Give Gengar HA Levitate

[K10ud]

From my understanding, the nerf for Gengar was due to his ability to set up his mega evolution switching into ground-type moves. 

Seeing how there aren't mega evolutions, and also seeing how even Gengar with Levitate never made it to Uber Tier.

Why not bring back Levitate Gengar when the meta is so strongly dominated by ground types? Maybe as a Hidden Ability so it takes some work to get. 

[Doctor]

This has been brought up several times, and I always think it would be horrible to have Gengar show up in every single team again. Triple immunity + immunity to poison makes it centralizing enough that I don't think it'd be healthy. Gengar is perfectly fine as it is right now.

[CanadaSorry]

Pretty sure its mostly because gengars levitate was removed by pokemon themselves, after gen 5. It wasnt a pokemmo decision, it was a decision made by the game makers, because levitate gengar is simply too OP. When we adapted to later gen battle mechanics, properly implementing them means we need to adjust to their changes. Im not saying i wouldnt use it if it did come back....it was great when he had it back in 2019, and maybe when we get HA blaziken and slowbro, we can have levitate gengar to help "level the playing field" but....idk....tough to see that happening

[Frieren]

Soooo, a major buff to a pokemon that's already OU?

[K10ud]

40 minutes ago, Frieren said:

Soooo, a major buff to a pokemon that's already OU?

Smogon puts him into UU after losing Levitate. 

He has a pretty terrible win rate in pokemmo's OU at the moment. 

 

1 hour ago, Doctor said:

This has been brought up several times, and I always think it would be horrible to have Gengar show up in every single team again. Triple immunity + immunity to poison makes it centralizing enough that I don't think it'd be healthy. Gengar is perfectly fine as it is right now.

Did Gengar ever have levitate in Pokemmo?
It just seems there are Tyranitars and Garchomps in every single team, it makes Gengar not very viable in the current meta. 

Edited May 4 by K10ud

[Doctor]

3 hours ago, K10ud said:

Smogon puts him into UU after losing Levitate. 

He has a pretty terrible win rate in pokemmo's OU at the moment. 

Did Gengar ever have levitate in Pokemmo?
It just seems there are Tyranitars and Garchomps in every single team, it makes Gengar not very viable in the current meta. 

Our meta is so much more different than Smogon that the comparison, while understandable, doesn't really hold up. No permaweather, Defog being able to clear hazards, updated learnsets to match gen 9 ones, the absence of so many Pokémon and their hidden abilities, etc.

 

Yep, Gengar did have Levitate here, and it was centralizing in my opinion. You were "forced" to run a specific way of dealing with it, since the common answers in the form of specially defensive mons usually couldn't handle a Substitute/Nasty Plot set due to the triple immunity + poison immunity I mentioned.

 

Sadly the stats page, while an useful tool to figure out the most played sets, doesn't really offer trustable information in terms of how good a Pokémon really is. It gathers data from all elo ranges, which means that the newest players' data weighs as much as the top players', resulting in a distortion of the perception of said mon. Gengar is a really popular mon among the playerbase, and a fairly easy one to get during your story run, so a lot of new players will queue up with their story teams to then get completely crushed. To give a similar example, Volcarona has almost the same winrate as Gengar, and there's even been arguments (not serious ones, but they're out there) arguing about it being too strong for our metagame. Garchomp has only 1% more winrate than Gengar as well, and of course no one would think it's in a bad spot for the metagame; it's just how popular the mon is and how that ends up distorting the data.

 

Its check and counters being common also doesn't mean it's in a tough spot: Gengar can easily run HP ice to deal with Garchomp and it naturally outspeeds it; and with good prediction + playing around it, Tyranitar isn't that big of an issue either considering it has access to Nasty Plot + Focus Blast (Shadow Ball + FB is the go-to moveset for Gengar due to its coverage)

 

All in all, it could be an interesting topic to discuss, can't say otherwise, but I still feel like Gengar is perfectly fine as it is right now.

[razimove]

It will never happen. 

[K10ud]

On 5/4/2024 at 5:15 PM, Doctor said:

Our meta is so much more different than Smogon that the comparison, while understandable, doesn't really hold up. No permaweather, Defog being able to clear hazards, updated learnsets to match gen 9 ones, the absence of so many Pokémon and their hidden abilities, etc.

 

So ultimately is all this speculative? You bring up a good point about the statistics being skewed by lower ranks.
Perhaps you're right and Gengar is a viable OU mon, it just doesn't seem like I've had many issues playing against him. Gengar feels very frail, and has a hard time surviving strong neutral hits. 

 

Idk, I never played Pokemmo when gengar had levitate, so maybe you're right to say he felt too dominating. He just feels underwhelming at the moment. 

[razimove]

10 hours ago, K10ud said:

So ultimately is all this speculative? You bring up a good point about the statistics being skewed by lower ranks.
Perhaps you're right and Gengar is a viable OU mon, it just doesn't seem like I've had many issues playing against him. Gengar feels very frail, and has a hard time surviving strong neutral hits. 

 

Idk, I never played Pokemmo when gengar had levitate, so maybe you're right to say he felt too dominating. He just feels underwhelming at the moment. 

Gengar rn is a lot stronger than it was as cursed body is another layer of RNG which can define a match late game. So no levitate existing wouldnt make him better by any means. Levitate was removed cause mmo follows the latest generation changes, and in gen8+ there is no levitate gengar, its that simple. So no, it wont return, and its not needed at all, gengar is frail by default if you look at his defensive stats and typing.