An unexpected Pokemon has the potential to radically shift the balance of Pokemon competitive play. This weekend is the Pokemon World Championships, the culmination of a year’s worth of competitive tournaments to determine the best Pokemon video game and card game players on the planet. Next year’s World Championships will likely be very different, mostly due to the introduction of Pokemon from Pokemon Sword and Shield, the upcoming Pokemon games for the Nintendo Switch. Players are already itching to get their hands on the new Pokemon, especially one recently introduced Pokemon with a gamechanging ability.
Earlier this month, the Pokemon Company introduced fans to Galarian Weezing, a regional variant of Weezing. In addition to being a Poison/Fairy-type Pokemon instead of Poison-type Pokemon, Weezing also has the unique Ability Neutralizing Gas, which negates the abilities of all other Pokemon in play. Not only can players use Galarian Weezing to cancel out Abilities of opposing Pokemon, leaving them vulnerable to attack, Galarian Weezing also cancels out the Abilities of friendly Pokemon too, which is especially relevant in Pokemon competitive play. As the standard competitive format for Pokemon battles is 2 v 2 battles with two Pokemon on a field at a time, players can team Galarian Weezing with several Pokemon shackled with negative Abilities.
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For instance, Galarian Weezing can turn Slaking into a major powerhouse by negating Slaking’s Truant ability, which causes Slaking to skip using a move every other turn. Slaking has one of the strongest base Attack stats in the game (on par with many Legendary or Mega Evolved Pokemon), so pairing it with Galarian Weezing could turn it into a major powerhouse. Other Pokemon potentially impacted by Galarian Weezing’s Neutralizing Gas ability includes Archeops, which has a Defeatist ability that nerfs its Attack and Speed stats when its HP drops below 50%, or Regigigas, which has a Slow Start ability that halves its stats during its first five turns on the battlefield.
Of course, since Pokemon Sword and Shield won’t have every Pokemon in the game, it’s possible that Galarian Weezing won’t have the opportunity to team up with Slaking or Archeops in competitive play next year. However, we can expect to see a lot of Galarian Weezing in competitive play very soon.
Pokemon Sword and Shield comes out on November 19th.
