Improve a bad ability

[PageEmperor]

Basically what the title says. There are some rules, though:

- Your ideas don’t need to have grounded logic. You can say something like ‘Stall now lowers the opponent’s attack every turn’ or something and it’s fine.

- No making overpowered abilities. The point of this is to make weaker abilities more usable, not create broken stuff.

- No need to look up to see if there is another ability that does the same thing as your idea. If you think it’s good, just go with it. And besides redundant abilities are a common thing anyway.

- Follow the basic forum rules, no insulting other people’s ideas if you don’t like them.

- That’s all! Just have fun posting ways you can better otherwise inferior abilities.

For me:

Illuminate: All light based attacks (eg. Dazzling gleam) and Electric attacks have a boosted crit ratio (let’s not make it anything too useful, increasing encounter rate is already a good thing. Just use repels if you don’t want more encounters)

Run away: The user’s quick reflexes makes it easier to land hits. It is now a No guard clone, but can only work in trainer battles and the ability wears off it the user’s accuracy drops or the opponents evasiveness increases by at least 1 point.

 

[IndigoClaudia]

Heavy Metal Raises your defense (by one) if the opposing pokémon is half as heavy as your pokémon
not a bad ability, but
Poison Point inflicts badly poisoned instead of just poisoned.

 

[Blast]

Magma Armor: Prevents the Pokémon from being frozen and halves damage taken from Water-type moves.
Leaf Guard: Protects both partners against status conditions and raises Special Defense by one stage in sunny weather.
Sticky Hold: The Pokémon's hold item cannot be removed by other Pokémon and prevents the opponent from switching if hit by a contact move.

 

[crime gardevoir]

In doubles and when possible, Trace consistently copies the ability of the opposing Pokémon that is directly across from the Pokémon with Trace, otherwise functioning the same as it already does.

In addition to being able to flee wild battles without failing, Run Away also prevents getting trapped by moves (such as Mean Look or Wrap) or abilities (such as Shadow Tag or Magnet Pull).

Instead of lowering attack, Defeatist functions the same as Emergency Exit/Wimp Out. Less about making a bad ability good with this one and more about making Archeops a little bit more usable.

Dry Skin raises defense and special defense two stages in rain, and lowers defense and special defense by one stage in sunlight.

Overgrow, Blaze, Torrent, and Swarm activate at 50% HP and display a message indicating that they're active.

In addition to what it already does, Synchronize also passes on volatile status conditions (including conditions that block switching). In the case of Rage Powder and Follow Me, Synchronize mirrors the effect to both opposing Pokémon.

Water Absorb and Volt Absorb heal HP equal to the damage that would've been taken when hit with the relevant move type.

Illuminate raises accuracy by two stages for Pokémon on your side of the field.

Pairing a Pokémon with Plus with a Pokémon with Minus raises the special attack and special defense of both by 1 stage while they are both are on the field. In addition to this, Minus negates damage and raises special defense by 1 stage when hit by an electric attack; Plus does the same but with special attack in the place of special defense (making it like Lightning Rod, but not drawing in attacks).

Ice Body reduces incoming damage from all contact moves by half (excluding fire-type moves).

Snow Cloak reduces incoming damage from all non-contact moves by half (excluding fire-type moves).

Shed Skin always activates at the end of a turn.

Static always activates on contact.

 

[qenya]

Cool idea! It's kinda fun to think about how things could be better balanced. Here's a few ideas, mostly based on frustrations I came across when trying to fit personal favourites into a reasonably strong team.

• Flame Body now grants immunity to entry hazards (idk, it burns up them up or something). This protects Moltres from what is otherwise a crippling weakness, while also not making Talonflame more durable unless you forgo Gale Wings.
• Leaf Guard and Chlorophyll both automatically cause sunny weather the first time the Pokémon switches in, triggering their respective bonuses immediately. This acts as a general buff for many Grass-types, which almost universally suffer from slow speed and vulnerability to status conditions.
• Reckless confers the ability to hit Ghost-types with Normal- and Fighting-type moves, which gives sadly sidelined Normal-types like Bouffalant a small degree of relevancy.
• Motor Drive now raises Special Attack and Special Defense as well as Speed, and activates (once) upon switch-in as well as when hit by an Electric-type move. This provides Emolga, Zebstrika and Electivire with a little more staying power and damage.
• Slow Start doubles Defense and Special Defense as well as halving Attack and Speed. I have no idea how well this would work - it may be going too much in the other direction - but Regigigas is supposed to be a legendary, dammit! It doesn't deserve to be this easy to fight.
• Harvest improves Speed somehow. I can't figure out a good in-universe justification for this, but literally every Pokémon with access to Harvest suffers from low speed. It's disappointing.