While playing Pokémon Sword and Shield, you may notice some of the shortcomings whether it is some of the Pokémon or items. Here are some of the ones that I have noticed and my ideas to fix them.

Zamazenta Moveset

Zamazenta
Zamazenta should have been given Body Press. It doesn’t only gets 4 Fightning attacking moves and one of those is Special so it makes Close Combat the only viable option on a conventional set. Giving Body Press would also be a good option given Zamazenta’s high Defense and ability Dauntless Shield. In a similar vein, its signature move should also be changed to use Defense as its attacking value during calculations. This would mean that investment can be done in its defensive stats without having the reduce its attacking potential.

Tapus Moveset

Tapu Koko Tapu Lele Tapu Bulu Tapu Fini

With the introduction of new tutor moves on the Isle of Armor, there were some new Terrain related moves. The logical Pokémon that should have gotten access to the Terrain based tutor moves where the Tapus given that they set the Terrain’s and can take full advantage of the new moves. This would be Rising Voltage for Tapu Koko, Expanding Force for Tapu Lele, Grassy Glide for Tapu Bulu, and Misty Explosion for Tapu Fini. But, this wasn’t done. The conclusion that I have come to is that they did this for balancing but I don’t agree with this based on the fact that Pokémon like Rillaboom and Indeedee got the tutor move related to their terrain. While, most of the Pokémon that get the tutor move and have their terrain have lower stats related to attack type of the moves, Rillaboom has an Attack stat just 5 points lower than Tapu Bulu. To me, this somewhat throws out the balance argument.

There was also a wierd decision not give all of the Tapus the move Play Rough. Tapu Koko and Bulu didn’t get Play Rough like Tapu Lele and Fini did. But, it makes little sense that only the latter got them considering the formers’ higher Attack stat compared to their Special Attack stat. This should be rectified.

Moves Mechanics

Move type indicators and base effects aren’t all applied the same and this needs to change to improve the player’s experience. These are:

  • Aura Wheel is a move that changes type based on the Morpeko’s form changes and it properly indicates this to the player at the move selection screen. But, for some reason this feature wasn’t applied to Weather Ball, Terrain Pulse, and those affected by Pixelate, Liquid Voice and Refrigerate. This means that a move can be selected for a particular effect and a different one is given without any indication to the user until the turn is done.

  • Weather Ball and Terrain Pulse are moves that keep their base effect as Max Moves. This is what causes them to change to diffferent Max Moves instead of just becoming Max Strike. But, it appears that Photon Geyser isn’t given this same treatment. It doesn’t change the attacking stat used during calculations when it being used as a Max Move. This makes it a bad option on Dusk Mane Necrozma.

The base power for Max Ooze and Max Knuckle which increase an attacking base stat are limited so that they don’t cause a snowball effect with Pokémon getting to +3 on the field and having Max Moves of over 100 base power. I don’t agree with this choice because of Weakness Policy as an item already allowing a Dynamax Pokémon to be attacking like this but furthermore Pokémon like Glastrier, Spectrier and Calryex have abilities which allow them to do this on successive KOs as Dynamax Pokémon. But, otherwise it is a fine mechanic I can understand. The major problem with it though is the effect on Physical Max Ooze, Special Max Knuckle, G-Max Malodor and G-Max Chi Strike. These moves have the same restriction as Special Max Ooze and Physical Max Knuckle but don’t have the same snowball effect.

Ability Patch

Much like the Max Soup, the Ability Patch greatly improves the experience of getting competitive accidentaly. But, unlike the Max Soup, the Ability Patch only works one way i.e. you can’t go from Hidden Ability to back to non-Hidden Ability. The only theory I could come up with is that Game Freak didn’t want to give a selection menu for Pokémon with more than one non-Hidden Ability and this doesn’t sound like a remotely reasonable reason. Thus, either the Ability Patch needs to be modified to Ability both ways or make it that the Ability Capsule change from Hidden Ability to non-Hidden Ability.

Also as a side note, the Ability Patch should be changed to work on Metapod since it currently doesn’t allow you to go both ways and thus a user cannot accidentally change between them accidentally on a Pokémon where they can’t tell the difference.