HOENN CONFIRMED

[Kindrindra]

Not too much of a change, but a gem shield? Going to go ahead and guess his defenses got buffed- Something Sableye will greatly appreciate. Very cool. Also the new mega evolution cinemagraphics are much cool.


In completely unrelated news, I think I know what mega stone I'm getting the PASBL!

[Sneaze]

>Mega Sableye

...saw it coming a mile away and thank god it's not some fugly ass thing like most other Megas. Still, it's... interesting. And how it will be adapted in ASB will certainly make me swing one way or the other with it.

[Raves]

Mother of god mega sableye is fucking badass.

[Cloneblazer12]

Mega Sableye gains a giant red gem and red eyes. Okay. Mega Metagross better be better than that.

[Kindrindra]

He gains a bit more than that. A third head-thingy and various frills and suchforth.

Have to say that I much prefer it to all the fanmade ones- Much more faithful to the concept.

[Red Panda]

All I could think was "How are we going to work with this in ASB?"

Cause on one hand it gives Sableye a well appreciated shield but on the other hand if Sableye can't ditch it mobility is lessen a lot.

Looks pretty awesome, though. Definitely prefer it over it's Mawile counterpart.

[Cloneblazer12]

He could use it just like the Conkeldurr line uses their plank/I-Beam/Conccrete Pillars. He can use it using a move, but has much less mobility and has to dich it to move fast.

[Kindrindra]

Since it's a mega, I think it would make sense for the gem to not inhibit his weight. Clone, the big difference between Mega Sable and Conkeldurr is that the Conkeldurr line's equipment is intended for offense, while Sable's gem is obviously intended for defense. Also, again, Mega.

Also, considering it's a ghost, it's not too implausible for the gem to not be stupidly heavy.

[Red Panda]

My biggest question is what the ability will be.

Will they keep it as Prankster? Will they have it as something more defensive?

Mega Banette already has Prankster, so they may not want the abilities to be the same.

[Talon87]

Years ago, I would've been 100% for this evolution. But Sableye has been a decent Pokémon in OU since the dying days of the Gen 4 meta. People already use him to good effect in VGC battles from what I have seen. The idea of augmenting his defenses while changing nothing else about him is just ...

I'm optimistic that Game Freak will balance him out as follows:

• give him a new ability which removes his weakness to Fairy
• give him boosted defenses
• by nature of swapping out his old ability for a new one, surprise surprise he loses Prankster and the speed that comes with it

Fairy was unkind to the old Ghost/Darks who had been designed for a time when Ghost/Dark meant that you weren't weak to anything. So I can understand Sableye fans' disappointment in Gen 6 introducing a powerful 2x weakness for the fragile gem hoarder and I can appreciate why Game Freak might want to use the ability slot to rectify that. But it would be overkill to patch up Sableye's defenses without touching his ability. In order to make him strong enough to not die instantly to Moonblasts only by modifying his defensive stats, you'd be unable to avoid making him stupidly good at walling every other type in the game. So if fans want the improved defenses, then they're going to have to forfeit Prankster. Otherwise ... yeesh ... this thing is going to be a downright terror.

[Red Panda]

Also, I don't think it was mentioned here.

Some information was released on Kyogre and Groudon (I dunno why it's spoilered)

Spoiler: show

They are officially called Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre.

Primal Groudon has been retyped to Ground/Fire.

Found on Serebii

Serebii also has a really detailed version of the Hoenn Map (I'm talking individual rocks and stuff)

[Kindrindra]

@Talon:

The thing with MegaSableye is, I don't think anyone's expecting him to get enough defenses to survive Moonblasts. Personally, what I'm hoping for is enough defenses to not be 2HKOed by everything else. Because non-Mega's defensive stats are literally miserable. In the first place, I could be totally off with this, but the inclusion of a physical shield makes me think that Sableye's physical defense is what's going to be buffed. Maybe special too, but no where near as much as physical. And, it must be noted, using Mega Sableye disables you from using another, more offensive Mega. So I don't think a physically-buffed Sableye with Prankster is out of the question.

That saaaaaid, do you know what would be kinda cool, and wouldn't surprise me? A new ability called Gem Shield or something, which would basically be a Fur Coat expy- In effect, an opposite to Huge Power (thus counterparting Mawile). With the gem-theme and all, this could also be Excelion Magical Girl's new ability. Would be very useful, frankly more useful than something negating the fairy weakness would be to Sableye (and also since I think making it so that every type has a weakness was a conscious decision on GF's part). Admittedly this could be kinda ridiculous on the legendary who could get it (SO MUCH PHYSICAL DEFENSE IT MAKES BLISSEY LOOK BAD AT WALLING SPECIAL MOVES), but. Would be cool!

[Lil'twick]

Originally Posted by empoleon dynamite

We have Mega Saybleye and it is glorious

Link

Brb laughing as COmp goes up in flames and burns to ashes. Anyways it looks pretty damned cool, and it certainly looks more defensive. Isthis the Prankster Wall from hell we're looking at? If it is damn the Meta Shift will be HUGE.

Also can't wait to smash people with the shield in ASB.

[Cloneblazer12]

Spoiler: show

>Ground/Fire Groudon

*Dies*

Im questioning how viable that would even be in game. He already had a huge disadvantage against his archnemesis, and now its been doubled into a quadruple weakness. I dont think he can even touch Kyogre anymore, sun or not.

Not that it really affects much, but Talon has a point....

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by Red Panda

Some information was released on Kyogre and Groudon (I dunno why it's spoilered)

Spoiler: show

Primal Groudon has been retyped to Ground/Fire.

Well well well ...

Spoiler: show

Originally Posted by Talon87

I. Types
I doubt that Kyogre will be retyped. Groudon, however, I think it's imminent that he'll gain the Fire type as a supplement. Because he's still technically the Continent Pokémon, I expect that he won't lose his Ground typing. And because Ground/Fire is a pretty awful typing defensively, I imagine that he'll want some help fixing it. (See below.) But aside from that, I think Ground/Fire makes sense for Groudon. What about you?

Originally Posted by Mercutio

I'm really not following why you think they'll retype Groudon.

Originally Posted by Talon87

The relationship between Groudon and Kyogre is rather asymmetric. In Kyogre, you have a Pokémon with an ability that boosts the power of its STAB attacks. In Groudon, you do not. Groudon's ability boosts the power and speed of moves that he has no STAB on. Eruption, Solarbeam, it makes no difference: Groudon's STAB is Ground and Drought just isn't helping that out any. Contrast this with Kyogre who gets Water Spout boosted to insanely high levels of damage output thanks to Drizzle.

The idea with the titans is that they're supposed to clash and be of roughly even power. Groudon isn't supposed to be Kyogre's bitch. But that's exactly what he has been ever since Ruby and Sapphire first came out over ten years ago. While the addition of a Fire typing might make Groudon an even bigger bitch of the big blue whale, it would at least address one of the asymmetries in their design that has bothered me for eleven years. "I'm Kyogre. My ability boosts my STAB." "I'm Groudon. My ability also boosts my STAB."

If it's one thing Game Freak has enjoyed doing with these megas, it has been using them to retype Pokémon to match fans' long-standing demands without officially officially retyping them. So we have a Fire/Dragon Charizard now but Game Freak still gets to have their cake and say, "Well he's still technically Fire/Flying and we were never wrong to make him so. " And we have an Electric/Dragon Ampharos to sate Japanese players' frustration over the fact that his very name meant "Electric Dragon" yet he wasn't a Dragon type. They haven't retyped things that no one really complained about (e.g. Mega Medicham is still Fighting/Psychic, Mega Manectric is still mono-Electric, etc.) but they've shown a willingness to type change Pokémon via mega evolutions whenever it's been something that fans have been really ardent about.

I think that there have been many fans over these past eleven, twelve years who have wondered why Groudon's ability doesn't match his STAB the same way that Kyogre's does. I think there've been many who have seen Groudon as a veritable "magma Pokémon" given where you find him, what he looks like, what he's said to have domain over, and so on. I mean, for Christ's sake: his signature move, Eruption, is a Fire-type move. So I think Groudon is a very healthy contender for a retyping so long as Game Freak patches the introduced 4x weakness somehow. If they do not intend to, then obviously they won't retype him either. A 4x weakness to Water is anathema to being a Pokémon that can be seen as Kyogre's equal. But if they're willing to patch the weakness by way of ability or hold item, then I think we could easily see a Ground/Fire Mega Groudon in our future.

Originally Posted by Mercutio

I dunno, I get the asymmetry but I just don't see them dealing with that. Maybe a potential Mega will be Ground Fire and maybe a Mega Kyogre will also be something, I just don't see it as likely myself.

Smartassedness aside ...

I didn't really think about it with Emp's post about the new mega evolution, but Cloneblazer's reply to Red, devoid of a spoiler tag, makes me realize that we're ruining the game for people who wanted to avoid spoilers about ORAS but still wanted to get on the hype train and speculate about it. So ... is there anyone out there who doesn't want to read ORAS spoilers yet who wants to discuss ORAS before it comes out? If there is, then we should make a new thread that is spoiler free and repurpose this one to be a spoiler-legal discussion. If not ... then this should still probably be morphed into a spoiler-legal territory for discussion. I've put my reply to Red in a spoiler box above since we've not agreed as a community on this course of action, but it's probably the last time I'll spoiler box anything in this thread -- anything that has to do with ORAS, anyway.

[Lil'twick]

Originally Posted by Cloneblazer12

>Ground/Fire Groudon

*Dies*

Im questioning how viable that would even be in game. He already had a huge disadvantage against his archnemesis, and now its been doubled into a quadruple weakness. I dont think he can even touch Kyogre anymore, sun or not.

Well he doesn't really have to fear Skymin or Grassceus, and acts as a nice counter to Steelceus. Groudon-P will probably also be a great partner with Xerneas, but Kyo-P also seems like it will.

Though yeah they sorta boned him against Kyo-P.

>Talon

Tbh I really don't think that a spoiler free thread needs to be created. Most of us watching E3 yesterday already know about this, and most of us have already been squealing over the CoroCoro leaks. I don't think anyone has specifically stated that they wanted to avoid spoilers, since it's pretty easy to guess at what most of them will be.

[Kindrindra]

Literally the first thing I did when I heard the news was go to Skype and post "Hear that? That's the sound of Talon being right.".

First Fatal Frame, now this, you should open a fortune telling business for fun and profit! Kehehe... Not funny?


>Groudon being boned by Kyogre

This is why the world is 66% water!

[Red Panda]

Yeah I spoilered it because I wasn't sure and better safe than sorry.

[Talon87]

Oh, you didn't have to edit out the spoiler tag in this particular case. I think this thread has morphed beyond the point of no return into a "COME ONE, COME ALL! SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOIIIIIILEEEEEERS! " thread. It's kind of silly to continue to use spoiler tags (for ORAS news) any longer while posting in this thread. Elsewhere on the forum, absolutely not, keep on using them if you've any respect for your fellow members who might be trying to dodge ORAS spoilers. But here? People have already said so much outside of spoiler tags that it'd be stupid to insist on their continued use in this thread.

And so with that said, one courtesy WARNING that this post contains spoilers for Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire! Don't scroll down any further if you don't want to be spoiled.

Originally Posted by Cloneblazer12

Spoiler: show

>Ground/Fire Groudon

*Dies*

Im questioning how viable that would even be in game. He already had a huge disadvantage against his archnemesis, and now its been doubled into a quadruple weakness. I dont think he can even touch Kyogre anymore, sun or not.

Well, I wrote about this earlier in the thread when I brought up the likelihood of a Ground/Fire retyping. Quoting the relevant bits:

Originally Posted by Talon87

II. Abilities
Most fans are already speculating that Groudon's and Kyogre's new forms will be given new abilities that match the Drought and Drizzle of old. It's a safe bet and will probably be the leading contender right on up until the official reveal.

However, it's possible that Game Freak will consider alternate abilities for the mega forms. If Groudon becomes Ground/Fire, one possibility is that Game Freak will give him something to mitigate his 4x weakness to Water given the prevalance of Palkia and Kyogre in the Übers circuit. Whether it's Solid Rock (ehh, I guess it's something ) or whether it's something new and better, who can say. I doubt it'll be Water Absorb, though that would be nice. ^^; (Would even make a strange sort of sense for a Pokémon said to be the genesis of the continents themselves. After all, does not the earth absorb water? ;D)

[...]

Do I think Kyogre will or Groudon will get new abilities? Probably not. I think they'll either retain Drought and Drizzle (gimped and all) or else they'll get back a "Gen 3 Drought" and a "Gen 3 Drizzle" which, as far as most of us are concerned, is functionally equivalent. But still: it's fun to consider the possibility of new abilities all the same.

III. Secondary Effect of Held Items
[...] In addition to the speculated primary effects of the Gen 3 orbs, i.e. that they will be revealed to be Mega Stones which facilitate the mega evolution of their respective legendaries, I anticipate that we might see some secondary effects coming out of these items as well. The most obvious one to me is one that's followed us throughout this post: the problem of a Ground/Fire Groudon's quadruple weakness to water. Game Freak could easily make it so that a Groudon which holds onto the Red Orb gains a 2x resistance to Water (for a net result of a 2x weakness to Water if he becomes Ground/Fire and a net result of 1x weakness to Water if he chooses to remain regular Groudon). Kyogre, for his part, could either be given a mirror buff to defense by holding the Blue Orb, e.g. he could gain a 2x resistance to Ground-type attacks since Ground is to Groudon what Water is to Kyogre; or he could be given an asymmetric buff to defense, e.g. he could gain a 2x resistance to electricity since Kyogre cares a fair deal more about Electric attacks than he does about Ground or Fire ones; or he could even be given a completely non-matching buff, like, one that has nothing to do with type weaknesses and resistances. Perhaps for Kyogre the Blue Orb would grant him a +20% boost to Special Defense. Perhaps it would magically grant him some other ability ...

That's a whole other area that these hold items could explore: they could gift the box cover legendaries with the first-ever instance of dual simultaneous abilities in Pokémon. Like, Kyogre could have both Drizzle (in-built) and Hydration (gifted by the orb). Or Groudon could have both Drought (in-built) and Tough Claws (gifted by the orb). I'm not sure we want to see Game Freak opening this veritable Pandora's Box like this, but given that the mega evolutions are already a "LOL POWER CREEP! WHEEEEE! " irresponsible move by the developers, I wouldn't put it past them to make certain hold items start conferring the gift of a second ability in addition to the first.

Primal Groudon's ability is probably going to be "Primal Drought" or some such, a.k.a. "the Drought you all knew and loved/hated from Gens 3, 4, and 5." So if the ability is going to be Primal Drought (with Kyogre's being Primal Drizzle), then it's going to fall to either the hold item or else to secondary effects of the new ability to ensure that Groudon isn't completely boned by Palkia and Kyogre with his new typing.

I wrote earlier about Game Freak using the item to confer a 2x water resistance buff to Groudon, meaning he'd go from being 4x weak (effectively 6x weak in rain ~_~) to only being 2x weak (or 3x weak in rain). But the thing is, that effective 3x weakness in the rain is still pretty killer. It's already killer for regular Groudon now. So it's possible that they'll decide to patch him up even further by perhaps having the item confer upon him a 3x or even a 4x resistance buff, the latter balancing out his natural 4x weakness to water and making him take neutral hits from it now.

While I would've placed more money on the hold item than the ability originally, as of this writing I'm more evenly split down the middle. This is because we've learned that Maxie and Archie appear to have Mega Stones on their persons, suggesting that one of their Pokémon can mega evolve. Since I believe that Maxie's Mega will be his Camerupt ... and since Camerupt shares the exact same types as Primal Groudon ... and since Camerupt hates Water-type attacks too ... it would make sense to me that Game Freak might have concocted an ability to help out Ground/Fires and that they may be planning on gifting it to both Primal Ground and Camerupt. While Mega Camerupt sharing Primal Drought with Primal Groudon isn't something I want to see happening for flavor reasons, it's possible that Game Freak will have neither of them feature this predicted ability. Perhaps they'll have something entirely new and which doesn't feel quite so stupid for an ordinary camel to share with a continental titan.

[Red Panda]

The whole "Primal Drought" and "Primal Drizzle" may not be a far shout. They might last forever, while also having enhanced effects (in drought, fire does even more and water does even less) because these Primal forms are meant to be raw power, ancient power.

[Mercutio]

Mega Sableye looks pretty cool. Obviously, Mega Evolution is the devil, but this one's not quite as vomit inducing.

[kusari]

Originally Posted by Mercutio

Mega Sableye looks pretty cool. Obviously, Mega Evolution is the devil, but this one's not quite as vomit inducing.

Ah. The highest compliment one can recieve from Kush. Good on ya Sableye.


>Fire/Ground Groudon

Supposedly, its ability will null that 4x weakness. Only heard this without sources though so I have no idea if it's true. Someone said it came from the the E3 press pack fact sheet, but I've seen that and there was no confirmation on what the abilities do, just that they got buffed.

[Heather]

Mega Sableye just went to Hyrule and stole a giant red Rupee and replaced it eyes with the normal sized red rupees.

[Ex-Admiral Insane]

inb4 Magma ploy to catch and sell all the Sableye to finance their operations

[rotomotorz]

Inb4 Wonder Guard Mega Sableye