#bugtypes

Unlike real bee flies (as far as we know), Cutiefly and Ribombee have the ability to sense the “auras” of living things.  “Aura” here, we should notice, is not the same thing as the spiritual power that can be manipulated by Lucario and other Pokémon that learn the Aura Sphere attack (which Ribombee doesn’t get).  This more famous and consequential “Aura” (capital A) translates a Japanese phrase (nami shirube) meaning something like “wave-guiding power,” whereas the “aura” that Cutiefly can see is referred to in Japanese by a simple transliteration of the English word “aura” (ora), presumably in reference to the colourful energy fields that New Age psychics can see around people and other living things.  This latter phenomenon is perhaps best known for being bull$#!t, but we can’t hold that against Cutiefly; after all, we’re in an escapist fantasy world in which “life force” does seem to be a thing.  What all this means is that, instead of being able to destroy their enemies with destructive blasts of radiant energy, Cutiefly and Ribombee can see flowers sometimes.

Don’t worry; I’m sure it’s worth it.

Cutiefly and Ribombee apparently use their supernatural sense mainly to locate flowers in bloom, because their auras shine particularly bright at that point in their life cycle.  This allows them to pillage the flowers’ sweet, sweet nectar.  They also sometimes cluster around certain people whose auras resemble those of flowers in bloom when they are emotional, presumably because those people are also frivolous attention-seeking decorations whose only real purpose in life is reproduction (listen, I’m a Grass-type specialist; I care about how flowers actually work; if you want someone to romanticise them, go talk to one of those hippy Fairy trainers).  According to the Ultra Moon Pokédex, Cutiefly can also read opponents’ intentions in their auras to predict their actions, not unlike Espeon’s ability to sense the subtle movements of an imminent attack by reading air currents, thus explaining how such a small and fluffy Pokémon hasn’t yet been squashed into extinction.  Given all that, it’s interesting that these Pokémon aren’t Psychic-types, especially since Bug/Psychic would be just as new a combination as Bug/Fairy, and even compared to other Bug Pokémon like Butterfree they can develop a fairly wide range of psychic powers.  The lines are further blurred by the fact that “classic” fairies have insectoid traits – what is that makes Butterfree, for instance, not a Fairy-type?  It could be that we should consider empathy-related abilities to be more a Fairy-type than a Psychic-type characteristic: consider here the addition of the Fairy type to the Ralts line, who formerly had the most overt focus on empathic powers of any Psychic-type, or the emotion-focused abilities of Fairy-types like Togekiss and Sylveon.  That doesn’t really tell us anything new about Ribombee, but I’m willing to jump on anything I can get to try and understand what the Fairy type’s identity is supposed to be.

All of this aura-sensing stuff is done in aid of gathering the nectar and pollen of flowers to create a variety of different types of pollen balls.  Adult bee flies, of course, feed on nectar, and in the process of gathering it they tend to pick up quite a bit of pollen in the same way as bees do.  They don’t really do anything with pollen, though; that’s where the bee-like side of Cutiefly and Ribombee becomes more important.  Adult honeybee workers mainly live off a portion of the nectar they collect for the hive, storing the rest of it as honey so they can eat during the winter.  Growing larvae, on the other hand, need more protein as they develop, and they get this from pollen, which worker bees mix with a little bit of nectar and their own saliva and pack into hard pellets to store.  The pollen then ferments into a highly nutritious substance called bee bread, which is an important part of the diet of larval bees.  As far as I know, honeybees have never been recorded launching explosive pollen balls at their enemies in an attempt to cause them misery and dismay, but they are mysterious creatures whose ways are manifold and enigmatic, so it’s possible we just haven’t observed that yet.  Like bee flies, Ribombee seems to be solitary, or at least the Pokédex makes no mention of complex social structures like those of honeybees, so they aren’t using their pollen balls to feed larvae.  However, we know that Ribombee hates rain – she shares honeybees’ ability to predict weather conditions from changes in air pressure, and only goes foraging when the skies are clear for several days in a row.  The ability to store food for her down time must therefore be quite important.  Finally, to continue Cutiefly and Ribombee’s theme of things that are essentially bull$#!t, Ribombee’s pollen balls are sold in Alola as a “super-food,” much like bee pollen is in the real world.  Real bee pollen is rich in protein and other nutrients, but like all “super-foods” its actual health benefits don’t even begin to live up to the marketing hype, and harvesting it in large quantities is extraordinarily wasteful because of its importance to the hive’s own life cycle.  Of course, Ribombee is literally magic, and can produce a wide variety of different pollen mixtures with distinct positive and negative effects, so it’s just possible that the Alolans aren’t credulous morons for thinking it cures cancer or whatever.  For more on what Ribombee’s pollen definitely can do for you, let’s talk about her Pollen Puff attack.

Pollen Puff is Ribombee’s signature move, a respectable Bug-type special attack that bombards a target with explosive pollen balls.  In singles, whether to take this over Bug Buzz is kind of a matter of taste.  Pollen Puff has 15 PP where Bug Buzz only has 10, but… eh, how often do you actually run out of PP on moves with more than 5, especially if you can afford PP Up?  Bug Buzz is probably marginally better because of its 10% chance to reduce a target’s special defence.  In doubles, though, Pollen Puff has a cool little dual-use utility function – if you target an ally with it, Pollen Puff will restore 50% of their health.  Ribombee basically gets to know Heal Pulse without actually giving up a move slot for it, which is pretty nifty.  That should already clue us in that Ribombee is meant to be a supporter.  She’s deathly fragile against both physical and special attacks, but is actually the second-fastest Fairy-type in the game after Tapu Koko, and possessed of a very impressive support movepool.  Want to slow or disable the enemy team?  She’s got Stun Spore, and picks up Trick and Sticky Web (the speed-lowering field hazard) in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, from a new move tutor and as a new egg move, respectively.  Maybe protecting and healing your own team is more your style?  Ribombee can learn Reflect, Light Screen and Aromatherapy.  Prefer to play cheerleader with Baton Pass?  Ribombee learns Quiver Dance, and the only other Pokémon with both are Venomoth and Masquerain, who have slightly better defences but are much slower and have weaker type combinations.  Want to do something really weird and super dumb?  Well, Ribombee’s got you covered there too, for what it’s worth, because she’s got Skill Swap, Magic Room, Wonder Room, Helping Hand, After You and Ally Switch.  There’s even Speed Swap, an interesting new move from Sun and Moon that Ribombee can get as an egg move from Alolan Raichu, one of only two Pokémon that learn it naturally (the other is Pheromosa).  Like Diamond and Pearl’s Guard Swap and Power Swap, it’s a fairly self-explanatory move: the user swaps the relevant stats with the target.  Obviously this is a terrible thing for Ribombee to do in singles, where she’ll be faster than most of her opponents, but it could create some interesting combos in doubles by allowing her to bestow her excellent speed on a slow but powerful ally.

When Ribombee tries to do any fighting for herself, the picture gets somewhat less rosy.  As we’ve already seen she gets Quiver Dance, and she has a respectable special attack score, so there might be an argument there for just taking three attacks – probably Bug Buzz, Moonblast and Psychic – and going to town.  Fairy is such a good type that a boosted Moonblast is scary coming from just about anything; the trouble is that Ribombee has no special attacks worth using against Fire or Steel Pokémon, barring Hidden Power, so as Quiver Dancers go, she’s fairly easy to stop.  Also, although Quiver Dance bolsters special defence, her physical defences will still have the consistency of fruit yoghurt.  I don’t want to undersell Quiver Dance, because that move alone can work wonders for an otherwise mediocre Pokémon, but eventually you’re going to have to ask yourself why you aren’t using Volcarona, or even Venomoth, who has many shortcomings but outshines Ribombee on offence because the Tinted Lens ability makes his attacks almost impossible to resist.  Ribombee can heal herself with Roost, but her defences are so flimsy that this is unlikely ever to be the best use of her time; better to use her speed with Baton Pass or U-Turn to just keep her from taking damage as much as possible in the first place.  Despite a large and interesting support movepool, Ribombee has relatively few good options to add spice to a straightforward offence gameplan.  Support is what she’s good at, and she has a large enough range of tricks that she won’t necessarily be predictable if she sticks to the utility side of things.

You might have noticed that I haven’t mentioned Ribombee’s abilities yet, and that’s because they’re frankly not very important to her playstyle, or particularly inspiring.  The Shield Dust ability negates the side effects of damaging moves, things like the burn chance of Fire attacks or the special defence penalty caused by Psychic (moves that don’t cause damage, like Will’o’Wisp, work normally).  This is fine, but you don’t really need fancy debuffs to knock out Ribombee; plain old damage will do that.  If you can be bothered chasing down a Cutiefly with their hidden ability, Sweet Veil, immunity to sleep is nice, especially in multiple battles where it will be shared with partners, and if nothing else it’s pleasingly thematic.  The only other alternative is Honey Gather, which does nothing in battle, and… honestly it basically does nothing out of battle either; honey is only useful in Sinnoh (where it’s the only way to attract certain Pokémon like Cherubi and Munchlax) and Kalos (where it can trigger wild horde battles – but even then, Sweet Scent does the same thing and has unlimited uses).  The ability is basically in the game to make absolutely sure that everyone knows how worthless Combee is – which I think is something we can all get behind.

Vikavolt’s species designation – “the Stag Beetle Pokémon” – immediately gives away what it’s supposed to be.  Stag beetles are a family characterised by their oversized, powerful mandibles; where Pinsir uses these to tenderise and brutalise enemies in close combat, Vikavolt instead uses them to charge up its Electric attacks.  This family includes some of the largest beetles – and by extension some of the largest insects – in the world, like the giraffe stag beetle, which can reach an impressive 12 cm long, not counting the mandibles (Vikavolt is quoted as 1.5m long, which probably does include the mandibles but is nonetheless downright terrifying).  Drawing on the beetles’ hard carapaces, Vikavolt’s design is very angular, with lots of sharp corners and straight lines, giving it an almost robotic appearance.  The Sun and Moon website describes it as “like a fortress that zooms through the forest,” which is an odd image, in that zooming through forests is not in my experience something fortresses are known for, but pushes the same sort of design angle.  It’s odd that the Pokédex says it “zips around,” and that the website talks about its speed and aerial acrobatic skill, since Vikavolt is very much not a “zippy” Pokémon, nor is it one that has much cause to be “on sharp lookout for an opening.”  Stag beetles, much like fortresses, are not exactly graceful in flight, so Vikavolt is slow, and not an actual Flying-type (though it does come with Levitate).  This is not a subtle Pokémon.  Vikavolt is forceful, rampant and destructive, like Genesect, Drapion or Scolipede.  From reading its flavour text, you get the impression that Vikavolt is very good at navigating around opponents to hit their weak points from unexpected directions, but using this thing is rather different: Vikavolt actually handles like a drugged whale, but has no qualms about blasting its way through any and all obstacles with overwhelming electrical attacks.  Still, I suppose they did give it Acrobatics and Agility, so I suppose I shouldn’t be too critical of any disconnect there.

What’s interesting about Charjabug and Vikavolt is the weird relationship they have in the wild.  Charjabug, we’re told, have a phenomenal capacity to store electricity (hence the battery-inspired design).  Vikavolt can take advantage of this by picking Charjabug up and carrying them into battle, slung under their bodies.  Charjabug’s extra power can then supercharge Vikavolt’s already devastating electrical beam attacks.  In the game, this tactic is represented by Charjabug’s signature ability, Battery, which enhances the special attacks of allies in multiple battles.  The ability doesn’t carry over to Vikavolt (who replaces it with Levitate), so at the moment its competitive relevance is pretty sharply limited, though I expect in future it will probably be distributed more widely (it sure kicks the cr@p out of Plus and Minus, while conveying much the same theme).  I suppose you can do a kind of support-focused Eviolite Charjabug in doubles (for those not in the know, a Pokémon holding an Eviolite that is not yet fully evolved gets a substantial +50% buff to both defence and special defence), but… ehhhhhhhh?  As for where this even comes from in terms of Charjabug’s flavour, larval insects spend most of their existence eating, storing energy in order to sustain their metamorphoses into their adult forms… so we might think that Grubbin, in a similar vein, are devoted entirely to charging themselves up with electrical energy so that, as Charjabug, they can act as power-packs for adult Vikavolt.  In turn, we may suspect that Vikavolt’s ability to generate its own electricity is relatively limited compared to more conventional Electric-types.  Charjabug, then, isn’t an intermediary stage in quite the same way as Metapod, Silcoon, etc.; it’s actually a fairly specialised organism in its own right that provides important support to its own much rarer adult form.  Of course, in the games, trainers’ Vikavolt don’t have the luxury of having Charjabug to assist them with free power… except for Sophocles’ Totem Vikavolt, who totally squanders the Battery bonus by using only physical attacks, a la Ghetsis’ Hydreigon on Black and White 2.

*headdesk*

Before me move on, a quick note on Vikavolt’s evolutionary path.  Actually playing with Grubbin in the game’s story is a bit of a pain, because Charjabug is one of three Pokémon (the others being Nosepass and Magneton) whose evolution requires exposure to a “special magnetic field.”  In Sun and Moon, this means you have to take them to the Vast Poni Canyon, close to the end of the game, and long after you will have first encountered an enemy Vikavolt (Sophocles’ Totem), which is extremely unusual for the past three generations (normally a Gym Leader’s signature Pokémon is one that either would have recently become available to you, or very soon will).  Three-stage Bug Pokémon in the past have been known for evolving very quickly, and being strong early- to mid-game choices as a result.  This is basically the key draw of early-game Pokémon – they tend to reach their peak power very quickly.  Purely because of the geography of the game’s setting, this is emphatically not true of Vikavolt, making a very odd departure from the way Pokémon availability normally works, to the extent that I almost think it has to be an oversight.

Once you actually get Vikavolt, it’s a pretty tricky Pokémon to use.  Vikavolt takes “artillery” to a whole new level. Painfully slow and with defences no better than decent, it nonetheless comes with a special attack score to rival some of the most powerful in the game, like Chandelure.  Certainly it has the strongest special attacks of any Bug Pokémon in the game, with even Pheromosa and Volcarona noticeably behind; among Electric-types, only Xurkitree and Mega Ampharos can best it.  The previous Pokémon to wear the Bug/Electric type combination, Galvantula, was able to wield incredible forces by enhancing the accuracy of Thunder with the Compoundeyes ability.  Vikavolt’s Thunderbolt (or Discharge in doubles) just blows that out of the water on raw power alone, but can’t match Galvantula’s blistering speed.  Bug/Electric, as Galvantula taught us, is a pretty solid combination.  You only have two weaknesses, Fire and Rock, and Vikavolt adds a useful Ground immunity, courtesy of the Levitate ability.  Bug attacks – for both Galvantula and Vikavolt, this is primarily Bug Buzz – cover Electric’s blind spot for Grass-types, and being a Bug-type also makes it thematically appropriate for you to learn Energy Ball, so it’s difficult for Ground-types to switch in and absorb your Thunderbolts with impunity.  Those three attacks form the core of Vikavolt’s offensive capabilities.  Flash Cannon is its other significant special attack, and is mostly useful to punish anyone who tries to counter you with a bulky Fairy-type special tank like Florges or Sylveon; if you’re confident your team can handle them by other means, ditch Flash Cannon.  Air Slash is technically there, but it’s a weak move and doesn’t really fill any major holes in Vikavolt’s type coverage.  Volt Switch, the special Electric-type counterpart to U-Turn, is on Vikavolt’s movelist as well.  It’s a fantastic move, and always worth consideration, but Vikavolt’s simply not the best Pokémon to use it, for similar reasons to Incineroar, Gumshoos and Toucannon: being slow with mediocre defences, it’s a very difficult Pokémon to get into play safely, and once it’s there, its time is best spent causing as much havoc as possible with its obscene special attack stat.  It shouldn’t be aiming to keep itself safe with a hit-and-run, because it may not live to do it a second time; it should be aiming to brutally murder things in, if possible, a single Choice Specs- or Life Orb-boosted attack.

Unlike all those other sledgehammer-style Pokémon I’ve been reviewing so far, Vikavolt actually learns Agility, and the thought of what this thing could do if it could actually move is nothing short of terrifying.  Even after using Agility, there are still a number of perfectly respectable Pokémon that will outrun Vikavolt, especially ones that carry Choice Scarves, so you’re probably never going to make Vikavolt a proper sweeper as such, but it might be worth playing around with.  Getting Trick Room support from your team is a bit difficult to pull off in singles, but makes Vikavolt damn near unstoppable for a short time if it works.  Alternatively, you can Thunder Wave things to slow down important targets in a way that helps your entire team, but playing support seems like something of a waste of Vikavolt’s talent for destruction.  If you’re facing multiple opponents, you can slow them all down with String Shot or Electro Web; these moves aren’t worth it in singles but can be useful support options in other formats.  Finally, Vikavolt can learn Roost for healing, so, like many Alolan Pokémon, you could theoretically try shoehorning it into a sort of off-tank role, dumping speed and putting a lot of points into Vikavolt’s HP.  I’m not convinced it has the durability to really make that work though.