AOTW: Cute Charm
Wil Brendel January 10, 2013AOTW: Cute Charm, 
Been gone a few weeks, trainers! Sorry for the absence, but, you know, holidays. I don’t want to make excuses or anything, but let me just run down what I’ve been up to in the weeks since you’ve heard from me. I had to head back to the Great Lakes state for Christmas, then drove back to the Windy City for work. New Year’s Eve happened. Drove back to Michigan the next day to pick up my Rival and immediately returned to Chicago, all while getting sick. Spent the day with Rival and dropped him off at Union Station. Nursed self back to relative health just in time for another work weekend, and had a roommate’s birthday party yesterday. WHEW! Oh, and in the middle of all that… tubby has a new girlfriend. And she’s adorable. Seems like as good a time as any to talk about a new Ability of the Week: Cute Charm!
Cute Charm has been around since the introduction of Abilities in the generation three titles. It functions in a similar fashion to Abilities like Static and Poison Point. Whenever a Pokémon with Cute Charm is hit by an attack that makes physical contact, there is a 30% chance that the attacking Pokémon will become infatuated (provided that it is of the opposite gender). As a reminder, a Pokémon that is under the influences of infatuation will only be able to move 50% of the time (so that’s why I’ve been so sluggish in my article writing! Lovesickness is a hell of a thing, guys).
Adorable.
So, apart from my new lady, who can use Cute Charm? Well, twelve Pokémon over six evolutionary families have access to Cute Charm, and all but one of them are the Normal type. The Clefable, Wigglytuff, Delcatty, and Cinccino families have Cute Charm the whole way through their evolution chain, while a Buneary with Run Away will gain Cute Charm when it evolves into Lopunny. Also, Milotic has Cute Charm as its Hidden Ability. From where I’m sitting, a Pokémon with Cute Charm needs two things to operate successfully: tankiness and status alteration. Attraction is a great status affliction because it stacks on top of the mainstream ones like Poison and Paralysis. A Wigglytuff or Clefable outfitted with Thunder Wave will love its life with Cute Charm. Between a reasonable amount of staying power and the innate ability to twitterpate its foes, these powderpuffs can be a force to be reckoned with!
That does it for your Ability 101 class this week, trainers! Until next time, watch out for them cute nerdy chicks. Who’d’ve thunk a Pokémon Ability would work in real life!? They’ll getcha every time…
Written by Wil
www.wheretheresawil.com
@wheretheresawil
Proofed by Greg
@gdavidson79
