AOTW: Defiant

How’s it going, boys and girls? Welcome back to your weekly Ability class! Not gonna lie, folks, the holidays have left me in a state of less than physical perfection. Your portly purveyor of passive pokémon powers has been pummeled by a pesky cold. But as they say, the show must go on, and I refuse to let a debilitating combination of cough, sneeze, and snot keep me down. So, on that note, let’s dive in! This is Ability of the Week: Defiant!

Introduced in generation five, you’ll find Defiant to be exclusive to the Bisharp evolutionary family, at least until you venture to the Dream World. In total, twelve pokémon can use Defiant, including the likes of Primeape, Empoleon, and two of the Kami Trio. Whenever a monster with Defiant has a stat lowered by an opponent, it will enjoy a two-stage increase to its Attack stat. You may recall my article on Intimidate, where it was suggested (in the comments, I think) to begin a doubles battle with two Intimidate-users. Well, here’s the counter to that. Your opponent in a doubles match tries to pull that strategy on you, they’re going to be facing a physical attacking monster with an extra four attack stages on turn one! Speaking of double battles, the unfortunate downside to Defiant is that you can’t set it up all by your lonesome. So, sorry, no Cotton Sporing your Defiant-using partner to a wicken Gyro Ball on turn one. So yes, because only your opponent can trigger Defiant, it is a bit of a gamble to use it.

As for the monsters best-qualified to use Defiant, you’re going to be looking for monsters with high Attack stats, and for that, we’re looking at Bisharp (125), Braviary (123), and Primeape (105). At this point, I’d typically describe the best options to take advantage of the Ability, but considering that the activation of the Ability is dependent on your opponent, that’s a little tough. I’d say that your best bet is to keep a Defiant monster as part of an auxiliary team, if you find yourself facing an opponent whose primary strategy involves altering your stats.

That does it for me this week, everyone! Have a week!

-Wil
www.wheretheresawil.com