Are Gimmicks reflective of a pokemon's true power?

[Red and Blue]

Tapu Koko is nerfed in SM series. Remember when Lusamine(?) said that Tapus fought centuries against UBs(including Guzzlords),? Logically, Tapu Koko based on that would be like on Groudon level or more, yet Pikachu that was trained much much much less against weaker opponents would beat it.So,I agree that realistically Pikachu would not beat it but would beat conviniently nerfred TK that would be below Pikachu.

Normal Pokemon can defeat Ultra Beasts themselves. Remember when Bewear beat the stuffing out of Pheromosa?

 

[CMButch]

Normal Pokemon can defeat Ultra Beasts themselves. Remember when Bewear beat the stuffing out of Pheromosa?

Bewear is >> Arceus. Lol.

 

[Ignition]

Don’t see why they wouldn’t. Every gimmick in the anime has shown that the Pokémon aren’t automatically strong because it has access to said gimmick; they have to work to fully utilize their power.

 

[DatsRight]

Power-wise, they count. I actually think even Z-Moves are relatively consistent in how they scale to each Pokemon's power. Taking someone like Lillie for example, the main reason her Z-Move couldn't beat Gladion was because Gladion was far stronger anyway. Or even comparing Kiawe vs Brock to Ash vs Misty, Turtonator naturally scaled lower than Pikachu, so it makes sense that Ash's Z-Move was able to beat a Mega while Kiawe's couldn't.

Even with Pikachu vs Tapu Koko, keep in mind it was a special Z-Move overpowering another special Z-Move. I think Pikachu would've won even without the recharge, it's just that a huge Z-Move clash was way more appropriate for le epic finale.

The bigger problem for me is how overused they are narratively as a crutch. 90% of gimmicks in the anime are treated like the battle's entire worth. Anything a Mega does in base form, for instance, is always written like it's irrelevant when the battle is always gonna come down to how broken the Mega is. Like, it's annoyingly obvious against Alain that Ash-Greninja could've swept through everything other than Charizard, and vice versa. The rest of the battle doesn't even matter when they would've eventually been Mega fodder anyway.

Surprisingly SM was kinda better in that regard, at least occasionally, at showing that Z-Moves aren't the absolute be-all-end-all for everything and should be used strategically. Even something like Infernape's Blaze had natural drawbacks that forced more strategy instead of having this instant super mode that could've been used turn 1 and trivialized everything.

Yeah, and notice in SM even the Megas feel neutered a bit since they are no longer the hot topic of the series. Granted even with that Megas are the most imbalanced since the show wasn't too great at showing the downsides to using them. They made odd references to power exhaustion and an arc about how they can go wrong if you're untrained to maintain them, but otherwise they were largely just OP saiyan forms for the Pokemon, to the point a lot of matches felt awkwardly stalled in using them, simply because when they were it usually ended up a stomp and would have ended things too quickly. The only potential in-universe excuse is maybe in exaggerated cases where the trainer might have felt it beneath them to waste their power on such a weaker opponent until they proved too annoyingly persistent in a normal scrap (most of the times Team Rocket bothered a gym leader or Diantha and lasted more than one smack definitely provoked an "Eghhh, MUST I?" disposition to activating them). As a result Megas felt pretty imbalanced and often story breaking.

With the later gimmicks, there are at least downsides and there is a point to strategically timing their use. We see Pokemon get exhausted from using Z Moves too early, or one fail because it was used at the wrong time. 'Mortal' Pokemon can even dodge or block them with the right approach. Hell sometimes one is even used perfectly and still doesn't win the match. This maybe didn't happen as often as it SHOULD have (I still don't get why TR almost never used their's against the twerps, especially given they were careless enough to spam them anyway), but it was enough to make them seem more balanced than Megas and better explain why they were reserved so often.

This is almost certainly the key reason (besides species exclusivity for Megas) that XY didn't give any of the main cast Megas but SM gave ALL of them a Z Move (even Team Rocket), since while Z Moves could give all of them a power boost at the ideal time, they were still limited and opportunistic boosts reflecting of their power level.

 

[dman_dustin]

I'm not sure I understand this "gimmick" concept because at the end of the day everything is a gimmick.

Type, abilities, moves, body shapes/morphology.

Sure we could argue artificial vs natural but then that would automatically mean Ash-Greninja isn't artficial so not a giimick? unless you want to really really stretch the definition of artificial but then of course stone / trade evolutions would have to be included. Is Ninetales a Vulpix gimmick when compared to the Ponyta line?

Even with artificial concepts like mega evolution Z moves all they really seem to be is just a burst of energy which can even change type (certain mega evolution) and of course mega evolution is referred to bringing back the original Pokemon back to its most powerful that was lost through the generations (though I doubt all of them)

If by Gimmick you mean special exclusivity, but therein lies the issue of signature moves like Volt tackle or Roar of time or bone club. At the end of the day how much do you want to devalue a Pokemon's win/strength by some weird arbitrary set of rules?

 

[ash&charizardfan]

I do think gimmicks definitely increase the power of certain pokemon by leaps and bounds especially the recent gigamax version. But if i am a beginner i would like to powerup pokemon normally before using any gimmick.

 

[Almighty Zard]

I'm not sure I understand this "gimmick" concept because at the end of the day everything is a gimmick.

Type, abilities, moves, body shapes/morphology.

Sure we could argue artificial vs natural but then that would automatically mean Ash-Greninja isn't artficial so not a giimick? unless you want to really really stretch the definition of artificial but then of course stone / trade evolutions would have to be included. Is Ninetales a Vulpix gimmick when compared to the Ponyta line?

Even with artificial concepts like mega evolution Z moves all they really seem to be is just a burst of energy which can even change type (certain mega evolution) and of course mega evolution is referred to bringing back the original Pokemon back to its most powerful that was lost through the generations (though I doubt all of them)

If by Gimmick you mean special exclusivity, but therein lies the issue of signature moves like Volt tackle or Roar of time or bone club. At the end of the day how much do you want to devalue a Pokemon's win/strength by some weird arbitrary set of rules?

when i made this thread, i was implicating for the most part, Mega evolution, Z-moves, and Dyna/Gigatanamaxing.

but you bring up some good points there.

I suppose there are some pokemon who's natural abilities "slip through the cracks" like Ash-Greninja's battle bond, but then again we all know that was basically a substitute for mega evolution.

 

[Kuzehiko]

I also prefer Pokemon to rely on their own power. Z-Move and Dynamax is something that just takes away a Pokemon's potential. They are just some kind of forgettable power up but I guess they needed to try out new things to make battles more interesting which I fail to find tbh.