@ToruMasuda, your deep commitment to the minutiae of fantasy worlds and ingrained sense of self preservation make you a Musharna, the sleepy dream-eating pokemon who’s both sensitive and resilient.
As a Psychic ‘mon you don’t enter the ring with many type advantages. You’re weak to Dark, Ghost, and Bug, and you’re only strong against Fighting and Poison. Whereas Psychic types excelled in the first gen meta due to some unfair stat advantages, in the current generation they’ve fallen behind as other types have been buffed ahead.
However, what you lack in typing, you make up for with personal quirks. Above all, you’re a survivor, and so your strengths are built around surviving, despite your disadvantages. Your greatest natural asset might be you HP. Yours is naturally quite high, making it easy to amplify your bulk with a full investment in that stat. We’ll also fully invest in Defense, ensuring that physical attacks will take their toll but leave behind only a scratch. This leaves you somewhat vulnerable to Special attacks, but that’s where your moveset comes in…
ToruMasuda (Musharna) @ Leftovers
Ability: Synchronize
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
- Stored Power
- Calm Mind
- Heal Bell
- Moonlight
Since your high HP removes the worry of being OHKO’ed or even 2HKO’ed in most cases, we’re open to spend a move building up. No matter how intimidating the challenge ahead of you, the first thing you want to do in battle is use Calm Mind. It raises your Special Defense and Special Attack by one level. Used once, it gives you a nice boost. But–given how bulky you are–why not use it again? Hell, use it three times. By your second boost, you should be able to at least 2HKO anything that doesn’t resist you. By the third…it’s time to sweep.
When you you just can’t take it anymore, you can lash out with Stored Power, a Psychic STAB move with a pathetic base power of 20. However, for each state raise you accumulate, Stored Power’s BP increases by 20. Since Calm Mind raises two stats simultaneously, that’s an additional 40 BP with each usage, meaning that after two boosts, it’s already among the strongest Psychic moves in the game.
Obviously, your opponent will try to stop you from reaching your full potential, but after your first boost, most ‘mon can only chip away at your defenses. Leftovers will heal you by 16% each turn, and if you ever really get low in health, Moonlight will heal you by 50%.
Since you’re such an effective Wall, your opponent will likely attempt to cripple you with status effects. However, thanks your ability Synchronize, any poison they throw your way will immediately effect them as well. And you can simply use Heal Bell to cure yourself (and your whole party) of any ailments.
Of course, you’re never completely safe. When an opponent breaks your concentration, you’re basically forced to start all over. So watch out for enemies that can knock you off your cloud with moves like Roar (always goes last, but switches the current challenger for a another on the opponent’s team), or moves that interrupt your set up enough to require that you switch out, like Taunt (limits you to offensive moves for three turns) or Encore (forces you to use the move you just used until you switch out). While these move are generally valuable in a competitive setting, many team tend not to pack them, simply because they feel so specialized.
But, above all, your biggest threat is Dark ‘mon. They’re both immune to your only attack move and super-effective against you. Therefore you’re best used only after all Dark ‘mon are dead or occasionally brought out early to coax out a Dark Sweeper.
While your strategy isn’t the most daring or flashy, it’s reliable, and it works. It keeps you alive longer than most, and that’s really all the foothold you need. With a little extra time to meditate, you find that you’re able to use yoour intellect to excel in a world in which the advantages of brawn so often dominate brains.
