The actual discussions were about, like, a few tens of posts ago. A lot of it was between me &
@Mr.Cutlery .
1 of the concerns is why Pheromosa has Unknown LS when it scales to Pokemon with known LS.
The relevance is if Stop Flash involves LS.
I'd guesstimate that Pheromosa is slightly above baseline with its scaling chain.
Its advantages include being a relatively small foe against a huge opponent, & the fact that it's implied to hate touching things:
| Sun | One of the dangerous Ultra Beasts, it has been spotted running across the land at terrific speeds. |
|---|
| Moon | One of the Ultra Beasts. It refuses to touch anything, perhaps because it senses some uncleanness in this world. |
|---|
Meaning it has good reason to try & play the range game with Swift, Bug Buzz, & maybe Me First (Cuts ahead to copy a foe's move at 1.5x strength to cut ahead, when moving before the foe.), & Silver Wind.
However, its actual showings say that despite that is touch aversion, it seems to prefer melee. Besides being Bug/Fighting Type, it did pure melee in the anime, & its movepool includes Jump Kick, High Jump Kick, Double Kick, Stomp, Bounce, Feint, Lunge, & Rapid Spin.
So it's ambiguous if it'll lean towards projectile spam or violently smashing its legs against the thing it sees as so "unclean".
Among those notable moves are:
Bounce: 30% chance to inflict Paralysis, which, in most recent gameplay, halves speed & inflicts a 25% chance to not act. However, that's like, 7.5% total. Pheromosa would have to use this a lot for much impact.
Feint: An attack that ignores, negates & removes barriers, preventing the broken barriers blocking further attacks -Such as those a hypothetical teammate of Pheromosa uses- during Feint's effect.
Swift: Homing Danmaku attack. Shoots stars.
Lunge: An attack that lowers the victim's ATK stat upon hitting. (In Pokemon gameplay, ATK is for physical Attacks, unlike Special Attacks.)
Bug Buzz: 20% chance to lower the victim's Sp. Def, which is durability against "Special" Attacks, which aren't physical. (Swift, Silver Wind, Bug Buzz, etc.)
Silver Wind: A breeze of silvery scales. If it hits, it has a 10% chance to raise Pheromosa's ATK, DEF, Sp. Atk & Sp. Def & Speed. In Pokemon gameplay, each such boost is equal to 50% of Pheromosa's base (Which seems close to baseline here by the scaling chain.) when boosted above Stage 0/unboosted. In theory, Silver Wind could be devastating, but it's not very in-character, let alone likely to be spammed, & its effect's chance is too unlikely to decide a typical match
Low Kick: A powerful low kick that makes the target fall over. The heavier the target, the greater the move's power.
Low Kick might be relevant.
Non-Attacking notable moves:
Leer: An intimidating look with sharp eyes to reduce foe's Defense. I'm sure you can guess the inherent limitations. (& supposedly, Ultraman Ace may have trained some Resistance against Statistics Reduction.)
Quiver Dance: "The user lightly performs a beautiful, mystic dance. This boosts the user's Sp. Atk, Sp. Def, and Speed stats."
Boosting above 0 is equal to 50% of base, but in gameplay, such boosts don't go above 6 stages (Meaning 300% added to the baseline's 100%, for 400% total.), but this is very potent.
Pheromosa's supposed dislike of uncleanliness -Implying liking beauty- & hating to touch stuff could very well mean it would want to do a "beautiful" move, as well go faster, so as to spend less time touching the foe. It's also Bug-type, so yeah.
Agility: The user relaxes and lightens its body to move faster. This sharply boosts its Speed stat.
Speed Swap: Pheromosa exchanges its speed stats, ignoring any stat changes.
Speed Swap might happen if Pheromosa observes Ultraman being faster than it, Agility might be plausible -Albeit, less so than Quiver Dance- for similar reasons to Quiver Dance.
However, since Agility boosts Agility by 2 stages to Quiver Dance's 1, unless Pheromosa uses its ranged options, Quiver Dance's Sp. Atk will only help its Special Attacks like Bug Buzz, Silver Wind, & Swift, & maybe stuff copied by Me First.
Pheromosa's weird Unknown LS situation (Despite having scaling to mons with LS.) is kinda relevant because of Ultraman, IIRC, using telekinesis into finishers.
Pheromosa could kinda go either way.
It could notice Ultraman is keeping up with it & want to Agility/Quiver Dance to reduce the chance the "unclean" foreign object touches it.
Or it would play the ranged game, which might not work well unless Me First is copying good stuff.
Or it would try to leverage its natural speed & agility, & go into melee. Its best options are probably Bounce (Paralysis for Speed reduction & inaction.), Feint to get past barriers (But supposedly Ace can & does throw away barriers regularly.), or Lunge to reduce Ace's physical ATK/AP.
In gameplay, Stomp can also flnch foes if the user is faster.
It may be worth asking: Would Ace Resist Pheromosa's Pheromones?
- Pheromones: Pheromosa releases pheromones that remove hostile intentions from its opponents.
For Pheromosa to be at its best, it needs to call on its vanity, especially about looking beautiful & about its Speed, & Agility/Quiver Dance, early on; Me First requires being faster, or at least equal, but the payoff is huge.
& it may need to do this multiple times.
The problem is while Quiver Dance's offensive boosts are nice, its options to capitalize on those boosts are lousy (Hah. Pun.), & Swift, Bug Buzz, Silver Wind & Me First will be strong, if basic attacks. (Plus, Ace may have a Sound Resistance.)
It would just be bruising (With boosts.) at Range unless it can fire off enough of those attacks to get lucky. (Silver Wind's effect is easily a huge game changer, but it only happens rarely.)
& in melee, Agility's DEF drop is nice, & Lunge's dropping Ace's ATK is good, & a 30% chance to Paralyze with Bounce is nice.... But if Ace reduces statistics reductions, most of Pheromosa's attacks are just kicking hard or multiple times, with little effect beyond that.
It would need to win on pure speed advantage, & it not liking contact with the "unclean" might make it predictable, even if small size & hit & run could mitigate that.
So I'll wait for what Ultraman supporters say.
What's a problem for Ace here?
What's his advantage?
Does Stop Flash or his TK involve LS?
