Every generation of Pokémon brings something new to the table for the meta. Gen III brought abilities, Gen IV brought the split between physical and special moves, Gen V introduced hidden abilities and Gen VI added Mega/Primal evolutions.
Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon - Gen VI - haven't shown any indication that they will introduce any similar mechanics that could influence the meta, but that hasn't stopped the games from showing that they have a huge potential to do so, even without any such mechanics entering the fold.
How? Newly revealed abilities.
As you may recall, the latest trailer for Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon dropped ahead of schedule on Thursday, June 30, and the Pokémon Company followed up on that trailer on Friday by revealing details about the nine new Pokémon unveiled at the time.
To be fair, there are always a few abilities here and there that stand out from the crowd that can elevate a Pokémon's usability, like Greninja's Protean. However, that ability is a hidden one, meaning that a player usually has to jump through several hoops to get it (or trade with someone who already has).
On the other hand, many of these new abilities are generic ones, and they come on what we would assume to be generic Pokémon. Honestly, it makes no difference whether an ability is hidden or not, as a serious player will aim to obtain the best abilities regardless of the difficulty attached to attaining them, but they still look notably strong, nonetheless.
First off, there's the new water/psychic Pokémon, Bruxish, sporting the abilities Dazzling and Strong Jaw. The latter is nothing new, as it just makes attacks that utilize teeth, like Bite or Crunch. However, the former is new, and its effect makes it so that opponents can't use priority moves. To understand why this is so strong, you need to know what a priority move is. Simply put, a priority move is a move that allows a Pokémon to act first at the start of a round regardless of its speed, such as Quick Attack or Shadow Sneak.
Furthermore, there are two abilities, Gale Wings (which gives priority to the flying-type moves) and Prankster (which gives priority to status-inflicting moves), that give certain moves priority, greatly enhancing their effectiveness against Pokémon who may have been faster than the user otherwise.
Dazzling effectively eliminates the danger of such moves, making it a hard counter for Talonflame, who had exclusive access to Gale Wings, and Pokemon like Klefki or Tornadus, who had access to Prankster.
Then there's the new normal Pokémon revealed in the previous trailer, Komala. This koala Pokémon has the Comatose ability, which allows it be immune to every single status condition other than sleep. Again, understanding how status conditions work is integral in understanding why this ability is so strong.
Simply put, status conditions impact the effectiveness of a Pokémon depending on which one they're affected by. For example, there's Poison, which causes a Pokémon to continuously lose HP each turn; Paralysis, which has a chance of preventing a Pokemon from taking any actions and Burn, which reduces a Pokémon's attack stat and causes it to lose a little HP per turn.
Various strategies in the current meta revolve around inflicting status effects, but Comatose makes many of those status effects useless, making many Pokémon whose purpose is to carry those moves useless by extension.
With all that said, while the strength of these abilities are undeniable, their true value will be dependent on the Pokémon that possesses them. A Pokémon could have among the strongest abilities in the game, but these are all useless if the Pokémon itself doesn't have the stats to back it up. And, unfortunately, the stats of the two aforementioned Pokémon are unknown.
So until more details about the Pokémon are revealed, how strong they actually are is still up in the air. However, we don't need to wait until later to conclude that some of these new abilities are really quite strong. If these abilities are present on Pokémon revealed in an early trailer, it will be interesting to see other ones that The Pokémon Company wants to keep under wraps.
