As time slowly winds down toward the release of the highly-anticipated Pokémon Sun and Moon, the Pokémon Company has been ramping up its efforts to ensure that fans stay in the loop by continuously revealing new bits of information about the game.
In an earlier report, it was mentioned that some of the newest additions to the game look quite powerful and will be most greatly felt in the competitive scene, from which it looks like many of these additions were inspired in the first place. Two notable additions were Bruxish, sporting the Dazzling ability, and Komala, sporting the Comatose ability.
As mentioned before, what make these abilities look so strong is their potential impact on the competitive scene. Dazzling makes it so that any priority moves, such as Mach Punch or Quick Attack, or any that are made a priority move, through the Gale Wings or Prankster ability, lose their speed advantage. Meanwhile, Comatose makes it so that the Pokémon who has it is completely immune to all status effects except for sleep (any weaknesses like a susceptibility to sleep, or the chance to instantly fall asleep mid-fight has not been mentioned by the Pokémon Company so far). The Pokémon themselves could turn out to be weak statistically, but their abilities are still top-notch.
Now, it looks like the Pokémon Company is keeping up that trend with its latest addition, Salandit, and it's becoming increasingly apparent that the company is looking to shake up the meta's established paradigm come Pokémon's 7th Generation.
From the trailer, revealed by Junichi Masuda at Japan Expo earlier, we see that Salandit is a Fire/Poison type with a brand new ability called Corrosive, making it notable for those very two reasons.
First off, Salandit's Fire/Poison typing is unique and has never been done before in the series' history. The prospect of having such a unique pairing has been discussed in the past, so it's definitely nice to see such musings become a reality. Of course, due to its unique type, Salandit has a unique batch of problems with which to contend. While the type does grant it either a resistance or leaves it neutral to a wide range of the more commonly-used types in the game (resistant to Fairy, Fire, Ice and Fighting), it also makes Salandit weak to Water, Psychic and Rock-type moves, and gives it a crippling 4x weakness to Ground-type attacks. High defensive or speed stats might help it, but it's not a complete fix. Of course, this could be alleviated by the Levitate ability, which would make it immune to such attacks, but that's not what this Pokémon contains.
Salandit's other notable attribute is the Corrosive ability, which allows it to poison other Poison or Steel types. This, quite honestly, is huge. Based on their type, certain Pokémon are immune to certain status effects: Fire is immune to burn, Ice is immune to freeze, Electric is immune to paralysis and Poison and Steel types are immune to poison.
Now, for the first time ever, those type-based resistances have been 100 percent nullified thanks to an ability (there were abilities like Effect Spore, but it was random), and poison was the most dangerous of the lot. In the current meta, poison is a status effect to be feared. Under normal circumstances, being poisoned meant that the afflicted Pokémon would lose a set amount of HP per turn, but there is also an effect called "badly poisoned," where the Pokémon would take an increasing amount of damage each turn. While this was something that trainers always had to keep an eye out for, those with Poison and Steel types could just ignore it. Now, Corrosive will make even those two types sweat, knowing that they are one Toxic away from disaster. In fact, this is particularly damaging for Steel types, as they often have high defenses.
Just like in the previous discussion, the only true limitation of this ability will be the Pokémon in possession of it. A Pokémon could have among the strongest abilities in the game, but it would be rendered useless if the Pokémon itself doesn't have the stats to back it up. Also, just like before, Salandit's base stats are unknown.
With that said, the mere presence of such an ability will mean huge things for the game's meta down the line. Originally, everyone's eyes were focused on the new Pokémon that would be revealed, but now, it looks like the real stars of these reveals will be the new abilities/moves and mechanic changes, as well as the potential changes to the metagame that come with them.
