Ah yes, the "give an ability that slows down the opponent on contact to a mon that can't take a hit and is already faster than most things anyway" gambit.
Gooey at least made some sense on goodra, massive special defense so you’d want to hit it with physical attacks, and be punished by the speed drops. Makes no sense on wugtrio though, absolutely. Pretty funny if you can switch it into a resisted multi hit move like surging strikes and get a bunch of speed drops, but if you get hit by a defiant Pokémon, they get free swords dance.
@@banditrests hell, it even kinda-sorta functions on the hairy Dugtrio, it's paper thin but at least it's made of steel and is on ground, switch it in on some scarfed resist and that piece of sheet metal will survive to kick its ass next turn. Mono Water's a good defensive typing, but not nearly good enough to carry Dugtrio stats.
What you described actually has a cool niche. If they want to revenge kill alo-trio with a contact move from a speedy revenge killer, you get a switch in against a slowed pokemon normally reliant on speed. That means instead of having to switch in a wall/resist to threaten it, you can potentially use a normally slower offensive mon that can threaten a switch in better than a wall/resist could. If tangled hair just harshly lowered the speed of whatever mon KO'd alo-trio, you'd actually have a revenge killer that itself discourages being revenge killed, especially by scarf users.
Its funny that wugtrio is in this big, sturdy looking rock, and instead of making it way slower but bulkier, they were like, "Yeah, 3 worms pulling a boulder? Move over Ninjask"
@avaluggglazer445 I mean, fair enough. But considering GameFreak make all the rules anyways they probably should have designed something different. Especially considering how few convergent mons there are, it feels like they made the slow looking design first, then made the rule that it had to share the stats second.
I have the same opinion of this that I do with megas always needing to get a +100 BST boost. Game Freak made the rule in the first place. They can go back on it and no one would care.
Its interesting because giving it water/stone instead of water alone would have made it so much better imo. Sure, 4x Grass weakness, but cancelling out the electric weakness, giving resistance to flight, normal, poison and 4x resistance to fire while "only" giving weaknesses to fighting and ground is a nice tradeoff, I think.
Conspiracy take: What if they originally designed triple dive to always crit, saw the community reaction to Urshifu, and panic nerfed it shortly before release with no compensating buffs? It wouldn't be the first time they tried to give a box legendary's signature trait to some rando trashmon (glares at drought/drizzle).
It's weird how inconsistent gamefreak is with giving typing based on what the pokemon lives in. Like wugtrio isn't rock, the flabebe line isn't grass, and dhelmise needs an ability just to be like a sorta steel type; meanwhile rotom inexplicably stops being a ghost and gains a typing vaguely related to the object it's possessing and wormadan turns into steel just because it's covered in trash, but also god forbid burmy changes typing that'd be blasphemous
@@InsertFunnyThingHere To be fair, while Burmy is covered in trash, Wormadam is trash. Its body fused with the cloak when it evolved. Since Burmy changes forms after each battle due to its cloak breaking, it would make more sense for it to start out bug/steel(or grass, or ground) and have an ability that makes it lose its secondary typing after it takes damage, rather than permanently being duel-type. As it was from Gen 4, though, it is just a bug; form changes were just being introduced, and it wouldn't be until Gen 6's Aegislash that a pokemon could change forms in battle. Rotom also makes sense; since it is possessing the object, it no longer has an insubstantial form. Dehlmise meanwhile feels like they wanted it to have three types, and chose the two that fit most. Wugtrio and Florges have no good excuse for not being water/rock and fairy/grass though, IMO.
@@InsertFunnyThingHereThere have been at least two Pokemon that can be described as "Ghost that lives in a rock." Neither of those Pokemon, nor the Ghost that's covered in rocks, are Ghost/Rock.
@@InsertFunnyThingHeresimilarly to that point, i never understood the clear difference between what makes something Rock vs Ground. Crustle is my example in this, being that it wears a fat chunk of the earth’s crust on its back, idk why that would be rock over ground. that being said, love Crustle. perfect mon, no notes. my lil shell-smashing babe.
Inb4 Gen 11 rolls around and they announce Treetrio, a pure grass type convergent evolution that has the signature ability “Sappy” that lowers the opponent’s speed on contact
@@ElectricWindGirlFriend Honestly, if they committed to the bit I might be on board again. Rule of threes and all. The generation after that well get the fairy type pokemon Hugtrio with tripple-hug and the ability tight embrace.
im probably giving game freak too much credit with a-dugtrio, but i really respect the attempt. it's a fun idea that was made like 5 generations too late.
@@InsertFunnyThingHere "Triotrio", which is just a trio comprised of a Dugtrio, A-Dugtrio and Wugtrio. It's gimmick is that it has a ground-steel-water tri-type. Unfortunately, its other gimmick is that it's restricted to triple battles only
The reason why Wugtrio doesn't get Wave Crash, beside its horrid distribution, is because it's mistranslated again : Wave Crash's Japanese name is Wave Tackle. In fact, the french name has much closer translation with Aquatacle.
@@dse763 Okay. But that doesn't even make sense as to why Wugtrio can't get Wave Crash. Its long heads can still tackle into a foe. And it has enough speed to build momentum for that move, so why not give it.
@@dse763 I feel like this is less of a Sucker Punch situation (original name: Surprise Attack, which is why Pokemon without fists can learn it + isn't boosted by Iron Fist iirc) and more just questionable logic on GameFreak's part.
They should’ve given it Technician which makes Triple Dive a base 135 move, resulting in this. 252 Atk Choice Band Technician Tera Water Wugtrio Triple Dive (3 hits) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mew: 372-438 (109 - 128.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO 252 Atk Choice Band Tera Water Urshifu-Rapid-Strike Surging Strikes (3 hits) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mew on a critical hit: 372-438 (109 - 128.4%) -- guaranteed OHKO That’s right, fast Urshifu.
I also want to point out that for some ungodly reason, Wugtrio's Hidden Ability is _Sand Veil,_ despite being an eel that's found exclusively in or near the ocean. That's like if Sandshrew got Swift Swim, because some other, unrelated mon that looks vaguely similar to it was a Water-type.
Technically while sort of "tenuous" the reason why it has sand veil may be because wugtrio is likely based on sand eels / garden eels which are small eel like fish that... well hide in sand, which is also what the skill means (specially in japanese where its literally called "hidden in sand")
It's insane how Game Freak gives Water Veil to the most random water types that don't need it, they made a "Water Dugtrio" and gave it new abilities, but couldn't even do the BARE MINIMUM of replacing Sand Veil with Water Veil. Water Veil isn't even all that good but at least it's SOMETHING.
Wugtrio is so funny like they took this already sorta mediocre mon and were like "hmm what if we did this again but without anything that made it actually almost work and with a funny signature move that isn't even good" I absolutely adore wugtrio
Given that Wugtrio is meant to be based off of garden eels they could have given it Sap Sipper if they were REALLY trying to be funny, it would be able to bolster its attack then.
The other convergent pokemon, Toedscruel, at least has an excuse as to why it’s bad. Because Spore on a pokemon with 100 base speed would be a nightmare and they needed to nerf it somehow.
Wugtrio, Toedscruel, and Sinistcha are all called convergent Pokemon, or "ecologically similar" Pokemon if you want to go with awkwardly phrased official terminology, meaning that they _appear_ similar to other past mons, but do not share the same common ancestor. They have pretty much the same mechanical rules as regional variants, but now can have different names, I guess. It is based on convergent evolution in real life; take, for example, both fish and whales having tails ending in fins and pectoral fins, despite whales descending from a lineage that was entirely land dwelling for hundreds of millions of years (coincidentally, also descending from some species of ancient fish; a whale is just a weird playdough sideways fish that righted its most important parts back up if you really think about it). Or for a less complicated answer, true moles and golden moles. Same gameplan, different ancestors.
I would not be surprised if the only reason we got another Diglett and Dugtrio variant is because their mesh data and models are super easy to edit. You could easily take Diglett's mesh, apply a few extra loop cuts to stretch it out and then change its base texture color from brown to white.
If they were gonna try Wugtrio, I think giving it Technician would go a long way. It would have technician boosted stab aqua jet and triple dive would actually be a very high base power move to work with. Bulldoze would also be 90 base power coverage as well as a form of speed control for teammates since it doesn't have earthquake. It'd still be pretty bad but at least it would have a better revenge killing niche and be a bit more frightening in general.
This is more a design complaint but I love how Wugtrio is a nod to unrelated animals that look similar (i.e. Hyrax and Rabbits having superficial traits similar to rodents but they're not related to rodents). However, having the EXACT same stats is absolutely mind boggling.
The only Wugtrio that I ever remember facing was in NatDex Doubles, where it used Triple Dive on its Palossand teammate to max its Water Compaction def boost. At least it can build some pretty solid sand castles lmao
Im still waiting for that presentation on how chimecho became the first pokemon to be banned from anything goes, hey what do you mean I need to take my meds
Step 1: Change Triple Dive into a Water version of Triple Axel, rather than 3x30bp Step 2: Alter Gooey so that it triggers when the user makes contact with the opponent as well Bonus points: Compensate Alolan Dugtrio by making Tangling Hair provide the damage-halving effect of Fluffy, so that it is reminiscent of Fur Coat.
Wugtrio feels like they made a regional form for dugtrio, and then GF realized they needed to include more new pokemom, so just made him his original pokemon.
The dugrtios are very weird Pokémon, arena trap is so broken it’s been banned multiple times, but it kind of hits like a wet noodle a lot of the time. Alolan dugtrio has technically fantastic typing but no niche over excadrill besides speed and wugtrio is kind of just worse Floatzel. The only real bright side is no one tends to know what they do, so you can catch people off guard with their high base speed and passable attack stats, especially in random battles. The other convergent evolution is way more interesting, toedscruel has an excellent stat line and move pool and a total dog water ability. It’s not even strong enough to get the slaking treatment. Just don’t give it spore if you really want it to not be good that badly.
A while back I was thinking of ways to give Wugtrio a niche and set it apart from the Dugs, and then I had an idea. Instead of outright trapping, what if it had an ability that punished switching? We already have the damage boost half of Pursuit as an ability in the form of Stakeout, but what if we had the striking before the opponent switches portion? Introducing “Rip Current”, an ability that gives switching -1 priority so long as Wugtrio is on the field. Even if Wugtrio is a subpar Pokémon, this ability is still capable of getting out of hand, so to try and balance it, it affects both sides of the field except for Wug.
Whats funny is that its the worst pokemon in go as well, however, people wanted to collect it and thus messed up years of open street maps data adding beaches everything
1:40 alolan dugtrio is also based on Pele's hair, essentially yellow volcanic glass. It was also essential in let's go ou as a zapdos check that's fast
we need a PowerPoint about Wugtrio and Toedscruel why do both of them have the need to be different and special (they both know they're just regionals but are too afraid to admit it)
They're not regional forms because they're a completely different kind of animal compared to their counterparts. Dugtrio is a mammal, Wugtrio is an eel. Toedscool is a fungus, Tentacool is jellyfish.
@@milliondollarmistake I will be honest, their designs barely feel convergent. Since when did whales and fish look the same in general structure. They barely even look the same despite having the adapted swimming ability. Or if you want to look at a more applicable example, bats and birds both fly, but still look completely different, with different body parts. The convergent evolutions just look like reskins. Sure, the typing is different, but at that point, they may as well be regional forms. You could easily say Wugtrio adapted to coastlines from Dugtrio, or Toedscoel adapted to live in mangrove marshes. The Pokemon Company fundamentally misunderstood what convergent evolution even is. We already see convergent evolution in Pokemon with Pidgey and Zubat. Whats the point of this?
@@egbertmilton4003 Moreover they're not actually convergent evolution anyway. They're something completely different. Convergent evolution comes about when different species face similar evolutionary pressures. A great example would be sharks and dolphins being extremely similar, and also having very similar larger relatives in whale sharks and whales which again underwent similar pressures to become similar. There is no logical explanation for why a mushroom would evolve to be similar to a jellyfish. The two species are so distantly related that even in the same environment they tend to experience completely different evolutionary pressures. Fungi are mostly decomposers and jellyfish are actually extremely well adapted predators. They face divergent pressures, especially since Todescruel isn't even an aquatic fungus. Honestly the thing that these Pokemon feel the closest too isn't convergent evolution, it's mimicry. If they just lived in the same environment as the original mon their existence would make 100x more sense biologically.
I was so sad about Wugtrio, I thought Wiglett was so funny, but even in my first playthrough, it wasn't really good, just served as a water stab and that's it. I was sad and eventually even forgot about it
Wugtrio would have appreciated something like long reach or even hyper cutter more than what it actually got. All of its abilities are already situational for pokemon that can take a hit, but on wugtrio, with barely any resists to physical attacking types, they are incredibly useless. If they gave it fairy, rock, or even bug typing, and minmaxxed its defensive stats and spatk for taking physical hits, there would be some common contact moves for it to switch into, but pure water typing with those stats doesn't want to take any kind of common contact moves except maybe aqua jet and bullet punch.
Wugtrio does have one fun (still not great) niche in doubles! If it targets it's own partner Pallosand with triple drive it will max out Pallosand's defense thanks to the Water Compaction ability!
I feel like they're just setting the stage for some kind of new fusion pokemon stuff, and we're gonna get some convergent Evolution bullshit where its all thee Dugtrios, in a Water/Ground Sticky-Trap nightmare
Who would've thought this guy would come a long way doing minimum editing with PowerPoint presentations and still manage to make good quality content every other day to grow a fanbase he has now? I found this guy last year and I'm so proud of him!
I appreciate that you mention the design of wugtrio and alolan dugtrio,. I feel like when people talk about battling they never mention when something has a nice design. Some pokemon look better than they battle and thats ok!
I feel like mons like Wugtrio were made less with gameplay and how it would be in a fight in mind and more about making something that works biologically, even if it not good. It's a convergent based on Moray eels, so it would be like a moray eel, its slimy, its a shy creature that would rather hide in rocks. But damn its so bad, like they could have made a water type variation of arena trap
How dare you? Moray eels are way more threatening animals than these bums. Straight up the best reef predator, and this mess is supposed to be a tribute?
I don't know, Wugtrio could receive a new Ability called Rough Edge, which causes Stealth Rock-esque damage when getting hit by contact moves. Also, I hate that Dugtrio lost its angry mood as the series went on. I prefer it to keep its mad mood, to differentiate itself more from Alolan Dugtrio (which I'm fine with), and maybe give Wugtrio a cocky mood, while at it.
My notable experience with Wugtrio is having Kofu's headbutt flinch me 6 times in a row when I tackled the gym 5 levels under, that thing was a menace to my team
Triple Dive, and therefore Wugtrio, would have been baller if it worked like Triple Kick. As in, its power doubled on each successful hit. 30 on the first hit, 60 on the second hit, and _120 on the third hit,_ for a total bp of 210. Wugtrio is cheeks anyways, so it would still be manageable. Just outspeed it, use any physical priority move ever, or bank on the 10% chance for it to get screwed over per hit. Or if you think it's too strong, then make its initial bp 25. 25, 50, 100 for a combined bp of 175 if all hits land.
the really cynical part of me believes these pokemon only aren't regionals because it means that if they have dugtrio, tentacruel and polteageist back they don't have to also bring back these forms it's a particular mindfuck with poltchageist/sinistcha, matcha tea isn't as different to other teas as a mushroom is to a jellyfish or an eel is to a mole.
I was so upset when I learned that Wugtrio couldn't learn Flip Turn, I feel like that, along with Wave Crash, could help it at least from a movepool perspective
Wugtrio would need the equivalent of Earthquake as STAB in its moveset, but it doesn't. Triple Dive would have need to be improved to 35 base x3 hit, wich would be slightly stronger in singles but its not spread move for doubles so it would still have its own cons. I really don't understand why they made it so bad.
@@dse763 The power isn't the greatest problem here. Triple Dive is a multi-hit contact move, meaning you get put in life support if you hit something with Rough Skin and/or Rocky Helmet. It also has a 95% accuracy for Flamethrower's BP so not the best choice... if Wug had another choice, that is
I raised one in my initial Violet run and alongside the Dreepy that didn't pay off for many, many hours I was essentially wasting two teams slots like HMs never left.
For some reason, Wiglett does not have the same BST as Diglett. It has an even worse BST. For whatever reason, its stats are the same as Diglett but with -20 Sp Def
Wugtrio is probably the first pokemon to have me truly stumped on what their intention was, like when a pokemon is designed a certain way whether its looks or kit you can understand what they were going for... Strong or Weak, Niche or All Arounder, Gimmicky or Frank, ect. But then there's this thing with a little bit of all aspects, feeling like at the very final hour before release they nerfed several aspects of it out of fear of it being a monster we'll never know without thinking it through and now can't correct the issue either way.
I play casually and I wanted to use Wiglett in SV. But i was so disappointed with it getting one shot by everything in the early game. I ended up replacing it with with Cyclizar after the second gym.
The hilarious thing is that they gave wiglett 20 less spdef than diglett. They really looked at it, gave it a worse ability, a typing that suits its role less, and still decided "nah 45 spdef is too high"
It could have worked if: Triple Dive have like 40 base power. It would hit as hard as wave crash which it doesn't have anyway. Or if we're being crazy maybe keep the base power but make it a dragon darts variant that hits 3 times and has an on hit effect that reduces speed so the partner can move before the enemy in doubles. The original target gets hit twice if its an opponent, but if you target a partner, it hits the partner and each enemy Pokémon at least once in doubles (for weakness policy shenanigans, coalossal will especially like it since the -1 speed would be negated by the steam engine). Basically icy wind, but one pokemon either gets -2 speed or if one protects, the enemy partner get -3 speed. In singles, it makes switching bad due to -3 speed. It would also cement its design as a source of speed control. Hitting it reduces speed, getting hit by it reduces speed. Give it a signature hidden ability that is an Arena Trap variant (maybe one that doesn't work on water types). Or just give it arena trap.
Just something else to add to what has been said in the video - Its movepool is AWFUL. Lacking Wave Crash is one thing, but you know what it also lacks? Any remotedly usable move above 80 BP aside from Liquidation and Triple Dive. Its coverage consists entirely of Throat Chop, Sucker Punch, Headbutt, Facade and Stomping Tantrum Meanwhile its best status move is just Memento to get rid of itself so you can bring in an actually good mon into the field
The only reason the wugtrio and toedscruel lines are “convergent evolutions” and not regional forms is so that Gamefreak can pad out the dex number without actually having to come up with an entirely new Pokémon. Same reason paradox Pokémon exist but somehow they’re even more lazy
I'm also baffled by wugtrio. Gen 9 is the generation where everything has something unique or near-unique about it. Spidops gets sticky web and a protect move that can lower the opponents speed. The pig gets stuff cheeks. Pawmot can revival blessing. Dachsbun is a fairy that's immune to fire and gets bulkier when it gets hit by a fire type move. These unique qualities aren't always enough to save these pokemon competitively, but they do at least make the pokemon interesting. Every pokemon, that is, except for Wugtrio. Mono-water is an incredibly common type. Wugtrio's abilities are shared by a ton of other pokemon and doesn't synnergize at all with its stats. Its movepool is pretty bland, and its signature move is straight up worse than liquidation. There's nothing that sets Wugtrio apart from other pokemon, so it's really the only gen 9 pokemon that's both bad and boring competitively.
triple dive is not worse than liquidation, you trade the defense drop for breaking sashes effectively 95% accuracy sounds bad but on average it's slightly higher bp than liquidation still pretty boring
I have ideas for Wugtrio, maybe swap the SpA and Atk, give it Nasty Plot and replace Rattled with Storm Drakn? Make it Water/Ground too?? Or keep Physical Attack, give it Wave Crash, EQ, Knock Off, Swords Dance and Stealth Rock/Spikes and uhhh idk what other ability is good and fits it, maybe Mold Breaker or smt
Game Freak really said "Oh this isn't a regional of the Diglet line!" and then just didn't change anything about Wugtrio to make it different from Alolan Dugtrio
Ah, another excellent powerpoint presentation. I love these things because they enable my escapism into an excellent series of games. I sure hope I don't get ripped out of it by a clumsy attempt to solicit attention for an overseas cause I don't care about...
The only good thing about Wugtrio is when your opponents have frail or water weak mons in random battles LOL because Wugtrio banded Liquidation goes crazy in random battles and will almost always go first
the game designers are fond of adding a few Pokemon here and there to the dex that are basically just 'newbie traps', They're Pokemon meant to be tried out until the naive, innocent player finds out they're dogshit. not every Pokemon can be good, and it's an element of team-building, figuring out which Pokemon just absolutely suck in all circumstances. for me, though, instinctively, I have never thought to use Wugtrio because I remember how frustratingly frail Diglett/Dugtrio are, and I want my Water type to be, you know, able to take hits. I'll have to use it for my Mono-Water run, siiiiiigh.
Wugtrio is like if the galarian zigzagoon line just ended at linoone and obstagoon didn’t exist. Its lack of any noteworthy traits or advantages over other dugtrio forms really screams middle stage evolution. even dipplin which actually is a middle stage pokemon is substantially better than it. Hopefully it gets the duraludon treatment eventually but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
It probably wouldn't be much better but I wish wugtrio had it's speed reduced to like 10 base speed and it have all of those points put into HP / maybe Def. It doesn't look fast and its abilities are better for tankier pokemon, plus it would differentiate it from the other two dugtrio forms
