My power rankings for this datamine:
Cracked: Champion Rosa
Broken: Champion Nate, Holiday Sycamore
Really good: Holiday Viola
Fine: Lodge Jasmine
As for grid expansions: In an ideal world Kukui would’ve gotten Honing Hit 9 Relentless, but as it stands he is much easier to nuke with. A triple Leer rotation removes all his offensive babysitting, so he can compress nuking for suboptimal Triple Strike teams (1/5 SS Diantha Rose, 1/5 Gordie 1/5 Paulo). He became a great Cakewalk enabler too. I don’t see what’s stopping Kukui from soloing Entei now.
[0:00] – Lodge Jasmine
Favoritism aside Lodge Jasmine is utterly mediocre. DeNA looked at Tech Magneton and said /”we could turn this into BP Clemont but worse./” Just how bad is it? Jasmine was nerfed with First Aid 2 and Recuperation 1 over First Aid 4 and Synchro Healing 1, which is baffling with how good Lodge Gladion turned out last month. The more you look into Jasmine’s passives the worse it gets: she cannot refresh her TM, offensively she only buffs 2 Sp.Atk and 1 Crit, Gyro Ball only exists to proc Fleet Feet 1. An actual train wreck.
Nonetheless, Screech salvages Jasmine’s kit, and she is capable of debuffing Spe for a mild advantage over BP Clemont. Good thing she has Team Full-Bracing Infliction to upkeep her team’s defenses because she’d be impossible to tank with.
Side-note: In one of my more galaxy brain moments I used the Five Stats Up option to activate Gyro Ball’s multiplier in this stage. Doesn’t get spicier than this folks.
[2:20] – Champion Rosa
If Blue wasn’t such a broken piece of shit Rosa would be in contention for best Support in the game. She adds AoE rebuffs for two types in desperate need of enhancers and she stacks peepee for both offensive spectrums, besides the obvious stuff such as a consistent Potion rate and a chance for raising all stats INCLUDED Eva. Rosa has a LOT of strong modes, but the reason she manhandles most content is Sing. Sleep is fundamentally broken. When you push it into a competent kit it gets out of hand. Rosa does have pacing and randomness concerns, but Sing makes up for her shortcomings.
[4:07] – Holiday Sycamore
If you thought Fall Phoebe was a hard defensive wall Sycamore takes her for a spin. Sycamore’s defensive prowess is hard to fathom. He sits neatly in the upper echelon of defensive supports alongside Aura Cynthia and SS Morty. At full investment Sycamore packs so much recovery he physically refuses to let your team die (think Costume Lillie).
These Support kits are typically nerfed with poor offensive profiles, but Sycamore compresses Crit buffs and an AoE Grass rebuff. Granted, there is the whole /”countering Grass damage/” shtick which is meant to bait pulls for the Grass High Score coming January, but Sycamore is just solid. The more I think about it the more robust Sycamore becomes. Given how specific Anabel’s Ultimate battle was, Supports like Sycamore are in higher demand (Rebuffs counter Acute Senses).
[6:35] – Champion Nate
The thing about Nate is that he excels at burst damage. His kit is built around big peepee and he blows the output of most Strikers in short order, but when he strays from the methodology his issues pop-up. DB Outrage lacks Extend Range and recharges once per sync cycle, so when Nate has to fall back onto Scale Shot it makes him look like a clown. Nate also lacks hard defensive tools, where his Master Fair predecessors in Ash and Marnie can unironically tank. Even Red has Endurance Protect. Nate’s Unova Passion and miscellaneous grid passives do improve his sustain against regular attacks, but I expect him to fold in advanced content like off-region Extreme Battles. There is also his busy grid that often has to sacrifice power for utility.
Nate is a little flawed so I’m pushing him down a peg, but keep in mind he is one of the most aggressive Strikers ever released. It’s hard to outvalue his nuke due to the Dragon Zone compression. Unova Passion has fun teambuilding perks.
[8:18] – Holiday Viola
Finally, we can abandon Costume Ingo. As a Field pair Viola has a plethora of modes. Her TM is great at enabling Special Bug-type pairs, who are notorious for their set-up issues. Viola’s nuke at full investment is really solid too. Viola’s only issue is that she can’t DPS at all, but she makes up for that with her utility: her Paralysis Confusion with improved chances of disruption basically makes it impossible for sidemons to land attacks, and her debuffs keep foes in check.
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