Summary
Pokemonfans are urging Game Freak to make a major change to 3rd generation starter Sceptile by giving the Grass-type a new ability that could make it extremely powerful in the competitive battling scene. Sceptile hasn’t ever been a big player in thePokemonbattling meta, but a new Gen 9 ability could potentially change that.
Similar to the post launch content ofPokemon Sword and Shield,Scarlet and Violet’s upcoming DLC adds new Pokemon along with older ones that weren’t previously available in the base game. Sceptile isn’t one of the Pokemon that’s been seen in the Teal Mask trailers thus far, but players have hopes that the Gen 3 starters will eventually come toScarlet and Violet, and that Sceptile in particular will arrive with a modern updates that makes it viable for competitive play.
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A post on Reddit’s mainPokemoncommunity by Hsiang7 proposes the idea for Game Freak to give Sceptile the alternate ability Sharpness when it comes to modern games. Sharpness is anew ability introduced toPokemon Scarlet and Violetthat gives a whopping 50% damage boost to any slicing move. The Reddit poster suggests that this new ability can be paired with Sceptile, a Pokemon that learns a lot of slicing moves, to give it a big boost in power and potentially make it a viable candidate for theScarlet and Violetbattle meta. The post has become very popular on the subreddit, garnering more than a thousand upvotes, which certainly suggests many within the community would be happy to see this change.
There are currently 23 different abilities that can be powered up by Sharpness, including Razor Leaf, Solar Blade, and Leaf Blade, which are all Grass-type moves that Sceptile can learn. As the post points out, there are actually so many different slicing moves that Sceptile can learn, it seems that an ability like Sharpness was almost designed for that Pokemon. As some commenters point out, though, Game Freak doesn’t make ability changes to Pokemon very often, with one of the few notable moments being when Gengar had Levitate swapped for Cursed Body in Gen 7. However, it did madechanges to VGC to allow Paradox Pokemon, though, so Game Freak could also change an ability if it wants.
Sceptile would also need its Special and regular Attack stats swapped in order for the Grass starter to become something truly worth recognition in VGC. At the time Sceptile was introduced, it made more sense for its Special Attack stat to be higher, but changes since then have made it clear without question that it should be a Physical Attacker. If those two changes are made, Sceptile could become a name players start to see pop up a lot whenit comes to the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet DLC.
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