Unfezant Concept

[ty_taurus]

Currently, Unfezant is a fairly unremarkable early bird Pokemon unique only for its cosmetic sexual dimorphism. The impressive 115 attack stat is nice, but their speed is just shy of being competitive enough to make up for their mediocre defenses. Pair that with some fairly generic abilities and a moveset that doesn't include anything to help them stand out against their much more reliable competitive of Normal/Flying birds, Staraptor, and you've got a Pokemon that fails to stand out as much as their designs would lead you to believe.

 

So what if each gender received their own unique ability--Something to help showcase their sexual dimorphism in a unique way? So here's what I have:

 

Unfezant (Male)

Ability: Courting - Pokemon of the same type as the ability-bearer are infatuated with them regardless of gender. 

 

Unfezant (Female)

Ability: Enamored - When infatuated, the ability-bearer ignores the normal conditions and instead increases all damage dealt by 50%.

 

On top of these abilities, I would also change female Unfezant's stats slightly.

Currently, both look like this:

HP - 80

Atk - 115

Def - 80

SpA - 65

SpD - 55

Spe - 93

 

Female Unfezant's would look like this:

HP - 80

Atk - 115

Def - 70

SpA - 65

SpD - 45

Spe - 113

 

In this change, Male Unfezant becomes a bit more support-y, being able to switch into Normal and Flying Pokemon and instantly crippling their combat performance regardless of their gender. Mechanically I did this because infatuation relying on gender is so unreliable that any attempts to utilize it are nothing more than gimmicky; however, many birds also display homosexual interactions, so there's some real-world counterparts there. As for doubting GameFreak's openness to including that aspect, I also see infatuation not necessarily as sexual attraction, but rather the opponent becoming blinded by cuteness or beauty, and I believe reinforcing that visually could allow them to scrape by without having to deal with any backlash.

 

In Singles, I doubt this would save Unfezant, but the unique ability to cripple certain Pokemon could make M Unfezant an interesting niche pick in some tiers, similarly to how Quagsire has been used in all tiers in places despite being considered very low tier. After all, you could switch into a Chansey, force a switch out, and guarantee yourself a tailwind, then U-turn into whatever you wanted to raise the speed of.

 

As for Female Unfezant, the shear lack of infatuation mechanics means that she largely would not be seen anywhere in singles for that purpose; however, the increase in speed in place of defenses could have her perform as a decent sweeper in lower tiers. Probably not a top pick by any means, but certainly a little better than she is now. The real specialty is using her in doubles. Virtually everything can use Attract, meaning any Male Support Pokemon could be used to help set up an extremely potent sweeper with the 50% damage boost on top of the 115 base attack. Female Unfezant would hit like a truck so long as the support Pokemon stayed on the field. You could also run the male and female together, for instant power increase and the opportunity to cripple threats like Landorus T. There's gimmick here, but it's not outlandishly gimmicky. Again, I don't see it being any top tier strategy, since it's something that can be disrupted without too much trouble, but there's something there that isn't there currently.

[Scyl]

All Unfezant needed was to have it's Special Attack switched with it's Physical Attack and it would have been decent, but nah, gotta make more bad Staraptors.

[luis]

You can use an unfezant with Z-tailwind and Super Luck to have an 100% crit rate... and that's it, its movepool is to shallow to do much more.

It could be fixed with access to close combat or earthquake (just to be different from staraptor) and to brave bird.

 

Your suggestion would be cool to see, though  

[ty_taurus]

12 hours ago, Scyl said:

All Unfezant needed was to have it's Special Attack switched with it's Physical Attack and it would have been decent, but nah, gotta make more bad Staraptors.

Hmm... you have a point. I was thinking pretty one dimentionally and looked at U-turn more, but you really don't need to hit hard for U-turn to be useful. Swapping physical for special means heatwave, and heatwave is even better for doubles, which this concept supports more than singles. So I would all be down for that as well.

[Nebulazure]

14 hours ago, ty_taurus said:

Unfezant (Male)

Ability: Courting - Pokemon of the same type as the ability-bearer are infatuated with them regardless of gender.                                                                                                                   As for doubting GameFreak's openness to including that aspect, I also see infatuation not necessarily as sexual attraction, but rather the opponent becoming blinded by cuteness or beauty, and I believe reinforcing that visually could allow them to scrape by without having to deal with any backlash.

While I do agree with most of your points on improving Unfezant, the ability "Courting" is basically displaying homosexuality. I know you already stated that you see the infatuation as "blinded by beauty and cuteness", but it will potentially create a large amount of controversy on whether or not the intention is to expose children (The main demographic of the Pokemon franchise) to homosexuality. I know it may not seem like a big deal, since it's just infatuation, not sexual intercourse. But the way I see it, Game Freak wouldn't risk damaging their brand to controversy, by having an unnecessary figment of "mature content" in the Pokemon games. If this idea was for Pokemon Reborn, then the developers might accept it, since the fan game is known to have 

mature content, but then again, they could get sued by the Pokemon Company if the Unfezant's ability "somehow" damages their brand. Just a thought

[Seal]

I love this idea. This concept could also be utilized if they were to make literal lovebird Pokemon

[Samtale]

the pokedex literally says females are better flyers I'd think this would be translated into them being faster then the male counterpart