by Doc – Owner, Founder, Faster, Faster, Gotta Go Faster
Two hours ago the new Mega Evolution for Lucario was revealed, as the first Mega Evolution Z in existence. While this likely won’t be the last Z one (my money’s on Mewtwo and Zard, and possibly Raichu being up for one) a note on the website reveals a unique game mechanic about this sucker.
He has a shorter Mega Evolution period, but makes up for it by having less startup lag when inputting commands. The trailer shows this as well, with Mega Lucario Z firing off Aura Sphere and hitting the opponent Mega Lucario before the opponent can get theirs off. Okay, cool. He’s faster but doesn’t Mega for as long. So what?
It’s Probably Better
Stuff like this is where it’s practically impossible to exactly guess the impact that it’ll have on the meta, because this is the “fighting game” aspect of the Legends: Z-A meta and not the traditional Pokemon aspect. What I mean is that where you can lay out a normal Pokemon match’s game state on a piece of paper and determine the objectively best options, here you have to take into account the stage layout, real-time Pokemon placement and other fluid decisions that can’t be accounted for until you’re playing the game and using the tools in the moment. Things like lower startup time could in theory create a way for players to predict a switch and hit with something before it occurs, killing the Pokemon that would have switched, but that’s a theorycraft at best.
Still, it’s a good theorycraft. Hitting first and hitting more often operates much like hitting harder in terms of DPS, so long as Lucario can survive. If he’s anything like base Lucario, he’s going to have options like Aura Sphere and Close Combat available to him to chop down opponents faster than they can Protect or Detect (and it may even go through those two shields). It’s easy to imagine, given the abstractions in play, a scenario where MLZ can basically hit twice as often thanks to his faster startup lag and a Speed investment for faster cooldowns, resulting in him just overwhelming with good attacks. The opponent would have to keep switching until the Mega wears off, leaving the MLZ user the choice of what to clean up with.
I’m not convinced this’ll be a large factor in the meta or anything centralizing, necessarily, but I do think it’ll have its uses and one could conceivably incorporate it quite effectively.
Amiibo Doctor 