Competitive Pokemon History - Medicham Quiz

Answer: 80 in Speed

A base 80 Speed is thoroughly mediocre for an offensive Pokemon. It would be just enough to outspeed most walls, but not enough to outspeed most other offensive Pokemon.

Believe it or not, Medicham's next highest stats are its defenses! Yet, in spite of that, they are very low base 75s. Mixed with an auspicious defensive typing and measle 60 HP, and Medicham cannot take hits well at all.

A mere base 60 for Attack and Special Attack makes Medicham look impotent at first. Fortunately, it had the tools to easily mitigate this shortcoming, and to be an elite wallbreaker.

Answer: Pure Power

Pure Power doubles the user's Attack automatically upon entering battle. Because of this, Medicham's Attack stat is actually very high despite a poor base 60. Combined with access to High Jump Kick, and Medicham will easily punch huge holes into anything that doesn't resist it and have a lot of bulk.

Answer: It was too prediction reliant

Medicham actually had an amazing movepool. High Jump Kick did tons of damage, Shadow Ball covered Ghost and Psychic types which resisted it, Rock Slide covered Flying types, and Medicham had one moveslot to spare for options such as Bulk Up, Fake Out, Substitute, and even gimmicky choices like Reversal or Recover.

Medicham was most definitely not passive. Its base 80 Speed was lacking, but did not hold it back so much that it couldn't do a fine job of being a wallbreaker.

Naturally, with low speed, poor defenses, and a massive susceptibility to common offensive teams, Medicham players really, really need to put their prediction caps on when sending out Medicham. Worse yet, if the opponent correctly predicts High Jump Kick, and either sends out a Ghost type or uses Protect, Medicham will lose half its health and essentially become left for dead, thanks to its poor bulk and speed. This was amplified even further if the player wanted to put a Choice Band on to Medicham, to raise its power to obscene heights, but raise the need to predict correctly even more.

Medicham was thus the ultimate risk/reward Pokemon. There were more consistent wallbreakers who, while not as powerful as Medicham, did not punish the trainer anywhere near as much for predicting incorrectly. Examples include Metagross, Salamence, Machamp, Snorlax, and more.

Answer: Bullet Punch

A priority move was just what the doctor ordered for Medicham, letting it mitigate its poor speed and strike an opponent first. Sadly, the fact that it did not get STAB did mean it wasn't exactly OHKOing things left and right. Still, if the target didn't resist it, it would do pretty reasonable damage.

Answer: Hypno

Hypno was the only viable, legal Pokemon in all of NU who can boast that it isn't 2HKOed by anything Medicham can throw at it, even off a Choice Band set. Because Medicham was so threatening, Hypno users commonly ran Shadow Ball solely to hit Medicham for a clean OHKO with.

Charizard was the king of the tier, but it would be a mere lamb to the slaughter should Medicham have Rock Slide equipped. If Stealth Rock was on the field, Charizard would lose even if it got a free switch in otherwise. It could defeat Rock Slide-less Medicham one-on-one from full health, but this is not 'countering' Medicham, this is 'checking' Medicham, and not even particularly consistently at that.

Slowbro can sponge Medicham's attacks, with the exception of Thunder Punch, which easily 2HKOes it, or OHKOes it if it switches in to a resisted move of Medicham's

Answer: Skuntank

Skuntank covered Medicham's weaknesses to bulky Psychics and Ghost types. In particular, Skuntank hard countered Hypno, easily switching in to Shadow Ball or some other move, and removing it assuredly by Pursuit trapping it. Skuntank could do this to Ghosts and Psychics in general, opening up the opponent's team to getting destroyed by Medicham's High Jump Kicks.

In general, the discovery of this partnership was key to developing Medicham's meta down the road; pairing it with a Pursuit trapper was a delightfully evil pairing, assuring that Medicham had as little defensive counterplay as possible.

Answer: Telepathy

Telepathy does... literally nothing in singles. Medicham is a poor choice for doubles play, and there, it would be rendered utterly worthless without Pure Power for an ability. With Telepathy, Medicham would become arguably the worst fully evolved Pokemon in the game. With Pure Power, its firepower exceeds that of even Groudon and Rayquaza. No brainer, really.

Answer: Pure Power

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If Mega Medicham had been given just about any other ability, it would have become laughably inferior to its base forme due to the titanic loss of power - this is not exactly what Nintendo had in mind when creating Mega Evolutions in the first place.

Answer: 100 in Attack and Speed

Finally, a stat build befitting for a standard play wallbreaker? Kind of... 100 Attack is really bad, but as we know, Pure Power renders that a non problem. 100 in Speed is acceptable, and lets Mega Medicham do a reasonable job keeping up with offensive teams, as well as easily outspeeding walls in the tier.

Answer: OverUsed (standard play)

Mega Medicham ended the generation off firmly and unquestionably viable and deadly in standard play. Having the highest Attack stat in the tier with a good movepool makes it so it's not hard to see why. It wasn't the best Pokemon in the entire tier, as it still did have issues with common offensive teams, and there were walls it could struggle to break, like Skarmory, Zapdos, Mew and Mega Slowbro, but it was a force to be reckoned with and respected by players and teambuilds everywhere.