[Balanced Hackmons] Suspect Discussion: Protean

Protean is a great ability, I think it works very well in the SM Balanced Hackmons tier and isn't so much broken, but does cause a lot of trouble for people. Protean is used on pokes with high atk/sp.atk, and some mixed attackers to get the most of stab and versatility, but pretty much all pokemon with Protean are still able to be beaten. I'm personally running P. Kyogre with Protean & Assault Vest, which gives a lot of coverage and a nice amount of bulk. P. Kyogre isn't the primary sweeper of my team, more like a solid revenge killer if anything. P. Kyogre's Sp. Atk. stat is base 180, only matched by Deoxys-A, and surpassed by Mega Mewtwo Y. A Life Orb sub gives P. Kyogre that extra kick, but with Protean changing your typing every time you change move typing, it's not that hard for users to play into the weakness, especially with a good scout.

I've also seen Protean on Mega Mewtwo Y and Mega Gengar, never used them personally but the big tradeoff of changing types with Protean is that you gain stab on everything, but playing high offense with Protean for coverage can leave you vulnerable just the same. A solid focus sash user with a priority move and the right stats can easily get the job done and I've done so on many occasions. Overall, I've never really had much struggle against Protean, nor have any of the pokemon I've tried with Protean ever been an overwhelming threat to where I felt they were broken. I'm in favor of not banning Protean.

This is only my experience, and I'd like to know if anyone else feels the same. I just know the top 3 highest sp.atk pokemon are all viably beatable with Protean so it's just not a threat to me personally.

 

I did some more experimenting with Protean, it is a very viable ability, but P. Kyogre with Assault Vest is still able to be defeated with a good level of bulk, and one of the other key points is that it's also an effective check against Normalize Mega Gengar because of the type changing. Normalize M-Gengar can cripple an entire team that's not prepared and I think Protean is the best counter to that strategy.

The only other viable counter I've run against Normalize M-Gengar is Soak because it makes him water type, which usually causes a switch; to where I can also switch safely, or I have some coverage move that can take him out because his defense isn't that good. It's bittersweet because an opp will likely never see it coming, but with Protean, you get a type change and offensive power.

Still in favor of NOT BANNING Protean because Soak did work for me, but Protean works a lot better. Without Protean, I think the rise of Normalize M-Gengar could increase potentially to broken status because there aren't a lot of viable counters to it.

 

While I haven't had the liberty of yet playing BH on the PO server, I have had extensive experience on the Pokemon Showdown equivalent. As far as I understand, the only two major differences between the two is that PO allows individual Arceus formes to be used (while PS doesn't) and the absence of a stakeout ban. If I'm incorrect on this, please let me know, but I will base my discussion on those assumptions.

Firstly, I do not believe it should be banned by itself. However, the existence of stakeout in conjunction with protean could place undue strain on defensive cores. While I don't believe they can't be handled in conjunction with the proper team structure, it would probably unduly constrain team-building and thus inherently reduce creativity and the ability to run certain team cores. So this brings me to my second point: if stakeout is to stay in the meta-game, protean should probably be banned.

While the counterpoint could be raised that protean also places strain on team-building like stakeout, I think (unlike PS) that the addition of the Arceus formes does allow the PO metagame to reliably handle Protean in a way that would not constrain team-building unduly. Further, stakeout by nature negates walls, protean does so too - but in the same way as say a sheer force user would and not in as dire a nature as stakeout.

My view on the matter is that if stakeout is not to be banned, protean should be banned. If stakeout is banned, protean should not be banned.