With the Pokémon Scarlet and Violet The Indigo Disk DLC just released on Dec. 13, competitive VGC players were horrified by one new change to existing Abilities, putting a wrench in their plans for San Antonio Regionals this weekend.
According to the 3.0.0 patch notes, the Paradox Abilities, Protosynthesis and Quark Drive, will now be affected by Weezing and Galarian Weezing’s Neutralizing Gas. As it turned out, Photosynthesis and Quark Drive’s immunity to Neutralizing Gas—which suppresses the effects of other Abilities—was just a bug, and Game Freak finally got around to fixing it.
Unfortunately for VGC players, they believed the original interaction between the Abilities was intentional rather than a bug. This allowed players to utilize Weezing and Roaring Moon—a past Paradox Pokémon—as a strong duo in the Regulation E format. Next to Weezing, Roaring Moon would hold the Booster Energy to activate its Protosynthesis ability. With the new update, Roaring Moon’s Protosynthesis will now be suppressed by Neutralizing Gas, meaning this duo and strategy is suddenly no longer viable.
Some pros, like Alex Underhill, were planning on bringing Weezing and Roaring Moon to San Antonio Regionals this weekend. Now they have to build and practice with a new team.
“I’m so sad, I had my team ready to go. Weezing Moon was the only way I could make this god awful format fun. Instead this off meta archetype catches a stray in an update 3 days before the regional while Torn/Ursh keeps getting to click the stupid buttons. This game’s so unserious,” the two-time regional champ stated in a tweet.
Aside from blindsiding VGC players just three days before a huge tournament, the big issue here is that the developers hadn’t made the playerbase aware the Ability interaction was a bug. Had players known this was a bug, they could’ve stayed away from it while teambuilding for San Antonio and future events.
A similar situation happened with Dondozo in patch 1.2.0 back on Feb. 27. The popular VGC ‘mon was hit with huge nerf after a bug removed its Order Up stat boosts when hitting into Protect. Again, this was an instance where players were not aware this was a bug in the first place. With Dondozo having such a huge presence in the meta early in Scarlet and Violet, that patch caught players off guard just as patch 3.0.0 has done with the Weezing and Roaring Moon duo.
