Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
- I could see Autotomize as Kitsunoh dropping some of its masks, but (especially if Hone Claws is added) it could prove troublesome.
- Wild Charge is a widespread move, plus it is outclassed by Iron Fist Thunder Punch.
Other old moves which fit a Ghost-type are Destiny Bond and Grudge.
I've discussed it KrazyCake and we are now ready for Full Movepool Submissions.
Guidelines for submissions:
You must include every move from Kitsunoh's current movepool in your submission. Kitsunoh's full movepool can be viewed here.
Our ultimate goal is to update Kitsunoh's movepool with Gen5, Gen 6, and Gen 7 additions, so please focus any new movepool additions with moves from these three generations. Gen 4 and older moves, are no strictly disallowed but good reasoning is expected as to why Kitsunoh should be receiving those moves now as opposed to in Gen 4.
You may not include any of the following moves in your submission: any Physical Fire-type coverage, new Physical Fighting-type coverage, reliable recovery moves, or new stat-up moves except for Hone Claws or Power-Up Punch, or new matchup-effecting coverage moves like Psychic Fangs. In addition to these moves, anything with competitive merit that has not been discussed in this thread should not be included in your submission.
Your submission must include Bullet Punch, Play Rough and Wish as competitively relevant moves selected for this update. Confide and Secret Power must be added as Universal Moves.
Every move addition must have sufficient reasoning as to why it is included and how you decided to add it. If it a move on your submission was not discussed in this thread prior, please include an explanation as to how it has no competitive merit on Kitsunoh.
We will only slate submissions marked with a Final Submission. You have 72 Hours to make and finalize your movepools, a 24 Hour warning will follow this post when the time is proper.
Someone brought up Power-Up Punch on Discord, PuP is basically a nerfed version of Shadow Strike most of the time. I've added it to the list of allowed stat-ups along with Hone Claws - Howl is obviously also legal as it's weaker than both of those.
- Play Rough (Heart Scale)
- Scratch
- Tail Whip
- Odor Sleuth
Evolve: Metal Claw
6 Lick
10 Fake Out
14 Copycat
18 Feint Attack
22 Shadow Sneak
27 Revenge
31 Hex
35 Memento
40 Shadow Claw
44 Iron Head
49 Shadow Strike
55 Perish Song
One of the first things that Luc and noticed was that Kit, surprisingly, had a pretty decent looking level up pattern to work with despite being a Gen 4 CAP. Therefore, we stuck with it, only moving moves around. Notably, we moved Fake Out and Copycat earlier because generally Pokemon learn these moves very early on. Revenge is another example of a move that Pokemon now learn earlier (usually in the 20s, hence its new placement). Iron Head takes its place as a STAB move since Kitsunoh is a primary Steel-type, and only having one STAB is weird. Other moves have been shifted around to accommodate for these changes. Hex was placed at level 31 to space out the Ghost-type moves, and Play Rough as added to Level 1. Linoone and Persian learn this move at this level, so there's good precedent.
Metal Claw is the evolution move of choice. Based on Nohface's design, it has neither claws nor strong references to a Steel-type. Therefore, Metal Claw would introduce both of those aspects when it evolves into a Steel-type with claws!
Bullet Punch made most sense to add here since Meteor Mash was already here and didn't really have a place in Level Up. Wish fits right in with all the odd utility moves Kitsunoh has access to. Defog, while a transferrable move from Gen 4, would cause illegalities, so it's included here.
Endeavor Foul Play
Ice Punch
Icy Wind
Iron Defense
Iron Head Iron Tail
Knock Off
Last Resort
Low Kick
Magic Coat
Pain Split Snatch
Snore
Spite
Super Fang
Superpower
Thunder Punch
Trick
Iron Tail and Snatch are old TMs. Foul Play is a welcome addition for a sneaky Pokemon.
Bulldoze and Snarl are the only additions, and Sleep Talk and Dark Pulse changed number. Confide is universal.
Captivate (Gen 4 TM78)
Cut (Gen 4 / Gen 5 / Gen 6 HM01)
Dig (Gen 4 / Gen 5 / Gen 6 TM28)
Flash (Gen 4 / Gen 5 / Gen 6 TM70)
Fury Cutter (Gen 4 Tutor Move)
Headbutt (Gen 4 Tutor Move) Hone Claws (Gen 5 / Gen 6 TM01)
Ominous Wind (Gen 4 Tutor Move) Retaliate (Gen 5 / Gen 6 TM67)
Secret Power (Gen 4 TM43 / ORAS TM94)
Sucker Punch (Gen 4 Tutor Move) Telekinesis (Gen 5 TM19)
Hone Claws is one of the worst competitively viable set up moves and Kitsunoh's claws suggest that it'd learn it. Retaliate is learned by generally aggressive Pokemon. Telekinesis has a strong correlation with Ghost-types.
Overall, this movepool aims to fix some of the irregularities in Kitsunoh's level up movepool based on trends on which Pokemon learn moves and does not add many moves to Kitsunoh's already busy movepool.
1 Bullet Punch
1 Scratch
1 Tail Whip Evolution: Metal Claw
6 Lick
10 Odor Sleuth
14 Feint Attack
18 Shadow Sneak
22 Copycat 27 Fake Out 31 Hone Claws
35 Shadow Claw
39 Revenge 43 Iron Head
48 Shadow Strike 52 Memento
56 Perish Song
- Kitsunoh's learning pattern has been regularized to 5-4-4-4-4. There are no evolutionary delays: I can envision Nohface evolving by some other way than pure leveling up, and even if this doesn't end up being the case there exist some regular Pokémon which do not delay moves after evolution.
- Memento and Fake Out have been moved later and earlier respectively to more closely resemble their distribution among real Pokémon.
- Metal Claw has been repurposed as an evolution move: Nohface is not currently defined, but it does not look like a Steel-type and giving it a Steel-type move upon evolution represents its assumed type change, like what happens with Eevee in G7 (plus it frees up a slot).
- Hone Claws forms a trio of sorts with Metal and Shadow Claw.
- Bullet Punch is compulsory. I don't think it fits Nohface, so I added it as a Heart Scale move.
- Iron Head is already a tutor move, and it fits Kitsunoh's iron face while adding one more Steel-type move to its level-up movepool. Were it not deemed fitting for Nohface, it would be easily replaceable with some other move (possibly from the egg move pool).
- Wish and Play Rough are compulsory.
- Hex is related to Curse and learned by fellow fox/kitsune-thing Vulpix.
- Defog is a very important move which would cause illegalities if kept only as a G4 HM.
- Many miscellaneous Pokémon gained Iron Tail as an egg move after it lost its TM status, and Kitsunoh's Steel type makes it fit even better.
- Sucker Punch is an old tutor which also gained some distribution as an egg move, and I feel it fits a vengeful-looking Ghost pretty well.
- Round and Confide are universal.
- Bulldoze is implied by Earthquake.
- Dark Pulse and Sleep Talk have changed number.
Endeavor Foul Play
Fury Cutter (G4)
Headbutt (G4)
Ice Punch
Icy Wind
Iron Defense
Iron Head (new level-up move) Iron Tail (new egg move)
Knock Off
Last Resort
Low Kick
Magic Coat
Ominous Wind (G4)
Pain Split Snatch
Snore
Spite
Sucker Punch (G4, new egg move)
Super Fang
Superpower
Thunder Punch
Trick
- Foul Play fits a vengeful Ghost and is also learned among others by Gengar and Banette.
- Snatch and Iron Tail are old TMs.
- Defog has been moved to egg moves.
- Hone Claws is repeated from level-up.
- Retaliate has decent conceptual correlation with Revenge.
- Telekinesis is almost universal among Ghosts available in G5 (the only exception is Frillish/Jellicent) and has little to no competitive implications on Kitsunoh.
---------------------------------
Considered but excluded moves:
- Smart Strike: Kitsunoh's mask has some protrusions, but they are not true horns.
- Power-Up Punch: Kitsunoh's focus on punching is already strange considering its quadrupedal design, I'd avoid pushing it more than necessary.
- Snarl: while it has a nice distribution among beasts, it is not universal; notably, among similar-looking Pokémon, Ninetales, Kanto Persian, Delphox and all of Eevee's evolutions bar the Dark-type Umbreon lack it. Wild Charge is a somewhat similar case, and is outclassed by Iron Fist Thunder Punch anyway.
- Ally Switch: while some have been mentioned it as fitting an "ultimate scout", its G5 TM is exclusive to Psychic-types. Several random Pokémon got it as an egg move in G5, but considering my other additions Kitsunoh has already enough egg moves. Its Z-version also raises Speed by two levels, which might be problematic.
- I considered adding some more tutor-exclusive moves (Trick, Ice/Thunder Punch) to the level up / egg movepool to prevent potential illegalities, but decided against it to avoid too much bloating. Kitsunoh has no G7-exclusive egg moves, so as long as the new egg moves are assumed to be added in G6 (or even G5, when applicable) there should be no problems (the only moves it misses out are some completely irrelevant G4 tutors, the only vaguely useful one being Sucker Punch which I added as an egg move).
0 Scratch
0 Tail Whip
0 Odour Sleuth
Evo Move: Metal Claw
6 Lick
10 Fake Out
14 Feint Attack
18 Copycat
22 Shadow Sneak
27 Revenge
31 Memento 35 Hex
40 Shadow Claw 44 Iron Head
49 Shadow Strike
55 Perish Song
Tbh Kit's level up movepool is fine, on of the best actually, so I only switched up a couple noves to be more consistent.
Fake Out is usually learnt early on so I moved it to level 10. Moved Iron Head to level up moves as it literally has an Iron mask.
Added Hex as it seems very flavourful, due to Kit being primarily based on a kitsune.
Bullet Punch
Curse Defog
Feather Dance
Flail
Metal Sound
Meteor Mash Play Rough
Psycho Shift Switcheroo
Wish
Yawn
Bullet Punch, Wish and Play Rough are required to be added, and truly seemed to only fit egg moves. Defog was moved to egg moves to prevent illegalities. I was gonna move Trick too, but then thought Switcheroo fit soo much better here, so bam!
Endeavor Foul Play
Ice Punch
Icy Wind
Iron Defense
Iron Head Iron Tail
Knock Off
Last Resort
Low Kick
Magic Coat
Pain Split Snatch
Snore
Spite
Super Fang
Superpower
Thunder Punch
Trick
Hate to flood Kit's already bloated movepool of tutors, but Foul Play fits so well, I couldn't skip past it.
I decided to give it Hone Claws, as I like the competitive reasoning behind it. Also, it has claws, so it makes sense with flavor. Since it's a claw move, I decided to put it right before Metal Claw. Finally, Play Rough is mandatory. I put it after Fake Out as I can see it using the move after using Fake Out in a battle, if that makes any sense. I adjusted the level it got Revenge and every move afterwards to make Revenge fit the trend of each move being 4-5 levels apart. I also put Fake Out earlier because iirc it gets it the latest out of all the things that get Fake Out via level-up. Finally, I decided to put Metal Claw and Shadow claw directly after Hone Claws, rather than making Metal Claw an evolution move like everyone else. You see, it hones it claw-using skills, then puts them to use! Also, Memento is a very sacrifical move that would make sense to me as a later move rather than sooner.
To start off, I added Bullet Punch here specifically, as it is not a tutor and the other steel punching move it gets (Meteor Mash) is also an egg move. I would have added Shadow Punch here, but nothing that gets it can breed with Kit. Although a mandatory move, Wish didn't fit anywhere else. It's not a TM or tutor move, and I couldn't see it getting it via level-up. Thusly, I placed it in egg moves. I added Hex here as it is a generic Ghost flavor move that is from Gen 5. Another reason is that it fits well with Curse, which is also here. Finally, I moved Defog to here, as it would otherwise be transfer only and thusly incompatible with Iron Fist.
I only added Power-Up Punch, since we're giving it Iron Fist.
Endeavor
Ice Punch
Icy Wind
Iron Defense
Iron Head
Knock Off
Last Resort
Low Kick
Magic Coat
Pain Split
Snore
Spite
Super Fang
Superpower
Thunder Punch
Trick Foul Play
Foul Play matches Kitsunoh's michevious personality too well to exclude it, even if the tutors are a little bloated.
Overall, I kept it rather conservative. I honestly do not see Metal Claw as an Evolution move, as it would likely take a bit of time for Kit to get used to its claws.
With Kitsunohs Updated Movepool now finalised (congrats Menshay) this Update is now officially finished, thus bringing the CAP Updates to a close! In summary, the competitive side of Kitsunohs update was us giving it the ability Iron Fist and the moves Bullet Punch, Hone Claws, Play Rough, Wish, these tools should give Kitsunoh an extra edge in our current meta.
It's been a long journey and I'd like to thank everyone who participated in this and the Revenankh project, they both haven't been smooth rides and I'd like to say sorry for the many mistakes that I've made along the way most importantly I'd like to apologise for being so slow to get things done, I've learned so much during these update and it's been (for the most part) a really enjoyable experience!
I want to give a big thank you to Deck Knight and snake_rattler as they've helped me out a lot, Deck was always there when I had a question to ask and was willing to cover for me when I wasn't able to make a post, Snake was really helpful when it came to formatting my posts he also gave me a lot of advice when it came to addressing certain topics during these updates. I'd like to thank all the ULs for doing their very best to lead their chosen project, thank you HeaLnDeaL for stepping in to help in the absence of DarkSlay, he's been very helpful and was even willing to run Kitsunoh, sparktrain was also very useful in helping to speed these updates along!
Again thank you all for participating in this project every post mattered!