AOTW: Anger Point
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Abiliteers, I’m back after my unscheduled hiatus with another helping of passive pokémon powers! Before we get into it, friends, I feel I owe you something of an explanation for my absence. Apart from my usual full plate of work on The Redeemers, my day job, and so on, my social life has recently taken an upswing, which unfortunately has distracted me from my editorial duties, and I apologize for it. This particular upswing also came on the heels of an underwhelming response to my 100th Ability Rapid-Fire on Victory Star, Wonder Guard, and Swarm, and I’ll admit that I was a little put out by it. It’s not necessarily a good reason to skip a few weeks, but there it is. I guess every just has their breaking point, and that’s also what we’ll be discussing for today’s selection. Ladies, gentlemen, let’s get back to it. This is Ability of the Week: Anger Point!
Anger Point is a generation four Ability, and probably one you’re not especially familiar with. Upon its inception, it was usable only my Mankey, Primeape, and Tauros, but you can also use it if you can snag a Dream World Camerupt or member of the Krookodile family. If a pokémon with Anger Point is struck by a move that scores a critical hit, its Attack stat is automatically maxed out to a +6! Now, this does mean that Anger Point is a gambling Ability, and while you shouldn’t rely too much on it, it can mean a massive windfall.
Of course, the obvious downside to activating Anger Point is the fact that you’ve just eaten a critical hit, so if you want to take full advantage of the Ability, breed and train accordingly with a focus on HP and defensive stats. Based purely on their capacity to absorb hits if trained properly, I’ll give the defensive nod to Tauros and Krookodile, and the gangster ‘gator also has the highest base Attack with which to take advantage of Anger Point.
A couple of half-baked double battle strategies occur to me, so let’s take a minute and try to figure out how to try to make Anger Point work for you instead of just being a random bonus. Now, you obviously don’t know when your opponent is going to score a critical hit, but a well-versed player should be able to recognize candidates that may have moves or Abilities to enhance crit opportunities. When a likely opponent shows up, have them battle your Anger Point user. This is the part of the article where I WAS going to tell you to equip a Ring Target so the opponent would be forced to attack the Anger Point user while a Heal Pulser restored HP, but el-oh-el that’s not what Ring Target does, oops! This might be one of those situations, trainers, where you just have to rely a little more than you’d like on luck.
‘Til next time, guys!
-Wil
PS- Don’t forget to check out the 649 Monsters art show at the end of August!
