It's time for another one of Reudh's Rarely If Ever Used Pokemon Reviews!
This time, we have the Blossom Pokemon, Cherrim. A mechanically interesting pokemon with multiple forms dependent on weather? Where have I heard that before?
Anyway, Cherrim has two forms:
Overcast Form, in all weather except sun
And Sunny Form, in the sun.
It has one and only one ability, Flower Gift, which lets it transform into Sunny Form in sunny weather, and give a boost of 50% to it and its allies Attack and Special Defense while it is in Sunny Form. This sounds gamebreakingly strong, except that it's entirely conditional on sun remaining active. It also has rather mediocre stats:
70/60/70/87/78/85, base stat total of 450. No stat over 100 base. Best stat (barely) is its 87 Sp.Atk, which is frankly mediocre; a base 60 with moves boosted by 50% is better than a base 87 with no boosts, in my book.
It's more of a supportive pokemon, and that's okay. Cherrim has a fairly standard movepool for a Grass type, albeit shallow. Its viable moves include:
Sunny Day (obviously, but with the advent of Drought pokemon there is less reason to run this except to refresh it)
Solar Beam (120 power, one turn to charge, second turn release, but is instant if in sunlight)
Growth (+1 atk, +1spatk, doubles in sunlight)
maybe Healing Wish (User faints. Next pokemon to switch in heals to 100% hp and heals status.
maybe Aromatherapy (Heal all status of the team).
Oh, and of course you can do SubSeed, but there's few pokemon with Leech Seed that can't, and most can do it better. Plus, with the advent of Infiltrator and sound moves bypassing subs, it's much less viable than it used to be.
Now, the bads:
Shallow movepool.
Relatively mediocre stats, including poor defenses. It wants to be a supportive pokemon, but it doesn't have the defenses to do so. It wants to be a mixed attacker, or a sun sweeper, but it lacks the power to do so, unlike Sawsbuck or Simisage, other grass type members of its tier.
It's also a rather poor type defensively and offensively. Grass is hit super effectively by Bug, Flying, Fire, Ice and Poison and resists only Water, Ground, Grass, and Electric. Offensively, grass is super effective against water, rock and ground, and is resisted by seven types, those being Bug, Dragon, Fire, Flying, Steel, Poison, and Grass.
Cherrim has barely any viable coverage; it got access to Dazzling Gleam, but so did Gengar. Most of the pokemon it would like to eat for breakfast, like fragile water types, either out speed it or carry coverage that easily deals with poor Cherrim.
I personally really like Cherrim, people are never ready for the 50% boost to damage and special bulkiness it provides its teammates, but that's if you can keep it alive. I'm considering trying something like a Tailwind Salamence-M with Facade coming in on a burn/paralyse/poison, and getting Cherrim to set up a sunny day for further boosts. (For reference, Salamence-M already has high Attack, then gets a 50% boost from Flower Gift, then Facade doubles after a burn/paralyse/poison, and finally Aerilate changes Facade to Flying Type, which gives it 50% more from STAB and 20% more from Aerilate.)
But that's a gimmicky set, and that sums up Cherrim, really. It's gimmicky. It has a cool ability that would be amazing if it was on a grass type with sturdier defenses and/or better offenses, but poor Cherrim never got to see the light of day. Smogon has never let it out of bottom tier, because even with Flower Gift, it's horribly outclassed.
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