Magikarp And Gyarados Make A Splash In Pokémon Unite Later This Month

I wonder if this phenomenon has a name - the one where your brain rearranges headlines in the corner of your eye into something highly inappropriate - because I read the headline to this article as

MedicAlert and Ganados make a splash in Pokémon Unite

I've never played a Pokémon game, but I'm pretty sure zombies cursing out the player in Spanish and the subsequent medical emergencies aren't part of Game Freak's business model. Although, I thought, with Fortnite doing all these crossovers, maybe I'm behind the times.

@CANOEberry Fellow Daoist, you've got it backwards. The times are behind you.

With Magikarp being effectively useless, I can only imagine this means Gyarados will be dreadfully overpowered, especially in 3v3 or 4v4 matches.

...is this a joke? Like, is this a very early April fools day joke?

This 10 seconds were the glory never before perceived by human eye

I have no clue how balancing process works out in Unite, but in any other game people would complain about Magikarp being easy picking while simultaneously bashing Gyarados for being too strong - from that point the devs would embark on a neverending quest to bring the two forms closer to each other power-wise in a series of small steps.

very much looking forward to Gyarados. Still waiting for a support vaporeon though

I kinda wish they made you hit an attack button all the time to move, because that is what Splash would do.

Bro, what?

I mean, I'm all for this sort of nonsense, but this is just wild.

So of course I'm gonna play Magikarp all the time.

@LadyCharlie

Not really. As a MOBA, it's not about Magikarp being powerful or weak, it's about if it has a place in the dynamic of the early game or not. Given how any character can block nodes, as long as it has at least some defense options, it could conceivably be a completely viable early game Pokémon even without any offence.

Other MOBAs already have this. Heroes that play one arguable extremely limited role in the early game only to become a "full hero" when they level up and gain a key ability.

The balance isn't in that 1st form being "weak' and the second being "OP", it's in the timing. If you hit your 2nd form early, you can snowball, if you miss it you remain useless for most of the match. Given most of Unite's most popular Pokémon are 3 stage evolutions that ALREADY are strongly based on this snowball mechanic, I don't see this addition mixing things up that much.