If you’ve been on Twitter the past couple of days, you might’ve noticed that there’s some hate being directed towards a certain scaly dragon.

Can the VGC community just gentleman’s agreement to not use Kommo-o for the rest of the season

— Wolfe Glick (@WolfeyGlick) April 8, 2018

Kommo-o needs to be eradicated

— [ˈbiːnɪ] Yuree (@YureeVGC) April 4, 2018

So people hate Kommo-o, and it seems like this is a pretty popular opinion. Kommo-o’s viability has been a debate in the VGC community for a while now, but now there’s some sort of hatred brewing towards it. Personally, I seem to be missing something, as I’m not on the Kommo-o hate bandwagon and I want to try and figure out why this bandwagon exists in the first place. Let’s try to figure out why players hate Kommo-o.

The Clangorous Soulblaze animation

I’ll start out with this one since it’s a simple complaint, and one that I kind of agree with. Z moves are notorious for their long animations and Kommo-o’s signature Z move is far from an exception. The animation in its entirety clocks in at about 36 seconds, which may seem even longer if you’re on the receiving end of it. While it doesn’t run off any of the in-game timer,  this animation happening potentially three times during a tournament set eats up almost two minutes of the round timer. That doesn’t sound like a lot considering matches have a 50 minute timer, but every minute of a round can be crucial in certain situations. The animation is cool, but having to see it so many times is kind of annoying for players and viewers especially.

Also, the Z move is copyrighted, so YouTubers have had to cut it out of their videos to avoid copyright claims. Can’t imagine that content creators like facing Kommo-o either.

Its ability

The main ability you’ll see most Kommo-o using in the VGC metagame is Soundproof, an ability that prevents Kommo-o from being affected by sound-based moves. This includes moves like Snarl, Perish Song and Hyper Voice. My theory is that since the rise of Mega Gardevoir (known Hyper Voice spammer) and Incineroar (a Pokemon that likes to Snarl), the hate for Soundproof has only grown. The Snarl part can be kind of annoying as it makes it harder for Kommo-o’s Special Attack to be lowered after it boosts up. The timing of this hate for Kommo-o seems to coincide with the rising popularity of Mega Gardevoir teams, which probably explains a lot of its haters.

The Pokemon it’s normally paired with are annoying to play against

Kommo-o usually finds itself on teams with Mega Gengar and Tapu Bulu, which are two Pokemon that also kind of have a negative reputation. Mega Gengar’s play style is what makes it annoying as Shadow Tag traps your Pokemon in against Mega Gengar and its partner. So if you lead wrong, or maneuver yourself into a bad position, Kommo-o can easily switch in and fire off its Z move for free. This combination of Gengar+Kommo-o has solid offensive coverage as Gengar can deal with the Fairy-types Kommo-o hates and Kommo-o can hit Dark-types that Gengar hates. Gengar also has access to Ally Switch which deserves a whole other article to explain why people hate that move.

Tapu Bulu gets a bad wrap for being the anti-meta Tapu that a majority of teams hate to go against. Tapu Koko and Tapu Lele are normally faster than Tapu Bulu which means Tapu Bulu will usually have the Terrain advantage while Tapu Fini hates the fact that Tapu Bulu is a strong, physical Grass-type. Also, Grassy Terrain adds so much extra time due to every Pokemon (that’s grounded) getting a healing animation at the end of every turn.

So it’s likely not just Kommo-o that people hate, but how it’s used in the metagame. However, does this limited viability warrant so many complaints about people playing against it? Well, this leads in to my final suspected reason.

Many players think Kommo-o is bad

To be fair, Kommo-o’s typing was two generations too late. A Dragon/Fighting-type Pokemon would have been amazing before Generation Six and Fairy-types; but in an era dominated by this new type, Kommo-o’s viability takes a huge hit. Prior to the release of its Z move and it having access to Close Combat, Kommo-o had it even worse being a sub-par Dragon with not much going for it.

Kommo-o’s stats are quite good as being apart of the “pseudo-legendary” class means it has a base stat total of 600. These stats are pretty evenly spread, with the only lacking ones being HP and Speed. The Speed part is big as a majority of the popular Dragons that came before Kommo-o (like Garchomp, Salamence, Latios/Latias and Hydreigon) are faster and therefore much easier to use without needing to boost.

The need to boost is probably Kommo-o’s biggest weakness, as it simply can’t do enough on its own. This is probably why it mainly exists on a single team composition since it needs so much support. Even with the boost, Kommo-o’s Fighting and Dragon attacks don’t hit very much of the metagame hard. Kommo-o does get access to coverage moves like Flamethrower, Flash Cannon and Poison Jab, but it’s attacking stats aren’t devastating enough even after the boost from Clangorous Soulblaze.

Other than these in-game, strategic complaints about Kommo-o, many people just seems to hate on Kommo-o for its looks.Regardless, I don’t think Kommo-o deserves the hate it’s getting. Sure the Z move animation lasts just a bit too long and it can be annoying to play against, but it’s still a cool Pokemon. There’s plenty to dislike, but there’s a lot to like as well. Kommo-o doesn’t mind the haters though. It’s got Soundproof to block out all of the Parting Shots its getting from VGC players.

Thanks for reading!

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