Should You Pull? Melony & Lapras

Eluded to by Raihan as the one Gym Leader in Galar that he cannot beat, Melony has finally made the trip to Pasio, and she’s ready to make waves! Paired with her signature Lapras, she follows her son, Gordie, and is ready to make her mark on the Pokemon Master League. This is a Sync Pair with a lot to prove, and the sheer will and power necessary to actually do so, so don’t just ignore them due to their general-pool status, as they could very well become an ace on your team if played right!

Melony & Lapras constitute an Ice Type Support unit with a weakness to Rock Type attacks. They have solid bulk that leans slightly towards the Specially Defensive side, Speed that’s less than stellar, and low Special Attack. They have Ice Beam as their only attack, which is a 2-bar Ice Type move with a low chance to leave the target frozen on use. Safeguard comes next, and it sets the Status Resistance effect on the player’s side of the field on use, blocking all forms of status while active. Sing comes next, and it is a 1-bar move that puts the target to sleep when successful, but it has an abysmal 45% accuracy base. Finally, I Won’t Hold Back! finishes off Melony & Lapras’ base moveset. This trainer move grants +2 Special Defense and +1 Critical Rate to the entire team on use at 2 uses per battle. But we’re not quite done yet! This is also a Gigantamax Sync Pair, with the Max Move G-Max Resonance acting as the set’s crown-jewel.  This is an Ice Type Sync Move with good power, but more important than that it sets the Physical and Special Damage Reduction effects on the player’s side of the field on use, effectively protecting the team from virtually all attacks for a time.

So now we come to passive skills, and we definitely have an interesting set here! Honestly, they can all be summed up fairly easily as they’re all different flavors of the same exact concept. Persisting shield 5, Persisting Barrier 5, and Persisting Immunity  increase the duration of Physical, Special, and Status Barriers while Melony & Lapras on the field. In essence, they not only shut down a sizable portion of the opposing team’s offensive capabilities post-setup, they also keep the opposing team at bay for an extended period of time.

The ability to instantly set up long-duration Physical and Special barriers can be very beneficial for many frail Sync Pairs, as it’s the equivalent of stacking several Defense and Special Defense buffs all at once. And the sheer effectiveness of many status effects makes Melony & Lapras’ status-blocking capabilities very valuable as well, as they can potentially invalidate the entire gimmick of some stages with the use of a single move. And once this is all done, Lapras is free to sit in front of her team and sing her peaceful song to lul the opposition to sleep and stop incoming attacks entirely at the poultry cost of 1 bar per use. This is a Sync Pair that’s all about giving the team room to breathe, and they do so very well!

But, on the other hand, no Sync Pair is perfect (minus Sygna Suit Thunderbolt Red & Pikachu, arguably), and Melony & Lapras are no exception. Much like traditional Defense/Special Defense buffs, the Physical/Special barriers that Melony & Lapras can set on the field are entirely ignored by Critical hits, making their effectiveness a bit dubious in select situations. And despite the fact that these barriers last for two whole Sync Move cycles thanks to Melony & Lapras’ passive skills, they will still expire in prolonged battles, at which time our dear Ice Type Gym Leader and her personal Loch Ness Monster’s actual performance as a Support unit will drop a bit. Still, it’s worth mentioning that 90% of battles won’t last anywhere near that long, so this isn’t quite as strong of a con as it seems to be on the surface. “But what about Safeguard”, you may ask? Well, it’s a bit harder to put Safeguard’s alleged limitations into the negatives section of this article. It’s got 2 MP and has an extended duration, so it’s going to last a very long time. And then there’s the fact that most stages with status gimmicks tend to drop them early on and not really revisit them save random infliction from moves like Heat Wave and Sludge Bomb, so Melony & Lapras get an A+ when it comes to status protection.

Sync Grid Considerations

Melony & Lapras are great and definitely worth using at ⅕. Their base kit is pretty attractive, and they have access to Sing: Accuracy+5 right out of the box to make one of their stronger gimmicks all the more effective. ⅖ adds some Hail and Rain synergy as their main bonuses, making the argument to stop at ⅖ a bit less appealing. Finally, ⅗ is where Melony & Lapras get access to tiles like Team Sharp Entry 1 and Vigilance, setting them up to genuinely excel in their job. Among these tiles, Vigilance is especially attractive, as picking it up here frees up Melony & Lapras’ Lucky Skill, which means they can pick up Troublemaker 1 and potentially make Sing 100% accurate.

Game Modes

Champion Stadium: Master Mode

Stages that feature Critical Rate buffs aren’t incredibly common in the Champion Stadium, so Melony & Lapras’ barriers will frequently be able to go up early and fully protect the entire team throughout the entire battle. Add to this the potential to max the team’s Critical Rate via their grid and the ability to inflict Sleep at a mere one-gauge cost and you’ve got a potentially devastating Support unit that can allow the team to potentially bulldoze many stages. They’re also fantastic on stages that sport Permanent Field effects, as it makes all three of Melony & Lapras’ barriers permanent, but they already last so long that it will frequently be hard to tell the difference.

Legendary Arena & Gauntlet

Most Legendary Arena bosses tend to be a bit passive on their first HP bar, throwing out weaker attacks and not really doing much to buff themselves up. During this time it’s fairly easy to simply waste time buffing up the team/debuffing the boss and gathering Sync buffs to clear the remaining HP bars with ease. This is where Melony & Lapras can truly excel, as they can inflict Sleep pretty consistently with their grid and then use G-Max Resonance and Safeguard when hitting the second HP Bar, defending their entire team and setting up a resulting blitzkrieg to obliterate the boss in short order. Melony & Lapras take a bit more planning than some Support units to get the most out of, but they can definitely deliver if played right!

Extreme Battles

Team-wide barriers that include Status resistance, good buffs with their grid, and Sleep support all offer near-universal utility for many stages. Add to this the fact that Galar-based Support units aren’t incredibly common, and you’ve got a real winner here.

Battle Villa 

G-Max Resonance can be used once per battle, adding a strong and long-lasting defensive measure to the team while Lapras sings the opposing team to a ruinous sleep. Melony & Lapras may not be stage-clearing monsters, but they are definitely not the worst picks for the Battle Villa!

Melony & Lapras are entering the normal pool after their debut, so passing on Melony & Lapras really isn’t a huge deal, as you’ll likely pick them up naturally on a future banner. However, if you lack a solid set of tanks or like to use particularly frail Sync Pairs, then Melony & Lapras may very well be worth a bit of an investment, especially since they need to get a few Sync Move levels in order to genuinely shine. They’re among the best general-pool Sync pairs in the game, so don’t feel like it’s a waste to try to get their skills onto your team sooner rather than later.

Only Milo, Kabu, and Opal remain (Avery and Klara are considered minor-league). Could we be close to a Galar-based Champion Stadium…?