Should You Pull? Dawn & Oricorio

The New Year is always a fun time, a chance to reflect on the past and focus on the future. And in this light, one of the most common  actions around this time of the year has to be to take up a New Year’s Resolution; a vow to make some form of change in the coming year. Well, it seems that Dawn has done just that this year, and her resolution is to dance! Alongside Oricorio, the famed dancing bird of Alola in its ghostly Sensu Style, Dawn is here to dance in the new year with a brand new outfit and a brand new way to make her enemies hate her!

Dawn & Oricorio comprise a Ghost Type Tech Sync Pair with a weakness to Ice Type attacks. They sport fairly high Special Attack, solid Speed, and semi-low bulk that’s balanced between Physical and Special. Their moves start with Oricorio’s signature move; Revlation Dance. This is a 3-bar Ghost Type move that has no real variables to speak of, as it’s just a simple, 3-bar attack. Next up is Feather Dance, which drops a single target’s Attack by 2 stages, followed by Teeter Dance, which leaves the target Confused when successful. Next up is Dawn’s Trainer Move, Perfect Dance!. This move is basically Potion on steroids, as it not only has the standard 40% HP Recovery to a team member of choice at 2 uses per battle, it also sets the Stat Reduction Defense effect on the field and raises Oricorio’s Evasiveness by 1 rank regardless of who the target of the move may be. More Potion users really need to learn from Dawn! Finally, Dawn & Oricorio’s Sync Move is Elegant Celebration Ghost Beam, which gets an innate boost based on how many stat boosts Dawn & Oricorio have garnered up to that point

Moving on to Passive Skills, we have a number of really interesting effects to look at. First up is Stat Up x2, which doubles any stat-boosts that Dawn & Oricorio may enjoy. This means that Perfect Dance! will actually provide +2 Evasion for use, and more importantly it means that any stat-boosts offered by teammates will be greatly enhanced. Next is Double Drop, which we’ve seen utilized by Sync Pairs such as Champion Iris & Hydreigon or Ghetsis & Kyurem. This passive skill doubles all stat drops utilized by Dawn & Oricorio, which primarily means that Feather Dance drops the target’s Attack stat by 4 per use. However, we do have a bit more to cover here, but we’ll talk about that in the next section. Finally, we come to Extra Special Ghost Damage. This is an extra special passive skill with an extra special effect! Seriously though; this is a pretty interesting skill, as it basically performs an additional Ghost Type attack any time that Oricorio uses Revelation Dance, Teeter Dance, or Feather Dance. The closest thing that we have to this is the added Dark Type damage that Sygna Suit Cyrus & Darkrai deal to Sleeping targets every turn, and the damage is actually fairly decent, hovering somewhere around Revelation Dance in terms of damage output. However, there’s more to this passive skill than meets the eye, and we’ll cover that nuance in, once again, the next section. Which just happens to be coming up right now!

So on the surface, Dawn & Oricorio don’t have a lot going for them. They have some basic stat-drops, access to Confusion, a beefed-up Potion, and passable Ghost Type damage output to their name. Well, we actually have more to cover, but we’re going to have to go into some spoilers for the Sync Grid section, as one simple tile that Dawn & Oricorio have access to at ⅗ actually adds a lot more utility than many might think: Grab Bag 9. This is a simple little skill that we’ve seen many times before; it has 100% odds of dropping the target’s Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, Speed, Accuracy, or Evasiveness by 1 stat-rank per use. This is nice, but nothing special in-and-of itself… but let’s look back to Dawn & Oricorio’s Passive Skills for a moment. To start with, Double Drop means that this is actually -2 to a single stat for a bit of added value, and Extra Special Ghost Damage counts as a second attack, meaning it will proc Grab Bag 9 a second time each turn, and it can also proc when using Teeter Dance or Feather Dance, meaning Dawn & Oricorio can melt the opposing team’s stats, dropping by up to -4 stats per attack use each turn.

But, honestly, is that alone enough to warrant the use of Dawn & Oricorio? They definitely have their own issues that can keep them from truly excelling. For one, their abject lack of self-boosting outside of Evasion means that they have trouble providing a strong offensive for their team, though it’s worth mentioning that this is a bit less of an issue than it may seem, as Stat Up 2x allows them to potentially max out their offensive stats even if paired with what would otherwise be considered a sub-optimal offensive buffing support. But more than that, their actual Tech utility is honestly a bit dubious if we’re being honest. The ability to quickly bottom-out Attack is nice, but many stages mix Physical and Special moves into the attacks that a player can face, and some even forgo Physical moves altogether to focus on nothing but Special moves, making Feather Dance unreliable in how much of an impact it will make on a given fight. The ability to inflict Confusion is also a bit “meh”, as it doesn’t have great base odds of causing the target to punch themselves in the face, and most stages carry high resistance to Confusion to drop those odds even farther. Admittedly, Confusion can still be utilized to activate damage-up effects for Dawn & Oricorio or other Sync Pairs, and they do have Stop Hitting Yourself 5 on their grid (still the best skill name ever), so it’s not all bad. Finally, their ability to proc 4 Stat Drops per turn is nice, but it’s 100% unfocused, so using it for anything other than effects like Power Loving can be a bit awkward at times. Honestly, the utility of Dawn & Oricorio really depends on the opposing team. If the ingredients added by the opposition are just right, then this can be a devastating Sync Pair that shuts down the other team quickly and efficiently. If the ingredients are all wrong, then Dawn & Oricorio are largely just dead weight with the bonus of a buffed-up Potion for a little team support.

Sync Grid Considerations & Lucky Skills

As we just highlighted in the previous section, this is a Sync Pair that really wants to hit ⅗! Sadly, ⅕ offers very little beyond some basic boosts and stat-drop immunities compounded by Dawn & Oricorio’s somewhat lackluster base kit, while ⅖ has Perfect Dance! MP Refresh 2 and Master Healer 1, Stop Hitting Yourself 5, and Move Gauge Refresh2 for Revelation Dance and Feather Dance. ⅗, meanwhile, is where the fun actually begins. We have Recuperation 2, Interference Sync 5, and Sync Power Flux to add more utility to Sync Move usage, a second Master Healer 1 for Perfect Dance!, and even Charging Infliction 4 to give Feather Dance and Teeter Dance a net Move Gauge cost of -2 bars. But the big take-away here has to be Grab Bag 9, which was just covered in-depth in the previous section, so go look at that for more information if you haven’t already.

If the goal here is to use Dawn & Oricorio for their damage output, then Critical Strike 2 is the way to go… assuming they’re paired with a Critical Rate buffer… and a Special Attack buffer, as they can’t do much of anything in-and-of themselves.  But if you just want a Debuffer, then definitely look into Defense Crush 2, or Mind Games 2 from the Deluxe pool, as these Lucky Skills not only have 2 chances to activate per attack thanks to Extra Special Ghost Damage, they also drop their respective stats by -2 per successful proc thanks to Double Drop.

Games Modes

While the majority of players nowadays want to take down the Champion Stadium as quickly as possible with an overpowering Striker, something can definitely be said for slow burn strategies that seek to break the opposition down bit by bit, and Dawn & Oricorio can definitely deliver on that front. However, the absolute best place to utilize Dawn & Oricorio arguably has to be to be the Legendary Arena, where they can quickly melt the boss with an array of stat-drops while protecting the team with Confusion and buffed up recovery to open the team up for a chance to score a quick KO against a newly crippled target and/or drop some fairly powerful Sync Moves for hefty damage themselves. This skill is especially attractive in the Legendary Gauntlet, where it’s possible to run Dawn & Oricorio alongside “sub-par” Support units and still get full effect thanks to Stat Up 2x.

By contrast, their utility in the Battle Villa is a little… underwhelming. Honestly, Dawn & Oricorio really only have their Stat Drops to rely on, and while they’re definitely far from the worst pick for the team’s 3rd slot, they’re also nowhere near the best. But, again, Stat Up 2x means that many Sync Pairs that passively buff the team will be literally twice as effective for Dawn & Oricorio, so they can work well with the right team. Finally, the various Extreme Battles all throw different gimmicks the player’s way depending on what they want to convey, so the polarizing nature of Dawn & Oricorio means that they can be good, but they can also be outright bad. It all depends on how the stage operates.

Team Compositions

Beisdes the obvious pairing with Sygna Suit Renegade Cynthia & Giratina, an offensive Dawn & Oricorio are going to need some support with Critical Rate and Special Attack, and while the normal candidates for this specific job such as Sygna Suit Kris & Suicune, Special Costume Lillie & Polteageist, or Sabrina & Alakazam may come to mind first, other Support units that may be a bit less complete in their buffing profile like Sygna Suit Brendan & Latios or Sygna Suit Elesa & Rotom can also step up and do the job thanks to Stat Up 2x.

A supportive Dawn & Oricorio can be a great catch-all debuffing Tech unit thanks to the high random stat-drops that they inflict, though Sync Pairs that want to target specific stats to drop can make use of them, and those who measure stat drops by sheer volume like Special Costume Rosa & Shaymin Sky Forme, Palentines Dawn & Alcreamie, and Champion Iris & Hydreigon find the pairing especially useful. Sync Pairs with Pecking Order would appreciate the help with debuffing Attack, but the main Sync Pair that could take advantage of that tactic is Anniversary N &  Reshiram, as all other Pecking Order users are very capable of debuffing Attack themselves with no opportunity cost to speak of. Still, a bit of help getting it done faster never hurts.

Let’s be perfectly honest here; if you wanted a debuffing Tech unit, then you probably pulled for Champion Serena & Greninja while they were here, as they do a good portion of what Dawn & Oricorio are capable of, but more of it and arguably better. And even if that’s not the case, Dawn & Oricorio can’t quite keep up with New Year Lissia & Galarian Rapidash or Sygna Suit Diantha & Diancie. While good in their own right, Dawn & Oricorio make for a pretty easy skip.

Editor's note: we apologize for the delay on this one, we're aware that the banner has already ended by the time this article is published but we decided to still release it for the overall analysis on the unit.