Pokemon Champions patches out strategies competitive players have been using for years, but hey, at least Freeze has finally been nerfed

Pokemon Champions makes some surprising changes to staple mechanics and strategies fans have been using for years, and it's safe to say that they're going to take some getting used to.

As a PvP battle hub that'll soon be the purpose-built place for the official Pokemon Video Game Championships (VGC) and its tournaments, you'd largely expect battle mechanics to remain in line with what veteran players have been used to up to this point. Not so, apparently, as certain status effects have been significantly nerfed.

Paralysis (first introduced in Red and Green) may have faced some changes over the years, but one thing has remained consistent – any Paralyzed Pokemon has a 25% chance of being immobilized each turn. Champions nerfs this, bringing it down to a 12.5% chance, so if you Paralyze a foe, don't expect to get so lucky when it comes to stopping their attacks.

What's more, the Sleep status condition has been nerfed so that it now lasts for a maximum of three turns (with a 33% chance of waking up on the second), while the Freeze status similarly has a three-turn cap (with a 25% chance of thawing out each turn before that). That last one is bound to be a relief for anyone who's previously found themselves trapped for a seemingly endless number of turns, it's got to be said.

That's not all, though, as other changes may have a direct impact on certain PvP strategies. Even before Champions released, 2016 Pokemon World Champion and VGC superstar Wolfe 'Wolfey' Glick noted from an early-access preview session that the maximum number of Power Points (PP) for the move Protect had been halved, from 16 to just eight.

As Wolfey explains, Protect is commonly used in the VGC's standard double battle format, which sees you send out two Pokemon at a time. Not only can you use it to shield one Pokemon from damage while your other one takes out a threat on the field, but you can use the move to stall out incoming attacks like Sucker Punch and Thunderclap, which only land if you've used an attacking move. Notably, Sucker Punch and Thunderclap also each have a maximum of eight PP, so now that Protect has been made the same, players won't be able to use it as freely without worrying about running out of PP.

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And, funnily enough, another anti-Sucker Punch and Thunderclap strategy has now been found dead since the game's launch earlier today. As highlighted on Twitter by @PokeMaineEvent, the move Fake Out now can't be selected at all unless it's the user's first turn in battle (or they just got switched back in). Those are the only circumstances the move actually lands – a trade-off for it being a high-priority attack that guarantees a flinch on its opponent – but previously, you could select it anyway and 'waste' a turn.

Except, it wasn't always a waste – it could similarly be used to bait out Sucker Punch and Thunderclap attacks from your foes. That's no longer an option, as Champions outright stops you from being able to throw away your turn using Fake Out if you're not using it as originally intended. At least you'll no longer be able to press it by mistake, I guess?

That Fake Out change also now means that if a Pokemon uses the move Encore on an opponent that just used Fake Out, instead of locking it into using a move that doesn't do anything, the Encored 'mon will instead use Struggle – letting it attack, but also forcing it to take recoil damage in the process (thanks for the spot, @shairaba).

Obviously, it's debatable if adjustments like this are necessarily a bad thing. Speaking in a group interview attended by GamesRadar+ ahead of Champions' launch, producer Masaaki Hoshino noted that the devs were "going to [pay] very close attention to how players are playing it, what the meta is like," and potentially "make balance adjustments accordingly." So, not only could all these things be changed further going forward, but we can probably expect more alterations to keep on coming, too.

The bigger question is what impact regular changes like that could have on the competitive scene, when large alterations have historically coincided with new generations of games, giving us years to get used to them. That's something we'll only be able to get a proper gauge of over time, but for now, between adjustments like these and the limitations Champions currently places on key aspects of battles (with many held items missing from the game at the time of writing, alongside hundreds of Pokemon), this might be the biggest shakeup VGC has had in years. Considering official tournaments are very soon going to be held in the game instead of the more familiar Scarlet and Violet, I can't imagine all players are thrilled.

If you're playing the new battle-focused game, be sure to check out our guide on how to link Pokemon Champions with Pokemon Home.