TLDR: make Rest behave the same way it does with Hydration with Gems/Safeguard/etc. Please
In PMU Ghost-types are difficult to use because of the belly drain. The best way to mitigate this is to use HP restoring moves. I myself have Giga Drain + Synthesis on my Gourgeist which is really convenient. But some aren’t that lucky and have Rest as their only healing option.
Which is totally annoying because you either have to wake up manually or use Refresh. There are a couple problems with using Refresh.
You use twice the amount of PP. Meaning you have to use twice the amount of Ethers.
If your Refresh can’t go in walls, you’ll be warped out. This is SUPER annoying because it means you have to make sure you won’t lose HP when you’re trying to move to a safe spot, or just manually wake up.
Perhaps some people are fine with doing this but it really narrows my options. For me it’s super annoying, and it sucks because Ghost-types are my favorite.
The second option when using a Ghost type is using a Trapped Scarf. Here’s the only problem I see with this:
Restricted mobility. Obviously that’s the point of the scarf, but we should be able to walk through water since the -4 drain doesn’t apply when walking through water.
So here are my suggestions:
1. Include Rest when it comes to items that protect statuses. It’s weird to have Gems/Safeguard protect against Hypnosis and drowsiness, but not prevent sleep when you use Rest.
I would really like Rest (with Gems) to work the same way it does with Hydration. I can’t think of a good reason why it doesn’t behave the same way with Gems/Safeguard because Gems and similar items say they “prevent” status conditions but you still fall asleep anyway if you use Rest. To make matters worse you have to wake up manually too.
Let Ghost-types walk through water with a Trapped Scarf. Like I said before the -4 drain doesn’t apply to water, so I don’t know why we can’t walk through it. And the reason why there’s a high drain rate in the first place is to balance walking through walls.
Honestly, Ghost types are actually pretty manageable. One of the best way is Trapped Scarf, A team held item that makes ghost unable to go through any terrain. Unlocking water tiles just kinda makes trapped scarf too op, and honestly i think the balance right now it’s fine.
The rest idea I think is a very good, and fasinating idea. That would make a lot of things reliable with rest, and also help with handling more stuff. But then again, rest is mostly use to get rid of status, and most ghost types prob have recover for better and faster healing. Also, spamming 2 f attacks in wall isn’t that annoying tbh.
Yeah I’m fine with how Trapped Scarf is for the most part. I just wanted to address it in the post. I also did not realize that it affected other types but just happened to be used by Ghost-type users. Anyway I think going through walls is super fun and it’s a major reason why I like using Ghost-types.
re: Rest for status, if you aren’t using a Trapped Scarf then Rest is most people’s only way to recover HP for Ghost-types. I’d bet there’s a good amount of people who use one Refresh mon than Rest on every single Pokemon because it’s much more convenient and doesn’t take up a valuable move slot. Imo Rest’s only real use for me is to recover HP.
Also a lot of Ghost-types don’t have reliable HP recovery moves.
List for available Ghost-types on PMU:
Recover: Jellicent, Sableye
Moonlight: Sableye
Shore Up: Palossand
Synthesis: Gourgeist, Decidueye
Strength Sap: Drifblim, Polteageist
Great if you want to use these, but the Ghost-types I like on PMU (besides Gourgeist) don’t have HP recovering moves like this. Dusknoir, Aegislash, Dragapult and Chandelure are all Pokemon I want to train at some point but I have to rely on Rest if I want to recover HP. Yeah it’s not that hard to F attack in walls like 4 times but it gets annoying when you have to do it several times in 1 minute… and it’ll probably get easier as HP gets higher but it’s just super annoying atm. Especially since you’re asleep, there’s that window of complete vulnerability (for either you or the Refresher) and if you aren’t somewhere safe you’ll get shot. This is why Moonlight/Synthesis is so superior because you don’t get that at all. The amount of times I’ve stood still in a corner somewhere in MJ thinking I was safe and something gets me…
Just give your refresher mobile scarf, then u don’t get warp away in walls. Also, Another idea would be to scale the hunger up rather than immediately -5 for every tile (like start from -2 and keep scaling up) in case of those accidents. (but that might be hard to code).
Don’t get me wrong, I get the HP recovering thing. And dusknoir line gets pain split which could be a relyable option. And with life dew coming hopefully more ghost gets access to it. Giga drain is also a valid option for some.
As fun as this would be for a few Pokémon, this sadly also has the effect of making every single heal outside of morning sun and moonlight (for group healing) useless when not in a no item dungeon. Pretty much everything gets rest, and no one’s gonna use a heal that only gives them 50%, or 66% situationally when they can get back 100% with no penalty.
Would I personally enjoy my spheal to have reliable recovery and be a genuine option for mobile scarf running? sure. But this would be a pretty bad change for balance and would probably just get gems banned faster, if anything else.
I personally feel like gems are already really powerful items as is, as is the Safeguard status. I wouldn’t feel comfortable making those even more powerful.
But that other part about the Trapped Scarf…I can bring that up with staff to see if there’s enough merit in changing it to allow travel over water/gaps, or if that wouldn’t make sense given that imitation item’s inherent “negative” nature.
In any case, thanks for the suggestion! ^_^
Also, I know that Peepo regularly plays Golurk (another ghost type) and uses Drain Punch for recovery. That’s another option you could add to that list for gaining HP.
It may be better to make a new version of the trapped scarf. As the Trapped Scarf has uses for non-ghost types as well. ie flying avoiding Lava tiles etc and so on.