One Pokemon Scarlet and Violet player recently made a hilarious observation about Meowscarada's Flower Trick attack, promptly taking to social media to present a convincing argument that this signature move is overpowered at best and utterly broken at worst. Their discovery dovetails with a series of October leaks suggesting the most OP Scarlet and Violet Pokemon won't be legendaries.
Those insider accounts correctly identified Meowscarada as one of the never-before-seen creatures to be on the lookout for. Meowscarada is a dual-type Grass/Dark Pokemon and the final evolution of Sprigatito, the Grass starter in the ninth-generation games. While the leaks weren't entirely clear on why exactly Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's Venusaur counterpart will be overpowered, the consensus was that its moveset will contain at least one comically broken attack.
It turns out that those accounts were likely referencing Meowscarada's signature move called Flower Trick. As pointed out by Reddit user tannerbirb, Flower Trick's hefty base power of 70 is always treated to a 1.5 multiplier thanks to the automatic critical hit it lands, which brings it to 105 and guarantees 100% accuracy. It then gets an equivalent boost due to the same-type attack bonus (STAB) that can easily be doubled by using the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Terastallizing mechanic to turn Meowscarada into a pure grass type, raising its power to 210. If used against Water, Ground, or Rock types, the super-effective bonus doubles that figure to 420, tannerbirb wrote, concluding that "this is a busted move that never misses, hits like a truck, and pierces through defenses."
Several theorycrafters expanded on the argument by pointing out that a Grassy terrain bonus and Helping Hand could both bring Flower Trick's power to 1,512, or even 2,268 when combined, however unlikely those circumstances might be. But one thing to keep in mind is that Grass is still one of the statistically weakest types across all generations, including the creature pool in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
Namely, there are seven types that resist Grass moves: Fire, Poison, Flying, Bug, Dragon, Steel, and Grass itself. Grass is also weak to five move types—Fire, Poison, Flying, Bug, and Ice—and it consequently overlaps with some of the weakest dual types in all Pokemon games, as the creatures combining it with Psychic, Ice, or Dark have a whopping seven weaknesses. That pool of glass cannons also includes Meowscarada, who is a Grass/Dark Pokemon, though a competitive specimen would almost certainly be Terastallized to limit its weaknesses and maximize Flower Trick's STAB.
Still, naively assuming even type popularity distribution and no TM-enhanced movesets in competitive play, every ranked matchup has a 62% chance that the opponent can field at least one Pokemon that will immediately dispose of a Terastallized Meowscarada. Given that state of affairs, Game Freak might not feel the need to nerf it, especially as the public pressure to deliver Pokemon Scarlet and Violet performance improvements and bug fixes likely pushed balancing changes down the developer's list of priorities.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are available now on Switch.