I wish I could say I was surprised, but at this point I’ve come to expect these kinds of questionable decisions from Pokemon Unite. The recently introduced method of gem-locking new Pokemon continues with the latest addition, Clefable, but this time it actually stands to make a big impact on the game. Clefable is a monster Support Pokemon - potentially the most powerful in the game - and those who don’t have it (or can’t afford it) will likely be at a disadvantage for the next week.
Clefable is the third Pokemon to join Unite as a limited-time real-money-only character, following both Dodrio and Scyther last month. There were some general grumblings about the new system throughout the community - including my own - but it all blew over because, frankly, Dodrio and Scizor aren’t very good. Dodrio is a finicky Speedster that has a lot of potential, but is much harder to play than powerful Pokemon like Gengar and Absol, while Scyther/Scizor were, at least for the first week, just straight up bad. They had the lowest win rate in the game and consequently received major damage and cooldown buffs across the board with the release of Clefable. Gem-only releases are frustrating, but if the Pokemon are terrible anyway then there isn’t that much to complain about.
In my last article, I said the pay-to-win alarms were going to start ringing once a Tyranitar-level Pokemon came out under the new system, and here we are. Can you hear the sirens? Clefable is a beast, particularly with its Moonlight/Gravity build. Its ability to heal the team while providing anti-Speedster crowd control in every fight is unmatched. There are Support Pokemon with different strengths, but it’s likely Clefable is currently the most valuable Support in the game. I don’t encourage anyone to pay for it this week, but check out a stream or video of Clefable in action just to see how easy it is to do 100k+ healing in a match without any practice. I have no doubt we’ll see an impressive win-rate for this Pokemon over the next week, which is a big problem.
It would be one thing if Clefable was banned from ranked the way other games like Overwatch temporarily ban new heroes, but it isn’t. If you pay the money, you can take Clefable into the competitive queue right away and start dominating matches. Using a strong Support isn’t a guaranteed win of course, but anything you can buy that gives you an advantage is pay-to-win, and clearly, playing Clefable is advantageous.
It may not seem like a week of p2w is that big of a deal, but consider the way the release schedule has changed since gem-locking was introduced. Starting with Mew at the beginning of September, we’ve had a new Pokemon every two weeks. The next two, Zoroark and Sableye, are already on the test server, so it’s likely this schedule will continue for the foreseeable future. If there’s a new Pokemon every other week, and it’s gem-locked for a week, that means the game will have a pay-to-win problem half of the time. They probably won’t always be monsters like Clefable, but based on the PTS, it sure looks like Zoroark and Sableye are. If this is the future for Unite, I’m going to be playing it a lot less than I used to.