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1 vote
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Is there any use for the move Synchronoise at all? In-game or competitively?

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You can make up a competitive battling format where the only move allowed is synchronoise. Then it would be useful.
A Synchronoise-only format trivially becomes an endless switch-fest. Just switch back and forth between Umbreon and something that doesn't share a type with what your opponent has out at the start of the turn (you can build your team such that there will always be such an option, even if it's a double battle), to avoid using PP. Anyone who does use PP will find themselves completely unable to make anything stick except Struggle, which should always hurt the user more than it hurts the target, and that's clearly not a winning plan.
Would it be useful in a hypothetical format where all moves and Pokemon, except synchronoise and normal Pokemon, are banned?
Realistically, there isn’t ever going to be a competitive format where only normal type Pokemon and Synchronoise are the only things allowed. I’d say it doesn’t have much competitive viability at all.

1 Answer

2 votes

The one niche case it has is if you're trying to hunt for the hidden ability (Infiltrator) on Seviper in X version. Unless you have the right Friend Safari, your only option is to seek out horde battles on route 8, where you run into the problem that not only does any horde with a Seviper contain 4 Zangoose to offset it, but those opponents will attack each other instead of you for as long as they're still standing.

By having to withstand all that friendly fire, you run into the distinct possibility that Seviper could be taken out by its "allies" before you can isolate it to throw a ball at all, or to scout its ability. The easiest way around this is to use a Normal-type with Synchronoise, such as Exploud. This will hit all the Zangoose at once on turn 1, while leaving Seviper untouched so you can move on to the ability scouter. No risk of losing it before you can do so!

There are no Poison-type Synchronoise users for Y version to try the opposite, and the only other 4/1 horde in which the opponents attack each other is Durant vs. Heatmor. In that case Durant is always the 4, regardless of version, and no Synchronoise users at the time were capable of having those types either. If it were the other way around, you could at least use Flareon.

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