Cipanku, the Next Island Update
The long-awaited Cipanku, the 5th island, is about to drop in April. The hype and teasers from Crema (the developers) have been at its highest, with a lot of players thinking that the patch might land on Tuesday, April 6th. Cipanku is a Japenese-themed island, with pink grass and is home to Digital and Electric type temtem. As much as we are exciting for the story continuation, the introduction of Digital tem and an increase in Electric Tems will bring a fresh dynamic that will balance out the current team-building experience.
Earthbreaker Technique
Earthbreaker is an earth technique with 2 hold and 120 base power. Compared to other techniques, it seems relatively basic in its power. However, the game changing property of Earthbreaker is that if the ally is electric, the synergy changes the Earthbreaker technique to electric type. Yes - the type changes!
For tems like Rhoulder and Garyo, this tends to have the disadvantage of losing STAB (Same Type Attack Bonus), however it is still valuable if you are able to hit a tem that is weak to electric. In the following video, in the turn at minute 8:00 - 9:00, because Grumper (Earth + Electric) is sitting next to Garyo, Garyo's Earthbreaker changes from Earth to Electric. This means it does 4x to the enemy Wiplump, since Wiplump is Water and Wind, two types weak to Electric.
Post-match, my opponent told me they had forgotten about Earthbreaker's synergy. This tends to happen frequently as one does not expect a type-changing move, particularly without many electric temtem existing. With the introduction of more electric tems in Cipanku, Earthbreaker is going to see more potential synergies. Enemy tems like Wiplump will often tend to avoid electric tems, however, if you switch out the electric tem (especially ones that are not weak to water) in the same turn you use Earthbreaker, you are going to do unsuspected electric damage that can decide the match.
Electrics Will Change Meta
There is more reason to be hyped up for electric tems! Currently, we only have the following tems: Gazuma, Nessla, Grumper and Electric Koish. Out of which, Grumper is the most well-rounded tem, with the first two seeing little to no competitive play. Electrics should in general be a good match into the Digital temtem (that are still yet to come), mentals (which are somewhat dominant right now) as well as winds and waters. This is mostly significant into Winds, as electric type is their only weakness, so tems like Volarend (Wind/Toxic with only 1 weakness) will finally have some more viable counters and will stop being as oppressive.
Nagaise, one of the current S-tiers that can definitely make lots of tamers want to quit competitive, myself included, is 4x weak to electric (as well as 2x weak to digital), so we should expect a huge meta change. Other tems which are either popular (like Barnshe) or viable (like Tukai and Wiplump) are also 4x weak to electric tems. We have no idea how the meta will change, but we definitely know that it will, and that many tems will have more counters, whereas other tems (like Crystals and Earths) will finally have more tems to face.
Cipanku Hype!
What are you most excited about with Cipanku release? I know plenty of tamers are eager to encounter and breed the new tems, particularly the digital ones. Other features are also included in the update, such as teleportation. There might be a lot more that we do not know yet, so I will be excited to read the patch notes when they come out just before the patch hits!
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