What EXACTLY does Contrary do?

Question

What does the ability Contrary do? I want to finally understand why this makes Serpirior good.

Answer 1

Contrary reverses your stat changes.This means that when you're supposed to lose stats, you actually gain them, and vice versa. This means if Serperior uses Swords dance with the ability contrary, its attack will actually go down two stages instead of up. This also applies to your opponents attacks. If you use screech on a Contrary Serperior, its defense will go up two stages.

The reason why this is so popular competitively is that he can use leaf storm with it. You take a base 140 move (210 after STAB) and its effect drops his special attack two stages...but thanks to that ability, it will raise it two instead, meaning you get a powerful STAB move with a beneficial side effect.

Comments

That's why Spinda should at least be RU for contrary SuperPower. I have a nice Typhlosion avatar that fits you well......http://tpmrpg.net/pokemon_statistics.php?pokemon_id=13032604

---

Spinda doesn't really have any notable moves to boost it up though, especially not as powerful as Serperior. Even if it could, it's stats are absolutely dreadful, which is unfortunate, since that could come in very handy.

---

Does this mean if a Contrary Shuckle uses rest it will faint instead of gain all it's health or just not have to sleep for two turns?

---

Stats only bud.

---

Not sure if you'll respond to this but does this only apply to the user or to any Pokémon out on the field, meaning if a Pokémon with contrary had swagger (as an example) would it still increase the opponent's attack by 2 stages or would it be lowered by 2 instead?

---

Only the Pokemon with Contrary is affected. If your Pokemon had Contrary and used Swagger on an opposing Pokemon without Contrary, it would still increase its Attack by 2 stages. On the other hand, if the opponent used Swagger on your Pokemon, your Pokemon would get confused and have its Attack decreased by two stages.