[Guide] Skill Boosters and their Effects

With the advent of Skill Boosters comes a lot of people with questions about them, so time to get a guide running on what they do!

What are Skill Boosters?

A new enhancement, similar to Speedups and Raise Max Levels. They're shaped like Pikachu cookies, and come in Small/Medium/Large variants. When used on a Pokemon, they fill part of an experience gauge on their skill page. Once the bar fills, your skill levels up (capping at level 5) and either its activation rate increases or its damage output increases. Unlike Speedups which are exclusive to mega evolutions and RML's which are exclusive to specific Pokemon, every single Pokemon in the entire game can be affected by Skill Boosters! Keep in mind that the skill gauge can only be increased through boosters--there's no other way to improve skills without these items.

How do we get more?

Inevitably, the same way we've gotten previous enhancements. Their popularity and flexibility in usefulness will almost ensure they become the top prize in mega competitions going forward. If you're not good at competitions then that's fine, because they're also going to be added to the prize table in future escalation battles. In addition, once Mission Cards and Survival Mode get updated these boosters will also likely appear there too.

A new method of obtain boosters is through Personalized Skill Boosters on specific Special Stages, detailed in its own section below.

Skill Boosters and Skill Exp

Similar to how Pokemon require different amounts of exp to level up based on their base AP, each skill requires a specific amount of exp to level up as well. Skills are divvied up into one of six slightly arbitrary groups by the devs, each having their own growth rate that is generally based upon the strength of that skills (as in, popular and powerful skills are mostly in the larger exp groups, whereas obsolete or inferior skills are in the lower exp groups).

The six groups, and the amount of exp required for each level, can be found here, or here if you prefer them in a table format.

Also of note is exactly how much exp each booster type gives:

Personalized Skill Booster: 1 Exp

Small Skill Booster: 3 Exp

Medium Skill Booster: 10 Exp

Large Skill Booster: 30 Exp

Which skills receive each effect?

Again, when leveled either the proc rate or the damage increases. This is not random, and is instead tied to the skill.

Damage Increase per Level

• Disruption Clearers: Rock Break, Block Smash, Barrier Bash, Eject, Cloud Clear

• Pattern Matches: Power of 4, Power of 4+, Power of 5, Power of 5+, +-Boost, T-Boost

• Status Effects: Astonish, Flap

• Variable Damage Boosts: Crowd Power, Counterattack

• Low Moves Boosts: Last Ditch Effort, Steely Resolve

• Consecutive Turn Matches: Damage Streak

• Flat Damage Bonus: Super Bolt, Risk Taker, Brute Force, Swat, Heavy Hitter, Opportunist

Activation Rate Increase per Level

• Disruption Clearers: Rock Break+, Block Smash+, Barrier Bash+, Eject+, Cloud Clear+, Cloud Clear++, Quirky, Quirky+, Stabilize, Stabilize+, Swap, Swap+, Swap++

• Status Effects: Burn, Spookify, Freeze, Sleep Charm, Paralyze, Shock Attack, Chill, Prank, Mind Zap, Quake

• Match-Only Damage Boost: Hyper Punch, Dragon Talon

• Combo Damage Boost: Pyre, Pummel, Sky Blast, Double Normal, Dancing Dragons, Pixie Power, Sinister Power, Sleep Combo

• Variable Damage Boosts: Crowd Control

• Mega Boosters: Mega Boost, Mega Boost+

• Low Moves Boost: Swarm

• Consecutive Turn Matches: Hitting Streak

• Percentage-Based Damage: Vitality Drain, Poisonous Mist, Downpour

How much does activation rate get increased per level?

That's completely different for each ability. You can discover how much each ability's activation rate globally increases in this pastebin.

How much additional damage gets added per level?

The majority of them deal double their original damage at level 5, while a lesser group deal up to 50% additional damage at level 5. The same pastebin details the percentage increase per level.

The other exceptions are Power of 4/5, which instead use this scale increase:

Level 1: x1.5; Level 2: x2.25; Level 3: x2.7; Level 4: x3.14; Level 5: x3.6

Power of 4+ uses this:

Level 1: x3; Level 2: x3.3; Level 3: x3.6; Level 4: x3.9; Level 5: x4.5

...while Power of 5+ follows this:

Level 1: x3; Level 2: x3.3; Level 3: x3.6; Level 4: x4.2; Level 5: x5.1

Personalized Skill Boosters in Special Events

Returning special stages now cost coins to play, but also give players the opportunity to farm them for Personalized Skill Boosters. After catching a Pokemon, replaying the stage gives you a chance at the elusive drops (note that these only apply to specific special stages, and those eligible will mention the drop potential at the bottom of their respective info pages). How they drop remains uncertain. The prevailing rumor right now is that they have a chance to drop at every 25% HP interval, allowing you to earn up to 4 boosters in a single run (the highest interval appears to be ~95% HP). Ultimately, they have a drop rate of bad and you'll be suffering layers of RNG to get your hands on them.

You'll know a booster has dropped when a unique sound effect plays and a present icon appears to the right of the HP bar. You have to finish the stage to keep the boosters!. As it stands, these PSB's appear to be half as powerful as a Small Skill Booster, with the positive caveat that these are indefinitely farmable...so long as you have the coins to keep paying the stage fee.

The only downside is these boosters, as the name would imply, affect ONLY that stage's Pokemon. They're instantly applied to their skill and aren't an inventory item you can freely use. If you get a present from Groudon, it gets applied to his ability Quake upon stage completion. For Ash-Greninja, its presents get applied to its skill Power of 4+ instantly on completion.

Where should our Skill Boosters be spent?

Now for something subjective--with so many Pokemon to spend them on, and with how slow the booster income is going to be--where should you be spending them? That is ultimately your decision, based on your current progress in the game, the skills you prefer, and your favorite Pokemon. But here's some of the most popular choices if you can't decide on your own.

Sleep Charm: A grotesquely powerful skill that's hindered only by its unreliable activation rates, Skill Boosters will turn this into a dominating powerhouse. Specifically, Shaymin is the best choice. A lot of types are immune to Sleep Charm, but the types Shaymin is super effective against that don't resist it are Water and Ground. The only type Darkrai is SE against that doesn't resist is Psychic, and the only type for Mesprit is Poison. The number of potential Psychic types and potential Poison types remaining to be released are in the single digits, while the remaining Water and Ground types combined are nearly 40! Shaymin will get you much more mileage, yet Darkrai is still an acceptable alternative--both due to a lot of Ghost type stages being a nightmare, and an eventual Cresselia escalation repeat being easier with consistent Sleep Charm activations. Both are acceptable and the choice is yours, but in the long run Shaymin will still technically see more potential uses.

Burn: A fairly good skill (delays disruptions for 1 turn, 50% increased Fire damage for 3 turns) also hindered by a mediocre proc rate (55% on a 4-match). Well worry no longer, cause Charizard can hit 95% on 4-matches when maxed out. That's practically ensuring you have a near-permanent 50% damage buff for your Fire team, disgusting. The perfect complement to the quadfecta Fire team (the popular M-Blaziken, the now reliable Charizard, Delphox, and Reshiram or Talonflame for disruptions) and we've got something all Bug and Grass types better damn well fear.

Most other status effects and disruption stallers: And this is where general popularity wanes and subjectivity comes into play. Both status effects and disruption stallers are great, yet have mediocre proc rates. Freeze, Mind Zap, Paralyze, etc. are abilities people seem to like were it not for their proc rates. Now that you can boost them, older Pokemon that'd never see the light of day will suddenly have a resurgence. Which ones you think are best are up to you, but make sure to check out the table of type immunities here to ensure you're not wasting your boosters!

Power of 4+: Sure, why not! Let's make one of the most popular skills even better! The one caveat is that there's quite a bundle of Po4+ users now...who to use it on is hard to answer. For the same reasons that Shaymin is good, Virizion is a high choice due to the long term viability of Grass types. But it's hard to discredit most Po4+ options as they're almost all entirely viable. Choice is up to you. But, there's another interesting option...

Power of 4: Yeah. Basic Power of 4. Cause you know what's funny about the damage increase between these two skills? They end up doing the exact same expected damage output. A maxed out Po4 Pokemon will deal the exact same damage across 5 activations as a maxed Po4+ Pokemon would deal, under the assumption that the 80% proc rate causes the Po4+ user to only hit 4 out of 5 procs. Suddenly Lapras, thanks to RML's, is potentially more attractive for raw damage due to power and consistency than even Ash-Greninja! And there's plenty other examples of Po4 users who suddenly can become really good with several levels of boosters fed into them.

Risk-Taker: Part of the camp that valiantly defends this skill? Well now it's become really viable! Dealing double damage at max rank means rolling the worst possible modifier on an activation will still bring the damage back close to what it originally would have done, but getting a high random roll on the proc would cause a max rank Risk-Taker to rival Power of 4+ in damage (with the bonus of not requiring matches of only 4)!

Disruption Clearers: As we're running out of Pokemon, and clearly running out of potential candidates for abilities that don't suck, anything currently that can clear disruptions is seen as a premium. The likes of Block Smash+ and it's other + buddies all have a 50/100/100 activation rate. Not quite what you should burn boosters on, but you'd also nearly guarantee that 3-matches remove disruptions too. Better yet are Pokemon like Deoxys (the only Psychic type that can deal with wood/metal) and Hydreigon (similarly, but for Dark types) who have Swap+. Unreliable activation rate but useful ability means another worthwhile candidate for the boosters. Those two Pokemon may be the best we ever get for their respective types in removing those types of disruptions, only making them more attractive to boost. Roserade and Stabilize+ is also an option, as we're low on future potential Grass types that could have superior anti-disruption abilities.

Combo Boosters: So you know how Pyre is pretty easy to activate and everyone praises Delphox for it? Wish Braviary or Lucario or Togekiss was more reliable in accomplishing the same thing? Now they can! Improving the likes of Pummel, Sky Blast, Sinister Power, and more shouldn't be overlooked!

And that's all you need to know about Skill Boosters! The suggestions aren't a be-all-end-all on where to spend your boosters--you're free to use them on whoever you like, on whoever you want to see activate better abilities. But as should be pretty clear: whenever these boosters are available as rewards for competitions of escalations, you should really be doing everything you can to earn them! They have incredible flexibility and potential across dozens of Pokemon, far more than Speedups could achieve.

I hope to update this with 100% concrete numbers once they're datamined, yet I've been told that's a tedious and frustrating process. It could be awhile before we have perfectly accurate numbers on several features of boosters.