"What if gym leaders weren't type specialists, but instead mechanic focused?"

I was talking with a friend last night about BDSP and we both agreed that the Elite 4/Champion battles were...kinda bullshit from a game design perspective. Fun, surprisingly challenging battles (we were both fairly underleveled)? Sure! But bad game design.Why? Because nothing in the game prepares you for that. All the game has really ever needed from the player is knowing type advantages...and then all the sudden Drifblim is baton passing minimizes to Infernape and flame orb marvel scale Milotic is baiting in special attacks to hit with mirror coat. Its a huge difficulty spike and it shouldn't be...a good game should prepare the player for the final boss, not introduce a bunch of new shit at the end.So I was thinking...what if we had a region where the gym leaders focus on mechanics, rather than typing? Sure, probably have a gym like the Striaton Trio in BW that covers type advantage...but after that?A gym where the focus is on spreading and using status effects. One focused on boosting moves, held items, weather, terrains, etc. And then give the players natural tools to learn how to play around them...have some mons that learn safeguard or mons with guts or marvel scale around the status effect gym. Some unaware mons or ones that learn haze or roar around the boosting gym, knock off or trick or embargo around the held items gym, etc. Have the gym leader in-battle dialogue be teaching the player, or pointing out when they've played around the gyms tactics.And none of these tactics are super hard to play around...but the game should teach you how to do it if they're intending on using those mechanics.And then when you get to the E4/Champion, the challenge is that they're using all of these mechanics togetherI think it would be a good way to change up the formula and add more difficulty in an organic way...rather than the gym leaders all just being "do you know what is super effective against X type" via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/V6rCIXS