Generic General Pokemon Discussion

In the same line as the general final fantasy and various other franchise specific threads, anything not directly covered in a game's own thread can be discussed here.  Just caught a shiny in Emerald?  Been playing on the free competitive sims and want to say something?  Or even comment about how Gardevoir makes you feel hot and bothered!  It can all be discussed here.  Well, maybe not that last one, but you get the idea!

I shall open things by posting a replay of a recent battle I had with my rather generic ou team I'm currently trying out.  http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-103180427

The match went fairly well, with my stallers holding off the opponent long enough for their team to crumble.  If they'd chosen to send out the mega Tyranitar earlier I'm not too confident the result would have been the same (either with them pushing me a lot more or, possibly, even winning), but as things were I'm pleased with the result and can't say I felt particularly threatened at any point in the match.  I'm also lucky they weren't packing a scarf Darmanitan, that thing rips my team to shreds so badly.

And in case anyone wonders why that bullet punch failed to ko the tyrantitar despite it being at that health level, it's because I'm not packing any attack ev's on my Scizor.  It's sort of a custom spread I'm trying with the attack ev's poured in to the hp stat for bulk, the idea is to swords dance on something a couple of times and roost any damage of before attempting a sweep.  I can't say it's worked out like that so far and I might alter it a little since I find myself outright attacking more often, but that's the idea behind it.

I'll come back with more stuff to say in this thread later. For now, I'll just say that Quilladin is bad and the person who designed it should feel bad. Also, I seem to have a particular affinity for dark types, and I'm not sure why.

We need a dark/fairy type, just because.

Still helping my girlfriend through SoulSilver. Last night she beat the Ecruteak Gym leader whilst I was asleep! She's gone crazy for the little critters, to the point of looking up plushies on Amazon. One day I'll come home to a house stuffed with the things.

My house is definitely not already like that.  Ahem.

I've been kind of helping my sister go though Soul Silver and now she's stuck at the league as they are apparently a bit strong..

Another match, this one I'm mostly posting because I don't have a clue what happened. http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-104348553

I mean, I shouldn't have won that. I shouldn't have come even close to winning that. As I said after they rage quit at the end I've no idea what happened, the Mandibuzz did a great job shutting my team down between taunting me to prevent me inflicting ailments and whirlwinding me repeatedly while knocking my items off one by one. Then I mess up big time, wasting my chance to get a swords dance off with my bisharp and instead using iron head again when I could have used swords dance while he was forced to roost and then really had him under pressure.

Instead they throw several pokemon down the drain and eventually come to the point they have only a roserade and porygon-2 that had had its eviolite knocked off to defeat my scizor. At that point they rage quit. I suppose I really shouldn't be this bothered, I do have a policy of never giving up no matter what because an opponent can always misplay, which happened here, but it was just really bizarre how fast the tide of the match went from me feeling completely pathetic to them losing several Pokemon and having nothing left to actually win the match.

shanks wrote:

I've been kind of helping my sister go though Soul Silver and now she's stuck at the league as they are apparently a bit strong..

They are a bit overpowered- and it's not like X/Y where you can concentrate on the one you can bring down and use the Exp. All to pull up other 'mon.

The problem with gold and silver and their remakes in my opinion is that they had such pathetically weak wild pokemon, then throw a relatively powerful elite four at the player and expect them to be able to actually take them on. I usually can because I only ever typically raise at most three pokemon, but anyone who's raising an entire team cannot take them on and expect to win easily. It's poor design that penalizes the player for raising a team and technically playing the game properly.

Okay I just have to post this, this battle was just plain awesome, long, but awesome. http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-104930376

Long, but damn winning felt satisfying. Winning after the opponent got so butthurt that he called me a c*** was especially amusing, he may have felt the match was a forgone conclusion after he laid down stealth rocks and three layers of spikes, but I had a hunch given I'd taken out his goodra that if I could take out the Venasaur I could snatch a win, and that's exactly what transpired. I'll admit I was lucky with the scald at the end not burning my mega scizor, had that happened odds are it would have come down to which of us ran out of roost first.

My girlfriend's take on Soul Silver makes me laugh, more often than not. She keeps fielding phone calls from Joey - whose Rattata is "in the top percentage of Rattata" - and said to me, "Joey is on drugs". She might be right! 

Has anyone tried out the Google April Fools thing? For the uninitiated, go to the Google Maps app. on your smartphone, and apparently if you have the latest version, there's a Pokéball button. I don't seem to have it though.

There's a spoof video to go with it too.

Balladeer wrote:

Has anyone tried out the Google April Fools thing?  For the uninitiated, go to the Google Maps app. on your smartphone, and apparently if you have the latest version, there's a Pokéball button.  I don't seem to have it though.

There's a spoof video to go with it too.

https://twitter.com/matte_johnson/status/450823172686770177

The first Pokémon game that I've completed:



Edit:

Now I've actually finished it.

Athrun888 wrote:

Long, but damn winning felt satisfying.

Hahaha, that was pretty amazing. I thought he had you beat with Skarmory, did he really need to switch? He also doesn't appear to understand that close combat makes his attack weaker. Was a great battle!

Poor Rotom being called a toilet, his cleanliness is unquestionably washing machine standard.

I don't use any of the simulators but for those who have X/Y I think you can search up battle videos on the VS recorder. Try looking up U2LG-WWWW-WWW3-XWCW, its a rating battle I had.

Its not particularly brilliant but hey, I won a rating battle.

Vidofnir wrote:

He also doesn't appear to understand that close combat makes his attack weaker.

You're thinking of Superpower. Also, why in the world would he not switch his Staraptor into Phantom Force? Does he not realise that 'Raptor is normal?

Haha, how could I make such a mistake? Hmm, in that case it really looked like Staraptor should have 2 hit Chansey...

And Smogon has continued to jump the shark with their various bans by banning, wait for it, it's hilarious.






Keep waiting.










Swagger.  Yes, that's right, swagger is now banned from competitive play.  Don't get me wrong, I don't even like the strategy, but I can't even begin to agree with banning it, unless they propose banning most troll strategies that rely on chance such as the ever obnoxious paraflinch.  Speaking of paraflinch I love how if you ever get any luck against people using it they'll start whining about hax, it's hilarious.  

Oh well, no skin off of my back.   

Really? Well alrighty then..

I'm thinking about restarting X and doing another quick run through

Banning Swagger? What? It seems to me like some of the competitive world doesn't understand that yes, while strategy does play a big part. Luck is also a key facet to the series, why else would the confuse status, attraction and critical hits be included in the programming of the game?

As well of a whole host of moves that have a 'chance' (luck) of inflicting burn, paralysis, lowering stats, you get the idea.

Does it not occur to anyone that maybe Luck is a Skill?

Also the notion that luck isn't competitive is entirely laughable. You think Wigan won the F.A cup in 2013 because they had the best team cohesion? Its a crude comparison yet in all competition worldwide, you can have the best tactical nouse yet get beat by chance.

How about the competitive pokemon world just makes its own game, removing all side effects of every attack, all status effects and all hit percentages are set to 100%? So they can enjoy their micro management and number crunching while talking out of their own arses in peace.

I should probably have saved that for Smogon eh?

That's their argument, though. They accept that luck is a part of competitive Pokémon, but that Swagger (especially its combined use with Foul Play) takes it too far. And given that I've never played at those levels, I'm not going to try and disagree. Plus, I still have a complex about those Golbats on Victory Road.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at the quick rage quits I'm getting as I've been playing awfully as of late and am around the 1370 mark, but why on earth did my last opponent think that switching in a breloom on a gliscore was a even remotely safe move?  I get that a good number of gliscore users only pack earthquake, but what about those of us who also pack acrobatics that breloom is quad weak to?  I'd have thought the smart thing would be to scout first before cockily throwing a breloom out against a gliscore and then rage quitting when it dies in one shot to one of its stab moves.  

As for the luck thing, I can kinda see why they'd want it gone but I just can't get on board with banning swagger when they leave other completely luck abusing strategies like paraflinch in play, it just comes off as a little too hypocritical to me.  But I'm at a lowly 1352, so what do I know.

Why are they banning it now, four generations after it was introduced? Is it being exploited with other more recent moves or something?

Something like that, gen six saw the addition of a new pokemon that has access to a combination that makes abusing swagger and foul play very easy.  The awful looking key Pokemon klefki.  Klefki has both the ability prankster (which gives status moves priority) and access to status moves like thunder wave, entry hazards such as spikes, and swagger, and foul play to boot.  Actually Klefki has access to practically all the status moves under the sun, even now I imagine it'll still be a very annoying pokemon to deal with.

I never ran in to that many myself, nor many pokemon abusing swagger actually, but I'd say it's klefki that's probably the reason why the move is being banned right now. Oh, and I forgot to mention it's also fairy/steel, which makes it extremely annoying typing wise.

Just had another fun battle, I made a few errors but still pulled off the win. http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-107479099

I make a few errors throughout the match, but overall I'd say I made the right calls when I needed to such as with predicting the landorous switch in on a expected volt switch, although honestly that prediction is hardly impressive given nobody is ever going to leave a gyarados in on a rotom. I got a bit lucky with the burn I suppose, but honestly with the amount of bs I've had with people burning me seemingly every single time they use scald on me I'd say that's just karma finally being fair.

Also never underestimate Durant, the thing has a beastly attack and 109 base speed makes it shockingly fast. The best bit is so many people will likely expect the troll entertainment set on durant they won't realize it's a set-up sweeper until it uses hone claws the first time. I take no credit for the idea of using one like this however.

Okay, lets try to spark a bit of discussion. Since this is a generic thread I'll ask a generic question once in a while, starting with: what are your favourite three pokemon? Mine from top to bottom are.

1) Shaymin land forme
2) Giratina distortion forme
3) Cyndaquil

I'm not the biggest fan of the big tough mean looking pokemon, I actually prefer the cute ones. Giratina is an exception because it looks all bringer of doom like. So what about everyone else?