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kjorteoIn this update:
* A fair amount of cheating, honestly. Let us discuss this!
* Latios absolutely 100% doing this on purpose to troll us!
* Wildlife that apparently craves its own destruction!
* Anyway, have the most powerful Rainbow Wing in the world.
* Taking the term Revenge Killing to a whole new extreme!
* An accidental cliffhanger ending!
Follow us on Twitch
Some notable clips and highlights from this session:
Latios is officially a jerk
Latios is an absolute troll
This is why Kabutops are extinct now
Ascending Bell Tower while we play unfitting music
Reena Declares Her Intentions (To Marry) (thanks topenguinmayhem for this clip)
So, remember a few entries ago when we did that listing of the primary offensive stat of everyone on our team (except maybe the HM users because really now?) Now that we've maxed out the EVs of everyone in the team except Moonchild (I could not for the life of me decide what stats she should specialize in,) I think that list needs to be updated.
Some caveats and clarifications:
So, here's the new combined list for primary offensive stat + Speed + Level, post-EV-boosting:
Okay, so, one thing that it is very important to note right away: In our last listing we coined something that may unofficially be called the "Priscilla Line," which I am hereby defining as an offensive stat of around 145-150 or so. This is so named because Priscilla had 146 Atk last listing, yet that was enough to do this on the physical side. Oracle is the equivalent example on the Special side after his showing versus Lance, and he had a SpA of 152 as of the last listing. Therefore, the Priscilla Line (or the Priscilla/Oracle line if you want, though that sounds like a ship and excuse me Moonchild has dibs on Oracle thank you) is 145-150 or so, and what it states, simply put, is that that is about as much offense as you actually need to one-shot everything (at least if you have a type advantage) and therefore any numbers higher than that are purely for showing off.
I say this because, post-EV-ing, every single mon in our party except Moonchild (and, again, the HM users but ehh) are very comfortably above that line.
Like, I want it to soak in just how utterly unnecessary this discussion is, how much we are talking about who can hit a Rattata for 4,000 damage versus who can only hit it for 3,000 when the poor thing only even has about 20 HP. See that Priscilla clip above there? That was when her Atk stat was in the low 140s. It is now slightly over 20 points higher than it was when she was already doing that. And with that boost, she's now the third-weakest member in the entire party.
So this entire team is just absurd at this point, basically, and everything below this line is just nerding out over numbers just for the sheer fun of doing so.
Understood?
Okay.
The second point we'd like to bring up is one we already mentioned in the last list, but it very much bears repeating here: Holy shit Rock Biter, calm down. Rock Biter's SpA takes a comfortable first place in the combined primary offensive stat list, and that's genuinely saying something with competition like... basically everyone else on the list. And Rock Biter is only level 53!!
(That said, we do still believe that the single highest-damaging blow we could strike with any single mon in the party still has to come from Badgertwo's Focus Punch. His 206 Atk is only 5 points off Rock Biter's 211 SpA, and Focus Punch has a whopping 150 power in its own right; Rock Biter's strongest move is Thunderbolt which "only" has 95.)
Third, this makeover makes us want to reconsider the three we had listed as the semi-retired second stringers--Kracko, Nimbly, and Atreyu. The reason they were all benched was a combination of low power, underwhelming movesets, and being straight-up obsoleted by the new crew (by Rock Biter, Gmork, and Badgertwo, respectively.) The "low power" part is definitely fixed; as you can see, each of these three are now solidly in line with their peers. The "underwhelming movesets" problem was fixed as of that last megapost we did going over the movesets of the entire squad, except for Nimbly, whose moveset is fixed as of when I decided to go ahead and let her have Brave Bird. So, now it comes down to a matter of... with their power and their movesets, do they have a niche to fill? Or is their lane still taken?
Kracko is the biggest victim of this last hurdle; even after the boost, the Electric side of his moveset more or less comes across as "Like Rock Biter but slower." Coverage-wise, Kracko's Signal Beam is no Rock Biter Hidden Power [Grass]. Kracko does boast Thunder Wave, which could make him a capture mon, perhaps, if Badgertwo's Spore didn't already have that job locked down too. Thus, Kracko may just end up remaining in the second string, even though he is a very powerful and worthy mon (just look at what he did to Misty's gym!) The fact that he can't cut it on the main squad speaks more to the utter ridiculousness of the main squad than anything else.
Nimbly's new moveset (Dark Pulse/Brave Bird/Psychic/Superpower) does have some overlap with her Dark contemporaries as far as the side coverage options go. Cassandra in particular also has Superpower and a Psychic-type move (even if it's not Psychic itself) backing up her Dark moves. As far as the Dark moves go, Gmork has Dark Pulse, too. If anything actually sets Nimbly apart, her salvation has to come from her finally having that long-awaited niche that she and she alone can boast: she's our Flying STAB. Her Dark contemporaries. Hell, even her half-Flying contemporaries, Priscilla and Falkor, can't say that. The Flying lane is HERS. The question is... is that lane... like... good? Is it worth having? Can it do something that we couldn't accomplish with other types?
Having a good Flying move is no longer a problem, but what that can do for us as far as typing... well. Let's see. Flying is Super Effective against Fighting, Bug, and Grass. Of these, Fighting and Bug have the unfortunate counter of being strong against Nimbly's Dark typing, a lesson we learned when we tried to sweep Bugsy with her. An unanswered dominance over the Grass type is something Flying can boast, but it's also something one can do with Fire, Ice, Bug....
In short, "oh no, if only we had a FLYING move; there just is NO OTHER WAY around this particular challenge" is... not... something we actually would be saying very often? Even the challenges that seem tailor-made for a Flying type (Bugsy's gym, Chuck's gym) Nimbly goes into with something of a handicap due to her Dark typing seemingly undermining everything the Flying typing is trying to do.
Still, look, she has STAB Dark Pulse and Brave Bird and the stats to use the both. She may have tried to Red Mage together a type combination that goes together like peanut butter and motor oil, and she may be both worse at being a Dark type than Dark types and worse at being a Flying type than Flying types as a result, but damn it, she has power, and versatility, and admirable coverage options. Like Kracko, she'd be a first-stringer on any other team, I think.
And finally, there's Atreyu, who went from "four different ways to punch someone with Fighting and no options" to having a rather sexy and impressively varied moveset. No Guard DynamicPunch alone is just dirty, but he can answer incoming Flying types with No Guard Stone Edge, incoming Psychic types with Payback, and oops those are his only Super Effective weaknesses, well fuck it let's throw Earthquake on there as a fourth move because Earthquake is almost always deadly. While the EV Up didn't put him in Badgertwo range (he's always going to suffer from that incredibly unfortunate Modest nature) it put him well above the Priscilla line, with a coverage spread that's... honestly pretty great? On paper, his Super Effective answer to Flying is something even Badgertwo can't boast (and Flying is a 4x weakness for Badgertwo,) though in practice Badgertwo is a lot faster and, if he outspeeds said Flying enemy, could just Spore/Facade most things down in a couple hits.
Still, bad speed aside, Atreyu can at least cover elements that Badgertwo can't, and if any of the three second-stringers can make a good argument for being elevated back to the first string, it'd be that. At this point, the only thing holding me back is vague memories that I already had a Machamp in my Hall of Fame team in Diamond, but I mean I already had the original Badger back in Ruby too so whatever.
* A fair amount of cheating, honestly. Let us discuss this!
* Latios absolutely 100% doing this on purpose to troll us!
* Wildlife that apparently craves its own destruction!
* Anyway, have the most powerful Rainbow Wing in the world.
* Taking the term Revenge Killing to a whole new extreme!
* An accidental cliffhanger ending!
Follow us on Twitch
Some notable clips and highlights from this session:
Latios is officially a jerk
Latios is an absolute troll
This is why Kabutops are extinct now
Ascending Bell Tower while we play unfitting music
Reena Declares Her Intentions (To Marry) (thanks to
penguinmayhem for this clip)So, remember a few entries ago when we did that listing of the primary offensive stat of everyone on our team (except maybe the HM users because really now?) Now that we've maxed out the EVs of everyone in the team except Moonchild (I could not for the life of me decide what stats she should specialize in,) I think that list needs to be updated.
Some caveats and clarifications:
- Rather than separating the lists for physical and special attackers, we're just combining all of them and sorting by "Primary offensive stat" (whichever one that mon uses.) There are only two mixed attackres with roughly even Atk/SpA in our party--Moonchild and Nimbly--and they are both sorted by whichever is a few points higher.
- In exchange, this list will also include Speed.
- It will also include Level. We're at the point where levels are making a huge difference--it seems fairly common now to expect somewhere around 3-4 gain in everyone's primary offensive stats per level, depending on mon. Thus, their levels make something of a difference now; it might not be fair to compare the stats of a level 53 apple to a level 55 orange at this point, you know? Thus, levels are included mostly so they can be taken into account as well.
- In the cases where the primary offensive stats were tied, ties were broken by the respective Speed stats.
So, here's the new combined list for primary offensive stat + Speed + Level, post-EV-boosting:
- Rock Biter (Lv. 53 Magnezone) (Special): 211 SpA, 109 Speed
- Falkor (Lv. 55 Dragonite) (Physical): 206 Atk, 134 Speed
- Badgertwo (Lv. 55 Breloom) (Physical): 206 Atk, 133 Speed
- Omnihunter (Lv. 55 Scizor) (Physical): 206 Atk, 106 Speed
- Cassandra (Lv. 55 Absol) (Physical): 196 Atk, 136 Speed
- Gmork (Lv. 54 Houndoom) (Special): 179 SpA, 156 Speed
- Kracko (Lv. 55 Ampharos) (Special): 179 SpA, 95 Speed
- Oracle (Lv. 54 Glaceon) (Special): 174 SpA, 122 Speed
- Nimbly (Lv. 55 Honchkrow) (Mixed, with a perfectly even 2 physical/2 special moveset): 173 Atk, 167 SpA, 94 Speed
- Atreyu (Lv. 55 Machamp) (Physical): 171 Atk, 96 Speed
- Priscilla (Lv. 57 Flygon) (Physical): 167 Atk, 178 Speed
- Auryn (Lv. 55 Starmie) (Special): 165 SpA, 159 Speed
- Moonchild (Lv. 55 Meganium) (Mixed, but currently only has one attack and it's Special): 118 Atk, 116 SpA, 127 Speed
Okay, so, one thing that it is very important to note right away: In our last listing we coined something that may unofficially be called the "Priscilla Line," which I am hereby defining as an offensive stat of around 145-150 or so. This is so named because Priscilla had 146 Atk last listing, yet that was enough to do this on the physical side. Oracle is the equivalent example on the Special side after his showing versus Lance, and he had a SpA of 152 as of the last listing. Therefore, the Priscilla Line (or the Priscilla/Oracle line if you want, though that sounds like a ship and excuse me Moonchild has dibs on Oracle thank you) is 145-150 or so, and what it states, simply put, is that that is about as much offense as you actually need to one-shot everything (at least if you have a type advantage) and therefore any numbers higher than that are purely for showing off.
I say this because, post-EV-ing, every single mon in our party except Moonchild (and, again, the HM users but ehh) are very comfortably above that line.
Like, I want it to soak in just how utterly unnecessary this discussion is, how much we are talking about who can hit a Rattata for 4,000 damage versus who can only hit it for 3,000 when the poor thing only even has about 20 HP. See that Priscilla clip above there? That was when her Atk stat was in the low 140s. It is now slightly over 20 points higher than it was when she was already doing that. And with that boost, she's now the third-weakest member in the entire party.
So this entire team is just absurd at this point, basically, and everything below this line is just nerding out over numbers just for the sheer fun of doing so.
Understood?
Okay.
The second point we'd like to bring up is one we already mentioned in the last list, but it very much bears repeating here: Holy shit Rock Biter, calm down. Rock Biter's SpA takes a comfortable first place in the combined primary offensive stat list, and that's genuinely saying something with competition like... basically everyone else on the list. And Rock Biter is only level 53!!
(That said, we do still believe that the single highest-damaging blow we could strike with any single mon in the party still has to come from Badgertwo's Focus Punch. His 206 Atk is only 5 points off Rock Biter's 211 SpA, and Focus Punch has a whopping 150 power in its own right; Rock Biter's strongest move is Thunderbolt which "only" has 95.)
Third, this makeover makes us want to reconsider the three we had listed as the semi-retired second stringers--Kracko, Nimbly, and Atreyu. The reason they were all benched was a combination of low power, underwhelming movesets, and being straight-up obsoleted by the new crew (by Rock Biter, Gmork, and Badgertwo, respectively.) The "low power" part is definitely fixed; as you can see, each of these three are now solidly in line with their peers. The "underwhelming movesets" problem was fixed as of that last megapost we did going over the movesets of the entire squad, except for Nimbly, whose moveset is fixed as of when I decided to go ahead and let her have Brave Bird. So, now it comes down to a matter of... with their power and their movesets, do they have a niche to fill? Or is their lane still taken?
Kracko is the biggest victim of this last hurdle; even after the boost, the Electric side of his moveset more or less comes across as "Like Rock Biter but slower." Coverage-wise, Kracko's Signal Beam is no Rock Biter Hidden Power [Grass]. Kracko does boast Thunder Wave, which could make him a capture mon, perhaps, if Badgertwo's Spore didn't already have that job locked down too. Thus, Kracko may just end up remaining in the second string, even though he is a very powerful and worthy mon (just look at what he did to Misty's gym!) The fact that he can't cut it on the main squad speaks more to the utter ridiculousness of the main squad than anything else.
Nimbly's new moveset (Dark Pulse/Brave Bird/Psychic/Superpower) does have some overlap with her Dark contemporaries as far as the side coverage options go. Cassandra in particular also has Superpower and a Psychic-type move (even if it's not Psychic itself) backing up her Dark moves. As far as the Dark moves go, Gmork has Dark Pulse, too. If anything actually sets Nimbly apart, her salvation has to come from her finally having that long-awaited niche that she and she alone can boast: she's our Flying STAB. Her Dark contemporaries. Hell, even her half-Flying contemporaries, Priscilla and Falkor, can't say that. The Flying lane is HERS. The question is... is that lane... like... good? Is it worth having? Can it do something that we couldn't accomplish with other types?
Having a good Flying move is no longer a problem, but what that can do for us as far as typing... well. Let's see. Flying is Super Effective against Fighting, Bug, and Grass. Of these, Fighting and Bug have the unfortunate counter of being strong against Nimbly's Dark typing, a lesson we learned when we tried to sweep Bugsy with her. An unanswered dominance over the Grass type is something Flying can boast, but it's also something one can do with Fire, Ice, Bug....
In short, "oh no, if only we had a FLYING move; there just is NO OTHER WAY around this particular challenge" is... not... something we actually would be saying very often? Even the challenges that seem tailor-made for a Flying type (Bugsy's gym, Chuck's gym) Nimbly goes into with something of a handicap due to her Dark typing seemingly undermining everything the Flying typing is trying to do.
Still, look, she has STAB Dark Pulse and Brave Bird and the stats to use the both. She may have tried to Red Mage together a type combination that goes together like peanut butter and motor oil, and she may be both worse at being a Dark type than Dark types and worse at being a Flying type than Flying types as a result, but damn it, she has power, and versatility, and admirable coverage options. Like Kracko, she'd be a first-stringer on any other team, I think.
And finally, there's Atreyu, who went from "four different ways to punch someone with Fighting and no options" to having a rather sexy and impressively varied moveset. No Guard DynamicPunch alone is just dirty, but he can answer incoming Flying types with No Guard Stone Edge, incoming Psychic types with Payback, and oops those are his only Super Effective weaknesses, well fuck it let's throw Earthquake on there as a fourth move because Earthquake is almost always deadly. While the EV Up didn't put him in Badgertwo range (he's always going to suffer from that incredibly unfortunate Modest nature) it put him well above the Priscilla line, with a coverage spread that's... honestly pretty great? On paper, his Super Effective answer to Flying is something even Badgertwo can't boast (and Flying is a 4x weakness for Badgertwo,) though in practice Badgertwo is a lot faster and, if he outspeeds said Flying enemy, could just Spore/Facade most things down in a couple hits.
Still, bad speed aside, Atreyu can at least cover elements that Badgertwo can't, and if any of the three second-stringers can make a good argument for being elevated back to the first string, it'd be that. At this point, the only thing holding me back is vague memories that I already had a Machamp in my Hall of Fame team in Diamond, but I mean I already had the original Badger back in Ruby too so whatever.
Re: The Burned Tower, The Bell Tower, and Ecruteak:
Date: 2022-06-30 01:16 am (UTC)That said, it's not like they roost in them all the time. Even in HeartGold (wherein Ho-Oh is the storyline object of your pursuit, and Ho-Oh is in the Bell Tower and doesn't have the whole "fucked off to the Whirl Islands after Brass Tower burned down" thing going on as an excuse) getting Ho-Oh to appear at the top of the tower is still something that requires the Chosen One, the Rainbow Wing, and a bunch of
totally not kitsunekimono girl shrine maidens who claim to have been at this unsuccessfully for ages before you finally got it.