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kjorteo(Content Warning: During the Ho-Oh fight, one of our viewers drops an n-bomb in chat. We at WFGR absolutely do not condone such language. It stayed up there for far too long before we finally deleted it because I was fumbling around unable to find where the delete button was. Apologies for being so slow to figure it out and take it down. Again, this happens as a written-down comment in the chat during the Ho-Oh fight which I DO NOT repeat or say out loud. This video should be safe to listen to; just maybe do not read or look at the chat text during that particular fight.)
In this update:
* A harrowing showdown!
* Absurd luck!
* Type disadvantages wrecking our day!
* Type disadvantages NOT affecting our day in any measurable way!
* You know what? Just give Badgertwo your character sheet; he can plot this whole fight out for you.
* Character development!
Follow us on Twitch
Some notable clips and highlights from this session:
Hold on, Legendary God Bird, be with you in a sec
Amazing luck here! Oh... wait... maybe not
Hashtag Messed Up Sleep Schedule Problems
Sorry Omnihunter :( Amazing lucky sacrifice play though
Properly honoring a revered and truly worthy adversary
GameStop Suicune
Remember when his team's status annoyance completely used to shut us down?
It's not you; it's us
And lastly, we end this particular entry with what I'm really hoping should be the last bit of mon moveset restructuring talk for now. No one in our entire party has been analyzed, re-analyzed, retooled, then re-re-analyzed more than poor Nimbly, but I really, truly think or at least hope that we finally finally figured her out.
Dark/Flying is an interesting typing. I mentioned in our last entry that it was more a burden than anything else, because anything she wants to go after with her normally advantageous Flying STAB (Bug, Fighting) is undermined by her Dark side being weak to it. And yes, the fact that this makes her a worse pick to, say, solo and sweep Bugsy's gym than just about any other bird in the region is still true. However....
I think I was looking at it backwards. She's not a Flying type whose STAB is undermined by her Dark typing. She's a Dark type whose primary weaknesses--Dark and Fighting--are covered by her other STAB. Her Flying type boosts each of those back up to neutral range instead of being actual weaknesses for her, and in return, Brave Bird (now that she has it) can wreck some face.
When her two types are put together, her actual Super Effective-level weaknesses are Electric, Ice, and Rock. All of those are standard weaknesses; she does not have any 4x weaknesses. She also has two complete immunities--Ground and Psychic, both of which are very powerful types and very handy things to which to be immune. Meanwhile, on the offensive end, Dark-type moves are resisted by themselves (Dark), Fighting, and Steel. Flying-type moves are resisted by Steel (again), Electric (again), and Rock (again).
So, let's give her a good Dark STAB (Dark Pulse,) a good Flying STAB (Brave Bird,) and Superpower for coverage. Then, let's examine her complete list of weaknesses and things that wall one STAB or the other in light of her coverage with just these three moves alone, before we even talk about a fourth:
Ice: Superpower covers this.
Rock: This, too!
Steel: And this!
Dark: This one, too! This one move alone is almost her entire coverage needs, isn't it.
Fighting: Sure, Fighting types resist her Dark STAB, but they're actually weak to her Flying STAB so this one is automatically covered.
Electric: Plenty of things neutral it (including Dark) but its only actual weakness is Ground. Not covered by these three moves (Dark does neutral it, though.) With the first three moves set, Electric remains the single biggest thorn in Nimbly's side, since it's something she's weak against and something she can only neutral (at best) in return. If only she had a Ground option, she could find an answer to her last remaining offensive and defensive holes....
The fourth move is where we struggled, especially because it was easy to make Nimbly too similar to the lane that either of our other Dark types was already occupying. Heat Wave could be another useful option for Ice and Steel... wait, a Dark type with Fire coverage almost (Superpower would be the main difference but other than that) just makes Nimbly into Gmork but slower. Psychic is good for Fighting and is a damn powerful move that can at least neutral everything else except Dark, but Dark Pulse+Superpower+a Psychic-type move is Cassandra's moveset. And I just could not get over how frustrating it was that Honchkrow lacks access to an official Ground move since that's the one thing that's missing....
Wait.
Wait just a God damned minute.
Nimbly has a Ground-type Hidden Power!
This is actually the third time in this run we've been lucky enough that someone with the Special Attack stat to use it just happens to have the exact right type of Hidden Power for their coverage needs (after Oracle's HP Fighting and Rock Biter's HP Grass) and that is absurd. Hidden Power should not be the answer to anyone's prayers this many times in one team, given how much sheer random luck is required to get the exact type you need on even one mon. On three? Come on.
... Okay but how's the power, since that's also generated from IVs and such.
Nimbly has a Ground-type Hidden Power of... 45. It's not... great. Even at double damage, a Super-Effective HP Ground (45x2) pales compared to even a neutral STAB Dark Pulse (80x1.5) let alone Brave Bird.
But it's something, God damn it. And we've run into quite a few opposing members of the Magnemite family, for whom Ground happens to be a 4x weakness. At that point, you have to admit that just about anything hurts when it's multiplied by four. Also, since Nimbly's stats are at least above the Priscilla line at this point, she can afford to have something like a Soft Sand as her held item, which should give it some extra oomph. Lastly, these are both neutral to her and not an actual weakness or wall she needed to break, but just... as a random extra bonus, it's kind of neat that this also gives her extra coverage for (non-Flying or Levitating) Poison and Fire?
So, at long last, we arrive at a set that makes Nimbly both unique among the Dark-type niches and... honestly, arguably one of the most complete mons we have, coverage-wise:
Nimbly (Honchkrow @ Soft Sand)
Dark Pulse
Brave Bird
Superpower
Hidden Power (Ground)
With this set finally addressing those pesky Electric types, she now holds the rare honor of being able to Super-Effective everything that can Super-Effective her and everything that resists her STABs. She's a mixed attacker with physical and special moves alike, so mon that minmax one or the other (hi Steelix) shouldn't be able to wall her with impunity. She's... maybe a bit of a Red Mage, in that she can do everything but not as potently as the people who only do one thing (her Atk isn't Badgertwo's and her SpA isn't Rock Biter's) but... again, both are above the Priscilla Line at the very least, so she's fine. Meanwhile, perhaps fittingly for a feathery trickster, spy, and something of a hatesink (hence the Dark type) both for "is a bad guy (temporarily)" and "is this movie's Jar Jar Binks" reasons, she is... well, nimble, with damn near unrivaled versatility and at least some answer or another for just about any possible situation the game could throw at her at this point.
And, you know, especially considering that no one on this team is supposed to be able to solo the entire game (that's why there are teams, after all,) the fact that Nimbly almost could should be more than enough to elevate her back out of those second-stringer doldrums in which her previous movesets had left her trapped.
In this update:
* A harrowing showdown!
* Absurd luck!
* Type disadvantages wrecking our day!
* Type disadvantages NOT affecting our day in any measurable way!
* You know what? Just give Badgertwo your character sheet; he can plot this whole fight out for you.
* Character development!
Follow us on Twitch
Some notable clips and highlights from this session:
Hold on, Legendary God Bird, be with you in a sec
Amazing luck here! Oh... wait... maybe not
Hashtag Messed Up Sleep Schedule Problems
Sorry Omnihunter :( Amazing lucky sacrifice play though
Properly honoring a revered and truly worthy adversary
GameStop Suicune
Remember when his team's status annoyance completely used to shut us down?
It's not you; it's us
And lastly, we end this particular entry with what I'm really hoping should be the last bit of mon moveset restructuring talk for now. No one in our entire party has been analyzed, re-analyzed, retooled, then re-re-analyzed more than poor Nimbly, but I really, truly think or at least hope that we finally finally figured her out.
Dark/Flying is an interesting typing. I mentioned in our last entry that it was more a burden than anything else, because anything she wants to go after with her normally advantageous Flying STAB (Bug, Fighting) is undermined by her Dark side being weak to it. And yes, the fact that this makes her a worse pick to, say, solo and sweep Bugsy's gym than just about any other bird in the region is still true. However....
I think I was looking at it backwards. She's not a Flying type whose STAB is undermined by her Dark typing. She's a Dark type whose primary weaknesses--Dark and Fighting--are covered by her other STAB. Her Flying type boosts each of those back up to neutral range instead of being actual weaknesses for her, and in return, Brave Bird (now that she has it) can wreck some face.
When her two types are put together, her actual Super Effective-level weaknesses are Electric, Ice, and Rock. All of those are standard weaknesses; she does not have any 4x weaknesses. She also has two complete immunities--Ground and Psychic, both of which are very powerful types and very handy things to which to be immune. Meanwhile, on the offensive end, Dark-type moves are resisted by themselves (Dark), Fighting, and Steel. Flying-type moves are resisted by Steel (again), Electric (again), and Rock (again).
So, let's give her a good Dark STAB (Dark Pulse,) a good Flying STAB (Brave Bird,) and Superpower for coverage. Then, let's examine her complete list of weaknesses and things that wall one STAB or the other in light of her coverage with just these three moves alone, before we even talk about a fourth:
Ice: Superpower covers this.
Rock: This, too!
Steel: And this!
Dark: This one, too! This one move alone is almost her entire coverage needs, isn't it.
Fighting: Sure, Fighting types resist her Dark STAB, but they're actually weak to her Flying STAB so this one is automatically covered.
Electric: Plenty of things neutral it (including Dark) but its only actual weakness is Ground. Not covered by these three moves (Dark does neutral it, though.) With the first three moves set, Electric remains the single biggest thorn in Nimbly's side, since it's something she's weak against and something she can only neutral (at best) in return. If only she had a Ground option, she could find an answer to her last remaining offensive and defensive holes....
The fourth move is where we struggled, especially because it was easy to make Nimbly too similar to the lane that either of our other Dark types was already occupying. Heat Wave could be another useful option for Ice and Steel... wait, a Dark type with Fire coverage almost (Superpower would be the main difference but other than that) just makes Nimbly into Gmork but slower. Psychic is good for Fighting and is a damn powerful move that can at least neutral everything else except Dark, but Dark Pulse+Superpower+a Psychic-type move is Cassandra's moveset. And I just could not get over how frustrating it was that Honchkrow lacks access to an official Ground move since that's the one thing that's missing....
Wait.
Wait just a God damned minute.
Nimbly has a Ground-type Hidden Power!
This is actually the third time in this run we've been lucky enough that someone with the Special Attack stat to use it just happens to have the exact right type of Hidden Power for their coverage needs (after Oracle's HP Fighting and Rock Biter's HP Grass) and that is absurd. Hidden Power should not be the answer to anyone's prayers this many times in one team, given how much sheer random luck is required to get the exact type you need on even one mon. On three? Come on.
... Okay but how's the power, since that's also generated from IVs and such.
Nimbly has a Ground-type Hidden Power of... 45. It's not... great. Even at double damage, a Super-Effective HP Ground (45x2) pales compared to even a neutral STAB Dark Pulse (80x1.5) let alone Brave Bird.
But it's something, God damn it. And we've run into quite a few opposing members of the Magnemite family, for whom Ground happens to be a 4x weakness. At that point, you have to admit that just about anything hurts when it's multiplied by four. Also, since Nimbly's stats are at least above the Priscilla line at this point, she can afford to have something like a Soft Sand as her held item, which should give it some extra oomph. Lastly, these are both neutral to her and not an actual weakness or wall she needed to break, but just... as a random extra bonus, it's kind of neat that this also gives her extra coverage for (non-Flying or Levitating) Poison and Fire?
So, at long last, we arrive at a set that makes Nimbly both unique among the Dark-type niches and... honestly, arguably one of the most complete mons we have, coverage-wise:
Nimbly (Honchkrow @ Soft Sand)
Dark Pulse
Brave Bird
Superpower
Hidden Power (Ground)
With this set finally addressing those pesky Electric types, she now holds the rare honor of being able to Super-Effective everything that can Super-Effective her and everything that resists her STABs. She's a mixed attacker with physical and special moves alike, so mon that minmax one or the other (hi Steelix) shouldn't be able to wall her with impunity. She's... maybe a bit of a Red Mage, in that she can do everything but not as potently as the people who only do one thing (her Atk isn't Badgertwo's and her SpA isn't Rock Biter's) but... again, both are above the Priscilla Line at the very least, so she's fine. Meanwhile, perhaps fittingly for a feathery trickster, spy, and something of a hatesink (hence the Dark type) both for "is a bad guy (temporarily)" and "is this movie's Jar Jar Binks" reasons, she is... well, nimble, with damn near unrivaled versatility and at least some answer or another for just about any possible situation the game could throw at her at this point.
And, you know, especially considering that no one on this team is supposed to be able to solo the entire game (that's why there are teams, after all,) the fact that Nimbly almost could should be more than enough to elevate her back out of those second-stringer doldrums in which her previous movesets had left her trapped.
Right. Ho-oh. Or Ho-o. Whichever.
Date: 2022-06-30 03:47 am (UTC)The obvious place to start with Ho-oh is its namesake; the Chinese phoenix or Fenghuang (鳳凰 read "hōō" in Japanese) is the cultural counterpart to the Chinese dragon, with the dragon being traditionally regarded as male and the fenghuang as its female counterpart, yet another reflection of the balance of yin and yang in the natural world. That's one inspiration, but much like its counterpart Lugia, Ho-oh is a whole smorgasboard of ideas, and one unassuming yet extremely interesting aspect is the Iranian Persian Huma Bird which not only bestows good fortune and foretells great prosperity, much like the Fenghuang, but also has one trait the Fenghuang used to share. That is, it is both male and female in one body. Or rather, historically both male and female Fenghuang used to exist in myth before gradually being consolidated down to a single, feminine-aspected, archetype. One other notable trait of the Huma bird that appears in Ho-oh is that it spends its whole life flying high above the earth, never resting, never returning to roost. It is mentioned here and there that Ho-oh used to roost upon Suzu Tower long ago, but ever since Kane Tower burned down, it has taken wing and never returned until the player character comes along; a worthy soul bearing the Rainbow Wing of legend.
Another possible inspiration that shares the Fenghuang's female coding is the Simurgh, similarly Iranian in origin. Like all the rest of Ho-oh's origins, the Simurgh is described as a clash of wildly disparate animal features, including feathers of copper, a peacock's body, and a lion's claws. And once again we see the association with greatness, as the creature was said to represent the divine mandate of rulership. Much more interesting, however, is the Simurgh's appearance in the Shahnameh, wherein she adopted a young prince who later begged her to save his wife when she suffered in childbirth. The Simurgh purportedly showed Prince Zal how to cut the child out of his wife's belly, being an explanation for one origin of what we now call a Ceasarean section today. It's not really bringing dead pokemon back to life but it's still pretty dang interesting right?
However, there is a Kurdish tale of a great hero saving the Simurgh's eggs from a snake, and in return she grants him three of her feathers, telling him to burn them in his time of need. Now that sure sounds like an uncanny coincidence to me.
I think the most noticeable thing about Ho-oh however is just how little two of its most obvious inspirations really have in common. The Fenghuang basically bears zero resemblance at all to the ubiquitous Greek mythological Phoenix. In its earliest surviving appearance way back in the 700s BCE, one poem claims that a phoenix lives for over 900 human lifetimes. Frustratingly, Greek scholars couldn't seem to agree on what the heck it looked like besides a vague outline, contradicting each other on even its basic size. Everything from peacock colouration, to sapphire eyes, to one description closely resembling (ironically) the Golden Pheasant, native to east asia. This one is the bird that specifically renews itself through fire and rebirth, becoming functionally immortal through a cycle of life and death. Funnily enough there doesn't seem to be much actual mythological activity for the poor phoenix in Greece, and it almost seems that the bird's supernatural traits are simply wild fantasies that greek scholars slapped onto one or more otherwise mundane but real species of exotic wild foul, such as the aforementioned golden pheasant. The phoenix doesn't really get any stories until after the rise of Christianity and its adoption into early Christian myth as a cultural motif.
Ho-oh's influences are certainly a microcosm of the "smorgasbord of mythical references" approach that Pokémon tends to take with so many things. Likewise the stories told about it within the fiction of Pokémon are varied, and sometimes even contradictory. Did Ho-oh really bring Entei, Raikou and Suicune back to life? Is it in fact the immortal lord of the skies? Is it just a really big grumpy bird? While there's certainly ambiguity about the way the myths are presented, we definitely seem to be leaning on the side of the supernatural more often than not, weaving a strong component of myth and folklore into the world. Perhaps fitting, then, that Ho-oh has been waiting for us all this time, waiting for a mythical protagonist to appear and step into the hero's role in this story.
Much like the Phoenix, we have risen from the embers of what once was. And like the Simurgh, Ho-oh's appearance marks only a turning point in our journey, for there is still a long road ahead.
Re: Right. Ho-oh. Or Ho-o. Whichever.
Date: 2022-06-30 06:25 am (UTC)And yeah, there's miles left to go on this road, especially because Ho-Oh was the last thing we needed before we could finally go back for the Ruins of Alph (and Sinjoh, too!) And hell, maybe the Celebi event while we're at it. Let alone, you know, actually getting back to making progress in Kanto and stuff. But this was a major milestone, and one absolute hell of a battle on top of that (you know it was exciting when we got three clips of just the fight itself alone.) And we couldn't feel happier or more blessed to have you along for all of the ride, but this part especially.
Re: Right. Ho-oh. Or Ho-o. Whichever.
Date: 2022-06-30 07:19 am (UTC)Re: Right. Ho-oh. Or Ho-o. Whichever.
Date: 2022-06-30 11:15 am (UTC)Re: Right. Ho-oh. Or Ho-o. Whichever.
Date: 2022-06-30 12:57 pm (UTC)I mean on top of the very broad idea of the immortal bird of prosperity being also a pretty ubiquitous concept in our folklore the world over, there sure is something about a whacking great bird with pretty colours being associated with the human fixation toward death and rebirth. No wonder it fits right in with Pokémon's distinctly shinto-buddhist-leaning view of myth as a narrative feature.