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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
legitimately most of these dont feel rare at all
It's honestly one of the things I like about SV. Because of how big the areas are and how many pokemon they spawn you're rarely in a position where you're not seeing rare pokemon. Charcadet is like the one that really stood out to me and even then there's set spawns for it and sometimes i'll still just see it wandering around while doing errands.
Yeah it's same thing with the fact that shinys "feel" more common in SV: there's SO MANY SPAWNS at any given time, that even "1%" spawns are relatively common.
All of these in that list I could go and find within 5 minutes at any given time.
I can't actually think of any pokemon in SV that i'd define "rare" at all, other than maybe Ditto or Zoroark, and honestly not cause they would be rare, just cause they're disguised and you actually have to "scan" other mons to find them.
All of these in that list I could go and find within 5 minutes at any given time.
I can't actually think of any pokemon in SV that i'd define "rare" at all, other than maybe Ditto or Zoroark, and honestly not cause they would be rare, just cause they're disguised and you actually have to "scan" other mons to find them.
I can think of only a few that I had particular trouble with:
- Blaze Breed Tauros until I ate a Fire-boosting sandwich
- Slakoth, which was frankly took a ridiculous amount of time to find and didn’t show up even with a Normal-boosting sandwich, but from a practical standpoint, this issue is mitigated by Vigoroth being very common so you can just bypass the Slakoth stage
- Antique Sinistea, which took sifting through over 200 Phony Forms before finally landing an Antique
Beyond that though, everything on that list feels way more common than those percentages would suggest. I guess maybe the Ralts family is sort of uncommon in my experience? But Mareep, Hawlucha, and even Chansey are pretty easy to come across.
I think both breeds are somewhat rare but since they spawn in packs of 5, realistically speaking it doesnt take THAT long. Expecially the fire one is easy to "not recognize" in a pack of Tauros since it's very similar to the regular fighting form, the water one differences are more apparent
I don't think Antique Sinistea counts :P It's a form and specifically intended to be rare
True, but even for Authentic Sinistea, those numbers felt excessive.
… you know, that would actually explain it. I spent most of that time catching Sinistea at the Gimmighoul ruins to the East of Alfornada, but I only ended up finding an Authentic one when I decided to try out the open plains between Alfornada and the cave entrance.
Okay I didn't have a problem finding the rare mons, I will admit.
I just dislike the mere concept or thought of it. Yes, the original games had their fair share of dumb rarity (Yanma, Marill, Chimecho) but nowadays, it feels like so many mons are insanely rare solely for the purpose of being insanely rare rather that it actually being an occasional design choice. Psuedo legends I can get behind being rare, but when perfectly ordinary mons become 1-5% encounters frequently it feels awful and it further contributes to the encounter table bloat that already plagued SWSH's Wild Area, where, OH YEAH, some mons were both low % encounters and not visible on the overworld and only in tall grass (thank goodness they scrapped this, was unintuitive beyond belief).
It's to the point where I don't think another BW1-styled limited dex game would be a bad idea - yes freedom is great and all, but it also contributes to the "let's throw it all in there" mentality which made stone evolutions OP as heck in the newer games.
I just dislike the mere concept or thought of it. Yes, the original games had their fair share of dumb rarity (Yanma, Marill, Chimecho) but nowadays, it feels like so many mons are insanely rare solely for the purpose of being insanely rare rather that it actually being an occasional design choice. Psuedo legends I can get behind being rare, but when perfectly ordinary mons become 1-5% encounters frequently it feels awful and it further contributes to the encounter table bloat that already plagued SWSH's Wild Area, where, OH YEAH, some mons were both low % encounters and not visible on the overworld and only in tall grass (thank goodness they scrapped this, was unintuitive beyond belief).
It's to the point where I don't think another BW1-styled limited dex game would be a bad idea - yes freedom is great and all, but it also contributes to the "let's throw it all in there" mentality which made stone evolutions OP as heck in the newer games.
To be honest, stone evos being OP has less to do with this, and more with the fact that stone evos were not designed with the idea of having move reminder available before postgame.
The entire concept of stone evo was "You can evolve early for stronger BST, but you give up in learnset".
Obviously this goes out of the window when you can reteach all the strong lvl 1 moves these stone evos get right away.
I think that we aren't going to see the primary games not have a large ingame dex, because a substantial selection of fully-evolved mons is considered required to keep competitive rolling. If we were reliably getting large amounts of transfer mons very quickly after release it wouldn't be a problem, but the current trend is to have 50 or so more mons after a couple months.
I think the concept meshes well when a given area is throwing like 50 pokemon at you in a 3 ft square radius. It means you burn encounters faster.
The stone evolution mentality is more a miss-match with the reminder mechanics in SWSH. Legends Arceus sidestepped this entirely by just treating stone evolutions as evolutions, but by stone. Raichu has the same moveset as Pikachu as Pichu.
You'll note that the new stone evolutions (Bellibolt, Scovillain, Cetitan) all operate the same way, rather than the SWSH styled "truncated moveset but you can remember everything instantly" which are more or less maintained from the SWSH carry overs.
You'll also note that things get weird with the stone evolutions who weren't in SWSH
Eelektross gets some, but not all, of what Eelektrik gets (for example it does not get Thunderbolt outside of TM).
Mismagius just gets a truncated moveset to only level 1 moves, missing the majority of Misdreavus' moves
Sunflora has an expanded moveset, rather than the thing of "similar, but learns different things at key levels" it used to have
Did you change which spawn locations you were checking when you ate the sandwich? I checked a BUNCH of Tauros spawns to get a water one, including checking online to make sure the areas I was in had water in addition to regular Tauros, and had 0 luck for a long while until I changed spawn locations to the 4th Area and found one in the first pack. Asking because of:
Ryme's Toxtricity uses Hyper Voice instead of Boomburst, even during her rematch. Since all her Pokemon are Ghost-type, they wouldn't take any damage from Boomburst, sort of like Liza's Claydol can spam Earthquake and never damage its Flying and Levitating allies.
I assume this comes down to them not wanting her to throw out 182 BP (once accounting for Punk Rock) spread moves
117 BP spread move seems fine.
117 BP spread move seems fine.
She does have Boomburst in the rematch.
Bulbapedia editor Akurochan has lied to me.
I also find it annoying when pokemon have obscenely low encounter rates but I don't think that this is required when having a larger pokedex. I feel like this is more of a questionable design choice that gamefreak has been using for multiple games, rather than something they needed to do in order to have a large regional dex. Like you said there has always been mons that have been too rare.
I think the design choice in general of making pokemon rare isn't that enjoyable for me, regardless of the what the intent was for the low encounter rate. I think you can have a lot of pokemon on a route while avoiding low encounter rates, by splitting the available mons in the route between different encountering methods. Such as the day/night cycle, berry/headbutt trees, rock smash rock/shaking ores, weather, fishing, surfing, how swsh has different pokemon between tall grass and overworld spawns, along with any other methods I haven't mentioned or could be added to future. All of these mechanics help integrate more pokemon into the regional dex in a more interesting, flavorful and fun way than just low encounter rates. Low encounter feel unnecessary for adding more pokemon to a route, so I believe that it is a intentional choice when it happens.
For example we can look at route 1 in galar to see how this plays out
https://www.serebii.net/pokearth/galar/route1.shtml
The route has eight pokemon on it and has a lot of uncommon and rare pokemon with
Wooloo having a 15% encounter rate in the overworld
Nickit having a 5% encounter rate in the overworld
Caterpie having a 15% encounter rate in tall grass
Grubbin having a 15% encounter rate in tall grass
Hoothoot having a 5% encounter rate in tall grass
while this may seem to prove the idea that these low encounter rates are needed to having pokemon on a route, it wouldn't be that hard to redesign the route to reduce this problem
if you split the encounter rates among the four pokemon found in the overworld, you can have a 25% encounter rate for each pokemon which isn't unreasonable to me.
You can get a similar 20% split if you split it equally among the pokemon found in the tall grass, and this can be increase to 25% for each pokemon if you remove Skwovet from the encounter table since it can already be found in the overworld on this route.
if you choose to add the day/night cycle into the mix you could get better results. Nickit and Hoothoot could be exclusive to nighttime rather than being rare encounters, and you could then make some pokemon only found during the day. Utilizing the day/night cycle more often would work well with how it has been revamped for Pokemon Legends Arceus and Scarlet and Violet. This is kind of of a tangent but it would be cool to add more pokemon that are explicably nocturnal or diurnal similarly to gen 2 (for example Ledyba and Sentret are diurnal, and hoothoot and spinarak are nocturnal). I really enjoyed having the day/night cycle while playing Legends Arcues, but I wanted there to be more differences in what pokemon you could find between day and night.
This exercise has shown me that you can have a route have a lot pokemon without needing low encounter rates. Then again the problem might just be that gamefreak doesn't take as much advantage of these encounter mechanics as they can, and just defaults to low encounter rates.
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ORAS had an excellent tool in the DexNav. Not the shaking grass bit, no. The "here's an easily-visible page that shows whether you've encountered everything available on this route" option.
And then they got rid of it. It makes completionist runs so much easier when you aren't having to constantly cross-check Bulbapedia for what's currently available.
And then they got rid of it. It makes completionist runs so much easier when you aren't having to constantly cross-check Bulbapedia for what's currently available.
Idk how well it fits in this thread, I certainly wrote enough that it probably doesn't count as a "little thing that annoys me in pokemon", but I already spent my time writing it, so may as well
Something that's honestly bothered me for quite a long time now is how the Ice Type is generally treated from a main game standpoint.
TLDR for those who would rather not read 12 paragraphs of text analysing Ice Type users in mons games
They keep trying to use Ice Types as late game mons when I feel like if they're used as an early game thread it would prove to be more effective, and the only time they've had an ice type trainer early game the pokemon choices have been truly unfortunate.
Something that's honestly bothered me for quite a long time now is how the Ice Type is generally treated from a main game standpoint.
We all know it's competitive flaws by this point, excellent offensive typing with practically no defensive utility, to the point where having an ice type coverage move is preferable to using an actual Ice Type Pokémon for the most part, with exceptions for some of the legendary ice types (Kyurem being the most notable). The worst part is that Ice types almost always seem to be given a defensive focus despite the clear flaws defensively, with the few offensively oriented ice types tending to perform way better, eg. Weavile.
However, i'm more here to talk about in-game usage, and how the type tends to be used poorly in that regard.
Starting off, in Kanto, yhe Ice Type specialist in the game is Lorelei, and she is quite possibly the best showing from an Ice Type specialist, with there being no Steel type to resist the attacks, no fire type resistance to ice and an extra Water resistance that they can use. The problem is that she's an elite four member so you have had plenty of time to prep up a team, along with her team having a Slowbro on it for some reason. Forgivable though, since gen 1 does this pretty often and she's not the worst offender. Looking at you, Bruno.
In Johto, Pryce is the official 7th gym leader, though he can be fought as early as your fifth gym. Again, he has a non-Ice Type on his team in Seel, though this one does at least evolve into an Ice Type. In battle he's generally unimpressive, with his Piloswine being the only really interesting member of his team. I've honestly never had any trouble beating him, even when I did go for him as my 5th Gym Leader since I wanted to get the Red Gyarados and EXP Share earlier. The big problem he falls to is his entire team consists of only using Normal and Ice moves, and Rest in gen 2. In HGSS they fix this slightly by giving his Piloswine Mud Bomb but it's a relatively weak move coming off of base 60 Spa.
In Hoenn, we have another Elite 4 member, this time in Glacia. and her team is quite frankly a mess. In the base RSE, she has two Glalie, two Sealeo and a Walrein, with the most threatening moves she uses being Light Screen on the first Glalie, having a Hail/Blizzard combo on one of her Sealeo, her second Glalie having Explosion, but only in Emerald, and her Walrein has a pretty competent moveset of Surf/Body Slam/Ice Beam, with Sheer Cold thrown on there just in case you're a bit underlevelled. ORAS changes her Sealeo for two Froslass instead, both of them having a Hail and Snow Cloak combo. Overall she seems designed to be more annoying than challenging, with most of her mons having status moves like Attract, Encore and the aforementioned Light Screen and Hail. Not a great showing though.
Next is Sinnoh, a region based on Hokkaido in North Japan and shown to be rather cold, especially in Platinum. You'd think that'd make Ice Types power up a bit, and while they got some decent improvements in the form of Snow Warning being desperately needed, the in game usage remains pretty poor. The Ice Type specialist in this game is Candice, another 7th gym leader, and she is once again not great. Her team in Diamond and Pearl consists of a Snover, a Sneasel, an Abomasnow for her ace, and a Medicham. We all know about it and how weird it is, but having an off-typed pokemon in the fourth game when you definitely have enough mons to fill out a 4 mon roster without much issue is not a great look. In addition to this, her actual usage of these Pokémon is similarly lacking, with Medicham probably being utilised the best with Bulk Up, Force Palm and Ice Punch to try and catch a flying type thinking it'd get an easy time. Sneasel just doesnt do anything, having its only ice STAB forcing it to go last and probably get KOed before it does anything, and Snover and Abomasnow similarly dont't do much, with Abomasnow's most threatening moves being Wood Hammer and Grass Whistle. In Platinum, her team was given a pretty well needed upgrade, with Snover being replaced by Piloswine (and with an actual moveset this time, having Earthquake and Stone Edge to take advantage of its attack stat!) Abomasnow being given a moveset upgrade with Water Pulse to maybe be able to threaten the average fire type, and Focus Blast being pretty hard hitting, and Medicham being replaced by Froslass, the mon that is also her Ace. With Snow Warning being set by Abomasnow to have Snow Cloak always active unless you change the weather yourself, and Double Team to make her even harder to hit, she can prove to be annoying, as well as having perfect accuracy Blizzards. If Lorelei isn't the best showing from an ice specialist, I would say Platinum Candice is.
Unova has Brycen, once again, the 7th Gym Leader. Starting to see a pattern now. His team is not overly interesting, having a Vanillish, a Cryogonal and a Beartic. And this time, there's really not a whole lot to be said about him, the team folds pretty easily, the most noteworthy moves he uses are Mirror Shot on his Vanillish and Reflect being there to try and shore up Cryogonal's cripplingly low Physical Defense. Worst part is, in Black and White 2 the closest thing we get to an Ice Type specialist is Ghetsis and his Kyurem being the big villain of the story, with Brycen having retired to focus on his acting career.
Wulfric is the Kalos Ice Type specialist, and this time he's the 8th gym leader! Finally, we're breaking the rule of 7s. He has 3 mons again, this time an Abomasnow (RIP permanent Hail though), Cryogonal and Avalugg. Noteworthy moves include his Abomasnow only having 3, for whatever reason, Cryogonal learning Confuse Ray, and Avalugg trying to be a Curse set up sweeper with Gyro Ball to try to take advantage of the speed drop. Still pretty harmless if you have any competent special attacker, but it tries at least.
Alola is easily the worst off in this department. There effectively is no Ice Type specialist in the region, the closest thing to it is an early game fight against Sina, where she does use exclusively Ice Type Pokémon, however the issue is she only fights the player in the Moon Games. Her teams are also extremely unimpressive, her Ace is a Glaceon that only knows Icy Wind and Quick Attack in both games, with her lead changing based on which version you're playing. In base Moon, she has a Delibird, which only knows Present, and though I can't speak from experience since I played through the Sun versions, it's hard to imagine this team posing a threat unless you picked Rowlet and had neglected to pick up any other Pokémon by this point. Ultra Moon improves this pretty significantly by replacing the Delibird with a Smoochum, and with it having an actual STAB move to use in Powder Snow, along with Pound. This, again, isn't amazing but it's way better than a STABless Delibird and I could see players struggling against it if unprepared. Icium Z is just found partway through the game's "victory road" in Mt Lanakila, for whatever reason.
Galar has Melony, the 6th Gym Leader. Once again, a version exclusive, this time to Shield Version, another game I haven't played at all. Looking at her team though, it seems relatively challenging, with a Galarian Darmanitan, albeit without Gorilla Tactics, and her signature G-Max Lapras being able to set Aurora Veil, though it being her last mon makes that effect feel a bit weaker than it should really. Her Eiscue and Frosmoth both look entirely unimpressive though, with the best thing Eiscue might be able to do being setting up Hail after it's Ice Face is broken to give it a free turn to buff its special defense with Amnesia I guess? Meanwhile Frosmoth has the special defensive side relatively fine and Feather Dance to try and make itself bulkier, but it's just not enough, especially considering Ice Types defensive weakness. Her position is also the earliest of any Ice Type Gym Leader if you're going in the intended order for every game, with only Sina coming earlier. I can't speak for how difficult she is but I doubt it's groundbreaking.
Finally, Paldea has Grusha, another 8th Gym Leader, and the reason I'm writing this dissertation. His team is quite possibly the most disappointing I've fought, if you exclude DP Candice. He has a Frosmoth, which seems to just be there to set up tailwind and maybe get some cheap damage in if you decide to use a special attacker against it, Beartic, which has a surprisingly competent moveset outside of only having 3 moves, with Icicle Crash and Earthquake being pretty strong and Aqua Jet being there to try to beat down mons that were potentially weakened by Frosmoth. Cetitan really has nothing going for it outside of its ability though, with Liquidation there to hurt any fire type that tries to fight it and its Thick Fat ability, otherwise it just has Ice Moves, and not particularly strong Ice Moves at that, those being Ice Shard and Ice Spinner. Finally his Tera Altaria. Outside of it being funny that the quad weak dragon bird became the type that is meant to be its kryptonite, I really don't know what it's trying to do here. It's ability is entirely counterintuative to it being his Ace Mon, though that's not the last time we'll see that being the case, it has Moonblast and Hurricane to try to beat down any Fighting Types you might plan on sweeping him with, though Altaria is probably too slow, and not bulky enough to actually land an attack against those by this point of the battle. Realistically, Grusha was the easiest gym leader I fought in Paldea, and the ice type's design is definitely part of that.
Realistically, this is never going to stop being a problem, the type is balanced around being a great offensive type with weak defenses, though they keep trying to design Ice Types defensively for whatever reason. However, I feel like if they were to give us a proper early game Ice Type specialist rather than constantly putting them as the 7th or 8th gym, they might be able to show their stuff. I'm glad that competitive Pokemon has managed to prove the might of fast, frail ice types as a design with Weavile being strong in every generation so far, and even showing that it's not impossible to make defensive ice types work with Kyurem getting a massive glow up in gen 8, but for in game purposes I feel like Ice Types are simply misused. Maybe one day we'll see Ice Types as an early game objective (not counting Sina since her teams are more handicapped by her using a Delibird in Moon) and i'll be proven right, or wrong. We'll see in time, hopefully.
However, i'm more here to talk about in-game usage, and how the type tends to be used poorly in that regard.
Starting off, in Kanto, yhe Ice Type specialist in the game is Lorelei, and she is quite possibly the best showing from an Ice Type specialist, with there being no Steel type to resist the attacks, no fire type resistance to ice and an extra Water resistance that they can use. The problem is that she's an elite four member so you have had plenty of time to prep up a team, along with her team having a Slowbro on it for some reason. Forgivable though, since gen 1 does this pretty often and she's not the worst offender. Looking at you, Bruno.
In Johto, Pryce is the official 7th gym leader, though he can be fought as early as your fifth gym. Again, he has a non-Ice Type on his team in Seel, though this one does at least evolve into an Ice Type. In battle he's generally unimpressive, with his Piloswine being the only really interesting member of his team. I've honestly never had any trouble beating him, even when I did go for him as my 5th Gym Leader since I wanted to get the Red Gyarados and EXP Share earlier. The big problem he falls to is his entire team consists of only using Normal and Ice moves, and Rest in gen 2. In HGSS they fix this slightly by giving his Piloswine Mud Bomb but it's a relatively weak move coming off of base 60 Spa.
In Hoenn, we have another Elite 4 member, this time in Glacia. and her team is quite frankly a mess. In the base RSE, she has two Glalie, two Sealeo and a Walrein, with the most threatening moves she uses being Light Screen on the first Glalie, having a Hail/Blizzard combo on one of her Sealeo, her second Glalie having Explosion, but only in Emerald, and her Walrein has a pretty competent moveset of Surf/Body Slam/Ice Beam, with Sheer Cold thrown on there just in case you're a bit underlevelled. ORAS changes her Sealeo for two Froslass instead, both of them having a Hail and Snow Cloak combo. Overall she seems designed to be more annoying than challenging, with most of her mons having status moves like Attract, Encore and the aforementioned Light Screen and Hail. Not a great showing though.
Next is Sinnoh, a region based on Hokkaido in North Japan and shown to be rather cold, especially in Platinum. You'd think that'd make Ice Types power up a bit, and while they got some decent improvements in the form of Snow Warning being desperately needed, the in game usage remains pretty poor. The Ice Type specialist in this game is Candice, another 7th gym leader, and she is once again not great. Her team in Diamond and Pearl consists of a Snover, a Sneasel, an Abomasnow for her ace, and a Medicham. We all know about it and how weird it is, but having an off-typed pokemon in the fourth game when you definitely have enough mons to fill out a 4 mon roster without much issue is not a great look. In addition to this, her actual usage of these Pokémon is similarly lacking, with Medicham probably being utilised the best with Bulk Up, Force Palm and Ice Punch to try and catch a flying type thinking it'd get an easy time. Sneasel just doesnt do anything, having its only ice STAB forcing it to go last and probably get KOed before it does anything, and Snover and Abomasnow similarly dont't do much, with Abomasnow's most threatening moves being Wood Hammer and Grass Whistle. In Platinum, her team was given a pretty well needed upgrade, with Snover being replaced by Piloswine (and with an actual moveset this time, having Earthquake and Stone Edge to take advantage of its attack stat!) Abomasnow being given a moveset upgrade with Water Pulse to maybe be able to threaten the average fire type, and Focus Blast being pretty hard hitting, and Medicham being replaced by Froslass, the mon that is also her Ace. With Snow Warning being set by Abomasnow to have Snow Cloak always active unless you change the weather yourself, and Double Team to make her even harder to hit, she can prove to be annoying, as well as having perfect accuracy Blizzards. If Lorelei isn't the best showing from an ice specialist, I would say Platinum Candice is.
Unova has Brycen, once again, the 7th Gym Leader. Starting to see a pattern now. His team is not overly interesting, having a Vanillish, a Cryogonal and a Beartic. And this time, there's really not a whole lot to be said about him, the team folds pretty easily, the most noteworthy moves he uses are Mirror Shot on his Vanillish and Reflect being there to try and shore up Cryogonal's cripplingly low Physical Defense. Worst part is, in Black and White 2 the closest thing we get to an Ice Type specialist is Ghetsis and his Kyurem being the big villain of the story, with Brycen having retired to focus on his acting career.
Wulfric is the Kalos Ice Type specialist, and this time he's the 8th gym leader! Finally, we're breaking the rule of 7s. He has 3 mons again, this time an Abomasnow (RIP permanent Hail though), Cryogonal and Avalugg. Noteworthy moves include his Abomasnow only having 3, for whatever reason, Cryogonal learning Confuse Ray, and Avalugg trying to be a Curse set up sweeper with Gyro Ball to try to take advantage of the speed drop. Still pretty harmless if you have any competent special attacker, but it tries at least.
Alola is easily the worst off in this department. There effectively is no Ice Type specialist in the region, the closest thing to it is an early game fight against Sina, where she does use exclusively Ice Type Pokémon, however the issue is she only fights the player in the Moon Games. Her teams are also extremely unimpressive, her Ace is a Glaceon that only knows Icy Wind and Quick Attack in both games, with her lead changing based on which version you're playing. In base Moon, she has a Delibird, which only knows Present, and though I can't speak from experience since I played through the Sun versions, it's hard to imagine this team posing a threat unless you picked Rowlet and had neglected to pick up any other Pokémon by this point. Ultra Moon improves this pretty significantly by replacing the Delibird with a Smoochum, and with it having an actual STAB move to use in Powder Snow, along with Pound. This, again, isn't amazing but it's way better than a STABless Delibird and I could see players struggling against it if unprepared. Icium Z is just found partway through the game's "victory road" in Mt Lanakila, for whatever reason.
Galar has Melony, the 6th Gym Leader. Once again, a version exclusive, this time to Shield Version, another game I haven't played at all. Looking at her team though, it seems relatively challenging, with a Galarian Darmanitan, albeit without Gorilla Tactics, and her signature G-Max Lapras being able to set Aurora Veil, though it being her last mon makes that effect feel a bit weaker than it should really. Her Eiscue and Frosmoth both look entirely unimpressive though, with the best thing Eiscue might be able to do being setting up Hail after it's Ice Face is broken to give it a free turn to buff its special defense with Amnesia I guess? Meanwhile Frosmoth has the special defensive side relatively fine and Feather Dance to try and make itself bulkier, but it's just not enough, especially considering Ice Types defensive weakness. Her position is also the earliest of any Ice Type Gym Leader if you're going in the intended order for every game, with only Sina coming earlier. I can't speak for how difficult she is but I doubt it's groundbreaking.
Finally, Paldea has Grusha, another 8th Gym Leader, and the reason I'm writing this dissertation. His team is quite possibly the most disappointing I've fought, if you exclude DP Candice. He has a Frosmoth, which seems to just be there to set up tailwind and maybe get some cheap damage in if you decide to use a special attacker against it, Beartic, which has a surprisingly competent moveset outside of only having 3 moves, with Icicle Crash and Earthquake being pretty strong and Aqua Jet being there to try to beat down mons that were potentially weakened by Frosmoth. Cetitan really has nothing going for it outside of its ability though, with Liquidation there to hurt any fire type that tries to fight it and its Thick Fat ability, otherwise it just has Ice Moves, and not particularly strong Ice Moves at that, those being Ice Shard and Ice Spinner. Finally his Tera Altaria. Outside of it being funny that the quad weak dragon bird became the type that is meant to be its kryptonite, I really don't know what it's trying to do here. It's ability is entirely counterintuative to it being his Ace Mon, though that's not the last time we'll see that being the case, it has Moonblast and Hurricane to try to beat down any Fighting Types you might plan on sweeping him with, though Altaria is probably too slow, and not bulky enough to actually land an attack against those by this point of the battle. Realistically, Grusha was the easiest gym leader I fought in Paldea, and the ice type's design is definitely part of that.
Realistically, this is never going to stop being a problem, the type is balanced around being a great offensive type with weak defenses, though they keep trying to design Ice Types defensively for whatever reason. However, I feel like if they were to give us a proper early game Ice Type specialist rather than constantly putting them as the 7th or 8th gym, they might be able to show their stuff. I'm glad that competitive Pokemon has managed to prove the might of fast, frail ice types as a design with Weavile being strong in every generation so far, and even showing that it's not impossible to make defensive ice types work with Kyurem getting a massive glow up in gen 8, but for in game purposes I feel like Ice Types are simply misused. Maybe one day we'll see Ice Types as an early game objective (not counting Sina since her teams are more handicapped by her using a Delibird in Moon) and i'll be proven right, or wrong. We'll see in time, hopefully.
TLDR for those who would rather not read 12 paragraphs of text analysing Ice Type users in mons games
They keep trying to use Ice Types as late game mons when I feel like if they're used as an early game thread it would prove to be more effective, and the only time they've had an ice type trainer early game the pokemon choices have been truly unfortunate.
Now that the upcoming 7-star raid is confirmed to be Cinderace, I would like to take some time to complain about Court Change.
First off, I'm not a fan of giving only one starter a second signature move. Because apparently being the only one with a uniquely named HA that also happens to copy a previous wildly successful starter wasn't favouritism enough.
Anyway, moving on to the effect. Who thought this was a good idea? I know I'm the hazard-loving wierdo, but this a step beyond the pale. Even though Defog also can't be prevented from undoing several turns of effort in one move against 99.9% of mons, it can at least be punished by abilities that react to the evasion drop. Court Change doesn't trigger those effects, and even rounds up the inability to act on a predicted use to work against 100% of mons.
While it's hard for me to think outside of how it affects my preferred playstyle, it feels like it's just a way of awkwardly fishing for matchups. It's never a decent all-round pick. If it plays into effect-reliant teams, it's an unstoppable way to make your opponent not have fun. If you and your opponent have equal hazard presence, it's a dead slot. That doesn't seem like good design.
First off, I'm not a fan of giving only one starter a second signature move. Because apparently being the only one with a uniquely named HA that also happens to copy a previous wildly successful starter wasn't favouritism enough.
Anyway, moving on to the effect. Who thought this was a good idea? I know I'm the hazard-loving wierdo, but this a step beyond the pale. Even though Defog also can't be prevented from undoing several turns of effort in one move against 99.9% of mons, it can at least be punished by abilities that react to the evasion drop. Court Change doesn't trigger those effects, and even rounds up the inability to act on a predicted use to work against 100% of mons.
While it's hard for me to think outside of how it affects my preferred playstyle, it feels like it's just a way of awkwardly fishing for matchups. It's never a decent all-round pick. If it plays into effect-reliant teams, it's an unstoppable way to make your opponent not have fun. If you and your opponent have equal hazard presence, it's a dead slot. That doesn't seem like good design.
Meanwhile it's a move I forgot even exists half the time
I think on paper its a fine effect though. Ability to swap around hazards (& screens) makes as much intuitive sense to me as being able to remove them. It's honestly an effect I'm surprised took so many generations to exist.
Realistically speaking, in any metagame where Hazards are a thing, Court Change would never have been a "matchup fish". Expecially when it came toghether with Heavy Duty Boots.
It sure won't be a matchup fish this gen either with how rampant hazards are in OU right now (and will still see exactly 0 play in VGC cause hazards aren't a thing there)
On this, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the two (either Pyro Ball or Court Change, most likely Court Change) end up being like Darkest Lariat for Incineroar or Sparkling Aria for Primarina and get redistributed to other pokemon via TM/TR and/or Egg move.
(Funny how of the Alolan trio, Decidueye is the only one left with an actual Signature move)
Oh and while I'm at it I'll also add an annoyance due to something said in the thread about the Cinderace raid:
But why. I can understand (actually I can't) when for some flavour thing some pokemon can only learn Light Screen (usually electric types), but I generally fail to understand why some psychic types (and fairy/ghost types associated with psychic powers) can only learn Light Screen and not Reflect.Mfw any time a psychic type which can learn a screen can't learn the other
The swap itself isn't my largest issue with the move, it's the lack of counterplay. Rapid and Mortal Spins can be blocked on switch with type immunity, while Defog can be punished on switch with Defiant/Competitive/Contrary (or blocked with Good as Gold). Court Change just happens.
Welp, guess my attempt at trying to think that it isn't completely doom and gloom for me failed.
Please don't. It being constrained to a single type that really wants to run Torkoal is the only thing keeping me sane.
Tecnically, Court Change has the same "counterplay" that Defog has, it also affects your side of the field, so if you want to use Court Change, you need to not be running hazards, tailwind or screens in first place.
In modern competitive, that's actually a pretty harsh restriction, expecially with how strong hazards are.
(Good as Gold wasn't exactly a thing in last gen after all, and honestly I don't quite think the interaction with Defog was intended, more like a sideeffect of Defog being classified as status move due to the evasion drop, kinda like Sheer Force boosts Flare Blitz due to the burn chance)
With the current state of OU, I'm not even sure people would run Court Change, expecially if their plan is to use Libero Cinderace. Using CC locks you into normal type which is a significant downgrade from fire type (funnily it flips your chart against Gholdengo, you are now immune to one stab but don't resist the other anymore)
What location is this because Hawlucha spawn in the eastern mountain range in aggressive flocks you’d have to actively avoid. Nothing on this list aside from some of the FEs are hard to find. Hawlucha and Mareep (of all things?!) are not rare.
Encounter Powers also make finding what you want a lot easier. There are very few genuinely hard to encounter Pokémon in Paldea.
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