Pokemon Umbral Discussion 25: Pokegeddon Returns

[Geminex]

EDIT: Gem, in regards to your post, what's wrong with my post? Drac and I had a plan there posted earlier. 5 attackers for each of the 3 targets. There is plenty of focus fire.

Oh? Fair enough, I must've missed that.
I'll look at it in a second. BUT.
...

Lemme put it this way:
These characters have sort-of featured in Omakes. AB cut the previous battle short, just so we could get to this one more quickly. AB said that these enemies would make one of our previous battles, probably our hardest battle to date (I'd say) look easy.
I do not think that AB would let us kill even one of them without heroic efforts. Much less three.
This is a game, people. Get into the mind of the GM.

Edit:

Also, I could've sworn AB said that Slayers could switch weapons whenever they wanted, Gem. So you should be able to switch to Swarm Bow, no problem.

Can you find said post? Because if so, then why the hell did he increase the Slayer limit to 6 weapons?

Also, their defensive ability is NOT proportional to our offense if we have to pile 3-4 Quad effective attacks to knock them out.

'fcourse it is. Considering the ease with which we can lay down quad-effective attacks, plus our numerical advantage. And that's just assuming that they go down after a few attacks, which I doubt.

[Dracorion]

Man, my plan involved five quad-effective attacks aimed at Gardenoir. That's goddamn heroic right there.

And Menarker, I'm pretty sure the reason the Shuckle in that video survived Earthquake is because it only takes neutral damage from Ground and because Legendaries suck.

Yes yes fine, they could change, but I think it's a liiiittle too much to assume that they'd change so much as to go from 690 to 900.

And I add slurs for color.

Originally Posted by Geminex

Can you find said post? Because if so, then why the hell did he increase the Slayer limit to 6 weapons?

Thinking back, I think it may have been before the BTS.

Hey AB, can Slayers still switch weapons whenever they want?

[Geminex]

Mollesk can definately take a hit before buffing and will take MUCH more when buffed.

He can't when he Power Tricks. A hit or two, maybe. But once he has high attack and comparativley low defense, he dies. I guarantee it.

Did that by having one attacker for focus fire and the other buffing up defensively, planning for long term if anything happens.

That's... not defensive. Not very much, anyway. Defensive is preventing damage to the team. What you're doing is preventing damage to yourself. It's a start, but it won't keep the rest of us alive when pokegeddon hit us with their signature techiques. Because you, all of you, you realize they have 100/100 rage? And we will die if even two or three of them get their techniques off, I guarantee it?

[Dracorion]

Originally Posted by Geminex

That's... not defensive. Not very much, anyway. Defensive is preventing damage to the team. What you're doing is preventing damage to yourself. It's a start, but it won't keep the rest of us alive when pokegeddon hit us with their signature techiques. Because you, all of you, you realize they have 100/100 rage? And we will die if even two or three of them get their techniques off, I guarantee it?

You're going to make me repost my plan, aren't you?

Here's my original plan:
THE PLANGardenoir: Impact's Siege Boomerang, Matthias' attack, Harliette's pokemons' attacks. Four 4x damage attacks.
Frossqueen: Sol-Leks' Overheat, Blaziken's Overheat, Pierce's Trainer Attack. Rachel's Pokemon can do Steel-type attacks for 2x damage. All in all, that's four 2x damage attacks and Pierce's trainer attack.
Pegidash: Hammond's Stone Edge, Tyranitar's Stone Edge, Mollesk's Rock Slide, Harliette's Mineral Shot. That's four 4x damage attacks.
Altarisect: Secondary target from Mollesk's Rock Slide. No matter.

That leaves Moon and Wilhelmina unassigned. Wilhelmina's Nether Shot can do 2x damage to Frossqueen. Moon's Lanturn can use Signal Beam for 4x damage on Gardenoir.

I can see Pegidash definitely down. Gardenoir probably. Frossqueen critically damaged. Keep in mind Moon still has an extra pokemon.

And here's Menarker's plan, which involves Mollesk not doing anything:
THE OTHER PLANGardenoir: Impact's Swarm Bow, Matthias' attack, Harliette's pokemon's bug type attacks. Moon's Lanturn's Signal Beam

Frossqueen: Sol-Leks' Overheat, Blaziken's Overheat, Rachel's pokemon's steel type attacks. Wilhelmina. Pierce's Trainer Attack.

Pegidash: Hammond's Stone Edge, Tyranitar's Stone Edge, Swampert's Waterfall, Harliette's Mineral Shot, Moon's Kingdra Hydro Pump

Originally Posted by Menarker

That's his designated purpose. He's supposed to be a wall, with merely passable offense unless he takes risks when he swaps to ultra powerful offense.

That doesn't help the rest of the team at all.

Originally Posted by Menarker

Well, assume 500 DEF and special defence which is the low end of benefical nature or high end of neutral nature later on in the story. (or even right now if Mollesk is assumed to have benefical nature),
The multipliers of each stage boost is as follows...
x1.5 (1 stage) Howl, Sharpen, Defense Curl
x2.0 (2 stage) Nasty Plot, Sword Dance. Mollesk using Cosmic Power.
x2.5 (3 stage) Supreme Upgrade
x3.0 (4 stage) Mollesk using a 2 stage booster buff technique.
x3.5 (5 stage)
x4.0 (6 stage) Belly Drum

If Mollesk was to have 500 DEF and SDEF, he would max out his DEF and SDEF stat with one cosmic power, due to it hitting 2.0 multiplier.

That's ridiculous. And wrong. So very, very wrong.

Originally Posted by Menarker

EDIT: Gem, do you want me to use Renny's protect ability? Or you think they aren't likely to use their technique first turn?

That would be nice, yeah. Though Pierce problably won't use it. He's saving up points for Hellfire.

[Geminex]

That's his designated purpose. He's supposed to be a wall, with merely passable offense unless he takes risks when he swaps to ultra powerful offense.

Then you made a bad choice when selecting stats. What use is a wall? Defensive mons, sure. But defensive in this game involves protecting your allies.

EDIT: Gem, do you want me to use Renny's protect ability? Or you think they aren't likely to use their technique first turn?

I'm... not sure. I was hoping people would give input on that, instead of insulting each other's mother and discussing psych-up.
Or, well, instead of discussing psych-up, anyway.

[Menarker]

Engineer's work differently I think. It's an aura, and not so much a "stick and apply enchantment". If Mollesk tried to use Power Trick while being in a Defense boost like Mirror's, the boost to attack (leaving only his base defense as his attack) would disappear because it never actually stayed "stuck" to Mollesk as a defense boost. Mollesk will continue to have a defense boost due to the aura, but using the base attack stat that was swapped instead.
Otherwise, I would send Mollesk out, have a +4 boost to Defence due to his Simple Nature, Power Trick so that boost applies to his attack, while his new defence got boosted by 4 too. (I doubt you'd approve of that)

With buff items, first there is a limited supply of items. Too many of them and you don't have revive or restore items to recover from the damage that one takes. Also, items by far only have 1 stage boosts. We don't even have 2 stage boost items (and the foes have 3 stage versions combined with Full Restore as a comparision) We'd need Dormond to get 2 stage boosts, and even then, that's pretty low power considering it takes up item slots. If someone intends to use a plan that rely on those items, he/she should be rewarded for using them, considering the risk of running low on healing items.
As for mentioning Lola's tech, Psych Up doesn't consider how many people have the buff. It only cares about the buffs on the one single person and how high it is. Spreading it around does no better than applying it on one person. Psych Up/Baton Pass works when the buffs are focused hard on a single target.

[Dracorion]

So basically, we should only have Psych Up give half the boost when someone has Belly Drum.

Listen dude, couple Dormond's ability with your Mollesk's Simple ability. And no, they shouldn't be rewarded. I thought you preferred winning by using a strategy other than "kill them until their die". Which obscene Psych Up-induced boosts would be, except for taking a turn to buff up.

[Menarker]

Technically, it would probably take the several turns needed to buff up in the process before Psych Up is used. Also, the other main issue with Psych Up at the time was that it was used by the Pokebrids who knew it, and not by pokemons who invested in a move slot for it.

Dormond, as much as I like his character, is not that good a choice for a healer. He encourages the use of buff items, when healing items tend to be the more cruical items required that we need to stock up on with a party as big as ours. Yes, combining him with Mollesk is a combo of sort, but when compared to benefit of the party in general, choosing him is not as effective as Rachel for this mission for example or Lola or Chizuru for their most effective healing purpose.

Also, you're misunderstanding the part of Renny's tactic. All our battles is about "Kill them until they die or flee" to a certain extent. Pokemon battles ultimately have to end with knocking someone out. How is it done is different from trainers to trainers. Some like you and Charlotte so far, use powerful moves right off the bat so the opposing foes don't get time to react fast or buff (mainly useful for glass cannons and foes that need time to buff up attack or some sort of set up. Especially if your team is varied enough to have good type coverage) Others might use a slightly delayed version by buffing up so they can deal with the big-brutes which have power and defence and such, sacrificing speed for survival and reliablility. Some uses status effects. Some use trapping (Spikes, Stealth Rock) and there are other stuff too. Renny has a few of most of these. Swampert is straight out fighter for the most part. Magnezone too although with a bit of paralysis. Togekiss offers support and has flinching with a bit of power. Shaymin does likewise. Umbreon is based on status and support. Mollesk can passably function as an attacker, but his main function is the Buff-Brute, where he can use defence/special defence to lower attacks to a scratch, use Recover when things go bad, and attack powerfully when the situation looks right, with Togekiss to use Follow Me or Umbreon's Confuse ray to muck up their attacks, reducing their chance of actually hitting him. Renny exercises a sort of variety, and not all of them function in the same way. Variety in type. Variety in support. Variety in tactics. That sort of thing.

[Dracorion]

You can also carry your own items. And you can use one as a free action if you only have one pokemon on the field.

[Menarker]

Well, in the big battle during Renny's Sidequest, all the items were healing stuff, and we still ran out. If some of them were buff items, chances are the party could have lost. (And that's taking the fact that the Psych Up tactic was used then). I'm trying to make a point that choosing to invest in buff items means sacrificing Healing items. Granted, with Renny's new ability, it's not as big a sacrifice as it was before, but it's still a big deal to think about how to proportion how many of each.

With items, a trainer/slayer can use them without using up a moveslot or taking up their action (Trainers can do one attack if using one). But they are limited in supply

Buffs from a move are unlimited therotically, but only apply to that pokemon normally, require a moveslot for that specific buff, another move if you want to transfer it over, don't get to attack that turn if you use it, and risk losing it all if you get knocked out before you can use the benefits of the buffs.

It's a sort of balancing which is suitable for the situation and which didn't. When I did it at Renny's Party, the end result was that Snorlax and Togekiss got knocked out, and two of the opponent's foes got knocked out. Dormond got the buff as well. So the actual advantage was average at best. Both side lost the same number of pokemons, and the only other advantage was that Dormond still had the buff. If Snorlax actually managed to last longer, it would have been better, but he was ganged up, and the end result was that the entire combo left the party only slightly better off than they were before.