If you're thinking of using a Pokémon with the ability Technician on your team, here are a few hints as to how it works. If you're just curious, maybe you'll consider using such a Pokémon.
First, how the ability interacts with moves. A move with a base power - including the effects of the moves - of 60 or less is made 1.5x as powerful. This means, without same-type attack bonus (STAB), the most powerful a move can get after being affected by this ability is 90. Most Pokémon with the ability don't learn anything worthwhile with over 90 power anyway, so you'll usually just stick four 60BP moves on it.
When I say 'including the effects of moves', I mean - if you use a move like Acrobatics without an item, it won't have its power boosted to 165. For this reason, you should probably try to avoid moves with these effects on a Technician Pokémon.
STAB doesn't remove the effects of the ability - meaning a STAB Technician 60BP move will have 135 base power. At this point, it's clear to see Technician can be an immense ability if utilised well.
There are ways like this to make other abilities very powerful, so look out for them! Or check back here to see if I've analysed any more powerful abilities!
-Pokéxplain
Thursday, 29 May 2014
Thursday, 22 May 2014
It's Super Effective!
I'm pretty sure everyone has had the message "It doesn't affect the foe's Pokémon..." at least once while playing. A great part of competitive battling is getting 'super-effective' hits. This involves knowing what type - or combination of types - your target is, out of 18, and how other types match up.
First, type matchups that do no damage whatsoever.
Normal/Fighting -> Ghost
Ghost -> Normal
Ground -> Flying
Electric -> Ground
Poison -> Steel
Psychic -> Dark
Dragon -> Fairy
In the case of Normal/Fighting vs Ghost, the ability Scrappy and the move Foresight will allow successful hits to be made. Everything else can only be stopped if the target is holding a Ring Target.
While some matchups are really obvious (Water beats Fire), others are a little obscure. To help you remember them, I'll include short explanations.
Key: (> Super effective) (~Not very effective)
Bug > Dark - Bugs can see in the dark.
Bug > Psychic - A psychic can't read a swarm's mind to defend itself.
Fighting ~ Psychic - A fighter's unchanging techniques are easy to predict.
Fighting ~ Flying - Martial arts don't work on birds.
Fighting > Ice, Rock, Steel - A karate chop with enough skill to shatter all three.
Ghost > Ghost - A ghost knows a ghost's weakness.
Dragon > Dragon - Magically charged fire breath breaks through another dragon's magic hide.
Poison/Steel > Fairy - Our poisons are foreign to fairies, so they have no resistance. 'Cold Iron' in legend is toxic to fairies.
For a full list of type matchups, this can be useful.
If you clicked the link, you'll notice moves can have quarter or quadrupled effectiveness. The single-type chart won't show any, but this is how multiple types interact with each other:
Type effectiveness multiplies damage. This means if one type resists your attack (halves damage) and another is weak to it (doubles damage) the final damage will be neutral effectiveness.
This also means a Dark/Fighting type still takes no damage from Psychic, even though it would normally hit 2x on Fighting.
As mentioned before, two weaknesses to the same type makes the Pokémon take four times the normal damage. Two resistances lowers it to a quarter.
If you don't know a Pokémon's type, either look it up or experiment to see what's good against it! Of course, you'll want to know the majority of their types before you start battling competitively!
Whether you're playing competitively or in story mode, you should always go for a 4x effective move when possible! (unless you're a hardcore player who's playing with intentional handicaps)
-Pokéxplain
First, type matchups that do no damage whatsoever.
Normal/Fighting -> Ghost
Ghost -> Normal
Ground -> Flying
Electric -> Ground
Poison -> Steel
Psychic -> Dark
Dragon -> Fairy
In the case of Normal/Fighting vs Ghost, the ability Scrappy and the move Foresight will allow successful hits to be made. Everything else can only be stopped if the target is holding a Ring Target.
While some matchups are really obvious (Water beats Fire), others are a little obscure. To help you remember them, I'll include short explanations.
Key: (> Super effective) (~Not very effective)
Bug > Dark - Bugs can see in the dark.
Bug > Psychic - A psychic can't read a swarm's mind to defend itself.
Fighting ~ Psychic - A fighter's unchanging techniques are easy to predict.
Fighting ~ Flying - Martial arts don't work on birds.
Fighting > Ice, Rock, Steel - A karate chop with enough skill to shatter all three.
Ghost > Ghost - A ghost knows a ghost's weakness.
Dragon > Dragon - Magically charged fire breath breaks through another dragon's magic hide.
Poison/Steel > Fairy - Our poisons are foreign to fairies, so they have no resistance. 'Cold Iron' in legend is toxic to fairies.
For a full list of type matchups, this can be useful.
If you clicked the link, you'll notice moves can have quarter or quadrupled effectiveness. The single-type chart won't show any, but this is how multiple types interact with each other:
Type effectiveness multiplies damage. This means if one type resists your attack (halves damage) and another is weak to it (doubles damage) the final damage will be neutral effectiveness.
This also means a Dark/Fighting type still takes no damage from Psychic, even though it would normally hit 2x on Fighting.
As mentioned before, two weaknesses to the same type makes the Pokémon take four times the normal damage. Two resistances lowers it to a quarter.
If you don't know a Pokémon's type, either look it up or experiment to see what's good against it! Of course, you'll want to know the majority of their types before you start battling competitively!
Whether you're playing competitively or in story mode, you should always go for a 4x effective move when possible! (unless you're a hardcore player who's playing with intentional handicaps)
-Pokéxplain
Saturday, 17 May 2014
Legends vs Strategy
A very common notion in the competitive scene (the 'big shots' in online battles) is that legendary Pokémon destroy everything there is.
What if I told you... This is both true and false.
First off, why it's false. Even though legendaries have insanely high stats, most users of non-legendaries don't quite seem to understand how to pull them off properly. I've had many a battle where my opponent sends out two intimidating beasts that, due to being legendary, should surely secure victory for them... And then I score a super-effective hit on both of them, and now we're 2-0. I've already won either a third or a half of the battle. Oh, and two more legendaries replace them and I get a 4-0 or 6-0 sweep.
What gives? Aren't legendaries giant beasts that are made of pure awesomeness?
Well, it's just that so many common Pokémon counter them. While Arceus has a base stat total (an approximate measure of power spread over all of a Pokémon's 6 stats) of 720, and Mega Mewtwo has 780, non-legendaries aren't far behind at all. Slaking has 670 stat total, making it ridiculously powerful if played correctly, and 'Pseudo-Legendaries' like Dragonite and Garchomp have 600. Also, the exact distribution of the stats comes into play, making certain Pokémon far greater sweepers than legendaries.
On to the next thing: The idea that a legendary secures a win is entirely false. Someone who believes that legendaries automatically win is less likely to have a good strategy, and probably even less likely still to have a good counter-strategy. Mewtwo is easily knocked out in one turn by a Greninja using Night Slash. Yveltal and Xerneas are generally not even that threatening when used by an inexperienced player, and Smack Down or Poison Jab, respectively, will make short work of them. Arceus is quite a special case, as it can be any type. However, the rarity of Arceus, and how it's rarer still to see Arceus played well, make this less relevant. As a general rule, any super-effective hit with a move of high enough power should either faint or greatly threaten Arceus, and it probably can't fight back effectively unless its four moves are diverse enough (of course, diversity is rare on a legendary that isn't played to its fullest potential).
And of course, type matchups. Mega Mewtwo could tower over your entire team, most likely being able to knock them all out in two hits. And then a fast sweeper Greninja comes in and uses Night Slash (Y) or Acrobatics (X). The same goes for all legendaries, and indeed everything. Everything has a type weakness, and everything has a counter.
So legendaries are useless, right? RIGHT?!
No. If you plan ahead, think of your strengths and weaknesses and teach moves and distribute EVs and develop a strategy that takes advantage of your strengths and nullifies your weaknesses, and lets you know when it's a good time to switch to something that will actually survive this next hit, you can make something rare and valuable - a legendary that actually wins battles.
And yes, these rules do go for everything. an insanely overpowered beastly destroyer of worlds can easily be beaten by Slurpuff. And then the Poison-types come along. And then Claydol says hi.
Also, this is how the metagame evolves. Counters are developed and the game as a whole becomes more diverse. If you're a competitive battler, you should keep this in mind, and mix your team up a bit! Who knows? Maybe Mega-Mewtwo will become the anti-metagame in the future. Your team might become the next anti-metagame! :D
-Pokéxplain
What if I told you... This is both true and false.
First off, why it's false. Even though legendaries have insanely high stats, most users of non-legendaries don't quite seem to understand how to pull them off properly. I've had many a battle where my opponent sends out two intimidating beasts that, due to being legendary, should surely secure victory for them... And then I score a super-effective hit on both of them, and now we're 2-0. I've already won either a third or a half of the battle. Oh, and two more legendaries replace them and I get a 4-0 or 6-0 sweep.
What gives? Aren't legendaries giant beasts that are made of pure awesomeness?
Well, it's just that so many common Pokémon counter them. While Arceus has a base stat total (an approximate measure of power spread over all of a Pokémon's 6 stats) of 720, and Mega Mewtwo has 780, non-legendaries aren't far behind at all. Slaking has 670 stat total, making it ridiculously powerful if played correctly, and 'Pseudo-Legendaries' like Dragonite and Garchomp have 600. Also, the exact distribution of the stats comes into play, making certain Pokémon far greater sweepers than legendaries.
On to the next thing: The idea that a legendary secures a win is entirely false. Someone who believes that legendaries automatically win is less likely to have a good strategy, and probably even less likely still to have a good counter-strategy. Mewtwo is easily knocked out in one turn by a Greninja using Night Slash. Yveltal and Xerneas are generally not even that threatening when used by an inexperienced player, and Smack Down or Poison Jab, respectively, will make short work of them. Arceus is quite a special case, as it can be any type. However, the rarity of Arceus, and how it's rarer still to see Arceus played well, make this less relevant. As a general rule, any super-effective hit with a move of high enough power should either faint or greatly threaten Arceus, and it probably can't fight back effectively unless its four moves are diverse enough (of course, diversity is rare on a legendary that isn't played to its fullest potential).
And of course, type matchups. Mega Mewtwo could tower over your entire team, most likely being able to knock them all out in two hits. And then a fast sweeper Greninja comes in and uses Night Slash (Y) or Acrobatics (X). The same goes for all legendaries, and indeed everything. Everything has a type weakness, and everything has a counter.
So legendaries are useless, right? RIGHT?!
No. If you plan ahead, think of your strengths and weaknesses and teach moves and distribute EVs and develop a strategy that takes advantage of your strengths and nullifies your weaknesses, and lets you know when it's a good time to switch to something that will actually survive this next hit, you can make something rare and valuable - a legendary that actually wins battles.
And yes, these rules do go for everything. an insanely overpowered beastly destroyer of worlds can easily be beaten by Slurpuff. And then the Poison-types come along. And then Claydol says hi.
Also, this is how the metagame evolves. Counters are developed and the game as a whole becomes more diverse. If you're a competitive battler, you should keep this in mind, and mix your team up a bit! Who knows? Maybe Mega-Mewtwo will become the anti-metagame in the future. Your team might become the next anti-metagame! :D
-Pokéxplain
Friday, 16 May 2014
This Blog
Hey there!
The purpose of this blog is to put together information on Pokémon that may be hard to find elsewhere. This ranges from lesser-known effects from Abilities and Moves, to competitive strategies. I will post periodically, and I accept requests. So if you have a question that you need answering, please post it in the comments section under any post, and I'll try my best to answer it.
-Pokéxplain
The purpose of this blog is to put together information on Pokémon that may be hard to find elsewhere. This ranges from lesser-known effects from Abilities and Moves, to competitive strategies. I will post periodically, and I accept requests. So if you have a question that you need answering, please post it in the comments section under any post, and I'll try my best to answer it.
-Pokéxplain
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