u/ianlazrbeem22

Welcome to Breaking the Binary, a sporadic series of posts all about mixed attackers in Pokémon Platinum. With competitive minmaxing dominating the conversation about Pokémon viability and the design philosophy behind movepools and stat spreads changing in newer gens, Pokémon are often rigidly divided by the fandom into the categories of "special attacker" or "physical attacker." But for the in-game story, you're not facing EV trained opponents and thus don't need to EV train to keep up, so mixed attacking sets don't have the opportunity cost they have in PvP. Going mixed still has anti-synergy with setup moves, but it still can give many Pokémon access to STAB moves with better base power, strong coverage moves with useful types, and more useful niches. This series will be covering those applications. We won't talk about every Pokémon here, only ones that I believe legitimately benefit from going mixed, but those Pokémon are surprisingly large in number. Today we'll be talking about Abomasnow. I'll be talking about in-game but feel free to discuss PvP or battle facilities as well. 

Abomasnow is an Ice/Grass Pokémon with solid 90/75/85 bulk, poor 60 speed, and an even 92 Atk and 92 SpA. Its notable physical attacks include Wood Hammer, Ice Shard, Earthquake, Rock Slide, Brick Break, and Return. Notable special attacks include Blizzard, Giga Drain, Focus Blast, and Shadow Ball. Notable utility includes Toxic, GrassWhistle, Light Screen, Protect, and Ingrain. 

Abomasnow is really fun to use, i have many many times on gimmick teams of all sorts, and he almost always finds himself running a mixed set. His 2 best STABs, Wood Hammer and Blizzard, have a whopping 120 BP each, stretching Abomasnow's 92/92 offense further than many Pokémon's better stats. Blizzard being downside-free thanks to Snow Warning is also awesome and difficult to pass up. Wood Hammer is also so welcome in a game where many Grass types don't have any good STAB moves at all for most or all of the journey. Wood Hammer and Blizzard are such no-brainers on offensive Abomasnow, you should almost always run these.

From there Abomasnow has a lot of good coverage moves on both sides - quite a few are pretty highly competed over TMs though. Earthquake is a fantastic option to pair with Blizzard as Ice/Ground is only resisted by Bronzong - otherwise Ground deals with the Steel and Fire types that Ice + Grass are resisted by. However, giving this TM to a pokemon with as many defensive liabilities as Abomasnow is a tough sell. You also generally want to give Earthquake to a Pokémon that is capable of using it to beat Fire types, and good fucking luck keeping Abomasnow in on a Fire-type and beating it with Earthquake. Focus Blast is a nice sub for Earthquake, for dealing with Steel types, and more relevant, enemy Ice types. Right when you evolve Abomasnow he can start dominating other Ice types, which are common around where you get him. For another type of perfect coverage, Fighting + Ghost, you can give him Shadow Ball with this if you want, but once again this is a TM likely best spent on a Psychic or Ghost type, not an Abomasnow.

No coverage move may be more valuable than Abomasnow's second Ice move, and this one is physical: Ice Shard. Ice is an amazing type throughout the lategame, and Abomasnow getting to work around its poor speed and poor defensive presence with a STAB move with an amazing type, that it almost always gets to successfully use, is so nice. Ice Shard hits surprisingly hard coming from Abomasnow, especially with a NeverMeltIce boost, and being able to get that guaranteed chip off saves Abomasnow so much HP, a valuable resource since it uses Wood Hammer. 

Ultimately you eventually want to drop Focus Blast for the E4 - the only Pokémon it is useful on there are Scizor and Lucario, and good fucking luck beating either of them with Abomasnow regardless. This opens up a space for GrassWhistle, which kinda sucks since it's inaccurate, Protect for free hail chip, Toxic to stack with Hail chip (and protect too if you like doing that,) Giga Drain to get some minor healing, or, and this is probably the most helpful, Light Screen for the last 2 fights. Shadow Ball, Earthquake. and Rock Slide are great too - but high investment! Aboma also doesn't really need Rock Slide since Ice is mostly just Rock type but better. Shadow Ball + Light Screen Abomasnow is also a decent anti-Lucian option for the Pokémon that DON'T obliterate it with Fighting moves. 

Abomasnow also gets a special mention, since part of what we're doing here is dispelling the in-game noobtrap/pitfall of, "you must use one attack stat or the other" - Abomasnow is so often victim to this. When I was younger, I insisted Abomasnow HAD to use just his physical attack, to the point of giving him Avalanche. Avalanche fucking sucks. Avalanche makes the user always go last, which to be fair Abomasnow often does anyway, but even so choosing to go last is such a throw for Abomasnow. This man has 7 weaknesses, you need to not be exposing it like that. Use ice shard to keep him alive, it hits harder than you think, use Blizzard when you need to use the stronger attack, it has the same base power as boosted Avalanche anyways! Ice Punch also exists, but why would you use a 75 BP move instead of a 120 one. Just use Blizzard! 

The only other Abomasnow builds that stand out to me are pure stall, which uses only one attack, usually Blizzard + Ingrain + Toxic + Protect, or pure utility with Light Screen instead of Ingrain. Both are not great ways to use an Abomasnow (stall is good if you breed it Leech Seed which is not real) so for a playthrough mixed Abomasnow is usually the move. The utility offered by hail can be fun and somewhat potent went leaned into though. 

Overall, Abomasnow stands out to me as a Pokémon that is almost always best to use as a mixed attacker, and the very picture of the archetype. A slow one with a lot of defensive problems, but its mixed offenses are pretty impressive.

What do you think of mixed Abomasnow? Is it worth exploring? Are there any applications for going mixed I didn't mention? Leave a comment below with your thoughts. 

Sample Sets:

Abomasnow @ NeverMeltIce/Light Clay • Blizzard, Wood Hammer, Ice Shard, Light Screen/Focus Blast/Earthquake/Giga Drain

Abomasnow @ Light Clay • Blizzard, Light Screen, Shadow Ball, Wood Hammer/Ice Shard

Welcome to Breaking the Binary, a sporadic series of posts all about mixed attackers in Pokémon Platinum. With competitive minmaxing dominating the conversation about Pokémon viability and the design philosophy behind movepools and stat spreads changing in newer gens, Pokémon are often rigidly divided by the fandom into the categories of "special attacker" or "physical attacker." But for the in-game story, you're not facing EV trained opponents and thus don't need to EV train to keep up, so mixed attacking sets don't have the opportunity cost they have in PvP. Going mixed still has anti-synergy with setup moves, but it still can give many Pokémon access to STAB moves with better base power, strong coverage moves with useful types, and more useful niches. This series will be covering those applications. We won't talk about every Pokémon here, only ones that I believe legitimately benefit from going mixed, but those Pokémon are surprisingly large in number. Today we'll be talking about Carnivine. I'll be talking about in-game but feel free to discuss PvP or battle facilities as well.

Carnivine is a pretty subpar Grass-type Pokémon with pretty subpar stats: unimpressive 74/72/72 bulk, horrendous 46 base Speed, and decent 100 Atk and 90 SpA. Its notable physical attacks are limited to Power Whip, Return, Wring Out, Payback, and Crunch, and on the special side, Giga Drain, SolarBeam, Sludge Bomb, and Hidden Power. Notable utility includes Sunny Day, Swords Dance, and Synthesis. 

Carnivine is another Pokémon that justifies mixed attacking not with its breadth of options, but with its lack of options. It's a victim of the same issue that plagues most of the game's Grass types, lack of access to good STAB moves. Power Whip is great when it comes, at the end of the game, at level 47. Until then, Carnivine's best STAB is either Giga Drain, or SolarBeam paired with Sunny Day. Bite is available to it right off the bat and Return will quickly become its best coverage move as you raise its friendship, Sludge Bomb is also a pretty strong option that allows Carnivine to deal with opposing Grass types, but that doesn't come until Galactic Hideout, and Grass types are rare after that point. Payback is already available once you get it too, and that will be frequently boosted to 100 BP since Carnivine is so slow. Since Carnivine is desperate it may also want Hidden Power if it rolls a favorable typing and base power. 

Once Carnivine gets Power Whip it generally will stick to using physical moves unless you've been really enjoying Sludge Bomb, and unless you're using it to set up Sunny Day. But until then, it does use that 90 SpA alongside its Attack. 

What do you think of mixed Carnivine? Is it worth exploring? Are there any applications for going mixed I didn't mention? Leave a comment below with your thoughts. 

Sample Sets:

Carnivine @ Heat Rock • Sunny Day, SolarBeam, Return, Payback/Sludge Bomb/Synthesis

Carnivine @ Miracle Seed • Power Whip, Sludge Bomb, Return/Synthesis, Payback/Synthesis

I finished Lazarus last night, I really loved the game! I was a big fan of the region, the dex size and design, and I liked the writing too! The gameplay was solid, I really liked the route design and the trainer design on the routes. I found the lategame a bit easy, but a low-pressure game is very approachable and the ease of training due to modern exp share and the lucky egg made it easy to casually pick up and play. The visuals were pretty good even though I prefer the GBA aesthetic, but they used the GBC style so effectively and the color grading was excellent. A lot of the movepool upgrades were cool even though some felt a little memey (I burst out laughing when Jolteon used Victory Dance into Trop Kick) and I didn't really care for the pokemon with changed types. But the new megas were really cool. Every pokemon recieving the "make every pokemon good" style of buffing does unfortunately make it harder to use Pokémon selection as a difficulty selector though, something this hack would benefit from imo

I really liked my team, getting Sneasel-Hisui from the gacha was very lucky, Protean Greninja is really broken, Mawile and Jumpluff as usual were joys, I love using them in romhacks because they often get crazy buffed and Jumpluff often doesn't even need the buffs to be good. And Mawile had cracked stats AND a Mega, this was probably my best mon. Ampharos started off as filler but ended up just sticking around, she was slow and didn't get good moves until late, but fine overall. And Ceruledge was an awesome late addition who swept Kalliope twice in a row and many other fights too.

I recently played through Aurum's Pokémon Spaceless Pearl ROMhack, and wanted to write up a review with my thoughts. Timeless Diamond and Spaceless Pearl are hacks of the original Diamond and Pearl that ask the question, "What would Diamond and Pearl look like if they had a year more of development?" The hack is vanilla-like but with updated trainer battles, wild encounters, some QoL, some modernized mechanics, and more. The game used some of the updates from Platinum, but also kept some Diamond and Pearl exclusive stuff intact.

As a fan and frequent replayer of the vanilla Pokémon games, vanilla-like hacks tend to be pretty approachable to me, I don't need a hack to be super different from the original games. As someone who likes the original games though, the bar far me is "is this worth playing over the original games?" Overall I'd say TDSP made that bar. They're of a similar quality to Platinum with some pros and only a couple cons, and I liked Aurum's updates to the region. If you like playing through Platinum, I'd say TDSP is worth playing through at least once.

Timeless Diamond and Spaceless Pearl use an updated Sinnoh Dex with 242 Pokémon - that's the 210 from Platinum's dex plus 32 new additions: the Surskit, Hoppip, Pineco, Teddiursa, Vulpix, Castform, Clamperl, Gulpin, Seel, Aron, Smoochum, and Luvdisc lines, as well as Phione. This is a great balance of Pokémon that fit well in the region as well as not an excessive amount of Pokémon jammed into routes. The updated Wild Encounters were one of my favorite parts of the hacks, the dex felt very curated and it also fixed a lot of little things about Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum too. Elekid in particular was very nice to see as early as Valley Windworks, and it was nice seeing the Diamond and Pearl exclusives all obtainable in both versions too.

There are two different ways to play Timeless Diamond and Shining Pearl, beyond the two versions. There are "Faithful" and "Complete" versions of the patch - the Complete versions include some changes to Pokémon's types, and the Faithful does not, but retains all the other changes to the games. The game doesn't add the Fairy type, which makes sense, since it doesn't add any newgen moves to the game. Overall I tend to not be a huge fan of type changes, I find it odd to have type matchups randomly be different than expected and don't really want to keep track of that, so it was nice to have an opt-out that kept everything else. There are so few type changes in the hack and not all of them feel additive, and the hack's hackdex listing even calls out "No, Luxray is not a Dark type," and my thought is just, why try and posit yourself as "not like other type changes?" Why are they so minimal? Just commit or don't, in my view. But again, I was glad to have the option.

One of the biggest mechanic changes in Timeless Diamond and Spaceless Pearl is the introduction of Infinite TMs. In many cases, I am a defender of finite TMs in the gen 1-4 games; the opportunity cost involved with them is interesting to me and adds replay value, I love having to consider resource management in games. One of my favorite things about Platinum compared to other Pokémon games is the high power level in terms of moves available via TM and tutor, you're able to optimize movesets in a way you can't in more limited games like the Gen 5 games or HGSS. Infinite TM games tend to gatekeep the best TMs behind postgames, and moveslots tend to feel less cramped and pokemon feel weaker as a result. However, TDSP handled this very well! Most, or maybe all, TMs are available before the postgame, only one is changed (Hidden Power to Swift, for Abra specifically lmao,) and quite a few location changes were made to balance things out, such as moving Rock Polish earlier to buff slow rock types, Earthquake requiring Strength to get so it isn't game-breaking. There are also no TMs at all in the Department Store or Game Corner. Infinite TMs did still feel very very powerful by around the 6th to 7th badge, especially since I used a couple Pokémon with big movepools like Infernape and Clefable, but shifting moves around in preparation for each matchup was a fun and unique part of this game that I felt was one of its primary strengths. It was also nice seeing some normally postgame-only TMs obtainable during the story such as Thunder Wave and Calm Mind. All Moves also use their current gen effects and power and accuracy, affecting many moves, but it all feels minor and not like a huge difference.

Another way movepools were revamped in TDSP was the tutors. These are totally original to the hack, there is some overlap to the tutors in Platinum, but also a lot of cool newly tutorable moves, such as the elemental fangs. Level up pools were also changed and have some new additions, one I noticed was Encore on Hoppip. Additionally, you're able to tutor egg moves onto Pokémon, as long as you have another Pokémon with the move in question, like how SV works with the Mirror Herb. All these changes are really cool and add a lot to teambuilding, I'd say that between infinite and rebalanced TMs and all these changes, the amount of possible customization to movesets is one of the main selling points of this hacks.

Timeless Diamond and Shining Pearl also feature updated Trainer Battles. Well, to an extent. Looking at these games' bases, this is one of the worst things about vanilla Diamond and Pearl - very repetitive and dull trainer battles both due to the games' small dex and the games being rushed, and a lot of them being very very easy. Platinum added a lot more variety and made many fights show the player more friction, and a lot of TDSP's updated trainers are lifted directly from Platinum, which is already a major upgrade. Most of the other changes were integrating the new additions to the dex into route trainers, which were handled pretty nicely and probably my favorite part of the updated trainer battles. However, the elite 4 and champion's teams were all lifted directly from platinum, right down to the levels. Some (maybe all?) had hold items and I noticed several different movesets, but it would have been nice to see the hack creator be a little more creative here. This is also the case with Barry and Cyrus. Cyrus and the E4 all had 5 Pokémon and easily could have been given one more. Aurum's take on Sinnoh with regards to what Pokémon should be available where and when was done so well, I would have loved to see their take on some changed battles in the endgame too. Each of the gym leaders had one additional Pokémon and most were additions to the dex, it almost felt like they got close to finishing the campaign and just went "eh I'm almost done, I'll just put Platinum's teams in." Why not give Aaron a Masquerain, Flint a Ninetales, etc? A minor nitpick I also had was the amount of resist berries in the lategame, I tripped over a few and mostly just felt annoyed to be lured, feels a bit cheesy in my opinion. Even with a lot of teams being lifted from Platinum, Platinum's teams are generally fun teams to face, so it wasn't awful - but the lategame being so similar to vanilla did feel a bit like missed opportunity.

The game's difficulty and level curve was also a plus in my view, I ran a team of 6 Pokémon and never struggled and managed to stay on par with the game's curve without any additional grinding. It felt pretty in line with the original Platinum overall, not punishingly difficult. The resist berries and being surprised by a couple moveset changes made it a tiny bit harder, but it was also nice not having to grind at all and still getting a very balanced experience - I got very close to losing to Cyrus, and Lucian took me a couple attempts, but everything else went quite smoothly.

This hack features HMs, and your mileage may vary on how they were handled. I personally liked it. My hot take on HMs is that they're one of the few things offsetting your advantage towards the AI, you have to run suboptimal sets or give up a team slot to traverse certain areas and this can be interesting to engage with. However, there are also some for this is a deal breaker, being used to hacks or modern games where HMs are usable in the field without needing to be on movesets, or cut completely. I personally am happy with how Timeless Diamond and Brillaint Pearl handled HMs; they're still needed on the field and need to be on movesets to be used, but they can be freely removed at any point, which is pretty easy to work around since all TMs are reusable. Rock Climb is also made Rock-type, the only totally fanon move change change to my knowledge, and this in and of itself fixes how useless and cumbersome of a move it is to bring around is, which to me is big - Rock Climb in many ways feels like the straw that breaks the camel's back to make HMs feel like a bit much in Sinnoh. Making it worth running helps a lot, and really, for me, making HMs easily removable makes them very easy to manage and perfectly fine to keep around. I still used a dedicated HM user though simply because I'm used to it, and since Cyrus still had only 5 Pokémon, this was fine too.

This game kept around a lot of Diamond and Pearl's differences to Platinum, but did a good job at fixing most of the bad, such as the Surf speed, the slow item scrolling, the lack of trainer AI, the small dex, the dull and repetive trainer battles, the horrendous e4 level curve, and some other annoyances. Honey Trees also are no longer time-based, a huge improvement over all 3 original games. However, unfortunately, a couple Diamond and Pearl problems are still intact. The biggest one that bothered me was the lack of a back button on the Pokétch. As someone who mostly just uses the team list and the dowsing machine, this actively discouraged me from hunting down other apps, since I didn't want to have to scroll through more apps to get from the Dowsing Machime back to the Team List. The hacks also unfortunately preserve Diamond and Pearl's tiny delay between every single action in battle, which Platinum cuts. Aurum offers an Action Replay code in the hack's listing that delimits fps to act as a speed up battles, but this is an incomplete solution in my eyes. Many Gen 4 hacks have an fps delimiter built into the in-game settings; would have rather seen this added, especially since I played on real hardware using Twilight Menu, which is difficult to add cheats to since it uses a cheats database rather than an editable code list. The game also uses Diamond and Pearl's gym puzzles and less polished visuals, which I mostly found fine - Maylene's gym puzzle might actually be less annoying in Diamond and Pearl, doing the old-design Galactic Eterna Building was fun, and Diamond and Pearl's visuals are nostalgic to me even though they're in most cases worse. However, Fantina's gym was still painful, those rooms are so massive and backtracking to heal between battles takes so god damn long, and the math questions of course were a dumb puzzle. Overall, the hack does a good job of getting Diamond and Pearl to a much more playable state, but there are a couple notable exceptions that make the game more of a sidegrade to OG Platinum than a direct upgrade.

One last new thing that I want to mention is very cool is the statistics feature, finishing the game then looking at those data points adds a lot to the playthrough to me and almost feels like it adds replay value. I love how Fire Emblem shows the battles/wins/losses of each unit when you finish a game, and how Pikmin counts days as score and keeps all the statistics on Pikmin grown and killed, seeing this concept brought over to Pokémon was great.

The hack also has a Wiki full of info and data about the game, which I overall found very helpful. It was nice being able to plan out my team and be ready for the new encounters, and I was able to plan a fun team that mostly used new additions to the dex or Pokémon with significant availability changes. However, one minor nitpick - the wiki is incredibly detailed, down to including stuff like a list of moves affected by Snatch. However, there were also a couple pretty glaring omissions - if I were Aurum, I would have prioritized a list of TM locations over some of these inclusions.

Overall, while imperfect and at some points leaving me wanting for more, Timeless Diamond and Shining Pearl were very much "my jam" between their focus on moveset customization, the well-handled wild encounters and Pokémon availability, and their vanilla-like gameplay and friendly but still engaging difficulty curve. People who tend to prefer hacks that radically transform Pokémon like the Unbound and Elite Redux types might not be a big fan of these, but if you like replaying the vanilla games and want more experiences like them, Timeless Diamond or Spaceless Pearl is worth playing through if you're in the mood for some Sinnoh - Aurum's take on the region is a nice one. Even the parts that feel a little too similar to Platinum aren't bad - Platinum is a great game after all, so a slightly different take on it still works.

Download Links:

Official Website

Hackdex - Timeless Diamond

Hackdex - Spaceless Pearl

Patcher:
ROM Patcher JS

I had a pretty good time playing through Aurum's Pokémon Spaceless Pearl. I'll probably write a full review once I get my fill of postgame stuff, but I wanted to show off my team! The hack is pretty vanilla-like and the lategame is very similar to Platinum's, except with infinite TMs, which affected my E4 strategy a lot as I rotated moves per matchup quite a bit. The game was played in set mode with no item use in battle, and I played the classic edition, which doesn't change any Pokémon's types - neither version changes stats or abilities, but there are some movepool changes.

Ape Tit the Hasty Infernape was pretty solid and reliable as Infernape tends to be, taunt wasn't as useful as I'd hoped but had a couple moments, and I couldn't find Swords Dance anyways but that set out work in, particularly the last Barry fight, where he just outsped and one shot almost everyone. Until the flint fight (where he got a great taunt in on houndoom) earthquake was rock slide, for dealing with flying types and fire types.

Alder the Calm Jumpluff was a very good staller with SleepSeed, he beat a ton of Pokemon he has no business beating. Jumpluff learns Encore in this game which I had until the Cynthia fight, and used to trap Lucian into Reflect so Gorebyss could pass Agility and Iron Defense to Jynx, who then set up Calm Mind and swept. He also carried Giga Drain over U-Turn until Cynthia. You can get Hoppip before Floaroma in this hack!

Olwen S the Quirky Elekid was actually great. You can get Elekid in Valley Windworks in this hack and it's so nice to get him earlier. I used him as a "fake ground type" to beat other electric types with motor drive + earthquake, and to destroy many many water types. He also cleaned up Cynthia's Milotic and Roserade after Clefable fell to Milotic Mirror Coat.

Alice the Bashful Clefable bailed my ass out of the Cyrus fight after I nearly lost to Gyarados with an awesome reverse sweep, and she also handled most of the Cynthia fight after a Light Screen and a Baton Pass. She had Cosmic Power for a while, including vs Cyrus, then when I started using Gorebyss more for the E4 I realized Calm Mind was way better. Clefable is so broken in a game with infinite TMs, I was constantly swapping her attacks out, mainly between the two pictured and Shadow Ball and Flamethrower, which made her useful in just about every situation.

Pearl the Bashful Gorebyss was cool, I love Gorebyss's design so it was nice to get her in Sinnoh, Clamperl is on route 213 with the Good Rod here. She was an okay but slow surf bot for a while, but her Baton Pass utility became very useful for the last couple fights, pairing Agility + Iron Defense with Jynx and Clefable's Calm Mind was very strong! She also took out most of Flint's Pokémon with Surf after an Agility.

Pucker the Rash Jynx was pretty decent, her slowness was awkward to work with but Baton Pass + Agility helped and she had some good utility on routes, the main highlight was the Lucian sweep. Calm Mind is so good. Giving her ice beam also freed up the moveslots on Gorebyss to run that greedy baton pass build, so her presence was appreciated for that too.

Again I'll write a real review of the game soon but overall I'd recommend it if you're itching to play some Sinnoh and want a game that's similar quality to platinum but has some slightly different traits. infinite TMs and the updated encounters and the other various changes make for a fun time. You can download it here and patch it here.

As a vocal Lucario critic I decided to play through the game with a mixed Lucario before my next Breaking the Binary post - it had been a while since I ran through the game with one and I wanted to make sure I was giving good data-based criticism, especially since I've gotten a lot better at optimizing the game since I last used one. This also was a good chance to compare it to other Pokémon, and use again a lot of Pokémon that I'm fond of, and many I see as a bit underrated or overhated. I got blessed with the Pokérus shortly after I got my Lucario, and as a result it became a little harder to collect data about anything since all my Pokémon gained double EVs, overinflating their stats for some lategame boss fights - all but Flareon had capped EVs by the end. Pokérus ended up being very helpful with reaching speed thresholds. With a good team with good stats I was able to finish at lower levels than usual, even without a Swords Dance user - Cynthia was a hard fight though. Rules for the run were level caps, no items in battle, and set mode.

Montserrat the Lonely Staraptor was obviously the best one on the team, as one of the best Pokémon in the game he was a good example of what a good Pokémon should look like and a good comparison point. He was excellent throughout the game and was very strong and dependable, always able to do good damage and usually outspeed and ohko with Return, Flying STAB, and later Close Combat. He put in a crazy amount of work for Cynthia, and for the whole game honestly.

Kellan the Naive Luxray was a good reminder for how Luxray performs. I definitely noticed his low points of the game, but still maintain he is good. Training him up in the earlygame was rougher than I remembered, but his midgame was amazing, and he was helpful at route clearing throughout the game, handling most of Mt. Coronet and most water routes, as well as almost the entire stretch from Route 215 to Pastoria, including the Pastoria Gym. Intimidate was also super helpful for early problem points like Mars and Jupiter. His bad speed was annoying during the e4 but wasn't really an issue before then, his bulk was surprisingly good and he took hardly any damage from most route trainers, and the speed was good enough for a lot of them, able to reliably get the jump on most Golbat. His best moment was, together with Staraptor, getting Cyrus's Gyarados to -2 and ohkoing it with Tbolt, and he did a fine job pivoting to a support role after that.

Akwakwak the Modest Golduck was even better than I remember, such a powerhouse once he got Surf and Ice coverage. He was super strong thanks to Specs, and his speed was pretty good - his bulk was too. He swept Bertha and a ton of routes with Specs Surf, and also was able to reliably survive EQ and OHKO Cynthia's Garchomp with Ice Beam. Such a good and slept on Pokémon.

Packer the Adamant Rampardos was a Pokémon I'd previously underrated! It took some TM investment between Earthquake, Rock Tomb, and Rock Slide, but this man one-shot almost everything he attacked. Rock Polish made him a surprisingly potent sweeper, Fire Punch was handy for Aaron and for enemy Bronzor and Bronzong, and SlideQuake hit everything else hard. He wasn't that great for Cynthia, but before that he was a good sweeper, sweeping the Galactic Commanders, Cyrus 2 and Saturn, Mars and Jupiter, Volkner, Aaron, and Flint. Rock Polish remains one of the most underrated moves in the game, both him and Rhyperior are cracked with it.

Anderson the Naive Flareon was sadly my worst Pokémon. I was excited when I got a naive Eevee, but this was a mistake - multiplying base 110 spdef by .9 was more impactful than I bargained for and made him unable to survive just about anything. He still was able to do a pretty crazy amount of damage, but only about once or twice per battle since his survivability was very disappointing, even against Pokémon he should have been pretty good into like Cynthia's Roserade - he did take Roserade out on the successful Cynthia attempt though. Part of the problem also was Flareon had other Pokémon doing his job better - Lucario ended up being better into Byron, Candice, and both were pretty bad into the E4. Rampardos was better into Volkner. Golduck was better into Fire types and Staraptor was better into Grass types. Flareon can put work in, but this run was not good for him. I should have reset for a Hasty or neutral one.

007 the Hasty Lucario put some work in. He was quicker to get trained up than I expected, but did eat up a lot of trainer exp, forcing me to do a Collector Douglas grind before Wake to save all the side areas for him and a Cole grind before Volkner to get everyone to competent levels. He was ready to go for Byron, who he swept with Aura Sphere, and did well into Candice with Flash Cannon, but fell to Froslass. After this his appearances were less frequent and he was not super notable, but I was impressed with him making the Froslass, Espeon, and the Cynthia's Lucario speed thresholds thanks to his nature, amazing speed IV, and Pokérus EV boost. I gave him all my Proteins and Carbos after I got him too. During the e4, he revenge killed Espeon, helped weaken and force out Cynthia's Spiritomb, and nailed her Lucario with Close Combat on the switch, which was always after she Full Restored Spiritomb if it was debuffed. Not great for a Pokémon that the entire playthrough was planned and optimized around, but a decent showing at least. Worse than a Swords Dance one would have been. If I bothered leveling him up to 55 he would have hit 151 (154 actually) speed, but Ice Punch wouldn't have ohko'd Garchomp regardless:

Lvl 55 138 Atk 13 IVs Lucario Ice Punch vs. Lvl 62 0 HP / 0 Def Garchomp: 136-160 (60.4 - 71.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Lucario's stats are included for reference. Look forward to reading more about mixed Lucario's performance in the upcoming Breaking the Binary post.

Overall it's always a good time playing through my favorite game with Pokémon I like and it was nice playing a very traditional team after mostly using out-of-dex Pokémon or doing monotypes.

I was hoping on playing through the game pretty normally to test out mixed Lucario, and look what I rolled... Lucario might actually make some speed thresholds with double EVs! My reward for spending hours resetting and re-hatching for a good nature I suppose

The community tier list series going right now inspired me to play through emerald again - talking about emerald makes me want to play emerald. It was a good reminder of just how amazing this game is, such a fantastic soundtrack and region, and the lack of physical special split and so many modern moves is so fun to go back to. I made a team of various pokemon I wanted to try out.

Rosie the Adamant Linoone was honestly the team's ace, even before the e4 she was always the one I could count on to kill stuff and be fast. And then I dabbed on the e4 as Linoone does

Goombella the Bold Breloom is the only one here I've used before in emerald, she was a little awkward to use at times with her limited offensive profile but still a strong and reliable team member. I just couldn't get rid of Stun Spore because it kept being useful for me, so no Bulk Up for me, she was still pretty good. I kept being in awe of how hard Sky uppercut hit and how weak Giga Drain hit

Karen the Bold Illumise was so good, Encore was constantly useful for me and it put in work in just about every boss fight, including encoring Wallace's Wailord into Rain Dance so the Rain would end before Ludicolo came out. It also took down Slaking and Altaria with Charm, and Encore also helped with Tate & Liza a lot. Such a fun and satisfying pokemon to use

Betty the Rash Camperupt was as good as she could be, Camerupt has its problems in the lategame but it was quite good for the midgame, and she helped out a lot in victory road too.

Oswin the Relaxed Skarmory was another fun one to try out. He appeared in a lot of route battles and was great for Winona, so many fights for him were totally free.

Tuskothy the Impish Walrein joined late but he put a decent amount of work in, Linoone had the e4 handled so really he mostly helped with route cleaning and only got one encore off. In victory road he was still pretty valuable though, and surf was great for double battles.

What do you think of the team? I'm itching to play more emerald and keep talking about it, this last run has really cemented it in my top 3 pokemon games. Now to transfer my pokemon while I still can.

Welcome to Breaking the Binary, a sporadic series of posts all about mixed attackers in Pokémon Platinum. With competitive minmaxing dominating the conversation about Pokémon viability and the design philosophy behind movepools and stat spreads changing in newer gens, Pokémon are often rigidly divided by the fandom into the categories of "special attacker" or "physical attacker." But for the in-game story, you're not facing EV trained opponents and thus don't need to EV train to keep up, so mixed attacking sets don't have the opportunity cost they have in PvP. Going mixed still has anti-synergy with setup moves, but it still can give many Pokémon access to STAB moves with better base power, strong coverage moves with useful types, and more useful niches. This series will be covering those applications. We won't talk about every Pokémon here, only ones that I believe legitimately benefit from going mixed, but those Pokémon are surprisingly large in number. Today we'll be talking about Pikachu and Raichu. I'll be talking about in-game but feel free to discuss PvP or battle facilities as well.

Raichu is a fast (100) Electric-type with poor defense and HP, passable SpDef, and an even 90 and 90 in Atk and SpA. Its notable physical moves include Return, Dig, and Brick Break. Its notable special moves include Thunderbolt, Grass Knot, Focus Blast, Charge Beam, Agility, and Thunder. Notable utility includes Thunder Wave, Light Screen, Rain Dance, Captivate, Magnet Rise, and, if evolved from a Pichu, Nasty Plot and Charm. 

Pikachu is slower with 90 speed, which is a significant difference honestly, is much frailer with abysmal 35/30/40 bulk, and much weaker with base 55 Atk and 50 SpA, but its final Atk and SpA after nature, IVs, EVs, and level are doubled when it holds a Light Ball. It learns all the above moves except Focus Blast. 

Raichu is really underrated as a mixed attacker! Dig is a strong move with a fantastic type and no functional downside in-game. Return is incredibly strong and has very few resists. On the other hand, Thunderbolt is clearly its best stab, but its special coverage is a bit lacking. Grass Knot synergizes pretty well with Thunderbolt, but the reliance on weight makes it very unreliable until the very end of the game. Focus Blast is another valuable anti-steel move, but its accuracy is just awful. A Raichu with Thunderbolt, Dig, and Return has strong and reliable options for hitting any target. Plot and Specs are good builds for Raichu too, but there are definite merits to going this direction, mostly dipping into its utility pool, since that's tough to fit on specs or plot. Thunder Wave is pretty rare in Platinum's story. Light Screen is great in the last couple fights. Captivate opens up Cynthia sweeps. All these options paired with good speed make it a good combination of offense and utility. 

Light Ball Pikachu is kind of a meme, hilarious minmaxing but not very good in practice, base 90-100 is the range of speed where even one point makes a big difference in the lategame, and speed is everything for one of the frailest pokemon of all time - base 90 means it sometimes gets outsped! More relevant to mention here, terrible bulk and the lack of Focus Blast makes Nasty Plot not very good on Light Ball Pikachu. This pushes it even further into mixed attacker territory than its evolution. For Pikachu to succeed it needs to never give away turns and always ohko, so this pushes it into 4-attacks territory. With more Atk than SpA and Return's huge 102 base power, of course Pikachu wants that move! Dig is its strongest option vs Steels and beats other Electric types. Brick Break is mostly redundant, but Grass Knot on the other hand is a good way for it to beat Rock and Ground types. Overall Light Ball Pikachu isn't the best but it's fun to use and giving it Return as a nuke along its various other attacks.

Pikachu and Raichu also get Brick Break, but Dig is stronger, has a better type, and is just as accurate, unlike the stronger-than-both Focus Blast. I don't usually have a place for Brick Break above those options, nor Iron Tail, which is also a worse type than Dig and Focus Blast, and is much weaker than Focus Blast but not much more accurate. 

What do you think of mixed Pikachu and Raichu? Are they worth exploring? Are there any applications for going mixed I didn't mention? Leave a comment below with your thoughts. 

Sample Sets:

Pikachu @ Light Ball • Thunderbolt, Return, Dig, Grass Knot

Raichu @ Magnet • Thunderbolt, Return, Dig, Thunder Wave/Light Screen/Captivate

Raichu @ Damp Rock • Thunder, Return, Light Screen/Grass Knot, Rain Dance

I have once again been in the mood to play Platinum and I've finished another run, using 5 Pokémon (all but Camerupt) for the first time! The general strategy for the team in boss fights was to set up Agility and/or Swords Dance with Ledian then pass them to the appropriate recipient for each fight. This ended up working pretty well for the league and a couple other fights, but ended up unnecessary or difficult to execute in many others. Once everyone's build was online though it became quite strong, and setup matches so well into the e4. Rules for the run included level caps, set mode, and no item use in battle. All Pokémon were genned - 2 were added to the team at the beginning, then one per badge after that.

Pinchy the Adamant Kingler was pretty good, but a little awkward at points. He wasn't able to learn Crabhammer until the end of the game so he was relying on a pathetic Bubble then a mostly pathetic BubbleBeam until he got Dive. Rock Tomb was pretty unreliable and Dig took a while to get too, Dodrio took the first Return TM, but once I got Dig, Return, and Dive for him he became pretty good.

Tricorn the Jolly Dodrio was one of the team's two carries, Return immediately was such a good damage options on him, Faint Attack was really nice to have vs Fantina and other earlygame Ghosts and Rocks, and in general he was great speed control and an awesome damage dealer. He was no Staraptor and the absence of U-Turn was felt, but he was still great.

Go-Goggles the Calm Ledian was a mixed bag. I'm glad I was able to get Ledian to do something, and the Baton Pass strategy worked pretty well on Aaron, Bertha, Cynthia, Barry 6, Cyrus 1, and at least one other fight, but setting it up with Ledian was often awkward due to its awful typing and poor physical bulk. It also had Silver Wind for a while but actually beating anything with it was a challenge, and dropping it for Light Screen for the e4 and eventually Captivate for Cynthia helped Ledian set up quite a bit.

Mariah the Modest Minun was the best Pokémon on the team once I got the Thunderbolt TM for her. She smoked Wake, did most of the work of route clearing, and swept Lucian and Cynthia, Lucian being without any Baton Pass cheese (just Encore cheese.) Plusle was better but my Minun was just incredibly reliable. That's Hidden Power Ice by the way, Grass Knot was in that slot until the e4 though.

Aghoul the Adamant Banette was functionally an empty Poké Ball. He sucked up EXP like nobody's business, very rarely entered the field because he couldn't switch in on anything, often failed to contribute anything even went sent out due to being outsped and one-shot, one day I will get this Pokémon to work but he was absolutely useless and probably a detriment to this team.

Vesuvius the Naughty Camerupt was the glue that made everything else work, the classic Ground type role. He dealt with Bronzors, other Steel types, Fire types, and Electric types, all of which were not easy to solve with other team members. The role compression brought by Fire/Ground made it possible to slot in do-nothing Banette and another strictly utility Pokémon in Ledian, and he balanced out my good Pokémon's weaknesses quite nicely.

The hardest fight was the first Jupiter battle, Fantina was no slouch either, things got a bit easier from there once Krabby became better, Baton Pass came online, and Minun joined the team, all around Veilstone. Although I probably should have used a Dark type instead of Banette, the team was pretty fun and I'm glad I got to try out some new stuff.

Welcome to Breaking the Binary, a sporadic series of posts all about mixed attackers in Pokémon Platinum. With competitive minmaxing dominating the conversation about Pokémon viability and the design philosophy behind movepools and stat spreads changing in newer gens, Pokémon are often rigidly divided by the fandom into the categories of "special attacker" or "physical attacker." But for the in-game story, you're not facing EV trained opponents and thus don't need to EV train to keep up, so mixed attacking sets don't have the opportunity cost they have in PvP. Going mixed still has anti-synergy with setup moves, but it still can give many Pokémon access to STAB moves with better base power, strong coverage moves with useful types, and more useful niches. This series will be covering those applications. We won't talk about every Pokémon here, only ones that I believe legitimately benefit from going mixed, but those Pokémon are surprisingly large in number. Today we'll be talking about Whiscash. I'll be talking about in-game but feel free to discuss PvP or battle facilities as well.

Whiscash is a slow and decently bulky Water-Ground type with 78 Atk and 76 SpA. Its notable physical attacks include Earthquake, Watferfall, Rock Slide, and Stone Edge. Its notable special attacks include Surf, Blizzard, and Ice Beam. Notable utility includes Rain Dance, Captivate, Substitute, and Amnesia.

That movepool says it all - Water, Ground, and Ice is an amazing offensive combination that accomplishes any and all of your needs, Whiscash has high base power options in all, these are across different but roughly equal attack stats. It usually prefers to use Earthquake, but Surf and Ice Beam are great moves with great types that aren't far below it. Both Water + Ice and Ground + Ice are amazing offensive combos, all 3 hits literally everything for neutral damage or better, and Whiscash is bulky and has only one weakness. This makes whiscash a very easy pokemon to use that can sit on the field, soak up hits, and consistently deal decent damage. Both its offenses and its bulk fall off a bit by the end of the game, but it's still a solid contributer throughout with a good typing and good physical and special moves.

What do you think of mixed Whiscash? Is it worth exploring? Are there any applications for going mixed I didn't mention? Leave a comment below with your thoughts.

Sample Set:

Whiscash @ NeverMeltIce/Soft Sand • Earthquake, Surf, Ice Beam, Rest/Amnesia/Toxic/Rain Dance/Captivate

Finally finished this Sapphire run I've been working on for a while. This was a weird team of mine and mostly I just wanted to use new stuff, didn't consider synergy too much but a little bit was there. Dealing with the Steven battle was such a pain, and so was Wattson much earlier. Honestly it's probably one of the worst teams I've used in a while, but at least I found a Shiny Pelipper. Set Mode + No Items

Boey the Adamant Sceptile was ok, at best. Ngl I do not like this Pokemon, its moves are such trash for so long and Leaf Blade barely carries it. I know mine didn't have a great nature but its damage was so underwhelming pretty much the whole time. Debuffing stuff with Screech was ok I guess

Magdalena the MODEST Shiny Pelipper was so lucky and one of my best team members!! Her IVs are not good according to PKHex but Surf and Ice Beam carried her pretty well. I was already using a Pelipper and that guy got replaced when I found her. A lucky Mon and a good one too, she put in the most work vs the E4 without a doubt.

Beefy the Naughty Hariyama was also a contender for the best, he wasn't as good vs the E4 and had some unfortunate points but swept several earlier gyms with Bulk Up, he was the main wincon in many cases.

Diana the Jolly Seviper came up less vs the E4 and wasn't the best, but she was faster than Metagross and had Earthquake which was significant. She mostly was a filler Pokémon. I wish Glare wasn't super inaccurate in this game, I also learned Ghosts are immune to it unlike many other status move interactions

Deirdre the Lonely Girafarig was really cool, I liked her a lot and she carried the lategame but appeared less vs the E4. She was a solid mixed attacker helpful at many points like against waters, flying types, ghost types, and other psychic types.

Miasma the Careful Banette was not amazing but was helpful at a couple key points. Curse was my best answer to Metagross and was how I beat Walrein, Wisp was helpful at points, and Curse also synergized very well with Fake Out on Hariyama. Not the best Pokémon but actually a pretty important one for this team.

Overall my review of Sapphire is "emerald but worse," there's less reason to play it over the more complete Emerald or more unique Ruby, but it's still GBA Pokémon so I had fun and enjoyed using new things. I beat like all the e4 around level 50 but had to level up a bunch for Steven sadly. What do you think of my team?

Welcome to Breaking the Binary, a sporadic series of posts all about mixed attackers in Pokémon Platinum. With competitive minmaxing dominating the conversation about Pokémon viability and the design philosophy behind movepools and stat spreads changing in newer gens, Pokémon are often rigidly divided by the fandom into the categories of "special attacker" or "physical attacker." But for  the in-game story, you're not facing EV trained opponents and thus don't need to EV train to keep up, so mixed attacking sets don't have the opportunity cost they have in PvP. Going mixed still has anti-synergy with setup moves, but it still can give many Pokémon access to STAB moves with better base power, strong coverage moves with useful types, and more useful niches. This series will be covering those applications. We won't talk about every Pokémon here, only ones that I believe legitimately benefit from going mixed, but those Pokémon are surprisingly large in number. Today we'll be talking about Cherrim. I'll be talking about in-game but feel free to discuss PvP or battle facilities as well. 

Cherrim is a Grass-type Pokémon with average 85 speed, unimpressive bulk, and an unimpressive 60 Atk and 87 SpA. Its notable special movepool includes SolarBeam, Giga Drain, Leech Seed, and Petal Dance. Its notable physical move, which is the only viable non-Grass attack it gets outside of the extremely unreliable Hidden Power, is named Return. Its notable utility pool includes Sunny Day, Gen 4's version of Growth which just raises SpA 1 stage regardless of weather, and Swords Dance. 

Cherrim is probably one of the worst Pokémon in the game and its options are extremely limited. These limited options, as well as its ability, Flower Gift, encourage it to use both its Atk and SpA stats. Barring the extremely unreliable Hidden Power, Cherrim only has two types of attacks it can access, Grass and Normal, and there is zero reason to use it outside of Harsh Sunlight, which activates Flower Gift to boost its Atk and SpDef by 1.5x. This turns SolarBeam into a 120/100 Grass STAB with no downside, and it boosts Return's damage to a usable level (thanks to its hefty 102 BP) , even coming from a measly base 60 Atk stat. Return should only be clicked on SolarBeam resists. 

Cherrim has a 4th slot beyond this. The Snowpoint tutor can give it Synthesis, which is probably best since the SpDef boost Flower Gift grants in the sun is not neglible, and neither is the boost to Synthesis's healing in the sun. You can also give it Growth, which does not boost both stats nor boost an extra stage in the Sun in this generation, to make SolarBeam stronger, or Swords Dance to boost Return further, or Hidden Power if it's a decent type and base power, or a Grass move that can be used more flexibly than SolarBeam, probably Giga Drain.

What do you think of mixed Cherrim? Is it worth exploring? Are there any applications for going mixed I didn't mention? Leave a comment below with your thoughts. 

Sample Set:

Cherrim @ Heat Rock • SolarBeam, Return, Sunny Day, Synthesis/Hidden Power/Growth/Swords Dance/Giga Drain

Welcome to Breaking the Binary, a sporadic series of posts all about mixed attackers in Pokémon Platinum. With competitive minmaxing dominating the conversation about Pokémon viability and the design philosophy behind movepools and stat spreads changing in newer gens, Pokémon are often rigidly divided by the fandom into the categories of "special attacker" or "physical attacker." But for the in-game story, you're not facing EV trained opponents and thus don't need to EV train to keep up, so mixed attacking sets don't have the opportunity cost they have in PvP. Going mixed still has anti-synergy with setup moves, but it still can give many Pokémon access to STAB moves with better base power, strong coverage moves with useful types, and more useful niches. This series will be covering those applications. We won't talk about every Pokémon here, only ones that I believe legitimately benefit from going mixed, but those Pokémon are surprisingly large in number. Today we'll be talking about Vespiquen. I'll be talking about in-game but feel free to discuss PvP or battle facilities as well. 

Vespiquen is a bulky and very slow Bug/Flying type with an even 80 Atk and 80 SpA. Its notable physical moves include U-Turn, Attack Order, Bug Bite, Aerial Ace, and Return. Its notable special moves include Power Gem and Sludge Bomb. Its utility includes Defend Order, Heal Order, Destiny Bond, and Toxic.

Vespiquen has enough unique going for it for me to not pair it with the other Bugs from the other day. It definitely still can do the mixed utility with U-Turn thing, it just has a very limited movepool and with equal attack stats you just want to use both sides to make the most of it. Toxic is good utility on it if you're using it as a U-Turn pivot. 

Attack Order is its best STAB by far, and Aerial Ace is okay albeit weak, Return is stronger when both are neutral: 

0 Atk Vespiquen Return vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Glalie: 73-87 (24.2 - 28.9%) -- 99.2% chance to 4HKO

0 Atk Vespiquen Aerial Ace vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Glalie: 66-78 (21.9 - 25.9%) -- 1.4% chance to 4HKO

Vespiquen is mostly using physical attacks with the notable exception of Power Gem, its best coverage move by far, obtained by level up. Its best attack being a bug move means it has a lot of resistances to contend with: Fighting, Flying, Poison, Ghost, Steel, and Fire. Power Gem helps it with the Flying, Poison, Ghost, and Fire types that resist Bug, and there's no situation where it can do anything to Steel types unfortunately (outside of a lucky Hidden Power typing.) Aerial Ace hits all those types neutrally except for Steel, but it is weak and that super effective hit on fire and flying is pretty nice. Vespiquen doesn't need to avoid super effective hits the way other bugs do thanks to its good bulk and its potential as a "slow sweeper" with Defend and Heal Order, which allow it to sit on the field, tank hits, heal itself, and slowly beat down anything in its path. Sludge Bomb isn't terrible for a slow sweeping Vespiquen either but it's not a great type overall and doesn't help with Bug resists very efficiently; the secondary effect is the primary draw. 

Overall, Vespiquen's movepool is pretty limited, but its equal stats on both sides and the nice typing, power, and accuracy of Power Gem give it them option to use both physical and special moves effectively as a pivot or slow sweeper. 

What do you think of mixed Vespiquen? Is it worth exploring? Are there any applications for going mixed I didn't mention? Leave a comment below with your thoughts. 

Sample Sets:

Vespiquen @ SilverPowder • U-Turn, Power Gem, Toxic/Sludge Bomb, Attack Order/Aerial Ace/Return/Heal Order

Vespiquen @ SilverPowder • Attack Order, Power Gem, Defend Order, Heal Order

Vespiquen @ SilverPowder • Attack Order, Power Gem, Sludge Bomb/Toxic/Heal Order, Aerial Ace/Return/Heal Order

Welcome to Breaking the Binary, a sporadic series of posts all about mixed attackers in Pokémon Platinum. With competitive minmaxing dominating the conversation about Pokémon viability and the design philosophy behind movepools and stat spreads changing in newer gens, Pokémon are often rigidly divided by the fandom into the categories of "special attacker" or "physical attacker." But for the in-game story, you're not facing EV trained opponents and thus don't need to EV train to keep up, so mixed attacking sets don't have the opportunity cost they have in PvP. Going mixed still has anti-synergy with setup moves, but it still can give many Pokémon access to STAB moves with better base power, strong coverage moves with useful types, and more useful niches. This series will be covering those applications. We won't talk about every Pokémon here, only ones that I believe legitimately benefit from going mixed, but those Pokémon are surprisingly large in number. Today we'll be talking about Mothim, Beautifly, Dustox, and Yanmega. I'll be talking about in-game but feel free to discuss PvP or battle facilities as well. 

Mothim is a slow Bug/Flying type with bad bulk and even 93/93 attacking stats. Beautifly is a slow Bug/Flying type with bad bulk, 70 Attack, and 90 SpA. Dustox is a slow Bug/Poison type with decent SpDef but bad stats everywhere else, including 50 Atk and 50 SpA. Yanmega is pretty fast, Bug/Flying, physically frail, specially decent, and has 76 Atk and 116 SpA. 

I'm combining all of these because the posts would be pretty similar. These guys have pretty much the same cardinal reason to go mixed: U-Turn. Pivoting obviously is really good, this has been spoken about extensively, and as a Bug-type STAB move this hits for great chip while the field is being left. Bug/Flying, and Bugs in general honestly, have a lot of defensive liabilities that force them to leave the field pretty often, even with some matchups where they are godly (eg vs Fighting types.) Needing to leave the field to not die synergizes perfectly with U-Turn. Every time I DON'T give a bug-type U-Turn, I feel like I'm wasting an opportunity to do big chip every time I have to switch it out, which is often. 

Mothim's 93/93 offenses are the obvious picture of a mixed attacker. Overall its special attacking movepool, which includes Silver Wind, Bug Buzz, Psybeam, Psychic, Air Slash, and by TM Shadow Ball, Giga Drain, and SolarBeam, is much more available outside of the solid early stab of Bug Bite and the Aerial Ace and Return TMs. With Specs available and all those moves Mothim usually favors Special attacks. But slapping U-Turn on there and running SilverPowder goes pretty hard too, even stacking it with Bug Buzz for TWO SilverPowder boosted STABs. 

Beautifly pretty heavily favors its Special movepool and it has a small movepool in general. Its special movepool includes the Grass-type draining moves, Gust, Air Cutter, Silver Wind, Bug Buzz, and by TM Shadow Ball and Psychic. I really like Giga Drain on it since giving it a way to easily kill Water and Ground types gives it a lot more to do in the story. Beautifly does have some interest in using the Aerial Ace TM for the Veilstone Gym, but the Air Cutter tutor works too if you have the shards for him. STAB U-Turn coming from 70 Atk isn't amazing, but it's chip with STAB in the many situations where you'll need Beautifly to leave the field, and with a SilverPowder boost it's even better. 

Dustox is the opposite of Mothim - instead of 2 solid offensive stats that can viably be used, Dustox has poor offense on both ends with 50 Atk and 50 SpA. This means it takes what it can gets and STAB modifiers help it a lot, so it doesn't discriminate between Bug Buzz and U-Turn and often likes running both. U-Turn as its only attack and just utility moves otherwise is pretty viable, but Psychic, Shadow Ball, Giga Drain, SolarBeam, and Sludge Bomb have some value on it too. 

Yanmega is a godly U-Turner and Bug STAB user because of Tinted Lens, no matter who it's hitting it'll do decent damage even coming from 76 Atk. Yanmega otherwise prefers to use its special movepool including Air Slash, Bug Buzz, Shadow Ball, AncientPower, Giga Drain, and SolarBeam coming from 116 SpA. Yanma's ability affects the viability of this - with speed boost you want to stay on the field and be fast, but tinted lens gives you a near unresisted U-Turn. 

Overall, most of the game's Bug/Flying types and the honorary Dustox prefer to primarily use their Special attacks, but they also really benefit from the power and utility of U-Turn. All of them can also set Sun for a teammate and pivot them in with a U-Turn and/or use SolarBeam, which is pretty cool.

What do you think of going mixed on these Bugs? Is it worth exploring? Are there any applications for going mixed I didn't mention? Leave a comment below with your thoughts. 

Sample Sets:

Mothim @ SilverPowder • U-Turn, Bug Buzz, Psychic, Air Slash

Beautifly @ SilverPowder • U-Turn, Giga Drain, Stun Spore, Morning Sun/Bug Buzz/Psychic/Shadow Ball

Dustox @ SilverPowder • U-Turn, Bug Buzz/Sludge Bomb, Psychic/Shadow Ball, Sludge Bomb/Light Screen/Toxic

Yanmega @ SilverPowder • U-Turn, Air Slash, 2 of Shadow Ball, Bug Buzz, Psychic, Giga Drain or AncientPower