u/rtkbob

Those orchestras are 4 years apart, and 2022 was 4 years ago. If that trend holds up, we might get perfection.

I like running dual mega teams, and the team I'm currently using has mega meganium and mega swampart, so although I can have a third mega, that feels a bit taboo for me. Mega staraptor is ironically really good into opposing staraptor and mega staraptor, as it's boosted by intimidate, and flying is super effective against fighting, so mega staraptor can hit opposing mega staraptor super effectively with brave bird. And if it and the opposing staraptor hasn't mega evolved yet, they can drop their attack stat because they don't have contrary yet. So one of mega staraptor's best counters is ironically itself. Since I'm not willing to use a third mega, though, what are some other Pokémon good against mega staraptor?

Their offensive and defensive synergy is really nice. Mega meganium is weak to fire, ice, flying, steel, and especially poison. 4 out of those 5 types are resisted by water, with the only one it doesn't resist being flying. And while ground makes swampart neutral to ice, it also hits 3 out of the 5 types that meganium doesn't like dealing with for super effective and hits ice for neutral. Swampart has a 4x grass weakness, and meganium resists grass and has perfect coverage into grass types with weather ball thanks to mega sol. You'd obviously want this duo on a rain team, because mega sol makes mega meganium not really care what type of weather it's in, and mega swampart's speed doubles in the rain because of swift swim.

I really like a lot of these abilities, which makes the underwhelming abilities more disappointing for me.

Whenever a Pokémon with one hit uses an attacking move, the move suddenly becomes a 1 hit ko move and is 100% accurate. This ability causes the move to trigger twice on focus sash Pokémon.

I don't know what's happening there. Maybe there was a bug of some kind, or maybe those modes needed generally maintenance, I don't know. What I do know is that whatever the reason is, it's preventing me from playing the mode I intended to play.

Your pokémon throws out a banana, and if it hits a pokémon that isn't a flying type, they slip and fall. Banana does 5 damage, and it goes through protect. If thrown at a monkey or gorilla, it doubles their special defense stat.

I wonder if this is actually a helpful buff for these two legendaries considering their competing with other restricted legendary Pokémon, or if it might be a bit overkill. Scarlet and violet wasn't a nice generation for these two( well, Scarlet and Violet wasn't nice for a lot of Pokémon, to be fair).

If a Pokémon protects, urshifu deals 50% more damage than it would normally, and it crits on top of that. Break through is immune to intimidate. Urshifu's signature move for its current form has its damage doubled.

One type of fear that I don't see utilized much in video games is megalophobia, the fear of giant objects. Maybe I just live under a rock, but that fear is something that's baked into our instincts, so I thought I would notice it more often. So I'm wondering if there's any games that use a monsters sheer size as the basis of its horror.

I haven't gotten to any of the bosses in the dlc, but I have finished the base game, and I really like the nameless puppet. I like fights that have a sense of immediacy to them, and that one certainly did.

I played my first matches in Pokémon champions, using a weird trick room team with mega golurk. While most people will just use headlong rush for its ground stab, its ghost stab is harder to come by since most ghost moves aren't contact moves. Golurk does have access to 2 ghost moves that make contact with the opponent's Pokémon that aren't Phantom force. Poltergeist is a 110 base power move have a 90% accuracy chance which turns into a 100% accuracy chance with its base ability, no guard, but comes with the asterisk that the target needs to have an item. Considering the amount of 1 time use items in this meta, that ain't ideal. Shadow punch is an 80 base power 100% accurate move with none of the drawbacks of Poltergeist. I played a few matches in champions and 1 with golurk, and I find myself leaning more towards Shadow punch as it's just more reliable in and out of mega. Thoughts?

Edit: I was wrong. Shadow punch is 60 base power. Super effective hits would still hit like a truck if the pokémon doesn't protect.

I looked at araquanid recently, and since it's in Pokémon champions, I've been wondering how popular it is in the current format. Water bug has alright synergy defensively, with water canceling out bugs, fire weakness, and bug removing water grass weakness, although it's still weak to flying, rock, and electric. It also has a number of useful resistances to water, ice, steel, fighting, and ground, all of which are common in some way right now, especially fighting and ground. Its two abilities are also ridiculous. Water absorb is basically a check to anything water type because it would have a water immunity, although it wouldn't resist fire. Water bubble basically turns its fire neutrality into a resistance, doubles its water type damage, and makes it immune to burn. So instead of trying to smack around baskulegion, araquanid would be fighting charizard. I really like the prospects of this Pokémon, but its typing leaves a bit to be desired, as rock and flying types are also pretty popular, and rock slide appears to be everywhere. What are your thoughts, though?

I've been playing with this duo in Pokémon showdown, and they're a surprisingly synergistic duo, but they leave a lot to be desired. On the one hand, their defenses and offenses cover each other surprisingly well, as other than opposing poison types and psychic types, the weaknesses of one mega are covered up by the other. On the other hand, psychic types hit both Pokémon for super effective and chesnaught has no way to retaliate as psychic resists fighting. Most psychic types are special attackers, which ignore the iron defense body press set chesnaught likes to use. Their typing, although working well together, aren't great. I'm a bit mixed on this duo, but I'm curious as to your thoughts on it.