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I ATTAC

8 (15.4%)

I PROTECC

6 (11.5%)

Waiting on the third one

2 (3.8%)

Waiting on the third AND fourth one

1 (1.9%)

GET WELL SOON ZYGARDE

5 (9.6%)

I am a concientous objector and abstain from taking up arms

30 (57.7%)

Total Members Voted: 51

[umiman]

I think a better way I should have put it was to say Togedemaru is durable "enough". As in, it will probably always get at least one attack off, if not more. It can also safely switch into a lot of moves provided they're not one of the big three killers. Though again, I think it will probably survive non-STAB special attacks that aren't ground-type, making a fairly large range.

Not to mention there's a lot of ways to spec it defensively, which can apply the crucial mindgames to people. Assault vest. Berries. Air Balloon.

Too bad it doesn't learn Follow Me like Pachirisu though, it would be fantastic candidate for it due to the amazing typing.

Every time I've fought Togedemaru (probably like... 3 times? No one knows he exists), I've always been impressed.

[RekkaAtsuma]

Actually, I remember Togedemaru, cause aside from the genderless Magne-line pokemon, it's the only electric+Steel, and it can be male or female.
That said, I don't play PVP, ever...but why did it catch my eye?

I have wanted a Male/Female-capable Elec-Steel for so long. Like since Gen3 or before. Shame that when we finally got such, it winds out to be a tiny attacker and I wanted A Male/female-possible tank.
Oh well.

EDIT:
That said, for fun's Sake i still did make my Togedemaru a tank, again, i don't pvp and only play for fun but yeah...

[umiman]

In my neverending quest to talk about interesting, unnoticed Pokemon, here's another fun guy.

And by "fun" I mean "a total piece of living cancer".



He's so unloved that he actually doesn't even show up on Google if you Google his name. Overshadowed by a metal band. He looks like trash and his stats are trash too. And bug typing. Ugh.

However, this guy was generously given Prankster as his hidden ability. I guarantee you, if you see a Pokemon with Prankster show up on the field, your shit is gonna get trolled. This guy is no different.

This guy basically exists to troll the living shit out of set up sweepers. If you don't know what a set up sweeper is, then it's a Pokemon that relies on a move like Swords Dance or Quiver Dance to start killing your entire team. If that Pokemon dares to use a move like that when Volbeat is in the field, they're gonna get destroyed.

See... what he likes to do is use encore. With Prankster. So if your previous move wasn't an attack... you're basically useless until you leave the field.

That's basically all he does.

He has other moves too, such as prankster thunder wave, prankster substitute, prankster tailglow, prankster roost, etc. etc. But that's kinda all he's known for. To encore the crap out of you and force you to switch. Smogon likes to pretend he's useful for other things like weather, but they just refuse to admit that he's there just to encore you.

[Culise]

Some love for the Euro-folk and Aussies: a fresh new event started a couple days ago, allowing you to pick up a Shiny Tapu Koko via Mystery Gift.  Do pick it up quickly, though; the event ends August 14.  Amis get to sit quietly and wait their turn, though there's been no official announcement yet.

[birdy51]

No official announcements, but we can do it too!

It's got a Timid Nature, which limits it to Special sets, but I'm hoping to take it for a whirl in the Battle Tree once I've got it trained up.

[Akura]

Did they distribute all the non-Alolan Mega Stones? I have the first two sets, but I don't recall seeing any more posted after that, or if there were any more after that.

[birdy51]

They are doing them in bunches and batches after every online mini-tournament. They are password locked, so Serebii is your friend to finding them all out.

[Reudh]

I'm considering writing examinations of lesser known or used pokemon like Umiman did. Would you all be up for that?

[Sirus]

Sure, that'd be interesting.

[Reudh]

Alright, first up is Wormadam.
A three-for-the-price-of-one Pokemon, Wormadam was one of the least used fully evolved pokemon in its debut generation, Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, and still is today.

Wormadam comes in three forms, each with their own typing.

Wormadam-Plant:



A sorry excuse for a pokemon. Bug/Grass type. Poor stats overall, like many of the overshadowed weak bug type Pokemon out there, it has nothing to set it apart from its competitors. Parasect is slightly better, with a wider movepool and access to the always good Spore, and more balanced stats. For reference:

Wormadam-P:
60/59/85/79/105/36, for a total of 424. Those lopsided stats are quite frankly awful. 60 HP is fragile. 59 attack is basically useless. 85 defense is not terrible, but it is nothing special. 79 special attack could be somewhat usable, but you're not going to be hitting hard with this little thing. 105 Special Defense is good, but there are other defensive pokemon out there with better movepools, better stats, and better typing. Its speed is basically non existent, so I guess you could use Trick Room and laugh as it still can't do much?

Basically the only thing Wormadam-P has going for it is spamming Choice Specs boosted Leaf Storm. That's it. I mean, I guess it can set up Stealth Rock, but I doubt it'd survive long enough to even do so.
You know it's bad when it's outclassed by a middle evolution; that being Roselia. Smogon's suggested moveset is Signal Beam/Leaf Storm/Giga Drain/Stealth Rock, with Choice Specs as the item of choice, but they plead with you to choose basically any other bug or grass type, as even in the bottom of bottom tiers, Wormadam-P is totally outclassed.

If you have gotten this far and still want to use Wormadam— please do not; use Victreebel, or Tangela, or Roselia instead.

Moving on, we have Wormadam-Sandy.



Wormadam-S is a Bug/Ground type, an uncommon type. It is still trash, but not like its other form Wormadam-T. Wormadam-S is slightly notable because it looks like a slice of pizza kind of.
Its base stats are the same as the other Wormadam-forms, but shuffled around.
Wormadam- Sandy Pizza form has the following base stats:

60/79/105/59/85/36.
This, much like Plant, is kind of weird and lopsided. You can clearly tell Game Freak wanted it to be defensive, but it got slapped with a poor defensive typing in Bug and not many tools to use.

Unlike Plant, Pizza can survive in a sandstorm without taking scratch damage, and uh, not much else. Unless Plant has its second ability, Overcoat, but that really isn't going to do much.

I guess it's like a weaker Golem that isn't rock type and instead is Pizza type. Its recommended moveset is "Margherita", with Stealth Rock, Earthquake, Rock Blast, and Sucker Punch. "Golem can do the exact same moveset but not suck with it." Pizza form doesn't even taste like pizza, it's just the bitter gritty taste of defeat.
Sucker Punch lets you lightly poke an enemy if they're about to attack Pizzadam before the little bagworm inevitably faints, Earthquake is old reliable, but it's a pretty weak earthquake, like the ones we get here in Australia, not the ones that stronger pokemon can fire off. Stealth Rock is Stealth Rock, and uh... Rock Blast is the only thing Pizzadam has to deal with pesky flying types that would eat it right up, getting a mouth full of sand in the process. Of course, being so slow, it's unlikely Pizzadam would survive long enough to throw rocks at the birds anyway. I guess Pizzadam can learn Fissure, and it's the lightest pokemon that can do so, but uh, if you're seriously considering putting a 30 accuracy move just so Pizzadam can get lucky and actually do something with its life, please reconsider.



Last up we have Wormadam-Trash.

Don't let the name fool you, Wormadam-T isn't literal trash, it's only figurative trash.



Wormadam-Trash is actually pretty cool, I guess. It's like a bug that looks like fairy floss, and it's got an actually good typing in Bug/Steel, unlike Pizza and Plant. It still has the glaring flaws shared with Pizza and Plant, but they're mitigated somewhat by its typing. It's even slightly bulkier than the other two, making it actually kind of defensive instead of "we thought it could be defensive but then laughed at it".

Wormadam-T's base stats:
60/59/95/69/95/36

This is not terrible, I guess. It's much bulkier than its siblings, and probably won't die in one hit maybe hopefully. That's about where the good stuff ends. It has next to no offensive presence. It has no reliable method to heal. Other steel and mixed-steel type pokemon outclass it horribly, most notably Probopass. It can't really do anything against pokemon that like to boost their stats. Its recommended moveset is:
Stealth Rock/Toxic/Protect/Iron Head
Stealth Rock because it's always good, and Trash might actually survive long enough to get one out. Toxic is useful for defensive pokemon, as always, because it puts the enemy on a short timer before they faint, and it's Trash's best way of dealing with anything that might threaten it, like every pokemon in existence. Protect is to stall and let Toxic rack up damage, and also because Trash doesn't have any other good moves to put there. Iron Head is so it's not totally stopped by Taunt, but with 59 attack it's not going to be doing much but lightly booping the opponent with it.

I guess Overcoat is kind of useful against enemies that would use stuff like Sleep Powder, like Venusaur, but considering nearly everything can deal with Trash without having to put it to sleep, Overcoat is basically wasted on it.



Thus: In general, Wormadam is trash, figuratively speaking, regardless of its form. Plant can click on Leaf Storm and tickle the opponent slightly better than its siblings. Pizza/Sandy can do a Golem style set, but badly. Trash can while away its hours (realistically seconds) of life with Toxic and Protect.
I guess they're kind of a cool idea, but being that they were part of the classical "early route bug trash" archetype, Wormadam and its male counterpart, Mothim, (yes, very funny) they're not going to do much.

Oh right, before I forget, Wormadam and Mothim both have access to Quiver Dance, but realistically, do you see them surviving long enough to get more than a single boost off?

[umiman]

I am always amused by Wormadam trash.

I find plant is the most... killy of the lot with access to giga drain and leaf storm. But in my experience it also dies the fastest.

I like trash simply because it can't be return toxic-ed. Meaning the opponent has to actually hit it to kill it. I mean, that's not particularly difficult but under the correct circumstances it can really screw with the opponent. Have actually won matches where the enemy had no way to defeat the Wormadam trash. When you put all your stats into defense, and say the opponent only has a Golisopod or Donphan left... there's basically nothing they can do.

That being said, at the end of the day... it's still a 424 stat total pokemon. So you can't expect it to win the entire game for you. It can certainly set up Stealth Rock and maybe toxic something before dying though. Also maybe tank spore or some other move. That's usually worth it. I'd rather have Wormadam than say... Maractus or... (bleh) Cacturne.

[Reudh]

Right after the horrors that are Wormadam and her two other forms, we have the male counterpart, Mothim!



There is very little to say about poor old Mothim. He has the exact same stats as his female equivalent, but shuffled around to be more offensive, and decidedly fragile. Still a total of 424, but distribution is like so:

70/94/50/94/50/66

Mothim is a Bug/Flying type that tends to be found early on in the game and then dumped for anything stronger, not unlike Butterfree (Gen 1), Ledian (Gen 2), Beautifly (Gen 3), Combee (also Gen 4), and Vivillon (Gen 6). Unlike the others, Mothim struggles to find its feet even in the bottom tier.

Mothim has access to Tinted Lens and Quiver Dance, just like Butterfree. Mothim has Bug Buzz and Air Slash, both decent STAB moves that run off its somewhat okay I guess 94 Special Attack. The difference between Mothim and Butterfree being that Butterfree is a little less bulky on the physical side (60HP/45DEF vs 70HP/50DEF), more bulky on the special side (60/80 vs 70/50), has slightly lower special attack (90 vs 94) and is slightly faster (70 vs 66).

Thus, it's fairly easy to see who's more effective. Butterfree is still slow, but can do a lot more with its stats than Mothim can. Both of the two are broken in half by merely switching in by Stealth Rock, but at least Butterfree has more coverage. Mothim really only gets Air Slash on the special side, while Butterfree gets the worse Air Cutter.

So yeah, Butterfree can do what Mothim does better, with the only exception being Flying type STAB. Both are pokemon you probably wouldn't want to use in a serious battle given their low base stat totals, but I guess at least Mothim is slightly better than Pizzadam and maybe Wormadam-P.

[DeKaFu]

Another Pokémon Go update today.

Seems to be a mixed bag of nice new QoL features and a whole bunch of rather hilarious bugs. For example, they added the ability to remotely feed berries to Pokémon defending gyms, and then immediately disabled it again to fix "an issue". I wonder if it's related to early reports of people getting speed-locked after feeding a berry? (If so, it would imply they implemented it by just spoofing the player's location over to the gym, and are triggering their own anti-cheating behaviour, which would be pretty funny.)

But the big winner in my book as the most entertaining new bug is this: Spark, the team Instinct leader, is... gone! D:
Instead we have Candela showing up with Sparky's dialogue. To quote the Niantic rep in that thread, "Oh no."

They have the first large-scale in-person Pokémon Go event happening in a few days in Chicago, so... Well, I wish them good luck.

Edit: And Legendaries finally announced! Looks like they'll be special raids with 48-hour countdowns.

2-day-later Edit:
Haha, so the Chicago event (Pokémon Go Fest) is happening right now and it's apparently a complete disaster so far.
- The event is half-over and people are still waiting in line to get in.
- The cellular providers are overloaded so people are having trouble getting internet.
- Niantic's servers are overloaded so even when they can get a signal, they have trouble logging in.
- Even once they log in, the game's performing so poorly due to the network issues that it's almost impossible to interact with anything.
- The Niantic CEO was booed when he appeared on-stage while the crowd apparently chanted "FIX THE GAME".
- They've already promised ticket-price refunds and $100 Pokécoin vouchers to attendees, but I doubt that's much comfort for people who spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on airfare+hotels to attend.

There's still supposed to be a big event later tonight to release Legendaries. The idea was that the people at the fest would work together to fight the Legendary Pokémon raid, and if they beat it it would unlock that Legendary for the rest of the world. Who knows how they're going to organize it now.

Feel pretty bad for everyone involved. Both Niantic and the people attending.

Edit to update: Looks like they fudged the numbers and decided to just unlock all the bonuses/legendary raids for Lugia and Articuno. Big group raid is cancelled, all the attendees just get a Lugia added directly to their account. Probably the best way they could've handled it at this point.

[umiman]

By the way, Pokemon Showdown and the Smogon team are doing another T-shirt fundraising campaign.

Considering the sheer amount of insane hours I've put into this, I went and bought one to show my support. Too bad the shirt designs suck though, not that they can do too much with it as obviously they can't use Pokemon themselves.

[umiman]

Doublepost!

I really hate the spam of new legendaries from this generation. I don't necessarily hate legendaries per se, I just hate these ones because they're so pervasive. There's so many of them and they're way too strong. Especially in contrast to how meh-ish the regular Pokemon of this generation tend to be. It's like GF put all their effort into way too many legendaries and made a bunch of vendor trash for regular Pokemon instead. The only standout normal Pokemon from this generation are Toxapex and Mimikyu. Everything else is meh-ish.

But out of all the legendaries, I particularly despise these guys:

-----

The Tapu Series:


I fucking hate the Tapu series. They look stupid, they all look the same, and they're all way too "perfect". Every single one of them has amazing coverage, strong to powerful defenses, good speed for their roles, and some sort of stupid gimmick ability that makes things unnecessarily annoying because they're too complicated.

Seriously. Without checking the wiki, tell me right now what electric terrain, misty terrain, grassy terrain, and psychic terrain does.

Here's the answer for electric:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This terrain has the following effects on Pokémon that are on the ground and not in the semi-invulnerable turn of a move.

    It prevents affected Pokémon from being afflicted by sleep or Yawn.
        If an affected Pokémon is already drowsy due to Yawn, it is prevented from falling asleep.
        Rest will fail if used by an affected Pokémon.
    It boosts the power of Electric-type moves used by affected Pokémon by 50% (regardless of whether the target of the move is affected by Electric Terrain).

If Electric Terrain is in effect, Nature Power becomes Thunderbolt, Secret Power uses the animation of Thunder Shock and may cause paralysis, and Camouflage causes the user to become Electric-type. Natural objects disappear and cannot be destroyed while Electric Terrain is in effect.

Pokémon with the Ability Surge Surfer have their Speed stat doubled when under the effects of Electric Terrain.

If a Pokémon is holding an Electric Seed while the field is Electric Terrain, it consumes the Electric Seed and its Defense is increased by one stage (even if it is not otherwise affected by the terrain).

If a Terrain Extender is held when Electric Terrain is used, the terrain will last 8 turns instead of 5.

When a Pokémon with the Ability Electric Surge enters battle, Electric Terrain is automatically created which lasts for 5 turns (8 if the Pokémon holds a Terrain Extender).

If powered up by an Electrium Z into Z-Electric Terrain, the user's Speed stat raises one stage.

They're all drastically different by the way.

So you gotta fight all these idiotic things that are too strong for their own good, come with natural steroid buffs for their STAB attack, and have to contend with these goddamn terrain mechanics as well. Honestly, probably the only one of those that isn't particularly used that often is Tapu Bulu, because he also heals the enemy. They're confusing, annoying, and they're in every single goddamn game. I hate them and I want them to bleed anus-out.

I don't even know why there are 4 of them. Every single generation has 3 of the somewhat-legendary trio tier. These guys decided they want 4. Hurr...