I was up to my 39th straight battle in the Battle Tower, in Alpha Sapphire.
50 wins, and you get to battle the "Battle Chatelaines", who come with their own (sorta) unique battle theme, plus other rewards besides. I had already beaten all of the Chatelaines at the 21 win mark, so i got to do the "Super" level of difficulty.
In this case, I was playing Super Multi battles, with Wally as my AI partner. His modus operandi was essentially "Mega evolve Gallade then spam Close Combat. Occasionally use Leaf Blade if they resist Close Combat." That worked really, really well, but it meant that Gallade-M was progressively more fragile the longer the fight went on. His second pokemon was a Magnezone; quite a strong mon with some strong moves, but it liked to use Thunder which had a habit of missing its 70% accuracy check multiple times.
So, on my side, we had an Aerodactyl, that I mega-evolved into Aerodactyl-M; gaining Tough Claws as the ability and a pretty staggering boost to attack and speed.
So the battle went absolutely swimmingly until Wally got Gallade knocked out after it couldn't break through some pokemon, forget which one, and got KO'd by earthquake. Aerodactyl obviously was fine; being flying it could avoid Earthquake.
The other issue was that Wally's Magnezone took a hit, popping the Air Balloon preventing ground types from hitting it, which left it open to another Earthquake.
I managed to knock the foe's whateveritwas out, thankfully preventing Magnezone from a quaky demise.
So that left just my Aerodactyl and my Sylveon, and the foe had one last pokemon.
They sent out a Luxray. Mercifully, this Luxray wasn't packing Intimidate.
So it uses Superpower, drops its attack and defense in order to wallop the shit out of Magnezone. (Superpower is a fighting type move, high base power, drops user's attack and defense one stage when used.). Doesn't knock it out, but gets Magnezone low. Magnezone is walled to shit; electric resists electric and steel, so the AI instead puts up a Reflect barrier to raise our team's defense. Smart.
Luxray, predictably whenever the AI in the battle tower has a mon with a move that drops stats on user, carried a White Herb to restore its depleted stats back to normal once.
Next turn, Luxray knocks out Magnezone with another Superpower. Aerodactyl-M misses a Rock Slide. Luxray lands a Wild Charge, and oneshots Aerodactyl-M. Bugger. Luxray takes recoil damage; about 25% of its HP or so.
Out comes Sylveon. Now, while Sylveon's physical defense isn't that great, the Luxray is at -1 Attack, and I have reflect up. That neatly protects me. I get Toxic up on the Luxray, ensuring its time is limited. It hits with Thunder Fang. Deals pretty abysmal damage. I'm safe; at the rate the Luxray is dealing damage, Sylveon will knock it out first. Even if things got hairy, I could just use Wish and Protect to restore health.
A Pixilate-d Hyper Voice knocks Luxray down to ~30%.
Next turn, the clincher.
Luxray used Thunder Fang!A critical hit!Sylveon fainted!FUUUUUUUUUCK. Thirty nine straight wins lost due to ONE MEASLY CRIT. (Critical hits ignore stat changes on both the user and foe, where applicable. So the crit based Thunder Fang off Luxray's healthy Attack vs my papery defense, ignoring Reflect.)
Just in case you hadn't read it already:
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Topic: How did you last die? (Read 2369725 times)