Is that the strongest legal hit possible in the game?
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RTTP: The Pokemon. All 721 of them, and counting.
- Thread starter Watch Da Birdie
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Is that the strongest legal hit possible in the game?
Nope, we can go further by adding a Helping Hand boost in doubles.
+6 252+ SpA Heatran Helping Hand Eruption (150 BP) vs. -6 0 HP / 0 SpD Dry Skin Paras in Harsh Sunshine: 2845800-3348004 (23715000 - 27900033.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
And I'm sure we can go even further if we wanted to.
balladofwindfishes
Member
Primal Groudon has the highest Special Attack of any Fire Type. Mega Mewtwo Y has the highest Spa in general. So either one of those.
Although I'm not sure, but Flash Fire might offset the higher Special Attack, in which you could have Heatran with Flash Fire activated, while holding Choice Specs.
Max EVs and IVs, along with Modest or whatever nature. And then against a Paras at level 1 with 0 EVs and IVs and a Special Defense lowering nature.
Although I'm not sure, but Flash Fire might offset the higher Special Attack, in which you could have Heatran with Flash Fire activated, while holding Choice Specs.
Max EVs and IVs, along with Modest or whatever nature. And then against a Paras at level 1 with 0 EVs and IVs and a Special Defense lowering nature.
Volcarona on its own wins this for me.
Man, gen V had so many great pokemon with unique types.
NipplesAndToes23
Member
Does anyone have any recommendations for climbing the Black City Tower in Blaze Black 2? I lost the Boss Trainer on floor 5 about 3 times before I beat him. I feel like I should have a team of mostly legendaries since the Boss Trainer legendaries were giving me the most trouble.
Boss Doggie
all my loli wolf companions are so moe
But of course we all know best bug
balladofwindfishes
Member
Joltik gets even cuter when you realize how tiny it is.
But of course we all know best bug
Best bug with best name too.
balladofwindfishes
Member
Apparently Joltik is/was pretty good in the TCG combined with Mew.
Mega Charizard Y has 159 Sp. Att. Primal Groudon has 150.
balladofwindfishes
Member
Oh, you're right. I skipped right over M. Charizard
that isn't a good analogy though? the problem is you have to choose 3/4 pokemon (singles or doubles), so it's akin to choosing which chess pieces you can use before starting the game. the information of what pokemon your opponent has isn't very valuable (if you play random matches), since your opponent doesn't have to bring a balanced team of six. he or she could have tyranitar, dragonite, gyarados and they could all have choice band for example. choosing your lineup of 3/4 is for the most part blind (again, in random matches.)
what team preview should have been is allowing both players to choose their starter(s). that's it. that way you create a predictation game that isn't similar to rolling a dice to determine a critical hit. there's already enough variance in the game. i understand the reasoning; they don't want long drawn out games in 6v6 singles/doubles. i don't think team preview is the way to create healthy mindgames.
Although the difference in power between Eruption and Fire Blast probably makes the hit more powerful coming from Groudon regardless.
balladofwindfishes
Member
M Charizard Y has Blast Burn, so Charizard would be higher. Same power (150). Would a boosted Fire Pledge be higher at 160? I honestly don't know how the pledge moves work.
Skill Swap Flash Fire onto that sucker ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
This was from yesterday, but damn, I agree. Probably the catchiest opening to any Pokemon movie. It sticks in my head the most. This song is my headcanon theme for Generation II, just like The First Movie's opening with Squirtle, Bulbasaur, and Pikachu was for Gen I. Really good showcase of the Johto Pokemon in action.
Pokemon Joh-to!
Blackleg-sanji1
Banned
Totodile was playing with the poor guy lmao!! The greatest opening to a pokemon movie
Watch Da Birdie
I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
#167 - Spinarak
Bug/Poison
If Ledyba and Ledian are to Caterpie and Butterfree, then Spinarak and Ariados are to Weedle and Beedrill, though beyond their type they're rather different so one might not think of them as counterparts at first glance. Spinarak is the opposite of Ledyba, found only at night (or in Headbutt trees) in Gold while its Gen I counterpart, Weedle, can only be found in the Bug Catching Contest in Gold. Night in Generation II began after 6:00 PM, right when a kid finishes all their homework and is allowed to play a few games for a bit until it's time for bed, so I think Spinarak was a bit more accessible for most folks plus, as a spider, I think it has a coolness to it that might make folks want to train it. After all, spiders in real life are known to be dangerous creatures and superior to basically every Bug, so the Pokemon version must follow suit, right? Well, Spinarak isn't all that great, but at least it was actually given a few Bug and Poison-type moves to use STAB with in Generation II.
I'm sure everyone remembers running into their first Spinarak and noticing that rather than it being bright green like in all of its official art, it was actually a dark purple color in Gold and Silver. I guess the intention was possibly since you typically only found it at night, the darker color was supposed to give the impression of "night time" since the battle scene otherwise was always simply a blank white void, but no other Pokemon sprite worked like that so maybe it was a mistake? Anyway, it was fixed in Crystal, and since then Spinarak has always been a lime green color, thought I think the dark purple coloring may have been a better choice ultimately as it fit better with its Type and Evolution. Spinarak only has six legs, and I've seen people claim it's not a real spider because of this, but I suspect the other two legs were dropped simply because it'd clutter up the design and might've proved difficult to sprite. There's plenty of Bug-type Pokemon who have far less arms/legs than they should have, so I don't know why people home in on Spinarak about this.
Spinarak lacks a visible spinneret, though it has been shown hanging from its bottom in various media so I assume they simply didn't draw a visible one, but for the most part it's usually shown shooting thread from its mouth. There's actually a real spider species known to do this, the "spitting spiders", who can shoot out a special combination of venom and spider silk that immobilizes and poisons its prey, so I wouldn't be surprised if Spinarak was inspired by these specifically. The face on Spinarak's bottom is believed to have been inspired by the "happy face spider", a spider native to Hawaii that has varying patterns on its back that on occasion form a shape akin to a smiley face, and it's believed these patterns are used to confuse birds who would otherwise swoop down and eat them. One particular "spitting spider", the Scytodes thoracica, also has a pattern on its abdomen that looks quite similar to Spinarak's, so once more I wonder if that spider influenced it more than normally thought as most folks tend to just say it's a "happy face spider", and leave it at that. When Spinarak is view from the front, the face appears to be frowning, but when viewed from behind, it appears to be smiling, and it's a pretty cute little visual gag. In the show, and I think the manga did this too, Spinarak apparently can change its face to suit its mood, though this has never been seen in the games as far as I know.
Spinarak's focus episode in Johto was actually pretty neat, involving one being used by Officer Jenny to capture a local thief known as the "Black Arachnid". It just so happened that in the past, a Spinarak foiled the original Black Arachnid, and since then it's become tradition among the Officer Jenny to use a Spinarak. Funny how that worked out so well with the spider Pokemon capturing the spider-themed thief. Bugsy also used a Spinarak in his Gym Battle against Ash in place of his Kakuna from the games, which makes so much more sense. Why couldn't they give Bugsy, the Bug-type Gym Leader of Gold and Silver, at least one of the nine Generation II Bug Pokemon in Gold and Silver?
#168 - Ariados
Bug/Poison
Ariados is the evolution of Spinarak at Level 22. Ariados has the same BST as Ledian, though better distributed with its biggest weakness being its rather low Speed, though it's probably far more useful during the main adventure than Ledian, and is probably one of the stronger Early Bugs, well, till Generation V that is. Ariados has never been exactly a "good" Pokemon competitive, but unlike Ledian it's actually got a niche due to its various entry hazard moves such as Toxic Spikes and Sticky Web, and its trapping abilities in Spider Web. Unlike Ledian, it seems Ariados is steadily seeing more and more useful tools added to its arsenal and if it ever Mega Evolved, with a decent boost in stats it could probably become quite potent. As it is, though, Ariados is just too slow to really get things set up to punish the opponent, but it's probably a fun Pokemon to mess around in game with as the NPC Trainers don't seem to be able to handle tricky play styles all that well. I need to get around to using this guy one day during an in-game adventure, might be fun.
It's time to talk about an aesthetic choice that's quite frequent in newer Pokemon, especially Generation III but it happens a bit in Generation II as well, that I think is a legitimate reason why one might not prefer Pokemon past the original 151---random palette changes. In Generation I, Pokemon more or less kept their main color as they evolved except for Pokemon who underwent major changes, like Magikarp and Dragonair, but otherwise if a Pokemon's body-type more or less stayed the same, their color stayed the same as well which gave evolutionary families a nice cohesion. For some reason, though, Game Freak began to drop what I'd consider a basic rule of design, and as we get into later Pokemon you'll notice many of them otherwise stay the same in terms of body shape and animal basis, except they suddenly have a drastic color change. You can see this clearly with Spinarak and Ariados, where upon evolution the colors pretty drastically change. Now if Spinarak was colored purple like it was in the original sprites, this wouldn't have been such an issue, but as it stands the cohesion of the line is ruined somewhat by the palette change. But to be fair, this isn't the worst thing that can happen to a design, and it doesn't make the Pokemon instantly bad and unsalvageable, but as I've thought it over I do think it isn't a design choice that should be used except for specific reasons (i.e. tadpole to frog where that makes sense), and may be why many folks consider later Pokemon to be more complex than their earlier counterparts. That said it was probably at its peak in Generation III, but Game Freak has dialed it down, specifically the Generation VI Pokemon for the most part avoid this issue and that may be why they've been received rather well for the most part.
Back to Ariados itself, it's a larger spider of course, and it now has a visible spinneret. Ariados is capable of shooting webbing from both its mouth and spinneret, sometimes simultaneously, and it's said in the Pokemon World, some people cannot tell which is the head and which is the back, though it seems pretty obvious to me. You'll notice if you look at Ariados from behind, the legs sticking out of its back look like antennae of sorts, while the spots and spinneret form a face of sorts, though I think the mimicry going on here is pretty poor and looks a bit goofy---perhaps it's good enough to fool the simple brains of actual animals, though. But as a person looking at Ariados from an aesthetic standpoint, I think the motif they were going for isn't pulled off all that well, and the little legs hanging in the air just end up looking kind of clunky and sort of make Ariados look a bit cute, when I think it should be a bit more ferocious. I'd rather they simply have gone with just a normal, eight-legged spider to be honest, as I don't think it needed the extra gimmick when just giving us a spider Pokemon would've been good enough, as they're iconic and exciting creatures on their own that fit right into the crazy world of Pokemon. Ariados is probably a take on the Myrmarachne formicaria, the "ant mimic spider", though the actual spider looks way cooler and pulls off the mimicry far better, to the point that I could see an actual human-being mistaking one for a simple ant. Ariados on the other hand doesn't really look like it's mimicking any bug, if anything the back of its body looks like some weird duck-rabbit creature. That being said, as our first spider Pokemon, Ariados did a pretty decent job, and despite my qualms with its secondary motif I think it filled in the role of the Pokemon world's spider well enough, though I think its Generation V counterpart easily wins out among most fans.
Ariados' debut filler in Johto took place at a ninja school, and I believe there's a history tying spiders and ninjas together, though I don't know all the specifics...I imagine it may be simply due to a ninja's craftiness being comparable to that of a spider, although there is a ninja tool named after the Japanese water spider, the "mizugumo", which are specialized shoes capable of allowing the user to walk over water, though modern tests seem to show these actually don't work and are probably a myth for the most part. Ariados has appeared quite frequently throughout the show over the years, often playing an antagonistic role which fits it quite well being a creature most people dislike---particularly in Diamond and Pearl they were regularly occurring antagonists to Dawn, attacking her in a way similar to the Spearow who attacked Ash at the onset of her journey, and returning in her post-series special to get their revenge, this time being led by a Shiny Ariados. Fuuuuuck spiders.
PorygonVandal
Member
This is still my favorite Pokemon calculation of all time
+6 252+ Atk Hustle Darumaka (lvl 5) Helping Hand Flare Blitz vs. -6 252 HP / 0 Def Dry Skin Parasect (lvl 100) in Sun: 324-384 (100 - 118.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
AKA Parasect trained all its life just to get bopped by a lil baby mon barely out of its mama's womb
I have used an Ariados as a reserve in my Crystal team, he was weak as a Spinarak but got stronger once he evovled.
He pulled his weight until I replaced him for Sudowoodo.
Same, Gen 5 had the coolest set of Bugs type.
So cute, I used one in my White team he was awesome.
He pulled his weight until I replaced him for Sudowoodo.
Same, Gen 5 had the coolest set of Bugs type.
But of course we all know best bug
So cute, I used one in my White team he was awesome.
balladofwindfishes
Member
Spinarack SCREAMS as his cry
Of course Stadium 2 translated that to bird noises because Stadium 2 loved bird noises lol
In reality an insect could not do that as its body is rigid, but Spinarack appears to have a soft body, as many bug types tend to.
Of course Stadium 2 translated that to bird noises because Stadium 2 loved bird noises lol
Stadium 2 had a nifty way for Spinarack to plausibly do this. By tilting its butt up, it makes its back into angry eyes without actually magically changing the pattern, but just folding over part of its body.
In reality an insect could not do that as its body is rigid, but Spinarack appears to have a soft body, as many bug types tend to.
I wasn't a fan of bug types until Gen V, only a handful of them were good, then GameFreak decided to make up for 14 years of neglect and made numerous awesome bug types for Unova. Galvantula and Volcarona have to be the two coolest Pokemon ever, and they are so damn good to use.
Dat Compound Eyes Galvantula.
Dat Compound Eyes Galvantula.
balladofwindfishes
Member
You'd think, looking at Water Pokemon, that because there's piles and piles of real life inspiration just sitting there, there would be way more bug type Pokemon. There's a lot of arthropods in the world, more so than any other animal.
Like, we don't even have a stick bug Pokemon. Or any of the other millions of insects, arachnids, worms, or crustaceans.
Like, we don't even have a stick bug Pokemon. Or any of the other millions of insects, arachnids, worms, or crustaceans.
We don't even have an earthworm or a fly or a cockroach or a mosquito. Some of the most common animals people see, and yet somehow there aren't any Pokemon based on them.
This is a bit of a tangent, but I feel like Pokemon drops the ball in regards to poison type moves and real world poisons or at least toxins. I'm sure there are many that paralyze, induce burning and other sensations but there's no poison type moves to reflect this. We have this in a sense with scald as it is boiling hot water that burns an opponent, but why isn't there a poison type move that paralyzes? I feel like the semi "mind-game" of fucking with a pokemon's sensations so to speak should be made as well. Poision, and by extension poison pokemon could be a lot more interesting. The psychic weakness makes no sense either, the only explanation is something like the placebo effect but even then that's kind of dubious.
Why would people want a fly, an earthworm or a cockroach Pokemon?
Because some people like earthworms, flies, and cockroaches?
And even for those who don't, this is the same game series that made people love a pile of purple sewage and a gas-spewing naval mine.
Watch Da Birdie
I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
#170 - Chinchou
Water/Electric
For the most part, Generation I played it relatively safe when it came to dual-Types. Most Type combinations were seen as "realistic", such as mixing Rock/Ground and Grass/Poison, with the weirdest Type combinations probably being the Psychic Pokemon since "Psychic" wasn't a natural element. In Generation II we began to see more Type combinations that were a bit risky, imaginative, and unexpected, and Chinchou is the first example of that, mixing together Water and Electric who were always shown to be basically dichotomous to one another. Personally, when we get an "odd couple" dual-Type like this, it's always neat, even if the actual Pokemon isn't all that cool---hey, it's better than yet another pure Water-type Pokemon. Chinchou isn't one of my favorite Pokemon, though I think it was a great choice for the premiere Water/Electric line. Unfortunately, unless you backtracked, the only place in Johto you'd find Chinchou to use in your team was not until you obtained the Super Rod at Olivine City, and then fished it up there, otherwise you wouldn't find one until you got to Kanto, or headed back around New Bark Town for whatever reason which is unlikely unless you needed to talk to your Mom to change to daylight savings or ask her for money. So many players may have skipped over it during their first time playing Gold and Silver unless they were specifically looking for one, which is a shame.
The Chinchou line are based off angler fish, and in fact Chinchou derives its name from the Football fish, known as the "chouchin-ankou" (basically lantern angler fish) in Japan. In Japan, Chinchou itself is known as Chonchie, and I'm really confused why the localization team took a Japanese word and reversed it for the English name. As a kid, I never knew why exactly it was called "Chinchou", and that's probably because the localization took a Japanese word only someone who studied Japanese would likely know, and reversed it. So, in order to appeal more to domestic audiences, NoA took a foreign word and switched it around, turning it into complete gibberish. Okay. Anyway, I'll talk more about angler fish when I reach the evolution, since Chinchou barely looks like one, and always reminded me of a Snork (aquatic Smurf, basically), though I wonder if it was possibly inspired by the sea angel as well. It's a cute design though despite not being an accurate representation of the animal, though I'll admit I'm disappointed that our resident angler fish Pokemon ultimately consist of these two, but I'll get more into that with Lantern.
Chinchou pretty much is colored how you'd expect a Water/Electric Pokemon to be colored, blue and yellow, and if you had trouble still telling it was an Electric-type after that, the plus-sign eyes and light bulb feelers probably would've tipped you off. Yeah, Chinchou is pretty on the nose as far as the design of dual-type Pokemon go, who in Generation I sometimes were quite hard to distinguish at first glance (would you think Exeggcutor was Grass/Psychic at first?), but that may be a good thing, as most players probably want to be able to tell the Type of a Pokemon at a glance, and a criticism levied at many new Pokemon is that their Type sometimes is impossible to tell without looking it up, though I think every Generation has this issue somewhat. Chinchou's antennae are used to communicate with its friends at the bottom of the sea (I don't think angler fish use their lures in this way though), as well as to hunt prey as the two tips are charged with positive and negative electricity which it can discharge between the two to zap its prey. Its electricity is pretty powerful, so much so that even Chinchou itself cannot help but feel a bit tingly from it. I guess as a Water-type Pokemon, there's still an inherent fear of electricity---though as of Generation III, its main Ability Volt Absorb means that Electric-type attacks will actually heal it.
"Takin' it on the Chinchou". It was a Johto filler, and Chinchou was in it. In the anime-only Whirl Cup competition it was owned by Misty's main rival of the arc, Trinity, and helped her win the semi-final match against Misty and move onto the finals, though like most rivals she ended up losing the next match to some no-name. The whole Whirl Cup arc was basically "Water Pokemon Filler Archipelago + We Remembered Misty Exists", with Chinchou's focus episode taking place within it too.
#171 - Lanturn
Water/Electric
At Level 27 Chinchou evolves into Lanturn. Water/Electric is a very beneficial Type due to only having two weaknesses, Grass and Ground, and combined with its high HP, the highest among all Electric Pokemon, Lanturn is surprisingly durable and capable of countering quite a lot of Pokemon, so it can find itself a spot on a variety of teams. Too bad it's not all that common in Johto, as it probably makes a great member of your in-game team as well. It's another Pokemon who I never paid attention to much in terms of gameplay, and always wrote it off as a gimmicky Pokemon who was easily disposable like most of our previous Johto Pokemon, but now I have the urge to train one myself as it fits the aesthetic of the Pokemon I tend to train, the odder looking Pokemon who have their uses but aren't a staple of high-level play.
I actually sort of hate Lanturn, only because it's a big "what could have been" for me in terms of design. Now, Lanturn looks more like an angler fish than Chinchou, and admittedly does adhere quite close to various traits of the creature such as the lure having evolved from its dorsal fin, the bioluminescence being caused by a symbiotic relationship with bacteria, and its ability to distend its mouth to great lengths to swallow prey whole with a single gulp. But if you've ever looked at an angler fish, you know those things are absolutely wicked looking, whereas Lanturn resembles a weird dolphin-like creature, and this is one time I regret a Pokemon being adorable, because it just doesn't do the actual fish justice. That's not even getting into the bizarre sexual dimorphism present in the species, where the super-tiny male latches onto the female and basically combines with her, and this is one animal Game Freak needs to utilize again right now. If we ever get a more true-to-form angler fish, then I'll be satisfied having both existing simultaneously to appeal to the fans who prefer one to the other, and reasons like this is why I don't necessarily think it's bad when Game Freak re-uses animals. Oh, and while they're at it, give us an actual dolphin Pokemon we've been waiting for six Generations now!
Another positive I'll say about Lanturn is its design has withstood the test of time in my opinion, and I think it actually looks really good in its XY model, as I think it looks more fish-like when before sometimes it resembled a strange penguin. The only issue with the XY model is that due to the washed out colors, the normal blue Lanturn and the Shiny purple Lanturn basically look the same and it's hard to tell them apart unless they're looking at both of them, when before the difference was very noticeable. For some reason purple Shiny Lanturn reminds me a bit of NiGHTS, especially in its back sprite.
Lanturn had multiple appearances during Johto, but actually never got a focus episode to itself, rather it always played a minor role secondary to another Pokemon. There was one Johto episode where Misty challenged an unofficial Water-type Gym Leader who used one, but before it got to fight, Team Rocket interrupted the match and it was never continued. It wasn't till Diamond and Pearl we actually got to see one battle in the "Wallace Cup" Pokemon Contest, where a minor, but named, Trainer used it to knock Ash out of the tournament.
Agreed, which is why gen 6 only having one set of bug type is so annoying, especially coming from gen 5.
I have a phobia of Snake and while looking at pictures of them set my fear off, the snake Pokémon strangely don't trigger them.
Probably because I feel safe and protected with my Pokémon.
Well Game Freak is experimenting with that what with Freeze-Dry being super effective against water, Flying Press being dual type, so maybe we will see more unique moves as the series goes on.
Also, just to say this again, because I said it already but: Acid should be reworked into being super effective against steel types or a move in that same vein.
I think Chinchou is adorable. I love the +_+ face, and while it might not look much like a real life angler fish, it works as a neat original creature design.
Lanturn is just kinda lame and goofy. Definitely a downgrade.
Lanturn is just kinda lame and goofy. Definitely a downgrade.
PhantomVash808
Member
I can't believe this list is missing one of the most powerful Pokemon
JK
JK
Orca
Orcas are dolphins.
or an orca for that matter
People want the smaller more common idea of the dolphin instead of free willy sea god.
Watch Da Birdie
I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
They go with "ogre" in the dub, but originally it's "Kaiorga", so it seems to be a weird misspelling of orca that the dub fucked up further I guess.
I mean if you look at it straight on and squint, you can /kinda/ pretend it's a dolphin, but I mean. That is a fish.
OfficerRaichu15
Member
This bitch gets it
Tangrowth has always been my main tank since DPP.
Tangrowth has always been my main tank since DPP.
Nocturnowl
Member
The last three evolutionary lines all strike me as feeling like they could've used a third form, not so much a loss with the bug types but Lanturn strikes me a bit too plain and I've always felt that was kind of a shame.
Point taken. We could definitely use another dolphin that doesn't look like the victim of a rolling pin.
Meanwhile, we have God knows how many lepidopterans. Butterfree, Venomoth, Beautifly, Dustox, Mothim, Volcarona, Vivilion...
SatelliteOfLove
Member
The gulf between Ledian's design, movepool, and stat distribution is painful.
Watch Da Birdie
I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
Generation II in a nutshell. A lot of two-stage lines I feel in Generation II easily could've used another evolution, though some like Teddiursa and Pineco I think could've fit in a middle form.