Jun 09
You're Doing It Wrong
OK, so I have a bit of free time today so I'll quickly analyse the detailed usage stats that Doug has kindly provided from the Little Cup. I'm going to demonstrate which pokemon (in my humble opinion) and being used incorrectly.
| Chimchar | Move | Grass Knot | 28.6 |
The majority of Little Cup pokemon are extremely light, putting them in the 20 or 40 BP range when it's even more effective to use a NVE Flamethrower even.
| Diglett | Item | Focus Sash | 84.2 |
| Diglett | Item | Choice Scarf | 7.8 |
Honestly, Choice Scarf Diglett needs to increase in usage. Focus Sash Diglett is useful, no doubt but at this moment in time, Snover's usage and hence Hail is rocketing and many more teams are packing Stealth Rock too, meaning it's more likely that Focus Sash will not be intact. Moreover, Choice Scarf Diglett naturally gets the jump on any Diglett without an intact Sash and revenge kills the pesky Cranidos as well as other common Scarfers such as Machop and Mankey. People need to stop discarding Diglett's revenge killing powers so readily.
| Duskull | Move | Blizzard | 18.2 |
| Duskull | Move | Ice Beam | 11.3 |
OK, let me get this straight, Gligar on almost 50% of teams and Duskull beats all non-gimmicky/specialised variants of Gligar and around 70% of Duskull aren't running the attacks to do so? Urm, you're definitely doing it wrong. Confuse Ray, Pain Split and Destiny Bond are all used more than those two attacks combined which is definitely weird as from my experience with Duskull, it doesn't really have the Speed to make use of Destiny Bond and Confuse Ray and Pain Split are what you would call "meh".
| Exeggcute | Item | Focus Sash | 78.9 |
Running Focus Sash on something with 60 / 80 / 45 defences and some good resistances like Fighting, Water and Ground is a waste of its talents.
| Gligar | Item | Leftovers | 12.4 |
| Gligar | Move | Rock Polish | 12.9 |
Oran Berry and access Roost means that Leftovers is very ineffective on Gligar as a means of healing. It's pretty weird that 1 in 8 Gligars are using this. Rock Polish needs more love as well, considering it's one of the most destructive sweepers in the metagame.
| Houndour | Move | Fire Fang | 9.6 |
Flamethrower is more effective against opponents than Fire Fang.
| Larvitar | Move | Facade | 50.0 |
Only 20 usages of Larvitar but Earthquake and Stone Edge have higher base power with STAB and Facade does nothing to enhance the type coverage of its STABs.
| Machop | Move | Close Combat | 5.9 |
The main reasons to use Machop over Mankey is confusion and its bulk. Close Combat doesn't confuse and is counter productive in retaining bulk so use DynamicPunch or use Mankey instead.
| Munchlax | Ability | Pickup | 12.1 |
1 in 8 Munchlax users don't bother to check its ability before using the team
| Porygon | Move | Tri Attack | 8.9 |
Illegal for the same reason that Hydro Pump is on Staryu
| Slowpoke | Move | Belly Drum | 26.6 |
Shocking that a quarter of users of Slowpoke are using a set that doesn't make use of its bulk and that it doesn't have the stats to make use of!
| Squirtle | Move | Foresight | 6.8 |
Honestly, don't bother at all with Foresight. By the time you try to Foresight and then Rapid Spin, Misdreavus is outspeeding and Shadow Balling you away or setting up. Same goes for Gastly.
| Staryu | Move | Hydro Pump | 19.7 |
If you are using Hydro Pump on Staryu please stop! It is genderless and Hydro Pump is learnt above level 5.
| Teddiursa | Item | Focus Sash | 32.6 |
| Teddiursa | Item | Oran Berry | 1.1 |
| Teddiursa | Move | Sleep Talk | 33.7 |
| Teddiursa | Move | Roar | 33.7 |
| Teddiursa | Move | Rest | 33.7 |
| Teddiursa | Move | Mud-Slap | 18.5 |
| Teddiursa | Move | Cross Chop | 15.2 |
| Teddiursa | Move | Dig | 14.1 |
| Teddiursa | Move | Return | 10.9 |
| Teddiursa | Move | Shadow Claw | 10.9 |
Why are some people using some sort of bulky Rest-talk variant or even worse a Focus Sash version when Teddiursa is up there with Taillow as an abuser of Facade and has a better movepool to back it up. Facade/Crunch/Close Combat is unresisted, don't bother using anything else guys.
| Trapinch | Move | Toxic | 14.3 |
Don't waste a turn using Toxic when you could be smashing something with your STAB Earthquake off a mammoth 100 Base Attack. Please.
| Zigzagoon | Move | Extremespeed | 100.0 |
| Zigzagoon | Move | Belly Drum | 100.0 |
Illegal combination here, unfortunately
The "lol" section
| Magikarp | Usage | 1 | 0.0 |
| Murkrow | Usage | 1 | 0.0 |
Thus I conclude, thanks for reading.
May 31
Things that are floating around in my mind
At the moment I have IRL priorities to be taken care of, but I still have quite a few ideas of what to write in future blog entries, when I have the time to do so, probably in a couple of weeks' time.
At this present time, I have ideas about writing an article on what makes a Pokemon broken in Little Cup, whether or not it is feasible that some banned Pokemon could be retested (in my opinion obviously), and general things about individual Pokemon, such as how and why you should use one instead of another, I think I may start with Gastly vs Misdreavus on that topic since I generally prefer Gastly to Misdreavus.
So check back sometime later and see what I've added here, if I can get out of my normal lazy self, that is
Feel free to comment on what you'd like to see most.
6:31 AM Nov 24
