dondon151

Awesome. I'm pretty confident that the Blaziken + Swoobat core can do everything that it did previously, but I hope none of the changes have screwed that one. Does the 3rd floor of the department store still sell hold items for battle (Scope Lens, etc.)?

Episode 13 just got released, so that means that it's time to start over and update the route. I am unfortunately very busy and there are some questions to which I would like to know the answer before I start over. If you're feeling generous, I'd like for you to help me out. 1. Are most Pokemon still in the same place? I am curious in particular about Woobat, Ralts, and Abra. 2. Have there been any big changes to the locations and identities of hidden items? 3. Do X items now work correctly? There was no mention of them in the changelog. 4. What exactly was changed for the Shelly and Shade battles (i.e., field effect and lead Pokemon)? 5. I read that there was an unintended big skip in the new content. Where should I stop beforehand? If Ame reads this, is the problem with the new events going to be patched in the near future?

What are the main changes in episode 13 prior to the new content? I'd like to know what I have to change in the speedrun route. (Obviously I know what the changes are from the release post, but I really want to know exactly what those changes are. I'm most curious about what I would have to do, if anything, against updated Shelly and Shade.)

Baton Pass is not worth the moveslot on Blaziken.

Use a Heart Scale to teach Hi Jump Kick to Blaziken (deleting Double Kick). If you use Gardevoir to try to pick off Aya's Pokemon one by one, you can have Blaziken set up as the partner Pokemon and sweep.

I am implying, however, that you should either expect to or at least aim to OHKO enemy Pokemon, since it's the most reliable way to defeat opponents and it's part of the reason why you even bother having other team members in the first place.

It's insignificant against Pokemon that Arcanine already outspeeds because of low power. Against Pokemon Arcanine doesn't outspeed, you're not coming close to OHKOing anything with Extremespeed. We know already that trips to the PC take time and recoil compromises sweeps.

My point was that Litleo evolves earlier than Growlithe. If Growlithe wants Flare Blitz, it either has to be bred (yuck) or it has to hold off evolution until L45, which is a whole 10 levels later than Litleo - that's quite a significant difference. If it doesn't want Flare Blitz, it loses its best physical STAB and it still ends up evolving later than Litleo based on the location of the first obtainable Fire Stone. The term "on paper" is a bit misleading. My comparison is a bit more practical, but it's still "on paper" since it has to make a bunch of assumptions in order to make the comparison seem fair. In practice it could be quite different, and I suspect that Litleo would have an even greater advantage because of the increased availability, slightly better level-up movepool, and trade EXP bonus. Both of these Pokemon have very solid stats for unevolved Pokemon. Litleo's BST is actually a little higher (for what it's worth), but late evolution is still a serious problem for Growlithe. It's incredibly misleading to flatly declare that Arcanine has a better offensive stat than Pyroar when it's a 1 point difference. The difference in speed can actually matter, however. Bulk tends to not be as useful in-game because sweeping is much easier to do. Normal type's Fighting weakness is not an insignificant problem, since Victoria, Kiki, and Samson focus on Fighting-type Pokemon. It doesn't tend to be very common otherwise. I would rather have STAB on Normal-type moves in exchange for Fighting weakness + Ghost immunity because they provide an option against Fire, Dragon, and Water-types, and the STAB tends to be very useful earlygame. There are several problems with this analysis. - I'm assuming you made a mistake with the Sun Stone, because the Fire Stone is relevant. The first one to my knowledge is on the bottom floor of Pyrous Mt. - Close Combat should not be relevant, for reasons that I'll explain below. - Outrage is garbage because it has next to zero coverage, is not boosted in any way, and self-confuses. Imagine if Arcanine learned Thrash at L43 - would you be jumping at the chance to learn it? Probably not. Pyroar's Hyper Voice also doesn't add coverage, but it's stronger to begin with, can be boosted, and doesn't lock in with confusion after 2-3 turns. - The big drawback with Flare Blitz is the recoil. Flare Blitz being stronger than Flamethrower doesn't necessarily mean that it's unequivocally better; I could just as well say that Pyroar's STABs don't necessitate recoil damage. - Boosting can be perfectly acceptable despite mediocre defenses. Blaziken can boost with Bulk Up even against special attackers. The only caveat here is that it's obviously not a universal option. There's also the option of facilitating setup with Noble Roar. - Of course Headbutt and Fire Fang are bad in the long run. That's why you replace them with Hyper Voice and Flamethrower. Even Echoed Voice has some strong damaging potential, since it's like Fury Cutter. What do I do with the Mankey/Primeape from Route 1? (Don't answer; that's a rhetorical question - the point is that getting a CC Primeape doesn't mean that you're even close to "good to go;" you have to breed it with the Arcanine, hatch an egg, level it back up to ~L50, and then use another Fire Stone.) What I don't understand is why the cost of obtaining such an Arcanine is completely handwaved. In economics, there is the concept of opportunity cost, which essentially suggests that in order to accurately gauge the net profit of a given activity, the profit you get from that activity should be compared to the profit that you would obtain from an alternate activity. If you've spent a lot of time breeding CC onto Growlithe, then why is the opportunity cost of that effort not considered? You could have bred a move onto some other Pokemon, or you could have been grinding another Pokemon, or you could have progressed through the game, or you could have gone and done something else entirely. A brief aside for the movepool comment: Litleo gets Headbutt at L11, which is better than anything Growlithe has until it appears. At L20, Growlithe's attacking options are arguably slightly better (though Headbutt w/ Moxie is better vs. neutral targets than Flame Wheel or Fire Fang). Litleo gets Take Down at L20, which isn't great because of accuracy and recoil issues, but it's there. At L33 Litleo pulls ahead with Echoed Voice, which may or may not be better overall than Growlithe's L34 Flamethrower. Litleo gets its own Flamethrower at L36/L38. If you're not overestimating Outrage and Flare Blitz, it's not obvious that Growlithe's level-up movepool is better at all. Parallel movepool comparisons are further muddied by the considerations below. Opportunity cost also applies to the EXP problem. Litleo is in the medium slow EXP group, gets a trade EXP bonus, and appears early enough in the game at an acceptable level (since you have to trade a Bibarel). Growlithe is in the slow EXP group, doesn't get a trade EXP bonus, and appears at a point in the game where it will be at least 8 levels below the party average. In your philosophy, Growlithe should immediately catch up, with no consideration for the extra effort that it takes to do so. Why? For what reason should Litleo's triple advantage of better EXP group, trade EXP bonus, and better relative starting level be ignored? It really doesn't make sense. So a fair comparison wouldn't be something like: L20 Litleo vs. L20 Growlithe L30 Litleo vs. L30 Growlithe L45 Pyroar vs. L45 Arcanine It would be more like: L28 Litleo vs. L20 Growlithe L36 Pyroar vs. L30 Growlithe L49 Pyroar vs. L45 Arcanine Not only is Litleo's level rightfully higher due to the better EXP gain situation, but it also contributes to the team. Consider that it takes fewer battles for Litleo to approach the maximum badge level. That means that other team Pokemon can fight more battles, and therefore their levels will be higher on average in a team with Litleo than in a team with Growlithe. No one actually said that Arcanine is "better in the long run;" they just disagreed with my assertion that "Pyroar is better than Arcanine in-game if you don't breed." If you want to make a comment about whether a Pokemon is better or worse than another Pokemon, you must take the entire game into account. EDIT: Wow this post turned out way longer than I thought it would be, and it's probably not very suited to this forum.

What a lazy argument. It seems like this mindset is pretty prevalent here, though, so I'll dispel these notions. Base stat total is not fully indicative of how good a Pokemon is because the distribution matters, as do other factors such as evolution level, level-up movepool, and typing. From the base stats alone, we can see that Pyroar is approximately as offensively powerful as Arcanine (comparing the former's special atk to the latter's atk), and that Pyroar is faster. Defensively, Pyroar is just slightly worse. The evolutionary method and level-up movepools are more indicative here. Litleo evolves at L35; Growlithe evolves by Fire Stone, which itself is not available until Pokemon are L40+. But if Growlithe wants to learn good moves, it has to delay evolution until L45, so Litleo evolves earlier. Litleo's level-up movepool is not quite as good as Growlithe's early on, but it's still good with moves such as Work Up, Headbutt, and Fire Fang. The drawback is that these moves run off its weaker atk stat, but the benefit is that Headbutt comes very early with STAB and Moxie helps to make up for deficient offensive power. They get Flamethrower at about the same level, but Litleo uses it off a higher special atk stat, plus it later gets Hyper Voice and Overheat to Growlithe's Flare Blitz (Outrage is pretty garbage when not boosted or coming off STAB). Growlithe's movepool is better if it gets CC via breeding, but the time spent breeding could be better spent getting through the game, or reading a book, or something. Litleo is also available earlier and does something useful during a part of the game where Growlithe doesn't exist. So it has that working in its favor. I'm not sure if Litleo also gets a trade EXP bonus in this game, but if it does, that's also a massive point in its favor. I should point out that Arcanine is a pretty good Pokemon, especially in this game where alternatives are lackluster. If I had to rank Arcanine and Pyroar in a tier list, I'd probably rank them in the same tier, with Pyroar being higher.

It still hits Fighting SE whereas Bug Buzz doesn't, but you're right - it's just a filler move until Vivillon learns Hurricane (and when Hurricane gets fixed). The healing might come in handy after Vivillon takes damage setting up - for, like, 6 levels.

Vivillon is a solid Pokemon in-game because it gets the Sleep Powder + Quiver Dance combination (on top of Compoundeyes to boost Sleep Powder's accuracy) and dual STABs in the form of Bug Buzz and Hurricane. Hurricane is glitched as of the current build, but it's the go-to move later on once it gets fixed. It also gets a fair boost from Compoundeyes. I dislike the suggestion of Light Screen and Psybeam because they are simply not good - Quiver Dance already boosts Vivillon's special defense, plus Psybeam is a poor coverage move that requires a Heart Scale to learn. You're better off keeping Draining Kiss. Pyroar is also better than Arcanine in-game if you don't breed.

I personally wondered why Noel had some boring Pokemon (Girafarig, Swellow) when there were several unique dual-typed Normal types introduced in gen 6. Pyroar and Gogoat in particular seem to synergize well with the grassy terrain.

Ralts is actually incredibly bad earlygame.

Or you could just reduce the increase in badge level limits, since the trainer density drops sharply after Noel...

Scyther/Scizor is really good in-game because of Technician, but you're otherwise correct about Ferrothorn and Slowbro. Both of the above users are mostly spot-on about Pokemon strength in-game.

I find this claim dubious when considering that PULSE Muk has 250 base Sp. Def.

Why not? You don't even lose money for losing to Solaris.

You mean Brave Bird? That should be okay. Brave Bird lets Blaziken get past guys like Chandelure, and it does some extra damage against Fighting-types (thus requiring 1 less Bulk Up to KO some of them), but it's not very useful otherwise.

Doesn'tKnowHowtoPlay's FireRed hack disables the "shift" battle style.

Did you look at my speedrun route? Blaziken has no trouble 6-0'ing most boss enemy trainers. Those that he can't handle can be covered by another Pokemon. Once you go through the effort of setting up, it's very favorable to go for the clean sweep rather than choose to switch out. Blaziken can actually set up against just about any physically-based enemy of a similar level, even if that enemy has a move that Blaziken is weak against (as long as it's not STAB or the enemy has a big atk stat).

It's not just trips to the PC (which in themselves are a bit of a time sink), but also the limits on sweeping imposed by constant recoil damage. I don't think that Barbaracle is overpowered at all. It's a fun Pokemon to use, too. My job is not just to convince you, but to convince the general audience as well. I think the argument that I presented is compelling, and I encourage anyone who disagrees to take me up on it. The definition that I intended is exactly the one that I quoted. I didn't mean any offense aside from the innate connotation of the word "scrub," which was the most concise way of communicating that concept.

Okay, but this is contradictory to the contention that Talonflame usage will spike even though it's not that good. Either most of the players are rational, or most of the players are irrational - you can't have both. The easy response to most of this is that none of those Pokemon rely on a STAB that inflicts recoil damage, which is actually a significant drawback in an in-game context. Now for Barbaracle in particular, a single Shell Smash allows it to potentially sweep 6-0, whereas Talonflame simply lacks the raw power to do the same. On the contrary, I don't defer to the concepts behind in-game tier lists - this is because I took part in creating them in the first place! In the case of Fire Emblem, that is. Your deflection is a bit of a trick to avoid engaging in a rational argument. I've laid out why it can be reasoned that Heracross is not a very good Pokemon, so your choice here is either to present a reasoned counter-argument or handwave it and essentially concede the point. Sirlin says: "A scrub is a player who is handicapped by self-imposed rules that the game knows nothing about." Is the decision to not use recovery items not a self-imposed rule?

Blaziken loses HP as it attacks enemies with Flare Blitz, and it will usually have to take damage to set up. If Blaze Kick doesn't OHKO an enemy, then the solution is to squeeze in an extra Bulk Up. Blaze Kick's 90% accuracy is problematic, but unlike Flare Blitz recoil, it doesn't guarantee that a sweep will fail. I personally wouldn't put Flare Blitz over Blaze Kick in the speedrun route because it would disable sweeps rather than enable them, and the same principle applies here. The difference probably isn't too big, though. Why shouldn't this be? Blaziken can 6-0 opponents easily provided he has Bulk Up and Speed Boost. Replacing Bulk Up impedes its ability to do so. How is that a good idea? This is not how probability works, guys. EDIT: back to the OP, Calm Mind is the best option to replace Charge Beam on Alakazam; it can set up on specially based opponents pretty easily that way.

Tier lists derived from usage statistics are also subjective. By definition, usage statistics are subject to the personal tastes of the users. A simple thought experiment should demonstrate this: suppose that Froakie is the most used starter Pokemon in Reborn (because players think Protean is a really cool ability). It would still not make sense for Froakie to be tiered above Torchic, because Torchic is actually a better Pokemon, even if its usage is lower. A similar conclusion can be made from competitive usage stats. OU Pokemon that are suspect tested and banned to Ubers don't necessarily have the highest usage stats, and the ones with the highest usage stats aren't necessarily banned. One possible explanation is that players aren't rational and don't automatically gravitate towards the best options because there's a cultural element to avoid using broken stuff, but that doesn't make the broken stuff any less broken. Now, bad Pokemon tend to be about as bad no matter what context you put them in. Talonflame is clearly ranked low in the XY in-game tier list because of the poor performance of its lower evolutionary stages. This has not changed in Reborn. It's slightly better after reaching its final stage in Reborn because it can learn Flare Blitz, but I already provided a thoroughly reasoned argument for why this isn't such a big factor. Looking only at the BP of the attacks is myopic. Talonflame has much lower atk than either starter or Heracross. Crawdaunt, for example, hits about as hard with Crunch as Talonflame does with a 120 BP STAB, and it hits even harder with Crabhammer. Barbaracle hits harder with either Stone Edge or a Tough Claws boosted Razor Shell, and it gets Shell Smash to boot. I mean, imagine if I reasoned that Togekiss is good because it learns Brave Bird and Double-Edge (well, it's Fairy-type now, so I guess it would have to be Play Rough instead, which isn't 120 BP - but you get the point). 120 BP STABs aren't intrinsically useful; they have to be backed up by big offensive stats to really roll over the game. Oh, but I did say that. I'll give you a brief history of Pokemon in-game tiering. The Pokemon in-game tiering movement started with several users who were involved with Fire Emblem in-game tiering, which had been going on for years. The metrics adopted for Pokemon were more relaxed versions of the metrics used for Fire Emblem, but of these metrics, availability was one of the important ones. Pokemon that were fundamentally good but who weren't available for significant portions of the game could not be ranked higher than Pokemon that were a bit worse, but were available for longer. The concept is rather simple to demonstrate, and I'll do it with Heracross. Heracross is currently available for only 3 late-game gyms, which means that he isn't contributing to the team for the first 7 gyms. Obviously, Heracross is much worse than Blaziken, who has been amazing for all 10 gyms. What about Charizard? Charizard has been good for some gyms but not others, but it's been in many more important fights over the course of the game than Heracross has. How could one rationalize tiering Heracross over Charizard? A more interesting comparison can be made between Heracross and Kricketune. Pokemon that peak early and fall off late are generally looked upon unfavorably by the community, whereas Pokemon that peak late but don't exist early are widely praised. By the way, this was true in the Fire Emblem community as well, until some intelligent users reasoned out of this way of thinking. If Kricketune is great for the first 3 badges (well, it isn't that great after ZEL and Taka, but it's a reasonable approximation) and Heracross is good for the last 3 badges, how could one justify the claim that Heracross is better than Kricketune? (By the way, I really am saying that as of episode 12, Kricketune is a better Pokemon than Heracross. Just to be clear.) Another essential component to consider is what I'm going to refer to as recruitment cost. This is a tricky area to consider, because all Pokemon other than starters require some amount time and effort to procure. At minimum, we expect to have to talk to an NPC, or to walk in the grass and find the Pokemon. In other cases, some Pokemon require lengthy sidequests, breeding for moves, and/or a significant amount of training to become usable. Heracross requires a lengthy sidequest to obtain, and that should be a mark against it. Okay, but you're going to have trouble making a convincing argument that the game should be tailored to scrubs. I think a big reason is that Fire/Flying is more exotic than Normal/Flying. But if you concede that no one is going to use Braviary anyway, then the consequence of delaying Talonflame is that more players are denied their fun.

I don't. I responded to a post that wrote off Talonflame as broken with the counterclaim that it's rather mediocre. I have no personal stake in Talonflame's availability, I'm just questioning the rhetoric that goes into these sorts of categorizations.