The Legend of Greg - A Gyarados "Solo" Run

[Falirion]

Come one, come all, and hear the legend of the most fearsome beast, the legend of greg, the mighty gyarados....... i am not going to do this whole thread in this style.
So the title should already tell you this is about a recent run i did, a run in which i only used a gyarados (+a 2nd one for doubles, hence "solo", i could call it a duo run, but that is kinda not correct either, since i only uses 1 gyarados for most the battles). This was something that was started by mainly. me being the type of person that takes some statements as a challenge, in this case several forum user thinking gyarados is fine and should be avaiable already, in particular zumi once showed a specific forum post (by the user myrrh) in discord talking about how gyarados is fine enough to have in the game now, since other things are more broken, you may read the post yourself, i personally disagreed as a number of the examples given were mons that are also unavaible or with moves that are not accessable yet, while also based on competitive (which in a purely single player game, felt besides the point), that being said for kudos trying to make their point as extensively as they did. At which point i remembered the user and rejuv dev Azery to have done a solo run of gyarados in reborn, succesfully. and i decided to do the same. for intense Rejuv, at the time "as far as it will go", which turns out is all the way through the game.
So let's talk about the run.
sry @MattL stealing the formating
THE RULES

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- The run Starts with a Level 5 magikarp, this magikarp may know the event move bounce

•  this was a later addition i didn't actually start with this, i started with tackle, but there is a reason for the rule to be like this. I will point it out once i get there

- No Items may be used in battle (Potions, X-items etc. i am allowed held items)

• Item's trivialize quite a lot of this challenge and are as such forbidden

- The Difficulty Setting is "Intense" and may not be lowered
- Only a single magikarp or gyarados may be used in a battle, 2 if the battle is a Double Battle without an AI partner

• The Use of 2 Mons in Doubles has 2 reasons, first a "true" solo with these rules is impossible with a standard pokemon, for non standard pokemon see Matt's Thread. and secondly Reborn and Rejuv both can bug out in several ways if one starts a double battle with only a single mon (the AI decision making can completly crash, you can suddenly have a invisible 2nd mon, just to name examples), Azery's Gyarados solo of reborn ran into this aswell.

- Rare Candy use is limited to leveling up to 5 levels over the cap for the purposes of move aquisition, i am not allowed to battle while leveled over the cap.

• this ruling is mainly in place since i am allowed to use pickup, i personally never use rare candies from pickup in challenge runs unless absolutely necessary (mono fairy, mono steel), and rather treat rare candies as a limited ressource until buyable in GDC, i am also on record stating that buying rare candies with AP is a gross waste of AP.

- For Timesaving the Use of Debug is allowed to alter Nature, EVs, IVs & moves of the Gyarados

• this is within legal parameters, i cannot stress this enough, so no illegal EV spreads, moves only if they are accessible
• If a Story segment locks me out of the move reminder/tutors, moves only accessable with those may not be learned until i regain access (this is specifically level 1 moves and tutor moves)
• The Swap of Natures and IVs may seem illegal since you wouldn't be able to do that for a while or at all in the case of IV, but due to breeding this would be legal as early as sheridan village, did i observe a ban on this before getting there? no. could i do this run with without changing, EVs IVs, Natures from the start until reaching sheridan, given 2 gyarados? yes. do i care to prove this statement? not at all. the point of this run was more if gyarados can beat every single battle with the right setup, and how easy it can do it, not if it can do so by only using 2 specific gyarados given at the start.

- Unreasonable Hax (Ice fang Freeze, Evasion) are a last resort and should only be used as such

• This mainly refers to Evading more than 1 100acc move via Bright Powder, and Freezes via Ice Fang (and the target then staying frozen for several turns)
• Hax will be part of this run, due to the nature it turned into a necessary evil for a select few batlles but the worst of it should be only used if necessary

- Sidequest Battles are a part of this run, any battle in which winning is optional has to be atleast attempted

• This is because i am too much of a completionist to leave sidecontent out, and just to have greg flex even harder on the game tbh

THE POKEMON

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Well as already mentioned the Pokemon used is Gyarados, but let's talk about greg in detail

• Stats:
  • Type: Water/Flying
  • Base: 95 HP / 125 Atk / 79 Def / 60 SpA / 100 SpD / 81 Spe
• Abilites:
  • Intimidate: Reduces Atk of Opponents by one stage when send out
  • Moxie: Raises Atk everytime it knocks out a pokemon

Due to my ruleset the nature wasn't fixed, i generally used maximum IVs except on 2 instances of using Hidden Power Grass, but Adamant/Jolly were generally the goto natures. (Careful & Impish were natures that came up from time to time when i needed a little bit more bulk, Modest was a rarity but also used)
Looking at these stats you should be seeing a moderately bulky phyiscal sweeper, with a good typing albeit a 4x weakness to electric, and that is basically also how it played, gyarados is suprisingly bulky, (especially with intimidate) and once a setup move became avaiable this bulk was often leveraged to get enough setup in to sweep the rest of the battle.
It has 2 Top Tier abilities in intimidate and moxie, with moxie being the more commonly used one, since intimidate due to the nature of it being a solo run can only ever affect the lead of a battle, intimidate allowed more setup opportunities against physical leads, while moxie was a snowball tool that would break any battle wide open if only enough boosts were achieved with it.

THE MOVEPOOL

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Gyarados' Movepool is extremly physical heavy, and consists almost entirely of single target moves, any spread moves that are avaiable in rejuvenation are either generally to weak to use (eg. Brutal Swing), or avaiable way to late in the game to be of much use (eg. Bulldoze), it's rather sparse in status moves but the few it does get are used quite a bit throughout this run.
The most important moves were:
Attacking moves:

• Aqua Tail: This was after aquisition Greg's Main STAB move, it a powerful Physical move at 90BP with no secondary effect, but an accuracy of 90%, sadly nothing more accurate would become avaiable until the challenge was over (waterfall becomes avaiable literally at the end of the run) (learned at Level 30)
• Bounce: Gyarados' only Physical Flying STAB, a 2 turn move with 85BP and 85% accurate, also has a 30% chance to paralyze the target, also has some field interactions, specifically on any Mountain variant, Sky Field & Underwater. (avaiable as Tutor move after G/Z in akuwa Town, was given as an Event move)
• Bite: 60 BP Dark move that has a 30% chance to flinch, 100% accuracy, this was a very important move since flinches were often necessary to bypass focus sashes, sturdy, or just sheer extreme bulk (learned upon evolution into gyarados, level 1 move)
• Iron Head: 80 BP Steel move with a 30% chance to flinch, 100% accuracy, basically worked as an upgrade to bite once avaiable, is also good and accurate steel coverage, basically my go to filler move if i needed nothing else (Neo East gearen move tutor, avaiable after Sashila Village Ren)
• Ice Fang: 65BP Ice move that has a 10% chance to freeze & a 10% to flinch*, this move was decent ice coverage in the early game particularly against grass (as i wasn't using bounce for the most part) and flying types, and a rather disgusting but important hax tool later on.
  *in rejuv's current version Ice fang is bugged and only has a 10% chance to have a 10% chance at both, so basically only a 1% chance for both effects, i fixed this for my own file as this is clearly not inteded and just made things more tedious when i did need ice fangs effects
• Other moves that were used(in no particular order): Iron Tail, Crunch, Hidden Power, Flamethrower, Bulldoze, Tackle, Thrash, Outrage, Frustration, Return, Facade, Avalanche, Rock Smash

Status Moves:

• Dragon Dance: This move was probably THE most important move of the run, Dragon dance was the liveblood of this run, as anyone familiar with the move will tell you this move is some broken stuff, a setup move that raises both attack and speed by 1 stage. once aquired this move basically never left my moveset, it is to vital (learned at Level 45)
• Substitute: Substitutes main use was generally to setup early to take multiple hits when this was possible, or take 1 hit that would do way more than 25%, or just as a status immunity (bonus points if the substitute can be used on the turn they would status you to nullify their turn aswell) (TM90 avaiable as a casine prize from the start of the game)
• Rain Dance: Weather controll can be important, and rain boosts water stab, this move came to use when i either needed to nullify weather that would hurt me (if i have the room to do so) or just to be able to boost my water moves more (learned at level 51, also avaiable as a TM18 in darchlight woods)
• Thunder Wave: Paralyze can be useful, it didn't come up a lot but when it came up it was useful (learned via TM73 in the xen backup Lab in sheridan wetlands)
• Attract: One of the more infamous hax strats of the run, a 50% chance for the opponent to lose a turn is devastating, obviously situationl due to the opposite gender regquirement, but when it works, boi does it work (TM45, avaiable on Route 4)
• also used: Leer, Taunt, Hail
   

The main moveset without specific requirements tended to be: Aqua Tail, Bounce, Iron Head/Bite/Ice Fang, Dragon Dance

HELD ITEMS

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Choosing the proper Held Item was often important to get this run to work, so here are the most commonly useful held items, why they were used (or not used) and when they were avaiable:
Bright Powder: i know, i know, these are listed in the order of avaiability okay? Bright Powder reduces the accuracy of anything targeting the holder by 10% so it was a hax tool, when nothing else worked, it was rarely used, mostly when the opponent lead a fast electric type that would oneshot me turn one, and other tools against this weren't avaiable (avaiable from wild wurmple in east gearen)

Seeds: Seeds oftentimes are the most powerful held item one can have, their effects are varied and useful, but their avaiability is limited, some variants more than others, there are for example only 3 telluric seeds avaiable, and all 3 of those were used, the game is stingy with them and i was too.

Status Berries (Pecha, Chesto, Rawst... etc.): only having 1 mon often meant that catching certain statuses was certain death so using a berry as held item to heal those was sometimes vital, their avaiability varies, but they are all avaiable in some way by Terajuma.
Type Gems: every so often comes the time when a normal type boosting item doesn't have enough power to it, thats when these things come in, not used a lot but quite necessary when they were

Power Herb: rarely used but quite neat when it was used, power herb makes 2 turn moves 1 turn as a one time consumable, so for gyarados that spells bounce and dive, why is this listed so early? well..... (avaiable from wild seedot on route 2)
Mystic Water: A commonly used general goto item, 20% to water moves, which were my main STAB, it's just good, nuff said (avaiable earliest by fishing goldeen with an old rod in amethyst cave)
Metronome: SNOWBALLING, metronome combined with a physical move and moxie is snowballs damage so hard it's quite disgusting, was abused in the early game a few times, lategame it either wasn't feasable or just not necessary, for those unaware metronome boosts the power of a move used by +20% for everytime it was used consecutively up to a maximum of doubling the power on the 6th attack (5 previous uses) (avaiable in sheridan village from wild kricketot/kricketune)
Wacan Berry: THE HOLY ITEM, without the wacan berry this run may have very well been impossible, or just plain ridicolous, the wacan berry halves damage taken by 1 electric move which on a mon that has a 4x weakness is beyond useful, it cannot be overstated how important this item is, it should also be noted that the AI always knows when you hold a weakness berry and as such just holding it might just stop the AI from going for the move in the first place. (avaiable earliest hidden on a bush on terajuma island, south of kakori village)
Aguav Berry: the aguav berry is one variant of the berries that heal you for 50% of your max HP, when you drop below 25% health, this was often used to take 1 or 2 extra hits that allowed the win in a battle (avaiable the first past segment on a hidden grass tile on past route 3)
Leftovers: Another sustain item, it works better than aguav if i need more than 50% extra health and the battle takes longer than 8 turns between me needing this extra health, pretty specific but came up once or twice. (avaiable via pickup with a level 71 or higher pickup mon)

there are many more that were used but those are the most important

THE BATTLES

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let's just continue to reuse matt's formating: battles noted in normal text caused some issues but weren't too bad (or are there because it be wierd to not name them, i will point those out), bolded text were actually difficult and Red bolded very supremly tough to almost impossible:

Chapter 1:

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i will note right here: starting with level 5 magikarp with just tackle, it is possible (and quite easy) to beat the entirety of east gearen's generic trainers except the bridge mugger, and the abusive buizel trainer, so let that sink in. after then evolving to gyarados, those 2 weren't an issue either
nothing else this chapter proved much of an issue except:

Dimensional Rift Gyarados: so who likes 2 intimidate procs from a single mon when you are only using 1 physical mon? no one? that's what i thought, i against rift dos i already had to pull out specific EV spreads namely special gyarados with HP grass/electric (i used electric now that i think about it, but if you want 1 IV spread that remains the same go for grass), special works better against dimensional rift gyarados for 2 reasons, 1. double intimidate running your physical attack into the ground, 2. dimensional rift gyarados has swapped base defenses compared to normal gyarados, so it's special defense is weaker than the physical defense, gets 3 shot by HP elec/grass, and with some def investment and intimidate it is possible to live 2 thunder fangs.

nothing else this chapter (including venam and novae) proved any sort of problem.

Chapter 2:

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the game starts getting serious slowly around here that being said, greg didn't struggle overmuch on most things (although the lack of access to a STAB move is an issue), pulse musharna, nim, and zetta were no trouble, then we have:

Dimensional Rift Galvantula: The Rifts in this game will not be denied, i will say that you will find every rift fight in this game on this list in some form (except volcanion), as they tend to pose at least some challenge for this run, galvantula and it's joltik were problematic at first due to use of electroweb and galvantula's blistering speed stat, but a use of a magical seed solved that problem right quick. venam as a partner works generally better in my experience than ren does, for this battle, seviper in particular makes short work of galvantula itself one it shows it's face
(which due to trick room from the magical seed was at the very end)

Keta 1: Keta proved to be the first real challenge of this run, his lead of breloom and hariyama along with his entire team carrying rock tomb (except lucario which carries slide) proved to be quite an issue, the fake out + spore lead was also mildly infuriating, eventually i came to the use of substitute along with metronome frustration, both gyarados (as this is a double battle i was allowed the use of 2 gyarados remember, i wil in the follow in refer to them by their nicknames whenever this happens, greg for the first gyarados, gregorious for the second) greg and gregorious would use substitute first turn, would get flinched, while the other would get a sub up, which often the spore from breloom would target that one and thus fail. after which the they would remove breloom with ice fang (rare candied move) and set a sub on the gyarados that didn't get a sub of, from there they would double up on hariyama (it tended to switch out and come back in for fake out a lot after if left at half health), and from there moxie + metronome snowball frustration hard enough to be able to remove lucario in a single turn after which it was cleanup. a lot had to go just right for this too work.

Madelis (Shadow Mewtwo): this is honestly one of those battles that i mention because people expect it, a setup of substitute along with shadow mewtwo for some reason targeting Keta made this trivial tbh, Keta was also extremly helpful by sporing houndoom and aromatisse.

Keta 2: This one, on the other hand, deserves mention, if only because Tessie exists tessie would come out 2nd (after ice fang one shot gabite) and click freeze dry (my second 4x weakness besides electric), i found no way around this so i had to go for a bite flinch on tessie to pass this battle, donphan's sturdy was a non issue, same with everything else in this battle

Chapter 3:

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astute readers may have noticed that the sheridan help center wasn't mentioned at all last chapter, thats because both the battle heavy quests were done this chapter due to novae 2 being utterly impossible on a 25 cap due to completely lack of stab, same with the gangsters on gearen harbor, the latter being a breeze now, but:

Novae 2: the joy of every solo run everywhere, focus sashes, yes plural, she uses 2, both mons having rock moves to use, skill link trumbeak first, i can outspeed it and lycanroc though so we are good on that front, all we needed was flinching lycanroc, which.... was for some reason harder than it sounded, i could live skill link rockblast rather well due to added typings by crystal cave, but i just wasn't getting flinches on lycanroc, now that i think about it i may have been using ice fang for the flinch (or freeze) and i was not aware of the bug on this move yet, so that may have been the reason it took so long, lycanroc was flinchable because it prefered rock tomb over accelerock.

Marianette: another entry that would be wierd to exclude, but probably the 2nd most free gymleader right behind venam, the only thing that required thought was her bewear being unreasonably fat due to fluffy, but that was invalidated by metronome and her sending it in 5th at which point i was +4 attack and had max count metronome oneshotting the teddybear through all it's bulk (note that even +6 without metronome can't ever hope to oneshot short of a crit), the only difficulty that remained was hitting aqua tail

Chapter 4:

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Alright let's start with something i delayed until now
Guardian Kingdra: for those that don't know what i am refeering to it's the level 53 kingdra statue in mirage woods (i really wanted the itemfinder okay?) so i beat that with a level 35 gyarados i either quick clawed a substitute or set one up on a missed thunder (the main reason for quick claw was that in slightly unfavorable scenarios i would not get the last hit because i am outspeed, so thats where the quick claw came in as a fail save), and then just kept hitting it with pre burned facade (burn setup on basically anything in carotos mountain), kingdra kept going for thunder so it was entirely feasable for it to miss enough to actually get the kill (at a certain point it would switch to ice beam but by then it wouldn't kill me before i killed it)

Geara 1: yeah this wasn't much trouble, it was generally alola marowak getting aqua tailed turn 1 and greg just kept on rolling through them, making sure to onehit persian, while gregorious was a distraction, the AI tends to go after low health targers so gregorious just kept setting up sub and dragged out it's presence on the field, by the time giratina hit the field i could 2 hit it without getting oneshot back

Ren 3: so this is where we begin a cursed tradition of this run, ren being absolute ass to deal with, namely his sableye lead which would burn me if it doesn't miss wisp, i can't run a rawst berry either, for one i don't  even remember if those are avaiable by now, and even if without mystic water i don't oneshot sableye, so it would just prankster burn me again, i could have guaranteed the first turn looking back at it with one of my truly blessed strats i found later, but as it stood i needed wisp to miss, follow that up with greninja getting a guaranteed hit on me and this turned quite annoying real quick, if ren hadn't been an idiot and send his seeded arcanine earlier i am not sure how i could have dealt with that.

Narcissa: from 1 annoying battle into the next, i needed to moxie roll this, but narcissa had dusclops being extremly fat with eviolite, sashed mismagius (that outspeeds me) and mimikyu. While i could oneshot rotom in the lead i would reveal aqua tail while doing so, causing narcissa to send dusclops 2nd which i cannot ever onehit at +1, what i ended up doing which took a while to figure out, was flinch rotom and 2 hit it with bite, this would bait in spiritomb, on which i could setup a sub for free (it clicks hypnosis) and oneshot it with aqua tail, due to me being damaged mismagius would come out after which i 2 hit due to sash (i used ice fang to break the sash hoping for a freeze, still unaware of the move being bugged) after which dusclops was oneshotable, and finish it up with flinching mimikyu, afterwards chandelure was no problem at all, this was all rather specific manipulation of narcissa's AI (mismag's power gem does about 50% so i live past it with about 25% HP)

Chapter 5:

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note that this is the chapter that dragon dance finally became avaiable by means of rare candy use, so the world is now greg's oyster to smash open

Dimensional Rift Gyarados 2: back to dealing with the inferior greg, thanks to higher base speed and level advantage it is now impossible to outspeed it, but it still dies to 3 HP grass uses thanks to field boost (of modest max spatk, with miracle seed) use of a telluric seed trivializes the battle but, telluric seeds are too valuable to use on this so i used a new tech, attract, 2 attract immobilizes allow enough room to beat it.

Madelis 2: i should not note this but this was a first try, bulk a 3 hit rockblast and dance up, flinch sharpedo, that is all

Neved: now this, this was almost deadly, neved leads a level 44 manectric, it outspeeds it murders, it could have spelled the end of this run, initially tried to quick claw substitute (aelita's blaziken 2 hits manectric and speed boost makes it outspeed it on the 2nd turn), but the sub damage made me a focus target for tentacruel, not ideal. i eventually caved and used bright powder to dodge manectric's thunder bolt, after which i would kill manectric myself to swipe a moxie boost (this decision was caused by blaziken missing blaze kick turn 1, so i actually got lucky with that since it made me see the strat), after which i would oneshot froslass while aelita's hawlucha deals with tentacruel, hawlucha dodge a blizzard from tentacruel which i am sure mattered (greg dodged the same blizzard but that wouldn't have killed so it didn't end up mattering), vikavolt next, +3 being necessary here (+1 from dd, +2 moxie from manectric and froslass), this turn tentacruel was KO'd by hawlucha, next turn i removed barbaracle, while hawlucha put crabominable down to sash, i actually dodged crab's rockslide, but me dying here wouldn't have mattered, aelita would have finished a 1HP crab easily

Madame X: So now i don't actually consider madame X a battle but i should note anyway, greg has literally no way to beat a level 100 yveltal with decimation, so 100% impossible to win this.

 

valarie: this is one of those that would be wierd to exclude, but this was entirely free, intimidate, setup 3 dances, go to town, done, next.

 

Chapter 6:

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Dimensional Rift Carnivine: hey so this rift is usually quite forgetable, but for this run it was hellish, the dimensional rift tangela and tangrowth are quite bulky (as is standard even for the normal species) it's field boosted dark pulses hit rather hard, and even if i had yet allowed bounce, it wouldn't help as dimensional field makes bounce quite literally suicide (it kills the user). ultimately this went similarly to geara 1, with gregorious being a distraction and greg being the actual attacker, both had specific EV spreads to bait the attacks against gregorious, both equipped with a sitrus berry to heal up damage to make them last longer, it should be noted that the tangling hair ability does not activate if the user is knocked out, so i could setup enough speed to outpace rift carnevine itself (even being at +1 scared it from coming in in the first place, +2 being actually needed to outspeed) it should be noted that gregorious despite all of this dies on turn 3, so greg had to sweep from there, every single move in this battle was deliberate and choregraphed, i am unsure if it would be at all possible to do if tangling hair activated properly on knock out. specifically greg ddances and gregorious ice fangs the left tangela (the one that holds a tanga berry), it lives 2 dark pulses and sitrus berry puts him high enough again to use sub on turn 2, while greg knocks out the tanga berry tangela without recieving a speed drop, gregorious would then chip the eviolite tangela (righ sided) and die on the 3rd turn, while greg oneshots a tangrowth with crunch (assault vest tangrowth), the chip on eviolite tangela made it swap out next turn so greg oneshots the new tangela (iapapa berry). so now i am facing the eviolite tangela and colbur berry tangrowth, i dance i the face of this and hope to dodge a sleep powder, tangrowth shadowballs, i kill the tangela next turn, tangrowth shadow balls again, i activate sitrus berry, i ice fang the rift carnevine and tank a 3rd shadow ball, after which i finish the tangrowth to end it.

Honorable mention Dexoys: these all forced me to use a wacan berry each (which just became avaiable so that was great)

Ren 4: ren is back and the annoyance he causes hasn't diminished. his lead is cacturne which is sashed, i danced on it and tried to flinch it out of the sash with ice fang (which i never got because bugged, i still didn't know) the battle had ultimately the same problem as all ren battles do for this, a lot of guaranteed damage, due to extreme speed arcanine, the sash on cacturne and greninja being rather fast (can be outspeed with proper ddance, but that requires taking hits somewhere else which is what i ended up doing)

Crawli: with double telluric seeds this is an absolute stomp, but i noticed something so i redid the battle without the use of telluric seeds, since those are as mentioned valuable, instead i ran double wacan berries because of galvantula, with gregorious being mainly physically bulky, and greg mainly special bulky, this caused galvantula to attack gregorious while ariados went after greg, both dancing up, from there on it was the same as the run with seeds, a double sweep knocking out 2 things per turn, since despite gregorious red health scizor would come out last
which made this possible, turn 2 kill galv and ariados, turn 3: kille heracross and pinsir, turn 4 attacking into araquanid, turn 5 kill scizor (priority bullet punch first kills gregorious and is then not able to finish greg)

Chapter 7:

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Sharpedo Gang: Elemental seed gyarados is quite bulky, a dance to outspeed the following sharpedo, the biggest challenge was actually figuring out which sharpedo just came in as there are multiple different sets all needing to be handled differently, setting up 2nd dance on the protect user sealed the deal

Saki + Venam: Synthetic seed greg on glitch field is fun, i ran max def max spdef careful gyarados and just used my now special attacks along with my substantial bulk + sub, to cause as much havoc as possible, melia actually way useful partner for this, particularly her crested meganium

Angie: fine i will give angie some respect i don't usually, her lead is scary but with seeds of my own i can oneshot the infamous sanicswine, needed to flinch the rotom frost though, as discharge would murder me, afterwards it was a double sided sweep by switching between aqua tail and pre poisoned facade (i commited to this as i already decided i could not take hits here)
walrein when it came in was thunder waved and para'd on the same turn, it's next turn was then taken up with angie healing said paralyze which was all i needed to finish up

Chapter 8:

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Novae 3: i already delayed this until now from chapter 6 due to the sheer level spike, this battle has on intense, her lead toucannon would always go for beak blast against me, which burns if i attack into it, something i cannot afford, so i was forced to run rawst berry i also had to setup enough to be able to oneshot this bird, so ultimately i went for thunder wave, to paralyze it and wanted it to paralyze.... i believe 3 out of 5 turns (don't remember this particular battle that well and i didn't make notes for it) after which i had to have high enough health left for sash lycanroc to either go for stone edge, and either miss or flinch (and i was still unaware of icefang being bugged so that wasn't happening, which was my only flinch move due to moveslot issues) and be able to survive accelerock after or just straight up being able to live 2 accelerocks, the rest of the battle poses no problem

Primal Groudon: this thing outlevels by 12 and invalidates my main STAB, i actually had to go deep in my box of tricks to 1v1 this despite the field actively working against it, specifically this is when my truly blessed strat was developed, pre setup sleep. now if you are unaware how long a mon stays asleep is actually defined when the sleep move hits (so sleep powder hits it rolls a number between 1 & 3 that is how long you stay asleep for), the remaining sleep turns do carry between battles, so you can setup a sleep and have it have 0 turns left so you wake up the first turn of the battle but come in statused. you may ask "why does that matter?" well corrupted caves seed gives +2 defense but poisons the user, with preset sleep i could avoid the poison while still getting the +2 and not lose a turn, a +2 def allowed a sub from gyarados to live a fire punch in sun from primal groudon which gave me an extra turn to stall
it also replaced the wacan berry to survive thunder punch since it reduced the damage by the same amount but also helped later. so i subbed in it's face until i was deep red, the AI would then go for fire punch since it assumes to kill with that on which turn i danced, i then attacked 2 times, with thrash, and it was just barely not enough, so i either needed thrash to crit, or just allow bounce at this point, i did the latter since i assumed it to be necessary on valor mountain anyway, i would be right, but not for the battle i thought, nor a battle any of you expect.
with bounce i used frustration instead of the first turn of thrash and then bounce after to stall one more poison turn. which beat this behemoth finally.
looking back on it now i could have used flail to beat this without the use of bounce, since i was going into range for max power flail anyway, this fact would probably reduce the rating from extremly tough to just tough tbh, but i am leaving it as is, since thats how it went for me.

Kyogre: i am tempted to mark this red considering what i had to end up doing, but ultimately it wasn't that bad, i used a wacan berry to live a field boosted thunderbolt (with considerable special defense investment) and i would ice fang freeze it.... (this was the battle i finally noticed that ice fang is bugged, and i would end up fixing it) it would then stay frozen 3 turns while i set up 2 dances the aqua tail it twice (boosted by kyogre's own rain) which takes it out (it didn't need to stay frozen the last turn since i outsped)

Eli & Sharon 3: Now this is the battle that required bounce, and it was still horrible, i am sure no one even expects this battle to be even a speed bump but let me tell you... let me tell you how venam is just actively bad at being a doubles partner, like good lord, her toxapex lead does basically nothing the entire battle except being a big dumb distraction and i had to carry wacan berry and some considerable special defense investment to make it do even that. it doesn't help that the rest of her team gets absolutely slaughtered once it comes in. i am serious, you all think melia in the next battle is bad? Melia in G&Z is a fucking blessing, there i said it.
i ultimately after trying to play in sky field only to be utterly murdered by mismagius (levitate on sky field gives +1 speed on entry, and it's under tailwind because of the seed on lickylicky) decided i had to prevent sky field from happening, atleast until lickylicky was of the field, so i froze their gyarados, and then setup and attacked lickylicky while it was distracted by toxapex
pex would eventually kill gyarados while i then sweeped up the remaining 5 mons after this setup (with including sky field bounce after getting rid of lickylicky)

Giratina: level 75 outleveling by 20 and still not being able to oneshot me, i ultimately bounce para'd it to 3hit it after a dance (sky field bounce wheeee), only needed 1 fully para due to giratina clicking calm mind the turn i come down from the first bounce (which is still 2 turn due to how the field transistion works), and i was outspeeding with +1 anyway, so i only needed the very next turn to fully para

Geara & Zetta: no i did not forget to bold this, this was as clean a sweep as they come, i did use a telluric seed though, the defenses from the telluric seed + volcanic top making rock moves part fire allowed quite a bit of setup on the lead, melia was also quite good at keeping their attention and even helped me take out a thing i would not have been able to oneshot, namely zetta's dragonite, with melia's hydreigon attacking into it, after that setup i basically just swepped zetta's side of the field and then cleaned up geara. note that i didn't need to use bounce for this, in fact the one time i clicked it, it almost lost me the game due to clefables elemental seed (zetta was already out so i clicked it on geara, clefable was thankfully the last mon so the tailwind didn't matter to much)

Amber: wacan berry, 1 dance, moxie sweep with aqua tail even under sun, greg didn't give a single fuck, just in case anyone thought amber could ever pose a problem

 

Chapter 9:

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Dimensional Rift Chandelure: delayed till now due to sheer stat issues, with now a cap at 60 it was possible to speedtie rift chandelure, and oneshot it using water gem aqua tail, nancy beforehand was a complete non issue, and just beaten by the use of bounce, the only problem that could arise was clefables randoming into unaware as its ability.

Dimensional rift Garbodor: to be honest, the first encounter is fine, the second one due to the field giving its sludge wave part rock typing was nightmarish, this sludge wave would cleanly OHKO and the Kebia berry was not avaiable as of yet, hax were necessary and due to the sheer bulk, a lot of hax, we are talking about it staying frozen for 5 turns while i setup 2 ddances, a rain dance and then hit it with aqua tail twice, it was basically like kyogre but worse. so this would not classify as battle greg would outright break by any measure.

Amanda 3: set a dragon dance on one and rain dance on the other, proceed to double sweep the whole battle, nothing to this at all

Erick: be honest you have been waiting for this one, to the suprise of absolutely no one that understands how pokemon works, a duo of water/flying mons against an electric type gym (of actually notable difficulty) had actual problems here, lets go over it.
Erick leads alola raichu (whose surge surfer ability is activated by the field, so blistering speed this thing) and a magnezone which is not only quite bulky but also the field amplyfies that by nullifying all ground moves (not that i have any short of HP ground, since bulldoze is post gym 14 in this game, something i'd argue being way too late, and earthquake being unavaiable entirely) and water moves gain part poison typing being unable to hit magnezone either, i frankly had nothing to hit this thing with (my best move was rock smash, yes you read correctly, rock smash), then there is the issue of mega ampharos if i even get past the lead which is entirely too fat and resists my (fieldboosted btw) mainstab, and lastly we have erick's signature move Thunder Pulse, a 100BP 90% accuracy spread move, that is boosted by the field and paralyzes with a 100% chance everything it hits.....
if you were expecting a genius strat without hax for this i will have to dissapoint you, ultimately i used attract and ice fang freeze to make this doable, both gyarados were using wacan berry to live a thunder pulse from alola raichu, along with just enough spdef investment to make this possible, they came in with a preset sleep that is about to run out, to not get paralyzed by said thunder pulse, both gyarados 1 male 1 female were carrying attract and ice fang, the opposite gendered gyarados to the alola raichu would attract it, while the other ice fangs and freezes magnezone, next turn greg would setup a dance while gregorious would aqua tail alola raichu, oneshotting it, raichu needs to be immobilized this turn. afterwards greg would oneshot everything comming in, as +1 speed with about 180 speed investment was enough to outspeed everything including crest oricorio, gregorious in the meantime chips away at magnezone, i cannot kill it at this point as much as i want to, when mega ampharos comes in both attack into it to guarantee the kill, and then the turn after eelektross and magnezone die, ending the battle
the probability for everything going the right way including move accuracy, magnezone staying frozen ,raichu getting immobilized by attract, is a 0.97% chance, yes i calced it, this probably proves more how stubborn i am that anything much in regards to gyarados. that being said, about a 1% chance to win this battle was much MUCH better than i expected this to go, going into this run, i personally went into this run expecting erick to be impossible, and for most of the run up to here i didn't see anything working, until i looked over all the strats and hax i used up to here and it just fell into place, by the time i reached erick i knew this was the strat, i knew this was the only thing with a realistic chance of working, and it did somehow.

 

Chapter 10:

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Given the mass of red marked battles the last 2 chapters one would think it can only get worse from here, which is kinda true much later, but for now the game actually eases up a bit, which i am fine with since i am kinda unhappy with this solid block of freeze hax (heh.... solid block of freeze)

Spector: Spector on intense is in this wierd level range where you either fight him about 10 levels under, or 10 levels over, with no inbetween, so i generaly do spector now. while it took a little bit to figure out how to do this ultimately the strat is pretty simple, and it only really took so long because i was not aware that i picked up aguav berries in the past. Come in with presleep, Dance once on the froslass, then bite it twice (the first either flinches or lass misses frost breath either works), sub on the ninetales to tank wisp (this is when i found out that wisp is bugged in rejuv to ignore subs, another bug i fixed for myself, otherwise i would have just done spector after GDC and that would have been boring soooo) dance twice (ninetales needs 2 hits to kill a sub), sub up again (it uses up the aguav berry here) and kill ninetales with aqua tail (we are stalling sun turns here), oneshot mega bannette with aqua tail, while the remainder of the sub tanks shadow sneak, 2 hit sash shedninja, with easily enough HP to take 2 field boosted sneaks (i love priority in this run) then just murder palossand and houndoom, done

Flora: so i actually did both grass siblings, between the 2 flora is more RNG heavy, a presleeped gyarados (there are static amoongus with spore) with not too much special defense, can oneshot the whimsicot lead with avalanche which is great since that thing is annoying, after which it tanks an attack from ludicolo and the aguav berry heals back up to half, killing ludicolo with bounce, and now here, here is where the RNG comes in, ferrothorn. +2 attack gyarados has no moves to actually oneshot the spikeball with, considering how bulky ferrothorn is that shouldn't really be a surprise, i 2HKO with bounce, and after the aguav berry i have enough health to not die to iron barbs, but i would die to it landing a move, it clicks power whip, so we want either power whip to miss, or a bounce fully para, fun, afterwards rotom mow, shiinotic and mega venusaur just fold to a single attack each (don't bounce the rotom it knows thunder)

Florin: required a slightly precise strat but is pretty consistent (as consistent as you get with the inaccurate moves greg gets) double seeded gyarados with mainly bounce and ice fang, 1 moxie 1 intimidate (for cradily) the moxie one setup to bait cradily's attacks, intimidate gyarados dances up to +2 to be able to outspeed false the sceptile, other than that a lot of baiting the AI into attacking into a bounce. maybe not quite straightforward but simple all things considered (for this stage anyway)

Chapter 11:

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uuuh there are notable battles this chapter? i guuuueess

Venam: only thing of note is mega zard x with thunder punch. but double intimidate with wacan berries makes it go for rock slide which does nothing. after which easy dances and smacking everything

Zetta: was a clean sweep, just to say it, only issue would be not getting flinched by weavile, nothing else is a speedbump

Puppet Masters: sooooooo chesto berry gyarados can dance up twice in delphox's face after which it cleanly just outspeeds telepathy gardevoir, causing magenta to get rolled even behind reflect, only exception is metagross which needs 2 hits, neon in the meantime swaps around trying to stop the gyarados and get's punished by aelita for doing so, he tried to hypnosis with bronzong but aelita's blaziken was having none of that so it blaze kicked it and it swapped back to oranguru after, which did nothing effectual, mega bro on neon's side can't be oneshot but that is what aelita is there for, all in all pretty simple oddly enough.

Chapter 12:

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Dimensional Rift Ferrothorn: Intimidate with an aguav, setup a ddances then rain, then another 3 ddances, one shot from 75% after a cave collapse because of it clicking EQ after rain turns it into cave, Rain is so it doesn't go for fire lash, the defense drop from it is nasty, the cave collapse helps too though

note about the following 3 battles i decided for basically no reason that i would not change my sets with debug until i leave doomed world (i would have the excuse of having access to the PC normally) soooo i will note all 3 but they were mainly slightly more difficult by needing sets that beat all 3, or well 2 since valarie is a joke.
to be exact against vivian i had aqua tail/bite/bounce/ddance with adamant and 252 atk, 214 def, 44 spe

this moveset would pretty much stay that way, as would the nature, the EV spread would be changed slightly, namely 16 speed EVs over to defense, so 28 speed 230 def (i actively trained it on the generic pirates on val's ship using power items)

Vivian: the ttar is begging to be setup up on so i did, aguav berry lots of defense investment a little bit of speed just enough to outpace sigilyph at +1, ttar prefers clicking slide so i don't need to worry about toxic too much, dance once then hit it with aqua tail, bite flinch the tyrantrum (sashed), dance on rhyperior and bank on stone edge missing, i really wish i could have done that differently, i could setup 2 dances on ttar with intimidate but i needed moxie to beat florges soooo f (and i need +2 speed for mega zam)
after which just oneshot everything else

Valarie: setup 3 dances on tentacruel it can't hurt greg in a meaningful way, kill with aqua tail, kill everything with aqua tail except vaporeon and jellicent, vaporeon is killed with power herb bounce, jellicent with normal bounce, dance on toxicroak until it runs out of sucker punch and bit flinch it to break the sash then just kill it (it should be noted there are more consistent ways to do this battle, subsitute instead of bite flinch, but due to my own stipulations for doomed world i would have lost out on bite which i need for kenneth) in short i shouldn't even need to note valarie and the only reason i do is her effect on kenneth's battle.

Kenneth: sooo kenneth, this was what this build up to, leftovers gyarados, tank a blackhole eclipse and dance up on krook, then bite flinch krook to stall out a turn of dimensional field, then kill it with aqua tail, bounce the roserade coming in, then just dance again on weavile, oneshot it after (with bounce to stall a turn of leftover heal), gyarados is now at +5 (with 2 dances and 3 moxie boosts) which is a range of 50% to kill tessie, which just came in, with bounce (yes this lapras is actually that fat) after that one tank a bullet punch from mega lucario and just kill the alola muk.

Souta: ..... so should i say it or can you guess it? we are freezing hawlucha because no. not dealing with tailwind and and even on a sky attack miss while bringing my own tailwind with moxie is just not feasable thanks to dnite so intimidate greg tanks a sky attack freezes hawlucha, dances up 4 times (+4 speed with jolly is enough to outpace timid crestcorio under tailwind) kills hawlucha (yes thats 5 turns of freeze) after which everything else gets oneshot (+4 atk with field boosted bounce and a sharp beak onehits dnite through multiscale).
all i really have to say about this and i don't wanna hear complaints about the freeze.

Rift Aelita: "erin totally hard carries this battle" suuuuuuuure..... why is it that AI partner battles that aren't usually difficult are just really bad on this run while the usually hard AI partner battles are a fucking joke? idk either
attract the golem add turn 1 (it's always female because the 2 different looks on the rift golems are gender differences) it immobilizes, erin's absol put rift aelita at half (aka +2/+2 attacking stats because savagery) rift lita goes after absol and puts it to sash, next turn rift lita finishes absol and i finish rift lita, i am invested into physical defense so in comes a special rift golem, which i can onehit at +1 after which we are rolling moxie, the attracted rift golem is allowed to break out of attract a few times at this point so whatever
this battle took way longer than it needed to because erin was just entirely uncooperative she would always send florges 2nd which would first turn click protect, when usually nothing targets it, fun...

Chapter 13:

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okay let's start right away with the battle you are probably looking for

Angel of Death Gardevoir: i did not forget the red color, this was annoying but not unreasonably bad, moxie greg with wide lens, intimidate gregorious with magical seed, gregorious had 1 job this battle and 1 job only, make AoD unable to do shit, i came in with pre setup sleep (wild delcatty in hiyoshi city) greg hits aqua tail into rift ralts, gregorious uses attract on AoD, ralts would nigh shade gregorious, greg finishes the ralts next turn while gregorious stacks thunder wave on top of attract on AoD. AoD wants nothing to do with this so she swaps into a kirlia on turn 3 which i abuse by having greg attack into it with aqua tail (kirlia are part fire), while gregorious bites the ralts (this ralts has eviolite so greg can't oneshot it at +1, note that rift ralts and kirlia are quite a bit more bulky than their normal counterparts), AoD comes back in on that spot which promptly gets attracted again, while greg uses a +2 iron tail to get rid of eviolite ralts, trick room despite the supossedly random turn number would basically always run out here, not sure if it's juts fix 5 turns after all or i was just getting unlucky, so i needed the last rift kirlia to miss lovely kiss or target gregorious with it. while greg dances up, gregorious bites AoD because bored (which obviously does literally nothing)
greg follows up by just oneshotting rift kirlia, AoD breaks the hax lock and kills gregorious, but and here is the fun part. greg at +1 outspeeds para'd AoD and dark pulse only 2 shots from full, yes the absurdly boosted dark pulse from angel of death can't OHKO a max spdef gyarados, imagine that, while +6 iron tail 2HKO's back (remember i am running wide lens and garde can still get parahaxed). round 2 is not worth talking about

Ren 5: sigh...... i don't like ren this run, i really don't. as mentioned before the problem with ren is unavoidable damage, he dialed that up to 11 here, i need to dance once on cacturne to not have flygon do worse to me than cacturne does, while tanking a foul play (foul play was not a fun move to deal with this run all in all), then flinch cacturne and kill it, i just had to believe here that greninja wouldn't come in on me despite being faster than +1 at my investment, which it didn't mega scizor decided to come in. i would dance a 2nd time on scizor, set a sub (tech bullet punch doesn't break sub) and then bounce scizor +3 kills and now in would come the thing that ruined all previous plans crested fairy silvally, for those that don't know the ability fairy silvally gets from the crest is unaware, i don't think i need to explain why that is a problem for a setup sweeper, it also hits really hard, but with this plan (i was holding leftovers to sustain the various bullet punches, the e-speed, the foul play and the boosted multi attack) for some reason fairy vally came out to attack into my sub, that was almost broken anyway, so yay for that, 2 bounces kills it, and bounce then kills everything else.

we be going sidequesting now, yippie

Officers Gumshoe and Miles: the main idea was basically disable the incineroar's side of the field while dealing with the murkrow's side, using moxie and substitute to avoid intimidate spam, so much for the theory, the practice was wierd to say the least, pretty sure there were atleast 2 bugs involved, since i sometimes wasn't losing atk despite the sub already being broken, also apparently the turn one wake's up from sleep one can't get flinched.... which is wierd. but the general plan did work, not sure how well this would work if these 2 had proper EVs

Xen Analysist Ruby and Kyle: i am mainly noting this battle for those that actual know what i am refering to, this is badlands baddies, and well it turns out desert only nerfs water moves if the user is grounded, which gyarados is not, so this was basically a double sided sweep without really too much to it

Novae 4: REVENGE, this battle was more or less a breeze because rainbow field is an abomination that shouldn't exist, i did use a telluric seed (the 2nd out of 3 in existance for those keeping count), greg ran telluric seed, gregorious set up rain with damp rock to say fuck you to sun and desert, great 2 for 1 deal on that one. greg would usually get sleeped by exeguttor which is fine, since healing on rainbow field in rain ninetales does basically nothing so it spends like 2 turns setting up nasty plot and the telluric seeds boosts made them go after gregorious instead of greg so bounce to dodge to kill exeg. greg should wake up after 2 turns at the latest and kill ninetales, taking an easy hit from lycanroc, and killing everything else with ease

Deathwing Danni: Forest Restoration btw, dance once on telluric seed crobat, tank a hit, outspeed and oneshot after, flinch primeape (sash), sweep through, done, not much to it, yes +1 can outspeed mega beedrill.

Deathwings Lupin and Sonia: wacan berry gyarados makes togedemaru forget it has zing zap, so it fake outs and iron heads lycanroc which gives me 2 free turns to dance, so we are dancing 2 times while togedemaru and bronzong take 2 turns to remove duskroc, with bronzongs own bulldoze almost killing togedemaru (this can kill and it still works, on the sucessful attempt it just didn't) and then after aya just heatwaves togedemaru with salazzle while i dance a 3rd time this turn, clawitzer replaces replaces togedemaru, i aqua tail it, salazzle heat waves and almost kills bronzong with it and then gets nuked (the sash was apparently used up against one of the generic grunt battles and stays gone, that was new to me aswell but apparently things work that way) , bronzong bulldozes nothing, so it swaps into pelipper which gets caught on the switch by nidoqueens tbolt, while i finish clawitzer so bronzong comes back in and tries to blow up which nidoqueen prevents, i remove krook, from here it can basically go several ways but mainly i remove the most threatening thing, dodging dangerous attacks with bounce as necessary +3 speed makes me outspeed swiftswim kabutops so i can avoid rock z from it, it should be noted if togedemaru dies to the bulldoze klingklang comes in second which gets oneshot by heatwave, so that is preferable even, the important part is that bronzong completely misses bulldoze due to only greg on the field which causes it to switch and gives nidoqueen an easy kill on pelipper.

we stop sidequesting here since aya wasn't quite doable with a 80 level cap, so back to the main story

adam: aguav berry with decent defense sets up a dance then bounces, adam swaps gigalith into the bounce allowing a kill on it with return without it getting a move of (arenite wall) archeops comes back and dies aswell, terrakion gets bite flinched (don't really care about justified, but do care about the sash) then just folds to the next attack, nothing else after lives a hit, and with a jolly nature gyarados outspeed mega dactyl at +1, nothing too bad

Chapter 14:

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back to sidequesting:

Temple Kingdra: easy setup with intimidate on seaking (bounce/dive first turn before setting up to make water resisted again instead of neutral) sweep after, done

Challenger Venus: same deal here, intimidate + dances on dhelmise, +3 kills everything with dive (dry skin heliolisk gets bounced instead), simple

Aya: aya was annoying due to running 2 protect seeds (or rather baneful bunker seeds to be precise) and a sash, also her venusaur's grass knot does doubled damage and gyarados is heavy enough to take the full 120BP from it, so mega venu has a 240BP grass move against me, it was also to fat to be dealt with before, now it dies to +1 bounce (with power herb) so gregorious ran moxie and the herb, greg ran intimidate a telluric seed (my last one) to not take damage from duskrocs rock slide, greg dances, gregorious oneshots nidoqueen (sheer force tbolt is a no from me, die) power herb bounce takes down mega venusaur, greg would then flinch salazzle while the chipped gregorious bounces onto alolamuk, now without power herb to not hit into baneful bunker, +2 bounce taking down muk while aqua tail removes salazzle the next turn
dragalge gets double bounced, the end.

Kowapudunga: it does quite a bit of damage but it's always female so we make it not do much with attract intimidate also reduces the damage it does when it breaks through that, then we just remove both the wailmer adds and setup a bit, kowapudunga would focus on goomink first after intimidate so i had a lot of breathing room, i also ran leftis for recovery.
and as we learned dive on water surface/underwater does a lot so after a bit of setup it gets killed relatively quickly.

Totem Cofagrigus: ice fang freeze... yes i know but it was just to powerful with crest and totem boost (free +2 defenses was not nice) it didn't need nearly as many turns as others, about 3 at most. the rest of the crest mons are not an issue. i went for ice fang freeze over other hax here mainly due to needing ice fang for crest leafeon anyway, paralyze or attract could have easily been enough for cofagrigus but moveslot issues.

Karrina: musharna is setup bait, that is all

Kimono Girl Gauntlet: this was "fun", mainly due to having to get past umbreon and vaporeon somehow, which are way to bulky, and with it being 8 seperate battles with no healing setup is not a plan, i could have made reasonable sets for each of those individually or even all in one battle but the seperation makes this problematic, ultimately i was mainly using bright powder and attract here, attract is of special note since eeveelutions lean heavily towards being male so a female gyarados was used for this, the moveset was attract, outrage, dragon dance, iron head. umbreon was attract haxed, can't get hit by foul play here. flareon gets 2hit by outrage, ideally flare blitz misses due to powder (note that saving between each battle is possible otherwise i would deem this entirely impossible, and even with the sheer amount of hax needed makes this unreasonable tbh, i just wanted the stamp) leafeon would spend a turn with SD due to intimidate so dance then 2hit with outrage, there is probably a leafblade miss here don't remember. espeon is fully free since it clicks calm mind, while i dance which then gets 1hit by outrage, now vaporeon has attract hax written all over it, 2 dances then outrage, toxic can land but should be late in the battle (you take 3 poison ticks after this and are not going  to get hit from here on out) jolteon is the main reason for bright powder, like espeon 1 dance and it dies to outrage. glaceon gets 2 hit by iron head and probably misses blizzard anyway, sylveon gets also 2 hit by iron head, with a flinch
this was obviously a complete hax execution but ig..... not too proud of this one obviously.

okay time for the rest of the main story, before the pyramid this wasn't too bad the pyramid itself was pretty bad and i was stuck in there for days, on what i clearly consider the toughest battle of the run, and no, it wasn't any of the battles you are guessing.

Eli & Sharon 4: free sweep i am only mentioning this one to show i didn't forget about this

Lorna: while holding power bracers gyarados functions suprisingly well in trick room, i ran adamant and not brave due to aromatisse not clicking trick room if i underslow it, which i do with brave, i underslow everything else though, so i was just doubling up on everything coming in until it was only aromatisse left, then hit it with iron head. not really an issue

Dimensional Rift Hippowdon: so these things are fat, we all know this, manuel runs 1000 arrows, although a bugged version that can't hit levitate, it CAN hit flying mons though so i was not as immune to it as i thought and while i could have ran air balloon to be immune to 1000 arrows (no one ever said that before while actually being right) i didn't really want to abuse this, so i was running an aguav berry and fully defensive set, and LEER to drop the hippos defenses enough that ren can kill manuel, i used attract on gloria to keep it out of the fight as much as possible, manuel would often use sandtomb on the silvally switching out into flygon and as such waste a turn, the hope was that i could get 4 leers of when that happens, since ren would just barely not kill manuel at +0 def, i never got this, what i instead got was ren critting manuel for the kill 1 turn after i died to it, me lowering the defenses did allow ren to put it in the range for that though, and also allowed ren with the rest of his team to 1v1 gloria. more luck than skill with this one.

Defense Mechs: the inglorious return of ice fang freeze for a lot of turns, defense mechs are extremly bulky so i needed to heavily double up on them to even get a kill, i froze the leading magneton while dancing up with greg, gregorious would get psyshocked by mech claydol which puts it in red for a salac berry. and now they would attack into claydol (greg with a water gem) to kill, my own speed setup so gregorious is faster just so that greg gets the moxie boost (and more importantly so greg takes the aftermath damage, since gregorious would die from that), then doubling up on the 2nd claydol, on the 2nd magneton, sigilyph could get oneshot by just greg so gregorious iron heads the frozen magneton just so to flinch it if it thaws (which wouldn't have worked now that i think about it since apparently in rejuv you can't be flinched on turns you recover from status) and finally finishing of the frozen magneton.
could i have just skipped this battle? yes, since it's optional to actually win this, but i am too stubborn for that.

 

Bladestar Gauntlet: delete this, just i don't even know, this was ridicolously hard, it was by far the hardest thing of the run and it was that for all the wrong reasons, i don't even know where to begin, those that saw me in discord while i was doing this run know that this got me stuck for days, and i was upset. lets go in order, a gauntlet consisting of 3 double battles the first against 8 mons with huey as your partner, the second against 12 with reina as your partner, and the last against 12 again with ren as your partner.
the first battle is a non issue huey can basically solo this if he has too.
the 2nd battle leads tbolt meowstic, bugged EV spreads make it so that it can't actually kill gyarados with it, but it does a ton of damage, wacan berry makes it thunder wave ribombee instead. the other lead is choice band explosion lickylicky (it literally only has explosion, it WILL blow up) so the easiest way to avoid that was just dive or bounce to dodge, reina's ribombee is sashed anyway, zebstrika would come after and with thunder it can hit into bounce, so dive is prefered. in the end i would dodge the first turn with dive into lickylicky's spot
which half healths zebstrika coming in, reina's ribombee sets web which is helpful, during the dive turn zebstrika finishes the paralyzed ribombee, skarmory (which replaced meowstic) would catch me after the dive with iron head. reina sends out a honchkrow which sucker punches zebstrika, it gets hit by iron head from skarm, i dance once, i iron head the druddigon coming in to guaranteed honchkrow killing it, which it does, skarm removes honchkrow, from here it went a number of ways but basically it was managable from here on out, reina's sticky web made scarf medicham outspeedable, reina in general put in a good amount of work, but either way the 2nd battle wasn't trivial, which is relevant for what comes next,
the 3rd battle is a complete abomination to this run, it's horrible and i hate every facet of it, first of ren leads his sableye which clicks prankster gravity, now since this usually needs explaining, gravity basically causes everything on the field to have -2 evasion while it's active, along with grounding everything and preventing bounce, fly and sky drop, so ren just hurt me in several ways, i can't use my flying stab (and there is a gogoat i would love to use it on), it made bright powder strats impossible (and there is a raichu lead that oneshots me on max special defense even with it having due to bugged spreads no Special attack investment), and it made me vulnerable to ground moves (not relevant here, but just to note), he would then spend the next 2 turns burning gogoat (which is useful tbf) and raichu (which is not), sableye would generally get ignored so i would get murdered and sableye itself does basically no damage, since the raichu has max defense, i can't even oneshot it with +0 and i can't oneshot at +1 either since then the battle is on grassy terrain (curtesy of gogoat) and raichu has a elemental seed (which gives +1 defense) i cannot do anything to these leads and just die outside of extraordinary circumstances, and all of that only due to bugged EV spread, with the intended spreads i could run quick claw strats.
so how did i beat this then? with the most cursed gyarados EV spread on this earth a decent plan, and a crit which i infact planned FOR,
first the spread

YEAH..... this is extremly highly specific and everything has a purpose, the HP investment is so that grassy terrain heals for 20 instead of 19, the special attack investment is to guarantee a flamethrower kill on alola sandslash on grassy terrain, the speed is to out speed said sandslash (under slush rush) and scarf medicham in battle 2 with +1 speed
the investment into defense and and special defense is to make me live things, adamant is just to get certain physical ranges. wacan berry is to manipulate meowstics AI in battle 2, while also to make me live a tbolt in battle 3 from raichu (at slightly above half HP.... on a good roll), the plan was to eat the fake out turn 1, then dance up while raichu tbolt me, then click dive on it, this dive NEEDS to crit, which would remove the raichu, gogoat would hit me with +1 horn leech here, iron head deletes abomasnow that comes in after (flamethrower would too but scare away my target) i would eat a 2nd horn leech while sableye continues to do fuck all, alola sandslash comes in which i outspeed even in hail and flamethrower kills it (no physical attack even at +3 kills this thing because bugged spreads made it max HP max Def, why do i need to remove this so badly? it sets aurora veil after which ren just loses. i die to horn leech now, so ren has to beat 9 mons remaining, which i know he can..... is what i would like to say, i know he could, if he actaully had the silvally crest that the PBS gives him, but partner trainers seem to have no inventory so the crest is just gone, without the crest he manages to beat 8 mons, and then silvally clicks parting shot on alola marowak because he can't oneshot it crested ground vally could..... this part was just demoralizing as i was denied a win again and again, by bugs, because that is what this battle is, a battle against bugs.
how i ultimately won was that after getting the crit once again gogoat horn leeched sableye that turn, i can only imagine it was because raichu's tbolt low rolled hard enough that gogoat rather attacks sableye after missing once because of dive. which caused me to sweep the entire left side, and rapidash on the right (i got flame bodied then) but ren's greninja  1 v 5'd the entire rest of the right side. was this win likely? not at all, honestly if i had been further from the end or if this had been an actually major battle that wasn't insulting to lose the run to, i would have probably given up, i probably should have really, but i didn't want to lose the run to random nobodies and a massive pile of bugs, so yeah that is that.
makes this run a whole lot less impressive doesn't it?
sorry for the essay on this btw, i just couldn't really put my frustration with this any shorter
TL:DR: this was basically impossible thanks to a lot of buggy BS and i only won due to an obscure low roll along with a crit

Ryland: this is just the pointe to the previous joke, ryland was.... dare i say it? easy. with an aguav berry intimidate and defensive investment, one can get a rain dance (to nullify sandstorm chip) and 4 dragon dances on nidoqueen (which with 24 EVs in speed is enough to outspeed ryland's excadrill) after that everything except torterra gets oneshot , torterra needing an iron head flinch, but that is it, i even did this twice because i forgot to save after, didn't get any harder from that.

Aelita & Melia: a little bit more finicky but ultimately quite doable due to aegislash being extremly abusable, cherri berry gyarados dances once, once it dances twice, i actually want beheeyem to get paralyzed, the speeddrop from that makes aegislash come out after togekiss faints, it can't get fully para'd though since it needs to 3 hit togekiss (otherwise togekiss hardswitches into hydreigon), +2 dive kills gliscor at half health (from sandtomb chip) through arenite wall, aqua tail then kills starraptor at +2 (+1 moxie -1 intimidate) while aegislash shadow sneaks beheeyem which lives, iron head into goodra and either flinch or just plain don't get hit by outrage, finish it next turn, use dive from here on out to remove aelita's side while avoiding aegislash (it clicks king's shield every second turn as aegislash does) it wises up sometimesand shadow sneaks me before i hide with dive (after not being disabled anymore by beheeyem crest ofc) but i cleanly remove aelita's side of field,ans sometimes gyarados even survives to deal with melia aswell, if not, oh well naganadel can generallly sweep the entirety of melia's team once arenite wall drops (which it will have by then a long time ago), finicky but managable

short sidequest intermission:

Empoleon crest def mech gauntlet: the only difficult one was the 2nd tbh. in the first battle the golurk gets double hit by aqua tail, and magneton loves clicking zap cannon (and we all know how accurate that is). the 2nd one has to claydols leading which needs a bit of setup to get right, gregorious baits a low roll on short curcuit thunderbolt from the level 96 claydol
the level 97 just goes for light screen, both gyarados dance up, then greg aqua tails the level 96 claydol while gregorious dives out of the way of tbolt and psyshock, dive and aqua tail finish the claydol, while gregorious tanks a psyshock (thanks to aguav berry heal), then both double up on magneton with aqua tail from gregorious which is slightly faster and bulldoze from greg (which is why we are doing this now and not earlier), greg then 1 v 1s the remaining claydol, invested to just barely live above 25% so i can take the aftermath damage.
the 3rd is just doubling up on claydol while double intimidate makes golurk useless (also living crest def mech hyper beam thats important too)

Challenger Venus: intimidate lives a 2x roll from tauros' body slam, then ddance on big top goes to town, remember equip aguav berry to be able to take all the priority hits, also kill tauros with aqua tail so steelix doesn't show early, 2nd dance on azumarill seals the deal
as if a ddancer on big top field could have ever been difficult

Final round:

Dr. Isha: hey kids? did you know that a gyarados can live a +1 crit dark pulse from hydreigon without defensive investment? on a roll tbf, guaranteed with some investment, so aguav berry to not get killed by tech shadow sneak, and dance once on hydra, flinch or freeze with ice fang (outrage would kill but not too great to lock into that several things on isha's team can live +2 outrage) then finish hydra and just kill what comes in, have outrage for giratina (yes i didn't free it just to trounce the legendary thing for a third time), not much to this


BONUS:

Dufaux: soooo turns out dufaux + any add without an electric move can't break a sub from gyarados with careful nature max spdef at +1 (from seed which also does ingrain), so free setup for days, and just sweep through the rotom adds, (bring crunch for rotom mow and rotom wash), then aqua tail dufaux till it dies (at +5 speed greg even outspeeds 2nd form dufaux)
 

 

CONLUSION

  Reveal hidden contents

i would say the run was pretty reasonable considering the circumstances, until rift hippowdon and the true hardest battle after, those 2 make this run just sooo bad all on their own, the latter especially, although i firmly believe if everything worked as intended that battle wouldn't have been nearly as hard as it was, it was just everything falling together in such a way that this battle couldn't have been much harder if it had been specifically made to stop this specific run, and it was entirely unitended which is just the biggest insult about it, all the issues that come from it were based on unintended EV spreads and ren missing and item he should have had.
Gyarados itself is a setup sweeper a strong one at that, it's typing and bulk lets it setup on a lot of things, it also just so happened to have certain tools (hax if we are being honest) to bypass things it otherwise couldn't, and that was it alone, put it in a team of mons that help it get around the parts it has trouble dealing with and it will go on a rampage, there is good reason that it's unavaiable as of yet, that being said it there are mons that are of similiar power or stronger that can accomplish similar, i wouldn't bat an eye if it was avaiable in the next version, i personally would say V14 might be a good place for it, not much later than that though
not likely to redo this or anything similar to it anytime soon, though it was interesting, i may pick this particular run back up on the finished game and see how it fares then.

- Thanks to Matt, Pyuku, Marten, SG, Citrine & more for listening to me ramble about this so long and give their own suggestions on some of the more diffcult parts
- Also thanks all the Rejuvenation devs, for this beatiful game that i can't help but replay with even the most ridicolous challenges
 

Edited September 3, 2020 by Falirion

[Matt.]

absolute madlad

 

I'm talking about both you and Gyarados

 

Even though I know turn-for-turn how you beat Erick, it will always be amazing. You thoroughly proved that Gyarados is completely busted, but also had to be really clever to pull this off. Congrats!

[Candy]

I'm not a good reader but I'm impressed you've gone so far with a single mon on one of the most difficult (imo) fangames

[DelRad]

Bro I can't even beat reborn with a full team of six yet you beat rejuvenation with only one!

      Applause    you beating the game with only one Pokemon...

  that was so cool!

[Myrrh]

That was obviously my post.  I'm perfectly fine being mentioned specifically rather than indirectly.  I also don't see a solo run, one that isn't even a true solo run, as impressive or much of a statement.  You can brute force with a lot of other things as well in similar ways given that a game over doesn't stop you from redoing the fight over and over until you finish it.  Given that AI opponents are easy to capitalize on, this isn't exactly an accomplishment.

 

I'll just quote your first part, grab the pieces I stated and properly explain the reason for the examples I presented because apparently it went over your head a bit.

  On 9/2/2020 at 3:02 PM, Falirion said:

Come one, come all, and hear the legend of the most fearsome beast, the legend of greg, the mighty gyarados....... i am not going to do this whole thread in this style.
So the title should already tell you this is about a recent run i did, a run in which i only used a gyarados (+a 2nd one for doubles, hence "solo", i could call it a duo run, but that is kinda not correct either, since i only uses 1 gyarados for most the battles). This was something that was started by mainly. me being the type of person that takes some statements as a challenge, in this case several forum user thinking gyarados is fine and should be avaiable already, in particular zumi once showed a specific forum post in discord talking about how gyarados is fine enough to have in the game now, since other things are more broken, the examples used for which were either other things that weren't in the game (ice beam greninja, mega lucario) or just not true (lilligant for example) volcarona was also mentioned as an example, and that one is arguable but volcarona would not be able to do this, the arguments were also heavily based on competitive, which..... is just completly besides the point in a purely single player game. (i could link said post, but i don't really want to put a person to a pillory, soo let's not). At which point i remembered the user and rejuv dev Azery to have done a solo run of gyarados in reborn, succesfully. and i decided to do the same. for intense Rejuv, at the time "as far as it will go", which turns out is all the way through the game.

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"Volcarona has Quiver Dance and can abuse it to be even more absurd.  Even in competitive it's a larger threat than Gyarados even despite the prevalence of Stealth Rock to keep it in check.  In fact, it's usually mentioned by Smogon as a reason they keep Stealth Rock around as it could very well be banned otherwise.  (This isn't the only reason of course, but it is a notable one all the same.)  One can also abuse Fiery Dance to get a boost from using that as well."

You simply stated it'd not be able to do this...which is only probably true if you are going by that early game its pre-evolution is just as worthless as Magikarp.  But if you really need to resort to that argument for how the game is at a stage where that's irrelevant, then you have no argument.  And I also already explained the competitive reasoning in that same topic, and it is, again, overlooked and blatantly ignored.

 

"Greninja has protean and hits as hard as Deoxys Attack with Ice Beam."

"Ice Beam Greninja is not in the game so therefore it isn't valid to put into perspective how strong Protean is with a 90 base move!"  Aw, yes,  More misrepresentation of what I stated.  I presented that for the perspective of it considering it has access to plenty other moves.

 

Megas evolution is properly being brought in version 13 so I brought it up due to that instance and for the fact that we do, indeed, already have a Lucario available in the game.  I didn't even state it WAS available in my post.  I said, "would be available".  I could have also stated "but we'll probably not have this particular mega until later I suppose." for this one as well, but it's hard to tell how the team will decide to do things.  That and Salamence is only available to people who use Debug anyways to grab the gift or the people who got it legitimately.

 

"Lilligant is quite honestly underrated when it goes against game AI as it can power through most singles related sections simply through abusing Quiver Dance and Sleep Powder.  It's not as reliable as the other two, but she does brute force really well."

This isn't wrong considering it can brute force many singles based battles easy due to the nature of Sleep Powder and Quiver Dance.  There's also a reason it's so hyped up for Black and White runs due to the same kind of strat I mentioned here.  This applies just as well in Reborn and Rejuvenation despite the terrains added to do all they usually can to act against the player.

 

So, no, this doesn't really prove anything to me as I stated other alternatives that kept in mind options available, power presentation, and taking into account what comes or could come from version 13.  I don't really care if they add Gyarados or not, doubt they will as they'll use this as a counterargument despite still not really proposing a counter to my individual points I made.  I never said Gyarados was a weak Pokemon that couldn't brute force past with setup.  There simply are many other strong available options, Volcarona as you even admitted is "arguable".  All it really comes down to is, "use our preferred super strong options and not this one we don't like because we arbitrarily drew the line with it."

[Falirion]

Sooo leaving aside for a second my own problems of using the right tone when writting this post for which i do apologize,
to be more precise in what my contentions with the arguments were.
Greninja: i wasn't intending to cast aside the whole issue of Greninja, but it should be noted that Ice beam may have been a poor example, and being a protean user it's movepool is what makes or breaks the mon, to which i personally believe in rejuvenation specifically Greninja is being overvalued, since it takes quite a long time to come to the movepool that makes it the threat it is, and even as of the current endgame it just still missing some of these options. Is Greninja a powerful pokemon? absolutely no question. Would i argue it being a single mon that cleaves the game wide open? not really, when it comes to starters we have blaziken for that, and rillaboom as you noted rillaboom, being so gamebreaking they are reworking how grassy terrain (and other canon terrains) interact with the field system.

Mega Lucario: While yes V13 is going to make the mega ring accessable to the player, i would actually be quite surprised if the lucarionite were the be avaiable, i am not questioning lucario's strengths in any way, my point here was more to the lines of making your argument of how other options are just as strong as gyarados if not stronger, these comparisions should not use mons that are just as unavaiable as gyarados is, to make the point of how gyarados is okay to have at this point.

Lilligant: i will admit, that Lilligant can quite heavily use sleep moves combined with one of the most powerful setup moves in the game quite well, i personally would not put it on the same tier as gyarados, but i to be perfectly honest don't feel like digging a punch of calcs to make a prove for it, as this was neither my intention nor, nor am i in the mood for it.

Volcarona: this is a fearsome beast that is avaiable, it's even in the mystery egg so even have a chance to be avaiable quite early, (with the downside that it only evolves very late as gen 5 mons do), now what was i trying to say with "it would not be able to do this" simple i do not believe volcarona to be able to do the same type of run, anyone who feels strongly enough about this, and has the freetime to do so can prove me wrong, start it as a level 5 volcarona for all i care, but that was all i was meaning to say with this, not that volcarona was worse than gyarados or whatever (same as you not saying that gyarados was a weak mon, i got that just fine) that being said volcarona's avaiability is definetly an argument to be made, when looking at other mons that are unavaiable.

all of that aside, i truly didn't wish to make this seem as an attempt to "prove you wrong" or just disparaging the post. I just wanted to note what ultimately lead to me doing this run and used the wrong tone (i have since slightly changed the intro, anyone that wants to read what it said before myrrh has it quoted), and ultimately i just wanted to present this run (at the suggestion of someone else even, i was initially not even gonna make a post about it), if you think it impressive or not, fine with me, i certainly didn't intend to as a war of some description.
The avaiability of mons, items and TMs in this game and any other can certainly be argued over, i know i have my own opinions about things that are avaiable too late, or even too early (too early is a dangerous argument to be made, but some things do deserve that distinction)
I personally believe (especially after doing this run) that gyarados, is something that has perfectly good reason to not be accessable quite yet, (i do disaggre with the notion that it should be almost at the league late, that would be entirely to late, V14 maybe? seems fine)

Edited September 2, 2020 by Falirion

[Myrrh]

I appreciate you editing the OP and responding to me logically.

  On 9/2/2020 at 7:24 PM, Falirion said:

Greninja: i wasn't intending to cast aside the whole issue of Greninja, but it should be noted that Ice beam may have been a poor example, and being a protean user it's movepool is what makes or breaks the mon, to which i personally believe in rejuvenation specifically Greninja is being overvalued, since it takes quite a long time to come to the movepool that makes it the threat it is, and even as of the current endgame it just still missing some of these options. Is Greninja a powerful pokemon? absolutely no question. Would i argue it being a single mon that cleaves the game wide open? not really, when it comes to starters we have blaziken for that, and rillaboom as you noted rillaboom, being so gamebreaking they are reworking how grassy terrain (and other canon terrains) interact with the field system.

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I actually don't disagree with you on Greninja too much.  My main point was the amount of power it can really unleash, especially given the options it already has available already.  I will also admit that Ice Beam was a poor example to put forth due to not being available yet, which makes the calculation deceptive to people who don't know better about this aspect.  I also agree that Blaziken would be the better option to go with as right now I believe both can only be gotten as starters so going Greninja is an opportunity cost of not having Blaziken instead.

 

  Quote

Mega Lucario: While yes V13 is going to make the mega ring accessable to the player, i would actually be quite surprised if the lucarionite were the be avaiable, i am not questioning lucario's strengths in any way, my point here was more to the lines of making your argument of how other options are just as strong as gyarados if not stronger, these comparisions should not use mons that are just as unavaiable as gyarados is, to make the point of how gyarados is okay to have at this point.

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Fair enough and I don't doubt it being late like Salamence's mega due to being debatably one of the strongest megas.  I will reiterate, however; that I only mentioned it due to mega evolution coming into the game and that this was with v13 in mind.  I can see how this could be seen as an extreme example all the same as it requires the assumption that they would make the mega stone available.  (Just because we get Mega Evolution does not mean we'll get the most broken ones.)

 

  Quote

Lilligant: i will admit, that Lilligant can quite heavily use sleep moves combined with one of the most powerful setup moves in the game quite well, i personally would not put it on the same tier as gyarados, but i to be perfectly honest don't feel like digging a punch of calcs to make a prove for it, as this was neither my intention nor, nor am i in the mood for it.

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When I mentioned Lilligant I brought it up for it being a Pokemon people would generally not look to in order to brute force the game and to put into perspective just how easy it is to brute force the game with a Pokemon that does it with such a simple combo.  This compared to Gyarados in that they both are able to brute force fights by manipulating RNG and the weakness of AI controlled trainers, but I by no means meant to say that Lilligant was as strong as Gyarados.  "especially when we have plenty of other things to look at to compare it to."  is what I said at the end of my post, and in this instance, I was comparing them with utility over power itself.  (Both are setup sweepers able to run over the AI without much strategy or effort.)

 

  Quote

all of that aside, i truly didn't wish to make this seem as an attempt to "prove you wrong" or just disparaging the post. I just wanted to note what ultimately lead to me doing this run and used the wrong tone (i have since slightly changed the intro, anyone that wants to read what it said before myrrh has it quoted), and ultimately i just wanted to present this run, if you think it impressive or not, fine with me, i certainly didn't intend to as a war of some description.

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Yeah, no worries.  I just prefer being straight up addressed with my original side shown.  I don't mind if people disagree with me and argue against what I said, especially like how you argued with this post, but I do take major issue with someone when they try to write out what I say without reference to what was said as it can lead to it being misrepresented.  (Which is how I felt from your post originally.)

 

I respect your position on Gyarados and even respect your disagreements with me.  V14 adding Gyarados would be fine by me, my main thing is that I truly do believe Volcarona to be just as strong and that it's arbitrary that one is available while the other is not.

[Hycrox]

greg

[Paperblade]

GREG GREG GREG GREG

 

wrt Gren, my experience is that it's the best early game starter I've used so far (haven't used Torchic yet) because protean Echoed Voice + its speed just lets it win any singles fight and it's an amazing Hidden Power user. It falls off a bit after Valarie or so because the 50-60BP moves that were fine before just to hit stuff super effective stop cutting it, and there's not a ton of fights where Mat Block can put in a ton of work so you are stuck with Surf and Extrasensory + like, Night Slash or Hidden Power? But once you get Dark Pulse and Hydro Pump it gets a third good move and a huge power boost and there are more fights where Mat Block is excellent as time goes on (Erick, Florin, Venam, Lorna, Eli&Sharon 4, Defense Mechs)

 

The real weakness of Gren however is that it has no setup move and its special attack is just serviceable, so it's more of an offensive support mon (you could run Spikes on it for example, which autobreaks sturdy and sashes and just helps secure KOs). And this lack of power really hurts as we move into mons where having cheaty EVs is the norm. For example: Lvl 85 252 SpA Life Orb Greninja Hydro Pump vs. Lvl 86 252 HP / 252+ SpD Steelix-Mega: 252-299 (82.6 - 98%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

 

And Mega-Steelix's special bulk isn't amazing, 75/95 is a bit above average but not terribly so. This ignores the field since the field is incredibly negative to Gren's damage--special water moves that aren't Scald are horrible on Desert Field.

 

gren can also get blizzard now, which is strictly better than ice beam if you are patient enough to reset for misses

 

I also wouldn't rank mons based on their ability to solo the game under these conditions, there are a lot of minor things that add up to give Gyarados an advantage that wouldn't really matter in regular gameplay, like its ability to flinch/freeze hax things letting it cheese its way past even fights like Erick.