I feel like new Souta is WAY too strong. ( in normal )

[Vhein]

I don't remember him being this bad in V12, here is what i noticed about this fight in terms of difficulty scaling :

 

- Most of his moves have a +50% damage bonus, as all champions have

- Sky attack in one turn enable for stupid rng and damage to come through, with a stunning 90% accuracy

- He can revert back his terrain at will via his Sig move

- His Sig move prevent any kind of setup for a sweeper / a staller

- Strong winds is active from the get go, nullifying weakness like rock, electrik, ice... 

- Tailwind is active from the get go, which last for almost the entirety of the fight ( 8 turns )

 

By no mean i put up this list to remove all of those factor, and by no mean he is invincible, an Altaria with cloud nine to remove Strong winds and then some Thunder after tailwind end ( if you can survive or stall long enough, that is ) is enough to melt him, what i'm tilted about his the fact that i feel like your option are kind of limited in this fight, and i don't remember him having Strong winds before, which definitely brought this fight to a whole other level that doesn't belong to a "normal" difficulty imo.

 

The team i ended up winning with ( for those who might be stuck ) :

 

- Altaria @ Cloud Nine, Flamethrower for Skarmory, 252 EV Def 

- Boldtund to finish off Skarmory @ Strong Jaw  

- Manectric ( did most of the work for me with Thunder ) @ Focus sash

- Grimmsnarl for wall setup @ Light Clay

- Zangoose to kill Dragonite @ Toxic orb and Toxic Boost

- Coalossal to setup Stealth Rock, Rapid Spin to remove those placed by his skarmory, can kill Unfezant easily under wall, can kill Swanna on a switch from Souta with Rock Slide @ Rock Gem

 

Feel free to switch Boldtund with Magnezone if you have him, seems better.

[pitxhblank]

it was definitely crazy diffcult; his field effect is by far the worst you come up against that far into the game. I somehow beat it with gale wings talonflame sharp beak brave bird spam, using chip damage here and there from other mons whilst trying to stall initial tailwind. Either use this guys team or run your own bird spam, thats the best ive come up with.

[LuckyHawk]

use a max ev and spatk boosting noivern with the seed, use hurricane and reset till the skarmory gets confused and hits itself. Spam hurricane after that. Bring something along to take care of the mega pidgeot. This worked for me. I just had to reset 3 times 

[Blontary]

Back in v12 electrode saved the day for me, I still have to face him here in v13, though a quick question: couldn't you use trick room? 

[Vhein]

3 minutes ago, Blontary said:

Back in v12 electrode saved the day for me, I still have to face him here in v13, though a quick question: couldn't you use trick room? 

pretty sure it works, i just didn't have a mons with it.

[Brauvo]

He's certainly intimidating, but I don't think he's the worst solely because you can match his advantages with your own hyper offense team. Even if not using flyers, having an elemental seed (or w/e seed he's using if that's not the right one) gives you the tailwind boost, too. He doesn't set up another tailwind, so if you have a way to do it or a second seed, you can have the speed advantage all battle. Not taking hits from his glass cannons makes him doable even for a team that isn't specifically designed to beat him. 

 

The sick strategy you cooked up looks like it'd demolish him for anyone who copies, especially with a seed on boltund. I myself used magnezone there for about the same job and swoobat for the other half of the work. 

[Lucifer Morningstar]

That does sound quite buffed.

In v12, I made a joke of him in Normal mode with Smack Down. 
I used Smack Down to descend the field to the mountain (which BTW is or was Jan's suggestion) and ripped through him easily with Lyconroc which gets a boost from the mountain field, A-Ninetails (for Dragonite) and Jolteon. 

[JK’S]

I beat a few days ago, I found it easy mainly cause I used court change Cinderace whenever Tailwind became an issue, then used aevian ampharos to take hits to get speed down with its ability (cotton down) then destroyed with stone edge aevian lapras. If your struggling, lycanroc can be found in Route 9 and smack down can be found in darchlight caves

[Vhein]

42 minutes ago, JK’S said:

I beat a few days ago, I found it easy mainly cause I used court change Cinderace whenever Tailwind became an issue, then used aevian ampharos to take hits to get speed down with its ability (cotton down) then destroyed with stone edge aevian lapras. If your struggling, lycanroc can be found in Route 9 and smack down can be found in darchlight caves

where du you get ampharos btw plz ?

[hepengild]

I found the smack-down strategy to be null in v13, as it requires two smack downs to change the field and Souta can change it back in one turn with heavenly wing.

[JK’S]

2 minutes ago, hepengild said:

I found the smack-down strategy to be null in v13, as it requires two smack downs to change the field and Souta can change it back in one turn with heavenly wing.

Yh that happened to me a few times, so the field would usually only change for like 1 turn

 

36 minutes ago, Vhein said:

where du you get ampharos btw plz ?

You gotta do zumi’s Pokédex quest in magnolia library 

[Vhein]

2 minutes ago, JK’S said:

Yh that happened to me a few times, so the field would usually only change for like 1 turn

 

You gotta do zumi’s Pokédex quest in magnolia library 

Cool, thanks !

[MhicKy]

I think Jan came back with a vendeta since in v12 he was way too easy..
I literally used to beat him with a Steelix with Smack Down and Dig to change the field to Cave Field and then just finish him off with Lycanrok but now Smack Down takes 2 uses to go to Mountain Top and when it does he immediately puts it back to Sky Field (On top of not being able to change from Mountain Top to Cave Field anymore, I tried.. I put his mons to sleep and tried that just to be hit with this realization..)

[Nocturne93]

He's definitely one of the harder Gym Leaders, but you can actually use his own field effects against him. Honchkrow with Sky Attack(via breeding) and Moxie as ability is absolutely broken here. Make sure to wait until the effects of his Skarmory's Tailwind are gone, then use Noivern or another Flying type to set up Tailwind yourself. Knock out Skarmory(because it resists Honchkrow's Sky Attack and could knock you out here) then send in Honchkrow, which should go first, because of Tailwind. Spam Sky Attack to knock out his Pokémon while boosting your Attack with Moxie. If your Tailwind effects run out(I defeated him before this happened), you could always use Sucker Punch to deal with his remaining Pokémon. 

[Tomek]

I remember using crobat, jolteon tyrantrum lycanroc back in V12....

[Lucifer Morningstar]

On 8/13/2021 at 2:49 PM, hepengild said:

I found the smack-down strategy to be null in v13, as it requires two smack downs to change the field and Souta can change it back in one turn with heavenly wing.

 

To be honest I can understand this change even though it sounds like a son of a bitch to deal with. 
For being what was it the 12th badge he did need a bit of a challenge buff. Smack Down made him such a joke in V12 that it was a bit inappropriate for his level. 

[MhicKy]

My main strat now is this
Start with Steelix setting Stealth Rock, if the Skarmory doesn't make it flinch then Steelix can finish him off with Gyro Ball (Make sure he has 0IVs on Speed for maximum damage), after that a bunch of bulky mons with type advantage can make it work, like the Aevium-Ampharos or Magnezone, basically just taking enough damage to not get OHKOed and then dishing enough to OHKO

[KM_]

I played souta in V12 on insane difficulty.
What did the trick for me was opening meowstic with an element seed (counters tailwind) and setting up barriers, following with a Gigalith with quick claw and smack down. Followed by a pokemon with dig. after that a high speed lycanrock and spamming revive herbs.
it was a very difficult battle, but doable.
I highly recommend trying to transition the field, a cave is imo best because it gives rock types extra power and decreases the power of flying types.

I would say its impossible in V13 though, since you cannot use items during battles (I'm going to dig through the code to see if I can disable this "feature" so i can continue my intense run, otherwise swapping to normal or going back to V12)
 

[Cyphre]

You cant change it into a cave field anymore. 

*    These moves transform the field into Sky field:
        Fly          Bounce    
        Heavenly Wing        
*    These moves transform this field into a Snowy Mountain:
        Blizzard        Subzero Slammer
*    These moves transform this field into a Volcanic Top Field:
        Lava Plume            Magma Drift             Eruption        Inferno Overdrive

One of the many, many, many bad things done to Fields in v13. 

[KM_]

So, how is V13 supposed to be playable on intense then? 
on a side note, would you know how to downgrade back to v12 by any chance. I regret updating to V13 so much right now. 
Going into the GDC apartment allowed me to switch back to V12 without any issue. I think I will just play V12 until its very end before swapping over. 

Edited August 17, 2021 by KM_
Swapping to V12

[Vhein]

40 minutes ago, KM_ said:

So, how is V13 supposed to be playable on intense then? 
on a side note, would you know how to downgrade back to v12 by any chance. I regret updating to V13 so much right now. 
Going into the GDC apartment allowed me to switch back to V12 without any issue. I think I will just play V12 until its very end before swapping over. 

Don't do that, you'll break your save 100%, there is a lot of things that have changed between V12 and V13 and if you revert back to V12, even tho it will work, when you go back to V13 some things may ( or certainly ) will break.

[HirsuteMonkey]

1 hour ago, KM_ said:

So, how is V13 supposed to be playable on intense then? 

Your two options appear to be to grind and EV train specific counters for every boss fight, including this one, or to use Debug mode to skip that gargantuan time sink.

 

The hyperspecific-counter grinding is atrocious and I’m only playing on normal! These fields are really, really unbalanced, and not in a fun way. Reborn’s was better, even though it’s not as good in general as Rejuvenation.

 

Then, of course, you can also get lucky, for example sweeping Adam and his surprise reverse field with a Dunsparce, killing Giratina with a Jigglypuff’s immunities, or taking out 2-vs-1 battles with the impenetrable thickness of Unaware Quagsire. Usually, though, things aren’t that easy.

 

And let’s not even get into the perennial aggravation of having to play with an NPC’s team…

[KM_]

5 minutes ago, HirsuteMonkey said:

Your two options appear to be to grind and EV train specific counters for every boss fight, including this one, or to use Debug mode to skip that gargantuan time sink.

 

The hyperspecific-counter grinding is atrocious and I’m only playing on normal! These fields are really, really unbalanced, and not in a fun way. Reborn’s was better, even though it’s not as good in general as Rejuvenation.

 

Then, of course, you can also get lucky, for example sweeping Adam and his surprise reverse field with a Dunsparce, killing Giratina with a Jigglypuff’s immunities, or taking out 2-vs-1 battles with the impenetrable thickness of Unaware Quagsire. Usually, though, things aren’t that easy.

 

And let’s not even get into the perennial aggravation of having to play with an NPC’s team…

All pokemon I have are already EV trained, I have about 1 and a half boxes full while doing a shiny only playthrough. 

 

 

50 minutes ago, Vhein said:

Don't do that, you'll break your save 100%, there is a lot of things that have changed between V12 and V13 and if you revert back to V12, even tho it will work, when you go back to V13 some things may ( or certainly ) will break.

Well, V13 screwed the game up so hard its 0 fun. so what am I supposed to do?

[0ris]

I beat him with the meme-team of five Donphans then a Wobbuffet to take down the Dragonite (extremespeed wrecks the Ice Shard strat). That's the only one of his with a priority move and he doesn't have any ghosts, so the Endeavor-Sturdy-Ice Shard combo again trivializes a single-battle gym.

 

Have a high-leveled one with an Ice Gem for the Gliscor, though, it won't be at 1hp due to Poison Heal.

[SpookyEvelyn]

Made an account just to reply to this thread.

 

Yeah this fight is stupid with how many advantages are stacked and how restricted you are. I raised a whole team of Elec/Rock/Steel thinking I could fight for control of the terrain and then destroy him, only to realize too late that Mountain can't be changed to Cave (why? You can change Cave to Mountain...). So here's what I did instead:

 

Steelix (Smack Down, Dig[Turned out to be useless...], Rock Tomb, Stealth Rock)

Electivire (Brick Break, Ice Punch, Thunderpunch, Light Screen)

A. Lapras (Perish Song, Rock Slide, Psychic, Sandstorm [turned out to be useless...])

Togedemaru (Spiky Shield, Nuzzle, Zing Zap, Fell Stinger)
A. Golem (Stone Edge, Explosion, Thunderpunch, Smack Down)

Ampharos (Cotton Guard, Light Screen, Discharge, Power Gem)

 

Nuzzled the Skarmory then setup Stealth Rocks with Steelix...you can debuff once with Rock Tomb then Power Herb Dig to kill Skarm. Swanna comes out next, let Steelix die, then go to Togedemaru and commence trolling with an entire team holding Red Cards to bounce his team around into Stealth Rocks. Togedemaru can take out a couple pokemon by itself easily if played right. Used Togedemaru to paralyze then Electivire to Icepunch Dragonite in its stupid goofy face and get rid of it after some stealth rocks. I cheesed his broken Mega Pidgeot with Perish Song.

 

Ultimately I think that's the best way to deal with him, since from reading various threads wondering why I couldn't control the field it looks like someone decided to just take away your ability to do that (which is like the main gimmick of this game...talk about lame...) so if you can't win clean and fairly you can always just troll him to death by playing the kind of way that'd get you slapped in person.