Beginners

Published on July 31st, 2013 | by HeroOfTheWinds

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Improbability Drive: A Guide to Probability in Pokemon Battles

Hax. A phenomenon known the whole world over that has caused thousands of dc’s and rage quits. A startling number of players curse this entity without any idea of how little (or much) reason there is to be upset. Like all RPG’s, Pokémon is no different in its incorporation of luck, ranging from full paralysis to critical hits. But just how random are these events? This is the question that this article will answer, and hopefully knowledge of these chances will help players to realize more fully the weight of luck in the game and its consequences.

Special Conditions

So in just what ways can random events affect battles? Well, look no farther than the most common means of placing opponents into the menacing palm of the RNG: special conditions. These effects tend to have fairly low chances of being inflicted or taking effect, and yet they are the easiest to cause due to the large number of means by which they may occur.  Be aware, however, that all special conditions except Infatuation can be blocked by Safeguard or Lum Berry. Now, to take a closer look at each one and its causes:

Paralyze: Grinding into a static halt

As the heading of this section suggests, the primary cause of the paralyze condition is the wide variety of Electric moves. Just what does this shock you with? Try a 25% chance of being completely unable to use a move. As if that wasn’t enough of a cripple (pun intended, naturally), the Pokémon’s speed drops to an astonishing 25% of it’s original value. But with every cloud comes a silver lining, and in this case, it’s the fact that no move has anything higher than a 30% chance of causing paralysis, barring Thunder Wave and Zap Cannon, which always inflict it. Notable among the moves with a 30% chance are Thunder and Discharge, due to their fairly common use in VGC. Note that the ever-standard Thunderbolt also has a 10% chance to cause it. Additionally, it would be remiss to neglect mentioning that the Static and Effect Spore abilities also can cause paralysis, with a 30% and 10% chance, respectively.

So what’s to be done once your Pokémon have been Paralyzed? Since Heal Bell and Aromatherapy are usually not worth the move space, methods to actually remove the condition are scarce. However, if more than one Pokémon is paralyzed, and you have access to Trick Room, at least one of the side effects of paralysis could be turned into a boon, as a 75% decrease in speed means a nearly quadruple speed bonus in TR. Also, moves like Psycho Shift and Abilities like Synchronize can cause the opponent to keep your misery company. However, an ounce of prevention always helps, and if you see a T-wave coming, there’s nothing like switching an immune Ground type in to be a “shock” absorber.

Freeze: Not as cool as you think

Chances are, after playing VGC for a while, it’s inevitable that you will run into the cold embrace of the Freeze condition. Perhaps one of the most terrible conditions, frozen Pokémon have only a 20% chance of thawing on any given turn. And unlike Confusion and Sleep, there’s no turn limit on how long you can be frozen. The bright side? All moves with a chance of causing Freeze only have a 10% rate of causing it. Not even the mighty Blizzard has a higher chance of causing Freeze…! But as the case is with all other luck-based occurrences, it’s bound to happen sooner or later. So if you really do not want to remain a Popsicle, consider attacking your own Pokémon with a Fire move. Without fail that will thaw your ‘mon without even the slightest trace of frostbite, getting it immediately back into the action. Furthermore, despair not if your Fire type gets frozen itself, since any move that involves being encased in fire with thaw the user. (Read: Flare Blitz.)  Once again, forethought will save frustration, as Sunny weather will prevent the Freeze condition from happening in the first place.

Sleep: You snooze, you lose

Sleep is one of those conditions that can be either a friend or an enemy. Lasting one to three turns, it was mercifully decided that a Pokémon could not sleep indefinitely. In fact, there is no bias toward any of the three lengths of sleep, so there’s a perfect one out of three chance for each duration. However, absolutely no luck is involved with the move Rest, which always makes you sleep for two turns (provided you don’t switch out and reset the counter). Also, the Effect Spore ability has a 10% chance of causing Sleep upon contact. Perhaps some of you have considered trying to use the Early Bird ability, but haven’t been sure how much of a benefit it is. The answer: very. There is always a 33.3% chance of waking up immediately, and otherwise, the Pokémon will only sleep one short turn. But as with all conditions, it can be prevented from happening to begin with. One way is to effectively predict around the common Spore users (Amoongus, Parasect, Breloom, and Smeargle) until you can KO them, another is to hold a Chesto or Lum Berry, and finally the Insomnia and Vital Spirit abilities always prevent it.

Confusion: Such a terrible thing

The other status effect that has a finite length, Confusion lasts longer than sleep, clocking it at two to five turns. The logical explanation of this effect is that each turn there is “only” a 50% of confusion taking effect, damaging the Pokémon and robbing it of an attack. With the exception of Swagger, Flatter, and Confuse Ray, however, no move has more than a 30% chance of confusing the target. Take note, though, since the rain-loving Hurricane has the full 30% of sending your ‘mon to the insane asylum.

The coin-flip involved in the confusion status effect sparks an interesting and never-ending debate: Switch out to remove the condition, endangering the incoming Pokémon, or test your luck, and hope for a solid hit? The answer is largely situational. If there is something significant to gain by taking the chance on that very turn, it could very well be worth it. But if the Pokémon that needs to switch in doesn’t stand a chance to live through the switch, and is vital for a later purpose, it would probably be better to take the chance. Sometimes you may have no choice. Hence, that bittersweet term, “luck.”

Seeing as how Infatuation also has the same chance of taking effect as Confusion, and because it is rarely seen competitively, it shall be treated in this section. With a 50% chance of immobilizing the opponent,  in reality only about half your Pokémon could ever suffer Infatuation since it only works on Pokémon of the opposite gender. On top of it, there are only two ways to do so: First, through the move Attract, which always causes it (if the gender conditions are met), and second, through the Cute Charm ability, which has a 30% chance of taking effect. You be the judge!

Burn: Too hot to handle

The final status effect that shall be covered in this article is that of the ever-present Burn. Causing a bit of damage every turn, and mercilessly slicing the Attack stat in half, nobody wants to get burnt. And that’s just what Will-o-Wisp and Inferno do without fail, provided they hit. To put salt in the wound, other moves can get as high as a 30% chance of burning the opponent, such as Scald.  Additionally, the Flame Body ability, common on such standard Pokémon as Volcarona and even Chandelure, can be a threat to any of your mons that touch the foe, particularly since it shares the 30% effect rate.  Be aware that Fire types cannot be burned, and ones with the Flash Fire ability will even boost the power of fire moves should they be hit with Fire. Scald definitely is the odd man out, however, being a Water move. Just by packing a Lum Berry, however, you can exploit the virtual panacea for all your status-problem needs.

Effect Spore:  Don’t mess with the ‘shrooms!

Finally, a few words are in order for the Ability which has already been mentioned twice in this article: Effect Spore.

The Effect Spore ability has a 30% chance of causing one of three special conditions: Poison, Paralyze, and Sleep, with 10% allocated to each. While this may sound terrifying, there are a couple of scenarios to consider.  First, direct contact with the spore-er in question is necessary for the ability to take effect.  Second, 10% of that chance is expended on a competitively weak condition, Poison. Last, the ability could cause major headaches if it is being abused within a TR team, as it could paralyze the foe and bring it down to a speed that thrives in TR.

While it was just stated that regular Poison is somewhat useless, it still is necessary to state that there is one more odd chance of contracting it: Poison Point.  The ability is on few common Pokémon, but when it’s there, be wary of its 30% effect rate.

Flinches, Criticals, and Accuracy/Evasion Stat Levels

Now that the most controllable and abused randomizers have been covered, it’s time to take a look at the less controllable (and hence more infuriating) events. Just what are these? Flinches, critical hits, and the pairing of accuracy and evasion levels.

Flinches: Just when you thought you were focused…

That dreadful moment when your Pokémon flinches and misses out on that match deciding Close Combat: that is what makes flinches so dangerous. Of course, everyone knows that flinches can be controlled with the move Fake Out, but after that, there’s a bigger chance of being made to flinch than most people realize. Many competitively viable moves such as Air Slash, Rock Slide, Icicle Crash and Iron Head and have a whopping 30% of causing a flinch. Additionally, their close cousins Dark Pulse, Waterfall and Zen Headbutt still have a 20% of causing a flinch. So, those numbers could be much worse. Consider this: many teams have two Pokémon who can use Rock Slide. If both of them use it at the same time, each of your Pokémon has a 51% chance of flinching. What can be done, then? Well, there are two approaches: if you are faster than the potential cause of a flinch, there’s no problem, since a flinch only works before you’ve made your attack. Second, the ability Inner Focus makes your Pokémon immune to flinching, even from Fake Out, making it a valuable tool in the current metagame. On a side note, the item King’s Rock often garners questions about whether it increases the chance of a flinch enough to make it worthwhile. The answer is this: it adds a 10% chance of flinching, but only when using damaging moves without any secondary effects (paralysis, stat boosts). While this is nothing amazing, a Pokemon with the Skill Link Ability can use five-strike moves with a combined 41% chance of causing the foe to flinch. Additionally, most of the moves with a 30% chance of flinching so not have any secondary effects, so this formidable sounding item can increase that chance to 40%.

Critical Hits: It’s a head-shot!!

The greatest match-flippers in the whole game: the dreaded Critical Hits. Not only do they double the damage normally dealt (or triple it, as is the case with the Ability Sniper), but they ignore all negative stat changes on the Pokémon that scores the hit, and all defense boosts on the target. That’s right; your Latios at -4 Sp. Atk can hit with Draco Meteor at double-full force if he scores a critical. So what is the chance of these minitaure catastrophes happening? The regular chance is 1/16, or 6.25%. However, a wide variety of moves that double this chance, including Stone Edge, Leaf Blade, Psycho Cut, Drill Run, Cross Chop, Cross Poison and Slash, bringing the chance up to 12.5%. Two items that further boost this ratio are Razor Claw and Scope Lens, bringing the regular chances up to 12.5% and 25%, respectively. Hence, it would appear that 25% is the highest it could go, right? In practice, yes, but it can indeed get higher: Focus Energy raises the critical hit ratio one more point higher, bringing that 25% up to 33.3%. The upside of this is that the metagame is so fast-paced that it would not be worth the effort to devote an extra turn to raising the critical rate that high. But there is one last factor: the Super Luck Ability, held only by Togekiss, Honchkrow, Absol, and Unfezant, which doubles the current critical “stat-stage.” That means that Unfezant’s Air Cutter has a base 33.3% chance of scoring a critical hit….! Add in a Scope Lens, and it reaches the highest level: 50%. Only two moves will ever get critical hits every time: Storm Throw and Frost Breath, both of which are on Pokémon who don’t have much use for the move. While criticals in and of themselves may not be the worst thing out there, they certainly have a huge impact on matches, often KO-ing something that would usually survive. On top of that, there are only two ways to avoid critical hits: the Ability Battle Armor, and the move Lucky Chant. While these may sound useful, most of the Pokémon who get them either have a better ability at their disposal, or are virtually wasting a move slot just for peace-of-mind. The bottom line: don’t rage if a critical or two happens in a battle. Statistically speaking, there are four Pokémon attacking each turn with a 1/16 chance of getting a critical hit; hence one could easily happen every four turns.

Accuracy and Evasion:  Missed it by *that* much

Accuracy is a fact of Pokémon.  Every attack has an accuracy rating between 30 and 100, naturally standing for percentages.  Simple, right?  Of course! Er… until you find out that accuracy can be affected by stat stages both of evasion and accuracy itself.  Furthermore, various items and Abilities can affect these stats as well.  Now, to make a more accurate explanation of these factors…

Stat stages for Accuracy and Evasion are complicated.  More so than regular stat changes.   The biggest reason for this is because most people are not aware how Pokémon’s accuracy is being calculated.  The answer is that Accuracy multiplies your move’s base accuracy, while Evasion divides it.  So, if the foe has six stages of evasion, divide your accuracy by three, and if you have six stages of Accuracy, multiply your accuracy by three.  To put it in a formula:  (Move Accuracy) × (Accuracy stat) ÷ (foe’s Evasion stat).  For example, if you are using the 90% accurate Draco Meteor with 1.66x Accuracy against a Blissey at four stages of Evasion, Draco Meteor will have a virtual accuracy of about 64%.   Now for the percentages themselves, which are the same for Accuracy and Evasion:

Negative Stages 
|       Positive Stages

-6 = Accuracy x 0.33
|       6 = Accuracy x 3

-5 = x .375
|       5 = x 2.66

-4 = x 0.428 
|       4 = x 2.33

-3 = x 0.5 
|       3 = x 2

-2 = x 0.6 
|       2 = x 1.66

-1 = x 0.75 
|       1 = x 1.33

So now that the values associated with accuracy and evasion have been fully explained, the various items and Abilities which automatically affect these entities can be easily illustrated.  The most common Evasion raising Abilities are Sand Veil and Snow Cloak, which activate in Sandstorm and Hail weather respectively, and each boosts the Pokémon’s evasion by one stage.  In other words, that Garchomp in the sand will only have a 75% chance of being hit… pretty big in this fast-paced game.  On the contrary, the CompoundEyes Ability raises your own Pokémon’s accuracy by 30%, explaining how Galvantula’s Thunder hits about as often as Draco Meteor despite the move’s base 70 Accuracy.  As far as items go, BrightPowder raises Evasion by 10%, while Lax Incense raises it a measly 5%.  (Who uses it, anyway?)  Accuracy-boosting items include Wide Lens, Zoom Lens, and Micle Berry.  Wide Lens increases accuracy by 10% of the base accuracy of a move, while Zoom Lens increases it by 20%… but only if the Pokémon moves last.  Micle Berry is not much more viable than Zoom Lens, since it activates only when your Pokémon is down and in the red.  The upside is that it increases the next move’s Accuracy by 20%, so at least your last attack is more unlikely to miss!

Serene Grace:  Blithely causing ragequits

Serene Grace is a peculiar Ability that deserves its very own section, considering that it doubles the chance of any added effect a move might cause.  Air Slash and Rock Slide, while they only have a 30% chance of causing a flinch, take a huge leap up to 60% in the hands of Togekiss, Blissey and Dunsparce, making for quite the threat.  Furthermore, attacks like Blizzard that only have a 10% chance of causing the Frozen condition now have a 20% chance of crystallizing your best attacker…!  Take it from me, when Serene Grace is around, your state of mind will more than likely be anything BUT serene.

Random Move Effects and Damage Randomization

Now for the final elements of chance in Pokémon battles:  those that occur in the moves themselves, the random factor applied to damage from attacks, and speed ties.  While easily overlooked, these are the factors that usually make or break the outcome of the battle. Will Bullet Seed hit two times or five times?  Will your Hitmontop or his Hitmontop go first?  And is that Dark Pulse going to do 48% or 50% damage, determining whether or not that Jellicent is KO’d?  Read on for the answers.

Moves with extra effects:  So NOW you fear my Metagross

The first category of attacks that randomly help the player are those that occasionally boost one (or more) of the user’s stats.  Examples include Meteor Mash, which has a 20% chance of raising the user’s Attack one stage, Steel Wing, which has a 10% chance of raising the Pokémon’s Defense one stage, and Charge Beam, which has a whopping 70% chance of raising the user’s Special Attack one stage (and face it, the move is so weak it NEEDS that boost).  Also worth a mention are AncientPower, Silver Wind and Ominous Wind, which all have a 10% chance of raising every stat one stage, except Accuracy and Evasion.  It bears noting, however, that none of these moves should be relied on for strategies, since most offer only a 10-20% chance of taking effect, and the ones that offer more usually are too weak to be worth the set up.  In other words, gloat over the boosts if you like, but do not expect them when you most need them.

Next are the multi-strike moves!  Who said that hitting the foe once per turn is enough?  Jokes aside, these moves hit 2-5 times when you attack (unless you OHKO, of course).  However, the odds are stacked in favor of hitting only two or three times, since there is only a combined 25% chance of hitting four or five times.  For the cold, calculated odds:  37.5% chance each of hitting two or three times, and a 12.5% chance each for hitting four or five times.  So if you plan on using Bullet Seed, Icicle Spear, Rock Blast, Bone Rush, or any of the other multi-strike moves, it stands to reason that you should try managing your EVs to allow for a KO of intended targets with only two or three strikes.  On the other hand, Cloyster and Cinccino both have Skill Link, allowing the moves to always hit 5 times… (Oh, woe to those who cross a Skill Link Pokémon!)

Finally, there are the attacks with a random chance of dropping one of the foe’s stats.  Not only do these lucky breaks generally make the foes more vulnerable in the following turns, they sometimes can be so devastating that they force a switch!  One move that causes this is Crunch, with a 20% chance of lowering Defense one stage.  Furthermore, Bug Buzz, Psychic, Energy Ball and Earth Power all have a 10% chance of lowering Special Defense one stage, while Shadow Ball has a 20% chance of doing the same thing.  So just as with the moves that might boost your stats, these moves that lower stats are no more reliable, and ought to be merely welcomed as offering an added sting to your foe’s wounds.

The random damage multiplier:  Lamenting a Pokémon’s inconsistent strength

Once you’ve played Pokémon for a while, it is almost impossible to notice that there is a slight variation in how much damage an attack deals each time, even though your Pokémon and the foe’s remain unchanged.  The reason is simple:  Game Freak decided that random parahax and unbelievably badly timed 10% chances of Freeze did not make battles random enough, so they made move damage random too.  Without expounding on the whole, mildly complicated damage formula, I’ll reduce it to this:  every attack’s damage will be multiplied by a random number between 0.85 and 1.  Consequently, it is proven that your Pokémon is occasionally responsible for a loss because it didn’t give its all!  Not really.  Regardless, this should be considered when developing EV spreads, just as Jio has mentioned in his article on EV spreads.  While calculating spreads, always assume every attack will be at it’s weakest, and EV accordingly.  Alternatively, find a percentage of a certain damage threshold that you are comfortable with.  It can’t hurt to cross your fingers while attacking a Pokémon, either.

Speed Ties:  Heads, I win; Tails, please miss

Last, but not least, there is the issue of Speed Ties.  With so many Pokémon out there who share speed tiers with others, it’s bound to happen sooner or later that two Pokémon have the exact same speed stat.  In the event of this tie, Pokémon does what every other rational being does when a decision needs to be made without bias: it flips a coin.  You read that correctly, in the event of a speed tie, there is a 50% chance of your Pokémon going before the opponent, and vice-versa.  The most unfortunate part is that on certain teams, particularly Trick Room teams and teams with Swift Swimmers or Sand Rushers, this event is nearly unavoidable.  While not much can be done to prevent them, it still is wise to have a plan for when they do inevitably happen.

Conclusion

Whether you wish to know this information in order to better weigh the risks, or else if you want to maximize the odds of “hax”, the same way Manoj Sunny (MangoSol) did in his 2012 Worlds team as well as others before him, arming yourself with a thorough knowledge of probability of in-battle effects will surely lead to a greater understanding of the game, and hopefully the development of a better playstyle.


About the Author

Chris N., better known as HeroOfTheWinds, is a Masters Division player living in Hawaii who only picked up on VGC in the August of Worlds '12, but has been playing the series since 8 years old. He might not be a big-ticket player now, but he is continually striving to better himself, as evidenced by his placing 26th in North America (269th overall) during the June International Challenge. He enjoys playing games and RPGs on Nintendo.



28 Responses to Improbability Drive: A Guide to Probability in Pokemon Battles

  1. Wolfey says:

    Finally, a guide to evasion. I bet OmegaDonut has never been happier to see an article on site

  2. melevin9 says:

    Finally, a guide to evasion. I bet OmegaDonut has never been happier to see an article on site

     
    what are the odds of him missing the article altogether? 

  3. BlitznBurst says:

    TL;DR Hax is everything

    Very nice that we have something like this on the forums though. I would have liked more pictures or sprites of Pokemon that go along with some of the topics for visual appeal and to help people with the long read, but the article photo I can live with for now.

  4. Adib says:

    This article gave a good overview of probability in the game. But one thing I don’t think you mentioned is how you can *partially* tilt the game’s RNG in your favor with good speed control. If you’re striking first, you’re more likely to land critical hits and flinches and such on your opponent before they can do the same back to you.

  5. OmegaDonut says:

    Finally, a guide to evasion. I bet OmegaDonut has never been happier to see an article on site

     
    I’m calling your mom if you ever ask me how to calculate evasion again.
     
    Not to report your terrible math skills, though.  I mean, daaaaamn.

  6. DaWoblefet says:

    You know how I feel about your article already man, but to the public, congrats! You worked hard on it, but I still got my article up first so nah-nah-nah boo-boo on you :P

  7. TKOWL says:

    This is worth reading for the puns alone. 
     
    As everyone else is saying, this is definitely a great and much-needed article to have on here. 

  8. MangoSol says:

    Taking confusing math and turning it into something fun and easy to follow along. Very well written. (And A+ for cover art ;p)

  9. Thank you for all the feedback!  I really enjoyed writing the article, and tried my best to cover as much as I could of this gigantic topic.  If I were to cover every aspect of manipulating the RNG in your favor and list every move that had a special effect, this article would have been twice as long.  In truth, it didn’t occur to me to put any sprites in the article itself since I wasn’t discussing any Pokemon in particular.
     
    Special thanks to everyone who helped me get this article on the site!

  10. MarvelousBridge says:

    I feel compelled to mention that infatuation is differs from confusion in one significant way, it never wears off unless one switches out! Although Torment has nothing to do with probability, it is worth noting that it’s effects are indefinite as well.

    Good article Hero, thanks for the AC shoutout!

  11. AGDP says:

    I noticed you didn’t mention poison?…

  12. I noticed you didn’t mention poison?…

    That is because poison itself has no random effects, and the moves that usually inflict it either are not competitively viable or have a 100% chance of causing poison.
    I did mention it in my discussion of Effect Spore, as well.

  13. Scald behaves the same way as a fire type move regarding freee, by the way (defrosts if used by frozen mon as well as used on the frozen mon).

  14. Lolnub says:

    Scald behaves the same way as a fire type move regarding freee, by the way (defrosts if used by frozen mon as well as used on the frozen mon).

    not completely true. Using scald on a burned mon will not defrost it.

  15. DaWoblefet says:

    not completely true. Using scald on a burned mon will not defrost it.

    What? A Pokemon can only have 1 major status condition at a time. So a Pokemon would never be Burned and Frozen at the same time. Not sure what you meant by that.

  16. What? A Pokemon can only have 1 major status condition at a time. So a Pokemon would never be Burned and Frozen at the same time. Not sure what you meant by that.

    I’m pretty sure he meant a Frozen Pokemon.  However, if the USER of Scald is Frozen, it will be defrosted.  Frozen foes are NOT defrosted.
    Still, nice catch.

  17. Soon says:

    Awesome trivia read.

    Thank you!

    To correct: A frozen pokemon can use Scald to defrost itself in the Battle and Attack (using Scald duh) on the same turn.

  18. Glad you liked it.
     
    And that is implied that you attack while defrosting yourself. ;)

  19. Soon says:

    When using the move Scald, you will always defrost yourself if you are frozen. 😉

  20. I’m pretty sure he meant a Frozen Pokemon.  However, if the USER of Scald is Frozen, it will be defrosted.  Frozen foes are NOT defrosted.
    Still, nice catch.

     

    When using the move Scald, you will always defrost yourself if you are frozen. ;)

     
    That point is no longer in dispute, Soon. :)

  21. neophenx says:

    I’ve gotten Flinches with Flamethrower using King’s Rock, despite its chance to burn. Was this a change made to X and Y or is there some slight misinformation in the article?
    Overall, though, GREAT article. I can’t stand all the talk of removing certain parts from “competitive battling” because it’s luck based. I always say if someone wants a game where luck isn’t a factor, they can go play Chess or something of the sort.

  22. Awesome article! There is a few fallacies about critical hits in the article. Critical hits actually only do 1.5x, NOT 2x damage in X and Y, they nerfed em.
    Also, you can actually get any move to critical hit 100% of the time if you’re holding a razor claw and use focus energy, due to the mechanics being different in X and Y. There is a gimmick mon known as “Critdra” a sniper Kingdra holding a razor claw that uses focus energy to spam draco meteor and not worry about the -2 drop since crits ignore stat changes.
     

  23. MrEobo says:

    Awesome article! There is a few fallacies about critical hits in the article. Critical hits actually only do 1.5x, NOT 2x damage in X and Y, they nerfed em.
    Also, you can actually get any move to critical hit 100% of the time if you’re holding a razor claw and use focus energy, due to the mechanics being different in X and Y. There is a gimmick mon known as “Critdra” a sniper Kingdra holding a razor claw that uses focus energy to spam draco meteor and not worry about the -2 drop since crits ignore stat changes.
     

    This article was written for fifth generation games. There are plenty of other guides that explain the new mechanics brought into the sixth generation.

  24. I’m sorry, I didn’t look at the dates and figured it was for this year. Neophenx bumped it from it’s grave :P

  25. GoldenEmp says:

    This was an awesome article! I always had the question about the “Damage Roll” mechanics!
    Also quoting one of the greatest teams ever (MangoSol’s) give your article a perfect 10/10 read! Thanks for the detailed info!

  26. GoldenEmp says:

    PD: (Sorry for double posting)
    I don’t know how I missed this article so long ago ._.

  27. Zekira Drake says:

    I still think Poison should be mentioned here, since poison can inevitably determine whether a series of attacks will end up KO’ing you a turn early or not. I have actually lost a few games to poison from Gengar’s Sludge Bomb, as one of my Pokemon is normally 3HKO’d by it but a poison puts it into 2HKO range :/

  28. Carbonific says:

    I still think Poison should be mentioned here, since poison can inevitably determine whether a series of attacks will end up KO’ing you a turn early or not. I have actually lost a few games to poison from Gengar’s Sludge Bomb, as one of my Pokemon is normally 3HKO’d by it but a poison puts it into 2HKO range :/

     
    Poison was pretty much an irrelevant type back in Gen 5. The only one you saw regularly was Amoonguss, who didn’t appreciate it because it simply gave him a weakness to Psychic, for a STAB that it’d never use. I don’t think anyone predicted Gengar seeing the kind of use it has now in VGC ’15 either.

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