Speaking of act of God levels of bad luck, here's why I'm retiring:
4XYG-WWWW-WWWT-DYMB
On the surface, it's Glalie setting up as usual and encountering a very shitty matchup where Infiltrator Chandelure comes out 2nd and OHKOs it with Heat Wave. With more analysis, it's even unluckier. Ace Trainer Colin has a roster of 101 Pokemon, making the odds of Infiltrator Chandelure making an appearance 1/303. Obviously a lead Chandelure is no problem at all, as it gets Flashed a couple times and then has its ability taken away. But also note Durant KOing Chandelure with Rock Slide, a move I specifically have on it to clean up after such a hax-filled encounter with Chandelure. Durant isn't going to be taking on an unknown 3rd mon with Truant Rock Slide, but by my conservative estimate, Colin could have had 29 different Pokemon in Granbull's place that would have been sent out 2nd ahead of Chandelure, and therefore Durant's Rock Slide would have made for one hell of a clutch victory.
So the odds of that kind of matchup were around 1-in-500, the type of hax which could definitely derail a lot of teams (on the same order as a lead Walrein evading Entrainment and hitting with a OHKO move when using a Durant + 2 sweepers team, or a little more frequent than encountering a lead Tornadus that hits with Hurricane, confuses, and makes you hit yourself in confusion) and will inevitably come up over a long streak. That part is just the beginning.
Until this point, I was at a similar level of confidence against this type of Chandelure that
VaporeonIce would be against a backup Unaware Quagsire - it *could* win in a 1-on-1 situation but it would need to use the right moves and/or have hax on its side (in Quagsire's case either Curse followed by EQ or EQ every turn with some help from either low Knock Off damage rolls or an Earthquake crit). However, Moody let me down in an extraordinary way. Chandelure 4 has a neutral nature and no EVs, so Glalie has to be at +0 Special Defense or lower to be KOed (and it can even survive Heat Wave with a low damage roll). Factor in that Chandelure has 1 or 2 chances to attack before being KOed, has an extremely high tendency of first going for Will-o-Wisp or Calm Mind, and must also hit through boosted evasion.
The *perfect* way to play it, of course, would have been to note while setting up that there was a 1 in 300 chance Infiltrator Chandelure could be lurking in the background (side note: excellent idea Game Freak had in deciding to change its hidden ability from Shadow Tag between 5th and 6th gen and then giving the ability to an even more broken Pokemon in Mega Gengar) and to hold off on KOing Porygon-Z until my Special Defense was sufficiently boosted. The fact that I've been able to compensate for Pokemon's primitive UI and keep track of that kind of stuff over thousands of battles without explicitly using a pen and paper (gauging Speed by the turn order, Special Attack by a spreadsheet with minimum damage calcs for +0 to +6 Frost Breath against every Maison Pokemon, roughly estimating defensive stats by how regularly attacks break the Sub, seeing which stats are near maxed out when they "rose" instead or "rose sharply") is frankly insane. For all the new stuff that's intended to make the game easier for younger audiences, there's nothing a new player could discern from official game materials to figure out the actual in-battle effect of a stat changing sharply/drastically/etc when it would be the easiest thing in the world to have something in the stat overlay ("Hmm, it said that Dragon Dance made my Salamence's Attack and Speed rose, but it shows the same number").
Normally I would've had an eye out for the Special Defense, but I was in the midst of an unlucky ("statistically extremely unlikely" is probably the better term given that these didn't really affect the battle in any way other than requiring me to waste even more Sub, Protect, and Taunt PP while setting up) streak in which my Speed was still negative after over 25 turns in the previous 3 of 4 battles (including this gem where a +2 Speed increase after about 30 turns of boosts still left me slower than Cresselia the following turn, which made for a potentially awkward situation against Scarf Heatran:
G69G-WWWW-WWWT-DN9U). With my Speed once again in the doldrums against Pory-Z, I'm sure I got annoyed and began to focus exclusively on looking for Speed increases rather than making sure all of my stats were decent.
Once Chandelure came out, it missed Will-o-Wisp the first turn, which tipped me off to the fact that it had Infiltrator. There are quite a few leads that aren't too threatening to Durant and allow me to switch directly to it while keeping Sableye alive. That would have allowed a Sableye sacrifice so I could use Entrainment again, but Porygon-z does too much damage and can paralyze with Thunderbolt (according to my spreadsheet/playbook, I can keep Sableye alive against 72 of the 194 non-legendary set 4 Pokemon). Anyway, I'm not good enough with probability or Monte Carlo simulations to determine just how unlikely it is for a stat (notwithstanding the 1/7 chance that the particular stat was Special Defense) to be at +0 or lower after 36 turns of boosts, but suffice it to say that it was pretty damn unlikely. A particularly astute critic may point out that I should be more concerned with Infiltrator Chandelure since a CH Heat Wave dooms me regardless of Special Defense boosts. I used to be, but the battle video and my subsequent logs of practice battles will show just how unlikely Chandelure is to use Heat Wave if my Special Defense is high enough.
After Chandelure missed WoW, my Special Defense dropped once more. In other words, no matter how unlikely the events leading up to this were, that last drop was likely necessary to secure the KO and encourage Chandelure to use Heat Wave (which was between 30-35% accurate depending on where exactly evasion ended up).
In these practice battles, I will deliberately play sloppily and begin attacking the lead Porygon-Z 5-10 turns earlier than I did in my loss, regardless of the boosts I've accumulated. I'm sure the frequency with which a poorly-played Glalie still ends up on top against one of the few backup Pokemon that is hypothetically supposed to trouble it and not Drapion one-on-one (the others would be Technician Scizor landing back-to-back crits with Bullet Punch, Sturdy Donphan breaking Glalie's Sub with either Fissure or a crit Stone Edge followed by a QC Fissure, and Heatran 1 not missing with a single Flash Cannon or Lava Plume) will show the totality of the luck required to give me a loss. It takes an extremely bad match-up, even worse luck with Moody boosts, bad luck in-battle, and bad luck in the moves the AI chooses all working together.
Practice Battle 1: Chandy lands Will-o-Wisp its first turn out, then uses Calm Mind, and then gets KOed by Frost Breath.
#2: I deliberately went on the attack even though my Speed was obviously too low. Glalie avoids WoW, gets burned by it on Turn 2, avoids Heat Wave, and avoids Heat Wave once again as the 4th Frost Breath KOs. Even with clearly bad boosts, Glalie would have comfortably survived at least one of those Heat Waves barring a crit.
#3: Heat Wave hits on turn 1 and does 53 HP of damage and Glalie 2HKOs with Frost Breath (which requires +6 Special Attack)
#4: Oops my accuracy was bad this battle (which would have been noticed and corrected when Taunt missed 4 turns before KOing Porygon-Z) and the first Frost Breath missed Chandy. Heat wave hits and does 54 damage. On turn 2, I definitely have +5 or +6 Special Attack as I do about half as Chandelure as it Calm Minds. The next Frost Breath KOs due to always critting, a solid example of why I used it over Ice Beam or Freeze Dry.
#5. My Special Attack is low going in as evidenced by how many Frost Breaths it took to KO Pory-Z (along with Taunt so it wouldn't recover). Chandelure goes 0/5 at hitting Glalie, using WoW the first 2 turns and Heat Wave the last 3. Against +6 Evasion, going oh-fer over 3 turns is more likely than landing Heat Wave on a given turn.
#6. SpA extremely low. 4 Frost Breaths manage to do less than half as WoW hits, Chandelure CMs twice, and then Heat Wave hits and KOs. I knew SpA was -2 or worse because a Frost Breath did the same amount of damage after a sharp boost against Chandelure. That's something that obviously would have been spotted while in the process of KOing Porygon-Z, but I wanted to keep the number of Moody boosts dangerously low. Still, you can see how long it takes for Chandelure to start attacking when Special Defense isn't terrible.
#7. Frost Breath and WoW miss Chandy's first turn out. Frost breath hits as it CMs. FB-CM the next turn but frost Breath misses. Frost Breath hits as Chandy goes to +3, and Glalie KOs the next turn without taking any damage.
#8. It CMs as Frost Breath does over half. Next turn it's KOed.
#9. Frost Breath 4HKOs as Chandelure misses a WoW, a Heat Wave, and a 3rd WoW.
#10. Frost Breath is a 3HKO as it misses Heat Wave and then connects with WoW.
#11. Another 3HKO with WoW and then Calm Mind missing. Ending up with a burn is fine for this battle since Glalie at worst 2HKOs after 2 rounds of LO recoil, but running into something that requires me to stall it like Walrein or Lapras 2nd or 3rd would likely have required that I do as much damage as possible while and then hoping Durant could finish it off. It'd probably be fine for Lapras and would obviously be a dice roll against Walrein, but imagine the odds of running into those particular Pokemon following Infiltrator Chandelure.
#12. Went 1/3 on hitting Pory-Z with Frost Breath but got an accuracy boost the turn Chandy came in. Still resulted in the first Frost Breath missing as WoW hit. Frost breath 2 hits while Chandy CMs. Frost Breath and Heat Wave both hit the next turn, taking Glalie to 61/177 HP after burn damage. The would-be fatal Frost Breath misses the next turn.
#13. 3HKO while Chandelure CMs twice.
#14. WoW misses, Heat Wave misses, it CMs, then the 4th Frost Breath KOs.
#15. WoW hits, Heat Wave hits, 3rd Frost Breath KOs. 4th Frost Breath OHKOs Granbull and then Glalie dies to burn damage. Eliminating those last 10 turns of setting up sure adds a lot of excitement!
#16. WoW misses, Heat Wave misses, 3rd Frost Breath KOs.
#17. WoW misses, Heat Wave does 120 damage (only +1 Special Defense, the lowest I've seen in any battle besides my loss despite that particular battle having 7 more turns to boost), the would-be fatal Heat Wave misses on turn 3, 4th Frost Breath KOs.
#18. Calm Mind, +1 Heat Wave hits and does 80 damage, 3rd Frost Breath KOs.
#19. Happened to catch that Evasion was +6 this go-around. WoW misses, Heat Wave hits and does 60 damage, 3rd Frost Breath KOs.
#20. low SpA once again, but dodged WoW on turn 1, got burned turn 2, evaded 2 Heat Waves turns 3-4, Chandelure CMed turn 5, dodged one more Heat Wave and by then Special attack had gotten a couple boosts and could KO.
#21. Heat Wave misses, WoW Burns, 3rd Frost Breath KOs
#22. Threw this one with intentionally low Special Attack. Chandelure CMs and then connects with 3 straight Heat Waves to KO Glalie when one more Frost Breath would have done it in.
#23. Intentionally low Speed. Evaded a WoW and a Heat Wave and a speed increase following that put Glalie ahead of Chandelure to get the 3HKO.
#24. Evaded 2 Heat Waves and 3HKOed.
#25. Special Attack was +0 or lower. Chandy Calm Minded, missed with WoW twice, CMed again, burned with WoW, then missed 3 Heat Waves before KOing with the 4th. During this 8 turn exchange, Special Attack went up 0 times and went down once.
#26. With intentionally low Special Attack once again, Chandelure went 1/2 on WoW, CMed twice, and went 1/3 on Heat Wave as Glalie held on with 2 HP and a burn to KO on the 8th Frost Breath.
#27. WoW missed, WoW hit, KOed by Frost Breath on turn 3.
23-4 with all 4 losses due to intentionally bad boosts in Special Attack or Accuracy, which require willful ignorance to overlook. I've survived 5 or more turns every single time when Glalie only needed to stay alive for 2 turns in the loss.
