Unpopular opinions

[bdt2002]

The best way they could have made Geeta’s team would have been as a hazard stacking hyper offense team; Dual Hazards + Mortal Spin Glimmora as a lead and the trio of attackers in Speed Boost Espathra, Hex Dragapult, and Supreme Overload Kingambit could have been the so-called “core” of the team but I feel like Geeta’s other Pokémon outside of that core four don’t add any sort of synergy or value to what she could have tried to go for. Where exactly do Chesnaught and Avalugg fit on hyper offense?

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of Champions and unpopular opinions… Cynthia’s Milotic was always more threatening than the Garchomp but y’all aren’t ready for that discussion

 

[Azery]

The best way they could have made Geeta’s team would have been as a hazard stacking hyper offense team; Dual Hazards + Mortal Spin Glimmora as a lead and the trio of attackers in Speed Boost Espathra, Hex Dragapult, and Supreme Overload Kingambit could have been the so-called “core” of the team but I feel like Geeta’s other Pokémon outside of that core four don’t add any sort of synergy or value to what she could have tried to go for. Where exactly do Chesnaught and Avalugg fit on hyper offense?

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of Champions and unpopular opinions… Cynthia’s Milotic was always more threatening than the Garchomp but y’all aren’t ready for that discussion

I feel like Garchomp is actually interesting to talk about in this context because it's pretty much hand-designed to counter the 6 Pokemon the devs expect the player to bring; the 3 starters, and Dialga/Palkia/Giratina. Its faster than basically all of them, and either tanks their hits or threatens to one shot. It's like a complete flip from Steven's Metagross who just loses to Groudon/Kyogre every time, for example

 

[LPBvgc]

The best way they could have made Geeta’s team would have been as a hazard stacking hyper offense team; Dual Hazards + Mortal Spin Glimmora as a lead and the trio of attackers in Speed Boost Espathra, Hex Dragapult, and Supreme Overload Kingambit could have been the so-called “core” of the team but I feel like Geeta’s other Pokémon outside of that core four don’t add any sort of synergy or value to what she could have tried to go for. Where exactly do Chesnaught and Avalugg fit on hyper offense?

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of Champions and unpopular opinions… Cynthia’s Milotic was always more threatening than the Garchomp but y’all aren’t ready for that discussion

Replayed BDSP once, the E4 was so hard I had to hack in a Palkia to do it for me after losing like 5 or 6 times.

True. Every time I faced her, Milotic gave me the most trouble.

 

[Ironmage]

As someone who was a complete idiot in DP and only used my starter, there's definitely an interesting note about Cynthia's Milotic. Garchomp may have been harder, but it was always sent out later. As a result, being forced to adapt away from just Infernape occurred against Milotic. So even if Garchomp was harder in absolute terms, it was not nearly as much as a jump in relative terms. With BDSP forcing Garchomp to be last, this situation gets locked in.

Though, funnily enough, in my recent BDSP nuzlocke, Milotic was the weak point I exploited to set up while it was Roserade I had to be careful to not face too early. I could set up two layers of TSpikes safely against Spiritomb, and the increasing poison damage forced Milotic to repeatedly Recover while I could set up. Early Roserade would have derailed the entire plan.

As an aside, I'd probably also consider any one of the lake guardians as part of the default lategame Sinnoh team alongside the starter and box legend. The story puts a lot of effort in pointing out exactly where to find them. They probably don't have a huge contribution for or against Garchomp's strength in casual play though, since using an Ice TM on them is far from guaranteed (Uxie doesn't even learn them).

 

[CPU]

Milotic is definitely a scary Poke in-game, especially for notably suboptimal teams. High Special bulk, reasonable Special Attack/Speed, can't just status it (because that boosts its Defense), recover. As the general power level has increased it's become more manageable, but still a bit of an in-game boogeyman. I still remember the Milotic used by the Ace Trainer on the routes south of Fortree. Those rain-boosted Water Pulses were nasty.

 

[Hugin]

Everybody is sleeping on WHY Espartha with Opportunist is her lead. The general strategy for players against any Champion is "Set up, sweep". Opportunist means she's copying the player's boosts, which makes that much less viable.

Is it a perfect strat? Obviously not. But it does at least force the player to consider where and when they set up, which is lost if you just slap Speed Boost+Calm Mind on it and call it a day.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Everybody is sleeping on WHY Espartha with Opportunist is her lead. The general strategy for players against any Champion is "Set up, sweep". Opportunist means she's copying the player's boosts, which makes that much less viable.

Is it a perfect strat? Obviously not. But it does at least force the player to consider where and when they set up, which is lost if you just slap Speed Boost+Calm Mind on it and call it a day.

And Lumina Crash forces openings by dropping SpD.

You might be on to something, but Espathra was the most defensible pick of the rest of her team. It is a genuinely good mon.

 

[pika pal]

The best way they could have made Geeta’s team would have been as a hazard stacking hyper offense team; Dual Hazards + Mortal Spin Glimmora as a lead and the trio of attackers in Speed Boost Espathra, Hex Dragapult, and Supreme Overload Kingambit could have been the so-called “core” of the team but I feel like Geeta’s other Pokémon outside of that core four don’t add any sort of synergy or value to what she could have tried to go for. Where exactly do Chesnaught and Avalugg fit on hyper offense?

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of Champions and unpopular opinions… Cynthia’s Milotic was always more threatening than the Garchomp but y’all aren’t ready for that discussion

Chesnaught could set Spikes and Leech Seed, which in tandem could drain weakened/Poisoned mons or force them to switch around and play into the Hazards even more. Avalugg by that token is the most generic by just being "fat thing that tries to not die while Poison chips"

 

[Bakugames]

see this was the reason that while i did pick some mons that are stronger, i tried to really push an AESTHETIC to it first and foremost. theres genuinely such an incredible concept of geeta being a bad bitch in a suit and tie that hides it with pleasantries/is softer on kids than her actual workers. i picked mons that could sell the villanous theme, maybe a bit on the nose but cmon its pokemon. i also wanted a secondary aesthetic of more artificial/inorganic pokemon, to compliment glimmoras inorganic-ness. kilowattrel is the weakest link but i like it

 

[Genuine_Angus_B33F]

Everybody is sleeping on WHY Espartha with Opportunist is her lead. The general strategy for players against any Champion is "Set up, sweep". Opportunist means she's copying the player's boosts, which makes that much less viable.

This is largely why I'd say any Geeta team overhaul that starts with "put Glimmora in the lead slot as a hazard stacking lead" completely loses me and says out loud that you don't really understand designing teams for a casual play experience. Putting a bump in the road for turn 1 setup sweep gameplans is far more healthy a form of ingame difficulty escalation than a hazard stacking lead, which itself becomes an extremely polarizing obstacle that can completely ruin blind players - who would bring Rapid Spin anything on an ingame team, let alone expect a casual player to know the interaction it has with hazards - while being completely trivial setup fodder for just about any player who knows it's gameplan.

Glimmora at this point in the game is going to be a complete unknown for ~80% of players. It's name doesn't reveal anything obvious for those in switch mode, it's design is visually esoteric, and most players won't have ever seen a Glimmet, let alone evolved one or figured out how exactly Toxic Debris works. (even considering Atticus's Starmobile) Even once it Terastalizes and reveals one of its typings, it's kind of hard to know what to expect from it, especially as (as far as I remember) it's the only special attacking Rock type opponent you face in the entire game. If you're facing Geeta and you know how Glimmora works, you probably weren't going to have a problem with it whether or not it was in the lead slot, because that knowledge check is meant to make up a pretty big part of the fight's overall difficulty.

With the rest of the team, I think most people's issues come down to her teams Aura rather than it's actual strength. We're all so competitive pilled that it's hard to look at Gogoat and Avalugg and see that they're 510+ BST chunky mons with effective sets when past champions have had mons like Lapras, Aggron, and Braviary that are overall similar in effectiveness but existed at a point where they weren't outclassed to hell and back by the sheer quantity of their competition. We're so aware of the most optimized roles that Glimmora, Espathra, and Kingambit can perform that it's understandable to forget that those sets are designed for extremely high power level PVP where held items, optimized EVs, and sheer stat creep make 80/90/80 defenses crumple like paper and where prediction is an inherently fun part of the game and not a shitty feeling and abusable rote system.

That and, yeah, aesthetically this team is all over the place. There's no cohesive theme at play, Gogoat is weirdly mundane, Kingambit is weirdly intense, Espathra and Veluza overlap a lot with each other but very little with the rest of the team, and there's no sense that this team is some local maxima of optimization the way you might take from Cynthia or Leon's teams. With that, I at least understand being dissatisfied, but I still think that not retreading that ground at least says something... even if it's that Geeta is significantly more imposing in position and influencial in her station than she is scary as a trainer in battles. And as others have mentioned, given she isn't even the true finale to her third of the game's plotline, that's not an unfair reading.

I don't even really think Geeta is impressively designed overall, just that Espathra as a lead is solid, Glimmora as an offensive ace is completely fine, and that everything else on the team makes sense with the difficulty they were aiming for. Said difficulty isn't exactly high, and that's OK. Given how ridiculously wide the breadth of player options between peak optimization and reasonably not actively self sabotaging has gotten to be by SV, I think expecting rigorous difficulty balance from these games is just a fools errand.

 

[LPBvgc]

Generation 7 and 8's Battle Facilities are better than the Battle Frontier and most of Gen 5's Facilities.

What I am counting as Gen 7 and 8's Battle Facilities:
-Battle Tree and Battle Tower (both SwSh and BDSP)
-Battle Royal Dome
-Battle Agency
-Restricted Sparing
-Dynamax Adventures
-Eternal Battle Reverie
-Path of Solitude and Tenacity

What I am counting as Gens 3-5's Battle Facilities:
-All versions of the Battle Frontier (including the Batte Subway because it's Unova's Battle Tower)
-PWT
-Batte Institute
-Pokéstar Studios
-Black Tower/White Treehollow

Reason 1: Accessibility
In Gens 3-5, it is damn near impossible to get Battle Ready Pokémon without RNG abuse or cheating, so you'll almost always be at a disadvantage if you train Pokémon normally. However, QoL enhancements in the modern titles make getting Battle Ready Pokémon much easier. There's still a grind, but it isn't as bad as the older titles. The Battle Towers even let you use restricted Legendaries to make reaching the harder battles easier. I think Gen 7's take on the Tower was the best because you can either use the normal formats for BP grinding, or take on the Super Variants with the flat rules intact.

Reason 2: Rewards
In the older facilities, you'd get maybe like, 3 BP for winning a 7 Streak, while the modern facilities reward you with similar amounts for winning 1 battle, and sometimes you might get useful items for training more Pokémon to use, which goes back to my point of accessibility. Rather than just some BP and a Berry with an effect that's mediocre, you get stuff like vitamins, EXP Candies, even fucking Legendary Pokémon. It actually makes the grind feel like it pays off.

Reason 3: Creativity
While I do think Pokéstar Studios is the most creative Battle Facility, most of the others are really just... Win 21/49 Battles with a gimmick in place and you're done. The newer facilities have much more unique gimmicks to them. Restricted Sparring forces you into up to 5 battles with only 3 heals in the gauntlet where you have to use a monotype team. Path of Solitude forces you into 1 Pokémon and pits you against opponent's designed to counter it. It's kinda like Pokéstar Studios in it's own right. Eternal Battle Reverie is basically a Rouglike Battle Tower. You get the point.

 

[Esserise]

Generation 7 and 8's Battle Facilities are better than the Battle Frontier and most of Gen 5's Facilities.

What I am counting as Gen 7 and 8's Battle Facilities:
-Battle Tree and Battle Tower (both SwSh and BDSP)
-Battle Royal Dome
-Battle Agency
-Restricted Sparing
-Dynamax Adventures
-Eternal Battle Reverie
-Path of Solitude and Tenacity

What I am counting as Gens 3-5's Battle Facilities:
-All versions of the Battle Frontier (including the Batte Subway because it's Unova's Battle Tower)
-PWT
-Batte Institute
-Pokéstar Studios
-Black Tower/White Treehollow

Reason 1: Accessibility
In Gens 3-5, it is damn near impossible to get Battle Ready Pokémon without RNG abuse or cheating, so you'll almost always be at a disadvantage if you train Pokémon normally. However, QoL enhancements in the modern titles make getting Battle Ready Pokémon much easier. There's still a grind, but it isn't as bad as the older titles. The Battle Towers even let you use restricted Legendaries to make reaching the harder battles easier. I think Gen 7's take on the Tower was the best because you can either use the normal formats for BP grinding, or take on the Super Variants with the flat rules intact.

Reason 2: Rewards
In the older facilities, you'd get maybe like, 3 BP for winning a 7 Streak, while the modern facilities reward you with similar amounts for winning 1 battle, and sometimes you might get useful items for training more Pokémon to use, which goes back to my point of accessibility. Rather than just some BP and a Berry with an effect that's mediocre, you get stuff like vitamins, EXP Candies, even fucking Legendary Pokémon. It actually makes the grind feel like it pays off.

Reason 3: Creativity
While I do think Pokéstar Studios is the most creative Battle Facility, most of the others are really just... Win 21/49 Battles with a gimmick in place and you're done. The newer facilities have much more unique gimmicks to them. Restricted Sparring forces you into up to 5 battles with only 3 heals in the gauntlet where you have to use a monotype team. Path of Solitude forces you into 1 Pokémon and pits you against opponent's designed to counter it. It's kinda like Pokéstar Studios in it's own right. Eternal Battle Reverie is basically a Rouglike Battle Tower. You get the point.

Gotta say, I admire the gumption of considering Pokéstar Studios as a battle facility.

I think you make good points here — personally, for me, there’s certainly a reason why I’ve actually bothered to put considerable time into most of Gen 7/8’s facilities but could never be assed when it came to Gen 3/4’s.

That being said, I think the Black Tower/White Treehollow has a lot of the upsides of later generations’ facilities. You can use restricted Pokémon, and the opponents’ teams aren’t built like they are in your typical battle facilities, making it much more viable to take on the challenge with your unoptimized in-game team. Plus, you get a Shiny Pokémon as a reward.

Similarly, as a big fan of Restricted Sparring, I have to give credit where it’s due — while I always knew that the PWT had a type experts tournament, I actually didn’t know until very recently that it also forces you to use Pokémon of those same types. So that’s kind of like a precursor to Restricted Sparring.

Lastly, to be entirely fair, I probably would have given Hoenn’s Battle Frontier a try if it had been in ORAS, precisely because of the gains in accessibility over the years. Most of those facilities don’t strike me as uncreative — they just have a barrier to entry that I don’t want to deal with.

 

[tentaghost]

This is largely why I'd say any Geeta team overhaul that starts with "put Glimmora in the lead slot as a hazard stacking lead" completely loses me and says out loud that you don't really understand designing teams for a casual play experience. Putting a bump in the road for turn 1 setup sweep gameplans is far more healthy a form of ingame difficulty escalation than a hazard stacking lead, which itself becomes an extremely polarizing obstacle that can completely ruin blind players - who would bring Rapid Spin anything on an ingame team, let alone expect a casual player to know the interaction it has with hazards - while being completely trivial setup fodder for just about any player who knows it's gameplan.

Glimmora at this point in the game is going to be a complete unknown for ~80% of players. It's name doesn't reveal anything obvious for those in switch mode, it's design is visually esoteric, and most players won't have ever seen a Glimmet, let alone evolved one or figured out how exactly Toxic Debris works. (even considering Atticus's Starmobile) Even once it Terastalizes and reveals one of its typings, it's kind of hard to know what to expect from it, especially as (as far as I remember) it's the only special attacking Rock type opponent you face in the entire game. If you're facing Geeta and you know how Glimmora works, you probably weren't going to have a problem with it whether or not it was in the lead slot, because that knowledge check is meant to make up a pretty big part of the fight's overall difficulty.

With the rest of the team, I think most people's issues come down to her teams Aura rather than it's actual strength. We're all so competitive pilled that it's hard to look at Gogoat and Avalugg and see that they're 510+ BST chunky mons with effective sets when past champions have had mons like Lapras, Aggron, and Braviary that are overall similar in effectiveness but existed at a point where they weren't outclassed to hell and back by the sheer quantity of their competition. We're so aware of the most optimized roles that Glimmora, Espathra, and Kingambit can perform that it's understandable to forget that those sets are designed for extremely high power level PVP where held items, optimized EVs, and sheer stat creep make 80/90/80 defenses crumple like paper and where prediction is an inherently fun part of the game and not a shitty feeling and abusable rote system.

That and, yeah, aesthetically this team is all over the place. There's no cohesive theme at play, Gogoat is weirdly mundane, Kingambit is weirdly intense, Espathra and Veluza overlap a lot with each other but very little with the rest of the team, and there's no sense that this team is some local maxima of optimization the way you might take from Cynthia or Leon's teams. With that, I at least understand being dissatisfied, but I still think that not retreading that ground at least says something... even if it's that Geeta is significantly more imposing in position and influencial in her station than she is scary as a trainer in battles. And as others have mentioned, given she isn't even the true finale to her third of the game's plotline, that's not an unfair reading.

I don't even really think Geeta is impressively designed overall, just that Espathra as a lead is solid, Glimmora as an offensive ace is completely fine, and that everything else on the team makes sense with the difficulty they were aiming for. Said difficulty isn't exactly high, and that's OK. Given how ridiculously wide the breadth of player options between peak optimization and reasonably not actively self sabotaging has gotten to be by SV, I think expecting rigorous difficulty balance from these games is just a fools errand.

Actually with that in mind i have a question..

Does pokemon work best at high level competitive where optimization and min maxing is key, or just casual competitve where nothings at stake and you can just go with whatever you have.

Im aware that high level number crunching is really only just the natural conclusion for a game like pokemon, but generally speaking i wonder which one would just be better for Game Freak to focus on more..

 

[Bakugames]

Actually with that in mind i have a question..

Does pokemon work best at high level competitive where optimization and min maxing is key, or just casual competitve where nothings at stake and you can just go with whatever you have.

Im aware that high level number crunching is really only just the natural conclusion for a game like pokemon, but generally speaking i wonder which one would just be better for Game Freak to focus on more..

I mean, the answer is neither: pokemon works better when its main battles are puzzles to be solved. Emerald tate and liza are really good battles: their pokemon arent that insane or anything, solrock and lunatone in fact are pretty uuuh bad even in their debut generation, but they have good synergy with every team member and theres a solid game plan that theyre going for that the player has to figure out and adapt. yes once you do figure it out with your team its easy, but thats the fun of it imo.

i dont know if this is an unpopular opinion and ive probably said it before and just forgot it, but for npc design, pokemon should get doubles pilled imo. its so much easier to make entertaining boss fights that require you to think when theres two guys on the field and who can have synergetic moves. single battles are much harder to do that for. when you ignore the hacks of bumping levels for artificial difficulty or evasion spam, the main way to make singles battles difficult or even interesting are just to pick whatever highest bst things exist on the dex and give them all their best stab and have the npc click it 10000 times. its boring!!

 

[QuentinQuonce]

I mean, the answer is neither: pokemon works better when its main battles are puzzles to be solved

This is why the Battle CDs in XD were one of the best sidequests the series has ever done, baffles me that there hasn't been anything comparable to this in the main games

 

[Ironmage]

I mean, the answer is neither: pokemon works better when its main battles are puzzles to be solved. Emerald tate and liza are really good battles: their pokemon arent that insane or anything, solrock and lunatone in fact are pretty uuuh bad even in their debut generation, but they have good synergy with every team member and theres a solid game plan that theyre going for that the player has to figure out and adapt. yes once you do figure it out with your team its easy, but thats the fun of it imo.

i dont know if this is an unpopular opinion and ive probably said it before and just forgot it, but for npc design, pokemon should get doubles pilled imo. its so much easier to make entertaining boss fights that require you to think when theres two guys on the field and who can have synergetic moves. single battles are much harder to do that for. when you ignore the hacks of bumping levels for artificial difficulty or evasion spam, the main way to make singles battles difficult or even interesting are just to pick whatever highest bst things exist on the dex and give them all their best stab and have the npc click it 10000 times. its boring!!

I disagree on the doubles point. Even in the default case for singles of setup sweep, which mon to set up on and how to bait them in can be puzzles in their own right. It's easier to create synergies in doubles, but it's also easier to brute-force an obstacle by double-targeting. The PvP scene seems to get around this with a lot of Protect, but trying to replicate that ingame is probably going to lead to similar frustrations as evasion. There's even an argument that synergies being more difficult in singles is an advantage for making fights puzzle-based: more moving parts means more opportunities for clever disruption compared to a weather,etc. just being active.

 

[Genuine_Angus_B33F]

i dont know if this is an unpopular opinion and ive probably said it before and just forgot it, but for npc design, pokemon should get doubles pilled imo.

This I agree with 100%, however

its so much easier to make entertaining boss fights that require you to think when theres two guys on the field and who can have synergetic moves. (...)

I disagree on the doubles point. Even in the default case for singles of setup sweep, which mon to set up on and how to bait them in can be puzzles in their own right. It's easier to create synergies in doubles, but it's also easier to brute-force an obstacle by double-targeting. (...)

It's a lot more organic for doubles to have interesting obstacles, but it's also much easier for solutions to complex doubles situations to be very basic gameplans like spread move spam or, as I see often in difficulty hacks, baiting both foes to target a frail ally who takes aggro to spam Protect and pivot while a strong attacker does damage free of risk. I'd argue having an ingame player's tools match competitive ones is even more harmful for doubles than singles in PVE.

There's even an argument that synergies being more difficult in singles is an advantage for making fights puzzle-based: more moving parts means more opportunities for clever disruption compared to a weather,etc. just being active.

There's more to this than meets the eye. Doubles combos that are extremely demanding and linear while still being strong in PVP such as Drizzle + Swift Swim are way more broken in PVE, as they just mindlessly invalidate such a large possible number of possible game states while the AI simply isn't smart enough to work towards the narrow outs where they do exist. On the other hand, that same lack of AI intelligence causes general problems in doubles because the higher number of options on each turn means there is more room for the AI to pick incorrectly. This can make the game easier, as players who understand the AI and can control the pace of a game and more reliably misdirect the AI into making ineffective choices, but it can also make the whole "puzzle" element much more nebulous when it's so much harder to get a grip on your opponent's actions each turn. One thing I notice when watching folks play fangames designed for difficulty is that double battles are almost always the fights that players choose to leverage cheese strategies for, not (just?) because the toolkits they use are generally optimized for singles first, but because it's so much easier and more devastating to lose control of the overall gamestate turn by turn.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

It's a lot more organic for doubles to have interesting obstacles, but it's also much easier for solutions to complex doubles situations to be very basic gameplans like spread move spam or, as I see often in difficulty hacks, baiting both foes to target a frail ally who takes aggro to spam Protect and pivot while a strong attacker does damage free of risk. I'd argue having an ingame player's tools match competitive ones is even more harmful for doubles than singles in PVE.

I don't think baiting the opponent with Protect is necessarily a bad thing. I did that a bunch with Espeon during my Colosseum playthrough and felt like a genius every time.

I also know for a fact that if I had played Colosseum as a kid, I would not have thought of that. My ass didn't think to give Swampert an Ice move to get past Drake.

 

[Bakugames]

which mon to set up on and how to bait them in can be puzzles in their own right.

eeeeh i dont really agree. setup bait on the first mon of any champion is usually 100% fool proof as long as its not something youre weak to regardless of the composition or gameplan of the npc, and its very easy to just have multiple setup sweepers and just do a quick switch -> spam setup -> win, especially with modern movesets giving most pokemon some amazing tools. geeta might be the first champion i didnt one shot sweep her team from using the lead as setup fodder, but then i just ko'd the espathra very easily and did it on the second pokemon.
similarly because of expanded movesets and the desire to make every pokemon useful, teams that are just "put 6 strong things" will be easily dismantled by the high stab and coverage options with the ai obviously struggling to keep up, because its ai and has limits.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

I mean, the answer is neither: pokemon works better when its main battles are puzzles to be solved.

I'll go a bit further.

It's not even a matter of them being puzzles. It's a matter of strategy and cohesion.

All major battles should have *some* proactive strategy for them, because realistically, after a certain point, the game can't really plan around what players might have. Therefore, it's important that they stand out on their own.

So for example, when Ein breaks out a Rain Dance + Thunder in Colosseum, that means that I, as a player, should figure something out to deal with that.

Pokémon notoriously sucks at this. This is why most gyms boil down to "Pick a good type matchup and mash A". Because you might as well just do it. The games are woefully incompetent at using the cohesion of a monotype team to enforce any kind of strategy, especially aggressive ones. If we're being honest, a lot of bosses don't even feel like they're actively trying to beat you.

Full doubles isn't a necessity, but I get the appeal. One can actually make it work with singles though.

This is largely why I'd say any Geeta team overhaul that starts with "put Glimmora in the lead slot as a hazard stacking lead" completely loses me and says out loud that you don't really understand designing teams for a casual play experience. Putting a bump in the road for turn 1 setup sweep gameplans is far more healthy a form of ingame difficulty escalation than a hazard stacking lead, which itself becomes an extremely polarizing obstacle that can completely ruin blind players - who would bring Rapid Spin anything on an ingame team, let alone expect a casual player to know the interaction it has with hazards - while being completely trivial setup fodder for just about any player who knows it's gameplan.

And after writing this post, I realized why I didn't even register that Espathra was Geeta's lead.

It just never occurred to me to bring a stat sweeper because... That's the easiest way to trivialize the game ever. So I don't do it.

Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily disagree with your post, even though there's counterplay to T-Spikes, and frankly, it's fine to put players into a bad situation so they have to crawl out of it, or adapt. In fact, Glimmora is great because it isn't passive while it sets up the field. It can be offensive and disruptive because it doesn't need to waste turns on setting up.

With that said, Espathra ruining those babies that "need to get to +6 or they're finished" is good, and Lumina Crash makes it even better because it can force openings by itself instead of just being a passive answer to one possible strategy. It's a pretty good lead all things considered, but it kinda lacks some aggressiveness.

And we're all in agreement that Geeta has aura issues.

Seriously, her team is so messy.

 

[Hugin]

And we're all in agreement that Geeta has aura issues.

I definitely think Aura is an underrated factor. Look at the other multitype champions. Blue has a whole team of rare, powerful mons. Red is literally Ash from the anime. Cynthia is powerful, sure, but the real issue is that she shows up with a Spiritomb, Lucario, Milotic, and a pseudolegendary. It's far scarier and more impressive than actually dangerous if you know what you're doing. Alder is a mess, but that's a whole separate issue. Diantha doesn't get a lot of respect for various reasons, but her team is mostly extremely cool. Leon is also the protagonist of a different game, and has Aegislash, a pseudo, Haxorus, and 2 starters.

Most multitype champions, you walk in, and 4/6 mons they send out will make for a good screenshot or story. Geeta has Kingambit, and Glimmora matches her hair I guess, but none of the others are impressive. It's not cool, which I think is a worse sin than being not difficult.

 

[Bakugames]

glimmora has aura cmon its so awesome. its a little weird freak that hits insanely hard. also its awesome...........

 

[igiveuponaname]

glimmaura

 

[Yung Dramps]

If on February 26, 2022 I had been shown the Paldea dex, new + returning mons and was told "make a Champion team out of this" with no further context I would've gone with something like Lokix, Armarouge, Annihilape, Corviknight, Dragalge and Palafin. A sort of vaguely menacing but heroic knightly vibe.

Palafin is a bit of an enigma in all honesty, it seems built to be a boss mon and yet just isn't. So many options for a Titan or a major character themed around it

 

[Karxrida]

The champion leading Palafin only to immediately Flip Turn out (or hard switch if the player leads something with Water Absorb/Dry Skin) to come back later as the last party slot signature mon would be pretty dope.