Smogon Forums

[Marty]

Any confirmation on how Stakeout works? Every site has it worded differently.

much confusion

Pokemon Showdown: "This Pokemon's attacks deal double damage if the target switched in this turn."
Pokemon DB: "Stakeout enables the Pokémon to deal twice the normal damage to any Pokémon that switches in or enters the field mid-battle."
Actual in game text: "Doubles the damage dealt to the target’s replacement if the target switches out."

- Does the boost last one turn, or indefinitely?
- How does it interact with enemies replacing fainted Pokemon?
- How does it interact with U-Turn / Baton Pass?

Well, they all say the same thing in different ways (I wrote the PS description and the Pokemon DB one is actually from the official site). If the Pokemon became active during the current turn in any way (i.e. choosing to switch as your action for the turn, U-turn, Baton Pass, Roar, whatever), Stakeout will double the damage to that Pokemon. Switching in at the beginning of the battle happens before Turn 1 starts and replacing fainted Pokemon happens at the end of the current turn right before the next turn starts, so Stakeout has no interaction with those "switches". The effect only happens if they switched in that turn and not every turn after that or it would be kind of ridiculous.

Does Thousand Arrows do neutral damage to flying type Pokemon with a secondary typing that resists ground, so grass flying and bug flying?

If the target is a Flying type and is not already grounded, this move deals neutral damage regardless of its other type(s).

So, essentially, if it's the first time you used it against that Pokemon while active, yes, and if not then no.

Mostly out of curiosity but... can Burn Up thaw out a Pokemon even if it fails?

Nope!

What happens if you use Powder on a Pokémon whose Burn Up would have failed?

The powder doesn't explode.
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In other news, I went back to do more digging on this interesting stuff:

Although Reflect Type fails against purely "typeless" previously-Fire-type Pokemon, by using Forest's Curse on it, then using Burn Up, and then using Reflect Type on it, the Reflect Type user becomes Normal/Grass. I'll be interested to know how Moltres works, if having a secondary type to fall back to is different from an added type in this case.

It was already known that Moltres after a Burn Up didn't become Normal type during Roost, since the "typeless" type is still its primary type. However, using Reflect Type on this ???/Flying Moltres makes the Pokemon pure Flying (becomes Normal type during Roost). So to sum up, Reflect Type with ??? + a secondary type just ignores ???, but ??? + added type from Forest's Curse/Trick-or-Treat makes ??? into Normal instead. And ??? alone just makes Reflect Type fail. Go figure.