Attract Discussion: Is it even useable?

Dragontamer

http://www.serebii.net/attackdex-dp/attract.shtml

Attract -- Support attack.
15 PP. 100% accuracy.

Makes opponent less likely to attack.

Pokemon who can learn it:
Just about every pokemon with a gender can learn this attack. TM45, Attract, is avaliable at the battle tower for 32 BP and at FR/LG Celedon City Department store for some cheap price.

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Attract seems to have been discarded into the "Never Used" moveset catagory. And Any battler worth his salt can see why attract is unpopular. Attract is unreliable: it only works on the average 50% of the time, not counting the many pokemon who are immune to it (Most of the Ubers, Porygon, etc. etc.). Furthermore, with very few exceptions, trainers cannot predict nor control the gender of the opponent's pokemon. So there will be entire battles where attract can never be used! But I think attract is unique enough that it deserves at least a discussion.

1. Most uber pokemon are immune to it, with exception of Latios/Latias. Okay, so thats a bad thing about attract. However, most people play OU around here, so that should make attract more ... attractive. :-p </bad pun>

2. Nearly every pokemon can learn it. It appears that every pokemon with a gender can actually learn attract... along with one genderless pokemon named Mew. Again, look at the list here: http://www.serebii.net/attackdex-dp/attract.shtml

3. Attract has 100% accuracy. According to a post in this thread: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23404 Attract even goes through substitutes.

4. If I remember correctly, Attract prevents 50% of the opponent's attacks from hitting. I just spent 30 minutes searching google and other sources but no one seems to care about this attack... no information is on it :-/ Correct me if I'm wrong however. And if you do find a reliable source, please post it up :-p Yes, I did check the analysis sub-forum and even over there Obi didn't know attract's specifics. He does however list 50% as attracts rate, so I'll assume that.

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21870

5. Totally not used. We can almost always expect the opponent to not be ready for attract. Meaning they are either going to switch out or stick it through with piss-poor effects.

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With that said, there should be at least some sense why Attract is never used: Pokemon who are classified as "annoyers" have better things to do. Attract in a competitive environment will serve two purposes:

* Force the opponent to switch -- Useful, especially when coupled with spikes and friends. I'm not talking about whirlwind/roar here. I'm talking that the opponent is forced to waste a turn switching pokemon out. Generally attacks that are better than attract in this situation are Yawn and Toxic.

* Give protection to your own pokemon -- Obvious. If the opponent cannot attack, you have protected your own pokemon. Confuse Ray, Thunder-Wave, and flinch-hax seems the more popular route for these sort of things.

So basically, if attract ever is used successfully, the opponent is trapped between a rock and a hard place. Furthermore, it sets up a good environment for you to set something up. Anything from Dragon Dance to Belly Drum may be waiting here.

I admit. This begs the question: Why not just use Yawn, Confuse Ray, and so forth? Why even consider attract at all? They hit almost all pokemon equally (Ignore own tempo and insomnia pokemon for now...) and already get the job done.

One answer stands out above all, there are very few pokemon who can learn Yawn and/or Confuse Ray. If you can, most likely it would be a much better choice to just use the standard attacks.

So what potential is there? Well, the #1 potential I see is a Female-Wall counter. Both Blissey and Cresselia are 100% female, meaning any male special sweeper can effectively demolish their walling capabilities. If you're attracted, you cannot softboil or moonlight 50% of the time.

Okay, well, discuss :-p
 
Well the great combo paratractafusion mostly used by Misdreavus and Lanturn in GSC/ADV has always been fun. I see your points and they are quite good although losing a move to give Blissey and Cresselia a 50% chance of recovering isn't gonna help you sweep with a special sweeper unless you're getting in some nasty plots or something.

I only ever used this in ADV sometimes as a Pikachu filler as I used to always run Tbolt, Surf, HP Ice and could never decide the last (I had a whole list of choices). The reason I sometimes had attract as it can go through subs (although encore is better to make them keep subbing). Yawn, Toxic and heaps of moves to scare people away can't go through subs like Attract can. That's what I've always liked about it, but on most stallers you really can be just happy with confuse ray (Crobat, Mismagius now, Umbreon) and normally better to save another slot for a different move.

I do remember in GSC after Sleep Perish Trapping was banned people started using attract on Misdreavus instead of using lovely kiss Jynx, but most of this I'm talking about has nothing to do with DP.
 
Good points. Would be great in conjuction with both paralyzing and confusion, for a whopping toofuckinglow chance of attacking! (if each of them are 50%, it'd be a 12.5% chance of attacking, or 1/8. Combine with Flinch for profit?) Run through your opponents team with a paralyzer, switch out your attract/confuse/flinchax Poké, and profit.

It's a very underappreciated attack, meaning yay for surprise. Also helps on own-tempo Pokés. For example, Slowbro would always run Own Tempo over Oblivious, end story.
 
Attract on male sweepers seems like a good idea to me, something to try out. Another usage, and I made a thread about this on Luxray a while ago, is on Rivalry pokemon (basically the Nidos and Luxray). Pack attract, and either a) they get attracted which in my experience seems to screw up them more than 50% of the time, or b) you get a boost to attack. The only problem would be genderless pokes, but since the three aforementioned pokemon are probably mostly UU, they'll usually only see the likes of Lunatone and Solrock, which isn't too bad.
 
Thats another thing. I didn't want to post a moveset or say a pokemon simply because I wouldn't know how it would play out in a real battle :-p But another strategy when those walls come out is to bring out say, Alakazam or some other male sweeper with calm mind/nasty plot. Attract Blissey and then calm mind up until the Blissey is scared and switches out. Winning a calm-mind build-up is easy when 50% of the time nothing happens.

The problems are:
1. I can't seem to get a moveset down to 4 attacks. (Attract + Calm Mind + Psychic is a must... Lol)
2. Blissey has shadow-ball, and I'm too lazy to calculate whether Alakazam would get a 3-hit KO or a 2-hit KO from a Blissey, which would seriously effect this strategy.
 
Blissey sets never use Shadow Ball, especially because of the horrible scenario of Blissey v Blissey, last pokemon.

Paralyze is supposedly a 25% chance to be too paralyzed to move, resulting in an additive 37.5% chance to hit if you stack it with Confuse. This makes for an 18.75% chance to hit if you stack confuse/paralyze/attract.

I believe the "annoyer" Raichu set way back in GSC was something like:

Sweet Kiss/Swagger
T-Wave
Attract
Thunderbolt

I mean, it works in a setting where you have the other pokemon trapped. But using it in a normal everyone switches setting, think about it.

Attract and Confusion both wear off by switching.
If you've already stacked both on the enemy, then they save a turn by switching, regardless of whether it's beneficial type-wise, they can always switch back in and hope for better hit odds.

It's an okay strategy to PRZ at least 2 enemies but beyond that it's walled by ground and stifled by Taunt, allowing Taunt DDrados to run rampant.

Edit: 100th post?! :D
 
ekans dilos said:
Attract on male sweepers seems like a good idea to me, something to try out. Another usage, and I made a thread about this on Luxray a while ago, is on Rivalry pokemon (basically the Nidos and Luxray). Pack attract, and either a) they get attracted which in my experience seems to screw up them more than 50% of the time, or b) you get a boost to attack. The only problem would be genderless pokes, but since the three aforementioned pokemon are probably mostly UU, they'll usually only see the likes of Lunatone and Solrock, which isn't too bad.
Click to expand...

Interesting. It appears that we can combine all three of these together, giving Nidoking a use aside from sitting on the UU bench crying as Rhyperior took its job :-p

However, I have issues with a poison-type Nidoking getting sent up against Cresselia in hopes of attracting it. Lol.
 
Synecdoche said:
Blissey sets never use Shadow Ball, especially because of the horrible scenario of Blissey v Blissey, last pokemon.

Paralyze is supposedly a 25% chance to be too paralyzed to move, resulting in an additive 37.5% chance to hit if you stack it with Confuse. This makes for an 18.75% chance to hit if you stack confuse/paralyze/attract.

I believe the "annoyer" Raichu set way back in GSC was something like:

Sweet Kiss/Swagger
T-Wave
Attract
Thunderbolt

I mean, it works in a setting where you have the other pokemon trapped. But using it in a normal everyone switches setting, think about it.

Attract and Confusion both wear off by switching.
If you've already stacked both on the enemy, then they save a turn by switching, regardless of whether it's beneficial type-wise, they can always switch back in and hope for better hit odds.

It's an okay strategy to PRZ at least 2 enemies but beyond that it's walled by ground and stifled by Taunt, allowing Taunt DDrados to run rampant
Click to expand...

I think we are looking at this the wrong way here, which is why I decided to start this discussion. It is obvious that "classic" annoying methods do not work, and quite possibly never did work in the first place. As you said, healing is only a switch away.

What we need is a way to keep the tempo *1 advantage. Using 3 turns (thunder-wave, confusion, then attract) when it only takes 1 turn away from the opponent (he only has to switch out) does not work. Switching out here gives the opponent the advantage. And thats totally against the point of attracting.

On the other hand, if we can use only a single turn on attract during the battle, we give ourselves the advantage in tempo. We spend 1 turn using attract, and the opponent will then spend 1 turn switching out in the worst case. And that is when we are slower than the opponent. If we have the speed advantage, the opponent has a 50% chance of wasting the current turn. A respectable tempo gain for us.

Where can we use this half-of-a-turn advantage? Gyarados might use attract + dragon dance. If the opponent stays in, Gyarados gets free dragon dances. If the opponent switches, Gyarados still had his one or two free dragon dances.

----
*1. Tempo is a term used in chess to describe how many turns were wasted.
 
Attract on sweepers is mostly useless. You use up a moveslot on what is at best an unreliable move, and you'll probably need that moveslot for type coverage.

Question: Does attract wear off after some time like confusion?
 
No, the only ways to remove attract are status-removers like aromatherapy, the herb the removes infatuation (white herb?), and switching out.

(IIRC)
 
Intuition tells me that Aromatherapy only works on visible status conditions like paralysis and sleep, not invisible confusion and Attraction. Unless you know otherwise?
 
I think it could be interesting if you have two moveslots to give, or with moves you're not entirely attached to, to put Attract on two pokes, a male and a female. You're guaranteed to be able to Attract SOMETHING, but even just one moveslot is often a lot to give up, let alone two.
 
Yes, I've seen swagger and attract on some sets. It also killed me when my partner (who was a DUGTRIO) used that combo. Attract does seems to be quite common in the earlier rounds of the battle tower.
 
attract is wack because u gotta depend on teh opponent using teh opposite sex as you.... i mean if u purposely bred your whole team to be male .. or female ... whichever sex is the most popular in the game... that woudl KINDA give u an advantage...

but the move is way too dependant on too many other factors so that makes it a wack move.
 
Attract's one main selling point over confusion is that it never wears off until the opponent switches, whereas confusion lasts a random amount of turns from 1-5 IIRC

Attract works well with Rivalry Nidos and Luxray, since whatever they can't attract they can blow away with physical attacks. (This is especially helpful for Luxray since most of its physical moves have low base power. A 50% boost would give the Fangs 97.5 BP, Crunch 120, and IT 150.)
 
Ok, maybe not everything.

100% chance of working on the opposite gender, 50% on same, never works on genderless? Something like that.

And Thorn, he was saying it didn't trigger Guts.
 
...Oh. I thought he meant using it as an official Status to block others that do activate Guts.

My Bad.

But if attract got popular, so would Destiny Knot (which, by the way, comes from a Japanese old wives' tales). Can you imagine how long those battles would be?
 
Wait, so if Mew can learn it by TM then how will attract function? Will it affect both male pokemon and female pokemon? or will it attract genderless pokemon because mew is genderless? or will it not work at all?
 
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