"I don't care if I never get back!" - Gyro Ball Discussion

Status
Not open for further replies.

Arceus

Hello. It's me again, Arceus, out to annoy you all with my discussions of gimmick moves and Pokemon! I saw the move Gyro Ball on the front page of Serebii, and I was interested. Turns out the move's name comes from a Japanese baseball technique where the ball can be thrown over 500 feet. That's not even the beginning of it.

Gyro Ball is a rather unique Steel Type move. As a TM, it is widely available for use. What makes it different? Like many other attacks, it depends on yours and your opponent's stats. However, as well as their Attack & Defense, the Base Power is calculate via different means.

Gyro Ball's Base Power is anything from 1 up to 150 making it a very powerful attack to be used. However, this is completely dependant on your Pokémon's Speed as well as the Speed of your target. First, the user & targets speeds are claculated. Their Speed Stat is taken into account as well as other effects such as previous attack effects that my have raised or lowered speed, whether the Pokémon is Paralyzed and whether or not it is holding an item that lowers Speed such as the Power Items used to train EVs or an Iron ball.

With these statistics now calculated, a simple equation is made to determine the base power of the attack.
  • Base Power = 25 * (TargetSpeed / UserSpeed)
With this equation, it is very easy to see that if the user has a considerably lower speed, due to being a slow Pokémon or just being unlucky and having had loads of attacks that have lowered speed used on it as well as being Paralyzed and holding an Iron Ball, it will do considerable damage. However, even if the Base Power calculation obtains an amount that is greater than 150, you will never have more than that. Add in the consideration of STAB if using a Steel Pokémon such as Magnezone, Bronzong or Steelix and it will easily defeat your foes.
Click to expand...
I was wondering - could a set be made where a Pokemon could hit 150 damage to an opponent every time with the use of Focus Sash to survive the first hit? I looked up the number of Pokemon that use this move and was pleasantly surprised. Pokemon that get STAB are bolded.

Blastoise
Bronzong
Claydol
Donphan
Driftblim
Dunsparce
Electrode
Forretress
Glalie
Golem
Hitmontop
Lickilicky
Lunatone
Magcargo
Magnezone
Metagross
Mew
Miltank
Omastar
Qwilfish
Rayquaza
Sandslash
Shuckle
Solrock
Starmie
Steelix
Torkoal
Typhlosion
Weezing
Wigglytuff
Wormadam (STEEL)

Steelix appears to be the most promising with the lowest Speed (base 30). However, there are a few other Pokemon on the list that have lower Speeds, most notably Shuckle. What do you guys think? I think it could be rather promising - like Self Destruct without the Defense cut, except you survive the attack.
 
Actually Gyro Ball is a VERY common attack move, with such a strong base power with low speeds, it's stupid not to use it (regardless of the fact that Steel is a poor attack type). I wouldn't really say it's a gimmick, this has been discussed already.
 
Bronzong and Forretress have been the most common users of this move. Bronzong's Speed bottoms out at 63, which means it gets max power on anything with 318 Speed or more, and significant power on a lot of other things.

BTW what scares me about Serebii is how they randomly capitalize words.
 
It's a great move, but not many Pokémon can use it well. The best IMO is Bronzong, who can easily 2KO many threats: Garchomp, Gengar, Weavile (OHKO), Salamence, Sceptile, etc).

Then it might be Steelix, who also has gargantuan Def to survive several hits.
 
It won't double the power, necessarily. It depends how fast you and your opponent are, like if you are at 60 speed and they are at 300 or so, it won't really matter. Macho brace and iron orb are pretty shitty items to use, unless you're flinging the orb, which isnt necessarily great. Power items reduce speed more than macho brace does, iirc.
Gyro ball is a pretty good move, but it is a bit situational(ie metagross) and is usefull on only a few pokemon, like bronzong, forretress, etc.
It could work in some gimmicky way though, i guess. But almost everything can.
 
First, Serebii's capitalization and Smogon's capitalizations are almost identical. "Attack" is capitalized when referring to the stat, but not when referring to a move ("I'm going to use my Tackle attack on you!").

Second, their formula is slightly off.

This move's base power is given by the formula of 1 + 25 * opponent's Speed / user's Speed, up to a maximum of 150. This formula uses real Speeds, not base Speeds, and is sensitive to stat boosts and drops.
 
Where's the discussion? You're just describing the move. I don't see anything resembling the start of discussion or strategy here at all.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top