• Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!

(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

we already have a ground type equivalent of flamethrower, its earth power.

Also, why should they be so different beyond the matchup chart? Why should some types have no access to some niches vs other types? Sure if the way it worked was like STABmons, i could see the logic, but its not like every pokemon can learn every move (otherwise the odd movepool choices thread wouldnt exist lol).

I'm not saying every single move needs a copy of another type. I said basic niches, like having good strong moves, weak moves, status moves, good accuracy, bad accuracy, maybe common secondary effects etc. The foundation which you can make more unique moves with the types traits

Theres also so many other factors to consider with a pokemon (type combos, the actual matchup chart, the stats, the abilities, the actual moves it can learn) too, so I honestly don't understand that conclusion
Because it makes the types incredibly bland.

Back in the first few gens a type informed what sort of role a Pokémon would play. Grass-types played around with status conditions and slowly healing; Dragons were rare overwhelmingly powerful Pokémon; Rock-types were physical titans; Electric-types were speed demons; etc. To a degree the Fairy type even practised something similar in its early days -- it was an undoubtedly amazing type, but the possibility of it being broken was kept in check by it mostly being given to Pokémon with mediocre stats.
The type matchups and common attributes of these types reflected this - Grass-types were only useful offensively against a few Pokémon so of course you wouldn't be trying to fire off super-powered Grass moves as you're just using the Pokémon wrong. Dragon moves weren't useful against anything except itself which was a rarity, so Dragons had overwhelming power but were kept in check by their STAB not being good against anything and not being too powerful. Electric-types were rarely incredibly powerful outside of Legendaries and their type matchup wasn't overwhelming, so despite their high speed they weren't singlehandedly sweeping anything they came across.
Exceptions did exist to each of these types, of course -- but that's what made them so cool and interesting. Sceptile was the fast and powerful grass-type and was exclusively given access to a fairly powerful grass-type offensive move that didn't require charging for that purpose. Lucario was the Pokémon that, aside from a lot of other interesting things about it; was characterised as a Fighting-type that actually had a special attack stat and had Aura Sphere for that reason. Heracross and Scizor the bug-types that could actually fight back; Aggron and Metagross the Steel-types with offensive power; Dusclops the tanky Ghost-type; etc. Their being exceptions to the rule made them stand out because said rule made you grow accustomed to what role each type filled and it was surprising how well these Pokémon could go against that.

This was not a perfect system, by any means; some types like Bug could barely be said to have any role beyond an in-game "it's kind of good for the first few hours but gets rubbish quickly" thing, and others like the Ice-type had a completely contradictory role that led them to be incapable of much of anything; the infamous 'slow glacier' archetype that makes them so awful to use. But the general system of each type having an archetype being the main thing about them rather than which types they do and don't have a 2X damage multiplier against was far more interesting and informed how you thought of different Pokémon. It's also resulted in balance issues -- Dragons were never meant to have powerful STAB moves, but then Gen 4 just gave physical Outrage to all of them and multiple Dragon-types now had to be banned and they had to patch in the issue by literally making a new type that was immune to them. The moment dark-types got given Knock Off they ran wild through the metagame, and when an offensive Ice-Type gets to exist all hell breaks loose.

As-is now, by just going with damage multipliers as what defines a type and asking to double down on this by literally wanting each type to just have clones of each other's moves, all you end up with is the current landscape where what the interesting types are is decided by which types they're good against, and that's that. As such it just means that Grass, Bug etc. end up having their identity as The Bad Ones, while Fairy, Dark and a few others have the identity of The Good Ones. It's just such a... boring approach to designing the main way Pokémon are differentiated, and won't fix any problems nor make anything more interesting just because Aurorus can now have a secondary special STAB.
 

But like, you can still have some moves exclusive to types. Stuff like aqua ring, aromatherapy, giga drain, high horsepower, leech seed, taunt, mach punch, fake out, many moves are completly fine to only be linked to one type! Thats not what im arguing

What Im saying is that we first should have some basic guidelines that every type can have access to. I quoted very basic "niches" (if you could even call them that) like "strong move" for a reason. Having every type have a founding base isnt going to make every single type play the same,even better because it eases the creation of signature moves and just new moves a lot. You can make as gimmick, thematic, weird, exclusive as you want, because the basics are all there. We can still have grass types have more access to recovery, that dragon be a more powerful type! But we can also make so that some niches arent just dead on arrival because "well some types need to be unique"

edit: This isnt vs you, its just something of my own opinion, you can ignore bc I didnt want to double post lol. I don't really understand the need to make every type focused purely on something. I dont mind some types leaning to something, its thematic. of course grass is heally, nature is a healing type, and so goes on. What I dont get is the idea that types need to follow this rule so hard.
Types arent pokemon, theyre just one part of it. Sure, its a big part, but they dont do anything by themselves. I dont like the idea of creating niches by type, it feels restricting and boring. But thats more personal
 
Last edited:
But like, you can still have some moves exclusive to types. Stuff like aqua ring, aromatherapy, giga drain, high horsepower, leech seed, taunt, mach punch, fake out, many moves are completly fine to only be linked to one type! Thats not what im arguing

What Im saying is that we first should have some basic guidelines that every type can have access to. I quoted very basic "niches" (if you could even call them that) like "strong move" for a reason. Having every type have a founding base isnt going to make every single type play the same,even better because it eases the creation of signature moves and just new moves a lot. You can make as gimmick, thematic, weird, exclusive as you want, because the basics are all there. We can still have grass types have more access to recovery, that dragon be a more powerful type! But we can also make so that some niches arent just dead on arrival because "well some types need to be unique"
No, I don't think you need any foundation like that at all -- you should just make them as you need them.

Going back to the Sceptile example, we didn't have any strong Grass-type moves before Leaf Blade - outside of Solarbeam which had caveats attached - because there was no need for one. Why should there exist a strong Grass-type move if Venusaur, Vileplume, Celebi etc. aren't supposed to be doing that in the first place? Just make it when you need it -- and sure enough when they made Sceptile, they made Leaf Blade.

If your complaint is that a Pokémon has a certain role and gimmick to it that requires a certain sort of move to work, that's not a fault of that move not existing from the foundation; that's a fault of them badly designing the Pokémon.
 
No, I don't think you need any foundation like that at all -- you should just make them as you need them.

I mean, you're going to need them eventually (honestly we have 900 pokemon, this should have been added when we passed the 500 mark). Make them in one go and you'll never have to worry about it again.
 
The problem with that, I guess, is that eventually you will run out of combinations. There are only so many ways to put together typings and general stat distributions - a Psychic/Fire Pokémon with 116 Attack and 84 Spe won't play much differently from a Fire/Psychic with 115 Attack and 85 Spe, for instance, even if one had a BST of 495 and the other a BST of 514.

That being said, I'm not really a fan of "signature moves/abilities for everyone!" either. It feels a little contrived when the Pokémon is new ("oh, so Squibble gets Snow Slap, but so what - it will probably just use Ice Punch anyway") and later when the move isn't exclusive anymore, it will just add to the bloat while the Pokémon in question will need another means to be relevant. If Squibble had nothing going for it over Walrein except the access to Snow Slap, and suddenly Snow Slap was handed out to everything including Walrein come the next generation, what's left for Squibble to be unique with? In the converse case, should access to Snow Slap forever be Squibble's one selling point? Not that that's bound to be effective either; I mean, it's not like "Unique access to Kinesis!" is the one thing people think about when they see the Abra line.

And ... seeing it from the other side, what do new Pokémon need unique moves for anyway? Squibble doesn't need Snow Slap to stand apart from Walrein if the Spheal family isn't native to Squibble's region. It has novelty, people would want to use the cool new Pokémon anyway, and the designers would know not to make it available right to the one Pokémon out there it sort of resembles. Okay, in later generations when the novelty has worn off, they would be a little redundant with each other ... but that would also have been the case if Snow Slap was no longer Squibble's signature move.

Besides, arguably, Gen I was the king of redundancy, and it did well anyway. It had two late-game Rock/Ground families. Three Water/Ice Pokémon, two of which evolved from a pure Water-type. There were three two-stage pure Fire-type mammal families, neither of which had any tools that made it stand out from the other two. Vileplume and Victreebel were both redundant with Venusaur. The Clefairy and Jigglypuff families are functionally the same and even use many of the same moves through level-up (Pound, Sing, Double Slap) and have near-identical TM compatibilities (Clefairy/Clefable get Metronome while Jigglypuff/Wigglytuff don't, that's the only difference). There are two functionally identical Nidoran families. Omastar and Kabuto do mostly the same things. You could probably make the case for a handful of others too (Hi, Normal/Flying birds!).
The traits that eventually separated all these similiar families were added in later generations. The Oddish family got a thing for Fairy-type moves while the Bellsprout family got more physical Poison-type attacks to play with. Ninetales got Drought and a slew of Psychic-type moves while Arcanine got Intimidate and Rapidash got horn moves. Cloyster got Skill Link and Shell Smash, Dewgong got screwed. Wigglytuff got lots of sound moves, Clefable got lots and lots and lots of moves in general. And so on. The traits they started out with didn't really define them in the end.

All that being said ... it could be that Game Freak doesn't want to bother with continuous overhauls for old Pokémon each generation anymore, so instead they just slap a gimmick on every Pokémon from the onset and call that sufficient forever. It's not like 'mons such as Klinklang or Vanilluxe have got a lot more tools to play with in the past three generations. Carnivine's moveset in Gen IV is almost identical to that of Gen VII. But I guess that's another discussion.

I mean. Game Freak arent the most gracious designers. Like I said earlier in the thread. The idea is good. The execution is (sometimes) bad. I would prefer to see Pokemon be designed with these signature moves/abilities in mind, not as an after thought. You can see this idea on play with Toxtricity, for example, whose whole kit is built around Punk Rock.

I also disagree with the idea of Move/Ability Bloat. I feel like with moves, quantity = quality. Yeah even if there are 3 moves that are functionally the same, maintaining flavor and lore goes along way. Don't discount the power of animations, etc. If GF gave some new Grass type a move that was identical to Leaf Blade in everyway except was called some shit like "Pollen Press," and came with it's own unique animation and style- I'd be 100% OK with it.
 
Because it makes the types incredibly bland.

Back in the first few gens a type informed what sort of role a Pokémon would play. Grass-types played around with status conditions and slowly healing; Dragons were rare overwhelmingly powerful Pokémon; Rock-types were physical titans; Electric-types were speed demons; etc. To a degree the Fairy type even practised something similar in its early days -- it was an undoubtedly amazing type, but the possibility of it being broken was kept in check by it mostly being given to Pokémon with mediocre stats.
The type matchups and common attributes of these types reflected this - Grass-types were only useful offensively against a few Pokémon so of course you wouldn't be trying to fire off super-powered Grass moves as you're just using the Pokémon wrong. Dragon moves weren't useful against anything except itself which was a rarity, so Dragons had overwhelming power but were kept in check by their STAB not being good against anything and not being too powerful. Electric-types were rarely incredibly powerful outside of Legendaries and their type matchup wasn't overwhelming, so despite their high speed they weren't singlehandedly sweeping anything they came across.
Exceptions did exist to each of these types, of course -- but that's what made them so cool and interesting. Sceptile was the fast and powerful grass-type and was exclusively given access to a fairly powerful grass-type offensive move that didn't require charging for that purpose. Lucario was the Pokémon that, aside from a lot of other interesting things about it; was characterised as a Fighting-type that actually had a special attack stat and had Aura Sphere for that reason. Heracross and Scizor the bug-types that could actually fight back; Aggron and Metagross the Steel-types with offensive power; Dusclops the tanky Ghost-type; etc. Their being exceptions to the rule made them stand out because said rule made you grow accustomed to what role each type filled and it was surprising how well these Pokémon could go against that.

This was not a perfect system, by any means; some types like Bug could barely be said to have any role beyond an in-game "it's kind of good for the first few hours but gets rubbish quickly" thing, and others like the Ice-type had a completely contradictory role that led them to be incapable of much of anything; the infamous 'slow glacier' archetype that makes them so awful to use. But the general system of each type having an archetype being the main thing about them rather than which types they do and don't have a 2X damage multiplier against was far more interesting and informed how you thought of different Pokémon. It's also resulted in balance issues -- Dragons were never meant to have powerful STAB moves, but then Gen 4 just gave physical Outrage to all of them and multiple Dragon-types now had to be banned and they had to patch in the issue by literally making a new type that was immune to them. The moment dark-types got given Knock Off they ran wild through the metagame, and when an offensive Ice-Type gets to exist all hell breaks loose.

As-is now, by just going with damage multipliers as what defines a type and asking to double down on this by literally wanting each type to just have clones of each other's moves, all you end up with is the current landscape where what the interesting types are is decided by which types they're good against, and that's that. As such it just means that Grass, Bug etc. end up having their identity as The Bad Ones, while Fairy, Dark and a few others have the identity of The Good Ones. It's just such a... boring approach to designing the main way Pokémon are differentiated, and won't fix any problems nor make anything more interesting just because Aurorus can now have a secondary special STAB.
Besides Dragons getting physical Outrage (and kinda Knock Off; Darks already had a plethora of really good physical moves), I don't see how any of the things you mentioned have to do with moves. Introducing (or rather, reintroducing) a move to fill the power vacuum between Struggle Bug and Bug Buzz wouldn't fundamentally simplify how Bug-types work, nor would introducing a weaker physical Fairy move to use before graduating to Play Rough.

Most types are actually pretty set in terms of having a strong attack for each category, but I would argue that there should be even more. If we take a look at Fire, Flamethrower is different than Fire Blast is different than Lava Plume is different than Heat Wave is different than Overheat is different than Eruption. And with Grass, Energy Ball is different than Giga Drain is different than Leaf Storm is different than Grass Knot is different than Petal Dance is different than Solar Beam. Meanwhile, every special Bug has to use Bug Buzz (or Signal Beam IF IT STILL EXISTED), every physical Fairy has to use Play Rough...

That's not to say that every Pokemon of these types should learn all of them. They often don't, and it's boring when they do (hello, Close Combat). But it offers more flexibility when designing Pokemon. And they needn't be clones either. Most of the attacks I listed for Fire and Grass don't have direct counterparts in the other type.
 
Besides Dragons getting physical Outrage (and kinda Knock Off; Darks already had a plethora of really good physical moves), I don't see how any of the things you mentioned have to do with moves. Introducing (or rather, reintroducing) a move to fill the power vacuum between Struggle Bug and Bug Buzz wouldn't fundamentally simplify how Bug-types work, nor would introducing a weaker physical Fairy move to use before graduating to Play Rough.

Most types are actually pretty set in terms of having a strong attack for each category, but I would argue that there should be even more. If we take a look at Fire, Flamethrower is different than Fire Blast is different than Lava Plume is different than Heat Wave is different than Overheat is different than Eruption. And with Grass, Energy Ball is different than Giga Drain is different than Leaf Storm is different than Grass Knot is different than Petal Dance is different than Solar Beam. Meanwhile, every special Bug has to use Bug Buzz (or Signal Beam IF IT STILL EXISTED), every physical Fairy has to use Play Rough...

That's not to say that every Pokemon of these types should learn all of them. They often don't, and it's boring when they do (hello, Close Combat). But it offers more flexibility when designing Pokemon. And they needn't be clones either. Most of the attacks I listed for Fire and Grass don't have direct counterparts in the other type.
If you're asking that more moves be introduced that have different effects then I'm not sure where the argument is. Of course more diversity is encouraged, especially when there's a clear design to it and it isn't mindlessly handed to every Pokémon of each type. What I'm opposed to is coalescing each type into the same bland "you are all just doing the same thing now" design philosophy, where you pointlessly make moves like Energy Ball and Iron Head, and when that doesn't work out because of course you'd never use a Steel-type attack; you just make a new type they're super effective against to 'balance' all these types out into being equally as viable offensively and having no clear role.
 
I'm leaning a bit on both sides.

On one hand, I think it's crucial for every single type to have at least two attacking moves, one physical and one special, to check the around 20/40/60/80 BP categories, with perfect accuracy, around 16 max PP and no secondary effects. A completely basic move.

From that point onwards, types really need differences. And I agree in that these differences have been lessened through generations. For example, only Fire had moves that could inflict a burn (and only a burn, so I exclude Tri Attack, Psycho Shift and Secret Power) in the first four generations, but now we have other two moves with a fairly high chance to burn and are not Fire-type moves that, as if that were not enough, have been handed out like candy (Scorching Sands and Scald). Another example could be how so many types nowadays have an HP-draining move when that trait was nearly exclusive to the Grass type.

THAT's when the problem arises. Not with generic moves, but when other types start gaining characteristics that should be the defining trait of another type.

Besides those 8 minimum generic moves each type should have, their moves should share very few traits, if any at all. I think that moves of a type that has effects of another one should be reserved to moves with extremely limited distribution (as giving it high distribution would take the uniqueness out of another type).
 
Last edited:
This is basically my point. I'd make the categories a bit more broad simply as to even give each type some leniency and maybe if they really want, give some other things like 10% chance or something in one or two of these moves, or do something to make it more thematic. I just want the bases to be covered completly, I don't want all moves to be the same or shared by the same types

I think if it helps, i'd classify it as this:

Every type should have: Basic attacking moves for every BP "tier". Basic coverage so we dont have some weird stuff like special fairy having a bunch of options while physical fairy has one, while some tiers arent even filled. Doesnt need to be the exact same BP and same additional effect, just fill each tier for start, mid and end game properly for each pokemon decently.

Can be shared by some types: Some status moves, a few specific moves. Shared with 2 to 3 types. Things like scald and scorching sands, the elemental punches/fangs, thunder wave and glare. Thematic, but you could shift the theme and it'd fit another type. Good to ease developers so they dont have to make everything from scratch, but limited so it doesnt become too common. Good for flavor.

Exclusive to one type: Literally everything else.
 
What really annoys me is that GF tends to give very specific moves to Pokemon that have no business getting that move at all. I think high horsepower is the perfect example. It´s basically just earthquake, but it only hits a single target. The animation shows a hoof, and the most iconic user of the move, Mudsdale, uses its hind legs for a kick. This is a pretty common and widely recognized attack that real life animals with hoofs can do, so it´s easy to assume that this move is a representative of that attack. This move is a perfect way to give a nice coverage move to horse- or deer-like Pokemon when earthquake makes little sense.

But then you read the move description, and they completely ruin it. The user fiercely attacks the target using its entire body. What?! How is it even different from using tackle then? That's not an exaggeration either, the description for tackle is actually very similar. A physical attack in which the user charges and slams into the target with its whole body (from B2/W2 onwards).

But then you look at the TR learnset, and you realise that many of the Pokemon that get high horsepower don't even have hoofs, or aren't even quadrupedal, or don't even have legs at all... Like, I highly doubt that Dugtrio has hoofs under there. What does Sandaconda use to kick the opponent? The vast majority of Pokemon that get the move through TR didn't even need it in the first place, because most of them get earthquake already.

But then you take a look at the Pokemon that didn't get the move, and it gets even worse. Pokemon like Zebstrika and Sawsbuck could make great use of this move, but they don't get it. Zebstrika could have a niche as a strong anti-electric Pokemon, while Sawsbuck could use this move while benifitting from grassy terrain at the same time. Stantler doesn't get high horsepower, but it does get earthquake for some reason.

This is far from the only example. I think movepools of most Pokemon have been too bloated from like gen 4. Even older moves like earthquake and stone edge have too wide a distribution in my opinion. Stone edge gets given out to like every physical ground and fighting type willy nilly. It makes sense for Conkeldurr to get it, because it litterally carries around concrete pillars all day, but why does Hitonchan get it, or Toxicroak, or Dugtrio? Well, because they are fighting or ground type, which isn't a great reason to me. In fact, the Machop line gettin rock-type moves as a reference to its dex entries would be a lot cooler if it was one of the few fighting types with that quality. How it is now, it's nothing special that fighting types can throw around rocks, so the reference is lost.

Restricting movepools would also put more emphasis on the type chart during battle. For example, grass is supposed to be strong against water, but the reality is that basically all water types have an ice-type move to cover grass. Flying is supposed to be good against fighting, but basically all fighting types have rock-type moves. Grass' and flying's resistance to water and fighting respectively is basically obsolete, because water/ice and fighting/rock go hand in hand. If only half of the water types had ice coverage, grass would be a lot better defensively as a result, and I think that would be a good thing. Grass was designed to be able to check water types in the first place. It would also make water types that do get ice-coverage a little more special.
 
But then you read the move description, and they completely ruin it. The user fiercely attacks the target using its entire body. What?! How is it even different from using tackle then? That's not an exaggeration either, the description for tackle is actually very similar. A physical attack in which the user charges and slams into the target with its whole body (from B2/W2 onwards).
Once more I think this is more of a issue on the translation rather than the move itself.

"High Horsepower" actually just refers to the strenght of a car.
It doesn't represent "kicking like a horse", rather "attacking with a strenght comparable to the one of 100k horses", similarly to how it's used when it comes to cars power.

Its original jp name in fact means (Japanese: 10まんばりき 100,000 Horsepower)

Not a case all the pokemon who learn it are either particularly strong/massive, literal horses or the preevolutions of said pokemon.
 
At the same time... the pun is pretty obvious, especially through both the move's animation and the animation of the Pokémon it used to be exclusive to.
It never was, Snorlax and Golurk already learned it via levelup in gen 7 (ok tecnically level 1 for Golurk).
Hapu's Golurk even used it in the anime.
1605607352695.png


In fact, the other literal horse (Rapidash) didn't learn it until USUM came out. Both Ponyta and Phanpy gained it as breeding move when USUM released.

While the animation was obviously a pun on the name, it was never intended to be a "horse" move.
If anything the opposite, in similar way to how all cat pokemon get Fake Out thanks to it being a pun on its japanese name despite having no business in having the strenght to pull it out, they also made sure to hand it out to all actual horses, excluding Spectrier who doesn't exactly strike me as capable of kicking anything since its feet aren't even connected to its body :P
 
While the animation was obviously a pun on the name, it was never intended to be a "horse" move.
That's my point. I think this is a missed opportunity and it should have been a horse move. Pokemon that are "particularly strong/massive" already have earthquake. High horsepower is a good excuse to give a good ground type coverage moves to pokemon that have no business learning earthquake, such as Zebstrika or Girafarig. Those kinds of Pokemon can actually benifit from getting a very specific coverage move like high horsepower. Not to say that the strong/massive Pokemon don't have a use for the move, but it's not nearly as neccesary because most of them have earthquake already.

I guess I just dislike how so many Pokemon have such massive movepools nowadays. It makes many Pokemon of the same typings very similar to each other. To use Zebstrika as an example again, having high horsepower would differentiate it from its fellow electric types, because most electric don't learn ground coverage. Restricted movepools lead to more individuality in each Pokemon.

This is one aspect of the new Pokemon in Sword and Shield I really like. Many of them don't have extremely massive movepools, so they feel like they each have an identity of their own. Centralizing moves like knock off and scald aren't slapped on a lot of Pokemon unnecessarily, for example, and I really like that.
 
excluding Spectrier who doesn't exactly strike me as capable of kicking anything since its feet aren't even connected to its body :P
Sword Dex entry: It probes its surroundings with all its senses save one—it doesn't use its sense of sight. Spectrier's kicks are said to separate soul from body.
It also learns Double Kick at lv.6. Granted, having no ankles would probably mean weaker kick moves and weaker overall physical strength, but Spectier also learns Thrash and Double Edge through level up. Glastier also learns those moves plus High Horsepower, but it is the physical strong one. At least no dex entry mentions Glastier being fast in any way.
This doesn't help whether a Pokemon's speed stat is based on reaction-time, since Glastier isn't nimble, but can close distance in a flash, but has base 30 speed.
 
If anything the opposite, in similar way to how all cat pokemon get Fake Out thanks to it being a pun on its japanese name despite having no business in having the strenght to pull it out
While the cats getting it probably is meant to be a pun (though considering the name, the technique was probably named after the cats in real life), I don't think "Fake Out" is meant to be a force of strength?
Its meant to startle the opponent, you clap in front of them and it makes them fall back or stunned for a second. An, uh, literal flinch. I've had it happen to me before, it was this whole "thing" at my middle school of trying to get people to blink/flinch. You know kind of like throwing a fake punch or swiping at the air in front of someone.
Probably why it goes to all sorts of pokemon over the years and not just cats & strong/bulky dudes. You got a bunch of lizards, frogs, weird psychic types, monkeys, tengu, penguins...

Honestly surprised it doesnt go to like every dark type.
 
The vast majority of Pokemon that get the move through TR didn't even need it in the first place, because most of them get earthquake already.
I should note that High Horsepower is waaay better than Earthquake in doubles.

But then you take a look at the Pokemon that didn't get the move, and it gets even worse. Pokemon like Zebstrika and Sawsbuck could make great use of this move, but they don't get it. Zebstrika could have a niche as a strong anti-electric Pokemon, while Sawsbuck could use this move while benifitting from grassy terrain at the same time. Stantler doesn't get high horsepower, but it does get earthquake for some reason.
They probably don't learn it because they aren't available in gen 8, the gen where High Horsepower got wide distribution.
 
I should note that High Horsepower is waaay better than Earthquake in doubles.
You see, it shows pretty well when someone only plays Smogon and not VGC, because the only Pokemon I've seen running EQ over HH in last year in VGC is ironically Lando-T (which doesn't have another ground move to use, and usually is a dedicated dynamaxer).

Plus, with the fact Rillaboom is a thing, there's a case for HH over EQ even in singles nowadays.
 
You see, it shows pretty well when someone only plays Smogon and not VGC, because the only Pokemon I've seen running EQ over HH in last year in VGC is ironically Lando-T (which doesn't have another ground move to use, and usually is a dedicated dynamaxer).

Plus, with the fact Rillaboom is a thing, there's a case for HH over EQ even in singles nowadays.
But Double Battles aren't everything, you know.

They're only the official competitive format with a TPC-sponsored tournament circuit. With payouts.
 
They're only the official competitive format with a TPC-sponsored tournament circuit. With payouts.
I know you're memeing with this answer, but here's the funny thing...

They kinda are. GF has been known for making balance changes only aimed at VGC and marginally BSS.
As repeated many times, Smogon and 6v6 in general doesn't exist for them. Everyone being mad that "Dynamax is broken in singles"... duh, because 6v6 singles havent existed for gamefreaks for last 10 or so years, why would they care if it breaks them?
 
Back
Top