lol the battle factory is ridiculous
ok somehow i got to 35 without getting haxed too much, got the ip/ns/bb/aa razor claw weavile as a lead and kind of murdered everything because i had the wide lens/pump/thunder/blizzard starmie as well for backup after a swap. then 36-42 i had some good options but went with:
680 | Nidoking | Modest | Expert Belt | Earth Power | Sludge Bomb | Ice Beam | Shadow Ball | SpA/Spe
because it was faster than the max speed gardevoir that was one of my options too, also had sash heatran at my disposal and the cm/dp/psy/tw SpA/SpD latios. i went with nidoking 100% because it gave me, i thought, a better chance to win than gardevoir, which trumped the fact that i personally love gardevoir and have if anything slightly negative feelings towards nidoking having never used it ingame or in competitive play. so of course i have to face not one but two gardy leads in the 36-42 stretch but am able to CM up with latios against one and boom on the other. beat the specs jynx with heatran too in like lattle 39 or 40 and would love to have taken that over nidoking but with latios already there it just didnt fit.
i'm highlighting all this because the factory has always been my bane since it took me six straight weeks to beat in emerald in 2005 and i was playing it exclusively like 3-4 hours a day, and i never broke 45 wins there and lost at the gold symbol 42 battle twice, the second time with an espeon lead. not saying that wasnt a good team, but that i know how lame it is to lose in the factory and that you have to put aside any, ANY favoritism if you want to win. ive lost in the first round before and peterko has too and im sure many others too, this isnt a place where you want to have fun because you have legit decisions to make every round regarding swapping and especially at the start of seven so yeah.
finished 42 with nidoking/latios/heatran and was really proud of myself because again, i'd only gone 42 wins in emerald one and i did it here on like the 7-8th try which is nothing, probably took over 70-80 tries in emerald. so this round starts off with these six, in the order they were presented:
852 | Porygon2 | Modest | Lum Berry | Tri Attack | Signal Beam | Shadow Ball | Ice Beam | HP/SpA
708 | Shuckle | Impish | Lax Incense | Gyro Ball | Substitute | Double Team | Power Trick | HP/Def/SpD
623 | Venusaur | Adamant | Black Sludge | Seed Bomb | Earthquake | Outrage | Curse | Atk/SpD
799 | Lopunny | Jolly | Muscle Band | Dizzy Punch | Fire Punch | ThunderPunch | Ice Punch | Atk/Spe
629 | Sceptile | Adamant | Scope Lens | Leaf Blade | X-Scissor | Night Slash | Aerial Ace | Atk/Spe
882 | Kingdra | Modest | Wide Lens | Hydro Pump | Draco Meteor | Blizzard | Signal Beam | HP/SpA
i had 14 swaps at the time, and again this was battle 43. scanning back through, i saw that lopunny had 339 speed...which was odd cause i was expecting "28" if anything. if battles 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 36, 43 "should be" 0, 4, 8, 16, 20, 24 and 28 IVs, respectively. but rather than just view the pokemon/movesets i decided to see what the IVs actually were for me, having swapped a third of the time. as it turned out, exactly two had 31 IVs, and the other four had 24 IVs. P2: 24. Shuckle: 24. Venusaur: 24. Lopunny: 31. Sceptile: 31. Kingdra: 24. that said, I stopped swapping to see how swapping solely for the sake of seeing how it helped IVs after my first time playing. i would probably have more 31 IV pokes if i had swapped more often but i definitely didnt care, that was emerald's problem with necessitating swaps for better IVs and it definitely ended up burning me at least a dozen times by itself.
so i ended up taking p2, venusaur and kingdra. neither of the 31 IV pokes really "worked" for me, i didnt want something that was frail and didnt have really good attack as well, and while sceptile and lopunny both had 339 speed, sceptile only had 295 attack and lopunny had like 251 attack even though both would have made pretty good leads. sceptile's only stab was leaf blade and we all know that's resisted by seven types. i felt p2 was a better lead than kingdra primarily because it *wasn't* a better lead than kingdra, and I fully planned to swap out p2 for a better lead if i were to come across one.
first battle was against amnesia whiscash which i though QCed me turn two but it turns out it was the same speed as p2, meaning it was also 24 IVs. p2 lost but kingdra cleaned up and i won pretty easily, beating the LO ambipom along the way and deciding instantly to swap it for p2 as i'd essentially planned.
battle 44 i led off against a rapidash. i calced my double hit on it, somehow forgetting about LO but adding technician, and i only did 40-47% against a 24 IV rapidash, so that meant a switch to kingdra, especially cause i didnt want ambipom taking a flare blitz to the face. (it turns out ambipom was pickup so my calc was only slightly off and kingdra was still the right move.) it uses sunny day, which means one of these two:
417 | Rapidash | Modest | Chesto Berry | Fire Blast | SolarBeam | Sunny Day | Rest | SpA/Spe
553 | Rapidash | Modest | White Herb | Overheat | SolarBeam | Swift | Sunny Day | SpA/Spe
which makes me think about what the best move is to use. I calc Pump in sun and its like 92-111%, so i calc DM and it always kills even if it lowers my SpA prematurely, and it's the best move further because it will still be sunny after kingdra kills rapidash which is all the more reason to switch out. so I pick the 99% accurate (wide lens) DM...but not before rapidash switches out? ok now people like peterko, tre, fasthippo and i have posted hundreds of words on the logistics of the AI switching, and we're pretty positive it's only if your poke is immune to the AIs moves or if perish song is in effect. i've also noticed that in plat, if you use an attack that doesn't kill the foe poke, and the foe has another poke that resists that attack, they "will" switch to that poke. i say "will" because i'm pretty sure it doesn't always happen, and it has not once happened to me here in the factory where it has happened in the tower and the castle and probably the arcade too.
and in fact, the factory was still using "random" attacks in like battle 40—i had my latios paralyzed against a last-poke drifblim with a 60% nidoking waiting, and it used...psychic while i DPed, psychic again while FP, and the thunderbolt as i DPed for the kill. it was this one:
686 | Drifblim | Modest | Wise Glasses | Psychic | Thunderbolt | Icy Wind | Destiny Bond | HP/SpA
"why wouldn't it use icy wind" etc, or even destiny bond though i guess the AI doesn't do that if it's the last poke...but there was no real reason to not use icy wind three times, lol. which is kind of lame because before that, nidoking led off against a dugtrio, and that's a pretty automatic switch to latios if it's possible (arena trap) since nidoking is ohkoed by eq and i dont want to break heatran's sash if i don't have to, but...dugtrio uses night slash??? it was this one:
635 | Dugtrio | Jolly | Razor Claw | Fissure | Giga Impact | Aerial Ace | Night Slash | Atk/Spe
which i guess had a problem using fissure but that's weird because even a CH night slash has no remote chance of killing nidoking, so whatever, latios was at like 40%, but what move is duggy going to use? i'm detailing this to show that "random attack" isnt always cool, because if i felt dugtrio is going to use a move at random, then staying in with latios is better than going back to nidoking into fissure or getting two "250 speed" pokes weakened pretty bad. but it of course used night slash again and killed latios and i had to go to heatran, fissure missed and i ohkoed with flash cannon and then lol (remembering this battle as it comes back to me, couldn't record everything and this was about 4pm yesterday), regigigas comes out, i use magma storm as that will give me the best chance to 2hko and i obviously miss and it uses...earth power, the only one with earth power lmao. i survive with sash and kill it with boom and looking back i guess another one had EQ and BP so its less funny (cause that one would have been worse) but the other two cant touch heatran so yeah. luckily it was a last poke tangrowth to take on nidoking and, while i did lose at battle 30 to one due to lax incense like 6 weeks ago as i posted about earlier, this is a great matchup and i dont miss with sludge bomb and win.
so, back to this battle, 44. rapidash switched out of kingdra's DM, and in comes...altaria. "lol." that got me pretty pumped cause as i explained, the AI virtually never switches and like literally had no reason that any of us know of to switch out there. it felt as if i'd predicted perfectly even though DM was the "better move", then again i might be waxing more modest than my kingdra because a few people there would still have used hydro pump i'm sure. so something dumb comes out and i go to venusaur and remember that i need to save kingdra for rapidash, i cant remember what came out because i definitely had to switch kingdra out and i couldn't save this battle cause there was...another i had to save later. nm it was donphan (why wouldn't i just delete part of that last sentence), EQed on the switch which brought me into OVERGROW RANGE and seed bomb did like 80% to it and ambipom cleaned up with IP and then used double hit on rapidash for the expected 90% and died to FB after LO recoil but it didnt matter, kingdra evidently walled this solarbeam rapidash enough that it was forced to switch as though kingdra was immune to everything it had, so the final DM was a formality.
anyway, not that i need a reason to post a wall of words, but i will again state that it took me six straight weeks of 3-4 hour-a-day play in 2005 to beat the emerald factory, and much of that was the horrible luck that's hard-coded into the game. i was closer then to my "competitive playing days" than i am now, if that's the only objective barometer i can use to gauge my skill, so i definitely knew how to play and more importantly was using the lists that peterko so kindly compiled for all of us the hard way...and i was still losing day after day, after streaks of 22 and 28 and 31 and after making switches just to get better IVs for later then losing to things i wouldnt have lost to if i'd kept the better team intact, and at times keeping a team with great synergy, losing anyway, and wondering if my IVs had anything to do with it.
so needless to say by now "i really, really didn't want to lose" after getting as far as i had in emerald's factory just once, because there was little besides the "you dont need to swap to get IVs" to reassure me that, if i did lose, it wouldn't again take "six straight weeks of 3-4 hours a day" of trying. that's why i had to be clicking on all cylinders for these last battles, because in a way, a loss at 47 or 48 would be more devastating than me losing at 321 last year when trying to get to 330. i dont really care about the factory as much as i do about the tower but i still "have to" have all the gold prints and this was the last one and "arguably" (it isn't an argument really) the hardest one to get so yeah. seriously, right now i would rather try getting to 330 in pearl with my lopunny/latios/lucario team than try getting to 42 wins again in the emerald battle factory, that should put it in perspective for you. i honestly think getting to 42 in the emerald factory would be harder.
so, battle 45 was funny. lead ludicolo, check the list and venusaur walls two and is the right switch regardless for info. it uses rain dance on the switch, and i curse with venusaur as it uses DT, and it turns out to be this one:
523 | Ludicolo | Impish | Leftovers | Leech Seed | Toxic | Double Team | Rain Dance | HP/Def/SpD
which venusaur entirely walls, awesome. but rather than let it DT up I decide to use seed bomb to chip away, I miss as it DTs again but i'm not remotely threatened by that since i entirely wall it. you know what venusaur is threatened by though? latios when it switches in on your curse. this was actually my fault, given what I detailed about the AI switching in pokes that resist the last attack you used, and this time I wasnt magician enough to predict a dragon coming in and use a dragon type move to OHKO. latios here is so ass to face...kingdra is murdered and ambipom doesn't ohko with ice punch. i dont even know which one it is, since after battle 28 pokes can be any set evidently, so i have to stay in and hope it does something stupid. it uses...luster purge...i just hope venusaur can somehow survive it, or that this latios is timid and not modest or whatever...and somehow venusaur survives with like 20% HP and kills with outrage.
very awesome...i'd forgotten that venusaur had max SpD, mainly because it didn't matter because staying in was my only move. next poke is mismagius which kills with shadow ball before i can outrage again, which kind of sucks because all of them have it and i have no idea which one it is. "luckily" it wont be hitting ambipom with any STAB move, even if one has sash, but i 2HKO with thunderpunch and face off against ludi again...dont freeze with IP and miss with FP trying to burn it as i realize it's a rain dish variant, but i switch in kingdra and tag it with signal beam as it toxics me, miss with another one as it gets back to a little over 50% HP, and put all my eggs in draco meteor's basket and hatch my 45th straight win when it hits. probably the toughest battle i've won in the factory looking back on it, cause nothing is switching into that latios at all and mismagius as a cleanup on venusaur made things interesting in the end since i no longer had my 100% ludi counter (thinking about it now, even if i never hit with any attack, i'm pretty sure i beat it with swift-like +6 struggle since it will not have damaged me). there aren't that many pokemon that can beat this latios 1-on-1, and not that many pokemon that would not have dented venusaur to make this possible in the first place. (curses aside, i only ohko unboosted ~15% of the time but "luckily" my adamant ambipom is faster than 75% of the latios and cleans those up everytime and actually takes 89.09% max from the timid psychic...though the timid one has expert belt and would have ohkoed venusaur with psychic 74.36% of the time lol, which kind of outlines how lame "latios" is for this team.)
anyway, this was the latios i beat:
947 | Latios | Modest | White Herb | Luster Purge | Draco Meteor | Hyper Beam | Surf | SpA/Spe
while i would have loved to "double dragon", especially because i really really love both kingdra and latios (ive been affectionately saying "kingdra is uber" for like two years now and latios is of course on two of my 300+ streak teams), it just wasnt a good idea to have two dragon weaknesses, so i replaced kingdra, a decision made easier because it was so slow (no Spe EVs). so i won battle 46, 47, and 48 (what, did you think you were getting a warstory for every battle?) and saw no reason to swap again.
so, finally, battle 49. "nervous" for aforementioned reasons, i really cant lose and I lost my first two gold symbol battles in emerald so yeah. thorton didnt particularly use any type (in fact only one of my last 14 opponents did, whatever). he says 70% even though i really dont "let that number concern me" because it's probably completely random, and he sends out Flygon. I'm almost positive that in my winning Gold Symbol battle in Emerald that Flygon led off against my Surf/Psychic/Ice Beam/Thunderbolt Starmie as well (it was either that or Ninetales/Rapidash then Flygon was 2nd, probably have it documented in an AIM log with skarm somewhere, and this is why Starmie's my second favorite poke ever), so this is a great sign. i know one has yache berry but i dont care, this is the right move by far, and it doesn't have yache. next poke...staraptor. i debate staying in to dent it with thunderpunch (par is better than freezing) even though i'm intimidated, but i figure that ambipom (which is at 90% now after LO recoil) is more valuable than venusaur. assuming it has 31 IVs, my thunderpunch only does 82-96% unintimidated, so hopefully venusaur can dent it a little, and hopefully it doesn't DT because lol. but on the switch, it uses brave bird, which, as i watch venusaur's health drop, i realize is great because i definitely kill now with TP after all that recoil.
so i bring ambipom back in, and i already know what damage i do on it but want to check my latios's speed again in case that's a factor for the last poke...but in between consulting my list on my pc and checking the summaries of the pokes i have on the touch screen i accidentally switch latios in to brave bird. lol. there's no words for how bad a "misclick" that is, so i'll just say that latios died which confirmed that it was the CB staraptor, probably, who cares. i'm beyond mad at myself at this point (i'd put my headphones on as i had for all gold print battles, yeah those were ripped off and slammed to the ground the instant i misclicked), i definitely had this in the bag with 80% ambipom and that 100% latios capable of beating pretty much every single pokemon except some dumb dd salamence stuff (intimidate).
as an aside, even if max def dragonite didnt still die to ambipom ice punch 53.85% of the time, it could not have been dd dragonite, because dragonite can only carry Lum, Razor Claw, EB and CB, and since i outsped Flygon (which was very probably 31 IVs), it could only have been the Lum Berry one because the other one I outspeed has yache. meaning draggy could only be razor claw or EB, both of which latios murder. only stuff like dd sala or gyarados are gay for me to face there if i play it perfectly (read: dont misclick), virtually everything else i can beat or have a great shot to because i have physical and special attackers in ambipom and latios (so something like registeel or blissey doesn't wall me). even if it were dd salamence, ambipom still ohkos that intimidated the same 53.85% of the time it beats max def draggy (which doesnt have dd), and those there's two dd gyarados, one only had eq/wf which latios walls, and the other can be a little bit of a nuisance with dd+if but ambipom gets that 58.97% of the time after intimidate .
sorry, i had to validate my anger with theorymon and calcs that dont matter. after i killed staraptor thorton sent out...cradily? i was sure it'd be something 80% ambipom loses to every time, but i have a chance against this i guess. ice punch for...45%, which sucks, and it uses...stone edge. it's this one:
817 | Cradily | Calm | Leftovers | Stone Edge | Seed Bomb | Earthquake | Mirror Coat | HP/Def/SpD
and i watch my bar drop, knowing at least it'd go under the 10% HP i'd need to have any chance of winning. it stops at 38/284 though, which surprises me because i definitely don't deserve to win after 100% a mistake on my part and no hax on theirs. so i use ip again...hoping for a freeze or a ch...no such luck though, and it uses stone edge for the kill.
except stone edge missed, because stone edge is the worst attack in dppt. i grin and spam IP for the win. maybe i did deserve to win. maybe i didn't. maybe that really, in some twisted way, does indicate that stone edge is really and unequivocally the worst attack in dppt as i've been saying since DP came out, since seed bomb and EQ both kill a 13% ambipom without question and even if they only did 4% i would die to LO recoil (which is why i denounce LO for Tower teams). maybe 13% was the unlucky number for the AI, and it felt it fitting to use the most luck-based move in the game to finish the battle and the decision on my gold print no matter what. or maybe pokemon's silly and there's no explanation at all.
so, at 49 and counting in the Battle Factory, 72-38980-00268 for posterity. i had to warstory that one, though. not going back there for a while.
tldr; "stone edge is the worst attack in dppt."
