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

Pokémon Movepool Oddities & Explanations

Wrap is not a tutor move like Bind has been, it's only learned via level up and usually early since it's bad. They weren't gonna make Bulbasaur worse in later gens, and it starting with Wrap in gen 1 would have been incredibly annoying to fight if you picked Charmander and painfully useless if you picked it.

Venusaur can learn Bind so would likely learn Wrap if it ever showed up as tutor or TM move.
But the Bulbasaur line can only learn Bind via Tutor in BW2, ORAS and USUM. BW2 was five generations after the Venusaur line was established, and it can never learn both Wrap or Bind in Gens 8 or 9. Not to mention that both Wrap and Bind were nerfed after Gen 1, so why couldn't Venusaur learn Wrap after Gen 2.

I also disagree on Venusaur not learning Wrap would have made it annoying in a playthrough because of its 80 speed. Plus, Erika's Victreebel and Tangela both have Wrap and Bind and whilst they aren't as fast fast, but they are also annoying if they also pull it off. So Venusaur should have learnt Wrap and it's not like it's the only broken move. Plus, wouldn't it also mean that the Charmander line shouldn't be able to learn Fire Spin in Gen 1 (even tho it does), which also works like Wrap in Gen 1?
 
But the Bulbasaur line can only learn Bind via Tutor in BW2, ORAS and USUM. BW2 was five generations after the Venusaur line was established, and it can never learn both Wrap or Bind in Gens 8 or 9. Not to mention that both Wrap and Bind were nerfed after Gen 1, so why couldn't Venusaur learn Wrap after Gen 2.
He acknowledges that Bind is a tutor move. Wrap isn't, and is only a level up move outside of Heatmor getting it by breeding. That's part of what he's putting forward: it's an awkward move to shove into the early learn set of a starter, like Bind, but would probably be learned if it was a tutor or TM move, also like Bind (& a bunch of other random early-game moves)

That said I do think it would be fine as an egg move. I mean have you seen some of those things? Lots of weird, very weak and outright useless moves pepper those egg learnsets. Splash is an egg move on 7 Pokemon lines and only one of those learns it naturally! I think they could easily extend wrap or bind a bit more
I also disagree on Venusaur not learning Wrap would have made it annoying in a playthrough because of its 80 speed. Plus, Erika's Victreebel and Tangela both have Wrap and Bind and whilst they aren't as fast fast, but they are also annoying if they also pull it off. So Venusaur should have learnt Wrap and it's not like it's the only broken move. Plus, wouldn't it also mean that the Charmander line shouldn't be able to learn Fire Spin in Gen 1 (even tho it does), which also works like Wrap in Gen 1?
It would be annoying to use because it's a low power move you have to spam to get anything done more than other moves. It would also be really annoying to deal with in your first encounters in the game, particularly the rival.
Erika bypasses this annoyance because she's a mid-game boss, & Charmander bypasses this by learning it late because the developers saw it as a late-game move that you might even get instead of the other late-game fire moves. I assume they felt the fire typing made it overall stronger where as Wrap is learned early on.
 
In Legends Z-A, Flaaffy learns Ice Punch but not Thunder Punch
Update: So I assumed what happened was that they decided to give Ampharos Ice Punch in this game, and then assumed Flaaffy had the elemental punches too when it didn't. But I just got the Fire Punch TM and it....learns that too??? Ampharos has always had Fire Punch.

So I looked further and it turns out both Flaaffy and Ampharos already learned all three elemental punches in SV to begin with. So it's not like this is an oddity caused by a moveset addition. I guess they just forgot to give Flaaffy access to the Thunder Punch TM, so it just learns every elemental punch in this game except Thunder Punch. That's so bizzare.
 
Update: So I assumed what happened was that they decided to give Ampharos Ice Punch in this game, and then assumed Flaaffy had the elemental punches too when it didn't. But I just got the Fire Punch TM and it....learns that too??? Ampharos has always had Fire Punch.

So I looked further and it turns out both Flaaffy and Ampharos already learned all three elemental punches in SV to begin with. So it's not like this is an oddity caused by a moveset addition. I guess they just forgot to give Flaaffy access to the Thunder Punch TM, so it just learns every elemental punch in this game except Thunder Punch. That's so bizzare.

Interesting that it got Ice Punch in the first place, it's always had Fire Punch but never Ice Punch. Both Flaaffy and Ampharos learned it via TM/tutor move in Gens II & III and then Ampharos had it as a starting move from Gen IV onwards...? Strange choice for it, Dazzling Gleam and Power Gem make sense given its general light theming and obviously it gets the odd Dragon move too but why it would get Fire Punch naturally I'm not totally sure. Unless it's a general "sparks cause a flame" sort of idea.
 
Interesting that it got Ice Punch in the first place, it's always had Fire Punch but never Ice Punch. Both Flaaffy and Ampharos learned it via TM/tutor move in Gens II & III and then Ampharos had it as a starting move from Gen IV onwards...? Strange choice for it, Dazzling Gleam and Power Gem make sense given its general light theming and obviously it gets the odd Dragon move too but why it would get Fire Punch naturally I'm not totally sure. Unless it's a general "sparks cause a flame" sort of idea.
The punch TMs were widely distributed in Gen 2, I'm willing to ignore Fire Punch as "Early Installment Weirdness" and then just being grandfathered in. Having arms and some elemental affiliation were the only real requirements.

Ice Punch, though...Why did Scarlet/Violet decide specifically to add that? It could have made sense back when the mega was first introduced, sure, or in HGSS as a random minor upgrade in it's home region. Heck, even if ZA had done it I could see the thought process. I don't think the line HAS a story presence in SV, why give it BoltBeam coverage exactly then?
 
So I get why Voltorb and Electrode have Gyro Ball in their level-up moveset. It's a flavor thing since the move involves spinning and/or being spherical.

But it's mechanically very stupid that a Pokémon tied for fourth-fastest in the franchise learns an attack that requires it to be significantly slower than the target to deal acceptable damage. (Ignore the crappy Attack stat for this.)

There are a decent amount of other Pokémon that are either naturally fast or just fast enough through other means (e.g. Revavroom, which is clearly meant to Shift Gear sweep) that get the move, but none are as ludicrous as Electrode. It sometimes feels like Gyro Ball was meant to have its damage be tied to Speed difference regardless of it being higher or lower.
 
Last edited:
I feel like there should be like requirements that a mon has to be able to do to be able to learn a certain move like for example swalot can learn fire punch when it doesn't even have any arms therefore he cant punch yet he still learns the move
 
So I get why Voltorb and Electrode have Gyro Ball in their level-up moveset. It's a flavor thing since the move involves spinning and/or being spherical.

But it's mechanically very stupid that a Pokémon tied for fourth-fastest in the franchise learns an attack that requires it to be significantly slower than the target to deal acceptable damage. (Ignore the crappy Attack stat for this.)

There are a decent amount of other Pokémon that are either naturally fast or just fast enough through other means (e.g. Revavroom, which is clearly meant to Shift Gear sweep) that get the move, but none are as ludicrous as Electrode. It sometimes feels like Gyro Ball was meant to have its damage be tied to Speed difference regardless of it being higher or lower.
Gyro Ball was always bizarre to me as a "Slower = Stronger" move since the text explicitly mentions it's a high speed spin, suggesting it'd do more damage if it could spin faster, or otherwise it could spin fast regardless and would be based on something else like Weight. Electro Ball meanwhile has pretty generic flavor text (Hurls an Electric Orb) so it just does damage that way because it's what the designers elected for. The formula's also mildly more complex since Gyro Ball's minimum power is 1 after rounding and a Target/User division vs Electro Ball just being increments of 20 by % brackets like later weight moves.

It also makes me wonder about Gyro Ball's distribution vs Rapid Spin's, since both cases are "Spin into the opponent really fast" but only one is fast enough to scatter the Hazards away I guess?
 
I've always thought that Gyro Ball was designed as the first iteration of Electro Ball but then someone pointed out all the Steel-Type Pokémon at the time (and largely still to this day) are slow asf so the move would suck

Not sure it makes sense because the most logical thing to do would be to re-type it rather than switch it to slower=more power, and that's exactly what they did a gen later with Electro Ball. Even still, though, the lack of sense the flavour makes with its current mechanics makes it feel like SOMETHING weird happened there.

And it was introduced in the same gen as Iron Head, whose secondary effect is a flinch chance and therefore only procs by going first. And Bullet Punch, a priority move. It almost does seem like Game Freak forgot Steel-Type is slow while making Gen 4's new moves at least until late in development lol.

Orrrr, here's a wilder possibility, it's all Bronzong-centric Trick Room marketing. Iron Head's flinch chance is to give Bronzong a cool "I can flinch you because of Trick Room!" angle to sell the Trick Room concept more, and Gyro Ball suddenly becomes a powerful fast moving attack under Trick Room meanwhile the flavour kind of makes sense. They somehow didn't consider that people would just use the attack outside of Trick Room or something. I mean, why else would you minimise your speed IV and get a -speed nature unless you were using Trick Room? To make the fast spinning attack stronger, that doesn't make sense??

Now that I've thought of it that's my headcanon :sphearical:

Random other weird thing I noticed looking at it, Staryu has always learned Gyro Ball by level up since Gen 4, but Starmie only learns it by TM and not by level-up. Strange choice, both of them are fast and neither of them are balls. Every other mon to learn the move by level up -- besides Bronzor and Bronzong themself -- are very explicit balls or are frequently depicted rolling up to become balls besides the later learner of Dhelmise (and kinda Varoom and Revavroom but wheels = balls seems fine to me).
 
Gyro Ball was always bizarre to me as a "Slower = Stronger" move since the text explicitly mentions it's a high speed spin, suggesting it'd do more damage if it could spin faster, or otherwise it could spin fast regardless and would be based on something else like Weight. Electro Ball meanwhile has pretty generic flavor text (Hurls an Electric Orb) so it just does damage that way because it's what the designers elected for. The formula's also mildly more complex since Gyro Ball's minimum power is 1 after rounding and a Target/User division vs Electro Ball just being increments of 20 by % brackets like later weight moves.

It also makes me wonder about Gyro Ball's distribution vs Rapid Spin's, since both cases are "Spin into the opponent really fast" but only one is fast enough to scatter the Hazards away I guess?

In fairness spinning at high speeds doesn't necessarily mean the locomotion is fast.

You even spin a marble, a coin or heck a top before? If you were to reall look at the spin, it's quite fast (relatively speaking); on coins it's what gives the illusion that they're a sphere. But unless you're at an incline, even if they start moving around the table, it's not going anywhere in a hurry. Certainly slower than if you just shot them off or threw them.
Electrode using Gyro Ball is spinning a marble towards you. Emolga using Electro Ball is using a marble shooter to hit you in the eye.

The specific of why slow moving high speed spinning does more damage if you're slower is less clear. I guess the idea is you'd get caught for longer in the force...?
 
In fairness spinning at high speeds doesn't necessarily mean the locomotion is fast.

You even spin a marble, a coin or heck a top before? If you were to reall look at the spin, it's quite fast (relatively speaking); on coins it's what gives the illusion that they're a sphere. But unless you're at an incline, even if they start moving around the table, it's not going anywhere in a hurry. Certainly slower than if you just shot them off or threw them.
Electrode using Gyro Ball is spinning a marble towards you. Emolga using Electro Ball is using a marble shooter to hit you in the eye.

The specific of why slow moving high speed spinning does more damage if you're slower is less clear. I guess the idea is you'd get caught for longer in the force...?
"I'm going to spin like this, and if you get KO'd, it's all your fault"
 
  • Like
Reactions: R_N
Back
Top