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

Pokémon Movepool Oddities & Explanations

AztecCroc said:
You are aware that after the spread damage reduction Astral Barrage becomes effectively power 90 in doubles right? The metagame that they actually balance for? 120 × 0.75 = 90
Click to expand...
True, the real culprits are Shadow Calyrex' offensive stats. A higher SpA than vanilla Kyogre coupled with Electrode's Speed stat is just obscene, no wonder Trick Room and Focus Sash are common sights.
I'm not that familiar with VGC, is Sucker Punch a common move in formats with the Shadow King?
 
KalosianPorygon said:
I'm not that familiar with VGC, is Sucker Punch a common move in formats with the Shadow King?
Click to expand...
Yesn't.

There aren't many VGC-viable pokemon that learn it, and the few who do often struggle to slot it in due to 4MSS, as Protect is almost mandatory in doubles on anything that is not AV or choiced. Follow Me and Rage Powder being a thing also severely hurt Sucker Punch as you know you can't really click it if a redirector is on the field.

Last generation, the only Pokemon I can remind that would almost always run Sucker Punch was Yveltal during restricted format, both cause it often ran AV and dark aura being a thing.

In current generation, it used to be the dark stab of choice for Chien Pao (generally in order to revenge booster / choiced Flutter Mane and Iron Bundle as well as have a tool to work in Trick Room), however with Farigiraf becoming meta relevant, some people have started to prefer using Crunch to not risk being completely shut down as soon as the giraffe hits the field.
Kingambit and Urshifu-Dark generally always run Sucker Punch (in fact kinggambit often doesn't run any offensive move other than Kotow and Sucker), however the 2 mons are relatively uncommon currently, and I can't really think of any other relevant pokemon that runs it.

(This is obviously subject to change once DLC2 happens and pokedex gets expanded + eventually restricted meta comes around. I can definitely see a increase in SP once Calyrex is unleashed)
 
AztecCroc said:
Assuming you mean Aqua Cutter, as Aura Cutter isn't a move, Gallade does learn Aqua Cutter. As does Samurott-H for that matter. The only Pokémon with Sharpness that doesn't is Kleavor.
Click to expand...
I meant Air Cutter

VGC Is a strabge thing. Ban lunala And keep caly-s. Really. But haye what's stranger than quick attack illumise/volbeat? Qatk charmander? Maybe.
 
KalosianPorygon said:
True, the real culprits are Shadow Calyrex' offensive stats. A higher SpA than vanilla Kyogre coupled with Electrode's Speed stat is just obscene, no wonder Trick Room and Focus Sash are common sights.
Click to expand...
yes, which was my point. 165 spatk/150 spd with not bad bulk means that even in vgc it would be usable as a mon that forces trades with just shadow ball - but they gave it a spread move that is stronger than shadow ball even after spread reduction, which would warp any doubles meta. regardless, singles is also a format they think about because of bss
 
There's a YouTuber I like who does solo runs with just about every Pokemon and ranks them based on time and resets. That's how I found out about the baby Pokemon's movesets in Crystal.

Magby: Starts with Ember (STAB move, 40 power) and gets Leer at 7 and Smog at 13.
Smoochum: Starts with Pound and Lick and gets Sweet Kiss at 9 and Powder Snow (STAB move, 40 power) at 13.
Elekid: Starts with Tackle and Leer and gets THUNDERPUNCH (STAB move, 75 POWER) at level 9.

Did... did someone screw up the coding? Was Elekid supposed to get Thundershock and someone put Thunder Punch by accident? Because that's cracked.
 
khlaylav said:
There's a YouTuber I like who does solo runs with just about every Pokemon and ranks them based on time and resets. That's how I found out about the baby Pokemon's movesets in Crystal.

Magby: Starts with Ember (STAB move, 40 power) and gets Leer at 7 and Smog at 13.
Smoochum: Starts with Pound and Lick and gets Sweet Kiss at 9 and Powder Snow (STAB move, 40 power) at 13.
Elekid: Starts with Tackle and Leer and gets THUNDERPUNCH (STAB move, 75 POWER) at level 9.

Did... did someone screw up the coding? Was Elekid supposed to get Thundershock and someone put Thunder Punch by accident? Because that's cracked.
Click to expand...
Elekid & Magby just have the same move sets as their evolved forms, but at lower level and with the redundant Level 1 Punch removed
The latter probably had their movesets ironed out first, then they backported to their baby form. They probably SHOULD have given Electabuzz Thundershock, and thus Elekid, but both are post game and Electabuzz is found at a low level anyway.

Smoochum/Jynx are in a similar boat, majority of the moveset is the same just at lower levels, but there's a different design ethos of "The baby gets different moves at certain points than the evovled form". For some reason.
 
If you want a lore-based reason, though, Elekid is associated with using its arms to create electricity a lot in its flavour text.

Gold Pokedex entry: It rotates its arms to generate electricity, but it tires easily, so it charges up only a little bit.

Emerald Pokedex entry: If it touches metal and discharges the electricity it has stored in its body, an Elekid begins swinging its arms in circles to recharge itself.

DP Pokedex entry: It generates electricity by whirling its arms. However, it can't store the energy it makes.

B2W2 Pokedex entry: Spinning its arms around to generate electricity makes the area between its horns shine light blue.
 
Oricorio getting Pound is consistent with the move's description ("The foe is physically pounded with a long tail or a foreleg, etc.") but I have to admit I did a double-take upon catching one that knew the move just now since to "pound" someone typically implies heavy physical strength beyond the capacity of a spindly-legged, floaty little bird. And yes, I know lots of birds are stronger than they look. But still.
 
khlaylav said:
There's a YouTuber I like who does solo runs with just about every Pokemon and ranks them based on time and resets. That's how I found out about the baby Pokemon's movesets in Crystal.

Magby: Starts with Ember (STAB move, 40 power) and gets Leer at 7 and Smog at 13.
Smoochum: Starts with Pound and Lick and gets Sweet Kiss at 9 and Powder Snow (STAB move, 40 power) at 13.
Elekid: Starts with Tackle and Leer and gets THUNDERPUNCH (STAB move, 75 POWER) at level 9.

Did... did someone screw up the coding? Was Elekid supposed to get Thundershock and someone put Thunder Punch by accident? Because that's cracked.
Click to expand...

Just logged in to say this is one of my favorite video series on Youtube so far and I wonder how good Electabuzz would be now. Or Electrivire if back ported by him.

---

You know funnily enough Pound was translated to "Pfund" in German, as in the literal... pound for measurement. It was fixed later in some generation to "Klaps" which is like... Slap in English? Basically it fits.
 
WinterArcanine said:
Which youtuber is this?
Click to expand...
Scott's Thoughts, he's a solo challenge guy who tries to see how optimally he can solo gen 1/2/3 with a given Pokemon and tracks a bunch of little statistics for ranking them.
I like him a lot, especially having seen him since close to his start since he's constantly trying to improve his knowledge on the game and also stat tracking, the pokemon, etc
 
DrPumpkinz said:
The "why didn't Lickitung learn Lick in gen 1" mystery is even weirder than I previously thought: Lickitung's entries in Blue, Yellow, and Stadium all talk about how Lickitung's licks induce paralysis, presumably in reference to the move Lick's secondary effect.
Click to expand...
This made me look at the learnset for Lick (because I figured they probably just made it signature to the Gastly line but no, Jynx of all things learns it in Gen I) and I discovered that Lick is a level 7 move for… Skeledirge?

Crocodiles are one of the land-dwelling animals that are closest to not having a tongue at all. The tongue they do have is basically just a bone that we call a tongue, can barely move (and is in fact usually secured to the roof of their mouth via a membrane) and doesn’t even have taste buds of any description on it. Skeledirge is also usually depicted with its mouth open and I can’t see a tongue in any of its depictions.

I assume they just threw a random weak Ghost-Type STAB into its early level up, since these moves are never being seen outside of hacking anyway, but Lick has never fulfilled that purpose outside of the Gastly line. The only other Ghost-Type family to even learn Lick is the Greavard line, and they’re dogs so it makes perfect sense there. It actually has pretty terrible Ghost-Type distribution.
 
Brief thing I noticed while making an Aerodactyl ramble in the Annoying things thread.

In Generations 4-7, Aerodactyl has the Elemental Fangs as Level 1 moves, likely to fit its Pokedex entries referencing its very dangerous teeth for hunting prey. In Generation 8, the Fangs were removed from its level up pool in favor of TM access, which I can't recall another major instance of for losing level-up access after holding it for that long (i.e. disregarding a potential Gen 1-2 Edge case before the mechanical soft-reset of Gen 3). It's not even like most of these cases in which Gamefreak were removing the move from non-Transfer access, a Gen 8 Aerodactyl can still learn the moves with little to no additional effort.
 
pika pal said:
Brief thing I noticed while making an Aerodactyl ramble in the Annoying things thread.

In Generations 4-7, Aerodactyl has the Elemental Fangs as Level 1 moves, likely to fit its Pokedex entries referencing its very dangerous teeth for hunting prey. In Generation 8, the Fangs were removed from its level up pool in favor of TM access, which I can't recall another major instance of for losing level-up access after holding it for that long (i.e. disregarding a potential Gen 1-2 Edge case before the mechanical soft-reset of Gen 3). It's not even like most of these cases in which Gamefreak were removing the move from non-Transfer access, a Gen 8 Aerodactyl can still learn the moves with little to no additional effort.
Click to expand...
Gen 8 did this very haphazardly to several Pokemon, Aerodactyl's probably just a good poster child of it.

My favorite is Gallade, who lost Leaf Blade despite having it since its inception and then that carried over to BDSP despite not having Leaf Blade as a TM. At least it got it back in LA & SV.





Similar shoutouts once more to Shellder who lost Rapid Spin (an egg move since gen 2) in SWSH because it didn't have any parents to pass it down, then didn't have it added back to its movepool when parents came back in the DLC, had it in BDSP because it just reused the same egg move list as usual, and now still doesnt have it in SV because they just pasted over the SWSH moveset.
 
doipy hooves said:
I found out Pikachu lost access to Slam between Gen 8 and 9, replacing it for Iron Tail. It's kind of random for a Gen 1 move that's been in its learnset for ages.
Click to expand...

Interestingly, Bonsly lost it a few generations back too.

Which brings up another point: I've often noticed that Sudowoodo doesn't get (m)any useful moves from Bonsly, unlike a lot of Pokemon with baby forms - for several generations, literally the only moves it got from Bonsly were Fake Tears and Uproar. Mr Mime is in the same unfortunate boat, only inheriting Tickle and Uproar from Mime Jr. Hey Game Freak, you need to GIVE Bonsly extra moves, not remove the ones it's already got.
 
Bruxish supremacy said:
Why did ambipom lose tail slap??
Click to expand...
So I offer one of 2 explanations:
1. They just copied over the egg moves from BDSP, which excluded Tail Slap entirely since it wasn't in the game.
2. They left it out similar to Rapid Spin Shellder in SWSH but forgot Tail Slap was actually available due to Fezandipiti having it.

Either of these would also cover Vulpix & Buizel not having it (Buizel same reason as Aipom + no Tail Slap in the base game, Vulpix because of a TM).
 
R_N said:
1. They just copied over the egg moves from BDSP, which excluded Tail Slap entirely since it wasn't in the game.
Click to expand...
Honestly I don't think the SV team considered BDSP movesets at all, since it didn't bother with Spore Breloom or any of the moves they added to replace removed moves in learnsets like Harden replacing Magnitude on Geodude in BDSP while SV just moved Bulldoze down instead.

Plusle and Minun's relationship with Fake Tears and Charm in their levelup learnsets is pretty strange.
In Gen 3, Plusle had Fake Tears and Minun had Charm, with no overlap between them.
In Gen 4, Minun gained Fake Tears at level 31. At the same time, Plusle also learnt an extra slot of Fake Tears at level 31 to parallel it, while it already still learned Fake Tears at level 21 when Minun learned Charm.
In ORAS, Plusle lost Fake Tears but gained Charm for the first time, while Minun lost Charm, but both moves also became egg moves anyway so they didn't lose access to them. The moves they naturally learn just ended up completely opposite of how they were in Gen 3 in their own remakes.

1702515119863.png

1702515132727.png
 
doipy hooves said:
Honestly I don't think the SV team considered BDSP movesets at all, since it didn't bother with Spore Breloom or any of the moves they added to replace removed moves in learnsets like Harden replacing Magnitude on Geodude in BDSP while SV just moved Bulldoze down instead.

Plusle and Minun's relationship with Fake Tears and Charm in their levelup learnsets is pretty strange.
In Gen 3, Plusle had Fake Tears and Minun had Charm, with no overlap between them.
In Gen 4, Minun gained Fake Tears at level 31. At the same time, Plusle also learnt an extra slot of Fake Tears at level 31 to parallel it, while it already still learned Fake Tears at level 21 when Minun learned Charm.
In ORAS, Plusle lost Fake Tears but gained Charm for the first time, while Minun lost Charm, but both moves also became egg moves anyway so they didn't lose access to them. The moves they naturally learn just ended up completely opposite of how they were in Gen 3 in their own remakes.

View attachment 579351
View attachment 579352
Click to expand...

Update: Plusle and Minun made it into SV DLC2! Charm and Fake Tears are TMs now, but surely that shouldn't affect anything.

1702523355593.png
1702523364255.png
1702523371717.png
1702523384651.png

Actually they just removed Charm and Fake Tears from the levelup learnset altogether, moved Charge 2 levels down to compensate, and Plusle lost Fake Tears as an egg move on top of that but Minun was untouched. They can still both learn both moves by TM but what the heck?
 
There's something about the Indigo Disc TMs and a certain event exclusive Pokemon from the end of Gen 4. (No, not Arceus. :P)

I'm putting it in a spoiler tab in case anyone doesn't want spoilers about TMs.
The 12th Movie Shiny Pichu knew Endeavor, or at least he did when the event happened the first time. There was another event for when the 12th movie was released in South Korea this year, but he didn't know Endeavor this time. That makes sense because they're not making many event only moves any more. (Fly Pikachu in SV and Seismic Toss Charizard in SwSh are the only ones I can think of other than stuff like Celebrate.) Pichu's evolution chain couldn't learn Endeavor through Move Tutors before, but now they can learn it through TM 205! So, it seems like Endeavor Pichu would be fine in hindsight, right? Wrong. Pikachu and Raichu can learn Endeavor. Pichu can't. Even after giving its evolution chain Endeavor, Endeavor Pichu is still event only.

This isn't anything odd, but Flamigo also learns Endeavor through TM and has Feint for Priority. Just pointing that out because it's really fun against opponents that don't know your Level 1 Pokemon has Scrappy. Luring in Ghost types never gets old. :P
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top