eiscue best pokemon
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
okay well, this is just no. Waterfalls main issue is that its 80 bp, which compared to 90 bp and especially 120 bp, is weaker. Stuff like gyarados is already infamous for flinching down its checks, and at the very least we now have liquidation to dissuade waterfall being used+not having as large as a physical water type movepool. Having a Keldeo clicking Hyro Pump into a check only to flinch does not sound fun.
Also surf has some niche secondary effects. The more common one is it hits all adjacent pokemon, and less common, it hits diving pokemon. Hydro Pump is fine as is, water is already a stupidly good typing and it having 80% accuracy is unique among the 110 special attacks (those being fire blast, blizzard, hurricane and thunder).
No comments on the other points, those I'm mostly fine with.
With Megas coming back to Champions I def won’t worry about that.
However, unless GF gets careless on balancing that out, in an event that Sableye get a new evo (more likely via a regional variant), it may not keep Prankster after evolving, but instead likely to be either a speedy sweeper or a bulky wallbreaker of sorts so the two have distinct roles. (That goes to fangames that don’t use Megas, too.)
speaking of which, even though i don't think it will ever happen now that they didn't just give pikachu the mega they clearly wish it could have, i would not mind if sableye and mawile (original from hoenn) got evolutions. the mega evolution lore is not very important to me at all and i am 100% on board with a retcon in this case lol. but just those two and maybe audino! no more evolutions to mons with already satisfactory BSTs, gamefreak. archaludon doesn't need to happen again.
(i guess beedrill evolving wouldn't be overpowered either but an evolution line going beyond 3 mons feels like a much tougher sell of a retcon)
(i guess beedrill evolving wouldn't be overpowered either but an evolution line going beyond 3 mons feels like a much tougher sell of a retcon)
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Between The physical bugged disguise that can reset, and ape buff with busted face, this seems underexplored. I tried it, stopped for no real reason. I bet it could be one of my favorites, if I kept with it. tera seems good for it too, you can see how they break your face and adapt the type to face that. And it's ice so stinky anyway. Av might be worth a think too.
Edit: my best guess to the lack of usage is it is hard to ev(fast is great when busted, if they special you are 50 spe locked so you may waste evs in any spe.) go is good if fat only, ice busted is somewhat frail. Then there's 4mss(or idk that's almost all mons.) like amnesia and feather dance are cool options kinda, though there's so many good attacks maybe just do those...hm. I mean I've seen some stuff I thought only if try on cart(crawdaunt I can think of,) but idk if any eiscue. If anyone wants to shed light on this feel free to reply/pm me. I'm esp curious why it's not, to my knowledge, a force in vgc. Cause torn or what not can set snow, unlike needing a tales for anti synergy. But nvm that cause it can handle being ice face once only imo. Ace call out!
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There's nothing to explain. Mono ice attacker with limited movepool and obnoxious to setup gimmick that is easy to exploit.
I like the Cover Gen 3 legendaries, but man did they fuck up in having the story/villains focus on them + 2 versions gimmick mid dev instead of the previous plot. ORAS further emphasizing this doesn't help
Honestly if they were an unrelated post game plot similar to Emerald for both legendaries feuding but strictly for 1 villain it'd be way better. RS's post game was pretty weak outside Contests
Honestly if they were an unrelated post game plot similar to Emerald for both legendaries feuding but strictly for 1 villain it'd be way better. RS's post game was pretty weak outside Contests
On the matter of Gen 3 Legendaries: The RS version of the encounters was the best atmosphere of any version. Emerald's Rayquaza climax is a cutscene and then they're pretty unremarkable Post-Game moments, while ORAS just feels silly and overdone with riding them to the encounter spot before they Primal Revert.
RS just nailed it with entering the cave, rumbling as you delve to the bottom, and finally on the bottom floor cutting out the music. Slowly walking over, the Legendary noticing and approaching, and then the slow start up with the Drums (also better mix than ORAS imo, the added instruments feel overdoing it).
RS just nailed it with entering the cave, rumbling as you delve to the bottom, and finally on the bottom floor cutting out the music. Slowly walking over, the Legendary noticing and approaching, and then the slow start up with the Drums (also better mix than ORAS imo, the added instruments feel overdoing it).
What was the previous plot?
https://tcrf.net/Development:Pokémon_Ruby_and_Sapphire/Character_Profiles
We only really have char profiles and some dev notes, but basically for earlier in dev;
-Maxie used his position in Devon Corp to further his schemes. Maxie's internal team to upsurp Mr. Stone was called Team Tunnel (lame) this point
-Archie (name swapped with Capt.Stern in dev) was a ragtime leader fighting in favor of Pokemon, though due to Maxie is slandered as a villain stealing pokemon. He was actually a former gym leader as well. Also had a group of helpers, but final he only has the 2nd in command + none important henchmen
Similarly Wally was meant to become the Psychic gym leader after recovering, with Ryllidy then later Psycho Dog being made for him, before ultimately scrapping the two lines for Gardevoir line, but eh. His char dev is still too off screen. Does confirm that the rival was meant to be him and not just the char of the opposite gender, but I guess they got cold feet after demoting him from the gym leader status
Groudon/Kyogre weren't really implemented till after spring 2002 in dev, so that's probably when things shifted heavily plot wise so that Maxie evolved to be a parallel to Archie. They already had version names based on Indigo/Sapphire and Ruby pitched in 2001, so I guess they really wanted to live up to that. Shame it meant Maxie and Archie lost braincells...
Honestly the ideas for rivals seems to be an attempt of not just repeating Gen 1/2's asshole trope. The idea of YOU encouraging them to overcome personal struggles is good, but severely underbaked in final. And I think they were aware of that, but because the none protag Brendan/May were meant to function similarly to the none Protag Ethan/Kris in HGSS it loses focus
If Midday got a Rock type Quick Attack, Midnight shouldn't be associated with Counter, and Dusk shouldn't be associated with Thrash/Outrage. So, give 'em Rock versions of Revenge and Thrash.
And Dusk should had been the in-between it was meant to be, rather than Midday with tweaks.
Mono Ice is a tough sell yea. Iirc I would t say bad moves, flip turn is covered. Also lots of other stuff but yeah. I guess the gimmick is limited and the base type, somewhat tera dependent. I just found it weird no one even tried it out in bss to my knowledge (bar me on cart. Lol.) it would never take any meta by storm, but seems cool enough to mess with. I've seen worse after all.
The thing with Flip Turn is that it's a move you like on either pivots, defensive mons, or choice users.
Eiscue is none of those, Eiscue wants to get on field (ideally with snow active already) and stay there.
That's where the problems arise: monotype Ice is actually pretty bad, the only "good" ice monotype is Glastrier and that is cause its stats are giga inflated with one of the highest attacks in the game from a non-restricted, massive bulk, and solid coverage to hit resists. Eiscue has... what exactly? 80 attack is hardly spectacular, no setup move to patch it up (nope, no sword dance, no bulk up, nothing).
You DO get Belly Drum but... that's now 3 turns needed for a setup (set snow, get in, cast Belly Drum and cut your own HP in half) and it's also a setup you can't even pull out against half of the pokemon cast since Ice Face only works on physical attacks.
....and it doesnt even have high BP moves to abuse. Ice spinner for 80 BP i guess, or Icicle Crash if you're feeling frisky for that 5 more BP with the miss chance.
Basically, as cool as the gimmick is, you have to go through obnoxious loops to pull it off (either have to set it manually and take a hit in the process, or get in after something else sets it) AND it doesn't even get you anything done since it hits like a wet noodle on top of thudding against any ice resist with its best option being unstabbed Liquidation.
Even in-game, the hassle you have to go through to make it work only to hit worse than another pokemon would hit with unstabbed Ice Beam is not worth it, and to make it worse, in both the games Eiscue shows up in, it's a rare spawn in a later game area.
If Eiscue would show up early in either games, I'm quite sure people would have bothered giving it a chance, after all for a early game pokemon it'd be a powerhouse. But by the time you even *can* find one, anything you have is so much better with so much less effort required... (not only you need multiple turns to make his gimmick work, you're also cutting your HP in half even *when* it works which also discourages even bothering with it.)
(Oh and that's just looking at it in-game. In actual competitive, this thing had no chance at all. Ice types need insane stats to make up for how bad the type is at everything, and a mediocre gimmick that falls apart the moment Pelipper or Gholdengo shows up ain't it)
Edit: Oh I forgot to mention G-Darm as far as mono ices that actually work, but i'm quite sure I don't need to explain why a built in choice band, strong attack stats with 120 BP coverage moves to boot was dumb enough to make up for it... being mono ice with 0 defensive value.
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Yes ok. That makes it make more sense. For move, I think you're committed to dice spear, but that still takes item, and isn't even scale shot. Yeah normal set up would help...that's true on glastier essentially, and even then it's like way low tier cause ice I guess. They do need stats to make up for that typing, snow and sheer cold immunity are not enough really. Even with stats, it can be trouble to be ice alone, like regice and reg avalugg.
Hopefully they buff ice, maybe in exchange for nerfing offensively. Idk though, might just be a dud defending type whatrver they do, rats.i like the cold rofl.
Ice already got buffed this generation with Snow now giving 50% defense.
Was enough for Articuno of all things to win a regional in VGC which was pretty notable.
The main problem with Ice is that they can't buff it. The few ice types that actually DO have the stats (Weavile, Caly-Ice, A-Ninetales, Iron Bundle, etc) are already very strong and in some case borderline broken pokemon. Further buffing the type would make those even stronger.
Unfortunately, it's Pokemon. There's now 1200 of it. Have to accept a good thousand of pokemon will suck and this number will get bigger every generation, as for every new pokemon added, for every old pokemon buffed, another one (or more) bites the dust. Such is the nature of powercreep.
Wow. Yeah that's fair. They would have to just slightly improve theons themselves, or change others, not type chart, to make them more appealing. Yeah powercreep got to me this gen for sure, tera, ting, flutter. Against those big mons eiscue and them can be a bit puny.
I would argue that Eiscue doesn't actually care about snow all that much at all. Ice Face's refresh mechanics have huge antisynergy with Belly Drum, so the only way you'd ever see it refresh is if you run Snowscape on Eiscue itself, which since refreshing your Ice Face means losing your speed boost you're probably never going to do. Other boosting Ice-types can appreciate snow being set up beforehand, since they can use the Defense boost to help them boost, but Eiscue already has infinite Defense in its cube form, and snow does nothing to help it against the special attackers that can bypass its face.
It costs the same amount of turns as any other setup sweeper, no awkward 3 turn shuffle needed, but it also means that Ice Face's secondary gimmick of refreshing in snow is practically vestigial.
That was kinda my point on his gimmick being... nonexistant. Takes too long to use, but if you don't use it, then you're left with what's basically a much worse Azumarill with more speed but much worse movepool and typing.
It's a lose/lose scenario.
Also sadly the spe still isn't enough anymore. Dang 135s...
Eh, I wouldn't really say it's all that similar to Azu beyond the both of them using Belly Drum. And I wouldn't call its movepool all that bad. Ice and Water is fantastic coverage already (although not as good as when Water-types run it since you'd rather get the STAB boost on the one not resisted by Steel) and its remaining coverage options, while shallow, can all serve some purpose. Zen Headbutt hits Water/Poison Pokemon, Reversal can theoretically hit Steel-types (though you need to not run Sitrus Berry and have taken Rocks damage on top of the Belly Drum self damage for it to be of a useful base power), and Head Smash can do... something probably I dunno it's stronger than its STAB. The more equalized environment of RandBats has shown that Eiscue can put in work if it gets its Belly Drum and broken face off, but that's the thing. Unless you're running SubSalac, you need the speed boost from having your face broken to sweep. And that requires cooperation from your opponent.
In that sense, I'd compare it to Rock Polish Weakness Policy Rhyperior or Weak Armor Meteor Beam Armarouge. But Rhyperior can boost its speed on command and doesn't need the Weakness Policy boost to be threatening, and Armarouge is going to hit something with a big Meteor Beam whether the opponent cooperates or not. If the opponent doesn't cooperate with Eiscue and just switches to a special attacker as it Belly Drums, Eiscue is usually fucked without having made any progress. And even when everything does go right from Eiscue, honestly a +2 +2 Rhyperior might still be scarier.
Yep and that was mainly my point.
The gimmick it relies on is so difficult to pull off that honestly... why even bother.
It really is a pokemon who'd be fun to use as early game mon, but in both games it's in is a late game AND rare spawn, by the time you have access to it you either already have a team you're attached to, or simply have better options in the very same area it spawns in.
And even then... even assuming you can get your hands on it in game... its gimmick relies on taking damage all the time. Not quite something you want to rely on during the story, unless you fancy spamming potions constantly.
(And as said and shown, this thing never had any hope in PvP, unreliable hard to setup gimmick that relies on your opponent doing something is never really going to work)
It's just another case in the long list of "it's a cool gimmick, too bad it's on a terrible pokemon". We got tons of those lately since GF has taken a liking on giving (almost) every new pokemon a signature move and/or ability.
Nah Ice Face is great in a vacuum. It's a reusable Super Focus Sash against physical attacks. Put it on literally anything besides "all-in setup sweeper who requires the ice face to be broken to sweep" and it would be fantastic. Eiscue is just uniquely terrible at abusing its own ability. It's like if something that was only good at being an Unburden Acrobatics sweeper was forced to always run Focus Sash.Weedletwineedle not finding a use for it Gen 8
I mean they did for Gen 9, but strictly cuz it had Soak and Freeze Dry. Ice Face genuinely is ass
It's also just...working at cross-purposes with itself.
Resetting with hail makes you want to run it with hail, but hail teams don't want to add another piece of complicated setup. Snow and Ice Face both boost physical defense, but in incompatible ways, so again, can't use them together. Making it not work on Special moves means that it's impossible to use reliably, which no one likes. And any ice-type sweeper, especially a setup sweeper, is high-risk. But you can't sweep without setup, because it's stats are too low. Whoever designed this put a lot of work into making sure this gimmick would never accomplish anything.