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chiasaur11 posted:There's still the mini-games and a child's confidence you can win with rentals. I got up to Bruno in the gym leader castle and ultra ball in the Poke Cup with rentals. 
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Jun 27, 2018 23:42
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There is a reason I'm going to have to turn the mechanics inside out to win round 2 with rentals.
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Jun 28, 2018 00:52
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PMush Perfect posted:There is a reason I'm going to have to turn the mechanics inside out to win round 2 with rentals. 
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Jun 28, 2018 00:57
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MagusofStars posted:You mean a reason beyond “because you let Goons vote on your team theme”?
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Jun 28, 2018 01:03
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I cannot for the life of me remember how, but I did at least manage to beat round one as a kid with just rentals. Despite having Yellow, a gamepack, and a really powerful team lead by Gengar and Alakazam, I still used rentals. As a child, I assumed rentals were the "correct" way to beat it, and using my own would just be "cheating". Holy poo poo, do I now see how backwards I was.
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Jun 28, 2018 01:25
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Arcade Rabbit posted:I cannot for the life of me remember how, but I did at least manage to beat round one as a kid with just rentals. Despite having Yellow, a gamepack, and a really powerful team lead by Gengar and Alakazam, I still used rentals. As a child, I assumed rentals were the "correct" way to beat it, and using my own would just be "cheating". Holy poo poo, do I now see how backwards I was. I came here to post almost literally the exact same thing, but I never made it past Giovanni. I also just wanted to use the Rentals because I just assumed they were better. That Gengar has Thunder! My Gengar doesn't have Thunder! This one MUST be better 
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Jun 28, 2018 02:39
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To be fair, Thunder on Gengar is pretty good.
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Jun 28, 2018 02:44
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Arcade Rabbit posted:I cannot for the life of me remember how, but I did at least manage to beat round one as a kid with just rentals. Despite having Yellow, a gamepack, and a really powerful team lead by Gengar and Alakazam, I still used rentals. As a child, I assumed rentals were the "correct" way to beat it, and using my own would just be "cheating". Holy poo poo, do I now see how backwards I was. Hell, same. I don;t even remember what I used. I just have memories of Agatha being the hardest for whatever reason.
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Jun 28, 2018 07:17
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I remember enjoying Pokémon Stadium until I started getting livid about all the late-game battles having enemies pull out 1HKO moves. All the time.
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Jun 28, 2018 07:32
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My only Stadium experience I can remember clearly is having my legendary dream team stopped dead by a snorlax. I had never met anything that could take those hits and heal them back until all of my power moves were out of PP.
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Jun 28, 2018 11:12
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My clearest memory like that is of a Snorlax (it might have been my own one) using Metronome and getting Fly. My next clearest memories all involve Wrap or Bind.
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Jun 28, 2018 11:59
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Don't forget Fire Spin and Clamp.
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Jun 28, 2018 12:12
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I think Blaine's Magmar was the end of my best Gym Leader Castle runs back in the day. I was using a mix of rental Pokemon and my own Game Boy critters, and because I was a dumb idiot child I hadn't built up my GB Pokemon very well. I did manage to at least win the Prime Cup!
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Jun 28, 2018 12:46
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I think I finally beat Mew with a rental Charmander after losing the rest of my team, but the memory is hazy after many years.
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Jun 28, 2018 14:25
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I beat the Gym leader castle with rentals (I think it took me way too long to realize that you could even bring your own Pokémon in because I was dumb?) and can't remember any of the battles being a complete wall despite being bad at video games. Couldn't do the same in Stadium 2 though, because I was bad at video games. Some poison type trainers were too much for me for some reason or something, I remember being screwed by toxic stalling. Because strategy is hard?
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Jun 28, 2018 14:38
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I remember never understanding why Exeggutor was such a bastard in this. Anything Psychic really. Or with Amnesia. Was always Eggy I remember as the bastard too, even though I'm sure Alakazam and Slowbro were jerks as well. Maybe there's a specific one later and that's why Also I'm pretty sure I had Hyper Beam on everything I used. Man Hyper Beam was cool in this game.
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Jun 28, 2018 16:12
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Exeggutor is pretty badass in RBY. Sleep Powder and STAB Psychic, and durable to boot? Yes please! Not to mention Explosion. Grass is a pretty great type in RBY, the problem is that almost all the Grass types are also Poison types and Poison is unplayable.
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Jun 28, 2018 16:17
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Eric the Mauve posted:Exeggutor is pretty badass in RBY. Sleep Powder and STAB Psychic, and durable to boot? Yes please! Not to mention Explosion. Leech seed, too, because gently caress you. Anything psychic type in Gen1 has to work very hard to be bad. Even the worst of the lot like Hypno are merely good but limited in range.
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Jun 28, 2018 16:19
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Watch out for that W4 to Bug though! 
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Jun 28, 2018 16:35
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Sneak peek at trivia likely at least a few updates away: Exeggutor is so good, it's pretty much literally the only reason Jolteon runs Pin Missile, as almost everything else takes more damage from Thunderbolt.
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Jun 28, 2018 17:08
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I'm pretty sure I managed to clear the entire game with Rentals back in the day; I didn't have any sort of teams set up in any of the Gen 1 games.
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Jun 28, 2018 20:32
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Oh, it's absolutely doable. There's speedruns of this game, and those are all rentals only. One of my final features is going to be making teams that can beat every tournament with a single game, the only duplication being of rare candies for the sake of my sanity.
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Jun 28, 2018 21:24
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Route 03 - Rockcrawling Unlike most of the tournaments, the Pika Cup only has one difficulty. This means that we must move on to somewhere else.  And where better to go for our next hurdle than the first challenge every starting trainer faces?  The Gym Leader castle includes eight four-opponent battles, the last one being the leader. The shorter rounds means you don't get sent back as far when you lose, but there are also no continues. One loss, and it's back to the start. This knowledge is entirely theoretical.  But we had a vote at the end of the previous update, didn't we? So, let's see what our audience wants to see happen next?  Oh. Huh. Guess we've got a choice then. Well, Rock's super-effective against both Bug and Flying, so half the bug team will be taking quadruple damage from rock moves. Better to use the team that'll make this battle a bit more fun.   But before we get to crushing a Bug Boy at his own game, why don't we look at the team in more detail?    So, let's talk about Pokemon stats. Not wbat tbey do, aside from the nonsense with Special being completely broken, that's mostly self-explanatory. No, let's talk about the stats on these rental Pokemon. I'm not going to bore you with details, but near as I can tell, Rental Pokemon at level 50 have stats anywhere between 10% and 15% lower than a trained imported Pokemon would at the same level. They seem to be about the same with random weak trainers at the start, but as you climb in difficulty, those higher possible stats start showing up on more and more. Exacerbating this issue is that in an attempt to keep all rental Pokemon equally viable, the most damaging moves are often only given to the first form. For example, a Charmander might be given Flamethrower or Fire Blast, while Charizard has to make due with Ember and Fire Spin. This balances an evolved Pokemon's speed and bulk by giving the younger Pokemon more damage potential. That might make for an interesting choice, except for two issues. First, in Generation 1, Speed is also a god stat. Unlike in later games where critical hit rate is set in stone, in Generation 1, it's based on a Pokemon's base Speed. So that Charizard's going to critical about 20% more often than Charmander will. And the increased damage only matters with attacking moves. With any kind of status move, Speed is far more important. A faster Pokemon can paralyze a slower Pokemon, burn it, maybe even put it to sleep, before the slower one can do anything. And second, they're not consistent about it. While a Charmander with Flamethrower is going to be doing about twice as much damage on average as a Charizard with Ember, that Charizard's Fire Spin is also going to trap a slower Pokemon, keeping them from attacking at all for several turns. And that's assuming they try at all.  Compare the Venomoth and Parasect above with the Paras and Venonat here. Notice anything different? Or, rather, notice anything similar? There is often quite a lot of overlap in a family's movepools. Picking a good team of rental Pokemon is often just about going through them and figuring out which fully-evolved ones still have decent moves. Which means that I must apologize to Paras and Venonat, but Parasect and Venomoth are just straight-up better. And I'm going to need all the help I can get right now.    Well, okay, maybe not against him.    Or him. But this next guy-    Alright, fine. These three are pushovers.   Brock isn't. Now, every single one of his Pokemon is weak (or at least not resistant) to Water, and five are weak to Grass. Guess what types we don't have a whole lot of access to? Which three we bring is going to be very important here, as is which three we'll have to deal with.   We open with Venomoth and his wonderful Psychic, while with Brock, I've never not seen him lead with his Onix. Onix has a lot of Defense, but very mediocre Attack and a terriblre Special. It's far from a competitive threat, or a physical powerhouse. But it has something else that makes it dangerous. A very respectable Speed. Anything we bring with a lower Speed than it is likely to get worn down with Bind until it's in range of a KO with a super-effective Rock Slide.   Venomoth is not slower than Onix, and is ready to bring the pain with another Psychic, knocking off about 2/3s of Onix's HP. Onix retaliates with a Rock Slide that only takes Venomoth down to half despite its weakness and lackluster defense, because Onix has an embarassingly low Attack for something that big and scary-looking.   A second Psychic blows it to pieces.   Next up is Omanyte, who, despite a Rock-typing, lacks any Rock moves.  It still has a respectable Surf, which is uses to take out Venomoth after tanking a Psychic much better than Onix did. Hear that, Onix? You're getting outclassed by a pre-evolved.   Next, in comes Parasect. Omanyte's Water/Rock typing gives it a double-weakness to Grass.   So of course Omanyte carries Ice Beam in return, which knocks a good chunk of HP off of Parasect before it can get off an attack.    But "a good chunk" isn't enough. Mega Drain doing quadruple damage more than makes up for the low base power, and Omanyte is extinct once again. Now, there's a few things Brock could bring out for his last Pokemon. Almost everything is faster than Parasect, so anything that can bring down a decent hit is going to end it, especially Graveler or Vulpix.  Well, that's alright. Cubone's attack is only barely higher than Onix, and it isn't carrying anything super-effective, so there shouldn't be anything that can really threaten Parasect before it one-hit KOs with Mega Drain.   Or that could happen. Fissure has an accuracy of 30% so there was a bit less than a 1/3 chance of that happening. But one-hit KO moves can only affect Pokemon who are slower than the user. And guess who's not slower than Cubone?   Well, okay, lots of things, but this time I mean Pinsir.    And without any other ways to really threaten physically, Cubone goes down in just a couple Slashes. That was easy, but depending on which Pokemon he chose, that could have gone very differently. If his last Pokemon had been Graveller or Vulpix, they would have taken out Parasect, and then been able to one-shot Pinsir. Later battles will make strategy more important, but this one really came all down to what Brock brought to the fight.   We now have access to the next tower, Misty's, and I've peeked ahead, and can say that strategy plays a much bigger part against her. Let's go show Misty why she should be afraid of bugs... ...next time! Audience Participation None this time, though people still seem to be putting plenty of votes into the old poll. At least I know which team we're probably using next!
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Jul 2, 2018 00:58
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Brock has a vulpix on his team here, despite not fitting his rock theme, mostly because he had one in the pokemon cartoon that was going on at the same time as this game. And also to ensure a grass type won't necessarily be able to ruin him. A less obvious weakness of his lineup here is that everything but Cubone is vulnerable to ground, so earthquake away if you are so inclined. And Onix... yeah, despite being one of the largest and most intimidating critters in RBY, and historically Brock's ace up his sleeve, it's always been bad. It's fast for a rock type, and rock slide and earthquake access isn't to be scoffed at in this era even if the rest of its move pool is awful, but surprisingly poor stats in general combined with far better options for the typing leaves Onix a well of disappointment. Still had one on the team the first time I beat the elite four as a kid, though, just because kid me thought it looked awesome.
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Jul 2, 2018 01:15
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"Very mediocre" is certainly a charitable description of Onix's attack stat also boy you know it's gen 1 when you see Mega Drain (40 BP!) as a consistent and best available coverage option.
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Jul 2, 2018 01:22
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The good one, Giga Drain, wasn't introduced until Gen 2. In Gen 1, the best Grass move hands-down is Razor Leaf. We'll get into why later. A shame it's only learned by the Bulbasaur and Bellsprout lines.
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Jul 2, 2018 01:29
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PMush Perfect posted:The good one, Giga Drain, wasn't introduced until Gen 2. In Gen 1, the best Grass move hands-down is Razor Leaf. We'll get into why later. A shame it's only learned by the Bulbasaur and Bellsprout lines. Let me guess: critical hit rate? Critical hits were pretty drat good in Gen 1...
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Jul 2, 2018 01:39
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Epicmissingno posted:Let me guess: critical hit rate? Critical hits were pretty drat good in Gen 1...
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Jul 2, 2018 01:51
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It's a shame there weren't any good offensive bug moves in gen 1 because it had the potential to be a really incredible offensive type. With poison being weak to bug something like 30% of the gen 1 pokedex has a bug weakness.
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Jul 2, 2018 01:52
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Not to get too technical on the numbers, but is the reason rental stats are poo poo due to the (lack of) Stat Experience (aka Effort Values)? Even if you weren't specifically trying to do EV training, your Butterfree is going to rack up a shitload of stat XP naturally just getting it up to level 50 which presumably the rentals don't have. Or are the stats shittier than normal even ignoring that fact?
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Jul 2, 2018 01:57
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MagusofStars posted:Not to get too technical on the numbers, but is the reason rental stats are poo poo due to the (lack of) Stat Experience (aka Effort Values)? Even if you weren't specifically trying to do EV training, your Butterfree is going to rack up a shitload of stat XP naturally just getting it up to level 50 which presumably the rentals don't have. Or are the stats shittier than normal even ignoring that fact?
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Jul 2, 2018 02:06
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As an avid fan of filenames, I can feel the TPP team coming.
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Jul 2, 2018 02:08
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They probably also have low (or straight up 0) DVs (same thing as IVs in later games) on top of having no stat exp. Edit: guess not
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Jul 2, 2018 02:13
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dude789 posted:It's a shame there weren't any good offensive bug moves in gen 1 because it had the potential to be a really incredible offensive type. With poison being weak to bug something like 30% of the gen 1 pokedex has a bug weakness. Yeah, when Twineedle has the highest base power of all Bug Moves at a whopping 25 there's a problem. It's amazing it took until Gen 4 for Bug to something as simple as Bug Bite, IE a common and decently strong Bug attack. Of course Bug isn't alone in that respect, Gen 4 was a really good generation for a lot of different types because it finally gave just about every type an entry level move that was worth a drat even without STAB boosts.
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Jul 2, 2018 02:20
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WrightOfWay posted:They probably also have low (or straight up 0) DVs (same thing as IVs in later games) on top of having no stat exp.
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Jul 2, 2018 02:22
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PMush Perfect posted:Oh, it's absolutely doable. There's speedruns of this game, and those are all rentals only. Please note that by "speedruns" he means multiple goes at it done by the same guy. The current WR for beating all the battles in the game using only rentals is 20:15:19 with time save of seven hours over the previous record because that's how long it normally takes to, with basically perfect play that knows and exploits all the AI patterns and damage ranges, bash your head against Round 2 of Pika Cup until you get really lucky and win when you've only got rentals. There's a reason Werster is literally the only runner for the category. Seven hour time save on a run that normally takes more than a full day to complete based entirely on sheer luck. When Mush said in the intro you weren't ever supposed to be able to beat this game with just the rentals he wasn't exaggerating even a tiny bit.
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Jul 2, 2018 03:15
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She! 
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Jul 2, 2018 03:22
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PMush Perfect posted:The good one, Giga Drain, wasn't introduced until Gen 2. In Gen 1, the best Grass move hands-down is Razor Leaf. We'll get into why later. A shame it's only learned by the Bulbasaur and Bellsprout lines. even in the context of gen 2 calling giga drain "the good one" is damning with faint praise. 60 BP, 5 PP it certainly gives these gens some...ah..."charm" when you see how weird the movesets were, i suppose
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Jul 2, 2018 03:29
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Captain Fargle posted:Please note that by "speedruns" he means multiple goes at it done by the same guy. The current WR for beating all the battles in the game using only rentals is 20:15:19 with time save of seven hours over the previous record because that's how long it normally takes to, with basically perfect play that knows and exploits all the AI patterns and damage ranges, bash your head against Round 2 of Pika Cup until you get really lucky and win when you've only got rentals. Is this on youtube somewhere? That's a legitimately impressive feat.
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Jul 2, 2018 03:37
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rannum posted:even in the context of gen 2 calling giga drain "the good one" is damning with faint praise. 60 BP, 5 PP 
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Jul 2, 2018 03:54
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