Hiya folks! Ever get into an argument over pokemon in which you sigh heavily? Have you made someone sigh heavily? Me too! Many times two or more people have differing opinions, and we cant reach a middle ground. Well, thats understandable. HOWEVER, I see some arguments that make no sense, but they sound convincing. And after a lot of thought, I think you can boil them down into 3 specific trends. So, without further ado, heres the article that no one was asking for! 3 Extremely Common Logical Fallacies (or flaws in reasoning) in Pokemon: NUMBER ONE! Thinking a pokemon is good/bad because of a weakness. In this case, lets take some classics. Garchomp, Chansey, Ferrothorn. Saying Garchomp is easy to counter by just using ice beam, Chansey by using a physical fighting move, and Ferrothorn by using a flamethrower, and therefore they are easy to beat, is kind-of misguided. A good player will not keep these pokemon in on pokemon that obviously know the offending move in question. The real judge of a pokemons typing is how effectively it can get in and fight a majority of pokemon (Ferrothorn, for example, can annoy many many pokemon that doesnt have fire-type moves), as well as how much it can do when they switch in a check or counter (Garchomp can fire off high-power moves, Ferrothorn can set up rocks or leech seed, and Chansey can use a wish in prep for switching or fire off a thunder wave or toxic). And stuff like that is usually a case-by-case basis. TL;DR version of #1: Saying that a pokemon dies to its weakness or 4x weakness from a faster pokemon is worthless, but the real test is how often that situation can come up. NUMBER 2! This is almost the reverse of the previous, and is most commonly seen when making movesets. Many times people say that packing a super effective move as a counter for your weakness is the best idea for a coverage move. This is sometimes true, so its harder to spot this error at times. I once heard that Blissey/Chansey should pack psychic to fight fighting types. Now most people here will agree thats silly. 252+ SpA Choice Specs Blissey Psychic vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Conkeldurr: 316-374 (76.3 - 90.3%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock and 2 layers of Spikes Mostly because Blissey wants to leave versus those pokemon, and Conkeldurr, while slower, isnt the only fighting type pokemon to consider, if the pokemon happens to be using a STAB. And too many pokemon fight Chansey by using taunt or trick, or being Gothitelle. But it gets tougher to tell when the pokemon is getting faster and faster. A common thing I hear is Garchomp using poison jab or iron head to fight fairy types. This makes sense when you first think about it. Sylveon is a good example, as it takes SE damage from Poison Jab and packs a powerful super-effective move on Garchomp, and is much slower, so you could conceivably fight it off, right? Well, in this case, Earthquake with STAB will have 10 less base power, almost the same damage for no extra moveslot. That actually only leaves Whimsicott and Togekiss as the only fairies that poison jab hits significantly harder than his Earthquake. But Stone Edge hits more pokemon for good damage than poison jab, and hits Togekiss harder, and then is Whimsicott worth a moveslot? In many cases no. For Whimsicott, and more importantly, fights like Skarmory/Ferrothorn/Scizor and many physically defensive grass types, the more effective coverage move there is Fire Blast, so in most to all cases, one of those two moves will serve you better than Poison Jab, and Iron Head is in this case just weaker than Poison Jab to begin with. We always forget that its not just super-effective moves that win matchups, its important, but, as another Garchomp example, an ice type just cant switch in for free on Garchomp without thinking and not expect to be in pain. And having a super-effective move to fight the things that will totally kill you is only useful if it actually changes the fight from a bad one to a good one. NUMBER 3! Now this one is usually a teambuilding fault. And we ALL do it to some extent. This ones the trickiest to catch in ourselves and others by far. Put quite simply, a type is not the same as its representatives. This is the reason we cant teambuild the exact same way in eaxch playstyle, and why monotype teams can sometimes do well in OU. We always assume that because a pokemon is good against type A, itll be good against most/all members of that type, when each type within a tier has pokemon of different subtypes, coverage moves, speed stats, and so on. It seems simple here, like wed catch ourselves before saying something that obvious, buuuuuut what if I, for example, suggested Snorlax as a counter to fire types on a team that needs the help against fire types? Yes and no. As you can see, Snorlaxs ability plus its good special bulk does look promising against many pokemon. 252+ SpA Volcarona Fiery Dance vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Thick Fat Snorlax: 69-82 (13.1 - 15.6%) -- possibly the worst move ever 252 SpA Mega Charizard Y Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Thick Fat Snorlax in Sun: 145-172 (27.6 - 32.8%) -- 81.7% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery Of course, its not the end-all. Some moves you dont always see, Focus Blast from Char Y or Bulky Roost/Rest sets for Volcarona, may be able to break your Snorlax. Charizard X hurts a lot, moreso if it is the bulky version with will-o-wisp. Entei has a high burn rate with Sacred Fire and can cripple many Lax sets without rest or heal bell support. I mean, Id totally recommend Lax with a set meant to counter specific fire types on certain teams who want checks to them, but not against fire types in general. But lets get trickier. Another example of the fallacy, and Ive used this one sometimes too, is Keldeo, who Ive recommended on teams to beat the teams fire weakness. Seems smart, right? Bulky, fast water type fella with good coverage, yeah? Nope nope nope. I was wrong as hell, seeing as 1.) Keldeo is not switching into a Char Y anytime soon, for fear of melting-face syndrome, and 2.) Char X can take it in a fistfight with little difficulty. If I recommended it for a team with Heatran or Bisharp problems, say, someone using a Talonflame and a Special-attacking Aegisslash, or something like that, Keldeo works great there. But its case by case. A type is not the same as its representative in a tier. OU will have different fire-type threats than UU, or NU, or even PU, and OUs threats are slightly different from Battle Spots threats, then theres doubles, triples, rotation, and so on. So, in summation, we often boil things down to the basic rock-paper-scissors of a pokemon, a strict heirarchy of types, when its never that simple, but is more like each pokemon is a statistical average of every single individual matchup it could ever go against. How can one human remember all that? NO ONE CAN! That disconnect is why we make logical errors along the way, and why no one is a perfect pokemon player. We all make logic goofs, and the more we talk the more we err, so Im probly the worst offender. But thats okay. The real purpose of this page, is to get us all, not on the right track, but to make sure were not ramming into dead ends, so we can explore our own unique way of commanding animals to punch each other, and very skilfully at that.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 21:09:03 +0000
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