Dynamax Adventures Thread

[R_N]

if i had to guess the AI probably also does weighted rolls but with this:
1. a supportive healing move. If I ever see anyone with Pollen Puff and anyone has any damage taken, they almost always seem to go for this above anything else. Likewise with Life Dew & Floral Healing.
2. A status move. Not sure if it favors Status (burn, confusion, etc) or Support (COACHING, ABC: ALWAYS BE COACHING!)
3. Damage

 

[sb879]

if i had to guess the AI probably also does weighted rolls but with this:
1. a supportive healing move. If I ever see anyone with Pollen Puff and anyone has any damage taken, they almost always seem to go for this above anything else. Likewise with Life Dew & Floral Healing.
2. A status move. Not sure if it favors Status (burn, confusion, etc) or Support (COACHING, ABC: ALWAYS BE COACHING!)
3. Damage

0. Endure

 

[R_N]

0. Endure

I've had several pokemon with endure but only seen the AI use it...twice? MAYBE three times? Across multiple runs. It's actually one of the things I wish they'd spam more often tbh, especially if they're frail to the boss.

 

[sb879]

I've had several pokemon with endure but only seen the AI use it...twice? MAYBE three times? Across multiple runs. It's actually one of the things I wish they'd spam more often tbh, especially if they're frail to the boss.

I wish I had your luck with it...I've seen the AI use it three times per battle.

 

[CPU]

I wish I had your luck with it...I've seen the AI use it three times per battle.

Can't lose battles if you don't die

(You also can't win battles if you don't attack, though. Usually.)

 

[R_N]

I wish I had your luck with it...I've seen the AI use it three times per battle.

if it makes you feel better i had a butterfree spam rage powder against zapdos

 

[IceBeam23]

I wish I had your luck with it...I've seen the AI use it three times per battle.

Sometimes they actually luck out and the legend attacks them 2 times in a row, so i think they're gigantamax brain
Then you get the grovyle who immediatly endures against a barbaracle

 

[R_N]

Well, I found Groudon. It aggressively didn't go well (though shoutout to Cryogonal for taking a lava plume in the sun that killed everyone else).

I've managed to burn through other AoE fights without wide guard but this really feels like a requirement.

 

[Count Bleck]

So a question for our fellow raiders: Is it better to hunt for natures or stuff them full of mints and call it a day?

Cause ive found uxie at least 4 times and had natures i just couldnt vibe with at all, but the thought of doing this for zygarde and other big hitters sounds...unpleasant.

 

[R_N]

I feel like half the reason nature mints exists is specifically for instances like this
Just eat the L on being weak to very specific type of berries and eat a mint

I find these adventures fun despite the more frustrating legends but if I had to specifically go out of my way to SR for natures? it would be an utterly miserable experience
god speed, you shiny hunters

 

[IceBeam23]

Well, I found Groudon. It aggressively didn't go well (though shoutout to Cryogonal for taking a lava plume in the sun that killed everyone else).

I've managed to burn through other AoE fights without wide guard but this really feels like a requirement.

Yeah, he has lava plume, EQ AND PB. They went overkill with the spread moves on that one.

So a question for our fellow raiders: Is it better to hunt for natures or stuff them full of mints and call it a day?

Cause ive found uxie at least 4 times and had natures i just couldnt vibe with at all, but the thought of doing this for zygarde and other big hitters sounds...unpleasant.

Honestly i don't have an issue with hunting for natures but that may be because i'm used to hunt for shinies, which take generally a VERY long time. I'm at 95 suicunes catched and it refuses to shine.
I prefer farming raids than the battle tower personally, but that's just a preference thing. I'm literally saving zygarde for last on my shiny list, i think it would be a great end to that little quest.
But i definitely recommend minting if you don't feel like doing the battle over and over, especially if it's a difficult legend to beat reliably like that megazord.

 

[MrHands]

So a question for our fellow raiders: Is it better to hunt for natures or stuff them full of mints and call it a day?

Cause ive found uxie at least 4 times and had natures i just couldnt vibe with at all, but the thought of doing this for zygarde and other big hitters sounds...unpleasant.

Neither. Use GTS if you want a particular legend.

Instead get the Shiny Charm and just hunt for shinies. With the Charm there's a 1/100 chance of each Pokémon being shiny, which means you have close to 1/25 of getting at least 1 shiny per run.

Just play them for fun, catch everything, but only keep if it's shiny.

 

[Count Bleck]

I was planning to shiny on another account, but as i was typing this i realized I need to reaquire a shiny charm, and while not hard, less fun. hmm, maybe i will shiny hunt them now, who knows, but that didnt exactly answer the problem of nature finding. gts is a terrible place if you want good pokemon economy.

 

[R_N]

Tried an online Adventure for the first time

I wish they told you who chose what path, because, i want names

i want numbers

i want to know who decided to go for the electric pokemon path over the water pokemon path twice on the path to GROUDON.

e: I am convicned it's this Mudsdale player who vastly over estimated their mudsdale. Now we're gettinbg owned by Groudon

e2: Did you know the cheer can cause the entire party to be full healed? It wasa almost clutch!

Then groudon spammed AOE

e3:
The second group was the god run, though. A solid set of players, i got pelipper and we even had another person get kingler. Kingler guy got to g-max turn 1 of the groudon battle an spam his attack, i spammed wide guard, the one max attack that went off hit the kingler too
Done with in 3 turns, shockingly easy, blocked like 5 moves

Also, shockingly? We took a morpeko from the start to the end. Secret MVP in the lead up, was at no danger in the final battle, had ice fang and dark turn auara spheres. Other guy had a Scolipede, nice support.


Kingler guy and me had the same name & hair style. We were bound by fate

 

[Siggu]

Talking about clutch adventures, I had one yesterday that was full of crazy.

I began a Gigantamax Toxtricity, and my partners were: a Lampent spamming Trick Room and Inferno, a Dedenne spamming Entrainment, and a Greedent.

After just two battles (vs a Cryogonal and a Kanto Sandslash), we were down to one heart, but we beat the third (a Haunter) and then we got to the legendary. It was a Cryogonal, a Kanto Sandslash, a Lampent and a Greedent, all with their low PP moves, vs a Zapdos.

Zapdos uses Agility, which is countered by Lampent using Trick Room (working for once). Then my Cryogonal freezes Zapdos with an Ice Beam, preventing it from moving for the rest of the battle. It was such an undeserved win I HAD to keep that Zapdos, even if it wasn't shiny and I already had one.

 

[Crimson Chris]

Imagine being at the final stretch and all your partner Gurdurr needs to do is use Brick Break to KO the legend. You have one more attack before the legend takes that last life and your ally Gurdurr just says COACHING.

 

[RocketSurgery]

I had a nice clutch adventure yesterday. In the second-to-last battle we were up against a Comfey, on the way to a water-type legendary, and our team had Raichu, Lickitung, Sharpedo, and Swoobat (mine). For some reason the Lickitung player decided to waste their Thunder PP, but thank goodness they did because it reminded us (or at least me) that Raichu had lightning rod, which was going to be inconvenient for that Lickitung dealing decent damage to whatever the legendary was with electric type moves. Fortunately, the Lickitung player switched moves the next turn and did not waste more PP.

Cue the next battle, with Sharpedo swapped for Comfey and the Lickitung is first up to dynamax and you better believe they mashed that dynamax button right away. The question is, does the Lickitung player remember that Raichu will redirect their max lightning?

Doesn't matter, because I remember, and my Swoobat has simple beam. The Lickitung dynamaxes, the Raichu sets up a light screen, I smack that Raichu with a simple beam, and that Lickitung player either completely forgot about lightning or galaxy-brain predicted my play and went for a max lightning right into Tapu Fini's face. Electric terrain goes up, powering up Raichu's rising voltage and Lickitung's next two max lightnings, and Fini goes down without much trouble at all.

I like to think that the game was rather pleased with my assessment & handling of the situation and rewarded me with a shiny Tapu Fini for my efforts. :P

So a question for our fellow raiders: Is it better to hunt for natures or stuff them full of mints and call it a day?

Cause ive found uxie at least 4 times and had natures i just couldnt vibe with at all, but the thought of doing this for zygarde and other big hitters sounds...unpleasant.

Is there a reason you're not just using mints? Unless you reeeeeeaaaaallly care about getting a neutral nature for the purpose of avoiding the very situational circumstance of not accidentally putting a confusion berry on the mon/getting tricked a confusion berry, just minting to the right nature seems like a much better use of time. I would think grinding the battle tower to earn BP for mints is going to be much quicker than repeatedly going through Dynamax adventures in hopes of a good nature. (You can take legendaries through the battle tower, so you can generally just steamroll it with Zacian, etc., to make it go faster).

Of course, take this with a grain of salt, because I don't really compete in anything other than the occasional online in-game competitions, so while I try to get optimal sets I'm willing to settle for something sub-optimal much more easily than a very serious competitor. Personally, the only things I bother trying to SR for is 0/1 IVs (or shininess), since those can't be fixed later and 0/1 IV is pretty much mandatory for trick room. (0/1 attack IV is nice too for the somewhat situational but not uncommon foul play/confusion minimizing, but as mentioned in another thread SRing for double 0/1 attack IV on Calyrex/Spectrier was pain so I settled for single-digit IVs there)

 

[doipy hooves]

I had an intense adventure that happened in the smogon discord some days ago. We were a group of 4 gunning for Xerneas, but the rentals were looking bleak, with Ditto being the best of the bunch. One guy quit out, and was insistent on everyone else doing the same. The host went along with it, but zizo and I stayed to see the journey through. We weren't expecting much; I personally stayed for the honor of it, and I think zizo wanted to save Xerneas's path.

We had started with Ditto/Oranguru/Galarian Mr. Mime/Marshtomp (me). Players 1 and 3 were completely replaced by CPUs by the end of a Ribombee battle, which ended up replacing Galarian Mr. Mime. Through the next battle against Thievul, it was doing a great job of healing (especially with Instruct since Oranguru had nothing better to do), but for some reason the AI chose to replace Ribombee with Thievul. Not good.

The other player took a gamble on the scientist to replace Oranguru, and got Gastrodon out of it. This squad wasn't ideal at all, with 3 weaknesses that Xerneas could nuke at its leisure, and only 3 lives remaining. The last branch was between Normal and Normal, with a backpacker at the start of one end. Nothing game-changing was obtained, but I swapped Marshtomp out for Exploud in the last effort to improve the team. After that, we were set to face off against Xerneas. The outlook was grim, and I couldn't help but think that if us two alone made it this far, then with four humans this would actually be winnable.

Surprisingly, Ditto-Xerneas was doing the most damage with Fairy Aura-boosted Moonblasts, even critting at least once and staying rather healthy with Ingrain to boot. I think I immediately dynamaxed with Exploud to launch Max Hyper Beams, while Gastrodon was using Skitter Smack or something. Thievul may have Taunted Xerneas, which hadn't really made a difference since it had already used Ingrain. I'm not sure what else it did, but I do know it got killed at some point. Gastrodon was definitely taken out by a Max Overgrowth earlier, which led to double passive healing to fight through.

The single-target focus kept the run going, but only prolonged the inevitable, as the next death would be the end for sure. Exploud was still healthy, but I couldn't say the same for the others. My dynamax had run out, and Terrain Pulse was my best/most reliable attack (Blizzard/Focus Blast/Hyper Beam were the alternatives). At the least, we had chipped Xerneas down into yellow health, and that turn took it into desperation. Xerneas used the opportunity to unleash a Dazzling Gleam on us all. Miraculously, Ditto and Gastrodon barely hung on to life, thanks to the Skitter Smack debuffs. Everyone was still pretty damaged though, and with Thievul rejoining the battle, the next turn would decide it all. At this point, there was nothing else I could do but click Hyper Beam.

In the end, after all those Max Strikes, Xerneas was outslowing everyone, with no chance to reset its speed until after all our attacks landed. Ditto shot another Moonblast, Thievul probably used Burning Jealousy, and Exploud finished it off with a glorious Hyper Beam.
Even though I already had Xerneas, this was still an inspiring battle that defied my expectations. Never give up!

screenshots

 

[sb879]

So what are everyone's most unexpectedly good sets? "Unexpectedly" varies from person to person obviously, but there's a number of sets I took one look at and knew they were good. Some others, on the other hand...


Flower Gift
Solar Beam/Worry Seed/Sunny Day/Weather Ball
I mentioned Cherrim a week ago, and guess what: it still owns. It provides such an easy boost to your whole team with Flower Gift (50% Attack and Special Defense), and even after setting up Sunny Day it's a respectable attacker in its own right with Solar Beam and Weather Ball. I picked it the first time cause I thought it was a cute gimmick, but it's actually so good. I two-turned a Dialga with this, Hitmonlee, and Rhydon, lol. Even the AI seems to know to just pick Sunny Day turn 1. The only flaw is that it is incredibly reliant on weather, so Pokemon that can overwrite it are kind of problematic. But only kind of, it's not like they overwrite the weather every turn, and even just 1 turn of Flower Gift is often worth the Sunny Day turn with the right team.


Aftermath
Lash Out/Burning Jealousy/Acid Spray/Sucker Punch
Acid Spray is so nice, and this is in a fun speed tier where it can both Acid Spray before others attack, but also slow enough to do fun Lash Out combos.


Adaptability
Liquidation/Dive/Psychic Fangs/Ice Fang
This hits quite hard, and if you can dynamax you get a rain boost to really go off. Dive is really clutch when you're low on health too; you can still deal decent damage while avoiding some attacks. The coverage looks nice but if you feel obligated to use it you're missing the point of Basculin. Also the blue stripe one is respectable too with Scald, but this one is just better to me.


Static
Electric Terrain/Thunderbolt/Earth Power/Muddy Water
Stunfisk is one of those Pokemon that always has better stats than I assume, and this mode is no exception. It has really good moves and takes most hits.


Battery
String Shot/Eerie Impulse/Spark/Dig
Like Flower Gift, Battery is really good in raids. String Shot and Eerie Impulse are great support on top of that, and Dig is fun for avoiding damage after debuffing, since it's not like this is dealing that much of it anyways.


Queenly Majesty
Aromatherapy/Trop Kick/Acrobatics/Swagger
This has good enough bulk to take a hit, and Trop Kick does consistently good, if not great, damage while neutering attack. I tend to like Skitter Smack for the same reason, but this is a cute (this was a typo but I'm keeping it tbh) above since this is quite a bit stronger than those. Acrobatics is coverage I guess, but ideally I just want to Trop Kick. Aromatherapy is also nice to heal status on the way to the boss.


Sturdy
Nuzzle/Poison Jab/Electroweb/Iron Head
Speed control is often nice, and with the new mid-turn speed change mechanics it's especially nice on a fast Pokemon like Togedemaru. It's often bulkier than expected due to Steel's million resistances, and even for stuff like Kyogre it has Sturdy to come in clutch. Iron Head then deals decent enough damage after speed control.


Cheek Pouch
Gyro Ball/Psychic Fangs/Body Slam/Swords Dance
Decent for the normal fights, but in the longer boss fights Swords Dance really shines, especially with Greedent being hard to OHKO. The 30% paralysis chance is delectable as always, too.


Serene Grace
Skitter Smack/Dual Wingbeat/Shadow Ball/Ice Beam
Okay, maybe this doesn't belong on a list of unexpectedly good Pokemon, but damn if this isn't a lot better than it looks. I've had the uh, fortune...? to have seen this multiple times when nothing looks good, and it always ends up being a respectable choice. Skitter Smack has great utility, and this hits a lot of things super-effectively in general. Serene Grace can be nice with Shadow Ball too, and outright amazing with Ice Beam.

 

[Worldie]

I will say to not sleep on the Helping Hand users. Bellossom / Nidoqueen / Bolthund (what hand? Helping Paw?) on top of my head...
Usually the sets have the issue of being walled by certain types only few sets have perfect coverage (generally with downsides of inaccurate moves, being off the weaker offensive stat, or being on unevolved mons), but HH circumvents the issue by boosting someone else's damage instead of doing negligible chip.
Plus, usually HH the dynamaxed mon will do more damage than a neutral hit, moreso if it's hitting on a weakness and further bonus if you get the nuclear combo of sun/rain/terrain + stab off the 2nd turn.

 

[Rarycaris]

Just had my first ever time hitting the 10 turn limit on a raid.

Granted, this was because one player (not AI, an actual player) kept spamming Speed Swap on the boss, and the other two went totally AFK for a full 15 minutes, meaning that one was just using Life Dew and the other was spamming X-Scissor on a Talonflame instead of using his rock move.

(I've also noticed that sometimes a communication error will cause a fight to be entirely skipped? What's with that? It's happened a couple of times now, and the second time, I'm reasonably sure the player triggered this on purpose.)

 

[R_N]

Oranguru. Instruct is super good, but obviously it's finnicky to actually pull off in the AI's hand.

 

[IceBeam23]

Maractus is actually cheating against suicune, and i'm assuming it's really good against kyogre and other legendaries with strong water attacks as well. Even if the AI spams acupressure with it, just storm drain existing negates any stab moves and invalidates half of suicune's moveset. Combined with the fact that suicune cripples itself sometimes, with psychic terrain (which renders extreme speed useless), you can reach a point where it can only do max mindstorm, strike or extrasensory if it wants to do damage.
Plus maractus has leaf storm, so you can do a ton of damage if you have +1 or +2 sp atk with storm drain.
I could also talk about leaf storm contrary lurantis, but since legends like removing buffs, it's a bit less useful than the 0w0 cactus.

 

[R_N]

Doesn't storm drain only redirect single target water moves? Kyogre's problem is it has spread moves

 

[IceBeam23]

Wait it only redirects single target moves ? I play singles, so i thought it redirected every water move. Does it still give you the sp atk boost and ignores damage with moves like surf ?
Ok so i just checked bulbapedia for it and yeah, it only works for single target moves but retains the immunity to water and buff for every other move.
A little less useful than i thought, but still pretty cool.