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I'd like to mention Drayden as one of the worst gym leaders in the franchise. Who's idea was it to combine dragon dance with dragon tail? This galaxy brain tactic was used for B2W2 as well. It's such a shame, because Drayden looks so cool and he has a Haxorus, so you would think that he'd be very challenging.
Aight so I wanna keep posting here but I'm kinda running out of primary "categories" to compare so fuck it, best and worst first gym leader, time to really scrape the bottom of the barrel here.
Best: Viola (XY)
Yup, I can't believe it either. An XY boss is actually the winner for once! I really like this fight because it subverts the match-ups of the starters. Being a Bug gym leader, you'd be inclined to think "Fennekin is best, Froakie is neutral, Chespin is worst", but it's actually the other way around: Surskit makes sure that Fennekin doesn't get an easy win and gives Froakie a tough time, and Chespin actually has the best match-up due to being able to learn and stack Rollouts with impunity against Surskit, then tank an Infestation from and KO back Vivillon with boosted Rollout. Vivillon is also a cool and memorable signature Pokemon.
Worst: Roxanne (Emerald)
The queen of arbitrary changes between games. In OG RS she had a Level 14 Geodude along with Nosepass, and now she's souped up with... ...two slightly lower-level Geodudes. Couldn't she have been at least given Rhyhorn or Aron or something? Roxanne in general is just kinda lame, Nosepass being really odd and easy to take out.
Worst: Roxanne (Emerald)
The queen of arbitrary changes between games. In OG RS she had a Level 14 Geodude along with Nosepass, and now she's souped up with... ...two slightly lower-level Geodudes. Couldn't she have been at least given Rhyhorn or Aron or something? Roxanne in general is just kinda lame, Nosepass being really odd and easy to take out.
Not sure about Rhyhorn. It's basically just "Geodude with double the HP", and it would be weird for the first gym to have something only found in the Safari Zone. I could see Aron working, though. It's found in Granite Cave just like Geodude and Nosepass, and its neutrality to Fire means Torchic is at as much of a disadvantage.
Speaking of which, I'd like to collectively lump together all the Rock gym leaders that are placed right at the beginning of the game: Brock, Roxanne, and Roark. Rock as the first gym is such a dumb decision, when most of the player's options are Normals, Fliers, Bugs, and their starter. It's a free win for the players who chose Grass or Water, and a giant "lol fuck you" to the poor saps who chose Fire.
Rest in peace MYFIRST the Torchic, who perished when I forgot to save the game, and who convinced me to use Mudkip after struggling with Roxanne.
I think the idea of analysing first gym leaders is particularly interesting. There are trends that can be observed that are a little strange. The typings of the first gym leaders in different games in the series are Rock-, Flying-, the type that's SE on your starter (FWG), Normal-, Bug-, Normal- or Normal-/Dark-, Grass-Type. For me as someone who really doesn't like Totem Battles, this means that there's only one contender for the best first gym battle in the series.
Best: Cheren (BW2)
How is Cheren the only first gym leader to use a typing that doesn't advantage or disadvantage certain starters over the others? Not only that, but they intentionally put his levels just low enough even in Challenge Mode to mean that so long as the player isn't over-levelling none of the starters will have evolved, so Pignite's secondary Fighting-Type isn't even a factor. It's the start of the game -- players have the option of Water-, Grass-, Flying-, Normal-, Fire- (starter only except Sinnoh and Kalos iirc), Bug-, and sometimes Dark- (Hoenn & BW1 only iirc) and Fighting-Type Pokémon (Kanto, Sinnoh & BW2 only iirc). Players don't have a lot of team options and in some cases choosing a certain starter all but necessitates a certain wild Pokémon: if you choose Fire-Type in any of the regions with a Rock-Type first gym leader you're essentially forced into using Mankey in Kanto, Shroomish / Lotad | Seedot (if you use Bullet Seed TM) / Wingull in Hoenn, and Machop / Budew / Psyduck in Sinnoh. If you choose Chikorita in Johto you have to use a Geodude or throw a full team of 6 Normal-Type Pokémon at Falkner, and in BW1 you're literally forced into receiving and then intuitively using an elemental monkey. Admittedly what Yung Dramps said about Viola is true and something I hadn't noticed before, so the type matchup isn't so clear-cut there. However, using one starter still gives a big advantage over the others -- it's just not in an intuitive way, so Chespin is the best matchup against the Bug-type gym leader whereas Fennekin and Froakie struggle a little and are forced to use a Flying-Type, or muscle through the Surskit with Normal-Type moves before using a Litleo on the Vivillon.
It's a very strange issue because the series has options available to it. Normal-, Fighting-, Psychic-, Dragon-, Ghost-, and Dark-Type are all viable options for early game gym leaders that wouldn't advantage one of the Fire-, Water- or Grass-Type starters over their alternatives, assuming the base forms of all of the starters are pure type. It seems like intuitively better game design to use any of these types as the first gym leaders for that reason, but in all 7 generations featuring gym leaders, only one actually does so. The only reason I can think of is that for less experienced players they can choose the starter that has the easiest time against the first boss battle, and the more experienced players can choose a challenge route if they like. However, this only works if players have knowledge of what type the first leader is which is never presented in-game before the starter is chosen, and by the time players are playing through the game for a second time none of them should need to take the easy road because they've understood the game enough to take down the Champion already. Furthermore, if that truly is the logic behind this design, Cheren further proves that it's not necessary to wrap the starters up in providing an easy route. Riolu can be found rarely in Floccessy Ranch and comes knowing Fighting-Type moves. If you're struggling against Cheren, you can catch a Riolu and beat him without breaking a sweat.
Riolu can be found rarely in Floccessy Ranch and comes knowing Fighting-Type moves. If you're struggling against Cheren, you can catch a Riolu and beat him without breaking a sweat.
Riolu as an early game fighting type counter to Cheren suuuucks
They purposely moved Riolu's Force Palm from level 11 in BW1 to level 15 in BW2. Cheren's Lillipup is level 13, the strongest pokemon you've faced to that point.
Without grinding, you are likely not getting Riolu to level 15, so your only other fighting type option is...Counter. Which, while Ghosts are immune to it, is effecitvely typless damage and Riolu's not really designed to eat hits, especially with Work Up in play on Cheren's side of the field.
For all intents & purposes, Cheren is like the one leader in the series where you can't find a near by counter to him (exception being Mareep is near by to handle Challenge Mode Pidove). There's no rock or steel types (unless you spend entirely too long grinding happiness on Riolu at which point you may as well just grind for Force Palm) to resist his attacks, there's no early game fighting TM (the only TMs at all are Return & Frustration), there's no off-type Pokemon that learns an effective move (ala Metal Claw charmander or Double Kick Nidoran) and unlike the striaton brothers there's no "use this or suffer" free pokemon. You can't even pull an Onix strat and take advantage of the other lower defensive stat because Patrat & Lillipup have equal defenses!
It sticks out a lot, really, to the point where I wonder if they meant to give Riolu a proper fighting attack and forgot to. Especially when literally next gym over you get access to magnemite, who hard walls Roxie; there's also Growlithe and Black version gets Magby for a little extra help on Venipede.
None of that is necessarily bad, of course, but one of those things where I gotta tilt my head.
I think the idea of analysing first gym leaders is particularly interesting. There are trends that can be observed that are a little strange. The typings of the first gym leaders in different games in the series are Rock-, Flying-, the type that's SE on your starter (FWG), Normal-, Bug-, Normal- or Normal-/Dark-, Grass-Type. For me as someone who really doesn't like Totem Battles, this means that there's only one contender for the best first gym battle in the series.
Best: Cheren (BW2)
How is Cheren the only first gym leader to use a typing that doesn't advantage or disadvantage certain starters over the others? Not only that, but they intentionally put his levels just low enough even in Challenge Mode to mean that so long as the player isn't over-levelling none of the starters will have evolved, so Pignite's secondary Fighting-Type isn't even a factor. It's the start of the game -- players have the option of Water-, Grass-, Flying-, Normal-, Fire- (starter only except Sinnoh and Kalos iirc), Bug-, and sometimes Dark- (Hoenn & BW1 only iirc) and Fighting-Type Pokémon (Kanto, Sinnoh & BW2 only iirc). Players don't have a lot of team options and in some cases choosing a certain starter all but necessitates a certain wild Pokémon: if you choose Fire-Type in any of the regions with a Rock-Type first gym leader you're essentially forced into using Mankey in Kanto, Shroomish / Lotad | Seedot (if you use Bullet Seed TM) / Wingull in Hoenn, and Machop / Budew / Psyduck in Sinnoh. If you choose Chikorita in Johto you have to use a Geodude or throw a full team of 6 Normal-Type Pokémon at Falkner, and in BW1 you're literally forced into receiving and then intuitively using an elemental monkey. Admittedly what Yung Dramps said about Viola is true and something I hadn't noticed before, so the type matchup isn't so clear-cut there. However, using one starter still gives a big advantage over the others -- it's just not in an intuitive way, so Chespin is the best matchup against the Bug-type gym leader whereas Fennekin and Froakie struggle a little and are forced to use a Flying-Type, or muscle through the Surskit with Normal-Type moves before using a Litleo on the Vivillon.
It's a very strange issue because the series has options available to it. Normal-, Fighting-, Psychic-, Dragon-, Ghost-, and Dark-Type are all viable options for early game gym leaders that wouldn't advantage one of the Fire-, Water- or Grass-Type starters over their alternatives, assuming the base forms of all of the starters are pure type. It seems like intuitively better game design to use any of these types as the first gym leaders for that reason, but in all 7 generations featuring gym leaders, only one actually does so. The only reason I can think of is that for less experienced players they can choose the starter that has the easiest time against the first boss battle, and the more experienced players can choose a challenge route if they like. However, this only works if players have knowledge of what type the first leader is which is never presented in-game before the starter is chosen, and by the time players are playing through the game for a second time none of them should need to take the easy road because they've understood the game enough to take down the Champion already. Furthermore, if that truly is the logic behind this design, Cheren further proves that it's not necessary to wrap the starters up in providing an easy route. Riolu can be found rarely in Floccessy Ranch and comes knowing Fighting-Type moves. If you're struggling against Cheren, you can catch a Riolu and beat him without breaking a sweat.
I would really like an early dragon gym leader. Rather than being neutral, dragon actually disadvantages all starter types equally. That would be an interesting challenge. It would also be a good excuse to finally have a decent dragon or ice type in the early game.
Riolu as an early game fighting type counter to Cheren suuuucks
They purposely moved Riolu's Force Palm from level 11 in BW1 to level 15 in BW2. Cheren's Lillipup is level 13, the strongest pokemon you've faced to that point.
Without grinding, you are likely not getting Riolu to level 15, so your only other fighting type option is...Counter. Which, while Ghosts are immune to it, is effecitvely typless damage and Riolu's not really designed to eat hits, especially with Work Up in play on Cheren's side of the field.
For all intents & purposes, Cheren is like the one leader in the series where you can't find a near by counter to him (exception being Mareep is near by to handle Challenge Mode Pidove). There's no rock or steel types (unless you spend entirely too long grinding happiness on Riolu at which point you may as well just grind for Force Palm) to resist his attacks, there's no early game fighting TM (the only TMs at all are Return & Frustration), there's no off-type Pokemon that learns an effective move (ala Metal Claw charmander or Double Kick Nidoran) and unlike the striaton brothers there's no "use this or suffer" free pokemon. You can't even pull an Onix strat and take advantage of the other lower defensive stat because Patrat & Lillipup have equal defenses!
It sticks out a lot, really, to the point where I wonder if they meant to give Riolu a proper fighting attack and forgot to. Especially when literally next gym over you get access to magnemite, who hard walls Roxie; there's also Growlithe and Black version gets Magby for a little extra help on Venipede.
None of that is necessarily bad, of course, but one of those things where I gotta tilt my head.
Ah, right, I rescind that point then. This is one of the issues with primarily running through games with nuzlockes -- I've never used a Riolu in BW2 because it's rare and there's the first encounter in each area rule :P
That said, I think it further proves the point to an extent. I don't think anyone stopped playing BW2 because they got stuck on Cheren -- he uses a Patrat and Lillipup (and Pidove in Challenge Mode) afterall, none of which are overpowered for that point in the game. The other first gym leaders almost all use something weirdly broken -- Onix, underlevelled Pidgeotto that shouldn't have evolved, Nosepass, Cranidos, forced type advantage over your starter, and Eldegoss. Viola is the other exception again crediting Yung Dramps' view that she's a great leader as well, since her ace, like Cheren, is available to the player by that point in the game which evens the playing field a little bit, which I feel is important for the first boss battle. However, it's specifically the perfect execution of a Normal-Type leader because Normal-Type isn't super-effective on anything. It makes sense to make it as even a playing field as possible because with few exceptions that's what the Normal-Type is all about.
One thing I like about Cheren is how challenging he is. In nuzlockes, particularly those with a level limit, my usual strategy (depending on encounters ofc) is giving an Azurill an Oran Berry and spamming Charm against his Pokémon before switching to something with better damage output. That's a strategy that is rarely used, because it's usually more efficient to just use a super-effective move. I guess that's why this boss battle stands out to me so much, perhaps due to the unique perspective offered by nuzlocking games more than anything else.
I would really like an early dragon gym leader. Rather than being neutral, dragon actually disadvantages all starter types equally. That would be an interesting challenge. It would also be a good excuse to finally have a decent dragon or ice type in the early game.
Agreed. When I was making this post and fully connected that Dragon-Type is an even matchup for all starters while putting all of them at a disadvantage, I thought it was a really cool idea too. It's not like we don't have bad Dragon-Type Pokémon -- Dratini, Bagon, Goomy, Gible, Jangmo-o, and Dreepy come to mind -- and these are Pokémon who literally never get a spotlight. It'd perhaps be a little strange thematically, and I can see it being troubling since most of these Pokémon rely on Dragon Rage for damage output early on which is utterly overpowered during the first boss battle. However, Twister also works as the TM that is given by this gym and they can simply not give the leader's Pokémon Dragon Rage in favour of Twister, so I don't think it's an unassailable issue.
I remember I once designed a Pokemon league for fun, and while most of the trainers were designed with flavor at the forefront (for example, I think the Rock gym leader was an artist who used something like Nosepass, Carbink, and Corsola) the first gym was designed with gameplay as the primary focus. It was a Normal gym, with inspiration taken from Ilima's Smeargle.
https://pokepast.es/1ff44d9a3ce89bec
It's a FWG core of Normal types. Bibarel is perhaps a bit strong this early in the game, but it has Simple to make your Growls and Leers more effective.
I do think it's valuable to make sure the player's starter is at some kind of disadvantage for the first gym, as it teaches the player to not rely entirely on their starter (if only the rest of the game would follow through on that). I think Ilima almost does this really well, with his Smeargle having coverage to counter your starter, but he falls flat because Smeargle is as weak as they come (might have been better with stronger moves, like Incinerate, Water Pulse, Magical Leaf, and Swift, boosted by Technician of course). That said, putting the starter at such a disadvantage as to render it unusable is going too far.
I remember I once designed a Pokemon league for fun, and while most of the trainers were designed with flavor at the forefront (for example, I think the Rock gym leader was an artist who used something like Nosepass, Carbink, and Corsola) the first gym was designed with gameplay as the primary focus. It was a Normal gym, with inspiration taken from Ilima's Smeargle.
https://pokepast.es/1ff44d9a3ce89bec
It's a FWG core of Normal types. Bibarel is perhaps a bit strong this early in the game, but it has Simple to make your Growls and Leers more effective.
I do think it's valuable to make sure the player's starter is at some kind of disadvantage for the first gym, as it teaches the player to not rely entirely on their starter (if only the rest of the game would follow through on that). I think Ilima almost does this really well, with his Smeargle having coverage to counter your starter, but he falls flat because Smeargle is as weak as they come (might have been better with stronger moves, like Incinerate, Water Pulse, Magical Leaf, and Swift, boosted by Technician of course). That said, putting the starter at such a disadvantage as to render it unusable is going too far.
I am going to go to bat for that damn Smeargle:
early game stats make it easier for weaker pokemon to still thrive. Meanwhile Illima's Smeargle has a suite of these IV & EVs
IVs: 30/25/25/25/25/25 EVs: 170/170/0/170/0/0
Combine that with Technician and that smeargle is a surprise terror at basically the only point of the game it could ever be a threat.
source: the smeargle beat up some of my pokemon and i will never forgive him or the boss teacher with her magnemite
So since everyone is talking about gym leaders now, I figure I ought to say my general favorite and least favorite gym battles now.
#1 best: Sabrina (Red and Blue)
I say Red and Blue because I find her yellow team lazy, and the remade versions are a bit too easy for my taste. Anyways, I really liked the creativity of the battle for one (the fact she has psychic powers and uses psychic types). Well it's not the level of creativity I found red in HGSS, absolutely not, but still interesting nonetheless. Also, the real factors as to why I chose this one. It really does truly put you to the test on how well you can handle psychic types. With the psychic types being what they were back then, it was a great challenge to be fighting them. So of course, choosing one of the most op types for a late gym leader was a rather smart way of saying "alright, let's truly put you to the test!". Dark and steel types and moves of those types didn't exist back then, and the bug moves that existed were terrible, so it's not just one of those lazily designed gym leaders where it's like " Oh yeah, let's use the super effective moves to win! Easy game!". No. It requires actual strategy. Your best best at winning this is a Snorlax. However, you don't just win by attacking to oblivion. You actually have to take the time to set up amnesia, use a hyper potion or two, and then start attacking the Pokemon with taking advantage of their lower defensive stats and your beefy attack stat. But even so, they do have a way of standing up for themselves (Kadabra can disable your amnesia, Mr.Mime can double it's defenses, Venomoth can paralyze or poison you, and Alakazam has a high crit ratio which bypasses your boosts and could get lucky with psywave's RNG based damage). Other good options are Slowbro (though you won't be getting amnesia until level 44, which I doubt you will be), and Chansey (who is stupid hard to obtain). So yeah. It actually puts you to the test, unlike most gym leaders in the game.
#1 worst: Falkner (the original GSC)
In the remakes, HGSS, he got a much needed improvement. However, I'll be mentioning those improvements after I state what was wrong with this battle. Anyways, yeah. Firstly, it uses only one evolution line. And you know I don't like battles that use only one evolution line. But it doesn't end there. You see, you are most likely going to enter at a higher level than his Pokemon. Also, that illegally under leveled Pidgeotto may seem like a scary ace, but it's... Not. It's rather underwhelming. So unless you're doing the battle with only the grass starter, you're pretty much going to win. Thankfully, the remake much improved this battle to instead of it being falsely threatening, stupid easy, and you pretty much going to be overleveling, it actually does provide the challenge that first gyms should provide. I'll state the improvements.
• His Pokemon are at actual levels now, with Pidgey being level 9 and Pidgeotto being level 13
• His Pidgeotto is actually threatening now, with it having the ability to heal many times with roost and being at a scarier level, so now the Pidgeotto is actually threatening and not just faking it
• You'll need an actual way to win now, such as using a geodude or the trade onix or a mareep, rather than "oh yeah my cyndaquil can take care of this on his own" or "let's win this by walking in with Sentret and Rattata and they'll win by spamming tackle". Exactly what all first gym should be like, where you need certain Pokemon, and it'll suck if you don't. However, gyms shouldn't be having ways to stand up to ways of standing up to them until the 5th gym and later, so this is plenty of satisfactory to me.
Still upset at how they didn't give him one more flying type though. They could've given him a spearow or hoothoot. I WOULD say Butterfree, but he only seems to be focused on bird based Pokemon, not flying types in general. But yeah though, I really liked the remade battle regardless. It's just the original that was so bad I wanted to choose it for this spot.
Also someone did their own first gym and I liked it and so did everyone else, so if you'd like you can click the blue bar.
Type: Fighting
First Pokemon: Machop (Level 10)
Ability: No Guard
Moves: Bulk up, Low Kick, Leer
Second Pokemon: Riolu (level 10)
Ability: Inner Focus
Moves: Bulk Up, metal claw, quick attack
Yup. I figured a fighting gym would be great for the first one, as it has no advantage against fire grass or water which is how I wish all first gyms were, yet threatens your common standard normal early game normal types. However, the idea here is that you would instead use the common bird Pokemon to stand a chance... Or maybe a Butterfree or poison type or something. After all, standard first form bird Pokemon and poison types are something almost always seen before the first gym. I wanted them all to be first form because I didn't want it to be TOO vicious for a first gym and because it would generally fit well for an early game boss.
Any feedback, positive or negative, would be accepted and appreciated!
Okay, so as I have done so well to conceal, I've been looking at X and Y recently. For no reason in particular, I happened to spend some time last night looking at their boss design.
Here's a brief introduction.
When I was younger, I remembered seeing people complain about the terrible movesets on X and Y's bosses, and found myself a little annoyed - the whole "three moves" thing is just Game Freak's way of making them easier to control with the AI, isn't it? How often does an NPC-controlled Pokémon need more moves than its best few options anyway? It's not like most of them could even pull off advanced strategies with status moves like a player (and, well, in fairness, have you seen the choices some of them make when they do have full movesets? it's not complete RNG, thankfully, but... for goodness's sake, when I was investigating these just last night, I saw a video of Siebold trying and failing to get to +5 with his Dragon Dance Gyarados rather than attacking!), so why risk wasting turns on mostly unhelpful moves just to fill up their movesets? It's not like it's lazy design - the battles are probably harder with more controlled movesets than they would have been with "completed" ones... right? And I mean, it would be nice if they could fix the AI itself - but the three-move movesets themselves are just a symptom of (or a band-aid over) a problem that's much bigger and takes much longer to solve than just adding a fourth move, so it's not really fair to reduce it to just that.
For that matter, I also never really liked the idea that NPCs should have EV-trained Pokémon. It didn't seem fair - the player isn't EV training their Pokémon in the main story, so doesn't that just give the AI a cheap advantage?
... Holy heck. I will not make the mistake of making excuses any longer. After an unhealthy amount of scrutiny, I can confirm that these bosses are terrible, for so many more reasons than just "they did the best they could to wrangle the AI!" and "but EVs aren't fair for kids!"
X and Y's bosses don't just have suboptimal movesets - they have boring ones.
The sheer number of sets that consist of "STAB + other STAB or coverage + weak priority" and nothing else...
The number of teams that have absolutely nothing to stop from being swept by a single Pokémon with an offensive type advantage...
And the handful of Pokémon that inherently come with unique playing styles or cool utility options and seemingly go out of their way not to use them...
Honestly, I'm kind of amazed that Viola went as far as she did - just using a single status move to provide coverage for one threat - because there is absolutely no contest: she has more strategy than every other Gym Leader in Kalos combined.
Also, refined perspective on EVs: giving NPCs straight 0s in all of their stats gives a really, really noticeable disadvantage; the player at least passively accumulates EVs in all of their stats, even if they aren't actively specializing and minmaxing, and that means they're always doing more and taking less and outspeeding faster Pokémon - the NPCs just can't keep up.
Besides, of all of the times to introduce EV-trained bosses to the series, why wouldn't you choose X and Y? These are the games that tried to make EV training a regular part of the main campaign - Super Training is the definitive casual EV training feature, and even as "the casual audience" and just a kid, I EV trained my whole team in my second run just because I liked the Super Training mini game admittedly also I for some reason had reservations about resetting EVs that Pokémon gained during the main story because they felt like memories of the journey they had and my solution was "just EV train them before they get any!" ... I was a strange child. - so what better time is there to use it to teach players about optimizing stats on a level no other entry could reach?
Either way, playing through Alola, I can confirm that giving bosses EV-trained Pokémon makes a massive difference in the best possible direction and that I had no idea what I was talking about as a kid. Those bosses were fun as heck even without Super Training or my own team having the minmaxed stats to match - imagine how great the same kind would be in a game with in-story EV training as casual and accessible as X and Y!
With that in mind, I hereby present... a breakdown of the most common problems in X and Y's bosses, as well as the really over-the-top and unholy demon spawn of USUM and XY that is my effort to give every Gym Leader in Kalos (and also Lysandre?) a distinctive, gimmicky and still genuinely challenging team and strategy and these should be fully within the confines of what I understand to be possible in the Gen VI engine, with no changes to the game but to the teams themselves? I might be wrong about some of this, though. These probably wouldn't be all that ideal or welcoming for a new player, but think of them like B2W2's Challenge Mode?
I have obviously not actually playtested these, let alone in context, so it's 100% possible that they're completely terrible, but I would imagine that it would be either really really fun or really really suffering.
Here we go!!
Viola
Okay, not gonna lie - as mentioned, Viola is actually a very good first Gym Leader and miles ahead of the rest of them.
I definitely love the choice to make her lead with a Surskit and have it use Water Sport, throwing a wrench in Fennekin players' plans to sweep with just their starter and a type advantage. And since she's only the first boss, I don't think it's too much of an issue that she's not all that tough even so.
The only thing that stands out as particularly questionable here is this: despite the lengths they went to stop Fennekin from having an unfair advantage, and despite the fact that doing this also put a slight damper on Froakie players thanks to Surskit's inherent Water resistance, I do think it's pretty questionable that - rather than giving all three starters an equal shot - they still left an indisputable best choice that can easily sweep her... it just happens to be Chespin of all things, thanks to Rollout spam. I haven't actually used Chespin, but I've been told that this is the case. Correct me if I'm wrong as to how the battle plays out!
I don't think it's necessarily a problem to let starter be the "easy mode," of course! And I think Chespin needs all the help it can get just to keep up with the other two starters, since the other two both end up with exactly the kind of stat spread and movepool that makes in-game runs a breeze. But if it can be said that the job of the first boss is to be a "wake-up call" that forces players to do something other than solo with their starter, well... why give even one starter a perfect matchup?
It is for this reason and also the sake of completion that - despite Viola being the most acceptable boss in X and Y and one of the better first Gym Leaders in the series - I have chosen to "mess with perfection" and make her a "challenge mode team" anyway. If nothing else, this can help to establish my goals for the rest of this set. So here it is:
The theme I chose for this battle is "anti-switching." I felt that it meshed effectively with her current signature move, Infestation, which directly stops switching, and it was also an effective way to highlight another new Bug-type move and to promote certain accessible early-game Pokémon (Pidgey, Fletchling, and the obvious intended counter of the Farfetch'd trade).
Surskit lv 9 (Bug/Water) Swift Swim
Serious nature
- Sticky Web
- Water Sport
- Bubble
- Quick Attack
This is a relatively small change, since her Surskit already serves its purpose well in the original team, but I opted to add Sticky Web as the first part of her anti-switching theme. Being slowed makes the rest of her team more threatening, and since it's a bit harder to solo her with just one Pokémon, this is likely to come into play. However, note that this doesn't affect any of the aforementioned Flying-types.
One of my main goals with these "challenge mode" teams was to make it so - wherever possible - every Gym Leader had at least a neutrality to each of their type's weaknesses, rather than letting certain types just walk all over them without even having to take any hits. Conveniently, Surskit already serves this purpose in canon for Fire-types!
Of course, it's still likely that certain types will have advantages (in this case, Flying, of course), but I strongly prefer making those defensive advantages over offensive ones, because it means both sides have a chance to use moves and to strategize - a type advantage means gaining the chance to use more moves, not removing the chance for your opponent to use them. I think being able to sweep a Gym Leader before they get to attack at all is a sign of a bad boss in general.
Following up on Surskit, Dwebble is Viola's main counter to total Flying-type sweeps - but note that it doesn't have any Rock-type moves! Again, remember that a) this is the first boss and doesn't need to be too hard and b) Flying-types are still supposed to be a solution to the fight - the goal is just to make sure that "solution" doesn't mean "one-hit KOs every single opponent!"
Sturdy also helps to impede Rollout sweeps, since that's the only Rock-type move that's relevant at this point. If it takes three hits to KO Surskit with Rollout, then Dwebble's Sturdy means the snowball effect will wear off just before Vivillon enters. I... don't actually know if it takes three hits to KO Surskit with Rollout, but I sure hope so. Speaking of Sturdy, though...! This is another change I would like to establish for my "challenge mode:" I actually don't think most of these bosses should use healing items. A lot of the time, the AI just doesn't understand how to use them effectively; there are a few bosses later on where I think it would be actively detrimental to waste a turn on a healing item, and Sturdy is somewhat notorious as a way to force bosses to waste healing items on a Pokémon that definitely won't get another attack in anyway. On one hand, this is a way to keep the AI in line (hopefully a better one than shrinking their movesets); on the other, considering the improvements to their strategies and the addition of EVs, it might also be seen as a way to throw the player a bone. In general, when looking at these boss ideas, just assume none of them will be healing their Pokémon with items!
Spikes is another manifestation of the anti-switching theme for the fight - Dwebble gets it as an Egg move, and I thought it would be fairer than giving it Stealth Rock, since it still doesn't affect Flying-types. Infestation is here because it's Viola's signature move and also prevents switching, and I also thought it would pair well with Dwebble's other three moves - if it happens to trap something that can't do much damage to it, it might be freer to set up Spikes and Withdraw, as well as to gain momentum for Fury Cutter.
Vivillon lv 12 (Bug/Flying) @ Sitrus Berry Shield Dust
Adamant nature I'm trying to keep it in line okay
- Struggle Bug
- Harden
- Infestation
- Tackle (?)
As in canon, this is Viola's ace and the hardest Pokémon to take down. It has Struggle Bug, which is both a powerful STAB move and a way to help it take hits from special attackers, and Harden like in canon to shore up its pitiful physical bulk; Infestation also once again might help it to set up, and that combined with the anti-switching measures already in place should keep special attackers from switching out to clear their debuffs like they otherwise might be inclined to do.
Struggle Bug actually might have too good a damage output at this point in the game - I was hoping to use it because of its secondary effect, and I thought it should be okay because Vivillon already does learn it at only level 12, but I'm not sure if it's too much, since it's 250% stronger than Infestation. Depending on how the AI handles it, it would be cool if it could compensate for this by always prioritizing Infestation on a non-trapped opponent - bosses with strong moves but exploitable attack patterns are always something I personally find fun - but it might just have to go.
It also just has Tackle because it has that in canon, but hm, maybe Gust or Draining Kiss would be a fun option instead? Again, no playtesting, so no idea how much I need to limit the power level, haha.
Unlike any of the later Gym Leaders, I opted to leave Viola's team with neutral natures and no EVs just like in canon. Since she's such an early-game boss, and Vivillon's stats are actually quite impressive, I didn't think it was right to buff her all that much.
Grant
Grant is... actually another okay one, I think? This is the last time I say this in this post.
He has a clear theme of his own in speed control - between his signature Rock Tomb on both of his Pokémon and Thunder Wave on his Amaura, it seems like his intention is to pave the way for his Tyrunt to outspeed things and sweep, kind of like a weaker version of Totem Araquanid from USUM. Somewhat amusingly, Amaura itself is maybe the bigger threat of the two, with Refrigerate-boosted Take Downs being one of the strongest moves available at this point in the game.
And honestly, I just appreciate the use of a crippling status move - he's actually the only Gym Leader in Kalos who intentionally inflicts a non-volatile status on the player in canon. And honestly, just by virtue of being earlier in the game, even his seemingly weird team of two level 25 basic NFEs is arguably more of a threat than most other Gym Leaders.
That said, again, there's no fun in just leaving him as he is! Here's my take:
Like in canon, the main theme in this battle will be "speed control," similarly taking advantage of Grant's signature Rock Tomb plus two more ways to alter Speed. I thought I could make more interesting use of the available Rock-types by picking just one of his fossils to serve as his ace, and I chose Amaura because it could do more with the speed control theme and was generally a more interesting opponent.
Also, I think this might be one of my favorite of my "challenge mode teams" here - I had fun with this! Did you think Viola was a sign of restraint?
That was early-game.
This is a real boss.
Binacle lv 22 (Rock/Water) Tough Claws
Adamant nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Attack
- Rock Polish
- Rock Tomb
- Night Slash
- Grass Knot
Right off the bat, Rock Polish and Rock Tomb are both intended to lean into the speed control theme of the fight. Technically, Binacle should not have Rock Polish at this level, but also technically, Binacle should have Shell Smash at this level, so... you're welcome.
Binacle is meant to be Grant's counter to Steel- and Water-type sweeps, and its coverage moves, Tough Claws-boosted Night Slash and Grass Knot, are meant to contribute to this. The reason I chose Night Slash is because by far the most threatening Steel-type at this point in the game is Honedge, which is immune to the more conventional Fighting-type coverage; Mawile doesn't even have any Steel-type moves, so there's less of a need to worry about it despite its useful resistances. Now that we're seeing some EVs on these, I should add that I'm following the precedent set by Generation VII's EV-trained bosses and by all past battle facilities: the only mechanically permitted EV spreads are ones that are split perfectly evenly between some number of stats, so you'll only be seeing 252x2 or 170x3 here.
Solrock lv 22 (Rock/Psychic) Levitate
Relaxed nature
EVs: 170 HP / 170 Defense / 170 Special Defense
- Rock Tomb
- Confusion
- Reflect
- Light Screen
Once again, this has Rock Tomb for the sake of speed control. I also gave it dual screens because why else would you ever use Solrock? Well, why am I using Solrock? The reason I picked Solrock here is because Levitate and its Psychic type make it an effective stop to attempted Fighting- and Ground-type sweeps. I thought it was more manageable for this point in the game than, say, Aerodactyl would have been - some other Trainers in Cyllage Gym even have Solrock of their own, if I'm not mistaken - but it also lent support to the team in a way that I thought was interesting, without stealing the spotlight from his ace...
Amaura lv 25 (Rock/Ice) @ Sitrus Berry Refrigerate
Modest nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Special Attack
- Thunder Wave
- Rock Tomb
- Charge Beam
- Echoed Voice
... which is this little monster. Either Amaura or Tyrunt would have worked as a counter to Grass-type sweeps, but Amaura's Thunder Wave is a more interesting manifestation of the speed control theme (and again, I liked the choice to use a crippling status).
Given that Solrock succeeds in giving dual screens support, I can see this adorable thing becoming an absolute menace - Charge Beam and Echoed Voice are weak but rapidly snowballing Bolt Beam coverage, and Thunder Wave and Rock Tomb can help to keep fast attackers in line and afford it the time it needs to get going. It may not be Whitney's Miltank, but I think it capitalizes well on what Amaura has to offer at this point in the game.
Okay, I had mostly nice things to say about Viola and Grant, and my changes were largely extraneous and just for fun. You might even be wondering why I was complaining about the bosses in X and Y at all.
The following seven case studies are why I was complaining about the bosses in X and Y.
Korrina
Korrina is the only Gym Leader who even really tries to be relevant and interesting. I will give her due credit for her story role.
But what the heck is her team.
For one thing, all three of her Pokémon have all three weaknesses of Fighting in common. There is absolutely nothing stopping Fairy- or Psychic-types from walking all over her team, and with Rock coverage being limited only to her slowest member which is also weak to Flying, I doubt Flying-types will have any trouble either. Speaking of that Rock coverage, her Machoke is the only one of her Pokémon that can even touch Ghost-types, and Rock Tomb is the only move that can do it - the most likely Ghost-type to be on anyone's team at this point is probably Honedge, which is resistant to that.
For another, all three of her Pokémon inexplicably go out of their waynot to make use of their Abilities. For some unfathomable reason, her Mienfoo has Regenerator but almost never switches out "almost" as in "I've never seen it switch out or heard of it switching out but it technically might if it's facing a Ghost-type solely because it can't touch them"; her Machoke has Guts but has no way to induce a status intentionally (nor do most players' teams, honestly? it would arguably be better served by No Guard - at least it could lose Rock Tomb's 5% chance to miss), nor even Facade to commit to the theme; and her Hawlucha has Unburden but neither holds an item nor has any way to obtain one intentionally. When I said "the handful of Pokémon that inherently come with unique playing styles or cool utility options and seemingly go out of their way not to use them," I was talking specifically about Korrina. ... Well, mostly - this kind of thing actually comes up again later.
She's also the third Gym Leader and one of her Machoke's three moves is Leer. Enough said.
If Viola and Grant mostly avoided the problems of X and Y's bosses, Korrina suffers them all at once.
Let's do this, then!!
The theme I chose for this battle is "Attack boosting," since, again, it meshes with her signature move of Power-Up Punch. You'll notice that I dropped her somewhat boring pick of Machoke in favor of a Lucario - although I understand the decision to save her Lucario for the Tower of Mastery fight right afterwards, especially since both of them were also just fought in Geosenge, I think the context and mechanics of each fight do enough to set them apart also the Tower of Mastery fight is scripted and you can only lose on purpose so is it even really redundant to make a proper boss, and it adds so much more to her Gym team's balance.
First of all, I just really wanted to make use of the pivoting gimmick that Mienfoo pulls off so well, so I chose to keep its Fake Out to capitalize on entering battle multiple times and U-turn both to trigger Regenerator and to hinder Psychic-types.
It also has Power-Up Punch, since it's Korrina's signature move and the basis for the Attack-boosting theme - I figured that Mienfoo's playing style would be sort of hit-and-run when it first enters, but if it's the last Pokémon standing, it would instead try to clean up with Power-Up Punch (and Knock Off for Ghost-types, although U-turn is still better for itemless Psychics).
Speaking of items, Knock Off also pairs pretty neatly with the gimmick of her next Pokémon, since Mienfoo will pivot out when it first enters and has a chance to come into play after Hawlucha:
Again, Power-Up Punch is there for the Attack-boosting theme, but that's hardly the most interesting thing about this set.
First of all, the Sticky Barb serves a dual purpose: if Hawlucha's first opponent happens to be a Ghost- or Psychic-type, it turns Fling into an 80-power coverage move, and its incredible Speed almost ensures that it will use that first rather than risk losing its item. But if it's facing anything else and would rather use a different move, it's also one of the easiest held items to lose, allowing it to trigger Unburden and become even harder to outspeed. Because the Sticky Barb goes back and forth to an extent, it's not necessarily losing access to Fling, either - Hawlucha's moves other than Fling all make contact, so it will likely steal back the Sticky Barb each time it uses a move (and then the opponent will either faint or steal it back by going second, ensuring that it's still the one to take damage at the end of the turn if it's using contact moves) and maintain the single-use option of Fling for whenever it needs to hit a Ghost-type.
Meanwhile, if Hawlucha goes down while its opponent still has the Sticky Barb... not only does that hurt the attacker passively, but Mienfoo can come back in and get the boost on Knock Off - with how rarely players make use of held items in the main story, this is a pretty rare bonus!
Retaliate is there in case Mienfoo happens to go down unexpectedly on the first turn, and Flying Press is a much stronger STAB to use after boosting enough with Power-Up Punch.
Okay, so here's why I chose to add Lucario rather than allowing it to be saved for the later boss fight: it's the only Fighting-type in Kalos with a neutrality to all three of Fairy, Psychic and Flying, the types that otherwise just sweep Korrina's team as it is in canon.
Despite being Korrina's signature Pokémon, Lucario doesn't get a Sitrus Berry or anything because Hawlucha gets the held item for the team; it seemed like Hawlucha was a better use for that, after all.
Swords Dance, Metal Claw and Power-Up Punch are all ways to tie into the Attack-boosting theme, and notably, Metal Claw is the only move on Korrina's team that's super effective against Fairy, which is pretty useful to aid in that matchup!
This set is inspired by the one Korrina's Lucario are already known to use, but her entire team doesn't have any special moves, so Metal Claw replaces the otherwise-useless Metal Sound. The reason this is Adamant is because it's the Lucario that Korrina keeps. The one she gives the player is fixed to Hasty so that it always goes first in the Mega Evolution tutorial - that's why the player can't lose unless they throw the battle on purpose. Naturally, that means her other Lucario must not have a Speed-boosting nature; that would defeat the purpose!
Ramos
I don't know what it is, but Ramos may well have my favorite design of any of Kalos's Gym Leaders. Actually I do know what it is. It's the giant scissors. This guy is so funny.
His Jumpluff, at least, also has a passably interesting set - in addition to its two STABs in Acrobatics and Grass Knot, it also has a status move that actually makes some sense to use in Leech Seed. Unfortunately, it's kinda too frail to make use of Leech Seed on its own, and players can just switch out after they defeat it so his bulkier members can't reap the benefits. Also, the AI thinks Grass Knot has a base power of 1 and never uses it. So this... could still be better, honestly.
More importantly, what exactly is going on with his other two...?? His Weepinbell is the only member of his team with four moves, but it might as well not, because one of them is the aforementioned Grass Knot (that the AI strongly prefers not to use) and one of them is... Gastro Acid? What Ability is even relevant to nullify? For a Weepinbell? And meanwhile, his Gogoat has STAB Grass Knot (... that the AI strongly prefers... knot to use? eh? no sorry) and then just uses the low-powered Bulldoze and the recoil-inducing Take Down. Speaking of Gogoat, this has nothing to do with Ramos, but I do not understand its stats. It seems like Game Freak went out of their way to inflate its stats while carefully avoiding making it good at anything. It has excellent HP but bad enough Defense and Special Defense not to make effective use of it, and the ratio of them means it doesn't even benefit that much from investing EVs in HP; it tries to be a mixed attacker to the point that Attack and Special Attack are its next-highest stats, but both of them are mediocre; and its Speed is low. Despite this, it also has one of the highest BSTs of any Pokémon in Kalos? And... it also has a signature Ability that relies on Grassy Terrain, but it could not set its own Grassy Terrain until 2017.
His team doesn't even really have a theme of any kind, and again, he doesn't have any good resistances (okay, he doesn't mind Bug so much, and Weepinbell is neutral to Poison, but who is relying on those types and who is not using Fire or Flying? at least Ice-types are passably rare at this point, but...), and he doesn't have a single move to hit Flying-types super effectively.
This is also right after everyone got access to some of the strongest Pokémon in the game for free and are bound to want to try them out...
In any case, here's my attempt at making his team just a little bit better:
Rrright, so the theme here is sort of... field effect stacking? Honestly, I had a harder time with this one - there aren't that many Grass-type options that work for this point in the game (if only his team came in the 40s instead! Ferrothorn would be so good) - but I did my best to give him a better team than what he has!
Ferroseed lv 31 (Grass/Steel) Iron Barbs
Relaxed nature
EVs: 170 HP / 170 Defense / 170 Special Defense
- Leech Seed
- Spikes
- Stealth Rock
- Gyro Ball
Ferroseed is not that much of a threat, but one of the reasons I wanted to use it is because it compresses neutralities to all of Grass's weaknesses except Fire into just one team slot. Stealth Rock is top priority because it punishes Bug, Fire, Flying and Ice all at once, and most players won't have hazard control on their teams; it doesn't really help when they lead with their shiny new Mega Charizard Y, but... it's a start!
Meanwhile, Leech Seed, potential Spikes stacking and Gyro Ball are just meant to make the most of its decent bulk and useful type. I guess Stealth Rock and Spikes both count as field effects, right? They're not quite as on-theme as his other two, unfortunately, but still!
Lombre lv 31 (Water/Grass) Swift Swim
Modest nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Special Attack
- Rain Dance
- Scald
- Grass Knot purely out of obligation because it's his TM, but again... it's not even going to use this, is it?
- Water Sport
If Ferroseed is his defense against sweeps from every type except Fire, Lombre is his dedicated anti-Fire measure. Rain Dance is meant for his field control theme and benefits all three of his Pokémon (although Ferroseed is probably down by the time Lombre uses it), and it directly boosts Lombre's Speed and its Scald.
Scald is also useful since the rest of Ramos's new team is on the bulkier side - spreading burns so easily is always nice! - while Water Sport can stack with Rain Dance, especially right before Lombre is defeated, as a last-ditch effort to make Gogoat as resistant as possible to Fire.
Okay... so this is actually technically cheating. Gogoat cannot learn Grassy Terrain in Generation VI. But it really, really should!! If I were sufficiently "in charge" to be designing bosses for the actual game, I would absolutely also be advocating for Grassy Terrain Gogoat!! In any case, it does finally get it as of USUM, so hopefully this is a fair enough addition... This is the only time I use a set that's not legal in Generation VI, and it's just because - like I said earlier - Gogoat really needs all the help it can get!
Naturally, that means Gogoat's main job is to be a Grassy Terrain abuser and tank - the healing and Grass Pelt combined should give it a touch more durability than it normally would, and stacking that with Lombre's Rain Dance and maybe Water Sport should really help it to deal with Fire-types as well!
Bulldoze is a useful option for Poison- and Fire-types, but its effectiveness is reduced in Grassy Terrain, so it would be best to use it before setting up. Even so, the utility of lowering Speed is always nice.
And... what's with that weird choice of item? Magost Berry? At a glance, that doesn't even do anything in battle... but it happens to be the single best way for Gogoat to deal with four of its weaknesses in a single coverage move: a 90 BP physical Rock-type move in the form of Natural Gift, super effective against Bug, Flying, Fire and Ice. It only gets a single use out of it, but it felt like a pretty fun tech option for a Pokémon that sorely needed a pretty fun tech option.
Clemont
This battle... is so... nothing. I guess I admire the attempt to use Electric Terrain this is a meaningless coincidence, but speaking of Terrains, fun fact: the first three Terrains introduced were Grassy, Electric and Misty Terrains, all of which correspond to three consecutive Gym types in Kalos; when Alola added the fourth, Psychic Terrain, it matched the next type in line, and pairing it with Sturdy on Magneton helps to ensure that it's used although I will reiterate that Sturdy is exactly how you get any Trainer with healing items to waste both those items and their turns, which specifically works against the turn-limited Electric Terrain ... good job AI.
Magneton's other moves are just dual STABs of Flash Cannon and Thunderbolt, and that's sort of another problem with this fight: Thunderbolt is actually a really boring TM to turn into a Gym Leader's signature move. Not only has it been around since Generation I... it's also just... perfectly consistent? You can't really build a strategy around Thunderbolt, because nothing interacts with it - it does damage and nothing else. I guess that's why they gave him Electric Terrain to try to boost it, but honestly, why wouldn't you just take that opportunity to... make an Electric Terrain TM? Grass Knot is the same way, but hey, at least Ramos doesn't actually use it! Haha. Ha. Ha. Right, anyway...
Meanwhile, his Emolga is like he wanted to be Elesa and couldn't quite commit, and both Emolga and Heliolisk fall prey to this incredibly boring archetype of STAB + coverage/other STAB + Quick Attack that X and Y start to use over and over again instead of any actual strategy. At least Emolga has Volt Switch for its Electric move but... like... why? his other Pokémon don't, so there's not even a pivoting core - all he's doing is making sure his own Magneton's Sturdy gets broken as soon as possible wait, maybe it's on purpose? props for averting the healing item spam if so, but Heliolisk is just Thunderbolt + Grass Knot for coverage. Oh hey, both of the moves I just called boring!
I feel like there are much more interesting ways to make an Electric-type team, especially with the freedom afforded by having only one weakness. Let's see what we can do:
The gimmick I chose for this was pretty easy - I want to theme his whole team after Volt Switch, since it's easily the most interesting move he has. For that matter, since Volt Switch is also a TM (and it just happens to be one you simply buy rather than one you find), why not just switch that with Thunderbolt? Clemont can give the TM for Volt Switch, while Thunderbolt can move over to the Battle Maison where Volt Switch is now - that's not going to mess with the rest of the game's balance all that much, is it? Aside from Volt Switch, I also thought it would be fun if he gradually set up for a dramatic Heliolisk sweep at the end of the fight, since it's fast and decently hard-hitting and its talents are wasted on Thunderbolt/Grass Knot/Quick Attack.
The first thing to note is that Emolga is obviously immune to Ground. Ground-types will not be sweeping this fight! For that matter, Emolga is also resistant to Fighting, which is good because both of Clemont's other Pokémon do happen to be weak to that.
Emolga is Clemont's fast pivot. It has high Speed, but it's also pretty frail; it uses Volt Switch to pivot out of battle before the opponent attacks and ensure that the bulkier Rotom takes the hits for it, keeping it safe.
That said, other than switching out, Emolga can do a few things to benefit its team: Acrobatics (not Aerial Ace, Clemont!! Ramos got it right, and he's supposed to be weaker than you!!) to deal with Grass-types that resist Electric moves, Nuzzle to spread paralysis and make Heliolisk even harder to outpace, and Rain Dance, which benefits both the Fire-weak Rotom and the Dry Skin-using Heliolisk.
Rotom(Frost Rotom) lv 34 (Electric/Ice) Levitate
Relaxed nature
EVs: 170 HP / 170 Defense / 170 Special Defense
- Volt Switch
- Blizzard
- Will-o-Wisp
- Thunder
The first thing to note is that Rotom is obviously immune to Ground. Ground-types will really not be sweeping this fight!
Rotom is Clemont's defensive pivot. It has an intentionally low Speed stat I do not think NPCs supported inconsistent IVs until Gen VII, so I dunno if its Speed IV can be set to 0, but that would be nice if so and high bulk, complementing Emolga well.
It also has Blizzard, which targets Grass-, Ground- and Dragon-types if anyone tries to bring those, and Thunder, which capitalizes on Emolga's Rain Dance to gain perfect accuracy. I guess the best counter for this fight is to bring your own Electric-type?
I didn't bother to give it Defog because players are less likely to try entry hazards in-game than in competitive (although honestly, if they do catch on to the pivoting and sneak in a Stealth Rock, good on them! that was one of the best ways to combat Elesa, too), so instead, its main utility move is Will-o-Wisp, augmenting its bulk and capitalizing on its ability to support its team.
Heliolisk lv 37 (Electric/Normal) @ Focus Sash Dry Skin
Timid nature
EVs: 252 Special Attack / 252 Speed
- Volt Switch
- Grass Knot
- Electric Terrain
- Thunder
The idea here is that Heliolisk steals Magneton's gimmick of Sturdy + Electric Terrain with its Focus Sash, enabling it to set up for itself and make the most of the next four turns. You can see why I was afraid of the AI trying to spam healing items now. Heliolisk would just be properly oneshot the next turn if Clemont did that.
Volt Switch ties into the team's pivoting theme, but its main STAB is, again, Thunder, which pairs with the rain and Terrain to reach a frightening level of power and accuracy.
Grass Knot is just there as the obligatory Ground coverage and it will actually use it, because Ground is immune to its other moves and therefore it will read as its strongest move even when the AI thinks it has a base power of 1! ... benefits of dropping Quick Attack, haha.
Honestly, I think this is another of the teams here that I like the most - its gimmicks go further to define it than most of the others, and it has a clear weakness that encourages players to explore an otherwise-underused move in the main campaign (Stealth Rock messes with the pivoting and the Sash), but it has the potential to culminate in a really threatening sweep if you're not prepared to deal with it. I would love to see a boss like this in a main series game!
Valerie
Three words. Hyper Cutter Mawile. Why. Why would you do this.
Sylveon is also another STAB with no utility + other attack with no interesting utility + Quick Attack set, although I guess at least it adds Charm to the list to mitigate it slightly.Speaking of Charm... if you're going to dedicate a move to lowering the opponent's Attack...why would you forego the Ability that lowers the opponent's Attack?ahem. Hyper Cutter Mawile, everyone.
In fairness to Valerie, she does do a good job of covering her weaknesses - Mawile is immune to Poison and neutral to Steel, and Mr. Mime is also super effective against Poison.
But... speaking of offensive coverage, I can't help but notice that her Hyper Cutter Mawile has no Fairy moves.
Or... or Steel moves.
It has Dark moves. Two Dark moves.
One of which is low in power but makes up for it by never missing and the other of which is high in power and has 100% accuracy. Hmm... DrPumpkinz, is this better or worse than if one of them was Ghost-type?
Anyway, I think I've done enough to establish the problem here, so how would I try to fix it?
The sixth Gym is an okay time to have four Pokémon, right? I think so. The theme here is Attack modifiers... but not of her own - all of Valerie's Pokémon have ways to mess with her opponent's Attack except Azumarill, but it's close enough - it lowers its own Defense as a drawback of one of its moves. She gets to play with the devious, tricky nature of Fairy-types and uses some really frustrating gimmick strategies, some of which may or may not be ripped from Gen VI OU and AG.
Sounds fun! Let's get to it.
Klefki lv 39 (Steel/Fairy) Prankster
Bold nature
EVs: 170 HP / 170 Defense / 170 Special Defense
- Light Screen
- Thunder Wave
- Swagger
- Foul Play
I appreciated her use of the Steel-type Mawile as an anti-Poison and Steel-neutral lead, so I did the same here with the other Steel/Fairy-type.
We all know what this does.
Light Screen stops special attackers from being used to bypass Valerie's mostly-physical-oriented crippling strategies, while Thunder Wave + Swagger + Foul Play will lead many physical attackers to destroy themselves without even getting in a move. Obviously, the justification is that Swagger and Foul Play both suit her high-risk theme of Attack manipulation.
This is Gen VI, aka pre-nerf.
Have fun. <3
Mawile lv 39 (Steel/Fairy) Intimidate
Adamant nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Attack
- Swords Dance
- Play Rough
- Iron Head
- Sucker Punch
Okay, so the first thing you should notice is (say it with me)Intimidate. There we go. Attack manipulation theme, check.
The second thing of note is that this is another Poison immunity and Steel neutrality, which is always good on a mono-Fairy team.
Obviously, this isn't a Mega Evolution, and that immediately makes it about a million times less threatening than it might have been... but hopefully the combination of Intimidate, Swords Dance, HP investment and priority in Sucker Punch should make it a passable threat, and this Mawile has dual STABs like it should have had in the first place, so here's hoping that it won't be quite as pathetic as her current Mawile!
In fairness, even if it is a bit of a breather amidst the rest of this fight, it's certainly a much-needed one.
Azumarill lv 39 (Water/Fairy) @ Sitrus Berry Huge Power
Jolly nature
EVs: 252 Attack / 252 Speed
- Belly Drum
- Aqua Jet
- Aqua Tail
- Superpower
It seems like Valerie is good enough at dealing with Poison for now, so here's another Steel neutrality with a Fighting-type coverage move, plus a good way to counter the Fire- and Ground-types that give Klefki and Mawile a hard time.
And, uh, yeah... we all know what this does, too. As mentioned, the Defense-lowering drawback of Superpower is what I'm calling this Azumarill's way to represent "high-risk Attack manipulation."
As with Klefki, Light Screen is to mitigate the team's ineffectiveness against special attackers, while Charm is Sylveon's Attack modifier. Mostly, Sylveon plays into the tank angle and maybe team support but I do not know if the AI is capable of Wish passing so it's probably just for itself, using Wish for longevity and Dazzling Gleam as its only attack.
I'm gonna be honest... the only reason this doesn't have Pixilate + Hyper Voice instead of Cute Charm + Dazzling Gleam is the meta context that this is the first Fairy-type Gym in the series. It wouldn't be as effective an introduction to the type if one of the Gym Leader's Pokémon used moves that weren't really Fairy-type at all in conjunction with a type changing effect - new players would be misled as to the moves and identity of the type, and it would sort of just feel sloppy.
Like Korrina's Lucario, this has no item because one of her other Pokémon does.
Olympia
This battle is actually kind of okay on paper - I think the only thing holding it back from working as intended... really is just the lack of EVs on any of her Pokémon. She has a theme of setup moves already, with dual screens on her Sigilyph and Calm Mind on her other two Pokémon, but they're all so utterly frail without investment that they really can't manage any of it - and Slowking's Speed doesn't really help it make the most of its moves, either.
The one thing that explicitly bothers me is her Meowstic's Fake Out, which serves no purpose but to give her own dual screens an extra turn to wear off.
This isn't a double battle, Olympia.
:meowstic-m:
I lied. This is a double battle, Olympia. ... yeah I know there's kinda no reason for it but that's the theme I chose for this just imagine if this came out before ORAS - the seventh Gym is a double battle against a Psychic Trainer? Hoenn confirmed!!
Okay, the main reason I did this was really just the thought process of "Meowstic would be a good support Pokémon" + "Slowking would really enjoy Trick Room support" + "it sounds like she wants to use Fake Out." But there are a couple of quirky gimmicks this enabled, so I threw those in for good measure! And I thought it'd be a fun way to shake things up if one major boss were a double battle I love Bryony and Celosia but they do not count and you know it... hey, should I do Team Flare Scientists next?, sort of like Raihan as the final Gym.
This is probably ill-advised in any serious competitive setting, but no one uses Taunt in the main story, so it's fiiine.
Olympia's first Meowstic has a full supporting moveset in order to enable the rest of her team. Trick Room is the most important move, since it pairs so well with both Slowking and Malamar; not sure if the AI can be trusted with this, but ideally, her other Meowstic just won't come out until it's over (hopefully dual screens will help her last that long), while her other three can go wild while it's up.
Flatter has interesting synergy with both of her other non-Meowstic members, which you'll see discussed in a moment!
Slowking lv 45 (Water/Psychic) Own Tempo
Quiet nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Special Attack
- Scald
- Psyshock
- Fire Blast
- Slack Off
Fire Blast is an anti-Bug measure, since without Sigilyph, Olympia's whole team is weak to Bug. Fortunately, with Trick Room up, this is very, very fast!
The original inspiration for Olympia's first Meowstic to know Flatter at all was when I noticed that one of Slowking's Abilites was Own Tempo. If Meowstic uses Flatter on Slowking, it gets a free Nasty Plot before Slowking even acts for the turn!
Scald and Psyshock are just dual STABs, of course, and Slack Off is free healing that will likely go first. I thought it would be funny to give it Bulldoze to trigger Meowstic-F's Competitive, but apparently that doesn't work when an ally triggers it. Oh well!
I mentioned that Slowking can handle Bug-types, but what about Dark- and Ghost-types? As it turns out, Malamar is the only Psychic-type in Kalos that isn't weak to Ghost, and it also has a Dark neutrality, so it seemed like the perfect fit!
Contrary + Superpower is a huge help both for boosting its stats in general and for dealing with the aforementioned Dark-types, and Knock Off is nice for Ghost-types as well, while Psycho Cut is just STAB.
Topsy Turvy might also be fun to combine with the male Meowstic's Flatter - while Meowstic can use Flatter on its ally Slowking for a free Special Attack boost, it can also hinder its opponents by confusing them, and Malamar can turn even the Flatter buff into a harsh reduction instead. I think it would be more efficient just to attack in most cases, but if Meowstic has nothing better to do than Flatter something, that's one way to put it to use!
Meowstic(female) lv 48 (Psychic) Competitive
Timid nature
EVs: 252 Special Attack / 252 Speed
- Fake Out
- Psych Up
- Psychic
- Shadow Ball
As mentioned, ideally, Olympia's female Meowstic will be saved for a late-game cleanup after Trick Room has worn off and her male Meowstic has gone down - it's a faster option so she isn't so easily overwhelmed in that case. But if Trick Room is still up and she needs to stall its last turns out, Fake Out can help her with that while also potentially giving her other Pokémon a free turn!
Psych Up is a gimmicky option, but since Slowking can easily boost its Special Attack with Own Tempo + male Meowstic's Flatter and Malamar can easily boost its Defense with Superpower, either one of them could give Meowstic a chance to grab a game-changing boost for itself when it cleans up.
Psychic and Shadow Ball are just Meowstic's existing attacks - I didn't see any reason to change them!
So yeah, this might've been a weird direction to take the fight, but I think it actually works pretty well. I tried to take advantage of the doubles format to create unusual gimmicks and interactions rather than just giving a team full of individually good Pokémon, but I'm also not very good at doubles myself, so let me know if you think I should do anything differently!
Lysandre Welcome back, Cyrus.
He's obviously not a Gym Leader, but I'm throwing Lysandre in as well because... well, ? Fun fact about his Mienshao - in USUM, it goes on to become the inversion of Korrina's Mienfoo! It finally has U-turn, only to trade Regenerator for Inner Focus! They really wanted to avoid that gimmick for some reason, didn't they...
Honestly, Lysandre's team isn't really that bad in isolation, but... well, it's clearly set up to be a power trip for your new mascot and nothing more. He's designed to be an easy sweep specifically because you were just obligated to capture and then strongly pressured to lead with the two Pokémon that completely demolish his entire team.
That's no fun. This could be a really cool battle if they tried. Let's mess with it!
Alright, so this fight doesn't exactly have a theme like most of the others, but the main changes I made were to help him deal with the freshly-caught mascot a bit better, and then to realize the missed potential of some of the Pokémon he already had.
First of all, give him Regenerator + U-turn, you cowards
The goal of this Mienshao is to bait a Moonblast or Oblivion Wing from the mascot, which is automatically the player's lead anyway - but it's guaranteed to be faster than both of them, so it can U-turn out right away and get in Magnezone on the resisted move instead.
Aside from that, its playing style is quite similar to Korrina's Mienfoo, but less boosting and more aggression and immediate power: use Fake Out and U-turn whenever possible, then clean up lategame with High Jump Kick and Acrobatics.
Magnezone lv 50 (Electric/Steel) Analytic
Modest nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Special Attack
- Flash Cannon
- Thunderbolt
- Volt Switch
- Light Screen
This is the main anti-mascot measure! As mentioned, it's likely to come in all but for free on a resisted move from the mascots, and then it can threaten them both with its STABs of Flash Cannon and Thunderbolt. It also has Analytic, so players who try to switch out to avoid the knockout will be met with even more damage instead. It also has Volt Switch if it ends up in a matchup it doesn't like, and... well, Generation VII is the only Generation in the series where it's even possible for an NPC to have a Hidden Power type other than Fighting and Dark, and Hidden Power is Magnezone's most common fourth move, so I just figured one can rarely go wrong with screens and picked the one that annoyed the mascots more.
This is also a pretty good anti-mascot measure, with Cross Poison for Xerneas and Ice Fang for Yveltal. I honestly don't know if it has the stats to threaten them, and it's definitely a weaker pick than Magnezone for this purpose, but I'm hoping the fact that the mascots are freshly caught (read: uninvested) while this does have EVs gives it a good enough chance against them anyway.
Ice + Ground is also obviously really good super effective coverage, and Knock Off is a generally fantastic move (maybe slightly less so against a casual player's in-game team, but eh). Sniper pairs adequately with Cross Poison, and... well, it wasn't getting any better with its other two Abilities, so I figured it was a fine pick!
There's not much else to say about this, haha. It's not really a distinctive gimmick or clever gambit - I actually have no idea why my instinct was Drapion - but I like Drapion, and it has a pretty useful type for this purpose!
Pyroar(male) lv 52 (Fire/Normal) @ Life Orb Rivalrytrust me I know what I'm doing
Timid nature
EVs: 252 Special Attack / 252 Speed
- Flamethrower
- Hyper Voice
- Snarl
- Will-o-Wisp
This is literally its USUM set plus a Life Orb... which I think is actually kinda scary for an in-game run.
I am also okay with giving it Rivalry in this one situation even though that's a terrible Ability... solely because there are a ton of really, really broken gift Pokémon in Kalos that happen to have a gender ratio of seven males to one female, plus a really, really broken gift Pokémon that's always male and weak to Fire, and I thought it would be funny to take advantage of that for once despite how generally bad Rivalry is.
Gyarados(Mega Gyarados) lv 53 (Water/Dark) @ Gyaradosite Intimidate
Adamant nature
EVs: 252 Special Attack / 252 Speed
- Dragon Dance
- Waterfall
- Earthquake
- Iron Head
This is not that different from his regular set, but... if you're using a Mega Gyarados, and it doesn't know Dragon Dance, I'm given to understand that that means you're doing something wrong.
I would have liked to give it Crunch for a second STAB, but that wasn't available until ORAS, and - unlike Grassy Terrain on Gogoat - I didn't feel that it was quite important enough to break from XY legality, so I left Iron Head from its canon moveset as a last-ditch anti-Xerneas measure and just dropped Outrage for Dragon Dance you're really gonna let it lock into that when you know your opponent has a Xerneas?.
Wulfric
I have one good nice to say about Wulfric: the Iceberg Badge is the best Badge design in the entire series, hands down. Kalos in general did really well with Badge designs, but this one is my favorite.
On to more important matters: what... what is this team... why is his Abomasnow set so bad...
Okay, so you know how I mentioned that X and Y really like giving things two moves with no useful secondary effect + Quick Attack and calling it a day? His Abomasnow is another of these: just dual STABs and Ice Shard. But the thing is... they're not even good dual STABs.
Small tangent here: remember when I said Thunderbolt made for a really boring "signature move" for a Gym Leader, because it's not used for any secondary effect except constant damage and reliability? At least Clemont tried to make something of it by pairing it with Electric Terrain... Wulfric here has Ice Beam, which literally does not interact with any other move.
But... here's why this is so silly in this case: his Abomasnow has Snow Warning and wanted a STAB move for no reason but to have a STAB move - there is absolutely no reason for that STAB move not to be Blizzard, which is a straight upgrade over Ice Beam in every relevant way and also capitalizes on Snow Warning.
And then he has a Cryogonal for some reason, and it also dedicates a moveslot to making sure his hail stays up even though it doesn't even take advantage of it (if you wanted to secure it for Avalugg... why wouldn't you just send Abomasnow out second so Snow Warning was more recent? then you wouldn't have to worry about resetting it in the first place?) and also rather uselessly knows Confuse Ray to go with its excellent base 30 Defense and really exemplify its physical walling abilities. And then it has Ice Beam (again, why not Blizzard?? or even Freeze Dry, which at least stops it from being totally walled by Water of all types...) and Flash Cannon (to be fair Cryogonal doesn't really have other coverage and I respect them for not giving it Solar Beam but how does this even help). My alternate team drops the Cryogonal outright, but if you really wanted to make it work, surely you could at least have replaced Confuse Ray and Hail with dual screens or something for Avalugg's benefit?
Avalugg's set is okay for an in-game boss, but it has no recovery except Ice Body, and despite being the one member of his team that actually wants hail, it also decided to be the only one that can't set it.
Sigh.
The eighth Gym Leader, everybody.
okay not gonna lie this one might be overkill
and this is coming from the one who... well, you saw the Valerie team for yourself
Okay, so the theme of this team is boosting stats in general. Each of his Pokémon is themed after a different boosting move, and it gives each of them a radically different playing style while putting constant pressure on the player both offensively and, by the end, defensively.
The end result is a bit chaotic, but I felt like a theme like this paired well with Wulfric's self-described stubborn nature - his focus on raw power and his Pokémon's simultaneous rigidity and frailty - and I think the dramatically over-the-top, frail and setup-reliant nature of his first three team members combined with the incredibly tanky Avalugg suits his description of his personality surprisingly well in the end.
Also I just noticed Cloyster when I was looking for good Ice-types and wanted to use it.
To be honest, I kinda just thought Abomasnow was too emblematic of Snowbelle City to drop, and there wasn't much else competing with it for the team slot as an Ice-type in Kalos. It does have a pretty scary Swords Dance set for the stat-boosting theme, as well as some very high-power attacks, so it's a threatening but fairly simplistic introduction to his team's theme.
I first noticed Cloyster as a defensive measure against Fire- and Steel-type sweeps - remember that rule? - and it ended up motivating the entire theme of the team all by itself.
This is a scarily over-the-top boosting Pokémon that capitalizes on every side of the Ice type at once, and I feel like it's a perfect match for Wulfric's personality.
Razor Shell is not super important, but I wasn't sure if I could trust the AI to use Explosion or Ice Shard wisely on what's already a high-risk Pokémon, and I figured it was harder to go wrong with a secondary STAB; it also helps against the aforementioned Fire-types. in before the AI reads Icicle Spear and Rock Blast as 25 BP and always prioritizes Razor Shell-- yeah maybe I should switch to Ice Shard actually
Like Cloyster, Jynx was chosen for being a passable defense against Fighting-types - certainly a better option than Delibird, the only other Ice-type in Kalos that isn't weak to Fighting.
Nasty Plot is its way of representing the boosting move theme of the battle, but unlike Abomasnow, it informs its strategy in a new way as well: I didn't want to give it a Focus Sash since I was already pushing it with two items on the team (and Cloyster's is a Sash of its own, no less), so Lovely Kiss is there to ease safe setup, setting Jynx apart from the more reckless Abomasnow and the Sashed Cloyster with a battle style of its own.
Avalugg is Wulfric's signature Pokémon, and after the player is worn down by the aggressive offense of his other team members, I'm not sure if a more slow-paced but incredibly bulky wall is cause for a sigh of relief or if it's the final nail in the coffin when every way they might have had to deal with it is down.
Naturally, Curse is Avalugg's take on the boosting move theme, and it's set up as a standard CRO set, pressuring the player to take it down as quickly as possible before it shrugs it all off - or whites them out with Avalanche. That said, I do not know if the AI knows how to count Rest turns for Sleep Talk purposes.
I... do not think it does, though.
Oh well. The battle is intense enough already. You deserve a break. :v
And... that's it!
I may or may not follow up with the Elite Four and Diantha in the future, but this is all I'm gonna do for now!
Welp, that's all of my rambling for today! Hopefully this was a fun post to read - and I'm not sure if I was right to put my proposed updates in this thread specifically, but I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on how you'd revamp your least favorite boss fights as well!
Okay, so as I have done so well to conceal, I've been looking at X and Y recently. For no reason in particular, I happened to spend some time last night looking at their boss design.
Here's a brief introduction.
When I was younger, I remembered seeing people complain about the terrible movesets on X and Y's bosses, and found myself a little annoyed - the whole "three moves" thing is just Game Freak's way of making them easier to control with the AI, isn't it? How often does an NPC-controlled Pokémon need more moves than its best few options anyway? It's not like most of them could even pull off advanced strategies with status moves like a player (and, well, in fairness, have you seen the choices some of them make when they do have full movesets? it's not complete RNG, thankfully, but... for goodness's sake, when I was investigating these just last night, I saw a video of Siebold trying and failing to get to +5 with his Dragon Dance Gyarados rather than attacking!), so why risk wasting turns on mostly unhelpful moves just to fill up their movesets? It's not like it's lazy design - the battles are probably harder with more controlled movesets than they would have been with "completed" ones... right? And I mean, it would be nice if they could fix the AI itself - but the three-move movesets themselves are just a symptom of (or a band-aid over) a problem that's much bigger and takes much longer to solve than just adding a fourth move, so it's not really fair to reduce it to just that.
For that matter, I also never really liked the idea that NPCs should have EV-trained Pokémon. It didn't seem fair - the player isn't EV training their Pokémon in the main story, so doesn't that just give the AI a cheap advantage?
... Holy heck. I will not make the mistake of making excuses any longer. After an unhealthy amount of scrutiny, I can confirm that these bosses are terrible, for so many more reasons than just "they did the best they could to wrangle the AI!" and "but EVs aren't fair for kids!"
X and Y's bosses don't just have suboptimal movesets - they have boring ones.
The sheer number of sets that consist of "STAB + other STAB or coverage + weak priority" and nothing else...
The number of teams that have absolutely nothing to stop from being swept by a single Pokémon with an offensive type advantage...
And the handful of Pokémon that inherently come with unique playing styles or cool utility options and seemingly go out of their way not to use them...
Honestly, I'm kind of amazed that Viola went as far as she did - just using a single status move to provide coverage for one threat - because there is absolutely no contest: she has more strategy than every other Gym Leader in Kalos combined.
Also, refined perspective on EVs: giving NPCs straight 0s in all of their stats gives a really, really noticeable disadvantage; the player at least passively accumulates EVs in all of their stats, even if they aren't actively specializing and minmaxing, and that means they're always doing more and taking less and outspeeding faster Pokémon - the NPCs just can't keep up.
Besides, of all of the times to introduce EV-trained bosses to the series, why wouldn't you choose X and Y? These are the games that tried to make EV training a regular part of the main campaign - Super Training is the definitive casual EV training feature, and even as "the casual audience" and just a kid, I EV trained my whole team in my second run just because I liked the Super Training mini game admittedly also I for some reason had reservations about resetting EVs that Pokémon gained during the main story because they felt like memories of the journey they had and my solution was "just EV train them before they get any!" ... I was a strange child. - so what better time is there to use it to teach players about optimizing stats on a level no other entry could reach?
Either way, playing through Alola, I can confirm that giving bosses EV-trained Pokémon makes a massive difference in the best possible direction and that I had no idea what I was talking about as a kid. Those bosses were fun as heck even without Super Training or my own team having the minmaxed stats to match - imagine how great the same kind would be in a game with in-story EV training as casual and accessible as X and Y!
With that in mind, I hereby present... a breakdown of the most common problems in X and Y's bosses, as well as the really over-the-top and unholy demon spawn of USUM and XY that is my effort to give every Gym Leader in Kalos (and also Lysandre?) a distinctive, gimmicky and still genuinely challenging team and strategy and these should be fully within the confines of what I understand to be possible in the Gen VI engine, with no changes to the game but to the teams themselves? I might be wrong about some of this, though. These probably wouldn't be all that ideal or welcoming for a new player, but think of them like B2W2's Challenge Mode?
I have obviously not actually playtested these, let alone in context, so it's 100% possible that they're completely terrible, but I would imagine that it would be either really really fun or really really suffering.
Here we go!!
Viola
Okay, not gonna lie - as mentioned, Viola is actually a very good first Gym Leader and miles ahead of the rest of them.
I definitely love the choice to make her lead with a Surskit and have it use Water Sport, throwing a wrench in Fennekin players' plans to sweep with just their starter and a type advantage. And since she's only the first boss, I don't think it's too much of an issue that she's not all that tough even so.
The only thing that stands out as particularly questionable here is this: despite the lengths they went to stop Fennekin from having an unfair advantage, and despite the fact that doing this also put a slight damper on Froakie players thanks to Surskit's inherent Water resistance, I do think it's pretty questionable that - rather than giving all three starters an equal shot - they still left an indisputable best choice that can easily sweep her... it just happens to be Chespin of all things, thanks to Rollout spam. I haven't actually used Chespin, but I've been told that this is the case. Correct me if I'm wrong as to how the battle plays out!
I don't think it's necessarily a problem to let starter be the "easy mode," of course! And I think Chespin needs all the help it can get just to keep up with the other two starters, since the other two both end up with exactly the kind of stat spread and movepool that makes in-game runs a breeze. But if it can be said that the job of the first boss is to be a "wake-up call" that forces players to do something other than solo with their starter, well... why give even one starter a perfect matchup?
It is for this reason and also the sake of completion that - despite Viola being the most acceptable boss in X and Y and one of the better first Gym Leaders in the series - I have chosen to "mess with perfection" and make her a "challenge mode team" anyway. If nothing else, this can help to establish my goals for the rest of this set. So here it is:
The theme I chose for this battle is "anti-switching." I felt that it meshed effectively with her current signature move, Infestation, which directly stops switching, and it was also an effective way to highlight another new Bug-type move and to promote certain accessible early-game Pokémon (Pidgey, Fletchling, and the obvious intended counter of the Farfetch'd trade).
Surskit lv 9 (Bug/Water) Swift Swim
Serious nature
- Sticky Web
- Water Sport
- Bubble
- Quick Attack
This is a relatively small change, since her Surskit already serves its purpose well in the original team, but I opted to add Sticky Web as the first part of her anti-switching theme. Being slowed makes the rest of her team more threatening, and since it's a bit harder to solo her with just one Pokémon, this is likely to come into play. However, note that this doesn't affect any of the aforementioned Flying-types.
One of my main goals with these "challenge mode" teams was to make it so - wherever possible - every Gym Leader had at least a neutrality to each of their type's weaknesses, rather than letting certain types just walk all over them without even having to take any hits. Conveniently, Surskit already serves this purpose in canon for Fire-types!
Of course, it's still likely that certain types will have advantages (in this case, Flying, of course), but I strongly prefer making those defensive advantages over offensive ones, because it means both sides have a chance to use moves and to strategize - a type advantage means gaining the chance to use more moves, not removing the chance for your opponent to use them. I think being able to sweep a Gym Leader before they get to attack at all is a sign of a bad boss in general.
Following up on Surskit, Dwebble is Viola's main counter to total Flying-type sweeps - but note that it doesn't have any Rock-type moves! Again, remember that a) this is the first boss and doesn't need to be too hard and b) Flying-types are still supposed to be a solution to the fight - the goal is just to make sure that "solution" doesn't mean "one-hit KOs every single opponent!"
Sturdy also helps to impede Rollout sweeps, since that's the only Rock-type move that's relevant at this point. If it takes three hits to KO Surskit with Rollout, then Dwebble's Sturdy means the snowball effect will wear off just before Vivillon enters. I... don't actually know if it takes three hits to KO Surskit with Rollout, but I sure hope so. Speaking of Sturdy, though...! This is another change I would like to establish for my "challenge mode:" I actually don't think most of these bosses should use healing items. A lot of the time, the AI just doesn't understand how to use them effectively; there are a few bosses later on where I think it would be actively detrimental to waste a turn on a healing item, and Sturdy is somewhat notorious as a way to force bosses to waste healing items on a Pokémon that definitely won't get another attack in anyway. On one hand, this is a way to keep the AI in line (hopefully a better one than shrinking their movesets); on the other, considering the improvements to their strategies and the addition of EVs, it might also be seen as a way to throw the player a bone. In general, when looking at these boss ideas, just assume none of them will be healing their Pokémon with items!
Spikes is another manifestation of the anti-switching theme for the fight - Dwebble gets it as an Egg move, and I thought it would be fairer than giving it Stealth Rock, since it still doesn't affect Flying-types. Infestation is here because it's Viola's signature move and also prevents switching, and I also thought it would pair well with Dwebble's other three moves - if it happens to trap something that can't do much damage to it, it might be freer to set up Spikes and Withdraw, as well as to gain momentum for Fury Cutter.
Vivillon lv 12 (Bug/Flying) @ Sitrus Berry Shield Dust
Adamant nature I'm trying to keep it in line okay
- Struggle Bug
- Harden
- Infestation
- Tackle (?)
As in canon, this is Viola's ace and the hardest Pokémon to take down. It has Struggle Bug, which is both a powerful STAB move and a way to help it take hits from special attackers, and Harden like in canon to shore up its pitiful physical bulk; Infestation also once again might help it to set up, and that combined with the anti-switching measures already in place should keep special attackers from switching out to clear their debuffs like they otherwise might be inclined to do.
Struggle Bug actually might have too good a damage output at this point in the game - I was hoping to use it because of its secondary effect, and I thought it should be okay because Vivillon already does learn it at only level 12, but I'm not sure if it's too much, since it's 250% stronger than Infestation. Depending on how the AI handles it, it would be cool if it could compensate for this by always prioritizing Infestation on a non-trapped opponent - bosses with strong moves but exploitable attack patterns are always something I personally find fun - but it might just have to go.
It also just has Tackle because it has that in canon, but hm, maybe Gust or Draining Kiss would be a fun option instead? Again, no playtesting, so no idea how much I need to limit the power level, haha.
Unlike any of the later Gym Leaders, I opted to leave Viola's team with neutral natures and no EVs just like in canon. Since she's such an early-game boss, and Vivillon's stats are actually quite impressive, I didn't think it was right to buff her all that much.
Grant
Grant is... actually another okay one, I think? This is the last time I say this in this post.
He has a clear theme of his own in speed control - between his signature Rock Tomb on both of his Pokémon and Thunder Wave on his Amaura, it seems like his intention is to pave the way for his Tyrunt to outspeed things and sweep, kind of like a weaker version of Totem Araquanid from USUM. Somewhat amusingly, Amaura itself is maybe the bigger threat of the two, with Refrigerate-boosted Take Downs being one of the strongest moves available at this point in the game.
And honestly, I just appreciate the use of a crippling status move - he's actually the only Gym Leader in Kalos who intentionally inflicts a non-volatile status on the player in canon. And honestly, just by virtue of being earlier in the game, even his seemingly weird team of two level 25 basic NFEs is arguably more of a threat than most other Gym Leaders.
That said, again, there's no fun in just leaving him as he is! Here's my take:
Like in canon, the main theme in this battle will be "speed control," similarly taking advantage of Grant's signature Rock Tomb plus two more ways to alter Speed. I thought I could make more interesting use of the available Rock-types by picking just one of his fossils to serve as his ace, and I chose Amaura because it could do more with the speed control theme and was generally a more interesting opponent.
Also, I think this might be one of my favorite of my "challenge mode teams" here - I had fun with this! Did you think Viola was a sign of restraint?
That was early-game.
This is a real boss.
Binacle lv 22 (Rock/Water) Tough Claws
Adamant nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Attack
- Rock Polish
- Rock Tomb
- Night Slash
- Grass Knot
Right off the bat, Rock Polish and Rock Tomb are both intended to lean into the speed control theme of the fight. Technically, Binacle should not have Rock Polish at this level, but also technically, Binacle should have Shell Smash at this level, so... you're welcome.
Binacle is meant to be Grant's counter to Steel- and Water-type sweeps, and its coverage moves, Tough Claws-boosted Night Slash and Grass Knot, are meant to contribute to this. The reason I chose Night Slash is because by far the most threatening Steel-type at this point in the game is Honedge, which is immune to the more conventional Fighting-type coverage; Mawile doesn't even have any Steel-type moves, so there's less of a need to worry about it despite its useful resistances. Now that we're seeing some EVs on these, I should add that I'm following the precedent set by Generation VII's EV-trained bosses and by all past battle facilities: the only mechanically permitted EV spreads are ones that are split perfectly evenly between some number of stats, so you'll only be seeing 252x2 or 170x3 here.
Solrock lv 22 (Rock/Psychic) Levitate
Relaxed nature
EVs: 170 HP / 170 Defense / 170 Special Defense
- Rock Tomb
- Confusion
- Reflect
- Light Screen
Once again, this has Rock Tomb for the sake of speed control. I also gave it dual screens because why else would you ever use Solrock? Well, why am I using Solrock? The reason I picked Solrock here is because Levitate and its Psychic type make it an effective stop to attempted Fighting- and Ground-type sweeps. I thought it was more manageable for this point in the game than, say, Aerodactyl would have been - some other Trainers in Cyllage Gym even have Solrock of their own, if I'm not mistaken - but it also lent support to the team in a way that I thought was interesting, without stealing the spotlight from his ace...
Amaura lv 25 (Rock/Ice) @ Sitrus Berry Refrigerate
Modest nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Special Attack
- Thunder Wave
- Rock Tomb
- Charge Beam
- Echoed Voice
... which is this little monster. Either Amaura or Tyrunt would have worked as a counter to Grass-type sweeps, but Amaura's Thunder Wave is a more interesting manifestation of the speed control theme (and again, I liked the choice to use a crippling status).
Given that Solrock succeeds in giving dual screens support, I can see this adorable thing becoming an absolute menace - Charge Beam and Echoed Voice are weak but rapidly snowballing Bolt Beam coverage, and Thunder Wave and Rock Tomb can help to keep fast attackers in line and afford it the time it needs to get going. It may not be Whitney's Miltank, but I think it capitalizes well on what Amaura has to offer at this point in the game.
Okay, I had mostly nice things to say about Viola and Grant, and my changes were largely extraneous and just for fun. You might even be wondering why I was complaining about the bosses in X and Y at all.
The following seven case studies are why I was complaining about the bosses in X and Y.
Korrina
Korrina is the only Gym Leader who even really tries to be relevant and interesting. I will give her due credit for her story role.
But what the heck is her team.
For one thing, all three of her Pokémon have all three weaknesses of Fighting in common. There is absolutely nothing stopping Fairy- or Psychic-types from walking all over her team, and with Rock coverage being limited only to her slowest member which is also weak to Flying, I doubt Flying-types will have any trouble either. Speaking of that Rock coverage, her Machoke is the only one of her Pokémon that can even touch Ghost-types, and Rock Tomb is the only move that can do it - the most likely Ghost-type to be on anyone's team at this point is probably Honedge, which is resistant to that.
For another, all three of her Pokémon inexplicably go out of their waynot to make use of their Abilities. For some unfathomable reason, her Mienfoo has Regenerator but almost never switches out "almost" as in "I've never seen it switch out or heard of it switching out but it technically might if it's facing a Ghost-type solely because it can't touch them"; her Machoke has Guts but has no way to induce a status intentionally (nor do most players' teams, honestly? it would arguably be better served by No Guard - at least it could lose Rock Tomb's 5% chance to miss), nor even Facade to commit to the theme; and her Hawlucha has Unburden but neither holds an item nor has any way to obtain one intentionally. When I said "the handful of Pokémon that inherently come with unique playing styles or cool utility options and seemingly go out of their way not to use them," I was talking specifically about Korrina. ... Well, mostly - this kind of thing actually comes up again later.
She's also the third Gym Leader and one of her Machoke's three moves is Leer. Enough said.
If Viola and Grant mostly avoided the problems of X and Y's bosses, Korrina suffers them all at once.
Let's do this, then!!
The theme I chose for this battle is "Attack boosting," since, again, it meshes with her signature move of Power-Up Punch. You'll notice that I dropped her somewhat boring pick of Machoke in favor of a Lucario - although I understand the decision to save her Lucario for the Tower of Mastery fight right afterwards, especially since both of them were also just fought in Geosenge, I think the context and mechanics of each fight do enough to set them apart also the Tower of Mastery fight is scripted and you can only lose on purpose so is it even really redundant to make a proper boss, and it adds so much more to her Gym team's balance.
First of all, I just really wanted to make use of the pivoting gimmick that Mienfoo pulls off so well, so I chose to keep its Fake Out to capitalize on entering battle multiple times and U-turn both to trigger Regenerator and to hinder Psychic-types.
It also has Power-Up Punch, since it's Korrina's signature move and the basis for the Attack-boosting theme - I figured that Mienfoo's playing style would be sort of hit-and-run when it first enters, but if it's the last Pokémon standing, it would instead try to clean up with Power-Up Punch (and Knock Off for Ghost-types, although U-turn is still better for itemless Psychics).
Speaking of items, Knock Off also pairs pretty neatly with the gimmick of her next Pokémon, since Mienfoo will pivot out when it first enters and has a chance to come into play after Hawlucha:
Again, Power-Up Punch is there for the Attack-boosting theme, but that's hardly the most interesting thing about this set.
First of all, the Sticky Barb serves a dual purpose: if Hawlucha's first opponent happens to be a Ghost- or Psychic-type, it turns Fling into an 80-power coverage move, and its incredible Speed almost ensures that it will use that first rather than risk losing its item. But if it's facing anything else and would rather use a different move, it's also one of the easiest held items to lose, allowing it to trigger Unburden and become even harder to outspeed. Because the Sticky Barb goes back and forth to an extent, it's not necessarily losing access to Fling, either - Hawlucha's moves other than Fling all make contact, so it will likely steal back the Sticky Barb each time it uses a move (and then the opponent will either faint or steal it back by going second, ensuring that it's still the one to take damage at the end of the turn if it's using contact moves) and maintain the single-use option of Fling for whenever it needs to hit a Ghost-type.
Meanwhile, if Hawlucha goes down while its opponent still has the Sticky Barb... not only does that hurt the attacker passively, but Mienfoo can come back in and get the boost on Knock Off - with how rarely players make use of held items in the main story, this is a pretty rare bonus!
Retaliate is there in case Mienfoo happens to go down unexpectedly on the first turn, and Flying Press is a much stronger STAB to use after boosting enough with Power-Up Punch.
Okay, so here's why I chose to add Lucario rather than allowing it to be saved for the later boss fight: it's the only Fighting-type in Kalos with a neutrality to all three of Fairy, Psychic and Flying, the types that otherwise just sweep Korrina's team as it is in canon.
Despite being Korrina's signature Pokémon, Lucario doesn't get a Sitrus Berry or anything because Hawlucha gets the held item for the team; it seemed like Hawlucha was a better use for that, after all.
Swords Dance, Metal Claw and Power-Up Punch are all ways to tie into the Attack-boosting theme, and notably, Metal Claw is the only move on Korrina's team that's super effective against Fairy, which is pretty useful to aid in that matchup!
This set is inspired by the one Korrina's Lucario are already known to use, but her entire team doesn't have any special moves, so Metal Claw replaces the otherwise-useless Metal Sound. The reason this is Adamant is because it's the Lucario that Korrina keeps. The one she gives the player is fixed to Hasty so that it always goes first in the Mega Evolution tutorial - that's why the player can't lose unless they throw the battle on purpose. Naturally, that means her other Lucario must not have a Speed-boosting nature; that would defeat the purpose!
Ramos
I don't know what it is, but Ramos may well have my favorite design of any of Kalos's Gym Leaders. Actually I do know what it is. It's the giant scissors. This guy is so funny.
His Jumpluff, at least, also has a passably interesting set - in addition to its two STABs in Acrobatics and Grass Knot, it also has a status move that actually makes some sense to use in Leech Seed. Unfortunately, it's kinda too frail to make use of Leech Seed on its own, and players can just switch out after they defeat it so his bulkier members can't reap the benefits. Also, the AI thinks Grass Knot has a base power of 1 and never uses it. So this... could still be better, honestly.
More importantly, what exactly is going on with his other two...?? His Weepinbell is the only member of his team with four moves, but it might as well not, because one of them is the aforementioned Grass Knot (that the AI strongly prefers not to use) and one of them is... Gastro Acid? What Ability is even relevant to nullify? For a Weepinbell? And meanwhile, his Gogoat has STAB Grass Knot (... that the AI strongly prefers... knot to use? eh? no sorry) and then just uses the low-powered Bulldoze and the recoil-inducing Take Down. Speaking of Gogoat, this has nothing to do with Ramos, but I do not understand its stats. It seems like Game Freak went out of their way to inflate its stats while carefully avoiding making it good at anything. It has excellent HP but bad enough Defense and Special Defense not to make effective use of it, and the ratio of them means it doesn't even benefit that much from investing EVs in HP; it tries to be a mixed attacker to the point that Attack and Special Attack are its next-highest stats, but both of them are mediocre; and its Speed is low. Despite this, it also has one of the highest BSTs of any Pokémon in Kalos? And... it also has a signature Ability that relies on Grassy Terrain, but it could not set its own Grassy Terrain until 2017.
His team doesn't even really have a theme of any kind, and again, he doesn't have any good resistances (okay, he doesn't mind Bug so much, and Weepinbell is neutral to Poison, but who is relying on those types and who is not using Fire or Flying? at least Ice-types are passably rare at this point, but...), and he doesn't have a single move to hit Flying-types super effectively.
This is also right after everyone got access to some of the strongest Pokémon in the game for free and are bound to want to try them out...
In any case, here's my attempt at making his team just a little bit better:
Rrright, so the theme here is sort of... field effect stacking? Honestly, I had a harder time with this one - there aren't that many Grass-type options that work for this point in the game (if only his team came in the 40s instead! Ferrothorn would be so good) - but I did my best to give him a better team than what he has!
Ferroseed lv 31 (Grass/Steel) Iron Barbs
Relaxed nature
EVs: 170 HP / 170 Defense / 170 Special Defense
- Leech Seed
- Spikes
- Stealth Rock
- Gyro Ball
Ferroseed is not that much of a threat, but one of the reasons I wanted to use it is because it compresses neutralities to all of Grass's weaknesses except Fire into just one team slot. Stealth Rock is top priority because it punishes Bug, Fire, Flying and Ice all at once, and most players won't have hazard control on their teams; it doesn't really help when they lead with their shiny new Mega Charizard Y, but... it's a start!
Meanwhile, Leech Seed, potential Spikes stacking and Gyro Ball are just meant to make the most of its decent bulk and useful type. I guess Stealth Rock and Spikes both count as field effects, right? They're not quite as on-theme as his other two, unfortunately, but still!
Lombre lv 31 (Water/Grass) Swift Swim
Modest nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Special Attack
- Rain Dance
- Scald
- Grass Knot purely out of obligation because it's his TM, but again... it's not even going to use this, is it?
- Water Sport
If Ferroseed is his defense against sweeps from every type except Fire, Lombre is his dedicated anti-Fire measure. Rain Dance is meant for his field control theme and benefits all three of his Pokémon (although Ferroseed is probably down by the time Lombre uses it), and it directly boosts Lombre's Speed and its Scald.
Scald is also useful since the rest of Ramos's new team is on the bulkier side - spreading burns so easily is always nice! - while Water Sport can stack with Rain Dance, especially right before Lombre is defeated, as a last-ditch effort to make Gogoat as resistant as possible to Fire.
Okay... so this is actually technically cheating. Gogoat cannot learn Grassy Terrain in Generation VI. But it really, really should!! If I were sufficiently "in charge" to be designing bosses for the actual game, I would absolutely also be advocating for Grassy Terrain Gogoat!! In any case, it does finally get it as of USUM, so hopefully this is a fair enough addition... This is the only time I use a set that's not legal in Generation VI, and it's just because - like I said earlier - Gogoat really needs all the help it can get!
Naturally, that means Gogoat's main job is to be a Grassy Terrain abuser and tank - the healing and Grass Pelt combined should give it a touch more durability than it normally would, and stacking that with Lombre's Rain Dance and maybe Water Sport should really help it to deal with Fire-types as well!
Bulldoze is a useful option for Poison- and Fire-types, but its effectiveness is reduced in Grassy Terrain, so it would be best to use it before setting up. Even so, the utility of lowering Speed is always nice.
And... what's with that weird choice of item? Magost Berry? At a glance, that doesn't even do anything in battle... but it happens to be the single best way for Gogoat to deal with four of its weaknesses in a single coverage move: a 90 BP physical Rock-type move in the form of Natural Gift, super effective against Bug, Flying, Fire and Ice. It only gets a single use out of it, but it felt like a pretty fun tech option for a Pokémon that sorely needed a pretty fun tech option.
Clemont
This battle... is so... nothing. I guess I admire the attempt to use Electric Terrain this is a meaningless coincidence, but speaking of Terrains, fun fact: the first three Terrains introduced were Grassy, Electric and Misty Terrains, all of which correspond to three consecutive Gym types in Kalos; when Alola added the fourth, Psychic Terrain, it matched the next type in line, and pairing it with Sturdy on Magneton helps to ensure that it's used although I will reiterate that Sturdy is exactly how you get any Trainer with healing items to waste both those items and their turns, which specifically works against the turn-limited Electric Terrain ... good job AI.
Magneton's other moves are just dual STABs of Flash Cannon and Thunderbolt, and that's sort of another problem with this fight: Thunderbolt is actually a really boring TM to turn into a Gym Leader's signature move. Not only has it been around since Generation I... it's also just... perfectly consistent? You can't really build a strategy around Thunderbolt, because nothing interacts with it - it does damage and nothing else. I guess that's why they gave him Electric Terrain to try to boost it, but honestly, why wouldn't you just take that opportunity to... make an Electric Terrain TM? Grass Knot is the same way, but hey, at least Ramos doesn't actually use it! Haha. Ha. Ha. Right, anyway...
Meanwhile, his Emolga is like he wanted to be Elesa and couldn't quite commit, and both Emolga and Heliolisk fall prey to this incredibly boring archetype of STAB + coverage/other STAB + Quick Attack that X and Y start to use over and over again instead of any actual strategy. At least Emolga has Volt Switch for its Electric move but... like... why? his other Pokémon don't, so there's not even a pivoting core - all he's doing is making sure his own Magneton's Sturdy gets broken as soon as possible wait, maybe it's on purpose? props for averting the healing item spam if so, but Heliolisk is just Thunderbolt + Grass Knot for coverage. Oh hey, both of the moves I just called boring!
I feel like there are much more interesting ways to make an Electric-type team, especially with the freedom afforded by having only one weakness. Let's see what we can do:
The gimmick I chose for this was pretty easy - I want to theme his whole team after Volt Switch, since it's easily the most interesting move he has. For that matter, since Volt Switch is also a TM (and it just happens to be one you simply buy rather than one you find), why not just switch that with Thunderbolt? Clemont can give the TM for Volt Switch, while Thunderbolt can move over to the Battle Maison where Volt Switch is now - that's not going to mess with the rest of the game's balance all that much, is it? Aside from Volt Switch, I also thought it would be fun if he gradually set up for a dramatic Heliolisk sweep at the end of the fight, since it's fast and decently hard-hitting and its talents are wasted on Thunderbolt/Grass Knot/Quick Attack.
The first thing to note is that Emolga is obviously immune to Ground. Ground-types will not be sweeping this fight! For that matter, Emolga is also resistant to Fighting, which is good because both of Clemont's other Pokémon do happen to be weak to that.
Emolga is Clemont's fast pivot. It has high Speed, but it's also pretty frail; it uses Volt Switch to pivot out of battle before the opponent attacks and ensure that the bulkier Rotom takes the hits for it, keeping it safe.
That said, other than switching out, Emolga can do a few things to benefit its team: Acrobatics (not Aerial Ace, Clemont!! Ramos got it right, and he's supposed to be weaker than you!!) to deal with Grass-types that resist Electric moves, Nuzzle to spread paralysis and make Heliolisk even harder to outpace, and Rain Dance, which benefits both the Fire-weak Rotom and the Dry Skin-using Heliolisk.
Rotom(Frost Rotom) lv 34 (Electric/Ice) Levitate
Relaxed nature
EVs: 170 HP / 170 Defense / 170 Special Defense
- Volt Switch
- Blizzard
- Will-o-Wisp
- Thunder
The first thing to note is that Rotom is obviously immune to Ground. Ground-types will really not be sweeping this fight!
Rotom is Clemont's defensive pivot. It has an intentionally low Speed stat I do not think NPCs supported inconsistent IVs until Gen VII, so I dunno if its Speed IV can be set to 0, but that would be nice if so and high bulk, complementing Emolga well.
It also has Blizzard, which targets Grass-, Ground- and Dragon-types if anyone tries to bring those, and Thunder, which capitalizes on Emolga's Rain Dance to gain perfect accuracy. I guess the best counter for this fight is to bring your own Electric-type?
I didn't bother to give it Defog because players are less likely to try entry hazards in-game than in competitive (although honestly, if they do catch on to the pivoting and sneak in a Stealth Rock, good on them! that was one of the best ways to combat Elesa, too), so instead, its main utility move is Will-o-Wisp, augmenting its bulk and capitalizing on its ability to support its team.
Heliolisk lv 37 (Electric/Normal) @ Focus Sash Dry Skin
Timid nature
EVs: 252 Special Attack / 252 Speed
- Volt Switch
- Grass Knot
- Electric Terrain
- Thunder
The idea here is that Heliolisk steals Magneton's gimmick of Sturdy + Electric Terrain with its Focus Sash, enabling it to set up for itself and make the most of the next four turns. You can see why I was afraid of the AI trying to spam healing items now. Heliolisk would just be properly oneshot the next turn if Clemont did that.
Volt Switch ties into the team's pivoting theme, but its main STAB is, again, Thunder, which pairs with the rain and Terrain to reach a frightening level of power and accuracy.
Grass Knot is just there as the obligatory Ground coverage and it will actually use it, because Ground is immune to its other moves and therefore it will read as its strongest move even when the AI thinks it has a base power of 1! ... benefits of dropping Quick Attack, haha.
Honestly, I think this is another of the teams here that I like the most - its gimmicks go further to define it than most of the others, and it has a clear weakness that encourages players to explore an otherwise-underused move in the main campaign (Stealth Rock messes with the pivoting and the Sash), but it has the potential to culminate in a really threatening sweep if you're not prepared to deal with it. I would love to see a boss like this in a main series game!
Valerie
Three words. Hyper Cutter Mawile. Why. Why would you do this.
Sylveon is also another STAB with no utility + other attack with no interesting utility + Quick Attack set, although I guess at least it adds Charm to the list to mitigate it slightly.Speaking of Charm... if you're going to dedicate a move to lowering the opponent's Attack...why would you forego the Ability that lowers the opponent's Attack?ahem. Hyper Cutter Mawile, everyone.
In fairness to Valerie, she does do a good job of covering her weaknesses - Mawile is immune to Poison and neutral to Steel, and Mr. Mime is also super effective against Poison.
But... speaking of offensive coverage, I can't help but notice that her Hyper Cutter Mawile has no Fairy moves.
Or... or Steel moves.
It has Dark moves. Two Dark moves.
One of which is low in power but makes up for it by never missing and the other of which is high in power and has 100% accuracy. Hmm... DrPumpkinz, is this better or worse than if one of them was Ghost-type?
Anyway, I think I've done enough to establish the problem here, so how would I try to fix it?
The sixth Gym is an okay time to have four Pokémon, right? I think so. The theme here is Attack modifiers... but not of her own - all of Valerie's Pokémon have ways to mess with her opponent's Attack except Azumarill, but it's close enough - it lowers its own Defense as a drawback of one of its moves. She gets to play with the devious, tricky nature of Fairy-types and uses some really frustrating gimmick strategies, some of which may or may not be ripped from Gen VI OU and AG.
Sounds fun! Let's get to it.
Klefki lv 39 (Steel/Fairy) Prankster
Bold nature
EVs: 170 HP / 170 Defense / 170 Special Defense
- Light Screen
- Thunder Wave
- Swagger
- Foul Play
I appreciated her use of the Steel-type Mawile as an anti-Poison and Steel-neutral lead, so I did the same here with the other Steel/Fairy-type.
We all know what this does.
Light Screen stops special attackers from being used to bypass Valerie's mostly-physical-oriented crippling strategies, while Thunder Wave + Swagger + Foul Play will lead many physical attackers to destroy themselves without even getting in a move. Obviously, the justification is that Swagger and Foul Play both suit her high-risk theme of Attack manipulation.
This is Gen VI, aka pre-nerf.
Have fun. <3
Mawile lv 39 (Steel/Fairy) Intimidate
Adamant nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Attack
- Swords Dance
- Play Rough
- Iron Head
- Sucker Punch
Okay, so the first thing you should notice is (say it with me)Intimidate. There we go. Attack manipulation theme, check.
The second thing of note is that this is another Poison immunity and Steel neutrality, which is always good on a mono-Fairy team.
Obviously, this isn't a Mega Evolution, and that immediately makes it about a million times less threatening than it might have been... but hopefully the combination of Intimidate, Swords Dance, HP investment and priority in Sucker Punch should make it a passable threat, and this Mawile has dual STABs like it should have had in the first place, so here's hoping that it won't be quite as pathetic as her current Mawile!
In fairness, even if it is a bit of a breather amidst the rest of this fight, it's certainly a much-needed one.
Azumarill lv 39 (Water/Fairy) @ Sitrus Berry Huge Power
Jolly nature
EVs: 252 Attack / 252 Speed
- Belly Drum
- Aqua Jet
- Aqua Tail
- Superpower
It seems like Valerie is good enough at dealing with Poison for now, so here's another Steel neutrality with a Fighting-type coverage move, plus a good way to counter the Fire- and Ground-types that give Klefki and Mawile a hard time.
And, uh, yeah... we all know what this does, too. As mentioned, the Defense-lowering drawback of Superpower is what I'm calling this Azumarill's way to represent "high-risk Attack manipulation."
As with Klefki, Light Screen is to mitigate the team's ineffectiveness against special attackers, while Charm is Sylveon's Attack modifier. Mostly, Sylveon plays into the tank angle and maybe team support but I do not know if the AI is capable of Wish passing so it's probably just for itself, using Wish for longevity and Dazzling Gleam as its only attack.
I'm gonna be honest... the only reason this doesn't have Pixilate + Hyper Voice instead of Cute Charm + Dazzling Gleam is the meta context that this is the first Fairy-type Gym in the series. It wouldn't be as effective an introduction to the type if one of the Gym Leader's Pokémon used moves that weren't really Fairy-type at all in conjunction with a type changing effect - new players would be misled as to the moves and identity of the type, and it would sort of just feel sloppy.
Like Korrina's Lucario, this has no item because one of her other Pokémon does.
Olympia
This battle is actually kind of okay on paper - I think the only thing holding it back from working as intended... really is just the lack of EVs on any of her Pokémon. She has a theme of setup moves already, with dual screens on her Sigilyph and Calm Mind on her other two Pokémon, but they're all so utterly frail without investment that they really can't manage any of it - and Slowking's Speed doesn't really help it make the most of its moves, either.
The one thing that explicitly bothers me is her Meowstic's Fake Out, which serves no purpose but to give her own dual screens an extra turn to wear off.
This isn't a double battle, Olympia.
:meowstic-m:
I lied. This is a double battle, Olympia. ... yeah I know there's kinda no reason for it but that's the theme I chose for this just imagine if this came out before ORAS - the seventh Gym is a double battle against a Psychic Trainer? Hoenn confirmed!!
Okay, the main reason I did this was really just the thought process of "Meowstic would be a good support Pokémon" + "Slowking would really enjoy Trick Room support" + "it sounds like she wants to use Fake Out." But there are a couple of quirky gimmicks this enabled, so I threw those in for good measure! And I thought it'd be a fun way to shake things up if one major boss were a double battle I love Bryony and Celosia but they do not count and you know it... hey, should I do Team Flare Scientists next?, sort of like Raihan as the final Gym.
This is probably ill-advised in any serious competitive setting, but no one uses Taunt in the main story, so it's fiiine.
Olympia's first Meowstic has a full supporting moveset in order to enable the rest of her team. Trick Room is the most important move, since it pairs so well with both Slowking and Malamar; not sure if the AI can be trusted with this, but ideally, her other Meowstic just won't come out until it's over (hopefully dual screens will help her last that long), while her other three can go wild while it's up.
Flatter has interesting synergy with both of her other non-Meowstic members, which you'll see discussed in a moment!
Slowking lv 45 (Water/Psychic) Own Tempo
Quiet nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Special Attack
- Scald
- Psyshock
- Fire Blast
- Slack Off
Fire Blast is an anti-Bug measure, since without Sigilyph, Olympia's whole team is weak to Bug. Fortunately, with Trick Room up, this is very, very fast!
The original inspiration for Olympia's first Meowstic to know Flatter at all was when I noticed that one of Slowking's Abilites was Own Tempo. If Meowstic uses Flatter on Slowking, it gets a free Nasty Plot before Slowking even acts for the turn!
Scald and Psyshock are just dual STABs, of course, and Slack Off is free healing that will likely go first. I thought it would be funny to give it Bulldoze to trigger Meowstic-F's Competitive, but apparently that doesn't work when an ally triggers it. Oh well!
I mentioned that Slowking can handle Bug-types, but what about Dark- and Ghost-types? As it turns out, Malamar is the only Psychic-type in Kalos that isn't weak to Ghost, and it also has a Dark neutrality, so it seemed like the perfect fit!
Contrary + Superpower is a huge help both for boosting its stats in general and for dealing with the aforementioned Dark-types, and Knock Off is nice for Ghost-types as well, while Psycho Cut is just STAB.
Topsy Turvy might also be fun to combine with the male Meowstic's Flatter - while Meowstic can use Flatter on its ally Slowking for a free Special Attack boost, it can also hinder its opponents by confusing them, and Malamar can turn even the Flatter buff into a harsh reduction instead. I think it would be more efficient just to attack in most cases, but if Meowstic has nothing better to do than Flatter something, that's one way to put it to use!
Meowstic(female) lv 48 (Psychic) Competitive
Timid nature
EVs: 252 Special Attack / 252 Speed
- Fake Out
- Psych Up
- Psychic
- Shadow Ball
As mentioned, ideally, Olympia's female Meowstic will be saved for a late-game cleanup after Trick Room has worn off and her male Meowstic has gone down - it's a faster option so she isn't so easily overwhelmed in that case. But if Trick Room is still up and she needs to stall its last turns out, Fake Out can help her with that while also potentially giving her other Pokémon a free turn!
Psych Up is a gimmicky option, but since Slowking can easily boost its Special Attack with Own Tempo + male Meowstic's Flatter and Malamar can easily boost its Defense with Superpower, either one of them could give Meowstic a chance to grab a game-changing boost for itself when it cleans up.
Psychic and Shadow Ball are just Meowstic's existing attacks - I didn't see any reason to change them!
So yeah, this might've been a weird direction to take the fight, but I think it actually works pretty well. I tried to take advantage of the doubles format to create unusual gimmicks and interactions rather than just giving a team full of individually good Pokémon, but I'm also not very good at doubles myself, so let me know if you think I should do anything differently!
Lysandre Welcome back, Cyrus.
He's obviously not a Gym Leader, but I'm throwing Lysandre in as well because... well, ? Fun fact about his Mienshao - in USUM, it goes on to become the inversion of Korrina's Mienfoo! It finally has U-turn, only to trade Regenerator for Inner Focus! They really wanted to avoid that gimmick for some reason, didn't they...
Honestly, Lysandre's team isn't really that bad in isolation, but... well, it's clearly set up to be a power trip for your new mascot and nothing more. He's designed to be an easy sweep specifically because you were just obligated to capture and then strongly pressured to lead with the two Pokémon that completely demolish his entire team.
That's no fun. This could be a really cool battle if they tried. Let's mess with it!
Alright, so this fight doesn't exactly have a theme like most of the others, but the main changes I made were to help him deal with the freshly-caught mascot a bit better, and then to realize the missed potential of some of the Pokémon he already had.
First of all, give him Regenerator + U-turn, you cowards
The goal of this Mienshao is to bait a Moonblast or Oblivion Wing from the mascot, which is automatically the player's lead anyway - but it's guaranteed to be faster than both of them, so it can U-turn out right away and get in Magnezone on the resisted move instead.
Aside from that, its playing style is quite similar to Korrina's Mienfoo, but less boosting and more aggression and immediate power: use Fake Out and U-turn whenever possible, then clean up lategame with High Jump Kick and Acrobatics.
Magnezone lv 50 (Electric/Steel) Analytic
Modest nature
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Special Attack
- Flash Cannon
- Thunderbolt
- Volt Switch
- Light Screen
This is the main anti-mascot measure! As mentioned, it's likely to come in all but for free on a resisted move from the mascots, and then it can threaten them both with its STABs of Flash Cannon and Thunderbolt. It also has Analytic, so players who try to switch out to avoid the knockout will be met with even more damage instead. It also has Volt Switch if it ends up in a matchup it doesn't like, and... well, Generation VII is the only Generation in the series where it's even possible for an NPC to have a Hidden Power type other than Fighting and Dark, and Hidden Power is Magnezone's most common fourth move, so I just figured one can rarely go wrong with screens and picked the one that annoyed the mascots more.
This is also a pretty good anti-mascot measure, with Cross Poison for Xerneas and Ice Fang for Yveltal. I honestly don't know if it has the stats to threaten them, and it's definitely a weaker pick than Magnezone for this purpose, but I'm hoping the fact that the mascots are freshly caught (read: uninvested) while this does have EVs gives it a good enough chance against them anyway.
Ice + Ground is also obviously really good super effective coverage, and Knock Off is a generally fantastic move (maybe slightly less so against a casual player's in-game team, but eh). Sniper pairs adequately with Cross Poison, and... well, it wasn't getting any better with its other two Abilities, so I figured it was a fine pick!
There's not much else to say about this, haha. It's not really a distinctive gimmick or clever gambit - I actually have no idea why my instinct was Drapion - but I like Drapion, and it has a pretty useful type for this purpose!
Pyroar(male) lv 52 (Fire/Normal) @ Life Orb Rivalrytrust me I know what I'm doing
Timid nature
EVs: 252 Special Attack / 252 Speed
- Flamethrower
- Hyper Voice
- Snarl
- Will-o-Wisp
This is literally its USUM set plus a Life Orb... which I think is actually kinda scary for an in-game run.
I am also okay with giving it Rivalry in this one situation even though that's a terrible Ability... solely because there are a ton of really, really broken gift Pokémon in Kalos that happen to have a gender ratio of seven males to one female, plus a really, really broken gift Pokémon that's always male and weak to Fire, and I thought it would be funny to take advantage of that for once despite how generally bad Rivalry is.
Gyarados(Mega Gyarados) lv 53 (Water/Dark) @ Gyaradosite Intimidate
Adamant nature
EVs: 252 Special Attack / 252 Speed
- Dragon Dance
- Waterfall
- Earthquake
- Iron Head
This is not that different from his regular set, but... if you're using a Mega Gyarados, and it doesn't know Dragon Dance, I'm given to understand that that means you're doing something wrong.
I would have liked to give it Crunch for a second STAB, but that wasn't available until ORAS, and - unlike Grassy Terrain on Gogoat - I didn't feel that it was quite important enough to break from XY legality, so I left Iron Head from its canon moveset as a last-ditch anti-Xerneas measure and just dropped Outrage for Dragon Dance you're really gonna let it lock into that when you know your opponent has a Xerneas?.
Wulfric
I have one good nice to say about Wulfric: the Iceberg Badge is the best Badge design in the entire series, hands down. Kalos in general did really well with Badge designs, but this one is my favorite.
On to more important matters: what... what is this team... why is his Abomasnow set so bad...
Okay, so you know how I mentioned that X and Y really like giving things two moves with no useful secondary effect + Quick Attack and calling it a day? His Abomasnow is another of these: just dual STABs and Ice Shard. But the thing is... they're not even good dual STABs.
Small tangent here: remember when I said Thunderbolt made for a really boring "signature move" for a Gym Leader, because it's not used for any secondary effect except constant damage and reliability? At least Clemont tried to make something of it by pairing it with Electric Terrain... Wulfric here has Ice Beam, which literally does not interact with any other move.
But... here's why this is so silly in this case: his Abomasnow has Snow Warning and wanted a STAB move for no reason but to have a STAB move - there is absolutely no reason for that STAB move not to be Blizzard, which is a straight upgrade over Ice Beam in every relevant way and also capitalizes on Snow Warning.
And then he has a Cryogonal for some reason, and it also dedicates a moveslot to making sure his hail stays up even though it doesn't even take advantage of it (if you wanted to secure it for Avalugg... why wouldn't you just send Abomasnow out second so Snow Warning was more recent? then you wouldn't have to worry about resetting it in the first place?) and also rather uselessly knows Confuse Ray to go with its excellent base 30 Defense and really exemplify its physical walling abilities. And then it has Ice Beam (again, why not Blizzard?? or even Freeze Dry, which at least stops it from being totally walled by Water of all types...) and Flash Cannon (to be fair Cryogonal doesn't really have other coverage and I respect them for not giving it Solar Beam but how does this even help). My alternate team drops the Cryogonal outright, but if you really wanted to make it work, surely you could at least have replaced Confuse Ray and Hail with dual screens or something for Avalugg's benefit?
Avalugg's set is okay for an in-game boss, but it has no recovery except Ice Body, and despite being the one member of his team that actually wants hail, it also decided to be the only one that can't set it.
Sigh.
The eighth Gym Leader, everybody.
okay not gonna lie this one might be overkill
and this is coming from the one who... well, you saw the Valerie team for yourself
Okay, so the theme of this team is boosting stats in general. Each of his Pokémon is themed after a different boosting move, and it gives each of them a radically different playing style while putting constant pressure on the player both offensively and, by the end, defensively.
The end result is a bit chaotic, but I felt like a theme like this paired well with Wulfric's self-described stubborn nature - his focus on raw power and his Pokémon's simultaneous rigidity and frailty - and I think the dramatically over-the-top, frail and setup-reliant nature of his first three team members combined with the incredibly tanky Avalugg suits his description of his personality surprisingly well in the end.
Also I just noticed Cloyster when I was looking for good Ice-types and wanted to use it.
To be honest, I kinda just thought Abomasnow was too emblematic of Snowbelle City to drop, and there wasn't much else competing with it for the team slot as an Ice-type in Kalos. It does have a pretty scary Swords Dance set for the stat-boosting theme, as well as some very high-power attacks, so it's a threatening but fairly simplistic introduction to his team's theme.
I first noticed Cloyster as a defensive measure against Fire- and Steel-type sweeps - remember that rule? - and it ended up motivating the entire theme of the team all by itself.
This is a scarily over-the-top boosting Pokémon that capitalizes on every side of the Ice type at once, and I feel like it's a perfect match for Wulfric's personality.
Razor Shell is not super important, but I wasn't sure if I could trust the AI to use Explosion or Ice Shard wisely on what's already a high-risk Pokémon, and I figured it was harder to go wrong with a secondary STAB; it also helps against the aforementioned Fire-types. in before the AI reads Icicle Spear and Rock Blast as 25 BP and always prioritizes Razor Shell-- yeah maybe I should switch to Ice Shard actually
Like Cloyster, Jynx was chosen for being a passable defense against Fighting-types - certainly a better option than Delibird, the only other Ice-type in Kalos that isn't weak to Fighting.
Nasty Plot is its way of representing the boosting move theme of the battle, but unlike Abomasnow, it informs its strategy in a new way as well: I didn't want to give it a Focus Sash since I was already pushing it with two items on the team (and Cloyster's is a Sash of its own, no less), so Lovely Kiss is there to ease safe setup, setting Jynx apart from the more reckless Abomasnow and the Sashed Cloyster with a battle style of its own.
Avalugg is Wulfric's signature Pokémon, and after the player is worn down by the aggressive offense of his other team members, I'm not sure if a more slow-paced but incredibly bulky wall is cause for a sigh of relief or if it's the final nail in the coffin when every way they might have had to deal with it is down.
Naturally, Curse is Avalugg's take on the boosting move theme, and it's set up as a standard CRO set, pressuring the player to take it down as quickly as possible before it shrugs it all off - or whites them out with Avalanche. That said, I do not know if the AI knows how to count Rest turns for Sleep Talk purposes.
I... do not think it does, though.
Oh well. The battle is intense enough already. You deserve a break. :v
And... that's it!
I may or may not follow up with the Elite Four and Diantha in the future, but this is all I'm gonna do for now!
Welp, that's all of my rambling for today! Hopefully this was a fun post to read - and I'm not sure if I was right to put my proposed updates in this thread specifically, but I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on how you'd revamp your least favorite boss fights as well!
This is a really great analysis and I like all the teams you made, but I'm surprised you didn't point out the most obvious, gaping flaw of the XY Gym Leaders.
NONE OF THEM.
USE.
MEGA EVOLUTION!!!!
Like yeah, I guess there's technically Korrina but she doesn't even use Mega Lucario in her gym fight and the story battle she does use it in may as well be a scripted encounter. Say whatever the hell you want about Dynamax/Gigantamax, but there is no denying that on that front it was INFINITELY better handled in the main story of SWSH with not just gym leaders but nearly every relevant character using a Dynamax/Gigantamax form of their own during at least one of their battles with one of the only exceptions being Piers, y'know, the guy whose primary character trait is apathy towards Dynamax. But even beyond that everything else you said rings true, to the point where the more I think about it the more I become convinced Viola being an awesome first gym leader that totally subverts the expected starter match-ups was a complete accident.
My favourites:
- Totem Lurantis. Extremely well put-together doubles strats that can pose an issue even if you have a strong Fire- or Flying-type.
- Guzma 3. His Masquerain has the power to ruin your day. Extra points for actually having a good Bug-type boss too.
My least favourites:
- Every Kalos Gym leader after Grant. Korrina is hard-countered by Ghosts, any good Poison- or Flying-type annihilates Grant, Clemont has a tedious Gym puzzle and a mediocre team, Valerie has a cloned Gym puzzle and can barely hit Steel-types, Olympia has no type coverage against Dark-types, and Wulfric has three Ice-types that cannot hit any of their weaknesses except for Rock for super-effective damage. They don’t have enough Pokemon and don’t showcase the new additions at all. To fix this, I’d replace Korrina’s terrible Mienfoo with a Pancham, give Ramos a Gourgeist or Trevenant (Grass-types in this generation got shafted hard), give Clemont a Dedenne, give Valerie one of Floette/Slurpuff/Aromatisse, let Olympia have a Delphox and maybe a Malamar for coverage (again, GF only added Delphox, Malamar and Meowstic for Psychic-types this generation), and give Wulfric Cloyster/Lapras and Aurorus. While it seems weird for the same evolutionary line to show up twice, he needs any form of coverage.
oh, and did i mention not a single one of them have a full moveset?
This is a really great analysis and I like all the teams you made, but I'm surprised you didn't point out the most obvious, gaping flaw of the XY Gym Leaders.
NONE OF THEM.
USE.
MEGA EVOLUTION!!!!
Like yeah, I guess there's technically Korrina but she doesn't even use Mega Lucario in her gym fight and the story battle she does use it in may as well be a scripted encounter. Say whatever the hell you want about Dynamax/Gigantamax, but there is no denying that on that front it was INFINITELY better handled in the main story of SWSH with not just gym leaders but nearly every relevant character using a Dynamax/Gigantamax form of their own during at least one of their battles with one of the only exceptions being Piers, y'know, the guy whose primary character trait is apathy towards Dynamax. But even beyond that everything else you said rings true, to the point where the more I think about it the more I become convinced Viola being an awesome first gym leader that totally subverts the expected starter match-ups was a complete accident.
While it would be have been great to do this, it would mean giving up something cool that each gym leader does, which is have a Gen 6 Pokemon as an ace. Compare to Lysandre, who so clearly wants for Pyroar to be his ace, but then completely overshadows it with a Mega Gyarados.
Of course, the obvious solution would have been to give megas to Gen 6 mons that aren't named Diancie.
I definitely get the feeling they wanted megas to be a little "special" which is why there's only 4 characters in the game that use them: Korrina for the Successor fight, the game's main villain, the game's final boss and your post game rival. The fact they're all tied to earlier gen Pokemon is also likely why.
I can respect the decision, honestly. The real issue imo is they decided gen 6 pokemon wouldn't get megas and there's no proper rematches with fleshed out teams where they could pull out megas. Basically what ORAS did, the only megas you see are Archie/Maxie, Wally, Steven and Brendan/May. 3 Of those are right at the end of the game (Brendan/May is literally after the credits!). But they made sure to have the elite four all pull out megas. Oh and Lissia's mega altaria but that's a whole different thing.
They obviously changed their tune with the Z Move & G-Max gimmicks, at least. Everyone gets a z move, and the only g-max less people are Hop, Milo, Nessa & Piers. But Nessa gets her before the end game while Hop (he uses Corviknight, as a reminder) and Milo has his in a post-game rematch; Piers doesnt get one but its for story purposes. And most people get the new pokemon as their g-max so the few that use older g-maxes aren't as big a sticking point.
While it would be have been great to do this, it would mean giving up something cool that each gym leader does, which is have a Gen 6 Pokemon as an ace. Compare to Lysandre, who so clearly wants for Pyroar to be his ace, but then completely overshadows it with a Mega Gyarados.
Of course, the obvious solution would have been to give megas to Gen 6 mons that aren't named Diancie.
100% true! Again, as R_N said, SWSH is a great example of how XY should've handled Megas in-game, with some trainers using GMaxes for the new mons (Kabu with Centiskorch, Gordie with Coalossal) and others using foreign mons (Bea with Machamp, Oleana with Garbodor) providing a nice mix of old and new.
Actually, y'know what's a further indictment against XY's lack of usage for Megas that even goes against R_N's assertion that they intentionally limited Megas to only the most special trainers ? The anime! If you weren't aware they depict MUCH more important XY characters using Megas, one of the biggest examples being Wulfric actually using Mega Abomasnow in his gym battle with Ash! There's also the Mega Evolution specials where they show characters like Malva with Mega Houndoom and Siebold with Mega Blastoise.
100% true! Again, as R_N said, SWSH is a great example of how XY should've handled Megas in-game, with some trainers using GMaxes for the new mons (Kabu with Centiskorch, Gordie with Coalossal) and others using foreign mons (Bea with Machamp, Oleana with Garbodor) providing a nice mix of old and new.
Actually, y'know what's a further indictment against XY's lack of usage for Megas that even goes against R_N's assertion that they intentionally limited Megas to only the most special trainers ? The anime! If you weren't aware they depict MUCH more important XY characters using Megas, one of the biggest examples being Wulfric actually using Mega Abomasnow in his gym battle with Ash! There's also the Mega Evolution specials where they show characters like Malva with Mega Houndoom and Siebold with Mega Blastoise.
I mean by the time the anime started pulling out megas in more abundance it was written like 2 years after XY were out. By that point they had started to change their tune so far as megas were concerned and they also wanted to push the ash greninja story so it eneded mega-level opponents for its end game.
not really going to fault XY for the anime having the benefit of stretching a game out for 3 years and getting to find ways to spice it up and clearly taking queues from a game taht didnt get made
Actually, y'know what's a further indictment against XY's lack of usage for Megas that even goes against R_N's assertion that they intentionally limited Megas to only the most special trainers ? The anime! If you weren't aware they depict MUCH more important XY characters using Megas, one of the biggest examples being Wulfric actually using Mega Abomasnow in his gym battle with Ash! There's also the Mega Evolution specials where they show characters like Malva with Mega Houndoom and Siebold with Mega Blastoise.
Which major battles should get Megas and which ones should be used?
I personally found it staggering that not only Korrina just sidetracked me to a pointless, tacked on Gym battle, but didn't even use the two Lucarios she used when ambushing me out of nowhere in Geosenge.
It'd also make sense if she had a Mega Lucario in her Gym match because she explicitly tells the player she wants both of her Lucario to use Mega Evolution at the same time on the Tower of Mastery.
Leaders having Megas would also reduce the absurd power trip that is roflstomping through the later leaders with a Mega, a full team and, y'know, 4 moves on your mons compared to the trash they got.
Not to mention that it's heavily implied that XY's whole "mystery" of Mega Evolution is as fake as wrestling.
Lysandre has it. Maybe he didn't tell Sycamore before he clearly went full Bond Villain, so he kinda gets a pass.
Diantha has it. We know they know each other since you encounter both of them at Coumarine together.
Sycamore himself not only gives you a Mega Stone, but more importantly, he trained at the freaking Tower of Mastery himself! This was all a ploy for the player and his friends to get to explore Kalos and figure out their vocations!!!
But I digress. Let's give these people some Megas.
I would have Ramos-onward be the mega point if they wanted to treat them as standard boss mechanic instead ofa special one. You just got your mega stone, you had the whole Korrina successor fight, seems a good a point as any. It could also coincide with everyone getting 4 pokemon instead of capping out at 3.
As for which ones to use...it's honestly really easy because XY only had 26 pokemon capable of mega evolving (well 28 but the Lati@s are weird...). And some typings just did not get that many.
Ramos: Venusaur
Clemont: Ampharos (I was going to say Manectric but the dual typing is fun)
Valerie: Mawile (since Diantha will have Gardevoir)
Olympia: Alakazam
Wulfric: Abomasnow (the anime agreed!)
If these were all saved for rematches instead then Viola & Grant would get in on the action. Grant I'd give Aerodactyl (continue the fossil theme) and Viola...I'd give Pinsir. Pinsir deserves some love.
I would have Ramos-onward be the mega point if they wanted to treat them as standard boss mechanic instead ofa special one. You just got your mega stone, you had the whole Korrina successor fight, seems a good a point as any. It could also coincide with everyone getting 4 pokemon instead of capping out at 3.
I'd straight up let Korrina use her Mega Lucario. It's a climactic enough battle and it is her signature mon. It's not like you don't have any options to deal with it considering how bad its moveset is anyway.
Unrelated, but I read the rest of the thread waiting for someone to post, and boy, there are some spicy takes about Cynthia.
The E4 level curve is a fair criticism. I prefer how BW handled it. If you're planning to just go through the whole E4 with a single mon, it was going to be overleveled anyway. No point in trying to catch up by increasing levels all the time.
But let's be realistic here, y'all need to press the Ice Beam button against that Garchomp more often. It's really not much of a threat if you got anything that isn't straight up OHKO'd by it, and if you don't, well, your team ain't built to be a Champion team to begin with. She's tough but very beatable.
As for my favorite and least favorite bosses...
Platinum Fantina. That battle epitomizes what I like the most about Platinum.
You can pull up to her with say, a Dragon Rage+EQ Gabite, a Crunch Floatzel, a Staravia and your starter. That would straight up rip apart any other 3rd Gym Leader in the franchise.
Except her. She'll probably just stomp you harder than Whitney's Miltank.
Platinum is a game that gives you a lot of fun and strong pokémon, but it also gives these mons to its bosses and the result is amazing. Instead of a slog with weak mons for all sides, every boss is a high-octane battle because they're not XY-weak, they're real bosses that will drop you if you don't take them seriously. They kinda peter out a bit after Wake, but they never get too easy.
Viola is also one of my favorite bosses because of how simple, yet effective she is at covering her weaknesses. Sure, Flying mons will beat her easily, but she doesn't fold to Fennekin. It's brilliant and sets a bar for strategy and difficulty that sadly isn't really surpassed by the other bosses.
As for the least favorite...
Red. GSC, HGSS, it doesn't matter. No. Just no. I don't wanna grind that much. It's ridiculous how a spike like that is even remotely ok by the devs. The battle itself ain't that bad, but the grinding for it just destroys any momentum the game has, and it's even slower in HGSS.
On the other side of the spectrum... Janine. What were the devs thinking when they made GSC Janine? She's weaker than Clair and 10 whole levels below Lance. Even in HGSS, where she's weaker than Lance but at least her ace is on par with his, you'd need to make a beeline for her Gym dodging every trainer in the way and you'd probably still be overleveled. It's just pathetic. She doesn't even have a good team.
While on the subject of complete jokes... Korrina.
It's even worse than the other XY Gym Leaders because we know she has two Lucario, can Mega Evolve at least one of them, is the first leader after Grant and Viola (who were good leaders) and comes right after Reflection Cave. That cave is tough. And when you brace yourself to battle her, a match that has been hyped since you first exited Lumiose...
She's an absolute joke.
It's not just Honedge, did you know that her Hawlucha simply has no way to deal with Fletchinder, Ducklett or any Flying-type that isn't a Normal/Flying one? Remember Reflection Cave? A random Battle Girl has a Rock Tomb Hawlucha. Korrina doesn't. On her supposed ace.
That's just embarrassing no matter how you look at it.
People talking about Platinum gym leaders and I'd be inclined to agree, they're generally really good, second only to SWSH if you were to ask me. There's a couple of reasons why they don't quite beat out that game for me though, actually more like one very very big reason...
Worst: Candice (Platinum)
Funny story about this one. I got to her in my recent playthrough a couple of months ago and went through her first 3 team members with relative ease, my whole party still in one piece. Right as I KOed Abomasnow and she sent out her main mon Froslass, I noticed permanent Hail and realized it most likely had Snow Cloak. At this point an extremely vague yet unsettling recollection from my Bulbapedia browsing for Which Pokemon Were Used The Most By Important NPCs popped into my head, but for a brief moment I shrugged it off. After all, I thought, surely the designers weren't that dement-
"The foe's FROSLASS used Double Team!"
What followed was a 15 minute nightmare as I watched my well-preserved team fall like flies largely unable to get a hit in, eventually resorting to PP Stall with my Lickilicky (god bless that mon) to just barely scrape by. Yes you can catch Sneasel right beforehand which basically hard-counters Froslass right down to having Faint Attack to ignore the evasion BS but c'mon, this is gym 7, by this point a lot of people probably already got their team of 6 down (myself included) and don't wanna catch one very specific Pokemon to serve as one very specific counterpick and then never use it again, that's Ultra Necrozma-tier BS right there. That said I am glad that option technically exists because if it didn't and I had lost at the end of that horrendous scuffle... I'm legitimately not sure I would've been able to bring myself to keep going, at the very least I probably would've had to take a few days' rest after such a frustrating encounter. Fuck this fight.
People talking about Platinum gym leaders and I'd be inclined to agree, they're generally really good, second only to SWSH if you were to ask me. There's a couple of reasons why they don't quite beat out that game for me though, actually more like one very very big reason...
Worst: Candice (Platinum)
Funny story about this one. I got to her in my recent playthrough a couple of months ago and went through her first 3 team members with relative ease, my whole party still in one piece. Right as I KOed Abomasnow and she sent out her main mon Froslass, I noticed permanent Hail and realized it most likely had Snow Cloak. At this point an extremely vague yet unsettling recollection from my Bulbapedia browsing for Which Pokemon Were Used The Most By Important NPCs popped into my head, but for a brief moment I shrugged it off. After all, I thought, surely the designers weren't that dement-
"The foe's FROSLASS used Double Team!"
What followed was a 15 minute nightmare as I watched my well-preserved team fall like flies largely unable to get a hit in, eventually resorting to PP Stall with my Lickilicky (god bless that mon) to just barely scrape by. Yes you can catch Sneasel right beforehand which basically hard-counters Froslass right down to having Faint Attack to ignore the evasion BS but c'mon, this is gym 7, by this point a lot of people probably already got their team of 6 down (myself included) and don't wanna catch one very specific Pokemon to serve as one very specific counterpick and then never use it again, that's Ultra Necrozma-tier BS right there. That said I am glad that option technically exists because if it didn't and I had lost at the end of that horrendous scuffle... I'm legitimately not sure I would've been able to bring myself to keep going, at the very least I probably would've had to take a few days' rest after such a frustrating encounter. Fuck this fight.
Lmao, evasion strats really are a special kind of evil. There's a reason I went the extra mile and changed all evasion-changing move effects when I hacked Stadium 2.
At least you know that if you get a hit on that Froslass, it's done.
Oh boy, if you thought Candice's Froslass was annoying, then Koga in the first E4 battle in HGSS must be the equivalent of a real life hell for you... No seriously. The dude has a muk holding a black sludge with minimize. And I think some full restores too. The battle can take ages.
So according to my chart you can give one more Pokemon to Ramos, Clemont, Wulfirc, and the Elite Four members. Some ideas:
Ramos: If you want your theme to be field effect stacking, then how about Roselia/Roserade so you can add Toxic Spikes (it can also learn Grassy Terrain!). Clemont: Volt Switch, you fiend! Didn't Elesa torture us enough? Well, anyway, I say add back in Magneton/Magnezone. Wulfric: Stat boosting, well got two ideas: either get a Pokemon with Snow Cloak (Mamoswine or Beartic) or can have a Weavile with Hone Claws (and Icicle Crash).
I'll wait for your suggestions on the Elite Four, though if I were to make some obvious suggestions:
While it would be have been great to do this, it would mean giving up something cool that each gym leader does, which is have a Gen 6 Pokemon as an ace. Compare to Lysandre, who so clearly wants for Pyroar to be his ace, but then completely overshadows it with a Mega Gyarados.
Of course, the obvious solution would have been to give megas to Gen 6 mons that aren't named Diancie.
The real issue imo is they decided gen 6 pokemon wouldn't get megas and there's no proper rematches with fleshed out teams where they could pull out megas. Basically what ORAS did, the only megas you see are Archie/Maxie, Wally, Steven and Brendan/May. 3 Of those are right at the end of the game (Brendan/May is literally after the credits!). But they made sure to have the elite four all pull out megas. Oh and Lissia's mega altaria but that's a whole different thing.
Eh, I'll also do the Hoenn Gym Leaders, and I'll try not to repeat a Mega I used above:
Roxanne: Tyranitar Brawly: Lopunny Wattson: Manectric (it's even his Siganture Pokemon!) Flannery: Charizard Y Norman: Kangaskhan Winona: Pidgeot Tate & Liza: Slowbro & Medicham Wallace: Milotic
"Milotic? There's no Mega Milotic". Well there should be... along with a Mega Probopass, Hariyama, Torkoal, Solrock, & Lunatone. Kind of annoyed they gave Mega Altaria to Lisia, that's supposed to be Winona's signature Pokemon (plus Lisia is related to Wallace, shouldn't she have a Water-type siganture?). Also, yes, I left out Slaking but I just feel Norman having a Mega Kangaskhan is thematically appropriate considering in the Hoenn games he's your father.
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