Tomas Elliot

The moment Greninja was given one single (physical!) coverage move, people started going into pure hysteria about it, resulting in one of the quickest ban in history. The same people decided that having Volcanion begin its run in OU was a good idea, and haven't yet started to suspect test it. Smogon everyone! Now that I got that out of my system, I need to ask: what is the purpose of this team? Because while I can see it doing a great job of spinning a silly meme, and while it seems perfect for being slaughtered horribly by every team that carries a bulky SR setter and Volcanion (I.E. every single team on SD right now), I am having troubles to see how it deals with the part about, you know, winning. Problems I see in order of appearance: 1) Latias is under a horrible amount of pressure. It checks every single Pokemon that is problematic for this team... But it does just that. It is basically a go out, tank, Roost, Defog, come back kind of deal. Which is all fine and dandy if the opponent's team carries ONE Pokemon that is problematic to you, as in, JUST Volcanion or JUST Tornadus-T or JUST Keleo (listing this over Gyarados because, well, how the hell is Gyarados giving you problems?). But if the opponent is running any two from this list at the same time (which nowadays means, Volcanion and another one), Latias will be switching in and out an awful lot, eventually getting its lefties knocked off and its pretty skin scorched by hot steam. That will wear you down fast, I tell you... And the set you gave her does her no favor, either. While I can kinda sorta understand the choice of HP fighting, it being your sole offensive move means that, while you are not a lot better at taking on prospective Pursuit trappers, you are also a lot worse at checking the things Latias is supposed to check. Sub CM Keldeo still exists, and once it has foiled your Toxic with Substitute, it will soon get to the point where you either give it a free turn by switching out, or you utterly fail to break the sub with your non-STAB, low-BP move. And then the little pony will wipe out your team, because Latias is your sole realistic out to it. So yeah, Latias is a good way of dealing with the Pokemon that give you grief, but she cannot do it alone. 2) Keldeo is good per se, but I see it having an issue with the synergy of the team, which I will explain in more details later on. 3) Magnezone is good, moving on. 4) My problem with CBTar is that Tyranitar does not NEED to lock itself into a move (and locking yourself into Pursuit essentially means, their next Pokemon is free to set up at its leisure) to Pursuit-trap people. Heck I remember running a set for Ttar that had no Atk investiments a while back, and it was still enough to kill the Latis with Pursuit. So yeah, consider Assault Vest over Choice Band, retaining the same EVs and moves. You will still have enough firepower to kill people, you will hve the luxury of choosing which move you want to use each turn, and between AV and Sand, you will have enough SpDef to tank any non-Focus Blast special move in existance, thus giving you a way of assisting Latias in her eternal struggle to sponge damage. Basically, right now Latias has to switch into any problematic move: with the change I am suggesting, Ttar could serve as an alternate switch-in for some threats (Mega Manectric, for starters), thus making it easier to keep Latias healthy. 5) Keldeo, Serperior, Pinsir: see, this is where you lost me. So, you have two sweepers who need to set up, albeit in different ways, in order to get going: one physical and one special. On top of that, you have an extra special sweeper (scarfed, at that) in Magnezone. What do you accomplish by adding a third special sweeper? What does it do to help the team win? What are the threats it can defeat, or at least cripple, that the rest of the team couldn't already handle? You have physical Fighting coverage on Pinsir (incidentally, consider Storm Throw over Close Combat: when you factor in the guaranteed critical it has the same damage output, but bypasses screens and doesn't debulk you), and between Magnezone and Serperior, you achieve a special coverage that makes Water absolutely irrelevant: Scald's burn chance doesn't justify, by itself, carrying a coverage option you simply don't need. Wouldn't it be wiser to have a defensive Pokemon here, something that can switch into some of those nasty threats that give your grief? As dirty as I feel even suggesting it, Quagsire could be a good match for this team: the Unaware variant stops the Mega Gyarados you are (somehow) so afraid of, while the Water Absorb variant is a great out to Volcanion and enemy Keldeo... Which means you can switch Quag, and not Latias, into those: suddenly, the main problem of this team (Latias being under way too much pressure) is solved. Plus, Quag has so few viable moves that you can easily give it Toxic and make it the status spreader of your team, allowing you to run some much needed STAB move on Latias (Psyshock being the top option, for the aforementioned CM Keldeo which still exists). TL;DR: Psyshock over Toxic on Latias, AV over CB on Ttar, and Quagsire over Keldeo.

While probably not directly applicable to my situation, these are cool ideas too. And I am finding the article you posted to be interesting, as well. You sure have given me some things to ponder

Yes I know the CR should be evaluated in relation to the party... But well, the only thing the DMG says on the matter is, and I quote: "A monster should prove a challenging, but not unreasonably dangerous fight, if it CR is equal to the average level of the party". Now, the average level of a party of freshly created Lv 6 characters is 6. You might have noticed that the monsters I am considering have CR of 5 and 4 respectively, so by following the letter of the DMG, they should be considered "easy fights". But the former resists physical attacks and the latter resists pretty much everything, so yeah, I am inclined to think that a mere numerical approach ("this monster's CR is lower than the party's average level, so they'll be fine") isn't exatly a smart idea. I am not registered to tht website, but I am familiar with it (big fan of OotS yo) and visit it regularly. I have read most of their guides concerning 5e, in fact. You do make a valid point concerning fun, tho: basically what you are saying is that monsters with resistances should be left for when the party has ways of circumverting them. My only fear is that, well, magical items are going to be featured rather sparingly, so by the time they become available in bulk, the party might have become way too strong for a Helmed Horror... Which in turn would mean missing out on a couple of thematically fitting monsters, that could have made for interesting boss fights. Do you think that lowering the allowed starting level to, say, 4, and toning down the planned difficulty of the whole thing accordingly, could be a solution? To give people more time to get their hands on magical items, I mean. While waiting for an answer, I will check out this link you posted

... But there is a problem. While my ideas are always sound characterization-wise and plot-wise, and while I am in possession of both the DMG and the Monster Manual (which grants me quite a wide knowledge of the various critters that exist in the game), the problem is that I lack any actual experience DM-ing a battle. Which means that, based solely on my gaming mentality and on the impressions I get from reading the abilities of this or that monster, I might be inclined to consider a certain critter to be an "easy fight", only for it to turn out much harder for the players to beat... Or I might have the reverse issue, overestimating an opponent that is actually quite easy. Long story short: following a long reasoning, I narrowed down my choice for a Warm-Up Boss to two possible alternatives, an Earth Elemental or a Helmed Horror accompanied by two Animated Armors. I need help from the many people with D&D experience in this forum to help me choose, with the considerations below in mind: 1) Characters in the party start at level 6 (the plan is to get all the way up to 20 eventually, and starting from 1 to get there seemed kinda unrealistic), and are created with a 27 points buy system. 2) For reasons it would be too long to explain right now, our heroes end their first mission chasing down this evil wizard guy, who is a notorious creator of constructs and generally likes employing minions. He is destined to become a recurring villain, so this is why the choice for a boss fight is between Earth Elemental and Helmed Horror: he either throws his strongest construct available at the party, or uses Conjure Elemental to summon the big guy. Either way, he gets away while the party is busy fighting. 3) I was told to use the "Challenge Rating" parameter as reference, but those honestly seem pretty out there: the Helmed Horror resists two thirds of the types of damage an adventuring party (made of characters that were just created, and thus have no magic items) can throw at it, and has no weaknesses, yet its CR is somehow lower than that of the Earth Elemental, despite the fact that the latter, as big and strong as it is, as a MASSIVE Achilles heel which is ridiculously easy to abuse (there is a Sorcerer in the party, and those have 3 Thunder-based spells to choose from at character creation... And I am pretty sure our Sorcerer did pick at least two of them). Basically, the choice is between a guy with a crapton of HPs and a very strong attack, but weakness to magic in general (Thunder vulnerability side, it is hit normally by almost all other forms of magic, AND it has crappy Dex, so for example everyone's favorite Fireball is a no-brainer against it), and a guy with significantly less HPs and damage output, but resistance to pretty much everything a party without magic items can throw at it. What do I do?

Do you really need a reason to love this guy? Just look at it! And competitively speaking, it is the ultimate gimmick Pokemon. Designed to do one thing and one thing only, but boy, is it good at it... Except now its gimmick has been murdered by Smogon <.<

What is this I don't even

I have sad news, everyone. For a plethora of reasons it would be too long to explain here, we have decided that, for the time being, Project Se7en needs to be put on hold. Azery is currently unable to provide the level of dedication this project would need (and not for lack of trying), and the rest of us have exams approaching. We have therefore decided that myself, Nova and Zim, the ones who still have enough free time and dedication to spare, will take some time off, to discuss the future, come up with ideas, and see where we can go from this. We will consider the resources at our disposal, and formulate a plan that can account for them: if we see that there are the conditions for a complete revamp of Pokemon Se7en starting in september, this project will be back on track then. But for now, to keep this project running, there are simply too many things to do. And with exams approaching fast, we cannot possibly take care of them all. We need to lay low, survive our exams, then discuss matters again over the summer, and hopefully be back on track in september. It is a pity, specially considering how close we were to completing Episode 2, but it is what it is. I can personally promise you this: we do not intend to squander the unprecedented support you guys so generously granted us. Myself, Zim and Nova are setting out on a MISSION to refocus our abilities, and create a new adventure that can begin in september, be it a complete revamp of Se7en, or an entirely different project. We must do it for you, for all the people who stuck with us for so long. We owe you this much. So anyway, the situation now is quite tense, as you can imagine: the wrong comment by an overzealous fan might very well transform what should be a tearful goodbye (mind you, a goodbye, not a farewell) into the kind of flame-fest that is unfortunately way too common in this community. As a precautional measure, I am locking this topic. But with God as my withness, I will try my hardest to make it so I can reopen it, or start a fresh new one, by the end of the summer. Until then.

Well talk about the necrobump. But welp, I suppose I should be glad PKNA is going to the states at long last... And thanks for your words Halloween: yes, getting people worldwide to know about this little trivia was exactly my goal with this. Although I am a bit sad that you would say that PKNA is "not quite your style" ;-;

This is a very touchy topic for me at the moment, so I will force myself to stay out of this. I doubt I'd be able to post impartial, unbiased opinions and/or to avoid flamewars should someone press one of my (numerous, in this particular field) buttons with a questionable comment. I will say this much: the idea of having something like EU is, on paper, very good. But lots of mistakes were made along the way, and there are people who, to protect their own interests, are making sure EU wil never reach its full potential.

I had no idea there was a video version, nice founding Nova!

OMG this got so much attention while I was asleep! Well, I am glad you people enjoyed it. Considering how old the whole thing is, it would have been a pity if it had just ended up forgotten... Never forger Edgardo and A Guy Called Squid! ... And Goldnharl too.