Monochrome_Complex

I hate critical hits in pokemon. So much.

Okay so Samson was hell. I actually had to resort to seeds for a change because hawlucha was just too OP otherwise and would birdbang everyone. I did figure out a good strat though: lead off with tangrowth(I used shiftry later attempts since he actually outspeeds hariyama)to set up grassy terrain(boosted with amp rock), then send out Gogoat with elemental seed for the def boost/health regen. Stack up 3 bulk ups(4 if hariyama KO'd shiftry right away but it only happened once), KO hariyama(with grass pelt gogoat becomes a physical fortress on grassy terrain so hariyama can hardly deal damage)  and samson sends out hawlucha. Hawlucha would always lead with swords dance, so I used leaf blade to bring him to yellow(or OHKO on crit which happened only once), next turn he would use roost which would remove his grass resist and get OHKO by leaf blade that turn. After that blaziken would show up, then mienshao, and lucario, all of whom Gogoat could take on alone provided she didn't get hit by a critical somewhere.

Problem is,  samson would nail a critical eventually every time I attempted this. Once it was a blaze kick, first time I pulled this strat off mienshao's first acrobatics was a critical. One egregious case was when hawlucha actually used flying press instead of roost, which he only did once out of the numerous times I tried this strat, and of course it was a critical. This had me suspecting that the AI *knows* when it'll get a critical and take appropriate action, as if flying press wasn't a crit it wouldn't have KO'd.  

Eventually I had a good stroke of luck and manged to get to conkledurr, landed a leaf blade to bring him to yellow, then got..crit by 9000 brick break :I Thankfully big top was long back by then and I had jumpluff use acrobatics boosted by the synthetic seed while samson healed with a potion, which didn't help him at all lol. 

But jeez that fight was frustrating. Being slightly underlevelled(63 was my highest for this battle) didn't help either, but hawlucha is just so stupid in this fight, as soon as he's on big top everything just dies. This badge took a lot of attempts, first to simply find a working strategy against hawlucha and then several attempts getting the strategy to work without being ruined by bad luck. I'm sooooo glad I got Gogoat though, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to win this fight.