Terra's Palossand?

[Guest Relinquished]

I don't know if it's a bug, so i will take the safe route and simply ask here, about it. It behaved really strangely. Some things i noticed, while battling its owner, very recently, in a new save, at episode 18:

 

1. First thing, it has great special defense and pumps it up further, with amnesia. Did battle with it, using Caturne and Energy Ball. Normal hits did very small damage. The occasional critical hit, though, depleted almost ALL of its life, as if it ignored its extremely buffed Special Defense. 

2. It kept using Shadow Ball against my Cacturne, which wasn't effective, since it is part Dark type. Then, i switched over to Jynx, in order to Perish Song + Mean Look it, because all my Energy Balls were wasted. But instead of KOing poor Jynx with Shadow Ball, it opted for using Giga Drain, only... Resulting in its death.

 

Is this behavior normal? Or the AI was "wrong"? The damage, numbers and calculations are right?

[Des Teto]

1. It just the way that critical hits work. A crit gets past defensive stats boosts. Go Bulbapedia for more details.

2. Pallosand has Energy Ball, Shadow Ball, Shore Up and Amnesia. So, against your Cacturne, Shadow Ball is the best choice.

2.bis Amnesia boosts Sp.Att too in this field since it works with Gen1 mechanics. So, when Pallosand was at +2/+4/+6 and it just assumed that Giga Drain was enough to K.O. Jynx, which worked apparently.

[Guest Relinquished]

1 hour ago, Des Teto said:

1. It just the way that critical hits work. A crit gets past defensive stats boosts. Go Bulbapedia for more details.

2. Pallosand has Energy Ball, Shadow Ball, Shore Up and Amnesia. So, against your Cacturne, Shadow Ball is the best choice.

2.bis Amnesia boosts Sp.Att too in this field since it works with Gen1 mechanics. So, when Pallosand was at +2/+4/+6 and it just assumed that Giga Drain was enough to K.O. Jynx, which worked apparently.

This settles it, then... Wow, thanks for the inside of mechanisms, i wasn't that deep into them. Only one problem remains... By resulting into its death, i didn't mean Jynx's, but Palossand's! Giga Drain did only 1/3 damage of Jynx's total HPs and for some reason, Palossand got stuck with this move, against it. If it did use Shadow Ball instead, then my Jynx would have been a goner! The problem here, is Palo NOT using Shadow Ball, but Giga Drain, on J!

[Nicocchi]

@Relinquished You say you managed to use up all your Energy Ball PP? Shadow Ball has 15PP while Energy Ball has 10. If you were weaving in some Spiky Shields or other moves there it's possible Palossand ran out of Shadow Ball PP and thus had to resort to Giga Draining your Jynx.

 

EDIT: See Azery's answer.

[Azeria]

Crits ignore stat buffs. On glitch field, Psychic is Immune to Ghost so Giga Drain was its best move to use.

[Nicocchi]

6 minutes ago, A̸͖̬͎̖̯̼̫͍ͣ̾ͧ͆͋͘͟ͅžͫ͗̈̅͗ͯ said:

Crits ignore stat buffs. On glitch field, Psychic is Immune to Ghost so Giga Drain was its best move to use.

Oh yeah, I always forget Psychic was immune to Ghost in gen 1. This is it then

[Guest Relinquished]

Thanks! Whoopsie, sorry, i forgot to do my homework... Then that is why... Good thing too, since a well timed ghost move, usually destroys weak (defensively) psychic pokemon.