Starter move sets

[Hatman]

I thought I'd make a thread for this since skimming through the desu forums I noticed poison jab isn't available nor is cross poison, not as a tm at least. This is an issue as vennipede is the starter I want and the best physical poison move it gets is poison tail. In addition, scolipede's special attack is grade A diaper batter so I was curious what people did for a scolipede move set. I thought other people may have the same issue so honestly I'm sure move sets for all the starters would be appreciated.

[Yumil]

My final moveset for scolipede was this :

Mega Horn

Protect

Toxik

Poison Tail

 

Scoli clearly hits harder on the bug side than the poison side right now, but I find some pretty good value in abusing toxik on problematic mons, since protect means a free speed boost and scolipede after one speedboost outspeeds basically everything. 

 

Before Mega Horn came along, it's main bug move used to be Steamroller, and bug Bite before that. it's not amazing but considering this is the early game/midgame 50-60 base power on the stab isn't awful.

 

Overall I'd say that while the little guy could definitely use a better poison stab, they've been a valuable asset throughout the whole run, and megahorn oneshots two of the most problematic mons of the final boss while having speed advantage so that's a pretty good plus in my book.

Edited October 20, 2020 by Yumil

[Hatman]

18 hours ago, Yumil said:

My final moveset for scolipede was this :

Mega Horn

Protect

Toxik

Poison Tail

 

Scoli clearly hits harder on the bug side than the poison side right now, but I find some pretty good value in abusing toxik on problematic mons, since protect means a free speed boost and scolipede after one speedboost outspeeds basically everything. 

 

Before Mega Horn came along, it's main bug move used to be Steamroller, and bug Bite before that. it's not amazing but considering this is the early game/midgame 50-60 base power on the stab isn't awful.

 

Overall I'd say that while the little guy could definitely use a better poison stab, they've been a valuable asset throughout the whole run, and megahorn oneshots two of the most problematic mons of the final boss while having speed advantage so that's a pretty good plus in my book.

how necessary is protect? I was thinking of running the defense curl-rollout combo and slapping on baton pass and megahorn for the last moves. Since scolipede has good physical bulk I thought this might work for a more high-risk high-reward set. By the way you're spelling toxic wrong jsyk.

[Yumil]

That's french to you, that's how they spell Toxic. Apparently I still haven't integrated the correct spelling after 300 hours of english only fangames.

 

That aside, maybe that's just me wholly underestimating rollout+defense curl (it's really possible, mind you, I'm not particularly experienced with Pokemon Strategy), but it feels like a lot of moves for a gimmick that doesn't ultimately amounts to much.

 

Like, looking at the numbers, I can see the appeal of the rollout defense curl combo, but I can't help but feel like this is a "win harder" set. The only kind of team this set beats is a team you already had the tools to crush anyway.

 

Scolipede doesn't have that much physical bulk, looking at it. Sure, if you get in defense curl first you can bring up the defense to a respectable level, but because of how PVE works (enemies being regularly ahead of you on the level side, perfect IVs being a pain to acquire while the AI has them, limited item selection), Scolipede can get outspeeded by other fast mons until speed boost kicks in, or just taken down by prority moves, and scolipede just doesn't have the bulk to take two good hits and live, even at +1 def.

 

Even so, Scolipede still has a base 60 HP, and that's really bad for a mon who's going to take at least two hits just to get in the groove (defense curl + the first rollout that's gonna hit at 60 base power, unstabbed). Like. I run a donphan in my team who has double that HP stat and 120 defense, making it bulkier on base than Scolipede after a defense curl, and it will still go down in two good hits. I know the comparison isn't perfect, but my point is that I have some trouble believing you would be able to set this combo up consistently to warrant using it, and more importantly, to use it in situations that really counts.

 

There's also the problem of rollout locking into itself and ground type moves being entirely negated by flying types and Levitate mons. sure, you can just switch out after getting the KO, but then that resets the whole combo, which limits the ideal scenario where it lets you sweep half a team with it.

 

Similarly, rollout has 90% accuracy. While this is fine for the overwhelming majority of moves, the fact rollout has to repeat itself uninterrupted for the damage multiplier to remain means that a single failed roll can drop the whole combo dead on the ground. I got majorly screwed over by that fact in the early game when rollout is venipede's only decent move. Sure, you can argue I was just unlucky, but the fact your combo has a 10% chance to crumble entirely every turn even when nothing else is going wrong adds just another layer of unreliability on it.

 

I'm also unsure of whether Baton pass would really be worth it as wasting a move slot on. I dunno how long you plan on spamming defense curl so maybe passing like +6 Defense would be pretty okay, but it goes back to the issue of consistency : I have a hard time believing the opponent isn't just going to KO scolipede before it reaches + 3 defense, on average, and passing +1 def isn't really impressive.

 

Plus, while using rollout, you can't decide to just use baton pass : you're switching immediately after the KO when the game gives you the option (so no baton pass), or you stay there and keep rolling. Situations where rollout naturally ends, and your opponent cannot kill you in retalation, and you can baton pass to someone else are way too niche to warrant a move slot, so I gotta ask : what's the case where you have a use for baton pass ? Because I'm not seeing it.

 

--------------------------

To talk about Protect, I find two uses to it that are pretty good. First, it gives you the first speed boost for free, at which point you can safely assume you outspeed everything outside of priority. It came clutch during at least two critical lategame fights for me. I said earlier Scolipede can occasionally take a hit, but the problem of a bug/poison type is that when you try to use the bug typing to check psychic types, the psychic types checks you back, and you REALLY don't want to find out you're actually the slower one of the two mons.

 

Second, it synergizes well with toxic : Provided you survive the turn you use toxic, you can just use protect to get another free turn of toxic buildup for your opponent.  Before getting mega horn, Steamroller's 30% chance of flinch can take this even further by flinching the opponent, giving you another two turns to live while toxic builds up, since it lets you reuse protect afterwards.

 

While it is not flashy, it's a really great tool to deal with almost any mon, which makes it very consistent and versatile. If Substitute was available as a TM, I'd teach it to Scolipede so it can reliably stall anything and everything the rest of the team isn't properly equipped to deal with. Mega Horn alone is more than good enough for just hitting stuff really hard, and poison tail is respectable throughout most of the game, only falling behind in the late game, and I don't really see a move that require just one slot in the moveset to be useful that would be better than this one, outside of maybe putting back steamroller to flinch my opponents, but I appreciate the occasionnal fairy-type check poison tail provides.

Edited October 21, 2020 by Yumil

[Hatman]

On 10/21/2020 at 6:17 AM, Yumil said:

That's french to you, that's how they spell Toxic. Apparently I still haven't integrated the correct spelling after 300 hours of english only fangames.

 

That aside, maybe that's just me wholly underestimating rollout+defense curl (it's really possible, mind you, I'm not particularly experienced with Pokemon Strategy), but it feels like a lot of moves for a gimmick that doesn't ultimately amounts to much.

 

Like, looking at the numbers, I can see the appeal of the rollout defense curl combo, but I can't help but feel like this is a "win harder" set. The only kind of team this set beats is a team you already had the tools to crush anyway.

 

Scolipede doesn't have that much physical bulk, looking at it. Sure, if you get in defense curl first you can bring up the defense to a respectable level, but because of how PVE works (enemies being regularly ahead of you on the level side, perfect IVs being a pain to acquire while the AI has them, limited item selection), Scolipede can get outspeeded by other fast mons until speed boost kicks in, or just taken down by prority moves, and scolipede just doesn't have the bulk to take two good hits and live, even at +1 def.

 

Even so, Scolipede still has a base 60 HP, and that's really bad for a mon who's going to take at least two hits just to get in the groove (defense curl + the first rollout that's gonna hit at 60 base power, unstabbed). Like. I run a donphan in my team who has double that HP stat and 120 defense, making it bulkier on base than Scolipede after a defense curl, and it will still go down in two good hits. I know the comparison isn't perfect, but my point is that I have some trouble believing you would be able to set this combo up consistently to warrant using it, and more importantly, to use it in situations that really counts.

 

There's also the problem of rollout locking into itself and ground type moves being entirely negated by flying types and Levitate mons. sure, you can just switch out after getting the KO, but then that resets the whole combo, which limits the ideal scenario where it lets you sweep half a team with it.

 

Similarly, rollout has 90% accuracy. While this is fine for the overwhelming majority of moves, the fact rollout has to repeat itself uninterrupted for the damage multiplier to remain means that a single failed roll can drop the whole combo dead on the ground. I got majorly screwed over by that fact in the early game when rollout is venipede's only decent move. Sure, you can argue I was just unlucky, but the fact your combo has a 10% chance to crumble entirely every turn even when nothing else is going wrong adds just another layer of unreliability on it.

 

I'm also unsure of whether Baton pass would really be worth it as wasting a move slot on. I dunno how long you plan on spamming defense curl so maybe passing like +6 Defense would be pretty okay, but it goes back to the issue of consistency : I have a hard time believing the opponent isn't just going to KO scolipede before it reaches + 3 defense, on average, and passing +1 def isn't really impressive.

 

Plus, while using rollout, you can't decide to just use baton pass : you're switching immediately after the KO when the game gives you the option (so no baton pass), or you stay there and keep rolling. Situations where rollout naturally ends, and your opponent cannot kill you in retalation, and you can baton pass to someone else are way too niche to warrant a move slot, so I gotta ask : what's the case where you have a use for baton pass ? Because I'm not seeing it.

 

--------------------------

To talk about Protect, I find two uses to it that are pretty good. First, it gives you the first speed boost for free, at which point you can safely assume you outspeed everything outside of priority. It came clutch during at least two critical lategame fights for me. I said earlier Scolipede can occasionally take a hit, but the problem of a bug/poison type is that when you try to use the bug typing to check psychic types, the psychic types checks you back, and you REALLY don't want to find out you're actually the slower one of the two mons.

 

Second, it synergizes well with toxic : Provided you survive the turn you use toxic, you can just use protect to get another free turn of toxic buildup for your opponent.  Before getting mega horn, Steamroller's 30% chance of flinch can take this even further by flinching the opponent, giving you another two turns to live while toxic builds up, since it lets you reuse protect afterwards.

 

While it is not flashy, it's a really great tool to deal with almost any mon, which makes it very consistent and versatile. If Substitute was available as a TM, I'd teach it to Scolipede so it can reliably stall anything and everything the rest of the team isn't properly equipped to deal with. Mega Horn alone is more than good enough for just hitting stuff really hard, and poison tail is respectable throughout most of the game, only falling behind in the late game, and I don't really see a move that require just one slot in the moveset to be useful that would be better than this one, outside of maybe putting back steamroller to flinch my opponents, but I appreciate the occasionnal fairy-type check poison tail provides.

so I'm using defense curl-rollout rn for tristan which I know isn't late game but more mid game, but if you d-curl rollout on the right mon. using rollout on something like Tristan's sawsbuck which can only hit for neutral damage on a non-stab move lets you rack up enough damage to sweep mons. I ended up rolling out till his lopunny came out and used fake out to save it's own life since I killed staraptor beforehand and was on the last hit, but using baton pass let me pass on speed boost to my banette to outspeed the lopunny and will-o-wisp it. I still lost because my team can't do a damn thing about his exploud, but I made it to his last two mons only losing one or two of mine. This still may be too early game but I've always been able to dent the opponents team with rollout if I used it at the right timing. As for baton pass, the defense is just a bonus for the speed boost, even if I miss rollout I can still baton pass away into something that appreciates the speed and defense like banette or even aggron or slowking if I miss late enough. Since rollout only goes for five turns it normally only kills two or three mons when I get it off, so being able to baton pass and keeping stat boosts instead of just hard swapping helps keep momentum. all of this involves the rest of my team composition and how well they set up scolipede and how well they function after it, but it gets the job done. Going into blackview I might try out another set if I REALLY think it's worth grinding the credits.

 

I wish I could of responded earlier but we've been busy moving so it was hard to find time and stuff. if I had the internet to see your response earlier I probably wouldn't have tried rollout d-curl but life happens. 

[Yumil]

Nah, don't worry about that, it's fine ! Besides, if it works out for you, foot in my mouth for me. If the option's actually viable it gives scoli some diversity.

Also, I totally forgot baton pass would pass on the speed boost too, so that's my bad, I could actually see baton pass being very worth it to use.

[Hatman]

ONE YEAR LATER I CAN CONFIRM DEFENSE CURL ROLLOUT METRONOME IS A THING.