Is it just me or is Tristan extremely difficult?

[Reispher]

Hello, everyone.

 

So, I just defeated the 6th gym leader and I cannot help thinking about how difficult the fight with Tristan was. While I found all the other gym leaders to be on a similar level to Reborn gym leaders, Tristan was on a Reborn Redux level for me. Well, the flying-type gym leader was also very difficult but I was lucky enough to get Electabuzz with Hidden Power - Ice to beat her. So, I was wondering if Tristan was so difficult for everyone or only for me? And yes, I suppose he would be much easier with speed boost Blaziken but I picked another starter.

[Yumil]

He was a bit of a roadblock for me but he was just reborn-level to me. Starter was Protean Greninja, for the record, but I don't remember him doing anything noteworthy in that fight. If memory serves, the two mons who really made a difference in that fight for me were raichu and most importantly, Fluffly Bewear, who's available in the wild right before addenfall. I struggled more on the flying leader before him, and on the electrical gym leader right after. 

 

To generalize to other feedback i've seen from people, struggling on tristan is far from unheard of, but he's rarely THAT harder than the rest.

[Reispher]

I like how everyone has different experiences with gym leaders in these games. For me, the electric type gym leader was the easiest of all gym leaders in desolation so far. I also used Bewear so I had no problem with Lopunny. However the Exploud with boomburst destroyed almost anything I tried to use against it. And Pyroar also gave me hard time.  However, I think that the biggest problem with Tristan is the limited options you have at that point in game: you can not breed, relearn moves, EV train etc. 

[Lucifer Morningstar]

Tristen has thus far been the most difficult gym leader for me as well. Pyroar specifically would one-shot my entire team with Flamethrower and/or Hyper Voice. 

 

I ended up having to use 3 Pokemon to take the damn thing down. 
Phase 1: Take out Sawsbuck with my own Pyroar then stay in and use Noble Roar on his Pyroar. This allowed my Nidoking to survive one Flamethrower. 
Phase 2: My Pyroar goes down on the second turn and I swap into Nidoking and use Earth Power. Which for some reason the damn thing survived with ONE FUCKING HP. Even with a special attack nature it couldn't one shot the fucker! 
Phase 3: Swap out into Houndoom to heal Nidoking and do as much damage as possible while Tristan Hyper Potion-ed at least twice. 
Phase 4: Houndoom eventually goes down and Nidoking finished Pyroar with another Earth Power. 

 

In retrospect, I might have made that a lot harder on myself than it needed to be. Camerupt might have been better than both Pyroar and Nidoking (though Camerupt would have replaced Pyroar as I still needed Nidoking for Wigglytuff). 
Poliwrath (which is actually still a Poliwhirl but I would have evolved if had I used it, I have a water stone) might have worked as well, I had considered using Rain Dance on Pyroar but figured it would just switch to Hyper Voice which also wiped me out. The AI is Reborn intelligent in this game. I swear sometimes it even seems to predict what I'm switching into.  

 

Though he made the strange decision in most attempts to use Close Combat rather than U-Turn with Staraptor on my Manantric which Manantric was able to survive in the yellow and the Special Defense drop allowed me to one shot it with Discharge. 

 

Revenge Toxicroak was my answer for Mega Lopunny. 

 

Spoiler

All that and apparently the badge isn't real despite it unlocking the next cap because Tristen is some kind of ghost! I'm interested to find out what happens with that. I'm about to battle Nova in Cellia Manor.