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jaybug-jabbers · 5 months ago

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Bug Run 9: Double the Fun

Just a quick update on the postgame. I did the DLCs with my bug team. Ogerpon was a fun challenge, but the Blueberry Elites (all double battles) were even more interesting to take on.

Amarys' gimmick is a Trick Room team, although she also has a very speedy Dugtrio with Focus Sash and Stone Edge. I focused on getting rid of the Dugtrio as soon as possible, while I let her Skarm set up rocks and then phase me around with Whirlwind. Lucky for me, the stuff I was phased into was always helpful, so it really wasn't so bad. I used Wo-Chien after changing its Tera type to Bug, with the rule that it had to be Terastallized immediately. It wasn't necessary to use Wo-Chien, I just wanted to for the fun of it. It's a snail, so it's already an honorary bug type, so I wanted to give it a try. Metagross wasn't difficult for Volcarona to take care of.

After Amarys, I stomped the fairy Elite, but I don't have many notes on her, it wasn't hard. Killing Primarina with Galvantula's Thunder + Volcarona's Power Herb Solar Beam was nice. Scizor was useful for fairies, so I added it to the team, and I taught my Rabsca Gunk Shot. Have I mentioned Rabsca has amazing coverage moves? It's really handy.

Crispin was definitely a challenge for an all-bug team. I decided to bring along extra help in the form of Araquanid and Kleavor. We focused on double-targeting the Talonflame because I did NOT want it to get Sunny Day up. Had to use Spike's First Impression to break the sash and Choice Scarf my Galvantula to get the job done. But it was worth it. We cleared out the Rotom in a few turns and then I had Volcarona set up Rain Dance and started hitting with Hurricanes. The Blaziken ace was pretty scary (and it 1HKO my Araquanid with Stone Edge, arghh), but Kleavor and Lokix managed to take it out.

I was scared of Drayton because in my main playthrough he kind of kicked my ass. His team is honestly really good, better than Kieran's, that's for sure. I tried to take out Dragonite on the first turn because I didn't want him setting up Tailwind, which would be a nightmare. I didn't manage to quite take it out on turn one but thankfully it didn't Tailwind anyway. Naturally I brought my Frosmoth to this fight. I had to Tailwind with my Volcarona to prep things, then I could send Frosmoth in and start blasting with Ice Beams. This tears through a good chunk of his team (Haxorous, Sceptile) while Volcarona takes care of Kingdra. The ace is Archaludon, which sucks to go up against. I attack with Rabsca's Psychic and get another Tailwind up with Frosmoth; he sets up an Electro shot on Rabsca and then kills Frosmoth with Flash Cannon the following turn, causing my heart to drop. I send out my Slither Wing and attack with Close Combat and another Psychic from Rabsca. He cleans out Rabsca, letting me use another Close Combat. Thankfully, it's enough to KO!

(Please ignore the fact Rabsca is holding a Soft Sand, I most definitely did Not forget that Drayton would Terastallize his ace into pure Dragon type and Earth Power would be pointless to use, ahem)

Kieran wasn't too bad, especially since his Dragonite doesn't even have Tailwind. I focused on removing Dnite first anyway with Galvantula and Frosmoth. Politoed wasn't that much of an issue so we just left it for a while. Which meant Kieran had a Drizzle Politoed and an Incineroar on the field. 🙄 I have a theory that Drayton let Kieran beat him, because there's no way this kid is better at battling than Drayton. Anyway, even in the rain a Flare Blitz is gonna toast a Frosmoth, but that was fine, she did her job already. I sent out and Sword Danced with Scizor because I was confidant Galvantula could clean out Incineroar, and he did. Galvantula goes down to a Weather Ball and I use Slither Wing and Scizor to eliminate the Porygon-Z and then the Grimmsnarl. Next we focus on removing Politoed so that it's safe for my Volcarona. It's soon down to my two butterflies, Volcarona and Vivillon, who are both packing Hurricane just for Kieran's Tera-Fighting ace.

Then the rain stops. Whoops.

It's not a problem though, I already had a Light Screen up and my Vivillon, Pixel, had Compound Eyes. Her Hurricanes land true and Volcarona just uses some Overheats.

When I took on Terapagos, I maintained the same rules as I have been for the entire Bug Run: bugs only, no items during battle other than hold items and no Terastallizing unless it's Tera Bug. Terapagos requires you to fight the first phase and then rolls into the second phase without healing your party. It packs Zen Headbutt, Water Pulse, Earth Power and Tera Starstorm. I used Volcarona to solo the first phase, holding a Sitrus Berry and getting a few Quiver Dances up before blowing it out with an Overheat.

The second phase is the hard part. This battle is modeled after Tera Raid battles, and if you've played the whole game without interacting with Tera Raids at all, it can be a little confusing. The "shields" that Terapagos put up make it so all your attacks do extremely little damage. You're supposed to attack a certain number of times before you have a chance to Terastallize your pokemon; moves that are powered up with Terastallization will punch through Terapagos' shields very easily, breaking the shields and doing a bunch of damage. It will proceed to break your Tera, then put up a new shield and the process will repeat.

Some notes, though: Carmine and then Kieran will help you during this battle but their attacks do not count towards the meter that will allow you to Terastallize again. Also, if you fail to break the shields once you Tera, you'll need to cycle through two more attacks before getting another chance to Terastallize. Finally, Terapagos will go through a few type changes during this battle. It starts off as Normal type, then becomes Psychic type, then finally Water type.

Here's the problem I had: my rule of "no Tera unless it's Tera Bug." Specifically the problem was, very few of my team actually HAD Tera Bug type. Most of them had the Tera of their secondary type. It made things very difficult. What's more, my team was pretty much hyper-offense, so it had difficulty standing up to Tera Starstorm for very long. The phase when Terapagos was Psychic type was nice and easy for my bug team, of course, but the other two phases were taking too long. The photo on the left-hand side shows how close I got to beating it anyway, but I still died because once Terapagos' HP hit zero IT STILL ATTACKED ONE MORE TIME, killing my Slither Wing and whiting me out. I was confused and angry but I believe the reason this happened is because Terapagos' battle is based on the Tera Raid battles, and this can happen during Tera Raids-- bosses can get a final attack off even after their HP has been depleted. (I'm not sure why)

Eventually I gathered enough Bug tera shards to turn my Slither Wing's Tera type into Bug, because I needed more pokemon on my team who could Terastallize and break the shields. This made it much easier. (Also, specially defensive Araquanid so my entire team wasn't just sweepers certainly helped too, lol) We were able to finish the final boss of the DLCs.

^ Some clubhouse hijinks. Katy is somehow unaware I have been playing the whole game with only bug types. Also, I gave Rika one of my beloved team members, because frankly Rika deserves the world.

And that'll be it for Pokemon Scarlet's bug run! I'll close out with a shot of my battle with Nemona.

#pokemon #bug pokemon #bugrun #bugrun9 #pokemon s/v #pokemon scarlet #long post #my content

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jaybug-jabbers · 2 years ago

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Bug Run 9: Final Comments & Movesets

Hello, all! I’ve finally jotted down my comments and movesets on the team I used during my Scarlet All-Bug Challenge Run. There won’t be any descriptions of battles in here-- just a summary of the different members of the team and what they contributed. So if there’s a single post you’d like to read about my challenge run, this is probably the one to check out! ^_^

(Opening with a picture of my Frosmoth and Volcarona just because it’s so darn aesthetic.)

Lollipop the Spidops

Silk Trap/Sticky Web/X-Scissor/Counter - Leftovers

Spidops takes some patience to use. This lad has a breathtakingly slow base speed of 35, so you shouldn’t harbor any illusions that he’s going to outpace anyone anytime soon other than some rock types and little unevolved pokes.

However, Spidops’ moveset is tailored around his low speed. He has access to moves such as Assurance or Counter, which are meant to go after his opponent regardless. He also has moves that are designed to slow down opponents and drag them down to his level.

His signature move is Silk Trap, which is like Protect but will slow down the opponent if it’s a contact move. Thus, you can get a speed drop for free, basically. I made extensive use of Silk Trap, surprisingly. For example, when I was in a desperate situation where even my fastest pokemon could not outspeed an opponent (such as when Vivillon couldn’t outspeed to use her Stun Spore), Lollipop could get in there and slow it down enough for a Stun Spore. The move is also helpful when you’re dealing with pokes who are just a little too fast for Spidops.

Spidops was also very good at taking some hard hits. He was bulky enough that Counter was a very useful and viable move on him. This was important, because I didn’t have a ton of bugs on my team that were tanky, so his role was crucial. His bulk also meant he could almost always get Sticky Web on the field, despite being slow himself. This role was important because several of my pokes were on the slower side, and thus they needed that extra help.

When combined with Leftovers, Lollipop could get in, slow down his immediate opponent, Sticky Web for the rest of the team, and then surivive long enough either to hit with Counter or a super-effective move of my choice. Spidops has a rather wide pool of coverage moves, including Trailblazer, Brick Break, Shadow Claw, Rock Tomb, Poison Jab and Aerial Ace. With Silk Traps in between moves to regain as much lefties as possible, he can wear down his opponents and often come out on top. And when he failed to do so, he’d slowed things down enough that his teammembers could easily come in and finish the job.

Favorite Alternative Moves: Trailblaze, Rock Tomb, Toxic Spikes

Pixel the Vivillon

Energy Ball/Hurricane/Stun Spore/Quiver Dance - Wise Glasses

I have a bit of a soft spot for Vivillon, it being one of my favorite bug pokes in general. I’ve especially felt close to it after my Gen 6 All-Vivillon challenge run. It’s a plucky pokemon, and while its base stat total is not particularly high by any means, it manages to get a lot more done than perhaps it should. That is to say, Vivillon can really punch above its weight and surprise you.

In the early game, Vivillon’s speed meant it outpaced nearly all its foes. Armed with a selection of Powders, Vivillon could then serve the extremely utilitarian functions of Stun Spore to make a dangerous foe manageable for the rest of my team, or she could instead choose to poison and use Protect to stall out her opponents. Either way, her speed meant that for a large portion of the game, she was essential to the team in her role. Also, Vivillon learns high basepower moves very early on when compared to other species, which meant in the early game, she also was my go-to special attacker. She also was fast enough to run from wild pokemon, haha, so she was often in the lead slot of my party, both for coping with wild pokemon and with trainer battles.

When you reach mid-game in Scarlet, you gain access to other bug special attackers, namely Frosmoth and Rabsca, who both boast higher Spec Attack and tankier Special Defense. However, Vivillon still outspeeds both of those teammates, so her ability to get in and fire first meant she remained important on the team. Even when facing opponents with terrifying 4x effective Rock moves, Vivillon often could kill them first and succeed where Frosmoth would fail.

During the late-game, you would think a pokemon that’s found in the Route 1 tall grass would start to struggle. But Pixel remained useful all the way to the end, largely due to the wonderful STAB Hurricane + Compound Eyes + Decent Speed combination. When she picks up Hurricane in the late game, she’s scoring essential kills still, and she also had important coverage moves such as Energy Ball to deal with Ground/Rock/Water pokemon. It does sound strange a Flying/Bug type was still going toe-to-toe with Ground and Rock types, but like I said from the start-- Vivillon can punch above its weight and really surprise you.

Favorite Alternative Moves: Poison Powder, Protect, Psychic, Hyper Beam

Hunter the Lokix

Lunge/Sucker Punch/Throat Chop/Axe Kick - Black Glasses/Silver Powder

Hunter was my second physical attacker. While Spidops is a physically and specially defensive tank (and uses his bulk as a weapon, such as with Counter), Lokix is about being fast and hitting hard. He had synergy with the rest of the team because the others could do the main bulk of the work, fall, and Hunter could come in as a guaranteed revenge-killer, or the others could run more support roles (Powders, Screens, Weather, Tailwind, etc) and then he could come in, terastallize, and just sweep. Because his defenses were pretty low, it was all about setting Hunter up in a position where he can wreck face uninhibited. He also does not have a particularly large coverage movepool, so he could not always just sweep a foe’s team-- which was why he often ended up revenge killing after a teammate had done most of the damage with their SE moves.

That said, Hunter did have access to one kind of coverage move that proved especially essential-- fighting moves. Low Kick, Double Kick, and Low Sweep were important for hitting a huge chunk of opponents. Late-game, he is one of the very few pokemon to learn the brand-new Axe Kick, which was his most prized move for taking out opponents that would otherwise probably completely wreck me.

It should also be noted that for most of my playthrough, Hunter was the fastest poke on my team. As such, I gave him Scary Face and that occasionally played a vital role when Vivillon couldn’t outspeed and use her Stun Spore. I should also note he was the one I tererastallized the most, for the added boost on his bug attacks but also to avoid foes wanting to exploit his Dark-type weaknesses.

Favorite Alternative Moves: Scary Face, Detect (for tox stall)

Snowglobe the Frosmoth

Protect/Reflect/Ice Beam/Infestation - Never-Melt Ice

For most of the game, Frosmoth was my biggest Special Attacker. She was much slower than Vivillon but her Special Defense was much higher, so in some situations, Vivillon prevailed, but in others, I needed Frosmoth if I had to punch harder. In those cases, she could sometimes absorb a special hit and live long enough to clear her foe out. However, she was pretty frail defensively, so often her teammates needed to slow opponents down first to help her out. Once they did, Snowglobe did very important work. She was quite specialized and focused pretty much on just getting her Ice hits, but that was quite frankly just fine-- Ice is fantastic offensively, especially for a bug team, taking out the very dangerous dragons, flying types and ground pokemon that were so common in Scarlet (while also not needing to keep any Bug moves on her roster, since Ice hits Grass too).

I did play around with a few other strategies on occasion. For the Poison or Steel types I couldn’t poison, I would sometimes use Snowglobe as a pseudo-tox staller, using Infestation and screens and Protect instead. Sometimes she traded off with Pixel to combine both poison and infestation stalling. I also had Blizzard and Snowscape on her for a short stint.

Primarily, though, Snowglobe’s job was to use Ice Beam and the rest of the time, she played support, getting Screens up, Tailwind, and the likes.

Favorite Alternative Moves: Quiver Dance, Light Screen, Tailwind

Fireball the Rabsca

Psychic/Power Gem/Bug Buzz/Earth Power - Twisted Spoon

I’m gonna be honest. I never really figured out how to use Rabsca. I think I somehow got it into my head that he was kinda frail, but that’s just not true, as his base Spec D is higher than Frosmoth’s, and his Phys D is also higher than anyone else on the team (even more than Spidops due to a Relaxed nature). Part of the issue is that he’s so gosh-darn slow, the slowest on my team (even outslowing Spidops, again, due to being Relaxed), and it made it hard for me to figure out how to best use him. I understood how to use Spidops with his slowness, but with Fireball, he kept being outsped and killed before he could do his job. I think the other issue is that Rabsca has a lot of weaknesses (six total), since Bug/Psychic is not a great type combo defensively, so he fell to a lot of moves. I think those issues, plus me getting it into my head that he was kind of hard to use, made me under-utilize the poor guy for quite a while.

Which is a shame, because I do think there probably are good ways to use this poke, and he has such a cool design! He can learn Trick Room, but I didn’t really have the team composition to run Trick Room. He also can learn the new Speed Swap, which offers another option to deal with his slowness, but it was difficult to find an opportunity to use that move. I dunno.

The most exciting thing he had going for him was he could learn Earth Power, which filled out an otherwise glaring hole in my team’s coverage moves. Being able to hit Electric and Fire types hard was great, and hitting Steel types on their typically weaker side is an added bonus. Sadly, though, Fireball wasn’t the reliable counter to Electric and Fire types that I wanted him to be. It just was a rare moment he truly could do the job I sent him out to do.

Still. I don’t blame Fireball for that. I blame myself. I simply have yet to figure out how to best use him on the team. Hopefully I will get the hang of it during the post game.

Ra the Volcarona

Fiery Dance/Bug Buzz/Overheat/Quiver Dance - Charcoal

Ra is an interesting case, because for most of the game, he was a Larvesta. The thing about Volcarona is that it’s a late bloomer-- it evolves at the incredibly late level of 59, similar to a pseudo-legendary. And also similar to a pseudo-legendary, it has an incredibly high base stat total (550), making it the single strongest bug pokemon other than Mythicals, Megas or Ultra Beasts.

As such, I decided it would be rather boring to have Larvesta for most of my game. So I left Ra on the bench during that time, and my Vespiquen filled out my team instead. Then, when I was reaching the final gauntlet of the game, I took Larvesta back and did some power-levelling so I could place him back on the team. The “Let’s Go” feature is very handy for power-levelling, as it turns out (as well as a trusty Lucky Egg, of course). I sat there and let Ra go to town on a patch that had lots of Psychic and Grass pokemon. And then, in the middle of the Elite Four battles, Ra finally evolved.

It’s honestly probably for the best that Volcarona evolves so late. If I had him on my team early on, things would have been far too easy, I suspect. This was supposed to be a challenge run, after all, not a spreedrun where I sweep everything with Volcarona. When Ra finally did evolve, he was able to join the team without hogging all of the limelight. I used him for important moments but I don’t feel I over-relied on him. And personally, that’s the experience I prefer. I enjoy a team that supports each other, rather than doing everything with a single poke. As mighty as Volcarona is, he is intensely vulnerable to Rock moves, and his movepool for coverage moves is pretty shallow. So he really does benefit from his teammates making up for his weaknesses.

From a technical perspective, though, Ra was definitely my ace on the team.

Ruby the Vespiquen

Roost/Air Slash/Venoshock/Toxic - Shell Bell

Hold on, seven pokemon?? That’s illegal! Well, it seemed unfair to not include Ruby, since she was such an important member of my team through most of the run. I caught her extremely early on, in the South Province at level 9 when she was just a Combee. (Yes, you could find Vespiquens alongside the Combee in this area, but I have a level cap if you’ll recall, so I wanted to start off with a low level). She was the third member of my team, so yeah, she was with me a very long time.

Vespiquen is a very tanky build; slow and focused on both physical and special defense. As such, she was great to have around when I needed someone who could absorb some hits. She’s also a mixed attacker, so she has a lot of versatility. Her movepool lets her capitalize on that, offering coverage in the form of Sludge Bomb, Venoshock, Toxic, Toxic Spikes, Power Gem, and Hex; she can thus work offensively but also set up hazards and tox-stall her enemies, with Roost really enhancing her stalling tactics. Ruby remained very dependable throughout my run, and quite frankly, having such a tanky bug helped a lot when so many of my teammbers were awfully squishy when it came to defenses. Her Power Gem was a very exciting coverage move for a team that just did not have very many, and her poison moves came in handy for Fairy types, such as Ortega and Penny’s ace.

Favorite Alternative Moves: Attack Order, Power Gem

Team Fun Facts

This team was pretty terrible when it came to its defensive type coverage. Bug types have three weaknesses, and the team did almost nothing to cover for it; we were all very vulnerable to Flying and Fire for 99% of the run (when Volcarona joined, he offered a single Neutral to Fire) and we were incredibly weak to Rock the entire run. As such, our best defense was a strong offense, wiping out dangerous pokes before they had a chance to sweep through our team.

Nemona’s Lycanroc still terrifies me, though. 😂

#pokemon #bugrun #bugrun9 #pokemon playthroughs #pokemon s/v #pokemon scarlet #bug pokemon #long post

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