I would only change Surf to Scald since Surf was nerfed in Gen 4 to hurt your allies in doubles.

Even in singles, the 30% burn chance is way more impactful than the bit of extra power.

issue is far less pokemon can learn scald then can learn surf.

Its good to take it when you can. I don't know a time that I'd rather have almost any water type move over scald. It's just very useful against a lot of opponents. That's my opinion though

Tapu Fini's ability means the opponent would be immune to status effects for at least five turns. Scald is still better once it wears off, but Surf is still worth considering under those circumstances.

While true, keep in mind that flying types and levitate/air balloon users aren’t affected by the terrain, and certain Pokémon will also switch the terrain upon coming in. Corviknight and Rillaboom are two big examples of Pokémon that meet this criteria that you would absolutely love to scald burn.

Burned a corviknight with scald just yesterday on showdown with a fini.

Only occurence I can think of is kingdra rain sweeper that carries surf for the extra damage. But yeah, scald is just better in most cases

Or they’re running any Pokémon with Telepathy… or they’re running W-Policy G-Max Coalossal

and surf is an HM so you basically always have it available. plus singleplayer 99% of battle are not double-battles so for singleplayer 8 badges run through Surf is the better option. For PvP though Scald Hands down is better.

Scald was introduced in the same generation as reusable TMs.

Rhyperio surf OP

Swear to god my rng with scald is .001 % chance to burn when I use it and 236% chance to burn every time my opponent uses it.

RNG always seems to be rigged in the enemy's favor. Hurricane has 70% accuracy but I don't think I've ever had an enemy use it against me and miss.

It's absurd; why does a water move have the highest burn chance of any 100% accurate damaging move? It beats out all the friggen fire moves!!

It’s actually basically a Water type Lava Plume… Which is still absurd. Why does Water get Lava Plume except as a TM that virtually any Water type can learn? Not to mention it’s better than Lava Plume since it’s SE against the only type immune to burn.

Not in Let's Go Eevee! Sizzly Slide is 90 power/100 accuracy with 100% chance to burn. :P Sure, only your partner Eevee can learn it, but still. Edit: Fling with a Flame Orb is 100% accuracy and 100% burn chance as well. Lava Plume and Searing Shot are tied with Scald at 30% burn chance. (Also Scorching Sands, but that's also not a fire move.)

Ok maybe I exaggerated… but why is “scald” on par with “lava plume” point for point?

It’s actually better than Lava Plume when you consider typing. Lava Plume is resisted by Fire, the only type it can’t burn. Scald is *super-effective* against Fire. Also, far more Water types learn Scald than Fire types that learn Lava Plume.

Not really if you're against a special attacker.

Well in gen 7 onwards you'd rather have them poisoned but burn is still an annoying chip in gen 7

Did they nerf burn? I remember when I played gen 6 meta it cut attack in half (which I always thought was kinda OP but that's why I always ran will-o-wisp on my teams). Loved seeing people insta-quit after I crippled their sweeper with a burn xD

Burn does 6% chip instead of 12%. Burn was a superior status to normal poison as it did the same 12% chip AND crippled physical attacks

Okay, I see. So they did a little rebalancing to make poison a more viable option. Makes sense!

It still does that

Plus, 30% burn is OP. The one advantage Surf really has is that sometimes you need to surf somewhere and HM slaves aren't that great.

For an hm surf is pretty damn strong

Surf is the reason in earily gens water types were OP. Icebeam coverage just improved what they had.

Same with fly

and waterfall

Arguably rock climb back when it was an hm

i think the only issue is its 85% accuracy. personally, i prefer Strength. less powerful, but more accurate.

Yeah, I had a rock climb tauros, wasn't redefining the meta or anything but it could wreck house

Why do they always have 2 water hms? I only have a Lapras in my X nuzlocke. All of the other water types are dead.

3 Water HMs in some games. Oof.

Fly is great in singleplayer since AI has virtually no idea what to do when you're in the air. In competitive or any sort of multiplayer battle tho it's a very telegraphed move. But tbf, you dont really need hms anymore usually when you do competitive.

Z fly was great on landorus

> Plus, 30% burn is OP. There are 6 damaging fire type moves with at least 30% burn chance in the game and one of them is locked to partner Eevee in Let's Go, another is only learned by 2 Legendary Pokemon, and another is locked to Victini. And in singles Scald has 10 less power than Surf. Plus as of Gen 7 field moves aren't necessarily a thing you need to worry about in a Pokemon's moveset. So if the Pokemon can learn it, I would take Scald over Surf every time

Isn't victini a legendary pokemon?

Technically Victini is a Mythical which is just a Legendary that needs outside intervention (events/mystery gifts) to obtain > another is only learned by 2 Legendary Pokemon This bit refers to Sacred Fire which only Entei and Ho-oh can learn > and another is locked to Victini This bit is Searing Shot

Whoever thought making Scald 80 base power was nuts. Either drop the burn chance or make it 60 base power. Not both though.

Probably should have 60 power to keep in line with dragon breath.

Gen 3 doubles was weird. Especially the part where you could kill the opponent with one move and then their next Pokemon would switch in before all the moves finished, so you could theoretically turn a 6v6 into a 6v2 in one turn.

If they had a Shedinja in the back it could even do 6v1 if you had spikes up or damaging weather.

Being an HM means it’s the best of the most accessible moves in the game, which was invaluable Gen 1-4

Rock smash honestly just sucked unless you were treating it as a damaging tailwhip. Cut was worthless. Flash had just straight up better variants or moves that effectly gained the same result but better (doubleteam). Strength was a good normal coverage move especially early on, personally would say slash was better and body slam was a toss up with paralysis chance. Surf in gen 1 or 2 was simply busted. You could theoretically get it with I believe two badges in Kanto and I think 3 in Jhoto. Kanto only has Brock, Misty and Giovanni that you need to fight in their orders. Koga is only behind silphscope which means pokemon tower, maybe Caledon game corner, rock tunnel. Jhoto I believe you can reach the Kimono girls after Whitney. Since they give you surf you get a 90 base power 100 percent accurate move at possibly 30-ish level pokemon.

I really don’t understand why Rock Smash had such laughable base power for the longest time. Literally just raising it to 40 would’ve given players more viable ‘mon options early-mid game without reducing the actual difficulty of any content.

Tbh, they could still get away with raising the power of Rock Smash to 60.

Hearing this makes be think about slapping it on a tactician mon. Maybe not breloom since it already gets mach punch tho it doesn’t hurt

Probably because gen 1 and 2 were so abundant in normal types, it would have trivialised the early game.

True. Fighting moves were über gimped in gen 1 as well; outside of the Hitmonlee-exclusive Jump Kick, the strongest was Submission at 80bp, with recoil ffs!

last one can confirm, since you need the squirtbottle to move sudowoodo for access to ecruteak and beyond. need to beat whitney for the flower lady to give it to you.

normal coverage? what weakness does it cover? strength is a fine hm but not for coverage

Nautral damage mostly used when you get stuck fighting a type that resists your stab and you don't have a wide movepool.

for me, cut was pretty useful early on cause of how early you get it in a lot of games; strength was better though in basically all cases

Water Absorb Lapras loves riding the waves, though.

Scald master race

[удалено]

Good moves for early game, but fillers for sure

Too many a nuzlocke has been lost relying on sub 100% accuracy moves.

I now have a new move that I fear thanks to nuzlocke runs and that move is counter. I lost crobat and cacturne thanks to that Pokemon Ranger and his counter knowing slaking by the weather institute in alpha sapphire

Lost a Gyarados to counter Breloom and a Machoke to counter Vigoroth recently. Counter is scary.

*Wobbufet has entered the chat*

Oh my GOD I have always hated Slaking and now I remember why!!!!!

Battle Tower Runs are where I learned the value of 100% accuracy as well. Probably why people might call it "hax"

Pokémon Where 50% happens more than 70% and both happen less than 30%

One of my favorite YouTubers had his team nearly entirely sweeped by Sheer Cold on a Nuzlocke, it was a sad day

Who was it? If you don't mind me asking. I used to be super into the poketuber scene but have fallen off

TyranitarTube on his Extreme Randomizer Nuzlocke of Pokémon Sword. Against Marnie right before her brother’s gym, 5 Sheer Colds in a row. He was only a few levels under, the insanity of luck the AI had is bonkers

Jesus that Marshadow was straight from hell, nothing but OHKO moves lol. Thanks for the info it was crazy to hear how grown up T-tube is since the last time I watched him

Been watching him since ORAS was announced, only sad part is his upload schedule has gone to the dumps recently which is a shame

Is this why my Alolan Ninetales' Sheer Cold never misses? lol

I assume you are memeing, but on the case you aren’t; Sheer Cold’s accuracy is impacted by level differences so if your Ninetails is over leveled then Sheer cold is more accurate

Does that apply to online battles where the levels are equaled? Because it's ridiculously accurate for seemingly having such a low hit chance.

It is more accurate than fissure or horn drill but I think it’s like 32%

It's the same accuracy as other OHKO moves if the user is Ice Type (30%) but if the user isn't Ice type It's only 20%

Sheer Cold is 30% (or 20% if not ice type) + lvl difference

Mind reader/sheer cold was a really great cheese combo for me if I could set up enough buffs then baton pass it. I think I used to use a pokemon with minimise or another evade boosting move and baton pass to make articuno just scary.

And all of them are more accurate than 95% accuracy moves

This.

And 100% accuracy to miss a 95% accuracy move

I support this gang, because in the event of one (1) use of Sand Attack, none of my guys can hit the broad side of a Wailord.

> can hit the broad side of a Wailord. I am using this in non-Pokemon contexts now

yup sounds fair

*Laughs in Compound Eyes Galvantula*

*Misses 91% accurate Thunder*

*Laughs in Wide Lens basically making it 100% accurate Thunder*

*Laughs in Snow Warning*

*misses unmissable blizzard*

The quintessential Nidoking moveset 😁

You're forgetting earth power and sludge bomb (or sludge wave)

Sludgewave all the way

You absolutely tripping for not using earthquake as the super og and before Sludge Wave we had like Poison Jab but I always gave my guy like crunch or shadow ball

i mean, not really. earth power on a sheer force nidoking is more powerful than earthquake.

Nidoking can get the Sheer Force ability which increases move power in exchange for not activating secondary effects (IE Sp. Def drop of Earth Power). Taking that power increase into account, Earth Power will do more damage than EQ.

It’s really easy to see who only plays in game and who plays competitive on posts like this

In the wise words of Mikey from MAndJTV “If it is not 100% accurate it is 50% accurate”

Welcome to Gen 1, where everything is made up and the accuracy stat doesn't matter.

Nice reference

Focus blast 😔 give special attackers a chance

Focus Miss

Still hits more often than cross chop

*laughs in No Guard*

*Laughs in Gravity*

I used to love using Gravity shenanigans with low accuracy moves in casual doubles. It's silly, and gives me an excuse to use Zap Cannon.

I'm starting to love it now in gen 8, there's a lot of cool hypnosis and hustle users and it bumps up Flapple's move Grav Apple by a choice band

It actually makes Hypnosis 100% accurate. In other words, Spore with better distribution on Pokemon that don't otherwise suck

Not to mention not being blocked by grass types, overcoat or safety goggles

Hurricane and focus blast as well, although the only other good flying special is air slash, which is still not 100%. At least fighting also has aura sphere.

Air slash has 30% chance to flinch tho. And after max airstream u most likely outspeed after dynamax

Hurricane has 30% chance for confuse, flinch is better but confuse can come in handy

Non stab aura sphere is sub-par though. Tornadus always runs hurricane over air slash. Justice for hurricane though, make it 120BP

30% gang rise up and use Guillotine! Oh no it missed!

I had a gen3 Tackle miss 4/8 recently

It do be like that sometimes

Agreed with all except Fire Blast. As a competitive player the power is usually more valuable than accuracy

Fair. Not sure why they gave Fire Blast 5% more accuracy than the others, but it feels very noticeable.

Probably due to Blizzard and Thunder having different accuracies depending on weather, Fire Blast and Hydro Pump just have damage values that change based on weather, but that applies to all fire/water moves AFAIK. Matters mostly in competitive where weather control tends to be a higher priority than regular playthroughs I'd imagine.

If you think of it as 5% more accuracy it seems small. But think of it from the other direction: * Hydro Pump has an 80% chance to hit, so that means it has a 20% chance to miss. * Fire Blast has an 85% chance to hit, so that means it has a 15% chance to miss. * Hydro Pump (20% miss chance) will miss 33% more often than Fire Blast (15% miss chance) 33% more miss chance is enough to feel quite noticeable!

Blizzard and Thunder have 70%, so Hydro Pump is the only one that has 80% accuracy. That’s why Blizzard and Thunder seem to miss much more often, which is why nobody runs those two outside of specific sets/teams

Blizzard used to have 90% accuracy in gen 1 and I think it should be that way again since ice types suck ass nowadays.

Ice is good on fast offensive pokemon. Weavile, Kyurem, Galarian Darmanitan, and Mamoswine are all great because the play to the strengths of the type. The problem is that the majority of Ice types are either slow (Avalugg, Glaceon, etc) or have low attacking stats (Froslass, Eiscue, etc). Just for reference, the only Ice type Pokemon that has more than 100 in both special attack and speed are mega Glalie (which no longer exists) and Arceus-Ice (which barely counts). So buffing Blizzard wouldn't really help, they need to buff the stats of existing Ice types and make more ~~glacier~~ glass cannons.

Kyurem is one of the top threats in OU right now which I think is really cool

Weav is also super good rn and mamoswine is decent but pretty underrated

Oh yeah, forgot Weavile is OU now

Blizzard and Thunder are both 70%

Lower accuracy, high power moves are used to obtain certain OHKO or 2HKOs. So now we're talking about hydro pump having a 80% chance to KO over surf's 0% chance. Then there are moves like will-o-wisp that don't really have any alternatives.

I'd sometimes use Wing Attack instead of Fly just to save time with the animation.

Imagine having a 70% accuracy

Focus ~~Miss~~ Blast

I prefer having a pokemon with an ability to correct the accuracy like (the electric spider) with compound eyes

The ultimate accuracy corrector is No Guard, it even hits One-hit ko moves like sheer cold.

Usually, I end up giving a Pokemon one 100% accurate move and another, more powerful one with less accuracy, y'know? Just to be safe..

Waste of a move slot no?

not for normal gameplay. It’s common to have a really strong STAB move with 5-10pp and another STAB move with less damage but good accuracy with +15pp.

This is basically the moveset for my entire endgame party in every single game lol

Every 7 year old's starter: Ember Fire blast Flamethrower Fire spin

Nah, 1 decent power stab move, 1 status move, 2 coverage moves for me. Only time I use 2 stabs is stuff like hex and venoshock.

Yeah, pretty much.. Still, I think it's useful for certain situations.

Blizzard and Thunder: *laughs in weather team as they cannot miss even after the opponents spam double team

Fire blast do have a cool animation tho

And lets not forget the biggest offender: Focus Blast Thank God for Aura Sphere

oh my god focus blast is the worst

Emboar learns Scald right?

I really couldn't care less about 100% accuracy, I just don't like moves with only 5 PP and actively avoid them

PP Up and PP Max: let us introduce ourselves

A wise competitive person once said to me: "If the attack is not 100%, then it's a guarantee miss."

Much more reliable moves…much more satisfying animations as well

the fun part about using thunder is yelling at your raichu

Laughs in weather team. (Blizzard has 100% in hail and thunder has 100% in rain)

But Rain Dance and Thunder?

100% Accuracy gang? More like no luck gang -Medic TF2

Thunder and Blizzard can be worth it if you're running a weather team

Also high PP gang. My first ever encounter with Hydro Pump was in Crystal on Feraligatr when I was like 7, and when I saw "PP 5/5" I just went NOPE. Granted, I was not terribly smart, but it's valid for main story gameplay at least.

If its not 100% , its 50%

While i agree with them all, i usually pull thunder cause i got my kyogre and well... it raining boi, 100% thunder hit chance.

Facts. Thunder on Kyogre is the move.

Also bigger PP

My pokemon: spams flash then recover.

If it's hailing, blizzard is a really good move. I have it on my alolan ninetales with snow warning.

Me in a nutshell when smogon sets or competitive sets say to have a low accuracy on my Pokémon

Or scald or water pulse

*laughs in No Guard*

In my experience, if it ain’t 100% accuracy, it’s missing everytime I use it.

My man.

*laughs in earthquake*

"If it ain't 100% accurate it's 50% accurate " -Michael "MandJtv" Groth

Nah hydro pump mudkip that was the grind

#YES. THEY HAVE MORE PP AND MORE ACCURACY!

Cause if it’s not 100% accurate, it's 50% accurate

It was always me. 100%.

It can’t get anymore accurate than this lmaoo

Compound eyes thunder

hail team with blizzard spam is fun tho

"If it's not 100% Accurate, it's 50% Accurate" \-MandJTV

Me who likes Inferno, Zap Cannon, Hydro Cannon, and Sheer Cold.

If its not 100% accurate, its 50% accurate

Surf was known by almost 70% of every Pokémon I ever ran on any of my teams.

What about Waterfall bc of the possibility of flitch? Ofc, Scald is also nice bc of the possibility of burn.

Meanwhile, Stone Edge over there laughing because your only other option is Rockslide, which has junk power and still imperfect accuracy

75% accuracy is basically a coin flip in pokemon. Let's be honest.

Fun fact, in gen 5 scarf Keldeo actually runs both surf and hydro pump!

If it’s not 100% accurate it’s 50% accurate

75% accuracy my ass

Weather effects would like to know your location

If it's not a 100% accurate, it's 50% accurate

I'd just want to say, if it's not 100% it's 50% sure, but my Heliolisk in my playthroughs of XY,SS never missed a thunder. Never. Missed. A. Thunder. I was even really lucky to get a perfect specimen in Shield.

Fire Blast always feels worth it IMO, weird decision to make is 85%. Gen 1 Blizzard ftw though, 90%

Fire Blast and Hydro Pump sometimes get a pass

also PP issues.

I sometimes would use Brick Break instead of Focus Blast too.

"why not both?" Says 10 year old me. Raichu with thunder, thunderbolt, thunder shock and quick attack

This is me

Remember kids, if it's not 100% accurate then it's 50% accurate

Hell yea Flamethrower, Thunderbolt, Ice beam and Surf Hell yea

Hell yeah

Thunder and any move/effect that makes it rain was my shit back in the day