Friday, January 24, 2014

The quest for Nita: Get the glory or die trying (Updated)

Skarmory. That's what battle #38, the very first of the day, greets me with. Well, time to settle for three Hone Claws again. Fortunately it was stupid, spamming Brave Bird all over the place, so no phazing shenanigans. Battle #40 pitted me against a Tentacruel that Protected the first Entrainment, but not the second, choosing to kill Durant with Surf instead. Close call! Next!

And I almost lost it right there at battle #41, with the same scenario being repeated against a Medicham. If it had Pure Power, I pretty much lost right then and there, but it didn't, so I survived a HJK and nailed the second Entrainment.

Although battle #43 didn't prove to be dangerous, I just wanted to highlight it because Durant survived a Fire Punch from an Electivire with 5 HP. So I guess Smogon's running joke really was that accurate. Then battle #44 provided the first legendary sighting, a Regirock. It somewhat liked to use Curse, but it didn't do so enough to avoid being OHKOed. Zapdos and Latios immediately followed, and died quickly.

So did this session, because things needed to be done elsewhere. Only six battles left!

Edit: Nah, I couldn't put the 3DS down for long so close to the goal! Fortunately, the rest of the path to Nita was fairly easy, despite the masses of legendaries. On that note, seems like Veterans always have three, and the rest never have any. I don't know the exact point at which you can start running into Veterans, but my first one was the aforementioned #44.

Anyway, Nita. I was a nervous wreck by that point. One more battle, one more opportunity for everything to go horribly wrong. Even though I was frantically mashing the button through the dialogue, it felt like an eternity. Finally the battle began.

Battle Châtelaine Nita sent out Tornadus!

Fuck. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. All that was left was to choose Entrainment and pray. And after the longest, most painful fraction of a second in my gaming life...

Durant used Entrainment!
Tornadus' Prankster!
...
Tornadus' Truant!

OH MY GOD IT HAD PRANKSTER. I came so close to losing this on the final battle, but Tornadus decided to be stupid and used Hurricane, just like in that video demonstrating this very fight with this very strategy. From that point on it was just a matter of not making any misclicks, which I hadn't made thus far. I didn't make any here either, and eventually Tornadus, Thundurus and Landorus all fell in rapid succession. I had done it. I obtained 50 BP, my gold trainer card, and even a statue in the front hall of the Battle Maison. Whew.

So, that was my journey through the Battle Maison and the whole process that led me to it. It wasn't recorded videos or anything, but I hope you've enjoyed this commentary all the same!

11 comments:

  1. Congrats Slow' ! I wonder if it's even possible to achieve this without training a specific team for it, though... It's already hard to find the motivation to build up the final team I'll use for online battles... Building another one specifically for the Battle Maison would be such a pain.

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    1. I don't think it's possible to just go in all Rambo-like with an in-game team and even make it to Nita. I mean, I just used arguably the best possible team, and I still nearly lost plenty of times.

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    2. That team isn't being made for in-game purpose, it will still be bred for near-perfect IVs, EV-trained and have competitively-viable movesets. Though I'm the kind of guy who isn't stopped by a Pokémon not being OU if I believe it complements my team well...
      But I can't even complete it yet anyway, because I'd need Pokébank to transfer a Storm Drain Cradily.
      So far my team would be : Crobat, Ampharos, Gallade, Chandelure, Azumarill and Cradily. I'm not really satisfied with it to be honest, I'm using Ampharos for the wrong reasons because I felt like I absolutely needed a Mega to keep up with the others and Cradily is just there because I felt like it was the only one giving me the coverage my team needed, but I should probably scrap it completely... But there are so many to chose from, I just don't know anymore !

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    3. Yeah, you should probably scrap the whole thing. Unless you have something very specific in mind, having only one OU on your team will rarely end well. You said it yourself, a Pokémon that's not OU can still be useful if it complements your team well, but that's the key word: complement. As it is you basically have a whole bunch of Pokémon that complement Azumarill, and I question their effectiveness. Especially Ampharos, who has a pretty bad mega in comparison to the others.

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    4. That "something very specific" I had in mind was trying to make a working team with my 3 favorites Pokémon, which are Gallade, Chandelure and Crobat.
      In White 2, I had Lanturn, Hydreigon and Torterra to complement them which made the team fairly balanced. Heck, using Crobat as a Tailwind lead made it a very effective team in VGC format, only completely shut down by Trick Room. However, with all the new stuff introduced, that team suddenly doesn't work as well as it used to, so I guess I have no choice but to start from scratch and leave my sentimental bias behind.

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    5. About the whole supposed impossibility of using a non-gimmick team...

      Crobat @ Choice Band
      Ability: Inner Focus
      EVs: 4 Hp / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
      Jolly Nature (+Spe, -SpA)
      - Brave Bird
      - Cross Poison
      - U-Turn
      - Pursuit (yeah, leftovers from PvP matches)

      He is my lead, and won 70% of the battles with CB Brave Bird, which annihilated most of its enemies.

      Garchomp @ Life Orb
      Ability: Sand Veil (Who needs Rough Skin anyways)
      EVs: 4 Hp / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
      Jolly Nature (+Spe, -SpA)
      - Outrage
      - Earthquake
      - Iron Head
      - Swords Dance

      Garchomp is my backup attacker, and handles most of what Crobat can't- since Brave Bird either kills most ice-types or puts the slower, bulkier ones in the KO range.

      Chansey @ Do I even need to do this
      Ability: Healer (Natural Cure would have been nice)
      EVs: 252 Hp / 252 Def / 4 Spe
      Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
      - Seismic Toss
      - Protect
      - Toxic
      - Softboiled

      The last resort. I can count on Chansey to do what it does best, NOT *twitch* FREAKING *twitch* DIE- sorry about that. I barely used it at all, and not once during the face off with Nita.

      Of course, everything here is IV bred.

      So, I plowed through all fifty. but lost at 53. Just thought I'd say that it IS in fact a possible task. That 250 BP.

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    6. Oh, I'm not denying that it's possible. What I'm denying, if you read carefully, is that you can just throw your in-game team in there and do the same.

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  2. Oh it's just 50 wins? I'm suddenly less impressed. I'm going for 100 wins. That kid in the lobby says get 100 so I'm going for the 100 wins.

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    Replies
    1. Of course I'll keep going to try to see how far I can go. Just, not now.

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  3. Well done Slow, you have given me new found confidence with this sub-game.

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  4. Woah. You only need to do 50 singles battles to get the trainer star? You're not forced to do all of them (Doubles, Triples, and Rotation)? That's merciful compared to the battle frontier of the old days.

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