01 June 2010

Top 5 Tuesday: Abilities!


Abilities are great. They added some really dynamic stuff to the game and made you rethink all your earlier strategies. (I'm sure I'm not the only one who encountered a Chinchou and stood aghast as my Thunderbolt was immediately thwarted.) You can exploit them to great gains in double battles: try pairing up a Gyarados who knows Surf (or another all-field water move) with a Quagsire with Water Absorb. Quagsire's Earthquake won't hit the Flying-type Gyarados, and Gyarados can Surf to its heart's content, healing Quagsire in the process. You could also pair up a Rotom with Quagsire; Rotom will levitate above any ground moves, and Quagsire will be immune to any all-field electric attacks like Discharge. (Did I mention I love Quagsire?)

Here's a list of the top 5 best Pokémon abilities. I don't want to get into any stupid arguments about how your Vileplume is going to kick my ass with its suck-tastic Chlorophyll, so let's just call these my top 5 favorite abilities.

#5. Mold Breaker
Mold Breaker disables any opponent's ability that hinders the user's attacks. Which is a lot of them. Unfortunately the only three Pokémon that can have this ability are not all that useful otherwise, so this is only a great ability in theory.

#4. Liquid Ooze
Instead of describing it, I will use this short comic to portray why Liquid Ooze is awesome.


#3. Shadow Tag
I would say “as well as Arena Trap”, but Arena Trap doesn't work if the opponent is Flying-type or has Levitate (so forget trying to use Dugtrio against Cresselia, Latios and Latias!) Shadow Tag is the perfect thing to use against fleeing Pokémon, who are normally so infuriating that 9 times out of 10 I just waste my Master Ball on them*. As if we needed another reason to love Wobuffet!

*Guilty of that in Soul Silver with Entei. I had seriously thrown like 200 Ultra Balls at him already!

#2. Trace
The best way to use a Pokémon with Trace is to put it up against an opponent whose own ability prevents or reverses hits of their own type (a Ninetales with Flash Fire, or a Loudred with Soundproof, etc). Use Gardevoir against a Wooper with Water Absorb, sit back and enjoy the shower.

#1. Pick Up
Step 1. Catch 5 Zigzagoons.
Step 2. Put them in your party with one strong Pokémon.
Step 3. Profit!

2 comments:

  1. Pickup now varies between the levels of said pokemon with the ability. Level 100 Linoones will pick up lots of great, rare, expensive crap.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, totally! I just loved toting around a few Zigzagoons in Ruby and reaping tons of rare candies. ^^

    ReplyDelete

Gotta catch 'em all!

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