I can't speak to Sceptile exactly, but I can tell you I have been PLAGUED by the death loop glitch against Groudon. Yesterday, my entire team "fainted" with 80% health left each and the game wouldn't send me to the exit screen to pick a second team OR let me rechoose one of the original group. I spent the last 45 seconds of the battle able to do absolutely nothing.
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Sceptile rather underwhelming against solar beam Groudon (?)
As titled. Farmed like a mad man for Treeckos the past few days (aided immensely by clear weather spawns), and was fortunate enough to land myself two very good Lv 31 specimens, 100% and 96% respectively. Been reading here and there about how the green lizard is on par, or better than Eggy in terms of DPS output as a grass attacker. Very hyped to have them join my team.
My experience with them in raid battles, however, tells a whole different story. To say Sceptile is squishy is really an understatement. Against solar beam Groudons, I trotted out my two newest additions first, both with fury cutter and leaf blade. Mere seconds was how long they lasted, each one shotted to heaven by the beam. No dignity to be found whatsoever. I dodged of course, only to get caught in the death-loop glitch immediately. Managed to only get off 3-4 leaf blades.
My question: was I wrong to use them against solar beam Groudons? Perhaps I shouldn't have attacked with them first? Are they better off against earthquake Groudons?
Thanks.
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Answers
Were you facing SoB Groudon in clear weather? That's a really hard fight. I've had Exeggutor go down without being able to fire off a SoB under those conditions. I would not recommend dodging at all because of the death-loop glitch and how strong SoB is against pretty much everything, including things that resist it.
In clear weather especially, I think you're better off with things that double-resist SoB, such as Dragonite, SoB Ho-Oh, and even Moltres (its moves are all boosted by the weather as well). Sceptile might fare better against Earthquake, but it's probably still questionable in clear weather as well. Unfortunately, Eggy is still the better choice (and Gyarados is even better).
Yeah, it was clear weather. I was stunned that I didn't even have the option of dodging. When Groudon releases SoB, game over. 10 secs and 3 leaf blades was all the lizards had in them. I mean, even Alakazam can get off 2-3 FS when dodging Machamp's charge moves. A bitter taste in my mouth for sure.
Earthquake has slightly lower damage so it requires your Sceptile to have lower HP in order to be hit by the death loop but it's still quite a high HP threshold.
Against a perfect level 30 Sceptile an undodged Earthquake will deal 82 damage and an undodged Solar Beam 102, while Sceptile will have 113 HP. A single Dragon Tail will put you at low enough HP for the glitch to occur.
Simulations show they're on par with each other - some cases Exeggutor is better, others Sceptile is, but at the end of the day, they're only simulations where in an ideal world there isn't the dodge glitch.
Sure in theory if you have 30 perfect Sceptiles they'll do a Groudon quicker than 30 Exeggutors or whatever the number is, but if you had that many then you'd get win around the expected average time - while some Sceptiles would faint before getting much damage off and others would get lucky with the Groudon using it's charge move late, they'd more or less cancel out.
But you only have one so you don't have that luxury of always getting the average amount of damage off before fainting, and consistency is important when you can't repeat the raid over and over till you get the best run possible.
In reality an Exeggutor will probably perform better on average as it's higher survivability makes it more forgiving with missed / unregistered dodges. Though it has lower defence, the higher HP pool makes up for it because you can take more hits from Groudon's quick moves before reaching the HP threshold for the dodge glitch to occur.
So you mean that against an EQ Groudon, my Sceptiles might have a better chance at dodging and thus have higher survivability? I have more than enough Eggys to throw at Groudon; it's just that people have been saying how good Sceptile is with its 3-bar leaf blade killer move. I liked very much the idea and novelty of using a new and agile grass attacker, only to see it wilt in battle before my very eyes.
TL;DR - Yes, since your Sceptile needs to have a lower HP value before it gets dodge-glitched.
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If I'm not mistaken, the dodge glitch is caused by a dodged attack being registered as undodged, which causes your Pokemon to be treated as though it's fainted - unable to use any attacks, but still has health because you dodged the move - which is why you get an invisible Pokemon that you need to manually swap out.
If your HP is above the undodged damage threshold your Pokemon will simply survive, have the difference in HP returned to it, and therefore not get glitched. It used to happen in regular gyms too but with less frequency since defender's weren't as strong as raid bosses so it was harder for them to one-shot your Pokemon.
So for example let's say you've got 100 HP and a special will deal 100 damage if undodged.
If you get affected by the glitch, the game sets your Pokemon's HP to 0, where it's supposed to faint, and the dodge is registered after your Pokemon has already incorrectly fainted, so the difference in dodge vs undodged damage, (75 HP) is restored to the Pokemon, but the Pokemon is still treated as fainted so it can't do anything but tank damage.
If your Pokemon has 101 HP, even if your dodge registers late, you'll get set to 1 HP so your Pokemon is still active, and then has 75 HP returned to it and is still able to be used.
As for people praising Sceptile, simulations don't show a significant difference in theoretical time against Exeggutor versus optimal movesets (Mud Shot + Solar or Earthquake), they're all in the 960 second range at level 40 which is close enough, but if you look at the damage of a single Exeggutor compared to a single Sceptile, Exeggutor often does around 360 per life, sometimes up to 400 while Sceptile's on the lower end of 300, around 370 being the upper limits.
They have similar DPS but Exeggutor does more total damage because it lasts longer, and it's damage output is more consistent too, despite Solar Beam being a slow 1 bar move.
Both Shiftry and Sceptile were suggested by pokebattler as being quicker to win than any of my eggys (probably due to level disparity). Both have been one shotted vs SB and Eq. I have removed them from the team.
That said in sunny weather it's hard for ANYTHING to survive a SB without dodging, only half of my eggys can, articuno, and dragonite. Otherwise it's rough. I haven't tried any "traditional tanks", lugia, snorlax, etc.
How is that any different from Groudon?
Kyogre has 2 charge moves that grass types resist and one charge move that grass types are weak to. Groudon is in the same situation.
Hydro Pump and Thunder are weaker in base power than Solar Beam and Earthquake but Kyogre has Waterfall and even though Sceptile resists it too, it's still a high base power quick move, whereas against Groudon, there's a much bigger difference between Mud Shot and Dragon Tail as it's defensive move.
There are slight differences. Of Kyogre's two C-moves that grass resists, 1 has a base power of 100, and the other has a base of 130 with STAB = 156. Whereas Groudon's base 120 with STAB = 144, and the other is 180. Groudon's super effective move also has a higher base power of 140 = 196 to Kyogre's 130 = 182. Kyogre has a slightly higher attack stat and one more powerful quick move, but if dodge glitching is what you're worried about, the higher damage of almost all Groudon's charge moves could easily be more troublesome, assuming your counters for both are the same.
And bear in mind, Groudon's optimal counter is usually Gyarados, resisting 2/3 charge moves and taking neutral from Solar Beam, though that doesn't mean it won't dodge glitch on SoB. And Kyogre's optimal counters will likely be of Electric typing, resisting Thunder (like a grass type), but being weak to none.
You were wrong to use them, period.
Treecko is worse than Exeggutor (except against tyranitar) nothing you do will change that. And why use it when you got Gyarados anyway?
Sometimes you can't turn iron into gold. Just accept Treecko isn't really worth powering up and move on.
As i've said elsewhere, as long as the gameplay remains one dimensional, the game will continue to have a meta where one or two Pokemon of each type trivializes all the rest.
Spoken like the bored, jaded, urban player that you are. Always whining about how lame you purport the game to be, and how players in high population areas brag about their raid catches. Some of us don't live in big cities/don't care about social media organizing, so we make due with what we are able to get on our own, basically the way you keep saying the game should be played/designed for anyway.
