Pokemon Emerald - Monotype Bug Part 4: Gym Leader Flannery
41The fire-type gym, expected to be a difficult point of the challenge since everything we can possible have on our team is weak to fire. Besides Surskit, but lol @ training a Surskit. It learns Bubblebeam at lv. 25, but getting it there is a pain in the arse, plus the TV/Swarm system in this generation makes it awfully difficult to locate, even. Once it evolves to Masquerain, it will lose its water-type STAB... Now you can see why I never bothered catching a Surskit. Intimidate and Ice Beam off a decent 80 base special attack do sounds cool, though.
However, the game was designed more favourably for this particular gym, giving us access to the Dig TM right after Wattson (I could've used it for Wattson too if I could). Its base power was cut from 100 to 60 between the first and second generation, but it's still 120 effective base power, which is important to remember for this gym.
Dig is good because so many things can learn it, and that happens to include Ninjask. It also learns Swords Dance at lv. 25, giving it setup capabilities. The only problem is setting up against that Numel who has Overheat, Sunny Day... wait, are you serious? Talk about overkill offence.
Anyway, setting up on Numel turned out to be far from impossible. Paralyse it with Beautifly, provoke it to use Overheat so that it lowers its own special attack (I'm pretty sure if it's clever enough to use Sunny Day, it can still OHKO Ninjask with the next Overheat because its base power is no joke). We could try lowering its accuracy with Nincada's Flash (no Sand-Attack on this one but oh well) to give Ninjask higher chances of staying alive.
A pretty excellent base phys attack stat coupled with Swords Dance and Dig's effective 120 BP turns Ninjask into something that actually manages to sweep the rest of Flannery's Pokemon. I was surprised to learn this includes Torkoal, and that I need neither a Soft Sand nor a critical (resetting for this one would've sucked) to secure a Dig OHKO on Flannery's bulkiest Pokemon by far (140 base defence, 70 base HP).
I didn't need any level grinding (or EV grinding) to bring Ninjask to sufficient physical attack for the gym, it even shared some experience with the likes of Shedinja and Volbeat who aren't very good at OHKOing generic trainer Pokemon. So yay for Ninjask. It doesn't seem to ever stop being useful in this challenge.