Pokemon Omega Ruby - 0 Exp Part 2: Brawly
36Second gym battle and one that illustrates the difference between playing a 0 exp run in original RSE and the fresh "upgraded" ORAS. This is also the perfect time to address my choice of playing Omega Ruby as opposed to Alpha Sapphire.
Challenge playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbSv8zSDR9c1PNYH-llf1dNbuoB3ONrsG
In RSE Sapphire was chosen because of Sableye's availability before this very gym, and Sableye could boast staying in and not fearing any damage whatsoever - there was nothing Brawly could do to a ghost. In ORAS, Makuhita running Knock Off means this would no longer be the case but that's beside the point - Sableye can only be caught in such an area of Granite Cave that's unavailable until the player reaches Mauville and gets his Mach Bike.
No longer capturable before the 2nd gym, Sableye loses to Mawile, Omega Ruby's exclusive, dramatically, as Mawile has such appealing qualities as great typing, powerful STABs, beneficial ability in Intimidate and a mega form that is both offensively menacing as well as usable way before Sableye's mega evolution is accessed (before the 8th gym).
Mawile was THE reason I bought Omega Ruby when the game was released, and he's the reason I'm playing OR again on this 0 exp run. Other exclusives? I don't particularly care about either Solrock or Lunatone even if Solrock gets used a bit in this run (and might see more use later on when I can access the latergame area of Meteor Falls), but I imagine Lunatone would see similar usage. Zangoose is probably better than Seviper, but not by much and didn't have a lasting contribution when it was still usable - I liked having False Swipe on it to farm Ralts of different natures for Synchronize nature rigging. Also, stupid fact of the day - I caught a couple -Synchronize- Ralts with -Synchronoise- w/ DexNav!
Seedot/Lotad lines are both meh in this run; oh wait, I did use Nuzleaf in one of the gyms (the last one you'd expect it used too) so there's that. It all boils down to Mawile vs Sableye, and Mawile crushes his adversary hard.
Now, back to Brawly. We don't get to enjoy the contributions of either Sableye or Mawile because of how Granite Cave now works, so we have to make do with underlevelled subpar scrubs from a limited range of Hoenn routes. Makit has a much needed update in a higher-levelled Makuhita from Granite, and the other options are also there, very suboptimal but offering options that would help you overcome this difficult opponent with a clear advantage in sheer strength.
In a normal file, players without an overlevelled starter (who could probably hope to solo the whole gym) could opt to use a Taillow or even a Zubat freshly caught in Granite Cave and levelled just once to learn Wing Attack. No levelling on this run, so we could still throw Zubat in there to tank 4x resisted Karate Chops until it does little damage and succumbs to Bulk Up/Leer-boosted attacks or Machop getting clever and using Seismic Toss.
...But that's not what I end up doing. In fact, my strategy is to have my lead die as soon as possible once it's done its job, which is to confuse Machop - Wingull accomplishes just that, Supersonic's poor accuracy (no No Guard on Machop) being compensates by Wingull always surviving the first turn barring Karate Chop crits. Machop confused, in comes...
...lv. 8 Skitty, the most unlikely Pokemon to be used in the vicious fighting-type gym! But it outspeeds both lv. 14 Machop and lv. 16 Makuhita; well, with a +spd nature it does... And it ends up performing much of the good work in this strategy.
Skitty sleeps Machop with Sing. Though inaccurate, we don't have such a bad chance of landing considering Machop should be confused at this point. When that is done, Skitty begins using Echoed Voice. Silk Scarf + STAB increases its base power from 40 to 72. Next turn, it rises to 144, then to 216, then it would rise to 288... Starting pretty weak, it gets strong enough to KO Machop, who may not fight back thanks to sleep / confusion being in effect. Should Machop wake up, confusion makes it a coin flip chance to live and land the final Echoed Voice on it.
When Makuhita is switched in, Skitty's chances to keep owning are low indeed. I have to choose between gambling with Sing again, now with nobody helping out by confusing the target, or just weaken with the powered up Echoed Voice (now at 288 base power; basically imagine using a STAB Hyper Beam)... The damage isn't what you'd expect, yet it's still nice meaty chip before Skitty falls like the true warrior it was.
We finish the fight with a Makuhita mirror, where Guts and having a higher speed helps us out (despite no +spd nature).
Hooray for Skitty? Spoilers: it will come back to kick bottom in another gym...
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