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Pokémon Movepool Oddities & Explanations
- Thread starter Kurona
- Start date
What's with the Steel/Rock types Aron and Lairon learning Water Pulse? I don't see the logic...
A lot of those ~60 power special moves like Water Pulse, Shock Wave, and Icy Wind are just kinda thrown onto Pokemon because "sure, why not". Even moreso than ~90 power special moves.
That's true, I see what you mean. That explains how Aron/Lairon can learn moves like Shock Wave and Aerial Ace. But still, I don't really see how a rock type can use a water move. They're weak to water. Maybe Aron and Lairon just can though
Aggron learns Surf as well, but I guess HMs had to have a wide distribution because it would kinda suck if you got stuck.
Aggron looks like Godzilla, an all the Pokemon like that have bonkers movepools.
Aron and Lairon, Water Pulse and Shockwave notwithstanding, have pretty standard movepools. Though they do learn a few claw moves for some reason. Metal Claw gets a pass since it's low-level STAB, but Fury Cutter, Shadow Claw, and Aerial Ace seem kinda out of place. I guess Lairon has claws, but Aron just has little nubs for feet and it still learns them.
I'll throw the usual response: don't give too much thought on old TM/Tutor learnsets, expecially for gen 1, 2, and to some degree 3.
Back then GF was just throwing around moves because "why not" as DrPumpkinz said, they didn't really start actually thinking out movesets until gen 4-5.
Incidentally many of these oddities have slowly disappeared from movesets over time, mainly due to said "bad" moves not being in the tutor/TM pools anymore.
Good point. Also, I can somewhat understand Aggron learning Surf because whether a Pokemon can learn Surf or not seems to depend on if it can swim.
Very true. That's actually why I didn't mention Aggron before. Since it can learn a bunch of other special moves, I could understand it learning water pulse a little more. Yeah, odd Aron learns claw moves without really having claws
That's just a case of Ice Punch Ghastly / Wooper. Aka it learns a move because its evolution does.
It's also another thing they've stopped doing in later gens, but back in gen 3 they still weren't exactly putting a lot of thought in these choices.
(We were just mentioning some pages ago how Gurrdurr line likely doesn't get Wood Hammer nor Steel Beam because it'd only make sense on one of the 3 and wouldn't make sense on the other two)
Completely writing off TM choices just because there's weird stuff rubs me the wrong way. Like there's absolutely a lot of instances where they don't think super throoughly about a choice, and especially in Gen 1 there's a lot of "its a video game, so we want there to be a lot of weird choices"
But there absolutely is some thought and purpose put into a lot of the move. Let's zero-in on Water Pulse real quick. This isn't a case of just slapping it on every pokemon that breathes, the things that leran it by TM even in gen 3 are:
-water type pokemon
-pokemon associated with the water
-ice types, usually at least passingly associated with water
-a bunch of Normal type pokemon because they had (and still have, to an extent) a shtick of learning a lot of elemental TMs for moveset flavor. A good example of that gen 1 hold over thoughts of approaching more from a game design aspect that lead to kind of sort of defining how a type wound up working in the years to come
-What I can best describe as "weridos", stuff like Celebi, Gulpin or Absol, which are in the minority. Even then you could probably label some of these as "Mysterious" since "Pulse" moves would go on to themselves have hand wavey weird wave stuff that legends and absol and whatever would go with.
in fact there is one other Rock Type (who is neither part water or associated with water) that learns Water Pulse and that's Tyranitar. I think Aggron being a kaiju is exactly why they did it, they gave it a bunch of weird tokuatsu beam powers and that's why it has such a vast special move pool.
Incidentally, Tyranitar & Aggron literally have the same exact gen 3 TM learnset except Aggron also gets Solar Beam (look out godzilla, mecha godzilla has a counter weapon....!)
But there absolutely is some thought and purpose put into a lot of the move. Let's zero-in on Water Pulse real quick. This isn't a case of just slapping it on every pokemon that breathes, the things that leran it by TM even in gen 3 are:
-water type pokemon
-pokemon associated with the water
-ice types, usually at least passingly associated with water
-a bunch of Normal type pokemon because they had (and still have, to an extent) a shtick of learning a lot of elemental TMs for moveset flavor. A good example of that gen 1 hold over thoughts of approaching more from a game design aspect that lead to kind of sort of defining how a type wound up working in the years to come
-What I can best describe as "weridos", stuff like Celebi, Gulpin or Absol, which are in the minority. Even then you could probably label some of these as "Mysterious" since "Pulse" moves would go on to themselves have hand wavey weird wave stuff that legends and absol and whatever would go with.
in fact there is one other Rock Type (who is neither part water or associated with water) that learns Water Pulse and that's Tyranitar. I think Aggron being a kaiju is exactly why they did it, they gave it a bunch of weird tokuatsu beam powers and that's why it has such a vast special move pool.
Incidentally, Tyranitar & Aggron literally have the same exact gen 3 TM learnset except Aggron also gets Solar Beam (look out godzilla, mecha godzilla has a counter weapon....!)
They’re not the only ones - Rhydon and the Nidos learn a bunch of Special moves that, without taking their Kaiju origins into account, they’d have no business learning - including, incidentally, Water Pulse in the Nidos’ case (though the Nidos actually have the SpA stat to actually use their Kaiju beam attacks)
Also Aggron is clearly an armor-plated Anguirus, not MechaGodzilla.
For the purposes of this conversation, Rhydon doesnt get Water Pulse & I zeroed in in Tyrnitar because it was a rock type like Aggron (and the TMs being 1:1 except for Solar Beam were a happy coincidence) though yes you're right, the Nidos are in the same boat (MARGINALLY less similar tm list).
That's odd. I wonder if the developers were thinking Cubone and Marowak could learn Water Gun & Bubblebeam because they could cry watery tears for their dead mother haha.
Similar to Nidoking, Nidoqueen, and Rhydon, Marowak is a Gen I Ground type with an absurdly massive special movepool comparable to Normal types. It can also get Ice Beam, Blizzard, Flamethrower, and Fire Blast. Golem can also learn many Fire Moves.
Unlike the rest, Sandslash, Dugtrio, and Onix got special movepools closer to what many modern Ground types get.
I know Cubone can learn Ice Beam because someone told me it was helpful for fighting Rayquaza in Rescue Team.
I feel like maybe the Golem line gets fire moves because of lava's relation to certain types of rocks.
And maybe the Marowak line gets ice moves because of its broken heart? It's interesting Marowak got fire moves before it got an Alolan fire type variant. Maybe that inspired it.
I doubt when they decided to make Alolan Marowak they were looking at its movepool, I think it's more they wanted to make a fire dancer Pokemon and, instead of making a new Pokemon, they looked for a Gen I Pokemon that was holding an item to give it a Regional Variant and that's when they remembered Marowak. OR when they deciding to make Regional Variants they looked through all the Gen I Pokemon (possibly with a list of potential ideas they wanted to do) and when they got to Marowak went "hey, if we made the bone longer and light it on fire it can be a fire dancer!".
As for possible reasons Marowak gets Ice Beam (aside it being from Gen I; also its in the Monster Egg Group thus probably has some kaiju reasoning), maybe it calls upon the spirit of its mother whose femur bone its using to send out a beam of ghostly chill through said bone from the great beyond.
Its odd that in Gens 2 & 3, Blissey learns all of its moves at earlier levels than Chansey. Usually it's the reverse, final stage pokemon learn moves later than first stage pokemon. I wonder why the Chansey line was like this. I never noticed it before. Starting in Gen 4 though, it was changed to where Chansey & Blissey learn their moves at the same levels.
I find it odd that there are multiple anti-poison abilities that are all rare. Water Veil's pretty common, Limber's pretty common, Own Tempo's pretty common, Vital Spirit and Insomnia are both pretty common. Magma Armor's super rare but so is freeze so whatever.
But poison? The OG anti-poison ability, Immunity was only given to two Pokemon (Snorlax and Zangoose) and has only ever been given to one other Pokemon, that being Gligar in the Dream World (not even Munchlax got it). Instead Game Freak would occasionally pull a repeat of Gen 3 and create a brand-new ability that blocks poison damage, give it to one or two more Pokemon (Shroomish and Breloom in Gen 4, Ponyta and Rapidash in Gen 8), and then never touch it again. Literally the only time a Pokemon has ever gotten an anti-poison ability that wasn't introduced that gen was in Gen 5, where Gligar and Gliscor got Immunity and Poison Heal as their hidden abilities.
I suspect it's probably because poison already has more innate immunities than other status effects, with both Poison- and Steel-types being immune to it. Steel-types in particular are extremely common in PvP.
Side note: Water Veil isn't very common ingame, since it's mostly a hidden ability.
I find it odd that there are multiple anti-poison abilities that are all rare. Water Veil's pretty common, Limber's pretty common, Own Tempo's pretty common, Vital Spirit and Insomnia are both pretty common. Magma Armor's super rare but so is freeze so whatever.
But poison? The OG anti-poison ability, Immunity was only given to two Pokemon (Snorlax and Zangoose) and has only ever been given to one other Pokemon, that being Gligar in the Dream World (not even Munchlax got it). Instead Game Freak would occasionally pull a repeat of Gen 3 and create a brand-new ability that blocks poison damage, give it to one or two more Pokemon (Shroomish and Breloom in Gen 4, Ponyta and Rapidash in Gen 8), and then never touch it again. Literally the only time a Pokemon has ever gotten an anti-poison ability that wasn't introduced that gen was in Gen 5, where Gligar and Gliscor got Immunity and Poison Heal as their hidden abilities.
I suspect it's probably because poison already has more innate immunities than other status effects, with both Poison- and Steel-types being immune to it. Steel-types in particular are extremely common in PvP.
I like to think that poison is seen as the most basic status, and so non-type immunity is rare to ensure that status-focused mons will usually have some ability to perform. But I will admit that that thought came about when every mon could get both reliable Normal attacks and reliable poison.
I think you're both right imo
Poison does have 2 types explicitly immune to it (Paralysis & Burn only have one each and the former only got that immunity in gen 6), and one of those types is a popular competitive pick, and beyond consistent damage it doesn't do anything special.
Also while you're not wrong that there's more Vital Spirits than the poison abilities looking at hte list is kind of interesting. 4 of the Pokemon that learn it lose it on evolution, and a 5th has the potential to lose it on evolution.
Poison does have 2 types explicitly immune to it (Paralysis & Burn only have one each and the former only got that immunity in gen 6), and one of those types is a popular competitive pick, and beyond consistent damage it doesn't do anything special.
Also while you're not wrong that there's more Vital Spirits than the poison abilities looking at hte list is kind of interesting. 4 of the Pokemon that learn it lose it on evolution, and a 5th has the potential to lose it on evolution.
Apparently there is an upcoming event for Sword and Shield that gives you a shiny Clefairy with Glaciate, instead of Icy Wind, which was the actual move on the original VGC clefairy it was based on.
Weird event moves are so rare these days, being mostly regulated to giving a Pokemon Celebrate/Happy Hour/Hold Hands/Hold Back, though there have been a few exceptions like the Seismic Toss Charizard and Sing Pikachu, but in those two cases they were available in older games and/or events, the more recent events merely made those moves legal for Sword/Shield's VGC format.
Weird event moves are so rare these days, being mostly regulated to giving a Pokemon Celebrate/Happy Hour/Hold Hands/Hold Back, though there have been a few exceptions like the Seismic Toss Charizard and Sing Pikachu, but in those two cases they were available in older games and/or events, the more recent events merely made those moves legal for Sword/Shield's VGC format.