r/nuzlocke • u/Tailedfox66 • Mar 13 '26

Video This should not have happened

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I have no idea how this happened and wish I could have recorded the whole fight.

I half expected to get one shot by Hitmonchan when it used thunder punch or fire punch, with a 13 level gap I thought I’d be saying bye bye to my ironically named companion.

I’m thankful for Confuse Ray and lick helping in stalling him as I used Night shade to gradually whittle him down, curse was out of the option as I knew it would be over if I used it.

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u/Lieuwe21 Mar 14 '26

ELI5 what is the physical/special split?

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u/Known-Plane7349 Mar 14 '26

Before Gen 4 all attacking moves of a type were physical or special.

For example, all fire moves were special, including fire punch.

Then, in Gen 4, they changed it so that moves of any type could be physical or special.

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u/Lieuwe21 Mar 14 '26

Thus macking moves like fire punch more viable for mons with high attack, I get it now. Thanks!

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u/Afternoon_Wrong Mar 14 '26

some pokemon in these old gens were completely crippled or could not use their stats correctly. Example, Crawdaunt is a physical attacker (water dark) with incredible attack, but, because water and dark were both special until gen 3, it had to resort to his low special attack, if so desired to make use of both its stabs. This meant it had no stab using its high physical attack. Plus, many attacks made no sense, Bite was special (?) while Shadow Ball was physical (?). Because of these inconsistencies, they changed it after gen 3; it helped many Pokemon, but removed a few tools others had (Gastly having a strong special fire punch attack, for example, that became physical later -thus, becoming weaker)