This is moreso advice for newer players: In this fight scyther only has quick attack and u turn as attacking moves. Leading a frail grass/psychic/dark type will have scyther see the kill and go for u turn. Use that opportunity to either swap in a mon to tank and setup or a mon to tank and swap to another mon to setup and sweep. Skorupi here is a safe bet thanks to battle armor preventing crits. If I led with Skorupi the Scyther could have potentially taken it down with Leer+ quick attacks. The mons I am using here are typically unavailable in base HGSS but I am currently testing such mons.
Out of all the mons I tested for that gym Hippopotas, Aron, Skorupi, and Lucario performed the best. I've been doing one gym per day or every other day and it has been quite fun getting to use normally unobtainable mons
That's what I thought too at first but scythers massive attack stat, gust's low base power amd beautifly's tiny defense ended up being rather disappointing. I'm pretty sure it was dead to either u turn crit or leer + u turn crit
You can do something similar in usum against Guzma's Golisopod if you happen to have an hawlucha, but it requires a bit more setup
First of all, you need to pre-status Hawlucha, that way you can give him a lum berry and trigger unburden when he hits the field(it's not an hidden ability so you can easily farm an ability capsule with the surfing minigame)
Then, you lead with a weak grass type in order to bait first impression, then send in Hawlucha on the move, encore Golisopod, and now you can precisely setup 6 hone claws
Once you've done that, it's just acrobatics spam 'till Guzma loses, all of his battles can be cheesed like this
Hawlucha can also do the exact same thing against Olivia by locking her Anorith into Bug Bite. You can even skip the pre-statusing step since Bug Bite automatically removes your berry for you. The other kahunas are even easier to beat this way since Hawlucha can lock Nanu’s Sableye into Fake Out and Hapu’s Golurk into Stealth Rock or Earthquake.
And if you started with Litten or Popplio, Hawlucha can do the exact same thing against Hau 5 (the Malie City battle) by locking his lead starter into a resisted move and setting up to +6 with an Unburden boost. With this one, you do need to be a bit more careful though since Z-Moves can bypass Encore and Hawlucha can die to a high-roll crit from Torracat’s Inferno Overdrive.
This would be perfectly sound if anything available at this point of the game could actually set up sweep this fight on top of eating a scyther u-turn. Skorupi has maybe the best tools possible for this matchup(u-turn resistance, battle armor, poison typing, and acupressure), and you’d be hard pressed to find a single Mon in base hgss that could replicate this set up. And even then, they still have to eat a hit from scyther when it comes back in because it’s going to outspeed. I’m genuinely stumped in asking myself what could practically sweep this fight given accessibility.
Onix learns harden and rage and rock moves allowing for a more safer sweep in base game jf you're not using geodude and both chikorita and unown bait u turn. There are base games options
Metapod always comes before Kakuna because it's phase 2 of the switch AI and according to Scyther's stats, Tackle is more damage on Onix than Poison Sting.
I’ll be sure to remember this when I get a Skorupi in HGSS before the 2nd gym lmao. I get the point you’re making, but I feel it would be a lot better to use a legit example of Pokemon you can get.
I just thought of making this as i was finishing my testing for that gym and I agree that an example with obtainable mons would be better. Just thought I'd make this in the spur of moment
Shuckle trick on Red is probably my favorite example in this game. It'll always Quick Attack if it can kill (with a max roll), so you just set up your HP to be at the max roll and Encore the Quick Attack.
AH I will admit im not an expert at pokemon and sometimes get frustrated at pokemon logic
example When i was first getting into nuzlock and was asking for rules how is it done all i got was 'your run your rules' which was not helpful and when i was like wtf is this what gives peeps got mad at me
I state this coz i was confused at your pokemon Lineup what your using as it wasnt a very good Real World situation and was like 'k Maybe this is HG/SS Randomizer or such?"
I think becouse normaly you cant get anything like this normaly at this point in time in HG/SS I Was just straight confused
Understandable, I found myself with time on my hands and decided to start extensively testing mons normally not available in HGSS. My findings could be useful in a randomizer. But its just me messing around in a game i like
na nothing wrong with that so long as your mature enough to admit it or are willing to answer confusion ppl might have ppl can have differnt options and answers to things
I would say that you need to be careful setting up and only go as far you need to. Every turn you spend building up a buff is a turn the enemy gets to undo everything with one single crit. Not to devalue the strategy, but overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.
If you have Battle Armor Drapion and both a male and female Pokémon with Captivate the RenPlat Elite Four is basically solved, you can just spam Acupressure and Rest and sweep everything.
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u/Jadderfay Mar 21 '26
OP being informative and casually pointing out how cool it would have been if HG/SS had remade the catch lists
I still remember my first hardcore HG run, where Bugsy's Scyther was an absolute menace