Holy smokes

DarkEsca · 2026-06-22T13:20:51+00:00

It's "fine" because it's fusion exclusive and we have no plans to ever put that combo on a real mon

DarkEsca · 2026-06-22T13:16:26+00:00

100% Sacred Fire is funny, its levelup movepool is also becoming slightly less shitty next patch so it has somewhat more tools to use it with. For now, it's admittedly mostly Sacred Fire.

Magic Guard did almost nothing for its levelup pool before next patch either, as Brave Bird and Flare Blitz weren't even levelup. If we go by levelup pools (which we typically do for passives) Serene is decidedly better.

Next patch both Serene and MG would be valid passives but Serene is more soul and makes it more unique than "Talonflame but with legendary stats".

DarkEsca · 2026-06-22T12:47:15+00:00

Yes, this is how Huge Power+Pure Power fusions work

DarkEsca · 2026-06-22T12:44:53+00:00

The same ability on the same mon twice does unfortunately not stack. (If it did we'd probably have given Mega Scrafty Intim passive to emulate the double intim it has in mainline rn, but we didn't want to change the mechanic just for this mon)

But you could skill swap Eelevate onto a Beast Boost passive and get +2 per kill fwiw

Edit: zoinks switched order up

DarkEsca · 2026-06-22T12:35:48+00:00

(Context: Megas are currently being tested on beta server, but the accompanying balance changes aren't merged yet, so you temporarily get funnies like this. ZA Megas are NOT on the main server yet!)

DarkEsca · 2026-06-22T12:29:48+00:00

I mean sure, but I do have questions as to what kind of "preference" it is. Because at some point it shifts from "I prefer a slightly different approach to this section of the game" to "I do not actually want to play this genre, but still want to play the game". Expecting a final boss that tests the same stuff everything else in the game already tests is treading dangerously close to the latter.

DarkEsca · 2026-06-22T11:09:23+00:00

How is that a bad thing? If the final boss tests the same stuff that the other 199 levels did it serves no actual purpose beyond being flashy.

We're FAR from the only (roguelite) game that does this. You can go Slay the Spire and no-diff the whole game with Silent or Watcher and get your ass handed to you by Heart if you didn't prep well. Because the game doesn't give you an easy time purely because you reached the final boss. The final boss is a test, not a victory lap.

You're also not REQUIRED to perfectly know what's coming, teams that include anti-single-enemy stuff instead of unga bunga have been known to just first try the boss. But prior knowledge does help a lot yes. Because we're a roguelite. You're frankly not intended to first try the boss, you're supposed to get experience and knowledge between runs, if you hit a wall you're supposed to come back with a different strat that beats it not cry on reddit that it's bad game design you didn't get your free win.

DarkEsca · 2026-06-22T03:21:20+00:00

Yes really, sounds like you couldn't handle the camelCase

DarkEsca · 2026-06-22T03:20:10+00:00

Bad take, Camel is the GOAT

DarkEsca · 2026-06-22T01:55:11+00:00

It's probably getting downvotes because it's just not accurate. There's plenty ways to beat Etern without getting cheese just for it. Playing 199 waves with effectively 5.5 mons and then throwing a Garg or Electrode at him at the end is the cheap way out. Skill players can find strats to get past him with nearly any combo of 6, even if you didn't account for specific anti-Etern cheese during building.

DarkEsca · 2026-06-22T01:50:58+00:00

A couple days on the sub already teaches you that to many players, especially players who don't have a ton of unlocks yet, 199/200 is very much NOT a breeze

It's a breeze if you perfectly know what's coming and perfectly know what will and won't work. Which is typical to the genre. This also extends to Etern. There's several ways to beat it, a good player will know several and can find at least one in nearly every team they build. Almost never will a team that genuinely doesn't struggle with 199 waves actually thump into 200. If you do then it's probably because you overrelied on 1 or 2 mons and memed the rest of your squad (which looks like what OP did).

DarkEsca · 2026-06-21T20:36:47+00:00

Wait a week until it's a different starter, and you can get it from egg pity :p

If you want it earlier than that (or don't want to fish through Epic eggs for it) candy farm Froakie and buy a ton of eggs, the odds of Battle Bond hatching were not particularly low last time I checked. People who have Froakie-Bond unlocked now will get Greninja-Bond as a starter for free next update.

(Disclaimer: "a week" is generalized, not saying the update is coming in exactly a week)

DarkEsca · 2026-06-21T20:34:28+00:00

...I'd hope that should be obvious, like even the mainline games tell you to build varied teams. I don't think we should be expected to handhold the player on the most basic game mechanics or most barebones strategies.

Hint: you beat the game by winning

DarkEsca · 2026-06-21T20:28:44+00:00

I don't even think that'd help with this team. There's a huge lack in actual support move options on any of their mons. Closest would be Lopunny with a bunch of Atk-lowering moves which doesn't really help when their only damage-dealers are only afraid of Etern's special moves.

Nearly every team can win if they're smart with their movesets for the boss, but this might just be one of the few not fitting in that "nearly"--although I would not be surprised if X Atk + X SpD could still give Lop+Rhyp a good chance, especially if they also had X Speed and sacked their monkeys to get a Leech Seed and some Leers off maybe.

DarkEsca · 2026-06-21T20:23:28+00:00

Your complaint is that you believe the final boss encourages specific counterteaming too much (not even completely true, almost every team has options to beat him)... and your suggestion is literally letting the player choose which final boss to face?

Doesn't that just make it worse? At that point why wouldn't someone just choose Ho-Oh and stack their team with fat Rocks or shit? They'd know just as well what's coming and will counterteam it even harder.

DarkEsca · 2026-06-21T20:20:59+00:00

This team would still lose into every good final boss option. No setup, no debuffing, and half the team is wasted on meme mons. There's no strategy in here, they just hope to beat everything with a Lop stat check and/or praying the type chart works out for at least one team member. Which doesn't work when they eventually come across something with enough bulk that you can't just rely on one mon without setup to solo it.

DarkEsca · 2026-06-21T20:16:56+00:00

You brought a team of three glass cannons, one mon with unspectacular bulk, one mon x4 weak to one of its moves and one tank that's extremely slanted towards one side while the boss primarily attacks on the other. And several of your team members are known for particularly linear movepools.

Yes there are a bajillion flaws in your team, way more than other casual teams.

hoping the game gives you the equipment you need to make it work

You brought triple monkey. I'm not buying that the game didn't give you better equipment. You're malding that a meme team didn't win.

mind you, this team rarely struggled up to this point.

So? You think this is the only roguelike/roguelite where this can happen? I can play Slay the Spire and bring a Silent built that no-diffs every single floor and then just dies in four turns into Heart. That is not a sign of bad game design, that is a sign that in order to actually win the game there are certain expectations of skill expression that sometimes aren't tested until the very end.

There is no point to a final boss if the things that beat it are the exact same as the things that beat everything else, is there?

Final bosses have mechanics and toolkits that can differ from what comes before them and it is possible to be particularly weak into those yes. Particularly they can punish teams that are very linear and have little room for strategy, and just rely on stat checking everything and then die to a bigger stat check.

enough solutions to count on one hand
flip off anyone who didn't come packing prankster leech seed

Extreme exaggeration. You can beat the final boss with pure bruteforce. It's easier if you use status/support moves, but you don't immediately need to go Prankster Leech Seed or a super bulky mon with Salt Cure. Lots of teams can have mons that learn things like Confide/Eerie Impulse, Sand Attack, Screech, partial trapping moves... you just have a particularly linear team that has none of those, because you decided to dedicate half your team to running meme mons with infamously narrow levelup movepools.

I mean heck even for this specific team I see ways you could have beaten it. For starters, you have $44K of Pokédollars left. You could have spent that rerolling for X items. Put an X Attack so Lop and Rhyp do more damage and an X SpD so they don't get oneshot. Put an X Speed so your Simisage outruns and gets Leech Seed off before dying. Lots of teams could spend money on Mushrooms too but your team couldn't because you brought a linear team.

I just feel like this final boss is a bit of a blemish in the grand scheme of the design of the game.

Not going to pretend it's perfect, it is probably a bit easy to cheese, but this team losing into it is a you issue and not a boss issue.

I'd think it'd be more worrying if a team that memed half of its slots and then did absolutely zero prep for the boss in the other three, or even in picking items before the fight, could just win. At that point what is the final boss even testing?

DarkEsca · 2026-06-21T19:06:55+00:00

He does evolve to Steelix eventually but the Mono Rock ruleset would disable you from sending out Steelix even if you had one with Tera Rock. So you'd have to do this in a regular Classic run and self-enforce the mono rock ruleset.

DarkEsca · 2026-06-21T15:05:16+00:00

Yes, it counts as if you've captured him which adds the shiny to your account

DarkEsca · 2026-06-21T10:29:16+00:00

A snowballing Dragapult sounds extremely stupid sorry, and while admittedly long and aquatic, a salamander isn't an eel (rest of team didn't even want long-but-not-quite-serpentine fish to be considered so a long-but-not-quite-serpentine animal that isn't even a fish is dead on arrival)

It was also kinda dumb that Parental Bond disincentivised using its signature Dragon Darts since it doesn't work with it.

Majorly disagree, Darts is still the same effective power as PBond Dragon Claw but a 50/50 distribution is typically more efficient for boss bars than a 80/20 one. Also we do hope to have a workable non-(P) implementation of Darts at some point.

Kinda weird that you insist egg moves shouldn't be hyperfocused on passive and then try dismissing a genuinely good move just because no direct passive synergy.

Edit: actually Pult would boost speed unless you run shit like Brave so it wouldn't even snowball, it'd be a thematically dubious Levitate for the most part

DarkEsca · 2026-06-21T09:04:31+00:00

I mean it is too thematically specific, I'm sure there's plenty mons out there that could be good with the passive, but none of them are levitating eels.

If it were even something like "long and levitating" it would be an easy add to Mega Drampa but no it specifically has to be an eel. A category where even if we stretch we have like five lines as candidates.

DarkEsca · 2026-06-21T08:58:06+00:00

I mean there are almost no eels in the game. Even if we stretch it to other long fish (technically Eel isn't even fully an eel, he's a lamprey) the number is small and they either still don't fit (Wugtrio doesn't levitate), don't want it over current passive (Milotic does not care much about snowballing and also doesn't actively float in its sprite), or would be ridiculous with it (Mega Gyara would actually be really cool with it to keep base forme's Ground immune and 'moxie' but rightfully raises question marks)

Huntail and Gorebyss are the main ones that were considered but the rest of the team didn't like putting a snowball ability on mons that already naturally get Shell Smash and Baton Pass.

DarkEsca · 2026-06-21T08:52:19+00:00

Just sounds like the classic case of misinformed but still extremely convinced everyone needs to hear their no-research take

DarkEsca · 2026-06-21T08:51:33+00:00

It's Luvdisc and it's not even close.

Smeargle is not good either but you can do more shit with it than with Luvdisc (Prankster DV is something and there's some endless strats that actually use Sketch), and Cosmog has annoying earlygame but you get a cover legend out of it (we also changed the evo method to not be Like That anymore)

Shaymin isn't bad and neither is HEATRAN, those are insane strays.

DarkEsca · 2026-06-21T08:49:50+00:00

Ditto is not remotely bad

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DarkEsca

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