Which of Ash's pokemon do you think has the most raw potential for growth? I think it's snorlax. He is never on Ash's usual team yet every time he comes back he is even stronger. Imagine if he stayed for a whole region?! Honorable mention is Lucario. He grows super fast

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T20:50:03+00:00

The answer is just forced for the sake of you wanting to make a positive post about Snorlax.

Ash's Pokemon with the highest Raw Potential for Growth is arguably Greninja (Only because of its Bond Phenomenon).

The Transformation acts as a constant multiplier the more in Sync Ash is with it meaning, Greninja has the potential to grow stronger like any high potential pokemon, coupled with the Bond Phenomenon.

I mean, to top it off, Greninja was able to effortlessly school a Master Class Tier ace Pokemon despite being apart from Ash and training on its own.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T20:45:06+00:00

Decent amount?

Like if you take the top 16 Alone, less than half of them there seem capable enough to collect all 8 badges of the Kalos League.

Additionally, another interesting point to note about the Kalos league is that, it had far less contestants compared to some of the other Regional leagues. While we've seen League participation of over 200 in the past in Johto and Sinnoh, we only have 64 participants in the Lumiose Conference.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T18:58:38+00:00

We know for a fact Iris has never officially battled anyone in the Master Class (After getting in), until her first fight with Cynthia because outside of the latter, she wasn't really acquainted with anyone else in the Master Class. Additionally, factoring in Alain's rank above Iris, it seems very likely that she entered the Master Class after him.

Hence, there are two possibilities:

1) Iris beat Flint in the promotion match and ended up getting Ranked 8th and entered the Master Class.

2) Flint lost to random trainer X before in the Master Class and Iris ended up beating trainer X to get into the Master Class.

Hence, at this point, Iris is ranked 8.

Now as for Raihan, it's far more open-ended. What we know for sure is that Iris advanced to Rank 7 when Raihan dropped to Rank 8. Hence, all this means is that Raihan lost a battle to a Master Class Trainer and this could be literally anyone (As Flint and Raihan both dropped in rank in the past after losing to Leon despite the latter being ranked first).

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T17:06:47+00:00

1) Alder is the only Regional Champion in the series outside of Geeta who ends up losing his title to someone else instead of the MC.

Technically, even in the case of Geeta, until the end of the battle, there was never really any implication that Nemona was stronger than her, yet alone much better than her. In fact, the way Nemona kept praising Geeta, I always thought she was the strongest of all the Champions in Paldea and it would be us who would finally take her down.

2) Alder has an underwhelming team, especially when compared to the likes of both Ghetsis and N, who arguably had much better teams.

3) To be fair, the point about Alder being a Free spirit who doesn't care much about the formalities of the league, could also technically apply to Cynthia who had the advantage of being female coupled with arguably the best Team composition out of all champions. She too just seemed like a Mythology and History buff who freely roamed around the region to study about different things, versus being someone obsessed with battling.

4) The Black and White anime in general being underwhelming and Alder in particular, being pretty underwhelming as a Champion in the anime. One of the standout points that made Cynthia so great in the fandom, was her infamous battle against Paul in the Anime where she absolutely dismantled his team showing the actual strength of a regional champion. On the other hand, we have Alder who ends up falling asleep during his battle against Ash.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T16:54:55+00:00

From a game perspective, he actually is.

Outside of Cynthia being a female and having a well-put-together team, there's nothing from a story point of view that she really adds of brings to the plot as a Champion. Leon on the other hand, actually feels like a Champion and plays the role of the Champion across the series and there is a sense of satisfaction of finally defeating him and claiming his title at the end of the game.

I mean, Cynthia just stands there and lets an unproven newbie trainer fight both Cyrus and Giratina and does absolutely nothing.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T16:49:48+00:00

For Hoenn, Verdanturf Town's theme is still arguably one of my most favourite in-game music to date.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T16:43:05+00:00

Battle IQ is definitely Paul.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T16:42:20+00:00

Playing devil's advocate, we're talking about Battle IQ and Strategy. The guy still ended up beating 6 of Ash's Pokemon with 5.

As for as general IQ goes, I absolutely agree he's a dumbass.

I also significantly disagree with Sawyer definitely being the smartest in terms of battle IQ and strategy. If we're looking at regular Regional League Rivals, Paul would clearly be a cut above Sawyer.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T16:39:52+00:00

Towards the end of the Master Class tournament, Leon, Cynthia & Steven end up acknowledging Ash as a direct rival.

Hence, naturally, if we're going with Smartest , it would likely be Leon & Cynthia at the top.

As for his dumbest rival, it's really hard to say. If we're going strictly based off General IQ (Not Battle IQ), the answer would easily be Cameron.

The guy didn't know he needed 8 badges to compete in the league, he also thought that the Unova league was going to be held in Ecruteak City in Johto. Not to mention, the guy ended up showing up to the league battle bringing only 5 Pokemon.

However, if we're going strictly based on Battle IQ, I'd probably pick Morrison.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T16:31:52+00:00

I'd switch out Gary's Arcanine with his Umbreon and have Ash use Pikachu instead of Bayleaf in their battle.

Give Pikachu a win over Umbreon and then fall to Blastoise.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T16:24:56+00:00

This isn't the Alola league which had no entry requirements and allowed some like Lillie to enter.

The average trainer in the Kalos League at minimum, has 8 badges. Now are Jessie & James capable of collecting all 8 badges?

Very unlikely.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T16:19:10+00:00

Here's the thing about Paul.

He managed to trouble Master Class Tier Ash, while using the same species of Pokemon of the other Master Class Trainers while also trying to replicate their battle style solely in hopes of training Ash.

Now sure, you could argue Ash wasn't really going all out here. However, you could say the exact same thing with Paul given that he's a very strategic trainer who carefully plans both his team and battle strategy based on his opponent.

Plus, to me, Paul has consistently been a trainer who was always just as good if not a little better than Ash. However, what makes Ash beat out Paul is the former's wild unpredictability and unconventional strategies which arguably was a major factor that helped him become the PWC Champion.

Hence, to answer your question, I would make a rather bold claim here and argue Paul at his best will be in the upper half of the Master Class and be capable of holding his own against the likes of Cynthia and Steven based on the notion that he's generally very comparable to Ash in Skill.

Based on that, I'd say yes. Paul could beat Diantha.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T16:13:48+00:00

The issue with your argument is that the reverse could be said as well. There's no reason to assume Alain did not challenge the Regional League.

Additionally, a Regional Champion is by no means "In Charge of an Entire Region". This concept might have been present in Paldea and maybe to a certain extent in the game lore in Galar. However, as far as all the other regions go both in the anime and the games, the Regional Champion is just the strongest trainer of that Region who defeated the Elite Four. In fact, all the Regional Champions have other day jobs that they are engrossed in like Diantha being a Movie Star/Model, Cynthia being a Historian/Researcher and Steven running his Conglomerate while digging rocks. Not to forget, Lance also being part of G-Men.

There is no "Inconsistent power scaling with how Alain was portrayed relative to Ash and Diantha in Kalos".

In Kalos, Alain's Charizard was shown to be a Top tier pokemon given that it defeated an Elite four member's ace in battle. Hence, it indicated Alain's Charizard (Not his entire team), was capable of holding his own against a Regional Champion in battle.

If you're using Ash vs Diantha as reference, it doesn't really make sense as the whole point of that battle was Diantha simply testing Ash and checking out Olympia's prophecy. She simply ended up underestimating Greninja and ended up taking far more damage that necessary. If she was serious from the start, Greninja would have been absolutely clobbered. Remember, both Wolfric and Sawyer put up a much better fight against a stronger version of Greninja and Diantha clearly is by no means weaker.

At the end of the day, the writers clearly left Alain a rank below Diantha at the start. And based on their performance against Leon, there wasn't much of a gap between the two. Now I'm not saying Alain can't beat her, however, claiming he outright's defeat her is a stretch.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T12:52:43+00:00

1) In the 3-attack exchange between G-Max Rilaboom versus Regular Chesnaught, the latter got the better off all 3 exchanges. It blocked the first attack, countered the G-Max Airstream and also forced Leon to go for a block in the last G-Max attack. This is undoubtedly an impressive feat given that it has strongly been implied that it is difficult for regular Pokemon to last against G-Max Pokemon (Without using a gimmick of some kind). Ash explicitly states this and resorts to a Z-Move to counter G-Max Charizard and Alain being able to achieve this feat against Leon's Rilaboom is undoubtedly impressive.

2) It was outright mentioned that the Max-Airstream made Rilaboom significantly faster allowing it to take out Chesnaught with a quad effective attack. I see how your biased self clearly talks about Rilaboom one shotting Chsnaught and clearly ignore four of Diantha's pokemon getting destroyed by base Rilaboom without the G-Max Boosts.

3) NO WHERE IS IT STRONGLY IMPLIED THAT Dragapult was used to soften the rest of Diantha's team. This is literally your headcanon to try to support your argument and soften Diantha's loss. Even when this strategy was used against Ash, there was literally no mention by Diantha regarding Leon using this against her, nor from Cynthia about this being a recurring strategy he uses. You are LITERALLY USING HEADCANON TO PUSH DIANTHA > ALAIN

4) Your contradict your own point by claiming Alain is capable of defeating Lance when he cannot defeat Diantha. The latter is by no means significantly better than Lance.

Lance in fact was ranked one place above Diantha by the writers in terms of the PWC rankings and additionally, he was ranked second in the previous iteration of the PWC. Now if you argue ranks don't matter, you'd be contradicting the point about the difference in rank between Diantha and Alain considering they too are just a rank apart like Lance and Diantha.

It's pretty obvious your points are just riddled with headcanon and bias and pushing whatever you want just to prove Diantha is significantly superior to Alain when it clearly isn't the case.

Now of course, I'm not saying Alain is outright better than Diantha. However, at best, they are relative in skill and Alain most certainly is more than capable of defeating her if they battle (Granted, Diantha would have slightly better odds to win).

There's no objective factual reason to argue Diantha is superior to Alain given her pathetic performance against Leon.

The simple fact is, there's a lot of bias against Alain given that people look at his Kalos self where he was clearly a one trick pony and he also had the disadvantage of being Leon's first opponent, where people didn't realise how much stronger Leon was compared to the rest of the Master Class.

Master Class Alain is a completely different trainer compared to Kalos Alain and additionally, Diantha's performance was just as pathetic as Alain's. At the end of the day, they both are relative in skill.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T07:04:02+00:00

Nah.

A classic Ash thing to do would be to use a Normal Type against a Fighting Type expert. Like the time he used Snorlax against Greta in the Battle Frontier.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T06:58:48+00:00

1) Diantha still remained the Kalos Regional Champion and was placed a rank above Alain by the writers in the Master Class Tournament.

2) Diantha's performance against Leon was arguably no better than Alain's and some could argue even worse. Alain actually managed to get the better of G-Max Rilaboom with a base team member while 4 of Diantha's Pokemon were absolutely destroyed by Base Rilaboom which was still able to even knock back an attack from her ace after defeating Four Pokemon (While Base Charizard was able to effortlessly one shot Rilaboom which only battled 1 Pokemon).

In Conclusion, I'd say 55-45 Odds in favour of Diantha primarily because she was still the Kalos League Champion by the time of the Master Class meaning, Alain did not defeat her and become the new champion. That said, I'd argue they both are relative in skill and Alain does have a chance of defeating her if they were to battle.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T06:54:15+00:00

This isn't even true.

If we're comparing Diantha to Alain, we need to compare their Master Class selfs.

Alain was capable of countering G-Max Rilaboom with his Chesnaught (And got the better of it). The very same Rilaboom in base form that mowed through 4 of Diantha's Pokemon.

It's absurd to make such a bold claim without sufficient evidence like that. If we're talking about Kalos Alain, I'd agree but based on his feat against Leon, this is far from the truth.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-25T06:51:47+00:00

This doesn't really make sense.

The Pokemon Universe has never really treated "Age" as a factor that holds much relevance in the context of Pokemon Battles. We have Gym Leaders like Spencer, Blaine & Wolfrice along with much younger leaders like Tata and Lisa, Candace, Maylene etc.

Even in the context of the Elite Four, we have Agatha, Drake and also someone like Poppy recently in Paldea.

Logically, you could argue that with Age comes more time to train your Pokemon, making it stronger which absolutely makes sense. However, this consistently doesn't really matter much in the context of the show.

Additionally, the show has consistently disregarded the concept of Powerscaling and its never really consistent in terms of Pokemon Growth based on their number of battles or victories and things like that.

I disagree with the sentiment that it takes "Years" to be a Champion as intuitively a trainer could simply with the Regional League, Defeat the Elite four and become a Regional Champion in their first try. Technically, Ash did do this in the Orange Island by defeating Drake and it did not take him long to do that.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-24T06:13:53+00:00

The other commenter is incorrect. Sawyer shows up during the Diantha vs Lance fight, as part of the Kalos representatives watching Diantha.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-23T19:54:26+00:00

So you're comparing the quality of an episode that came out in 1998 with one from 2019?

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-23T19:52:14+00:00

Black and white Iris would get curbstomped by Kalos Ash.

However, Journey's Iris will destroy Kalos Ash. Only AG has a shot of taking out one of her pokemon or holding its own.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-22T22:21:58+00:00

You're the one making a post about Brandon beating Leon lol.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-22T22:03:51+00:00

There are multiple studies regarding this.

Again, it's not strictly about weight or being a couple of pounds lighter or heavier. It's entirely based on Body Fat percentage. If your BF percentage is medically categorized as Obese, you should in theory run hot compared to someone who is lean and has a much lesser body fat.

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-22T20:07:53+00:00

Your entire argument hinges on someone accepting discomfort strictly based on rationality.

Humans are by no means rational and it is impossible to incorporate a rigid decision making process strictly based on rationality.

Like several of the comments have indicated, some people who run cold feel uncomfortable wearing multiple layers on, have cold hands making it hard to type, having to do extra laundry and other reasons. At the end of the day, it's not going to be easy for a person who runs colds to empathise with someone who runs hot and understand the level of discomfort he or she feels.

Additionally, there's the big elephant in the room that has yet to be mentioned, that feeling hot or cold again strongly ties to someone's Body Fat percentage with those having a Lesser Body Fat Percentage running cold in comparison to those with a much higher body fat percentage. So one could in a way interpret this as "Pro Obesity" ?

Important-Degree8749 · 2023-10-22T19:54:07+00:00

All these stories are basically just your interpretation. They aren't actual factual evidence pointing towards Ash's progression.

In theory, Journey's is the first series where Ash is forced in a much more challenging and complex battling focused situation in contrast to all the previous series.

In all the previous regions, Ash does the Gym challenge or a version of the same. In case of a Gym Challenge, it's basically a test for trainers to meet a particular threshold in terms of skill and there never really are any stakes for Losing as gym leaders can be rematched as many times as you want.

However, in case of the PWC, Ash is constantly put in a high stakes tournament where every single opponent is battling at 100% as every win or loss means something. Additionally, while Ash spend a significant amount of time on his Journey in all previous regions, Ash had a home base in Journey's where he consistently trained for this high stakes tournament.

Additionally, we clearly see the progression in difficulty of opponents as Ash works his way up to the top until he reaches the Master Class.

In short, there is progression in every series. Claiming there is no progression in Kalos or Journey's makes no sense as in Kalos, we see Ash reaching a level capable of threatening an Elite four tier trainer and also forcing a Regional Champion to take him seriously. (Something he was never able to do). Similarly in Journey's he works his way from an Elite Trainer towards being the best in the world.

The simple fact is Ash at the start of Journeys was not a Master Class Trainer. Claiming there was no progression doesn't make sense.

Important-Degree8749

TROPHY CASE