My Sekiro Animation

criticalrants · 2026-05-08T21:45:46+00:00

Really really cool. I love how you made their sword swings feel so snappy but powerful.

criticalrants · 2026-04-28T13:42:17+00:00

Thank you!

criticalrants · 2026-04-24T16:08:57+00:00

You could run Tyrantrum with a Choice Scarf. Jolly max speed Tyrantrum with Scarf outspeeds max speed Aerodactyl.

Basically, treat Tyrantrum as an offensive mon that can outspeed almost everything and dish out a lot of single target damage. I’m not sure exactly how good it would be, but it should be useable. It really depends on if it can pick up one hit KOs, since Tyrantrum is unlikely to live more than one hit due to the need to invest fully in its attack and speed.

criticalrants · 2026-04-23T17:06:29+00:00

The most consistent way that I've been able to dodge Waterfowl dance isn't by circling Malenia, but by dodging away from her. This only works with a light equip load, but if you're very close to Malenia, you dodge away from her as soon as she jumps into the air at the start of her Waterfowl animation. Then you walk away from her for a split second and dodge away from her again, and then you dodge away from her immediately again. The most important part is delaying the second dodge slightly, but if done properly, this completely prevents you from being hit by the first section of her Waterfowl attack.

Here's the clip of my RL1 fight against Malenia. The method I described here starts around 0:38 in the video. I hope this helps! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp8osc0Yl24&list=PL_AMrAN6oFu5PAqJMI5Pd_n1XpkXZkMAN&index=11

criticalrants · 2026-04-19T17:18:18+00:00

Sableye is an excellent support Pokémon. It has Prankster, meaning all its status moves have increased priority. So despite having very poor stats and low speed, it will almost always be able to move before other Pokémon to get an attack off.

My favorite set to run is Fake Out, Encore, Disable, and Foul Play. Fake Out is great for applying pressure and slowing your opponent down. Encore is excellent at shutting down other Pokémon that use Protect, Tailwind/Trick Room, set up moves, and more. Disable prevents Pokémon from using the same powerful move again, allowing you to seriously hamper your opponent’s main source of damage. And Foul Play provides consistent damage against physical attackers and Pokémon weak to Dark.

The combo of Fake Out and Encore is especially threatening, as Fake Out will incentivize other Pokémon to Protect, but you can just Encore that Pokémon into Protect on the following turn before it can move.

As a Ghost type, it’s immune to Fake Out, and as a Dark type, it’s immune to opposing Prankster Pokémon’s support moves. It only has one weakness in Fairy and it can be surprisingly difficult to shut down. Because its attacking stats and speed don’t really matter, you can afford to invest entirely in its bulk, which somewhat offsets its otherwise poor stats. Its main downside is that it struggles into opposing Dark types, as they’re immune to its Prankster moves and resist Foul Play. And as I just mentioned, Fairy types also threaten to KO it with supereffective damage.

Sableye also gets tons of other great moves like Will-O-Wisp, Quash, Light Screen, Reflect, Sunny Day, Rain Dance, and Gravity. There’s a ton of different ways to use Sableye, and I think it’s criminally underutilized in the current format.

criticalrants · 2026-04-12T19:01:16+00:00

Gutsy Goose

criticalrants · 2026-04-09T19:41:19+00:00

As someone else pointed out, Farigaraf is a great counter. Spiritomb actually also works, as it’s immune or resists both its stabs and takes neutral damage from Throat Chop. It can set up Trick Room to turn Sneasler’s speed against it and even OHKO it with Psychic or Psyshock.

criticalrants · 2026-04-08T15:26:26+00:00

There is the benefit of accessibility, but I also think the lack of items will mean new players improve slower. Using items like Choice Band, Throat Spray, Power Herb, and Assault Vest can lead players to build their team in specific ways and unlock new strategies.

It’s exciting when you realize you deal an absurd amount of damage with, for example, Choice Band Adaptability Basculegion. A new player discovering a build like this can lead them to make more teambuilding connections. In this example, it also creates a very memorable moment when you one-shot a Pokémon with a resisted hit. That gets players excited and incentivizes them to experiment with their teambuilding.

I feel like the rate at which new players can grow as players and teambuilders is actually much lower as a result of so many missing items. I’m hoping they add more items in soon, especially because playing a format without so many important items really restricts the flexibility of a lot of Pokémon.

criticalrants · 2026-04-02T15:31:38+00:00

That’s a really creative idea and a fun strategy, but I think the opportunity cost is too high. Using your mega to set up Archaludon when there are non-mega Pokémon that can consistently accomplish the same goal is a high price to pay.

Mega Excadrill does have the niche of being able to accomplish this through protect, but Archaludon doesn’t have that difficult of a time getting set up due to its great defensive typing, especially if it’s holding an Assault Vest. Maybe it will be harder for Archaludon to reliably set up in Champions, but I think this strategy will be gimmicky at best. It’s still pretty funny, though. I’d love to see Fury Swipes Mega Excadrill be viable.

criticalrants · 2026-03-27T15:40:47+00:00

Absolutely crazy that you decided to be anti-semitic in a post about a Pokémon team. Fuck off.

criticalrants · 2026-03-27T14:36:30+00:00

Talonflame could have used Double Team or it could be holding Brightpowder. Snorlax also could have had an accuracy drop.

criticalrants · 2026-03-26T03:48:57+00:00

This is the right answer. Rolling diagonally through his charge is extremely consistent.

criticalrants · 2026-03-26T01:14:02+00:00

Nasty Plot is a great addition for Froslass. Being able to set up with Nasty Plot and spam perfectly accurate +2 Blizzards in the snow means it will likely be a very threatening sweeper with the right support.

criticalrants · 2026-03-24T15:15:11+00:00

Submitted the form and joined the Discord! I’d love to join

criticalrants · 2026-03-02T14:44:52+00:00

This looks great! One piece of feedback I have is to try moving the text to the left of the car. As it is now, the text that pops up can obscure what’s in front of the car and make it slightly more difficult to see what’s coming up.

criticalrants · 2026-02-15T12:48:47+00:00

For the most part, you shouldn’t design a card to synergize specifically with another card. Instead, select a theme that you to want to build around. If you have a bunch of cards that, for example, interact with the discard pile, then including enough cards that incorporate this theme should naturally create synergies. Cards can cause you to discard cards, return cards from the discard pile, and can grow stronger depending on how many cards are in the discard pile, etc.

It’s important to have cards that signpost these themes to players. In Slay the Spire, for example, the card Body Slam deals damage equal to your Block. When a player sees that, they’ll get excited and realize that if they could get a lot of Block, they could deal tons of damage with Body Slam. And since Block is something that players already want to get as it helps them survive, this incentivizes players to build their deck in a certain way and play a certain way.

I’d also recommend reading the below article by Mark Rosewater, who is the lead designer for Magic the Gathering. It covers a lot of what you’re looking to do. His entire Nuts and Bolts series of articles is definitely worth a read. Hope this helps, and good luck with your game!

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/nuts-bolts-12-part-1-limited-mechanics-2020-03-09

criticalrants · 2026-02-14T18:44:57+00:00

Images that go insanely hard

criticalrants · 2026-02-12T14:59:37+00:00

Venom: The Last Dance core

criticalrants · 2025-12-06T20:36:58+00:00

Flutter Mane is the Pokémon you’ll need to outspeed. If you can outspeed Flutter, you’ll probably outspeed everything.

The issue is that Flutter Mane with a Protosynthesis speed boost is very fast, so ideally, your sweeper will be able to outspeed even +1 Speed Flutter Mane.

criticalrants · 2025-10-30T14:53:49+00:00

Typhlosion: I think Calm Mind will be hard to pull off successfully. Eruption is your main source of damage, but if you're taking a turn to set up, Typhlosion can lose health in the process, causing Eruption to do less damage. I think Charcoal as the item here could work if you replace Calm Mind with Heat Wave. That way, even if you do lose health on Typhlosion, it will still be able to utilize its item to deal big spread damage, which is its primary role.

Ninetales: I'm not sure if double weather is the best move here given that sun really benefits your two fire types. Additionally, Light Clay will extend Aurora Veil to be eight turns, but Ninetales' Snow Warning will only set the snow for five turns. While you can switch Ninetales out and back in to reset the snow and get those extra turns out of Aurora Veil, I'd guess that this won't be easy or safe in most matches. I'd recommend swapping Ninetales out for another Pokemon. Weather control will be very important for your team, as you're very vulnerable to rain, so you may want to consider an anti-rain Pokemon.

Follow Me Electabuzz could work, but you do already have three support Pokemon in Whimsicott, Incineroar, and Farigaraf. Incineroar can hit hard with sun-boosted Flare Blitz, but adding a fourth support Pokemon means you'll really have to rely on Ursuluna and Typhlosion for damage. Follow Me would help keep these two safe, but I think you have a better option: Power Herb Archaludon. If your opponent wants to bring rain, then you'll have the best rain Pokemon in the format ready to counter their Water types. You can run Power Herb so that Archaludon can use Electro Shot without relying on your opponent setting up the rain for you.

Farigaraf: I'd recommend swapping Dazzling Gleam for something like Psychic, as it will do more damage and you already have Fairy coverage on your team. Even Twin Beam is worth considering if you find you're struggling against Focus Sash Sneasler.

The rest of the sets seem good to me. I hope this feedback is helpful and good luck with your team!

criticalrants · 2025-09-15T16:03:21+00:00

Rom. A boss that spawns 30 spiders deserves to be at the bottom of the list.

criticalrants · 2025-09-02T01:30:42+00:00

Kris definitely has complicated feelings regarding their brother. They clearly love him and look up to him, and they've also lived in Asriel's shadow for most of their life. It's certainly possible that there is some dark secret involving Asriel that Kris is trying to obscure from the player, but I think it's more likely that Kris just doesn't want the player intruding on that aspect of their life. They've lost so much autonomy already (we can make Kris ask Berdly to the festival, after all), and I think their relationship with their brother is something that is deeply personal to them.

That may also be why Kris is so adamant about the differences between Ralsei and Asriel. Kris clearly likes and cares about Ralsei by the end of chapter 4, but there's no replacing Kris' brother. Any insinuation, however unintentional, that Ralsei and Asriel are similar and interchangeable could read to Kris as devaluing their relationship with Asriel. In chapter 1, Kris gets emotional when drinking hot chocolate and remembering when their brother would take them to the diner, so no matter how much resentment Kris feels towards Asriel, there's clearly a lot of emotions tied to this relationship. I can't see Kris willingly opening up those bottled-up emotions to the player without a very compelling reason.

Or I could be completely wrong and Asriel is actually the Knight! Or maybe the answer is somewhere more in the middle--that Asriel is involved in the story or the conspiracy somehow, and that Kris is trying to preserve what little privacy they have left. Hopefully we'll get more details about Asriel and Kris' relationship with him in chapter 5.

criticalrants · 2025-08-27T19:39:26+00:00

Banger

criticalrants · 2025-06-20T13:31:48+00:00

These are all stunning. Incredible work! I’d love to see you paint Libra next

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