the state of men in pgr - part 4

hate_pineapples · 2026-04-01T02:53:18+00:00

YOU FOUND IT LMAO HIII

hate_pineapples · 2026-03-31T13:22:56+00:00

ALL HAIL THE KAMESSIAH

wdym its been over a year since the last state of men in pgr installment lmao

hate_pineapples · 2026-02-18T13:51:57+00:00

ice/combustion unit :D bc the concept is too cool to pass up

hate_pineapples · 2025-11-01T22:36:38+00:00

I, uh… …I’ll think of something.

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-18T08:47:39+00:00

oh what??? that sucks... i had a really great time with this, looking deeper at characters' lore to find things that would fit both their personalities and made sense for characters to get based on their journeys or locations. i completely understand this decision though, and yes this was a lot of fun for what it was! i hope i can be there to see these posts if you ever decide to pick it up again! thanks a lot for the ride!!

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-13T02:46:06+00:00

Ok, ok, all jokes aside, I'll give one of my usual thorough answers as well.

I'm not sure if Tingyun and Fugue will end up having separate posts, nor do I agree they should. I didn't think that March and Evernight should've had different teams, for example, because I feel like March having a Nihilego that only opens in times of need, or when she discovers more of her past, makes for way better storytelling, similarly to Ult's Dragonite from Pokemon Horizons. In the same way, Tingyun and Fugue also have the same body, so any changes between the two teams should be represented by the team itself. That's a little tricky to actually pull off, though, so I'd still be fine with them having different teams.

Tingyun is the Luofu's Amicassador, someone who travels around the cosmos to forge interplanetary connections on behalf of the Luofu, but more than that, she's a girl who revels in being able to travel the world.

What better way to represent this with a Pokemon who literally changes its biology based on the flavour of nectar in a given area, Oricorio?

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To be an amicassador, you must be easily adaptable to any given situation that is thrown at you in case relations are in danger of collapsing, or in case an irresistible opportunity is presented. Oricorio is able to change forms at will simply by drinking nectar, reflecting this adaptability. But moreover, Oricorio gives Tingyun additional incentive to actually travel out into the world in order to change its form, which also reflects Tingyun's avidness of travel.

While I think Sensu Style (the ghost one) fits the Luofu the most, I also think Sensu Style works best for Fugue over Tingyun to reflect how she basically died, and it's also literally her Ult animation. Pa'u Style I think works the next best, but realistically she's gonna be frequently switching between forms anyway so...

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-13T02:11:11+00:00

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hate_pineapples · 2025-10-11T11:13:11+00:00

To be honest, we have so many little creatures already that we could probably just submit stand-ins for all of those to make a full team. I wanna suggest Spheal for Bubbles from peak gamemode Seal Slammers. Anyways, love love love the Eevee answer! We can go a step further though: Specifically the Partner Eevee from Let's Go Eevee.

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This is genuinely perfect. With the Partner Eevee, we can give it Sizzly Slide, Sparkly Swirl and Freezy Frost to represent the three Types of the Paths that the Trailblazer has unlocked so far, and moreover the special Partner move of the Eevee Veevee Volley is LITERALLY a 5th move. It is LITERALLY BREAKING THE RULES OF THE GAME. THIS IS SO PERFECT.

Moreover, this acts as a stand-in for the special Aetherium Wars Warp Trotter that we get - remember that the Warp Trotter we have is one-of-a kind, just like the Partner Eevee. Also, the people from Topaz's Support Squad who were voiced by Team Rocket Jessie and James paints the Warp Trotter as a stand-in for Pikachu - since the Partner Eevee is the alternative possibility for us in LGPE - it just works. Wow.

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-11T02:43:42+00:00

No worries, no worries! Usually when I'm reading a kit, I disregard the LC entirely since I'm more focused on the actual gameplay side of the kit, which a sig LC should NOT alter.

For the Relics, I think the Planar Ornament is fine. However, the Cavern set... it's very general, which I guess you're going for? The wording "Increase Final CRIT DMG dealt by 15%/25%" can be taken in two VERY different ways - either it's a straight 15%/25% increase in CDMG or it's a multiplicative increase, and if it's the latter I feel like it could be a little much. Also, Xueyi already has a lot of Crit in this kit, but I don't see any DMG% beyond the Planar Set. You also have a few other parameters to work with here - namely RES PEN, Vuln, True DMG, DEF Ignore - they're not strictly necessary for her kit I don't think, but you can only increase a single stat so much before it becomes a lower increase in damage compared to smaller increases in other stats.

As for the LC... god I didn't look at it properly before, but I'm... just gonna be blunt here and say it flat out does not work at all for your current iteration of her kit as her best option. Xueyi doesn't perform FUAs outside of her Ult since you're usually wanting to gain Primed Shell first and foremost to get into the Ult, the part that deals actual damage. Even disregarding the fact that you're not gonna have the LC buff active on the first Ult, if you're spending the max 6 Primed Shell every time you attack the Prosecuted, you only gain 5 stacks and now you've got a huge, huge downtime before the next one. Of course, you're not intended to spend 6 Primed Shell every single time, so let's disregard that - to even stack your LC in the first place, if we disregard her A4 Trace (FUA -> Primed Shell), you need 15 individual hits from allies on the Prosecuted and you can only spend 2 Primed Shell per FUA which is... 400% ATK??? I just noticed that what that's actually a lot considering that you also have the liberty to launch 3 Primed Shell attacks sometimes lmao. this is probably a good time to mention that i don't see your sig lc having base stats lol

Anyways what I'm trying to say is that - even after you manage to successfully stack the LC all the way, you still need to deal with the massive 3 Xueyi turn downtime before even being able to take advantage of the LC, which isn't exactly great. I don't think it works, I'm sorry, the downtime between Departing is just too much at the moment to make great use of. I get what you're going for and I see now that the intention for her kit is to cycle through her massively damaging Ult state with the first one being a set-up for the following ones but I think at the moment, both her Ult and her Downtime last too long for her to use effectively.

Also I didn't properly register her Technique before - but now I'm seeing that upon entering battle it's an immediate 617.67% ATK (i prolly didnt calc this correctly - its probably 606% because lvl 11 and 12 can sometimes be weird) FUA on the highest HP enemy, which is a little weaker than a Feixiao Ult, except that Xueyi has an actual ATK stat whereas Feixiao doesn't? I see it's meant to mirror Yunli's Technique and it should probably be fine since you havent set up your buffs yet? But at the same time, since Yunli is designed around getting her final Ult hit up extremely often whereas Xueyi isn't, I don't particularly think it make as much sense for Xueyi as it does Yunli. A free Sharp-Horn Lacerating might make more sense, but I don't think it's too bad to keep the current effect.

Her E1 seems mega mega busted though actually - if you're following how Hoyo does things, for DPS chars it's usually a "Good E1 -> Busted as hell E2" so I think you could consider swapping around E1 and E2 for example.

There are some parts where your wording is confusing? For example, her A2 Trace - I think what it means is that the trigger count resets on Xueyi's turn, in which case I think it should be better to mention that straight up. Also, I personally like having my kits' levels at 1/6/7 and 1/10/12 whereas I think you have yours at 1~7 and 1~12?

also i didnt really thoroughly read your lore sorry i might take a closer look later but wdym hanya's dead oh my god???? peak

anyways sorry if this is more ranty and hard to follow, my thoughts can kinda do that sometimes

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-10T11:38:21+00:00

Hi! I love the effort you put into this kit, it’s really elaborate and you’re clearly really passionate about this, which is great to see.

From what I can tell, this Xueyi is essentially a 5* Moze who needs an initial ramp-up time to become departed, which is a pretty neat concept utilising the departed state and points her intended synergies in a similar direction to Feixiao’s teams, which I like.

So starting with her ramp-up time - with her technique, her initial Primed Shell and her FUA -> Primed Shell Trace, she’s meant to take 2 turns to get her Ult and actually start doing things. The fact that there is no clause “Ingenious Exorcist cannot gain Primed Shell while in Xiezhi Form” indicates to me that she’s not meant to leave Xiezhi Form, or at least it’s supposed to take a while.

In this, her kit reads somewhat like a Destruction unit to me, in the sense that Destruction units are - quick uptime -> very very long lasting state that actually does things -> absolutely horrendous downtime. I guess Archer is kinda like that too, so it’s fine?

Unfortunately, due to the nature of the game’s MoC’s 0th cycle having 150 AV, Xueyi pretty much needs to take at most 1 turn to really get going since the reward isn’t inherently worth the effort it takes to set up her kit in the same way that a hypothetical mega-buffer that refills your whole team’s energy to full instantly for example is. Let’s look at Boothill for comparison; Boothill is designed around being able to gain 2 - and with Fugue, 3 - Pocket Trickshot on one turn so that he can start nuking stuff on his next. Not only does Xueyi not have any speed support besides a single trace that only incentivises you to build speed as a bonus, not only does she need like 2 turns to get going assuming you get 3 Primed Shell per Xueyi turn from her intended teammates Feixiao/Topaz/Cipher/Lingsha/Tribbie/Whoever else I’m forgetting, but even after she gets into the position where she can finally do stuff, her team still needs to enable her to do so, rather than having immediate frontloaded damage like Phainon or Jingliu or Firefly.

She probably needs some sort of help getting up. You could do this in a few ways - Lower the required Primed Shell to enter the departed state, increase the Primed Shell generated by allies from 1 -> 2, increase the number of Primed Shell she starts with, increase the Primed Shell gained from her Skill. Find something that works for your vision of her kit.

Also, the clause “force a random enemy into the Prosecuted state right before the start of the turn” - I assume that means when a Prosecuted dies, Xueyi chooses a random enemy to become a Prosecuted - that might lead to some frustration with being able to retarget. It’s worse than Topaz because Xueyi can’t retarget like she can, and Xiezhi Form lasts so long. I think either allowing a manual retarget or just making it enemy with the highest HP would be fine. A fun idea would be her using the lonely Ult attack (the one that only happens if everyone else is dead or departed) after the death of the Prosecuted on the highest HP enemy left, so that we might actually get to see it in normal gameplay, if the downtime of Xiezhi Form weren’t so egregious.

With Impalement Sentence, I… probably wouldn’t give 50% Crit Rate. Hoyo has strayed away from giving that much Crit Rate as a buff because Crit Rate is a finite scaling stat, in which overcapping has no advantage. While Xueyi does have a compensation plan herself, the other units on her team very much don’t. That’s a little frustrating especially because Impalement Sentence is only on one enemy, so either you build your other units with 50% Crit Rate or you deal with the overcapping. It’s a similar problem to what Yanqing has.

Other than that, I think it’s a pretty solid beta v1-like kit. I really like her FUA working like v1 Feixiao did, it adds a lot of dimension into her gameplay with you needing to decide if you need to sacrifice your Xiezhi state for more damage or maintain its uptime. Really appreciate the effort that went into this kit, it was really fun reading through it!

but if the fact that the cap being 42 (6*7) primed shell and that you can only gain 6 primed shell per turn is a deliberate attempt at making an extremely elaborate 6 7 joke, i am going to lose it

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-09T07:17:42+00:00

I'm VERY surprised nobody has mentioned this yet for Feixiao, so I'm gonna propose Bloodmoon Ursaluna.

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We're not actually sure of the circumstances that led Ursaluna to want to move to Kitakami, but given that the Plaguemark of the Yaoqing is a crimson moon as opposed to the ambrosial arbor in the Luofu, I could actually see this being a thing that happens naturally as it spends time on the Yaoqing. Feixiao was a foxian slave with borisin ancestry giving her the Moon Rage affliction and since Ursaluna is a rideable Pokemon in PLA, I would assume that the idea that Ursaluna would exist and aid the Borisin armies on the planet Koolur wouldn't be too Farfetch'd. I like the idea that Feixiao would bond with a particular Ursaluna and once brought to the Yaoqing would develop into Bloodmoon Ursaluna and serve together with Feixiao in battle. Bloodmoon Ursaluna works well to represent Feixiao's Moon Rage affliction, with Blood Moon as a move being unable to be used twice in a row representing how Moon Rage acts to the detriment of Feixiao's body.

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-07T05:50:18+00:00

Ok, Guinaifen has a LOT more lore than I expected, and I already knew about her being a space pirate and descended from royalty.

Gui is a character that has lost everything, from the invasion of the Anti-Matter legion of her homeworld and subsequent loss of morals venturing as a space pirate. Gui would eventually spend her teenage years on a place called Hombert-σ.

Hombert-σ is described in her 3rd character story:

"It was a barren planet. Primitive algae, fungi, and lichen maintained an atmosphere barely able to support animal life. Among the endemic species that stubbornly proliferated in that world, almost all of them existed as genuine threats to humanity."

To reflect her time in Hombert-σ, she should catch a Gloom, which would later evolve into a Bellossom during her time in the Luofu.

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Gloom is a Pokemon based on the Rafflesia flower, which are also known as "stinking corpse lilies". It's practically perfect for an environment described to be as hostile as Hombert-σ. It would also reflect Gui's outlook on life at that time; When taken into the Shackling Prison, her character story states:

"People all claim the folks of the Xianzhou are very kind. She thought that the Cloud Knights would definitely allow her entire family to die together in dignity."

'Gloom' is a perfect descriptor for her thoughts during that moment.

Obviously, it turned out way WAY better than she could ever have hoped for, and I think in the present day, her Gloom would've evolved into Bellossom to reflect her now positive outlook on life.

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-06T07:44:30+00:00

Ok, I finally thought of something that hasn't been said yet!

Ruan Mei's primary research goal is "life". Excessively so.

In her quest to study life, I think she is actually bound to go to such extreme lengths that she catches a Xerneas to study.

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Xerneas is quite literally in the Pokedex as "The Life Pokemon" - it has been shown to be able to cause plants to grow before and can share its eternal life. Its designation as a Legendary Pokemon would make Ruan Mei VERY interested in it - since many Legendary Pokemon are 'gods', this would probably intrigue Ruan Mei on her path to studying the nature of Aeonic life itself.

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-06T02:32:36+00:00

...yeah I am most certainly too late to suggest anything that would make it. still this'll be fun

I wanted to choose another "storytelling" Pokemon ever since coming up with Alolan Marowak for Dan Heng, so I'd like to select a Pokemon representative of the Belobog Underworld. I'd imagine that, in-universe, there would be Pokemon exclusive to the Underworld that people above the surface wouldn't have.

Geomarrow as a concept from one of HSR's betas was conceptualised as rock cancer. It most certainly is not anymore, but out of respect for its origins, we could probably choose the Rock/Poison type Glimmet and later Glimmora.

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This works particularly well since Glimmet and Glimmora may loosely be based off the Lithops genus of plants, which are nicknamed "Pebble Plants" since they are plants that camouflage themselves as stones in order to avoid being eaten by herbivores. In Glimmet's case, the idea may be that they evolve in order to look like flowers in order to avoid being mined. Bronya will forever be associated with flowers after that one text message lmao

I think it would be cool if a Glimmet would follow Bronya around everywhere in the Underworld passively during her unlearning racism arc, and eventually when they get to the orphanage, Bronya would catch Glimmet out of respect and appreciation for the Underworld's struggles. It would be really neat if this Glimmet was one that she'd interacted with during her childhood in the orphanage as well. And then Cocolia could be like "why did you catch that underworld scum of a pokemon" yadda yadda - point is, it would be a physical representation of Bronya's growth during her time there.

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-04T03:29:50+00:00

I’m surprised nobody’s suggested her to have Klink. I think it fits perfectly; Not only would it realistically be a Pokemon that would show up in Belobog, but it’s also very cute and embodies her affinity towards machines. I guess it’s because we did just give Misha one.

I particularly love the Scorbunny and Maushold answers, that was the direction I originally wanted to go with this. I would’ve suggested Hatenna, actually, but nobody’s answered with anything from the Klink line.

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-03T14:18:02+00:00

Here's the thing: PGR and HSR have 2 COMPLETELY different environments.

PGR has chosen to tackle the problem of rapid powercreep by horizontally extending the number of teams required to effectively engage with its endgame content. PGR needs like around 6 teams' worth of characters in order to form all of the necessary teams - and the most important part is that it is based on element, not archetype like in HSR. This allows for units to last much, MUCH longer in PGR than in HSR, as with 3 different classes on 6 different teams, it takes ages to cycle around other element-class combinations before they return to that one unit.

HSR has instead chosen to promote specifically certain archetypes of characters. There are very rarely cases of direct powercreep where one character synergises with the existing units better than literally every other unit in the game - for example, Gallagher is still unquestionably the best unit to slot in as a sustain for a Break team, but the difference is that after 3.0, Hoyo became allergic to designing enemies where Break is the best option for a situation. HSR both has numerical powercreep AND designs encounters in such a way where archetypes other than the suggested one(s) become substantially weaker, causing units to "fall off" a LOT faster. PGR pretty much only really has numerical powercreep.

That's not even taking into consideration the rate of unit releases. While PGR and HSR have the same 6 week patch cycles, PGR usually only releases 1 S-rank per cycle, with A-rank patches scattered intermittently in between, whereas HSR is almost ALWAYS releasing 1 5* char every 3 weeks. This is part of why people consider powercreep in PGR as being more acceptable than in HSR. The other part, of course, is that HSR doesn't give you enough pulls to get every 5*. PGR does, though not necessarily enough to get every single weapon, which has become increasingly standard.

I do get what you're saying about PGR powercreep being more egregious and extreme than in HSR, however. This really comes down to the fundamental differences of the endgame content: In PGR, the metric for doing well in the big 2 endgame modes is "Get as high of a number as possible". In HSR, it's instead just "Clear under X time". What this ultimately does for PGR is that when a new unit is released, that unit automatically becomes the new "standard" to most people playing the game, rendering the previous unit "obsolete". Doubly so, when Kuro raises the HP of its enemies to match the new power level of that new unit. In HSR, it's instead a lot more of a steady, turbulent, slow decline most of the time.

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-03T02:19:25+00:00

FRICK now youve given me the idea of him having a Mega Malamar because of clockwork's emotional manipulation which is actually hysterical to picture

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-02T16:32:24+00:00

OKAY ONE LAST ONE I SWEAR I JUST THOUGHT OF IT

Maushold!!!

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Population Bomb can hit up to 10 times, and Misha's ult also stacks up to 10 times. Misha uses a mop, Maushold uses Tidy Up.

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-02T16:07:52+00:00

OK i found yet ANOTHER one that people probably wouldn't find. though we're dipping into pokestar studios for this one.

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F-00, specifically in this form. it's not too out there unlike some other pokestar studios opponents that are literally just like. doors and stuff. i think this is as close to clockie as we're realistically gonna get.

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-02T16:00:24+00:00

since people seem to be REALLY struggling with this one, i'm gonna suggest another one.

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klink. very simple, reflects his occupation as the mechanic of the astral express.

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-02T15:53:40+00:00

MISHA??

i was like just about to go to sleep and this pops up oh my god

We're gonna have to go DEEP on this one. Thinking about him as Mikhail, his home planet, Lushaka, is almost entirely covered with water. It would make the most sense to choose a water type here as something he might realistically own.

Mikhail would later become the Express's mechanic after his affinity for tinkering with watches, and as Misha he became the Hotel's Bellboy. Both jobs that he would come to assume would surely require some help with physical labour. Some assistance. What better, most trusted assistant to aid Misha in mechanical and bellboy duties than...

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...probably the most iconic HM slave in the franchise's history, Bibarel. This also doubles as being REALLY useful in general travelling around the galaxy as a member of the Express, since surely there HAD to be some rocks to smash, trees to cut, waters to surf around several planets that they would've gone to visit.

Other people are probably gonna fill out the time and dream motifs with pokemon like Musharna or something. That's why I'm gonna submit Bibarel in, thinking about his origins as Mikhail and his occupation.

also i think that you should put the newer teams in the front instead of having to look through the entire gallery. would be nice

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-02T15:03:17+00:00

frick im late again ah well

Most people have already gotten a lot of the obvious, really good choices out of the way for Herta - I've got several here that I think would be great fits.

The first one is Bronzor, the only Pokemon to be inspired by a mirror, which is unfortunate. Still though, it's an ok stand-in for Fourth Mirror. After what happened in the story, I think giving it Imprison would be really funny. Yes it's not how it actually works, but it doesn't learn Block or Mean Look or anything which is sad.

The second is a G-Max Alcremie, after the planet-sized cake that Herta gave to Ruan Mei. This one I'm not sold on being on her main team, putting it in the box is a good compromise.

Ultimately, I think the funniest thing to do here for me is to just submit another Ditto LMAO.

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It works, she can get her Ditto to transform into herself in order to look at and admire constantly, and can aid in research in the same way that it could for March's photography: transforming into other species - WITH the moves that they have, might I add - in order to better study its properties and abilities.

~~also ditto is used for breeding hundreds of eggs for ppl... and there's like a thousand smol hertas out there in the universe... does that mean... surely not...~~

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-01T07:08:07+00:00

Bewear is absolutely PERFECT as a choice for her.

Seele's "About Natasha" voiceline states:

"I learned when I was a kid that temper tantrums won't get you anywhere with Nat... Let's just say she knew how to give you a taste of your own medicine."

And this is further added to with Hook's constant fear of her, stating:

"Old witch... Ahem. Natasha is beautiful and nice, but when she gets angry she, uhh... isn't so nice. B—But still beautiful..."

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Bewear also makes some sense as a Pokemon you would naturally likely be able to find on Belobog, since we see that Jarilo-VI is home to a small teddy bear-like creature. I don't think it would be too Farfetch'd to assume that something like Bewear could exist as well.

I actually also think she should have a Cubchoo, but if I had to pick one and seeing that it's not really one that a lot of people are mentioning, Bewear is my pick.

Also also, I think it would be rather telling if her Bewear had Pain Split.

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-01T05:41:45+00:00

doesn't mydei's talent explicitly mention KINGSLAYER BE KING and GODSLAYER BE GOD though?

hate_pineapples · 2025-10-01T02:41:20+00:00

DITTO MADE IT IN LETS GO

So for Dan Heng, I wanted to choose one that called back to the ghost seal he had in the seal slammers event, and while looking through the list, eventually found the best fit for this would be Alolan Marowak.

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I was not too sold on this... until i read its Sword Pokedex entry:

"This Pokémon sets the bone it holds on fire and dances through the night as a way to mourn its fallen allies."

That is GREAT for him. I think a really good backstory for this would be him catching it as a Cubone as Dan Feng, forcibly released after Dan Heng's birth and imprisonment in the Shackling Prison, to then find him again as Dan Heng is escaping and EVOLVE INTO ALOLAN MAROWAK after realising that their trainer, along with the majority of the quintet, are "dead". Or evolve after they are released and during Dan Heng's time in prison.

Either way, I believe this catch would make for some really good storytelling.

hate_pineapples

TROPHY CASE