I think removing the Casino's RNG is a good thing since it creates a best case scenario for every pokemon. Plus, all of the runs are made with perfect natures and IVs and EVs, so adding easy casino rewards as an extra beneficial feature aligns perfectly with the spirit of these runs :D
Devils advocate, but if you're going to remove the RNG from voltorb flip with the justification of a best case scenario then you could argue for guaranteed crits with the same logic. I think it's a moot point really though, as long as Scott is using the same ruleset across his runs then it's up to him to make the rules he finds most agreeable. People can argue over his methodology until the cows come home - I still think there's a reasonable argument for not disabling pre-repel encounters like he has in some games because a pokemon that is good against the common pre-repel annoyances is losing one of it's strengths if you disable them, but at the end of the day the reason I keep coming back to these series is Scott clearly enjoys what he's doing - I'd rather he had a ruleset he was happy with than trying to push him into catering to the audience's no doubt myriad tastes.
@@Nagassh I would personally argue that if he's going to keep Voltorb flip (not all Pokemon may even need to use those TM's) he should just have a flat time across all pokemon added. I tend to agree with you on the pre-repel routes as well but I can get the frustration of knowing one pokemon clocked in slower ONLY because a pidgey just refused you not encountering it. And ultimately with your example and my tack-on, it is up to him. To me, as long as its consistent and readily understandable thats what matters most. For any gripes people would have, it would be way worse if there was an "exception" that damages the lists reputation entirely.
@@Gungho73 This is a good compromise. I absolutely understand how as the creator of these videos endlessly replaying Voltorb Flip would become ... extremely tedious. Maybe like a hour added per TM obtained?
@@-MisterWhite... Perhaps he should put up a poll or ask some of the many speed runners in our small community what they would consider a fair flat time? Maybe an hour is too much (I don't know myself what a reliable time is to do it once a player has done it consistently enough vs someone like Scott learning the process right now) but maybe he could see if there's a ratio his group of fans thinks is entirely fair per 1000 coins (not counting the items he could also get). Like if fans consistently hit 15 minutes on the total time to get the money required (say 7.5 minutes per 1000), but you have outliers that are 18 (9) 20 (10) and 13 (6.5), 15 should be the safe spot expected for one move or item. If he wants another item or move, add that exponentially. So in that case, 30 minutes. Again I don't know myself a fair time, but if we can get a group of people to do the great Parasect/Porygon runs maybe we can get that data too?
I love it cause it let's you have the Game Corner when planning a run, but it still has the actual real life time of playing Voltorb Flip, and there's still small variance in how many coins (I'm assuming, im actually not the expert on Voltotb Flip's code) he'll get from each level cause he can only see the 2s and 3s of the board and it's not the same every time. and the solution is a very Scott's Thoughts way of solving the Game Corner problem in HGSS, using programs and modding to solve variance problems are the same thing as removing encounters before you can get repels.
Dropping Eruption was likely a huge mistake. Specs Eruption is so insanely strong that you should probably keep the move and pump it full of PP Ups to 8. Looking forward to you replaying this mon a year or two down the line, it’s REALLY strong in this game
Additionally, picking up Fire Blast in the Goldenrod Dept. store can be really good, especially if you put yourself into Blaze range before a battle and slap on the Specs
I’ll use a well timed,Blast Burn or Heatwave over a Fire Blast! Eruption was not a good bet I guessing especially with it knowing Substitute. The synergy isn’t there.
@@JayClearman411you don't really need to use substitute if you just nuke everything in one hit. Although, fire blast in blaze range is probably a little bit stronger
@@NevG27Almost as strong but not quite, assuming you have to drop the choice specs for charcoal to be able to use the fire blast + sub combo. Commenter above gave STAB eruption + specs’ effective power of 337. Well, STAB fire blast + blaze + charcoal is 322. In my opinion it’s indeed close enough in power that the added flexibility of being able to choose other moves would make it worth it, except probably a few fringe cases
I really appreciate Bruno's character arc through these games. Starts off terrible in Gen I, improves a bit in Gen II thanks to Cross Chop, gets continued improvements in Gen III, and now he's finding ways to cause close calls and resets in HGSS. Proud of him.
Choice Specs Eruption (337) deals roughly twice the damage of Charcoal Flamethrower (171), so you might have had OHKO ranges on Lance. Edit (a couple days later): I ran the numbers for "fun". Scott's Hardy Typhlosion with ~132 EVs in Special Attack CANNOT pull off a Choice Specs Eruption sweep. 😭 It gets decent ranges on Salamence, Gyarados, and Charizard as low as level 95, but even at level 100 it's only got bad ranges (37.5%) on Altaria and Garchomp, and Dragonite won't go ever down in one hit without a crit. Maybe they will all pick setup moves if Typhlosion is at full health and get 2HKO'ed, but that sounds unlikely. However, Choice Specs Blaze-boosted Fire Blast _could_ actually have won at a lower level, and an _even lower_ lower level can be attained using Substitute, Rest, Defense Curl, and Rollout with Hard Stone (for speed)/Wide Lens (for consistency/sanity).
is is what I came to say, this or Choice Specs Blaze Flamethrower has over 300 Base Power, nearly double what the hits did on Lance. Using Rock Slide or Return wasb probably a mistake
@@ShukakuTheCrazy1 unfortunately thunderpunch not only lost its TM status but also it’s not special..so typhlosion doesn’t get the added benefit of a special Thunder punch..so Maybe Solarbeam + Sunny day combo in conjunction with flamethrower.
@travisalexander6440 Yeah..... Meganium and Typhlosion got bullied badly by the dragons. But don't worry! I'm sure Feraligatr will bully the dragons back once it gets its turn to get revenge for his two pals. Claire and Lance will learn to fear the power of swords dance boosted ice fang. The Kingdra he can take out with return or any other neutral normal move, idk.
Sorry for the double comment but if any patreon member can make sure Scotts sees tips for Heartgold: 1. You can buy Solarbeam and Hyper Beam early. 2. You can additionally buy Fire Blast which increased fire power would have helped with damage ranges 3. Phone Calls are the best trainning method.
Scott doesn't like 120BP TMs (HydroPump/Thunder/FireBlast/Blizzard) because of their accuracy but for some odd reason he will insist on using moves with even poorer accuracy (hypnosis or supersonic, to name a few 😂).
I agree with removing the RNG from Voltorb Flip and going with the idea that having to use it beyond HM users will act as a detriment to the Pokémon's overall time. The challenge would then be trying to figure out which mons need the extra moves and optimizing from there.
Today, in a new installment of "what is possibly the Fire-type starter with the worst movepool"... I assume Feraligatr will crush Meganium because of a massive difference - coverage. Ice Fang alone will make a world of a difference for the Lance fights, and possibly Bugsy as well if some grinding is needed.
Croconaw gets rock tomb to crush Bugsy. That's all he'll really need to destroy that Scyther, and after that, it gets swords dance in Goldenrod city to crush the rest of the game. I think we all know who's gonna get the best time.
Croconaw even gets IceFang at 21 to help with Bugsy, so you probably don't even need RockTomb tbf, especially as Quilava was at 20 (and Bayleef was 21) for the Busy fight, it's basically just "regular path gets it" Swords Dance, Dragon Claw / Ice Fang, Aqua Tail / Superpower / Crunch / Slash / Shadow Claw / Earthquake, Rest uhhh, yeah, there's only ONE winner when you look at movesets, holy glow up
During the chuck fight I think you kept forgetting that Blaze was actually giving you a pretty significant boost after being hit by surf. You kept spamming headbutt despite at that point flamethrower was doing pretty significantly more damage compared to headbutt Maybe a change to the overlay would help with that in the future or a more significant change for you to see abilities activate in the future would help?
I was about to comment this exactly. Blaze probably would’ve gotten the range in the first Chuck attempt so the training to typhlosion may have been premature.
I’m leaving another comment to leave more feedback, some Typhlosion specific and some HG related in general (spoilers below): -Rollout would’ve helped significantly against Clair and Lance in combination with Defense Curl. The way it builds up in power, especially with most of them having a Rock weakness, works wonders. -To build off my first point, Wide Lens is a very good item to get in Voltorb Flip, giving a 10% boost to accuracy. Rollout normally has 90% per hit, but that gets buffed to 99%. For more perspective, landing 5 hits in a row is normally about 59% odds, but Wide Lens makes that about a 95% chance. It also makes Fire Blast 93.5% accurate, which is almost the same as not landing a crit. -While there is some upside to getting Flamethrower early, I think the Cyndaquil line can get by with Wide Lens boosted Fire Blast as well as weaker Fire moves like Flame Wheel (going into battles in Blaze range can make it tear through them, which I’ve done before). Getting 10,000 coins takes some time, even with Voltorb Flip working the way it does on your software. -The TM for SolarBeam is in Goldenrod Department Store, which Typhlosion and other Fire types in general could use alongside Sunny Day in future solos. I’m excited to see you continue to learn HeartGold! Hopefully my comments have been helpful and not come across as me being mean (I promise I’m not trying to be). Edit: I since learned that there are indeed 22 candies available during a solo, apologies for my mistake.
Protect is also a move you want to teach, specifically for Whitney, and it’s in the Department Store. Now every Pokémon has a built-in way to counter Rollout.
@ While that is true, it’s not super useful; she only really goes for Rollout if the initial hit has more effective power (as in you take 4x more damage from Rock moves than you do Normal moves). Even against targets like Cyndaquil that are weak to Rock, she‘ll use Stomp. I have found utility for it with Pokemon who need to heal with Leftovers, though, so it’s not entirely useless.
Is it just me, or does the decision to rematch the E4 seem like a mistake? I feel like this is going to flatten the results sooooo much. Every Mon will take level 95-100 and around 4 hours just to do a single run. And I bet most of the first and second stages will end up in the “impossible” tier.
@@kode-man23 Speaking from experience, I used to do the E4 rematches because I thought it was cool, but I eventually decided to stop doing them because some Pokemon get by Red at a lower level than the Lance rematch. Considering Scott is just starting out, I think it’s best to see how he feels after a few runs.
If there's one thing you need to know about modern Typhlosion is that you go BRRRRR with Eruption and a choice item, and nothing more. Specs Eruption probably would've beaten Lance without as many (if any) Rare Candies. You also forgot about Blaze at Chuck. Fire types in general get a lot of mileage out of playing aggressively and stacking multipliers like STAB, sun, Blaze, items etc. Modest Typhlo spamming Eruption all day probably could shave an hour.
I prefer heatwave/lava plume..more consistent and better burn chances. Speaking of Rare Candies I like catching a few pkmn with Pickup Aipom who you can encounter at azalea town.
@@JayClearman411He generally avoids luck based factors like pickup especially given that it's another pokemon which would defeat the solo part a bit (excluding the hm field moves) Besides, it has to be lvl 21 for a 4% chance and you need to check and spend time getting the candies or grabbing the other 96% of items. Though if you're playing the game casually, pickup can be very nice.
@@ktvx.94 I suppose the question is how the speeds line up in the remakes, and if a base 100 pokemon can afford to run a -speed nature without missing out on any important outspeeds.
My mental picture of the Chuck fight was your Typhlosion just grabbing the Polywrath by the upper arms and headbutting it mercilessly like some kind of Glaswegian street fight.
Can't wait to watch the second playthrough and have you realize the things you can do to make Typhlosion much better then it was in this video. It's wild you had to get to lvl 99 to beat the game.
I really appreciate these infographics about the line and how their BST changes as they evolve. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this info put together like this, and it makes my little nerd heart happy.
Hey Scott will you allow "Phone Call Training"? After Clair or rather I think access to Clair you can call on a weekday a fisherman with like 3 Seakings around Level 33 or something. I remember as a kid gaining massive amount of EXP like that because you only have to walk out of the route, call him go to him and battle and can do that unlimited times. Basically Calling Trainers is the best way to train
I think you found a very fair way of dealing with voltorb flip. The only thing I'd dislike would be to use voltorb flip to generate money by selling items bought with coins. I'm not even sure if that would be benificial for any pokemon, but it really feels wrong to use a "RNG-mitigation-hack" to generate money when there's other ways of gaining money and that was never what the hack was meant to do.
@@MrSinger187 Yea but you can buy a TM for coins, then sell it for poke-dollars. Substitute is only 2000 coins and can be sold for 1000$. That might never be worth it since you could just rebattle trainers for money and get exp while doing so, but ikd.
That’s where I think the sub-rule of “Can only be used to obtain the prizes for use or storage, not to sell” will eventually be made to ensure that won’t be a factor in anybody else’s head for any reason.
14:49 that chuck fight was tight! Daaamn! One thing to mention is you were in blaze range when he healed, so the flamethrowers would have done way more damage! Love your videos scott!
I believe Solar Beam + Subsitute would solve the Chuck issue, and adding Fire Blast would make the damage ranges much better against Claire as well. Maybe Rollout for Lance 1?
I'm looking forward to second playthroughs of Heart Gold because Hidden Power might not be a catch all solution. It's exclusively Special now and Morty's critters all Levitate, so it might only be useful for Special Attackers.
This was my first ever pokemon for Pokemon Silver. I essentially used Typhlosion to steamroll every single fight regardless of types in the later game. Too OP
I agree, Cyndaquil was my go-to for gen 2. Sadly, the physical/special move split hurt Typhlosion quite a bit (and also helped Feraligatr quite a bit) so for the remakes I definitely prefer Totodile.
Since Pryce's seal and Dewgong have thick fat, your flamethrower essentially does 1/4 and 1/2 damage to them, respectively, which is why they took longer to knock out than you were expecting. I wonder if rollout would be a potential solution against Claire. It's super effective against Gyarados, and you could potentially get in a range where you can two shot the kingdra if you get it on the later rollout turns? The dragonairs would still be frustrating, and it's an inconsistent strategy, but it's probably better than trying to use flamethrower or return through her. Rollout also might also work for Lance, since his team is full of flying types. Removing rng on voltorb flip is... interesting. It seems to trivialize the next few gym leaders, and I don't love getting access to moves like flamethrower and ice beam so much earlier than the game designers clearly intended you to have them. It does make the next few battles less interesting than they otherwise would have been. On the other hand, it's basically the equivalent of getting body slam so early in gen 1, or getting access to the goldenrod department store in crystal, so it's probably fine. It definitely doesn't trivialize the entire game, and the late game fights are the most interesting parts anyway, so I don't really mind it.
I feel like a lot of this video was you being baited by physical moves. Especially return. There are too many intimidates in too many key battles for physical moves on a pokemon without set up like swords dance or bulk up to offset the intimidate. It also doesn't help that typhlosion's physical attack is significantly lower than its special attack. I also think you gave up eruption way too easily. In a future run with a modest nature and doing focused ev training, even Lance's Dragonite, his bulkiest pokemon, has a chance of being oneshot. Lvl 98 236+ SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. Lvl 75 0 HP 30 IVs / 0 SpD 30 IVs Dragonite: 224-264 (91.8 - 108.1%) -- 50% chance to OHKO Something else to consider in future playthroughs is Focus Blast. You only need it for a couple of key threats, so the accuracy issue won't come up that often and you can buy it in the goldenrod department store. Consider the following: Lvl 48 112 SpA Typhlosion Focus Blast vs. Lvl 41 0 HP 30 IVs / 0 SpD 30 IVs Kingdra: 62-74 (50 - 59.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO At level 52 for the substitute interaction with gyarados then fire blast becomes an option to 2 shot the gyarados without relying on sunny day: Lvl 52 112+ SpA Charcoal Typhlosion Fire Blast vs. Lvl 38 0 HP 30 IVs / 0 SpD 30 IVs Gyarados: 66-78 (50.3 - 59.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO There are a couple of other damage ranges I could point to and this is also ignoring that future playthroughs will have access to hidden power ice. There is one final **MAJOR** thing I want to point out for the later stages of hgss that could benefit some pokemon: The Life Orb. It's a little out of the way and requiers you have Ho-oh in your party, but for some mons, a universal 30% boost on all their moves rather than a 20% boost on a single type has the potential to make several battles easier with better damage ranges. The true test would be managing the life orb recoil and figuring out which battles requier it and which you can go without.
Typhlosion cemented my affinity for fire types, and was my favorite Pokemon for a long time because of how good fire is in Johto. It may not be my favorite anymore, or even my favorite fire type, but I still have a fondness for it. Typhlosion's biggest weakness is it's lack of variety on the special side of things. It's an excellent starter, but it just doesn't have the coverage to go it alone without brute-forcing it. Definitely pulls it's weight in a team, though!
I personally don't understand why anyone would think 'cheating' at voltorb flip is bad. It's a free game, not costing any money or coins. Its already free coins. I would have just given myself the exact amount of coins I would need for the mon I'm running based on what I think I need, then do it again if I need something else.
Look I don't think it is unfair that you removed RNG from Voltorb Flip, you never played the minigames before you just bought coins in other games so I think it is just as fair.
It’s so fascinating that a lot of the Pokemon games seem to be centred around a solo challenge when that isn’t at all how the games were thought. Intimidate works so much better as an ability in a solo challenge rather than a regular playthrough.
I really like that you are doing elite four rematches in these videos. You can actually do some more fights if you go to Mt Moon when you get to Kanto there is another rival battle and if you beat that you can do a double battle with your rival vs claire and lance in the dragons den (this would be an interesting battle to see in a solo challenge) and then you get the strongest rival battle before the elite for rematches too
Note that Choice Specs is also available in Celestic Town in Platinum (only in the morning) By the way, for Pryce: You didn't do 0.5x damage against Seel and 1x damage against Dewgong, since they both have Thick Fat, hence why they took longer than expected
BTW Scott u should probably use Lava Plume a lot more than Flamethrower on the Fire types that learn it. It has a 30% burn rate which is going to be crucial in these games, as Typhlosion proved here Of course HP Ice or Dragon would've helped dramatically as well
I think you should time yourself 10 times to get the coins you'd need for any of the particular items in voltorb flip. Then whenever a mon needs access to one of those TMs or items, they just get the average of those 10 times added on to their overall time. Mons that need those items to succeed should have time added to represent that they needed something that other mons just did not need to be successful, but it should just be a flat time addition to remove RNG and keep it consistent. If one mon absolutely cannot make it past a challenge without getting ice beam and another mon can, then the one who needed to get ice beam should have some time added to represent that fact. But they way you're doing it now with actually "playing" voltorb flip still invites some amount of user error and some (albeit very small) RNG. I just think there's a simpler solution. If you do your testing and find that it takes you 45 seconds on average to get the coins necessary to buy ice beam, then you should just start the game with infinite coins and as soon as you buy ice beam have 45 seconds added to the time.
I think Lance the second time around would be a lot more consistent with Eruption over Rock Slide. There seem to be a lot of times where you're near full health and Flamethrower is barely missing a two hit, such as on your winning attempt against the Altaria or against the Salamence at the start of the battle. With Eruption, I think you'll be able to get the two-hit by using Eruption first, then Flamethrower.
I really dont like winter or christmas. But in december, your videos are always there, to keep up the good mood. The "subplots", the Tierlists and the Analysis are always the best part. Maybe the Metronome from the Gamecorner would be a Way to handle Lance. It is not as good as in later Generations, but after the second use it is as good as the charcole and after the 5th use it is as good as the choice specs. I mean you only use flamethrower and rest in this battle.
I know you don't like to use Hidden Power on first runs, but maaaan, on these games where you don't seem to want to do a second run to really re-rank them it just makes the experience more painful. Like you're just banning a super important tool for solo runs instead of comparing the runs with and without the coverage.
You should make more use of abilities now that you have access to them. For example, against Chuck, you spammed Headbutt instead of Blaze Flamethrower, which 2HKOed.
Always been my favorite started despite being a Gen1 kid, I have fond memories of playing an 90% untranslated rom of silver before it's release in the west and it was a magical experience as a kid, enough so that I still think of a fair few Gen2 pokemon by their badly phonetic translated Japanese names like Typhlosion which came out as "Bakufan", and was what I named mine in Silver and eventually SS. Those Lance fights were nailbighters, don't think I've ever been quite as invested in a fight and those Perish Song's / Burns were something.
Just a couple notes but the Clair gym battle opener still shows her having 3 dragonair. Also I think there’s something going on with Eruption and your overlay where sunny day doesn’t accurately track the current damage of eruption?
This video really illustrates Typhlosion's main issue for like the majority of the generations, that being its moveset having way more physical options despite having a much higher special attack. Earthquake, Dig, Return, Rock Slide, Shadow Claw, Thunder Punch (as a move tutor thats locked behind BP so it wouldn't be relevant for this run anyway), Brick Break gives it some physical coverage where as outside of fire moves special wise it has Solarbeam (which is 2 turns outside of sun), Focus Blast (which wouldn't have helped with Lance anyway), Extrasensory (Egg move so not relevant), Hidden Power, and... Thats really it. Charizard sort of has a similar problem but the difference is they that thing has Swords Dance as a TM and Tutor and also Belly Drum as an egg move. The second one not relevant to this challenge but the point it It can make its physical moves hit harder. Typhlosion has no set up and that frustrates me as someone who loves Typhlosion. That being said I wonder if Sunny day Solar Beam would have helped more with Lance 2. Neutral Damage for Garchomp and Gyarados + Flamethrower hitting harder in general. And after going to a random calculator it says that with the Charcoal in Sunnyday Flamethrower always does more Damage then Solar Beam but with the Life Orb Solar Beam does slightly more then flamethrower with fireblast always hitting harder then the two... and apparently the Life orb is also in the Ruins of Alph and you can get it as long as you have surf and Ho-oh in your party... Wow this is gona make routing Heartgold runs weirder.
Scrolled through the top comments to see if anyone else said it, but the overlay shows eruption’s effective power incorrectly. I noticed this during Bruno’s first fight. Eruption’s damage is based on the users health. A max damage power of 150, but it decreases as you lose health. The calc is (150xMaxHealth)/MaxHealth
I would say for a follow-up Eruption and Sunny Day along with PP Up seem like they will be important... but in reality, Hidden Power will probably just effectively solve almost everything - particularly Hidden Power Ice. ^_^"
Outside of Specs Eruption probs OHKO'ing all of Lance2 I think you should have used Return after the first Flamethrower on Altaria so the second Flamethrower killed it instead of being in Full Restore range. In any case thanks for another lovely video, I spammed Typhlosion from start to end back in Gen 2 so seeing it here always makes me happy.
Coming from watching MDB's Cyndaquil playthrough I knew this one would a pain, also I think Sunny Day + Solar Beam would have been a good idea in the last battle.
It's crazy how much more difficult this game is from a solo perspective. I'm sure with a beneficial nature and hidden power type, it would be better, but, even so, this really convinces me there will be a lot of impossible first stage pokemon. Even ones good in the OG games 😂
I love watching you because you remind me of myself. And don't worry about Voltorb Flip. It's just a huge annoyance, and it's always been unnecessary and just too annoying to have the TMs locked behind the game corner. It's like GF thought it would be too BrOkEn to let you get access to the moves they always put in the game corner, but no... It wouldn't be. I think a lot of viewers simply don't understand how difficult and/or tedious these challenges actually are.
Pausing at 26:03 to provide some thoughts on what you could've done about Clair. Notably, you get Rollout at level 46, and in the past that move has proven useful to defeat stronger foes. You can also use the move reminder in Blackthorn to teach Defense Curl if you need it, and there's a Heart Scale in Route 32 accessible once you have Surf. Unfortunately, you can't get a White Herb before facing Blaine so you're stuck with the attack drop. I'm not sure if you'd be doing enough damage to take care of the Kingdra after Gyarados goes down, but you can find a Sitrus Berry in the Ruins of Alph for an extra bit of longevity. I'm curious to see how the rest of this run plays out, so I'm gonna get back to the video. :)
I think keeping Eruption would have been better. Btw, you can get a hidden Heart Scale in the bridge on Route 32! The Itemfinder in this game is the best in the series (seriously, it's amazing, why did they ever change it). You have to get it after Surf. I always get this. You can also get more Heart Scales with the Pokéathlon, but only on Wednesdays for 1000 points. That's not too hard to get, but might not be worth it. Man, it really did steamroll until Lance. I forgot how stacked his rematch team is. Double Intimidate is harsh, that's going to be hard for physical attackers. Quilava is the cutest middle evo, I adore this thing and never want to evolve it.
First of all, you do you, thats what matters, its your runs and I and many others enjoy them regardless. My personal opinion is having access to these powerful moves pre gym 3 would be a detriment to any pokemon not fortunate enough to have that power that early timewise. How about locking it to the amount of pokedollars you have? (Might already have been suggested) For example if you have 20000 pokedollars you can get 1000coins. Might make it more consistent when thinking about the 493 pokemon there is in the 4 gens?
Substitute and Protect can be used together on basically any Pokemon to stall out 5 and at a push 10 PP moves if you need to, Claire's Kingdra for instance.
I'm eager to see how well you do with this. In Crystal runs the speed run pokemon was Totodiles line. But in the remakes if you don't manage to get a Raikou and even if you do, the line most responsible for at least early game success is the Cyndaquil line. So there is merit to any discussion that this would be the best starter in the Johto remakes.
2 playthroughs in, and I have some thoughts. First of all is the player's mom. If you let her save your cash in GSC, she buys some stuff that isn't that helpful for a solo playthrough. In the remakes, those items could be potentially game changing. She can hand you stuff like a focus sash or choice scarf at certain intervals. The kicker is that she can also give you resist berries to mitigate major threats like Garchomp, but the berries she gives you are random. Yay, more RNG to work out. I think making use of crystal dust to remove hail from the Red fight is still worth considering. In a flawless run where you outspeed and OHKO everything, you're still losing nearly 1/3 of your hp to hail alone. That's a pretty unrealistic run, and you're going to be getting hit hard by his team. The result is that most winning strats are centralized around either spamming rest, or pulling off a one turn setup sweep. I'm already expecting there to be a lot of impossible solo challenges for this game. I am by no means suggesting making it a part of the run, but there's actually a third Lance battle. In the originals, you could encounter Silver training in Dragon's Den on certain days of the week. There wasn't much of a point to it, but it was one of those cool worldbuilding things that Gen 2 was so great about. In the remake, coming here results in teaming up with Silver for a double battle against both Lance and Clair. Regarding Typhlosion, I wonder if it would have been enough to max special attack investment, throw on the specs, and unga-bunga through some the problem fights with resisted eruptions. Typhlosion sorely lacks coverage these days, but the sheer destructive power behind that move helps him stand out somewhat. Hyper beam alongside substitute could also be helpful for dealing with Clair.
to counteract the perish song attacking turn 2 with return seems like the solution, this will not put it in healing range letting you knock it out the turn after, this way you should be able to beat lance at a much lower level especially on follow up runs which i assume will make you choose hidden power ice to cover mostly lance
Hey, Scott! Great content, as usual :) Don’t you think it would be better to hit Altaria with Return or Rock Slide between Flamethrowers so it doesn’t hit healing range? I wonder that.
For Chuck's Poliwrath maybe you could have used Solar Beam (Buy in Goldenrod Dep store) with the Miracle Seed I'm pretty sure you would have one shot it.
I had a feeling Clair would be a major roadblock on this run, she's an absolute menace in Gen 4 if you're a fire type. Edit: I'm very interested to see how Feraligatr will manage to do. Swords Dance being available so early is probably going to benefit him the most since his physical moveset is already amazing.
As someone who enjoys your overlay and all the other tech, i love how the voltorb flip is being dealt with, and i hope you don't get much grief from others over it. the RNG things are never gonna have perfect solutions but i feel what you've decided is consistent with other rules like the perfect IVs and the disabled pre-repel encounters, and that's what matters. i do question the ban on hidden power, though. it makes sense on crystal playthroughs since that game is easier and also tends to converge into similar movepools, but this one feels way harder with the league rematches especially, i don't think hidden power would have enough power to trivialize all these high leveled Pokemon, and even if it became a common solution for problems in a playthrough, it's still just one good move as opposed to the controversial rest-curse-return of crystal, which is more tiresome due to being a whole set used by most of the Pokemon
I'm not sure where the Will-O-Wisp TM is but it feels like you could have used it to great effect in this run. Most of the scary pokemon for Typhlosion were physical attackers like Snorlax, Garchomp, Salamence and Gyarados. A turn 1 burn would serve a similar effect as setting up Sunny Day to reduce damage but would reduce all physical damage. I feel like Rest, Will-O-Wisp, Flamethrower and a coverage move would have smoothed out a lot of rough parts of the run. Worth thinking about for future fire (and ghost) pokemon playthroughs, and when you inevitably redo Typhlosion.
2:39 To be honest, if you reach gen 9 (a big if, with how many mons there are), you'd find that Skeledirge goes against what you said. That mon is VERY consistent, with its great bulk and broken signature move. Of course, you may find it earlier if you backport it. I like better Sprigatito's line, but Fuecoco is a BEAST.
It looked like you missed some potential sweep ranges using both choice specs and eruption, I do think knowing the later grind can also help optimize where you go fast or try to stall. Not sure Rollout would have ever been ideal but it has some potential to get through some of the sticking points you had where you couldn't one shot things like the altaria. Appreciate all the videos, it's clear that typhlosion really suffers without good coverage from thunder punch. It also looked like the overlay didn't always dynamically update the power of eruption, or that it updated sooner than it should have, would be good to double check some of that code as you iron out the issues in this overlay.
Sunny Day + Blaze means fireblast one shots most of the end game threats at the levels you were working at. Shoud be using lava plume for the burn and fire blast and sunny day for damage imo. The last move can be the coverage move you will rarely need.
@scottsthoughts I don’t know of any of the damage ranges, but if Typhlosion is in Blaze, use choice specs, and as long as you out speed everything, would Fire Blast one shot everything?
To anyone saying Eruption might have OHKO'd on Lance, absolutely not. Even assuming generous, reasonable stats for Lance and 75 SpA EVs for Typhlosion (enemy mons DO have set natures, IVs, and even EVs in some cases) and specs from full health, all of Lance's pokemon are 2 shots with eruption. I checked using the Smogon damage calculator.
opening a typhlosion video with “lets address the allegations” is INSANE work
I’m fucking crying, MY BOIS INNOCENT ITS NOT EVEN CANON
@@TyeJak588it’s a mistranslation too
Why are we talking about this? There are ghosts that haunt you forever in these games, and this is what bothers people?
He knows what he's doing 100%
That was diabolical work and he knows it 😂
I think removing the Casino's RNG is a good thing since it creates a best case scenario for every pokemon. Plus, all of the runs are made with perfect natures and IVs and EVs, so adding easy casino rewards as an extra beneficial feature aligns perfectly with the spirit of these runs :D
Devils advocate, but if you're going to remove the RNG from voltorb flip with the justification of a best case scenario then you could argue for guaranteed crits with the same logic.
I think it's a moot point really though, as long as Scott is using the same ruleset across his runs then it's up to him to make the rules he finds most agreeable. People can argue over his methodology until the cows come home - I still think there's a reasonable argument for not disabling pre-repel encounters like he has in some games because a pokemon that is good against the common pre-repel annoyances is losing one of it's strengths if you disable them, but at the end of the day the reason I keep coming back to these series is Scott clearly enjoys what he's doing - I'd rather he had a ruleset he was happy with than trying to push him into catering to the audience's no doubt myriad tastes.
@@Nagassh I would personally argue that if he's going to keep Voltorb flip (not all Pokemon may even need to use those TM's) he should just have a flat time across all pokemon added. I tend to agree with you on the pre-repel routes as well but I can get the frustration of knowing one pokemon clocked in slower ONLY because a pidgey just refused you not encountering it. And ultimately with your example and my tack-on, it is up to him. To me, as long as its consistent and readily understandable thats what matters most. For any gripes people would have, it would be way worse if there was an "exception" that damages the lists reputation entirely.
@@Gungho73 This is a good compromise. I absolutely understand how as the creator of these videos endlessly replaying Voltorb Flip would become ... extremely tedious. Maybe like a hour added per TM obtained?
@@-MisterWhite... Perhaps he should put up a poll or ask some of the many speed runners in our small community what they would consider a fair flat time? Maybe an hour is too much (I don't know myself what a reliable time is to do it once a player has done it consistently enough vs someone like Scott learning the process right now) but maybe he could see if there's a ratio his group of fans thinks is entirely fair per 1000 coins (not counting the items he could also get). Like if fans consistently hit 15 minutes on the total time to get the money required (say 7.5 minutes per 1000), but you have outliers that are 18 (9) 20 (10) and 13 (6.5), 15 should be the safe spot expected for one move or item. If he wants another item or move, add that exponentially. So in that case, 30 minutes.
Again I don't know myself a fair time, but if we can get a group of people to do the great Parasect/Porygon runs maybe we can get that data too?
I love it cause it let's you have the Game Corner when planning a run, but it still has the actual real life time of playing Voltorb Flip, and there's still small variance in how many coins (I'm assuming, im actually not the expert on Voltotb Flip's code) he'll get from each level cause he can only see the 2s and 3s of the board and it's not the same every time. and the solution is a very Scott's Thoughts way of solving the Game Corner problem in HGSS, using programs and modding to solve variance problems are the same thing as removing encounters before you can get repels.
Dropping Eruption was likely a huge mistake. Specs Eruption is so insanely strong that you should probably keep the move and pump it full of PP Ups to 8. Looking forward to you replaying this mon a year or two down the line, it’s REALLY strong in this game
Additionally, picking up Fire Blast in the Goldenrod Dept. store can be really good, especially if you put yourself into Blaze range before a battle and slap on the Specs
I’ll use a well timed,Blast Burn or Heatwave over a Fire Blast! Eruption was not a good bet I guessing especially with it knowing Substitute. The synergy isn’t there.
Seconded. If you factor STAB in as well, it has an effective power of 337. It would hit harder than hyper beam against single resist mons.
@@JayClearman411you don't really need to use substitute if you just nuke everything in one hit. Although, fire blast in blaze range is probably a little bit stronger
@@NevG27Almost as strong but not quite, assuming you have to drop the choice specs for charcoal to be able to use the fire blast + sub combo.
Commenter above gave STAB eruption + specs’ effective power of 337.
Well, STAB fire blast + blaze + charcoal is 322.
In my opinion it’s indeed close enough in power that the added flexibility of being able to choose other moves would make it worth it, except probably a few fringe cases
Clair's gym image still uses 3 Dragonair rather than one being swapped out with a Gyarados.
I really appreciate Bruno's character arc through these games. Starts off terrible in Gen I, improves a bit in Gen II thanks to Cross Chop, gets continued improvements in Gen III, and now he's finding ways to cause close calls and resets in HGSS. Proud of him.
Let's start with the allegations. That went differently.
Choice Specs Eruption (337) deals roughly twice the damage of Charcoal Flamethrower (171), so you might have had OHKO ranges on Lance.
Edit (a couple days later): I ran the numbers for "fun". Scott's Hardy Typhlosion with ~132 EVs in Special Attack CANNOT pull off a Choice Specs Eruption sweep. 😭 It gets decent ranges on Salamence, Gyarados, and Charizard as low as level 95, but even at level 100 it's only got bad ranges (37.5%) on Altaria and Garchomp, and Dragonite won't go ever down in one hit without a crit. Maybe they will all pick setup moves if Typhlosion is at full health and get 2HKO'ed, but that sounds unlikely. However, Choice Specs Blaze-boosted Fire Blast _could_ actually have won at a lower level, and an _even lower_ lower level can be attained using Substitute, Rest, Defense Curl, and Rollout with Hard Stone (for speed)/Wide Lens (for consistency/sanity).
is is what I came to say, this or Choice Specs Blaze Flamethrower has over 300 Base Power, nearly double what the hits did on Lance. Using Rock Slide or Return wasb probably a mistake
Oh god, Scott forgetting eruption for the second Lance fight hurttss. Wouldve got the 2hko on both Altaria and Garchomp and maybe helped elsewhere too
Typhlosion really misses TM thunderpunch
And HP Ice (for this run, at least). OMG the Dragons bullied poor Typhlosion and took his lunch money.
Thunderpunch is in battle tower
@@VicRobles and that's available post game.
@@ShukakuTheCrazy1 unfortunately thunderpunch not only lost its TM status but also it’s not special..so typhlosion doesn’t get the added benefit of a special Thunder punch..so
Maybe Solarbeam + Sunny day combo in conjunction with flamethrower.
@travisalexander6440 Yeah..... Meganium and Typhlosion got bullied badly by the dragons. But don't worry! I'm sure Feraligatr will bully the dragons back once it gets its turn to get revenge for his two pals. Claire and Lance will learn to fear the power of swords dance boosted ice fang. The Kingdra he can take out with return or any other neutral normal move, idk.
Sorry for the double comment but if any patreon member can make sure Scotts sees tips for Heartgold: 1. You can buy Solarbeam and Hyper Beam early. 2. You can additionally buy Fire Blast which increased fire power would have helped with damage ranges 3. Phone Calls are the best trainning method.
Scott doesn't like 120BP TMs (HydroPump/Thunder/FireBlast/Blizzard) because of their accuracy but for some odd reason he will insist on using moves with even poorer accuracy (hypnosis or supersonic, to name a few 😂).
Imagine being articuno, at the bottom of a dangerous cave, and seeing this guy just passing you by focused on a damn candy.
I agree with removing the RNG from Voltorb Flip and going with the idea that having to use it beyond HM users will act as a detriment to the Pokémon's overall time. The challenge would then be trying to figure out which mons need the extra moves and optimizing from there.
Typhlosion Video: "Let's start this one with the allegations."
Thanks, I am now wearing my drink.
I think it's funny that you use the old Claire art for her battle intro. Would love if you just added Gyarados' head onto one of the dragonaire bodys
this is the only way to do it ahahahahhaha
Today, in a new installment of "what is possibly the Fire-type starter with the worst movepool"...
I assume Feraligatr will crush Meganium because of a massive difference - coverage. Ice Fang alone will make a world of a difference for the Lance fights, and possibly Bugsy as well if some grinding is needed.
Croconaw gets rock tomb to crush Bugsy. That's all he'll really need to destroy that Scyther, and after that, it gets swords dance in Goldenrod city to crush the rest of the game. I think we all know who's gonna get the best time.
Croconaw even gets IceFang at 21 to help with Bugsy, so you probably don't even need RockTomb tbf, especially as Quilava was at 20 (and Bayleef was 21) for the Busy fight, it's basically just "regular path gets it"
Swords Dance, Dragon Claw / Ice Fang, Aqua Tail / Superpower / Crunch / Slash / Shadow Claw / Earthquake, Rest
uhhh, yeah, there's only ONE winner when you look at movesets, holy glow up
During the chuck fight I think you kept forgetting that Blaze was actually giving you a pretty significant boost after being hit by surf.
You kept spamming headbutt despite at that point flamethrower was doing pretty significantly more damage compared to headbutt
Maybe a change to the overlay would help with that in the future or a more significant change for you to see abilities activate in the future would help?
I was about to comment this exactly. Blaze probably would’ve gotten the range in the first Chuck attempt so the training to typhlosion may have been premature.
Blaze saved him on Bruno too. Hitmontop's Counter threw him into Blaze range so he could one shot everything else despite their high SpDef
As somebody who never remembers Blaze when it matters, I sympathize with Scott. lol
I’m leaving another comment to leave more feedback, some Typhlosion specific and some HG related in general (spoilers below):
-Rollout would’ve helped significantly against Clair and Lance in combination with Defense Curl. The way it builds up in power, especially with most of them having a Rock weakness, works wonders.
-To build off my first point, Wide Lens is a very good item to get in Voltorb Flip, giving a 10% boost to accuracy. Rollout normally has 90% per hit, but that gets buffed to 99%. For more perspective, landing 5 hits in a row is normally about 59% odds, but Wide Lens makes that about a 95% chance. It also makes Fire Blast 93.5% accurate, which is almost the same as not landing a crit.
-While there is some upside to getting Flamethrower early, I think the Cyndaquil line can get by with Wide Lens boosted Fire Blast as well as weaker Fire moves like Flame Wheel (going into battles in Blaze range can make it tear through them, which I’ve done before). Getting 10,000 coins takes some time, even with Voltorb Flip working the way it does on your software.
-The TM for SolarBeam is in Goldenrod Department Store, which Typhlosion and other Fire types in general could use alongside Sunny Day in future solos.
I’m excited to see you continue to learn HeartGold! Hopefully my comments have been helpful and not come across as me being mean (I promise I’m not trying to be).
Edit: I since learned that there are indeed 22 candies available during a solo, apologies for my mistake.
Protect is also a move you want to teach, specifically for Whitney, and it’s in the Department Store. Now every Pokémon has a built-in way to counter Rollout.
@ While that is true, it’s not super useful; she only really goes for Rollout if the initial hit has more effective power (as in you take 4x more damage from Rock moves than you do Normal moves). Even against targets like Cyndaquil that are weak to Rock, she‘ll use Stomp. I have found utility for it with Pokemon who need to heal with Leftovers, though, so it’s not entirely useless.
Is it just me, or does the decision to rematch the E4 seem like a mistake? I feel like this is going to flatten the results sooooo much. Every Mon will take level 95-100 and around 4 hours just to do a single run. And I bet most of the first and second stages will end up in the “impossible” tier.
@@kode-man23 Speaking from experience, I used to do the E4 rematches because I thought it was cool, but I eventually decided to stop doing them because some Pokemon get by Red at a lower level than the Lance rematch. Considering Scott is just starting out, I think it’s best to see how he feels after a few runs.
Your choice with Voltorb Flip seems optimal in my opinion
If there's one thing you need to know about modern Typhlosion is that you go BRRRRR with Eruption and a choice item, and nothing more. Specs Eruption probably would've beaten Lance without as many (if any) Rare Candies. You also forgot about Blaze at Chuck. Fire types in general get a lot of mileage out of playing aggressively and stacking multipliers like STAB, sun, Blaze, items etc.
Modest Typhlo spamming Eruption all day probably could shave an hour.
Maybe not Modest, but some other +Sp. A nature
I prefer heatwave/lava plume..more consistent and better burn chances. Speaking of Rare Candies I like catching a few pkmn with Pickup Aipom who you can encounter at azalea town.
Yeah, really looking forward to the followup whenever Scott gets to it. He'll basically nuke everything once he gets eruption
@@JayClearman411He generally avoids luck based factors like pickup especially given that it's another pokemon which would defeat the solo part a bit (excluding the hm field moves)
Besides, it has to be lvl 21 for a 4% chance and you need to check and spend time getting the candies or grabbing the other 96% of items.
Though if you're playing the game casually, pickup can be very nice.
@@ktvx.94 I suppose the question is how the speeds line up in the remakes, and if a base 100 pokemon can afford to run a -speed nature without missing out on any important outspeeds.
My mental picture of the Chuck fight was your Typhlosion just grabbing the Polywrath by the upper arms and headbutting it mercilessly like some kind of Glaswegian street fight.
Can't wait to watch the second playthrough and have you realize the things you can do to make Typhlosion much better then it was in this video. It's wild you had to get to lvl 99 to beat the game.
I really appreciate these infographics about the line and how their BST changes as they evolve. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this info put together like this, and it makes my little nerd heart happy.
0:00 Those AREN'T the allegations Typh needed to address Scott 😂
it's not a Typhlosion, it's a Johtonian Charizard
Hey Scott will you allow "Phone Call Training"? After Clair or rather I think access to Clair you can call on a weekday a fisherman with like 3 Seakings around Level 33 or something. I remember as a kid gaining massive amount of EXP like that because you only have to walk out of the route, call him go to him and battle and can do that unlimited times.
Basically Calling Trainers is the best way to train
I think you found a very fair way of dealing with voltorb flip. The only thing I'd dislike would be to use voltorb flip to generate money by selling items bought with coins.
I'm not even sure if that would be benificial for any pokemon, but it really feels wrong to use a "RNG-mitigation-hack" to generate money when there's other ways of gaining money and that was never what the hack was meant to do.
I don’t think that you can sell coins for money in any game
@@MrSinger187 Yea but you can buy a TM for coins, then sell it for poke-dollars.
Substitute is only 2000 coins and can be sold for 1000$. That might never be worth it since you could just rebattle trainers for money and get exp while doing so, but ikd.
you make a good point, but I doubt scott would really do that, plus you dont need to much money in heartgold
That’s where I think the sub-rule of “Can only be used to obtain the prizes for use or storage, not to sell” will eventually be made to ensure that won’t be a factor in anybody else’s head for any reason.
14:49 that chuck fight was tight! Daaamn! One thing to mention is you were in blaze range when he healed, so the flamethrowers would have done way more damage!
Love your videos scott!
I believe Solar Beam + Subsitute would solve the Chuck issue, and adding Fire Blast would make the damage ranges much better against Claire as well. Maybe Rollout for Lance 1?
I'm looking forward to second playthroughs of Heart Gold because Hidden Power might not be a catch all solution.
It's exclusively Special now and Morty's critters all Levitate, so it might only be useful for Special Attackers.
This was my first ever pokemon for Pokemon Silver. I essentially used Typhlosion to steamroll every single fight regardless of types in the later game. Too OP
Same. flamethrower, thunderpunch, return and earthquake and i was able to solo even Red at level 70.
I agree, Cyndaquil was my go-to for gen 2. Sadly, the physical/special move split hurt Typhlosion quite a bit (and also helped Feraligatr quite a bit) so for the remakes I definitely prefer Totodile.
Since Pryce's seal and Dewgong have thick fat, your flamethrower essentially does 1/4 and 1/2 damage to them, respectively, which is why they took longer to knock out than you were expecting.
I wonder if rollout would be a potential solution against Claire. It's super effective against Gyarados, and you could potentially get in a range where you can two shot the kingdra if you get it on the later rollout turns? The dragonairs would still be frustrating, and it's an inconsistent strategy, but it's probably better than trying to use flamethrower or return through her. Rollout also might also work for Lance, since his team is full of flying types.
Removing rng on voltorb flip is... interesting. It seems to trivialize the next few gym leaders, and I don't love getting access to moves like flamethrower and ice beam so much earlier than the game designers clearly intended you to have them. It does make the next few battles less interesting than they otherwise would have been. On the other hand, it's basically the equivalent of getting body slam so early in gen 1, or getting access to the goldenrod department store in crystal, so it's probably fine. It definitely doesn't trivialize the entire game, and the late game fights are the most interesting parts anyway, so I don't really mind it.
I feel like a lot of this video was you being baited by physical moves. Especially return. There are too many intimidates in too many key battles for physical moves on a pokemon without set up like swords dance or bulk up to offset the intimidate. It also doesn't help that typhlosion's physical attack is significantly lower than its special attack.
I also think you gave up eruption way too easily. In a future run with a modest nature and doing focused ev training, even Lance's Dragonite, his bulkiest pokemon, has a chance of being oneshot.
Lvl 98 236+ SpA Choice Specs Typhlosion Eruption (150 BP) vs. Lvl 75 0 HP 30 IVs / 0 SpD 30 IVs Dragonite: 224-264 (91.8 - 108.1%) -- 50% chance to OHKO
Something else to consider in future playthroughs is Focus Blast. You only need it for a couple of key threats, so the accuracy issue won't come up that often and you can buy it in the goldenrod department store. Consider the following:
Lvl 48 112 SpA Typhlosion Focus Blast vs. Lvl 41 0 HP 30 IVs / 0 SpD 30 IVs Kingdra: 62-74 (50 - 59.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
At level 52 for the substitute interaction with gyarados then fire blast becomes an option to 2 shot the gyarados without relying on sunny day:
Lvl 52 112+ SpA Charcoal Typhlosion Fire Blast vs. Lvl 38 0 HP 30 IVs / 0 SpD 30 IVs Gyarados: 66-78 (50.3 - 59.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
There are a couple of other damage ranges I could point to and this is also ignoring that future playthroughs will have access to hidden power ice.
There is one final **MAJOR** thing I want to point out for the later stages of hgss that could benefit some pokemon: The Life Orb. It's a little out of the way and requiers you have Ho-oh in your party, but for some mons, a universal 30% boost on all their moves rather than a 20% boost on a single type has the potential to make several battles easier with better damage ranges. The true test would be managing the life orb recoil and figuring out which battles requier it and which you can go without.
Where are good places to do Sp Ark EV training?
@@skeetermania3202 Surfing on route 6 gives you a bunch of psyduck to grind sp atk evs on that are low level.
@@poweruppikawho9007 I also found that Sprout Tower at night spawns Gastly 85% of the time, meaning it can be done before beating Falkner.
@@poweruppikawho9007 I should mention that the Kingdra calc is misleading since it’s not accounting for the Sitrus Berry.
@@skeetermania3202 I completely forgot it had a sitrus
I really like the way you are handling voltorb flip. A good way to remove the RNG that still involves investing time to participate.
It's so interesting seeing sort of the same story, tougher, but with more tools. I think I'm going to like this series. (Also, what a gorgeous game.)
PLEASE remember your starter’s abilities. Overgrow, Blaze, and Torrent can save you in a pinch.
Scott is still falling in love with the move,Return. Return just sucks in the later gens.
Hidden Power Ice will really help in the future play through of Typhlosion
I like how the animation for Lance's first team show up to the beat of the Champion music.
Typhlosion cemented my affinity for fire types, and was my favorite Pokemon for a long time because of how good fire is in Johto. It may not be my favorite anymore, or even my favorite fire type, but I still have a fondness for it. Typhlosion's biggest weakness is it's lack of variety on the special side of things. It's an excellent starter, but it just doesn't have the coverage to go it alone without brute-forcing it. Definitely pulls it's weight in a team, though!
Love watching your videos. I watch them the day they're released and then probably 4 more times each later lol
I personally don't understand why anyone would think 'cheating' at voltorb flip is bad. It's a free game, not costing any money or coins. Its already free coins. I would have just given myself the exact amount of coins I would need for the mon I'm running based on what I think I need, then do it again if I need something else.
Look I don't think it is unfair that you removed RNG from Voltorb Flip, you never played the minigames before you just bought coins in other games so I think it is just as fair.
It’s so fascinating that a lot of the Pokemon games seem to be centred around a solo challenge when that isn’t at all how the games were thought. Intimidate works so much better as an ability in a solo challenge rather than a regular playthrough.
I'm ok with the RNG optimized Voltorb Flip.
I really like that you are doing elite four rematches in these videos. You can actually do some more fights if you go to Mt Moon when you get to Kanto there is another rival battle and if you beat that you can do a double battle with your rival vs claire and lance in the dragons den (this would be an interesting battle to see in a solo challenge) and then you get the strongest rival battle before the elite for rematches too
Note that Choice Specs is also available in Celestic Town in Platinum (only in the morning)
By the way, for Pryce: You didn't do 0.5x damage against Seel and 1x damage against Dewgong, since they both have Thick Fat, hence why they took longer than expected
I believe you solved the voltorb flip well. So excited for more heartgold!
Sunny day solarbeam with M.seed = chuck poliwrath 1 shot ,kingdra dies, sweep Brock whole team, lances garchomp = minus an hour
Perfectly fine workaround for Voltorb Flip. I honestly would play your rom for the remakes because it is just such a slow mini game.
7:42 oh, wow! You were just talking about Flamethrower and that's the move Clefairy called upon with Metronome!
20:48 Claire intro has an extra dragonair where it should be a Gyarados
BTW Scott u should probably use Lava Plume a lot more than Flamethrower on the Fire types that learn it. It has a 30% burn rate which is going to be crucial in these games, as Typhlosion proved here
Of course HP Ice or Dragon would've helped dramatically as well
Literally just finished Meganium video. Nice!
I think you should time yourself 10 times to get the coins you'd need for any of the particular items in voltorb flip. Then whenever a mon needs access to one of those TMs or items, they just get the average of those 10 times added on to their overall time. Mons that need those items to succeed should have time added to represent that they needed something that other mons just did not need to be successful, but it should just be a flat time addition to remove RNG and keep it consistent. If one mon absolutely cannot make it past a challenge without getting ice beam and another mon can, then the one who needed to get ice beam should have some time added to represent that fact. But they way you're doing it now with actually "playing" voltorb flip still invites some amount of user error and some (albeit very small) RNG. I just think there's a simpler solution. If you do your testing and find that it takes you 45 seconds on average to get the coins necessary to buy ice beam, then you should just start the game with infinite coins and as soon as you buy ice beam have 45 seconds added to the time.
I think Lance the second time around would be a lot more consistent with Eruption over Rock Slide. There seem to be a lot of times where you're near full health and Flamethrower is barely missing a two hit, such as on your winning attempt against the Altaria or against the Salamence at the start of the battle. With Eruption, I think you'll be able to get the two-hit by using Eruption first, then Flamethrower.
I really dont like winter or christmas. But in december, your videos are always there, to keep up the good mood. The "subplots", the Tierlists and the Analysis are always the best part.
Maybe the Metronome from the Gamecorner would be a Way to handle Lance. It is not as good as in later Generations, but after the second use it is as good as the charcole and after the 5th use it is as good as the choice specs. I mean you only use flamethrower and rest in this battle.
“Hey son, you’re adventuring quite a bit and you’re…only in Goldenrod? Here’s a Choice Item-enjoy.”
-Gold’s Mom, I think
I know you don't like to use Hidden Power on first runs, but maaaan, on these games where you don't seem to want to do a second run to really re-rank them it just makes the experience more painful. Like you're just banning a super important tool for solo runs instead of comparing the runs with and without the coverage.
You should make more use of abilities now that you have access to them.
For example, against Chuck, you spammed Headbutt instead of Blaze Flamethrower, which 2HKOed.
Always been my favorite started despite being a Gen1 kid, I have fond memories of playing an 90% untranslated rom of silver before it's release in the west and it was a magical experience as a kid, enough so that I still think of a fair few Gen2 pokemon by their badly phonetic translated Japanese names like Typhlosion which came out as "Bakufan", and was what I named mine in Silver and eventually SS.
Those Lance fights were nailbighters, don't think I've ever been quite as invested in a fight and those Perish Song's / Burns were something.
Just a couple notes but the Clair gym battle opener still shows her having 3 dragonair. Also I think there’s something going on with Eruption and your overlay where sunny day doesn’t accurately track the current damage of eruption?
I am personally in favor of the changes to Voltorb flip. Also, don’t forget about Blaze/Overgrow/Torrent!
This video really illustrates Typhlosion's main issue for like the majority of the generations, that being its moveset having way more physical options despite having a much higher special attack. Earthquake, Dig, Return, Rock Slide, Shadow Claw, Thunder Punch (as a move tutor thats locked behind BP so it wouldn't be relevant for this run anyway), Brick Break gives it some physical coverage where as outside of fire moves special wise it has Solarbeam (which is 2 turns outside of sun), Focus Blast (which wouldn't have helped with Lance anyway), Extrasensory (Egg move so not relevant), Hidden Power, and... Thats really it.
Charizard sort of has a similar problem but the difference is they that thing has Swords Dance as a TM and Tutor and also Belly Drum as an egg move. The second one not relevant to this challenge but the point it It can make its physical moves hit harder. Typhlosion has no set up and that frustrates me as someone who loves Typhlosion.
That being said I wonder if Sunny day Solar Beam would have helped more with Lance 2. Neutral Damage for Garchomp and Gyarados + Flamethrower hitting harder in general.
And after going to a random calculator it says that with the Charcoal in Sunnyday Flamethrower always does more Damage then Solar Beam but with the Life Orb Solar Beam does slightly more then flamethrower with fireblast always hitting harder then the two... and apparently the Life orb is also in the Ruins of Alph and you can get it as long as you have surf and Ho-oh in your party... Wow this is gona make routing Heartgold runs weirder.
When you eventually get to Heartgold replays, do not get rid of Eruption. Full health Choice Specs Eruption is simply ridiculous.
Scott can you not purchase solarbeam at the golden rod department store? Would that not solve clair?
Scrolled through the top comments to see if anyone else said it, but the overlay shows eruption’s effective power incorrectly. I noticed this during Bruno’s first fight.
Eruption’s damage is based on the users health. A max damage power of 150, but it decreases as you lose health. The calc is (150xMaxHealth)/MaxHealth
I would say for a follow-up Eruption and Sunny Day along with PP Up seem like they will be important... but in reality, Hidden Power will probably just effectively solve almost everything - particularly Hidden Power Ice. ^_^"
12:30 name a more iconic duo than Scott and Scott forgetting about Blaze
Oh God, Feraligatr is going to annihilate the competition. Poor Meganium and Thyplosion, they don't stand a chance
Outside of Specs Eruption probs OHKO'ing all of Lance2 I think you should have used Return after the first Flamethrower on Altaria so the second Flamethrower killed it instead of being in Full Restore range.
In any case thanks for another lovely video, I spammed Typhlosion from start to end back in Gen 2 so seeing it here always makes me happy.
Coming from watching MDB's Cyndaquil playthrough I knew this one would a pain, also I think Sunny Day + Solar Beam would have been a good idea in the last battle.
It's crazy how much more difficult this game is from a solo perspective. I'm sure with a beneficial nature and hidden power type, it would be better, but, even so, this really convinces me there will be a lot of impossible first stage pokemon. Even ones good in the OG games 😂
I love watching you because you remind me of myself.
And don't worry about Voltorb Flip. It's just a huge annoyance, and it's always been unnecessary and just too annoying to have the TMs locked behind the game corner. It's like GF thought it would be too BrOkEn to let you get access to the moves they always put in the game corner, but no... It wouldn't be. I think a lot of viewers simply don't understand how difficult and/or tedious these challenges actually are.
Pausing at 26:03 to provide some thoughts on what you could've done about Clair. Notably, you get Rollout at level 46, and in the past that move has proven useful to defeat stronger foes. You can also use the move reminder in Blackthorn to teach Defense Curl if you need it, and there's a Heart Scale in Route 32 accessible once you have Surf. Unfortunately, you can't get a White Herb before facing Blaine so you're stuck with the attack drop. I'm not sure if you'd be doing enough damage to take care of the Kingdra after Gyarados goes down, but you can find a Sitrus Berry in the Ruins of Alph for an extra bit of longevity.
I'm curious to see how the rest of this run plays out, so I'm gonna get back to the video. :)
I think keeping Eruption would have been better. Btw, you can get a hidden Heart Scale in the bridge on Route 32! The Itemfinder in this game is the best in the series (seriously, it's amazing, why did they ever change it). You have to get it after Surf. I always get this. You can also get more Heart Scales with the Pokéathlon, but only on Wednesdays for 1000 points. That's not too hard to get, but might not be worth it.
Man, it really did steamroll until Lance. I forgot how stacked his rematch team is. Double Intimidate is harsh, that's going to be hard for physical attackers.
Quilava is the cutest middle evo, I adore this thing and never want to evolve it.
Gee that second Lance fight sure is brutal. Really interested in how and if some weaker Mons can manage that.
First of all, you do you, thats what matters, its your runs and I and many others enjoy them regardless. My personal opinion is having access to these powerful moves pre gym 3 would be a detriment to any pokemon not fortunate enough to have that power that early timewise. How about locking it to the amount of pokedollars you have? (Might already have been suggested) For example if you have 20000 pokedollars you can get 1000coins. Might make it more consistent when thinking about the 493 pokemon there is in the 4 gens?
Substitute and Protect can be used together on basically any Pokemon to stall out 5 and at a push 10 PP moves if you need to, Claire's Kingdra for instance.
I'm eager to see how well you do with this. In Crystal runs the speed run pokemon was Totodiles line. But in the remakes if you don't manage to get a Raikou and even if you do, the line most responsible for at least early game success is the Cyndaquil line. So there is merit to any discussion that this would be the best starter in the Johto remakes.
No please keep the Voltorb flip!
Also keep the league rematches! Personally I love to see as much content as possible in a single video :)
You could pick the item metronome in the game corner as well, it's really good on certain battles
2 playthroughs in, and I have some thoughts. First of all is the player's mom. If you let her save your cash in GSC, she buys some stuff that isn't that helpful for a solo playthrough. In the remakes, those items could be potentially game changing. She can hand you stuff like a focus sash or choice scarf at certain intervals. The kicker is that she can also give you resist berries to mitigate major threats like Garchomp, but the berries she gives you are random. Yay, more RNG to work out.
I think making use of crystal dust to remove hail from the Red fight is still worth considering. In a flawless run where you outspeed and OHKO everything, you're still losing nearly 1/3 of your hp to hail alone. That's a pretty unrealistic run, and you're going to be getting hit hard by his team. The result is that most winning strats are centralized around either spamming rest, or pulling off a one turn setup sweep. I'm already expecting there to be a lot of impossible solo challenges for this game.
I am by no means suggesting making it a part of the run, but there's actually a third Lance battle. In the originals, you could encounter Silver training in Dragon's Den on certain days of the week. There wasn't much of a point to it, but it was one of those cool worldbuilding things that Gen 2 was so great about. In the remake, coming here results in teaming up with Silver for a double battle against both Lance and Clair.
Regarding Typhlosion, I wonder if it would have been enough to max special attack investment, throw on the specs, and unga-bunga through some the problem fights with resisted eruptions. Typhlosion sorely lacks coverage these days, but the sheer destructive power behind that move helps him stand out somewhat. Hyper beam alongside substitute could also be helpful for dealing with Clair.
Favorite game I'm glad you are doing heart gold now...
to counteract the perish song attacking turn 2 with return seems like the solution, this will not put it in healing range letting you knock it out the turn after, this way you should be able to beat lance at a much lower level especially on follow up runs which i assume will make you choose hidden power ice to cover mostly lance
Hey, Scott! Great content, as usual :)
Don’t you think it would be better to hit Altaria with Return or Rock Slide between Flamethrowers so it doesn’t hit healing range? I wonder that.
That was triggering me, wont lie
For Chuck's Poliwrath maybe you could have used Solar Beam (Buy in Goldenrod Dep store) with the Miracle Seed I'm pretty sure you would have one shot it.
I had a feeling Clair would be a major roadblock on this run, she's an absolute menace in Gen 4 if you're a fire type.
Edit:
I'm very interested to see how Feraligatr will manage to do. Swords Dance being available so early is probably going to benefit him the most since his physical moveset is already amazing.
28:00 bruh why'd you use return on the counter mon, especially after intimidate?
Specs flamethrower would've just swept Bruno
As someone who enjoys your overlay and all the other tech, i love how the voltorb flip is being dealt with, and i hope you don't get much grief from others over it. the RNG things are never gonna have perfect solutions but i feel what you've decided is consistent with other rules like the perfect IVs and the disabled pre-repel encounters, and that's what matters.
i do question the ban on hidden power, though. it makes sense on crystal playthroughs since that game is easier and also tends to converge into similar movepools, but this one feels way harder with the league rematches especially, i don't think hidden power would have enough power to trivialize all these high leveled Pokemon, and even if it became a common solution for problems in a playthrough, it's still just one good move as opposed to the controversial rest-curse-return of crystal, which is more tiresome due to being a whole set used by most of the Pokemon
Claire is still in 12 days of Christmas mode - THREE DRAGONAAAAAAIR!
Been waiting all day for this! 😂
I'm not sure where the Will-O-Wisp TM is but it feels like you could have used it to great effect in this run. Most of the scary pokemon for Typhlosion were physical attackers like Snorlax, Garchomp, Salamence and Gyarados. A turn 1 burn would serve a similar effect as setting up Sunny Day to reduce damage but would reduce all physical damage. I feel like Rest, Will-O-Wisp, Flamethrower and a coverage move would have smoothed out a lot of rough parts of the run. Worth thinking about for future fire (and ghost) pokemon playthroughs, and when you inevitably redo Typhlosion.
Will-O-Wisp is Battle Frontier exclusive, so no luck there unfortunately!
@@Flaming_Rok Oh fr? dang i thought i was on to something. I was thinking i should look it up before commenting oh well lol
2:39 To be honest, if you reach gen 9 (a big if, with how many mons there are), you'd find that Skeledirge goes against what you said. That mon is VERY consistent, with its great bulk and broken signature move. Of course, you may find it earlier if you backport it. I like better Sprigatito's line, but Fuecoco is a BEAST.
32:03 SUPERHERO LANDING! 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻
On today’s video, we turn up the heat with the Cyndaquil line! My personal favorite Johtonian starter.
It looked like you missed some potential sweep ranges using both choice specs and eruption, I do think knowing the later grind can also help optimize where you go fast or try to stall. Not sure Rollout would have ever been ideal but it has some potential to get through some of the sticking points you had where you couldn't one shot things like the altaria.
Appreciate all the videos, it's clear that typhlosion really suffers without good coverage from thunder punch.
It also looked like the overlay didn't always dynamically update the power of eruption, or that it updated sooner than it should have, would be good to double check some of that code as you iron out the issues in this overlay.
Sunny Day + Blaze means fireblast one shots most of the end game threats at the levels you were working at. Shoud be using lava plume for the burn and fire blast and sunny day for damage imo. The last move can be the coverage move you will rarely need.
@scottsthoughts I don’t know of any of the damage ranges, but if Typhlosion is in Blaze, use choice specs, and as long as you out speed everything, would Fire Blast one shot everything?
Damn typhlosion 😅 sorry buddy. Thankyou Scott for reminding everyone that some fire pokemon are mid😂
Just to add some insight to reds Snorlax.... Giga impact...
Lol great video, not at all how I thought it was going to go.
To anyone saying Eruption might have OHKO'd on Lance, absolutely not. Even assuming generous, reasonable stats for Lance and 75 SpA EVs for Typhlosion (enemy mons DO have set natures, IVs, and even EVs in some cases) and specs from full health, all of Lance's pokemon are 2 shots with eruption. I checked using the Smogon damage calculator.