#nivensj

[crystalelemental]

Top 5 things about Gen 4

Hell yes.

The emphasis on mythology.  Gen 3 kinda had myths, with Rayquaza specifically in Emerald being the hidden third.  That was novel.  But Gen 4 really dove in with the complex mythology behind the gods of space and time, the over-god Arceus, the three lake spirits that blessed humanity with willpower, knowledge, and emotion.  Not to mention Giratina, whose separate world keeps things in balance beyond even that.

This is kinda cheating, but the legends in general are a huge step up.  There are a ton, but beyond that, they have such a connection to the world.  The birds and the regis just kinda existed, while the beasts were tangentially related to Ho-oh but not quite.  The lake spirits?  Directly a part of the overall mythology.  Cresselia and Darkrai are established as embodiments of the phases of the moon.  Shaymin exists as a being representing the concept of gratitude, who can only be found by expressing significant gratitude directly. Heatran is the spirit of a volcano, and Regigigas is the lord of the Regis that helped put the continents together.  Manaphy...was there.  Plus, the ability to find all of them from direct events where you find and capture them?  Ideal.  Please bring that back.

Unique and effective villain team.  Rocket was always really straight-forward and not that interesting.  Magma and Aqua had something unique, but their motives were pretty stupid, and nothing about their goals made much sense.  Galactic is cult-like in its stance, and Cyrus himself is just using that cult to achieve his own goal.  The underlings also got a bit more fleshed-out, and were more engaging than any subordinates that came before.

Legitimate challenge without being ridiculous.  Gen 4 gym leaders did not fuck around.  Gardenia, the second leader, had a Roserade.  Crasher Wake had a team of three waters types that included a Gyarados and a Gastrodon to mess up Electric and Grass respectively, giving him an effective team to prevent move-spamming in just three Pokemon, something I don’t think any Gen 6 leader managed.  But despite that, it wasn’t ever an unfair or obnoxious challenge.  You just had to play smart and be prepared.  Gen 7 has this obnoxious thing with the trials, where the summoning of a second Pokemon makes it 2-on-1 against you, and they can easily fuck you up in one round.  It’s a stupid challenge that’s not really fun.  And one major Pokemon instead of a leader’s team of 3-5?  Not as engaging, and nowhere near as dynamic.

Evolutions where they needed to go.  Gen 4′s Pokedex is not as great to me as most.  Surprisingly, I don’t care for it as much as you’d think.  But the evolutions?  Weavile and Gliscor was incredible improvements.  Rhyperior and Dusknoir are cool as hell.  Togekiss was a huge buff and is cute as all hell.  Tangrowth and Lickilicki...exisst, and are neat enough considering they were never really relevant in their pre-evo forms.  Leafeon and Glaceon are A+ new types for the eeveelutions.  Roserade, Ambipom, Mismagius, Honchkrow, Probopass, Gallade, Yanmega, Porygon-Z, Mamoswine, Magmortar, Electivire, and Froslass: all of these new evolution options suddenly existed, and improved on things that had either fallen behind slightly and needed the buff, or were never that significant to begin with any at least got notoriety with a new evolution.  I kinda wish sometimes that new evolutions was still a thing.  Instead, now we’re just praying for megas, or something is doomed to obscurity.

#pokemon gen 4 #top 5 asks #nivensj

[crossout-nuzlocke]

40 for Xaden

why you gotta ask him that

#xaden #nivensj

[lennythereviewer]

What are your theories on Weirdmageddon: Part 3?

Dipper’s Real Name revealCipher Wheel symbolsFord is the one who gets axed, but he and Stan make up

#nivensj

[noodlerama]

Are there any OC's that you have? It'd be a nice to see some non-Pokemon characters.

OC STUFF I DEFINITLEY WILL DRAW MORE OFSOON

#ask #nivensj

[princepronk]

There have been so many fun and creative additions to the #pettyteamrocket tag, and as a fun little warmup I sketched a few fellow Grunts! In order: @nivensj's Kowalski, @freelanceplatypus's Delilah, @catnesart's Yumi, @nuzlockeboutthatkid's Belle, and @falcon1160's Dorian! :>

#pettyteamrocket #nivensj #freelanceplatypus #catnesart #nuzlockeboutthatkid #falcon1160 #kaitlin draws things

[hideandseaking]

2345( Again this is guy555008) just incase you didn't get the other one.

Yall ain't a mutual lol

#nivensj #my asks

[crystalelemental]

About the regional variant thing, I feel the biggest problem with the Alolan variants was the lack of stat variation. Outside of slight changes to different stats, a lot of forms suffer from just being the same pokemon but with a different type or ability. I feel like actual changing where the stats go would be an interesting way to develop new play styles for different Pokemon, while adding something to the lore.

The few stat changes they did make could also be a make-or-break scenario. Exeggutor losing more speed didn’t really hurt it, but helps it work better on Trick Room sets.  Ninetales getting +9 speed helped it outpace a lot of threats that regular Ninetales can’t (not to mention the Aurora Veil thing, which is admittedly ridiculous as an attack).  There are a lot that don’t really change, though, and yeah, it kinda sucks, but the real issue is that there’s one version that’s better than the other.  Usually the Alolan form.  Alolan Ninetales is so much better than Ninetales, there’s virtually no reason to run Ninetales.  How often do you see Sun teams in higher-tier play?  Never?  Maybe because of Zard-Y.  But Alolan-Ninetales lets you run Hail teams just fine.  Alolan-Marowak was solidly OU for a long while this generation.  Regular Marowak is never used ever.  Probably less often now that Baton Pass is banned.  Even things like Alolan-Raichu outperform regular Raichu solely by virtue of having a more speed-boosting ability.  At best, they’re equivalently useless.  So the real issue is that, because the alolan variants count as “look, they fixed Ninetales!”  But they didn’t.  They made a different form that’s better in every way, and classic Ninetales, who I like a lot better, is basically useless and will remain useless.  That’s why I hate the variants.  I just want to focus on the original forms.

Also, having a lot of first time type combinations be just different forms of gen 1 pokemon kinda sucks.  I like Ice/Fairy and Electric/Psychic, but I would rather those cool typings be applied to new things than just a different form of an old thing that’s going to completely overshadow the base form and take all emphasis off of actually fixing said base forms.

#pokemon #alolan variants #nivensj

[crossout-nuzlocke]

12 for Alexa

Ironically the journalist doesn’t like people peering into her private life.

#alexa #nivensj

[protocol00]

What did Oak do in the Emerald Run.

Oak is absent in the Emerald run

the plat run however...

#nivensj

[crystalelemental]

Do you think there's a chance, that we could get more Alolan forms in USUM? I know that you're more a fan of the concept rather than the execution, but I want to here your thoughts?

Unfortunately, there's a difference between what I would want, and what will happen.No, I do not think there will be new Alolan Forms.  I may be surprised!  It's very possible that, like Mega Evolution, the next games will introduce additional variants.  We also know the Dex has expanded, and that there are going to be approximately 100 new species available in Alola, given that Necrozma is now #400.  So there's space.  However, we have to consider a few things.First, Ultra Beasts.  Of the two, I'd much rather get new Ultra Beasts, so I'm hoping they take up a good chunk of what's new.  UBs are also very clearly the focus of all this, and honestly I think it's appropriate to have the emphasis on ultra beasts over alolan variants, given the likely direction of the story.Second, we've seen in trailers that some new species are just...returning things.  Volcarona's around, Mareep is around, but these don't have alolan variants, they're just the same as they ever were.  Given those new introductions, on top of only having 100 extra Pokemon in the dex AND new UBs, I highly doubt we're going to see any new alolan forms.  If we do, I predict it will be one or two new forms, and they will once again be only for Gen 1.So, in order, here's what I'd expect for "new":1) Ultra Beasts2) Pokemon that have a mega evolution, due to the blowback of how terribly distribution was held in the base games3) Other random previous Pokemon for more of the less common types in the base game.4) Possible alolan variants5) It was all a lie and there's not actually anything new6) Mega evolutions7) A mega evolution for Flygon specifically

#pokemon ultra sun and ultra moon #nivensj

[crystalelemental]

nivensj replied to your post: Pokemon White 2 Pokemon Y Pokemon Alpha...

I’d recommend doing a Y run but without the EXP share. I remember doing an X run about 2 years ago and it was pretty challenging.Plus, the Pokemon are a lot more varied, so you have plenty of options,especially after the first gym. For an added bonus, you could add in a rule where you don’t heal during battle(that’s what I did for mine).

You know, I think I might actually do that.  The one stipulation I usually have, though, is that I like to only stick to the brand new Pokemon in each region.  Maybe that’s a bit limiting or against the spirit of the challenge, but my favorite Nuzlock by far was the Pokemon White run, because I wound up using so many Pokemon I otherwise ignored all the time.  As a result, I tend to run the special rule of not running things that are either not new to this generation’s game, or not running anything I’ve run before or on competitive teams.  That way, there’s variety.

While Gen 6′s list is fairly short, I also think there’s a lot of stuff I’ve never really run before or built an appreciation for, so maybe this is a good time.  We’ll try a run of Y.

#nivensj

[crystalelemental]

Scrafty

I’m so sorry, nivensj, and I hope this was asked randomly and not based on it being one of your favorites.

I really detest Scrafty.  I dislike almost every fifth-gen Fighting type.  Scrafty in particular is really obnoxious to me, because it was just such a powerful answer to Psychic on Mono-Fighting teams, and as someone who spent the bulk of his life in Monotype in Gen 5, I hated that.  I hated that Fighting type got an absolute answer to the type that was supposed to eat them.  When Poison did it, it was okay.  Poison needed help.  But Gen 5 Fighting types were all absurdly strong and getting things like Sucker Punch, and that gen really began the stance of “Psychics have been nerfed into shit, and Fighting types are absurdly good.”  Fairy ruining Scrafty so hard is like 30% of the reason I love the type so much, and fully support the decision for Fairy to wreck Dark types so badly.  I do think that Dark deserves a bit of an improvement after that, but hey, it worked out for me.  It’s just...really not my favorite.  I don’t like its design, its typing bothers me tremendously, I think it’s nonsense that it gets Dragon Dance.  I’m not Scrafty’s biggest fan.

#pokemon #scrafty #apologies to Scrafty family fans #nivensj

[crystalelemental]

nivensj replied to your post: It just dawned on me, but a Fire/Fairy type would...

When the leaks came out, I thought Tapu Bulu was going to be Fire/Fairy(and Tapu Fini Ghost/Fairy) to correspond with the Oricorio typings.

Honestly, I like Tapu Bulu, I think it’s really cool, but Fire/Fairy would’ve been so much more interesting.  Grass/Fairy has been done several times and it’s never all that great.  Granted, it’s still pretty effective, but it’s just an unfortunate typing overall...

Ghost/Fairy Tapu Fini would’ve been cool, too.  Definitely fewer of those than of Water/Fairy.

#nivensj #tapu bulu #tapu fini