MOTW: Dream Eater

Do you still have lingering thoughts of Halloween? Or what about decorations of skulls, and evil looking pumpkins? Do get spooked easily and have nightmares for days? Well then you might not want to read this article. In the wake of Halloween we’re going to be talking about Dream Eater...

If you have any intuition at all you can tell what Dream Eater does without even looking up its definition. It pretty much does exactly what it says it does. When your opponent is asleep, and only when they’re asleep, you can deal damage with Dream Eater and ‘eat their dreams’. Now, what on earth does that mean? Apparently dreams taste pretty good to some Pokemon and even restore HP. Whatever damage you deal out you get 50% back in HP.

Dream Eater has been around since Gen I and hasn’t changed one bit since then. For good reason too. It’s just an all around good move. I have seen it on teams consistently for many many years now, and I’m implementing it on my own team, as you’ll see here in just a minute.

Dream Eater is pretty much the Giga Drain of psychic Pokemon. It’s a psychic type special move, with a power rating of 100 and 100% accuracy. Pretty good right? The only caveat to Dream Eater is that your opponent HAS to be asleep. So how can you accomplish this? What probably 98% or 99% of most people and teams that I see use Hypnosis, including myself. Another common move amongst grass or psychic type Pokemon is Sleep Spore. Hypnosis is a little less accurate at 60% chance to sleep, and Sleep Spore is 75% accurate, but only a couple dozen can learn Sleep Spore as opposed to the 20 or 30 that can learn Hypnosis. 

If the Pokemon you may want to add can learn Dream Eater but you don’t want to waste one of your moves with a status effecting move, I suggest having it on at least one of your party members, if not multiples. At that point you’re not relying on the one Pokemon on your team that has that effecting move where you could run into all sorts of trouble.

Other than that there really isn’t a whole ton of strategy to it. As long as you have a sleep status effecting move you should be ok. I would really recommend putting this on a special heavy Pokemon, and having one of its types be psychic wouldn’t be a bad idea either. Just so you can can that extra 50 power with the STAB bonus. So I’ve talked a little bit about it, but I do really like the move, enough that I think it’s effective enough to put on my own team. A couple weeks ago you got to see a detailed look at my Scizor and Brick Break, and now here’s the breakdown of my Gengar. (man by the end of the year you guys are going to know my whole team...)

Gengar

Ghost/Poison

Hypnosis - Psychic Type - 60% Acc

Dream Eater - Psychic Type - 100 Pwr - 100% Acc

Shadow Ball - Ghost Type - 80 Pwr - 100% Acc

Sludge Bomb - Poison Type - 90 Pwr - 100% Acc

As you might have noticed, I didn’t beat around the bush at all with this guy. He’s a special fighter through and through. I’ve got Hypnosis backing up Dream Eater, and then my other two moves both get bonuses for being same-type as Gengar. All my moves are 100% accurate with the exception of Hypnosis of course and I’ve EV trained Gengar in the defense department. Defense is Gengar’s biggest downfall, just because he’s so unbalanced when it comes to special power, (his special attack is why I chose him for my team. 130 rating for special attack) I brought up his HP, defense, and special defense, with the main focus on HP with EV training, and then I have his item actually be a Spell Tag, to bump his Shadow Ball, Gengar’s weakest move, up by 20%. Along with the STAB on that it makes his Shadow ball his most powerful move.

I didn’t put Dream Eater on a psychic Pokemon, but I have made up for that with it’s bumped moveset. Dream Eater is a very powerful move, so you don’t NEED a bonus to make it great. It can be great all on it’s own.

Hope this helped you guys out a little more. I’ve been using Dream Eater for a very long time on my team. Gengar has been on my team since Pokemon Blue, and has been there ever since. It’s a great choice for any team and one of the original 3 to be able to learn Dream Eater by leveling up, the other’s being the earlier evolutions of Gengar, so it was kind of a move made just for him.

If you have any questions/comments you can comment below, or email us at pokemonpodcast@me.com. Hope you enjoyed the article this week you guys! Thanks!

It’s Super Effective!

-Aaron Spriggs