MOTW: Overheat
/
So I’ve kind of touched on stacking stats before. I believe that when we looked at our first triple battle set with Darmanitan, Seismatoad, and Amoonguss, we managed to get Darmanitan’s Fire Punch, a normally 75 base powered move, to 195. Not too shabby at all. But what if we were to take this stat maxing, well, to the max? The most powerful move that I’ve come across that can be boosted is Overheat, and I’ll tell you why...
Overheat is a fire type move. Fire type moves have always seemed to get the most love, as far as power goes, throughout almost all the generations so far. Not only that, but fire type Pokemon are some of the only Pokemon in the entirety of the game that can have an ability that ramps their fire type up even higher, Flash Fire. A Pokemon with the ability Flash Fire, when hit with a fire type attack, not only is immune to fire type moves, but it boosts it’s own fire type attacks by 50%.
What other things can we stack on top of this? Well, if you’re a fire type you automatically get a same type attack bonus (STAB) for using a fire type move, and that’s another 50% bonus in power. Cool, so we’re up to a doubling in power so far. What ELSE can we add on here. Weather effects! Sunny Day is a must have for fire type Pokemon, and that adds on another 50% to base power (BP). There’s one more thing we can add on for even more power here, items. WELL... We could go for something like a Life Orb, which bonuses 30% in power, but has a recoil. If we’re going for pure power here there’s nothing better than Choice Specs. What Choice Specs does is it boosts a Pokemon’s special attack by 50%.
So now that we have all of these boosts happening towards one move, we have to choose a Pokemon to put it on. Now, this is where I struggled a little bit. I had to find a Pokemon capable of having all of these requirements, with a high special attack to make this combination worth while. Normally, I don’t condone the use of legendaries, however, I find this particular Pokemon to be, well, lets put it in the ‘grey’ area of Pokemon battling legality.
Heatran is, I think, a pretty sweet Pokemon. It’s very powerful, being a sort of psuedo-legendary, and mainly I’m using it here as an example of how stacking different things for power can be used extraordinarily well and be very, VERY dangerous for your opponent. Within the Grey League, Heatran cannot be used by gym leaders, but, if you are looking to challenge the gyms, you are more than welcome to use this setup.
Heatran has a special attack rating of a base 130. When you add on the Choice Specs it jumps up to 195. That’s a pretty good platform to build off of. Now, when looking at a Pokemon with one of the ‘choice’ items as it’s held item you have to be very careful with how you set it up. Once you use a move you are locked into it until you switch out, so you must be careful with what you decide to do. When looking to send out Heatran, this is the setup I would put on one if I had it in my team:
Overheat
Flamethrower
Flash Cannon
Solar Beam
Overheat is our go to move for power, Flamethrower for consistency, Flash Cannon for a STAB’ed steel type move (Heatran is dual Steel/Fire type), and Solar Beam, because once we get a Sunny Day up, it’s a must with how high a special attack it has.
Now I can already hear hundreds of people reading this screaming at their computer screens...
“Overheat is a one time move you moob! Your special attack lowers by two stages when you use it @*$wipe!”
Or...
“Solar Beam without a Sunny Day on it!? What are you? A TURNIP!?!? Even the very basic/newb Pokemon trainer KNOWS that you should have Sunny Day on the same Pokemon!”
Or...
“You do know that you have nothing to defend against a fighting type Pokemon, which would probably pull a OHKO on you no problem, right?”
To answer your condescending questions, yes. I do know these things, thusly I am addressing them in this article here, and henceforth.
Overheat is our most powerful move to go to when it comes to item stacking, BUT!!!, once we use it we are pretty much done with Heatran. Overheat lowers the user’s special attack by 2 stages, which can be absolutely killer in a battle. With our Choice Specs on we gain 50% to special attack, but that doesn’t hold on for long after 2 Overheats, which is what Choice Specs ties us into for the remainder of Heatran being out. We’re not looking at effectiveness here, we’re looking at one hit, raw power, instant death, if everything is set up correctly.
To answer the other two questions, I present Slowking, Heatran’s backup:
Psychic
Substitute
Sunny Day
“Slowking? Why in the world would you choose a Slowking?”
Well, dear person who asks too many questions, here’s why. Slowking may not be the best of Pokemon. It’s base over all stats are 490, and over all, that kind of sucks. Its special defense, however, is fairly decent at 110, and it’s hp is average to above average, sitting at 95. Essentially what we’re doing here is creating a healing wall, with the ability to take out any fighting types that would try and OHKO Heatran. We give it Psychic as it’s one special STAB move to take out any offenders, Substitute so it can protect itself while it’s healing either Heatran or itself with Heal Pulse (which was covered 2 weeks ago), and Sunny Day, to set up that extra 50% fire power boost, specifically for Heatran.
Heatran must be used in this power set up with another Pokemon. Having something this powerful requires backup. Your focusing too much of your energy to one thing, in this case attack, to survive on your own. Removing Choice Specs can allow you to switch between moves, but if you’re removing Choice Specs you’re really looking at a completely different move set all together.
A different item that you may want to consider if you try modifying this setup is Life Orb. You lose 20% power boost, which isn’t too much, but you do also gain recoil damage, a lot of it in this instance, so having that extra backup of Heal Pulse will really help.
Another thing you may be asking is why did I choose Slowking as a wall, when there are obvious wall choices out there like Blissey or Snorlax. Well, to be honest, I had Snorlax as my main backup choice up until about halfway writing this article. Thick Fat is an amazing wall ability, and it’s base HP is 160! But... It too is also weak to fighting types, like Heatran, and that’s one thing I overlooked. Plus it’s a physical attacker, so Psychic wouldn’t have done that much good anyways, and it can’t learn any physical psychic attacks. Lamesauce. When it comes to Blissey, well... Blissey is a great wall and everything, but honestly, I hate it with a passion.
Be honest with me here, when your opponent sends out a Blissey don’t you go, “Aw garshdangitallmfer...”, cause I do. I hate to be that guy, and honestly, Blissey is the obvious choice for a wall, and I expect it to be there. Do you expect a Slowking as a wall? Not usually. Plus, Blissey is ALSO weak to fighting types, and has a base defense of 10 where as Slowking’s base defense is 80. I mean, 80 isn’t great, but 10 is just pathetic. I don’t care how much hp you have when your base defense is only 5 points higher than Shuckle’s speed stat.
Well I think I’ve been rambling on long enough, but I hope you get the point of this article, which I should probably lay out here...
When you are so focused on one thing you really are leaving yourself open to a number of other types of attacks. I don’t care if you have a base attack of over 400 (which by the way is how high Overheat would be with everything in place). If you can only use a move once or twice and then your done, you’re not being much of an opponent to battle. Power isn’t everything, which is why I like Slowking so much. He’s a really good defensive unit, and great backup to anything you want to use it with, but you don’t want to be forced into using something just based on one strategy, in this case, power, raw power.
There are definite holes in this strategy, like how slow both Pokemon are, or what can you do once you hit a special defense wall? Not to mention how hard it is to actually get everything in place for this to happen without someone feinting right of the bat. I recognize that those are there, and you should too when building a team. Overheat is a great move when used wisely, but if you base your entire Pokemon around power, prepare to face the holes and consequences, cause it could come back to bite you.
-It’s Super Effective
-aaronspriggs
P.S. Sorry about this MOTW being such a downer, but this is me getting a point across. Balance your teams and strategies! Here’s a funny video to make up for it :) WARNING definately NSFW for language, but funny.
