AOTW: Oblivious

Let’s touch briefly on a topic that can seem foreign to many of us that frequent this site and are fans of the noble work of the Pokémon Podcast: love and romance. WAIT WAIT WAIT, KEEP READING. KENNY, STOP SCROLLING. KAY, YOU TOO. GET. NO. GUYS. COME BACK HERE. Ugh. The rest of you still here? Good. Let’s face it, gentlemen, we’re some-teens and twenty-somethings who wax sentimental and intellectual about a video game and trading card game franchise that’s aimed primarily at tweens and children. I’m no Dr. Love, but I imagine that most of the fairer sex doesn’t find this an overtly attractive trait, but that’s also why we find ourselves so enamored with the few of you ladies out there that join in with as much (or more) fervor as we do in our monster-wrangling pastime. That is, when we’re paying attention. Fellas, if you’re like me, you’re horrible at reading signals from the ladies. Comes with the nerd territory, you know? But hey, they say to make your weaknesses into strengths, right? And we can, at least, with our pokémon. This is Ability of the Week: Oblivious!

Introduced in generation three, Oblivious is a defensive Ability that will prevent your pokémon from… well, becoming twitterpated.

Yeah, I just referenced Bambi. What of it?

To put it in Pokémon terms, though, Oblivious blocks the opponent from using Attract or Captivate, or else letting the Ability Cute Charm take hold. Nineteen pokémon over nine evolutionary families can find themselves immune to the opposite gender’s wiles, and perfectly enough, most of them are very defensive.

You might be wondering where the application for Oblivious is? Well, let’s say you’ve been building a team that you love. You’ve figured out five great pokémon, and are trying to decide on that elusive sixth team member, when you suddenly notice that your team has, I dunno, formed a fantasy football team (or a sewing circle, no gender bias here! [Ladies, that was a joke. It’ll be okay.]) Throw a pokémon with Oblivious into the mix, and that Attracting Miltank your friend has been saving is effectively neutrailized! Too specific a scenario for you? Well, too bad, my article. There’s a lot of pokémon to consider here, so right away, I’m going to toss out a few. As famously stated in past episodes of It’s Super Effective!, Mamoswine with Snow Cloak is the vastly superior version of that monster, so let’s get rid of him. Let’s also eliminate anything that has a stat total of less than 475, getting rid of Whiscash, Jynx, and Illumise. This leaves us with the much more manageable roster of candidates of Slowbro, Slowking, Wailord, Lickilicky, and Walrein.

Right away, my inclination for what to run on Oblivious pokémon turns to Safeguard. You’re already a pretty bulky monster that can’t be infatuated, why not take all the other major status afflictions out of the picture right away, too? Both of the Slowpoke evolutions can learn Safeguard via TM20. The other obvious move, to me, is to run Attract yourself, turning the tables on an opponent attempting a love connection-based victory, and any pokémon with a gender (save for a select few, none of which have Oblivious) can learn Attract via TM45. Beyond that, Oblivious just works as a built-in passive line of defense! Plan your offense accordingly.

That takes care of our Ability discussion for this week, kiddos! I’ll see you next week. Now then, Bachelorette #2: I’m a Castelia Cone. How would you eat me?...

-Wil
www.wheretheresawil.com