Scott, this comment is not related to this versus video, but I have a possible idea for a bonus versus video for Crystal version in the future. Thick Club Cubone/Marowak versus Light Ball Pikachu. The idea behind it is that both run with their respective item that doubles their primary attacking stat. Would be interesting to see how both of them would fare in Crystal when allowed to use their signature held items.
@@johnh290A hidden backport of galarian farfetch'd to compare between the 2 birds will be awesome too, especially if there is a sneaky addition of a sirfetch'd, though that last bit might be hard to programme.
Ledian, an adorable boi heavily themed around punching, with the Iron Fist ability... and its lowest stat is Attack. 21:25 My assumption is that they programmed it in a way of saying "if it's weakened, don't risk with an inaccurate move (... or Ember)".
Thank Guzma. He's probably the sole reason the Leech Life buff, First Impression, and the expansion of Ariados' movepool happened. Well and Leech Life for Buzzwole I guess. Also Lunge came into existence, and Pheromosa is absolutely nutty, with Golisopod being quite respectable too. Bug types ate good in Gen 7.
Fun fact: of all the "spider" Pokemon, the ONLY line that actually has eight legs is the Spidops line. You can see all eight clearly with Tarountula, but Spidops' always holds its third and fourth legs together so it looks like it only has three pairs of legs. Spinarak has six legs, Ariados has four or six depending on what we're calling those things coming up out of its back. Joltik and Galvantula have four legs, though it's cool that Galvantula actually has pedipalps (the modified limbs coming out at the front). They could've given male Galvantula larger pedipalps for some niche gender dimorphism. Dewpider and Araquanid also only have six legs. As for Ariados' leg placement, they're actually a bit further back than they would be on a real spider. Spiders have two main body segments, the prosoma (or cephalothorax; the head section) and the opisthosoma (or abdomen; the rear section). If you look at any spider, all of its legs protrude from the prosoma, the front segment, and the abdomen has no limbs. I believe these choices were made because many people, especially children, find spiders unsettling or frightening. Giving a "spider" Pokemon fewer than eight legs, no chelicerae, and more tetrapodal limb placement, makes them generally more approachable. I maintain that an anatomically-accurate jumping spider-based Pokemon could be absolutely adorable however.
Joltik and Galvantula seem to be at least partially based on jumping spiders. They have large eyes with excellent vision and at least Joltik hops in its 'running' animation iirc. Joltik doesn't exactly look like a jumping spider but it's definitely adorable!
Spinarak was my first ever pokemon - my friend gave me a pokemon card for it, and I still have it on display. Love to see my favorite bug's adult form getting some love.
I love Ledian, it's such a fun design and the idea of a ladybug punching enemies with giant fists is hilarious to me. A shame that it's not great competitively, but for the single player campaign it always finds a place on my team.
Really enjoyed the structure of this versus video! It is much easier to follow along and get a sense of each playthrough when they aren't arbitrarily going back and forth. In the 'old' comparative style, I would keep forgetting about how the other pokemon did, especially when there were more than 10 minutes between each "meanwhile". It kinda took me out of the moment more than it made it feel like a "race". It was kinda like watching two cars race the same track, but not at the same time, and watching one car do 8 laps, then watch the other car do 8 laps. So big thumbs up for doing each playthrough seperately! :D Edit: It also seemed like you had a good time doing the voice over and that made it more enjoyable and easy to follow as well :) -And this is coming from someone who has been watching since before you started doing crystal runs ~
Here's some cursed Lore for Scott related to Ariados: It has actually 6 legs as seen in Pokemon colosseum and Pokemon Colosseum 2 - the two extra legs are on its back (the yellow things on top)!! and it uses them to push itself back up and leap with
My guess is Ariados only has 4 legs because arachnophobs often say the 8 legs are what creeps them out. So basically, they tried to make it more cute. btw, real life spiders do have all of their legs on the first section of their body and have a really big abdomen, just like Ariados
I'm ready for the pain. As a kid (circa 8 year old me in Gold traded from a friend in 1999) I drug a Ledian through Red because I did not understand how bad it was. I think it was like level 85 by the end of my run to be useful lol. My money is on Ariados, just better moves overall.
I’m so glad you redid these Pokémon! As a freak who loves bug types, I figured these two needed a revamp. Ledian is one of my favorite bug types, too, so this makes me very happy. Thank you for doing what you I do, it’s madly entertaining. Very excited to see some of my other favorites pop up in the future (your Spinda run made me very happy, another favorite of mine)
Random fact: none of the spider Pokemon had 8 legs until Scarlet/Violet's Tarountula and Spidops. Ariados, Joltik, and Galvantula have 4 legs while Spinarak, Dewpider, and Araquanid have 6 legs.
Ariados level 1 moveset does suck from a game play perspective, but thematically that is a pretty spot on moveset for a spider to learn. Pity it couldn't get poison fang rather than poison sting tho.
Gamefreak: "Oh, spiders typically sit on webs, so let's make Ariados have a low base speed stat." Also Gamefreak: "My cat was able to dart around the corner of my house rather quickly, so let's give Purugly a higher base speed than Latios."
I was just watching the scyther/scissor battle and thinking about how a matchup like this would be neat when I saw this next in my reccomended. Perfect timing
I actually used Ledan on my first time simply cause I thought Ledyba looked cute, and the evolution looked like a superhero. I even used it as my lead for simple chip damage. Then i got baton pass and swept through the rest of the game. Was a fun tim! 😂
One thing the note is that in a casual playthrough the ability to learn punches is something going for Ledyba and Ledian over Spinarak and Ariados. Any one-off TM has a higher value in playthroughs with a full party whereas in a solo run it's either use, skip, or sell.
12:29 Damn, Chuck's AI must be awful if he's telling Pryce's Piloswine to use Mist in a battle Chuck is not even in. 17:32 Sad Hitmonlee. (After Ledian's victory against Rival 2 in its first run) Wow, a rare instance of Safeguard being useful. 39:55 I'm guessing that's a Shawn addition, but I loved that laughing guy next to Pryce's dialogue. 1:09:04 Wait a minute, that's Rival 2's setup.
My friend, back in the GBC days, soloed Crystal with a Ledian that knew the three E Punches and Sleep Talk. He had to grind against the Elite Four to defeat Red. Looking forward to what strat Scott goes for.
When I was a kid, I've trained my Ledian to lvl 100 because it was the first Mon I ever caught on my own, and boy, I remember that after I did it I let it live on the box lmao
17:40 I got curious and checked the gen 2 AI documentation, Machamp used foresight because the AI modifications that e4 members (and other "boss" trainers) have don't explicitly encourage higher damage moves, they discourage moves that aren't the most damaging. That's relevant in this case because the modifier that relates to foresight only discourages the move 92% of the time. In other words its around a 4% chance for Machamp to use foresight (specifically, both the highest damage dealing move and foresight end up with unchanged scores while the other 2 moves are eliminated; leaving it to a 50/50).
Hey Scott :) thanks for the video as always! Before I watch, or really 1 minute in, I’m interested in growth rates. Are we certain that medium-slow is the best rate for all Pokemon? Obviously slow will always be the worst, but would some mons, maybe those that will finish at level 85, 90, or higher, maybe realize more benefit from the fast (or even medium-fast) growth rate in the late game than they would realize from the quick early levels of medium-slow? I’m thinking maybe something like a first stage grass type in gen I that can crush the first two or three gyms with type advantage but then starts to struggle in the mid game, and then needs a high level to beat Champion Butt
Ariados is one of my favorite pokemon, but like, i'm a Poison type person. Zubat/Golbat/Crobat are my fav pokemon~ I was so happy when Ariados got Toxic Thread in Sun and Moon
I had Silver as a kid and it was my favorite and last Pokemon game until Black, played the hell out of it. I thought the spider was the silver exclusive. That's how little of an impression Ledian left on me.
Damn, never knew my favourite Bug from the first 4 gens was that slow. Ariados looks so much like a fast moving ant thing, that i just falsely remembered it as a fast bug Pokémon Also that gen 2 backsprite is horrible my god. It looks like the face of a confused drinking birds
I think adding + and/or - letter tiers would be fitting to balance out the tier list. I’m also picturing what a mess the finalized pokemon sun/moon tier list will be.
24:00 There is a glitch in GSC with stat overflow, if you go beyond 999 in a stat it rolls over to 1 again. It's the reason Thick Club Marowak doesn't run max atk stat exp with swords dance
Ariados vs Ledian; also known as Pain vs Suffering Funnily enough; as a kid I used Ledian in Crystal. I remember the thing basically sweeping Lance with Thunder and Ice punches. I specifically recall it dodgeing Thunder, and then tanking Fire Blast [because Ledian's only stat that exists is sp.def]
I used an Ariados in my playthrough of Crystal on Virtual Console. It took me way too long to upgrade to using Sludge Bomb, but for a long time I had Return, Dig, Scary Face and Night Shade on it (I think Shadow Ball might have went to another Pokémon?). Ariados is not a great Pokémon but I think it's better than a lot of people would assume just looking at its stats!
They really wanted ledian to be physical despite it's attack stat. It not only has the punches, they also gave it the ability iron fist as a hidden ability.
Isn’t it weird how normal types are immune to night shade, but it also can’t do super effective or not very effective damage? I wonder why they would only keep one type interaction for the move.
it would take far too long to add more stuff to the mix, but it would be nice to see some move update solo runs. ariados gets megahorn via breeding, so if it got that as a lategame move, it could be neat to see if that helps its performance.
Funny thing about Ariados only having 4 legs, there was no spider Pokemon with 8 legs until Spidops in Gen 9! I don't know why they did Ariados and Galvantula like that
I will say that Ariados did way better than I expected. I remember it having some pretty brutal Sludge Bombs in casual playthroughs (and at least one Nuzlocke) of GSC, but that's honestly all I remember, and a lot of things can do that. But it does seem to be a fair bit stronger than expected. Also the graphic at 1:09:05 shows the wrong battle. Pikachu didn't use Charm twice against Ledian, if it did you'd be at -4. Charm lowers the stat by 2 stages.
Hey Scott! What if you changed the game files so the rival always had the opposing Pokémon in your Vs Videos? For example, if you pick Ledian, then your rival has Ariados and vice versa. I feel like this could be really cool especially for games where the rival isn’t that important
I love how back in GSC Game Freak still designed movepools based design and flavour regardless of competitive viability seeing gen 6 Blastoise get Aura Sphere and Dark Pulse in its natural learnset just to make use of Mega Launcher made it for me. Everytbhing lost its soul now
Hey Scott. Just wondering if it would be possible to do first runs without using return? It feels like a lot of mons that use it only do so as a crutch because it's the best and it feels like it skews their performance just like it would if they used hidden power as normal hits a lot of types neutrally
I think you’ve mentioned this before, but do the gym leaders in kanto also give a boost to their badge’s type? Like beating Surge boost electric type moves.
Looking at Ledian and Ledyba's moveset... I wonder how bad they would be in Generation I? Even using their Special Defense as their Special stat, the only Special move they would access to would be Giga Drain. Would they have to rely on double badge boost Rest strategies with Swords Dance and Agility since their Attack is so low or would Giga Drain and Mimic be just enough for their Special stat to carry them to success?
Yikes, they're both so bad I have no idea who's better here... I'm gonna go with STAB sludge bomb which is physical on this one... Edit: wow, losing to both Surge AND Bruno in Gen 2. That thing is so, so bad. I wonder if either of the screens would've helped... (for example light screen against Pika so that we could setup). Double screens + Toxic with leftovers seems interesting
I’ve asked this earlier and I still haven’t gotten an answer, but couldn’t the answer for best growth rate be relative to certain Pokémon types? For example, a Slow growth rate might be beneficial under the conditions of not needing a high level to beat the game and getting past the early game quickly enough. Alternatively, I actually do think Fast is the best if considering a very high level of finish as Medium Slow slows down considerably. There’s also the quandary of less level-ups meaning less time spent on in-battle text.
I don't know if Scott has adressed this explicitly, but he does have reasoning as to why medium slow is the best (then fast, medium fast and finally slow). From what I gathered, he noticed that levels on the early game make or break a pokemon's time. As the game progresses, rare candies become available and higher experiences yields as well, so getting leveles is way easier. I think he has said that for very weak pokemon, medium fast can be better than medium slow because they require very high levels (think 85 or 90). Also, remember that experiences curves aren't linear, so it isn't as simple as "the smallest requirement of exp al level 100 is the best". IIRC, he has said that flactuating can work, but only in very specific scenarios and for very specific pokemon. Overall, I guess that after playing many, many different species, he has concluded that levels on the early game tend to be a good predictor of a good time (or rather, lack of early levels is a predictor of a bad time), which is why he likes medium slow.
