Yet again another lovely guide, mate. While not the most comprehensive out their on the subject of IQ groups and Skill, it makes up for it by the personal insights and little details you bring to the table to flesh out the explanation into something more than just dry recital of information. I especially like how you do your best to qualify your statements with said personal information, as well as pointing out some quirks with some Skills that might be overlooked by the less savvy. Overall excellent job, all things considered! Of course, I wouldn't be me without offering my own mountain of change on the topic, so *again* I hope you can have patience for my verbosity. Before I begin, though, I do have a recommendation for a great source of info about IQ Skills, and its a GameFAQs EoS IQ Guide by FatRatKnight. It's quite the bit of the read, but I consider it to be the 'be all, end all' when it comes to the knitty gritty of IQ! First off, let me get some Skills out of the way that I consider being so worthy and good that they can elevate a group single handily to high tier placing that I didn't see you place much emphasis on: Concentrator: You've heard me say this before, but for those that haven't/didn't read my comment of his previous Starter Tier Video (Go watch it if you haven't, random reader!) Conc. is perhaps hands down one of if not *the* best IQ Skill in the game. At the paltry cost of some Evasion you get roughly a ~20% accuracy boost to ALL Moves, regardless of if the deal damage or not. Now this may not seem like much on paper at first glance, one crucial thing to note is that virtually every Move has non-perfect accuracy in PMD EoS. The more powerful ones especially have low Accuracy, like LoS Moves and Multi-Hit Attacks, while even low power ones have roughly 80-90% accuracy. All it takes is one more to miss at the WORST of times to faint your Starter/Leader out cold, and even if the miss doesn't prove disasterous you've still have essentially wasted 1 PP (quite a lot, on some Moves). Concentrator fixes that issues entirely for the more reliable Moves, making them go from 'good' to' life savingly good' like Always Accurate Attacks. Even the less than accurate Move benefit from this more than you think, most notably Multi-Hit Moves like Bullet Seed, which would normally 'miss' several of its little attacks on a mob. The fact that its a relatively early Skill makes it entirely feasible to obtain before the Main Story wrap up and all the more useful, and it does something that Gummi Drinks, Seeds, and other Stat Boosters can't do. Whatever you do, DON'T sleep on this Skill. It can literally save your runs, or at least make them a whole lot less frustration! Erratic Player: As we may or may not all know, STAB rules the roost of PMD games. In the event of you having SE coverage against a target vs using your neutral STAB, you would almost always be better served to do the later unless the SE Move has some nifty effect or the mob has some Ability that ruins your fun with STAB. This is due to the fact that STABs do MORE damage than SE WITHOUT STAB, and even against a mono resistant target you're still doing only a little bit above 100% damage of a neutral non-STAB Move. As such, unless your STAB has a lot of Types Immune or Doublely Resistant towards it the best course of action is just to fill your Moveset with your fav STABs and leave all the other interesting options to rot, save for utility Moves like Earthquake for Monster Houses. Erratic Player 'fixes' this 'issue' by drastically raising the damage of SE Moves to surpass neutral STAB, and together with STAB make already strong Moves almost certain doom for that poor mob you dished them out on. It's just an overall huge damage boost to everything, giving you a heck of a lot more edge and interesting options to cut through mobs with than just STAB alone. The Skill DOES have the downside of it being reciprocal towards you too (as in SE Moves are more effective against you too!), but nothing is stopping you from toggling it off against foes packing such coverage and not having to deal with that problem at all. Or better yet, turning it back on once you've worn them down to be within KO range from a E.P. buffed Move! See what I mean about this being a game changer? Only REAL problem I see with the Skill is that it takes a LOT Of Gummis to get it early enough for it not to be a late Main Story Skill, but some grinding during the moments where you can stall out the plot can remedy this at the cost of a whole lot of time and tedium. Bodyguard: Less so good on you than on your Partner, this Skill acts as a safety net for you if you get into 'Red HP' (FYI when your HP Bar starts flashing red on and off). Can save you many Reviver Seeds in the long run as your Partner eats up damage meant to KO you, and if you're the type to let your Starter do all the fighting it does get some use out of your Partner beyond occasionally hiding behind them from scary mobs or using them as a back up when you run out of PP and Elixirs. Even if you take a Starter with this Skill it still is nice to have, as saving your Partners from KOes can be just as good when you don't want to waste Revivers and/or you can tank it via Resistances. SUPER easy to get too, so you hardly have to go out of your way to get it! Weak-Type Picker: One of three 'Target and Choice' IQ Skills, this one is by far the most useful, as it allows your NPC allies to actually consider the effectiveness of its Moves against a target and then choose to use the one most effective against it. While some may not consider this as great at first glance, seeing as STAB Is King and all and none the groups that get it also get Erratic Player (F and J), its usefulness mainly lay in the ability to not having to constantly fiddle around in the menus selecting and de-selecting your NPC ally Moves if you don't want them using the wrong Move at the wrong time. That, and those that have this Skill also have Type Advantage Master, which while not as good as Erratic Player does still makes coverage Moves more useful (albeit at the whims of RNG), and therefore WTP even more useful. Of course its useless on the Leader since you play as them, so their is an argument to be made that it downgrades some Starters from being the Protagonist since they'll squander this Skill until they can be sidelined in Team Building Post Game. Multi-Talent: + 5 PP to all Moves, enough said! Even if you pack your Bag out the wazoo with Max Elixirs /Revivers (they restores all Moves PP to full, so if you're the reckless/frivolous type...) this Skill is still useful as it reduces the overall amount you need to consume, and for the more stingy of Explorers when it comes to Inventory management it lets you 'downsize' on the amount of said M.E.s you'd normally want to carry. It's just an all around nifty Quality of Life Skill to have, really! Fun fact: The Pikachu line has an Exclusive Treasure that add + 2 PP to all its Moves, and it stacks with Multi-Talent! Enjoy having almost double PP on Thunder once you get both online! Fast Friends: Gives + 5% to the chance of Recruiting a Pokemon If you're the type to want to 'catch them all' , then this Skill will make things just even so slightly easier on you to do so! Lots of Pokemon have negative recruitment Rates too even with your Leader's Max Level Recruitment Bonus (24.5%, if you are wondering). Keckleon in particular you can't get WITHOUT Max Level + Fast Friend + Golden Mask, so if you want a little shop keeper to play around with you literally must have this Skill to get them. Critical Dodger/Quick Dodger/Clutch Player: No Critical Hits on you EVER AND attacks miss you more often. Takes ages to get with or without Gummi grinding, but once you get the Skills you can breathe a sigh of relief as you take away and tone down the tools RNG had to torment you with. Best damage mitigation is simply not taking it, after all!
Continuing my commentary, since RU-vid is stingy with word count. ---- With all the above said, I humbly say that all groups with this IQ Skills deserve to be at least at B tier, with the Concentrator Groups deserving even A or S/Ubers like J/I . For the really late Skills it could be argued that the grind to take to get them can rank them lower, but ANY real progress into the IQ Groups requires copious amounts of Gummies, so it really is a matter of patience/diligence as to what Skills are worthwhile or not (and by logical extension, the Groups that hold them). Now onto my own insights about the various groups, and where my opinion aligns or differs with yours! A: Completely agree with your placement here, in all honesty. However it's not all that hard to make use of Pokemon of this Group even though it doesn't have a Starter among the lucky lot. To paraphrase from that guide I mentioned, Paras (Part of Group A) are relatively easy to get in Apple Woods, and learn Stun Spore + Spore as just great support Moves to royally screw over mobs Main Story. Post Game Butterfree is great, as they get Stun Spore and Sliver Wind combing with their Compound Eyes, and Vespiqueen has a Exclusive Item that can potentially stack with Collector, which if it DOES you get ALL the Loot, mwahaha! B: See above points made about their Skills, but one thing to note is like Group E they get most of their generally useful Skills early on while the REALLY exploitable stuff can feasibly be left to Post Game for toiling away towards. That, and its the only group that has both Nature Gifter and Pierce Hurler, so if you want to be absolutely economical with Gummies and want to exploit the heck out of those Skills you can't really forgo stuffing one of these Mons gullet with sweet sweet knowledge. Oddish and its lineage are great and easy Recruitment options for this group, and considering that it can become the excellent Sunny Day Destroyer Bellawessom...... C: See above points made! In a game where each and every attack counts and you're constantly being beset by enemies, having all that extra POWER and the little bit of extra accuracy to cleanly KO them in 1-2 hits is nothing something to scoff at! Makes all that coverage the C Starters have all the more enticing too if/when you can get at it, so you have even more to look forward with them! D: Again, see above points. That, and since Pikachu and Treecko exist within this group and are arguably the best Starters period, they automatically increase the value of this Group by association unless you just don't plain care about IQ at all. E: You have a good point about Gummies and Stat Boosters obsoleting some of the usefulness of this group late game, but the reverse of that is equally true: up until then Group E is great to getting you there with much less risk (Or if one chooses not to max out their Stats for one reason or another, it never gets 'worse' ). Most of the really useful Skills for both Player and Partner use are gotten for a pittance of IQ too, so if one only wants to get as much bang for their buck as possible out of IQ grinding early on then Group E Pokemon are undoubtable a sound choice for their grind targets. Considering what other IQ groups ask for their Skills, I'm sure a lot will appreciate the low investment Group E asks for. F: Again Again see above points. Not much else for me to say here, really. G: Agree with you on all points you made, though if a player doesn't want to play as a Female PC then they effectively have zero options for Group G Pokemon. That, and Skitty sorta devalues its own Group with its Normalize since it completely stuffs Erratic Player, so if you want to get full use out of it you don't have much choice but to play as Vulpix or bring Meowth along as your Partner and wait until Post Game to play as them. H: This is less about the Group itself, but If it gets A Tiering then B should also get it as well, as both are practically equivocal in their usefulness once you get a Pokemon all the way through them. And since it takes literally *hundreds* or IQ points to get to Nature Gifter having Chika as your Starter only does so much to give you a headstart at getting to it, so I don't think Starter accessibility of the group should be as big of a factor in its ranking. Especially since it's not terribly hard to find really good Group B Pokemon you want to invest in pre or post Main Story, like the aforementioned Oddish and its fragrant ilk. I/J: Don't really have much to say here, as the only Pokemon have it are all Legendary Pokemon that are already OP as they are without ample IQ investment. Really, considering how loooooong it takes to get their signature IQ Skils and the members SHEER POWER, you could say its the Legends that make the Groups Ubers, and not the other way around. All done with me commentary, mates! Hope you find it to be enjoyable everyone, and may your future days be wonderful!
@@anonjohn9760 Christ mate, I just got around to reading all of this haha, and yes you do make quite a few good points! hopefully others will see your passion and opinions about iq groups in the game in conjunction with the video and enhance their options further! thanks for the comment!
Good point, I didnt consider the usefulness of concentrator as much during the video as I learned how useful it was afterwards. I'd say they're really useful, but its hard to find Pokémon who can utilize it super well with their other skills and movesets.
A- utility B- support C- aggro D- assasin E- explorer/tank F- specialist G- scout H- healer . C/D get Concentrator B/H get Fast Freind A/F/H get All-Terrain Hiker A/B/C/F get Peirced Hurler F only class with Peirced Hurler and Gap Prober . Certain skills only work with the user being the Leader or a Partner Leader only- Survivalist/Energy Saver/Haggler/Fast Freind/Nature Gifter Partner only-Dedicated Traveler/Effiency Expert/Cheerleader/Weak Type Picker/Exp. Go-Getter/Trap Avoider/House Avoider
"They just buffed the crap outta Palkia" Yeah you can say that again. Not only the incredibly broken IQ skills but also having access to a room clearing move and its exclusive item that increases base attack power by 50%. It's absolutely disgusting. I wonder though if this exclusive item and the space orb (which increases base attack power by 100%) would stack
I tested it and unfortunately it seems like the space globe doesn't stack with it :( also it seems like the space globe has a limited use in general as for me and others I've noticed that it doesn't really work in general lmao
@@shensei4 The space globe must be a held item while the exclusive item can be in your inventory to have its effect. Well, even if the space globe is just hot garbage, it's still bragging rights
@@nyapoleon8999 lol I gotcha, I did that, and tested multiple moves done by multiple pokemon, but the overall damage output didn't seem to change, so I thought that the item must have been bugged or something. Welp bragging rights it is lol
Maxing out Palkia's iq was such a hassle, but it was totally worth it. I found using gummies felt too slow so I just ran Zero Isle North like 6-7times with IQ booster.
@@eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee9531 Yup, the IQ booster is only in Sky through big win's at Spinda's cafe. It gives +1 IQ every 1-2 floors depending on how high level the dungeon is.
IQ group E definitely improves survivability & has definitely saved my team SEVERAL game overs. Deserves better than rank D 😭 (also personal bias, but still 😂)
I totally agree with you! IQ group E has insane skills! My favourite ones are Energy Saver which let's your stomach last 33% longer and Deep Breather whicih restores 1 of your attack's pp every new floor you get on :D Basically you don't need to take any items to fill up your belly/pp with you! Atleast for dungeons with ~20 floors only :D Quick Healer is a great skill too, since it let's you restore more hp while walking/standing still Can't believe he put this group on rank C- / D+ ô.o
I know this is like super endgame stuff, but similar to the IQ group I, you can have Tyranitar and maybe some other rock pokemon on your team with the Stone Gem, and so long as the weather doesn't change, you basically also get a permanent speed buff. In fact, your entire rock type team does. It's my favourite thing in the game right now.
If you re-record the bulbapedia site to accommodate for the 720p resolution and played the audio over it; I would have given this video a like. As for when you're talking about certain traits from each IQ tier, I think that you should've shown gameplay examples instead of the constant Palkia gameplay.
The first pokemon I really invested in the IQ of was one of my Combee so I could do nectar farming strats. Even just having two combees go off on their own and get treasure boxes while the player and partner do stuff can get your iq really high during the main story. Then once you can use three combee and a leader with illuminate it gets even better. Once you get someone with pierce hurler and some lockon specs levelling up IQ becomes so dang easy. Plus because I invested 5 million gummis into this one combee it's also really freaking strong which is pretty funny.
One thing I really like about your tier list videos is you take the time to subrank them within the tiers. I don't think I've seen anyone else ever do that.
I can’t believe I haven’t seen this video yet. Great job! It’s awesome to see people analyzing the Pokémon mystery dungeon series, I would love to see more videos like this in the future. ❤️
Something to note about g on vulpix in particular. Considering vulpix’s main strength in movepool lies in its ability to lock down bosses with the combination of imprison and attract vulpix likely wouldn’t be using quick striker against story bosses considering every turn would likely be used to debuff permanently stun bosses especially as a female vulpix because most bosses are male. Though I suppose dark pulse fits into this quite well considering the flinch chance.
Oh my god sniping with pierce hurler.... galaxy brain (the monster house one too!!! Genius. I usually have room sweepers with Darkrai and Shinx but, genius!!)
IQ group F gets Weak-Type Picker, which easily makes it the best group for partners IMO. The skill completely changes how the AI selects their moves, to the point where they reliably know the best move in every situation generally, and now they'll reliably use line-based moves. For this reason, the group is S-tier for partners IMO. I'm surprised that you didn't mention this skill at all in your video.
In my experience I find C iq group to be the worst, in Darkness version I was Charmander and back then I was like “Oh, aggressor makes me stronger but also lowers my Defense and Consentrator improve my accuracy but lower my dodge chances but I’m sure nothing can go wrong” But then I was dying… A LOT. That’s because this game isn’t well design for glass-cannon at all and for most people experience, this game is actually pretty hard. When I got Sky version I was more focus on survivability instead of focusing on being offensive and I die in like almost never and by that point I know how I can play the game. Survivability is more important in PMD
C is horrible. So many pokemon are in that IQ group, but nearly every single IQ skill it has is sacrificial. So while every other IQ group gets skills that give them objective boosts, C is stuck with trade-off skills that may even hinder you more than they help you.
Totally agree. I have Garchomp (C) at 100 and even at max health he still dies with his exclusive item. While Grovyle at 100 (D) can handle his own with Bullet Seed. I'd prefer using gummies on C group to max IQ because they're smart n reliable too. They don't step on traps like C all the time 😂 but combined together as a team the soldier (C) and ninja (D) are quite the team if you're leading them
All-Terrain Hiker has always been a must-have IQ skill for my starter, and preferably a water type, the mobility is just so important to me. So I main Mudkip, but maybe I should play as Chikorita sometime...
Nice video! Ive played this game a long time ago, then i come back again so i was trying to think some strategies for teams, them this video come right on time, thanks!
I feel like Intimidator alone could bring group E up a tier because it just procs so damn often and it’s so ridiculous, but having group E be that low speaks to the power of how op IQ is as a whole.
Time Tripper is definitely the best for offensive tactics. But like the video maker said, it's extremely unhelpful if you have a non-Time tripper pokemon with you and it's best to leave off bc you'll end up leaving them behind.
I'm gonna disagree on the number means early and late content. I think the main issue is that players don't use gummies right. It's "technically" more effective to feed liked and favorite gummies to the Pokemon. That being said, it's faster and quicker to farm gummies and feed every single one to one of your duos and swapping once you finish a Pokemon. By the time i had 6 stars on my riolu and 3.5 on my shinx i was half way through the game and i wasn't considered over leveled either. Feed your Pokemon gummies as you get them and focus on the missions that give you those.
Pierce hurler raises up to 3 teammates iq at once, iq booster as a held item in specific dungeons, spindas cafe drinks guarentee a stat raise+ potential benefits, and try to match certain Gummis to pokemon types to be more efficient at distributing the resource!
@Cryo Yup, I was going to say this. There are some guides online on how to farm Nectar with Combee, and it works really well. And if you have a mon with Pierce-Hurler… even better. With one of those, you can feed Nectar to 3 Pokémon at the same time and get loads of IQ all at once.
Hello! I am really enjoying the game! huge improvement over blue rescue! I'm not having ANY difficulty as Phanpy and Shinx. I'm going for a 4 way team in theme of the Jungle. So far my team is Phanpy Shinx Spinarak and Oddish. Oddish might change however I'm looking for a good Pokemon that will balance type weakness and stats... I'm thinking of making My Spinarak the smart one of the group, my phanpy me is the all arounder and Shinx is a speedy attacker. I need a Pokemon who can take special attacks and do special attacks. What do you say about me improving my spinaraks IQ? Also who'd be a great fourth member?
palkia isnt one of the best imo it is THE best by a massive margin. Utility trumps power since 255 in each stat is possible with any mon and covers combat completely.
If my partner or other pokemon on my team have a skill like Stair Sensor, do I have to be controlling it to benefit from these skills or does it only need to be on my current team to see the floor layout and stair location?
yes! every pokemon's evolution will also be in the same IQ group as their pre-evolution. So Eevee, along with all its potential evolutions will all be in IQ group F for example.
How....what? Am I seeing that right? Your walking, no, busting through walls as palkia? Is that an item thats letting you do that? I dont think ive found anything like that before
Can't tell if you're joking or not. But the answer is Palkia, and only Palkia, has access to a special IQ skill called Absolute Mover that allows it to plow through walls and carve its own paths. It takes a ton of gummies to get it, but it's so fun and useful to have once you do get it.
@@YoshiDryBones god i remember doing this in red rescue team then having a couple pokemon reach max iq in sky but they couldnt do this. Its so fucking annoying.
Real ranking people should follow: Leader: S - I, J( the best) A - E, H, G, A (survive, and navigate) B - B, D, F(story line fine, zero isle? GOOD LUCK) C - C(unless if you want to continue to die in the game, or have crazy amounts of revival seeds, don't bother) Partner: S - A, G (the best) A - F, D(very well balanced IQ) B - C (good damage, but needs a E, J group leader for survival) C -B, H (not really a good partner) D- E ( this a leader IQ group, not partner they make the worst partners) WHY?!?! - I, J ( this two are best tiers for leader, why would anyone one with basic common sense use this Pokemons as partner) Stop trying to make fire Pokemons look good, in this game they are not that good and E is tank Pokemon and very powerful as leader. Also energy savor + filling your belly up fast can be a life savor in the bigger dungeon. It seems like to you only played the main game and no zero isle islands. Palkia, dialga, and a Pokemon with E, H, and G are the only ones that survive them. You need to play the game differently man, it seems like you only played to have fun and not really understand the components.