Pokemon's Most Obscure And Useless Moves 

the ariados spider web is actually a really good way to catch the johto beasts in pokemon firered and leafgreen: you breed an ariados with a ledyba so you get spiderweb on ledian, which is a pokemon with baton pass. so you use spider web, trap entei or raikou with it and then baton pass into a soundproof pokemon like electrode.

My favorite thing about Spider Web is that, in Gen 9, they made it unusable. Then they decided to introduce a new spider Pokemon and give it Block, a move that's literally the same thing as Spider Web.

i actually used captivate when i fought cynthia in platinum, i believe her team is all-female so i just threw it on one of my male mons to weaken her special attackers. truly the pinnacle of niche

You know, I kind of like that sentiment at the end. I agree that there can be value found in moves who's only real purpose is giving kids a moment to think about if they want to learn them (and then inevitably choose "no")

an easier way to describe Miracle Eye is to call it a psychic variant on Odor Sleuth/Foresight. It has the same nullification of evasion improvements, it just removes dark's immunity to psychic instead of Odorsleuth/Foresight's removal of ghost's immunities. It might be interesting to see it return as an ability, akin to Scrappy or Corrosion

Useless Moves 15 year old me: Anything that did not inflict damage.

I love how atmospheric these videos are. It's such an unorthodox choice but it adds a lot to these videos.

Reflect Type was actually a niche tech move in Gen V OU on Latias. It allowed you to turn the tables on any Tyranitar trying to Pursuit trap you by turning into a Dark Type and resisting the hit

It's weird that Porygon couldn't learn Reflect Type, Conversion basically did the same thing in Gen 1 so it'd make logical sense for it to be able to do that but maybe it'd make Porygon2 and Z too good

In Gen. 2, I put Spider Web on all my Smeargle. It's the saucier trapping move. Then you give it Spore, Super Fang/False Swipe, and Fly for the prime pokemon-catching loadout

Bite went from physical in Gen 1(normal), to special in Gen 2 when it became a dark type, and regained physical in Gen 4

Miracle Eye is basically the same thing as Foresight, but for the Psychic-Dark relationship instead of the Normal-Ghost relationship. I didn't realize it also resets evasion, so that would make Foresight the worse of the two, especially when most Normal types can learn Dark type moves to counter Ghost like Bite, Feint Attack or Knock Off. And most can learn Shadow Ball too.

Miracle Eye would go bonkers if it also raised the user's accuracy, even by one stage. Alakazam smiting enemies with a 93% accurate Focus Blast? I'm all for it.

3:22 I might be one of the rarest users of Spider Web ever existed lol. Back in Gen 7, for a Monotype Bug, I ran an Araquanid with Spider Web, Soak, Toxic and Rest to stall and get rid of any other wall/threat to the team. And it's safe to say that set not only worked, but it was way more effective than it may appear. Sad the move has been deleted from the series, I would love to bring back my Stallaquanid

5:24 small mistake, but Shadow Moves are totally usable by the player while you have Shadow Pokemon.

The only one I was pretty familiar with was Spider Web, since Koga's team on the Johto Elite Four features an Ariados who loves using it. I'm glad it at least got SOME love from GameFreak there!

Reflect Type was actually really good on Mega Latias in competitive! It basically let it Terastellize versus Pokemon like Tyrantatar or Ferrothorn, two of its most common answers.

From my experience of more than 20 years in gaming, the games that contain "useless" and "strictly worse" moves/items/mechanics and allow for some insane abuse and min-maxing usually are the best. There is a reason why the devs included Salami as a Weapon in BG3 ... :-D 😀

You mentioned ariados' old signature move but its new one is even more obscure(toxic thread). Genuinely cant remember what the move does but it was introduced all the way in gen 7.

The player is able to use Shadow Moves! Just not outside the story mode of the GameCube titles

I actually used Reflect Type in a recent SV run. I had a Gengar on my team and I had it use Reflect Type at the Ghost gym after my Farigiraf became Dark Type with Tera in order to more readily body Rhyme's team.

The ending comments are very true for pokemon. People forget that it's a solo game first, with competitive coming second. Yes, there are pokemon that are pretty much useless competitively, but serve a function in a solo play through (looking at you, bug type pokemon).

Rare instance where I've actually intentionally used one of these obscure moves before: Reflect Type. Fun little niche build for Starmie back in gen 6 that worked surprisingly well simply based off the fact no one ever expected it

I think another commonly forgotten move is Ion Deluge. It's a rather situational (and kinda useless) effect with a small learnpool, but what makes it stand out is that in unpatched versions of USUM, it was glitched and would always fail. It's so forgettable that even Game Freak forgot about it.

i dunno why but i love learning about these useless moves no one uses/forgets about/ended up deleted eventually. psywave is my personal favorite

Really love the random Digletts fact you through in there because you didn’t have enough content for 10 mins. S tier stuff man

What really stands out to me is that this is the first Pokemon Analysis/Deep Dive Video that has a "transcedental" kinda vibe too it thanks to the choice of music and your calm voice. Paired with the message you gave at the end really made this stand out from all the other Pokemon Theory channels. Keep it up. Good stuff.

Wow... Reflect-type would be really cool on Shedinja, the only Pokemon that could really use it.

Well if you think about it Odor Sleuth/Foresight/Miracle Eye remove immunities from Ghost/Dark types, obviously that means it's a must have in Hackmons to deal with Wonder Guard Sableye/Spiritomb instead of literally any other strategy that makes more sense, including but not limited to not playing Hackmons before Gen VI

Gonna do a wombo combo of reflect type and synchronize, starme is a bout to hard carry, and Miracle eye actually saved me in one of my runs. Very niche move, but useful if you have nothing for dark types.

You ever heard of a move called rototiller? I never saw it before playing through ultra sun for the first time recently. I think there’s a lot of weird moves in gen 6/7 that got abandoned in the move to the switch games

Was almost gonna say Reflect Type's sole purpose was to enable another near-useless move you didn't mention here called Synchronoise, but then I checked who could learn both those moves and found only Kekleon. And even then he only learned Reflect Type as a special Dream World move, so post-Gen 6 it's like he doesn't at all.

The Shadow move factoid is wrong. Shadow moves can be used by the player, and they only have a physical-special split in XD. Colosseum only had one shadow move, which was physical.

Funny enough i actually did use aridos to catch the legendaries in my playthroughs back when i was a kid 😂 i dont think i knew about meanlook at the time and somehow ran into figuring out about spiderweb so trained up a legendary catching aridos every playthrough 😂

My main Pokémon catcher is a smeargle with FALSE SWIPE, HYPNOSIS, RECOVER and SPIDER WEB. Smeargle has high speed so it works well.

I love your content so much, its incredible how different your pokemon videos are, the editing is amazing as well, keep it up man!

Miracle eye found a niche in fanfiction. Psychic types are difficult to write around on account of their telepathy. In universe it makes it difficult for authors to have characters keep secrets when a passing psychic type can just scoop them out of the character’s mind. As a result authors tend to either counter telepathy with other psychics or dark types. This is where miracle eye finds a niche in either interrogation (read crazy invasive mind reading). Alternatively, fanfiction plays it fast and loose with the only knowing four moves rule. It gives psychic types more of a reason to use miracle eye when you can use more of your movepool than just focus miss.

Oh yeah! I remember using Captivate all the time when I was doing the Pokemon contests to get every ribbon back in Pokemon Diamond, good general move you can add and remove with little consequence as a Pokemon is leveling since you'll have moves to replace later down the line

I love the music you used in this video. So relaxing

Pokken tournament players could never forget miracle eye. It allowed both Shadow and Normal Mewtwo to perform an infinite combo.

I did actually get some use out of Miracle Eye, once, in a Platinum Randomiser. It was the only way I could break through Mars' Skuntank at the Valley Windworks. Now, Wonder Room, Eerie Impulse, Synchronoise, those are moves I've never even considered using.

Reflect Type did have a niche in Gen 7 OU by Mega Latias. Calm Mind, Stored Power, Reflect Type, and Roost. Alternatively it had a use on Mega Lati on defensive sets with BoltBeam + Roost and Reflect Type. The first set was used as a check to Clefable and unaware mons. Stored Power + CM would brute force Unaware mons with high BP and Celf as a staple mon would get checked with Reflect Type. Was one of my favorite sets when climbing OU since I was a huge mega Latios/Latias fan.

Love this videos, some of them make me remember my silver and sapphire playthroughs, thanks

Miracle Eye is a pretty underwhelming move in game for sure. I've actually been reading a genuinely incredible fanfiction called "The Origin of Species" where Miracle Eye was created during the events of the story and it had world altering affects. It features a more gritty and realistic world where Pokemon are more akin to animals and there are Dark humans, who, like Dark Pokemon, cannot be detected by Psychics, human or Pokemon. Something like Miracle Eye, that even temporarily can remove that protection from a Dark human or Pokemon, has long reaching ramifications that alter the course of history. It's a very good read and is still in progress and regularly updated, strong recommend for anyone who is interested in a more mature Pokemon story that takes a very analytical, in depth approach to a Pokemon world.

Great video, gonna go watch the other 3 now

8:15 "Most forgotten Psychic type move" he says... COMPLETELY FORGETTING KINESIS EXISTED SINCE GEN1

I actually used Reflect Type on an ally Zoroark in a link battle to fool my opponent. It was a Latias Reflect Typing a Zoroark disguised as Infernape. Seeing my friends face doing 0 damage when using Psychic on my Latias was priceless

Ngl I thought Reflect Type was a Mystery Dungeon exclusive move or something since I only ever remembered seeing it on my most recent playthrough of Super. I think these moves are pretty neat even in niche and situational and I feel like you could possibly make use of them if you plan things correctly, and I think they add nice flavor to the Pokémon that use them

Another great update from the legend Woop 😺👍

This guy gets so deep about the intricacies of pokemon and I love it! Subscribed

Reflect Type was part of my strategy for SOS chaining Larvesta in Gen 7: you need to be Ghost type to prevent the Larvesta from KOing themselves with Take Down, but also Fire type to prevent burns. Thus a Smeargle with Trick or Treat to make them a Fire/Bug/Ghost and then Reflect Type to copy it There's also the concern of 1% Volcarona spawns with Whirlwind, so you can Ingrain with Smeargle and then Baton Pass to Mew who can Reflect Type

You are absolutely correct about your ending realization. And then again, seemingly useless moves do exist for more than flavour's sake. Some are just game freak experimenting in different ways, but moves can absolutely also exist for educational purposes for players. And that's okay, just like Brock's Onix and your average evil team grunt exist for similar reasons.

"What's your purpose in life?" "I'm here to add flavour when contrasted against better people"

Your final point reminded me of something I read from one of the Magic: The Gathering devs. Don't remember it exactly, but it was something like "There are four factors that make a card terrible. If it fills between one and three of them, it will be literally unplayable. If it fills all _four_ of them, *_someone will win a tournament with it."_*

Something worth noting about the physical/special split is that it was basically always an option to apply by the Pokemon Company, at least in Gen 3. For starters, by this point contact and non-contact moves were already a thing. As well, according to an old user who goes by the name Doesnt who made a patch for applying the gen 3 phys/special split to fan mods, there's a byte in the data of every move where if it's set to 0, the move is considered physical, 1 makes it special, and 2 makes it non-attacking.

I used miracle eye on my "Keikei" Kadabra to beat Cynthia's Spiritomb in my first gen4 playthrough. What a memory

I remember Miracle Eye so much I gave it to a fakemon I made! It was obviously a filler move and it was only there because it fitted its Pokedex entry, but still.

Dope video, subbed :D

This is edited like a "My parents farted under my blanket but I don't have any proof" creepypasta.

I've never known what captivate does, you're telling me it's just a worse version of eerie impulse 💀

Your voice over is easy to listen to and binge. A lot of poketubers have shrill and booming voices, so it only holds my interest for so long 😂

I didn't know "powder" was a move until just this year. Almost expected it to make it in here but ah well, it's either not that not that obscure or so obscure that it was overlooked lol

Bruh 9:50 I really needed to hear this right now. The timing is kinda freaking me out lol This popped up on my timeline and, while I was listening, I was also thinking less-than-kind thoughts about myself. So yea, thanks. Imma keep trying my best and adding a lil flavor to the world 😂❤️

The atmospheric music and sound design is insane in these. I feel like you must study or be a professional in sound design? It's like...unreasonably good. Keep it up :))

Make Nightmare only castable when the pokemon is asleep, but continue even if the pokemon wakes up. Make the weather condition Hail, cause all normal and fighting moves to have 30% recoil, cos how much more does it hurt to hit your hand in cold weather.

I was considering using Miracle Eye on Gothitelle with Stored Power since it could trap the opponent, but by the time I thought of it, it was in Sword and Shield and I think it was removed.

Physical/special split was coded into gen III. Some moves make contact, and others don't. But instead of using that for damage category they trolled the players with things like Dark type Physical attackers.

Reflect Type is a cool move but it's main drawback is how it's use is very situational

I like how the content is completely wholesome, yet the editing makes it look like a creepypasta.

I definitely used Airados a ton in Gen 2 and def used that move to catch Entei, Raikou, and Suicune.

Badly descripted moves remind me of the Dutch handbook for Pokémon Red and Blue staring that by using the move Substitute the created clones would fight independently. This got me so hyped to get Substitute on my Mewtwo, but no: no extra fighting clones.

I wanted say the move Teleport but then i tought of its outside battle uses and remember always picking up that trade abra in Oreburgh city for fast travel purpose (Before Fly) and how nice it is to teleport back to a poke center instead of having to go all the way back if i had to backtrack somewhere to pick up a tm or item

Miracle Eye is really just a psychic version of Odor Sleuth or Foresight that affects dark types instead of ghost types. I've gotten plenty of use out of Oder Sleuth in particular in gen 3, where Double Team is absolutely rampant; I imagine there's gotta be a few people who kept Miracle Eye for a similar purpose, though I'm not sure is Double Team is as common in gen 4.

That Onyx ppkedex entry implies that the digglet tunnel ending in Pewter and Rock having an Onyx are connected! Cool

9:12 for miracle eye, some situations arise where you don't have a neutral or super effective move. It allows the user to super effective hit dark poison and dark fighting types with psychic type moves. However, the move foresight/odor sleuth or pokemon with the ability Scrappy have one niche use against Sableye and Spiritomb, making them weak to fighting type moves as I discovered by playing with a loppunny as my ace making high jump kick and jump kick super effective. Any Ghost Dark types can be made weak to fighting types as far back as Gen 3 due to all three options of dealing with them existing in Gen 3. In Gen 4, you get more mileage with Cynthia's Spiritomb being weak to fighting on a foresight/odor sleuth/ Scrappy pokemon but the game I discovered this trick in was Gen 7s Ultra Sun after I played Ultra Moon and wanted to Challenge myself to use only stereotypical feminine Pokemon and oddly enough, loppunny got the most milage and basically took the lead in every fight which is why I respect Loppunny's power as it even earned me a battle tree win and got me the ribbon for that tree. If I had a choice between a STAB supereffective Psychic move against something like Skuntank in gen 4 or a fighting type who doesn't do well against dark types, than I would utilize the Miracle Eye and a psychic type move although ground type solves it well

Miracle eye was useful against Flints original squad. Other than that, you're right lol. New sub bro, great stuff 👍🏽

Don’t forget Bronzing line for some unusual reason can learn Steel wing in Gen 6 when the TM for Steel wing used to be something else that was more fitting in Gen 5.

I was playing a Pokemon white soullink nuzlocke randomizer with a friend recently and I had a sigilyph (I think). I had to fight N who sent out his purrloin. I freaked out because my only attacking move was confusion, then I realized I could actually use Miracle Eye.

I don't see how anybody who has been playing Pokemon since day one, doesn't already know all of this.

reflect type is actually really useful for ti@s and starmie since it makes them resist most pursuit trappers, it used to be very common in gen 6 to have reflect type as an option for teams that were reliant on starmie or tias to check keldeo, since they would else be way too easily caught off guard by ttar or even bisharp. with reflect type starmie you could check their moves, scald burn and recover any damages with little to no risk !

while working on my move dex, spotlight and mat block were the last two to obtain. also funny how they removed spider web and instead gave ariados an even more obscure exclusive move in toxic thread.

It's so much fun to watch that one second where ads try and fail to bypass AdBlock.

Hey, I remember miracle eye cuz I know it was used in one of the PokeStar studios movies cuz those are like mini puzzles. I think it was for the horror zombie movie one where you only have a sigilyph and the opponent is a dark type alien thing. I have vivid memories of that and the wonder guard dark/ghost type where they give you Soak on a basculin so it's susceptible to an electric move they also give you

There's also another instance of a Pokémon wrongly being given an -s for the plural of it. In Sun and Moon if you talk to Alolan Professor Oak(I think in the library), he will ask you about the local variation of "Persians" when talking about Alolan Persian.

I legitimately combined Miracle Eye with Mind Reader, because of them having an overlapping effect, so I was like, "How are you forgetting the Miracle Eye into Sheer Cold combo on Articuno!?" And then I realized that Mind Reader is what I was thinking of

Another great vid

I feel like these moves existed in the sake of unacknowledged battling evolution to come. Which never came but it was thrifty to add them just in case.

I love how this video has the vibes of a "mysterious folk tales and unsolved murders" video.

Regarding Miracle Eye, you say resetting your opponent's increased evasion is way less useful than if it would have reset your lowered accuracy. For that you already switch out but if you're stuck with an opponent that's very defensive and used many double teams, helpful moves would then be never-miss moves like Swift, but also Foresight, Odor Sleuth and Miracle Eye that brings increased evasion (not lowered) back to normal and I believe even for the remainder of the fight, so if it continued to increase its evasiveness it would be ignored by the user of Miracle Eye and in double battles your other Pokemon would also benefit from it. Still a very situational move but quite an interesting one that they came up with.

Great video

6:12 i think you spoiled some of the video with the purple links haha (jk more like an Easter egg behind the scenes) Good video though nice pacing, fun topic

Trapping moves in Gen 2 are also useful if you’re trying to catch some of the species that randomly flee. This was also supposed to be the use of Fast Balls, but they were bugged and only worked on a few species.

10/10 editing bro

Ever considered making non-Pokemon related videos? I feel like your editing and commentary would fit many other topics as well - though I'm not at all complaining about Pokemon content

Magneton's gen 1 Pokédex entry also uses normal plural as it mentions MAGNEMITEs. Every other gen keeps that s out, though.

In addition to the plural of a Pokemon being the same as the singular, the plural of a basic Pokemon can include a group of Pokemon that evolve from it! It's correct to say "the Zubat are swarming" when there are Golbat and Crobat mixed into the group, but incorrect to say "the Golbat are swarming" if there are Zubat in the group (and still correct if it's a group of Golbat and Crobat with no Zubat in the group).

It’s so funny seeing Miracle Eye on here cuz I was playing USUM with my bf and he was only running alakazam and couldn’t get focus blast yet, so miracle eye was a godsend for him lol

Shadow Moves can be used by the player, but only for a little bit. When you catch a Shadow Pokemon, its moves are Shadow Moves until it begins to trust you and open its heart, and you'll slowly unlock their REAL moves. I guess there's no way to use them in competitive matches, but when I think of using moves I mostly think of the main story.

Stuck in Time sounds like Snorlax DLC

Captivate is super useful in the excellent Drayano difficulty hack Renegade Platinum, where it's part of the safest strategy to beat Fantina reliably.