Pokemon Diamond/Pearl Prediction Guide
Ok, so many of you experienced players may be wondering why on earth I'm making this guide, because they know all about it. But in many recent battles, both here and on Marriland. Gamefaqs etc. I have been accused of getting extremely lucky when I manage to kill someones pokemon when they first send it out.
To all you new people, you may not be too familiar with the concept known as:
Prediction.
Prediction is basically where one of the two players predict correctly what the other player is about to do, and counters it to catch his or her opponent off guard.
Prediction can be an extremely dodgy area, as if you make one wrong prediction, the battle can go completely down the tubes. This works the same way, that if you think you have a plan, and fall into your opponents prediction, you may have just lost your battle.
I'm going to start off with a pretty simple scenario:
Scenario 1: Donphan VS Salamence:
Ok, so your halfway in a battle, and a Donphan just earthquaked your Metagross to death. But never fear! you have a perfect plan!
You can send out your Salamence! It's well known that all Salamences have Hydro Pump, with is a Sp. Atk, and would rip a Donphan wide open. So you send out your Salamence and select Hydro Pump. It's also well known that Donphan has an incredibly bad speed, most pokemon could outrun it anyday. You sit back and wait for your victory.
Wrong.
Donphan unleashes Ice Shard, which always goes first, and with Donphans massive attack power, and Salamance's double weakness to Ice, you slowly watch as your dragon becomes extinct...
Ok, so, that was a really basic example, but it shows how the player with Donphan predicted that a dragon was coming and stayed out with his Donphan, which many people would assume he would change, and completely annihilated your Salamence.
Another common scenario:
Scenario 2: Skarmory and Electevire/Arcanine
So, your battle is really heated up. Your winning, and you killed your opponents last pokemon with your Garchomp. Your opponent sends out Skarmory. Hmm... Your Garchomp won't do much damage against a Skarmory, especially seeing as you decided to swap Fire Fang for Swords Dance. Never mind, you've got your Gengar with Thunderbolt, that would rip it apart.
You call back Garchomp and out comes Gengar. Skarmory used stealth rock, but Gengar takes no damage. Fantastic, with any luck you won't have to switch again this battle, so stealth rock hardly means anything.
You unleash your Thunderbolt to watch this bird go bye-bye. But wait. <Trainer> Calls Skarmory back?!? And out comes Electivire. Thunderbolt hits Electivire, and his speed greatly increases, leaving Electivire open to sweep he rest of your team...
This also works when playing against Skarmory, and you send out Charizard, who uses Flamethrower and they call back Skarmory and send out arcanine, who absorbs the fire attack and gets it's own fire power boosted by 50%.
Prediction can completely turn a battle around, so you always have to stay on top of the battle. It also takes a good understanding of the game, a knowledge of many stereotypical pokemon and their movesets and knowing what players will do in different situations. Prediction is nothing that can be learned over night, it takes experience, practice and learning from mistakes. It's ok to think about the there and then, what two pokemon are out and what each of the weaknesses are, but you also have to take the following in when coming to predicting moves:
- Accuracy
- The other pokemon on your opponents team
- Pokemon's moves
- Hidden Power moves
- Items such as Choice Band etc.
- And I'm sure there are more I have missed
One thing that really screws up peoples prediction are the 'Choice' Items. These items can really mess with your strategy, especially if your teams main focus is the Speed stat, and a pokemon that should be faster then your opponent is now slower, your strategy is completely scrapped.
I hope this guide helps people understand that a battle isn't always what it seems, and that risks and predictions can sometimes be necessary, but can also be extremely dangerous.
R1k
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