How Fast can you Beat Pokemon Red/Blue with Just a Dragonite?

[Music] hey everyone how's it going so recently there's been one video i get requested to do over and over and over again and obviously the video we're doing right now dragonite my comment section is convinced that the pokemon that will finally dethrone mewtwo from its top spot in our tier list is this pokemon and i can see why looking at its stats dragonite is tied from you with a 100 base stat average i mean obviously it's 500 divided by 5. so that's good its attack is also the highest in the entire game that being said i immediately have my doubts about dragonite being able to come anywhere close to mewtwo and before you think i'm spoiling the video the issue with dragonite is something we're gonna have to deal with extremely early on and that is its opening move set yes we have agility which dratini didn't but we're still pretty much dealing with the rap for the foreseeable future and the increase in attack to dragonite doesn't really make much of a difference versus brock and i guess we should just talk about brock this took an extremely long time and you might notice i'm not actually at level 6 which would be minimum battles not even close in order to save as much time as possible i fought rival 1a the two extra bug catchers the mandatory bug catcher with the weedle and the junior trainer and i still couldn't beat brock and it's not for the reason you think 99 of the time the reason you're gonna lose the battle is you don't have enough hp to keep up with your opponent hp was not the problem here i don't think i ever got knocked out due to my hp getting to zero what did happen though is that i ran out of power points for rap rap only has 20 power points and the way rap works for those who don't know in generation one it hits every single turn and the other pokemon can't move that's partially why my hp is not too big a deal it can hit anywhere between two and five times and if the first hit of rap is a critical hit every hit will be a critical hit subsequently speaking of which for all dragonite's amazing stats its speed is very mediocre base 80 is a mere 15.6 critical hit ratio which for generation 1 legendary or pseudo-legendary pokemon is quite awful and because of that i would routinely run out of rap i should also mention rap does not have 100 accuracy it is a mere 85 percent so basically what you need to win is you need to not miss too much with rap or pretty much not at all and if you do what you're gonna need to do is after you knock out geodude you're gonna use six lir versus onyx which you may have already seen but figure i should mention it in case the battle is going too quickly at this point we want no critical hits because they'll actually deal less damage because they will not take into account the defense drops and there you go eventually you'll beat brock i actually had to do this a couple of times for a reason i'll talk about in just a second the first time it took me just about three minutes and the second time it took me closer to 20 before i actually could get a victory and yeah leveling up would be fine but that would just make dragonite's time even worse than it already is going to be and it's going to be luck based no matter what because rap is inherently lucky so as far as i'm concerned the strategy is perfectly legitimate but where i lost a run funny enough is despite dragonite's seemingly massive move pool a lot of the good moves dragonite can use have something in common they're all special moves dragonite can't even learn megapunch like what the heck it's got big massive hands but until sword and shield there was no way for dragonite to legitimately learn mega punch and it was a tutorable move in gen 3. bizarre and that's why i reset my run because i went out of my way to get mega punch to make the next battles easier and i can't even use it anyway now we're at cerulean and most times like 99 the time i fight rival 2 and yes even when i fight rival 1a we call him rival 2 because he's the second mandatory rival but you could already tell we're not going to fight rival 2 right now we're going to fight misty and the fight goes pretty okay one way to conserve rap power points which you'll see me use for not too much longer because we're about to replace it is by using leer and as you can already see there's very little staryu or starmie could do misty's best moves are water moves which i resist and so that's two gym leaders down with the rap strategy but even though this was an easy first try victory it still wasn't quick because rap takes so many turns and with that said rival 2 essentially works the same way as misty for everything but abra i will use a lear because i'd like to not heal at the pokemon center that will save a little bit of time there is a bit of risk with pidgeotto that it could use sand attack and i would have reset but it didn't so i get a nice little first try victory and yeah i guess spoiler alert but i mean what are they gonna really attack me with squirtle which i pick because it learns blizzard in the final battle and so it has the biggest potential of being a problem but for now the rival is extremely easy and the biggest issue right here is trying to have enough power points not to heal at the pokemon center thankfully we have bubble beam and the special is base 100 is okay not great but enough to get through these battles quick enough and speaking of which we can speed right by this part and make our way to vermilion on the ssn because we're not at minimum battles and because it will save a ton of time we're gonna get arguably one of the most powerful and useful tms in the entire game tm8 body slam it's just such a strong move available so early on definitely not something pokemon would do in modern pokemon but hey i'm not going to complain and let's see if this speeds up rival 3 well it still doesn't want to k.o pidgeotto but no sand attack so that's fine maybe that lear against raticate was useless probably was we easily won at ko kadabra and war turtle i don't bother using a lyre because it's a 2ko anyway and we don't really need the powerpoints so that's rival number three unsurprisingly dragonite with arguably its best physical move pretty good at this point of the game will lieutenant surge shock us all and be able to make this battle difficult no it's it's looking like no although raichu wasn't a one ko and that did pretty good damage with a critical hit i still win and this will give me access to thunderbolt which is a base 95 attack we actually aren't going to use it too too much but since the rival is a water pokemon it's something we're gonna need to have for the rest of the run and it will help against those super nerd slowpokes coming up but overall not necessarily the most useful move on dragonite but still good nonetheless anyway now that we have gotten past those super nerds and the rest of rock tunnel it's time to head to celadon city and yes i can get the tm for ice beam and i'm going to but i don't actually need it right now it is quicker to go right into the game corner and battle giovanni and bubble beam bubble beam kangaskhan is a 2ko okay so that's a thing and it has low special so i use thunderbolt which i think did more damage and i said i would use thunderbolt sparingly but here's an example of where it was useful now we're gonna go shopping but we can skip ahead and go right to rival four who i battle next and in this battle every single pokemon is a one ko now that i have ice beam except for wartortle because i wasn't paying attention and i was looking at some stats and i didn't use ice beam just once i used it every time but it was still a three at ko albeit with a critical hit so i think that goes without saying it's an easy battle in fact i had more trouble with the channelers and that doesn't bode well for agatha but again let's not get ahead of ourselves still a lot of game and after we finish with pokemon tower i'm not going to skip erica because there's no need ice beam should be great against your pokemon unfortunately does not want a ko victory bell and it gets a oh come on five turn rap really so that wasted a bit of time but it's knocked out now tangela is a one ko that's great vileplume probably won't be it's not and mega drain okay that did like almost nothing so there goes erica that's four gym badges and now i have to decide where i'm gonna go and battle next after i get surf i'm not gonna use surf on dragonite ice beam is a lot more useful than surf so i'll just teach it to lapras but i actually have legitimate concerns against koga since his pokemon's defense is pretty high and we don't know psychic so we don't have a super effective move i actually think rival five will be easier let's see if i'm correct all right well i expect pidgeot outspeed me so i'm gonna go for agility actually doubt speed not for badge boost glitch send attacks to one thing i didn't want to see so i might actually lose haven't lost a battle since brock and turns out i won't be losing to pidgeot that's one down i miss with body slam growlithe misses with takedown and i don't knock it out but growlithe misses again pretty good luck and i knock out growlithe execu could be really trolly it's one i don't want to miss against thankfully i don't and it's knocked out alakazam i should want ako oh i don't thankfully rival fievel still uses potions so okay and we have one more pokemon left blastoise all right finally another miss but it uses bite and i think you can tell if we don't miss too many times we should win ahem alright it stopped being funny no no seriously uh oh that didn't do half i actually could lose all right please hit yes okay the no losing streak is still alive and well very very close but turns out rival fival was the right play that sand attack was very unfortunate literally anything else this would have been a far less stressful battle i have a full restore giovanni by the way not a problem in fact i'm probably showing you the battle as i'm blabbing but here i have to make a choice blaine or sabrina would be easier to face than koga unfortunately blaine who i think might be the easiest i can't battle until i've beaten koga because i can't use surf and i didn't want to kill rival fields alakazam so that makes me nervous for sabrina's so you know what let's just go battle koga and hope for the best unfortunately i keep using my full restore and then getting poisoned and i don't want to backtrack so i'm gonna have to battle koga poisoned that's going to be fun and ice beam does about half the coughing tackle is fine so that's one down now my attack is way better than my special attack so i'm gonna go for body slam that's only doing a third this is what i was worried about at least we got the paralysis muck uses x attack that was alright another body slam minimize is actually not fantastic because i really don't want to miss thankfully i don't and we're halfway done we've already seen what coughing can really do but it's wheezing i'm nervous about ice beam looks like it's doing about a quarter smog is good okay that's very well and yeah that's kind of what i'm nervous about every time i battle wheezing is it can just you self-destruct and unfortunately if this went by competitive battle rules i would be the victor because it used self-destruct but by single-player rules i lose and our streak of consecutive winning battles is now over and i actually lose two more times to koga before i get this battle you've already seen coughing it's the same thing muk i get a critical hit on one of the ice beams but it goes for sludge so i'm at less hp and coughing number two isn't the problem but basically the big change is that wheezing doesn't use self-destruct and as far as i'm aware it's a simple one in four chance that it uses self-destruct funny enough this is my fourth battle although i don't think that's what the actual odds were but still kind of funny and we've beaten koga and here's what's hilarious i'm thinking about this sabrina might be the easier trainer am i gonna battle the gym leaders in order well the answer is yes you actually can't battle giovanni before you battle blaine so for the first time in i don't know how long i'm gonna battle the gym leaders in order what's next not using badge boost glitch never we're gonna use it right here against sabrina i'm gonna go for one agility to boost my speed the second agility as well as the first will boost my attack a little bit which i hope will allow me to knock out that alakazam in a single hit this is a rare time i actually prefer seeing psychic because i just don't want to be confused so down goes kadabra oh mr mime that's not a good sign it heals so we get to try again maybe it was a range no no it was not so that means we're not going to want to kill venomoth probably we don't but cybein does nothing and now i kind of hope for a critical hit no we get a paralysis and critical hit psi beam that that just stinks and funny enough i end up trying a third agility to boost my attack just a little bit more and while i am able to knock out mr mime still not a wanna kill against venomoth and also not a one ako against alakazam but it's very close so i do something that i usually don't do but is very simple and an easy way to overcome this problem just use one of my rare candies now i don't like to use them now because as you know it takes more and more experience points to level up and dragonite's already in the slowest level up group the same as mewtwo another reason i was always concerned about it overtaking mewtwo's spot that being said just take a look at how much of a difference one level makes i mean cadabra and mr mime we knew but venomoth was a one-hit ko even and this is why we have level up groups but now that we're done with sabrina the only gym leader we can face is blaine he does have normal attacks so i'm a little concerned but hopefully it should be fine but before we do you might be wondering why is my character named adam well one of my fans wives tanya asked if i could do something for her husband adam who is a massive fan of the channel so while it might seem a little silly i thought it might be kind of cool if i named the main character after him so merry christmas adam so far i think me and dragonate have done well by your name but there is a couple more difficult trainers will blane be one of them let's find out now so first we're going to set up agilities for the badge boost glitch and thankfully growlithe never attacks so i can knock it out with a single body slam unfortunately though ponyta is not a one ako and it uses growl so i think my attack is actually now lower than my special so i'm gonna use ice beam the rest of the way obviously after knocking out ponyta with body slam so ice beam stomp does decent damage and we get a freeze fun fact there is no way pokemon can dethaw themselves in generation one i would have to hit rapid ash with a fire move to de-thaw it so yeah down goes rapid ash now we move on to this big fire dog pokemon which just uses roar and i win it's really silly but i call this thing our canine because it's a canine yet time and again people try and convince me it's arcanine so i looked it up in the anime it's arcanine pokedex 3d pro which is supposed to be official arcanine but pokemon stadium 2 is our k9 and that's what i grew up with so as far as i'm concerned the pun is on k9 it's our k9 now that that's out of the way and you'll notice i actually battled blaine again because i thought i got too lucky but i won again so apparently it was fine we can battle giovanni and while i'm sure some of you are hoping i bust out the count von count impression pretty sure these aren't going to be one at kos after the first two so i'm going to go for agility so i outspeed doug trio yes right horns of one akio yes doug trion at ko but as i suspected nidoqueen was not nor was neato king but i got a freeze not that it mattered in any way shape or form and surprisingly ridon actually was not a one of ko that really did surprise me it is very poor special but hey it's only single super effective not double super effective so that's the one drawback of using ice beam i could have taught blizzard at this point but it's actually good that i didn't in retrospect and we'll talk about why just a little bit later and i really do mean just a little bit later because we only have six more battles to go commencing with rival six thus far the battles against the rival have all been very very easy we actually have not had anything but a first try victory will that trend continue here so i'm gonna set up one agility for actual speed i don't want hit ko pidgeot but it's not a real problem 32 hp is not a huge loss i now level up i did look at my experience points beforehand so i knew i'd level up after pidgeot which is why i didn't use the additional agilities and i probably could have used them against ryhorn but i knocked it out i'm hoping growlithe will be one of ko it's not with body slam understandable and it uses a potion thank you gen 1 programming execute i'm pretty sure yes it is a one ko alakazam probably won't be it's not but it goes for reflect i think i'll still knock it out i do very very good now we just have blastoise no real scary moves doesn't yet have blizzard we go for thunderbolt doing half paralyzes doesn't move really didn't matter best thing you could have done is skull bash which is a two turn attack so i would have been fine and i got a critical hit for good measure so now we move on to the elite four and i am not liking my odds we start off with laura lee and you can tell i didn't play a lot of pokemon stadium one because even pokemon stadium one pronounces it lorelei but no need to talk about it let's just show you what it would look like if i didn't level up anymore thunderbolt does good damage almost half and the aurora beam almost knocks me out and yeah i'm not going to last much longer in this battle don't want it kale cloister and okay so we're gonna have to use rare candies all right so my level 52 and okay i'm doing better damage and i take that a lot better from dugong but now the big question is is cloister now wanna ko yes maybe critical hit i have no idea whatever slow bro only has one attack water gun so i can easily knock it out but i don't think i'm gonna want to ko the jinx it does have poor defense and no okay all right one last idea before i do something completely different i'm gonna use agility against slow bro after i knock out the dugong and hopefully the cloister okay so i do knock out the cloister without a crit very good to know that but slowbro can do very little so i'm gonna use all three agilities knock it out now will i want to kill the jinx i do and now i have to want to kill a lapras which i don't and i lose okay i don't know why i thought that was gonna work let's try this much better strategy gonna require a tiny bit of backtracking to get the pokedoll and mimic but i'm going to replace ice beam with mimic remember how i said it's good that i didn't teach blizzard well this is why never going to know when you need a move you didn't anticipate and mimic is going to work wonders here let me show you alright so we've already seen the dugong part it's going to do the exact same thing every time knockout are you come on really it's a range all right all right all right let's try this another time dugong oh i get a critical hit that's going to be kind of nice and i get the range versus cloister and here's the new strategy use mimic mimic amnesia use thunderbolt to knock out everything i am extremely confident this will work and knocks out the jinx and the lapras if i got a critical hit that would have been bad but amnesia boosts my defense as well since special is unified in generation one so i actually could afford to get hit by a blizzard didn't happen we won now we're going to go battle bruno but before we do that i'm going to delete mimik i no longer need it and we're going to teach blizzard and now the moment you've all been waiting for one two three four yeah not fine machamp is not going to fade to blizzard but it's only attacking move that could really do anything is submission and uh i'm a flying type and it didn't use it so we move on to everybody's favorite part step right up to the agatha lottery dragonite is low level enough and slow enough that i don't know if i'm gonna out speed or pokemon and i have to rely on special attacks because even though a bunch of people are going to suggest it anyway you cannot learn dig or earthquake in generation 1. it's silly dragonite can definitely learn earthquake in later generations but in gen 1 no can do so let's see how this goes first question is about speed it goes for night shade so without speeds night shades okay blizzard's not doing half so this is not looking good anyway i really need to out speed so i'm gonna go for agility dream eater is good alright the agility is now set up even with the slight special boost blizzard doesn't knock it out but it goes for another dream eater and i don't want to risk missing so thunderbolt knocks it out that is one down now i'm pretty sure thunderbolt will knock out goldbadden seriously at least it heals but really okay then another range we have to deal with lovely now we're gonna use blizzard with haunter and hey that does oh crit okay that did good damage but that means it's not even actually doing half so in reality it's actually a bad thing and thus i don't know if i'm gonna knock it out after that super potion oh good i do okay so now we just have the arbok and the last gengar pretty sure body slam will deal more damage and i get a paralysis it goes for glare which misses thankfully only 75 accurate in gen 1 and body slam again hopefully that crit didn't matter but whatever and now we just need good luck on the final gengar blizzard i don't even know if that's doing a third confuse raise the one move i didn't want to see no and now i miss click i go for agility at least i don't hit myself in confusion but it goes for dream eater that is the move i do want to see now please don't hit yourself in confusion no that's how i lose isn't it all right hold off dream eater still good we're still in this all right no confusion yes okay one more hit toxic not great but i'll take it because if i hit myself in confusion it can really start to add up especially with the nightshade but that's not a nightshade it's a dream eater and i think i snap out of confusion this turn i do and okay so i was confused the maximum amount of times first try with the mimic strategy and we've made it past agatha and lance is probably gonna be pretty easy i mean i think i match up extremely extremely well against his dragon pokemon i got nothing more to say let's see if it's really as easy as i think it's going to be all right thunderbolt versus gyarados one of ko blizzard versus dragonair one ako blizzard doesn't miss again wanna ko now no crit hyper beamer super sonic bite no crit either good knock it out with the one ko and we're gonna out speed lance's dragonite no miss one hit k oh we're at the champion this is this is great i've matched up extremely well against the champion as well so it looks like dragonite is going to make it through the elite four with relative ease and had it not been for brock maybe this would be top tier but hey let's not talk about victory before we even start the battle champion can always be difficult but i'm thinking this might be it let's see all right so i'm gonna go for agility to out speed alakazam pidgeot goes for sky attack now i just need blizzard to hit it does very good so that's one down now i don't believe all one one-shot alakazam no i do get the paralysis psi beam no confusion very good there is a chance it can confuse me so that's alakazam down so i did check my experience points beforehand so i'm going to use the other two agilities not for speed but to boost all my other stats rydon unfortunately misses with the tail whip and horn drill is fine but i'm just gonna knock it out with blizzard and that's three down all right i think body slam should do more oh doesn't even do half thankfully get the paralysis there leer that's gonna boost my attack just a little bit more will this knock it out it does not and oh my a takedown crit that's not good but we only have two pokemon left blizzard should wanna kill wow i was off that wasn't even close thankfully it went for stomp and not hypnosis but we're gonna need to wanna kill this blastoise because it does have blizzard all right come on one ko one ko e no no we were so close that was so close and you know what i could have stalled versus rydon could have gotten a few more tail whips and then it would have been a two-way kill over starkinon it could have knocked out exeggutor i should have thought that was so easy i didn't realize oh well it's not like it's gonna take me another 15 minutes to get back here right right yeah so it took me another 15 minutes to get back here and there's only one reason for this agatha because that battle versus agatha the first battle i had versus agatha was extraordinarily lucky we were put to sleep nary a single time not one nor nor were we really confused for all that much but in the subsequent nine battles we lose in every way you can imagine and there's very very little i can do there are some more rare candies lying around that are kind of inconvenient to get to but we're not talking about one or two levels we're talking about a good move and it's really unfortunate because dragonite at level 60 does know hyper beam which would be great but that wouldn't really help against agatha anyway i mean maybe against the golbat and the arbok but against her ghost pokemon seriously if we just had earthquake this whole battle would be totally different instead it's just loss after loss after loss even dragonite can't get past the agatha reality that slow pokemon plus special attacker equals big big trouble and the annoying thing about losing to agatha is that i need to battle laura lee and bruno every single time and they're easy i mean i did lose to laurely a couple times if dugong gets a critical hit there's nothing i can do and if i don't get the range from cloister i can get knocked out but my win rate against her was pretty good i even went back to the martin bought some calcium i did try different things but when it comes to agatha you need to out speed right away without an agility or have an attack that knocks out her pokemon before they have too many chances to annoy you bruno i didn't lose to a single time i don't even know how i would lose to bruno even an ice punch from hitmonchan never happened in fact i even had a bruno battle where i forgot to teach blizzard and so i still had mimic and mimicked ice punch and shockingly i still won took me a while to knock out the first onyx and thankfully i lost that agatha battle so i don't have to show off that embarrassment but the reason that happens is i just get very bored it's the same battles over and over just for a chance for agatha to be not so obnoxious and so finally we're back at agatha dreamer turn one is always a good sign i go for agility blizzard you already know much that's gonna do and hypnosis miss very good like before no need for risk thunderbolt knock it out now with my higher special i have a better range against cool bat i still don't get it so it goes for the super potion not really an issue but still frustrating that that's a range haunter i go for blizzard not doing half hypnosis miss i decide to go for agility because i get slightly better stats and that will help knock out the haunter in one more hit unfortunately it goes for confuse ray unless they got a crit it was getting a chance to attack anyway so that's just unfortunate donate myself in confusion now we have to deal with arbok and in case you thought body slam would do more no blizzard does way more than body slam it does so much that agatha decides to use a super potion that's very good and we knock her out with body slam and so while we're still confused we have a lot of health for the final gengar actually we're not confused and we hit very good never mind we're confused again hooray all right please hit and oh my god oh crit didn't even knock it out no dream eater i like to see please just hit no all right toxic come on come on thank goodness all right all right so we've knocked out agatha and now we just have to beat lance again lance isn't an issue really the only pokemon that even will get a chance to attack assuming i don't miss with a blizzard which is a 10 chance on each attack is aerodactyl and i can actually eliminate that possibility by simply using agility against gyarados and it goes for dragon rage because i'm a dragon type so i think that's why it went for it maybe it's just random i don't actually know who cares knock out the gyarados now please don't miss good don't miss good okay so we've knocked out the two dragon air and i think thunderbolt should want a ko aerodactyl no okay hyper potion you know what redo that was a mistake let's just go for blizzard i was worried about missing no not the one move was super sonic that was it oh and of course i hit myself a confusion why wouldn't i oh and hyper pbs let's just pile on okay it wasn't a crit so we have chances please snap out of confusion all right go no okay okay i just need to come on all right a lot thank gosh it went for super sonic but like seriously what is with this aerodactyl just hit yes come on man please don't miss versus dragonite all right you know what i i don't think you understand just how annoying it is to battle agatha again and again and again and again and again i want to win here i have a strat i've thought about it i know it will work i just need nothing silly to happen can that be the case let's find out all right agility sky attack blizzard same as last battle body slam critical hit that's actually good ride on has terrible attack so i'm just gonna spam agility even once i've reached my maximum speed and wait for three defense drops leer and tail would both work 50 50 chance of it using them and that's the third one all right please don't miss all right i think we're good the only thing i don't know about is our canine could knock me out with takedown all right body slam crit no does way more damage lear i think we did it i think we won i think that sealed the deal as long as we don't miss yes yes all right we won we won there's no way we lost thunderbolts there we go i knew this would work i just man it's so frustrating as soon as i lost i realized i could have just waited for ride on to use more attacks it has such bad attacking moves ah that wasted so much time not in game time mind you this isn't going to affect dragonite's tier ranking time wise but definitely it will affect it in the sense that agatha was a lot trickier than i thought it would be which is actually kind of a good thing sometimes if i win early i don't really know how difficult fights would have been i knew i got a little lucky but i didn't realize how lucky it was anyway final time 351 that is pretty much below all the other legendaries in fact it's gonna go in tier three the top of tier three but tier two we have incredibly good times sub three and a half hours and there's a significant divide between the pokemon in the second tier and pokemon like dragonite that do well for large sections of the game but struggle mightily with some sections and i'm gonna go back to working on my other videos we're gonna see some generations never before seen on this channel very exciting stay tuned subscribe like all that stuff thanks for watching take care

Channel: Jrose11

Views: 463,026

Rating: 4.9186735 out of 5

Keywords: Pokemon, Jrose11, Red, Blue, Generation 1, Pokemon Red, Pokemon Blue, Pokemon Red and Blue, Pokemon Challenge, Kanto Challenge, pokemon challenge, pokemon challenges, pokemon red, pokemon blue, can you beat pokemon with only a, elite four, pokemon solo challenge, no items, is it possible to beat, challenge run, Dragonite Pokemon, Dragonite challenge, Dragonite no items, can you beat, gen 1, how fast Pokemon, Minimum Battles, Legendary Pokemon, Dragonite, Mewtwo, Dratini

Id: Aofa1ZHoXAM

Length: 34min 52sec (2092 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ShowtimeCA]

So now that Dragonite is done do you see anyone able to get close to that top 3? Maybe a fully evolved starter?

[u/richarddickle]

Poliwrath is now my favourite for that top teir spot!

[u/--orb]

I gotta say, as one of his biggest fans and somebody who has seen every JRose video, this is probably his most disappointing one.

Does anyone remember why he doesn't save between Elite 4 members? To my knowledge, it was to ensure that he doesn't rely on luck based strategies.

But what was this? He literally just beat Agatha by just re-attempting the Elite 4 and wiping to her over 10 times. Playing at a x4 speedup, it took him nearly an hour of IRL time to defeat Agatha.

And let me be clear: I am OK with JRose using a speedup. I remember some of his oldest videos, before he started using speedups, how he would actually soapbox about how he felt that using speedup took away the authenticity of the run. I am even inclined to agree. I'd rather him not use speedup. But he said it's purely to pump out more content, and I agree with that. Plus, we've all seen what this madman is capable of. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

But this? This was abuse. Using x4 speedup to spend an hour brute forcing Agatha? By this point, just resort to save scumming or save states, dude. IMO, JRose should not allow himself to use speedups during the Elite 4. I think he's lost sight of why he dislikes speedups and why he was willing to speedup to begin with. Without speedups, he would have spent 4 hours brute forcing Agatha. By then, he would have needed to begrudgingly admit that it wasn't working and done something different. Instead, the speedup enabled/encouraged him to just keep going until he won.

And how is that acceptable by his own standards? If you're going to take 10 shots to beat Agatha, just save in front of her dude. His whole "I want a consistent strategy" plan went out the window.

And it really disrespects other Pokemon he did. Gyrados (I think - IIRC), for example, nearly 1-shot the Elite 4, but then he failed on the rival due to something similar. JRose eventually went and leveled up Gyrados extra in order to make Agatha more consistent. He even said something along those lines -- "I'm sure this would work if I keep trying, but I want a consistent strategy."

And before people tell me "Oh, it's the Agatha Lottery, it's meant to be inherently luck-based!" sure, that may be true, but JRose typically finds the proper balance between "leveling up to remove TOO MUCH luck" and "relying on a bit of luck to avoid TOO much leveling up."

This time, he did not achieve that.

Look at where he placed Dragonite into the tier list -- above Jolteon? Hell, even above GASTLY? Gastly didn't have nearly as much trouble. Yes, Gastly was a much higher level, but that is PURELY a function of being part of a faster level-up group. Gastly was at minimum battles. Gastly also had no problem with Brock whatsoever, whereas JRose said that in one of his runs Brock took as much as 20 minutes.

If he leveled Dragonite to the point where the fights would be more consistent, Dragonite would be at around level 63-652 or so, and his time likely would have been around 5 hours.

I get the feeling that JRose got some initial bias by almost 1-shotting the Elite 4 when he made it past Lorelei, but he got EXTREMELY LUCKY against that Agatha the first time. She used like 3 Dream Eaters with her final Gengar. No sleeping. One confusion and he only hit himself once.

And since he almost beat them, and mainly felt bad about missing the strategy with the Rhydon, he felt like he "owed it" to Dragonite to get back there and "vindicate" the loss. But TBH it was completely unmerited. Dragonite did not deserve to win at that level.

And let me get into why I called this the "worst JRose video" -- the badge boost glitch.

I generally vehemently disagree with his mental gymnastics that he goes through in order to justify the badge boost glitch. He claims these runs are "glitchless" and for that reason he won't use the pokedoll glitch in the tower. And yet he claims the BBG is exempt from this because it's "unavoidable."

While that may be true, and it's true that I don't expect him to reset his game whenever he's hit with a leer or some shit, I do think there's a huge line to draw between "I can't help being affected by it sometimes" VS "I am going to intentionally exploit it with harden or mimic."

I've always disagreed with JRose about this, but that isn't the point I am getting at. I feel doubly so about this video. While I admire the creativity with the Rhydon play, it just felt so cheap. Stalling against Rhydon to hope he pointlessly lowers your defense so you can take advantage of a glitch? That isn't glitch abuse?

There's a chasm of difference between "What, am I supposed to reset my game when hit with a tail whip?" and "I know! I'll use 16 agilities so that I can gain +250% attack due to my opponent hitting me with -defense moves!"

And TBH, this video had all of the worst in one package:

1. Relying on too much luck / brute forcing the elite 4
   
2. Misusing the purpose of why he started using speedups in the first place
   
3. Relying on OVERLY CHEESING the BBG
   
4. Bad tier placement
   

So there's my stance: the worst (and IMO only bad) JRose video to date.

Somebody contact JRose and let him know that I would throw $500 at him to remake this video.

EDIT: I found what I was referring to with Gyrados:

32:55 - Gyrados just lost to lance due to bad luck.

Well, at least we'll make it back to Lance in no time, right? Wrong. And here's where I chose to abandon minimum battles, because, first off, Lorelei was about a 50-50 chance, and I was starting to spend a lot of time on this run, which is against what I like to do. I know I measure in-game time, but when the real time is really starting to add up, it's telling me something. In addition, while Agatha was not impossible, but so unlikely. And there are so many trainers around; there are some more Rare Candies I can get that are a little more out of the way. All I have to do is battle them, and this will probably go much better.

It checks off literally all the boxes:

1. Dragonite was only about 80%'ing Lorelei
   
2. He was spending a lot of time, which is against what he likes to do
   
3. Agatha was "not impossible," but truly was "so unlikely"
   

By comparison, he ranked Jolten LOWER in his tier list, and Jolteon was only 1 level higher, 11 minutes slower, and WAY more consistent.

And yes, before someone comments -- I know that his tier list is meant to be arbitrary and follow some goofy "JRose Standards" and not meant to be a scientifically accurate tier list, but what I am trying to say is that Dragonite doesn't belong here by those JRose standards. Internal consistency.