Why this Stupid Cat is the Best Pokemon Ever

if you haven't played a Pokémon game in a while and somebody asked you what you thought the best Pokémon of all time was you'd probably say something like Mewtwo if you've played a decent amount of Pokemon over the last two decades you might say something like Groudon or Kyogre if you consider yourself more than a casual fan you'd probably answer something like Mega Rayquaza or Zan but if you've played a ton of Pokemon you'd know the answer is obvious because it isn't really even Up For Debate the best Pokemon ever is incinerar some of you may be confused incinerar the starter from alola the Smash Bros ultimate character the thing that haunts my nightmares yes the thing is what makes incinerar the best Pokemon ever isn't immediately obvious it doesn't have stats that make Mewtwo look like flittle it doesn't have some stupid signature ability it doesn't have a move that made me throw up the first time I saw it or any one utterly broken to tool that makes it gamebreaking how could it possibly be stronger than alltime great Pokémon like Kyogre or mega Rayquaza or scream tail huh that's a really good list I bet whoever made it is like super goodlooking well to understand what makes incinerar so strong we have to get our hands dirty for the full picture it's going to take some digging today I want to talk about why incinerar is the best Pokemon ever made to do this we need to start at the beginning not the beginning of Pokémon but the beginning of our nightmare in Generation 7 with the release of Pokémon sun and moon but in cino's introduction to the world of competitive Pokémon was lackluster in fact despite the first year of sun and moon using a rule set of legal Pokémon that was very limited allowing for a lot of creativity in Pokémon selection incinerar usage was below 1% now I know what you're thinking how could a Pokémon that performed so badly in its debut season possibly be the greatest Pokemon of all time wouldn't it be nice if that had been true the thing is when incinerar was first released it was missing something very important but we'll get to that in a little bit in the first year of sun and moon there was basically no reason to use incinerar because there was a better fire type Pokémon Arcanine what made Arcanine so good was in large part its access to the ability intimidate one of the best competitive abilities of all time the combination of intimidate and good stats with fires great defensive typing would allow Arcanine to become the number one most used Pokemon at the time but this Blissful period okay sun and moon weren't exactly Blissful with zov's koing Pokemon through protect but this relatively Blissful period wouldn't last long the cat couldn't be contained by a cage and in early 2018 Pokemon made the biggest mistake of the entire franchise bigger even than putting this tree in sword and shield they gave incinerar intimidate this might not sound like a very big deal it's not like incinerar got a Mega Evolution or a new form it just got access to an ability that isn't even all that rare you can probably think of a couple pretty Infamous intimidate users right now but unfortunately even though it might not sound too imposing this one change would forever alter the course of competitive Pokémon like I said intimidate is arguably the best ability in the game there's a couple reasons why first in Pokémon almost all damaging moves are either physical attack or special attacks and typically the balance between them is about 50/50 intimidate lowers the physical attack of both opponents every time the user hits the field after just a single intimidate a Pokemon's physical attack stat is 2/3 of its starting value after a second intimidate that's down to 50% and these stat drops stick around until you switch your Pokemon out making them extremely annoying so in went from a Pokemon that basically didn't have an ability to a Pokemon with one of the best abilities in the entire game and in doing so all of the latent Tools in incin or's kit were suddenly activated incin incin is so stupid I bet six incin could beat any team maybe maybe five inar I should remake that Lion's video intimidate is extremely strong but not strong enough to let just any intimidate Pokémon give me nightmares intimidate is on other Pokémon that nobody wants to use like mascarin M granbull okay I might have tried some of these at one point or another but normal people wouldn't be interested in using them what I'm trying to say is that there's less intimidate Pokémon that have been used than intimidate Pokémon that haven't so what makes some of these Pokémon better than others and what makes incinerar the best of them all well when it comes to intimidate the ability becomes much more valuable the more often you're able to activate it during a battle for a Pokemon like mighten its base stats aren't high enough to allow it to repeatedly switch in without taking massive amounts of damage even with intimidate helping out a Pokemon like masquerain is slightly tankier but has many more weaknesses meaning it's still a liability to switch in Gyarados on the other hand has good defenses and only two weaknesses and Arcanine is even tankier so at least part of her answer has to do with how easy it is to switch in the intimidate user that's mostly combination of Pokémon's base stats and its typ the better your Pokemon is defensively the more frequently you can activate intimidate during a battle remember how Arcanine was the number one most used Pokemon in Sun and Moon's first competitive format in large part due to its access to intimidate well why don't we compare the stats of Arcanine and incinerar when it comes to bulk incinerar is strictly better with five more HP 10 more defense and 10 more special defense incinerar has a meaningful advantage over Arcanine in fact incinerar also has a higher attack stat the only relevant stat where Arcanine has an advantage is its higher speed stat but incin War's lower speed stat is actually more useful here though I'm getting ahead of myself let's take a step back and think about what we're seeing here incinerar has strictly better stats than the number one most used Pokemon in the format better than number one and it has the exact same ability that enabled Arcanine to take the spotlight beginning to see why this might be a problem okay but let's calm down there is a key difference between Arcanine and incinerar their typing is not the same while Arcanine is a pure fire type Pokemon incin is both fire and dark surely having this extra type hurts more than it helps right right wrong incor typing is pretty much a strict upgrade compared to Arcanine both Arcanine and incinerar are weak to rock water and ground attacks but incinerar is also weak to fighting moves being a dark type however has several benefits in exch change for this one additional weakness first incinerar gains resistances to dark and ghost with ghost being an especially difficult type to resist this puts incinerar total resistances and immunities at seven a stupidly High number for a non-steel type Pokémon second incinerar gains an immunity to psychic attacks immunities are incredibly valuable in competitive Pokémon as they're one of the only ways to completely negate damage and this was especially valuable in Sun and Moon because of the powerful psychic type Pokémon running around tapu Lele set up the psychic terrain with its ability and could output enormous amounts of damage and the Pokémon company then Unleashed Ultra necros who had access to the signature Z move light that burns my eyes a move with a whopping 200 base power incin being immune to these ridiculously strong attacks is just another absurd accomplishment on its resume being part dark type has other benefits as well most notably dark type Pokémon are immune to attacks affected by the ability prankster prankster is another of the best abilities in the game and some of the most famous Pokemon in history make use of this powerful ability that gives non-damaging moves priority because the ability is so good going into sun and moon it was nerfed to no longer work on dark type Pokémon as a slight aside because it's so cool in the finals of the 2017 World Championships a player used this mechanic change to completely block an opponent's Z move whimsicott was using the move nature power a move that is classified as a non-damaging move because it transforms into a different move depending on where the player is and what effects are present on the battlefield the reason whimsicott used this move is because it was paired with both tapini and tapu Coco with nature power transforming into moonblast if Misty terrain was up and Thunderbolt if electric terrain was up and both Z moves could be accessed by holding the normalium Z Crystal because nature power is a normal move and until it transforms in other words whimsicott could use both fairy and electric Z moves by using nature power in game three of the finals of the world championships whimsicott was staring down at Garchomp and saw an opportunity to take a ko. by switching in tapini and launching the Z for a surprise knockout but the opponent predicted this and switched Garchomp into mandibuzz a Pokemon also weak to fairy but because nature power is a non-damaging move it gets affected by prankster and turns into a priority move which is great unless your opponent is a dark type like mandibuzz because in that case you will completely waste your once per battle Z move while also doing no damage anyway as you can see being immune to dark type moves can make or break a battle but there is a drawback to being a dark type incinerar gains another weakness to fighting and of course having more weaknesses is a bad thing but not all weaknesses are created equally some types are just strictly better than others you'd pretty much always rather be weak to bug than to fairy for example and while fighting type moves are always present in competitive Pokémon they're rarely among the most common and there's another reason why incinerar fighting weakness isn't actually that big of a deal nearly every relevant fighting type Pokemon is a physical attacker this is partially because of how their stats are distributed and partially because physical fighting type moves are Far and Away Superior to special fighting type moves and the reason these moves being physical is such a big deal is because of intimidate while taking a super effective attack means you're taking two times as much damage if that attack is physical and has been reduced by intimidate you're effectively only taking 33% more damage a much more manageable multiplier and this doesn't just apply to incin fighting weakness it's true of rock and ground type moves as well while there are more special ground and rock type moves than fighting the vast majority of times we see these types in competitive Pokémon they're on physical attackers so hitting in SAR for actual meaningful super effective damage is a lot more difficult than it looks at first glance the messed up thing is that fire and dark is such a good type combination even not factoring in intimidate when I ranked every single type combination in the game I put it at number 13 out of over 150 the fact that intimidate just so happens to synergize incredibly well with it is just a fun little bonus today's video is sponsored by honai impact 3D it's a Sci-Fi Adventure game developed by hoyse the game now has a 3D combat system and supports free jumping which really enhances gameplay players now can fight monsters and defeat bosses in the air which I mean who doesn't love a little aerial Combat on top of that players can climb onto the walls which adds complexity to the battlefield and now players can directly play part two a brand new story in entirely new worlds and new protagonists are available in part two making it the perfect time to join for both new and returning players enhanced character modeling reveals more details than ever before with more refined animation there's also a new s-rank character called sadena not to mention other new characters like Coral Helia and SQ you can even get coraly for free plus you can get one srank character and one outfit from part one download honkai impact third now and use the redeem code Trip 2 Mars to get tons of rewards thanks again to honai impact third for sponsoring this video of course being able to switch in and intimidate down your opponent without taking too much damage isn't the only thing that makes a Pokemon good they need to be able to actually contribute to the battle after switching in so they're not just dead weight the easiest way to contribute to a battle is to deal damage it's not rocket science but incinerar is a support Pokemon so you'd think that doing damage wouldn't be its Forte and if you did think that you'd be kind of right incin rarely looks like it's doing a Zan impression it's not going to be the Pokemon sweeping through your opponent's team however most support Pokemon really struggle to do damage often because Pokemon that are bulkier tend to have worse offensive stats Pokemon like Cresselia amongus whimsicott and Dei Porygon 2 and more at best are able to gradually chip down their opponents contributing a little damage over time if you ignore them for too long incinerar however is built different with an attack stat higher than Arcanine it's not a Pokemon you can afford to ignore and with its fire type move flare blitzes huge base power incinerar is capable of koing many frail Pokemon in two hits even without super effective damage and that's not to mention that flare Blitz also has a chance to burn isn't that fun and if you can even believe it flare Blitz is the least problematic of incineroar's moves incinerar also gets a signature dark type move called Dark darkus Lariat because yeah why not give it a signature move darkus Lariat was used occasionally as it ignores defense boosts but it wasn't normally incin or's dark type move of choice that honor instead goes to knockoff this 65 base power move not only removes the item of any Pokemon it hits it also becomes 50% stronger if the target is holding an item after the damage boost knockoff is comparable in power to strong moves like Stone Edge except instead of you know missing 20% of the time it instead removes the item of whatever it hits knockoff means even in the situations where incinerar isn't immediately threatening a ton of damage it can still be a complete nuisance if you think you can ignore it but knockoff also isn't incin or's most problematic move now we get to talk about one of the best supporting moves of all time fake out fake out is a move with enough increased priority that it goes before almost all standard moves and if it hits a Target it causes them to Flinch being unable to act for the turn the catch is that fake out only works on the first turn after a Pokemon switches in fake out is so strong because it allows players to control the pace of the battle with fake out you can use your partner to attack into a Pokemon that can't protect or to buy yourself a turn to save a Pokemon that was under a lot of pressure you can use it to temporarily invalidate a threat to let one of your other Pokémon set up and you can even use the threat of fake out to scare your opponent into protecting letting you switch out for free you'll never be upset to have fake out on your team since it offers such high value and is useful in virtually every matchup not to mention that fake out is one way for incinerar to not be bothered by its lower speed stat since it has such high priority but the really cool thing is that fake out synergizes so well with intimidate since intimidate and fake out both become active whenever incin or is Switched in as long as you can switch incinerar out safely you'll be able to access both fake out and intimidate multiple times per battle gee it sure would be funny if incinerar got some kind of I don't know specialized tool to let it switch out easier huh wouldn't that just be swell huh it's finally time to talk about the stupidest move that they gave to incinerar you turn this bug type move does a little damage and then lets the user switch out even with every other thing the Pokemon company gave to incinerar it still might have been manageable if they just hadn't given it U-turn it's not that you U-turn is some absurd damaging tool it's weaker than incin Ro's other moves and Bug isn't exactly a good type what makes U-turn so broken is the ability to switch out after you hit something with it doing a little damage and switching out doesn't sound very exciting at first glance after all every Pokemon can switch out but there is a key distinction here U-turn lets you switch out after you attack normally switching is one of the riskiest things you can do in a Pokémon battle you're sacrificing your ability to do damage for the turn turn and bringing in a Pokémon who is completely vulnerable unable to attack or protect a bad switch can lose you the game if you let a key Pokemon take too much damage the trade-off is that switching allows you to save a Pokemon currently in danger and bring out a Pokemon with a better matchup overall I'd say it's a really well balanced mechanic but incinerar completely breaks it thanks to its low speed stat incinerar is able to move after your opponent has already attacked for the turn and with U-turn it's able to bring in one of your other Pokemon after your opponent has already attacked this completely mitigates the drawback of switching in one of your Pokemon and allows incinerar to switch itself out resetting both intimidate and fake out this one inclusion in its move pool takes incinerar from one of the best support Pokémon of all time to the very best everything in its kit synergizes so well together and it has no obvious weaknesses incinerar was so good once it got intimidate that it literally killed off one of the best Pokemon of all time landeras theion just like in Cur landeras gets access to intimidate and U-turn but unlike incinerar it's better utilized as an offensive Pokemon because of this landeras has a much harder time making use of U-turn as a defensive tool using it instead as an offensive move to do damage to grass and psychic type Pokemon who can give it trouble otherwise ever since incinerar hit its stride landeras usage has plummeted and landeras has never won a World Champ championships while incinerar has been legal so now that you know what makes incinerar so strong let's go back to 2018 when intimidate incinerar was first introduced at this point players hadn't yet realized how good incinerar was and in part due to landeras being a great Z move user while incinerar was mediocre with the mechanic at the World Championships that year incinerar was second in usage to landeras however despite being present on fewer teams than landeras incinerar took every spot in the top four finishers while landeras was only present on two of those teams of course inin Ro's great performance this year would be laughable compared to the utter domination it would show in 2019 the next year's format was the final format of sun and moon and it featured a different rule set than 2018 the rule set is known as a restricted format which means that players are allowed to use two super powerful Pokémon on their teams now you might expect incer or to do worse in a restricted format after all Pokémon like Groudon and Kyogre can much more easily deal damage to incinerar with Kyogre being one of the only Pokemon that can KO it in one hit but here's the thing the stronger the Pokemon are the more valuable intimidate is the more valuable fake out is and the more valuable being able to switch in one of your super powerful Pokemon for free is incinerar very quickly became the king at the 2019 World Championships incinerar was present on over 83% of teams the single highest usage of any Pokemon in the history of the game by a long shot in 2018 landeras T was used on 61% of teams as the most used Pokémon in the tournament for comparison this kind of usage indicates that incinerar wasn't just good it wasn't even just great it was nearly mandatory on every team at the top level its ability to do so many different things at once combined with various tools against the super strong restricted Pokémon meant you needed to have a really good reason to leave it off your team A Reason only a handful of players found oh yeah we haven't even talked about how it's dark typing this year was a total game Cher giving it a great matchup against new restricted Pokemon lunala Soo and Ultra necros one thing that makes incin so hard to deal with is the fact that it's a support Pokemon when an offensive Pokemon is dominating tournaments players can invest in more Niche Pokemon that happen to have a good matchup against it such as bronzong to slow down xerus the idea is as long as your Pokemon is decent enough if your opponent brings the threatening offensive Pokemon to the battle they'll need to deal with your counter and if they leave it behind then they've just given up a lot of their offense and one of their more threatening tools it's not like there isn't counterplay to incinerar Pokemon like competitive myotic and defiant thear saw play in some formats but the problem was nobody was relying on incinerar for Dam image they could afford to leave it behind if the opponent prepared too much for it or keep it off the field until the threats were neutralized plus these Pokémon that match up well into incinerar tended to have a harder time when they weren't boosted by it making them a liability at times ultimately all the power was in the hands of the incinerar player but after incinerar dominance at the 2019 World Championships there was at last a ray of Hope after 2 years being beaten down by incinerar players could see salvation sword and shield Pokemon doesn't get balance patches unlike games like team fight tactics which receive a balance patch every 2 weeks or an emergency patch when something is really out of line thank you Mort dog Pokemon at Best receives balancing changes every 3 years when a new generation comes out this was the light at the end of the tunnel surely the Pokémon company would see how insanely broken incenter or was and Nerf it in some way finally we could find peace they buffed it they gave it one of the single largest Buffs any Pokemon has ever received in the entire history of the game remember how we talked about how strong U-turn was well the good news is that it's now mostly obsolete the bad news is that that's because they gave incinerar an upgraded version of it called parting shot this move is just like U-turn in that it switches the user out after it connects however unlike U-turn which does a little damage Parting Shot lowers both the attack and the a special attack of whatever it hits that's right incinerar can now double down on physical attackers and weaken special attackers the only class of Pokémon it couldn't weaken before thanks Pikachu there was an attempt at balancing incinerar certain old abilities were reworked to be immune to intimidate and fake out didn't work on Dynamax Pokémon because they couldn't Flinch but the Pokemon who had these reworked abilities were across the board pretty mediocre and the ability to weaken a Dynamax Pokémon's offenses with intimidate and Parting Shot more than made up for the inability to Flinch we can't say too much about incenter performance during the first two years of Pokemon sword and shield as due to the pandemic inperson major events were cancelled what we can say though is that of the four online events the Pokemon company held to replace inperson events called The Players cup 1 through 4 incinerar One all four every single one okay to be fair one of those was my fault so so um yeah my bad but in 2022 in-person tournaments returned again with another restricted format and in C or one every single major in the US every single major in Europe except one where it finished second every single major in Australia nearly every single major in the rest of the world all three international level tournaments and the world championships incinerar was used on 74% of all teams at the world championships in 2022 finishing on seven of the top eight teams in the tournament while this is technically lower usage than the world championships in 2019 it's in my opinion just as impressive as even more Pokémon were viable in 2022 that hadn't been in 2019 so having ainar continue to be so mandatory on almost every team despite the wider field is an impressive feat which brings us to scarlet and violet and in 2023 incinerar was not in the game for the first year of competition but just recently incin was added back into the game with the indigo disc DLC which meant an opportunity for Pokemon to correct their mistake after two generations and 5 years of complete incinerar domination surely this time they're going to Nerf it they buffed it again are you kidding me okay so this buff is smaller but it is still a big deal incin was given helping hand a move that goes before all other moves and Powers up its partner's attack by whopping 50% this is an amazing move and it's extremely valuable on a support Pokémon like incinerar however they did add more counterplay this time around that has actually succeeded in slowing not stopping incinerar first two new items were added covert cloak and clear amulet covert cloak stops the secondary effects of moves making fake out not flinch while clear amulet prevents a Pokémon stats from being lowered by intimidate or Parting Shot these items are massive as is the fact that inner Focus Pokémon are stronger now than during sword and shield in part due to their Synergy with chenow and the benefit they receive from talization on top of the items several new Pokémon were added with anti- incinerar abilities dundoo has oblivious making it immune to intimidate and King Gambit and annihilate are both Pokemon with defiant powering them up if any stat is dropped not to mention Terra ghost is a great defensive tool on Fast and frail Pokémon to get around f out in a pinch and so it came to be that when incinerar was finally added to the game top competitive players were shocked to find it actually manageable they started calling it midcore YouTubers were making videos saying it was washed and that it fell off and to a certain extent I get it we were used to a level of dominance from incinerar that was unmatched by any other Pokémon and with the new counterplay available it finally felt like well just a good Pokémon at the first tournament after incinerar was added to the game its performance was disappointing only two finishes in the entire top eight was this it was incinerar finally brought back to Earth had the king been toppled from his throne save himself from this one the flare Blitz from the incinerar is going to deal so much damage to the U to put it on one last life and with that attack wolf Glick becomes your Charlotte Regional Champion the king is back ladies and gentlemen nope

Channel: WolfeyVGC

Views: 1,540,191

Keywords: Wolfey, Pokemon, VGC, Wolfe Glick, Competitive Pokemon, Pokemon VGC, twitch, pokemon nuzlocke, nuzlocke, hardcore nuzlocke, smallant, ludwig, pokemon challenge, pokemon challenges, alpharad, wolfeyvgc, purplecliffe, pm7, pokemen7, mandjtv, shiny pokemon, pokemon scarlet, pokemon violet, scarlet, violet, scarlet and violet, fuecoco, quaxly, sprigatito, incineroar, incineroar vgc, wolfey incineroar, wolfe glick incineroar, wolfeyvgc incineroar

Id: BtF7mQljqyk

Length: 27min 26sec (1646 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 02 2024