Ash's strongest rival

Yep, a monster, but both Ash and Paul have stronger mons than it. Also even Ash's Torkoal (who was jobber back in AG) gave a good fight against one of Brandon's Legendary Titans so it's not that they were invincible.

 

Yep I rewatched Alain's battles and still haven't seen anything from him that indicates that he's on par or better than Paul when it comes to battling skill and planning ahead.I'd place Alain in the Tyson/Virgil/Harrison category in terms of skilled trainers.Yeah Alain won at a league but so have Tyson and Virgil and they weren't all that impressive in terms of skill,they won more so because of the power and overall balance of their team,with Alain his team is decent but most of the power comes from his Charizard.
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• Paul vs Ash (When Pokemon Worlds Collide)
• Paul vs Ash (Different Strokes For Different Blokes)
• Paul vs Roark (Shape of Things To Come)
• Paul vs Ash (Pedal to the Mettle)
• Paul vs Ash (Evolving Strategies)
• Paul vs Barry (Casting a Paul on Barry)
• Paul vs Ash (Familiarity Breeds Strategy)
• Paul vs Ash (A Real Rival Rouser)
• Paul vs Ash (Battling a Thaw in Relations)

 

Credit goes to doctorgecko--->>>>https://www.reddit.com/r/respectthreads/comments/78gdti/respect_paul_pokemon_anime/

Paul

Trainer Strategy/Skill
Basic Intelligence/Battle Style

• Gets a basic feel for Ash's battle style after a single battle with weak Pokemon
  
  
• Purposefully targets the legs of Roark's Cranidos in order to weaken it and win the battle
  
  
• Is entirely willing to attack his ally if it means landing a hit on his opponent
  
  
• Ash outright acknowledges there are no flaws in his battle strategy, and that his Pokemon recognize their roles and act accordingly
  
  
• After seeing Ash's counter shield strategy once, adapts it into his own strategy and then uses it against Ash.

Predicting/Outwitting

• Purposefully lets Ash go first so that his Elekid can absorb an electric attack and power itself up
  
  
• Uses dig to make Ash unable to tell where his attacks are coming from, and then anticipates his strategies in order to win
  
  
• Takes advantage of Cynthia's Garchomp using giga impact in order to land a hit on it without it being able to fight back
  
  
• Purposefully has an attack miss to cause Ash to become more reckless, and then leaves his Torterra open for attack so that he can lure Ash into a trap
  
  
• Able to predict Ash's actions in battle, and structures his team specifically to counter Ash's
  
  
• Purposefully battles in a way that keeps Ash from being calm, and takes advantage of his emotions to put him into bad match ups
  
  
• Predicts that Ash will come up with a way for Buizel to escape a trap, and uses that opportunity to land heavy blows on Ash
  
  
• Purposefully lets Ash's Torterra heal itself so that he can beat it in one hit and crush Ash's resolve.
  
  
• Intentionally let his first two Pokemon get beaten so that he could determine Ash's team and strategy, and then predict's Ash's actions for a good portion of the battle.
  
  
• Anticipates Ash's unusual strategies, as well as being behind him in terms of number of Pokemon

Environmental Usage

• Takes an advantage of the wind to avoid a strike from his opponent and land a hit on it
  
  
• When facing a ground type with an electric type, has his Pokemon attack the field to damage his foe indirectly and win the fight.

 

Yeah Alain is definitely more skilled than Harrison, Tyson and Virgil. Here are his skill feats:

1. Had Charizard smash up the water in the river as a shield against fire attacks
2. Had MC-X fire Flamethrower at a precise angle in order to land a clean hit on an unsuspecting MC-Y
3. Tyranitar’s Sandstream ability.
4.Had Tyranitar use its tail to launch the Stone Edge debris at Pikachu after the Stone Edge vs Electro Ball.
5. Weavile’s nimble/evasive battle style supported by moves like Protect and Double Team.
6. precision Ice Beams (e.g. target Noivern’s wing tips or Hawlucha’s legs).
7. Guillotine + Thunder Wave a.k.a Alain is literally the only trainer in the anime (and yes that includes Paul due to how he had Gliscor use Guillotine) who properly did justice to a OHK move and didn’t make it seem cheap since he only used it when the opponent was crippled with paralysis thus greatly lowering their evasion (since speed and evasion are linked in the anime) or when they were too damaged/drained to dodge.
8. Used Agility to augment Metagross’s speed.
9. Didn’t bother using Thunder Wave on Goodra which shows that Alain is very knowledgeable of Pokémon abilities since if Bisharp had used it, it would have just been cured via Hydration.
10. Having Bisharp circle around to hit Goodra’s back since there’s less flesh on
Goodra’s back hence attacks aimed their would deal greater damage.
11. MC-X’s Tough Claws ability.

Not to mention that his command speed, reaction time and move chaining are comparable to even E4/Champion caliber trainers. Yeah Alain heavily relies on the power of MC-X, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a very skilled trainer in his own right and it’s not like Paul also wouldn’t use a lot of brute force if he had a monster like MC-X that was just so much stronger than most of the competition (matter of fact he went 100% brute force mode with Torterra against Brock and Molly because Torterra was just that much stronger than their Pokémon, so he absolutely would heavily rely on brute force if given a Pokémon like MC-X). With that in mind I still think Paul is the most skilled trainer in the anime though I really wouldn’t lump the only on-screen tnon-RC trainer to beat an E4 with the other conference champions.

 

Interestingly MCX's Tough Claws ability was never mentioned to be in effect in the anime, so I don't think that should count. It's similar like in Tobias's Darkrai's case, Bad Dreams should always be in effect when the opponent is asleep, but it was never mentioned to take effect.

 

Alain/Paul/Gary got top tier for me.. Alain was a strong guy, but annoyingly reliant on MCX, whereas Paul had amore developed and balanced team IMO. Gary is Gary. nuff said there.

 

If we're talking about rivals that were really important, let's see. Gary was the first, if only by pure nostalgia, but he did show himself as a strong opponent. Their most important battle was at the Johto League, but even that showed they're in equal terms, with Gary's main advantage being more calm and collected.

I ever saw Paul more like Gary, but more cynical and stoic, taking full advantage of Ash's more emotional nature and not falling on his unorthodox strategies (even copying counter shield, which makes me angry until now). For all his faults, Paul doesn't trust only in his ace, he builds a team to win for all purposes. If he win with them or no is arguable.

At last, Allain is more similar to Ash than the previous two, but more hardened by his journey to be the strongest. While he's not deprived of strategies, he trusts to much in charizard and raw strenght in general. But, if only in terms of power and stamina, he's actually stronger.

Summing up: Paul >= Allain > Gary.

Paul have the edge (heh) in terms of strategy, but Allain (ironically, for Paul) have power to back him up. In fact, I'm postive Allain would give Paul a longer run for his money than Ash ever did. But, I won't enter in the "who would defeat who?", that's enough.

 

Actually in Darkrai’s case Bad Dreams is visually depicted to be affecting Sceptile understood by the scene where Sceptile is in the darkness while asleep before Ash calls out to him (this is distinct from the DE animation). Heracross was KOed before an iteration of bad dreams could occur. Huh... that’s kind of annoying that they don’t mention Tough Claws for MC-X especially since they mention Mega Launcher for Mega Blastoise, Thick Fat for Mega Venasaur and Drought for Mega Charizard Y. Eh I’m just going to use default expection and say MC-X had Tough Claws since abilities are unique for Megas and this isn’t a gen where abilities weren’t a thing. Anyways removing that doesn’t detract from my assessment of Alain’s skill at all since Tough Claws just augments the power of contact moves. Sandstream on the other hand definitely shows Alain’s skill in particular he sent out Tyranitar first and also had Bisharp + Metagross both of whom wouldn’t be affected by the weather variant of Sandstorm in the case that Sandstorm were still active after Tyranitar’s defeat.

 

Yeah Gary is absolute fodder compared to Alain (would get eviscerated by MC-X 6-0) and even Paul would make him his b*tch when using his best team. The rest of Alain’s team gets grossly underestimated especially Tyranitar and Metagross because people don’t factor in that Tyranitar and Metagross lost to the strongest variant of Pikachu till date (supported both by scaling from Alain’s Base Charizard as well as Pikachu’s contributions to beating Lysandre’s MRG just a few hours later, and by the narrative of if there were ever a time for Pikachu to battle with full cumulative expereince, it would be during a league final). Metagross in particular given how well it did against Peakachu would be stronger than any of Paul’s Pokémon except debatably Motordrive Electivire.

 

Alain is obviously the strongest, but Paul is a much more interesting battler

 

I say and i say it again: dont compare rivals. Each Ash has a rival that fits that specific Ash. You cant let OS Ash fight Paul for example

Greetings Kenzey

 

I absolutely don't think the "dream killer" rivals need to be judged all because they are made to be cheap. If so, Tobias is absolutely at the top of everyone even if we have never seen his full team, which I theorize are all Legendaries just because.

 

Agreed. Alain wasn't the main rival like Gary and Paul, Sawyer was. People just can't get over the fact that Ash won most of the time against Sawyer, which for some reason makes people think he wasn't the true rival. He was the true rival, it's just that for once he had the upper hand in the rivalry, which is fine.

 

I’m going to be frank; if the rest of Tobias’s Pokémon are on par with Darkrai/Latios (this is a high ball since there’s a fairly good argument for why Darkrai was Tobi’s Ace and hence none of his other Pokémon were stronger than it), then it's highly doubtful that Tobias can beat Alain. Tobias’s Darkrai and Latios scale to being in the E4 Base Ace spectrum (and even then most likely not on the upper end of it where the likes of Flint’s Infernape and Caitlin’s Gothitelle reside) whereas Alain’s Mega Charizard X is the strongest trainer Pokémon in existence barring Champion Mega Aces (and debatably Lysandre’s MRG) a.k.a is definitively above the E4 Mega Ace spectrum (if anyone doesn’t know about my justifications for these claims, feel free to ask). I can’t understate just how drastically above Darkrai and Latios MC-X would be; MC-X could literally take on an entire team of legendaries of that ilk and have a non-trivial possibility of winning. On average (when factoring in stamina drain) MC-X should be able to take out around 5 legendaries and then loose to the 6th from which point Metagross (and Bisharp if needed) can finish the job.

 

We of course didn't see Tobias releasing his ace Arceus. Dakrai was a distraction. Egads!

 

Alain wasn't his dream killer rival, he was one of his main rivals in XY, no dream killer has faced ash even once let alone multiple times before the league. Comparing alain to other dream killers is palin old stupid. As for strongest rival alain takes the cake, he is only trainer who has defeated an E4 ace something paul is a fodder compared to even with his superior so called skills and strategies.

 

Difference is Alain always kept dominating Ash anyway and suddenly was thrust to dream killer status for a shinier domination, which by then he was forced into the role of dream killer almost out of the blue. Ha ha.

 

Hands down I still preferred promoting Alain from a regular dominating rival to the eventual dream killer, since it made sense knowing how strong Alain was anyway. People complained that he didn't want to compete in the league, and that he was a last minute addition as a league participant, but that's still much better than having random last minute challengers like Harisson, Tyson and the worst, Tobias, appear in the last minute, beating Ash, and then disappearing without a trace, even if their goals were to win a league.

 

The only match he dominated ash was the first match after that in all matches it was close whether it was second match between AG and MCX or between noivern vs metang it was close and no where onesided. I agree alain should have lost to ash at the league they probably didn't have time to bring in new dream crusher so they had to go with alain in worse case, besides even paul was dominating ash all the time before the league, rivals generally dominate ash before the league is nothing new.

 

At least we knew how absolutely fast Alain was pushed into the league. It was ridiculous.