Actually this discussion is about both Ash’s peak performances (SL Paul and KL Alain respectively) and you’re the 1 going on this irrelevant (and fallacious) tangent about an aspect of his performance against Sawyer. Ash has literally never done something like preparing beforehand for what to do against a given Pokémon in several different battlefield scenarios; that’s not the sort of trainer he is and you insinuating that I think he can do that based on my praise of him is the epitome of a strawman fallacy. The examples that I used to show that XY Ash’s decision making speed outclasses DP Ash’s were in scenarios where both were presented with the challenge in the match itself and in both cases were fairly similar (Trick Room to Trick Room and Toxic Spikes to Sandstream).
So basically you want to cherrypick and say that XY Ash magically became much better from Vs. Sawyer to Vs. Alain so that now he can decision-make quickly in every situation? Lol okay.
Yeah he did. If you want to headcanon it like that then be my guest; there were several points in the HL where Ash would have benefited from switching (especially against Katie) yet he literally switches all of 0 times over the course of 3 full battles. Orange Islands Ash on the other hand makes 4 switches in his 1 full battle (Ash against Paul at the SL made made 5). Switching really isn’t all that special; even OS Ash at certain points knew how to do it effectively.
"Switching isn't all that special." LOL okay. Switching sure would have helped XY Ash in a bunch of scenarios.
Besides, "XY is the new AG." AG Ash didn't switch as much, and neither did XY Ash. Both relied on their Pokemon (the number of times XY Ash sent out/kept his Pokemon in type-disadvantage situations) to just grit their way through battles.
DP Ash was the best of all worlds in being realistically written to know when to aggressively switch + counter-strategy + keep his Pokemon in the battle.
Nope it’s objectively a mistake (based on the statements of Brock + Regi (in LA)) because Ash messed up the timing of Synthesis causing Torterra to be vulnerable. It’s not my problem if you don’t understand that. If we don’t consider XY Ash as the successor to DP Ash in terms of skill and character (which is what you do) then I can admit that there’s a degree of subjectivity in saying who’s best performance was “better” given both sets of positive feats and mistakes. As to what those positive feats and mistakes were to begin with; however, I don’t think there’s any subjectivity in them (they’re all based on direct observations and inferences,and I’m very conifident in my ability in those aspects).Nope since DP Ash made that mistake due to Paul’s battle psychology getting to him initially and XY Ash would never allow that to begin with. Another strawman; we’re specifically discussing the Paul and Alain performances and I outlined what I observed/inferred to be the merits and demerits of both performances with complete impartiality. I was actually very surprised that the positive feats of both performances match up so well despite the SL battle having a significantly longer run time.
Yeah, they praise Paul more than they critique Ash. Give me a break, if that was "vulnerable", then every iteration of Ash is guilty of messing up timings. The fact is it was garbage writing that led to Torterra Suicide Mountain'ing into having to use Synthesis and still getting KO'd by a frickin Pin Missile just after healing while being a supposed tank. That writing wouldn't have magically saved XY Ash from also losing with Torterra.
And Torterra got a starring win against Ramparados as a Turtwig. Torterra also got to look good against Frontier Brain and E4 lvl opponents (even if they weren’t really trying). Goodra draws against a Slurpuff whom up till then was shown as a jobber (and got plot nerfed since Ash didn’t have it use Rain Dance to weaken Flamethrower) and then jobs to Bisharp so that Greninja isn’t a fall guy. This would be an aspect where it is mostly subjective as to who got butchered worse.
As.A.
Torterra.
What evidence do you have that Drapion can break apart the entire battlefield? The only Paul Pokémon in that battle who has shown the ability to do that is Electivire. Let’s see... because Infernape was the only 1 who could counter Toxic Spikes which is capable of crippling Ash’s entire team; seems like a pretty good reason. XY Ash would get the “turn the battlefield upside down” thought signifcnantly earlier than DP Ash and as a result would end up sending Infernape out earlier (I’d say after Staraptor falls) to execute underground Flare Blitz. He would definitely get the “eureka” moment earlier though how much earlier is where the subjectivity comes in.
There have been a bunch of examples of Pokemon slamming the ground and causing stuff to crack/burst. It was a perfectly valid move for Ash to not want to send Infernape until it was absolutely necessary to avoid getting Poisoned and avoid having to expend energy to battle against a tough opponent in Drapion or waste energy in burning the battlefield. Buizel and Staraptor had already battled, so better to expend them to try and take down Drapion. Once Ash realized Drapion could block/evade their attacks and easily grab them out, he sent out a large tank in Torterra that
should have been able to absorb a lot of damage, chip away Drapion with ranged attacks, and
should have had the high ground if Suicide Mountain was written correctly.
Actually they could’ve also/instead had it know Nightmare which further damages sleeping Pokémon. Dream Eater was specifically useful because of its healing aspect which would have undoubtedly played a vital part in being able to effectively sweep full teams.
Darkrai's Dream Eater dishes out enough damage + heals Darkrai, so obviously that's better.
Okay and they literally could have just had Recover be his 4th move (since Latios only used 3 moves), but nah cuz that would ruin Pikachu’s chip damage strategy. I just headcanon it as Latios was recently caught hence Tobias didn’t have the time to teach it a healing move since that’s the only answer that makes sense from an in-universe standpoint.
Once again, if Toby is against a trainer with a Pokemon capable of actually damaging Latios to that extent (which is almost never), it's better to have Light Screen in that niche position. This argument of yours that Latios not having a healing move somehow makes the feat contrived or less impressive is just stupid.
Uh nope, that's just a very weird headcanon of yours so you can downplay this feat once again.
Anyways I’d appreciate it if you stuck to the topic at hand which is basically a “versus matchup” of Ash’s SL Paul and KL Alain performances. In general XY Ash is trivially (axiomatically) better than DP Ash for me just like how Hoenn Ash is better than Johto Ash and Sinnoh Ash is better than BF Ash since I consider XY Ash to be the next stage in Ash’s skill and character progression and over half of the broader Pokémon anime community does as well. Matter of fact only slightly under a quarter of the broader community believe that DP Ash is outright more skilled than XY Ash (just some fun results; check them by downloading “amino” on your smartphone and then join the Pokémon community). I thought this particular “matchup” was interesting to discuss since I previously just assumed that the SL Paul battle would be Ash’s GOAT performance due to sheer run time + narratively satisfying climax though surprisingly Ash in KL Alain has just as many positive feats and his mistakes aren’t as bad as DP Ash’s mistakes (IMAO on the “not as bad” part though what the mistakes were in both cases isn’t up for subjective interpretation).
Lmao, I could care less what some "amino" voters think. If they come here and see the arguments given by Serebii posters, they'd probably change their minds too. I already pointed out to you how XY Ash made mistakes against Alain.
. LMAO I dare you to try! All you need is a smartphone. Like I’ve said before; it’ll be a good lesson for you to understand that the broader Pokémon anime community (1 that blows this echochamber out of the water) on the whole couldn’t care less about your arguments 
