From The Previous Versus Thread; Page 128 Post #3196
Greatest Performance Of Ash’s Life; SL Paul or KL Alain!!!???
Positive Feats:
— SL Paul
[Spoil]- Had Staraptor use Close Combat on the ground in order to shake Gastrodon off
- Buizel’s counter shield
- Buizel’s Ice Aqua Jet
- Had Buizel puff his flotation sack in order to escape Drapion’s clutches
- Underground Flare Blitz which served the dual purpose of both eviscerating Toxic Spikes and landing severe damage on Ninjask hence crippling its previously insane speed
- Having Infernape calmly focus in order to locate and land the finishing blow on Ninjask
- Having Pikachu use Iron Tail in conjunction with the rebound force from Ice Shard as a spring board in order to quickly get close to and then strike Froslass with a clean Iron Tail before she could faze out again. For Froslass Snow Cloak allows her to faze through all opponent attacks; however, she needs to materialize when launching her own attacks and there exists a certain time interval (that is likely quite small) after she launches an attack before she can again go back into faze mode a.k.a the best moment to counter attack is immediately after Froslass launches an attack
- Gliscor rolling into the sky right after using Giga Impact in order to avoid the consequences of its temporary immobility drawback
- Pikachu using the speed and momentum of Quick Attack in order to respectively dodge and climb the debris resulting from battlefield Thunder (fun facts: Paul copied that move from Ash who used it in his first match against Roark and also Pikachu’s “rock climbing” could be thought of as a prototype for Ash’s Rock Tomb climb tactic in XY) giving him a temporary “high ground” that allowed him to make a clean strike with Quick Attack
- Deliberately had Infernape get caught and damaged by Electivire in order to activate special Blaze more quickly (notable since Infernape was already nearing the limits of its stamina and had Ash waited for longer for special Blaze to activate from the accumulated damage from fighting Electivire + Poison, Infernape may have been too exhausted to do anything after entering that state)[/Spoil]
— KL Alain
[Spoil]- Had Pikachu use Iron Tail on the river in order to flood the battlefield serving the dual purpose of eliminating Sandstorm and dousing Tyranitar making it vulnerable to electric attacks
- Used the angular momentum (a.k.a spin) from Tyranitar flinging Pikachu (after their Iron Tail vs Crunch clash) to augment the power of his Electro Ball
- Had Noivern use Echolocation in order to find the real Weavile in the Double Team
- Had Hawlucha use the Ice floor created by Weavile in order to skid in the same (vector) direction as Weavile’s attacks thereby reducing their damage (tell me if this or any other point need further explanation). For this point I’d also add that Hawlucha gets “pumped” from being “perceived” as being able to tank his foe’s attacks which of course allows him to battle to his full potential, so it is also notable that Ash was able to adapt to Hawlucha’s battle style by reducing the damage he takes from the foe’s attacks, but still maintaining the perception of Hawlucha’s perseverance
- Had Talonflame use Flame Charge in order to boost speed (after its speed got lowered from the damage it took via Air Slash which is similar to Ninjask’s speed crippling case but to a lesser extent) resulting in Talonflame having greater momentum and hence impact in the final Brave Bird vs Sky Attack clash
- Had Pikachu jump on Metagross’s head where it can’t reach him and launching a stream of direct hit Thunderbolts
- Had Pikachu use Iron Tail in order to propel sand upwards blocking Flamethrower in the process
- Immediately had Goodra use Rain Dance in order to avoid getting Paralyzed by Thunder Wave; this was actually smarter than if Ash had used Rain Dance only after Thunder Wave was used since A) there was a chance that the paralysis would kick in preventing/delaying Rain Dance and B) Bisharp would likely have had more opportunities to strike with Guillotine while Goodra was Paralyzed whereas notice that Alain only used Guillotine in the actual battle when it was clear that Goodra was already too exhausted and hence wouldn’t be able to evade; also I’m sure most of you having heard the saying “prevention is better than cure”
- Used Rain Dance to augment the power of Greninja’s Water Shuriken
- Used Ash-Greninja’s Water Shuriken as a shield against Mega Charizard X’s Thunderpunch (certainly not a conventional way of using Water Shuriken)[/Spoil]
Mistakes:
— SL Paul
[Spoil]- Bad timing on Synthesis. Synthesis is a move that while being used leaves the user completely vulnerable to foe attacks and in addition there exists a time interval between when the user finishes/stops using Synthesis and having their guard back up. This is inferred from Regi implying that Grotle’s vulnerability from using Shynthesis was a factor in why it got KOed by Honchkrow’s attack eventhough it stopped using Synthesis and was even setting up for a counter attack with Rock Climb (and there should be a time interval albeit a small one between those 2 actions). Paul specifically waited until right after Synthesis was done to strike in order to psychologically mess with Ash by pretty much conveying “even in the best case scenario you would still loose” while landing a critical hit since as established Torterra would still be vulnerable the moment immediately after finishing Synthesis. The better approach for Ash would have been to focus on dealing as much damage as possible with Torterra before it inevitably fell instead of fruitlessly attempting to heal
- Had Pikachu use Volt Tackle on Electivire activating its Motordrive ability. Ash deliberately gave Electivire the speed amp in order to lure him in and recreate an analogous situation to Ash and Paul’s first battle; however, Ash grossly underestimated the strength increase Electivire got since then (it was still an Elekid in that battle) and even more importantly Ash showed a lack of long term foresight by not factoring in that Electivire would still have the speed amp going into the final battle with Infernape stacking the deck even further against the already damaged, fatigued and Poisoned monkey. Obviously the “meta” reason for why this was done was to make Infernape look like an ultimate survivor badass for overcoming the odds and it worked; however, that doesn’t excuse Ash needlessly making the battle more difficult than it needed to be[/Spoil]
— KL Alain
[Spoil]- Ash not switching out Noivern against Weavile; this might be the 1 instance in the Alain battle where XY Ash not being as prone to switching as DP Ash may have cost him. Now it should be noted that Ash chose to make the substitution for Noivern before Alain sent Weavile out and league battles likely have policies that prevent switching from being abused. As far as known league battles go the minimum amount of time that a given Pokémon has battled before being recalled with the opponent neither making any substations themselves nor having any of their Pokémon KOed would be roughly 25 seconds as witnessed in Ash vs Katie (Torkoal vs Venamoth where Venamoth was recalled) and Ash vs Conway (Donphan vs Shuckle where Donphan was recalled). The 25 second mark in Noivern vs Weavile was right before the Ice Beam - Boomburst clash meaning that yes Ash definitely could have switched out Noivern after that move clash yet chose to follow up with Dragon Claw instead. It could be argued that Ash didn’t feel the need to switch since up till that point the battled seemed even with both Pokémon landing 1 hit on the other; however, it could also be counter argued that Ash got sucked into the flow of the battle which prevented him from making the wiser call to switch
- Not having Greninja use Water Shuriken on Charizard while Rain Dance was still active. Now Ash actually made the right call by having Greninja initially charge in instead of using Water Shuriken straight away since that’s what he did in XYZ 23 and Charizard had no trouble dodging several of them and then landing a clean strike with Dragon Claw. Alain also had Charizard rush in and was a split second faster in calling out Flamethrower to which Ash reflexively had Greninja dodge. The implication here is that Cut was easier to utilize than Water Shuriken whilst Greninja was in a mid air spin hence why Ash chose to call Cut; however, if you believe that Water Shuriken could have just as easily been used from that particular position, then it would be fair to count this as a mistake.[/Spoil]
Well that would wrap it up as far as objective assessment of both performances is concerned. I’m interested in reading the community’s thoughts on which performance was better (and for the record better result =/= better performance). As for my view while the positive feats in both performances match up quite well, the magnitude of the mistakes in the SL Paul battle far outweigh those in the KL Alain battle hence why I would consider the KL Alain performance to be superior overall and the best performance Ash has had till date. Did I miss anything of note from either battle? Do you think any other battle should be in contention for best Ash performance? Haha.. in a way this is a vs matchup of “trainer performance”, so it should fit within the parameters of this thread.
Honestly, anything to do with Torterra is just so BS because the writers wrote Suicide Mountain as the dumbest move in existence, and they completely threw Torterra under the bus in all its battles to be the victim of the Worf Effect. I get that there might be vulnerability during and momentarily after Synthesis, but considering Torterra literally just got thrown down a cliff, it wasn't exactly a mistake for Ash to have it heal it up. The immediate Pin Missil KO was garbage, but we just have to accept it as Drapion being just flat-out a better Pokemon and there wasn't anything more Torterra could have done against it.
I think the lack of switching was major flaw on XY Ash. It made the battle against Sawyer more tense than it needed to be, and it played a role here. DP Ash knew Infernape was his major carry, and didn't have any qualms of repeatedly bringing it out throughout the battle against Paul. I get that XY Ash might be saving Greninja for Charizard, but XY Ash also knows Greninja could have brought down some of Alain's Pokemon without burning too much stamina. For example, DP Ash didn't bother wasting Pikachu and Gliscor in more annoying match-ups against Aggron and Ninjask, and instead sent out his big gun, thereby saving Pikachu and Gliscor for matches later. Likewise, XY Ash could have brought out Goodra earlier (instead of putting it in a bad match-up against Bisharp), set up the Rain Dance, recalled, and sent out Greninja to get some KOs on Weavile and Bisharp. Or tag-teamed against Metagross instead of having Pikachu do all the work. We see Alain call out Charizard when he understood the threat Pikachu posed; it allowed him to save his Bisharp for Goodra, instead of potentially having a situation where he might have his Charizard face Pikachu, Goodra, and Greninja back-to-back.
The result kind of does matter, because it's hard to call a loss the "greatest performance of Ash's life." I think defeating your greatest rival to date, with so many twists and turns, strategies galore, and winning with the Pokemon that your rival released is just so much sweeter. Heck, even if Ash improved since then, at the time, Orange Islands Ash earning his first major award and defeating the most broken Dragonite ever was outstanding. Plus, there's also an argument to be made that Ash v Tobias might also have been the greatest erformance considering Ash literally brought down two legendaries, including a legendary that was undefeated up to that point.
I can only see Dragonite and Excadrill putting up a good, long fight.
