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Substitute and how to beat it

Linkachu

Linkachu

Hero of Pizza
Staff member
Administrator
Since the release of FR/LG Substitute usage has run ramped, and while I've never had to face anyone with it (and, considering the lack of Pokemon players around, probably never will) I'm still interested in the best strategy to thwart it.

So, what is the most effective way to fight back against it? Status changing attacks (ie. burn to drain their HP even faster or Hypnosis to give yourself the edge), switching out for a more useful Pokemon, all-out attacking, or something else entirely? For that matter, can a copy block status changers? And exactly how much HP does a copy have?

Any thing else you can tell me about the attack I'd love to hear, too, even simple stuff most players already know. Thanks for any help!
 
A

arek

Well let's see substiute ha been around since the R/B days as a strategy. It was usually used to set up the dt rest combo on some pokemon. How to combat against it.

Well considering sub blocks all,status effects from working. Usually a sub has 1/4 of the pokemon's HP. Thats why a recover/sub mewtwo use to be god like status. Infact alot of alakazam's used this strategy back in the RBY days a Reflect Sub Recover Psychic setup. I remember seeing a few variations to that. How to combat it, well if you act first you can try to use a status altering effect on them such as poison/sleep/paralysis to try and prevent the sub. After they use the sub you almost only have the option of breaking the substitue. I can't remember if Whirlwind and similar attacks could force a change but I don't think they can.
 
M

Mawile

Whirlwind and Roar still work against something that used Substitute. Besides Bonemerang, Rock Blast is another good attack to break Subs. *sigh* Substitute is easily the most used move on Netbattle... =/
 
Linkachu

Linkachu

Hero of Pizza
Staff member
Administrator
Ditto to that... The amount of people who use it make me loathe the move even more :p

I'm not quite as afraid of it as I once was, though. There's only been a few battles now where Substitute has actually worked out for my opponent. Usually they were using it so often that they couldn't get an attack in either way, or their Toxic wasn't powering up as quick as they wanted it too. Oh well... NetBattle never was accurate for battling anyways.
 
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