Swords dance is a move that doesn’t do damage but makes the pokemon deal attack double. Most of the time as a young pokemon player you’d disregard these kinds of setup moves as you’d just cram 4 attacking moves on everyone.
On competitive pokemon getting set up on is very dangerous and could lead to you losing the whole fight.
Signtist@bookwyr.me 1 month ago
Swords dance is a move in Pokemon where your opponent does no damage, but doubles their attack power, allowing them to deal twice as much damage every subsequent turn so long as that Pokemon stays in the battle. A small decrease in damage dealt now in exchange for more damage dealt later.
Most children play Pokemon with a simple goal to attack every turn, and don’t pay attention to what non-attacking moves do, and they view all such moves as a waste of a turn, represented by the bored spongebob. Adults playing Pokemon better understand strategy, and realize that the opponent becomes much more threatening after using swords dance.
taiyang@lemmy.world 1 month ago
To add, it’s even worse if you know sweepers and how fast they can decimate your team; they usually have protection to one shot KO and decent speed.
Except there’s perhaps a third bored looking Spongebob with the counter ready to go, as you should always be ready to counter a Swords Dance sweeper.
OttoVonNoob@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
I picked up Pokémon Champions on Mobile and made Master ball in theee days. Oblivious Calm mind Clefable, put all those dragon dancers in their place.
taiyang@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Truth be told, dragon dancers still win so often against everyone else, but the bar is pretty low. Lol
I am on a retro fix lately and adore my Gen V Volcarona with Quiver Dance, but in that generation, my Ferrothorn saves me more often than not. Still, can’t do competitive with those DS games though, lol.
grranibal@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Thank you!
Rubanski@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
But most of the stat rising or lowering moves are quite tame. Doubling the attack power seems almost OP? It’s like that grain of rice that doubles every chess field story OP
Signtist@bookwyr.me 1 month ago
Technically I was simplifying it a bit. What it actually does is add 1x normal damage, so one use gives x2 your normal attack, 2 uses gives x3, and 3 uses gives x4. After that it does nothing.