Batbloodx

As I'm sure all of us know, one of the many awesome things about Pokémon is that you're never really done with the game. There's always something to do; right now, I've got over 427 hours of play time on my Diamond, which are still increasing. :P

Lately, I've been training a couple Pokémon for use on my second main team, one of which is a Slowpoke nicknamed Dynastduke (I have pretty much all of my Pokémon nicknamed...).

And, as usual, I've been doing a bit of research for information on the Slowpoke family (in addition to my other team members). I check Bulbagarden frequently to refresh my memory on what TMs the can Pokémon learn, its base stats, what moves it learns as it levels up, and so on. I also like to check back every so often to make sure I won't pass up any pre-evolution moves I might want.

So today, as I was thinking about what I was going to do in order to balance Duke's eventual moveset, I decided to pay a little visit to Smogon.

I never use Smogon's suggested movesets--but I like to check them out sometimes when I'm training a Pokémon to see what they've got to say. I take some of their ideas into consideration, but almost always usually end up with something completely different that works for me.

And that's when I began to think--when do the "rules" of Pokémon cross the line between strategy and simple over-analysis? Let's take the tiers, for example.

When I put together a team, I don't limit myself to sticking to the proper tiers (though as it usually turns out, a lot of the Pokémon I choose happen to be in the "Never Used" or "Under Used" catagory, even though that's merely coincidence). In a team, the only things that really concern me are type coverage, and if I like the Pokémon I'm going to use (which I obviously do, otherwise I wouldn't be using them). I don't pick my Pokémon because they're strong, rare, shiny, popular, or however else you might categorize your monsters, but because I like them.

That being said--what's the big deal, anyway? Why do we have to categorize what Pokémon are allowed to battle other Pokémon? It's Pokémon; you don't see in-game trainers fussing about tiers (though a lot of in-game trainers aren't exactly the poster-children for type coverage, or even decent movesets--then again, some actually seem to have pretty good strategies, don't they?).

That's why I like free battles (including those on PBR). I don't care about what Pokémon "can" and "can't" be used, or even what their natures should be (which is the beginning of an entirely different rant that I'll get to later...), I just want to battle Pokémon. Of course, that means I expect my opponent not to be cheap and rely on legendaries to take out my team because they don't know how to use an effective strategy--but you get what I'm saying.

Anyway, my point in all this is that I think we should all just be able to have a decent battle without all those unnecessary rules that could possibly stifle your otherwise magnificent team.

And just an FYI--I love all my diverse groups of little Pokémon buddies all the same (though I do have my favorites :P).

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