11/11/2017

The Avian Solo Runs, Episode 5: Talonflame in Pokemon Y


This is it, dear fellow gamers: the fifth and last instalment of my Avian Solo Run feature. The winged star of this ultimate episode is none other than Fletchling, a bird whose ultimate evolution Talonflame is deemed the most dazzling regional bird ever created by many a Pokefan. And rightly so, shall I say: Talonflame improves so much on the old regional bird formula that he virtually creates a league of its own — a league that, so far, is his turf alone. Sure, older regional birds are good, even great in some cases; but Talonflame is simply outstanding, and its awesomeness is made even more extreme by the fact that it comes right after what is arguably the crappiest regional bird ever created, i.e. Unova's 'my-Stats-don't-match-my-ridiculously-tiny-Move-pool' Pidove. And yet, weirdly enough, it actually turns out that Talonflame is not the best suited regional bird for a solo run. He may be stellar competitive material allright; but when roaming Y as a lone ranger, the fiery bird displayed a number of unexpected foibles — foibles that didn't detract from my run at all, but definitely came as a surprise from a bird that highly rated.

I'll cover Talonflame's unexpected shortcomings very soon; but for now, let's focus on his brilliancy and achievements. This is a bird that managed to rise above his regional bird condition, raising the bar for all regional birds to come in the process. These birds, while often great battling material, are usually afflicted with poor defensive Stats, a rather dull Normal/Flying double typing and, last but not least, severely restricted Move pools. Talonflame virtually pulverizes these traditional limitations by boasting more balanced Stats, a more strategically interesting Fire/Flying double typing that he gains by evolving and a deliciously varied Move pool that covers a much wider array of Move Types than his kind usually allows. Over the course of my run, my Talonflame wielded in turn Thief (Dark), Peck, Aerial Ace and Fly (Flying), Ember, Flame Charge and Flamethrower (Fire), Fighting-type Hidden Power and Return (Normal), Solar Beam (Grass), plus a couple of other early Moves I can't be bothered to list here. That's a whole lot of Moves, and that welcome variety made for tons of fun on the battlefield. Cherry on the cake, this is a helluva gorgeous bird, with a lovely middle evolution and a superb final evolution whose splendor is made even greater by the fact that it's constantly airborne when fighting. And talking about being airborne, I could at long last take part in all those Sky Battles that I had to decline constantly when playing X and Y with non-flying 'Mons. You never get too many Trainers to fight, indeed!

My Talonflame run was overall a smooth and pleasant run full of glorious one-shooting moments; despite having to resort to Battle Items to escape unscathed from Grant's Rock Gym and final showdown against Champion Diantha, I mostly breezed through the game with a virtually unstoppable Talonflame at my side. And yet, cruising Kalos with the fiery bird actually proved harder than I expected given said fiery bird's track record and overwhelming popularity in the Pokemon community. Talonflame is afflicted with two solo run-unfriendly weaknesses that made him regularly unable to one-shoot opponents, leading him in turn to take hits and sustain copious amounts of damage — to the point that I slapped Leftovers on him just to avoid having to heal him constantly.

His first weakness is his (surprisingly) low Attack: with a base Attack of only 81, Talonflame is the second-weakest of all regional birds, standing a mere point above Pidgeot and his 80 base Attack. Such a low base Attack simply couldn't guarantee one-shooting in all battles, even when factoring in overleveling. The fiery bird's second weakness is his lack of Special Move options. Despite the fact that he boasts a base Sp.Attack of 74, which is simply the highest base Sp. Attack of all the final evolutions of regional birds, Talonflame can learn very few Special Moves; and most of the Special Moves he can learn are two-turn Moves that are quite hard to pull off in a solo run. You'd think that given his Stats, GameFreak would have made him a mixed attacker; yet he ends up being mostly a Physical attacker, with the Move pool to match. Talonflame's overreliance on Physical Moves meant that I couldn't pull off my tried-and-tested strategy of using Special Moves to get rid of 'Mons with low Sp.Defense such as Rock and Steel 'Mons, making some battles much harder than they would have been with, say, Pidgeot or Swellow. I fortunately got some much-needed leeway after getting hold of Hidden Power and Flamethrower in the late stages of the game; but having no Special options during most of my run certainly made cruising with Talonflame much harder than it should have been. This was not even something I could circumvent with suitable strategies; the only thing I could do was patiently wear down my opponents while taking damage and heal afterwards. Until the next battle.

I could also verify my hunch regarding solo runs being the perfect EV training regimen; and lo and behold, it turned out that I was right. As proven by the picture on the right, my Talonflame maxed out his EV solely through battling every Trainer and wild 'Mon that crossed our path. I didn't keep track of when the maxing-out exactly occurred, but the deed was done by the time I reached Laverre City and was presented with the Effort Ribbon. Now, this fact doesn't really change anything as far as my solo runs are concerned; but it sure fills me with pride to know that I took all my beloved One and Onlies to such lofty grinding heights. One last anecdote for the road: remember that torturous fight against Aegislash in my Skitty run? Well, what do you think happened this time? I one-shot the bloody sword, that's what happened. Oh, and Lucario too. Pokemon solo runs sure can be wildly different depending on your lone 'Mon's Type and Moves! And with that said, dear fellow gamers, this Talonflame run report comes to an end. I'll write an ultimate wrap-up post about these Avian Solo Runs though, so stay tuned for an ultimate bout of feathery goodness! Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!

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