Pokemon X: The Pyroar solo run

Dear fellow gamers, the Pokemon Summer 2020 Season is now officially open! Kickstarting that new round of solo runs is my annual revisitation of X&Y, starring a 'Mon I've wanted to cruise with for the longest time: Pyroar, the somewhat-out-of-place, somewhat-statistically-impaired Kalos lion. I rolled with the lioness for convenience's and aesthetics' sake — said lioness being more abundant on the field and more pleasing to my retinas — and was lucky enough to land a specimen with a Bashful Nature, which means that I could experience the purest, truest-to-form version of Pyroar.

Let's address the elephant in the room right away: yes, Pyroar's stats distribution is kinda off, and it makes its hidden ability totally useless. You can see for yourself the vertiginous gap between my Fiamma's Attack and Special Attack: we're talking about a whopping 89 points here, which I'm sure is one of the highest Attack stat discrepancy I've ever encountered in a solo run. Now for the million-dollar question: did it hinder me? Nope, not in the slightest. Fiamma basically blazed through Kalos, burning every living thing to a crisp and one-shooting the entire Elite Four — bar five 'Mons that pulled off the exploit of lasting two turns.

Of course, that battle prowess required a fair bit of tweaking. Pyroar's learnset is pretty shallow and infested with Physical Moves; and to make matters worse, it takes her forever to learn powerful Special Moves through levelling-up — the first Special above 40 power being Flamethrower, at lv. bloody 38. With Rock Smash, Ember and Echoed Voice, my early Move pool was nothing to brag about; and with Pyroar's Attack being so shitty, the arrival of Take Down, Fire Fang, Crunch and Return painfully failed to turn the tables. Faced with such inefficience, I decided to go Special all the way; and that's how I finally ended with Incinerate, Flamethrower, Hyper Voice and Dark Pulse — renouncing my beloved Return along the way.

With that battery of Special Moves, my French lioness could live up to her full potential; but I can understand why it failed to make an impression back in the days — and later, for that matter. Getting my late kickass Move pool took ridiculously high levels and an awfully long time — and mind you, that was with the benefit of running solo. Let's just say that GameFreak is keeping up with the tradition of sneaking in trolly, stat-misfitted 'Mons in every game, and that Pyroar is Gen VI's Pidove.

Still, I had a blast with Pyroar, and that run was a most delicious appetizer. Because indeed, I'm nowhere near sated; more solo runs will be tackled this summer, both in X&Y and other entries. And talking about this: back to da grind! See you soon for (much) more Pokemon goodness, dear fellow gamers; and as usual, feel free to drop clever and challenging One and 'Monly suggestions in the comments!