Well, roughly a year has passed, and a new generation of games is out. As such, B+UP is back to cover the changes and additions to the franchise that Black and White have brought.

The New EXP System

Experience from wild Pokémon and trainer battles is now affected by the difference between your level and that of the opponent. If your level is lower than that of the opponent, you will gain more experience. This means you can level up faster against strong opponents, making it easier to raise newly caught or hatched Pokémon.

The New TM System

TMs are now infinitely reusable like HMs were in previous generations. This has several notable effects. You are now free to teach moves as soon as you get them, rather than saving them for a specific Pokémon. Also, being able to use TMs infinitely reduces the amount of working for money and Battle Points needed to get them over and over.

New Abilities

With the Dream World, a Pokémon can now have up to three possible abilities. This means that Pokémon that were rarely considered or used previously are now a lot more viable. A lot of old Pokémon have entirely new roles, and some have gone from poor or average to powerful or even gamebreaking.

New Items

Absorb Bulb: Increases the user's Special Attack when it is hit by a Water attack.
Air Balloon: The holder behaves as if it has the Levitate ability. The balloon is destroyed when the holder is directly attacked.
Binding Band: Increases the damage of trapping/binding moves.
Cell Battery: The user's Attack is increased when it is hit by an Electric attack.
Eject Button: When the holder is attacked, it is switched out.
Eviolite: Increases the Defense and Special Defense of the holder if it is not fully evolved.
Red Card: When the holder is attacked, the attacker is switched out.
Ring Target: The holder loses its type immunities.
Rocky Helmet: When contact moves are used against the holder, the attacker is damaged.



With everything that's been added and everything that's been changed, there's going to be a lot to mention in the coming weeks. I'll do my best to keep you informed, along with my co-writer, Terra.

#597: Ferrothorn

The moment I first saw a Ferroseed in Chargestone Cave and saw it use Curse and Gyro Ball, I realized “I'm going to want one of these things”. While I haven't actually evolved one ingame yet, I've tried it out on Pokémon Online with quite a bit of success.

Typing
Weaknesses: Fire (4x), Fighting (2x)
Resistances: Poison (Null), Grass (1/4) Normal (1/2), Water (1/2), Electric (1/2), Rock (1/2), Ghost (1/2), Dragon (1/2), Dark (1/2), Steel (1/2)

While Ferrothorn has one more weakness than Forretress, it keeps the poison immunity and has slightly more resistances. Additionally, Ferrothorn's ability makes taking advantage of this added weakness a risky proposition. It's just as tough a nut to crack as its older counterpart.

Stats
HP: 74 (average)
Attack: 94 (average)
Defense: 131 (well above average)
Sp. Atk: 54 (below average)
Sp. Def: 116 (well above average)
Speed: 20 (very low)

Stats are where Ferrothorn starts to distinguish itself. While its HP and attack stats aren't much different, it has almost twice as much special defense as Forretress does. This comes at the cost of a slight bit of physical defense, but mainly speed; Ferrothorn is remarkably slow. However, with those tank-like defenses and the existence of Trick Room, the lack of speed isn't a major impediment.

Moves
The movepool is where Ferrothorn starts to truly come into its own and find its own niche. While it can do some of Forretress's support work with Stealth Rock and Spikes, Ferrothorn is meant to be an armored beast that ignores the opponent's attacks while beating them down with its own. It learns several powerful physical moves on its own, including Power Whip, Gyro Ball, and Explosion. With TMs, you get access to several other attacks, such as Return, Poison Jab, Shadow Claw and Aerial Ace.

For whatever reason, Ferrothorn can use electric attacks; while it doesn't have the power to use Thunderbolt or Thunder, it can get some mileage out of Thunder Wave. Ferrothorn also has several other status-inflicting moves, including Toxic and Leech Seed.

Ability
Iron Barbs – Deals 1/8 damage to the opponent's HP when hit with a move that makes contact
Iron Barbs solidifies Ferrothorn's defensive capabilities. It punishes the opponent for trying to hit it with physical attacks, and especially punishes it for trying to take advantage of its Fighting weakness. Combined with a Rocky Helmet, you can take off a quarter of the opponent's health when you're attacked. This combined with Ferrothorn's already high defenses makes it ideal to switch in to catch physical attacks for the rest of your team.

Summary
While it looks the part, Ferrothorn isn't just a clone of Forretress; it's much tougher on the offense and on the defense. If you want something to clear spikes though, you're out of luck, sadly.

Wow. Awesome stuff. I am salivating for more juicy info.
I just ran through that cave and got a couple of the residents - Klink and some large rock type.

Ferrothorn looked kinda cool so might switch him in. I'm way scrubby with the types now as I don't know what all the strengths and weaknesses are - just playing it through experience. Great to see resistance info like that though.

tl:dr

moar!

Requesting Elektross. (He's my favorite electric-type in B/W.)

I was actually considering doing that next anyway, since it's too notable to ignore.

inorite? Pure Electric with Levitate.

So what's good? My team relies too much on Emboar and Throh. So far have ran into few problems but when I have I've had to rely on a weak ass Liepard to get me out of trouble being a Dark type.

In-game, a Jellicent will apparently take you far, and I've heard good things about Bisharp.

Bisharp will fuck your face. Lower his stats in any way and OH LOOK HIS ATTACK POWER JUST WENT THROUGH THE ROOF

i use one and love it

It was suggested, I wanted to cover it, so here it is.

#604: Eelektross


Typing
Resistances: Ground (Null) Electric (1/2), Flying (1/2), Steel (1/2)

While mono-Electric's a bland typing, it's still useful. It has only one weakness (which is nullified by Eelektross's ability), and gives a boost to commonly used and commonly useful attacks.

Stats
HP: 85 (average)
Attack: 115 (above average)
Defense: 80 (average)
Sp. Atk: 105 (above average)
Sp. Def: 80 (average)
Speed: 50 (below average)

Eelektross is strong on the offense, able to use physical and special attacks with equal competency. However, it is somewhat slow, and its merely average endurance means you will want some support to make sure you can do as much damage as possible before going down.

Moves
Eelektross gets a wide variety of useful moves on its own, made even more useful by being able to use both physical and special attacks. These moves include Thunderbolt, Discharge, Charge Beam, Wild Charge, Thrash, Crunch, Thunder Wave, and Gastro Acid. With TMs, you may add on Flamethrower, Return, Brick Break, Dragon Claw, Grass Knot, and U-Turn. There's a broad range of possibilities available to you.

Ability
Levitate: Gives immunity to Ground attacks and Spikes
Levitate is incredibly useful here. While Eelektross isn't the first Electric-type to have the ability, being mono-Electric and having immunity to Ground moves gives it effectively no weaknesses in normal circumstances. However, this defense can be broken through. Gravity, Smack Down, Worry Seed, and Gastro Acid will nullify Levitate, and Mold Breaker ignores it entirely. Be wary of anything that can use these.

Summary
Eelektross is a powerful and versatile Pokémon. While it's not invincible, it can devastate an unprepared opponent.

Sheer Force/Life Orb Glitch
Every Pokémon game seems to have its glitches, and Black/White is no different, it seems. Thanks to Terra for bringing this to my attention.

Sheer Force is a new ability. It increases the power of moves with a secondary effect, in return for disabling that effect. This leads to some odd behavior; when combined with a Life Orb, this results in moves that use Sheer Force not triggering the recoil damage of the Life Orb.
Now that I've told you about this glitch, a question presents itself: is it okay to take advantage of it? I say, “why not”. Many competitive games have been defined by unintended behavior, such as rocketjumping in early FPS games and wavedashing in Melee, among others. Unlike something like Mario Kart's infamous snaking, using this glitch takes no need for reflexes or timing, simply knowledge of how it works and how what works with it, so it's a lot more accessible to the players. While I'm sure this kind of thing isn't what the programmers intended to happen, I think it adds a bit more flavor and variety to the metagame.

I'd do it.

Is the Life Orb thing actually a glitch? I figured it was sort of a bonus since Sheer Force is kind of mediocre on its own.

B+UP will be on hiatus for the next two weeks due to me being busy with visiting family and going to Anime North. When I come back I'll try to deliver the best content I can to make up for this.

You're going to AN? Me too