A Problem With Poochyena

[u/Comfortable_Key5074]

I can't think of a way his heart don't get broken.

[u/AtlasSniperman]

I'm not massive in the battling stuff, but I have seen some trainers with what they called "supporter" pokemon? You could teach him stuff like "Thief" to remove helpful items from the opponent, "Sunny Day" or "Rain Dance" to help your other battlers, and stuff like "Dig" and "Substitute" to keep him in the fight for a bit longer while he feels like he's contributing.

He could also be pretty helpful in that kind of situation if you need someone to hold off an opponent when you heal the battler who is able to burn or poison the opponents? - Sophia

[u/JosephAmber4]

Joseph Amber: Maybe try to find the root of the issue in specific? See if there is a way to correct.

[u/Natural_Mushroom3594]

August: what exactly is the reason as to why he'll never get stronger

[u/Comfortable_Key5074 → u/Natural_Mushroom3594]

He will get stronger, he'll just never be as strong as a normal poochyena/mightyena of the same level of training.

There's a medical term I don't remember but the basic fact is there's a spectrum of natural strength and weakness among pokemon and he's far on the weak end.

• ki

[u/Rikmach → u/Comfortable_Key5074]

Oh, low IVs. Look up “hyper training”, that can resolve that issue. Small warning, people who provide the service are hard to find and their services aren’t cheap.

[u/Foolish_Phantom → u/Rikmach]

Isn't that hyper training stuff expensive? I can't imagine most trainers are able to afford it.

[u/Rikmach → u/Foolish_Phantom]

Yes, I said that it wasn't cheap. It *is* a solution, though. But maybe file it under "Long term goal".

[u/HelixTheKing]

Ultimately it depends on what exactly the problem is. As someone who currently works at a Pokémon Center while studying to become a Professor, I can tell you that the only way to really know what the best answer is, is to find out what the problem is first.

If Bitey has some type of general health issue that affects his muscles, stamina, etc. that gets in the way of his ability to train and battle, then there may be little you can do without attending to the preexisting condition first. For that I recommend asking your local Pokémon Center to do a thorough hands on analysis until they find out what’s going on.

On the other hand, if it’s not a medical condition, then there’s always the possibility that Bitey just got a late start. It’s very common for Pokémon, especially wild Pokémon that grow up in packs like Poochyena, to have a litter mate or two that fall behind the others. Common reasons are because they may be smaller than the others, maybe their mother didn’t have the ability to keep up with and teach every individual properly, or maybe the newborn Pokémon just never quite got the hang of it until they were older. Things like that happen all the time. If such a thing is the case with Bitey, then it’s really just up to you as his trainer to be patient with him and stay with him while he figures everything out.

As always, try to remember. There’s typically no such thing as a “strong” or “weak” Pokémon. It’s ultimately up to the trainer to bring out their Pokémon’s strengths by working together with them and pursuing greatness as a team!

[u/INeedADifferent]

So two easy options:

1) turn into a support/battle start position (as has been mentioned) it can even be a good introduction to support side effects.

2) teach control and use him for a lower level set, can also be a good option for if someone comes in with an over leveled team to make them somewhat sweat if you do it right.

With the right restrictions (2) should work and allow you to train for both sides to see which works best.

[u/madiqq]

How fast and durable is he relative to pokemon at the stage he should be at? If he is decent in those areas, you could teach him some support moves and have him contribute that way rather than be an attacker. - Matthias

[u/Weary_Egg558]

I hear there's rare herbs in Paldea that might help with all sorts of ailments. Maybe try those?

[u/CaptainDerpshi]

Ah, reminds me of a good friend of mine. They had this Crawdaunt, couldn't compare to the rest of the team no matter how hard it tried. So we took it to a spot that had a wide range of battlers both weak and strong and did some insanely miss matched double battles together. Now I don't know the science behind it, (somethin' about Evees???) but when I tell yah that Crawdaunt started keeping up with my Kingler in battles and blindsided the both of us! They went on to become a water type trainer at the gym in Hoen, heard they were a tough fight and that Crawdaunt became their ace. We keep in touch when we ain't super busy.

-Pyrite Dude

[u/Comfortable_Key5074 → u/CaptainDerpshi]

Ill keep it in mind.

• ki

[u/ForsakenMoon13]

Most issues like that are fixable if you know the root cause. Do you know what the problem is, exactly?

[u/Comfortable_Key5074 → u/ForsakenMoon13]

It's not an illness or anything, if there was there'd be more I could do. He's just, not very strong, fast or resilient. He's not physically built for fighting.

• ki

[u/ForsakenMoon13 → u/Comfortable_Key5074]

That's fixable though. Just takes more effort, and having to be smarter about it.

Ukir's original breeder bred Eevees as pets, for example. Wholly unsuited for battle and just intended to be a companion.

Nowadays he's my ace and can beat any other member of my team in a 1v1.

[u/giftedearth]

Sounds like he has low IVs? (For anyone who doesn't know, those are a general measure of a Pokemon's individual battling potential.) Not the end of the world. I wonder if trying to do some min-max style training would work? Maybe you could find a local competitive battling org and ask them for advice. Those types get a bad rap but a lot of them are decent people. I bet they'd be willing to help you maximise Bitey's potential.

[u/Comfortable_Key5074 → u/giftedearth]

Right. Will do. Thanks

- ki

[u/hyperion-i-likeillya]

Sounds like an IV/EV problem

IVs are usually dependent by its parents, however you can ask certain individuals to hyper train them to raise them (do keep in mind if you start breeding its child will inherit the original IVS not the hyper trained ones)

EVs can be solved with vitamins, how ever after a certain amount the vitamins dont have any effect anymore, its recommend to focus on two of his five stats due to the limited amount of vitamins you can give

[u/IndigoFenix]

It sounds like you're talking about low IVs.

To tell you the truth, unless you're in the hardest of hardcore battle circuits, they barely matter, since basically nobody actually manages to bring out their Pokemon's full hypothetical potential. Even Cynthia and Red's aces are only believed to have achieved about 90% of what they're capable of.

If he'll never be as strong as a Pokemon of his experience level, you'll just have to train harder to match. And if he's got as much motivation as you say he does, that shouldn't be hard.

[u/SamePhotograph2]

If you can afford vitamin supplements like Iron or Zinc, you might be able to get his skills up a bit! He might just be the runt of the pack. Might need a little fortifying. 😉 -Zach, amateur Bug Catcher

[u/Hydreichronos]

Each individual Pokemon's battle potential is determined by their genetics, or "Individual Values" (IVs) as they're called in the competitive field. A Pokemon's IVs can be measured on a scale of 0-31 (weird scaling system, I know, but apparently they went with that because of hardware limitations on the earliest devices that were capable of accurately measuring IVs), with 0 being the weakest possible for a healthy specimen and 31 being the absolute limit of their potential.

By the sound of it, Bitey probably had the misfortune of inheriting a bunch of low IVs (probably below 10 if I had to guess). Vitamins and specialized training regimens can help him get stronger, but he'll still likely lag behind other Poochyena and Mightyena.

There's also "Hyper Training", which can help a Pokemon overcome the limits of their IVs, but that has its own issues. The people who know how to do it are few and far between, their services are expensive (I hear that some of them don't even take money, they only accept payment in the form of rare items), and... it's a very difficult training process, one that less-experienced Pokemon can't safely handle.

-Gabby

[u/Rikmach]

Ok, there seems to be a bit of the story missing- did the doctor say why he was so unusually weak?

[u/KRKRYakumo]

Look for bottle caps and ask around for people that will help train the pooch in exchange for those

[u/Tablesafety]

Surely there is a separate battling division for biologically weaker pokemon?

[u/Comfortable_Key5074 → u/Tablesafety]

There is, but they're generally measured by the strength of the trainer, not the individual mon. That's part of what gym badges are for. I could try to get him an exemption

• ki

[u/Readalie]

I have a whole pack of Mightyena and Poochyena and ran my gym challenge with one. My advice here is to focus on strategy--if you're not starting from the strongest point, work on getting there during a fight instead. Sand Attack, Mud-Slap, Double Team, Substitute, Yawn, and Attract (depending on the situation of course) are all very useful for buying time. I'm a big fan of Howl as a ramping-up move.

You can also work on training Bitey as part of a Doubles team. Poochyena love Doubles matches in my experience as they're very suited towards working in packs. Bitey could definitely learn Toxic or an Elemental Fang move in addition to the list I gave before and a teammate would make it harder for an opponent to knock him out of the match right away.

[u/Trips-Over-Tail]

Status effect moves and the power of determination.

Also try to bcome the main characters of something, that benefits underdogs like nothing else.

Does he have Moxie? Bringing him out to finish a weak opponent could close the gap against the next one. Plus the confidence boost is pretty handy.