Poison vs. Toxic

Footnote

Footnote

Now, I'm not a NetBattler, so I'm sure there's a perfectly good answer to this question that I'm just not aware of. Why is Toxic preferred to regular poison? I'm taking a look at the threat list on the RMT threads, and none of them seem to be stallers. The ones that are usually have Rest or Aromatherapy or are immune to Poison.

Now, I know how poison and toxic work. But in order for toxic to be better than normal poison, the victim has to be out for at least four rounds. If it's only out for one or two rounds, normal poison is better! Toxic hardly seems to have a place in the switch-happy, counter-using metagame I keep hearing so much about.

Is it because Toxic is more accurate? Is it because, without Toxic, stallers would be used more often? If you have the time, please help me to understand this. Thanks!
 
Toxic forces you to switch out or somehow cure your status in-battle (which very few Pokemon have time or room for). A last Pokemon'd Blissey is going to die from Toxic as well. A Milotic that gets Toxiced will die sooner or later no matter how often it Recovers, but if he's Poisoned he can just keep on recovering with Marvel Scale. Normal Poison is also only inflicted through Poison Gas which is just a poor excuse of a move, and for the rest is usually seen as a bonus side effect of moves like Sludge Bomb. Some people say it gets in the way of burn or something, but personally I've rarely (if ever) had a problem with this.

Toxic stalling as a strategy to base yourself around is really naive thinking by the way.
 
Mekkah said:
Toxic forces you to switch out or somehow cure your status in-battle (which very few Pokemon have time or room for). A last Pokemon'd Blissey is going to die from Toxic as well. A Milotic that gets Toxiced will die sooner or later no matter how often it Recovers, but if he's Poisoned he can just keep on recovering with Marvel Scale. Normal Poison is also only inflicted through Poison Gas which is just a poor excuse of a move, and for the rest is usually seen as a bonus side effect of moves like Sludge Bomb. Some people say it gets in the way of burn or something, but personally I've rarely (if ever) had a problem with this.

Toxic stalling as a strategy to base yourself around is really naive thinking by the way.
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Yes, Mekkah, I understand how the mechanics work. Toxic stalling may be a naive strategy on NetBattle, but it's another story when you're battling with the rules set that I come from. Hence I was asking you why it didn't seem to be used on NetBattle. But, thank you for putting me in my place. You know, in case I didn't make it clear enough that I had no experience with the standard metagame.

By the way, you did answer my question, so thanks. In future, I may just use private messages for very minor topics such as this one. So, my apologies on that front.
 
I'm not trying to put you down or anything (just to clear up) - I prefer your interesting topics over "countering Landshark #13267812368723 hey I suppose Weavile can Ice Punch this". So feel free to ask around, though if you have a lot of these questions I suppose it would be handier to just stick them to one thread.

Just out of curiosity, what is the ruleset you are battling in?
 
Thanks for clarifying. I'm sorry for being so sensitive, there. I misunderstood what you were saying.

The rules we used were all the standard rules included in games like Colloseum (Sleep Clause, Freeze Clause, etc.), no legendaries of any sort, no Hidden Power, and usually no Pokemon with 600 BST. But, since we battled at level 50, you couldn't use Dragonite or Tyranitar anyhow. I have a Metagross and my friend has a Salamence, but after using them for a while, we decided that Metagross was just too good. Salamence's double weakness to Ice mitigated its power somewhat.

Anyhow, we used a pretty big variety of Pokemon and had a lot of fun, interesting battles. I guess I believe that if we had a bracket without those Pokemon here at Smogon, it would be the biggest bracket yet since many more Pokemon would be viable options. I don't know that this would be true, but I'd like to try it out.

It wasn't a rule, but we also tended to play double battles a lot more than single battles. See, one of the guys I battled with had never competitively battled before Advance. So when we started, most of us were like you guys here. We thought, "Double battles are OK, I guess. But, where's the strategy?" But the new guy (who got good at battling real fast), preferred double battles so we played some, only a few at first. The more we played, the more we realized that double battles were where the real strategy was. We came up with all sorts of cool combos. Some weren't viable (too much setup, etc.), but some turned out to be killer. And we found double-battles to be so much more interesting than the predictable switching of single battles.

So, I know you didn't ask for my Pokemon life-story, but that's why I'm a proponent of double battles and no legendaries. I think that if people tried playing with these rules (not exclusively, but once in a while), then they'd really have a lot of fun with all the new options available to them.
 
First, everything except the "we are pathetic Pokemon with only 2 moves" group learn Toxic. That means that every Standard Pokemon gets Toxic, and some are bound to be walls that can use it effectively. Toxic is a lot more scary than normal Poison because while normal Poison doesn't do too much damage over a long period of time, Toxic damage builds up to a lot.
 
Great Sage said:
First, everything except the "we are pathetic Pokemon with only 2 moves" group learn Toxic. That means that every Standard Pokemon gets Toxic, and some are bound to be walls that can use it effectively. Toxic is a lot more scary than normal Poison because while normal Poison doesn't do too much damage over a long period of time, Toxic damage builds up to a lot.
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Cool. So I was more-or-less right when I said that without at least the threat of Toxic, Recovery Pokemon like Blissey and Milotic would be nightmares. Makes sense.

Oh, and that's also a good point about everything being able to learn Toxic. That had slipped my mind, since I put it on so few Pokemon. I wonder why everything can learn Toxic, anyhow? They could have changed that bewteen 2nd and 3rd gen if they'd wanted to, so there's probably a reason. Poison-types could have used that advantage, though. They kind of got the shaft in a lot of ways.
 
Footnote said:
Cool. So I was more-or-less right when I said that without at least the threat of Toxic, Recovery Pokemon like Blissey and Milotic would be nightmares. Makes sense.

Oh, and that's also a good point about everything being able to learn Toxic. That had slipped my mind, since I put it on so few Pokemon. I wonder why everything can learn Toxic, anyhow? They could have changed that bewteen 2nd and 3rd gen if they'd wanted to, so there's probably a reason. Poison-types could have used that advantage, though. They kind of got the shaft in a lot of ways.
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To be honest, while poison sucks as an attack, A LOT of poison types rock. Gengar has been an OU staple forever, Tentacruel terrorizes UU, The Nidos are damned unpredictable, Weezing enjoyed quite some status as an alternative physical wall. Crobat has the potential to be a real menace this gen, it is the fastest Schemer. I have a great liking for Venomoth, who may also wreak havoc in UU this gen. Having resistance to Fighting, Bug, Grass, and Poison aren't that bad either.
 
Toxic in GSC reverted to normal Poison after switching, but now it remains as Toxic, which still makes it dangerous if you don't get rid of it. Even Milotic which receives a defense boost from status doesn't like it.
 
Deck Knight said:
To be honest, while poison sucks as an attack, A LOT of poison types rock. Gengar has been an OU staple forever, Tentacruel terrorizes UU, The Nidos are damned unpredictable, Weezing enjoyed quite some status as an alternative physical wall. Crobat has the potential to be a real menace this gen, it is the fastest Schemer. I have a great liking for Venomoth, who may also wreak havoc in UU this gen. Having resistance to Fighting, Bug, Grass, and Poison aren't that bad either.
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Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of many Poison-types, too. We share a liking for Venomoth, and I have a great 2v2 team composed only of Amorphous Egg-Group Pokemon where my Muk with Memento is key. I think I'm just bitter from 1st gen when Psychic types ran around unchecked, so using Poison and Fighting types was suicidal. It would be nice if Poison attacks were super-effective against something besides Grass, though.
 
Well, Poison was super effective against Bug in RBY, but GF changed it to neutral for some strange reason, maybe to help Parasect... And Toxic is usually used merely as an annoyance to force switches for Spikes damage and buy more time for setup; things like Blissey and Milotic are usually killed by something else, though Toxic does help.
 
Toxic in GSC reverted to normal Poison after switching, but now it remains as Toxic, which still makes it dangerous if you don't get rid of it. Even Milotic which receives a defense boost from status doesn't like it.
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No, Toxic in RBY reverted to normal poison after switching. In GSC it remained as toxic as before.
 
Surgo said:
No, Toxic in RBY reverted to normal poison after switching. In GSC it remained as toxic as before.
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Toxic didn't stay Toxic until the 3rd Gen. That's why in GSC Toxic Trapping was so important. Your staller in GSC had to use Mean Look or Whirlpool or something like that in order to ensure the Pokemon stayed in while the Toxic worked. When it changed in R\S, there was initially a massive panic as the best counter (switching) had been removed. Early R\S logic dictated that you HAD to have an Aromatherepy/Heal Bell user on your team or Toxic would destroy you. :D
 
I'm mistaken, then. Which is odd, because I could have sworn I saw a surge in the importance of toxic in early GSC.
 
Surgo said:
I'm mistaken, then. Which is odd, because I could have sworn I saw a surge in the importance of toxic in early GSC.
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I'm pretty certain, but that doesn't mean I can't be wrong. The surge in Toxic really came in GSC because stalling in general was such an easy tactic before they limited the total EVs (stat exp) a Pokemon could have. And when the entire game is essentially a stall war (since direct attacks had little hope of bringing down the better tanks), Toxic is simply your best friend.
 
Surgo said:
I'm mistaken, then. Which is odd, because I could have sworn I saw a surge in the importance of toxic in early GSC.
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The popularity of Toxic was because it allowed teams to be worn down slowly, as it negated Leftovers even after reverting to normal Poison.
 
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