User:Blueeighthnote/StrangeStuff/1

If you really think about the metagame of Tower of Saviors, in some way it is similar to competitive Pokémon battling. Some Pokémon is used more because they are much more powerful, and some are appreciated for its utility. This is similar to how in Tower of Saviors, there are leaders that can dish out incredibly high damage, while some of them are geared towards the ability to problem-solve.

Think about this. You have the commonly-used leaders as your repertoire, and Madhead is your opponent. The mastermind will make ultimate stages that the player has to conquer, analogous to a Pokémon battle where you must somehow defeat the enemy's team using only one Pokémon......It is a weird analogy, but considering how many traits in Tower of Saviors can be reflected by the tiering of Smogon, the forefront of competitive battling community, I really cannot help but thinking about the connections between Tower of Saviors and competitive Pokémon.

If you are really into nerdy stuff, read on!

Background Information of Pokémon
In competitive Pokémon battling, two players will face each other with a Pokémon team. The number of Pokémon used varies from 1, 3, 4, or 6, but six Pokémon is the format most commonly seen.

The traits defining a Pokémon include type, ability, stats (HP, Attack, Defense, Sp. attack, Sp. Defense, Speed), and movepool. When battling, the factors that can change a certain Pokémon are their EV spread (Effort Value), nature (affecting stats slightly), held item, and the moveset. While these might seem like a lot of information, it all boils down to choosing the right Pokémon and customizing it, so that it can function in a team.

I will explain the above-mentioned features and describe it using Tower of Saviors (ToS) logic:


 * Type: This is similar to attributes in ToS, except there are 18 types in Pokémon. The type chart is extremely complicated since each type can offensively dominate certain types and defensively diminish or nullify certain types, compared to only 5 attributes in ToS. All you need to know is that the type relationships exist in Pokémon (just like other RPG games), but more complex.
 * Ability: This is difficult to explain because some abilities have a wide range of effects, from boosting certain attacks to summoning weather, from changing the priority of attacks to nullifying a certain attribute's attack, and so much more. Think of it as the Leader Skill or Team Skill of ToS, even if both of them works differently.
 * Stats: The offensive stats (Attack, Special Attack, and Speed) are related to the Pokémon's offensive capabilities. The defensive stats (Defense, Special Defense, and HP) translates to a Pokémon's defensive capabilities. While physical and special splits do not exist in Tower of Saviors, there are differences between natural damage (without activating skills) and bursting damage (using active skills), so I will try to do my best to translate them:
 * HP - This is exactly the same as in Pokémon. Some teams have naturally more HP than others, but for the most part, a usual "team" in ToS has 15,000 to 22,000 HP. However, it is more difficult to recover HP in Pokémon because they usually need to use the move "Recover" manually to restore quickly, or they have to rely on passive recovery such as the held item "Leftovers", both of which are in contrast to Heart Runestone recovery in ToS. Similar logic applies to the enemy's HP as well, although depending on the difficulty, the enemies have an unfairly high HP, usually at the range of millions, if not tens of millions. The leader multiplier still proves to be enough to take them down, though.
 * Attack - When a Pokémon uses a physical move, it uses its attack to damage the opponent's Pokémon. Instead of directly translating, I instead translate the attack to The Leader's Multiplier. With a higher multiplier, the damage can also substantially increase without having to activate active skills.
 * Defense - The Pokémon can reduce the physical damage with higher Defense. The way defense works in ToS is different since I will translate it to the Team's Recovery since recovery is a major aspect of ToS. If a player is able to recover without using active skills, they have high defensive capabilities. This can be done by either literally "shielding the attack" with team skill or leader skill, "recovery multiplier" to improve recovery, or "alternate ways of recovery" by altering the recovery formula. However, if an enemy simply has higher attack than team HP, then the enemy will take the team down, unfortunately. While enemies do not work the same way in ToS, the defense stat exists as a way for an enemy to reduce the team damage slightly.
 * Special Attack - When a Pokémon uses a special move, it uses its special attack to damage the opponent's Pokémon. I translate this to the active skill damage or a short damage boost to increase burst damage.
 * Special Defense - The Pokémon can reduce the special damage with higher special defense. In ToS, if a team can reliably use active skills to help survive enemy attacks, the team has a high special defense. For an enemy, it will be "Enemy Skills", using special effects to block certain attacks, certain trickery so that only attacks fulfilling the conditions can penetrate. While no attacks can miss on the enemy, the certain enemy can avoid damage altogether with "Enemy Skills", perhaps akin to a Pokémon dodging an attack.
 * Speed - This is directly translated into Active Skill Cooldown. Because ToS is not a 2-player game, the speed does not matter, but the rate of the active skill that can be opened matters a lot when dealing with enemies.
 * Movepool - A Pokémon can learn a lot of attacks. Each move can do different things, such as physical moves dealing physical damage, special moves dealing special damage, and status moves doing various things such as boosting or battlefield setup. There are also some special mechanisms, but a Pokémon can only learn 4 moves at most to be brought into the battle - the 4 moves become its moveset.
 * EV - Ultimately a Pokémon can increase its offensive stats or defensive stats by carefully training a Pokémon to increase the stats in a way the trainer wants. There are a lot of technical details, but these are all related to methods of training. In ToS, this translates to the members that the player chooses, because each member can alter the stats (HP, Attack, Recovery) of the team somewhat. (I did not mention IVs, the individual values, since they do not exist in ToS and they are just to personalize each Pokémon, but every Pokémon trainer will seek for a Pokémon with as many perfect IVs as possible in most cases.)
 * Nature - This does not exist in ToS, but in Pokémon, each individual has a nature that may increase one stat by 10% and decrease another stat by 10%.
 * Held Item - Each item can customize and produce a wide range of effects, such as locking a Pokémon in one attack, passive recovery, damaging opponents' Pokémon if they make contact, or to hold on an attack at full HP (once). There are a lot of held items that a Pokémon can use, but it ultimately boils down to some commonly-used ones.

Also, one important aspect of competitive battling is switching Pokémon. Unfortunately, in ToS, we cannot switch teams mid-battle, and we cannot switch members, either.

Still, here are some flashy mechanisms in Pokémon that can also be explained by ToS logic:


 * Mega Evolution: Introduced in Generation 6, some Pokémon can further transform into a higher stage mid-battle via Mega Evolution, but it must hold a Mega Stone as a held item. This is similar to "fusion/combination/switching" in ToS, transforming a certain monster by combining (Cyborgs, Fenrir, Immortal Heroic Spirits) or just utilizing magic to self-transform (Revolutionary Heroes).
 * Z-Move: Introduced in Generation 7, a Pokémon can use a Z-Move, which is a stronger version of a move, but only once, and it must hold a Z Crystal. This is similar to using a Dragonary Craft (except it can be used twice), where the player can make a one-time damage boost or utilizing craft to clean up boards or enchanting runestones.