I've been trying to come up with the perfect way to force my opponent to only use Struggle. But for some reason the enemy only struggles every other turn.

My first attempt looked like this:
(no EVs, items, and I didn't think nature mattered because it was a test)

Grumpig
-Taunt
-Torment
-Confuse Ray
-Psychic

1st turn:
Grumpig used Taunt
Enemy ___ fell for the taunt...Enemy ___ used ___

2nd turn:
Grumpig used Torment
Enemy ___ used struggle == great, it works

3rd Turn
Grumpig used ___
Enemy ___ used ___ == the enemy attacks here somehow

4th Turn:
Grumpig used ___
Enemy ___ used struggle == OK, so it worked again...


SO... I tried a different approach

Mr. Mime
-Encore
-Torment
-Reflect
-Psychic

And the same thing happened like in the first time. On the first turn after the enemy was tormented it used struggle, but on the second turn it was able to attack.

WTF is going on here!?

Well you should take the time to read Torment. Torment specifically says that it can not use the same attack twice in a roe, correct? Well struggle counts as a different attack, thus allowing for the opponent to keep selecting the same attack and letting it be succesful every other turn. A good move to add to that would be Spite, to lowers its PP by 5 when it struggles.

If they only have 1 damage dealing attack they are forced to use that due to taunt. Torment (sorry if I have it backwards...) makes it so that they can't use the same move twice. They use the move once, but then have no available moves so they struggle. Now they can use the move again... blah blah blah you get the rest

OK I got it.

I was thinking of putting Swagger into the mix. How do you think that would pan out?

I would stick with confuse ray, all it does is confuses them and raises their attacks, if they have a berry preventing it you pretty much just screwed yourself. Trust me it sucks it happened to me.

There's also a move (I think it is embargo) that will drop an opponent's move's pp to 0 if that opponent uses that move to kill you.

Yes, but if you get KOd that kind of ruins the whole strategy hmm.

That's called Grudge. Only ghosts have it. And it kind of does ruin my strategy.

I believe they have a move called Embargo as well, again too lazy to look but it does sound familiar.

Would Switcheroo/Trick be better by giving them a Choice item, then disable or torment them? Also because they keep the item even after they switch.

Embargo prevents use of items.



Sounds interesting, tell me how it works out. Of course, if they switch out, there's no guarantees that you'll have the tormenter/disabler out when they switch back in.

Well, all I know is that if he wanted to keep Grumpig or Mr. Mime in, those two can learn both Trick and Torment.

That would be a gret idea if it wer possible, and a move that can delete PP as it goes would make it poretty tough to beat, of course you would also need a healing move.

If you're trying to force your opponent to struggle, don't you think it would work better with a ghost Pokemon? I mean, struggle IS a normal move, so you'd be avoiding damage, but then again, there aren't many ghosts who can take big beatings while wasting away PP, 'cept for Dusknoir (it's my bloody opinion, don't go critisizing it!). I haven't checked for these moves on one, so I'm gonna check the psydex now...

Struggle still hits ghost types for some reason. I tried on a ditto where I sent Smeargle and used sketch (1 pp) as I switched to Gengar, then it used struggle and still damaged Gengar.

There's also the possibility that s/he wants them to recoil from their attack.

An interesting develpoment, but I think the earlier discussion has found that Struggle counts as a move. So even though Taunt and a Choice item would force the enemy to use an atttack, they would use Struggle on the second turn and therefore be able to attack again on the 3rd turn.

So I guess the Struggle strategy only works half the time, which isn't bad because I thought that Torment would totally fail after using Taunt or Encore.

But wouldn't it work for the Trick/Switcheroo + Disable strat?

Ok here is a way to make them use struggle 50%-100% of the time

Bannete Choice Scarf
Grudge
Trick
Torment
Shadow Ball

Turn 1

Bannete used trick
Opponent used attack move

Bannete used torment
Cant use same move twice
opponent used struggle

Bannete used grudge
opponent uses move
Bannete fainted
opponent lost all pp

But this would only be useful against one pokemon not a team

One problem; on turn 2 they get to attack first (most likely!) because they have the choice scarf...

Give it a different Choice Item, may I recommend Specs because you dont seem to run among many Spc sweepers besides Starmie, Alakazam, and Porygon in competitive battles.

Try the coice specs/band trick combo and use disable, better than forcing struggle.

Yeah that would work pretty well. Sounds good. Thanks!

Talking about Struggle, what would happen if I give my opponent a Choice Spec and then my opponent uses Struggle because of the Taunt/Torment combo? It would use Struggle until it gets switched out because choice Spec won't allow it to use another move?

Did you read anything in this post, I mean really I am decently sure I answered that exact same question ages ago in this exact post...