Why People Have Stopped Playing Pokemon Trainer | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Shame they’ve lost competitive relevance because they’re one of the coolest designed fighters in the game and by far the best representative of Pokémon as a franchise

Still one of the most exciting additions to the franchise tbh

I lol'd pretty hard at "warcrimes for aerials". It's so true, Ivysaur has some of the best in the game. Which is pretty bizarre for a plant.

at the very least, they're one of the most entertaining characters to watch imo. Being 3 characters in one and each one having different strengths and weaknesses provides a good amount of variance in a match, plus seeing how different players pilot them

I think one thing you forgot to mention was that PT had actual type matchups in Brawl, further cementing Ivysaur as the worst of the 3. There are a plethora of fire based moves in Smash compared to water or grass.

One of their biggest problems compared to pyra and mythra (similar to shulk's issue) is that their swap is not as on demand and fully under control as Aegis. PT has to do a fixed cycle, meaning you can't just be squirtle whenever you want unless you potentially want to do two swaps successively. Combined with their swap being longer and stalling them, and having to do two swaps is a downtime and risk. Shulk similarly can't just be any monado mode he wants at any time. He's got a fixed duration and cooldown on his arts that he's got to constantly juggle. He can't just go to kill mode or tank mode at any split second he wants. Aegis at least can always swap to speed form or kill form at any time and their swap is smooth and fast.

PT's disadvantage is by far one of the most daunting factors when it comes to their pros and cons. They've been my main for the better part of a few months now but it can be difficult navigating through matches with the lack of speed and overall lag they have at times. Even then, they're one of the characters that kept me motivated enough to keep practicing Ultimate, so I'm thankful. Plus they're fun to experiment with.

You forgot to mention in Brawl they used to take more damage based off the element they got hit by. For example Ivy took more to fire attacks.

PT also has a insane amount of matchups to learn, courtesy of having 3 characters in one. It may be easy to play each pokemon to their strengths, but sometimes you might be matchup checked if you do not know how to fight against a character with just one pokemon.

Someone in the PT discord was talking about convincing Quidd to drop out of college so that we would have some sort of representation. We're starving out here man

I was honestly expecting a why everyone plays for PT, excited to hear your thoughts as always Edit: upon watching the video the mental aspect of playing pt is interesting. I've never really thought about the mental aspect of learning a character with a very unorthodoxed play style IG that's why we don't see many olimar or pacman players

Pokemon Trainer was my main in Brawl and when Red returned in Ultimate he went back to my main. I honestly don't care if he isn't used highly in competition play because I still like Red.

Pokémon Trainer is my main so I've been looking forward to this video for a while. Honestly mostly what I expected - having to learn 3 individual movesets and 3 times as many matchups make them probably the hardest character to just pick up and learn, especially compared to many other characters who are both simpler and higher tier. That said I still think they're an incredibly fun and rewarding character if you put the time in - being able to just entirely switch archetypes in the middle of the match is so freeing, especially as someone who tends to get bored playing one character after not too long.

I'm a current PT main that dropped the character for all the reasons you mentioned. However I actually came back to playing them after a year because I missed the feeling of always learning something new about a matchup. Yes it's a lot of work as you said but I also think that's part of the fun of ultimate.

“warcrimes to aerials” i was not expecting that holy shit lmfao

I think a new series that should exist is like “Why MORE people should play _____” and it details a character’s strengths that are good in the current meta but not much people play them unless it’s too similar to “Why No one plays.” Some characters who fit that bill are like Terry, Young Link, Ness, or Samus

"No one" is definitely not the term I'd use.

As an ex-PT main, I'm so happy you made this video. I know my reason for stopping, but wondered what made everyone else stop

Another reason why PT fell off is because of severe nerfs. Ivysaur lost his broken dair. Yea it's still good but before it was literally easier to hit the sweet spot than sour spot. He also had vine whip lose significant knockback taking away a vital kill option. Razor leaf also gained a few frames in start up.

The biggest buff they should have done is be able for you to switch "backwards". (Squirtle switching to Charizard without needing to go to Ivysaur first)