MOTW: Curse

Heeeyyy Trainers! How are all of you guys and gals doing? Training hard for Nationals, I'm sure. Well this week, I'm gonna cover a move that I'm sure a lot of you have seen in your competitive lives. That's right, we're gonna take a look at Curse! 

I'm sure most of you know what Curse does but hey, a refresher course never hurts! Curse is a Ghost-Type Status-Category move with 10 PP (max 16), and no definied Base Power or Accuracy. Yes folks, as of Generation V, Curse actually has a type! No more of those ???-Type shenanigans. Now, let's get onto what the move actually does. Curse is a funny little move. For every type but Ghost, curse ups the user's Attack and Defense by one stage, but drops the user's Speed stat by one stage. This makes it a great move for those who wish to take advantage of the move Gyro Ball. By increasing Attack AND lowering Speed, you're effectively increasing the power of the move twice in one turn!

Curse does something a bit different with Ghost-Types however. True to its name, when a Ghost-Type uses curse, they actually cut their own HP by 1/2 of their maximum HP (maximum, not current, you'd best remember that!) and lays a curse on the opponent! Spooooky, huh? Now, some of you might be asking what a Curse does exactly. A Pokémon afflicted with a Curse loses 1/4 of their MAXIMUM HP. That's right Trainers, a Cursed Pokémon with full HP with faint in four turns! Yikes, talk about a powerful status effect! The Curse status-effect is an "unlisted" status effect, meaning that, similar to status ailments such as Attract and Leech Seed, it goes away when the afflicted Pokémon is withdrawn. So if one of your Pokémon gets Cursed, make sure to switch out!

Well everyone, I really hope that you all succeed at Nationals. Make sure to let eveyone here at PKMNcast know how you did, we'd love to know! Stay strong, Trainers! I know you'll all make us proud!

IOTW: Choice Band

Hey everybody. It's Travis. I've been a long time fan of It's Super Effective and Critical Hit, and I noticed that something was missing in the arsenal of returning articles on the website. That something was a discussion of Pokémon items. We have move and ability of the week already, so it just made sense to add in items. I will mostly focus on hold items and their relation to competitive battling, but I might talk about non-battle items at some point down the road.

 This week we will be looking at Choice Band. Choice Band has the awesome ability to boost the user's attack by 50%. That way, you don't have to waste a few turns building up a swords dance or dragon dance to get your attack up. So why doesn't every physical sweeper and its grandmother have choice band?

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