When are status moves most useful for in-game playthroughs?

Question

I know that many people have told me that in regular playthroughs you should just attack and progress through the game, but I have seen a lot of other people use many status conditions for a regular playthrough, not even challenges like Nuzlockes or use-only-one-pokemon. So when are they most useful?

Comments

During Gym battles or E4, these Status moves play a crucial role. If you just attack with no tactics, you may lose to them.

Answer 1

Status moves are generally more common in Nuzlockes and other challenges than regular playthroughs. For instance, I once had to use Sing to stop an opponent from Dragon Raging my team.

They can be useful if you want to go through a long fight more easily (e.g. Swords Dancing your Lucario to wipe the floor with, say, Diantha). You can also stall out an opponent with burns and poison if you so choose.

It's overall more useful to just attack and keep attacking in regular playthroughs, though, as that's often fast enough.

Hope I helped!

Comments

Or use stat lowering moves to the point where they should switch but they aren't programmed to (cough my friend spamming smokescreen on everything to win)

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Stat lowering can be good for very tough opponents that can destroy you easily

Answer 2

You can win a Pokemon game using almost anything. A few people have successfully done that using no attack moves.

However, if you are not doing a weird challenge and care about your own time, then most status moves are useless. Although some status moves, like rest, toxic, recover, charm, heal bell, or light screen might make it easier to win battles, using them many times over the course of a game might take an extra hour. That time is much better used level grinding so your Pokemon can do more damage. As far as I know, there are 2 significant exceptions to this rule.

Moves that raise attack, such as swords dance, dragon dance, nasty plot, and quiver dance: Their purpose is pretty simple. Raising attack makes each move do more damage, so the Pokemon can more easily spam any attack and solo a gym battle or Elite 4 battle.

Accurate sleep moves, such as sleep powder, lovely kiss, spore, and yawn: Sleep moves often let your lower level Pokemon defeat a higher level opponent, so you can do less level grinding.