@lr-hr-rh:
Wait, "dreaded" grass trial? :blink: Did I miss something there? Now granted I didn't finish S&M (in part because I found the base game as bone easy as every other game before it) but I did at least finish the grass trial and all I really remember is two shotting the Lurantis with my hipster d-bag owl guy and being mildly annoyed by the flaming weather balls of a Castform. I'm not sure which parts of that are made more complicated by doing a Nuzlocke though :/
If you have anything but a grass type out, Lurantis uses a solar blade…. and with harsh sunlight going (provided by castform) it can spam it every turn.
100% accurate 125 damage stab on a fast artifically stat boosted monster is basically guaranteed to kill something.
However, the AI is easily derped, and if you have something out that has any resistance at all to a move, the AI won't use it. It's a way to cheese a lot of the trials. Put something out with resistance to the boss's attack type and it won't use it's best stuff. It's how team 4star survived most of their nuzlocke.
Basically if you'd had one of the other starters, it probably would have wiped your whole team out instead.
Similar goes for the Wishiwashi boss prior to that one... it has insane stats and sometimes gets Alomola as a partner... and if it gets off aqua ring then is basically constantly full healed every turn. But if it gets a baby wishi as its partner instead and you tear it down fast enough, its no issue.