Why low Defense matters in Kaizo

Defense is the the highest average stat among my eight Kaizo winners. It's also the stat that's killed the most runs for me, although Speed is a close second. This paste explores why.

Defense is fundamentally different than Special Defense for two reasons: 1) It affects how much damage you deal to yourself in confusion, and 2) It protects you against two of the biggest random threats in the run, Explosion and Selfdestruct.

Self-confusion damage is extremely relevant for physical or mixed attackers. The best physical attackers have very high Attack or an Attack-boosting move. All of these Pokemon, with the exception of Bulk Up users, will do massive damage to themselves in confusion. In fact, they often lose battles in which they hit themselves on 4 consecutive turns. This means confusion usually needs to be healed immediately. However, this can be a major drain on healing items, since the only confusion-specific heal is Persim Berry. Wasting Full Heals, Lum Berries, and HP heals on confusion can lead to a loss later in the run when those items are needed. Furthermore, confusion can't be reliably healed when a Pokemon gets outsped, or when the confusion-inducing move is Teeter Dance, since all trainers will use that move randomly even while you are confused.

Explosion and Selfdestruct can kill a run at any time. If your defense is low enough, they are bigger threats than any other move, including Perish Song and Counter. They are also difficult to play around on the Elite Four because the AI favors using them at low HP, which is generally the best time to heal your Pokemon. A common situation is when the runner is at low to mid HP on the final Pokemon, and they are looking to heal before the next battle. They could heal immediately, but then they risk taking two or more hits if they fail to OHKO the final Pokemon, which could put them at dangerously low HP. So they instead weaken the Pokemon, perhaps inflicting a status such as confusion in the process, and then heal when they know they can finish it next turn. This is reasonably safe with a Pokemon that has high Defense, since it will usually take 50% damage or less from Explosion or Selfdestruct. However, Pokemon with low Defense are at risk of being OHKO'd, and sometimes the runner just has to hope the opponent doesn't have those moves.

Besides these two reasons, Defense is more important than Special Defense because there are more physical moves than special moves, and more Defense-lowering moves than Special-Defense lowering moves. A Pokemon with low Special Defense can often survive difficult fights because the opponent doesn't have any strong special moves. They can also find more frequent healing opportunities in dungeons and the Elite Four. This is considerably less likely with special moves.