Pokemon catching guide explained

We all know the basic pokemon catching guide, paralyze, lower HP, use a ghost type, the question is, why do we have to do it?

Pokemon Catching Guide

For starters, let me tell you what is the guide we'll discuss about in this article.
The guide is quite simple actually, what you need for it are:

• Pokeballs of course.
• A pokemon with the move "False Swipe"
• A pokemon with the move "Thunder Wave"

What you have to do is to, first of all, paralyze the pokemon using thunder wave, once paralyzed, you switch to the pokemon you have with false swipe (or stay with the same pokemon if a pokemon has both thunder wave and false swipe).
You use false swipe untill you pokemon only has 1 HP left and throw pokeballs untill the pokemon is caught.
But why?
Well, following the guide is quite simple, there's nothing complicated but, why do we do that? After all, there are many other status effects such as burn, sleep, and poison (I do not count freeze because all of you may guess why it is not used- it is only used as a side effect with low chance, so chances are the pokemon will die before you manage to freeze it).
Why do we paralyze? Well, if we think of it, poison is known to damage a lot, even if we won't lower the pokemon's HP, it will die after a couple of turns, so it's obviously not an option when standing against a legend or any other pokemon who is hard to catch.
Sleep, well, sleep has to maintained, as sleep prevents a pokemon from using any move at all it seems like the perfect choice, but the problem is, a pokemon can wake up anytime, the sleep effect can last for 3 turns or just 1 turn, and then you must put it to sleep again.
Well then, why don't we burn? Burn also cuts the pokemon's attack by half, so if it's a physical attacker it will also deal less damage, but, even if the burn's damage is small it's still damage, catching a legendary pokemon can take a lot of turns, so even if we don't lower it's HP, it is possible that the burn alone would kill him, also, we don't lower the pokemon's HP for no reason, pokemon's mechanics work so the lower the pokemon's HP is, the better the catch chance will be, burning a wild pokemon would risk killing it, and will prevent us from being able to lower it's HP. Paralyze on the other hand, does not the damage the pokemon and can only be cured by moves that cure status effects (which affect all the other effects too) or by items (which can't be used by wild pokemon). The only problem is when a pokemon is a ground or electric type, as they are immune, well, in that case I'd recommend using sleep.



Alright, so we chose to paralyze, makes sense doesn't it? Well, but why false swipe? The answer is a quick one, false swipe is a move that does not kill the target, basically by using false swipe you can lower a pokemon's HP to 1 HP (The lowest HP you can get a pokemon to) without risking the pokemon dying.

Hopefully, now you know why you catch pokemon that way instead of just doing because "That's what the guide says" :)