will defence lowering moves always lower the defence enough?

Question

I got wondering, if my lvl1 patrat used tailwhip on a lvl100 legendry steel type say then if my patrat used tackle after would it deal more than 1HP damage? i think not because it lowers defence so it would have mad crasy defences anyway. in short if i only deal 1HP damage before tail whip then will i deal more after even if the pokemon are the same ones in the example?

Comments

no offense but can you edit it so we can understand?

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there sorry

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Using tailwhip 6times will make the opponent's defense 1/4
but I'm not sure if the patrat will do more than 1damage

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Yeah like Kangmin says, the Patrat will probably not have enough Atk for it to do more than 1 damage (unless critical hit?); plus Steel resists it.

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Using smogons gen 4 damage calculater i worked out this.
Ok because its gen4 tackle does 35damagge and patrat does not exist so i used a ratata which has 56base atk similar to Patrats terrible 55 base atk.
Ok so lv1 Ratata has adamant nature (+atk -spatk) it has guts and flame orb to boost its atk by 50% it has 31ivs in all stats and 252 in atk, it has been baton passed to with +6 atk it now has 40atk i beleive.
It has had a helping hand from an arcanine giving it 80atk (this is at lv1 :) you would expect this stat at around lv 40-50.
The opponent is arceus rock, not steel but it still resists tackle.
It has no ivs in hp and def and has got -6 def giving it 55 def i think.
The move lands a crit and the damage is wow ....4hp max/1.1% max which is as good as 1%.
:O hope that cleared it up a bit, If arceus is lv1 though 13511260hp lost ....... ratata wins

Answer 1

That all depends on the condition. Since Tackle is weak against Steel, that's not helping. But, if you use strategies such as Baton Passing Attack Stat-increasing moves onto Patrat, more than 1HP has to be in some way, possible.

If the Steel-Type Pokemon has Defence lowers applied, than Patrat could have another way to deal some damage. Tail Whip is one way to do that, but as explained in the comments above, there's a good chance it still won't work, plus using it six times is a waste of time and the LV. 100 Steel-Type should have beaten it anyway. (LOL)

Hope this helps; remember, the answers to questions like this often is like this one - all about the conditions of the battle at the current stage.