Life Orb actually sucks; here's why

[BKCplaysPokemon]

I hope the nuanced use of a semicolon in the title has some people reconsider losing 10% of their health

[immagns]

I heard magic guard as magikarp for like the first 4 minutes of the video and I was waiting for the hottest Ryan gosling joke to come together with the life orb magikarp exaggeration gag but then I realized that I got plain goobed by my ears

[bananaspice]

Nidoking is a fun example where Life Orb is so good that people never expect you to run anything else. So it's why in gen 8 OU Scarf Nidoking was so good. Just nuking things like Garchomp and Lando with Ice Beam out of the blue is a good surprise factor.

[free_playstation_]

I'm a pretty inexperienced player but I remember that when I laddered Gen 4 OU sometime around 2017 with an account lost to time, I forgot to give my Jolteon an item for several battles (I don't think there was a warning for no items back then? Either that or I somehow didn't see it) and after I gave it Life Orb for damage I was losing more often due to recoil, so I gave it Leftovers instead lmao

[XtheGAMEmaster]

Life Orb sometimes feels like giving your Pokemon a Toxic Orb and taking damage every time you attack instead of on every turn- You actually take *more damage from 2 attacks with Life Orb* than you do from 2 turns of Toxic damage, and that's not including other chip damage. You REALLY have to justify using it over the other options depending on your style of team. This is partially why I prefer the boosting items of Expert Belt or the Single-type boosting items when building- It doesn't reveal your item to keep opponents guessing, it still boosts your attacks (albeit not as much), but with the trade off of not being worn down nearly as easily over the course of the game.

[OshawottLuke]

Experts report a drop on Life Orb usage of 90% in the upcoming month

[arcanusafonso]

Most of the issues with Life Orb being less and less common as generations go is that we got progressively better items to put on "offensive threats that need to change moves". Gems (when legal), mega stones, Z-moves, AV and Boots are all amazing at giving either bursts of power or longevity necessary to set up and win

[luckylucas]

I feel like Gen 7 subtly caused the shift away from Life Orb. A lot of would-be LO users used a Z Crystal instead. I think that went to show that the 30% boost was not as necessary for picking up KOs as many of us may have thought. It’s better to stack hazards and play around safe defensive pivots than to go all out, chip yourself, and die to priority moves. By Gen 8, I think the only common LO mons were Sheer Force and Magic Guard mons that don’t take the recoil anyway. Even still, a lot of these mons still seem to like Leftovers or Boots instead.

Edit: And like how the Knock Off buff in Gen 6 encouraged Knock Off usage in older gens, the shift away from LO in new gens precipitates through the old gens as well.

[tisha]

To add some math to how bad the drawback of life orb is, in order to break even with life orb i.e deal 10% extra damage (assuming not optimal ev spreads) you would have to 3hko before life orb (to 43.33 after), everything below that is a net negative. Given the longevity of these teams if your life orb mon doesn't have longevity to match defensive mons, this "break even benchmark" is turning more into 2hkos/ 2/3s of the defensive mon's hp, where you are not going over any major thresholds and it would just be better to run a defensive item. If a mon is doing this much damage to the tier's best defensive switch ins for it (not counting set up), the mon is probably broken and life orb won't do anything. If it isn't, the mon is losing hp everytime it attacks and will be dead weight quickly. The only time life orb would be useful is to go over the 3hko -> 2hko or the 2hko -> ohko thresholds on common targets which in practice don't matter given how common chip damage is in most formats.

[thebestworst]

When I play random battles and one of my Pokémon with life orb gets knocked off, half the time I’m happy

[superfrubblez]

I’ve always said that there are only two (and a half) reasons to use life orb.
1: You don’t take damage from it cuz magic guard and sheer force are Op
1.5: you have a way to heal off the damage you’re taking ie: regenerator mienshao, giga drain on venusaur in sub, grassy terrain with rillaboom
2: you are ready and willing to have your life orb pokemon die, likely early on.

If it’s neither of those, then life orb is probably not a great item for your Pokemon.

[bakurasensei]

Its all fun and games until Lucario extreme speeds you into the next life

[Joeyisagonnawin]

I've seen most people swap out Life Orb for Heavy-Duty Boots or Protective Pads. Instead of taking extra chip, remove it entirely. Hell, I've seen setup sweepers with Leftovers pretty often. With how much residual damage there is now, every bit of health counts.
Best example is Black Glasses Kingambit.

[gbpooky]

i think there's an additional aspect to today's games -- power creep and optimization. offensive pokemon would rather get as much damage as they can with a choice item -- and mixed attackers are much rarer nowadays than in the past (iron valiant, the most prominent mixed attacker, uses booster energy for its mixed set). you need as much damage as you can because bulky pokemon are bulkier, hits matter more when pokemon are getting an additional stab modifier off tera, there are things running around like specs dragapult hitting crazy neutral stab damage with shadow ball (which isnt even close to being an issue in the meta, its just so standard at this point). and speed has really shown itself this generation to be the be all end all, so many attackers that might have used life orb in the past are now using scarf and pivot moves, to outspeed and scout. i mean, the fact that darkrai runs timid max speed scarf, and needs it, is just testament to how much higher the bar is for speed.

[ricardoludwig]

A fun side effect of this is that, as ir becomes less common, it becomes much more distractive when not expected. Even DD dragapult usually opts for other items, but life orb adamant dragon darts blows past so many of it's checks with power alone, same went with zeoraora.

[arcanusafonso]

Another interesting dynamic that rose with people moving away from Life Orb is that more offensive team structures started to favor even more bursts of power, either with using more choice items or having resilient setup sweepers, which certaingly compounds the issue of offensive threats feeling even more unbeareable

[GuyInHisOwnWorld]

LO definitely isn't a bad item. But like you said, longevity and the nature of the game currently have made it less desireable and we have more options now.

[MacZephyrZ]

I feel like the opposite kind of happened to Rocky Helmet. Back in Gen 5 I remember people brushing it off and saying Leftovers were far more practice as a defensive item. However when Gen 6 came around with Mega Kanga people started using it on Ferrothorn as an answer and suddenly people realized the item was good, even after Kanga got banned.

Like it's not slapped on everything and anything but it's still considered a viable item to consider today.

[reunclus]

I recently switched LO to leftovers to my offensive starmie on my BW HO team a while ago and it did wonders… again emphasizing, offensive starmie on HO… mitigating stealth rock damage (once upon switching in and because it forces switches on the next) is so much better for my games

[matthewadams]

Something to say about Urshifu(SSOU Rapid Strike to be specific), LO would not be good on it. You either go banded for maximum nukage or go Protective Pads to avoid rocky helmet and iron barbs recoil(which is very common)