Battle tactics.
aka how not to get destroyed by your team’s 4x weakness.
note: i do not apply in-game turn based restrictions !
Years of practice, diligence, constantly pushed to the edge of his own ability by a rival with a team almost perfectly crafted to counter his own with a type advantage to boot, rare is the occasion that a battle truly tests him.Patient and ruthless, Maxie is known most for using terrain to his advantage, and does so almost without parallel, at least on his own terrain. Intimate knowledge of Hoenn and its physical components often come into play as he often focuses on unbalancing opponents, be it unsettling shale from a hillside, kicking up loose dust, splintering stalactites or unsettling dirt under a heavy opponents feet to slow them down.
Many of his pokemon, being rock and ground types, are slow and bulky, but their blows are devastatingly powerful. Supereffective moves are often deflected through frequent use of earth power, glancing blows off jagged rock and using the remnants to counter immediately. Those that cannot, such as crobat and torkoal, sometimes use vision-obscuring tactics, filling a field with smoke, ash, or dust to their benefit. This is also, incidentally, his preferred way to escape a battle without being pursued, as well as how to outmaneuver flying types.
Few blows however, literally or physically, are too low.
Ordering his pokemon to put a trainer directly into harm’s way is far more rare, but not something he is above if it will make the difference between himself and an escape: forcing someone to choose between catching him and saving themselves from a landslide is never going to make him lose sleep – the exception perhaps being to do so to his own grunts.
He draws the line at excess cruelty, and will generally cease to continue hitting an opponent once they seem to soundly be buried. Battles are a tool and a test of power, not an excuse to murder, unless the circumstances are dire and the opponent is truly deserving.