Taking a water break between explanations, Xia Chi keenly spotted a comment in the chat and countered, "That's not right, my friend. Every Pokémon is unique. There's no such thing as one that only exists to fill out the Pokédex."
"The same goes for items. There are no useless items, only useless Trainers."
Huh, why did that line sound so familiar?
Setting that strange thought aside, Xia Chi continued, "Every item can be useful for a particular Pokémon or in a particular matchup."
As expected, the chat immediately started pushing back.
"Is that really true? Leftovers restores 5% HP every ten seconds. What does a Red Card do? Send the opponent off after they hit you?"
"Clearly, the guy above has never been beaten senseless by a Spikes team. Red Card is ridiculously strong on those teams, okay? If you want to talk about useless items, the Iron Ball is the truly useless one."
"Exactly. It halves your Speed and takes away your ability to fly or levitate. That's not even a question of whether it's useful anymore. It's pure downside!"
"Calling it pure downside is a bit unfair. An Iron Ball can slow down an attacker on a Trick Room Team, though it's not that useful. The Eject Button is the only real garbage here. What's the point of switching out after one hit? Screwing over your teammates?"
"Can you play a match with the Eject Button? It's not that we don't believe you, streamer. We just want to broaden our horizons."
Xia Chi was getting tired of explaining anyway, and so many newcomers to the stream were questioning the usefulness of certain items.
So he went along with it. "Okay, let's move on to a practical demonstration and see how to use these items everyone agrees are useless."