Okay, so here's how the Elite Four went down...
Sidney went down pretty easily. OHKO’d each one of his Pokémon, not taking any damage aside from ~50 on Buffy from Sharpedo’s Surf. Spike took out Mightyena and Absol (despite my initial intentions to not use Spike against Absol due to Aerial Ace, Spike ended up being out and I decided to just go with it) with Brick Break and Cacturne with Fire Punch, Angelus took care of Shiftry with Aerial Ace (fortunately, on the switch-in he used Double Team in vain), Buffy’s Thunderbolt dealt with Sharpedo.
Phoebe got a little more complicated. D’Hoffryn’s Crunch left her first Dusclops with 1 HP (argh), giving time to confuse D’Hoffryn. Both moves I tried with him ended in confusion damage, which gave her more time in which to set up a Future Sight and a Curse, forcing me to switch out for Lorne, and I decided to just stick with Lorne throughout the battle, rather than healing D’Hoffryn and switching, and then switching back when she likely would counter with her Ice Punch Dusclops. Lorne took a bit of damage and I had to use a Hyper Potion, but the rest of the battle was otherwise pretty smooth.
Glacia went down more easily than Phoebe. Spike OHKO’d Glalie, and I switched to Buffy when Glacia sent out her first Sealeo, unfortunately allowing for a Hail setup. Buffy easily handled the two Sealeos, though, and Glalie number two went down in a single hit. Walrein whittled Buffy down a bit with a Surf on the switch-in, so I healed with a Hyper Potion and took a Blizzard before Thunderbolting it dead in one hit.
Drake went surprisingly smoothly. I was worried about Anyanka taking down an entire team solo, but she handled it with aplomb. She OHKO’d Shelgon with a crit hit Ice Beam (I’ll never know if she would’ve done so without one). I wasn’t worried about OHKOing Altaria or the two Flygons due to the 4x damage, and they went down in a single hit. I was a little nervous about Salamence, but even he went down in a single hit.
Now, before Steven, even though nobody was even in the red (the lowest was D’Hoffryn, in the yellow), I decided to break the no healing items outside of battle rule. I decided to count the end of the Elite Four as some sort of break, mostly because I was terrified Steven would rip my team apart even without that advantage.
Buffy took out Skarmory with a single Thunderbolt, which stopped it from setting up anything, fortunately. Aggron followed, of course, and I could easily predict the coming EQ, so I blocked with Lorne and then put in Angelus, who took entirely minimal damage from the Thunder that hit and then OHKO’d with his own EQ.
Cradily took a bit more work. Confuse Ray got Spike on the switch-in, and after my bad luck with confusion with Phoebe, I decided a Persim Berry was a better decision than simply attacking. Cradily got in an Ancientpower, but it did almost nothing, and I got it down to about 1 HP with Brick Break. It was able to confuse me, but I knew Steven would Full Restore and used another Persim Berry while he did that, then Brick Break OHKO’d the second time.
Metagross came next, and I was of course a bit nervous. I switched to D’Hoffryn, hoping he’d try to hit Spike with an EQ, but he used Psychic instead. The overall damage was still minimal, but he survived my Flamethrower and got in a Meteor Mash…which managed to hit, with a critical hit, and raise Metagross’s attack no less, taking out D’Hoffryn. A bit demoralized, but not ready to panic yet, I sent out Lorne, who fortunately finished him off with a Surf.
I kept Lorne in on Claydol and Surfed, but Claydol held on by a bit and managed to set up a Reflect. Steven Full Restored as per my prediction, so I Surfed again…and Steven Full Restored again, so I Surfed again, and then one last Surf took Claydol out.
Finally came Armaldo. I switched to Anyanka (I predicted he would actually use Ancientpower this time, since he wouldn’t be setting anything up unlike with Claydol), took an Ancientpower which didn’t do much damage, and a Water Pulse made a dent in Armaldo’s HP and confused him. He still managed to attack through his confusion, but another Ancientpower didn’t even get Anyanka down below half HP and there was no stat boost. One more Water Pulse…
…and Armaldo went down.
And so at the conclusion of my run, I'm pretty satisfied. I'm a little sad that I lost D'Hoffryn, besmirching an otherwise perfect Elite Four run, but I'm extremely pleased that I've beaten my first Nuzlocke, and that there wasn't any huge disaster. Only two total Pokémon lost in an entire run is pretty decent in my opinion, especially considering how many I lost just over the first 6 badges in my previous attempt.
Going forward, I actually think I'm going to do a fourth gen -- specifically, Pearl -- run after all. Fourth gen is probably my least favorite generation, but I realized today that it's actually been quite some time since I played through the games, and I don't feel like I ever gave many of the Pokémon in those games a try, so it should be interesting.
