Whitelight

I believe the future Shelly reborn champions secondary type was fairy. She mentions that Titania had given her a love of "fairy tales" and also she has a xerneas iirc

Ok so I have set up a discord server for us to strategize on and such, my username is Whitelight#7487 if you wanna send me a friend request and we can add members from there and organize a bit more! I figure we can kind of just come to a consensus on how we wanna set it up once we get in the server. Hoping that we get to have a ton more good discussion about all this good stuff!

So I would like to piggyback onto this and say that those are some incredibly interesting strategies you bring up... I also want to say thank both of you so incredibly much for being active on this thread and sharing your experiences. I am nearing the close of the "first phase" of the mono project that I have been dreaming of for literally YEARS and I am getting more and more excited to tackle end game. I would also like to reach out to you akontistes, and see if you would like to join Cassandra and I on a project in the near future to determine an "optimal" end game team for each type! I think it would be fantastic to have as many viewpoints and opinions as we could get, especially since we each seem to have a niche type or two that we really enjoy building. Also, I feel like Grass probably will end up moving up a bit after all since I hadn't really factored in much trick room usage, and I also hadn't given a ton of priority to berry and harvest strategies which probably would have made the run much easier. All the more reason why I appreciate yalls advice and feedback so much. And a small update for me, I am currently on Samson in the water run, everything has been fairly smooth sailing so far after florinia who was a little more dicey than I would have liked. Swanna has been a surprising kingpin of my team with the flying support but I suppose that it will be trashed once I get my hands on gyrados. The one thing I have found a bit frustrating around the water type run is that it seems a lot of good water types are locked fairly far into the run... I finally can get my walrein and kindgra though so that is a big step in the right direction, but powerhouses like cloyster and golisopod (and of course the almighty magikarp) are unfortunately all the way in post renovation reborn :( Oh and one last sidenote... for simplicity and speed I do play on switch battle mode and use items... and unfortunately have sometimes resorted to revive/toxic stalling and other such "degenerate" strategies. I am trying to get better about it, but I feel what I lack in strategic initiative sometimes, I try my best to make up for in sheer determination!

You do bring up some good points about rain having no defensive buffs over Misty terrain, but I still thing having 50% boosted STAB water attacks on a swift swim user like Kingdra is SUPER potent. I think both Misty terrain and rain both have their distinct advantages and disadvantages though, while Misty terrain does give a huge special defense boost, it only boosts certain Fairy type attacks and does nothing for Speed, and also pigeonholes you into NOT using status conditions at all, if im not mistaken you can't even flinch on Misty terrain so that removes the use of any fakeout tech as well. It does do a good job of triggering some passive abilities of some of the Fairy pokemon too. On the other hand, rain may be easier to cancel out, but it is also easier to set up IMO with things like Drizzle, which admittedly forces you to use either pelipper, politoed, or kyogre, but that seems like an OK tradeoff for being able to utilize the effects with other pokemon. Rain also boosts ALL water type moves, and you can use it in CONJUNCTION with terrain so if you play it smart you can have things like volt absorb lanturn on a broken Electric Factory Field that becomes immune to electric AND a lot of water moves while still able to Dish out double boosted water moved of its own. Anyways, I figure it mostly boils down to personal preference too considering it is kinda hard to compare the two side by side given they do different things, but on another note I finished the flying run, the E4 was way easier than I thought it was gonna be. I'm just starting the water run and yikes I didn't think of how tough the early game was gonna be with electric and grass being the first two gyms and also having to deal with the pulse tangrowths.... luckily bibarel learns yawn and was able to sleep it long enough for golden to drop it'd defense with tailwhip through the floor and let me finish it off with some tackles and other assorted physical moves lol

Nice that you found some use foe crabrawler!!! That is another pokemon that I have unfortunately found pretty lackluster in my experience. As far as the terrain goes, I agree that it is potent especially for mono runs, but I can't help but feel a lot of the arguments you use against rain hold up the same against Misty terrain, the turn issue for example. The only "drizzle" for Misty terrain AFAIK is ok one of the tapu ultra beast pokemon, so you would have to burn a turn just setting up Misty terrain, which, fair enough it's a strong opening move. But where I see the struggle is it has 0 value against bullet punch pokemon, or sped up iron heads from Slush Rush alolan sandslash for example. I guess I'm coming more from a position that since Reborn introduced more in the terrain aspect, there is a little bit less overall strategy involved with the Misty terrain. It is more of a slap on buff than it is a game changer, and it can hurt you a bit too considering you can't use things like rest, hypnosis, thunder wave etc. I mean don't get me wrong when it works it really works, but there are some fringe cases where I actually held off using the terrain because it hurt me more than helped me especially by turning off status conditions, and I can't really think of a situation where rain would HURT a water team. And I do agree on a water team fire types pose no threat, I guess where I was coming from on that is that you can set up more fragile sweepers in the rain against a fire type without worrying about them tearing you up. Also! I'm at the E4 with flying types now. A lot of it has been a breeze but it's very glass cannon speed reliant without many viable tanks, so I'm learning certain things like accelerock can REALLY put a hurt on you, other than that it's been nice. I'll hit you up after I round out the rest of the runs, it shouldn't take me TOOOO long hopefully, especially since the last 5 runs should HOPEFULLY be the easiest.

Hmmm I hadnt fully considered how the pulse2 would affect speed and bulk in the early game especially on the cradily... I could see how that could be extremely annoying... I would probably have tried to reset until hitting a lucky freeze or something, but that does sound infuriating. As for the terrain, I agree that pretty much all the terrains are stronger than things like heavy winds or hail, but there are a few weather effects that I would say rival even the Misty terrain field, specifically rain. Rain is such an insane staple of a lot of water based teams that COMPLETELY neuters fire types to the point where almost every fire type in the game that isn't specifically taking water coverage moves like Grass knot just becomes a set up pokemon. Also there are so many abilities that trigger off of rain it is ridiculous, ranging from rain dish which is like... OK whatever, all the way to hydration, which allows you to essentially spam rest for free, which is bonkers especially on a maxed out defensive lapras set up. Given, rain doesn't always cancel out beneficial arenas, or give the huge special defense boost to fairy types, but I would also say that other than things like venoshock, sludge wave, and flash cannon there aren't that many special moves you would use to take out a Fairy team. At least when I am fighting Fairy types I almost always opt for things like iron head, bullet punch, cross Poison, things like that. It can be wild how even with all the huge boosts of Misty terrain the Fairy type still really crumples under physical attack pressure. But anyway, I can understand your reservation and if the terrains were more powerful I would probably agree but I think that the fact rain exists means that they aren't the absolute top tier. Also, super happy to hear you are willing to contribute to the teambuilding cause! I will probably end up starting a new thread once I get around to it, mostly because I would like to "whittle down" the number of pokemon to "I would definitely always have this on my team" and "I would never consider putting this on my team" just so it isn't so daunting of a task to build out the teams. I have put a lot of thought into it and you can't really give pokemon the axe purely due to stat totals because you have things like mawile who server a very specific purpose and also can be mega'd so they kind of overcome a really crappy stat total. On the other end you have stuff like Abomasnow, which may have some use early but it just pains me to put it on a team being so weak to so many different types and not having bulk OR speed to make up for it...

Wow huge props to you for going for the pulse2 run, that sounds like an absolute nightmare lol. I mean, I figure with the difficulty curve the pulse2 matters most in midgame, since early on there aren't enough stats in general for it to make TOO big a difference, and by late game you mostly have "optimized" teams you are running against anyway so the extra stats are pushed into weird places (like extra bulk on sweepers). I am honestly beginning to feel a little burnout from my mono runs now that I have done like 12 runs, but im so close I can taste it. Also, I understand what you mean about overriding field effects being busted, and I would mostly agree HOWEVER there is still some level of counterplay to it, such as with Misty terrain there are a few poison moves that can actually flip the terrain AGAINST you. Admittedly this doesn't really matter in most scenarios and you are much more likely to just be able to set up and sweep, but the terrain stuff is just the same as weather setting imo, you are making a conscious effort and sacrifices (team slot, move slot, or both) to gain benefit from the terrain or weather effect. Also I just feel like from a "ranking" point of view it would be disingenuous to exclude things that are too op and then put them lower on the list for not being strong enough. Anyway, I am looking forward to hearing how your ice run goes, and I will probably be amending this thread or creating a new one once I have all the runs caught up through the E4, since my next project is to build the "perfect teams" for each type. I feel like you would be a great person to bounce some ideas off of especially for the ice type team!

Hey! Thanks for the great feedback! Uli always appreciate hearing from different points of view, and you brought up some really nice points that I hadn't given much thought to. The use of trick room to set up a trick room team in particular is something I hadn't put too much thought into but that seems like a pretty good strategy. I also dumped jumpluff at some point just because stat wise it was beginning to really fall off, but I agree that it does breeze through the early game. I would be interested to see what your experiences end up being post renovated reborn, that to me is where it starts to draw a line in the sand "late game" wise. I would say though apart from the lack of speed, one thing that really makes grass rough in my opinion is having 5 weaknesses. It is especially important to cover weaknesses late game because there are so many different teams that utilize a sweeper, and if the sweeper is something you have a tough time preparing for it can be a REAL pain. My toughest matchup sweeper wise with grass was scizor, since other than hidden power you don't have access to any fire moves in the grass pokemon pool. It's unfortunate too that scizor is difficult for grass to handle because it is an incredibly efficient sweeper, most of the time loaded out with Swords dance and bullet punch as well as the technician ability to cheat in priority stab damage and technician boosted bullet punches. I do REALLY appreciate you bringing up your strategies though, because currently i am running everything to E4 and plan on coming back to each run and making a full optimization of every team before running them through postgame. Please let me know how the later half of the game treats you, as that was the part I struggled with the most.

Ok so another update, even though it's quite possible this thread has died and this is being played out to deaf ears XD. I have worked my way up the list to poison. All I gotta do is beat the E4. Poison is gonna end up going WAY down the list for me actually, just because I have struggled like hell with there being so many glass cannons you rely on. It's of course nowhere near as bad as some of the ridiculous BS down the list, but not having a terrain changer is a big minus and it doesn't hold up as well defensively as I had hoped. Move coverage can also be a bit lacking sometimes although access to salazzle has been really nice. Looking forward to plowing through the top 7, I'm kinda getting a bit burned out although I guess that is what happens when you have played through the main storyline 11 times lol.

It's been a bit since I have posted an update... I finished off the steel run and then blew through the ghost run at a good clip. I am now in post restoration fairy run and it is definitely a step up from the other rubs. Misty terrain has pulled a LOT of weight with the doubling of special defense for all my Fairy types and some nice boosts to my STAB fairy moves. I have found some other things that have helped a ton too, such as an insanely powerful azumarill strat to have it with the ability huge power as well as breeding the moves belly drum and aqua jet... essentially if I can get 1 turn respite to cheat in a belly drum I can sweep most teams that don't have other priority users or Sturdy/Focus Sashes. I recently unlocked some tech with a busted prankster whimsicott strategy utilizing leech seed and substitute. We will see how that ends up turning out... as long as I can get past adrienn which I don't see as tooooo much of an issue, I will get my mimikyu which will be a nice power boost too. Also just need to track down the mawilite for Mega mawile and I think I'll be pretty set... oh and how could I forget!!! Cosmic Power magic guard clefable is a powerhouse too. Anyway, tldr: completed Steel and ghost. Halfway through fairy and fairy has been pretty ezpz

So definitely think I'm starting to speed up a bit... I just got to post restoration in my Steel run. Considering I was still at the e4 in my normal run this time yesterday I would say that ain't too bad of time lol. Steel is my main type though so I guess I may be a little biased... I feel like there are just SO many good options though for Steel and with so many powerhouses you usually have the cure to whatever is killing you, other than Ground and fire being a general pain in the ass most of the time. But with access to a lot of boosting, especially the insane boost gear shift gives you on klingklang, I find that you can usually post up on a weaker mon in battle and then sweep from there. Ezpz. Looking forward to polishing off ghost next and then that will complete the lower half, "bottom nine" runs.

Ok so a little update on the normal run, parked halfway through the Elite 4, Elias is proving a little difficult but I just need to work it out. I am almost considering flipping the ranking back though, ever since I kind of worked out the normal type strategy... basically it MOSTLY revolved around ditto copying a teams most powerful mon and sweeping the opposing team with it. The difficult part is that it is a coin flip on tied speed for who is fastest. Other than that, silvally has been a HUGE asset, given in the late game you can just pop a memory into him before a battle to give yourself a pretty solid mon with a whopping 120 power physical move of your choosing on it. Mega kangaskan kicks some butt too, and even though the rest of the normal mon pickings are scarce other than my reckless staraptor, the run is going a lot smoother now. I guess it just really tanks in the midgame I would say after like Shelley, and then picks up again really strong at the circus and rides it out from there. Oh! Almost forgot skill link mincinno is a badass too! But yeah, I'll have to mull it over for a bit and see but the rankings might get flipped... not too sure.

I guess I view tinted lens as a better stand in since I've been locked in this "mono run" mindset for so long and any leverage you can get to get more type coverage is seen as critical to me. I wouldn't necessarily say I would completely write whimsicott off in general, but for the grass team specifically it felt like a waste to do so much setup when I couldn't find a really solid sweeper that had enough coverage to actually go the distance in most fights. I also feel like even things like serpirior, while strong, fail to be able to get off the ground most of the time and get REALLY screwed over by some of the fields, particularly the flame field and the Dragon's Den. Also, as for the normal run, I actually have already made it to the circus, which I would say is far enough to give some preliminary opinions.... I would say that it isn't the most terribly difficult run I've ever done, but I would say I actually think psychic was a bit easier so I think I will end up flipping them on the rankings. I think the big separator is that psychic had an IDENTITY as being speedy and hitting hard, and I am kind of struggling to find the identity in normal typing. On one hand you have pretty good stats and access to a TON of pokemon from early on, but on the other hand you don't have access to really any "beneficial" field typing that you can control, and some of the movepools can be sort of weak at times. I guess the biggest issue is really not having a "core" pokemon that you can really set up for. I need to swap some stuff out however and I think things will change pretty drastically when I get ahold of the almighty mega kangaskan as well as start rotating silvally into things. I will keep updating as I go along but for now that's kinda where I'm at.

Actually, I was thinking of Magic Guard when I said it would be pretty broken, the strat to negate the life orb damage can be pretty wacky especially on a typing like Ice Fairy. I mean I guess depending on stats and movesets it may not be completely gamebreaking but a free life orb boosted Dazzling Gleam seems really strong. looking at the other mon with magic guard (clefable, Sigilyph, Alakazam, and Reuniclus) they all have some pretty distinct weaknesses... Alakazam is very fragile, sigiliyph has a better ability imo, Rueniclus is just meh, and that leaves clefable as the main star of the show and with how bulky it is it can actually be SUPER oppressive. Again, not saying game breaking but i would definitely say that it could potentially rank like in the top 25% depending on stats and moveset. I would also say grass ABSOLUTELY has to be put that low at least for me, the main issue I have after reflecting a little bit more is the ABYSMAL speed stats. I would consider speed to be one of the more important stats in pokemon, especially pokemon reborn. Sceptile and MAYBE serpirior are the fastest grass types you get access to and even then they are both mono grass with movesets that dont exactly put them in the position of a great sweeper. Also, I find that Torterra is almost a mandatory starter for grass because you REALLY need access to the ground coverage. you do have whimsicott too but you get that so late in the story that it doesnt make too much of a difference. all in all too I never could quite get a "final" team that I was happy with in the sense of feeling super confident going into fights. There were always huge holes in coverage that made me a bit uncomfortable, especially fire which is one of the MAIN attacking types. I mean the only pokemon you really have that can fight fire is Ludicolo, which is a low caliber pokemon imo that only really excells in the mid game or extremely beneificial boosted fields like Amarias underwater field to auto proc swift swim. I am glad you brought up the psychic run too! I just finished it a bit ago and damn it was a cakewalk through and through. My final team was Metagross, Medicham, Alakazam, Delphox, Malamar, and Slowking. Metagross is of course spectacular, and medicham with pure power can one shot a ton of stuff, whether or not the HJK is super effective or not. alakazam also hits like a truck and learns a ton of good coverage moves, and Delphox suprised me at just how potent it could be. and of course Slowking was an absolute beast of a wall that has access to Yawn to allow for easy setup. and Malamar was really there just to power through teams with superpower and boost itself with contrary. there were a few times like pulse avalugg where malamar just solo'ed it. anything that was a physical attacker that couldnt just one shot malamar became a punching bag. Funny thing is, with the team I was running I actually never even abused trick room either, although i definitely could and probably should have. And yeah I am planning on going back and doing the endgame for all the runs, after I get them all through the E4. I figure it will almost be a different game entirely due to having access to every non legendary pokemon from the "start". I feel like endgame will need its own seperate difficulty list too just by nature of some types having a ton of really strong legendaries and other types being super starved. I will be looking forward to getting around to it as soon as I can but it will probably take a while... I do anticipate the runs taking less and less time as I go on though because I am running them from least powerful to most powerful (roughly) so i think by the time I get around to fire and fighting im just gonna breeze through it. I even found that in this last run for psychic it wasnt even the fights that took a lot of preparing and resetting for, it was mostly just the puzzles that gummed me up. I am infinitely grateful for the puzzle solution shards that are sprinkled through some of the more daunting ones like the tauros puzzle and the logic puzzles in victory road, but holy hell there are still some like the ice slide puzzle in the sapphire room that I feel like I need to look up constantly. Anyway even that is getting quicker so I should be on the fast track soon I hope. Anyway, I think my next two runs on the docket are normal and fairy. Normal is one that I am a liiiitle bit concerned that I might have misjudged, although with only 1 weakness to fighting I feel like it should hopefully be mostly coverable. best case scenario it goes up a bit in the rankings, worst case scenario my life will be a living grinding hell for the next few days. I will look forward to updating the list as I continue through. an edit: it was normal steel, I forgot that I pushed fairy up a bit. I am looking forward to steel too though... that is the type i have the MOST experience with and jeeebus i am excited to get my damn aegislash XD

Well I guess I can't speak to well for insurgent and deviant types, but I gotta say ice fairy mismagius with wonder guard and life orb sounds a LIIIITTTLE bit busted imo lol. I seriously can't stress enough though just how rough the grass run was... I was almost inclined to put it behind electric but electric didn't have any natural toxic users so... there was that. I mean paralysis was all fine and good but it didn't necessarily help in the ground weakness situation so there was that... And yeah, Psychic has been an absolute breeze. Another thing I forgot to add about it was the amount of turn manipulation inherent to psychic, you have a lot of trickster users for setting up status and you have a good number of mon with access to fakeout which is a very useful move imo. Also, you get trick room from radamous which you can then basically copy his team strat if you so wish. Also thanks for the praise on the speed... I would say I'm just a pro but honestly I think at this point I am more driven to just finish this project as much as anything... I REALLY want to do end game content but for my own pleasure I would like to do a "real run" with no restrictions and beat the game on my own terms and at least experience end game through fresh eyes the first time before I grind the 18 runs through it. But before I do that run I want to get all of my 18 save files "prepped" to start endgame, so i feel like I just gotta push for it. I did kinda set up for it though by doing the "worst runs first". I truly believe most of the other runs are gonna be a total cakewalk, the only ones I'm a tad concerned about are normal and Fairy since I think they could have a few rough patches, but other than that I think pretty much all the other runs are gonna be SUPER easy compared to the ice, rock, dragon, electric and grass gauntlet that I have just been GRINDING through...