Oh my god help me I don't know what I'm doing anymore

[Lynxiechan]

Ugh, after about 5 episodes of reborn, I can officially say this.

I have absolutely no idea where my team setup is going.

Can someone give me some advice? I'd greatly appreciate it.

My current main team is:

Soulix The Chandelure

Ability: Infiltrator

Moveset: Flamethrower, Will-O-Wisp, Shadow Ball, HP (Electric)

EVs: 252 Sp.Atk/128 Def/128 Spd

Concordia The Gardevoir

Ability: Synchronize

Moveset: Psychic, Calm Mind, Shadow Ball, Moonblast

EVs: 252 Sp.Atk/128 HP/128 Spd

Blasty The Clawitzer

Ability: Mega Launcher (uh duh I mean cmon anything else on this thing would be stupid :c)

Moveset: Aura Sphere, Dark Pulse, Dragon Pulse, Surf

EVs: 252 Sp. Atk/128 Def/128 Sp.Def

Spikes The Chesnaught

Ability: Bulletproof (this thing is evil against Chandelures)

Moveset: Strength, Rock Smash, Belly Drum, Seed Bomb (Surprisingly, Rock smash is quite OP)

252 Atk/252 Spd/4 HP

Nyx The Azumarill

Ability: Huge Power

Moveset: Bounce, Dive, Play Rough, Brick Break

EVs: 252 Atk/128 Def/128 Spd

Firessa The Ninetales (typing that is just embarrassing, Im changing that nickname)

Ability: Drought

Moveset: Flamethrower, Will-O-Wisp, Nasty Plot, Extrasensory

EVs: 252 Sp. Atk/128 Def/128 Sp. Def

All my pokemon have no items, and I also have a frickload of rotation pokemon:

Medicham, Hawlucha, Altaria, Trevenant, Gourgeist, Golurk, Lilligant, Barbaracle, Krookodile, Mamoswine, Sharpedo, Empoleon, Beartic, Cofagrigus, Gengar, Florges, Bisharp, Vanilluxe, Emolga, and Gigalith. The ones that get used most often of these are:

Altitude the Hawlucha

Ability: Limber

Moveset: Aerial Ace, Flying Press, Swords Dance, Featherdance (I know I know, it learns Sky Attack/Sky Drop. But I prefer the non-misser.)

EVs: 252 Atk/128 HP/128 Spd

ZipFlight the Emolga

Ability: Motor Drive (I might change it to static)

Moveset: Electro Ball, Nuzzle, Acrobatics, Flash.

EVs: 128 Atk/128 Sp. Atk/252 Spd

Ironic The Bisharp

Ability: Inner Focus

Moveset: Iron Head, Iron Defense, Swords Dance, Night Slash.

EVs: 252 Atk/252 Def/4 HP

Again, these guys have no items either.

I just want to know whether my team is okay enough against a majority of types, or whether I seriously need to play shuffle the deck with my pokemon~ any comments/criticisms/advice would be really helpful. thanks c:

EDIT: before you knock me out because my EV choices are off the charts weird, just know that I did them to suit the pokemons' specific IV set.

Edited October 18, 2014 by Lynxiechan

[Tomas Elliot]

Eh, it's hard to make a coherent team out of this... You have Ninetales to set up sun, but nothing that can exploit it!

Let's proceed carefully: first thing first, what kind of team you want to create with these guys? I recommend a Sun team if you are still in Ep 5, because a certain Gym Leader will abuse a different weather later on, so yeah, taking out their (generic pronoun so I won't spoiler) weather lead and then setting up a weather of your own would be very advantageous.

So, Ninetales is gonna be our mainstay. Who can benefit from sun, and be very useful for the team? Among the pokemon I see in your list, the first that comes to mind is Gigalith: not only is his weakness to water reduced by the Sun, not only does he synergize fairly well with Ninetales (he fears Special Grass-type attacks, which Ninetales can sponge easily), he also is capable of naturally learning Stealth Rocks, and trust me when I say, later on you will meet enemies who have great strategies, so putting up a great strategy of your own will be mandatory. And every great strategy needs Stealth Rocks.

So, Ninetales and Gigalith. Now we need someone that can abuse the Sun, right? Luckily, we can get our hands on a very good Sun abuser: if you check out the "On the Hunt" section, you'll see there is an event to get a Bulbasaur. And seriously, there is no better Sun abuser than Venusaur in Gen 6, because with the nerf to weather, nowadays abusers need to be good at doing their job of for the team even after the weather wears off. And Venusaur has the bulk, the offensive presence and the wide movepool to do just that.

So we have Ninetles, Venusaur and Gigalith. Now, what does a good in-game team need more than anything else? That's right, coverage. In any good in-game team for every Pokemon game, not just Reborn, it is mandatory to have a core consisting of a Grass, a Fire and a Water Pokemon, to take advantage from the fact that most opponents use Pokemon of a single type: assuming an opponent is using all Pokemon of the same type, if you have a Fire, a Water and a Grass Pokemon you'll be virtually guaranteed that your opponent won't be able to hit all 3 of them for supereffective, there will always be at least one you'll be able to use to defend from their offense. So now we need to add a Water-type to our team, to complement Ninetales and Venusaur: you already have two great Pokemon to fill in the role, Clawitzer and Azumarill, pick the one you like the most! DO NOT pick Barbaracle because that would make you too weak to Grass, as you already have another Rock-type.

So, Ninetales-Venusaur-Azumarill (or Clawitzer)-Gigalith. This is a very good core that can address many different situations in game, and give you a basic combo to use when you push for game (NInetales-->Venusaur). Fill in the last two spots with whatever Pokemon you like the most, if you pick Clawitzer as your main Water Pokemon then I would recommend including Gardevoir, as a Fairy Pokemon can come in handy to try and win a certain hopeless boss fight. But if you run Azumarill don't include Gardevoir, two Fairies are redundant. Should you go the Clawitzer-Gardevoir route, then your team would be mostly specially-oriented, so in such a case it would be wise to throw a physical attacker like Hawlucha or Bisharp in the last spot.

This is all for now, I hope this can be of help. If you need further advice on movesets and the likes, just ask

Edited October 18, 2014 by Tomas Elliot

[Lynxiechan]

Thanks for the input c:

I see where you're going, and yeah, sorry my team really is messed up in terms of type matchup/weather effects, I mean hence the title of my post xD

Weather effect- wise, I did actually notice that my Ninetales potentially could set up a pretty good sweeper team with chlorophyll/growth/solarbeam, but tbh I'm dead set against having a weather-centric team in gen VI because it's just a chore to have to sweep a team in 8 turns (granted that I give my ninetales a heat rock).

Off topic, you mean sierra right? xD yeah Im up to the end of ep 13 now (dammit I want to keep my magmarizer/electrizer, Ame is fricking evil awesome for putting them in), so her hail wont be a massive issue (though it fucking was when I sent my old ninetales up against it, stupid snow warning)

Back on topic, In terms of Fire-Water-Grass Coverage, I was actually revolving around Ninetales/Azumarill/Roserade (or Tropius) but I actually completely forgot about bulbasaur. Guess its time to pull that stupid chingling out and massage it into oblivion (ugh), thanks for that though c:

Again off topic, if you mean Solaris, I took him out with a Will-O-Wisp/Power Split/Hex cofagrigus which just trashed it (although it took like 3 cotton candies, goodbye to 18k pokeyen qq), same thing also trashed medicham when I wanted gastly lol

On topic, I like the suggestion of gigalith, but my biggest issue (and its even more pronounced in it's IV) is it's speed. Not only is it slow, it's also got a poor speed IV of 4 and a nature that hinders said stat (yay, triple awkwardness on the bulky tank!). I mean I like the idea, and I did train it to have 128 EVs in Defense/HP and 252 EVs in attack (god these EVs took too long), but it's just too slow and it's largest weaknesses are mainly pokemon in the Sp Atk category (by this I mean the glaring weaknesses of Water/Grass), so yeah. If I had to pick a rock type though, do you think that gigalith is potentially the best one to choose? Or should I choose something else?

[Tomas Elliot]

If you have already defeated Sierra and Solaris, then you can scrap half my suggestions lol.

Also, apparently Bulbasaur was axed in Ep 13, the event of Cantrememberthename Island now gives you a friggin' Chikorita. And Vulpix now requires you to beat a level 45 Kinglang, is Ame dead set on killing any chances of making a good sun team early on?

Rants aside, Roserade is probably your best bet for a Grass Pokemon, with Venusaur out of the picture: at this point, since abusing Sun is nearly impossible (unless you get your hands on a Shiftry, there was an event iirc... And what about Victreebel? Is Bellsprout anywhere in the game?), you might as well go for a non-weather core, with a Fire Pokemon that is better than Ninetales (Arcanine if you got the event Growlite, otherwise Chandelure is cool I think). Now that I think about it, you picked Chespin as a starter, and Chesnaught is actually a strong, bulky grass type. Not as good as Roserade in competitive environment, but hell, for a game it should be enough.

So yeah, Chesnaught-Clawitzer-Arcanine-Gardevoir seems good, because it gives you great coverage both offensively and defensively when you factor the secondary types in the picture. To complete your coverage, considering that you have a RPS of Water-Fire-Water and 2/3 of a pseudo-RPS of Fighting-Steel-Fairy, it would be wise to include a Steel type. Luckily you have Bisharp, which doubles as an always useful Dark-type, so you should be ok.

For the last spot, I can't stress enough how important a Stealth Rock user is. And Gigalith is one of the two Pokemon you can obtain in this game that learn Stealth Rock naturally (the other is Golem, but Golem has double weakness to Water AND double weakness to Grass, so yeah...). I honestly don't understand what's your issue with Gigalith's Speed: since when a defensive Rock-type with Sturdy, which just happens to also have a HUGE Attack, needs speed? All you need is Attack and HPs, and then your Gigalith will be able to do two things: go out first (as a lead) against Pokemon that cannot hurt it, and just bring the pain with Stone Edge and Earthquake (IIRC it learns both naturally), and go out first (as a lead) against Pokemon that CAN hurt it, endure the first hit with Sturdy and place Stealth Rocks. At that point, let the opposition kill it or just bomb away with Explosion (you can get that TM in game IIRC).

So yeah, this is it for your team, as far as I can tell... OR, if you REALLY like Azumarill, it could be Chesnaught - Azumarill - Chandelure as a core (don't run Azumarill and Arcanine together, or you'll have too many physical attackers). Such a core would remove the need for a Dark-type, since you'd have Chandelure's powerful Shadow Ball to take care of Psychic and Ghost types, And Azumarill would act as your Fairy thus removing the need for Gardevoir. So yeah, this would reduce your team to Chesnaught - Azumarill - Chandelure - Gigalith, to complete it you'd need at least a special attacker and at least a Steel type. Maybe Vanilluxe could act as your special attacker (an Ice-type is always helpful) and you could get yourself an Excadrill to act as your Steel type? Excadrill is very strong, and IIRC Drillbur can be found in the area where the giant Steelix was...

So yeah, to summarize: it's either Chesnaught - Clawitzer - Arcanine - Gardevoir - Bisharp - Gigalith or Chesnaught - Azumarill - Chandelure - Vanilluxe - Excadrill - Gigalith. Personally I like the first idea the most, but it's up to you...

Edited October 19, 2014 by Tomas Elliot

[AuthorReborn]

Also, I'm not the best at making teams and such, so I'm just going to throw in a few side comments here.

Trick Room for Radomous would be quite useful with the first team suggested and you can always revert to episode twelve or previous to obtain Bulbasaur.

Also there are actually a ton of Pokes that learn stealth rocks via level up that you can obtain, including Onix, Carbink, Tyrunt, Dwebble, Roggenrola, and Geodude.

[Tomas Elliot]

Also, I'm not the best at making teams and such, so I'm just going to throw in a few side comments here.

Trick Room for Radomous would be quite useful with the first team suggested and you can always revert to episode twelve or previous to obtain Bulbasaur.

Also there are actually a ton of Pokes that learn stealth rocks via level up that you can obtain, including Onix, Carbink, Tyrunt, Dwebble, Roggenrola, and Geodude.

Roggenrola and Geodude are the unevolved stages of Gigalith and Golem respectively, AKA the Pokemon I had mentioned in my post

Onix is kinda bad, as for Carbink and Tyrunt I didn't know they had been added to the game... Still, Gigalith still seems the superior option because of its offensive presence (having a pokemon dedicated ONLY to defense/support roles is generally not so good in game, because it will be hard for it to gain experience...) that makes it better than Carbink for in-game use... And Tyrantrum is more of an all out attacker, it has more attacks powered up by its ability than it has move slots, so yeah, wasting a slot for Stealth Rock isn't the wisest idea...

The Trick Room idea sounds cool however, given that many of the Pokemon we mentioned for a possible team (Gigalith, Chesnaught, Bisharp) are fairly slow. IIRC you mentioned having a Cofagrigus, Lynxiechan? That guy can lern Trick Room if I'm not wrong...

Edited October 19, 2014 by Tomas Elliot

[AuthorReborn]

Roggenrola and Geodude are the unevolved stages of Gigalith and Golem respectively, AKA the Pokemon I had mentioned in my post

Onix is kinda bad, as for Carbink and Tyrunt I didn't know they had been added to the game... Still, Gigalith still seems the superior option because of its offensive presence (having a pokemon dedicated ONLY to defense/support roles is generally not so good in game, because it will be hard for it to gain experience...) that makes it better than Carbink for in-game use... And Tyrantrum is more of an all out attacker, it has more attacks powered up by its ability than it has move slots, so yeah, wasting a slot for Stealth Rock isn't the wisest idea...

True, I was just listing off all of the Pokemon that could potentially use stealth rocks. Also sturdy, shell smash, stealth rock, x-scissor dwebble/crustle is still an excelent option.