team rate for now? (12 badges)

[Jellybat]

i just finished my 12th gym battle. and im not exactly happened on how i got it( overeliance on ultra potions)

so i just felt like putting my current team here:

Blastoise (currently having hm overload but will remove em when i can)

ability: rain dish once bred:(also known as the mega set without rapid spin)

moveset: aura sphere

dive dark pulse

surf ice beam(when available/found)

hydro pump hydro pump

rain dance(really needed it for the gym. used to be dark pulse)

Mamoswine(bred)

ability thick fat

moves:

icicle crash

ice shard

earthquake

strenght

Escavalier

ability: overcoat no thoughts on breed set yet

iron head

x-scissor

rock smash

headbutt

Roserade

ability: poison point bred set:

toxic spikes extrasensory

giga drain sludge bomb

cut leaf storm

shadow ball rest/sleep powder/toxic spikes

Honchkrow(bred)

ability: moxie

brave bird

sucker punch

night slash

roost

Arcanine

ability:intimidate no breedset plans yet

flamethrower

flare blitz

crunch

outrage

and 2 that are currently retired:

Luxray

intimidate

crunch

spark

charge

strenght

Gothitelle

psychic

psyshock

shadow ball

flash

after the last gym fight i truly started to doubt if the current team is capable of continuing in its current state.

1 of the major problems of the team that i knew before i even considered it was its lack of a speedy mon. and it definately showed with typhlosion eruption causing me to redo the fight alot of times..

anything you would people would consider to make the team bit more effective?

i felt adding movesets/abilities was a bit reduntant but i will tell em if you want to.

Edited December 15, 2014 by Jellybat

[Simon]

I like this team alot, other than the common weakness being Fire (but you already got past Cal and Charlotte so you did fine either way). I see what you mean by the lack of "speed" as the fastest out of those six is Arcanine with a decent 95 base speed.

If you can add the Movesets/Abilities, I/others can give a more detailed analysis of your team and how it can improved for the next gym.

[Jellybat]

I like this team alot, other than the common weakness being Fire (but you already got past Cal and Charlotte so you did fine either way). I see what you mean by the lack of "speed" as the fastest out of those six is Arcanine with a decent 95 base speed.

If you can add the Movesets/Abilities, I/others can give a more detailed analysis of your team and how it can improved for the next gym.

small notes:

the point when i truly started designing a from what i got was the point when i noticed some of my team falling behind the rest.(notably luxray and gothitelle)

added the movesets for all the mons. also made a note next to their name if the mon was bred and added any plans for breeding some movesets in.

i do intend to breed the entire team at some point once i feel ready for a not so fun grindfest from lvl 1 to the current viable level..

and for some longer information:

during the thought process the retirement day for luxray and gothitelle i definately considered switching luxray for a jolteon. but it kinda dropped with the annoyance of breeding it a good moveset.

the other candidate i considered during the change-up was gengar. but for similiar reasons as jolteon + the fact that it was colliding in coverage with roserade that i ditched it.

i most certainly knew my weakness to fire fairly well. the lack of any rock-type coverage really showed its fangs at the gym. i usually don't like doing massive save reloads to beat a gym. but in this case i was locked out of the daycare and move relearner and i definately did not want to start a grind session in that place..

teamwise the ones that are feeling behind the others are roserade and blastoise. arcanine is still quite impressivelly able to keep its top level alongside escavalier even without breeding them a better moveset. but the other 2 definately either in a need to be switched or re-shape their movesets to fit their job better.

still need to consider that fast mon that would fit into the spot without completely redoing the team.. the other thought for me is really to switch out arcanine for another fire mon that is far better at beating other fire types(camerupt comes to mind. also chandelure with flash fire is tempting to give an easier switch-in.)

and last but not least is the thought of removing either roserade or escavalier. when i play competitive mons i generally have some iron rules while teammaking. and one is to not have another mon that shares the same weakness a 4x weakness in the team has(in this case fire) i decided to ignore this thought back then because of well.. MORE grinding for another new member.

Edited December 15, 2014 by Jellybat

[Simon]

Ah, well glad to see you acknowledge it.

Hmm.. well I can recommend Crobat, Aerodactyl, Noivern, Alakazam, and Heliolisk as some pretty speedy mons to use.

Crobat is overall a really good pokemon in-game with Cross Poison and Acrobatics, Noivern with access to Hurricane/Air Slash, BoomBurst, Dragon Pulse, and Heliolisk with T-bolt and Volt Switch.

Aerodactyl and Alakazam, would require some moves to bred onto but that really isn't something you'll be interested in.

[Jellybat]

Ah, well glad to see you acknowledge it.

Hmm.. well I can recommend Crobat, Aerodactyl, Noivern, Alakazam, and Heliolisk as some pretty speedy mons to use.

Crobat is overall a really good pokemon in-game with Cross Poison and Acrobatics, Noivern with access to Hurricane/Air Slash, BoomBurst, Dragon Pulse, and Heliolisk with T-bolt and Volt Switch.

Aerodactyl and Alakazam, would require some moves to bred onto but that really isn't something you'll be interested in.

its not really that i don't hate breeding movesets. the game just doesn't always have the easy choices for the mons to breed the moves with.

crobat is most certainly a good choice if you want speed. but in this case its colliding with 2 different mons in terms of coverage(roserade,honchkrow) and would require me to find another replacement alongside crobat.

alakazam has always been the * i can't think of anything this team needs anymore other than revenge killer so ill add him* kinda guy for me. psychic typing has never been the very best after gen 1 and in this case roserade is able to cover the type with extrasensory. i cannot however ignore its amazing coverage and will probably take its place over escavalier or roserade to fix the fire weakness issue. honchkrow able to cover up the main problems to psychic type is also quite helpful. i honestly am starting to see this as one of the best choices i could do without overly changing the team too much and fixing every problem somewhat at once. the main problem on this choice is really the colliding coverage with roserade. and if i decide to remove roserade i have the new problem of effectively dealing with water types.

aerodactyl is probably the mon i would not add, because it would cause an entire new problem with HUGE shared weakness to water if switched in over honchkrow

helioptile... eh.... i would probably rather try to get a jolteon working instead. being further on in the game might make it simpler now.

Edited December 15, 2014 by Jellybat

[Etesian]

If you want to improve your team:

Instead of Hydro Pump, I'd say go for Water Pulse. It's 90 power with 100 accuracy as opposed to 110 power with 80 accuracy. The confusion also comes in handy, when it happens. And make it's Ability Torrent. As rarely as it would benefit you, it'd still be more frequent than Rain Dish's activation.

Also keep in mind this thing learns Flash Cannon for whenever Adrienn's badge is next on the list.

For Mamoswine, I'd obviously recommend scrapping Strength. Great moves for it would be Curse, Freeze-Dry, Body Slam.

You could also go back to pre-E13 and breed it a Rock move.

Instead of Rock Smash and Headbutt, Drill Run (tutor) and Knock Off for Escavalier are great moves.

Don't go for Rest on Roserade, healing moves are pointless since we have healing items. Sure, Natural Cure could make getting rid of Sleep easily, but still, there's no point unless you're doing a challenge. Instead, Technician Hidden Power has 90 Base Power.

Also, Giga Drain is imo better than Leaf Storm. Not only does it heal you, it's nigh useless after a single use.

I'd say the same thing for Roost as I have for Rest above. Instead, Tailwind is a wonderful move for Honchkrow, since it stops Speed-issues preventing sweeps.

With Tailwind, you would be outspeeding all foes anyways, so you might as well ditch Sucker Punch at that point.

Also, give this thing a Scope Lens and Night Slash will be critting 50% of the time.

Flamethrower and Flare Blitz is redundant. Instead, Agility will pretty much make sure you go first. And since we're past Shade and Radomus, but have yet to face Terra and Hardy, Close Combat would be the superior move.

Now, for your speed issues, you'd have 3 options, some speedy Pokemon, some Tailwinders or some Trick Roomers.

For speed, the ones listed above along with Archeops, Swellow (if you get that Toxic Orb "illegally"), Zebstrika, Scolipede (helps with speed in general), Gengar, Espeon I guess, Tauros (especially pre-E13 if bred with Smeargle for moves), Durant (basically 190 base attack), Galvantula and Mismagius.

Braviary and, especially in your case, Honchkrow are great Tailwinders.

For Trick Room, Porygon-Z, Exeggutor (no, really), Bronzong, Gallade, Dusclops/noire, Cofagrigus, Gothitelle, Reuniclus, Chandelure, Gourgeist and Malamar are all great Trick Room setters.

[Jellybat]

If you want to improve your team:

Instead of Hydro Pump, I'd say go for Water Pulse. It's 90 power with 100 accuracy as opposed to 110 power with 80 accuracy. The confusion also comes in handy, when it happens. And make it's Ability Torrent. As rarely as it would benefit you, it'd still be more frequent than Rain Dish's activation.

Also keep in mind this thing learns Flash Cannon for whenever Adrienn's badge is next on the list.

For Mamoswine, I'd obviously recommend scrapping Strength. Great moves for it would be Curse, Freeze-Dry, Body Slam.

You could also go back to pre-E13 and breed it a Rock move.

Instead of Rock Smash and Headbutt, Drill Run (tutor) and Knock Off for Escavalier are great moves.

Don't go for Rest on Roserade, healing moves are pointless since we have healing items. Sure, Natural Cure could make getting rid of Sleep easily, but still, there's no point unless you're doing a challenge. Instead, Technician Hidden Power has 90 Base Power.

Also, Giga Drain is imo better than Leaf Storm. Not only does it heal you, it's nigh useless after a single use.

I'd say the same thing for Roost as I have for Rest above. Instead, Tailwind is a wonderful move for Honchkrow, since it stops Speed-issues preventing sweeps.

With Tailwind, you would be outspeeding all foes anyways, so you might as well ditch Sucker Punch at that point.

Also, give this thing a Scope Lens and Night Slash will be critting 50% of the time.

Flamethrower and Flare Blitz is redundant. Instead, Agility will pretty much make sure you go first. And since we're past Shade and Radomus, but have yet to face Terra and Hardy, Close Combat would be the superior move.

Now, for your speed issues, you'd have 3 options, some speedy Pokemon, some Tailwinders or some Trick Roomers.

For speed, the ones listed above along with Archeops, Swellow (if you get that Toxic Orb "illegally"), Zebstrika, Scolipede (helps with speed in general), Gengar, Espeon I guess, Tauros (especially pre-E13 if bred with Smeargle for moves), Durant (basically 190 base attack), Galvantula and Mismagius.

Braviary and, especially in your case, Honchkrow are great Tailwinders.

For Trick Room, Porygon-Z, Exeggutor (no, really), Bronzong, Gallade, Dusclops/noire, Cofagrigus, Gothitelle, Reuniclus, Chandelure, Gourgeist and Malamar are all great Trick Room setters.

tailwind is probably the best option for switching roost out. i generally dislike using items and try my best to not resort to em. but to be honest honchkrow almost never roosts anyway so..

trick room is not considered with the speed levels i currently have.

most of the Hm moves should be ignored. i intend to breed my team at some point with them not included.

i don't consider hidden powers because i am not that desperate for power yet in this game. so no perfect ev/iv. i only breed for the movesets.

good note on the flash cannon coming up. gives a similiar amount of coverage that ice beam would give.

for now the ones i consider fitting in the best is alakazam or espeon.probably would be switching in over escavalier. with this change however i will have the problem of effectively dealing with dark types. its still far smaller problem than a speed+ fire weakness problem though.

probable moveset for alakazam:

psychic/psyshock

shadow ball

screen if espeon/ focus blast OR screen if alakazam

thunder wave if alakazam/ 2nd screen if espeon

essentially a revenge/support set if i was playing PVP. i would 100% choose espeon if it learned thunder wave.

Edited December 15, 2014 by Jellybat

[Simon]

How about Heracross?

[Jellybat]

How about Heracross?

most certainly considered using when i got it. crippling weakness to flying alongside roserade made me ditch the idea back then fast though ( 1st rule) adding in heracross would force me to remove both roserade and escavalier in order to keep the balance clean.

adding my general rules according to types when making a team from scratch:

1st rule: no mon should share the same weakness that a 4x weak mon has. reccomended to have a safe switch for that type. ( bred arcanine will have flash fire if escavalier stays)

the 2nd rule: no more than 2 mons can share a 2x weakness to a type in a team (in my team thick fat avoids the 3rd fire weakness)

these 2 are generally what i follow when i make a team from scratch and if meta/match-up is not considered.. sadly the escavalier + roserade is something i rarely do but laziness to grinding made me..

Edited December 15, 2014 by Jellybat

[Simon]

I'm kinda of confused with this concept of balance being "clean". You can't really have a truly perfect team with no weaknesses in Reborn (don't get me wrong, you probably could haha).

With this game, you're more likely to be switching your team members around a lot to adapt to each location/boss battle/gym. You can't really reach the "perfect" team that will work in every scenario. Heck, you may at times have to redo your whole team if things get too tough.

I would say for you to grab any mon you deem good enough, but not all of them actually have good in-game movesets and may require breeding, which is something you'll do later on.

EDIT: Those two rules would make it very, very hard to form a team the way you want it in this game speciffically. Let me think about this more.

[Jellybat]

it's good team but...if you want electric type why choose luxray? he is weakest electric type i ever have...catch magneton or pikachu...or nidoking and learn him some electric moves.

.. because back then i was at the gambling place the first time and was looking for more type diversity(and no. i did not feel like going for a flygon grind back then). this team was made as i played outside of mamoswine+ Honchkrow which i added after coming back from a break and wanted to fine tune the team a bit.

consider Retirement really the place where the mons i used to use but don't anymore. they would simply require less work to make working again + my attachment to them

i would use luxray again if i ever need another intimidate to beat something like that garchomp again..

and for derpy simons:

i try to keep the amount of mons to a minimun just because this game really doesn't have the best way to grind..(for frick sake it took several hours to get mamoswine+ honchkrow to lvl 55-60) and i would be lying if i said i wasn't using items to help me beat some of the gyms.

the reason i considered alakzam/espeon to be the best options was because it passed both rules, was not bringing types already in the team and would fix the speed problem. i have not gone too deep on the problems the change will bring outside the ways of effectivelly fighting dark types(aura sphere being the SE hitter if escavalier leaves)

generally after this i start considering match-ups aka what mons is my team specifically weak to and make the movesets according to it and edit the team if there are too many mons that would be a problem to its current state giving priority to mons most used in the meta. obviously thats a bit too much tryharding for PVE so im just going to keep it at the typings with mons i like.

obviously its impossible to make a perfect team, but you can generally always find a slot to possibly change to fit your needs.

Edited December 16, 2014 by Jellybat

[AuthorReborn]

Protip: Use Cheat Engine to speed up breeding (both the production of eggs and to instantly hatch them) and grinding (by increasing the speed multiplier). This will cut down considerably on your overall time running back and forth in any given area just trying to level up.

[Etesian]

Protip: Use Cheat Engine to speed up breeding (both the production of eggs and to instantly hatch them) and grinding (by increasing the speed multiplier). This will cut down considerably on your overall time running back and forth in any given area just trying to level up.

My guide in this section has explanations on how to do both, OP. And since it wouldn't alter the game's difficulty, I recall seeing topics which show how to give yourself a bunch of rare candies and the like, just search around.

[AuthorReborn]

My guide in this section has explanations on how to do both, OP. And since it wouldn't alter the game's difficulty, I recall seeing topics which show how to give yourself a bunch of rare candies and the like, just search around.

Yup. These links might be helpful for those pursuits in mind:

General Cheat Engine Guide:

http://www.pokemonreborn.com/forum/?showtopic=6333

Etesian's Breeding Guide and Recommended Sets (to obtain through breeding):

http://www.pokemonreborn.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=10935

[Jellybat]

just an update on the team for right now. in the end i decided to switch more than 1 mon.

as you probably already figured. i switched out escavalier for alakazam(in paper) but im relucant on it now

the other switch i am about to do is to remove honchkrow. the bird really has not shown to have any real value for the team so far so i finally decided to switch out for a different take.

i switched honchkrow for Hawlucha (that i apparently had in my box) in order to give me a stronger switch into fighting types which honchkrow really could not do with the glass defenses,while also providing the needed speed for the team AND better odds vs rock and ice types.

oh . and moxie broke again..

obviously the new flaws now showing out now.

harder time to deal with psychic types, but with coverage it should not be that difficult to handle

the type im more worried about is flying, i might have to go through with that jolteon over alakazam after all. the team is more capable handling ground types than it is flying types if i switch alakazam away for jolteon. and volt absorb helping with the 2 electric weakness never hurts.

at least for now i avoided the mass grind session with these guys considering neither of em really benefits from breeding movesets.

and breeding aura sphere for squirtle is still not possible in episode 14 apparently.

overall in paper my current team:

blastoise

roserade

arcanine

hawlucha

mamoswine

jolteon OR alakazam

Edited December 17, 2014 by Jellybat

[AuthorReborn]

You can teach Alakazam Charge Beam via TM, have a Flying coverage move, and set up, all at the same time. Just a thought.

Also, make sure Hawlucha has Unburden. Once he loses his item, his speed doubles. Just give him some item which he consumes in battle.

[Etesian]

You can teach Alakazam Charge Beam via TM, have a Flying coverage move, and set up, all at the same time. Just a thought.

Also, make sure Hawlucha has Unburden. Once he loses his item, his speed doubles. Just give him some item which he consumes in battle.

Pretty much, and if you go back to pre-E13, Petilil/Lotad>Cacnea>Abra nets you Energy Ball.

And there's 2 really good ways to utilize Unburden with Hawlucha. The inferior way is using Sky Attack with a Power Herb to negate charge-up, its got a great 30% flinch rate and a heightened crit ratio. The better option is stacking up on Flying/Fighting Gems and ding whatever, really. Acrobatics also would get the item-less power-boost since the gem is consumed before the game checks for an item, so Acrobatics would have 143 Base Power first use, then 110 every next use.

To get Acrobatics, Mienfoo is your friend. It learns all the same useful TMs Hawlucha does, like R.Slide, S.Edge, Poison Jab, etc, and it's in the Field Egg Group, so Smeargle gets you whatever you need.