Team help: Garchomp?

[Lorane]

Hiii!

So lately I have a lot of time on my hands ( yanno the pandemic thing etc etc), and I'm sure you do too. I recently completed the Gible sidequest, and tried to beat Titania but her excadrill CRUsHED my pokès. So i thought why not tackle her with Garchomp instead? But then i fell into the dilemma of choosing between noivern or garchomp, or any poke on the rest of my team:

 

Primarina-M

Liquid Voice

Timid

Surf

Misty terrain

Aqua jet

Moonblast

 

Lucario-M

Inner Focus

Calm

Drain Punch

Meteor Smash

Aura sphere 

Swords dance

 

Arcanine-F

Flash Fire

Adamant

Flare Blitz

Extreme Speed

Iron Head

Bulldoze

 

Cincinno-M

Skill Link

Jolly

Knock Off

Rock Blast

Tail Slap

Bullet Seed

 

Ampharos-F

Static

Sassy

Power gem

Signal Beam

Dragon Pulse

Discharge

 

Noivern-F

Infiltrator

Lax

Fly

Boomburst

Hurricane

Dragon Pulse

 

Garchomp (still in training)(basically a level 10 gible)

 

Please help me to improve my team in general , and please please tell me if its bad, or if it needs some more moves or something and help me solve my dilemma: Noivern(or any other poke) or Garchomp?

Thanks a lot in advance!

 

[Edo]

I don't think you need Garchomp to win, Noivern is really useful with its high Speed and Tailwind, you might actually be able to do it with your current team. But I think you should optimize your abilities and natures first, just the improving of stats can really help after all, especially proper EV distribution.

 

Primarina is really slow, so Timid won't help much, better boost SpAtt or SpDef (Modest/Calm). And Liquid Voice without a voice move is useless, I would change it to Torrent or teach it Hyper Voice. How helpful is Aqua Jet to you? Primarina's base Att stat is low, so it probably does little damage. If you think you can replace it, then Icy Wind can prove very useful with its speed reduction. Or Reflect/Light Screen for team support.

 

Calm on a physical Lucario is hindering you, better give it a Speed boosting nature. Usually that'd be Jolly, but if you wanna keep Aura Sphere go with Hasty or Naive.

 

For Arcanine, Flash Fire is very situational and only boosts your Fire move. Justified would generally boost all physical moves so it might be better, but I'd go with Intimidate. It's always very useful against any physical attacker, especially against Titania who has 4 physical mons.

 

Cincinno looks perfect, Ampharos is also ok, although you could replace Power Gem or Signal Beam with a status move like Light Screen or Cotton Guard.

 

Lax for Noivern isn't helping it, better go for Modest. And before important battles, you might wanna replace Fly with a special move like Flamethrower, or teach it Tailwind as another team support move.

 

[Lorane]

3 hours ago, Edo said:

I don't think you need Garchomp to win, Noivern is really useful with its high Speed and Tailwind, you might actually be able to do it with your current team. But I think you should optimize your abilities and natures first, just the improving of stats can really help after all, especially proper EV distribution.

 

Primarina is really slow, so Timid won't help much, better boost SpAtt or SpDef (Modest/Calm). And Liquid Voice without a voice move is useless, I would change it to Torrent or teach it Hyper Voice. How helpful is Aqua Jet to you? Primarina's base Att stat is low, so it probably does little damage. If you think you can replace it, then Icy Wind can prove very useful with its speed reduction. Or Reflect/Light Screen for team support.

 

Calm on a physical Lucario is hindering you, better give it a Speed boosting nature. Usually that'd be Jolly, but if you wanna keep Aura Sphere go with Hasty or Naive.

 

For Arcanine, Flash Fire is very situational and only boosts your Fire move. Justified would generally boost all physical moves so it might be better, but I'd go with Intimidate. It's always very useful against any physical attacker, especially against Titania who has 4 physical mons.

 

Cincinno looks perfect, Ampharos is also ok, although you could replace Power Gem or Signal Beam with a status move like Light Screen or Cotton Guard.

 

Lax for Noivern isn't helping it, better go for Modest. And before important battles, you might wanna replace Fly with a special move like Flamethrower, or teach it Tailwind as another team support move.

 

oh? So you suggest that I improve my team's stats instead of changing mons?

I hink you're right, but what I'm concerned about is that for almost every important battle, I have to do it like 3-4 times to win. I'm sure thats the case with everybody, but I still HAVE to use special items in everything. And my team, they're so frail...I'm especially sad..

My team doesn't cover type weaknesses well and that goes for moves too...

I have another question. I recently got TM Poison Jab, and as you can see my Lucario has physical attacks mostly, BUT has special attack much higher than physical. So, shall I make him a physical only?

Another question teehee. As you said garchomp is not needed for this fight, dya think I need to tweak my team accordingly for the long run? your methods will work, but is it enough given my bad type coverages? (P.S i chose garchomp mainly because of earthquake and the fact that i don't have a counter except Arcanine to ice and steel(as my whole tean is weak to them)

Finally, THANKS A TON, REALLY!

I was struggling and your post made me realized that I really NEED to start tweaking my stats too, thank you so much! >. <

Edited March 25, 2020 by Lorane2234

[Edo]

Regarding type coverage, I don't see too much of a problem there, except Ground attacks, cause half your team is weak to it, so better keep Noivern.

 

Lucario has great attack stats for both physical and special and your team is already balanced between both, so it doesn't really matter which you choose. If you want to make him pure physical, then you could get your Attack stat higher than the special one by redistributing its EVs from SpAtt to Att. If only the Att stat has EVs, it should become much higher.

[Lorane]

17 hours ago, Edo said:

Regarding type coverage, I don't see too much of a problem there, except Ground attacks, cause half your team is weak to it, so better keep Noivern.

 

Lucario has great attack stats for both physical and special and your team is already balanced between both, so it doesn't really matter which you choose. If you want to make him pure physical, then you could get your Attack stat higher than the special one by redistributing its EVs from SpAtt to Att. If only the Att stat has EVs, it should become much higher.

Thanks A TONNN!!

2 last questions (im sorry im dumb at this...) 1. How do you get light screen and reflect?, and 2. How can i redistribute EVs? I only know that changing natures will do that, but if theres another way then please tell me!

Thanks a lot again!

[Edo]

5 minutes ago, Lorane2234 said:

Thanks A TONNN!!

2 last questions (im sorry im dumb at this...) 1. How do you get light screen and reflect?, and 2. How can i redistribute EVs? I only know that changing natures will do that, but if theres another way then please tell me!

Thanks a lot again!

No problem, there's a lot to know after all.

 

1)  The TM for Light Screen is in the Azurine Lake, you have to Dive to find it.

Reflect is in Rodochrine Jungle. You need to finish the Kecleon side quest to get it.

 

2)  Well in short:

In the department store, I think floor 2 or 3, they're selling berries that can reduce your EVs of a certain stat (for removing EVs from an useless stat), and Power items (Power Bracer, Power Anklet, etc.) which increase the EV gain from fighting in a specific stat (for the important stats you wish to improve). It says which one in their description. That's how you can remove all unwanted EVs and put all of your points in the desired stats.

 

For more detail:

You can see your EVs and IVs in the menu screen on the page before the one with your pokemon's attack moves. The right side shows your IVs, which range between 0-31 and are unchangable, so the closer your mons IVs are to 31, the higher their stats will be.

The left side shows the EVs. A pokemon starts with 0 in all of them, but they can be increased slowly by fighting, or by giving expensive vitamins like Protein, Iron, Carbos, etc (those only work while your EV value is below 100). The limit is 252 in a single stat, and 510 in total, so you can at best have two stats at their maximum of 252, so choose carfully which stats you want to improve. Every pokemon you defeat gives you a certain amount of EVs in a certain stat, but the Power items will help you train a specific stat with a much higher rate than normal. So just put the power item you want on, train somewhere with low level mons that you can defeat fast, until your EV stat doesn't improve anymore, then use the berries to decrease EVs that accumulated but you don't need.

[Lorane]

47 minutes ago, Edo said:

No problem, there's a lot to know after all.

 

1)  The TM for Light Screen is in the Azurine Lake, you have to Dive to find it.

Reflect is in Rodochrine Jungle. You need to finish the Kecleon side quest to get it.

 

2)  Well in short:

In the department store, I think floor 2 or 3, they're selling berries that can reduce your EVs of a certain stat (for removing EVs from an useless stat), and Power items (Power Bracer, Power Anklet, etc.) which increase the EV gain from fighting in a specific stat (for the important stats you wish to improve). It says which one in their description. That's how you can remove all unwanted EVs and put all of your points in the desired stats.

 

For more detail:

You can see your EVs and IVs in the menu screen on the page before the one with your pokemon's attack moves. The right side shows your IVs, which range between 0-31 and are unchangable, so the closer your mons IVs are to 31, the higher their stats will be.

The left side shows the EVs. A pokemon starts with 0 in all of them, but they can be increased slowly by fighting, or by giving expensive vitamins like Protein, Iron, Carbos, etc (those only work while your EV value is below 100). The limit is 252 in a single stat, and 510 in total, so you can at best have two stats at their maximum of 252, so choose carfully which stats you want to improve. Every pokemon you defeat gives you a certain amount of EVs in a certain stat, but the Power items will help you train a specific stat with a much higher rate than normal. So just put the power item you want on, train somewhere with low level mons that you can defeat fast, until your EV stat doesn't improve anymore, then use the berries to decrease EVs that accumulated but you don't need.

(you are probably an angel)

I feel a lot bette about my team when someone as experienced as you tells me that my team is fine but needs a few tweaks. Again thanks a LOTT!!!

[Seel The Deal]

Apart from the advice Lorane gave, I'd just like to suggest some new movesets:

 

It's a bit of work, but you can breed Close Combat onto Arcanine for a powerful option against Rock types. This makes both Bulldoze and Iron Head somewhat redundant, giving you room to run Crunch and then either Heat Wave for doubles, Fire Fang as a more reliable physical STAB, Thunder Fang for Water types, or Extreme Speed like you have now.

 

Cincinno starts to lack in raw power in the late game, so giving it some utility moves might not be a bad idea, to abuse its massive speed stat. Knock Off is a great start, but consider replacing one of Rock Blast or Bullet Seed with Encore to lock opponents into status moves and give yourself free turns. Sing is also an option, but smart use of Encore makes it mostly obsolete, and its accuracy leaves something to be desired.

 

If you go full physical on Lucario, I'd recommend a set with Close Combat, Meteor Mash, Extreme Speed and Swords Dance. Close Combat should OHKO anything that doesn't resist after a boost, Meteor Mash hits Fairy types, and Extreme Speed is for anything faster than Lucario. Full special, you could run a similar set with Aura Sphere, Flash Cannon, Nasty Plot and either Agility or a coverage move like Dark Pulse or Shadow Ball. Mixed is also an option but isn't the strongest IMO; you lack either coverage or power, or both if it's not built just right. The most I'd do with a mixed set is run Hidden Power Ice on a physical set to deal with something like Gliscor or Garchomp that might live an unboosted Ice Punch.