Gen III Battle Frontier Discussion and Records

shadowHP · May 1, 2021

I just won the Gold symbol (and got a 74 win streak) in the Battle Tower - Open Level Singles (Emerald - playing on an emulator).

Breloom is one my favorite mons in Gen3 so I definitely wanted to use one for the frontier. Didn't feel like using Lati@s, so Starmie became my special attacker. Snorlax is the bulky setup sweeper. All mons are RNG bred on Emerald.

AZURA (Starmie) @ Lum Berry
Ability: Natural Cure
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 6 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Surf
- Psychic
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt

My lead pokemon. Typical SPIT Starmie. Lum berry to avoid status/confusion. 2HKOs most things due to insane coverage and nice attacking stats. Modest nature because Timid doesn't hit hard enough for my taste.

WRATH (Breloom) (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Effect Spore
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 48 HP / 252 Atk / 6 Def / 204 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Spore
- Substitute
- Mach Punch
- Focus Punch

The annoyer/hard-hitter. Spore if the foe is slower (or even faster but cannot KO back). Then sub up. Then use Focus Punch. Watch them take huge damage (even if resisted). Mach Punch is there for finshing off weakened mons. I originally had Leech Seed over Mach Punch. But I couldn't use it as often as I would like to.

SLOTH (Snorlax) (M) @ Chesto Berry
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 136 HP / 96 Atk / 60 Def / 212 SpD / 6 Spe
Careful Nature
- Curse
- Rest
- Body Slam
- Shadow Ball

CurseLax. Switch it in on weak special attackers who cant 3HKO you. Start setting up. Heal up if you are too low on HP. Return might be better over Body Slam, but I like the paralysis chance. Shadow Ball is for beating Ghosts and Anabel's Alakazam/Latios.
IDK what I'm doing with the EV's. 1 speed point to outrun Anabel's Snorlax.

Strategy - Lead Starmie. 2HKO/3HKO most things. If you feel you can't OHKO/2HKO (and would get KOd back instead) then switch to Breloom or Snorlax. If Starmie barely misses the KO, then finish off with Mach Punch. Snorlax can set up on weak special attackers.

Potential threats -
Quick Claw: Sometimes it just happens. This team is not really built for long streaks. I just wanted to reach 70 and challenge Anabel for the Gold symbol.

Shedinja: Snorlax is the only one who can damage it. So try not to throw away Snorlax early.

Here's a screenshot of the streak and a video of wins 71-74. Lost because of my own misplays. Today I learned that in Gen 3, the opponent's recoil self-KO ends the turn and doesn't let you use Rest to heal up.

howtogetpikachuonabus · May 1, 2021

Hi all, I really liked Actaeon's monotype challenge and wanted to take a stab at part of it myself. I'm trying the flying type team. I managed to get 72 wins at the Battle Tower lvl 50 (emulator) from one attempt with this team.

Salamence Choice Band (adamant)
HP Flying / earthquake / brick break / hyper beam
EV's 252 Atk / 4 def / 252 spe

Zapdos Leftovers (timid)
Protect / substitute / rest / thunderbolt
EV's 252 Hp / 4 def / 252 spe

Gyarados Lum Berry (careful)
dragon dance / rest / hp flying / earthquake
EV's 180 Hp / 252 def / 74 sdf

The team relies mostly on zapdos to pp-stall and then gyarados to setup once they are struggling. Against some pokemon salamence OHKO's them then does a chunk to the next pokemon, allowing zapdos to revenge kill. Most physical attackers are much easier for the team to handle because of the double intimidate and some battles can be very fun when you need to switch out repeatedly. The main weakness of the team is fast special attackers starmie, latios, latias, gengar, and alakazam. In that case I sacrifice salamence for some damage and the hope zapdos can outspeed and outstall. So far I have always been able to outspeed with zapdos but its still very hard to outstall them.

I finally lost to a latias with ice beam / dragon claw / psychic / thunderbolt. Turn one I use salamance hp flying (about 65%) and latias kills it with an ice beam. I switch in zapdos and manage to pp stall ice beam and some of her other moves. I eventually need to rest without a substitute and zapdos cant withstand 2 dragon claws and a thunderbolt. Then I switch in gyarados and assume all is lost. I use hp flying, Latias uses thunderbolt first and gyarados survives on 10 hp (what a beast) but doesn't even kill with hp flying. So I might have actually won if I used dragon dance instead

I would try to give zapdos some more special defensive bulk and perhaps gyrados as well. It's possible salamence could be a different pokemon or defensive instead, because sometimes he feels like a wasted slot. It's possible moltres could replace zapdos, but the slight decrease in speed worries me

The flying typing is indeed very challenging. Flying is naturally weak to rock ice and electric. Those three types are some of the most powerfull attacking types in the game. And in particular ice and electric is really hard to handle. Every single flying type is either weak to ice or electric and there are many very fast and powerful pokemon that know both thunderbolt and ice beam. Anyways I'm going to keep trying flying teams because I'm not satisfied yet. Also Actaeon how high did you get your flying type teams?

Kommo-o · May 1, 2021

I'm really excited to share that GUCCI GANG has hit 60 on-going tournament wins!! After some failed attempts and getting involved in other projects, my streak has reached again its previous benchmark. I had been working on this streak during my free time after work and I had been grinding wins slowly throughout the last month but didn't wanted to publish something at least until I was close to come back to the previous record.

Having my DS Lite is a true blessing (I wish I had a backlit GBA SP but sometimes you can't have everything in life). Either way, I'll update my streak whenever I have time and hopefully the team is able to hit 100 wins as the minimum objective.

RE: Slaking, I've been using both Aerial Ace and Hyper Beam. Hyper Beam is an insanely powerful nuke that OHKOs anything that is not resistant or immune to the move. However, AA is a nice tranquilizer when you face Pokemon like Alakazam4 or Gardevoir2/4/8 who had been weakened previously and guarantee a hit. Having Aerial Ace also puts me at a very easy state of mind against Ludicolo 4.

Actaeon · May 1, 2021

howtogetpikachuonabus said:
Hi all, I really liked Actaeon's monotype challenge and wanted to take a stab at part of it myself. I'm trying the flying type team. I managed to get 72 wins at the Battle Tower lvl 50 (emulator) from one attempt with this team.

Salamence Choice Band (adamant)
HP Flying / earthquake / brick break / hyper beam
EV's 252 Atk / 4 def / 252 spe

Zapdos Leftovers (timid)
Protect / substitute / rest / thunderbolt
EV's 252 Hp / 4 def / 252 spe

Gyarados Lum Berry (careful)
dragon dance / rest / hp flying / earthquake
EV's 180 Hp / 252 def / 74 sdf

The team relies mostly on zapdos to pp-stall and then gyarados to setup once they are struggling. Against some pokemon salamence OHKO's them then does a chunk to the next pokemon, allowing zapdos to revenge kill. Most physical attackers are much easier for the team to handle because of the double intimidate and some battles can be very fun when you need to switch out repeatedly. The main weakness of the team is fast special attackers starmie, latios, latias, gengar, and alakazam. In that case I sacrifice salamence for some damage and the hope zapdos can outspeed and outstall. So far I have always been able to outspeed with zapdos but its still very hard to outstall them.

I finally lost to a latias with ice beam / dragon claw / psychic / thunderbolt. Turn one I use salamance hp flying (about 65%) and latias kills it with an ice beam. I switch in zapdos and manage to pp stall ice beam and some of her other moves. I eventually need to rest without a substitute and zapdos cant withstand 2 dragon claws and a thunderbolt. Then I switch in gyarados and assume all is lost. I use hp flying, Latias uses thunderbolt first and gyarados survives on 10 hp (what a beast) but doesn't even kill with hp flying. So I might have actually won if I used dragon dance instead

I would try to give zapdos some more special defensive bulk and perhaps gyrados as well. It's possible salamence could be a different pokemon or defensive instead, because sometimes he feels like a wasted slot. It's possible moltres could replace zapdos, but the slight decrease in speed worries me

The flying typing is indeed very challenging. Flying is naturally weak to rock ice and electric. Those three types are some of the most powerfull attacking types in the game. And in particular ice and electric is really hard to handle. Every single flying type is either weak to ice or electric and there are many very fast and powerful pokemon that know both thunderbolt and ice beam. Anyways I'm going to keep trying flying teams because I'm not satisfied yet. Also Actaeon how high did you get your flying type teams?

Very cool you're trying Mono Flying. I haven't been able to test yet how far my version can get on its own, but I think it should be able to get gold with some luck or after a few tries. The Xatu/Gligar/Gyarados team is currently in the 5th spot from "bad to good". I can't use Mence nor Zapdos nor any other Pressure abuser at all because they are on other teams already. Gyarados is a given and definitely the most potent sweeper. So what would be the best in general, without the restrictions?

A typical "Burglar" team consisting of Thief, Speed Control, stalling PP and setting up, is what my team represents. But a lead PP-stall Roar Bird + another Pressure abuser could definitely be good. You can consider Zapdos and then Aero/Moltres or even Reflect Articuno for example. What I like about Gligar is that it's not weak to Elc/Rock in particular.

I'm curious to hear what you can come up with!

howtogetpikachuonabus · May 2, 2021

I came up with another flying type team but it got to almost the exact same place. I got to 74 wins this time.

Skarm chesto berry (bold)
Protect / sand attack/ torment / rest
EV's 252 Hp / 100 def / 156 sdef

Zapdos Leftovers (timid)
Protect / substitute / rest / thunder wave
EV's 180 Hp / 76 sdef / 252 spe

Salamence lum berry (adamant)
dragon dance/ rest / hp rock / earthquake
EV's 252 HP / 252 atk / 4 def

The team felt stronger than the last one and skarmoy absolutely destroys so many threats. Skarm can wall every physical attacker and most special attackers on his own. But unfortunately against the really strong special attackers all he can do is 1 sand attack. Also some fire and electric type pokemon can OHKO him but they are all handled decently by Zapdos. I did consider thief on skarmory but all his moves seem very important.

I lost to a starmie. I sacrifice skarmory to 2 tbolts in order to get off 1 sand attack. Then I try to pp stall with zapdos. First protect then he ice beams me to about 50% and then I sub. Then protect. Then behind a sub I go for substitute again, because I had assumed I was slower. Because it was a speed tie I did nothing that turn and he breaks my sub. Then protect. Then he wins the speed tie and ko's me. Last is salamance which he OHKO's with the last ice beam. This starmie is an absolute nightmare for my team and would have also beaten my last team. It's the modest one with ice beam / thunderbolt / surf / psychic so it had a lum berry to stop thunder wave from mattering. Going for a second protect on the wasted turn would have given a 50% additional chance of removing the last ice beam but I didn't think of it at the time.

Actaeon · May 2, 2021

howtogetpikachuonabus said:
I came up with another flying type team but it got to almost the exact same place. I got to 74 wins this time.

Skarm chesto berry (bold)
Protect / sand attack/ torment / rest
EV's 252 Hp / 100 def / 156 sdef

Zapdos Leftovers (timid)
Protect / substitute / rest / thunder wave
EV's 180 Hp / 76 sdef / 252 spe

Salamence lum berry (adamant)
dragon dance/ rest / hp rock / earthquake
EV's 252 HP / 252 atk / 4 def

The team felt stronger than the last one and skarmoy absolutely destroys so many threats. Skarm can wall every physical attacker and most special attackers on his own. But unfortunately against the really strong special attackers all he can do is 1 sand attack. Also some fire and electric type pokemon can OHKO him but they are all handled decently by Zapdos. I did consider thief on skarmory but all his moves seem very important.

I lost to a starmie. I sacrifice skarmory to 2 tbolts in order to get off 1 sand attack. Then I try to pp stall with zapdos. First protect then he ice beams me to about 50% and then I sub. Then protect. Then behind a sub I go for substitute again, because I had assumed I was slower. Because it was a speed tie I did nothing that turn and he breaks my sub. Then protect. Then he wins the speed tie and ko's me. Last is salamance which he OHKO's with the last ice beam. This starmie is an absolute nightmare for my team and would have also beaten my last team. It's the modest one with ice beam / thunderbolt / surf / psychic so it had a lum berry to stop thunder wave from mattering. Going for a second protect on the wasted turn would have given a 50% additional chance of removing the last ice beam but I didn't think of it at the time.

Try Twave/Protect/Sub/Flash Zapdos lead with Salac/Lum, SubTect Sand Attack Skarm and a Leftovers Intimidate Sub DD sweeper. You'll be surprised, this setup is "statistically" really strong and a nice showcase of the calculations I made on SubTecting with various parameters.

howtogetpikachuonabus · May 3, 2021

Actaeon said:
Try Twave/Protect/Sub/Flash Zapdos lead with Salac/Lum, SubTect Sand Attack Skarm and a Leftovers Intimidate Sub DD sweeper. You'll be surprised, this setup is "statistically" really strong and a nice showcase of the calculations I made on SubTecting with various parameters.

I tried your team Actaeon. It seemed like a nice idea, but I died to the same starmie set at 50 wins -_- I used Twave he used ice beam and critted zapdos. I could have used Flash instead. I could have tried to protect substall instead. But at the end of the day it's a speed tie.
Maybe I just got really unlucky though. After looking at the max pokemon database a bit more Starmie (3) and (4) look like they should be the absolute fastest threatening pokemon for this team. Tomorrow I might try to use one of your simulations to see how unlucky I was.

Edit: tried this team again and I'm now on 91 wins. Haven't run into metagross yet but I think he could be a problem if he gets one attack raise. Starmie is still an issue and for a lot of special attackers I rely on a bit of luck to win. Either way this team is decent.

Actaeon · May 4, 2021

howtogetpikachuonabus said:
I tried your team Actaeon. It seemed like a nice idea, but I died to the same starmie set at 50 wins -_- I used Twave he used ice beam and critted zapdos. I could have used Flash instead. I could have tried to protect substall instead. But at the end of the day it's a speed tie.
Maybe I just got really unlucky though. After looking at the max pokemon database a bit more Starmie (3) and (4) look like they should be the absolute fastest threatening pokemon for this team. Tomorrow I might try to use one of your simulations to see how unlucky I was.

Here's another funny one that might solve a lot of problems:

MID JULY (Butterfree) (F) @ Salac Berry
Ability: Compoundeyes
EVs: 60 HP / 196 Def / 252 Spe
Timid Nature (+Spe, -Atk)
- Endure
- Thief
- String Shot
- Flash

CUSTER (Zapdos) @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 220 HP / 204 Def / 4 SpA / 4 SpD / 76 Spe
Timid Nature (+Spe, -SpA)
- Protect
- Substitute
- Double Team
- Baton Pass

WORKINGMAN (Salamence) @ Liechi Berry
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 244 HP / 236 Atk / 12 Def / 16 Spe
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SpA)
IVs: 30 SpA / 30 SpD / 30 Spe
- Dragon Dance
- Substitute
- Hidden Power [Flying]
- Earthquake

Currently at 56 wins. Needs some luck in some fights with Butterfree of course, but it's pretty solid for Gold I think. Will continue some tonight and see if I can get 100 maybe?!

EDIT: finally lost to Ancientpower Aero lead; it got the full boost after Endure, so I couldn't outspeed it. After that, it hit Zapdos for like 70% but its Ancientpower was outstalled. It paralyzed Salamence with Dragonbreath, and Salamence got beaten by Ursaring Facade crit. Miraculously, Zapdos was able to setup double teams and burn through all its PP, beating Ursaring in the process. Finally, Charizard beat me just before I struggle KO-ed it with a Blaze Flamethrower. An epic battle, but I got 76 wins.

If you want make a decent team out of this, I suggest using Suicune over Butterfree with Icy Wind, Roar, Mud-Slap and either Protect or Surf. Zapdos does all of the work for you after that.

Actaeon · May 6, 2021

Just a small update on the team that was previously called "Cigarette". Salamence got way tankier and Snorlax was eventually made to be Calm for way better odds of setting up against all kinds of special Pokemon, most notably Latios and Calm Mind Psychics.

The new Salamence is quite an original set, because it's the first BULKY Choice Band Mence we ever considered as far as I know. It's called "VAN NELLE" after the Dutch cigarette brand, since it still fries Bug-types and actually lets me roll these cigarettes while setting up Lax. The Speed EVs let it outspeed Metagross. The Attack EVs are to make it able to 2HKO Walrein and Lapras so I have a decent chance of beating them even before they get a chance to start using OHKO moves. It still gets 2HKOs against Marowak and many other threats as well, but now misses the opportunity to OHKO Zapdos. Luckily, Snorlax being bulkier now helps against that.

Salamence has good odds of avoiding getting 2HKOed itself by all sorts of things, like non-STAB Intimidated Rock Slides, Metagross Meteor Mash, various Thunderbolts and Psychics. It tanks weaker Ice-type moves like Electabuzz Ice Punch before sending it to a great hen house in the sky with Earthquake. Also the extra defensive bulk, combined with Intimidates, makes it laugh at (STAB) Fighting moves and it is now able to switch in multiple times for Intimidate while keeping its health above 50% which is essential to make it choose the right moves in a pinch situation.

Anyway, I proudly present the new team, "RISING HOPE"! I think I speak for dgice too if I say this is the best team we've got for Palace until now.

https://pokepast.es/a2ef7a0ebde67d15

dgice · May 7, 2021

Actaeon said:
Anyway, I proudly present the new team, "RISING HOPE"! I think I speak for dgice too if I say this is the best team we've got for Palace until now.

View attachment 338493

https://pokepast.es/b0d45918b703644b

This is definitely the best team we have so far, and now it is better optimized and we know the plan for various matchups in higher detail and with more confidence. We have run it over and over against hard trainers like dragon tamers, black belts, and swimmers. Funnily enough I think swimmers are the riskiest with the ohko's but we have pretty decent chances between rock slide on salamence and substitute on suicune and they often don't have the most dangerous sets with them. For physical trainers you often rely on salamence and suicune to beat all 3 pokemon. Substitute was used less often than I like but when it is it's pretty awesome, you need a very bulky pokemon to make it work. For example I love a substitute blissey as your special wall in the palace, the only reason I didn't use it is I couldn't find a physically defensive enough struggler, regirock and registeel are both too weak to earthquake (and maybe brick break), skarmoy doesn't have amnesia (maybe that's not a deal breaker but without higher base attack it would get rough); but I'm sure substitute blissey should be on other types of palace teams.

Edit: The debate for next week is whether protect is doing enough work in it's slot on suicune. The AI algorithm with rest and substitute works very well (and probably pays off in many situations where you have calm mind or reflect). Protect with substitute does the same work as just substitute in pp stalling only a little better. The reason it's not a lot better is situations like swords dance where protecting on a swords dance is way worse than using substitute or OHKO moves where the move may miss anyways and you get to carry the substitute forward (the biggest problem in the OHKO match is choosing surf and losing to an early ohko, so either sub or protect doesn't matter, things do get worse for just sub in the 10pp ohko variants vs the 5pp). The huge benefit is against physical heavy teams where you rely on suicune and mence you may actually carry a reflect or substitute forward far more often than you would with protect.

We tried a lot of other teams out a long the way and some seemed very workable. One thing that we realized about struggling sets is that we don't really need amnesia once set up as long as we have high enough special defense that we can survive a hit. Amnesia does help at all againsts crits from their second pokemon anyways, double team does and having a high attack stat so they can survive fewer turns against you. You basically need curse and double team to win struggle wars. With that in mind Actaeon came up with an awesome struggle umbreon set that uses wish and no amnesia. With wish you don't use rest as often and therefore status from things like the elemental punches is less of a worry. Umbreon's typing also saves it from most of the psychic calm minders! We found that for umbreon you actually want the extra pp on double team so you can stall for awhile getting the worst moves out of the way then switch out to suicune to stall more status inducing pp then switch back to umbreon ( I think that's the reason I know there was something we wanted more pp because we wanted to switch out). Synchronize is really interesting as well as umbreon doesn't have immunity but, synchronize tends to shut toxic opponents down faster (not as ideal as just setting up, but the threatening trainers don't often have toxic). Once you get your opponent struggling you can wish your team back to near full health (this could be really strong with intimidate or charm).
One of the downsides of Umbreon is the base stats aren't as good for the struggle wars and you come closer to not being able to set up as often, they also are not as good for setting up on non-psychic calm minders. Actaeon ( who honestly appears to work on pokemon somehow more than me even when my only priority everyday is pokemon) has been simulating struggle wars to find out who wins, how much hp we have left at the end, and how many turns it takes. In most situations snorlax only wins a little bit more often than umbreon, they both win most fights. But in terms of turns it takes umbreon may take 300-400 turns to win a battle that only takes snorlax 100 turns. Which is a pretty big deal if you are going to do this on retail because that umbreon fight is realistically multiple days of playing while half paying attention.
Being fast on the other hand is very nice on umbreon, being calm you often don't use curse early and the speed helps you heal early.

Umbreon has better synergy with shedinja so I put them together on a team. It's not as good as RISING HOPE, but it was really interesting to me how much thinking you got to do and how the team seems to thread the needle in terms of how it covers specific teams.
https://pokepast.es/76f1ae683e80ae21

For instance against cross chop machamp you switch into shed, out to umbreon in to shed baiting cross chops. You repeat 3 times then switch to swapping between suicune and shed (you are likely to lose shed here but it is not great against these trainers anyways) for the last cross chop pp. At that point machamp becomes setup fodder for umbreon. This sequence is important because you both need to be maintaining just enough hp on both umbreon and suicune (suicune wants enough hp to survive the last cross chop, umbreon needs it to set up), and because after moves have been repeated a few times they become less predictable. This highlights something we can exploit in palace, 5 pp moves, they are relatively easy to swap stall, I might not consider this technique in tower because it might be 10% chance to fail, but it is a real way we can overcome that there are too many types of threats to answer perfectly with just three pokemon.

Spenser's arcanine is a pokemon you need to play a little differently against since it's so important to set up on it. You can not attack it ever because you will hit it low and it will struggle itself to death, you ideally want to be at your last 6 double teams when it runs out of roar and starts struggling. The nice part is that as you double team and curse the opponents take less and less recoil from their own struggle. Running it out of pp is not hard since you can bait overheat with your useless shed and then easily bait extreme speed into shed when the special attack is lowered (pressure of course helps too) not that it was ever really a threat to umbreon, just nice to be safe.

There are other interesting synergies like how the dragon dancers that don't lose to ice beam are walled by shed.
Reflect suicune is nice, if that first rest with chesto gets used too early it can be rough though that it spams defensive moves because you sleep so much. Reflect does tend to buy you enough time to wake up. Reflect is interesting for doing it's job against clear body pokemon that charm doesn't work against. It however is dissapointing on this team because you need it against brick break. I may consider reflect on a psychic type for that reason.

The thought I want to leave people thinking about is switching into wish. When you switch in you have to survive the attack, then you get healed, so it doesn't work if you're already low, it does work to keep you at high health if you were already high. You also can't plan on picking wish very quickly so you need to be very good against the pokemon you are wishing on. Where you can break these rules with some certainty is if you get the opponent struggling and at lowered attack as you can be at 30% health and easily survive a reduced struggle. This style should theoretically benefit you if your plan is to trade health attacking against certain threats as you could take some damage beating the first pokemon, fully set up on the second pokemon and heal up, lose to an OHKO or have to switch out because of a psychup threat on the third pokemon, but the full health of your attacker saves you.

Actaeon · May 7, 2021

dgice said:
This is definitely the best team we have so far, and now it is better optimized and we know the plan for various matchups in higher detail and with more confidence. We have run it over and over against hard trainers like dragon tamers, black belts, and swimmers. Funnily enough I think swimmers are the riskiest with the ohko's but we have pretty decent chances between rock slide on salamence and substitute on suicune and they often don't have the most dangerous sets with them. For physical trainers you often rely on salamence and suicune to beat all 3 pokemon. Substitute was used less often than I like but when it is it's pretty awesome, you need a very bulky pokemon to make it work. For example I love a substitute blissey as your special wall in the palace, the only reason I didn't use it is I couldn't find a physically defensive enough struggler, regirock and registeel are both too weak to earthquake (and maybe brick break), skarmoy doesn't have amnesia (maybe that's not a deal breaker but without higher base attack it would get rough); but I'm sure substitute blissey should be on other types of palace teams.

We tried a lot of other teams out a long the way and some seemed very workable. One thing that we realized about struggling sets is that we don't really need amnesia once set up as long as we have high enough special defense that we can survive a hit. Amnesia does help at all againsts crits from their second pokemon anyways, double team does and having a high attack stat so they can survive fewer turns against you. You basically need curse and double team to win struggle wars. With that in mind Actaeon came up with an awesome struggle umbreon set that uses wish and no amnesia. With wish you don't use rest as often and therefore status from things like the elemental punches is less of a worry. Umbreon's typing also saves it from most of the psychic calm minders! We found that for umbreon you actually want the extra pp on double team so you can stall for awhile getting the worst moves out of the way then switch out to suicune to stall more status inducing pp then switch back to umbreon ( I think that's the reason I know there was something we wanted more pp because we wanted to switch out). Synchronize is really interesting as well as umbreon doesn't have immunity but, synchronize tends to shut toxic opponents down faster (not as ideal as just setting up, but the threatening trainers don't often have toxic). Once you get your opponent struggling you can wish your team back to near full health (this could be really strong with intimidate or charm).
One of the downsides of Umbreon is the base stats aren't as good for the struggle wars and you come closer to not being able to set up as often, they also are not as good for setting up on non-psychic calm minders. Actaeon ( who honestly appears to work on pokemon somehow more than me even when my only priority everyday is pokemon) has been simulating struggle wars to find out who wins, how much hp we have left at the end, and how many turns it takes. In most situations snorlax only wins a little bit more often than umbreon, they both win most fights. But in terms of turns it takes umbreon may take 300-400 turns to win a battle that only takes snorlax 100 turns. Which is a pretty big deal if you are going to do this on retail because that umbreon fight is realistically multiple days of playing while half paying attention.
Being fast on the other hand is very nice on umbreon, being calm you often don't use curse early and the speed helps you heal early.

Umbreon has better synergy with shedinja so I put them together on a team. It's not as good as RISING HOPE, but it was really interesting to me how much thinking you got to do and how the team seems to thread the needle in terms of how it covers specific teams.
https://pokepast.es/76f1ae683e80ae21

For instance against cross chop machamp you switch into shed, out to umbreon in to shed baiting cross chops. You repeat 3 times then switch to swapping between suicune and shed (you are likely to lose shed here but it is not great against these trainers anyways) for the last cross chop pp. At that point machamp becomes setup fodder for umbreon. This sequence is important because you both need to be maintaining just enough hp on both umbreon and suicune (suicune wants enough hp to survive the last cross chop, umbreon needs it to set up), and because after moves have been repeated a few times they become less predictable. This highlights something we can exploit in palace, 5 pp moves, they are relatively easy to swap stall, I might not consider this technique in tower because it might be 10% chance to fail, but it is a real way we can overcome that there are too many types of threats to answer perfectly with just three pokemon.

Spenser's arcanine is a pokemon you need to play a little differently against since it's so important to set up on it. You can not attack it ever because you will hit it low and it will struggle itself to death, you ideally want to be at your last 6 double teams when it runs out of roar and starts struggling. The nice part is that as you double team and curse the opponents take less and less recoil from their own struggle. Running it out of pp is not hard since you can bait overheat with your useless shed and then easily bait extreme speed into shed when the special attack is lowered (pressure of course helps too) not that it was ever really a threat to umbreon, just nice to be safe.

There are other interesting synergies like how the dragon dancers that don't lose to ice beam are walled by shed.
Reflect suicune is nice, if that first rest with chesto gets used too early it can be rough though that it spams defensive moves because you sleep so much. Reflect does tend to buy you enough time to wake up. Reflect is interesting for doing it's job against clear body pokemon that charm doesn't work against. It however is dissapointing on this team because you need it against brick break. I may consider reflect on a psychic type for that reason.

The thought I want to leave people thinking about is switching into wish. When you switch in you have to survive the attack, then you get healed, so it doesn't work if you're already low, it does work to keep you at high health if you were already high. You also can't plan on picking wish very quickly so you need to be very good against the pokemon you are wishing on. Where you can break these rules with some certainty is if you get the opponent struggling and at lowered attack as you can be at 30% health and easily survive a reduced struggle. This style should theoretically benefit you if your plan is to trade health attacking against certain threats as you could take some damage beating the first pokemon, fully set up on the second pokemon and heal up, lose to an OHKO or have to switch out because of a psychup threat on the third pokemon, but the full health of your attacker saves you.

Awesome read, sums it up quite well. I used Curse/DT/Rest/Agility Brave full Attack investment Skarm alongside Latias lead and a kind of Blissey you were talking about. Needs a ton of support but sweeps quite well. Ultimately you lose to Tbolt/Flamethrower from second opponent actually hitting through Double Teams in the little time they have of course, in my case Blaze Blaziken ;)

JoebertIII · May 13, 2021

Grab your popcorn, I've racked up enough replays to justify to myself posting more Factory exploits!

I knew Houndoom was a massive threat, but assumed I had the tools to beat him..

Absolutely painful. I tried to play as safely as I could with Metagross. I was holding out hope that it was the other Blizzard Articuno set and I could get to +6 evasion.

So this was Round 4 (Zapdos was an elevation pokemon) and the AI is still only "Moderate AI". The Nidoqueen was a starting pick with 12IV's across the board. Without that tiny boost to speed, she would have surely fallen.

A good visual to understand how to PP stall opponents in the frontier. I'm sure I would have won even without Regirock being a boss.

And with that last battle, I am sitting on an ongoing streak of 56 in the Level 50 Factory singles. So look forward to a full post in the future once it ends!

Actaeon · May 13, 2021

Here's the first version of my recent project: DomeAssistant!

This program lets you extract as much info as you can about what sets the opponent might bring. As usual, it's not coded very efficiently but it does the job, and a fantastic one in most cases: most of the time, there are over 300 combinations if they use Pokemon with a lot of sets and this program narrows them down to below 10 most of the time. Luckily I haven't spotted any mistakes yet while using it myself.

Here are some examples of how to use it:

Code:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who is your next opponent? Fill in the trainer name.
Dario
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fill in the different species you see, separated by Enters.
Metagross
Latios
Exeggutor
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Select the battle style from the following list:
(0) Willing to risk total disaster at times
(1) Skilled at enduring long battles
(2) Varies tactics to suit the opponent
(3) Has a tough winning pattern
(4) Occasionally uses a very rare move
(5) Uses startling and disruptive moves
(6) Constantly watches HP in battle
(7) Good at storing then loosing power
(8) Skilled at enfeebling foes
(9) Prefers tactics that rely on luck
(10) Attacks with a regal atmosphere
(11) Attacks with powerful, low-PP moves
(12) Skilled at enfeebling, then attacking
(13) Battles while enduring all attacks
(14) Skilled at upsetting foes emotionally
(15) Uses strong and straightforward moves
(16) Aggressively uses strong moves
(17) Battles while cleverly dodging attacks
(18) Skilled at using upsetting attacks
(19) Uses many popular moves
(20) Has moves for powerful combinations
(21) Uses high-probability attacks
(22) Aggressively uses spectacular moves
(23) Emphasizes offense over defense
(24) Emphasizes defense over offense
(25) Attacks quickly with strong moves
(26) Often uses moves with added effects
(27) Uses a well-balanced mix of moves
0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is there emphasis (E) or neglection (N) of any stats, or is the team 'well-balanced' (B)?
B
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, enter any moves you know via the Tourney Tree, or 'none' if you don't know.
Psychic
Ice Beam
Earthquake
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
=== Option 1 ===
Metagross 2     Lum Berry  Adamant    Earthquake   Meteor Mash      Psych Up       Swagger
    Latios 2    Quick Claw   Docile       Psychic   Thunderbolt      Ice Beam    Earthquake
Exeggutor 3     Leftovers    Hardy    Leech Seed    Giga Drain         Toxic     Explosion
=== Option 2 ===
Metagross 3  Chesto Berry  Adamant    Earthquake   Meteor Mash   Double Team          Rest
    Latios 2    Quick Claw   Docile       Psychic   Thunderbolt      Ice Beam    Earthquake
Exeggutor 3     Leftovers    Hardy    Leech Seed    Giga Drain         Toxic     Explosion

Code:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who is your next opponent? Fill in the trainer name.
Dorine
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fill in the different species you see, separated by Enters.
Latias
Moltres
Entei
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Select the battle style from the following list:
(0) Willing to risk total disaster at times
(1) Skilled at enduring long battles
(2) Varies tactics to suit the opponent
(3) Has a tough winning pattern
(4) Occasionally uses a very rare move
(5) Uses startling and disruptive moves
(6) Constantly watches HP in battle
(7) Good at storing then loosing power
(8) Skilled at enfeebling foes
(9) Prefers tactics that rely on luck
(10) Attacks with a regal atmosphere
(11) Attacks with powerful, low-PP moves
(12) Skilled at enfeebling, then attacking
(13) Battles while enduring all attacks
(14) Skilled at upsetting foes emotionally
(15) Uses strong and straightforward moves
(16) Aggressively uses strong moves
(17) Battles while cleverly dodging attacks
(18) Skilled at using upsetting attacks
(19) Uses many popular moves
(20) Has moves for powerful combinations
(21) Uses high-probability attacks
(22) Aggressively uses spectacular moves
(23) Emphasizes offense over defense
(24) Emphasizes defense over offense
(25) Attacks quickly with strong moves
(26) Often uses moves with added effects
(27) Uses a well-balanced mix of moves
15
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is there emphasis (E) or neglection (N) of any stats, or is the team 'well-balanced' (B)?
E
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Which stat(s)? Type 'none' if the second input is not necessary.
SpA
none
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, enter any moves you know via the Tourney Tree, or 'none' if you don't know.
Thunderbolt
Overheat
none
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
=== Option 1 ===
    Latias 1     Lum Berry   Modest       Psychic   Thunderbolt      Ice Beam   Dragon Claw
   Moltres 2    White Herb    Hardy      Overheat    Aerial Ace   Double Team       Protect
     Entei 4   King's Rock   Modest  Flamethrower          Bite   Double Team       Reflect
=== Option 2 ===
    Latias 1     Lum Berry   Modest       Psychic   Thunderbolt      Ice Beam   Dragon Claw
   Moltres 4    White Herb    Quiet      Overheat   Double-Edge    Steel Wing     Safeguard
     Entei 4   King's Rock   Modest  Flamethrower          Bite   Double Team       Reflect

Code:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who is your next opponent? Fill in the trainer name.
Miller
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fill in the different species you see, separated by Enters.
Lapras
Gyarados
Salamence
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Select the battle style from the following list:
(0) Willing to risk total disaster at times
(1) Skilled at enduring long battles
(2) Varies tactics to suit the opponent
(3) Has a tough winning pattern
(4) Occasionally uses a very rare move
(5) Uses startling and disruptive moves
(6) Constantly watches HP in battle
(7) Good at storing then loosing power
(8) Skilled at enfeebling foes
(9) Prefers tactics that rely on luck
(10) Attacks with a regal atmosphere
(11) Attacks with powerful, low-PP moves
(12) Skilled at enfeebling, then attacking
(13) Battles while enduring all attacks
(14) Skilled at upsetting foes emotionally
(15) Uses strong and straightforward moves
(16) Aggressively uses strong moves
(17) Battles while cleverly dodging attacks
(18) Skilled at using upsetting attacks
(19) Uses many popular moves
(20) Has moves for powerful combinations
(21) Uses high-probability attacks
(22) Aggressively uses spectacular moves
(23) Emphasizes offense over defense
(24) Emphasizes defense over offense
(25) Attacks quickly with strong moves
(26) Often uses moves with added effects
(27) Uses a well-balanced mix of moves
12
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is there emphasis (E) or neglection (N) of any stats, or is the team 'well-balanced' (B)?
E
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Which stat(s)? Type 'none' if the second input is not necessary.
Spe
none
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, enter any moves you know via the Tourney Tree, or 'none' if you don't know.
none
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
=== Option 1 ===
    Lapras 2    Quick Claw    Timid          Surf      Ice Beam     Body Slam          Roar
  Gyarados 1     Lum Berry  Careful        Return          Bite  Thunder Wave  Dragon Dance
Salamence 1   King's Rock    Hardy   Dragon Claw    Aerial Ace      Headbutt    Rock Slide

Maybe it's an idea to move this to "tools" on the main page if there are no more bug reports? If you want to use the program, run it from command line from the same folder the .txt files are in. Note that you have to convert these .txt files to .csv files first (I can't upload .csv files here). Good luck!

Mucks · May 14, 2021

I'd like to report my streaks for the Battle Tower with 108 wins and Battle Factory with 56 wins, both on retail and Lv.50.

https://pokepast.es/5fd56486eb564097

This team was originally just built to get the gold symbol but I continued the streak as much as I could afterwards.

Due to the amazing coverage of Heracross and Starmie, most trainers are straight forward. Defensively, the three team members cover each others' weaknesses well, so threatening Pokemon can be avoided by switching without losing much health. Heracross can struggle with a few matchups, which are usually dealt with quite well by Starmie and Blissey. Fire types are handled by Starmie and Psychic types with good coverage like Alakazam or Gardevoir are handled by Blissey.

Some of the problematic matchups are Crobat-4, Szizor, Skarmory and Lapras-7/8. Crobat is problematic since it outspeeds all team members. It threatens Heracross with Aerial Ace, and KO's Starmie with Aerial Ace into Shadow Ball. So the answer to Crobat-4 is Blissey but with bad luck in terms of poison and crits Blissey could lose as well. Scizor and Skarmory can be problematic for similar reasons if crits are involved and Lapras can get lucky with Sheer Colds.

The gold leader was fairly easy since Heracross could Earthquake the Raikou and put it into range of Brick Break in case it chose to set up a Reflect. For Latios, I switched into Starmie and KO'd it with two Ice Beams. For Snorlax, Heracross did the rest.

Kommo-o gave some comments on this team, which I would like to share. If I would build this exact team with the intention of a high streak, I would suggest using a Jolly Heracross with Choice Band to outspeed more Pokemon, specifically Lati@s sets and Choice Band to hit harder. Lum Berry does not do too much since it has 4 attacks and no setup moves and as well as Guts for burns. Also Blissey has Aromatherapy for annoying paras or freezes. 84 speed EVs on Blissey can be used to outspeed Walrein. Thanks to Kommo-o again for the feedback!

The trainer I lost to used Szizor-3, Regice-6 and Salamence-7. For Scizor, I switched into Starmie to scout for Aerial Ace. After revealing Agility, I switched back to Heracross to scout for a potential Sivler Wind but it used Agility again. I damaged it with Break Break and finished it of with Starmie at the cost of Heracross and Starmie both having below 50% hp.

The next mon was Regice-6 with should be winnable for Blissey. It being the Rest set was annoying since it could heal the Toxic. After a Rest, I wanted to switch into Hera to kill it during the sleep turns but I forgot that it could have Sleep Talk and rolled Ice Beam to kill Hera. Blissey got Sleep Talk Ice Beam frozen afterwards. I stayed frozen fow a 5-6 turns and decided to switch into starmie to remove the freeze with Natural Cure. Regice then Ice beam crit the Starmie so I only had the Blissey left.

I finished the Regice off eventually and the last mon was Salamance-7 with Lum Berry. Because of the berry, I had to Toxic it twice and pray for no crit during the first turns, but unfortunately I got crit. If I had the Toxic setup and Soft Boiled up, Mence would have needed two crits in a row to win this matchup. A disappointing loss due to the bad luck but I'm still happy that I got that streak.

For the Battle Factory, I originally used to swap after every battle in order to get the higher IV tiers in the higher rounds. After only getting to round 3 or 4 a couple times with the switching strategy, I decided to stick with a good team once I was satisfied. I feel like, the tier-ups are not really worth it since it also requires some mental efford to remember all the opposing mons, time for the switch and potentially sacrificing a good team after a switch. I good through the runs much quicker and for higher rounds, I felt like getting a bad set of Pokemon is still the main cause of failure instead of missing the higher IVs.

For round 6, I had really good luck and got Gengar-3, Houndoom-3 and Blastoise-3 in the initial draft and I stayed with this team through the whole round. The gold leader had Porygon2-3, Arcanine-3 and Medicham-3. For Porygon2 I had the good synergy of Ghost and Dark types to switch between Psychic and Tri Attack. The Arcanine-3 was killed by Blastoise and for Medicham I still had full hp Gengar.

In Round 9, I did not have the best Pokemon to choose from, where I picked Kingdra-2, Slowbro-2 and Regirock-5. The first opponent had a Misdreavous, which I KO'd easily with Kingdra. After that, the opponent sent out Registeel-1. I switched into Regirock and went for the +6 evasion Focus Punch strategy. While setting up, Registeel went for 4 Curses and 2 Amnesia, so I needed to crit Focus Punch and Registeel not to hit with Metal Claw. After 12 Focus Punches without a single crit, Registeel eventually hit 2 Metal Claws to kill my Regirock and I couldn't break through +4 SpDef Rest Registeel with Kingdra and Slowbro.

Actaeon · May 14, 2021

Here's a team that I believe reduces hax to a minimum when used alongside DomeAssistant. I honestly can't think of very realistic losing scenarios, it's got me from 100 to 140 tournament wins without risk at all:

https://pokepast.es/d6591bcc0fcad004

Suicune carries the team in Dome and we all know how it does that; it outspeeds so many Pokemon and simply outstalls them, whatever move they use. The scary things are Water Absorb OHKO'ers, Curse Quagsire, Dragon Dance, QC (Curse) Snorlax and some other QC OHKO things like Whiscash. Also, Jolteon is definitely a problem since it still outspeeds you despite having 3 IVs. This also applies to Sceptile, for example. Finally, there are some special attackers with many coverage moves that break Suicune's Sub, such as Lapras, Gardevoir and Latios.

Shedinja beats most of the Water-type (haxing) threats, or at least forces the switch so I can either 1/2KHO whatever they might switch in if that's certain, or use Baton Pass to get Suicune in against the other Pokemon without taking damage and play from there. With a Choice Band, Shedinja hits ridiculously hard, factoring in the IV advantage. For example, Shadow Ball cleanly 2HKOs Metagross without Defense investment, and the same applies to 255 Def Snorlax and HP[Fighting]. This often lets Shedinja beat the switchin, and obviously the Pokemon they switched out after that.
Its Speed isn't particularly bad either; see this post previously made by Adedede.

Finally, I needed some glue to solve the following problems:

Jolteon (might carry Bite or Shadow Ball for Shedinja)
Crobat
(QC Curse) Snorlax
Dragon Dance Salamence and Gyarados (there's one with Bite, lol)
Coverage special attackers
Extra safety against QC hard-hitting physicals like Ursaring, Metagross, Granbull.

This is an interesting mix of things you have to be prepared against with only one Pokemon, particularly it asks for a very dependable mixed wall. Mixed walling in general is very hard to do in BF, but with the IV advantage it suddenly becomes possible in the form of Umbreon.

It either beats Jolteon cleanly after switching in, or leaves it paralyzed at least after double Synchronize activation since that's the only way Jolteon will get through Umbreon. After that, Suicune can easily set up on it. Crobat becomes a lot less dangerous after a Charm, and Lum Berry helps against the first Confuse Ray at least. Not the best answer, but you simply can't use anything else (like a Steel) without creating way more problems instead. Crobat needs to be crazy lucky to get through Umbreon without running out of Sludge Bomb PP if you play conservatively with Wish and Protect.

Curse Snorlax will get Charmed until it can't restore the Attack anymore with Curse. Even a critical hit Double-Edge does 84.6% max, so again you reduce this to fodder if play conservatively with Wish, Protect and Charm. Quick Claw isn't really much of an issue anymore this way. The same applies to Dragon Dancers. You can safely switch from Suicune to Umbreon, whatever Salamence it turns out to be. Even a +1 Double-Edge critical hit still doesn't KO Umbreon.

Umbreon beats the special attackers outright, and pretty quickly too because of the super-effective Faint Attack. As a bonus it will have full HP after beating them! Faint Attack in general beats all kinds of things within like 8 hits, even if they have Leftovers. Umbreon's STAB and Special Attack make it not-even-that-weak, given the IV advantage. For example it royally 2HKOs Gengar (be careful about Destiny Bond).

So what are the realistic losing scenarios? I guess Fissure Dugtrio and QC Horn Drill from Rhydon remain the most dangerous, but even those will probably waste OHKO PP against Suicune while it Protects, and then Umbreon has Protect as well. Then Raikou can be hard to play around; if it's the Bite set it beats Shedinja and if it's the Calm Mind set it beats Umbreon.

Umbreon can handle a great deal of Pokemon on its own without even needing to setup like Suicune, so bringing Umbreon + Shedinja is a rare but sometimes effective pinch play. If you prefer, you can even use the Mercury Gengar from Adedede's team over Shedinja for more easy wins! But be careful, since not having Slaking makes you don't always win the Tie break.

I really want to see legit streaks with this team, feel free to use it.

dgice · May 17, 2021

Frontier threats, a Battle Palace perspective

This is going to be a breakdown and classification of the frontier threats (lvl 50) with respect to what makes them tough in the palace, comparing solutions to them and their frequency. This should be a description of threats I start to worry about after a basic plan to beat the majority of less threating sets has already been made. This could perhaps grow into a breakdown grouping of all sets, where purely physical and purely special pokemon are listed, but which pokemon in those lists you actually care about and how you divide subgroups would be very dependent on the team your building. And many just don’t have the base stats to matter (think clefable). So for now this will just focus on the streak ending pokemon tinted by my work with slower teams and perhaps useful as a reference to anyone who wants to work on palace with me.

The number at the end of the row is supposed to represent the percent chance of running into the set in a specific battle (past battle 49). Actaeon did the actual calculations. The assumptions are that a pokemon is randomly chosen from the available sets a trainer has (and that all sets are as likely as eachother for the first) then of course no repeating items or species for the next two. We also assume that any trainer has an equal chance of showing up. It does seem logical they would have implemented something to prevent repeating the same set of trainers in a set of seven, I am fairly certain we’ve seen evidence that the same trainer can appear multiple times in a streak in different sets of seven. If there was something to prevent repeat trainers in a set of seven I believe it would only affect rare sets (in any significant way) that only show up on two trainers like shedinja and make them 30-40% rarer. The percentages may seem high, but the probabilities of encountering the Pokemon at some position of their team adds up to 300% since their team consists of 3 pokemon. There are some groupings where all of the sets are likely to show up on the same group of trainers so thinking about what the number represents gets a little funny because it’s like you tracked many battles asking did this set show up yes or no and then when two sets of the same type of threat showed up you marked it twice, even though there are situations where if you have the answer to a type of threat it doesn’t matter whether they have one or three pokemon of that type of threat (while other types of threats you may expect to trade damage and the second instance is actually more risky than the first). But in general the totaled probabilities give us some useful info in approximating which is more important to answer relative to eachother and how likely you are to be able to dodge a type of threat. If a threat was really rare then in a frontier challenge like the battle palace where you do not expect to be able to go infinite a realistic strategy may be to ignore certain rare threats so you can focus your pokemon on increasing your odds against the more common threats and just hope you never encounter it or that if you do you manage to pull off an unlikely victory.

Swords Dance
I’ll start with swords dance because it’s a threat unique to the palace. In other facilities you can easily take advantage of the free turn where swords dance is used to enact your strategy, whether It be to get the first hit of a 2hko where you are faster in, or use that free turn to roar or set up a substitute. There are plenty of strategies that easily race swords dance users in the battle tower. However, in the palace many of these strategies drop to something like a 20% chance of working. Strategies like roar work in the tower because you usually can make your pokemon take 1 hit from anything and you only give them one shot before you roar. The problem specifically with roaring away swords dance is you need to give yourself a few turns to reasonably select roar, which of course you can do with something like protect so when you’re not selecting the support move roar you’re selecting protect as a defensive move but now the opposing pokemon gets extra turns to swords dance and you’re vunerable on your roar turn.

Obviously if you use growl or intimidate you are eventually going to get out paced by swords dance. Haze keeps pace but you are always chasing their stat boosts which means eventually you will miss a turn and lose. Acid armor is interesting because it keeps pace but you really open yourself up to crits if you want to stick around long enough to heal and make use of the boosts like a normal set even curse can kind of work here but the crits get you eventually. Charm actually keeps pace, the hard part is finding a good user of it, and you still have to build a complimentary set around it.

These are typically the swords dances sets I’m referring to. There are others like ursaring but they have very limited move pools.

Armaldo 3

Adamant

Quick Claw

Earthquake

Rock Slide

Brick Break

Swords Dance

0.456688506

Marowak 2	Adamant	Thick Club	Earthquake	Rock Slide	Swords Dance	Icy Wind	0.47275788
Marowak 3	Adamant	Thick Club	Earthquake	Rock Slide	Swords Dance	Brick Break	0.470487851
Marowak 4	Adamant	Thick Club	Earthquake	Rock Slide	Swords Dance	Mega Kick	0.990282406
Scizor 2	Adamant	Quick Claw	Silver Wind	Steel Wing	Swords Dance	Light Screen	0.4955082
Scizor 4	Careful	BrightPowder	Silver Wind	Swords Dance	Agility	Baton Pass	0.933552356

The baton pass scizor one isn’t so scary with only 5pp in silver wind, Scizor 2 I would rate as a higher threat but realistically it’s not as bad as Armaldo and marowak. Marowak and Armaldo are both weak to surf, though marowak is easier to one shot. Those weak to surf add up to 2.42% and with scizor 3.8%

Snorlax

Snorlax 1	Adamant	Leftovers	Facade	Shadow Ball	Attract	Double Team	0.393808822
Snorlax 2	Adamant	Chesto Berry	Earthquake	Rock Slide	Curse	Rest	0.427097615
Snorlax 3	Adamant	Quick Claw	Mega Kick	Shadow Ball	Swagger	Psych Up	0.330809629
Snorlax 4	Adamant	Quick Claw	Double-Edge	Shadow Ball	Brick Break	Curse	1.35268862
Snorlax 5	Adamant	Quick Claw	Mega Kick	Shadow Ball	Brick Break	Counter	0.191330956
Snorlax 6	Adamant	Leftovers	Earthquake	Shadow Ball	Brick Break	Counter	0.197685878
Snorlax 7	Adamant	Quick Claw	Hyper Beam	Shadow Ball	Earthquake	Curse	0.191330956
Snorlax 8	Adamant	Chesto Berry	Return	Shadow Ball	Belly Drum	Rest	0.256007075

Snorlax is fairly unique in that it’s a curse user but it has dangerously high stats. You’ll notice that three of it’s sets have curse including set 4 which is far more popular as it appears on the most trainers. You will notice that all of the sets are adamant which has a 70% chance to attack after getting low on health dropping it’s odds to curse to 15% instead of 31%. So my favorite plan is to knock snorlax low and then use intimidate so it’s at neutral or -1. Racing it on stat boosts is otherwise a very dangerous game.

Snorlax is one of the pokemon like the starters and evee’s that have a predominantly male gender distribution (87.5%) in order to make breeding more difficult. This distribution I believe also applies to frontier encounters. I suggest that it’s feasible to have a female set that has attract and another support move (so you don’t use attract all of the time) that might have decent odds against snorlax.

Dragon Dance

Gyarados 1	Careful	Lum Berry	Return	Bite	Thunder Wave	Dragon Dance	0.700771279
Gyarados 4	Adamant	Chesto Berry	Return	Earthquake	Dragon Dance	Rest	1.663308126
Kingdra 3	Adamant	Salac Berry	Flail	Hydro Pump	Dragon Dance	Endure	0.551481936
Kingdra 4	Hardy	Chesto Berry	Double-Edge	Ice Beam	Dragon Dance	Rest	1.463737633
Lapras 3	Docile	BrightPowder	Double-Edge	Psychic	Confuse Ray	Dragon Dance	0.723757636
Latios 7	Adamant	BrightPowder	Earthquake	Shadow Ball	Dragon Dance	Recover	0.38451801
Salamence 4	Adamant	BrightPowder	Double-Edge	Earthquake	Aerial Ace	Dragon Dance	0.884011466
Salamence 5	Adamant	BrightPowder	Facade	Earthquake	Rock Slide	Dragon Dance	0.383567652
Salamence 6	Hardy	Lum Berry	Headbutt	Aerial Ace	Crunch	Dragon Dance	0.377457678
Altaria 3	Adamant	Lum Berry	Sing	Dragon Dance	Earthquake	Aerial Ace	0.302718432
Charizard 2	Adamant	BrightPowder	Earthquake	Aerial Ace	Dragon Dance	SmokeScreen	0.800245692

Dragon dance is not quite as bad as swords dance in terms of how fast things can go wrong, but it encounters similar problems where if you just raise your defense and heal, eventually you will get crit by a boosted attack. Here intimidate might not be too slow. Notably there are several rock slide weaknesses (intimidate make rock slide worse here) and ice beam weaknesses, coming from adamant pokemon, so even if you just get them below 50% health you may be able to take a slightly slower approach, them boosting still looms you just have more time for intimidate. Being aggressive with something physically bulky seems like the answer here.

Kingdra 3 probably shouldn’t be even included in this list if you can take advantage of it’s few weaker hydro pumps without damaging it, even boosted the flails don’t do much. Lapras 3 and KIngdra 4 are interesting in that they are likeyly to recoil themselves vs blissey and snorlax and are mostly beat by shedinja.

In total dragon dancers are 8.23%, flying subgroup 5.11% and dragon subgroup 3.13%

Calm Mind

Alakazam 2	Modest	Lum Berry	Psychic	Calm Mind	Thunder Wave	Recover	0.477334698
Espeon 1	Modest	Lum Berry	Psychic	Charm	Calm Mind	Baton Pass	0.577301797
Espeon 2	Docile	Chesto Berry	Psychic	Shadow Ball	Calm Mind	Rest	0.686965455
Espeon 4	Modest	BrightPowder	Psychic	Bite	Attract	Calm Mind	1.261537088
Gardevoir 2	Modest	Chesto Berry	Psychic	Calm Mind	Double Team	Rest	0.604891903
Gardevoir 7	Bold	Quick Claw	Psychic	Calm Mind	Will-O-Wisp	Destiny Bond	0.396970604
Latias 5	Modest	BrightPowder	Dragon Claw	Thunder Wave	Calm Mind	Recover	0.459797244
Latios 5	Modest	BrightPowder	Dragon Claw	Thunder Wave	Calm Mind	Recover	0.46543683
Medicham 1	Docile	Focus Band	Psychic	Hi Jump Kick	Calm Mind	Baton Pass	0.65676913
Slowbro 2	Modest	Leftovers	Surf	Ice Beam	Calm Mind	Yawn	0.5534777
Suicune 1	Modest	Chesto Berry	Surf	Double Team	Calm Mind	Rest	0.36543581
Raikou 1	Modest	Chesto Berry	Thunderbolt	Thunder Wave	Calm Mind	Rest	0.362184719
Entei 1	Modest	Chesto Berry	Flamethrower	Double Team	Calm Mind	Rest	0.362184719

You may notice the on the first 7 sets (4%) the only dangerous move is psychic so dark immunity is pretty nice here and steel resists can be strong. There are a lot of modest pokemon here which is dangerous but if half the time they are using calm mind then doubling up 2 physical attacks to beat their weak physical defense should be a reasonable but high risk strategy. When using a special wall amnesia I will often amnesia up to race and stall out the first 8 pyschics then switch to my pressure pokemon suicune just so I don’t get crit on the last two psychics (59% chance not to get crit in the first 8 psychics).

Toxic blissey should work well vs many of these killing before you can be crit.

The rest sets have the weakness that if you can last long enough to get through their chesto berry the second rest will buy you lots of time. Raikou and entei generally don’t bother me as they have a single move type and are weak to earthquake. Suicune in a subgroup with slowbro or a different subgroup with the calm mind legendary dogs are slightly troublesome but both less than 1% to show up.

With most of these pokemon being psychic type a strong shadowball or double edge usually does the trick. You should aim to 2HKO with a physical move and take a +1 psychic probably from the most common which is espeon.

I think as I close up the attack boosting section I should mention that having a fully set up pokemon actually makes most of these pokemon quite easy if they happen to be in the back after you set up so your odds of facing them might reduce to roughly one third of what I reported. Which is perhaps part of the appeal to using a struggle sweeper or gentle/hasty sweeper.

A calm natured substitute calm mind softboiled leftovers blissey is my new favorite answer to calm mind. The actual ev spread may want some bonus special def so you can switch in and out to natural cure the status several calm minders can inflict.

7.23% in total or 6.14% if you just look at the psychic types and ignore the legendary dogs.

OHKO

Walrein 3	Hardy	Quick Claw	Sheer Cold	Fissure	Surf	Attract	0.494385357
Walrein 4	Quiet	BrightPowder	Surf	Ice Beam	Earthquake	Sheer Cold	1.168168563
Dewgong 4	Docile	Lum Berry	Sheer Cold	Ice Beam	Surf	Signal Beam	1.15358796

These first three are what keep me up at night, sheer cold doesn’t have the type based immunities the other OHKO moves have and these users have high pp special attacks that hit sturdy users hard. Docile and quiet choose attacking moves 56% of the time, Hardy 61% of the time, none of them change with less than 50% health which means they attack, randomly or smartly 78% of the time (81% for hardy). The next four pokemon create a similar problem but with fissure being the move, meaning you can create chances with an immunity. If you are going to face them with a sturdy user you only get a few turns so you need to put them on the clock. Palace randomness when you can only survive a few hits makes it tough, near impossible if you don’t have a move like protect to save you on the defensive turns. Rollout bypassing some of the randomness can work here. Toxic puts them on a 6 turn clock (or 5 if you attack once), one technique you can use is switching out and switching back in this resets the memory of the ai that you have sturdy (doesn’t work for type based immunities obviously) and could give you a free turn if you’re high enough health that they will use the ohko move (could buy a free turn with rest). But this is palace so what about stray sheer colds when you switch in the non sturdy pokemon? Well the odds of those are about 5.5% to happen then still 30% to hit. Let’s look at the interesting case of lead Salamence and backup Suicune vs Whiscash 4. Against salamence the AI is strongly encouraged to use ice beam because it highly favors quad weaknesses so 56% chance to use icebeam plus the 44% chance a non attacking move type is selected, but there are none so half of that is 22% chance to move randomly, and then of the 4 moves only one we care about so 5.5% chance it uses icebeam plus 56% is 61.5% chance to use icebeam. 1-.055=.945 .945^3=.844 1-.844= .156 so from that I estimate your odds of getting ice beamed in three switch ins to be about 16%. I wouldn’t want to go beyond three switches because I believe there is some function in the ai discouraging repeat moves, but the ai is very difficult to follow specifically how some of the functions are used especially for OHKO moves. Now those odds of getting hit by fissure seem way too low from anecdotal experience so I am suspicious. But technically you should only be hit .0165 by fissure on the switch in so 0.9835^3*.945^3*.7=.56 so this plan should have an 56% success rate of swap stalling the first three fissures then dodging the last 2 fissure pp in one turn with pressure. If we give ourselves a 50% chance of using a defensive move like substitute or protect with a calm or modest suicune then our success goes up to about around 68% using some bad estimation. I should take the previous section out because it’s poor modeling but I just wanted to show how in a controlled situation it’s an ok plan but it quickly gets tough. You only have a 20% chance that fissure is used on all of the first three switch ins to salamence meaning you will likely need more switches.

One strategy with we’ve tried is protect rest substitute surf calm suicune. The problem is that you will use surf and not protect at least 40% of the time on the first turn and you are immediately vulnerable until you reach relative safety behind a substitute. Substitute on it’s own may hold a slight advantage when they only have 5 ohko pp but when they have 10, the turns you use sleeping to sub make having protect better. There is also something to the idea that even if Suicune dies to an ohko move even if it was only targeted by two of them, it drained 4 pp so you only have to dodge one more

Shedinja is the only answer that is truly safe against these threats. It just feels impossible to find 2 pokemon that can cover the rest of the frontier. Most of the things shedinja walls are a subset of attackers that you already needed another answer to. As in it’s great that it walls starmie but you need a special wall against the elemental punchers and psychic/bite or tbolt/bite anyways. Shedinja will often force out the pokemon it answers, the question is what to do with the free turn. Just attacking can be strong punishing opponents for switching in. choice band is good for doing just that, although I prefer lum or persim so that shed can get lucky against things that will rarely status in the palace. Toxic and confuseray are good options for support moves, cofuseray can be better if the rest of your team is planning to stall the opponent to set up.

The most straight forward answer for these OHKO users is of course is to just attack. Very few pokemon can 1 shot the bulky walrein and lapras, this is awkward because even one extra turn could easily become two extra turns with random palace move choices. Salamence can 2hko this group but gets one shot by ice beam which really isn’t a great situation although between a rock slides 30% chance to flinch, being able to crit, and the opponents 35% not to choose a good move, it does pull off some wins. Thunderbolts generally require special attack investment to 2hko.

Better of course is slaking, but truant can be especially punishing in the palace, as getting hit below 50% changes your odds to attack and standing idle for 2 turns increase your odds to be hit, meaning your failure rate for slaking is going to be similar across all matchups, let’s say around 6%. Which may be good when talking about the most dangerous threats but it’s low compared to failure rates against lesser threats that pokemon without truant have lets imagine 1-2%. So you ideally want your other two pokemon to cover as much as possible so you only have to rely on slaking for the really dangerous fights where your win rate would be much lower without it.

Whiscash 3	Hardy	Chesto Berry	Sleep Talk	Rest	Surf	Fissure	0.397258372
Whiscash 4	Quiet	Quick Claw	Fissure	Surf	Earthquake	Ice Beam	1.275698139
Wailord 3	Modest	Chesto Berry	Hydro Pump	Fissure	Double Team	Rest	0.521542726
Wailord 4	Hardy	Quick Claw	Surf	Ice Beam	Earthquake	Fissure	1.128092934

Above 7 pokemon are 6.13%

Dewgong 3	Bold	Chesto Berry	Horn Drill	Sheer Cold	Sleep Talk	Rest	0.387415839
Lapras 7	Calm	Leppa Berry	Sheer Cold	Horn Drill	Rest	Sleep Talk	0.556107374
Lapras 8	Calm	Quick Claw	Sheer Cold	Horn Drill	Sing	Attract	0.44836896

This is an interesting group hard walled by sturdy but it is 4-5 times less likely than the previous group. Combined the first 10 pokemon mentioned have a 7.5% chance of appearing.

Nidoking 1	Adamant	Quick Claw	Horn Drill	Double Kick	Body Slam	Counter	0.462840504
Rhydon 2	Adamant	Quick Claw	Earthquake	Horn Drill	Rock Slide	Brick Break	0.545853231
Rhydon 3	Adamant	Quick Claw	Megahorn	Crush Claw	Earthquake	Horn Drill	0.523810275
Rhydon 4	Adamant	Quick Claw	Megahorn	Earthquake	Rock Slide	Horn Drill	0.86414414
Dugtrio 3	Adamant	King's Rock	Earthquake	Double-Edge	Sludge Bomb	Fissure	0.240913022
Dugtrio 4	Adamant	King's Rock	Earthquake	Double-Edge	Rock Slide	Fissure	0.758385225
Donphan 3	Adamant	Quick Claw	Fissure	Earthquake	Rock Slide	Secret Power	0.240200962
Donphan 4	Adamant	Quick Claw	Fissure	Earthquake	Rock Slide	Iron Tail	0.58805449

You’ll notice a surf quickly dispatches dugtrio and rhydon. These pokemon tend to show up on teams where you expect physical threats. Rock slide from rhydon isn’t a big enough threat to salamence after intimidate. I don’t really fear these sets as much except for donphan. 4.22%

Kingler 2	Adamant	Salac Berry	Guillotine	Rock Tomb	Flail	Endure	0.251204626
Pinsir 2	Jolly	Salac Berry	Guillotine	Swords Dance	Flail	Endure	0.277634961
Crawdaunt 2	Adamant	Quick Claw	Guillotine	Frustration	AncientPower	Aerial Ace	0.217153871
Seaking 2	Impish	Quick Claw	Horn Drill	Megahorn	Sleep Talk	Rest	0.217153871

These are pokemon you almost never see easily walled by sturdy but even easier to just attack and knock out, and are on the easy opponents like fisherman. Pinser you’ll notice isn’t even that likely to attack since it has one move of each type and is jolly (35% chance to attack).

Clear Body
Metagross is the most dangerous of this grouping and is more aggressive than the other two, but I group these together because they all have high physical defense, similar typing, Clear body, and double team/psychup/explosion sets. Not being able to intimidate or toxic these pokemon makes the job quite difficult. Metagross is the reason that even when I have a physical wall like skarmory I still bring something with a strong earthquake. Resisiting meteor mash is a big reason to use bulky waters. In the palace attacking has always been the preferred solution. With enough bulk, I’ve found that reflect is pretty usable and has the advantage of working against these clear body users (brick break is a little awkward but more of a problem coming from non-clearbody pokemon). Metagross totals to 6.18% while all the threats listed total to 13.96%

Metagross 1	Adamant	Leftovers	Meteor Mash	Aerial Ace	Facade	Light Screen	0.806305811
Metagross 2	Adamant	Lum Berry	Earthquake	Meteor Mash	Psych Up	Swagger	0.829913797
Metagross 3	Adamant	Chesto Berry	Earthquake	Meteor Mash	Double Team	Rest	0.925616931
Metagross 4	Hardy	Quick Claw	Meteor Mash	Psychic	Earthquake	Shadow Ball	1.110526908
Metagross 5	Jolly	Quick Claw	Explosion	Earthquake	Rock Slide	Brick Break	0.541887552
Metagross 6	Hardy	BrightPowder	Meteor Mash	Psychic	Ice Punch	ThunderPunch	0.640439016
Metagross 7	Hardy	Shell Bell	Earthquake	Shadow Ball	Ice Punch	ThunderPunch	0.78678589
Metagross 8	Adamant	Quick Claw	Meteor Mash	Earthquake	Brick Break	Explosion	0.541887552
Regirock 1	Adamant	White Herb	Superpower	Earthquake	Rock Slide	Explosion	0.773841609
Regirock 2	Adamant	Quick Claw	Earthquake	Rock Slide	Counter	Explosion	0.645657618
Regirock 3	Adamant	Chesto Berry	Rock Slide	Earthquake	Curse	Rest	0.619433613
Regirock 4	Careful	Leftovers	Rock Slide	Brick Break	Double Team	Thunder Wave	0.642976326
Regirock 5	Adamant	Quick Claw	Hyper Beam	Focus Punch	Rock Slide	Double Team	0.645657618
Regirock 6	Adamant	BrightPowder	Swagger	Psych Up	Rock Slide	Explosion	0.588425501
Registeel 1	Adamant	Chesto Berry	Metal Claw	Curse	Amnesia	Rest	0.621506063
Registeel 2	Quiet	BrightPowder	Thunderbolt	Ice Punch	Earthquake	Aerial Ace	0.590497951
Registeel 3	Adamant	Quick Claw	AncientPower	Amnesia	Counter	Explosion	0.621296584
Registeel 4	Impish	Leftovers	AncientPower	Earthquake	Double Team	Thunder Wave	0.66733736
Registeel 5	Adamant	Leftovers	Focus Punch	Substitute	Toxic	Double Team	0.580936942
Registeel 6	Adamant	White Herb	Superpower	Aerial Ace	Swagger	Psych Up	0.775914059

Mixed attackers
Mixed attackers are difficult to classify but I will distinguish a few groups. The most dangerous is the cross chop users. As cross chop does not require much investment to be dangerous in a few hits due to it’s power and increased chance of critical hit. One strategy I’ve been talking a lot about recently is pp stalling cross chop by baiting it and switching as an okay, pressure definitely helps here

Electabuzz 3	Quirky	Lum Berry	Fire Punch	Ice Punch	Thunderbolt	Cross Chop	0.157534617
Hariyama 2	Quiet	Quick Claw	Cross Chop	Fire Punch	Ice Punch	ThunderPunch	0.585626595
Machamp 3	Hardy	Quick Claw	Cross Chop	Fire Blast	ThunderPunch	Ice Punch	0.609110086

Golduck 2	Quirky	Lum Berry	Cross Chop	Surf	Swagger	Psych Up	0.270256113
Golduck 3	Docile	Shell Bell	Hydro Pump	Cross Chop	Blizzard	Protect	0.281721077
Golduck 4	Docile	Scope Lens	Surf	Cross Chop	Ice Beam	Aerial Ace	1.078155131
Electabuzz 4	Docile	Scope Lens	Thunderbolt	Psychic	Mega Kick	Cross Chop	0.600107136
Medicham 3	Hardy	Scope Lens	DynamicPunch	ThunderPunch	Ice Punch	Fire Punch	0.677613443
Magmar 4	Docile	Scope Lens	Flamethrower	Psychic	Cross Chop	Confuse Ray	0.761830585

Cross chop mixed totals to 5.02%

Granbull 2	Quiet	White Herb	Overheat	Thunderbolt	Ice Punch	Facade	0.20729415
Metagross 6	Hardy	BrightPowder	Meteor Mash	Psychic	Ice Punch	ThunderPunch	0.640439016

What you will notice about this next group is that they are fire and electric types, they carry fire and electric moves that therefore have extra strength from stab, plus they have physical moves, mostly earthquake and notably a variety of fighting type moves. This combination can be hard to wall relying on common walls like skarmory, blissey, umbreon, lanturn, venusaur, bulky water types. However this entire group is weak to earthquake; dragonite, salamence, flygon, latios, swampert have interesting resistances to this group making them decent switchins and earthquake users. Earthquake does have notable strengths helping against clear body users and sweeping many iterations of guitarists and kindlers. Electric fire mixed totals to 6.77%

Ampharos 2	Hardy	BrightPowder	ThunderPunch	Fire Punch	Focus Punch	Thunder Wave	0.307081902
Ampharos 3	Hardy	Focus Band	Thunderbolt	Mega Kick	Iron Tail	Brick Break	0.272308378
Typhlosion 2	Hardy	Scope Lens	Flamethrower	ThunderPunch	Aerial Ace	Rock Slide	0.503577768
Typhlosion 3	Adamant	Salac Berry	Earthquake	Overheat	Endure	Reversal	0.562602101
Typhlosion 4	Hardy	White Herb	Overheat	ThunderPunch	Earthquake	Crush Claw	0.925589965
Blaziken 1	Docile	Quick Claw	Flamethrower	Sunny Day	Double Kick	Roar	0.890119169
Blaziken 2	Docile	Scope Lens	Blaze Kick	Mega Kick	ThunderPunch	Brick Break	0.806313132
Blaziken 3	Hardy	Salac Berry	Overheat	Earthquake	Endure	Reversal	0.916245736
Blaziken 4	Hardy	White Herb	Overheat	Earthquake	ThunderPunch	Rock Slide	1.294715201
Electabuzz 1	Relaxed	Cheri Berry	Thunderbolt	Thunder Wave	Brick Break	Light Screen	0.294078562

Latios
Latios actually can represent a group of pure special attackers like starmie and mixed attackers like feraligtr and blastoise that have surf, ice beam and earthquake (not particularly hard to handle). But Latios presents a more significant threat due to it’s high attacking stats. You may notice that at ~1.5% it’s not actually that common to face pure special latios so you justifiably could focus your bulkpoints and damage output on pokemon like starmie from this group.

Latios 1	Modest	Lum Berry	Psychic	Thunderbolt	Ice Beam	Dragon Claw	0.409730579
Latios 2	Docile	Quick Claw	Psychic	Thunderbolt	Ice Beam	Earthquake	0.452262136
Latios 3	Docile	Focus Band	Dragon Claw	Thunderbolt	Ice Beam	Earthquake	0.567341168
Latios 4	Modest	Lum Berry	Luster Purge	Thunderbolt	Ice Beam	Dragon Claw	0.409730579
Latios 5	Modest	BrightPowder	Dragon Claw	Thunder Wave	Calm Mind	Recover	0.46543683
Latios 6	Docile	Shell Bell	Luster Purge	Shadow Ball	Dragon Claw	Thunder Wave	0.582928389
Latios 7	Adamant	BrightPowder	Earthquake	Shadow Ball	Dragon Dance	Recover	0.38451801
Latios 8	Docile	King's Rock	Psychic	Shadow Ball	Earthquake	Aerial Ace	0.50608366

JoebertIII · May 19, 2021

After toiling in the Factory for ages, I'm happy to report my newest high score of 85 wins in the Level 50 Battle Factory Singles! I really have this forum to thank for all of the battling tactics and advice I've learned.

Round 5, 26 Swaps: ~~Flygon2~~➡~~Crobat2~~➡ Gyardos2, Nidoqueen2, Blissey2
As a rule of thumb, I don't touch Flygon2 with a ten foot pole, but the first opponent preferred poison types.

Round 6, 30 Swaps: ~~Raichu3~~➡~~Alakazam3~~➡ Milotic3, Shuckle4, ~~Crobat3~~➡~~Feraligatr3~~➡Heracross3
Shuckle4 blew me away this round. I only took him because shuckle had 31IV's, my first opponent specialized in water types and I had a recent streak end due to an OHKO'ing Dewgong3.

I also deserved to be put down by Noland2; so I went in with Milotic, Shuckle, and Heracross and first saw Vaporeon3 (Surf, Ice Beam, Acid Armor, Baton Pass with Quick Claw). I lost my Heracross and Nolan lost his last Pokemon. Vaporeon passes defense boosts to a Fearow3 (holding scope lens) and I switch in shuckle to do his double team-toxic thing, but switch in on a drill peck, expecting a frustration. The next drill peck was a crit and shuckle went down. Milotic could 2HKO Fearow with surf whereas Fearow needed to 3HKO. But Fearow outsped and gets another crit drill peck, leaving Milotic on low health, and Milotic doled 55% damage to fearow. At this point I stand up to turn off my gamecube, but this cocky Nolan switched into his Vaporeon to activate the water absorb, giving my Milotic time to recover up. Vaporeon set up 3 acid armors and the turn he used baton pass, his quick claw activated and Milotic knocked out the incoming Fearow before it can make a move. 45mins of conserving PP and waiting for struggle recoil to kill Vaporeon later, I won.

Round 7, 35 Swaps: ~~Tauros3~~➡Gyardos4, ~~Skarmory1~~➡Gengar4, Snorlax4
So all 6 picks had 31IV's, but the swap count would have you believe only three Pokemon would have 31IV's. Ummm I'll take it.

Round 8, 38 Swaps: ~~Tauros2~~➡Gengar7, ~~Vaporeon4~~➡Suicune1, Regirock6
So the starting drafts looked like this:
Tauros2 (Bad speed IV's, Good attack IV's)
Xatu3 (Nearly perfect IV's)
Vaporeon4 (Ok HP IV's, bad everything else)
Regirock6 (Ok HP IV's, good everything else)
Steelix1 (Perfect IV's)
Nidoking3 (Perfect IV's)
Now usually the "elevation" pokemon are listed first, not last, and I was supposed to have four 31IV Pokemon based on my swaps. I traded Tauros on the first battle for a Gengar7 (definitely 3IV's) which was in the enemy's third slot. Is it possible the enemy's Breloom and Alakazam in thier first 2 slots had my 31IV's? This is just a hypothesis based off of peoples' breakdown of the coding in the Factory, which always depicts the starting picks juxtaposed with the first enemy trainer.

Above is a previously posted battle on Battle 55. I took the Suicune1 for my Vaporeon4 which did me no favors in Battle 56 against a solarbeaming Vileplume in the sun.

Round 9, 41 Swaps: Regice3, Metagross6, ~~Lanturn2~~➡Latios6
41 swaps and four 31IV pokemon, nothing abnormal

Round 10, 43 Swaps: Starmie7, Registeel5, Salamence7
Really solid round. Just had to play carefully around steel types.

Round 11, 44 Swaps: Latios6, Lanturn2(Volt absorb), ~~Ludicolo4(Rain Dish)~~➡Metagross1
Ludicolo4, much like Shuckle4, blew me away. Ludicolo4 switched into a Latias3 and still beat it 1v1. The next opponent had poison types so I reluctantly switched for Metagross.

Round 12, 46 Swaps: ~~Arcanine1~~➡Zapdos4, Vaporeon1, Salamence7
My life flashed before my eyes on battle 79 against a Dewgong3, which could have put me down with ease (and left me with my previous best score of 78 wins). But my arcanine got the body slam paralysis and salamence got to attack twice due to a full paralysis.

Noland4 gave me a little scare; the battle starts with Zapdos4 vs Sceptile3. Zapdos missed the 75% chance to OHKO with drill peck and had to settle with 2HKO. Thus Zapdos took heavy damage in the process (from a crush claw and crit leaf blade). Next is Arcanine, so I switched in Vaporeon into a fire blast (Arcanine2). Arcanine fire blasted again (is Noland smart for not using sunny day with a scizor in the back...?) and went down to surf. Last out is scizor, so I switched hard into Salamence7 to not give him a chance to set up, but that's exactly what he did: swords dance. I clicked flamethrower, but Scizor first used his quick claw to smack me with a +1 steel wing and knock me down to 20% before my flamethrower killed in return.

Round 13, 48 Swaps:
Starmie1
Ninetails1
Walrein1
Alakazam2
Ursaring4
Tentacruel2
I choose:
Tentacruel2, Ursaring4, Alakazam2
It's evil to offer me two mono psychic sets, but I almost went for Starmie1, Ursaring4, Alakzam2 so if the opponent had a super effective coverage for psychics, they'd likely throw it out second, and my team could deal with it before getting into a potentially unfavorable 1v1. But I was worried about that'd put a lot of pressure on slow Ursaring4 to handle steel types, dark types and special walls. And I considered Starmie1, Tentacruel2, Alakzam2, but immunity/rest snorlax, registeel, or if a blissey manages to get a sub up, they would have a field day.
And my first opponent was surfed down easily enough. (Marowak, Magmar2, Machamp1)

I heard that the next trainer preferred water types, so I abandoned any thoughts of taking the previous Marowak, Magmar or Machamp, but in hindsight all of those pokemon would have pulled their weight in this battle. Do let me know if I should have played it differently. ~~I almost switched brightpowder Ursaring right into the fissuring walrien to lower the odds of landing a fissure.~~ Feraligatr had scope lens so I can't complain about the crit on Ursaring, but that scope lens was enough to scare me away from setting up any further on Feraligatr with Alakazam. If I could have gotten to +3 without getting critically hit, I could have set up one more calm mind on houndoom4, and recover-stalled out his crunches, barring a crit again. I try to write a report upon every loss, and I think I'd have to attribute this loss mostly to teambuilding and minorly to hax.

Actaeon · May 19, 2021

JoebertIII said:
After toiling in the Factory for ages, I'm happy to report my newest high score of 85 wins in the Level 50 Battle Factory Singles! I really have this forum to thank for all of the battling tactics and advice I've learned.

Round 5, 26 Swaps: ~~Flygon2~~➡~~Crobat2~~➡ Gyardos2, Nidoqueen2, Blissey2
As a rule of thumb, I don't touch Flygon2 with a ten foot pole, but the first opponent preferred poison types.

Round 6, 30 Swaps: ~~Raichu3~~➡~~Alakazam3~~➡ Milotic3, Shuckle4, ~~Crobat3~~➡~~Feraligatr3~~➡Heracross3
Shuckle4 blew me away this round. I only took him because shuckle had 31IV's, my first opponent specialized in water types and I had a recent streak end due to an OHKO'ing Dewgong3.

I also deserved to be put down by Noland2; so I went in with Milotic, Shuckle, and Heracross and first saw Vaporeon3 (Surf, Ice Beam, Acid Armor, Baton Pass with Quick Claw). I lost my Heracross and Nolan lost his last Pokemon. Vaporeon passes defense boosts to a Fearow3 (holding scope lens) and I switch in shuckle to do his double team-toxic thing, but switch in on a drill peck, expecting a frustration. The next drill peck was a crit and shuckle went down. Milotic could 2HKO Fearow with surf whereas Fearow needed to 3HKO. But Fearow outsped and gets another crit drill peck, leaving Milotic on low health, and Milotic doled 55% damage to fearow. At this point I stand up to turn off my gamecube, but this cocky Nolan switched into his Vaporeon to activate the water absorb, giving my Milotic time to recover up. Vaporeon set up 3 acid armors and the turn he used baton pass, his quick claw activated and Milotic knocked out the incoming Fearow before it can make a move. 45mins of conserving PP and waiting for struggle recoil to kill Vaporeon later, I won.

Round 7, 35 Swaps: ~~Tauros3~~➡Gyardos4, ~~Skarmory1~~➡Gengar4, Snorlax4
So all 6 picks had 31IV's, but the swap count would have you believe only three Pokemon would have 31IV's. Ummm I'll take it.

Round 8, 38 Swaps: ~~Tauros2~~➡Gengar7, ~~Vaporeon4~~➡Suicune1, Regirock6
So the starting drafts looked like this:
Tauros2 (Bad speed IV's, Good attack IV's)
Xatu3 (Nearly perfect IV's)
Vaporeon4 (Ok HP IV's, bad everything else)
Regirock6 (Ok HP IV's, good everything else)
Steelix1 (Perfect IV's)
Nidoking3 (Perfect IV's)
Now usually the "elevation" pokemon are listed first, not last, and I was supposed to have four 31IV Pokemon based on my swaps. I traded Tauros on the first battle for a Gengar7 (definitely 3IV's) which was in the enemy's third slot. Is it possible the enemy's Breloom and Alakazam in thier first 2 slots had my 31IV's? This is just a hypothesis based off of peoples' breakdown of the coding in the Factory, which always depicts the starting picks juxtaposed with the first enemy trainer.

Above is a previously posted battle on Battle 55. I took the Suicune1 for my Vaporeon4 which did me no favors in Battle 56 against a solarbeaming Vileplume in the sun.

Round 9, 41 Swaps: Regice3, Metagross6, ~~Lanturn2~~➡Latios6
41 swaps and four 31IV pokemon, nothing abnormal

Round 10, 43 Swaps: Starmie7, Registeel5, Salamence7
Really solid round. Just had to play carefully around steel types.

Round 11, 44 Swaps: Latios6, Lanturn2(Volt absorb), ~~Ludicolo4(Rain Dish)~~➡Metagross1
Ludicolo4, much like Shuckle4, blew me away. Ludicolo4 switched into a Latias3 and still beat it 1v1. The next opponent had poison types so I reluctantly switched for Metagross.

Round 12, 46 Swaps: ~~Arcanine1~~➡Zapdos4, Vaporeon1, Salamence7
My life flashed before my eyes on battle 79 against a Dewgong3, which could have put me down with ease (and left me with my previous best score of 78 wins). But my arcanine got the body slam paralysis and salamence got to attack twice due to a full paralysis.

Noland4 gave me a little scare; the battle starts with Zapdos4 vs Sceptile3. Zapdos missed the 75% chance to OHKO with drill peck and had to settle with 2HKO. Thus Zapdos took heavy damage in the process (from a crush claw and crit leaf blade). Next is Arcanine, so I switched in Vaporeon into a fire blast (Arcanine2). Arcanine fire blasted again (is Noland smart for not using sunny day with a scizor in the back...?) and went down to surf. Last out is scizor, so I switched hard into Salamence7 to not give him a chance to set up, but that's exactly what he did: swords dance. I clicked flamethrower, but Scizor first used his quick claw to smack me with a +1 steel wing and knock me down to 20% before my flamethrower killed in return.

Round 13, 48 Swaps:
Starmie1
Ninetails1
Walrein1
Alakazam2
Ursaring4
Tentacruel2
I choose:
Tentacruel2, Ursaring4, Alakazam2
It's evil to offer me two mono psychic sets, but I almost went for Starmie1, Ursaring4, Alakzam2 so if the opponent had a super effective coverage for psychics, they'd likely throw it out second, and my team could deal with it before getting into a potentially unfavorable 1v1. But I was worried about that'd put a lot of pressure on slow Ursaring4 to handle steel types, dark types and special walls. And I considered Starmie1, Tentacruel2, Alakzam2, but immunity/rest snorlax, registeel, or if a blissey manages to get a sub up, they would have a field day.
And my first opponent was surfed down easily enough. (Marowak, Magmar2, Machamp1)

I heard that the next trainer preferred water types, so I abandoned any thoughts of taking the previous Marowak, Magmar or Machamp, but in hindsight all of those pokemon would have pulled their weight in this battle. Do let me know if I should have played it differently. ~~I almost switched brightpowder Ursaring right into the fissuring walrien to lower the odds of landing a fissure.~~ Feraligatr had scope lens so I can't complain about the crit on Ursaring, but that scope lens was enough to scare me away from setting up any further on Feraligatr with Alakazam. If I could have gotten to +3 without getting critically hit, I could have set up one more calm mind on houndoom4, and recover-stalled out his crunches, barring a crit again. I try to write a report upon every loss, and I think I'd have to attribute this loss mostly to teambuilding and minorly to hax.

View attachment 341911

This is really an amazing streak for Factory, and it requires very high skill, a lot of patience, thorough planning and of course, some luck. Congratulations!!

dgice · May 23, 2021

Battles 49 and Lower documents (palace focus)
During the first seven rounds trainers with limited sets and weaker iv's are used and ramp up (not to be seen again until you beat battle number 256*7=1792). Normally these can be ignored as a weaker subset of the challenges that come after. In any challenge where you can't "go infinite" getting the longest streak is really a numbers game where once you have a decent strategy you just need to attempt the challenge many times to increase your streak. Therefore you would need to face these lower battles many times. In the palace I would say even good teams might lose between battles 21-49 every so often, wasting time. But these teams are optimized for battles 50+, if you optimized for the lower battles you might go from a 95% win rate to a 99% win rate as you can take iv's meant to outspeed or ohko opponents with31ivs and put them into your own defenses. This is in the context of me planning an attempt on retail using struggle snorlax, with which might last an hour for a single battle. The plan is to get around battle 77-84 then switch over to struggle snorlax to finish the streak. As is clear by the leaderboard, even getting to battle 77 without struggle snorlax will be difficult and likely take multiple tries. I do have ideas for slightly improved teams that are more aggressive and don't involve struggling (I'm interested in on passing screens to substitute users with attacks, sub and rest on a really bulky calm user with attacks). But if possible I want to exploit the lower rounds and never lose before battle 49 (while ideally doing it in a way that wins in under twenty turns to save time).

To this end I have barely begun my study, but I have created some documents that will hopefully help me determine the specific weaknesses of each 7 battles. I've modified versions of the excel sheet so they only list the pokemon from that specific trainer or grouping of trainers for that round. I've also included the iv's used by those trainers and all of the probabilities. I tried to demonstrate how the pokemon from the higher tier 7th trainer is rarer by just multiplying the other sets by 6 (Actaeon is currentlly working on simulating the probabilities properly). But in determining relative importance of each threat these should be close. Then I created setdexes limited to the trainers, including their iv's that can be pasted into a local version of the turskain damage calc. So you just download a copy from github then paste over the setdex_rse.js with one that i've provided and you can do all vs ones and one vs all's limited to a single trainer or group of trainers (with the proper iv's for mixed groups!)

I also modified my local copy to have speed as a column, it wasn't hard but I don't remember how right now.

Edit: There were several small errors with the first data set I uploaded, gengar 1 was missing, ninjask 1 was labeled as ninjask 2 and had excessive spacing between the number and name, the setdexes didn't have the sets grouped under their species meaning only the last set to be loaded for each species was there. Instead of recreating every combination I've done in for rounds 5,6,7 the ones I think are most worth studying in low trainer groups. It has yeilded results and got us thinking about new sets already! Also the speeds and probabilities in the new zip file on the "combined" sheet are now accurate!

You would just navigate to the folder below to copy in the new set file

So when I did combined groups of trainer sometimes a pokemon set would have 18 ivs on one trainer and 15 ivs on another, but I only printed it to the setdex for one set. I do however have a sheet in the excel file that lists them separately. The excel files also have the lvl 100 and lvl 50 stats I just copied from the original without modifying for the lower iv's. Since the iv's are calculated correctly in the damage calculator, i don't see it as a big deal.

Kommo-o · May 30, 2021

THE GUCCI GANG
:latias:

None of this shit be new to me

It's been a while since I made a post in here and after being really busy due to my real life obligations, I had been steadily building on GUCCI GANG from the sidelines. Sometimes, I played 1 or 2 tournaments after my work shift and sometimes I played up to 5 if I had more time and energy to play. This has been a wild ride considering that this is probably my 7th or 8th attempt on using this team and so many things have happened. From the times where my Gamecube failed to read the disc and crashed on the middle of the streak and Crobat 4 getting CHs on a row, we had to go through so many difficulties. In the end, I'm really satisfied with the team's results considering that my unwavering faith on GUCCI GANG has finally paid off. I'm proud to announce the centurions of this feat:

Dior (Latias) (F) @ Lum Berry
Modest Nature
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50 [167-77-110-169-150-159]
EVs: 92 HP / 188 SpA / 230 Spe
- Psychic
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
- Calm Mind

Funnily enough, I've always considered myself a bigger fan of Latios, but ironically, Latias has been a synonym of success for me considering that she is a crucial part of my most succesful Tower team. However, for this team, this Latias performs a completely offensive role. While I am a firm believer that Latias will always fall short to Latios when it comes into full offense, the reason why Latias fits this team much better is due to her higher defenses and opposing gender to Slaking. Allow me to explain: As you should know, I despise Attract and it's a very common crippling move in Gen 3 which is one of the biggest reasons why I always take gender into account when team-building. Because the Slaking I RNG abused on my Emerald game was Male, Latios was already a not-good from the start.

Lum Berry is an absolutely delightful item that allows her to heal unwanted status such as Sleep or Paralysis, allowing her to grab some extra Calm Minds on the process. A boosted Latias is a massive sweeper on Dome thanks to her opponent's reduced IVs which gives her almost 7/*the same destructive potential Latios has on more difficult facilities such as Tower or Arena. With Calm Mind, Latias not only boosts its offensive power, but also her higher Special Defense, which makes it really hard for the opponent to break through Latias thanks to the reduced IVs Battle Dome Pokemon are forced to run due to a glitch on the game's programming. If you remember my original post, I displayed some defensive calculations on how bulky Latias can actually become at +1. The fact that 255 SpA Alakazam and Gardevoir fail to even get a 2HKO against Latias with Ice Punch should tell you enough. On most cases, scouting the opponent is important because Latias most of the time only needs a single CM to sweep the opposition.

Psychic is STAB and doesn't needs any explanation. You need this to get rid of Muk, Weezing, Machamp and most importantly: Heracross, an opponent that has inflicted pain on some of my streaks before. Ice Beam was chosen over Dragon Claw, first and foremost, for its ability to OHKO Salamence, deal higher damage to Grass types like Meganium and Shiftry and the ability to OHKO Rhydon. With Ice Beam as part of her moveset, all my 3 team members are able to OHKO Rhydon which is the biggest benefit. I'm an avid defensor of running Dragon Claw on any offensive Lati@s set but when you consider that due to Dome's lower IVs and the fact that it's only notable target was Kingdra, the difference was barely noticeable and I'd probably say that Ice Beam is even the superior move to run. Thunderbolt can't miss on this Latias set due to its ability to toast Water and Flying types.

The EV spread was adjusted a few times early on, but I ultimately settled for what I considered as a fair combination between bulk and power while retaining the best speed tier benchmark for the Battle Dome. 230 Spe allows you to hit 159 which means that you'll be faster than all Sceptile/Dugtrio sets on this facility. 188 SpA guarantees the OHKO on Heracross 2 without any boost. The rest is dumped into HP to improve Latias' overall raw bulk

D.K. (Slaking) (M) @ Choice Band
Jolly Nature
Ability: Truant
Level: 50 [225-212-120-93-93-198]
EVs: 252 Atk / 60 SpD / 198 Spe
- Hyper Beam
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Double-Edge

The last time I heavily shitposted on how easy it is to use Slaking. I have to agree at some extent that it is pretty much true although there's an art on itself on figuring out on whether it is actually the most beneficial play. After all, as the great Steve Jobs once said: "Simple can be harder than complex". I always analyze the opponent and think on whether it is more beneficial to take out an opponent or simply set up and win on the long run. I prefer setting up with a future plan in mind specially considering how dangerous it can be to get something like Snorlax, Lapras or Walrein coming up next. However, when raw power is required, Slaking is your nuke button. But you must know when to press that button and how much you can lose after pressing that trigger.

It should be mentioned that you need to take your time on whether you benefit from Slaking knocking something out on the first turn depending on what your opponent carries. If you nuke something out but the next mon is a Walrein or Lapras that showed on team preview, you better think twice on sending out Slaking as the first Pokemon, because you don't want to get your switch-in or Slaking getting Sheer Colded to death.

Choice Band is what makes Slaking's Hyper Beam a nuclear weapon of mass destruction. It's strong enough to OHKO tanks like Walrein, Umbreon, Suicune, Regice 4, Snorlax and Blissey. While in the past I have used Aerial Ace mostly to make the matchup against Ludicolo 4 more easy, I ultimately ended up staying with Hyper Beam and using it on the rest of the battles. It's nuking power is the sole reason to make it worthwhile to run despite its imperfect 90% accuracy. Truant makes the waiting turn irrelevant because Slaking won't be able to move anyways so it combines well with this Pokemon. Double-Edge is your secondary and accurate STAB variation. Main reason why Double Edge is preferred as the 2nd STAB despite its recoil penalty is because you don't miss out on a lot of power; which would've been more noticeable if you used something like Return. It's strong enough to OHKO bulky mons such as Vaporeon and some Lapras variants without sacrificing any accuracy. Shadow Ball is the obvious coverage move to OHKO all Lati@s sets (except Latias 7 which God forbid why GF decided to give max Defense to a physical Latias set), Gengar, Dusclops and Misdreavus. Earthquake is the last coverage move that destroys Metagross, Rhydon and Golem.

Of course, Slaking comes with a couple of weaknesses. Confusion, Attract, Protect and Paralysis spells doom for Slaking thanks to the disaster of ability that Truant is. There's also the fact that if you miss your attacks against a Double Team spammer or a Bright Powder user, Slaking won't be able to move next turn. Knowing your limits and most importantly, now when to press the nuke button is the best way to use Slaking.

Suigetsu (Suicune) @ Leftovers
Bold Nature
Ability: Pressure
Level: 50 [205-82-168-110-135-122]
EVs: 236 HP / 142 Def / 132 Spe
- Surf
- Rest
- Calm Mind
- Substitute

This Pokemon is extremely overpowered. The fact that I was able to reach 100 wins without ever optimizing the set for Dome, speaks volumes. Suicune has always been one of my favorite Pokemon and it becomes even better thanks to weaker opposition at Dome. As a matter of fact, Forretress' 255 Atk Double Edge will never be able to break Suicune's Substitute bar a critical hit. How OP is that? I always bring Suicune when I need to stall a specific threat or as a life insurance against troublesome Pokemon like Walrein 4, Vaporeon, Militoc and Lapras 7/8. Suicune is my anti-luck assault vest whenever I need my back-up plan in case that the game attempts to fuck you over. Battles are somewhat slow specially if you are on a situation where you need to bring Suicune, but once it sets up all the way to +6, the battles become nothing more than a formality.

Substitute is the most broken move in Generation III and the fact that more opponents are unable to break past Suicune's sheer bulk, due to the lower IVs, it makes it even easier to set up. Substitute also protects Suicune from status ailments which would otherwise ruin its sweep. It's worth mentioning that even Walrein 4 is unable to break with an Earthquake (On Tower, it has a high chance of breaking it). Calm Mind, once again, is what makes Suicune the unstoppable force of nature it is known for. Surf is the self-explanatory STAB and as my grandmother would've said: "One Surf a day, will keep the Rhydon away." Rest is the only recovery move Suicune gets access to and does the job.

It should be mentioned that I genuinely believe that Actaeon and Adedede play a better Suicune set for Dome, but using Timid means that I'll have to RNG another Suicune at Colosseum and I don't really have the time to RNG another dog from the Gamecube games. My only reason not to upgrade this set is because of laziness. Another option I've considered is tailoring the EVs but my Box space on Emerald is quite limited due to my RNG projects and I hate the idea of cloning Suicune again just for this streak. Who knows, maybe I will update the EVs at one point.

A TRIBUTE TO PERSEVERANCE
After some failed attempts, it's finally great to see this team reach its original objective which was 100 tournament wins. It was a long and torturous road. I still remember how my first attempts ended due to my Gamecube crashing when reading the GBA Adapter disc. My lost on the 60th tournament hurted the most because I built that streak playing on my original (non-backlit) GBA and I had to spend the morning playing through the Dome because I couldn't see a damn thing without some sunlight.

Personally, the best way to play this team is to analyze your opponent's team and figure out which is the best combination to pick. I can't stress how important it is to check the Tournament Tree because not only it reveals the opposing teams but also shows the moves that were last used, which can make a huge difference on your scouting. If the opponent has a bulky wall like Umbreon, Snorlax or Blissey, always bring Slaking because he will be able to OHKO any of these threats with the right move. Don't underestimate how important it can be to bring Suicune on shaky match-ups where the opponent might carry a Walrein or a Lapras. While Suicune slows down games severly, it's a safety net you can use against these Pokemon. Suicune excels even more on this facility due to the reduced IVs from its opponents and becomes a massive asset to this team. I found myself on situations where finding a weakness to exploit the AI and set up Suicune or Latias is much more preferable than grabbing a quick OHKO with Slaking. Latias is an excellent lead against more offensive teams where you can find an opportunity to set up a Calm Mind. Ice + Electric + Psychic is really good coverage in Gen 3 and you won't really find yourself needing more than that. The best part is that with the reduced IVs, Latias can now beat its kindred as an Ice Beam 2HKOs Alakazam without needing a boost. It also beats Gardevoir reliably on a 1-v-1 as Latias can even survive a CH Ice Punch from Set 4! Latias is my choice for a lead if I find that opportunity to set up a CM and I am confident that a +1 Latias will end the match quickly. Latias also complements Slaking as an offensive core capable of scoring quick kills and end battles quickly.

One of the things that I really liked about the team is the flexibility it provides when choosing the two Pokemon who will go up-front. To give you an example of my thought process, let's say you face Tucker on the Gold rematch. My choice is always Latias and Suicune against his team of Swampert / Latias / Metagross. You might be wondering, hey Kommo, why you don't bring Slaking if it can OHKO all of his Pokemon with the right move? The answer is simple: Metagross. First, Tucker's Metagross infamously runs Protect which is a move that completely fucks up Slaking. It's no good if Slaking can't attack because Metagross decides to Protect which will inevitably lead to a lot of 50/50s because Metagross can either attack on the Truant turns and there's also the threat of gaining Attack boosts from Meteor Mash. Second reason: A combination of Latias + Slaking has no Steel resist. What if Tucker decides not to lead with his usual Swampert lead and decides to lead with Metagross? My team has no Steel resistance and Suicune is left behind. Add to the fact that his Metagross runs Quick Claw and it is a recipe for disaster. The main reason why you want to include Suicune on the team is precisely because of this reason. Latias will set up against Swampert to a +6 without any threat because she takes a pittance from its Ice Beam but Swampert will most likely attempt to spam Mirror Coat anyways. At +6 Latias fears nothing and it will OHKO both Tucker's Latias and Metagross. However, if Tucker's Metagross gets a lucky QC activation and OHKOs Latias with a crit or gets 2 QC turns on a row, I have my safety net on Suicune because Suicune beats Metagross 1-v-1, it takes almost nothing from Meteor Mash and it can set up Calm Minds on the turns Metagross decides to spam Protect instead. There's no risk in here and it's pretty much a straight victory. See how I minimized any potential risks using the right picks? This is pretty much what you have to do on any Dome match and I promise you that you'll be flying to the moon.

A TRIBUTE TO HARDSHIP

Possibly the worst threat for the team. Absolutely disgusting if it gets to pull off a Quick Claw boost which will prevent Hyper Beam from OHKOing it.
Set 4 is a really bad Pokemon to face if you let it gain too many boosts, specially if she builds up on evasion boosts. The best way is to OHKO it quickly if you get Slaking to lead against it. I recommend going all out against this Pokemon and don't give it a chance to screw you over.
Thunder Wave is annoying specially if you end up with an unfavorable lead. While Suicune needs to build up to +2 to avoid Thunderbolt from breaking the Sub, be mindful of critical hits or random paralyzes which will hurt Suicune a lot.
While the whole team has a way to OHKO it with the appropriate coverage move, a QC activation is extremely dangerous.
The sight of this Pokemon forces Suicune to be picked as otherwise without Substitute's protection and Pressure stalling, Sheer Cold will easily go rampant.
Quick Claw Explosion will kill something upon activation and going on a 1-v-1 against the wrong Pokemon will put me on a bad position.
Evasion is bad for Slaking's health and these two are troublesome for Latias / Suicune to set up against. Garde 2 / Ludicolo 4 are complete AIDS. The best way to deal with them is by using Slaking. Suicune deserves a shout-out since it can easily stall Ludicolo out although you need to keep Slaking or Latias alive to later OHKO it.
While Latias has enough SpA to even OHKO Set 2, a Bright Powder miss or a Focus Band activation will easily mean doom for the team.
Fake Out users mess up with Slaking pretty badly. Shiftry deserves special attention due to its access to Explosion (which can kill something), access to Grass STAB and Set 2 which is a cancerous Double Team spammer. Kangaskhan not really a threat but Fake Out is annoying.
The team lacks a way to OHKO it and Set 4 can pose a huge threat if it sets up and passes its boosts to someone else. Fortunately, thanks to Suicune's Pressure, it can stall out Silver Wind which is Scizor's most significant way to deal damage.
I only feel pain when I see this on team preview. It's a forced Slaking carry and I can't stress how dangerous a King's Rock flinch can be. Latias also 2HKOs with Psychic although you will want to be mindful of those Bite flinches.
I really hate how this thing almost ruined the streak on one of my runs. It doesn't looks as a mayor threat until you remember it can Endure and then explode out of nowhere to deal heavy damage. Suicune survives Explosion but it's a fair big chunk it takes. Not good if Slaking or Latias are facing it though since Icy Wind can be annoying due to the Speed drop.

Pretty sure they are out there more threats but will update this section as I find them

A TRIBUTE TO FRIENDSHIP

Actaeon: For programming DomeAsisstant which is basically an improvement over the Frontier spreadsheet. I started to use it on the last rounds of this streak and I don't see myself ever attempting another Dome streak without your tool. It's a really amazing tool and I am extremely grateful for your help on setting up the tool.
Adedede: For posting your Dome Speed tiers. These were incredibly helpful when teambuilding and it was pretty important. Massive respect for you to take your time to compile all of that.
turskain: For developing Gen 3 support for the Damage Calculator. I can't thank you enough for all your efforts and your tool is also a massive reason why this community is so active and why I keep pushing forward with new streaks.
Eisenherz: I may have stolen shamelessly your format so I'm also paying my tributes to compensate you for it. After all, we all have to do it at some point in life!

Would also like to give a shout-out to some good friends of mine. Only reason why I am able to stick around is because of you guys: ReptoAbysmal, Level 51, JustinTR, submenceisop, Smuckem, HeadsILoseTailsYouWin, SadisticMystic, atsync, Runeblade14, average fella, Captain Santana, Golden Blissey, pokemon4eva, wtset, DrDimentio, dgice and DHR-107!

Ok that was a lot of tags and I'm sorry if I ended up on missing out on someone or if this was too unexpected. I just want to say that I really enjoy sharing these moments with all of you and I'm grateful that I have been able to meet a lot of friends in here. You guys are an absolute blast and ever since I took over of the Gen 3 leaderboard I'm happy that now I am able to contribute more to the server.

A TRIBUTE FOR HISTORY

Kommo-o · May 30, 2021

A TRIBUTE TO EPIC GAMIN'
So I made a video recording Tournaments #90-#100 after exporting my save file into VBA to make this video. Despite a couple of misplays on some battles, I hope this video does enough to explain how the team works, my decision making, my thought process and how the team plays. Rather than tell you the whole story, I think it's better if you watch it by yourself!

A TRIBUTE FOR THE RECORDS:

A team with average potential. Uses strong and straightforward moves. Neglects Def & SpD.

I have to say this is a troublesome team for the sole inclusion of Crobat 4: a bloodthirsty beast that can outspeed all team members. It has Confuse Ray which puts Slaking on a difficult spot which already discourages me from using it at the lead spot. Blastoise 4 and Lapras 4 are not exactly massive threats, but these are Pokemon that Latias can deal with. Latias took the lead spot due to its favorable matchup against Crobat. Latias hates Shadow Ball but if Crobat opts for Confuse Ray, it will just rinse the Lum Berry and Latias will conserve its full HP. If Lapras or Blastoise were on the lead spot, I can safely switch into Suicune to conserve Latias' HP in case Crobat is in the back (to tank the potential Shadow Ball) and set up to +6 to the point where Crobat cannot even touch me once it is behind a Substitute.

:latias:

vs

Latias took the lead and Tess decided to lead with Crobat. On turn 1, Crobat uses Shadow Ball which takes Latias down to 82 HP. No crit and Latias OHKOs back with Psychic. The next mon is Lapras and of course, I am forced to switch out into Suicune. Latias is already below ~50% HP and if Lapras is Water Absorb, the stall battle will last for even longer. The plan in here is to switch out, stall Lapras' PP and then set up with Latias once Lapras uses Struggle. Suicune's Substitute is broken 68% of the time at +1 so I had to set up another CM to avoid its Thunderbolt from breaking the sub. Fortunately, Lapras doesn't gets any hax on its favor and to my surprise, after clicking Surf, Lapras was Shell Armor. Scary team preview but the battle went smoothly.

A candidate to finish first. Has a tough winning pattern. Emphasizes HP and Special Attack

Regice is the only problem Pokemon in here. While Aggron 3 looks like meme material, Thunder makes it hard to set up. Could pretty much say the same about the Cradily depending on the set (Sunny Day + Solarbeam is no bueno). Despite this, if Suicune manages to avoid any critical hits, it has the best match-up against this trainer. I would probably say leading with Slaking would've been tempting but Cradily being on the team means that Slaking cannot OHKO it. I can't use Latias against a team where she cannot OHKO a single member even with a +1. Naturally, this lead me to use Slaking as a backup for Suicune in case that things went haywire against the Regice.

:suicune:

vs

Suicune took the lead against Regice and on t1 I set up a Calm Mind to tank any potential Thunderbolt before Substituting. Regice revealed Amnesia, which pretty much gave away the set as Set 1. I set up a Sub on the next turn only for Regice to use another Amnesia. With a free +2, Suicune was guaranteed to win this match and stall out Regice 1 out of PP. After burning out its attacking moves and Rest PP, Suicune scored a nice critical hit which accelerated the progress of this battle. Next, Aggron came out only for it to get brutally murdered by a +6 Surf.

One win will make this team proud. Skilled at enfeebling, then attacking. Emphasizes Attack.

This team looks like meme material at first, but Miltank is the biggest threat in here. I have to say, Dugtrio and Golduck get cooked by Latias but Slaking is a must just because of this stupid cow. Suicune is the safe plan but depending on the Dugtrio set, it can be really bad if it carries Fissure.

:latias:

vs

I only got myself to blame in here for sheer arrogance. I should've definitely lead Slaking in here because I didn't took into consideration how bad Miltank can be depending on the set. Fortunately Set 2 cannot touch Latias and the only annoying thing it can do is paralyze it. Nothing worth to spill out the milk though since Slaking would've been able to outspeed Dugtrio regardless. A paralyzed Latias cleansed this match

This tournament's average team. Willing to risk total disaster at times. Raises Pokemon in a well balanced way.

Without using DomeAssistant, I knew this battle would be a huge red flag. The fact that he raises his Pokemon on a "balanced way" means that any of the 8 possible sets for Lapras and Ursaring could be available. Gengar being included doesn't helps if I picked Slaking and it comes up first because I will be locked into Shadow Ball. As a mater of fact, after entering all the information, DomeAssistant couldn't predict his team, so I had to hope for the best. My lead of choice was Slaking because if Gengar came up first, I can switch out into Latias to tank any potential attack and get rid of it. While not carrying Suicune on this match was something I had my doubts about, if Latias got rid of Gengar and managed to damage it if it was Set 8, the good thing is that I won't be forced to click Hyper Beam.

:slaking:

vs

I absolutely got the lead I wanted to see and Ursaring got Double Edge'd to death. Next came Lapras. In hindsight, I should've switched into Latias to sack her and scout the set. I stayed thinking that if it was going to be Set 7/8, I could just 2HKO it later with Latias. Either way, Horn Drill missed on the truant turn and Slaking OHKO'd the haxxor with Double Edge

Overall a weak team. Has a tough winning pattern. Neglects HP and Speed.

Surreal stuff when you see Dewgong and Lapras at the same time but since it is Joyce, all of her team members are set 4. No Haxpras and while the Dewgong carries Sheer Cold, it's hold item is a Lum Berry. This team couldn't have screamed SUICUNE TIME louder on a 10 km radius.

:suicune:

vs

Suicune ate seal blubber for free. What happens once Suicune gets a +6 and sets up behind a Substitute safely while stalling all those Sheer Cold PP? Total annihilation.

Overall a weak team. Has a tough winning pattern. Emphasizes Attack.

The only real threat comes from Ninjask who can potentially Baton Pass Swords Dance boosts or Speed boosts to either Armaldo or Forretress. Another small inconvenience is that Slaking can't OHKO any of its team members bar Ninjask (who can potentially Endure or use its Focus Band and it would still be bad for Slaking). Dome Assistant revealed that Forretress 1 is guaranteed, which is meme material for Suicune. I decided to lead Suicune considering that even if Ninjask would lead, if it decides to Baton Pass a boost, Suicune has enough bulk to tank a +2 attack and it will 2HKO Armaldo or Forretress if they become the receivers. There wasn't really a right or wrong call on the 2nd member since all I needed was Suicune to lead.

:suicune:

vs

Ninjask on the back lol. Forretress was just extremely easy for Suicune to set up into it and with Ninjask being the only Pokemon left, there was nothing it could do against a boosted Suicune.

This tournament's average team. Has a tough winning pattern. Neglects Defense.

Those fucking words: "Neglects Defense" gave me hope because I know that Lapras 7/8 would never show up. After entering everything on DomeAssistant, it showed up Lapras 2, Kangaskhan 1 and Feraligatr 1. No OHKOs and this Lapras is just vibes, or so I believed. Kangaskhan is annoying because of Fake Out which made me think twice of a Slaking lead. Feraligatr is not even worth discussing, it's hardcore meme material.

:latias:

vs

I have to admit, I made a dumb mistake on this battle. Even if it doesn't carries a OHKO move, any Lapras with Quick Claw is still a menace. Latias landed a Thunderbolt on this thing, however, its QC activated on the next turn and due to sheer arrogance, I ignored the warning signs and lost Latias for free. Fun part is that I could've even played the turn better because I did not calculated further:

255 SpA Lapras Ice Beam vs. +1 92 HP / 0 SpD Latias: 61-72 (36.5 - 43.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
+1 188+ SpA Latias Thunderbolt vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Lapras: 180-212 (94.2 - 110.9%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO

A +1 Thunderbolt has a good chance of landing a OHKO while Latias would've avoided a 2HKO at +1. Either way, I hated myself for this because I knew how costly this mistake would've been for me. Fortunately Feraligatr decided to set up a rain parade to celebrate its death and get Double Edge'd to death by Slaking. If it would've been Kangaskhan, it would've 100% Faked Out on the next turn. A small price to pay for salvation?

A team unlikely to win the tournament. Willing to risk total disaster at times. Emphasizes Attack and Speed.

The only real threat comes from Ninjask who can potentially Baton Pass Swords Dance boosts or Speed boosts to either Armaldo or Forretress. Another small inconvenience is that Slaking can't OHKO any of its team members bar Ninjask (who can potentially Endure or use its Focus Band and it would still be bad for Slaking). Dome Assistant revealed that Forretress 1 is guaranteed, which is meme material for Suicune. I decided to lead Suicune considering that even if Ninjask would lead, if it decides to Baton Pass a boost, Suicune has enough bulk to tank a +2 attack and it will 2HKO Armaldo or Forretress if they become the receivers. There wasn't really a right or wrong call on the 2nd member since all I needed was Suicune to lead.

:suicune:

vs

Tournament 96 was arguably not my best tournament in which I played to the best of my abilities. Suicune was definitely a bad lead for Misdreavus because I didn't took into consideration that Misdreavus 4 is faster and carries Thunderbolt. Only got myself to blame for that. After setting up a Calm Mind, now that I think about it as I am writing this, I should've exploited Destiny Bond and set up more CMs while being behind the Sub. It's a 50/50 but at low HP, the AI favors Destiny Bond massively. After Misdreavus took down Suicune with Destiny Bond, Latias was up against Golem. To my horror, Golem not only survives Ice Beam but the fucker also gets a critical hit Double Edge on Latias.

188+ SpA Latias Ice Beam vs. 0 HP / 255 SpD Golem: 119-140 (84.3 - 99.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Incredibly cursed calc I must say. But blessed by the fact that Latias was guaranteed to survive it... until you realize Golem had a chance to survive the Ice Beam and a regular DE recoil if it wasn't a critical hit: 40.1 - 47.3% (15.6 - 18.4% recoil damage). Lol.

A team with top class potential. Prefers tactics that rely on luck. Neglects Speed and Special Attack.

Yes, the game said the funny words: LUCK. 4 letters enough to send shivers to your spine and two Ice/Water types on your screen. I swear, I should stop emphasizing on these Pokemon, but they are a big pain in the ass. Fortunately DomeAssistant showed that Samir plays nice: Lapras 1 / Walrein 3 / Machamp 6. While Lapras 1 is a cancerous set, it gets blocked by Suicune. Machamp 6 as a tendency of spamming Counter. Seriously, the only big threat on this team is the fucking Walrus that has been hounding your 12 year old Frontier dreams since 2004.

:suicune:

vs

Machamp on the lead was food for Suicune. All I needed to do was to stall out its Cross Chop's PP and everything was good. Walrein came up next against a +5 Suicune (I could've sworn I was at +6 but apparently I wasn't) but either way, Walrein couldn't break the sub, missed a Fissure while I was behind a Sub and got 2HKO'd by Surf.

One win will make this team proud. Prefers tactics that rely on luck. Emphasizes Attack.

This is one of those few teams where getting the favorable lead match-up was a coin toss. I was unsure and not confident on which Pokemon was the ideal one to lead against this team for a few reasons: Latias would be fantastic against Skarmory and Heracross but if the Scizor carries Silver Wind, I got no resists to Bug and if it manages to get an omni-boost, it would be more difficult to bring it down. Slaking can't OHKO Scizor and it would encourage Heracross for a potential Endure if it is Set 4. Skarmory is a formality but the biggest concern was Heracross.

:suicune:

vs

I made a huge mistake on picking Suicune and I got severely distracted by the fact that I've forgotten that the Scizor set does not carry Silver Wind which is one of the easiest Scizor sets for Latias to even handle. My lead should've been Latias not only because it OHKOs Heracross and discourages the Endure play (because the AI will favor the OHKO from Megahorn) but Latias would've been able to handle Skarmory as well. What followed was Suicune stalling out Heracross out of Megahorn while hoping on Heracross not being lucky enough to get a crit. Fortunately, Heracross didn't and eventually I figured out it was Heracross 3 and not 4 which pretty much discarded the potential risk of Reversal. Suicune manages to stall out of its moves to set up more safely on a Heracross who can only struggle itself to death and manages to 2HKO Skarmory without any drama.

IamYourBoss · Jun 6, 2021

Hello!

Due to covid, I find myself spending a lot of time at home. Was packing up my room when I found my old emerald GBA. When I opened it, I found a letter written 10 years ago, promising myself that I will conquer battle tower 1 day for at least the silver medal (50 wins) or Gold medal (100wins). These medals are for the secret base and not the golden symbols. I have all 7 silver symbols, with 1 gold in the dome. My previous record was 47, and I was able to push it to 48 this play through, but am generally still struggling to get at least 50 wins. Preferably I would like to get the golden symbol (70wins). Would appreciate some input here guys! I am focusing on open level, and have close to one full box of lv100 Pokemon. Following the steps laid out by my 10 year old self, here are my leading pokemon:

Slaking
Nature: Adamant Item: Choice Band
252 ATK / 252 SPE / 4 HP
- Double Edge
- Brick Break
- Shadow Ball
- Rock slide

Latias (From emerald, without the IV glitch in ruby or saphire)
Nature: Modest Item: Leftovers
252 SP ATK / 252 SPE / 4 HP
- Psychic
- Ice beam
- Thunderbolt
- Calm Mind

Tyranitar
Nature: Adamant Item: Chesto Berry
252 ATK / 252 SPE / 4 HP
- Earthquake
- Rock slide
- Rest
- Dragon dance

Gyarados
Nature: Adament Item: Chesto Berry
252 ATK / 252 SPD / 4 HP
- Earthquake
- Hyper beam
- Rest
- Dragon dance

Strategy:
Pretty self-explanatory: I lead with slaking to get to try a KO to make it 3-2, then swap into either 1 of my special or physical sweeper to set up depending on their resistance. Tyranitar or Gyarados will try to get a extra DD in with rest+chesto.

Dilemma:
Slaking and Latias have served me well and are pretty much locked for me. What is remaining is my 3rd slot. I use Tyranitar as his stats are better than Gyarados, but he creates x2 weakness for bug and fighting combined with Latias and Slaking. However, the moveset for Gyarados creates situations where I am walled by Gengar and ghost pokemon in general. I know hyper beam sucks, but with my internal battery dead and no additional GBA/cartridge, I have no access to return/double edge etc. I appreciate the intimidate by Gyarados but it somehow hasn't help me much, whereas the sandstream by Tyranitar can be a double edged sword. Any other suggestion would be appreciated!

Other EV trained Pokemon:
Scizor, Milotic, Suicune (lousy IV from firered), Heracross, Snorlax, Swampert, Porygon2, Skarmony, Hitmonlee (WHY 10 year old me!), Magmar (omg why did I waste so much time), Pikachu (with light ball), Sceptile with dragon claw

Other Non EV trained Pokemon:
Dragonite, Charizard, Genar, Rhydon, Articuno, Walrein, Houndoom, Tyranitar (another copy)

* I caught a shiny Poochyena while moving around trying to do stuff like finding heart scale etc!

* Will upload a photo of the letter from 10 years ago if I manage to get the gold symbol.

IamYourBoss · Jun 7, 2021

Update:

I know its nothing much compared to the streaks found here, but I managed to break my previous best of 48 with 52 this time round. I lost to a Regirock that I couldn't kill. Fight is break down as followed:

He had on him leftovers with the following moves:
- Thunder wave
- Ancient power
- Rock slide
- Minimize (or was it double team?)

Turn 1: Slaking misses brick break for some reason. Regirock uses ancient power. Boosts everything.

Turn 2: Slaking truant, I had no choice but to swap to Latias (my only special sweeper) since Regirock has lower sp def than his monster def. Able to land ice beam. This is probably where I started to mess up, didn't know it was not super effective, should have went with STAB psychic. Damages only like 1/4 or 1/3 of his hp.

Turn 3 onwards: This is probably where I screwed up big time. I got caught in a power up battle with Regi, hoping than my STAB psychic will hit him hard after I get +6 or decrease his sp def. But his leftovers, minimize, ancient power and left overs proved too much. Latias was able to damage more than 3/4 of his hp eventually, before I swap in Tyranitar to DD and get a +6 and stall with rest. However, my misses combined with this boost from ancient power and leftovers eventually healed him back close to full health.

End turn: I was eventually able to force him to struggle, but with Slaking I was unable to hit any brick break again due to this minimize. He finished me with struggle. His leftovers was just enough to cover the recoil dmg. It was a pretty agonizing process. To be fair, even if the brick break hit in the beginning I doubt it would have made much difference to be honest.

I guess this counts as fulfilling a part of my childhood goals? Since I got the silver medal and placed it in my secret base...

The funny thing is I won 2 previous close battles against these stalling strategies. (Registeel and wailord) Albeit painfully...

This might be a sign for me to develop a counter against a staller or something. I had a scizor with swift that was developed specifically for this. But it doesn't seem to gel well with Slaking and Latias in my trial runs. Unfortunately, I do not have aerial ace anymore to counter these pesky teams too. I am considering Adedede's strategy of using Wobbufet to build on my slaking-make-it-3-2-strategy.

Sadly, my streaks leading up to this was:

- 39 wins (Misplay)
- 20 wins (Messing around with random teams - Hearcross swap Tyranitar)
- 48 wins (Infamous RNG Rhydon horn drill x2, probably had a quick claw, my +3 Tyranitar missed earthquake to finish him off)
- 28 wins (Messing around with random teams - Suicune swap Tyranitar)
- 20 wins (Messing around with random teams - Swampert swap Tyranitar)
- 38 wins (Realize that Tyranitar is probably still a better fit than Gyarados)
- 28 wins (Messing around with random teams - Skarmony swap Tyranitar)
- 37 wins (Triple critical hits from Heracross. That has got to be a first. But to be fair, Latias and Tyranitar is weak against bug to begin with. I can usually finish him off with Slaking double edge in first turn but somehow missed in the first turn)
- 52 wins (Regirock staller)

I have a brave nature Metagross still in my PC. And a Swarmpert (It didn't do as well in my trial run tho, maybe I don't know how to play it right. Should I just try to use those typical teams people use to clear battle tower? (Latios, Metagross, Swampert) Unfortunately, I don't have earthquake anymore for Metagross. I am considering getting an additional GBA and sapphire cart to trade.

Man it was really a struggle. I have already scanned through all the available docs/ guides online...I even looked at the trainer list for emerald (some are missing btw) How did you guys achieve your streaks? Is it a matter of trying 20-40 rounds or swapping things in and out? At this point I don't know if I should continue trying with the same team (Latias, Slaking, Tyranitar) or try to bring in something new.

Kommo-o · Jun 10, 2021

IamYourBoss said:
Hello!

Due to covid, I find myself spending a lot of time at home. Was packing up my room when I found my old emerald GBA. When I opened it, I found a letter written 10 years ago, promising myself that I will conquer battle tower 1 day for at least the silver medal (50 wins) or Gold medal (100wins). These medals are for the secret base and not the golden symbols. I have all 7 silver symbols, with 1 gold in the dome. My previous record was 47, and I was able to push it to 48 this play through, but am generally still struggling to get at least 50 wins. Preferably I would like to get the golden symbol (70wins). Would appreciate some input here guys! I am focusing on open level, and have close to one full box of lv100 Pokemon.

Hey, welcome to the forums and thanks for sharing! Apologies in case you still have not received any feedback yet, so I'll try to do my best and help you on this.

IamYourBoss said:
Following the steps laid out by my 10 year old self, here are my leading pokemon:

Slaking
Nature: Adamant Item: Choice Band
252 ATK / 252 SPE / 4 HP
- Double Edge
- Brick Break
- Shadow Ball
- Rock slide

Latias (From emerald, without the IV glitch in ruby or saphire)
Nature: Modest Item: Leftovers
252 SP ATK / 252 SPE / 4 HP
- Psychic
- Ice beam
- Thunderbolt
- Calm Mind

Tyranitar
Nature: Adamant Item: Chesto Berry
252 ATK / 252 SPE / 4 HP
- Earthquake
- Rock slide
- Rest
- Dragon dance

Gyarados
Nature: Adament Item: Chesto Berry
252 ATK / 252 SPD / 4 HP
- Earthquake
- Hyper beam
- Rest
- Dragon dance

Strategy:
Pretty self-explanatory: I lead with slaking to get to try a KO to make it 3-2, then swap into either 1 of my special or physical sweeper to set up depending on their resistance. Tyranitar or Gyarados will try to get a extra DD in with rest+chesto.

Dilemma:
Slaking and Latias have served me well and are pretty much locked for me. What is remaining is my 3rd slot. I use Tyranitar as his stats are better than Gyarados, but he creates x2 weakness for bug and fighting combined with Latias and Slaking. However, the moveset for Gyarados creates situations where I am walled by Gengar and ghost pokemon in general. I know hyper beam sucks, but with my internal battery dead and no additional GBA/cartridge, I have no access to return/double edge etc. I appreciate the intimidate by Gyarados but it somehow hasn't help me much, whereas the sandstream by Tyranitar can be a double edged sword. Any other suggestion would be appreciated!

I'd probably would say that Slaking is running decent moves although there could be some improvements. If you have a Level 100 Pickup Linoone in your Emerald game, there's a 1% chance of finding a TM26 which contains Earthquake. I'm not sure if you already used that TM but in case you haven't, I recommend using the cloning glitch, to its full extent, so you can duplicate its TM several times and keep some extras.

If you're willing to invest the effort on this, I'd recommend replacing Rock Slide with Earthquake on Slaking. Ground coverage is too important to miss out and it's the move that will allow Slaking to destroy Metagross, which is a Pokemon that laughs at Brick Break. Talking about Brick Break, it isn't a terrible move but when you consider that Hyper Beam exists, the coverage isn't really worth it. Hyper Beam is a nuke that will allow Slaking to heavily damage Blissey, Umbreon and other fat Pokemon.

On Tyranitar, I don't think Rest is a bad move but have you considered using Taunt over it? Taunt is a really neat move that will allow Tyranitar to soft-check Double Team spammers like Umbreon and Ludicolo while setting up safely. Take into account that in Gen 3, Taunt only lasts for the next turn, unlike the newer games where it can last up to 3-4 turns.

On Gyarados, Hyper Beam is not a really good choice and I have to say that a physical Gyarados will struggle without a STAB to use. Hyper Beam is also not a good choice to use as your "pseudo-STAB" due to the recharge turn. If you really value the Intimidate factor, I would strongly recommend to use Salamence. If you cannot RNG a good HP Flying on Gyarados, I'd recommend breeding a Salamence since it can use Aerial Ace (a move which will never miss) and it pretty much does the same a Dragon Dance attacker should do.

If you're looking for a Pokemon to use alongside Slaking and Latias, I think that Milotic will complement your team much better. I personally believe that any Gyarados without a form of Hidden Power STAB won't be successful, but Milotic will provide an Ice resist helping Latias while it is bulky enough from the special side to take hits.

IamYourBoss said:
Other EV trained Pokemon:
Scizor, Milotic, Suicune (lousy IV from firered), Heracross, Snorlax, Swampert, Porygon2, Skarmony, Hitmonlee (WHY 10 year old me!), Magmar (omg why did I waste so much time), Pikachu (with light ball), Sceptile with dragon claw

Other Non EV trained Pokemon:
Dragonite, Charizard, Genar, Rhydon, Articuno, Walrein, Houndoom, Tyranitar (another copy)

* I caught a shiny Poochyena while moving around trying to do stuff like finding heart scale etc!

* Will upload a photo of the letter from 10 years ago if I manage to get the gold symbol.

Would probably say that all the Pokemon you have EV trained are solid picks for Frontier. I would discourage using the Suicune since due to a known glitch, 4 of its stats are locked into 0 IVs. Cool Pokemon to use though, might not be terrible depending on the nature you have.

Scizor might be good if you're using a Baton Pass set. Milotic is the perfect bulky water to use over Suicune since at least you can get better IVs out from it. Heracross and Snorlax are two great Pokemon to use as physical attackers. Porygon2 and Skarm will be useful! Sceptile is the best grass type on this game, so you can't go wrong with it. I think that a solid addition to your pool would be Metagross. You would be surprised by how strong it can be when used with a Choice Band and it is arguably the best Steel type to use. Sorry if my post is not insightful enough since it was kind of late for me on the moment I wrote this review.

Da Funky Dragonfly · Jun 11, 2021

Hi guys

i was thinking about building an open level battle tower team around this thing:

aerodactyl
Leftovers
ability: pressure
Jolly nature
252/0/4/0/0/252
Protect
Substitute
Torment
scary face(?)

I might link this one up with a setup sweeper like latios.

whats your thoughts on this, any ideas for team mates?

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