Gen III Battle Frontier Discussion and Records

[Kommo-o]

Hello everyone, I hope all of you are doing fine, there has been some tough times ahead of us recently specially considering that several hurricanes have been recently forming and right now, we are being hit by one as well. Now, this has nothing to do with my prolonged absence since I had other projects I am currently taking care of but I just found myself with enough time to update some of the recently new streaks that were posted on the forum.

Welcome to our community Bayleef030 and thank you for being such an active participant. I recently added all of your streaks to the leaderboard and I'm sorry I couldn't give you a response earlier. Please let me know if there's any mistake and feel free to ask for advice here!

AuraRayquaza I just wanted to let you know that some of your proof pictures are actually missing on your posts and seems that some of them were not uploaded. If you can re-upload some of your missing proof pictures, please let me know so I can add your streaks to the leaderboard as well. Again, my apologies for not getting back to anyone sooner.

 

[Bayleef030]

A little bit late, but yes. Milotic is definitely a viable Water type. It has great defenses, a decent ability and two weaknesses being on its strongest defensive stat which means that it can even tank STAB Thunderbolts on a pinch. It just falls short of what Suicune is capable of doing because Suicune has Calm Mind which not only allows it to wall other Pokemon but also sweep on its own, which is what Milotic lacks. A Bold nature is pretty good if you don't have reliable Dragon Dancer checks for your team and Milotic's Special Attack is decent enough to run Ice Beam. You also got plenty of good options: Toxic lets Milotic beat other Water types that cannot damage it super-effectively and really useful. Mirror Coat allows Milotic to tank a Thunderbolt and retaliate back, which is useful to reflect back the damage from non-STAB Thunderbolts from the likes of the Lati@s. Calm is also an option if you wanna go this route because the extra Special Defense lets you reflect back more special attacks.

I second this. I have been using Milotic in several facilities, and well, Milotic is amazing. Really amazing. No physical weakness, and surprisingly good physical bulk. A lot of very strong physical attacks cannot 2HKO Milotic. And even without investment, the high Special Defense allows you to not be 2HKOed by non-STAB Thunderbolts. The only real special threat? STAB Thunderbolts and boosting sweepers. Grass is barely an issue, since Giga Drain is weak. Solarbeam can hurt, but that's it. So yeah, most special attackers and most physical attackers can be stalled out.

I use:

Milotic @ Leftovers
Bold, 252 HP, 252 Def, 4 SAtk
Surf, Ice Beam, Toxic, Recover

I would avoid going with a Calm nature and SDef EV's. Milotic would miss out on physical bulk and wouold no longer reliably check physical hitters. And the special defense is good enough to outstall non-boosting special attackers without running Calm and max SDef. And running Calm and max SDef will not allow you to beat or outstall strong STAB Thunder(bolt) users or Calm Mind boosters.

Bold with maxed out Def allows Milotic to beat most Pokemon 1 vs. 1. Calm and max SDef would make Milotic lose to physical hitters. And Bold Milotic can beat almost all special attackers who Calm Milotic can beat.

Hello everyone, I hope all of you are doing fine, there has been some tough times ahead of us recently specially considering that several hurricanes have been recently forming and right now, we are being hit by one as well. Now, this has nothing to do with my prolonged absence since I had other projects I am currently taking care of but I just found myself with enough time to update some of the recently new streaks that were posted on the forum.

Welcome to our community Bayleef030 and thank you for being such an active participant. I recently added all of your streaks to the leaderboard and I'm sorry I couldn't give you a response earlier. Please let me know if there's any mistake and feel free to ask for advice here!

AuraRayquaza I just wanted to let you know that some of your proof pictures are actually missing on your posts and seems that some of them were not uploaded. If you can re-upload some of your missing proof pictures, please let me know so I can add your streaks to the leaderboard as well. Again, my apologies for not getting back to anyone sooner.

I completely understand. Don't worry. No need to rush. I just hope things will be better for you in the future. Sorry to hear about the hurricanes.

Anyways, it's nice that I have been able to create a team that wins gold symbols in all facilities (aside from the Battle Factory, where I cannot use them), without any changes or adaptions. And since I used this Flygon and Milotic in-game (I EV trained in-game and bred them), it feels nice to use two Pokemon from my in-game team.

After getting the team up to lv.100 a while ago, after doing all the Frontier streaks, I just started trying to see if I can get an even longer Battle Pike streak. The top 3 of the Open Level leaderboard will be hard, but let's see if I can break my 221 room record. I think I should be able to. And I would love to reach 100 wins in the Battle Tower, so I might try that later.

I need one more gold symbol... The dreaded Battle Factory... Ugh, I hate it. But oh well, I have to do it at some point if I want all the gold symbols. But first, let's have some more fun with the Pike, my favourite facility.

 

[roshansoma]

Hey everyone! Been a lurker on the Smogon threads for what feels like centuries... I often play on my Switch in ranked BSS/casual BSS. I tried getting into Battle Tower in every generation, and usually got the highest rewards for a streak in every generation. However, I missed the nostalgia of Gen III's Battle Frontier, not just in the difficulty or uniqueness but also the challenge of the restricted teambuilding and EV Training without Power Items. I wanted to RNG manipulate a good Southern Island Latios, had my eye on the flawless Timid spread on seed 448B so I manipulated my TID/SID ('Pandora's Box') to make the spread shiny. For Tauros, I RNG manipulated a 31 attak/ 31 Speed one in Fire Red safari zone, traded it over to emerald via VBA Link, manipulated a ditto with 31/31/31/2/31/31 and bred the two to give me a Jolly one with 31/31/30/15/30/31 and HP Ghost. Did the usual Emerald Shiny Egg PID RNG too. Suicune was done on Colosseum via Dolphin and then transferred over via emulator linkup too. He is Bold with 31/13/31/31/31/31. Anyways, I decided to give it a go for old time's sake:

The Team:

Tauros@ Choice Band
252 Atk/252 Spe/4 HP
Jolly
-Double-Edge
-Return
-Earthquake
-Hidden Power [Ghost]

I loved the dominance this mon had in RBY so wanted to build a team around him. Your basic Tauros, fast and powerful lead to break opponents. I tend to switch if it is a fighting type that can survive my double edge (e.g. Hariyama) and the usual Steelixes etc. I tend to try to break Walrein or Lapras so that Latios has an easy revenge kill waiting for him.

Latios @ Lum Berry
252 Sp. Atk/252 Spe/4 HP
Timid
-Psychic
-Dragon Claw
-Thunderbolt
-Calm Mind

My cleaner, set up smasher all in one. Works well with Tauros.

Suicune @ Leftovers
252HP/ 252 Def/ 4 Spe
Bold
-Surf
-Ice Beam
-Rest
-Calm Mind

Still wondering if I should add a Chesto Berry instead of Leftovers...

The streak is still ongoing, I did not even have Choice Band for the 70th battle versus the Tower Brain because it is a fresh file and I have only ever won 150 BP in total (basically all I did was a 105 tower streak from 0). I was using Silk Scarf on Tauros xD I have a video of that battle that I can share here:

Open to suggestions on all of 'em, but would much rather stick with Tauros. Would not mind seeing if a Tyranitar set could do some fun here too!

 

[Churly-Puik]

Hi everyone! I’m happy to share with you my Battle Frontier records achieved on my 11-year-old Emerald savefile (on cartridge). I’m going to be as concrete as possible, if someone needs more info about my streaks, I’m giving more details.

Battle Dome Singles. Clear streak: 49. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

King Kong (Slaking) @ Choice Band
Level 100 Stats: 434/459/230/180/166/297
Adamant Nature
- Double Edge
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Hyper Beam

Metallian (Metagross) @ Quick Claw
Level 100 Stats: 363/401/292/191/216/177
Adamant Nature
- Meteor Mash
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Explosion

Adamance (Salamence) @ Lum Berry
Level 100 Stats: 330/404/195/227/207/266
Adamant Nature
- Aerial Ace
- Earthquake
- Flamethrower
- Dragon Dance

Description:

I never enjoyed long battles, PP stall and that, so I usually built hyper-offensive teams. The strategy is simple: wreck things with Slaking’s Double Edge or the appropriate cover move (Earthquake / Shadow Ball). Hyper Beam is reserved for very bulky pokemon such as Suicune, Lapras, Umbreon, Walrein, etc. Switch to either Salamence or Metagross depending on the rival’s pokemon (mence for fighting, bug, steel, grass, fire types; gross for water, ice, psychic, dragon, etc.). If Explosion KOes the enemy, it's a guaranteed win (the judge always chooses me as the winner thanks to Slaking’s sky-high base stats). If Salamence or Metagross are defeated, Slaking can enter again and finish the job. Threats: mostly OHKO users and Quick Claw users (or the pesky combination of both, like Walrein 3, Whiscash 4 and the infamous Haxdon 2-3-4), sometimes Jolteon as lead (parahaxed my Slaking and almost ruined my streak) and Aerodactyl/Salamence/Gyarados as leads (there’s no other option but the risky Hyper Beam). Tucker’s Metagross was a little bit difficult for this team because sometimes it used Protect smartly against my Slaking and it’s perfectly capable of OHKOing both my Salamence and Metagross with its Quick Claw and a critical hit, so I used my first ever pokemon, the eleven-year-old, not-EV-trained, “average in ability” Swampert only for the Tucker rounds, since I can 2HKO the metal spider, and the later can only 3HKO my pert with Earthquake (without any previous attack boost, of course).

Nolustain (Swampert) @ Leftovers
Level 100 Stats: 369/250/196/200/221/161
Hasty Nature
- Earthquake
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Rock Slide/Toxic (almost never used it, lol)

I have some videos of my streak; you can watch them here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-30XmRLsNPoZNhTXOIK60Cxh1If1AjlM

Loss:

On the final battle of Round 50, King Kong OHKOed Tucker’s Swampert with Double Edge as always. Then, Tucker’s Metagross got the boost in attack against my Slaking thanks to its Meteor Mash and activated its Quick Claw to 2HKO my Nolustain with Earthquake before I could kill it first (Nolustain’s Earthquake didn’t manage to KO Metagross, and on the last turn of the battle the spider hit first).



Battle Dome Doubles. Clear streak: 30. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

The same Slaking, Metagross and Salamence team from the Battle Dome Singles.

Description:

Start the battle by KOing one of the rival’s pokemon with Slaking’s Double Edge, so it’s an early 2 vs 1 advantage situation. Watch out for Fake Out, Protect, Quick Claw and OHKO users!

Loss:

I can’t remember well, but the enemy had an Aerodactyl that ended up 1 on 1 vs my Slaking and flinched me to death. It was many years ago and I did not record the battle video.



Battle Factory Singles. Win streak: 58. Open Level. Retail.

Battle Factory Doubles. Win streak: 28. Open Level. Retail.

Strategy:

I didn’t have a particular strategy, but I remember that I swap my pokemon anytime I can, even if I had won the battle with relative ease, in order to “get better pokemon the next round I play”.

Loss:

I can’t remember both since I didn’t record the battles on my Frontier Pass.



Battle Tower Singles. Win streak: 117. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

The same Slaking, Metagross and Salamence team from the Battle Dome, but Slaking had Return instead of Double Edge.

Description:

Hyper-offense team. Hit and run with Slaking, explode with Metagross against the appropriate enemies, and spam Dragon Dance in front of grass-type Double Teamers (Salamence has Aerial Ace to finish them off), opposing Scizor/Curse Skarmory/Forretress (then kill them with Flamethrower) and fire-types in general. However, many battles result as the following: Slaking quickly get the first KO, switch out to Salamence, Salamence beats his opponent or is KOed first, Slaking enters again, KOs his second opponent, switch to Metagross, the spider explodes. Threats: anything that is not OHKOed by Slaking’s return/shadow ball/earthquake. Hyper Beam is very risky, but sometimes came to shine. I remember having a lucky battle against a Cloyster that had many Double Teams under its belt, and Metallian’s Explosion managed to hit, so my Slaking could enter again and win the battle 1 vs 1 against a Nidoqueen. It was the 104th win because I remember that was just before Anabel’s third encounter.

Loss:

I can’t remember, it was many years ago and I was probably furious, lol.



Battle Tower Doubles. Win streak: 71. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

Polloguapo (Zapdos) @ Leftovers
Level 100 Stats: 309/190/195/380/193/292
Modest Nature
- Rain Dance
- Thunder
- Light Screen
- Protect

Lord Helix (Omastar) @ Petaya Berry
Level 100 Stats: 344/116/267/361/164/140
Ability: Swift Swim
Modest Nature
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Hydro Pump
- Rain Dance

Metallian (Metagross) @ Choice Band
Level 100 Stats: 363/401/292/191/216/177
Adamant Nature
- Meteor Mash
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Explosion

Latios (Latios) @ Lum Berry
Level 100 Stats: 305/170/187/391/243/310
Modest Nature
- Psychic
- Dragon Claw
- Thunder
- Protect

Description:

Rain-based team. Protect is very useful to gain a free turn when both rival’s pokemon try to attack my low HP Zapdos or Latios. Omastar’s Hydro Pump is a risky but powerful option under the rain. Choice banded Metagross is there for opposing Blissey and Snorlax, benefits from rain since fire attacks are weakened, and its Explosion (paired with the ally’s Protect) usually disintegrates both foes to dust on difficult situations. Fast Thunder + Ice Beam + Surf annihilates all sort of Dragon Tamers, Ruin Maniacs (watch out for Lightning Rod ability!), Kindlers, etc. Double Team spammers are usually beaten by Thunder from both Zapdos and Latios, and OHKOers are mostly weak against Electric and Water moves (beware of Whiscash).

Loss:

It was against a swimmer who start the battle with Starmie and Slowbro-4. My Zapdos use Light Screen and my Omastar switch out, fearing Starmie’s Thunderbolt. Enter Latios and take the Thunderbolt like nothing. Zapdos tried to use Rain Dance and Latios used Protect, but Starmie manage to get my Zapdos frozen with its Ice Beam before I can move. Latios OHKOs Starmie with Thunder (without rain), Slowbro KOs my frozen Zapdos with Ice Beam. Opposing swimmer sent out Kingdra, I sent out Metagross. Kingdra loses against Latios’ Dragon Claw, but Slowbro wins against my Latios with its Ice Beam. Enter Omastar again. Swimmer sent out Blastoise. My Metagross and Omastar are incapable of beating both Blastoise and Slowbro (only bring their HP to red, almost dead) and Blastoise finally knocked down my Metagross. On the last turn, Slowbro activated its infernal Quick Claw and KOed my Omastar before I can use Surf on both of them one last time to win the battle (I can’t remember if I used Rain Dance with Omastar or if it was the opposing Kingdra, but there was rain at the end).



Battle Tower Multi. Win streak: 33. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

Adamance (Salamence) @ Lum Berry
Level 100 Stats: 330/404/195/227/207/266
Adamant Nature
- Aerial Ace
- Earthquake
- Flamethrower
- Dragon Dance

Metallian (Metagross) @ Quick Claw
Level 100 Stats: 363/401/292/191/216/177
Adamant Nature
- Meteor Mash
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Explosion

Description:

I start using Dragon Dance if possible, or switch to Metagross when the opponents have many water types. I tried to choose my ally based on his/her flying or levitate pokemon, so I can use Earthquake for free.

Loss:

I can’t remember, since this was one of the battle modes that I played the least.



Battle Pyke. Rooms Cleared: 154. Open Level. Retail.

Team

Toxey (Blissey) @ Leftovers
Level 100 Stats: 714/43/128/179/296/118
Ability: Natural Cure
Relaxed Nature
- Toxic
- Defense Curl
- Seismic Toss
- Soft-Boiled

Starmie (Starmie) @ Petaya Berry
Level 100 Stats: 290/152/201/311/215/265
Ability: Natural Cure
Modest Nature
- Surf
- Psychic
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt

Hercules (Heracross) @ Choice Band
Level 100 Stats: 296/378/181/86/214/268
Ability: Guts
Adamant Nature
- Mega Horn
- Brick Break
- Rock Slide
- Earthquake

Description:

A team based around the pesky status conditions that one can get on certain rooms. My strategy was to avoid the trainer battles and status rooms as much as possible.

Loss:

I can’t remember, I did this streak more than 5 years ago, and this facility doesn’t let you record the Battle Video on the Frontier Pass.



Battle Arena. KOs in a row: 61. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

Latios (Latios) @ Lum Berry
Level 100 Stats: 305/170/187/391/243/310
Modest Nature
- Psychic
- Dragon Claw
- Thunderbolt
- Calm Mind

Metallian (Metagross) @ Quick Claw
Level 100 Stats: 363/401/292/191/216/177
Adamant Nature
- Meteor Mash
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Explosion

King Kong (Slaking) @ Choice Band
Level 100 Stats: 434/459/230/180/166/297
Adamant Nature
- Return
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Hyper Beam

Description:

Offensive team. I start using Calm Minds whenever it’s possible and try to sweep the entire opposing team. Metagross revenge kills the foes that managed to KO my Latios, and finally explodes. Slaking is used as a last resort, spamming Hyper Beam. I think this team is far from optimal, but I have built other teams since then (for example Destiny Bond Gengar, Self-destruct/Rest Snorlax and sweeper Latios) and each of them fail to achieve a better streak.

Loss:

A ruin maniac sent out Metagross 7 as lead and kill my Latios with Shadow Ball and Ice Punch, resisting two Thunderbolts before. My Metallian kills the opposing spider with Earthquake. Ruin maniac sent Golem 3. We earthquaked one another, and when both have the HP bar in red, enemy’s Golem activated its Quick Claw and kills me with Flamethrower. Enter Slaking and kills Golem with Hyper Beam. Ruin maniac sent Shuckle, Hyper Beam misses on the only attacking turn Slaking has, and Shuckle won the battle with a 5 to 1 score.



Battle Palace Singles. Win streak: 67. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

Adamance (Salamence) @ Lum Berry
Level 100 Stats: 330/404/195/227/207/266
Adamant Nature
- Aerial Ace
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Dragon Dance

Miloxic (Milotic) @ Leftovers
Level 100 Stats: 385/131/180/328/286/197
Modest Nature
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Toxic
- Recover

Curselax (Snorlax) @ Chesto Berry
Level 100 Stats: 502/310/200/149/260/63
Ability: Immunity
Brave Nature
- Return/Body Slam
- Earthquake
- Curse
- Rest

Description:

A fun team to use. Salamence’s Adamant nature forces him to use more attacking moves when he’s below 50% HP, so it’s very useful when he get some Dragon Dances before. However, he can be incapable of using his power sometimes. Modest Milotic is the defensive pivot of the team, she spams Recover when her HP is below 50%, and she’s never incapable of using its power, because she has all 3 move categories. She also enjoys spamming the Toxic + Recover strategy. The only problem is her low Defense stat (in fact, that was the reason why I lost my streak). Finally, Snorlax’s Brave nature makes him offensive when his HP is full and defensive when his HP is low (using Rest). Once lax has some curses under the belt, it’s nearly unstoppable (except for the pesky physical crits and the all-time-hated OHKOs). Threats: Gengar is very difficult for this team, I ended up PP-stalling him a pair of times with Snorlax. Vaporeon 4 is a real pest.

Loss:

Male PKMN-Breeder sent out Gyarados. Both Gyarados and my Salamence began Dragon Dancing. Gyarados used Return two times (failed to kill me), and Salamence used an Aerial Ace and a Rock Slide to kill his opponent. Enemy sent out Crobat, and the fattest bottomed bat on Earth resisted what I think was a +2 Aerial Ace. Crobat kills me with Shadow Ball and I bring out my Curselax, who start using Curses before knock down his enemy. PKMN Breeder sent out another Curselax who used Curse and then Double Edge to kill my Snorlax that had around 40% HP. Finally, Milotic was not able to kill the opposing Snorlax, and he Double Edged me to death.



Battle Palace Doubles. Win streak: 31. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

The same Salamence, Milotic, Snorlax team used in Singles, but Salamence has Brick Break instead of Earthquake.

Description:

Pretty much the same from singles. Salamence had Brick Break, so he can’t hit his allies.

Loss:

I don’t remember.



Battle Pyramid. Floors cleared: 474. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

King Kong (Slaking) @ Choice Band
Level 100 Stats: 434/459/230/180/166/297
Adamant Nature
- Return
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Hyper Beam

Toxey (Blissey) @ Leftovers
Level 100 Stats: 714/43/128/179/296/118
Ability: Natural Cure
Relaxed Nature
- Toxic
- Defense Curl
- Seismic Toss
- Soft-Boiled

Bandergon (Salamence) @ Choice Band
Level 100 Stats: 328/405/195/230/196/298
Adamant Nature
- Aerial Ace
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Flamethrower

Description:

In my opinion, a fast Adamant Slaking is simply the best pokemon available for this facility. He’s the undisputed king of 1 vs 1 battles, once you have found the Choice Band on the floor. All the wild battles are easily cleared with the combination of Slaking, Blissey (only for certain special attackers) and Salamence. Sometimes, depending on the wild pokemon encountered on each round (thanks Bulbapedia!), I use Latios or Heracross instead of Salamence, in order to get better match ups.

Latios (Latios) @ Lum Berry
Level 100 Stats: 305/170/187/391/243/310
Modest Nature
- Psychic
- Dragon Claw
- Thunderbolt
- Calm Mind

Hercules (Heracross) @ Choice Band
Level 100 Stats: 296/378/181/86/214/268
Ability: Guts
Adamant Nature
- Mega Horn
- Brick Break
- Rock Slide
- Earthquake

Blissey is a very important member of the team, particularly on the first rounds since she can cure her teammates with Soft-boiled and let me save the potions for critical situations. Also, she can sponge special attacks like they were nothing, and use Soft-bolied on battle to regain her precious HP. The strategy is to KO wild pokemon with Slaking as much as possible, avoid double battles at any cost, and don’t grab boosting-stats items (are mostly useless).

Loss:

I was not paying attention and entered a Double Battle, against a female Expert and a Guitarist (I think). They sent out Regirock 2 and a Breloom. I sent Slaking and Salamence. Slaking used Earthquake on both enemies and Salamence used Flamethrower on Breloom. Breloom died while Regirock resisted the attack and then it used Counter to kill my Slaking. I bring out Blissey AND I FORGET TO REVIVE MY SLAKING. Instead, I used Seismic Toss and Flamethrower to knock Regirock down quickly, but it savagely activated the Quick Claw and exploded on my face, ending my streak and my will to live (nah).

 

[submenceisop]

Reporting a 1163 pike streak! I'm proud to finally hit the elusive 1000+ rooms (Actaeon did it first).

Lost to a bird keeper with an agility skarmory and an articuno. Skarmory had a lot of PP with Steel wing and aircutter... if I had rest on swampert, it would have been very useful here. Wish pike was recorded, but at least Pearl and Kommo-o saw it.

Two noteable battles that I escaped with wins were against lead Rhydon (who landed a horndrill on the switch to pert) and faced a bug catcher with a lead Heracross 2 with my paralyzed Latios, and frozen pert and Blissey. The bug catcher one was insane... sacked bliss and pert and latios beat shuckle and ninjask at -1 accuracy.

I had a stroke of genius asking Actaeon to try out CB Pert for pike. I wanted to use something that checked strong physical attackers and wasn't useless in double battles. Unfortunately, the only good spread move in doubles is earthquake... which is something you want to take advantage of. The other catch with your EQ user, is that you want them to be fast enough to get a hit off and not be frail. Stuff like Steelix and Marowak can't be used for this reason, as much as I've tried.

Strategy for choosing rooms
- Take nostalgia rooms
-Whispering rooms are generally pretty good. Double battle OR a free room EXCEPT when Latios and Swampert are statused. In this case, I take my chances with a different room.
- I rarely take the "Is it a trainer? room. It's generally not worth it, unless you Latios and Swampert are statused. In that case, I just take it and hope to get off aromatherapy.

Switch to Smokeball for rooms 840+. Wobba comes out frequently enough that it's not viable to CM 6x and ko. There will be times you have to heal against Milotic and you want to save your PP.

Enkidu (Latios) (M) @ Lum Berry / Smoke Ball
Level : 50
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 28 HP / 12 Def / 244 SpA / 4 SpD / 220 Spe
Timid Nature (+Spe, -Atk)
- Calm Mind
- Psychic
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam / Dragon Claw




Swampert (M) @ Choice Band
Level: 50
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SpA)
Ability: Torrent
EVs: 32 HP / 228 Atk / 80 Def / 168 Spe
IVs: 30 Def / 30 SpD / 30 Spe
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power Rock
- Return / Rest
- Roar

Ev Explanation
- 228 Atk + Band koes Rhydon from full
- 101 speed. Faster than base 80s like 0 speed Venusaur.
- Hp and defence evs are shifted to tank a hit from Snorlax 4.

*Tried rest the first time. Didn't find it useful, but it's situationally useful enough in long stall battles. I think it justifies the spot enough to be used. Return is a filler move for the most part.

228+ Atk Choice Band Swampert Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Rhydon: 214-252 (100.9 - 118.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+1 252+ Atk Snorlax Double-Edge vs. 32 HP / 80 Def Swampert: 151-178 (84.3 - 99.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO



Blissey (F) @ Leftovers
Level: 50
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 Spe
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Protect
- Soft-Boiled
- Toxic
- Aromatherapy

I decided it wasn't worth Blissey investing in speed. I do not recommend 252 HP/ 252 Def for any other facility. The reason why it makes sense here is due to a couple of reasons.

- Blissey will be using softboiled often to give away hp to Latios and Pert, which noticeably lowers it's bulk
- Blissey would need to outspeed swampert to avoid getting hit by earthquake. I've accidentally made the mistake of EQ'ing Blissey, which you can't avoid without investing a lot of evs into speed. In this facility, I valued Blissey having higher hp, over the increased speed to stall things out.
- Blissey has protect to avoid getting hit by EQ while it's in a double battle with swampert and to stay at 100% health against special attackers.

Threats
Snorlax 4
Physicals like Meta , Regirock(even with Pert)
Qc ohko users
Heracross

Edit: Actaeon brought up a good point that there's a lot of variance with pike. I'd agree with his analysis that Latios+CB+ Bliss is a strong archetype. Intimidate users like Salamence and Tauros have also been used to great success with Actaeon and wtset.

Thank you for reading and following Actaeon and Kommo-o. I'm going to go back to being semi-retired, unless I have an other crazy idea that works out.

https://pokepast.es/8ab6c7b8e0021fef

 

[Kommo-o]

Hi everyone! I’m happy to share with you my Battle Frontier records achieved on my 11-year-old Emerald savefile (on cartridge). I’m going to be as concrete as possible, if someone needs more info about my streaks, I’m giving more details.

Battle Dome Singles. Clear streak: 49. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

King Kong (Slaking) @ Choice Band
Level 100 Stats: 434/459/230/180/166/297
Adamant Nature
- Double Edge
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Hyper Beam

Metallian (Metagross) @ Quick Claw
Level 100 Stats: 363/401/292/191/216/177
Adamant Nature
- Meteor Mash
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Explosion

Adamance (Salamence) @ Lum Berry
Level 100 Stats: 330/404/195/227/207/266
Adamant Nature
- Aerial Ace
- Earthquake
- Flamethrower
- Dragon Dance

Description:

I never enjoyed long battles, PP stall and that, so I usually built hyper-offensive teams. The strategy is simple: wreck things with Slaking’s Double Edge or the appropriate cover move (Earthquake / Shadow Ball). Hyper Beam is reserved for very bulky pokemon such as Suicune, Lapras, Umbreon, Walrein, etc. Switch to either Salamence or Metagross depending on the rival’s pokemon (mence for fighting, bug, steel, grass, fire types; gross for water, ice, psychic, dragon, etc.). If Explosion KOes the enemy, it's a guaranteed win (the judge always chooses me as the winner thanks to Slaking’s sky-high base stats). If Salamence or Metagross are defeated, Slaking can enter again and finish the job. Threats: mostly OHKO users and Quick Claw users (or the pesky combination of both, like Walrein 3, Whiscash 4 and the infamous Haxdon 2-3-4), sometimes Jolteon as lead (parahaxed my Slaking and almost ruined my streak) and Aerodactyl/Salamence/Gyarados as leads (there’s no other option but the risky Hyper Beam). Tucker’s Metagross was a little bit difficult for this team because sometimes it used Protect smartly against my Slaking and it’s perfectly capable of OHKOing both my Salamence and Metagross with its Quick Claw and a critical hit, so I used my first ever pokemon, the eleven-year-old, not-EV-trained, “average in ability” Swampert only for the Tucker rounds, since I can 2HKO the metal spider, and the later can only 3HKO my pert with Earthquake (without any previous attack boost, of course).

Nolustain (Swampert) @ Leftovers
Level 100 Stats: 369/250/196/200/221/161
Hasty Nature
- Earthquake
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Rock Slide/Toxic (almost never used it, lol)

I have some videos of my streak; you can watch them here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-30XmRLsNPoZNhTXOIK60Cxh1If1AjlM

Loss:

On the final battle of Round 50, King Kong OHKOed Tucker’s Swampert with Double Edge as always. Then, Tucker’s Metagross got the boost in attack against my Slaking thanks to its Meteor Mash and activated its Quick Claw to 2HKO my Nolustain with Earthquake before I could kill it first (Nolustain’s Earthquake didn’t manage to KO Metagross, and on the last turn of the battle the spider hit first).



Battle Dome Doubles. Clear streak: 30. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

The same Slaking, Metagross and Salamence team from the Battle Dome Singles.

Description:

Start the battle by KOing one of the rival’s pokemon with Slaking’s Double Edge, so it’s an early 2 vs 1 advantage situation. Watch out for Fake Out, Protect, Quick Claw and OHKO users!

Loss:

I can’t remember well, but the enemy had an Aerodactyl that ended up 1 on 1 vs my Slaking and flinched me to death. It was many years ago and I did not record the battle video.



Battle Factory Singles. Win streak: 58. Open Level. Retail.

Battle Factory Doubles. Win streak: 28. Open Level. Retail.

Strategy:

I didn’t have a particular strategy, but I remember that I swap my pokemon anytime I can, even if I had won the battle with relative ease, in order to “get better pokemon the next round I play”.

Loss:

I can’t remember both since I didn’t record the battles on my Frontier Pass.



Battle Tower Singles. Win streak: 117. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

The same Slaking, Metagross and Salamence team from the Battle Dome, but Slaking had Return instead of Double Edge.

Description:

Hyper-offense team. Hit and run with Slaking, explode with Metagross against the appropriate enemies, and spam Dragon Dance in front of grass-type Double Teamers (Salamence has Aerial Ace to finish them off), opposing Scizor/Curse Skarmory/Forretress (then kill them with Flamethrower) and fire-types in general. However, many battles result as the following: Slaking quickly get the first KO, switch out to Salamence, Salamence beats his opponent or is KOed first, Slaking enters again, KOs his second opponent, switch to Metagross, the spider explodes. Threats: anything that is not OHKOed by Slaking’s return/shadow ball/earthquake. Hyper Beam is very risky, but sometimes came to shine. I remember having a lucky battle against a Cloyster that had many Double Teams under its belt, and Metallian’s Explosion managed to hit, so my Slaking could enter again and win the battle 1 vs 1 against a Nidoqueen. It was the 104th win because I remember that was just before Anabel’s third encounter.

Loss:

I can’t remember, it was many years ago and I was probably furious, lol.



Battle Tower Doubles. Win streak: 71. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

Polloguapo (Zapdos) @ Leftovers
Level 100 Stats: 309/190/195/380/193/292
Modest Nature
- Rain Dance
- Thunder
- Light Screen
- Protect

Lord Helix (Omastar) @ Petaya Berry
Level 100 Stats: 344/116/267/361/164/140
Ability: Swift Swim
Modest Nature
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Hydro Pump
- Rain Dance

Metallian (Metagross) @ Choice Band
Level 100 Stats: 363/401/292/191/216/177
Adamant Nature
- Meteor Mash
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Explosion

Latios (Latios) @ Lum Berry
Level 100 Stats: 305/170/187/391/243/310
Modest Nature
- Psychic
- Dragon Claw
- Thunder
- Protect

Description:

Rain-based team. Protect is very useful to gain a free turn when both rival’s pokemon try to attack my low HP Zapdos or Latios. Omastar’s Hydro Pump is a risky but powerful option under the rain. Choice banded Metagross is there for opposing Blissey and Snorlax, benefits from rain since fire attacks are weakened, and its Explosion (paired with the ally’s Protect) usually disintegrates both foes to dust on difficult situations. Fast Thunder + Ice Beam + Surf annihilates all sort of Dragon Tamers, Ruin Maniacs (watch out for Lightning Rod ability!), Kindlers, etc. Double Team spammers are usually beaten by Thunder from both Zapdos and Latios, and OHKOers are mostly weak against Electric and Water moves (beware of Whiscash).

Loss:

It was against a swimmer who start the battle with Starmie and Slowbro-4. My Zapdos use Light Screen and my Omastar switch out, fearing Starmie’s Thunderbolt. Enter Latios and take the Thunderbolt like nothing. Zapdos tried to use Rain Dance and Latios used Protect, but Starmie manage to get my Zapdos frozen with its Ice Beam before I can move. Latios OHKOs Starmie with Thunder (without rain), Slowbro KOs my frozen Zapdos with Ice Beam. Opposing swimmer sent out Kingdra, I sent out Metagross. Kingdra loses against Latios’ Dragon Claw, but Slowbro wins against my Latios with its Ice Beam. Enter Omastar again. Swimmer sent out Blastoise. My Metagross and Omastar are incapable of beating both Blastoise and Slowbro (only bring their HP to red, almost dead) and Blastoise finally knocked down my Metagross. On the last turn, Slowbro activated its infernal Quick Claw and KOed my Omastar before I can use Surf on both of them one last time to win the battle (I can’t remember if I used Rain Dance with Omastar or if it was the opposing Kingdra, but there was rain at the end).



Battle Tower Multi. Win streak: 33. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

Adamance (Salamence) @ Lum Berry
Level 100 Stats: 330/404/195/227/207/266
Adamant Nature
- Aerial Ace
- Earthquake
- Flamethrower
- Dragon Dance

Metallian (Metagross) @ Quick Claw
Level 100 Stats: 363/401/292/191/216/177
Adamant Nature
- Meteor Mash
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Explosion

Description:

I start using Dragon Dance if possible, or switch to Metagross when the opponents have many water types. I tried to choose my ally based on his/her flying or levitate pokemon, so I can use Earthquake for free.

Loss:

I can’t remember, since this was one of the battle modes that I played the least.



Battle Pyke. Rooms Cleared: 154. Open Level. Retail.

Team

Toxey (Blissey) @ Leftovers
Level 100 Stats: 714/43/128/179/296/118
Ability: Natural Cure
Relaxed Nature
- Toxic
- Defense Curl
- Seismic Toss
- Soft-Boiled

Starmie (Starmie) @ Petaya Berry
Level 100 Stats: 290/152/201/311/215/265
Ability: Natural Cure
Modest Nature
- Surf
- Psychic
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt

Hercules (Heracross) @ Choice Band
Level 100 Stats: 296/378/181/86/214/268
Ability: Guts
Adamant Nature
- Mega Horn
- Brick Break
- Rock Slide
- Earthquake

Description:

A team based around the pesky status conditions that one can get on certain rooms. My strategy was to avoid the trainer battles and status rooms as much as possible.

Loss:

I can’t remember, I did this streak more than 5 years ago, and this facility doesn’t let you record the Battle Video on the Frontier Pass.



Battle Arena. KOs in a row: 61. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

Latios (Latios) @ Lum Berry
Level 100 Stats: 305/170/187/391/243/310
Modest Nature
- Psychic
- Dragon Claw
- Thunderbolt
- Calm Mind

Metallian (Metagross) @ Quick Claw
Level 100 Stats: 363/401/292/191/216/177
Adamant Nature
- Meteor Mash
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Explosion

King Kong (Slaking) @ Choice Band
Level 100 Stats: 434/459/230/180/166/297
Adamant Nature
- Return
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Hyper Beam

Description:

Offensive team. I start using Calm Minds whenever it’s possible and try to sweep the entire opposing team. Metagross revenge kills the foes that managed to KO my Latios, and finally explodes. Slaking is used as a last resort, spamming Hyper Beam. I think this team is far from optimal, but I have built other teams since then (for example Destiny Bond Gengar, Self-destruct/Rest Snorlax and sweeper Latios) and each of them fail to achieve a better streak.

Loss:

A ruin maniac sent out Metagross 7 as lead and kill my Latios with Shadow Ball and Ice Punch, resisting two Thunderbolts before. My Metallian kills the opposing spider with Earthquake. Ruin maniac sent Golem 3. We earthquaked one another, and when both have the HP bar in red, enemy’s Golem activated its Quick Claw and kills me with Flamethrower. Enter Slaking and kills Golem with Hyper Beam. Ruin maniac sent Shuckle, Hyper Beam misses on the only attacking turn Slaking has, and Shuckle won the battle with a 5 to 1 score.



Battle Palace Singles. Win streak: 67. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

Adamance (Salamence) @ Lum Berry
Level 100 Stats: 330/404/195/227/207/266
Adamant Nature
- Aerial Ace
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Dragon Dance

Miloxic (Milotic) @ Leftovers
Level 100 Stats: 385/131/180/328/286/197
Modest Nature
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Toxic
- Recover

Curselax (Snorlax) @ Chesto Berry
Level 100 Stats: 502/310/200/149/260/63
Ability: Immunity
Brave Nature
- Return/Body Slam
- Earthquake
- Curse
- Rest

Description:

A fun team to use. Salamence’s Adamant nature forces him to use more attacking moves when he’s below 50% HP, so it’s very useful when he get some Dragon Dances before. However, he can be incapable of using his power sometimes. Modest Milotic is the defensive pivot of the team, she spams Recover when her HP is below 50%, and she’s never incapable of using its power, because she has all 3 move categories. She also enjoys spamming the Toxic + Recover strategy. The only problem is her low Defense stat (in fact, that was the reason why I lost my streak). Finally, Snorlax’s Brave nature makes him offensive when his HP is full and defensive when his HP is low (using Rest). Once lax has some curses under the belt, it’s nearly unstoppable (except for the pesky physical crits and the all-time-hated OHKOs). Threats: Gengar is very difficult for this team, I ended up PP-stalling him a pair of times with Snorlax. Vaporeon 4 is a real pest.

Loss:

Male PKMN-Breeder sent out Gyarados. Both Gyarados and my Salamence began Dragon Dancing. Gyarados used Return two times (failed to kill me), and Salamence used an Aerial Ace and a Rock Slide to kill his opponent. Enemy sent out Crobat, and the fattest bottomed bat on Earth resisted what I think was a +2 Aerial Ace. Crobat kills me with Shadow Ball and I bring out my Curselax, who start using Curses before knock down his enemy. PKMN Breeder sent out another Curselax who used Curse and then Double Edge to kill my Snorlax that had around 40% HP. Finally, Milotic was not able to kill the opposing Snorlax, and he Double Edged me to death.



Battle Palace Doubles. Win streak: 31. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

The same Salamence, Milotic, Snorlax team used in Singles, but Salamence has Brick Break instead of Earthquake.

Description:

Pretty much the same from singles. Salamence had Brick Break, so he can’t hit his allies.

Loss:

I don’t remember.



Battle Pyramid. Floors cleared: 474. Open Level. Retail.

Team:

King Kong (Slaking) @ Choice Band
Level 100 Stats: 434/459/230/180/166/297
Adamant Nature
- Return
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Hyper Beam

Toxey (Blissey) @ Leftovers
Level 100 Stats: 714/43/128/179/296/118
Ability: Natural Cure
Relaxed Nature
- Toxic
- Defense Curl
- Seismic Toss
- Soft-Boiled

Bandergon (Salamence) @ Choice Band
Level 100 Stats: 328/405/195/230/196/298
Adamant Nature
- Aerial Ace
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Flamethrower

Description:

In my opinion, a fast Adamant Slaking is simply the best pokemon available for this facility. He’s the undisputed king of 1 vs 1 battles, once you have found the Choice Band on the floor. All the wild battles are easily cleared with the combination of Slaking, Blissey (only for certain special attackers) and Salamence. Sometimes, depending on the wild pokemon encountered on each round (thanks Bulbapedia!), I use Latios or Heracross instead of Salamence, in order to get better match ups.

Latios (Latios) @ Lum Berry
Level 100 Stats: 305/170/187/391/243/310
Modest Nature
- Psychic
- Dragon Claw
- Thunderbolt
- Calm Mind

Hercules (Heracross) @ Choice Band
Level 100 Stats: 296/378/181/86/214/268
Ability: Guts
Adamant Nature
- Mega Horn
- Brick Break
- Rock Slide
- Earthquake

Blissey is a very important member of the team, particularly on the first rounds since she can cure her teammates with Soft-boiled and let me save the potions for critical situations. Also, she can sponge special attacks like they were nothing, and use Soft-bolied on battle to regain her precious HP. The strategy is to KO wild pokemon with Slaking as much as possible, avoid double battles at any cost, and don’t grab boosting-stats items (are mostly useless).

Loss:

I was not paying attention and entered a Double Battle, against a female Expert and a Guitarist (I think). They sent out Regirock 2 and a Breloom. I sent Slaking and Salamence. Slaking used Earthquake on both enemies and Salamence used Flamethrower on Breloom. Breloom died while Regirock resisted the attack and then it used Counter to kill my Slaking. I bring out Blissey AND I FORGET TO REVIVE MY SLAKING. Instead, I used Seismic Toss and Flamethrower to knock Regirock down quickly, but it savagely activated the Quick Claw and exploded on my face, ending my streak and my will to live (nah).

Welcome to the forums! I had been reviewing your streak for the past few days and I wanted to know a few things. I noticed that you had used a Salamence with an extremely low base Speed IV and there's some sort of Special Defense investment on it since the stat is 207 at Level 100. Was there any particular benchmark that you were trying to survive with these EVs? Also why would you use a slow Salamence like this one considering the fact that you also had a Modest Latios on the Arena streak at your disposal, which to be frank, seems to outclass this Salamence on almost any considerable way considering that based on its stats, it has better IVs than that Salamence and if you probably replaced it with this Latios, you would've ended up with an even stronger team for the Battle Tower (you would've obtain a Pokemon who can bring more coverage with Metagross and Slaking since you would have access to Thunderbolt/Ice Beam and not end up with the redundant coverage of Shadow Ball/Earthquake since two Pokemon on your team already carry these moves).

Re: the Palace streak, didn't you felt it was a problem to run 3 offensive moves and a support move only on Salamence? You would've been stuck with a 15% of choosing the wrong move and a 15% chance of doing nothing at all (Can't use its power). It would definitely feel frustrating that Salamence was able to pull out a Dragon Dance but then not move at all the next turn because of the odds and get killed by a Pokemon that otherwise it would beat. Personally, I would've considered a move like Leer or even Scary Face (both Support moves) which could've actually given an advantage for the next mon to revenge kill the AI, which is more useful than not moving at all.

 

[Churly-Puik]

Welcome to the forums! I had been reviewing your streak for the past few days and I wanted to know a few things. I noticed that you had used a Salamence with an extremely low base Speed IV and there's some sort of Special Defense investment on it since the stat is 207 at Level 100. Was there any particular benchmark that you were trying to survive with these EVs? Also why would you use a slow Salamence like this one considering the fact that you also had a Modest Latios on the Arena streak at your disposal, which to be frank, seems to outclass this Salamence on almost any considerable way considering that based on its stats, it has better IVs than that Salamence and if you probably replaced it with this Latios, you would've ended up with an even stronger team for the Battle Tower (you would've obtain a Pokemon who can bring more coverage with Metagross and Slaking since you would have access to Thunderbolt/Ice Beam and not end up with the redundant coverage of Shadow Ball/Earthquake since two Pokemon on your team already carry these moves).

Re: the Palace streak, didn't you felt it was a problem to run 3 offensive moves and a support move only on Salamence? You would've been stuck with a 15% of choosing the wrong move and a 15% chance of doing nothing at all (Can't use its power). It would definitely feel frustrating that Salamence was able to pull out a Dragon Dance but then not move at all the next turn because of the odds and get killed by a Pokemon that otherwise it would beat. Personally, I would've considered a move like Leer or even Scary Face (both Support moves) which could've actually given an advantage for the next mon to revenge kill the AI, which is more useful than not moving at all.

Hi, I'm glad you took the time to review my post. I think I didn't clarify that in some of my streaks achieved (for example the Tower) I used pokemon trained long before I had access to competitive data about the Battle Frontier (enemy stats, etc), so when I raised my Adamance (Salamence) back in 2014 I didn't have in mind any EV's distribution in particular. Also I didn't know RNG mechanics, so I just hatched many eggs and choose "the best" Bagon possible. I usually trained 252/128/128 EV's for all my pokemon (in case of mence, it was ATK/SPD/SPE) because I though it "could" resist better "some" ice attacks. I think his IV's are 30/30/30/28/10/29. Years later, I learn more and more, and finally in 2019 I get a competitive Latios by pomeg glitch to access the Southern Island (but I didn't know that the Battle Video of the Trainer Card allows you to hit deep frames, so yeah, the IV's of the Latios I used in streaks are suboptimal). The reason I used Salamence instead of Latios was because of Flamethrower. I was tired of Curse Skarmory and Reversal Scizor in particular.
And thanks for the Palace advices btw :) Having 3 attacking moves on Salamence was definitely a problem.

 

[Bayleef030]

Battle Pike
247 rooms cleared
Open level (lv.100)
Cartridge, no emulator
Latias, Flygon & Milotic

I would like to update my Battle Pike streak. Well, update... This is a new streak with the same team. Kommo-o, could you please update the leaderboard? The team is the same as in my previous Battle Pike post, but the Pokemon are lv.100 now.

Basically, I was farming battle points by mindlessly going in the middle room all the time in the Battle Pike while doing other things... And every time I went through at least 100 rooms, I started taking it seriously. I felt that I should be able to beat my old record of 221 rooms, so I made that my goal. A few attempts were unlucky, with extreme hax a few times and a very stupid misclick one time, so I had a few attempts that ended around room 210-220, just short of my goal of beating my old 221 room record. Very annoying when you feel like your team should be able to make it through at least 222 rooms and beat that record, but fate is just not in your favour...

... Until today, when I beat my previous record, which I have been trying on and off for a while now. Sadly, after 247 rooms, I lost to a Psychic. Thanks to the Gentleman's Dusclops, all my Pokemon were frozen and Latias already consumed her Lum Berry earlier, so the Psychic's Espeon kept setting up Calm Mind and swept my team. That was unfortunate, but oh well. I beat my old Battle Pike record, so I did what I wanted to do. All that's left to be done in the Battle Frontier? The gold symbol in the Battle Factory gold symbol and a 100+ streak in the Battle Tower.

Proof of my streak:

A battle against Lucy:

 

[Kommo-o]

Battle Pike
247 rooms cleared
Open level (lv.100)
Cartridge, no emulator
Latias, Flygon & Milotic

I would like to update my Battle Pike streak. Well, update... This is a new streak with the same team. Kommo-o, could you please update the leaderboard? The team is the same as in my previous Battle Pike post, but the Pokemon are lv.100 now.

Basically, I was farming battle points by mindlessly going in the middle room all the time in the Battle Pike while doing other things... And every time I went through at least 100 rooms, I started taking it seriously. I felt that I should be able to beat my old record of 221 rooms, so I made that my goal. A few attempts were unlucky, with hax and one time a very stupid misclick making me finish around room 210-220, just short of my goal of beating the 221 room record. Very annoying when you feel like your team should be able to make it through at least 222 rooms and beat that record, but fate is just not in your favour...

... Until today, when I beat my previous record, which I have been trying on and off for a while now. Sadly, after 247 rooms, I lost to a Psychic. Thanks to the Gentleman's Dusclops, all my Pokemon were frozen and Latias already consumed her Lum Berry, so the Psychic's Espeon kept setting up Calm Mind and swept my team. That was unfortunate, but oh well. I beat my old Battle Pike record, so I did what I wanted to do. All that's left to be done in the Battle Frontier? The gold symbol in the Battle Factory gold symbol and a 100+ streak in the Battle Tower.

Proof of my streak:
View attachment 462596

A battle against Lucy:

Hello, thanks for letting me know. I have updated your streak and congratulations on your new record!

 

[SirToastyToes]

I recently did hundreds of battles in the Emerald Battle Tower in order to purchase all of the Poké Dolls on offer there, which costs a grand total of 1,536 BP. Because of this I eventually ended up doing my streaks in the Link Multi mode, as you get 3 BP to start and get BP on both cartridges, which means you end up getting twice as much. While doing this I ended up getting a record of 142 wins, so figuring that I used this forum as a resource I might as well submit my record here.

The streak ended up losing to a Latias/Dragonite and Regirock/Zapdos team because I didn't respect Latias as a threat to my team, and once my Latios side went down being Choice Banded into Earthquake meant I had to make many unfavorable switches.

The whole setup, one English Emerald in the Game Boy Player and one Japanese Emerald in a GBA SP:

This team is pretty much a variant of waffles101's 252-win Doubles team, so pretty much all teambuilding credit goes to them.

Team 1

Ｓｈａｗｎ (Latios) (M) @ Lum Berry
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 9 HP / 0 Atk / 10 Def / 30 SpA / 15 SpD
- Psychic
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam
- Surf

The only Pokémon that I didn't RNG to be perfect, Latios served as somewhat of a nuker to get threatening Pokémon such as Heracross off the field ASAP. Calm Mind is likely better in the fourth slot but Gen III Surf is very useful for chipping both opposing Pokémon.

Moltres @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 42 Def / 40 SpA / 76 SpD / 100 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 2 Atk / 30 SpA
- Flamethrower
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- Toxic
- Protect

One big part of this team is using Earthquake to clear out one side of the opposing team quickly. To this end I needed a Ground-immune partner for Latios that wasn't also weak to Ice, which left me with Gengar, Articuno, Moltres or Skarmory for team options. I ended up going for Moltres because it was a proven winner on waffles101's team and it was very good at picking off the things that threaten Latios such as Regice and Heracross, as well as providing a Toxic stall option for opposing stall strategies.

Team 2

Ｇｏｒｔ (Swampert) (M) @ Choice Band
Ability: Torrent
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 164 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 88 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Rock]
- Brick Break
- Ice Beam

Team 2 is all about throwing out big damage, and the Ground immune partners have no problem with Swampert clicking Choice Band Earthquake almost every turn. Hidden Power Rock covers most Flying types such as Charizard, Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, and Ice Beam is almost exclusively for Flygon and Salamence. Pokémon immune to Ground and resistant to Rock such as Claydol do give this set some trouble but they are easily taken care of by everyone else on the team.

メタグロス (Metagross) @ Cheri Berry
Ability: Clear Body
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 204 HP / 252 Atk / 52 Spe
Adamant Nature
IVs: 11 SpA / 30 SpD
- Hidden Power [Steel]
- Earthquake
- Shadow Ball
- Aerial Ace

Metagross is one of the strongest Pokémon available in Generation III, so it is well suited to being a backup Earthquake spammer, and provides an invaluable switch-in on the many Grass-types that Swampert fears. Hidden Power Steel provides a more consistent Steel move than Meteor Mash, and Shadow Ball provides nice coverage against Ghost types that can threaten Latios. Aerial Ace not only gives a coverage move for the Grass-types that Metagross switches in on but also keeps Double Team sets like Shiftry and Blissey in check.

The entire streak was streamed, so here are some links to the VODs

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/ 1645375011

Part 2
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/ 1645373538

Part 3
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/ 1641171857

(Apparently these auto-embedded, you can click the embed to go to the VOD page)

 

[Newusername2000]

So I wanna ask a few questions about what the frontier brains AIs are like, lets take Anabel Gold for example.

How does she use her status moves (Calm Mind, Curse), does she just always instantly start setting them up, or what's her choice making process for when she uses them? I've seen some videos of fights against her where she does *nothing* but try to setup CM/Curse while her whole party gets sweeped and never attacks once. Does she just always do several buffs upon sending out a new pokemon no matter what, or is there some kind of method she uses to determine (I.E. if she has a super effective move, that takes priority over buffing or something like that)?

How often do they switch their pokemon? Anabel Gold is another great example for this, because her Raikou that she opens with has nothing it can do against ground types, like literally no effective attacks. So if I open with a ground type against her, she must switch on turn 1, right? Or will she legit just spam calm mind and let her Raikou die? How often, and in what circumstances, do the frontier brains swap their pokemon?

Finally, how do they handle using their healing moves? Like the Latios that has Recover and the Snorlax that has rest+chesto berry. Do they just use their healing moves at low HP thresholds the same way gym leaders/E4s use potions? Or do they have some other method to it?

I have a team setup that I like and I want to do the battle frontier with, but it's very suboptimal and I guess "unique". I wanna try beating facilities with it and I know that in a "clean" fight it can beat Anabel Gold (My lead can beat her lead, my second can beat her second, my third can beat her third). But my team is just barely able to beat her and if they have to swap in they don't have enough HP to still win their match ups. For example I have a starmie that can beat her latios, but if I have to swap starmie into latios, it will take too much damage on the swap and no longer be able to win that matchup. Additionally there's my worry that she buffs before I send in my next mon. For example once my Starmie beats her Latios and she sends in snorlax, Starmie is worthless against snorlax so I need starmie to just faint and let me safely swap in my next guy. But if she starts using curse in front of my starmie, I will get screwed because my third mon can't bet snorlax if it already has 1 curse ready before he swaps in. Basically my team wins in a series of consecutive 1v1s, so if she plays along and just keeps revenge killing my mons and letting me safely swap into my next mon, I win every time unless she gets crits, but if she tries to setup while one of my previous mons is alive, or she does a weird switch, it will totally throw off my teams momentum and screw me over. So if I can know how she acts, like what switches to expect, what buffs to plan on seeing, I can prepare for that and make my plan around that and still win.

I know these questions are probably pretty obscure and specific, so I doubt anyone has answers for me, but thanks in advance all the same to anyone who takes the time to consider. Have a good one!

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Snip

So cool to see someone else trying this mode!

So I wanna ask a few questions about what the frontier brains AIs are like, lets take Anabel Gold for example.

How does she use her status moves (Calm Mind, Curse), does she just always instantly start setting them up, or what's her choice making process for when she uses them? I've seen some videos of fights against her where she does *nothing* but try to setup CM/Curse while her whole party gets sweeped and never attacks once. Does she just always do several buffs upon sending out a new pokemon no matter what, or is there some kind of method she uses to determine (I.E. if she has a super effective move, that takes priority over buffing or something like that)?

How often do they switch their pokemon? Anabel Gold is another great example for this, because her Raikou that she opens with has nothing it can do against ground types, like literally no effective attacks. So if I open with a ground type against her, she must switch on turn 1, right? Or will she legit just spam calm mind and let her Raikou die? How often, and in what circumstances, do the frontier brains swap their pokemon?

Finally, how do they handle using their healing moves? Like the Latios that has Recover and the Snorlax that has rest+chesto berry. Do they just use their healing moves at low HP thresholds the same way gym leaders/E4s use potions? Or do they have some other method to it?

I have a team setup that I like and I want to do the battle frontier with, but it's very suboptimal and I guess "unique". I wanna try beating facilities with it and I know that in a "clean" fight it can beat Anabel Gold (My lead can beat her lead, my second can beat her second, my third can beat her third). But my team is just barely able to beat her and if they have to swap in they don't have enough HP to still win their match ups. For example I have a starmie that can beat her latios, but if I have to swap starmie into latios, it will take too much damage on the swap and no longer be able to win that matchup. Additionally there's my worry that she buffs before I send in my next mon. For example once my Starmie beats her Latios and she sends in snorlax, Starmie is worthless against snorlax so I need starmie to just faint and let me safely swap in my next guy. But if she starts using curse in front of my starmie, I will get screwed because my third mon can't bet snorlax if it already has 1 curse ready before he swaps in. Basically my team wins in a series of consecutive 1v1s, so if she plays along and just keeps revenge killing my mons and letting me safely swap into my next mon, I win every time unless she gets crits, but if she tries to setup while one of my previous mons is alive, or she does a weird switch, it will totally throw off my teams momentum and screw me over. So if I can know how she acts, like what switches to expect, what buffs to plan on seeing, I can prepare for that and make my plan around that and still win.

I know these questions are probably pretty obscure and specific, so I doubt anyone has answers for me, but thanks in advance all the same to anyone who takes the time to consider. Have a good one!

So I've been doing a little research into this lately and can answer a couple of your questions.

Switching is generally the AI's absolute last resort, and tends to happen only in the most specific situations. In later gens, the AI in battle facilities tends to switch when it's locked into a move that does no damage to your Pokemon. This seems to be less likely in Gen III; I've had NPCs stay in for multiple turns using useless moves, like Earthquake against a Levitator. This has been the case both for opponents and allies.

This isn't the case for when an enemy Pokemon only has one move that can deal damage (but the opponent is immune to) and can freely choose between. In that instance, the fact that they cannot realistically damage you isn't a factor. The mindset seems to be "I'm going to accomplish something" despite how futile it ultimately might be, because the AI only plays with the current turn in mind - it does not anticipate future actions.

Fighting Tucker Gold with a Shedinja gives an insight into this mindset because he can't damage it. So Metagross will use Protect over and over even when it has no chance of succeeding, Latias will boost to the max and then attempt to rest, and Swampert will just attack uselessly as it has no other option (it doesn't prioritise Mirror Coat iirc though, so it seems the AI recognises the immunity for that too). The fact that once Protect's PP is used up Metagross can't do anything or that once Latias is at +6/+6 it still won't be able to KO you isn't taken into account - what matters is that they can do something in the here and now.

So with that in mind, if one sends out a Ground-type against Anabel's Raikou it is unlikely that she will opt to switch it out. Instead, she will have it set up Reflect, boost with Calm Mind, or use Rest if the other two options are not possible. The fact that once she's done boosting she still can't do squat against your Marowak does not play a role in this equation.

To answer your later question, the AI will almost always go for a kill if it can achieve one in the current turn. As previously stated, only the current turn is considered, which is where the AI can sometimes act without considering longer strategy and be "out-thought" by the player - if the match starts with Alakazam v Snorlax it is obviously more beneficial for Snorlax to boost with Curse and then sweep the opposing team, but because Snorlax is capable of getting a KO with Shadow Ball it will go for the kill instead.

When it comes to boosting though, the AI is fully aware of your stats and will attempt to gain the advantage if it is slower than you or if its offenses are lower than your defences (or vice versa). From memory sometimes this does take precedence over going for a kill but generally not if it can reliably KO your Pokemon without needing to boost. Machamp will generally prefer to use Cross Chop on Tyranitar rather than use Bulk Up for instance. When it's Machamp against Starmie though, Machamp will be more likely to go for a Bulk Up so that it can hit Starmie harder the next turn even if Starmie promptly KOs it with Psychic.

Very occasionally, the AI will switch Pokemon if it has something benched that resists a move you've already used. Say that I did 95% damage to the AI's Dragonite with Ice Beam, it might then switch out to Aggron to absorb the anticipated attack. This is, as I said, incredibly rare but it's worth keeping in mind, though it tends not to be very productive due to the fact that their Pokemon has taken damage. If I were using Starmie in the scenario I described I'd be able to finish Aggron the next turn with Surf. I've observed this more with regular trainers purely due to the sheer number of them I've fought as opposed to Frontier Brains but I'm assuming if regular trainers do it Brains will too. But Brain teams are fixed so you should be better placed to counter them and a random switch is less likely to cause problems.

Healing is more ambiguous. The AI will generally attempt to heal if it's on low health (probably under 25% but I've seen it heal from yellow and red health) but again will often prioritise going for a kill over healing which can work in your favour. It can work the other way though. There's a battle against Lucy Gold I wrote up somewhere in this thread where I had my Metagross up against Lucy's Gyarados, both as our final mons. Gyarados was on +2 or +3 thanks to Dragon Dance and could have killed Metagross in a couple of turns with Return but opted to keep using Rest which allowed me to eventually get the KO with Rock Slide; Return being nominally not very effective against Metagross meant that the AI prioritised healing over going for the kill despite the fact that the sleep turns from Rest gave me room to get ahead.

Speaking more generally, the clean setup you described where your first can beat her first, your second can beat her second and so on is not the most optimal method. Ideally you want a setup where either a) potentially all of your team can sweep or b) one or two members of your squad support the other members to allow them the opportunity to sweep. Playing with consecutive 1v1s in mind is fine in the earlier rounds (and will probably get you to Silver in most or all of the facilities) but it's generally not sufficient for reliable Golds. Ideally you want to minimise your losses in every fight, even more so in the Pike and the Pyramid where you're not healed between battles and a Pokemon fainting can wreck your streak. What happens if her first unexpectedly kills your lead and the other two can't manage? I know you said you want to play in a unique way which is totally fine and I'm not going to tell you to do any differently if you don't want to, but just making a note of it anyway (and for anyone else who might be reading); my preferred team style generally trends towards hyper offense which is by no means the most optimal method of play either. Best of luck in your attempt!

 

[Newusername2000]

Thanks for the detailed response! This is exactly the kind of run down I was hoping for! Thanks so much!

 

[submenceisop]

Doing another post on the Arena as well. It's about the Open Level modification of my classic "GOD SPEED" Lax / Latios / Medicham team, and after much testing and brainstorming (mainly with my Arena comrade submenceisop ), I concluded it's still the best setup for Arena even with Tyranitar and Dragonite around:

GOD (Snorlax) @ Lum Berry
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 232 HP / 252 Def / 20 SpD / 4 Spe
Careful Nature (+SpD, -SpA)
- Yawn
- Brick Break
- Shadow Ball
- Rest

It might have new threats to deal with in Tyranitar and Dragonite, but Snorlax is bulkier than it has ever been in Level 100. The shift towards physical bulk is to be more certain of avoiding very powerful physical 2HKOs, such as Ursaring and Metagross (MM boost + MM; you have 91% chance to win against 170+ Atk MM-spamming Metagross as per 100.000 simulations). The physical bulk is immense; stuff like Flygon very likely won't even 2HKO you if they crit an Earthquake. If Snorlax starts a battle at non-full HP the crazy bulk helps to nail the Body category. Doesn't need much explanation if you know the Level 50 team, but Brick Break is essential for Tyranitar here and Shadow Ball gives it neutral coverage. Also dents Psychic-types greatly and wins Skill even if you use Rest Yawn-less. This compensates for the fact that Snorlax got a little less bulky on the special side. STAB is missed sometimes, e.g. this Snorlax usually doesn't even break a Zapdos Substitute.

View attachment 396008
ENDIKU (Latios) @ Cheri Berry
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 40 HP / 252 SpA / 216 Spe
Timid Nature (+Spe, -Atk)
- Calm Mind
- Psychic
- Dragon Claw
- Thunderbolt

Not much has changed; this doesn't need an overly complicated EV distribution anymore, since all SpA matters and the "free level 100 bulk" ensures it already lives through Ursaring Double-Edge and stuff like Glalie's STAB unboosted. Ice Beam was replaced by Dragon Claw to have a better matchup against most Psychics (e.g. Hypno/Gardevoir/Espeon), fellow Lati twins, and Houndoom. At +1 it does most things Ice Beam would do as well, except against some bulkier Ground-types. The Steelix matchup got a LOT worse, sadly, but most of the time you still power through it.

View attachment 396009
DALAI LAMA (Medicham) @ Salac Berry
Ability: Pure Power
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SpA)
- Brick Break
- Shadow Ball
- Endure
- Reversal

Same old Medicham except for the nickname. The Level 100 bulk helps Medicham; it still OHKOs all Metagross with Reversal, something other Reversal-users like Heracross can only dream of. Basically we concluded that Medicham outclasses any Reversal Heracross. Shadow Ball's coverage is perfect. Ironically Lax now also has this coverage. Of course you can't Endure if Sand is already up, but usually Brick Break is already extremely helpful against teams containing Tyranitar.

https://pokepast.es/17ebaae6d88767c3

Edit: got to 154 and lost battle 155. Sacked Lax to get Latios to +2 safely against a Zapdos, but faced Regice in the middle who lived 2 Psychics by a sliver and boomed on Latios. Last was AA Moltres and I was sure it had Overheat too, so I had to play for an Overheat miss, but didnt get it.

I reached 199 wins in Open Level with God Lax, Latios and Tyranitar!

GOD (Snorlax) @ Lum Berry
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 232 HP / 252 Def / 20 SpD / 4 Spe
Careful Nature (+SpD, -SpA)
- Yawn
- Earthquake/Brick Break
- Shadow Ball
- Rest

Yawn Lax lead is still the most broken pokemon to use in Arena. I made a change with EQ over Brick Break, but both moves are viable. Earthquake allows you to just muscle past fires, electrics and still hits Tyranitar, while most importantly getting Metagross (although BB has neutral coverage and 2koes most Ttars). The lack of normal stab is mostly noticeable when there are substitute pokemon, such as Zapdos. BB also makes Greta's Umbreon a more cleaner win, but EQ 3x usually handles that. Hilariously, this Lax is completely walled by normal/flying types and Skarmory. As such, you yawn on turn 2 to get Latios a free substitute.

ENDIKU (Latios) @ Petaya Berry / Leftovers / Bright Powder
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 28 HP / 12 Def / 252 SpA / 216 Spe
Timid Nature (+Spe, -Atk)
- Substitute
- Psychic
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt

Actaeon and I have tried out substitute Latios behind Yawn Lax. I prefer Substitute+Petaya/Brightpowder, as CM is far more safer with Lum Berry. Substitute also makes double Yawn against lum targets like Charizard far more safer, as you get something out of the turn without risking CM. Ice Beam is mandatory for grounds and grasses, while still hitting Latios and Latias.

-28 HP allows you to create 4 subs and activate petaya berry

Tyranitar @ Liechi Berry
Level: 100
Jolly Nature
Ability: Sand Stream
EVs: 180 Atk / 128 Def / 200 Spe
IVs: 30 Def / 30 SpD / 30 Spe
- Dragon Dance
- Hidden Power Rock
- Earthquake
- Brick Break

Tyranitar is a decent last pokemon, as it checks dangerous mons like houndoom, crobat, Jolteon and regice, blissey. It is ev'ed to outspeed Sceptile at +1, and is able to outspeed Metagross and Jynx before a DD. This allows you to ko them before they get you (assuming that Latios has got some chip damage against them). This Tar also lives Metagross's MM without a crit or atk raise.

170+ Atk Metagross Meteor Mash vs. 0 HP / 128 Def Tyranitar: 287-338 (84.1 - 99.1%)- Guaranteed 2hko.

Honestly, you do want Adamant Tar's power a lot of the time, but the speed here is nice. Tar 7 got this roll against me. It's unfortunate, but had Latios got IB chip, this would have been a likely win.

Loss to Expert Weston.
C-ray Starmie beat Snorlax with confusion cheese. Latios got a free sub against Starmie, muscled past Regirock (no substitute active). Tar 7 shows up last, QC rock slide against Latios. My Jolly Tar gets a BB off, but Tar 7 gets this roll against me :(

Adamant Tar 7 BB - 252+ Atk Tyranitar Brick Break vs. 0 HP / 128 Def Tyranitar: 306-360 (89.7 - 105.5%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO

This team in the last two spots is obviously weak to Metagross and waters. I lost my first 3 attempts before 100 to DT Meta, QC meta getting an atk raise and Milotic. The variance with this team will heavily depend on not getting hit too by too many ohko moves and not losing to Meta/waters. I got that kind of luck to hit 199 (still sad about not hitting 200).

https://pokepast.es/1d7ff617ee212fa6

 

[Alex_Super_Tramp]

Hi guys! Just wanted to post here my last achievement and than put my journey with pokemon emerald behind (maybe) cause I think I have achieved everything that I wanted. It is time to let it rest and return it to the nostalgic past where he belongs now that he earned its peace. Anyway this summer I completed every gold symbols of the battle frontier and posted here my streak of 107 in the tower just to be put in the list. But after losing to a DD salamence I resetted my record cause for the factory you need to do that before trying the gold run. Funny story, I didnt know about the golden shield so I decided that I would take that trophy from the little fatty hands of that cheap fucker Scott. I basically have beaten every trainers in the entire Hoenn region, maybe of the known world, and what did he give me?!? 2 little berries. 2 berries! Never used them by the way. Are you kidding me? Now I want my gold shield cause silver is not enough. So to commemorate the arrival of the new pokémon game Scarlet/Violet I decided to finally get that golden shield and this week end I tried a new battle tower run from scratch with the same team of this summer, and I lost at 84, 91 and 94, before finally reaching my new record of 111 wins in the tower today. I lost to a regirock, snorlax and exeggutor that quick clawed my slaking who was ready to obliterate him but too weak cause the other 2 wore my team down with rest and curse. Bad luck I think overall. Could I have done something better? I think not but I dont really want to know.

In the end losing my streak to an Expert as Jasper isnt so bad I think. If I had lost against a ranger, swimmer or a fucking bully I would have punched someone. Anyway, no regrets, came for the gold shield and got it. The run was done at the tower lv 50 same as the other time, always on retail.

Now I can rest in peace, cause I have beaten the Frontier, completed the Regional and National dex, 386/386 physical pokémon on the box plus 5 shinies. Obtained the golden trainer card beating the master contest, got 2 useless berries from Scott and 2 pretty shields. More than 500 hours of game later I am satisfied.

This is the team. Its called Latios' Bodyguards cause he is a frail and special creature that needs two big boyz who protect him from dragons, ice, dark and scary bugs.

https://pokepast.es/6265135ce0afb14d

Slaking (Gorillaz) Jolly

Choice band
Evs 252 atk, 252 speed
Double edge
Earthquake
Shadow ball
Aerial ace

Latios (Zefiro) Modest

Lum berry
Evs 252 sp atk, 252 speed
Calm mind
Psychic
Ice beam
Thunderbolt

Metagross (Titan) Adamant

Leftovers
Evs 252 atk, 200 hp, 52 def
Meteor Mash
Earthquake
Shadow ball
Explosion

If you can please update my new record I will be glad. I played again with my italian cartridge of pokemon emerald in my GBA sp.

Thanks for everything guys, it was a pleasure reading this forum and finding good strategies and new ideas. Pokemon emerald is the only pokémon game I ever played but I am glad cause it is the best one. Maybe it s just a nostalgic and sweet feeling, but I loved every minute of it. So thanks again, I will attach some proof under here. Goodbye to every pokémon trainers here in smogon, I salute you.

 

[Alex_Super_Tramp]

I wanted to ask something to the community, dont know if this is the place. Anyway, seeing the various team I was blown away in finding how many of you use the move substitute. And in the tower records its full of this move, adede the man at the top have it in 2 out of 3 of his pokémon. My question is, playing on retail is there some kind of trick that let you teach the move substitute more than once? Cause replaying the game and than trade it over seems just too much, I see people with 8 substitute moves, how is it possible? Maybe with the pomeg glitch? Dont know, please tell me your secret. Thanks and cheers.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Why nobody upload my record? :(
Where are the administrator? Also I wanted to ask something to the community, dont know if this is the place. Anyway, seeing the various team I was blown away finding how many of you use the move substitute. And in the tower records its full of this move, adede the man at the top have it in 2 out of 3 of his pokémon. My question is, playing on retail is there some kind of trick that let you teach the move substitute more than once? Cause replaying the game and than trade it over seems just too much, I see people with 8 substitute moves, how is it possible? Maybe with the pomeg glitch? Dont know, please tell me your secret. Thanks and cheers.

I'm not that experienced with the Pomeg Glitch but speaking as someone who plays on retail it's perfectly possible to get onetime moves more than once without resorting to nefarious tricks as long as you can reliably trade. I have Emerald, LeafGreen, and a fake copy of FireRed that's prone to save file deletion but they all have a Substitute tutor.

Granted I've actually got several copies of Emerald in addition to my main, purchased-on-day-one copy (one inherited from a friend who no longer plays, one a freebie I won in a contest, and one Engrish version). I also have a copy of XD which, without checking, I think also has a Substitute tutor but even without that, having played each game multiple times that's ample opportunity to teach Substitute to multiple Pokemon. I have in fact genuinely done speedruns of Emerald and FRLG in the past solely for the purpose of re-obtaining tutor moves or TMs. You amass quite a collection when you've been playing for years.

RE your record, always worth tagging whoever runs the thread or private messaging them if you're desperate to get it uploaded. I imagine they're probably busy, things often get missed; I submitted a streak to the Subway thread months ago which never got listed.

 

[Newusername2000]

So I could use some feedback and recommendations regarding my team and my methods.

So first off, I've posted here before a few times asking about this as well, but I'm doing a water types only challenge. I can't trade since I only have one DS and no other games, so I can't use pokemon like Suicune that aren't in the game and I also don't want to catch non-water types even for breeding (so stuff like leech seed on ludicolo isn't doable).

So far my highest streak ended at like 38-41ish (shortly after beating Anabel Silver). I lost because Swampert got frozen and died because of that and then a pokemon with an eletric type move swept up my last guy.

My team I've currently setup and used is

Starmie @ Lum Berry
Ability: Illuminate
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Mild Nature
IVs: 15 HP / 15 Atk / 15 Def / 15 SpA / 15 SpD / 15 Spe
- Psychic
- Surf
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam

Gyarados (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 128 HP / 252 Atk / 128 SpD
Adamant Nature
IVs: 15 HP / 15 Atk / 15 Def / 15 SpA / 15 SpD / 15 Spe
- Earthquake
- Return
- Protect
- Dragon Dance

Swampert (F) @ Chesto Berry
Ability: Torrent
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 128 Def / 128 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 15 HP / 15 Atk / 15 Def / 15 SpA / 15 SpD / 15 Spe
- Earthquake
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Rest

Basically the idea is I open Starmie since it has good speed, damage output, and coverage. So it generally wins the opening matchup and frequently can basically sweep, especially in the early rounds. The setup on Starmie is super standard and nothing weird or unusual. Just run of the mill go fast and kill hard starmie. Then if I see an eletric type I swap in swampert and almost always get the free switch from immunity. Swampert easily kills eletric types and can often take down a second pokemon as well due to his good bulk and second health bar (rest+chesto berry). My swampert setup is a little weird EVs/Nature wise. I didn't want to totally invest in either defense since I need swampert to be taking hits from all sorts of different stuff and I want him to really be bulky so I can swamp him into neutral match ups decently if I need to. He has no attacking EVs and as such I use his as a split attacker since he has about the same baseline special and physical attack. His primary role on the team is killing eletric types, if he dies and an eletric type comes out later in the fight it's basically game over. Then if I see a grass type I swap into Gyarados. Gyarados is my weirdest pokemon for a number of reasons. First of all, I enlisted him primarily as a check to grass types not as a fast physical sweeper or anything like that. I did max out his attack stat, but I wanted him to by specially bulky so I invested split between HP and SpDef, neglecting speed. He runs leftovers and protect which I found to work surprisingly well at giving him just the edge he needs. Alternating protect and attacks so get double leftover heals worked pretty good and kept him healthier for longer, just gotta be wary about using protect against someone who might try to buff instead. Gyarados functions well for what I need of him, with this setup and method he's decently durable and soaks up grass type hits pretty well and can pretty frequently switch into a grass type and kill it. For particularly weak hitting pokemon I tend to use a dragon dance or two if I think I can get away with it.

So this works good enough, I open starmie and swap into gyarados or swampert when weaknesses of starmie show up. However there is issues. First of all, I have no great defense against double team spammers. I've yet to die because of a double team user, but I've had several hairy situations because of them. The other thing is due to the way the team works if the enemy has two or more eletric/grass type pokemon I'm pretty well boned. This seems very uncommon due to the way the AI's pick their lineups, but the more common and more deadly thing is when several of their pokemon know thunderbolt since that move is pretty common. I'm also worried about how powerful the AI parties become past round 50 since even certain round 30-40 sets can give me a bit of trouble (not too much mind you, but enough that it worries me when you start throwing random Lati@s that know thunderbolt into the mix in the later rounds).

I was considering either a Tentacruel or a Ludicolo for my line up, since both have high Special defense and aren't weak to grass they could both replace gyarados and possibly be better suited to the role I have gyarados playing. Additionally, Ludicolo isn't weak to eletric either which is huge since it means that multi-thunderbolt trainers would be much less scary. Tentcruel's abnormally high Special Defense also means he isn't instantly cooked by thunderbolts either and his decent speed is also appealing. I also think Milotic could be a great option since it has insane Special defense and also a strong offensive presence as well as reliable healing in recovery. Another pokemon I mildly considered, although probably not worth it, was Relicanth. A weird pitch for sure, but the insane physical defenses make him an easy swap in and easy winner against basically all non-fighting type physical attackers. He would also save me a lot of stress against Anabel's snorlax since he absolutely shuts Snorlax down without any issues at all.

Anyways here's my two attempts I've done so far:

Like I said, on attempt two I succeeded in getting the Silver Symbol and beating the first Anabel encounter. Both times I lost where primarily because Swampert got frozen. In fact it almost makes me want to run a Lum Berry on Swampert instead of a chesto berry, but I use Lum Berry on Starmie atm and that's been pretty useful (especially since my stupid starmie rolled Illuminate not Natural Cure and I didn't notice until I had already EV trained it and used TMs on it and everything).

Any tips on my setup, my approach, and even my gameplay itself (common mistakes, stupid things I do, etc) are super appreciated. I lurk these forums *ALOT* and I use this site all the time for info on these games, but I don't post often. Anyways a million thanks in advance!

 

[QuentinQuonce]

So I could use some feedback and recommendations regarding my team and my methods.

So first off, I've posted here before a few times asking about this as well, but I'm doing a water types only challenge. I can't trade since I only have one DS and no other games, so I can't use pokemon like Suicune that aren't in the game and I also don't want to catch non-water types even for breeding (so stuff like leech seed on ludicolo isn't doable).

So far my highest streak ended at like 38-41ish (shortly after beating Anabel Silver). I lost because Swampert got frozen and died because of that and then a pokemon with an eletric type move swept up my last guy.

My team I've currently setup and used is

View attachment 473358
Starmie @ Lum Berry
Ability: Illuminate
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Mild Nature
IVs: 15 HP / 15 Atk / 15 Def / 15 SpA / 15 SpD / 15 Spe
- Psychic
- Surf
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam

View attachment 473359
Gyarados (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 128 HP / 252 Atk / 128 SpD
Adamant Nature
IVs: 15 HP / 15 Atk / 15 Def / 15 SpA / 15 SpD / 15 Spe
- Earthquake
- Return
- Protect
- Dragon Dance

View attachment 473361
Swampert (F) @ Chesto Berry
Ability: Torrent
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 128 Def / 128 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 15 HP / 15 Atk / 15 Def / 15 SpA / 15 SpD / 15 Spe
- Earthquake
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Rest

Basically the idea is I open Starmie since it has good speed, damage output, and coverage. So it generally wins the opening matchup and frequently can basically sweep, especially in the early rounds. The setup on Starmie is super standard and nothing weird or unusual. Just run of the mill go fast and kill hard starmie. Then if I see an eletric type I swap in swampert and almost always get the free switch from immunity. Swampert easily kills eletric types and can often take down a second pokemon as well due to his good bulk and second health bar (rest+chesto berry). My swampert setup is a little weird EVs/Nature wise. I didn't want to totally invest in either defense since I need swampert to be taking hits from all sorts of different stuff and I want him to really be bulky so I can swamp him into neutral match ups decently if I need to. He has no attacking EVs and as such I use his as a split attacker since he has about the same baseline special and physical attack. His primary role on the team is killing eletric types, if he dies and an eletric type comes out later in the fight it's basically game over. Then if I see a grass type I swap into Gyarados. Gyarados is my weirdest pokemon for a number of reasons. First of all, I enlisted him primarily as a check to grass types not as a fast physical sweeper or anything like that. I did max out his attack stat, but I wanted him to by specially bulky so I invested split between HP and SpDef, neglecting speed. He runs leftovers and protect which I found to work surprisingly well at giving him just the edge he needs. Alternating protect and attacks so get double leftover heals worked pretty good and kept him healthier for longer, just gotta be wary about using protect against someone who might try to buff instead. Gyarados functions well for what I need of him, with this setup and method he's decently durable and soaks up grass type hits pretty well and can pretty frequently switch into a grass type and kill it. For particularly weak hitting pokemon I tend to use a dragon dance or two if I think I can get away with it.

So this works good enough, I open starmie and swap into gyarados or swampert when weaknesses of starmie show up. However there is issues. First of all, I have no great defense against double team spammers. I've yet to die because of a double team user, but I've had several hairy situations because of them. The other thing is due to the way the team works if the enemy has two or more eletric/grass type pokemon I'm pretty well boned. This seems very uncommon due to the way the AI's pick their lineups, but the more common and more deadly thing is when several of their pokemon know thunderbolt since that move is pretty common. I'm also worried about how powerful the AI parties become past round 50 since even certain round 30-40 sets can give me a bit of trouble (not too much mind you, but enough that it worries me when you start throwing random Lati@s that know thunderbolt into the mix in the later rounds).

I was considering either a Tentacruel or a Ludicolo for my line up, since both have high Special defense and aren't weak to grass they could both replace gyarados and possibly be better suited to the role I have gyarados playing. Additionally, Ludicolo isn't weak to eletric either which is huge since it means that multi-thunderbolt trainers would be much less scary. Tentcruel's abnormally high Special Defense also means he isn't instantly cooked by thunderbolts either and his decent speed is also appealing. I also think Milotic could be a great option since it has insane Special defense and also a strong offensive presence as well as reliable healing in recovery. Another pokemon I mildly considered, although probably not worth it, was Relicanth. A weird pitch for sure, but the insane physical defenses make him an easy swap in and easy winner against basically all non-fighting type physical attackers. He would also save me a lot of stress against Anabel's snorlax since he absolutely shuts Snorlax down without any issues at all.

Anyways here's my two attempts I've done so far:

Like I said, on attempt two I succeeded in getting the Silver Symbol and beating the first Anabel encounter. Both times I lost where primarily because Swampert got frozen. In fact it almost makes me want to run a Lum Berry on Swampert instead of a chesto berry, but I use Lum Berry on Starmie atm and that's been pretty useful (especially since my stupid starmie rolled Illuminate not Natural Cure and I didn't notice until I had already EV trained it and used TMs on it and everything).

Any tips on my setup, my approach, and even my gameplay itself (common mistakes, stupid things I do, etc) are super appreciated. I lurk these forums *ALOT* and I use this site all the time for info on these games, but I don't post often. Anyways a million thanks in advance!

Ludicolo is probably your best bet against the Latis (though nothing Water-wise really can put up much of a fight); it's unlikely to beat them, but you can slow them down and bring them in range for Starmie to KO. The thing is that including Ludicolo means forgoing Gyara or Swampert, and Gyara is too good a sweeper to pass up while Swampert is one of the best mons for the Frontier overall. It's a pity you've said you're not willing to catch non-water types, because Leech Seed makes such good support for a team like this. Tentacruel isn't a great option; it has high Special Defence but too many common weaknesses, including Earthquake. Ludicolo and Swampert are both superior since Swampert only has one weaknesses and Ludicolo has no 4x weaknesses at all; it only really fears Poison, Bug, and Flying.

I would stick with the ones you've got as they're all good choices - however, I would suggest rebreeding all three of your team. Mirror Coat Swampert is a potentially very good counter to both the Latis, but is situational and needs full HP/Special Defence investment to be sure of working, particularly since eventually you'll fight someone who's carrying both Latias and Latios. With 252 HP/Special Defence EVs and a +SpDef nature Swampert can just barely survive Sceptile's Leaf Blade at the highest damage roll assuming full health and no critical hit, and is comfortably 2HKO'd by Ludicolo's Giga Drain - so it will be able to comfortably tank Psychic, Ice Beam, or Dragon Claw from a Latios and KO back in turn, thereby making for a great (but probably one-time) counter shield that can reliably take out one special sweeper. Don't worry about not investing in physical defence; Swampert's major weakness is special, and you can potentially rely on Gyarados' Intimidate to give you a pseudo-boost against the more threatening physical attackers.

You will need to predict well with Mirror Coat though, so make sure you're intensely familiar with enemy sets and know which variant of the mon you're facing. If you Mirror Coat on Milotic expecting an Ice Beam and it uses Toxic, you're screwed. However this leads onto what your other moves should be: you could go with (Chesto) Rest if you want it to be able to stick around and soak up more damage, and maybe even Toxic to try and catch the Double Teamers before they get too much momentum. I almost always run Aerial Ace when I can on any serious team I'm trying to get a longer streak with since Double Teamers are almost all weak to Flying (Venusaur, Ludicolo, et al) or don't like taking physical moves (Blissey) but as that's not an option here Toxic is probably the best catch-all option for a lot of them, even though some are immune and some will be able to heal themselves. However, I've been able to stall mons like Kingdra out before and force them to use up all their Rest PP - keep in mind that you, unlike the AI, have the advantage in that you can max out your PP and thus get them to Struggle first if it comes to it. Icy Wind is also worth consideration for when there's something you can't beat but Starmie or Gyarados can if they have the Speed advantage, and Earthquake is practically mandatory on Swampert as it takes care of so many things the other two struggle with (better to just hit Raikou with EQ than try and Mirror Coat an incoming Crunch, for instance), and hits hard even with no attack investment.

As far as Gyarados goes I would try going for one with Hidden Power Flying. It's a real pain to get and I used to never want to bother with Hidden Power because it's so difficult breeding for it in Gen III but as time went on and I learned more about the processes involved I began to see the benefit. And there is a huge benefit in this instance. Return and Earthquake leaves you walled by so many Pokemon. But HP Flying is a dependable STAB and hits like a train when you've got a DD or two up. Don't bother with Protect IMO; Gyarados is tanky enough to live through a lot of neutral attacks and if you're Protecting against an Electric-type that'll just kill you anyway next turn so there's no point. Substitute would be better for three reasons; 1) it blocks status moves, 2) if you're up against a physical opponent who's taken a -1 from Intimidate and can't do too much damage you can grab some spare turns to boost while they try and break your sub and potentially waste PP from high-powered, low-PP moves (off the top of my head, all of the Donphan in the Frontier know one Rock move but once that's gone they're much less threatening), and 3) even at +6 you run the risk of being pipped by a Quick Claw user or missing a move (both guaranteed to happen eventually). If you run two moves alongside Sub/DD, which I would advise, Earthquake/HP Flying has better overall coverage but you'll need a few boosts to be sure of killing everything you want to kill since Earthquake is un-STABed and HP Flying's highest base power is still pretty low. Leftovers is overall the best item on Gyara especially if you're running Substitute but you do need to be wary of random status infliction which can ruin you. Poison is manageable but any of the others will absolutely fuck you over. I mentioned Donphan, for instance; one of them has Secret Power which at -1 you'll shrug off but can potentially paralyse you. Fearow is a similar example of something you can render much less threatening with an Attack drop but at least two Fearow variants in the Frontier have Tri Attack.

Finally, I would redo Starmie. Mild is a poor nature because Starmie has few physical weaknesses and can comfortably stomach a couple of hits from weaker Rock, Ground, Normal, and Flying attacks (allowing it to get a 2HKO on bulkier foes like Hariyama) so there's no point compromising, especially when there's potential Intimidate support from Gyarados. And you need every advantage you can get so Natural Cure is absolutely non-negotiable here. Fortunately Starmie isn't too difficult to get a good one of since it doesn't actually need to be bred - I caught a bunch of Synchronize Pokemon (Natu in the Safari Zone, I believe), eventually got one with a Modest nature, then went to Lilycove and fished up about two boxes' worth of Staryu - about 20 of them had a Modest nature, and after examining all their stats I found that I had one with very high IVs across the board and the correct ability. Plus it came at level 27 so wasn't difficult to subsequently raise up. However you said you're not willing to catch non-Water types and from memory I'm not sure if there's a Water-type with Synchronize so this will be more difficult. Still, if you catch three or four boxes' worth you'll hopefully eventually get a decent one in the end. Lum Berry is a good option on Starmie (even with Natural Cure) because it can waste a turn for the opponent and give you a second wind, but Twistedspoon is also a viable choice to make Psychic a bit more of a nuke. I learned long ago that Modest is the best nature on Starmie in the Tower; none of the Latis have +Speed natures so Starmie will always outspeed, but they do often invest in HP so you won't be KOing with Ice Beam even if you're holding a Nevermeltice.

A lot of the time Starmie should be perfectly capable of sweeping entire teams by itself; it's an excellent Pokemon with true star power, but overall your best chance of victory here is placing Gyarados in front of something that can't hurt it and getting as many boosts as you can before demolishing the opponent's team. In an ideal world you always want the full six boosts but realistically three or four will usually be enough to get the job done. Intimidate is a great ability that makes a lot of physical opponents a lot less threatening so if you come up against something that can't KO Gyarados quickly, make full use of that fact and boost as much as you can; if it's safe, consider even switching back and forth couple of times to make their attacks even less powerful and potentially grab more boosts. Don't be afraid to make use of the "dumb switch" tactic too; if you know for certain what set you're facing, swapping back and forth in front of something with Thunderbolt to use up all its PP is a great strategy.

Your Gyarados's EV spread is workable but could be a little better. In my Lightningrod team I've been working with recently I went with a slightly more rounded spread you might find useful. Obviously this is a Doubles team, but the basic principles are the same. For the Gyarados I used on that team I ran the following EVs with an Adamant nature.

74 HP, 252 Atk, 40 Def, 20 Sp.Def, 124 Spe

Obviously you want max Attack as a priority and an odd, non-divisible-by-four HP (349 in this instance); 124 Speed EVs gets you to 228 Speed which after one Dragon Dance very nearly outruns the whole Frontier (only six Pokemon are faster than 339; refer to the spreadsheet linked on page one for exact numbers). The remainder is dumped into the defences.

(These are all for level 100 and taking into account slightly compromised IVs because this individual had HP Flying but obviously tailor it to your specifics. Psypoke's stat calculator is highly useful and I use it a lot when I want to decide how many EVs to invest)

Hope this helps! I sort of vomited my thoughts onto the page and it got quite long so if anything's unclear let me know. I think this is a really cool challenge and hope to see you reach new heights!

 

[Newusername2000]

Thanks a ton of your input! Yeah I kinda figured Tentacruel wasn't great. He also dies to Lati's due to psychic weakness. I just liked him because he matches up better against venusaur and grass types in general, but overall he'll be a liability in more intense fights so if I was making a swap out Ludicolo would be preferable. But with Ludicolo then I'm lacking any physical aside from Swampert's EQ which matches me poorly against CM users and Snorlaxes (both of which Anabel Gold uses)

So first off I've been trying to avoid RNG abuse or other mild exploits (TM duping, etc), just for stupid personal reasons. If push comes to shove I will indulge, it's not a hill I'm gonna die on. I'd even be fine catching grass types and a ditto to breed leech seed and IVs if I had to, but I just wanna try and do without if possible. So none of my guys were breed. I fished gyarados at soopolis (it's very hard to check IVs on a level 10 magikarp, so I caught it as a gyarados so I could more accurately measure it's IVs when catching it). I fished the starmie at lilycove and I was trying for modest, but staryu is quite rare and all the modest ones I got kept having like single digit SpA and Spd IVs so when I finally got a SpA nature with decent SpA and Spd IVs I said good enough and kept it.

These are my exact IVs:

HP/Atk/Def/SpA/SpD/Spd
Starmie: 26/4/30-/15+/6/23
Gyarados 0/21+/18/8-/26/8
Swampert: 3/22/10/14/24+/0-

Additionally I used my EQ TM on my current Gyarados so remaking gyarados would be particularly hard, I'd have to do some duplication shenanigans or bend my original rules slightly to catch a zigzagoon to use pick up to get more EQ TMs. Since HP Flying requires RNG abuse to get properly and I'd need to screw around to get a second EQ TM, that's a bit of a hassle, but it's doable if it's necessary. As for substitute, I just feel uneasy about it since it cuts HP by so much just to try it, in the past when I've ran substitute I always find it breaking in 1 hit. It just scares me because if you misjudge and use it against a mon that one hits it and outspeeds you then you've given the enemy a free hit, wasted your turn, and lost 1/4 of your HP all for nothing basically suiciding gyarados right away. But that's all likely just skill issue and needing to know what mons and sets its safe to use against. So substitute to replace protect is probably worth doing on my current set. If you think my current set is good enough to get me to gold with good play and a bit of luck then I will just keep grinding until I get a good run going. I think a big thing I need to get used to is check spreadsheets at the start of every match and taking a few moments to figure out what moves the enemy might have and what mons they might use next. So foresight like that could really go a long ways. I can rebuild my team if need be, I just feel like without RNG abusing to get perfect IVs/Natures that the different won't be big enough to warrant the hassle. So if I do rebuild my team I'll probably just have to RNG abuse it this time.

Anyways here's the extact stats on my guys, notice my swampert has literally the lowest speed possible >.<

Thanks again for all your input, pretty sure you responded to my last inquiry as well, so thanks again. Btw if I was gonna run toxic, where would I even fit it? All my slots are pretty well filled atm. I guess I can just throw caution to the wind and let double teamers be RNG, tbh I'm not sure that's really that awful since I only need a 70 streak (not going for insane records or anything, just want to barely squeak out a gold symbol if possible). I was thinking I could maybe rework some stuff to have rain dance and thunder on this team for double teamers and just a generally decent setup thing to do against certain sets.

EDIT: Oh yeah I had one closing thought. It's either stupid or genius. Lead Quagsire and use Yawn, swap into Gyarados for free Dragon Dances, should get 2-3 easy. Quagsire can just function as budget Swampert after yawn leading. Probably not worth since Quagsire is so inferior to swampert in every other way, but yawn leading to give Gyarados a basically garaunteed free setup sounds powerful. The other option could be something like running Confuse Ray and Thunder Wave on Starmie to cripple the oppontent lead before swapping in gyarados, but that seems much riskier and means I can't run full coverage on starmie either (plus starmie probably takes a ton of hits and dies setting that up half the time). Yawn should give Gyarados anywhere from 2-5 turns to setup assuming I swap him in on the turn of the yawn. He will always get one totally safe DD and I could just keep DDing until it wakes up and hits Gyarados unless I'm afraid it will oneshot (Not super likely unless it's thunderbolt). 2-5 DDs should let Gyarados sweep pretty decently most the time and then have Starmie as the back up/clean up when gyarados goes down, Quagsire can still function to clean up eletric types. I just feel like losing Swampert isn't worth it since he's such a reliable and powerful pokemon (when he doesn't get freaking frozen).

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Thanks a ton of your input! Yeah I kinda figured Tentacruel wasn't great. He also dies to Lati's due to psychic weakness. I just liked him because he matches up better against venusaur and grass types in general, but overall he'll be a liability in more intense fights so if I was making a swap out Ludicolo would be preferable. But with Ludicolo then I'm lacking any physical aside from Swampert's EQ which matches me poorly against CM users and Snorlaxes (both of which Anabel Gold uses)

So first off I've been trying to avoid RNG abuse or other mild exploits (TM duping, etc), just for stupid personal reasons. If push comes to shove I will indulge, it's not a hill I'm gonna die on.

I get that. I do admire your resolve but I would just gently push back and say that with this you really do need to seize every advantage (even though the cloning glitch obviously isn't an intended one and is bending the rules of fairness somewhat - I'm more referring to things like breeding, Pickup abuse, and PP maxing). But it is your choice.

As for substitute, I just feel uneasy about it since it cuts HP by so much just to try it, in the past when I've ran substitute I always find it breaking in 1 hit. It just scares me because if you misjudge and use it against a mon that one hits it and outspeeds you then you've given the enemy a free hit, wasted your turn, and lost 1/4 of your HP all for nothing basically suiciding gyarados right away. But that's all likely just skill issue and needing to know what mons and sets its safe to use against. So substitute to replace protect is probably worth doing on my current set.

Well, my point regarding Substitute is that it should be used well. It is a skill issue because using it against something that would otherwise KO won't save you unless you can stall it out of PP, which is situational. But the AI often has trouble dealing with Substitute and will often try to use status moves against it, which obviously nets you free turns. Against more passive mons like Blissey and Shuckle Substitute can be an absolute god-tier move, definitely don't underestimate it.

If you think my current set is good enough to get me to gold with good play and a bit of luck then I will just keep grinding until I get a good run going.

Definitely do persevere with this team, it's good in terms of fundamentals but I do think it probably requires a little tweaking to be reliably assured of getting golds.

I think a big thing I need to get used to is check spreadsheets at the start of every match and taking a few moments to figure out what moves the enemy might have and what mons they might use next. So foresight like that could really go a long ways.

Yes, absolutely this.

Btw if I was gonna run toxic, where would I even fit it? All my slots are pretty well filled atm. I guess I can just throw caution to the wind and let double teamers be RNG, tbh I'm not sure that's really that awful since I only need a 70 streak (not going for insane records or anything, just want to barely squeak out a gold symbol if possible). I was thinking I could maybe rework some stuff to have rain dance and thunder on this team for double teamers and just a generally decent setup thing to do against certain sets.

With Toxic I was really only thinking it's there if Swampert is a dedicated Mirror Coat user, on a set like I suggested such as:

-Mirror Coat
-Rest
-Toxic
-Earthquake

Or I suppose it could fit onto a more offensive set tbh.

-Surf
-Earthquake
-Icy Wind/Ice Beam
-Toxic/Rest

EDIT: Oh yeah I had one closing thought. It's either stupid or genius. Lead Quagsire and use Yawn, swap into Gyarados for free Dragon Dances, should get 2-3 easy. Quagsire can just function as budget Swampert after yawn leading. Probably not worth since Quagsire is so inferior to swampert in every other way, but yawn leading to give Gyarados a basically garaunteed free setup sounds powerful.

Too gimmicky and not reliable. Eventually you'll come up against something with Vital Spirit/Insomnia/Early Bird or a Lum/Chesto Berry or something that knows Sleep Talk. I'm not sure offhand whether the AI switches to avoid Yawn but it's certainly a possibility. It's also a waste of a team slot when Swampert can accomplish so much more. Quagsire gets some good options but it doesn't have a lot of immediate power. It's also slow and is easy prey for any lead Grass-types who will annihilate you even if you fully invest in SpDef.

The other option could be something like running Confuse Ray and Thunder Wave on Starmie to cripple the oppontent lead before swapping in gyarados, but that seems much riskier and means I can't run full coverage on starmie either (plus starmie probably takes a ton of hits and dies setting that up half the time). Yawn should give Gyarados anywhere from 2-5 turns to setup assuming I swap him in on the turn of the yawn. He will always get one totally safe DD and I could just keep DDing until it wakes up and hits Gyarados unless I'm afraid it will oneshot (Not super likely unless it's thunderbolt). 2-5 DDs should let Gyarados sweep pretty decently most the time and then have Starmie as the back up/clean up when gyarados goes down, Quagsire can still function to clean up eletric types. I just feel like losing Swampert isn't worth it since he's such a reliable and powerful pokemon (when he doesn't get freaking frozen).

WRT Starmie, Confuse Ray's accuracy is unreliable and Thunder Wave doesn't guarantee free turns. Sweeping is a far better use of your time (note that crippler leads aren't bad, there are just many mons who do it better). By going the defensive route you forgo the possibility of winning a battle in three moves - easily achievable with Starmie in numerous cases - in exchange for giving the AI multiple turns in which they have the chance to boost or cripple you or just sweep you outright.

Thanks again for all your input, pretty sure you responded to my last inquiry as well, so thanks again.

No problem at all. I've invested a lot of time into Gen III Frontier, I genuinely think it's the best one and I enjoy discussing it. And I've come on a lot since I started so it's always cool to see people coming into it.

 

[Newusername2000]

Yeah I figured most those ideas (crippler lead, quagsire) weren't gonna be any good. But I do think it's worth thinking about Tentacruel a bit more.

Right now grass pokemon are giving me the hardest time. Eletric types are no issue with swampert around getting free switch ins on them, but Ludicolos that know Thunder Punch and Giga Drain are ruining my day nonstop. Venusuars and Ludicolos are really messing with me. I lost my 3rd attempt at round 50 against a trainer who used BOTH. Cradilies are also no fun since they have rock moves to screw with Gyarados. I'm honestly thinking that Tentacruel might be getting slept on here. I'm unsure, but I really feel he might be the secret ingredient. This might just be me getting bad sets or playing it poorly, but Starmie seems to become less useful in many of my battles in the later waves. All too often I find myself not one shotting with it and then it just dies due to it's extreme fragility. It begins to lose most neutral opening matches and thus only really does work if it wins the lead match up (which is fairly common due to great coverage), but even then it typically is too injured to do anything else after that. I absolutely need Gyarados to kill high SpD mons like snorlax and blissey, so I can't get rid of him, also he's still pretty good for grass types. I honestly almost feel like Tenta, Gyara, Swamp might work well. It basically makes grass no more of a nausiace than any other type since only swampert is weak to it and Tenta will crush grass types with sludge bomb/ice beam while gyarados also doesn't fear them. The biggest brain part of tenta is also that with fully invested HP and SpD he *can* survive a fully invested psychic from Lati's *AND* he learns mirror coat, so assuming he's at full HP he can take Lati's down with mirror coat (of course at his own expense, but still). I also suspect this means that basically *ANY* poor match up against a SpA mon (eletric and psychic types) can in a pinch be cheesed by tentacruel just memeing on them with mirror coat as well.

Tentacruel @ Lum Berry
Level: 50
Calm Nature
Ability: Liquid Ooze
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpD
IVs: 0 HP / 0 Atk / 0 Def / 0 SpA / 0 SpD / 0 Spe
- Sludge Bomb
- Rest/Surf
- Ice Beam
- Mirror Coat

This mon would solve my Vensaur/Ludicolo/Cradily problem and in conjunction with Gyarados even out any grass weaknesses altogether while also being able to kill problematic Special Attackers like Latis and Giga Drain/Thunderbolt Gengar in a pinch. He also opens up the ability to force out EQs and get free swaps into Gyarados in certain cases. My only worry is that while this will solve my grass problem, I'm worried what other issues it might cause to arise in turn by not having starmie (also speaking of starmie, Illuminate should totally just function like a free brightpowder and no one can convince me otherwise). Anyways I'm gonna train up a tentacruel and do some runs with it to see how that feels. If it feels like I just have no killing power at all, I'll bring Starmie back, but I really think Tentacruel might just be the solution to the cracks in my team.

I also looked a tiny bit more at Relicanth, but I just can't seem to justify using him. I do think I'd get good mileage out of him, but if I replace Gyarados with him then I have 2 times 4 grass weaknesses which is just gonna make my grass issues EVEN WORSE. Still having a phyically defensive mon that can swap into any physical attack easily and also easily beat snorlax would be nice and Relicanth's stats, ability, and movepool are all surprisingly good, he can put out 120 BP double edges with no down side, have EQ, and 90 BP (after stab) ancient power. Sadly he just won't fit into the team, but he's really tempting to be honest.

Relicanth @ Leftovers/Chesto Berry
Level: 50
Adamant Nature
Ability: Rock Head
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def
- Double-Edge
- Ancient Power
- Earthquake
- Rest/Whatever else

Also sorry if I'm spamming this thread, just seems like I get the most responses here. Anyways thanks again for your advice, slowly making progress!

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Yeah I figured most those ideas (crippler lead, quagsire) weren't gonna be any good. But I do think it's worth thinking about Tentacruel a bit more.

Right now grass pokemon are giving me the hardest time. Eletric types are no issue with swampert around getting free switch ins on them, but Ludicolos that know Thunder Punch and Giga Drain are ruining my day nonstop. Venusuars and Ludicolos are really messing with me. I lost my 3rd attempt at round 50 against a trainer who used BOTH. Cradilies are also no fun since they have rock moves to screw with Gyarados. I'm honestly thinking that Tentacruel might be getting slept on here. I'm unsure, but I really feel he might be the secret ingredient. This might just be me getting bad sets or playing it poorly, but Starmie seems to become less useful in many of my battles in the later waves. All too often I find myself not one shotting with it and then it just dies due to it's extreme fragility. It begins to lose most neutral opening matches and thus only really does work if it wins the lead match up (which is fairly common due to great coverage), but even then it typically is too injured to do anything else after that. I absolutely need Gyarados to kill high SpD mons like snorlax and blissey, so I can't get rid of him, also he's still pretty good for grass types. I honestly almost feel like Tenta, Gyara, Swamp might work well. It basically makes grass no more of a nausiace than any other type since only swampert is weak to it and Tenta will crush grass types with sludge bomb/ice beam while gyarados also doesn't fear them. The biggest brain part of tenta is also that with fully invested HP and SpD he *can* survive a fully invested psychic from Lati's *AND* he learns mirror coat, so assuming he's at full HP he can take Lati's down with mirror coat (of course at his own expense, but still). I also suspect this means that basically *ANY* poor match up against a SpA mon (eletric and psychic types) can in a pinch be cheesed by tentacruel just memeing on them with mirror coat as well.

View attachment 473683
Tentacruel @ Lum Berry
Level: 50
Calm Nature
Ability: Liquid Ooze
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpD
IVs: 0 HP / 0 Atk / 0 Def / 0 SpA / 0 SpD / 0 Spe
- Sludge Bomb
- Rest/Surf
- Ice Beam
- Mirror Coat

This mon would solve my Vensaur/Ludicolo/Cradily problem and in conjunction with Gyarados even out any grass weaknesses altogether while also being able to kill problematic Special Attackers like Latis and Giga Drain/Thunderbolt Gengar in a pinch. He also opens up the ability to force out EQs and get free swaps into Gyarados in certain cases. My only worry is that while this will solve my grass problem, I'm worried what other issues it might cause to arise in turn by not having starmie (also speaking of starmie, Illuminate should totally just function like a free brightpowder and no one can convince me otherwise). Anyways I'm gonna train up a tentacruel and do some runs with it to see how that feels. If it feels like I just have no killing power at all, I'll bring Starmie back, but I really think Tentacruel might just be the solution to the cracks in my team.

So I got interested in this and ran some calculations and I may have slightly underestimated Tentacruel. With 0/0 HP/SpDef investment and a neutral nature Tentacruel is actually guaranteed to survive Psychic from a neutral natured Latios with 252 SpAtk EVs. From there it only takes a small amount of HP and SpDef investment to guarantee survival from Modest 252 SA Latios; 56 EVs in both guarantees that Psychic is a 2HKO. I'd forgotten that of all the eight Latios in the Frontier (well technically nine as Anabel also uses one) only three are Modest; the rest are Adamant or have neutral natures.

So that's something. It still dies to Earthquake but at least many users of that are slow Rock/Ground-types who Tentacruel can easily beat. I ran the calcs on Ursaring (chosen off the top of my head for being a non-STAB Earthquake user with a high Attack stat) and you basically have to put nearly everything else into Defence to survive. I went with a spread of 248 HP/180 Defence/24 SpAtk/56 SpDef which means that you survive Ursaring's Earthquake but the problem is that you're not 2HKOing unless you run Hydro Pump, which generally isn't a good idea. That spread doesn't even take speed into account which you should as due to being a base-100 mon Tentacruel sits at a very common tier, so that sucks EVs away from other areas.

And running it with purely defensive stats seems such a waste - it's fast and relatively good enough to be offensively capable. I might be biased though as Sludge Bomb is one of my favourite moves so any excuse to run it. But as long as you ensure that you can survive Psychic, you're all good.

On balance I would probably be inclined to go with Swampert, but you've got me interested in Tentacruel now. Kind of tempted to breed a couple and test them out...

I also looked a tiny bit more at Relicanth, but I just can't seem to justify using him. I do think I'd get good mileage out of him, but if I replace Gyarados with him then I have 2 times 4 grass weaknesses which is just gonna make my grass issues EVEN WORSE. Still having a phyically defensive mon that can swap into any physical attack easily and also easily beat snorlax would be nice and Relicanth's stats, ability, and movepool are all surprisingly good, he can put out 120 BP double edges with no down side, have EQ, and 90 BP (after stab) ancient power. Sadly he just won't fit into the team, but he's really tempting to be honest.

View attachment 473684
Relicanth @ Leftovers/Chesto Berry
Level: 50
Adamant Nature
Ability: Rock Head
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def
- Double-Edge
- Ancient Power
- Earthquake
- Rest/Whatever else

Oh now Relicanth is also really good fun to use. Admittedly way more so in later generations, but I had a ball using Rock Head Head Smash Relicanth in a playthrough some years ago. Never used it in a battle facility as I can't imagine it'd be much good - it's just too slow and has too many weaknesses. But definitely one for a novelty team sometime.

Also sorry if I'm spamming this thread, just seems like I get the most responses here. Anyways thanks again for your advice, slowly making progress!

Asking for advice about the Frontier in a thread devoted to the Frontier is about as far from the definition of spamming as it gets and this thread is often too quiet so by all means continue. Yours is a really interesting challenge and should be encouraged.

 

[Newusername2000]

So for the tentacruel I'm thinking I'm gonna run Ice Beam/Surf/Rest/Mirror Coat. Sludge bomb actually only works on Ludicolo out of the three grass types that commonly cause me issues, whereas Ice Beam works on all grass types except ludicolo who mirror coat can safely kill since there's never any phyiscal sets for him. Plus doing Surf/Ice Beam means more consistent bang for my buck investing in SpA if I do end up having the extra points (also I used the Sludge Bomb TM on my base game Tentacruel to beat Wallace's Ludicolo so I don't even have the TM to dupe it anymore, I'd have to physically trade to get a new one I think since it's once per game).

So the spread will be heavy HP, minimum SpD for surviving an invested latios physic since I don't wanna get wiped by this stinker

Although I think swampert can feasibly beat that set actually, but still. The rest of the EVs could go one of two ways. I'm thinking either I do full defensive and go Bold nature and invest remaining EVs in defense so that Tentacruel can soak up physical attacks decently as well. Or I go Modest nature and invest in SpA instead so that he can deal better damage.

Also now that you mention physical Lati sets it makes me a tiny bit nervous. Swampert can beat most of them, but some of them run recover which since swampert takes 4 hits to kill them, will likely cause issues since I imagine they will use it. Althought I think Gyarados matches decently against Physical Latis as well since he removes their EQ and forces them to use shadow ball instead + imtimidate and leftovers. Gyarados does enough damage to make recover not so scary. Gyarados takes just over 3 hits to kill them and (if he hits them with intimidate) will basically out heal their damage with leftovers.

The real issue is these stupid split attacker Latis that have EQ and thunderbolt and psychic. Luckily they don't have recover on those sets so swampert can beat them reasonably.

It's just gonna be a huge hassle to properly ID what set these latis run since my response to them has to be significantly different for each one.

 

[dgice]

Why nobody upload my record? :(
Where are the administrator? Also I wanted to ask something to the community, dont know if this is the place. Anyway, seeing the various team I was blown away finding how many of you use the move substitute. And in the tower records its full of this move, adede the man at the top have it in 2 out of 3 of his pokémon. My question is, playing on retail is there some kind of trick that let you teach the move substitute more than once? Cause replaying the game and than trade it over seems just too much, I see people with 8 substitute moves, how is it possible? Maybe with the pomeg glitch? Dont know, please tell me your secret. Thanks and cheers.

My trick to getting substitute is replaying emerald over and over. It's extra easy if you trade out your mudkip and teach it surf, waterfall, and strength right away then trade it back holding a lucky egg (sometimes I trade in a claydol with dig and teleport to save a few steps too). You don't even need to beat the elite 4 just get to lilycove. Honestly replaying the game is not that time intensive compared to breeding pokemon or attempting long runs. Takes maybe 5 hours if you're not paying attention but speed runners do the whole thing in under 3 hours.