-
Snag some vintage SPL team logo merch over at our Teespring store before January 12th!
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Resource VGC: Ask a Simple Question, Get a Simple Answer
- Thread starter blarajan
- Start date
It survives 252+ LO Pheromosa HJK, Tectonic Rage from Garchomp after burn, and survives LO Mimikyu Play Rough after burn damage. Possibly some other things as well
Best nature for Bulu and Fini?
In my Sun game I caught Naive HP Ice Koko (Brave Bird), Modest HP Fire Lele, Adamant Bulu and Bold Fini.
For Moon, I'm going Timid HP Ice Koko and Timid HP Fire Lele, but what other two natures should I have for Bulu and Fini?
In my Sun game I caught Naive HP Ice Koko (Brave Bird), Modest HP Fire Lele, Adamant Bulu and Bold Fini.
For Moon, I'm going Timid HP Ice Koko and Timid HP Fire Lele, but what other two natures should I have for Bulu and Fini?
I'm building a Trick Room team, and I'm using Exeggcutor-Alola for one of my Trick Room setters (The other one's Oranguru). I gave him Ancient Power (egg move), Substitute and Trick Room, but for his fourth move slot I'm having a hard time deciding between Leech Seed and Giga Drain, or another offensive move entirely, since I have Harvest/Sitrus for recovery as well.
It will be a Gen 7 Pokemon whatever you do. I do remember reading somewhere that if you have a Kanto form pokemon (like Vulpix) hold an Everstone, then the children are more likely to also be Kanto form, but I can't remember details and haven't tested this myself to know for sure.
I like Calm for Fini.
It will be a Gen 7 Pokemon whatever you do. I do remember reading somewhere that if you have a Kanto form pokemon (like Vulpix) hold an Everstone, then the children are more likely to also be Kanto form, but I can't remember details and haven't tested this myself to know for sure.
I like Calm for Fini.
Last edited:
It's a speed thing. If the Sky Drop user is faster than the target, they lose Turn 1 and get to move Turn 2. If the Sky Drop user is slower, the foe attacks Turn 1 and loses Turn 2.
I'll use Aerodactyl and a Timid, Life Orb Tapu Lele as examples:
Turn 1: Aerodactyl uses Sky Drop on Lele; Lele did not use Protect and thus loses its turn.
Turn 2: Aerodactyl deals damage with Sky Drop; Tapu Lele is freed. Lele blasts Aerodactyl with Psychic.
Now if we have Scarf Lele:
Turn 1: Aerodactyl gets blasted with Psychic, down to Sash. Uses Sky Drop on Lele.
Turn 2: Lele loses a turn. Aerodactyl deals damage via Sky Drop; Tapu Lele is freed.
For the general public:
What is this AFK core you guys are talking about? I see it skimming threads but not sure what it is. Arcanine Fini... Koko?
I'm trying to sponge info for the international. Yes I'm doing it just for mega stones, but I don't want to just be a free point farm either.
Garchomp looks amazing, all the Tapus look amazing, but I'm having trouble figuring out a core and I don't see too many sample teams. Anyone have a few examples? Char-Y and MegaGross are unavailable in the format therefor I have no idea what I'll use.
Might just use Pellipper + Koko or some stupid shit.
Garchomp + Celesteela
Celesteela takes the hits that Garchomp is weak too really well. Garchomp is immune to Electric and resists Fire. Garchomp can freely Earthquake next to a Celesteela. This duo was used very early in the meta that still stands strong today.
Garchomp + Tapu Koko + Arcanine
Fairly common trio in the meta right now. For the most part they cover one another's weaknesses. Arcanine is incredibly good for its Fire typing, Intimidate, and other support moves. Garchomp hits most things fairly hard. Tapu Koko is a fast attacker that is often lead with Garchomp.
Tapu Lele + Pheromosa
Tapu Lele's Psychic Terrain allows Pheromosa to be able to quickly attack without worrying about priority moves. Very frail but powerful lead.
Golduck + Pelipper
Rain + Rain abuser. Golduck's Swift Swim allows it to easily fire off a Hydro Vortex immediately. It struggles against Gastrodon and Trick Room, but when Pelipper has Brine Hydro Vortex + Brine OHKO's Porygon2, the most common TR setter. This core recently won Utah Regionals and has seen performing well at other events such as Oceania and London Internationals where Tommy Cooleen got top 8 at both with the core. This core's been very off and on with its usage. It was huge after London Internationals until people used Porygon2 Trick Room and Gastrodon to beat it up, but when Gastrodon's usage went down due to the rise of Kartana and Tommy Cooleen's use of Brine Pelipper in Oceania Internationals, it began to pick up usage again.
Tapu Koko + Alolan Raichu
Similar to the Golduck/Pelipper lead in the sense that the terrain is speeding up Alolan Raichu to basically make it the fastest thing in the game. Struggles against Togedemaru/Alolan Marowak due to Electric immunity. Raichu's Fake Out/Encore adds a lot of pressure to the enemy. The duo struggles against Trick Room. A friend of mine, Ethan Simpson (PacoTaco) used this duo to get top 16 at Collinsville Regionals.
Tapu Fini + Arcanine + Kartana
A strong Fire/Water/Grass core that was pretty popular around January and February but has died off a little bit in usage. Kartana's weaknesses are for the most part covered by Tapu Fini and Arcanine.
Tapu Lele + Drifblim
Drifblim wasn't used at all until Pokebank came out giving Drifblim access to Tailwind. With its ability Unburden, Drifblim carries Psychic Seed to be able to immediately outspeed basically everything and set up Tailwind easily. Tapu Lele usually has Taunt in order to Taunt Trick Room users. Since the duo was discovered it's become incredibly popular and has become a major threat - it won the invitational ONOG tournament by 2015 World Champion Shoma Honami, Oceania Internationals by Zoe Lou, and Oregon Regionals by Aaron Zheng among other things.
Porygon2 + Araquanid/Gigalith
The Porygon2 + Araquanid combo was a very good Trick Room mode added to a lot of teams and won almost every single Regional in North America until around March or so. March was the time Gigalith seemed to become a lot more popular as it is a good answer to a lot of the common Trick Room abusers like Magnezone, occaisonally Araquanid (this is extremely iffy as it depends on both Gigalith/Araquanid's sets), Porygon2, Mimikyu. Keep in mind you'll need something for Hariyama/Buzzwole if you use the Porygon2/Gigalith duo. Another reason a lot of people bring Gigalith to their teams is that it provides strong weather control. It doesn't underspeed Torkoal (so Sandstorm may not go up), but it still puts massive pressure on it due to having Wide Guard and its Rock typing.
---
There are other cores out there but I thought I'd just name some of the most notable ones. You can find what teams have cut major tournaments at Trainer Tower.
Last edited:
This all makes sense and is super helpful, thank you :P
I am at a loss to understand how Gigalith threatens Araquanid at all though. Slower, smited by Waterfall, no Sturdy? o_0
So regarding Gigalith threatening Araquanid I may have mispoken a bit but I said what I did because Araquanid is typically only brought when you're expecting Trick Room. Since Gigalith underspeeds Araquanid, it threatens Araquanid by either one shotting it (Rockium Z is common enough on Gigalith) or forcing it into Wide Guard. Araquanid doesn't guarantee the one shot unless they're Z Water or Mystic Water. Both are extremely common I'll admit, but Waterium Z forces you to blow you Z move onto gigalith (possibly into a Protect if you call it) and with a lot of common Intimidate users in the format like Arcanine and Gyarados Mystic Water Liquidation won't OHKO Gigalith (in fact if the Gigalith is a pinch berry variant like on Nick Navarre's top 4 St. Louis team which had Gigalith/Porygon2 it'll activate the berry). It's one of those scenarios where it really depends on what both Pokemon are running. I wasn't very good at explaining that part so I'll go edit it. I think Gigalith is primarily used because it underspeeds pretty much all of the common TR abusers.
If you want a brain dead simple team to use, you could try gigalith / p2 / arcanine / koko / kartana / fini. Maybe with garchomp and gyarados over fini and kartana.
We also have a sample teams thread over here: http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/vgc-17-sample-teams.3590391/
How viable is Decidueye in VGC atm?
Its sometimes used in Pledge teams together with Primanera as their effect works like Tailwind. However, those teams are pretty matchup-based and out of them its not used at all
First time building a competitive team since Diamond/Pearl days.
So here's my dilemma. I bred an Analytic competitive Magnezone and ended up with this:
Magnezone
Modest
31/X/31/31/31/31
252 Sp. Atk, 252 Defense, 6 HP
Regardless, physically, it still seems to get one shot in battles. Not sure why or what to do to fix this, but it's survivability to get a move off without Quick claw is just slim to none and frustrating to say the least. Is it my EVs? Any tips and calculations/explanations to fix and tweak?
So here's my dilemma. I bred an Analytic competitive Magnezone and ended up with this:
Magnezone
Modest
31/X/31/31/31/31
252 Sp. Atk, 252 Defense, 6 HP
Regardless, physically, it still seems to get one shot in battles. Not sure why or what to do to fix this, but it's survivability to get a move off without Quick claw is just slim to none and frustrating to say the least. Is it my EVs? Any tips and calculations/explanations to fix and tweak?
I have a question of "what if...?". If we get Incineroar with Intimidate finally, could he be a susbtitute for Arcanine? He is slightly more tanky and hits slightly harder physically, while being much slower, but has access to support moves that arcanine doesn't, like Fake Out, whiel still beign able to use moves like WoW, Snarl and so. What do you think?
I personally think it would change things up quite a bit, and certainly add another viable intimidate user and fire type, however I don't think we will get it this season.
Move the 252 Def EVs to HP instead.
I also don't see Analytic used very often. It only gives you the boost when you move last, yet you say your problem is that magnezone gets targeted down because it's so slow. Have you considered using Sturdy instead?
Also, what's your moveset like? Protect is a great move to have on most pokemon if you aren't using it already.
Is it more impressive to win a regional or to have 1900 points on cart?
Far more impressive to win a regional, however, it's different as one is Bo3 and one is Bo1 so some things that work well in one don't work well in the other.
I win the majority of my games still, I think my moveset seems fine for the type of playstyle that I run for Doubles, etc. (I think anyway)
But I run:
Discharge
Thunder Wave
Flash Cannon
Protect
I will definitely try moving the points to HP though.
Last edited:
Thunder wave and no thunderbolt is surprising. I also usually see something like substitute, HP fire, or magnet rise instead of discharge.
I typically run a prediction battle sweeper and double hit kind of style with Ground types or synching my Ground EQ's with my Mag switch/Protect. Usually.
I was playing around a bit with HP, but it had HP Dragon, so I just got rid of it as the Dragon's (Garchomp) typically one shot me anyway with Earthquake. Decided to take Protect instead because it works better with my Flygon.
Do I have to lock a team already, when I register for a tourney this weekend or can I wait until the first match?
If you are referring to the Online Competition on the PGL, it will automatically lock the team you choose for your first battle.
Imo winning a regional is more impressive but its also more luck based. Like if you get haxed out on battlespot you can still keep trying and after a specific amount of battles your rating will show your "real" skill. At regionals its much more about getting good matchups, having the right meta call and not getting haxed out