Essentials For Your Pokemon Team

[vaporeon7]

What are some of the essential things for your Pokemon teams? Do you always have to have the move Surf, Fly or need a Ground Type? What about a HM Slave, a physical sweeper, a cleric or anything else? Post what you almost always try to have on your teams (not in challenges).

Personally I always try to have a Pokemon with Surf and one with Fly for maximum convenience. I don't like HM Slaves.

 

[Sydian]

Gotta have someone that can learn Flamethrower. Or some powerful fire move at least. And um I've gotten into the habit of having to have Furret or Aipom on my team. Yeah idk. lol <3

 

[Dillon_68]

I need all of my members to be able to learn the HMs, I'm against HM slaves. I need to cover a wide range of types, if not all of them.

 

[Imperator161]

I need something in my team to know Surf, and I also really like to have my starter on my team. For my "main" game in each generation, I typically pick the water starter anyway, so those two requirements are easily taken care of in one Pokemon. It's really useful to have a team member with Fly, too, though I'm willing to use various throw-away Pokemon for that move if necessary. I tend to stick the other HMs onto Pokemon that only come out of my PC when I need their moves.

 

[Impo]

they have to be cute and powerful ^-^

 

[PlatinumDude]

My main essentials are having Pokemon that can use Fly and Surf. Pokemon that look good and do well in battle are also important.

 

[SquirtleGirl]

Fly and Surf. I never have HM slaves. And I always seem to end up with an electric type no matter how hard I try not to have one :P

 

[Ryden]

Using my starter is essential for sure, but aside from that my team needs to have a fire, water, and psychic type along with either as Electric or Grass type pokemon.
I also like trying to make sure I can have something like Nidoking or Aggron in my party, you know, a pokemon with a large movepool with plenty of variety in there.
By this type I should have five Pokemon, and the last spot I usually try to have a dragon in, if not there I leave it as a wild card so to speak

I do try to have someone that know essential HM moves like cut, surf and fly.. providing my team doesn't already know or is soon to learn better moves. Fly is normally one that doesn't get fitted into the team well, so I just have to swap out a random flying pokemon to get around and swap back in the pokemon removed for it after I finish flying

 

[Archipelago]

Well, there aren't a huge amount of things that I find are essential, and I often enjoy experimenting with a team of mis-matches when the mood takes me, which can often end with surprising results, both good and bad. But there are a few things I try to do when I'm taking the game seriously.

The Four Base Elements - And by this, I mean one Pokemon from each of these types. Fire, Water, Grass and Electricity. Using this, you can cover each others weaknessess easily, managing a wide array of different attacks.

Starters - An easy Pokemon to retrieve which is usually of a type not found easily early in the game, unless of course you chose the Grass type. Usually my choice would be the Fire type as they seem to be becoming increasingly rare in the Pokemon world, and it sets you up with a decent combatant against the some-what common Bug-types in the early game stages.

Double Typing - A Pokemon with more than one type - in my opinion - is better than one with only a single element. Dual typing allows for further STAB moves, and usually a wider array of tactics and abilities for the user. While you may face the downsides of having further weaknesses (or less if you're lucky), it is brought back with a greater chance to fight with a higher likelyhood of approaching a foe in which an attack would be super effective.

 

[GlitchCity]

Well not just the moves surf and fly, but specific pokemon. I MUST have a Flying and a Dragon type on my team. And that is mostly it. Im not too picky :3

 

[-Cygnus-]

I always have and always will keep my starter... It's been there since I left the first town, and we've gone through so much together :') I don't even put my starters in the box... At all. Ever.

Haha but other than that... I had never heard of the term "HM slave" until a few years back, so I always had to make sure I had at least one water type (maybe two for Hoenn because of it's unnecessary amount of water HMs), and one half-junk Pokemon that was still useable in battles, but had that terribile move Rock Smash...

I almost never have dragon types, they come way too late in the game for me to feel like integrating them into my team :/

 

[Bibliophibian]

I always keep my starter, and I always have a Water type for Surf and a Flying type for Fly, mostly because it's terribly inconvenient to have to run back to the PC if I need to do either of those things. I don't usually like to keep a permanent slot for an HM slave, since I like training a full team of 6.
Other than that, I'm not very picky. :P

 

[Clark]

My team must consist, at least mainly, of Pokemon I've never trained before. Whether or not I keep HM slaves depends on the size of the team (sometimes I'll only use three or four Pokemon), but I'll always make sure I can use all the essential HMs + Fly.

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

1. A Water Type.
2. An Electric Type.
3. A Ground Type.
4. Something with Fly (except in XD/Colo)
5. The moves Earthquake, Ice Beam, and Thunderbolt.
6. A cat-like Pokemon whenever possible. Yes, that does mean I suffered through Delcatty in Sapphire and Emerald, and Purugly in Pearl. Said cat Pokemon must be female.

 

[Aquacorde]

Fly, Surf, Starter, Crobat and/or Gyarados. I also like to have a variety of types, though I usually end up with two water types.

 

[Haberdasher]

I always keep my starter, a Water-type with Surf, and a Flying-type with Fly. The rest varies, but I've found I usually end up with some variation of Water, Fire, Grass, Flying, Electric, and a wild card slot, often but not always filled by a Dragon-type.

 

[Shining Raichu]

I follow a basic pattern for all of my teams:

- A fire type
- A grass type
- A water type (which usually ends up as an HM slave because there are so many water HMs, though luckily they're powerful)
- An electric type
- A flying type
- One other. Usually it ends up being Ground or Psychic, though I have had Dragons in there from time to time.

I always teach Cut to the Grass Pokemon.

 

[Epic-Scizor]

I always have to have the starter in my team and they never ever leave my team. Another few requirements is a Flying type and Water type and the moves Surf and Fly on the team. I also like to have a Fire-type although that isn't exactly an essential for the team(but almost all my teams have it)

 

[RYOUKI]

Here is my checklist:

Starter - A must have, if starter pokemon sucked, too bad. (I suffered when I chose Chikorita as a starter. Why did I chose a 'defensive' starter?)
Flying - it's really annoying when you can't fly.
Water - It's also annoying when you can't surf.
Grass/Fire/Water - 2 of those to counteract the elemental triangle.
Psychic, or atleast, a pokemon who can learn Psychic.

 

[Brendino]

The only thing that is usually consistent on my teams is that I have one Water type Pokemon as an HM slave, and usually one other HM slave. Another constant is that I always have a Flying type on my team, even if I don't have the HM yet.