Battle Tactics?

I wanted to talk to experienced trainers about battle strategy and different techniques that I could learn from.

The top things I would like to learn more about are,

- Type match ups What's effective against what? (Besides obvious ones like fire < water?)
- Specific moves What do you find useful and can turn the tide in a losing battle? (I prefer status moves like Poisoning)
- Abilities What is the most useful? (I find Natural Cure to be useful)


When I completed Diamond, My pokemon were almost 20 lvs below the elite four. I brought 20 Full Restores, 20 Max Potions and 50 Revives. (I didn't use all of them but I wanted to be prepared!)

My pokemon were
Dialga - LV 52
Honchcrow - LV 43
Drifloon - LV 23
Azel(?) - LV 50
Uiex(??) - LV 50
Haunter -LV 48

The most useful tactic I used was "Yawn" with Azel, then when the foe fell asleep, I switched to Haunter and used "Curse". This would guarantee a HP drain on every turn. I couldn't have done it without those two pokemon working together. I thought that maybe, MAYBE, certain moves and types can overcome pokemon that are incredibly more advanced by my own.

What do you think?

I think this fits better in Pokemon Gaming Central, as it is about the games. Moved!

Type match ups What's effective against what? (Besides obvious ones like fire < water?)

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Physical and Special split pretty much bought us the idea of what physical and special defensive walls/sponges are. In a sense, you don't want to switch in your Steelix to tank an incoming earth power, which is a special move and Steelix has low special defense, but you may want to tank an opposing pokemon's Earthquake despite Steelix's steel typing because he has the huge physical defense stat to take even the super effective earthquake.

Just because a move's type is not super effective, it doesn't mean that it wouldn't deal damage or vice versa. Arcues bless the physical and special split which helped trainers be even more considerate when it comes to a Pokemon's base stats.

- Abilities What is the most useful? (I find Natural Cure to be useful)

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Intimidate. Even on casual playthroughs Intimidate is such a life saving move because that -1 attack is able to reduce a lot of damage.

Filter. Reducing the damage of super effective hits is such a blessing especially for the bulkiest of monsters, like Mega Aggron.

Magic Guard pretty much puts the middle finger against stealth rocks and weather damage.

Sturdy. It wasn't until Gen 5 that Sturdy became such a wondrously annoying ability with it being a "free" focus sash. This enables certain cheesy setups such as Sturdy + Rock Polish + Weakness Policy + Jolly Golem to become suddenly fast and start earthquaking teams without priority attacks or weather to death.

Prankster. Such a great ability. It makes something like Jumpluff become a legitimate threat. Priority on status effects is too good.

Another thing i consider as a good practice is to learn how to damage calc. Calculating damage is something that can be applied well even in casual playthroughs of a game since it enables trainers to be more efficient with damage dealing, and it also lets trainers know why certain moves are a OHKO against a certain pokemon or not.

Also, accepting that hax is part of the game. Even in competitive battling, hax such as that missed fire blast, not fighting through paralysis, dat confusion, and even crits out of nowhere are always going to be present in battles. Which is why i always consider being careful against status effects such as paralysis because i never know what happens if my boosted sweeper gets suddenly paralyzed.

Mega XinZhao said:

Physical and Special split pretty much bought us the idea of what physical and special defensive walls/sponges are. In a sense, you don't want to switch in your Steelix to tank an incoming earth power, which is a special move and Steelix has low special defense, but you may want to tank an opposing pokemon's Earthquake despite Steelix's steel typing because he has the huge physical defense stat to take even the super effective earthquake.

Just because a move's type is not super effective, it doesn't mean that it wouldn't deal damage or vice versa. Arcues bless the physical and special split which helped trainers be even more considerate when it comes to a Pokemon's base stats.



Intimidate. Even on casual playthroughs Intimidate is such a life saving move because that -1 attack is able to reduce a lot of damage.

Filter. Reducing the damage of super effective hits is such a blessing especially for the bulkiest of monsters, like Mega Aggron.

Magic Guard pretty much puts the middle finger against stealth rocks and weather damage.

Sturdy. It wasn't until Gen 5 that Sturdy became such a wondrously annoying ability with it being a "free" focus sash. This enables certain cheesy setups such as Sturdy + Rock Polish + Weakness Policy + Jolly Golem to become suddenly fast and start earthquaking teams without priority attacks or weather to death.

Prankster. Such a great ability. It makes something like Jumpluff become a legitimate threat. Priority on status effects is too good.

Another thing i consider as a good practice is to learn how to damage calc. Calculating damage is something that can be applied well even in casual playthroughs of a game since it enables trainers to be more efficient with damage dealing, and it also lets trainers know why certain moves are a OHKO against a certain pokemon or not.

Also, accepting that hax is part of the game. Even in competitive battling, hax such as that missed fire blast, not fighting through paralysis, dat confusion, and even crits out of nowhere are always going to be present in battles. Which is why i always consider being careful against status effects such as paralysis because i never know what happens if my boosted sweeper gets suddenly paralyzed.

Click to expand...

A lot of what you just said I don't understand. I've been playing Pokemon again for maybe 3 weeks and just discovered Bidoof >.<

I dont call myself a "master" of the pokemon games but allow me to at least lighten up some terms:

Abilities that i find useful:

Intimidate = reduces an enemy's attack by 1 stage = basically if you've played a Gyarados in Gen 4 (i assume), he will always have the intimidate ability. So what happens is that pokemon with intimidate reduces the enemy's attack by 1 stage (the same mechanic as growl, except unlike Growl, this is a passive ability)

Sturdy = prevents a pokemon from being One hit KO'd. In gen 1 to 4, Sturdy only prevented One hit KO moves from working, its only in the later generations that Sturdy becomes an ability that makes a pokemon survive an attack that would have otherwised KO'd it in one hit -> 1HP

in generation 4, which i totally assume the game you are playing and the reason for making the topic, moves in pokemon are divided into 2 kinds: Physical moves and Special moves. Physical moves are moves that deal physical damage and apply from the pokemon's attack stat. Special moves are moves that deal special damage and it comes from a Pokemon's special stat.

It also applies to defense. Defense reduces the damage of physical moves. Special defense, obviously reduces the damage of special moves. Go figure.

I've played for so long I just know the type match ups now. The best way I learned was just through experience. I think a really good exercise that enforces this knowledge is building a team of 6 of all different types and seeing how many weaknesses you can cover. You don't actually have to train this team, but just write it down. Start with a favorite of yours and build off of it.

For example say you started with (we'll start with something easy) Voltorb. You would list its weaknesses and strengths and whether it changes or gains a type after it evolves.

Voltorb (electric, stays the same type after evolution)
Weaknesses - Ground
Strengths - Water, Flying

So you'd now want to add a type that will cover Voltorb's weakness to ground types so let's just go with Staryu. Keep in mind it's going to gain a type once it evolves so you may want to list the weaknesses of it's evolved form with it. I do anyway since I evolve all my pokemon.

Staryu (water, gains type after evo water/psychic)
Weaknesses - electric, grass, (bug, ghost, dark)
Strengths - fire, ground, rock, (fighting, poison)

Then from there I would pick which weakness would be the most annoying for me to deal with considering both voltorb and staryu together. I'd maybe but a type on my team to deal with grass or other electric types. Anyway you can do this however you want this was just an example and my preferences.


Anyway my strategy tends to be high speed/high attack as I like to just get the battle over with. This is not always a good idea as you may face an opponent that's really defensive which will survive your hit and then take down anything really fragile you have. So it's good to have a defensive/high hp member on your team to take any blows when you find an opponent like this or to also face other high speed/high attack opponents. One of my favorite moves to use to wittle down hp is toxic spikes. I've used it with Tentacruel and I'm able to dominate everything with it (try strapping black sludge to it too). Also another thing I like to do is strap big root to a grass type with a move like Giga Drain. It's getting a stab since it's a grass type using a grass move and big root let's it take a higher percentage of health from the opponent giving you more recovery.