The Latest Rage! (HGSS)

So I'm playing HGSS for probably the 5th time, I and I need help making a decision on teams, and since my last run failed, I want to know if this team will work well or not

First off, we have Typhlosion

Lava Plume
Flamethrower
Focus Blast
Solarbeam/Swift

I wanted to keep Flamethrower and Lava Plume because, while flamethrower is more powerful, Lava Plume has a higher chance of Burn, which could come in handy. Focus Blast is powerful and special, so yeah. The indecisivness comes with the 4th move, Solarbeam is powerful and special, but takes two turns to charge. Swift on the other hand, is weaker, but also special, and never misses, which would be better?

Next we have Gengar

Shadow Ball
Hypnosis/ Focus Blast
Nightmare/ Dream Eater (only with hypnosis)/ Thunder
Sludge Bomb

Shadow Ball is obvious. As is Sludge Bomb. The other moves though... Hypnosis and Nightmare/ Dream eater would pair well for large, albeit gradual damage. Where as Focus Blast and Thunder, while both being innacurate, can pull off some massive damage when Paired with Gengar's Immense Sp. Atk. Which One Guys?

After that, we've got Kingdra

Dragon Pulse
Waterfall
Surf
Ice Beam/ Blizzard

Kingdra has the same base stat for Atk, Sp. Atk, Def, and Sp. Def, 95. As such, it can pull off just about any attack I give it. In fact, the only thing that's even remotely a question is whether to stick with Blizzard or ever teach it Ice Beam. Blizzard, while innacurate is easy to obtain, unlike Ice Beam, and I'm not even sure where you get that.

One of the more unusual options, here we have Dodrio

Return/ Facade
Drill Peck
Fly
?????????

Ok so first move, not even really sure what it should be, but I picked those two because both have the potential to be VERY strong, especially with STAB. Next, Drill Peck. Again STAB, High Power, self explanatory. Fly, again, STAB High power, plus usefullness outside of battle. Now, the last move.... I honestly have no idea whatsoever. Toxic? Pursuit? Steel Wing? Roost? Help please?

Next, Machamp

Cross Chop
Earthquake
Rock Slide
Rock Climb

Cross Chop STAB. Earthquake, High Power Physical Move, Rock Slide, Also High Power Physical move, covers weakness to flying types. Rock Climb, while it is powerful, and has a chance to confuse, is there purely so I can get to Red at the end of the game. All of these are otherwise self explanatory.

Last, but not least, Alakazam

Psychic
Focus Blast
Shadow Ball
Hyper Beam/ Energy Ball

Alakazam has high speed and sp. atk. Psychic is a 100 (or is it 90?) power STAB move, Focus Blast is a 120 Power special move. Shadow Ball is a pretty strong ghost type move, and Hyper beam is another strong special move, but it's only there until I get energy ball.

So what do you guys think?

It looks good, but no Hyper Beam. Alakazam doesnt get a STAB, and it leaves opening on your low defense. I'd go with Charge Beam or Recover. Charge Beam takes out enemies with HP in the red, and will almost always raise sp.atk

If Machamp's ability is 'No Guard', use Stone Edge instead of Rock Slide.

On Dodrio, you could go with the common Tri Attack. STAB and chance of burn/freeze/paralysis.

Ice Beam is a better move, unless you have Hail. Have Kingdra hold Leftovers, and it should get back the HP it lost to Hail.

All charge moves (Solarbeam, Hyper Beam) arent helpful. If you can get Sunny Day, Solar Beam will fire the turn you use it. Or you could skip Sunny Day and use Solar Beam when the enemy wastes a turn.('Leader Jasmine used a Hyper Potion. Typhlosion is gathering light. Typhloion used SolarBeam')
And whered you get those pkmn images?

I just googled the Pokemon Images.
I didn't use Tri -Attack because it was special
I will try to get a no-guard Machamp, but I was only going with Rock Slide because I wasn't sure where to get Stone Edge. I can always look it up I guess. EDIT: I just found out Stone Edge is a battle frontier prize. For 80 B.P.......DEFINITELY NOT HAPPENING.
So should I use Solarbeam or Swift on the Typhlosion? I don't plan on having any weather moves.

Swift is probably the way to go if you're not using Sunny Day. Granted, it's probably not too big of a deal, as your other team members can deal with Typhlosion's biggest threats. But it can help against those Double-Teams and Minimizes you may run into.

Koga's Muk minimized against me so much that Swift was the only attack that could really hit it.

As far as Ice Beam over Blizzard, the only way to get Ice Beam pre-E4 is through the Goldenrod Game corner, and it costs a whooping 10,000 coins. And since we can't buy coins anymore, it'll take a while to rack up enough coins through that stupid vortorb flip thing. Go with Blizzard. It may be inaccurate and low on PP, but use the PP Ups you find on it. You may find yourself getting lucky with it.

Well I guess that since I'm using Rock Slide and Not Stone Edge (because of how difficult Stone Edge is to get) Guts would probably be the better ability for Machamp. Granted, Rock Slide CAN miss, but it's not often, and every other move has 100 Accuracy (meaning that Evasion and Accuracy affecting moves could throw it off.)

If my signal ever gets fixed, I'll give you a free stone edge tm. You can buy'em in Celedon for 5500 or something.
And Ice beam is easy to get actually. All you have to do is stop the voltorb flip when you got about 12+ coins to gain. It took me like half an hour.
My Typhlosion knows Lava Plume, Flamethrower, Eruption and Return. I know I should change uts moveset, but it works for now. But give Typhlosion Eruption. More HP Typhlosion has, more damage it does. And with a STAB and a Charcoal, it should leave almost anything in the red.
And have a pkmn with Haze if you can. You can use it to cancel out any stat changes, like Koga's Minimize.
For Dodrio....I got nothing.

I would replace Lava Plume with Eruption and have the held item be Charcoal. You have 150 base power + 50% STAB making it 225 power and the Charcoal adds onto that, thus making it a very deadly move for those who are afraid of Fire types.

If my signal ever gets fixed, I'll give you a free stone edge tm. You can buy'em in Celedon for 5500 or something.

Click to expand...

No you can't. You're probably thinking about stealth rock.

I do sort of plan on teaching Eruption to Typhlosion, but I was mainly focusing on the moves I would have when I took on the E4 for the first time.

Do you want a free Stone Edge TM?

• Honestly, I had the same set on Typhlosion... Because those are the only decent moves he learns. You'll never use SolarBeam. Like ever. It helps with Rock / Ground / Water, which give you trouble... But you're basically dead if you stay in.
• Nightmare and Dream Eater suck. Just use Psychic and Thunderbolt. Explosion works in Gen IV too.
• Kingdra is good for Rest, Sleep Talk, Surf, Dragon Pulse / Ice Beam or Rest, Dragon Dance, Outrage, Waterfall OR Dragon Dance, Waterfall, Return, Draco Meteor.
• Dodrio wants Brave Bird over Drill Peck, Return over Facade, and Roost. You know Fly sucks (high power, really?)... But you need it right? Replacements for Fly include Quick Attack and Payback (or Faint Attack if you like being indie).

Gymnotide said:

Do you want a free Stone Edge TM?

• Honestly, I had the same set on Typhlosion... Because those are the only decent moves he learns. You'll never use SolarBeam. Like ever. It helps with Rock / Ground / Water, which give you trouble... But you're basically dead if you stay in.
• Nightmare and Dream Eater suck. Just use Psychic and Thunderbolt. Explosion works in Gen IV too.
• Kingdra is good for Rest, Sleep Talk, Surf, Dragon Pulse / Ice Beam or Rest, Dragon Dance, Outrage, Waterfall OR Dragon Dance, Waterfall, Return, Draco Meteor.
• Dodrio wants Brave Bird over Drill Peck, Return over Facade, and Roost. You know Fly sucks (high power, really?)... But you need it right? Replacements for Fly include Quick Attack and Payback (or Faint Attack if you like being indie).

Click to expand...

-Nah, the stone edge is fine, It'll do just fine with Rock Slide.
-I'll probably just use swift unless I find I need it.
-Yeah I figured Nightmare and Dreameater wouldn't do to good. I never even thought about Psychic, but wouldn't Focus Blast be better to cover Gengar's dark type weakness?
-The only problem with Brave Bird is that I would have to breed to get it. Considering this is an in-game team, it's just not worth it when Drill Peck will do just fine. And yes I had fly mainly for it's convenience, I know that when you have Drill Peck, which is only ten less power, fly is outclassed.

PikachuGuy said:

I would replace Lava Plume with Eruption and have the held item be Charcoal. You have 150 base power + 50% STAB making it 225 power and the Charcoal adds onto that, thus making it a very deadly move for those who are afraid of Fire types.

Click to expand...

I dont think STAB adds 50% of the moves power. I think its more like 15-25. And all held items (charcoal, miracle seed and others) add 10%.

STAB does add 50%, I just looked it up. But it increases to 100% if your Pokemon has the Adaptability ability.

Run Focus Blast over Sludge Bomb then. I ran Focus Blast on my Gengar too.. Except he kept getting trolled by accuracy and died to Dark-types anyway lol.
Sludge Bomb doesn't have all that great coverage (even though it was like my favorite attack in Gen II).

Dragonite's Wrath said:

I dont think STAB adds 50% of the moves power. I think its more like 15-25. And all held items (charcoal, miracle seed and others) add 10%.

Click to expand...

In Generation IV, they boosted Charcoal and the like to 20%.

PikachuGuy said:

STAB does add 50%, I just looked it up. But it increases to 100% if your Pokemon has the Adaptability ability.

Click to expand...

Eevee's the only pkmn I've seen with Adaptability, and I thought it powered up an attack if the last move you used was that type(Charm, then a boost for tackle)
Now that I'm all confused,
does Mold Breaker eliminate Levitate?
I forgot what I had to do to get Eevee from Bebe.

Dragonite's Wrath said:

Eevee's the only pkmn I've seen with Adaptability, and I thought it powered up an attack if the last move you used was that type(Charm, then a boost for tackle)
Now that I'm all confused,
does Mold Breaker eliminate Levitate?
I forgot what I had to do to get Eevee from Bebe.

Click to expand...

Adaptability's flavor text says "Powers up moves of the same type."

This means that it powers up moves that are the same type as the user. This effect is programmed on top of STAB bonus, so STAB doesn't add 50%, but 100% instead (so instead of 1.5x, you do 2x damage for using an attack of the same type).

Pokemon with Adaptability are Eevee, Porygon-Z, and Basculin. Corphish, Crawdaunt, and Feebas all learn it from the Dream World.

Mold Breaker eliminated Levitate ONLY if the user is using an attack. That means that if you're in a double and your ally uses Earthquake, the Levitate user will remain safe. Only Ground-type moves and Sky Drop owning to the user will ignore Levitate.

To get an Eevee from Bebe, you need to obtain the National Dex.
But this is off-topic.

Somehow helping me out with my HG In game team/ rating it translated to debates about Adaptability and Eevee. lol. I'll say it was off-topic.

Now, On topic: Thanks everyone, your input has been much appreciated, and I think I've got an answer for my questions.

the flame trower is not good make sunny day instead

Okay, first of all, it might be kind of helpful to post all of your Pokemon's stats (e.g. Sp. Attk is 178 or something). And you can also look some of this stuff up on Bulbapedia or Serebii or whatnot, but whatever.

Typhlosion:
For the last move, choose Swift. Solarbeam takes too long to charge, and it leaves you open to strong attacks while you're waiting. If you picked Solarbeam because it gives you an advantage against Rock and Ground types, you still have
Kingdra for backup. As an added bonus, Swift always hits and it's easy to learn (Typhlosion learns it at lvl 31).

Gengar:
For your 2nd move, do Hypnosis. You already have Focus Blast with Typhlosion and Alakazam, and when you have Hypnosis you can choose Nightmare/Dream Eater. I would recommend Nightmare, even though Dream Eater restores HP, you can always heal with items, considering the other Pokemon would be asleep anyways.

Kingdra:
Last move should be Icebeam. You can get it at the game corner for 10,000 or so coins, which is a lot, but it's worth it. Otherwise, you can find it somewhere in Seafoam islands, I believe. Icebeam has a better chance of hitting, and it does a
decent amount of damage. You'll just waste turns trying to hit the other Pokemon with a Blizzard. Strong and fast is a good strategy, in my eyes at least.

Dodrio:
Whether you want Return or Facade for your 1st move depends. Do you want to spend the time making Return worthwhile by making your Pokemon like you? Facade is only really useful when Dodrio has a status condition, as you know. Unless
you want to teach Dodrio a move or have it hold an item that inflicts a status condition, the chances of Facade dealing a lot of damage are not certain. Return and especially Facade are better for more competitive/strategic battling. I would say teach Dodrio a more reliable move for its first attack, something like Tri Attack, which can cause damage and a status condition. It also gets STAB. Or you could teach it Endeavor instead, which is always handy in a fix. For Dodrio's last move, a good choice would be Toxic, since it wears down the opponent quickly and is easy to use (e.g. no charging up or backlash).

Machamp:
Its moves are fine as they are.

Alakzam:
Psychic is a good move, it has 90 power. The last move's choice should be Energy Ball, because Hyper Beam leaves you too open and vulnerable to attack. Also, you don't have a single Grass type move otherwise, unless you decide to
teach Typhlosion Solar Beam. But you have Normal type moves with Dodrio anyways, so the better choice would be Energy Ball.

Remember, these are only my opinions.
Anyways, I hope this team is good and you'll be able to beat the game well with it. Good luck!