Frostweaver
Ancient + Prehistoric
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- Age 36
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- Seen Sep 12, 2016
This guide is written for people who has already finished the game, and wants to battle in a more competitive style (such as participating in tournaments or playing online). Questions such as "how do you catch Feebas" do not belong here. It is expected that you know the mechanics of almost every move and has access to every Pokemon available.
Training
Q: So... what to do with my starter?
A: Always try to get a female one for it. Then you can make duplicates of it through breeding. This way you can get the egg moves you desired and the nature you wanted. I will cover nature later.
This doesn't matter if your version of the Pokemon game has a Ditto. Using Ditto to breed, you can get multiples of your starters. If you don't understand this, refer to the breeding corner forum.
Q: So how should i train my pokemon to maximize my stats?
A: Don't battle at all. Follow these steps.
1) Pull out that pokemon that you want to train in the lowest lvl possible (do all breeding necessary)
2) Rare candy your way to lvl 100 without a single battle(choose when to evolve and what moves to keep). Now before you say this is stupid or cheap, read on first.
3) In the advanced generation, stats growth are calculated by EV. You get a hidden amount of EV for every opponent you battle. Every Pokemon gives a different amount of EV in different categories. For example, a Zigzagoon gives you EV +1 in speed, while a Spinda gives EV +1 in sp.att. 4 points of EV means +1 in stats for that category. However, you can only get up to 512 EV, meaning maximizing only 2 category out of HP, Attack, Defense, Sp.Attack, Sp.Def and Speed. So you must choose who to battle. Now that you're at lvl 100, even if you don't have any EV growth, you can still KO anyone. So choose which area of EV to improve on, and choose your opponents wisely. Train for hours until you get an effort ribbon (meaning that your EV has been maximized). Put it in the box like the classical GSC box trick to maximize stats. Voila... There's a more detailed guide regarding this concept in the RSE FAQ.
Note that this doesn't include breading for IVs, but only focusing on controlling the aspect of EVs to get the best stats.
IVs can be slightly manipulated through breeding. If you really want to truly get the ultimate stats, go ask the breeding corner regarding how to breed for IVs.
Q: Where can i get so much rare candy?
A: Pickup. Pickup is a handy ability that Zigzagoon, Linoone and Phanpy has. It will randomly earn itself a free attachment item. When training, bring out the pokemon you want to train, along with 5 zigzagoons will earn you a lot of rare candies easily. Meowth in FRLG can find you rare candy as well.
For emerald, you'll have to actually train up your Zigzagoon/Linoone to manipulate what item they can dig out...
Q: How come some people on this forum keep asking me to get all these TMs? How the heck can I get so many of these limited goodies?
Well first of all, don't ever teach a TM to anyone within your game until you've completely planned out your future perfect dream team. Through some careful technique with breeding, you can "increase" the amount of TMs you have. In a "RMT" always tell us what versions of the game you have, and what other version do you have at your disposal. If you have just more than one game of the Advanced Generation, then we expect infinite TMs as you can trade back and forth, continously restarting a game to get more and more TMs.
Online battling always refer to Netbattle, a program where all the moves are at your disposal, as long as it's within legal limits.
Team Building
Q: So what's a good team?
A: A team should basically consist of at least one of the following...
-a pseudohazer/hazer
-has a way to destroy flail/reversal/berry abusers with very low hp
-a sweeper (one special and one physical, or a mixed sweeper)
-one or few Pokemon capable of tanking
-safe way to destroy some very common Pokemon, known as "OU" (overused). Check what they are using the Pokemon Battledex.
However this is only a general outline. After you got the hang of the "metagame" you can start writing out your own rules.
Q: What's pseudohazer? what's haze? it does no damage! why use it?
A: Pseudohazer and hazer saves your life. A pseudohazer is a pokemon capable of using either whirlwind or roar. Haze has the special ability to neglect all stat booster moves such as sword dance, calm mind, bulk up, agility and double team. I'm sure no one wants to face up against a Kyogre with 900+ special attack and special defense. This is the time when pseudohazer and haze comes into play. By using one of those moves, a pokemon loses all of their stat bonuses, reverting back to their original stats. Pseudohazer also has a few other side effect. It destroys mean look as well. Pseudohaze is Umbreon's arch rival.
Q: OK! I'm all ready! Thunder, Fire Blast, Blizzard, Solarbeam... ready for mass destruction now! So now can i win battles?
A: Actually no... when you are building a team be aware of PP. Powerful moves will run out of PP quickly, and if the opponent is stalling you out then you will be wasting your PP. Also take accuracy of a move into account too. Blizzard has only 5 PP, but only 80% accuracy. So technically only 4 out of the 5 blizzards will hit. So it's not the best move. Try ice beam... twice the PP, 100% accuracy... but only sacrificing 30 attack power. Balance your PP and power, and accuracy as well when considering moves.
2 turn attack are not acceptable. They are not that strong, and the opponent can switch to a Pokemon who has resistance to your attack. For example you fly the first turn, the opponent will pull out the Steelix to block off Fly then, wasting your attack turn. Any attacks that take multiple turns are not good. The only exception is dive and fly, when you need them for stalling purposes.
Do not put 2 offensive attacks of the same element on a Pokemon. You will be wasting an attack slot. To have Shockwave and Thunderbolt on a Pokemon is a great example of this common error. Thunderbolt does a lot more damage than Shockwave, so we will be using the stronger move instead of the weaker shockwave. If we are not using shockwave, then why are we wasting an attack slot with it?
There are a few exceptional cases where duplicated moves are used, such as having both facade and quick attack for Swellow. Moves with these following special effects can go with another offensive move of the same type if you like. But absolutely and never more than 2 offensive move of the same type.
-if the move has first striking ability and if the move results in a self KO
Refer to the later list regarding all the usable moves that are ever acceptable for competitive battling purposes.
Q: Ok... so what attacks should i give to *this* pokemon?
A: Look at the pokemon stats. See if the stats support the move you gave it. For example if a pokemon has an attack of 200 and a special attack of 300, you would want to give it special attacks with no physical attacks at all. If your pokemon has no attack power, resort to more strategical damage like toxic, or if it has high defense then make it a staller to waste the opponent's energy and PP. It all depends on stats most of the time.
Q: So what's with those adamant, quiet, modest stuff?
A: They strengthen your stats. Each personality/nature can boost one of your stats by 10%, sacrificing another area's stats by 10%. So you have to choose your nature carefully to see if it suits your strategy/pokemon. A list on nature can be found here: *link removed* As for which one of them to use, refer to a later section that teaches you what EVs and nature to get for most Pokemon.
Q: What's with rest? 2 turn of sleep? That's useless!
A: It's your life and savior in some cases. Anyone with decent defensive power can consider this. Rest can restore irritating status like paralyze and toxic, and also fully recovers your hp as well. It adds to your staying power. With more staying power, your pokemon can last longer in battle. No one wants their pokemon to go down in 3 hits right? It is a good substitute for the other healing moves as well, such as recover, slack off, wish, synthesis, morning sun, softboil and moonlight. Notice that Rest can heal the status off of your Pokemon by replacing the status such as burnt or toxic into sleep, while all other healing moves cannot.
The combo "chesto rest" is sometimes used as well, using a chesto berry to wake up the Pokemon immediatley after using rest. Do note that Pokemon with abilities such as vital spirit cannot use rest. They can learn it, but the move will fail due to contradicting nature of the move and the ability (ex: Vigoroth).
Q: What is so freaky about Blissey and Snorlax? I can beat them easily within the game... what's to be scared of?
A: They are the bane of the metagame (or part of it.) There are many other terrifying Pokemon, but I just chose these two as examples.
Blissey has an insane special defense. Blissey alone is very annoying with close to complete immunity to special attack. Also it has one of the strongest move in the world: heal bell/aromatherapy. It heals its whole team of any negative status such as burn and paralyze. With softboil too to recover all the damage, Blissey quickly makes its way to the blacklist of the metagame.
Snorlax is just as evil. With curse to increase its defense, it's a tank... massive attack power after curse, it can roll over your team. Its only weakness is its physical defense, but curse can fix that up for it. If Snorlax got its chance to fully curse up, you are close to having no chance to win at all unless you haze in time (not even pseudohaze can help you as pseudohaze always strike last, and Snorlax can OHKO you by then). Now with even more moves added to its already wonderful movepool, its attack are unpredictable. It can be a classic curselax, or a blocklax, or a completely new Snorlax. It can use double edge for mass destruction, body slam or paralyze and deals great amount of damage at the same time. It may use brick break to destroy other Snorlax and the dark types, or even shadowball to finish off Shedinjas. Fire Blast can also be found on Snorlax to counter Skarmory. Earthquake is common on Snorlax as well. With so much moves to be afraid of plus a strong special defense, it is a common sight in the metagame.
These 2 are just examples of many scary Pokemon that within the game they sound harmless... there are a lot more powerful Pokemon hidden that will amaze and surprise you. Just because you've beaten them before against them controlled by the computer, that doesn't mean that they're no longer a threat at all. You'll be mistakened.
Check the Pokemon Battledex to see some other common foes.
Q: How can i improve my battling skills?
A: "Practice makes perfect". The hardest part to the metagame in terms of battling skill is predicting the opponent's moves, switching and when to pseudohaze. You can do nothing about the pseudohazing part. But you can improve on your prediction skill and switching skill by knowing every Pokemon's common moveset. If you know what move they have, you can switch/act in advance to counter the strategy. Memerizing some important stats will help too. Say that there is a battle between a Breloom and a Kingdra. If Breloom goes first, spore will do Kingdra in for good. However Kingdra also got ice beam which is super effective against Breloom. So now's the time where memerizing stats will help. If you remember the speed that Kingdra is generally faster, then you'll know that the chances are bending towards Kingdra and the Breloom player should switch out.
Check the Pokemon Battledex as well.
Q: What EVs and Natures should I give to <this> Pokemon?
That'll depend on the role it is playing... As a first ultimate rule though, do NOT try to use EVs to balance off the stats a little, or to pull up low stats. That is something you should never do. Generally, EV is invested in stats where you excel at, with a nature strengthening a boosted stat while further weakening a useless and weak stat. Also, for a defensive setup, ALWAYS improve HP as one of your main priority. Giving no EV to hp while maximizing your defensive stats won't help much at all.
Also, when defense or sp.defense reaches over the 350 stats, it's usually a good hint to tell you that any more EV in taht category is quite likely to be wasted. Invest some of the leftovers in an offensive stats so your tank can deal a little bit of damage, slowly wearing your opponent down. This rule is almost always true except for Shuckle.
Pokemon who relies on agility, chlorophyll or rain dance should reach a speed of 198, so that under the x2 speed effect, they can outrun Jolteon/Aerodactyl/Mewtwo/Crobat.
Pokemon using counter/mirror coat should always buff hp.
Q: So what are all those terminologies used? What's STAB? HP?
Terminology list:
Sweeping: to eliminate the opponent's pokemon without giving them the slighest chance to retaliate (meaning high offensive power). Most pokemon who can sweep is fast, but there are exceptions, like Slowbro and Slowking.
physical sweeper: an offensive Pokemon made to sweep with physical attacks
special sweeper: an offensive Pokemon made to sweep with special attacks
mixed sweeper: an offensive Pokemon made to sweep with a mixture of physical AND special moves
annoyer: a Pokemon dedicated to causing nasty statuses or other various methods to annoy all living daylights out of your opponent
STAB: Same Type Attack Bonus, STAB. If a Pokemon uses a move that's the same type as that Pokemon, the attack will get a bonus of multiplying the damage done with that attack by 1.5.
Example: Pikachu using thunderbolt (electric Pokemon using electric attacks)
Tank/Sponge: A defensive Pokemon made to endure attacks. Though generally tank refers to Pokemon dedicated to endure physical attacks while sponges generally refer to Pokemon dedicated to special attacks, they are sometimes used interchangably.
Spiker: Pokemon with the ability to spike, such as Skarmory
Ubar/00ber: describes legendary Pokemon of supreme stats that can easily sweep the opponent's team. Note that not all legendaries are ubar, such as Jirachi or Articuno (they're a lot closer to a high stats UU)
OU: Over-Used Pokemon... they are frequently used in the metagame due to high stats, good movepools and so on
BL: Borderline... they are Pokemon who sometimes make an appearance, yet it's just once in awhile... the in-between of an OU and an UU
UU: Underused... Pokemon that are hardly used due to crappy stats, bad movepools or they're just a weaker version of something else...
NU: Neverused... Pokemon that are never heard of because they just never get played at all... sadly, most of them are either water, normal or bug types.
HP ______: Hidden Power ________. Refer to the previous sections in the guide regarding what's hidden power
RMT: "Rate My Team" aka places where people asks for advice and help regarding their team(s). Within PokeCommunity, it is preferred that RMT talks of your Pokemon's natures, movesets, item attachments, EVs and some short side note along with the Pokemon. If you don't know how to handle all these details, feel free to leave it blank, but we certainly strongly encourage you to actually try to do as much as you can.
RMTs isn't "Make a team for me please." Keep that in mind. If you got a team of 5 we can always give some suggestion about what's the last Pokemon, but we won't do an entire moveset for you, nor will we ever give you team members for like your entire team.
Metagame: the balance, strategies and other various aspects related to competitive battling for the Pokemon game.
Buff/Debuff: as the word suggests, a buff increases the power of something while a debuff weakens the power of something.
Nerf: usually used to describe how a Pokemon gets a lot weaker due to the changes of the metagame, such as how the introduction of EVs greatly weakened Mew and Kingdra
gg: "good game" and is a common saying for good manners at the end of a battle for online battling
hax: interchangable for the term "luck" basically
Status Suffix
pyro--: a prefix "will o wisp" user, or various ways to cause the burn status
tract--: a prefix for "attract" user
para--: a prefix for "paralyze" status user
toxic--: a prefix for "toxic" status user
--fusion: a suffix for "confuse" status user
--flinch: a prefix for "flinch" status user, not a real status
double powder: a term refering to any Pokemon capable of using a sleep status along with another status such as paralyze, burnt or toxic. Though in theory double powder is weak as the different status is contradictory, it does work in practice if used correctly. Double Powder is used only if sleep clause is on.
--shuffling: a suffix for the act of using roar/whirlwind along with another status, making is possible ot cause a status, force a switch and then induce the status onto another one of Opponent's Pokemon again.
So when you're describing a Pokemon capable of using a status, choose the correct prefix and suffix. Say if you want to describe a Ninetales capable of using both roar and will o wisp, then it'll be "pyroshuffling." A Lanturn capable of using thunder wave, confuse ray and attract for annoying purposes will be called "paratractfusion" as it can paralyze, confuse and attract all at once.
Be sure to check this guide again, as it will be updated frequently.
Training
Q: So... what to do with my starter?
A: Always try to get a female one for it. Then you can make duplicates of it through breeding. This way you can get the egg moves you desired and the nature you wanted. I will cover nature later.
This doesn't matter if your version of the Pokemon game has a Ditto. Using Ditto to breed, you can get multiples of your starters. If you don't understand this, refer to the breeding corner forum.
Q: So how should i train my pokemon to maximize my stats?
A: Don't battle at all. Follow these steps.
1) Pull out that pokemon that you want to train in the lowest lvl possible (do all breeding necessary)
2) Rare candy your way to lvl 100 without a single battle(choose when to evolve and what moves to keep). Now before you say this is stupid or cheap, read on first.
3) In the advanced generation, stats growth are calculated by EV. You get a hidden amount of EV for every opponent you battle. Every Pokemon gives a different amount of EV in different categories. For example, a Zigzagoon gives you EV +1 in speed, while a Spinda gives EV +1 in sp.att. 4 points of EV means +1 in stats for that category. However, you can only get up to 512 EV, meaning maximizing only 2 category out of HP, Attack, Defense, Sp.Attack, Sp.Def and Speed. So you must choose who to battle. Now that you're at lvl 100, even if you don't have any EV growth, you can still KO anyone. So choose which area of EV to improve on, and choose your opponents wisely. Train for hours until you get an effort ribbon (meaning that your EV has been maximized). Put it in the box like the classical GSC box trick to maximize stats. Voila... There's a more detailed guide regarding this concept in the RSE FAQ.
Note that this doesn't include breading for IVs, but only focusing on controlling the aspect of EVs to get the best stats.
IVs can be slightly manipulated through breeding. If you really want to truly get the ultimate stats, go ask the breeding corner regarding how to breed for IVs.
Q: Where can i get so much rare candy?
A: Pickup. Pickup is a handy ability that Zigzagoon, Linoone and Phanpy has. It will randomly earn itself a free attachment item. When training, bring out the pokemon you want to train, along with 5 zigzagoons will earn you a lot of rare candies easily. Meowth in FRLG can find you rare candy as well.
For emerald, you'll have to actually train up your Zigzagoon/Linoone to manipulate what item they can dig out...
Q: How come some people on this forum keep asking me to get all these TMs? How the heck can I get so many of these limited goodies?
Well first of all, don't ever teach a TM to anyone within your game until you've completely planned out your future perfect dream team. Through some careful technique with breeding, you can "increase" the amount of TMs you have. In a "RMT" always tell us what versions of the game you have, and what other version do you have at your disposal. If you have just more than one game of the Advanced Generation, then we expect infinite TMs as you can trade back and forth, continously restarting a game to get more and more TMs.
Online battling always refer to Netbattle, a program where all the moves are at your disposal, as long as it's within legal limits.
Team Building
Q: So what's a good team?
A: A team should basically consist of at least one of the following...
-a pseudohazer/hazer
-has a way to destroy flail/reversal/berry abusers with very low hp
-a sweeper (one special and one physical, or a mixed sweeper)
-one or few Pokemon capable of tanking
-safe way to destroy some very common Pokemon, known as "OU" (overused). Check what they are using the Pokemon Battledex.
However this is only a general outline. After you got the hang of the "metagame" you can start writing out your own rules.
Q: What's pseudohazer? what's haze? it does no damage! why use it?
A: Pseudohazer and hazer saves your life. A pseudohazer is a pokemon capable of using either whirlwind or roar. Haze has the special ability to neglect all stat booster moves such as sword dance, calm mind, bulk up, agility and double team. I'm sure no one wants to face up against a Kyogre with 900+ special attack and special defense. This is the time when pseudohazer and haze comes into play. By using one of those moves, a pokemon loses all of their stat bonuses, reverting back to their original stats. Pseudohazer also has a few other side effect. It destroys mean look as well. Pseudohaze is Umbreon's arch rival.
Q: OK! I'm all ready! Thunder, Fire Blast, Blizzard, Solarbeam... ready for mass destruction now! So now can i win battles?
A: Actually no... when you are building a team be aware of PP. Powerful moves will run out of PP quickly, and if the opponent is stalling you out then you will be wasting your PP. Also take accuracy of a move into account too. Blizzard has only 5 PP, but only 80% accuracy. So technically only 4 out of the 5 blizzards will hit. So it's not the best move. Try ice beam... twice the PP, 100% accuracy... but only sacrificing 30 attack power. Balance your PP and power, and accuracy as well when considering moves.
2 turn attack are not acceptable. They are not that strong, and the opponent can switch to a Pokemon who has resistance to your attack. For example you fly the first turn, the opponent will pull out the Steelix to block off Fly then, wasting your attack turn. Any attacks that take multiple turns are not good. The only exception is dive and fly, when you need them for stalling purposes.
Do not put 2 offensive attacks of the same element on a Pokemon. You will be wasting an attack slot. To have Shockwave and Thunderbolt on a Pokemon is a great example of this common error. Thunderbolt does a lot more damage than Shockwave, so we will be using the stronger move instead of the weaker shockwave. If we are not using shockwave, then why are we wasting an attack slot with it?
There are a few exceptional cases where duplicated moves are used, such as having both facade and quick attack for Swellow. Moves with these following special effects can go with another offensive move of the same type if you like. But absolutely and never more than 2 offensive move of the same type.
-if the move has first striking ability and if the move results in a self KO
Refer to the later list regarding all the usable moves that are ever acceptable for competitive battling purposes.
Q: Ok... so what attacks should i give to *this* pokemon?
A: Look at the pokemon stats. See if the stats support the move you gave it. For example if a pokemon has an attack of 200 and a special attack of 300, you would want to give it special attacks with no physical attacks at all. If your pokemon has no attack power, resort to more strategical damage like toxic, or if it has high defense then make it a staller to waste the opponent's energy and PP. It all depends on stats most of the time.
Q: So what's with those adamant, quiet, modest stuff?
A: They strengthen your stats. Each personality/nature can boost one of your stats by 10%, sacrificing another area's stats by 10%. So you have to choose your nature carefully to see if it suits your strategy/pokemon. A list on nature can be found here: *link removed* As for which one of them to use, refer to a later section that teaches you what EVs and nature to get for most Pokemon.
Q: What's with rest? 2 turn of sleep? That's useless!
A: It's your life and savior in some cases. Anyone with decent defensive power can consider this. Rest can restore irritating status like paralyze and toxic, and also fully recovers your hp as well. It adds to your staying power. With more staying power, your pokemon can last longer in battle. No one wants their pokemon to go down in 3 hits right? It is a good substitute for the other healing moves as well, such as recover, slack off, wish, synthesis, morning sun, softboil and moonlight. Notice that Rest can heal the status off of your Pokemon by replacing the status such as burnt or toxic into sleep, while all other healing moves cannot.
The combo "chesto rest" is sometimes used as well, using a chesto berry to wake up the Pokemon immediatley after using rest. Do note that Pokemon with abilities such as vital spirit cannot use rest. They can learn it, but the move will fail due to contradicting nature of the move and the ability (ex: Vigoroth).
Q: What is so freaky about Blissey and Snorlax? I can beat them easily within the game... what's to be scared of?
A: They are the bane of the metagame (or part of it.) There are many other terrifying Pokemon, but I just chose these two as examples.
Blissey has an insane special defense. Blissey alone is very annoying with close to complete immunity to special attack. Also it has one of the strongest move in the world: heal bell/aromatherapy. It heals its whole team of any negative status such as burn and paralyze. With softboil too to recover all the damage, Blissey quickly makes its way to the blacklist of the metagame.
Snorlax is just as evil. With curse to increase its defense, it's a tank... massive attack power after curse, it can roll over your team. Its only weakness is its physical defense, but curse can fix that up for it. If Snorlax got its chance to fully curse up, you are close to having no chance to win at all unless you haze in time (not even pseudohaze can help you as pseudohaze always strike last, and Snorlax can OHKO you by then). Now with even more moves added to its already wonderful movepool, its attack are unpredictable. It can be a classic curselax, or a blocklax, or a completely new Snorlax. It can use double edge for mass destruction, body slam or paralyze and deals great amount of damage at the same time. It may use brick break to destroy other Snorlax and the dark types, or even shadowball to finish off Shedinjas. Fire Blast can also be found on Snorlax to counter Skarmory. Earthquake is common on Snorlax as well. With so much moves to be afraid of plus a strong special defense, it is a common sight in the metagame.
These 2 are just examples of many scary Pokemon that within the game they sound harmless... there are a lot more powerful Pokemon hidden that will amaze and surprise you. Just because you've beaten them before against them controlled by the computer, that doesn't mean that they're no longer a threat at all. You'll be mistakened.
Check the Pokemon Battledex to see some other common foes.
Q: How can i improve my battling skills?
A: "Practice makes perfect". The hardest part to the metagame in terms of battling skill is predicting the opponent's moves, switching and when to pseudohaze. You can do nothing about the pseudohazing part. But you can improve on your prediction skill and switching skill by knowing every Pokemon's common moveset. If you know what move they have, you can switch/act in advance to counter the strategy. Memerizing some important stats will help too. Say that there is a battle between a Breloom and a Kingdra. If Breloom goes first, spore will do Kingdra in for good. However Kingdra also got ice beam which is super effective against Breloom. So now's the time where memerizing stats will help. If you remember the speed that Kingdra is generally faster, then you'll know that the chances are bending towards Kingdra and the Breloom player should switch out.
Check the Pokemon Battledex as well.
Q: What EVs and Natures should I give to <this> Pokemon?
That'll depend on the role it is playing... As a first ultimate rule though, do NOT try to use EVs to balance off the stats a little, or to pull up low stats. That is something you should never do. Generally, EV is invested in stats where you excel at, with a nature strengthening a boosted stat while further weakening a useless and weak stat. Also, for a defensive setup, ALWAYS improve HP as one of your main priority. Giving no EV to hp while maximizing your defensive stats won't help much at all.
Also, when defense or sp.defense reaches over the 350 stats, it's usually a good hint to tell you that any more EV in taht category is quite likely to be wasted. Invest some of the leftovers in an offensive stats so your tank can deal a little bit of damage, slowly wearing your opponent down. This rule is almost always true except for Shuckle.
Pokemon who relies on agility, chlorophyll or rain dance should reach a speed of 198, so that under the x2 speed effect, they can outrun Jolteon/Aerodactyl/Mewtwo/Crobat.
Pokemon using counter/mirror coat should always buff hp.
Q: So what are all those terminologies used? What's STAB? HP?
Terminology list:
Sweeping: to eliminate the opponent's pokemon without giving them the slighest chance to retaliate (meaning high offensive power). Most pokemon who can sweep is fast, but there are exceptions, like Slowbro and Slowking.
physical sweeper: an offensive Pokemon made to sweep with physical attacks
special sweeper: an offensive Pokemon made to sweep with special attacks
mixed sweeper: an offensive Pokemon made to sweep with a mixture of physical AND special moves
annoyer: a Pokemon dedicated to causing nasty statuses or other various methods to annoy all living daylights out of your opponent
STAB: Same Type Attack Bonus, STAB. If a Pokemon uses a move that's the same type as that Pokemon, the attack will get a bonus of multiplying the damage done with that attack by 1.5.
Example: Pikachu using thunderbolt (electric Pokemon using electric attacks)
Tank/Sponge: A defensive Pokemon made to endure attacks. Though generally tank refers to Pokemon dedicated to endure physical attacks while sponges generally refer to Pokemon dedicated to special attacks, they are sometimes used interchangably.
Spiker: Pokemon with the ability to spike, such as Skarmory
Ubar/00ber: describes legendary Pokemon of supreme stats that can easily sweep the opponent's team. Note that not all legendaries are ubar, such as Jirachi or Articuno (they're a lot closer to a high stats UU)
OU: Over-Used Pokemon... they are frequently used in the metagame due to high stats, good movepools and so on
BL: Borderline... they are Pokemon who sometimes make an appearance, yet it's just once in awhile... the in-between of an OU and an UU
UU: Underused... Pokemon that are hardly used due to crappy stats, bad movepools or they're just a weaker version of something else...
NU: Neverused... Pokemon that are never heard of because they just never get played at all... sadly, most of them are either water, normal or bug types.
HP ______: Hidden Power ________. Refer to the previous sections in the guide regarding what's hidden power
RMT: "Rate My Team" aka places where people asks for advice and help regarding their team(s). Within PokeCommunity, it is preferred that RMT talks of your Pokemon's natures, movesets, item attachments, EVs and some short side note along with the Pokemon. If you don't know how to handle all these details, feel free to leave it blank, but we certainly strongly encourage you to actually try to do as much as you can.
RMTs isn't "Make a team for me please." Keep that in mind. If you got a team of 5 we can always give some suggestion about what's the last Pokemon, but we won't do an entire moveset for you, nor will we ever give you team members for like your entire team.
Metagame: the balance, strategies and other various aspects related to competitive battling for the Pokemon game.
Buff/Debuff: as the word suggests, a buff increases the power of something while a debuff weakens the power of something.
Nerf: usually used to describe how a Pokemon gets a lot weaker due to the changes of the metagame, such as how the introduction of EVs greatly weakened Mew and Kingdra
gg: "good game" and is a common saying for good manners at the end of a battle for online battling
hax: interchangable for the term "luck" basically
Status Suffix
pyro--: a prefix "will o wisp" user, or various ways to cause the burn status
tract--: a prefix for "attract" user
para--: a prefix for "paralyze" status user
toxic--: a prefix for "toxic" status user
--fusion: a suffix for "confuse" status user
--flinch: a prefix for "flinch" status user, not a real status
double powder: a term refering to any Pokemon capable of using a sleep status along with another status such as paralyze, burnt or toxic. Though in theory double powder is weak as the different status is contradictory, it does work in practice if used correctly. Double Powder is used only if sleep clause is on.
--shuffling: a suffix for the act of using roar/whirlwind along with another status, making is possible ot cause a status, force a switch and then induce the status onto another one of Opponent's Pokemon again.
So when you're describing a Pokemon capable of using a status, choose the correct prefix and suffix. Say if you want to describe a Ninetales capable of using both roar and will o wisp, then it'll be "pyroshuffling." A Lanturn capable of using thunder wave, confuse ray and attract for annoying purposes will be called "paratractfusion" as it can paralyze, confuse and attract all at once.
Be sure to check this guide again, as it will be updated frequently.
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