Pokémon General

[SoldierSpence]

I finally got the idea for how my Togekiss is going to be.  Here it is:
Nature: Modest (Increases Special Attack, but decreases Physical Attack.)
EVs in: Special Attack and Speed
Item: Life Orb or Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
Moveset
1. Aura Sphere
2. Air Slash
3. Thunder Wave
4. Roost or Nasty Plot.  Roost for the Life Orb, and Nasty Plot for Leftovers.

What do you think about that?

[NejinOniwa]

Seems about regularly good. Paraflinchers are always nice.

[SoldierSpence]

Are they not?  Now, any advice for Empolleon?  He's one of my favorite Pokémon from Gen 4.

[Simonorged]

@Nej: you say only regularly good, are there any better combinations?

[NejinOniwa]

Regularly good, because it's a very standard competitive set. Of course, standard competitive set means pretty much "what the meta thinks is the best right now", so there.

How good it actually is depends on what you want done with it, of course.

[Simonorged]

When I play I hardly ever have Pokemon with status moves. Paralyze burn etc.
I usually go for attack/special attack moves. and by that I mean the best they can learn.
My favorite team includes Gardevoir, Arcanine, and Scizzor. Because in my book they're all power houses. I try to teach them moves that make up for type disadvantages, which usually works out well. This works out perfectly against the computer but against other users, I'm a sitting ducklet, I mean most of the time they can run circles around me or take me out easily with a well placed out rage. I've never use status moves because it just seems to prolong the battle.

Although I do enjoy a good Darkrai

[Nichi]

I used to be the same, although I've found it fun to often have a Pokémon in my team that specializes primarily in status moves; mostly to mess with my foes (After all, my Butterfree was a troll in battle)

[Chocofreak13]

when i have a pokemon that is capable of learning status-effecters, especially bug pokemon, i typically keep one or two around. after all, it always helps to poison a foe at the start, since then for the rest of the battle it's like you get 2 attacks instead of just one.

(also helpful to paralyze or cast sleep on a powerful opponent or one that is likely to run. -w- )

[NejinOniwa]

The main thing is to think about what you need your set to accomplish, and compare that with what you have available.

Do you need a setup sweeper? Physical or Special? Does it need to be bulky? Is it a lead? How good at predicting are you, and how much are you willing to risk on it? What about entry hazards and status absorbing? How do you counter certain elements on the opposing team?

Ordinarily, you seldom have a use for a pure tank, status dealer or entry hazard user in single player mode. Simply because the AI doesn't think that far, and doesn't have enough power or tools to match you in the first place anyway. Most times in the game your optimal pokémon is one that can stay alive and healthy and sweep through smaller opposing teams without getting hurt or running out of moves too much before you can get to the next pokémon center. A fast, hard-hitting sweeper that doesn't need to set up is optimal for this sort of thing, and you can usually count on your opponent to not switch around or use other tryhard tactics.

Take your stereotypical single player team - call it Team A - composed of six different pokémon. They all have reasonably powerful attacking stats, movesets with strong reliable attacks and lots of coverage, and lots of speed everywhere; most likely there'll be a few half-useless HM moves in there as well (useless except for Fly and Surf, at least), to get you around the map properly. None of the members of Team A are likely to have all their best moves, however, since you very rarely get to level 100 in regular gameplay. All the members of Team A fulfill a similar role - the regular, setup-less sweeper - and aside from variations in type, coverage moves, small gimmicks and the like, they are essentially all the same pokémon. The main goal in Team A is to have strong type coverage for every possible opponent, leading to a very spread-out team as far as typing goes. This means there is not much in terms of team synergy to be found in most cases, which leads us to...

Team B. Team B is your average competitive online battling set. It is composed of 6 quite different pokémon, and depending on which tier you're playing in (or if you're just playing Wi-Fi battles for lulz) and just how tryhard you are, these 6 pokémon can have a myriad of roles. However, there are a few common elements that usually come into play.

Weather setters. Sand Stream Tyranitar/Hippototas, Drizzle Politoed/Kyogre, Drought Ninetales/Groudon, even Abomasnow and its Snow Warning. These pokémon have abilities that summon various weather conditions, and with the new G5 changes, these weather conditions Last The Entire Game, unless someone comes in and changes them. This means that your various weather effects - Fire-type boosts and instant Solarbeams in Clear Skies, increased Water-type damage and 100% accuracy for Thunder and Hurricane in Rain, Sp. Def increase for Ground/Rock/Steel-types in Sandstorm, and damage to those who aren't, Sand Rush speed boosts, the list goes on - will be around for the entire game if you have a lead with one of these abilities, or for the rest of it if you bring him in later. Weather has a LOT of importance in the metagame, and is not to be underestimated. Weather setters are few and in between, and their only real job is really to get out on the field and get their ability in play; the rest is considered a bonus.

Entry hazard setters. This is one common Leads (your first pokemon on the field), and for a simple reason: once the hazard setter has done its job, it means free damage for every single pokemon your opponent brings in after that. Stealth Rock, the thing that keeps any pokémon ever with a 4x weakness to Rock out of competitive play almost entirely, because half their health vanishes every time they switch in. Spikes, and their Toxic counterpart, that gives any pokémon that isn't Flying (and thus weak to Stealth Rock) or Levitating a headache and/or bad case of stomachache. Hazard setters are usually bulky and reasonably fast, preferably wearing a Focus Sash or having the Sturdy ability, ensuring they get at least one layer of hazards out before going down, and most of them are suicide leads; sometimes they may even carry Explosion or something in that vein, to put an extra oomph in before disappearing.
That also brings us to the counters and subsequent counter-counters to hazard setters: Spinners and Spinblockers, along with the less common but no less useful Magic Bouncers like Espeon. Rapid Spin is a normal-type move that deals virtually no damage but removes all entry hazards from your side of the field. Remember Forretress? He invented this game on his own, pretty much, but Skarmory holds the wang these days. Likewise, a Spinblocker is someone who can prevent the Rapid Spin from happening and take down the Spinner; namely a ghost-type of some kind (since RS is a normal-type move), usually with decent bulk and attacking power. Finally, Magic Bounce is a poorly distributed (but very awesome) ability that bounces back a shitload of moves right in your enemy's face, including any hazards; making your opponent think twice about even using them.

General support types. So many kinds of them there are. Baton Pass users, boosting up and passing on boosts to a sweeper in need of extra speed or power. Screen setters, getting Reflect/Light Screen up for long time love and decreased damage to your team. So many of them. Gaaah.

So you have your nice little sweeper and your cool status setter ready, and you're about to roll some major pain your opponent's way. Or are you? Sweeper, meet Staller. Status setter, meet Status absorber. How frustrating isn't it to use Toxic on a Dewgong or something, for it only to use Rest and Sleep Talk you to death? You switch in your Charizard (why would you use Charizard, really, why) and your opponent laughs at you as he brings out a Pink Blob Of Ultimate Walling (Chansey/Blissey/Something else that's pink and has a ridiculously high HP stat), absorbing your Fire Blasts like they were Embers and healing it up right away, only to kill you off with Toxic and Seismic Toss spam? Yeah, these are the guys that just ruin your day. You may also run into a Cleric, who's usually one of these things as well and bringing Wish (heals for half of caster's hp 2 turns later) and Heal Bell/Aromatherapy or something (heals all status across team) into play as well. Either way, these are the guys that you seldom, if at all, see in the single player game simply because of the fact that HEY, ITEMS ARE ALLOWED, and you don't need to do a convoluted bait-and-switch scheme to heal your sweeper up to full HP and no poisoning, just pop a Full Restore and bam. Also another thing that doesn't happen too often in the single player game is PP stalling, which is doubly effective if you have a pokemon with the ability Pressure (like half of the legendaries ever made have). Strong moves have limited PP in most cases, and that is a vulnerability in itself.

Finally, we have the damage dealers. You may think you know all about offense, but I advise you to rethink that notion. Damage dealers are usually divided into Early and Late game, depending on when they are most effective bringing out the hurt. A very fast pokémon with a priority move or two and good coverage might be a good sweeper, but it may be an even better Revenge Killer - basically, the guy you send in after one of your guys have gone down to Get Rid Of The Enemy Sweeper That Just Killed Him, and Will continue doing so if you don't stop him Now. There are Setup Sweepers, who switch in on something that can't handle them/is sleeping, get a boosting move or two off, and proceed to wreak fucking havoc until they fall over. There are plain brute-force Life Orb users who just get right in and start kicking ass straight off - the penultimate form of the sweepers we saw in Team A. There are Choice users, who lock themselves into one move with superior attack power/speed from their item, either scouting with U-turn/Volt Switch or kicking ass until they find themselves facing something they can't touch, and switch out. There are Pursuit users, who switch in against vulnerable Psychics or Ghosts, who are scared off and killed on the switch (hits double on foes switching out, before they switch, Dark-type move). There are Substitute users. There are Status inducers, even though these are usually found among the more defensive pokémon. There are hybrids like Breloom, who double as status inducer AND offensive powerhouse. There are SO MANY WAYS TO HURT PEOPLE IN THIS GAME, and so many tactics to use.

TL;DR - Depending on what you want to do with your team, you can set it up in an almost infinite amount of different combinations. Just based on the number of pokémon, there are 74,725,388,357,583,601 combinations to use (649 g5 pokes, ^6, over 74 QUADRILLION combinations) in a single party - and that's without even starting to think about abilities or moves. Sure, there's a lot less of it that's actually regarded as "competitively valid picks", and you'd have to detract a bunch due to most places banning duplicates or pokemon in the same evo chain being on the same team, but even so the possibilities are too many for us to begin to comprehend.

And that's how Kanto was made...

[SoldierSpence]

Here's a reply to a certain attribute of the games.

"Critical Hit?  More like, Critical Bullcrap!"

Holy crap, I did not know Pokémon can get this complex, even in Gen 1 .

[Simonorged]

http://pokemonfloraskyrom.com/flora-sky-guides-faqs
pokemon hacked game, new world, emerald graphics, all the pokemon up to univa.

[NejinOniwa]

MAWILE

ALL OF MY FUCKING YES

[Krizonar]

Mawile evolved form? That looks really cool but is still cute?

I will have to look into this.

http://www.twitch.tv/pokemon also herp

[NejinOniwa]

Blaziken, Ampharos, Lucario and Absol also get new formes/evos/whatever, alongside Mawile and the previously revealed Mewtwo forme. Ampharos' form apparently gets Mold Breaker and an extra fucking dragon type.

SUDDENLY AWESOME THINGS.

[Bella]

MAWILE

ALL OF MY FUCKING YES

I'm 12 and what is this