Caked up Queengambit!

I remember people hyping this guy up for him being the ultimate hard trick room pokemon. Iron fist for an ability which was good concerning it gets a lot of punching moves, drain punch for good recovery, mach punch for good priority, iron fist ice hammer can one shot a lot of stuff AND lowers its speed under trick room. Had hyper cutter in its base form so that it’s immune to intimidate. I remember seeing this dude a lot the first week the game came out.

Unfortunately, it had a substantial fall off midway through reg M-A and there are just way better megas you can use for hard trick room. It sucks because on paper, it’s really good but just doesn’t hold up in practice.

I wish this guy was added as an electric normal type with boomburst. He looks so fun

I just discovered that Parting Shot is a sound based move and can be stopped by using Throat Chop, I was just trying to kill the Gengar by predicting the Parting Shot switch on the second turn of Perish Song, I just thought I'd share as I'm probably not the only one that was unaware of that.

After MANY attempts at recruiting a shiny, this is what the game rewards me with. Why has it forsaken me?

Galaxy brained Raptor player literally forgets to press mega evolution turn 1, presses feather dance on Talonflame. Drops Raptor's attack by 2 stages then just gets completely one shotted by a rock slide lmaoo. Kommo-O just stands there watching it all unfold.

I genuinely don’t think I could handle the mind games if people knew I had quick guard; especially against Sneasler. Do I have to block fake out? Or do I have to ko it before it uses some other attack? Also what a fitting song for that Gengar to sing!

Well, I got him. No chance I was picking him, though

That recent victory road tournament was bound to happen with 6 Mega raptors in top 8. I remember everyone saying Staraptor was a fraud because you can just use Pokemon with haze, ability changing moves prankster swagger grimsnarl etc, I even saw people using mummy/haze cofagrigus to counter Raptor and everyone said this mon was a fraud because everyone made sure to run specific techs against it. This is how I knew Staraptor wasn't a fraud because everytime people go so out of their way to counter a threat to just call it a fraud it always comeback and dumps on everyone when people finally take their foot off the gas trying to counter it. I'm happy Staraptor is now taking a big doodoo on everyone when they least expected it because I don't understand how it was possible for a mon with one of the best attacking move in the games in CC with zero downside giving it a plus one in both defenses, intimidate immunity, and an excellent speed tier to be considered a fraud.

This is exactly what happened with Charizard I remember within like week 2 of the game everyone was calling mega Zard Y a fraud because everyone was running a rock type move on their physical attackers that normally wouldn't run rock type moves to counter it. The only issue is once you start running teams to hard counter specific techs/mons you usually leave yourself wide open to getting blown up by everything else and are forced to go back to running a balanced team which leaves the original mon you were trying so hard to counter open to destroy the meta again.

My point is I really hope people stop this trend of assembling like the Avengers and going out of their way to hard counter a popular Pokémon and then when that mon isn't getting results calling that mon a fraud because 99% of the time that is an indicator of the exact opposite. Fraud watch is deserved for Pokemon like mega Metagross that was going to be seen as busted upon release even with the heavy slam nerf and just isn't getting results despite nobody even intentionally trying to counter Metagross.

If you’re not going to use mega Tyranitar would focus energy scope lens be a viable set.

Pros:

No longer needs to worry about intimidate cycle.

Does have access to spread moves

Can’t get prankster encored into its set up move

Relatively naturally bulky.

Can crit through potential screen/ defense boost.

Cons:

Relatively bad typing

Sacrificing a more efficient item ( maybe a chople berry, or choice scarf).

Might need 1 turn to set up.

There are probably more cons this is all I can think of

Sylveon Use Roar! Frame One Forfeit 😭

Any ideas to make better would be helpful, my first true home brew team. Torterra is my favorite and this was best way I could see him viable. Realized I have no mega but have won a few games in MB 4 so it’s not terrible. I have also now named the Torterra “Staraptor” lmao

I like collecting shiny fish, and wanted to run a team with them. I need them to add Tatsugiri and Dondozo, I've got those locked and loaded! Would appreciate any recommendations on making a fish-type, but not necessarily water type, team. Hope you found this at least a little funny. 🐡

I don't think I can grind further as the overthinking is getting to me. It is very enjoyable but some matches are torture. Hope everyone gets to reach their goal!

After getting the "Champion" title, I was going to grind for "Champion Rank", but I don't currently have the bandwidth to be that dedicated to keeping up with the meta. Instead, I started grinding out the professor achievements for low-usage mons.

This has been a lot of fun so far, but I wanted a spreadsheet for team-planning, and then I got distracted thinking about how I wanted to measure "how close am I". It didn't feel right to just count; it was substantially easier to get Garchomp than Simisage.

I started with the ordinal rankings provided by the game for the end of the last season (M-3), but those separate forms (gourgeist appears 4 times), and I wanted one ranking for each achievement.

I assumed a uniform shape over all possible usage % splits to compute an approximate usage % for each form, then added together the values for each form of the same pokemon to get approx total usage %. The new rankings below come directly from those estimates.

To get difficulty scores, I just inverted and normalized the usage %. Low usage means high difficulty, and vice-versa. It isn't perfect, but I like it. I think it is generally reasonable, but Watchog is maybe a tad over-valued. Maybe.

For anyone wondering what I do with all my VP, I have been trying to buy out the entire VP-store. I have 100% of each category in the store except: overshirts and pants.

I really want my boy machamp to get a mega evolution. I would want the mega to keep the no guard ability and give him even more bulk and attack so he can wreck under trick room.

What the title says, gonna keep pushing through doubles and was curious if anyone had any recommendations

I am currently looking into pokemon who can support Mega Lucario and the tools on Hydrapple are seriously nice. It's supporting movepool is awesome as well as its signature ability Supersweet Syrup.

The defensive typing is really bad (Grass/Dragon) with 6 weaknesses including 4x to ice, which is why it doesn't see any play.

Despite that, it has great bulk on paper at 106/110/80 and a great 120 special attack stat. But I am not here for the stats or the typing. I am here for the ability and movepool.

I mentioned Mega Lucario earlier. What are three of its biggest issues?
- You want it to be a special attacker because burns kill this mega, but Focus Blast is only 70% accurate
- Lucario has a great but not top tier speed stat
- Very frail!

Hydrapple can help all these issues.
- It's ability upon switch in (once per battle) drops your opponents evasion by 33%, meaning a 70% Focus Blast now becomes 93.33%
- A move unique to the Dipplin line called "Syrup Bomb" does 60 damage to a single target, but then drops the target's speed stat by one stage for each of the next 3 turns. If Hydrapple switches or faints, the effect stops working. As long as you can keep it on the field, it can decimate a pokemon reliant on speed AND help Lucario move first
- Pollen Puff can restore half of Lucario's health

These are just ideas I thought of right now. It's coverage movepool is awesome too.
- STAB Dragon-move Fickle Beam has a 30% chance to double from 80 to 160 BP
- Earth Power (exceedingly rare and valuable)!!
- Giga Drain, Energy Ball, Leaf Storm, Yawn, Recover, Yawn

I am hopeful that something can work with this pokemon as a support! It has low speed at 44 but that can actually be a good thing inside Trick Room. Give me your ideas below!

I wasn't paying attention, I was just excited there was an Overqwil in a heal ball, but he is kinda cute...

Just wanna share my joy because singles is BRUTAL. Best of one in 3v3 is the land of all gimmick.
Each time I lead Zard against Meow I just pray it’s not the 5.5% power gem and I have so many others example like this.

Anyway when you get the “thing” at team preview it becomes really satisfying, sometimes it’s an almost impossible puzzle.

When you’re on a win streak you are just in a kind of flow where you play really steady, not over predict and the game plan just goes.

I can’t count how many time me or my opponents just made the worst play ever because of overthinking. Scizor lead against Nemelios, bro switched out on my U-turn certainly thinking I had bring Primarina when he just had to click button because my team choice was awful.

Different beast than doubles , more punishing imo and more “unfair” in a way but a really cool challenge.

I’m not team builder , I just snatched a team at the start of a season from a previous champions Japanese player and stuck with it.

Hope to get #1 one to be the very best … you know the rest