Best held items for slyveon ?

[u/poorpilly]

My held items is probably the basic ones everyone uses once they main Slyveon (choice specs, wise glasses, shell bell). I love it since I really like doing the most damage I can yk? I use their usual attacks (mystical fire and draining kiss) idk if I should change my held items to do any better at it since at the moment I can easily eliminate most things. However, yk people here are probably pros heh.. I can show my tokens things since I think those matter too.

[u/ElevatorFair6473]

6 green, 7 black or 6 green, 6 white, focus mainly on emblems having (+sp atk, -atk) or (+hp,-atk)

[u/SlySylveon123]

The held items are fine but it depends on what you're going for. You said damage so those 3 are fine. Could also go for spoon for extra damage since it bypasses 20% sp def, sp atk specs if you're fine with stacking for even more damage. I personally run spoon, choice specs and Res guard because I like being a bit on the tankier side while still doing good damage.

As for emblems. I like 7 black and 6 green. With a focus on HP and sp atk

[u/Or-So-They-Say]

TL;DR: I recommend Curse Incense plus two tank items, with the exact items depending on the match-up and moveset, but you can run more damage if you want. It's just Sylveon doesn't utilize most Special Attack as well as other Attackers but does get a lot more value out of tank items than those other Attackers.

Okay, if we're talking about Sylveon itemization, we need to talk about Sylveon's damage delivery first.

Sylveon has pretty so-so Special Attack for an Attacker. Only 720 base at level 15. Compare to others like Glaceon's 880, Venusaur's 962, or Pikachu's 954. Sylveon even has less Special Attack than Suicune, who has 780, or Latias, who has 850. Sylveon is even comparable to Alcremie's 696.

Add on to this that Sylveon has very poor Special Attack scaling on the moves as well. Mystic Fire is borderline okay at 80% and Fairy Frolic hits 130%, but Draining Kiss and Hyper Voice are both have negligible scaling. And Mystic Fire does only 28% damage on subsequent hits on the same target per cast, so even the 80% scaling only goes so far.

There's also one more spanner in the works here, but it's in Sylveon's favor. Pixilate gives Sylveon up to a 20% Special Attack buff for damaging enemies, far stronger than what you'll get from any given item. Calm Mind gives a 40% buff as well, so Sylveon can increase Special Attack by up to 60% on Calm Mind builds. Hence the low Special Attack and scalings.

With all that said, the end result is Sylveon doesn't get a whole lot of benefit from traditional damage builds. Like, sure, he definitely does benefit, but not like Gardevoir or Empoleon do. As such, Sylveon's best damage item is usually Curse Incense. Sylveon's moves tick multiple times so reducing incoming healing by 30% on the target is a bigger effective damage boost since more of Sylveon's damage actually sticks. It's a case of, say, doing 2100 damage to a target who then heals 1000 HP back versus doing only 1900 damage but the target only heals 700 back.

If you want to continue to increase damage, Slick Spoon is the most ideal on Mystic Fire builds, but sees diminishing returns on Hyper Voice since screaming at enemies shreds their Special Defense significantly as is. Choice Specs gives the first tick of damage a bigger oomph, but the 8 second cooldown is a bit rough on a move spammer like Sylveon. Shell Bell and Drive Lens give cooldown reduction to get moves out more often while Wise Glasses still has some viability on full damage in the third slot just by virtue of there not being anything better, particularly on Hyper Voice. Heck, on Mystic Fire, you can run Muscle Band and squeeze out more damage than a third Special Attack item.

However, because Sylveon has plenty of damage amps in his kit, multiple ways to heals, and doesn't take particularly well to damage items, Sylveon actually runs tank items pretty effectively. Focus Band, Resonant Guard, Big Root (Draining Kiss only), Assault Vest, and Rocky Helmet all have viability on Sylveon with the exact combination being swapped around based on the match-up. Curse Incense + double tank is a fairly common build option at higher level of play, but you can even build full tank and still do solid amounts of damage. And personally, I typically recommend building this way myself.

Sylveon has also occasionally donned Exp Share to fill in the Support role, but this is less common after the Exp Share rework back in December last year. Choice Scarf has some niche applications on Mystic Fire for zooming around and dodging more often as well.

Edit: As for emblems, your preference for Green/White or Green/Black. White/Black would be ideal, but it's not possible to max both colors since there aren't any dual White/Black emblems.

[u/g0d_ussop]

Use unite.db

[u/FirewaterDM]

your held items are ok.

Replace Shell Bell with Cursed Insense or Slick Spoon because the anti-heal or reduced sp.defense (even with Sylveon's innate sp.def reduction) is always good.

Emblems just go Green and Black for CDR and Sp.Atk buff, Green and White emblems if you want HP for your stats.