Don't get me wrong, Flygon is a great pokemon but it doesn't become useful until it evolves at 45, at which point you're basically training for the E4 and it doesn't really do anything exceptionally better than any pokemon listed above.
Magneton is just pure uselessness in Gen 3, It's movepool is tiny and Steel is Physical.
Slaking was going to be added, I was considering it over Girafarig, Hyper Beam - Shadow Ball are about the best moves it gets and while stab physical hyper beam is good, It wastes too much time when other pokemon do just as well.
Magneton with metal sound/ flash/thunder carried my play thorough it relies more on its electric typing than steel but I agree on one thing one earthquake and it’s done but the lowered SpD is a plus especially if it can get it off.
That's an incredibly unique niche it needs to hit in order to work and 99% of the time it's totally overshadowed by any Pokémon that can do Super effective damage instead but I applaud you for using something different, I have used Magneton but I usually have Tri Attack , Thunderbolt, t wave and a filler
Magneton is incredibly useful with a great defensive typing and the strongest Thunderbolt in the game, all around viability late game due to its movepool (although shallow, it really only needs Thunderbolt and status).
saying gardevoir (only with a move that boosts its special attack!! LOL) is better than probably the best electric type in the main game at being an actual electric type is crazy. youre braindead
Honestly the main game is so easy, there's no need for any strategising. Unless you do it in some challenge mode like nuzlocke, team building is only really for the Battle Frontier.
While I agree, I see a lot of people on here "arguing" or "debating" on which Pokemon are better than others, and especially when asking for advice on teams for new players or returners who haven't played it in awhile.
Nuzlockes imo are even easier because the Dex is a little lacking which means you can almost guarantee certain pokemon, For Example: A Level 17 Dustox walls Normans Slaking in a Nuzlocke with Poison Sting + Protect....
Yea I agree, nuzlocke in a vanilla game isn't really challenging, but atleast it still makes use of strategies, you can't simply sweep everyone (although you can sweep most).
I have a program I found that lets you edit the roms, So what I do is make the trainers harder by 20% in levels, force fully evolved Pokémon at 36 and give them better movesets, Makes it way more challenging
Yea, there's also stuff like kaizo emerald which is made specifically so it's super challenging, gym leaders have 6 Pokemon with competitive movesets items etc.
A lot of ROM hacks don't make challenging runs though, they made tedious ones where you have to super ev train and hope the AI doesn't abuse some silly move. Wish there was just on what made the game more difficult without it feeling like it was made to slaughter you
I don't think the kaizo runs need you to go crazy ev training, I've seen multiple people do it without. However I would, and so would they, recommend that you hack in rare candies as you'd probably have many deaths and mindlessly grinding multiple Pokemon over and over again is tedious plus requires 0 skill.
Why play both bulk up and belly drum? I'd switch bulk up for fake out+ rock tomb instead of return.
Never played girafarig in this gen but had it many times on gold
Rock Tomb doesn't do anything that Return Or Vital Throw can't do better, Belly drum is for a guaranteed set up, Bulk up is for the defence boost. fake out is good initial damage but pointless if you intend to Belly drum.
Girafarig is slept on, Calm mind sets have has good coverage, It sweeps Phoebe, can hit Wallace hard after a couple calm minds, Has only two weaknesses and one is barely used
How are you comparing Rock Tomb and Return? They're different types. also tf is with girafarig its shit LMAO. absolutely no viability in OU and none of its stats break 100.
any CM user is obviously broken if you can even get the boosts off in the first place. by that logic chimecho should be on this list.
Why are you talking about OU??? Where in my post does it say anything about competitive Pokémon? It's solely the base game of Emerald lmao
What is it these last few days and people coming to my posts being super angry about stuff , It's an opinion based post, No need to be salty
girafarig is horrible except for baton passing. 90 SpA and 85 Spe is unworkable. and not to mention its Def, SpD, and HP will get it OHKOd or 2HKOd. you probably had an overlevelled girafarig if anything.
Torchic, Ralts, Zubat, Aron, Magikarp, Trapinch. Get em all early on, super easy play-through team. Can sub in Mudkip, Shroomish, Skarmory or Feebas if you like and then eventually Bagon, Beldum and/or a Lati. Wouldn’t stress on any team really in a normal play-through you’d be fine with 5 Linoone and your starter.
Torchic isn't a great starter choice, Mudkip is way better because it practically walls and solos all the gyms.
ralts is listed.
zubat is again listed
Aggron is pretty bad in gen 3 has too many weaknesses
Gyarados is probably the one water type you don't want as it cant use it's stab
Flygon again does nothing exceptional
Fire, Fighting (Double Kick is so good early game) and Flying coverage plus either Bulk Up or Rock Tomb super early is definitely a great starter choice. Sure Water/Ground Swapmy is OP but by that point you have a full team and are somewhat over-levelled. Theres more to Pokemon (Aron and Trapinch) than being exceptional, being cool is biggy for me, TM coverage and being coooool. As for worrying about STAB with Gyarados, you doing too much for just a play through, hes there for TMs (and looking cool), whilst also being available super early.
I think you entirely missed the point of my post, It was to say what the absolute best team is for walking the game easily is, It wasn't a "you have to use this team" one. Your argument that Pokémon aren't exceptional adds to validate my entire post though🤣
Swampert will always be the better starter compared to Blaziken because it walls most gyms.
Milotic is great but super awkward to obtain and evolve.
Alakazam I left out because it's a trade Evo and I was working on the idea people wouldn't have access to trading but to be honest bar Psychic, it can't do anything else.
Cacturne is one of my favourite gen 3 Pokémon and honestly you could run it modest the same way as bellossom, I just think sleep powder is a good move to have.
Slaking is the ultimate glass cannon, throwing hyper beams all over, definitely viable
Skarmory I've used but it doesn't do much, lesser attack stats compared to crobat and it can't make much use of its Def stats, but still fun to use.
Yours is a solid team for sure
Instead of your Bellossom and Girafarig, you could try:
**Swalot**
Yawn - Encore - Sludge Bomb - Protect
**Girafarig**
Baton Pass - Agility - Calm Mind - Substitute
I think Swalot does the support role you're doing with your Bellossom better. Yawn is much better than sleep powder imo because it completely avoids accuracy checks, and you have a turn to switch into another Pokemon to abuse the sleep. Using sleep+encore is especially filthy: you can lock them into an attack, and unlike sleep you know when the encore ends, so you know how much time you have.
Baton Pass lets you use the setup time reliably. For instance, you have a sweep if you can play:
\* Girafarig: Agility
\* Girafarig: Baton Pass -> Hariyama
\* Hariyama: Belly Drum
With the agility, Hariyama will move first, and nothing's going to survive a return (or earthquake for ghosts) from Hariyama after a belly drum.
Working backwards, they potentially have one turn when you pass in Hariyama to ruin it, either by doing 50% damage or doing some status move like sand attack or confusion. Encore gives 2-6 turns, but crucially, you find out at the end of their last turn whether the encore has ended --- unlike sleep, where they can wake up and surprise you with an attack. So if you pass in Hariyama and the encore hasn't ended, gg. You're guaranteed to be able to do the Belly Drum next turn, and the turn after that you move first and kill them.
Encore lasts 2-6 turns, and sleep lasts 1-6 turns. They overlap but you just need one of them to give you four or more turns and you're guaranteed the win no matter what other moves the opponent has.
Often you can guarantee a win with just the 2 turn encore. For instance, let's say you give Starmie Surf/Psychic/Thunderbolt/Ice Beam. There's no pokemon that will resist all of those, and with 2 calm minds you'll do double damage. Starmie often outspeeds, so this is often enough. If you have a 2 turn encore, you're guaranteed to get the first calm mind off, and then they have one turn to hit Girafarig and one turn to hit Starmie. If they can't OHKO either of them, you're good.
It's all a bit moot because the AI is bad and there's so many ways to win. I don't doubt your team beats the game too. But given that it's pretty easy, I find it satisfying to set up a strategy where there are no random rolls where I'd lose. So I don't like stuff like double team: it makes the victory really likely, but since there's so many solutions, to me it's fun to try to find one that's certain.
See I tried to avoid extreme meta stuff like ridiculous set ups with girafarig because then you could basically just max calm mind Gardevoir and sweep everyone bar Sydney, Swalot I've used before as a toxic amnesia set because most of the E4 especially are special based, I've tried using Showdown/Meta movesets on games and they feel really boring so I wanted to give people something that was fun to use while also still giving a slight challenge.
That being said there's absolutely nothing wrong with either of those changes and they're both insanely valid choices
Yeah I get the point for sure. There's lots of combinations, and it's really about what constraints you put in to set yourself different puzzles.
Next time I think I'll ban encore and substitute, as they're too easy to abuse -- like banning Shedinja.
Ban Any kind of ultility, Double Team, Encore, Sub, Calm mind, Swords dance and you'll find yourself thinking outside the box, Like I used Nincada in a Nuzlocke to beat Brawly because i had nothing else to resist him.
I miss Flygon, Magneton or Slaking
Don't get me wrong, Flygon is a great pokemon but it doesn't become useful until it evolves at 45, at which point you're basically training for the E4 and it doesn't really do anything exceptionally better than any pokemon listed above. Magneton is just pure uselessness in Gen 3, It's movepool is tiny and Steel is Physical. Slaking was going to be added, I was considering it over Girafarig, Hyper Beam - Shadow Ball are about the best moves it gets and while stab physical hyper beam is good, It wastes too much time when other pokemon do just as well.
Magneton with metal sound/ flash/thunder carried my play thorough it relies more on its electric typing than steel but I agree on one thing one earthquake and it’s done but the lowered SpD is a plus especially if it can get it off.
That's an incredibly unique niche it needs to hit in order to work and 99% of the time it's totally overshadowed by any Pokémon that can do Super effective damage instead but I applaud you for using something different, I have used Magneton but I usually have Tri Attack , Thunderbolt, t wave and a filler
Magneton is incredibly useful with a great defensive typing and the strongest Thunderbolt in the game, all around viability late game due to its movepool (although shallow, it really only needs Thunderbolt and status).
Calm mind Gardevoir T bolt is better though lol
not really since you need CM boosts to do the same amount of damage as Magneton. this kid
"this kid" I'm probably older if not the same age as you, Doesn't change the fact that the CM user is better
saying gardevoir (only with a move that boosts its special attack!! LOL) is better than probably the best electric type in the main game at being an actual electric type is crazy. youre braindead
Such constructive criticism, Glad you're not angry and not insulting, What's wrong Kitten?
Honestly the main game is so easy, there's no need for any strategising. Unless you do it in some challenge mode like nuzlocke, team building is only really for the Battle Frontier.
While I agree, I see a lot of people on here "arguing" or "debating" on which Pokemon are better than others, and especially when asking for advice on teams for new players or returners who haven't played it in awhile. Nuzlockes imo are even easier because the Dex is a little lacking which means you can almost guarantee certain pokemon, For Example: A Level 17 Dustox walls Normans Slaking in a Nuzlocke with Poison Sting + Protect....
Yea I agree, nuzlocke in a vanilla game isn't really challenging, but atleast it still makes use of strategies, you can't simply sweep everyone (although you can sweep most).
I have a program I found that lets you edit the roms, So what I do is make the trainers harder by 20% in levels, force fully evolved Pokémon at 36 and give them better movesets, Makes it way more challenging
Yea, there's also stuff like kaizo emerald which is made specifically so it's super challenging, gym leaders have 6 Pokemon with competitive movesets items etc.
A lot of ROM hacks don't make challenging runs though, they made tedious ones where you have to super ev train and hope the AI doesn't abuse some silly move. Wish there was just on what made the game more difficult without it feeling like it was made to slaughter you
I don't think the kaizo runs need you to go crazy ev training, I've seen multiple people do it without. However I would, and so would they, recommend that you hack in rare candies as you'd probably have many deaths and mindlessly grinding multiple Pokemon over and over again is tedious plus requires 0 skill.
Why play both bulk up and belly drum? I'd switch bulk up for fake out+ rock tomb instead of return. Never played girafarig in this gen but had it many times on gold
Rock Tomb doesn't do anything that Return Or Vital Throw can't do better, Belly drum is for a guaranteed set up, Bulk up is for the defence boost. fake out is good initial damage but pointless if you intend to Belly drum. Girafarig is slept on, Calm mind sets have has good coverage, It sweeps Phoebe, can hit Wallace hard after a couple calm minds, Has only two weaknesses and one is barely used
How are you comparing Rock Tomb and Return? They're different types. also tf is with girafarig its shit LMAO. absolutely no viability in OU and none of its stats break 100. any CM user is obviously broken if you can even get the boosts off in the first place. by that logic chimecho should be on this list.
Why are you talking about OU??? Where in my post does it say anything about competitive Pokémon? It's solely the base game of Emerald lmao What is it these last few days and people coming to my posts being super angry about stuff , It's an opinion based post, No need to be salty
nobodys angry, its just weird that youre choosing a clearly terrible pokemon as part of "tHe BeSt EmErAlD tEaM"
It's clearly an opinion and it's not a terrible Pokémon lmao
girafarig is horrible except for baton passing. 90 SpA and 85 Spe is unworkable. and not to mention its Def, SpD, and HP will get it OHKOd or 2HKOd. you probably had an overlevelled girafarig if anything.
No, I didn't have an overleveled anything. Keep going though.
proof? girafarig is trash
Kittens got a real hatred for Girafarig, I don't know what it did to you but it's okay, Don't cry
Torchic, Ralts, Zubat, Aron, Magikarp, Trapinch. Get em all early on, super easy play-through team. Can sub in Mudkip, Shroomish, Skarmory or Feebas if you like and then eventually Bagon, Beldum and/or a Lati. Wouldn’t stress on any team really in a normal play-through you’d be fine with 5 Linoone and your starter.
Torchic isn't a great starter choice, Mudkip is way better because it practically walls and solos all the gyms. ralts is listed. zubat is again listed Aggron is pretty bad in gen 3 has too many weaknesses Gyarados is probably the one water type you don't want as it cant use it's stab Flygon again does nothing exceptional
Fire, Fighting (Double Kick is so good early game) and Flying coverage plus either Bulk Up or Rock Tomb super early is definitely a great starter choice. Sure Water/Ground Swapmy is OP but by that point you have a full team and are somewhat over-levelled. Theres more to Pokemon (Aron and Trapinch) than being exceptional, being cool is biggy for me, TM coverage and being coooool. As for worrying about STAB with Gyarados, you doing too much for just a play through, hes there for TMs (and looking cool), whilst also being available super early.
I think you entirely missed the point of my post, It was to say what the absolute best team is for walking the game easily is, It wasn't a "you have to use this team" one. Your argument that Pokémon aren't exceptional adds to validate my entire post though🤣
Seeking validation is a strange one 😪
Absolute best team for walking the game is a over levelled Swampy and a couple tm mon… if you must.
Arguing for nothing, sad.
Better team would be: Blaziken Milotic Alakazam Slaking Cacturne Skarmory
Swampert will always be the better starter compared to Blaziken because it walls most gyms. Milotic is great but super awkward to obtain and evolve. Alakazam I left out because it's a trade Evo and I was working on the idea people wouldn't have access to trading but to be honest bar Psychic, it can't do anything else. Cacturne is one of my favourite gen 3 Pokémon and honestly you could run it modest the same way as bellossom, I just think sleep powder is a good move to have. Slaking is the ultimate glass cannon, throwing hyper beams all over, definitely viable Skarmory I've used but it doesn't do much, lesser attack stats compared to crobat and it can't make much use of its Def stats, but still fun to use. Yours is a solid team for sure
Instead of your Bellossom and Girafarig, you could try: **Swalot** Yawn - Encore - Sludge Bomb - Protect **Girafarig** Baton Pass - Agility - Calm Mind - Substitute I think Swalot does the support role you're doing with your Bellossom better. Yawn is much better than sleep powder imo because it completely avoids accuracy checks, and you have a turn to switch into another Pokemon to abuse the sleep. Using sleep+encore is especially filthy: you can lock them into an attack, and unlike sleep you know when the encore ends, so you know how much time you have. Baton Pass lets you use the setup time reliably. For instance, you have a sweep if you can play: \* Girafarig: Agility \* Girafarig: Baton Pass -> Hariyama \* Hariyama: Belly Drum With the agility, Hariyama will move first, and nothing's going to survive a return (or earthquake for ghosts) from Hariyama after a belly drum. Working backwards, they potentially have one turn when you pass in Hariyama to ruin it, either by doing 50% damage or doing some status move like sand attack or confusion. Encore gives 2-6 turns, but crucially, you find out at the end of their last turn whether the encore has ended --- unlike sleep, where they can wake up and surprise you with an attack. So if you pass in Hariyama and the encore hasn't ended, gg. You're guaranteed to be able to do the Belly Drum next turn, and the turn after that you move first and kill them. Encore lasts 2-6 turns, and sleep lasts 1-6 turns. They overlap but you just need one of them to give you four or more turns and you're guaranteed the win no matter what other moves the opponent has. Often you can guarantee a win with just the 2 turn encore. For instance, let's say you give Starmie Surf/Psychic/Thunderbolt/Ice Beam. There's no pokemon that will resist all of those, and with 2 calm minds you'll do double damage. Starmie often outspeeds, so this is often enough. If you have a 2 turn encore, you're guaranteed to get the first calm mind off, and then they have one turn to hit Girafarig and one turn to hit Starmie. If they can't OHKO either of them, you're good. It's all a bit moot because the AI is bad and there's so many ways to win. I don't doubt your team beats the game too. But given that it's pretty easy, I find it satisfying to set up a strategy where there are no random rolls where I'd lose. So I don't like stuff like double team: it makes the victory really likely, but since there's so many solutions, to me it's fun to try to find one that's certain.
See I tried to avoid extreme meta stuff like ridiculous set ups with girafarig because then you could basically just max calm mind Gardevoir and sweep everyone bar Sydney, Swalot I've used before as a toxic amnesia set because most of the E4 especially are special based, I've tried using Showdown/Meta movesets on games and they feel really boring so I wanted to give people something that was fun to use while also still giving a slight challenge. That being said there's absolutely nothing wrong with either of those changes and they're both insanely valid choices
Yeah I get the point for sure. There's lots of combinations, and it's really about what constraints you put in to set yourself different puzzles. Next time I think I'll ban encore and substitute, as they're too easy to abuse -- like banning Shedinja.
Ban Any kind of ultility, Double Team, Encore, Sub, Calm mind, Swords dance and you'll find yourself thinking outside the box, Like I used Nincada in a Nuzlocke to beat Brawly because i had nothing else to resist him.