I never actually managed to finish Pokemon Black or White, so I’m doing that now. I’m planning my team right now, at the moment I’m in Castelia City, my team is:
Drilbur
Axew
Victini
Dewott
Zorua
Timburr
Axew, Dewott, and Drillbur/Excadrill are staying. Victini is just hanging around filling up a slot, I’m not too impressed with Zorua and Zoroark looks stupid. Timburr is likely going to be replaced with Mienfoo/Mienshao (though I haven’t decided whether or not to wait until post-Elite 4 to do it).
So far my candidates for replacement are:
Sigilyph/Archen (for Victini’s slot) – likely to be replaced by a Volcarona later.
??? For Zorua’s slot, I was thinking maybe Yamask, or perhaps a psychic type if I choose Archen for Victini’s slot.
Post-game my party may be modified a little bit, to allow for Zekrom (bye Axew/Haxorus :(), and/or maybe Thundurus or something.
Does anybody have any feedback? My biggest issue right now is that I don’t have any coverage for water. While there aren’t any water gym leaders, it still bugs me. There’s Zebstrika, but I don’t really like zebstrika. Does my current plan sound workable? Yeah, I know I could probably faceroll the in-game/post-game story without worrying about anything, but I prefer to have a plan.
Gwaaah, now I’m replanning everything again. I like Reuniclus and Chandelure a lot, but I need someone that can learn fly*. So
Excadrill
Axew
???
???
???
Samurott
My candidates are:
Mienshao, Conkeldurr, Chandelure, Archeops, Sigilyph and Reuniclus. Pick 3. At least one must be able to learn fly (I’ll consider other pokemon that can learn fly* if I forgot them). I probably shouldn’t have Archaeops and Chendelure on the same team because then my team will not have a fun time against water (by the way, I taught Dewott grass knot, thanks), but I’m not sure.
Golurk is super mega awesome and all, but I’ve been told he’s not that great a Pokemon, sadly.
ETA: I guess I could replace Excadrill for Krookadile to helpt with the ghost E4 member, but I’m not sure it’s worth it. Hmmm. I’m not considering Scraggy for my fighting slot because it looks far too derpy.
Can I suggest Swanna as a good party member for travel because it can learn both Fly and Surf?
Also: if you decide to go the Excadrill route, get an Excadrill with Sand Rush rather than Sand Force, and either have him learn Sandstorm. (Alternatively, trade in Tyranitar or Hippowdon, whose Sandstream ability creates an everlasting sandstorm when they enter battle). Excadrill with Sand Rush, in a sandstorm, is amazingly fast.
You may want to consider Zoroark anew. When I’ve used him, I have Conkeldurr in the last slot. When Zoroark comes out, his ability Illusion makes it look like Conkeldurr is in play, which invites a Physic attack from an opponent – to which, of course, Zoroark is completely immune. That’s often enough time to get a Swords Dance in and a single Swords-Danced Zoroark with Night Slash is a formidable opponent.
I generally don’t use travel pokemon/HM slaves. I usually decide to keep my party as my party and not mess around with swapping members out depending on whether I’m fighting or travelling. Perhaps silly, but it’s what I do. I actually looked into replacing Samurott with Swanna completely, but from what I can tell nobody recommends using Swanna as anything other than a travel pokemon. I’m open to switching out my starter for another water type (or something else, I guess, as long as I maintain decent type coverage).
Trading a tyranitar/hippowdon isn’t an option, and I value my sanity too much to try and find another Drillbur. It took me at least an hour to encounter mine.
Oh, I understand that Zoroark is useful, he just looks dumb to me. If he never evolved I’d probably use him, but my prejudice against him is mainly aesthetic.
I’ll probably get Chandelure and Archeops, go with a Mienshao for fighting. That leaves me without a psychic or dark, though (which may be obnoxious for the Elite 4), but I’ll probably be able to manage. Probably. Hopefully without too much grinding.
Well, I guess you’re staying true to the anime cartoon. Ash doesn’t arrive at a gym and swap out his HM slave Pokes for battle pokes before the gym badge battle, after all.
I don’t have a lot of experience with Samurott – Tepig was my starter – but just looking at the numbers makes this a foregone conclusion: keep Samurott over Swanna.
Here I disagree. My son will spend time not only getting a Pokemon with the right ability, but one with the right nature as well. He wanted an Adamant Drilbur with Sand Rush. Adamant nature boosts Attack by 5% and of course Sand Rush gives him double speed in a sandstorm. I don’t know how many Drilbur he caught before he got what he wanted… but it was a few.
How about Braviary as your Fly guy? Especially if aesthetics are important to you…
Yeah, that’s what I thought, thanks. (Also, I chose Oshawott on a coin toss. In White 2, I was going to go with Tepig, but since I can get a Lucario – one of my favoritestest Pokemon ever, Oshawott or Snivy it is, since sadly Emboar has that fighting type redundancy).
Well, I don’t battle people, I’m just getting through all the “story” content, meaning up to the Elite 4 rechallenge (and Bianca rematch). Maybe if I were doing Battle Subway or something I’d consider it.
The way I see it, it’s not worth the headache to go after nature/abilities on rare-ish Pokemon unless you’re doing Battle Subway/Frontier/Tower or competitive/online stuff. I make exceptions for abilities if a pokemon has two abilities – a really useful one and a vastly useless or detrimental one. Or if one is just absolutely clearly inferior (e.g. that poke that can have Magic Guard or Overcoat). But generally I don’t worry about it, because I usually end up giving up on the game when I do that because I’ll go the insane route and start wasting hours trying to breed near-perfect IVs and grind perfect EVs and then get bored that I’m not continuing the story and obsessing over things that don’t even matter that much for in-game content. That’s why I never finished D/P.
As for Braviary, he comes in a bit late, no? I might use him post-game, but I can’t get his pre-evolution until Route 10 and he doesn’t evolve until level 54, which is post-game (unless you obsessively grind I guess).
After testing them out, I’m probably going to go with Sigilyph for now, I’ll probably just break and use Virizion for my fighting slot, since its extra grass type will cover that typing hole I’m having.