Link to the list for a better look: https://tiermaker.com/list/pokemon/pokemon-emerald-elite-redux-20-beta-687656-2/6390704

I don't usually post on here, but I thought this would be a fun thing to do as someone who has been playing this game for almost the past three years. I've used a lot of different mons over 200+ runs (about half of those being Monotype and the other half being Mono Ability) and I'm surprised by how good/usable the vast majority are. Anyway, here's some other things to keep in mind about my rankings:

1. This is all loosely ordered within the tiers. There's a lot of mons that do similar things, so some of them can be swapped around and still be an accurate rating in my opinion. Other than that, it's in order.

2. Mega spots in the ranking are higher or lower than where the base mon is depending on how good they are and generally how worth giving up your Mega slot for it is. Base Dewgong is an excellent mon, but their Mega for me gets a lower rank since it has to contest with other Water or Ice Megas that can do their role better while still keeping a base Dewgong on the team. Megas being close to their base form in rank means that they're still good options, but you can easily forego the slot for a different Mega.

3. I always do full Gym Skills. For fights like T&L for example, I rank a mon higher for having something that counters annoying gimmicks (Quash and Brick Break in this case).

4. I rank strong early game mons that stay consistently great the whole game very highly. The start is usually the hardest part of a run when you have limited choices.

5. On the opposite end, mons that come in later have to be incredible to get a high rank. I don't want to wait until the 5th gym for a half-decent pick. There's some exceptions with post game mons that I debugged in for a few Mono Ability runs though.

6. I play on the latest alpha patch, so if some placements look crazy just assume that they were buffed/nerfed.

7. There's still a few base game mons that I haven't got to use yet, but I believe that almost every one of them has a use, hence the lowest rank being a B-/the ranks themselves being split into three parts.

I'm not gonna list out why every mon is where it's at since that would take forever, but feel free to ask about any spots and I'll explain why they're there if I can.

It came out really good.

She spent a few weeks working on it in snippets by modifying a pattern for Snom.

Tinkaton for scale

Project 1025 is my personal challenge to beat this game with every. Single. Pokémon. After all, the stat buffs, movepool additions, and especially abilities make all of them viable. I hope. And along the way, I'll share a bit about what I find interesting, unique, or strong about each one.

Disclaimers:

- I gen in the needed Pokémon for each run in a 2.65 debug savefile, then transfer the savefile up to the latest 2.65 patch and do the run there. It's quite a few hoops to jump through, but this challenge would not even be possible in the first place without debugging the mons in at the start.

- The particular patch of 2.65 I play on has a little toggle called Boss Rush, which does the same thing as turning off trainer sight. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be included, but it's technically a publicly available feature, so I will be using it to preserve my mental health. In the event that a future patch does not have this toggle, I will do the challenge in the latest version that does.

- I fight the gym leaders, the Pokémon League, the evil team leaders and admins, the rivals, the first Calvin fight, and every trainer in Victory Road.

- I play in Permanent Mega mode because I find it more fun.

- This is nowhere near a comprehensive guide to the Pokémon in this game, and in fact the vast majority will not be used optimally due to taking advantage of certain field conditions or synergies that the Pokémon surrounding them in the Pokédex can't provide.

- Redux forms and other fanmade mons (except evolutions of existing mons) will be done after all the official ones.

The Run

Thus begins Hoenn, the home region of Elite Redux! Today we have a cast of classic starters and some early route icons. This was actually a very easy run, this team is INCREDIBLY fast and can convert that speed into a powerful offense as well.

Treecko/Grovyle/Sceptile

Sceptile has always been rather unfortunate among starters. Its (former) signature move comes off of its worse attacking stat, it has a fairly shallow movepool, its Mega has a questionable ability, and it's incredibly frail to boot. Granted, it's been picking up lately in Champions thanks to Earth Power and ally Discharge support, but Elite Redux presents its own take on this beloved grass lizard. For starters, it's actually a physical attacker now like it always should have been, letting it use its several powerful slicing moves. These are boosted further by Keen Edge, letting things like Leaf Blade and Dragon Claw hit quite hard. Its Speed can also be put to additional use thanks to Blur, letting it take contact moves fairly well. The star of the show, though, is Protean, effectively giving it STAB on its coverage moves. This also goes well with its high Speed, as you can change your type before getting hit by an attack. Alternatively, Cutthroat gives it priority on entry just in case. The fun really starts when you factor in its Mega. Having become extremely fast, it can throw out its Keen Edge moves against even the speediest opponents, and these will be firther boosted by Speed Force. It becomes even deadlier on a Sun team; with Big Leaves boosting both its offense and Speed under the harsh sunlight, it becomes practically unstoppable. Sceptile makes for a very reliable general damage dealer, not only for its power but also for its ability to outpace most opposing Pokémon.

I think I should also note here that with the Quick Guard cheese in the Water gym that I mentioned in the run with Sneasler, Sceptile along with the next Pokémon were able to beat both parts of the Water gym fight by themselves.

Torchic/Combusken/Blaziken

There's a reason Blaziken is one of the best starters to ever grace competitive singles. Its bread and butter is the ability Speed Boost, which lets it outspeed most things after a single protect. It has Aerodynamics which you can do some funny stuff with if you switch it into a Flying move, but really you only ever want to use Speed Boost. After getting fast, it can hit really hard with Striker-boosted Blaze Kick and Double/High Jump/Triple Kick. If you want to play with fire (literally), you can drop Protect for Swords Dance and equip a Focus Sash. You can live a hit, set up, outspeed on the next turn, and hopefully sweep from there. The Mega only makes this even better. Now that it has Roundhouse, you never need to worry about HJK or Triple Kick misses again, and physical walls can't stop you either. With its massive Attack stat it doesn't quite need to set up anymore, but if you're playing Permanent Mega mode, why not? Sash SD Mega Blaziken can literally solo Steven; it outspeeds Mewtwo after one boost, his entire team drops to +2 Blaze Kick or Triple Kick, and he doesn't have a single priority move on his team (and even if he did, his own Psychic Terrain would block it). You'll need to be cautious around opposing priority and passive damage, but if you can find the right opportunity, Blaziken can end fights faster than you can say "fried chicken".

Mudkip/Marshtomp/Swampert

So, I heard you liek Mudkips? Good for you, as Swampert is quite the excellent choice. It really prefers being played on rain, as Swift Swim unlocks a lot of its offensive potential, but even outside of it it performs very well. With solid all-around bulk and access to abilities like Stamina and Regenerator, it makes for a good pivot with Flip Turn that can also dish out great damage. Aqua Tail and Earthquake are the STABs of choice, but if using Field Explorer over Stamina or Swift Swim, then Waterfall and weirdly enough Secret Power Ground have the highest damage output. In this run I used Stamina with a Rocky Helmet to punish physical attackers and safely set Stealth Rocks for the team. In its Mega form, just as with the other two Hoenn starters, its existing talents only get better. The stat increases help in all areas, Swift Swim gets upgraded to Breakwater to help on both offense and defense, and Iron Fist makes Seismic/Torrent Fist and especially priority Jet Punch very dangerous. Even when just using it as a lead to set Rocks, Jet Punch can take several knockouts before it goes down. With this great versatility, it's no wonder Swampert is so well-liked among starter Pokémon. Just keep it away from grass.

I should also note here my frankly hilarious strategy in the Psychic gym, which involved having Swampert sit on the field setting up with Curse while its frail teammates spammed Protect to buy turns for it. After getting fully set up, I just slammed everything with Hammer Arm and Ice Spinner.

Poochyena/Mightyena/Skulberus

For some reason I'm not too fond of the name "Skulberus", but that's neither here nor there. Regardless of the quality of its name, it's a decent physical attacker, though it can struggle to distinguish itself a bit. It has many powerful biting moves to take advantage of with Strong Jaw and loves seeing Intimidate thanks to Guard Dog. Shadow Tag is eh, the AI doesn't switch too much and it doesn't have a very good way to take advantage of it. Moxie is a fun option over Strong Jaw, against the right team you can ramp up pretty quickly with strong Knock Offs and Crunches boosted by Nocturnal. Stygian Rush is its most interesting ability, acting as Gale Wings for Dark moves. This was the one I brought to the League, though I used Moxie for the rest of the play through. Having an emergency button in Choice Band Nocturnal-boosted Crunch or Rip and Tear is nice, but overall, outside of Phoebe and the trainers in the Psychic gym, I never found myself thinking that it was an essential member of the squad.

Zigzagoon/Linoone

This is probably the biggest surprise of this entire challenge so far. I was expecting Linoone to end up like Furret or Ratiking; a decent Normal attacker with fun cheese but ultimately nothing too impactful in the lategame. Furthermore, these rodents tend to be overshadowed in their runs since they usually get grouped with the starters. What I got instead was a hydrogen bomb capable of annihilating pretty much anything, even in the halls of the Pokémon league. The key is Momentum, an excellent ability that lets it use its Speed as offense on its contact moves. With base 110 Speed this is a pretty good deal, since you can invest a bunch of EVs into HP to hopefully survive a hit and get off an Agility that functions as a double Dragon Dance in one turn. Linoone doesn't need that though. See, it also gets Quick Feet, increasing Speed when statused. Due to Momentum, this effectively acts like Guts as well. Equip it with a Frost Orb and now it has both a Choice Band and a Choice Scarf at the same time. Protect is not even required since Violent Rush gives it the same effect on its first turn. As for moves, Field Explorer gives it access to many great coverage options. Dig and Strength emulate the EdgeQuake combo, but with 100% accuracy and 165 BASE POWER APIECE. Secret Power also gets boosted to a 120 power move that can be any type you like. As for its Normal STAB, even with the boost, Headbutt is still weaker than Facade once the Frost Orb is active, so the latter is preferable. Combine all that and you have a Pokémon that can outspeed literally anything that isn't a pesky Booster Energy user and delete it with some of the most high-powered moves you'll see around. You'll have to watch out for priority since even with max HP EVs, Linoone is still quite frail, but when that isn't a factor, you'll have yourself one of the fastest and strongest offensive threats around.

Wurmple/Silcoon/Beautifly

Beautifly is fine. Its stats are eh, but at least Majestic Moth helps. To its credit, it can be pretty fast if you spec it to get the boost in Speed. Its damage is fine, I used it with a Life Orb and it got the job done but I can think of many better options for anything it could do. It has pseudo-STAB on Flying thanks to Giant Wings and Levitate so its Air Slashes can hit decently hard and cheese some flinches. Dazzling is situational but really funny when you can get it to work. Beautifly is really not built to be a lategame Pokémon, it can do a good bit against Roxanne and dunks on Brawly but falls off after that. If you really wanted to make it work, my best advice is to give it some good support, like a Yawn/Teleport Slowbro, and set up with Quiver Dance. Dazzling becomes valuable here to save it from priority moves or abilities that could otherwise bypass its speed boosts.

So this is my first ever post on reddit and I genuinely need help with this battle.

For the context, I use my boy on my android and this is elite redux version 2.65

The glitch or the problem is that I can't get past this battle. Whenever I attack mega-Granbull, his ability activates which makes my pokemon or Steven's pokemon switch and then the screen gets stuck.

I have been trying for several days and I don't wanna lose this save file as it has 80 hours of gameplay and 8 whole boxes of pokemon.

I had tried various teams and attacks to not let that ability awaken, I finally ohko-ed this granbull with my mega-tinkaton with steel gem and gigaton hammer. And the first pokemon that goes out is mega-swampert with torrent fist, ice punch, seismic fist and jet punch and the other is empoleon with steel gem flash cannon, water pulse, nasty plot and dark pulse.

I have tried resetting the game as well.

I genuinely don't know what else I could do hence I'm making this post as a plead for help.

Please help me with this save file, fellow pokemon lovers.

im genuinely so confused how do i do this yall

All these guys were so good. Most fun run of the monotypes I've done so far, very hyperaggressive.

i'm no graphic designer by any means, but i thought i'd share it just incase anyone else wanted to use it as well!

Run using only Pokémon "formed only by a head" . Never brought an NFE to the E4,but hey,there's a first time for everything.

S+: The best of the best. If you have these Pokémon on your team, you are playing on easy mode.

S: Very strong and consistent choices into a wide variety of encounters. Not an automatic win but you'll never complain about having them on your team.

A+: Strong but less versatile or consistent. Good assets to have on your team, but support from other members is needed.

A: Very strong, but only on the right team structure or in the right matchup. If you want to use one to the fullest potential, you'll have to build a team that can set up the conditions for success.

B: Decent, but outclassed in their roles. Using these on your team over higher-tier Pokémon is possible, but a direct downgrade in almost all situations.

C: Underwhelming. These Pokémon struggle to contribute much of anything, or at least anything unique or especially strong.

Every Pokémon here has been rated based on my experience using them in Project 1025. Tiers are very roughly ordered within themselves. Note that, as stated in the disclaimers on my HoF posts, many of these Pokémon are not on their optimal team structures, thus my perception of them may be impacted. I'd understand nearly any argument for a certain Pokémon to move to a higher or lower tier; for example, looking at it now, I think Wobbuffet could stand to be demoted a tier.

If you have questions about a specific Pokémon or would like to make a case for something to move to a different tier, just put it in the comments, I'll try to respond to everything. As you can see, I've made a separate tier for Pokémon people made cases for in the previous tierlist. I will be giving them a second chance at some point in the future. That's all, and see you in the next installment of Project 1025!

Full modifiers cause quash is just that much of a hard counter into it. Spearow on the team exclusively to take the pre-sleep modifier.

Project 1025 is my personal challenge to beat this game with every. Single. Pokémon. After all, the stat buffs, movepool additions, and especially abilities make all of them viable. I hope. And along the way, I'll share a bit about what I find interesting, unique, or strong about each one.

Disclaimers:

- I gen in the needed Pokémon for each run in a 2.65 debug savefile, then transfer the savefile up to the latest 2.65 patch and do the run there. It's quite a few hoops to jump through, but this challenge would not even be possible in the first place without debugging the mons in at the start.

- The particular patch of 2.65 I play on has a little toggle called Boss Rush, which does the same thing as turning off trainer sight. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be included, but it's technically a publicly available feature, so I will be using it to preserve my mental health. In the event that a future patch does not have this toggle, I will do the challenge in the latest version that does.

- I fight the gym leaders, the Pokémon League, the evil team leaders and admins, the rivals, the first Calvin fight, and every trainer in Victory Road.

- I play in Permanent Mega mode because I find it more fun.

- This is nowhere near a comprehensive guide to the Pokémon in this game, and in fact the vast majority will not be used optimally due to taking advantage of certain field conditions or synergies that the Pokémon surrounding them in the Pokédex can't provide.

- Redux forms and other fanmade mons (except evolutions of existing mons) will be done after all the official ones.

The Run

The second region of this challenge is done! It took a lot less time than the Kanto section since that one included the many, MANY future additions to the Gen 1 evolutionary lines. Anyway, what better way to close out the land of tradition and legends than with a full legendary run? Though, to be honest, most of this run was just The Entei Show.

Raikou

Pretty much the paragon of pure Electric-type offense. With Ground Shock and Overcharge it has ways to break past common Electric counters, Drizzle lets it abuse Thunder and Electro Shot (though the latter is only available in the postgame), and Electric Surge and Transistor send the power of its Electric moves through the roof. With a deadly Rising Voltage and a priority Thunderclap, even resists would do well to be cautious around it despite it not really needing to use its coverage moves. The cherry on top is Beast Boost, which is an ability I always thought the legendary beasts should have for obvious reasons. It can boost either SpA or Speed, but since its power is so great as previously discussed, the Speed boost is more helpful to patch up its quick but not blistering base 115. As a general offensive threat, Raikou put in a lot of work throughout the run. It probably would've done more, if not for our next entry.

Entei

Choice Specs Flaming Soul Volcano Rage Molten Down Beast Boost Eruption. BEFORE THE THIRD GYM.

Suicune

I applaud the ER devs for having the foresight to NOT give Suicune Beast Boost like the other two dog-cat things, as it really is not built for that kind of thing. It prefers to play slowly, tanking hits behind the screens from North Wind as it deals damage and stays healthy with Recover. Water Veil and Leftovers combines means it has no trouble healing off damage even without spending a turn, and its incredible defensive stats mean it can shrug off even strong super-effective hits. With all this staying power, Suicune can either stall out passive damage sources like Toxic and Whirlpool or set up for more direct offense with Calm Mind. Notably, it has access to the perfect coverage of Water STAB + Sheer Cold, the latter also gaining STAB and never being able to miss thanks to Aurora Borealis letting it act as if in the hail. A bulky Water-type is useful anywhere and Suicune is one of the best ones. There is another, though.

Lugia

The guardian of the seas finally gains its well-deserved Water typing, a massive upgrade over Flying in terms of its defensive profile. This is all for the better, as Lugia is all about defense. With gargantuan stats in both defenses, Multiscale, and Wonder Skin, it can stand firm against nearly any attack and undo all the enemy's progress with Roost. Similarly to Suicune, it can either set up for damage or chip the foe down passively. The latter playstyle is significantly helped out by the ability Poseidon's Dominion, using Whirlpool on an enemy upon switching in. This traps them on the field and immediately puts them on a timer, though another underrated benefit is its decent chance to drench its target. This can provide valuable speed control in doubles or just help Lugia get the jump on fast threats. Overall, a super reliable switch-in to so many things, and one of the sturdiest defensive pieces in the game.

Ho-Oh

Where Lugia brought pure defensive prowess, its counterpart Ho-Oh takes a more balanced approach, balancing longevity with damage potential. For one, it trades its Flying type for Fairy, a vast improvement for both offense and defense. Off of its impressive base 130 Attack it can use stuff like Sacred Fire and Play Rough, but it would actually much rather use its Special Attack thanks to Majestic Bird giving it a sizable multiplier. Flamethrower, Dazzling Gleam, and something like Earth Power or Imposing Wings-boosted Air Slash can hit pretty much everything for great damage, and it even carries Flame Burst for spread priority. While its Speed is a little lower than you'd like on most offensive Pokémon, it makes up for it with its impressive special bulk with Prism Scales. I went the extra mile and equipped it with a Tactical Vest to shore up its Defense as well. Regenerator or Self Sufficient then let it heal off any chip it sustains, while Magic Guard can be used to prevent that chip in the first place and enable the use of Life Orb with no drawbacks.

Celebi

On the surface, Celebi's perfectly even stat spread would indicate a versatile Pokémon, somewhat like a lesser Mew. This is true to some extent, but its toolkit really pushes it to one particular playstyle. It can definitely serve as an offensive threat, setting up with Quiver Dance and making use of its selection of coverage moves to dispatch opponents. However, its movepool isn't the widest thing in the world, and an offensive build can struggle a bit to find opportunities to set up due to how sketchy Grass/Fairy is defensively. The best way to use Celebi, weirdly enough, is to go all in on defense instead, making use of its absurd healing from Grassy Surge, Self Sufficient, and Leech Seed to stall out opponents. Preferably you bring it in against something it can actually take hits from, and with good timing you can set up a Substitute to keep the stall going even in disadvantageous matchups. QDance still does well here, setting up its SpDef and Speed and ensuring its Giga Drains can actually heal for a good amount, but this is still a SubSeed build at its core. You can also just Baton Pass the QDances off, but who needs that on a team like this?

Trust smol birb gaming. What’s the fight this time around. The hint this time is that its not dmgless.

I don’t see the option to mega evolve it like in mainline games

Trust the process.

i dont think this guy will ever die