r/VGC

This is mostly a trick room team where I set up with espeon and incin and then switch steelix in to be annoying and spam rock slide and head smash. It does have tailwind stuff that I can use if steelix's natural lifespan looks to be less than 1 turn but I dont use it that often 🥀

I picked steelix for the good bulk, kingambit is there because I couldnt figure out who else could work in trick room (and my resources are limited), espeon still has psychic terrain because of some steel roller nonsense I tried earlier but I may change that, not sure to what though..

Fighting types and garchomp with earthquake seem to be a big issue for this team especially if I get read on the opening so I'd love some advice on that.

Steelix is specially bulky because gardevoir and other sp. attackers were a big issue before despite light screen midigating the damage. Espeon is built for defense because it can't live despite it's best attempts (it's really only here because a) it's my favourite eeveelution and b) it has both screens and trick room and I cant think of an alternative).

Hey there! Been a big fan of Competitive Pokemon and VGC for a while. Now with the release of Champions I was finally able to actually participate without having to spend days or even weeks on a team.

Now my Girlfriend also really likes Pokemon, however she wasnt able to play the Games as a child as I did, so she really doesnt know all the types or moves as much as she probably would like due to nearly all of these mons being VERY unfamiliar to her.

Due to her AuDHD she also has a really hard time just playing and learning by Trial and Error, and even though I tried to build multiple teams for her, most werent strong enough or too difficult to pilot. Now here comes my question, I asked her, about her favorite Pokemon and I need some BIG help to get a Team built for her, that is fun to play, not too difficult to pilot and allows her to learn about the other Mons at a more comfortable Pace.

Here is the list of Pokemon she really loves from the current Regulation. The Team doesnt have to be 6 pokemon of this list, but the more, the merrier.

Any and all Help is really appreciated, I just wanna support her to enjoy this a bit more and not worry too much about the big learning wall that usually comes from getting into this Game.

- Ninetales

- Tauros (any)

- Jolteon

- Typhlosion - Hisui

- Ampharos

- Azumarill

- Espeon

- Steelix

- Houndoom

- Sceptile

- Gardevoir

- Camerupt

- Milotic

- Ramparados

- Lopunny

- Garchomp

- Leafeon

- Serperior

- Liepard

- Scolipede

- Zoroak & Zoroak - Hisui

- Eelektross

- Hydreigon

- Meowstic

- Dragalge

- Tyrantrum

- Aurorus

- Lycanroc

- Kleavor

- Glimmora

I jumped into this season two nights ago, built this team, and made it to master ball this morning. I shamelessly lead Sableye every single game.

You want to double into Sableye turn one? Have a Fake out!

You want to Fake Out my Sableye? Sorry I’m ghost type!

You want to prankster Encore me? Sorry I’m dark type!

You want to mega evolve to use your weather setting ability? Sorry have a Prankster Rain Dance!

You want to use protect or try setting up? Sorry have an Encore!

You used a strong move into the slot I protected? Here’s a disable!

You finally took me out after bringing me down to sash? Enjoy my rain abusing menace that’s about to come in for free!

I mean seriously, this has to be the most tempo generating abomination I have ever used.

When you combine it with the forces of Swift Swim Mega Swampert, Swift Swim Destiny Bond Overqwil, Electro Shot Archaludon, and bulky Drain Punch annihilape, I think a 7 year old might have been able to make it into master ball with this team.

Even facing Armor Tail/Queenly Majesty the tempo gained from just spamming rain dance is enough to let the teammates cook.

The first 4 mons are absolutely cracked on this team, most of the time they’re who I’m taking to a match. It’s the last two I’m struggling with. I need a way to stop TR from going up but nothing I’ve tried seems to synergise well with the first 4 mons

I’ve made the blaze chicken mode work surprisingly well into most everything including swampert/arch rain teams, but anything with farigiraf seems to shut me down at least 50% of the time. What do yall think? Kingambit doesn’t feel amazing with the rest of the team but I’d love to hear arguments for him. Mega scrafty just can’t break the bulk, hisuian samurott doesn’t have the strength

I do want to try to run a second mode with a second mega as well if possible replacing the bellibolt and sceptile. Thank you for the help; it’s appreciated very much!

Animated in Blender by me!

This is my team, pretty straight forward

Trick Room Mawile Mode and Raichu Tailwind Mode

Almost every pokemon can work in both modes beside the Megas, need some help, as in Trick Room I seem to struggle with Torkoal (Often they also bring their own trick room, so it's not that easy to just not bring Mawile)

And with both modes I struggle with Sinistcha, in theory Incinerowr should hard counter it, but in practice it either dies, or it's too slow and gets KOd by ally, or they have Milotic or other Defiant mon

Any suggestions are welcome :)

Maybe some redirector of my own, but I dunno who could that be

I originally built this team centered around how ice types have a very good offense and can check a lot of threats i was struggling with my other team such as the common rain team mons like swampert and basc with freeze dry. I added in incinerator and made him fully specced into attack because I needed an answer for king gambit but him alone wasnt enough which inspired the mega delphox. If they somehow get on the field together vs gambits I can either read the sucker punch into delphox or fake out into the gambit and heat wave which chunks it to about 10% and can be dealt with anyone else. The whims is for speed control and disruption with encore while also dealing decent chip damage.

Basculegion feels like my weakest link tho. Its decent damage but I feel like another mon could take its place. Any suggestions on who could potentially take the place of basc. Or any team-building suggestions in general?

hiya, im looking for some input on what to change on this team - i had dropped down to 1550 by constantly trying oit different teams and playing sloppily combined, and this team as it is has gotten me back to the 1800s.

I still cant help but feel that something could make this team a lot better, whether its a different mega or somehow flexing in kingambit or basc. also I feel like a fakeout user could be helpful, so would ice coverage (mamo, a-ninetails, frosslass...)

point being, i cant really figure out who to drop. venusaur feels incredibly good, but it is reliant on sun, and im thinking about dropping either the mega zard or the whim, or both, but it feels like dropping zard means i kind of have to drop venusaur too, or make it my second mega perhaps? would mega frosslass + a-ninetails be a decent enough swap? i struggle somewhat versus rain teams, although it does feel possible to outplay them as is.

pointers for Evs would be appreciated as well <3

Hi all, this is my first VGC. I have some success climbing until MB4 rank, and somehow opponent now gets so good and I’m meeting bulky (a water turtle, a flaming tortoise) trickroom teams like 90% of the time. I went through a lot of videos and is trying to stall them out. But I always die to some erruption.

How do I play it? I normally don’t bring whimsicott and syvleon to this matchup but I feel like there is not much I can do. Am open to suggestion and even switch up my team.

Thanks a lot everyone!

Currently I don't really have problem with my Trick Room side of Team, Farig + Incineroar to set up trick room, then let Mawile sweep, teammate depends on the problem whether it's chomp or Sinistcha, the only real struggle is when opponent goes with Basc + kingambit, as lead, but even then I absolutely despise sash fast gambit, as usually I can take surprise KO on the gambit with charcoal Inci before it can attack round 1

The only problematic thing usually is when opposing team has torkoal, that's annoying

Now I had Raichu mostly for Sun team and Rain teams, before I ran it with whimsicott tailwind, but it felt really award against rain teams that had Sinistcha, so I got Sinistcha of my own, but now I struggle to outspeed them, cus they can set up tailwind/swift swim Swampert

Would love any recommendations what to change, I'd love to have TailRoom possibility, but dunno exactly how

Hey there! This post is a follow-up to [this first post here, about how I got top 100 with this mess of a team](https://www.reddit.com/r/VGC/s/qqq1CHMIIE). Many people asked me about leads and matchups, so I wrote this to help whoever is trying to run this team!

I spent most of the season on champion tier, but fell down to some 1900 elo some 2 days ago testing ways to solve the rain matchup. This is how I climbed back!

I've actually caved in and benched scizor for metagross, at least for a while. There are too many rain teams running around, and scizor was a sitting duck against pelipper. Metagross deals respectable damage to it, and also boosting matchups against incineroar, charizard, grimmsnarl and staraptor. On the other hand, we have worse matchups into kingambit, aerodactyl, garchomp. I'll go into details latter.

This set came from a Cybertron video, but there's one point I dislike: this Metagross (171 speed) gets outsped by adamant sneasler (173 speed). But since I wanted Metagrossto get outsped by our Liepard (174 speed) to knock off sitrus berries before attacking, there's not much I can do. Since the most popular team featuring sneasler right now runs jolly (#1 protect the blastoise/delphox team), I've settled with this. Body press should 2hko Incineroar without sitrus berry (hence the faster knock off).

The team right now is very solid and has no crazy bad matchups in the meta, only normal bad matchups. Our newly found weaknesses are:

- Kingambit: The lack of bug coverage from scizor meant I found it better to switch low kick for dark pulse on Greninja. Scizor could also reliably swords dance against a Kingambit. Metagross can kill it with body press, but we get really hurt by sucker punch. Now Decidueye is the only reliable way to kill kingambit, but chandelure can also do it on a good day.

- M-Aerodactyl: commonly paired with Kingambit, they can Tailwind + kowtow cleave to kill M-Metagross. Since we are running no choice scarf, we can only speed draw with aerodactyl, which I'm not a fan of. Our best bet is to bully it with Liepard.

- Garchomp: is good into both of our megas, so you can bet it's going to be brought every match. Greninja dismantles it outside of tailwind, and Decidueye trades favorably into it. Liepard dislikes use because fake outing a garchomp breaks focus sash.

So we ended up getting a weaker matchup into the big 6, but not weak enough that we can't handle it.

Now, let's talk about team matchups and leads! I'll try to go in detail for matchups that I didn't talk about in the previous post or that changed a lot. Since our team is made to answer the meta, we usually run different leads for each different teams.

One very important thing is to identify our winning conditions and keep them safe. We also want to construct alternative win conditions on the fly: many people in high rank will fight to the death even when the match seems lost, and will play for the crit, for the miss, for the double protect, for an opponent's mistake. We want to do this as well. One pretty global plan B for us is setting up multiple swords dance on Scizor, or putting important pokemon to sleep with yawn, but I'll go into details for plans on each matchup.

- Rain:

• Win condition: Decidueye sweeps their team

• Lead suggestions: liepard + decidueye (please don't let decidueye die), Liepard + greninja or Aerodactyl + greninja.

• Alternative win conditions: Metagross can solo swampert outside of rain, Greninja 2hkoes Archaludon (maybe with Liepard knocking off their leftovers)

In this matchup, you want your Decidueye to kill most things, but it dies very easily to pelipper. Try spamming yawn to keep their pokemon swapping, or encoring pelipper on Tailwind. Maybe read when Pelipper switches in and hit it with both pokemon. Also, if you fake out pelipper and decidueye is ingame pay attention who attacks first, as leaf blade may be valuable for killing pelipper. Also, I've only seen one player keep swampert and attack me in the lead against decidueye, so it's usually safe to focus fire on the pelipper turn one. If you really really hate this matchup, you can try running sunny day on pelipper or grass knot on greninja.

- Protection comps:

• Win Condition: Metagross if they're protecting floette, decidueye if they're protecting blastoise or kingambit, Aerodactyl if they're protecting delphox or annihilape.

• Lead suggestion: decidueye + liepard, chandelure + liepard or Metagross + liepard

• Alternative win conditions: leaf blade should deal some 70% of Floette's hp on a crit, and greninja or aerodactyl will help decidueye outspeed floette, while helping to deal the rest of the 30%. Metagross and Aerodactyl are also good plan B to kill incineroar. Decidueye will deal some 70% to Delphox with a sucker punch. Chandelure is very hard for them to kill and will deal good chip damage even to floette and incineroar.

You can identify this one on team preview by the core of Floette (or another scary pokemon), Incineroar and Sinistcha. They might run Grimmsnarl and Maushold as well.

So, this matchup is mostly positional, and is about identifying your win condition, and trying to deal with the pokemon that the opponent has to mess it up. That's usually incineroar, sneasler or kingambit.The blastoise protection team is popular right now as the #1 player on the ladder was running it, so keep in mind that their sneaslser is jolly! Also, I thought Metagross would trivialize this matchup, but opponents are really ready for metagross + a fake out support, so no harm keeping it in the back.

- Big 6:

• Win Condition: more complex plan, you need to analyze what they brought and make sure your answers are safe.

• Lead suggestion: Liepard + Greninja is what a play 90% of the time.

• Alternative win conditions: if charizard is asleep you can mess it up with decidueye, as a crit and a defense reduction will put it in range to die to a sucker punch. If Floette is brought and you didn't bring Metagross, you can try to take it down with a crit from decidueye or with chandelure. If Basculegion is scarfed you can protean into normal type and become immune to last respects.

This matchup got harder since most of their pokemon is good against metagross, and if you don't bring it, they might bring Floette and just sweep you. I always try to take down whimsicott turn one with fake out + ice beam, and hope my greninja survives. Turn two I hopefully see what else they brought and find out which of my pokemon is more valuable. For example, Greninja is amazing against basculegion, garchomp and zard, but weak into kingambit and floette. Decidueye is strong against kingambit, garchomp and useful against basculegion, but weak against the rest. Metagross is your only hope against floette but helps against charizard, basculegion and on a last resort, kingambit. So read their game and plan for it.

- Big 6 alternative (many variations of this team with kingambit instead of incineroar on ladder)

• Win Condition: Take down their incineroar/kingambit and garchomp and sweep with Metagross.

• Suggested lead: Metagross + Liepard

• Alternative win conditions: decidueye does some 70% of Sylveon on a crit, and Greninja should be able to kill Aerodactyl, but will get really hurt in the process. Kingambit doesn't 1hko greninja unless you protean into ice and they have iron head (low kick isn't enough even after life orb damage),

Some variations of this team have been really popular lately and it's really hard for us. They often lead with Aerodactyl + something that will mess up Metagross, and we don't really have a lead that does well with that while keeping girafarig in mind. So I often just hope they didn't bring it, fake out the biggest threat and kill something with metagross. So I haven't solved this matchup by any means.

- Sand

• Win Condition: a way to kill Corviknight and a way to deal with Houndstone.

• Suggested lead: Decidueye + Liepard, Decidueye + Scizor

• Alternative win conditions: Decidueye should deal some 60% of corviknight's health with a crit on triple arrows, and Liepard might get a lucky encore on a move that does nothing.

So this matchup has always been pretty trivial, but the addition of hounstone made it really hard. Another thing that makes this hard is that the sandstorm breaks liepards sash. If you identify they have a losing board, try to swords dance before the dog shows up. Also, Chandelure is afraid of Excadrill, but not that afraid of tyranitar! They usually lead Tyranitar + Exadrill, and only one in my life i've seen them keep tyranitar and attack, so fake out + triple arrows excadrill is a rather safe plan.

- Trick room:

• Win Condition: Chandelure

• Suggested Lead: Chandelure + Decidueye, unless you expect them to lead Blastoise + Vivillion, then I'd lead Aerodactyl + Chandelure or Metagross.

• Alternative winning plans: this one is pretty much lost if you lose chandelure and they have torkoal, but might be one of those matches where you try double protects to stall trick room

Right now there are many popular trick room leads, and you'll want to run Chandelure + a pokemon that threatens their lead. That is usually decidueye, since we stopped running scizor, which was valuable to threaten farigiraf. If you think they'll run blastoise + vivilion, keep decidueye in the back, as they'll probably go for sleep powder turn one (they run scarf), and Decidueye will be free to challange Blastoise. I like going for aerodactyl on this one to threaten wide guard, which I don't even use, but the opponent has to respect the possibility

- Perish

• Win Condition: Kill gengar with Chandelure, Greninja or Metagross

• Suggested lead: Liepard + Metagross, Liepard + Chandelure, Liepard + Greninja

• Alternative win conditions: We kill the pokemon that aren't gengar and their perish becomes too risky. If you think Gengar is going to attack, Decidueye's sucker punch might be clutch.

We used to have a really high winrate against perish while running Zoroark, it's really gone down If you have better plans than mine I'd love to read it. What I can say is that Gengar usually doesn't 1hko our threats, and we 1hko it back. That being said, it's usually very telegraphed and they have plans against it, so it becomes pretty hard to play.

So that's what I have for now! Have fun climbing the ladder! I really want to keep champion until the end!

On my first season of champions (mobile) - this team has done consistently well against most of the meta - handily owning rain / Swampert teams, Sun / Zard teams, and trick room teams with Farigiraf imprison wreaking havoc. But struggling to get past less common teams and feel like I've hit my ceiling at MB3.

I'm ideally looking to swap in another mega in Basculegion's place. Floette would have been ideal but I didn't realize it wasn't available for mobile users until way too late 😞

Other than countering trick room with Farigiraf, I'm mainly using my core 4 or Tsareena, Talonflame, Mega Raichu Y, and Garchomp ATM.

Any suggestions are appreciated!

Hey everyone, just like the title says, i'm new to VGC style play, and i'm looking for a bit of advice to help improve my team.

For Reference here, this is my first time playing pokemon vgc, however i have been a passive observer for a while so i have some cursory knowledge of how to play. i don't own any other pokemon games, so i'm limited to specifically what's in champions.

I'm pretty happy with the sets for gardivoir, farigiraf, incineroar, and basculegion(obviously not my own creations, based off of seeing whats good from watching vgc). Corviknight feels alright, and tsareena is one i'm unsure on. the biggest struggle i have is rain teams, and the steel types like aggron and metalgross(or however you spell it)

Gardevoir is one of my favorite pokemon, so i really want her to remain my main damage dealer/late game sweeper.

any advice on pokemon i should look for or what to change on any of the sets to sure up weaknesses?

Heyo guys, I’m currently around Master Ball Rank 4 and want to improve consistently rather than rely on occasional winning streaks.

What are the most effective ways to practice, review losses, and build a reliable team? I’d especially appreciate advice on identifying mistakes, improving decision-making, and training toward higher Master Ball ranks and eventually Champion Rank.

Constructive tips are welcome.

Also I sent my Main team if you want to take a look at it. :)

I’ve been doing consistently good with this team I made, hovering around masterball 2-3, but recently I’ve dropped all the way back down to masterball 4 due to facing four imprison trickroom Farigaraf users in a row. It’s not a common move supposedly, only sitting at 14% usage according to pikalytics, but it seems like a completely unwinable matchup. How do I deal with imprison without losing an absurd amount of momentum?

So, I've come up with this team after tinkering with it for about a week. It was mainly built to deal with rain teams, especially Mega Swampert, but now sun teams are a huge pain to deal with. On top of that, Metagross just feels like dead weight most of the time. Any ideas or suggestions on how I could improve it?

Just got into VGC, opinions/suggestions on this team would be appreciated.

Charizard is applying so much pressure with heat wave so I thought why not apply even more with choice scarf Typhlosion instead.

Whimsicott is an easy partner for Zard and Raichu-Y makes the rain matchup so much easier.

Sneasler has felt really strong with fake out and finishing games after the unburden boost.

Sylveon used to be Kinggambit and this is the slot I am most unsure about.

Is this team even a good composition and if not what Pokémon/EVs/moves could I change?

Any and all advice is appreciated as I have been playing VGC for 4/5 days now. I'm currently Ultra ball 2 if that means anything.