Pokemon Planning Primer
Nov. 2nd, 2016 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marchionessofmustacheSo, I decided to make this little primer for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dreamingmystic but I guess anyone can use it if they want. I will try not to be long-winded but YOU KNOW ME
Getting into training strong Pokémon is kind of hard because there's tons of information and choices. You can do a lot of work to make them tournament-level strong, which takes a ton of effort, but some people just want to do it casually -- making them strong but without TOO much work and understanding. Then if you enjoy it you can choose to learn more. That's what this guide is for.
Basically you can divide Pokémon builds into a few distinct types. These are my terms, and I'll put common terms I hear other people use in parentheses:
Attacker (Sweeper) - A Pokémon whose primary strategy is to deal lots of damage at once. Generally you will focus on one type of attack (physical or special) but you can do mixed. Speed is important, too, because you want to make sure you go first. In an exchange of blows of Pokémon of relatively similar strengths, the faster Pokémon will win.
Defender (Wall) - A Pokémon whose primary function is to last for a long time or take hits. Generally in single battle, you will switch to this Pokémon in order to try to 'tank' a hit, then hopefully get off some kind of useful move like Toxic, Steal Rock, etc. Sometimes walls can also hit hard. These Pokémon will focus on defenses primarily -- which can include any combination of HP, Defense, and Special Defense. Some can focus on an attack type, too. The combination of all of a Pokémon's defensive capabilities (HP, Defense, and Special Defense, along with abilities and items that improve these, are referred to as its "Bulk")
Support - A Pokémon whose primary function is to provide support for other Pokémon in the team, through things like healing, weather, screens, etc. In double and triple battle this also involves drawing attention of other Pokémon and using moves like Helping Hand. They can focus on speed and defense, or if they're naturally slow, pure defense.
Trick (Utility, Annoyer, etc.) - A Pokémon whose primary function is to perform some kind of gimmick. Examples: a Pokémon that paralyzes and confuses the opponent and then uses moves to avoid attacks in hopes that the opponent knocks themselves out with confusion, or a Pokémon that poisons and leech seeds the opponent and heals itself a lot in hopes of waiting out the poison and leech seed damage.
Lead - This is the Pokémon you plan on using first in your lineup. It will be one of the other types, but it is good to think about how it can respond to virtually anything or how it can set up the field for your other teammates. Generally things like being able to inflict status effects, boost your own team, use field hazards like Stealth Rock or Toxic Spikes, etc. are good things for a lead Pokemon to be able to do.
Other Pokémon you'll try to only bring out in certain situations and pull them out against other types.
If you're doing online tournament rules or Battle Maison rules, you'll have a team of 6, but at the beginning you'll have to choose only 3 of them (for single battle) or 4 of them (for double battle) to send out. Triple and Rotation you use all 6 I think, I forget, oops. I've still been meaning to get into triples. But keep this in mind when building a whole team. It's also okay to build your Pokémon without thinking about how they fit into a team at first, then adjusting them once you find a team you like or training new replacements to fit a team or whatever.
I'm assuming you just have a specific Pokémon you want to train since you want to use one you like, rather than you're looking for a Pokémon to fit a certain role. So like, "I want to train Ninetales!" not "I need a Special Attacker!"
The first thing you should do is go to an information page for that Pokémon. I like Serebii because it's always the most up-to-date and has the best organization, and everything links to other pages so you can learn more.
For this example, we're going to be looking at Ninetales. Here's the Serebii entry for Ninetales in Pokémon 6.
Basically you want to look at these things:
Thinking about Base Stats
On Serebii, these are found at the bottom of the page. There's a lot of numbers down here, but for casual building you only need to look at the actual base stats and not the various potentials below them.
These are just the base stat of that species.
Your Pokémon can have wildly different stats based on its Intriguing Potential (also called "Individual Values" or IV, these are an addition modifier to base stats that are unique for each Pokémon, and can range between 0 and 31 for each stat).
The Pokémon's nature affects certain stats. (Some natures will give a percentage boost to one stat while giving a percentage drop to another stat. Other natures do nothing.)
Furthermore, you can train in stats to give additional modifiers to base stats. This doesn't have an official name in the game, but fans refer to these bonus points as Effort Points and Effort Values (EV).
For example if you look at Nintetales, it could have an HP of anywhere between 256 and 350 at level 100. That's almost a 100-point difference!
But for now, we're just looking at the base stats of the species. This is the most influential thing in how high the stat can get, and if the base stat is bad, the Pokémon will always be bad at that thing.
Generally, these are a general guideline of how good a Pokémon's base stats are:
110+ - Amazing!
100-109 - Very good
90-99 Good
80-89 - Just OK...
70-79 - Not very good
0-69 - Bad
In the case that you're wanting a low speed, around 25 and below is the best. Anything over 40 is bad. 5 is the lowest you can get I think (Shuckle). Low-speed Pokémon are not common unless you're building a Trick Room team which is a bit advanced.
So let's look at Ninetales. Ninetales is a very interesting Pokémon because one of its defenses is high and its speed is high, too! Generally defensive Pokémon are very slow. Ninetales isn't particularly bulky because its HP and Defense are not anything special. but this can give Ninetales some particularly interesting uses.
Since only one of the defenses is high, we could focus on that and make Ninetales a "Special Defender." If we focus on a high Special Defense and HP, we could switch out to Ninetales when we think the opponent is going to use a Special attack, or whenever we know the opponent only has access to Special attacks. Ninetales would then not take too much damage.
Single battles are all about being able to make smart, safe switches like this. Then hopefully we'll be able to use some moves to counter against the opponent when they try to switch or continue trying to hurt Ninetales despite its big defense.
So when we go to look at the moves later, we should see if there are any moves that might be helpful in this way -- things we can use to hinder an opponent after tanking their attack, or help out the other Pokémon in our team.
The good speed also allows Ninetales to be decent at attacking, too. Special Attack is better than Attack here, so when we look at moves, we'll want to think about what kinds of Special Attack moves Ninetales can do.
Potentially a high speed with good Special Defense could allow Nintetales to fulfill other roles like support or trick, so we could think about that, too. It will depend on the moves. Generally when first planning a Pokémon, I find moves and think "Oh, maybe I can use that!" and then have to go back to the base stats to see if it's viable. It takes me a very long time and a lot of re-referencing stuff to plan a Pokémon build lol.
Thinking about Abilities
At the top of the serebii page, you can see all of the available abilities for the Pokémon:
Ninetales only has two available abilities. Most Pokémon have 2 or 3. Make sure you take note if the hidden ability is available. Getting the hidden ability will be harder, so if you don't want to mess with it, just ignore the hidden ability.
Generally as of Pokémon 6 games, the main way of getting a hidden ability is 1. Through Friend Safari in X and Y or 2. Through hoarde encounters in any game. The first one is much more reliable and easier to do. Once you get one with the hidden ability, you can then breed that ability onto others.
The first ability we have access to is Flash Fire. When Ninetales is hit by a Fire move, it goes into 'Flash Fire' mode which means all its fire attacks do 50% more damage. This can be useful and supports an attack-based Ninetales.
The other ability we can use is Drought, which used to be a unique ability for Groudon only. But now even Ninetales can get it! This immediately changes the weather to strong sunlight when the Pokémon is sent out, and it will last for 5 turns naturally. This can be used to support other Pokémon or even Ninetales itself, as it weakens water moves and strengthens fire moves.
This also means Ninetales might be good to lead with if you're wanting to use a team that takes advantage of strong sunlight right away. This can be good for double battle, too. Right now we're mostly just thinking of ideas. The moves will really decide how we can use a Pokémon.
Thinking about Moves
Every Pokémon can learn a huge variety of moves (well, some Pokémon can't learn very many, but most can learn a ton). It can be hard to wade through them all.
But moves are the most important part! Pretty much which 4 moves you decide on will determine everything else -- where you want to put your EVs, what kind of nature you should choose, which ability you should aim for, etc. Because you want to build your Pokémon around what kind of moves it will use.
I'm not going to take a screenshot of Serebii's move list for Ninetales because it's huge. But it's pretty much most of the page. Serebii organizes moves based on how they are learned -- by level up, through TMs, through breeding, etc. If you're not wanting to bother with breeding moves, you can ignore that section. I always ignore the "transfer-only" moves because it means you can only get those moves by playing older versions of the game. Not only does this make your Pokémon ineligible for tournaments now, but it's also a huge pain in the ass, and now requires paying for a Pokémon Bank account (something I'm still bitter about lol).
Even looking at the available moves if we ignore those sections, Ninetales still has a huge pool of moves to choose from, and we're only able to choose 4!
We can also ignore all the moves that are just weak moves for using as you play through the story, like Ember. We can also ignore moves of the attack type we decided we don't want to use (so we can ignore all the physical attacks).
In general, you don't want to have more than one of a certain type of attack. (It's okay two have two of the same type of move, like Will-O-Wisp and Flamethrower are both fire. But two attacks of the same time is pointless, like Flamethrower and Fire Blast.)
This is because you'll generally only need to use one of those moves, and since we only get 4 moves, it's better to use a move slot for a different attack type in case you can use this against the opponent to exploit a weakness. For example, if instead of Flamethrower and Fire Blast you had Flamethrower and Energy Ball, you'd be able to use Energy Ball if the enemy was weak to Grass, and it would be more effective than using Fire Blast. And if they were weak to fire, you already had a fire move anyway.
Generally, higher-accuracy moves are considered better than high-damage, low-accuracy moves. But you can use your own playstyle to decide which you like. You might like Fire Blast over Flamethrower if you are fine with sacrificing accuracy for more power. Competitive battles can be pretty short, so you don't need to worry about the law of averages too much. You just have to be willing to make the gamble. So you can either ignore the weaker high-accuracy moves or ignore the more powerful low-accuracy moves depending on your play style. (Anymore I like to sometimes use the high-power moves for fun, but most people would tell you never to do it).
So let's look at viable Special Attack moves that Ninetales can learn.
Fire Type
-Flamethrower
-Fire Blast
-Overheat
Grass Type
-Energy Ball
-Solar Beam
Psychic Type
-Psyshock
-Dream Eater
-Extrasensory
Dark Type
-Dark Pulse
Ghost Type
-Hex
That's about it! I didn't include more "utility"-based moves like Fire Spin. Even though it is a special attack, it is more used for the sake of trapping the opponent, not dealing lots of damage at once.
Some of these are just generally good damaging attacks without too much special properties. But some are special cases:
Overheat - This lowers Ninetales's Special Attack drastically, so it's only good as a last resort or if you plan to switch Ninetales out right away after using it (since switching out restores stat modifiers like that)
Solar Beam - Not worth using unless it is sunny, which makes it not require an extra turn to 'charge.' Ninetales has Drought ability and can use Sunny Day move, so we can make it sunny if we want.
Dream Eater - This requires the opponent to be asleep. Ninetales has access to Hypnosis but that's only got 60% accuracy, so it's probably not a good idea unless you're in a double battle with a partner that knows a better sleep-inducing move like Spore.
Hex - This is not good unless the opponent has a status condition like posion or burn. Ninetales has access to Will-O-Wisp and Toxic, so we can make use of this easily.
Already you can see some ways to use these special moves well.
For example, we'll probably only be switching Ninetales in against something we can tank hits against. So if we switch in, the opponent will probably try to switch out, or continue using a move that doesn't hurt Ninetales much, so the next turn is pretty "safe." We can use that turn to use Will-O-Wisp or Toxic, then we will be able to use Hex if we want, especially if the opponent is weak to Ghost.
Another example, if we have Nintetales with Drought, Solar Beam would be a great idea since it will always be sunny when we switch in. We'll just have to be careful of the opponent having moves or Pokémon that also can change the weather so we don't get stuck charging Solar Beam.
It seems Ninetales can learn a decent variety of attacks. Generally we want to try to be Super-Effective against as many types as possible, so using both a Ghost move and Dark move is not too great, since they both tend to be good against the same types of Pokémon like Psychic and Ghost. So having a Grass and Ghost move might be better, or Dark and Grass, for example. Of course, we always want a Fire move since Ninetales is Fire type, and we'll get a bonus for using the same type of attack, making Fire moves even stronger.
We also should think about what kind of opponents we might face. Ninetales is weak against water, ground, and rock. Grass is super-effective against all of those! So having a Grass move sounds like a very good idea.
Let's look at what kinds of status and utility moves Ninetales you can learn (any kind of move that isn't about dealing lots of damage at once). There are a lot, so I'll just list a few particularly interesting looking ones.
In general, moves that can boost your stats or lower the opponent's stats are good. Generally you want moves that boost or lower stats "sharply" or "harshly." Just regular boosts are not as good unless they do something else, like Baby-Doll Eyes always goes first, or some moves do damage and lower a stat at the same time.
Also, moves that can inflict status effects with 100% or near-100% accuracy are good.
Moves that trap the opponent can be very useful, especially if your Pokémon is bulky and can sustain a lot of damage.
Moves that can disable the opponent are good, too, like Taunt which makes them only able to use attacking moves, or Disable which completely removes the ability to use one of their moves.
So here's some noteworthy utility moves Ninetales has:
Nasty Plot - This raises Ninetales's Special Attack sharply. This will make you much more powerful, and able to take out many more Pokémon than normal.
Calm Mind - This raises both Special Attack and Special Defense a bit. This can be useful if you're planning on being able to tank lots of attacks.
Will-O-Wisp - This can inflict enemy with a burn at 85% success rate (pretty good). Burn also halves the opponent's attack, so this can make Ninetales able to withstand a lot of oncoming attacks...
Fire Spin - This can trap the opponent while slowly damaging. Good if you can manage to trap an opponent that can't hurt Ninetales much.
Sunny Day - Makes the weather strong sunlight. This boosts fire moves, hurts water moves, and allows Solar Beam to be used without charge, to name some advantages to Ninetales specifically. Can also help other Pokémon on the team if they benefit from sunlight in some way.
Toxic - Inflicts bad poison. can be coupled with Fire Spin to slowly chip away at a trapped Pokémon's HP.
So, looking at these moves, we can think of some things that will work well together.
For example, you could trap a Pokémon with Fire Spin and use Toxic to poison it, watching it die slowly. Then you could use Protect and Calm Mind to help Ninetales survive even longer. This kind of strategy is risky and more fun/gimmicky, but you can use it.
A more offensive strategy would be to use Nasty Plot or Calm Mind plus three attack moves. This way, you can switch in safely when expecting a special attack, and then since the opponent will either have to continue using a weak attack or switch out, you can use that turn to use Nasty Plot or Calm Mind, then you will be able to attack with boosted attack from there on out.
In either of those cases, speed would be very important because you want Ninetales to be able to hit first and take opponents out faster before they can damage Ninetales too much.
The Nasty Plot version would work better if you wanted to try to take the enemy out quickly, and Calm Mind would work better if you want to try to boost a lot while tanking attacks. Of course, you'll only be able to safely tank Special Attacks, so be careful!
You could also try a mix of strategies -- Will-O-Wisp on the 'safe turn' and hopefully burn the opponent. With lowered attack and your high Special Defense, you might be able to use more than one Nasty Plot or Calm Mind, but you'd be limited to only two attacking moves since you use Will-O-Wisp for a slot now.
Putting it all together: Choosing moves
Now that you've thought about possible move sets, basically just pick one, and then we'll build your Ninetales around that. I like the idea of being able to use Solar Beam freely without the charge, especially since it is Grass type, which is strong against all of the types Ninetales is weak against.
So let's say we're going to use a Ninetales with Drought ability and the move Solar Beam. Now we need to pick out 3 other moves. Since our Ninetales seems like it's going to be focused on offense, let's go with the Nasty Plot set from earlier.
So we have Nasty Plot and Solar Beam for our moves. Since we're going to have sunlight and Ninetales is fire type, we obviously want a Fire type move. Since we're already getting a boost from the same-type attack bonus and from the sun, it's probably better to go with the accurate Flamethrower over the overkill Fire Blast at this point. Plus we don't want to risk missing if we're trying to take out something that can do a physical attack against Ninetales since it won't hold up well.
So now we have Nasty Plot, Flamethrower, and Solar Beam. What should we pick for the last move?
Dark Pulse can help against Psychic and Ghost types, though these often are special attackers, so Ninetales is already pretty good against those.
Extrasensory can help against Poison or Fighting types, which threaten Ninetales more, so it might be better. But we also might need to pull Ninetales out if we won't be able to one-shot them anyway.
Will-O-Wisp or Toxic can give us something to use if we want to debuff the other Pokémon. Being able to lower their attack would prove very useful, even if it means sacrificing the ability to cover more types of Pokémon weaknesses.
Personally, I would go with Extrasensory or Will-O-Wisp.
If you're going to use a Physical wall to complement Ninetales, you might want to go with Will-O-Wisp. Gourgeist, Leafeon, Chestnaught, and Altaria seem to be some high-defense Pokémon that aren't weak to rock or ground, just from a quick list at Serebii's list of Pokémon ordered by Defense...
The grass types resist Ground, and Leafeon even can have the Chlorophyll ability which benefits from the sunlight.
This way if you see an opponent with a strong ground or rock Pokémon in their party during the team preview, you could try using Will-O-Wisp after switching in, hoping they will switch out to the ground or rock type. Then bring in Leafeon right after. Then later after taking out the threat, you can do your Nasty Plot, for example...
I know that's a lot of thinking ahead, though, and not always a situation that will be useful. So you could easily just throw in Extrasensory and go for an all-around attacker. Always switch Ninetales in against something it can tank, then use Nasty Plot. If you think you can take more damage, use Nasty Plot again, if not, attack with the strongest move you have at the time. It's an easier-to-use strategy.
Anyway, whichever one you want to go with, now it's time to base the rest of what you do around that...
Choosing nature, EV spread, and item
Once you have an idea of what 4 moves you want to use and what ability you will use, you should pick nature, EV, and item to complement this.
Let's look at our Ninetales so far:
Ability: Drought
Moves:
- Nasty Plot
- Flamethrower
- Dark Pulse
- Extrasensory
Our Ninetales is based around a strategy of switching in when it can take a hit, and then using Nasty Plot to boost Special Attack while the opponent either switches out or continues to try a weak attack against Ninetales. After that, we're going to want to hit hard and fast so Ninetales doesn't take damage from the new threats, or switch Ninetales out if we think it will get KO'd.
Choosing Nature
You want a nature that boosts the most important stat you will be using, and lowers a stat you will not use. Do not use neutral natures. Generally, you do not want to use natures that lower your defenses, either.
In our case, we want to boost Speed, since being able to take out the opponents before we are taken out is most important. Or if we're using Will-O-Wisp, it might even be helpful to get the Will-O-Wisp out before the opponent can take us down, if we're wanting to sacrifice Ninetales for the sake of burning the opponent. Either way, Speed is the most important.
We don't want to lower defense or special defense ever. And we don't want to lower Special Attack since it is what we're using for all our moves. So the only thing left is Attack.
You can use this chart at Pokémon Database to see which natures do what.
Looking at the chart, the nature that boosts speed (+Speed) and lowers attack (-Attack) is called Timid. That means we need a Timid Ninetales.
Getting a Pokémon of the nature you want is outside the scope of this tutorial, but basically you have two ways to do it: breed for it, or try to catch it.
If you have a parent with the nature you want hold an everstone, the baby will always be that nature. If you don't have either hold an everstone, the baby will get random nature. So you can just breed over and over until you get it.
If you have a Pokémon with Synchronize ability (such as Ralts or Abra) in the first slot of your party (even if it's fainted) the Pokémon you encounter in the wild have a high chance of being the same nature as the Synchronize Pokémon. So if you get have a Timid Abra with Synchronize, you can try to catch the Vulpix you want. If you don't have this, you can just catch a bunch of Vulpix until you get a Timid one.
Choosing EV spread
Whether you fight to get EVs or get them through Super Training, you want to pay attention to what stats you put your EVs in. Without going too much into it, since it's very complicated, for now, just max out the EV counts for the two most important stats. In our Ninetales's case, those are Speed and Special Attack. Then you can dump the extra EVs into HP or Special Defense, but it doesn't matter so much since it will barely boost the stat.
This tutorial will not tell you how to train your EVs, but you can check on them in the Super Training window, and if you try to use a punching bag or do Super Training for a stat when it is maxed out in EVs, you'll get 0 EVS for doing it. So that's how you can tell if you maxed one stat. Once you have maxed your EV limit, the Super Training window will tell you it's a fully-trained Pokémon.
Note that every time you get EXP for your Pokémon (even if they aren't in battle, like with EXP Share) you WILL get EVS, so do not get any EXP at all unless it is boosting the EVs you want. If you don't want to learn how to train through battle, you can always do Super Training, especially if you think it's fun. Once you know how to do it through battle, though, it's MUCH faster.
Choosing Item
There are a small subset of all the items in the game that are actually useful. Most of these you will get through Battle Points at the Battle Maison. These are harder to suggest because you just have to have a good idea of what all items are available.
You can find a list of most battle items at Bulbapedia here. But this doesn't include Berries. You can find berries here.
Some good ideas for Ninetales would be Life Orb (hurts Ninetales every time it attacks, but boosts the power of all attacks by 30%), Passho Berry (makes a water attack not super effective once), Wise Glasses (10% power boost to all special attacks), Expert Belt (boosts attacks by 20% if they're supereffective), Leftovers (restores 1/16 of max HP every turn), etc.
Life Orb is good because Ninetales's base Special Attack isn't particularly amazing, and our nature is boosting Speed, so this will make up for that a bit. But this is up to play style, plus in many tournament rules, you can't have more than one of the same item across your team (including Battle Maison rules) so if you want someone else to have a Life Orb, for example, you might go with something else.
Leftovers (or maybe even Shell Bell?) would be good if you're planning on using Will-O-Wisp and trying to stay in the battle after using it, and to lessen the damage you receive by switching in.
Anyway, let's say we're gonna go with Life Orb.
Here's our finished Ninetales design:
Timid Ninetales @ Life Orb w/ Drought
252 Sp Att - 252 Speed - 4 Sp Def
- Nasty Plot
- Flamethrower
- Dark Pulse
- Extrasensory
So now we know exactly what Nature, EVs, Item, and moves we need.
252 is the max number for EVs so you know why I wrote that number. 4 is just what is leftover after you use your 504 from those, since you can only spend 510 EVs total, and only multiples of 4 effort points will affect a stat.
Actually getting the Pokémon
So you have the idea of what Pokémon you want. How do you actually get it?!
You can either breed for it or try to catch it. If you care about IVs, you're going to want to breed for it, which breeding for IVs is a very involved process and takes a lot of time and a lot of setup before you can do it effectively.
In this case, whether we are hatching an egg or catching, we need to make sure of two things that are determined at birth or encounter and you can't change later: the nature and the ability. (You can change ability between 'normal' abilities but not to hidden ability).
If you're using any moves that are egg moves, you HAVE to make sure you breed for those, too.
Our moves are found this way:
Nasty Plot (heart scale)
Flamethrower (technical machine)
Dark Pulse (technical machine)
Extrasensory (level up Vulpix)
So we don't need to breed for moves, and we can evolve to Ninetales as soon as we learn Extrasensory.
So we only need to breed or catch worrying about 1. having Timid nature, and 2. having Drought ability.
If we were using a non-hidden ability, we wouldn't have to worry so much about ability since you can change it.
For breeding: One of the parents must have the hidden ability or none of the babies will have it. Using everstone on a Timid parent will make all babies Timid. Keep breeding with one Timid parent holding everstone and one parent with the Drought ability until you get a baby with Timid nature AND Drought ability. You're done! If you don't have a parent with the Drought ability, you'll have to go find one and catch it.
For catching: To get Drought ability, you'll need to be in Omega Ruby or Alpha Sapphire. Go to Mt Pyre and either encounter Vulpix hoardes over and over until you find one with Drought, or use PokeNav to chain Vulpix until you find one with Drought ability. While chaining you can also see the natures easily with the PokeNav, so you can try to get a Timid one while doing it.
For hoardes, just use Sweet Scent to make hoardes happen every battle. you will know if a Vulpix has Drought because it will activate when the battle starts. If none of them have Drought, just run away and try again. If one does, make sure you notice which one and catch that one!
If you do it this way, you can try to use Synchronize to get one with Timid nature if you want.
Either way, you might have to do a combination of catching and breeding until you get it. Remember the dad doesn't have to be Vulpix or Ninetales, so if you have a Pokémon in the same egg group as Vulpix, you can use any dad with Timid nature to get a Timid Vulpix.
However, if you end up with a male that has Drought and don't want to wait for a female, you can breed the male until you get a female baby with Drought, then breed her with the Timid dad you chose, for example. Just think about your options and try to get to the final result, which is both Drought and Timid on the same Vulpix.
Once you have your Vulpix with both Drought ability and Timid nature, you can start training it.
Remember, EVERY TIME you get EXP in ANY WAY, you will get EVs with it. So do not gain EXP unless you're getting the EVs you want, or you've already maxed your EVs.
Max your EVs first. You can use a combination of vitamins, super training, and battle training, however you'd like. Battle training is the fastest, but you'll need the Power items from Battle Maison as well as Pokerus to do it the fastest. It's still faster even without Pokerus though. But you will want the Power items first. Vitamins are also very fast but you'll need a ton of money or BP to buy them, and they only go so far, so you'll have to either battle or Super Train after using them (they can only give up to 100 per stat, so in this case, you could use 10 Calcium and 10 Carbos to get Special Attack and Speed to 100 each, then train the rest of the 152 you need). Don't put a Zinc in Special Defense because it will give 10 points, and take away from some that you can give to the other two stats. Once you've maxed the other two, you can use a vitamin for that if you want.
If you mess up your EVs, you can use the white punching bag to completely reset them to 0 so you can do it over again. It can take a long time to find one, but keep punching the generic punching bag and eventually a white one will pop up. Make sure to throw away or use some once you fill up your punching bag inventory, though.
Once you get all your EVs, start leveling up and focus on getting your moves. The only move we need to level up for is Extrasensory, which Vulpix will learn at level 31. Give Vulpix Lucky Egg and go to the Battle Resort island. Fight the trainers outside there and they give a ton of EXP. After that you should easily by at level 31, so make sure you learn Extrasensory. If you accidentally didn't teach it, just go to the Heart Scale guy to relearn it.
After that, you can evolve Vulpix into Ninetales if you want. Use the TMs to teach Flamethrower and Dark Pulse. Then go to Heart Scale guy and Nasty Plot should appear as teachable move. Then you have all your moves.
Now level Ninetales up to at least level 50. Most tournament rules will automatically lower your level to 50 but if you're under 50 it will not raise your level up, so you need to be at least level 50.
Go to Battle Maison and buy the Life Orb for 48 BP or however much it costs. Give it to Ninetales. You're 100% done! You have the best Ninetales you can have based on what you wanted (well, if you didn't do IV breeding, it could be better, but you're still close enough).
Summary (tl;dr)
I know I wrote a LOT. Because honestly Pokémon is an extremely involved and complicated game despite being for little kids lol.
Here is a quick summary of the steps you need to take to plan and raise a strong Pokémon. Just follow this list and you should be good. If you need more details, then look back up at the full post.
Planning the Pokémon
1. Choose a Pokémon you want to train.
2. Look up its information on a site like Serebii.
3. Look at the base stats to get an idea of what the Pokémon is good at.
4. Look at the abilities to see what kinds of special abilities the Pokémon has.
5. Look at the move pool, and using what you know about the nature and stats, choose the 4 moves you want to use. Try to think of how you'll use the Pokémon in battle.
6. Based on the moves you chose, figure out what the two most important stats will be, and what stat you will not make use of (usually one of the attack stats).
7. Choose a nature that boosts your most important stat, and lowers the stat you don't use.
8. Choose where you will spread your EVs. Easy choice is to max out the two most important stats, then put the extra 4 into either HP or one of the defenses or whatever.
9. Choose an item that helps your Pokémon based on how you plan to use it.
10. Write down your four moves, your nature, your ability, and your item that you chose. Also write down how to get each move (what level you learn it, or if it's from TM, etc. This will be very convenient later).
Sometimes you'll think of new ideas and what to jump back a few steps. That's okay. Just make sure you do each of these things.
Obtaining the Pokémon
1. Check and see what you need from the Pokémon that you have to get at birth or at catch:
--- You always need to get the right nature at birth or catch.
--- You have to get hidden ability at birth or catch. Regular abilities are not required, but more convenient to get at birth or catch. It costs 200BP to change your ability, so try to get it now if you can.
--- If you are wanting any Egg Moves, you have to get them at birth.
--- If you want to breed for IVs, you need to get those at birth.
--- If you need a move learned from a special baby Pokémon like Munchlax, you need to breed for the baby now.
--- If you need a certain gender for an evolution or something, you have to get that now, too.
2. If you can catch the Pokémon easily, do that. If you need to breed, try to catch or breed parents so that they have everything you need.
--- Everstone will pass the nature of the parent to the baby.
--- Hidden ability has a chance of passing if a parent has it.
--- A parent must know the egg moves at the time of putting them in the daycare to pass to baby.
--- Passing IVs is complicated and not part of this tutorial.
3. Once you have two parents that between the two of them have all the egg moves, the ability (if hidden), and the nature you want, give everstone to the parent with the correct nature, then continue hatching eggs until you get one that has all the things you need on it (all egg moves, correct nature, ability). Now you have your Pokémon!
Training the Pokémon
1. Pay attention if you need to be at a certain evolution to get certain moves. For example, if you want Butterfree to have Iron Defense, you need to learn it as Metapod through a tutor. If you evolve to Butterfree early, you can't get Iron Defense. Just take note of this before you start.
2. Get all EVs first before trying to level up, since EVs will gain in the wrong stats if you just fight random stuff. Vitamins give 10 EVs each so be careful. They also can't be used if you have more than 100 in that stat.
3. Once you have all EVs, learn all your moves. Pay attention to if you need to be at any certain evolutions. Generally if you can learn it by level up, it will be faster to keep the Pokémon not evolved.
4. If you're still not at level 50, get to level 50.
5. Get the item you need and give it to your Pokémon to hold. If it's an item that gets used up in battle (like a berry or focus sash) you need to make sure you DON'T use this Pokémon in battles with trainers or wild Pokémon because you can lose your item! Battling against other players in any way, or battling in the Maison, your items will be given back to you at the end of every battle. But any other battle will use up your item.
You're done!!
I know this is super long. But just follow these steps every time. Eventually it becomes very simple and easy and you will wonder how it was ever confusing in the first place. But at first it's very intimidating. Just follow the steps one by one.
If you have trouble deciding what is good moves or stats, you can see example builds at Smogon University. These are based around the Smogon competitive metagame following Smogon rules, so they might not always be the best for tournaments or Maison, but generally they are very good. They also do not take into account other Pokémon in the team, so it's important to also think about what other Pokémon are in your team.
For example, you might give a Pokémon Thunder instead of Thunderbolt if you know a partner Pokémon will use Rain Dance. Or you might use a slower Pokémon with a speed build, or focus on an attack instead of speed even when speed is most important, if you plan on having a partner user Baton Pass to give it speed boosts. Stuff like that. These are not taken into account at all on Smogon.
Once you are battling with your Pokémon, you might decide to change up its moves and that's okay. And eventually you might think "I can make this better" and train a new one from scratch. I have like 7 Probopass lmao.
Also remember you can change some stuff about a Pokémon without having to start over from breeding a new baby:
- To change ability between one of the normal abilities, use Ability Capsule item. Costs 200 BP though, I think. Can't change to hidden ability.
- To reset EVs, use the white punching bag in Super Training. All your EVs will reset to 0 so you can train them again if you messed up or decide you want to focus on different stats or something. There are also some special berries that can decrease one stat a little bit but they're hard to get.
- You can relearn level-up moves you missed with Heart Scale, and always teach TMs and HMs unlimitedly. If you need a new Egg move, though, you'll have to start over from scratch with a new baby.
Some stuff you can't change:
- To get hidden ability, you have to breed it or catch it.
- To get a new nature, you have to breed it or catch it.
- To get egg moves, you need to breed them.
- To get IVs, you need to breed for them.
- To get shiny you'll need to breed or catch :P
- To get a new gender, you have to breed or catch.
In Pokémon Sun and Moon they will certainly change up how all of this works like they always seem to. Usually it only changes a little, though. Usually to make things easier. Like breeding IVs got a lot easier with each game, so now getting perfect IVs is easy (albeit time-consuming) in Omega/Alpha.
In Sun and Moon it seems like you'll be able to boost IVs to max with a special feature! But you'll have to get your Pokémon to level 100 to do it >_>
They will probably make breeding and stuff even easier. Maybe a way to change natures? Who knows! But for now, this is what we have to deal with ^_^
Useful Links
Chart of natures
Serebii XY Pokedex
All battle items
All berries
EV hoarde training hotspots
More detailed breeding guide
Smogon XY Pokémon Builds for every Pokémon
dreamingmystic but I guess anyone can use it if they want. I will try not to be long-winded but YOU KNOW MEGetting into training strong Pokémon is kind of hard because there's tons of information and choices. You can do a lot of work to make them tournament-level strong, which takes a ton of effort, but some people just want to do it casually -- making them strong but without TOO much work and understanding. Then if you enjoy it you can choose to learn more. That's what this guide is for.
Basically you can divide Pokémon builds into a few distinct types. These are my terms, and I'll put common terms I hear other people use in parentheses:
Attacker (Sweeper) - A Pokémon whose primary strategy is to deal lots of damage at once. Generally you will focus on one type of attack (physical or special) but you can do mixed. Speed is important, too, because you want to make sure you go first. In an exchange of blows of Pokémon of relatively similar strengths, the faster Pokémon will win.
Defender (Wall) - A Pokémon whose primary function is to last for a long time or take hits. Generally in single battle, you will switch to this Pokémon in order to try to 'tank' a hit, then hopefully get off some kind of useful move like Toxic, Steal Rock, etc. Sometimes walls can also hit hard. These Pokémon will focus on defenses primarily -- which can include any combination of HP, Defense, and Special Defense. Some can focus on an attack type, too. The combination of all of a Pokémon's defensive capabilities (HP, Defense, and Special Defense, along with abilities and items that improve these, are referred to as its "Bulk")
Support - A Pokémon whose primary function is to provide support for other Pokémon in the team, through things like healing, weather, screens, etc. In double and triple battle this also involves drawing attention of other Pokémon and using moves like Helping Hand. They can focus on speed and defense, or if they're naturally slow, pure defense.
Trick (Utility, Annoyer, etc.) - A Pokémon whose primary function is to perform some kind of gimmick. Examples: a Pokémon that paralyzes and confuses the opponent and then uses moves to avoid attacks in hopes that the opponent knocks themselves out with confusion, or a Pokémon that poisons and leech seeds the opponent and heals itself a lot in hopes of waiting out the poison and leech seed damage.
Lead - This is the Pokémon you plan on using first in your lineup. It will be one of the other types, but it is good to think about how it can respond to virtually anything or how it can set up the field for your other teammates. Generally things like being able to inflict status effects, boost your own team, use field hazards like Stealth Rock or Toxic Spikes, etc. are good things for a lead Pokemon to be able to do.
Other Pokémon you'll try to only bring out in certain situations and pull them out against other types.
If you're doing online tournament rules or Battle Maison rules, you'll have a team of 6, but at the beginning you'll have to choose only 3 of them (for single battle) or 4 of them (for double battle) to send out. Triple and Rotation you use all 6 I think, I forget, oops. I've still been meaning to get into triples. But keep this in mind when building a whole team. It's also okay to build your Pokémon without thinking about how they fit into a team at first, then adjusting them once you find a team you like or training new replacements to fit a team or whatever.
I'm assuming you just have a specific Pokémon you want to train since you want to use one you like, rather than you're looking for a Pokémon to fit a certain role. So like, "I want to train Ninetales!" not "I need a Special Attacker!"
The first thing you should do is go to an information page for that Pokémon. I like Serebii because it's always the most up-to-date and has the best organization, and everything links to other pages so you can learn more.
For this example, we're going to be looking at Ninetales. Here's the Serebii entry for Ninetales in Pokémon 6.
Basically you want to look at these things:
- The base stats of the Pokémon
- The potential abilities of the Pokémon
- The available moves of the Pokémon
Thinking about Base Stats
On Serebii, these are found at the bottom of the page. There's a lot of numbers down here, but for casual building you only need to look at the actual base stats and not the various potentials below them.
These are just the base stat of that species.
Your Pokémon can have wildly different stats based on its Intriguing Potential (also called "Individual Values" or IV, these are an addition modifier to base stats that are unique for each Pokémon, and can range between 0 and 31 for each stat).
The Pokémon's nature affects certain stats. (Some natures will give a percentage boost to one stat while giving a percentage drop to another stat. Other natures do nothing.)
Furthermore, you can train in stats to give additional modifiers to base stats. This doesn't have an official name in the game, but fans refer to these bonus points as Effort Points and Effort Values (EV).
For example if you look at Nintetales, it could have an HP of anywhere between 256 and 350 at level 100. That's almost a 100-point difference!
But for now, we're just looking at the base stats of the species. This is the most influential thing in how high the stat can get, and if the base stat is bad, the Pokémon will always be bad at that thing.
Generally, these are a general guideline of how good a Pokémon's base stats are:
110+ - Amazing!
100-109 - Very good
90-99 Good
80-89 - Just OK...
70-79 - Not very good
0-69 - Bad
In the case that you're wanting a low speed, around 25 and below is the best. Anything over 40 is bad. 5 is the lowest you can get I think (Shuckle). Low-speed Pokémon are not common unless you're building a Trick Room team which is a bit advanced.
So let's look at Ninetales. Ninetales is a very interesting Pokémon because one of its defenses is high and its speed is high, too! Generally defensive Pokémon are very slow. Ninetales isn't particularly bulky because its HP and Defense are not anything special. but this can give Ninetales some particularly interesting uses.
Since only one of the defenses is high, we could focus on that and make Ninetales a "Special Defender." If we focus on a high Special Defense and HP, we could switch out to Ninetales when we think the opponent is going to use a Special attack, or whenever we know the opponent only has access to Special attacks. Ninetales would then not take too much damage.
Single battles are all about being able to make smart, safe switches like this. Then hopefully we'll be able to use some moves to counter against the opponent when they try to switch or continue trying to hurt Ninetales despite its big defense.
So when we go to look at the moves later, we should see if there are any moves that might be helpful in this way -- things we can use to hinder an opponent after tanking their attack, or help out the other Pokémon in our team.
The good speed also allows Ninetales to be decent at attacking, too. Special Attack is better than Attack here, so when we look at moves, we'll want to think about what kinds of Special Attack moves Ninetales can do.
Potentially a high speed with good Special Defense could allow Nintetales to fulfill other roles like support or trick, so we could think about that, too. It will depend on the moves. Generally when first planning a Pokémon, I find moves and think "Oh, maybe I can use that!" and then have to go back to the base stats to see if it's viable. It takes me a very long time and a lot of re-referencing stuff to plan a Pokémon build lol.
Thinking about Abilities
At the top of the serebii page, you can see all of the available abilities for the Pokémon:
Ninetales only has two available abilities. Most Pokémon have 2 or 3. Make sure you take note if the hidden ability is available. Getting the hidden ability will be harder, so if you don't want to mess with it, just ignore the hidden ability.
Generally as of Pokémon 6 games, the main way of getting a hidden ability is 1. Through Friend Safari in X and Y or 2. Through hoarde encounters in any game. The first one is much more reliable and easier to do. Once you get one with the hidden ability, you can then breed that ability onto others.
The first ability we have access to is Flash Fire. When Ninetales is hit by a Fire move, it goes into 'Flash Fire' mode which means all its fire attacks do 50% more damage. This can be useful and supports an attack-based Ninetales.
The other ability we can use is Drought, which used to be a unique ability for Groudon only. But now even Ninetales can get it! This immediately changes the weather to strong sunlight when the Pokémon is sent out, and it will last for 5 turns naturally. This can be used to support other Pokémon or even Ninetales itself, as it weakens water moves and strengthens fire moves.
This also means Ninetales might be good to lead with if you're wanting to use a team that takes advantage of strong sunlight right away. This can be good for double battle, too. Right now we're mostly just thinking of ideas. The moves will really decide how we can use a Pokémon.
Thinking about Moves
Every Pokémon can learn a huge variety of moves (well, some Pokémon can't learn very many, but most can learn a ton). It can be hard to wade through them all.
But moves are the most important part! Pretty much which 4 moves you decide on will determine everything else -- where you want to put your EVs, what kind of nature you should choose, which ability you should aim for, etc. Because you want to build your Pokémon around what kind of moves it will use.
I'm not going to take a screenshot of Serebii's move list for Ninetales because it's huge. But it's pretty much most of the page. Serebii organizes moves based on how they are learned -- by level up, through TMs, through breeding, etc. If you're not wanting to bother with breeding moves, you can ignore that section. I always ignore the "transfer-only" moves because it means you can only get those moves by playing older versions of the game. Not only does this make your Pokémon ineligible for tournaments now, but it's also a huge pain in the ass, and now requires paying for a Pokémon Bank account (something I'm still bitter about lol).
Even looking at the available moves if we ignore those sections, Ninetales still has a huge pool of moves to choose from, and we're only able to choose 4!
We can also ignore all the moves that are just weak moves for using as you play through the story, like Ember. We can also ignore moves of the attack type we decided we don't want to use (so we can ignore all the physical attacks).
In general, you don't want to have more than one of a certain type of attack. (It's okay two have two of the same type of move, like Will-O-Wisp and Flamethrower are both fire. But two attacks of the same time is pointless, like Flamethrower and Fire Blast.)
This is because you'll generally only need to use one of those moves, and since we only get 4 moves, it's better to use a move slot for a different attack type in case you can use this against the opponent to exploit a weakness. For example, if instead of Flamethrower and Fire Blast you had Flamethrower and Energy Ball, you'd be able to use Energy Ball if the enemy was weak to Grass, and it would be more effective than using Fire Blast. And if they were weak to fire, you already had a fire move anyway.
Generally, higher-accuracy moves are considered better than high-damage, low-accuracy moves. But you can use your own playstyle to decide which you like. You might like Fire Blast over Flamethrower if you are fine with sacrificing accuracy for more power. Competitive battles can be pretty short, so you don't need to worry about the law of averages too much. You just have to be willing to make the gamble. So you can either ignore the weaker high-accuracy moves or ignore the more powerful low-accuracy moves depending on your play style. (Anymore I like to sometimes use the high-power moves for fun, but most people would tell you never to do it).
So let's look at viable Special Attack moves that Ninetales can learn.
Fire Type
-Flamethrower
-Fire Blast
-Overheat
Grass Type
-Energy Ball
-Solar Beam
Psychic Type
-Psyshock
-Dream Eater
-Extrasensory
Dark Type
-Dark Pulse
Ghost Type
-Hex
That's about it! I didn't include more "utility"-based moves like Fire Spin. Even though it is a special attack, it is more used for the sake of trapping the opponent, not dealing lots of damage at once.
Some of these are just generally good damaging attacks without too much special properties. But some are special cases:
Overheat - This lowers Ninetales's Special Attack drastically, so it's only good as a last resort or if you plan to switch Ninetales out right away after using it (since switching out restores stat modifiers like that)
Solar Beam - Not worth using unless it is sunny, which makes it not require an extra turn to 'charge.' Ninetales has Drought ability and can use Sunny Day move, so we can make it sunny if we want.
Dream Eater - This requires the opponent to be asleep. Ninetales has access to Hypnosis but that's only got 60% accuracy, so it's probably not a good idea unless you're in a double battle with a partner that knows a better sleep-inducing move like Spore.
Hex - This is not good unless the opponent has a status condition like posion or burn. Ninetales has access to Will-O-Wisp and Toxic, so we can make use of this easily.
Already you can see some ways to use these special moves well.
For example, we'll probably only be switching Ninetales in against something we can tank hits against. So if we switch in, the opponent will probably try to switch out, or continue using a move that doesn't hurt Ninetales much, so the next turn is pretty "safe." We can use that turn to use Will-O-Wisp or Toxic, then we will be able to use Hex if we want, especially if the opponent is weak to Ghost.
Another example, if we have Nintetales with Drought, Solar Beam would be a great idea since it will always be sunny when we switch in. We'll just have to be careful of the opponent having moves or Pokémon that also can change the weather so we don't get stuck charging Solar Beam.
It seems Ninetales can learn a decent variety of attacks. Generally we want to try to be Super-Effective against as many types as possible, so using both a Ghost move and Dark move is not too great, since they both tend to be good against the same types of Pokémon like Psychic and Ghost. So having a Grass and Ghost move might be better, or Dark and Grass, for example. Of course, we always want a Fire move since Ninetales is Fire type, and we'll get a bonus for using the same type of attack, making Fire moves even stronger.
We also should think about what kind of opponents we might face. Ninetales is weak against water, ground, and rock. Grass is super-effective against all of those! So having a Grass move sounds like a very good idea.
Let's look at what kinds of status and utility moves Ninetales you can learn (any kind of move that isn't about dealing lots of damage at once). There are a lot, so I'll just list a few particularly interesting looking ones.
In general, moves that can boost your stats or lower the opponent's stats are good. Generally you want moves that boost or lower stats "sharply" or "harshly." Just regular boosts are not as good unless they do something else, like Baby-Doll Eyes always goes first, or some moves do damage and lower a stat at the same time.
Also, moves that can inflict status effects with 100% or near-100% accuracy are good.
Moves that trap the opponent can be very useful, especially if your Pokémon is bulky and can sustain a lot of damage.
Moves that can disable the opponent are good, too, like Taunt which makes them only able to use attacking moves, or Disable which completely removes the ability to use one of their moves.
So here's some noteworthy utility moves Ninetales has:
Nasty Plot - This raises Ninetales's Special Attack sharply. This will make you much more powerful, and able to take out many more Pokémon than normal.
Calm Mind - This raises both Special Attack and Special Defense a bit. This can be useful if you're planning on being able to tank lots of attacks.
Will-O-Wisp - This can inflict enemy with a burn at 85% success rate (pretty good). Burn also halves the opponent's attack, so this can make Ninetales able to withstand a lot of oncoming attacks...
Fire Spin - This can trap the opponent while slowly damaging. Good if you can manage to trap an opponent that can't hurt Ninetales much.
Sunny Day - Makes the weather strong sunlight. This boosts fire moves, hurts water moves, and allows Solar Beam to be used without charge, to name some advantages to Ninetales specifically. Can also help other Pokémon on the team if they benefit from sunlight in some way.
Toxic - Inflicts bad poison. can be coupled with Fire Spin to slowly chip away at a trapped Pokémon's HP.
So, looking at these moves, we can think of some things that will work well together.
For example, you could trap a Pokémon with Fire Spin and use Toxic to poison it, watching it die slowly. Then you could use Protect and Calm Mind to help Ninetales survive even longer. This kind of strategy is risky and more fun/gimmicky, but you can use it.
A more offensive strategy would be to use Nasty Plot or Calm Mind plus three attack moves. This way, you can switch in safely when expecting a special attack, and then since the opponent will either have to continue using a weak attack or switch out, you can use that turn to use Nasty Plot or Calm Mind, then you will be able to attack with boosted attack from there on out.
In either of those cases, speed would be very important because you want Ninetales to be able to hit first and take opponents out faster before they can damage Ninetales too much.
The Nasty Plot version would work better if you wanted to try to take the enemy out quickly, and Calm Mind would work better if you want to try to boost a lot while tanking attacks. Of course, you'll only be able to safely tank Special Attacks, so be careful!
You could also try a mix of strategies -- Will-O-Wisp on the 'safe turn' and hopefully burn the opponent. With lowered attack and your high Special Defense, you might be able to use more than one Nasty Plot or Calm Mind, but you'd be limited to only two attacking moves since you use Will-O-Wisp for a slot now.
Putting it all together: Choosing moves
Now that you've thought about possible move sets, basically just pick one, and then we'll build your Ninetales around that. I like the idea of being able to use Solar Beam freely without the charge, especially since it is Grass type, which is strong against all of the types Ninetales is weak against.
So let's say we're going to use a Ninetales with Drought ability and the move Solar Beam. Now we need to pick out 3 other moves. Since our Ninetales seems like it's going to be focused on offense, let's go with the Nasty Plot set from earlier.
So we have Nasty Plot and Solar Beam for our moves. Since we're going to have sunlight and Ninetales is fire type, we obviously want a Fire type move. Since we're already getting a boost from the same-type attack bonus and from the sun, it's probably better to go with the accurate Flamethrower over the overkill Fire Blast at this point. Plus we don't want to risk missing if we're trying to take out something that can do a physical attack against Ninetales since it won't hold up well.
So now we have Nasty Plot, Flamethrower, and Solar Beam. What should we pick for the last move?
Dark Pulse can help against Psychic and Ghost types, though these often are special attackers, so Ninetales is already pretty good against those.
Extrasensory can help against Poison or Fighting types, which threaten Ninetales more, so it might be better. But we also might need to pull Ninetales out if we won't be able to one-shot them anyway.
Will-O-Wisp or Toxic can give us something to use if we want to debuff the other Pokémon. Being able to lower their attack would prove very useful, even if it means sacrificing the ability to cover more types of Pokémon weaknesses.
Personally, I would go with Extrasensory or Will-O-Wisp.
If you're going to use a Physical wall to complement Ninetales, you might want to go with Will-O-Wisp. Gourgeist, Leafeon, Chestnaught, and Altaria seem to be some high-defense Pokémon that aren't weak to rock or ground, just from a quick list at Serebii's list of Pokémon ordered by Defense...
The grass types resist Ground, and Leafeon even can have the Chlorophyll ability which benefits from the sunlight.
This way if you see an opponent with a strong ground or rock Pokémon in their party during the team preview, you could try using Will-O-Wisp after switching in, hoping they will switch out to the ground or rock type. Then bring in Leafeon right after. Then later after taking out the threat, you can do your Nasty Plot, for example...
I know that's a lot of thinking ahead, though, and not always a situation that will be useful. So you could easily just throw in Extrasensory and go for an all-around attacker. Always switch Ninetales in against something it can tank, then use Nasty Plot. If you think you can take more damage, use Nasty Plot again, if not, attack with the strongest move you have at the time. It's an easier-to-use strategy.
Anyway, whichever one you want to go with, now it's time to base the rest of what you do around that...
Choosing nature, EV spread, and item
Once you have an idea of what 4 moves you want to use and what ability you will use, you should pick nature, EV, and item to complement this.
Let's look at our Ninetales so far:
Ability: Drought
Moves:
- Nasty Plot
- Flamethrower
- Dark Pulse
- Extrasensory
Our Ninetales is based around a strategy of switching in when it can take a hit, and then using Nasty Plot to boost Special Attack while the opponent either switches out or continues to try a weak attack against Ninetales. After that, we're going to want to hit hard and fast so Ninetales doesn't take damage from the new threats, or switch Ninetales out if we think it will get KO'd.
Choosing Nature
You want a nature that boosts the most important stat you will be using, and lowers a stat you will not use. Do not use neutral natures. Generally, you do not want to use natures that lower your defenses, either.
In our case, we want to boost Speed, since being able to take out the opponents before we are taken out is most important. Or if we're using Will-O-Wisp, it might even be helpful to get the Will-O-Wisp out before the opponent can take us down, if we're wanting to sacrifice Ninetales for the sake of burning the opponent. Either way, Speed is the most important.
We don't want to lower defense or special defense ever. And we don't want to lower Special Attack since it is what we're using for all our moves. So the only thing left is Attack.
You can use this chart at Pokémon Database to see which natures do what.
Looking at the chart, the nature that boosts speed (+Speed) and lowers attack (-Attack) is called Timid. That means we need a Timid Ninetales.
Getting a Pokémon of the nature you want is outside the scope of this tutorial, but basically you have two ways to do it: breed for it, or try to catch it.
If you have a parent with the nature you want hold an everstone, the baby will always be that nature. If you don't have either hold an everstone, the baby will get random nature. So you can just breed over and over until you get it.
If you have a Pokémon with Synchronize ability (such as Ralts or Abra) in the first slot of your party (even if it's fainted) the Pokémon you encounter in the wild have a high chance of being the same nature as the Synchronize Pokémon. So if you get have a Timid Abra with Synchronize, you can try to catch the Vulpix you want. If you don't have this, you can just catch a bunch of Vulpix until you get a Timid one.
Choosing EV spread
Whether you fight to get EVs or get them through Super Training, you want to pay attention to what stats you put your EVs in. Without going too much into it, since it's very complicated, for now, just max out the EV counts for the two most important stats. In our Ninetales's case, those are Speed and Special Attack. Then you can dump the extra EVs into HP or Special Defense, but it doesn't matter so much since it will barely boost the stat.
This tutorial will not tell you how to train your EVs, but you can check on them in the Super Training window, and if you try to use a punching bag or do Super Training for a stat when it is maxed out in EVs, you'll get 0 EVS for doing it. So that's how you can tell if you maxed one stat. Once you have maxed your EV limit, the Super Training window will tell you it's a fully-trained Pokémon.
Note that every time you get EXP for your Pokémon (even if they aren't in battle, like with EXP Share) you WILL get EVS, so do not get any EXP at all unless it is boosting the EVs you want. If you don't want to learn how to train through battle, you can always do Super Training, especially if you think it's fun. Once you know how to do it through battle, though, it's MUCH faster.
Choosing Item
There are a small subset of all the items in the game that are actually useful. Most of these you will get through Battle Points at the Battle Maison. These are harder to suggest because you just have to have a good idea of what all items are available.
You can find a list of most battle items at Bulbapedia here. But this doesn't include Berries. You can find berries here.
Some good ideas for Ninetales would be Life Orb (hurts Ninetales every time it attacks, but boosts the power of all attacks by 30%), Passho Berry (makes a water attack not super effective once), Wise Glasses (10% power boost to all special attacks), Expert Belt (boosts attacks by 20% if they're supereffective), Leftovers (restores 1/16 of max HP every turn), etc.
Life Orb is good because Ninetales's base Special Attack isn't particularly amazing, and our nature is boosting Speed, so this will make up for that a bit. But this is up to play style, plus in many tournament rules, you can't have more than one of the same item across your team (including Battle Maison rules) so if you want someone else to have a Life Orb, for example, you might go with something else.
Leftovers (or maybe even Shell Bell?) would be good if you're planning on using Will-O-Wisp and trying to stay in the battle after using it, and to lessen the damage you receive by switching in.
Anyway, let's say we're gonna go with Life Orb.
Here's our finished Ninetales design:
Timid Ninetales @ Life Orb w/ Drought
252 Sp Att - 252 Speed - 4 Sp Def
- Nasty Plot
- Flamethrower
- Dark Pulse
- Extrasensory
So now we know exactly what Nature, EVs, Item, and moves we need.
252 is the max number for EVs so you know why I wrote that number. 4 is just what is leftover after you use your 504 from those, since you can only spend 510 EVs total, and only multiples of 4 effort points will affect a stat.
Actually getting the Pokémon
So you have the idea of what Pokémon you want. How do you actually get it?!
You can either breed for it or try to catch it. If you care about IVs, you're going to want to breed for it, which breeding for IVs is a very involved process and takes a lot of time and a lot of setup before you can do it effectively.
In this case, whether we are hatching an egg or catching, we need to make sure of two things that are determined at birth or encounter and you can't change later: the nature and the ability. (You can change ability between 'normal' abilities but not to hidden ability).
If you're using any moves that are egg moves, you HAVE to make sure you breed for those, too.
Our moves are found this way:
Nasty Plot (heart scale)
Flamethrower (technical machine)
Dark Pulse (technical machine)
Extrasensory (level up Vulpix)
So we don't need to breed for moves, and we can evolve to Ninetales as soon as we learn Extrasensory.
So we only need to breed or catch worrying about 1. having Timid nature, and 2. having Drought ability.
If we were using a non-hidden ability, we wouldn't have to worry so much about ability since you can change it.
For breeding: One of the parents must have the hidden ability or none of the babies will have it. Using everstone on a Timid parent will make all babies Timid. Keep breeding with one Timid parent holding everstone and one parent with the Drought ability until you get a baby with Timid nature AND Drought ability. You're done! If you don't have a parent with the Drought ability, you'll have to go find one and catch it.
For catching: To get Drought ability, you'll need to be in Omega Ruby or Alpha Sapphire. Go to Mt Pyre and either encounter Vulpix hoardes over and over until you find one with Drought, or use PokeNav to chain Vulpix until you find one with Drought ability. While chaining you can also see the natures easily with the PokeNav, so you can try to get a Timid one while doing it.
For hoardes, just use Sweet Scent to make hoardes happen every battle. you will know if a Vulpix has Drought because it will activate when the battle starts. If none of them have Drought, just run away and try again. If one does, make sure you notice which one and catch that one!
If you do it this way, you can try to use Synchronize to get one with Timid nature if you want.
Either way, you might have to do a combination of catching and breeding until you get it. Remember the dad doesn't have to be Vulpix or Ninetales, so if you have a Pokémon in the same egg group as Vulpix, you can use any dad with Timid nature to get a Timid Vulpix.
However, if you end up with a male that has Drought and don't want to wait for a female, you can breed the male until you get a female baby with Drought, then breed her with the Timid dad you chose, for example. Just think about your options and try to get to the final result, which is both Drought and Timid on the same Vulpix.
Once you have your Vulpix with both Drought ability and Timid nature, you can start training it.
Remember, EVERY TIME you get EXP in ANY WAY, you will get EVs with it. So do not gain EXP unless you're getting the EVs you want, or you've already maxed your EVs.
Max your EVs first. You can use a combination of vitamins, super training, and battle training, however you'd like. Battle training is the fastest, but you'll need the Power items from Battle Maison as well as Pokerus to do it the fastest. It's still faster even without Pokerus though. But you will want the Power items first. Vitamins are also very fast but you'll need a ton of money or BP to buy them, and they only go so far, so you'll have to either battle or Super Train after using them (they can only give up to 100 per stat, so in this case, you could use 10 Calcium and 10 Carbos to get Special Attack and Speed to 100 each, then train the rest of the 152 you need). Don't put a Zinc in Special Defense because it will give 10 points, and take away from some that you can give to the other two stats. Once you've maxed the other two, you can use a vitamin for that if you want.
If you mess up your EVs, you can use the white punching bag to completely reset them to 0 so you can do it over again. It can take a long time to find one, but keep punching the generic punching bag and eventually a white one will pop up. Make sure to throw away or use some once you fill up your punching bag inventory, though.
Once you get all your EVs, start leveling up and focus on getting your moves. The only move we need to level up for is Extrasensory, which Vulpix will learn at level 31. Give Vulpix Lucky Egg and go to the Battle Resort island. Fight the trainers outside there and they give a ton of EXP. After that you should easily by at level 31, so make sure you learn Extrasensory. If you accidentally didn't teach it, just go to the Heart Scale guy to relearn it.
After that, you can evolve Vulpix into Ninetales if you want. Use the TMs to teach Flamethrower and Dark Pulse. Then go to Heart Scale guy and Nasty Plot should appear as teachable move. Then you have all your moves.
Now level Ninetales up to at least level 50. Most tournament rules will automatically lower your level to 50 but if you're under 50 it will not raise your level up, so you need to be at least level 50.
Go to Battle Maison and buy the Life Orb for 48 BP or however much it costs. Give it to Ninetales. You're 100% done! You have the best Ninetales you can have based on what you wanted (well, if you didn't do IV breeding, it could be better, but you're still close enough).
Summary (tl;dr)
I know I wrote a LOT. Because honestly Pokémon is an extremely involved and complicated game despite being for little kids lol.
Here is a quick summary of the steps you need to take to plan and raise a strong Pokémon. Just follow this list and you should be good. If you need more details, then look back up at the full post.
Planning the Pokémon
1. Choose a Pokémon you want to train.
2. Look up its information on a site like Serebii.
3. Look at the base stats to get an idea of what the Pokémon is good at.
4. Look at the abilities to see what kinds of special abilities the Pokémon has.
5. Look at the move pool, and using what you know about the nature and stats, choose the 4 moves you want to use. Try to think of how you'll use the Pokémon in battle.
6. Based on the moves you chose, figure out what the two most important stats will be, and what stat you will not make use of (usually one of the attack stats).
7. Choose a nature that boosts your most important stat, and lowers the stat you don't use.
8. Choose where you will spread your EVs. Easy choice is to max out the two most important stats, then put the extra 4 into either HP or one of the defenses or whatever.
9. Choose an item that helps your Pokémon based on how you plan to use it.
10. Write down your four moves, your nature, your ability, and your item that you chose. Also write down how to get each move (what level you learn it, or if it's from TM, etc. This will be very convenient later).
Sometimes you'll think of new ideas and what to jump back a few steps. That's okay. Just make sure you do each of these things.
Obtaining the Pokémon
1. Check and see what you need from the Pokémon that you have to get at birth or at catch:
--- You always need to get the right nature at birth or catch.
--- You have to get hidden ability at birth or catch. Regular abilities are not required, but more convenient to get at birth or catch. It costs 200BP to change your ability, so try to get it now if you can.
--- If you are wanting any Egg Moves, you have to get them at birth.
--- If you want to breed for IVs, you need to get those at birth.
--- If you need a move learned from a special baby Pokémon like Munchlax, you need to breed for the baby now.
--- If you need a certain gender for an evolution or something, you have to get that now, too.
2. If you can catch the Pokémon easily, do that. If you need to breed, try to catch or breed parents so that they have everything you need.
--- Everstone will pass the nature of the parent to the baby.
--- Hidden ability has a chance of passing if a parent has it.
--- A parent must know the egg moves at the time of putting them in the daycare to pass to baby.
--- Passing IVs is complicated and not part of this tutorial.
3. Once you have two parents that between the two of them have all the egg moves, the ability (if hidden), and the nature you want, give everstone to the parent with the correct nature, then continue hatching eggs until you get one that has all the things you need on it (all egg moves, correct nature, ability). Now you have your Pokémon!
Training the Pokémon
1. Pay attention if you need to be at a certain evolution to get certain moves. For example, if you want Butterfree to have Iron Defense, you need to learn it as Metapod through a tutor. If you evolve to Butterfree early, you can't get Iron Defense. Just take note of this before you start.
2. Get all EVs first before trying to level up, since EVs will gain in the wrong stats if you just fight random stuff. Vitamins give 10 EVs each so be careful. They also can't be used if you have more than 100 in that stat.
3. Once you have all EVs, learn all your moves. Pay attention to if you need to be at any certain evolutions. Generally if you can learn it by level up, it will be faster to keep the Pokémon not evolved.
4. If you're still not at level 50, get to level 50.
5. Get the item you need and give it to your Pokémon to hold. If it's an item that gets used up in battle (like a berry or focus sash) you need to make sure you DON'T use this Pokémon in battles with trainers or wild Pokémon because you can lose your item! Battling against other players in any way, or battling in the Maison, your items will be given back to you at the end of every battle. But any other battle will use up your item.
You're done!!
I know this is super long. But just follow these steps every time. Eventually it becomes very simple and easy and you will wonder how it was ever confusing in the first place. But at first it's very intimidating. Just follow the steps one by one.
If you have trouble deciding what is good moves or stats, you can see example builds at Smogon University. These are based around the Smogon competitive metagame following Smogon rules, so they might not always be the best for tournaments or Maison, but generally they are very good. They also do not take into account other Pokémon in the team, so it's important to also think about what other Pokémon are in your team.
For example, you might give a Pokémon Thunder instead of Thunderbolt if you know a partner Pokémon will use Rain Dance. Or you might use a slower Pokémon with a speed build, or focus on an attack instead of speed even when speed is most important, if you plan on having a partner user Baton Pass to give it speed boosts. Stuff like that. These are not taken into account at all on Smogon.
Once you are battling with your Pokémon, you might decide to change up its moves and that's okay. And eventually you might think "I can make this better" and train a new one from scratch. I have like 7 Probopass lmao.
Also remember you can change some stuff about a Pokémon without having to start over from breeding a new baby:
- To change ability between one of the normal abilities, use Ability Capsule item. Costs 200 BP though, I think. Can't change to hidden ability.
- To reset EVs, use the white punching bag in Super Training. All your EVs will reset to 0 so you can train them again if you messed up or decide you want to focus on different stats or something. There are also some special berries that can decrease one stat a little bit but they're hard to get.
- You can relearn level-up moves you missed with Heart Scale, and always teach TMs and HMs unlimitedly. If you need a new Egg move, though, you'll have to start over from scratch with a new baby.
Some stuff you can't change:
- To get hidden ability, you have to breed it or catch it.
- To get a new nature, you have to breed it or catch it.
- To get egg moves, you need to breed them.
- To get IVs, you need to breed for them.
- To get shiny you'll need to breed or catch :P
- To get a new gender, you have to breed or catch.
In Pokémon Sun and Moon they will certainly change up how all of this works like they always seem to. Usually it only changes a little, though. Usually to make things easier. Like breeding IVs got a lot easier with each game, so now getting perfect IVs is easy (albeit time-consuming) in Omega/Alpha.
In Sun and Moon it seems like you'll be able to boost IVs to max with a special feature! But you'll have to get your Pokémon to level 100 to do it >_>
They will probably make breeding and stuff even easier. Maybe a way to change natures? Who knows! But for now, this is what we have to deal with ^_^
Useful Links
Chart of natures
Serebii XY Pokedex
All battle items
All berries
EV hoarde training hotspots
More detailed breeding guide
Smogon XY Pokémon Builds for every Pokémon
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Date: 2016-11-05 02:49 am (UTC)Thanks so much!!!
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Date: 2016-11-05 02:51 am (UTC)did you finally get through reading it all? XD I hope it's helpful XD
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Date: 2016-11-05 02:37 pm (UTC)I finally waided my way through all of this. XD