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Everything old is new again
What is Pokemon XD?
Pokemon XD is a Gamecube game that was released fairly recently. It's the sequel in spirit to Colloseum. Besides being a 3D battle sim, it allows you to raise pokemon that are found in the game. These pokemon can be corrupted by shadow, to my knowledge, and when ‘purified’, learn a new move that they couldn’t learn before. Also, XD features a man who will teach Mew some moves he couldn’t learn before, and three new move tutors; Selfdestruct, Sky Attack and Nightmare. To see a list of these moves, go to “View Current Mods’ under ‘Version’ in the NB Team Builder.
Why don’t the new moves work with some moves?
The new moves gained from purification are considered special moves, and as such, will not work with egg moves and NYPC/Box moves. However, some pokemon in XD that you can catch start off having one of their egg-only moves on them, meaning that these will work with the new purification moves. At the current moment, not all of these working egg moves are known; we are doing our best to find all of them and make this XD update 100% accurate. In addition, the new XD move tutors have only been tested on pokemon that can be caught/raised in XD, so some non-XD pokemon may be able to use these tutors. Again, we are doing our best to discover which tutors will work with these non-XD pokemon. Don’t worry, though; most of these moves/restrictions don’t affect competitive play.
Now, a lot of the new XD moves are semi-useless/only good in 2v2, and since this is only covering competitive 1v1, we won’t cover those moves. These include helping hand, follow me, Refresh for the most part, and a few others. So, what new moves should you be aware of? Let’s go over the Pokemon that got significant upgrades.
Zapdos:
Starting with the big winner from XD, Zapdos gets three new moves, and two of them are very useful. His new moves are: Extrasensory, Baton Pass, and Metal Sound. Now, all three legendary birds get Extrasensory, which isn’t very useful, but the other two moves are potentially game-breaking. Zapdos with Metal Sound has an obvious advantage; Zapdos is a special pokemon and Metal Sound lowers special defense. As Hipmonlee pointed out, Spikes is a huge help to this; pokemon will be switching out frequently to rid themselves of their special defense lowering, and Spikes will put a nice dent in them. Plus, most things that can resist spikes (fliers and levitaters, that is) take a nice hit from Zapdos anyway. A common Metal Sound Zapdos might look like this:
Zapdos @ Leftovers
Trait: Pressure
EVs: A lot of Speed and Sp. Atk
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)/Timid Nature(+Spd, -Atk)
- Thunderbolt
- Metal Sound
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- Substitute/Rest
This Zapdos will wear down switch-ins with Thunderbolts and Hidden Powers while discouraging special walls from staying in. How do you counter this? The best Counter is Regice, with his high special defense and trait which protects him from Metal Sound. Without Regice, however, you will just need slick prediction and you’ll have to hope your special wall can take a thunderbolt with -2 special defense.
The other new move, Baton Pass, is even more useful in my opinion. The Baton Pass Zapdos will most likely look like this:
Zapdos @ Leftovers
Trait: Pressure
EVs: Lots of Speed and some HP and Special Attack here
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Thunderbolt
- Baton Pass
- Agility/Hidden Power [Grass]
- Substitute
This Zapdos will try to pass a substitute and/or an agility or two to a powerful sweeper like Thick Club Marowak or Medicham. These pokemon can also hit Regice very hard, and with Metal Sound Zapdos running around, Regice will be a common switch in to Zapdos. This Zapdos will also be able to baton pass to Dugtrio, which will trap anything that it is passed into, and can possibly ko them. How do you counter this? Well, it’s not easy. There is no guaranteed counter; things that can take a Thunderbolt and hit Zapdos hard are good choices, as are Psuedohazers. However, the two most common psuedohazers, Skarmory and Suicune, can’t take a Zapdos Thunderbolt, so you will need to be creative. Besides that, if Zapdos ever needs to pass without a sub up, try a move that will kill the recipient of the baton pass. Jolteon is also a good counter because he can do the same thing; that is, Substitute up and Baton Pass it's own sub/agility. Jolteon has the ability to outspeed Dugtrio and pass to a pokemon who can handle it, so use that to your advantage.
Zapdos receives Sky Attack thanks to the new move tutor, and this could be used on a CB Zapdos set, but he already has Drill PEck, which is much better, so let's move on, shall we?
Moltres:
The first trio of legendary birds got a big upgrade in XD, and Moltres probably fared second best, though it’s certainly debatable. Anyway, besides Extrasensory which we already know is bad, Moltres got Will-O-Wisp and Morning Sun, and both can be very useful. In fact, they are feasible in the same set. Back before XD, Moltres really need Rest to be competitive, and he tended to use Sleep Talk with it so that he could do something to the water or rock type (or Salamence or Snorlax) switch in. Now, he can use a set more like this:
Moltres @ Leftovers ** Moltres
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 60 HP / 252 Spd / 196 SAtk
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Fire Blast/Flamethrower
- Hidden Power [Grass]/Will-O-Wisp
- Morning Sun
- Sunny Day
EVs don’t have to be exactly that, but please focus on making it strong in Special Attack and fast enough to outspeed the 299 pokes (and the ones that go 300 to beat the 299s as well). Sunny Day not only increases the healing power of Morning Sun, but it makes Moltres’ Fire Blasts extremely powerful. Flamethrower for the luck challenged, of course. Hidden Power Grass is great to nail pokemon like Tyranitar (who wrecks your Sunny Day as well) and Swampert, but Will-O-Wisp will put a serious dent in Snorlax’s ability to hurt you, as well as any other pokemon switching in who depends on physical attacks. The best counter for this set is probably still going to be Blissey with Thunder-Wave, since Moltres can’t rest off the paralysis. Flash Fire pokemon will also take little damage from this set, and ones like Arcanine can hit Moltres hard physically. Overall, you need to remember that Moltres isn’t Zapdos; it can’t stay in versus most of its counters. However, pass this thing a few calm minds and watch it burn everything that switches into it to a pile of unrecognizable ashes.
Articuno:
The last (well, uno is one so technically first), but not LEAST, of the elemental birds is of course Articuno, the much maligned Icy Flier that always seems to be good, but just not quite good enough for people to use it. So what did he get? Once again, besides that Extrasensory garbage that we won’t be using, Articuno got two nice utility moves that nicely compliment his stallish/utility style of play: Heal Bell and Haze. So, how do we utilize these moves?
With Heal Bell, Articuno becomes one of the better defensive Bellers in the game. Sure, Celebi is better, and Blissey is better at walling all special attacks, but Articuno has very good defenses, and pressure to boot; his only downside is poor defensive typing. An Articuno with Heal Bell might look like this:
Articuno @ Leftovers
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 124 HP / 136 Def / 192 SAtk / 56 SDef
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
- Heal Bell
- Ice Beam/Substitute
Classic Resttalking beller, you can bell the teams status back to normal, then rest yourself to full health and hope that Sleep Talk chooses Heal Bell to wake you up early. Ice Beam is, as always, Articuno’s best offensive move, and you should have enough SpAtk EVs to do decent damage to things. Unfortunately, this is wrecked by Metagross and doesn’t exactly like things like Thunder(bolt) Regice either. For pure stalling, you can use Substitute as well to keep you alive longer/stall more with Pressure, but I never like using a pokemon with no offensive moves, especially since Articuno packs a pretty strong STAB Ice Beam. Waters can easily switch in but none will do very much, I’d suggest using Spikes on just about any team with Articuno on it.
Haze is a pretty nice move too, and Articuno is one of the faster pokemon that gets it (and can actually take a hit). However, all you’ll be able to Haze are things that don’t raise speed/lower speed, aka a Snorlax’s Curses or Suicune’s Calm Minds, as well as some assorted Swords Dances. A good set for Haze would be:
Articuno @ Leftovers
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 124 HP / 136 Def / 192 SAtk / 56 SDef (these are the EVs from the other set, generally use something like this with a good defensive emphasis, put more speed if you have a certain thing you want to be faster than so that you can Haze it and more/less SpAtk at your own preference).
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Haze
- Rest
- Substitute/Reflect/Toxic
- Ice Beam
Rest is really needed on just about any Articuno set, given his defensive nature, and like I said, he has a nice STAB attack in Ice Beam so it would be a shame to waste it. Besides that, Substitute is as always great for stalling and abusing pressure, Reflect can be cool because a Hazing Articuno is more of a utility choice anyway, and Toxic for indirect damage if you want to go that route. Again, Watch for Metagross and things of that ilk; most things that can resist Ice Beam and pack a Rock/Steel move spell big trouble for Articuno, and he needs to avoid these as a first priority.
Articuno also gets a fourth new move, Sky Attack, from the new move tutor, but this is pointless unless you are running a gimmick CB Articuno set, so like Extrasensory, you can ignore it.
Altaria:
Altaria, a very underrated UU pokemon in my opinion, was mostly used as a pseudo-staller in 200 (well, by me and a few other people), and in 386 is a rarely-used UU Dragon Dancer or Hazer. Well, now that he has received the move Heal Bell from XD, he is probably the best UU beller out there. It’s got great special defense, above average defense and okay HP, but best of all: Natural Cure! Altaria is a flying dragon like Salamence, so he has a huge weakness to Ice obviously, and Rock moves aren’t very nice either. Probably the best Altaria moveset would be this:
Altaria (M) @ Leftovers ** cloudy boudy
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 188 HP / 12 Def / 176 Spd / 96 SAtk / 36 SDef
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Rest
- Heal Bell
- Perish Song
- Fire Blast/Filler
Not very sure on the EVs, I just made those really quick for a team I’m using, probably give it more Defense and Special Defense and less speed on this type of moveset. Natural Rest is obvious; it doesn’t have recover, but it can Rest and then switch out and wake up thanks to Natural Cure, which is great. Perish Song is a nice p-haze move and just cool in general, and it’s nice to have some sort of attacking (or status) move to round it out. Can’t stand up to a lot of the big OU attackers, but if you give it a more Defensive spread it can take it well enough to rest it off, at least.
This is what I have so far, I'm going to continue on this in Word, while I'm doing that you guys can make some corrections/suggestions/additions.
Pokemon XD is a Gamecube game that was released fairly recently. It's the sequel in spirit to Colloseum. Besides being a 3D battle sim, it allows you to raise pokemon that are found in the game. These pokemon can be corrupted by shadow, to my knowledge, and when ‘purified’, learn a new move that they couldn’t learn before. Also, XD features a man who will teach Mew some moves he couldn’t learn before, and three new move tutors; Selfdestruct, Sky Attack and Nightmare. To see a list of these moves, go to “View Current Mods’ under ‘Version’ in the NB Team Builder.
Why don’t the new moves work with some moves?
The new moves gained from purification are considered special moves, and as such, will not work with egg moves and NYPC/Box moves. However, some pokemon in XD that you can catch start off having one of their egg-only moves on them, meaning that these will work with the new purification moves. At the current moment, not all of these working egg moves are known; we are doing our best to find all of them and make this XD update 100% accurate. In addition, the new XD move tutors have only been tested on pokemon that can be caught/raised in XD, so some non-XD pokemon may be able to use these tutors. Again, we are doing our best to discover which tutors will work with these non-XD pokemon. Don’t worry, though; most of these moves/restrictions don’t affect competitive play.
Now, a lot of the new XD moves are semi-useless/only good in 2v2, and since this is only covering competitive 1v1, we won’t cover those moves. These include helping hand, follow me, Refresh for the most part, and a few others. So, what new moves should you be aware of? Let’s go over the Pokemon that got significant upgrades.
Zapdos:
Starting with the big winner from XD, Zapdos gets three new moves, and two of them are very useful. His new moves are: Extrasensory, Baton Pass, and Metal Sound. Now, all three legendary birds get Extrasensory, which isn’t very useful, but the other two moves are potentially game-breaking. Zapdos with Metal Sound has an obvious advantage; Zapdos is a special pokemon and Metal Sound lowers special defense. As Hipmonlee pointed out, Spikes is a huge help to this; pokemon will be switching out frequently to rid themselves of their special defense lowering, and Spikes will put a nice dent in them. Plus, most things that can resist spikes (fliers and levitaters, that is) take a nice hit from Zapdos anyway. A common Metal Sound Zapdos might look like this:
Zapdos @ Leftovers
Trait: Pressure
EVs: A lot of Speed and Sp. Atk
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)/Timid Nature(+Spd, -Atk)
- Thunderbolt
- Metal Sound
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- Substitute/Rest
This Zapdos will wear down switch-ins with Thunderbolts and Hidden Powers while discouraging special walls from staying in. How do you counter this? The best Counter is Regice, with his high special defense and trait which protects him from Metal Sound. Without Regice, however, you will just need slick prediction and you’ll have to hope your special wall can take a thunderbolt with -2 special defense.
The other new move, Baton Pass, is even more useful in my opinion. The Baton Pass Zapdos will most likely look like this:
Zapdos @ Leftovers
Trait: Pressure
EVs: Lots of Speed and some HP and Special Attack here
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Thunderbolt
- Baton Pass
- Agility/Hidden Power [Grass]
- Substitute
This Zapdos will try to pass a substitute and/or an agility or two to a powerful sweeper like Thick Club Marowak or Medicham. These pokemon can also hit Regice very hard, and with Metal Sound Zapdos running around, Regice will be a common switch in to Zapdos. This Zapdos will also be able to baton pass to Dugtrio, which will trap anything that it is passed into, and can possibly ko them. How do you counter this? Well, it’s not easy. There is no guaranteed counter; things that can take a Thunderbolt and hit Zapdos hard are good choices, as are Psuedohazers. However, the two most common psuedohazers, Skarmory and Suicune, can’t take a Zapdos Thunderbolt, so you will need to be creative. Besides that, if Zapdos ever needs to pass without a sub up, try a move that will kill the recipient of the baton pass. Jolteon is also a good counter because he can do the same thing; that is, Substitute up and Baton Pass it's own sub/agility. Jolteon has the ability to outspeed Dugtrio and pass to a pokemon who can handle it, so use that to your advantage.
Zapdos receives Sky Attack thanks to the new move tutor, and this could be used on a CB Zapdos set, but he already has Drill PEck, which is much better, so let's move on, shall we?
Moltres:
The first trio of legendary birds got a big upgrade in XD, and Moltres probably fared second best, though it’s certainly debatable. Anyway, besides Extrasensory which we already know is bad, Moltres got Will-O-Wisp and Morning Sun, and both can be very useful. In fact, they are feasible in the same set. Back before XD, Moltres really need Rest to be competitive, and he tended to use Sleep Talk with it so that he could do something to the water or rock type (or Salamence or Snorlax) switch in. Now, he can use a set more like this:
Moltres @ Leftovers ** Moltres
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 60 HP / 252 Spd / 196 SAtk
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Fire Blast/Flamethrower
- Hidden Power [Grass]/Will-O-Wisp
- Morning Sun
- Sunny Day
EVs don’t have to be exactly that, but please focus on making it strong in Special Attack and fast enough to outspeed the 299 pokes (and the ones that go 300 to beat the 299s as well). Sunny Day not only increases the healing power of Morning Sun, but it makes Moltres’ Fire Blasts extremely powerful. Flamethrower for the luck challenged, of course. Hidden Power Grass is great to nail pokemon like Tyranitar (who wrecks your Sunny Day as well) and Swampert, but Will-O-Wisp will put a serious dent in Snorlax’s ability to hurt you, as well as any other pokemon switching in who depends on physical attacks. The best counter for this set is probably still going to be Blissey with Thunder-Wave, since Moltres can’t rest off the paralysis. Flash Fire pokemon will also take little damage from this set, and ones like Arcanine can hit Moltres hard physically. Overall, you need to remember that Moltres isn’t Zapdos; it can’t stay in versus most of its counters. However, pass this thing a few calm minds and watch it burn everything that switches into it to a pile of unrecognizable ashes.
Articuno:
The last (well, uno is one so technically first), but not LEAST, of the elemental birds is of course Articuno, the much maligned Icy Flier that always seems to be good, but just not quite good enough for people to use it. So what did he get? Once again, besides that Extrasensory garbage that we won’t be using, Articuno got two nice utility moves that nicely compliment his stallish/utility style of play: Heal Bell and Haze. So, how do we utilize these moves?
With Heal Bell, Articuno becomes one of the better defensive Bellers in the game. Sure, Celebi is better, and Blissey is better at walling all special attacks, but Articuno has very good defenses, and pressure to boot; his only downside is poor defensive typing. An Articuno with Heal Bell might look like this:
Articuno @ Leftovers
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 124 HP / 136 Def / 192 SAtk / 56 SDef
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
- Heal Bell
- Ice Beam/Substitute
Classic Resttalking beller, you can bell the teams status back to normal, then rest yourself to full health and hope that Sleep Talk chooses Heal Bell to wake you up early. Ice Beam is, as always, Articuno’s best offensive move, and you should have enough SpAtk EVs to do decent damage to things. Unfortunately, this is wrecked by Metagross and doesn’t exactly like things like Thunder(bolt) Regice either. For pure stalling, you can use Substitute as well to keep you alive longer/stall more with Pressure, but I never like using a pokemon with no offensive moves, especially since Articuno packs a pretty strong STAB Ice Beam. Waters can easily switch in but none will do very much, I’d suggest using Spikes on just about any team with Articuno on it.
Haze is a pretty nice move too, and Articuno is one of the faster pokemon that gets it (and can actually take a hit). However, all you’ll be able to Haze are things that don’t raise speed/lower speed, aka a Snorlax’s Curses or Suicune’s Calm Minds, as well as some assorted Swords Dances. A good set for Haze would be:
Articuno @ Leftovers
Trait: Pressure
EVs: 124 HP / 136 Def / 192 SAtk / 56 SDef (these are the EVs from the other set, generally use something like this with a good defensive emphasis, put more speed if you have a certain thing you want to be faster than so that you can Haze it and more/less SpAtk at your own preference).
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Haze
- Rest
- Substitute/Reflect/Toxic
- Ice Beam
Rest is really needed on just about any Articuno set, given his defensive nature, and like I said, he has a nice STAB attack in Ice Beam so it would be a shame to waste it. Besides that, Substitute is as always great for stalling and abusing pressure, Reflect can be cool because a Hazing Articuno is more of a utility choice anyway, and Toxic for indirect damage if you want to go that route. Again, Watch for Metagross and things of that ilk; most things that can resist Ice Beam and pack a Rock/Steel move spell big trouble for Articuno, and he needs to avoid these as a first priority.
Articuno also gets a fourth new move, Sky Attack, from the new move tutor, but this is pointless unless you are running a gimmick CB Articuno set, so like Extrasensory, you can ignore it.
Altaria:
Altaria, a very underrated UU pokemon in my opinion, was mostly used as a pseudo-staller in 200 (well, by me and a few other people), and in 386 is a rarely-used UU Dragon Dancer or Hazer. Well, now that he has received the move Heal Bell from XD, he is probably the best UU beller out there. It’s got great special defense, above average defense and okay HP, but best of all: Natural Cure! Altaria is a flying dragon like Salamence, so he has a huge weakness to Ice obviously, and Rock moves aren’t very nice either. Probably the best Altaria moveset would be this:
Altaria (M) @ Leftovers ** cloudy boudy
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 188 HP / 12 Def / 176 Spd / 96 SAtk / 36 SDef
Calm Nature (+SDef, -Atk)
- Rest
- Heal Bell
- Perish Song
- Fire Blast/Filler
Not very sure on the EVs, I just made those really quick for a team I’m using, probably give it more Defense and Special Defense and less speed on this type of moveset. Natural Rest is obvious; it doesn’t have recover, but it can Rest and then switch out and wake up thanks to Natural Cure, which is great. Perish Song is a nice p-haze move and just cool in general, and it’s nice to have some sort of attacking (or status) move to round it out. Can’t stand up to a lot of the big OU attackers, but if you give it a more Defensive spread it can take it well enough to rest it off, at least.
This is what I have so far, I'm going to continue on this in Word, while I'm doing that you guys can make some corrections/suggestions/additions.