There is no shame in using other people's teams :p
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Pokémon Champions - releasing April 8, 2026
- Thread starter Codraroll
- Start date
Like what Worldie said, there's nothing wrong with using an already-existing team. In fact, a lot of tournament players do that (look at all the Big 6 comps and their variants). From there, if you want to, you could make modifications to those teams to meet your preferences. Perhaps instead of Solar Beam Zard Y, it's Ancient Power for the mirror matchup, or Sylveon instead of Mega Floette, or Choice Scarf Basculegion instead of Life Orb.
If anything, using other people's teams and learning how they work is precisely how you'll get better at making your own teams.
It also can be good to contrast how you build a team versus how someone else would build it. For example, I decided to use Wolfey's Baltimore team since it was already a similar idea to what I was doing, a Psy-Spam M-Garde team with M-Mence, but the other choices were where I noticed the differences such as using Gholdengo and Incineroar vs Kingambit and Armorouge and how that changes the dynamics of the team. It helps you see what you overlook as well as allow you to later build off of that idea if something isn't working or you want to put your own spin off of it.
Mini sprites for Mega Heatran and Mega Magearna (Original Colour) allegedly leaked from the Android version. TM02 on Twitter said this was possibly leaked from a CDN that someone had access to.
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I think with this we can safely say the Mythicals with Megas will almost certainly be legal in M-D, then.
I think the community playing the game is generally getting better because I am doing much worse at this. At least I hope this is why and I'm not just getting worse. Feels like I could at least get to Master Rank easily with just enough trying before, but now I'm struggling in Ultra Ball 1 and 2 and have been losing most of my Grand Challenge matches I've had so far. I don't know if it's the casuals are leaving or are getting better, but it has been rough.
It's not so much that the community is getting better, but rather, the more casual playerbase is slowly getting filtered out or quitting.
It's pretty normal for this kind of game's life. Most of the hype for the game is gone so people who were playing mostly for fun, aka the free wins you'd get in mega and ultraball, are slowly being phased out.
I feel like UB is where you're most likely to see the off-meta jank that's kind of effective against noobs but fairly reliant on cheese or matchup fishing to win against competent players. You can obviously still lose to these strategies for those very same reasons so don't think too much about it.
I had a really bad stint a few weeks ago so I took a short break from laddering outside of doing my daily. Helped me a lot.
Sleeping better and not playing during degen hours also contributed lol.
Mega Salamence usage surprisingly non-existent too
If that's true since Mythicals are never legal in VGC until the very end of a game's lifespan, power creep will scale up a lot
It actually had pretty high day 1 usage.
However, there is the issue that everyone knows how good it is, so almost every single team is prepared for it.
Megachomp Z specifically *is* one of the anti-salamence techs as it can outspeed & 1hko most variants of it.
Man, who could have predicted that a Pokemon that's fast as fuck and drops strong Dracos would be good?
Most of those don't even run Draco
Garchomp Z is mainly run since it
- oneshots most Charizard Y with Power Gem
- does well into Salamence without being intimidate victim
- can outspeed and finish off weakened Raichu Y, Gengar and Delphox
- outspeeds pretty much every viable scarfers so can help against psyspam
As standalone, it's a really bad mega. As "matchup fixing mega that you only bring in specific scenarios" it's solid.
I'd disagree. It makes it a situational mega that will disappear as soon as those scenario disappear.
Which tbfh is more than you can say for a lot of other that don't even get a temporary niche I guess
What is its niche over Mega Alakazam? Must have something to do with slightly better bulk, a specific status move and/or pre-Mega Prankster, I'm assuming?
Neither.
It's competitive pre-mega + Fake out access. All the Meowstics i've seen were female.
Competitive in a meta infested by Intimidate is either a guaranteed +2 or a guaranteed "opponent is not bringing incineroar", and both are good.
...Huh. Completely forgot about Competitive
Too early to say of course but I might have to owe this Mega an apology...?