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Pokemon Legends: Z-A Combat/PVP Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Count Bleck
- Start date
Psyshock for sure. iirc its also a bit faster than Psychic (don’t quote me on that)
Built 18 or so alphas today of things I felt would benefit from the increased attack range. After my post the other night, I began thinking about what moves benefit the most. I came up with the following:
With that in mind, today I built a mix of megas and non-megas that relied on a lot of these. I had about ~60 to go on the alpha wielder title and got it in like 3 battles by running a team of 3 of the alphas I built. These were:
Hippowdon @ Rocky Helmet
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Heavy Slam
- Stone Edge
- Curse
Glaceon @ Never-Melt Ice
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA
Modest Nature
- Freeze-Dry
- Ice Beam
- Blizzard
- Calm Mind
Delphox @ Delphoxite
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA
Modest Nature
- Heat Wave
- Psyshock
- Dazzling Gleam
- Calm Mind
(not sure how to add the sprites)
I liked this team a lot. I found that Hippo is really strong against anything physical. Curse walls Mega Metagross badly even with Ice Punch. I do find that Dig over EQ might be worthwhile bc he's slow and needs to gap close but the whole point of being alpha is the EQ. I could see a Xerneas/Hippo/Skarmory-M build being super strong. The other alphas I had built were Garchomp, Excadrill-M, Charizard-MX, Gyarados, Skarmory-M, Tyranitar, Metagross-M, Talonflame, Machamp, Camerupt, Emboar-M, Scolipede-M, Feraligatr, Aggron and Venusaur.
With that in mind, today I built a mix of megas and non-megas that relied on a lot of these. I had about ~60 to go on the alpha wielder title and got it in like 3 battles by running a team of 3 of the alphas I built. These were:
Hippowdon @ Rocky Helmet
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Heavy Slam
- Stone Edge
- Curse
Glaceon @ Never-Melt Ice
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA
Modest Nature
- Freeze-Dry
- Ice Beam
- Blizzard
- Calm Mind
Delphox @ Delphoxite
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA
Modest Nature
- Heat Wave
- Psyshock
- Dazzling Gleam
- Calm Mind
(not sure how to add the sprites)
I liked this team a lot. I found that Hippo is really strong against anything physical. Curse walls Mega Metagross badly even with Ice Punch. I do find that Dig over EQ might be worthwhile bc he's slow and needs to gap close but the whole point of being alpha is the EQ. I could see a Xerneas/Hippo/Skarmory-M build being super strong. The other alphas I had built were Garchomp, Excadrill-M, Charizard-MX, Gyarados, Skarmory-M, Tyranitar, Metagross-M, Talonflame, Machamp, Camerupt, Emboar-M, Scolipede-M, Feraligatr, Aggron and Venusaur.
Drampa @ Life Orb
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA
Modest Nature
- Calm Mind
- Hyper Beam
- Dragon Pulse / Draco Meteor
- Earth Power / Hyper Voice / Heat Wave
Behold; the most powerful Hyper Beam in the game. I'm trying to use Normal-types to get the Normal Pokemon title, and there's really only one way that I wanna do it. I wanna click a button. A button that kills things from far away. A button that gets me double or even triple kills. Draco Meteor is another long-range nuke with a big AoE, but it drops your SpA and takes a long time to cast, leaving you vulnerable to Dragons rushing you down. Earth Power is a nice way to snipe far-away targets, especially Chandelure and Gengar who are Normal-immune and weak to Ground. Hyper Voice is a secondary Normal STAB, and Heat Wave gives you something to hit Skarmory while your Hyper Beam is charging.
Is it good?
Since I need the Fairy title, too, but refuse to use Xerneas, I paired this Drampa with a dual-screens Babiri Berry Clefable:
Clefable @ Babiri Berry
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA
Modest Nature
- Reflect
- Light Screen
- Moonblast
- Mystical Fire
Light Screen + Mystical Fire is a great combo for neutering Xerneas and other SpA threats, with Moonblast even chipping in to sometimes drop SpA. I've had quite a few instances of Xerneas setting up Geo / CM, then I Mystical Fire to bring them to neutral, then Moonblast puts them at -1.
My last member was originally a Mega Froslass since I need the Ice and Ghost tites too:
Froslass-Mega (F) @ Froslassite
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA
Modest Nature
- Nasty Plot
- Shadow Ball
- Ice Beam
- Thunderbolt
While Mega Froslass is incredibly underrated, and when ignored, just decimates whole lobbies (super effective coverage for like more than half the type chart lmao), it made my team pretty weak to Metagross. It's honestly really good on any other team comp besides this one. So, I've since swapped it out for Scizor, since I need the Bug title, too.
Scizor-Mega @ Rocky Helmet / Life Orb / Scizorite
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Lunge
- Curse / Swords Dance
- Steel Wing
- Night Slash / Brick Break
Bug/Steel is pretty goated in this meta besides the 4x Fire-weakness, being a Steel-type not weak to Ground or Electric. Behind screens, this thing just doesn't die. Lunge is an incredibly-helpful move. It not only neuters Metagross, Garchomp, and other physical threats, but it teleports you to your target, closing the gap very fast. Steel Wing is its most consistent Steel STAB, as Iron Head kinda sucks. Night Slash gives you a super effective move for Metagross, Chandelure, and Delphox, and a neutral hit into Skarmory. Brick Break hits Excadrill for super effective and breaks Screens, but personally I prefer Night Slash's coverage.
Curse + Lunge + Rocky Helmet is an underrated combo for whittling physical mons down, especially Skarmory. Life Orb + Swords Dance for raw damage for a longer time without the Speed drop, especially when running another Mega. Mega Scizor doesn't seem that great compared to Life Orb, but one benefit it has is its much faster movement speed. It flies to its prey, closing the distance much faster than base form, and not having to worry about hitting the plus button is nice, too.
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^ I know you did mention Life Orb but I've been wondering is there ever a real reason to run Normal Gem over Life Orb in this game? Gem boosts one move 1.3x per respawn whereas Life Orb boosts all moves 1.3x and the recoil is neglible really in a FFA. If Gem was still 1.5x (or LO was lowered to 1.2x), I think Gem would be a lot more worth it. The only reason I could see for not running life orb is that you already have life orb on a different teammate.
So at this point, I've done everything else in this game, so it's time for me to get the kalos starter mega stones by playing this mode. That being said, I've never actually done competitive outside of showdown before so I'm not really sure about a couple things.
First of all, how does changing EVs work in this game? I know what items increase them, and I saw an NPC in the rust syndicate that sounded like they remove all your EVs. But how much of the items do you need to max out an EV? and how easy/hard is it to get more of those items? And also, how much do the EVs even matter to begin with? Since I don't need to reach Rank A or anything like that, I just need to get the exclusive mega stones (though I may play more if I really enjoy it)
Also what should I do for my team? Would just doing 2 strong members of my in game team + Xerneas be good enough? Or do I need to find a full competitive team? And if so, where do I even find a bunch of teams to begin with?
First of all, how does changing EVs work in this game? I know what items increase them, and I saw an NPC in the rust syndicate that sounded like they remove all your EVs. But how much of the items do you need to max out an EV? and how easy/hard is it to get more of those items? And also, how much do the EVs even matter to begin with? Since I don't need to reach Rank A or anything like that, I just need to get the exclusive mega stones (though I may play more if I really enjoy it)
Also what should I do for my team? Would just doing 2 strong members of my in game team + Xerneas be good enough? Or do I need to find a full competitive team? And if so, where do I even find a bunch of teams to begin with?
You can buy power items from Quasartico Inc. Berries can be bought from vendors to reduce EVs. If you want to get the best prizes, then yes, you will optimized Pokemon because people will be using optimized sets. That being said, this mode is very casual, so if you only want the Mega Stones, don’t worry too much about optimization.
Honestly I thought it was 1.5x this whole time…I forgot it was nerfed lmao. Then yea, LO it is.
wait wtf I got greninjite in one battle LMAO
Edit: Two battles for Delphoxite LMAO. I was worried I wouldn't be able to get it, and then got it in two battles.
Edit: Two battles for Delphoxite LMAO. I was worried I wouldn't be able to get it, and then got it in two battles.
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I know you got the stones in two games, but I'll answer anyway if you do decide to keep playing.
So beyond the power items for old-style EV training, the items that instantly boost EVs are the vitamins and the feathers. A pokemon can have 252 EVs in a single stat and 510 EVs total. the vitamins (protein etc) boost an EV by 10 and the feathers boost by 1. You usually want a 252/252/4 spread in terms of HP / Attack or SpAtk / Def or SpDef. So you either want 26 HP Up, 26 Protein/Calcium (or 25 + 2 feathers) and 1 Iron/Zinc (or 4 feathers). Feathers you pick up on the ground but you can buy the vitamins in the mart. You're pretty much about $250k per mon to optimize, plus a Modest or Adamant mint (20k up in Rouge sector 6) and you can also hyper train to boost their IVs to max with bottle caps at the dojo.
Typically the meta is Xerneas + something to counter Xerneas + something to be immune to ground moves. Consider the following:
Xerneas @ Expert Belt or Life Orb with Moonblast, Focus Blast, Thunderbolt and Geomancy. 252 HP / 252 SpAtk / 4 Def. Modest.
Excadrill @ Excadrite with Iron Head, Drill Run, Earthquake and Swords Dance. 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def. Adamant.
Gyarados @ Wacan Berry (buyable in Rouge 6 or Magenta 6 I think) with Waterfall, Ice Fang, Bounce and Earthquake. 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpDef. Adamant.
That is pretty much the exact team I got to rank A with on day 1 of season 2. Gyarados and Excadrill can also be alphas to increase the range of their Earthquake/Drill Run/Waterfall. Alphas automatically come with 3 max IVs and also 252 built in HP EVs.
You can definitely get the mega stones without having a competitive team and probably even hit rank A although it'll get more challenging as you go further up. Of course, having a comp team makes it easier plus it increases your chance of winning which increases the rewards as they severely upped rewards this season. You can now get Johto balls and a ton of nuggets and bottle caps for placing well in each game when you're rank A. I have about 5m pokedollars just from playing ranked a few hours daily and selling the treasures plus like 10+ of each johto ball now.
Yes, extremely easy lol. Rank A is a bit of a grind but now there’s no way to actually lose points its honestly a matter of time.
26x vitamins will max out the EVs for a single stat. iirc they’re 10k each which would mean ~500k for a single Pokemon. Money is very easy to grind with Infinite Royal or Jacinthe in this game.
It’s 5k for each Vitamin, so it ends up being 260k, or 265k if you use the last vitamin on a defensive stat or something. It’s a pretty drastic change from it being the usual 10k in the main series.
Funnily enough Excadrill is one of the two playthrough team members I've been using. The other one I used was Meganium, since it was insanely good in-game, but unfortunately the free for all format + not starting with the ability to mega evolve weakens it a lot. Now that I have Delphoxite, I swapped it out for that, just because I love Delphox. but I'll keep Gyarados in mind for if I want to really use the best team.