Badges: 2
Current Level Cap: 34
Current Team:
- Ozone the Weezing (lv. 35) (I'll explain, I swear)
- Glow the Lanturn (lv. 34)
- Lillith the Houndoom (lv. 34)
- Pebble the Lycanroc-Dusk (lv. 34)
- Ferris the Magneton (lv. 34)
Deaths:
- Guppy the Finneon
- Dusty the Vivillon
- Whiskers the Gyarados
- Snipper the Kingler
So, the Donphan in the room: Weezing. To put it simply, Whitney scared me. A lot. I figured that a Weezing would be much bulkier against a team of hard-hitting normal types. And the way the level cap works in this game is that once you hit the level cap - in this case, level 34, one level below when Koffing would evolve into Weezing - you start getting anywhere from 0 to 20 (give or take) experience from Pokemon. Koffing needed about 3500 experience to level up so I... sat there... and grinded it out. I have Rare Candies, but I figured that if I was going to circumvent the level cap, I should at least punish myself a little for it. And, tbh, I don't know if it would have even worked. So that's what I did. Ozone is a Weezing and I am glad I did this, as I could not have beaten Whitney without him. Also I felt it was kinda fair since Whitney's Pokemon all have max IVs and are EV trained while I currently do not have access to the EV deleter/trainer and the IV maxout guy in Saffron City yet. While grinding I did discover that the macho brace
quadruples the EV yield instead of doubling it so that'll make for cleaner EV training in the future.
I'll explain my team make-up and my thought process here:
- Ozone the Weezing because he's bulky, Sludge Bomb hits hard and with Levitate he has only one weakness. Good synergy with Lanturn, Lycanroc, and Magneton having a shared ground weakness.
- Ferris the Magneton also because of good bulk and a good typing (steel may have been nerfed, but it still walls normal moves). Unfortunately I didn't get Eviolite until after this battle.
- Lillith because she has Flash Fire and is Dark-type and I thought that would synergize well with Ozone's psychic weakness and Ferris's fire weakness.
- Glow because Glow is kinda my ride-or-die Pokemon at the moment. Reasonable bulk, good type coverage (Shock Wave, Bubblebeam, Signal Beam) and Volt Absorb.
- Pebble because with a Muscle Band and Tough Claws, he can hit like an absolute semi truck with Brick Break.
- Snipper because Kingler has high defense and can also learn Brick Break.
I led Ozone because I was somewhat expecting a Clefairy or Clefable since that's what she leads in her gym battle. I was sorta correct because she led the also-fairy Wigglytuff. Wigglytuff took a massive hit from Sludge Bomb but retaliated with a Lovely Kiss to put Ozone asleep (joke's on you, Whitney, you are subject to sleep clause as well). I stayed in to stall the sleep and she switched to Indeedee. Fearing a psychic move, I swapped to Lillith. Lillith shrugged off the Psybeam and I chose Snarl because Lillith's special attack is better than her attack and I couldn't remember Indeedee's defense stats. This turned out to be a great move (regardless of Indeedee having better special defense as I found later) as Indeedee used Hyper Voice and took Lillith to about 40%. My Sitrus Berry activated and Snarl lowered Indeedee's special attack. Lillith survived the second Hyper Voice on a sliver and I launched a 100% accuracy Bite (you just know the 5% miss would have happened) to finish off Indeedee. Wigglytuff came back out and I switched back into Ozone. He ate up a Drain Punch and woke up pretty quickly to finish off Wigglytuff without losing much HP. Next out was Vigoroth. I used Poison Gas to put it on a timer and it started setting up with Bulk Up. I used Clear Smog to remove it before he could start doing too much damage. She kept trying to re-set Bulk Up (despite Weezing using only special attacks lol) After a Sludge Bomb had it to where poison would finish it at the end of the turn, I switched to Ferris to eat the Body Slam. Next out was Miltank. I wasn't sure what Miltank wanted to do and thought perhaps it would have something like Brick Break or Power-up Punch to deal with steel, so I switched back to Ozone. Even if she
had Zen Headbutt or something, that would not be the move she'd pick against a nearly full-health steel type. She had something far, far better. For me that is. Ozone came in on a
Stomping Tantrum and took no damage (the irony). I used the free switch to poison the cow which counteracted her leftovers nicely. Her Body Slam did a lot, though, so I decided to switch to Snipper. Snipper took a Body Slam well, but his Brick Break was a little lacking. Between that damage and the poison, I felt that I could finish it with Pebble, but Pebble's defenses are low, so Snipper had to make the ultimate sacrifice. Pebble took full advantage of the safe switch though, and outsped and defeated the Miltank. Her last Pokemon was a Drampa so I stayed in and chose Brick Break again. It took Drampa to under half (thankfully whatever ability it had was not Berserk). Drampa took Pebble to just under half with a Dragonbreath but did not get the paralysis so I was able to finish off Drampa and win the battle with only one fallen teammate. Rest well, Snipper. You weren't a part of the team long, but you're easily the best Kingler I've ever used. May you party hard with the other fallen teammates (including Whiskers who, between flying type and Intimidate, probably could have gotten me through that battle deathlessly nope not salty at myself for being careless and losing a
Gyarados at all) in the big Pokeball up in the sky.
Making this update now since I'm probably going to need to rework my entire team for Surge.
He's going to need a lot of cash put into him (an ability capsule to give him Intimidate rather than Flash Fire, a nature change to anything besides Bold with his 0 SpAtk IVs) but meet Scorch!
