r/VGC

Really wanted to build an original—or at least not copy and pasted from a YouTuber or tournament results page—team after hitting Master Ball tier! Built it today and went 8-2 in MB4 tier (almost into MB3 now). There is no rhyme or reason to any of the spreads other than Incin really, it’s mostly vibes based point allotment…

Curious if anyone who’s a better team builder than I could help me patch some holes, suggest some ways to improve it, or point out some areas where it will obviously struggle as I climb the ladder! The only caveat is I realllllllly don’t want to change my mega, I love the flower dinosaur. My 2 losses today were to a Mega Frosslas snow team and a Mega Meganium rain team w Rain Dance Sabaleye + Archaludon!

Thanks in advance for any input! 🙏

A little about the team:

- Cofagrigus: My physical wall and main TR setter. His goal is to click TR and then burn a physical attacker with Will-O-Wisp. I usually lead with Rotom Wash next to him. Mental Herb is to stop enemy Taunt or Encore and guarantee the TR, especially against Whimsicott and Sableye.

- Hatterene: My second TR setter, usually paired with Incineroar to guarantee TR with the help of Fake Out on turn 1. It's also my secondary special sweeper and my main sweeper against enemy dragon and poison pokemon.

- Mega Camerupt: My main special sweeper. It's as slow as Torkoal, and it hits way harder thanks to its ability Sheer Force. Even pokemon that resist fire damage can take a lot of damage from Eruption if they don't have special bulk investment. This pokemon loves it when enemy Mega Charizard Y sets the Sun for them.

- Incineroar: One of my two pivots and specially defensive walls alongside Rotom Wash. His main goal is to help Hatterene set up TR. While it's mainly a specially defensive support, it's also pretty good against enemy physical attackers such as Garchomp thanks to the Shuca Berry it's holding.

- Conkeldurr: My main physical sweeper. It can hit Mega Charizard Y pretty hard and OHKO or bring to Focus Sash enemy Pelipper with Thunder Punch. It can function somewhat outside of TR thanks to priority Mach Punch.

- Rotom Wash: Also a pivot and specially defensive wall. Can hit some pokemon super hard with Thunderbolt and Hydro Pump despite having 0 spa investment, especially in the Rain. I usually lead with him alonside Cofagrigus and click Volt Switch on turn 1.

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So i reached master with a Snow team similar to this (instead of Fire, Water Rotom, Incin and Whims Named Marlene because my Mom gave me that Whismicott) but after reaching Master i feel like nothing is working with the team, and honestly i don't know what to add to the team.

Maybe is that i'm forcing myself to run the Starter Core (Grass fire water) or that i' not seeing the obvious anwser right in front of me because i'm tilted due to some losses that i just messed up.

This are the mons that are working, and wich other partner can work

This is my current team that I hit Masters with earlier today. The comp I bring when suspecting trick room is Milotic, Incineroar, Garchomp and Lucario.

If Trick Room goes up I struggle a lot, as the only way to win is either stall it out of get extremely lucky. It gets harder if there’s a Torkoal because Eruption does insane damage. Is there a thing I can change to make this hell of a matchup easier?

I'm back from my previous post after getting an 8-game winning streak and breaking into the top 25k.

No real reason for switching teams other than wanting to try out a different mega. The team I used for all 8 games is from JoeUX9's yt video (Broken Mega Tyranitar Team Got me Champion Rank). He has since updated the team to be vastly different and I'll likely update my team to match after I hit a loss.

Anyways, onto things I think can help newer players like me and some concepts I would attribute my success to.

1. Get to know your pokemon.

From the first team that I used on the ladder, all of my (successful) teams have contained Tyranitar. As a result, I have a strong grasp of which hits he can take, how much damage he can deal, when he can switch in safely, and when not to bring him to a battle. I haven't quite memorized speed tiers yet but I have a good feel of when he's going to move without speed control, in tailwind, and in trick room.

2. Take the time to bring the best 4 you can.

I think this is a very difficult skill to learn, especially if you're going into a lot of different matchups all of the time. My usual approach is to identify the core pieces of opponents team, usually their mega pokemon, and then bring pokemon that have answers for that pokemon and then pokemon that compliment those answers.

If I see that my opponent has a charizard team with venusaur, I'm going to need my own weather setter and likely excadrill to outspeed and hit venusaur. If I see the opponent has a rain team with archaludon and incineroar, I'm going to bring my kommo-o to body press both of those threats.

A good practice I've been doing is taking pictures of the team selection and going back to see if I could've chosen a better 4. There are a lot of games I've won where I think the opponent could have brought a different pokemon and made things a lot more difficult for me.

3. Borrow knowledge from others.

After I hit master ball, none of my teams have been built by myself. I learn how to deal with certain pokemon not always through my own experience but by the people that built the teams themselves. If you can watch them play and pilot and make certain decisions, you can see how it deviates from your own thought processes and learn more about which dimensions of the game you might not be thinking of yet.

4. Speed control is the name of the game.

I'm confident that you can get to ultra ball rank if you have a fast tailwind setter and a strong spread move. Understanding the different ways that your team can manipulate speed is crucial to eeking out advantages over your opponent and winning the game. Learn how to stall out trick room or take advantage of it yourself. Even smaller things like icy wind and 1 speed drop can make the difference between a win and a loss.

5. Play to your outs.

If what it takes for you to win is 3 rock slide flinches in a row then go for it. If your only hope to win the game is getting a crit or poison or freeze, lock the attack in. I've lost to double protects and have nothing but respect for my opponent for going for the only move that wins them the game. In the same vein, I've won games off of bright powder procs or opponents missing 85/90% accurate moves. It doesn't always feel the best to win that way but take what you can get. Dire claw and pray, that's what I see all of the best players doing.

I think that's all I've got for now. I'm happy to help anyone else looking to improve, even though I'm not the best player myself 😅. Having a lot of fun with the game and hoping to get some of my friends into it as well.

This team was extremely fun. It is designed to be counter-meta and have luxurious hair. Everything is slow with extra bulk.

Wide Guard Araquanid stops spread moves and liquidation chips everything for heavy damage, even those with water resists like Basculegion. Water bubble prevents burns from mega scovillain & dogs fire types. Soak is for threats that resist parabolic charge, like Mega Aggron or Mega Venusaur. Wide Guard protects your own team from Parabolic Charge, but still has it hit the enemy team.

Itemless, Defiant Passimian gets a ATK boost from intimidate users, parting shot, charm, and icy wind, etc. With extra EV bulk, drain punk OHKOs many pokemon weak to it at +1, and the threats it wants to hit are quad-weak anyway (Tyranitar, Kinggambit). No Close Combat to stick on the field if they don't have an answer to drain punch. Acrobatics OHKOs sneasler. Gunk Shot is for Mega Floette - its the only coverage I had for this match up and the melon monkey clutched it out multiple times. Outspeeds an uninvested Incin outside trick room and is slower than a speed invested Incin in trick room.

Tsareena is for Queenly Majesty to get trick room up against fake out. Most of the time Tsareena is in the back with Araquanid in the front. If they have spread moves I click Araquanid wide guard, if I see prio, then I switch in Tsareena on turn 1 for Queenly Majesty to stop all fake outs/sucker punch/etc for free trick room. Power whip for basculegion, rotom wash, milotic, and anything hit by soak. High Jump Kick is always horrifying to use as it crashes out on protect but feels sick as hell when it lands. Triple Axel for garchomp, mega dragonite - it also OHKOs sash Aerodactyl and Whimsicott.

Gardevoir sets trick room with focus sash. Moonblasts if you ignore it. Psychic + focus sash is for Sneasler & Mega-Venusaur. Hilariously, Telepathy only works when Ampharos is not in mega, because it has Mold Breaker. Its a shockingly safe switch into most special attackers.

Mega-Ampharos usually comes in with 1-2 turns left on trick room. If they are stalling Trick Room out, you can click cotton guard in trick room for the +3 def before attacks. Against most meta teams, you win with the +3 defense boost and parabolic charge spam even if trick room goes down. Most other threats (Charizard Y, Chandelure, Spread Spammers) are checked by the leads. You can also intentionally damage your own pokemon to heal HP, as most tank it well, and Araquanid can both wide guard for the self-protect + enemy spread protect, or be an HP battery if you need it as in trick room it can attack or soak before Mega-Ampharos then die to parabolic charge.

Sinistcha was benched, as the fairy coverage from Gardevoir was almost always better than the redirection, but did come for games where the enemy only had physical attackers to reset trick room with hospitality for end-game Mega Ampharos.

Big thanks to everyone who helped a new player learn the ropes. Just made it to master ball with one of my personal favorite Pokemon, Volcarona. Big thank you to GrabbaGary for giving me the team foundation to build on!

Hey y’all, I’m trying to build my second team, built around Mega Glimmora as it does well against Sun and Floette, probably the top two threats this season. And while it does well against those comps, it struggles sometimes into various compositions, including certain Snow and Trick Room compositions, as well as some gimmicks.

Essentially this is a more defensive tailroom team (primarily Tailwind).

I think that Glimmora, A. Ninetales, Corviknight, and Sinistcha all are pulling their weight, but if there are better alternative compositions, do let me know. I think my weak links here are Washtom and Kingambit, as they were the wild slots I was playing around with. Washtom has done me well into Rain and Sand comps, though.

I have spotted a lot of ground weaknesses, and if they kill some of my key mons I’m dead most of the time. I’m also very specially focused, so light screen or aurora veil is threatening as well.

On thing I’m sure of is that my Trick Room mode is really weak. Because my mons are mostly not negative speed, and I don’t have anything to directly stop Trick Room, I can struggle unless I perfectly stall it out with Corviknight and Sinistcha.

I was considering a secondary Mega because I also think my offensive pressure is quite low. I was looking at Trick Room megas like Gardevoir or especially Chesnaught, but I’m not too sure if they’d fit the team best.

Any advice is appreciated! Hovering around 1750 elo right now, so the team might be fine it might just be a skill issue on my part, since I am new to the team and I do notice I do a few mistakes in games.

Don't sleep on Garbodor. Your Sneaslers, your Floettes, your Pelippers. All one-shot. He has no mercy.

First and most importantly I already fixed my whimsicott EVs

Second, I'm more of a TCG Player but have always wanted to dabble in the VG, but the high price point (lol) and hours of grinding for optimal Pokémon has always turned me away.

With champions coming out (despite having 0 space in home and refusing to pay for it) I'm able to play for the first time, and after switching my team around for a while I finally settled on this.

I want to go to locals just for fun, but if it's going to be hyper competitive I don't really feel like showing up to get stomped. I don't even have an answer for Floette here lol.

But yeah are locals super competitive in the video game where everyone is running super optimal teams? Or is it like the TCG where people have pretty decent stuff but still wacky shenanigans and not sweat lords.

Oh and if would be good to know if Local events are running on champions yet or if they're still S&V

As for the team, I want to add Archaladon but don't have anyone I can really switch off. I also haven't found one. Garchomp is too good and my only ground type (even if I suck with her), Medicham is surprisingly busted and I find myself bringing Primarina to most matchups. So instead my only answer to Fairy types are to pray that Primarina can tank a couple hits. Same with ghost types but less of an issue with them. Currently climbing through Ultra Ball with this team pretty consistently if I don't outplay myself. Anyways thats ab it

hello! I’m pretty new to VGC, so I know I’m not building or playing optimally yet—mainly here to get advice and improve.

The idea behind this team is honestly pretty simple: I really like Hisuian Decidueye’s design, so I wanted to build a team around it. On top of that, I also ended up shaping the team around a shiny Palafin I randomly found while scouting, so that definitely influenced some of my choices as well.

Same goes for most of the other Pokémon here—I just picked stuff I like and tried to make it work together.

I’ve been testing different versions (Trick Room with Hatterene, then Gardevoir, and now Talonflame for Tailwind), and this is where I’ve landed for now.

The team feels decent, but I’m not sure if it’s actually solid or if I’m just getting by. I feel like I struggle if I lose speed control, and some matchups feel really rough—but I can’t tell if that’s a team issue or just me misplaying.

I’m not trying to go full meta, but I do want to make this as strong and consistent as possible while keeping my boy Decidueye on the team.

Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated!

last turn of trick room, know opponent is going to protect on both mons. so i trick room with both of mine to reset back to 4 turns of trick room left. would have lost if trick room ended as their Floette was going to wreck me but my mons in the back were able to win in trick room.