Ok. What you're gonna want to do is chop up a cucumber and put it in a bowl. Then you're gonna sprinkle a generous portion of salt on top. Then you're gonna drizzle them with a balsamic vinaigrette and gently shake to combine, leaving you with a cool and refreshing summer snack. In 15 seconds dangerous and burly men are going to drag me away to an unknown second location. Remember everything I've taught you. I love you
I got 10 wins with Scolipede but I'm not doing a writeup about it because it was too depressing. The short version is that Scolipede can dish out and take a fair bit of punishment, and is faster than you expect if you maneuver correctly before evolving, but ultimately it's hampered by being weak to both Charizard, still easily the most used Mega in the game right now, and the predominantly rock-type moves people bring to beat Charizard. Hypothetically it has a niche in that it walls Floette, but across my 10 wins (which involved a lot of losing!) I never faced a single Floette.
My team also wasn't great, admittedly, I think Aerodactyl was the wrong choice of tailwind setter since it wasn't as consistent as Whimsicott, and I didn't bring Alolan Ninetales to set up Aurora Veil as often as I maybe should have. I think Mega Scolipede also suffers a bit from only being able to bring 4 moves, since you kinda want Protect AND Swords Dance AND both of its STAB types AND at least one extra move for coverage.
Might putter with Scolipede to try and find a better set/team later but at best, it's hard to make use of, so for now I'm gonna work on some of the other new Megas. I think I wanna try out Mega Eelektross next, though I also wanna use Mega Mawile finally.
Pokémon Champions has finally entered it's second competitive ruleset, with Regulation M-B adding a few big names like Gholdengo and Annihilape. What most people were interested in were the Mega Evolutions, and while not all of the absent Megas are in yet, quite a few did get added. All of the Hoenn starters have made it, with Swampert in particular looking fierce in clips. Mawile and Metagross add some powerful steel types, though it remains to be seen how much play they'll see with Charizard running things at the moment. And of course, there's the new Mega Evolutions, which I think it's fair to say are a mixed bag. Mega Raichu Y and Mega Staraptor are already common sights on ladder, with the former dealing tons of damage with unmissable Zap Cannons and Focus Blasts thanks to the No Guard ability, and the latter bulking up with STAB Close Combat's thanks to Contrary; Mega Eelektross got a pretty nice ability with Eelevate combining both Levitate (can't be hit by ground moves or entry hazards) and Beast Boost (get a stat boost whenever it gets a KO); Pyroar got another new ability in Fire Mane (50% damage boost to Fire type moves), which isn't terrible but doesn't make it especially good; my personal favorite new mega, Mega Scolipede, got kinda shafted with the extremely boring ability Shell Armor, blocking Critical Hits.
But the big question mark was always Malamar. Poor, poor Malamar. After a marketing blitz that made it seem like Game Freak really wanted people to be excited about it, it's actual stats after Mega Evolving made it look like a cruel joke. It's highest stat was Special Defense? At 120? It's better attacking stat is only 102 points? What does this thing even do? It seemed like the only possible explanation was that Mega Malamar's ability was powerful; so strong that the only possible choice Game Freak could make was to make the Pokémon itself seemingly awful to balance it out. And make no mistake, a great ability has saved a Mega with lackluster stats before: Mega Mawile and Mega Kangaskhan were two of the strongest early Megas thanks to Huge Power and Parental Bond. The same thing could very well happen for Mega Malamar. It could put your opponents Pokémon to sleep on entry, or maybe it sets up Trick Room automatically! If this thing is so bad stat-wise, it must be absolutely busted ability-wise. Mega Malamar seems so bad, it could be getting an ability so powerful it completely flips the meta on it's head!
It didn't! This thing sucks!
Mega Malamar ends up keeping Contrary, which reverses all stat changes you receive. For example, if an opponent sends out a Pokémon with Intimidate which normally lowers Attack, a Pokémon with Contrary will gain Attack instead. It's a powerful ability for sure, but one that Malamar already had access to, meaning Mega Malamar does basically the same thing with it: Spam Superpower, a 120 base power Fighting type move that normally lowers your Attack and Defense but thanks to Contrary raises them instead (and is literally the only move Malamar gets that benefits from the Contrary ability). For the moveset, other than Superpower, I gave it Psycho Cut for Psychic STAB, Knock Off for Dark STAB and support, and protect for protecting. Initially I was running Taunt as a support move, but it never came up and after a few matches I decided I'd rather have a STAB option in both of Malamar's types instead.
The stat spread thought process went as follows: Floette is a major threat that Malamar is weak to, so I gave it enough HP and Special Defense to hypothetically survive a Dazzling Gleam. This never came up in my testing, but according to my calculations it should work. Then I put points into Speed so that in base form it would have 100 speed for no reason other than it being a nice round number. I probably could have optimized this a little better, but that would require figuring out speed tiers and all that stuff, which was more effort than I was willing to put in for Malamar of all Pokémon. The remaining points went into Attack. I figured it was okay to start with a non-maxed Attack stat on account of Superpower hopefully buffing it. Frankly, with how meager Mega Malamar's Attack stat is, I doubt it would have made much difference if the extra 18 points had been there. I didn't invest any points into Defense under the assumption that Superpower would be buffing it anyway, which turned out to be true in most of my games.
You may be thinking to yourself, "Wow, don't you spin a wheel to determine who you play for these writeups? It sure is unlucky that you immediately got Malamar right when it was added to the game!" On the contrary; I bypassed the wheel and picked Mega Malamar as my first target for this challenge of the ruleset. Why? Because Mega Malamar is terrible, and I figured it'd be easier to get 10 wins shortly after a reset when I was still in Poke Ball Tier, rather than waiting until I hit Master Ball again. And I was right! In fairness, Malamar did not look terrible for most of this testing. In fact, I actually managed to get a 7 win streak while laddering with it and made it to Ultra Ball 4! And then, immediately afterwards, the good times ended and I started losing a bunch. Mega Malamar is not good! That 7 win streak is a testament to the fact that you can make literally anything work at lower tiers because you are facing literal children! I was using Superpower, getting disappointed by its damage, using it a second time now that my Attack was increased, and getting more disappointed that I still wasn't doing much damage. Once I got 3 or 4 boosts it usually started feeling pretty strong, but most Pokémon are pretty powerful at +4 Attack and a lot of them start feeling strong a lot sooner than that, especially Megas! If you want an idea of how powerful Malamar felt, in one match I was at +3 Attack with Malamar and my opponent had a Tyranitar on the field. Tyranitar takes 4x damage from Fighting type moves. When I clicked Superpower, a fighting type move, into Tyranitar with a +3 Malamar, there was a split second where I thought to myself "boy. I hope this gets the KO." That was the real Mega Malamar experience: being in a position with stat boosts out the wazoo, doubling or even tripling it's attack, and still not having confidence that something that would be a sure-fire success with any other Pokémon would be a sure-fire success with Mega Malamar.
In exchange for saddling myself with such a terrible Mega, I also let myself use a good team. Whimsicott was my most frequent starter, setting up Tailwind, disrupting with Encore and Taunt, and dealing a surprising amount of damage with Moonblast when it was time to attack. Garchomp and Kingambit rounded out my most common 4-mon team, providing plenty of physical damage to remind me of what actually good physical attackers are capable of in case I started thinking Malamar was decent. This Garchomp is the same as previous ones I've used, with the notable exception that I've swapped speed for power and replaced the Choice Scarf with the newly added Life Orb, an item which grants a 30% damage boost in exchange for losing 10% health every time you deal damage. A small price to pay to make Garchomp even more powerful. Kingambit holds the Chople Berry, though in retrospect something like the Black Glasses for more power would have probably been better seeing as Chople Berry didn't stop it from getting KO'd by fighting type moves. Incineroar and Sinistcha provide more supporting options; Sinistcha in particular was helpful thanks to the Hospitality ability, which provides healing whenever it switches in. For all it's faults, Malamar is somewhat bulky, but doesn't get any recovery moves besides Rest, and can't hold a healing item like Sitrus Berry or Leftovers. Anything to help keep it alive slightly longer to get additional boosts from Contrary is appreciated. This team writeup is short for a reason; I gave myself good Pokémon I've used before to help maintain my sanity as I used Mega Malamar when other people were busting out Mega Raichu Y and Mega Staraptor.
As always, we finish with some notes:
When I first started using Malamar, I was typically leading with it Whimsicott to try and get the ball rolling immediately. Eventually, I stopped doing this and began opening with Garchomp to hopefully soften up my opponent before Malamar came in late to look like it was contributing more than it did. A couple of matches didn't involve Malamar even when it came along; It never had to leave it's ball, with Garchomp or Kingambit doing all the heavy lifting. But it tagged along regardless, the game still counts those, and so do I.
In my first match in Poke Ball tier, my opponent clearly knew what to do in the face of a Malamar. Despite the squid being Dark/Psychic type, on it's first turn out they knew it was going for Superpower and switched into Sinistcha to avoid taking damage. By all rights I should have lost that match, my opponent was clearly better, but once I got a single KO they forfeited. I suspect they were trying to do the "win 3 matches without any Pokémon fainting" weekly mission and decided to go next once I took out their Kommo-O.
Speaking of the earliest matches, there's two I suspect were against bots. Opponents who never protected, never changed tactics, always blindly went for Super Effective moves despite more important targets being on the field, it felt pretty obvious. I thought you only got those when you first start playing, but maybe it's possible to get bot matches for as long as you're low tier?
In one of the suspected bot matches, my opponent was using Steelix. I Superpower'd into it, it dealt 48% damage…on a crit. But the second, boosted Superpower took it down…to 2% HP. I know Steelix's defense stat is ridiculously high, but jeepers creepers.
Using Malamar in Poke Ball and Great Ball tier really proved to me that you can make anything work if you're facing people who are bad enough. I might try Appletun again once the next reset happens. It's also why I haven't actually been all that impressed by most of the "This new mega is BUSTED!!!!!!" clips I keep seeing of Staraptor and Raichu Y; they're all on Day 1 of the format and almost certainly low-tier matches. Show me how much of a win streak you're getting when you're facing people who know how to hold a controller, and maybe I'll be impressed. That being said I did lose to Mega Raichu Y and Mega Staraptor several times in testing, so maybe I'm just salty.
I should mention, I tried to use Mega Malamar as itself, as the focus, rather than as a means to give other Pokémon the spotlight, but there is another tactic that might be of interest: Malamar gets access to the move Skill Swap, which switches its ability with that of the target. Hypothetically, you could Skill Swap Malamar's Contrary onto another Pokémon (perhaps the newly released Gholdengo, with the newly nerfed Make It Rain now giving it -2 Special Attack per use), then Mega Evolve to get Contrary back and either do it again if your first Pokémon gets KO'd or start going for Superpower boosts. This is definitely a gimmick strategy, but it's something else you can try that might be moderately more interesting than repeatedly getting disappointed at how little damage Mega Malamar is even after boosts.
I have no idea why Game Freak would bother giving a Pokémon a Mega Evolution, preventing any 1- or 2-stage Pokémon from ever being able to get a proper evolution, only to make it mediocre or outright bad. It doesn't make sense to me! If they're not gonna be good like Charizard or Floette, they can at least be interesting or get the Pokémon to do something it can't normally do, like Mega Heracross or Mega Houndoom. Malamar is neither, a bad Pokémon that got a bad Mega Evolution that can only do what the base form does but mildly, incrementally better, which isn't worth something as valuable as the one Mega Evolution you get per match. Even when Mega Malamar did it's thing, it never felt good to use. Superpower spam worked against bots and people who were fresh to Pokemon, people who had just downloaded Champions onto their phone and hopped into ranked and had no idea how to deal with Mega Malamar. It's easy to get wins in the low tiers with just about anything. The moment I got into the higher tiers, where I was facing people who knew what they were doing? Malamar was easily dealt with if I led with it, and couldn't finish up games if I kept it in the back. I got to Ultra Ball tier with 8 of the 10 wins; it took me about 7-8 games to get those last 2.
Do I have anything positive to say about this awful, ugly octopus? Yes, exactly one: When it Mega Evolves, it's idle animation involves it spinning its two tentacles with a neon light effect at the tips, and instead of doing the obvious thing and having them be perfectly mirrored, they're slightly out of sync. It's legitimately a nice touch that actually makes the animation slightly more mesmerizing, which is the goal since Mega Malamar is supposed to be a master hypnotizer. That's it. That's the nice thing I can say about Mega Malamar. Don't use it.
After your Pokemon admirer challenge, do you think you will do all the tamer achievements?
Probably not.
Like, okay, I've been doing the Admirer Challenge for about a month now. I've gotten my 10 wins with 5 pokemon specifically as a part of that; add in the other pokemon that I got to 10 wins with as part of those teams, plus pokemon I got to 10 wins with just playing normally, I'm sitting at around 25 Admirer titles at the moment. Game's been out 2 months, so grand total it's taken me around 2 months to get 25 titles.
There's 186 pokemon in the game currently, so I'm about 14% of the way through. Except, Regulation M-B is gonna be starting soon, which is almost certainly adding new pokemon to the game. I assume they'll add every Pokemon eventually, which is over 1000. Eventually, I will have to amass 10 wins with over 1000 different pokemon. 10,000 wins, just to finish the Admirer challenge. That'll take a long time, even if I completely sacrificed playing teams I thought were Good and Fun and focused exclusively on doing it.
Getting the Tamer titles requires 50 wins. 5 times as many matches. It is SO much more, especially if a pokemon is Bad and Hard To Win With. I struggled to get 10 wins with Mega Camerupt, a pokemon people are Actually Using because it is Situationally Powerful. I lost a lot, and didn't have fun. What's it gonna be like trying to get 50 wins with Watchog? Spidops? Bibarel? I think forcing myself to try and get 50 wins with a bunch of pokemon I don't like very much is gonna do nothing but make me miserable, so I'd rather avoid it. If I get sufficiently bored, or unemployed, maybe I'll really crack down and go for 50 wins with every pokemon just to prove I can. But I think even if I started doing that, I'd probably give up once I was down to a bunch of terrible pokemon. I know myself well enough.
So, tl;dr never say never, but I'm gonna save the Tamer achievement for Pokemon I like to battle with, and just settle for Admiring the rest.
Thank you for the question! It's nice to know someone is at least occasionally reading these things.
Volcarona is maybe the single coolest bug-type pokemon in history. Introduced in Generation 5, it was treated almost like a legendary: hidden away as a static encounter at the bottom of the Relic Castle, forcing the player to go through an entire maze to find it as if it were a legendary on par with the Swords of Justice or the Forces of Nature. Volcarona is not, in fact, a legendary, not technically, but you might not realize that considering it's list of tournament results. Volcarona is overall the winningest Bug type in Pokémon history, with 60 Top 8 finishes in regional-level tournaments, with 6 wins, and 18 Top 8 finishes in International level events. Other Pokémon have reached higher heights; a few have won internationals, and Escavalier is famously the only Bug to be a World Champion, but nobody is as consistent and present as Volcarona at the highest levels of play.
Which makes it a bit odd that Volcarona isn't seeing much play in Pokémon Champions thus far. We've now had 3 major tournaments using the newest official battle simulator, and Volcarona's results have been, at best, okay. Two top 64 finishes, one at Special Event Turin this past weekend and one at Indianapolis Regionals the weekend before, with an additional Top 128 finish at the latter as well. Why is this? Is Volcarona washed? Does it stand no chance against the current meta? Well, I've been using Volcarona the last few days and I'm here to tell you: Not at all! As someone who liked Volcarona for it's design before, I came away extremely impressed by it in my games, going 10-2 using it. I think I know why it's not seeing much play at the moment, but let me start by saying: Volcarona is a great pokemon that you should definitely keep in mind while team building.
As usual, we start with the stat spread. Volcarona is primarily used in one of two ways: as a bulky redirecting support Pokémon, using Rage Powder to draw in moves and Struggle Bug to reduce the damage opposing special attackers can do, and as a powerful Setup Sweeper, using Quiver Dance to increase it's Special Attack, Special Defense, AND Speed before mowing over opposing teams. I prepped two separate Volcarona for each build, but ended up sticking with the Support version during my testing because I was doing so well and was so impressed with it. It's almost a shame; the other Volcarona was a shiny!
Anyway, Volcarona's big drawback is it's physical defense: compared to it's relatively beefy 105 Special Defense stat, it's 65 Physical Defense stat is downright paltry. So, I gave it a Defense-boosting nature and put as many stat points into Defense as I could; next, I gave it enough Special Defense points to guarantee it lived a Sun-boosted Weather Ball from Mega Charizard Y. Then, I put the rest of it's stat point into HP. What this left me with is a Pokémon that was EXTREMELY bulky; there's only one common move I did calcs on that can defeat it in one hit, Wave Crash from an Adaptability-boosted Basculegion, and throughout the matches that was the only thing I saw OHKO Volcarona. This thing was taking hits like a champ, consistently surprising opponents who figured they'd get an easy KO with Brave Bird (for example), only for it to stay standing and keep redirecting attacks away from Volcarona's powerful allies. Best of all, Volcarona's impressive 135 Special Attack stat meant it was dealing a decent bit of damage on the occasions it went on the offensive even without any investment!
The moveset was pretty basic. Rage Powder redirects single-target attacks so that they hit the user instead of their intended target; it doesn't have the priority to stop Fake Out, but otherwise a lot of moves destined to take out the main damage dealers of the team were absorbed by Volcarona instead. As usual, I was running Protect just in case it seemed like it would be useful to guarantee survival for another turn. If I was in a position where I felt it would be better to attack with Volcarona, I had two options: Fiery Dance, Volcarona's former signature move (now shared with its Paradox form Iron Moth), an 80 BP Fire-type move with a whopping 50% chance of boosting Volcarona's Special Attack stat, and Struggle Bug, a 50 BP bug-type move that hits both opponents and, importantly, is guaranteed to reduce their Special Attack stat. Struggle Bug is a great support move…usually. A bit less so now, unfortunately.
Y'see, most of Regulation M-A, the current competitive regulation, is fairly low-power, but there are a few standout powerful pokemon that are seeing a LOT of play. I used a few of them on this team, in fact, as the best partner for a pokemon that will take hits for another is a pokemon that can use that opportunity to dish out a ton of damage. Kingambit, Garchomp, Basculegion, and Sneasler are all physical attackers; not only is this the damage type Volcarona takes less well even with all the investment I gave it, they also aren't particularly phased by Struggle Bug reducing their special attack. On top of that, the special attackers that ARE powerful in Regulation M-A end up matching fairly well into Volcarona, with both Mega Charizard Y and Mega Floette resisting Bug type moves that would be the most useful as support. You still get the Special Attack drop of course, but it'll be harder for your other Pokémon to finish them off. Volcarona IS still good as a redirector that can take hits…but so are plenty of other pokemon, and something like Sinistcha can take physical hits better, can heal your other pokemon with the Hospitality ability and the Life Dew move, and can better help deal with Physical attackers thanks to Matcha Gotcha carrying a chance of burning the opponent. In a field where the powerful threats were special attackers and didn't resist Volcarona's types, it looks a lot better than it does right now.
Despite this, I can't say I think Volcarona did especially badly. Maybe Sinistcha would have been "better", but Volcarona was not only taking some hits you'd expect to destroy it, but when it was time to go on the offensive Volcarona was no slouch either. It looked really powerful! Shockingly powerful, considering how bad it seems to be based on the current metagame.
Like I said, Volcarona does best when it's allies are powerful as well, and between that and being sick of playing bad teams, I decided to treat myself to one of the most powerful Pokémon in the format: Mega Floette. Mega Floette is one of the bogeymen of Champions at the moment, and for good reason: It's got an impressive base 155 Special Attack stat, bolstered to monstrous levels by it's ability Fairy Aura, which makes Fairy type moves 33% more powerful. It's special defense isn't much lower at 148, making it extremely specially bulky, and it's physical bulk isn't terrible either with 87 base defense. Other than it's speed stat, which is heavy air quotes "only" 102, it's basically a supercharged Flutter Mane, the overpowered bane of most of Scarlet and Violet. I'm doing absolutely nothing unusual with Mega Floette, doing a bog standard stat spread of maximum special attack, maximum speed, and the extra points in defense because it's the lower defense stat, with a moveset consisting of Moonblast for single target damage, Dazzling Gleam for spread damage, Calm Mind for setup (I don't think I pressed this a single time and I never really felt like I needed to), and Protect to hopefully get me out of some jams. Mega Floette is very powerful! I think people saying Pokémon Champions is pay-to-win because you very heavy air quotes """""need""""" Mega Floette are being hyperbolic, you can absolutely win without it even going against it, but you need to be prepared for it, it's definitely one of the big threats in the metagame at the moment, and it definitely lived up to most of the hype when I used it.
My other choices for "screw you I'm using a good team" mode this time around are Kingambit and Basculegion. I've got some experience with Kingambit, a powerful and bulky Dark/Steel type that doesn't even mind being pretty slow thanks to it's access to the priority move Sucker Punch. It's also running Kowtow Cleave as a more powerful Dark-type move that can't miss, and Iron Head for Steel-type coverage. Instead of Protect, I'm running Swords Dance to sharply increase Kingambit's attack: I only actually used it once in my testing; I was down to Kingambit (already +1 from a Defiant boost because of an opponent's Intimidate) against my opponents Milotic (at +1 Special Attack from a Competitive boost after hitting it with Struggle Bug, oops). They had been playing pretty safe and stall-y and were at less than half health, so I predicted them to Recover instead of going for damage. The next turn they dealt over 50% with Scald, so Kowtow Cleave had to win, and it did! For it's item, I went with Chople Berry, which once per battle halves the damage Kingambit takes from fighting type moves, which are very prevalent and deal 4x damage. Kingambit is good, there's a reason people are using Kingambit, use Kingambit.
Basculegion was also running a pretty standard set: Adaptability as it's ability to increase the damage with moves of it's type from doing 1.5x more to 2x more, with a set consisting of Aqua Jet (Priority attack), Flip Turn (allows for pivoting), Wave Crash (Most damaging water type move), and Last Respects (Ghost-type coverage, and deals more damage for each ally that's fainted making it a fantastic finisher). It's item was Choice Scarf, so it's relatively mediocre speed stat doesn't stop it from outspeeding opponents, and being locked to only one move was never really an issue in this set of matches. My Basc even outsped a Weavile, one of the fastest Pokémon in the format! Between Adaptability and it's movepool, Basculegion is another really fantastic pokemon, and it's another one you Probably Should Be Using if it can be of any use to your team, at least if you're focused on winning.
My final two Pokémon, and the (relatively) less common picks, were Hisuian Arcanine and Whimsicott. Hisuian Arcanine was my Intimidate user, lowering opposing attack stats, but outside of that and the Leftovers item, it's built pretty aggressively with a moveset of Rock Slide and Flare Blitz for damage, Extremespeed for Priority, and Protect for Protecting. Hisuian Arcanine did pretty well for a pokemon with a 4x weakness to Water, which never felt like as much of a liability as it did back when I tested Mega Camerupt. Whimsicott is Whimsicott with an extremely Whimsicott moveset: Tailwind to give me speed control, Encore to lock opponents into unfavorable moves, Taunt to prevent my opponent from doing setup, and Moonblast for when it is Time To Kill. I didn't bring Whimsicott much, but it looked as good as ever in the games where I did.
As always, we finish with some additional notes:
The worst of the losses I experienced was against someone who led Venusaur and Mega Charizard Y against my lead of Volcarona and Hisuian Arcanine. Grass types are actually immune to Rage Powder's redirection, and Charizard is never running anything that can take out Hisuian Arcanine in a single hit, so I picked an attacking move with Volcarona instead…only for the Charizard to be running Scorching Sands, a ground-type move that dealt 4x damage to Hisuian Arcanine and OHKO'd it. I was so despondent about it I played horribly the rest of the game and lost very badly. Pokémon Champions lets you check the most used moves of each Pokémon: Scorching Sands is not on the list of Charizard's most used moves, but Dragon Pulse is at a measly 5% usage. I got extremely, frustratingly unlucky with that matchup.
I typically did not bother bringing Volcarona if my opponent was running a hard rain team. I did it exactly one time…and Volcarona got 1-shot on the first turn by Basculegion Wave Crash, the exact thing I knew would do that. It was the wrong decision by any reasonable metric…except I did win that match. So there's that.
Technically there is something other than Wave Crash Basculegion that can OHKO Volcarona: Rock Slide Tyranitar. That said, Tyranitar is falling out of favor a little bit, and when I finally faced one it came onto the field late enough that Volcarona had already taken a few hits so it didn't really matter. Still, something to keep in mind if you use Volcarona.
My last couple of matches were done very sleep deprived. I had assumed this would finally lead to a terrible losing streak and expose all of Volcarona's weaknesses, but instead I went 2-1 to finish up and in the loss I didn't even bring Volcarona.
Speaking of those last few matches: when I was in the Pokémon selection phase of what ended up being my final match, my internet went out 9 seconds before the match was set to start and I had to scramble to reset it to get back in. When I did, I found the game had ignored the pokemon I selected before disconnecting and instead defaulted to giving me the first 4 pokemon on my team: Volcarona and Floette in the lead, with Whimsicott and Kingambit in the back, against an opponent running a Mega Venusaur stall team. As it turned out, this ended up being a very good selection: Mega Floette got decent damage onto the board, and Volcarona got multiple Special Attack boosts clicking Fiery Dance into Venusaur. By the time my opponent realized they should kill Floette instead of going for Leech Seed, I had already taken out their Rotom Wash and gotten Mega Venusaur and Hippowdon to red health, with Volcarona at +2 Special Attack. The only reason Volcarona didn't get a double KO the next turn with Struggle Bug when I got Whimsicott out was because I misclicked and used Moonblast instead of Tailwind, which hit first and only left one pokemon for Volcarona to take out, and as you can imagine once my opponent was down to only Mimikyu it was basically over. Volcarona with 2 Special Attack boosts was powerful! Makes me wanna do another 10 with Setup Volcarona!
This team did wonders for my ranking. I went from an ELO in the low 1300s to the high 1400s, and could probably climb higher if I wasn't kind of exhausted with playing Pokémon at the moment.
I feel I should address the elephant in the room: Yes, this team is mostly meta threats. The success of this team did not hinge entirely on Volcarona. But that doesn't mean Volcarona wasn't an important piece of the puzzle. Consider: Why did an opponent of mine have to switch out a Garchomp that could have outsped and KO'd Floette with Iron Head? Volcarona. Why did my opponent lose their Corviknight without getting a KO, despite nailing a super effective Brave Bird, and needed to use their Glimmora to finish off a low-HP 'Mon instead of getting damage onto Kingambit? Volcarona. Who took out a Weavile AND a Medicham AND neutered a Mega Ampharos, clearing the way for a Mega Floette win? Volcarona! Make no mistake, I purposefully built a very strong team to use for these matches. I was getting tired of trying to be cute and using teams that were kind of bad to justify unconventional pokemon. But despite Volcarona being less used at the moment, this is not a team of 5 strong Pokémon and a hanger-on. It is a team of 6 strong Pokémon, even if one of them is criminally underused at the moment. On paper, Volcarona is poorly positioned in this meta, and you would be better served using Sinistcha or perhaps Maushold instead. In practice? Volcarona looked just as legendary as it did all those years ago in the Relic Castle ruins.
Volcarona is maybe the single coolest bug-type pokemon in history. Introduced in Generation 5, it was treated almost like a legendary: hidden away as a static encounter at the bottom of the Relic Castle, forcing the player to go through an entire maze to find it as if it were a legendary on par with the Swords of Justice or the Forces of Nature. Volcarona is not, in fact, a legendary, not technically, but you might not realize that considering it's list of tournament results. Volcarona is overall the winningest Bug type in Pokémon history, with 60 Top 8 finishes in regional-level tournaments, with 6 wins, and 18 Top 8 finishes in International level events. Other Pokémon have reached higher heights; a few have won internationals, and Escavalier is famously the only Bug to be a World Champion, but nobody is as consistent and present as Volcarona at the highest levels of play.
Which makes it a bit odd that Volcarona isn't seeing much play in Pokémon Champions thus far. We've now had 3 major tournaments using the newest official battle simulator, and Volcarona's results have been, at best, okay. Two top 64 finishes, one at Special Event Turin this past weekend and one at Indianapolis Regionals the weekend before, with an additional Top 128 finish at the latter as well. Why is this? Is Volcarona washed? Does it stand no chance against the current meta? Well, I've been using Volcarona the last few days and I'm here to tell you: Not at all! As someone who liked Volcarona for it's design before, I came away extremely impressed by it in my games, going 10-2 using it. I think I know why it's not seeing much play at the moment, but let me start by saying: Volcarona is a great pokemon that you should definitely keep in mind while team building.
As usual, we start with the stat spread. Volcarona is primarily used in one of two ways: as a bulky redirecting support Pokémon, using Rage Powder to draw in moves and Struggle Bug to reduce the damage opposing special attackers can do, and as a powerful Setup Sweeper, using Quiver Dance to increase it's Special Attack, Special Defense, AND Speed before mowing over opposing teams. I prepped two separate Volcarona for each build, but ended up sticking with the Support version during my testing because I was doing so well and was so impressed with it. It's almost a shame; the other Volcarona was a shiny!
Anyway, Volcarona's big drawback is it's physical defense: compared to it's relatively beefy 105 Special Defense stat, it's 65 Physical Defense stat is downright paltry. So, I gave it a Defense-boosting nature and put as many stat points into Defense as I could; next, I gave it enough Special Defense points to guarantee it lived a Sun-boosted Weather Ball from Mega Charizard Y. Then, I put the rest of it's stat point into HP. What this left me with is a Pokémon that was EXTREMELY bulky; there's only one common move I did calcs on that can defeat it in one hit, Wave Crash from an Adaptability-boosted Basculegion, and throughout the matches that was the only thing I saw OHKO Volcarona. This thing was taking hits like a champ, consistently surprising opponents who figured they'd get an easy KO with Brave Bird (for example), only for it to stay standing and keep redirecting attacks away from Volcarona's powerful allies. Best of all, Volcarona's impressive 135 Special Attack stat meant it was dealing a decent bit of damage on the occasions it went on the offensive even without any investment!
The moveset was pretty basic. Rage Powder redirects single-target attacks so that they hit the user instead of their intended target; it doesn't have the priority to stop Fake Out, but otherwise a lot of moves destined to take out the main damage dealers of the team were absorbed by Volcarona instead. As usual, I was running Protect just in case it seemed like it would be useful to guarantee survival for another turn. If I was in a position where I felt it would be better to attack with Volcarona, I had two options: Fiery Dance, Volcarona's former signature move (now shared with its Paradox form Iron Moth), an 80 BP Fire-type move with a whopping 50% chance of boosting Volcarona's Special Attack stat, and Struggle Bug, a 50 BP bug-type move that hits both opponents and, importantly, is guaranteed to reduce their Special Attack stat. Struggle Bug is a great support move…usually. A bit less so now, unfortunately.
Y'see, most of Regulation M-A, the current competitive regulation, is fairly low-power, but there are a few standout powerful pokemon that are seeing a LOT of play. I used a few of them on this team, in fact, as the best partner for a pokemon that will take hits for another is a pokemon that can use that opportunity to dish out a ton of damage. Kingambit, Garchomp, Basculegion, and Sneasler are all physical attackers; not only is this the damage type Volcarona takes less well even with all the investment I gave it, they also aren't particularly phased by Struggle Bug reducing their special attack. On top of that, the special attackers that ARE powerful in Regulation M-A end up matching fairly well into Volcarona, with both Mega Charizard Y and Mega Floette resisting Bug type moves that would be the most useful as support. You still get the Special Attack drop of course, but it'll be harder for your other Pokémon to finish them off. Volcarona IS still good as a redirector that can take hits…but so are plenty of other pokemon, and something like Sinistcha can take physical hits better, can heal your other pokemon with the Hospitality ability and the Life Dew move, and can better help deal with Physical attackers thanks to Matcha Gotcha carrying a chance of burning the opponent. In a field where the powerful threats were special attackers and didn't resist Volcarona's types, it looks a lot better than it does right now.
Despite this, I can't say I think Volcarona did especially badly. Maybe Sinistcha would have been "better", but Volcarona was not only taking some hits you'd expect to destroy it, but when it was time to go on the offensive Volcarona was no slouch either. It looked really powerful! Shockingly powerful, considering how bad it seems to be based on the current metagame.
Like I said, Volcarona does best when it's allies are powerful as well, and between that and being sick of playing bad teams, I decided to treat myself to one of the most powerful Pokémon in the format: Mega Floette. Mega Floette is one of the bogeymen of Champions at the moment, and for good reason: It's got an impressive base 155 Special Attack stat, bolstered to monstrous levels by it's ability Fairy Aura, which makes Fairy type moves 33% more powerful. It's special defense isn't much lower at 148, making it extremely specially bulky, and it's physical bulk isn't terrible either with 87 base defense. Other than it's speed stat, which is heavy air quotes "only" 102, it's basically a supercharged Flutter Mane, the overpowered bane of most of Scarlet and Violet. I'm doing absolutely nothing unusual with Mega Floette, doing a bog standard stat spread of maximum special attack, maximum speed, and the extra points in defense because it's the lower defense stat, with a moveset consisting of Moonblast for single target damage, Dazzling Gleam for spread damage, Calm Mind for setup (I don't think I pressed this a single time and I never really felt like I needed to), and Protect to hopefully get me out of some jams. Mega Floette is very powerful! I think people saying Pokémon Champions is pay-to-win because you very heavy air quotes """""need""""" Mega Floette are being hyperbolic, you can absolutely win without it even going against it, but you need to be prepared for it, it's definitely one of the big threats in the metagame at the moment, and it definitely lived up to most of the hype when I used it.
My other choices for "screw you I'm using a good team" mode this time around are Kingambit and Basculegion. I've got some experience with Kingambit, a powerful and bulky Dark/Steel type that doesn't even mind being pretty slow thanks to it's access to the priority move Sucker Punch. It's also running Kowtow Cleave as a more powerful Dark-type move that can't miss, and Iron Head for Steel-type coverage. Instead of Protect, I'm running Swords Dance to sharply increase Kingambit's attack: I only actually used it once in my testing; I was down to Kingambit (already +1 from a Defiant boost because of an opponent's Intimidate) against my opponents Milotic (at +1 Special Attack from a Competitive boost after hitting it with Struggle Bug, oops). They had been playing pretty safe and stall-y and were at less than half health, so I predicted them to Recover instead of going for damage. The next turn they dealt over 50% with Scald, so Kowtow Cleave had to win, and it did! For it's item, I went with Chople Berry, which once per battle halves the damage Kingambit takes from fighting type moves, which are very prevalent and deal 4x damage. Kingambit is good, there's a reason people are using Kingambit, use Kingambit.
Basculegion was also running a pretty standard set: Adaptability as it's ability to increase the damage with moves of it's type from doing 1.5x more to 2x more, with a set consisting of Aqua Jet (Priority attack), Flip Turn (allows for pivoting), Wave Crash (Most damaging water type move), and Last Respects (Ghost-type coverage, and deals more damage for each ally that's fainted making it a fantastic finisher). It's item was Choice Scarf, so it's relatively mediocre speed stat doesn't stop it from outspeeding opponents, and being locked to only one move was never really an issue in this set of matches. My Basc even outsped a Weavile, one of the fastest Pokémon in the format! Between Adaptability and it's movepool, Basculegion is another really fantastic pokemon, and it's another one you Probably Should Be Using if it can be of any use to your team, at least if you're focused on winning.
My final two Pokémon, and the (relatively) less common picks, were Hisuian Arcanine and Whimsicott. Hisuian Arcanine was my Intimidate user, lowering opposing attack stats, but outside of that and the Leftovers item, it's built pretty aggressively with a moveset of Rock Slide and Flare Blitz for damage, Extremespeed for Priority, and Protect for Protecting. Hisuian Arcanine did pretty well for a pokemon with a 4x weakness to Water, which never felt like as much of a liability as it did back when I tested Mega Camerupt. Whimsicott is Whimsicott with an extremely Whimsicott moveset: Tailwind to give me speed control, Encore to lock opponents into unfavorable moves, Taunt to prevent my opponent from doing setup, and Moonblast for when it is Time To Kill. I didn't bring Whimsicott much, but it looked as good as ever in the games where I did.
As always, we finish with some additional notes:
The worst of the losses I experienced was against someone who led Venusaur and Mega Charizard Y against my lead of Volcarona and Hisuian Arcanine. Grass types are actually immune to Rage Powder's redirection, and Charizard is never running anything that can take out Hisuian Arcanine in a single hit, so I picked an attacking move with Volcarona instead…only for the Charizard to be running Scorching Sands, a ground-type move that dealt 4x damage to Hisuian Arcanine and OHKO'd it. I was so despondent about it I played horribly the rest of the game and lost very badly. Pokémon Champions lets you check the most used moves of each Pokémon: Scorching Sands is not on the list of Charizard's most used moves, but Dragon Pulse is at a measly 5% usage. I got extremely, frustratingly unlucky with that matchup.
I typically did not bother bringing Volcarona if my opponent was running a hard rain team. I did it exactly one time…and Volcarona got 1-shot on the first turn by Basculegion Wave Crash, the exact thing I knew would do that. It was the wrong decision by any reasonable metric…except I did win that match. So there's that.
Technically there is something other than Wave Crash Basculegion that can OHKO Volcarona: Rock Slide Tyranitar. That said, Tyranitar is falling out of favor a little bit, and when I finally faced one it came onto the field late enough that Volcarona had already taken a few hits so it didn't really matter. Still, something to keep in mind if you use Volcarona.
My last couple of matches were done very sleep deprived. I had assumed this would finally lead to a terrible losing streak and expose all of Volcarona's weaknesses, but instead I went 2-1 to finish up and in the loss I didn't even bring Volcarona.
Speaking of those last few matches: when I was in the Pokémon selection phase of what ended up being my final match, my internet went out 9 seconds before the match was set to start and I had to scramble to reset it to get back in. When I did, I found the game had ignored the pokemon I selected before disconnecting and instead defaulted to giving me the first 4 pokemon on my team: Volcarona and Floette in the lead, with Whimsicott and Kingambit in the back, against an opponent running a Mega Venusaur stall team. As it turned out, this ended up being a very good selection: Mega Floette got decent damage onto the board, and Volcarona got multiple Special Attack boosts clicking Fiery Dance into Venusaur. By the time my opponent realized they should kill Floette instead of going for Leech Seed, I had already taken out their Rotom Wash and gotten Mega Venusaur and Hippowdon to red health, with Volcarona at +2 Special Attack. The only reason Volcarona didn't get a double KO the next turn with Struggle Bug when I got Whimsicott out was because I misclicked and used Moonblast instead of Tailwind, which hit first and only left one pokemon for Volcarona to take out, and as you can imagine once my opponent was down to only Mimikyu it was basically over. Volcarona with 2 Special Attack boosts was powerful! Makes me wanna do another 10 with Setup Volcarona!
This team did wonders for my ranking. I went from an ELO in the low 1300s to the high 1400s, and could probably climb higher if I wasn't kind of exhausted with playing Pokémon at the moment.
I feel I should address the elephant in the room: Yes, this team is mostly meta threats. The success of this team did not hinge entirely on Volcarona. But that doesn't mean Volcarona wasn't an important piece of the puzzle. Consider: Why did an opponent of mine have to switch out a Garchomp that could have outsped and KO'd Floette with Iron Head? Volcarona. Why did my opponent lose their Corviknight without getting a KO, despite nailing a super effective Brave Bird, and needed to use their Glimmora to finish off a low-HP 'Mon instead of getting damage onto Kingambit? Volcarona. Who took out a Weavile AND a Medicham AND neutered a Mega Ampharos, clearing the way for a Mega Floette win? Volcarona! Make no mistake, I purposefully built a very strong team to use for these matches. I was getting tired of trying to be cute and using teams that were kind of bad to justify unconventional pokemon. But despite Volcarona being less used at the moment, this is not a team of 5 strong Pokémon and a hanger-on. It is a team of 6 strong Pokémon, even if one of them is criminally underused at the moment. On paper, Volcarona is poorly positioned in this meta, and you would be better served using Sinistcha or perhaps Maushold instead. In practice? Volcarona looked just as legendary as it did all those years ago in the Relic Castle ruins.
I was planning on doing 5 matches of Defensive Support Volcarona followed by 5 matches of Offensive Setup Volcarona but support Volcarona is going so well I'm worried I'll be disappointed by how easily setup Volcarona gets blasted.
made a Volcarona team, got into a match where Volcarona absolutely was NOT the play, won the match with Basculegion (this team uses actually good pokemon), got the Basculegion Admirer title because apparently that was my 10th Basculegion match.
Doing a Basculegion writeup just so I can have something to post would be Very Funny, but also it's been so long since I last actually used Basculegion that I wouldn't have much specific firsthand memory of using it (more facing it, really). It may also be really funny, though...
in fairness to myself, my opponent was running 4 psychic types on their team all of which they brought to the match, Basculegion in the back instead of taking up two slots with Volc/Mega Floette was ABSOLUTELY the play.
made a Volcarona team, got into a match where Volcarona absolutely was NOT the play, won the match with Basculegion (this team uses actually good pokemon), got the Basculegion Admirer title because apparently that was my 10th Basculegion match.
Doing a Basculegion writeup just so I can have something to post would be Very Funny, but also it's been so long since I last actually used Basculegion that I wouldn't have much specific firsthand memory of using it (more facing it, really). It may also be really funny, though...
hey heads up, the next Pokemon write up might not be for a bit. Appletun was so miserable I stopped wanting to use it after 3 horrendous losses, I followed a friends advice on challenges of "you can do what you want forever including saying this challenge is ass", rerolled what pokemon I got (rolled Volcarona, an actually good pokemon that I like) and was still so done with Pokemon that I still haven't figured out the team or even what Volcarona build I wanna use. So I think I'm gonna take a break from forcing myself to use non-meta pokemon for a bit and just use the teams I actually like. Volcarona writeup might still happen soon-ish but I also might wait to do another writeup until the next format starts since that's in less than 2 weeks. IDK point is don't expect the Appletun writeup anytime soon, can't guarantee the Volcarona writeup for a bit either.
turnnoffyourmind
areudirty
theartofmadeline
stormborns
gracieabrams
andulkaphoto
