[Pokemon Violet] Efficient Pokemans

Date: 2022-12-11 | contumption | pokemon | video-games |

Since I left my job at Instagram I've been playing a lot of video games - on Xbox, Steam, and now Switch. We purchased a Switch OLED during Thanksgiving sales and have been sinking time into training our Pokemans to be the very best.

Pokemon Violet is the first Pokeman I've really focused on since the Ruby / Saphire days so in this post I'm going to do some ramblings about my thoughts on differences and how to play more effectively.

Types

Getting type matchups correct has always been a core part of the Pokemon series but these new generations seem to take even stronger emphasis on it. Idk if I was just dumb when I was younger but I found it common to use Pokemon / moves that were normally effective against an opponent and slowly wear them down throughout the battles.

In this game it seems the new types / matchups make normal / weak type matchups v bad and prone to losses. In many cases (if around same level) seems its supereffective or loss.

There are a lot of new Pokemon now and even new types (Fairy) and old Pokemon receiving new types (like Marill is a Water / Fairy) so relying on old knowledge is no longer viable. This dual typing (and triple typing with Terrastallize) makes keeping up with effectiveness much harder.

Thus I recommend not doing this in your head and using a computer - a real life Pokedex.

I regularly reference this each time I fight a Pokemon to make sure I'm understanding how its types / stats impact effectiveness. Each time I fight a Pokeman:

  • Find in Page > POKEMAN_NAME
  • Click into Pokeman page
  • Look at effectiveness chart

This will save you some grief from using a move that theoretically is supereffective but ends up being non-effective (or even immune) due to type overlaps.

Pokeman Optimizations

Back in my day we just collected cool Pokemon and battled a few times with a link cable. Thus Pokeman comparison was limited to you and your local trainers. Once you physically left their company you could continue training your team on your own terms.

With the advent of the internet, you now have the ability to compare your Pokemans with that of the best teams on the planet, opening yourself up to the greatest thief of joy: comparison. It's okay to make a team of the cutest Pokemans alive - just know that your team is bad and you should feel bad too.

If like me you like to optimize everything with the least amount of effort possible, we'll need to understand a few basics of Pokemon breeding - an art form once relegated to the snobbiest areas of the internet which has since spilled into the mainstream.

TBH you should prob just Google this but here are the things I think matter:

  • Tier lists - These let you know how the internet ranks different Pokemans. Do not look at this if you don't want to be robbed of joy. Do look at this if you want your Pokemans to be good - if you pick a bad one, it cannot be not bad.
  • Effort Values (EVs) - EVs (also Base Points) are internal stats that your Pokemon gain from killing other Pokemon of certain types. These correspond with the stats of your Pokemon and each kind of Pokemon you kill will give a certain kind of stat EVs. Thus over time as you kill Pokemon, the types you kill will effect how your Pokemon grows! These can be manually influenced by using the Protein like items and feathers.
  • Individual Values - This is like the base talent of your Pokemans. There are many Snorklaxes but some Snorlaxes are better than others. In Pokemon SV you can max these out with the use of bottlecaps so mass breeding / incarceration is not necessary.

My Team

In the end, it's a game so the goal is to have fun. But still if you have bad Pokemans you should feel bad.

Here's my team after much comparison and angst:

  • Annhilape - Fight / Ghost
  • Amoonguss - Grass / Poison
  • Fire Croc - Fire / Ghost
  • Dragapult - Dragon / Ghost
  • Tinkaton - Fairy / Steel
  • Tyranitar - Dark / Rock

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