I joined Bulbapedia on October 3, 2008. I mostly posted comments on talk pages, and was gravitating towards just helping other users get Egg Moves until I was told it was talk page abuse. However, my edits lately have centered around cleaning up unsatisfactory grammar, style, and tone as well as contributing trivia. Lately, I've also been on the lookout for Pokémon species articles whose learnsets are not yet up to date for Generation VI. I remain keenly interested in breeding.
Current Activities
As I currently attend Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA to get a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering, I have less time to play Pokémon as I had in high school. However, when I'm not in class or doing coursework, I usually play Pokémon , breeding and training Pokémon to be as successful as possible in the Battle Maison. I also have a habit of seeking out Pokémon with competitively useful Hidden Abilities. This pursuit often means I pursue opportunities to add Friend Safaris, trade with people with access to Friend Safaris I don't have, and breed things I do have for other people so that I can trade.
My Skills Have Improved Since Gen IV
I'm quite proud to say that breeding in my Black Version has gone absurdly well. I've gotten to the point at which I can breed Pokémon (that don't have unknown genders) well enough to get triple flawless Pokémon (3 IVs are 31). I can do this quite easily in the Monster, Dragon, Field, and Fairy Egg groups, and can chain breed my way into others. I've also started to get picky about the Legendary Pokémon I choose to keep, preferring to wait until I get one with a desirable Nature and IV spread. My skills have continued to advance further in White 2; I have been picky about the IVs of almost every Pokémon I have chosen to train and with every legendary Pokémon I catch (from any source other than Pokémon Dream Radar). For the first time in my Pokémon career, I went out of my way to collect at least one Ditto with perfect IVs in each of the six stats, and the only perfect IV I don't have in a Ditto is Attack. Also, every Pokémon I train has had EVs tracked in great detail--even Pokémon I have barely used. I even developed an Excel-based Stat Calculator/Journal so that I never have to manually calculate IVs when I'm offline. I even made sure that it had a look-up feature for the base stats of every form of each species, and I have included features to account for the statements of the Stats judge and each possible Characteristic.
I really only had one successful competitive team in Generation V. I mainly used it to participate in the Pokémon World Tournament's Champions' Tournament in Triple Battles. I had few problems with it in the tournament. It also won several battles against the team my best friend used for exactly the same tournament, and he was getting similar results to me. The key aspects of this team are Skarmory's Tailwind support, Cresselia's Dual Screens, and Salamence's Moxie ability (particularly when used with Outrage or Earthquake).
I've had a few ideas for teams I can use in the Battle Maison (mostly for fun). The three I'm acting upon at the moment are a Trick Room Rain Team for Doubles, a Sun Team for Triples, and a Tailwind Team for Triples.
Note: When not Mega Evolved, Houndoom's Ability is Flash Fire.
This team is complete, and it works as well as I had hoped. A lot of people I tell about this team are surprised to hear that I'm using Mega Houndoom instead of Mega Charizard Y. There are two reasons for my choice: 1) I don't have a Charizardinite Y and don't feel like asking someone for one, and 2) Mega Houndoom's Solar Power makes its Flamethrower extremely scary; its Base Power is 202.5 just on STAB and the Sun Boost, and Houndoom's Sp. Atk is doubled in the sun. In addition, I'm using this team to experiment with Florges's Flower Veil, Grassy Terrain, and Gogoat's Grass Pelt. This team has little vulnerability to Intimidate but a lot of vulnerability to status (for that, it is nice to have Florges on the field to protect Gogoat and Tropius), Fire-type moves from opposing Pokémon, and Poison-type Pokémon. To help with the first vulnerability, I may teach Florges Aromatherapy in place of Flower Shield. One way or another, I'm excited to see how this team will perform.
Note: When not Mega Evolved, Ampharos's Ability is Static.
This team utilizes Trick Room and Rain Dance. Its Pokémon are all pretty bulky since no EVs are distributed to Speed, but they all have one fully trained offensive stat and a Nature that boosts that offensive stat and lowers Speed. Ampharos is the offensive heavyweight however, carrying a base 165 Sp. Atk stat (when Mega Evolved) and STAB Thunder in the rain. I didn't utilize Drizzle for this team because Slowking can double as the source of both Rain Dance and Trick Room, and as such, I'd use Trick Room on the first turn, and Rain Dance when Slowking goes first (probably) on the second turn. Escavalier helps Slowking with Dark- and Grass-types and helps Ampharos with Fairy-types. Since some Fairy-types aren't weak to Steel (such as Azumarill, a serious threat in the Rain and Trick Room), Escavalier has Poison Jab, a strong physical Poison-type attack. This team will not likely be made in full until after I finish the Triples Team, but I definitely plan to carry it out.
Note: When not Mega Evolved, Manectric's Ability is Lightning Rod.
Since I enjoyed so much success with my Triples Team in White 2, I decided that the combination of Dual Screens and Tailwind was worth bringing back, and the release of Pokémon Bank and the Poké Transporter made this team possible (or, at the very least, more reasonable to achieve through breeding). However, I ended up replacing four Pokémon that were originally on the White 2 team. Initally, I realized that I did not want to use Cresselia or Heatran because I disliked the idea of transporting legendary Pokémon, so I planned replacements for them. I then figured out that I could not have Tailwind and Stealth Rock on a Skarmory unless I bred it under the Generation V breeding mechanics, so I had to replace it. Unfortunately, its replacement does not set entry hazzards. In order to keep the same physical-special balance as I had before, I also had to replace Electivire with a fast Electric-type Pokémon with good coverage and Special Attack. Talonflame replaces Skarmory, Claydol replaces Cresselia, and together Steelix and Manectric replace Electivire and Heatran. As far as type match-ups are concerned, Water-type Pokémon may cause me some trouble, and certain Rock-type Pokémon, particularly (Mega) Aerodactyl may be difficult to stop if they get, say, Talonflame and Salamence down and also have Earthquake. Originally, I was going to use a Furfrou instead of Steelix, but the type match-ups looked a lot better with Steelix, and I really like the idea of Sheer Force and the Assault Vest on Steelix. Salamence's moveset has been rearranged to give it coverage for the new Fairy-types that seem so prevalent in the Generation VI metagame. Milotic works so well, I saw no need to change it, except to breed one with five perfect IVs and put EVs in Defense this time.
EDIT: Now that I have had some time to use this team, I have made a slight change to adapt it to the Battle Maison. Primarily, since I had a battle where Milotic got walled by a Walrein (they were the last Pokémon), I replaced Substitute with Toxic. Also, I decided during the training of the members of this team that I'd rather have Steelix use Crunch over Thunder Fang; this change helped to round out this team's coverage, as none of my other Pokémon had a good move to take out Psychic-types or Ghost-types. I can now say the the experiment with Steelix was a success and would recommend to other players that they consider Assault Force Steelix.
