Tapu Lele, Alkazam @rating 1712
In season 6 I was able to get out of 1600 rating with my boi Alakazam and wanted to share few tips on how I did it. The win rate doesn’t look too good (52.5%) because I was messing around with weird parties at the start of the season, but with Alakazam party, I think I had a win ratio of 60% at any rating.
1. Creating party
I based my party on Alakazam, one of my favourite Pokemon. I won my first 1600 challenge with him in season 5 so I wanted to go to 1700 with this dude as well. It surprises me that Alakazam is not even in the top 50 of most used Pokemon. In my opinion, he’s one of the strongest Pokemon in singles due to having a very high special attack and speed with a wide range of high damaging abilities, which means that he’s good at sweeping, 1v1s and not allowing cycles. You also can’t forget about the ability trace, one of the strongest ability in the game if used properly.
At the start of season 6, I paired Alakazam with Solar beam z Heatran due to Alakazam being really weak against Pokemon like Celsesteala, Aegislash, Metagross, basically all steel type Pokemon you can think of. And with these two I thought that my party would be really weak against ground type so I put stealth rock explosion Landrous. Rest of the three I put AB fairy z Mimikyu because Blazkiken and Salamance are one of the most used Megas in this meta, mega Sharpedo for being a really good sweeper with Landorus’s stealth rock and choice band aranquid because he has high damage and I like high damage (I really didn’t know who to put as my 6th pokemon).
With this party, I was going pretty well around 1600 – 1650. I was pretty consistent with my rating around this area but when it came to the late 1600s, I couldn’t win at all. Then I realised, I had two megas and two z moves in my party. I was also dumb enough to not realise that I used my Landorus as an opener which meant that after my Landorus died, ground type move destroyed the shit out of my party.
2. Fixing my party
I came across an article about Alakazam and Tapu Lele based party. Its concept was to make Alakazam sweep their team under the psychic terrain. I found this concept interesting and replaced Aranquid for Tapu Lele who was pretty useless in my previous party.
I also realised that Heatran didn’t go too well with Alakazam. As mentioned before Alakazam is really weak against steel types like Metagross, Celesteala, Aegishlash but Heatran doesn’t have enough special attack to kill celesteala or aegislash if ev trained correctly and also he’s slower than metagross, and metagross learns earthquake. To replace heatran I needed a fire type pokemon with high speed and damage. So I replaced heatran for blaziken. Blaziken is commonly used as a physical attacker with mega stone, but if he is trained to max ev he will have a special attack of 187. With that special attack and life orb, he can turn a majority of the steel type Pokemon into an ash and can one-shot most of the mega Salamance with hidden power ice. Sp attack based blaziken ended up working very well for my party.
The biggest weakness with my party was not having anyone that could deal with Mimikyu. Atack Defence Mimikyu loses against normal Atack Speed mimikyu, Alakazam and Tapu Lele gets swept by Mimikyu. And that is why I picked Gyarados as my 2nd mega. Gyarados can one-shot Attack speed Mimikyu with dragon dance into a waterfall and even against focus sash or Atack defense mimikyu, you can still play the flinching game. There is always a chance to win with Gyarados.
I ended up only playing 7 games with this new party because I won 6 out of 7 battles from 1640 and made to 1700 in no time. I had my final exams the week after so I couldn’t keep playing past that rating. I’m still very happy that I could make it to 1700, which was one of my goals from the day I started playing this game.
3. Ev’s, nature, ability moves and items
Alakazam – Mega stone
Nature Modest
Ability: Magic guard -> Trace
Moves: Psychic - Grass knot - Shadow ball – Focus Blast
Ev Hp 52 Defense 96 Sp attack 116 Speed 244
Actual stats (after mega): HP: 137 Defence: 97 Sp attack: 231 Sp defence: 125 Speed: 201
Sweeper No.1. I was using timid Alakazam in season 5 and at the start of season 6 but then I realised that speed of 222 would just be an overkill. So I searched for a good ev with modest Alakazam and I found ダイジ’s article. He made a rating of 2003 with Alakazam, Tapu Lele based party. Apparently, with this ev Alakazam can take earthquake from adamant Garchomp, thunderbolt from life orb Tapu koko and psychic z from Tapu Lele. Grass knot isn’t that common to have on Alakazam but it works really well trust me. In season 6 Swapert based party was a trend and I chose Alakazam when I played against those parties. You just trace Swift Swim from Swampert then kill him with grass knot, it is the most satisfying thing. It can also be used to kill Mamoswine, Hippowdon, Tyranitar.
Tapu Lele – Expert Belt
Ability: Psychic Surge
Moves: Psychic - Moon Blast – Shadow Ball - Taunt
Sp attack: 252 Special Defence: 4 Speed: 252
Actual Stats: HP: 145 Defence: 95 Special attack: 182 Special defence: 136: Speed: 161
In all honesty probably the worst Pokemon I had in my party. Its only purpose was to provide Alakazam a psychic terrain. I have no clue why I gave him expert belt instead Choice Scarf or Spec. I wanted Tapu Lele to be strong against Breloom so I taught him taunt but in that case, substitute or sleep talk would’ve been a better choice.
Landorus – Focus sash
Ability: intimidate
Moves: Earthquake – Rock Tomb – Explosion – Stealth Rock
Ev: HP: 4 Attack: 252 Speed: 252
Actual stats: HP: 165 Attack: 215 Defence: 110 Special Defense: 100 Speed: 143
One of my favourite opener in this game. Against a slower pokemon, stealth rock into earthquake or explosion. And against a faster Pokemon, rock tomb into stealth rock and explode if possible. By doing this enemy’s focus sash become useless. You can choose this guy most of the time but gotta be careful when vsing greninja, he can kill landorus with ice beam into water shuriken and also Primarina can kill landorus with Aria into aqua jet. Breloom Landorus matchup is also a weird one because it depends on how many bullet seeds he hits and how many turns Landorus sleeps.
Gyarados – Mega stone
Nature: Jolly
Ability: Intimidate -> Mold Breaker
Moves: Dragon Dance – Waterfall – Ice Fang – Earthquake
Ev: HP: 4 Attack: 252 Speed: 252
Actual stats (after mega): HP:171 Atack:207 Defence: 129 Special Defence: 151 Speed: 146
Sweeper No.2. Chose this guy every time there was a mimikyu in their party and I was able to win it 100% of the time (out of 2 games). Not only that he’s good against mimikyu, he can also be strong against ground type sweepers after Landorus dies. Really good mega Pokemon with such a simple ev adjustment.
Blaziken – Life orb
Nature: Rash
Ability: Speed boost
Moves: Fire Blast – Hidden Power (ice) – High Jump Kick- Protect
Ev: Attack 28 Special Attack 252 Speed 228
Actual Stats: Hp: 155 Attack: 144: Defense: 90 Sp Attack: 178 Sp Defense: 81 Speed: 128
Sweeper No.3. Another ev adjustmentダイジ(2000 rated player) came up with. Ev should be 36 attack and 220 speed but I couldn’t be bothered leveling Blaziken to 100 and hyper training (lost 1 speed due to hidden power ice). I definitely needed Blaziken to have a speed of 128 because with 128 speed Blaziken can beat Timid Greninja after one speed boost. This blaziken was really good against cycle based party because he has both good attack and Special Attack. Also, it was fun killing Salamance with hidden power ice as the opponent usually expects Blaziken to be a full attacker so the hidden power worked really well. He also hit most of the Fire Blast and was really fun to use.
Mimikyu – Fairy Z
Ability: Disguise
Moves: Play Rough - Shadow Claw - Shadow Sneak - Sword Dance
Ev: Hp: 164 Attack: 156 B: 188
Actual stats: Hp: 151 Attack: 143 Defense: 124 Sp Def: 125 Speed: 116
Surprisingly this Mimikyu wasn’t that good with this party. This mimikyu is basically Mega Blaziken and Salamance killer, this mimikyu can take hits from both Blaziken and Salamance and kill them with fairy Z. So this mimikyu is basically a mimikyu with both Focus Sash and Fairy Z. This might sound really strong but this mimikyu has no speed. It’s really weak against Atack Speed Mimikyu and Breloom which this whole party is weak against. If I kept playing after I hit 1700 I would have probably replaced this mimikyu with Curse Mimikyu because this party is really weak against speed stacking Pokemons like Blaziken, Gyarados, Salamance, Charizard, Shapedo, Volcarona and all that. I need Alakazam to be over speeding these Pokemons hence I can’t let the enemy dance before I throw Alakazam. Jolly Curse will stop them from dancing and it can take both Mimikyu and Breloom.
4. Picking patterns
Open Landorus into Tapulele and Alakazam.
The first picking pattern I came up with after I finished creating my party. Throw stealth rock, put psychic field then sweep with Alakazam. But out of 7 games, I think I only chose this pattern once. I realized this isn’t that best picking pattern because I open up with Landorus and I won’t keep him (because he usually explodes or dies) which meant that ghost type Pokemon will just destroy Tapu Lele and Alakazam.
Open Landorus into Gyarados and Mimikyu/Blaziken.
Chose pattern if they had mimikyu in their party. Throw stealth rock and sweep with Gyarados, if Gyarados couldn’t sweep then sweep with Mimikyu/Blaziken. This works really well but this picking pattern is for brain deads like me. You literally don’t need any brain to win with a picking pattern like this because it won’t involve much swapping, I won against a 1900 rated party with this so I know that this is a strong picking pattern.
Open Tapu Lele into Alkazam and Blaziken/Mimikyu.
I chose this pattern if they had Primarina, Greninja or Breloom or if they looked like they didn’t have any focus sash. Probably the most common picking pattern out of the last 7 games I played and it worked really well.
5. Conclusion
As you may be able to see there are so many things I could improve upon and in USM I want to change up my party and get to 1800 or higher.
Pokemon isn’t one of the popular competitive game as it is one of the hardest game to get into. I started playing rating battles in season 2, back then my highest rating was about 1503 with a win ratio of below 50%. This game isn’t fun at all when you can’t win, most people grind to get 6 full ev trained Pokemon, play few games in rating, find out how hard it is to win a game then quits. That is exactly what happened to me, I spent more than 10hrs to create my party then found out that the party was complete trash then stopped playing. And then I found志摩’s Vivlion party. You rarely see that Pokemon in rating any more but he made it work and made to 2000 with that party. I wanted to use the party he was using but he had an icy wind Gengar and Greninja which I didn’t have. So I messaged him on twitter asking if there was any left from breeding and he politely gave me a Froakie and Gastly with icy wind. It was a complete copy of his party but I made it to 1750, I learned how fun it was to win in Pokemon which gave me a motivation to play more and come up with my own party. The community is small but there are so many kind people in such a small community. I wrote this article in hopes of making the community bigger especially outside japan and also to express my love for this game.
Thanks for reading my article, if you could leave a comment on my article, that’d be great and if anyone wants my magic guard Abra please leave a comment down on that as well. Thanks.
