POKEMON

[LopezAMV]

Anyone need Pokerus?

I was lucky enough to get it from a wild Litwick on my first Black playthrough. I realize it's not as hard to get anymore cause of the global trade system but it doesn't hurt to ask .

[mirkosp]

I'm fine, I randomly got it myself in Black way back, too.

Back to B2W2, though, Skill Link Cinccino is a boss.

[mirkosp]

Just finished Black 2 (basically started it 2 days ago). Wanted to reach the postgame as quickly as possible, so I rushed the story as much as I could (I did not skip reading the text though); ended up with a team of just 4 mons, slightly underleveled too, and abused hax a bit too much (but hax is part of the game, and I've had Minimize spammed on me, so it evens out). On the other hand, I EV trained them in my Black copy, because that helps a lot. Since I predicted I would be around level 50 for the league, I used lvl 50 math for EV training (plus I'm going to do doubles with some friends using our ingame teams for fun, and those are gonna be at 50).
E4 Team under spoiler:

Spoiler :

Tapioca (Swanna)@Razor Fang
Keen Eye
Quiet 28/20/9/18/10/16
EVs: 8 HP / 6 Def / 248 SAtk / 248 Spd
Fly
Surf
Ice Beam
Hidden Power (Fighting 60)

I put the razor fang after the elite four and before the champion in the event ice beam would not be enough on its own, but it was superfluous (and I didn't get any crits anyway). Swanna is generally left as a HM slave, but I ended up using it quite a lot in battles throughout the game, it's a chill bro. Hidden Power Fighting was a lucky thing to come across, and 60 is good enough to be usable, so it helped me earlier on, before Druddigon got Superpower (which was in Victory Road). I'll prolly get tailwind back in that spot now. Ice Beam from the Black cartidge because I needed it.

Frattaglia (Druddigon)@Quick Claw
Mold Breaker (DW)
Lonely 10/3/29/12/23/7
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 6 Def / 4 SDef
Bulldoze
Dragon Claw
Superpower
Sucker Punch

I got to the Dream World as soon as I could, because I knew if I had luck I could get one of my bros to tag along. Chances were with me as I was able to get a Sucker Punch Druddigon, and he stuck with me for the whole time. Dude's slow, and since Trick Room wasn't a viable option ingame, I had to resort to Quick Claw+Bulldoze speed drops (scary face was of help in early game). And man, that quick claw was vital at times. Sucker Punch was of HUGE help, especially at the league. Swanna's Ice Beam doesn't OHKO Haxorus (even if it crits there's the focus sash). I could bring Haxorus at red, but by then he was DDanced, and then swanna was quickly disposed of ─ Druddigon was the only dude left, so having a priority there granted me the match (without need to rely on quick claw hax, which didn't activate).

Swiffer (Cinccino)@King's Rock
Skill Link (DW)
Jolly 21/20/2/12/0/12
EVs: 4 HP / 248 Atk / 10 Def / 248 Spd
Tail Slap
Bullet Seed
Rock Blast
Encore

My god, what a beast. MVP for most the time. 50% flinch rate was too good to pass on, so I had to stuck a King's Rock (5 Pickup Lillipups in team until I found it, it didn't take as long as I thought it would) on him, and damn if it worked well. I lucked out a LOT and was able to catch it jolly, and the IVs were decent enough for ingame purposes. Coupled with the EVs, I was able to outspeed pretty much anything I encountered, and when it wasn't a OHKO, I often got the flinch. Coverage is decent, and for the pesky steel types I had Druddigon and Swanna. Encore is pretty situational, but predicting the CPU is easy, so it works well. It was especially useful against Shauntal: lead with druddigon, switch in on the obvious shadow ball, encore, X Attack, sweep. Hadn't it been for gen V 3 turn nerf, I'd have abused it to deal with Iris's Hydreigon too, but Swanna was able to handle a charge beam, if just barely, so it was fine.

Bipolare (Magnezone)@No Item
Sturdy
Quirky 2/8/17/12/5/8
EVs: 248 HP / 14 Def / 248 SAtk
Thunder Wave
Flash Cannon
Thunderbolt
Lock-On

Fourth slot filled during the E4 (I had SonicBoom up till then, mind you... it was mostly filler anyway, and SonicBoom is nice to help out catching pokés without false swipe). Otherwise pretty straightforward and I've seen it commonly used in B2W2 runs too, so yeah, not much to say.

[Kitsuner]

Finally conquered the Subway in Black. Now I'm only three pokemon away from the final trainer star, one of which (Registeel) I just need to transfer from Platinum.

[Radical_Yue]

Playing it at work as a way to pass the time and I'm really enjoying it so far. I love the fact that you can catch older Pokemon right off the bat (Mareep, Riolu, and Growlithe on mah team ) and since I just like to play with Pokemon I enjoy as opposed to all that crazy EV training, I'm having an awesome time.

Rival isn't a total douche, but he's still just kind of ok. Totally in the process of abusing the double battles w/healing in the sewer currently to level my mons a bit before the next gym battle.

The game is still kind of hand-holdy but doesn't feel as bad as B/W. I was actually getting really annoyed playing Black when they were like...
Every damn NPC in town = "THE GYM LEADER USES ELECTRIC BUT I HEAR GROUND CAN DEFEATz IT."
*runs around in the wild outside of the town to find just about nothing but ground pokemanz*
Me = "Geee....subtle..."

Overall I give it a so far.

[mirkosp]

Actually the point of ev training is so that you can make stronger ANY pokémon. It's exactly what Karen means!

Strong Pokémon. Weak Pokémon. That is only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled trainers should try to win with their favorites.

Otherwise you're forced to level up a lot more, and that just becomes a chore easily when you're doing the main game story...

I mean, Druddigon is terribly slow, Cinccino has horrible defenses, and Swanna is mostly kept around as death fodder and HM slave. But I liked them, and I used them.
Magnezone really is the only competitive Pokémon there... OTOH both Lucario and Arcanine are strong competitive Pokémon with high BSTs. Nothing wrong in liking them (I like them too), but hey, don't judge!

[Radical_Yue]

Haha, I wasn't trying to go after EV trainers or anything xD;;

To be honest, I just don't understand a whole lot of that insanity so whenever I'd try to talk Pokemanz on the interwebs I was called a n00b for my team picks, so I just kind of threw that in there

[mirkosp]

Mmmh, well the idea behind EV training is quite simple and logical, and has been around since red and blue (just with different math).
Basically, the gist of it is that if you defeat a Pokémon that has a certain good stat, you should receive a small boost in that stat. So for example, defeating Zebstrika, which is incredibly fast, will gain you 2 speed EVs. This is affected by different forme of the same pokémon, so defeating a Darmanitan gains you 2 attack EVs, whereas Zen Mode Darmanitan gives 2 special attack EVs. There are also Pokémon with mixed EV yields. For example, defeating Shuckle gives you 1 defense EV and 1 special defense EV.
Along with this, there are held items which boost the EVs the Pokémon gains, along with the Pokérus, which doubles the gained EV amount. The various vitamins also increase the EV by 10 untill the Pokémon has 100 EVs in the stat, and the feathers introduced in BW add 1 EV each with no cap. Vitamins and feathers don't get the Pokérus boost, tho.
Finally, if you messed up something, using certain berries, you can easily delete certain EVs of a Pokémon.

Hope this clears things up! Don't be scared of the mechanics, they are part of the game for a reason.

[Kionon]

Using this sentence to explain the Past Participle in class:

"What is a yellow pokemon owned by Satoshi (Ash)?"

Pokemanz all up in this bitch, yo.

[Kitsuner]

Hahaha, so I might have already known this, but now that I have four Trainer Stars, Nurse Joy greets me by name and asks if I want the usual. When she first found out, she was all "Please can I heal your Pokemon (you sexy Pokemon master)?"

She may not have actually said the last part of that, but it was defs implied.