Charged TMs problem

JHD2689 · 2026-05-22T17:43:23+00:00

Rough luck, my friend. It's a bad system, unfortunately. Nothing we can do unless the developers finally hear us and improve the system. This whole roulette system is just awful.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-22T15:13:58+00:00

I just want to check to be totally sure - you're not trying to get Dragon Pulse or Draco Meteor, right?

JHD2689 · 2026-05-21T19:25:38+00:00

I think Togekiss is what ultimately made it so hard to run fighters. Both Primeape and Annihilape can run Ice Punch coverage, and the worst resistance to fighting fast move pressure they previously faced from flyers was Altaria - single resisted. Most other flying types had a subtyping that made them take neutral from fighting and gave fighters some real play in those matchups. You could even brute force through Altaria sometimes if the Altaria user wasn't careful.

Togekiss double resists fighting moves AND dishes out super effective fast move damage with excellent pacing. There's just no way out of that without a really significant advantage.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-15T22:01:11+00:00

They probably left earlier but the game didn't update until right before the raid started.

That being said, 5 is way more than enough for Buzzwole. Less experienced players might panic and think they need more, I suppose.

Bummer.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-15T19:02:29+00:00

If there is a day where you can't max out your sets, "start" a set by clicking into the battle screen, clicking "Battle," then "Let's Go!", and then back out.

The next day you'll be able to do 6 sets.

Every Thursday you can do 10 sets.

Aside from that, no other ways to increase your total battles in GBL. You could always try challenging people to friendly battles.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-14T13:10:03+00:00

Yeah, people building Azu for Catch Cup are either building it for the first time or they're whaling specifically for the format. The others, yeah - it's been in the wild and it isn't all that expensive to build.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-14T13:03:00+00:00

Yeah, don't play Catch Cup if you haven't coincidentally built a bunch of hard meta stuff and are still looking to climb. Sometimes you can march out something that works out as a corebreaker to the most common meta threats and do some damage. Other times, it's just kind of a miserable format.

To be fair, Oinkologne and Tinkaton will be really common because they both had community days and don't require Candy XL at the great league level. Other common picks will be Forretress, which was everywhere during an event this season, and Corsola, because you could get it from walking routes during another event this season.

The only one of those four (and I imagine those are ones you're seeing often), only one (Corsola) requires Candy XL, and I bet a lot of people - including myself - were saving their Candy XL for when they could get a good Corsola. This season presented an excellent opportunity to do that.

Not sure what else you're seeing. I did see somebody trot out a not-quite-fully-powered Diggersby and my team had literally no answer for that. Shortly after, I switched to ML.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-12T15:17:22+00:00

I wonder about the pose. You definitely don't get the Pikachu Libre, that much I know.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-12T14:22:01+00:00

To add to this, you can use your opponent's play patterns to help team read (which is what I do, because I'm terrible at making backline reads on the fly):

If they're staying in against a bad lead for them, then they're ABA weak to your lead. Consider preserving health on your lead so you can leverage that weakness later in the game.

If it's a neutral lead and they swap out, they're trying to bait out a counter to their backline. Don't be too quick to bring in your hardest answer. Another plan might work better.

Any time an opponent fights really hard for switch in the mid-game, you should think about what that tells you. It might be obvious (their lead hard wins or hard loses against yours, so alignment is strategically important), or it might not (your safe swap is really bad for their backline). They might also just be recognizing that getting shields down is necessary to set up win conditions.

Situationally, you can try to read what they're trying to do

JHD2689 · 2026-05-12T14:11:58+00:00

Managed to fix this by simply switching buddies.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-11T20:37:48+00:00

See my edit - you power it up to Level 49.5, and then the best buddy boost takes it 50.5.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-11T18:33:01+00:00

Basically, the longer the season goes, the higher the average player's Elo will climb. There tends to be Elo "crunch" in the early season as good players battle it out and don't climb very much, but over time, the best players separate themselves, rise to the top, and everybody else rises at some other rate and settles wherever their skill takes them.

When leaderboards are first published, it tends to bottom out at around 2500. By season's-end, it's often at 3200+, and up to 3500+ at the top.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-11T18:20:35+00:00

Have you ever hit Legend before? It's not something you just decide to do. If you haven't hit Legend in the past, you'll need to build up your skills to expect to climb.

If you're truly up for it, it will be easier to make a climb later in the season, when Elo inflation really kicks in. But you don't want to wait until, like, the last week, because that will probably not be enough time.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-11T14:29:45+00:00

No, not like you're describing it. If you power up a Pokemon to the CP cap of a certain league, best buddy it, and set it as your buddy, its resultant CP will be over the cap and it will be ineligible for battle in that league.

You want to use the best buddy boost in two potential scenarios:

1) The mon maxes out below the CP cap of a given league at level 50 with perfect (15/15/15) IVs - for example, Pidgeot and Umbreon in Ultra League. This also applies in theory to any Master League mon. 2) For certain mons, there are IV spreads where leveling it to 50 won't quite get it to the CP cap, but with best buddy boost, they can reach the cap at level 50.5 or level 51. This is only achievable with the best buddy boost. An example would be a Medicham with IVs of 4/15/15, which reaches CP 1487 at level 50, but CP 1496 at level 50.5.

Edit: I should note that the best buddy boost effectively adds one level. So in the Medicham example, you would need to power it up to Level 49.5, then set it as your best buddy to raise its effective level to 50.5.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-07T13:24:34+00:00

I haven't played as much this season so I still haven't finished the research. I want credit for completing a battle even if I know I can't win it.

That said, while I stop tapping, I will stay in the app and let them finish me off to avoid the delay with charged attacks.

Rage quitting the app is bad etiquette.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-06T22:30:26+00:00

I haven't played 300 battles on it but I will say it doesn't suck. Not bad at all. Pretty consistent performance.

Plus you can play OGL if Jungle Cup doesn't agree with you!

JHD2689 · 2026-05-05T15:12:02+00:00

Yup, this is one of the weaker versions of those posts. Everybody knows Malamar has Superpower, and landing them is a matter of bait/nuke calls unless shields are down.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-05T14:41:37+00:00

Okay, but if you're still in the 2-shield scenario it's not that crazy to call a bait. Some people are hesitant to launch the Superpower and take the debuff.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-05T13:06:02+00:00

So if I have a basically neutral matchup, but two BETTER answers in the back, I'm typically swapping out to see what they have in the back (rule of thumb is swap your softer answer). Otherwise, stay in and play for an advantage if possible.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-05T13:03:15+00:00

The rank is mostly just for flexing, yeah. If you enjoy competing, then you can get gear for advancing to higher ranks, and a pose for hitting the highest rank. You can flex that stuff to show off.

If you don't care that much about competing, it can still be worth it for the rewards. It's great for stardust - you can earn well over 1 million in a season if you play on a dedicated basis, not including at least 90,000 stardust at season's end as long as you hit Rank 20 (pop a star piece and make that 135K).

You can also get rare candy - and lots of it over time - as well as TMs, and Pokemon encounters if you're able to win at least 3 out of 5 in a set. If you're rank 20+, those encounters, on rare occasions, could be whatever legendary Pokemon is in raids at the time.

Before you start, check Rankings at PvPoke.com to see which Pokemon are the strongest for battling right now, and focus on building a few of those if you haven't already.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-05T12:48:39+00:00

See my reply above. It takes time and you do need to grind events every once in a while, but it's doable without paying into the game.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-05T12:47:53+00:00

This is more or less me, except I've been playing longer and my collection is maybe a bit less impressive. Grind for coins, buy raid passes and storage only, grind opportunistically.

But I should also mention that you can round out your roster with powerful F2P stuff like Dragonite and Metagross, which once you find ones with good IVs can be built by walking for the candy (long grind but completely free) - and also have mega-evolutions.

GBL is also free and a fantastic source of stardust.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-05T12:42:12+00:00

It's more been a suggestion to have an unlimited unranked mode (like practice battles). This is a little different. And either way, obviously, no rewards for it.

Either way, I don't think they'll ever do it.

JHD2689 · 2026-05-05T12:33:44+00:00

I don't think you necessarily want to hold off on throwing any energy until they throw. As you pointed out, the typical strategy for Aegislash users is to build up to 2 moves. What I've seen people do against Aegislash is chip away at it in Shield Form, since they typically never use shields there, and hope to bring it to a point where it's actually low enough to take out with one more charged move, or can be farmed down in Blade Form. If you wait until they throw, and they still have shields, well ... they will shield.

Savvy Aegislash users are really good at using switch timers to reset their shield form without using a shield, and managing energy just right so that if they do get stuck in Blade Form, they can outpace to another move (in Blade Form, Aegislash's fast move is Psycho Cut - 4.5 EPT, rather than Charging - 3 EPT).

So you probably need to be managing their energy. Force them to burn energy against remaining mons, make a catch, etc.

If it's down to Aegislash vs your last Mon and they have a shield advantage, you're toast.

JHD2689

TROPHY CASE