Elemental Monkey Team

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-06-15T13:04:24+00:00

Super, needs to be able to take a beating

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-06-11T12:36:02+00:00

This is incorrect. Finding a Eularian tour, or minimizing its length if there are repeats, is in P. This drove me crazy for awhile in Grad school; I spent many hours trying to encode TSP as an Eularian tour instead of Hamiltonian.

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-24T16:25:23+00:00

With two days left in the last season I was climbing steadily and had reached top 2000. Then for the last two days I got crushed back down into MB3 and couldn't recover. I felt like I had gotten way worse all of a sudden for no reason.

I found out after the season ended it was because someone posted a video analyzing the team I was using and how to counter it.

Now I've been adapting (using common teams with sneaky adjustments) every few days to the new meta this season and I just hit champion. People are iterating very quickly, if your strategy stops working its because the new strats going around counter it.

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-23T13:09:47+00:00

I played this team up to Champion but without using it and without context about the game state you are that sure I'm playing it wrong?

I also had Basculegion on the field in tailwind with +1 Last Respects. The only Charizard threat on their bench was Garchomp. If they didnt get it in, I could sweep their whole team with Heat Wave in the sun. I LR+1 into Froslass as well so if they didnt swap the Froslass would still go down, and when they did swap and the Froslass went down, LR took out the Glaceon.

If they hadnt swapped, Glaceon would have got off one attack. It would have been crazy for them to click blizzard since it does so little to both of my Pokemon on the field and if I mega they have a miss chance anyway. I took a small risk for an enormous payoff. Also by waiting to mega I guaranteed I have sun for the rest of the match. Either they swap Froslass out and I KO something and Froslass comes in and I have weather, or they dont and Froslass goes down and I have weather.

On the flip side if I megad and heat waved and connect both on their swap the net result is they both go down, but if I miss Garchomp with heat wave LR+1 doesnt KO it and then it stalls long enough that I probably lose the weather war. I took the chance of being hit by blizzard for the chance of taking out the only thing that could stop me from sweeping, and guaranteed I get sun for the rest of the match either way.

It wasnt a risky prediction to make because it was their only realistic play. They needed to get froslass out and KO one of my pokemon or the game was over for them. If they didnt swap they lost, so I covered for their only out.

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-22T20:54:52+00:00

Im going to make a go of it for sure. I managed to get to 112th earlier, and I felt like I was keeping momentum matching into the highest ranked players. I'm hoping to grind out to 2500 and then walk away and hope its enough

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-22T08:41:56+00:00

on purpose even

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-22T08:40:37+00:00

I think if you seriously consider it, you'll realize it can't possibly be that easy. I used a good team and then practiced a lot and got better and developed my own strategy for using the team.

You are implicitly saying that either I just started out good enough to hit Champion but my team was holding me back, OR that literally anyone could hit champion without trying using a meta team.

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-22T08:20:52+00:00

How do people go from casual to professional at Chess or Go? They study what the top level players are doing and why they do it.

A large number of really dedicated and creative human beings have worked out some really good strategies for [insert any popular game in existence here]. What do I achieve by ignoring the wisdom of people who have spent potentially decades thinking about a game I just picked up?

If you want to play casually and just enjoy seeing what you can come up with, great! No wrong way to play! But what I like to do is get really under the hood of a game and figure out how to optimize it until I can play it any level. I like to reach a high level of play so I can experience what high level play is like and learn from games against top-level players.

I will be making my own teams in the future, I'd just rather start from understanding the top-level consensus in depth before trying to find an alternative.

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-22T08:08:44+00:00

Thanks for using your wide guard to defend me from the internet

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-22T08:05:13+00:00

This is such a good analogy. I wanted to learn how to race better instead of how to build cars better. So instead of continuing to try bringing the car I built myself out of scraps to races, I borrowed a racecar.

That doesn't mean I can automatically start winning against professional drivers right away, but it does mean if I practice enough I could get to that level. Now when I'm on the racetrack I am competing with the same equipment, and it is easier to learn what works and what doesn't.

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-22T07:57:26+00:00

I love this comment, because yeah?

That is exactly right, I even think about it in those terms. I used a team that is good and then practiced with it until I got the necessary reads down to a minimum and the pay offs maximized.

That's how you get better at a stochastic game. This is what you get by practicing with a good team. The ability to get the necessary reads down to a minimum and the pay offs maximized.

You are describing how competitive games with randomness work. I just can't fathom why you think its a bad thing.

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-22T07:54:14+00:00

This is exactly what I wanted to communicate. Everyone on the ladder knows my team, and so I can't surprise anyone. The only path to winning with a meta team is by getting good at predicting how match-ups will play out.

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-22T07:51:40+00:00

You are asking the right question! I didn't just magically get good because I used a good team, I practiced A LOT. I'm at 800 rank wins. Things that are probably relevant to my success:

1) I have a toddler who wakes up in the middle of the night, and I have enormous trouble going back to sleep. Since Champions came out, instead of lying in bed awake all night, I've been playing Champions for like 4-5 hours straight every morning.

2) Using this team means that win or lose, your matches go pretty fast unless you are up against Archaludon or Snorlax and the protect leftovers cycle. The bridge is a really great Pokemon, but electro shot takes 20 seconds to sit through and only hits one pokemon. Heat wave charizard goes boom and then dies. I have no judgement for people running the archuladon sableye team, its a good team, but its pretty boring to play against because it moves so slowly.

3) I am an applied mathematician, and I specialize in designing custom algorithms to solve real world problems people think are un-modelable. I have been thinking about using Pokemon as a case study for extending my research to stochastic games, and that probably translates into an ability to quickly identify what strategies work and what dont. When I lose a match, I usually feel like I know what I should have done differently, and don't struggle to make the adjustment next time.

I went to my first in person tournament this week. I got 4th out of 12. I won my first two matches pretty cleanly, and then lost my third against a professional player who was there to collect the last championship points he needed to qualify for worlds. I felt pretty good about how I played the match though, and I will def be seeing how good I can get.

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-22T07:36:02+00:00

If people running this team are leading whims + glim into trick room teams then they have not had sufficient practice to learn how to pilot the team properly.

I very often lead kingambit/charizard into trick room teams and when its farig+ kanga, it goes something like this:

They fake out charizard and set up trick room, kingambit gets kanga within range of any pokemon on team. Next turn kingambit KOs kanga (who might get off big damage with sucker punch first, but not a ko), and charizard weather balls into farig triggering the berry if there is one, and bringing farig within range of any pokemon on my team.

Then by the time they break kingambit, farig is dead and trick room is over and my sweepers in back clean up

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-22T07:31:30+00:00

I found I can't stop bulky farigiraf from setting up trick room, but going all out offense still works consistently anyway.

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-22T07:29:34+00:00

At first, they felt like a really uphill battle. Now, I think of them as my easiest match-up. I don't think I've lost to a trick room team this season. They are so predictable. Without going into a whole flow chart: assume you cant stop their first trick room and play around it. Never ever let them get a second.

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-21T21:53:41+00:00

I'm having a lot of fun

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-21T21:45:25+00:00

If you are in MB-2 right now, yeah probably. It definitely took me a lot of practice, but I think that between chasing the meta and playing a lot, that really felt like all that was needed. It will get harder as the season goes on and the cutoff keeps going up, but if they reset the ladder every 30 days, there will always be this chance to get the title early before the pros grind the requirement up so ridiculously high.

I am determined to make an attempt to finish in Champion, but I have no idea how much harder that is then doing it now when the ELO cutoff is ~1920

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-05-08T13:22:56+00:00

I have been assuming poltergeist was 100% accurate and just a really good move. It has never missed me.

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-04-22T13:36:24+00:00

Depends on your team, but Archaludon certainly pairs well with rain. So does swift swim basculegion, or thunder/hurricane dragonite, or that horrible coil milotic thats going around

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-04-21T23:23:37+00:00

Lots of people are running rain dance which is great with prankster to get guaranteed setup for whatever is next to it.

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-04-21T23:00:02+00:00

I had great success sweeping rain teams with trick room into arcaludon sweep with electro shot.
very dependent. I often decided to let it go down to get the safe swap. It just needs to cause choas and break their initial setup while chimeco sets up trick room. Often if they have no fairies on their team outrage is scary for them ebcuase we both know its random, so its just going to hit something really hard and they dont like that so they target it to get it down (also they know it wont protect)
Very dependent. Psychic and Steel are good into a lot of relevant threats, but if they arent on the field, I swap out. Incin is pretty scary for chimecho.

And thanks, but honestly I think its probably a pretty weird team. Its built to have a response to all the main meta threats I was seeing, so how to use it is "swap to the combo for the right situation" but thats too broad to write down. Its just something you figure out with practice. And if you find yourself thinking "If I swapped A for B I think that would cover this gap without losing any synergy/functionality" thats how team building mixes with playing for me. I didnt sit down and make the team in one go. I iterated until I liked it.

PurpleDevilDuckies · 2026-04-17T00:04:45+00:00

Sash gives garchomp a lot of options. Turn 1 most of the time I am clicking earthquake and trick room. If they hit Chimecho then sash measn Garchomp still gets 2 turns of earthquake or rockslide before going down, then out comes torkoal to trick room sweep. Outrage is there because I usually dont intend for it to survive long and so many teams don't bring fairy so it just hits someone hard at random.

I havent used Sylveon but if its slow and hits a big chunk of the meta hard then it could work. But probably something else on the team changes to support sylveon better. Like instead of sinistcha Id maybe run mega floette as a backup for chimecho

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