Hardest Champion Battle

[Devalue]

Which Champion battle do you think is the most difficult?

(Previous thread from pre-Alola times: thread)
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Goes with Cynthia from Brilliant Diamond / Shining Pearl. Lacks any special gimmicks in this generation, like Megas and Dynamax, to give the player a good edge. Geared these Pokemon to the 9's with items, proper natures, IVs/EVs, and even one hidden ability (on Garchomp). Sees no major type weaknesses, unlike someone like Lance. Patched up Garchomp's weakness a little with the Yache Berry too.

Mentions one other thing not found on most Champion teams: boosting moves. Includes two: Nasty Plot on Lucario and Swords Dance on Garchomp. Increases the potential for hefty damage that you cannot simply item-spam your way out of.

Criticizes one thing about the team: a heavy Special lean. Views Garchomp as the only source of heavy physical damage. Remarks on Spiritomb's Sucker Punch, Gastrodon's Rock Tomb, and Gastrodon's Earthquake being the only physical moves outside Garchomp's. Cannot suppress special damage as easily as physical damage, though. (See: Eerie Impulse and Mystical Fire versus Intimidate, Charm, and Feather Dance.)

 

[Zeostar]

I agree with Cynthia in the remakes. I struggled a lot.

Also Lance in Gen 2 is troublesome without being properly prepared for his specific fight. Three Dragonites is rough.

Unpopular answer: Wallace from Emerald. I struggle with him way more than Steven. He has decent ice coverage. Hits decently hard with his initial rain setter. Has a double team swift swim Ludicolo. He's beaten me on my playthroughs of Gen 3 several times and it often comes down to attrition.

 

[Explorer of Time]

I haven't played any further than Gen 6 myself, but the champion I usually have the hardest time with is Steven. Granted, I do usually play challenge runs where my team members are restricted, but Gen 3 doesn't have a lot of good options to fight Steel-types, and his Metagross is the hardest champion's ace because it only has two weaknesses (in Gen 3) or is a Mega-Evolved Pseudo-Legend (Gen 6).

Wallace is also a harder champion, with a lot of Water-types that synergize really well together. I had some difficulty with him even with a mono-Grass team against his mono-Water team, but I haven't fought him a lot since he's only in Emerald.

Gen 4 Cynthia, at least, tends to be overrated in terms of difficulty. Yes, she has that absolute monster of a Garchomp, which in my opinion is the second most dangerous individual Pokemon in the franchise (behind Steven's Metagross), but her team apart from Garchomp is not the best and Gen 4 has a lot of access to setup moves that you can use to exploit that. In Platinum, I once swept her whole team with a Level 56 Gyarados that used Dragon Dance once. I typically find Flint and Lucian to be harder than she is.

Lance can difficult or easy depending on whether you have Ice moves and a way to hit his Dragons with them without getting KOed first.

Blue is only difficult because of the steep level curve, but his team is mediocre, and you've had to fight weaker versions of it several times to get to the League in the first place.

It's been a long time since I fought a Gen 5 champion so I can't give the best impression on any of them, but Diantha's team in Kalos was the easiest champion I've fought. Her team has terrible synergy with only Mega Gardevoir being a serious threat, and if you've gotten that far you've probably managed to do a few setup moves to make it much less of a threat than it would've been had she led with it.

 

[Sheep]

Cynthia was super tough in DPPt. I remember losing multiple times. Also had some issues with Lance and Blue back in the day, but not much has compared to Cynthia. Great team members, good moves, and some really high bulk among some of her aces (like Milotic). With a great design comes a great battle though, so I approve!

 

[Delta Crowned Sword]

Agree with @Explorer of Time .

Steven's team is very tough to beat considering the generation and the types which he uses. Rock, Ground, Steel, Psychic stuffed in a team provides wide coverage that can be tough to overcome if we lack the balance.

And as she said, Cynthia's team is not bad, but not too good as well. Entire team is weak against Physical attacks, with Spiritomb being the one which needed to be taken care of, due to pressure. Mamoswine is there in Gen-IV and it can KO most Pokémon of her team single-handedly.


Wallace is also tough to beat, whereas both Diantha and Alder being the easiest.

Alder comes with 3 bug type Pokémon and an Ice type Pokémon. So it is easy to take away majority of team.

 

[Corveone]

Cynthia in BDSP is the only champion in the main games that uses optimal natures, EV spreads, move sets, and held items.

Well, we also have Kieran in the Indigo Disk DLC, which might be even harder if you're not well prepared for a competitive-ish 6v6 double battle.

Other than that, it mostly depends on each player's team, experience with the games, and team levels. Some people who remember Blue as hard might have not played FRLG (or RB) in ages, and it was just hard because they had much less knowledge and experience back then... or because they used too many Pokémon during the adventure and ended up underlevelled.

Some champions are not necessarily hard or easy, but rather just unbalanced. Steven for example is too vulnerable to Water and Fire, and it's also too physical, lacking any good special attacker. Lance (Johto) has literally a Flying-mono team, half of his team is weak to Ice and the other half is weak to Electric, so it comes down to whether you have good type match ups for it, go against Lance with types like Ground, Grass, Bug, Fire, or Fighting and it's probably not going to work well... but that's not his team being strong, it's just you not having a good team against him.

 

[Rock_Salazar]

I had no idea the previous thread got locked for being an old thread. Just saw it on the homepage and assumed it was new, so my apologies. These were my initial thoughts.

What comes to mind for me is Cynthia and Blue from FR/LG, and I'd say FR/LG Blue is the hardest. Cynthia is no doubt a difficult trainer because of how diverse her team is, plus she has strong pokemon like Garchomp, Lucario, Milotic, and Togekiss in platinum. Blue is challenging for sure because he too has a diverse team, but in gen 1 you can cheese him thanks to the badge boosting glitch which is something I always did, so I believe his gen 3 remake version is tougher. You have access to the vs seeker in both gens 3 and 4, however, the level gaps between the victory road and the Elite Four are more noticeable in FR/LG. What makes FR/LG Blue more challenging in my opinion has to do with 2 reasons:

1.) The fact that the Kanto elite four felt more difficult thanks to trainers like Agatha and Lance. They really wore you down thanks to the limited selection of pokemon in gen 1. If you had psychic mons to deal with the Agatha's poison mons, you often got hit with ghost moves that did good damage. Then there's Lance's 2 dragonites and aerodactyl which hit like a freight train. I cannot recall any of the sinnoh elite four being difficult except for Flint getting buffed in Platinum.

2.) While both champions had diverse teams, it seemed like Blue had an answer to everything in Kanto. Compared to Cynthia, if you were playing Platinum, you had at least 30 more choices in what you wanted to build your team with. For example, you did not have many legendary mons to cheese the fight against Blue. Sure you had Zaptos and Articuno which can easily win you matches against Lorelei and Lance, but Blue's team felt so complete for everything. He has a water, grass, fire, psychic, flying, and rock/ground mon which covered a lot of the types in game. Especially for the Kanto mons. You do not have many choices to go up against his Alakazam with how fast it is. Or how if you do not have a fire type or good flying type then his Exeguttor could give you trouble. Cynthia doesn't have a fire type so with something like Torterra you didn't have much to worry about unless you went against her Garchomp or Togekiss in Platinum. Plus you have access to Dialga/Palkia/Girantina, and the lake trio which are noticably strong pokemon. A little bit of grinding and they could defeat her Garchomp. While Cynthia has an ace being her Garchomp, it seemed like any of Blue's pokemon were his ace. I always get nervous when fighting Blue, and in my most recent playthough of FR/LG I barely beat him with 2 pokemon remaining. Cynthia I had at least 4 pokemon remaining. I could beat Cynthia when I was a kid, but it took me years to beat Blue in FR/LG.

Lance also comes to mind, but in HG/SS he loses to the Red Gyarados as long as you stack 6 Dragon Dances against his Gyarados (which is always his first pokemon) and spam ice fang and waterfall. Gen 2 Lance is a different beast altogether but it is mainly because of his 3 Dragonites. Realistically the toughest fight in the games if you lack a good water/ice mon, especially in Gold/Silver since evolutionary stones are locked to post game. That means no Starmie or Slowbro. Good luck getting a Politoed by yourself, or relying on the Red Gyarados' subpar special attack. You could solo him with Feraligatr, but that's not always everyone's cup of tea.

Steven is also tough, but since he has fossil mons + Metagross, just use either Swampert or Blazikin + Groundon/Kyogre.

Alder is... not difficult as long as you complete everything in the post game before fighting him in BW1. Iris I do not remember struggling against her at all.

Diantha? 3 of her pokemon lose to steel types. Also the EXP share made grinding non-existent. She was easy.

SM/US&M's champions aren't hard either, but they are at least fun.

 

[giradialkia]

The clearest answer is Cynthia in BDSP, because she has a competitive-ready team which just keeps getting stronger with each iteration. No other game really comes close to this.

But I would like to give a shout out to Blue's rematch team in FRLG. People never talk about the fact that FRLG had postgame rematches with the League, where they were all 12 levels stronger with some Johto Pokémon sprinkled in. Blue got a Heracross and Tyranitar, two of Johto's best Pokemon, and all around made for a pretty cool champion battle. By today's standards it's not much, but in 2004 it was awesome.

 

[ReKoil]

I don't remember really struggling with any of them. If I had to point something out it'd probably be BDSP's Cynthia simply for taking the longest to defeat first time round. It wasn't hard though. That Milotic of hers just took a whole bunch of turns to defeat, but none of them really posed a problem for the team I had.

 

[PoryKid575]

Out of the games I've played, I find Cynthia from DP to be the hardest. She's far above you in levels unless you grind and has a very solid, diverse team. There also aren't any special gimmicks like Z-Moves or Mega Evolution that let you cheese the fight, you have to beat her fair-and-square.

 

[Sweet Serenity]

Cynthia's difficulty in the remakes is very overrated. You can wall much of her team with a good special defender. A Pokémon such as Skarmory, for example, can also wall much of her team on the physical side, including her Garchomp. However, the hardest champion battle I ever had was actually against Steven in the Generation 3 remakes. What made Steven so tough for me was that not only is Steel a great defensive type, but he also has other types along with his Steel-type Pokémon, such as Rock-type, which is great offensively; Psychic-type, which doesn't have too many common weaknesses; Flying-type, which is good offensively and is immune to Steel's Ground weakness; and Ground-type, which is great offensively. A lot of his Pokémon also have the Sturdy Ability, which was annoying to face since many of them were strong enough to deal massive damage to me after surviving. Most importantly, his Mega Metagross was very tough for me; not only does it get a major stat boost from Mega Evolving, but it can also boost its Attack stat with Meteor Mash. When this happens, it can potentially sweep your team with its coverage.

 

[Meganium]

I had no problem beating Lance in Gold/Silver and in HG/SS. Took me two tries to get him out of the way.

Completely forgot about Diantha in X/Y. She kicked my party's butt several times.

 

[Explorer of Time]

Cynthia's difficulty in the remakes is very overrated. You can wall much of her team with a good special defender. A Pokémon such as Skarmory, for example, can also wall much of her team on the physical side, including her Garchomp. However, the hardest champion battle I ever had was actually against Steven in the Generation 3 remakes. What made Steven so tough for me was that not only is Steel a great defensive type, but he also has other types along with his Steel-type Pokémon, such as Rock-type, which is great offensively; Psychic-type, which doesn't have too many common weaknesses; Flying-type, which is good offensively and is immune to Steel's Ground weakness; and Ground-type, which is great offensively. A lot of his Pokémon also have the Sturdy Ability, which was annoying to face since many of them were strong enough to deal massive damage to me after surviving. Most importantly, his Mega Metagross was very tough for me; not only does it get a major stat boost from Mega Evolving, but it can also boost its Attack stat with Meteor Mash. When this happens, it can potentially sweep your team with its coverage.

Pigs have flown! Hell has frozen over! Me and Sweet Serenity agree on something!

 

[Artha]

Of course Ghetsis in the BW : )
the fake Champion: Alder, beaten by N easily, can just fight after a long run
the true Champion: Ghetsis, the BOSS during the 1st journey

1.This cheater has a lv54 Hydreigon with Flre Blast, Surf, Dragon Pulse and Focus Blast. (What a great combination! Stupidly in BW2 he let Hydreigon use Physical moves w_t_f?)
2.From Gen5 the Pokemon exp doesn't grow so fast as it was in the past Gens. Players are encouraged to use Pokemons of low level to fight.
3.There are no Pokemons from other Area could be in use before beating Ghetsis.

This guy and Clay with the Excadrill, Cynthia in the 2nd run, were the only three who impressed me in BW. (The others are too weak to stop the player, maybe N's team needs advancing)