3rd Gen The Best RSE team?

[Raven Valt]

I recently saw an old video about the best RSE team, This included Swampert, Crobat, Hariyama, Manectric and Absol. Now my initial thought here was "Why the hell do you only have 5 pokemon?" To make the best team, it makes more sense to fill all 6 spots of the team that way you can soak out damage and roles, then I looked at the team he considered the best after researching the most important trainers and battles in all three games to make this.. I decided to pick this apart a little bit.

Swampert is by far the best of the three hoenn starters in terms of its usefulness, It completely walls 3 Gym leaders and is useful against 5 of them, as well as being insanely useful against 1 Elite Four and walling 2 of them. These being: Roxanne, Wattson, Flannery, Winona, Tate and Liza, Sidney, Glacia and Drake. Swampert also puts in a really good swift against most of Steven's team and is capable of fending off a lot of Wallace's team.

the next on this list is Crobat, Crobat is by far the superior Flying type in gen 3 as it boasts two physical types which work with Crobat's attack stats, it gets an extremely powerful poison move aswell as a host of flying moves, anything it can't hit hard it can whittle down with toxic and you could go full annoyance with confuse ray. so no complaints there.

Now here's where I start seeing problems, Hariyama is a pretty good attacking pokemon, it can hit hard and has a great niche use, however in gen 3 that niche is best served by other pokemon... Hariyama is only useful against 1 gym leader and 2 elite four members. Those being Norman, Sidney and Glacia. Let's first take Norman, in R/S Norman's team is pretty lack luster with him using 2 Slakings and a Vigoroth, Vigoroth poses no real threat and is easily dispatched by a Swampert or Crobat, His slaking's given they have Truant, are easily countered by any single pokemon which can use Protect or Detect, as well as being hindered slightly by Crobat's Confuse ray... Hariyama will do the job of taking down the Slakings but if it takes any hit it's going to end up pretty low, which leads me to my next assessment that Hariyama is just too fragile to make it useful, while it has a good attack stat, it's defensive capability is lackluster, meaning that even if you run Thick fat as an ability, You're going to take a ton of damage, Glacia will most likely take out Hariyama with Surf/Ice beam combo and Sidney isn't too much of a threat but his Absol will most likely destroy Hariyama.

The forth entry on this team was Manectric and while I get that for Wallace Manectric is a good pokemon, Electric types in Gen 3 suffer massively from bad movesets, most of which only get 2-3 types of moves (Electric, Steel and Normal).. However Manectric gets bite, useful against Pheobe but not really powerful.. Thunderbolt/Thunder do make good of taking down all but 1 of Wallace's team but I don't think an Electric type is at all necessary, there are other non electric types that can learn thunderbolt and enough grass types to clear this out and provide themselves more useful.

Finally we have Absol, we all know Absol's biggest weakness in gen 3 is its typing, the list I saw had absol use Bite with Calm Mind to try and help with this but to me that feels like a waste... Absol already has a massive attack stat and while it cannot make good on stab, it can still learn a decent set of moves to deal a lot of damage, couple that in with Swords Dance, you can happily sweep most non resisting trainers with it.

My question to you guys is, What do you think is the best RSE team? Remember this has to take into account the champion differences and all important trainer battles..

Mine would be:

Swampert @ Soft Sand/Mystic Warer/NeverMeltIce
Quiet or Brave Nature
- Earthquake
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Return

Crobat @ Sharp Beak or Poison Barb
Adamant Nature
- Fly
- Sludge Bomb
- Toxic
- Aerial Ace

Slaking @ Silk Scarf
Brave Nature
- Shadow Ball
- Thunderbolt
- Hyper Beam
- Flamethrower/Facade

Heracross @ King's Rock
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Megahorn
- Bulk up
- Brick Break

Cacturne @ Miracle Seed
Quiet Nature
- Giga Drain/SolarBeam/Needle Arm
- Faint Attack
- Growth
- Leech Seed/Return

Electrode @ Magnet
Quiet or Brave Nature.
- Thunderbolt
- Explosion
- Light Screen
- Return

 

[Nah]

I'm not really sure what combination I'd call the best for RSE personally. There's a couple of standout 'mons like Swampert and stuff, but I'd probably need a lot of time to think of a very good combination.

Electric types are still a fine choice though. The situations where a Grass type is better than an Electric type is few than the other way around imo.

I didn't know that so many Hoenn Pokemon got Protect via level up though. The TM's not buy-able until after you beat Norman, but I guess you don't need that anymore when you have several choices for Protect beforehand.

 

[Raven Valt]

I didn't know that so many Hoenn Pokemon got Protect via level up though. The TM's not buy-able until after you beat Norman, but I guess you don't need that anymore when you have several choices for Protect beforehand.

They're only useful for Norman's Slaking because of how much damage it can do, Torkoal, Volbeat, Pelipper and Dustox all learn Protect before you'd take on Norman. The best here in my opinion being Dustox and while none of these appear on my "best" team, there's no reason you can't use other pokemon to make some gyms easier. Meditite and Sableye learn detect before then as well, Sableye isn't a bad choice to have in your overall team as it's helpful against Liza & Tate and Pheobe.

 

[Adam_The_Actor]

If we're talking in game

Blaziken
Ludicolo
Flygon
Gardevoir
Manectric
Armaldo

This is what I came up for pure coverage. As it turns out I didn't need to bother getting a flyer because Flygon can learn the move and as it turns out Fly is actually a solid move in this Generation IMO and rolls well off his physical attack.

 

[Sydian]

swampert puts up a great front against a lot of gyms and E4 members, but i'm gonna stick w my boi blaziken. with a little extra grinding (which is totally doable and i always do this for any starter i choose in RSE) you can have a combusken for the first gym to get the fighting type edge over roxanne. i find combusken still holds up decently at the next two gyms, especially wattson's where he's got some steel types. flannery can't do much to combusken either. and ofc norman trying to face off against blaziken is a losing situation. that leaves you with three more gyms that blaziken isn't useful for, but you still have the E4 where it's solid against sydney, glacia, and steven. not saying blaziken is perfect here obviously but it's still out here hittin hard.

i've always really liked having a ludicolo too. you can rly throw down w one and that type combo can be hard to disrupt for some. grass typing saves it from being weak to electric, gets great coverage in terms of what you can teach it. if you're in emerald and wanna be really extra, you can give it thunder punch to deal with opposing water types and it's still a special move there so it works. ofc that's post game and with a lot of extra stuff involved so lol but still a fun option. too bad the moves aren't inheritable by breeding but like. what's lotad gonna punch with...

sableye is a good staller. he's not gonna bust out here w the big hits and eliminate big threats but with that typing, he'll resist a lot of shit. you can really piss people off too and run fake out and detect. faint attack is good for all the people out there using double team in this game too. doesn't hit hard, but it's reliable and decent. you could just go full annoyance and run like fake out/detect/toxic/confuse ray but lol that's a pain to train in game so.

i'm gonna give altaria a vote here too bc we stan an underrated dragon bird. i'm tellin u. put in the time to boost the sp att EVs (this is one of the only times i ever EV train for the main story but it's always worth it) on fluff bird and you can be a monster w flamethrower/ice beam/dragon claw/fly. fly is just kinda There but hey. or you could go the opposite route and run a physical altaria. i ain't judgin. dragon dance gotta get used for something right. dragon/flying isn't ALL that useful this game, but i'm largely putting altaria here for support and coverage, plus it resists a lot of basics and you only really need to watch out for ice and dragon which aren't all that common here anyway.

i feel like alakazam took a bit of a nerf in this gen bc he's no longer got access to punches very easily (unless emerald move tutors are an option for you but again that's post game unless you have an emerald at that point you can just send him over to, teach him, and send him back). you can get shock wave but not t-bolt so that's kinda lame. but at least shock wave doesn't miss so there's a silver lining i suppose. and you can always buff up w calm mind but alakazam can't take hits very well so i almost don't wanna risk it and i'd go gardevoir over him for t-bolt and wiser calm mind buffing bc you won't die as quickly while doing it. but then i realized. what do you need a psychic type for in this game? one leader is weak to it and it's so early in the game, you can get by with. whatever. usually. brawly kind of kicks my ass sometimes ngl but still. psychic doesn't do you much good this gen anyway so for as popular as both these guys are, it's like. what's the point. other than perhaps just support and good neutral moves or back up against something unexpected, but neither of these will provide all that much benefit in the E4 especially.

i think i'm just kinda talking to myself at this point lmfao this isn't necessarily a team building thing for me i guess, i'm just analyzing some faves...in the long run, it's not like you can't get by with anything that you choose. i mean. it's pokemon. whatever you want to make work, you'll make it work. the world is your cloyster.

 

[Megan]

Some things in regards to Haryama, coming from someone who had it on his team on his last playthrough:
- you can get it fairly early (Granite Cave, plus low evolution level)
- it learns a lot of HM moves (including Surf) so if you're into HM slaves that's a good option,
- but also has enough attack power to offset their rather weak base power (thinking about Rock Smash in particular)

I'm not saying it's an outstanding asset to any team, but it certainly has enough uses to justify a team slot.

Also, if we're talking E4 and onwards: at the end of the game the legendary will most likely be the best choice (just thinking in terms of offenses and coverage). Especially in Emerald, where you can crush all of them with a Lvl 70 monstrosity on your first runthrough.

 

[Sydian]

- it learns a lot of HM moves (including Surf) so if you're into HM slaves that's a good option,

oh my god i'm literally crying laughing you're just chillin in the ocean and see a trainer surfing on big ass hariyama i'm losing my mind omg..............i forgot he could learn surf thank you for this lmfao oh man....