Generation 9 Team Advice/Suggestions for Pokemon Scarlet

[The Mega Champion]

I'm finally playing Gen 9/Pokemon Scarlet (the version I bought) for myself. Yes my gaming backlog is that bad (especially when it comes to Pokemon games) but that's not really the point or the issue right now.

I'm getting close to the third Gym. Or the recommended route from a guide I'm using from GameFAQs if you want/feel like you need specifics. My team right now is currently Floragato (starter), Fletchinder, Charcadet (planned to make an Armarouge), Clodsire, Pawmo, and Tinkatuff. Obviously... two fire types is probably not the best idea. Not really sure how good Pawmo/Pawmot is either honestly but it's on my team, for now, with a possibility for replacement.

I'm thinking water type but I'll take any suggestions for team improvements or a final team member in general.

The only reason I'm asking is because of the last two Pokemon games 'random bullshit go!!!!!!!!' mentality (metagame Elite 4 in BDSP and no healing in Giratina fight in PLA) so that BS has me paranoid as hell.

Yes I plan on playing the DLC because the game is incomplete without it. I guess. So keep this in mind as well.

I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions or advice for this. Thank you.

 

[terashards]

honestly your team is pretty solid, i do agree with a water type instead of two fire types because that'll complete your fire/water/grass core and tbh it's kind of up to you, i think talonflame and armarouge are both good and fun pokemon to use. perhaps talonflame should be kept for the ground immunity (since tinkaton/clodsire/pawmot are all weak to it) and the speed? shrug.

really anything should work here that isn't wugtrio cause wugtrio is like. Shockingly bad. not knocking anyone using it who's using it for fun but since you want some strong pokemon i definitely would not go for wugtrio. i personally used a slowbro on my endgame team when i played violet for the first time but really the world is your oyster and do whatever you want.

BTW once you get far enough, definitely teach tinkaton protect + gigaton hammer. it is such an op combination in the context of singleplayer lol. it basically lets you rip infinite gigaton hammers without penalty.

 

[da man/man]

I do believe Scarlet is very apologetic toward most teams, without spoilers, nothing should be as problematic as PLA's Giratina. That said if you do want a more optimal team, there are a few guidelines I suggest.

Floragato, kind of builds itself, nothing you'd need to worry about with it. Two fire types isn't the worst but if you'd like to replace one, I'd definitely recommend dropping Fletchinder instead of Charcadet, and adding a water type in its place. As for which Water type, I'd suggest Mareanie, if you're approaching the 3rd Gym, it shouldn't be difficult, they're right on the beaches below Levincia City. Since you appear to lack good bulk on your team outside of Clodsire, Mareanie provides Water coverage and also fills the role of Tank your team likely will need, and it's Psychic weakness can be easily covered by Tinkatuff, and Meowscarada(when Floragato evolves).

If you do end up making a grass/fire/water core, you can do a lot more, if you want to drop Pawmo, there are plenty of strong options like Cetitan, Kilowattrel, Espathra etc.

Also here are some Strategies that would work on these particular Pokemon.

Tinkaton:

BTW once you get far enough, definitely teach tinkaton protect + gigaton hammer. it is such an op combination in the context of singleplayer lol. it basically lets you rip infinite gigaton hammers without penalty.

DEFINITELY this. Not really much to add, I'm just seconding that this is a great strategy for single player. (Though you can sub Protect out for Reflect, Light Screen, or Substitute, if any of those better fit your playstyle)

Floragato -> Meowscarada:
Like I said earlier, it kind of builds itself, most of it's level up moves are ideal. However, if you do end up using Toxapex, I suggest adding Toxic Spikes to your moveset, because...

Mareanie -> Toxapex:
When you catch you're Mareanie, check if it has the Merciless ability, if it doesn't, I strongly suggest catching one with that ability. If you end up teaching Meowscarada Toxic Spikes, it will poison a majority of the enemy team, and Merciless makes it so that all of Toxapex's moves are critical hits when the opponent is poisoned. Teach it Ice Spinner, and a Water attack of your choice, and you've got a strong attacker on your hands!

 

[The Mega Champion]

I've been thinking of my water type being Veluza. That's the one I'm interested in the most right now.

Would this be acceptable?

 

[da man/man]

I've been thinking of my water type being Veluza. That's the one I'm interested in the most right now.

Would this be acceptable?

There's no unacceptable team addition really, if you're interested in Veluza, use Veluza! I haven't used one, in any context, so I can't speak on how strong it is but from what I've seen, it's a very offensive-oriented Water type which will likely not add much bulk to your team if that's what you're looking for.

 

[RichestAirPirate]

Floragato (starter), Fletchinder, Charcadet (planned to make an Armarouge), Clodsire, Pawmo, and Tinkatuff.

Pawmo/Pawmot can actually be pretty good. Although it doesn't have much outside of good attack and speed, it can hit hard with Close Combat and Double Shocks and also support the team with Revival Blessing, which you DEFINITELY want to have.

I've been thinking of my water type being Veluza. That's the one I'm interested in the most right now.

Would this be acceptable?

The thing about Pokémon games is that you're able to run just about anything in the main story and get away with it. That being said, Veluza is not a bad Pokémon. Water Psychic's a good type. It has good attack. However, its bulk is... middling and doesn't quite work well with its signature move Fillet Away. It should also be noted that you do add Veluza, you run into a bit of an issue with your Pokémon. Physical attacker overload. Now that's not bad, but it would be better to have more variety, since your only special attacker is Armarouge.

My suggestion is catching a good Special Attacking Water type. Unfortunately, Paldea doesn't have too many of those. Pelipper can be a good replacement for Fletchinder, especially if you get with Drizzle. Vaporeon is reliable. And Slowbro/Slowking are strong, although they have type overlap with Armarouge. If you don't mind going to Kitakami for the DLC, you can catch a Lombre and get a Ludicolo, although that overlaps with Meowscarada's grass type. If only you could head to Blueberry Academy at this point in the game. If you did, you could get Seadra/Kingdra or maybe even one of the water starters if you don't mind grinding out quests.

I'm thinking water type but I'll take any suggestions for team improvements or a final team member in general.

I know it causes type overlap, but Gallade is one of my personal favorite Pokémon to use in SV because of its new Sharpness ability. It now gets Sacred Sword too, so combine that with other cutting moves like Psycho Cut, Night Slash, Leaf Blade, X-Scissor, Aerial Ace, etc, and you got one heck of a good physical attacker.

If you don't mind trading, you can head to Levincia and trade a Pincurchin for a Haunter and get a Gengar, who is always a very strong mon.

Lucario is a good versatile mixed attacker, Glaceon can be used practically if you got an Eevee and an Ice Stone, Scyther is very good (and if you can transfer it to Legends Arceus to use a Metal Coat, Scizor can be quite good too!).

Really, you can use just about anybody.

 

[The Mega Champion]

Well it took me way to long... but I caught my water type. It ended up being Veluza after all. I couldn't come up with a nickname... so I settled on Torpedo. Yes it's a bad nickname. Either way my team is likely complete now. Pour one out for Talonflame I guess (it got boxed)

I suppose having two Psychic types could be a problem... but eh.

 

[Red Knight]

The only reason I'm asking is because of the last two Pokemon games 'random bullshit go!!!!!!!!' mentality (metagame Elite 4 in BDSP and no healing in Giratina fight in PLA) so that BS has me paranoid as hell.

Yes I plan on playing the DLC because the game is incomplete without it. I guess. So keep this in mind as well.

The base game is pretty lenient, as others have said, and so is Teal Mask as far as I can remember. The final fight of each of them is definitely a difficulty spike, but not a huge one, I'd say. I think your current team (Meowscarada, Armarouge, Veluza, Tinkaton, Pawmot, Clodsire) does well enough into the base and Teal Mask endgames that you probably don't need to make any substitutions there.

If you do make a substitution, I would probably swap out Veluza for a different Water-type. Veluza is fine, but it's pretty slow without Fillet Away and can struggle to find opportunities to set up when it has to slash half of its health away from its already unimpressive bulk. Here are some recommendations that haven't been made already:

Spoiler: I'm not sure whether I went into too much detail, not enough detail, or both

• If you want a similar flavor of setup sweeper to Veluza, Shell Smash Cloyster has the same base Speed and is better at finding chances to set up due to its exceptional Defense and the fact that it doesn't need to use half of its health as a resource (if you want to, you can run Focus Sash or White Herb on Cloyster, which don't work at all on Veluza). It has slightly lower Attack than Veluza, and Water/Ice has worse neutral coverage than Water/Psychic and is more flawed defensively, but it has better Special Attack if you want to go mixed, a stronger physical STAB in Skill Link Icicle Spear (which alone makes up for the lower Attack stat against neutral targets; it comfortably outdamages Sharpness-boosted Aqua Cutter and Psycho Cut from Veluza, and you probably don't have Sharpness on your Veluza because that is its Hidden Ability), Water/Ice has better super effective coverage than Water/Psychic, and because the lesser neutral coverage is entirely from other Water-types, that issue is easier to patch up with coverage (Rock Blast is excellent for this purpose due to its power; it's stronger than STAB Waterfall and only marginally weaker than STAB Liquidation).
• I used Gyarados on my final team in my first playthrough, and it served me very well with its bulk, power, coverage, and Dragon Dance. The Ground immunity would be great for your team, considering that 2/3 of it is weak to Ground.
• Floatzel and Barraskewda are stronger physical glass cannons right out of the ball; Floatzel has Wave Crash and some mixed attacking potential, while Barraskewda has bigger numbers in Attack and Speed but has to rely on Waterfall or Liquidation for STAB and is slightly frailer. Floatzel's Wave Crash hits harder than Barraskewda's Liquidation, but the recoil is a potential turn-off.
• You could also make a case for Adaptability Basculin, which is about as frail as Floatzel and noticeably slower than both (base 98 as opposed to 115 or 136, still much better than Veluza's 70), but also gets Wave Crash, has a Liquidation that hits even harder than Barraskewda's, and even more mixed attacking potential than Floatzel; its Hydro Pump actually hits harder than Rotom's. Its coverage moves won't hit nearly as hard, though; Basculin's only really good at clicking Water moves. For the base game and Teal Mask, that might be enough.
• Gastrodon is slow as molasses, and you might not necessarily want two slow, defensive Ground-types, but its good defensive profile, solid mixed bulk, and Recover (even the nerfed 5PP Recover) give it good longevity, and while it is the least offensively powerful suggestion here, base 92 Special Attack still isn't terrible, especially if you can snag a Storm Drain boost.
• Rotom-Wash is the fastest mon you have access to in the base game that you can comfortably call a "special attacking Water-type" (besides maybe Basculin) at a blistering... base 86. The overlapping Electric typing with Pawmot isn't that big a deal defensively because of Levitate (again, Ground immunity), and Rotom is pretty strong, pretty bulky, and has a lot of utility with moves like Thunder Wave, Will-O-Wisp, and Volt Switch. You can get the Rotom Catalog in Porto Marinada after catching a Rotom. And since the Catalog lets you change your Rotom's form at will, if you think an Ice- or Flying-type or a second Fire- or Grass-type would suit your team better than a Water type for an upcoming battle, you can do that.
• If you're willing to make a substitution fairly late into the game, then Dondozo is a very sturdy physical tank, and Tatsugiri is a strong and moderately fast special attacker with serviceable special bulk and access to Nasty Plot and Rapid Spin for boosting. Put them together in a Double Battle, and they turn into a raid boss. This won't be useful until Indigo Disk, but there it could prove very helpful. If I were to pick one or the other to use until then, I'd say Dondozo in a vacuum, but your team might appreciate Tatsugiri's talents more.

Another note: because of the mandatory group Exp. Share and how easy it is to find Exp. Candies, it's not too hard to have one or two auxiliary mons rotating in and out of the team to deal with rough matchups. Some solid options that haven't been mentioned yet are Annihilape (a bit of a grind to evolve if it's not on your main team but boy is it cracked, give it Rage Fist, Drain Punch, Bulk Up, and Substitute and watch it flatten everything in its path), Kilowattrel (aka Diet Zapdos), Glimmora (good special attacker and hazard setter with decent bulk and Speed, just keep it away from Ground moves), and Weavile (extremely strong into the E4, especially if you get the Tera Fighting one from Dalizapa Passage, but potentially a bit redundant with Meowscarada). Whenever you go to Kitakami, I'd also suggest Gliscor (great physical bulk, phenomenal typing, good Attack and Speed that can be boosted with Swords Dance, so many good coverage and utility moves).

Indigo Disk, however, is a pretty big difficulty spike. I haven't played BDSP (nor do I plan to), so I can't make any comparisons to that, but it's fairly comparable to Volo+Giratina; it's not as blatantly unfair, but it does require you to make some pretty serious changes to your team. All of the battles are Doubles (which is rough when your team was built for Singles), and the boss trainers have fully EV'd, optimally IV'd teams with pretty competitive movesets. You might want to EV train in turn for those; if you don't want to blow all your money on vitamins, you can get the Power items from Delibird Presents, and those make grinding EV's way less tedious. Aside from that, you may just want to play it by ear.

 

[The Mega Champion]

Well I made it to Indigo Disk. I didn't really change my team outside of swapping out Veluza for Ogerpon (currently Wellspring Mask)

Regular trainers that weren't the BB Elite 4 one shotting team members was already a bad sign. Then I battled Crispin.

Did I beat him? Yes. But it took me two attempts.

This is an extremely bad sign for the 'not rage quitting it' possibility. There's no excuse to make single player modes metagame competitive bull shit nonsense. No excuse. I'm sorry.

I'm still playing it. For now.

 

[Wyrmfemme]

Did I beat him? Yes. But it took me two attempts.

My first time doing the DLC, with a team I prepared long in advance and had good natures, abilities, full and optimized IVs & EVs, and had Ursaluna-Bloodmoon and Ogrepon-Hearthflame two fantastic Doubles Mons.. ..I still took like 4 or so attempts against Drayden.

In my replay of Scarlet late 2025, I had a rotating team of 12, none of them were properly IV'd or EV'd as I had gone through the base game and Teal Mask with them. Lacey took me two tries, but all it took for me to completely spin the fight was putting an Air Balloon on my Revavroom.

I'm not gonna poke at your comment about it being "competitive bull shit nonsense" as that's fairly subjective, but I will say, two tries at something and succeeding on that second try is, fairly good. Like if everything I did I succeeded on the 2nd attempt I'd be a pretty happy cat. There's definitely an upper limit to getting frustrated at throwing attempts at something over and over, but, two is nowhere near that.

 

[terashards]

upon the request of the thread starter, this thread has been locked! thank you