Claydoll

You missed Ame : P

It's all about perseverance and resourcefulness, i think. Quite a few times i've had to use "mercenary" one-time pokemons for certain occasions and also invest some time and money on pokemons that would go back to the box once whatever ordeal required them is done with (name the box in their honor, they deserve it). In my impression, the game taughts you that your team is far bigger than just the 6 you carry around at any given time, it does a nice job and is a really interesting experience.

You only need to defeat fern in route 1 to gain access.

Underground railnet (post rock smash) seems reasonable, although there are more than enough flying types before kiki already... but meh.

No need to get pissy about it, fact is that it isn't something intended or even practical for players to do but a lot of people have things that shouldn't really be obtainable in the current version but are allowed to keep them and that's that.

Story-wise, i can't picture battling hardy after titania, but having it in an event similar to riolu seems ok. Can't see it being immediatly useful there, but i would like it at some point before noel actually.

Wouldn't claydol trivialize Aya almost completely?

Heatmor is available at lvl 40 in pyrous mountain and 2 of the monkeys (water/fire) are available before julia.

That's the best part, you can't do anything about it. I just watched a youtube of that, can't say i'm surprised by that being a thing but damn.

I would give fern his own theme song so it plays whenever he shows up, and maybe put a combination of the phone system from gold/silver-ruby/sapphire so fern can call the player every couple of days or something; that way people can hate him even more.

Afaik megas are quite a distant thing from now, probably post-game/NG+ stuff, and even then finding the stones will be a hassle.

iirc you have to try to enter the mart so it gets teleported on top of the gym and that opens it.

Julia for all the reasons above. After that it would be: -Samson: i just caught a hawlucha and gave it bounce from the circus tutors, the -1 priority on landing is godlike. -Serra: sturdy magneton did most of the job. -Luna: she made me realise my lack of fighting/bug types, so i trained a heracross. -Kiki: my flying attacks raised a LOT lof dust and i was sad... a couple of her pokemon didn't really do anything at all though. -Radomus: mightyena with crunch and strengh took care of most of his team. -Corey: the field was annoying but i had my as swalot a CC bot with yawn/body slam while the other pokemon had type coverage. -Shelly: annoying with her anorith and bug buzz/struggle bug (can't remember) did considerable damage on most of my pokemon. -Shade: i had more trouble with his rotom than his chandelure, even if it did high damage with flame burst, the biggest issue was that my ghost coverage was a fragile mightyena. -Aya: magneton did some heavy lifting here but her dragalge was tough and the sludge waves did a lot of damage. -Noel: magneton again with the heavy lifting since it took me more than i would like to admit to realise clefable was immune to poison and colateral damage, his pokemon weren't too bad to deal with except for that Porygon Z which took some serious fire power to take down while one-shotting everything. -Florinia: i was rather careless at this stage of the game and didn't have bugs or fighting types and didn't want to grind so i ended up pulling the following strat to kill her cradily: poison it first with gulpin to force her waste turns not attacking, then using mightyena to lower it's accuracy, followed by growl spam from noctowl, and finally tail whip spam from braixen to one-shot it with flame charge. Her other pokemon fell easily after that. -Cal: screw magmortar, the others weren't horrible but they weren't easy either, but seriously... screw magmortar. -Charlotte: decent amount of trial and error here, my strategy ended up being make-shift at best since killing both typhlosion and darmanitan at the same time allowed her to overwhelm me completely with volcarona and ninetails. What i did: ludicolo and bronzong at the start to flinch typhlosion and use rain dance/heal block while hoping darmanitan used something other than flame blitz, then surf to kill darmanitan and lower typhlosion's accuracy to oblivion, after that i defeated her other pokemon one by one with ludicolo using dive or golurk and others STABing while typhlosion sat on his thumbs. -Terra: not yet there.

From what i've seen from this game, having started quite recently and getting past Charlotte and all that, i don't think any gym leader is due for nerfs so far; i would've liked to see some of the prenerf versions actually. The beauty of this game and, pokemon in general, is that there's an amazing number of strategies you pull off in most situations depending on what you currently have at that given time (even if some are, like the ones i have used, incredibly make-shift) and by the point you reach this specific gym you should be expecting such things and become more invested with the more in-depth mechanics of the game. So far, the game is great.

Out of the ones i've caught i really like Ludicolo and Rhydon, Sandshrew is cute aswell, with a special mention to Kecleon for missing his entire body.

Thanks, i'm sure i will. Hehe, thanks.

Thanks to both. I've already checked some of those before but still, thank you.

Hey everyone here at Reborn. I've started to play the game quite recently, this being my first pokemon game since Gen 3, and it has been a really nice experience especially considering the incredible amount of new pokemons/moves/evolutions available. I just managed to defeat Charlotte after a good amount of suffering and decided to come here and say hi out of excitement, especially since i have lurked in these forums for a bit.