Lake

Yeah, np. Congrats anyway for beating the game, didn't think you'd actually get through it after you failed that miserably at beating Florinia, Shelly, Taka and Arceus. Especially the first half of the game.

Thing is, in Reborn, sometimes just sometimes you need to think over your strategy and/or your Pokémon once or twice - and retry. I've been through this game 2 and a half times now (e10, e16, e18.2 which is running atm) and Serra was always one of the easier leaders while it was never necessary to break her field. Sure it's annoying, but oh well. Like you said, Arcanine is a huge plus against Serra, Klinklang (as ridiculous as it sounds) did the trick as well. In my current run, I blasted half of her team with A-Dugtrio's Iron Head. To answer the last question about what's wrong with the normal gym: Well, the main problem is, that the normal gym is anything but normal.

I'm just plain curious how this will turn out in the end when the real issues begin. Anyway, best of luck to you with your playthrough - you'll need it and I'm always there for you to help you out. Just make sure you'll talk to everyone and everything in Reborn's world, even if it's just some piles of stone. You WILL be rewarded at some point.