Help with lapis gym

[Levi1155]

Please help. I cannot seem to defeat this gym and I am continuously failing at it. I have these pokemon:

Zigzagoon

Skitty

Whismur

Caterpie

Teddiursa

Esperr

Pancham

Swirlix

Igglybuff

Hoppip

Electrike

Oddish

Munna

Fomantis

Litleo

Mightyena

Minun

Beedrill

Furfrou

Lotad

Pansear

Trubbish

Pansage

Swanna

Snover

Weepinbell

Delibird

Noibat

Kricketune

Graveler

Blaziken

Camerupt

Klink

Onix

Zebstrika

and an egg with a pink top and a beige bottom

 

Please help. What do I do?

[VanPhanel]

Okay, so, this answer comes in two parts. The first one is general advice, the second part (in the spoiler tags) is a specific strategy, which should work. Only open the spoiler tags, if you don't want to figure it out on your own.

 

• As you probably noticed, Shelly's gimmick is Rain Dance. Since Illumise has Prankster, it's hard to stop her from setting the Rain up.
• Additionally, she's good at lowering your offensive stats (with Masquerain's Intimidate and most of her team using Struggle Bug). This means, it's hard to take her down quickly.
• She is also very good at offsetting Bug weaknesses (Rain Dance stops Fire, all the water moves she uses will destroy Rock types and her Swift Swim Anorith is a pain for flying types).
• However, she still uses Bugs and those are somewhat weak. Individually, only her Yanmega and Anorith are threatening and most of Anorith's threat comes from Rock Slide Flinches.
• There are generally three obvious ways to beat her strategy:
  1. Stop her from setting up Rain and burn her forest and her bugs down. There are again two obvious ways to do this:
     1. Use Fake Out on Illumise and kill it immediately (note that her Araquanid is a secondary Rain Dance setter, so you're not out of the woods yet (get it? Because forest field ... I'll see myself out)). Your Espurr or Lotad could do that, however they're also both weak to Bug type attacks.
     2. Set your own weather to overwrite her rain. One easy way to do this would be a Snow Warning Snover that you can switch in on a turn when you really need the rain gone.
  2. Overpower her with good Pokemon. Seriously. She uses bugs. Bugs are bad, decent strategy or not. An Ampharos will do nicely here because it learns Power Gem on lvl 35 (but it seems you have passed the Mareep in Jasper Ward. A tip: Try to have Pokesnax in your bag always, or you'll miss a ton of useful encounters).
  3. Abuse her own strategy against her by bringing Water Pokemon and moves. Your list of available Pokemon is somewhat limited in that regard: Swanna is the only one that can really fill that role (Lotad can somewhat do it but being weak to Struggle Bug hurts).

And now, press the button for more specific advice, if you so wish.

 

Spoiler

• A Pokemon that's easy to get and very strong against Shelly is Persian (regular, not Alolan, because Dark type makes it weak to Bug). It gets Fake Out and Power Gem, which means it's the perfect Pokemon to go for the "stop the rain" strategy.
• The single most broken thing you can do against Shelly is set Stealth rocks. It will do massive damage to her pokemon, in particular the Yanmega. If either your Onix or Graveler have Sturdy, do that (if they don't and you have an ability capsule, it's worth it to use it and give Graveler Sturdy which will come in handy in lots of places later).
• Forest Field can be set on fire by some Fire moves as long as it's not raining. This will both boost your Fire moves and damage all (non-fire) Pokemon every turn (and type weakness counts, so bugs are hurt more).
• You may have noticed that her Anorith has a Spiky Shield the turn it comes in. That is because it's held item is a Telluric Seed. You will probably have found at least one (if not, check the empty house in North Obsidia Ward to the East of the Grand Stairway). There are four different Seeds, each field activates exactly one of them, in case of Forest Field it's Telluric Seed and its effect is that the pokemon holding it will have a Spiky Shield on the turn it comes in.

 

Final spoiler warning: Press the next button at your own risk:

Spoiler

An Ampharos would really help your team out (even though you'll still be able to win the fight without it). Consider getting it (I think it should still be available). Have Pokesnax on you, speak to the panicked guy in the house East of the Pokemon Center in Jasper Ward, then go to the house all the way East (still in Jasper). Early access to Ampharos is one the many ways in which the devs were actually really nice to us

 

Entry Hazards ftw:

You might still fail an attempt or two, (particularly to bad Confusion luck), but it really shouldn't be hard to win at all.

 

• Level your Trubbish to 36 to get Garbodor and Common Candy back down to 35.
• Get the Protect TM. It is on the ground in the nightclub (in North Obsidia right next to the Grand Stairway. It is only open during night (in game time).
• Bring a Team of: Garbodor, Onix or Graveler (with Stealth Rocks and Sturdy). Ampharos or Persian (or both if you feel like putting the grinding in). Swanna, Jumpluff with held Telluric Seed. For the last slot anything decent without obvious weakness to water or bug should do.
• Open on Garbodor and Sturdy Graveler or Onix. Set Toxic Spikes and Stealth Rocks. On turn two use Toxic Spikes again. The rest of the fight is all about stalling her out and chipping away at her pokemon while the damage from the entry hazards grinds her down. Her main threats at this point are Yanmega and Anorith. Yanmega comes in at half health due to Stealth Rocks, so it should just die to a single Power Gem from either Ampharos or Persian, the other semi-dangerous pokemon is Anorith, but you can easily get around that by waiting until it kills something, bringing in Jumpluff and killing it with Acrobatics in the invulnerable turn from the Telluric Seed. Jumpluff in general should be very hard for her to deal with once Anorith is down.

 

A final note: This specific setup is extremely overkill. You almost certainly won't need everything I listed here. You can find out yourself, how many pieces you could cut until the strategy doesn't work anymore. For example, you might easily get away with a lower level Trubbish without evolving it, you might get away without getting the Ampharos or Persian and so on. I just tried to give you a strategy that works as safely as possible.

 

 

Good luck!

 

- Van

 

PS: Your egg is most likely a Deerling.

[Levi1155]

Thank you. I have successfully beaten the gym. Thanks for the help