It does reasonably well into a lot of meta threats and, while the form change seems to be a little different than I expected, the late game power boost is very nice. Ancient Power/Acrobatics makes it a bit of a bait merchant, but it feels strong into everything it should feel strong into.

Paired with my favourite double grass backline of Amoongus and Gourgeist. Ice types aren't real, they can't hurt me.

I know it's not the biggest achievement but it's the first time I've ever hit Ace!

The team is Forretress, Lanturn and Dunsparce

Forretress is the opener with Dunsparce as the safe swap.

Anyone else testing minior and seeing how despite its level increasing in when it starts the battle, it just doesn’t take charged attacks the way that a 2287 stat product mon should. Like, this thing should be bulkier than galarian corsola but I’m getting one-shot by super effective moves a lot of the time. Usually these guys can tank way more than that. Any idea of what’s going on?

Is there any point of hoarding xls for this guy for an ultra league build? He seems to only get 2700 stat product as a level 50 hundo in the meteor form. Seems like an awful investment of candy and 500k dust for a non that has less stat product than his attack form. Am I missing something?

Tested a 1500cp minior (rollout) vs a 3800cp shadow raikou (volt switch).

In this scenario minior gets knocked out by 3 volt switches (12 turns, shields down after 8 turns) so should not be able to make it to power gem(12 turns/4 rollouts).

However, after the second volt switch minior switches forms. This realigns minor, finishing its rollout sneaking one turn, meaning it can do a fourth rollout before the third volt switch lands, allowing for it to use power gem.

Not sure if this interaction would flip any matchups, but an interesting mechanic to take not of before you start blaming one turn lag!

Earlier I was testing the form change mechanics for Minior.

Upon further testing, it seems in GL, Minior-Core (lv22, IV 8/6/4 at CP 1309) is transformed at the beginning of the battle to Minior-Meteor at CP 1398 (lv41, 8/6/4)

However it’s transformed into a much lower CP if it’s entered to UL (video below in comments). Presumably if I were to level up Minior-Core CP much closer to 2500, its corresponding transformed Minior-Meteor CP would also go up.

So for now XL candies are only needed if you’re intended to use it in UL.

Is there any way to fix this?

I've lost so many games to this issue. Mon 1 dies.. and it won't let me pick who I want to bring in next.. simply counts down to 10 and picks the next Mon in the slot.

Admittedly a very meta heavy team. Originally I had Virizion as a lead but the number of weaknesses it had became a bit debilitating and for me outweighed the wins it got. Once I swapped Virizion for G Moltres, I climbed 350 ELO in three days.

G-Moltres: I’m not great at using self debuffing moves at the right time, so Fly + Payback for me. Didn’t run into as many Ghost & Psychic leads as I would have liked but overall pretty strong and would often grab shields when bluffing a Brave Bird.

Mimikyu: Everyone’s least favourite due to its gimmick, I found success delaying the disguise break and shielding it more often. Especially as in this team it was nearly always my safe swap; if someone broke the disguise and then swapped into something with heavy fast move pressure I would go down very quickly. I understand the calls for nerfs, but it still can be beaten comfortably, especially in the Melmetal era we are currently in.

Corviknight: I’m not a huge fan of bait/nuke playstyle, so now that both Air Cutter & Iron Head are solid damaging moves I much prefer how it feels to use now. The damage it does on the fairies is always great.

Forretress beats this entire team, but I didn’t see many during my climb. Fairy leads were manageable provided I wasn’t hard countered in a swap, but this team is weak to electric so if someone leads with Ampharos and then doesn’t keep it in when I swap then it’s an uphill battle. Similarly, if someone is running double electric it’s probably best to top left and battle someone else!

Thanks to anyone on this sub who’s ever provided useful advice and battling tips. Veteran is very much my ceiling, so will now be running some interesting teams and trying to have some fun!

I caught this a few days ago. PokéGenie says it’s the #1 ranked Ursaring for GL and #8 for UL. Which league does it perform better in?

i'm trying to think of the best way to represent pacing for arbitrary mons. as always, we start by looking at pvpoke. so far as i can tell, it expresses move counts in terms of a single charged attack in relation to a fast attack. the fast attack is selected, and all possible charged attacks are shown. so we have something like (i've selected ember, the recommended move):

• Blast Burn: 6 - 6 - 5 - 6
• Air Cutter: 5 - 4 - 5 - 4
• ...etc...

i want to show the possible sequences with two charged moves in play. this seems significantly more complex. it definitely seems we'll need address each combination of attacks distinctly. given that set, we want to enumerate all possible sequences.

well, that's an infinite set, so we'll need another idea. thankfully, for any given energy value, we can ignore the history, so we just need deal with a set of energy values. energy is capped at 100, so that's finite!

if we assume the charged move we want to throw is thrown as soon as we have energy for it (de rigeur for any kind of pacing summary), we only need deal with energy values less than or equal to the costlier of the two charged moves. this is a smaller set unless we have a charged move requiring 100 energy.

we can do better: we only need consider reachable nodes. for instance, if we have a fast attack with 2 energy, and our charged attacks take 40 and 50, we're never going to have an odd amount of energy.

from each energy point, we can seek to throw either charged move. so we just need compute the number of fast moves necessary to get to each one. the leftover energy tells us our target node; the number needed is of course our fast move count. the result is something like the linked graph. this models Charizard employing Air Slash, Air Cutter, and Fire Blast. Charizard requires 75 such graphs to represent its full move space (leaving out single move configurations and Return/Frustration): 5 fast moves each with 6 choose 2 charged move sets = 5 * 15 = 75. with return/frustration you have 21 move sets (6 choose 2) and thus 105 total graphs.

what i conclude from this is:

• unless someone has a better idea, it's pointless to enumerate pacing representations for two charged moves -- the spaces are too large to memorize
• pacing in terms of counting fast moves by itself is kinda dumb, because it ignores the possibility of holding off from firing charged moves immediately
• the thing to do is count opponent energy, not moves. this requires knowing the numerics of their energy buildup and drawdown, *but* that's fewer things overall to memorize (just one number per attack rather than a sequence)!

so i'm going to stop trying to memorize pacing sequences (never really started, to be honest), memorize energy values for all attacks instead, and just keep a running tally during matches. i suspect that the highest level players already do this (i don't watch youtube or whatever, and thus don't really know).

i guess my question, then, is: why does anyone calculate, display, or memorize fast move counts? it seems worse than memorizing energy in every way. knowing move counts does involve less calculation during the game, but it gets thrown off by held moves, and doesn't handle mixed moves at all. unless i'm missing something obvious.

this is for a little site i've been working on this week. i was going to include pacing diagrams on the mon pages, but no longer think them useful. u/EmpoleonDynamite, you always have thoughtful input, and i'd love to hear from you!

First time getting to Ace trainer. I was really excited because of the pool of encounters this season, but the second I passed level 20 my winrate absolutely tanked 🥴. Not sure if this is common for a lot of new GBL players, but its tough because all I really want is 3 wins per set for the encounter, but Ive been averaging maybe 2 since I hit ace, only got 3 once in 5 sets.

Outside of the obvious, like playing more and practicing more, anything I should do to get to win #3 more often? I mainly play Great league and its variants, but this week have been heavily playing little cup.

Ive heard some people mention like intentionally losing to get placed against easier opponents. Also heard switching leagues. Any anecdotes to that?

Was getting thrashed around a bit when open great league came back, then stumbled on this team and went ham, stunfisk corebroke basically everyone in the entire entire 2000-2400s, after TWO chokes at 2497 elo where i went 1-4 both times i got back to 2497 and finally finished off. Good to come back after a few seasons off (last veteran was with shadow swampert vigoroth and skarmory🫣) and get back to here, now it’s time to fuck around and run some spice

Hi All,

Any chance someone that has already catched a Minior can share what moves are available?

Thanks!

Hi All,

As the post says. Today I experienced two situations where DRE did not work as intended, i.e. when throwing a charged move on the last turn of an opponent fast move that would ko me, my mon faints instead of throwing. Wanted to see if it is just lag on my side or it is a diffused issue. I am confident that in both situations I had the energy to throw the move.

Situation 1: my Volt Switch Forretress has basically 100 energy from farming down an opponent. an Incinerate Houndoom enters the field and starts an Incinerate - in theory I should be able to throw a VS and then a Rock Tomb on the 5th turn, instead my Forretress faints.

Situation 2: I have a Hydreigon against a Sableye. Sableye kills me with 5 shadow claws, however I should have been able to throw 9 DBs and then throw a Brutal Swing on the 10th turn.

Which should I silver bottle cap? G.moltres is GL rank 8 after raising hp to 15. I’m in Ace and only played GL currently. Never played UL and ML as I do not have the resources for them.

I know sword zacian raid is coming but I don’t think I’ll have the time to farm the energy as it is only available 1 day in my location.

Moltres is not as great in GL vs UL. Should I use it on moltres and wait for the next silver bottle cap to use on zacian when I have the resources and finally decided to play ML?

Thanks in advance for any inputs.

Now that we have several of them, and they have proven to be powerful how do you feel about them? Do you think they are healthy for the game?

Hello, battlers. I'm still working on an overview of the entire Fantasy Cup meta ahead of next week, but in the process of doing that, I've run across a huge problem. Put simply: Mimikyu is about to absolutely destroy this format.

Now, I've written about Mimikyu before, before it was even allowed in GBL, and came the conclusion even then that it was completely busted. And while it hasn't completely broken GBL in half, it has become a big part of even Open formats, emerging as a Top 10 Pokémon in the rankings {and at multiple levels) and in actual usage (per the already awesome GoBattleLog), and again, across multiple Leagues. With a unique and potent defensive typing that is weak to only Ghost and Steel damage (and double resists Dragon, Normal, and Bug damage, and triple resists Fighting damage), and its extremely powerful third shield mechanic, it has a LOT going for it.

And now we arrive at Fantasy Cup. Like other Fairies, that double resistance to Dragon damage is a big deal in a format with only three typings, and one of them being Dragon. I'll show the sims in a moment, but despite having only one move that deals super effective damage to Dragons (Play Rough), there is only ONE Dragon in the entire format that can sometimes overcome Mimikyu, and even that one is IV-dependent (and realistically you're never going to actually see it anyway).

Now here's where things start getting crazy. There is also only one single Fairy that reliably beats Mimikyu, and that one is Wigglytuff which, of course, resists Ghost damage thanks to Wiggly's Normal typing.

So that leaves us with Steels, and even there, not many manage to best Mimikyu! Accounting for the Wigglytuff and Appletun we just mentioned, there are less than 10 Steel types that can reliably overcome Mimikyu in 1v1 shielding: Steelix (regular and Shadow), Forretress, Galarian Stunfisk, Ferrothorn, Corviknight, Melmetal, and then a couple things there's basically no chance of encountering (Aron and Shadow Probopass). Additionally, Aggron and Lairon with Metal Sound can force a tie. But that's it... Mimikyu can defeat a whopping 93% of the entire Fantasy Cup format.

Admittedly, Mimikyu is not quite that dominant in other even shield scenarios, but 0shield still hits an 86% winrate, and 2shield drops down to 79%. I mean, when about 80% winning is your LOW point, that's not ideal. That's like Aerodactyl-in-Flying-Cup, Bronzor-in-Little-Cup levels of domination.

The only Fantasy Cup Pokémon that consistently beat Mimikyu in all even shield (well, as "even" as you can get when Mimikyu cheats with its third shield)? WIGGLYTUFF, FORRETRESS (regular, not Shadow), and MELMETAL. That's it... that is the entire list.

STEELIX (both regular and Shadow) wins in the 1shield and 2shield matchups, but not with shields down. EMPOLEON loses in 1v1 shielding, but wins otherwise. Same with CARBINK, who also wins with shields down and with both shields up, but loses the 1shield showdown. CORVIKNIGHT gets 1shield and 0shield matchups, but loses the advantage when the battle pushes to both shields.

And uh... that's really about it. There are a handful of others that win one specific even shield battle scenario against Mimikyu, but that's about the extent of it. Oh, and there's even one more wrinkle that can mess with the above, as Mimikyu could come packing Thunder instead of Play Rough and flip some of those results above like Corviknight and Empoleon, giving up only a couple Dragons (sometimes Zweilous, Hydreigon, and/or Turtonator) to do it and otherwise remaining just as domineering.

Scopely, if you're reading my analyses like I know Niantic used to... any chance you could just ban this thing in Fantasy Cup and be done with it? 🥺 The meta has a much healthier look without it. (Not to mention GBL in general, while we're at it. 🙏)

If not, dear readers, then get whatever few Mimikyu hard counters you have ready. You're gonna need 'em.

I'll still try and push out an analysis on other new and improved stuff in this meta (like Melmetal, which does a LOT more than just consistently outrace Mimikyu) in the coming days, but I didn't want to wait on this one. Scopely, you know what to do! (Please!)

Anyway, until next time, you can often find me on Twitter for Pokémon GO analysis nuggets, or Patreon. Thank you for reading, and good luck in your Fantasy Cup prep (or avoidance! 😅) next week. Catch you next time, Pokéfriends!

This has bothered me since they double nerfed scizor a few seasons ago. Bullet punch lost 1 damage and night slash went from a double attack boost to a single boost.

Scizor was a cool Pokemon to have around the meta for the 2 or 3 seasons that it was good. It thrashed fairies, it got thrashed by fires, and to everything else it was just a strong neutral presence. Waters resisted bullet punch but took SE from trailblaze. It was very neutral into ghosts because night slash just isn’t a great move. It went pretty even with fighters although primeape would overwhelm it in even energy.

The thing that made scizor obnoxious was always the double boost from night slash. Once you got that it was usually game over because even resisted bullet punches would tear through entire teams. Scizor worked fine without the boost but once you got it it was unstoppable unless you had a pocket fire mon, which at the time was pretty uncommon. Now we have ninetales though.

The same season Scizor went away, wiggly became an absolute terror. Wiggly is nerfed and mostly gone now, but now we have mimikyu, which, while not as irritating as wiggly, really makes you wonder why bullet punch was ever nerfed. Mimikyu is only weak to ghost and steel, but ghosts take SE from yu’s shadow claws in return and there are currently no good steel fast moves, so that leaves us with what? Astonish dunsparce and I guess ludicolo to punish mimikyu. That sucks man. Steel sucks as an offensive type, let it have bullet punch.

TL;DR Scizor was cool, night slash made it dumb. Leave NS but bring bullet punch back to its former glory.

Trying my luck since the meta shifted. I'm one of the few that likes the new system as it is more balanced personally and lag is not as prevalent as the past seasons that made me quit GBL and PoGO entirely.

I have recently gotten to the point where I consistently reach ace rank each season. What techniques/strategies helped you get from Ace to Veteran?

My team changes a lot based on what I am using, but I am currently running Gastrodon lead with shadow snorlax and clamoring.

I appreciate any tips the community can provide.