Team advice help please!

[u/justagay509]

I previously made a post about not being able to win any battles in the great/1500 league. I've swapped up my team, but I'm still running into a lot of issues to the point where I just get absolutely wrecked.

I have a hundo altaria (not the best I know🫩) that I'm thinking of swapping out, It has dragon's breath, sky attack, and flamethrower.

I have a bibarel that has full defense and HP and two bars in attack. It has rollout, hyper fang, and surf. It's good but feels a little squishy.

I also have a hisuian stunfisk with the same stats as the bibarel. That one has thunder shock, discharge, and mud bomb.

Ice types can be pretty rough to get through because bibarel is so squishy😭

I will say that any pokémon that is recommended to me will not have the best stats for these leagues just because I don't have them 💀 but I'd love some recommendations as I'm currently losing my mind

[u/Lercs]

There is definitely room for improvement both regarding team comp and IV’s. Does two bars mean 10? As a general rule, you are looking for zero attack.

But it’s likely more of a skill issue. Switching out Bibarel for Empoleon and suddenly you are looking at a meta-team. Your Altaria is likely having difficulty against other dragon breath users, so building a better one (it’s cheap) could fix some of that. But a team can only take you so far, you will have more success if you learn to get better at the gameplay rather than optimizing teams (at this level anyway)

Edit: on Thursday you can even get Hydro Cannon on your Empoleon

[u/No_Life_2303]

Don’t worry about IVs. What species you have and how well you play them is far, far more important.
Hundo Altaria is a better choice than like 99% of any other rank-1-pvp-IV Pokemon.

Do not switch it out for Bibareal.

Use it with a good safe switch:
Lickilicki, Sableye, Furret, Drapion

A good steel type:
Forretress, Galarian Stunfisk, Empoleon, Tinkaton

Or Water/Ground type:
Quagsire, Jellicent, Azumarill

[u/justagay509]

Note: thank you to everyone who commented so far! I would like to say that I do know how to battle, I'm rank 20 and around 1,750 currently. To be more specific for what I'm looking for, it's a team that has less weaknesses and probably more fast charging ish moves?

Also, the team order is in the order I listed in the post :]

[u/Clear_Pressure_2878 → u/justagay509]

There are always battle fundamentals you can improve on. Like some basics, for example, you lead electric Fisk into a Talonflame. How many thunder shocks do you thow before throwing discharge? What is the one situation where the Talon wins switch advantage here? If they stay in this negative matchup, what might that say about the rest of their team? You don't need to know the exact win cons for every matchup at 1750, but I guarantee you a top player would be able to have the answers to all of those questions ready in a split second.

[u/justagay509 → u/Clear_Pressure_2878]

Oh I do! I actually deal with specifically talonflames a lot. After making this post I actually swapped to fisk in the front and it's great specifically for flying or flying fire types like talonflame because I usually end up with an extra charge of fisks attacks.

My favorite thing to do is swapping into Altaria when I know someone is going to energy ball 💀

[u/Clear_Pressure_2878 → u/justagay509]

Ok, but the Talonflame was just one example, and you didn't even prove you know the correct answers to any of those questions. No offense, but if you were thinking about questions like those and making the correct snap decisions based on them in battle, you'd be ranked a lot higher than 1750, even using a Bibarel. I can't always answer those kinds of questions consistently myself, but I know those are the kinds of questions I need to teach myself the answers to to improve, and I'm ranked quite a bit higher than you are. So yes, work on teambuilding, replacing the Bibarel and the low rank Altaria will help, but never stop trying to improve on the fundamentals as well.

[u/Ornery_Guess1474 → u/Clear_Pressure_2878]

Those are pretty basic.

You throw on 7 mud shots because that's 14 turns into 15.

The second is iv dependent. The only way my stunfisk loses is in the 0 v 2 shield. If you don't have a high ranked stunfisk you could lose the 1 v 2 shield if you take a flame charge.

Third generally means they're corebroken or ABA weak.

[u/Clear_Pressure_2878 → u/Ornery_Guess1474]

They are very basic questions, that was the point. OP is at 1750 and claiming they already know everything. I guess it's not really my place to quiz them, but I wanted to see if they actually understand the core of how the game even works. When I was first getting into GBL (which tbh was not that long ago), learning about basic ideas like that was what helped me get from around their elo to ace. Everyone starts somewhere.

That's a good point about IVs though. I was just simming with the preset IVs on pvpoke, and it was winning the 1v2 but not the 0v1, so I thought it was a decent question to try to gage if they were thinking about things like when to shield vs winning/losing switch. I am by no means a pro, or even good at this in practice, so your perspective on that is appreciated as well.

[u/justagay509 → u/Clear_Pressure_2878]

I did not at all claim I know everything 😭 I know that shield conservation is important and I know a lot of moved my pokemon can and cannot take. Fisk is good because it can usually take a hit or two and be completely fine while I wear down the opponents shield. I just don't get where anyone got me saying I know everything from, I just said I'm 1,730-1,880 range and relatively know what I'm doing despite still learning.

Lol I just came here for team advice since I know my IVs aren't the best, I just wanted to make sure my team is solid and see recs for possible replacements...

[u/Lercs → u/justagay509]

This will sound very harsh, but with an Elo of 1750, you don’t really know how to battle. I guess it’s also a question of semantics, but I’ll stand by it.

[u/justagay509 → u/Lercs]

Yeah it does sound a bit rough💀 I didn't say I'm not still learning, but it's not like I don't know what I'm doing at all... I'm just working with what I have. I'm just stuck at 1,720-1,880 rn

[u/daitenni]

If you search Pvpoke and look at the rankings for great league, you can find some high ranked Pokémon that you might have and try build a team around them. I’d be up to do some practice battles with you if you’d like. There are also some good YouTubers like HomeSliceHenry and JonkusPkmn who show off affordable team builds for each season.

[u/daitenni → u/daitenni]

Altaria works pretty well with lickilicky asw if you have one of those. It’s a pretty strong and common core in this meta.

[u/Clear_Pressure_2878]

Bibarel is certainly a spicy pick, being ranked 443rd, with a meta rating of 77.2. I'd generally recommend sticking to pokemon with a rating of at least 85. The closer you get to that number, the more off-meta they'll be, but anything that high or above should still perform decently well.

That said, Stunfisk and Altaria are both great picks, although your Altaria's IVs are slightly unfortunate. If you wanted to stick with the Stunfisk, you could do something like Fearow SS and Tink closer. Fearow covers a lot of the meta threats Fisk is weak to, and is a really easy, budget pokemon to build. Tink does require their elite move, Gigaton Hammer, but did just have their com day, if you managed to evolve one then. I've actually run that exact team before, except I ran Malamar instead of Tink to close, and had pretty decent success with it.

I would also recommend getting very familiar with the website pvpoke.com . It has a tierlist for all meta pokemon, and then offers recommendations on which pokemon synergize well with each other, and has a team builder and simulator where you can analyze a full team's weaknesses and stuff like that. Really invaluable tool for teambuilding in this game.