I’ve gotten to the Elite 4 and I want to try running a new moon team against them, what team should I use? I have Delta Charizard and Delta Roserade.
You can use HA spiritomb for a noctem setter, mega delta typhlosion ( for supercell) delta rosrade is mostly fine. Delta electivire w/ shadow dance is fairly stronk too
Edit: I have spiritombs/cyndaquils and I can breed delta electabuzz for you
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As Sbeve has pointed out, D. Charizard eats your mega slot. Not that it’s bad or anything, but it locks you out of mons like Mega D. Typhlosion, who is a top tier threat.
The biggest issue you have to worry about in the E4 with a noctem team is that you are boosting you opponents foul plays. This is carried pretty heavily by the champ.
Noctem Spiritomb is generally the best setter otherwise, but Lunatone also has it as a hidden ability now. Seeing as how darkness boosts screens it isn’t an terrible choice.
I’m a fan of combining baton pass with noctem because of the hone claws boost. HA Spiritomb and HA Blaziken basically carried me through the later part of the game. The fact that it makes fairy type moves weaker though makes dragons more viable.
I’ve spent a decent amount of time thinking about new moon as a team archetype and I’ve come up with a pretty good team I’m using, and some ideas about the archetype in general.
Here’s the general idea of my new moon team:
I use spiritomb as my primary weather setter. Spiritomb has some very nice perks as a new moon setter, aside from you know, having noctem. Spiritomb is slow, which means that your weather will probably override other weather if you and your opponent lead setters. Spiritomb also has access to a number of support moves and is builky enough with hp investment to take a few hits. I run mine as an offensive support mon, ideally buring something or taking out the opposing lead with night boosted suckerpunches before switching.
I use mega d.charizard primarily as a stallbreaker but also as a secondary night setter. If spiritomb goes down and I don’t have night up my team is significantly impacted so having a second source can be important.
I currently use d.roserade with choice specs and shadowdance as a new moon sweeper. She’s essentially just a lunar cannon stick and is heavily reliant on new moon to be useful, though under new moon I don’t know if there’s anything that’s okay with taking a lunar cannon from her. She also can deal heavy damage to dragons with moonblast if necessary.
I run hustle durant as a hone claws abuser and fiary killer, though I think I’d rather have scizor in that role, and I run tenacruel as a rapid spinner/spikes setter and physical tank and chansy as a special well since I had one trained up from a stall team.
Honestly for most battles once roserade works its way onto the field its essentially over.
Now I have some more general thoughts also
New moon does a lot of things, which is really cool, and allows for a number of ideas about how to build those teams. One general thought about new moon, is that while fairy type moves are weakened, I still think having a dedicated fairy check is important if you’re running multiple dark types.
Hone claws is really strong under new moon, but I’ve not found many pokemon that it breaks wide open. It does however make hustle durant quite good, and if you want, baton pass hone claws is a good trick, but I personally would rather be using new moon turns to do other things.
Shadowdance is nuts. I’d highly reccomend using something with shadowdance as a sweeper on the team. Like I said, I use D. roserade and it is a monster.
Mega d. typhlosion is definintely a good pick for the mega slot, I haven’t used it but the thing seems pretty amazing in rain or under new moon.
I think there’s something neat that can be done with new moon’s boost to surf, though I haven’t played around with that angle much muself. I will say that on my tentacruel its a bit underwhelming but that doens’t necessarily rule out using a water type with new moon boosted surf to knock holes in an opposing team. I’ve been toying with the idea of using illuminate starmie in this way, but that might be more cute than it is good.
Also I feel like giratina spamming shadow force under new moon is probably very strong.
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