Battle Pyramid Miltank

[Kikkoman]

Hi everyone,

So I figured it'd be a good idea to take a Blissey into the Battle Frontier's Battle Pyramid so I could basically have some additional HP and Status support. Problem is, I don't have a Blissey or Chansey, thanks to my lack of FRLG and/or a person to trade with. So, I figured Miltank could be the next best thing, and I'm trying to figure out how to best make her up, moveset and EVs/stats.
This is what I have thought atm. Obvo, I've been breeding to try and go for good IVs - so far, I've got one that looks really good. In terms of EVs and moves though, this is what I have in mind:

Miltank @(Battle Pyramid, so whatever I can get my hands on)
Impish, 252HP, 252Def, 6 SDef
-Return/Body Slam
-Shadow Ball
-Milk Drink
-Heal Bell

But I feel like maybe I should invest in Attack a little bit, for Return and Shadow Ball, or should I put some more into Miltank’s weaker SDef, or should I improve its Speed… Choices!!! =( =(

And in terms of moves, I could make it more supportive with, say, Thunder Wave; I don’t think Seismic Toss would be too great ‘cause it would probably do less than Return on everything that doesn’t resist.
Anyway, thoughts would be very greatly appreciated!! =)

Also, the other two members of my team are Metagross (Meteor Mash, EQ, Rock Slide, Light Screen) and Milotic (Surf, Ice Beam, Toxic, Recover)

 

[Sceptile Leaf Blade]

Miltank indeed works amazingly well in the Pyramid, I've used it myself and it really works amazing. Heal Bell support is really handy, and Milk Drink support reduces your potion expenses by about half if not more, because you can heal your teammates with it as well outside of battle. Your moveset looks fine, Shadow ball is great, and Return does significant damage. I recommend Return over Body Slam for the Pyramid, it has more PP, and in the Pyramid you want to last.

As for EV's, Max HP is a given, it increases the amount that Milk Drink heals which benefits the rest of your team. The rest is a bit more subtle, but I think the set you have is fine. You can move a bit from Def to Atk if you want. Something like 252 HP, 136 Def, 120 Atk works. Lasting is really important, but having higher attack gives you a benefit against special attackers, especially those using Ice or Fire moves (due to Thick Fat), potentially allowing them one less hit on you. I think speed is less important for Miltank, it isn't particulary fast anyway.

The rest of your team, I recommend swapping Light Screen for Shadow Ball on Metagross. Metagross should attack, and Shadow Ball benefits against certain threats in the Pyramid, especially Slowbro, Slowking, and Starmie. It also hits Gengar and Dusclops slightly harder than Meteor Mash (and at 100% accuracy).

Milotic seems okay to me, Milotic is especially powerful in the 3rd run which is filled with fire types. She can handle burn with Recover and Marvel Scale and fight back with Surf.

You still need some more team members though. In the Pyramid you adapt your team depending on the wild pokémon in that run. The first 7 floors holds loads of electric pokémon and grass pokémon that try to paralyze you, floor 8-14 holds poison pokémon and skarmory, after that come fire and ghost pokémon that burn, and so on. For the first run, you want a fast Earthquaker that eliminates all the electric types with ease. Try using Salamence, it also carries Aerial Ace to eliminate grass types with Stun Spore:

Salamence
Adamant nature
252 Atk, 252 Speed, 4 HP
-Dragon Dance
-Earthquake
-Rock Slide
-Aerial Ace

in the first run, Milotic isn't very useful, replace it with Salam for that run.

Another one that can be useful is Starmie

Starmie
Modest
Trait: Natural Cure
252 Sp. Atk, 252 Speed, 4 HP
-Surf
-Ice Beam
-Thunderbolt
-Psychic

recover is less necessary when you have Miltank support, and Psychic is good STAB to kill poison types.

You also need a stat booster, one run has a particulary nasty set of loads of wild Wobbuffets and stat boosters can get past them. Salamence works, but you need a second one as well:

Latios
252 Sp.Atk, 252 Speed
-Psychic
-Dragon Claw
-Calm Mind
-Recover

Latios has great Sp.Atk, good Speed, good bulk, and a great movepool. Adapt its movepool to the run, in some runs it may be more beneficial to run Psychic/Dragon Claw/Surf/Thunderbolt.

Running something like:

1st run: Miltank, Salamence, Metagross (or some other filler, I used Linoone for pickup to get more items in the early runs)
2nd run: Miltank, Metagross (poison immunity rules here, they keep on trying to use Toxic over and over on you), Latios with four attacks (it destroys poison types with Psychic and Skarmory dies to Thunderbolt)
3rd run: Miltank, Milotic, Salamence. These three all resist fire and can destroy the foes with ease.

and so on. You'll get a run with pokémon that have levitate, a run against loads of ice pokémon, one with rock pokémon, one with pokémon that have abilities to trap you (loads of Wobbuffet and Wynaut), and so on. Adapt your team to have a very good advantage against the wild pokémon, it benefits you greatly.

 

[Kikkoman]

Thanks for all the suggestions, Sceptile! Problem is that for Earthquake and Shadow Ball, there's only one TM in the game; I had considered using a Salamence, or even a Flygon, but the lack of multiple Earthquake TMs makes that not quite as feasible. Also, Miltank's Speed is actually not bad - base 100 - though I guess I'm not really using it for that after all, and speed never guarantees a flee in the Pyramid anyway - so many times, I won't be able to escape against like a level 38 Pikachu (in lv 50 comp).

I've also got a Weezing that I use for Battle Frontier, and he might be helpful against the Arena Trappers later on. I'll see though, Salamence probably would be better. I might train up a Starmie too, Starmie's always been an awesome Pokemon whenever I've used it.

My other thought for Miltank was to give it Rock Slide instead of Shadow Ball, just 'cause I don't like using the one-off TMs, but I'll see... I only realised just now that you can breed Sableye with Spinda, and then Spinda with Miltank to get it there... but I just got a Miltank with such good IVsssssss =( =( =( I'll see.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions! =)

 

[Sceptile Leaf Blade]

Thanks for all the suggestions, Sceptile! Problem is that for Earthquake and Shadow Ball, there's only one TM in the game; I had considered using a Salamence, or even a Flygon, but the lack of multiple Earthquake TMs makes that not quite as feasible. Also, Miltank's Speed is actually not bad - base 100 - though I guess I'm not really using it for that after all, and speed never guarantees a flee in the Pyramid anyway - so many times, I won't be able to escape against like a level 38 Pikachu (in lv 50 comp).

I've also got a Weezing that I use for Battle Frontier, and he might be helpful against the Arena Trappers later on. I'll see though, Salamence probably would be better. I might train up a Starmie too, Starmie's always been an awesome Pokemon whenever I've used it.

My other thought for Miltank was to give it Rock Slide instead of Shadow Ball, just 'cause I don't like using the one-off TMs, but I'll see... I only realised just now that you can breed Sableye with Spinda, and then Spinda with Miltank to get it there... but I just got a Miltank with such good IVsssssss =( =( =( I'll see.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions! =)

TM availability indeed messes it up a bit. You can get Ice Beam, Flamethrower, Psychic, and Thunderbolt from the Game Corner. Multiple EQ TM's are available from pickup at lvl 100 users (although quite rare). Shadow Ball can indeed be bred to Miltank through Sableye and Spinda. If you want to preserve the good IV's, breed with the Miltank you have now, it should be female and you have a good chance of getting some good IV's passed on. Just breed a bunch of Miltank out, eventually you'll get a good one.

Unfortunately you can't breed EQ to either Metagross or Salamence. I cloned my TM's to get around the problem (and also cloned to get enough PP UPs to max out all moves). If you don't want to clone, you'll have to rely on Pickup.

Aerial Ace can be bred to Salamence by the chain Swellow > Swablu > Bagon. Because Altaria learns Dragon Dance naturally, it doesn't conflict with Dragon Dance either.

The only thing that you can't really get around to using one-off TM's is Latios, where you spend Dragon Claw and Calm Mind, as Latios can't breed, and of course Shadow Ball Metagross.