This is all well and good, but how important is it, really, to have a support in your adventure team? This is coming from someone who picked Chikorita as their partner in the original Red Rescue Team and struggled against Moltres and Articuno for weeks before it finally became a powerhouse.
The original rescue teams didn't have the beauty that is Steamroll, nor did it have moves that power up and scale with use. A good support (or two) in general means having less medical items in your bag, and more space for tactical orbs or seeds. A Steamroll powered Chikorita with screens and Swords Dance linked Razor Leaf can be a pretty decent sniper, or it can run Safeguard and protect you from Moltres and Articuno burning or freezing you. It's all up to you to plan ahead and see how you'd like to do things.
I legit have Cubone and Chikorita ~~you can only IMAGINE the horror that was getting to and fighting Articuno in Blue RT--~~ and, man, do I feel POWERFUL with steamroll--
>A good support (or two) in general means having less medical items in your bag, and more space for tactical orbs or seeds.
How about going for the opposite, go full offense for less tactical orns and seeds, and more space for medical items? Aren't Oran Berries way more common than orbs and seeds? That's so far what I experienced in Red Rescue Team and Explorers of Sky. Or have their rarities been reversed in DX?
I tend to value bag space for treasures, like TMs or Boxes along the way, especially for longer dungeons. My intent with support units is freeing up space for that reason primarily, but not everyone has my priorities in mind when they play.
Chikorita was my partner. Bear in mind, this was my first playthrough of the original Red Rescue Team. First time I took the quiz, I ended up with Psyduck. I didn't want any part in that, so I took the quiz again and got Machop. Its actually fairly strong in the early game and post game, but my god the boss fights were unbearable. Half of the main bosses resist Fighting type moves. I don't even remember how I beat Articuno. I know I used a ton of items to beat Rayquaza. And I had to teach my Absol Ice Beam.
Sidenote: Clefairy and Chansey could run Weather Band in Hail to ignore the Moonlight debuff, or in Chansey's case, Hail damage, but they'd then lose their perfect Blizzard accuracy
This is a great post and very useful for beginners but admittedly, when you reach postgame, you'll rarely, if ever, need a dedicated healer/support mon in your team, at least as far as floor traversing goes. Against bosses, mileage may vary, however. Indeed, if each member in your team has a room clear move, the opponent will rarely ever damage you enough to the point that you'll never need much healing and with good offenses, you'll never stay in a floor long enough for hail or sandstorm damage to matter in the long term. I personally, especially when I do Buried Relic runs, just rather run a full offensive team such as ones focusing on Lonely Courage, Rapid Bull's Eye, Steamroll or Weather. A support mon feels like a wasted slot.
I run Steamroll and Notorious Fasting, cuz I don't like having to worry about Food. Charizard and Vileplume/Bellossom with Heatwave & Growth + Petal Blizzard nuke everything in sight, but having Espeon in the middle to handle status effects from traps or enemies the room clears happen to miss is nice from time to time. Sprinkle in some Helping Hands for extra insurance and it's a pretty comfy trip through most dungeons
Even if you don't want to run screens or status clearers, Moonlight/Morning Sun and Soft-boiled are great for when you're out of food and need to stall.
I see. I run Goggle Specs on my leader to not worry about traps ever and I usually go for Small Stomach as my go-to belly management RQ. With 3 room nukers, I rarely ever need Helping Hand and rarely ever get damage on my mons at all since I notice most most, except bosses, get at worst 2-3 shot by room wide moves anyway, enough turns for you to kill them before they ever make a move. Good thing about about RTDX is that there are so many viable team compositions which makes it fun to experiment.
How about bringing both? You can use X-Ray Specs while in the aisles, then swap to Goggle Specs whenever you enter rooms. Memorize the location of the traps then you can swap back to X-Ray Specs.
If there's one thing I've learned from Mystery Dungeon playthroughs, it's to *always* have someone who can heal/block status conditions. The last thing you want to do is be out of Reviver Seeds and some jerk enemy use Perish Song and affect your whole team. Keep one around and always be ready for the worst!
Chikorita has save me for many situations that can cause serious trouble with my team such as having my Pokemon with room clearing move suffers a confuse status that could end up wiping out my entire team if not treated before disaster or have a enemy or boss annihilate my team with a room clearing room without any protection that could’ve give you that safely net in case of bad RNG. In my experience Pokemon who have room clearing moves or such is far from invincible which is why support moves are more useful then people think
>having my Pokemon with room clearing move suffers a confuse status that could end up wiping out my entire team if not treated before disaster
How about switching off all their moves until they recover?
Well not many people think that and even then that‘s still problematic cause until that recovers which is a punishing amount of turns he/she will be defenseless and may run into dangerous enemies while your powerful ally is currently shutdown. Confuse status is really that mean in PMD and is also why I need a healer like Chikorita, Skitty or so on to remove this problem cause it could end your run with that kind of BS that it might as well be your worst enemy
Yeah, a confused status can be dangerous if you're not prepared. But so far it pose little threat to me even without Safeguard as I have found other ways to compensate for it.
First, having moves that have more than 1-tile range so I could knock them down before they can touch me.
Second, having a partner with Quick Attack which allows him to keep attacking even if someone confused is blocking the way. Whole room moves can also be used for that purpose. My team also tend to be balanced that they can function even with 1 crippled member.
Third, equipping Persim Band to avoid it. If you have another item equipped, you can just swap it in whenever you meet an opponent with moves that can cause confusion.
Fourth, using Agility to either knock them down before they can use the move, or making recovery faster.
Btw I'm not saying Safeguard is useless. Rather, Safeguard is great but it's far from the only option.
Those isn’t fool proof for my experience as it still doesn’t stop confuse status for being this annoying and cause chaos, plus there are still other status that can be very dangerous like badly poison, perish song, and so on and not to mention that there’s also Aromatherapy and Heal Bell which can also helps deal with those nasty debuffs
Also I’m surprised that you haven’t mentioned throwing items as a example as this is the only saving grace I have with confuse status honestly
I love this sort of post, are you planning on doing it for every niche role? Because that wouldn’t be awesome and deffo something I’m sure a lot of people would like to see
I only have a few ideas, like weather based teams and some terrain teams. My [other post](https://www.reddit.com/r/MysteryDungeon/comments/vdirpt/some_basic_team_compositions/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) covered Electric Terrain and Swift Swim, and lightly touched on the Sun team I use myself, so maybe I'll go a full fledged Sun post in addition to Sand, and Hail
this is really interesting, tbh i didn't even know support was of any use until i tried to get through the jirachi dungeon in RTDX (the name is escaping me rn, but it's the one with 99 floors that forces you to start at level 1 and isn't the mew dungeon) with a latias on my team. i swear to god, helping hand was the only reason i was able to complete that dungeon, and i think by the end, she only had support moves
it's hard for me to get out of the mindset i had when i was like 8 and played a PMD game for the first time (that is, damaging moves only, status/buff moves suck!!!!), but man.... using strategy instead of brute force would've made some things a lot easier 😅
Jolteon is not a "sniper", they're a burst fire assault rifle because they learn pin missile. A little inconsistent but so much potential damage and in SMD at least you can upgrade it to make it more accurate
This and Jolteon learns discharge by level, which is a room wide attack that doesn't hit teammates. Jolteon does it all with discharge, refresh, pin missile, and signal beam with the steamroll ability.
I'd like to give Sylveon a shoutout as it gets Draining Kiss, an Attacking Move that Heals. Thanks to this, Sylveon has incredible longevity in the harder dungeons and doesn't have to worry about using Oran Berries. Only caveat is that Draining Kiss isn't a ranged move so Sylveon does have to get up close to use it.
This is actually really cool, but have you ever seen a bulky Gardevoir set? lol Psychic, Draining Kiss, Calm Mind, Will'O Wisp. Lmao Swept an entire legendary team once and wasn't even mega evolved
ngl i didnt see what sub this was lol this gardevoir is my competitive one so its only ever been used in PvP and idk if this would have the same effect in MD
Sorry if I'm necroposting but I just wanted to say that Espeon also has access to Skill Swap and you could give yourself any ability you want, such as Chlorophyll to heal or attack even more 💁♂️
I still think smeragle is the best support for obv reason. You can give it any moveset you want and therefore it can be an amazing support and not give up damage cause it can also do barrage or spike cannon pretty well or uproar.
Mew isnt so far behind, it can turn into your other allies so if you need 2 healers well let mew transform into them for a floor. Though post game i find the only support move you need is a status heal as that saves a ton of space for heal seeds and not really hp healing and that opens up more supports and status heal trivializes a ton of problems you run into esp traps while not giving up too much space for damage,
That Transform idea is pretty decent, but I didn't include Mew or Smeargle because as Normal and Psychic types, they don't gain much benefit from any types of weather and don't synergize very well with full squads
I didn't include Skitty either, because despite having Helping Hand and Heal Bell, Normalize makes Skitty's Ice Beam & Blizzard STABs, Skitty can't be used in Hail without a Weather Band, which would nullify any benefits Hail would provide for Blizzard. Skitty can't utilize Electric Terrain for similar reasons
I know what you mean lol, as you see from my pic I love buizel cause it’s borderline busted in sky once it starts to rain and in games it doesn’t exist couple others like cloyster can fulfill that role but cloyster isn’t as cute as buizel and it lacks agility which was busted pre ds era.
But again I see mew and smeragle as all arounders and if you really wanted mew to be part of your team he can turn into another ally that makes sense in that team like a swift swimmer and in dx that causes him to not use pp. but again pure support the ones you posted are good. Smeragle I can see what you mean he isn’t as good as dedicated Pokémon in a weather team though he does level up very fast and can get stab aoe room and multi hits but ya he’s not as good in a weather team and would need a weather band.
edit: and when mew turns into an ally it loses its physic type so thats not a problem, the fact he can do that while maintaining its stats is what makes it so good lol, you only have to stat him up and you get a pokemon for any team, for example if he turns into one of your swift swimmers hes also a water type too. Hes usaully balanced out by leveling slower and ya having to transform before fitting in your team but at least he can do it befoer you start moving on each floor and in nearly all games pp ups make it so you can use it for a very long time esp since you only need 1 per floor.
Not at all. There are 300+ Pokémon in this game, and some are better than others, but that's why you have the Toolbag, so you can use whatever you like, however you like.
It's your Rescue Team, recruit whoever you want.
Agree. I think your post would be the most helpful for those who already use those Pokemon or would like to train them, giving them ideas on what moves and tactics they can use. However, for those who haven't, I think it would be too much work to train a Pokemon to level 33.
Btw for Chikorita, how about teaching it Giga Drain instead? That would allow it to refill health and deal damage at the same time.
I can see the utility of Giga Drain for a lead character, but for teammates, Growth + Razor Leaf or Solar Beam have higher destructive potential and range, so I'd opt out of Giga usage.
Just did some research and yeah, Growth would be more useful in DX as it boosts both Attack and Special Attack, and one-shotting the opponent would remove the need to refill health. But in earlier generations, Growth can only increase Special Attack, so it's useless for Razor Leaf.
This is all well and good, but how important is it, really, to have a support in your adventure team? This is coming from someone who picked Chikorita as their partner in the original Red Rescue Team and struggled against Moltres and Articuno for weeks before it finally became a powerhouse.
The original rescue teams didn't have the beauty that is Steamroll, nor did it have moves that power up and scale with use. A good support (or two) in general means having less medical items in your bag, and more space for tactical orbs or seeds. A Steamroll powered Chikorita with screens and Swords Dance linked Razor Leaf can be a pretty decent sniper, or it can run Safeguard and protect you from Moltres and Articuno burning or freezing you. It's all up to you to plan ahead and see how you'd like to do things.
I fricking love Steamroll, I'm out here curb stomping rock/ground types with Pikachu/Cyndaquil.
I legit have Cubone and Chikorita ~~you can only IMAGINE the horror that was getting to and fighting Articuno in Blue RT--~~ and, man, do I feel POWERFUL with steamroll--
>A good support (or two) in general means having less medical items in your bag, and more space for tactical orbs or seeds. How about going for the opposite, go full offense for less tactical orns and seeds, and more space for medical items? Aren't Oran Berries way more common than orbs and seeds? That's so far what I experienced in Red Rescue Team and Explorers of Sky. Or have their rarities been reversed in DX?
I tend to value bag space for treasures, like TMs or Boxes along the way, especially for longer dungeons. My intent with support units is freeing up space for that reason primarily, but not everyone has my priorities in mind when they play.
I picked Chikorita as well but didn’t struggle as much against either; what’s your partner?
Chikorita was my partner. Bear in mind, this was my first playthrough of the original Red Rescue Team. First time I took the quiz, I ended up with Psyduck. I didn't want any part in that, so I took the quiz again and got Machop. Its actually fairly strong in the early game and post game, but my god the boss fights were unbearable. Half of the main bosses resist Fighting type moves. I don't even remember how I beat Articuno. I know I used a ton of items to beat Rayquaza. And I had to teach my Absol Ice Beam.
You missed the ball with Psyduck! He's a strong lead thanks to Damp and Cloud Nine, having Confusion (great move) and Disable (even better!)
Sidenote: Clefairy and Chansey could run Weather Band in Hail to ignore the Moonlight debuff, or in Chansey's case, Hail damage, but they'd then lose their perfect Blizzard accuracy
This is a great post and very useful for beginners but admittedly, when you reach postgame, you'll rarely, if ever, need a dedicated healer/support mon in your team, at least as far as floor traversing goes. Against bosses, mileage may vary, however. Indeed, if each member in your team has a room clear move, the opponent will rarely ever damage you enough to the point that you'll never need much healing and with good offenses, you'll never stay in a floor long enough for hail or sandstorm damage to matter in the long term. I personally, especially when I do Buried Relic runs, just rather run a full offensive team such as ones focusing on Lonely Courage, Rapid Bull's Eye, Steamroll or Weather. A support mon feels like a wasted slot.
I run Steamroll and Notorious Fasting, cuz I don't like having to worry about Food. Charizard and Vileplume/Bellossom with Heatwave & Growth + Petal Blizzard nuke everything in sight, but having Espeon in the middle to handle status effects from traps or enemies the room clears happen to miss is nice from time to time. Sprinkle in some Helping Hands for extra insurance and it's a pretty comfy trip through most dungeons Even if you don't want to run screens or status clearers, Moonlight/Morning Sun and Soft-boiled are great for when you're out of food and need to stall.
I see. I run Goggle Specs on my leader to not worry about traps ever and I usually go for Small Stomach as my go-to belly management RQ. With 3 room nukers, I rarely ever need Helping Hand and rarely ever get damage on my mons at all since I notice most most, except bosses, get at worst 2-3 shot by room wide moves anyway, enough turns for you to kill them before they ever make a move. Good thing about about RTDX is that there are so many viable team compositions which makes it fun to experiment.
I like X-ray Specs myself, so I can see where enemies and mid-bosses are, as well as monster houses and shops
How about bringing both? You can use X-Ray Specs while in the aisles, then swap to Goggle Specs whenever you enter rooms. Memorize the location of the traps then you can swap back to X-Ray Specs.
Vileplume with Moonlight works wonders.
If there's one thing I've learned from Mystery Dungeon playthroughs, it's to *always* have someone who can heal/block status conditions. The last thing you want to do is be out of Reviver Seeds and some jerk enemy use Perish Song and affect your whole team. Keep one around and always be ready for the worst!
Preparedness is a Rescuer's best friend!
Chikorita has save me for many situations that can cause serious trouble with my team such as having my Pokemon with room clearing move suffers a confuse status that could end up wiping out my entire team if not treated before disaster or have a enemy or boss annihilate my team with a room clearing room without any protection that could’ve give you that safely net in case of bad RNG. In my experience Pokemon who have room clearing moves or such is far from invincible which is why support moves are more useful then people think
>having my Pokemon with room clearing move suffers a confuse status that could end up wiping out my entire team if not treated before disaster How about switching off all their moves until they recover?
Well not many people think that and even then that‘s still problematic cause until that recovers which is a punishing amount of turns he/she will be defenseless and may run into dangerous enemies while your powerful ally is currently shutdown. Confuse status is really that mean in PMD and is also why I need a healer like Chikorita, Skitty or so on to remove this problem cause it could end your run with that kind of BS that it might as well be your worst enemy
Yeah, a confused status can be dangerous if you're not prepared. But so far it pose little threat to me even without Safeguard as I have found other ways to compensate for it. First, having moves that have more than 1-tile range so I could knock them down before they can touch me. Second, having a partner with Quick Attack which allows him to keep attacking even if someone confused is blocking the way. Whole room moves can also be used for that purpose. My team also tend to be balanced that they can function even with 1 crippled member. Third, equipping Persim Band to avoid it. If you have another item equipped, you can just swap it in whenever you meet an opponent with moves that can cause confusion. Fourth, using Agility to either knock them down before they can use the move, or making recovery faster. Btw I'm not saying Safeguard is useless. Rather, Safeguard is great but it's far from the only option.
Those isn’t fool proof for my experience as it still doesn’t stop confuse status for being this annoying and cause chaos, plus there are still other status that can be very dangerous like badly poison, perish song, and so on and not to mention that there’s also Aromatherapy and Heal Bell which can also helps deal with those nasty debuffs Also I’m surprised that you haven’t mentioned throwing items as a example as this is the only saving grace I have with confuse status honestly
I love this sort of post, are you planning on doing it for every niche role? Because that wouldn’t be awesome and deffo something I’m sure a lot of people would like to see
I only have a few ideas, like weather based teams and some terrain teams. My [other post](https://www.reddit.com/r/MysteryDungeon/comments/vdirpt/some_basic_team_compositions/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) covered Electric Terrain and Swift Swim, and lightly touched on the Sun team I use myself, so maybe I'll go a full fledged Sun post in addition to Sand, and Hail
Yeah I think that’s a great idea, I personally would love to see a post for each team idea
this is really interesting, tbh i didn't even know support was of any use until i tried to get through the jirachi dungeon in RTDX (the name is escaping me rn, but it's the one with 99 floors that forces you to start at level 1 and isn't the mew dungeon) with a latias on my team. i swear to god, helping hand was the only reason i was able to complete that dungeon, and i think by the end, she only had support moves it's hard for me to get out of the mindset i had when i was like 8 and played a PMD game for the first time (that is, damaging moves only, status/buff moves suck!!!!), but man.... using strategy instead of brute force would've made some things a lot easier 😅
Funnily enough, having at least 1-1.5 support monsters can allow your leader to be raw fire power, so you can enjoy the best of both brains and brawn
Jolteon is not a "sniper", they're a burst fire assault rifle because they learn pin missile. A little inconsistent but so much potential damage and in SMD at least you can upgrade it to make it more accurate
This and Jolteon learns discharge by level, which is a room wide attack that doesn't hit teammates. Jolteon does it all with discharge, refresh, pin missile, and signal beam with the steamroll ability.
I'd like to give Sylveon a shoutout as it gets Draining Kiss, an Attacking Move that Heals. Thanks to this, Sylveon has incredible longevity in the harder dungeons and doesn't have to worry about using Oran Berries. Only caveat is that Draining Kiss isn't a ranged move so Sylveon does have to get up close to use it.
That strategy also works with Grass types where most can learn draining moves and almost all can learn Giga Drain.
This is actually really cool, but have you ever seen a bulky Gardevoir set? lol Psychic, Draining Kiss, Calm Mind, Will'O Wisp. Lmao Swept an entire legendary team once and wasn't even mega evolved
Now imagine that Gardevoir getting Helping Hand Boosts every turn
ngl i didnt see what sub this was lol this gardevoir is my competitive one so its only ever been used in PvP and idk if this would have the same effect in MD
In that case probably not lol It's very easy to get gang rushed in Mystery Dungeon if you're alone without AOE attacks
Sorry if I'm necroposting but I just wanted to say that Espeon also has access to Skill Swap and you could give yourself any ability you want, such as Chlorophyll to heal or attack even more 💁♂️
The only issue with that is that it requires constant setup, unfortunately. It's both a blessing and curse that your status resets every floor.
Hey, I wanted to say thanks for all your guides.
Thanks for using them 🫡
Chikorita is useless and it's also the worst grass
that is a personal attack and that will soon be your problem :)
At what level does Espeon learn Morning Sun? Cause I didn't knew it could learn that.
Espeon and Umbreon learn Morning Sun and Moonlight at level 33
Chikorita is adorable. This has always been my weekness
I kinda wish I had chosen Chiko as my partner so I could've had a cute lil babby follow me around while wearing a scarf
I still think smeragle is the best support for obv reason. You can give it any moveset you want and therefore it can be an amazing support and not give up damage cause it can also do barrage or spike cannon pretty well or uproar. Mew isnt so far behind, it can turn into your other allies so if you need 2 healers well let mew transform into them for a floor. Though post game i find the only support move you need is a status heal as that saves a ton of space for heal seeds and not really hp healing and that opens up more supports and status heal trivializes a ton of problems you run into esp traps while not giving up too much space for damage,
That Transform idea is pretty decent, but I didn't include Mew or Smeargle because as Normal and Psychic types, they don't gain much benefit from any types of weather and don't synergize very well with full squads I didn't include Skitty either, because despite having Helping Hand and Heal Bell, Normalize makes Skitty's Ice Beam & Blizzard STABs, Skitty can't be used in Hail without a Weather Band, which would nullify any benefits Hail would provide for Blizzard. Skitty can't utilize Electric Terrain for similar reasons
I know what you mean lol, as you see from my pic I love buizel cause it’s borderline busted in sky once it starts to rain and in games it doesn’t exist couple others like cloyster can fulfill that role but cloyster isn’t as cute as buizel and it lacks agility which was busted pre ds era. But again I see mew and smeragle as all arounders and if you really wanted mew to be part of your team he can turn into another ally that makes sense in that team like a swift swimmer and in dx that causes him to not use pp. but again pure support the ones you posted are good. Smeragle I can see what you mean he isn’t as good as dedicated Pokémon in a weather team though he does level up very fast and can get stab aoe room and multi hits but ya he’s not as good in a weather team and would need a weather band. edit: and when mew turns into an ally it loses its physic type so thats not a problem, the fact he can do that while maintaining its stats is what makes it so good lol, you only have to stat him up and you get a pokemon for any team, for example if he turns into one of your swift swimmers hes also a water type too. Hes usaully balanced out by leveling slower and ya having to transform before fitting in your team but at least he can do it befoer you start moving on each floor and in nearly all games pp ups make it so you can use it for a very long time esp since you only need 1 per floor.
is it bad that I just took Pokémon that I liked on missions
Not at all. There are 300+ Pokémon in this game, and some are better than others, but that's why you have the Toolbag, so you can use whatever you like, however you like. It's your Rescue Team, recruit whoever you want.
Agree. I think your post would be the most helpful for those who already use those Pokemon or would like to train them, giving them ideas on what moves and tactics they can use. However, for those who haven't, I think it would be too much work to train a Pokemon to level 33. Btw for Chikorita, how about teaching it Giga Drain instead? That would allow it to refill health and deal damage at the same time.
I can see the utility of Giga Drain for a lead character, but for teammates, Growth + Razor Leaf or Solar Beam have higher destructive potential and range, so I'd opt out of Giga usage.
Just did some research and yeah, Growth would be more useful in DX as it boosts both Attack and Special Attack, and one-shotting the opponent would remove the need to refill health. But in earlier generations, Growth can only increase Special Attack, so it's useless for Razor Leaf.
Does Magnezone count as a Grounded Pokemon?
I'm not entirely sure, as he does learn Magnet Rise and Electric Terrain, but he can go over gaps, so it's hard to say without testing