DPPt/HGSS Moves that are ESSENTIAL for a team?

[baratron]

OK, I posted this over at Pokeschool, but I notice quite a few of you who've given me good advice in the past don't venture into the gameplay forums there. So I thought I'd copy the post here 'cos I love you so much .

I need to complete the Colosseum Mt Battle 100 trainer challenge. For the first time ever, I need to pick a team. I've managed to avoid making one so far, because I'm terminally indecisive at the best of times, and because I've always tailored my team to the particular task (which gym it is, what types the Elite Four use in that particular game, etc). Now I have to do 100 trainers in a row with the same team, and it's hurting my brain.

What I've figured is that it would be useful if as many as possible of the 17 Types of attack were included in my team's moveset. But with 6 Pokemon, I only have 24 slots to choose from, and if I take up 17 of them with attacks, that doesn't leave much space for healing, stat boosting or annoying moves. So I need to stop being chronically anxious (like THAT'll happen anytime soon) and just pick ~12-15 attack types out of the 17.

So I'm wondering which of the 17 move types people consider ESSENTIAL to a team.

Just looking at the compatibility tables, it looks like the essential move types are: Fire, Water, Ice, Fighting, Ground, Psychic and Rock. And that I could in theory manage without Bug, Dark, Dragon and Steel. But then I remember moves like Megahorn (power 120 + STAB with some pkmn) and Dragon Claw (power 80 + STAB), and get confused again.

Personally, I can't imagine a team without:
Surf - Water
Thunderbolt/Thunder - Electric
Ice Beam/Blizzard - Ice
Earthquake - Ground
Shadow Ball - Ghost
Psychic/Dream Eater - Psychic
A Fighting move (several decent ones to choose from)
A Rock move (ditto)
A Grass move (simply because I love Grass Pokemon)
A Poison move (even though Poison is only Super Effective against one type)
A guaranteed no-miss move (e.g. Aerial Ace)
Confuse Ray or similar annoying move

What else should I be including to make my team super-balanced?

 

[Linkachu]

A Fighting move - Since it's the most common, Brick Break
A Rock move - Since it's a Move Tutor move, Rock Slide
A Grass move - Giga Drain or Leaf Blade, unless you plan to train a Sunny Day team for Solar Beam.
A Poison move - Sludge Bomb
A guaranteed no-miss move - Aerial is great, especially considering all the various grass/fighting types around.
Confuse Ray - Great attack to have, especially with 100% accuracy.
I also personally love moves like Sword Dance or Feather Dance - anything that greatly raises your stats or greatly reduces the opponents.

I'm not sure if people have mentioned this yet at Pskool or not, but don't feel that you have to use one of every type of attack. A better way to plan a team is to make sure that the attacks you use can land a Super Effective hit on every type - something you can pull off with less variety than you think. Of course not every individual Pokemon will be able to do this, but collectively it's a good thing to strive for.

The best way to judge any team you build is by counting up their strengths/weaknesses and seeing if your other Pokemon can protect against 'em (ie. if you have a lot of Pokemon with Electric-type weaknesses do you have a Ground-type to counteract them?) Stats are also important to consider, because if all six of your choices have high attack/Sp. attack stats but lower defences you'll be in for trouble if an opponent comes up that manages to survive your first hit. I know this all to well... Zangoose/Absol were awesome sweepers on my team, but pretty much any two direct hits (or one super-effective hit) and they were down for the count.

Last thing you should remember is that using certain attacks more than once IS okay. Sometimes it's good to have multiple Pokemon with a powerful attack like EQ because it can do so much in the right hands. On average I tend to have two Pokemon per team that know EQ, both for offensive and defensive reasons (ie. I had a team with Swampert and Sceptile where both knew EQ - worked out VERY well. Sceptile's speed matched with EQ's strength gave it a nice edge over Fire-types).

If I'm simply repeating stuff you already know sorry for wasting your time. I just find the idea of choosing your attacks less important than actually choosing your Pokemon. They go hand in hand, yeah, but attacks still follow the team choice IMO ^^