Pokémon Playthrough Team Builder

How the Pokémon Playthrough Team Builder Works

The Team Builder can be used to evaluate an entire playthrough team, but it is particularly useful when you already have several Pokémon picked and need to find the best teammate to fill the remaining gaps.

Your Team and Their Coverage

Each Pokémon on your team has its available level-up attack types displayed. These moves can be filtered by minimum Move Power and by the level at which they are learned.

Set the Learned At level to something appropriate for where you are in your playthrough. If you are building a team for the Elite Four, for example, set it close to the level you expect your team to be when challenging the League. If you are planning for the midgame, use a lower level that better reflects where your team currently is.

This helps keep coverage results realistic instead of counting powerful moves that your Pokémon will not learn until much later.

Offensive Coverage and Missing Offensive Coverage

Offensive Coverage shows which Pokémon types your team can hit for super-effective damage using the moves they can actually learn in your selected game. By default, this is based on level-up moves, but TM moves can also be included.

This means offensive coverage is based on your Pokémon's actual learnsets rather than simply assuming they can cover types based on their own typing.

If a type is not being covered when you think it should be, check your Learned At and Move Power settings. Earlier-generation Pokémon games often have much more limited level-up learnsets, so lowering or raising these filters can significantly change the results. For complete Learnset information, see the individual Pokémon's detail page.

The Missing Offensive Coverage section shows the types your current team cannot hit super effectively under your selected settings. Ideally, your team should be able to cover most types, but not every missing type is equally important. Pay particular attention to the Elite Four and Champion in the game you are playing, since having strong coverage against their teams can be much more valuable than filling an otherwise uncommon gap.

Defensive Coverage, Missing Coverage, and Weaknesses

Defensive Coverage shows which attacking types your team can resist or is immune to. If multiple team members resist the same type, those resistances stack in the display. The same is true for immunities and weaknesses.

The Missing Defensive Coverage section identifies attack types for which your team has no resistance or immunity. This does not necessarily mean your team is weak to that type; it simply means you do not currently have a Pokémon that can comfortably switch into it based on typing alone.

The Weaknesses section identifies attack types that can deal super-effective damage to members of your team. Stacking values make it easier to spot major shared weaknesses. When choosing another teammate, try to avoid adding another Pokémon that makes an already significant weakness even worse.

What Pokémon Should I Add to My Team?

The Team Builder compares the Pokémon available in your selected game against your team's offensive and defensive coverage gaps to help identify useful additions. PokeLore Suggested is designed for normal Pokémon game playthroughs rather than competitive battling. Availability, realistic learnsets, evolution requirements, type coverage, and usefulness during the story therefore matter more than competitive viability alone.

The Team Builder is especially useful when you need one final Pokémon and are wondering what Pokémon you should add to your team. Suggested Teammates compares available Pokémon against the gaps in your current team and attempts to surface options that are both useful and realistically obtainable.

Understanding the Sort Modes

The default PokeLore Suggested sort considers how much useful offensive and defensive coverage a Pokémon can provide at your selected level. Pokémon found in the Regional Pokédex are strongly favored, helping keep recommendations focused on Pokémon you can realistically obtain during that game's playthrough.

Trade evolutions and Legendary Pokémon are excluded from suggestions by default, but either can be included using the available filters. A Pokémon's level-up learnset in your selected game and its defensive typing are also major components of its recommendation score.

Offensive and defensive coverage are the main drivers of most recommendations, but several other factors help refine the results. Base Stat Total (BST) plays a smaller role, primarily by pushing low-BST, unevolved Pokémon farther down the list while giving stronger Pokémon a modest boost. Pokémon known to be particularly strong playthrough choices may also receive a ranking boost even when their raw type coverage is somewhat lower.

The highest-ranked Pokémon will not always be the absolute best choice for every playthrough. Some opposing types are much more important to cover in certain games than others. If your current team is missing a large amount of type coverage, powerful Pokémon with limited level-up coverage, such as Snorlax, may appear farther down the list. As your team's coverage becomes more complete, these powerful but less versatile Pokémon can begin ranking higher.

Normal-type Pokémon can be extremely useful during a playthrough, but because Normal-type attacks cannot deal super-effective damage, they may contribute less to offensive type coverage than Pokémon of other types. For that reason they get a slight boost in the scoring system to help them appear more prominently.

Most Coverage focuses primarily on which Pokémon can fill the greatest number of your team's missing coverage needs. Factors such as BST are ignored. The Team Need dropdown can further focus the results on Offensive Coverage, Defensive Coverage, either one, or Pokémon that help with both.

Stat-based sorts such as Highest BST, Highest Attack, and Highest Speed still limit the results to Pokémon that can help your team in some way, but prioritize the selected stat rather than overall coverage.

TM Coverage and Specific Types

Sometimes the best way to fix a missing type is not to add another Pokémon at all. One of your existing team members may be able to learn an appropriate TM. Set TM Learnsets to Include to factor available TM moves into the calculator's offensive coverage analysis.

If you specifically need an answer to one troublesome Pokémon type, choose Selected Type First from the Sort dropdown. A Type dropdown will then appear, allowing you to prioritize suggested teammates that can help cover that particular type.

Using the Builder

Offensive coverage is based on damaging moves each team member can learn in the selected game, with optional move-power, level, and TM restrictions. Defensive coverage identifies attacking types your team resists or is immune to, while weaknesses show super-effective matchups.

Suggested teammates compare the available Pokémon against uncovered offensive and defensive needs. Filters let you include legendary Pokémon or trade evolutions and choose how recommendations are sorted. Your team remains only for the current page session, while the selected game and recommendation filters are stored locally in your browser.

Select a game, add up to six Pokémon, and tune move restrictions to reflect your playthrough. Use the recommendation filters to prioritize the coverage gap that matters to you. Need to answer one matchup instead?