FGW Core- The Big Question

Upstart

Copy Cat
Why Does it exist?
Looking through all the past UU metas the FGW core seemed to still be in existances. I was wondering what other UU players think the advantages if disadvantage of this core structure is? Why this structure exists? And what cores you the players have used and why?
 

Meru

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Because it's the best way to distribute a team with a healthy list of resistances when the metagame doesn't revolve around needing tons of dragon resists.
 
You start the game by being taunted with a FWG core but can only pick one. It's only natural for people to return what they wanted at the beginning of the game
 
Because the strongest pokemon in the metagame are fire and grass types, and as such the numerous water types (who aren't too bad) also are used, for the resistance to fire. Moltres and venasaur are probably the two best pokemon in the metagame (heracross -_-), and milotic isn't too far behind (though imo rhyperior is better than it)
 
Because the strongest pokemon in the metagame are fire and grass types, and as such the numerous water types (who aren't too bad) also are used, for the resistance to fire. Moltres and venasaur are probably the two best pokemon in the metagame (heracross -_-), and milotic isn't too far behind (though imo rhyperior is better than it)
NEWSFLASH: Milotic is the best pokemon in UU, period.

FWG isn't exactly the first thing people think of when they make teams so FWG 'core' isn't accurate imo. Alot of the time, one of the types is used to just patch up a weakness and from there they get natural synergy with the others so 'may aswell put this on' happens often.

Its pretty obvious obvious why any core exists. Its going to be either defensive or offensive synergy, possibly both. That is where any core stems from in the end, otherwise it would just be 3 mons that are good individually.

Yeah what discussion can come from this?
 
First you need to do is look at what makes the UU metagame. It is littered with Water Pokemon that aren't used enough for OU. Understandable seeing as water pokemon are the most common type of pokemon. Next look at what beats those waters. Grass is the best option. Sure there is electric but what options are there. Electric is a common type in OU considering how few there are. So now you have a water and a grass poke. What tames those Grass types. It used to be flying types. but then those started to get banned. Fire became the norm because it can really capitilaze on those grass and water pokemon that you already have.

So we have established that it is a great and simple core. The biggest disadvantage is how widespread it is. It makes UU predictable. That was why I kinda gave up on UU for a while. It was a very stable metagame but it was kinda stagnant. That aside is that anti metagame pokemon are able to run semirampant once that core has been destabilized.

Anyways. I suppose the standard one for a while was Moltres/Milotic/Venusaur The reason those went well together was because you had the sweeper/wall/supporter in one little set while all have access to recovery. Defensively a good one is Milotic/Arcanine/Leafeon all three of them are tanks while still supporting each other. Maybe stick a specially defensive thing in there and give them offensive sets. You will have yourself a nice bulky offensive team easy.

UU really isn't my best tier though so you may want a different opinion but that is how I see it.
 
FWG cores often just come into existance, and aren't planned. For example, I made a UU-team with Venusaur, and to patch up some weaknesses, went with Slowbro as well. By adding an Arcanine, i completed a FWG-core (unknowingly), and had in it a physical wall, a special 'wall' (Arcanine isn't walling things, but ok) and supporter.

Also, to drag some OU into this, my new team has a Heatran/Celebi/Vaporeon core, in which all patch up each others weaknesses, lure certain attacks (Fire to Heatran, Water to Vaporeon, status to Celebi), and just work well together.
 

Chou Toshio

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dispelling unthought-out assumptions about coverage/resistances:

Water: One of the best types in the game with one of the highest member counts. It is a no-brainer that almost any tier would not only have relatively powerful water pokemon, but popularize them. Even OU should never have been called a steel-dragon meta, but a steel-dragon-WATER meta. UU has some extremely powerful water types that didn't make OU just because there are even better water types in OU, not because they are not powerful enough to handle the competition.

Fire: A weakness to SR forces a lot of pokemon who would otherwise be OU based on stats/movepool/etc. down a tier. Pokemon like Arcanine, Moltres and Charizard have the substance to be extremely good pokemon if not for SR. Blaziken gets forced down almost solely because of Infernape. In a nutshell, UU just has fire pokemon of a relatively higher power level than other types.

Grass: Is one of the shittiest types in terms of both offense and defense. It's only real merits are not having any immune opponents, and having 2 extremely useful super effective hits (Water and Ground). Grass is a typing so bad that many otherwise extremely powerful pokemon didn't cut it in OU for a long time simply because of their grass typing. As a result, like fire, Grass had relatively much more powerful pokemon than many other types.

You can see the phenomenon very clearly when comparing to Dragon and Steel-- inversely, dragon and steel are so good as types (and unlike water have so few members) that OU sucks them all up, despite pokemon like Flygon or Bronzong being potentially under-welming even in UU (I doubt the two mentioned would dominate it).

Bottom line is in terms of base stat/movepool, fire and grass both have pokemon of extremely high power relative to UU because their typing hampers them severly in OU play. Water is simply one of the best types in the game and also has members of a power level similar to even OU (Milotic, Slowbro, etc.). To me, it seems natural that they should be very popular UU without any real thanks to synergy.
 

Agammemnon

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I'll try not to be redundant but here's my opinion :
In Gen1, Psychic type was predominant, making it the obvious answer to tear through teams.
In Gen4, stat distributions made Steel and Dragon being the right answer to destroy your opponents. Obviously, everyone (nearly !) used to getting them in their team, to the epitome of stupidity ; 4 Dragons / 2 Steels teams.
"Then why ?" FWG core is very potent with awesome synergies, as there are useful double-typing especially with water (Water/ground, Water/steel, Water/flying, namely Swampert, Empoleon, Gyarados (even if they are OU I'm demonstrating a general law, don't flame) BUT it is walled and laughed by Dragon/steel Pseudo-core.
This way, FWG couldn't be dominant in OU when Garchomp or Salamence, or even Latias were in the place.
With the ban of those named ones, we are seeing a massive rise of FWG core, with bulky teams using (Exemple) Heatran / Celebi / Suicune cores. It stills get a Steel in the name of Heatran, allowing it not to be blasted by Flygon, the remaining OU Dragon.

In UU, now. Steel is reduced to Registeel, which isn't an offensive threat at all, (Heatran is one, thanks to its secondary type), and Steelix. Steel is pretty defensive down here.
Dragon is reduced to the rare Altaria, which isn't really a threat else.
Obviously, there isn't a needing for countering those, because people don't even pseudo-core with this, as it's pure horse crap. (Individually they can be good, though)
So as I explained earlier, FWG core becomes the "easy" solution, allowing mass coverage and bulkiness.
For my part, opposing to More Cowbell, I love to build something around a core. You can't take mons one by one and just add them "to see". A starting core is a good option, and it's known that FWG is a nice starting core, so here we go.
 
I think a more likely reason for FWG cores being common can be found in the answer to this question: name the ten best Pokemon in UU. Did your answer include the following?

1. Arcanine
2. Moltres
3. Sceptile
4. Venusaur
5. Milotic

If it did, then there you have it, a FWG core ... furthermore, one Pokemon leads quite naturally to another, e.g. if you're going to use Sceptile you have to worry about opponent Moltres's and Arcanines, against which Milotic is a catch-all security. If you're going to use Milotic then you have to worry about opponent Sceptiles and Venusaurs, against which Arcanine and Moltres do well. If you're going to use Arcanine then you have to worry about opponent Milotics, against which Venusaur does well. And so on and so forth ...

Put it another way, you could try to make a team without a FWG core, but you might find yourself reducing to a FWG core sooner or later. For example, without the "F" in FWG, you're weaker to stuff like Toxicroak and Venusaur, while without "W", you're weak to Moltres. Sure you can build your team to compensate while explicitly avoiding using FWG Pokemon, but that would have to be a conscious decision.
 
because its one of the most effective and simple combination you can have
basically you have a type to break through steel with pure offense(fire) a type that does well in both spectrum that can actualy be considered best type in the game being a combination of dragon and steel (somehow) and able to handle most type well(Water)
and a type that can counter the horor that is water type and also having many disruptive moves(grass)

in UU its even a bigger case though seeing grass in UU has OU power level and so beastly. Water in UU as said in the smog is outclassed by another broken OU and Fire in UU doesnt become OU because of SR and outclassment (no charizard sucks im talking about moltres and his u-turn) its as obvious as anything can happen
 
I'll try not to be redundant but here's my opinion :
In Gen1, Psychic type was predominant, making it the obvious answer to tear through teams.
In Gen4, stat distributions made Steel and Dragon being the right answer to destroy your opponents. Obviously, everyone (nearly !) used to getting them in their team, to the epitome of stupidity ; 4 Dragons / 2 Steels teams.
"Then why ?" FWG core is very potent with awesome synergies, as there are useful double-typing especially with water (Water/ground, Water/steel, Water/flying, namely Swampert, Empoleon, Gyarados (even if they are OU I'm demonstrating a general law, don't flame) BUT it is walled and laughed by Dragon/steel Pseudo-core.
This way, FWG couldn't be dominant in OU when Garchomp or Salamence, or even Latias were in the place.
With the ban of those named ones, we are seeing a massive rise of FWG core, with bulky teams using (Exemple) Heatran / Celebi / Suicune cores. It stills get a Steel in the name of Heatran, allowing it not to be blasted by Flygon, the remaining OU Dragon.

In UU, now. Steel is reduced to Registeel, which isn't an offensive threat at all, (Heatran is one, thanks to its secondary type), and Steelix. Steel is pretty defensive down here.
Dragon is reduced to the rare Altaria, which isn't really a threat else.
Obviously, there isn't a needing for countering those, because people don't even pseudo-core with this, as it's pure horse crap. (Individually they can be good, though)
So as I explained earlier, FWG core becomes the "easy" solution, allowing mass coverage and bulkiness.
For my part, opposing to More Cowbell, I love to build something around a core. You can't take mons one by one and just add them "to see". A starting core is a good option, and it's known that FWG is a nice starting core, so here we go.
I don't think I was really clear in my post - I often build my teams around a FWG-core too. What I meant was, if you're not planning on using a FWG-core and are looking for synergy in individual Pokémon, you will often end out on a FWG-core anyways. I never said they are bad - they are very useful and always a nice entry to a new team.
 

Agammemnon

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I agree to this last sentence.
I've wondered what could replace this core, and I found something pretty impressive on paper :
-Steelix
-Weezing
-Grumpig

That gives you some perfect defensive coverage, but I found that often, the 'mons get another move that's super effective against the pretended wall, making it useless, so I always have to get back to FWG
 
I agree to this last sentence.
I've wondered what could replace this core, and I found something pretty impressive on paper :
-Steelix
-Weezing
-Grumpig

That gives you some perfect defensive coverage, but I found that often, the 'mons get another move that's super effective against the pretended wall, making it useless, so I always have to get back to FWG
That core looks like it would be torn apart by Houndoom
 

Agammemnon

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I totally agree that my core isn't good.
I was pointing the fact of "necessity" for FWG Core as other cores can't handle some threats.
 
Grass: Is one of the shittiest types in terms of both offense and defense. It's only real merits are not having any immune opponents, and having 2 extremely useful super effective hits (Water and Ground). Grass is a typing so bad that many otherwise extremely powerful pokemon didn't cut it in OU for a long time simply because of their grass typing. As a result, like fire, Grass had relatively much more powerful pokemon than many other types.
Grass has Water, Grass, Electric, and Ground resists. Which are quite handy. Also, grass types get Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, and Swords Dance, which are all great moves. Oh, and they have high power STAB which, as mentioned, hits two important types.

There are 4 Grass types in OU. Rock, Fire, and Ice have 2; Ghost, Bug, Dark, and Poison have 3; and Electric and Normal also have 4. Grass is doing quite well for itself as a type. I'd hardly say it's "shitty".
 
I play OU mostly, but the reasons are pretty similar. FWG is simply the easiest way to cover the vast majority of types. It wasn't apparent in OU when Salamence and Latias where around because their sheer power and great offensive typing necessitated Steel types. Now that they're both banned the boring Heatran-Vaporeon/Suicune-Shaymin cores are coming up everywhere.

The same thing applies to UU. FWG in terms of typing allows you a decent switch in to almost all metagame threats. People don't generally aim for a FWG core, but to cover threats properly they often end up with one.

Grass types, by the way, aren't "shitty", but a lot of their success comes from the predominance of Water types. Venusaur isn't quite in this boat, since it's movepool and general bulk are so good in UU anyway, but things like Shaymin just wouldn't be in OU if they weren't needed to reliably counter Swampert and the like.
 
Comparible to a FWG-core is the Fighting/Dark/Psychic core, iirc. It provides pretty much the same coverage and defensive values, but is less accesible. It might be worth trying sometime.
 
Comparible to a FWG-core is the Fighting/Dark/Psychic core, iirc. It provides pretty much the same coverage and defensive values, but is less accesible. It might be worth trying sometime.
I tried a FDP core once, didn't work out. For one, in a core you generally want the pokemon to be bulky enough to abuse the type synergy. There are shockingly few bulky dark types in uu. Drapion is one, tomb is another. after that not much else (I'm sure I've forgotten something, but oh well). another issue is that your psychic can be picked off do to pursuit, and when a member of your core goes down, you have issues. Probably most importantly, I find that FWG gets way more natural resistances than FDP does. FDP covers it's own weaknesses well, but doesn't resist much out side of that, while FWG gets a plethora of non-core related resists to work with.

Just my two cents.
 
I tried a FDP core once, didn't work out. For one, in a core you generally want the pokemon to be bulky enough to abuse the type synergy. There are shockingly few bulky dark types in uu. Drapion is one, tomb is another. after that not much else (I'm sure I'm forgot something, but oh well). another issue is that your psychic can be picked off do to pursuit, and when a member of your core goes down, you have issues. Probably most importantly, I find that FWG gets way more natural resistances than FDP does. FDP covers it's own weaknesses well, but doesn't resist much out side of that, while FWG gets a plethora of non-core related resists to work with.

Just my two cents.
Yeah, the FWG-core is quite obviously superior to the FDP-core. There are indeed very few usable Pokémon for a FDP-core in UU, and even if there would be more, FWG would still work better. But FDP might carry more of a surprise. I don't know, I haven't quite tried, it actually.

If you'd be to use a FDP-core, I think something like Hariyama/Drapion/Uxie would be best, defensively seen.
 
To be quick, the 10 first mons list is because of FWG Core, not the contrary.
I think you underestimate these Pokemon. Consider:

1. Milotic tanks a whole lot of stuff in UU. It single-handedly walls, for example, Feraligatr / Arcanine / Rhyperior / Aggron / Moltres blah blah blah. Physical or special, Milotic usually survives a non-SE hit and hits back. That's formidable bulk, combined with instant recovery. It can also go offensive, when its 81 base speed allows it to outspeed the base 80 crowd, and it still has 100 base SpA, good bulk and instant recovery to boot.

2. Venusaur is highly versatile. It can go physical, mixed or special. It has viable defensive sets. It has a sleep move and a recovery move. It's bulky. It also happens to resist Close Combat, which is important since Heracross is in the tier. Venusaur is one of the most common Pokemon in the metagame - and one of the most metagamed against - for a reason.

3. Arcanine is also highly versatile. It can go physical, mixed, special, or Choice. It has reliable recovery and one of the best abilities in the game, Intimidate. It resist Megahorn, which is important since Heracross is in the tier. It has access to a BP 80 priority move. It's quite bulky, augmented by Intimidate (or the bonus immunity in Flash Fire). These are all valuable traits when choosing a Pokemon for a team.

I've not considered Sceptile and Moltres, but I hope you get the idea. You may not like these Pokemon, but even without considering the FWG core they have plenty of independent merit. The fact that they cover each other's weaknesses is a bonus. You will / should find that, quite often, you encounter problems like "my team has no way to kill Milotic", or "rain dance teams wipe my team", and the solution is one of these three. Like I said, you could try making a team without a FWG core, but chances are you'll find yourself drawn to using these three Pokemon. And, once you start using one, you'll often find yourself using another, just because they complement each other so well.
 

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