When I first decided to plunge seriously into Gen 3 Battle Tower, I decided to use this team, which was based on the team Werster used for his Pokemon Emerald speedrun. It's one of the most perfectly balanced teams for Battle Tower and the fact that these three Pokemon can be easily obtainable in-game without needing to trade from other Gen 3 games, made it highly appealing to use. I decided to do Open Level at this point and since I had access to flawless versions of this Pokemon, I played around with the EVs to suit them to my own preferences. I got good results using Werster's team, however, it had a flaw on the long run which is being weak vs Water type Trainers (Swimmers, Fishermen, Sailors) who had a lot of Water/Ice types on their team, meaning that Latios could get easily overwhelmed since outside it, the team lacked proper answers to Water types.​

On my insatiable curiosity of trying more stuff, the next well known team I wanted to try out was Jumpman16's team of Choice Band Salamence, Suicune and Snorlax (It was his team, right?). This was a good opportunity for my Shiny RNG abused Colosseum Suicune to shine in here since this was perhaps the only "proven" Suicune team in Gen 3. Also I should mention that Suicune is one of my favorite Pokemon ever alongside Latios. This team was solid overall, however, it had a massive flaw of being weak to Banded Normal types such as Slaking and Ursaring who were pretty much claiming a kill if they ever showed up. Also, if Curse users managed to get a boost, Band Salamence stopped bieng a reliable answer to them. This is a damage calc on Snorlax 2 who carries Curse and Rock Slide: 252+ Atk Choice Band Salamence Brick Break vs. +1 170 HP / 170 Def Snorlax: 110-130 (42.9 - 50.7%) -- 3.1% chance to 2HKO. Don't get me wrong, I think this team was interesting, but I found it kind of underwhelming when trying to achieve +100 wins.​

I could say this version of the team was kind of inspired from my Gen 7 team with me using CB Flygon as a lead and Morning Sun SD Scizor. For those who do not know, Gales Scizor gets Morning Sun as a purify move, so I went ahead and RNG'd an Adamant Gales Scizor: 29-31-30-18-30-30 which yielded a 68 power Hidden Power Fighting. Now, for those who are not familiarized with Gamecube RNG, the spreads on certain shadow Pokemon are conditioned by Nature Locks which greatly limits the amount of possible spreads on a Shadow Pokemon. Also, against trainers with multiple shadow Pokemon, locking the 1st or 2nd shadow can also influence which spreads you can hit. The IVs are kinda disappointing, but this was the best HP Fighting Scizor I could get from Gales and use it as a pseudo-Gen 4 Scizor but without the priority Bullet Punch that makes it the monster it is well known for since Gen 4. The team did fairly well since I was consistently getting around 70-90 wins on each attempt. However, the team was highly vulnerable to almost all 8 sets of Lati@s that appeared at the Battle Tower and Alakazam shredded me into pieces. While Flygon was fortunately faster than Lati@s 8, which were the sets invested on Speed, even a Banded Hidden Power Bug only had a 12.5% chance to OHKO Latios, while Latias could easily laugh at the damage and KO back with Dragon Claw or Ice Beam. Scizor can handle them well, but it loses to critical hits and the occasional paralysis that can come from Latias carrying Thunder Wave or simply by spamming Thunderbolt. Scizor also needed a boost in order to kill HP invested Latios & Latios with a +2 Silver Wind.​

After being tired of getting parahaxed to death by Lati@s and Alakazam (because it happened a lot), I decided to go for a different direction. I decided to replace Flygon with Latios again mostly due to the fact that Latios can easily beat the other Lati@s in Frontier as long as they don't get a critical hit. Also, because of Scizor's initial lack of power and vulnerabilty to get CH'd and its x4 to Fire which made even meme sets such as Ursaring 3, I decided to go back into Banded Metagross. Originally, I didn't thought that the lack of Electric immunity would hurt this team much since Latios had the Lum Berry to protect itself from status ailments. Latios also performed nicely against Lanturn and Ampharos as Psychic 2HKO'd them most of the time. However, it all came down to shambles when I met this stupid thing:​

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King's Rock | Thunderbolt, Thunder Wave, Bite, Shadow Ball | Volt Absorb | 0 / 0 / 0 /255/ 0 /255 |​ Jolteon4 | Timid || Thunderbolt, Thunder Wave, Bite, Shadow Ball | Volt Absorb | 0 / 0 / 0 /255/ 0 /255 |​

| Lv: 50 stats: 140/76/80/162/115/200 | Lv.100 stats: 271/149/156/319/226/394 |​

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Just look at this set: King's Rock, the only Pokemon who uses 394 in Gen3, a move with a 30% chance of flinching the opponent. Complete bullsh*t set. From the 4 losses I had when using this team, 3 of them were caused by this big piece of sh*t. Bite flinched Latios to death making it unable to 2HKO it with Psychic, Thunderbolt/Thunder Wave would paralyze Metagross and 2HKO it, and after having its devilish deeds done, it didn't needed to sweat to finish off Suicune. Despite these results, they were two things clear: Latios & Suicune were pulling their own weight most of the time. I mean, we are talking about two of the most broken Pokemon in G3 and they were sweeping the opponent 75% of the time where Metagross was barely involved at all. The lack of Electric type immunity also hurted this team as Jolteon 4 can easily cheese through it with Emerald's broken RNG at its favor. I heavily considered going back to Flygon / Suicune and use Metagross as the 3rd team member, but the reason why I never used it was because CB Metagross spoiled me so much to the point where Flygon/Metagross would be competing for the item. Both miss some really important KOs without the Band, so I decided to look for another solution. The team performed decently well, gaining around 90-120 wins on average until Jolteon 4 decides to show up. I knew there was missing something, so I needed to be a bit creative and find a Pokemon that could glue both Latios & Suicune.​

With Latios and Suicune being able to clean the mayority of the Pokemon sets present in Gen 3, I need a team member that could be the glue of this team. A Pokemon whose typing could protect both Latios & Suicune. You don't even need to check Serebii or Smogon to know that the amount of Steel types in G3 was quite limited. I guess I kinda resigned myself to conform with ~100 wins until I was casually talking on my IRC channel with Zari. On IRC, he shared his idea of using Curse Steelix / Zapdos / Vaporeon team based on the perfect team synergy of its members. While I was talking to him, something clicked inside my head. What if I test Steelix as my final team member? Steelix is the only Pokemon in Gen 3 that possesses this Ground / Steel typing, which not only makes it immune to Electric moves but also grant it 9 resistances and two immunities overall, while only having 4 weaknesses which were complemented perfectly by Latios / Suicune. Latios resist the Fighting type attacks that Steelix doesn't wants to take, while being immune to Earthquake. On the other hand, Steelix resist Ghost, Dark, Dragon and Bug type attacks giving it a great matchup vs Pokemon like Scizor 2/3/4, Dusclops 2 and Absol 1/2, which are Pokemon that Latios doesn't want to face.​

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I own plenty of save files in Gen 3 that are part of my RNG project and in one of my Fire Red save files, I had access to a H-1 spread that had slots 3, 5 and 11. Guess what? Victory Road Onix was available in slot 3 and it has access to a full 70 power HP Steel. After RNGing the Onix and trade evolving it, Steelix was ready to roll. My experience with G3 Curse users is terrible mostly due to the fact that they are so vulnerable to critical hits. When I used Snorlax, I wanted to scream every time it got nuked by a critical hit attack. Snorlax always moves last and because of this, you don't really know when it could be the right time to Rest, because an unexpected crit can easily overwhelm you and force to Rest or die easily by a strong crit. For this reason, I decided to test a Choice Band set specially taking into account that because of Steelix's average 85 base Attack, he was going to appreciate the extra power. After making the calculations, I can't say I feel disappointed by this decision specially considering that it was able to OHKO 170 HP Metagross from full health. While its Explosion was much weaker than Metagross' it was still strong enough to OHKO +1 Curselax, who would otherwise go ham on this team. The very first run ended at 123 which was very good at the same level of my runs using Werster's team. I lost to Latias 1 after being too greedy and CM 1st turn only to be CH'd to death. After sending Steelix, Latias froze Steelix with Ice Beam (My biggest mistake in here, was not attempting to BoltBeam stall via switching). After Steelix went down, Suicune was the only guy left to keep me in the battle (I was using Leftovers back then). While I tried to set-up on the hopes of stalling Latias' Thunderbolt's PP, Suicune got CH'd during its sleep and well, it was game there. I had a very strong impression from my team on the 1st run.​

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On the second run, this thing came here to make my life impossible:​

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Leftovers | Leech Seed, Rain Dance, Double Team, Toxic | Rain Dish or Swift Swim | 170 / 0 / 170 / 0 / 170 / 0 |​ Ludicolo 4 | Bold || Leech Seed, Rain Dance, Double Team, Toxic | Rain Dish or Swift Swim | 170 / 0 / 170 / 0 / 170 / 0 |​

| Lv: 50 stats: 176/81/122/110/141/90 | Lv.100 stats: 343/158/239/216/278/176 |​

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Another AIDS set but this one involved a Pokemon that normally, it wouldn't be threatening from start but it became much more dangerous that what I originally thought. When I played with the Werster team, the strategy was to CM once and then, attempt to 2HKO it as fast as possible with Psychic. However, on this battle, I was never able to get the 2nd Psychic I needed to finish it off since the RNG played in favor of the AI. After losing my Lum Berry and some Leech Seed damage, I swapped into Suicune in the hopes of PP stalling to get my chances to win, however, this plan backfired on me. Take into account that in G3, the Struggle mechanics are completely different in G3 than what they were in G4 and onward: the damage done by Struggle recoil is 25% of what you deal, not a 25% of your total HP. In other words, if you are, say Blissey, a pokemon with the outrageous base Attack of 10, the damage from Struggle recoil would be nothing more than 5 or 6 points of your total HP (don't take this as a fact, but the damage is so ridiculously low that Blissey basically nullifies it and even gains HP if using Leftovers). After PP stalling Ludicolo, it will never die from Struggle. My 2nd mistake was precisely thinking I could take it down with Latios after PP stalling. My Psychics never landed and Latios got defeated eventually by Ludicolo's continuous Struggles. My only chance was to pull out something as ridiculous as this:​

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+6 0 SpA Suicune Surf vs. 170 HP / 170 SpD Ludicolo: 79-93 (23 - 27.1%) -- possible 5HKO after Leftovers recovery​

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Yeah, attempting a 5HKO against an opponent with +6 evasion who also had a x4 resist to Surf. I simply forfeited the match knowing that, as I was running out of Surfs, I was never going to win this fight. This loss eventually made me think about many stuff. My objective was to reach +100 wins but with Ludicolo 4 being a fairly common set on certain Trainers, I knew I was going to struggle against it. It's never good to struggle against Double Team sets if you want to suceed in G3 Battle Tower. Looking back into the battles I have done so far, I realized that the amount of times I used Rock Slide were extremely barren. I only used it like against Pokemon like Zapdos or Scyther, but it has never seen use outside those situations. Also, when you take into account's Steelix' average base 85 Attack, it isn't a good move for Steelix to get locked into on the long run as it is something that many other Pokemon can take advantage of. Toxic was the solution I came up with to deal with Ludicolo 4 as well as any Double Team user without Rest. It worked to perfection and it has even surpassed my own expectations. Pokemon like Ludicolo 4, Umbreon 1/2 and Blissey 1 can now be defeated without me risking my Pokemon's PP or relying on hitting an attack. All I have to do is set up with Suicune once they are poisoned and the poison damage will do all the work.​