Soft Resetting in Gen VI Guide

[cant say]

temporary until we get our own art (taken from pokemonrubysapphire.com)​

Intro:

• RNGing doesn't exist in gen VI
• Soft Resetting (SRing) is super viable now compared to past gens due to how legends have three guaranteed perfect stats
• Sure you can just fling Masterballs at them and check everything you catch, but doing stat checks in-battle allows for using cooler Pokeballs (it's also faster even if you do want to just use a Masterball

Why bother SRing?

• It's important to have the right nature and good IVs in the stats you want to use (at least) for competitive battling.
• Some of the best Pokemon used in Battle Spot are legendaries including Suicune, Thundurus, Landorus, Cresselia and Heatran.
• Even something like x/31/x/x/31/31 with an Adamant nature is better for a physical attacker than that random IVed Hardy nature that you caught first try.

Mechanics:

• link to the IV guide?
• every legendary comes with three random stats guaranteed to be perfect, with a 1:32 chance of getting a fourth, and a 1:1024 chance of getting 5.
• with a Synchronise Pokemon in the lead slot you have a 54% chance of getting the nature you want (50% sync chance + 4% random)
• Capture O-power makes using Pokeballs with a low catch rate feasible, or good Pokeballs even better!

How Soft Resetting / In-Battle stat checking works:

• Soft Resetting (SRing) is the process of saving your game right before encountering a Pokemon, catching it and resetting the game if the Pokemon's nature and/or IV's are not to your liking so that you can try again.
• You can speed up the process by checking the HP and Speed stats during the battle instead of checking after catching, this saves time by making sure you don't bother catching anything with imperfect HP or Speed, the other stats are not able to be checked.
  • HP testing is done with either a Pokemon with Final Gambit and a HP stat which is one point less than your target Pokemon's HP stat when it has a 31 IV, or a Pokemon with Seismic Toss / Night Shade which is at a level equal to one point less than the target Pokemon's HP.
    • If the target Pokemon survives the Final Gambit / Seismic Toss / Night Shade then it is confirmed to have a 30/31 HP IV.
  • Speed testing is done by any Pokemon with a Speed stat exactly one point less than the target Pokemon's Speed when perfect (and the Nature that you want), or with a Speed stat exactly one point higher in the case of negative-speed natures and 0 Speed IVs.
    • If your Speed Checker goes before the target Pokemon then the target's Speed IV cannot be perfect and therefore you reset. If the target moves first then it is confirmed to have a 30/31 Speed IV. On the contrary, if aiming for a negative-speed Nature with a 0 Speed IV, you want your Speed Checker to move first, if the target moves first then it's speed cannot be 0.
  • Staraptor and Smeargle are arguably the best HP and Speed checkers respectively, and they will be used for examples later in the article.
  • You can easily create your own checkers, the best way to do this is to play around with the Pokemon Showdown! damage calculator and seeing if you can hit HP / Speed stats with various combinations of levels and EVs.
• If your target Pokemon is either KO'd by Final Gambit or outsped by your Speed checker than it isn't flawless and you try again.
• This only works for Pokemon that you catch yourself. Event Pokemon that you receive through Mystery Gift can be Soft Reset, but you can't Synchronise their Natures.

What you need:

• A Pokemon with both the Ability Synchronise and the Nature that you want your Pokemon to be.
• 50+ of the Pokeball that you want to catch your Pokemon in.
• Capture O-power (level 3 is ideal but any is better than none).
• HP Checker Pokemon
• Speed Checker Pokemon
• Utility Pokemon (knowing False Swipe / Spore / other useful moves that will help you catch the Pokemon). This can be combined with the Speed Checker role to save space in your party.
• 1 spare slot in your Party so that you don't have to Fly back to the Pokemon Center to check the Nature + IVs of the Pokemon.
• MetalKid's IV calculator. Use this to determine your target Pokemon's exact IVs once captured. This is especially important for Xerneas, Yveltal and Rayquaza as you will not have access to the in-game IV checker NPC.

Legendary Pokemon and Sample Methods of Catching:

For the purposes of these examples, we will be using Staraptor for HP checking and Smeargle for Speed checking. However, you can use any Pokemon that learns Final Gambit to test a Pokemon's HP, and any Pokemon with a Speed stat one point lower than your target's (or one point higher for negative speed and 0 IVs). You can use the Pokemon Showdown! damage calculator to see what level and how many EVs your Pokemon need to reach specific HP and Speed stats.

XY Pokemon:

Xerneas

Recommended Natures: Modest, Timid, Mild, Rash, Bold.
Recommended Pokeballs:

Location: Team Flare HQ, Pokémon X (Must be caught)
Capture Rate: 70
Level: 50
Shiny Lock: Yes
Moves (PP): Gravity (5) | Geomancy (10) | Moonblast (15) | Megahorn (10) [Total: 40]

HP | Att | Def | SpA | SpD | Spe
Base Stats: 126 | 131 | 95 | 131 | 98 | 99

Boosting: 201 | 166 | 126 | 166 | 129 | 130
Neutral: 201 | 151 | 115 | 151 | 118 | 119
Hindering: 201 | 135 | 103 | 135 | 106 | 107

How to test Xerneas

HP Checker:

Staraptor:
Level: 53
Nature: any
IV: 31 HP
EV: 232 HP
HP stat at level 53: 200 Hp
Move: Final Gambit

Speed Checker (+Speed nature):

Smeargle:
Level: 90
Nature: Sassy
IVs: 31 | x | 31 | x | 31 | 00
EVs: 252 HP | 236 SpD | 20 Spe
Stats at 90: 283 HP | 95 Def | 183 SpD | 129 Spe
Moves: Spore | Rock Polish | Recover | Taunt

Speed Checker (Neutral Speed Nature):

Smeargle:
Level: 85
Nature: Sassy
IVs: 31 | x | 31 | x | 31 | 00
EVs: 252 HP | 4 Def | SpD
Stats at 90: 268 HP | 91 Def | 177 SpD | 119 Spe
Moves: Spore | Rock Polish | Recover | Taunt


How to capture Xerneas:
With your Synchronise Pokemon fainted in the lead slot of your Party, you should have Staraptor in the second slot. Use Final Gambit first, if Xerneas faints then reset your game. If it survives then you have confirmed it to have a 30/31 IV in HP. Now bring in your Smeargle and use Spore to put Xerneas to sleep. If Smeargle moves first then reset, if Xerneas moves first then you have confirmed it to have a 30/31 Speed IV and a great chance of having the Nature that you want. If Xerneas passes both of these tests then you can start throwing your desired Pokeball, use Spore whenever it wakes up.

• I'll repeat this for the other Kalos legends

 

[cant say]

reserved for Hoenn legends because character limit

 

[cant say]

extra

should I do guides on all the individual Pokemon like I did for Xerneas? I should I just list their stats and stuff? the mon-by-mon guides I think are cool and are helpful for tricky mons like Lati@s and the genies where you can't just use a Final Gambit + speed checker, it'll just take me a while to compile it all

 

[NoCheese]

Well, you could split the difference, and do the fully detailed guides for the "tricky" catches, and then just list stats and say "apply the basic technique" for the easier ones.

 

[Adamant Zoroark]

False Swipers capable of removing immunity to Ghost (either with Soak, Foresight/Odor Sleuth, or Scrappy) should be mentioned whenever you get to Giratina. It'd be a good idea to also mention False Swipers with Soak (but iirc this is only Smeargle) for things like Heatran and Regirock, but these False Swipers should especially be mentioned for Giratina since you can't HP check it with Final Gambit (maybe you could use Pain Split then maths to figure out what Giratina's HP stat is? I think the formula for calculating this is (2 * current HP) - max HP = opponent's max HP, basically taking Pain Split calculation and solving for x, but it'll have to make your HP decrease when using Pain Split for this to work) I figure you were going to do that anyway, but it doesn't hurt to mention it.

 

[cant say]

False Swipers capable of removing immunity to Ghost (either with Soak, Foresight/Odor Sleuth, or Scrappy) should be mentioned whenever you get to Giratina. It'd be a good idea to also mention False Swipers with Soak (but iirc this is only Smeargle) for things like Heatran and Regirock, but these False Swipers should especially be mentioned for Giratina since you can't HP check it with Final Gambit (maybe you could use Pain Split then maths to figure out what Giratina's HP stat is? I think the formula for calculating this is (2 * current HP) - max HP = opponent's max HP, basically taking Pain Split calculation and solving for x, but it'll have to make your HP decrease when using Pain Split for this to work) I figure you were going to do that anyway, but it doesn't hurt to mention it.

Soak + False Swipe is unnecessary for Heatran, Regirock/steel, Dialga and Terrakion since Final Gambit will leave them at 1HP and they don't have recovery moves. For Giratina I was going to do a level 56 Sableye with Night Shade, which uses it twice to see if Giratina drops below 50% health (goes yellow) or not. It can also be trained to do the speed check as well so it does both, meaning you can just bring any old Spore user to put it to sleep.

Thanks for the suggestions though.

edit: leaving this here for future reference

Sableye (level 56)
Bold / Impish
IVs: 31 HP / 31 Def / 31 SpD / 31 Spe
EVs: 36 HP / 252 Def / 220 Spe
Stats at level 56: 109 Speed

For +speed (just in case)
Change to timid. Can't reach 120 speed though (either 119 or 121), will look at other options.

 

[vzxt]

extra

should I do guides on all the individual Pokemon like I did for Xerneas? I should I just list their stats and stuff? the mon-by-mon guides I think are cool and are helpful for tricky mons like Lati@s and the genies where you can't just use a Final Gambit + speed checker, it'll just take me a while to compile it all

I think you should do individual guides but only talk about the target stats like speed and HP amount of PP and so on. Let the ppl do the calcs for the pokemon they need to train for the SR. some pokemon can work with a lot of different sets(+speed - speed neutral speed) and it'd be a lot of work to do an explanation for all different ccombination of EV spread you can use for the HP/Speed checking pokemon.

Maybe you can do a through explanation of all the different methods to SR a legendary pokemon and then when you list a legendary just reference back to the specific method used to SR said pokemon like "The best method to SR Thundurus is using Prankster Pain Split Sableye" or "Raikou has Pressure as ability so it is easy to SR by the Speed O-Power method". Maybe you can do detailed guides only for the pokemon that have specialized SR methods like Giratina and the lati twins?

 

[Oglemi]

Please don't put a recommended pokeball section lol, that's entirely subjective unless there is an actual benefit to using one of them a la the Dusk Ball getting the 3.5 capture rate in helping capture a few of the Gen 4 legendaries.

 

[cant say]

Please don't put a recommended pokeball section lol, that's entirely subjective unless there is an actual benefit to using one of them a la the Dusk Ball getting the 3.5 capture rate in helping capture a few of the Gen 4 legendaries.

lol fair enough. I was only thinking of doing it since people ask all the time in the wifi forum "what ball looks good on ____?"

 

[NoCheese]

A brief discussion of ways to get extra master balls, though hardly essential, might also be nice, since each master ball means one legendary where you don't need to worry about anything more than a synchronizer. I've pulled 2 from "pick something up" and they definitely sped the SR process.

 

[ant]

what's popping dudes

 

[cant say]

I've been working on this in dribs and drabs but admittedly haven't updated this at all. I got kinda stuck with whether I want to do guides on all the legendaries or just do a more detailed description of how it works so people can make their own capture Pokemon

 

[ant]

just bump as a reminder since this was bumped around a month ago and holidays and stuff happened etc. cant say