Pokemon HeartGold

[Namine]

I believe the elemental punches are in battle frontier (so at the very dead end of the game.) Old GSC games elemental punches were much earlier on in Goldenrod, but now they got scaled back and it's much more costly to learn them too.

As for Gardevoir, much better for her to use psychic. I don't think she can learn zen headbutt anyway. Elemental punches are also all physical now. Gardevoir has always been much more of a support type though with access to wish, dual screens will o wisp and healing wish. If you really want her to be a sweeper, then shadow ball, thunderbolt, focus blast, signal beam and trick (for using choice spec) are you best options.

[ShadowValentine]

I have Thunderbolt, Psychic, Energy Ball and Future Sight, with Wise Glasses. Should I switch out Future Sight for Shadow Ball or something? I was thinking of getting, at the very least, two Psychic type special attacks.

[Namine]

It's pointless to get beyond 1 of the same type attack, unless it's things like overheat/fire blast, or water spout/surf. If you want 4 sp.attacks, Shadow Ball or Signal Beam should be last slot (or ideally, the other one replaces energy ball) so you can hit other psychic/ghost, or other psychic/dark. 2 attacks of the same type, unless it's special circumstances, is wasting elemental coverage or other forms of utility.

Energy ball is a new type of attack, but got weak coverage compare to what Gardevoir can do. Whatever is ground, is generally going to be weak to psychic due to low spdef, and they really got little reason to switch in to Gardevoir unless it's something that can Sucker Punch you (in which case, you'll have to run or face an OHKO.)

[ShadowValentine]

Hmm.... I'll need to rethink my entire team's attack roster then =P

I'm used to using the same element as the Pokemon, with the corresponding elemental item, like Charcoal with Typhlosion, using 3 Fire and one other element attack.

[Namine]

Elemental item only gives usually 10% boost to that element's attack, which is usually far from significant enough to make any difference. You almost always want multi-elemental as much as you can and almost never stack attacks of the same element. Consider leftovers instead which heals 1/16th of your hp every turn. Essentially negates sandstorm damage, or if you live 16 turns, that's essentially a 2nd life. Generally, items are usually either choice band, choice scarf, choice spec, focus sash (for leads), leftovers, or life orb. Specific strats may have specialized items like light clay, damp rock, chesto berry or lum berry, but those are the more common ones.

Typlosion is the odd one out since most of them use choice scarf, then carry eruption. But since eruption drops in power really fast if it's damaged (which can happen a lot by stealth rock, or aqua jet) then it carries flamethrower/fire blast as 2nd fire attack. That's another one of those odd exceptional times to use 2 attacks of the same element. Typlosion isn't a good Pokemon to use in "no AR" teams cause you don't have access to hidden power, and Typlosion's movepool is far too shallow to avoid hidden power...

[ShadowValentine]

... o.o

[Frogboy]

lol, a bit unnerved by namine hmm shadow? she is right though, you don't want just single element type attacks as the game is fit for gen IV specs rather than gen II specs.

most of the pokemon have had a complete overhaul of their types, to mostly include a second type that would typically benefit them by decreasing their weaknesses to specific type attacks, though most of the time it ends up working against them because there's the new movesets that allow for STAB to work at 4x normal. a typical case is rock type monsters like onix and geodude, as they're most of the time rock and ground types, which both types have a weakness to fighting moves iirc. so certain strategies have changed when dealing with these generation updates, though it's typically not that difficult to plan out, or if you really don't care about wi-fi battling or battle frontier stuff it's not a big deal and you can develop your pokemon how you feel comfortable and accustomed to as they should still be able to get through the main storyline without much effort.