I'm looking to try out the competitve scene, after completing my living pokedex and doing almost everything you can in my Alpha Sapphire game, looking to spice things up and try out battling. I'm familiar with breeding for competitive Pokemon and how to make sure you get certain moves and abilites with items. However, I don't really have much knowledge on what Pokemon are good at the moment as a new player.
My point being, what do you guys think would be a good all around competitve team for a new player to start on. A team that would suit a lot of opponent Pokemon whether not be the best, but average so I could learn the ropes. Also, are there any massive points I should know before getting into the competitve scene? Any tips?
I don't know what your level of knowledge on competitive you already have, but here are a few tips to get you started!
- Start off by choosing a tier to play (OU, UU, Etc..) and a pokemon you would like to build a team upon. This will be the foundation of your team to build around.
Ex : Let's say for the sake of this, you really like Weavile! It's incredibly fast, with a life orb it hits very hard and with a well time sword dance can easily sweep a team.
- Now looking at Weavile, you know that it's biggest weakness is stealth rocks. So you would definitely need something to get rid of those. Latias could be a good team mate since it could defog hazards, resist fighting attacks (which do x4 to Weavile) and support with healing wish to bring back Weavile to full if something were to happen.
- Another weakness that Weavile has is steel types. A Technician / Tough Claws boosted bullet punch can easily break a Weavile. So why not add in a Magnezone to catch those Steel types! With a magnet pull to keep them on the field, Hidden power Fire to hit really hard.
- Since the opponent will be doing a lot of switching, setting up stealth rock ourself would break focus sashe's / sturdy's / Multiscales and really hurt threathening pokemon like Talonflame or Mega Charizard. Let's go with a great defensive / offensive pokemon like Landorus. It has great bulk, it can U-turn to give you initiative and setup the rocks.
- Weavile is extremely fast, but pokemon with choice scarf could easily outspeed and cripple it. Know that, we would need our own choice scarf user. Since we do not have a water type pokemon, we could easily see Keldeo. Keldeo has a very good Sp. Atk and Speed making him a very dangerous scarf pokemon. Not a lot of pokemon can take his hits.
- We have already 5 pokemon and no mega's! We have a serious fairy weakness and Azumarill can wreck our team with ease. I believe mega-venusaur would be a great add-on. Having a great defensive typing paired with good bulk and an ability to reduce fire/ice damage and access to recovery in Giga drain / Synthesis, we will have something really good to round up the team!
With all that, I made a quick team for you to try out! I haven't tried it because i'm at work but it should give you a good feel. http://pastebin.com/Y1jwSSNL
I did the bare minimum in this explanation because the real way to learn, is to try and play a lot! Here are a few other ressources to help you out
I'm looking to try out the competitve scene, after completing my living pokedex and doing almost everything you can in my Alpha Sapphire game, looking to spice things up and try out battling. I'm familiar with breeding for competitive Pokemon and how to make sure you get certain moves and abilites with items. However, I don't really have much knowledge on what Pokemon are good at the moment as a new player.
My point being, what do you guys think would be a good all around competitve team for a new player to start on. A team that would suit a lot of opponent Pokemon whether not be the best, but average so I could learn the ropes. Also, are there any massive points I should know before getting into the competitve scene? Any tips?
Thanks everyone
Which competive scene are you wishing to try? VGC which are double battles? Or maybe online through some PGL online tournaments that would be single battles?
I main Tracer for some reason...
My Friend Safari is Flying with Pidgey, Fletchiender and Swanna. Feel free to add me!
Also, my name is Hayden... Why am I Johnnyspyguy?
I'd say as well to keep in mind that not everyone you will come across in battles will be using the smogon rule set. I know a lot of people use it as gospel but I think it can be good to just pick pokemon you like and not worry about tiers.Things like double team and sleep spamming are not allowed by smogons rules but it doesn't mean you won't come across people using them.
Jun 20, 2016, 08:49 AM (This post was last modified: Jun 20, 2016, 08:49 AM by Magnificzero.)
@Johnnyspyguy Thanks! It still needs a lot of tweeking (like i'm still unsure about the air balloon on Magnezone) but so far it's very cool.
I do agree with @PrinceeZuko , it's very important to determine where you want to play and the format. Researching that format will save you serious surprises!
I'm looking to try out the competitve scene, after completing my living pokedex and doing almost everything you can in my Alpha Sapphire game, looking to spice things up and try out battling. I'm familiar with breeding for competitive Pokemon and how to make sure you get certain moves and abilites with items. However, I don't really have much knowledge on what Pokemon are good at the moment as a new player.
My point being, what do you guys think would be a good all around competitve team for a new player to start on. A team that would suit a lot of opponent Pokemon whether not be the best, but average so I could learn the ropes. Also, are there any massive points I should know before getting into the competitve scene? Any tips?
Thanks everyone
Alright here's my two cents about competitive Pokemon. Firstly, there are several styles or formats that exist, the main two being Smogon and Battle Spot. These two break down into smaller subsets where Smogon consists of Doubles and Singles formats with a usage tier system aimed at balancing competitive play by grouping Pokemon into tiers based on their strength so like Latios and Landorus-Therian would be OU while Butterfree and Avalugg would be in PU. A majority of Singles battlers prefer Smogon over Battle Spot singles because of how the tiers allow you to be able to create teams for different metagames instead of just one centralized metagame so if you plan to play Singles competitively, I'd suggest looking up Smogon and Pokemon Showdown. Battle Spot is the more official format as it is programmed into ORAS. All types of battles are existent only there is no tiering system so you can bring anything that isn't a base 680 legendary Pokemon (except on the Special ladder). Battle Spot has more restrictions in terms of the amount of items you can bring to a battle (can't bring more than one of the same item on a team) and the amount of Pokemon you can bring to a match (its generally carry 6 and pick 3 or 4 then play). Honestly, the only appeal of Battle Spot is the Special and Doubles rated ladder seeing as how they're the most popular and current ones AND they imitate the VGC16/VGC15 ruleset which is the one we currently have.
With all these different formats, it is impossible to make one single team that works in all of them so you need to choose and state the metagame you want to play in.
I'm not as familiar with VGC16 as I am with Smogon so I'll pass you a Smogon PU team I'm currently using on the ladder
TEAM :-
Unfezant @ Choice Band
Ability: Super Luck
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- U-turn
- Return
- Night Slash
- Quick Attack
I'm looking to try out the competitve scene, after completing my living pokedex and doing almost everything you can in my Alpha Sapphire game, looking to spice things up and try out battling. I'm familiar with breeding for competitive Pokemon and how to make sure you get certain moves and abilites with items. However, I don't really have much knowledge on what Pokemon are good at the moment as a new player.
My point being, what do you guys think would be a good all around competitve team for a new player to start on. A team that would suit a lot of opponent Pokemon whether not be the best, but average so I could learn the ropes. Also, are there any massive points I should know before getting into the competitve scene? Any tips?
Thanks everyone
Alright here's my two cents about competitive Pokemon. Firstly, there are several styles or formats that exist, the main two being Smogon and Battle Spot. These two break down into smaller subsets where Smogon consists of Doubles and Singles formats with a usage tier system aimed at balancing competitive play by grouping Pokemon into tiers based on their strength so like Latios and Landorus-Therian would be OU while Butterfree and Avalugg would be in PU. A majority of Singles battlers prefer Smogon over Battle Spot singles because of how the tiers allow you to be able to create teams for different metagames instead of just one centralized metagame so if you plan to play Singles competitively, I'd suggest looking up Smogon and Pokemon Showdown. Battle Spot is the more official format as it is programmed into ORAS. All types of battles are existent only there is no tiering system so you can bring anything that isn't a base 680 legendary Pokemon (except on the Special ladder). Battle Spot has more restrictions in terms of the amount of items you can bring to a battle (can't bring more than one of the same item on a team) and the amount of Pokemon you can bring to a match (its generally carry 6 and pick 3 or 4 then play). Honestly, the only appeal of Battle Spot is the Special and Doubles rated ladder seeing as how they're the most popular and current ones AND they imitate the VGC16/VGC15 ruleset which is the one we currently have.
With all these different formats, it is impossible to make one single team that works in all of them so you need to choose and state the metagame you want to play in.
I'm not as familiar with VGC16 as I am with Smogon so I'll pass you a Smogon PU team I'm currently using on the ladder
TEAM :-
Unfezant @ Choice Band
Ability: Super Luck
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- U-turn
- Return
- Night Slash
- Quick Attack
Smogon is not official battling. The VGC is the actual official battling. Smogon was created because they thought that using all pokemon for your team made it unbalanced. Though I would guess if you use a lower Smogon tier you probably won't do well at VGC. I don't know what the PU tier is.
You can also sign up on the pokemon-gl and sometimes they have online competitions. I did a johto classic so it was only first 2 gens of pokes and was a one on one battle. Each had a team of 6 (or less in the case of some of my competitors) and we fought 3 on 3.
I hope you don't feel bad for choosing smogon. That was not my intent. Just that Smogon rules will probably never go anywhere except online on pokemon showdown.
