Jul 16, 2015, 02:16 PM
Hey guys I am back finally with a post I was dying to do for some time, yes! One about teambuilding. following my own pattern of teambuilding through which I personally build my team. Everyone has their own way similar to many I may also having a different way of my own through which I can explain the most. Apart from teambuilding I would also include some points of my own to add up to some advice on teams you play; a sample team for VGC format would be included in the post to help as an example. Let’s get started:
Teambuilding:
Many beginners question how to teambuild, which obviously was my base for this specific post, the thing is to understand the term itself. Different formats like singles double may include different kinds of building strategies, this one would be given reference with VGC which I specialize in. everyone kind of already knows that in VGC there are 4-on-4 out of 6 double battles included. Similarly we would build our team on a strategy effective on this format. It seems very hard to choose 6 out of hundreds of them to beat others but is usually possible to do so, you also really wanna choose strong Pokémon, nor the basic form or the fully evolved cool looking one, speaking of one with better stats than others like beedrill, butterfree. So 10 what makes a team stronger? And 10.1 what is going to be used against me? 10.2 How do I know what to use? 10.3 what should give me help for the Pokémons on the team? 10.4 how should I balance a team? 10.5 I can’t teambuild! 10.6 how do I know the stats of so many Pokémons when in a battle? Following are some terms affiliated with teambuilding and do answer the questions
10 > Synergies: I have talked lots and lots on synergies, from what they are to what they do, hope you find the answer based on the post I made about synergies:http://pokemonforever.com/Thread-ORAS-VG...erstanding this article includes an introduction to synergies and types of synergies; there is not way or process to create synergies other than thinking about one yourself, ability to make awesome synergies increases with general skill and knowledge of the game and Pokémons.
10.1 & 10.2> Metagame: metagame is a very helpful list of Pokémons that shows that what Pokémons are being used the most that season. Metagame comes from the word meta meaning change and game well… meaning a strategy. Metagame as it means changes consequently over days and nights. Metagame can guide many to lead what to choose to counter the Pokémons that are being used the most. I personally still define metagame as a cycle of Pokémons that beat each other, well how does this happen? A guy uses a really strong Pokémon to defeat another Pokémon in the metagame, as that newly brought Pokémon comes on the scene others try and take out a new Pokémon purposely to defeat the one that was recently brought, this process continues. Metagame can be the answer to what to use and choose against these overused Pokémons. In usual the metagame is usually a 90%-10% difference in the meta and others being used, however in worlds or nats this probability goes up way higher with different players using interesting Pokémons.
10.3> Items, Moves, Themes, EV’s: ok you did choose the synergetic Pokémons at a number of six to beat others so what other things make it much better. Items: items are really an important thing in the competitive scene, each single Pokémon is sure to carry an item; some of the most used items would be: Choice items, mega stones, assault vest, leftovers, sitrus berry, life orb, focus sash, weakness policy, safety goggles, rocky helmet, lum berry, etc. moves: moves should be coordinative with the Pokémons on the team themselves, e.g. special attackers should carry special attacks and likewise physical attackers should carry physical attacks, support Pokémons should carry supportive moves coordinative with the team. Themes: themes are a big part of the strategy; themes like trick room, sand, rain, sun are usually run popular whereas hail is seen the least. EV’s: EV’s are a big part that help to increase a Pokémon’s stats by the help of EV’s any Pokémon can OHKO an opposing Pokémon outspeed the other one or even survive an opposing attack from them, I am not gonna put the definition of EV’s here as complex they are but I am sure you will find appropriate definitions in my “stats” post
10.4> Balancing: balancing a team is one of the most important things you should keep in mind at every step of the team you make, the team should be balanced by the division of 10.7 ‘roles’ they can provide, increasing the numbers of physical attackers would be useless against burning tactics, similarly adding on to 6x special attackers would be useless against a team with many specially defensive pokemons. Adding on 6x support pokemons on a team won’t dish out any damage. Hence it is very important to balance the components of a Pokémon team.
10.7> Roles: different Pokémons have different capabilities, likewise these are divided into some groups accordingly to their actions these are, different formats have different roles popular, this one gives reference to common VGC:
Special sweeper: a Pokémon specialized to deal heavy amount of damage on opponents with high special attack e.g. hydreigon , gardevoir.
Physical sweeper: a Pokémon specialized to deal heavy amount of damage through high physical attack stat e.g. mega-kangaskhan, mega- mawile.
Support (utility, redirection, trick roomers): a Pokémon meant to support the members of its team through status moves, these are even further categorized, utility: a pokemon with no major goal to fulfill however chosen purely for supportive purposes e.g. thundurus, gyarados, zapdos; redirection: a pokemon who can redirect away moves targeted at its ally through moves or abilities like rage powder, follow me or lightning rod e.g. amoongus, togekiss, pachirisu, clefable, raichu.
Physical wall: a Pokémon capable of withstanding physical moves with efficiency e.g. ferrothorn.
Special wall: a Pokémon capable of withstanding a special moves with efficiency e.g. gothitelle, cresselia.
Mixed sweeper: a Pokémon that can use offenses by means of both physical and special attack e.g. infernape.
Side sweeper: a pokemon that can serve purposes for offense as well as the defense of the team e.g. rotom-w/rotom-h
10.5 & 10.6> Increasing knowledge: well it is kinda really understood that teambuilding is one of the toughest things to do in competitive play increasing knowledge can even make better teams, also being up in a battle sometimes your knowledge can save you. There is a lot of problem for beginners even many experienced players to misjudge the stats of opposing obscure Pokémon this can be finished by reading about different Pokémons on the internet, even building some of my team I use differ Pokémons than from the meta to fulfill a purpose or two, the one I think the best is Pokémon database which provides the moves it can learn, base stats, and abilities. Following are some of the things you may have problems with identifying them:
Stats: stats of almost every Pokémon are different, this quarrel can be finished as suggested above, from reading about all the Pokémons, however some Pokémons have similar stats according to what type they are like steel types have high physical defenses and physical attack but lower special attack and defense; if this can be memorized it would be much easier of how to target down an opponent.
EV spreads: EV spreads for different Pokémons are even specialized to survive an attack, you really can’t ever know what a Pokémon’s ev spread is, but you can know that what is going to be ran popular and react to it accordingly. Online many of these can be found and also be build accordingly to counter them.
Now that we are done with everything basic I think that team building should be started. The following is a little line aiming to show how I stage teambuilding in VGC, hence teambuilding is not an easy thing to do, as I suffered about team building in the past by reading posts from online blogs I didn’t understood some of the things at all, so staging may help a lot, get ready, just let’s get started:
Outline of the team> Choosing a Base > Centralizing the base > Fill ins + Appropriate support > Testing > Ready!
Here you have my steps, you already know how I do the stuff, but what work on the team is included in these specific steps would be explained ahead.
1.Outline of the Team:
Before even starting to build the team, there are some principles to follow for me, you already know the two main aspects of it, but how when and why? Would be detailed:
Against the metagame: I did gave a brief description about the metagame, you already know from above that what is going to be thrown at you about 80% of the time, so planning ahead that the six Pokémon you choose on the team are purposely there to counter the metagame; if not it is sure to be said that you are going to suffer in the battles. There may be some common weakness of your team to a meta-mon in that case you can have counters to them. It should be included that speed and effectiveness plays an important role in interaction of two or more metagame Pokémons and should be kept in mind too.
Synergetic approach: a synergetic approach in VGC is always going to make a team much better. Synergies had their part in the post above this and a link was included for types of synergies. The advantage of having soo many synergies in doubles format is to play many of them and let your team coordinate with them, adding synergies like switch in, individual synergies, cores, leads should be kept in mind to include in the team. E.g. as common sense I should be having 6x Pokémons weak to flying type or something else, also if a major part of my team is weak to the usual talonflame I should keep something on the team to handle it for the ones weak to it
2.Choosing a base:
Now that we have our heads on an alert lets lay the foundation of our team. Many of you guys can still be getting me wrong about a base of the team, if I do say a thing as a base I mean that anything that our team would be build around, it can be a 10.8 weather, a 10.9 mega Pokémon or even a 10.10 synergetic tactic, 10.11 trick room, 10.12 tailwind or even perish trap. So why should you care? Why not random 6 beat them all? The fact here is that random six does not work as well as a base of the team, a team with a proper base already starts to have a synergetic start and builds up much better, giving one Pokémon what it needs (supporting it is always going to turn in the favor, and would help the overall team.
What is a good base for my team? :
10.8> Weather teams are among the most abundant and popular archetype you are likely to encounter at your VGC competition. Teams built around weather rely on weather effects to give various benefits and attack boosts to their Pokémon. Currently there are 4 types of weather: Rain, Sun, Hail, and Sandstorm. However, there are a few key things to keep in mind when playing with weather though. First, the slower Pokémon will have its weather effect on the field dominate if two Pokémon with differing weather abilities are released at the same time; this is to say, if Politoed and Hippowdon were released at the same time at the beginning of a battle, Politoed’s Drizzle Ability would come into play first and summon Rain, but this would be subsequently cancelled out and replaced by Hippowdon’s Sandstorm Ability, leaving Sandstorm as the weather in play. Second, keep in mind the need to switch - in the above example, for the player using Rain, they would need to switch out their Politoed and then bring it back in the next turn in order to have Rain back on their side of the field. Switches can happen quite often as players attempt to establish their weather preference, so prediction to what your opponent will do is always key.
Rain: First up, and probably the most popular type, are teams based around Rain. optionally, a few teams might opt to set up Rain manually with the Rain Dance attack (which can also be learned via a TM), but this is less than optimal as it lasts only a mere 5 turns (8 if the user is holding the item Damp Rock) compared to Rain brought in with Drizzle. Rain itself confers many advantages; it beefs up all Water type attacks used, weakens all Fire type attacks, increases the accuracy of Thunder and Hurricane from 70% to 100%, and triggers several Pokémon Abilities. Teams built with Rain usually carry Pokémon with the Swift Swim Ability, which effectively doubles their speed in battle. Two notable Swift Swim Pokémon are Ludicolo and Mega Swampert. Ludicolo has a fabulous typing of Water/Grass, making him not weak to the common counter of Electric attacks. In addition, Ludicolo has great defensive stats and offensive stats, and can learn a variety of support moves and damaging attacks depending on what you want to do with it.
Sun: Sun teams rely on Charizard y’s 100% of the time and its mega Ability, Drought, as with Rain teams, you can also opt to manually set up Sun via the attack Sunny Day (which also comes conveniently packaged in a TM and can be increased from 5 to 8 turns if the user holds Heat Rock). Sun teams are less effective overall, as many of the Pokémon that take advantage of it are weak to Water (which Rain teams love), Ground, and Rock (the last two of which Sandstorm teams love). Still, Sun itself is a useful condition; it boosts the attack power of Fire type moves while weakening Water, weakens the accuracy of Thunder and Hurricane from 70% to 50%, eliminates the charge time of Solar Beam, boosts the recovery of Synthesis, Morning Sun, and Moonlight, and triggers several Abilities reliant on Sun.
Sandstorm: Sandstorm (nicknamed SS) teams are not as attractive as Rain since many Pokémon that benefit from SS are weak to the popular ones on Rain teams, but it's still a useful weather type to build around. Much like Rain and Sun, SS provides varying benefits; it damages all non-Rock, Ground, and Steel Pokémon in-between turns, increases the Special Defense of Rock Pokemon by 50%, limits the power of Solarbeam and the effectiveness of Synthesis, Morning Sun, and Moonlight, and triggers Abilities associated with it. Unlike Rain and Sun, you have two legal options for Pokémon that can summon it to the field; Tyranitar and Hippowdon. Tyranitar is generally more favorable due to its typing and strong attacking potential, but Hippowdon is slower (a plus in the battle to establish weather) and defensively more sound. Optionally, you can use the SS TM as well, and increase its duration from 5 to 8 turns if holding Smooth Rock. Though not as abundant as Rain or Sun, Black and White introduced two new Abilities to take advantage of in SS: Sand Rush (another Speed doubler, akin to Swift Swim and Chlorophyll) and Sand Force, which increases the strength of a Pokémon’s Rock, Ground, and Steel type attacks in SS. The most notable example here is Excadrill; normally possessing great HP and Attack, but saddled with ok Speed, Sand Rush grants Excadrill a way to go in and get the first hits. Or, you can opt for Sand Force to give him unrivaled power. And of course, there’s Sand Veil as well, which ups the evasion of the Pokémon during a SS.
Hail: The final weather effect, Hail is a bit of an oddball; Hail is used as a counter tactic to other Weather teams, since so few Pokémon benefit from it, making it a “neutral” field so to speak when you replace another opposing weather effect. Hail does damage to all non-Ice type Pokémon in play in-between turns, which helps in weakening your opponent's Pokémon, but keep in mind it damages your Pokémon as well if they're not Ice types, the other option is to use the Hail TM to teach it to a Pokémon (and making it last longer if holding Icy Rock). This isn’t to say that a Hail team can’t be made, but it confers so little advantages to the team, with the most notable effect is a boost to Blizzard that makes it 100% accurate. Unlike Rain and Sun, Hail offers no boost to Ice type attacks and Ice, while a great attacking type, has never been that great defensively in taking hits. This makes abilities triggered by Hail like Ice Body and Snow Cloak less than stellar since the Pokémon possessing them are weak to the popular attacking types. Still, a team using Hail with Abomasnow and other strong Pokémon using Blizzard continuously to overpower and wear down the opposition works well, as very few Pokémon used will be resistant to Ice and Ice is a great attacking type.
if we specifically talk weather conditions the two most used are sun and rain teams, and team are usually well built nowadays to counter this widespread usage of weather effects, sand based team are not very popular, however all the tyranitar’s with sand stream ability are often seen, hail catches someone’s attraction in addition to abomasnow being such a beast, the 4x fire weakness is the only thing holding it back. Setting up of weather through a move in battle s not appreciated that much in the VGC 2015 season atleast or even items like weather extending rocks are avoided to be used, but however still are an option, instead Pokémons with weather setting abilities are used more often than these like politoed, charizard y, tyranitar and abomasnow is rarely seen. You aren’t forced to put on weather in your teams though by any means, many feature it while many don’t.
10.9> a Mega Pokémon: every team in VGC contain a mega Pokémon. Mega evolution first played in the 2014 season had the biggest impact on many team and tactics. Likewise the base I choose most of the time is a mega Pokémon. There are many mega Pokémons out of which are used more often than others though, like in the metagame, some are easy to play while some are difficult do play. However choice is all yours though. Mega evolution as you already know makes a Pokémon stronger by having a positive or sometimes inverse effect on their stats. Amongst competitive scene offensive mega Pokémons are used quite more often than support mega’s like audino and sableye.
10.10> Synergetic Tactic: synergy builds up good team to great, hence choosing a lead combination or a combination of two or more moves can also be laid as a base. However these are often difficult to discover, other than using a mega or weather as a base. Example in 10.13, also an example of trio core.
10.11 & 10.12> Speed Control:
Trick room: Trick room would be ranked by me the most dominant theme overall, trick room is not only a move but a theme though, many came and got out of the play where trick room really did stood up against everything. Trick room is a move that reverses the speed tiers of the Pokémons for 5 turns, in this way the slower ones move the first and latter come the fast ones. Trick room’s advantage is that it cannot be subsided by any other weather or move interruption, of course it resets itself wherever used 1 after another. Trick room itself being a -7 priority move (the slowest one) goes last for the setter up. Trick room is a reason giving slower Pokémons of the game given a chance; usually strong and bulky, oh yes! Now they move first!
Tailwind: Tailwind is the exact opposite of trick room mentioned above, yes it’s effect is to double the speed of its ally Pokémons, yet only for 4 turns not like trick room doing it for 5 turns, similarly it can’t be interrupted nor be reset, tailwind plays an important part in backing up Pokémons with a medium base speed like bisharp can be taken as an example
3.Centralizing The Base:
We finally have laid a base for our team, now is the step to build around that base, this purpose can be accomplished by many purposes centralizing the base can be thought of making the base the backbone of your team, some of them in my minds are as following:
Cores: cores are again a most common type of synergy, you already may have been through my synergy post including the topic of cores, but here again is a link: http://pokemonforever.com/Thread-ORAS-VG...erstanding
Finding the perfect counters: I thought this process of mine would really help the people who can’t find the perfect counters for their Pokémons on your team, dividing the process into steps really does help out; I would also give an example I once faced:
Detecting threats:
The first stage of doing so is detecting the Pokémon that threats your team, or takes out a big part of it
![[Image: landorus-therian.gif]](http://www.pokestadium.com/sprites/xy/landorus-therian.gif)
E.g. my team has trouble countering landorus-therian.
Making observations for threats: this is the second stage where you observe where you are getting beaten by a Pokémon and list down the reasons for it or the predictable traits of the Pokémon, weaknesses and strengths of it.
. Landorus therain usually carries a choice scarf with jolly nature.
. Ice attacks can easily take down landorus-therain.
. A physical attacker can’t be used because landorus-therain cuts their attacks wih its intimidate ability.
Statements:
. A special attacker, with ice type attacks outspeeding choice scarf landorus can counter it.
Matching requirements for countering the threat:
The following were a few I found rather obscure they work really well:
Matching with your teams composition and synergy:
At this point these both could’ve been used to counter landorus therain. Non of the two were disrupting my teams composition or synergy.
![[Image: starmie.gif]](http://www.pokestadium.com/sprites/xy/starmie.gif)
, ![[Image: raikou.gif]](http://www.pokestadium.com/sprites/xy/raikou.gif)
Experimentation
Experimentation won’t always rely on battles this can be easily obtained by using a damage calculator correctly for an example this is the one i use: http://pokemonshowdown.com/damagecalc/ , to see whether the pokemon OHKO’es the opposing pokemon you want to counter
4.Fill ins + Appropriate Support:
Now that you have a strong team going up it is the final step of putting Pokémons on the team, after you have centralized your base through cores; you may notice that a certain Pokémon on your team, or the majority of it is still weak to a particular tactic or Pokémon; this can also be fulfilled from 10.4 Balancing mentioned above in the post above. However there are some important points to highlight with reference to balancing a team:
. Keep the speed game in mind; control of speed is a big part of the game. Build with potential to counter changes in speed e.g. trick room.
. You should keep a reasonable amount of support Pokémons, 2 at max on a team.
. Balance the number of physical attacker and special attackers.
. Also keep counters to certain moves e.g. fake out, earthquake, etc.
Appropriate support may be good for your team, as a support Pokémon utilizes your team into a better one. But how do you know what support do you need? Well the answer is a bit complex, there are many types of support Pokémons; their typical names and roles would be explained as under:
Redirection: a Pokémon is a redirection support when it uses moves that can redirect attacks from their opponents to themselves; used widely in the VGC scene these are used amongst set-up sweepers who raise their own stats with the help of a move e.g. dragon dance. The moves for redirection are follow me and spore, used by Pokémons like togekiss, pachirisu, amoongus and etc.
Utility: a Pokémon is a utility support whence it carries moves like taunt and thunder wave, for example these Pokémons afflict status on the lower levels but are effective e.g. a good example for utility support is thundurus and supportive gyarados.
Will-o-wisper’s:will-o-wisp holds a special place in VGC, as being a TM move it can be learnt to many variants that can effectively use it with them. Burn cuts the opposing Pokémon’s attack in half what do we need more than that.
Prankster support: prankster is an ability beared by many like meowstic, sableye and tornadus which adds priority +1 to all of their non attacking moves, which potentially makes them a beast.
Speed control: speed is an important part of the game as I did mentioned somewhere above hence the Pokémons who can use speed control moves for various purposes are cresselia, suicune, trick roomers and etc.
Trick room support: trick room is a big part of the game, hence the Pokémons used to set up trick room are called trick room support.
Ability redirection: there are a lot of glitch tactics in VGC and especially the ones that irritate you. Ability’s like lightning rod and rai-choose-you duo is wicked though.
5.Testing (Improvements):
Efficient EV’ing:
Congrats you have putted 6 Pokémons on your team, now with reference to the question 10.3 we would continue our discussion. During your teambuild you may have putted on 252/252/4 EV spreads for common instance, but now we would explain these “ efficient EV’s” which basically means EV’d from efficiency, not wasting any of the EV’s on boosting certain stats. There are some aspects of EV’ing which makes them easy to obtain for this purpose: EV’ing against the meta; this is the most beneficial thing to do with EV’s e.g. a EV train my Pokémons to survive or outspeed a particular Pokémon that is not ever seen by anyone on the scene, that would be a waste of EV’s. Another example is train cresselia a trick room support as a physical defensive Pokémon; on trick room leads usually have a fighting type like scrafty and hariyama nowadays. Which are able to take care of Pokémons like bisharp and kangaskhan to that may threat cresselia, whereas on the other side there are Pokémons also like aegislash and hydreigon, hence training cresselia specially defensive is the better way to do it. These also might be known as many by specialized EV’s. it is not always essential to specialize a Pokémons EV spread some work the way they just love to, 252/252/4 spreads are the ways for some and even not for some. During testing these EV’s you putted on may be working the best or may not be, although specializing EV’s won’t work for every Pokémon.
Items:
Same as EV’ing you must have putted on some good items for which you think would work, also similar to EV’s they may do to, but for some members of the team there may be some confusion between a Pokémon or two’s items. Some Pokémons are only good when paired up with a certain item like landorus therain with choice scarf, but with most there are more than one items ran like talonflame with choice band, as well as life orb is popular, mamoswine with choice scarf and even life orb and focus sash are popular; most ludiculos are ran with assault vest but some carry the sitrus berry. Similarly with these examples as coordinated with your overall team, you may replace or switch an item or two here and there to whip up the team in shape again; and keep up the synergy.
Add & Drop:
You were just writing the team down on a paper when building it up, however what looked great on paper would may even suck overall when in a battle; well I am not saying that the team you built was pretty bad, but even though could have may weak spots to fill in right? This is a problem I face with most of my teams when I get into a battle; mentioned above items and EV spreads may be able to have been achieved by using damage calculators online, but a team’s add and drop step can’t be accomplished by just using calcs but other than getting out I a real battle to see what is weak on your team; Pokémon showdown is a great online simulator for battling on any formats to test out your team. Well during you test your team after figuring out the weaknesses and threats against you team you can again write down observations give deductions and find the perfect counter for the Pokémon on the team; sometimes to accomplish this you may have to replace a Pokémon or two from the team you just build but that’s for all good of it. Similar to adding and dropping Pokémons on a team you may also add or drop a moveslot or two to counter various scenarios; other than giving up a whole slot of a Pokémon for the purpose e.g. a counter to fake out can be the move quick guard on meowstic as well other than keeping one with the ability inner focus like sawk or meinshao.
Misconceptions of teambuilding in VGC:
This may get a little off from the actual post itself but this was really important to include here. You may have noticed when going through my ideas or teambuilds that I do like to go for some Pokémons that are potentially obscure; and even sometimes non-meta things. For this very reason I have been hated many times before when posting for help on my teams on various sites though and people have also hated some of my personal concepts on these topics; following are some things I would like to share with you guys:
Choosing from the meta: you may have heard that try to use Pokémons from the metagame; they are extremely strong but the metagame itself holds perfect counters to them. If you think about it for only like 5 minutes you realize it though. This concept has started to mislead many; however looking at the team of VGC 2014 worlds champion Sejun Park”s team which had a pachirisu on it; it really wasn’t ever seen being used before that.
When my answers aren’t meta, what and how? You may bring Pokémons to fulfill a purpose better than others to beat a certain scenario, that the metagame won’t provide counters to .Reading through all this you may be wondering 10.13 how should I use these, and how to recognize potential in an obscure Pokémon? 10.13> whenever I look at an individual Pokémon, not part of the meta there are some basic principles of what makes a Pokémon useful, come to my mind; I consider these things: stats, abilities, movepools & typing. All these things contained in a Pokémon can be abused to make a beast out of it. Whereas how do these matter in when I put on the team? Stats of a Pokémon can give it a special role paired up with other general things that others can’t get against the meta; abilities like have become the half of a reason a Pokémon is used in VGC like charizard y boosting its special attack with sun, ludiculo doubling its speed in rain and etc, similar to these other abilities can be put to great use on a team; moves are a great reason why Pokémons may be used e.g. getting a combination of two or three certain moves in a single Pokémon when the metamons won’t be able to learn it; and finally typing of a Pokémon can also be putted to extremely good us in terms of being capable of surviving attacks from others.
Things to keep in mind about VGC
.There are many combinations and tactics that are used often against you watch out for them.
.Never use entry hazards, considered as a waste of turn; hence 2-on-2 situations are less likely for players to switch out especially in 4-on-4 doubles.
.Set-up-sweepers can make their way in VGC; hence redirection support is available and used often.
.Switch out less predicting attacks but switch out more in favor of the current situation.
At every step check in your composition.
Sample Team:
The team infact was built a long-long time ago. Teams also go under changes, as the metagame changes it's many formes throughout the season, the latest up date on this team can be found here in a post i made on the site: http://pokemonforever.com/Thread-RATE-MY...d#pid67724
For the base of my team I wanted something strong and fast, hence as obvious not a trick room team a thing covering up many aspects of what metagame can bring, so I choose mega charizard as the base of my team, the following is the set and capabilities of mega charizard:
![[Image: charizard-megay.gif]](http://www.pokestadium.com/sprites/xy/charizard-megay.gif)
Charizard @ Charizardite Y
Ability: Blaze
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Heat Wave
- Protect
- Solar Beam
- Focus Blast
. mega charizard by bringing out the sun can really help keeping control of the weather on the field and also turning it into its favour.
. my mega charizard can handle heatran 1-on-1 situations.
. it carries the item charizardite Y.
. charizard can handle pokemons like mega-mawile and ferrothorn very well.
Second up on the team I really wanted something to make more use of charizard’s drought ability, hence the answer was venusaur
![[Image: venusaur.gif]](http://www.pokestadium.com/sprites/xy/venusaur.gif)
Venusaur @ Black Sludge
Ability: Chlorophyll
EVs: 44 HP / 112 Def / 252 SpA / 100 Spe
Modest Nature
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Giga Drain
- Sludge Bomb
- Protect
. venusaur can double up its speed in the sunny weather with it ability chlorophyll
. venusaur helps against threats like gastrodon, fairies like sylveon and gardevoir, and even the dragons with its secret HP ice.
. venusaur adds to the composition of the team’s overall bulk
. venusaur carries the item black sludge.
Third Pokémon on my team was sure going to be something forming like a core around it.
![[Image: lapras.gif]](http://www.pokestadium.com/sprites/xy/lapras.gif)
Lapras @ Assault Vest
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpA
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Freeze-Dry
- Ice Shard
- Ancient Power
- Surf
. Lapras gives me a nice F/W/G core in my team.
. Lapras can put the move freeze dry to great use in countering rain mode and gyarados which were going to be scary for my team.
. Lapras carries the move surf capable of hunting down mega camerupt by surprise in trick room situations.
. Lapras is also carrying the item assault vest making it bulky.
. Lapras also hunts down any opposing mega char y’s and talonflames with ancient power.
. lapras puts ice shard with little priority and quiet nature to great use.
Next I did noticed that charizard was quite open against moves like rock slide, hence I putted on this weird looking aegislash.
![[Image: aegislash.gif]](http://www.pokestadium.com/sprites/xy/aegislash.gif)
Aegislash @ Lum Berry
Ability: Stance Change
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Shadow Claw
- Iron Head
- Wide Guard
- King's Shield
. my physically offensive aegislash does not disrupts the team synergy.
. aegislash being a physically variant can hunt down phychic types like cresselia and gothitelle also fairies like sylveon and etc with more efficiency prepared for special aegislash.
. aegislash carries the item lum berry which puts it out of danger of moves like will-o-wisp and swagger (which also turns in its favour)
. aegislash’s main purpose is to guard charizard from rock slides and also itself from EQ’s.
A little support is always good with teams, and especially the ones who can help in tons of scenario’s
![[Image: meowstic.gif]](http://www.pokestadium.com/sprites/xy/meowstic.gif)
Meowstic (M) @ Safety Goggles
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Bold Nature
- Quick Guard
- Leer
- Thunder Wave
- Psyshock
. Meowstic helps protect against any priority moves with its +3 priority with quick guard.
. Meowstic helps both inside and outside of trick room with its thunder wave slot and makes tailwind users useless against me.
. Leer would be weird to see but helps greatly with itself and also other physical variants on the team.
. Physhock combined with leer is an example of synergy.
. Meowstic carries the item safety goggles.
Next up was the last slot of the team, I did knew that a physical attacker was gonna be putted on this slot; hence I choose the greatest of them all! Yes a mega kangaskhan; again a bit weird but still ok.
![[Image: kangaskhan-mega.gif]](http://www.pokestadium.com/sprites/xy/kangaskhan-mega.gif)
Kangaskhan (F) @ Kangaskhanite
Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fake Out
- Drain Punch
- Double-Edge
- Crunch
. mega kanagskahn took over for the situations in which charizard couldn’t have been brought.
. mega kangaskhan was pairing up nicely with the meowstic leer combination, complementing its attack stat even further.
. mega kangaskhan’s double edge and drain punch was also a synergetic example.
Team tips
. Being unpredictable e.g. using obscure Pokémons puts you on a head start; hence not many do this you can.
. Keeping a wide variety of mixed moves and types of Pokémons is better to do other than making mono, duo or trio typed teams.
Testing:
While testing the team I really felt like I was running many medium or slow speed pokemons and megakangaskhan was still a lose spot though.to fix this problem I switched out mega kangaskhan for a choice scarfed diggersby, it was giving me OHKO’es on opposing charizard’s earthquake flexibility with my own. so the team became:
![[Image: diggersby.gif]](http://www.pokestadium.com/sprites/xy/diggersby.gif)
[img]Diggersby @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Rock Slide
- Earthquake
- Superpower
- Strength[/img]
Conclusion:
Whoa! I never expected it to be that big of a post though, but finally it ends here and I really successfully was able to complete it by myself. I tried to cover up many things and it resulted in a thing making teambuilding scary. However if you know the right way to do it is all easy and fun thing though. Apart from what to use I also gave some tips on how to help improve your teambuilding skills by one way or the other. It may not be ok for some to read it in one try and understand all of it though you can come over again and again or just copy paste to read it later. This took such a long time to get all this text up to its full potential but I was so much fun doing it. Hope it helped. Bye for now!
Teambuilding:
Many beginners question how to teambuild, which obviously was my base for this specific post, the thing is to understand the term itself. Different formats like singles double may include different kinds of building strategies, this one would be given reference with VGC which I specialize in. everyone kind of already knows that in VGC there are 4-on-4 out of 6 double battles included. Similarly we would build our team on a strategy effective on this format. It seems very hard to choose 6 out of hundreds of them to beat others but is usually possible to do so, you also really wanna choose strong Pokémon, nor the basic form or the fully evolved cool looking one, speaking of one with better stats than others like beedrill, butterfree. So 10 what makes a team stronger? And 10.1 what is going to be used against me? 10.2 How do I know what to use? 10.3 what should give me help for the Pokémons on the team? 10.4 how should I balance a team? 10.5 I can’t teambuild! 10.6 how do I know the stats of so many Pokémons when in a battle? Following are some terms affiliated with teambuilding and do answer the questions
10 > Synergies: I have talked lots and lots on synergies, from what they are to what they do, hope you find the answer based on the post I made about synergies:http://pokemonforever.com/Thread-ORAS-VG...erstanding this article includes an introduction to synergies and types of synergies; there is not way or process to create synergies other than thinking about one yourself, ability to make awesome synergies increases with general skill and knowledge of the game and Pokémons.
10.1 & 10.2> Metagame: metagame is a very helpful list of Pokémons that shows that what Pokémons are being used the most that season. Metagame comes from the word meta meaning change and game well… meaning a strategy. Metagame as it means changes consequently over days and nights. Metagame can guide many to lead what to choose to counter the Pokémons that are being used the most. I personally still define metagame as a cycle of Pokémons that beat each other, well how does this happen? A guy uses a really strong Pokémon to defeat another Pokémon in the metagame, as that newly brought Pokémon comes on the scene others try and take out a new Pokémon purposely to defeat the one that was recently brought, this process continues. Metagame can be the answer to what to use and choose against these overused Pokémons. In usual the metagame is usually a 90%-10% difference in the meta and others being used, however in worlds or nats this probability goes up way higher with different players using interesting Pokémons.
10.3> Items, Moves, Themes, EV’s: ok you did choose the synergetic Pokémons at a number of six to beat others so what other things make it much better. Items: items are really an important thing in the competitive scene, each single Pokémon is sure to carry an item; some of the most used items would be: Choice items, mega stones, assault vest, leftovers, sitrus berry, life orb, focus sash, weakness policy, safety goggles, rocky helmet, lum berry, etc. moves: moves should be coordinative with the Pokémons on the team themselves, e.g. special attackers should carry special attacks and likewise physical attackers should carry physical attacks, support Pokémons should carry supportive moves coordinative with the team. Themes: themes are a big part of the strategy; themes like trick room, sand, rain, sun are usually run popular whereas hail is seen the least. EV’s: EV’s are a big part that help to increase a Pokémon’s stats by the help of EV’s any Pokémon can OHKO an opposing Pokémon outspeed the other one or even survive an opposing attack from them, I am not gonna put the definition of EV’s here as complex they are but I am sure you will find appropriate definitions in my “stats” post
10.4> Balancing: balancing a team is one of the most important things you should keep in mind at every step of the team you make, the team should be balanced by the division of 10.7 ‘roles’ they can provide, increasing the numbers of physical attackers would be useless against burning tactics, similarly adding on to 6x special attackers would be useless against a team with many specially defensive pokemons. Adding on 6x support pokemons on a team won’t dish out any damage. Hence it is very important to balance the components of a Pokémon team.
10.7> Roles: different Pokémons have different capabilities, likewise these are divided into some groups accordingly to their actions these are, different formats have different roles popular, this one gives reference to common VGC:
Special sweeper: a Pokémon specialized to deal heavy amount of damage on opponents with high special attack e.g. hydreigon , gardevoir.
Physical sweeper: a Pokémon specialized to deal heavy amount of damage through high physical attack stat e.g. mega-kangaskhan, mega- mawile.
Support (utility, redirection, trick roomers): a Pokémon meant to support the members of its team through status moves, these are even further categorized, utility: a pokemon with no major goal to fulfill however chosen purely for supportive purposes e.g. thundurus, gyarados, zapdos; redirection: a pokemon who can redirect away moves targeted at its ally through moves or abilities like rage powder, follow me or lightning rod e.g. amoongus, togekiss, pachirisu, clefable, raichu.
Physical wall: a Pokémon capable of withstanding physical moves with efficiency e.g. ferrothorn.
Special wall: a Pokémon capable of withstanding a special moves with efficiency e.g. gothitelle, cresselia.
Mixed sweeper: a Pokémon that can use offenses by means of both physical and special attack e.g. infernape.
Side sweeper: a pokemon that can serve purposes for offense as well as the defense of the team e.g. rotom-w/rotom-h
10.5 & 10.6> Increasing knowledge: well it is kinda really understood that teambuilding is one of the toughest things to do in competitive play increasing knowledge can even make better teams, also being up in a battle sometimes your knowledge can save you. There is a lot of problem for beginners even many experienced players to misjudge the stats of opposing obscure Pokémon this can be finished by reading about different Pokémons on the internet, even building some of my team I use differ Pokémons than from the meta to fulfill a purpose or two, the one I think the best is Pokémon database which provides the moves it can learn, base stats, and abilities. Following are some of the things you may have problems with identifying them:
Stats: stats of almost every Pokémon are different, this quarrel can be finished as suggested above, from reading about all the Pokémons, however some Pokémons have similar stats according to what type they are like steel types have high physical defenses and physical attack but lower special attack and defense; if this can be memorized it would be much easier of how to target down an opponent.
EV spreads: EV spreads for different Pokémons are even specialized to survive an attack, you really can’t ever know what a Pokémon’s ev spread is, but you can know that what is going to be ran popular and react to it accordingly. Online many of these can be found and also be build accordingly to counter them.
Now that we are done with everything basic I think that team building should be started. The following is a little line aiming to show how I stage teambuilding in VGC, hence teambuilding is not an easy thing to do, as I suffered about team building in the past by reading posts from online blogs I didn’t understood some of the things at all, so staging may help a lot, get ready, just let’s get started:
Outline of the team> Choosing a Base > Centralizing the base > Fill ins + Appropriate support > Testing > Ready!
Here you have my steps, you already know how I do the stuff, but what work on the team is included in these specific steps would be explained ahead.
1.Outline of the Team:
Before even starting to build the team, there are some principles to follow for me, you already know the two main aspects of it, but how when and why? Would be detailed:
Against the metagame: I did gave a brief description about the metagame, you already know from above that what is going to be thrown at you about 80% of the time, so planning ahead that the six Pokémon you choose on the team are purposely there to counter the metagame; if not it is sure to be said that you are going to suffer in the battles. There may be some common weakness of your team to a meta-mon in that case you can have counters to them. It should be included that speed and effectiveness plays an important role in interaction of two or more metagame Pokémons and should be kept in mind too.
Synergetic approach: a synergetic approach in VGC is always going to make a team much better. Synergies had their part in the post above this and a link was included for types of synergies. The advantage of having soo many synergies in doubles format is to play many of them and let your team coordinate with them, adding synergies like switch in, individual synergies, cores, leads should be kept in mind to include in the team. E.g. as common sense I should be having 6x Pokémons weak to flying type or something else, also if a major part of my team is weak to the usual talonflame I should keep something on the team to handle it for the ones weak to it
2.Choosing a base:
Now that we have our heads on an alert lets lay the foundation of our team. Many of you guys can still be getting me wrong about a base of the team, if I do say a thing as a base I mean that anything that our team would be build around, it can be a 10.8 weather, a 10.9 mega Pokémon or even a 10.10 synergetic tactic, 10.11 trick room, 10.12 tailwind or even perish trap. So why should you care? Why not random 6 beat them all? The fact here is that random six does not work as well as a base of the team, a team with a proper base already starts to have a synergetic start and builds up much better, giving one Pokémon what it needs (supporting it is always going to turn in the favor, and would help the overall team.
What is a good base for my team? :
10.8> Weather teams are among the most abundant and popular archetype you are likely to encounter at your VGC competition. Teams built around weather rely on weather effects to give various benefits and attack boosts to their Pokémon. Currently there are 4 types of weather: Rain, Sun, Hail, and Sandstorm. However, there are a few key things to keep in mind when playing with weather though. First, the slower Pokémon will have its weather effect on the field dominate if two Pokémon with differing weather abilities are released at the same time; this is to say, if Politoed and Hippowdon were released at the same time at the beginning of a battle, Politoed’s Drizzle Ability would come into play first and summon Rain, but this would be subsequently cancelled out and replaced by Hippowdon’s Sandstorm Ability, leaving Sandstorm as the weather in play. Second, keep in mind the need to switch - in the above example, for the player using Rain, they would need to switch out their Politoed and then bring it back in the next turn in order to have Rain back on their side of the field. Switches can happen quite often as players attempt to establish their weather preference, so prediction to what your opponent will do is always key.
Rain: First up, and probably the most popular type, are teams based around Rain. optionally, a few teams might opt to set up Rain manually with the Rain Dance attack (which can also be learned via a TM), but this is less than optimal as it lasts only a mere 5 turns (8 if the user is holding the item Damp Rock) compared to Rain brought in with Drizzle. Rain itself confers many advantages; it beefs up all Water type attacks used, weakens all Fire type attacks, increases the accuracy of Thunder and Hurricane from 70% to 100%, and triggers several Pokémon Abilities. Teams built with Rain usually carry Pokémon with the Swift Swim Ability, which effectively doubles their speed in battle. Two notable Swift Swim Pokémon are Ludicolo and Mega Swampert. Ludicolo has a fabulous typing of Water/Grass, making him not weak to the common counter of Electric attacks. In addition, Ludicolo has great defensive stats and offensive stats, and can learn a variety of support moves and damaging attacks depending on what you want to do with it.
Sun: Sun teams rely on Charizard y’s 100% of the time and its mega Ability, Drought, as with Rain teams, you can also opt to manually set up Sun via the attack Sunny Day (which also comes conveniently packaged in a TM and can be increased from 5 to 8 turns if the user holds Heat Rock). Sun teams are less effective overall, as many of the Pokémon that take advantage of it are weak to Water (which Rain teams love), Ground, and Rock (the last two of which Sandstorm teams love). Still, Sun itself is a useful condition; it boosts the attack power of Fire type moves while weakening Water, weakens the accuracy of Thunder and Hurricane from 70% to 50%, eliminates the charge time of Solar Beam, boosts the recovery of Synthesis, Morning Sun, and Moonlight, and triggers several Abilities reliant on Sun.
Sandstorm: Sandstorm (nicknamed SS) teams are not as attractive as Rain since many Pokémon that benefit from SS are weak to the popular ones on Rain teams, but it's still a useful weather type to build around. Much like Rain and Sun, SS provides varying benefits; it damages all non-Rock, Ground, and Steel Pokémon in-between turns, increases the Special Defense of Rock Pokemon by 50%, limits the power of Solarbeam and the effectiveness of Synthesis, Morning Sun, and Moonlight, and triggers Abilities associated with it. Unlike Rain and Sun, you have two legal options for Pokémon that can summon it to the field; Tyranitar and Hippowdon. Tyranitar is generally more favorable due to its typing and strong attacking potential, but Hippowdon is slower (a plus in the battle to establish weather) and defensively more sound. Optionally, you can use the SS TM as well, and increase its duration from 5 to 8 turns if holding Smooth Rock. Though not as abundant as Rain or Sun, Black and White introduced two new Abilities to take advantage of in SS: Sand Rush (another Speed doubler, akin to Swift Swim and Chlorophyll) and Sand Force, which increases the strength of a Pokémon’s Rock, Ground, and Steel type attacks in SS. The most notable example here is Excadrill; normally possessing great HP and Attack, but saddled with ok Speed, Sand Rush grants Excadrill a way to go in and get the first hits. Or, you can opt for Sand Force to give him unrivaled power. And of course, there’s Sand Veil as well, which ups the evasion of the Pokémon during a SS.
Hail: The final weather effect, Hail is a bit of an oddball; Hail is used as a counter tactic to other Weather teams, since so few Pokémon benefit from it, making it a “neutral” field so to speak when you replace another opposing weather effect. Hail does damage to all non-Ice type Pokémon in play in-between turns, which helps in weakening your opponent's Pokémon, but keep in mind it damages your Pokémon as well if they're not Ice types, the other option is to use the Hail TM to teach it to a Pokémon (and making it last longer if holding Icy Rock). This isn’t to say that a Hail team can’t be made, but it confers so little advantages to the team, with the most notable effect is a boost to Blizzard that makes it 100% accurate. Unlike Rain and Sun, Hail offers no boost to Ice type attacks and Ice, while a great attacking type, has never been that great defensively in taking hits. This makes abilities triggered by Hail like Ice Body and Snow Cloak less than stellar since the Pokémon possessing them are weak to the popular attacking types. Still, a team using Hail with Abomasnow and other strong Pokémon using Blizzard continuously to overpower and wear down the opposition works well, as very few Pokémon used will be resistant to Ice and Ice is a great attacking type.
if we specifically talk weather conditions the two most used are sun and rain teams, and team are usually well built nowadays to counter this widespread usage of weather effects, sand based team are not very popular, however all the tyranitar’s with sand stream ability are often seen, hail catches someone’s attraction in addition to abomasnow being such a beast, the 4x fire weakness is the only thing holding it back. Setting up of weather through a move in battle s not appreciated that much in the VGC 2015 season atleast or even items like weather extending rocks are avoided to be used, but however still are an option, instead Pokémons with weather setting abilities are used more often than these like politoed, charizard y, tyranitar and abomasnow is rarely seen. You aren’t forced to put on weather in your teams though by any means, many feature it while many don’t.
10.9> a Mega Pokémon: every team in VGC contain a mega Pokémon. Mega evolution first played in the 2014 season had the biggest impact on many team and tactics. Likewise the base I choose most of the time is a mega Pokémon. There are many mega Pokémons out of which are used more often than others though, like in the metagame, some are easy to play while some are difficult do play. However choice is all yours though. Mega evolution as you already know makes a Pokémon stronger by having a positive or sometimes inverse effect on their stats. Amongst competitive scene offensive mega Pokémons are used quite more often than support mega’s like audino and sableye.
10.10> Synergetic Tactic: synergy builds up good team to great, hence choosing a lead combination or a combination of two or more moves can also be laid as a base. However these are often difficult to discover, other than using a mega or weather as a base. Example in 10.13, also an example of trio core.
10.11 & 10.12> Speed Control:
Trick room: Trick room would be ranked by me the most dominant theme overall, trick room is not only a move but a theme though, many came and got out of the play where trick room really did stood up against everything. Trick room is a move that reverses the speed tiers of the Pokémons for 5 turns, in this way the slower ones move the first and latter come the fast ones. Trick room’s advantage is that it cannot be subsided by any other weather or move interruption, of course it resets itself wherever used 1 after another. Trick room itself being a -7 priority move (the slowest one) goes last for the setter up. Trick room is a reason giving slower Pokémons of the game given a chance; usually strong and bulky, oh yes! Now they move first!
Tailwind: Tailwind is the exact opposite of trick room mentioned above, yes it’s effect is to double the speed of its ally Pokémons, yet only for 4 turns not like trick room doing it for 5 turns, similarly it can’t be interrupted nor be reset, tailwind plays an important part in backing up Pokémons with a medium base speed like bisharp can be taken as an example
3.Centralizing The Base:
We finally have laid a base for our team, now is the step to build around that base, this purpose can be accomplished by many purposes centralizing the base can be thought of making the base the backbone of your team, some of them in my minds are as following:
Cores: cores are again a most common type of synergy, you already may have been through my synergy post including the topic of cores, but here again is a link: http://pokemonforever.com/Thread-ORAS-VG...erstanding
Finding the perfect counters: I thought this process of mine would really help the people who can’t find the perfect counters for their Pokémons on your team, dividing the process into steps really does help out; I would also give an example I once faced:
Detecting threats:
The first stage of doing so is detecting the Pokémon that threats your team, or takes out a big part of it
E.g. my team has trouble countering landorus-therian.
Making observations for threats: this is the second stage where you observe where you are getting beaten by a Pokémon and list down the reasons for it or the predictable traits of the Pokémon, weaknesses and strengths of it.
. Landorus therain usually carries a choice scarf with jolly nature.
. Ice attacks can easily take down landorus-therain.
. A physical attacker can’t be used because landorus-therain cuts their attacks wih its intimidate ability.
Statements:
. A special attacker, with ice type attacks outspeeding choice scarf landorus can counter it.
Matching requirements for countering the threat:
The following were a few I found rather obscure they work really well:
Matching with your teams composition and synergy:
At this point these both could’ve been used to counter landorus therain. Non of the two were disrupting my teams composition or synergy.
, Experimentation
Experimentation won’t always rely on battles this can be easily obtained by using a damage calculator correctly for an example this is the one i use: http://pokemonshowdown.com/damagecalc/ , to see whether the pokemon OHKO’es the opposing pokemon you want to counter
4.Fill ins + Appropriate Support:
Now that you have a strong team going up it is the final step of putting Pokémons on the team, after you have centralized your base through cores; you may notice that a certain Pokémon on your team, or the majority of it is still weak to a particular tactic or Pokémon; this can also be fulfilled from 10.4 Balancing mentioned above in the post above. However there are some important points to highlight with reference to balancing a team:
. Keep the speed game in mind; control of speed is a big part of the game. Build with potential to counter changes in speed e.g. trick room.
. You should keep a reasonable amount of support Pokémons, 2 at max on a team.
. Balance the number of physical attacker and special attackers.
. Also keep counters to certain moves e.g. fake out, earthquake, etc.
Appropriate support may be good for your team, as a support Pokémon utilizes your team into a better one. But how do you know what support do you need? Well the answer is a bit complex, there are many types of support Pokémons; their typical names and roles would be explained as under:
Redirection: a Pokémon is a redirection support when it uses moves that can redirect attacks from their opponents to themselves; used widely in the VGC scene these are used amongst set-up sweepers who raise their own stats with the help of a move e.g. dragon dance. The moves for redirection are follow me and spore, used by Pokémons like togekiss, pachirisu, amoongus and etc.
Utility: a Pokémon is a utility support whence it carries moves like taunt and thunder wave, for example these Pokémons afflict status on the lower levels but are effective e.g. a good example for utility support is thundurus and supportive gyarados.
Will-o-wisper’s:will-o-wisp holds a special place in VGC, as being a TM move it can be learnt to many variants that can effectively use it with them. Burn cuts the opposing Pokémon’s attack in half what do we need more than that.
Prankster support: prankster is an ability beared by many like meowstic, sableye and tornadus which adds priority +1 to all of their non attacking moves, which potentially makes them a beast.
Speed control: speed is an important part of the game as I did mentioned somewhere above hence the Pokémons who can use speed control moves for various purposes are cresselia, suicune, trick roomers and etc.
Trick room support: trick room is a big part of the game, hence the Pokémons used to set up trick room are called trick room support.
Ability redirection: there are a lot of glitch tactics in VGC and especially the ones that irritate you. Ability’s like lightning rod and rai-choose-you duo is wicked though.
5.Testing (Improvements):
Efficient EV’ing:
Congrats you have putted 6 Pokémons on your team, now with reference to the question 10.3 we would continue our discussion. During your teambuild you may have putted on 252/252/4 EV spreads for common instance, but now we would explain these “ efficient EV’s” which basically means EV’d from efficiency, not wasting any of the EV’s on boosting certain stats. There are some aspects of EV’ing which makes them easy to obtain for this purpose: EV’ing against the meta; this is the most beneficial thing to do with EV’s e.g. a EV train my Pokémons to survive or outspeed a particular Pokémon that is not ever seen by anyone on the scene, that would be a waste of EV’s. Another example is train cresselia a trick room support as a physical defensive Pokémon; on trick room leads usually have a fighting type like scrafty and hariyama nowadays. Which are able to take care of Pokémons like bisharp and kangaskhan to that may threat cresselia, whereas on the other side there are Pokémons also like aegislash and hydreigon, hence training cresselia specially defensive is the better way to do it. These also might be known as many by specialized EV’s. it is not always essential to specialize a Pokémons EV spread some work the way they just love to, 252/252/4 spreads are the ways for some and even not for some. During testing these EV’s you putted on may be working the best or may not be, although specializing EV’s won’t work for every Pokémon.
Items:
Same as EV’ing you must have putted on some good items for which you think would work, also similar to EV’s they may do to, but for some members of the team there may be some confusion between a Pokémon or two’s items. Some Pokémons are only good when paired up with a certain item like landorus therain with choice scarf, but with most there are more than one items ran like talonflame with choice band, as well as life orb is popular, mamoswine with choice scarf and even life orb and focus sash are popular; most ludiculos are ran with assault vest but some carry the sitrus berry. Similarly with these examples as coordinated with your overall team, you may replace or switch an item or two here and there to whip up the team in shape again; and keep up the synergy.
Add & Drop:
You were just writing the team down on a paper when building it up, however what looked great on paper would may even suck overall when in a battle; well I am not saying that the team you built was pretty bad, but even though could have may weak spots to fill in right? This is a problem I face with most of my teams when I get into a battle; mentioned above items and EV spreads may be able to have been achieved by using damage calculators online, but a team’s add and drop step can’t be accomplished by just using calcs but other than getting out I a real battle to see what is weak on your team; Pokémon showdown is a great online simulator for battling on any formats to test out your team. Well during you test your team after figuring out the weaknesses and threats against you team you can again write down observations give deductions and find the perfect counter for the Pokémon on the team; sometimes to accomplish this you may have to replace a Pokémon or two from the team you just build but that’s for all good of it. Similar to adding and dropping Pokémons on a team you may also add or drop a moveslot or two to counter various scenarios; other than giving up a whole slot of a Pokémon for the purpose e.g. a counter to fake out can be the move quick guard on meowstic as well other than keeping one with the ability inner focus like sawk or meinshao.
Misconceptions of teambuilding in VGC:
This may get a little off from the actual post itself but this was really important to include here. You may have noticed when going through my ideas or teambuilds that I do like to go for some Pokémons that are potentially obscure; and even sometimes non-meta things. For this very reason I have been hated many times before when posting for help on my teams on various sites though and people have also hated some of my personal concepts on these topics; following are some things I would like to share with you guys:
Choosing from the meta: you may have heard that try to use Pokémons from the metagame; they are extremely strong but the metagame itself holds perfect counters to them. If you think about it for only like 5 minutes you realize it though. This concept has started to mislead many; however looking at the team of VGC 2014 worlds champion Sejun Park”s team which had a pachirisu on it; it really wasn’t ever seen being used before that.
When my answers aren’t meta, what and how? You may bring Pokémons to fulfill a purpose better than others to beat a certain scenario, that the metagame won’t provide counters to .Reading through all this you may be wondering 10.13 how should I use these, and how to recognize potential in an obscure Pokémon? 10.13> whenever I look at an individual Pokémon, not part of the meta there are some basic principles of what makes a Pokémon useful, come to my mind; I consider these things: stats, abilities, movepools & typing. All these things contained in a Pokémon can be abused to make a beast out of it. Whereas how do these matter in when I put on the team? Stats of a Pokémon can give it a special role paired up with other general things that others can’t get against the meta; abilities like have become the half of a reason a Pokémon is used in VGC like charizard y boosting its special attack with sun, ludiculo doubling its speed in rain and etc, similar to these other abilities can be put to great use on a team; moves are a great reason why Pokémons may be used e.g. getting a combination of two or three certain moves in a single Pokémon when the metamons won’t be able to learn it; and finally typing of a Pokémon can also be putted to extremely good us in terms of being capable of surviving attacks from others.
Things to keep in mind about VGC
.There are many combinations and tactics that are used often against you watch out for them.
.Never use entry hazards, considered as a waste of turn; hence 2-on-2 situations are less likely for players to switch out especially in 4-on-4 doubles.
.Set-up-sweepers can make their way in VGC; hence redirection support is available and used often.
.Switch out less predicting attacks but switch out more in favor of the current situation.
At every step check in your composition.
Sample Team:
The team infact was built a long-long time ago. Teams also go under changes, as the metagame changes it's many formes throughout the season, the latest up date on this team can be found here in a post i made on the site: http://pokemonforever.com/Thread-RATE-MY...d#pid67724
For the base of my team I wanted something strong and fast, hence as obvious not a trick room team a thing covering up many aspects of what metagame can bring, so I choose mega charizard as the base of my team, the following is the set and capabilities of mega charizard:
Charizard @ Charizardite Y
Ability: Blaze
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Heat Wave
- Protect
- Solar Beam
- Focus Blast
. mega charizard by bringing out the sun can really help keeping control of the weather on the field and also turning it into its favour.
. my mega charizard can handle heatran 1-on-1 situations.
. it carries the item charizardite Y.
. charizard can handle pokemons like mega-mawile and ferrothorn very well.
Second up on the team I really wanted something to make more use of charizard’s drought ability, hence the answer was venusaur
Venusaur @ Black Sludge
Ability: Chlorophyll
EVs: 44 HP / 112 Def / 252 SpA / 100 Spe
Modest Nature
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Giga Drain
- Sludge Bomb
- Protect
. venusaur can double up its speed in the sunny weather with it ability chlorophyll
. venusaur helps against threats like gastrodon, fairies like sylveon and gardevoir, and even the dragons with its secret HP ice.
. venusaur adds to the composition of the team’s overall bulk
. venusaur carries the item black sludge.
Third Pokémon on my team was sure going to be something forming like a core around it.
Lapras @ Assault Vest
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpA
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Freeze-Dry
- Ice Shard
- Ancient Power
- Surf
. Lapras gives me a nice F/W/G core in my team.
. Lapras can put the move freeze dry to great use in countering rain mode and gyarados which were going to be scary for my team.
. Lapras carries the move surf capable of hunting down mega camerupt by surprise in trick room situations.
. Lapras is also carrying the item assault vest making it bulky.
. Lapras also hunts down any opposing mega char y’s and talonflames with ancient power.
. lapras puts ice shard with little priority and quiet nature to great use.
Next I did noticed that charizard was quite open against moves like rock slide, hence I putted on this weird looking aegislash.
Aegislash @ Lum Berry
Ability: Stance Change
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Shadow Claw
- Iron Head
- Wide Guard
- King's Shield
. my physically offensive aegislash does not disrupts the team synergy.
. aegislash being a physically variant can hunt down phychic types like cresselia and gothitelle also fairies like sylveon and etc with more efficiency prepared for special aegislash.
. aegislash carries the item lum berry which puts it out of danger of moves like will-o-wisp and swagger (which also turns in its favour)
. aegislash’s main purpose is to guard charizard from rock slides and also itself from EQ’s.
A little support is always good with teams, and especially the ones who can help in tons of scenario’s
Meowstic (M) @ Safety Goggles
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Bold Nature
- Quick Guard
- Leer
- Thunder Wave
- Psyshock
. Meowstic helps protect against any priority moves with its +3 priority with quick guard.
. Meowstic helps both inside and outside of trick room with its thunder wave slot and makes tailwind users useless against me.
. Leer would be weird to see but helps greatly with itself and also other physical variants on the team.
. Physhock combined with leer is an example of synergy.
. Meowstic carries the item safety goggles.
Next up was the last slot of the team, I did knew that a physical attacker was gonna be putted on this slot; hence I choose the greatest of them all! Yes a mega kangaskhan; again a bit weird but still ok.
Kangaskhan (F) @ Kangaskhanite
Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fake Out
- Drain Punch
- Double-Edge
- Crunch
. mega kanagskahn took over for the situations in which charizard couldn’t have been brought.
. mega kangaskhan was pairing up nicely with the meowstic leer combination, complementing its attack stat even further.
. mega kangaskhan’s double edge and drain punch was also a synergetic example.
Team tips
. Being unpredictable e.g. using obscure Pokémons puts you on a head start; hence not many do this you can.
. Keeping a wide variety of mixed moves and types of Pokémons is better to do other than making mono, duo or trio typed teams.
Testing:
While testing the team I really felt like I was running many medium or slow speed pokemons and megakangaskhan was still a lose spot though.to fix this problem I switched out mega kangaskhan for a choice scarfed diggersby, it was giving me OHKO’es on opposing charizard’s earthquake flexibility with my own. so the team became:
[img]Diggersby @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Rock Slide
- Earthquake
- Superpower
- Strength[/img]
Conclusion:
Whoa! I never expected it to be that big of a post though, but finally it ends here and I really successfully was able to complete it by myself. I tried to cover up many things and it resulted in a thing making teambuilding scary. However if you know the right way to do it is all easy and fun thing though. Apart from what to use I also gave some tips on how to help improve your teambuilding skills by one way or the other. It may not be ok for some to read it in one try and understand all of it though you can come over again and again or just copy paste to read it later. This took such a long time to get all this text up to its full potential but I was so much fun doing it. Hope it helped. Bye for now!
