Pokemon
Hello there! You must be an acquaintance of miss Feni if you've stumbled upon my petpage. My name is Pokemon, and I'm here to enlighten you all about the strategy that goes into a 'HARDCORE' pla[injection]yer's team. Ready? Let's get started!
One lovely resource for movesets, natures, and EVs (all which will be later explained with great detail on this guide) is Smogon. This is one of the best (if not the best) places to see the strategies and such of true competitive battlers. The people who contribute here are die-hard Pokémon fans. They’ve spent a good majority of their time with what they put up, so you can trust them. As I said before, you might not want to follow everything they say in light of personal preferences.
Information You Need to Know
Movesets and Types of Attacks
Every Pokémon can only learn four moves. Depending on the type of battler you want, you will use different types of moves. Some prefer to wear out the foe. Others like to take them out with various attacks.There are three main types of moves: Physical, Special, and Other.
Physical attacks gain their power from the Attack stat. The higher it is, the stronger your Physical attacks are. They are stopped by the opponent’s Defense stat. The higher the Defense, the less damage your attack will do.
Special attacks, likewise, are heightened by the Special Attack Stat. They are hindered by the Special Defense stat.
The Other type describes stat-increasing or reducing moves like Growl and Swords Dance. These attacks are not increased or decreased by any statistic. They're quite useful though. Tiers These are the rankings of Pokémon. Now I have taken these from Smogon, so if you want to check out which Pokémon fall where if you don’t know so already, feel free to go here. The rankings are as follows.
Uber – Contains Pokémon which are too powerful to be used in a standard battle. These include most of the legendaries. And Salamence. Any other Pokémon exempting Ubers can be used in standard play.
Standard/Overused (OU) – The normal tier for the metagame. Contains the Pokémon you see most of the time.
Borderline (BL) – Pokémon that are still more popular than than UU but usually aren’t seen on standard teams.
Underused (UU) – Contains Pokémon who aren’t used too often. They are generally ‘weaker’ than standard tier, but they can still hold their own against a few in a Standard game. People don’t choose to use them much, though.
Neverused (NU) – Bottom of the barrel. Don’t use them unless you either want to be different or get beat up in competitive battling.
Not Fully Evolved (NFE) – Although not really a tier, we need somewhere where we can chuck the rest of the Pokémon. As they aren’t at their full potential, NFE tier Pokémon are rarely used.
Effort Values (EVs)
Effort Values are essential when you’re training any Pokémon. Why? They raise your ba[injection]se stats, and you get EVs every time you battle until a certain point (battles in which you gain experience). Pokémon have set EVs. In some, it’s easy to tell. For example, let’s take Zigzagoon. I’ve trained one in the 3rd Generation games and found out it was quite fast. If you look at Serebii.net’s Pokédex, you could see that it gives 1 Speed Effort Value. It’s harder to tell in some others, and some even give EVs in different stats. Take Venusaur for example; it gives 1 EV in Special Attack and 1 EV in Special Defense. It is possible to have up to 3 EVs given from a particular stat, per Pokémon, as well. Blissey, for example, gives 3 Hit Point EVs.So let’s say you were raising a Leafeon, like I have done. And say I was battling Pikachus. Pikas give 2 Speed EVs. After I have defeated two of them for a total of four Effort Values in Speed, it would gain one more point in speed (when it levels)than if it had beaten three Pikas and one Roselia (2 Special Attack EVs).
There has to be a limit to all of this, though! You can get 510 Effort Values before they’ll stop being counted. The Effort Ribbon is given to Pokémon who have surpassed 510 EVs. In the 4th Generation games, you can find the Effort Ribbon woman in Sunnyshore’s market. She’s the ‘seller’ in the bottom left corner. The Effort POINTS you can gain is a whopping 126. But that needs a limit too. You are only allowed 255 Effort Values per stat, making 63 Effort Points per stat available for your Pokémon as a maximum.
You might say to yourself, “I don’t want to battle 255 Zigzagoon! There has to be another way of accomplishing this!” Remember those stat boosters that cost 9998 Pokédollars (Carbos, Iron, Zinc, Calcium, and HP Ups)? If fed to a Pokémon, that creature gains 10 Effort Values in a particular stat. Why wouldn’t they work? It was either that A) they had full EVs on that particular stat already or B) you already fed them 10 of that particular medicine (the limit on them). You could make a round-about Pokémon this way… 10 of Carbos, Iron, Zinc, and Calcium would give you 100 Effort Values in each of the stats, Plus 1 HP Up would max out everything.
The Macho Brace and the elusive Pokérus double the amount of Effort Values an enemy Pokémon gives. Instead of Pikachu giving you 2 Speed EVs, it would give you 4! Now if you had a Pokémon with Pokérus while holding the Macho Brace, that Pikachu would give you 8 EVs in Speed. The Power Items in the 4th Generation games add 4 EVs to a Pokémon’s EVs that you’re battling. So say you were against that Pikachu again. With the Power Anklet, your Pokémon would gain 6 EVs in Speed if you defeated the Pikachu. Coupled with Pokérus… Makes your life a lot easier, no?
The best thing to do would be to start EV training as soon as you got a Pokémon. Usually they’re too weak to take on the big buys, right? That’s where the Exp. Share comes in. You’d probably think that since it splits the experience that it would split the Effort Values. Not true! The Pokémon holding the Exp. Share gets the same number of Effort Values the Pokémon fighting got. However, you can’t get the ‘extra’ Effort Values that the Macho Brace/Speed Items and Pokérus would give you. (Unless you sent out your weak Pokémon with Pokérus, holding a special Effort Value item, then switched.)
Rare Candies are best to be used AFTER all Effort Values have been received. They don’t take into account Effort Values when increasing levels.
Natures and Personalities/Characteristics
Choosing the right Natures and Personalities/Characteristics can give you an edge in battle. Specific natures give a 10% increase in one stat and a 10% decrease in another, unless you have one of the five Neutral natures. When you choose a nature, it would be best to keep a moveset in mind. For example, I have an Espeon. Its attacking moves are all Special Attacks. I chose a Timid nature for it because its speed would be raised (its Special Attack is high enough) and the useless Attack stat would be lowered.Characteristics correspond to your Pokémon’s Individual Values. It’s not enough to say that only the highest one is considered here; there are different Personalities for different IV spreads. Characteristics show how much a particular stat will (or will not) grow.
For more information on everything about Natures and Personalities/Characteristics, please see this.
Individual Values (IVs)
I REFUSE to go into too much detail about these. That is why I have supplied the li[injection]nk here. Only truly competitive gamers will truly take these into account.What you should know… IVs come from 0-31. The higher the number is in a particular stat, the higher the stat will grow and vice versa. Your ‘spread’ of IVs, being the different numbers in the stats, determines what kind of Hidden Power you have. This could be quite useful for true battlers, but I suggest you don’t try this unless you’re going to dedicate yourself to it.
If you consider yourself a die-hard competitive battler, click the li[injection]nk. I dare you.
Types of Competitive Pokémon
Now that you know the background information, let’s get to the basic types of competitive Pokémon that you can have! A balance of these types would make the ultimate team.Sweeper
Do you like hitting your opponents fast and hard? These are of the type of battlers for you! Usually Pokémon trained as a sweeper have amazing speed and one (or both) of the attack stats EV trained. They’re used to take out enemies quickly without retaliation. When you have the Attack fully trained, you have a Physical Sweeper. When you have the Special Attack fully trained, you have a Special Sweeper. Sometimes you can train them both to half of their full potential and get a Mixed Sweeper!Tank
Pokémon here are made to take hits. Recovery moves, items that recover Hit Points, high HP and Defenses are considered Tanks. There are many variations of Tanks. Walls are Physical Tanks while Sponges are Special Tanks.Examples:
Stallers are like Tanks, but they also have moves that slowly kill your opponents like Will-O-Wisp and Toxic. Substitute is a must for a proper staller. Your substitute will take the damage while the foe's health whittles away slowly.
Trappers fall under Stallers. They have moves like Mean Look, Fire Spin, or Rock Tomb. (Or the Pokémon could have the Shadow Tag.)
Spikers use the moves Spikes, Toxic Spikes, or Stealth Rock. They’re usually used in a standard moveset to the Pokémon that can learn them, but they can be placed on Tanks as well. You usually see these as Leads, the first Pokémon your opponent sends out.