The Best Competitive Battlefield

We will talk about competitive Pokmon battling, completely different from

Pokmon games developed by Nintendo. I suggest you save this article somehow and
study it throughout a long period if you are completely unfamiliar with this subject.

Even if this article does not interest you, please try it once. Build your team and
battle. Learn about tiers first, pick Pokmon according to their powers, invest EVs in
stats they deserve investment (for example, most people invest all 252 EVs in attack
and speed if it is a physical attack and never try to put balanced EVs as a
special attacker would not be benefitted by EVs in attack stat). Also, pick moves,
which suit the user: like Salamence can go with Outrage (a physical move) and not
Dragon Pulse (Latios or Hydreigon is better off with this one). Finally, check your
team for counters if you want, otherwise you will learn them later anyway.

Online battle simulators of Pokmon are not something you will feel like arguing
upon after the recent release of X and Y, but guess what, the thing I am talking today
has guts to even surpass the generation VIII of Pokmon, practically. Though the
gameplay gives you the story, and many more things, which we all have already
experienced, either by X and Y or by our already grown brain which has beaten
masterfully and splendidly a lot of Pokmon games already, the competitive field is
where things get really tough.

It will be a guide on the online Pokmon battling community: tens of thousands

already are there and sharpening their skills. Moreover, newcomers do not stand a
1% chance of winning no matter how hard they make their teams or read strategy
guides; it is all a matter of learning and the learning rate is very fast indeed.

Most basic things first: to play Pokmon online, you need software called Pokmon
Online (you can download it from www.pokemon-online.eu/download.php). You can
also play it on browser, as to engage in battles over Internet without any extra
download (Smogons Pokmon Showdown is based on flash and javascript which
browsers can run though it can also be downloaded). Pokmon Online is a better
choice, but as we will learn, it is disputed. For the latter, you can play on the online
simulator titled Pokmon Showdown! which has been developed by the
competitive battling giant Smogon University (www.smogon.com).

We will take the example of Pokmon Online, but do not worry; it will work equally
for Showdown too. You can create your own team. Your own Pokmon (plural);
preferred EVs, preferred moves and everything. You can go as deep as deciding the
IVs, giving the Pokmon items to hold, deciding on abilities (if multiple options are
available) or making it a shiny!

After customisation (or giving all of them a nickname too), we have a few other
things to consider too. There are tiers according to whose rules you must form your
team. It, and other rules, are there to maintain some order and not just slap three
 Darkrai and three Arceus in your team while a passionate trainer whom you are
battling against has six different non-legendary Pokmon.

There are several tiers, but they will not be concerned here. The most used tier is the
OverUsed tier, OU for short. You can use any Pokmon for this tier, except the ones
that are universally banned due to their overwhelming powers (and are placed on the
supreme tier: Uber tier). One thing should be noted here: legendary Pokmon are
NOT meaningful here. They are completely different from Ubers. Legendaries like
Latios, Heatran, Jirachi, Cresselia, etc. are not in Uber on both servers (Smogon has
its own tier system which makes more sense while POs tiers are flawed).
Surprisingly, many non-legendaries are in Uber, like Blaziken and Excadrill.

After choosing a team, you need some more things: equip them with items and
provide them necessary stats and moves. I swear that for my first battle, I made such
an awful, absurd, funny, and shitty team that I do not even feel like remembering it
anymore, so feel okay if you do something like that and recognise it later. Now say
you want a Dragonite on your team, and we know that Dragonite is a physical
attacker, so you should invest EVs in its attack stat, and completely forget the special
attack stat.

Dragonite, Salamence, Hydreigon, Gyarados, Heatran, Latias, Latios, Tyranitar,

Scizor, etc. are a few Pokmon most teams have at least one of they have their own
strategies and decent power combined. Dragonite has a base attack of 304 and base
special attack of 236, so clearly it prefers the physical attack, hence put all the EVs in
attack, and be sure to give it only physical-category moves like Earthquake and
not Dragon Pulse. As the icing, you can also customise the nature to Adamant,
which will boost the attack stat further on cost of lowering the sp. attack stat: which
we do not want anyway (as we are not using any special category move that derives
power from the special attack stat).

Just like this, pick any six powerful Pokmon, which are not in the Uber tier. Mostly,
as a beginner, you may want to give your three Pokmon Life Orb and three others
Leftovers. However, as you learn more, many others will become useful.

Now, a set of other important things:

STAB: similar-type attack bonus is called STAB. To understand STAB, let us

negate the different attacking powers of two Pokmon Hippowdon and
Salamence (they have attack stats of 112 and 135 respectively) and suppose
they both have equal attach stat value. If the Hippowdon (Ground-type) uses
Earthquake, it will be stronger than the Salamences (Dragon-Flying-type)
Earthquake. Any guesses why? If the Pokmon uses a move of the same type
as its type, it will get a bonus, the STA bonus, which is equivalent to a 50%
boost! So the Earthquake from our hippo will be 50% stronger, i.e., of the
power of 150 while our Salamence will launch it with the base power value of
100 only. STAB works on both categories of moves: special or physical.
 Ubers: What you cannot use. Arceus has seventeen forms (will become
eighteen on XY transition), all of which are Ubers. Moreover, Giratina and
Deoxys and all their forms are Uber. Tornadus-T, Shaymin-S, and Kyurem-W
are also Uber. Other Ubers are: Blaziken, Darkrai, Dialga, Excadrill, Genesect,
Groudon, Ho-Oh, Kyogre, Landorus, Lugia, Manaphy, Mewtwo, Palkia,
Rayquaza, Reshiram, Thundurus, and Zekrom.
Types and moves: keep type advantages and disadvantages in mind. Dont
slap more than one move of the same type (like Thunderbolt and Thunder
both on Jolteon). Try to cover as many types as you can (like slap a Dragon
Pulse, Surf, Flamethrower, and Dark Pulse on Hydreigon). Also, try to avoid
using moves that have very less coverage. Steel type, Ghost type, and Poison
type moves are useless.
Strategies: play with strategies. Keep on switching out and changing
Pokmon for your benefit. Read guides on strategy making. Use crippling
moves that induce status problems.
Clauses: keep battle clauses in mind. These would not concern you right
here. Anyway, keep in mind a few things: you cannot make more than one
Pokmon of the opponent sleep in a battle, when the previous one wakes up,
only then you can induce sleep once more, and you cannot include more than
one Pokmon of the same species in your team. No two Dragonite or
Gyarados!