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Basic teambuilding Overview: (use ctrl+f to find the selections) 1 Basic info when you build a team 1:1 Introduction 1:2 Roles 1:3 Lead 1:4 Team types 1:5 Counters 1:6 Tiers 2 Moves 2:1 Meta/type coverage 2:2 Stab 2:3 Nyi moves 2:4 Status effects 2:5 Priority 1:1 Introduction This wall of text will cover the usual aspects of teambuilding aimed towards new players. If you feel that you are an advanced player you could probably learn something from this too if not feel free to comment about something below. There is some things I will add later such as clauses and the advanced part, I am basicly online everyday so it should be here within a week since I have several exams this week. 1:2 Roles When you pick a pokemon it is important to ask yourself, Why did I pick this one? Because you like it is not really a good awnser, does it have high base stats? Good move pool? Does it counter common threats? Ehh, back to roles, there is a few common roles most teams will have. Lead: The pokemon in the first slot in your team, there is a section just about your lead below. Physical sweeper: This role is considered one of the most fun roles within your team, it is a high attack attacker(derp) it could be anything from gyarados, tauros or dragonite. What is common with physical sweepers but not needed is a boost move that boosts attack such as swords dance, or attack an speed such as dragon dance. If you use these sort of moves it is called a setup as you prepare to sweep. Special sweeper: (everyones favorite role?) The special sweeper works as the physical sweeper but with special attacks, this role can be filled with many many pokemons. A few common ones is exxegutor, alakazam or gengar. Walls: They do what the name says. They wall off the enemy pokemon with moves such as refect, heal up with recover or wish. These pokemon usually have a high hp and high defensive stats. Chansey/blissey is a very common wall with its redicilous amount of hp and special defence. Snorlax is another special wall who can not live for as long as blissey but can learn selfdestruct which is a great move when low on hp (if you will survive or predict a switch in) Forretress and Cloyster both have high defence but cloyster sort of lack hp and has sort of bad typing, although he can break through substites with ease. Tanks: See walls. 1:3 Lead Your lead is a very important role and pokemon as this is what either, atleast most likely, gives either you or your opponent an advantage. If you start off with, for example Starmie, and they with Jolteon, you should switch out which gives them a chance to either try to kill your starmie or predict what you will switch into. Starmie according to me, and other experienced players are a decent but still bad lead since it can not scare away anything, and it can get in a blissey, and do what? Give it paralyzis? If you do blissey will cheer at you. Gengar on the other hand, can put starmie to sleep, giga drain him, he can most likely kill a blissey with hypnosis with a bit of luck and so forth. Jolteon is the fastest pokemon around basicly and with his amazing speed and special attack he can wreck some normal leads such as starmie. This site shows you some common leads and why they are good or bad. http://www.smogon.com/rs/articles/your_starter_pokemon 1:4 Team types Balanced teams: These teams contains a combination of walls and sweepers. Stall teams: These teams contains more walls to try to kill with slow things such as toxic and survive. Offensive teams: More sweepers less walls simple enough. 1:5 Counters There is certain pokemon which shuts down a pokemon completely, this is called a counter. Hidden power can usually help with this, but it is not implemented yet, so some pokemon will lack type coverage a lot! Let's say I send out my lead, Jolteon, and you start with Dugtrio (Bad lead, better revenge killer), normally I would have Hidden power ice, but now I do not have it and you can one hit my jolteon with earthquake. At the very bottom at each pokemons info there is a checks/counters tab http://www.smogon.com/rs/pokemon/ 1:6 Tiers When you choose a pokemon it should be something that is not totally crap. Using a tierlist blindly is bad too, but picking something from Uber/OU/BL could be a good idea as they usually have good stats combinded with a good movepool, or an amazing movepool with worse stats and so forth. But why pick a pokemon with bad stats AND a bad movepool? Sorry as I wrote this on my mobile and I'm running out of battery I'll post this and keep writing as soon as possible. 2:1 Meta game/Type coverage It is quite common that I hear people who say, I play with this pokemon because I like him. Well, sure games should be fun, but then you could just as well stop reading this since I want to teach you how to build a good team. The meta game should, simplified, contain all the good pokemon and their counters. You can have a hint at the pokemon list at smogon. http://www.smogon.com/rs/tiers/ Uber = The very best pokemons OU = Over used = The very good pokemon BL = Borderline = Almost made it to OU UU = Under used, not good enough usually NU = Never used You should usually just pick pokemon from OU and BL, but do not forget that if their move are not yet implemented their effectivness can be quite bad. Type coverage is when you have pokemons AND moves who can cover the types of your opponent. If your gengar only knows ghost moves, he will be eaten alive(:P) by any normal type with hiddenpower ghost, like snorlax. But if he had gigadrain, hiddenpower flying or something he can take on most other types too. Starmie should learn thunder(bolt nyi) to cover some normal threats such as their starmie or aero. 2:2 Stab This is pretty basic, but still, it could be great for new players to learn. STAB is a common term which is a shortening for Same type attack bonus, and it is just what it sounds like. If you use an electric move on an electric pokemon you deal more damage.(50% to be exact) This is why most fire pokemons are bad. They have great attack and speed, worthless defensive stats. But their special attack is not that great, so finding a physical fire move that is not firepunch? Well yeah.. No stab moves for fire types that will hurt the opponent too much. While there is exceptions this is what most firetypes have a problem with. 2:3 Nyi moves There is some moves which is very common in other battle simulators etc. is entry hassards, spinners and spin blockers. Entry hassards is spikes, which damage the pokemon you switch into whenever you switch. Rapid spin removes spikes and deal some damage(low power normal attack) Spin blockers is ghost types since normal attacks can't hit them, thus making rapid spin worthless. Another very common move is Baton pass which lets you keep all stat changes and pass it to another pokemon. The move basicly lets you switch, without the priority(see 2:5) and pass your stat changes to whatever pokemon you want. 2:4 Status effects There is some very common status effects that most people should know about Burn, decreases your ____ the first round it gets applied, then it deals ___ damage each round. Poison is worthless... Badly poison is quite good as it gets worse (___)each round and after a few rounds you need to switch out. Freeze is like a better parazysis but much more unreliable as it can only be applied through ice attacks and a % chance. Sleep is arguably the best status effect as it renders you unable to act, with a few exceptions. You can still switch, but sometimes that is just bad.(Captain obvious) Paralyzis is a great status effect, it makes your pokemon just horribly slow, actually I'm not 100% sure on how slow, but I think it is half your speed. Also you have a chance of being ”fully paralyzed” and unable to do your attack. 2:5 Priority Who goes first in a battle is usually determined from the speed of the pokemon. But there is also something called priority which always goes before a lower priority move. Normal attacks have 0 priority, Quick attack have priority +1 and Persuit have a whooping +6. The whole list can be found here http://www.smogon.com/rs/articles/move_priority This list is to be extended.