How to get into competitive battling?

So over the past few months I've really started to get into trying to understand stats, IVs, EVs, natures and the like, and I'd like to maybe start some competitive battling, though I'd just like to start out by doing some rated random matchup before I do anything seriously competitive, just to get the hang of it. What are some general tips that I could use to my advantage in the world of competitive team building and battling?

Well you could take time and read the load of tutorial posted on this forum..

showthread.php?t=287472

Have fun.

Actually, I've also just begun competitive battling, so I'll give you a couple tips based on the path I took from advice from the experienced in the art :) . First of all, decide what kind of team I would make. This is going to be how your battling style will be based so choose wisely. There are quite a few sites however that could give you some insight on your decision. Be sure to do some research on the techniques of your team and how to operate it.

Next, decide the tier you will be playing in. There are quite a few tiers in today's current metagame, being U (Uber) OU (OverUsed) UU (UnderUsed RU (RarelyUsed) and NU (NeverUsed). There a few less important tiers as well, but you shouldn't dwell on these too much. Just decide which one of these you will be playing in. Take note, pokecommunity follows OU tiers and under in competitive battls here, so I recommend those tiers. There are also some specific guidelines to follow as well, which you can find on smogon.

Next, begin building your team. This can be one of, if not the most, important factor in your competitive battling. To build your team, you must once again refer back to what team you are going to have. For example, if it's a baton passing team (which happens to be the team I use :D) you would want to include a few sweepers to do the damage. If you are unfamiliar with the vocabulary I'm using, you can learn all that through serebii.net. Be sure to definitely take your time on this one, because you most likely won't get it right the first time.

Finally, get some advice from some of the best. We have some great experts in this department, so I highly recommend asking them about your team in this same sub-forum.

And that's it. I know there may be a few things I may have missed that could be essential to competitive battling, so I would definitely visit the link recommended by that above me :D

Go over to Smogon, pick some pokemon and read through their strategies. It's a good way to get used to how something can be used, the strengths and weaknesses and whatnot. Familiarize yourself with your Pokemon. Ask questions.

You just need to learn the basics of competitive battling, such as learning each Pokemon's particular strategy and study all their most-used movesets, which abilities/items to use, IVs, EVs, and natures.

Also, you need to study all the different tiers, and which Pokemon are housed in that tier based on their movepool, type coverage and strategies. There are several tiers in the competitive battling metagame such as Ubers, NU (NeverUsed), RU (RarelyUsed), UU (UnderUsed), OU (OverUsed), BL (Borderline) and LC (Little Cup).

Smogon is a recommended place to learn the basics, and you can also practice on battle simulators such as Pokemon Showdown. Also, team building is important since you need to take things like type coverage, strengths/weaknesses and more into factor. And you also have to decide if your team is going to based around a particular strategy, like Trick Room or certain weather conditions.

Also, PC has loads of experts in competitive battling so feel free to ask them if you need to learn more about the metagame and what you can improve on.

I suggest you do free rated then rated. rated ones are harder then free

The best way to make any real progress is to do some research and speak to those who are competitive. It's all about knowledge, in my opinion anyway.

Feel free to shoot through a message if you have any questions :)

I believe Hikari was on the button, you should take heed of what she said it was excellent advice.

Building a perfectly viable, well rounded team is the easiest thing to do when it come to competitive battling, there are core threads, basically these are pokemon with good synergy you can base your team around, RMT(rate my team) threads and tons of resources so you don't have to work all that hard, the most important aspect, most new players sometimes find difficult to grasp is prediction, you see pokemon is basically a game of chess except you both make your moves at the same time, the more knowledge you have about the pokemon in the tiers you are playing in the easier prediction will be, imagine how much harder it would be to beat someone at chess if you didn't know what the pieces did? after that just practice practice practice good luck ^ _ ^