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return of the king
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- Kobe's Reality
- Seen Mar 6, 2022
The idea for this piece is very straightforward. The most common barrier people in our battling community run into is team building. A common occurrence on the Battle Server is a conversation like "hey, wanna battle" "i'd love to, but i have no teams :(" so the goal of this article is to give people more expertise and confidence in building. The only clarification I want to make is that this is not intended to be a broad team-building guide but rather a collection of observations that I think would be useful for some of our less confident battlers as they tackle the task of team-building.
The content I have planned for the article is as follows:
- Metagame-Friendly: Great teams do not exist in a vacuum--they are good because they perform well against opponents, who tend to use similar Pokemon and strategies. I want to begin my tips by opening with the observation that great team-building--and the great teams that follow--emerge from a deep knowledge and understanding of the metagame. If you are unfamiliar with a metagame, it is virtually impossible to build a good team, so that immersion experience (usually on the ladder) is required.
- Win Conditions: Many people build teams around win conditions, or Pokemon that can win in the endgame. While win conditions vary from battle to battle, many Pokemon are inherently threatening as win conditions. Here I want to discuss how to select win conditions and how to ensure that a team's combination of win conditions accounts for the variety of the metagame, both in terms of Pokemon variety and stylistic variety.
- Counterplay: This seems like an obvious point, but it has its nuances. I want to discuss how to build in necessary counterplay for Pokemon that threaten your team's original core and how to make sure that you do so in a stylistically cohesive way. For example, if I am building a team around Serperior, Quagsire sounds nice to help with Talonflame, Heatran, and Scizor should they force my Serperior out, but it adds passivity. Rotom-Wash is a much more cohesive choice to accomplish a similar defensive goal, as it is much less passive and can pivot momentum back to the Serperior user with Volt Switch. Finally, I want to emphasize that, while counterplay is important, building a team whose primary goal is to have checks for metagame threats is a losing bet--even stall builds need strategies and their own paths to victory besides "don't die"!
- Avoiding Role Filling: Many novice builders try to fill in roles like physical sweeper, Stealth Rock setter, etc. without an eye for the synergy of the Pokemon. Here I just want to briefly spell out the difference between role filling and synergizing, and how to avoid the former in favor of the latter (and how to identify each).
- Necessary Utility: This point is just to explain two things: 1) why Stealth Rock is mandatory on any serious competitive team, and 2) why Speed control (often in the form of priority attacks) is also necessary for defensive purposes. I hope to offer suggestions about how to include these aspects to cohere to a team's goals. One example would be using a Stealth Rock setter that beats Mega Sableye 1v1 for teams that nee extra support against stall.
- Miscellaneous Utility: Here I want to talk about how random little bits of utility can make a team more more playable and flexible in practice, especially defensively. The utility I want to include is Rapid Spin/Defog, Magic Bounce (these two are mainly hazard control), momentum moves (U-turn, Volt Switch, and Baton Pass), Sand Stream, Regenerator, Pursuit, Rough Skin/Iron Barbs/Rocky Helmet, non-SR hazards, status counterplay (Heal Bell, Magic Guard, type immunities, Natural Cure), Scald counterplay, Prankster+status, Intimidate, and Taunt, and secondary effect moves. I want to dive into how each of these things can make actual battles much more enjoyable and successful.
- Ease of Use and Reliability: Pokemon that are more reliable and easier to use are objectively better than roughly equal Pokemon who are not as reliable. These categories refer to game aspects like the accuracy of moves, the battle conditions requires for success, and how prediction-reliant a Pokemon or strategy is to function. I want to talk about how to make sure that you have Pokemon with a margin for error and how that makes Pokemon like Keldeo far superior to Pokemon like Hawlucha even though both can be tremendously threatening.
- Consistency: It is important that both individual Pokemon and teams as a whole have some degree of consistency, which is to say that they are not match-up based. I want to briefly talk about how to avoid making a one-dimensional team while also offering guidance on how to avoid falling into the "this Pokemon beats offense, this Pokemon beats stall, and this Pokemon beats balance!" trap.
- Accepting Weaknesses: Every team has weaknesses. It is important to have ways to play around weaknesses, but as long as that is the case, trying to mix and match at the end of building to cover obscure weaknesses is a waste of time. However, if something can outright 6-0 you with very minimal support, that is a huge problem. The acceptability of weaknesses is also stylistically dependent, which I intend to touch on further in this section.
- Specialization: Teams can be made great on the margins. Specialization of EV spreads and secondary moves on Pokemon can make huge differences in how effective a team is, and I want to discuss in some depth how to do that successfully.
- Testing: Finally, I want to offer some advice on the testing of teams, including when (and when not) to make changes, how to properly adjust to using a new team, and how to use the ladder to bring out the most in your team.
That's it. If there is anything I should add or remove, I am open to hearing suggestions.
Lastly, as the first half of this thread's title suggests, I'll do a few more of these when I have time. In particular, I want to do a few pieces on battling strategy, which is not requested as often but would be even more useful in my opinion.
The content I have planned for the article is as follows:
- Metagame-Friendly: Great teams do not exist in a vacuum--they are good because they perform well against opponents, who tend to use similar Pokemon and strategies. I want to begin my tips by opening with the observation that great team-building--and the great teams that follow--emerge from a deep knowledge and understanding of the metagame. If you are unfamiliar with a metagame, it is virtually impossible to build a good team, so that immersion experience (usually on the ladder) is required.
- Win Conditions: Many people build teams around win conditions, or Pokemon that can win in the endgame. While win conditions vary from battle to battle, many Pokemon are inherently threatening as win conditions. Here I want to discuss how to select win conditions and how to ensure that a team's combination of win conditions accounts for the variety of the metagame, both in terms of Pokemon variety and stylistic variety.
- Counterplay: This seems like an obvious point, but it has its nuances. I want to discuss how to build in necessary counterplay for Pokemon that threaten your team's original core and how to make sure that you do so in a stylistically cohesive way. For example, if I am building a team around Serperior, Quagsire sounds nice to help with Talonflame, Heatran, and Scizor should they force my Serperior out, but it adds passivity. Rotom-Wash is a much more cohesive choice to accomplish a similar defensive goal, as it is much less passive and can pivot momentum back to the Serperior user with Volt Switch. Finally, I want to emphasize that, while counterplay is important, building a team whose primary goal is to have checks for metagame threats is a losing bet--even stall builds need strategies and their own paths to victory besides "don't die"!
- Avoiding Role Filling: Many novice builders try to fill in roles like physical sweeper, Stealth Rock setter, etc. without an eye for the synergy of the Pokemon. Here I just want to briefly spell out the difference between role filling and synergizing, and how to avoid the former in favor of the latter (and how to identify each).
- Necessary Utility: This point is just to explain two things: 1) why Stealth Rock is mandatory on any serious competitive team, and 2) why Speed control (often in the form of priority attacks) is also necessary for defensive purposes. I hope to offer suggestions about how to include these aspects to cohere to a team's goals. One example would be using a Stealth Rock setter that beats Mega Sableye 1v1 for teams that nee extra support against stall.
- Miscellaneous Utility: Here I want to talk about how random little bits of utility can make a team more more playable and flexible in practice, especially defensively. The utility I want to include is Rapid Spin/Defog, Magic Bounce (these two are mainly hazard control), momentum moves (U-turn, Volt Switch, and Baton Pass), Sand Stream, Regenerator, Pursuit, Rough Skin/Iron Barbs/Rocky Helmet, non-SR hazards, status counterplay (Heal Bell, Magic Guard, type immunities, Natural Cure), Scald counterplay, Prankster+status, Intimidate, and Taunt, and secondary effect moves. I want to dive into how each of these things can make actual battles much more enjoyable and successful.
- Ease of Use and Reliability: Pokemon that are more reliable and easier to use are objectively better than roughly equal Pokemon who are not as reliable. These categories refer to game aspects like the accuracy of moves, the battle conditions requires for success, and how prediction-reliant a Pokemon or strategy is to function. I want to talk about how to make sure that you have Pokemon with a margin for error and how that makes Pokemon like Keldeo far superior to Pokemon like Hawlucha even though both can be tremendously threatening.
- Consistency: It is important that both individual Pokemon and teams as a whole have some degree of consistency, which is to say that they are not match-up based. I want to briefly talk about how to avoid making a one-dimensional team while also offering guidance on how to avoid falling into the "this Pokemon beats offense, this Pokemon beats stall, and this Pokemon beats balance!" trap.
- Accepting Weaknesses: Every team has weaknesses. It is important to have ways to play around weaknesses, but as long as that is the case, trying to mix and match at the end of building to cover obscure weaknesses is a waste of time. However, if something can outright 6-0 you with very minimal support, that is a huge problem. The acceptability of weaknesses is also stylistically dependent, which I intend to touch on further in this section.
- Specialization: Teams can be made great on the margins. Specialization of EV spreads and secondary moves on Pokemon can make huge differences in how effective a team is, and I want to discuss in some depth how to do that successfully.
- Testing: Finally, I want to offer some advice on the testing of teams, including when (and when not) to make changes, how to properly adjust to using a new team, and how to use the ladder to bring out the most in your team.
That's it. If there is anything I should add or remove, I am open to hearing suggestions.
Lastly, as the first half of this thread's title suggests, I'll do a few more of these when I have time. In particular, I want to do a few pieces on battling strategy, which is not requested as often but would be even more useful in my opinion.
