How do you guyys/gals go about building a competitive team?

[JimmyS1985]

I got no idea how the good competitive people pick their teams. I have a couple favorite Poke'mon I wouldn't mind screwing around with in Wifi battles.

Off the top of my head, most of mine are capable of Mega Evolve, but that's in part due to them also being my favorite Poke'mon. But clearly competitive players care more about the Utility of the poke'mon in a battle, over it's "looks".

I'm looking at Kangaskhan, Gengar, Charizard, Venusaur, Mewtwo, and Skarmory.

Even though I like all these Poke'mon a lot, would my team actually turn out to be immensely weak when it came to battling actual human opponents?

I already got a perfect Bulbasaur (6IV, Modest, Egg Move Giga-Drain, Chlorophyll) and am working on breeding a perfect Charmander.

I just don't know what you guys do to come up with competitive team builds, I've never built a competitive team against human opponents, and have mostly only gone up against the AI in all my Poke'mon games.

And how do you decide what moves to equip them with?

For example with Skarmory, should I buy a Gen V Poke'mon game and breed into him Stealthrock to counter flying types that Spikes wouldn't even cover?

I'm so confused, it's such an immensely complex game. It'd help if I had some kind of mentor to discuss this with.

Also, even though hacked poke'mon are incredibly prevalent, due to the chances of getting banned from GTS, isn't it best if I at least attempt to do everything Legit, no matter how time consuming that would be?

 

[gimmepie]

Is this for VGC or a Smogon tier? I think the most important part is to know your meta and what the common threats in it are.

 

[Megan]

Do yourself a favor and don't bother with teambuilding; at least until you actually know what competitive battling is. Until then it's a better idea just to take already finished teams and familiarize yourself with how they work and what environment (VGC, Smogon tiers, etc.) they're useful in.

Teambuilding is a rather complex topic that contains a lot of role filling, compressing, coverage, backup strategies, evaluations, adjustments made over time (occasionally even reasjusting readjustments), knowledge about your opponents even before you've met them, etc. There's a lot to it and tbh. I thinks its one of the most notorious beginners traps that scare a lot of new players away.

Well, I suppose, there's also the option to pick whatever you want, which is fine for most casual players who just want to random battle people on wifi. But that can hardly be called teambuilding and it won't help much against opponents who know what they're doing.