Overwhelmed Newbie

[Mini Dude]

Sup, so I used to be really into Pokémon however I stopped playing right before Black & White came out. Now I'm trying to get back into it but I don't even know where to start. It's been over five years since I've played and even then I just played casually so I don't really understand what people are talking about when I try and read stuff online. I've been trying to read stuff about competitive battling on forums but then I keep coming across all these terms and acronyms I don't know and when I'm done reading I'm even more confused than before. I'd liken to experience to trying to read a different language, some stuff sounds a little familiar but I have no idea means. I'd really appreciate it if someone could direct me to some resources to get started because I don't even know where to begin. I tried making a team on Pokémon Showdown but apparently there's like over 700 Pokémon now and I only recalled like one of the moves so I just made a random team with Pokémon I like and gave them moves that seemed to be powerful. I played a couple random battles but I had no idea what I was doing. Ironically enough I actually beat someone (even though I was just choosing random attacks) and he got kind of angry at me. Anyway, I would really appreciate it if someone would direct me to a starting point as even though I have played before I'm essentially coming in fresh as I don't remember anything (even basic stuff like type advantages) and I don't even know what I need to learn.

 

[ddrox13]

It can be hard figuring out what the heck all those numbers and acronyms mean, so here are all the acronyms in Pokemon and what they mean and do.

Stat Acronyms:

BST: Base Stat Total, or the sum of a Pokemon's 6 base stats. This ranges from 180 (Sunkern) to 780 (M-Rayquaza and M-Mewtwo). It means nothing in battle :P

IVs: IV is short for Individual Value. Like Nature, IVs are chosen at semi-random when the pokemon begins to exist. Each Pokemon has 6, one for each stat. They are a hidden value from 1-31 inclusive. these greatly impact stats, as well as the move Hidden Power. For competitive play, you will generally want Pokemon with 31 IV in all stats, unless they use the move Hidden Power.

EVs: Effort Values. A value from 1-252 inclusive in each stat. At Lv100, 4 EVs in a stat increases said stat by 1. A total of 510 EVs are allowed on each pokemon across all stats.

HP: Health Points
Atk: Attack
Def: Defense
SpA, SpAtk: Special Attack
SpD, SpDef: Special Defense
Spd: Speed (not to be confused with SpD)

Type Effectiveness Acronyms:
STAB: Same Type Attack Bonus. tl;dr if the type of the move matches the type of the pokemon using it, it's power is increased by 1.5x
SE: Super Effective
NVE: Not Very Effective

Move Acronyms (there are a lot more, these are the common ones):
HP [Type], HP (if type already stated): Hidden Power (not to be confused with Health Points)
HP (with no type specified and it's obviously not a stat): Hydro Pump
EQ: Earthquake
BP: Bullet Punch (not to be confused with Battle Points from the ingame Battle Tower/Frontier/Subway/Maison)
SE: Stone Edge (not to be confused with Super Effective)
SD, DD, QD, NP, CM: Swords Dance, Dragon Dance, Quiver Dance, Nasty Plot, Calm Mind, respectively. Stat boosting moves
I might add more here later

Format Acronyms:
OU: Overused. The default format.
BL: Between Level. Honestly you will never see this.
UU: Underused
LU, RU: Little Used or Rarely Used, them mean the same thing.
NU: Never used
NEU, PU: I have no idea what Smogon's means, but POs means Never Ever Used and it's below NU.
LC: Little Cup. Only unevolved pokemon that can evolve
CC: Challenge Cup. RANDOM TEAMS!
BF, BF6v6: Battle Factory. See Platinum.

That should be good enough for now. Here is a nice competitive start guide to help you with the rest. https://www.smogon.com/dp/articles/intro_comp_pokemon

 

[Nah]

Yeah, that's always the thing with competitive battling for newer players: there seems like a shitload of information to understand before you can even begin to play. And admittedly there kind of is a lot to learn, though it's also not necessarily as complex as it might seem at first. Just take it slow, you don't have to get everything at once.

ddrox did give you a good bit to start on, so make sure to read his post and the linked post. The thing that I wrote almost a year ago that's linked in my signature may or may not be of use to you as well. What might also be helpful would be to play through a 5th gen game and then a 6th gen game so you can get a feel for some of the new stuff that's be introduced since you had stopped playing, in a more casual setting.

Also a couple of minor notes: Speed is often also abbreviated as Spe, and LU and NEU aren't used on Showdown (which is by far the more commonly used battle simulator, and the one we use here on PC) and are just known as RU and NU. There are also two other metagames above OU, Ubers and Anything Goes.

Then of course asking some specific questions on things is good too, and maybe hopping on PC's battle server and watching some people play will help too.

 

[ddrox13]

-snip-
Also a couple of minor notes: Speed is often also abbreviated as Spe, and LU and NEU aren't used on Showdown (which is by far the more commonly used battle simulator, and the one we use here on PC) and are just known as RU and NU. There are also two other metagames above OU, Ubers and Anything Goes.

Then of course asking some specific questions on things is good too, and maybe hopping on PC's battle server and watching some people play will help too.

Yea, I should have mentioned those. Oops. I mainly play on PO, where RU is known as LU. They mean exactly the same thing.

BUT YEAH, watch some battles. I should be on more often now that I signed up as a mercenary for PCL, and I'm happy to explain stuff whenever.