Team-Building

[Nah]

As the name of this section implies, there are two major components to competitive Pokemon: Battling (the actual execution) and Team-Building (the creation of the tool(s) needed to carry out battle with). This is about the latter, if that wasn't already obvious. I've been doing competitive battling for 5 years now, yet I don't feel like I really understand how to build a truly solid team and quite frankly it bothers me.

How do you go about starting the team-building process? How do you know which 'mons will be the best fit for the overall strategy you're going for? How do you know if the 'mons you picked all work together with each other well? How do you know when you've made an actually decent team? When you've spotted holes or problems, how do you figure out how to fix them without screwing up everything else?

What do you all do?

 

[gimmepie]

Well when I build teams I usually start by picking one or two Pokemon I particularly want to use or experiment with. Then I add Pokemon that cover for that Pokemon (and preferably each other). Then rinse and repeat until I have a full team. Once that's done it's really just trial and error. I start with the bot, because if it loses to the bot you know it sucks. Make any alterations I think I need. Then move on to people and alter according to suggestions advice I get from there.

The way I see it, you're rarely ever done with building a team. You're not done until you cannot possibly change anything without ruining the team's synergy.

 

[faf]

Haven't done much serious battling lately but I tend to build my teams using 1 or 2 leads, 3 or 4 core mons, and 1 or 2 "glues". I tend not to overthink since I can build a team in like 5 minutes and it can still be at least decent via battling. If I'm in a hurry, I just slap 6 mons in one team and hope it works. Furthermore, I sometimes do what gimmepie does in regards to building around a Pokémon.

Every team, good or bad, will have a few threats to deal with; the beauty of Pokémon is you can work around them without replacement(s). But if worst comes to worst, I normally replace the least useful/used member with a mon that's similar to the role/able to deal with said threat.

 

[gimmepie]

To add to what Zinnia said, one thing I have learned is that with well over 700 Pokemon it is impossible to be prepared for everything. The more you can cover the better, but it's better to focus on having answers for the really common stuff then to try and have an answer to literally everything.

 

[Pepperton]

I mean the whole 'you can't counter everything' I thought at least was pretty common knowledge. In terms of deciding to make a team, the easiest way to go about it in my opinion is picking a central pokemon or core that you're interested in using. A lot of the times this Pokémon will be a mega, which is an awesome starting point because it's always going to be a centralizing pokemon and if supported well by its teammates is almost guaranteed to be effective, or a common typing core such as Fire/Water/Grass, Fairy/Dragon/Steel, etc. or even a offensive core with Specs/Band or defensive cores, but those are less common for a reason (aren't as easy to build around). Once you've decided what you want to try out - for example, let's say SubSeed Serperior. Realize its glaring weaknesses and find the best counters to those weaknesses with another Pokémon, like Landorus-T for momentum, rocks, and a counter to Pokémon that wall Serp such as Heatran. From there it's mainly about filling in holes. A spinner, a wall, etc etc.


I could go more in depth but I feel like it's pretty simple. I'm by no means saying I'm good at team building - I'm actually painfully average at it and have only had serious success laddering with other people's teams, but this is what I think is the best way to build.