The Teambuilding Process

[Zeffy]

One of the most, if not the most, important aspect of battling is teambuilding. As a battler, your skill is aptly measured not only by how you use your team in battle but also by how you built said team in the first place. With this in mind, how do you build your teams? Additionally, which specific roles do you think should each team fulfill?

Generally, I start with an idea--it may take the form of an interesting Pokemon (which is also usually a win condition) or a competent core. From there, I try to decide whether I'm going to go offensive or stall. I also consider a couple of things, like a Stealth Rock user, a Water-type and/or a Steel-type, an Electric-type immunity, among other things.

And finally, to lighten up your day, here's a cute bunny.

 

[champagnepapi]

I usually start off with 2 pokemon or so, not even necessarily a core at the start. After this I work towards streamlining the team, make sure that there are ways to win games, members that help each other, and that the team can take on most of the metagame. I also find it helpful to look at similar builds to the ones that I'm building as a WIP, since they can give insight into what pokemon work well together.

 

[Musicality]

For building most competitive team unless it's a specific type of team (e.g 4Drag2Mag) I always try to incorporate a core of some kind, usually focusing on synergy between team members. A FWG (Fire, Water, Grass) core or the now popular FSD (Fairy, Steel, Dragon) core is always reliable, and having a good defensive core if you're not doing hyper offense is a must for most teams. I usually try to have walls on both the physical and special side, though the remaining four would usually be sweepers of sorts and / or a pivot. I always run a choice scarf pokemon, because you need to be able to revenge kill threats. This is generally how I build my team:

1.Physical Wall
2.Special Wall
3. Sweeper
4.Sweeper / Pivot
5.Choice Scarf / Pivot

As it's always good to pack resistances to common attacking types, especially water. Water resists are nearly mandatory today. Resisting other common types like psychic, fighting, fire, dragon as well as flying will all contribute towards a successful team.

 

[srinator]

starting to team build is one of the hardest thing for me and the way i team build has gone through so many phases from when i first started last year. Then it was all elf inspired ****** stall teams with 0 idea and logic behind them, i did sometimes get wins so idek lol!
now i prefer a more offensive team but that which can still take care of other play styles. bringing in the concept of stall in certain pokes is also very funny at times, subseedwhimsi/sub toxic zap anyone lol!

anyway now when i first sit down to build a team i think about what underrated/underused set/pokemon i wanna use,or what extremely bbroken on is fun.from there i cover its weaknesses and try to add more offensive pressure.give someone sr, if my team is very status weak get a status absorber/healer. get something for birdspam, voir spam,medi spam essentially mega spam. someone who can set up on bad mons and someone that has coverage to beat all.
then i proceed to lose on main since my theorymon teams always tends to suck, and slowly make it better

 

[Detox]

My teams usually start off as ideas or random theorymonning. I will start with an individual Pokémon or core, and then pick out Pokémon that I think will support said Pokémon/core the best. I keep things like synergy, current metagame trends, etc. in mind when building teams so I don't end up with a jumbled mess. When I'm done building the team, I consider this a draft. I like to playtest the team, finding out its flaws and what I have troubles with. From here, I go back to the drawing board and try to make any changes that I think will help the team be more efficient in handling threats, while also doing its job. This may be anything from changing move sets to entire Pokémon. After this, I playtest again, go back to the drawing board, and repeat. It's pretty much a trial and error thing until I am satisfied with the results of play testing, and feel as if my team can handle whatever situation may be thrown at it. Also as user Exile said, I find it helpful to look at some of your older teams, or even another person's teams when teambuilding. This can give you an idea of how to go about building your team and even make the process easier.

 

[welsknight]

I usually start out with a specific idea or Pokemon (i.e, Weakness Policy Dragonite, Regenerator ability, etc.) and then pick my first two Pokemon around that. I usually try to make this idea center around something that isn't extremely common (had a Whimsicott stall/wall team once that actually worked pretty well... in OU).

From there, I examine the common threats list and choose a physical and special wall. The last two Pokemon on the team are meant for support and to cover weaknesses.

Throughout the process, I look at overall types and weaknesses, and once I have the first version of the team built, I play on PS to test and refine as needed.

 

[MoxieInfinite]

For building most competitive team unless it's a specific type of team (e.g 4Drag2Mag) I always try to incorporate a core of some kind, usually focusing on synergy between team members. A FWG (Fire, Water, Grass) core or the now popular FSD (Fairy, Steel, Dragon) core is always reliable, and having a good defensive core if you're not doing hyper offense is a must for most teams. I usually try to have walls on both the physical and special side, though the remaining four would usually be sweepers of sorts and / or a pivot. I always run a choice scarf pokemon, because you need to be able to revenge kill threats. This is generally how I build my team:

1.Physical Wall
2.Special Wall
3. Sweeper
4.Sweeper / Pivot
5.Choice Scarf / Pivot

As it's always good to pack resistances to common attacking types, especially water. Water resists are nearly mandatory today. Resisting other common types like psychic, fighting, fire, dragon as well as flying will all contribute towards a successful team.

Most of this is not recommended if you're playing XY (unless Stall, but Stall is pretty much dead in XY (which is such a huge shame)).

edit: i can post why if most of you arent bright enough to realize why this isnt the optimal way

 

[Nah]

edit: i can post why if most of you arent bright enough to realize why this isnt the optimal way

Please do, for those of us who have the misfortune of not truly understanding team-building.

 

[MoxieInfinite]

pokemon is pretty much 100% pivoting at this point, "innovative switching" if you wanna look at it that way. you go aggresively at checking mons now(say, most sand dont run a direct dd zard x answer, but rather sacing ttar, into sand rush exca for the ko. the only true things you really need an answer to, is flyingspam and keldeo (mostly zard y, ttar, keldeo teams) in my eyes. something like scarf ttar, zapdos, thundurus, whatever answers the former decently. this is where youve got the lati/mag/mpinsir core. lati weakens scarftar significantly if played correctly, this making the mpinsir sweep easier. mag checks elecs nice, and traps stuff like ferro. youve got teams like alexanders' (leadchomp / azu / mag / latios / mega pinsir / diggersby), which has major azumarill issues, but still pulls through as one of the best ladderteams nowadays. momentum-keepers are so extremely good atm, like scarf lando-t, which pivots insanely great, and fits the meta atm very well. uve got teams like reys (?) team (mega scizor / ttar / exca / lando-i / rotom-w / latios) which pivots into offense well, where neither really have any specific defensive roles (except maybe rotom-w as a emergency talon/mpinsir check. it might have keldeo issue on paper, but the aggresive and fast nature of sandoffense w/ exca allows it to relatively make that issue not that big.


what the point of the post is; you dont run dedicated spectrum walls anymore. the powercreep was too much this gen (and also last gen). you might run a spdef mega scizor, but you cant call that a special wall, because it cant switch into every special attack, unlike blissey, which has the stats to do so. you play on resistances/immunities, not stats now. 2 mon cores arent that solid anymore, and 3, and even up to 4 are much better. and all of those mons need SOME ways to pressure the opposing team offensively. even on balance which i felt was inferior, but i guess players like tele proved me wrong there with that slowbro/mega scizor/heatran/clefable core (even slowbro does that through twave and potential scaldburns), and the final two offensive mons (i guess you can somewhat call mega scizor offensive too, but it does include defensive utility) have transitioning mons with immunities (in this case to eq).


hope thats good enough, if not, tell me what you dont understand. n_n

 

[VeranithasVI]

I pick a team based on, primarily, type. I like having an even balance of types in my team, so I can cover all areas of the battle if need be.

Water, Fire, Electric and Grass are a must (at the moment my X team is lacking in Grass-type Poke's, but with the inclusion of Fairy I might be able to give Grass a miss this time around) and I generally rotate the other two spots when I need too.