Professormaple

I merged my Red and Blue accounts to start over from scratch on Silver, since I didn't want to be on Gold. After starting, I went through the beginning area and in to Pallet. I thought it was strange I had a Bulbasaur and Rattata, but didn't think anything of it until I tried to leave. A prompt keeps coming up to investigate the Eevee as one would normally when starting. Except there is no Eevee or the NPC that it belongs to. Was told in Discord Support that I needed to make a post here for help.

What is your Discord tag? Martyr Panda #1047 How often do you use Discord? Everyday If you could improve PRO's Discord with one suggestion, what would it be? Implement a filter of some kind for, at the least, English cursing. It would cut back on needing someone to manage the potty mouths like was needed this morning.

Welcome to Professor Roxanne Maple's class on Team Building 101. This guide will differ from Purple's a bit and it will focus more on how to build a team that it aims to teach you how to best select your Pokémon based around a Core, rather than checking off the boxes for what priority and entry hazards you'll want to have. I would recommend reading Purple's guide as well, as combining the knowledge you gain from their guide and my own will cover just about everything you will need to know for building a successful team. In this class I will be teaching you some basics about building your team of Pokémon so that you can get started on you way to taking part in battles against other trainers. We will go over an example team to show you the process of building your team, using one of my own. I would like to note, before we proceed, that the examples I will be giving will be Pokémon that I currently use or have used in the VGC Formats of Competitive Battling (Comp) which use the 2v2, bring 6 and pick 4, style of trainer battles. That said, most, if not all, of these examples can easily be used in a Singles 6 format of battling. A bit about myself. Like many people who are in or around my age, I have been playing the Pokémon games since early October of 1998. I quickly began to have an interest in battling other kids in the school yard, pitting our best Pokémon against each other to see who was the better trainer. This grew and eventually we were betting our cards on matches. I am sure this happened all over the world and I would argue it was the first Comp scene for Pokémon. As the years went on, Comp took on other forms such as the Nintendo Cup and eventually VGC, where a Comp format was solidified and is what we use today. I have not entered in to any tournaments myself, so I have no accolades that I could offer, as I have never quite had the time, money or both to travel to such events. Despite that, I am actively on the VGC ladder every season, ending with ratings in the mid 1600s to the high 1700s, peaking at an 1829. So, without further ado, lets carry on with an introductary lesson on Comp. The first and most important thing a Trainer must know is that no matter how good their team is, it can easily be over powered, overwhelmed or out played by any team. Believe it or not, yes, this does include having a well built Übers team (mostly consists of Legendary or extremely powerful Pokémon) swept by a Magikarp or Caterpie. A Trainers most important skill in Comp is predicting and out playing their opponent. As such it is very important to spend time investing in improving this skill, but to not get overconfident about it and risk out predicting themself. Play at a calm pace and don't let a misplay tilt you. Now, on to beginning to build your team. The first thing you should consider is what kind of team you want to put together. Will you try and over power an opponent with raw power, use a more subtle strategy to wither them down; will you use a weather condition such as rain or sand? To this end, you will want to choose 2-3 Pokémon to be the Core of your team. These 2-3 Pokémon will guide you towards selecting the remaining 3-4 Pokémon that will be their support and back up. My current Comp team will serve as the example here and they are Tyranitar, Excadrill and Aegislash. The idea behind them is that Tyranitar can set up Sand with its Sand Stream, which increases its S.Def by 50% (Rock Type only). It also carries the Choice Scarf to outspeed many Pokémon that could threaten it or Tyranitarite, but the latter isn't available in PRO as of yet. With Sand set up, this will give Excadrill a nice boost as well in the form of one of its two abilities, Sand Rush and Sand Force. My Excadrill runs Sand Rush and carries Life Orb with some EV investment in Speed so that it can outspeed other Pokémon that are in the same Speed Tier (Pokémon that have the same Base Speed) as it is in. This allows it to deal heavy damage to try and get the KO on any unprepared Pokémon my opponent has on the field. The last part of the Core is a Special Attacking Aegislash so that my Core is not composed of all Physical Attackers and it is unaffected by Sand. In VGC, I run it with Ghostium-Z, but since that is unavailable, alternitive items you could consider are Red Card, Weakness Policy, Leftovers or even a Sitrus Berry. Looking over this Core, a few weaknesses begin to show their face in the form of Ground, Fire and Fighting type attacks. Ground hits all three of these Pokémon hard and they do not quite care for it, while neither Tyranitar or Excadrill like taking a Fighting type attack. Excadrill and Aegislash are not fond of Fire either, so we would want a Pokémon that can check at least two of these weaknesses. A good choice for this would be Rotom-Wash. Not only does it scare Ground type Pokémon, but it is also immune to Ground type attacks as well, which means it has no weakness on its Electric side of typing, only on Water. With Rotom also being a Water type, that means it is not afraid of taking a hit from a Fire type attack. That is all 3 major weaknesses taken care of with a single Pokémon. However, patching up weaknesses in your own Core may not be as easily accomplished, but don't worry. That is why you have other slots that can cover it and why you try to keep your Core to a maximum of 3 Pokémon. Usually you would want a Pokémon that is capable of Speed Control (increasing the speed of your own team or decreasing the speed of your opponents), however I know Trick Room, Tailwind and possibly other similar moves do not work on PRO. Regardless of this, I will give an example for a Speed Control team member in the event that this is changed in the future and/or you wish to pursue Comp outside of PRO. I would be a poor professor if I did not prepare you entirely. For a Speed Control Pokémon, we can look to a few possibilities, but I am partial to using Tailwind if my Core is not built for utilizing Trick Room. Tailwind is a field effect that doubles your Pokémons speed for 5 turns. I have several Pokémon that fill this spot and the most common two I use here are Special Attackers. Many people don't know that Hydreigon can learn the move and it can catch them off guard when they are expecting a Dark Pulse or Draco Meteor to come out, so they either Hard Switch (switching out without your Pokémon being knocked out or from an effect such as Volt Switch or U-Turn) or will Protect in order for their current Pokémon not to take the hit. This gives you the chance to set up your Tailwind for free. The other I use is Naganadel, so I won't talk to much about it, due it not being available in PRO, but will mention that much of the same concept surrounding Hydreigon applies to it. For an example on the last slot, I will bring up a Pokémon that I, personally, do not often use, but will help against that pesky Fighting type weakness that has shown up and Aegislash can't check by itself. Dragonite. Why Dragonite when we already have Hydreigon? Well, both of Dragonite's major weaknesses are already covered several times over with the other Pokémon on the team. Ice is handled by Tyranitar's rock attacks, while both Excadrill and Aegislash have their Steel typing and/or attacks to handle them. The same is said for Fairy types. So this makes both Dragonite and Hydreigon feel somewhat safe to work together and Dragonite makes sure that the team isn't too heavy on the Special Attacking side of things. This will prevent things like Seismic Toss, Evolite Chansey's from being a major wall against the team. Please keep in mind that the examples I have given here may not be ideal for PRO, as the team was put together for play on the VGC Ladder playing on Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. The addition of the Dragonite was for the sake of having a 6th Pokémon for the team, as the others I use are not available in PRO and it was there to cover the other Pokémon. With that, we have now built a team of six Pokémon that are not only powerful individually, but are even stronger when working together to help cover weaknesses that they might have when separate. It isn't a perfect team though; no team ever is, but lets review how we came to this Comp team. • Select 2-3 Pokémon as the Core members of your team • Identify any common weaknesses these Pokémon have • Select your next Pokemon by which would be best suited to covering most of those weaknesses • Select a Pokémon that can give you Speed Control or a Pokémon that can cover any more weaknesses (or both) • Find a Pokémon that can fill in any last little gaps you have • Make any adjustments to your team as you see or feel the need to, a new weakness may appear in the form of an attack, Pokémon or even overall playstyle. Your team won't be perfect, so don't try to strive to make a perfect team. Instead aim to always improve how you play your teams instead, as that will benefit you the most in the long run. Don't be afraid to try cookie cut builds and play around with how you EV train them either. In most cases a 4/252/252 EV spread is not the most ideal when playing in Competitive Battles, as you may want a Pokémon to have slightly more in HP, Defense and/or Special Defense so that it can survive just 1 more hit. Using a Damage Calculator, such as one provided by Smogon or Pokémon Showdown can help you figure out how you want to divide up your 508 EV points. I hope this helped you to learn a little more about building a Competitive Team to have fun and battle against other trainers. If you have any questions, please feel free to send me a Private Message on the PRO Discord. My name on there is Prof. Roxanne Maple. However, do not message me asking me to rate your team. It will take longer than a 'yes, it is good' or a 'no, it won't work' and unfortunately I can't spare the time it would take to help give a proper rating for everyone's team. Good luck in all your future battles~