Consistent Team Building Template

[Mcschitter]

Introduction:

Hey guys, my name is McSchitter of Scarlet and today I wanted to go over how to build a team in PRO. There is no one correct answer just to start off, but I think a lot of players in PRO would definitely do well to build some good team building habits as a good player may be able to win with bad teams. However, a well made team even in the hands of an inexperienced player can still easily have a positive win rate in PRO. This guide takes a different approach to guides made by Idkup, but can go very well hand in hand for the team building experience and highly recommend people use both resources as he did an excellent job and I will use a lot of jargon that he mentions in his guides so have your "ctrl+f" feature ready if you are are not the most experienced with Pokemon.

 

If you are curious if I have any credibility in pro PvP, I may not have finished on the ladder yet, but I am a consistent 200+ rating player and if I was not so lazy would aspire to attempt to do better by PvP'ing more. Every season I average around mid 60's to 70% win rate which is the perfect amount any player needs to climb even to the ladder, but you may have to play more than others to reach that goal with a lower win rate than your average ladder player. My main experience involves "Pokemon Showdown" which is the premier style for Pokemon battling past VGC formats. By the way, this strategy for the most part works for Showdown too as this process was built from Showdown team making for me.

 

NOTE: This guide mainly focuses and exemplifies building "Balanced" teams as nobody likes stall users and without Volt Switch or U-Turn in the game, I find Hyper Offense to be very lack luster as it can be very easy to lose Tempo to tanky opponents if they have switches available and you do not. This is the best style for beginners as the learning curve does not add more concepts than needed to learn.

 

IMPORTANT: Any text in white throughout the guide is meant for the inexperienced! Otherwise if you have a core understanding of the basics, I would recommend you skip over it as there is a lot and even that barely scratches the surface of what it explains regarding Pokemon.

 

The Steps I follow to build PvP Teams:

1. Choose your main "Win Condition"
   
2. Do you have a Core that is vital to your win condition
   
3. Create a checklist that the team needs to work properly
   
4. Check type weaknesses
   
5. Double down on your checklist or create surprises if you still do not have 6 Pokemon
   
6. Take notes when using your team for the first time
   
7. Expect to fail, not every team can be A+ tier
   

1) Choose your main "Win Condition"

 

[spoiler=1]Your win condition is vital and is the heart of the team. Pokemon is very complicated and scenarios change all the time where you have to adapt, but what you choose to be your "main" win condition means that although your team can win in other ways, this is the go to strategy you should be playing to for success. I tend to choose my win conditions when I am thinking of cool or practical tactics that work in Showdown. Some of the strongest win conditions are Pokemon that:

• Excel at zero counter play
  
• Abuse the majority of the meta
  
• Counter common team answers with little to no support
  

[spoiler=Bullet Point Analysis]A Pokemon that has zero counter play is a Pokemon that cannot be "checked" or "answered" by any other Pokemon. Obviously no Pokemon like this exists but there are Pokemon that get as close to the definition as possible. In Pokemon Showdown, Pokemon have a tier listing for which they comply to be playable. The top of these tiers is known as "Ubers" which include famous powerful names like Mewtwo and Arceus. After that comes Overused (skip borderline tiers since it is not a PRO discussion), Underused, etc and these exist because not all Pokemon are equal as the difference between Mewtwo and Delibird I feel should be obvious. In PRO we do not have tiers past a ranking of the best. Unless banned, all PRO Pokemon play on the same playing field making this concept more important than ever in my opinion when choosing your win condition. I think this idea is where most of your "Ban 'Insert Good Pokemon Here'" arguments come from because a lot of people often run awful teams that have zero counter play for strong abusive Pokemon like Azumarill or Eviolite Chansey. Chansey has counter play in the form of knock-off, taunt trapping, etc. Azumarill has plenty of less specific ones as well but can be tricky since it runs more than one set and one set can do things better or worse than the other. PRO is not going to ban a Pokemon because of this unless the counter play style needed to beat the Pokemon is absurd like Speed Boost Blaziken who destroys a majority of the meta as it gets a free speed boost with protect and unless the it is faced by a good prankster answer, setup with priority, or a couple other fringe cases, most Pokemon will completely struggle to help answer the threat before it becomes to much to handle with its speed and simply limits team building for too much.

 

PRO's meta, like any other game, changes even if infrequently. Pokemon rise and fall by this and through the revolving door new Pokemon who are abusive to the meta will appear (looking at you Conkeldurr). These Pokemon often are your culprits of having little counter play and limit team building because of their prevalence. For instance, Chansey use to be top tier in PRO but because drain punch was fixed and gave Conkeldurr resilience despite being burned with Guts, it basically has wiped out the majority of Chansey users as the Pokemon lacks knock-off to abuse one of the few counter play options to beat Conkeldurr and just offers a free switch in.

 

A Pokemon that can win a game with just a little bit of support would obviously make more sense to use than a Pokemon that needs a ton of support to find consistent wins. A very easy way to look at this is a "Screens Belly Drum Azu" core versus a "Hazard Phasing" core. The idea behind Azumarill simply requires that the Pokemon have the opportunity to come onto the field and Belly Drum without being counter played and this is achieved through the help of light screen or reflect and maybe some hazard help if certain Pokemon have to reach certain HP values for Azumarill to sweep. Hazard Phasing generally needs a lot of different hazard setting Pokemon and phasers that need quite a bit of effort to setup properly for a win condition especially if the opponent finds one single turn to remove the hazards without being punished then you must restart the process. This Azumarill core is great as well because it has priority for teams that plan to outspeed you, outrageous attack totals to deal with tanks, and added bulk through the help of screens if certain scenarios threaten the advantages of Azumarill.

 

 

Examples of good Win Conditions in Balanced teams:

 

[spoiler=Example Win Cons]

-Belly Drum Azumarill (21.4% of teams use some kind of Azumarill based on last season stats)

-Quiver Dance Volcarona (7.82%)

-Breloom (Unknown)

-Weather Sweepers and Setters

-Manaphy (New)

 

 

 

 

 

2) Do you have a Core that is vital to your win condition

 

[spoiler=2]When you have chosen your win condition, you are going to want to support the win condition's goal. The best way I have found to do this is to use Smogon University's Analysis of Pokemon to understand your Pokemon's needs and to understand what parts of the Analysis are relevant to you, a PRO player and not a Showdown player (the common theme here you will see are for examples of screens Azumarill teams as it is my most recent build and freshest in my head for the process I followed).

 

When I search Google for "Azumarill Smogon" this is what you will see:

 

IMPORTANT: If a Pokemon is listed as any tier other than OU check the strategy's formats for OU as a set in UU works in UU because OU Pokemon cannot battle there! Here Mandibuzz is UU tiered but in PRO Azumarill is an important Pokemon that you would not see in UU tier. The OU analysis has specific speed EV's you want specifically for Azumarill (the second most seen Pokemon in PRO)! This might seem obvious because I am saying it, but I have seen twice now where my Azumarill has beaten Mandibuzz because I assumed the player is bad due to rating and was rewarded by going first with Play Rough and my own Mandibuzz has beaten an Azumarill once because I did invest as needed back when I used it!

We have plenty of places to look through and what is most important for all the Pokemon you analyze for PRO will be both SM (Ultra Sun and Moon) and XY (Gen VI). Some of you might wonder why we should care about XY even though we play with SM mechanics and this is because although we have the moves and mechanics from SM, we lack the Pokemon available in that generation and so lots of XY analysis pertains to us but I would always recommend reading both as things change over time and the freshest builds are in SM. Here is the Belly Drum set from SM:

 

If you visit the site you will notice lots of information provided for each set such as overviews, move analysis, set details like EV's and items, usage tips, team options (very useful part), and at the bottom checks and counters (also very important).

 

IMPORTANT: You will notice that the team options and set details often mention a ton of Pokemon you possibly have never heard of and whenever this is the case just make it common practice to ignore that portion for PRO especially if set details explain why you should take very specific EV's to counter a Pokemon only used in Showdown. Sometimes it does matter and it is very important you listen because the people in these guides know exactly what they are talking about. A perfect example goes back to the Mandibuzz spread. Under ideal IV's, we see a small 18 speed investment beats out the Azumarill in speed forcing an Aqua jet for any damage but that cannot take out a healthy Mandibuzz thus Azumarill loses sweeping potential as we see in this Showdown Calculator where Mandibuzz reaches 200 speed which is 1 point faster than the fastest Adamant Azumarill:

 

 

The above is starting to get a little off topic but is important to making sure your team's core is built correctly. Continuing on, if we read both SM and XY analysis we will see Azumarill has a clear disadvantage versus solid tanks like Skarmory and Ferrothorn. Both of which are in PRO and Ferrothorn boasts the highest usage stats above even Azumarill (coincidence? no... you can verify this through PRO Discord's Reborn bot using the "^mostused" command). Both these walls are steel types and in PRO if we do not like a steel type we do the same as Showdown and employ the use HP Fire Magnezone.

 

Klefki is not mentioned because that was my own brainstorming of ideas to make Azumarill more consistent and with that I have created what I call the Core of my team with a win condition and supporting tools that are specific to my win conditions success. Past this, Pokemon not chosen with a specific purpose to support your win condition goes into the next step.

 

 

3) Create a checklist the team needs to work properly

 

[spoiler=3]This stays consistent for just about any team, but essentially you want to check off the things your team needs to cover. Every team built is a ship with holes and the better the team the less holes you have sinking your ship. I think everyone can agree just about 99% of teams want both hazards of some kind and removal of hazards too. Unless your team has like 2 or more defoggers you should probably always have a hazard setup. This all being said, now is a great time to use the helpful resources given by Idkup. Links to his forum posts here:

 

https://pokemonrevolution.net/forum/index.php?threads/guide-how-to-build-teams-good.98098/

https://pokemonrevolution.net/forum/topic/96677-url

 

The compendium comes in VERY handy as it allows you to look at all available types of hazard generation / removal options in a neat and orderly format so you can choose the perfect match and other types of needs as well. Here is an example checklist I made using common needs and the Smogon analysis pages for my current core and more specifically how to deal with Azumarill answers and it helps if you choose a pokemon that fits multiple categories at once. This list is super generic as you will find most balance teams are as I have mentioned:

[spoiler=Generic Azumarill Checklist]-Hazard Setup

-Hazard Removal

-Steel Type Tanks (I already answered with my core)

-Poison Type Attacks

-Physical Walls

-Special Walls

 

 

 

4) Check type weaknesses

 

[spoiler=4]This can be especially useful if your unsure of what your team of six should be. If you go to http://pokemonforever.com/teambuilder.php which lets you check what your team is weak to. If we check what my current core is plagued by we see a huge problem first off with ground types which is obvious now but when you have 5 Pokemon further down becomes less apparent even to a trained eye.

 

Okay well I check the most used statistics and can see Garchomp, Excadrill, Dragonite, and Gyarados are the most notorious ground attack abusers in the game. With two fairies and a decent movepool for klefki and Azumarill I ignore Dragonite and to some extent garchomp as it is also a dragon I can beat and then I also ignore Gyarados as a personal choice since I have not seen almost any this current season in my PvP and accept the consequences. So now its down to wanting to specifically answer Garchomp and Excadrill so maybe now is a good time to check Smogon's checks and counters for motivation. I already know these are two strong Stealth Rock users and physical pokemon. Oh hmmm bulky water types are good but I don't want to use Rotom-Wash as mold breaker smashes me despite being bulky and having defog access. Well why not use a bulky Starmie as it makes for a pretty good tank, has rapid spin, and other cool options available which works perfectly to fit into my check list. Obviously this does not change the team builder as ground is neutral damage to water types which makes Starmie a really good check but not a full blown answer. Not wanting to fall too deep answering this one threat I also check other weaknesses I need to answer and see electric and fire twice.

 

I did not at this point bother with statistics and Smogon because I already had Impish Garchomp in mind as it is a physical wall, Stealth Rock user, negates electric, and resists fire. Sounds like the package deal to me so sign me up. All that is really left is taking at best neutral ground damage and so I decide to add another soft check that is just all around power in many other aspects, Assault Vest Tangrowth. This adds a resistance to ground and just a resilient all around Pokemon to the team. This doubles down on some of my checklist needs in a special tank along with klefki and depsite adding a poison type weakness we already have two steel types on the team for that.

 

The steps to follow this are the guidelines by which you should easily be able to do on your own or is just advice when this gets frustrating (trust me it frustrates me a lot the RNG I have). Doubling down hopefully naturally comes in step 4 as I have shown and makes the team more robust, tinkering with sets so they are not too standard can give edges over even good players by surprising them but requires an understanding of the meta and how players act to truly undertake this successfully. Then taking notes of what destroyed your team during initial runs allows you to understand if something needs to change on the team, move sets, or how you play the team. Sometimes its small things like one Pokemon is just not carrying its fair share of weight in the team or just bad RNG (I get that one a lot and it prematurely sends me back to the drawing board maybe too soon).

A good example of this I see ALL THE TIME is people running 6 Pokemon with choice items, Swords Dance, and etc just hoping they get one good setup to sweep your team away and then people who lose to this think its unfair that a team with little to no thought wins. Understandable, however, the key to their success is that most players just try to kill whats in front of them and then leave on the battle field a Pokemon that loses to one of the other Pokemon left on the opponents team when instead there was nothing wrong with your team you just needed to play more considerate of this and try to knock out opposing Pokemon without exposing yourself to the next sweeper to come out. I get that it is easier said than done but it is something to learn for yourself or from the help of a guild mate.

 

 

 

In this example here is the resultant team:

This team has already taken me to 261 rating this season and has beaten 300+ rating opponents and even a ladder player. I do not talk S*** except in the heat of a battle when someone does something completely stupid so I obviously do not name people and could care less if people believe me or not because I am here helping people looking for it, not answering skeptics. I believe I can make this team better as I already know I struggle with Gengar for instance as it just has coverage that is hard to handle for the team and unfortunately for me that is a Pokemon at the top 6 spot in the usage charts for PRO.

 

Do not think the team I built here is ever a final version, things always change! With that said I hope this insight into my team building strategy proved useful and I typed a lot of this late of night so feel free to pick me apart in comments for corrections or criticism. Just try to keep it constructive and not just bash me or any other person who comments. Again, I highly recommend checking out and using Idkup's guides as well as this guide provides a template of Team building and does not cover everything.

Edited December 31, 2018 by McSchitter

[Idkup]

First off, nice work. It's clear you put a substantial amount of effort into this guide.

 

as nobody likes stall users

COME ON MAN >.>

 

Now that that's out of the way, a bit of constructive criticism:

- I wouldn't really consider Breloom a strong win condition in this metagame. While it's extremely good in certain matchups such as Sand and Rain, it is also far too easily shut down by bulky Grass-types, and with its low speed also struggles against Offense.

- Checking type weaknesses is a proxy for checking threats. Threats are what actually matter. You can have 3 ground-resists and 3 dragon-resists and still be deathly weak to Garchomp because none of said resists can actually handle it at +2.

- Smogon is a good starting point - however, don't be afraid to venture away from it! Lure moves and nonstandard EV spreads are often not only good, but optimal on certain teams!

Edited December 31, 2018 by idkup

[Mcschitter]

Breloom is just an example and the usage stats show who the more common Pokemon in this category are. I just do not want people to think you have to always go with a Pokemon in the usage charts because that leads to stagnation of creativity and severely limits team making.

 

The type weakness I agree does not help you specifically answer a Pokemon however the process of knowing what typings you are weak to along with the usage stats should help pinpoint problems for the team and even if one is missed that is why I recommend taking note of what Pokemon beat the team in its initial runs to analyze it afterwards. I will update the process to mention not only checking type weaknesses but also to use this in conjunction with usage statistics. The note taking helps a lot in the case of Pokemon like Gengar against my team where my poison type answers do not deal well with it despite how it looked on paper while also smashing my tangrowth pretty easily too. It did not even occur to me until a tried the team out afterall. May need to add a checklist of running through most used mons and making sure the team in some capacity can typically handle a certain mon.

 

Lastly, I fully agree with not just relying on Smogon. That is part of the 5th step which I do not detail because I feel the only way to talk about it is with examples but learning first hand is the most important part for creating tech move builds. My favorite had to be using grassium-z heatran back when gastrodon was everywhere trying to answer ash-greninjas.

 

Thanks for your input and I will update the guide based on what you have said.

[Tr3y]

Where is your Choice Band Rhyperior answer on this team?

[Mcschitter]

Where is your Choice Band Rhyperior answer on this team?

 

Oh crap I did not even think about that :kappa: