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Teambuilding 101 - Getting Started


NickCrash

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Obligatory Introductory Paragraphs

Greetings Ladies, Gentlemen, and people of unidentifiable gender! My name is Nick, and this is the first of a series of teambuilding guides. I wanted to make them relatively short, like separate courses on the matter, so people to not get lost behind huge walls of text. The thematic division will help generate discussion and improve the guide(s) as the metagame progresses. This aims to address the basics of teambuilding, so it should always be useful for newer players, no matter what the state of the metagame at any given point is.

My battling experience started a while back, but I decided to enter the twilight zone of competitive battling in late BW2 - early XY. I personally enjoy teambuilding and believe I have steadily become good at it. The reason I am making this guide is the current decrease in RMTs from the community, and the fact that every time a workshop thread appears, people massively gather and make requests. Thus I've come to the conclusion that many of you are just shy of your teambuilding skills and may just need a little bit of guidance to get a confidence boost. So, if a person like me, who started out as a horrible battler but learned with hours on the ladder, can do it, so can you. And you'll do well.

Generally speaking, teambuilding is simple. One needs to choose a tier to start from, have a general understanding of the metagame, and begin building with pokemon of their liking. One good idea is to know what you want your team to do, and not just enter mindlessly into battle. But we'll come back to that later in detail. When teambuilding, first comes the pokemon or core of interest, then the supporting pokemon, and finally the pieces of the puzzle that provide balance to the team, may that be type synergy or simply offensive capabilities. When done with the prototype, the builder tweaks the team. This includes movesets, EV spreads, held items and abilities, or even changes in particular secondary pokemon. Any change can be made, but one should not panic. The more care you put into your teambuilding at first, the easier it will become later to build more efficiently.

Therefore, battling versus a variety of teams is absolutely necessary to put your team to the test. Gaining first hand experience on the ladder is essential to find out your team's flaws, and make possible changes. Sometimes said changes are extensive because switching a single pokemon around may not be enough and a large group may need to shift to cover up the weaknesses of the team. Naturally one should not make changes at the first sign of trouble, because at the same time, we'll be honing our prediction and general battling skills. Patience, Observation and Experience are qualities that can be improved over time and are important in becoming a good battler, and consequently a good teambuilder.

Why Should You Build

Certainly, you may go to the RMT threads or steal one of Skitty's teams, however there are several important factors that should urge you to start building on your own:

  1. Understanding the team. If someone snatches another person's team, they might not understand it fully because they haven't gone through exactly how it works. The sets, choice of pokemon, or EV spreads may confuse them, and thus they will not enjoy using the team as much. Even if you are new at pokemon, and want to improve as fast as possible, it's better to build your own team, because understanding everything in it will help better tackle possible problems it will have and improve your choice of pokemon, sets, EVs, items in future teams or versions of the current one.
  2. Improving your battle skills. Teambuilding and Battling are closely connected. Having a deeper understanding of teambuilding leads to a better grasp at concepts such as momentum, and core synergy. In fact it works as a way to plan ahead, as you will indirectly train in how plays work, which is always better than on-the-fly critical thinking.
  3. It is fun. Creating pokemon teams can be as fun as using them to battle. Making a good pokemon team takes time and effort, but many people like myself find the process of building so much fun, and is quite rewarding in the end. This includes experimentation, and the surprize factor is always nice. Furthermore, building with friends also a possibility; they make building more fun, and perhaps even more effective (as two heads are better than one).

Important Note

Before you start building, you need to understand that there is no perfect team. ORAS is a very diverse metagame with many possible team archetypes and threats that you cannot simply cover each and every one of them. Naturally some teams will be better prepared than others, but that's all a matter of experience in teambuilding. That said, threat-coverage should not be your only focus, as the general function of the team comes first. How do you want your team to win, and by extension what are your win conditions? Those should be questions you could ask yourself while building the team, as it will help construct solid cores and remind yourself of your objective, thus focusing on your strategy.

Generally, how many threats your team addresses is based on how diverse the metagame is. If it's broad enough, there are more pokemon to counter, while overcentralizing pokemon limit your opponents (and yours) choices in pokemon used, thus making the game simpler to predict, yet not so healthy as you'd see the same ones over and over again. So, focus on your team being good to address anything without fretting too much about certain threats themselves.

To improve that, you could check the Usage Stats, Viability Rankings (coming soon) and of course check Smogon's strategy pokedex for ideas for your team-members. That of course does not necessarily mean you should copy them, as they are mere examples and might not fit on your team. Yet it is still a good point of reference to improve your teambuilding. Build, check, collide with others, tweak, re-build, battle again. It's all a big experiment, and that's what's compelling about teambuilding.

Your Basic Objective

Every team should try to accomplish something in battle, whether that is eliminating checks and counters of your sweeper(s) or by halting your opponent's strategy. Every pokemon on the team should contribute to this objective one way or another. You cannot simply pick 6 individually strong pokemon and call it a team. Even in team archetypes like Hyper Offense (HO), where individual powerhouses are prefered, they should work together either offensively or defensively, either by type or moves. This is the concept of synergy, which will be discussed in further detail in the next installment of the series.

The most basic objective of a team is to prepare a single sweeper to KO the remaining pokemon of your opponents team. Usually said pokemon has a boosting move, but that is no prerequisite. What is needed however, is the existence of backup win conditions in case your sweeper falls onto a bad matchup, your opponent's strategy manages to prevent the execution of your own, or something goes wrong, either in terms of bad plays or hax. There is no perfect player just like there is no perfect team, and of course nobody is exempt from bad luck. So, we try to manage our luck with a better build.

Another type of objective is to have a core of pokemon, or an established group of pokemon with good (or even exceptional) synergy. A core is basicaly a couple or group of pokemon that deal with each other's threats or compliment one another offensively. The core serves as a good starting point for a team, since the pokemon themselves work pretty well with each other to begin with. However, the core must have a purpose. If it is offensive, it must break up the opponent's team, or even secure the win. If it is defensive, it's main focus is to wall or otherwise inhibit the opponent's strategy.

Finally, an objective can be conceptual, which means the strategy does not revolve around a specific pokemon or two, but the team as a whole. The primary archetype that falls under this category is stall. Teams that are based on pivoting either with Volt/Turn or Baton Pass (boosted or wish pass) may also belong here, yet their usage is not restricted to defensive builds. To stall by walling all the opponent's pokemon and chipping their damage off requires coming in on threats, check or counter them, possibly heal and/or pass status, and move around. Therefore it is a team effort, with the team condition being the team itself. Similarly Volt/Turn employs switching around to force your opponent into unfavorable matchups and steadily weaken their pokemon in the process. Naturally there are pokemon and team archetypes designed to destroy said strategies. Remember what we said about the metagame; you can't prepare for everything.

In summary, there are 3 main categories of a team objective: to pave the way for a sweeper, to support a core, or to conform to a concept. The objective of a team usually defines the style or archetype of the team (offense, defense, balance, etc). Then the rest of the team has to be build accordingly, supporting the center of the team, and contributing to the general objective.

~~ That's all for now folks ~~

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I wanted to make them relatively short, like separate courses on the matter, so people to not get lost behind huge walls of text

Bruh? My eyes got tired by the moment I go into the thread :P

Aside from joking, that's a very good guide for begginers! Very good job Nick :)

Edited by pyrromanis
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Great guide :D I was so bad at battling but now at least I have a decent idea of making correct plays after watching hours of vids of pokeaimmd and blunder's OU lives. I'm still on low ladder though :P but I think it helped me a lot. To be honest the more you play the greater idea you get about the metagame and certain sets and checks which helps you anticipate moves and make correct or even aggressive plays. I'm so bad at teambuilding because usually I fail to cover all the counters to powerful mons which I forget about while building, so I really look forward to your guides. My preferred style is bulky offense with a volt-turn core, also Im extremely partial to specs heatran which I always try to use on my team so there's that, I'll be following your posts very closely :D

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This is a great guide! (Not gonna lie, I was planning on making a teambuilding guide XD) So, are you going to write a guide on how to make a OU team in depth? (I also made a core guide, maybe it can correlate with this guide)

Edited by Cool Girl
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Do you accept contributions here or in the old meta thread if I'm taking about DPPt OU and UU?

Also, do you allow contributions from other builders general, even if it's for ORAS, or is this thread only yours personally?

Also, not to be rude, but I'm questioning this thread's purpose of it isn't a personal unilateral thing for you; smogon exists, with its vast span of teambuilding guides and instructors to teach people how to build or give them advice. And if it's not such a thing, then the ambit of this thread would be the same as existing threads here, like the competitive discussion one or the older meta's one or even the RMT in general.

I'm sorry of I sound dense, but I'll be basing my future comments and additions based on what I understand of this thread.

[Also based chimpact had said once to based jamvad, "A core is an outdated term for mediocre teams. Synergy and partnerships are the new thing" and even if I'm trolling, I'm bound to agree that textbook teambuilding is a stagnant idea that needs to have its Mold Broken. There's got to be a balance between creativity and practicality/feasibility]

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What I am planning to do is make a series of basic guides for teambuilding. Everyone is welcome to contribute to the guides in the comments, and I welcome all feedback, suggestions for additions or subtractions from the main comment. So @Cool Girl, feel free to pm me if you like with your ideas. I do not have OU specific guides here, but since this is the tier I play the most, my main examples will derive from it. There are plans for playstyle/archetype specific threads.

@Viri , the purpose is to make simple guides that everyone understands without getting bored. I would rather we kept the current meta in mind in this one, but that other thread also means to include teambuilding and all sorts of comments on the previous metas. It's a thread supposed to cover all aspects of them, just due to the limited contribution it won't be as heavy.

I am well aware that smogon has various guides and is certainly ages ahead of what I do, but these are only the beginning. The base idea is to make teambuilding open for anyone in the Reborn Community so they get a good grasp of why things are the way they are. Smogon is usually not so friendly to people who recently took an interest to the game and wish to get started, so this basic knowledge and thought-process in dealing with things and/or organizing your various teambuilding and battling strategies are key in integrating them to the game without frustrating them too much for being inexperienced.

The Tier Discussion thread is supposed to address the more experienced members, because it has tiering as it's main point, and newer players do not have enough experience or knowledge of the meta to provide many serious arguments on the matter. This particular thread assumes the reader knows few things about the game, but as I move forward, the newer threads will steadily address the peripherals; the deeper parts of the game that one should know if they want to become the very best like no-one ever was, one day.

We have to start somewhere, so I believe this guide does the job. There are more to come, so after the next one or two, and since the point is for the community to interact with the competitive scene a bit more, you guys could ask of propose threads about more specific facets of the big umbrella called Competitive Battling.

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