Competitive Battling Volume 1: Basics and Explanation

This is Dragonite. I will be writing a series of posts about how to succeed in competitive battling. Also, please note that while I will not start using competitive lingo right off the bat, I will use terms that the average pokemon player would know, and so you will have a hard time understanding this if you have never touched a pokemon game.

I think it is important to begin with he differences between casual and competitive battling. This way, readers used to casual battling may more easily switch. There are three main differences.

The first, is that levels don't matter. All of your pokemon are expected to be level 100. Fortunately, flat battles (or battles were pokemon are lowered to 50) are played, so you don't have to worry as much. This affects the style of play. No longer, can you rely on your level 100 Infernape to 1-hit everything in sight. You must have a well made team that is able to compete with another team of six, maxed out pokemon, which leads me to the next difference.

Teams that have a chance of winning are well rounded, and have a strategy. You can NOT win be throwing a team of your favorite pokemon together and using all movesets from smogon.com (which I will get to later). That's not to say that you can't use your favorite pokemon. Most can fit into a team, but it is important that the teammates help reinforce each other, or work together for a cause (like supporting an attacker). Teams will generally have many different types of pokemon, who resist their teammate's weaknesses, and enough variety of moves between them that they can land a super effective move on almost every pokemon in the game.

Finally, switching is much more common compedetively than casually. This is in part, because there is no perfect sweeper than can knock out everything, but also because your team is rounded enough to switch in to take hits. Also it is an important factor that THERE ARE NO REVIVES. You pokemon faint, they're out for the battle, so keeping them alive by switching is very important. For example, the opponent has an Infernape out and you have out a Venesaur. Venesaur is very bulky, and might survive the flamethrower you know is comming. In game, you might stay in and try to earthquake because none of your other pokemon are able to fight. Competitively, you would switch out to your Swampert, who resist fire, and threatens Infernape with Earthquake, because you planned your team ahead for this or a similar situation.

That just about concludes the differences between competitive and casual battling. Next time I will be talking about how to create a team and the different categories of pokemon. See you then!