Pokemon Team Building Steps

With 721 Pokemon and counting at your disposal, you could come up with a berzillion tactics and strategies for your team. Of course, only a few of them work due to consistency and not relying on sheer luck all the time. In Battle Spot Doubles format, I cannot emphasize enough how important your Pokemon synergy is; if you just simply pick all your favourite Pokemon with no synergy, then y'all gonna have a bad time. 

My team-building blueprint lol

Team building is probably my favourite thing to do, in fact, I think I spend more time theory crafting than playing in WiFi battle, even in the office (last time lol) when I had nothing to do, and at home doing tonnes of research through Pokemon Database, Serebii, Bulbapedia, and of course, Smogon. And thanks to Pokemonshowdown.com, a Pokemon battle simulator, I was able to test out various builds and synergies of my former Trick Room team, I was able to claim the top spot in Msia Doubles three times in a row starting at season 6 from XY. I wish I have the proof, but for some reason, the database from Pokemon Global got corrupted or something.

Anyway, from my experience, here are the top 5 ways of playing Doubles that can give you the most consistent winning streak:

• The Good Stuff

This is possibly the most popular build because most of the Pokemon are both strong and fast, however, there are cases of slow strong Pokemon in the team too for support and to balance the synergy out. This is also probably the recommended start-out build for beginners, to get an understanding of how vastly different Doubles is from Single format.

• The Weather Team

Weather teams in Doubles format are super common, particularly Sunny and Rain ones, Sand team are also seen occasionally, with Hail (Ice) team being the least used because of their terrible type weaknesses. During Gen 5, Weather Wars was the staple of the metagame because the weather effect lasts forever until the weather gets replaced by another different one. Thank goodness that was changed in Gen 6 that only allows the weather to last 5 rounds (or 8 if your Pokemon holds a special item). If you're one of those that favors a certain element, then the Weather strategy is for you (never go for anything else, like...pure Normal type team or something).  

• The Trick Room / Tailwind / Semi-Room

Trick Room, a move introduced in Gen 4 is a wonderful tool for slow Pokemon because once activated, the slowest Pokemon will move first. Tailwind, is the complete opposite of that as it boosts your Pokemon's speed by two stages. Semi-Room, on the other hand, is considered quite a new strategy that mixes both slow and fast Pokemon, using Trick Room only if needed. Pretty self-explanatory here, and Trick Room is also my best team to reach 1700 points before; pretty good considering I don't really rely on the lesser legendaries nor the top 12 OU Pokemon. 

• The Prankster / Spellcaster

Prankster is an awesome ability that a few Pokemon have, and they're annoying AF because of how it can cripple your team if you don't have anything to counter. However, if you know how it works then it can be dealt with. There are some teams that don't rely on Prankster though, such as those who use Perish Song move, or using an unsuspecting Pokemon like Pachirisu by 2014 Pokemon Champion,  Se Jun Park using Follow Me. 

• The All Rounder

Actually, there's no official "All Rounder" team by Smogon or Nuggetbridge. It's just a term I made up by myself because this team is unique and also probably the most difficult to build. The reason why it is difficult is because the build solely revolves on your core which is your favourite Pokemon of all time. My AR team consists of Umbreon (core), Mega Metagross, Azumarill, Tangrowth, Swellow, and Chandelure. It may look like a random build but it's not, as it was designed to fight on par with the top 12 OU Pokemon (which you will encounter a lot) in Doubles format, and the best part of it is that most of the time, your opponent don't have a single clue what the team is capable of. More on that in the near future.

So to recap, to build a team, choosing the core Pokemon and your preferred battling style is a two-way foundation. Your core Pokemon will carry your team's style, and certain Pokemon are already selected naturally due to their useful abilities; the rest of the five Pokemon that have good synergy with it or each other are completely up to you. 

With this foundation, sometimes this brings out the best of your favourite Pokemon that is less than average, even the ones that ranked low by Smogon, which makes this game so much fun to play (especially when you crush their overpowered team). Until next time, I'll be going into how I choose my first Trick Room team.

Laters!