How to Build a Competitive Pokémon Team on a Pokémon Battling Simulator

Choose the tier you want to build a team in. Tiers are determined in general by Smogon and can be viewed on their site. More information about the tiers and the tier system can also be found under policy review on their forums.

Choose whether or not to run weather. Weather may be more viable in some tiers than others, and some weathers may be more viable in some tiers than in others. Running weather gives a team certain advantages and disadvantages. First, it allows a team to take advantage of many Pokémon's abilities (such as Toxicroak's Dry Skin or Landorus' Sand Force) and overpower another team that cannot do this. Furthermore, Hail and Sandstorm can take advantage of the attrition that those weathers bring to non-ice or non-Ground, Rock, and Steel-types respectively, while Rain and Sun can take advantage of the fact that they boost water-type moves and weaken fire-type moves or vice versa, respectively. If weather is chosen, an appropriate weather starter should be the first member of the team. This Pokémon will be able to create unending weather through an ability that activates each time that Pokémon switches in. The weather inducers are: Politoed and Pelipper for rain, Tyranitar, Hippowdon, Hippopotas, and Gigalith for sandstorm, Ninetales and Torkoal for sun, and Abomasnow, Alolan Ninetales, and Snover for hail.

Choose team goal and strategy. This is a crucial part of team building and never should be overlooked. Will the built team seek to win by overpowering the opponent for the win, out-stalling the opposition with moves such as Toxic and "walls" that cannot be touched, or a mixture of both? These team strategies are called Offense, Stall, and Balanced. Within these three overarching strategies are more specific strategies, such as Bulky Offense (an offensive team that also packs Pokémon with high defenses to give the team some endurance), Hyper Offense (an offensive team that solely focuses on taking down the opponent's Pokémon as fast as possible), or Rain Stall (a Rain team that takes advantage of the fact that water-types typically have high HP and defenses to out-stall the opponent). There are many more strategies that can be played -- for more information see the Dragonspiral Tower section of the Smogon site or the Rate My Team forum, also of Smogon.

Based on the above, pick roles for your team. Depending on what you have decided so far, you should have a general idea of what your team is trying to achieve and a rough outline of what kinds of Pokémon to have on your team. This is where you finalize this. A standard balanced team will have a special sweeper, a physical sweeper, a special wall, a physical wall, a lead, and a support Pokémon. However, your team may be different. If you are running weather, replace the generic lead with a weather inducer. If you are running Offense, you might want to replace the wall(s) and/or supporter with (a) sweeper(s). If you want to run a Stall team, you might want to increase the number of walls or supporters on your team. If you are running a weather team, you want to make sure that many of your Pokémon benefit from the weather you are creating.

Choose possible Pokémon. Up until now, we have carefully avoided the topic of choosing Pokémon to eliminate all bias. The first place to start choosing Pokémon is a list of all the Pokémon in the tier that you are attempting to build a team in. Read analyses of these Pokémon (even just the overview section) on Smogon. This will give you an idea of what each Pokémon does on a team. For each role that you aim to have on your final team, choose three (or more) Pokémon from that tier that might fit in that role. Rank them from 1-3 (or higher) based on how well you think they will do.

Look for team synergy. You now have plenty of options for Pokémon. What you now want to do is actually choose which of those three Pokémon you are going to use for your first draft of the team. Look to make sure the Pokémon on your team resist each others' weaknesses and no more than two or three Pokémon on your team share a common weakness. If three Pokémon share a weakness, make sure you have an immunity to that type in your party or a couple of good counters to the common attackers using that type in your tier.

Look for checks and counters to common Pokémon. First, let us define a check and a counter. A counter can switch into a Pokémon with little or no risk, and ensure the opposing Pokémon's defeat. A check can sometimes switch into a Pokémon safely, and sometimes ensure it's defeat. In many battles, you will see the same Pokémon over and over again. Make sure none of these Pokémon will be able to set up and run rampant on your team. In fact, if there are still some party slots in which multiple Pokémon could still be chosen, you might want to consider one that counters or checks the most commonly used Pokémon rather than simply provides a little extra team support.

Choose movesets. Now that you have finalized what you believe to be the Pokémon you are going to use on your team, look at the Smogon analyses, and choose the moveset that you think will carry out that Pokémon's role most efficiently. Often you can tell which this will be from the name of the set (for example, for a Dragonite Rain Mixed Attacker in OU, choose the Mixed Attacker (Rain) set). If you are new to competitive battling, make sure you don't disregard stat-boosting moves -- they do come in handy.

Create the first draft of team in the Pokémon Battle Simulator. Currently, the best simulator for the Fifth Generation is probably Pokémon Online, so this guide will assume that you are using this program. First, open it. Click "Teambuilder." Then click the "Pokémon" tab at the top of the pop-up window. Now you can enter the species of your Pokémon, it's nickname (not necessary), it's moves, it's gender, it's Hidden Power type and IV's, it's EV's, it's nature, and pretty much anything else. In the simulated battling world, it is assumed that you have spent your entire life breeding or soft-resetting for perfect Pokémon (even though you haven't -- this saves you time!), and so you can use almost unrealistic, but NOT HACKED Pokémon.

Battle with your team. This guide recommends battling on Smogon's server, as you will encounter the best trainers there who will easily show you through the course of battle where your weaknesses lie. Battle at least 10 separate opponents until the end of the battle (or until it is obvious who will be the victor and the losing side forfeits). Ensure these battles are saved to a folder so you can go back over the logs.

Review your logs. Look specifically to see if there are any pertinent weaknesses on your team or any of your Pokémon are failing to carry out a role for a particular reason. Make sure the Pokémon that looked good or looked like they would work together well on paper actually were or did. After reading through each log, rank your Pokémon from 1-6 based on their positive impacts on the battle. Tally up the totals. Pokémon with higher numbers perhaps should have a moveset changed or species changed to help the team more. You can make more than one change between drafts, but it is not advised -- one change can make a huge difference on its own while the second change may muddle results. In this stage, keep to the Smogon analyses; the new player with a new team will not have the experience to create strong sets and EV spreads yet.

Repeat steps 10 and 11. Continue to let your team change and make sure you seem to be winning more and more often. If not, perhaps the changes you are making are actually detrimental. Once you seem to be unable to boost your wins higher (this will take a while and many team drafts), you have a couple options available to you. Continue to the next step.

Fine-tune your Pokémon. Now you can stray from the Smogon analyses. Is it frustrating that many Conkeldurr just outspeed your Gastrodon? Consider taking some EV's from Attack or Special Attack and moving them to Speed. Would it be more helpful to your team for Starmie to know Psychic instead of Scald? Replace them and see if your winnings are boosted. Besides customizing your Pokémon to be better on your team, you also add a bit of unpredictability to your Pokémon. Some Conkeldurr users will expect to outspeed Gastrodon and you will surprise them. Perhaps some unwitting trainer will switch in Gengar to your Starmie and you will OHKO with Psychic from sheer surprise. Eventually, you will get stuck here too. When you do, move to the next step.

Post to the Rate My Team Forum on Smogon. This will allow other Pokémon trainers to view your team and may point out some weaknesses or offer advice to help your team grow and get better. One note of caution -- make sure to put a lot of analysis about each of your Pokémon. People will underrate your team if they think that you have not put a lot of effort into it's creation (which you have, if you have followed this guide). Now you can fine-tune again with the new suggestions and edit your Rate My Team submission. Eventually, your team will peak, and no longer be able to do any better.