Pokemon Champions: The Beginner's Guide To Competitive Pokemon

This will serve as a primer for getting into the serious competitive scene to take your Pokemon training to the next level.Making A Monster TeamCompetitive Pokemon can be divided into two phases: Team building and battling. Team building is primarily defined by optimizing your Pokemon's base stats. Every Pokemon has six stats: HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, and Speed. By looking at a Pokemon’s base stats you can get an idea of how they are played. For example, Charizard’s two highest stats are Speed and Special Attack, while Annihilape has high HP and Attack. Generally speaking, this means Charizard is a fast special attacker and Annihilape is a bulky attacker. Of course, players have found many other uses for these Pokemon, but for simplicity we’re going to treat them as such.So what’s the difference between an Attacker and Special Attacker? It largely comes down to its move pool. Moves that deal damage in Pokemon are split into two attack types: Physical and Special. Physical Attacks calculate the users attack stat against the opponent’s Defense Stat. Special attacks calculate the users special attack stat against the opponent's special defense. There is a lot of math that happens here, but the general rule of thumb is that Pokemon with a high attack should only be using physical attacks and a Pokemon with high special attack should only use special attacks. This is denoted by symbols next to the move name. Ideally when team building you’d want to have a mix of attackers and special attackers to cover your bases.Continue Reading at GameSpot