Free write: How to Prepare a Usable Online Team in Pokemon

The first step in creating your team is choosing an uber (an overpowered pokemon) to base your team's typing off of. Most ubers are dragon type. You can find a list of ubers at serebii.net. Once you have your uber, you assemble a team of six legal pokemon, this should include one fire type, one water type, and one dark ghost or psychic type. Try to avoid using two pokemon of the same type, it can create a major disadvantage against some opponents. Coordinating a perfectly typed team will take some experimentation. Your game's battle institute is a great place to try out different pokemon.

Once you have your pokemon decided, it is time to choose their move pool. A pokemon can have up to four moves. They should have one to two attack moves of it's own type, one to two attack moves of another type, and one strategy move. An attack move of a pokemon's own type is called a STAB move. It does 1.5X more damage than moves of other types. They should have an attack move of another type to avoid a situation where all of the pokemon's attacks are "not very effective". The strategy move is optional but recommended, a pokemon can be based purely off of its attacks, but it is very useful to have a stat boosting move for tight situations. There are two kinds of attacks: physical attacks and special attacks. A pokemon has a statistic for each of these. It is advised to have only  kind of attack, based off of the pokemon's statistics. There are three different ways to teach a pokemon a move: level up, egg, and machine. Teaching a pokemon a move through "level up" is very basic, simply train your pokemon to the level that it learns the desired move. Teaching a move through machine is also fairly simple; in your bag, you'll find a pocket labeled "HMs and TMs". This stands for "Hidden Moves and Technical Machines". Simply activate the machine and if your pokemon can learn it then select the desired pokemon. Egg moves are slightly more difficult to teach. To teach an egg move, you must find a male pokemon with the desired move that matches the egg group of the pokemon you want to hatch, breed it with the female version of the pokemon you want to hatch and the baby will know the egg move (I will cover breeding mechanics later).

Once you have selected all of your pokemon and their move pools it is time to move on to nature breeding. Each pokemon has one out of twenty-five natures. Each nature either leaves statistics where they are or raises one statistic by ten percent while lowering another by ten percent. The ten percent may not seem like much, but it makes quite a difference in battle. Decide which nature is best for your pokemon and begin breeding. The easiest way to breed is to put the pokemon that you want to hatch into daycare with a Ditto. Get on your bike and after about two-hundred-fifty steps, you can pick up an egg from the day-care man. Put a pokemon with the ability Flame Body in your party to make the egg hatch faster. Ride your bike around with the egg until it hatches. When it hatches, there is a four percent chance that the baby will have the nature you want. If it does not, repeat the entire process until you hatch a baby of the correct nature.

Once you've hatched the pokemon with the right nature, it's time to start EV training. Each pokemon has six different stats: HP, attack, defense, special attack, special defense, and speed. EV stands for Effort Value. Each pokemon can have a maximum of five-hundred-ten EV's and a maximum of two-hundred-fifty-five EV's on a single stat. The best way to go is to find the pokemon's best two stats and put two-hundred-fifty-two on each of them. Four EV's bring a stat up by one. I know what you're thinking "Allen! two-hundred-fifty-five isn't divisible by four!" and you are correct about that. That is why you cap it at two-hundred-fifty-two. Otherwise, three of those EV's go to waste. To get EV's on a certain stat you have to battle certain pokemon. For example, when you beat a frillish, you get one special defense EV, or when you beat a basculin, you get two speed EV's. There are short-cuts to collecting EV's. Such as, power items and drugs. Power items are to be held by the pokemon while in battle. After each battle that the pokemon that is holding the power item, is granted four EV's of a certain stat. Drugs can be fed to a pokemon to increase a certain stat. Each drug increases a stat's EV's by ten. However, one pokemon can take a maximum of ten drugs and drugs are very expensive.

Once you've gotten to this point, you've completed well over two week's worth of work and the hard part is over. All that's left to do is give each pokemon a held item. The best items are one-time-use-only. However, When used online, these items are recycled after each battle. Items can do anything from cure a pokemon of a status ailment to increase a pokemon's resistance to certain types of attacks to restore a pokemon's HP. When battling online, two pokemon in your team are not allowed to hold the same item. Items should be coordinated as diligently as moves.

Battling online is much different from in-game battles. Online, you are allowed to use three of your six pokemon. Before selecting your three, you are shown your opponents six pokemon. Only held items are allowed to be used online. online battles are significantly more difficult than in-game battles. In fact, a good online battler is said to win one of every four matches. Good luck and nobody probably bothered reading this.