Competitive Pokemon Playing?

I tried it but I can't stand playing with people who are so stuck up and pretentious that if I don't do things exactly the way they think you're "supposed" to, they insult my quality as a human being. Most of the people I've played with are like that. I also apparently don't have the required mental capacity to memorize the entire database of moves, items, types, and abilities which also seems to be necessary. I understand the full concept behind competitive; I just can't do it.

I've been interested in competitive play for years now, but I've never TRULY made perfect Pokemon for battle, you know? It's just so much time and effort.

... However, I'm finally saying "Screw it!" with OR/AS and actually building some decent Pokemon. Well, I'm getting a lot of help via Wonder Trade (BLESS WONDER TRADE OH MY GOSH IT'S SO USEFUL FOR THIS KIND OF THING) but regardless, I do hope I can get into the meta-game this time around for realzies.

I really don't like going back and forth and back and forth and HATCH and back and forth and back and forth.,...
I am starting to take up competitive VG just so I can battle whoever when they ask. Maybe I'll use pokegen...

I have no idea why people competitively battle and not follow official PCi rules, such as banning megas. It makes no sense to me.

Playing TCG competitively is fun, but requires money. A lot. Sometimes it's a matter of skill, but unless both players are playing competitive decks, YOU MUST HAVE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING ARCHETYPES: VIRGEN, PYROAR, YVELTAL, FAIRIES, NIGHT MARCH, DONPHAN, OR MUST HAVE AT LEAST ONE OF SEISMITOAD, GARBODOR, MANECTRIC, LANDORUS.. TO WIN.

Also tournaments are demanding. However, they are great. I'm thinking of biking 7 hours strraight (according to google) just to get to regionals.

I do enjoy competitive battling, well the more causual version of it!
If anyone feels like it, I'd be up for some battling !

There's also, Pokemon Showdown that can be used for battling, and it doesn't require breeding any pokemon firsthand, you can just pick what you want. Its maintained by the smogon community, but you can play any rules you want really.

And, it helps a lot to watch poketubers battles on youtube, you learn quickly what does what, and you can gauge better what to do when you actually battle. I've been watching tons of Shadypenguinn's battle videos, because I feel he's one of the nicer poketubers, and he puts out battle videos everydays.

About the hostility of the competitive scene, I think it has mostly to do with how most people are just parroting what they read somewhere to gain "internet cool points" basically. I mean, sure, there's truth in what they're rambling about, but that's not a free license to be an asshole. You shouldn't mind those people too much. Besides, some try to do derogatory remarks like that, because they got thrown off by you not using the same thing as everyone else..

Smogon has been a big source of that crap for years, but recently they've really made an effort to finally attain a little more professionalism and sportsmanship within their community and articles. In Gen 5 for example, you'd find articles that would literally make fun of the pokemon they were made on, while anyone reading those could not give less of a crap about that snarkiness.
However, there's still this whole tendency where when forum members know they're right, they're going to go the extra mile and basically just try to ignite a flame war with some needless comment on how this or that pokemon is so bad or whatever. That kind of remarks brings absolutely nothing to a debate, and if anything shows a lack of maturity and a dishonest attempt in being objective and helpful.

Not to mention that Gamefreak isn't doing the best job at balancing the game either. There's hardly ~200 pokemons out of the 700+ that aren't missing something to work well in battle.(Of course this number includes pre-evolutions, but even some pre-evo are battle worthy thanks to eviolite and etc)


When you're just starting out, you don't need all perfect IVs. Just be sure to have the right nature, and EV train them properly. Having at least one or two IVs where it matters is good enough early on. And when you do want to breed them with IVs, most of the time you only need 5 perfect IVs on a pokemon.

To make things faster with breeding, you want to breed a male poke with good IVs in as many egg groups as possible. (some pokes actually share multiple egg groups, which makes this much easier!) That way, you can pass the IVs to any other pokes in those egg groups! Since most pokemons are in the Field egg group, that might be a good start ! I got a ton of 5 IVs Poochyenas I breed with everything else. They're easy to breed, and the eggs hatch really fast too. You might want to look at a breeding guide on youtube. They do a good job at this. I think Shofu's was the easiest to understand I stumbled on.


There's a trick to hatch eggs with little input from your part. You can do something else while doing it that way !:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPkVlucuWa0

It works much better on X/Y though, because when a pokemon hatches you don't need to re-lock yourself into the infinite loop.
Also having a pokemon with flame body in your party, like talonflame/fletchinder, slugma, reduce the hatching time significantly.

And, I think you're referring to smogon.. Well, at first, they wanted to make the game more competitive and less luck based, while making tiers for people to battle with their favorites against pokemon they could take on and having fun. But it really degenerated.. Especially when tiers became synonyms for how good or bad pokemons are..

They're not the only ruleset though. There are many small leagues that have their own rulesets. They're just not official.
And personally, I've always been annoyed at how you can't use 6 pokemon in VGC, and how there aren't any singles battle formats competitions.. Being stuck in double, with only 4 pokemon slots to fill basically neuters most of my favorites, which weren't all that great to begin with..

Not at all, lol. I play(ed) competitive Smash for a few years, which was the only game I ever really took on a serious level. Pokemon has always been a casual experience for me, but I love it for that reason. I have a few friends who dip their toes into the competitive end of the pool every now and again, but I don't see myself ever really taking the series to that level. However... Pokken Tournament may just make a liar out of me. Fingers crossed for international home-console release! :3

I don't play properly in actual Pokemon games, though I do have Smogon teams, OU, UU, NU etc to play against my classmates.

However, since Gen VI I've decided to get myself a semi-competitive team IN X and Y (though only in the endgame). It was tiring to breed but it's quite worth the fun in the end in battle spots.

I've frequented Smogon's battle simulator in gen 5, but I got really fed up with the general competitive mentality. I never did like using the cookie-cutter teams, so I tried to make an all-Flying team. The results varied, but they were okay. But the people I won against always complained about things, the people I lost to bragged even before the battle was over, and 65% of the battles were someone leaving before the battle even really began. I tried to get into competitive battling with the actual games. I EV trained a team of flying types in XY (that I still use in ORAS), and I joined a Pokémon club on my campus. However, I left that club because they banned both Mega Salamence (which I completely understand) AND regular Salamence (which I don't understand) with the (paraphrased) reason of "because screw it". I don't mind EV training, really. But I'm not going to try competitive anymore. I've given it multiple chances, and all chances ended up disappointing me even more.