How To Build A Competitive Team

This is a step by step guide into how to build a competitive team.

Things to consider when building a competitive team:
What kind of team do I want this to be? Weather, Stall, Offensive etc.
Does my team have synergy (works with each other)?
Can this team survive in competitive battling?

Team Needs:

1. Leads - Leads basically start the game off as the first Pokémon you send out. They should either leave a mark, like Stealth Rocks or Hypnosis or do major damage to your opponents set-up. Examples of leads would be, Bronzong, Azelf, Tyranitar/Abomasnow and Gyarados.

2. Walls/Tanks - Walls are Pokémon that basically wall Pokémon. They can take attacks from certain Pokémon easily. For example Blissey and Skarmory are both great walls. Tanks are Pokémon that can take hits and hit hard. Examples of Tanks would be, Metagross and Slowbro.

3. Sweepers - Sweepers try to do as much damage as possible to your opponents team. They have high atk/sp.atk which makes these Pokémon capable of this job. Sweepers usually have low defences with the exceptions of Heatran and *Cough Cheap Cough* Garchomp and various other Pokémon. Examples of sweepers would be, Azelf, Machamp, Garchomp, Heatran, Gengar, Gyarados and Infernape.

4. Phazers - Phazers are Pokémon that disrupt your opponent with moves like Taunt, Light Screen and Reflect. Taunt is a deadly move which stops Baton Passing teams. Light Screen and Reflect can disrupt your opponent via your defences may stop them from damaging you as much. Examples of Phazers would be Gyarados, Skarmory, Mesprit. Wish also falls into this catergory. Wish is a useful move which heals the Pokémon in play, after 1 turn of the use of Wish. Examples of wishers are, Vaporeon, Umbreon, Gardevoir and Celebi.

5. Type Coverage - Type Coverage are the types your team covers obviously which means that they have other Pokémon’s weaknesses. Type Coverage can be in a single Pokémon like Electivire or Gengar which hit a lot of Pokémon super effectively. But the team should cover most of the types and not rely on a single Pokémon.

Threats:
Azelf
Blissey
Breloom
Bronzong
Celebi
Cresselia
Deoxys-S
Dugtrio
Electivire
Garchomp
Gengar
Gliscor
Gyarados
Heatran
Heracross
Hippowdon
Infernape
Jirachi
Jolteon
Lucario
Machamp
Magnezone
Mamoswine
Metagross
Milotic
Salamence
Scizor
Skarmory
Starmie
Suicune
Swampert
Tentacruel
Tyranitar
Vaporeon
Weavile
Yanmega
Zapdos

These are the threats in the current metagame. Your team should counter most of these Pokémon too some extent.

Example of a beginners team would be: Azelf, Blissey, Celebi, Vaporeon, Machamp, Gengar.

Azelf will set the stealth rock up and can taunt.
Blissey walls sp.attackers.
Celebi is a great wall and offers support via Thunder Wave and Leech Seed.
Vaporeon can take water attacks easily and wish too help other Pokémon.
Machamp sweeps Pokémon with its physical attacks.
Gengar sweeps Pokémon with its special attacks.

This team offers quite a bit of type coverage so its a great team to start with. Hope you enjoy the guide. Feel free to ask me any questions that concerns team building or what I've said.

By Dragon9