Pokémon VGC Starter Team Building & Strategy Advice
Summary
At Pokémon Champions | VGC Battles & Tournaments, community members share their competitive team builds for expert feedback. This discussion focuses on optimizing a starter team featuring Mega Gardevoir, Incineroar, and Whimsicott, while exploring potential additions like Volcarona. It is a great resource for players looking to refine their strategies and improve their performance in VGC battles.
Hey, this is my team for the game, i have just recently gotten into the game and i want to improve this team, any type of help in will be appreciated, i will explain the pokemons below here
i have a Volcarona in the shop, i can get that if it will help with the team.
Mega gardevoir: if enemy team has more physical defence
mega starapter: if they have more special defence
whimsicot: mainly for trickroom, shadow ball and sunny day (support)
incineroar is my opening one along with whimsicot. (it's been a great help)
kingambit: to use with trickroom for heavy damage
ceruledge: that's an extra, feel free to suggest something on it
I think u have the items of ceru and whim bad
(also, I'm planning on using garchomp once i get that, but i think I'm gonna get that any time soon)
Try using sash on whim and leftovers bulk up on ceru
should i switch ceru?
Is this for 1v1 or 2v2?
2v2 for the most
And use chople berry pls not kings rock
for kingambit or overall?
This server is for vgc Bruhh
(i put the kings rock for kingambit, get it?)
Both
there are no protects on the team, no fake out, I wanted to double check
hmmmm, okay
Yeah cool but if u want to win that’s strange
inceneroar got fake out
Yeah right fake out is very important and protect too
ahh, I missed it, got distracted by superpower
yeah well, that's why I'm asking help here
can i use protect on other pokemons? like the user protects teammate?
I highly recommend standard builds to start off, and using more protects. Pikalytics is a great site for getting popular sets
There are specific moves that can do something similar, but not just "protect"
There's wide guard which prevents spread moves (moves that hit either everyone or both enemies)
There's quick guard which prevents priority moves (fake out, aqua jet, etc)
what's a 'standard build'?
Popular moves, items, and stats that most people use
so what do i change here?
the held items, got it
and protect
So I went on pikalytics, and on the left I typed in the name of a pokemon. On the right you can see a list of most popular moves:
Hyper Voice, Protect, Psychic, Psyshock, Trick Room.
Below on the left is items, so most people are using Gardevoirite (mega garde)
The most popular ability is trace
The most common nature is Modest, and then if click EV Spreads next to nature it recommends:
2 HP/0 Atk/0 Def/32 Spa/0 Spd/32 Spe
These are good starting points, if most people using that pokemon are using these moves there's probably a good reason
holysh thanks mate, that's very helpful
If you want to use trickroom you'd change some stuff, like you wouldn't necessarily want speed investment because you are trying to be slow, but its a starting point
yeah i got that
also, should i get volcarona?
volcarona is very bad right this second because people are trying to beat charizard Y, and charizard is 4x weak to rock, just like volcarona, so everyone is ready to beat volc
not a bad pokemon in a vacuum, but the meta is very hostile to it
I'm in the early ranks, should i worry about the meta?
A lot of people "netdeck" their teams, basically finding a team posted by someone and replicating it. They may not pilot it correctly, but if they do that, they will have an answer to volc
oh damn
should i prioritize health or defence?
99% of cases health, the rule wolfey gave a while back is that your HP invest should always be higher than your SPD or DEF investment as a beginner tip. I don't think I've seen a popular EV spread that has HP lower than Def/Spd. Like if you're putting EVs on Incin, you might do 32 HP/ 0 Atk / some Def / 0 Spe/ som Spd/ 0 Spe
Most popular Incine stats is careful nature, 32/0/14/0/20/0
so 32 on hp, atk, and then one-one to defences
oh damn
For gambit, I liked using 32/32/2/0/0/0, but I know a lot of people are going with very different EVs now
elaborate please?
oh wait, i see it
hp, atk and defence
low speed foe trickroom?
yeah, I would usually use adamant so it still has some speed for tailwind
alright, thanks for your help mate
no problem, ping me if you have more questions, good luck on the grind, if your winning right away you at least have a handle on the game tho
i got garchomp finally
Nice! Chomp is great, you're a bit weak into fairies like sylveon (both mega staraptor and chomp are fairy weak, and incin and gambit are neutral, and can die to sylveon fairy feather hyperbeam) so you might want to consider life orb as the item and poison jab, with this team earthquake is a bit awkward but not bad, but I'd probably go with like poison jab (optional), stomping tantrum or earthquake, rock slide or dragon claw, protect with life orb, 2/32/0/0/0/32 with jolly nature (which is the standard nature). Poison Jab won't kill a bulky sylveon but does a ton of damage and with a little bit of chip from something else will take it
32 Atk Life Orb Garchomp Poison Jab vs. 32 HP / 0 Def Sylveon: 169-200 (83.6 - 99%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
