Some help would be appreciated

[Lazyjelly_fish]

Hey everybody! I just recently joined and I am excited to hear everyone's feedback anyway,I've been playing Pokemon since gen 1 and still have my original Red cartridge to this day. Granted,the game doesn't work anymore but it's still nice knowing I have it to remind me of the good ol' days. My favorite generation would have to be GSC.

So I'm asking help from all you guys and girls today. I want to get into competitive play and breeding and the whole nine yards,but all the IV's,EV's,nature's,abilities seem so intimidating that it throws me off. Is there any way someone can pretty much water the process down for me??

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[SUP3RN0VA]

You can use this which describes what Effort Values (EVs) are.

Serebii.net Games - Effort Values

It is intimidating at first glance, however once you start the process and it gets broken down into separate parts, it becomes much easier to understand, and quite easy, albeit time consuming, to accomplish.

The best way to start is to choose what Pokémon you want for your team. You can choose your Pokémon based on different strategies that can be found online, or create your own. Or you can do what I do, and create a team consisting of some of your favourite Pokémon and form strategies from that.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or looking for more guidance.

 

[Hellpest]

Hey everybody! I just recently joined and I am excited to hear everyone's feedback anyway,I've been playing Pokemon since gen 1 and still have my original Red cartridge to this day. Granted,the game doesn't work anymore but it's still nice knowing I have it to remind me of the good ol' days. My favorite generation would have to be GSC.

So I'm asking help from all you guys and girls today. I want to get into competitive play and breeding and the whole nine yards,but all the IV's,EV's,nature's,abilities seem so intimidating that it throws me off. Is there any way someone can pretty much water the process down for me??

Any help would be greatly appreciated

When first starting competitive play, It's best to just let your team grow organically, without worrying too much about how it works together - trying out a few single-pokémon ideas. For example, one of my first pokémon was Dragonite, purely because it's one of my favourites. After you've built up three or four pokémon on your team, you can start filling in any weaknesses you may have spotted.

When training competitive pokémon, it's best to think of it in two different parts:

• Selecting a pokémon:
  • When selecting a pokémon you want to use, the best thing to do is find a list of pokémon that meet a criteria you want (eg, all pokémon that can have the ability speed boost).
  • You then narrow down the selection to a single pokémon by comparing them together. How you do this depends on what you want in the pokémon, but you should keep in mind all attributes of it; ie, you might look for pokémon with speed boost, but only a couple have high attack power.
  • How a pokémon's stats are determined mainly comes down to base stats, as most other influences are maximised.

• Training a pokémon:
  • When breeding the Pokémon, there are two things to consider:
    • The nature increases one stat by 10% and decreases another by 10%.
    • IVs are randomly generated values that can be passed down to offspring through breeding. These are what makes every pokémon's stats unique - unless, of course, you force them to all be the highest value possible.
  • EVs are another stat modifier. These are gained either through battling, or super training. These are by far the easiest parts of the pokémon to manipulate.

Although all this seems quite daunting, it's really as simple as:
I want a pokémon.
Here is all the pokémon that I could use.
This is the best one of those.
Now let's breed it.

The hard bit is that last part. A large knowledge of the breeding system, and how you can manipulate it to affect pokémon, is required before you can get into competitive. It also uses many aspects of random chance, a single pokémon could take from 5-500 eggs.

Unfortunately there isn't really much of a way to simplify it, as it requires so many different things in order to get the best pokémon. Once you have the knowledge though, it becomes extraordinarily easy to do. It eventually becomes as simple as: 'you get a everstone, you get a destiny knot, please drown me in eggs now'. It also becomes progressively easier as you build up a larger collection of pokémon with good IVs and natures.

Also, it's a massive time sink. Be prepared to lose over 100 hours into this.

 

[TouyaShiro]

Unfortunately there isn't really much of a way to simplify it, as it requires so many different things in order to get the best pokémon. Once you have the knowledge though, it becomes extraordinarily easy to do. It eventually becomes as simple as: 'you get a everstone, you get a destiny knot, please drown me in eggs now'. It also becomes progressively easier as you build up a larger collection of pokémon with good IVs and natures.

To follow on from this point in particular, if you're in Generation VI, then you have multiple options of getting high IVs for breeding. In XY, you have the option of catching Pokémon in the "Undiscovered" egg group that later evolve into the egg group you want to pass down the IVs to, as they will be guaranteed 3 perfect IVs. You also have the Friend Safari where every Pokémon present is guaranteed at least 2 perfect IVs.
Making it a little bit more difficult, but at the same time more rewarding, ORAS instead allows you to use DexNav chaining to get Pokémon with perfect IVs, and it's not limited to the Undiscovered egg group.

I find it easiest to pay attention to egg groups in Friend Safari chain breeding scenarios rather than try for DexNav parents, mostly because certain Pokémon are notoriously difficult to encounter (Bagon being a perfect example of why I chose to pass IVs down via Charmander family parents instead of catch parents via DexNav).

All four games guarantee at least 3 perfect IVs for Legendary and Mythical Pokémon, and while most of them cannot breed, keep this in mind when catching them if you plan to go into competitive battling with things like Smogon's Ubers or the official VGC 2016 format (which allows us 2 "restricted Pokémon" in one team).

 

[UB-01 Kenobi]

Or you can do what I do, and create a team consisting of some of your favourite Pokémon and form strategies from that.

When first starting competitive play, It's best to just let your team grow organically, without worrying too much about how it works together - trying out a few single-pokémon ideas. For example, one of my first pokémon was Dragonite, purely because it's one of my favourites. After you've built up three or four pokémon on your team, you can start filling in any weaknesses you may have spotted.

I don't know how serious you plan to be about competitive battling, but since you said you wanted to go "the whole nine yards" I'ma give it to you straight: you want to get out of the mindset mentioned in the two quoted posts as soon as possible. If you want to win, your new favorite Pokemon is like, Clefable or Mega Sableye or Tornadus-T, and you like Talonflame and Bisharp and Garchomp and Raikou and Skarmory a lot too.

The best way to get used to IVs and EVs and stuff is to just play on play.pokemonshowdown.com - a battle simulator website that makes everything easy and simple. You go into the teambuilder, you pick a Pokemon you want, and you can control everything through easy to understand interfaces. For the EVs, there's just some simple sliders - if you want attack to go up, just slide the attack slider to the right. For the natures, you just put a "+" in the box for the stat you want to go up and a "-" in the box for the stay you want to go down.

Another great resource is Smogon, which has everything from a Viability Rankings List (so you know which Pokémon are good and which are bad) to an in-depth analysis of each Pokémon's moveset (http://www.smogon.com/dex/xy/pokemon/), and even a Team Showcase that you can borrow pre made, high quality teams from if you just want to get straight into battling: Team Showcase | Smogon Forums