How to get started with competitive battling?

[InfernoTowel]

Hey, I need some tips on how to start competitive battling. I was reading a lot about it a few months ago, but I got discouraged due to the difficulty in making my first team - mainly IVs and choosing my pokemon for it.

So I want to know - how high should the IV's for a pokemon's stats that it uses be (should be they be 28+ or I'll always get pwned, or just not plain BAD?), how long should I expect EVing one pokemon to take, and how can I build my first team and battle my first battle?

Thanks in advance. I'll try to get the EV speeding up items from the battle tower today and I hope those, combined with advice from all of you, should help me get started with this.

 

[Alex Practice]

You should get shoddy battle, as it allows you to throw together an entire team with perfect IVs without having to breed/train on your DS. It also lets you battle people easily without having WIFI, friend codes, etc.
It'd be a good idea to download that and give it a try. Not only will it give you a sense of competitive battling but you won't have to spend months breeding a team just to find out it's not very good.

As for IVs in-game, perfect aren't really crucial but there are some situations where not having a perfect IV in Speed can lead to defeat. For example, your Gengar with timid/252 speed EVs/30 Speed IV vs one with Timid/252 Speed EVs/31 Speed IV is going to get nailed by shadow ball first and die. but that's really the worst that could happen other than maybe not ohkoing/2hkoing or avoiding ohko/2hko based on other stats.

When I first started playing, I just got shoddybattle, threw together a team, lost a lot, and gradually got better as I learned to predict attacks and switches, memorize the capabilities of enemy Pokemon in order to counter them, etc. There's not much else you can do to get started than to just jump in.

www.smogon.com/dp/pokemon/___ <- fill that with whatever Pokemon you want to see a bunch of sets including nature, EVs, and moves. For example www.smogon.com/dp/pokemon/metagross will show you a great Metagross set to use as your lead.

 

[MegaBuddha]

I wish smogon had a for beginners sort of article or whatever. I try to teach my girlfriend to play but there's just so many aspects of pokemon to know. It's overwhelming. I've had her on Shoddy battling myself and others trying to lead her through. She can remember like scenarios like when Latias comes in, switch to Scizor. But she can' remember like.. everything lol

 

[Olie]

I wish smogon had a for beginners sort of article or whatever. I try to teach my girlfriend to play but there's just so many aspects of pokemon to know. It's overwhelming. I've had her on Shoddy battling myself and others trying to lead her through. She can remember like scenarios like when Latias comes in, switch to Scizor. But she can' remember like.. everything lol

we do

 

[Rayne Sylvan]

It takes time to learn, just like any competitive game.

On topic, Battling 101 is a great program for beginners that Smogon offers. The current session is full, but another one should be starting up in August =)