Hansol

This is Hansol's space.

POKEMON IS NOT CHILDISH. Many people think that pokemon is a children's game. Well, pokemon animation played quite an important role for people's thoughts like that. (no offense!) However, the real pokemon game is not just a child game.

I'll write four articles for the beginners.

=Introduction to Competitive Pokemon and Battle=

Some pokemon players say, "The most important thing in pokemon is level! If you don't have high level pokemon, you can't beat me!!" Well, that may be true when you are battling computer NPCs, such as gym leaders, elite four or the champion. However, the competitive battle, or pvp(player-versus-player) battle, is different from those.

You battle in order to win. Of course, some people play for fun, but it would be much nicer to win, rather than lose. In competitive battle, cheat pokemon is NOT allowed. Also, what is important is team members, individual values, move sets, effective distribution of effort points... and etc. Levels are not quite important in competitive battle, because the most of the competitive battle is held on wi-fi, which allows all pokemon to become level 100.

Damage is the key to winning in all battle. The term 'damage' means, of course, inflicting as much as damage possible to foe, but also receiving minimized damage from foe and avoid if possible.

The first important thing to inflict as much as damage possible to foe is what called types. There are 17 types in total, each pokemon and move has one or more types, and every type has its weakness and strengths. For example, if the foe has Geodude, which is an rock-type pokemon, it would be better to attack with something effective to it, such as water-type move, rather than normal-type move, which would be not effective to a rock-type.

Also, another important factor of inflicting damage is the distinction between Atk (Attack) and Sp.Atk (Special Attack). Atk moves' damage base on the stats of Attack, while Sp.Atk moves' damage base on the stats of Sp.Atk. From 1st to 3rd generation of pokemon, pokemon game divided Atk moves and Sp.Atk moves by their move types. All bug, flying, fight, ground, normal, poison, rock, ghost and steel moves were Atk, and all dark, dragon, electric, fire, grass, ice, psychc and water moves were Sp.Atk. (Psychc is the type name, which is shortened for psychic - so it is not a typo.) However, after the 4th generation (which is D/P/PT/HG/SS), each type had both Atk and Sp.Atk moves.

So, move sets of a pokemon highly recommends looking at whether if the learning move is Atk or Sp.Atk.. For example, move named "Psycho Cut" (which is Atk move) wouldn't be effective to pokemon Alakazam, because Alakazam's Atk stat is terrible. So, rather than teaching Alakazam Psycho Cut, it would be much more effective to teach move "Psychic" because it is a Sp.Atk move.

Besides those two, there are still more important factors. The third one is pokemon's nature. There are 25 natures in total. Many people indicate individual values (IVs, which I'm going to explain later) rather than looking the pokemon's nature, but that's the totally wrong thing. What move a pokemon uses and the pokemon's base stats indicate what nature would be the most effective. 20 natures out of 25 adjust pokemon's two stats. For example, nature "Adamant" adjust stat "Atk" by 1.1 times, while it reduces stat "Sp.Atk" by 0.9 times. So, physical attackers usually use this nature. The other 5 natures do not adjust any of the stats, but these natures are never used in competitive pokemon world, because these natures do nothing good for a pokemon. You can find pokemon's nature and its adjustments list really easily by googling, so I wouldn't mention all 25 natures in this post.

Now, I get to explain what EP (effort point) is. EP helps in increase of a stat, but you can't really see it. Every 4 EP changes into 1 stat. The maximum amount of EP a pokemon can get is 510, and each stat can afford till 255 EPs. 510 can't be divided by 4, so the extra 2 (remainder 2) is actually not needed. I'll explain more detailed on the Effort Points section.

The second last thing is IV (individual values). IV helps in increase of a stat, but you can't really see it like EP. What IV actually is, it is a set of numbers. IV applies to each stat, and it's range is from 0 to 31. (so, it has 32 numbers.) 0(z) is the lowest number that pokemon can have, while 31(v) is the highest number. Usually, people write 31 as v, 30 as u, 29 as t and 0 as z. Unlike EPs, IVs never change once it is determined. For example, if you had an egg and you hatched it with certain IV, the certain IV would never change, unless you use some cheats. Like EPs, I'll explain more on the Individual Values Section.

The last one is the members of party. You can have maximum 6 pokemon in a party. However, instead of putting 6 Physical Attackers, it would be better to mix the pokemon's parts, such as Physical Attacker, Special Defender and etc. (I'm Korean and play in Korean forum, so I don't know the exact names of those roles.)

This is the basic intro of competitive pokemon world. Next time, I'll write something about Effort Points.

=Effort Points= uploading

=Individual Values= uploading

=Characteristics= uploading