Curious about VGC? Here I’ll post my first impressions of it and how I got started. Hopefully, you do not know much about VGC and you’ll learn a couple of things.
I’ve played Pokémon for ages now but I never played it competitively. I had fun catching them all, breeding and battling in the Battle Maison or the Battle Tree. I knew about VGC since I watched the Pokemon Championship on Twitch every year and I always wanted to try it but it all seemed a bit overwhelming. However, all this changed with this year’s format. If you want to get into competitive Pokemon now is the time.
The thing that bothered me the most was having perfect Ivs Pokemon. ‘Normal’ Pokémon were not a problem to breed and get those IV’s but the legendaries were a different story… Thankfully this generation introduced something called Hyper Training. Just get the legendary Pokémon you want, level it to 100 and Hyper Train it in the stats you want. By doing so they will have max IVs. This was one of the reasons I decided to give VGC a try. Now I only needed to make sure they had the right nature.
But IV’s and natures are not enough! You need to EV train all your Pokémon if you want to be the very best! And how is EV training in this generation? Quite easy and simple to understand but I still miss the horde battles from the previous generation. I’ll leave a link at the end that explains how to Ev Train.
However, before you do any of this you need to plan! Doing all this can be time-consuming so it is important to plan your team beforehand. Imagine that you spent a lot of time preparing your team only to find out that they have terrible synergy. I learned that going to Pokemon Showdown, a Pokémon battle simulator helps a lot. I strongly advise every newbie to use it. It does not matter if you win or lose what matters is that you gain experience and learn how your team works.
But how do you choose a team? The best option, I think, is to use other people’s teams. Imitation is the best form of flattering right? You can go to the Trainer Tower where you can check what the best players are bringing to the field. You can also find some EV spreads, natures, abilities, and move sets there. You also have the option of going to the Global Link. However, there you can’t see the EV spreads. These two are very important if you want to be somewhat successful in VGC. Check them regularly to be up to date with the current meta.
After finding your dream team you need to play! And I am not going to lie, it can be a bit frustrating at first. But the more you play the better you will get, believe me. Of course, that playing isn’t the only way of improving. Watching others play is also quite helpful so I advise you to go to Youtube or Twitch and go see some Pokemon battles! Every day I need my dose of Cybertron Zheng! Go check him out on Youtube. He has a lot of helpful videos.
To finish I would like to say that part of what is needed to succeed in this game is to keep yourself calm and think clearly. Things will not always go your way, you will get crit, frozen, paralyzed, burned, your attacks will miss and you might lose every single speed tie. It is how you handle yourself in this situations that will decide how far you will go. Do not let yourself get frustrated and reach for the top!
Helpful Links:
–CybertronProductions
–WolfeyVGC
–Pokemon Global Link
–Trainer Tower
–Effort Value Guide / Video Explanation
–Individual Value Guide
