Teambuilding / Pitfalls

What is Sixth Pokemon Syndrome?

Sixth Pokémon Syndrome is a term my friends and I coined to describe the situation where the final Pokémon you want to add to a team has too many roles it needs to fulfill. If you’ve ever found yourself in a situation where you really like the core five Pokémon on a team and feel like if you can just figure out the perfect last pick you’ll have a great team, you’re likely struggling from Sixth Pokémon Syndrome.

As you narrow down what your last Pokémon needs to be able to do through testing and refining your team, you may find yourself looking for some miraculous Pokémon that fixes all of your team's problems. When your core team has too many weaknesses and the 6th Pokémon cannot fix all of them, it’s typically an issue with the first 5 Pokémon on your team. Sixth Pokémon Syndrome isn’t actually about the Sixth Pokémon, it’s about the first five.

If I think my team has Sixth Pokémon Syndrome, what should I do?

Try other Pokémon in the last slots.

Have you actually exhausted your options? If you like a core, and it almost works, keep trying with different combinations– Sixth Pokémon Syndrome happens only after you’ve tried a bunch of options and none feel right. Pay attention to how far down in the usage stats the Pokémon are that you’re trying out-- while we don’t think the usage statistics are law, looking at Pokémon with extremely low usage rates can be an easy sign that you’re reaching. 

Accept the flaws of your team and press on.

Every team is going to have weaknesses, and yours is not an exception. No team will be able to cover all of its flaws– and as time winds down closer to an event, you might have to make compromises or accept the flaws of your team. Furthermore, not every weakness is worth totally changing your team for– being weak to the most common team might be worth fixing a weakness, but for a random loss on the ladder, you might not have to change anything.

No matter what, it’s up to you whether you like where your team is at. If you can accept the weak points of your team, and you like your team, don’t feel like the sixth Pokémon is too much of a burden– you probably shouldn’t change much at this point.

Rework a larger part of your team or move on.

The most heartbreaking end to a team with Sixth Pokémon Syndrome is needing to take a big step back and change major aspects of your team. This step can be a challenging one to take– it’s a lot of work to build a team, and teams are kind of like art in that they feel extremely personal and it’s easy to get attached. Sometimes, you’ve got to rip the band-aid off.

In this scenario, you can:

• Revert to a much more scaled-back version of your core. What are the most important elements / your favorite elements of the team? Could you have built around them from a different angle or new perspective? Try to scale down to two or three Pokémon that you think you absolutely need, and work from there.

• Ditch your team entirely. This can hurt a lot to think about– and if a tournament is approaching quickly, it can even induce anxiety– but in some cases, it’s the best way out. It’s definitely worth your time to have built a team, even if you have to move on from it. For one, you gained experience and learned a lot about the Pokémon that you used on your team. Maybe you found subtler elements of your team that aren’t quite a “core” that you like enough to put onto another team, however you build it.

Wrapping Up

It can be painful to lose battles, and even more painful when you realize that despite your best efforts, your team isn’t going to work out. Critically evaluating how the final Pokémon (or the “sixth” Pokémon) addresses the main problems of your team can help you realize whether your team will sink or swim in the current metagame and competitive environment. If you’re working on a team and you find yourself changing its last Pokémon repeatedly, and never feeling satisfied, it may be a problem with the larger structure of the team as a whole– and you might want to take a step back.