Teambuilding / Pitfalls

After a bit of time playing a format, you might be rather fed up with some of its Pokémon. "I'm sick and tired of losing to Incineroar! (or insert popular Pokémon/team/strategy here)", you might think. "Screw this! I'm going to build a team that beats it every time!" If this sounds similar to something you've said during teambuilding, you're not alone-- different Pokémon frustrate us all the time. What you’re looking for is a good matchup– you want to be favored to win when you play against that Pokémon or strategy. It's natural to want to build in a better matchup against certain opposing Pokémon, especially the strong ones with high usage rates. 

In extreme circumstances, you might consider a counter to that Pokémon. A Pokémon counters another Pokémon if it invalidates it in a variety of circumstances. The word “counter” tends to strongly imply that it nearly always beats the target Pokémon: a softer concept is a check, which generally means it is favored against the opposing Pokémon, though not all the time. Counter and check are words borrowed from Singles: look here for more information. 

Given the complexity of Double Battles, finding a good matchup or a counter to a Pokémon is not always a straightforward or easy task, and in some cases it may even be more of an aspiration than an achievable goal. In this article, we'll go over what countering means to us, and how we go about building better matchups versus the Pokémon that we hate to fight against.

Common Misconceptions

It’s not easy to purposely beat another Pokémon, and there are a few pitfalls that may lie in your way when you try. 

• It is impossible to knock out a Pokémon 100% of the time. This may work in Single Battles, but in Doubles, your enemy can do a lot to prevent you taking a knockout, such as Fake Out, Follow Me/Rage Powder, Protecting that Pokémon, switching in Intimidate, or gaining Speed control. At the end of the day, your opponent can always switch out that enemy Pokémon and attack you with its partner.

• Simply surviving a Pokémon’s attacks (“walling”) isn’t going to cut it, either. If you have a “wall” Pokémon that can survive an attack from an enemy Pokémon, but can’t damage it very quickly in return, the enemy can always target the wall’s partner, and come back for the wall later.

• Some Pokémon are too powerful to be immediately “countered”. Some enemy Pokémon have a large effect on the battles that they are brought to and it isn’t possible to have one Pokémon whose job it is to beat it. That’s not saying that those Pokémon can’t be beaten– there are always ways to beat enemy Pokémon– but doing so may be more than a one-Pokémon job, and may require careful thought over the entire structure of your team.

• There are a lot of enemy Pokémon out there, and if you tunnel vision on beating one, your team may suffer overall. If you have one Pokémon whose “main job” is to beat another Pokémon, and it does nothing else, you’ll only be able to use it effectively in games where that enemy appears. This is a crude example, but in VGC your Pokémon often need to work flexibly together, and if you have a Pokémon that is only on your team to accomplish a minutely specific goal, it may be at odds with the rest of your team.

Because of these reasons, we advise that you make it your goal to find good Pokémon with a good matchup– Pokémon that are strong in general, have a variety of situations that they are useful in, and happen to be useful against the Pokémon that you want to beat. 

How do I find a good matchup?

First, you’ll have to identify the strengths of the Pokémon you’re trying to beat. What is it good at? What about its options in gameplay make you want to beat it so badly? Make a list. Some things you could include are:

• Is the Pokémon’s offensive coverage strong?

• Does the Pokémon’s defensive stats and typing make it hard to hit for high damage?

• Does the Pokémon have utility (e.g. Fake Out, Intimidate, sleep moves, etc)

• Does anything else about the Pokémon’s stats stand out? (e.g. Speed)

• Does the Pokémon have unique moves or a unique style of playing that gives you a tough time?

Now, look at the Pokémon’s weak points, and find Pokémon with tools that help you beat that Pokémon. 

• You could find ways to hit that Pokémon for high damage (maybe super effective).

  • However, think about what will happen if that Pokémon has utility support (e.g. Fake Out, Follow Me, Intimidate, Speed control). Make sure you can still beat it in most of those situations as well.

• Is the Pokémon frail? Consider options that can outspeed and knock it out (including priority). Speed control can help in this situation. 

• Does the Pokémon have a reliance on other conditions (e.g. Rain, Sun, Trick Room, etc)? How do you counteract those?

• Look for utility moves that are useful versus that Pokémon’s strength.

  • Does the Pokémon lack offense? Consider Pokémon that can ignore its utility and set up, or stop it in some way (e.g. Taunt).

  • Is the Pokémon weak to strong status conditions (burn or sleep?)

Finally, test your idea. You want to make sure that your team is working well against the enemy Pokémon that you’re targeting.

When do I want to find a counter or a check?

This situation comes up when you have a team of 4 or 5 Pokémon that you like (maybe a core), and they’re weak to one enemy Pokémon in particular. In that situation, adding a Pokémon that gives the enemy Pokémon a tough time can make your team much stronger. Maybe you want to add a Pokémon that focuses on beating that enemy Pokémon (a counter), or you want to add a Pokémon that is useful in other situations, but is merely favored against the target enemy Pokémon (a check). The strength of your response depends on how challenging that Pokémon is for you to fight, and how often it appears on opposing teams. 

How to Beat a Combo or a Team

Rather than beating one Pokémon in particular, you may want to beat a combination of Pokémon or even a whole archetype. Maybe you have five Pokémon that work quite well against a number of teams, but there’s one team that is quite strong against you, and you would like to add a sixth Pokémon to beat that team frequently. 

Beating Pokémon combinations, modes, cores, archetypes and teams is more challenging than beating a single Pokémon, and often you won’t find a Pokémon that does so on its own. This is because you have to consider the strengths and weaknesses of each individual Pokémon that you would like to beat, as well as the synergy between them– a Pokémon team is more than the sum of its parts. It feels easy to look for one Pokémon that counters all of a team by itself, and you can scroll through the list of available Pokémon to find something with just the right typing-- but often, that dream Pokémon doesn’t exist. Here’s what to do in this situation:

• Follow the steps in the above sections and identify which aspects make each of these enemy Pokémon so strong.

• Now, follow those same steps again, but try to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their synergy: why do these Pokémon work so well together?

At this point, if you have laid out most of the framework of a team, you might not have many slots free on your team. Brainstorm some Pokémon that have a good matchup against the synergies that you have identified. It is unlikely that you’ll find one good Pokémon that covers everything, but it’s worth thinking about– you never know what you’ll find. Evaluate how it synergizes with the Pokémon that already exist on your team, and see if there is any synergy that is particularly useful against the enemy Pokémon. Maybe test some attempted solutions out on the ladder.

If that doesn’t work, it may be the case that you have to take a step back and use more than one slot to beat these particular enemy Pokémon. Now, brainstorm some combinations of strong Pokémon that would match up well against the synergy that you’ve identified. At this point, it’s synergy against synergy– can you find Pokémon with synergy that make life hard for the enemy Pokémon?

If you haven’t started building yet, but you know you want to match up well against a team and you’re looking for a starting point, start from this type of synergy. Do something strong with your core that is naturally advantaged versus the Pokémon that you want to beat. 

As always, test your ideas to make sure that they do work in practice.

Wrapping Up

When you build and test teams, you’ll often find flaws in the team quickly, and want to plug up those holes with Pokémon specifically designed to fix them. However, as I’ve shown above, it is a tall order to beat or counter a Pokémon. Consistently beating strong Pokémon is challenging at best and nearly impossible in the most skewed metagames, and adjusting the Pokémon on teams to work against the Pokémon that you want to counter is where a lot of time is spent during teambuilding. At the end of the day, if you can pull off a team that is naturally advantaged versus the important threats that you identify, many of your battles will be easier to win.