could someone help me make a good pokemon team?

[disliker of the mary sue]

yeah i been playing pokemon platinum and i am about fight the elite 4 but i fell my team is not up to snuff. not to mention i planning to use this game for Pokemon battle revolution and now that i got wifi to work maybe face against some people online.

my current team

kadabra lv45 (will evolve as soon as i get hand on another DS)
moves
recover
roleplay
psychic
psybeam

houndoom lv 31 (in training) (traded)
roar
bite
beat up

raichu lv 50
item equiped light ball
moves
volt tackel
surf
thunder shock
iron tail

strepatar lv 36 (in training)
moves
areal ace
fly
close combat
wing attack

empolion lv 44
item equiped quick claw
moves
aqua jet
brine
peck
bubblebeam

lurcario lv 47

moves
aura sphere
dragon pulse
close combat
psychic


pokemon in reserves

bulizel lv 10

porygon lv 25

tokipi lv 1

eevee lv 20

wooper lv 26

3 yanma;s (for trading)

4 tropius (for trading)

duskull lv 20

skoripi lv 27

quagsire lv 28

gastly lv 22

psyduck lv 22

bidoof lv 12

sneasel lv35(caught with grip claw)

ralts lv 17

meditite lv 29

bronzor lv 29

giratina (regulur form) lv 47

luxray lv 42

chansey lv 17

shellos lv 24

bibarel lv28

gligar lv 16 (traded)

tangela lv 28

rhyhorn lv 24 (traded)

so can someone help me make a better team. i can catch more Pokemon if needed.  

[wellwisher]

Know what you're facing, and plan accordingly.
the first trainer Aaron uses bug type pokemon. (except for Drapion)
use Flying, Fire, and Ground attacks.

Bertha uses Ground.
use Grass, Ice, and Water.

Flint uses fire.
use Water, and Ground.

Lucian uses psychic.
use Dark, and Ghost. (there are some extra type advantages you can use, but those are the most globally beneficial.)

Cynthia is well balanced.
Electric, Ice, or rock, Fire, Fighting, Ground, Grass.

Just spread out your team to be balanced.
So, think less about the types of pokemon you'll be using and more about the attacks. just try to get your team to come with most of these attacks. It should be ok if you don't have all of them though.
Flying, Fire, Ground, Grass, Ice, Water, Dark, Ghost, Electric, Rock, Fighting, Grass.  

[disliker of the mary sue]

wellwisher

Know what you're facing, and plan accordingly.
the first trainer Aaron uses bug type pokemon. (except for Drapion)
use Flying, Fire, and Ground attacks.

Bertha uses Ground.
use Grass, Ice, and Water.

Flint uses fire.
use Water, and Ground.

Lucian uses psychic.
use Dark, and Ghost. (there are some extra type advantages you can use, but those are the most globally beneficial.)

Cynthia is well balanced.
Electric, Ice, or rock, Fire, Fighting, Ground, Grass.

Just spread out your team to be balanced.
So, think less about the types of pokemon you'll be using and more about the attacks. just try to get your team to come with most of these attacks. It should be ok if you don't have all of them though.
Flying, Fire, Ground, Grass, Ice, Water, Dark, Ghost, Electric, Rock, Fighting, Grass.

hm thank you

do you got any tips for when i face real people?  

[Nadian]

disliker of the mary sue

hm thank you

do you got any tips for when i face real people?

Depends on who you might fight and how badly you want to win. Possibly also the rules you might be fighting under.


For example, AwwHeck really only plays against his friends and they're not as into competitive battling as, say, myself. Thus he's never cared about the speed stat and has even recently gone back to not training. (He's more or less stuck to non-legendary pokemon, too.)


However, if you want a winning chance against me, for example, you'll probably have to EV train, if not IV breed.


I suppose that, at work today, I can begin by talking about good pokemon to select? (And this often doesn't care about what you currently have since there's usually *some* tweaking you might want to do to the pokemon from birth.)  

[wellwisher]

disliker of the mary sue

hm thank you

do you got any tips for when i face real people?

I do. when playing competetively. (I haven't done since the G/S/C erra though, I assume it's the same concept but with more selection) You're going to want to abide by the no uber rule. (and probably the single species and single item rules as well) But, enough about what you shouldn't do. onwards to the pokemon that you'd be interested in.

You'll want pokemon that have been EV trained. (and possibly IV bred, if you want to play really competetively) your team should be diverse with moves to help you take down just about any pokemon. but definitely any pokemon type. try to minimize the weaknesses your team has by having attacks that can take advantage of pokemon type advantage.

When I'm making a team (well, now, originally I just used my old battered up GS strategy guide) that is going to represent me as a trainer, I take a lot of things into account.
stats, moves, effectiveness, powers, and other.
natures, very important for training
competetive strategies
Team builder type advantage/weaknesses
and I look at what would be ideal held items and pokemon powers.(I downloaded a program that I use to calculate Hidden Power, and stats with various IV, EV, and natures as well.)
http://pokemon.marriland.com/statcalc_dp.php  

[disliker of the mary sue]

wellwisher

disliker of the mary sue

hm thank you

do you got any tips for when i face real people?

I do. when playing competetively. (I haven't done since the G/S/C erra though, I assume it's the same concept but with more selection) You're going to want to abide by the no uber rule. (and probably the single species and single item rules as well) But, enough about what you shouldn't do. onwards to the pokemon that you'd be interested in.

You'll want pokemon that have been EV trained. (and possibly IV bred, if you want to play really competetively) your team should be diverse with moves to help you take down just about any pokemon. but definitely any pokemon type. try to minimize the weaknesses your team has by having attacks that can take advantage of pokemon type advantage.

When I'm making a team (well, now, originally I just used my old battered up GS strategy guide) that is going to represent me as a trainer, I take a lot of things into account.
stats, moves, effectiveness, powers, and other.
natures, very important for training
competetive strategies
Team builder type advantage/weaknesses
and I look at what would be ideal held items and pokemon powers.(I downloaded a program that I use to calculate Hidden Power, and stats with various IV, EV, and natures as well.)
http://pokemon.marriland.com/statcalc_dp.php

wow so basically all this entire game comes down to is pure stats and type. well this is certainly going to be hard.  

[Nadian]

disliker of the mary sue

wellwisher

disliker of the mary sue

hm thank you

do you got any tips for when i face real people?

I do. when playing competetively. (I haven't done since the G/S/C erra though, I assume it's the same concept but with more selection) You're going to want to abide by the no uber rule. (and probably the single species and single item rules as well) But, enough about what you shouldn't do. onwards to the pokemon that you'd be interested in.

You'll want pokemon that have been EV trained. (and possibly IV bred, if you want to play really competetively) your team should be diverse with moves to help you take down just about any pokemon. but definitely any pokemon type. try to minimize the weaknesses your team has by having attacks that can take advantage of pokemon type advantage.

When I'm making a team (well, now, originally I just used my old battered up GS strategy guide) that is going to represent me as a trainer, I take a lot of things into account.
stats, moves, effectiveness, powers, and other.
natures, very important for training
competetive strategies
Team builder type advantage/weaknesses
and I look at what would be ideal held items and pokemon powers.(I downloaded a program that I use to calculate Hidden Power, and stats with various IV, EV, and natures as well.)
http://pokemon.marriland.com/statcalc_dp.php

wow so basically all this entire game comes down to is pure stats and type. well this is certainly going to be hard.

It's "hard" if you want to be good and haven't become familiar with the basics.


The truth is, if all you want to do is play against random people that probably don't train super competitively, you can have a sub-optimal pokemon that only utilizes the handful of those concepts you understand. As a rough example, my first competitive pokemon (Gardevoir) has plenty of mistakes, but when I first trained it I was holding my own pretty well.


At a minimum for understanding stats, I would suggest understanding the concept of Nature, Base Stats, and EVs. IVs are good for being super-competitive, but they are much harder to manipulate and generally require much more time and resources to do properly (because they are random and hidden.)


After that, just picking some widely used pokemon and giving them some good moves would be an excellent start.  

[disliker of the mary sue]

Nadian

disliker of the mary sue

wellwisher

disliker of the mary sue

hm thank you

do you got any tips for when i face real people?

I do. when playing competetively. (I haven't done since the G/S/C erra though, I assume it's the same concept but with more selection) You're going to want to abide by the no uber rule. (and probably the single species and single item rules as well) But, enough about what you shouldn't do. onwards to the pokemon that you'd be interested in.

You'll want pokemon that have been EV trained. (and possibly IV bred, if you want to play really competetively) your team should be diverse with moves to help you take down just about any pokemon. but definitely any pokemon type. try to minimize the weaknesses your team has by having attacks that can take advantage of pokemon type advantage.

When I'm making a team (well, now, originally I just used my old battered up GS strategy guide) that is going to represent me as a trainer, I take a lot of things into account.
stats, moves, effectiveness, powers, and other.
natures, very important for training
competetive strategies
Team builder type advantage/weaknesses
and I look at what would be ideal held items and pokemon powers.(I downloaded a program that I use to calculate Hidden Power, and stats with various IV, EV, and natures as well.)
http://pokemon.marriland.com/statcalc_dp.php

wow so basically all this entire game comes down to is pure stats and type. well this is certainly going to be hard.

It's "hard" if you want to be good and haven't become familiar with the basics.


The truth is, if all you want to do is play against random people that probably don't train super competitively, you can have a sub-optimal pokemon that only utilizes the handful of those concepts you understand. As a rough example, my first competitive pokemon (Gardevoir) has plenty of mistakes, but when I first trained it I was holding my own pretty well.


At a minimum for understanding stats, I would suggest understanding the concept of Nature, Base Stats, and EVs. IVs are good for being super-competitive, but they are much harder to manipulate and generally require much more time and resources to do properly (because they are random and hidden.)


After that, just picking some widely used pokemon and giving them some good moves would be an excellent start.

i mean i understand on the basic idea of Ev is it a stat bonus that you get form killing certain Pokemon, nature basically increases the growth of one stat in the cost of another being slightly lower. and i am not sure what IV are though but i can look that up on bubbapedia. anything else you like to add?  

[wellwisher]

disliker of the mary sue

wow so basically all this entire game comes down to is pure stats and type. well this is certainly going to be hard.

It's not all stats and type. Stats are important, but for type, it's more important that you get attack type advantage over actual type advantage. (STAB is nice though)
In the end, the pokemon you pick is heavily based on what you want to ensure that your team is well balanced. I don't start making competetive teams until I have a dex of about 450. so, my Platinum game is very far away from building anythign competetively. even my Diamond game hasn't reached competetive building level.  

[disliker of the mary sue]

wellwisher

disliker of the mary sue

wow so basically all this entire game comes down to is pure stats and type. well this is certainly going to be hard.

It's not all stats and type. Stats are important, but for type, it's more important that you get attack type advantage over actual type advantage. (STAB is nice though)
In the end, the pokemon you pick is heavily based on what you want to ensure that your team is well balanced. I don't start making competetive teams until I have a dex of about 450. so, my Platinum game is very far away from building anythign competetively. even my Diamond game hasn't reached competetive building level.

yeah i probably never get as good as you or nadian that's for sure. i really don't have the patients to go though a hundred eggs until it exactly how i want it.  

[wellwisher]

disliker of the mary sue

i mean i understand on the basic idea of Ev is it a stat bonus that you get form killing certain Pokemon, nature basically increases the growth of one stat in the cost of another being slightly lower. and i am not sure what IV are though but i can look that up on bubbapedia. anything else you like to add?

EV points are s finite amount of points that each pokemon grants when it's beaten. every pokemon that gains experience from the defeated pokemon gains the experience.
For example, Pidgey grants 1 speed point. 4 points equal one actual stat point boost, with a max of 255 points that you can effectively put into a single stat. (you can put 510 points across all 6 stats)
Nature is 10% off of the base stat. a Modest nature changes the stats Special attack and attack stats from 100% and 100% to 110% and 90%. I gave you a link to the natures and their boosts and hindrances. (there are 5 stats that increase a stat by 10% and then decrease it by 10% of the base. so, it ends up at 100%)

as for IV points, they're tricky. Nadian knows much more about that then I do. I know how to calculate it after 9 rare candies. (approximately, it's not exact) if you use the stat calculator that I gave you, you can check the IV stats of your pokemon if you know the EV points.  

[disliker of the mary sue]

wellwisher

disliker of the mary sue

i mean i understand on the basic idea of Ev is it a stat bonus that you get form killing certain Pokemon, nature basically increases the growth of one stat in the cost of another being slightly lower. and i am not sure what IV are though but i can look that up on bubbapedia. anything else you like to add?

EV points are s finite amount of points that each pokemon grants when it's beaten. every pokemon that gains experience from the defeated pokemon gains the experience.
For example, Pidgey grants 1 speed point. 4 points equal one actual stat point boost, with a max of 255 points that you can effectively put into a single stat. (you can put 510 points across all 6 stats)
Nature is 10% off of the base stat. a Modest nature changes the stats Special attack and attack stats from 100% and 100% to 110% and 90%. I gave you a link to the natures and their boosts and hindrances. (there are 5 stats that increase a stat by 10% and then decrease it by 10% of the base. so, it ends up at 100%)

as for IV points, they're tricky. Nadian knows much more about that then I do. I know how to calculate it after 9 rare candies. (approximately, it's not exact) if you use the stat calculator that I gave you, you can check the IV stats of your pokemon if you know the EV points.

hm okay. another question i got a legit Pokemon infected with pokerus in my pc box in diamond. should i just trade that over to have my Pokemon infected with it for stat bonuses. (in diamond i was lucky enough to get pokerus before the first gym)  

[Nadian]

disliker of the mary sue

wellwisher

disliker of the mary sue

i mean i understand on the basic idea of Ev is it a stat bonus that you get form killing certain Pokemon, nature basically increases the growth of one stat in the cost of another being slightly lower. and i am not sure what IV are though but i can look that up on bubbapedia. anything else you like to add?

EV points are s finite amount of points that each pokemon grants when it's beaten. every pokemon that gains experience from the defeated pokemon gains the experience.
For example, Pidgey grants 1 speed point. 4 points equal one actual stat point boost, with a max of 255 points that you can effectively put into a single stat. (you can put 510 points across all 6 stats)
Nature is 10% off of the base stat. a Modest nature changes the stats Special attack and attack stats from 100% and 100% to 110% and 90%. I gave you a link to the natures and their boosts and hindrances. (there are 5 stats that increase a stat by 10% and then decrease it by 10% of the base. so, it ends up at 100%)

as for IV points, they're tricky. Nadian knows much more about that then I do. I know how to calculate it after 9 rare candies. (approximately, it's not exact) if you use the stat calculator that I gave you, you can check the IV stats of your pokemon if you know the EV points.

hm okay. another question i got a legit Pokemon infected with pokerus in my pc box in diamond. should i just trade that over to have my Pokemon infected with it for stat bonuses. (in diamond i was lucky enough to get pokerus before the first gym)

Pokerus is incredibly helpful for EV training so you'll want to use it. 3nodding

Basically, Pokerus doubles the amount of EVs gained. So, in Wellwisher's example, if a pokemon with Pokerus gained EXP from a Pidgey fainting... the Pidgey gives 1 Speed EV, but the Pokerus doubles it to 2.

Macho Brace (hold item) also doubles EVs, so in that example the Pidgey gives 1 Speed EV, the Macho Brace doubles it to 2 Speed EVs, and the Pokerus doubles it again to 4 Speed EVs.


I prefer to use the Power items, though. There's one for each stat ; they add 4 to that stat (and that can be doubled with Pokerus.) Thus, if I put on a Power Anklet (which raises Speed EVs) when I fight that Pidgey... it gives 1 Speed EV... the Power Anklet adds to it increasing it to 5 Speed EVs, and Pokerus doubles that to 10 Speed EVs.


I'll try and make a separate post talking about some of the details of IVs.  

[disliker of the mary sue]

Nadian

disliker of the mary sue

wellwisher

disliker of the mary sue

i mean i understand on the basic idea of Ev is it a stat bonus that you get form killing certain Pokemon, nature basically increases the growth of one stat in the cost of another being slightly lower. and i am not sure what IV are though but i can look that up on bubbapedia. anything else you like to add?

EV points are s finite amount of points that each pokemon grants when it's beaten. every pokemon that gains experience from the defeated pokemon gains the experience.
For example, Pidgey grants 1 speed point. 4 points equal one actual stat point boost, with a max of 255 points that you can effectively put into a single stat. (you can put 510 points across all 6 stats)
Nature is 10% off of the base stat. a Modest nature changes the stats Special attack and attack stats from 100% and 100% to 110% and 90%. I gave you a link to the natures and their boosts and hindrances. (there are 5 stats that increase a stat by 10% and then decrease it by 10% of the base. so, it ends up at 100%)

as for IV points, they're tricky. Nadian knows much more about that then I do. I know how to calculate it after 9 rare candies. (approximately, it's not exact) if you use the stat calculator that I gave you, you can check the IV stats of your pokemon if you know the EV points.

hm okay. another question i got a legit Pokemon infected with pokerus in my pc box in diamond. should i just trade that over to have my Pokemon infected with it for stat bonuses. (in diamond i was lucky enough to get pokerus before the first gym)

Pokerus is incredibly helpful for EV training so you'll want to use it. 3nodding

Basically, Pokerus doubles the amount of EVs gained. So, in Wellwisher's example, if a pokemon with Pokerus gained EXP from a Pidgey fainting... the Pidgey gives 1 Speed EV, but the Pokerus doubles it to 2.

Macho Brace (hold item) also doubles EVs, so in that example the Pidgey gives 1 Speed EV, the Macho Brace doubles it to 2 Speed EVs, and the Pokerus doubles it again to 4 Speed EVs.


I prefer to use the Power items, though. There's one for each stat ; they add 4 to that stat (and that can be doubled with Pokerus.) Thus, if I put on a Power Anklet (which raises Speed EVs) when I fight that Pidgey... it gives 1 Speed EV... the Power Anklet adds to it increasing it to 5 Speed EVs, and Pokerus doubles that to 10 Speed EVs.


I'll try and make a separate post talking about some of the details of IVs.

okay i trade it over to platinum as soon as i can get my hands on my friends DS as well as evolving kadbra.  

[Nadian]

The most important aspect of using IVs to your advantage is being able to determine what your pokemon's IVs actually are. At the pokemon's creation (when you encounter it in the wild, when its egg is created, or when an NPC gives it to you), the game does the following:

-All EVs are set to 0
-All IVs are randomly generated

(When you're doing pokemon breeding, some of the IVs won't be random... more on that later.)


The value of an IV is between 0 and 31, so at best an IV can add 31 to a stat.


Fun fact: Hidden Power's Type and Power are determined by all six of the pokemon's IVs. (There's an IV for each stat.)



Determining a pokemon's IVs

Cheating - there are (Action Replay) cheat codes that allow you to see a pokemon's IVs. I'm not familiar with how it works, though. I just know it exists.


Emerald IV Man - if you do your breeding in Pokemon Emerald, there's a guy in the Battle Frontier that you can use to tell when a stat is "perfect." This is useful if you're only interested in maximizing your pokemon's IVs.


Rare Candy / Daycare - If you level up your pokemon without fighting any battles, the pokemon's EVs will stay at 0 and you can plug its stats into an IV calculator to find approximations. If you need an exact value, you usually need to enter all stats every time you level the pokemon up with a Rare Candy.

Obviously, since you don't have an unlimited supply of Rare Candies, you have to save before you use them and reset once you've determined what the pokemon's IVs are. Similarly, leaving a pokemon in the Daycare will cause its moves to be automatically overwritten so you might want to load to avoid losing any valuable moves.


IV Check / two DS-es - If you have two DSes, you can have them battle each other over Wi-Fi using the "Single Level 100" option. This will temporarily force all pokemon to level 100. If your pokemon has no EVs at all, you'll be able to plug its values into an IV calculator and get near-100% accuracy.

This is my preferred method, but I have 4 DSes so I can easily do this.


Pokemon Battle Revolution - If you have Pokemon Battle Revolution, you can battle yourself using the "Single Level 50" option and use the same IV calculator as before. Just be aware that this only has 50% accuracy. (You won't be able to tell the difference between a 30 and a 31, for example.)


Characteristics - Sometimes, you can get just a little bit more information about a pokemon from this text. This won't tell you the IVs of all its stats, but it will tell you something about its highest stat. For example, if the pokemon is "Alert To Sounds" that tells you two things:

1) The pokemon's Speed IV is its highest IV. (It could be tied for highest.)
2) The pokemon's Speed IV is 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26, or 31. (But you don't know which one.)

This table here gives all the details of what each characteristic means.


Caught At Level 50 - Pokemon that are caught / acquired at a high level (legendaries, event pokemon) can usually be plugged into an IV calculator right off the bat and have their IVs determined with 50% accuracy.

-----------


Once you can check IVs, you can start doing IV breeding. The basic concept behind this is that the offspring inherit up to three of their IVs from their parents, significantly increasing the chance that you'll get a pokemon with the IVs that you want. (I suggest beginning with only maxing two IVs. Going above two makes the process much, much longer.)

Starting from scratch, it's not unusual for a breeding project to go something like this:

-Breed an offspring with a 31 IV in Speed.
-Breed another offspring (of the opposite gender) with a 31 IV in Attack
-Breed the two of them together until you get an offspring with 31s in both Attack and Speed.


If you're also aiming for a specific Nature, that can make it a little more complicated, but really you'll only be keeping / checking the females with the right nature. (If a female is holding an Everstone, she has a 50% chance of passing on her Nature.) Thus, the breeding project may look something more like:

-Breed until you get a female with the correct Nature. She becomes the new mother and holds an Everstone.
-Toss all females of the wrong nature.
-Breed an offspring with a 31 IV in Speed.
-Breed another offspring (of the opposite gender) with a 31 IV in Attack
-Breed the two of them together (the new female should hold an Everstone and be the correct nature... you tossed out all the bad ones, right?) until you get an offspring with 31s in both Attack and Speed with the correct nature.


Now, I mention the steps as if they're quick, but there is some time-consuming probabilities I've left out.

-Getting a female offspring with the correct nature is a 1 in 50 chance. (Worse for something like Eevee where only 1 in 8 offspring are female!)
-Getting an offspring with a perfect IV in the stat you want has something like a 1 in 65 chance. That can be time consuming.
-Breeding the two pokemon with 31s in two different stats has something like a 1 in 17 chance of success.

That could mean breeding a total of about 200 eggs just for one pokemon with two good IVs. If you're going to do this, it's important that you have a pokemon with Flame Body or Magma Armor as its ability. When that pokemon is leading your party, eggs take half as many steps to hatch. Pokemon that you can use:

-Magmar
-Slugma
-Magcargo
-Magby
-Camerupt (make sure it doesn't have Solid Rock!)
-Magmortar


That'll help you go through eggs faster, but if you want to increase your probabilities there is a pokemon that can help: Ditto!


-When a Ditto holds an Everstone, it has a 50% chance of passing on its Nature
-A Ditto can also pass on its IVs, which has a much higher probability than the IV appearing at random


I, personally, maintain two (one in Emerald, one in Diamond) forces of Dittos explicitly for these reasons.

-I have 25 Dittos, one of each nature.
-I have 6 Dittos, each one has a 31 in one stat.


This makes my breeding look more like this:


-Breed with the 31 Attack Ditto until the offspring has 31 Attack
-Breed that with the 31 Speed Ditto until the offspring has 31 Attack and 31 Speed
-Breed that with the Ditto with the correct Nature ; use an offspring with the correct Nature and 31 Attack and Speed.


The probabilities there:

-1 in 4 chance that the first IV will be passed
-1 in 17 chance that the second one will be passed
-1 in 34 chance that the offspring will have the correct nature and IVs

Thus, we've reduced the number of eggs we need to hatch to something like 55.



This doesn't cover every single example of what you'd need to do. For example, the Ditto method is quicker, but it's more complicated than the "natural" method when you add Egg Moves to the mix. Also, I like to save off "parents" for all pokemon I can easily breed this pokemon again in the future.


-------


That's the brain dump, I suppose. As you can see, IVs are significantly more complicated than the others. Most of my time preparing a competitive pokemon is IV breeding.