Classes

Competitive Battling

The Class System is really just all the different movesets used by Competitive Battlers. Like in general there are main fields. Each class emphasizes a certain stat and uses it with certain attacks to maximize the potential for destroying the opponent.

There are two things I'll talk about here. First is the Primary Classes. The Primary Classes consist of things which can be used by many different pokemon. Then there are the Secondary Classes. The Secondaries are far more numerous since they are Pokemon-Specific. Which means that it might be a particular moveset for Blastoise which isn't really used by anyone else. Anyway, I'll be listing Natures, Ev Spreads and movesets and the general idea surrounding the Classes; so I'd reccomend reading the other sections first.

These are the most commonly used classes and probably the most important to include on a team. That doesn't mean you need to have all of them, just that you should think carefully about whether or not to include one on your team.

Sweepers:

Sweepers, as their name suggests, are meant to attack. They specialize in being able to quickly and efficiently destroy the opponent's team. That being said they almost always get strong Ev spreads in one of the attack stats and speed. OR they have support attacks, like Dragon Dance, to influence their stats in that direction. In general there are two types of sweepers used and than there are two others that seem to be used less. There are Physical and Special Sweepers. We'll talk about those first.

Physical and Special Sweepers are pretty easy to use, generally speaking. I've heard it recommended you start with a spiker, not a sweeper, but that's up to you. I'll do spikers further down. Anyway, with most of these classes the thing to first worry about is whether your pokemon, naturally, has the stats to be a sweeper. Like Jolteon or Aerodactyl. They've got great natural speed. Oh, also, I might say natural(ly) or base stats. It's the same thing. Go over to the Ivs/Evs page for base stats info. So anyway. It's better, for competitive battling purposes, if the pokemon that you're making into a sweeper has a high base stat rating in at least the attack stat that you're going for. Of course realistically you'll want it speed too since what's the point of a high attack stat if you're not fast enough to attack. So if you're making him into a special sweeper, try for a high base stat in special attack. Same deal for physical sweeper. So that said, something like Blissey wouldn't be good as a physical sweeper, since Blissey doesn't have anything worth beans in attack. But, someone like Dragonite, with a high base stat rating in attack, will do very well.

Second thing to consider is the learnable moves. Like Dragonite. Dragonite learns a heck of a lot more special attacks then physical attacks. Which means, you'll want to think about which matters more to you, physical sweeper with limited choices of physical attacks or special sweeper with limited special attack(in comparison to Dragonite's physical attack) Of course DD Dragonite is an amazing physical sweeper but a bolt beamer works too. But stat wise Dragonite does have way higher physical attack while at the same time he has more special attacks. Just looking at him. So therefore, using him as an example, you'll need to make a decision which matters more. BUT both work well for Dragonite.

Allright, now that we got the choosing pokemon part outta the way, we'll go into an example and other good stuff to know about Sweepers. Oh, before I forget, a lotta people slap a choice band on their physical sweepers. Not always of course. You could just go with swords dance or something. Or maybe you've got the stats to abuse choice band. In any event, just something to keep in mind.

Tauros - Choice Band

    Jolly Nature - 252 Att, 252 Speed, 6 Hp.

Return
Earthquake
Iron Tail
HP Ghost
So anyway that'd be a physical sweeper with choice band. All physical attacks you'll note. Evs in Attack and Speed and the nature fits right in there too. All things you'll probably want to follow when making your team. Next, special sweeper.

Alakazam - Lum Berry

   Timid Nature - 252 Sa, 252 Speed, 6 Hp

Psychic
Thunder Punch
Calm Mind
HP Dark
All special attacks with Calm Mind to help out further. The final thing is Mixed Sweepers. Which is just what it suggests. There physical and special. Kinda difficult to use, since inevitably you'll have to fix its Evs in a way that might be risky in the end.

Swampert - Leftovers

Relaxed Nature - 252 Sa, 129 Special Defense, 129 Speed

Curse
Earthquake
Surf/IceBeam
Rest
Curse boosts Earthquake and he's got Surf or IceBeam, whichever you prefer. Limits the moves you put on him, but still.

Tanks:

Allright, these next guys are all about Defense. They're known as Tanks, Walls, and Sponges. So that suggests that they can take hits, and they can. Also you might hear of things called Toxi/Pyro/Parastaller. These guys are essentially tanks with one of the status afflicting moves; toxic, will-o-wisp, or thunder wave. Anyway, I'll refer to them as Tanks. Tanks characteristically stats which specialize in Hp and the Defenses. So pokemon like Blissey, Tentacruel, Suicune, RegiSteel, and Grumpig all work into this category. Leftovers and a status move (i.e. toxic, will-o-wisp, confuse ray, etc.) are commonly on them. Don't forget the nature. Natures to consider for a tank are Sassy, Careful, Lax, Calm, Impish, Bold. Anyway. Like Sweepers. Tanks can be Physical, Special, and Both. One other thing to keep in mind is that with tanks, you're typically stalling while hurting them.

With Tanks its not that you're going to have Physical attacks, as we had with a Physical Sweeper, but with a Physical Tank you're going to have stats and moves to defend against physical moves. Natural resistences are often a very good thing to have here. (i.e. Steel is resistant against practically everything.)
Allright next up. Examples. And I know how you guys love those.

Skarmory: Leftovers - Impish

DrillPeck
Roar
Spikes
Rest
So he's pretty standard. Many people use him with Blissey, thus you have SkarmBliss. I'll go into exactly what that means in a sec. First about Skarmory. Skarmory as you can see is a physical tank. He's got base 140 defense, an essential being he's a physical tank. It's got good type to further enhance its potential. Plus its got spikes and rest. Roar is there for if you get something like a special sweeper, since Skarm's built for physical stuff. Spikes is pretty obvious. Now, just one more example to make sure you get the hang of it.

One other thing I'd like to point out is about Walls. Walls are really mixed-tanks. Like I said with Sweepers, I don't think its a good idea and I wouldn't reccomend it, unless they've already got high enough base stats to make it feasible to split your evs like that. Of course then again, mixed sweepers would be good for combatting skarmbliss. So. And anyway, there's suicune. That's always very reliable.

Now we're going to cover Special Tanks. As with physical tanks, special tanks are high in special defense. Same things apply as before except they're special now. Most notably is Blissey.

Blissey: Bold - Leftovers

Seismic Toss
Aromatherapy
Softboiled
Thunderwave
Blissey's got astronomically high special defense and Hp. The Hp let's it survive physical attacks and with softboiled it can heal up pdq (pretty darn quick). Seismic Toss is a good idea. Thunderwave's there for the effect.

Now back to SkarmBliss. SkarmBliss: One's physical the other's special. Thus together you cover practically everything. Pretty self-explanatory but not totally obvious if you've got no idea about any of this.

Other pokemon used as tanks are Suicune, Celebi, Umbreon any pretty much anything else that you can think of with the moves and defensive stats to survive. Often you'll use a tank as a stall, that's partially why the status afflicting moves are there. I know that's pretty obvious to some of you, but I figured I'd point it out anyway.

Anyway, I think that's about it for this part.

Pseudo-Hazer & Hazers:

I decided to cover both Classes, since they are pretty similar, together.

Anyway, the difference is that Pseudo-Hazers also called Phazers use status afflicting moves and then force the opponent to switch, thus bypassing stat boosters and other guys winding up for something. Hazers on the other hand simply use the move haze. Haze cancels the stat upping moves of an opponent. So that's pretty simple too.

First off Pseudo-Hazers can be used in the way I described above with two different objectives in mind. The first objective is to simply afflict conditions across the opponent's entire team. Once that's done, just bring out your staller and wait for the thaw. That's what a Toxi/Pyro/Parastaller is, in case you've heard those terms as well. The other reason is to essentially act as a hazer, just forcing the opponent to switch out to undo a status upping move. Like Alakazam using calm mind, just use roar and the calm mind was useless. Course that's what hazers are for. Just use haze and you don't need to force em' to switch out.

Skarmory works very well as a pseudo-hazer.

Anyway, short thing about Hazers. Hazers are stuff like Vaporeon, I use Dragonite as one too. Crobat isn't since it can't take a hit. That's an important thing to remember with Hazers. When you use Haze you're sacrificing a move to cancel the opponent's thing. If the opponent has already used their status upping move as much as they want then they'll be attacking as you us Haze. So make sure your pokemon can take the hit they're about to dish out. Speed's also important. You've got to haze the opponent before they can take advantage of that status upping. Thus Crobat would be good in that sense. But in another it might not be able to take the hit anyway.

Vaporeon: Calm - Salac Berry

Haze
Acid Armor
Surf
Baton Pass
Vaporeon's got the Salac for the speed boost, trust me it'll help. Calm ups its special defense. Haze is there. Now Vaporeon's could essentially double as a baton passer. Since it's got Acid Armor. So just keep those kinda tricks in mind. But Baton Passers are another section.

So anyway that's pretty much it. Not a whole lot to these guys. Though its a good idea to have one.

Annoyers:

I'd just like to point out that these guys are essentially useless. Don't use them. But they do exist, so I'm putting them here.

Just as the name suggests they are built to annoy the heck out of the opponent! Confuse Ray, Protect, all those types fit nicely into here. Obviously though, like tanks, you'll want to have some sort of defense so that you'll be able to annoy while taking anything the opponent tries to dish out. Thus you could probably group both Tanks and Annoyers together as Stallers. Just something to keep in mind.

Also something they're good at is not dieing. They'll have combos of moves, stats, and types so that they'll just keep surviving and healing. Thus you'll see rest, and probably a chesto berry.

Sableye: Serious - Bright Powder

Night Shade
Double Team
Confuse Ray
Recover
So anyway, Annoyers. Pretty self-explanatory.

Sub Classes

Allright. This is pokemon specific. I'm not going to list the move sets themselves. Least not now. :P For now, just name and description.

Bellyzard - A Charizard that utilises the move Belly Drum, in tandem with a Salac Berry for almost guaranteed sweepage (when it works). Outspeeds everything except speed boosted Ninjask, OHKOs almost everything with an attack in excess of 1100, and deals with the most predictable counter (Skarmory) with flamethrower/fireblast/overheat.

CMCune - Calm Mind Suicune. A Suicune that uses Calm Mind to Tank and sweep.

Curselax - This Snorlax uses the move Curse to significantly boost its offensive and defensive power.

Flailgoose - Subrever Zangoose. uses Substitute to lessen HP instead of Endure.

Jaskwak - The use of Ninjask to pass speed boosts to a Thick Clubbed Marowak, allowing Marowak to sweep.

McGengar - Popular and widely used hybrid Gengar, able to counter a lot of standards effectively.

Snatchbat - A Crobat that uses the move Snatch.

Sporegle - A Smeargle that uses the move Spore. In the past, primarily seen with Belly Drum and Baton Pass, but nowadays seen with the deadly Endure-Endeavour-Seismic Toss combination, and a Salac Berry.

Sporepunch - A Pokemon (usually Breloom, though Smeargle can do it as well) which uses the move Spore to incapacitate an opponent in order to give themselves a risk-free Focus Punch on the next action.

Subpunch - The usage of Substitute to prevent a Pokemon from breaking their focus when Focus Punching. Lots of guys can use this. Tyranitar, Ursaring, use your imagination.

Tracedevoir - Gardevoir with the characteristic Trace. Can sweep with ease if it's sent in against a Magneton.

Attack Combinations

Boltbeam - The combination of Ice Beam and Thunderbolt to be able to land a neutral hit on just about anything (Lanturn is the exception).

Breakball - The combination of Brick Break and Shadow Ball.

Double Powder - Pokemon who use Sleep Powder and Stun Spore to mess with the opponent when they switch. Not so popular in Advanced Generation. Was most popular in RBY days (**** Miracle/Lum Berries). The new improved Butterfree does the job VERY well, though, since CompoundEyes raises the accuracy of its powders to 97%.

Earthslide - The combination of Earthquake and Rock Slide.

Endrever - The combination of the attacks ENDure and REVERsal, generally used in tandem with a Salac Berry. After Enduring a hit, Reversal's power is boosted to 200.

Paraflincher - Pokemon who Paralyze their foes and then follow up with Flinching attacks to prevent an opponent from attacking back.

Parafusion - Combination of paralysis and confusion, a popular annoying strategy.

Perishtrapper - A Pokemon that uses the move Perish Song in tandem with a trapping move.

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