Teambuilding, Dynamaxing, and more

Hey everyone, Joseph Ugarte or as most of you know me "JoeUX9" here with some advice when it comes to teambuilding. I plan to work on more guides for teambuilding but today I wanted to touch on the topic of what encapsulates good building and the approach you should have to best help yourself learn how to play the game effieciently and with good practice. If you guys do not know, I am lucky enough to be able to do coaching for many people right now so I feel adequately qualified to give some advice on this field. When it comes to team building, sometimes it's easy to get caught up on building around your favorite Pokemon or just putting a bunch of your favorite Pokemon on a team. When it comes to team building I would always tell people this is a not efficient and not productive approach.

Realistically, if your goal is to improve in the game, you should start your VGC journey by using standard, proven teams. The reason why i emphasize this fact so much is because by using consistent and strong teams you are using teams which when you understand how they work together will teach you important things that you will want to implement for your own building. For example, the TED core which we have seen very commonly in 2020 since its inception. Why is this core good? For one, it has redirection with togekiss to better support setup, has a strong Fairy Steel Dragon typing core, and they are all strong mons in their own right and all are efficient uses of maxing.

With this idea in mind, I encourage all of the new starting players to use standard teams for a while because it will help your game knowledge and help you practice another important skill, good play. Also, I know people can be annoyed by saying "competitive is so boring, everyone plays the same teams" but I'd argue even if that was true it wouldn't make it boring. Just because you're running the same does not mean the item choices, moveslots, and your playstyle does not make a difference. For example, with standard sand, you can have a player that plays it completely different from another. The first player could play very safe while the other makes very aggressive reads.

Another thing I want to touch on quickly is maxing. When I analyze most 2020 games I see a very large trend of early maxing especially in formats like this but I encourage players to look back at their games and be a little smarter with maxing. Sometimes it can be really tempting to make your togekiss go big and smash the opposing cinderace, but late game maxing has a lot of potential and is very valid. Most teams in this format are very aggressive; and by stalling out their early max, absorbing the damage, and preserving your own max, you have put yourself in a much better position. Teams that max late game are very beneficial especially when they force the opponent to use their max first and not gain much from it. I intend to be posting on here more often so hopefully this first post helped you guys! I stream on twitch at JoeUX9 where we have many discussions like this and more! Also for all subs I offer public sessions where I teach fundamental team building and run workshops to help people improve their skills! Definitely use the resource if you have an extra 5 dollars to spare! Please make sure to give feedback on the post if you feel there is anything i missed, if you have any questions, or anything else you'd like to ask me. Thanks!