Ranked Battles Pokemon Scarlet & Violet. How to Build a VGC Doubles Team.

In this guide, I plan to teach all Pokemon players the basics to competitive Pokemon and how to build a team for ranked battles.

https://marriland.com/tools/team-builder/en/

https://www.pikalytics.com/

https://www.smogon.com/dex/sv/pokemon/

https://play.pokemonshowdown.com/

Nintendo Switch

Nintendo Online

Copy of either Pokemon Scarlet or Pokemon Violet

A double battle, also known as a two on two battle, is a pokemon battle with each side featuring two pokemon at once. Both plays are allowed to bring a team of 4 to 6 pokemon from level 1-100. All pokemon are then set to level 50 during battle. It is strongly recommended to have a team at level 100 and to bring 6 pokemon. At the start of a doubles battle , you can see both yours and your opponents team and then have to choose 4 of your 6 pokemon to battle. That battle will start when both players have chosen 4 pokemon and the first two selected will be sent out first. The game will continue in 2v2 format until a player has fainted all 4 of the opponents pokemon.

Pokemon selection, their roles, and what they contribute are important factors to consider when building a team. Putting a pokemon into your team with purpose and understanding how they synergize with the rest of the team will largely affect how the team performs, and how you look at and analyze other teams.

Core: A key factor to building a doubles team that will do well is using cores. A core is a group of pokemon that have synergy with each other, where each pokemon is covered by the other offensively and defensively. A general idea is to have two cores of three pokemon or three cores of two pokemon. Having a good mix physical and special attackers , different speeds, and different roles as support or attacking mons helps a ton in making an efficient doubles team.

Example of cores would be : Urshifu rapid strike as a physical attacker , tornadus incarnate form as a support mon, and flutter man as a strong special attacker. These three pokemon cover each others weakness ( you can check weakness and resistance chart using https://marriland.com/tools/team-builder/en/ ) while having a good mix of both special and physical attackers. Tornadus is a support mon because it can use powerful tailwinds that allow the team to move faster then your opponents.

The best way to come up with a team when you are new is to use a website( such as https://www.pikalytics.com/) to look at the percentage of pokemon usage to know what is good to use. knowing this will allow you to choose between pokemon to pick and put into Marriland teambuilder to check if they work well together type wise. You wont to avoid having more than 2 pokemon with the same weakness unless you have enough pokemon that resist the type it is weak to.

https://marriland.com/guides/ev-training/#:~:text=Effort%20Values%20raise%20your%20Pok%C3%A9mon's,in%20that%20stat%2C%20rounded%20down.

This link can show the basics to understanding EVs but the basics of it is a pokemon can have a total of 508 effort values which will increase its base stats but can only have 252 in a single stat. For example, the flutter mane I showed earlier is a fast special attacker so to bring out the best in it you would want to give it 252 special attack EVs , 252 speed EVs,and 4 to either HP, special defense , or defense. These effort values will increase the base stats and make your pokemon stronger than it normally would be.

One more thing to keep in mind when building your pokemon is its nature. A pokemons nature will increase a single stat while lowering another. When choosing a nature you want to increase your strongest stat and decrease your lowest. Using flutter mane as example against you would want to either run a timid nature that increases its speed and lowers its attack (its a special attacker so doesn't use normal attack points) or modest nature that increases its special attack and lowers its attack. Using timid nature will make flutter mane out speed other flutter mane while modest will make it slower but do more damage. You can find what natures do at the link bellow.

https://pokemondb.net/mechanics/natures

When choosing moves for your pokemon , you need to think what you want it to do. If you want a fast special attacker then you want to max out on its strongest special attacks with a support move or two like protect. if you want a support mon like grimsnarl, you will usually use three support moves and one attacking move. Move sets will always depend on what you want a pokemon to do and its strongest moves to do what you want. You can also use online guides to learn how other people are using certain pokemon to max out its potential.

Other than moves the final part is to add items. Items allow a pokemon to be stronger than it already is. Items like life orb will increase base damage by 30%, choice band will increase physical damage by 50% but only allow it to use one move before switching , choice specs will also increase 50% but only for special attacks and lock your moves, and there are items such as leftovers that will heal every turn. Items will be the final boost of your choosing to increase the capability of your pokemon.

Congrats . Your ready to battle. Good luck and may the best trainer win .