I'm no longer really keen on improving my battle skills... What I mostly used to do in the past was pick up ideas and just overall get used to the whole thing by studying the strategies of others and repeatedly battle.
I always found studying teams and playstyles to be an excellent way of becoming better. By seeing how others perform and assimilating the good points of their style into yours helps you learn about yourself as a player and the metagame as a whole. It's much easier to find out what you're good at if you start by taking ideas from those who have already discovered it. It's part of the reason why I really like RMTs and why I try to make mine look good-RMTs aren't just to show off great ideas or take advice, but also for others to use those ideas and think of their own. Apart from that, the only other thing I truly found good for improving myself was just a lot of battling. Of course, studying old battles isn't bad, but I've never felt it was that helpful. Competitive play isn't chess. Chess may incorporate tons of strategy and prediction, but it's always the same pieces and the turns aren't simultaneous. As such, it's much easier to find similar situations between games, and so studying the best course of action for such a situation is a great way to succeed. Battling is different in the sense that apart from some general rules there is no real best course of action for every situation. Switching a Psychic-type in place of a Steel-type against a Fighting-type only to get hit by Knock Off on the switch means you made a mistake, but it could have been Drain Punch just as easy. The exact same course of action might yield entirely different results in two separate cases. In the long run, competitive play is much more about learning to read your opponent than anything else.
Reading your opponent and teambuilding. That's the essence of the game. Practice how to make good teams by observing others and using their ideas in conjunction to yours. And practice reading your opponents by battling many of them. Those were the principles I used to follow. I haven't truly improved as a battler in quite some time now, as I don't care as much as I used to. But that's the advice an on-and-off player has to give.
I always found studying teams and playstyles to be an excellent way of becoming better. By seeing how others perform and assimilating the good points of their style into yours helps you learn about yourself as a player and the metagame as a whole. It's much easier to find out what you're good at if you start by taking ideas from those who have already discovered it. It's part of the reason why I really like RMTs and why I try to make mine look good-RMTs aren't just to show off great ideas or take advice, but also for others to use those ideas and think of their own. Apart from that, the only other thing I truly found good for improving myself was just a lot of battling. Of course, studying old battles isn't bad, but I've never felt it was that helpful. Competitive play isn't chess. Chess may incorporate tons of strategy and prediction, but it's always the same pieces and the turns aren't simultaneous. As such, it's much easier to find similar situations between games, and so studying the best course of action for such a situation is a great way to succeed. Battling is different in the sense that apart from some general rules there is no real best course of action for every situation. Switching a Psychic-type in place of a Steel-type against a Fighting-type only to get hit by Knock Off on the switch means you made a mistake, but it could have been Drain Punch just as easy. The exact same course of action might yield entirely different results in two separate cases. In the long run, competitive play is much more about learning to read your opponent than anything else.
Reading your opponent and teambuilding. That's the essence of the game. Practice how to make good teams by observing others and using their ideas in conjunction to yours. And practice reading your opponents by battling many of them. Those were the principles I used to follow. I haven't truly improved as a battler in quite some time now, as I don't care as much as I used to. But that's the advice an on-and-off player has to give.
Last edited: