[Sword & Shield] Single Battle Cup Anyone?

[TaterKoch]

Hey yall!

So I just heard about the upcoming online competition for Sword and Shield, and since it's single battle I thought, well I'll give it a try! But I've never really actually battled competitively in any of the games other than a few random battles when I got bored.
Could anyone give me some advice? What should I expect, what pokemon should I try to use, etc.
I'm thinking of using Gyarados, Garchomp, and Blissey, as they've always been some of my go to pokemon. I have thought about switching Garchomp for Dragapult because he's quickly climbing to the top to be my favorite, but what do you guys think?
I may be in over my head 😅 but I'm sure gunna try my best!

 

[Nah]

I'm not familiar with the Gen 8 meta at all, my last days in competitive battling were during Gen 7, but generally one thing to do is to look at usage statistics, to try to get an idea of what's common and such. These are two such sites that contain said data:
https://www.pikalytics.com/
https://www.smogon.com/stats/

Though you need to choose the dataset of whichever format would be closest to the Single Battle Cup, and keep in mind how it has a differing banlist to the normal online ladders.

One other thing to do would be learn about EVs and IVs if you've not done so yet. Maximizing your Pokemon's IVs and distributing their EVs well has long been an important factor in competitive battling.

 

[TaterKoch]

Thanks for the info, I really appreciate it and will start looking into it!
I have learned a fair bit about IVs and EVs and fortunately do have some Pokemon with near perfect IVs, I just need to EV train them, and that's where I get nervous. I get the general sense of how to distribute them, but I'm always second quessing myself and unsure if I'm putting them into the right stats for a lot of pokemon still. I'm actually going to sit down tonight and get some research done on all of it so I can hopefully be best prepared and at least win a few battles. Lol.