Competitive Pokémon Guide for Pokémon Champions

Story mode teaches you how to catch Pokémon and beat the gym leaders, but it barely scratches the surface of what the battle system can do. Competitive play is where that system shows its real depth, and Pokémon Champions is the easiest way in that has ever existed. You can face players from anywhere in the world from your own home, and if you get hooked, there is an official circuit that ends at the World Championships.

This guide is written for someone starting from scratch. We go through each piece of a competitive battle in turn, so that by the end you can read a team, understand why it is built the way it is, and start thinking about your own. There is a lot here, and that is fine. You are not supposed to remember it all after one read: most of it becomes second nature after a few dozen games, and every match you watch fills in another gap.

What is competitive Pokémon?

Competitive Pokémon moved to Pokémon Champions in April 2026, and the main series games are no longer where official battles happen. Champions is free to play on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, and it arrived on phones in summer 2026. The same account works across all of them, so a game started on Switch and a game played on the bus count toward the same progress.

Official battles use the doubles format. You and your opponent each control two Pokémon at once, so up to four Pokémon are on the field at once, reacting to each other. Keep this in mind for the rest of the guide: moves, abilities and items are designed with that crowded field in mind, and many of them only make sense in doubles.

The pool of allowed Pokémon is not fixed either. Every regulation comes with its own list, and a Pokémon that dominates one season can drop out of sight in the next. Pokémon Champions is currently in Regulation M-C, and you can check the best competitive Pokémon of this format in our Pokémon Champions tier list.

Stats: the numbers behind every Pokémon

Each Pokémon has six stats: HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense and Speed. Before anything else, you need to know the difference between a base stat and the number that shows up in battle. Base stats belong to the species and let you compare one Pokémon with another, but they are only a starting point. Gengar's base Speed is 110, yet a Gengar trained for speed reaches 178 in a level 50 battle, the level every Pokémon Champions match is played at.

HP is how much damage a Pokémon can absorb before fainting. Attack and Special Attack set the strength of its physical and special moves, while Defense and Special Defense set how much it suffers from each kind of hit.

Speed plays no part in how much damage anything deals. Its only job is to set the turn order, with the quickest Pokémon acting first unless something overrides it, which we will cover in the section on moves. Stats are not fixed during a battle either: moves, abilities and side effects can push them up or down, by up to six steps in each direction, and each step changes the stat by a set multiplier.

Physical and special moves

Damaging moves are split into physical and special, and the split decides which stats get compared. Physical moves pit the user's Attack against the target's Defense, and special moves pit Special Attack against Special Defense.

Two Fire moves make this easy to see. Fire Punch, with 75 power, is physical, so it relies on the user's Attack. Flamethrower, with 90 power, is special, so it relies on Special Attack instead. Same type, different stats. Whenever you look at a move, check its category, because its type alone will not tell you which stat it uses.

Types and the type chart

Pokémon have one or two of the 18 types: Normal, Fire, Fighting, Water, Flying, Grass, Poison, Electric, Ground, Psychic, Rock, Ice, Bug, Dragon, Ghost, Dark, Steel and Fairy. The matchup between the type of a move and the types of its target sets a damage multiplier. Grass Pokémon take double damage from Fire, and Fire Pokémon take half damage from Grass. Do not assume every matchup works both ways like that one, though, because many of them do not.

When the target has two types, you apply both multipliers one after the other. Charizard is Fire and Flying, and both of those types are weak to Rock, so Rock moves hit it for four times their normal damage. Both types also resist Grass, which leaves Grass moves at a quarter of their damage. Ice is a mixed case: Fire resists it while Flying is weak to it, so the two effects balance out and Ice moves deal normal damage.

Some matchups go further and deal no damage at all. Poison moves cannot touch Steel types, Fighting moves pass through Ghost types, Ghost moves fail against Normal types and Dragon moves do nothing to Fairy types. Once an immunity is involved, the second type stops mattering: a Steel Pokémon is immune to Poison moves whatever else it is.

The game helps you along, but learning the chart properly is worth the effort. Most close games are decided by someone knowing which attack will land hard and which hit their Pokémon can afford to take.

STAB, the same type attack bonus

A move gets a 50% power boost when its type matches one of the user's types. Players call it STAB, for same type attack bonus. Flamethrower used by Charizard, a Fire type, effectively has 135 power instead of 90.

Moves from other types are often worth running for coverage, but they hit without that boost. You can see both cases on Garchomp at tournaments: as a Dragon and Ground type, its Earth Power gets STAB, while its Power Gem, which is a Rock move, does not.

Shaping your Pokémon: natures and stat points

Two Pokémon of the same species can end up with very different stats, because you decide where their strengths go. This is a big part of the strategy behind every team.

Natures

Natures are the first lever. Out of 25, twenty give one stat a 10% boost and take 10% away from another, and the remaining five do nothing. Competitive players skip those five, since nearly every Pokémon has a stat it never uses, and trading it away for a stat it does use costs nothing.

A special attacker like Charizard has no use for Attack, so it usually runs Timid, for more Speed, or Modest, for more Special Attack, both at the expense of Attack. Tournament teams follow the same logic with physical attackers: Kingambit runs Adamant, which boosts Attack and lowers Special Attack. There is no need to learn the full nature list by heart, because Pokémon Champions lists what each one raises and lowers right on the selection screen.

Stat points

Most of the fine tuning happens with stat points, which take the place of the EVs from older games. The idea is the same, but the system is much easier to read. Each Pokémon has 66 points to spend, no more than 32 can go into the same stat, and every point adds exactly one to that stat.

A quick example with Speed. An untrained Charizard has 120 Speed at level 50. With 32 points in Speed it reaches 152, and a Timid nature lifts that by 10% to 167. That is the ceiling for any Pokémon whose base Speed is 100.

Since the damage formula is public and damage calculators run it for you, experienced players spend their points with real precision. A few points in the right stat can be the difference between knocking out a common threat in one hit or not, or between holding on through a key attack and fainting to it. Those small margins win games.

Players coming from older generations may also remember IVs, hidden values that had to be maxed out through breeding or special items. They do not exist in Pokémon Champions.

Moves

A Pokémon carries up to four moves, picked from its movepool, the full list of moves that species can learn. Movepools vary a lot, and many moves are only available to a handful of Pokémon.

Every move is physical, special or status. Damaging moves either target one Pokémon or hit several at once, which matters a lot in doubles. Earthquake, Rock Slide and Heat Wave all hit more than one target, and when they do their power is cut to 75%. Beyond its category, each move has a type, a power, a PP count that limits how many times it can be used in a battle, and sometimes an added effect.

Priority is the other property to watch. Nearly all moves have a priority of zero, and between those, Speed settles the order. A move with a higher priority always goes ahead of moves with a lower one, regardless of Speed. Incineroar is not fast, but its Fake Out has +3 priority, so on the turn it uses it, it acts early anyway. Trick Room works the other way, with a negative priority that sends it to the end of the turn.

Status moves deal no direct damage. Their job is to help your side, hinder the opponent or change the flow of the game. Swords Dance raises your Attack, Taunt shuts down the target's status moves, Follow Me pulls attacks onto the user, and Protect shields the user from almost everything for one turn. Protect is everywhere on tournament teams, so expect to see it constantly.

Taunt also shows why the line between status and damaging moves is worth knowing, since its whole effect depends on it. Moves are further tagged as contact, sound, slicing and so on. These tags show up in the move details in Pokémon Champions, so you can look them up when you need them, and they matter because other effects key off them. Sharpness boosts slicing moves by 50%, Soundproof blocks sound moves entirely, and Grass types ignore powder moves like Rage Powder.

Abilities

Each Pokémon runs a single ability, picked from the two or three its species can have, and it keeps that ability for the whole battle. Some abilities fire the moment the Pokémon is sent out. Incineroar's Intimidate is the best known: on entry, it lowers the Attack of both opponents by one stage.

Others stay in the background until the right moment comes. Volcarona's Flame Body gives a 30% chance to burn any opponent that hits it with a contact move. That brings in a detail worth remembering: being physical and making contact are two separate things. Earthquake is a physical move that never touches its target, so it cannot trigger Flame Body. These interactions can feel like a lot at first, but they stick quickly once you start seeing them in real games.

Items

Each Pokémon holds one item, and your team is subject to the item clause: every Pokémon has to hold a different item from its teammates.

Some items quietly work in the background, others change how the Pokémon plays. Choice Scarf boosts Speed by 50% but locks the holder into the first move it picks until it switches out, so the Garchomp that carry it at tournaments run four attacking moves. Life Orb, a common pick on Kingambit, boosts move power by 30% in exchange for 10% of the holder's HP each time it deals damage. Item choices are one of the main ways two teams with the same Pokémon end up playing very differently.

Status conditions

Status conditions come from moves, either as their main effect or as an added one, and they change what a Pokémon can do. Only one of them can be on a Pokémon at a time, except confusion, which can sit on top of another status. Several of them work differently in Pokémon Champions than in the older games, and the values below are the Champions ones.

• Burn costs 1/16 of the Pokémon's HP each turn and halves the damage of its physical moves, which is a serious problem for physical attackers. Fire types are immune.
• Sleep keeps the Pokémon from acting. It cannot wake on its first turn asleep, has a one in three chance on the second, and is guaranteed to wake on the third.
• Freeze also keeps the Pokémon from acting. It has a 25% chance to thaw each turn and is guaranteed to thaw by the third. Ice types are immune.
• Paralysis cuts the Pokémon's Speed in half and makes it lose its turn one time in eight. Electric types are immune.
• Poison costs 1/8 of the Pokémon's HP each turn, while bad poison starts smaller and grows every turn. Poison and Steel types are immune.
• Badly Poisoned: A badly poisoned Pokémon takes increasing damage at the end of each turn, starting at 1/16 of its maximum HP and increasing by an additional 1/16 every turn
• Confusion may make the Pokémon hit itself instead of carrying out your command.

How damage is calculated

Every hit runs through the same formula. The main inputs are the attacker's offensive stat, the defender's defensive stat and the move's power, and then come the multipliers: type matchup, STAB, weather, items, abilities and more. A small random factor is also applied, so the same attack lands for slightly different amounts from one turn to the next.

Learning the formula is not necessary. After enough games you will have a good sense of how hard each Pokémon hits, and for exact figures a damage calculator gives you the answer in seconds.

Weather and terrain

Two kinds of field effects can reshape a battle: weather and terrain. Both change damage, and both do more than that.

The four weathers are sun, rain, sandstorm and snow. Moves can set them, but most of the time they come from abilities, and they apply to everyone on the field. A new weather replaces the old one, so teams built around a weather spend a lot of effort keeping theirs active, and the back and forth between two weather teams is known as a weather war. On tournament teams, Pelipper brings rain with Drizzle and Torkoal brings sun with Drought.

• Sun makes Fire moves 50% stronger and Water moves half as strong.
• Rain reverses that: Water moves get 50% stronger and Fire moves lose half their power.
• Sandstorm gives Rock types 50% more Special Defense and chips 1/16 of their HP each turn from every Pokémon that is not Rock, Ground or Steel.
• Snow gives Ice types 50% more Defense.

Terrains come in four kinds too: Electric, Grassy, Misty and Psychic. Weather and terrain stack without any problem, so rain plus Grassy Terrain is a normal sight, but a new terrain always replaces the previous one. Terrains only reach Pokémon standing on the ground, which leaves out Flying types and Pokémon with Levitate. Rillaboom's Grassy Surge sets Grassy Terrain as soon as it is sent out, and Indeedee-F's Psychic Surge does the same with Psychic Terrain.

• Electric Terrain makes Electric moves 30% stronger and keeps grounded Pokémon awake.
• Grassy Terrain makes Grass moves 30% stronger and heals 1/16 of HP each turn.
• Misty Terrain halves the damage grounded Pokémon take from Dragon moves and shields them from status conditions.
• Psychic Terrain makes Psychic moves 30% stronger and stops priority moves from hitting grounded Pokémon.

Whoever controls the terrain often controls the game, much like with weather.

How a match works

A match starts long before the first turn, with the six Pokémon you register. Good teams are built to cope with many different opponents, not just to feature favorite Pokémon, and they are shaped by the current regulation and by what everyone else is playing at that moment.

Official sets are usually best of three, so you need two game wins to take the match. Each game opens with team preview, which lasts 90 seconds. Both players see each other's six Pokémon and secretly pick four. The first two you choose start on the field, and the other two sit in the back as replacements for switches and knockouts. A good pick depends on how your Pokémon line up against theirs in both directions, and on reading your opponent: they are trying to predict your four just as you are trying to predict theirs. Team preview is one of the hardest parts of the game for new players, and one of the parts that improves fastest with practice.

You win a game by fainting all four of your opponent's Pokémon before they do the same to you. Time is a factor as well. You get 45 seconds to lock in your moves each turn, and the battle as a whole has time limits on top of that. Running out of time can lose you a game that you were winning on the board.

How to build a competitive Pokémon team

No team stays the best forever. Every format has its own answers, and what works today will be countered tomorrow. The goal is to understand the pieces above well enough to read what is working right now.

The simplest way to start is with a team someone else has already built. Pokémon Champions supports replica codes: the creator of a team generates one in the game, and anyone who enters it in Champions gets the full team, with moves, abilities, items, natures and stat points included. Playing a strong team for a while teaches you more about team building than any amount of theory. On PokeFeed you can browse community teams with replica codes, upvoted by other players and ready to paste into the game. If there is a Pokémon you already want to use, start from the teams built around it, like these Incineroar teams.

When you move on to building your own, study how the strongest teams fit together. You will see Pokémon that make each other better: a weather setter next to the Pokémon that thrive in that weather, a terrain setter next to the attackers its terrain powers up, a Fake Out user next to a partner that needs a free turn.

Stay informed

The players who improve fastest are the ones who follow the meta closely. That means knowing which Pokémon are popular, which ideas are gaining ground and, most importantly, how the top players are using them. Much of that knowledge comes out of tournament results from every region. New strategies appear all the time, and a team that wins in one country is soon copied, or countered, everywhere else.

Our Pokémon Champions meta page shows what the community uploads and votes for, and PokeFeed Tournaments shows the official Day 2 teams from each event, with complete sets. We keep the two apart on purpose, because what wins tournaments and what most players run are often different things.

More than anything else, though, play games. Each idea in this guide becomes clearer once you see it happen in a real match. Pick a team, start climbing the ladder, and come back here whenever something does not make sense.