What are the basic roles?

The most important roles for a team are:

• “Sweeper” - combines a high speed with a high attack and/or special attack to KO (best case) multiple enemies
• “Wall” - combines high HP with high defense or special attack to stop sweepers from KO-ing multiple of your own pokemon
• “Wallbreaker” - combines high attack and/or special attack with abilities and/or items that boost damage output even further to break through enemy walls

These roles should be part of almost any team, safe for a select few, more advanced, special tactics that will not be covered in the basic guide (for those, see: advanced guide).

Sweeper

Their primary role is to KO as many of the opponents as possible. A prime example is Dragapult. It is naturally fast enough to outspeed a lot of other Pokemon, so it can use either Choice Band or Choice Specs to boost its attack or special attack respectively.

Usually our sweeper needs some preparation/support from the rest of the team, to properly do their job. Almost every sweeper has at least a few walls they simply can't effectively defeat on their own. On top of that, there are often sets specifically designed to outrun and oneshot the most common sweepers, or to survive one hit of them and kill them in return.

Walls

An especially tanky Pokemon is called a “wall” with their main goal being to stop enemy sweepers. In turn they are usually slower than sweepers and deal significantly less damage. They force sweepers to switch out by being virtually impossible for the sweeper to KO and/or using “passive damage” (for example poison, burn, “entry hazards” like Stealth Rocks) or attacks with fixed damage amounts like Seismic Toss or Sand Tomb.

Walls can again be split into 2 main groups:

• “Checks” are meant to stop the sweeper from destroying your team, but are usually not really able to really threaten them in turn.
• “Counters” are basically the same as checks but in turn threaten significant damage against the sweeper.

It should be mentioned that those roles are less specific to the wall, and more defined by the match-up. Most walls act as checks to certain Pokemon, and as counters to others. A wall's primary job is to be able to switch into dangerous Pokemon without losing a Pokemon yourself on the spot, best case they also scare out the sweeper or may even be able to win against them.

Wallbreaker

As the name already suggests, wallbreakers are there to “break” opposing walls. They achieve this by either completely KO-ing the opposing wall, or by dealing enough damage to allow the sweeper that would usually be stopped by that wall to get past it at a later point. For example, if your sweeper deals about 30% to an opposing wall, the sweeper won't use that 1on1 - unless your wallbreaker previously managed to “break” that wall, leaving it at 25%. Suddenly your sweeper can easily one-shot what would usually stop them, which is exactly the job of a wallbreaker.

In this case, Toxtricity is able to deal massive amounts of damage to opposing Pokemon due to the combination of Choice Specs, its huge special attack and its damage boosting ability on top. However, its speed stat is too low to be an effective sweeper - but gladly for Toxtricity, speed is not the most important stat for a wallbreaker.

How to use sweepers effectively

As a general rule of thumb, you'll want to keep your sweeper in the back until they got an opportunity for a safe KO on the opposing Pokemon. There are of course exceptions to that rule.

In cases where you can assure that your sweeper can enter the fight safely (like at the very first turn of a battle or after one of your own Pokemon was knocked out), especially if your sweeper knows a “switch move”, like U-turn, Flip Turn or Volt Switch. These moves allow you to deal some damage, while also switching out your Pokemon. Best case, your sweeper even threatens your opponent's active Pokemon, forcing them to switch out and in turn allowing you to react to it, by switching into a good match-up after using a switch move while also dealing some damage on the way out.

Physical vs Special?

There are 2 basic types of damage in Pokemon: physical and special damage - and accordingly, physical and special defense. Each attack also is marked with the responding icon, to show you at first glance if a move is special or physical. (--Icons einfügen--)

For that reason, a Blissey can take attacks from a special Dragapult just fine due to Blisseys sky high special defense stat. At the same time, a Dragapult focussing on physical attacks is a way bigger issue for Blissey. That's why you'll usually want physical sweepers, but also special sweepers on your team and the same goes for walls (and wallbreakers).