A Beginner’s Guide for Building Teams and Training Pokémon

This isn’t an exhaustive list of what to do and how to do it, but it will give you guidance and direction on different ways to train Pokémon, compose teams, and win battles if you are new to Pokémon Masters. Many tips have a short video clip of less than a minute showcasing the tip and how to apply the tip to training or battle if you need help navigating the world of Pokémon Masters. This game can be as simple or complex as you want it to be.

Additional Guides:

1. I’m New, What Do I Need To Focus On?
2. Guide on How to Use Status Conditions to Win
3. Which Three Stars to Upgrade and Invest In?
4. How to Get More Pokémon
5. Guide on Egg Pokémon
6. How to 6 Star EX a Character and Increase Sync Move Level
7. Guide on Level 3 Gear

Basics of Building a Team for Defense and Offense

1. Be wary of super effective attacks against your team because your teammates will faint sooner. Mind your weakness.
2. Don’t have your striker as your first target. Learn how to place your Pokémon according to tactics. Example of bad tactics
3. Adjust your tactics to have a Pokémon with good health and defenses as your first target. Have a tank and try to keep that tank alive.
4. Know what the enemy has in store for you, whether it’s weather, status conditions, certain kinds of moves, etc. How to know your enemy; Example Battle
5. Super effective attacks do more damage. Choose a strong super effective striker or tech.
6. Queue up multiple moves to sync faster and more often. Hit more times, get buffs more quickly, debuff opponents more often. Don’t waste your gauge by not queuing moves, unless you’re about to sync. Not queuing multiple moves vs Queuing multiple moves

Importance of Buffs and Debuffs

1. Pokémon can have physical moves, special moves, or both. Their sync can be physical or special. Some Pokémon have high defense for physical hits, others have high special defense instead. Some Pokémon are equipped to deal with both.
2. Consider giving your attackers the right support they need. In this example Sylveon and Gengar will both rely on special moves. Physical support vs Special Support; Watch Special Attack buffs increase damage
3. Some teams or individual Pokémon will have physical and special moves/syncs present in their move set. You can choose to focus solely on physical, special, or both. Investigating move set before battle of a mixed striker; Battle Example
4. Physical Attackers need more attack; some BP Pairs like Raichu can boost it for the whole team, as seen here; Battle Example, watch damage increase with attack buffs
5. You can buff or debuff crit, attack, special attack, defense, special defense, speed, accuracy, and evasion. Some Pokémon are better buffers or debuffers than others. Of note, even if you fully buff your evasion and fully lower accuracy of the opponent- you can still be hit. In this battle, you see multiple buffs and debuffs happening at once, here. While this battle was overboard, you can choose a buff or debuff that can be a game changer.

Have a Strategy

1. Based on your teammates, you can choose different sync grids. If your teammate can boost your needed stats, you don’t have to boost it yourself. Example of Making a Mew Sync Nuke and Psychic Grid; Example Battle with teammate boosting evasion for blindspot.
2. Weather, terrain, and multipliers found in a sync grid or the Pokémon’s innate passives can boost damage. Find teammates to create the ideal damage conditions. Mew changes his grid to benefit from weather and if the opponent has a status condition, here; Battle to illustrate with and without multipliers present.
3. You can build a team to benefit one main attacker or two. Either way, adjust your team to help the attacker(s) to do big damage. See if your attacker can benefit from weather, terrain, status condition, buffs, or debuffs of any kind. Investigating a Pokémon’s kit with move-set, passives, and grid; Mallow enjoying help from two Legendaries.

Basic Investments for Characters

1. Filling in your sync grid can be the difference between winning and losing. Sync grids open your Pokémon up to new passives and stats they can use in battle. How to fill in a sync grid with Co-op Orbs; How to get Co-op Orbs and Sync Orbs
2. Theme Skills are activated when two or more on the team share a theme. The boosts are different depending on if the Pokémon is a support, tech, or striker.
3. You can choose a team based on theme skills for fun, mission requirements, or because you need the extra boost to your team’s stats. How to see active theme skills and How to get Theme Skill Orbs
4. You’ll need to invest in some characters to benefit from their event multiplier boost or because a mission limits who you can use. Example boosts and missions
5. You can also level up Pokémon, increase their level cap with drinks and books, give lucky skills, and sometimes evolve them. Check the egg section for clips on leveling up and lucky skills.
6. For lucky skills, most supports want Vigilance for a lucky skill, strikers want Critical Strike 2, and Techs want Critical Strike 2, Vigilance, Defense Crush 2, etc depending on how you use them. There are several exceptions, like Brendan and Sceptile wanting Dauntless so Leaf Storm doesn’t lose special attack. Phoebe’s Dusknoir and Dawn’s Turtwig already have Vigilance, so you can choose Defense Crush 2 or other skills. Serena’s Fennekin and Elio’s Popplio both want Trouble Maker 1 so their hypnosis/sing is more likely to take effect.

Helpful Tools

1. Sync Grid Helper by u/endurance12916; Gamepress Sync Grid Planner Tool
2. Sync Grid Simulator with Damage Calculator found here
3. Max Damage Calculations, found here.
4. The Eggmon Compendium by u/Zinfogel, found here.
5. Pokémon Masters Game Press
6. Serebii Lucky Cookies List

If anyone has anything else they’d like to add that newcomers and returning players can and should know, please add it below! If you’d like to link guides, videos, pictures, step by step instructions, or describe your battle style and strategies- I’m sure it could really help some of our new Pokémon Masters friends.