Question about being an Elite member...

[Inkraven]

Do you absolutely have to have a team that's intermediate or veteran difficulty to be considered as an Elite member at PPL East? One of the reasons I put myself as casual level this year and last is because I don't usually have the time/skill to easily make a good team that would be that caliber. However, I still wouldn't mind trying for elite if you guys let casual people in

If I need a better team, I'm more than willing to put the effort in and consult people regarding my team/strategy, but I just wanted to check first beforehand.

[kirby4life]

I don't know how East does it, but in AUS we had a tourney to figure out who should be the champ. The top 6 became our elites. At the very least, the challengers that get to that stage are gonna assume that the battles will be tougher.

[Inkraven]

True, I wouldn't mind improving my skills. One of the reasons I'm considering it this year is that the battle load would fit better with what I want to do - making most of the battles Sunday for me would be great.

I'd like to make an awesome team and have it be challenging for people to beat, but I'm not sure if I'd have the time to EV/IV train all of my pokemon. Are there any good beginners guides for that kind of thing? My school and job can make it kinda tough u.u

[Aurethious]

Volaro wrote up some nice little guides that might be of some use.

http://paxpokemonleague.net/2014/02/pok ... -training/
http://paxpokemonleague.net/2014/02/exp ... -training/
http://paxpokemonleague.net/2014/02/exp ... -training/

As far as your original question goes, I feel like Elites should probably be at least Intermediate since they should be, thematically speaking at least, tougher than the garden variety Gym Leader. Not sure what the official stance on this is.

You'd be surprised how easy it is to make an Intermediate level team though. In general, even just proper EV training and move planning should be enough to do it. And really, with Super Training, it's really simple and quick to properly max out EVs on a full team of 6.

[kirby4life]

[Volaro]

People still remember my guide ; u;

But yes, if you wanna use that, its a bit out of date. I never updated it for ORAS, but its mostly the same. Except its actually a [ibot]lot[/ibot] easier to Horde train in Hoenn than Kalos. Weather doesn't disrupt sweet scent in the routes you need and its an 100% chance of finding the Pokemon you wanna train on.

[bbot]HP[/bbot] is in Rusturf Tunnel, from Whismur
[bbot]Attack [/bbot]is in Mt Pyre's cemetary, from Shuppet
[bbot]Defense[/bbot] in Route 111 (the desert), from Sandshrew
[bbot]Special Attack[/bbot] is Route 119, from Oddish (or 113 from Spinda)
[bbot]Special Defense [/bbot]is Route 115, from Swablu
[bbot]Speed [/bbot]is Route 104, on either side of Petalburg. Taillow, Wingull, and Zigzagoon all give those EVs.

[Fraxure]

Hmm. This is just one person's opinion, but to me it feels like the Elites should be a cut above the rest of the Gym Leaders. I think the PPL has it right in terms of natural progression of difficulty.

[Inkraven]

Thanks for all the help guys! I'll definitely be putting myself as intermediate then and trying out for Elite status. It's not that I wanted to be an easy Elite to beat - I just needed help in making my team better! Now all I have to do is figure who's gonna be on my team...

[Shrain]

When it comes to being an elite, you need to blur the line between unbeatable and completely casual. You should not be winning every fight, but if you go an entire day losing every fight, you don't quite come off as elite. You should be either 50/50 or 40/60 (going either way.)

Helpful tips for elite members, in my experience (although not mandatory):
Understand at least the basics of EVing and IVing (and utilize them to some extent)
Pretty skilled at predicting switch-ins
Good at guessing held items
Have plenty of PPL time for late Friday, and throughout Saturday/Sunday

With mono teams or complicated themes, 40/60 win/loss can be hard to achieve. Part of the challenge of being elite is finding away past that barrier and still bringing a challenge.

[MrAGeezie]

I wasn't that difficult... was I?