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Okay, so as good as Smogon may be at churning out great battlers, sometimes I think it doesn't hurt to offer our readers some advice from a seasoned battler such as myself. Let's start with the basics before getting onto more advanced tactics.
Use Pokémon. I don't care if Wargreymon is cooler than Tyranitar and has better stats; neither Shoddybattle nor Netbattle supports monsters outside the 493 we all know. I've told Colin on several occasions that he would silence all the people advocating Netbattle's supremacy (hehe I'm a modern-day Oscar Wilde, except not gay) over Shoddybattle if he coded in such things like Batman and Greymon to shake up the metagame, but alas, no dice. Until he changes his mind, the foundation of a good team requires six good Pokémon, or at least three good ones and three kinda shit ones if they were the only ones you could be bothered to catch. I must warn you, though: EV training on Shoddybattle is not a task to be undertaken by the faint of heart.
Attack the opponent with damaging moves. I know this might seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people have battled me and forgotten this (Blissey will just use Aromatherapy and that'll be the end of your Toxic stall). Besides, I've always used this strategy and it always worked except the times when it didn't. It must be noted that the non-attacking strategy (also known as the Gandhi Gambit) also worked except when it didn't, but worked less often.
Don't lose!
OK, now that the basics are out of the way, we can move onto some more advanced stuff. Are you ready? (If not then just take a couple minutes before reading the next section.)
Curse, when used on a Ghost-type works differently than when using it on a non-Ghost-type. Back in the days of GSC, I experimented with a defensive tank Gengar set consisting of Shadow Ball/Curse/Rest/Sleep Talk and was shocked to find out Curse took away half my HP rather than boosting my stats.
Explosion is a powerful attack, but it makes your Pokémon unable to battle; use it wisely. A similar move, Lunar Dance, is not a powerful attack but also makes your Pokémon unable to battle. I don't recommend using this.
Leftovers is the REAL item of choice (I'm here all week) for any Pokémon. Consider this: after 16 turns, your Pokémon will have healed 100% of its Health, effectively giving it a second life. Most Pokémon are on the field for around this long, so this is true.
You can breed Cross Chop onto many Pokémon like Psyduck and Elekid, who aren't even Fighting-types. Use it to gain an advantage on Pokémon who normally wall your attacks, such as Relaxo and Blissey. Even though they don't get Same Type Attack Bonus, the 100 Base Power is more than enough to compensate for this. Same Type Attack Bonus is a very good way to boost the power of your attacks, by about 50% (if you need more power I suggest you train your Pokémon more).
On the subject of Relaxo: this Pokémon has excellent Health, Attack and Special Defense stats, with already low Speed. Give it Curse to boost its Defense and round out its defensive profile while raising its already good Attack. This will make it unstoppable.
OK, while writing this, I realised the second section was a bit big (like your mum) so I needed to put something into it to make it more manageable (unlike your mum, who just got fatter when I did that). The next section is more to do with the aspect of Pokémon that goes beyond the battle arena and chaos's server and into the hearts and minds of trainers.
Psychological warfare! Go ahead, leave your Parasect out against that Arcanine. Your opponent will think you are a noob and will not expect the Spanish Inquisition, i.e. you using Swords Dance on your Rhyperior and sweeping his team. Of course, you need to eliminate any Suicune first before attempting this.
In the same vein, I am going to quote Sun Tzu's "Art of War" here: "Although the combatant of a/the victory surpasses firstly and go to a/the war furthermore and the combatant who it was defeated goes that wins fight, with the 1st on the other hand, to try". Pretty self-explanatory, really. For those perplexed by the syntax, I chose to directly translate from the original text rather than go with the "Victorious warriors go to war first..." quote, which was reputedly translated using Babelfish.
Despite mentioning earlier that Same Type Attack Bonus is a good thing, this doesn't mean that you should give Charizard four Fire-type moves. You should give it attacks that don't match its type to surprise your opponent and keep them guessing. Besides, I recommend only two attacks of the same type, just in case one runs out of PP. I will never again make the mistake of giving Charizard just Fire Blast, since I was up against an Exeggutor and ran out of PP for the move.
(ADV only) If you have a lot of patience or simply have nothing better to do with your life because it's empty, unfulfilled, and spent masturbating to the lingerie section of home-order catalogues, use a Wobbuffet. If by chance your opponent has a Wobbuffet too, just sit back and wait until your opponent gets bored, goes to bed, or has something to do and has to forfeit. Remember: sleep is for the weak.
Prediction, prediction, prediction. Go by your gut feeling, playing patterns, or by having someone spy on your opponent and relay their move choice to you. If thinking ahead taxes your ant brain too far, just pick a random move. There's a 3/4 chance you'll pick a move your opponent didn't expect, provided your opponent expected a particular one.
If bloobers are attacking the server you are currently on, don't be a hero. GET OUT OF THERE. Even if you're winning. If you're losing of course, you've found a good excuse to abandon the battle. As such, bloobers are a double-edged sword.
Aaaaaand that concludes my tips. If you want more tips like the previous and those mentioned in the rest of this article, I recommend you come to my server; you already know the password. You are free to copy these tips provided you credit me, the writer, and zerowing, whose initial idea it was to write up tips for Pokémon players (he's even better at Pokémon than me). In fact, you'll see a couple of zerowing's PRO TIPS from Phillip's article here, but elaborated upon a little.
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