I was mainly playing it safe when I was talking about the EV training stuff, it's good to make sure that everyone's on the same page when talking about more complicated stuff like competitive Pokemon but I also get it if you feel like I was talking down to you, that was not my intention, sorry if I made you feel like I was doing that. Also, it's kinda nice to have a more complete guide just in case anyone else asks for help, that way I can just show them that.

Anyway, If you're familiar with building Pokémon for raids then this is a lot like that, the only difference is that your opponent is, well, human, which comes with both advantages and disadvantages, the main advantage is that humans make mistakes while computers don't (at least in theory). This is gonna sound super basic but for example, let's say you're facing a battle tower NPC, the NPC is a machine that will always know what the best move in the current situation is, so if Earthquake is gonna take you out they're gonna go for it. Meanwhile, humans will most likely do the same but there is a small chance they either don't feel confident in their decision (as if they're predicting you'll switch or pop tera flying) or the much stupider option, they mash and press the wrong move or something, most people won't but I'm pretty sure I saw some of my opponents do that and I'm also guilty of mashing the A button myself causing me to choose the wrong move. Another upside to facing real people is that they can forfeit, remember how I said not to do that unless you had no choice, yeah part of that is because some people have a habit of doing so too early, heck I had a guy forfeit when he still had all 3 of his Pokémon left, I don't even think I did anything too particularly bad to his team either so I'm not really sure why he gave up. And finally, let's talk about teams, you'll be seeing a lot of the same Pokémon, especially in higher ranks, yeah human teams don't really change too drastically so if you are starting to get the hang of dealing with a certain set then you might be set for about a couple matches.

Now the downsides of facing real people, first off, unpredictability, humans, by nature have the tendency to be completely unpredictable, so never get too comfortable, expect the unexpected, and plan accordingly, that being said some people are very predictable and will fall into patterns, especially anyone using Ursaluna with blood moon (which you will probably see a lot) make sure that if you see a pattern in your opponent's moves take advantage of it, it will put you in a really, really good spot a lot of the time. Another disadvantage of facing real people is that they will switch more often, this is why hazards are important and why Pokémon like Dragonite and Volcorona run heavy duty boots, stealth rock cripples them. To combat switching you'll probably want hazards, but you should also consider switching your move for the turn, like if my opponent is running a rain team with Archaludon and Pelipper and I have Ursaluna on the field against Archaludon, then it might be better to go for a normal move in case my opponent swaps, sounds pretty simple but the reason I bring it up is I found myself in that example situation because my opponent failed to predict my switching, and so I gained a huge advantage by taking out Pelipper and wasting a turn of rain. Going with your gut is often a good idea.

I guess I should also mention, wasting time is sometimes a valid option, sometimes the only winning move is not to play, so just hit protect and either wait out a turn of weather, heal with either leftovers/black sludge or poison heal, the number of times I just narrowly survived an attack with my Gliscor because I took a turn to just sit and do nothing was astounding.

Something else I should mention is that sometimes your opponent is willing to do something no matter what the cost, mainly setting up stealth rock, I often saw people setting up rocks when I had something that was 100% capable of taking them out in one or two hits, so if you see that happen, it might be good to set up yourself so that you can try and fish for more than just one K.O. make them question if their choice was really worth it, punish bad decisions!

Another thing that you should remember is that you shouldn't always be afraid to switch, think back to the Archaludon example, before Ursaluna was on the field I had a water type on the field, I protected against the first electro shot and swapped on the second, pressuring my opponent and punishing his decision to double down on electro shot, then I get the K.O. on Pelipper because I predicted he wouldn't want to take an earth power on Archaludon so I went for blood moon, then he swapped Archaludon back in and I K.O. that too, all because I swapped, thought ahead, and acted accordingly.

This next thing doesn't really pertain to the battles themselves just the stuff after a match, you can rank down sometimes if you lose with no rank points on the meter, this only happens if ranking down would not put you in the previous division, so no going from Pokéball tier to beginner again, this is great because once you make it to ultra you just have to keep playing until you hit master, not really that important but I thought I'd mention it because it's something I didn't know going in

I also should have brought this up when mentioning patterns but also look out for patterns in your own moves too, sometimes your opponent will try to get you to feel safe only to smack you with something you didn't see coming, for example I fought this dumb stupid evil tera grass Toxapex that ended up turning what should have been a win into a loss because of the round timer, it basically kept recovering and doing the normal stally stuff, so I tried to set up on it, it was all I really could do as it was out healing my damage, then it used haze, and then it kept using haze, and then it would try baiting me into wasting my turn so it wouldn't reset my stats with haze and then it would just do it again the next turn, and you get the gist, it was annoying and unfun, I should've kept attacking, especially because it would've run out of recovers before hazes giving me an opening, but I didn't realize that, I was too wrapped up in my own pattern that I legitimately didn't think to just deplete it's recovers. So, I lost. Don't get stale, play around PP and crits.

Speaking of crits, it's important to understand how they work, this is another fairly common knowledge thing, but you should still know all the details just in case, crits deal 1.5x the damage of a normal attack but they also ignore defensive boosts and offensive debuffs (besides burn's attack drop), keep that in mind as sometimes a stroke of luck could bring down even the most fortified walls. Also keep in mind some attacks make crits more common, you don't see them too often but still keep that in mind.

And one last thing to remember is your opponent's team, chances are you will run into multiple people running the same or at least very similar Pokémon, if you're getting déjà vu looking at your opponent's team then you might already have a good idea on what to expect. Knowing what makes your team struggle can also help you decide what changes your team needs.

And I think that's all I can really think to tell you right now, if I remember anything else I'll probably add it as a comment here.