Is Smogon Really That Bad?

Looking at the forums, talking in the chatbox, and clicking around in PO, I have noticed that there are very mixed opinions of Smogon University, one of the most well-known competitive pokemon website there is. Smogon’s all over the website, having its own set of well-accepted tiers and perfected movesets for a good portion of all the pokemon. However, some seem to dislike, even despise, the website. Some dislike the idea of ranking pokemon by movepools and abilites, or disagree with certain bans or limitations that Smogon has set on the most current metagame. I’d like to know what everyone at Nightmare thinks of all of this, as I’ve seen some diverse replies on the forums and chatbox. What do you think of the community or the site itself?

In 4th gen OU barely had any usable pokemon , which is why I played UU,NU alot . The BL tiers are bullshit because there is only 3,4 pokes in their . Smogon makes some stupid decisions and I don't like how everyone follows them. Everyone is a lemming , including myself but that's only because smogon is the only place with its tiers . I hated how they fully banned Blaziken and not just Speed boost, that was just stupid . They should've banned Excadrill in Sand and Garchomp in sand because Garchomp can't do shit in Uber . Thundurus still rapes with one nasty plot and 2HitKo's walls without rain .

This is my opinion only: Smogon is only "well-accepted" because it is THE ONLY site that ranks Pokemon by tiers. I bet things would be much different if Smogon had a rival site to compete against.

Even with all of the emnity for Smogon swirling about, I have a respect for smogon and what it does. I’m not a Smogon member myself, and never intend on joining, but I do think that the critisicm and poor opinions of the site is overblown. Organizing pokemon into tiers is no small task, and one of the primary reasons why Smogon is so well-accepted and well-known is because of the general correctness of the tiers. Other organizations such as PO make tiers as well, though most aren’t well known because the tiers they create are not as effective. If Smogon really did make “stupid decisions” why would people follow them? If you don’t like a ban or a certain rule, do you question the validity of it or the test that made the rule exist?

Smogon isn’t banning things out of randomness; they test everything before they ban or unban something. I myself don’t agree with all of their judgements, but they do a lot of thinking before they make a decision, and no one is perfect. Those on the site you so vehemently despise are among the best pokemon minds, and I don’t think it is right to despise and mock Smogoners, especially if you yourself could not do a better job. How many of you could create tiers and movesets for hundereds of pokemon and never make a wrong? I know that I couldn’t. Think before you bash. Smogon may not be perfect, but it is doing the best job it can.

I don't really think they are doing a good job. Garchomp, Thundurus and Excadrill were banned based on their usage on weather teams. Smogon didn't even try to analyze those pokes out of weather to see if they are still broken. Maybe banning weather teams would solve the problem, without banning Pokes unnecessarily.

I don't think that smogon is doing that bad of a job. Yeah they may be banning things that are only good in weather teams. Excadrill is a piece of crap out of sand. In my opinion I think that Thundurus should be in ubers. It hits hard and can 2hko most walls even without rain, that includes blissey/chansey with hammer arm. Excadrill was used for the sole purpose to abuse the sand so it can be super fast and hit like a truck without any worries of a scarfer to stop it, minus the occasional deoxys s with scarf.

LynjaBear wrote:Even with all of the emnity for Smogon swirling about, I have a respect for smogon and what it does. I’m not a Smogon member myself, and never intend on joining, but I do think that the critisicm and poor opinions of the site is overblown. Organizing pokemon into tiers is no small task, and one of the primary reasons why Smogon is so well-accepted and well-known is because of the general correctness of the tiers. Other organizations such as PO make tiers as well, though most aren’t well known because the tiers they create are not as effective. If Smogon really did make “stupid decisions” why would people follow them? If you don’t like a ban or a certain rule, do you question the validity of it or the test that made the rule exist?

Smogon isn’t banning things out of randomness; they test everything before they ban or unban something. I myself don’t agree with all of their judgements, but they do a lot of thinking before they make a decision, and no one is perfect. Those on the site you so vehemently despise are among the best pokemon minds, and I don’t think it is right to despise and mock Smogoners, especially if you yourself could not do a better job. How many of you could create tiers and movesets for hundereds of pokemon and never make a wrong? I know that I couldn’t. Think before you bash. Smogon may not be perfect, but it is doing the best job it can.

This pretty much sums up my opinion. While they've made mistakes, they do know what they're doing. For the most part, their tiers are great.

Ten or so Pokemon being "badly" placed (which is completely subjective) out the six-hundred-forty-nine we have is pretty damn spot-on. If anyone thinks they can do a better job, go ahead. I welcome it. I do apologize, but (this isn't addressed to anyone in particular, mind you) if you complain about/hate Smogon's tiers, yet do nothing about it, then why are you complaining? Be happy that we have people that are so devoted to the Pokemon community that they give up so much time and energy to make sure that we have an enjoyable metagame.

I think Smogon is doing very well at the moment. Hear me out y'all.

First of all, when a Pokemon analyzed to see if it is broken or not usually means that it has the chance to be banned. When Smogon possibly thinks of the situation of for example, Thundurus, Excadrill, and Garchomp, 3 very standard weather Pokemon, I believe Smogon had choices to make. They could have:

Banned the Pokemon from any further use, no complication.

Ban the Weather from the Metagame, kind of a complicated and unjust ban imo (More later)

Ban the aspect of the Pokemon that makes it truly overly powered and what centralizes the Metagame.

I believe that banning the Weather would be a HORRIBLE decision in my opinion. In that case, not only would they be banning a whole entire play style, they're banning or pretty much prohibiting the general use of many Pokemon. (Pokemon like Toxicroak and Venusaur come to mind). Banning the Pokemon would probably be the better decision, avoiding any complicated decisions and thus freeing the playerbase from the Pokemon.

There really wasn't any other choice to do with. Banning a whole playstyle would be catastrophic. (Would you like having Stall of Hyper Offense unviable if they banned BlissGliss or etc?) Sand isn't a big problem when Excadrill isn't in the picture. Unlike other Doubled SPD Pokemon (Kingdra), Excadrill has more offensive presence, and is not 100% walled by ANYTHING in the Metagame. (For example, a Kingdra has no chance against a Ferrothorn but an Excadrill can run Return to 2hko a Gliscor at +2 and SR[and perhaps other weakening, Gliscor tends to need to switch in a lot.])

Thundurus deserved the ban. No question about it. Centralized the Metagame by forcing Weaviles and FidelGastro everywhere. His main prescence wasn't in Rain as some of you suggest (He isn't as abused as Excadrill in weather if you think about it.), it was his INSANE coverage, miraculous stats and types, high speed to outspeed even base 110s, and last but not least, he gets a move that raises it stats by 2.

I'll end this a bit short not to kill your minds but you get the point.

I think they're doing a great job. Granted, Blaziken was a poor move, but I digress. It seems to me that the people who care the most about things like Thundurus and Excadrill being banned are those who abuse them the most. Garchomp was the same way. Pokemon like those make it near impossible to have any diversity in the OU tier, as you virtually have to have some sort of counter to them.

By the way Leo, I don't know what crack you're on, but 4th Gen tiers were great. If anything, UU was the most problematic, as Heracross demolished the whole tier, outside of very few Pokemon.

List of usable 4th Gen Pokemon that are no longer (as) Viable in 5th Gen:

Flygon, Metagross, Suicune, Celebi, Blissey (goes both ways), Infernape, Empoleon, Heatran, Azelf, Aerodactyl, etc.

By the way, there now needs to be a rise in Sand Rush Sandslash. BEGIN.

Hate there tiering. Not good at all, and it just doesn't do things right. Some of the pokemon they put as banned or even Uber are not deserving of that title. I dunno, not a big fan.

This poll proved one of my points to me. Practically 40% of people dislike/disagree/hate Smogon. They're just followed because they are the ONE AND ONLY site that does tiering. In my view, they only care for OU. NU and UU were always left aside in Gen 4 and still is on Gen 5. BL is inexistent. RU?! Just one more tier to not care about.

Eduardo wrote:Practically 40% of people dislike/disagree/hate Smogon.

Pardon me, but I don't think coming to a conclusion like that based off of a poll of around 10 people is reasonable. That would be like me interviewing 5 dentists about Crest toothpaste and then saying that 4 out of 5 dentists recommend it. You aren't getting a good pool of people, because more people=more accurate results.

Unless of course you meant 40% of the people who have voted on the poll so far, since that would actually be accurate.

I don't say that based only in this poll. I've seen many people complaining on PO servers and Serebii wifi chat.

I just think that they take their opinions a little bit too far. I mean, who certified them to be the end-all be-all for Pokemon tiering? Just my two-cents, but my friends and I just make our own ban list, for the sake of not putting up with Smogon's idiocy. Which, although said idiocy is not constant, it is somewhat incessant.

Exactly. I don't think it's wrong to disagree with smogon, if you don't want to use it, don't use it. Simple as that. I only don't think that you should HATE smogon or call them "newbs" for odd reasons. No one did certify them to be the "end-all," it is just that Smogon is generally well-respected. In fact, if you go on PO, PO has its own tierlist. I think you are taking your opinion a little bit too far in calling Smogon idiots, as everyone makes mistakes, and Smogon actually makes less than many. How many "mistakes" has Smogon made? Now think of all the "sucesses" or correctly placed pokemon. Even with a few misses, that's still a darned good ratio. If you can do better, make your own tiers or don't follow Smogon.

LynjaBear wrote:Exactly. I don't think it's wrong to disagree with smogon, if you don't want to use it, don't use it. Simple as that. I only don't think that you should HATE smogon or call them "newbs" for odd reasons. No one did certify them to be the "end-all," it is just that Smogon is generally well-respected. In fact, if you go on PO, PO has its own tierlist. I think you are taking your opinion a little bit too far in calling Smogon idiots, as everyone makes mistakes, and Smogon actually makes less than many. How many "mistakes" has Smogon made? Now think of all the "sucesses" or correctly placed pokemon. Even with a few misses, that's still a darned good ratio. If you can do better, make your own tiers or don't follow Smogon.

While this is true, many of us here did try to do our own Tier list which fell flat due to lack of support from said people who complained about Smogon so it's more of a case of you can't have your cake and eat it.

fuck smogon. you dont ban pokemon. you just dont. nintendo and gamefreak arent retarded. if a pokemon was "broken" they wouldnt put it in the game. people go to whats best, then smogom takes it away. people stop listening to them. and they do need a rival, how about us? =3. it would take a while but, if we tried we could probably get popular tiers. and smogon has no affiliations with anyone involved in the making on pokemon, soooo yeah. they have no actual athority, people just accept them, and could stop accepting them at any time. but you have to accept the real rules of the game. you have to accept the game makers athority. or just not play the game XD. so yeah smogon is nothing if people don accept it, and if they keep being bitches, people might stop. its pretty clear people are starting to not like it.

I don't hate Smogon because they have like 20 misplaced Pokemon. I hate it because they insist in past mistakes. That's definitely dumb in my opinion.

Reshiram wrote:fuck smogon. you dont ban pokemon. you just dont. nintendo and gamefreak arent retarded. if a pokemon was "broken" they wouldnt put it in the game. people go to whats best, then smogom takes it away.

The funny thing about that is that Nintendo actually has a banlist for their sponsored Video Game Championship events. To be honest though, GF couldn't give less of a fuck about the competitive scene. When they're designing a Pokemon, they aren't thinking "Oh, we should do something about this because it will be overpowered in the metagame".

And Smogon takes away what's "best" because the Pokemon that are overpowered over-centralize the metagame. Either you're gonna have to use it, use something to counter it, or in some cases both. To prevent that from happening (since seeing a lack of diversity in teams is no fun), they have to ban what will cause this to happen. Now, you could argue that people are just going to go to the next thing, or that teams will be the same anyway. While strategy and teams might not change much, it would at least make it so that not every team has to have something to take care of Pokemon X.

I think that Smogon is OK, it doesn't necessarily have the best strategy, but more of ok references, and data

fuck smogon. you dont ban pokemon. you just dont. nintendo and gamefreak arent retarded. if a pokemon was "broken" they wouldnt put it in the game. people go to whats best, then smogom takes it away. people stop listening to them. and they do need a rival, how about us? =3. it would take a while but, if we tried we could probably get popular tiers. and smogon has no affiliations with anyone involved in the making on pokemon, soooo yeah. they have no actual athority, people just accept them, and could stop accepting them at any time. but you have to accept the real rules of the game. you have to accept the game makers athority. or just not play the game XD. so yeah smogon is nothing if people don accept it, and if they keep being bitches, people might stop. its pretty clear people are starting to not like it.

Resh, there is a place where there is no banning. Just play ubers with any team you like, and if you want a special item, then just play unrated. If there was no banning, then the whole metagame would just be uber after uber, and you wouldn't ever see any of the OU pokemon that we all complain about today.

P.S. Sorry about the thread necro.

What Epic says is correct, without the bannings most pokemon we say in the Meta wouldn't even be viable (Lucario isn't good to use anymore, just use Arceus, also Arceus can pretty much replace like at least half of the meta roles.). Also this is to note this is the competitive world, I mean if you wanna play for fun go ahead go nuts with your team.


By the way Resh if we did make our own tiers just so you know we'd still ban the OP Pokemonz.

I love Smogon.

I think smogon is ok. Without it all hell would break loose. People will always use some of their own rules, but it will be based off of smogon rules. It sort of sets a standard of where you can start making your own changes.