Competitive Battling

[Layton]

Sorry if it seemed disrespectful and/or rude to simply assume that all people who use Smogon are so... Tightly wound, for lack of a better phrase. My apologies if I had offended you.

And I agree, if you're gonna ban Quick Claw, may as well ban Togekiss with Serene Grace or moves like Flamethrower or Thunderbolt. It is and entirely luck based game, I don't believe it was ever intended to become as mechanic as some people are making it.
And I lost it reading "And occasionally I see Technician/Skill-Link Cinccino who apparently has the strength of Thor's testicles." xD Too funny! Although I know someone with a Cinccino like that and it's very frustrating to battle it.

[Basel]

Am i the only one who doesn't know what a Smogon is? i thought it might be a pokemon but i don't think that's the case now. Can someone please explain my stupid or noob question of what it is?

[TheManyFacesOfGlalie]

Sorry if it seemed disrespectful and/or rude to simply assume that all people who use Smogon are so... Tightly wound, for lack of a better phrase. My apologies if I had offended you.

And I agree, if you're gonna ban Quick Claw, may as well ban Togekiss with Serene Grace or moves like Flamethrower or Thunderbolt. It is and entirely luck based game, I don't believe it was ever intended to become as mechanic as some people are making it.
And I lost it reading "And occasionally I see Technician/Skill-Link Cinccino who apparently has the strength of Thor's testicles." xD Too funny! Although I know someone with a Cinccino like that and it's very frustrating to battle it.

Yes and they did end up banning the move Swagger too!

I've never had the grace of battling a Cinccino hehe xD

Am i the only one who doesn't know what a Smogon is? i thought it might be a pokemon but i don't think that's the case now. Can someone please explain my stupid or noob question of what it is?

Smogon is just a website for people that battle competitively, which means they treat it like a sport basically. If you really get into a sport you learn the other team's stats, figure out their strategies, and give up anything to win. That's basically what the really competitive battlers at Smogon do.

They build a team centered around a certain strategy, and they are all derived from Offense and Stall (I love stall so much). Hyper Offense, for example, is a team built of really fast and really powerful Pokemon, and they 99% of the time don't have anything other than Attack moves. Sometimes they carry Swords Dance and Protect, but they basically only attack, so if you look at someone's team and figure out that it's a Hyper Offensive team, all you need to do is stall, hit with priority, burn, taunt, torment, etc. Most really competitive battlers analyze teams as best as they can to figure out how they need to battle to win, and if they lose, they watch replays to figure out what they did wrong and how to fix it.

It's a pretty serious site for something that's so fun and that shouldn't be such a stressful thing. Oh well! The website is http://www.smogon.com/ if you want to take a tour. The Analyses page is where they talk abut what different Pokemon can do well in battle and how you should use them (according to them). They also have a Forum in which you can discuss the use of different items, attacks, etc. It's very interesting to see their speculation, because it's almost like a science to them.


I personally got through the forums a lot and I use strategies that get bashed a lot. For example, my physically-offensive Greninja is amazing. Water Shuriken gets priority and is a multi-hit move, and it can OHKO Talonflame after Stealth Rock if it only hits 3 times, and you don't even need Stealth Rock if it hits more than three times. Talonflame is faster if it is Jolly, but if they go Adamant (which they usually do), Greninja goes first. Pretty interesting. Talonflame is the most annoying thing right now so this is very useful. I basically stalk Smogon so I can defeat all the common strategies and make all those people reevaluate their choices.

I also build non-Smogon teams, which are much more exciting and fun! You get Evasion and Hax are allowed so it's much more interesting