• Hi all. We have had reports of member's signatures being edited to include malicious content. You can rest assured this wasn't done by staff and we can find no indication that the forums themselves have been compromised.

    However, remember to keep your passwords secure. If you use similar logins on multiple sites, people and even bots may be able to access your account.

    We always recommend using unique passwords and enable two-factor authentication if possible. Make sure you are secure.
  • Be sure to join the discussion on our discord at: Discord.gg/serebii
  • If you're still waiting for the e-mail, be sure to check your junk/spam e-mail folders

Serebii Journal November Issue Discussion Thread

Discuss the issue of the Serebii Journal here, anything from what you liked the most to what you disliked as well as what you would want to see in the next issue. Updates on the next issue will be posted here such as the number of articles, the theme, and some of the article names.
 

Psynergy

Strong Winds
Staff member
Super Mod
It's a fitting month to focus on Gen 3 stuff. Given that I have like 3 hours of experience total in the tier [in an ADV OU tournament] it's nice seeing what things actually are like in that scene, the tiers alone don't give the same impression they do now when OU has 27 Pokemon and BL has 48. I'm okay with the fact that I ran Blaziken even now after finding out it's ranked D in viability, HP Grass Blaziken is a cool Swampert check. Are the viability rankings listed based on how they're ranked on Smogon, though? I know they rank Magneton as B+ in XY RU and Blaziken as A+ in XY Ubers as opposed to C and Unranked, so I'm just wondering.

I also liked the coverage on the Guardian Cup, nice to get an opinion on the players and community as a whole, and predictions/analyses on the matchups were nice since a lot of them tried to highlight what either player had going for them. Will more predictions on future rounds be added to that section as the tournament goes on? That would be fun to see, given the more official scale of the tournament.

Overall I enjoyed what was covered this month. Only thing I'd say it's missing is more people reading it.
 

Saph~

Serebii Champion x.x
Mosh Pit
Hosted by Apollo77

Mosh Pit breaks the mold of how tournaments are normally run on Serebii. Instead of going through the basic 32 to 16 to 8 and so on style bracket it focuses on each person battling numerous times per week instead of just once. It is otherwise a standard XY OU tournament. The tournaments fast paced rounds allow for the tournament to emphasize the main goal of the tournament from the start. Battling a lot of people in short amounts of time.

1st: Cloneblazer12
2nd: Saph~

This tournament took possibly the longest amount of time of any I've participated in besides the chaos that was TCC.
 
This tournament took possibly the longest amount of time of any I've participated in besides the chaos that was TCC.

seconding this^

also why was my article changed from "Making a successful Balanced Team" to "Roles of Pokemon"? The whole article heavily referenced Balance teams and the title was supposed to reflect that x.x
 

Rocxidi

The Jim Reaper
Also, someone should proofread and make sure there are no obvious grammatical or organisation errors. More bold text should be used as well.
 
I'm okay with the fact that I ran Blaziken even now after finding out it's ranked D in viability, HP Grass Blaziken is a cool Swampert check. Are the viability rankings listed based on how they're ranked on Smogon, though? I know they rank Magneton as B+ in XY RU and Blaziken as A+ in XY Ubers as opposed to C and Unranked, so I'm just wondering.

Yeah, they line up pretty closely with the Smogon ranks. I think the ranks Eliteknight picked for Magneton and Blaziken are based on their performance in OU rather than their current respective tiers, in which case Magneton is ranked at C+ and Blaziken is obviously unranked due to it being banned. He probably did that to show how their OU viability has changed from ADV to XY.
 

Psynergy

Strong Winds
Staff member
Super Mod
Yeah, they line up pretty closely with the Smogon ranks. I think the ranks Eliteknight picked for Magneton and Blaziken are based on their performance in OU rather than their current respective tiers, in which case Magneton is ranked at C+ and Blaziken is obviously unranked due to it being banned. He probably did that to show how their OU viability has changed from ADV to XY.

Ahhh, OU, yes that makes sense now. It hadn't even occurred to me that Magneton is ranked in OU, should have figured since that's more consistent.
 

ger9119

Well-Known Member
It's a fitting month to focus on Gen 3 stuff. Given that I have like 3 hours of experience total in the tier [in an ADV OU tournament] it's nice seeing what things actually are like in that scene, the tiers alone don't give the same impression they do now when OU has 27 Pokemon and BL has 48. I'm okay with the fact that I ran Blaziken even now after finding out it's ranked D in viability, HP Grass Blaziken is a cool Swampert check. Are the viability rankings listed based on how they're ranked on Smogon, though? I know they rank Magneton as B+ in XY RU and Blaziken as A+ in XY Ubers as opposed to C and Unranked, so I'm just wondering.

I also liked the coverage on the Guardian Cup, nice to get an opinion on the players and community as a whole, and predictions/analyses on the matchups were nice since a lot of them tried to highlight what either player had going for them. Will more predictions on future rounds be added to that section as the tournament goes on? That would be fun to see, given the more official scale of the tournament.

Overall I enjoyed what was covered this month. Only thing I'd say it's missing is more people reading it.

Yeah, they line up pretty closely with the Smogon ranks. I think the ranks Eliteknight picked for Magneton and Blaziken are based on their performance in OU rather than their current respective tiers, in which case Magneton is ranked at C+ and Blaziken is obviously unranked due to it being banned. He probably did that to show how their OU viability has changed from ADV to XY.

I wrote this article and this is what i intended it to be, I focused on OU Viability and how those Pokemon in ADV rank now in the current XY OU landscape.

Also I plan on doing predictions for the next slate or a review of the tourney overall since it should be over by the time the next entry will be up.
 

Moonclawz

Aura Trainer
I really liked the Guardians Cup Coverage - it was really interesting to see predictions on the beginning matches and to compare how the predictions matched with the actual results.

I also enjoyed reading the Roles of Pokemon article. I think the Roles of Pokemon is very useful for beginning players learning how to teambuild and including a sample team at the end was a really good idea.

All the other articles were good too - both in their content and in terms of being decently well-written.

Next Journal, an article on all (or some) the different Megas that were released would be nice. (Which ones would be most competitive? What would be the common movesets?) I haven't even looked them competitively yet :eek:
 
seconding this^

also why was my article changed from "Making a successful Balanced Team" to "Roles of Pokemon"? The whole article heavily referenced Balance teams and the title was supposed to reflect that x.x

1) There was no title in the Article you sent me and based off of what our pms stated you were making an article on the Roles of Pokemon.

Also, someone should proofread and make sure there are no obvious grammatical or organisation errors. More bold text should be used as well.

Bold text is used for labels. There is a specific set of guidelines when each article is written.
 

Aeon™

Rock Ultimate
Alright Ger said he wanted more discussion on the journal and I decided to get back into competitive Pokemon battling (woo!) so here we go.

First things first, I'm going to start with a nitpick. Instead of listing the authors of each article in the op, why not instead put the author right under the title of the article in each article? It would just make so much more sense. Anyways, on to the actual discussion part.

I'm a huge fan of the tournament analyses, especially for the guardian cup. I only wish that there had been a weekly update as each round was posted, maybe written by a different person so that Ger didn't kill himself. Of course, it's a bit late for that but whatever. However, my favorite article by far was Clone's on Balanced Offense or Rolls of Pokemon or whatever it was. I found the examples of Pokemon for different rolls extremely helpful. I can see why EK made that mix up with the name, but articles like that are the main reason I read the journal three weeks late. I'm really looking forward to upcoming ORAS articles as well, because god knows I need them.

Maybe an idea for a future article could be a featured RMT of the month, to replace the archive that's never used? You know, if any teams that would fit the criteria get posted.
 
Top