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Things that grind your gears!

Requiem Aeternam

Dance like an eggplant!
Steals away EXP? When you switch one Pokémon for another, they all gain full EXP. It hasn't been halved since Generation IV.

The thing about doing that is that it takes longer as you have to switch one Pokemon in and then back out again the next turn which isn't worth doing as you could possibly KO 2 Chansey in the time it takes to switch out meaning you won't be getting any more EXP in the long run. Not to mention the Chansey know Heal Pulse which can be annoying if they heal each other when you switch meaning you have to waste another turn lowering one's HP.
 

RedJirachi

Veteran member
Platinum may have improved on Diamond and Pearl in a lot of ways, but there's something that sticks out like a sore thumb in its quality-having FIVE roaming Pokemon. Mesprit, Cresselia, Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres. WHY would you do that? It was bad enough having any roaming Pokemon, or two, but five of these things?! Would it really be that hard to add some small areas in post-Elite 4 locations for the bird trio? You added an entire alternate universe with weird physics and 59 Pokemon in the Sinnoh Dex
 

Vini310

Well-Known Member
I don't know if this count, but Pokémon ROM Hacks that increase the difficulty really annoy me. Why? Simple, because the ROM hacker neve balances the entire thing, like making trained Pokémon stronger but leaving the wild ones at the same level as the original game, which makes the act of grinding extremely tedious (unless you use cheat codes, but still...)
 

Mr. Reloaded

Cause a pirate is free
Platinum may have improved on Diamond and Pearl in a lot of ways, but there's something that sticks out like a sore thumb in its quality-having FIVE roaming Pokemon. Mesprit, Cresselia, Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres. WHY would you do that? It was bad enough having any roaming Pokemon, or two, but five of these things?! Would it really be that hard to add some small areas in post-Elite 4 locations for the bird trio? You added an entire alternate universe with weird physics and 59 Pokemon in the Sinnoh Dex

Diamond and Pearl just introduced too many legendaries, that's real problem. The trio as a whole aren't even good Pokémon either.

Azelf still had the not nerfed Explosion going for him at least.

I imagined Platinum was already so crammed they couldn't find any space for the birds.
 

RedJirachi

Veteran member
Gible being incredibly underlevelled when you can finally catch it. You're likely in the early-mid 30s, its 15-17
 

Jirachi100

Kirby Fan
When I bought Silver on the Eshop last month, I was given a code to get a Celebi in a Gen 7 game. I just now realized the location in the summary says it's from the Johto region. However, I took it to the Photo Club in Ultra Sun and the woman there still says I don't have any Pokemon from other regions. If it's not a legitimate Johto Pokemon, then why was that put as the place it came from?! (I totally should have spent some of the money on Pokemon Bank...)
 

RedJirachi

Veteran member
The fact that it took until Gen IV at least for event Pokemon to be available world-wide
 

Mega Altaria

☆~Shiny hunter▢~
The Battle Agency in USUM not being true to the past Battle Factories. Whenever I get a higher Agency rank, I'm at a level disadvantage because a lot of passerbys are at Rank 0 and their Pokémon are at Lv 50 while the opponent's and mine are well beyond Lv 50. Selecting 3 out of 6 random Pokémon on my own choice was a lot more fun and I wasn't at a level disadvantage at all.
 

Vini310

Well-Known Member
The fact that it took until Gen IV at least for event Pokemon to be available world-wide

Probably because theaddition of aa online mode makes event Pokémon to be distributed easily.

The fact you cannot breed in Gen 1 games, making it harder to give starter Pokémon to your friends (I have all 3 Sinnoh starters in Diamon, Pearl AND Platinum because of that).
Also, the absence of something like AJ's Gym (imagine Battle Tower, but your Pokémon actually earn experience) in pretty much every Pokémon game, unless you count the Rival Battle at the Fight Area in Pokémon D/P/Pt and the post-game Gym Leader battles in Gen 4 and Pokémon Emerald as such.
 
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RedJirachi

Veteran member
Speaking of breeding, I'm never happy when a game doesn't let you have Ditto. Even if it's available post-game, it annoys me because the Pokemon makes breeding the Pokemon needed to complete the dex much easier. Or breeding so you can get a starter to trade and fill it up
 

Mega Altaria

☆~Shiny hunter▢~
Collecting Zygarde Cells and Cores in Sun and Moon was a laborious and a long process. There were cells that were time exclusive and there were also cells that were hidden in elusive places so it was hard to keep track of cells all at once. Even some cells were postgame only, which made it even worse. Thankfully Totem Sticker collecting in USUM wasn't as painful.
 

Mr. Reloaded

Cause a pirate is free
Bright powder, Evasion abilities under weather and the moves need to be removed from these games entirely. The least competitive s*** i've ever seen in my life. Smogon has the right idea by getting rid of this garbage.

Call me salty.

I hate Froslass especially.
 

Sceptile Leaf Blade

Nighttime Guardian
Bright powder, Evasion abilities under weather and the moves need to be removed from these games entirely. The least competitive s*** i've ever seen in my life. Smogon has the right idea by getting rid of this garbage.

Call me salty.

I hate Froslass especially.

Alright, I'll call you salty. I think Smogon are a bunch of hypocrites, if they want to ban RNG elements from the game they should also get rid of sleep, moves with imperfect accuracy, confusion, critical hits, random damage spreads, Assist, Sleep Talk, and all these other things that are random but they don't for some reason. I hate to break it to you, but evasion has been nerfed so much already that if you lose to evasion strats nowadays you just deserve to lose or the opponent had a really good setup that allowed them to actually pull that off. Seriously, just hit them with a Z-Move or something. Randomness and luck are a part of the game, and evasion just isn't reliable to play which is why almost nobody uses it.
 
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RedJirachi

Veteran member
Collecting Zygarde Cells and Cores in Sun and Moon was a laborious and a long process. There were cells that were time exclusive and there were also cells that were hidden in elusive places so it was hard to keep track of cells all at once. Even some cells were postgame only, which made it even worse. Thankfully Totem Sticker collecting in USUM wasn't as painful.

Totally agree with you on that
 

Mega Altaria

☆~Shiny hunter▢~
It's really annoying that I can't Synchronize event Pokémon. Otherwise, that would not require or if going for a Hidden Power, few soft resets, and overall make it easier to get competitive Mythical Pokémon.
 

Luthor

Well-Known Member
Elite 4's without full teams of 6 annoy me slightly. It just seems like when you get to that stage it should be all full battles.
 

Requiem Aeternam

Dance like an eggplant!
Bright powder, Evasion abilities under weather and the moves need to be removed from these games entirely. The least competitive s*** i've ever seen in my life. Smogon has the right idea by getting rid of this garbage.

Call me salty.

I hate Froslass especially.

I can't stand these either. Lax Incense can be added to the list as well. I don't do competitive or online play but I do play the Battle Tree a lot and this sort of thing is pretty common there. The worst offender I'd say is Walrein4 which has a Lax Incense as well as the moves Sleep Talk, Rest, Sheer Cold and Fissure. I've lost a lot of streaks because I missed an attack that would have KOd it because of the Lax Incense and it OHKOd me instead.

Alright, I'll call you salty. I think Smogon are a bunch of hypocrites, if they want to ban RNG elements from the game they should also get rid of sleep, moves with imperfect accuracy, confusion, critical hits, random damage spreads, Assist, Sleep Talk, and all these other things that are random but they don't for some reason. I hate to break it to you, but evasion has been nerfed so much already that if you lose to evasion strats nowadays you just deserve to lose or the opponent had a really good setup that allowed them to actually pull that off. Seriously, just hit them with a Z-Move or something. Randomness and luck are a part of the game, and evasion just isn't reliable to play which is why almost nobody uses it.

I personally think Smogon was right to ban evasion/accuracy moves. With things like inaccurate moves and moves like Sleep Talk players themselves are choosing to chance their luck with the RNG in exchange for more power. With facing evasion/accuracy they're having an unnecessary dice roll being thrown at them which they can't do anything about. I've lost a lot of battles due to the opponent spamming Double Team or because of hax items. It's not a fun way to lose, if anything it's the absolute WORST way to lose as there is sometimes nothing you can do to prevent it. You can use moves that can't miss to deal with it but outside of Aura Sphere they're all fairly weak and Z-Moves are all once per battle and a lot of the evasion spammers are generally defensive Pokémon so there is no guarantee they'll go down depending on your Z-Move.

Evasion may have been nerfed over the generations but that still doesn't make it a fair or fun strategy to play against.
 

Tsukuyomi56

Doing Their Best
It's really annoying that I can't Synchronize event Pokémon. Otherwise, that would not require or if going for a Hidden Power, few soft resets, and overall make it easier to get competitive Mythical Pokémon.

It is for this reason that it is very nice the shiny Tapu Koko event had it nature-locked to Timid, you only have to worry about its Hidden Power and if necessary use Bottle Caps to tweak its IVs. Going to imagine it will not be a pleasant experience soft-resetting the Legendary Pokémon to be distributed over this year (assuming it comes to Australia as well).
 

Sceptile Leaf Blade

Nighttime Guardian
I can't stand these either. Lax Incense can be added to the list as well. I don't do competitive or online play but I do play the Battle Tree a lot and this sort of thing is pretty common there. The worst offender I'd say is Walrein4 which has a Lax Incense as well as the moves Sleep Talk, Rest, Sheer Cold and Fissure. I've lost a lot of streaks because I missed an attack that would have KOd it because of the Lax Incense and it OHKOd me instead.



I personally think Smogon was right to ban evasion/accuracy moves. With things like inaccurate moves and moves like Sleep Talk players themselves are choosing to chance their luck with the RNG in exchange for more power. With facing evasion/accuracy they're having an unnecessary dice roll being thrown at them which they can't do anything about. I've lost a lot of battles due to the opponent spamming Double Team or because of hax items. It's not a fun way to lose, if anything it's the absolute WORST way to lose as there is sometimes nothing you can do to prevent it. You can use moves that can't miss to deal with it but outside of Aura Sphere they're all fairly weak and Z-Moves are all once per battle and a lot of the evasion spammers are generally defensive Pokémon so there is no guarantee they'll go down depending on your Z-Move.

Evasion may have been nerfed over the generations but that still doesn't make it a fair or fun strategy to play against.

The thing is, statistically it's pretty much never worth it to go with Double Team, it sets up so ridiculously slow, wastes a moveslot, and in most cases you're going to end up still getting hit regardless of your Double Team. You need 3 double teams to increase your evasion enough to reach 50/50 odds of avoiding a move, that's three free turns you're giving your opponent to do whatever they want and during which they're likely to still hit you. So after three turns you've essentially doubled your durability statistically. Moves like Cosmic Power and Stockpile do the same in two turns and are generally more reliable. I just don't get why it is so much worse than losing to confusion or the opponent putting you to sleep and you being unlucky enough to sleep for 3 turns every time, or losing to critical hits. There are plenty of ways to get around double team, it's been nerfed so much over the generations. The addition of Z-Moves was just another nail in the coffin. You can just Roar them out, you can Haze them, and there are more moves than Aura Sphere that still hit them. Against Minimize users there are several moves that always hit, like Body Slam (which already is a very good move), Dragon Rush, and several others, and they also deal double damage against them. Smart Strike is a new move spread through TM that never misses and Steel isn't a bad coverage move to carry, pokémon like Kartana and Tapu Bulu get it. Incineroar is pretty popular and Darkest Lariat ignores targets stat changes. Sacred Sword also ignores evasion boosting. Unaware and Keen Eye pokémon also ignore it.

You're saying it's unfair because you're getting RNG thrown at you, but how is that different from moves like Confuse Ray, Sleep Powder, and Focus Energy? How does it matter who chooses to subject themselves to RNG? Sleep Talk is still RNG and you can also say it's frustrating if your opponent happens to never roll Rest, or when Sleep Powder never misses for them (and subsequently keeps on taking 3 turns to wake up). Luck is part of the game, sometimes you lose by luck, sometimes you win by luck, but statistically Double Team and Minimize are just not really worth it anymore. On Showdown people run Rapid Spin to get rid of Stealth Rock because it's common in their meta even though Rapid Spin is a very weak move, but nobody on the Battle Spot runs Aerial Ace or similar moves (like Technician Magical Leaf on Roserade) because nobody uses evasion boosting. And nobody uses evasion boosting because it's simply not worth it, sure there's the odd battle where you win with it but most of the times you simply get clobbered regardless. The meta is simply not adapted to evasion strategies because they're on the whole fairly weak, so when someone manages to do something unique and pulls it off people can be unprepared to deal with that. The hard fact is that it's incredibly risky to run evasion boosting. In the time you set up your opponent can also set up, let's say Swords Dance Garchomp. And once Garchomp is at like +4 attack it can go for Tectonic Rage and proceed to sweep the rest of the team. Or Dragon Dance Tyranitar, Tyranitar often runs Z-Moves as well. If an opponent has something to deal with it it can be taken advantage of really well. Swords Dance Aegislash often runs Sacred Sword, it's another one that really punishes evasion setup.

Let's be real, if Minimize spam was more viable and more used people would start running a lot more Dragon Rush on pokémon like Garchomp, Salamence, and Dragonite to deal with it. Now people still generally run Outrage or Dragon Claw over Dragon Rush even though Dragon Rush is by no means a bad move, it's almost as accurate as Stone Edge, has the same base power, and has a nice flinching side-effect.
 
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Requiem Aeternam

Dance like an eggplant!
The thing is, statistically it's pretty much never worth it to go with Double Team, it sets up so ridiculously slow, wastes a moveslot, and in most cases you're going to end up still getting hit regardless of your Double Team. You need 3 double teams to increase your evasion enough to reach 50/50 odds of avoiding a move, that's three free turns you're giving your opponent to do whatever they want and during which they're likely to still hit you. So after three turns you've essentially doubled your durability statistically. Moves like Cosmic Power and Stockpile do the same in two turns and are generally more reliable. I just don't get why it is so much worse than losing to confusion or the opponent putting you to sleep and you being unlucky enough to sleep for 3 turns every time, or losing to critical hits. There are plenty of ways to get around double team, it's been nerfed so much over the generations. The addition of Z-Moves was just another nail in the coffin. You can just Roar them out, you can Haze them, and there are more moves than Aura Sphere that still hit them. Against Minimize users there are several moves that always hit, like Body Slam (which already is a very good move), Dragon Rush, and several others, and they also deal double damage against them. Smart Strike is a new move spread through TM that never misses and Steel isn't a bad coverage move to carry, pokémon like Kartana and Tapu Bulu get it. Incineroar is pretty popular and Darkest Lariat ignores targets stat changes. Sacred Sword also ignores evasion boosting. Unaware and Keen Eye pokémon also ignore it.

You're saying it's unfair because you're getting RNG thrown at you, but how is that different from moves like Confuse Ray, Sleep Powder, and Focus Energy? How does it matter who chooses to subject themselves to RNG? Sleep Talk is still RNG and you can also say it's frustrating if your opponent happens to never roll Rest, or when Sleep Powder never misses for them (and subsequently keeps on taking 3 turns to wake up). Luck is part of the game, sometimes you lose by luck, sometimes you win by luck, but statistically Double Team and Minimize are just not really worth it anymore. On Showdown people run Rapid Spin to get rid of Stealth Rock because it's common in their meta even though Rapid Spin is a very weak move, but nobody on the Battle Spot runs Aerial Ace or similar moves (like Technician Magical Leaf on Roserade) because nobody uses evasion boosting. And nobody uses evasion boosting because it's simply not worth it, sure there's the odd battle where you win with it but most of the times you simply get clobbered regardless. The meta is simply not adapted to evasion strategies because they're on the whole fairly weak, so when someone manages to do something unique and pulls it off people can be unprepared to deal with that. The hard fact is that it's incredibly risky to run evasion boosting. In the time you set up your opponent can also set up, let's say Swords Dance Garchomp. And once Garchomp is at like +4 attack it can go for Tectonic Rage and proceed to sweep the rest of the team. Or Dragon Dance Tyranitar, Tyranitar often runs Z-Moves as well. If an opponent has something to deal with it it can be taken advantage of really well. Swords Dance Aegislash often runs Sacred Sword, it's another one that really punishes evasion setup.

Let's be real, if Minimize spam was more viable and more used people would start running a lot more Dragon Rush on pokémon like Garchomp, Salamence, and Dragonite to deal with it. Now people still generally run Outrage or Dragon Claw over Dragon Rush even though Dragon Rush is by no means a bad move, it's almost as accurate as Stone Edge, has the same base power, and has a nice flinching side-effect.

I can only speak for the Battle Tree where this sort of thing is much harder to counter due to the 4 Pokemon limit and the randomness and diversity of the AI. Having to devote a move to getting rid of evasion spammers is more detrimental than beneficial in the long run at least from my experience. Obviously it's different against players than AI and I'll admit I didn't consider moves like Dragon Rush and Technician boosted Magical Leaf but I've lost to it so many times I just despise the thought of it. It's not fun to play against. I had my fair share of losses against it when I did play online back in Gen4, it wasn't fun then either.

I don't play online anymore and I doubt I ever will again so I don't know a lot about that side of the metagame, but against AI evasion is cheap and unfair and when a lot of the Battle Tree relies on luck already, evasion is the last thing I want to see.
 
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