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Things that grind your gears!

WishIhadaManafi5

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before.
Staff member
Moderator
This.

Smogon is a fan site that does a good job helping people with strategies and stuff but their word shouldn't be absolute and shouldn't be the standard for battle formats and official competitions.
So much this. I've always gotten a rather arrogant vibe from the site (in general, not regards to any members) in regards to their battle restrictions and what not. Like a 'if you don't do things our way, you're doing it wrong' kind of thing.
 

Dragalge

"Orange" Magical Girl
I hate it when mobile games get more updates and love than console games. Pokemon café mix gets weekly updates, same with Go.

AND FOR THE LOVE OF ARCEUS, PLEASE FIX THOSE ANNOYING TREES!
If mobile stuff doesn't get updates they will die! Like Larry the Leprechaun did once we found out he had stunt doubles that took the fall for him.

Also if I may ask why do some people act like a phone game as Pokemon Go slaughtered their entire cow farm overnight?
 

Requiem Aeternam

Dance like an eggplant!
Event raid dens. I’m so sick of these now. The events last way too long and they end up taking over so many of my dens. At the moment 4/5 Wild Area dens and 4/7 Isle of Armor dens are these. I don’t even want to do the raids in the Crown Tundra because if I clear them all and it creates new ones I’m certain it’s just going to flood there with the event ones too. I really wish there was a way to just get rid of them entirely so I wouldn’t have to bother with them anymore. Outside of the special events that last a weekend, I have no reason to do them so they’re just a waste of space.
 

Weavy

I come and go suddenly
I completely forgot about this, but I feel like I should mention it. Smogon formats would also sometimes expect you to have moves on a Pokemon that are very hard to get on cart these days, so building them in game would be a very difficult task. Examples include the infamous Wish Chansey or Eruption Heatran. This can get especially bad with event only moves with some of them being long expired by now, meaning very few would have legit access to them.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think it's better transfer moves can't be used in official formats these days. It would surely grind peoples gears if they were allowed, but only an event only move makes them viable, and since those a very hard to get hold of, especially these days, it would really annoy others.
 

MrJechgo

Well-Known Member
I completely forgot about this, but I feel like I should mention it. Smogon formats would also sometimes expect you to have moves on a Pokemon that are very hard to get on cart these days, so building them in game would be a very difficult task. Examples include the infamous Wish Chansey or Eruption Heatran. This can get especially bad with event only moves with some of them being long expired by now, meaning very few would have legit access to them.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think it's better transfer moves can't be used in official formats these days. It would surely grind peoples gears if they were allowed, but only an event only move makes them viable, and since those a very hard to get hold of, especially these days, it would really annoy others.
I've heard both good and bad opinions about Smogon... mostly about the excessive banning and how they narrow competitive gaming.
Whe you need a "30-step flowchart" to the perfect Pokémon, it's far from being rewarding...

I believe that's why several players don't want numerous good Legendary and/or Mythicals Pokémon (or exclusive typings), because they end up being banned by GameFreaks themselvbes for some tournaments... or by the community.
 

Auraninja

Eh, ragazzo!
I wish the Normal, Flying, Bug, Electric, and Ground jerseys got used by someone in Sword/Shield.

They are the only ones without a gym leader (past or present).
 

Ignition

We are so back Zygardebros
While I understand people's gripes with Smogon (trust me, as someone who's been playing with their rulesets since Gen 5, there is a lot of elitism and room for improvement), I feel like their presence is vastly overexaggerated. For one, it's just as common to see someone write off playing by Smogon because it's not official as the opposite. The amount of vitriol people have when Smogon is mentioned when discussing competitive is astounding to me. The same "my way or no way" attitude is found in the VGC community.

It's also ironic how a common criticism of Smogon is how restrictive it I feel they encourage more variety than VGC ever has/will. The tier system helps you use something that's not top tier in a less powerful tier so it can strive. You can actually have something prosper in a tier where it's not overshadowed by an objectively better Pokémon. There's also a tier literally called Anything Goes if you don't want to be restricted. There's also a lot of fun monthly metas that make underappreciated Pokémon get spotlight. I like this approach more because the meta shifts monthly and there's so many weird dynamics that come from it. Contrary to popular belief, there's not that much of a definitive Smogon moveset for most Pokémon because they might change their movepools to accommodate new threats. Some people also forget that Smogon has Doubles formats too.

People can play whatever they choose to but the elitism is apparent everywhere and it confuses me that Smogon gets this image because people generalize from a few players. More than anything, I hate the mindset that Smogon makes people stick to certain playstyles when that's more so people who don't want to experiment and just copy sample teams. You'll find try hards like that in every format (looking at Coalossal & Indeedee teams in Gen 8).
 

WishIhadaManafi5

To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before.
Staff member
Moderator
Fair enough. You brought up some good points. It's too bad that the more open formats are overshadowed by the more restrictive ones.

I just avoid their rules. I play for fun and find them to be too limiting and restrictive. VGC's can be the same to be fair though.

But what bugs me more than both is just how overly competitive, battling has become. Never been much of a battler myself, but the hyper competitive nature of the game now, makes me want to avoid it, more than anything.
 
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Ignition

We are so back Zygardebros
Fair enough. You brought up some good points. It's too bad that the more open formats are overshadowed by the more restrictive ones.

I just avoid their rules. I play for fun and find them to be too limiting and restrictive. VGC's can be the same to be fair though.

But what bugs me more than both is just how overly competitive, battling has become. Never been much of a battler myself, but the hyper competitive nature of the game now, makes me want to avoid it, more than anything.
I disagree about them being too competitive and restrictive but I appreciate that you don’t knock down others who do play that way. I don’t want to make people think Smogon is good but at least see it’s not just “you have to play my way”. It’s your game so all that matters is your enjoyment in whatever way you find it.
 

Ophie

Salingerian Phony
I personally think so. As far as the Pokemon company is concerned, 6v6 is a casual format and nothing more. And as far as I'm aware, there's no Smogon rules in Japan, so they'd be used to 3v3 singles and the official 4v4 doubles formats. A lot of English speaking countries tend to prefer Smogon formats, but they're also not the whole playerbase, so they can't account for everyone. People need to reliase that the Pokemon Company will pretty much never acknowledge Smogon and its rules officially, regardless of it they want them to or not.

I remember, since I started playing Pokémon online in Generation IV via Pokémon Battle Revolution, that Japanese players took to double battling, as well as 3-versus-3 and 4-versus-4 rules, really well. We've gotten to the point where there are now team from Japanese players adapted very much for those rules, such as ones consisting of 3 support Pokémon and 3 primary Pokémon, where the primary is chosen based on the opposing team seen in Team Preview. Such a team wouldn't work playing as a full team, as the support Pokémon would get wiped out faster than the others.

I've also noticed Japanese tiers are fairly different due to them following the official rules near-exclusively. Pokémon like Excadrill and Greninja are as much of a nuisance there as they are in the Anglosphere. However, they don't deem Ice as that weak of a type, for instance, and Gardevoir has seen frequent use for the past few generations, Mega Evolution or not.

This.

Smogon is a fan site that does a good job helping people with strategies and stuff but their word shouldn't be absolute and shouldn't be the standard for battle formats and official competitions.

Some strategies work, and some don't. The biggest thing is that there is a lot less switching under official rules. As a result, counter-switching strategies, like entry hazards and Arena Trap/Shadow Tag, are more of a niche strategy in the main games themselves, rendered impractical against the majority of opponents. That's because there is a lot less switching done due to switching being riskier.

Earlier this month, for instance, I encountered someone using a Skarmory using the classic Stealth Rock, Whirlwind, Body Press, and Roost moveset. I just took it out without breaking a sweat because with fewer Pokémon, it's more likely Whirlwind will drag out something able to deal big damage to it. Dynamax/Gigantamax also serves to put a halt to this strategy (though I didn't need that to get rid of Skarmory).

Event raid dens. I’m so sick of these now. The events last way too long and they end up taking over so many of my dens. At the moment 4/5 Wild Area dens and 4/7 Isle of Armor dens are these. I don’t even want to do the raids in the Crown Tundra because if I clear them all and it creates new ones I’m certain it’s just going to flood there with the event ones too. I really wish there was a way to just get rid of them entirely so I wouldn’t have to bother with them anymore. Outside of the special events that last a weekend, I have no reason to do them so they’re just a waste of space.

A workaround is to join other people's Max Raid Battles, if you're able to at least. When you do, one den from that area (Wild Area, Isle of Armor, or Crown Tundra) will vanish with the exception of rare dens, which never contain the event dens.

That being said, sometimes I go do the event raids anyway because they often give out a higher EXP Candy payout than normal ones, though they don't hold a candle to the Chansey, Blissey, Audino, and Delibird ones.

I completely forgot about this, but I feel like I should mention it. Smogon formats would also sometimes expect you to have moves on a Pokemon that are very hard to get on cart these days, so building them in game would be a very difficult task. Examples include the infamous Wish Chansey or Eruption Heatran. This can get especially bad with event only moves with some of them being long expired by now, meaning very few would have legit access to them.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think it's better transfer moves can't be used in official formats these days. It would surely grind peoples gears if they were allowed, but only an event only move makes them viable, and since those a very hard to get hold of, especially these days, it would really annoy others.

They use simulators rather than the official games, so they can just generate them at will and they don't have to be concerned with how difficult it would be to have it in the actual games. I wouldn't be surprised, however, if the decision to not allow transfer moves in for Generation VIII is as much an effort to lower the barrier of entry as it is an effort to nerf some Pokémon in a subtle manner.

While I understand people's gripes with Smogon (trust me, as someone who's been playing with their rulesets since Gen 5, there is a lot of elitism and room for improvement), I feel like their presence is vastly overexaggerated. For one, it's just as common to see someone write off playing by Smogon because it's not official as the opposite. The amount of vitriol people have when Smogon is mentioned when discussing competitive is astounding to me. The same "my way or no way" attitude is found in the VGC community.

It's also ironic how a common criticism of Smogon is how restrictive it I feel they encourage more variety than VGC ever has/will. The tier system helps you use something that's not top tier in a less powerful tier so it can strive. You can actually have something prosper in a tier where it's not overshadowed by an objectively better Pokémon. There's also a tier literally called Anything Goes if you don't want to be restricted. There's also a lot of fun monthly metas that make underappreciated Pokémon get spotlight. I like this approach more because the meta shifts monthly and there's so many weird dynamics that come from it. Contrary to popular belief, there's not that much of a definitive Smogon moveset for most Pokémon because they might change their movepools to accommodate new threats. Some people also forget that Smogon has Doubles formats too.

People can play whatever they choose to but the elitism is apparent everywhere and it confuses me that Smogon gets this image because people generalize from a few players. More than anything, I hate the mindset that Smogon makes people stick to certain playstyles when that's more so people who don't want to experiment and just copy sample teams. You'll find try hards like that in every format (looking at Coalossal & Indeedee teams in Gen 8).

It's not so much that I don't like the way Smogon approaches Pokémon battling so much as there seems to be some very vocal groups that drown out the main games' Ranked discussion when it comes to Pokémon battling. There's a lot of talk online like it was the default when 4-versus-4 double battling is the real default setting (with 3-versus-3 single battles as the secondary setting), with no full-team modes except in private rooms. It's hard for me to figure out trends in the Ranked modes in the official games because there's a lot more talk online about battling with Smogon rules; I mainly do it by playing a bunch of Ranked myself and observing carefully. Even here on Serebii, there isn't really a discussion group centered around Ranked, and advice seems to assume single battles with full teams. (As a Johnny type player, I use only Pokémon that are not seen very often, so it doesn't bother me much--if I want to see a particular Pokémon, I put them on a team.)

Not to say I don't benefit from this--I can't help but smirk when I play a Ranked single battle online and the opponent wastes their first turn throwing out Stealth Rock thinking this is a universally good move in this format.

That being said, one thing that does confuse me is why there isn't more adoption of the pick-3/pick-4 rules. Is it inertia, or did some people find something wrong with it? The official rules and the Smogon rules are diverging more and more with each generation, and accusations of Game Freak not understanding balance might stem at least partly from playing using a set of rules that they were never really meant for. (I mentioned it before, but I still find them as good examples in that Galarian Darmanitan and Dracovish are not considered overpowered in the official Ranked rules for either single or double battling. They're both deemed very strong but not at the top.) Then again, Game Freak could also help with that by having a more doubles-centric story mode. The last time we had a Pokémon campaign with double battles being the primary means of battling was in Generation III, which is over a decade ago. I don't blame people for wanting to play competitively using the set of rules they learned going through the story.
 

Requiem Aeternam

Dance like an eggplant!
A workaround is to join other people's Max Raid Battles, if you're able to at least. When you do, one den from that area (Wild Area, Isle of Armor, or Crown Tundra) will vanish with the exception of rare dens, which never contain the event dens.

That being said, sometimes I go do the event raids anyway because they often give out a higher EXP Candy payout than normal ones, though they don't hold a candle to the Chansey, Blissey, Audino, and Delibird ones.
I didn’t realise that was a thing you could do. Does it just pick any common den, event or not, and get rid of it or does it only get rid of the type you did (non-event gets rid of non-event, event gets rid of event)? I actually still have the Moon/Sun Stone evolution dens with the shiny Clefable as I haven’t connected online since then as the monthly ones just don’t interest me. The 5* Clefable are a nightmare to face though so I usually avoid them which is probably the main reason I have so many event dens. Hopefully next month’s event is better.

I haven’t tried the Chansey, Blissey or Audino ones as I wasn’t aware that they gave increased rewards until recently but I did get lucky with a 5* Delibird raid spawning. Took ages to get the Dream Ball from it but the other rewards are really nice. The fossil dens are also pretty good as they drop a lot of Rare Bones and fossils which sell for a lot.
 

Spider-Phoenix

#ChespinGang
Ok, while doing the Muskedeer hunt, I was really annoyed with constantly being chased by Boltund and Noivern. Not to mention accidently bumping into wild pokémon. It's really annoying repels don't prevent overworld pokémon from chasing you.
 

Ophie

Salingerian Phony
I didn’t realise that was a thing you could do. Does it just pick any common den, event or not, and get rid of it or does it only get rid of the type you did (non-event gets rid of non-event, event gets rid of event)? I actually still have the Moon/Sun Stone evolution dens with the shiny Clefable as I haven’t connected online since then as the monthly ones just don’t interest me. The 5* Clefable are a nightmare to face though so I usually avoid them which is probably the main reason I have so many event dens. Hopefully next month’s event is better.

I haven’t tried the Chansey, Blissey or Audino ones as I wasn’t aware that they gave increased rewards until recently but I did get lucky with a 5* Delibird raid spawning. Took ages to get the Dream Ball from it but the other rewards are really nice. The fossil dens are also pretty good as they drop a lot of Rare Bones and fossils which sell for a lot.

Doing any Max Raid Battle from somebody else will turn off one of your normal active raid dens. The game doesn't care if they're event or not. Bear in mind, however, that they're area-specific: Wild Area raids will turn off Wild Area active dens, Isle of Armor raids will turn off Isle of Armor active dens, and Crown Tundra raids will turn off active Crown Tundra dens.

Because of that, you get the most out of playing only the rare den and active dens with something in them that you actually want, then ignoring the rest of them while playing other people's raids for the area you're looking for stuff in until your dens reset.

The Chansey and Blissey ones give out every type of EXP. Candy equal to the number of stars in the Max Raid Battle, plus a number of Rare Candies randomly between 0 and 5. That means, at minimum, a successful 5-star Chansey or Blissey raid will yield you 219,500 EXP, enough to bring a Pokémon from Level 1 to Level 60 or a Pokémon from Level 92 to just barely under Level 100 (assuming it takes 1 million EXP to reach Level 100).

Audino gives out half as much as Chansey and Blissey rounded up, so a 5-star Audino raid yields 3 of each sort, which is still way higher than the payout of 2 EXP. Candies L and 1 EXP. Candy XL normal 5-star raids yield.

I remember being quite surprised at the payout when my rare den happened to be the one in Snowslide Slope you have to double back around through Tunnel to the Top to get (the one to the right when you first enter Tunnel to the Top) and I got a 5-star Dracovish raid. I got piles and piles of fossils, some of them being ones that would be quite rare in my version.
 

Auraninja

Eh, ragazzo!
I looked on Smogon today to see if what nature was best for Lunala.

So I kept the Timid Cosmog I received.
 

Ophie

Salingerian Phony
I looked on Smogon today to see if what nature was best for Lunala.

So I kept the Timid Cosmog I received.

Bear in mind that Smogon's advice is best used in Smogon's rules, which aren't the same rules as used online in Pokémon Sword and Shield except in private rooms between friends.

(Timid would still be a great Nature to have on Lunala either way though.)
 

Divine Retribution

Conquistador de pan
I'm not about to get into a huge debate on Smogon's behalf as I've become disillusioned with their tiering policies and general conduct myself but it's no secret that I am (or was) an active Smogon user so I suppose I'll explain why I was attracted to Smogon in the first place, and why I have, for the most part, left. I'm not even really sure this post belongs here as it does kind of straddle the line of off-topic and I know Smogon is kind of perceived as a "competitor" to Serebii, even though they really aren't anymore, so if the moderators don't feel it's appropriate feel free to delete it. However, it does seem to be a topic of discussion at the moment and I'd like to offer a different perspective than one you'd typically get from either the "pro-Smogon" or "anti-Smogon" crowd.

The first reason why I joined Smogon and adopted Smogon tiers has already been somewhat alluded to; Smogon's standard formats are 6v6 Singles, which seem to be utterly neglected by GameFreak. This is still somewhat of a curiosity to me, as most of the story of the games are played in a Singles format where you can use up to 6 Pokemon, so it seems a bit jarring for a casual player trying to transition to competitive play to learn an entirely new style of battling where most of the principles you've become accustomed to simply don't apply in the same way.

Back around 2010, when I first really got into competitive play, that was me. Compounding that jarring experience of not wanting to learn what almost amounts to an entirely new game was the fact that VGC wasn't really a thing back then, so Doubles wasn't really accepted as the "official" format for competitive Pokemon play, and I don't think anyone at the time would have really predicted that it would be.

The other reason is that I was attracted to the idea of Pokemon being balanced around something less arbitrary than a label like "mythical" or "event legendary", which either excludes the use of Pokemon without a truly good reason or allows the use of Pokemon that are so overcentralizing you're handicapping yourself by not using them.

Contrary to popular belief, Smogon doesn't ban things just because they don't like them, or at least they didn't for the majority of my time on the site. There's generally tons of debate among esteemed, experienced, and skilled players about whether or not a Pokemon is healthy for the metagame before it even put up for a suspect test, which is sort of a meritocratic-democratic process to decide whether or not a Pokemon will be banned. This was, and I believe still is a fantastic system if it was actually being adhered to fairly. In my opinion, a system that allows or bans Pokemon based on a democratic discussion of their impact on the metagame is far more fair than one that bans them based on a label that GameFreak slapped on them when they were designed, and should lead to a generally less restrictive format.

The last major reason why I was attracted to Smogon is because of its tournament scene; Smogon runs some really amazing draft-style team tournaments that are probably a lot of fun for the relatively small handful of people who get to participate in them. At one point I wanted to be one of those people, but upon hanging out with some people who were involved in the tour scene I came to realize that it had a ton of problems in its own right. Players in these tournaments are chosen more often than not based on personal connections rather than any accomplishments or skill they have in their chosen metagames, and the entirety of the tour scene is rife with drama and toxicity.

Now, we get to the issues. I already touched upon the more general issues I witnessed within the tournament community, and to delve any deeper into those would require me to go into specifics about people and events that I'd rather not really talk about to be honest, but simply following Smogon's tournaments and the ridiculous amount of drama they've generated over the past few years would put anyone's doubts to rest anyways.

The next issue is that Smogon's 6v6 format has now entirely diverged from the common official formats (namely 4v4 Doubles and 3v3 Singles, both selected out of teams of 6) to the point where the general concepts you learn from one format often aren't applicable to the other. When I first got involved in Smogon's formats and community, that wasn't the case. Like I said, this was before VGC was really a thing and before we could really predict that GameFreak would fully adopt and embrace the 4v4 Doubles format. These days, regardless of whether or not I personally agree with it, it's clear that GameFreak has chosen to make this format their official format, and so I think if I had the choice to go back in time to that point where I was first getting my bearings in the competitive community knowing what I know now, I think I might have chosen to embrace Doubles instead.

Another issue is the overall deterioration of the Smogon community's adherence to the tiering principles that were in play throughout most of my time with them. This is somewhat of a more recent issue and it goes quite deep. I could probably write paragraphs about this problem alone, but the short version is that an overall tendency to invoke non-democratic quick bans over suspect tests and a general disconnect between the OU council, which ultimately decides whether a Pokemon gets suspect-tested or not, and the larger community have poisoned my appreciation for Smogon's tiering system.

The suspect test model is fantastic on paper; it runs into problems in practice when the council refuses to suspet test certain Pokemon despite months and even years of popular demand, when Pokemon are regularly banned without a suspect test to begin with and with no opportunity to argue the contrary against their ban, and when the concept of suspect testing something to unban it rather than just banning all the time seems to be lost on the people making the decisions. In a perfect system, the OU council would act as recipients of the community's voices and opinions, and would act based on those voices and opinions rather than their own. As it stands, that's not at all how it works anymore.

Compounding this issue is the fact that Gen 8's main gimmick, Dynamax, is utterly incompatible with Smogon's philosophy and ideals for a fair and stable 6v6 Singles system. This led to the controversial decision by Smogon to disallow it in their Singles formats entirely, and while I don't actually disagree with that decision, it is one more divide between Smogon and the larger Pokemon community, and further adds to the general perception that Smogon just likes banning things. After all, they banned an entire main gimmick now.

A few people have brought up the issue of elitism, and I think that's a little bit of a thorny one because I actually don't think elitism is always wrong, depending on the specific context. Elitism as in a general smug, superior attitude over players who don't play the same format as you do is definitely wrong and makes you look like an asshole. However, some people would describe Smogon's workings as inherently elitist, and to that I would say yes, they are, and they have to be to function. Suspect tests are a prime example of this; in order to participate in a suspect test you must first achieve certain requirements, usually a certain rating on the Pokemon Showdown ladder for that tier while maintaining a certain GXE. This ensures that people participating in the voting phase of the suspect test are at least more likely to be competent, informed players who are experienced in that metagame enough to understand the implications of said test. This is an inherently elitist system; it excludes less experienced/skilled players who can't meet that requirement, but unfortunately it must in order to achieve its intended function. This should be a motivation for those players to improve if anything; it was for me.

Overall, Smogon's philosophies and workings are based on principles that I absolutely agree with and regard as superior to more what I see as more arbitrary ways of developing metagames that GameFreak employs, however a general failure to adhere to those original philosophies and the fact that, for better or worse, Smogon's 6v6 Singles format is simply not similar at all to GameFreak's adopted official formats leaves me questioning Smogon's true place in the competitive Pokemon community. I foresee an overall decline for the site; I believe it has already been happening for some years now, even if most Smogon users would still deny it.
 

Ophie

Salingerian Phony
I'm not about to get into a huge debate on Smogon's behalf as I've become disillusioned with their tiering policies and general conduct myself but it's no secret that I am (or was) an active Smogon user so I suppose I'll explain why I was attracted to Smogon in the first place, and why I have, for the most part, left. I'm not even really sure this post belongs here as it does kind of straddle the line of off-topic and I know Smogon is kind of perceived as a "competitor" to Serebii, even though they really aren't anymore, so if the moderators don't feel it's appropriate feel free to delete it. However, it does seem to be a topic of discussion at the moment and I'd like to offer a different perspective than one you'd typically get from either the "pro-Smogon" or "anti-Smogon" crowd.

I read the whole thing, and honestly, that is a very insightful, passionate essay on how you feel about it. I've questioned about the divergent evolution between Smogon at least since I started participating in VGCs, and Generation VIII seems to be where it's diverged far enough that I find myself scratching my head sometimes about why some people question Game Freak's choices for certain aspects of competitive play when they were never meant for the Smogon rules to begin with. For the record, I began with Pokémon Battle Revolution, whose online play was more or less identical to the main games' Casual Battles play today. As a result, THAT was my foundation, and it's why I'm more comfortable with picking my 3 or 4 Pokémon during Team Preview. (I started playing way back in Generation I, but there was no online play at that point, and I just played against the other kids interested in challenging me. At least until one of them threw at me a Nidoking whose stats were all 1,023.)

Note that I don't inherently dislike Smogon. What I dislike is that, as I mentioned, discussions about competitive Pokémon battling outside of Smogon seem to assume Smogon rules, which don't necessarily work if the person taking that advice intends to use it in the actual games. That's what grinds my gears--they are being given bad advice without either side even knowing it, and it's hard to find good advice on the matter. Making it more impenetrable is that there is a lot of advice that's good for both, but it takes an experienced eye to know what isn't. The result is people being told to use, say, Skarmory with Stealth Rock, Body Press, Whirlwind, and Roost and them taking it into Sword and Shield Ranked double battles, not realizing this is not what this advice was meant for. They get crushed left and right before they even reach Rank 3 and have no idea what they're doing wrong or why their opponents, who aren't using this advice, are always at an advantage.

YouTube seems to be the one place at the moment where there's a lot of advice pertaining to the Ranked formats in the official games (with double battling rules being identical to those of VGCs, albeit best 1 of 1 rather than 2 of 3), and predictably, there is a rift between Smogon and the PokéTubers who give that advice, even though there shouldn't be one because they're talking about what works under different sets of rules.

If there is a general decline for Smogon, I haven't really seen it, considering the vocalness of competitive Pokémon discussion outside of the site making it seem like it's something everybody follows. There is an almost religious reverence by some people of the site, not all of whom are actual members or participants, which I find a bit baffling.

For the record, I think the general ban by Game Freak on Mythical Pokémon is because they're limited in availability. They aren't always obtainable, so Game Freak doesn't allow them in most official formats because they likely consider it unfair against those who missed their chances to get them, whereas everything else is always available. I see it as similar to modern-day fighting game tournaments of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and the Ultimate version thereof, which ban Jill Valentine and Shuma-Gorath because they were limited-time characters--they were available only as DLC, which is no longer obtainable. Consequently, those two characters were banned because people who got into playing MvC3 after they were obtainable would be at a disadvantage against those who did, as they can neither use them nor practice against them. Pokémon Showdown doesn't need to worry about that because the Mythical Pokémon can be generated out of thin air whenever the player wants.
 
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Sceptile Leaf Blade

Nighttime Guardian
For the record, I think the general ban by Game Freak on Mythical Pokémon is because they're limited in availability. They aren't always obtainable, so Game Freak doesn't allow them in most official formats because they likely consider it unfair against those who missed their chances to get them, whereas everything else is always available.
I think this is true. Mythicals don't even always get released in every region, some regions never get mythicals at all. Events are still an issue even outside of mythicals sometimes though, in the later Alola VGC series Multiscale Lugia was limited to the wind-event Lugia which was only released in some Asian regions, and Multiscale is just by far Lugia's best ability, especially in a 4v4 doubles setting where PP stalling isn't really a thing. I do have a Multiscale Lugia myself, but it's illegal for VGC as it's a Crystal transfer (it also doesn't have access to Hurricane, which the wind Lugia had, and which is viable over Aeroblast if also running Kyogre). I only own Marshadow, Magearna, Celebi (Crystal transfer), and Zeraora as mythicals, and Ash-Greninja if you count it as a mythical form (which GameFreak seems to do for the online battles, but not battle tree). I could still get Deoxys from Omega Ruby, but everything else, like Darkrai, Shaymin, or Victini, is essentially unavailable to me. And while some of them are a bit forgettable in battling capabilities (for instance Celebi) compared to big legendaries, some others like Marshadow, Magearna, and Zeraora are powerful enough that missing out on them would be unfair.

I think the only event-exclusives (aside from shiny exclusives) they do usually allow in online battles are the Ash-hat Pikachu, and that's purely because Ash-hat Pikachu misses out on a lot of Pikachu's better possibilities like Fake Out and Lightningrod. 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt is fun in the story where Refresh boosts grant it a 100% crit rate, but it's not exactly enough to push it into viability online (where it's only a 50% crit), especially with Ash-hat Pikachu lacking boosting options like Charge (egg move), Nasty Plot (Pichu pre-evolution), or even Electric Terrain (egg move), and it not having the Light Ball either when running the Z-crystal.
 
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Spider-Phoenix

#ChespinGang
What annoys me is that Triples were dropped. I much prefer Triples over Doubles and I long for the day Triples will be the official VGC format.

If that happens, then I might consider playing competitive

(yeah, I'm being petty lol)
 

Captain Jigglypuff

Leader of Jigglypuff Army
What annoys me is that Triples were dropped. I much prefer Triples over Doubles and I long for the day Triples will be the official VGC format.

If that happens, then I might consider playing competitive

(yeah, I'm being petty lol)
Triples were fun but once the games went to 3D, it did seem to cause some serious lag in battle.
 
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