Is competitive Pokemon worth getting into?

Ask yourself the following questions:
>Do I really, REALLY like Pokemon?
>Do I enjoy the turn-based battling system and the options it provides?
Your answer to these should also be your answer to the thread topic

No. Do not bother. Pokemon was never designed to be truly competitive, only casually competitive at most. As such, the ultimate winning strategies have been boiled down to a handful of near broken exploits and number games solved by years of turbo autism. This mostly consists of always picking a few specific Pokemon that have to go through laborious breeding and training bullshit until everyone has nearly the same party with nearly identical Pokemons. Then players just spam the same perfect strats against each other and hope the dice rolls edge out in their favor. It's not even fun competition, it's just autismal suffering. Unless you're that kind of person who enjoys grueling petty number games that take forever to understand and execute with no real payoff, do not attempt competitive Pokemon. The scene has already long been dominated by other turbo autists anyway so you have virtually no hope of ranking anywhere.

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doubles

How much do you like landorus t and heatran? Do you want to see them every fucking game for the rest of your life? If not then stay the fuck away from that cesspool.

Yea Forums is casual central now, dedicating more than 5 minutes to anything is autistic.

High chances are, the Pokémon you like are absolute shit.

not really
both because theres not many people left that are actually organically good at it and its hard to find resources to actually teach you about maintaining turn advantage and simple setplay shit, and because any of the "metagames" youre stuck with nowadays are gonna be fuckawful

also its very likely just gonna outright die with these new shitheaps of games theyre putting out so not a wise long term investment either

>Yea Forums is casual central now
That could be said about the videogame audience in general, pokemon itself is certainly made with those in mind lately... since almost a decade.

>pokemon has a real strong set
>some mod on a smogon forum loses to it
>complains and throws a tantrum
>pokemon that beat him has it's set banned

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The more you like the actual Pokémon the shittier competitive play is, don't get fooled by Smash and fighting games, in Pokémon tiers determine basically EVERYTHING. If your favorite Pokémon aren't good you will never beat someone competent at the game with them outside of their tier.

Casual pokecompetition with friends using mons you actually have an affinity for and a pinch of online research autism is comfy as hell.

Are there any examples of this happening?

One is pretty funny involving Slowbro of all Pokemon.
gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/696959-pokemon-x/68195682

Until someone gets pissy and starts going full meta. Always happens.

smogon bans are made by a council of faggots that are bamboozled by your opponent having two viable options, like with the sword. REE I CAN'T PREDICT IT'S MOVE 100% OF THE TIME

also there was that time a mod threw a fit and banned a bunch of people because someone ran energy ball on a jellicent

As one of the few people here that probably play Pokemon at a "competitive" level on Smogon tours, I would say it is not worth it unless you really like Pokemon that much. Speaking mostly from a Smogon experience, but you just never really win anything when you win a tour besides a random png next to your username. Not sure how the VGC scene is, but from what I have seen, the reward is better, but ain't worth it either because of the time you have to spend on it just to get a reward and chances are, you probably ain't getting compensated.

funbro was based, showderp threads on vp would always go for the high score, literally thousand + turn battles

I don't understand how anyone can unironically follow Smogon's ruleset. It's so desperately made anti-fun and try to restrict every possible moveset that may be seen as "problematic"

I'm not that big into competitive pokemon but aren't infinite stalls/loops like that always banned?

Entrenched by time. It was a necessary evil early on to make the game more interesting so it wasn't just 6 mewtwo mirrors or evasion luck spamming, but now they're the only game on the block still sticking around in a big way and have become too autistic.

This. Why can't we have good things?

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Before anyone fall for this guy's BS. Bans are made determined by voting from the player base. In order to get a vote, you must get a certain amount of wins within a set number of games. The only time the council itself ever ban something was for broken mons that everyone agreed was broken and it is usually by a super majority. Examples are things like Mega Salamanca that literally ohko or 2hkoed every month that is not a Porygon 2

I'll give the competitive crowd props for trying to push the game as far as it can go, but it's just becoming less and less my cup of tea as it goes on.

they're determined by qualifying votes, but the things on the vote list are decided by a small committee of autitsts, right?

Infinite Loops with no change in game state are always fun.

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no it's a waste of time

t. played for 4 years + badgeholder at smogon

>play gen 4
>can't use baton pass effectively because of bans from gen 6
>EVEN THOUGH MAGIC BOUNCE DIDN'T EXIST YET

I played this shit for years and posted on their forums regularly. I will now list most of the fuckups Smogon has made since the imfamous Garchomp ban that started it all. I will not address Chomp as it was such a highly controversial ban at the time that only got banned because the yache berry variant couldn't be stopped at the midgame.

>banning Latios, Latias for a while, and Salamence instead of just banning outrage and draco meteor. It's quite obvious that all three of these mons were carried by Draco and Outrage to a lesser extent
>keeping Stealth rock without any spinners strong enough to guarantee that rapid spin. No, Starmie isn't strong enough as it gets hard countered by Rotom-A
>not banning Drizzle/Drought and Volt-Turn for being a blight upon modern pokemon and its sheer overcentralization of every meta onward. You know, the very thing that got Chomp banned? Oh wait, "centralization can be a good thing" happened
>admittedly, banning Tornadus-T and Landorus-I after it got sheer force was a pretty good idea
>Mega Lucario, Mega Gengar, Mega Kangz, and Mega Mawile were all beyond broken and should have been quickbanned. Honestly, There was so much powercreep this gen that I'm surprised Darkrai got banned.
>Grenigger deserved the ban. Nothing to see here.
>banning a shit move(swagger) when prankster was the problem the whole time. It's like these faggots forgot Thundurus's priority T-wave in BW1 didn't generate enough infamy to dub the pokemon "Cancerus"
>the entire crusade against baton pass that even killed gen 4 Ninjask in the process because no one could figure out that magic bounce was what enabled degenerate baton pass play in the first place.
>........whatever gen 7's meta is. Z moves are so bad I quit prior to release.

Pokemon's dead, guys. Either play gens 3-4 or fuck off.

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This. The right amount of research makes it enjoyable and there are several cool pokémon and strats to try and you can still play your favorites. Going full autism makes the game boring as shit.

I remember feeling the mechanics of Pokemon seemed like they were underutilized in the single player mode so I decided to dip my toes into competetive.

>My favorite Pokemons were shit and not worth bothering with
>To have the best possible chance you need to have good IVs which requires breeding which is literally just manipulating RNG until you get decent shit
>Oh and you need to get EVs done too
>And god help you if you have the wrong nature or ability
>This has to be done on your entire team

I came out of the experience wondering what the hell people see in this anti-fun mess, its pure numbers autism that requires a shitton of time put into it before you can even attempt to play.

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All the mons that they have suspected are things that the community has complained about a lot. They don't just go and randomly suspect something. In the suspect ladder, they either add in or remove the mon, depending on if the suspect is adding or removing something, so the players can see first hand what it is tO have something back or gone

Worst time to get into it . You dont even know what makes it into the next games

Why on earth would you pick competitive pokemon instead of competitive [literally any other videogame]?
Like really, you'd have more fun learning chess openings and that's boring as shit.

Noone does the breeding for IV's unironically, they usually just hack mons so that they fit their team and don't have to waste hours. VGC players literally do that too

it's more switching pokemon than battling and everything is a one shot it's miserable

Nah, gens 4 and 5 are peak comf. Shame perma weather made speed increasing abilities busted.

I like Competitive Pokemon. I just don't like how Smogon does it.

2v2 is clearly the way to go.See how varied VGC is? You get laughed at when you use a Pachirisu or a Raichu in Smogon practice

This.
I unironically enjoy beating low elo kids with my boy kingler.
However as soon as you climb a bit it's NO FUN ALLOWED, good luck not getting stomped if you aren't using at least 5 OU übermons.

You just stared into the face of True Autism. I wish I was joking but this is what autism is in it's purest form. For them things are being done not because of fun, nor disdain. It's just a task that they must do and a task that they must perfect.

Not sure what your argument is because you get laughed at for using shit mons in VGC too. Both of their metagames are different so ofc the good mons would be different too

As a whole, yes, gens 4-5 are the peak. However, gen 3 and 4 have the best metagames.

Smogon are too much focuse on potential sweepers or stall tanks than care about strategy or team composition. I reckon if you have 5 sweepers and one setup mon, you're good to go most of the time in OU

Point is that strategy like in 2v2 does not exist in 6v6

They banned Baton Pass in 4th gen? But it wasn't broken at all!
They shouldn't go back and ban stuff that's perfectly balanced in previous gens just because a combination is broken in a later gen.

That argument works the other way around too. There are sets that won't work in doubles, but would work in singles

Oh, and Draco Meteor and Outrage were fine on Flygon, those moves were not the problem. Salamence was also balanced until it got Outrage from move tutor.

The best metagame was 4th pure DP after Garchomp was banned, before the gamebreaking move tutors were added. A shame it only existed for a month.

No. Competitive pokemon peaked in gen 4 and even then it was pretty meh

Draco and Outrage were "fine" on Flygon because it was shitmon that only found its way into OU because people went for the next best thing to spam those moves with. The same goes for Kingdra.

Salamance was banned because people realized that you could spam Draco off a 110 base special attack and nothing could switch into it except for the shaky T-Tar and Heatran checks that got obliterated by EQ. After a Draco is popped, you just spam outrage. "You guessed wrong, lose a pokemon" Originated from Mixmence because it's guaranteed 1-2 KO's a game. People were doing the same fucking thing with Latios (and to a lesser extent Latias).

go to vp you retard

I'd love to have tried it, seems pretty cool and complex but the IV, the egg moves, the natures, the EV training etc all combine to form such a massive fucking barrier of entry that I just don't want to bother.
It's like only the biggest autists out there get to starting point. I like Pokemon but I'm not super fucking obsessed over it, I'd rather play a new game rathen than grind just the right Bagon for 100 hours.

Not really, but if you can't help yourself just go on Pokemon Showdown, the games are dead.

There's a concept known as "fair hacking" where it's generally acceptable if you hack your pokemon in if they have sets that could be obtained in the game. It IS possible to have a perfect shiny bagon with the hydro pump egg move, but it's so improbable to masuda method a perfect shiny bagon that you might as well skip the hundreds if not thousands of hours. The real fun is in the battling.

This. The only people who might get mad are breeding purists, but online no one will notice whether your pokemon were hacked or not anyway

No

>5 sweepers and one set up mon and you're good to go
Hyper offense is the hardest archetype to play.

>set up dual screens
>sweep
>hard

Hyper offense has been easy since gen 5.

>actual tournies
they let you use Rayquaza and shit so no
>online simulators
not that fun either but there’s goofy stuff like random fights

I honestly had fun in Gen 4 meta years ago. Each Gen just got a bit worse to play.
fuck you genies

Only if Legendaries are banned

>See how varied VGC is?

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Every balanced team will have counters for all of your sweepers
Making a single mistake with HO will lose you the game
Also imagine not using your HO lead to hazard stack

its a lot of work but its fun but wait until sword and shield because who knows how that will change competitive Pokemon

My friend is incompetent in every game genre, he can't be technical to save his life. But he's the biggest pokemon fan I know and knows almost every optimal setup and matchup, and has teams for every division. He also has aspergers :)

Every game after black & white 2 is garbage, so unless you can play online with your DS then no. Team preview absolutely killed competitive pokemon anyway.

>not running an anti lead

How's sub 1600?

I still swear by lead Aerodactyl after all these years despite knowing he might be outclassed now. RIP mah nigga Azelf

If hyper offense is so easy to deal with, how come Garchomp, Blaziken and Salamence were banned? Hyper offense and sweepers are literally the best way of playing 6v6 unironically

It was pretty hilarious of GF to immediately make Zoroark completely useless with team preview

I remember the energy ball jellicent incident. It was very autistic.

I played smogon rules from gen 3 to 5 on shoddybattle and showdown, the time from gen 6 on is kind of a dumpster fire. And not just because of how ban heavy they got.

Also, official rules have homogenous teams with little variation.

If I remember correctly gen 5 saw the rise of pivot characters that were bulky enough and had advantages against meta pokemon which forced switches, then they'd use their free turn to either setup or just guess with a choice item.
Also, I don't remember any of them being banned back in gen 5.

Maybe if you read the fucking thread, then you'd know why Mence and Chomp were banned in gen 4. In gen 5, Chompgot unbanned only to find out Mamoswine trucks his ass at any stage of the game while not even he likes coming in on boosted water moves. Salamence is in the same boat, except that base 100 speed does him no favors in the much faster metagame. Blaziken is utter trash without his ability and it shows in a metagame that can deal with a +1 speed Blaziken.

Also if you did your homework, then you'd know that bulky offense was statistically the most popular team comp in 5th gen. The data's on Smogon's forums via usage stats.

I can only watch blunder and Joey play PS since I don't care enough to build my own teams and I'm not about to learn the meta of the tiers I want to play in

At least baton pass got banned pretty early on so matches aren't a race to boost a Stored Power Espeon.

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I think smogon relies too much on number data instead of strategies. I used to play a lot of shoddy/pokemon online and I did pretty well in the OU ladder with bl/uu shit like rapid spinner/ice shard donphan or toxic spikes/leech seed roserade. metafags used to sperg a lot because their perfectly calculated team was defeated by random uu mons.

i read “casual central” as like, some sort of fucking political spectrum placement

Nobody does this, people just use simulators instead. Yes, the games are so badly designed people use 3rd party software instead.

Absolutely. Sword and Shield is really going to strengthen the sport.