History Website / Smogon

Smogon then spent much of 2006 and 2007 on hiatus because they outgrew their servers. The site was relaunched in 2007 as what you see today. Along with the revamping came a name change to "Smogon University" and a slogan change from "Pokémon on the Internet; let's make it happen!" to "''Nil Sine'' Pokémon".

** Initially inverted during the change to Generation V: '''ALL''' the Ubers were temporarily kicked downstairs at the beginning of Generation V in order to properly test their adequacy. It was then played straight and subverted (depending on their resulting place in the Ubers metagame), as first [[OlympusMons Mewtwo, Ho-Oh, Lugia, Groudon, Kyogre, Rayquaza, Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, Arceus, Reshiram, and Zekrom]] were kicked back upstairs, then Deoxys-A, Deoxys-N, Manaphy, Darkrai, Shaymin-S, and Deoxys-S were booted back up.
** Recently, Genesect also has been kicked out of OU to Ubers.

* LevelGrinding: Half the appeal of the Simulator is Averts all the, LevelGrinding, EV training, breeding, hunting for pokemon with the perfect nature/ability, etc. to get competitive pokemon needed for tournaments.
* MinMaxing: Actively encouraged to have the very best combination of pokemon typing, stats, abilities, and movesets for any pokemon on your team as you can (given whatever tier your).

* DudeLooksLikeALady: Smogon's Gothitelle analysis refers to Gothitelle as a male, since the only legally released Shadow Tag Gothitelle (i.e. the only remotely useful one) is male.

* WallOfText: The user bugmaniacbob habitually goes on and on with his analyses; infamously, [[http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68333 his single set to add to Claydol's analysis]] is longer than the analysis itself. [[note]]Just a note; the analysis was done before analyses were divided by tiers; it would have been added to the then-UU tier listing rather than given a separate page.[[/note]]
** the same user has since eclipsed himself, and potentially everyone else before [[UpToEleven and since]], with his [[http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2316278&postcount=104 Necturna analysis]], totaling at ''17,567 words''.
** This has since been proven true with his [[http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4472287&postcount=1 CAP4 Final Product opening post]], which [[WordOfGod according to him]] is around 5000 words shorter, but actually clocks in at 16,142 words.

** This has since been proven true with his [[http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4472287&postcount=1 CAP4 Final Product opening post]], which [[WordOfGod according to him]] is around 5000 words shorter.

* GrammarNazi: The people who QC Pokémon analyses. Justified in that their job is, in fact, to catch mistakes and make the analyses look professional.
* HonorBeforeReason: The analysis for Farfetche'd paints that using the pokemon is the most respectable thing a player can do... and also that it is completely suicidal.

** the same user has since eclipsed himself, and potentially everyone else before [[UpToEleven and since]], with his [[http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4472287&postcount=1 CAP4 Final Product opening post]].

* WallOfText: The user bugmaniacbob habitually goes on and on with his analyses; infamously, [[http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68333 his single set to add to Claydol's analysis]] is longer than the analysis itself.
%%Just a note; the analysis was done before analyses were divided by tiers; it would have been added to the then-UU tier listing rather than given a separate page.

*** Kyurem-Black, on the other hand, started in the Ubers tier; base 700 total stats and an outstanding 170 attack stat made it an intimidating force that was capable of spamming Outrage that could 2HKO most of the tier. However, like its normal Forme, its weak typing and only 'okay' speed made it easy to play around, by switching a Steel-type into a locked Outrage or using super-effective priority and Stealth Rock to whittle its HP.

* ButtMonkey: Most Pokémon with terrible attacking moves and stats are treated this way in their analysis. Luvdisc, Unown, and Spinda are two notable examples.

Though the site hasn't been ruined by "tourneyfags"... yet, [[StopHavingFunGuys there are quite a few elitists]] on the forums.

The site is the current largest influential authority in the English-speaking competitive Pokémon battle scene. Their CharacterTiers for the Pokémon are considered an excellent attempt at balancing what is a ''very'' unbalanced metagame. The tiers are also criticized and most everyone on the site admit that the tiers aren't perfect. The tier that the casual players tend to pay the most attention to is the "Uber" tier, as those Pokémon are deemed "too powerful" and are typically banned from standard play. Fortunately, only a minority of Pokémon are in this tier, and they all received placement in it for one reason or another. From the looks of things, all but a couple of them were [[PurposefullyOverpowered designed to be there]] by Game Freak. The few that aren't (Wynaut, Wobbuffet, Garchomp, and Salamence in Gen IV, and Blaziken, Garchomp, Excadrill, and Thundurus in Gen V) appear to have very good reasons for their placement... and it could be argued that Garchomp and Salamence were ''also'' made powerful on purpose.

** Initially inverted during the change to Generation V: '''ALL''' the Ubers were temporarily kicked downstairs at the beginning of Generation V in order to properly test their adequacy. It was then played straight and subverted (depending on their resulting place in the Ubers metagame), as first [[OlympusMons Mewtwo, Ho-Oh, Lugia, Groudon, Kyogre, Rayquaza, Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, Arceus, Reshiram, and Zekrom]] were kicked back upstairs, then Deoxys-A, Deoxys-N, Manaphy, Darkrai, Shaymin-S, Garchomp, and Deoxys-S were booted back up.
** Kyurem initially averted the trope. It has all the flavor characteristics of an Olympus Mon, including a BST of over 600 and similarities with the main duo, but due to its defensively fail-tastic Ice-typing, redundant [=STABs=] of Ice and Dragon, an awful speed tier, a terrible signature move, and simply being outclassed by the now-legal Latios (and then-legal Garchomp), it failed to really go anywhere but Underused. However, without the other truly "amazing" Dragons -- Dragonite, Salamence, Latios, Latias, Garchomp (well, then anyway), Haxorus, Hydreigon -- to give it competition, no Scizor/Conkeldurr to make its life hell, Hail being a much better weather in Gen V's UU, and 125/90/90 defenses suddenly getting a LOT stronger relative to the tier's average power level, it was free to abuse STAB Draco Meteors and Blizzards to its heart's content. Kyurem was banished to the Borderline tier (i.e. UU's "Uber Tier") unanimously, playing the trope straight.

* ButtMonkey: Most Pokémon with terrible attacking moves and stats are treated this way in their analysis. Luvdisc and Spinda are two notable examples.

->''Pokémon on the Internet. Let's make it happen.''
-->The site's original slogan. It's still unofficially used.

[[http://www.smogon.com/ Smogon]] is a notable competitive {{Pokemon}} battling community. It provides reports for every fully-evolved and non-evolving Pokémon (as well as a few "special cases" like Pikachu, Porygon2, Scyther, and Vigoroth who differ play wise from their evolved forms, plus some others like Chansey or Magneton, who are strong enough to be used in lower tiers their fully-evolved counterparts are banned from) that analyze how well they do in the site's competitive battling circuits and give moveset recommendations. ALL Pokémon, regardless of evolution status, get a description of their abilities, base stats, and the moves they can learn. Smogon also has numerous informative articles that explain things like how Hidden Power works, how to make a good Rain Dance team, and so on.

It's unknown why this site is seen as an authority. One reason may be because the founder was one of the creators of [=NetBattle=]. Obviously, in order to create that simulator, there had to do a lot of ROM hacking to see how the Pokémon games worked. The site also claims that many of its staffers have been playing and/or hacking Pokémon since the days of ''[[PokemonRedAndBlue Red and Blue]]''. Another more likely reason is that the site's staffers simply work ''really'' hard in analyzing the game and its mechanics.

*** There is also now BL2, for Pokemon deemed too powerful for RU, but not used enough for UU.
* LethalJokeCharacter: A Pokémon from the UU tier, when used correctly, can handle itself well in OU (or even Ubers!). One such Pokemon is Shedinja, an NU tier Pokémon that walls many Uber sets. There's also Quagsire, which pretty much eats Kyogre alive.

* ViewersAreGeniuses: The analyses themselves are optimized for all of the major threats in the Pokemon's metagame, with movesets of specific use as well as comments on the purpose of what stat spreads outspeeds or survives.

** This happened rather infamously once, concerning an Energy Ball Jellicent. [[http://pastebin.com/FHFpAivS After a Pokemon Online moderator named Somalia lost to a Jellicent with Energy Ball]] and thus proceeded to use his moderator privileges to [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge systematically rageban all members of the Smogon PO server]] and subsequently was banned, Energy Ball Jellicent has become a regular sight, even becoming part of a temporary new name of the off topic discussion forum.

Smogon determines which tiers the Pokémon go into by tracking usage statistics on battle simulators. The Uber and Borderline tiers are ban lists for Pokémon too powerful in the Overused and Underused tiers, respectively. What they consider "too powerful" is typically determined via peer review, polling, and analysis of statistics; even then, [[YourMileageMayVary Your Mileage May STILL Vary]].

** This happened rather infamously once, concerning an Energy Ball Jellicent. [[http://pastebin.com/FHFpAivS After a Pokemon Online moderator named Somalia lost to a Jellicent with Energy Ball]] and thus proceeded to use his moderator privileges to [[RageQuit systematically rageban all members of the Smogon PO server]] and subsequently was banned, Energy Ball Jellicent has become a regular sight, even becoming part of a temporary new name of the off topic discussion forum.