>>38017203There was a /v/ thread that wanted to know what people thought about Smogon. Posting my reply to the now deleted thread here:
I've been out of competitive pokemon for a while. There are tons of elitist dicks out there, but if you want to play pokemon competitively (for fun), their ban lists for things like OU are pretty great.
I remember seeing Mega Kanga get banned shortly after it came out and I was like "What the fuck he's not that strong" and then I saw some of the absurd bullshit he could do compared to other megas, and I realized it was actually a good decision to ban Kanga. Then I saw them later ban Mega Gengar and I had the same reaction, but again, I realized after reading about him and using him that Mega Gengar is ABSURDLY overpowered and basically guaranteed to get you at least a two-for-one in nearly all situations.
So basically, without any bans, the metagame when I was playing it (A little before ORAS) would have forced every single person to have a Kanghaskhan or Gengar on their team instead of one of the others. Good mega pokemon variety is definitely lacking, but the ban made the game at least a little more interesting since it made other options actually usable and not totally dominating.
Pokemon Company just sucks at balancing their own games lately which is a shame, but it can't be helped.
