OverUsed News Archive

Current Events

Posted by Jukain on August 17, 2013

This week has been quite eventful in the OverUsed forum. Get the scoop on the latest events and discussions below!

Looking Ahead to Gen VI Mark II has been opened thanks to GSCChris with a spin on the old version—there will now be a focus each week! Originally created as a place for competitive X&Y discussion and speculation, the thread will now be given a topic with some confirmed aspects for an engaging and insightful discussion. The first topic is Mega Pokemon, which are basically evolved formes of normal Pokemon that have a similar design but increased stats, different abilities, and sometimes even different typings! They evolve when holding a species-specific Mega Stone through an in-battle command, after which they can use their attacks. You can only have one Mega Evolution occur each battle. This all means enhanced strategic play and a surge of NU Pokemon like the new Steel/Fairy Mawile with Pure Power and increased defenses as well as a Dragon/Electric Ampharos. Don't miss a beat—participate!

C05ta, Soul Fly, and XKnightX have all advanced to the finals of the sixth OU mini-tournament. Mini-tournaments are basically standard tournaments that are contained all in one thread and have a twist on the normal banlist. This time around, the auto-weather abilities, including Drizzle, Drought, Sand Stream, and Snow Warning; VoltTurn, or U-turn and Volt Switch; and Stealth Rock were all banned. C05ta has already lost to XKnightX—who will win? Best of luck to the three in a round robin-style finals!

The OU Community-Create-A-Team aims to create a viable team for the OverUsed tier via community submissions and voting. Specially defensive Rotom-W was just selected for the team, and the fourth round of submissions has begun! Great work, everyone who has participated.

Rounding out this week's Current Events we have The SS-Class Warstory, a warstory by scotti and Subject 18, has been posted! It features a bulky offensive rain team with a Kabutops on scotti's end and a weatherless offensive team on Subject 18's. Filled with thoughtful plays and predictions, it comes down to the wire at the end with Subject 18, barely hanging on after Kabutops's rampage, smartly switching around his Forretress and Terrakion, cleaning house with his Choice Band Terrakion. The commentary by both players makes the warstory exciting to read. Be sure to give it a read and post your thoughts—you won't be disappointed!

That wraps up this edition of current events. See you next week!

The Future of Suspect Testing: Identifying a Design Philosophy

Posted by Jukain on August 13, 2013

Any avid player of Smogon's tiers knows about the suspect testing system. Pokemon suspected of negatively impacting the metagame in some way are discussed and put up to a vote that will decide whether they stay in OU or are banished to Ubers. Participation in these votes is given by laddering to a certain ranking and deviation, and casting votes in four separate suspect tests nets you the Tiering Contributor badge, which is show in your postbit and grants various privileges.

If you participate in the np threads, or threads that discuss the brokenness and non-brokenness of the suspect at hand, you will notice that drama quickly ensues. Players of all skill levels approach the suspect from various angles with conflicting philosophies. This makes it difficult to determine anything truly conclusive about the suspect. The Identifying a Design Philosophy thread, posted by Crux, aims to alleviate this issue. Players of various pedigrees are often on one camp or another—can a Pokemon be strategically handled in a reasonable way, or can it be tactically handled in a reasonable way? The outcome of the consensus decided by this thread will help determine the future of suspecting testing in X&Y and generations to come. Make your opinion heard and help shape the next generation of competitive Pokemon!

New Overused Community Contributors

Posted by Birkal on Oct 5, 2012

As some of you may know, Smogon awards badges for certain efforts here on the forums (you can read more about it here. Recently, the Overused moderating staff has broadened the scope of the Community Contributor badge to support users who consistently post great thoughts in our forum. As a result, users alkinesthetase, ganj4lF, and Jimbon have all been given the badge for their herculean efforts. Alkinesthetase is a great overall presence who is active, knowledgeable, and willing to help out (not to mention one of the most friendly people you'll ever meet), while Jimbon brings in his experience as a team rater to give people meaningful and in-depth conjectures on the OU metagame. ganj4lF was one of the best posters in Counter This Pokemon and is continuing his streak of excellent in other projects. Check out their posts to see exactly what we're looking for in Overused, and make sure to send them your congratulations!

For those of you who have been working hard in Overused, don't feel that your work is going unnoticed. This is just our first batch of Community Contributors; there are already some more potential candidates in the pipelines. Discussing who could earn the badge is a hot topic for us moderators, and we've noticed that a lot of posters are really picking up their game. So for all of you diligent workers, keep up the fantastic job of contributing to our Overused community.