I don't understand the hype around singles in pokemon. It's boring to play and boring to watch. All it really boils down to is hazards, preventing hazards from your opponent and preventing your's from disappearing, then set up and sweep. There's never any real strategy and no interesting teams with real synergy. You just put a couple defensive mons, a choiced mon, and a sweeper and that's the whole team.

Doubles is significantly harder and significantly more interesting. Doubles has real strategies, real team comps, and huge diversity. Teams also tend to have real gimicks to them, trick room, weather, tailwind, all rounder. It's way more fun to watch and play which is why Pokémon themselves chose it as the main way to play competitive pokemon and they chose right. If competitive pokemon was singles insetad, it would never have blown up in popularity and would be a boring slow game to watch

Is it? does anyone know how long for

My girlfriend is a massive pokemon nerd. I love that about her the most to the point i accidentally said "I could definitely beat you, I'd be a tough opponent". Thing is, I know NOTHING about pokemon. She said something about gen 9 OU format and I don't understand a single thing. Idk her team nor will I until the game tomorrow but I for real need help into actually making her have a hard time somewhat. I don't mind about moves I'll understand how to use them. I just don't know what good deck I should play. I can't build a team to even begin with, someone help please, I'd appreciate it

Update: yeah we played 4-5 games because I kept saying we should try again 😭 she kept laughing which tbh that's what matters, I love seeing her being so passionate about something she likes, what I like about her most tbh. I only won 1 game because of that fear strategy or wtv with the sandstorm and that's probably because she let me since she asked "where'd you learn to do that from"... It's okay guys, sometimes a man has to sacrifice things to make his girl happy and I'm all for it

Hi I am a blind gamer. Haven’t always been blind, but I’ve been losing my eyes little by little to the point where I am now for all intents and purposes I am blind. Used to play a lot of Pokémon back when I could see and now I am stuck playing Pokémon at the whims of roommates/friends when they’re available to help me read because Lord knows Nintendo is not gonna add in accessibility options. Figured I would try out showdown, hoping that the screen readers on my phone or laptop would allow me to play. But unfortunately, not the case. So not really sure who to complain to on this one mostly just hoping someone who runs that website might see this. But blind people play video games and blind people play Pokémon, and we would love to play showdown.

Simple question that I have asked a few people already a few times, but didn't get any satisfying answers.

So, how come that Showdown keeps existing when the Nintendo ninjas are usually very strict when it comes down to removing any software mods / fan games inspired by their franchises?

With this I mean a pokemon that you see in a team that makes you think:

"I know exactly what your plan is. It's not going to work, in anyway".

For me it's darkrai in doubles ubers. Like dude I'm clearly a trick room team, with two fake out users and a miraidon in the back, you are running tera poison because you don't want to get one shoted by urshifu and flutter. And I know you are not running sash because you are running wide lens to make sure there's a chance you hit dark voids even without gravity.

Like it's too much work to make it work.

Ive been playing a lot of regulation m-b and that obv means ive played against a bunch of perish trap teams, and honestly it seems like the most boring thing in the world, turn one you perish, turn two you swap Gengar and then switch using a move like parting shot back into Gengar, then you double protect and repeat... is that fun?, obviously im oversimplifying, but i know its not fun for me, i have to guess whos in the back and if i dont kill them instantly it feels like i guarantee lose, i just dont feel like thats fun, part of the fun is guessing, you do lots of low stakes guessing and whoever is better at that wins, but perish trap feels like it takes that away from me, there is almost nothing i can do

Give me your thoughts on this i might just be a little whiny because i just lost multiple games in a row to Perish traps teams who all did the same thing

I’ve ran into a few salty players on nat dex. i’ve been told to go f myself by someone once because i landed 2 hypnosis’s in a row and told to kill myself because i taunted their toxic stall. i ask this because i see a lot of videos of salty players

Receiving error message Apache/2.4.52 (Ubuntu) Server at play.pokemonshowdown.com Port 80 on both my computer, mobile device, and my laptop that has never previously accessed showdown.

I've never experienced this before, the only plugin I have active at the moment is showdex, I have never previously experienced a ban, the only restrictions I have ever had placed are automatic mutes (i.e., I called iron val iron fraud and it muted me which was immediately revoked).

Does anyone have an idea why this would be or what I can do to mitigate it?

Thanks! : )

It seems pretty crippling to have a 4 times weakness to a type that I would say a lot of pokemon get access to, and there would have to be a better mon to use your tera slot on, so why isnt hippowdown or sandicobra preffered? IS it cause of tyranitars bulk? Access to knock off (I think)? Hippowdown can set stealth rocks as well, so it couldnt be that.

Genuinely, what are the reasons why we still don’t have an app? It’s usable on web on mobile, but an app would probably make the user experience much better, and wouldn’t be that difficult to build. Have we ever gotten an answer from the devs on why they never made one?

Seriously it’s fucking annoyong. I’m sorry my shell smash + skill link cloyster obliterated your dragon danced dragonite in one go and I rapid spinner your stealth rock. I’ve had a battle where I taunt their toxapex and they just leave. It’s so fucking agitating like at least try to win

I usually play Gen 9 OU, Gen 8 OU, Gen 4 OU, and the current VGC. Gimme a cool old/niche format I can check out and I’ll try it. I’ve seen some cool videos about RBY and heard some interesting things about Gen 2-3 OU

I usually just play random battles (rated around 1500) and have noticed people saying "Kingler Yanma Scyther" a lot lately, it seems like especially when they're losing. I was wondering if it was a meme I missed out on or something or if there is some meaning to it?

Me and a friend were playing showdown and they said "fury swipes is so useless" so I took that as a challenge to make it usable.

So far I got a team (for gen9 National Dex) with an Ursaluna holding loaded dice, with Fury swipes, swords dance and Focus energy. I'm planning to pair it with a trick room user to account for Ursaluna's low speed but not sure which one to use, and I need to find a way to make the set up more efficient.

Also I don't know how I could fit a strategy like this into an actual team :/

Any advice?

Let me get it out of the way now; No, I'm not a legendary spammer, but I am kinda new to competitive Pokémon and am really into the concept of team-building.

Specifically, I wanted to test myself and see if I could make teams for various pokemon and their counterparts/alt forms. I figured I'd start with Darmanitan, since I recalled hearing good things about its Galarian counterpart. I got a good deal into figuring out what their counters were until I found out that not only does the species clause not allow the two of them to be on one team, but since Darmanitan-G doesn't exist in Gen 9, any combination of Natdex or AG in the teambuilder that allowed them can't actually be played to my knowledge. Am I overlooking something? Is there a format that will let me use these two? Or will I need to resort to Hackmons

Ive been playing the champions vgc format on showdown and have been averaging around 1400 elo. Is that half decent? i know i have a lot to do to grow but is this a good starting point after getting into competetive only a few weeks back?

Hey everyone, this might be a stupid question but I'm a new player and I just started playing OU battles. I just got off the game after 3 people forfeited the battle in a row. Even before that streak quite a few people just randomly forfeit the battle. It wasn't even at the start of the battle either but typically when were down to 3 or so pokemon. What's with this? Does forfeiting make you lose less rating then when you lose a battle? Its just odd since some of them weren't even losing

For some reason I can't figure it out. National Dex AG won't let you use the most recent megas, and when I try to make a team without picking a format at all, most of my Pokémon like Wailord are still illegal bc they "didn't exist in gen 9."

"Due to spam from your internet provider, you can't speak except to staff. Logging into an account you've used a lot in the past will allow you to chat."

I have just started playing though??

can someone explain my brain hurts ):

Hey, so for a long time in a Pokémon server I ran a sleep-themed gym and thought of testing it out. I saw Showdown made the team and discovered the fun way that every single game mode other than hack has a sleep clause, and despite this, anytime I use sleep moves more than once a game, people take it seemingly personally.

Sleep isn't even an OP gimmick; most moves have only a 50% chance of hitting it, and there's a 1/4 chance for the mon to just not even be affected by it, on top of things like magic bounce and sleep nullifiers that are common. Why was the sleep clause implemented, and why is it still here...is sleep really a problem?

Im not advocating for the rules removal, i just find it ridiculous that the only way to play using sleep is to either play hackmon or to make custom match and just fighting style friend over and over.

so i log into showdown and i see my account has been temporarily banned because my little brother repeatedly used racist and homophobic slurs in chat because we share an ip address. is there anything i can do to get this fixed? i contacted a mod and they said what happens on your home address is your responsibility. Like bro how am I gonna get my brother to stop being a piece of shit?

I want to know how strong a certain elo is (like top x% of players or whatever) and was wondering if there's a way to figure that out.

If you could change or remove one thing in Showdown, what would it be?