Just A Question + Other Info

[MarriedWaifu]

It has been years since I've been on Showdown properly, and I had no idea where to post this, really. I thought this might be a "Safe" area since it's Showdown in general and not like an OU forum or something.

My question is fairly simple. I've never used Smogon forums before at all. What would be some good avenues to get more involved in the competitive scene(s)? as well as the general community at large?

 

[R8]

It depends what tier you want to play, especially since it could be more accurate to say there are competitive scenes and communities (in general one around each tier). One way to get more involved into the competitive scene of a given tier is to participate in their tournaments, which are often announced on their Pokemon Showdown room or on their discord server - you can find a directory for Smogon discord servers here (and one specific to NatDex metagames here). Most tournaments that happen on the website are announced in the official Smogon discord server too which you can find in the first link. In general, nowadays a huge portion of the activity happens on discord servers and joining one of those is probably the easiest way to get into the stuff

To get more involved into the community of a specific tier, in addition to the discord servers you can find dedicated subforums on the front page where lot of the activity happens:

"Smogon Metagames" regroups pretty much any current gen metagame on the website that are not VGC or BSS. Note that a couple of those sections are actually home to multiple metagames, for ex Unofficial Metagames is where you will find ZU or Ubers UU for example.

Ruins or Alph are dedicated to old generations, RBY being the first and SS being the 8th.

Finally, Battle Stadium is dedicated to Nintendo's formats, so VGC and BSS.

Hope this helps, if you have any other questions feel free to ask!

 

[MarriedWaifu]

This helps plenty, thanks! I'll browse some of the Discords, haven't touched competitive mons since like mid gen 7 monotype (started with gen 6 monotype), and gen 9 was briefly bringing me back as well as finding a new interest in gen 3 OU.