lol, who the heck follows smogon's sets... and wins? they are just suggestions, and you can use them if you don't know what to do
and about the tiers, they do it so well, the bans happen because they are needed and higher tiers tend to be banlists from tier that are lower, so you can use your pikachu agains other pokemon of it's level, some pokemon are just stronger than the others, that's a fact.
<.< now i don't know much about smogon's people, but i play a lot on showdown and i'm completely fine with the rules, minus some things i disagree, but we can't all agree with the same thing
random thing: showdown > PO