In Gen 8 which is what you started with when making this point (FM and Annihilape are Gen 9) the only non-legendary Ghost above UUBL is Dragapult. UUBL consists of Gengar, Mega Sableye, and Blacephalon. UU is Aegislash and Chandelure.Pursuit wouldn't help in the case of some of the later Ghosts I noted like Annihilape (who is bulky enough to not have any fear of Pursuit users anyway)
252 SpA Flutter Mane Moonblast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Tyranitar in Sand: 216-254 (63.3 - 74.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO (so no reason it'd switch out and have to take the weak OR strong Pursuit)
And my point remains on the fact that anything with Ghost STAB can get its coverage with 1 move, 2 at most, just by nature, and can get away with not watching for weird combos because only one of those Resistances is a common one vs Fairy having 2-3 Resistances, of which 1 is the main Defensive typing in the game and the other 2 are pretty common even if not the focus of a mon. Pursuit has literally no relation to my contention with Ghost's incredibly scarce defensive answers on the Type Chart, even acknowledging it keeps the Ghosts-in-practice controllable as offensive counterplay.
I sort of get the idea for Ghost since it's immune to conventional trapping so this is a specialized answer, but Psychic being collateral is an unfortunate trade-off there.my hot take is pursuit is dumb anyways and making trapping based on typings is dumb also
esp. because it also punishes psychic, IMO one of the weakest types chart wise
Eh it didn’t really work that way with Mewtwo - Crunch was special and T-tar’s special attack is relatively poor. Plus ya know, Suicune.Psychic definitely occupied a weird spot in Gen 1: its overall lack of type interactions both defensively and offensively lended to a powerful type, but it was really at once both an above average mid-game type and a busted uber powerful type up there with Dragon, and in-game balance wise there were two places it was in: it was a type with some mons like Mr. Mime, Alakazam, Jynx, and more who had great Special but were given really bad physical bulk to counteract it as their "weak point" despite their unintuitive type interactions.
The big elephant in the room, however, and what truly made Psychic powerful, was one (or really two) Pokemon: Mewtwo. Mewtwo was basically designed as this god-tier powerful Pokemon that you meet at the very end of the game in the very last and most deadly dungeon of the game. RBY definitely had single player JRPG game design and dungeons were a big part of it: many optional dungeons had different flavors and the legendary birds were different "dungeon bosses" of different elements, and Mewtwo was basically the ultimate dungeon boss and de facto final boss of RBY: much, much stronger than anything else with no real weak points, while its high Special and powerful Psychic STAB and Recover made it a near unstoppable force and a challenge to catch in-game. It was basically designed so that you use it, it's unstoppable, you fight it and try to catch it, it will be a major force and challenge to try to capture it for your Pokedex.
Mew was similar although not intended to be caught and more of a socialization mystery at the time, but its whole thing in-universe is that it has everything's DNA and can thus do almost anything and has a solid 100 across stat spread, while Mewtwo is more specialized and in-universe is a scientific experiment that went berserk and destroyed the lab it was in.
I do imagine the Psychic type being the powerhouse it was in Gen 1 was at least partially intentional in that regard, mainly to highlight the power of Mewtwo and Mew as these Uber powerful forces above everyone else. Other Psychic-types being strong in PvP was collateral, that said, while they were capable of being dealt with, picking on their weak physical bulk was the way for the most part, not "hitting them super effectively", which is something I think they wanted to change in Gen 2 hence why Dark was created: to block Psychic *and* hit it super effectively.
In hindsight this makes me realize Tyranitar's type combination was likely deliberately made so it could be the powerhouse that could best all other legendaries/pseudo-legendaries: a 600 BST tank that can wall Mewtwo and hit it with Crunch, resists Dragonite's Hyper Beam and also hits it with Rock STAB, deals with both Lugia and Ho-oh and the original legendary birds.
Fair. To take it back to the original point(a discussion of Gen 2's gyms sucking), I think there's various ways a gym can be good, and people get confused because they don't always agree on the definition of good.Tbh I feel like having gyms actually use mechanics like the ones you mentioned would automatically make them tougher then they currently are just by virtue of there being something happening. Like a Fire gym using Drought/Sunny day would cripple a players water types forcing them to make a new strategy that isn’t just spam surf/water pulse/etc and win.
Though personally I do feel like almost all gyms could stand to bring in an extra Mon or two. The eighth gym leader should not have the same amount of Mons as the second gym; like at least 5 at the most.
Agree with everything else, but I think you're underselling some of the non-Totem fights a bit! In USUM at least, all the Kahunas' mons have 252/252 EV spreads and 30 IVs across the board, which make them quite threatening (although obviously they have major shortcomings like their terrible Z-move AI). I remember Hala in particular really caught me by surprise with how tanky his Pokemon were. However, I think it's fair to say that this is a pretty lame way to make battles harder.*If you want hard boss fights, there you go. Alola, if you aren't cheesing them, made things as difficult as reasonably possible in a game aimed at kids. Just not if you're fighting the human characters.
As I said, though, 100% agree with the rest. Discussions of difficulty in Pokemon tend to focus on the fangame/Kaizo approach, which simply isn't feasible in an official title. Fangames can safely assume near-perfect game knowledge, but the main series games can't and shouldn't. It seems really obvious to me that they should lean more into designing each Leader with a powerful strategy in mind and also interesting and accessible forms of counterplay, like a less boring version of the guy in Virbank City who tells you that he was struggling against Roxie until he caught a Magnemite at the Virbank Complex. Maybe there's a Gym Leader who uses a scary Aurora Veil team, but you can do a little sidequest to get access to Brick Break in the same city; Hex team/Safeguard; setup spam/Encore; etc. Nothing is forcing the player to use these strategies, but they'll be rewarded if they do.I think that gyms should be a challenge, which is different from being a tough fight. [...] I want battles that say "learn the mechanics of the game and be rewarded"
Hazards are non existant in official competitive pokemonSo, this is a subject someone raised to me, and I was curious what people here thought - Do Hazards need to be nerfed?
Like, it's kinda hard to deny how much hazards have shaped competitive Pokemon at this point. Teambuilding at this point is shaped around the mechanic, how it can be set, how it can be removed, and how you can avoid the dreaded damage caused by Stealth Rocks. It has only intensified with Gen IX, where a number of factors have made the mechanic a huge reason for the current misery endured in the meta, to where even something as innocuous as Ribombee is now subject to hate.
So the question is, should Hazards be significantly nerfed in some fashion, such as having them be temporary much like Weather, Terrain, and Screens are? Or should it just have the removal options expanded so that it acts as a less dominating mechanic? Curious what people think.
It's hard to think of a change that strikes the appropriate balance without being cumbersome to convey to the player. A five-turn clock would be interesting; my only criticism is that I think it'd make them even less appealing to use in-game. No team preview + healing items + virtually no AI switching means you're probably only gonna get one or two instances of hazard chip per use of the move (assuming the Pokemon that come out are even affected by your hazards of choice), unless you're steamrolling through the opponent's team anyway.So, this is a subject someone raised to me, and I was curious what people here thought - Do Hazards need to be nerfed?
Like, it's kinda hard to deny how much hazards have shaped competitive Pokemon at this point. Teambuilding at this point is shaped around the mechanic, how it can be set, how it can be removed, and how you can avoid the dreaded damage caused by Stealth Rocks. It has only intensified with Gen IX, where a number of factors have made the mechanic a huge reason for the current misery endured in the meta, to where even something as innocuous as Ribombee is now subject to hate.
So the question is, should Hazards be significantly nerfed in some fashion, such as having them be temporary much like Weather, Terrain, and Screens are? Or should it just have the removal options expanded so that it acts as a less dominating mechanic? Curious what people think.
Dragon type was busted but stats are a big reason why it was so threatening. Stats of both Pokémon and moves. All but two pseudo legends being Dragon Type (all with strong offensive stats) bloated the type with threats. There were also Kingdra, Flygon, and Haxorus, all with BSTs of 500 or higher. I'm going off of memory here but I think the only two fully-evolved Dragon types as of Gen 5 with a BST below 500 were Altaria and Druddigon? That's goofy. Latias and Latios were two other 600 BST legends allowed in OU. Outside of an OU meta, Game Freak had just made two straight generations with Dragon Types as box legends (with a few extra forms for good measure), not to mention Rayquaza.1. In Generation 5 OU, some Dragon-Types were literally using only one Attacking move: Outrage, and succeeding.
You had sets like Outrage, Dragon Dance, Roost, Substitute, succeed and sweeping great teams. That's insane. No coverage necessary. Ferrothorn? Not a problem, it will break through eventually. That's absurd.
Dragon-Types were also absurd in Doubles and the only reason they weren't spammed even more was because Physical Dragon STAB isn't very good in Doubles.
Defensively, Dragon resists the entire 4 Basic Types (Grass, Fire, Water and Electric), and is only weak to two: Ice and Dragon. Dragon being, you know, the type we are talking about; and Ice-Type being a rarer type to be viable, especially in Doubles, which matters more than Singles.
It was also one of the best neutral defensive typings in the game. You wanna blame it on stats? Fucking Altaria was a good Dragon Dance sweeper in DPP UU.
Dragon-Type was objectively busted. Like, insanely so. DragMag was literally a thing, being able to remove the one or two Steels on a team, the only thing stopping the Dragons from basically picking up a KO every time they attacked, was viable. Stacking 3+ Dragons on a team was viable!
2. Fairy resisting Bug makes sense because in a lot of folklore, fairies control bugs and creatures of lower dominion. It's a lot more fair to say Fairy shouldn't resist Bug than your prior statement though.
Nah, they are good. Glimmora is a great Stealth Rock setter in BSS. And hazards are amazing to break Focus Sashses. Not as dominant as in Smogon metas though since switching is noticably weaker.Hazards are non existant in official competitive pokemon
They need to be buffed not nerfed.
With how common Intimidate shuffling is as well as Amoongus whole existance and despise from VGC players, if anything I'll expect more, stronger buffs to them.
Yeh, that was mostly where I was getting at.Nah, they are good. Glimmora is a great Stealth Rock setter in BSS. And hazards are amazing to break Focus Sashses. Not as dominant as in Smogon metas though since switching is noticably weaker.
If that's the case, then I really do seriously advocate Smogon just abandons this ship and makes its own meta while it still can.Considering the usage is still very low AND Intimidate shuffling + Amoongus are still what they are, if anything I'll expect *more* hazard buffs in the future.
It's more likely they get a buff then a nerf, in the only format Gamefreak really cares about they're nonexistent.So, this is a subject someone raised to me, and I was curious what people here thought - Do Hazards need to be nerfed?
Like, it's kinda hard to deny how much hazards have shaped competitive Pokemon at this point. Teambuilding at this point is shaped around the mechanic, how it can be set, how it can be removed, and how you can avoid the dreaded damage caused by Stealth Rocks. It has only intensified with Gen IX, where a number of factors have made the mechanic a huge reason for the current misery endured in the meta, to where even something as innocuous as Ribombee is now subject to hate.
So the question is, should Hazards be significantly nerfed in some fashion, such as having them be temporary much like Weather, Terrain, and Screens are? Or should it just have the removal options expanded so that it acts as a less dominating mechanic? Curious what people think.
The main thing (which unfortunately most Smogon players do not understand, albeith I saw some mention it), is that Smogon per se is trying to play a game with rules that the game is not made about.If that's the case, then I really do seriously advocate Smogon just abandons this ship and makes its own meta while it still can.
It didn’t surprises me that bulky offense managed to not just survive, but prosper better than most playstyles in VGC. What does surprise me is that for all the addition of hyper offense Pokémon in SV, bulky offense remained the top favorite in VGC, but it’s not that difficult to see why.The main thing (which unfortunately most Smogon players do not understand, albeith I saw some mention it), is that Smogon per se is trying to play a game with rules that the game is not made about.
It's like if you're trying to play soccer with 4 goalkeepers, or Rugby with 3 balls. Sure you "can" play it, but the rules and field were not made with the intention of that interaction, and ofc it does become a mess.
Since a few generations, GameFreaks has been focusing intensely over VGC and making Pokemon a "esports" (memes included).
E-sports however require to be interesting to watch. One of the main reason for the presence of such high impact mechanics like Dynamax and Terastal, and decent variance with secondary effects, is because these create spectator interest. As much as it would be interesting to play a calculated match of chess where all that matters is player decision and everyone is on even field, in reality the tension generated by a crit or freeze at a weird moment is much higher and the hype behind surprise comebacks is massive when it comes to spectatorship.
In same way, they always try to nuke any type of stall strategy (see matches having strict timer and recovery nerf) because these matches are just not fun to watch.
Do note that it's a pretty weird misconception that VGC is "all ho with broken pokemon". In fact, it's a very calculated metagame, and while matches are indeed often over in few turns, most pokemon do invest in bulk and positioning is as important as ever, specifically because you only have 4 mons and losing even a single one can be match deciding.
Es this was one of the latest top 10
View attachment 562505
You'd expect everyone playing ChienPao / ChiYou / Fluttermane / Bundle / etc etc, yet.... most teams actually play bulky offense and there's even Yvar playing cursed stall (pls stop)
Interestingly, Trick Room right now is in a pretty weird spot where it's very matchup fishy.A speedy Pokémon can be dominant in Singles, but if they do not have a good base bulk in Doubles territory, good luck surviving a priority move or getting struck back by a bulkier but equally stronger Pokémon, or dealing with all sort of speed control.
Flutter Mane and Iron Bundle, especially the former, managed to get away thanks to the big Special Defense and Defense they have, respectively, allowing to worry less of getting hit. That way, while their sheer Speed also make them vulnerable to Trick Room, they can still survive a strong move coming from Special Attack and Attack respectively so long it isn’t a high Base Power STAB Super Effective move. With that said, their high Speed means that it Trick Room is on, they can get into trouble, but their high bulk on one means that they aren’t in immediate danger, either.
It's not all HO, but it is extremely centralized. Look at what you posted. 8 Fluttermane, 5 Rillaboom, 6 Landorus, 7 Ogerpon...In Smogon Singles, if someone breaks ~40% you quickly see people calling for a ban just because they're bored of it. This meta hasn't had time to settle and there's 4 mons over that point.Do note that it's a pretty weird misconception that VGC is "all ho with broken pokemon". In fact, it's a very calculated metagame, and while matches are indeed often over in few turns, most pokemon do invest in bulk and positioning is as important as ever, specifically because you only have 4 mons and losing even a single one can be match deciding.
Es this was one of the latest top 10
View attachment 562505
You'd expect everyone playing ChienPao / ChiYou / Fluttermane / Bundle / etc etc, yet.... most teams actually play bulky offense and there's even Yvar playing cursed stall (pls stop)
Yes like everyone demanding to ban Lando-T for last 5 generations.It's not all HO, but it is extremely centralized. Look at what you posted. 8 Fluttermane, 5 Rillaboom, 6 Landorus, 7 Ogerpon...In Smogon Singles, if someone breaks ~40% you quickly see people calling for a ban just because they're bored of it.