So you can pokemon battle online now. Pokemon

Soda · Post by **Soda** » Wed Dec 12, 2012 6:37 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: On sleep: the only 100% effective sleep move is Spore, which is only available for Parasect and Shroomish.

Shroomish evolves into an OU pokemon. I have 2 brelooms and have put whole teams to sleep. It's not fun for anyone.

Yes, there are ways to counter sleep..
Yes, it's clunky to institute weird bans..

But these are rules for competitive play. To keep the metagame healthy. I think they do ok.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Dec 12, 2012 7:16 pm

Again, Breloom is Speed 70, which is slightly below average. How did you manage to put the entire enemy team to sleep before they could act? And if you did that, don't you think your opponent might have deserved it, coming into a Pokemon battle with zero pokemon with an even average speed value?

I mean, we're not talking about someone taking an Aerodactyl or Jolteon and "killing you before you can act". We're talking about getting schooled by Pokemon who are slightly under average in speed. It's not a monster in any defensive stat either, as it is below average in Defense, Special Defense, and Hit Points. Breloom is considered good because it has high damage output and good STAB on several nice damaging attacks. If you're just trying to stay alive until you can land Spore, Parasect is more resilient.

-Username17

Soda · Post by **Soda** » Wed Dec 12, 2012 7:43 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Again, Breloom is Speed 70, which is slightly below average. How did you manage to put the entire enemy team to sleep before they could act? And if you did that, don't you think your opponent might have deserved it, coming into a Pokemon battle with zero pokemon with an even average speed value?

With a choice scarf, breloom can outspeed any poke with less than base 130 speed. Sleep lasts 1 to 4 rounds. Even if you have to switch because of the item, you come out ahead because they average 2.5 lost turns.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Wed Dec 12, 2012 9:01 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Again, Breloom is Speed 70, which is slightly below average. How did you manage to put the entire enemy team to sleep before they could act? And if you did that, don't you think your opponent might have deserved it, coming into a Pokemon battle with zero pokemon with an even average speed value?

I mean, we're not talking about someone taking an Aerodactyl or Jolteon and "killing you before you can act". We're talking about getting schooled by Pokemon who are slightly under average in speed. It's not a monster in any defensive stat either, as it is below average in Defense, Special Defense, and Hit Points. Breloom is considered good because it has high damage output and good STAB on several nice damaging attacks. If you're just trying to stay alive until you can land Spore, Parasect is more resilient.

-Username17

Breloom learns Substitute, Frank. So it goes like this:
Breloom switches in on something it resists or outspeeds and sets up Substitute.
Opponent swings on the Sub, gets put to sleep.
Opponent switches out, Breloom puts the switch to sleep or makes a new Sub.
Sub eats the next attack, Breloom puts them to sleep.
Repeat.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Dec 12, 2012 9:22 pm

Soda wrote:With a choice scarf...

Mask wrote:Breloom learns Substitute...

The Choice Scarf strategy is 100% incompatible with the Substitute strategy for obvious reasons. Breloom is weak to Flying, Poison, Fire, Psychic, and Ice, and has below average speed. I'm not saying that you can't pull off a Substitute/Spore strategy, I'm saying that there are a metric fuck tonne of perfectly valid counters that include such obscurities as "Be Rape Ape, punch Breloom in the dick with Overheat until he dies".

I mean the core complaint here is that sleep effects are supposed to be SO BROKEN that they need to be B&. And I'm just not seeing it. I'm not seeing it at all. Whether you're doing a Butterfree, Breloom, or Parasect based sleep strategy, the things that will ruin your day are all things that are independently good in a lot of cases.

-Username17

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Wed Dec 12, 2012 9:46 pm

Scarfloom doesn't normally run Spore and Rape Ape rapes a lot of things. However, if Rape Ape swings into a Substitute, something's getting put to sleep. Either it (if it stays) or the switch (if it doesn't). Speed doesn't matter if Breloom is allowed to set up.

I think the idea for the Sleep Clause is it centers the metagame around a very small number of strategies. As opposed to the pre-No Guard OHKO Clause, which was "sperg sperg sperrrrg".

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 12:27 am

...there was a clause against No Guard + OHKO? Here are the ways you can pull that off:
1. You use it on Machamp, because you have a OHKO move and Machamp has No Guard
2. You Skill Swap with the enemy Machamp, use your OHKO and then keep using it, though there are ways of being immune to any of them that can just crop up on regular teams (Flying/Levitate > Fissure, Ghost > Guillotine/Horn Drill, Ice > Sheer Cold, Sturdy > All of them)
3. You're in a double-battle, you Skill Swap with your own Machamp, and then go to town. Actually you might need to swap Machamp out - I'm not sure if there are any Skill Swappers that get OHKO moves.

As for entry hazards, I could see them working better in an alternate universe like so:
1. Stealth Rock "breaks" when it hits someone, so it's good for only one switch-in. Now you literally use your Fighting types to smash them so Volcarona has a safe entry.
2. If you're Flying/Levitating/Magnet-Rising/Ballooning and lose that effect at any time (Roost, Smack Down, Magnet-Rise ends, Balloon bursts, Ability change/suppression, Type change, Ring Target gets switcherood onto you), you are immediately affected by any Spikes/Toxic Spikes in the area. Holy shit, Smackdown now has a use outside of double battles!

This does not equal wanting to change it now though.

Edit: technically there's one more that can learn Spore, and that's our good friend Smeargle. And everyone's totally afraid of Smeargle's fierce base stats, right? Oh wait, no, they're not. Smeargle is handy for breeding... if you can seriously tell me you're willing to go through the trouble of sketching those moves.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 1:28 am

No, there's just a general OHKO Clause. The point is that it's only with No Guard that it's remotely relevant.

You're gonna have to explain how Ice beats Sheer Cold.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 2:03 am

I was under the impression that being Ice type made you immune to Sheer Cold. If I'm mistaken, then there's still Sturdy > All of them though, and with Sturdy now having the "No OHKO from damage" thing, it's actually relevant and there are legitimate reasons you might want to use it.

And Soda: no, I genuinely don't find the fighting interesting (stacking multipliers is perversely fun, so going Sunny Day + Charcoal + STAB Fire Blast on a Dry Skin Parasect is hilarious). Even watching competetive battles on youtube, the only ones I found interesting were the Magikarp sweep (Endure or Focus Sash to 1 HP, switch to Smeargle, Spore, Belly Drum, Baton Pass, Flail spam) and the Aron sweep (Tyranitar leads for Sandstream, gets taken out, then Sturdy Aron + Endeavour + Shell Bell + Sand Storm damage). Because they exploited cute tricks to be funny.

Almost every game is made worse by the inclusion of other people. What I *want* out of the Pokemon games is to steamroll enemies while I go about capturing new cute pokemon to make teams with, then doing performances and things. Now PC software has the benefit of letting you just say "I have a Multiscale Dragonite with X Nature, 31s for IVs and X EVs" rather than grinding that process like a sucker for actual DS connect. But you're still making the best of a shitty situation by taking one of the worst parts of the game and then mixing other people into it. It then behooves you to just run Sleep teams or whatever simply to troll people and get your fun that way.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 6:52 am

Mask_De_H wrote:Scarfloom doesn't normally run Spore and Rape Ape rapes a lot of things. However, if Rape Ape swings into a Substitute, something's getting put to sleep. Either it (if it stays) or the switch (if it doesn't). Speed doesn't matter if Breloom is allowed to set up.

I think the idea for the Sleep Clause is it centers the metagame around a very small number of strategies. As opposed to the pre-No Guard OHKO Clause, which was "sperg sperg sperrrrg".

The Rape Ape is faster than a Breloom. Also it's a very powerful sweeper. So I don't know how it intends to survive the experience long enough to Substitute. Are we positing that the Breloom came in on a Pokemon that was switching out because it was somehow worthless against a Breloom and the Breloom already had Substitute up before the Rape Ape came onto the field? Because at that point you're still losing the Substitute before you even get a move off in the Rape Ape's direction.

Spore is a modest improvement over a normal Substitute situation where you have a Substitute and then hit the target really hard. But only in that you have the time to put up a second substitute and then hit the target really hard.

But where are we tactically now? We're at the point that a Breloom can use Substitute when they are in a match with a good type matchup and then totally do very well if their opponent switches in with a Pokemon who doesn't have a good Substitute counter. How is any of that Sleep's fault? How does that even count as something that is a problem? If someone is doing a Substitute gambit, you're probably better off switching to something that is good against a Substitute gambit. Like a Roarer or something.

-Username17

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 7:26 pm

There's also pokemon immune to sleep.

And pokemon with sleeptalk.

Wrathzog · Post by **Wrathzog** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 8:41 pm

So, without the Sleep Clause, what would the metagame for Competitive Pokemon be like?

because if it's "Sleep Team," "Anti-Sleep Team," and "Everything else that Loses," then that is a shitty meta.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Dec 13, 2012 11:48 pm

You would actually be hard-pressed to make an "everything else that loses" team. You'd need a team that:
[*]Is very slow. As in, everyone.
[*]Has nobody immune to Sleep
[*]Does not have any instances of Lum/Chesto Berries, Snore or Sleep Talk
[*]Also can't fight its way out of a paper bag

Literally having one Infernape Rape Ape will sweep every Sleep Inducer the enemy has. But you can do okay with a Vigoroth (give it Eviolite as the item because, as a non-fully-evolved, it gets the doubled defences from it) just being immune to sleep. Or any of the other sleep-immune things. And at the end of the day, you could give your slow things Lum/Chesto berries.

So the metagame wouldn't change much. Mostly it just means more pokemon would have the odd Hypnosis or whatever on the off chance.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 1:47 am

Wrathzog wrote:So, without the Sleep Clause, what would the metagame for Competitive Pokemon be like?

He has a base speed of 125 (above average) and his signature move is an 80% sleep chance Dark Void.

I just find being put to sleep is an 'anti-fun' move. Yeah there's ways to adapt to it, but it then cuts down the pool of usable pokemon a bit more.

A large problem though is that the single player game never prepares you for what competitive play is like. There's no Substitute using gym, there's no Spiking gym, there's no Choice Scarf gym. Those are the actual challenges that teach you the complexities of the gym

This is another reason which drives the core Pokemon player far, far away from 'competitive' play.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 2:10 am

(Reminder: Darkrai is Uber tier, being a legendary with good stats and a nice move pool. But isn't picked in Uber tiers very often because his biggest trick is putting people to sleep - especially in multibattles. So removing the Sleep Clause but retaining the tiers means more Uber sets will have Darkrai because he can do his thing at all. Removing the tiers as well and having every game be a free-for-all basically means he's there to counter the Mewtwo that every team will have.)

Keep in mind that pokemon is a game that is marketed to kids, that adults happen to play, and thus has the difficulty and tactics* of a "kids" game, not magic the gathering or something. The main people who play pokemon don't want to have to deal with crap like Choice Items, SubPunching and Entry Hazards, so they're never going to make the core game really cover those things - and by the same token, they're never going to expand the mechanics out into something much more in-depth, you'll instead have spin-off games for that.

Competetive gamers really are outliers, and the regular game you play at home should not be expected to cater to them. I just wish more games would be single player only: adding more people makes most things worse - why would video games be different?

*ie "simpler than most jRPGs". Even the switching in and out thing is more simple than "everyone is out, you choose your targets", it simply adds a prediction element rather than target priorities. Once you factor in entry hazards and substitutes you're probably looking at something that is, in total, as complex as FF7 or 8. Note that kids don't really play the FF games as much as teenagers/adults, and that's only partially due to the emo thing.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 2:53 am

Frank: we're at the point where it takes a lot longer to get to the same result (team incapacitated) with a foregone conclusion baked in. If Breloom doesn't switch into a Rape Ape (which would be dumb) or is allowed to set up, that's the game. Roar is working off lower priority than Spore so gets put to sleep and has to switch. A switch-in is a free turn to Sub or Spore; a Chesto Berry gives you another shot, but then it prevents you from taking advantage of Leftovers, Life Orbs, Eviolite or other useful items to kill not-Breloom. Give it to your Rape Ape, swing into an opponent's switch out for Staryu or Jellicent or something, wave bye to Rape Ape.

In a vacuum, one on one, yeah, Rape Ape beats Breloom. Pokemon isn't a one on one thing. The Smogon sperglords try to prevent their competitive game from turning into a one on one thing.

Koumei: I know you hate people and shit, but it's pretty selfish to want to remove the connectivity for a game that made its name on connectivity. And completely retarded for people not you.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 3:30 am

Yes, but the game certainly shouldn't cater specifically to people who want to battle each other (especially online, as that doesn't even involve buying Nintendo products).

As much as I'd love it if game companies personally called me to get my permission for everything before release, we know that's never happening, and I'll make do with being annoyed with the amount of connectivity they already require, being glad there are ways around most of these things, and asserting that the game is still designed for kids to battle against the AI/against other kids they personally know on the schoolyard or at home. It would be foolish from a money/playerbase perspective for them to cater to you rather than to Timmy, Suzie and Little Takeda. Just like it would be foolish for them to cater to me by removing all connectivity and having Nurse Joy get her tits out once in a while. By wanting the game to be more like competetive play, what you really want is a different game.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 3:50 am

So, I was a Smogon admin for quite a long time and invented a number of the early DP strategies. Perhaps I can shed some light on the current rules/clauses situation, and why things evolved the way they have. I hope from that you believe that I at least know what I'm talking about.

Let me say straight off the bat that I disagree with a lot of the stuff that currently stands as rules -- I think they are no longer necessary. Some of my fellows Smogonauts have agreed and went to form their own website over it (well, mostly because double battles are treated as second-class citizens on Smogon whereas they are the official Nintendo format) -- a group that includes the three-time worlds winner, and pretty much everyone who regularly places at the official tournaments.

So, getting down to business...

Tiers: Nothing wrong with this. There is a mode of gameplay where everything is available: it's called ubers. People even play it. A lot.
Is it still necessary? No reason it ever wouldn't be.

Sleep clause: dates back to RBY, where it was 100% necessary. Sleep lasted a minimum of three turns back then, so whoever was luckier getting their Lovely Kiss Jynx putting an entire team to sleep actually would win the game.
Is it still necessary? Arguable. I'm not going to wade into the debate on this one. I think it adds more to the game than it removes.

Freeze clause: This is an RBY relic, where you would never unfreeze except under circumstances that would not happen in a match.
Is it still necessary? No.

Species clause: This comes from RBY, where it was actually highly beneficial to compose most of your team out of Tauros. Lasts well up until about Advance (multiple Salamences are just too good).
Is it still necessary? IMO, should have been scrapped with DP. Definitely no longer needed.

OHKO clause: This one is actually not from RBY, but GSC. It was implemented after someone named Fish (who is still a Smogon member) revealed Fishtauros, which was vastly more powerful than anything else in GSC (moveset: Horn Drill, Fissure, Rest, Sleep Talk). This completely destroyed anything it would face because of how fucking tanky[/b] everything in that generation was. It turned the entire game on its head -- you either played that, or you lost. It was even better than Snorlax that gen.
Is it still necessary? Advance changed the way EVs worked (could no longer have 255 in every stat), so OHKO moves became a risky proposition. IMO, it should have been scrapped in Advance.

Evasion clause: This one has a weird history. It first came around from RBY, where games became about who could get their minimize Chansey off the ground first. But most people then never even used this clause. Evasion was good and strong throughout GSC too. It got added in Netbattle for Advance and just gained traction from there.
Is it still necessary? Fuck no. Evasion moves became pretty risky in Advance because of the EV change, and never were a problem in GSC even because of Skarmory. I get a lot of agreement whenever I brought this up on Smogon, btw.

Can't comment on any further rules, as they're all a bit after my time. However, I believe that Smogon got rather...rules-happy...after I left, because the way of making decisions changed. They tried to do some sort of democratic process of deciding BL champs and rules (before it was just all the admins would decide on it), and IMO it's made a complete clusterfuck of things.

Hope that sheds some light on where some of this has come from.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 4:00 am

Now as far as the type chart balance goes...I disagree about the "nooooo don't remove types!!!" bit. It doesn't really take a lot to balance the types out. All you need to do is:

1) Remove steel.
2) Make poison Super Effective against water.

Tada! Now you still have some overall winners and losers in this scheme, but the most polarized pieces on both ends are gone. I firmly believe that Steel was a mistake and an overreaction to the Psychic dominance in RBY. If you're not down with the "remove Steel" train, you can instead remove a lot of its resists and make out reasonably okay.

Wrathzog · Post by **Wrathzog** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 4:25 am

Koumei wrote:You would actually be hard-pressed to make an "everything else that loses" team. You'd need a team that:
can't counter sleep

This actually answers my question.

I keep typing things to Koumei but I keep ending up at the same point:
You are a Casual Player who wants to play his Casual Game. This is not a Slur of any sort, it simply is. The Competitive environment does not appeal to you and that is okay.
But do not mix what you want to play with what they're playing. You absolutely CANNOT pass yourself off as an expert or authority on the Competitive pokemon metagame because you have already admitted that you dislike the very idea of PVP (or interaction with people at all but I can't fault you for that).
It would be like Ghandi trying to make comments on General Patton's progress during the North African Campaign.

And regardless of how you feel about the topic, other people DO want to play Pokemon at a "competitive" level. Let them do that and leave it well alone.

Surgo wrote:1) Remove steel.
2) Make poison Super Effective against water.

I fucking called that shit.

-e-
reworded some stuff. also

Koumei wrote:By wanting the game to be more like competetive play, what you really want is a different game.

Shit man now we've come full circle.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 6:15 am

So people other than the whiners I used to play with ban Chansey too back in RBY?

honestly, I don't see what the big deal is. Chansey is slow, and a strong enough fighting attack can in fact knock its OVER 9000 hit points out in one turn. I've seen it happen. I've done it fighting someone who used chansey against me (level 50-55 range, might be different at level 100). And Chansey is slow as dirt, while I seem to remember fighting types being faster.

Is Tauros that good in RBY? I honestly never used it before so I don't know.

I liked Chansey, Nidoking, Alakazam, Snorlax, Clefable, and Lapras as my battling team.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 6:19 am

I always liked a buddy's Countering Chansey.

Something hits Chansey with a physical attack that doesn't kill it, Chansey's gonna murder it.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 6:27 am

eww, that's pretty good. I just used the old minimize/seismic toss combo. It's old hat now (and I think it's been made unavailable now without some major gymnastics), but at the time no one in my peer group had thought of it, and everyone was gunning for my chansey. It didn't take long until almost everyone else's competitive groups had Swift, and Fighting type pokemon became a lot more popular.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 6:42 am

Wrathzog wrote:
Koumei wrote:You would actually be hard-pressed to make an "everything else that loses" team. You'd need a team that:
can't counter sleep
This actually answers my question.

How? Among the counters to sleep are "bring out a pretty good hitter like Aerodactyl or Rape Ape that you are probably using anyway". Of the high end sleep effects, there are literally only 3 Pokemon in the non-uber tiers who can use them. Of them, the highest speed is 70 and the highest defense is 80. "Just punching them in the dick" is totally viable as a "counter".

If you're willing to accept considerably lower chances of sleeping, you can get Hypnosis on a Gengar, which is pretty badass. But Hypnosis is only a little better than a coin flip and Gengar's primary draw is that he hits like a hammer. Hypnosis appears on competition Gengars because it's a thing to do when you're about to KO the opponent's Pokemon and you're pretty sure the enemy is going to switch on you to something that can bounce a shadow ball. Because then at least you get a coin flip's chance of putting the new guy to sleep and if you have to switch yourself then at least you have a free turn to do it in.

The thing is that sleep clause or no sleep clause, sleep moves do appear in the OU tier. Brelooms do use Spore and Gengars do use Hypnosis. They don't run into the Sleep Clause because the only thing the Sleep Clause does is allow the other player to switch out their sleeping Pokemon and then throw a temper tantrum if you sleep them again. But since Brelooms actually use Spore to set up time to put up a Substitute and then Focus Punch from behind it, and Gengars use Hypnosis when they are about to get switched on to buy time to potentially switch themselves, it doesn't fucking make any difference!

An actual Sleep Team is possible, probably based on Roserade's Sleep Powder and hoping you get lucky. But there are ways to hammer that down. Up to and including "just punching them in the face". Of course, there are ways to really hose up sleep that are right in the game that are not used in Smogon fights because no one is allowed to make a sleep team! Primeape is just not used even though he forces sleepers to use something else while fighting him. Sleep curing berries are not used at all even though they are totally an item you could have. And so on.

The Sleep Clause specifically and obviously shrinks the metagame. I don't see how you could even argue differently.

-Username17

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Dec 14, 2012 7:07 am

Technically, Chesto Berries see plenty of use: ChestoResto. But only for self-inflicted sleep, similar to Persim berries for self-inflicted Confusion.

Wrathzog wrote:You absolutely CANNOT pass yourself off as an expert or authority on the Competitive pokemon metagame because you have already admitted that you dislike the very idea of PVP (or interaction with people at all but I can't fault you for that).

I actually remain educated on the metagame - typically just to look at good movesets for individual pokemon when I can't be fucked filtering through the movelists on serebii/bulbapedia. Granted, the movelists end up looking very similar because that's what the competetive environment does.

Seriously. I know how that game you play that isn't Pokemon generally plays out, and what people do in it. Much like I know what happens in golf even though that game doesn't interest me.

If your entire team completely collapses when faced with an opponent who is allowed to put more than one dude to sleep at a time, then your team isn't actually very good. Or to put it another way: if the Sleep Clause didn't exist, do you honestly think you'd find a whole slew of people fielding Sleep Teams with "put all of the enemies to sleep and then win" as their main tactic?