Robofiend

i thought replays were rip?

Update: me and cressman on in 5-10 http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/battle-gen4ou-302273441

shit, yeah my bad something came up at work :'( Available from here on out if you're still around

Overall good post, I just think Dugtrio is more unhealthy than beneficial for the game right now. In particular, I'm not a fan of keeping Dugtrio around to check Magneton when it can be played around to some degree and struggles more against offense than defensive teams. Magneton is shockingly common right now and I think that without Dugtrio the metagame would adapt to things like Metagross and Magneton by gaining new threats like CB Swampert or Marowak, both of whom have legitimate uses as stallbreakers. I have always had trouble seeing Magneton as de facto problematic, mainly because of its lack of value outside of taking out Steel type walls. I'm less on board with this for a couple of reasons: First, these pokemon can't trap Heracross, Metagross, Blaziken, etc. etc. as well as Dugtrio can while also being able to Leichi bomb things. They just don't have the speed, firepower and acceptable HP stat to do all the jobs Dugtrio does. Calcs: 236 Atk Diglett Aerial Ace vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Heracross: 100-120 (64.5 - 77.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO 236 Atk Diglett Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Metagross: 80-96 (42.7 - 51.3%) -- 2.7% chance to 2HKO 252+ Atk Blaziken Quick Attack vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Diglett: 63-75 (74.1 - 88.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery (kek) 236 Atk Diglett Earthquake vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Medicham: 63-75 (46.6 - 55.5%) -- 71.5% chance to 2HKO AT pre-evos are considerably less useful than Dugtrio and imo running them would be equivalent to running Hail Chansey right now - a gimmick that can work well in one set of circumstances but is otherwise pretty useless. I don't really object to banning Arena Trap, but I think Diglett or Trapinch could be fine in lower tiers as well.

The time has come. EDIT: We'll be talking mostly about Dugtrio but we're also concerned whether other AT pokes should be banned as well, since they can perform a similar duty. Dugtrio is one of everyone's favorite things to hate and it's probably worth it to have another community discussion about it. Dugtrio has become a lot more common and a lot more useful since Gengar was banned, both as a special wall trapper and as a catchall way of removing physical attackers that are troubling for stall, like Ursaring, Heracross, weakened Metagross and lesser-used pokemon like Blaziken or Medicham. In past discussions, Dugtrio has always been passed off as not that viable due to specially bulky Arcanine being able to stop it with Espeed, Gengar getting a free pass on it once it's in play, and the use of walls like Venusaur or who don't fear the Sub-Reversal set as much as Chansey and Porygon2 do. But with the decline in usage amongst the former pokemon and the heightened viability of Weezing/P2 for stopping pokemon like Gyarados, who punishes Dugtrio users, it seems like it might be time to ban the Dugtrio again for similar reasons that we banned it the first time - it centralizes the metagame into a few key team builds (Dugtrio Stall, Special spam + trio, etc.), it's uncompetitive as hell, and it generally supports its team too well to allow players the freedom to develop new sets. Pros: - Checks special walls, stall amazingly - Rewards risky play, punishes formulism - Reliance on Liechi berry and susceptibility to entry hazards limit its opportunities in battle. Cons: - Uncompetitive, lacks counters (although teams can be engineered to be less weak to it) - Could be seen as centralizing - Lots of utility in current Metagame, as it can trap+checkm8 Metagross, Heracross, Ursaring and a host of other Phys attackers pretty easily.

This, Natural Cure is the best ability for a wall and it's not mentioned enough when people talk about Chansey. Vaporeon and Umbreon could run Heal Bell, but a low PP move that gives the opponent a free turn is a big loss, especially for Stall teams and especially on a low damage-output pokemon like Umbreon. Well, you're ignoring the fact that pokemon like Alakazam, Magneton, Jolteon, Kingdra, Ludicolo and Vaporeon could drop an attack or two to Toxic stall and still be threatening. Once Porygon2 takes Toxic it has a lot harder time standing up against repeated special attacks, letting special wallbreakers like Magneton do their job better. Other special walls like Venusaur or Umbreon aren't as threatened by Toxic, but are weak to CM and thus you get a dynamic special metagame instead of having one pokemon checking everything (pls no Espeon argument again, no one fucking runs Espeon). From what I see in OU matches, the problem is more that Chansey is centralizing than anything ese. It's clearly better than running other special walls like Porygon2 because it doesn't die to Toxic and that alone narrows the scope of what can work in OU and what can't. Venusaur, Ludicolo, Umbreon and Porygon2 used to see some use, now most have fallen off in favor of Chansey. Because of this, the pool of Physical attackers also gets constricted a bit. That said, it might make sense to get rid of Dugtrio first because that problem isn't going to get any better if we ban Chansey.

Like 5 or 6 mil at most (you don't need that many 31's tho)

Think Zangoose should be A- it's good against stall but Hitmontop & Armaldo get in the way in most matches. Zangoose's paper defenses really make its life hard, especially with the popularity of superfast sweepers like Buzz and Sneasel. Overall I almost always find its performance middling, despite having a useful ability, great attack stat and decent coverage it just doesn't support its team as well as you want it to - one attack from almost anything sends you into the red. Hypno should be be A+ because it's pretty 1-dimensional. It's going to have wish/protect and probably Toxic - the only surprise it might pack is Focus Punch for Sneasel or Psychic for for some STAB output. Imo it's not S Rank, despite being a great teammate its reliance on its one set combined with its weakness to the ever common Toxic stall means it needs support of its own to function - which isn't true of S Ranks in general. I'm also down on Roselia - the popularity of Psychics, Sneasel, Top (or other could-be Rapid Spinners) and a lot of other potent attackers with STABs that can wound Rosy makes it a relatively hard thing to get into play. If it goes physically bulky it can abuse Poliwrath's popularity but then surprise Ice Beams or coverage moves from bulky waters are no longer a safe entry. Overall, it's a flimsy spiker in a tier where even the walls can hit it for decent damage. B+ imo. Sharknado for B: even with CB it's weak, it can't switch in and it gets walled by Poliwrath, Lapras and Hitmontop. Needs a lot of support and careful play to be effective and is weak to several S Ranks Speaking of S-Rank: Lapras is a beast. Its speed puts it ahead of Poliwrath, Walrein and Armaldo - all really viable and scary pokemon that sort of check each other but all fall to Lapras after some prior damage or Spikes. Not even to mention that it can Perish trap or just use Perish Song to keep setup pokes like Grumpig at bay, or combine with spikes to force switches and rack up damage. I almost think Armaldo should be S but I'll go with A+, absolutely great poke but it suffers from how dominant Water types are. Nonetheless, it breaks pretty much every wall in the tier.

Ban slowking, give scizor a couple of weeks should work. Per "the rules" we're not supposed to ban more than one thing at a time.

Welp, thought it was a joke but it looks like my LYLE days are for real over Was fun being a part of the team for the last few years and I'll miss all the bullshitting and team chat and all that. It's unlikely that I'll ever really come back to play the game, I was only in it for the spectating and occasionally getting beat in NU by K9, so have some fun and keep the LYLE #! spirit going. Good luck winning them tournies, hope life gives y'all some good RNG! o7

Damn, guess it's time to go join cody's team lol

why'd i get kicked?

Frex said he had the post covered (crosses fingers, hopes for rematch)

this was the 4th time I beat this guy... he just keeps coming back and challenging me lmao http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/oususpecttest-300484923 claimed that I "haxed" him every time, including this game

seems legit

I don't think anyone here is talking about quickfixes, we're talking about the fact that nearly every aspect of the game is a grind that players get sick of.

A better trade system would be an improvement but I'm not super convinced. It's not like a trade system is going to make people want to go dig around in the bushes for hours for a pittance of an item - the gameplay of farming just flat out sucks. And more importantly, even if it does happen that Sticks or Blackglasses or what have you become way more common because of item farmers (inb4 bots), it still doesn't change the fact that I have to grind for the money to buy those things. In either case - high prices are a secondary effect of the fact that the gameplay for both gold farming and item farming is relatively unbearable. But it's a complete mystery as to how this will ever change! We've been told, "we know this is monotonous but we can't just make the game easy" for near eons, but it's still a complete mystery to me where this "fun gameplay" is going to come from. As Senile pointed out in his mangnum opus, there just isn't incentive to do everything that the game expects us to do: it's all mindless and there aren't even great rewards for winning tournaments anymore. I shouldn't have to point this out but: cartridge Pokemon doesn't offer fun gameplay, and you're kind of bound by that. It's not like Berry Farming, Pickup, Beauty Contests or any of the elements of the cartridge games will be any more "fun" that just spam battling trainers - it's just a series of mindless button mashing activities that require no mental energy and are thus unbearable. Granted, breeding is a relative success, but its contingent on me going out and button mashing for long enough to get the raw materials. More frustrating than all of this is that the development team regularly overlooks the objectively best part of Pokemon, which could replace tedious, mindless gameplay: pvp competition. If I were rewarded with money for beating higher ranked players or Battle Points that could be used to buy more comps, I'd be a straight up addict, and so would most players. Beating people is fun. Hell, losing can even be fun. In either case, if I have to choose between mindlessly nuking enemies with my level 100 Persian and battling friends, enemies and teammates I'd surely choose the second. But of course, this is always cast aside by the devs as being prone to abuse. They seem to not have noticed that payday/pic up farming clearly are as well - and on a much grander scale. I don't think it's necessary for me to go into detail on ways to prevent abuse, as I've already done this a lot in past threads. It's not hard to think up ways to block players from continually battling the same person or playing for hours on end to farm as much reward as possible. TL;DR: PvP is pretty much the only "fun" part of Pokemon. It's the only gameplay that actually gets players excited and is the main reason for the existence of teams at this juncture. It's also the main reason that Pokemon exists as a game outside of 12 year olds who buy the cartridge, beat the story and then throw it in the trash 6 months later. Devs: the game you're making has a global competitive following and you're just standing there thinking of ways to implement berries. Currently comp play is a total money pit: there's no ROI for my veritable army of comps - they're just going to sit in my PC and never do anything for me. Sure, I might get a comp shiny if I took the time to play countless tournaments, train a perfect team and manage all the grinding - but the non-transferability of those winnings makes me no better off than not playing at all... which is exactly what I've been doing since non-tradable tournament rewards were introduced. I'm not the only one who feels this way, and I'm sure future recruits to the game feel the same way.

I bring this up time and time again but the Devs have a completely warped view of how hard this game should be to grind and regularly overcompensate by making the gameplay completely mind numbing. Grind for items so you can get moves? Grind for money to buy items? Grind for 45k BP to get event moves? What? With each update come minor improvements (grinding BP isn't completely cancerous now, Hidden Power can be worked around, more moves and options become available) but they always come at the cost of player time and energy. There's nothing inherently fun about mindlessly killing things, and that's essentially all of the gameplay in PokeMMO outside of battling other people. For every 3 hours you spend playing in a tournament, getting haxed out in the third round and then watching the winner stall their way to first place, you're spending many more just preparing - and while the gift shinies are nice they're really no substitute for good gameplay. This game just isn't worth it right now (nor has it been for quite a while). Why on earth would you bother to: 1. Catch ~30 pokemon looking for good breeders 2. Grind for $100-$300k in braces, breeding, everstones - possibly more if you go for hidden powers. 3. Grind for 510 Evs or pay someone to do it, more cash grinding 4. Grind for items to buy move tutors 5. Grind for event moves 6. Option: wreck your hard earned EVs by rolling the dice on the hidden power guy 7. Grind your pokes up to 50, hope you don't accidentally evolve it or learn over a move or something. There are always people who say "oh it's not that bad" but the relatively small size of the competitive community in this game speaks to how much of a pain it is for people to get into. The same people who defend these decisions come back in 3-6 months and either forum lurk indefinitely, log on exclusively for tournaments, or just disappear into other better games. Keeping people around should be a priority, not a nice side effect of making a game that caters to the tiny fraction of people with the free time and mental fortitude to grind heavily for pretty modest rewards. There's almost no reason to get good at this game. It's not like LoL where being good equates to getting the best gear, reputation amongst other players and seeing your name in lights. The fact that there's no competitive ladder, no reward for passive PVP play and that even winning a tournament doesn't get you any closer to having a comp that you want makes it a huge labor for a pretty unreliable payoff. If you look at who wins tournaments you'll see that almost no one who started playing the game last year regularly does well: it's often older players who have lots of money from shinies or lucky eggs. With all the players who've started playing this game in the past year, there's a noticeable lack of people who are reasonably good at comp and can stomach the horrible pains of the devs constantly making things more tedious. For instance, it's been literally years since I first pointed out how unbearable EV training is. The only noticeable changes are that now you can swap out EV grinding for paying a premium for vitamins - requiring you to grind even more cash by mindlessly killing the island 6 & 7 trainers. Good MMO games have gameplay that is inherently fun/interesting. This game, after years of disgruntled forum lurkers (like me), pointing out how Sisyphean this game is without any non-competitive endgame or passive competitive rewards, continues to neglect glaring holes in it's viability - leading it to attract new players for a couple of months, let them struggle to build a team, and then say "fuckit" because the metagame changes and the stuff they built last month is no longer viable. The devs really just don't care about the competitive experience and they seem to make it more and more obvious with each passing update. I'm even sure how I'd ever come back with this system - as someone with 1-3 hours per day to actually devote to playing a video game, the amount of time and energy it takes to play the game just doesn't add up to the reward in any way, shape or form. /rant

Taunt Skarm is cool even if no one uses it in this gen

This thread needed a bump anyway [spoiler] rip JJ it was fun [/spoiler] I'd like to hear what people think about Chansey - it's still really common but I'm wondering what people from the community think of this

Yeah Skarm/Forre both A rank for reasons listed above - both have weaknesses, both provide utility to their team (Taunt Skarm OP) and both are relatively common in OU.

But the quake damage is real. CB Swampert and CB Flygon are more of an issue when you use Forretress. Suddenly it becomes an issue to choose between taking a hard hit with Forretress or mispredicting and letting a Flying pokemon take a Painful STAB Dragon Claw or Waterfall (or Tpunch or Rock Slide or what have you). 252 Atk Choice Band Flygon Earthquake vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Forretress: 117-138 (33.1 - 39%) -- 8.5% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery 252 Atk Choice Band Flygon Fire Punch vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Forretress: 232-276 (65.7 - 78.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery 252+ Atk Choice Band Swampert Earthquake vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Forretress: 136-162 (38.5 - 45.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery I'm not saying Forretress is bad, it's just not on the same level as Skarmory when it comes to things like Heracross, Aerodactyl and Haunter, all of whom are unharmed by Forre.

LF choice band Also Forretress just isn't as reliable as Skarmo.

Can someone tell Frexa to clear his inbox I can smell the fear

I agree with moving up cradiggly doodly and atariarino