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Shiny Wars 2025 - FAQ Here are some of the most commonly asked questions that we've been asked regarding shiny wars - Feel free to ask anything not included here in the comments too and we'll get it added to the main post too. Q: Can last year's winners play this year's Shiny War? A: Yes, last year's winners are allowed to play this year too. Q: Is there plans to change the prize at all for Shiny Wars? A: At this time there’s no plans to change the prize for Shiny Wars. It will remain to be the Sparkling/Charcoal Dragon Wings (with the distribution year marking). Q: Why are there no live leaderboards for this year? A: Because this event is all manually moderated on our end, it’s unfeasible for us to provide one due to needing to tally everyone's scores ourselves. Q: If I get a regular shiny & an Alpha shiny of the same species, will only one count towards the Duplicate species clause? A: No, if you get a regular shiny and an Alpha shiny of the same species, you’ll get the full points for both, as Alphas are in their own tier. However, if you get multiple Alpha Shinies of the same species, the duplicate ones will be worth 25 points, not 50. Q: Do Alphas count separately towards the Unique Species clause for the team? A: No, the species bonus will be claimed for the team regardless of if the first one caught is an Alpha or non Alpha. Q: Why is Blitzle in Tier 6? Its horde is broken currently. A: This is something we’re aware of. It’s been confirmed to us already by the developers that this will be fixed via the next in-game update thus we will not change the tier. We do not know when this update will come though. Q: How do Nidoran M/F & Illumise/Volbeat work towards Unique Species & Duplicate Species clauses? A: Both genders of Nidoran (male & female) & Illumise & Volbeat all have their own species lines, so they will be treated as their own species. Q: Which takes priority for duplicate species clause - duplicate clause or the egg tier? A: 20 point egg clause takes priority, the lowest value points for a species will always be the one which gets marked for duplicate points. Q: What happens if you get a duplicate, but it’s Safari caught/Secret Shiny. A: The points are accumulated, so it’ll get marked as a duplicate, then you’ll get +5 for Safari, or +10 for Secret Shiny added onto the total points respectively. Q: Why is (insert pokemon name) in Tier X & not Tier Y instead? A: All of the tiering is based on the rarity of the species and/or the difficulty of the hunt. Q: Does the unique species bonus count towards the individual score and the MVP prize? A: It doesn’t, it only contributes to the team as a whole

No, the +5 points for Unique Species will be the species only, so for example: if I caught a shiny Rattata, I'd get the +5 bonus for the team for the Unique Species Clause if you then hatched a shiny Alpha Rattata you'd only get the individual points for the Rattata (the 50 for the Shalpha), and no unique points because I've already claimed the points for this species line. I hope this makes sense?

Groups smaller than 25 would not be fair for both the team as they realistically wouldnt stand a chance to win with such small numbers, and it'd be unfair to potentially take a spot from another full team with not full numbers. In an event with such strict rules like this and limited numbers, it's important for us to attempt to make it as fair as we possibly can for the people playing, this is the best way to do that.

Alphas are their own "tier", so Alpha will count as flat 50, separate from the individual tier of the species. So it'll count as 50 points, yeah. Teams are between 25-30 to make it fair for some teams as some of the smaller teams may not be able to fill up a bigger team of 50+ people as easily. Not to mention the fact that I really dislike the idea of bigger teams because it allows the wealthier players to just group together into a mega team and make the competition very unfair for everyone else.

Yeah, you can change hidden power types. It's done by using 40 of the type of gems you wish to change your hidden power to. So in your case - 40 Ground Gems for HP Ground.

@Servor5555 you are the goat my friend. Incredible achievement!

Yes, sleep clause will be removed - and all bans etc. will be reset too, i.e. Follow Me Jirachi will be freed.

I think you're right in most cases, I hate the idea of complex banning things in doubles - but this is one if not the only exception where I think it actually makes sense to do it personally. Jirachi is a great mon still and offers alot to the format even without Follow Me.

What to know? Jirachi has taken the Doubles metagame by storm, by being one of the most versatile and valuable Pokemon in the Doubles metagame. Boasting great 100 stats all across the board, great defensive typing, large movepool and most importantly - access to Follow Me - has made Jirachi an insanely valuable asset to many Doubles teams. Jirachi has become quickly the most prevalent Follow Me user in the entire metagame, while also carrying multiple other sets to catch opponents by surprise (such as Calm Mind/Cosmic Power sets). Jirachi has become very popular and very high winrate carrying Pokemon in the PokeMMO Doubles metagame. What is the issue? While it is very rare for things to become Uber territory in Doubles environment, due to having more counter-play available with the presence of two Pokemon on the field, Jirachi may have potentially crossed this line. This is due to the insane versatility that Jirachi carries, which has a very unhealthy effect on the metagame. The value Jirachi brings to the table and the unpredictability opponents have to face when battling against Jirachi has resulted the Doubles metagame in many negative ways. How is Jirachi potentially banworthy? Jirachi could be classified Uber in Doubles environment for two ways - Support Ubers and Unhealthy characteristics. One could make the case that Jirachi in Doubles environment is Support Uber Characteristics. Jirachi's ability to support its team is second to none. First and foremost, Jirachi is easily the best Follow Me Pokemon in the game, with its enormous bulk and great defensive typing. Not only this but Jirachi has plenty of supportive options available to really pin opponent into bad positions. The most obvious one is Jirachi's 60% flinch chance Iron Head. While for example Togekiss also carries the combination of Follow Me and 60% flinch move, Jirachi does this role enormously better because of its higher speed stat and Steel-type being far more spammable in the Doubles metagame than Flying-type attacks. Jirachi also does have very few Pokemon that can really oppress it. Ground-types like Garchomp have to be extremely vary of Icy Wind, leaving Jirachi being most threatened by Fire-types, which aren't the most common types in Doubles metagame to begin with. Furthermore Jirachi has other supportive tools available like Stealth Rock, Imprison, Encore, Fake Tears, Trick Room and all this is just scratching the surface. While Doubles metagame has plenty of great supportive options available, the ability in which Jirachi can support its team is miles above anything we have had in Doubles metagame yet. However, it all mostly comes down to Follow Me. While Smogon isn't and shouldn't be used to determine PokeMMO tiering decisions directly, it needs to be noted that in Smogon environment when Jirachi had access to the event move Follow Me, it was considered to be Doubles Ubers while without Follow Me it was deemed fine for the metagame. Follow Me can be argued is what truly pushes Jirachi to the incredible territory. It is miles better than any other Follow Me user like Togekiss, Blastoise, Electabuzz to name a few. So even if Jirachi wasn't deemed Supportive Ubers, it could still be argued that Jirachi monopolizing Follow Me play to itself has a notably unhealthy effect to the Doubles metagame, enough to warrant a ban. Another way which Jirachi is potentially unhealthy is being so unpredictable what comes to the role of Jirachi in the battle in general. Opponents could be caught completely off guard expecting to face a normal support Jirachi that suddenly starts to set up a sweep of its own with Calm Mind/Cosmic Power and opponent suddenly having no tools to stop this unexpected moveset. The solution? There are two potential solutions if Jirachi is considered banworthy. 1) Ban Jirachi from Doubles metagame 2) Remove event-move Follow Me from Jirachi Normally, complex bans are not desired because they leave a bad precedent. This could be argued in this situation as well, because ever removing any part of a Pokemon may open the floodgates for discussing if some other oppressive Pokemon should only have part of it removed to balance the tier. However, in this particular case the idea of just removing Follow Me from Jirachi could be worth discussing because it is an event-move and there is clear proof in Smogon environment that Jirachi having access to this move is what pushes it over the edge in Doubles environment. What's also important that this move only has an effect in Doubles, so any changes to this would leave Singles metagame untouched. What also needs to be addressed is that does Doubles metagame really need Jirachi? Generally complex bans are only explored when the alternative (complete ban) would not be a good solution to the healthiness of a metagame. I don't think Doubles metagame necessarily needs Jirachi, so pushing Jirachi as a Pokemon to Doubles Ubers could be also considered and would be the most straight-forward way to deal with the issue. Discussion prompt How do you feel about Jirachi in Doubles? Is it too strong, to the point of being banworthy? If so, is flat banning Jirachi altogether a good solution or should alternatives like Follow Me removal be discussed as a potential solution? We are looking forward to hear your thoughts. credit to @OrangeManiac for original draft.

For me Lucario is overly centralizing and requires too much attention from a teambuilding perspective otherwise it can just delete your whole team pretty effortlessly which is why I personally believe it's too unhealthy for the tier. In my opinion and in the opinion of others from what I’ve seen this is one of the worst states that the UU tier has been in for a long time now and a large part of that imo is due to Lucario and the attention it requires when you’re actually building teams. I think another thing that backs this statement is that as it’s been mentioned already at points of this thread, some mons have literally moved up from NU to help deal with Lucario being in the tier. Originally, I was fine with the idea of allowing some extra time to test it when Tangrowth dropped, but I don’t think that the tier is really any better with Tangrowth in it to help with dealing with Lucario. All in all - a lot of what I feel of the situation has been said in this thread already so in short, I think it’s too strong, requires way too much attention when teambuilding and honestly just removes any sort of creativity from most teams because more often than not you require 2/3 slots to help with not auto losing to Lucario, and even then you might not be prepared enough to deal with it because it can run numerous sets, both special or physical. I think it’s time we move on, remove it from the tier & allow people to build around some of the other good attackers in the tier because right now Lucario is simply too good to not use imo.

Just to clarify, the issue here isnt just that the item is broken on Zapdos. Zapdos is the easy example because it's already one of if not the best mons in the tier like you stated in your comment. But it also goes deeper than "Zapdos cant be flinched/fake out'd with the item" - it also cant have it's speed reduced with icy wind, cant have its spatk reduced with snarl, and cant get scald burned neither. This paired with the constant having to guess whether the item Zapdos is holding overall adds a factor of "cheese, and uncompetitiveness" to Zapdos paired with the item thus not good for the doubles meta with it unflashing. This is something we were slightly worried about before the addition of the Cloak, but it was decided not to nerf the item before it came to the game. Not knowing something can be Covert Mantle in endgame especially can also be very devastating and cause you the game, and I dont think random cheese like this is good for the "healthiness of the meta" this can also be applied for honestly mostly any special setup mon as long as support correctly as they can just ignore snarls/fake outs etc too. All in all, I personally dont think making the cloak flash in a doubles metagame makes the item any "worse" overall. I just think it removes the randomness that comes with having the item in the metagame and takes out all the cheese that comes with using it.

Hey everyone. I just wanted to chime in & say something to give some clarification to the situation here as I believe there is some confusion on peoples part. This thread doesnt exist because Tier Council as a whole are majority in favor of this change, nor does it exist because we're forcing this change down peoples throats. It's been discussed internally that we should inquire with the community with some important gameplay changes and gather feedback for these types of situations. This is a major gameplay change and one of those times and we understand that which is why we made this thread. We're looking to actually receive proper feedback/input from people regarding this and why it should or should not be added. I hope this gives some clarification on things for yall.

Congrats to Heatran's Lock for winning Monotype Mayhem #1 & to Inshallah no dubs hax for 2nd place! Until next time...

No more entries! The event will begin in a minute. https://pokemmotournament.challonge.com/MM1 here is the final bracket.

Nah, of course not haha. Hydreigon can be used in both Dark & Dragon teams, just like Ttar can be used in Dark Rock, Zapdos in Electric Flying, etc etc