Zymogen

I understand that this is through no fault of your own, but this is outrageous. The fact that lower tiers are left to fester whilst OU is endlessly argued over just highlights how inefficient this tiering setup is. The idea of discrete, tier-specific councils been bandied around a few times recently but I honestly think it needs serious consideration as the amount of time it takes for action to be taken regarding bans in lower tiers is just insane

Story of NU's life

Petition for an active, dedicated council for each tier

It’ll be interesting to see how Feraligatr and Bibarel perform with no Blastoise or Whimsicott

Great service and very reasonable price. I asked for a perfect 6 IV breed and he got it to me within 2 hours, highly recommend

Yo I’ll buy the Careful Kanga and Modest Slowking Is Tauros Jolly? If so I’m interested

*Ahem* please bear with me while I invoke my inner Havsha I would actually argue that Water Spout is one of its worse sets because it's very difficult to pull off a Shell Smash without taking at least some damage. In fact, one of Blastoise's best qualities is the ability to take hits while it sets up due to its high defensive stats of 79 HP/100 Def/105 SpDef. Right now the most common set I've seen is Surf/Ice Beam/HP Electric/Shell Smash - with this set its main checks are bulky grass types like Venusaur, Roselia, Roserade and Whimsicott, and other bulky SpDef walls like Clefable, Throh, Lickilicky and Slowking. However, Blastoise also has access to coverage moves such as Aura Sphere and Dark Pulse which are able to handle the Normal types and Slowking respectively; however I think that Ice Beam and HP Electric are too important to drop for either. SS Blastoise typically runs Life Orb or White Herb. I personally think that White Herb is the best item on this set as it affords it more opportunities to set up, provides decent-ish longevity and makes it difficult to revenge kill with priority moves: Moreover, with White Herb, Modest Blastoise actually beats SpDef Roserade and Roselia after 1 turn of Stealth Rocks chip. Lickilicky is 3HKO'd by Modest Blastoise provided there are no hazards on the field, however there is a chance to 2HKO with 1 turn of Stealth Rocks; but Lickilicky can also phase Blastoise out with Dragon Tail or damage it with Power Whip. Calm Clefable is able to tank 2 Timid Surfs, however unless it is a Wish/Prot/Toxic set with priority elsewhere in the team, it does not necessarily pressure Blastoise enough to prevent it from setting up another Shell Smash to go +4 in its face; additionally there is a chance to 2HKO Calm Clefable with +2 Modest Blastoise after Leftovers recovery. Throh has a low chance to be 2HKO'd by Modest Blastoise, however it only 3HKO's the White Herb variant with Storm Throw. Granted, Throh has access to Circle Throw, but imo that's kinda gimmicky. Calm Venusaur beats Timid, and has a chance to beat Modest 1v1 with Stealth Rocks and an Overgrow-boosted Giga Drain after taking an Ice Beam. Whimsicott naturally is the best check as it has access to priority encore which stops Blastoise in its tracks, however it does not have access to very reliable recovery and is susceptible to being pressured by Ice Beam and/or hazards. Slowking counters the HP Electric set, however it struggles vs Dark Pulse and is generally quite a pressured Pokemon since physical Dark types are currently so prevalent in the tier. Additionally, Timid Blastoise is fast enough to outspeed scarfed Jolly/Timid base 120 speed Pokemon, which means that revenge killing by means of scarfers is very limited. The caveat to this, though, is that Timid Blastoise misses out on a couple of 2HKO's that Modest is able to pull off. In short I am in two minds about Blastoise at the moment, because White Herb offers more bulk for less power; and Life Orb offers more power but less bulk and longevity. Having said all this, I think I am leaning towards it being too powerful due to the lack of solid defensive checks, its ability to reliably tank priority moves, and the lack of scarf users that are fast enough (and strong enough for that matter) to revenge kill it. XD

for what it's worth, i'm rank 11 in NU and i got 4 points for beating someone who wasn't even on the ladder. i have a win streak of 1 and the game lasted about 20 minutes

The problem was that if you were in a high position on the ladder it would take forever to find a battle because of the way that the matchmaking system determined eligible opponents, and it was highly dependent on how many of the top players were also online and actively searching for battles. That way, in terms of MMRWP acquisition, players were effectively punished for reaching high ELOs. There needs to be a system where players are rewarded for being a higher rank or having a high win streak, e.g. through being given more MMRWP per battle

This is how I assume it’s intended, otherwise it’s backwards and favours having a shit ELO like Cali said. Hopefully it’s just a bug. However, they still haven’t explained why they decided to drop the update slap bang in the middle of a fortnightly cycle instead of waiting a week so people don’t get conned out of prizes

As far as I know, we have 3 months to get the hood

Why were the fortnightly rewards reset? Could you not have waited until the scheduled reset date before adding this update? Sigh

system error, happens commonly when the game is updated

which items did that encompass? king's rock etc?

I know it's early, but what are people's opinions on Blastoise so far?

Nvm

I think this would be a reasonable middle-ground, because 27+ IVs in off-stats are usable, and the incentive to play CCs would be preserved since they would still offer prizes with better IVs.

XD

This some @Havsha level essay bs

Yeah you’re right, I forgot that they reduced the entry fee - iirc it was 1k before the nerf. I don’t disagree that PvP is inefficient for making money - I wasn’t arguing against that at all - I only suggested that increasing the actual BP cost for the items could be a solution to the inevitable decrease in BP’s value. And in my eyes, because PvP is the most (/only) enjoyable way to make money, it doesn’t feel like a grind. It certainly feels like less of a grind than doing 2hrs of mind-numbing gym and E4 runs or whatever the meta is these days. 50k was also just a ballpark figure and I hadn’t done the maths, but as Darkshade pointed out it’d be easier to just nerf the output.

I don’t know if you’ve yet played the new matchmaking system but 50k BP is not a grind with the new payout method (provided they don’t nerf it) and permanent ranked. You can earn upwards of 3k BP per match, and 200 BP for a loss. Not to mention that there is also a payout of ~10k BP from the fortnightly MMRWP tree. In the old system there was a 1k BP entry fee which you lost if you lost the game, average profit per win was ~1.2k, and ranked windows lasted for 1hr and were available every 2-3hrs. Not to mention that ranked now isn’t limited to one tier. So, no, not really.

Sure why not

Or just bump up the cost of the BP items to like 50k or something

Agree

Oh I missed that part. I had 5 wins at the time of posting so 10 points makes sense. Cheers