Ladder Balanced Hackmons

[Transcendent God Champion]

A problem: Balanced Hackmons has never had Team Preview, despite the fact that such goes against the game mechanics of both Generations V and VI. How do you justify adding an EV limitation to Balanced Hackmons on the grounds of following game mechanics then when the very existence of this metagame has always ignored such?

 

[Eminegg]

[21:04:45] macrarazy: Hackmons means hack.
[21:04:53] macrarazy: Hack means you can do what is normally impossible.
[21:05:38] macrarazy: (Balanced) Hackmons is for players/users to enjoy a Metagame where "hacks" is what happens.

So basically, if you're removing the >510 EVs feature, you're ruining what is meant to be considered Hackmons. There's one less hack involved. Why? Because the game has that limitation. Where we are clearly going against all that and, in fact, using hacks, why remove that one feature? And like LLW Gao Changgong stated, if you take the >510 EVs change in effect, then why not the Team Preview one?

And then even after that, you're preventing others to leave and not even try to convince you into reverting those changes without playing them, although it's clear that it's Hackmons and not something else. Say even if it's Balanced Hackmons, that is only to prevent the use of absolutely obscure and obsolete abilities and only so users can play something that isn't only pure offense which is really what the Metagame evolves into with the >510 EVs restriction into consideration.

Tl;dr you guys are doing everything wrong here.

 

[Ranger Mike]

Ok I propose having two serperate ladders gen 5/pre ev bh and the bh that will come soon because this is the biggest change to a meta since since the inception of pokemon and no one wants anything to happen to the sacred cow of other metagames. Either do this or I will somehow muster out an unlimited ev bh

 

[Rumors]

It's quite clear to say that speed creep is going to be prominent. We've been discussing possible bans before this update.

Possible suspects are as follows:

• Protean​
• Pixilate​
• Refrigerate​
• Aerilate​
• Mega Mewtwo Y, Mega Mewtwo X, Mega Latios, Mega Latias, Mega Gengar​

I mostly agree that these need to be looked at and watched carefully when the change goes live, if it isn't yet. I'd also look at Chansey + Imposter and maybe Blissey + Imposter. Neither Chan/Bliss nor Imposter are broken on their own, so I'm not suspecting them individually. And while annoying, they weren't necessarily broken before these changes since it's one thing when a 704 HP Imposter is copying a 416 HP Sweeper. It's another when the latter drops to 353. Nor has any bulk to take it's own attacks anymore. Lemme show you...

Current

252+ Atk Refrigerate Kyurem-B Extreme Speed vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Eviolite Chansey: 120-142 (17 - 20.1%) -- possible 5HKO

252+ Atk Refrigerate Chansey Extreme Speed vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Kyurem-B: 180-213 (39.6 - 46.9%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
New

252+ Atk Refrigerate Chansey Extreme Speed vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Kyurem-B: 229-270 (58.5 - 69%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ Atk Refrigerate Kyurem-B Extreme Speed vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Eviolite Chansey: 153-180 (21.7 - 25.5%) -- 0.5% chance to 4HKO


The sweeper's chance to fight back is not only seriously reduced since it can't take hits anymore, but Imposter Chansey is much more powerful, able to 2HKO Kyu-B for certain now where it was only a 3HKO previously, giving Kyu-B, and other sweepers by extension, less options against Imposter Chansey. I'm worried Imposter Chansey will centralize the meta hard (or harder, really) and too many people will use it as an excuse of why we don't need to remove some things that may very well prove to be broken against everything else.

Mind again, just suggesting Imposter + Chansey as something to look at. Not suggesting an Imposter ban nor a Chansey ban, just Imposter + Chansey. (Besides, if Chansey was actually any good, we'd actually see it used for more than just Imposter.)

 

[GlassGlaceon]

Wait what we aren't having unlimited EVs anymore?
RIP ADRIAN
RIP AWOAT
RIP ME
RIP DEFENSE
RIP TO MY BOY GIRATINA

Chansey is gonna get rly good b/c offensive things can't run max bulk anymore so things like Ice Kyube can get easily revenged while chans still takes minimal damage b/c of eviolite bulk.
RIP balanced offense to stall meta, we hardly knew ye. As Adrian pointed out, protean nd other big offensive abilities are gonna get really good with this new change, stall is now virtully impossible, etc. This meta is in for some huge changes, and bans will be implemented no doubt

Chansey and blissey might possibly become huge monsters, as they're going to be nigh on impossible to take down but also powerful as crap with the lessened bulk of these sweepers (will post calcs later) BH is taking an extremely odd turn and I'll have to play it before I get some actual decisions and opinions on it, but the future isn't looking bright for stall ;;;;
E4 Flint nd the other offensive dudes be like

Edit: ninja'd again ;;;;

 

[CashKP]

Alright I know i might not have as much respect in the community as i used to but i have some things to say about this. Honestly, this is pretty much bullshit. I dont have to understand why some of the higher up members have to be such nerds about all this stuff. (I may get banned for this post but whatever)

I see no reason why you have to change balanced hackmons at all. THIS IS A POKEMON WEBSITE FOR FUN. Notice that i said FOR FUN. Why do people have to such whiney nerds about this. Like, "according to my scientific calculation we can not be allowed to have too many evs" who cares? like seriously who cares at all. Balanced hackmons is supposed to be for fun. Its a sandbox where people can do what they want (barring all the broken over centralizing stuff) and thats the beauty. Thats the lure of BH and thats why i loved it and why people love it now. Why would this get changed because of some stupid in game rule. Like PS isnt in game, its not. You can argue its based on smogon and all that garbage and thats fine. I understand that standard tiers need to follow all the rules. But BH? really BH? thats just totally totally unneeded. Pokemon is a game. It was made for fun. That is the purpose.

Im 21 years old now. Im not a kid anymore. I have real life shit to do. Looking for jobs, moving out of the house. and im sure some of you are as old or even older then i am and im sure you deal with this stuff too. So you all know its not as fun as being a kid. And im sure thats why you go on PS, because its fun. Its away from the real world. So maybe if everyone stopped being so anal about the very specific (literally hacking the game) rules and focused more on the fun aspect BH would still be enjoyable.

But unfortunatly life dosent work like that. Life lesson for everyone- The higher up people always have all the power, there is nothing you can do about it. No amount of arguing or logic will ever be able to change things. So leave it. Move on, do other things. Enjoy life. Play other games, do other things. Dont let other people suck the fun out of things for you.

I dont even play anymore and this change hurts me. It hurts me because I know this is hurting people that are my friends. And thats bullshit. It really is. And really shame on the PS staff, since when did you all care more about the rules than the community? Thats the worst part of all. Really disappointed with all this, handled very very poorly.

 

[Kaphotics]

This wasn't some unfounded change.

If you hack Pokemon into your X/Y game, if any have >510 EVs you are prevented from battling anyone via Link Battle. This implies that you can only battle against the in-game NPC trainers and wild Pokemon if you have >510. It's absolutely impossible to bypass this; local/WiFi battles have this legality check client side. SciresM and I confirmed that you can Mega Evolve Megas and have held items on Permanent Megas, and confirmed this fallacy weeks ago; I wasn't aware of Showdown's inaccurate XY EV limit until YouTuber complained about hackmons lack of parity for the 510 limit. If there's anyone you should hate, it's me ;)

Hackmons is in parity with the game's limitations, in terms of hacking-in things. X/Y added this change, and people assumed that X/Y allowed it because you could Link Battle with >510 in previous games. Now that it was actually checked Showdown yet again updates to match the games. Sure you can hack in >510, but you can't battle with them against other humans. If you're going to do away with the ingame 510 limit, what's stopping you from re-balancing other aspects of the game you don't like? Dropping some base stats for things that are problematic? You should parity with the games... don't change the sandbox that GameFreak provides!

 

[Monte Cristo]

This wasn't some unfounded change.

If you hack Pokemon into your X/Y game, if any have >510 EVs you are prevented from battling anyone via Link Battle. This implies that you can only battle against the in-game NPC trainers and wild Pokemon if you have >510. It's absolutely impossible to bypass this; local/WiFi battles have this legality check client side. SciresM and I confirmed that you can Mega Evolve Megas and have held items on Permanent Megas, and confirmed this fallacy weeks ago; I wasn't aware of Showdown's inaccurate XY EV limit until YouTuber complained about hackmons lack of parity for the 510 limit. If there's anyone you should hate, it's me ;)

Hackmons is in parity with the game's limitations, in terms of hacking-in things. X/Y added this change, and people assumed that X/Y allowed it because you could Link Battle with >510 in previous games. Now that it was actually checked Showdown yet again updates to match the games. Sure you can hack in >510, but you can't battle with them against other humans. If you're going to do away with the ingame 510 limit, what's stopping you from re-balancing other aspects of the game you don't like? Dropping some base stats for things that are problematic? You should parity with the games... don't change the sandbox that GameFreak provides!

Changing the sandbox game freak gives us is the entire point of OMs, while there are some OMs that just make the sandbox more usable (i.e. AAA)
see things like:
no team preview OU
tier shift *base stat changing
and others

these are only possible by altering the games mechanics- and these are not possible in the sandbox and only can be achieved by things like ROM hacking (BH/sandbox is more about things like pokegen esque things)

We still have no answer on the whole Team Preview not being applied/the EV limit being applied either. Can someone explain this?

 

[hexenjaeger]

Coming into the BH thread this morning like:

But seriously. The change already happened, so why are people still arguing about it? Sure, it's metagame-redefining or whatever people call it, but it isn't as though BH is "RUINED FOREVER ;_;7". Honestly? I don't like it. But i'm not about to quit playing pokemon forever or something, because that'd be silly. i'm actyally pretty interested as to how the new meta will work. My playstyle is Stupid Offense, and the abbreviation is my reaction to the whole thing. SO? If i was really serious about playing BH the " old way" i could just go to piccolo's server or something (and i probably will tbh). It's like... The sacred cow has been chopped up and served as hamburgers. Is whining about blasphemy gonna bring the cow back? The bottom line is that these things happen, and you either deal with it or just do something else.</unpoplar opinion>
honestly the thing that bothers me the most is that this applies to custom games. Like, really? Isn't that the point of custom game?

 

[verbatim]

Look, I know you're concerned about balance hackmons- but when you literally take away the glue and huge aspect of the metagame, you can't stop people from not liking it.

By taking away such a huge focus that we all took for granted, you are essentially taking away the "glue" that made balanced hackmons precisely free range enough for us to enjoy. Without that glue, the package falss apart. You can try some weird shitty $0.99 brand Duck Tape (bans) but it'll kinda end up a shadow of what it truly was.

Banning stuff isn't going to fix it because the point was in BH- we found stupid funny ways to balance out our metas without having to resort to banning if something isn't truly in essence un-competitive , with this ruling applied and pokemon bans being placed, you really take away the freedom aspect of the meta.

I know you want the community and all the people to be at peace playing this meta again- but you can't have your cake and eat it too.

This is like if the government passed a law to make all forms of drugs, alcohol and tobacco, (cigs, weed, alcohol) illegal and then expected nobody to get mad. (also a reason why they don't make it illegal- it's just a bad business move overall) You can't expect to have this new rule and still have your same community. We're not robots that are stuck on playing BH no matter what- we will get pissed and might even quit if something we invested so much time, so much hours so much days, even MONTHS and YEARS for some- becomes a shell of what it used to be, it becomes something somewhat of an undesirable product/metagame/whatever. Don't forget this isn't just the meta your leading, this is the communities will you have in your palms. If you decide to make just one wrong accidental turn, people will leave. That's just the way it works

I'm not making this decision, please stop acting like it. This is a move made to insure that PS more accurately follows in game mechanics.

Also, while we're here, I know that a lot of you have put forth a great interest in expanding BH, so please listen to me when I say that one of the more prevalent accusations leveled against the community has been its volatility. If we want to prove that we're level headed enough to have inclusion in programs on this site, bitching and moaning about this change sends a giant "don't trust us" signal to people that were on the edge about how much recognition we should get. This goes ditto for assuming change is making the metagame "a shadow of what it truly was". If you care for BH, now is the time to focus on what's added, speed tiers, the impact on mixed sweepers and walls, and the rise of possible utility counters, instead of threatening to quit over what's lost.

If you quit that's fine, but leave knowing that the community is going to have to work that much harder to prove to people that they're not all like that.

 

[EV]

Maybe this is just me, but won't Imposter be even more important at keeping HO in check? BH players were already really good at making sets Imposter proof anyway, so I don't see Chansey turning into the pariah some posters have prematurely made her out to be.

 

[Monte Cristo]

I'm not making this decision, please stop acting like it. This is a move made to insure that PS more accurately follows in game mechanics.

Also, while we're here, I know that a lot of you have put forth a great interest in expanding BH, so please listen to me when I say that one of the more prevalent accusations leveled against the community has been its volatility. If we want to prove that we're level headed enough to have inclusion in programs on this site, bitching and moaning about this change sends a giant "don't trust us" signal to people that were on the edge about how much recognition we should get. This goes ditto for assuming change is making the metagame "a shadow of what it truly was". If you care for BH, now is the time to focus on what's added, speed tiers, the impact on mixed sweepers and walls, and the rise of possible utility counters, instead of threatening to quit over what's lost.

If you quit that's fine, but leave knowing that the community is going to have to work that much harder to prove to people that they're not all like that.

I'm not saying I'm quitting- I'm saying it's a bad move for both sides. i'm saying maybe you would like to reconsider this- because this is really just bad business for both sides. I analyze BH and meta trends, I rarely truly play it much aside from when I need to, however I can tell enough that despite adaptability in a community being good- this is still a bad move. We've broken sandbox restrictions before so I see no reason why we subjectively pick and choose just for this. As an analyst of course I won't quit BH, there are still some stuff I have to research for my own benefit, so leaving would be a bad move for me.

 

[yikes]

Old BH is ded ;_;7
Long live new BH

 

[xJownage]

Banning stuff isn't going to fix it because the point was in BH- we found stupid funny ways to balance out our metas without having to resort to banning if something isn't truly in essence un-competitive , with this ruling applied and pokemon bans being placed, you really take away the freedom aspect of the meta.

EXACTLY. So why don't people try to find more cookie-cutter ways to beat these threats? The umbreon above already shows the type of thing that can be done to beat kyurem-black, and that was just off the top of somebody's head. This is a big issue, but I think before people throw quick-bans and ban-hammers the metagame needs to settle and people need to figure out how to check these major threats. It doesn't take years to do this or whatever, it takes just a little looking. So you know what? Screw it. This is in no way directed at you monte cristo. If you guys want to complain that you can't play this meta anymore thats fine by me; but you need to know you are being ignorant, not logical.

That being said, I am opposed to this, even though I am an avid offensive player. This really defeats the purpose of the metagame IMO, its supposed to be hack-based so why should we care at all at what the game doesn't let us do? Since we would need cheat codes or something of the like to do this in-game in the first place, why don't we assume that everybody has a cheat code that goes around the check for proper EVs to begin with? BH shouldn't ever have anything to do with what happens in-game, since almost everything is impossible in-game in the first place. We can have fake out + Espeed Refrigerate Kyurem-Black, which is blatantly illegal in-game and requires cheating devices that don't exist making it impossible in-game, but we can't have them being over 510 evs since it is impossible to get around the check in the server with more? If we assume we can cheat to beat the game's cheat prevention mechanisms, then we need to assume we can cheat, not that we can break some rules and not others.

 

[V4Victini]

There seems to be a misconception about BH. BH is not about hacking the game, it's about hacking the Pokemon. That is why it remains mechanically accurate. I know this changes the game 100%, it's a different OM in all but name now imo, but that IS what Balanced Hackmons is. Not sure where the format will head wrt playstyle and meta from here but that is up to you guys to decide.

 

[verbatim]

Seconding V4,

Hackmons is about messing with the values in the pokemon themselves. If we could hack anything it would very quickly boil down to something that would be impossible to replicate online and even worse (hey guys I sent out Goku and used instant win ability to instantly win).

The main reason this applies is that it is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to fight another human being with over 510 ev's unless both players have manually edited the in game code, which falls way outside of BH's rules and opens pandora's box.

 

[skies]

V4Victini verbatim Could we have any confirmation on how team preview will go? Also, it's not possible to change stats like in Tier Shift or physically change a Pokemon's typing, but it happens in OMs, just throwing that out there.

 

[Pikachuun]

Also, it's not possible to change stats like in Tier Shift or physically change a Pokemon's typing, but it happens in OMs, just throwing that out there.

That's because those metagames have that goal. This metagame has the goal of being as true to the games as possible, except that everything is legal as long as you can, legitimately or illegitimately, obtain it and battle others with it in a vanilla copy of the game.

Believe me, it is possible to change stats or typings, as long as the tools are available. But then again, that's besides the point.

 

[Rumors]

On the issue of Team Preview, I think since the goal is to stay mechanically accurate, then we need to implement Team Preview. With the new EV mechanics, I'd say such a thing would be even more important now.

Maybe this is just me, but won't Imposter be even more important at keeping HO in check? BH players were already really good at making sets Imposter proof anyway, so I don't see Chansey turning into the pariah some posters have prematurely made her out to be.

Mind, when it comes to me, I'm not calling bans. I'm just pointing out Imposter + Chansey, along with what Adrian mentioned, as things that need to have a close eye kept on to see if they overpower or over centralize the new meta or not. Watch em for a bit, let the metagame stabilize somewhat, and, if they prove to be broke or otherwise unhealthy, get rid of 'em.

 

[V4Victini]

Forgot about Team Preview. I think it's fitting to add that as well considering how radically the game is changing at this point anyway, it doesn't need another shake up down the line.

EDIT: just to add my thoughts on the meta now I would consider adding Species Clause as well, this isn't for a mechanical reason though. BH has a species limit in place already to stop teams of 6 super threats. Someone posted in this thread before that the arbitrary number was arbitrary and not that relevant to the game's balance. This might be a good time to simplify that restriction.

 

[Uselesscrab]

EDIT: just to add my thoughts on the meta now I would consider adding Species Clause as well, this isn't for a mechanical reason though. BH has an arbitrary species limit in place already to stop teams of 6 super threats. Someone posted in this thread before that the arbitrary number was arbitrary and not that relevant to the game's balance. This might be a good time to simplify that restriction.

We actually don't have any sort of species clause. It's a two-of-the-same-ability clause.

 

[V4Victini]

We actually don't have any sort of species clause. It's a two-of-the-same-ability clause.

Oh really, then ignore me then. Except for the random num

 

[xJownage]

So, whatever you do, do not ban imposter chansey, as the metagame will go to ridiculous setup-sweeping + Coverage fest with the fastest mons and priority. Everything will be using extremespeed, every other mon can spam -ate, even as coverage, and yeah...it would be kind of outrageous. Imposter chansey is probably the only reason stall was good in the old meta, and is the only reason it has a chance (it does have a good chance) in the new meta.

 

[verbatim]

Imposter's never leaving,

I didn't see this one coming but my message is still the same. Please use this as an opportunity to show everyone that we're calm under pressure.

 

[Adrian Marin]

Since the dawn of gen 5, Balanced Hackmons has always been dedicated to following game mechanics; however, the communities philosophy of Balanced Hackmons has changed a lot; as such, I urge anyone that thinks otherwise to stop trying to alienate Balanced Hackmons from different other metagames. Balanced Hackmons does not have to follow precedent, as Balanced Hackmons is an other metagame, and just like any other metagame, we can implement complex rules at our discretion. For the most part, to deny this is to rebuff the legitimacy of almost all other metagames, as a lot of other metagames implement rules that will not be possible in the games code (e.g, Camomons.)