Freeze and Paralysis

[Its_A_Random]

k just dont do bad stuff itt since it is moderated
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k so people have complained about Freeze and Paralysis enough to the point where I feel a separate discussion thread is necessary so I have posted this thread to talk about it!

This is where I would post quotes, but just read everything on this page from Post 434 through until Post 445. Oh and deadfox081's initial call to nerf Freeze here.

So basically we will start with a couple of questions before moving into the nitty-gritty stuff:

• Is the current effect of Freeze and/or Paralysis degenerate enough to warrant a nerf and why?
• If Freeze/Paralysis is indeed degenerate enough to warrant a nerf, then how should it be nerfed?
• Is there anything else related to Freeze and Paralysis that needs to be looked at?

Just note that paralysis and freeze are inherently degenerate effects so do not say they are not. There were some good arguments to the point where I set this up so uhhh... yeah.

Post away?

 

[Mulan15262]

Statistically, Freezing your opponent should get you an average 1.5 free turns. The calcs on Paralysis are more complicated, and I don't have time to do them right now. I would say that, should we decide to nerf Freeze, we should just make it last 1 action. That would make it not as big of an inhibition, so not as bad.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Made my case for it in feedback, I believe limiting freeze to one action is sufficient reward for the effect without being overly punishing to the victim

 

[Frosty]

Hax is part of the original game, so it should be a part of this game too. Not saying this should/shouldn't be done. But that needs to be considered.

As for freeze, I maintain that we should consider making it 0/1/2 actions. Represents ingame better and lowers the chance of mega hax to 3%.

About paralysis...I really dunno. The easy way is changing decay to 10% per round or 7.5% per round or 2.5% per action or something like that. But I dunno which number is fine. Paralysis is the worst status here because it is the worst status ingame, so I am not sure if a nerf to it won't make us deviate too much.

tl;dr: idk

 

[TSRD]

Just tossing in my two cents that I don't feel freeze nor paralysis is too degenerate to be allowed. Yes it can turn games around by itself but so can a timely crit or a burn on the proper mon. It is luck plain and simple and while it's frustrating when you lose and you feel like you shouldn't have that doesn't make it unfair nor uncompetitive. Everyone has that same chance and everyone can use or avoid it equally (or not as the case may be). As I said in the previous thread, this sounds a bit too much like the ever popular "Crits are uncompetitive and unfair" threads all over normal mons and I just don't want to see asb following the same road of banning and clauses and altering that so many want done there. Of course asb is already drastically altered from the original game and so some would argue that there is no point in trying to retain any semblance of the status's original effects but I disagree (and the fact that I wasn't here to argue against those changes doesn't mean I'm willing to stand aside for them now that I am here).

 

[zarator]

IMO Freeze is not too bad. I am in favor of Frosty's suggestion for 0/1/2 duration because it seems slightly more consistent to in-game while cutting down chances of worst hax, but that's it. As for paralysis, I feel that what makes it a bit more dangerous in ASB is that it is much easier to exploit than in normal game. In-game, devoting a slot to T-wave has a significant opportunity cost, and as such is seen only on Pokemon who can abuse it or who can use it surprisingly well (Celebi, Thundurus, etc). In ASB it's completely different. Not only the opportunity cost is somewhat smaller, but you have a much easier time abusing it. Just about every Pokemon gets a confusion inducing move (Swagger or something else), same with Flinch and other annoyance tools. On top of it, you can stack status afflictions in ASB - in-game you often don't want to paralyze mons that need to be burned/put to sleep, but in ASB this isn't a concern.

Still, paralysis decays in ASB unlike in-game, and as long as the paralyzed mon doesn't get more than a full paralysis (which is quite likely with paralysis induced by chance moves like TBolt), the status is not too punishing

 

[Elevator Music]

Again, don't really care about freeze.

But again, I'm strongly in favor of changing paralysis to decay 15% when fully paralyzed.

Thunder Wave and co. are far, far better than other status effects. Going to for now ignore how the argument of "paralysis is better than other status ingame so should be better here too" doesn't really make any sense and is inconsistent with other things we've done mechanics/policy wise in ASB, but regardless of that paralysis is leagues above other statuses -- to the point where it's very possible to nerf but still leave it as stronger than the others should people choose to do so.

Firstly, 25% PAR is much easier to inflict than sleep and freeze, but also on average will cause Pokemon to miss out on about as much/more actions than the other two. I did the calculations out yesterday, and assuming a Pokemon has 25% PAR before it acts a1 (ie, hit with Thunder Wave before it acts), on average it will be fully paralyzed ~1.55 times before the paralysis fully decays. Likewise (and perhaps slightly more realistically), if a Pokemon has 25% PAR before it acts a2, on average it will be fully paralyzed ~1.4 times before the paralysis fully decays. Even just at a surface level, this is annoying because sleep on average puts a Pokemon out of commission for 1.33 actions, and freeze 1.5 actions. But then, most sleep moves are unreliable, and freeze isn't even something you can really choose to inflict on the opponent. This of course also doesn't even consider the fact that paralysis also has another completely different (and powerful) effect.

But, like I mentioned in my original post, it also doesn't consider the fact that with paralysis you can't be certain when it's going to happen. While losing an action or two to sleep is annoying, the moment your Pokemon is put to sleep you know which actions they will be asleep for (and if you're constructing orders after this happens, you can just use Sleep Talk). However, someone ordering with a paralyzed Pokemon doesn't have this luxury. You have access to chance subs, and that's it. This isn't enough though, because it's very likely you'll lose an action to paralysis, and even with chance subs you probably won't be able to execute anything good. The uncertainty of paralysis hardly matters to the one that inflicted the status, but it's a huge detriment to the other player. I'm not going to write an essay on why this uncertainty is way worse for the statused Pokemon, but if someone really wants to debate me on this, let's go.

So, not only does 25% PAR put Pokemon out of commission on average as long as the other two statuses, but the way it does so is also way more annoying. And AGAIN, this is not even the only thing paralysis does. And AGAIN, it's way way way way way easier to inflict.

Changing the decay when fully paralyzed to 10% would make it so that, on average, a Pokemon will lose 1.25 actions to paralysis when inflicted with 25% PAR before they act a1 (or 1.15 if it's before they act a2). Changing the decay when fully paralyzed to 15% would make it so that, on average, a Pokemon will lose 1.08 actions to paralysis when inflicted with 25% PAR before they act a2 (or 0.99 if it's before they act a3). Because it's so likely that with 15% that a Pokemon will only lose 1 action to 25% PAR, this is why I'd prefer that. If people would rather do 10%, that's at least progress. Either way, paralysis is still better than sleep and freeze due to again, the uncertainty of it, how easy it is to inflict, and how it still has another effect.

I have to go but will probably write more on this later.

EDIT: Very quickly going to address TSRD's post. The argument of "I just don't want to see asb following the same road of banning and clauses and altering that so many want done there" doesn't make sense to me because... this isn't a ban? Just a slight mechanical nerf. Regardless, this isn't like ingame where the mechanics are given to us. It's not like there was a huge amount of thought put into the balance and design of ASB paralysis, but just because it wasn't constructed in a balanced way doesn't mean we can't tweak it to make it slightly less ridiculous. :<

 

[TSRD]

I was mostly talking about freeze in my last post so lets go over Para this time.

First of all the "easy" method of getting Para inflicted is via Thunder Wave, which means you're 100% giving up one of your actions for the chance of them giving up one (or more) of theirs. You might argue that's it's a pretty good chance but lets consider that your numbers assume both you and your opponent live for the entire duration of the Paralysis (and there are full actions each round ect...). Much more likely you live a couple rounds, actions are lost to cool down/flinches/early faints, or someone switches, ect... That's still a decent chance (given that the chance of full para is front loaded) but that still means the numbers aren't quite as high in practice as they are on paper. And if they only lose one action then all the effect did was restore action parity. It only gains if your get more than one.

Then there is the second effect. Yes it can be a very good effect but it can also be a pointless effect and it's not something you have any control over. Is your opponent already slower than you? Then the secondary effect does almost nothing and the entire value of the status is the chance of full para. If they are faster is it by too much for the para to matter? Are you able to abuse the speed difference meaningfully? the answer to those to is "usually but not always."

I know we're not talking about bans but we are talking about nerfs which can be just as bad in their own way if they are not truly deserved. Anyway, I need to go to work now. I might edit this with more stuff later.

 

[Avnomke]

IMO speed-lowering is (almost) a viable enough effect for para on its own, but we should stick with ingame somewhat, but nerf it some. I think we could have it start with 20% para or maybe even 15% max, since the main goal of para isn't to stop the opponent from moving, but to slow them down.

 

[Dogfish44]

Quickie whilst I catch up from funerals, depression and other related things.

• When I'm actively Para'ing an opponent, it's in 90% of cases because I need the speed drop to pull something off. I'd rather see something limiting the number of times a full para can occur than something which makes the speed drop vanish faster. Perhaps something which says Full Para can only occur at 15%+? iunno.
• Freeze should probably drop to a flat 1a because it's stupid, both as someone who scores it (Makes match boring) and someone who has to endure it (See above).

 

[ZhengTann]

I've already made my case against Freeze being about the same as flinches.

But about Paralysis though, I am unabashed to say I have been won over into EM's camp. Just look at this:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ELCONq-zR7kdNKsC4yKBmfO2_wVVgTEs5SoBXeZmV60/

Assuming that nothing changed about Paralysis starting at 25%, and tweaking only how much it decays either per full para or per round, EM devised 2^15 scenarios, filtered out the implausible ones (like 5 full paras over 3 rounds), and did the weightage calcs to find out how much actions, on average, a TWave or a Glare can give to the user. So don't say the man simply spouted numbers, people - he actually crunched them.

And his reasoning is actually very sound - I'm sorry if I sound like I'm heaping praise here. To help him provide a counterargument to Dogfish's first bullet point, I'd say that currently a 25% paralysis can last up to 5 rounds, with an 89% chance of lasting 3 rounds if I read EM's calcs right. 3 rounds in a normal ASB battle is, I would think, more than enough to secure a KO on said paralysed mon, or anything else of equal significance. Even with a 10% decay per full paralysis, there's approximately a two-in-three chance that paralysis would last a minimum of 3 full rounds, or your opponent would've been ceding 2 free actions to you (which I think we can agree, is huge in a battle).

Even with 10% decay per full paralysis, and 5% decay as usual on standard rounds, Paralysis can still consistently achieve what battlers expect out of it - a semi-permanent status that cripples speed, with an added effect of "screw you" that is already icing on the cake. The current mechanics emphasised more on the "screw you" part than the "slow you down" part, which I agree with EM, is perfectly plausible to tone down and still make TWave a viable move.

Av's options of lowering the maximum threshold may help too, but personally I'm not swayed until I see the numbers, sorry Av.

 

[tavok]

So, reviving the discussion (or trying to) with a little issue.

Renovation of paralysis.

Apparently this still exists, and it is mentioned in the handbook in the FAQ section. If this is no longer possible, it should be removed from the answers; if it is still possible, then it should be added to the paralysis section AND we should discuss it, as this aspect really pushes it into the "this is dumb" area.

 

[Stratos]

i literally clicked this thread expecting to read "these two status conditions are underpowered relative to burn and poison"

so theres my stance on the issue

 

[ZhengTann]

Update: EM has allowed people to edit his Google Sheet, which I linked on post #11 above. If you guys would look at the "Summary" tab, it will show the results - how often can you expect full paralysis to occur given initial paralysis level, decay rates, etc. Please read it before making further arguments, since the material is already there for us to tweak.

* * * * *​

Since it's been a week without new posts, I'll push the fast forward button. Initial slate includes:

What should be done to Paralysis mechanics?
25% initial paralysis level, 5% decay per round, 5% decay per full paralysis. (as is)
20% initial paralysis level, 5% decay per round, 5% decay per full paralysis.
25% initial paralysis level, 5% decay per round, 15% decay per full paralysis.
25% initial paralysis level, 5% decay per round, 10% decay per full paralysis.

What should be done to Freeze mechanics?
Freeze has an equal chance of lasting 1/2 action when inflicted
Freeze has an equal chance of lasting 0/1/2 action when inflicted

Slate is not final yet. Note that there's a 48-hour window for last campaign messages discussion, make good use please. As to tavok's issue of refreshing paralysis, so far there has been little support, so maybe we'll reserve it for another time?

 

[ZhengTann]

Oops, that was way more than 48 hours. Adjourned to Voting, thank you for your time. This thread my now be closed at mod discretion.