Data ASB Feedback & Game Issues Thread - Mk IV

I'm proposing a buff to Inversion Charm because it actually actively harms Malamar. Swagger is a universal TM that inflicts confusion and reduces malamar's Attack stage by 4. Malamar is basically useless after one Swagger. a /flat reduction/ of 8 damage per hit and a 33% chance to just not move is absolutely bonkers.

Proposing that Inversion Charm gives Malamar an immunity to Swagger. Seriously, Malamar is worse than useless, and this wouldn't even make it that good. It'll make it slightly usable.




Discord chat says that a buff of "Contrary only affects moves that decreases stats" is more appropriate, so that's an option.
 
Last edited:

JJayyFeather

Drifting~
is a Forum Moderatoris a Community Contributor
Moderator
Seconding the bottom half of what is above.

Targeting Swagger just feels incomplete, and the biggest problem Malamar truly has is the fact that +stat changes get inverted as well.
 
Can we update the preference berries (Figy, Wiki, Mago, Aguav, Iapapa) to Gen VII? The percentage of health restored was majorly buffed on-cartridge, but, in ASB, we haven't bothered to touch them at all—even the <25% HP threshold is a holdover from the old days of ASB, rather than a generation-induced change. Changing the amount of HP restored to +20 would be a suitable buff, as it lets the berries match the HP restored by recovery moves, which heal an identical amount in-game.

Also, can we remove the "Can't be Recycled" clause from the aforementioned berries? This is completely inaccurate to the in-game portrayal of these berries, and I highly doubt that the Harvest users would be overpowered after this change, as many have damage issues when not using an offensive item, lack survivability without a Focus Band, and/or possess horrible defensive typing a that reduce the chance that they would reach a HP total that is less than 25% of their maximum but higher than 0.
 
Can we change Rest? It's unintuitive, deviates heavily from in-game and the majority of people had no idea how it worked before my qualifier match! It leads to ridiculous situations such as: Gardevoir used Rest (to clear status) -> Toxapex uses Venoshock (it's boosted because Gardevoir is still poisoned!). Such a thing makes little sense, goes against in-game, and again, it's inintuitive. I propose the following:

Rest status cleansing is immediate, prevents any status for the duration rest and will heal the 12 HP during the sleeping pokemon action.

A small but useful boost and one that makes it closer to how it actually works.

Another proposal is to increase the threeshold for waking up. Sleep is a meh status on ASB as most of the time you're getting a 1 for 1 trade in actions with the opponent (except you lose energy), the chance to get a free turn is there but even that it's not that great since if you're faster and do more than 16 damage (something VERY easy to do) your opponent will wake up and you would have waisted the extra turn instead! I propose we raise the threeshold to match the one from Focus Band, this gives us a nice round number, adds a bit more consistency all around and creates a new strategy where pokemon with Focus Band cannot be woke up early by regular means.
 

JJayyFeather

Drifting~
is a Forum Moderatoris a Community Contributor
Moderator
Going to contest both of those, especially since one of them is a salt thing.

1) Rest already was designed to work with ASB's system in mind. The reason that Rest cleanses immediately in-game is because you can only have 1 status at a time, which is not a rule in ASB.
2) I see no reason why Sleep should be buffed, it's a very dangerous status condition that I have abused more than once to win a match or bridge the gap in a matchup, especially when combined with something like Nightmare or Dream Eater. Not to mention, you could honestly just use a chip damage move if you want to keep the mon asleep longer. I don't see any reason why Sleep should be more than a mitigation tool.
 

cityscapes

Take care of yourself.
is a Tiering Contributoris a Community Contributor Alumnus
ok so I'm still on hiatus because there's still no ub tlr but I had an idea so I decided to share it with you guys. with that in mind here is signature items for legendaries

basically, in the asb metagame legendaries are actually pretty irrelevant for the most part due to bad typing (celebi) and/or bad movepool (zapdos) except for stuff like deoxys. however, unlike mons such as garde and sab, legendaries are actually hard to obtain. you need to prepare for a tlr, train mons for it and make really good plays just to get one legendary. this means that legendaries take more effort and skill to obtain than other mons and I think they should be worth the effort you put in. thanks for reading and I hope you consider my suggestion
 
Signature items are related to evolution methods, so we'd have to break precedent in order to do that, and then we come to the problem of "Well Unown/Tauros/'insert pokemon here' is crap so lets give it a better sig item!".
 

cityscapes

Take care of yourself.
is a Tiering Contributoris a Community Contributor Alumnus
Signature items are related to evolution methods, so we'd have to break precedent in order to do that, and then we come to the problem of "Well Unown/Tauros/'insert pokemon here' is crap so lets give it a better sig item!".
that would be a new precedent, not a breaking of the current one. instead of "mons that evolve thru strange methods get an item" it's "those and legendaries get an item". i don't see the problem.
 
The problem is that it would then be completely arbitrary who gets sigs or not. We'd just be deciding if some legendaries get them or not, unless of course you want to give Deoxys a sig item. Or Mew, Mewtwo, and Victini... which we don't really need to be giving sig items to. It also doesn't help that for the most part "Legendary" is an arbitrary category that doesn't mean anything as far as game balance goes.

In the end, a large amount of legendaries are gonna be trophy mons, and even with buffs, signature items can only do so much to improve a Pokemon's viability; just look at Wormadam-Sandy's sig item, which is crazy powerful but still doesn't make it relevant.
 
If you ignore precedent (which in a case like this I think is fairly unimportant), I still personally think legendaries don't really need sig items. I'd say Celebi is an outlier amongst legends in terms of viability. The other legend you cited, Zapdos, may have a rather paltry movepool, but it still has a niche as a premier electric type special attacker that also has the added bonus of useful defensive typing. In most cases, by merit of their stats, legendaries tend to stand at least even with regular (viable) Pokémon, but just like regular Pokémon, some end up getting the short end of the stick and there's just not much we can do to alleviate that without drastically altering the spirit of the game and proliferating buff culture to an absurd extent.
 

JJayyFeather

Drifting~
is a Forum Moderatoris a Community Contributor
Moderator
Two part post:

1) Signature Items for Legendaries

I'm against this because signature items honestly do not just magically become a fix-all for a Pokemon's issues unless we ridiculously overdo it. Primarily I'm talking about issues related to typing or movepool, since both of those tend to shaft most Pokemon. As Exclaimer brought up, Wormadam-S has an incredibly beefy signature item, but its still not that great because (a) Knock Off does exist and (b) Wormadam-S still has an incredibly limited movepool. A lot of these legendaries that 'need a buff' are the ones that have issues that really just aren't fixable.

Also worth noting is that very few Pokemon in ASB are just downright unusable (I'm looking at you Parasect). It's up to the Pokemon's user to make it work. I mean, we all joke about Primeape just not being good enough in our metagame, yet Matezoide consistently uses his, and performs very well with it, even having it duel a Mega Gardevoir to some extent. A lot of what makes a Pokemon 'bad' can often be circumvented if you know what you are doing with them, and Legendary Pokemon are just another facet of this. Example, if Ho-oh's 4x weakness to rock is really a problem, just run Focus Band or spam Sacred Fire until a burn is rolled. Either option gives it a lot of defensive help so that it can just do Ho-oh things and spit out damage.

2) A Potentially Horrible Suggestion

Alright, so messing around in IRC last night, the discussion of adjusting the rank 3 floor came up once more. More specifically, sending it down to 60 instead of 61, as to include a lot of Pokemon that got stuck with rank 2 in certain stats where a 3 may be better for it. But after thinking on it some more, I really want to suggest this change as at least a discussion point to hear arguments for an against it because Generation VII did not really bring much change to our metagame, and I think this slight change could bring quite a few Pokemon out of the 'almost good enough' category.

My Perspective
- Buffs some Pokemon that otherwise wouldn't see the light of day. Example: Zoroark goes from 90/4/2/5/2/105 to 100/4/3/5/3/105, one bad set of bulk to one good bulk set.
- Buffs some Pokemon that probably really just don't need the buff. Example: Kecleon goes from 90/3/3/2/5/40 to 100/3/3/3/5/40, but it was already heralded as good prior to this.
- Some of these changes actually hurt the affected Pokemon more than it helps them. Example: Cherrim gets an extra rank in Atk, but that causes it to lose the +2 SpA it got from Rare Candy
- Despite the vast variance in effects this change could have, I think it's worth at least considering just as a jolt of viability to ASB, since otherwise we'll just keep being stuck in the same stale metagame.

For those who want/need it. I've compiled a list of what Pokemon have what stat boosted here.

EDIT @ Below: For Spinda, that's just not true. Spinda's change actually has the exact same stat yield as before, just much less dependent on the Everstone (see: Knock Off only removes 1 rank of stuff instead of 2).

Also, not sure how going 4/2/2/3/95 to 4/3/3/3/95 is suddenly unplayable. You might just need to change natures to Adamant or run RageCandyBar or something.
 
Last edited:

ZhengTann

Nargacuga
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
^ I disagree. Parasect is actually capable of giving Magikarps a run for their money.

On a more serious note, the sole reason for the suggestion above is "why not?" and "shake up the metagame". I don't have much qualms about "why not", but I do not think we'd be capable of really shaking up the metagame with this. At a glance, Jayy's list does look tempting (I own a Zorua, an Absol, a Starmie, and most importantly an Aerodactyl that might be able to run a mixed stats set), but will these boosts really allow any mon on that list to overtake the likes of Mega-Gardevoir, Deoxys-D, and Mega-Gengar? While it will shake up the mid-tier (there's definitely a lot of NFEs that would appreciate this), it won't change the metagame where it really matters, eg. in Best-of-Best tournaments where you bring the best FEs with the largest movepools and beefiest stats.

On a final note, that change would also turn Spinda from 12 BRT to 18 BRT, and Primeape from 17 BRT to 19 BRT, making them literally unplayable. So I hope I'm not out of turn when I speak for Matezoide's behalf, "Heck no don't you genetically modify Steve!"
 

JJayyFeather

Drifting~
is a Forum Moderatoris a Community Contributor
Moderator
I edited in a note about the Spinda and Primeape statement, but I realized I actually should respond since I do have a qualm with your statement: There's no way you actually expect a Pokemon to try competing with a mega pokemon. Mega Gardevoir got to where it is by having insane movepool, insane abilities, AND insane stats. There's no world in existence where a mid-tier Pokemon will actually compete with her. Same for Deoxys-D. My idea here is to shake up that ground underneath them, since I for one like the idea of just enabling more options. For example, since you named Zorua (Zoroark), the only thing that's really kept me from using a Zoroark is the 90/2/2 bulk, which is just absolutely abysmal. With 10/3/3 it becomes on par with the 'average' so to speak, while having a speed above 100 so it actually outspeeds in +Spe 100 mon if you run it +Spe, and it has quite the usable movepool, both offense and utility-wise. Which would actually give it a really nice spot in dealing with Gengars and Kitsunohs (see: things that are incredibly high meta).

Also lol does Aerodactyl actually have that useful of a special movepool?
 
On ZT's and Jayy's comments, I think this isn't necessarily being looked at properly. First off, I don't believe we should be looking at this as a way to "shake up the meta," even if that is some people's intention. Rather, I think this discussion should be approached as a means of making a number of Pokemon previously considered "virtually unplayable," playable in a casual atmosphere, thus theoretically improving the overall health of ASB's meta. A number of Pokemon, such as Absol, Ribombee, Cacturne, and Dodrio, exist on the edge of viability. In cases like these, they have decent offenses and usable movepools, bu their defenses are too poor to go toe to toe with statistically well-endowed pokemon. A shift of 1 point in favor of Base 60 suddenly makes these pokemon playable in a much wider berth of situations, and makes some such as Dodrio downright viable. In addition, it provides a lot of these Pokemon roles as niche members of specialized teamcomps. The important thing I think to consider here, however, is that it makes a number of Pokemon more "playable" while only buffing a small handful to levels that may be concerning. That said, while I'm currently in the camp of approving the buff, I intend to do a case-by-case analysis before I give a final statement of my own thoughts.

Ps. Is there really a reason to be afraid of buff culture if the goal (in this specific case) is to improve overall game health?
 

Frosty

=_=
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
If the buff culture does indeed improve game health there is no problem in doing it. The problem isn't about buffing something, but buffing it for the heck of it or just to improve the useability of specific mons, not the metagame as a whole.

I can't see any broader change for the metagame, merely a couple mons getting better stats. Seems something to be done "for the heck of it". Hell, I'd argue that having two "viable" illusion users is not, under any point view, something healthy for the metagame (yes I am aware aurumoth is under revisions, but those aren't over nor implemented here, so we would have 2 illusions users until that happens). There is a huge distance between "doing something aiming to improve the game health" and "improving the game health".

Changing things because you are bored isn't improving the game health. No game does that. It is natural that the metagame stabilizes at some point, not something to be bored at. When you change things "for the heck of it", you mess around with dynamics and choices made by other people (choices done and raised throught he usage of many counters, gained through hours of investment). It can't be done only for the lulz, because you don't have anything better to do.

Sure, I would love a metagame where Gengar has 100/3/3/5/3/110 Stats and Aggron has 4/fuckload/3/3 stats. Because that was the metagame pre-61 benchmark. And it wasn't necessarily better than today's metagame. And I don't see any change done in that spread of your that would change my perspective of the metagame. It irks of Buff Culture, of giving random arbitrary boosts to some specific pokemon for the heck of it, because you have too much time on your hands. Not because it is necessary. Because it isn't.
 

Texas Cloverleaf

This user has a custom title
is a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
as point of reference we had also previously changed the r4/r5 cutoffs (why things switch at 116 instead of 120) as a result of the introduction of gen 5 mons to rebalance the original system

previous stat changes were done less because "why not" and more because "lets keep things playable"

fwiw i have no problem with this if you want to show me the effects of what changes and how that might impact things in a way that makes the game inherently more playable
 
I'm not totally sure the posts Frosty provided are relevant. They were in Gen 5 for one so they aren't entirely gamefreak relevant but they were also in the very early days of ASB which, even with a quick glance at a few posts in those threads shows, was very very conservative. It's pretty far from the ASB we play now.

To Texas' point, Rank 5 has already dropped from 125 to 120 and then 120 to 116 since then and this was done for little other reason than why not which is the same thing we are looking at now.

That said I need to take the time to actually look over what changes it would make and if I think any are too gamebreaking before giving a concrete answer (if anyone has the time to develop a would-be changelog with just asb stat lines instead of text lists that jayy's made so far that would be grand) especially since some mons look to be gaining a couple of stats or even 3. But I am not opposed to this idea in principle. I'll try to make more time on the weekend to take a better look.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 1)

Top