Battle Mechanics Research

No one has confirmed that one yet (you can see the OP has no link to any post regarding that).
There's plenty of evidence from practically everyone playing the game. that critical hits do lessened damage. The 1.5x is a guess, but it appears to be a pretty accurate one. I think we can safely say that critical hits do less damage now.
 

Arcticblast

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Mario With Lasers means that there is no confirmation that Sniper has changed.

EDIT: well forget this then
 
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Mario With Lasers means that there is no confirmation that Sniper has changed.
I don't think so, considering the part of the quote he used...also, that's kinda the exact question Liferake was asking.

It would be interesting, however, to re-confirm the mechanics of critical hits this generation. If they ignore defensive buffs on the opponent's side, etc.
 

jake

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cbb and I tested Explosion. His Steelix used Explosion on my Eviolite Tangela, with Steelix having 104 Attack, and my Tangela having 131 HP and 132 Defense.

The calc with non-Defense-halving Explosion (and including Eviolite on Tangela) looks like this: 104 Atk vs 198 Def & 131 HP (250 Base Power): 50 - 59 (38.17% - 45.04%). Explosion did 56 damage, so it's pretty safe to say we have the same Explosion mechanics as last gen.
 

Mario With Lasers

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No, I was talking about the CH nerf. I've never seen a CH ingame that wasn't against a pokémon that would faint to a non-CH move already, so I was annoyed by the fact no one has posted irrefutable evidence the nerf existed.


And to add to Zebraiken's post: I've had a wild Electrode eight levels higher than my Hawlucha do only 42 damage with Selfdestruct. It would be ridiculous for a move that'd essentially have 400 BP to do so few damage, so there's that.
 
This isn't strictly a battle mechanic, but I think it bears noting; it's pretty big.

Destiny Knot and Power items can stack.

31 SpA/DEF male Togetic holding Destiny Knot and 31 SpA/SpD Pikachu holding Power (whatever the SpD one is, I forget) give me 31 SpA/DEF/SpD Pichu 5/6 of the time.

This should mean that it's possible to breed flawless Pokémon ingame without RNG abuse, by introducing an additional flawless IV each generation.

It's not even time-consuming. There's very little randomness involved now, and Friend Safari enables you to easily farm perfect IVs on breeding stock.

As per Ves, apparently the Power item IV reduces you to inheriting four Destiny Knot IVs, so you can't inherit 6 IVs, and inheriting the five perfect ones from two parents still has a bit of chance involved.

You can inherit up to 5 perfect IVs from one parent this way, and nature from the other.

So, yeah.
 
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Perfect HP, Atk, Def and Spd Marill holding Power Weight and Perfect Atk, Def, Sp.Def and Spd Marill holding Destiny Knot produce a Marill with perfect HP, Atk and Def.

So it seems if you're inheriting a Power IV, you'll only inherit 4 Destiny Knot IVs.
 

Arcticblast

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When Bannette MegaEvolves, does Prankster activate that turn or will it use "other" moves in its normal priority bracket for that turn?
 
Really?

Hmm. That's kinda lame.

Still really exploitable, though; you need a bit more luck, but 4 DK IVs+1 Power IV should still be very workable.

I'll make sure that Destiny Knot is compatible with Everstone.
 
A battle where I tested out critical hits with my brother:
(This requires you to have the VS recorder to see, connect to the internet and punch in the codes)
My persective:
GZ9G-WWWW-WWWX-E8VU
His perspective (Watch this so you can see how much HP is lost on both non-crits and crits):
FWZW-WWWW-WWWX-E95Y

Skorupi with Sniper had 40 SpA is the male skorupi. Spamming Venoshock against Solrock (78 SpD) and Minun (94 SpD)
Critical Hit lands on minun on turn 10
Skorupi with Battle Armor had 45 SpA and is the female skorupi. Spamming Venoshock against Zangoose (71 SpD)
Critical hit lands on Zangoose on turn 4

Also, for the lols this confirms that using Trick room twice resets the dimensions.

You may now at least have a rough range on how much crits (Both with and without Sniper) do. Get to it.
 
A battle where I tested out critical hits with my brother:
(This requires you to have the VS recorder to see, connect to the internet and punch in the codes)
My persective:
GZ9G-WWWW-WWWX-E8VU
His perspective (Watch this so you can see how much HP is lost on both non-crits and crits):
FWZW-WWWW-WWWX-E95Y

Skorupi with Sniper had 40 SpA is the male skorupi. Spamming Venoshock against Solrock (78 SpD) and Minun (94 SpD)
Critical Hit lands on minun on turn 10
Skorupi with Battle Armor had 45 SpA and is the female skorupi. Spamming Venoshock against Zangoose (71 SpD)
Critical hit lands on Zangoose on turn 4

Also, for the lols this confirms that using Trick room twice resets the dimensions.

You may now at least have a rough range on how much crits (Both with and without Sniper) do. Get to it.
Expanding on this with information so you don't need to watch the replay:
Skorupi with Battle armor:
Non-crit hit 1 vs Zangoose = 27 dmg
Non-crit hit 2 vs Zangoose = 28 dmg
Non-crit hit 3 vs Zangoose = 25 dmg
Crit hit vs Zangoose = 40 dmg
Averaging the non crits ((27+28+25)/3) =26.67
40/26.67 = 1.499, which is 1.5x. So Its safe to say they nerfed crits to do only 1.5x damage now.

And with nerfing of crits means nerfing of Sniper. Kind of. Sniper didn't really change, it just multiplies with a 1.5x bonus to the base critical multiplier (Which used to be 2x, but is now 1.5x)
Skorupi with Sniper:
Non-crit hit 1 vs Minun = 19 dmg
Non-crit hit 2 vs Minun = 19 dmg
Non-crit hit 3 vs Minun = 18 dmg
Non-crit hit 4 vs Minun = 18 dmg
Crit hit vs Minun = 40 dmg
Averaging the non crits = 18.5
40/18.5 = 2.1621621...
Because my damage output against minun is so low, the numbers aren't exactly friendly enough to give it perfect accuracy, but I'm leaning towards it doing 2.25x damage.
So instead of sniper doing 3x, it now does 2.25x damage.

Proof of this is in the quote, watching that battle from my brother's perspective will allow you to see Zangoose/Minun HP. Zangoose and Minun's Special defense, as well as my skorupi's Special attack, are also in the quote.
 
If you want to test crits more easily, use a Pokémon with Focus Energy and Sniper. Focus Energy now makes most attacks crit 50% of the time and high-crit moves crit 100% of the time.

I can confirm on my own game that the crit multiplier seems to be 1.5. I don't have Sniper to confirm that bonus, but I am disappointed to hear that it still appears to be only 1.5.
 
Elaborating on Destiny Knot: I think the current understanding is wrong - it passes 5 IVs from either the male or the female. Usually a mixture of the two. It does work with Everstone, though.

I don't think you have fewer IVs passed with a power item, though?
 
Elaborating on Destiny Knot: I think the current understanding is wrong - it passes 5 IVs from either the male or the female. Usually a mixture of the two. It does work with Everstone, though.

I don't think you have fewer IVs passed with a power item, though?
No, you don't. It just works as if without the Destiny Knot - the baby inherits the guaranteed Power Item IV and gets four from either the father or mother
 

R Inanimate

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Now that I'm finally in the post game, I can start doing a few minor tests and stuff. At least before I start to hit the Battle Mansion to try to create another Trainer Dex.

I did a quick test to also confirm that Mega Launcher is a 1.5x damage boost.

Lv37 Mega Blastoise: 107 SpA
Delphox: 199 SpDef

Using Water Pulse. Delt 42, then 48 damage
Just a quick two attacks here. 1.3x can't deal 48. 1.6x can't deal 42. While it could be 1.4x boost from those numbers... I don't think there has ever been anything that gives a 1.4x boost to anything. So it's pretty safe to say it is 1.5x.

Also did another test with Misty Terrain:

Floges Used Misty Terrain. Then switched out for Talonflame.

Lv 78 Goodra: 215 SpA
vs Lv 61 Talonflame: 100 SpD

Delt 178 Damage. 100% power.
So Dragons that are standing in the mist will still hit for full damage against flying targets.
 
Has someone tested Knock Off's bonus BP against various items yet? My friend would like to code this into Showdown soon.
 

Arcticblast

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<Arcticblast> Was Knock Off confirmed to not have a BP increase when it knocks an item away?
<Zebraiken> i think dtc confirmed that yes
<dtc> i'd test it a bit more
<dtc> it doesnt seem to be a substantial boost that's for sure

Also, why are you guys doing the programming when the PS staff programmers are doing it for you...?
 
Anyone can submit a pull (submission) on github which is reviewed by staff and gets committed.

Staff is swamped so helping them out is good.
 
Did some testing with my Aurorous and Frost Breath to test crit damage. Frost Breath was doing less than 50% damage to wild Poliwhirl, while Ancientpower was able to KO them after that, meaning there is clearly a nerf to critical hit damage. I then used Frost Breath on 3 different Poliwhirl and captured them to verify the damage:

Aurorous: Lv. 39, 90 SpAtk
1. 44 damage, 44 SpDef
2. 42 damage, 47 SpDef
3. 42 damage, 48 SpDef

The minimum damage that would be done if the crit modifier were x2 would be 54 on the first Poliwhirl, which is much higher than what was observed, also pointing to the fact that there was a crit nerf. I then looked at the damage ranges for each Poliwhirl if the crit mod were x1.5:

1. 40 - 48 damage
2. 38 - 45 damage
3. 38 - 45 damage

Each of the observed damages falls within its respective range. I then calculated the range the crit mod could be to get the observed damages:

1. 1.372 <= CH < 1.614
2. 1.366 <= CH < 1.699
3. 1.4 <= CH < 1.7

Since the crit mod is constant, 1.4 <= CH < 1.651. Therefore, critical hits now do anywhere from x1.4 to x1.651 damage.

I'll test it with a move that doesn't always crit in a bit.
 
^I did a little bit on CHs on the previous page, if that helps you out at all. Includes my results from using a non-sniper venoshock on a skorupi getting really close to 1.5x, with sniper venoshock getting somewhat close to the expected 2.25x
 

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