Playstyle Reversal [Now Playable!]

Eh, this meta seems to be too stally for my taste, how about turning this into ContraryMons?

Where Malamar and Spinda can use bulk up in safety.
 
Cosmic Power (Plus Defend Order, and situationally Magnetic Flux): Sharply raises the user's defenses, lowers Attack and Special Attack. Very useful for walls.

Foul Play: Raises the user's defenses while reducing their vulnerability to Foul Play and Confusion self-hitting. For Klefki, Sableye, etc, Foul Play is now fantastic. It of course ignores drops to the user's own Attack stages.

Shift Gear: Agility+Cosmic Power, with the only loss being your Special Attack drops. Klinklang can ignore that if it likes.

Tail Glow: Nasty Plot+Cosmic Power while reducing vulnerability to Foul Play and Confusion self-hitting. Fantastic.

Anything that sharply raises a defensive stat: Cotton Power, lowers your offenses. Yikes.

Cotton Guard: Raises Defense 4 stages, raises Special Defense, lowers offenses. Holy crap.

Quiver Dance: Sharply raises Special Defense, raises Defense and Speed, reduces vulnerability to Foul Play and Confusion self-hitting. Wow. Keep in mind Volcarona gets Fiery Dance and it has a 50% chance of raising the user's Special Attack, so Volcarona can easily chain a series of attacks without needing to Roost to get its Special Attack back. Oh, and it gets Roost hurrrr.

Focus Energy: If it counts as a set-up move (Pretty sure it does), just give the user a Scope Lens (Or have Super Luck or be using moves with an increased critical hit ratio) and now they lower their offenses (But completely ignore the drop because lol crits) while using Cosmic Power. Nice.

Growth: Cosmic Power. In Sun, Cosmic non-Sun Growth. (+1 to everything except Speed, crit chance, Evasion, and Accuracy) Heck yeah.

Work Up: Cosmic Power.

Swords Dance: Howl+Cosmic Power. Nice.

Nasty Plot: Calm Mind+Harden.

Calm Mind: Amnesia+Harden, lowers vulnerability to Foul Play and Confusion self-hitting.

Bulk Up: Iron Defense+ uuuuh plus, uh, +1 to Special Defense, OK? Lowers Special Attack one stage.

Agility: Cosmic Agility! Lowers offenses though.

Reflect and Light Screen: Wait, are these Status moves or set-up moves?

Accupressure: Cosmic Power+random stat. Lowers offenses, but hey, Shuckle doesn't care.

Amnesia: Drastically raises Special Defense, raises Defense, lowers offenses. Heck yeah.

Hone Claws: Cosmic Power+Accuracy. Attack stays the same. Lose Special Attack. Pretty cool.

Coil: Sharply raise Defense, raise Special Defense, raise Accuracy, Attack stays the same. Lose Special Attack. Better than Hone Claws, of course.

Dragon Dance: Speed+Cosmic Power. Attack stays the same. Pretty cool.

Poison Fang: Now that Toxic lowers your defenses while Poison Fang raises them, might be worth using over Toxic.

Leeching moves: Much more appealing for walls now, since they all double as Cosmic Power. Especially if you can get a maxed critical hit ratio.

Note that Drifblim, Blaziken, Scizor, Swellow, Furret, Beedrill, and of course Smeargle all get both Baton Pass (What happens with it anyway, stats-wise?) and Focus Energy. They'll be huge complements to any Pokemon that wants to wall and has access to leeching moves. Pass off Focus Energy, and leech away with each leech being a Cosmic Power+heal while completely ignoring the offense drops! (Completely if you're holding a Scope Lens, anyway)

Contrary: So now whenever Malamar attacks with any move its defenses lower and its offenses rise. Pass off some Speed boosts to it and murder everything.

Shuckle meanwhile can run Contrary and spam its usual repertoire of Status moves with them all being Cosmic Power too.

Regigigas: Give it Leftovers, start slapping everything with Power Up Punch, stall the heck out of the enemy until your Slow Start ends, start murdering things while basically invincible.

Roar and Whirlwind: Raise your offensive stats while ensuring your opponent doesn't get to use the fact that your defensive stats dropped. (Specifically useful for fast Pokemon)

Circle Throw and Dragon Tail: Keep Cosmic Powering while slamming the enemy through hazards over and over and oh my god over.

Power Up Punch: I already covered this, but its damaging Cosmic Power that retains your Attack. Sweet.

Charge Beam: What I just said about Power Up Punch, but less reliable. And for Special Attack.

Recharge moves: Maybe slightly less terrible, since they raise your defenses in the process?

Acid Spray: Harshly lowers the target's Special Defense while you use Cosmic Power. Their defenses will drop faster than your offense!

Stored Power: Oh my god. Keep in mind that Stored Power only cares about how many stats are above base -it doesn't count stats below base as a negative. So every time you attack with it, it gains BP and you use Cosmic Power.

Punishment: What I just said about Stored Power, but for beating up the opponent. Consider consistently using this over Crunch -after one move most Pokemon will have at least two stages, raising its BP to 100!

Frost Breath and Storm Throw: Cosmic Power and completely ignores the drop to your offensive stats! Also completely ignore the enemy's attempts to raise their defenses!

Seismic Toss and Night Shade: I just covered this.

Clear Smog: Get the enemy's out of control stats back to baseline. And use Cosmic Power.

Volt Switch and U-Turn: Attack and switch out without having to suffer from decreased defenses!

Fake Out: Cosmic Power before the enemy can attack, and in fact preventing them from attacking. Sableye might be justified in running this and Foul Play consistently.

Endeavor: Cosmic Power while dragging your opponent's HP to your own level, totally unimpressed with your Attack and Special Attack drops.

Counter, Mirror Coat, and Metal Burst: Wait, do these count as attacking moves?

Priority attacks, generally: Cosmic Power before the enemy can move!

Chip Away and Sacred Sword: Ignore the enemy's (Potentially huge) defensive boosts while Cosmic Powering. But lower your offenses and actually care. Probably invalidated by Frost Breath and Storm Throw and Critdra and...

---

I suspect Shuckle is going to be the king of this meta, with Volcarona possibly king of offense Pokemon. Either that or some of the Frost Breath/Storm Throw Pokemon.

More generally, I anticipate Hazards: The Meta.
 
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Focus Energy: If it counts as a set-up move (Pretty sure it does), just give the user a Scope Lens (Or have Super Luck or be using moves with an increased critical hit ratio) and now they lower their offenses (But completely ignore the drop because lol crits) while using Cosmic Power. Nice.
The set-up move distinction only applies to stat changing moves, so Reflect, Light Screen, Focus Energy, Ingrain, Aqua Ring ect. fall under the category of status moves. Critdra could still abuse this though seeing as while critical hits ignore negative attack drops, they don't ignore the positive ones, making its surfs that much deadlier at first and making the first Draco hit like Kingdra effectively has specs.

To hopefully prevent future confusion I added this to the set-up move clarification in the OP, since I can see why one would be inclined to think that they would count as set-up.
 
Maybe it might be a good idea to have defensive set-up moves lower defense instead of offense? I mean, Cotton Guard giving +4 Def and +1 Sp. D in one turn is cool, but it does strongly slant things towards stall. As for moves that do both, like Bulk Up and Calm Mind... I don't know. They could either do nothing or drop all four stats I guess. Or stay offense dropping.
 
Well, Focus Energy is raising your Critical hit ratio stages, which is why I'm guessing it constitutes a "set-up" move. Kind of curious how Pikachuun's code would count it.

Re: Rumors

That's just getting confusing and you're underestimating the impact of "recovery=defense drops". You can't just stall through something ripping off half your health by Recover spamming, even though they'll be losing offense!
 
It depends on the mon. If you have Cosmic Power, you can boost +2/+2 per turn, while recover will only be -1/-1. Just add Toxic or other residual damage and non-crit abusers will be hard pressed to break through after a CP (or other defensive boost) or two. Of course, not every stally mon can do this since they lack the right movepool.
 
Deoxys, Arceus, Chimecho, Beeheeyem, Starmie, Sigilyph, Clefable, Solrock, Lunatone, and Smeargle are the only Pokemon that have both Cosmic Power and a 50%-health-now move. (Additionally, Vespiquen gets Defend Order+Heal Order, but it needs all the help it can get)

Of these only Clefable is neither Uber, nor typically crap, nor ill-suited to taking advantage of this. (Starmie is rather fragile, though maybe having Cosmic Power sharply raise both stats will make it possible to do the walling thing after all)

Personally I'm glad to see the likes of Beeheeyem getting a leg up, while Clefable can probably still be taken down, particularly since the meta is liable to focus more heavily on crits, forced-switches, etc anyway.

For everything else (Eviolite Chansey) they're opening themselves up to the potential for a Pursuit kill -you hit them, they heal, you hit them, they heal, you hit them, they heal, you switch while they heal, and then you Pursuit while they either switch or don't switch, they faint. Heal-spam is going to be really difficult to do safely, compared to other metas -especially since any critical hit will ignore your own offense drops but not the target's defense drops, so Eviolite Chansey is going to be horrified by Storm Throw anything switching in on it.

I think the main thing this meta does is actually push away from "straight offense", and more towards set up offense and defense, and tools that counter those. For instance, Manaphy using Tail Glow may represent enough of a defensive boost that what would normally switch in on it and OHKO it instead just barely fails to do so -and gets KOed in turn by the boosted Scald/Ice Beam/Energy Ball/whatever Manaphy tosses back.

Basically, Assault Vest Pokemon and anything that is in the spirit of an Assault Vest Pokemon (eg Mega Kangaskhan. I'm actually wondering if it could be unbanned) is going to be the least happy segment of Pokemon.
 
scolipede spamming protect/sub then passing to something with power herb such as azumarill would be very broken.
 
Well that's a terrifying thought. Depending on how things turn out, Baton Pass might need to be banned outright, sadly.
 
That could work, but part of my thought is that literally anything with Baton Pass can do whatever it's going to do and then potentially pass off to a White Herb holding Pokemon to get all the advantage of the stat weirdness and none of the disadvantage, which had never occurred to me until Pagoose posted it, and would potentially be, if not broken, than at least over-centralizing and obnoxious.
 
Yeah actually, anything with baton pass that also gets a speed boosting move such as agility would be able to do a similar, but less effective thing. Get an agility off then spam protect/sub until low hp then baton pass the boosts off to a pokemon holding white herb. Baton pass should definitely be banned in this meta.
 
Yeah actually, anything with baton pass that also gets a speed boosting move such as agility would be able to do a similar, but less effective thing. Get an agility off then spam protect/sub until low hp then baton pass the boosts off to a pokemon holding white herb. Baton pass should definitely be banned in this meta.
That's not really the point. The point is you can put Baton Pass on anything, and just do whatever you normally do and then Baton Pass off to something with White Herb. Also Spinda new meta, has both Contrary and Baton Pass.

And on top of all that, Baton Pass itself inherently lowers Def and Sp. Def while increasing Attack and Sp. Atk before passing. Unless you rule that Baton Pass is an offensive move like you do with direct boosting moves. That might actually be the nerf Baton Pass needs, since it would damage your offensive setup before passing. (Grab Atk/Sp. Atk boosts with Sub spam, but then lose 1 stage each in exchange for defences that are already going to be reset by White Herb.) And it makes Spinda even better since it can get increased offences and decreased defences with Baton Pass.

With Baton Pass counted as an offensive move and Protect/Detect banned, the strategy you mentioned results in this:
+2 Speed/+1 Def/+1 Sp. Def/-1 Atk/-1 Sp. Atk (Agility), +1 Atk/+1 Sp. Atk/-1 Def/-1 Sp. Def (Substitute), +1 Atk/+1 Sp. Atk/-1 Def/-1 Sp. Def (Substitute), +1 Atk/+1 Sp. Atk/-1 Def/-1 Sp. Def (Substitute), +1 Atk/+1 Sp. Atk/-1 Def/-1 Sp. Def (Substitute), +1 Atk/+1 Sp. Atk/-1 Def/-1 Sp. Def (Substitute), +1 Def/+1 Sp. Def/-1 Atk/-1 Sp. Atk (Baton Pass), White Herb.
The total result of that setup? +3 Attack, +3 Special Attack, +2 Speed. That's it. And that's an Agility, five Substitutes (possible due to Leftovers recovery if your max HP isn't divisible by 4), and a Baton Pass. If you aren't able to get up 5 Subs (due to pressure from the opponent or the threat of priority moves or the like), then you get less than that. Now admittedly, +3/+3/+2 offences are pretty scary, but they're nowhere near as bad as what you were describing. Speed Boost + Sub + Baton Pass is far scarier, however, because it takes 1 less turn to set up and gets a lot more Speed as well as 1 more stage of Attack and Sp. Attack. As such, banning the combination of Speed Boost and Baton Pass on the same Pokémon seems like a reasonable step. Also, keep in mind that every Substitute lowers your defences until you pass, which could leave you open to priority moves.


Also question: if a move fails (Substitute while you already have one, Sucker Punch on an opponent who isn't attacking, etc.), does it still apply stat modifications? If not, that introduces some interesting options in regards to stat control, and also makes it easier to deal with an Agility + Sub + Pass strategy as their Substitutes aren't stat boosts if you don't keep breaking them.
 
The reason I initially allowed baton pass is I figured that while the opposing Pokemon is setting up substitutes and getting attack boosts, you would be able to attack that Pokemon and gain defensive boosts to balance them out. Then again, the baton passer has a choice of recipent which means even then things could get ugly if your defense booster is forced out. I'm still not entirely convinced baton pass is broken though, so I think the best course of action at this point is wait until (if ever) the metagame becomes playable, and then quick ban it if it becomes necessary.

On the topic of sub/protect boosters, I'd like to bring up Crobat, which seems like a terrific anti-metagame Pokemon:

Crobat @ Choice Band
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 36 HP / 252 Atk / 220 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Brave Bird
- U-turn
- Cross Poison
- Tailwind

Admittedly, this thing doesn't have the greatest physical coverage, but Infiltrator Brave Bird is all it really needs to put serious pain on substitute spammers (especially since a great deal of them don't resist it). The following spread outspeeds everything up to timid Lati's, but if desired a jolly nature can be used to outspeed things such as Greninja or anything up to 130+ really. While 90 attack might seem rather low, a choice band + defense drops can make it hit very hard, adding on to the fact that brave bird's base power can mitigate low attack stats as Talonflame has proven. Not really much else to say apart from the fact that it looks to be a terrific revenge killer, and if Playstyle Reversal becomes playable I plan to use it on a great deal of my teams if it ends up as great as I think it will be.

Also question: if a move fails (Substitute while you already have one, Sucker Punch on an opponent who isn't attacking, etc.), does it still apply stat modifications? If not, that introduces some interesting options in regards to stat control, and also makes it easier to deal with an Agility + Sub + Pass strategy as their Substitutes aren't stat boosts if you don't keep breaking them.
A move that fails will still give stat boosts. Will edit the OP to address this.
 

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