Reflecting on BW and Looking Ahead to Gen VI - SEE POST #508

[FrostFire]

This is legit why we need critical hits to balance stuff out. Cosmic Power, Barrier, and bulky Calm Mind/Bulk Up users would be impossible to take down after a few boosts, simply because they are turning would be KOs into not KOs. It means that you won't lose 100% of the time because you got unlucky and you missed that one hit and that one Pokemon is just powering through you due to it. Its suprisingly easy to get stuff like Sigilyph and Baton Pass chains to work if the critical hit does not become a factor, and those two things, along with other annoyances, just become imposible to beat way too quickly.

Critical hits really do save games, even if they are incredibly annoying oftentimes.

Yes, but the flaw in this argument (I think) is that you are implying that critical hits are to be relied upon to beat specific pokemon (Sigilyph) or strategies (Baton Pass). This is not the case - there are plenty of viable ways of dealing with these threats (Perish Song and Tricking Choice items immediately comes to mind, though there are others). This means that a critical hit is only ever hax - it's saving your butt when you haven't prepared for a threat (or dealt with it) properly. If Sigilyph gets to +6, that's on you; you should have built you're team to deal with it better, or played around it better. If you're relying on the crit to beat you're opponent's Sigilyph (just as an example), then you're relying on hax (or luck) to win in a situation where either:

-You're opponent has outplayed you or;
-You haven't prepared properly for a threat

Thus, crits should not bypass defense boosts as it (essentially) steals wins from players that should have won the match. There really isn't an excuse for letting something like Sigilyph get to +6. Or +3 for that matter.

That's just my feelings anyway.

 

[Hugin]

Have they ever gotten rid of a move before? If that's possible at all, I hope they get rid of Scald. That was a horrible idea. Or just give it 20 base power with a 0.5% chance to make the opposing Pokemon drunk or whatever. Fuck Scald.

Drop burn to 20%. Suddenly it's one hit out of 5 instead of 1 out of 3. People are far less likely to depend on something that will happen less than Full Paralysis. Maybe drop power too, but that's honestly not really necessary. Surf's damage, after STAB, Rain, LO/Specs, etc, is so much higher than Scald, that if the Burn were even slightly less likely, Scald would be ignored.

ATM, though? Scald is broken. Surf is a standard for attacks, sitting at the same tier as EQ, Return, and similar, and it gets ignored on everything but the most offensive sweepers. Scald is simply too good for the game as-is.

 

[Explorer]

My suggestion to help make the metagame less hax-reliant to stop setup sweepers such as Cosmic Power + Stored Power Sigilyph is to cut the critical hit rate of all attacking moves by 50% so people can't rely on them as often. Super Luck/Sniper/Scope Lens would be nerfed appropriately.

 

[SHUCKLE MAN]

I guess I'm in the minority, but personally enjoy critical hits and all that sort of thing. And I really liked playing RBY where there was a lot of critical hits around (some Pokemon had critical hit ratios of over 20% back then, and moves like Razor Leaf and Slash were almost 100% likely to critical hit on some Pokemon like Persian and Venusaur).

Obviously though, it's not good in a tournament when you only have one battle per round and you lose because of a critical hit (although the tournaments where they do "best of 3", or even "best of 5" can help counter that sort of thing), but on the ladder overall I don't think it matters much. For every battle you lose because of a critical hit you'll probably win another battle because of one, so in the ladder it usually balances out, and you'll still see the best players at the top and the worst at the bottom.

 

[Eggbert]

I really think we should take liberties with the game to make it better, since game freak isn't exactly fine tuning everything. As far as critical hits go, they are uncompetitive as it gets. Generally you don't let the enemy set up to 6+, and even if they do there are many ways like trick to stop the barrier and whatever sweepers. In tandem with out lovely weather based matchups, it's nearing the point where a good team/player can't win everything

 

[Glen ^^]

I believe CH only got overboard after DPP, when everyone and their mother started running around with 100+ BP moves of whatever type coming off their best stat for little to no drawback, and the addition of new boosting moves and items.

Unless we go back to using stuff like Brick Break and Dragon Claw, CHs will continue ruining games.

But, considering Kyurem's new forms, it looks like Game Freaks is taking a TCG approach to the games ("make everything more powerful because if it doesn't hit harder than before then it sucks and nobody will buy it") and we'll get a Dragon-type V-Create.

 

[Too cute to kill]

I want no weather to be a viable play style in the same way atheism is a religion. Imagine if air lock was on a u-turner. imagine a move called clear skies that inflicted double damage if it cancelled weather and had excellent distribution. The a imagine an abuser of no weather, with the ability homeostasis this Pokemon loses power in weather but gains power without. If anti weather becomes a viable style the very threat of it should lower weathers usage or at least make no weather vs. weather a more interesting match. At the moment we either kill weather or endorse it with some much needed balancing.

 

[FinalEquin0x]

I don't believe critical hits are an issue. It is part of what makes a game more fun because of one players immense joy and the other player's rage.

OT though,

- Weather needs to take a hit. Maybe create new ability that has good distribution (maybe Nidoqueen, new bulky ghost type, special offensive water/fire type, and bulky ice/fighting) and clears weather when it comes in.

- Another bulky spinblocker. Jellicent is becoming boring to use and Sableye doesn't always out so well.

- A "good" rapid spinner. Something like a bulky (physically defensive, similar to Skarm w/ low offense) Ghost/Steel w/ levitate doesn't sound like a bad idea. Not only would it drive the nail straight into the power creep, but give it a pal (a blissey type pokemon) and we could see stall making a comeback.

- need to reduce burn chance on Scald. It will still make its appearance on pokes like Jelli, Vapor, Tenta, but it will be denied over surf/hydro P for the pure power output on pokes like Rotom-W, Politoed(I am aware they typically use Hydro, but I do seem them packing Scald on occasion).

- Plethora of bulky, lower pokemon that can tank non-super effective hits from the meta and turn what are currently 2HKO's and 3HKO's and turn them into 4HKO's and 5HKO's. It gives them more time to set up some defense and combat the Hyper Offense teams that are swinging like wrecking balls in today's Meta.

 

[blitzlefan]

To me, critical hits are rather annoying, especially if you've sacked someone to Draco Meteor in hopes of setting up on the -2 Dragon, and then getting OHKO'd because of a crit. I hope that GameFreak will keep the critical hit ratio the same for lower powered moves, but decrease the critical hit ratio of stronger moves in proportion to the original base power of the moves. Therefore, weaker moves like Tackle would maintain their CH ratio, while overpowered moves like Draco Meteor and Outrage would have vastly decreased CH ratios. Having critical hits negate the opponents stat increases is good and helps check bulky set up sweepers, but having them negate your own stat drops is overkill, IMO.

 

[Cygnis]

To me, critical hits are rather annoying, especially if you've sacked someone to Draco Meteor in hopes of setting up on the -2 Dragon, and then getting OHKO'd because of a crit. I hope that GameFreak will keep the critical hit ratio the same for lower powered moves, but decrease the critical hit ratio of stronger moves in proportion to the original base power of the moves. Therefore, weaker moves like Tackle would maintain their CH ratio, while overpowered moves like Draco Meteor and Outrage would have vastly decreased CH ratios. Having critical hits negate the opponents stat increases is good and helps check bulky set up sweepers, but having them negate your own stat drops is overkill, IMO.

Just to say, critical hits happen 6.25% of the time. You hit a critical with Draco Metoer, doesn't matter because you have set-up bait and also if a Hippowdon is at +6 impossible to kill, you need Outrage to critical or its game over, even then, Outrage has a low chance to critical and you got Ice Fang so doesn't matter. Stop whining about critical hits, if you got the hax, you would be happy, right? So its like a 50/50 pizza, be happy. You can't win every single game, people must lose. Imagine some Peaked #1 several times team sweeping and always winning. Critical hits breaks that winning record with hax. Believe it or not hax is a big part of our metagame. Without Jirachi and Haxers this would be pretty boring. If hax is banned, there would be no such thing as luck just skill. In hackmons I see Superluck Stick Farfecth'd sweeping team with critical hits.

 

[Schpoonman]

If hax is banned, there would be no such thing as luck just skill.

At risk of infraction, I would like to point out just how wrong you are and why you should take a serious look at your competitive career. The ENTIRE POINT of Smogon is to create an environment where the best player wins. There has been serious discussion in the highest levels of Smogon's leadership in the past about whether or not to ban "hax" of all kinds because it gives wins to players who should not have won and that goes against the site's philosophy.

 

[nygerman]

Yeah, that's actually a neutral Flare Blitz, which is why it didn't say Super effective next to it. (Its Darmanitan, though, CB Sheer Force STAB 140 base power attack off of base 140ish attack stat is also fairly stupid). Also, I would have to calc the Water Spout in rain, too, which is kind of the most powerful attack ever, so that would OHKO.
You did remind me, though. I forgot to give it any EVs.

Choice Specs Palkia Hydro Pump against 252/252 Shuckle evo (in sand) - 46.7 - 56.04%

Yeah, that's not even a guaranteed 2HKO. I have nothing else to say about this.

GVon, here ya go, Eviolite Shuckle

Choice Specs Palkia Hydro Pump against 252/252 Eviolite Shuckle (in sand) - 50 - 59.83%

2HKO. That's slightly more reasonable, given that Shuckle now has no form of recovery whatsoever, and of course it still is SR weak, which is always a factor. Still, I do not like that calc at all.

Keep in mind that Shuckle has no offense. Which is why I hope they give shuckle magic guard so it can't be taunted.

 

[Schpoonman]

Keep in mind that Shuckle has no offense. Which is why I hope they give shuckle magic guard so it can't be taunted.

Magic Bounce would block Taunt, Magic Guard would do nothing but prevent passive damage.

 

[Infernis]

In hackmons I see Superluck Stick Farfecth'd sweeping team with critical hits.

No, you don't. That's an Impostor Blissey.

More seriously, I have never ever seen such a thing. Farfetch'd isn't fast enough and doesn't hit hard enough (even at double power!) for a metagame infested with Prankster Groudon, Skill Swap Normalize Gengar, and Wonder Guard Spiritomb. (Or even the hilarious Sturdy Shedinja.) It only doubles Farfetch'd's damage. Base 130 attack (instead of 60) isn't actually that outstanding for that metagame. Why? Because Groudon just got to +6 attack with Belly Drum and is spamming Nature Power for +1 priority earthquakes. No Guard Inferno Reshiram is chopping your people up. Drizzle Palkia and Swift Swim Specs Kyogre will end you if you don't carry a water immunity. (Or damage immunity.)

But this is the OU forum. The point is that scads of critical hits are not enough on their own to make a Pokemon good. They will not make Farfetch'd fast. They will only allow him to deal half the damage (with his most powerful attack!) that Aggron can dish out on a normal Head Smash. I think you're grossly exaggerating the importance of that doubling for most Pokemon. (That said, Prankster Groudon will take all the crits he can get.)

 

[Smilodon]

For every battle you lose because of a critical hit you'll probably win another battle because of one, so in the ladder it usually balances out, and you'll still see the best players at the top and the worst at the bottom.

Hum, not really. If you have a defensive set-up playstyle, you will throw something like 10 offensive (so more than 50% chance to have no crit) hits during the whole game, whereas your offensive opponent will hit 30 times (15% chance to have no crit), so CH really benefit more to the offensive strategy, there is no balance. We are discussing CH making defensive strategies non viable, and they are arguably a more harsh obstacle to defensive set-up than to offensive.

Just to say, critical hits happen 6.25% of the time. You hit a critical with Draco Metoer, doesn't matter because you have set-up bait and also if a Hippowdon is at +6 impossible to kill, you need Outrage to critical or its game over, even then, Outrage has a low chance to critical and you got Ice Fang so doesn't matter. Stop whining about critical hits, if you got the hax, you would be happy, right? So its like a 50/50 pizza, be happy. You can't win every single game, people must lose.

You "need" a CH to kill +6 Hippodown ? No, you need to have Perish song, Trick, Haze or Roar to erase the boost. If you have none of these tools, and not enough offensive pressure to avoid the set up, then your team is not well built, you deserve to lose. As I said earlier, no one ask for a 6,25% chance that the slowest pokemon hit before the other, so if you have no priority against +6 dragon dancer, you've lost, and that is normal. Why would defensive set up have to avoid hax when offensive one doesn't have this issue ??

Oh, and when I say I hate CH, I'm consistent. I sincerely apologize when I win because of a random crit when I had to lose, and it doesn't make me "happy".

 

[SHUCKLE MAN]

Hum, not really. If you have a defensive set-up playstyle, you will throw something like 10 offensive (so more than 50% chance to have no crit) hits during the whole game, whereas your offensive opponent will hit 30 times (15% chance to have no crit), so CH really benefit more to the offensive strategy, there is no balance. We are discussing CH making defensive strategies non viable, and they are arguably a more harsh obstacle to defensive set-up than to offensive.

Your numbers make absolutely no sense I'm afraid, but I get your general point; a team that uses attacking moves more often will benefit more from critical hits.

Something they could do is make the critical hit ratio increase according to your opponent's defense modifier. For example, if your opponent is at +1 defense, you have a 6.25% chance to crit, then if they're at +2 you have a 12.5% chance, and so on.

 

[zyrefredric]

@above, the weakness of defensive set-up (Cosmic Power, Stockpile, etc) is that it can be beaten by a critical hit, rendering all those turns of setting up wasted. Why then should critical hit ratio increase against them? Doing so makes defensive boosting less viable as it is now. I'd say the critical hit chance now is good as it is. If there must be a change, it should be that there be more incentive in boosting critical hit chance, so that items (Scope Lens), abilities (Super Luck, Sniper, Battle/Shell Armor) and moves (Focus Energy, Lucky Chant, Night Slash, etc) to be of greater value. Something like this:

stage - % chance of crit - proposed change
Stage 1 - 6.25% - 5.00%
Stage 2 - 12.5% - 10.0%
Stage 3 - 25.0% - 20.0%
Stage 4 - 33.0% - 40.0%
Stage 5 - 50.0% - 80.0%

Not much of a change. However with this, you get a lower chance of getting a critical hit normally. Even when using a high-crit move, you have a lower chance of getting a CH than what it is now. However, the proposed change gives more incentive for sets that specialize on CH. Any Pokemon holding a Scope Lens can set-up with Focus Energy and use high-crit moves like Leaf Blade has 80% chance to deal double the damage. A Sniper Pokemon can utilize this to do triple the damage 80% of the time. Not that bad.

 

[IcyMan28]

Critical hits serve as a fail safe against excessive defensive boosters. If they were really as broken as you are all implying, abusing them would be a much more viable strategy (see: RBY metagame). They are the least of our worries when we have behemoth attacking stats and weather having a much more noticeable and consistent impact on gameplay.

As a technical issue, keep in mind that we can never ban critical hits unless they can be turned off or removed from the cartridges. I understand that's what some are arguing for, but I'm just pointing it out

 

[Smilodon]

Your numbers make absolutely no sense I'm afraid, but I get your general point; a team that uses attacking moves more often will benefit more from critical hits.

Thanks for the "no sense" ^^
If you want math, i'll do math.
Chance of not having a critical hit (can seems strange if you have never done stats, but it's the way it works) when you hit 10 times :
[(100-6.25)/100]^10 = 52.4%. So about 50% chance to make a crit when you hit 10 times (higher than many would expect).

[(100-6.25)/100]^30 = 14.4% of not having any crits when you hit 30 times.

So my numbers were exacts (just rounded up a very little bit, hope you'll forgive it).

And I don't ask for the suppression of CH, they are part of the game, whether I like it or not. I would just like that the defensive bonuses could not be negated by critical hits. Still double damage (which is strong enough), but no "anti-armor" effect.

 

[IcyMan28]

That would be pointless at any defensive boost above +2, essentially. You are far less likely to land the crit at that point than after multiple attempts against a +6 opponent. A crit at +2 would be like a regular hit, but a crit at +6 would do nothing significant.

 

[eriados]

It would be a valid argument, but that doesn't happens.

They are the best Pokemon to use because they conform to those previously considered side mechanics. Now, to be OU, you have to:

- Have great base stats.
- Have a good move list, or an excellent, specific move set.
- Be good under weather. Bonus points if you are good at more than one.
- Substitute the word "good" with "awesome" or "top of line" if you're weak to SR.

Everything else is neglected to lower tiers, even if they conform to the two first points (good stats and moves).

Personally, I've never saw a Pokemon centralise a metagame so much like SR and weather is doing. I don't want them gone, just altered to an "optional viable strategy" status instead of "use them or lose", because atm even countering them is not an option.

Are you arguing that you want Pokemon to be viable that don't have good base stats or good movepools? Not all Pokemon in OU necessarily benefit from weather. Breloom, Salamence, Landorus, are all great examples of Pokemon that function well inside and outside of weather, not preferring any single one. And you can make the same argument for "use them or lose" for things like Steel types. If you don't use Steels, you will lose to Dragons. Therefore are Steels centralizing? I don't think so. SR is just a good strategy in the current metagame, just like running a Steel is a good strategy in the current metagame.

 

[keleyeemoh]

It would be a valid argument, but that doesn't happens.

They are the best Pokemon to use because they conform to those previously considered side mechanics. Now, to be OU, you have to:

- Have great base stats.
- Have a good move list, or an excellent, specific move set.
- Be good under weather. Bonus points if you are good at more than one.
- Substitute the word "good" with "awesome" or "top of line" if you're weak to SR.

Everything else is neglected to lower tiers, even if they conform to the two first points (good stats and moves).

Personally, I've never saw a Pokemon centralise a metagame so much like SR and weather is doing. I don't want them gone, just altered to an "optional viable strategy" status instead of "use them or lose", because atm even countering them is not an option.

Are you saying that Pokémon have to adhere to ALL of these situations or just SOME of them? If the former, I point you to Jolteon, who adheres to only one, and yet I use him on most of my teams. If the latter, refer to the post above me.

 

[HabibsHotDogs]

Doubles is a much more balanced metagame, and when you combine this fact with the plethora of doubles geared additions to movepools and abilities, this begins to somewhat support the notion that GF seems to be balancing with a focus on doubles. In regards to singles balancing using the hypothesis that GF prioritises doubles, we will probably not expect drastic changes that affect singles without GF carefully considering how it affects doubles.

Some evidence:

In doubles rain is just a "good" strategy even with drizzle + SS, in singles with none of the bans (since drizzle + SS) being active, rain is "the" great strategy.

In doubles, shadow tag Chandelure probably won't even turn heads, it has been shown in DW OU that Chandelure is one of "the" most overcentralising pokemon (the death of stall, etc).

Stealth Rock in doubles is "just another strategy" and appears on no where near 9 in 10 teams as it apparently appears in singles! (and 99 in 100 of teams over 1900 I'll guess)

In doubles, no one bats an eyelash at dragons/Terrakion/Keldeo but just prepare for them as they would most threats (ie you can prepare for them automatically by preparing for most offensive threats, in a blanket fashion, impossible in singles), in singles, if you don't have a way to deal with the aforementioned threats chances are you will have to go 2 for 1 or worse..

edit: by doubles I do NOT mean VGC!! (Which is much more difficult to balance.. intuitively then a 6v6 no time limit metagame)

 

[Erico9001]

While crits are annoying, I don't see them being removed from the metagame. While the philosophy of smogon is to find the top players, etc, what also must be kept in mind is the nature of Pokemon. Smogon's philosophy is a philosophy based around Pokemon and therefore Pokemon's philosophy. Haxes ARE annoying, and can change a game against the probable outcome, but can add a level of surprise and fun.

Yes, defensive teams or pokemon suffer because of critical hits. Specifically I can think of the many times I have set up for a viable sweep with stockpile Hippowdown and been taken out with a critical hit. But to remember us that Pokemon's nature does not include making defensive and offensive teams equal, this is just a goal by many of us competitive players. Defensive teams do suffer and should CONTINUE to suffer from critical hits, unless if the owner of the teams takes crits into account in his teambuilding.

 

[Arcticblast]

HabibsHotDogs, Game Freak's official tournament metagame is VGC Doubles (4v4), so of course they'd balance toward that instead of toward singles.