Weight-Based Mechanics in ASB

[ZhengTann]

This thread will be tightly moderated to keep discussion focused. ​

Weight Classes, and ASB mechanics related to them, are part of the "flavour spices" that makes ASB slightly different from in-catridge games. However, since the 4th term of Council, there has been concerns about Weight-based moves being unbalanced. User Frosty is the forerunner on this topic: having a Colossoil, a Pyroak, and a Snorlax (WC 10, 5, 9 respectively), he can and did testify to their overwhelming strengths and lack of distinct weaknesses. I have done some calculations myself, based on the claims, with the following results:

Assumptions:
- The opponent Pokemon has 100/5/3/5/3/80 stats, Size/Weight of 3/4, is neither Grass- nor Fighting-type, and is neutral to all incoming attacks.
- All calculations are done with neutral Natures and no Items.

Snorlax Body Slam versus Opponent Pokemon (7 EN cost after STAB) ~ 11 [BAP] + 3 [STAB] + 1.5 [RANK] = 15.5 damage
Snorlax Giga Impact versus Opponent Pokemon (11.6 EN cost after STAB) ~ 18 [BAP] + 3 [STAB] + 1.5 [RANK] = 22.5 damage
Colossoil Bounce versus Opponent Pokemon (12.333 EN cost) ~ 11 [BAP] + 3 [RANK] = 14 damage
Colossoil Giga Impact versus Opponent Pokemon (13 EN cost) ~ 19 [BAP] + 3 [RANK] = 22 damage
Pyroak Wood Hammer versus Opponent Pokemon (8.5 EN cost after STAB) ~ 15 [BAP] + 3 [STAB] = 18 damage
Pyroak Flare Blitz versus Opponent Pokemon (8.5 EN cost after STAB) ~ 15 [BAP] + 3 [STAB] = 18 damage
Bronzong Gyro Ball versus Opponent Pokemon (6 EN cost after STAB) ~ 11 [BAP] + 3 [STAB] + 4 [HEAVY METAL] = 18 damage

So let's start the discussion with the following questions:

• What else makes the aforementioned Pokemons so powerful, aside from their Weight?
• Continuing from the question above, would it be a viable solution to balance the Pokemons (and the whole ASB, to an extension) by working on Weight-based mechanics?
  
• Are there any other facets of Weight-based mechanics that should be brought to light? (Staraptor Brave Bird, for example)
• Are there reasons (or lack thereof) to balance ASB Weight-based mechanics?

This will be the first stage of the discussion, where we explore the motives, not the means, behind balancing Weight-based mechanics. So please focus your thoughts on that for now. You may or may not answer all the listed questions above. Progress of the discussion will be tracked and recorded on this OP.

EDIT: Second stage of the discussion, pertaining to balancing Weight-based moves, can be found at post #13.
EDIT2: Third stage of the discussion, concerning Heavy Metal, can be found at post #32.

Fire away ^_^

 

[Avnomke]

Going to address this point-by-point.
(Also you forgot about Aggron Head Smash/Heavy Slam)
1. They all have a lot of hp and/or high defenses, so they're harder to take out than most other pokemon.
2. I think so, since these 5 or so pokemon can do a lot of damage to the opposing team without much more thought than subbing for p/e, counter and/or bide.
3. Not really, since other users of weight-based moves don't have BAP >13 after abilities drawbackless moves.
4. Yeah, they're really strong, much stronger than other options. Note that I'm not saying strong things are bad, I'm saying things that are so much stronger than all other options that you have no reason not to use the move in almost all situations, then that is bad.

 

[ZhengTann]

Alright, I suppose everybody's said their piece about the 4 above questions in SotG, so I'll try to tackle this from a different angle. Looking back on the OP, perhaps it may have been inappropriate to shoehorn the discussion into very few, very specific mons. Doing so might blind us all to the overall effect of Weight-based Mechanics on the game, and instead shifts the focus to, more or less, "dem Pokemon OP plz nerf". Looking back the Pokemon mentioned above, they are not powerful solely because they are heavy. Actually they boast quite a few more qualities besides - good defenses, superb coverage / powerful STAB moves, etc. etc. So since we have a HP discussion waiting in the wings, I'm a bit reluctant on nerfing Weight Classes and their impact on the game unless I'm sure that we're not going two-pronged with it.

That said, I think the major problem with Weight-based Mechanics, is that they provide skewed risk/return ratios except for, again, very specific circumstances. Take a look at the BAP of Weight Class related moves below. The first one shows how hard you'd hit for a given Weight Class:

And this second image shows how hard you'd be hit for a given Weight Class:

But considering the fact that most of the moves listed in the orange table are recoil moves, those numbers actually looked...... balanced (?!)

 

[Geodude6]

1. These Pokemon that people claim to be "broken" have other things about them that make them extremely powerful. (well maybe not Pyroak...) Colossoil, Snorlax, and Pyroak have high HP totals, Bronzong has massive defenses and an extremely powerful Gyro Ball, Aggron can spam recoilless Head Smash, Snorlax has a wide movepool. Nothing we do to weight will keep these Pokemon from being powerful (again, maybe not Pyroak).

2. IMO make Heavy Metal only double weight, make Flare Blitz/Wood Hammer's BAP be 10+WC/1.5 (round normally) to match Double-Edge, make Brave Bird's BAP be 11+WC to match Volt Tackle, and make Head Smash and Giga Impact have a flat 15 BAP to match in-game BAP.

3. Most Flying-type Pokemon lack powerful STAB that doesn't force them to go last, mainly due to Brave Bird and Giga Impact being weight-based. Talonflame, Braviary, Crobat, and the aforementioned Staraptor all have a low WC, and because of that have low BAPs. 12 BAP Brave Birds and 13-14 BAP Giga Impacts seem weak when compared to Pyroak's infamous 15 BAP Flare Blitz/Wood Hammers.



This post was made from a dying phone, so I'll try to post something more substantial later.

 

[akela]

Let's look at this from another angle. EN Cost.

Formulas:
User Weight Class
Body Slam: 5 + wc/3
Meaning an EN cost between 5.33333 and 9

Bounce: 9 + wc/3
Meaning an EN cost between 9.33333 and 13

Giga Impact: 9 + wc/2.5
Meaning an EN cost between 9.4 and 13.8

Tackle: 2 + wc/3
Meaning an EN cost between 2.33333 and 6

Double-Edge: 6 + wc/2.5
Meaning an EN cost between 6.4 and 10.8

Flare Blitz: 7 + wc/2
Meaning an EN cost between 7.5 and 13

Head Charge: 8 + wc/2
Meaning an EN cost between 8.5 and 14

Head Smash: 9 + wc/2.5
Meaning an EN cost between 9.4 and 13.8

Brave Bird: 7 + wc/2
Meaning an EN cost between 7.5 and 13

Take Down: 6 + wc/2.5
Meaning an EN cost between 6.4 and 10.8

Volt Tackle: 7 + wc/2
Meaning an EN cost between 7.5 and 13

Wild Charge: 6 + wc/2.5
Meaning an EN cost between 6.4 and 10.8

Wood Hammer: 7 + wc/2
Meaning an EN cost between 7.5 and 13


Target Weight Class:
Circle Throw: 4 + wc/2
Meaning an EN cost between 4.5 and 10

Psychic: 5 + wc/2
Meaning an EN cost between 5.5 and 11

Seismic Toss: 7 + wc
Meaning an EN Cost between 8 and 19

Sky Drop: 4 + wc/2
Meaning an EN cost between 4.5 and 10

Storm Throw: 6 + wc/2
Meaning an EN cost between 6.5 and 12

Submission: 6
Vital Throw: 4 + wc
Meaning an EN cost between 5 and 16

Food for thought.

 

[Mulan15262]

I assembled a document comparing the energy cost and BAP for each weight-based move (except Heat Crash and Heavy Slam), which can be found here.

I also made a spreadsheet showing the amount of FEs in each weight class, which can be found here, in case anyone wants to check it for reference.

 

[Frosty]

I am trying to get a vacation from policy, so I will be super brief:

Seeing the big picture won't matter here. If you look at all pokemon the average is balanced, no arguments there. The problems are the mons the tip the scales. Since there are no caps, strengths and weaknesses go a long way and there are mons that get very powerful attacks, but since they are rare, the average is still balanced.

So when I say "weight problems" I specifically say "Pyroak, Bronzong, Aggron and Snorlax and +7WC to an extent pokemon are too good in that regard". So please, while considering how it affects all WCs is nice for determining the balance method, to estabilish if weight is broken in the first place you have to look at those specific mons and create solutions that balance them, without compromising the others of course. But they should be the focus of dicussion.

Also weight isn't the only problem, which adds to what I am trying to say. Those pokemon are special because they have weight AND other stuff that add to it making it broken (rock head, heavy metal, insane WC, normal STAB, good HP) making their cases worse. It is not because Abomasnow's Wood Hammer is balanced that we can say that Pyroak's is also just because they have the same WC. We can't just look at the forest in this subject. We will need to look at the trees.

glhf

 

[Pallas Athena]

What makes these moves so obnoxious in my opinion is that we really set about buffing, directly and indirectly, some of the strongest moves in the game. When you get a Pokemon capable of using these weapons very, very well that puts it at risk of being obscenely good for little to no in-game precedent.

Let's start with the current formula for Wood Hammer/Flare Blitz: 10+WC. This means that an "average" Pokemon would have a BP of 13, which is higher than the already very high in-game BP. The problem is, not every Pokemon is "average" and many of those who get full body assault moves are a fair bit heavier than average. Most of those with Rock Head, what really sets the recoil moves over the edge for most people, have even higher than average weight. So the abusers are definitely heavier than average. So, if the average WC of a FB/WH user is treated as 4 for sanity's sake, we boosted a 120 BP move to 140, which would make it one of the strongest in-game moves and tied for the strongest-drawback free one if Rock Head is assumed. That's kind of messed up.

So you end up with situations where a Pyroak with R3 Attack and Everstone can do 19 damage with a neutral Flare Blitz/Wood Hammer or 30 damage with an Expert Belt and hitting for Super Effective. All with no drawbacks except somewhat higher than average energy.

Are there ways around it? Sure. Gastro Acid, for one. But let's be realistic; when you can do nearly 20 damage with STAB moves and R3 attack and are only taken down by a niche strategy there might be a problem. While the same could be said of Cinccino, it has a pretty limited STAB that hits nothing for Super Effective and happens to be quite frail. This makes Pyroak and friends singularly powerful for what is effectively a baseless formula we implemented to buff already strong moves.

I propose changing the formula to 8+WC, as this brings a 4 WC mon, which is much more typical of the average user of these moves than 2, to the "average" power of the original moves. It also means that Pyroak and co. are only working with 13 BP STAB, which is much more in line with powerful, good threats that tend not to get as many complaints.

Or we could just bring the moves back away from Weight that don't rely on weight in the beginning and admit that we may have severely harmed balance and divided the playerbase for a pretty minor flavor reason... but that would be crazy.

 

[Gerard]

I'm against to the complete removal of WC for damaging porpoises because I think that it's both a good flavor mechanic, and because I think it can be balanced, we can either take the easy way out and ban it or we can think more in ways to balance it and find a way to keep it. It's clear that heavy mons are also bulkymons, look at all the FE available pokemon that are hit by Grass Knot for 120 or more damage. Of those only Scolipede, Camerupt, Beartic, Golurk & Glalie (out of 48) Don't have an above average Hp, Def or SpD (or a combination of the three), and most of them have a good attack. Thus you have pokemon with good stats and bulk and a reliable STAB, which thanks to the WC can outdamage even STABless SE attacks thanks to your good defenses (or at least give them a run for their money) even more against pokes with few weaknesses.

I don't like that Red's balances the dmg from the higuer end mons by making the move close to useless for the light weight, my proposal would be: 10 + WC/2 (Round up), thus the attack has a minimum BP of 11 for pokes WC 1 & 2, average WC 3 & 4 mons get the regular 12 BP move, Pyroak gets a 13 BP Flare Blitz (Same as Red's proposal), the heaviest in the game (along with Emboar's & MegaZardX). Wood Hammer follows with all FE members having a 12 BP move, Pyroak, Exeggutor & Aboma with 13 & Torterra with 14 (the biggest loser here sadly). Thus still making very respectable damage but not being as overwhelmingly pokemon as before.

Volt Tackle would ideally have a Base Damage of 11, as well as Brave Bird due to the difference in distribution of the moves (No Wood Hammer user weights less than 3 for example) meanwhile many users of Brave Bird & all the users of Volt Tackle are lighter than WC 3 (No non-legendary user of Brave Bird is heavier than WC 4). Thus the formula would be: 11 + WC/2 (Round up)

 

[Geodude6]

I am strongly opposed to nerfing Brave Bird and Volt Tackle. I have seen zero complaints about Volt Tackle, and its only users, Pikachu and Raichu, aren't exactly strong to begin with. Literally the only thing Raichu has going for it is 16 BAP Volt Tackle, and besides that Raichu is kinda...sub-par.

As for Brave Bird, the number one complaint I've seen is that its users can't really use it to its full effectiveness, save for Mandibuzz and maybe Blaziken. Solution: Nerf Brave Bird. I don't quite follow.


I suggested above that we remove the Weight-Based mechanic from Giga Impact and Head Smash, and nerf Flare Blitz and Wood Hammer to a BAP of 10+WC/1.5, rounded down. This gives Pyroak's infamous 15 BAP STABs a more reasonable but still strong 13 BAP. A Pokemon with WC 3 or 4 would have 12 BAP. The part of my proposal that I think needs to be emphasized is that my proposal does not affect Brave Bird or Volt Tackle. The users of BB/VT are generally either light or not that strong to begin with, save for Ho-Oh but that's a legendary so lol.

The other part of my proposal is that we remove the Heavy Metal buffs to weight-based moves and Gyro Ball. This single-handedly breaks Bronzong (which would be pretty good even without these HM buffs to its moves) and pushes Aggron to near-broken levels as well. If we remove these buffs and implement the Head Smash nerf I suggested in my previous post and in the paragraph above this one, Aggron would remain strong due to high defenses and Head Smash still having 15 BAP (which is what it is in-game). Also it'll still have Heavy Slam and Double-Edge (which may or may not need a nerf).

 

[Pallas Athena]

Gerard:

I find the idea that a 9 BP move or a 10 BP move is "useless" as a very disturbing notion in this debate. 9 BP are the power levels of the Bolt Beams and higher than 8 BP, long viewed as the threshold of usable. But suddenly when we're talking about these moves that is viewed as unusable. We have to keep in mind that we are trying to balance moves that already have very high base powers, and making broad statements that some Pokemon or moves would become literally unusable because they /only/ have a 9 or 10 BP physical STAB move is not helping the discussion.

I am not inherently opposed to your proposal, but I wanted to correct the idea flying around in this debate that somehow weaker Pokemon are hopelessly nerfed when they are still running around with what would objectively be considered a high or moderately high base power move. The notion that every Pokemon needs 11+BP STAB is actually somewhat more concerning to me than that we can tolerate a Pokemon with 15 BP STAB.


And I'm pretty sure that no BB/VT/Whatever user gets Rock Head, which is really what has proved unbalance with the recoil moves, so I'm not opposed to keeping them with current formulas, although for the sake of consistency it might be good to bring them down a bit. Once again, not every Pokemon really needs to have 11+ BP STAB and viewing their deprivation of one as a human rights violation is a really disturbing consequence of buff culture.

As for removing WC as a whole from these moves and related ones, I would like to point to Size Class. SC is basically useless and actually more likely to get you punished by Stomp, etc. than anything, but small Pokemon get a dodge boost and big Pokemon get a few new tools in the form of commands to play with in larger matches. It's not like we were trying to take the really, really arbitrary Pokedex sizes and determine if we should make a Pokemon obscenely powerful because of them. The benefits and losses of being big are not substantially different than in game. With weight, this is not the case. As such, I think we could solve a lot of problems by just taking the weight out of already powerful moves to limit access to mega-ultra-powerful moves and solve a lot of problems, leaving it with the already powerful moves it does influence (Heat Crash, Heavy Slam) and the drawbacks of being heavy (Low Kick, Grass Knot). There's really nothing but a flavor-based ruling a year or so ago that justifies giving 13+ BP moves to Pokemon, among the most powerful in the game, because of a somewhat arbitrary number given by the ultra-reliable Pokedex. But I doubt that passes, so back to arguing about formulas. I just wanted to clarify some points.

 

[Gerard]

The problem with that lies in the comparison, they're not equivalent, Flare Blitz and Co. NEED a good BP to offset the recoil they generate, a 10 BP Flare Blitz is worst than a 9 BP Flamethrower, all thing being equal because the 1 extra BP doesn't compensate for a 3.3 recoil (not even taking STAB, SE or other things into consideration). They deserve that 10+ dmg move in their movepools because they HAVE a 12 BP move in their movepools, we're not adding anything, and I'm trying to affect as little pokemon as we can while still attacking the problem. It changes nothing for pokemon weighting little but nerfs the dmg on the heavy side. Why should we punish the small mons for well, being small. Relicanth's Head Smash isn't the problem, it's Aggron's, so I believe that the biggest loser there shouldn't be Relicanth, yes his attack might be nerfed but not as much as Aggron's, thus my formulas try to keep lighter pokemon with a slightly weaker version of the moves while cutting the high end mons by a point or two

 

[ZhengTann]

Alright, seems like the community is eager to move on. Based on the posts above, it seems that we have to focus on the Pokemons that tip the scales of balance, despite the fact that BAP for Weight-based moves are more or less balanced in a vacuum when accounting for factors such as recoil. And since some of us have moved on to the "BAP-tweaking" part of the discussion, I might as well start putting it out:

• Which Weight-based move should we adjust? (Eg. Not just Flare Blitz and its clones because of Pyroak)
  
• When it comes to tweaking Weight-based mechanics, should we take into account Pokemon with lesser Weight Classes, or not? Why, and how?
• What other mechanics should we take into account in our - slightly perfectionist - tweaking? (Eg. BAP-versus-EN-cost)

This part of the discussion is where we explore the means/methods on tweaking (no, not twerking. We have enough flashes in ASB as is) Weight-based mechanics. Of course, you may still revisit the first part of the discussion and say no to any form of adjustment at all, should you have a strong opinion on that. Also, there have been mentions of Bronzong and Aggron in the discussion, but I think we could first focus on Weight-based recoil moves (because nobody has yet to point out that Tackle is obscenely OP) before we try to weigh Heavy Metal. Rest assured, we will get to that in due time.

* * * * *​

I'd like to address Red and Gerard's posts in particular, because they spoke out to me the most.

... The benefits and losses of being big are not substantially different than in game. With weight, this is not the case. As such, I think we could solve a lot of problems by just taking the weight out of already powerful moves to limit access to mega-ultra-powerful moves and solve a lot of problems, leaving it with the already powerful moves it does influence (Heat Crash, Heavy Slam) and the drawbacks of being heavy (Low Kick, Grass Knot)...

While I am against the idea of removing all weight factors from moves that do not follow in-game canon, I do agree that limiting the weight factor is a way to go. Which leads me to agree with Gerard's views on leaning towards higher base BAP, lower weight factor:

... I'm trying to affect as little pokemon as we can while still attacking the problem. It changes nothing for pokemon weighting little but nerfs the dmg on the heavy side. Why should we punish the small mons for well, being small...

After looking at the tables, IMHO, Flare Blitz, Wood Hammer, Brave Bird, Volt Tackle, Double-Edge, and Head Charge are the moves that definitely deserves looking into. After doing some snooping around in Bulba, I finally noticed that these moves are basically clones of each other, so I am surprised that there is so much inconsistency when it comes to calculating BAP and EN cost for these moves in ASB. My initial response is to just lump them together for the sake of consistency, but I haven't got around to crunch the numbers and come up with a good-looking proposal yet.

When I do, though, I am definitely going to consider the data presented by Mulan, that 3, 4, 5, 2 are currently the four most common Weight Classes in ASB, in that order. On another note, I think Grass Knot and Low Kick warrants some discussion as well, since the second of Mulan's spreadsheets show trends that seem out of place. Could be just me being a compulsive tinker, though.

 

[Objection]

I don't have much to contribute to this beyond what has already been said, but there's one thing I wish to point out.

On another note, I think Grass Knot and Low Kick warrants some discussion as well, since the second of Mulan's spreadsheets show trends that seem out of place. Could be just me being a compulsive tinker, though.

Bear in mind that, up to Weight Class 6, the BAPs of Grass Knot and Low Kick correspond to what their BAPs in-game are. If you're talking about the +1 BAP per WC above 6, I'm pretty sure that's meant to be a way of checking especially heavy Pokemon so that their increased Head Smash and Flare Blitz BAPs aren't drawback free.

 

[Psyco_Josho]

How about these two suggestions (not necessarily mutually exclusive):

1. We make Rock Head increase the EN Cost of Recoil moves by 1-2 EN. Otherwise they have almost no drawbacks.
2. I haven't come up with anything specific, but why not make the damage formulas (and the EN formulas) of WH, FB and HS logarithmic instead of linear?

 

[Mulan15262]

Perhaps we could make Rock Head cause the user to need an extra amount of energy proportionate to the recoil blocked.

The problem with logarithmic formulas is that some people do not understand a logarithmic formula. A square-root (or maybe even cubic-root) formula would be more easily understandable and easier to work with without a calculator. Also, base-10 log would be just a harder to calculate version of removing weight class entirely (with 1 extra power, natural log (base e, where e=((n+1)/n)^n becomes more accurate as n approaches infinity (or, as stated less frequently, negative infinity) or e=(-1)^(1/(iπ) or e=2.7182818284590452353602874713526624977572470936999595...) is hard to understand and work with, and other number bases aren't on most calculators.

 

[Psyco_Josho]

If we do log divided by log then they can do any base log that we want as long as the entry in the dividend log is correct.

EDIT: And we'll round up or down, of course.

 

[Avnomke]

Yeah, and about how many people understand logarithms and have an easily accessible method of doing them? (Hint: the answer is very, very few)

 

[Psyco_Josho]

Umm. I have a TI-84. I guess I did under think that factor a bit.

 

[ZhengTann]

So yeah, if it ain't broke, I supposed there's no pressing need to fix Grass Knot and Low Kick - after all, nobody else deemed it necessary. I do, however, wish to push on putting Flare Blitz, Wood Hammer, Brave Bird, Volt Tackle, Double-Edge, and Head Charge into the same category. While the motives behind adjusting BAP for Flare Blitz and co. comes from certain mons abusing them on the game, I am not convinced that certain moves deserve cutting some slack just because their prominent users are underwhelming. If we're going to balance mechanics now, might as well be consistent and leave no parts behind.

* * * * *​

Better put up a list of proposed changes so far.

For Flare Blitz, Wood Hammer, Brave Bird, and Head Charge:
Rediamond: 8+WC
Gerard: 10+CEILING(WC/2)

For Volt Tackle:
Gerard: 11+CEILING(WC/2)

Miscellaneous options:
Psycho_Josho: Rock Head increases EN cost of recoil moves by 1 or 2.
Psycho_Josho: Logarithmic scaling for BAP and EN cost calculations of recoil moves.
ZhengTann: Lump Flare Blitz, Wood Hammer, Brave Bird, Volt Tackle, Double-Edge, and Head Charge together with the same BAP and EN cost.

Bear in mind this is a very rough slate, and it'll be refined should this move to Voting. 24 hours window 'til that happens, okay? Get in some final thoughts if you haven't and absolutely must.

 

[Mulan15262]

Don't forget my idea of Rock Head increasing EN cost of moves based on the amount of recoil damage prevented.

 

[Avnomke]

Another option is to just have a flat BAP and en cost for all the weight-based moves, which was suggested by rediamond.

 

[Geodude6]

I feel a bit insulted that you didn't put my proposal on the list, which was to make Flare Blitz, Wood Hammer, Head Charge, and Brave Bird (which I'm now adding) have a BAP of 10+WC/1.5. I do believe that Volt Tackle should get a free pass because it seems like an unnessecary nerf to Raichu, and Volt Tackle is already different from the other recoil moves, so what's the harm in keeping it how it is currently.

Also, I proposed that Giga Impact and Head Smash have a flat BAP of 15, which brings this in line with the cartridge games. This has the added benefit of buffing things like Talonflame and Relicanth that are pretty underwhelming currently.

 

[akela]

Let's not forget that Magic Guard performs the same function as Rock Head and then some. Magic Guard pokemon currently consist of Cleffa, Clefairy, Clefable, Abra, Kadabra, Alakazam (And Mega-Alakazam in battles with 2 or more abilities), Sigilyph, Solosis, Duosion, Reuniclus, Protowatt, and Krilowatt.

Pokemon with the ability Magic Guard also learn the following six (6) weight based moves, two (2) of which are Recoil Moves and one (1) with potential crash damage under certain situations: Body Slam, Bounce, Double-Edge, Giga Impact, Tackle, Wild Charge.

 

[Geodude6]

I don't think we need to worry about Magic Guard in this particular instance because none of its users are particularly heavy - Clefable and Alakazam have WC 3; and Sigilyph, Reuniclus, and Krilowatt have WC 2, none of which scream "game-breaking" to me.