Time to artificially rise Bibarel's usage. - Tauntarel

[CardsOfTheHeart]

I'm not really sold on this quite yet. It isn't really doing anything to walls with an instant recovery move or restalk (Most of 'em). It's pretty slow and fragile to boot. Yawn, Taunt, Super Fang are all great moves, I agree, but sweepers have already set up before taunt or killed you before yawn. And, personally, I wouldn't care too much if my Lucario is 50% or 100% if it got an SD up in the process.

And Bibarel wouldn't care too much if your Lucario got an SD up because of Unaware.

Man, if I had any programming knowledge at all, I would be working on an Unaware and Simple patch for Shoddy. I can't wait for those to get implemented so I can personally test this. (My DS feels abandoned...)

 

[Aldaron]

Lol, Bibarel wouldn't care? Lucario Swords Dances, and sure, Unaware causes Bibarel to not be hit by a *2 Close Combat...which of course, is irrelevant since Lucario OHKOs with Close Combat without the boost. So tell me, are you going to leave Bibarel knowing you can't OHKO Lucario and that it can OHKO back? That's about as intelligent as allowing Lucario a free Swords Dance boost...o wait...that's your only other option...

 

[TVboyCanti]

Sorry to rain on this buck toothed parade, but I don't see this set working at all, since even with a mild boost to defenses, an 80/60/60 defense spread will still be 2hkod by the top tier sweepers, even without their boosts, am I right? Hell, a bare 100 base attack STAB earthquake with no modifiers 3hkos this thing. And considering many walls have 100 base attack and strong STAB attacks, that's not very promising.

I may be mistaken, and if I am, I hope the OP will post war stories of how exactly Bibarel is supposed to function in battle, but I'm assuming this is the game plan for this Bibarel:

Send it out against a wall while it recovers. Taunt it, super fang it 3 times, clean up.
The problems I see are thus:

1: Walls usually set up SR/spikes/rain/etc., and then recover, so your not going to be stopping them from setting those things up, barring unusual situations.

2: Walls can switch out to a fast sweeper after the first Super Fang. Bibarel can then:
a) Super Fang again, ensuring that the sweeper can be revenge killed via priority move later on, but also making bibarel into a casualty as it has most likely taken +50% damage which makes it useless, thus creating an un-guranteed 1 for 1 trade.
b) Yawn, which forces the fast sweeper to switch to most likely another fast sweeper*, while again nullifying it's own usefulness by giving up a huge amount of non-recoverable hp. A 1 for nothing trade, if you will.
c) GTFO, i.e. switch. I don't think I have to explain the consequences of switching right after your opponent has switched.

This all assumes that your opponent somehow doesn't know super fang is coming and leaves their wall in to be super fanged.

3: Even if your opponent is stupid enough to leave their wall** in long enough to be killed by 3 super fangs and an attack, your Bibarel will most likely be close to dead, and therefore completely useless, which again creates a 1 for 1 exchange.

4: In a brawl, most walls can actually kill bibarel with their own attacks before bibarel can kill them with super fang. Another non-guranteed 1 for 1 exchange.

So now all we've done is create a 1 for 1 exchange (best case scenario), that is not guranteed, in that it takes another pokemon to finish the job. But, you say, you've also weakened their wall by 44% damage correct? Yeah, but good walls don't really care about taking <50% damage. They'll just recover it off the next time they switch in.

And I was going to footnote this, but it's so glaring that I had to add it to my arguments. The only walls that Bibarel can actuall kill with 3 super fangs and an attack are blissey and hippowdon. The rest either require more than 3 super fangs, or KO bibarel before he can get them off. Hell, even in this guys first post he pretty much lists all the walls that bibarel can't kill.

All I see when I look at this Bibarel is a bad 1 for 1 exchange, in that it can't even finish the exchange on it's own.

I don't want to be jr. modding, but considering how much time I put into making this relevant post, I'd just like to say this to everyone bickering about smogons analysis: Read the fifth bullet.

*almost every team, good or bad, has at least two. It just kind of happens that way. I means seriously, how paranoid or bored are you if your packing 5+tanks/walls on your team?
**If you are not dealing >50% damage to a wall in one turn without disabling it's recovery, you are not killing it any time soon. Common Knowledge I hope.

 

[CardsOfTheHeart]

Lol, Bibarel wouldn't care? Lucario Swords Dances, and sure, Unaware causes Bibarel to not be hit by a *2 Close Combat...which of course, is irrelevant since Lucario OHKOs with Close Combat without the boost. So tell me, are you going to leave Bibarel knowing you can't OHKO Lucario and that it can OHKO back? That's about as intelligent as allowing Lucario a free Swords Dance boost...o wait...that's your only other option...

That's right, Bibarel wouldn't care at all... but you would!

 

[TVboyCanti]

That's right, Bibarel wouldn't care at all... but you would!

It's as if logic just bounces off of him and splashes onto Jumpman16 in a thick gooey paste of rage.

Bibarel is ended by any sufficiently powerful fast sweeper, boosting or no. Lucario would definitely qualify as sufficiently powerful (as does anything with a fighting attack).

 

[CardsOfTheHeart]

I will admit that the thought of Close Combat occurred to me AFTER I made that initial post. Man, that really was a lame attempt to cover my ass.

 

[Jumpman16]

Like I said, I have no problem with the vast majority of analyses, just the way they were obtained.

Everybody seems to have this idea that faster is better . . . I don't see the problem with waiting a few months for a good battle sim before writing them . . .

Maybe that has more to do with you having not paid much directive attention to Unchartered Territory/Stark Mountain in the few months before and after DP was released on April 19. (Which of course, by no coincidence, is the responsibility of the same Staff members who decided that we needed to have the analyses written when we did.) Even if there hadn't been the amazing demand for analyses referred to already in those spring and summer months before the competitive metagame had time to materialize, anyone reading the RMTs and the threads about competitive DP play would have wondered whether it was a good idea to make some sort of educated guess (read: theorymon) about what the probable competitive movesets and strategies would be.

And again, regardless, the analyses were and continue to be a community effort. The issue now is with editing the analyses, not questioning the timing of their initial drafting some 9-10 months ago. For those of you (still) actually looking for a way to make a positive impact on this community, I hope I don't actually have to spell out how to do that (or how not to), as this thread has in some ways become more helpful in thase regards than in supporting the merits of Bibarel.

 

[DougJustDoug]

I've done quite a bit of programming and customization of Shoddy over the past few months. I've been interested in implementing Simple and Unaware. Simple doesn't look like it will be that tough. From what I know about the Shoddy ability code, Unaware will be a challenge. I suspect they are currently unimplemented because they are non-trivial to code, the details are not known, and they only apply to Bibarel, who has heretofore been irrelevant in the metagame.

If I can get it working, I will implement it on the Create-A-Pokemon server for testing. If that goes well, I'll send it in as a patch to Colin and he can decide if he wants to put it into the main source. I'm not guaranteeing anything, but it should be a fun programming challenge. Since I already have a customized Shoddy server running, it shouldn't be too big a deal to fiddle around with Unaware.

Here's what I need from someone else: How EXACTLY does Unaware work ingame? And I'm not interested in the ingame move description. I also don't need noob descriptions of basic battle mechanics. I need to know all the little details that most people glaze over or rarely encounter when playing the game. Since I've implemented custom abilities in Shoddy, I've learned that the basics are usually easy. The devil is in the details. Here's all I could find about Unaware from the Smogon research thread.

Unaware - It seems to negate all stat-uppers outside of Speed. So Agility, Rock Cart, Speed Boost, Electric Engine, Quick Feet, and the speed part of Dragon Dance should not be affected. Oh, and it seems to activate anytime that the Beavers are brought in.

That's not going to cut it. Here's some examples of the kind of detail I need:

--- Does Unaware ignore boosts, drops, or both? I think it's just boosts.
--- Does Unaware ignore the boosts only while the Unaware poke is on the field? Is it only applicable at the beginning of a turn? What if the Unaware poke is BP'ed in? What about U-Turn?
--- Do boosts return when the Unaware poke is removed? What if it BP's out? What about U-Turn?
--- Can an opposing pokemon continue to stat-up in front of an Unaware pokemon, and then have all the cumulative boosts kick in when the Unaware poke is removed?
--- Are there any oddities associated with an unaware poke using moves like Haze?
--- Does Unaware only affect the boosting parts of moves, but not the lowering parts? I can't think of a good example of this, other than Curse. But I suspect there are others that don't affect speed.
--- Does Unaware ignore all boosts including the "hidden stats", like evasion and accuracy?
--- How does Unaware interact with Mold Breaker?
--- Any problems with Trace?
--- Does Unaware ignore ability-driven boosts like Pure Power? What about Hustle? Would the Hustle accuracy loss still apply?
--- Is there any message displayed when Unaware activates?

If someone can answer some or all of these questions, I can get a lot better idea of how to implement it in Shoddy. If there is any level of discussion around this, it is probably off-topic for this thread; since this could quickly turn into an Unaware research and implementation thread, instead of a discussion about Tauntarel. I'll look to the mods to give direction on how to proceed with this. That is -- assuming anyone else is actually serious about testing this thing out in Shoddy.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I haven't done ingame testing with Unaware at all, but I was under the impression that it treated stat boosts ("normal" boosts like Meditate that go -6 to +6) other than speed in the same way that Air Lock treats weather (and the reason speed is ignored is because Unaware is probably only checked for when Pokemon are attacking each other). Of course, since Mold Breaker negates all abilities during attacking, this would suggest it negates Unaware. It would be bizarre and shocking if it actually changed your level of boosting, especially given the name of the trait. Implementation wise, I think it is actually very similar to Simple.

Like I said, this is just a guess at exact mechanics, but my guesses like this are usually right (the way things work in Pokemon is usually very predictable). If I have time, I'll back it up with testing later.

 

[AJC]

i can answer the last question about unaware doug it displays no message in battle so i think it works like air lock for its effect

 

[DougJustDoug]

^You're right, AA. Since the game is nothing but a program, the mechanics are usually predictable. One thing I really like about the internal object model in Shoddy, is that it appears to map very well to apparent ingame mechanics. I would not be surprised if the Shoddy model very closely resembles GameFreak's own model.

It would be great if Unaware only affects moves from/to the Unaware poke. That makes the coding much simpler. If it affect ability-based boosts, it's harder. I'm also VERY interested to see what happens when you continue to stat-up on an Unaware pokemon. If the boosts continue to accumulate, that would tell me a lot. If we can get a definitive answer on a few of these "big" questions, I probably have enough info to start coding this thing. We can iron out the other details later during testing.

EDIT: And great tip about Air Lock as an example of an abililty that puts certain battle effects "on hold" during battle. BTW, that raises an interesting question: If you use a weather move while an Air Lock poke is on the field, will the weather begin when the Air Lock poke is removed from play? Or does it say "Rain Dance failed" or similar?

 

[TheMaskedNitpicker]

I can tell you right now that Unaware does negate evasion drops. I used Defog on an opponent to ensure that Bibarel's Rollout wouldn't miss while I was testing it, forgetting that it was an Unaware Bibarel. Whoops.

Moreover, I will be glad to to all the nitpicky testing for you if it'll help make Shoddy better. Check out the guide link in my sig and tell me if that's the level of detail you're looking for.

I believe it was shown quite some time ago that Unaware is only taken into account when the Unaware Pokémon is part of the interaction. However, I will test this immediately to confirm.

If you use a weather move while an Air Lock poke is on the field, will the weather begin when the Air Lock poke is removed from play? Or does it say "Rain Dance failed" or similar?

The weather is summoned as normal. All its effects are just suppressed. There is no change to duration of the weather.

 

[AJC]

if it negates the trait holder's acc drops does it negate other stat downs of the trait holder (except of course speed related ones) for example will Bibarel be able to spam super power without having to worry about losing power or taking more damage from defense drops

 

[TheMaskedNitpicker]

if it negates the trait holder's acc drops does it negate other stat downs of the trait holder (except of course speed related ones) for example will Bibarel be able to spam super power without having to worry about losing power or taking more damage from defense drops

I said it negates Evasion drops on the opponent. I don't believe it negates any of the holder's stat drops at all. It only negates the stat changes of Pokémon targeting or being targeted by the Unaware Pokémon.

 

[AJC]

i still have yet to see anyone putting down solid proof of that claim (IE Damage tests)

 

[TVboyCanti]

That's not going to cut it. Here's some examples of the kind of detail I need:

--- Does Unaware ignore boosts, drops, or both? I think it's just boosts.
1. Have Bibarel attack something that knows close combat. Switch out Bibarel, and have the opponent use close combat. Send Bibarel back in and attack again. compare the damage by bibarels two attacks.

--- Does Unaware ignore the boosts only while the Unaware poke is on the field? Is it only applicable at the beginning of a turn? What if the Unaware poke is BP'ed in? What about U-Turn?

2.Send bibarel against a pokemon thats going to use offense boosting move, then switch in a wall while the SDer attacks. If the wall takes more damage than it should from an unboosted attack, then you know unaware only works while bibarel is on the field. If it takes damage as iff from a non boosted attack, then Unaware's effect lingers after bibarel switches, and we can induce that if something boosts while bibarel is not on the field, sending in bibarel will not negate that boost.

--- Do boosts return when the Unaware poke is removed? What if it BP's out? What about U-Turn?

Baton Pass is obvious and we can logically deduce how that would work based on our knowledge of unaware and baton pass. Baton pass is like switching without going changing any of the invisible status effects and boosts on a pokemon. That is to say, if I swords dance and then baton pass to something, it would be the same as if I switched normally and then had whatever I switched in use swords dance. Therfore, we can conclude that the baton pass recepient would also have it's boosts negated. I don't really see what U-turn has to to do with boosts.

--- Can an opposing pokemon continue to stat-up in front of an Unaware pokemon, and then have all the cumulative boosts kick in when the Unaware poke is removed?

This can be proven by 2.

--- Are there any oddities associated with an unaware poke using moves like Haze?

Does Bibarel or any of the tracers actually learn haze? If it doesn't and I'm pretty sure it does not(can't check atm) this is moot, since bibarel is the only poke that has unaware as an ability.

--- Does Unaware only affect the boosting parts of moves, but not the lowering parts? I can't think of a good example of this, other than Curse. But I suspect there are others that don't affect speed.

Can be proven by 1. Curse is the only purely boosting move that also lowers a stat.

--- Does Unaware ignore all boosts including the "hidden stats", like evasion and accuracy?

This would be hard to test, but logic says that it would. Remember, boosts to attack and defense are just as hidden as boosts to evasion and accuracy, you can't actually see the boosts on screen.

--- How does Unaware interact with Mold Breaker?
That's actually a good question, since I'm pretty sure Mold Breaker stops heat proof from working. But then again, unaware isn't directly affecting how much damage is being done, it's affecting the mold breaker's stats. And since Mold Breaker doesn't stop Intimidate from altering damage, I don't think mold breaker would interact with Unaware either.

--- Any problems with Trace?

A tracer would copy Unaware upon switching in, and assuming that already existing boosts can be suppressed by switching in an unaware poke, then any of bibarel's boosts would be suppresed by the tracer's unaware ability.

--- Does Unaware ignore ability-driven boosts like Pure Power? What about Hustle? Would the Hustle accuracy loss still apply?

Sadly this one cannot be deduced through logic, but it's so easy to test.

--- Is there any message displayed when Unaware activates?
Nope.

 

[Cathy]

The proper way to think of Simple and Unaware is that they change the values i the stat multiplier table for the pokemon with the ability, or for both pokemon in the case of Unaware (except for speed if I remember correctly). I already know exactly how I would implement these, by adding a framework for statuses to modify the multiplier table. I just haven't gotten around to actually writing the code for doing this, but maybe I will do it this week.

There have been many attempts of people to post "obvious" code for Simple and so far these attempts are always wrong. For example, making stat boost moves boost twice as many levels is wrong. This is largely because of the confusion about what these abilities do among most people, although I don't think there are actually any open questions.

 

[DougJustDoug]

--- Are there any oddities associated with an unaware poke using moves like Haze?

Does Bibarel or any of the tracers actually learn haze? If it doesn't and I'm pretty sure it does not(can't check atm) this is moot, since bibarel is the only poke that has unaware as an ability.

In practical terms, it might be moot. But, just about any combination of moves and ability are technically possible when things like Skill Swap are used. Also, Smeargle says hi. He can do anything. He's a wonderful poke for testing stuff like this out. I don't think it's urgent to test it, but it can sometimes give you an idea of the underlying mechanics.

--- Does Unaware ignore all boosts including the "hidden stats", like evasion and accuracy?

This would be hard to test, but logic says that it would. Remember, boosts to attack and defense are just as hidden as boosts to evasion and accuracy, you can't actually see the boosts on screen.

I used the word "hidden" (intentionally in quotes) to mean that they are not normally thought of as stats like ATK, DEF, etc. But, when it comes to programming, they aren't any different than the others. When testing stat mechanics, people sometimes forget about evasion and accuracy. That's why I pointed it out specifically.

The proper way to think of Simple and Unaware is that they change the values i the stat multiplier table for the pokemon with the ability, or for both pokemon in the case of Unaware (except for speed if I remember correctly). I already know exactly how I would implement these, by adding a framework for statuses to modify the multiplier table. I just haven't gotten around to actually writing the code for doing this, but maybe I will do it this week.

There have been many attempts of people to post "obvious" code for Simple and so far these attempts are always wrong. For example, making stat boost moves boost twice as many levels is wrong. This is largely because of the confusion about what these abilities do among most people, although I don't think there are actually any open questions.

If you plan to implement this stuff, I'll leave it alone.

 

[TheMaskedNitpicker]

The proper way to think of Simple and Unaware is that they change the values in the stat multiplier table for the pokemon with the ability, or for both pokemon in the case of Unaware (except for speed if I remember correctly). I already know exactly how I would implement these, by adding a framework for statuses to modify the multiplier table. I just haven't gotten around to actually writing the code for doing this, but maybe I will do it this week.

There have been many attempts of people to post "obvious" code for Simple and so far these attempts are always wrong. For example, making stat boost moves boost twice as many levels is wrong. This is largely because of the confusion about what these abilities do among most people, although I don't think there are actually any open questions.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, but wouldn't it make more sense for a check to be done whenever a move that targets another Pokémon is executed? Unaware ignores boosts. It doesn't change or remove them. Make a check when an attack is used. If the user of the move has Unaware, then the target is treated as having 0 Defense, SpDef, and Evasion levels. If the target has Unaware, then the user is treated as having 0 Attack, SpAtk, and Accuracy levels. This is almost certainly the way it should be done.

 

[Cathy]

No, that does not make more sense, because that places logic specific to one ability in a crucial sequence of the code, and that is not in the spirit of the design. That is the sort of thing that I have been trying to avoid for months. If I wanted an ugly solution to Simple and Unaware, we would have had one months ago.

What I described has nothing to do with "chang[ing] or remov[ing]" stat boosts. And yes, my post above does not go into details but that is because the code can speak for itself when it is written. Admittedly the design I envision works better for Simple but it will also work for Unaware following the pattern of user/target transformers used for move transformers as well.

Since I'm responding to you anyway, I might as well also address this witty comment above:

I'm not holding my breath on Shoddy fixing any of its bugs

Since the bug tracker's inception, bearzly and I have addressed an incredible 450 bug reports. These are all publicly viewable. These issues did not fix themselves, believe it or not.

 

[Cathy]

I went ahead and implemented Simple and Unaware. As expected, the solution was quite elegant, in light of a few minor framework changes.

This will be ready to use sometime tomorrow when the server resets itself.

 

[X-Act]

Okay guys, we have already tested Unaware around a YEAR ago, so most of the answers to it are already known.

THIS IS HOW UNAWARE WORKS, SO READ CAREFULLY.

If the user has the ability Unaware and attacks, the foe's Stat Modifier for Evasion and that for Defense or Special Defense (depending on the move being used) are made equal to 0.
If the foe has the ability Unaware and you attack, your Stat Modifier for Accuracy and that for Attack or Special Attack (depending on the move being used) are made equal to 0.

THIS IS HOW SIMPLE WORKS, SO READ CAREFULLY.

If the user has the ability Simple, the user's Stat Modifiers for Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense and Speed conform to a different chart:

Stat Modifier is between -3 and -6: Stat is divided by 4.
Stat Modifier is -2: Stat is divided by 3.
Stat Modifier is -1: Stat is divided by 2.
Stat Modifier is 0: Stat remains unchanged.
Stat Modifier is 1: Stat is multiplied by 2.
Stat Modifier is 2: Stat is multiplied by 3.
Stat Modifier is between 3 and 6: Stat is multiplied by 4.

Furthermore, the user's Stat Modifiers for Accuracy and Evasion conform to the following chart:

Stat Modifier is between -3 and -6: 100/3 % for Accuracy, 300% for Evasion.
Stat Modifier is -2: 300/7 % for Accuracy, 700/3 % for Evasion.
Stat Modifier is -1: 60% for Accuracy, 500/3% for Evasion.
Stat Modifier is 0: 100%
Stat Modifier is +1: 500/3 % for Accuracy, 60% for Evasion.
Stat Modifier is +2: 700/3 % for Accuracy, 300/7% for Evasion.
Stat Modifier is between +3 and -6: 300% for Accuracy, 100/3 % for Evasion.

Questions:

If Unaware Bibarel uses Superpower, will it deal 66.7% of the damage by a physical move next turn? YES. Will it be dealt 150% more damage by a physical move next turn? YES.

If the foe uses Close Combat against Unaware Bibarel and survives, will Bibarel then deal more damage against the foe? NO.

If Simple Bibarel uses Superpower, will it deal only half of the damage by a physical move next turn? YES. Will it be dealt twice the damage by a physical move next turn? YES.

If the foe uses Close Combat against Simple Bibarel and survives, will Bibarel then deal more damage against the foe? YES.

 

[Cathy]

Thanks for that recap, X-act. The way I just implemented Simple and Unaware is completely correct according to this information.

 

[TheMaskedNitpicker]

Since the bug tracker's inception, bearzly and I have addressed an incredible 450 bug reports. These are all publicly viewable. These issues did not fix themselves, believe it or not.

My apologies. I know only of the bug tracker list on the forums, which to my untrained eye appears to change very infrequently. I'm not trying to be witty or sound superior. I'm simply referencing the fact that many bugs in Shoddy Battle cannot be fixed easily or elegantly with the current implementation and other seemingly simple bugs have not been addressed.

I understand that you have priorities and limited time and that you may not be interested in fixing most bugs regarding little-used moves and abilities, but as someone who endeavors to design and test interesting new sets, these are the very moves and abilities that I would like to see implemented correctly. Also, your shortcut solution to Unaware, if you'll forgive me, is a perfect example of how Shoddy's code has no concern whatsoever about the implementation of Double Battles, another aspect of Pokémon that's very important to me. Again, I realize Double Battles are not a priority for you. But for these reasons, I'm a bit bitter. Again, my apologies for mouthing off. Our goals are just at odds.

In detail, your solution assumes that Unaware acts as a temporary Haze effect for the opponent, which it does not. The changes only take effect when the Pokémon with Unaware is targeted by or using an attack. It also has unintended consequences for Single Battles, I should add. For instance, a Pokémon that hurts itself in confusion and has 6 levels of Attack and -6 levels of Defense should slaughter itself, even if its opponent has Unaware. Your implementation ignores this.

EDIT: Oh, and thanks very much for implementing Simple and Unaware! Don't think I don't appreciate all the hard work that went into Shoddy Battle. It's really an amazing program.

 

[Cathy]

I'm well aware that double battles weren't really considered in the original design. It's unfortunate and we have been planning to make changes one of these days to allow for n v. n. And yes, the rate at which bugs have been fixed has slowed down lately, but bearzly and I are only human and this is not a job.

The changes only take effect when the Pokémon with Unaware is targeted by or using an attack. It also has unintended consequences for Single Battles, I should add. For instance, a Pokémon that hurts itself in confusion and has 6 levels of Attack and -6 levels of Defense should slaughter itself, even if its opponent has Unaware. Your implementation ignores this.

This is true, and the solution is to use the "other pokemon involved in the attack" rather than then "opponent", and not to check the "other pokemon in the attack" for multiplier statuses if the two "pokemon involved in the attack" are the same. (In the source which I am about to link to I use the word "target" for "other pokemon in the attack", but this is just because it's shorter.) To be fair this is hardly the most obvious situation, and it's surprisingly easy to fix actually, and this solution actually should work for n v. n as well. The reason I mention this is that you make it sound as if this is a serious problem as opposed to something that is apparently trivial to fix.You can review my solution here: 1, 2 in case you would like to check for additional oversights.

The version with the bug was never live, so thanks for helping us avoid this potential issue.