What do you guys think about removing Shadow Tag and Arena Trap users in position 1?
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Format Discussion Scarlet/Violet Random Battle Sets
- Thread starter A Cake Wearing A Hat
- Start date
Council has voted against doing so.
Indeedee having Psychic instead of Expanding force here is objectively bad. Indeedee should have Expanding Force on 100% of its movesets, and not sure if Psychic should EVER be on a moveset at all. Having Psychic over Expanding Force makes this objectively bad. Expanding Force is almost twice as strong as psychic.
Listen, I fully agree with you. Indeedee-F should get Expanding Force; it’s stupid that it doesn’t. However,
Hi,
Sorry if this is not presented in the right way as I'm typically not a forum user (I just frequent the randbats chat on showdown).
Suggestion: Consider adding life orb and/or specs set options to Sandy Shocks, and potentially remove Heavy Duty Boots sets
Reasoning: I think the Heavy Duty Boots set for Sandy Shocks is underwhelming. I can see that the idea behind it is for the mon to pivot freely, but I don't find Shocks to have such strong support that it benefits so much from the boots.
Sorry if this is not presented in the right way as I'm typically not a forum user (I just frequent the randbats chat on showdown).
Suggestion: Consider adding life orb and/or specs set options to Sandy Shocks, and potentially remove Heavy Duty Boots sets
Reasoning: I think the Heavy Duty Boots set for Sandy Shocks is underwhelming. I can see that the idea behind it is for the mon to pivot freely, but I don't find Shocks to have such strong support that it benefits so much from the boots.
- Shocks is already resistive to Stealth Rock, so it's moderately less punished by hazards than a lot of other mons as it is.
- It doesn't come with sufficiently important support moves or abilities that make Lumineon (encore) or Almomola (regenerator+wish) benefit from Boots over other items.
- To be clear, I do find TWave to be valuable, and I think Sandy Shocks with its own hazards is a good set. I just don't think it's so centralizingly good that other options shouldn't be available.
- At its current level it has decent speed (208) and spatk (240) that would make life orb or specs potentially threatening mixup options that would force an opponent to account for it / scout out its set.
- Just as an example that took 30 seconds to find, Bombirdier survives a TBolt with HDB/Leftovers but is OHKO'd when adding a life orb. An Annihilape is a possible 2HKO with life orb and a guaranteed 2HKO with specs, when it's a 3HKO without either. I'm sure there are many other pokemon where adding one of these items would create a useful breakpoint, and you can still have the threat of volt switch.
- I understand that there's inherent value to boots and avoiding hazards if you have access to a STAB pivot. But if that were the case, then maybe we ought to consider boots for mons like Barraskewda or Basculin just so they can fire off flip turns (I think that would be less useful than what they do with the choice band).
We did end up discussing this. Ultimately, the dev team at this time does not want to add Specs or Life Orb or remove Heavy-duty Boots from sandy shocks.
Would you mind sharing any of the reasoning?
Of course! apologies for the lack of communication at first, I've had a busy month.
-The team values the ability to Volt Switch in and out without chip
-The team likes having Leftovers sometimes too, and adding Specs and Life Orb would affect the rate of Leftovers negatively
-Adding Life Orb and Choice items without removing Boots and Leftovers would require adding a fourth attack that would also be viable alongside hazards. Sandy Shocks doesn't have one of those. Closest it's got are Power Gem (which sucks) and Tera Blast (which we've tried, and it sucks too in rands from our statistical analysis. Plus, even if we were to try it again, every type that hits grass is weak to Rock and that's really rough and no we're not trying Poison)
-Freeing Specs would also free Scarf in most situations and we don't want that.
-The team values the ability to Volt Switch in and out without chip
-The team likes having Leftovers sometimes too, and adding Specs and Life Orb would affect the rate of Leftovers negatively
-Adding Life Orb and Choice items without removing Boots and Leftovers would require adding a fourth attack that would also be viable alongside hazards. Sandy Shocks doesn't have one of those. Closest it's got are Power Gem (which sucks) and Tera Blast (which we've tried, and it sucks too in rands from our statistical analysis. Plus, even if we were to try it again, every type that hits grass is weak to Rock and that's really rough and no we're not trying Poison)
-Freeing Specs would also free Scarf in most situations and we don't want that.
Can you elaborate on this point? I'm sure it has something to do with the set generation rules, but I'm not 100% sure how the limitation works.
the Fast Support role, which is what allows it to generate Boots currently, gives a Choice item if you have four physical or four special attacks, Boots if you have a pivot move, Leftovers if you have 2 or fewer attacks, or Life Orb if you have 3 attacks. That's in order, too; if one earlier on in that list is true, the others can no longer apply. Sandy's only attacks on its set right now are Thunderbolt, Earth Power, and Volt Switch. Because Volt Switch gives Boots with its role (and we would like to keep it that way), an additional attack would be required to add Life Orb. An additional attack would also be required to reach the 4 attacks required for Choice items. This fourth attack would be generateable alongside Volt Switch, and it would also be generateable alongside the other non-Volt Switch status moves like Stealth Rock. So, for example, if we were to give it Power Gem, it would get Power Gem Thunderbolt Earth Power Stealth Rock sometimes, and those would be the instances where it gets Life Orb. That set is unfortunately not very good because Power Gem isn't useful for anything aside from, like, some Rotom formes or Thundy-T.
An alternate solution could be adding a second set with the Wallbreaker role, which generates Choice Band or Specs with four physical or four special attacks and Life Orb in all other cases. However, then, we run into the same problem. In order to have Specs exist, we'd need a fourth attack once again, and that attack would also be generateable in the situations when it would also have Life Orb. So, while with this solution you would actually get Life Orb Volt Switch Stealth Rock Thunderbolt Earth Power, you'd still have to deal with the chance of Life Orb Power Gem Stealth Rock Thunderbolt Earth Power too.
I hope I've explained it thoroughly enough. Do let me know if you have any further questions!