Pokemon Black & White, aka Gen 5. Coming to Japan in Fall 2010.

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yeah i gotta agree pokemon sunday is pretty damn funny but that aside i have to agree 85% with that rei said, i dont agree that no pokemon use psychic atacks anymore, you see azelfs leads with psychic once in a while and zam always run psychic in UU (you know? the poison filled metagame?), its true psychic sucks but at least its more usable then poison has main STAB.
 
Poison is a poor STAB, clearly, but is still very good defensively because there are only a few Pokemon who would normally exploit it's weaknesses. And resisting fighting is nice in today's metagame.
 
Yes, but how many steels have access to Pain Split, Giga Drain, Confuse Ray, Sleep Powder, Stun Spore and resist Fighting attacks like Focus Punch and Close Combat? Also Poison types are only weak to Psychic and Ground. Most Poison types have a secondary type that makes them neutral to ground or an ability that makes them immune to it as well as Psychic becoming completely forgotten and even the dreaded Mewtwo gives up it's STAB for something w/ better coverage. Salamence doesn't get Extrasensory to hit Weezing. Fire Blast is also on everything to hit Zong and Skarm. Nothing gets or uses Psychic attacks anymore.

Yeah dude no offense but you really don't know Pokemon that well...
Just a headsup, Giga Drain, Confuse Ray and Stun Spore aren't exactly moves to write home about...
And Salamence doesn't need extrasensory when he can just Draco Meteor Weezing into next week...

And we've been over this already, steel just has way too many good pairings, and even as a pure type [which doesn't exist fyi] it still blocks too many other types out of being viable.
I don't disagree that poison is decent defensively, I'm mainly arguing for an offensive buff, but even so, weaknesses aren't everything. If you can't switch in on anything then you aren't exactly being credit to team are ya?

This is what makes steel so great, despite being weak to 3 common types, it's still so phenomenal because it resists most types and in particular dragon, which is an INCREDIBLY important type in today's metagame. [And as you know are the only type to do so]

I mean in your world it sounds like Normal is the best type ever and Ghost/Dark is unbeatable.
 
"Steel? WHAAAAT?" Yeah, Steel. Just look at Alakazam and Kadabra. What are those things they're always bending with their Psychic powers? Spoons. And what are spoons made out of? Metal. I rest my case. In any case, Steel shouldn't resist Psychic. A neutral hit, maybe. Holla at me if you agree.

I whole heartily disagree that slightly changing the type chart is a good solution. However, I must concede that you are a genius.

And McLuvdisc beat me to it, but I've been saying this since I joined and apparently it bears repeating. Rock is supereffective against flying as the game's way of "killing two birds with one stone".

@Rein

Yes it is. We've been over this before. Look at the fucking type chart and tell me that each Type has the same number of weaknesses and resistances. That each Type is supereffective against an equal number of other Types and NVE against against an equal number. If this was true, the chart would be balanced. When you say the types aren't unbalanced, you don't seem to understand what you're talking about at all.

Pretty soon, I'll be doing lead design work on a game with 12 different types in it. There's no supereffectiveness, and each player will have at most 2 types in their deck, but usually only one. It will be a monumental task for me, and I can in no way prevent there from being high tier types. But if I didn't know how to balance it as much as possible, I wouldn't be getting the job.

Balance starts with the type chart. If it cannot (and it cannot) be perfectly balanced, then we can prevent it from being wildly unbalanced. As it stands, it is wildly unbalanced. I have no fondness of poison, but I would never stand for it being as weak as it is. I love Dragon and Steel, but I would never let them be so good for so long.

At the end of the day, talk of a new type isn't fanboyism or idle speculation. It's the hope that something new and good can be brought into the game. And maybe that's false hope. But right now, with as little as we know about B&W, all we can do is talk about how the game might be better, from a competitive gameplay perspective, because this is Smogon University and that's what we fucking do. A new type CAN make things better. Let's discuss the possibilities and stop clinging to the status quo.
 
Exactly. Altaria is the weakest Dragon we have, and it is still a pretty good Pokemon. Dragons also all learn and use Fire attacks (cept, maybe Latias who uses Surf and Palkia for the same reason) which stops the only type that resists there STAB. The only Pokemon who isn't nailed by Fire Blast and Outrage is double weak to the most common physical attack in the game (EQ is that good, but Heatran is still usable....Just not the best Dragon counter because of that and weakness to Lati@s Surf)

Palkia gets fire blast.
 
Why does every Pokemon have to be equal with the other? Why do they all have to have the same amount of resistance? Neutralities? Super effective weaknesses? The type chart is not the sole factor for determining balance. Along with typing, you have ability, move pool, and stats. If Metagross had the same typing but he had base stats of Mawile he wouldn't be so amazing, as an example, in fact, he would be outright fucking terrible. If we got a Pokemon with Rhyperior's typing, base stats, but he had 110 speed he would be even more of a monster than Rhyperior despite his incredibly awful typing.

The lack of 'perfect' balance makes team building more easily achievable. If we did have perfect balance, we would have an extremely hard time trying to play the game we do now.
 
Why does every Pokemon have to be equal with the other? Why do they all have to have the same amount of resistance? Neutralities? Super effective weaknesses? The type chart is not the sole factor for determining balance. Along with typing, you have ability, move pool, and stats. If Metagross had the same typing but he had base stats of Mawile he wouldn't be so amazing, as an example.

We're talking about types being balanced. That STARTS with the type chart. The fact of the matter is, there are Pokemon with great stats that aren't OU because their type isn't good. There are Pokemon with great stats that aren't OU because of Stealth Rock too, but I never argued in favor of Stealth Rock.

You guys have used this Mawile argument before and it's just as stupid as saying "Water isn't inherently good because Luvdisc is NU".

Now I didn't say the types have to be perfectly balanced, or that it'd be reasonable at all to expect such a thing. But it is wildly unbalanced, as someone else put it, it's about as balanced as Marvel vs. Capcom 2.

The lack of 'perfect' balance makes team building more easily achievable. If we did have perfect balance, we would have an extremely hard time trying to play the game we do now.

And there we have it. Thanks for editing this in and completely invalidating your standpoint. "Pokemon shouldn't be balanced because right now the status quo is nice and cushy and I don't want to have to work harder to build teams in the future".

Absolutely selfish.

In my field, I can equate this to "I bought 4 of this card online and use it in every deck, therefore it should not be banned".
 
Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one who reads anything X-Act writes.

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64264

This is how DTR in that chart was calculated.

For DTR, I looked at the type chart of that particular typing, and summed up the numbers, literally.

So, for Steel, we have:

1/2 + 1/2 + 1/2 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 1/2 + 1/2 + 1/2 + 2 + 1/2 + 1/2 + 0 + 1/2 + 1/2 + 1/2 + 1 = 13.5

For Water/Steel, we first multiply out the corresponding columns and then add them up (this is easily done by Excel by the SUMPRODUCT function). So we have:

1/2 + 1/2 + 1/2 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 1/2 + 1/2 + 1 + 2 + 1/4 + 1/2 + 0 + 1/2 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/2 = 13

The numbers listed in the table are the numbers above multiplied by 4, so that they become a whole number. (I prefer using whole numbers rather than decimals). As you can see, Water/Steel is slightly better than Steel because it has two double resistances (to Steel and to Ice) as opposed to mono-Steel, which doesn't.

So you want a low number because that means you have more resistances than weaknesses. Pure Poison has a DTR of 68 while pure Steel has a DTR of 54. The best defensive typing that includes Poison is Poison/Steel which has a DTR of 58. The best that doesn't involve Steel is Poison/Dark with a DTR of 60. The worst typings that include Steel are Ice/Steel and Rock/Steel with DTRs of 73 and 72, respectively. Once you get past those outliers, though, the next worse typings are Fire/Steel and Dark/Steel with a DTR of 60, which is the same as Poison/Dark.

So this means that Steel outclasses Poison a defensive type and it obviously outclasses Poison offensively because Poison is the worst offensive type. You can argue that Poison has a good resistance to Fighting all you want but I'd much rather use a Ghost that's immune to Fighting.
 
You guys have used this Mawile argument before and it's just as stupid as saying "Water isn't inherently good because Luvdisc is NU".

Yo. Those are two different arguments. The Mawile one is "a type doesn't define wether a Pokemon is good or not" and the Luvdisc one is "a Pokemon defines wether a type is good or not." Those are opposite arguments. The Mawile one is correct. A Pokemon is good based on its stats, moves, and abilities. It just happens that a lot of Poison, Bug, and Electric Pokemon lack what it takes to be good so the type is seen as crappy. It's not the type that's crappy. It's the Pokemon that's made that landed in those types.
 
I think Poison and Grass should resist Steel. Poison should hit Water and Fighting SE and one of either Dragon or Flying should lose their Grass resist.

I don't know what can be done about Ice. It is good as an attacking type but is such a liability defensively that it isn't worth it to have STAB Ice.

Though, I think it isn't the type chart that isn't balanced as much as it is the stats and the movepools monsters of certain types get. What, for instance, is the point of Grass being SE against Water when most Water types get Ice attacks? Swampert is pretty much the only Water type you're taking down with a STAB Grass attack.
 
Yo. Those are two different arguments. The Mawile one is "a type doesn't define wether a Pokemon is good or not" and the Luvdisc one is "a Pokemon defines wether a type is good or not." Those are opposite arguments. The Mawile one is correct. A Pokemon is good based on its stats, moves, and abilities. It just happens that a lot of Poison, Bug, and Electric Pokemon lack what it takes to be good so the type is seen as crappy. It's not the type that's crappy. It's the Pokemon that's made that landed in those types.

No, they aren't separate arguments at all. I say Steel is very good. Others also say Water is very good. You say that if Steel is so good, why is Mawile bad? I say if Water is so good, why is Luvdisc bad? Luvdisc and Mawile are obviously bad because of their stats, but this has absolutely no effect on whether Steel or Water are above average types.

Poison is only supereffective against one Type, but unlike Dragon it is also resisted by a fair number and does no damage against a type that happens to have three times as many resistances as the average type. This is a black and white subject. The types are clearly not balanced just by looking at the chart and that's what matters most.
 
No, they aren't separate arguments at all. I say Steel is very good. Others also say Water is very good. You say that if Steel is so good, why is Mawile bad? I say if Water is so good, why is Luvdisc bad? Luvdisc and Mawile are obviously bad because of their stats, but this has absolutely no effect on whether Steel or Water are above average types.

Poison is only supereffective against one Type, but unlike Dragon it is also resisted by a fair number and does no damage against a type that happens to have three times as many resistances as the average type. This is a black and white subject. The types are clearly not balanced just by looking at the chart and that's what matters most.

Now you're arguing on the other side? What you just said goes against wanting a new type. From that, you want a lot of good Pokemon from the "bad" types to balance them out, not a new type.
 
Now you're arguing on the other side? What you just said goes against wanting a new type. From that, you want a lot of good Pokemon from the "bad" types to balance them out, not a new type.

What the fuck are you smoking? I just said that Poison is bad because of its place on the type chart. Did you just not read that or something?

At the end of the day, the fatal flaw in the Mawile argument is that no matter how many Pokemon you add that are better than Mawile, Mawile will always be around. Make a better Poison pokemon, it ends up in UU because of its bad STAB, you say that Poison sucks because Arbok exists, and what we have is a mobius loop of logical fallacy.

Just refer to X-Acts thread that was already linked. I've done all the same calculations myself long before joining Smogon, and that's how I know the types aren't balanced. But the least you can do is look up the research yourself, this is a site where Pokemons are serious business so start treating them as such and do the damn research.
 
What the fuck are you smoking? I just said that Poison is bad because of its place on the type chart. Did you just not read that or something?

At the end of the day, the fatal flaw in the Mawile argument is that no matter how many Pokemon you add that are better than Mawile, Mawile will always be around. Make a better Poison pokemon, it ends up in UU because of its bad STAB, you say that Poison sucks because Arbok exists, and what we have is a mobius loop of logical fallacy.

Just refer to X-Acts thread that was already linked. I've done all the same calculations myself long before joining Smogon, and that's how I know the types aren't balanced. But the least you can do is look up the research yourself, this is a site where Pokemons are serious business so start treating them as such and do the damn research.

Ugh...this guy. It doesn't take much to understand that STAB isn't everything. A Pokemon isn't going to lose value because it doesn't have good enough STAB. The Mawile argument is saying that type doesn't affect how good a Pokemon is. You're saying that it does. Then, you say that it doesn't. Then, you say that it does again. Make up your mind. Poison doesn't suck because it can't hurt many Pokemon with its STAB moves. Poison is seen as bad because there aren't many good Poison Pokemon. Adding a type isn't going to help out Poison Pokemon. The only thing that can help out Poison-types are making good Poison Pokemon. Steel is good because there are more good Steel-types than bad ones. Poison just needs a better Good:Bad Pokemon ratio.
 
I think Poison and Grass should resist Steel. Poison should hit Water and Fighting SE and one of either Dragon or Flying should lose their Grass resist.

I don't know what can be done about Ice. It is good as an attacking type but is such a liability defensively that it isn't worth it to have STAB Ice.

What, for instance, is the point of Grass being SE against Water when most Water types get Ice attacks? Swampert is pretty much the only Water type you're taking down with a STAB Grass attack.
What cuts grass? Metal. And what kind of material is unaffected by toxins? Non-organic. Poison SE on Fighting makes less sense than Poison SE on Normal, so I don't understand that choice. Flying resistant to Grass is indeed a strange choice, but Grass normal against Dragon makes even less sense.

I assume you mean what can be done to improve it? Offensively, nothing. It has a good range of sensible SEs and Ice Beam is an excellent move to stick on non-Ice Pokémon. Removing its weakness to Rock or Steel would help it defensively; Steel more so, but that's extremely unlikely.

Heard of Sun-supported Solar Beam?

This is all pretty remote to me, because I don't see any type changes being made in B&W, unless of course a new type is introduced. That itself isn't even too likely; after all, Dark was only really introduced because Pyschic destroyed everything.
 
I think it's kind of obvious that if I like something it's an opinion.
Especially since I said |I'd take Krabby over|...

However, what isn't my opinion is that Zoroark is overly designed and a huge deviation from gen1's artstyle, which to remind you is the one that captivated most of us as children or whatever-you-were.
I feel the new style is trying to become digimon-esque and "badass", to appeal to today's kids, but in the end I feel incredibly shafted as an oldschool fan.

Then again maybe it's Gamefreak's hint that I should find a life.

I agree the the pokemon designs are going more and more over-the-top from the simplicity found in Gen 1 (which I agree in many ways is unfortunate).

I've watched all the pokemon movies up to the Shaymin movie, and there's a similar transformation in art style there too. The movies up to the Movie 5 Latias & Latios, Guardian Gods of the Water City, have a beautiful art style with strong traditional animation techniques (though movie 2 with the birds was kinda "meh," 3-5 were great!).

I read one review that criticized movie 4 as being too similar to Mononoke Hime, but being compared to Ghibli Studio's work seems more like a compliment than anything. Celebi, Suicune and the other pokemon blended perfectly into the wonderfully drawn forest and natural sceneries, and like Hayao Miyazaki's work, it feels like a moving painting. The simplicity of the story lines is a strong point, not weak imo.

In more recent movies, they've been depending more and more on glaring 3D graphics, which frankly are something of an eye-sore. Also the designs of the pokemon themselves seem more and more out of place, meshing well with neither their computer-graphically illustrated backgrounds nor with the natural settings that should be the strong-point of pokemon movies.

For instance the Darkrai Movie, I have to compliment it for some truly beautifully illustrated scenery shots (breathtaking really!) but Darkrai, Dialga and Palkia all feel really out of place in the nature-themed background and story line.


So yeah, there is quite a deviation from the traditional aims of pokemon. IMO though, there's no real need for serious deviation-- Children are always children. It's unlikely that there are needs for big changes in the pokemon formula to stay popular with its target audience.

On another note, Nintendo should continue to try to design pokemon with some relevance to the real world. Part of the pokemon angle is to be semi-educational, so it's good for pokemon in game to be inspired by real animals/legends/objects/etc. Pokemon like Gyarados (based off of a Japanese Legend) or Relicanth (Based off of a real-life living fossil) are very good to continue making.

I can tell you that spending a lot of time learning to live in Japan and speak Japanese, it's surprising how often I was able to figure something out, remember something, or learn something quickly because "Ah, it's like the name of pokemon [x]," or "aw, it's like that time in pokemon gold" etc. etc. Pokemon might now be a Sesame Street perse, but having some educational value is definitely a plus.

Simpler, nature-related designs are definitely something Nintendo should definitely continue to make, to keep not only the children happy, but their parents happy-- after all, someone has to go to see all those movies with the kids, and it's better if the parents like what they see.

It's funny because while many parents last generation often berated their kids berated their kids for playing video games, I would actually feel good introducing my kids to pokemon (when I eventually become a parent).
 
The type chart is not balanced, and never will be balanced. I'm surprised people are still arguing about this. We can all say that both Poison needs to be beefed up, and Steel needs to be toned down, but no matter what we do people will still be complaining. The truth is, in non-competitive play, every type does just fine. It's only when we take in the variables in the metagame that we get such a large spectrum of what is good and what is not. Put that on top of move pools, stats, abilities, items, and whatever else, and that's a lot to take into consideration. Oh, Stealth rock is popular? Use a Rapid Spinner. Don't want Rapid Spin taking them away? Put a Ghost type on your team. Lots of Ghosts now? It's the only reason we see Dark type attacks other than the 4 Psychic types it hits for SE which matter.

Then there's the point with Dragon types. Dragon has always meant to have an edge over the rest of the types, and even then, it's only super effective against itself. Its weaknesses are very common. The reason Dragon types are so powerful is because they have so many powerful pokemon, such as Salamence, Kingdra, Flygon, Garchomp(So powerful he's banned), Dragonite...pretty much all of them bar Altaria, who is not that bad anyways. This combined with powerful STAB attacks(Outrage) and movepools means you've got a force to be concerned about.

Dragons are powerful so we use them. Steel type pokemon become popular because they resist. Ground and fighting type moves are used to counter them. Flying pokemon and levitators used to avoid Ground attacks. Electric attacks used to hit Flying types. Ground pokemon used to absorb Electric attacks (And some with abilities), Ice type pokemon used to counter both Dragons and Ground. Steel becomes even more popular to resist. Every team and their mother starts carrying Fire type moves for Steel type pokemon. Water type becomes valuable as neutral damage and SE against Ground, as well as resisting Ice and Fire. Electric becomes even more popular. Ground types and attacks get more popular after that, on to of Steel being more popular. It's a huge spiral which makes some things almost essential, while others are left in the dust.

And that doesn't even begin to cover everything. I could go on, but it would be pointless. The fact is that there are way too many variables to try and balance such a complicated metagame. I agree that some obvious types should be made better or worse to make things a little more even. Even beyond typing, it depends on all other factors which make a pokemon good or not in competitive play. However, taking everything into consideration, the point still stands.

It will never be "balanced".
 
Ugh...this guy. It doesn't take much to understand that STAB isn't everything. A Pokemon isn't going to lose value because it doesn't have good enough STAB. The Mawile argument is saying that type doesn't affect how good a Pokemon is. You're saying that it does. Then, you say that it doesn't. Then, you say that it does again. Make up your mind. Poison doesn't suck because it can't hurt many Pokemon with its STAB moves. Poison is seen as bad because there aren't many good Poison Pokemon. Adding a type isn't going to help out Poison Pokemon. The only thing that can help out Poison-types are making good Poison Pokemon. Steel is good because there are more good Steel-types than bad ones. Poison just needs a better Good:Bad Pokemon ratio.

I have not once deviated from my original standpoint. Lots of things make individual Pokemon good or bad, but this has no bearing on whether the Types themselves are balanced. Mawile sucks in spite of its Steel type advantage. This has no bearing on standard play because no one in their right mind would use Mawile in standard play. However, I'd like to see CAP make a pure Poison type with balanced stats with the intent of being OU. Impossible, probably not. Hard, yes, but that's the point. At the end of the day, being a Steel type is a boon to any Pokemon whereas being Poison does nothing useful. I felt I had to bold this for you specifically, as despite repeating this for dozens of pages now you seem to be confused.

Now stop your feeble attempts at telling me what my argument is, and memorize the charts in X-Acts thread.
 
Alas, the type wars shall never end, unless GF is smart enough to make a 600 BST poison-type just to see if the mayor problem is the typing or the pokemon itself because right now the only decent pokemon that I really consider poison is Drapion (1 weakness is nice), the others are outclassed on their role for lack of reliable recovery (Weezing), lack of usable ability and outclased too (Muk) or flat-out suck (every single poison out there that doesn't include the above mentioned).

My cents on this, the neverending argument can proceed...

EDIT: damn, guess the upper comment beat me with the decent pokemon thing...
 
I have not once deviated from my original standpoint. Lots of things make individual Pokemon good or bad, but this has no bearing on whether the Types themselves are balanced. Mawile sucks in spite of its Steel type advantage. This has no bearing on standard play because no one in their right mind would use Mawile in standard play. However, I'd like to see CAP make a pure Poison type with balanced stats with the intent of being OU. Impossible, probably not. Hard, yes, but that's the point. At the end of the day, being a Steel type is a boon to any Pokemon whereas being Poison does nothing useful. I felt I had to bold this for you specifically, as despite repeating this for dozens of pages now you seem to be confused.

Now stop your feeble attempts at telling me what my argument is, and memorize the charts in X-Acts thread.

So the reason why you want a new type so Poison could be SE against it and resist it so it'll have a better chance while Steel gets SE hits by the new type and becomes weakened? That's not going to help out Poison. People aren't going to start to use Poison Pokemon because they hit SE against the new type. All they can do is make good Poison-types. You make it seem like a pure Poison is so difficult to be good if it has decent stats. Give it a large movepool, nice stats, and a good ability. You'll get a good Pokemon no matter what type it is.
 
So the reason why you want a new type so Poison could be SE against it and resist it so it'll have a better chance while Steel gets SE hits by the new type and becomes weakened? That's not going to help out Poison. People aren't going to start to use Poison Pokemon because they hit SE against the new type. All they can do is make good Poison-types. You make it seem like a pure Poison is so difficult to be good if it has decent stats. Give it a large movepool, nice stats, and a good ability. You'll get a good Pokemon no matter what type it is.

I'm not suggesting we make a run of the mill type. I'm suggesting we make a really decent one, so that people will want to run Poison types against it.
 
Guys.


May I ask you to stop talking about new types and whether the chart is balanced or not? Really. I wouldn't be surprised if at least one third of this thread were about it. And hell, we know nothing of the competitive aspect of the game yet. We should wait until we get relevant news, just like when they revealed Thunderpunch would be a physical move back then. One thing is to speculate, other to make a wishlist, other to discuss pacifically. But other is to rehash the same discussion over and over, only to have everybody's animosity higher and higher by each edition.


And hell, this thread is bigger than the old HGSS one already, isn't it?
 
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