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

[McLuvdisc]

If they made soft sort of Grass type pokemon with an ability like Swift Swim (If they can get it in the sun, they can get it in the rain too. They need both to survive and whatnot), It would make a good addition to Rain Dance teams, without the need of super-duper BST.

You mean like Ludicolo, who has the ability Swift Swim? :naughty:

But yeah, we need some better Grass types with better stats. Sure, Grass has got a lot of weaknesses, but so does Tyranitar, and no one's complaining about him.

I'm personally hoping for a Grass/Fire sweeper with Chlorophyll or Solar Power. It could be based on a nettle, or something. More importantly, it would finally give Sunny Day teams a Pokemon that gets both its STAB attacks and its ability boosted by the sun. The way it is now, one has to choose one or the other, which is what makes Sunny Day so inferior to Rain Dance.

Another change that I think would really help all the Grass mons out there is the removal of Grass' weakness to Flying, and Flying's resistance to Grass. Both of those never made any sense to me...what advantage does a bird have over a bush or a tree?

 

[Mario With Lasers]

I don't see a grass starter hitting high OU any ime soon. Grass is such a shitty, unnecessary typing that it's gotta be fucking GODLY or BROKEN in some aspect to get there.

To be that good, you pretty much need at LEAST 600 BST . . . or Spore on top of other good shit . . .

I'd actually like to see Grass/Electric. Fair STAB coverage, only 4 weaknesses and a number of useful resistances-- also with the capacity to wipe out EVERY water type (killing water is grass' only real purpose for even being included on an OU team).

Too bad there's no good 3rd move to round out the coverage. Ice comes closest but still has issues with Steel Types (Magnezone).

There's also the problem Grass starters are locked with their horrid ability (no seriously, Torrent and Blaze are useful, but Overgrow?). Were it possible for starters to have other abilities, or if Overgrow worked for both types the pokémon may have, then it'd be a bit better.

 

[DDRMaster]

While a Fire and Electric type sounds pretty cool, I doubt they'll make the starter that type unless they make the Grass type Rock or Ground in order to hit it SE. They're not going to give a blatently obvious advantage to the Fire type to make it the best.

 

[Chou Toshio]

Seriously. Even Shaymin-S with 125 Base Speed Serene Grace + Air Slash/Seed Flare, is not good enough for top OU. SR weak and meh defenses really prevent it from doing a grass type's job of stopping bulky waters (Celebi is better at this). Although it's a huge step closer to what a Grass Type should be in terms of brokenness, it's really not quite there.

. . . and then we banned it to uber. Well Shaymin-S isn't banned because it's good, but rather because it's annoying as hell (which is actually why I advocate banning Jirachi but oh well . . .).

If they made soft sort of Grass type pokemon with an ability like Swift Swim (If they can get it in the sun, they can get it in the rain too. They need both to survive and whatnot), It would make a good addition to Rain Dance teams, without the need of super-duper BST.

Also, good secondary typing and movepool is a godsend for them. When it boils down to it, the only reason Grass type is SO BAD (Not just bad in general) is because most of the pokemon are just not good enough. Look at Breloom, he does just fine with sub/spore. Venasaur dominates UU. Celebi, despite being even worse typing than just grass, finds a way to play past those weaknesses (Even if it was a little less than 600 BST, it would still be viable considering the movepool and the way it's used).

I say we need better Grass Pokemon. None of this beginning of the game shit that half of them are forced to be.

@Res Ipsa Loquitur: Yeah, it would be a very viable and fun type to play with. The only real big downside is the x4 Ground weakness, but other than that, seems like something GF might want to give us....Please.

The thing about movepools is that they are not something inherent to the type itself. The only things that are inherent to a type are weaknesses, resistances and synergy (or in grass' case a LACK of synergy) with other types.

I mean, if all I want is Spore I could just pack a smeargle, who can at least do other shit like Destiny Bond, Trick, or set up Spikes after he's done with his initial scarf-spore.

Keeping that in mind, I hardly feel justified in carrying a grass type just to put 1 pokemon to sleep (especially when said enemy pokemon is largely up to the opponent's choice, since it's really obvious when a player is going to use a sleep move most of the time because sleep users are only used for sleep).

Now if say, Jumpluff got Spikes, then we'd have a different story on our hands.

 

[Typhlosion]

what i want to see is to have a pre-evo of a very good pokemon (in-game and competitively) available early in the game. imagine HGSS if you could get yourself a larvitar on the first route. it would still need to get to a high level to evolve and at that point in-game level is the only real thing that counts. food for thought.

 

[Airfoil]

I mean, if all I want is Spore I could just pack a smeargle, who can at least do other shit like Destiny Bond, Trick, or set up Spikes after he's done with his initial scarf-spore.

Keeping that in mind, I hardly feel justified in carrying a grass type just to put 1 pokemon to sleep (especially when said enemy pokemon is largely up to the opponent's choice, since it's really obvious when a player is going to use a sleep move most of the time because sleep users are only used for sleep).

Now if say, Jumpluff got Spikes, then we'd have a different story on our hands.

There are some relations between Pokemon of the same type. As I mentioned, most Grass Pokemon have access to sleep-educing attacks, w/ a few outliers.

Most Steel types are defensive accept for a few outliers.

Most Dragons are offensively based, weather it's bulky or not.

Most Rock Types have higher defense than special defense.


lol, Jumpluff w/ Spikes = OU/UU Deoxsys Speed




Maybe a starter that is great in-game but poor competitively, and a starter excellent in competitive battling, but poor in-game. The third being one in between.

Good in-game:
Relatively rounded stats w/ reasonably high attacking stats.
Many high PP moves (power doesn't usually matter as long as it's higher than 40)
Typing that covers large # of Gym Leaders, as well as doing good in the E4.
Levels up/Evolves quickly
In a common non-ground egg group w/ a large move pool to spread hard to get egg moves
Learns a multitude of HMs

If not forced to Overgrow/Torrent/Blaze than maybe Magma Armour/ Intimidate/ Pick Up/ Compound Eyes (useful in-game ability)

Competitively:
High defenses and instant recovery if defensive.
High speed and 100< Attack/Sp Attack if offensive.
Reasonable typing.
Decent ability (meaning probably not Overgrow. Most likely water starter)
Not outclassed by something else (Feraligator when Gyarados got physical Waterfall)
At least one good STAB
Good STAB attacks to match the good STAB typing
Large Move pool

If not forced to standard abilities, maybe Intimidate / Motor Drive / Thick Fat / Flash Fire / Levitate / Drought / Drizzle (good competitive ability).

 

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

But typing-wise grass is poor. Offensively it's godawful, I think it's the worst.

I'd say Bug is probably even worse. It overlaps a lot with Grass, but it is resisted by Ghost and Fighting, two common and strong types, in exchange for being neutral on Bug, which sucks. Also, Grass is SE on Water and Ground, two great types, while Bug is SE only on Dark, Psychic, and Grass, none of which is too terribly earth-shattering.

That said, I agree that the best Grass-types, like Breloom and Celebi, rely on their movepools and stats because Grass is a weak type overall.

But at least Grass has excellent representatives like Celebi, Breloom, Roserade, Shaymin. Fire is the butt-monkey of types. Infernape and Heatran are fine, but we need some more alternatives. It is ridiculous that Fire STAB is so scarce that Fire Blast is run on nearly half of all Salamence and a third of all Flygon (with 80 SpA!).

 

[Chou Toshio]

The thing is no one feels a need for Fire Pokemon. The meta goes along just fine without them.

Afterall, in terms of a Primary STAB type offensively or as a Defensive typing, Fire is basically an inferior water. Water hits everything fire hits (except for Grass, which again, is shitty and under-represented) and more for at least neutral. Defensively too, weakness to Grass/Electric are much harder to hit than weakness to fire, Ground or Rock, and SR weak sucks. So yeah, as a pokemon type, both offensively and defensively Water > Fire 100%.

It's only as a secondary attacking type where fire becomes better. Afterall, if you don't have STAB than you need super effective hits to get the required damage, which is why Salamence uses Fire Blast and not Hydro Pump despite the latter's superior neutral coverage. Kingdra for instance, would never bother with fire attacks even if it got them-- because STAB Water > Fire.

If fire pokemon are inherently largely inferior, and secondary fire attacks are everywhere, than I'd say fire is already doing it's part in the metagame. I'd say the same thing about Ice really (Dragon > Ice as primary STAB, while Ice is shitty defensively).

Grass on the other hand, is a different story-- because bulky water pokemon and ground types are both extremely powerful presences in the metagame, which go largely unchecked because of how shitty the "counter" nintendo built for them is.

In other words, while Fire and Ice are already successfully carrying out their best role as secondary attacking types, Grass' job of stopping water/ground types (especially water) is left up in the air because you need to BE grass to use grass' resistances, but being grass is a natural handicap.

ie. While it's true being a fire pokemon sucks, you actually need to be grass to do grass' job. You don't need to be fire to kill Skarm or Scizor. Even Jolly Flygon can 2hko them with F-Blast.

And if you think you don't need resistance to water to stop water, try switching in your Rotom/Zapdos/Jolteon into Gyarados randomly and try shrugging off the STAB waterfall to the face. It's not pretty.

 

[asdfrozen]

Wasn't Sceptile OU in Gen 3?

 

[Revolution]

Wasn't Sceptile OU in Gen 3?

Yes, but that was before the Physical/Special split and the rise of Scizor (and priority in general.)

 

[Proboscidea]

Electric STAB is also rare. They need to fix that. They should also make more moves like Head Smash: Super powerful, without a stopping period on the next turn, recoil, and lower accuracy.

 

[Airfoil]

Electric STAB is also rare. They need to fix that. They should also make more moves like Head Smash: Super powerful, without a stopping period on the next turn, recoil, and lower accuracy.

Head Smash has some HEAVY RECOIL (half the HP the opponent lost. Head Smashing Blissey w/ HP investment......lol)....They just need Volt Tackle less exclusive, or maybe just a physical T-Bolt for electric types.

Special wise, Electric has usable options, nothing outrageous, but good....

Fire and Electric both DESPERATELY need better physical attacks. Only a number of physical Electric types actually get T-Punch, and even less physical fire types get Fire Punch....
And even then, relying on the Punches will leave you w/ a heavy thirst for power.

 

[Proboscidea]

Head Smash has some HEAVY RECOIL (half the HP the opponent lost. Head Smashing Blissey w/ HP investment......lol)....They just need Volt Tackle less exclusive, or maybe just a physical T-Bolt for electric types.

Special wise, Electric has usable options, nothing outrageous, but good....

Fire and Electric both DESPERATELY need better physical attacks. Only a number of physical Electric types actually get T-Punch, and even less physical fire types get Fire Punch....
And even then, relying on the Punches will leave you w/ a heavy thirst for power.

Thank goodness for Aggron and Relicanth's Rock Head, huh?

 

[Airfoil]

lol. Exactly. Poor Ramparados is probably the worst user of it's own signature move.

If you notice, they saw this problem and gave it usable HP.



And aside from the games, some information people have forgotten is a clip from the trailer of Zoroark's movie, showing Lugia vs Ho-Oh.....But that might not mean much....

Maybe they fight, emphasizing on how everyone is confused through the shadowy games....Or it could just be to point out HG/SS will have some bearing on Gen 5.

 

[Chou Toshio]

The thing is that only now in 4th gen we are starting to get an idea of the types' full potential and the ramifications of their spreads (weakness/resistances).

Up until now (and still now to a degree) pokemon have been largely limited by the available moves (and of course by their base stats and abilities).

Despite the elements being largely unchanged from first gen (aside from the intro of steel and dark), the roles pokemon have been able to take despite having good/bad typing were shaped to a higher degree by available moves.

Gyarados has spent a large part of it's competitive life as UU/semi-BL, and Salamence's most reliable attacking move was Aerial Ace last gen. Dragon attacks were largely completely unused even in 3rd gen!

The physical/special split along with a whole variety of new offensive moves opened up opportunity for us to really see the full ramification's of a type's coverage offensively, and as a result were forced to respond by more fully utilizing resistances defensively (sorry Rhydon, but even looking back at gen 1, it's laughable to think of you as a physical wall anymore . . .).

Of course there are still a lot of holes in the physical/special split for various elements (SPECIAL ROCK/physical ice/physical electric/etc.), 4th gen gave us much better insight imo on what actually is good offensive coverage and what actually is good defensive typing, both for general tanking and specific walling.

 

[noob3]

Seriously. Even Shaymin-S with 125 Base Speed Serene Grace + Air Slash/Seed Flare, is not good enough for top OU. SR weak and meh defenses really prevent it from doing a grass type's job of stopping bulky waters (Celebi is better at this). Although it's a huge step closer to what a Grass Type should be in terms of brokenness, it's really not quite there.

. . . and then we banned it to uber. Well Shaymin-S isn't banned because it's good, but rather because it's annoying as hell (which is actually why I advocate banning Jirachi but oh well . . .).

You sure do talk like you know alot, maybe get your facts straight and we'd take your posts half way seriously. Now I see you post alot, and I have chosen not to bite thus far. But this post is beyond stupidity. If you don't even know a poke's base stats, please don't involve yourself with theorymon. Shaymin-S is one of the most broken pokemon in the game, hands down. For you to even question that, maybe you should post on serebii.. If all grass types were even 100 yards close to as good as Shaymin-s, they would easily become the new Dragon type of OU.. If they wern't all regulated to ubers, that is.

 

[Airfoil]

Shaymin's largest selling point, either form, is Seed Flare. Shaymin S is Uber b/c it can outrun a large chunk of both the OU and Uber tier, as well as being able to KO an even larger chunk of the metagame w/ a pretty wide move pool and an excellent STAB. Also, as you said, most Serene Grass Flinchax can be extraordinarily effective, but Air Slash didn't get Togekiss uber.

It also isn't walled by Blissey, a common problem for Special Pokemon, b/c it can run physically, and more commonly will bury opponents in a mess of Sp Defense drops from Seed Flare.

 

[noob3]

You can't compare Togekiss to Shaymin-S. It's like comparing Mawile to Salamence.

 

[Airfoil]

My point was that it takes more than 1 attack to make/break a Pokemon.

 

[FlareBlitz]

Not really. Garchomp without Swords Dance would not have been banned. Wobby without Encore probably wouldn't have been banned. Lati@s without Draco Meteor? Meh. 1 attack really can/does make or break a Pokemon.

 

[Aminar]

One move can totally break a pokemon with the right stats. What breaks Shaymin is his speed with Serene Grace(and some moves that abuse it) which is as close to broken as any ability in the game. Your point isn't especially valid considering. That said, I don't think Shaymin-S is as broken as people say. Uber, but not by too much. I'd love it if the thing were just a little worse.

 

[Chou Toshio]

You sure do talk like you know alot, maybe get your facts straight and we'd take your posts half way seriously. Now I see you post alot, and I have chosen not to bite thus far. But this post is beyond stupidity. If you don't even know a poke's base stats, please don't involve yourself with theorymon. Shaymin-S is one of the most broken pokemon in the game, hands down. For you to even question that, maybe you should post on serebii.. If all grass types were even 100 yards close to as good as Shaymin-s, they would easily become the new Dragon type of OU.. If they wern't all regulated to ubers, that is.

I choose to state my opinions frankly without regard to general consensus-- so what? It's up to you if you want to "bite" or not.

So the thing has been banned for so long I forgot it's speed stat by a couple of points (when there are no pokemon around that speed tier that are really relevant anyway). So what?

I WAS heavily involved in the Shaymin test (that was the only test so far I actually cared about, posted about, and put in the time and effort to get voting rights for), so I remember the situation well. And then, I only really bothered testing it because it was a grass type. Again, I remember being disappointed largely by it's inability to do much when a water type switched away from it, while being SR weak-- also it's so frail that it couldn't switch into them either, especially with 4x ice weak. Also it's not like it could one-shot every Suicune that came around, and was actually screwed by Tentacruel. Frankly Celebi is a better pokemon overall as a grass type, but I just took a liking to Shaymin because of it's offensiveness (though ultimately I ended up cutting it from my main team because it wasn't good enough).

The voting in regards to Shaymin-S was incredibly slim. It had no where near a majority in either direction. Many of the better players like IPL felt largely unthreatened-- to the point that they didn't even care to voice an opinion one way or another. Most stronger players on the leader board were largely underwhelmed by Shaymin's abilities. Unlike Deoxys-S, Garchomp and Wobb, the players at the top of the ladder were almost completely uninvolved with the discussion regarding Shaymin.

While having solid counters is not an indicator of OU viability, Shaymin-S was countered by so many pokemon (and even checked by things like Tyranitar who it loses 1 on 1 to), that your team had to already be in a really bad position to get thoroughly owned by it. The inaccuracy of its moves also caused a great deal of frustration for those who tried to abuse it, further taking away from its strength.

In fact, even my own personal reasons for wanting Shaymin around was that I thought if there was 1 powerful Grass type sweeper in OU with some level of popularity (albeit with mostly weaker players), I might run into a few less Vaporeon or Swampert, who really screwed my team at the time. I had almost no intention of actually using it myself.

When it came down to voting, it was heard time and again, "You know, this thing is really not that strong-- but it just gets so much f*ing luck, it's ridiculous!"

Shaymin really did not win games-- it didin't help players excell on the ladder like Wobb or Deoxys did. It never commanded a dominating position, and there was little to no need to alter teams just to counter it because so many widely-used OU pokemon already had the advantage against it.

At the end of the day I'll say it frankly-- whatever people might say, the real reason Shaymin-S was banned is because it is unbelievably Haxy, playing with it or against it causes such stupid levels of frustration on luck-based play, that most competitive players simply did not like having it around. It made the game less fun for everyone.

Frankly, I think that is a great reason to ban a pokemon. We ban OHKO moves and evasion to reduce some luck factors in the meta. Banning a pokemon for the same reason is perfectly acceptable imo. If it makes the game less fun, why keep it? On the same note, I'd even be for banning Jirachi.

. . . I just don't like that people pretend Shaymin-S was banned because it's "so stwong".

 

[Frank Ripley]

My point was that it takes more than 1 attack to make/break a Pokemon.

What about Scizor before it got Bullet Punch? i was not around here but ive heard that it was not used much. :P

 

[Aura Guardian]

Yes, but U-turn and Superpower and a few other attacks also contributed to making Scizor the king of OU.

 

[cantab]

Fire and Electric both DESPERATELY need better physical attacks. Only a number of physical Electric types actually get T-Punch, and even less physical fire types get Fire Punch....
And even then, relying on the Punches will leave you w/ a heavy thirst for power.

This is a point I continue to disagree with. Part of what makes types distinctive is that still some are predominantly special, and others predominantly physical. I don't want that character taken away. I don't want every type with an elemental beam, a fire blast variant, a flare blitz/volt tackle variant, a typed return, a Draco Meteor variant, and so on.

A small power boost to the punches, and a bigger boost to the fangs, would be good I reckon. Between 80 and 90 for the punches I reckon, and just 5 less (not 10 as now) for the fangs.

Higher power physical moves on mainly special types, and vice versa, should have restricted distributions, to the Pokemon that can effectively use them. Flareon wants Flare Blitz, even if he'd still be NU with it. Electivire might like Volt Tackle. Don't go giving the moves to Magcargo and Electrode, or to Salamence.