Reflecting on BW and Looking Ahead to Gen VI - SEE POST #508

[Endeby]

Am I the only one that still want Gamefreak to rebalance Stealth Rock to hit all types neutrally? I remember this being a biggie when we speculated about B/W. Stuff like Volcarona being deemed too powerful for OU would be a fair trade for a change like that, imo.

I am also agreeing with the people wanting a slower metagame with more viable walls next time around. That is also dependent on where we draw the line on our banlist.

 

[Nova]

Am I the only one that still want Gamefreak to rebalance Stealth Rock to hit all types neutrally? I remember this being a biggie when we speculated about B/W. Stuff like Volcarona being deemed too powerful for OU would be a fair trade for a change like that, imo.

I am also agreeing with the people wanting a slower metagame with more viable walls next time around. That is also dependent on where we draw the line on our banlist.

If Gamefreak changed Stealth Rock to hit all types neutrally then it would vastly change the landscape of what is viable and what is not. As you mentioned things like Volcarona and other threats such as Thundurus-T and Salamence would be much harder to deal with as they can now switch into Stealth Rock 8 times instead of just 2 for Volcarona and 4 for the latters. Tornadus-T would be even harder to deal with as currently it heals a net 8.33% when switching into SR and then back out with Regenerator, with a neutrality to SR it would heal a net 20.83% every time it switched in and out with SR up. Things that resist Stealth Rock right now such as Lucario who 4x resists it may become a bit less viable if SR always did neutral damage. However, the change in terms of what becomes less viable is much less significant than what Pokemon will become more viable/dangerous if SR were to always deal neutral damage.

 

[youngjake93]

I want weather to last for 8 turns on switch-in instead of being permanent, just like a free use of Rain Dance. Then, I want some Pokemon to have instant Trick Room and Gravity on entry as an ability(that lasts 5 or 8 turns). Maybe Tailwind/Safeguard or some other field effects as well.
Weather is too easy of a 'strategy' and the current metagame makes making use of other field effects not viable.

An eviolite for attacking would be cool. It would make a lot more Pokemon very viable such as Kadabra, Haunter, Magneton, etc.

Sleep being nerfed back down please.

More ghost types, good poison types and unique support moves would all be great additions. All in the name of less close combat spam.

 

[Scorpiopt]

-Dragon types should be 2x weak to Steel
-More Hail inducers
-Weather Balance ,All Weathers also should boost Special Defense by 50% o(Fire type pokemon get a 50& boost on Spd during sun for example) today Sandstorm does this with rock types , this would help Ice Pokemons during hail
-Some Pokemons need their movepool reviewed and typing
-Tailwind should last the same has trick room
-Ice type in general needs a boost in resistances
-Magic Bounce pokemon that is not weak to pursuit
-Weather Removing move

Metagame today is way too centralized in weather

 

[deluge]

Personally I want:

1) Waterfall Kingler
2) Dragon Rush Druddigon
3) Better Flying STAB for Gyarados
4) Flareon sucks but give it something better than Fire Fang
5) Offensive abilities for Hail

The End.

I find it hard to speculate about gameplay elements of new generations because you never know what GF will do. Prior to Gen V I certainly did not expect setup moves like Shell Smash and Quiver Dance which give so many boosts at once. I didn't imagine a move like Psychock which targets defense but works off special offense, the retyping of Rotom-A, or Tail Glow suddenly giving a +3 SpA boost. They even gave us ridiculous things like the move Synchronoise, the item Ring Target, and Zen Mode Darmanitan that really made us wonder what they were smoking.

So all I can say is that I'm ready for the wacky ride.

 

[Endeby]

If Gamefreak changed Stealth Rock to hit all types neutrally then it would vastly change the landscape of what is viable and what is not. As you mentioned things like Volcarona and other threats such as Thundurus-T and Salamence would be much harder to deal with as they can now switch into Stealth Rock 8 times instead of just 2 for Volcarona and 4 for the latters. Tornadus-T would be even harder to deal with as currently it heals a net 8.33% when switching into SR and then back out with Regenerator, with a neutrality to SR it would heal a net 20.83% every time it switched in and out with SR up. Things that resist Stealth Rock right now such as Lucario who 4x resists it may become a bit less viable if SR always did neutral damage. However, the change in terms of what becomes less viable is much less significant than what Pokemon will become more viable/dangerous if SR were to always deal neutral damage.

True that. This is why talking about banning Stealth Rock is frowned upon, if I remember correctly. The OU banlist would definitely grow a lot if SR suddenly disappeared from BW, that`s for sure.

It would be really nice if they could just make it impossible to transfer Pokemon from older games, and then nerf some of the top threats by making certain moves unavailable to compensate for this (Salamence without Outrage, for example). Not that I think this will ever happen as long as 6vs6 singles isn`t the official metagame of choice...

These are just silly dreams of mine though. Breaking the barrier that is changing the base stats could also be the way to go at some point, but that is not a discussion I will touch upon here.

In any case, I still firmly believe that Stealth Rock was a mistake. They just made a lot of other mistakes along the way that sort of made Stealth Rock a lesser issue :adam:.

 

[Schpoonman]

-Some Pokemons need their movepool reviewed and typing

Fighting/Flying Staraptor. FIGHTING/FLYING STARAPTOR.

 

[IcyMan28]

Definitely pushing for a levitating Ghost/Steel. With neutrality to Electric, Water, Ghost, and Dark, as well as a full-blown weakness to Fire, I highly doubt it would be too difficult to handle. On the other hand, it would provide a much-needed check to Dragon and Fighting types while (hopefully) being a viable spinblocker, all at once!

I'd also like to see Ice gain a resistance to dragon and lose the weakness to Rock, Grass lose the flying weakness, and Water gain a weakness to poison.

A boost to the punches (85 BP or so) would be nice, as well as giving Ghost and Dark some stronger moves (bumping Shadow Ball and Crunch to 100 BP). Physical electric types don't really exist, let's see some of those.

Either halve the damage that Stealth Rock does at each level, or cap it at 25% like Spikes. The move makes many pokemon unviable that would be otherwise decent (Hurricane Moltres is decent in rain, Specs Tinted Lens Yanmega, etc). On a similar note, maybe make the moves some pokemon once received exclusively as past events into moves they get via level-up. I'm looking at you, Aura Sphere Raikou.

Oh, and as a final note, make Dream World ability have a certain percentage (say, 20%) of being present on wild pokemon when you catch/breed/receive them. I don't foresee GF rehashing the whole DW idea so this would ensure that you could still get them without have an enormous amount of the (unreliable) hidden grottos.

 

[Shurtugal]

that frog starter is a fight / water type lol. a shittier keldeo imo

the fire type is fire / psychic..... just what we need, another fire / psychic thats shit in sun and SR weak. what a waste

and the grass is grass / dark, NOW THAT HAS POTENTIAL. Another pursuit trapper? It might get chlorophyll in DW or possibly Pursuit, which are all good imo.

 

[IcyMan28]

Chlorophyll Grass/Dark type exists - Shiftry.

 

[Shurtugal]

does it get pursuit -- i can't remember? hopefully this will be a better shiftry in the terms of bulk / and shenanigans

 

[Cherub Agent]

cofagrigus was the perfect candidate for ghost/steel, they'd better remake its typing. god think of the potential...

 

[Enguarde]

Am I the only one that still want Gamefreak to rebalance Stealth Rock to hit all types neutrally?

As previously mentioned making Stealth Rock hit neutrally on every type sounds like a bad idea at the moment. But perhaps make the max damage 25%? I could sure go for making Moltres better and Articuno viable.

 

[IcyMan28]

Another option would be to limit the amount of hazards that could be used at once. One of SR, Spikes, or Toxic Spikes. Yeah it would kill stall, but let's face it; stall is already on its last legs and the new generation is just going to finish it off.

 

[Codraroll]

Physical electric types don't really exist, let's see some of those.

Oh, apart from Zekrom, there is one. It was much hyped when we first saw it. Its design hints that it should be able to throw foes through walls after frying them with its tail, and GameFreak gave it superb coverage to boot...

...but unfortunately, none of the moves it learned were particularly reliable. They were either too inaccurate, or had too low Base Power, and it had no proper good STAB.

Here's hoping that Gen. VI would be nicer to Electivire. At least give it the tools it would have needed to stand out in the metagame of today.

 

[Uvood]

Oh, apart from Zekrom, there is one. It was much hyped when we first saw it. Its design hints that it should be able to throw foes through walls after frying them with its tail, and GameFreak gave it superb coverage to boot...

...but unfortunately, none of the moves it learned were particularly reliable. They were either too inaccurate, or had too low Base Power, and it had no proper good STAB.

Here's hoping that Gen. VI would be nicer to Electivire. At least give it the tools it would have needed to stand out in the metagame of today.

Don't forget Luxray, even if he's not that good, he is a physical electric pokemon too.

 

[Shurtugal]

ghost / normal ? for spinblocking? i gurantee whatever Pokemon gets that will likely suck. Just look at all the other normal types they made; besides Arceus + Blissey what good normal types are there? Possibly Snorlax and... no thats it really. Nintendo makes all half normals shitty imo. Take a look at Audino if you don't believe me :{

Though if they don't fuck it up, it could potentially have hazards like SR + Spikes and still set up (and maybe even get RS). That'd be cool but I'm not gonna hope to high :[

 

[Swamp-Rocket]

Kinda minor but there are three things I want to get in this gen.

Get rid of Wild Charge recoil - There is no reason why this move should have recoil damage. Its weaker than Thunderbolt and yet it gets a deliberating side effect? Absurd! Also stuff like Keldeo hate getting hit by Wild Charges in general.

Get a strong physical Ghost STAB - When most physical Ghosts have their strongest move as Shadow Punch, which is weaker than Return, Earthquake, and many other moves after STAB, you know there is a huge problem. Also, stuff like Golurk and Dusknoir really want it.

Get more Rapid Spinners - Self-explainitory.

 

[JacobNinja]

ghost / normal ? for spinblocking? i gurantee whatever Pokemon gets that will likely suck. Just look at all the other normal types they made; besides Arceus + Blissey what good normal types are there? Possibly Snorlax and... no thats it really. Nintendo makes all half normals shitty imo. Take a look at Audino if you don't believe me :{

Though if they don't fuck it up, it could potentially have hazards like SR + Spikes and still set up (and maybe even get RS). That'd be cool but I'm not gonna hope to high :[

Many things relying on fighting/ghost coverage would be completely walled by it.

 

[PureQuestion]

Which is basically the entire merit of a ghost/normal typing.

The issue/concern they were pointing out was that most Normal types are aggressively poor with regards to stats and movepool. ie. They are worried it would be a bad Pokemon with a great typing.

Which is odd... but... sure.

 

[UltiMario]

I wonder...

What if we get a Team Preview toggle in Gen VI? What if we can now choose between battling with Team Preview on or off?

The decisions that would have to be made...

 

[G-Von]

You wanna know what I REALLY wanna know? What buff is Pikachu going to get this time around? It seems like every gen, GF tries to make it more viable, so I wonder what shenanigans will be used to help Pikachu out this time.

 

[SHUCKLE MAN]

Most of all though, NO MORE AUTO WEATHER POKEMON!

I disagree for two reasons.

Firstly, I think an extra Drizzle user would've been good this generation. Why? Because rain teams have been over-powered (so much that we've had to do the Swift Swim thing, and also testing rain abusers). Maybe if some crappy Pokemon like Poliwag or Lotad or something had been given Drizzle, we could've nerfed the rain strategy by banning Politoed. We've seen this in lower tiers, that it does strongly nerf weather teams when Hippowdon or Abomasnow rise to OU and you're left with their useless pre-evo to bring weather, almost giving you a 5-man team. That could've been enough of a nerf for rain in OU (it's just theorymon obviously, none of us will ever really know if it would've been).

Secondly, auto-weather as a concept isn't bad imo. It's just that they add extra features to each of the weathers every generation and they just keep getting stronger and stronger. If rain had worked like in GSC (i.e. no swift swimmers, just boost for water moves and thunder, and weakening of fire moves and solarbeam), I doubt the rain strategy would've been much of a problem. If Game Freak can nerf the weathers again (especially rain), then it might be alright again. Also having the weather abilities wear out after a certain number of turns (5, 8 or 10) would help a lot too.

You wanna know what I REALLY wanna know? What buff is Pikachu going to get this time around? It seems like every gen, GF tries to make it more viable, so I wonder what shenanigans will be used to help Pikachu out this time.

They should straight up just make Light Ball double all of Pikachu's stats imo.

 

[Gary]

Am I the only one that's actually kind of scared of what this next generation will bring to the OU meta game? If you think about it, this generation could easily either make or break OU. It could definitely improve OU if (like everyone is saying) GameFreak decides to bring Pokemon that could balance out the current weather infested/hyper offensive meta game that OU is becoming. What would make OU a much more competitive and all around more of an enjoyable meta game, are more bulky Pokemon to choose from to counter all this offence, and most importantly Pokemon to counter weather. Air Lock, Cloud Nine, or even a weather stopping move would be just a few of the things that could easily calm down the weather tier. Also, more support Pokemon would be great too. Dual Screening is a great strategy that definitely helps a team's sweeper or hazard setter come in and set up much easier, however with all these weather boosted moves even screens don't do their job as good as they could. Besides, most of the viable dual screeners in OU are pretty lackluster, most which posses pititful bulk like Espeon. Deo-D is a great screener, but you'd be much better off using his hazard set. Also like others are saying, more spin blockers that are actually bulky and resist a lot of things. Cofagrigus would be so much better if it was Ghost/Steel.

Now for what I think would be the breaking point of the OU meta game. If this generation is just like 5th where a majority of the OU viable Pokes are all hyper offensive, OU will become a shit hole. Why? Well little to no strategy would be needed in order to build a team. Most would be forced to sacrifice defense for more offense in order to check the offensive threats. It's already hard enough to build a bulky offensive team with all these offensive behemoths like Terrakion, Keldeo, Kyurem-B, Tornadus-T, and weather boosted moves running rampant in the tier. Of course every gen is going to bring lots of offense, I realize that, but I feel like the only amazing OU viable defensive behemoths that this gen brought us were Ferrothorn, Jellicent, and Eviolite Chansey. Every other defensive Pokemon are from other generations. However even with 4 other gens there is still a lack of defensive presence in OU. Hopefully GameFreak is smart and not only makes bulkier OU Pokemon, but also maybe buffs non OU bulky Pokemon in order to make them OU viable. For example, Cofagrigus would most definitely be OU viable if it was Ghost/Steel, and with it's great ability Mummy and its huge Defensive bulk, it would be a great counter to Technician Breloom, Terrakion, and even Salamence. Also, giving a Ghost type some viable form of recovery other than Pain-Split and Rest would be nice. More Flash Fire Pokemon, Water Absorb and or Storm Drain, and please GameFreak maybe some buffs to hail? Why haven't you released a Chlorophyll or Swift Swim ability for Hail yet? That would be awesome!

 

[ModestGarchomp]

i really hope this gen brings in some defensive titans like G/S/C did.

Other things that i would like to see:
1. Bronzong with a form of recovery, either recover itself or wish.
2. Nerf weather
3. Good spinner(s), well atleast better than the current ones in the game.
4. More distribution of moves such as roost and rapid spin.