(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon

…How exactly would special Strong Jaw or Iron Fist for example work? Not everything physical needs a 1:1 special counterpart, it takes away part of what makes the game interesting (also why I dislike Frostbite). Special Moxie is Grim Neigh and Soul-Heart.

Special strong jaw would increase the power of sound based moves by 1.5. Give it to Exploud
 
Special strong jaw would increase the power of sound based moves by 1.5. Give it to Exploud

...There already IS an ability that increases the power of sound moves(by 1.3x IIRC). It is the signature Ability of Toxtricity. It also has the bonus of halving the power of sound-based moves used on the Pokemon with Punk Rock.
 
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It's interesting how many penalties physical attackers have (Rocky Helmet, Rough Skin, Burn, Intimidate, most moves for substitute), yet cuz EQ is so nice, they still thrive
It helps that Earthquake doesn't make contact.

Also, Lucario is slow (ie: base 90) because of power creep; Pokémon with a base speed above 100 used to be relatively rare. Garchomp having 102 speed was apparently a huge deal back then because it outsped Salamence.

I'm also reminded of when I started playing Temtem, and was surprised to learn that the base stat numbers are much lower than Pokémon, to the point where base 70 is considered good and there's hardly any min-maxing. The only Temtem with a Pokémon-like stat distribution is Oceara.
 
...There already IS an ability that increases the power of sound moves(by 1.3x IIRC). It is the signature Ability of Toxtricity. It also has the bonus of halving the power of sound-based moves used on the Pokemon with Punk Rock.

But as usual power is nerfed with some niche effects which it's not benefit from. Also no sound based stabs.
 
But how would special Tough Claws or Iron Fist work? Makes no sense
The first: boost Special moves that make contact (there are currently six in the game).
special contact moves.png

The second: boost Special fist-based moves (there are currently none).

Also worth noting is that Tough Claws boosts the power of the Pokémon's contact moves by 30% (not just Physical ones), while Iron Fist causes the power of affected punching moves to increase by 20% (again, not just Physical ones).
 
??

Tough Claws boost contact moves 1.5x Iron Fist boost punch based moves 1.2x

U can make an ability which boost Ballistic moves

or an ability which boosts Wave moves
Those aren’t “special Tough Claws” and “special Iron Fist” those are “Tough Claws for ballistic moves” and “Iron Fist for wave moves”

While something like Huge Power you can just swap the category to make special, something like Tough Claws you have to define a whole different type of attack? That’s not a special version that’s a whole new ability

Anyway you’re ignoring the important part of my post:
Not everything physical needs a 1:1 special counterpart, it takes away part of what makes the game interesting [by effectively making phys/spec interchangeable] (also why I dislike Frostbite).
 
Poor distribution
You didn’t say “there should be a special variant of Iron Fist that’s widely distributed” you said “there should be a special variant of Iron Fist”. Moreover, a wave-boosting ability (unsure what this even means but I’d assume Surf, Muddy Water, and Sludge Wave) isn’t a special variant of Iron Fist, it’s an entirely new ability that boosts wave moves. Whereas Grim Neigh is simply Moxie but Attack is changed to Special Attack, there’s no way to directly make Iron Fist have a counterpart for special moves (and Iron Fist already would affect special moves if there were any special punch moves), you have to make a whole new ability that effects a different class of moves. I’ve said that twice, I don’t know why it isn’t registering for you.
 
So earlier today I was thinking about how unforgiving Electro Ball's damage formula is, and thought "Gyro Ball is a good move, what if Electro Ball's damage was just the inverse of Gyro Ball?" but it turns out that in almost any given matchup one Pokemon's Electro Ball is stronger than the other Pokemon's Gyro Ball, so making Electro Ball the inverse of Gyro Ball would actually be a nerf.

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This graph compares the base power of Gyro Ball and Electro Ball in a given matchup, Electro Ball in red and Gyro Ball in blue. The y-axis shows how strong the move is, while the x-axis shows how many times faster the faster Pokemon is than the slower Pokemon. Electro Ball consistently stays above Gyro Ball and maxes out at 4x faster, which Gyro Ball doesn't match until nearly 6x faster.

It frustrates me just how bad Electro Ball is. Even when it's copying the homework of an actually good move it still fucks up.
 
Accuracy/Evasion-affecting moves.

I don't think I need to elaborate.
Oh, come on. Surely you definitely need to elaborate on why Sand-Attack and Minimize and Double Team are such fun game design and not a literal time wasting simulator that isn’t really impacted by player skill whatsoever.

right?

in all seriousness FRLG is the absolute worst for that. Sand-Attack makes every battle with the rival’s Pidgey line a chore and for the wrong reasons

related: Double Team Static Emolga is awful, which is a shame as I actually like Emolga’s design, animation is top tier cute
 
So earlier today I was thinking about how unforgiving Electro Ball's damage formula is, and thought "Gyro Ball is a good move, what if Electro Ball's damage was just the inverse of Gyro Ball?" but it turns out that in almost any given matchup one Pokemon's Electro Ball is stronger than the other Pokemon's Gyro Ball, so making Electro Ball the inverse of Gyro Ball would actually be a nerf.

*snipped*

This graph compares the base power of Gyro Ball and Electro Ball in a given matchup, Electro Ball in red and Gyro Ball in blue. The y-axis shows how strong the move is, while the x-axis shows how many times faster the faster Pokemon is than the slower Pokemon. Electro Ball consistently stays above Gyro Ball and maxes out at 4x faster, which Gyro Ball doesn't match until nearly 6x faster.

It frustrates me just how bad Electro Ball is. Even when it's copying the homework of an actually good move it still fucks up.
So, I ran some calcs, because I knew the move was bad. But I foolishly assumed it was bad because the meta is extremely fast, so if you can end up that much faster than your opponent, you've set up a win already.
Against a max-speed base-100, a Surge Surfer Raichu deals slightly more with TBolt than with Electro Ball. 80 power
At +1(Scarf) or if the opponent is -1(Sticky Web), you're still better off with Rising Voltage by a decent margin. 120 power
With the oppt paralyzed, if you're at +2(Agility), or if you're Scarfed and they're at -1, it finally does more than Rising Voltage. Which is a nice reward for this very silly situation. 150 power.
And that's a base 110 mon with an x2 speed ability against the baseline for the meta. You're not going to be faster than that.
But then I checked it against some walls, to see how it does against things like Blissey and Ferrothorn. I didn't realize the move maxes out at 150 power. Makes sense, I guess, in that they're averse to giving out moves more powerful than that, but Reversal et al hit 200 BP. Electro Ball sitting at 150, when Rising Voltage and Thunder are 140/120 with 100 accuracy with a slight bit of setup, is just sad.

You can't wallbreak with it because the ideal user is something built for speed and doesn't have enough hitting power to wallbreak even with 150 base power, but against speedy threats you're better off with TBolt under any reasonable circumstances. The math doesn't work out, I can't figure out where this is actually supposed to be used. Even in-game, TBolt is a much more reliable option for the big fights, which are the ones that matter.
 
TBF, Gyro Ball is also pretty bad on most users. Even something with base 60 Speed (such as Aegislash) as well as 0 IVs and a negative nature, your target needs at least 110 base Speed fully invested just to be equal to Iron Head.
0+ Atk Aegislash-Both Gyro Ball (79 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Gengar: 189-223 (72.4 - 85.4%)

For anything in the base 40 - 60 range, you're still whiffing against uninvested targets (i.e. most defensive Pokemon). Dhelmise has base 40 Speed and it still can't get to 80 BP against uninvested Mew.
0+ Atk Steelworker Dhelmise Gyro Ball (78 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mew: 117-138 (34.3 - 40.4%)

The required difference is still so big that you need to be extremely slow for it to work well. Combined with the fact that it's only really good with STAB (or Steelworker), there's only a handful of Pokemon that can actually use it.
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Of the above, it's only Bronzong, Ferrothorn, Forretress, Stakataka, Wormadam-Trash, and sometimes Steelix that use it. Melmetal would also use it if it didn't have Double Iron Bash. There's a Smogdex set with Gyro Ball Aegislash, but it has to hold an Iron Ball to make it effective.
6 viable users is still more than what Electro Ball has at the end of the day, but it's a pretty low number for a move with decent distribution. I guess it makes sense that it's easier to make a Pokemon that's several times slower than average than to make a Pokemon that's several times faster than average, given that almost always want higher Speed.

Actually, I'm wondering if it's supposed to be used alongside pre-nerf Paralysis. If your base Speed is equal to or greater than that of a paralyzed target's base Speed, you're guaranteed to get max power due to the 1/4 multiplier. Which is "usable strategy for in-game" territory rather than "almost entirely pointless".
 
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