One thing I think people need to consider re: Entrainment scarf is that unlike with trick or skill swap, you’re still locked into using Entrainment again after you use it, so even if you aren’t willing to dedicate a slot on your team to countering it, if someone gives you a scarf and you’re locked into a move, you’re completely safe to keep using that move until they switch back out. I’ve stolen a lot of games from people locking themselves into a status move, then panic switching into a second Entrainment, but as soon as people realize I’m still locked into it, they can just pp stall and I can’t attempt to spread another scarf until next time we’ve both switched. It’s still annoying being effectively down a mon, but even without specifically building around it you still have options to limit how much damage it can actually do to your team.
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Metagame Bio Mech Mons [Leader's Choice]
- Thread starter RADU
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So I did some testing and found that if you’re holding a Sticky Barb in a move slot and get hit by a contact move by an opponent without an item, the opponent will be forced to hold whatever is currently in your item slot. It doesn’t duplicate the item, so in practice this mostly serves as a more gimmicky version of trick, but some notable uses I thought of are:
- Transferring AVs onto mons like Alomomola, Corv or Gliscor that want to be using status moves a lot but still use contact moves often enough to set off the Sticky Barb.
- Giving actively detrimental abilities like Truant or Slow Start to the opponent (this one is less useful since almost everything with either of those abilities is already banned, but I’m sure there are other abilities you can give people that they don’t want)
- Giving weather/terrain setting abilities to your opponent so that even if they get rid of you setters, they now set the weather for you
- If you want to be really funny you can force Dondozo to hold Explosion and then have it kill itself later in the game when it tries to use Sleep Talk
- And if you want to be REALLY funny, put Sticky Barb and Cursed Body on a Polteageist that has Memento in its item slot, then intentionally eat a contact move from a 1 button scarfer, then hope the opponent doesn’t notice that their 1 available move is now Memento and tries clicking it
Also, weirdly enough, the item is transferred even if you have Sticky Hold, but it is NOT transferred if you have Sticky Hold and got hit by the opponent’s own Knock Off
Edit: Ok so It’s also possible to smuggle Huge Power onto something with a real attack stat as long as it has Thief, Trick or Switcheroo and it’s bulky enough to tank a hit from whatever you gave Huge Power to. I don’t think it’s super useful on any Thief users because you need to use 2, maybe 3 slots for it (1 slot goes to Thief, 1 goes to your item slot being empty and 1 goes to living the hit with a sash. You could consolidate by putting the sash in your item slot, but then you can only set this up on physical attackers and not stuff like Corv U-turn), and if you want to set it up against anything that will actually set off the sash then now you can’t use a Life Orb. For Trick users though you can just put Trick itself in your item slot, use 1 slot to live the hit, and spend the rest on extra damage. Mimikyu in particular feels like it could be potentially good for this since you can use Disguise to live the hit and not have to worry about Life Orb recoil. Realistically giving your opponent Huge Power is probably just going to get you killed, but the fact that you can do it at all is hilarious to me
- Transferring AVs onto mons like Alomomola, Corv or Gliscor that want to be using status moves a lot but still use contact moves often enough to set off the Sticky Barb.
- Giving actively detrimental abilities like Truant or Slow Start to the opponent (this one is less useful since almost everything with either of those abilities is already banned, but I’m sure there are other abilities you can give people that they don’t want)
- Giving weather/terrain setting abilities to your opponent so that even if they get rid of you setters, they now set the weather for you
- If you want to be really funny you can force Dondozo to hold Explosion and then have it kill itself later in the game when it tries to use Sleep Talk
- And if you want to be REALLY funny, put Sticky Barb and Cursed Body on a Polteageist that has Memento in its item slot, then intentionally eat a contact move from a 1 button scarfer, then hope the opponent doesn’t notice that their 1 available move is now Memento and tries clicking it
Also, weirdly enough, the item is transferred even if you have Sticky Hold, but it is NOT transferred if you have Sticky Hold and got hit by the opponent’s own Knock Off
Edit: Ok so It’s also possible to smuggle Huge Power onto something with a real attack stat as long as it has Thief, Trick or Switcheroo and it’s bulky enough to tank a hit from whatever you gave Huge Power to. I don’t think it’s super useful on any Thief users because you need to use 2, maybe 3 slots for it (1 slot goes to Thief, 1 goes to your item slot being empty and 1 goes to living the hit with a sash. You could consolidate by putting the sash in your item slot, but then you can only set this up on physical attackers and not stuff like Corv U-turn), and if you want to set it up against anything that will actually set off the sash then now you can’t use a Life Orb. For Trick users though you can just put Trick itself in your item slot, use 1 slot to live the hit, and spend the rest on extra damage. Mimikyu in particular feels like it could be potentially good for this since you can use Disguise to live the hit and not have to worry about Life Orb recoil. Realistically giving your opponent Huge Power is probably just going to get you killed, but the fact that you can do it at all is hilarious to me
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i mean yeah but u can also just entrainment smth a scarf, switch out, then do the same thing again later except now they have to be worried since ur entrainment user might just go for an attack anyway so switching in the scarf mon wont always b the best play. overall, i still think its uncompetitive and entrainment should be banned. theres a reason trick is effectively single use move, giving smth a scarf is insanely powerful as an effect
I don’t entirely disagree, but imo you’re overselling how easily you can get an entrainment user in after the first time. Other than Araquanid, none of them are particularly good at taking a hit, so you have to rely on a slow pivot to start that mixup in the first place, and even then it only works if the opponent doesn’t have a good switch in (Ability Shield, already having a scarf + enough bulk to survive the entrainment user’s attacks, etc.). Overall I actually agree that it’s uncompetitive, but it’s uncompetitive in the same way that something like Trap + Imprison + Transform is uncompetitive. Annoying and frustrating, but not gamebreaking.
That said, I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to a ban of Entrainment + Scarf, just banning Entrainment as a whole would be excessive. Forcing multiple scarves onto the opponent is probably pushing it, but for most items, Entrainment as a whole isn’t much more busted than something like Knock Off, and with how busted stuff like Poison Heal or Magic Guard are, I think removing counters to those options would be a step too far. There’s a reason no one is complaining about Entrainment + Iron Ball Pawmot for example. If anything, I think restricting Scarf from being used as an ability would be a reasonable approach: Things that can’t afford to lose scarf are putting it in a move slot anyway, and things that don’t mind losing it are putting it in an item slot.
Hi everyone, I'm hosting a Bio-Mech Mons room tournament this Sunday at 1 PM EST (GMT-5) with a $100 Prize for the winner :)
approved by KaenSoul
Pokémon Bio-Mech Mons Tournament
$100 Pokémon Showdown Tournament
Format: Bio-Mech Mons https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/bio-mech-mons-leaders-choice.3771254/
Prize Distribution:
1st Place: $100
2nd Place: Discord Nitro
approved by KaenSoul
Pokémon Bio-Mech Mons Tournament
$100 Pokémon Showdown Tournament
Format: Bio-Mech Mons https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/bio-mech-mons-leaders-choice.3771254/
- When: February 1st (Sunday) at 1:00 PM EST (GMT-5)
- Where: the Other Metas Room on Pokémon Showdown in the form of a room tournament: https://play.pokemonshowdown.com/othermetas
- Who: You! Signups are free, just click the join tournament button on the day of the event and you are good to go. Signups will open at 12:50!
Prize Distribution:
1st Place: $100
2nd Place: Discord Nitro
i agree that in a vacuum, entrainment+scarf ban would be ideal, but i know that generally bans like those aren't necessarily realistic bc of the fact that ppl tend not to like complex bans. i agree w restricting scarf from the ability slot as a solution, but i mainly wanna disagree w the comparison to trap imprison transform, we're talking about a strat that takes 3 turns to get off the ground and only works if the opposing mon has no firepower to take out the trap imprison transform user in the first three turns, where scarf entrainment just takes one turn and now u have a scarf for the rest of the game. also, ur totally underselling slow pivots here, and ability shield is a good solution, but it literally only does anything against this one tactic, like 90% of mus thats gonna be a dead slot, which defensive mons dont wanna waste given the sheer amount of power running around in this format. while i agree w u that restricting scarf from the ability slot would be another reasonable solution here, im just not 100% sure if thats gonna happen either, since that's been brought up as an idea before and from what i've read, it seems as if the conclusion has been to treat every slot the exact same in regard to bans/restrictions. hopefully i get proven wrong though, because i think restricting scarf from the ability slot would solve the issue here, as would an entrainment ban
Agreed that Imprison trapping is probably pushing it (though since Imprison applies to the user rather than the target, all you have to do is switch in on something that can’t threaten you and if the opponent can’t OHKO or outspeed you with whatever they switch into, Imprison -> Trap -> Transform is guaranteed to get at least 1 free KO), disagree with Ability Shield being useless outside of beating this strat. NGas still affecting all abilities rather than just what’s in the ability slot makes Ability Shield an (admittedly niche) option on defensive mons like Gliscor and Clodsire who just kinda lose to ngas otherwise.
As for complex bans, yeah they’re unlikely to happen but tbh with a format that has stuff like unremovable boots and 18% healing per turn, I feel like the only options you have without implementing complex bans are to ban every item/move that makes the format interesting, or to accept the janky stuff as inherent to this format. Happy to be proven wrong, at the end of the day I think it’ll be a while before people run out of funny tech either way
Speaking of which, even with Entrainment banned you can still duplicate Choice Scarves because Gardevoir has both Trace and Skill Swap, meaning you can copy the opponent’s Scarf (either one that they already had or one that you SS’d onto them with someone else) and if they switch, you can swap it with whatever they switch into. You have the added challenge of switching Gardevoir into something with a scarf (but this isn’t that bad since you can copy their scarf even if they try to switch as long as you switched from something faster), but in exchange you get to act after giving the opponent a scarf, unlike with Entrainment. The way the game seems to handle Trace is that no matter what slot you put it in, whatever is in the opponent’s ability slot is copied into yours, but Trace itself doesn’t get replaced unless it’s in your ability slot.
And for a less fun piece of tech, if you put Trace in your item slot and your only move in your ability slot, the battle crashes on switch-in. This one should probably get fixed
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