BH Policy Discussion: Balanced Hackmons and Cart Legality (that went exactly as expected)

[Palapapop]

Hi ! just wanting to share my opinion about the possible dexited form return!

I think that BH should include all of them with the "clause" previously discussed, to give to the pokemon used their proper gamesprites. It seems more logical to change the metagame like that. BH is a tier where you should be able to use everything that's hackable in game. So it would be more respectful of the definition to include everything, thus, it would be more logical for a newcomer to understand the rules and the goal of BH. The clause would just be a more easy way to play the game, and as instruct said, there is a precedent in gen3ubers.
- Having all the dexited mons coming back will create a huge mess, but we're still at the beginning of the generation, it wouldn't be much of a problem after 2-3 month, and the policy will last for the rest of the gen, and possibly after.

To summarize : Bring back the dexited mons/ make a"sprite" clause to reveal properly opposing pokemon. (modifié)

 

[QT]

I think we have a pretty broad consensus but since I'm making BH forum posts anyway atm I might as well weigh in. I think we ought to allow invisible megas, with a clause that makes them visible ala Deoxys' precedent. I don't think there's a strong identity reason not to do so, not when our current definition ought to allow them. Probably a good deal of them will be broken and we should be prepared to take rapid action on them if they are (mega diancie? mgar? MMY? plus obvious ones like mray and pdon) but that isn't a reason to have them mechanically forbidden.

WRT formes I will admit that part of me wants to keep Zamac legal but if it's not hackable ingame in local battles that kind of decides it for me. It's a shame to lose such a cool addition to the metagame but hopefully at least new invisible megas can help make up for it.

 

[BoingK]

quick forum post cause I’m on phone

a clause that makes them visible ala Deoxys' precedent

From the tests I’ve seen, the invisible megas and mons do retain their typing and their name, so I’d find it a little silly if we didn’t have visibility clause

Personally speaking, I prefer the meta as is and would rather exclude insibule megas and keep zamac etc. however I feel I’m in the minority, and I can definitely see new mons being beneficial to the variety of the meta. If it means the meta stops suffering so much I’m all for trying it

 

[Tea Guzzler]

So the council has been discussing on what to do here as it's a very complicated situation to navigate. Our general consensus, at least for the minute, is as follows:

• The cut Pokemon would be freed but reveal claused.
• The forme changes would replicate cartridge. This means that existing in-battle formes (Zamazenta-C, Zacian-C, Palafin-H) will be inaccessible without manual transformation, as well as the cut formes that are confirmed to revert on boot (see this post; the big ones are Zygarde-C, both Darmanitans, Cramorant, and Aegislash).
• Tera would stay banned for this. We do not fancy demons like Tera Fairy Specs MDiancie running around. We'd also be almost guaranteed to re-ban Gorilla Tactics.

It's unfortunate to see mainstays like Zygarde-C going (realistically nobody's going to use Power Construct), but we can still remain optimistic since we're going into basically a completely new meta (even if it is for the second time in 8 months); sort of like our HOME but significantly more disruptive.

Also, small sidenote, but Xerneas is on the reversion list on that post I linked. I'm going to test if Xerneas can actually keep its ability, so check back here in like 10 minutes and i'll have edited in my findings.

e: it's locked to fairy aura

 

[aerobee]

Less relevant and shouldn't matter much but cut Pokemon/Megas would also be beneficial competitively for (a still horrendously uncompetitive) Pure Hackmons while preserving the integrity of the metagame

 

[Negative Charge]

I'll be honest, I don't see how a few mons being unusable under the existing framework justifies taking this format from cart-replicable to a pet mod with the addition of megas. Megas do not exist. We already have natdex filling this niche.

 

[UT]

I'll be honest, I don't see how a few mons being unusable under the existing framework justifies taking this format from cart-replicable to a pet mod with the addition of megas. Megas do not exist. We already have natdex filling this niche.

This was a separate discovery during mechanics research. It is possible to bring megas into a local game in SV, which is our definition for legality. This is not a policy change, it's a "we discovered the game works differently than we thought."

Once again, NatDex has no bearing on our policy.

 

[cityscapes]

not a fan of this. if i wanted to play with megas and primals i would play natdex and have fun with things like poison heal (probably the most fun ability in bh), pursuit, 16 pp recovery, mg being a functional ability, things like that. so what's the point of vanilla bh? it's to play with interactions caused by the lack of these elements. but when we ban stuff like substitute, a move which enables a variety of interesting strategies that would never be possible in natdex, it's kind of unclear to me what the purpose of this meta really is besides just existing. sorry for the short and largely subjective post i just wanted to share my thoughts

 

[Chessking345]

Hi I wanted to leave my quick thoughts on this and why I personally supported the decision.

Moving to full dex will create a distinctively new meta, it will destabilize the meta in the short term, and it might not create a more "balanced" meta. But in my opinion what it will do once the meta has somewhat stabilized is increase the diversity of the meta and reduce the staleness, making it overall a more enjoyable meta to build and play in. Now, "stale" and "fun" are completely subjective interpretations on the meta but I think it can be agreed upon that the current dex does have rather limited options in both the offensive and defensive spectrum. We have seen how Koraidon is by far the dominating physical wallbreaker while the special side breakers we have a few options such as Flutter and Miraidon. Defensively Arceus's bulk is simply so high that there are very few non-Arceus defensive mons because everything else just lacks the bulk to tank hits meant for Arceus-level bulk. These can be seen through stuff like OMPL usage stats. To be clear I do not mean that the current meta is bad.

I think that going full dex will allow for more diversity in the teambuilding by offering many new viable defensive options to consider while teambuilding. In terms of Steel-types alone we gain like 8+ options from the 2.5 we have presently. Offensive options also open up to allow for a potentially more dynamic meta by introducing more threats to account for, which also affect the diversity of the defensive meta. In addition, due to the unique characteristics of the current gen features we will see a completely different meta to the other BH metas that have had these mons. We will be likely seeing numerous bans and seeing "unviable" mons be relevant or even dominating the meta. The only thing I'm personally sad about is not being able to use natural Zygod which is unlucky but not much to do about that.

Just my thoughts on the benefits this change will bring. These do not reflect the general opinion of the council.

 

[UT]

Hello friends!

So the council has been discussing on what to do here as it's a very complicated situation to navigate. Our general consensus, at least for the minute, is as follows:

• The cut Pokemon would be freed but reveal claused.
• The forme changes would replicate cartridge. This means that existing in-battle formes (Zamazenta-C, Zacian-C, Palafin-H) will be inaccessible without manual transformation, as well as the cut formes that are confirmed to revert on boot (see this post; the big ones are Zygarde-C, both Darmanitans, Cramorant, and Aegislash).
• Tera would stay banned for this. We do not fancy demons like Tera Fairy Specs MDiancie running around. We'd also be almost guaranteed to re-ban Gorilla Tactics.

This is now The Official Plan! All Pokemon that can brought into local battles (all base Pokemon, Primal Groudon / Kyogre, all Megas, most formes except for a few relevant ones like Zama-C, Zyg-C, and Darm-GZ) will be legal! This has no impact on legal moves, items, or abilities, and a clause will be added to make them appear as the correct sprite (which has precedent here and is effectively a cosmetic QoL clause). Some anticipated questions:

• When will this be on ladder? Anticipated go-live date is August 1st, barring any implementation issues.
• What about BH Seasonal? It will be tier locked for the duration of the tour to the current metagame.
  • To that end, pre-full dex BH will have a separate challengeable format for the duration of the Seasonal.
  • OMPL will also finish out under the pre-full dex rules, should it go to tiebreaker.
• Wait why is Xerneas locked to Fairy Aura? It switches between an out-of-battle and in-battle forme, which reverts it to Fairy Aura every time. Sorry!
  • No Yveltal is not ability locked, no I don't know why GameFreak did Xerneas dirty.
• Is X going to be broken or banned? I don't know, but ask anything related to tiering back in the main BH thread! Council will have a tentative banlist soon (tm).

Thanks for participating, and we are looking forward to seeing the new meta in action!