Ladder Balanced Hackmons

You're arguing for a ban on Frustration. Based on a set that's 5/50 anyway. Never mind the plethora of other ways to get 50% results, you go for the one that will sometimes (And it really is sometimes) make an Imposter have a lower power move.

Why? It's not the strongest move, and there are multitudes of other ways of countering this set without Impostering it. You're right that Pokemon wasn't built for balance (Until recently) and especially not with BH in mind, but really? It's a niche move that will see use on about 0.01% of sets ever. I mean seriously. Frustration. There's no upside about banning it other than Imposter users now have to take into account Happiness. And if that means you have to put more than ten seconds of thought into an Imposter, well. Sucks to be the person with one of the least thinking-intensive sets in existance, doesn't it?

But really. As someone who literally never uses Chans or Bliss, you arguing to get something that's not something that's metagame definig banned makes less sense than... Something that makes no sense. Seriously. I could maybe understand something like trying to ban Gigas, Contrary, or something actually relevant to the metagame at large but...

Well, Frustration. WHY?

Also, merry Christmas.
I'm of the opinion that only three things should be banned: broken stuff, over-centralizing stuff, and stuff that's unhealthy for the metagame. The latter two almost always coincide with the former (endless games being the only exception coming to mind right away). And, except in very clear cases (HP/PP and PB, for example), things should be suspect tested first.

Return/Frustration add little to the metagame. So what? Should we ban them from OU because Ditto users might have to worry about happiness? Should we ban Tackle and Ember from BH because they add little to the metagame? No, of course not. That's just silly.

If you don't want to have to worry about your Imposter getting shafted 50% of the time because you made the wrong decision on happiness, then stop using Imposter. If you want to use it, then be prepared to deal with the downsides.
First, merry Christmas.
Second, I want to clarify something. I think both of the above posts understand it, but the argument is not that frustration is game breakingly strong. The argument for its banning is the third of rumors' ban criterion, 'stuff that is unhealthy for the metagame'. I think that those in favor of banning frustration are that way because it increases "variance." Variance is an attribute of an unhealthy metagame that is high when worse players are more likely to beat better players, because of luck or because of some annoying rock-paper-scissors like situation. Low variance makes for a healthier metagame, and banning frustration would lower variance.
Third, those of you on your high horses saying that imposter is so thoughtless and below you, think of the Chanseys. Including an imposter on your team gives a Chansey a home and a source of sustainable income, which are increasingly rare what with all of the Pokemon centers closing down these days. Sad, sad Chanseys. They need good trainers, and this Christmas, you can help them find a safe haven from the cold. Also, Chansey is really, really good.
Running frustration also increases Pokemon abuse, because your Pokemon need to hate you for it to work effectively and this causes abuse. :(

In all seriousness, I am for anything that makes the game better, including banning frustration, if it does indeed help the game. It seems off to me that we are banning frustration when there are so many other problems in the meta, though. Banning frustration wouldn't help very much from any perspective, and you know what would? ENDLESS BATTLE CLAUSE. Standard metagames have it. It started here. Why not kill the detrimental, evil strategy at its source? It seems off to me that we argue about banning frustration, a relatively minor change, when we need infinite battle clause. There is no use to not having it, and I think it needs to join this metagame as it joined so many others. Honestly, we can return to our other mostly irrelevant banning discussion after killing this behemoth.

After posting this, I will vm user: verbatim about adding infinite battle clause. If you care, please respond to my vm on his profile with your opinion. Seriously, EBC takes nothing away from this meta, while helping it on principle. This is the age of taking action.

Make your voice heard.
 

verbatim

[PLACEHOLDER]
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I didn't think anything in this thread could be more idiotic than the "ban all Sleep because the moves introduce variance" argument but nope you proved me wrong

I may not be verbatim, but I think I can say with 100% accuracy that Frustration will never be banned.

lmao
This


With regards to the endless battle clause, have you seen it being used this generation? I let the old thread on endless stall die because the people who were using it quit. If no one is using it I'm not going to cloud BH with unnecessary rules, but it can also be added if this becomes a continuing issue.
 
I'm so confused by this ban frustation thing
just because it makes the imposter unreliable for checking and/or countering the kyube or anything else that might potentially run and thus giving away a perfectly good slot that could be e-speed or something else, just to drop imposters away from it and completely ignoring any other check or counter they might have now that they dropped off their priority move makes it seem bannable or something???

I'll gladly face e-speedless kyubii that runs frustation cause then I can go prankster on its ass.
 
verbatim: I don't think it's really a complicated rule. It bans a horrifically annoying edge case most players wouldn't even think of trying but could easily rage-quit the meta if they were a victim of it. Being able to drag a match until the server resets provides not benefit but can do a lot of harm. I'll admit I've not seen it in BH yet. But, then again, we've not really been speaking about it publicly either so as to keep people from getting ideas.


frustration debate: At the moment, critical hits, secondary damage effects, and the damage variation for every hit adds more variance to the meta-game than Frustration ever will. I have lost to inexperienced players due to those three things before. I have never lost, in any meta, because my opponent chose to use Frustration over Return or another move.

It adds a negligible amount of "variation". And I question whether "variation" is inherently bad. After all, we've not banned critical hits.

Also...

1. Is this good design?
Frustration/Return was originally designed to help showcase the new happiness mechanics introduced within Generation 2. Game Freak didn't really consider competitive implications at the time as they've not really seemed to be too interested in competitive play until Gen VI or V.

Regardless, the current impact of Frustration/Return in BH requires decision making during the team-building phase of play, which is, in my opinion, at least as important as the actual battling phase of play. A player must weigh the opportunity cost of using other moves that may be more effective, such as Double Edge, Facade, or Extreme Speed, against the benefit of crippling some Imposters. The Imposter player must determine whether they're more likely to run into which move and also how their team will cope if they make the wrong decision. Alternatively, the Imposter can choose to run middling happiness to have effectiveness regardless of the opposing team building decision at the cost of never having maximum power.

If the Imposter player finds that Return/Frustration puts them in a 50/50 win/lose situation simply because they picked the wrong happiness level, then I would argue that they are practicing poor team building and should have had a back-up plan in mind in case of opposing anti-Imposter tricks, Frustration/Return being one of them.


2. Is "Don't play removal spells if you don't want to deal with it" the proper way to react?
The counter-arguement of questioning whether "Ban it if you don't want to deal with it?" is a proper way to react also exists.

Mind, when someone chooses to run Imposter, they must be willing to put up with all of the drawbacks of using Imposter, whether that be Magnet Pull trappers, Spooky Plate Judgement Ghosts, or Frustration/Return. Likewise, when opting to run Frustration/Return, that user must consider the possibility of running into an Imposter with the correct happiness level.

Personally, if someone dislikes some aspect of the set they're running, I'm of the opinion of either adapt to it or stop doing it. After all, they made the team building decision to include an Imposter on their team and run all of the associated risks and benefits. Running into anti-Imposter usage of Frustration is one of the risks they took. If they don't like taking that risk, then they need to stop taking that risk. It's not the meta's job to mitigate the risks for them.



3. Would the better player be more or less likely to win without this restriction?
It would have virtually little impact. Pokemon begins in team building and a skilled player will have a back-up plan in case an Imposter has the correct happiness level to counter their choice of Return or Frustration. Likewise, the skilled Imposter player will have a back-up plan in case they made the wrong decision. If one of them doesn't have a back-up plan, then they made a critical team building mistake and deserve to be punished in-battle for it by a loss.



4. If you were designing MtG, would you include this mechanic?
This question isn't exactly relevant because an "Imposter Eviolite Chansey" equivalent card isn't exactly something that's common in MTG. There's similar cards, such as Clone and Evangelize, but I'm not aware of any single card that basically says "This monster is a copy of target opposing monster plus all enchantments in play on it plus with 5 extra Toughness and all damage taken is reduced by 1." And even if there was, there's nothing stopping the other player from just swatting it with Terror, Fire Ball, Counter Spell, or what have you. Conversely, the closest equivalent to spell cards in Pokemon are items like Full Restores and X Attacks and those aren't usable in competitive play regardless of meta.


For those of you who play MtG, imagine if there were A and B versions of every removal spell, and A and B versions of every creature. Other than letter, the different versions are exactly identical (and both versions count to the same 4 of a card per deck limit). However, A removal spells can only target A creatures, and B removal spells can only target B creatures.
This is a bad analogy because this is not how Frustration/Return works. If the opponent is anything but an Imposter, it hits everything. If the opponent is an Imposter, both hit them equally hard regardless. The only "catch" is the Imposter may or may not be able to hit for more than scratch damage with it back. It'd be closer to using Clone on an opponent's creature that may or may not have Unquestionable Authority on it.

It's also bad because other than the 4-identical-card-per-deck rule affecting them all, cards like that do exist as is in MTG. I have a removal deck and I have cards that specifically kill non-Black creatures, cards specifically for non-Snow creatures, cards specifically for tapped creatures, and so forth. They all have the same, identical effect (insta-gibbing the creature dead), but the A spells only target A creatures, B spells only target B creatures, and so on. Mind, I'm a MTG casual, so I'm might be doing that wrong in the eyes of pros (none of my decks are tourny legal, that's for sure), but that's besides the point because the cards still do exist.

...and don't even try to list the number of, say, 1/1 White Flying creatures whose only difference is the name and maybe creature-type. Or Green 1/1 Elves that are tapped to create mana.
 
I'm sorry for dragging this argument out farther but, Frustration and Return aren't even the go to Normal type STABs in BH, those are Facade, (for PH Normals) and Extreme Speed, (for everything else). Frustration is used so rarely that I'm surprised it is even being brought up. Let's look at the usage statistics, to see who used these moves the most, and see just how often that "50/50" actually comes into play shall we?
Regigigas: Extreme Speed: 42.519%, Facade: 39.897%, Return 3.394%, Frustration 0.663% Fighting type coverage (Not including PuP): 37.606
Slaking: Extreme Speed: 73.119% Return 4.694%, Facade: 4.298%, Frustration 3.108%, Fighting type coverage (Not including PuP): 46.005%
Zekrom (lol): Dragon type coverage: *100%, Frustration 0.945%
*I think, adding the move %s comes up to >100% so I'm assuming that means most ran multiple dragon type attacks

That's it. Nothing else notable even touched Frustration last month. The only one that looks like it even could give specifically happy imposters a hard time is Refrigerate Zekrom, which approximately 5 teams used. PH Gigas gives imposters a bad time in general, and that isn't because of Frustration. I personally have seen Last Resort more often than Frustration over the last 2 months (1 occurrence to 0).

Also, lets not forget that these are the only physical anti imposter moves available, other than Natural Gift lol. (edit: Facade is also anti imposter to a large degre on status orb users, but it really needs PH in order to work.) Banning one would mean that there are literally 0 left. I think Verbatim made the right call here.

With regards to the endless battle clause, have you seen it being used this generation? I let the old thread on endless stall die because the people who were using it quit. If no one is using it I'm not going to cloud BH with unnecessary rules, but it can also be added if this becomes a continuing issue.
I appreciate your efforts to keep things as simple as possible, but there is really no reason to not include this clause. That strategy is so anti-competitive, that it shouldn't be allowed to exist even for a second in any tier that wants to be competitive.
 
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How would banning this set be possible without harming potential sets? The only way to completely stop this strategy from working would be to ban Sitrus Berry, Leppa Berry, Ingrain, Magnet Pull and all other permanent trapping effects. Banning all this would cause more damage than good.

If consistency is not of concern then it wouldn't be a good idea to try banning the strategy especially when there are so many ways of doing it, however, if consistency is of concern, an easy fix would be to ban Leppa Berry, Ingrain + Magnet Pull/ perma-trap moves and/or 2 of the same move on Magnet Pull / perma-trap pokemon.

I think we shouldn't get too hasty, banning a strategy that is not even used in this metagame would only cause complications (especially when there are so many ways of pulling it off.)
 

Monte Cristo

Banned deucer.
So you're telling me people are basically wanting to ban frustration because it stops a strategy meant to counter set up sweepers with no thought or effort put in team building by you? I'd rather not ban something because someone whines that they can't mindlessly spam imposter against anti-imposter, grow up and deal with it. This is like wanting to ban HP ice + Terrakion + Ice gem in gen 5 OU because it stops gliscor, yes not the perfect analogy but you get the point, when you use chansey/blissey as an imposter your taking the chance that you will have to deal with anti imposter. If this bans goes through, what's the community going to whine about next, PH pokemon because their anti imposter?(I know PH normals have a legitimate argument like Adrians arguments, but banning them for just being anti imposter is dumb) This is BH, I think we've fucking realized no 1 set can counter anything, Everything has ways around their counters stop whinning.
 
Adrian: Banning Healing Pulse and multiple identical moves on the same set (For example, a set of Tackle/Tackle/filler/filler) would eliminate at the very least the obvious chunk of the strategies while having virtually no impact on competitive teams. And then there's also the "x number of Struggles in a row = end of battle" clause I've seen mentioned somewhere before that'd solve the problem as well.
 
Arguing to ban Frustration is like arguing to ban Judgment or Techno Buster, only rather than a hold item it's Happiness that gives it the anti-Imposter ability. Sure, you can give a Plate to your Imposter but there's no guarantee that said Plate will work.

The entire argument is ridiculous and immensly frustrating. Verb's already spoken too, so I won't say anything else on this.
 
I don't think people are responding to the things I'm actually saying, and are instead imagining that either
A) I think it's overpowered/overused/overcentralizing/good at all (it's pretty mediocre, if not bad)
or
B) It's a really solid check to Chansey strategies and I'm whining cuz I happen to use Chansey and it is difficult to deal with (there are a million better, more reliable ways to be anti-imposter)

I, on principle, don't think games should have pure 50/50's (where the payoffs and penalties for guessing right and guessing wrong are identical). If a pure 50/50 can be removed from the meta without impacting the meta much or at all, then it probably should be. That's all I'm saying.

All this being said, this is a minor issue and if everyone else is against it (though I don't think anyone has given a reply that doesn't respond to a strawman) then whatever. I will be the first to admit that it's not hugely important either way.

Endless Battle Clause is a good idea imo. Would it be possible to have the server automatically call a mod after 6 struggles by the same mon in a row? Seems like having a human element is the best way to cover all the possibilities.
 

Pikachuun

the entire waruda machine
If a pure 50/50 can be removed from the meta without impacting the meta much or at all, then it probably should be.
So let's ban Zap Cannon. It has exactly 50% accuracy. Oh and let's not forget about the 50% chance to hit yourself in confusion; let's ban that too :o

Frustration/Return is pretty much a solid Imposter counter if the opponent has the wrong happiness. Sure, it's a 50/50 shot, but the same thing applies to confusion or the 50% accuracy moves. At least you know that if you end up wrong the first time, you'll end up wrong every other time. If that's their only attacking move, just send in a good priority user. If they have something that you're immune to as the other attacking move (like Draco Meteor on a Fairy type), adjust for that accordingly. If you know how to counter one anti-imposter, you'll probably know how to counter them all. Return/Frustration's just one on the giant list.

Then again I haven't played BH that much, so the heck if I know :P
 
So let's ban Zap Cannon. It has exactly 50% accuracy. Oh and let's not forget about the 50% chance to hit yourself in confusion; let's ban that too :o

Frustration/Return is pretty much a solid Imposter counter if the opponent has the wrong happiness. Sure, it's a 50/50 shot, but the same thing applies to confusion or the 50% accuracy moves. At least you know that if you end up wrong the first time, you'll end up wrong every other time. If that's their only attacking move, just send in a good priority user. If they have something that you're immune to as the other attacking move (like Draco Meteor on a Fairy type), adjust for that accordingly. If you know how to counter one anti-imposter, you'll probably know how to counter them all. Return/Frustration's just one on the giant list.

Then again I haven't played BH that much, so the heck if I know :P
Clearly, you did not read what I said. This is another example of a strawman.

I, on principle, don't think games should have pure 50/50's (where the payoffs and penalties for guessing right and guessing wrong are identical).
My post was talking about double blind decision making, not RNG. RNG is a separate issue entirely. All I am saying is that when you have to make a teambuilding decision, there should be a reason to make one decision over the other. When there isn't (i.e. a pure 50/50), there's a problem.
 

Pikachuun

the entire waruda machine
My post was talking about double blind decision making, not RNG. RNG is a separate issue entirely. All I am saying is that when you have to make a teambuilding decision, there should be a reason to make one decision over the other. When there isn't (i.e. a pure 50/50), there's a problem.
Yeah, I didn't understand what pure 50/50 meant, and that was the problem. Disregard my post I guess :P
 
There's... not really a blind situation here. It's not a coin flip either. Most inexperienced or lazy players will be using the default, happy Imposter. So, someone wanting Imposter resistance will use Frustration over Return. Hence, you'll want sad Imposters the majority of the time. The only two kinds of people who will run Return are those who don't know any better, and thus you'll probably beat them anyway, or those building teams to counter higher levels of play and know that it's usually a good idea to run a sad Imposter.

But basically, because of default settings, Frustration > Return for countering most Imposters, so unhappy Imposter is generally better. This is a decision that can be made by analyzing the metagame rather than tossing a coin.
 

Monte Cristo

Banned deucer.
I don't think people are responding to the things I'm actually saying, and are instead imagining that either
A) I think it's overpowered/overused/overcentralizing/good at all (it's pretty mediocre, if not bad)
or
B) It's a really solid check to Chansey strategies and I'm whining cuz I happen to use Chansey and it is difficult to deal with (there are a million better, more reliable ways to be anti-imposter)

I, on principle, don't think games should have pure 50/50's (where the payoffs and penalties for guessing right and guessing wrong are identical). If a pure 50/50 can be removed from the meta without impacting the meta much or at all, then it probably should be. That's all I'm saying.

All this being said, this is a minor issue and if everyone else is against it (though I don't think anyone has given a reply that doesn't respond to a strawman) then whatever. I will be the first to admit that it's not hugely important either way.

Endless Battle Clause is a good idea imo. Would it be possible to have the server automatically call a mod after 6 struggles by the same mon in a row? Seems like having a human element is the best way to cover all the possibilities.
Frustration is literally a dimension of skill in the game, it isn't pure 50/50, it's the fact that you didn't prepare for it, it's not a true 50/50 where say (terrible situation and sets but just showing an example)like Dynamicpunch protean CB mega scizor where you could hit and OHKO a heatran or miss and say the heatran kills you. This isn't called a 50/50, this is called prediction, you have to predict whether they are frustration or return, or you could be oh I don't know not be dumb and stand there and not scout their basic STAB/main move. Seriously, the entire argument of banning something for being pure luck when it really even isn't is dog shit and the day this gets banned pigs can fly out my ass and learn to knock off mega stones

edit: Found something that may be a causable banning to frustration-

I'm sorry guys, I'm obviously wrong
 
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I don't get why you may want Frustration banned when many imposter matches are decided by 50/50 anyway, "if Chansey wins the Speed tie I win, if she loses, I lose", I doubt chansey is even your main counter for set up sweepers anyway (and if it is then your team is bad and will lose to many other things, not just Frustration)
 
I don't get why you may want Frustration banned when many imposter matches are decided by 50/50 anyway, "if Chansey wins the Speed tie I win, if she loses, I lose"
Ban Imposter for causing 50/50 blind luck situations and adding variance to the meta. :D

Not serious, by the way.
 
Yeah! Either way you lose! So, on to more important things. What do you guys think will raise to fulfill the holes left by the death of parental bond?
 
Depends on the 'mon in question's STABs. If it has really spectacular STAB coverage (Mamoswine, not that using it is a good idea) Adaptability might be better than Protean. There's other things like Super Luck (Critspam, although I've seen it less recently), Sniper (same), Guts (Why?), Mold Breaker (No shedblocking for you) Vital Spirit (Prankspores, eat your heart out) immunity abilities in general (Flash Fire, Levitate, all of that group) and Magic Bounce (Prankster Topsy-Turvy? No) that might go upin useage. Mostly it'll be Protean users, although there'll be niche things like the group above, or even really odd stuff like Filter.
 

Kit Kasai

Love colored magic
Depends on the 'mon in question's STABs. If it has really spectacular STAB coverage (Mamoswine, not that using it is a good idea) Adaptability might be better than Protean. There's other things like Super Luck (Critspam, although I've seen it less recently), Sniper (same), Guts (Why?), Mold Breaker (No shedblocking for you) Vital Spirit (Prankspores, eat your heart out) immunity abilities in general (Flash Fire, Levitate, all of that group) and Magic Bounce (Prankster Topsy-Turvy? No) that might go upin useage. Mostly it'll be Protean users, although there'll be niche things like the group above, or even really odd stuff like Filter.
Well there's two things to note about sniper. At max crit chance with scope lens and focus energy, you have 100% crit chance. So all your hits will be doing double damage and you can ignore stat drops, allowing you to spam moves like Draco meteor.
The other thing to note is that imposter does not copy focus energy, effectively making sniper sets somewhat imposter resistant, because they copy your spA drops but not your crit chance.
 
Banning Frustration is the most utterly ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Grow up people and stop whining about not being able to use an impostermon on certain things
 
Depends on the 'mon in question's STABs. If it has really spectacular STAB coverage (Mamoswine, not that using it is a good idea) Adaptability might be better than Protean. There's other things like Super Luck (Critspam, although I've seen it less recently), Sniper (same), Guts (Why?), Mold Breaker (No shedblocking for you) Vital Spirit (Prankspores, eat your heart out) immunity abilities in general (Flash Fire, Levitate, all of that group) and Magic Bounce (Prankster Topsy-Turvy? No) that might go upin useage. Mostly it'll be Protean users, although there'll be niche things like the group above, or even really odd stuff like Filter.
Magic Bounce is probably my favorite of these to have on sweepers because you can basically boost unimpeded by status conditions, Whirlwind, or Prankster annoyance. The main things that can stop a Magic Bounce sweeper from boosting and sweeping are Shedinja, Mold Breaker (a very good counter to this strategy), Heart Swap (a really good move that no one uses anymore), and Haze (again, no one uses it). (You can be Psycho Shifted or Tricked something, but that won't be too much of a detriment.)

Any kind of boosting is relatively weak to Imposter, so I use a standard anti-Imposter Ghost type.
 

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