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Ladder Balanced Hackmons

Okay this is my last post for several hours I have three finals in the next 48 hours and I still have to study for all of them oh god

Keep it Playful, this is mostly a nitpick: the difference between trapping and AV Trick is that the latter requires the dedication of an entire Pokemon, whereas the former requires only one slot. Outside of Trick shenanigans there are very few practical uses of Klutz, and this takes up your item, ability, and a move (as well as often limiting your Pokemon choice to something faster). Even Poison Heal, without a doubt one of the strongest abilities in the metagame, takes up both an item and ability slot to be used to its fullest potential.
 
Arcticblast said:
Okay this is my last post for several hours I have three finals in the next 48 hours and I still have to study for all of them oh god

Keep it Playful, this is mostly a nitpick: the difference between trapping and AV Trick is that the latter requires the dedication of an entire Pokemon, whereas the former requires only one slot. Outside of Trick shenanigans there are very few practical uses of Klutz, and this takes up your item, ability, and a move (as well as often limiting your Pokemon choice to something faster). Even Poison Heal, without a doubt one of the strongest abilities in the metagame, takes up both an item and ability slot to be used to its fullest potential.
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Good luck on the finals man! : o

Yeah I can see your point there, Trapping does have an advantage there because it only takes one slot.
 
Rumors said:
Knock Off is actually one of the weakest ways to stop PH cold. Pecha Trick and Natural Cure Entrainment shut them down much more. Of course, I'm not defending, or offending, Koff here.

Anyway, I can't say much now since I'm on lunch from work. But Koff is one of those things I'm on the fence about. On one hand, it does seriously cripple a lot of sets. On the other, things like Gengar and Shedinja get buffed massively if we remove Koff.
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The issue with that logic is that despite buffing shed and gengar, in the sense that they can't get hit by random koffs, it's not that significant of a buff - both of these pokemon are threats that any viable team would have answers to either way, so all keeping koff into them is make a random switch in take them out - essentially make them easier to deal with sometimes, without giving your team a consistent answer to them.
 
Firstly, I am going to take the definition of "complete trapping" to mean "The player's ability to switch the current Pokemon he has out for another on his team is neutralized for an indefinite amount of time by the influence of the opponent's Pokemon until either said Pokemon has left the field." By this definition, this already does not include Infestation and the rest which if I recall correctly can only trap a Pokemon for at least 4, and at most 7 turns (with an item) i.e. not an indefinite time. For this reason, I am not going to talk about the ban on permanent trapping methods such as Magnet Pull, Thousand Waves etc, only partial trapping.

Keep it Playful said:
I believe that removing all forms of trapping will significantly increase the amount of stall in the meta and make it much more difficult to take out Sturdy Shedinja. Most players use status + partially trapping to take care of the bug. With partially trapping gone, then Shedinja will must likely not get status afflicted to it because a player could just switch into a toxic orb mon. Also, Shedinja could run Magic Coat to stop most forms of status infliction (aside from Sacred Fire/Scald/Steam).
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I'd say this is a pretty relevant point and pretty much the focus of my argument here. Of course it is quite easy to say "just use Mold Breaker, Hazards, Rocky Helmet, Entrainment" but in practice these are not really reliable at stopping the bug. Let's take a look at what's wrong with each one of these.

1) Mold Breaker + Hazards

Mold Breaker is not being used much in the current meta for a pretty good reason and that's cause most of its utility that it had in gen 5 is almost entirely gone. Mold Breaker cannot guarantee sleeps anymore because of Safety Goggles, grass mons for Spore, and general status absorbers for Dark Void. Besides, noone is going to keep their Shedinja out if you switch in your Mold Breaker in - meaning you'd probably have to use Pursuit or make your Mold Breaker so threatening that it has the ability to beat anything the opponent can offer on switch in, including Chansey. Of the latter there is only one case I can think of and that is Moldy GengarM and even that has to be wary of Kyurem Black. Besides, anyone with a good play-style will not use Shedinja blindly and allow you to put your Mold Breaker in complete with a comfortable rocking chair and champagne; almost always Shedinja has a switch move which is the first move most players use after Shedinja switches in to scout.

You could use Mold Breaker to set Hazards of course, or use hazards in general. Except, unlike Gen5 all hazards can be removed with relative ease. Almost all the time, Shed is in a team that has ample Defog support. Your best bet would be to use one of Dragon Tail, Circle Throw, Whirlwind or the rest to try and get a lucky phaze to get Shedinja in. Also that's two moves that you've decided to use on your Mold Breaker, further reducing the ability of your Pokemon to have a wide impact.

Or you could use Pursuit. You've already reduced your movepool with a move that solely gets Shed with this move, or the hazard + phaze option, or even all three! Of course, you could try to make it more wide ranging (trust me I have tried), maybe even use it with a Yveltal or something else with Dark Stab but unless you use Spiritomb (which doesn't really have the speed or defenses or offenses to run any form of hazard setting and phazing, walling, or sweeping respectively), you're going to be at risk of an endeavor. So, in this case, its purpose is for killing Shed which it might not even be able to do; it could get taken out before it ever gets the chance to. Then, along with the previous phaze moves, if you're not Spiritomb, you might want to run some form of recovery as well so you have the security of taking at least one Endeavor, or just not dying until Shed is dead. Great movepool you have there, really messes with quite a lot of the tier/s.

There are better mons available for hazard setting, phazing and offensive pressure that aren't limited to only hitting the bug since partial trapping moves are available, but they are not quite able to become powerful enough to finish off entire teams in just 4 turns. Often, the one running the trap move has had to make a difficult choice to choose a stronger move, or limit their coverage to get Shed. The strongest one of them, Magma Storm, has terrible accuracy and is blocked Flash Fire Pokemon, which is not exactly hard to find. Or you know, you could use another Mold Breaker, one for targetting Shedinja and one for other purposes. However it is important to know that with the removal of partial trapping moves, Shedinja starts requiring "the dedication of an entire mon" which doesn't sound really appealing to me. I don't want to have to run a mon that is irrelevant to my team 80% of the time.

2) Rocky Helmet, Leech Seed, Entrainment, Status

These are soft counters to Shedinja at best, because they are easy to find, and easy to avoid. Once again, noone is going to allow you to use Entrainment and kill the Shedinja, so again you could run Pursuit and face the similar movepool arguments I put forth above. If something is gonna try to stop PH with entrainment it's likely gonna be a wall and walls need as much utility as they can get; Pursuit as an option seems pretty poor. A competent player should be able to find out almost all of these methods and prepare for them with dare I say it, relative ease.

Of course, you could argue against the above point by saying that the same could be said about partial trapping moves... so then why ban it if it's predictable and easy to stop?


Therefore, if you remove partial trappers, you would get rid of any PerishTrappers at all. I think it's obvious though that Shedinja is far more common in the tier than Perish Trap is because one's viability greatly outstrips the other. I'd also put Perish Trap with partial trapping something you should be able to prevent or predict via scouting/switch moves. Finally, you do have a way out after a while. Partial trapping doesn't seem to have the same problems as permanent trapping would and removing them would very likely cause more harm than good.

I am open to any counterarguments of course and the possibility of banning permanent trapping moves, though.
 
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Ranger Mike said:
Honestly sturdinja is kind of dead (kind of) and as previously stated imposter keeps contrary in check while I don't want to suspect anything since we voted on the ability clause not so long ago, I'd say let's wait a bit however if anything needs a suspect its contrary it is like swagger in terms of how a noob can beat a top player with a mon basically klefki->mm2y
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Sheddy might be absent, but look at your team(s). Look and see how many ways you've included to hit Shedinja. Chances are, your teams have at the very least two different ways to nail Sheddy in two different fashions (aka hazards and Infest). Many teams are now packing three, four, or even a different move on all six of their Pokemon. Just to kill Shed. Sure, there might be too much magma being slung about to effectively use Shedinja right now, but the fact that teams are still running multiple Shed checks/counters on their teams during one of it's low points is indicative of a problem, IMO.


TheBurgerKing99 said:
The issue with that logic is that despite buffing shed and gengar, in the sense that they can't get hit by random koffs, it's not that significant of a buff - both of these pokemon are threats that any viable team would have answers to either way, so all keeping koff into them is make a random switch in take them out - essentially make them easier to deal with sometimes, without giving your team a consistent answer to them.
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The threat of Koff scares standard Gengar dearly since it becomes absolutely useless once it loses it's plate unless the opponent lacks a good Ghost or Psychic-type. Without the threat of losing its item, Gengar is free to attempt to smite anything that dares switches into it as long as its HP is high.

For Sheddy, Koff makes it much easier to deal with since you can then use whatever checks or counters you have to deal with it. With the inability to remove its item reliably, the number of checks you need increases since weather loses to Goggles Sheddy, status loses to Lum, partial-trapping loses to Red Card, and so forth.

Also, I'll add a Koff ban buffs Chansey. One of the best things you can do against Imposter Chansey is remove its Eviolite since this makes a significant cut into its bulk. Trick is unreliable for this since the Imposter can harass your team in return with Trick. On the other hand, Judgement sweepers are buffed, so Chansey gets hurt in that respect. But still, Chansey pretty much gets buffed over anything not specifically Imposter-proof.
 
Or at least both Hackmons and BH since they are similar and you know, Hackmons had 35k battles while BH only had 12k as last reported in the statistics for Feb.
 
The Eevee General said:
Or at least both Hackmons and BH since they are similar and you know, Hackmons had 35k battles while BH only had 12k as last reported in the statistics for Feb.
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The problem with that is although they are similar in concept the meta is very different. Also, it might get confusing with the two :/

But I guess with labels it would work :3
 
The Eevee General said:
Or at least both Hackmons and BH since they are similar and you know, Hackmons had 35k battles while BH only had 12k as last reported in the statistics for Feb.
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The difference between both tiers however is on the Smogon forums BH gets a lot more discussion compared to the pure hacks community which mostly keep to themselves (And when they do get involved in the Smogon thread they troll, which can be seen in the Hackmons XY thread). Most of the PH battles generally come from people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing either and just want to try it out, which leaves the number of dedicated PH players in comparison to the number of battles a pretty low number. Obviously this can be said for BH as well, but from my experience playing in both tiers this is the case far more in PH than BH, where you still see completely unviable strategies even very high up the ladder.

Not for or against both PH and BH forums either way, just pointing this out.
 
If you play this, how would stance change work? Does it swap offenses and defenses when you use an attack, and then a shield? or does it work with only king's shield? And also, are banned abilities unbanned on the Pokemon who normally has it?
 
warriorman222 said:
If you play this, how would stance change work? Does it swap offenses and defenses when you use an attack, and then a shield? or does it work with only king's shield? And also, are banned abilities unbanned on the Pokemon who normally has it?
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Stance Change only works on Aegislash. Banned abilities are banned on everything, but none of the megastones are, so it is possible to get use those abilities, as long as you Mega Evolve into something with a banned ability.
 
PokemonMasterDebater said:
Stance Change only works on Aegislash. .
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It would have been cool to have Stance change Deoxys A or something, right?

PokemonMasterDebater said:
. Banned abilities are banned on everything, but none of the megastones are, so it is possible to get use those abilities, as long as you Mega Evolve into something with a banned ability.
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SO Mega Mawile doesn't have his ability banned for him. ok.
 
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So, I'm the type of guy who hates bans on principle. I cringe every time there's a new suspect test. That being said, I really like the idea of banning knockoff. It would bring back so much more complexity to the metagame, because items so important in creating new and unique strategies. The two cons raised (Mega Gar and eviolite chans) have other checks besides knock off, and the pros (decentralizing poison heal, allowing for more consistent item based strategies) outweigh that in my opinion.

I think we need more play time before we think about banning the 1K moves. PB was SHOWN to be broken, not just theoried to be so. Same with the Power abilities. Lets just wait and see what our boys (and girls) come up with in terms of the 1K moves, and if they turn out to be as ridiculous as some of us are claiming, then we make a stand. I personally think the meta will adapt to 1K Arrows pretty easily. 1K Waves on the other hand I can see it being banned because *trapping arguments*.
 
Something I have been using to quite some success lately is Red Card Imposter Chansey. This seems a bit odd, but in practice it is surprisingly useful. You can come in on something that is boosting up and take its boosts. Then, they will be forced out when they hit you, allowing you to sweep their team. This works best against things that are using Quiver Dance or Coil or are Contrary, as they will have defense boosts as well allowing you to tank the hit easily. Many such Pokemon wall themselves if boosted, and thus are able to PP stall regular imposters. Red Card Chansey beats these pokemon, and often results in an easy sweep. Here is a battle against Pikachuun where Red Card Chansey was very useful (skip to turn 79 if you want to see Red Card Chansey in action): http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/balancedhackmons-112843149. I dont use Red Card as my only Imposter, I find that it works best alongside a standard Eviolite Chansey. Red Card Chansey messes with so many common set-up sweepers, and it's really useful in the current meta. Just be careful with the Red Card though; waste it too early and you could find yourself in trouble later on.
 
If you're not using Eviolite, why not Blissey? Unless you're going for a surprise factor. That's probably it.
 
perplexing pool said:
Something I have been using to quite some success lately is Red Card Imposter Chansey. This seems a bit odd, but in practice it is surprisingly useful. You can come in on something that is boosting up and take its boosts. Then, they will be forced out when they hit you, allowing you to sweep their team. This works best against things that are using Quiver Dance or Coil or are Contrary, as they will have defense boosts as well allowing you to tank the hit easily. Many such Pokemon wall themselves if boosted, and thus are able to PP stall regular imposters. Red Card Chansey beats these pokemon, and often results in an easy sweep. Here is a battle against Pikachuun where Red Card Chansey was very useful (skip to turn 79 if you want to see Red Card Chansey in action): http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/balancedhackmons-112843149. I dont use Red Card as my only Imposter, I find that it works best alongside a standard Eviolite Chansey. Red Card Chansey messes with so many common set-up sweepers, and it's really useful in the current meta. Just be careful with the Red Card though; waste it too early and you could find yourself in trouble later on.
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Tbh I never would've guessed that that was you
 
The game is up as soon as a non-Eviolite Chansey takes any damage at all, so at that point it's almost a matter of your playstyle and your opponent's playstyle. I personally would rather use Blissey if I wanted to run an Imposter with a different item. I suppose Chansey could still work if you somehow managed to avoid sending it in against an attacking move (or Leech Seed), but the odds of that actually happening are pretty slim.
 
Well looking at it with a mind game POV, there are benefits to each. Running chansey, of course, gives the benefit of bluffing eviolite. On the other hand, blissey has the advantage of, if you are using an alt, making you seem to be a mediocre player, giving you an edge on that front.
 
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