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Balancing Scald - New Mechanics (see post #125)

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I hope it wasn't said already but, although seems like a great balancing idea,
it stands against all "smogon morals" as to not alter actual game mechanics.
So far, only Pokemon, items, moves were banned from a tier as if they were never created and that's ok.
More extreme bans were limiting moves or combination of abilities like 1 Baton Pass user per team or DrizzleSwim
which more crosses this gray line of not altering moves, but the moves\abilities stayed the same, it's just
team structure, like Species clause, was limited.
But now, altering the mechanics of a whole moves seems way over the top.
I mean, if this is ok and considered normal why won't we alter other moves that make some other aspects broken ?
For example, V-create, Victini's signature move (at least he is the only UU/BL user) can have it's power reduced so
Victini won't be broken anymore. It just seems stupid to me and goes way too much and crosses the line,
as to not mimic accurately the actual tier'd real game.

edit: this is april fools...
 
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Sam said:
After much deliberation with Hikari and the UU Council, we have come to a conclusion that should effectively balance Scald in UU. From now on, Scald has a chance to faint the user. We have implemented this change on Pokemon Showdown for UU only. An example of this mechanic can be found here.

The chance of the user fainting is not constant. Instead, we have contracted a company to create a formula to determine how much a user is 'fishing for a burn'. The more likely you are fishing for a burn, the more likely you are to faint. For example, Scalding against an Entei is a good play and has almost zero chance to faint the user. However, if two Tentacruels stay in against each other and Scald, they will both have a high chance to faint. As you can see, this mechanic was added in order to encourage more thought in battling and add a little risk to Scald.

We hope this fixes everyone's problems and creates a better meta. Think twice before clicking Scald!
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The only problem i see is baiting the scald and switching out to tenta so the user can faint. I also think the rates are too high. What are your thoughts on baiting because if i want to hit a hippowdon with scald but they switch to roserade, it doesnt seem right. Its kinda like sucker punch tbh
 
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Sleepless said:
I hope it wasn't said already but, although seems like a great balancing idea,
it stands against all "smogon morals" as to not alter actual game mechanics.
So far, only Pokemon, items, moves were banned from a tier as if they were never created and that's ok.
More extreme bans were limiting moves or combination of abilities like 1 Baton Pass user per team or DrizzleSwim
which more crosses this gray line of not altering moves, but the moves\abilities stayed the same, it's just
team structure, like Species clause, was limited.
But now, altering the mechanics of a whole moves seems way over the top.
I mean, if this is ok and considered normal why won't we alter other moves that make some other aspects broken ?
For example, V-create, Victini's signature move (at least he is the only UU/BL user) can have it's power reduced so
Victini won't be broken anymore. It just seems stupid to me and goes way too much and crosses the line,
as to not mimic accurately the actual tier'd real game.

edit: this is april fools...
Click to expand...
Hole is this one giant prank?
 
ONE DAY THE B A S E D U U C O U N C I L B O Y Z WAS LIKE WHOA I HAVE A GR9 IDEA M7

giphy.gif


[15:42] hikari ok yo check this mess out
[15:42] hikari xXn00b5c0p3r42069Xx said that people who use scald should die
[15:42] hikari i politely tipped my ebin fedora at him
[15:43] sam ah i get ur idea lets not scan bald but rebalance scald so that every time a luckE n bad player
[15:43] sam such as hikari
[15:43] sam will literally have their pokemon faint
*calloflochie shudders in grave and twitches in opposition*
[15:43] nahmetmas i feel a disturbance in the 4ce
[15:43] sam this is confirmo not an abril fooly cooly joke.

And The Rest Was History
 
This thread is ridiculous.

Everyone complained about kokoloko (make your SPL shootouts, you fool) and his ban happy system. Now we are taking a different and more balanced approach to make the UU tier enjoyable for everyone, that doesn't require banning every single little threat, like Scald, Staraptor, or Victini, and people are complaining about it. You can't please this crowd.

The Scald thread showed lots of people wanted us to balanced that move, and that lots of people wanted to keep relying on a 30% to beat sweeper that resists Water-type moves, like Salamence and Haxorus. To try to make everyone happy, we settled for the middle ground. This mechanic still allows users to rely on terrible odds to beat threatening sweepers, because running a consistent counter is foolish; the odds are just slightly worse for the Scald user now, because they still risk getting swept by a Pokemon with multiple boosts, but now they also have a chance of automatically fainting. Players are now forced to play smart and run properly built teams, instead of relying on a 30% to beat every physical sweeper.

"But this ruins bulky Water-type Pokemon"

No, it doesn't. If you don't want to risk your Pokemon fainting, you have two options:

- Play smart
- Use Surf

It's foolproof.

The best part about this mechanic change is that we are setting a precedent that can be used to fix other problems in the near future, for example:

- Knock Off: It's not luck based like Scald, so giving the user a chance of auto fainting is dumb. But we can make the user lose its item + take 30% or 50% recoil damage, or simply revert to Gen 5 Knock Off mechanics

- Staraptor: We can just decrease Reckless's power boost, or make moves like Brave Bird and Double-Edge not affected by this ability

- Victini: This one is a bit harder because Victini is incredibly versatile. I guess we can give it a lower BST.

- Klefki: Thunder Wave, Spikes, Light Screen and Reflect don't gain priority. You can still use Magnet Rise, Toxic, Calm Mind, Rest, and Sleep Talk

- Smeargle: We can ban the combination of Geomancy + BP

The possibilities are endless. We can finally balance the tier without banning Pokemon, which is what many people want.
 
Ernesto said:
No Patrick1088 , the thread was started on the 31st, meaning that it wasn't April Fool's day (yea it was in a lot of countries, but that doesn't matter). Sheesh, it's like with Giratina-O in OU, it was introduced on the 29th... It's like you're suggesting we celebrate Halloween on August .–.
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Why did the council decide to have the user faint when going to use scald (and potentially risking the KO, even if its wasted on say roserade, blissey, shaymin, etc..) instead of handling it in a say more rational way;

Like reducing the 30% chance to something more manageable like 20% (crit chance of stone edge, sp def drop ofshadow ball) or even 10% ( chance of burn and freeze like flamethrower).

I think reducing the % to 10% would make it almost the equivalent of Flamethrower, ice beam and thunderbolt. Wouldnt this be a better compromise than a potential wasted KO?

Edit: Personally, I think 20% is fair since Scald is 10% weaker than Flamethrower, Ice Beam and Thunderbolt so having a slightly higher chance of secondary effect is fair. It'll turn the 1/3 chance to burn into a 1/5 chance.
 
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I think lowering the burn chance overall would make a lot more sense than risking a KO, honestly. I know it's 30%, but let's be honest. If you use scald, you're either burn fishing or using a coverage move.
 
[ARE SMOGON RUINING THE GAME]
honestly guys i'd love you so much if i hadn't looked at the calender. Could please request the brilliant user who came up with this idea to look into Jirachi as well. And for Skymin in Ubers so that it doesn't get banned. Sweep can we do something similar to this?
 
Finally some REAL balance in this game.

Maybe we should balance something like crits next? Something like 50% recoil when one occurs sounds fine to me.
 
1. Im really skeptikal of this
2. I think the move mechanics should not have been changed especially without giving us the percentages of fainting when scald spamming, also could we have not suspected scald and included a third option for a change such as this? I think this is more so what people had a problem with in koko dynasty, the players didn't have a voice (we kinda had one here but no one expected such a drastic mechanic change),I guess what Im really getting at is why can't we get a suspect for this where the mechanic is implemented? I mean is there really any reason because it would appear as though we dont plan to suspect anything else in the near future. Honestly I feel like we shoulda just dropped burn chance but this isnt all too bad I appreciate the effort put forth if this is real to balance the game.
 
Pinkin Lark said:
Maybe we should balance something like crits next? Something like 50% recoil when one occurs sounds fine to me.
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Most of the time, you can't help when you get a crit or not, people purposefully try to get burns when using Scald, people don't try to get crits most of the time using damaging moves.
 
Froggyboy said:
Most of the time, you can't help when you get a crit or not, people purposefully try to get burns when using Scald, people don't try to get crits most of the time using damaging moves.
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You never pray for that game winning crit?
 
I've been looking for something to replicate the pure thrill of HJK Mienshao and this seems like just the thing, I cant wait to rng for my life!
 
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