Rejected Fake Out & Attack IV

Adamant Zoroark

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As can be seen on the attached Salazzle set (a standard VGC 17 set), Fake Out is causing the Attack IV to be set to 31 and is also causing the teambuilder to suggest Hasty. I know why this is happening; the Attack IV defaults to zero unless the Pokemon's set has a physical move (which Fake Out is), and the suggestion of the Hasty nature is due to it detecting both physical and special moves on the set.

I want to suggest that Fake Out should not have any impact on the suggested nature and should not automatically set the Attack IV to 31. Neither of these things are difficult for a person building a team to change themselves; this is a very minor suggestion, but I'm basing it on one simple thing: When Fake Out is used, it is not generally used for its damage output. In DOU and VGC, Fake Out sees use predominantly to cause an opposing Pokemon to flinch; dealing damage is not its primary use, so it makes no sense for the teambuilder to suggest a Hasty nature and a 31 Attack IV on a Pokemon that is otherwise strictly a special attacker. The teambuilder already handles Rapid Spin this way (view attached Starmie set), so it makes sense for it to treat Fake Out the same way, given that both moves are physical attacks that are used primarily for support and just happen to also deal damage.
 

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DaWoblefet

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I disagree with this proposal. It's very common on Pokemon like Ludicolo, Salazzle, Alolan Persian, Smeargle, or specially based Zeraora to use and want to use 31 Attack IVs for the extra Fake Out chip damage. Sure, you might take more damage from Foul Play, but these Pokemon are not common targets of Foul Play in doubles, and it's often more advantageous to have the power to deal ~2-3% more damage than to reduce Foul Play and self-inflicted confusion damage. I think I'd be far more annoyed at having to manually change these Pokemon back to having 31 Attack IVs than I would be in situations where I actually wanted 0 Attack IVs.

However, the recommendation of Hasty/Naive on the set is probably something that would be nice to see go. In those cases, while the extra 31 Attack IVs for extra Fake Out chip comes at very little cost, sacrificing a defensive stat for the extra damage is hardly ever worth it.
 

Adamant Zoroark

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is a Contributor Alumnus
I thought about this for a second and ran a damage calc for it, using Salazzle as the attacker and Xerneas as the target. Fake Out does a whole two extra damage with 31 compared to zero. That’s so little damage that it’s unlikely to ever matter, while the benefits of reduced confusion / Foul Play damage from having it set to zero are readily apparent. I personally never have a focus on the Attack IV when breeding these mons in game simply because neither scenario is significant enough to warrant spending more time on it, but in the case of the PS teambuilder, it seems best to err on the side of precedent regarding special attackers.
 

DaWoblefet

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I made a poll in the VGC room and let it run for several days to see a more widespread opinion on the matter. The largest response was to keep 31 Attack IVs, at 42%, while 36% were indifferent. It is just a room poll, so take it how you will, but I thought it would be useful to add this to the discussion.
181232
 
That’s so little damage that it’s unlikely to ever matter, while the benefits of reduced confusion / Foul Play damage from having it set to zero are readily apparent.
The confusion benefit itself is only a margin of 3 damage there, so you cannot plausibly claim that one benefit is "readily apparent" as a point of contrasting it with the other. Considering that you get to control what moves to put on your own sets, and what moves to use in battle when you have those sets, presumably if you have a set that has Fake Out, a large percentage of that Pokemon's visits to the active field are going to begin with that move. Do you expect that confusion moves will be prevalent enough among your opponent's sets, or even that Salazzle will be the target of those moves, that its confusion self-hits are going to be at least 2/3 as numerous as its Fake Out uses, the break-even point at which both ends of the spectrum result in equal amounts of extra damage to their respective side?

This doesn't even factor in the tiny bit of extra vig in the 31 side's favor, where you run into some gimmick like Imprison-Transform and are forced to try to get desperation damage out of Struggle.
 
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pre

pkmn.cc
The discussion in this thread and DaWoblefet's poll seems to imply this change is debatable at best for most players and thus I don't think its something that we would want to implement. Players are able to change their Attack IVs to whatever they wish, and players are always going to have reasons for optimizing their spreads for one situation vs. another.

However, the recommendation of Hasty/Naive on the set is probably something that would be nice to see go. In those cases, while the extra 31 Attack IVs for extra Fake Out chip comes at very little cost, sacrificing a defensive stat for the extra damage is hardly ever worth it.
This we can fix though.
 

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