Resource Game Issues and Feedback Thread

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Gemini Taurus said:
Can we just have them all use the same item if this is a thing? I don't know if people would have issues with this economically (bc you only have to buy one) but just using Dynamax Candy seems thematically relevant
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I think it would be better to have an individual item for each Pokemon/GMax move. The main reason is that the Z-Crystal itself is what determines the number of uses. Another more minor reason is that without an item that specifically lists the move name, players would have to scour the Data Audit to find out what GMax moves are available to the opponent's Pokemon.

Stage 5* Pokemon are supposed to be hard to obtain, so I'm not worried about the cost. I don't expect people to buy many signature Z-Crystals.

Finally, although it's very unlikely at the moment, dedicated items do give us the opportunity to add Pokemon-specific effects back into the game at a later date.
 
Shell Side Arm has some outdated language referring to same move combinations and banning different move combinations. I would like both reference and ban to be removed.
 
I'd like to talk briefly about some moves and Abilities.

Body Press: Apparently, Body Press applies Item-, status-, and Ability-based Attack-stat modifications to its user's Defense stat during damage calculation. This seems like something vital enough to the move's behavior to warrant adoption by BBP; acknowledging the fact that BBP Burn reduces BAP, adding a quick line to Body Press's description stating that "if the user has an Ability or Item that increases its Attack rank, that Ability or Item applies to the user's Defense rank during damage calculation" should suffice.
Neutralizing Gas: Our list of exemptions is inconsistent with the cartridge games: while BBP's version cannot negate Trait Abilities, its in-game counterpart is only ignored by forme-changing Abilities and As One. Given that our Neutralizing Gas dissuades the use of multi-battle strategies involving certain rarely-seen Pokemon and is weaker than the cartridge games' version with no grandfathering precedent or "rule of cool" explanation behind its difference, I propose that we abide by the mainline games' mechanics and allow the Ability to negate Truant, Slow Start, Defeatist, and Gorilla Tactics.
Perish Body: Can we make this a Toggle Ability? It's bad enough that a Perish Body's user's opponent has sole control over its activation, but the fact that the Ability nearly guarantees its user will lose the endgame makes it significantly less appealing than it first seems.
Quick Draw: This is fundamentally and unpredictably incompatible with certain moves and Abilities such as Payback, Metal Burst, and Analytic. While no user naturally possesses such a combination, I think we should change Quick Draw to activate on a per-action basis à la Stall both to future-proof the Ability and to ensure it works properly when received through Trace, Skill Swap, or Role Play.
 
P2X7
All right, a lot of stuff at once but I'll work through it all best I can.

Body Press: Sounds fair. In-game, do Choice Band and Huge Power calculate their boost based off percentage of Atk, or percentage of Def?

Neutralizing Gas: This isn't just a Neutralizing Gas thing, we condensed all the Ability tags into "Trait" a while back while we were cleaning up some problems with the Data Audit. Thanks for bringing it up. We'll probably be looking at re-tagging Abilities in the near future, alongside various other QoL fixes to the Data Audit.

Perish Body: Before adjusting Perish Body, I'd rather take a look at reworking the Doom status itself. I think the Doom status may deserve to be buffed. If it is buffed then Perish Body's downsides may become worth playing around. A strong Ability with drawbacks is probably more interesting than a poor ability with Toggle Off.

Quick Draw: "Once per Round, on any one (1) Action, the Pokemon can be ordered to act with a +1 increase in Priority level. (Multi-stage moves have each stage's Priority increased by +1)". Is that an appropriate rework? The once-per-Round limitation is supposed to resemble the 30% activation chance from in-game. While we're at it, I'd also like to suggest giving an identical effect to Quick Claw.
 
This is another relatively minor change that has come up a couple times in discord, much like the above, so I'm going to throw it here as well: Confusion self-hit is technically an attack with the current RAW description of Confusion, which means it doesn't break Endure (even though it should). This also results in some deviations from ingame behaviour of Confusion self-hit that I'm not sure are intended, like the Burn attack drop, Reflect, and Attack- and BAP-boosting items and abilities impacting it here, but not ingame. The weirdest (non-Endure) interaction is Life Orb, which RAW should both boost the BAP of the confusion self-hit and then inflict its own recoil on top of that.
 
nightblitz42:
Yeah; that post was longer than I intended.

Body Press: Unfortunately, I can't personally verify how this works because I skipped Gen VIII. I would guess that the exact same effect that would be applied to the user's Attack is applied to its Defense; that is, Choice Band would multiply Defense by 50% rather than add 50% of the holder's Attack to its Defense.
Neutralizing Gas: Fine by me.
Perish Body: I can't argue with what you've said on this point. If we're discussing a buff to Doom, though, then I'll suggest making the status drop all afflicted Pokemon to zero HP again, as the effort involved in stalling for three entire rounds rather than simply aiming for a traditional damage-based KO is difficult to justify otherwise.
Quick Draw: Hmm; I like that idea. I had been trying to articulate the mere ability to stick a "[No Quick Draw]" tag on any number of actions in a round, but a once-per-round priority increase would make the Ability stronger and more consistent than its current incarnation. I don't know about extending the change to Quick Claw, though, as one can't really replicate a 20% activation rate with that effect.
 
Chiming in on a couple of things

Body Press: Greenlighting this change, with the confirmation that effect of Choice Band is a %Def increase during the use of Body Press (but only during Body Press). Good catch.

Neutralizing Gas: Not really an opinion on the suggestion, as I don't necessarily have the time to go over the balance implications of it at present (I am however naturally inclined against the change, as it seems like an unnecessary buff to an already incredible, potentially even oppressive ability), but a clarifying note about how the Trait tag was assigned. It's assigned to the mostly immutable abilities in-game, and I say mostly because outside of a select few, those abilities all have like, 2-3 ways to reassign them, but block others, and are not entirely consistent in their methodology either. As such, the tag just functions as simple way to register what is and isn't mutable without awkward hardcoding. Again though, refer to the earlier parenthetical for my initial thoughts on buffing this ability.
 
Thinking about it now, free-form priority boosting might be too difficult to sub against. Having boosted Priority is one thing, but being able to choose between normal and boosted Priority on any Action is definitely more of an advantage than a disadvantage. Should Quick Draw be on a fixed every-3a timer instead of free selection? Something like:
"At the start of each Action, the Pokemon gains one (1) Quickdraw Counter. Then, if the Pokemon has three (3) Quickdraw Counters, it immediately spends all its Quickdraw Counters to gain +1 increased Priority this Action. (Multi-stage moves have each stage's Priority increased by +1.)"
I think from a user's standpoint it's still reliable enough to strategize around, and from an opponent's standpoint it's regular enough to anticipate.

As for Quick Claw, I'd like to keep the randomness on that item but make it +1prio instead of first-action in order to clear up conflicts with moves like Snatch.
 
Honestly, I would rather see no change to Quick Draw than see a fixed timer. While any consistent activation rate would lead to increased tactical depth for a Quick Draw user, I think that this particular direction would make the Ability's activation too predictable and thus too easily countered. Moreover, the idea of Quick Draw only triggering on the last action of a round deprives the Ability of its ostensible primary uses: maximizing a Pokemon's value by squeezing in a final hit at low HP after a KO and finishing off a weakened opponent after a full round of trading attacks.

While I agree with the new view on Quick Claw, I was under the impression that its current effect of "moving first" only applied within a move's unaltered priority bracket. This might eliminate some concerns over the Item's strength.
 
Quick Draw:

I support the initial proposal for a Quick Draw buff that activates on user command. I believe that this would be a great addition to the game, as an ability of such caliber creates opportunities for skilled players to explore new strategies and set-ups while allowing the native wielder to hold a distinct niche in a metagame in which it is otherwise overlooked. Although anachronistic given recent metagame trends that appear to deviate from such ideals, the continued introduction of Pokemon that utilize player input to create unique ability-based playstyles is beneficial to metagame diversity, and I wholeheartedly embrace the opportunity to do so.

To address balance concerns, with the recent loss of high-power combinations, leeway has been created in drafting a set of substitutions, so further accommodations for counterplay may be unnecessary. Furthermore, issues of ability transference and replication are minimal, as the usage of an action to remove or copy a utility-based ability is rarely justifiable in a DPR-focused metagame, and the popular Tracers either lose to the native holder of Quick Draw or, as I suspect, would receive greater benefit from duplication of Regenerator. Therefore, I am comfortable adjusting Quick Draw without much scrutiny, as harsh constraints may simply lead us to another such discussion in a few months' time.

Doom:

I am not opposed to a reversion of the nerf, but given that the prior state was neither viable enough to warrant consistent usage nor enjoyable to employ or encounter in battle, I propose a superior alternative: increase the rate at which the counter ticks to once per action, beginning at the end of the following action. With an effective timer of four actions, risking a single move and thirty hit points to inflict 30 damage is suddenly an attractive option, as the output is in line with peak competitive DPA standards, yet the reward does not arbitrarily lock itself behind an unrealistic timeframe; to briefly expand upon the rationale, given the choice, the vast majority of Pokemon would rather land a solid hit in their losing matchups and advance the player's win condition than gamble with Doom, and preservation of a trapped foe for three rounds often requires a conscious effort not to score a knock out, at which point the choice of inflicting Doom becomes a detriment to the user. Furthermore, adequate counterplay is retained, as both players are given an opportunity to self-switch or manipulate phazing effects regardless of turn order, and devoting an additional action to ensuring one's opponent is trapped often incurs a steep hit point cost which may exceed the value of Doom itself.

Additionally, I suggest a change to the fixed damage from a static value to a percentage of the afflicted Pokemon's maximum HP, such as 33%, on the grounds that the Doomed condition is currently less viable against Pokemon with particularly large base HP scores due to their ability to absorb the damage with relative ease. I presume that this is an unintended consequence of the initial change; therefore, such a solution provides a sufficient remedy to the issue and is supported by precedent from moves such as Belly Drum that incorporate similarly variable damage formulae.
 
Okay so this is totally unrelated to the ongoing discussions, and I'm sure I will have something to say on the topic later but

Can we decrease the EN cost of Charge Beam? As it stands Power Up Punch is a 100% Accuracy, 100% Effect chance to boost Attack and it costs 4EN. I propose that Charge Beam be dropped to 5EN or 4EN to be more in line with Power Up Punch, despite only having a 70% chance to increase SpA. It seems like a great option that should be allowed to be used under Sluggish that just isn't for some reason right now.
 
Also, can we clearly and explicitly write down somewhere what subs will or won't work "properly" vs Illusion?
 
Doom on a 4a timer sounds a bit iffy to me. If the defending Pokemon doesn't have Pivoting moves, there would be many opportunities for the attacker to set up a "guaranteed" Perish Song. The potential for a Pokemon ordering second in a losing matchup to Perish Song > Protect > U-Turn might be too strong? Or maybe not. I'll have to give it some thought.

Charge Beam at 4 or 5 EN sounds fair to me, but I'll wait for Jayy to confirm that in case I overlooked any abuse(?) there. Probably an oversight?

Mowtom said:
RAW it seems like you cannot sub for arena effects, most notably in Realgam or TLG. Can we please fix this?
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...That's about Ten Carat Hill, isn't it. As far as I know, that's the only Arena that has that issue -- all the other Arenas have effects that are explicitly tied to existing mechanics like Terrain, Weather, and BAP. In the future, I'll make sure that unique Arena effects are codified for subbing. If you want to know intended sub mechanics for Ten Carat Hill, ask TMan87.

For Illusion, I can look into it. I know from previous WoG rulings that chance subs based on raw stats and Type read the Zoroark's "fake" statline. But I don't know what the ruling is for things like current HP.
 
I don't think that Perish Song on a 4a timer sounds too strong. Mainly because, while the reduced time makes it hard for your opponent to escape it, it also makes it hard for the user to escape it. Unless you're either pivoting or trapping then switching immediately, you end up getting hit by your own Perish Song, and I can't think of many circumstances where that's something you want, unless you're at like 3 HP when it lands. It would make it a niche move to be used with pivoting and trapping, or when low-HP and you have first order next round. It would definitely be stronger than the current version, but I don't think it would be too strong, just because it's situational and, in the case of using it to escape a bad matchup as nightblitz mentioned, it doesn't actually provide that much help: if you assume that if the matchup is bad enough to sacrifice actions on pivoting, in most cases that means the opponent can do at least 23 damage per action. This means that throwing the Perish Song in there like that is only at most a 7 HP swing relative to Protect, U-Turn, Protect. This changes when the pivoting happens in a neutral or positive matchup to avoid a bad matchup elsewhere, however, so I'm not sure how looking at it from that perspective would change things.

However, I'm a bit worried that making Doom a 4a timer would be too much of a buff to Cursola, especially when ordering second. It forces your opponent to either avoid contact moves (keep in mind that pretty much all common physical Ghost- and Dark-type moves are contact and that Cursola has 4/9 defenses, so that is very helpful) or it lets you order Protect, Whirlpool, Protect and switch out to deal 30 damage while only taking one attack in return. Perhaps making Cursola very weak to U-Turn is enough of a drawback to compensate (an opponent using U-Turn both triggers Perish Body and pivots out, guaranteeing that Cursola eats the Doom effect), but I'm not convinced it is.

For Illusion I think the rule should be that you can tell by reading the result of an attack (whether it was SE/NVE, or its damage), but other methods of trying to detect don't work. If you allow checking based on things like current HP, then there's nothing preventing the person ordering against Zoroark from going "[CASOR] IF your opponent has 85 current HP THEN replace your orders with whatever." unless the Zoroark user only ever wants to mimic 85 max HP mons. However, when an attack lands you know as part of that attack how much damage it dealt and what its type effectiveness was (even if that doesn't match what it should be based on what you see), so I don't see any reason for those not to be able to determine an illusion breaking.
 
For the current version of Doom (3r timer), resolving Doom for max value requires one of the following:
  • The foe has no benched teammates, and the user switches or faints within 3r.
  • The foe remains Trapped for the duration, does not Pivot, and the user switches in the third Round.
These requirements are a bit much for the payoff. Obviously, the first option is far easier to attain, although it requires you to already have an advantage in resources and in matchup control. Therefore, I would consider this version of Perish Song to be a "win-more" tactic.

Moving Doom to a 4a timer would result in the following requirements:
  • The foe has no benched teammates, and the user switches or faints within 4a.
  • The user faints ordering Second that Round.
  • The user Pivots in the same Round they inflicted Doom, and the foe does not Pivot.
I feel that the third scenario is too consistent. Utility Pokemon like Kitsunoh and Gengar that aren't "supposed" to have big damage would be able to use Doom to deal big chunks pretty quickly and reliably, I think.

Part of the issue I had with the old Combo system was that so much of the strategy with Combos revolved around avoiding Cooldown, which made them very rigid in use and difficult to balance. I think that the potential to avoid Doom's self-damage creates similar balance issues. Perhaps either completely removing the self-damage aspect of Doom, or forcing the user to eat the damage no matter what, would open up new design space.
 
At least in singles, it's not super common for a pokemon to survive 3 rounds in play in my experience, which is part of the issue with Doom as-is: if the opponent doesn't switch or pivot, they usually get KOed before it procs.

Of the 3 conditions you listed for a 4a Doom to resolve for max value, I feel like the most reliable is case 2, because then you're only spending one action on it. This is the same reason I was worried it would be too much of a Cursola buff, because Cursola only needs to spend one action on Whirlpool to set up the Doom trapping into switch. 30 damage plus 7 or 8 chip damage from U-Turn does not seem super unreasonable to me for a mon spending 2 actions on it. You mention Kitsunoh as a mon that's not supposed to have big damage, but this doesn't actually improve Kitsunoh's damage numbers that much: 2 SE itemless elemental punches or Earthquakes against a 6 Def target does 34 damage, compared with 38 from this combo. Additionally, the list of mons that actually learn Perish Song plus a damaging pivoting move is not that long (Celebi, Meloetta, Primarina, and Smeargle, plus CAPs from searching on Showdown) and if a mon uses Perish Song into a non-damaging pivoting move it just becomes more likely that the mon could outdamage it with other options, because 15 damage per action is not remotely unreasonable. The list of mons with Perish Song plus damaging trapping moves is a bit longer, but I still don't think that this option would outdamage just attacking for most of those mons.

However, there are 2 factors I didn't previously consider that make me a bit more wary of changing it to be 4a. The first is that then Perish Song could become a reliable way to deal damage through Protect, which I'm not sure is something we want to be encouraging. The second is that, while pivoting with it might only be a 7 HP relative swing versus pivoting with Protect, the raw damage values change a lot. It can turn a take 23 damage and deal 8 trade into a take 46 damage and deal 38 trade, which is much more even. The 46 damage is likely to take off 2 or 3 hits from TTK later on, versus only 1 from the 23 damage, but the increase from 8 to 38 goes from "this might take one action off of TTK or let me get a priority KO in in some situations" to "this almost certainly takes at least 2 actions off of TTK". This is the part that, on further thought, is more concerning to me: pivoting should be a sacrifice in terms of actions that you try to get back in the better matchup. I think pivoting with Perish Song into U-Turn with 4a Doom is substantially more likely to not be such a sacrifice and work out action-neutral without even considering the new matchup. Thus, while Perish Song into U-Turn will usually be equivalent damage to just attacking outright, it can greatly reduce the cost of pivoting, which I think is worth considering.
 
As for Ten Carat Hill, the existence of a Stone Barrier as an arena element can be checked with a sub, as it is technically a value which is either 1 or 0. It counts as a Chance Clause: "IF a Stone Barrier is present/absent THEN X" is a valid sub.
 
It wasn't actually about Ten Carat Hill, it was a more general concern. TMan's solution doesn't seem to work because that isn't an inequality for a "quantity associated with a Pokemon". I just want this to be in the Handbook so that in the future we're not going to have a RAW vs RAI fight in a context where it actually matters.
 
Instead of being a general rule, I think it needs to be specified on a per-arena basis. Arena effects are too unique for a blanket "you can sub for any arena effect" rule.
 
The handbook is unclear on how to handle when a Pokemon has an evasion increase due to Sand Veil and is being targeted by a Pokemon that has an accuracy decrease using a move with some number accuracy. Because Sand Veil isn't a +1 stage boost, but rather a straight percent number unlike other stat boosts, the accuracy drop and evasion decrease can't be added together on the table for accuracy and evasion. The handbook also doesn't specify where to add the evasion boost/accuracy decrease, thereby leading to several different ways to calculate the move's chance to hit. i.e.
1.apply the accuracy decrease first and then the flat +20%, so with a Gible in Sandstorm and no Mold Breaker in effect would lead a move with 100% accuracy like Tackle used by a Pokemon with a -3 accuracy stage boost to have a hit rate of 30%.
2.However, hit rate can also be calculated by applying the evasion increase first making Tackle have a hit rate of 80%, and then applying the accuracy drop of 50% would lead to Tackle having a hit rate of 40%.
3.Or you could multiply the two percents together to get a hit rate of 40%.
4.Another way would be to multiply the hit rate after applying the accuracy drop of 50% with the evasion rate, this case 20% of .5 being .1, and subtract that from .5 would lead to a hit rate of 40%.

Here are the formulas for each scenario I've just listed.
Where ae = the coefficient of the accuracy as determined by adding the flat stage boosts of accuracy and evasion that the Pokemon impacted by the move being have as decimal, E representing a flat percent change in evasion as a decimal(e.g. Sand Veil's 20% evasion boost), H being the hit rate of the move after calculating evasion and accuracy drops, and C representing the base accuracy of the move being used.
1. H = (C * ae) + (C * E) when ae ≥ 1 or (C * E) - (C * ae) when ae ≤ 1
2. H = (C * E) * (C * ae)
3. H = |(E - C)| * (C * ae)
4. H = (C * ae) - ((C * ae) * E) when ae ≤ 1 (I wasn't sure what the correct hit rate would be if ae ≥ 1)

I suggest further clarification on how to calculate hit rate in such scenarios.

Here's the battle which led to such a discovery, which you can analyze if you wish.
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/rextreff-vs-montegom-3v3-1-singles.3695217/page-2#post-9074380
 
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First the accuracy of the move is multiplied by whatever the accuracy and evasion stages say it should be multiplied by, then flat percentage point boosts or drops from things like Sand Veil or natures are added or subtracted from the final total.
 
Mowtom said:
First the accuracy of the move is multiplied by whatever the accuracy and evasion stages say it should be multiplied by, then flat percentage point boosts or drops from things like Sand Veil or natures are added or subtracted from the final total.
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I don't see this in the handbook is there somewhere else with this info
 
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