Move Category suggestions

Floral Healing should be considered useful if the tier is doubles, after all Comfey almost always uses it in VGC, where it has a niche, and can be useful in Doubles OU meme teams. At the same time, Ally Switch should be considered useful in VGC, because, although not very standard, it has good use, even more than it can surprise. If it is considered useful in Doubles OU, I see no reason not to be in VGC, considering that it can cause much greater damage there, since the game is shorter and can make you miss a dmax turn.
 
Celever said:
Shore Up needs to be considered useful. The Palossand line doesn't get Recover, so I was surprised when teambuilding for ZU that it's not in useful already.
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If I'm not mistaken Shore Up is the best recovery move in the game (in a vacuum). It is no-drawback and if you happen to be in a sandstorm you heal 2/3 of your health instead of 1/2. Roost is second only because sometimes getting hit by EQs as a flying type is bad.
 
Tradebacks OU finally has the moves show up, but naturally this also comes with a need for some moves to be deemed useful;
  • If a Pokemon doesn't get Thunderbolt, Thunder Punch should come up as useful. Eg. Alakazam, Hypno
  • If a Pokemon doesn't get Blizzard or Ice Beam, Ice Punch should come up as useful. Prime example of this is Gengar.
    • It should probably be deemed useful in general as Snorlax can use Ice Punch's extra PP to fish for freezes more consistently than with Ice Beam.
  • Headbutt should generally be seen as useful, it comes up in a lot of situations. Most notably, Headbutt Tauros / Aerodactyl, they're really good users of it.
  • Haze shouldn't be useful most of the time, it's not very good.
  • Growth is amazing and should always be seen as useful, hell it should be that way in normal RBY. Growth Vaporeon and Jolteon are big, big, big threats.
  • If a Pokemon has a sleep move of higher probability than another, the worse one should be dropped to useless (Lovely Kiss VS Hypnosis on Poliwrath)
There are probably more but these are the big ones I noticed by a long shot.

I don't know how PS handles stuff like this but I think these are broad enough to work regardless of if formats like this are "main gen"? Sorry, not sure how to word this.
 
Future Sight deserves to be labeled as a useful move in singles formats. Most notably, it's seen a lot of usage in SS OU, and while its usage in lower tiers and other formats isn't on the same scale, it's undeniably seen enough use to justify removing it from the "usually useless" category.
 
future sight is ass until gen 6 when it became 120 bp and I've only heard of it being used in SS. Should only be useful in gen 8 imo
 
Just went through all SS OU and a bunch of other OU viable Pokemon's movepools to check for all the moves in the "usually useless" section that are certainly useful and that range from rarely to commonly used.

Bisharp: Aerial Ace, Assurance, Beat Up
Corviknight: Power Trip
Dracozolt: Fire Spin
Dragapult: Infestation
Excadrill: Rock Tomb
Heatran: Nature Power
Kartana: Aerial Ace, Endure
Landorus-Therian: Gravity, Imprison, Rock Tomb
Magnezone: Mirror Coat, Rising Voltage
Melmetal: Acid Armor
Mew: Block, Cosmic Power, Imprison, Misty Explosion
Ninetales-Alola: Hail, Hypnosis, Safeguard
Regieleki: Assurance, Round
Reuniclus: Acid Armor, Future Sight
Scizor: Bug Bite, Sand Tomb
Slowbro: Future Sight
Slowking: Future Sight
Slowking-Galar: Future Sight, Whirlpool
Tangrowth: Infestation, Nature Power
Tapu Fini: Draining Kiss, Nature's Madness, Whirlpool (these are all very important)
Tapu Koko: Nature's Madness
Tapu Lele: Draining Kiss, Future Sight
Tornadus-Therian: Icy Wind
Toxapex: Block, Spite
Tyranitar: Assurance
Victini: Final Gambit, Focus Energy, Future Sight, Glaciate
Volcarona: Safeguard
Weavile: Aerial Ace, Assurance, Beat Up
 
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Currently in GSC, Thief is listed under usually useless moves, despite it being a key move on quite a range of Pokemon throughout the diff tiers due to how monumental stealing leftovers is. Kept forgetting to post about that one but got reminded again for the nth time while building yday.

Also did a quick run through SS UU viable mons like Ruft for OU as I was bored, spotted some of the following;

Azumarill - Whirpool
Chansey - Confide
Diggersby - Mega Kick (v important)
Excadrill - Rock Tomb
Gyarados - Bounce (v important)
Hatterene - Draining Kiss, (v important), Misty Explosion
Hydreigon - Belch, Shock Wave
Moltres - Mystical Fire
Primarina - Snore
Slowbro-Galar - Future Sight (v important)
Slowking - Future Sight (v important)
Zarude - Jungle Healing (v important)
Zygarde-10% - Skitter Smack

Cloyster - Pin Missile
Reuniclus - Future Sight
Weezing-Galar - Corrosive Gas, Misty Explosion
Vileplume - Corrosive Gas
 
NewMetaaaaaaaa said:
Psychic and Pollen Puff is outclassed by Psyshock and Bug Buzz respectively but for some reasons, Pollen Puff is in the "Usually useless move" category and Psychic isn't, while both having the same base power of 90.
You could argue that Psychic is useful if the user don't have Psyshock but the same can be said for Pollen Puff and Bug Buzz.
So for the above reasons, I would like for either:
-Pollen Puff to be listed as a normal move(for Pokemons without Bug Buzz),
or
-Psychic to be listed as a useless move(for Pokemons with Psyshock).
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This ship has probably already sailed, but wouldn't Psychic's advantage be hitting a different defense? I'm pretty sure that could be significant depending on what you want your pokemon to do.
 
Topsy-Turvy could possibly be in useful moves, as it can counter strategies that involve a lot of boosting (for example extreme evoboost/metagross with weakness policy)
Not sure if this will happen as the only pokemon that get it are in PU, but I use it with malamar and it can end someones sweep.
Basically it can be good like haze.
 
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This my new suggestion : We should actually be a bit more precise (category) on what moves is useful and not, thus I suggest to divide the moves in 3 tier.
- Used moves (main moves always used on the mon that are written on smogon dex, or are obv. to run)
- Usable moves (moves that will give some satisfying result and can be really good on specific match ups, but are often ran on 1 slot move out of 4)
- Usually useless moves (moves outclassed, useless competitively, unsynergic, way too underpowered).

Many old gen known pokémon actually need some changes on their suggested moves on showdown, they are outdated.
Ex : Ice Punch in ADV while the mon can learn Ice Beam. (same for all elemental punch)
Hyper Beam, Body Slam, Double-Edge suggested on Blissey/Chansey on Gen 1 or Gen 3.

Obv. these aren't the only ones, but this is main idea.
 
May said:
Not sure if this is possible for a specific tier, but Toxic shouldn't be considered useless in Gen 1 UU. It's used to combat Dragonite spamming Wrap, as it causes it to take more damage than it deals in the grind game. This is huge, as its pivot utility is put on a serious timer as well, making hard switches less favourable. This can be applied to any other Wrap user that's not Poison-type. Pokemon such as Dugtrio, Dewgong, Persian and Dodrio use this move quite a lot, for reference.

As an aside, this also goes for Gen 1 NU (should it get a format) given the prevalence of powerful Fire Spin users like Moltres and Ninetales.

EDIT:
Should it be possible for a tier, I have some suggestions for Stadium OU:
  • Double-Edge should never be considered useless unless the Pokemon has awful Attack, as it effectively replaces Hyper Beam. Recoil doesn't apply on KOs in Stadium.
  • Focus Energy should never be considered useless, as it works.
  • Hyper Beam should never be considered useful, as it forces a recharge even on KOs and misses.
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May said:
Tradebacks OU finally has the moves show up, but naturally this also comes with a need for some moves to be deemed useful;
  • If a Pokemon doesn't get Thunderbolt, Thunder Punch should come up as useful. Eg. Alakazam, Hypno
  • If a Pokemon doesn't get Blizzard or Ice Beam, Ice Punch should come up as useful. Prime example of this is Gengar.
    • It should probably be deemed useful in general as Snorlax can use Ice Punch's extra PP to fish for freezes more consistently than with Ice Beam.
  • Headbutt should generally be seen as useful, it comes up in a lot of situations. Most notably, Headbutt Tauros / Aerodactyl, they're really good users of it.
  • Haze shouldn't be useful most of the time, it's not very good.
  • Growth is amazing and should always be seen as useful, hell it should be that way in normal RBY. Growth Vaporeon and Jolteon are big, big, big threats.
  • If a Pokemon has a sleep move of higher probability than another, the worse one should be dropped to useless (Lovely Kiss VS Hypnosis on Poliwrath)
There are probably more but these are the big ones I noticed by a long shot.

I don't know how PS handles stuff like this but I think these are broad enough to work regardless of if formats like this are "main gen"? Sorry, not sure how to word this.
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I sent in a Pull Request that should hopefully satisfy these bits and pieces. Didn't do the Toxic bit because 1) There's a suspect test for agility + trapping right now and 2) I couldn't figure it out within my caffiene-addicted squirrel attention span. There seems to be an issue with Babel, though.

The rest should be a massive improvement for RBY teambuilding across a lot of formats if my dumb stupid code is acceptable. RBY has needed this looked at for a while.

EDIT: Merged!
 
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Sorry if this is the wrong spot, but the thematic is very similar, I couldn't find a better thread and I don't think it warrants an entire thread on its own: Auspicious Armor and Malicious Armor should be in Useless Items rather than in "Items", right?

They don't do anything in battle so it should be with the other evolution items like the evolutionary stones. Or, if it do they have some use I'm not aware of? If so their description should be changed as rn it's just "Evolves Charcadet into Armorougue/Ceruledge when used".
 
Please list the other three new signature moves (Thunderclap, Burning Bulwark, Tachyon Cutter) as useful moves.
Tachyon Cutter - Straight 25% upgrade over Flash Cannon, also breaks sashes. In some OMs, strong technician option.
Thunderclap - Strong priority option, Raging Bolt benefits a lot from it due to its speed.
Burning Bulwark - Straight upgrade over Protect which is an useful move. Free burn is OP, will be bog-standard in OMs like BH that extensively used King's Shield in past gens.

Also, (seconding) Scale Shot to useful moves please. (Kyurem, Bax, RMoon, and Chomp, namely, have proven its effectiveness as both a setup and damage option)
 
bite and similar moves should be in the useful category for pokemon with technician. also, put splash in the useful move category for mimikyu in formats where z moves are legal. z-splash mimikyu is actually decent. also, double edge, leech life, and substitute should be usually useless on shedinja. also, moves like assurance should be useful on pokemon like braviary, as it has sheer force and no better dark moves. also, cross poison and similar moves shouold be useful on kleavor and other pokemon with sharpness. thunder fang and similar moves should be useful on poltund and other pokemon with strong jaw. rock slide and similar moves should be usually useless on marshadow and other pokemon who can only have technician.
 
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