Metagame Pacifistmons

fanyfan

i once put 42 mcdonalds chicken nuggets in my anus
approved by drampa's grandpa and Ransei
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In this metagame, you can only use status moves. You can’t rely on any physical or special hard-hitters anymore, so you have to rely on less direct ways of dealing damage such as status ailments, hazards, perish song, and more! There’s all sorts of cool strategies here that wouldn’t be very good in standard battles so let your imagination run wild!

Rules:

Mechanic
: Any move not classified as “Status” is banned

Clauses: Ubers Clauses,
Level 100 Clause: All Pokemon must be Level 100

Banned Abilities: Magic Guard, Magic Bounce, Regenerator

Banned Moves: Taunt, Nature Power, Heal Order, Life Dew, Moonlight, Morning Sun, Purify, Recover, Rest, Roost, Slack Off, Soft-Boiled, Strength Sap, Swallow, Synthesis, Wish, Ingrain, Metronome

Strategy:
- Status ailments, especially toxic, are a great way of wearing down opposing Pokémon relatively quickly. Because of this, Pokémon that can still learn toxic are very useful. On the flip side, poison- and steel-types that are immune to toxic are valuable to prevent your whole team from being worn down quite quickly. Will-O-Wisp can also be nice to wear down toxic-immune opponents, albeit quite a bit slower then toxic.

- Hazards are another way of quickly spreading passive damage. Stealth Rock in particular damages any Pokémon just for switching which is nice in a meta such as this. Spikes can also be stacked however, so non-immune Pokémon can potentially take a lot of damage just by switching in. This also makes roar and whirlwind nice moves to use to try and quickly rack up hazard damage. Also, Heavy-Duty Boots are very useful for hazard-weak Pokémon, making them a lot harder to KO.

- Perish Trapping can ko a mon in just 3 turns, which is the fastest way to ko a mon. This involves the move Perish song alongside a trapping move such as Mean Look or Block. The ways of countering it are: using a ghost-type, having baton pass or teleport, having a phazing move like Roar or Whirlwind, having the ability soundproof, or just equipping a Shed Shell. Perish Song can also be nice to force a mon to switch out and rack up hazard damage.

- Leech Seed also is a great move. It’s one of the few ways to restore your health and you can also damage your opponent at the same time. The main counterplay is to go out to a grass-type who is immune to Leech Seed or getting a fast substitute off. Generally, mons will want 1 HP IV in order to minimize Leech Seed recovery they give to the opponent, while having an odd HP number to potentially last an extra turn

- Substitute in general is nice for becoming temporarily toxic-immune and Leech Seed-immune. It doesn’t block phazing though, and if the mon using it doesn’t also have leftovers/black sludge or leech seed, taking a fourth of your hp off can be a risky endeavor. Since that kind of damage can be hard to get.

- Klutz + Assault Vest + Trick seems like a pretty nice strategy. If the opponent doesn’t have a Sticky Hold mon or a Klutz mon of their own, then they basically just lose a mon to this. However, the mons that can pull this off (Woobat, Swoobat, and Golurk) can’t do a ton once they do this. Golurk can set rocks, but none of them get status ailments, Phazing moves, perish song or anything that can cause direct damage to the opponent. This means that those mons can potentially be dead weight once they trick.

- Dynamaxing, of course, turns every move into Max Guard, so it’s not going to spiral out of control anytime soon. Dynamaxing basically serves as a one-time free protect to get extra chip damage on something that ‘s is being worn down through to

- There are other potential, more niche strategies like Ghost-Type curse or Nightmare that maybe have potential, but only tme will tell if they end up becoming consistent strategies.


Watchlist:
Salazzle/Salandit:
Potentially too much for the tier for being able to toxic everything except immunity snorlax, being immune to both Toxic and Will-O-Wisp, and Heavy-Duty Boots taking away the other main way of dealing damage to them. They have the potential to become over-centralizing.

Shadow Tag/Arena Trap
On one hand, the Goth line, Wobb line, and Dugtrio line don’t have great moves to abuse their abilities, but on the other, they could potentially sub up and just use a lot of high pp moves to just stall out the opponent, which could be deemed uncompetitive if the opponent doesn’t have a chance to switch into a mon that has counterplay to it.

Wonder Skin
This ability causes all status moves to have 50% accuracy versus a mon with this ability, which of course is every move here that targets the opponent. This is potentially too luck based and doesn’t really add much.


Playability:
Nowhere yet, but you can challenge someone to the gen 8 Ubers format with both players only using status moves. To find people who want to play, you can join the discord located here

Council:
fanyfan (TL)
Pokesartoolcay (TL)

Tip:
Type ‘status’ into a mon’s moveslot to see every status move they learn.
 
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Here are a couple sets that came to mind:

Salazzle (F) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Corrosion
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Disable
- Encore
- Toxic
- Substitute

Salazzle is immune to both poison and burn, and has corrosion to poison opposing Steel/Poison types. It also learns Disable and Encore, which seem like they could be useful (either separately or in combination), and it can use Heavy-Duty Boots to nullify its weakness to hazards.


Trevenant @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Harvest
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Curse
- Leech Seed
- Sunny Day
- Substitute

Harvest abuser with both Leech Seed and Ghost-type Curse.


Diggersby @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Cheek Pouch
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Recycle
- Spikes
- Substitute
- Protect

Sitrus Berry + Cheek Pouch + Recycle circumvents the ban on healing moves. Unfortunately, Diggersby doesn't have a great status movepool, but it does get Spikes.

Edit: apparently Recycle is not available in gen 8.


Snorlax @ Leftovers
Ability: Immunity
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpA
Naughty Nature
- Substitute
- Protect
- Metronome
- Encore / Block

Snorlax is the only legal mon with Immunity, so even Salazzle can't poison it. Leftovers cancel out burn damage, and Metronome can potentially do a good amount of damage.


Gengar @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Cursed Body
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Mean Look
- Perish Song
- Skill Swap
- Trick

Gengar is probably the best perish trapper in the meta (and not just because it's the only mon with both Perish Song and a trapping move) - it learns Trick to get rid of Shed Shells, and Skill Swap to deal with Soundproof mons, so it can trap and kill almost anything. And as an added bonus, it's immune to Toxic.
Edit: Haunter is also an option; it's a bit slower than Gengar, but Levitate gives it an immunity to Spikes.


Abomasnow @ Lum Berry
Ability: Soundproof
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Ingrain
- Substitute
- Hail
- Leech Seed

Abomasnow's hidden ability is unreleased, so this set is currently illegal, but hardly anything can kill it after it's used both Substitute and Ingrain - the only things I can think of that can beat it once it's set up are Infiltrator mons and the above Gengar set.


I was going to post a Poison Heal set, but apparently all the mons that get it are banned.
 
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Goth family tricking a Scarf against a trapped pokemon... Yikes. Anyways


Sableye @ Leftovers
Ability: Prankster
Level: 3
EVs: 144 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Mean Look / Will-O-Wisp
- Disable
- Encore
- Substitute

The standard Prankster mon. Sableye is blessed with a unique typing of Ghost/Dark, which grant it an immunity to both trapping and opposing Prankster-moves. You may noticed, why is it level 3? Due to the fact you can only used status moves in this metagame( meaning no damaging moves) and majority of them are HP percentage-base, this means Sableye take very little chip damage ( 1 HP from burn, sandstorm, 2 HP from Stealth Rock and Leech Seed, with the latter also makes the users hard to regain health against it). Wait until Pokemon Home is released, because in past generation, Sableye has access to Pain Split, which instantly gains full health as many high level mon lost half of their health.

Hmm... might as well spam low level mons, :psysly:.
 
some other stuff that needs to be looked at

Metronome (move):
Its a status move that calls in moves that deal non status damage.

Leftovers / Black Sludge / Ingrain:
Makes passively wearing down Pokemon, especially those immune to Toxic, rather hard and tedious. Ingrain also removes the possibility of stacking hazard damage. All 3 come with the cost of being weak to perish trapping, but pivot moves solve that.

Ferrothorn / Ferroseed:
Ferrothorn is immune to so many statuses while also spreading so much. Immunties to Toxic, Leech Seed, Sandstorm make it incredibly hard to kill. Meanwhile, they will spread both Spikes and Stealth Rock, and have the rare Toxic and recovery with Leech Seed. Ferrothorn can't particularly harm itself, either - making games really just not fun (both will PP stall so the switchin won't get status'd). Sub mons stop Ferrothorn cold, but can't prevent guaranteed hazards. There's also no Rapid Spin, so Defog will run out of PP before Rocks.

pull a metronome battle off and whole ban the steel type

perish trapping will also become centralizing, but there will always be a centralizing status move because of how little and slow they are, which could be a problem with the concept as a whole

---
other stuff that could be good
Mew: Great movepool lol, including magic room which can help gengar trap shed shellers, also got imprison
Item Centric meta in general: TrickScarf (or rather TrickSpecs) is always good and magic room could be a gimmick since its the only other way to get rid of items (and trickscarf is less effective the more you use it)
AV / Choice Band: Pokemon like Zacian and Haxorus can use a low PP move and fish for the struggle, or just instantly go struggling with AV. might go against the concept but probably just a meme. Falinks in particular gets the 8pp no recoil No Retreat (which also traps itself), though drummers could be both risky and potent.
 
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T.I.A.

formerly Ticktock
All of the instant healing moves are supposed to be banned. Which ones am I missing?
Milk Drink and Shore Up seem to be missing. Wish isn't really a "instant" healing move, though, but I guess it can be abused.
 

fanyfan

i once put 42 mcdonalds chicken nuggets in my anus
Announcement: The Pacifistmons council has decided to implement a Level 100 clause to avoid over centralization from low level mons and adhere to the precedent set by Suicide Cup.

In other stuff, here’s the first official Pacifistmons battle. I am definitely going to keep a close eye on Shadow Tag and the Salazzle line, but I don’t want to ban anything off of one battle.

Milk Drink and Shore Up seem to be missing.
As Roldski32 said, there is currently no mon that is able to use these moves so there’s no reason to ban them. If a mon gets access to them in the future, then they will be banned.
 

fanyfan

i once put 42 mcdonalds chicken nuggets in my anus
Sorry for the double post but it’s been a few days so hopefully it’s fine
The Pacifistmons council has decided to ban Ingrain and Metronome
Ingrain
plus substitute has almost no counterplay, as the usual counterplay for subs is phasing. As you can see in this replay, there was nothing I could really do once ingrain started, except stall out pp.
Metronome, in a similar way to Nature Power, can subvert the idea of the meta by calling attacks.
 
now that this is a playable meta, here are my thoughts/predictions
hazards might be really really good as you need corvi / 2 defoggers to beat one hazard user
ban vest, i forgot to notice earlier on but not only is it an attack move, but you can also sd pass and then run thru teams
phazing iself is prob good due to hazards + getting past trapping abilities
salaazle is also gonna be super meta, but without it idk how we would break something like ferrothorn
 

Ransei

Garde Mystik
is a Forum Moderatoris a Community Contributoris a Battle Simulator Moderatoris a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnus
now that this is a playable meta, here are my thoughts/predictions
hazards might be really really good as you need corvi / 2 defoggers to beat one hazard user
ban vest, i forgot to notice earlier on but not only is it an attack move, but you can also sd pass and then run thru teams
phazing iself is prob good due to hazards + getting past trapping abilities
salaazle is also gonna be super meta, but without it idk how we would break something like ferrothorn
Updating the title of this thread. Pacifistmons had been chosen as the LCotM for April.
 
I'm really excited about this meta being LCotM !

Many mons regained Magic Coat thanks to Home... including everyone's favourite cancer :

Gothitelle @ Choice Scarf / Leftovers
Ability: Shadow Tag
EVs: 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 1 HP / 0 Atk
- Magic Coat
- Heal Bell
- Toxic
- Trick / Protect

That's a very Suicide Cup-like Goth (except you'll be Toxic stalling the opponent instead of yourself). Pop this in front on something that has been Toxic'd, and just wait. Heal Bell supports the team and makes you sure Goth doesn't get Toxic stalled itself. Shadow Tag Tricks are the best tricks (the juicy part is tricking baton passers/substitute users before they can do anything), but Protect+Leftovers may be more consistent. Hell, you can even run Trick without a choice scarf to remove shed shells...
I used it for a couple of games and it's fun to use in tandem with Corrosion/Infiltrator to secure some easy KOs.
 
Right now, this follows Ubers clauses, including the Ubers dynamax clause, which bans specific pokemon from dynamaxing (Ditto, Kyurem-W, Lunala, Marshadow, Mewtwo, Necrozma-DM, Necrozma-DW, Reshiram, Solgaleo, and Zekrom). This doesn't really matter since dynamax is more-or-less pointless in this format and none of these pokemon save ditto and mewtwo have any real viability, but there is no reason to ban only these pokemon from dynamaxing. Can the clause be removed? (Or dynamax could be banned, either option works.)
 
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Got to top of the ladder without running into or using it,but painsplit shouldnt be allowed, it goes against the heart of the meta. And imo weezing is dumb in this meta total toxic immunity, defog aromatherepy willo and spite (with pain split) alongside being immune to shadow tag and arena trap make it completely nessisary to run, and it hard walls teams with a little help from goth dug
 

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