Passive Aggressive

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EV

Banned deucer.
(✿◕‿◕✿)


Passive damage is unfair! It chips away at your Pokemon indiscriminately. For instance, why should a Fire-type be punished by Leech Seed, a Grass-type move? Why do Flying-types and Water-types take the same amount of damage from Hail even though one is weak to Ice and one resists it? In PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE, that's no longer the case. In this metagame any passive or indirect damage associated with a particular type will deal damage each turn based on that type's effectiveness.

Using Hail as an example, here's how much damage it would do to your Pokemon at the end of every turn depending on its weakness to Ice:
  • 0x effective ~ 0 HP
  • 1/4x effective ~ 1/64 HP
  • 1/2x effective ~ 1/32 HP
  • 1x effective ~ 1/16 HP
  • 2x effective ~ 1/8 HP
  • 4x effective ~ 1/4 HP
  • 8x effective ~ 1/2 HP

Here's the list of passive damage and their corresponding types:
  • Burn ~ Fire
  • Poison ~ Poison
  • Toxic Poison ~ Poison
  • Confusion ~ Type of the move selected the turn your Pokemon hits itself, calculated against your Pokemon.
  • Sandstorm ~ Rock
  • Hail ~ Ice
  • Stealth Rock ~ Rock
  • Spikes ~ Ground
  • Recoil ~ Type of the move used the turn your Pokemon hurts itself calculated against your Pokemon. This includes the crash damage from High/Jump Kick.
  • Trapping damage ~ Type of the move (Whirlpool is Water, Bind is Normal, etc)
  • Leech Seed ~ Grass
  • Curse ~ Ghost
  • Nightmare ~ Ghost
  • Black Sludge ~ Poison (clone of the Poison status)

Rules:

Mechanic
: All type-based passive damage now deals damage based on the type chart.
Clauses: OU clauses
Bans: OU banlist
Unbans: N/A



Strategy:

Passive Aggressive adds extremes to indirect damage, greatly punishing the Pokemon that are very weak to a type while letting neutral and resisted matchups off the hook. Let's use Talonflame as an example. If Sandstorm is active, Talonflame will lose 1/4 of its HP every turn because it's x4 weak to Rock (look at the chart above to see why). But wait! Leech Seed, a Grass-type move, is 1/4x effective against Talonflame, meaning it will only lose 1/64 of its HP every turn. That's not so bad after all!

Here's a sample in action:

Archeops @ Leftovers
Ability: Defeatist
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Head Smash

Now that recoil has changed, every time Archeops deals damage with Head Smash, regardless of how much it does to the target, it takes 1/8 HP loss in return because Rock ix 2x effective against Archeops. So whether its OHKOing a Talonflame or barely scratching a Steelix you always know how much HP you'll have left after the attack. Furthermore, adding Leftovers to Archeops effectively gives you a net HP loss of only 1/16 every turn!

Here's another:

Abomasnow @ Icy Rock
Ability: Snow Warning
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SAtk / 252 Spe
Lonely / Naughty Nature
- Wood Hammer
- Earthquake
- Blizzard
- Leech Seed / Ice Shard

Similarly to the other damaging weather setters, Abomasnow has the potential to do big chunks of passive damage against your opponent's team just by showing up. When it needs to attack it has a strong Wood Hammer that only returns 1/32 HP in recoil thanks to Abomasnow's resistance to Grass.

And another:

Starmie @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 SAtk / 4 SDef / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Scald
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam
- Rapid Spin

Starmie is a notable Spinner thanks to Natural Cure and a neutrality to Stealth Rock and Spikes damage. There's something else that makes it better in Passive Aggressive, however, something that makes its usual switch-in Ferrothorn more nervous than usual: Scald. If Ferrothorn gets burned it will lose a whopping 1/4 of its HP every turn, ruining its ability to check other offensive threats on your team. But Scald isn't totally broke! Other Water-types, for example, won't mind the burn nearly as much now that it only damages them 1/32 HP per turn.

Q&A:
Q: How does this affect Pokemon with Magic Guard?
A: They're still immune to passive and indirect damage.

Q: How does this affect Pokemon with Wonder Guard, specifically Shedinja?
A: Shedinja still faints from any passive damage.

Q: What if a move of a different type gives a status condition? For instance, will Scald's burn and Twineedle's poison be Water and Bug or Fire and Poison?
A: Burn and poison are set to always deal Fire and Poison damage, respectively, due to those conditions' associations with those types.

Q: How does Toxic work?
A: Toxic is a super poison and will still increase overtime. A Rock/Ground Pokemon affected with Toxic will take 1/64 HP loss the first turn, then 2/64 loss the next, and 3/64 the next, and so on. A Grass/Fairy Pokemon takes 1/4 the first turn and 2/4 the next, meaning it will have lost 3/4 of its HP in only 2 turns!

Q: How does confusion work?
A: Your Pokemon damages itself based on the move it selects the turn it hurts itself in confusion. For example, if a confused Salamance uses Outrage and hurts itself instead, it loses 1/8 HP, but if it uses Earthquake and hurts itself it loses 0 HP.

Q: How does this affect hazards?
A: Stealth Rock is essentially nerfed and its damage brackets are shifted down one level each. Spikes will damage Pokemon based on their weakness to Ground times the number of layers of Spikes on the field. Toxic Spikes and Sticky Web don't deal any damage.

Q: What happens if I miss with High Jump Kick or a Ghost-type switches in?
A: Your Pokemon will damage itself based on High Jump Kick's effectiveness versus itself. Mega Lopunny takes 1/8 HP loss in recoil while Mega Medicham takes a paltry 1/32. Of course Mega Lopunny will still hit the Ghost-type thanks to Scrappy.

Q: Ghosts can't be trapped, so will they still take damage from moves like Whirlpool?
A: Yes. But like you said, they can switch out at any time.

Q: How does this affect Leech Seed?
A: Leech Seed is a Grass move so it will drain damage based on Grass's effectiveness versus the target. A Seeded Rock/Ground type loses 1/4 of HP per turn and the Pokemon receiving the drained HP recovers 1/4 of the Rock/Ground type's max HP for itself.

Q: How does this affect Curse?
A: A Pokemon that uses Curse will damage itself and its target based on Ghost's effectiveness versus both, individually. So a Ghost-type Pokemon will cut its own HP by 1/8 to lay the Curse and a Dark-type target will lose 1/32 of HP per turn. Because they are immune to Ghost, Normal types lose 0 HP.

Q: Speaking of immunities, how are ability, type, or item immunities affected?
A: Immunities are unchanged. A Fire-type Pokemon can never be burned and thus cannot take passive damage based on Fire's effectiveness from a burn. A Pokemon with Sap Sipper is immune to Grass so Leech Seed will always fail against it unless the attacker has Mold Breaker. Pokemon immune to weather via abilities will retain that immunity. (Sand Rush, Ice Body, etc.)

Q: What if a move or Pokemon changes type?
A: It will calculate passive damage based off of the new typing. An Electrified Leech Seed will now use Electric instead of Grass to calculate damage. A burned Kecleon that changes from Normal to Ice will now take 1/8 HP loss instead of 1/16 from the burn.

Q: How does this affect Baton Pass and Leech Seed/Curse/Nightmare?
A: The new Pokemon will start taking passive damage based on its weakness to Grass or Ghost.

Q: Why are some passive damage not included?
A: They're not associated with a specific type so they still do normal damage. This includes Rough Skin, Iron Barbs, Aftermath, Rocky Helmet, Sticky Barb, Life Orb, and those berries that cause recoil.

Resources:

Playability: N/A

Council: N/A

Ban History: N/A
 
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The biggest thing in this meta imo is Spikes.

3 layers instantly kill Heatran and Magnezone.
Raikou, Jirachi, Metagross, Tyranitar, Volcanion, Manectric, Klefki, Bisharp, Excadrill, Mega Char-X. That's how many strong OU mons are weak to ground.
Add that to the fact that most Pokemon immune to Spikes (ie Flying types) won't enjoy this meta due to Sandstorm and Hail.


Though you pointed out why some of the passive damage are left out, you should probably add them to the FAQ just to be extra clear:
Liquid Ooze
Dry Skin under the sun
Solar Power under the sun
Bad Dreams
Spiky Shield


Safety Goggles is now a thing.
 
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How do abilities work with this? Because the first thing that comes to my mind is Flash Fire Arcanine spamming Flare Blitz. No recoil and a damage boost sounds delicious.


Also did you make sure to get Eevee General to approve of this?
 
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Martin

A monoid in the category of endofunctors
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IK it's in the OP, but I want to really sell Archeops here 'cause that is completely insane. That said, I don't think that Leftovers are mandatory on it because by running them you sacrifice a reliable STAB option in Acrobatics, which is useful when cleaning late-game due to it meaning that you don't have to rely on an 85% accurate move to clean
 

sin(pi)

lucky n bad
  • 16x effective ~ 1/2 HP
Is this meant to be 8x? 8x is relevant for things like Forest's Curse on a burned Scizor, but I can't work out how you get 16x.

Love the meta's name. First thing that came to my mind is Trick/Switcheroo + Black Sludge Steel types, since they're immune to the damage. Unfortunately this is limited to Bronzong, Jirachi, Metagross and Klefki, but there seem to be some viable sets:

Klefki @ Black Sludge
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Careful Nature
- Trick
- Spikes
- Thunder Wave
- Play Rough

Tricking Sludge makes this a great way to annoy fatmons. Spikes are spikes, twave helps vs setup sweepers, and Play Rough does a respectable amount of damage to Mega Sableye which otherwise walls this set. You can use Flash Cannon to hit Mega Diancie, but I reckon Sableye will be more common thanks to WoW and recovery.

Bronzong @ Black Sludge
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Trick
- Stealth Rock / Gyro Ball / Earthquake
- Trick Room
- Explosion

This one is for Trick Room teams, the moveset is self-explanatory. Unfortunately it's Taunt bait, so you can replace SR with an attack if you want.

Jirachi @ Black Sludge
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 HP / 224 SpD / 32 Spe
Careful Nature
- Trick
- Wish / Toxic
- Iron Head / U-turn
- Thunder Wave / Body Slam / Iron Head

Who needs friends?
 

EV

Banned deucer.
How do abilities work with this? Because the first thing that comes to my mind is Flash Fire Arcanine spamming Flare Blitz. No recoil and a damage boost sounds delicious.


Also did you make sure to get Eevee General to approve of this?
I wish. Passive damage is always typeless, this metagame just adds the semblance of typing by introducing the new mechanic. I consulted with The Immortal who pointed out Flame Burst's typeless splash damage as precedent (which does not activate Flash Fire) and Marty confirmed.
Is this meant to be 8x? 8x is relevant for things like Forest's Curse on a burned Scizor, but I can't work out how you get 16x.
I thought Bug/Steel/Grass is 16x weak to Fire not 8.
 

EV

Banned deucer.
The biggest thing in this meta imo is Spikes.

3 layers instantly kill Heatran and Magnezone.
They actually take 75%. 1/4 x 3.

Spikes will be good, though. Skarmory is notable for ignoring Sandstorm and taking the standard 1/16 from Hail while brushing off other stuff like Leech Seed and Brave Bird's recoil. It also comes with its own shuffling moves.

Klefki is already a great stacker and might be even better here. Like Skarmory it ignores Sandstorm but it takes only 1/32 from Hail, meaning it can still regain health with Leftovers.

Pair your stackers with a Defiant mon, a Ghost, and a weather setter and watch the opposing team crumble.

This guy looks really threatening. HJK only returns 1/32 HP loss if it misses meaning it can spam it with no major consequence now.

Magic Guard will probably rise as well. I have a feeling Steel-types will be strong and most Magic Guard Pokemon struggle to get past them, which may lead to Fire coverage becoming more common, and stuff like Flame Orb Psycho Shift could see more usage too.
 
So are you basically changing all passive damage to do 6,25% damage then? Some of these examples make literally no sense otherwise, logically since Archeops is weak to Rock is should be taking double the recoil damage and suffer in viability, not be taking less damage...
They actually take 75%. 1/4 x 3.
A full set of spikes does 1/4 and Heatran takes quadruple damage from them, though if Spikes do 6,25% instead of 12,5% it becomes 50% damage since 3 layers of Spikes only does twice the damage.
 
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power

uh-oh, the game in trouble
Extra layers of spikes shouldn't do anything according to the OP - All passive damage is 1/16, and since 3 layers of spikes do damage at the same time, they're 1/16, so heatran takes 4 * 1/16 = 1/4
 

EV

Banned deucer.
nvm

I guess it's ironic that this bombed after the passive aggressiveness that occurred in the OM chat today. Oh well.
 
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