Pokemon Black & White, aka Gen 5. Coming to Japan in Fall 2010.

[Chou Toshio]

Poison SE against water and Ice resisting Dragon, thanks. That's all I'm asking. Oh, and a Rapid Spin movetutor

Though of course it's not enough to add a weakness here and a resistance there. You have to consider the wider interactions for elements.

For instance, why isn't grass a better, well-used counter for water?

a) It's offensive coverage is HORRIBLE
b) There's no strong "partner" secondary attack that completes coverage

So the point is even if you give Poison a super-effective hit against water, is that enough that people will actually find Poison a useful attacking type in general?

For instance Electric also hits water for super effective, but in the large scope of things, electric types simply do not pose enough of an offensive threat to make them really effective. This situation might change drastically if, for instance, if Lanturn had 125+ special attack or if Zapdos got Ice Beam. Still, lacking a water resist or particularly intimidating defensive stats make them shaky checks at best.

In Poison's case, Poison is resisted by poison, ground, rock, ghost and steel-- which is really not encouraging . . . The two most notable problematic types are Ghost and Steel, both great defensive presences in the metagame (Rotom-A is everywhere, an Steel is THE king of defense). Steel resists Dark/Ghost, and Ghosts are immune to Fighting and often Ground. Fire comes seems like the best fill-in, but Poison-Fire is laughed at by TTar and every other rock type. Also, you're not hitting Rotom strong enough with fire unless you get STAB-- at which point you're getting screwed by water types again anyway.

See? It's not so simple-- even if you made poison hit water types for super effective, it wouldn't help the situation any more than the current situation of electric types doing jack to check water types.

Trying to use Ice to defensively stop Dragon is riddled with even greater issues (you'd have to COMPLETELY over-hall Ice to make it anything of a decent defensive type-- one more resistance is not going to be enough to get people to run them defensively).


These are just the issues with typing-- it becomes an even worse problem when you consider your odds of getting the base stats and movepools to make decent counters to pokemon as powerful as water and dragon types. :/

 

[vonFiedler]

Cshadow, I'd rather go to bed than debate every single point you just made, so instead I'll pick out the single most circular piece of logic in your argument.

Fire types are all but non existent in OU, the only two that are left resist Stealth Rock due to a secondary typing. Ground misses Flyers and Levitators. But you're right, Fire and Ground are two extremely common attack types. But that's BECAUSE of Steel. Unlike any other Type, it's perfectly okay to have two Steel Pokemon on one team, and I've all too often seen up to three.


You still haven't told me why you think the Type chart is balanced. Because of flavor, it never can be. To fix it would be to change it almost completely. Your argument seems to be something about factors outside the Type Chart balancing it, but I can count factors that have a significant influence on one hand (Stealth Rock, Outrage, Blissey, maybe I'm missing something but it's late). Outrage makes Steel types more valuable (though Steel would already be valuable for reasons already stated), Blissey makes Fighting attacks more valuable, and Stealth Rock makes Fire, Flying, Bug, and Ice types less valuable.

 

[Chou Toshio]

^Well technically speaking, Steel isn't the only type that does well with multiple members.

Latias and Flygon both do well on teams with multiple dragons (Flygon in particular loves having Salamence, Latias or Dragonite as teammates).

Gyarados and Swampert work well with each other or with other water types. The same can be said about Tentacruel and Empoleon to a certain extent.

Fighting types' weaknesses (Flying and Psychic) are so rare that multiple fighting types can easily go onto the same team without any negative consequence outside of repetitive coverage (which actually serves to weaken their counters and open a sweep).

There are many other possible examples, but I'm just noting a few. In particular, Water and Dragon, as fellow "near-broken" types, find similar popularity to steel in terms of being used in multiple. Water and Steel in particular contain lots of members that possess a variety of interesting dual-typing + abilities that make repetitive weaknesses a minimal problem. Between Latias and Flygon, Dragon also has just enough diversity as well.

 

[Kristy Haruka]

I think the battles should be faster. I hate how slow they are. -_- At least make the attack animations fast like Gen 1 and 2.

 

[Coronis]

You can turn them off.

 

[Mattman324]

Animations of the old times short? I'm sorry, but Gen1 Razor leaf.

It takes a good 6 seconds to execute. And considering it's a lot of Grass type's best attacks (Broken crit ratio much?), you're pretty likely to see it.

 

[Eggbert]

2nd Gen surf? Takes hours.

 

[zarator]

^Well technically speaking, Steel isn't the only type that does well with multiple members.

Latias and Flygon both do well on teams with multiple dragons (Flygon in particular loves having Salamence, Latias or Dragonite as teammates).

Gyarados and Swampert work well with each other or with other water types. The same can be said about Tentacruel and Empoleon to a certain extent.

Fighting types' weaknesses (Flying and Psychic) are so rare that multiple fighting types can easily go onto the same team without any negative consequence outside of repetitive coverage (which actually serves to weaken their counters and open a sweep).

There are many other possible examples, but I'm just noting a few. In particular, Water and Dragon, as fellow "near-broken" types, find similar popularity to steel in terms of being used in multiple. Water and Steel in particular contain lots of members that possess a variety of interesting dual-typing + abilities that make repetitive weaknesses a minimal problem. Between Latias and Flygon, Dragon also has just enough diversity as well.

I have to disagree with your case about Water, and I'll show you why.

The following data show the likehood of a Pokémon to have a team mate of the same type. Basically, I gathered them summed up the percentages of every single top20 team mate of said type, from doug's March 2010 statistics. I considered OU Pokémon only (for the Pokémon themselves, not for the team mates - Kabutops and Ludicolo, for example, contributed heavily to Kingdra's high value)

WATER
 
Empoleon = 33.39%
Gyarados = 24.77%
Kingdra = 77.01%
Starmie = 28.63%
Suicune = 0%
Swampert = 34.48%
Tentacruel = 39.63%
Vaporeon = 11.27%
 
STEEL
Bronzong = 54.55%
Empoleon = 91.98%
Forretress = 61.87%
Heatran = 92.77%
Jirachi = 79.07%
Lucario = 78.27%
Magnezone = 82.95%
Metagross = 67.68%
Scizor = 66.62%
Skarmory = 77.38%

As you can see, Water-typed Pokémon team up with much less frequency than Steel-types - hell, Suicune almost never shows itself along with a Water Pokémon! As of now, the Water type is broken as Dragon was in Advance (i.e. it has the potential to be broken, but none of his current exemplars are). Much like Dragons in the past generation were held back by the lack of good STAB moves, Water pokémon lack the raw offensive stats to abuse of their very good STABs, especially on the special side. Take a look at the Pokémon above. Very few of them have a Special Attack stat which exceeds 100, and those who have one (Empoleon and Vaporeon) have an hard time sweeping without an unusual amount of support (even Empoleon can't be thrown around like Latias or Salamence). Defensively, the difference between Water and Steel becomes even more apparent. Water has a high degree of neutrality, yes, but in OU things hit so hard that you can't rely on a neutral wall to take on the assaults of the staple OU powerhouses (not even Suicune can take a CB U-turn from Scizor, whereas Heatran comfortably does). Water does have some useful resistances like Water, Fire and Ice, but compared to Steel's Normal, Grass, Ice, Flying, Psychic, Rock, Bug, Ghost, Dark, Dragon and Steel (along with Poison immunity), Water definitely pales. Even the comparison between defensive stats makes it apparent. Most defensive OU Waters have much higher defensive stats than their steel counterparts, to further show that a neutral wall like a Bulky water needs much higher defenses than a Steel-typed wall in order to survive in OU.

As long as Gamefreak does not release a Water-typed Latios or something as stupid as it (Manaphy comes close, though), Water does not need any revamping on the type-chart, whereas Steel may (but the debate whether Steel is so much used depends more on Dragons or on Steel's gazillon resistances in general is still open)

 

[deluge]

If steel didn't have all those resistances it would be near useless considering that it is weak to three common types that have high BP moves.
IMO, there is nothing wrong with the type chart but some types could do with better moves and pokemon representatives.

 

[Proodle.]

I also hope that the pokathalon makes a welcoming return, but if we receive quadruple evolutions, it'll just be ridiculous.
What about the idea of being able to have more than four attacks per pokemon?
Possibly five or six? Would make some things ridiculously over powered though... (Hi infernape)

 

[cantab]

Straight more than four moves per Pokemon would make the game very offensive.
Ideas like mine where running more moves makes them less powerful might be more balanced.

 

[Galactic Boss Cyrus]

To solve the Steel problem, it wouldn't be too bad to make a Magnet Pull Pokemon that doesn't have a weakness to nearly everything it's supposed to stop, Magnezone.

 

[Eggbert]

Fire priority that doesn't get good (broken) distribution and no STAB. Like donphan with ice shard.

 

[Proodle.]

Fire priority that doesn't get good (broken) distribution and no STAB. Like donphan with ice shard.

I always thought that some type of special priority would be nice tbh.
And possibly a viable auto-inducer of sun/rain.

 

[shuckles my hero]

I always thought that some type of special priority would be nice tbh.
And possibly a viable auto-inducer of sun/rain.

err no offence but the rain one would be band simply lead of with it force out their weather changer (if they have one and kill it bamm) rain sweep.

I hope the plot will be better and pleese no fushions, when was the last time you bought a digiman game?

 

[egg shell]

about fusions what would happen to items? just a thought
i hope ice get improved weavile and mamoswine just don't cut it ice should also resist dragon (im dreaming) i'm tired of checks i want counters (maybe walrein ) game freaks could at least give hail something special

also why doesn't zapdos learn zap cannon but raikou does

 

[Proodle.]

also why doesn't zapdos learn zap cannon but raikou does

Either way, zap cannon is shit, so i don't think zapdos is missing out.

And true, an auto-rain inducer would be insanely powerful...
I also hope Luvdisc gets a secondary evolution.

 

[Grammarian]

I just thought of something very interesting:

What if Game Freak created a Fighting type variant to the move Pursuit.

To compliment this new move, they create a Fighting/Dark type which gets Technician, Pursiut and the Figthing type variation to Pursuit. This would be an incredibly useful Pokemon who would be an amazing revenge-killer.

 

[UltiMario]

I say they need a fighting type version of pursuit to pursuit a good chunk of pursuiters.

 

[Ramblin Wreck]

I say they need a fighting type version of pursuit to pursuit a good chunk of pursuiters.

And then a psychic version to pursuit the pursuiters of the pursuiters.

 

[Pharaoh]

and then a ghost version to pursuit the pursuiters of the pursuiters of the pursuiters, but then the pursuiters would pursuit them in the first place, and stay superior :|

 

[Glutexo]

I have thought about undergroups of the different types. It would be very difficult to add more types, both because it would be difficult to find something to base them on, and because it would be difficult to remake the type chart.

So here is the idea:
There could still be the types that already are. The pokemon would keep the types they have today. But the types of attacking moves could be divided into different groups. Let me give an example:
Offensive ground moves could be divided into the groups mud, seismic and bone. They would mostly be the same, but with small differences. The mud group would include moves like mud bomb, mud shot and sand tomb. Maybe not mud, but loose masses. The seismic includes Earthquake, Earthpower and Magnitude. And bone is just for the bone attacks. The seismic group could be neutral to poison and the bone could hit flying, just small changes like that.

All groups of a type would still get STAB if the user has it's type, just with small differences in effectiveness.

Another example could be ice. It could be divided into the two groups ice and cold. Ice for actual ice based moves, like Avalance, Blizzard and Powder Snow, while cold would be the moves based on just making things more cold, like Icy Wind, Ice Beam and Ice Punch. But I don't know what differences there could be between the groups.

This could lead to interesting changes, and without removing too many STAB options from pokémon or making more types. It could also balance things out more. For example, letting bone moves hit flying would give a buff to the weak Marowak, and nerfing EQ against poison could make poison types a little better.

 

[Gaburaisu]

Auto-rain inducer sounds nice. That would definitely make the lead spot on the Rain Dance team I'm making now. Well, provided that it's fast enough to pull off a Taunt lol.

Edit: Whoo! Finally 100 posts!

 

[DDRMaster]

While that does sound very interesting, it seems very complicated to me. What you basically have done is completely confused all the kids that this game is aimed at. It would basically turn Pokemon into Yu-Gi-Oh (in that no one can understand/remember how certain things work in certain situations). I do think it's a better idea than adding more types, but I still don't like it.

Edit: This was aimed at Glutexo, not Gaburaisu.

@ Gaburaisu: There was a test done by the CAP members a long time ago that allowed Kyogre and Groudon to be used at levels that make there stats comperable to other OU Pokemon. What they found was that Rain became overcentralizing and way too powerful. An auto-Rain ability that only lasted five turns could work, though.

 

[Zach]

Exactly. Talking about over-powered types, the 3 main ones are Water, Dragon and Steel. I doubt anyone can make an argument for any of the others being really overpowered.

While something that handles all of those would be nice (ie. specifically resisting dragon and hitting steel/water types super effective), light doesn't really strike me as having anything to do with any of those.

Go Magic type. It uses its magical power to break the dragons powerful auras and uses magic to melt steel / evaporate water ^_^

Auto-rain inducer sounds nice. That would definitely make the lead spot on the Rain Dance team I'm making now. Well, provided that it's fast enough to pull off a Taunt lol.

Edit: Whoo! Finally 100 posts!

Auto rain inducer already exists, its called Kyogre, and besides, an auto rain-inducer would be uber anyway