Format Discussion Pokemon Sun/Moon Random Battle sets

[The Immortal]

The big update is live! This addresses move combinations, ability selections, and items. Almost 100% of the time, any set that you get now is either intentional or that specific (bad) case hasn't been handled. No more Psychic/Psyshock or Scald/Hydro Pump. No more setup with the wrong category attacks. No more Expert Belt where it's useless. No more Life Orb on defensive Pokemon like Quagsire and Gastrodon. Better abilities on Pokemon, such as Flash Fire and Tinted Lens. A bunch of Pokemon have also received new moves so don't be surprised when you see Tapu Koko fire off a Z-Move, or Cofragrigus laying some Toxic Spikes.

 

[Merritt]

I think I found one of the cases that should probably be fixed, this doesn't seem like a good set.

 

[duck]

View attachment 193083

I think I found one of the cases that should probably be fixed, this doesn't seem like a good set.

ironic isnt it like after the ti post

 

[Zaide]

The big update is live! This addresses move combinations, ability selections, and items. Almost 100% of the time, any set that you get now is either intentional or that specific (bad) case hasn't been handled. No more Psychic/Psyshock or Scald/Hydro Pump. No more setup with the wrong category attacks. No more Expert Belt where it's useless. No more Life Orb on defensive Pokemon like Quagsire and Gastrodon. Better abilities on Pokemon, such as Flash Fire and Tinted Lens. A bunch of Pokemon have also received new moves so don't be surprised when you see Tapu Koko fire off a Z-Move, or Cofragrigus laying some Toxic Spikes.

I just had a life orb Cress.

I was pleasantly surprised to have a Specs Kyogre alongside a swift swim Golduck on my team though. I think this is gonna be a great update overall. Thanks for the hard work on this update. :)

 

[The Immortal]

View attachment 193083

I think I found one of the cases that should probably be fixed, this doesn't seem like a good set.

Haha. It slipped my mind that regular Greninja technically could roll Battle Bond. This didn't happen before because Battle Bond had a low rating. Fixed now.

I just had a life orb Cress.

I was pleasantly surprised to have a Specs Kyogre alongside a swift swim Golduck on my team though. I think this is gonna be a great update overall. Thanks for the hard work on this update. :)

Life Orb Cresselia was unintentional. The logic for selecting Life Orb has been corrected.

I've also fixed RestTalk sets as it was broken in the update due to a small error on my part.

 

[breh]

FREE ANCIENTPOWER YANMEGA; it gets stupid wins ~20% of the time because you have good opportunities to fish for the ancientpower boost on a free KO. it hits rock-weak bug resists about as hard as air slash does but with the added benefit of maiming moltres. u-turn is poop and yanmega often can't use it without dying if it has LO, switches into rocks, and you have no spinner (fairly common) and also removes all of your speed boosts anyway.

correct me if I'm wrong but I think LO dustox can still spawn; shadow ball is both bad by itself and allows this to happen

would it be possible to change the way that sheer force / the LO that comes with it are handled? some pokemon spawn with LO + 1 attack boosted by sheer force (nonSTAB and usually low BP) and the LO is just a wasted slot for what could have been leftovers or something useful. braviary had this problem (until rock slide was removed now) and druddigon also did (until gunk shot / fire punch were removed). hariyama will continue to have this problem until it is fixed because it can still get ice punch (and will frequently get CC / ice punch / x / x while longing for flame orb guts or even just leftovers thick fat). removing sheer force hariyama entirely (LO sheer force on one move <<<< burn orb guts) while keeping druddigon with sheer force but no LO would be the desirable outcome. not allowing LO if the pokemon has sheer force but no STAB sheer force moves would allow for druddigon with an item that isn't LO (better), but I'm not sure how to get rid of sheer force yama at the same time

tr on spinda is kind of awkward, in large part because spinda's stats can't support it before it dies to LO recoil + attacks because it doesn't have leftovers, but rock slide is awful and encore is something that spinda is too slow to abuse considering that most pokemon are faster and want to KO it before it sets up superpowers and kills 1.5 pokemon. sucker punch is really valuable for a pokemon that is as slow as spinda. what level does this get right now? I don't think it would be unfair to boost this to 100 like castform

rock slide bastiodon feels worse than rock blast because you can at least meme through a moltres's substitute this way instead of losing to it without toxic

u-turn mothim is worse than u-turn yanmega for the same reason. mothim without QD is the worst.

psychic spiritomb is a meta specific thing (apparently for gurdurr) that I do not feel will be good in randbats

FREE CHARGE BEAM EMOLGA, u-turn sucks since it often gets LO and is SR weak, knock off is kind of bad too. if charge beam is removed it's a good target for defog

Why remove fire punch / gunk shot on druddigon? with a fixed LO condition gunk shot especially is quite good with just leftovers and fire punch can get you KOes on (for example) skarmory or ferro that you can't hit well otherwise.

Why remove bug buzz from vivillon? another meta specific thing (for rhydon) that shouldn't be transferred over to randbats

 

[Aeonic]

This update has been great so far, thanks TI. Got this mega sableye earlier though - is there any reason to run dark pulse over shadow ball? Can't think of one off the top of my head and afaik it doesn't run dpulse on any standard sets.

 

[The Immortal]

This update has been great so far, thanks TI. Got this mega sableye earlier though - is there any reason to run dark pulse over shadow ball? Can't think of one off the top of my head and afaik it doesn't run dpulse on any standard sets.

That one is kinda difficult to fix because setup usually requires two attacks in the script. However, the best I could do was make Dark STAB an exception (because NP Liepard and such) which means Sableye-Mega will occasionally not have double STAB and only CM Dark Pulse. Ideally it should be Shadow Ball, yeah, but this was the best I could do with minimal hardcoding.

 

[The Immortal]

FREE ANCIENTPOWER YANMEGA; it gets stupid wins ~20% of the time because you have good opportunities to fish for the ancientpower boost on a free KO. it hits rock-weak bug resists about as hard as air slash does but with the added benefit of maiming moltres. u-turn is poop and yanmega often can't use it without dying if it has LO, switches into rocks, and you have no spinner (fairly common) and also removes all of your speed boosts anyway.

Removing Ancient Power was necessary to free Specs Tinted Lens. In addition, Life Orb U-turn Yanmega doesn't exist anymore, nor does Speed Boost U-turn.

correct me if I'm wrong but I think LO dustox can still spawn; shadow ball is both bad by itself and allows this to happen

QD with 3 attacks receives Life Orb, correct. Removing Shadow Ball isn't a bad idea; would delete Specs Dustox.

would it be possible to change the way that sheer force / the LO that comes with it are handled? some pokemon spawn with LO + 1 attack boosted by sheer force (nonSTAB and usually low BP) and the LO is just a wasted slot for what could have been leftovers or something useful. braviary had this problem (until rock slide was removed now) and druddigon also did (until gunk shot / fire punch were removed). hariyama will continue to have this problem until it is fixed because it can still get ice punch (and will frequently get CC / ice punch / x / x while longing for flame orb guts or even just leftovers thick fat). removing sheer force hariyama entirely (LO sheer force on one move <<<< burn orb guts) while keeping druddigon with sheer force but no LO would be the desirable outcome. not allowing LO if the pokemon has sheer force but no STAB sheer force moves would allow for druddigon with an item that isn't LO (better), but I'm not sure how to get rid of sheer force yama at the same time

I considered this, as well as just rejecting Sheer Force with only one benefiting move, but this affects some Pokemon such as Kingler who only run one Sheer Force move but prefer Life Orb. Mold Breaker Druddigon is better, imo, and it can deal with Ferrothorn and other slow support Pokemon with the newly added Taunt. If there was an ideal solution that would apply to every Sheer Force Pokemon, then yes, that'd be preferred. I will see what can be done about Hariyama.

tr on spinda is kind of awkward, in large part because spinda's stats can't support it before it dies to LO recoil + attacks because it doesn't have leftovers, but rock slide is awful and encore is something that spinda is too slow to abuse considering that most pokemon are faster and want to KO it before it sets up superpowers and kills 1.5 pokemon. sucker punch is really valuable for a pokemon that is as slow as spinda. what level does this get right now? I don't think it would be unfair to boost this to 100 like castform

Spinda does not have Trick Room anymore. And it is level 100.

rock slide bastiodon feels worse than rock blast because you can at least meme through a moltres's substitute this way instead of losing to it without toxic

A move just for one or two Pokemon is pointless. Rock Blast ain't breaking any other Pokemon's sub with 52 base attack. At least Rock Slide is more consistent.

u-turn mothim is worse than u-turn yanmega for the same reason. mothim without QD is the worst.

This is Random Battle, not Battle Factory. We have sub-optimal sets.

psychic spiritomb is a meta specific thing (apparently for gurdurr) that I do not feel will be good in randbats

Adding Psychic was the only way to fix Spiritomb's atrocious sets. Feel free to suggest a better Special move.

FREE CHARGE BEAM EMOLGA, u-turn sucks since it often gets LO and is SR weak, knock off is kind of bad too. if charge beam is removed it's a good target for defog

No.

Why remove fire punch / gunk shot on druddigon? with a fixed LO condition gunk shot especially is quite good with just leftovers and fire punch can get you KOes on (for example) skarmory or ferro that you can't hit well otherwise.

See above. Basically, Life Orb with one SF move Druddigon was a bad set, especially with Dragon Tail.

Why remove bug buzz from vivillon? another meta specific thing (for rhydon) that shouldn't be transferred over to randbats

First so it always rolls Hurricane. And second, Energy Ball provides good coverage. There are significantly more Ground/Rock/Water Pokemon than they are Psychic/Dark.

 

[breh]

Just got a Magician LO Delphox @ Psyshock / CM / GK / FB; magician is kind of uniformly bad unless you want to make magician + dark weak force colbur or a funny item like petaya / weakness policy

wrt sheer force LO: is the only reason there's no check for STAB sheer force moves (which would stop kingler from being caught in that net) just because it would make that line of code look significantly uglier lol

if attack >> SpA (idk, atk > 50+SpA) and has guts and counter < 2, reject sheer force to solve hariyama's case?

wrt spinda: Like in the sense that TR is awkward but at least tries to make the best of a bad pokemon.

rock slide is just bad, especially in comparison to sucker punch which is really, really needs.

wrt rock slide bastiodon: on average it does more damage and it will do less damage 1/3 of the time. this is a very cheap gamble for a defensive pokemon to make, especially considering that it is not doing much damage to begin with

wrt mothim: level balance makes this less bad than it would be in normal play and allows a lot of otherwise bad quiver dancers to flourish. being outclassed by other pokemon in normal play and having some tangentially relevant niche does not matter in randbats, where you have no team choice

wrt spiritomb: I know what you mean, but spiritomb is just kind of perpetually bad in a weird way because it's at the intersection of randbats problems like bad EV investment (it needs max HP), versatile but low BP movepool, and mixed attacks. I'm not going to pretend that this is an easily solvable problem, but it's not one solved by psychic. probably the least bad set is crotomb but the ones with wow that don't end up with life orb (didn't even realize, but this is also gone!!) are also all right. maybe this pokemon will be less awful in general without life orb as it is. I'll play more games where I get it to see if it works or not before I complain too much lol

wrt emolga: spinners are a luxury and you very often don't get one at all. budget zapdos with defog is still a defogger. without charge beam or defog, probably the most useful thing it will do is provide a fastish encore and do about 30% to a pokemon you're trying to flinch with air slash before getting 2HKOed

wrt druddigon: mb kind of sucks (it helps you with magic bounce, fluffy / fur coat, multiscale dnite, and the few levitate users that want to switch into druddigon; that's pretty much it unless GF didn't fix that bizarre glitch where mb dtail makes levitating pokemon take spikes damage lol). rough skin has a lot of utility in comparison by helping you chip pokemon you can't otherwise win against. again, I reiterate - sheer force druddigon isn't bad, specifically sheer force LO druddigon is bad. removing fire punch / gunk shot is a kludge to fix that

taunt doesn't actually let it kill ferro and it's pretty much a free switch in. eq probably fails to 4HKO with leftovers. it cannot deal with most fairy types (short of paralyzing them, which barely counts) without gunk shot or fire punch.

wrt vivillon: the choice between the two is a choice between 3 types each I guess (dark / psychic / elec vs. water / rock / ground), I'll do the same as with spiritomb

 

[duck]

wrt sheer force LO: is
wrt druddigon: mb kind of sucks (it helps you with magic bounce, fluffy / fur coat, multiscale dnite, and the few levitate users that want to switch into druddigon; that's pretty much it unless GF didn't fix that bizarre glitch where mb dtail makes levitating pokemon take spikes damage lol). rough skin has a lot of utility in comparison by helping you chip pokemon you can't otherwise win against. again, I reiterate - sheer force druddigon isn't bad, specifically sheer force LO druddigon is bad. removing fire punch / gunk shot is a kludge to fix that

They didn't fix that "bug" so I assume it's a feature? A levitate latias WILL be poisoned by Toxic Spikes if a Mold Breaker Pokemon drags him in!

 

[The Immortal]

Just got a Magician LO Delphox @ Psyshock / CM / GK / FB; magician is kind of uniformly bad unless you want to make magician + dark weak force colbur or a funny item like petaya / weakness policy

Good point.

wrt sheer force LO: is the only reason there's no check for STAB sheer force moves (which would stop kingler from being caught in that net) just because it would make that line of code look significantly uglier lol

There's no way to check that anyway. Moves are saved, number of Sheer Force moves are counted, number of moves per type are counted, and number of STABs are counted. You'd have to literally check the Pokemon type, the ability, and specific moves if you hypothethically wanted to check for STAB Sheer Force moves. That is completely unnecessary.

wrt spinda: Like in the sense that TR is awkward but at least tries to make the best of a bad pokemon.

rock slide is just bad, especially in comparison to sucker punch which is really, really needs.

The updated Spinda has a Speed boosting Z-Move.

wrt emolga: spinners are a luxury and you very often don't get one at all. budget zapdos with defog is still a defogger. without charge beam or defog, probably the most useful thing it will do is provide a fastish encore and do about 30% to a pokemon you're trying to flinch with air slash before getting 2HKOed

Charge Beam Emolga sucked and was a mere remnant of Baton Pass meta. But I do see your point. Maybe a Toxic / Defog set could work.

wrt druddigon: mb kind of sucks (it helps you with magic bounce, fluffy / fur coat, multiscale dnite, and the few levitate users that want to switch into druddigon; that's pretty much it unless GF didn't fix that bizarre glitch where mb dtail makes levitating pokemon take spikes damage lol). rough skin has a lot of utility in comparison by helping you chip pokemon you can't otherwise win against. again, I reiterate - sheer force druddigon isn't bad, specifically sheer force LO druddigon is bad. removing fire punch / gunk shot is a kludge to fix that

After implementing checks to prevent undesirable combinations, Sheer Force with Fire Punch / Gunk Shot is being re-added in the next patch.

 

[breh]

Life Orb Noctowl @ Heat Wave / Roost / Night Shade (lol) / Hurricane

Opponent had Life Orb Delphox @ Trick / Shadow Ball / Fire Blast / 1 move I didn't see (move order not necessarily correct)

I think Togedemaru always gets Sturdy over Iron Barbs because it frequently gets Wish?

Granbull gets LO, may want to shift that speed higher. I believe that dunsparce is also able to get it and is absolutely awful with it. I had one game where dunsparce stopped the opposing pokemon from moving and still died first to hazards + lo recoil lol

LO trevenant @ phantom force / horn leech / rest / shadow claw (phantom force + shadow claw is bad, LO trevenant is bad)

 

[The Immortal]

Life Orb Noctowl @ Heat Wave / Roost / Night Shade (lol) / Hurricane

Found the problem. Will make this almost never happen.

Opponent had Life Orb Delphox @ Trick / Shadow Ball / Fire Blast / 1 move I didn't see (move order not necessarily correct)

That doesn't make sense. You sure you didn't miss it using Trick?

I think Togedemaru always gets Sturdy over Iron Barbs because it frequently gets Wish?

It can get Lightning Rod. It doesn't get Iron Barbs because Lightning Rod and Sturdy are both rated higher.

Granbull gets LO, may want to shift that speed higher. I believe that dunsparce is also able to get it and is absolutely awful with it. I had one game where dunsparce stopped the opposing pokemon from moving and still died first to hazards + lo recoil lol

I will try to fix Dunsparce.

LO trevenant @ phantom force / horn leech / rest / shadow claw (phantom force + shadow claw is bad, LO trevenant is bad)

I think the issue is its move pool. It's easy for it to get stuck with this set because of rolls and rejections. I'll try to come up with something new for it.

Other changes in the next patch:

Rock Blast Bastiodon returns
Better Shaymin-Sky
Fixed Lugia and Araquanid
Attempt at a better Vespiquen
No non-smash Huntail
Slightly better Mega Diancie and Guzzlord
No hazardless Shuckle
The lead isn't always mega anymore (if it can mega)
Fixed Blacephalon (Orb Mind Blown existed...)
Fixed Hariyama (No SF now)
Fixed Zoroark (bug with NP + physical moves)
Fixed Relicanth/Tyrantrum/etc (Rock STAB)
Removed some Scarf mons in favor of Specs (because weak)
Boomburst Chatot always
Life Orb Pheromosa in some cases

Plus other things I may have missed or will still implement before the next patch is live.

 

[Deleted User 276886]

Nasty Plot Zoroark with two physical STABs is questionable.

 

[breh]

I had an archeops with u-turn / earthquake / tailwind / stone edge (iirc, don't recall perfectly whether it was stone edge, but I believe so) that rolled leftovers. As replacement items (i.e. not acro > no item, not 4 attacks > cb), maybe:

sitrus
the 50% berries
rockium z?
ebelt?

idk something else

 

[Puer Abutens]

The problem with this set is: Vanilluxe is totally dependent on Blizzard to work, this set is patetically weak (this same set was stronger last gen, when it was PU and had a higher level), Freeze-Dry should never be the only STAB option on Ice-Types, specially on a Snow Warning user.

 

[useless trainer]

I forgot to take any screen because i didn't consider it to be that relevant, but i got a scarf, magnet pull magnezone with flash cannon/volt switch/tbolt/hp ice. I was wondering why it was running hp ice instead of hp fire, since hp fire would be more useful when combined with magnet pull and scarf (heavy damage on ferro and scizor, can trap and kill weakened exca and steelix).

 

[Aph9898]

I mean there's no problem with not having stab as a Protean Greninja, but I don't think it's that great without something like Hydro Pump, especially just seeing a Greninja on your team without a water or dark move

 

[breh]

Would it be possible to remove Sunny Day and maybe HP fire from venusaur? I got a venusaur that was actually really good (subseed + giga drain + sludge bomb) and the lack of either of those moves to fuck up recovery + dual STABs was really refreshing. Chlorophyll isn't good if Venusaur has to set its own sun. Heat rock fucks up sleep powder / sd / xx, too, because you're too weak to take advantage of your sun turns.

On the topic of heat rock, if I understand correctly, the reason heat rock pyroar exists is when it gets sunny day + wow?

Continuing on sunny day pokemon - could sunflora be made l100? I don't know how you fix this pokemon (carnivine is the same way) but this would hopefully be a step towards it not being just death fodder?

 

[Adeleine]

Would it be possible to remove Sunny Day and maybe HP fire from venusaur? I got a venusaur that was actually really good (subseed + giga drain + sludge bomb) and the lack of either of those moves to fuck up recovery + dual STABs was really refreshing. Chlorophyll isn't good if Venusaur has to set its own sun. Heat rock fucks up sleep powder / sd / xx, too, because you're too weak to take advantage of your sun turns.

YMMV but for me, Mega Venusaur already does those sorts of things that aren't sun, so I'd rather keep Sun Venu reasonably likely for variety. Venu doesn't have SD as an option, and SP/Sun is fine imo. Rare for instant sleep to not be a contributor to a moveset.

On the topic of heat rock, if I understand correctly, the reason heat rock pyroar exists is when it gets sunny day + wow?

Heat Rock because we chose to give it Sunny Day (I think), and Sunny Day because Fire STAB + Solar Beam.

Continuing on sunny day pokemon - could sunflora be made l100? I don't know how you fix this pokemon (carnivine is the same way) but this would hopefully be a step towards it not being just death fodder?

Pretty sure 100 is staying reserved for Unown.
E: It would seem to not be so! Still feels like a jump to give it to a mon with a pre-evo though.

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

Pretty sure 100 is staying reserved for Unown.

while you were gone Delibird, Castform, and Spinda also gained level 100 status.

 

[breh]

YMMV but for me, Mega Venusaur already does those sorts of things that aren't sun, so I'd rather keep Sun Venu reasonably likely for variety. Venu doesn't have SD as an option, and SP/Sun is fine imo. Rare for instant sleep to not be a contributor to a moveset.

Heat Rock because we chose to give it Sunny Day (I think), and Sunny Day because Fire STAB + Solar Beam.

Pretty sure 100 is staying reserved for Unown.
E: It would seem to not be so! Still feels like a jump to give it to a mon with a pre-evo though.

venusaur: {
randomBattleMoves: ["sunnyday", "sleeppowder", "gigadrain", "hiddenpowerfire", "sludgebomb", "leechseed", "substitute"],

It has sunny day and hp fire as possible moves, I'm not sure what you mean? And idt variety is as valuable when you all too often get stuff like hp fire / sludge bomb / other fillers with no giga drain or 3 attacks + LO which high key sucks in comparison to leftovers

else if (hasMove['sunnyday']) {
if (template.baseSpecies === 'Castform' && !teamDetails.zMove) {
item = 'Firium Z';
} else {
item = (ability !== 'Chlorophyll' || counter.Status > 1) ? 'Heat Rock' : 'Life Orb';

It's actually even worse or I can't read booleans; Heat rock will spawn if the pokemon has sunny day, isn't castform, and either doesn't have chlorophyll (i.e. every time pyroar spawns with sunny day, regardless of whether it has something mediocre like sunny day / hyper voice / dark pulse / fire blast that barely benefits from it in comparison to LO) or has more than one status move (I'm not sure what the intent here is)

If it's a jump to give it to a pokemon with a prevo, then Carnivine isn't a jump at all :)

Is evolving from the worst Pokemon BST wise worth anything? pls

 

[Adeleine]

It has sunny day and hp fire as possible moves, I'm not sure what you mean?

venusaurmega: {
randomBattleMoves: ["sleeppowder", "gigadrain", "hiddenpowerfire", "sludgebomb", "leechseed", "synthesis", "earthquake", "knockoff"]

Venusaurite Venusaur in specific does not have Sunny Day.

heat rock stuff

Maybe for things like Synthesis? The extra turns could be valuable if you're using it to recover. If there are Pyroar Heat Rock sets without Solar Beam, though, that's probably bad and should be fixed.

 

[breh]

Ah, I see what you mean; you were talking about distinguishing it from megavenusaur.

I realize that its stats are worse (mostly physical bulk being worse) and that its ability is also worse, but giving it sunny day forces it into a niche that it is not good at abusing. Only if it gets sunny day + 3 attacks does it work to its fullest. sleep powder is also /all right/ if it gets dual STAB but you don't have much of an impetus to use sunny day and (at the current moment) this will force heat rock.

Having an item (especially black sludge with substitute, leech seed, or both) is the difference between it and its mega (and overgrow giga drain facilitated by sub, but whatever lol), and I really don't think sunny day is necessary to abuse that. Sunny Day is frequently a deleted moveslot that could have been the other STAB move you're missing on that set.

Venusaur does not get Synthesis. I still don't get the logic, and don't see why one would want to extend sunny day specifically for synthesis at the cost of an item slot.

Also fwiw it gets z-celebrate if you really want to have some "niche" that separates it from megavenusaur