Format Discussion Pokemon Sword & Shield Random Battle Sets

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Is there any particular reason Snorlax is a gmax variant rather than a regular dynamax? As far as I can tell, every mon that has a dynamax form picks that one over the regular form, but it doesn't seem to make sense here? I can't remember any moveset having any berry to prefer using G-Max Replenish over Max Strike.
Snorlax does have a Chesto-Rest set. Also, it's not like Snorlax really cares about the speed drops from Max Strike (though its teammates certainly would), especially if it's Curse.
 
I think that unless we make it so MaxLax has Sitrus (or Gluttony Wiki Berry) in all non-Chesto situations, it would probably prefer the speed drops for its teammates. Personally, I think we should be giving Snorlax a berry because of its G-Max Replenish, and AFAIK there's nothing in the code for it yet. (That said it might not matter in the future anyways if Dynamax gets banned by the suspect lol)
 
ascriptmaster: I like that suggestion. Getting speed drops to let your team beat something that would have just swept you to death (like some Shell Smasher, Durant, Scarf Dracozolt, Bellossom, etc) can be super useful, though.

Another thought: Can we remove Sap Sipper from Drampa? I believe the opportunity cost of losing Berserk outweighs Sap Sipper's at best situational benefits. Unless you're facing something that OHKO's Drampa outright, Berserk will put in good work. Even if the opponent can *nearly* OHKO, Drampa can eat a single hit then strike back with a +1 Draco Meteor or Hyper Voice, which will do massive damage off its fantastic base 135 SpA. Depending on what set you got and if they do less damage to you, Drampa can paralyze with Glare then accumulate Berserk boosts over and over with Roost + Leftovers. In contrast, Sap Sipper is fairly useless to Drampa. It already resists Grass, Grass-type attackers like Virizion and Moonblast Bellossom have other ways to damage it, and the Atk boosts are useless for Drampa. Immunity to Sleep Powder, Spore, and Leech Seed, along with hard walling Moonblast-less Bellosom, are all great, but none of these come into play in the majority of matches. But in my experience Berserk will basically never not be at least a bit useful, which is why I think Drampa should always have that ability.

What exactly is the breakdown/difference between Latios and Latias sets? In particular, I've never seen Calm Mind Latios or Defog Latias-- why not? I feel like they'd both be good with those moves, though of course Latias's greater bulk means she's better at Calm Mind sweeping than her brother.

(Late) thoughts on semi-recent editions: Sub-Toxic/Kings Shield/Shadow Ball Aegislash is almost as annoying as Salazzle; I love it. :P Thank goodness for getting rid of that crappy physical Scarf Xerneas set! It's so much better with 3 attacks + Calm Mind. Also, I love seeing intermittent new mon's like both Lycanrocs and Electivire. :)
 

breh

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berry lax sans chesto rest is a waste of an item slot that also requires you either run sitrus (which simply does not work in 6v6 singles for pokemon like this) or the 33% berries (which do not heal anywhere near enough to be valuable and require using gluttony, which is a significantly shittier ability than either thick fat or immunity).

snorlax is a doorstop dynamax. you're not using it to sweep your opponent; you are using it as a dynamax because it is the last 3 turns and your opponent will lose to it regardless or you are using it to avoid getting swept. gmax replenish does not help you avoid getting swept, but max strike can let your teammates finish what snorlax did not.

Also worth noting that for specifically chesto rest to be valuable wrt dmax vs. gmax you have to actually use rest before you dynamax (else you don't use the berry you're replenishing).

for sap sipper drampa vs. berserk, it is 100% the choice to absorb grass-type moves. I can see the value of roost berserk, but drampa is also not a bulk god as it is and painfully slow. gaining immunity to spore, sleep powder, and leech seed is worth it for something that will often get 2HKOed period.
 

breh

強いだね
A shower thought I had at some point yesterday but didn't post til today:

Teams are fundamentally unbalanced, and huge type weaknesses throughout are pretty common. TI doesn't want to restrict overlapping weaknesses from removing Pokemon, so a potential workaround that doesn't require increasing team generation time (not by very much, anyway) is rolling through all of the Pokemon on a team once it's made and, in order, all of the types, and checking per each if there is any overlapping weakness, or potentially even sweeping neutralities. On seeing an overlapping weakness (define as desired; maybe something like 2 weak and no resists, 3 weak, or 6 neutral), a level boost is applied - arbitrarily, 2-4 levels, but feel free to pick your favorite number - and given to the Pokemon with the highest level that bears that weakness.

Highest level such that the Pokemon in the lowest tier is given the boost and given the least consequential jump (72 > 75 is a big jump, 89 > 92 is comparatively smaller) so as to avoid breaking things.

You could limit the amount of level boosts that you would get (one per Pokemon at most, obviously, but probably just one or two per team) and could also restrict certain Pokemon from getting level boosts (ex. Pokemon with max airstream and setup moves, Pokemon with fairly dominating setup moves like quiver dance, dragon dance, shell smash, uber Pokemon as a whole, Pokemon with set levels, and so on) so as to avoid basically making one Pokemon randomly a more powerful sweeper rather than the ideal result of a Pokemon better able to handle particularly poor matchups.

Alternatively, the level boost could be applied to another Pokemon that doesn't fall into that weakness (or, if there's a resistance, to the resistance).

Even if this specific idea is untenable, I'd be interested in seeing any other suggestions / ideas for simple team generation changes that would reduce getting outteamed in rands.
 
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Psychic/Psyshock-less Alolan Raichu makes Dracorage go something something...

Crazy?

For real tho, Psyshock should be an option over Psychic. I had no way to hit grass types today without relying on Focus Miss.
 
berry lax sans chesto rest is a waste of an item slot that also requires you either run sitrus (which simply does not work in 6v6 singles for pokemon like this) or the 33% berries (which do not heal anywhere near enough to be valuable and require using gluttony, which is a significantly shittier ability than either thick fat or immunity).

snorlax is a doorstop dynamax. you're not using it to sweep your opponent; you are using it as a dynamax because it is the last 3 turns and your opponent will lose to it regardless or you are using it to avoid getting swept. gmax replenish does not help you avoid getting swept, but max strike can let your teammates finish what snorlax did not.

Also worth noting that for specifically chesto rest to be valuable wrt dmax vs. gmax you have to actually use rest before you dynamax (else you don't use the berry you're replenishing).

for sap sipper drampa vs. berserk, it is 100% the choice to absorb grass-type moves. I can see the value of roost berserk, but drampa is also not a bulk god as it is and painfully slow. gaining immunity to spore, sleep powder, and leech seed is worth it for something that will often get 2HKOed period.
I think Berserk is worth it over Sap Sipper on one, and one very specific condition : It has both roost and glare. Other than that, yeah, Sap Sipper > Berserk in general, since powder moves and leech seed are generally and actually quite frequent imo.
 
I forgot to get screenshots of these two but,

I don't know if it's wanted for Snorlax to have G-max sets, but can it please be made so that if the Snorlax is not holding a berry (like it is Leftovers/Thick Fat) it's also not G-max? Being G-max makes its max normal move have a useless side effect in that scenario.

Can Grimsnarl be guarenteed at least two status moves? (With the exception of Bulk Up sets) I got a Sub/Lariat/Sucker/Play Rough one with Leftovers which was really underwhelming.
 

A Cake Wearing A Hat

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I forgot to get screenshots of these two but,

I don't know if it's wanted for Snorlax to have G-max sets, but can it please be made so that if the Snorlax is not holding a berry (like it is Leftovers/Thick Fat) it's also not G-max? Being G-max makes its max normal move have a useless side effect in that scenario.
Not possible given the current way gmax formes are generated in rands (which is as separate Pokemon from the dmax form)

Max strike is useless on it anyway so the loss is minimal and the fix would take way too much work for way too little payoff.
 
Not possible given the current way gmax formes are generated in rands (which is as separate Pokemon from the dmax form)

Max strike is useless on it anyway so the loss is minimal and the fix would take way too much work for way too little payoff.
So G-max Snorlax is treated as a separate Pokemon, and you don't have it always hold a berry? The fuck?
 

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So G-max Snorlax is treated as a separate Pokemon, and you don't have it always hold a berry? The fuck?
Correct. Regular Snorlax doesn't exist in rands and does not have a moveset. There is no reason to give non-rest sets of G-Max Snorlax a berry, because pinch berries suck now big time. These berries would also cause it to roll Gluttony, which is significantly worse than Thick Fat in usefulness. You will not always dynamax your Snorlax so always giving it a berry is not optimal, and if you need to rely on a speed drop from a Snorlax's Max Strike to win you probably lose anyway because your best option was to sack a dynamax Mon without even koing the opponent, who can just switch out.

There is not a feasible way to force all Snorlax sets to have Rest, either, without fixing Snorlax to four moves or doing unnecessary hardcoding. That is also not an option.
 
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A Cake Wearing A Hat

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Because any set for regular Snorlax would be directly inferior to the current sets of G-Max Snorlax. Running solo rest Chesto would mean it would be running a berry without the gmax, resttalk would mean it would be hardwalled by ghosts with literally every curse+rest set it rolls, and no matter what, adding a second Snorlax set would make generating the optimal Snorlax set of gmax curse/rest/slam/coverage move half as common as it currently is due to the way forme splits work in set generation.
 
I don't know if I'm the only one feeling that way, but I can't say I've *ever* been able to use G-Max Replenish and have it matter even once. Best I've gotten is restore berries a few times. But actually living afterwards to rest again? Never happened to me, at best I just die right after dmax ends.

On the other hand, the reason I asked that question initially is because I lost a game due to not having Max Strike. IIRC (it's been a while) it was a late game situation, opponent had already used his dmax, I let something set up as I applied webs thinking I could tank a hit with dyna Snorlax and lower its speed for a teammate to ohko it (and clean up everything), then sent Snorlax, then realised I dun goofed and lost right there because the mon could outspeed and ohko everything I had left (except dyna snorlax obviously). So I disagree heavily with the statement that Max Strike is useless on Snorlax. Max Strike in general is used for teammates more than anything else in general anyway.

If G-Max Replenish was actually useful I'd understand that this is situational at best and a minimal loss that only matters in extreme niche situations like the one I just described, but I feel like I'm missing out more from missing Max Strike than .. whatever nothingness I'd miss if I didn't have Replenish.

It could be that I'm just using Snorlax wrong, idk.
 
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duck

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got a leftovers thievul with foul play, parting shot, psychic, grass knot. I guess a stab special would be nice but idk
 
I don't know if I'm the only one feeling that way, but I can't say I've *ever* been able to use G-Max Replenish and have it matter even once. Best I've gotten is restore berries a few times. But actually living afterwards to rest again? Never happened to me, at best I just die right after dmax ends.

On the other hand, the reason I asked that question initially is because I lost a game due to not having Max Strike. IIRC (it's been a while) it was a late game situation, opponent had already used his dmax, I let something set up as I applied webs thinking I could tank a hit with dyna Snorlax and lower its speed for a teammate to ohko it (and clean up everything), then sent Snorlax, then realised I dun goofed and lost right there because the mon could outspeed and ohko everything I had left (except dyna snorlax obviously). So I disagree heavily with the statement that Max Strike is useless on Snorlax. Max Strike in general is used for teammates more than anything else in general anyway.

If G-Max Replenish was actually useful I'd understand that this is situational at best and a minimal loss that only matters in extreme niche situations like the one I just described, but I feel like I'm missing out more from missing Max Strike than .. whatever nothingness I'd miss if I didn't have Replenish.

It could be that I'm just using Snorlax wrong, idk.
I feel the same way as you do. For itself, Max Strike is pretty useless, sure, but saying it's useless in the context of a full fight is quite wrong IMO. Snorlax is a Pokémon that, thanks to its bulk, you can use as a defensive dynamax to slow down an opponent that is too fast for the rest of your team and to cancel speed boosts. I think that alone is extremely valuable. The number of times I've used G-Max Replenish to its intended purpose can be counted on the hand of someone who's missing 2 or 3 fingers, really.

Anyway, I'd wait for the suspect voting before doing anything.
got a leftovers thievul with foul play, parting shot, psychic, grass knot. I guess a stab special would be nice but idk
Foul play will do more than Dark Pulse in a lot of situations since it's not like Thievul has great special attack without NP.
 
After playing against Cosmic Power Eternatus in the randdubs playest, I think it should be included in singles. Eternatus' bulk, combined with its speed and recover, makes it an incredibly threatening cosmic power user. In normal rands this would be augmented by toxic as well, allowing it to stall out plenty of powerful attackers. I had to get to +2 just to take it out when I doubled it.

That being said, cosmic power only really works if Eternatus also has recover. So if those two couldn't be guaranteed together, I wouldn't support it.
 
Using no retreat with a choice item would be some big brain strategy to confuse your opponent IRL
Obviously No Retreat is not being used with a Choice Band since you lock yourself into it. I would have thought Falkins was guarenteed No Retreat given the whole slew of pure Fighting-Types.
 
With Dynamax staying, I think it might be worth to review some of the abilities. Midday Lycanroc can get Steadfast, although Sand Rush is so much better since it can boost its attack with SD and then set up sandstorm when dynamaxed. Steadfast will only really activate with Fake Out since Lycanroc is pretty fast... and generally, the two most common scarfers carrying flinching moves (Jirachi, Gyarados) will likely KO it anyway.
 

Celever

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Cherrim currently already has two sets, but I don't think it has enough bulk to run SubSeed effectively, which is its Overcast form set. Its most viable set in ZU is scarf with Energy Ball | Giga Drain / Dazzling Gleam / Pollen Puff / Healing Wish. Given the higher bulk of randbats, it could also run with specs. Either way, I think this set is better for its overcast form, partly because its current set is awful and partly because Healing Wish is rare to come by in randbats but it's a cool move that can save games, and it could give Cherrim-Overcast a proper use.
 

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life orb conk is seriously bad. like, switching into a will-o or scald is a fun meme, yes, but it's extremely unreliable and in every other situation you have a significant damage cut with extra chip damage to boot, all for little reason. i guess not having to activate the orb is a somewhat legitimate argument for its viability?
 
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