If you're using Ash Gren, Water Shuriken is always 3 hits, regardless of Skill Link.
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
Metagame Shared Power [Under Re-Construction!]
- Thread starter Haaku.
- Start date
- Status
Battle Bond makes it so Water Shuriken has 20 BP and will always hit 3 times. (That, and the fact that Skill Link just got banned, but I don't think it's implemented yet)
As for my view on the new bans:
- Skill Link is good to see gone. Most of what I think about Skill Link was already stated by other people above so I won't go much in depth here.
- Magic Guard is really the spotlight here. It is true that this opens up room for dumb things like Iron Barbs + Rough Skin + Rocky Helmet, but it creates a whole lotta fun new strategies too. Magic Bounce does the job decently, but now you would need Rock Head to nullify recoil (Note that Mind Blown isn't affected by this abiliy), among a fewother things
As for the substitute thing... How good is infiltrator on the meta? I've never tested it myself but it shuts down the foe just spamming substitute endlessly. (It's not like Infiltrator has bad users either - Chandelure and Crobat are pretty fine mons.
I think he means, that he only gets 3 hits, instead of the maximal 5 hits due to Skill Link.
As far as I know, Battle Bond changes the maximum to 3. Or at the least it seems like it from what the ability says:
"After KOing a Pokemon: becomes Ash-Greninja, Water Shuriken: 20 power, hits 3x."
I'm not entirely sure tho. May be just because the abilities weren't supposed to interact, may be because it's Ash-Greninja (Unless you're running Accelgor as well for some reason). Either way, not really relevant anymore due to the ban.
I've never once seen anyone try to fit Infiltrator on a team, unfortunately. It's just not feasible to expect the rare case that you match up against a substitute stall, and having Infiltrator otherwise is borderline useless. And yeah, Boomburst Noivern ironically enough is redundant with Infiltrator.
Big kudos to Haaku for continuing efforts to balance the metagame as OMOTM reaches its halfway point (unlike, say, Ultimate Z. RIP).
And yes, Water Shuriken on Ash-Greninja is designed to be 3 hits always, similar to how Gear Grind or Double Hit are 2 hits.
Note that a Skill Link softban isn't the end of the world, Skill Link fanatics. Cloyster on its own can still do serious damage with it!
Shared Power Stage 2Due to the sheer amount of votes in the thread, I have decided that I might as well make this a formal Suspect Test. After a long discussion with the current council members, we believe that the results are satisfactory and that they will help towards balancing the metagame in the long con. Without further ado, here are the much-expected results of the decision that will change the meta:
Pray For Me
Magic Guard
BAN: 80
DNB: 61
Even though a 57% majority is lower than that of the SP Stage 1 suspect, we believe it is enough to guide us in the direction the community wants us to take. After talking with SamHPL Kris that ivy guy and aGroove, I have personally changed my mind on what decision makes the most sense myself. While banning Magic Guard is a tough choice, it is essential towards the future of the metagame. Magic Guard enables abilities that are normally fine (like Sturdy) to be completely broken, and the overcentralization of this ability is something toxic towards the development of the metagame. It is unknown whether Magic Bounce or even Multiscale are broken without Magic Guard, but it is a safe assessment to make. The council will not be banning Multiscale and instead will ban Magic Guard. So, after a long time of discussion and mistakes, Magic Guard has been BANNED from sharing in Shared Power! Innards Out is also banned for obvious reasons.
Multiscale
BAN: 61
DNB: 80
Conversely, the rest of the community voted to ban Multiscale instead, but with only a 43% of players voting to ban it, it just wasn’t enough. Because of this. Multiscale has been UNBANNED from Shared Power. This ability may still be looked at in the future, but the council decided that it does not appear to be a huge probem at the moment, and we have decided to not base bans on a metagame that doesn’t exist yet. Because of this, Multiscale remains for now.
Magic Bounce
BAN: 36
DNB: 44
With less than half of the divided Magic Guard votes voting to ban Magic Bounce also, Magic Bounce remains UNBANNED. This may also become a problem later on. Currently, teams will feel the need to include a Mold Breaker Steath Rock Pokemon solely to bypass the fact that these teams are still immune to a large portion of passive damage. We will see if Magic Bounce proves to be an equally broken replacement for Magic Guard, but it remains unbanned for now. Lastly, the council has decided to move forward with some of the bans I proposed myself a couple of posts ago. Those are the following.
Now that the results from the suspect test are in, here are the council bans:
Skill Link
- Mega Beedrill has proven to not be the enabler of the ultimate problem- Skill Link. These teams only took a slight hit from Mega Beedrill’s loss and continue to invalidate many defensive and offensive archetypes alike. I believe I’ve said everything I have to say in the post earlier, but I’m just gonna conclude this with the news that Skill Link has been BANNED from sharing in Shared Power. Moving on to the next topic, but should be pretty obvious:
Mega Beedrill
- The sole factor making Mega Beedrill a broken Pokemon in Shared Power was Skill Link. Now that it is eliminated from the metagame, it’s my pleasure to announce to announce that Mega Beedrill has been UNBANNED from Shared Power. Free mega bee!!
Prankster + Substitute
- The combination of Prankster and Substitute allows for two broken elements of the metagame. The first one is the recently discovered Substitute + Prankster Pressure Stall, which is a defensive metagame almost impossible to break for certain playstyles. With Skill Link, one of the only ways to deal with this strategy, gone from the metagame, it has become an even bigger problem. Another playstyle that can Combat these Pressure stall teams is Triage, but it’s not feasible to expect every single team to run it and only enhances the matchup based nature of the metagame. The other abuser of this combination is Harvest teams. Harvest teams rely on setting up fast Substitutes in order to activate berries and sweep while the opponent cannot do anything back since they run APS. Banning the combination of Prankster + Substitute, despite being a very unwanted complex ban, kills two birds with one stone. Neither element is even the least broken here, but the combination of both is gamebreaking. It is for these reasons that the combination of any Pokemon with Prankster + any Pokemon with Substitute is now BANNED. One very last thing to get out of the way:
Harvest
- Harvest teams are a lot more difficult to pull off because of the ban above. While Starf Berry remains to be a pretty dumb element in Shared Power, it is not concerningly problematic at this point and that’s why Harvest has been UNBANNED from Shared Power.
I understand that this is an incredibly lot to digest, but those are the new Shared Power bans! If you haven’t already, I strongly suggest reading this post as it goes in-depth into our “mission” to balance the Shared Power metagame this month. While my stance at that time was to keep Magic Guard unbanned, the new council and I have come into an unanimous decision- one that will ultimately benefit the metagame. Shared Power is a very hard metagame to tier, and we’re doing everything within our abilities to do so. The decision to unban Magic Guard wasn’t an easy one. There was a legitimate argument for either side of the spectrum, and in the end, we let the community decide where we should take the metagame. In case anything was missed:
Magic Guard has been BANNED
Skill Link has been BANNED
Prankster + Substitute has been BANNED
Innards Out has been BANNED
Multiscale has been UNBANNED
Mega Beedrill has been UNBANNED
Harvest has been UNBANED
Tagging Kris to implement this on main!
Good timing. Enjoy!
MS Paintkeldurr is here to tell you that he'll be returning to focus punching the fuck out of this meta now that the mild inconvenience of a possible Substitute ban is no more, and that he doesn't have to worry about prankster substitute bullshit anymore.
yes, i put absolutely 0 effort into this one. feel free to steal the image if you want and use it in every other thread you want.
Thanks Haaku :]]]]]
Loving the no Magic Guard meta. I originally thought Sturdy not getting banned and Mutiscale coming back were going to be an issue, then I remembered the best move in the game, Stealth Rock. Now it's just get up stealth rocks (maintain them at least for a good about of the battle) and sweep! Let's see who has the better offense!
Stealth Rock ban anyone? Nah, that would never happen...
Nidoking used Sludge Wave!
The opposing Trevenant lost 72% of its health!
The opposing Trevenant ate its Starf Berry!
The opposing Trevenant's Attack rose sharply!
[Opposing Trevenant's Cheek Pouch!]
The opposing Trevenant restored its HP.
The opposing Trevenant used Substitute!
The opposing Trevenant put in a substitute!
The opposing Trevenant lost 25% of its health!
Nidoking was burned by the Flame Orb!
[Opposing Trevenant's Harvest!]
The opposing Trevenant harvested one Starf Berry!
The opposing Trevenant ate its Starf Berry!
The opposing Trevenant's Special Attack rose sharply!
[Opposing Trevenant's Cheek Pouch!]
The opposing Trevenant restored its HP
This is... quite fun.
The problem with this, its unbeatable.
The pokemon abusing this gets insane bulk with whatever berries it wants to abuse and with sturdy...
someone help with this...
The opposing Trevenant lost 72% of its health!
The opposing Trevenant ate its Starf Berry!
The opposing Trevenant's Attack rose sharply!
[Opposing Trevenant's Cheek Pouch!]
The opposing Trevenant restored its HP.
The opposing Trevenant used Substitute!
The opposing Trevenant put in a substitute!
The opposing Trevenant lost 25% of its health!
Nidoking was burned by the Flame Orb!
[Opposing Trevenant's Harvest!]
The opposing Trevenant harvested one Starf Berry!
The opposing Trevenant ate its Starf Berry!
The opposing Trevenant's Special Attack rose sharply!
[Opposing Trevenant's Cheek Pouch!]
The opposing Trevenant restored its HP
This is... quite fun.
The problem with this, its unbeatable.
The pokemon abusing this gets insane bulk with whatever berries it wants to abuse and with sturdy...
someone help with this...
Unnaware makes this strat go down tho, unless the foe has a Mold Breaker mon. In fact, Prankster + Taunt also works against non-Dark mons running this, Knock Off is useful against teams without Sticky Hold and, like I mentioned earlier in the thread, infiltrator can help too. I'm not saying it isn't a sort of broken strategy, but calling it "Unbeatable" is a bit of a stretch.
Every berry abuse build should have a mold breaker mon, usually pangoro
Deleted User 229847
Banned deucer.
it's either pangoro or kyurem-b, but pangoro destroys the entire metagame with double stab so yeah
After playing a few rounds....
I want to ask what you think about unbanning Mold Breaker? Because right now, you have soooo much stuff to deal with, that I think unbanning Mold Breaker is easier than Banning everything else. Prankster + Unaware + Magic Bounce is something you just cannot break. Slap a Mega-Slowbro + Dnite (Multiscale) on top of that and it just becomes impossible to beat (unless you run Unaware, but even then it is problematic).
If your Opponent runs Intimidate + Regenerator, you HAVE to run Contrary/ Defiant, otherwise, your physical attackers won't do much.
Against Priority, you need one of Psychic Surge/ QM/ Dazzling. While Dazzling and QM stop you from any kind of Priority, it won't stop you from Mold Breaker Triage, for that, you need Lele. But with Psychic Surge, your non-grounded Mons are not safe from any kind of Priority and also after 5 turn, the Mon that is in the battle right now, is not safe anymore either. On top of that, if your opponent runs a Koko, your defense against Triage becomes almost completely destroyed.
I just feel like there is soon much to deal with, that it might probably be better, just to unban Mold Breaker instead and see how it develops for a few days.
On a side note, while banning Magic Guard changed the Metagame a lot, I still find it annoying as of right now. Some use Magic Bounce instead, where a Mold Breaker Rock setter (Pinsir/ Excadrill) is quite useful. Then you also have Donphan, which - alongside Excadrill - can also Spin your rocks away. The benefit now is, that Donphan has Sturdy, so it can run Mental Herb/ Rocky Helmet, where especially Rocky Helmet prevents the opposing Excadrill from spinning in the long run. Opposing Sturdy/ Multiscale/ Focus Sash is as annoying as it was before, with the only difference that you have to invest in some Hazard Control instead now. If you want to prepare against it, you need like 2 Mons just to handle Hazard Control. But these 2 Mons now become dead against almost anything else.
I honestly feel, like this Metagame is too centralized on the Match-up and you basically lose, when you have the wrong Match, regardless of how well you play. Either your have the counter to your opponent and automatically win or you don't and instantly lose. Other extreme Metagames like Mix & Mega are not as heavily match-up reliant as this one, so I'm not sure on how to properly deal with this in the long run.
I want to ask what you think about unbanning Mold Breaker? Because right now, you have soooo much stuff to deal with, that I think unbanning Mold Breaker is easier than Banning everything else. Prankster + Unaware + Magic Bounce is something you just cannot break. Slap a Mega-Slowbro + Dnite (Multiscale) on top of that and it just becomes impossible to beat (unless you run Unaware, but even then it is problematic).
If your Opponent runs Intimidate + Regenerator, you HAVE to run Contrary/ Defiant, otherwise, your physical attackers won't do much.
Against Priority, you need one of Psychic Surge/ QM/ Dazzling. While Dazzling and QM stop you from any kind of Priority, it won't stop you from Mold Breaker Triage, for that, you need Lele. But with Psychic Surge, your non-grounded Mons are not safe from any kind of Priority and also after 5 turn, the Mon that is in the battle right now, is not safe anymore either. On top of that, if your opponent runs a Koko, your defense against Triage becomes almost completely destroyed.
I just feel like there is soon much to deal with, that it might probably be better, just to unban Mold Breaker instead and see how it develops for a few days.
On a side note, while banning Magic Guard changed the Metagame a lot, I still find it annoying as of right now. Some use Magic Bounce instead, where a Mold Breaker Rock setter (Pinsir/ Excadrill) is quite useful. Then you also have Donphan, which - alongside Excadrill - can also Spin your rocks away. The benefit now is, that Donphan has Sturdy, so it can run Mental Herb/ Rocky Helmet, where especially Rocky Helmet prevents the opposing Excadrill from spinning in the long run. Opposing Sturdy/ Multiscale/ Focus Sash is as annoying as it was before, with the only difference that you have to invest in some Hazard Control instead now. If you want to prepare against it, you need like 2 Mons just to handle Hazard Control. But these 2 Mons now become dead against almost anything else.
I honestly feel, like this Metagame is too centralized on the Match-up and you basically lose, when you have the wrong Match, regardless of how well you play. Either your have the counter to your opponent and automatically win or you don't and instantly lose. Other extreme Metagames like Mix & Mega are not as heavily match-up reliant as this one, so I'm not sure on how to properly deal with this in the long run.
Jrsmash9
jrsmash that timer
Mold breaker should not be unbanned, that would then be used on every team and invalidate so many abilities even more then magic guard did. Stall is weaker on the special side and can be broken, however if you don't prep at all expect to lose.
And this is the problem. It is just too much going on in this tier, you just cannot prep for everything at the same time.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but this meta just isn't as fun to me without magic guard. I'm all for the ban of multiscale, sturdy, and regenerator but a lot of what made this meta so fun to me was the combinations with magic guard like solar power. Anyone else feel the same way?
Going to tag urkerab and Kris to help fix a bug that’s been happening recently. As you can see in this replay, Intimidate is stacking when you have multiple Pokemon with the ability. This isn’t intentional, and only works once when you have a native user like Lando-T out, also seen on this replay. It’s not a huge deal, but yeah.
I personally enjoy the balance that the Magic Guard ban has brought onto the meta a lot. Sure it’s all fun and all but it only makes things more broken that they currently are. Also, a Magic Guard ban may make stuff like Solar Power unviable, but also allows for a lot of cool things like Rough Skin/Iron Barbs and others.
That’s just hyperbole on your part. It’s a legitimate strategy even after Substitute was banned on Prankster teams, but come on. You don’t go into detail on what makes this any good at all, and you’re not telling anyone anything by just saying “it’s impossible to beat pls ban.”
Or you could just run a special attacker.
I personally enjoy the balance that the Magic Guard ban has brought onto the meta a lot. Sure it’s all fun and all but it only makes things more broken that they currently are. Also, a Magic Guard ban may make stuff like Solar Power unviable, but also allows for a lot of cool things like Rough Skin/Iron Barbs and others.
Have you played against it? If so, tell me how to beat it. I legitimately see no way to break this core.
LatiasDigs
formerly digitalson
I'm just going to mention a mon that I think is VERY underrated, and that would be Mega lop
mlop has two things that make it powerful in sp (granted, only one is specific to sp, the other is mainly the same as why its powerful in anything else)
first, of course, unresisted stabs thanks to scrappy, in addition to high atk and speed, making it hard to wall if you setup with pup as well as stacking abilities such as touch claws, adapt, hustle+no guard, etc. not to mention you can boost speed with beast boost or attack with moxie.
second, and the more fun one, is cute charm, which is bad in standard, but limber isnt amazing either. However, in sp, ALL of your team will get cute charm (until you mega, but scrappy isnt bad either), so mons with contact moves will need to watch out for it. Nevertheless you should only use cute charm over limber if your team can properly abuse it, for example, having a defensive core with opposite genders, such as a male toxapex and a female clefable, to maximize odds of infatuation. Now, it's only a 30% chance and requires contact, but infatuation itself is essentially a pre-nerf confusion (minus making them hit themselves), so it can come in handy.
mlop has two things that make it powerful in sp (granted, only one is specific to sp, the other is mainly the same as why its powerful in anything else)
first, of course, unresisted stabs thanks to scrappy, in addition to high atk and speed, making it hard to wall if you setup with pup as well as stacking abilities such as touch claws, adapt, hustle+no guard, etc. not to mention you can boost speed with beast boost or attack with moxie.
second, and the more fun one, is cute charm, which is bad in standard, but limber isnt amazing either. However, in sp, ALL of your team will get cute charm (until you mega, but scrappy isnt bad either), so mons with contact moves will need to watch out for it. Nevertheless you should only use cute charm over limber if your team can properly abuse it, for example, having a defensive core with opposite genders, such as a male toxapex and a female clefable, to maximize odds of infatuation. Now, it's only a 30% chance and requires contact, but infatuation itself is essentially a pre-nerf confusion (minus making them hit themselves), so it can come in handy.
Happy Valentine's day :D
Oops, that probably affected Download as well. AquaticPanic tested a fix for me and I've submitted a PR.
I have been trying Garchomp and it is pretty good in this new meta. Against offensive teams he can help with rough skin to break sturdy/sash and if you are using a sand team he can mega evolve and provide sand force against defensive teams. The main problem with rough skin is that you need to be attacked in order to force activation, but it offer help if you dont set up rocks.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7sharedpower-703803794
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7sharedpower-703810583
There is a banette exploit with prankster in these battles.
This is proif that harvest needs to be banned immediately.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7sharedpower-703810583
There is a banette exploit with prankster in these battles.
This is proif that harvest needs to be banned immediately.
Last edited:
Yeah this is being worked on. Expect some sort of fix in the near future. The complex ban isn't able to be as robust as it needed to be
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7sharedpower-703894833
A complex ban would be pointless. Just get rid of Harvest.
A complex ban would be pointless. Just get rid of Harvest.
Again.
Multiscale + Regenerator + Pressure + Unaware + Poison Heal + Marvel Scale is unbeatable. You can only win, when you have dedicated Counters, but then you lose to everything els ein this Metagame. I told you this before, but instead of reacting, all you did was saying "lolz, get gud".
I came to the Conclusion, that his Metagame just cannot be balanced, no matter how hard you try. You either have to ban a lot, or urban a lot, to make a lot of things happening. Right now, Sturdy and Multiscale are way more annoying, than all the creative Teams we had to face, that worked under Magic Guard. I am heavily for banning Mulstiscale / Regenerator and unbanning Magic Guard. Skill Link + Technician doesn't really hit that much harder than Adaptability + Tough Claws for example or some other combinations involving Guts (where you also have the defensive option with Poison Heal).
After all the time invested into testing, I will just leave this Metagame how it is and return in like 2 weeks to see, if anything changed.
- Status