STAB Effects

Avnomke

Avnomke

This thread will be moderated to keep discussion focused.

Geodude6 said:
Also, STAB commands. They were used quite a lot until it was "ruled" (in quotes because I can't find where this actually happened) by Deck that STAB commands were not useable a la toggle or trigger abilities like Trace or Drought. This then caused usage of STAB commands to virtually cease. At times, I've forgotten they even exist, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I therefore propose that we do one of the following:
A) Make STAB commands useable for free on sendout.
B) Buff STAB commands so that people will actually use them.
C) Explode them.

Option C I'm not really a fan of, because it leaves the Fire, Grass, and Ice-type Polemon without a STAB effect beyond what they have in-game. So that leaves us with the option of making them toggleable on sendout, or buffing the commands themselves. (alongside the obvious option of leaving them as their underpowered current selves) I'm personally a fan of option A, but buffing the commands themselves wouldn't be a bad idea. I'm thinking that a possible Frost buff would be to have it triple the freeze chance as opposed to the current iteration of doubling it, given that a 30% chance is a lot better than a 20% chance and that freezing is nowhere near as powerful in ASB as it is in-game, I'd say that that's pretty good but not overpowered. Brighten could maybe temporarily activate Blaze, Flash Fire, and whatever Fire-type boosting abilities there are. No clue as for what we could do to Bloom. Store we could maybe explode if we go the "buff" route, given that Poison-types already have -- Acc Toxic and Co.
Click to expand...

Okay so this was brought up, and not much discussion happened. There are three questions to be answered:

  • What do we do with STAB commands?
  • Are we better off providing miscellaneous buffs instead of STAB commands?
  • If we do make STAB commands usable on sendout, do they need balance changes?
Thoughts?
 
Well, Elec doesn't have a STAB command and only gets what it already gets in-game, and Steels STAB actually makes it "worse" than in-game's Steel since it can get corroded.

But getting back to commands. I don't think that we should just get rid of them. Making them usable on sendout seems like a good solution. However, if that's what we do, we should take a look over them, since 5 EN for a 30% freeze chance on my Ice-type moves for 6 actions is quite powerful IMO, and getting that poison soon can be nice when your opponent has Endure and whatnot, while also powering up Venoshock and Hex. Sure, you can do that with Toxic, but sometimes it is not possible (opponent subbing, you wanting/having to go for the straight damage race).

Maybe increase the EN cost if they are activated on sendout? Reducing their effects a little bit? Maybe chaging them altogether?
 
I'd argue that active STAB commands are never going to work out in practice. If they're relatively useless (as they are now), even if they provide some unique niche effect, there's always going to be some move the Pokemon can use that is far superior. On the other hand, if they're really useful, then we essentially throw out some importance of movepools because every Pokemon of that type is going to be using the command often.

Instead, what appeals to me is some sort of small improvement to the passive side of things to make a typing more than +3 BAP and immunity to certain things. Some cool defensive boosts could be cool – there's already enough offense as it is, and adding more would just exacerbate type advantages – so maybe something like "Fire-types have a reduced chance of accuracy being lowered" idk that sounds sort of lame but something along those lines?
 
I agree completely. If we are just talking about commands, then sure, make them like trigger abilities and maybe nerf them a little.

However, something like what Engineer said (the passive bonus thing, not the reduces chance to get accuracy lowered :P) is what I think would be better.

Of course, if we do that, then DO explode the commands.
 
STAB Commands fall into my ASB category of "TLR Designer Moves". That is to say,a TLR Designer will develop a trap that uses them, but there's very not much reason to expect to see them used in actual matches... with the exception of them being within "If Protective/Evasive" substitutions.

That's not to say these moves aren't useful. Ice's Frost can give Mega Glalie and Aurorus 90% Freeze Secret power in the appropriate arena (At least, that's how the interaction with refrigerate was last ruled). Store gives Poison Fang 100% Toxic Poison infliction. Brighten and Bloom it's harder to give a reason to use, but they've seen use - particularly in TLR.

I believe the commands are good enough to stand in their own right - I wouldn't object to lowering the EN cost to give the moves another use (A la Splash), but apart from that they're fine.
 
I haven't seen the commands used, at any point. Even in P/E subs, I've always seen Chill used instead and most commands are pretty useless. Frost is the most useful out of the bunch, which is good considering how weak Ice is, but 90% freeze Secret Power is too strong imo. Sadly, I don't see any way we can prevent Frost from being useless without insane freeze chances. Store is almost completely outclassed by Toxic, so that probably needs to be fixed. Although TBH poison is a strong enough typing, it doesn't really need the buff. Brighten is just terrible, I would rather use something like Hone Claws (which is never used) or Gravity or something. It needs to be either replaced or buffed somehow. Same with Bloom, a 15% accuracy increase to bad moves isn't going to make them better.

I like Engi's suggestion. Perhaps give Ice the often-suggested defense boost in hail (and probably something else, looking at rock-types), Fire some pseudo-sun stuff, and Grass some weak version of what the herbs give?
 
I'm opposed to commands on send out because they would jump from useless to OP pretty quickly. This isn't for all of them but imagine Abomasnow or Aurorus on Triples (65.7% to freeze one opponent which you can use each action). IMO to do this we would have to revisit all commands with this in mind (ex. Ice command could be all Ice attacks reduce it's target speed by one stage, or a 50% chance to do so. Poison Command can cause Regular Poison to act as Bad Poison and Bad Poison to start at 2 dpa, etc..)

Otherwise we could make Commands be able to trigger on certain conditions, after an opponent (or ally) is KOed, when you're at <33% health, after 2 rounds have passed, etc...
 
Personally I am more fond of just boosting the commands. Having them effective on the send out is a bit too good and it is better to just turn them into passive bonuses.

I am looking at stuff like:
Store: Triple Poison chance, turn regular poison into toxic poison and increase BAP of Poison-typed moves by 3
Frost: Triple Freeze Chance and increase BAP of Ice-typed moves by 3
Brighten: +1 accuracy to all pokemon on the user's side of the field. Increase BAP of Fire-Typed moves by 3
Bloom: +35 accuracy to "Grass," "Powder," and "Seed" status-moves. Increase BAP of Grass-Typed moves by 3


To move this kinda quickly I propose a voting on what we will do. Something like:

Slate:
- Keep as is
- Keep command activation as is and lower their EN costs
- Keep command activation as is and boost them
- Have commands activate on the switch-in and adjust them accordingly
- Have commands activate when certain conditions are met and adjust them accordingly
- Get rid of commands making the necessary adjustments to balance things out.


Thoughts?
 
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Yes Frosty, Please go for Voting... We can discuss after the council has agreed on a solution.

I personally like this order:

- Have commands activate when certain conditions are met and adjust them accordingly
- Have commands activate on the switch-in and adjust them accordingly
- Keep command activation as is and boost them
- Get rid of commands and replace them with passive boosts for the respective typings, balancing other types if necessary
- Get rid of commands
- Keep command activation as is and lower their EN costs
- Keep as is
- Get rid of commands and replace them with passive boosts for the respective typings

But that is of no concern... We need a council decision. So start a poll for this please.
 
Mulan, they will probably last for 6a, but it is possible that this will be buffed/nerfed if people think that's necessary.

Also Frosty that slate looks good to me, but the last two seems kinda redundant.
 
Personally, I am biased against this petition to come back to Discussion after Voting. Asking the Council to decide on the direction of the Discussion indicates two things - one, the community is too lazy / doesn't care enough about the issue at hand, and two, the community is being too reliant on Council (a small bunch of people not that much different from them) to solve their problems for them.

That said, sugesting that we alter might-be-broken STAB commands without scrapping them all and restarting from scratch. Placeholder post to address any broken STAB command problems that I might perceive. (expect edits because am in class right now)

EDIT:
IMO even if we buff the 4 STAB commands we have now in a manner similar to Trigger abilities, they would need at most minor debuffs to avoid being broken.

  • Store command is okay as a pseudo-Serene Grace thing, Poison Fang's only notable users are Nidoqueen and Seviper for breaking Endure and Taunt with auto-Store.
  • Bloom command is okay as is too, most powder attacks sit at 75% acc IIRC, encouraging some form of speed creep I guess?
  • Frost command is icky because Ice gym will be basically unbeatable with Secret Power, but I think we can balance that by simply forcing the triple FRZ chance on naturally Ice-type moves (i.e. no Refrigerate Secret Power shenanigans)
  • Brighten command is slightly less icky. No idea for what to do, so going for "don't fix if ain't broke".
 
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Yeah, voting before we discuss it enough is not right IMO.

I like the idea of making all STABs a passive boost the most. The other ideas of buffing the commads are not bad, but this is the one I prefer the most, since it puts them in line with all the others. Scrapping them is not something I would like, since this would leave some types with a "disadvantage", if you may say, compared to other types.

Also, I find the increase BAP part of Frosty's suggestions way too powerful. Maybe if it didn't give them a +3, since that is literally a dual STAB plus some more in the form of increased effects.
 
Not really for or against it but I want to float the idea of giving Fairy-types a STAB command or something really easy to remember to replace the current effect.

Because who seriously remembers the Fairy-type STAB effects? That a Mega Gardevoir Pixilate Hyper Voice costs 5 EN and not 6 EN? Who even remembers things like that?
 
The problem is that if we multiply the number of possible ways to handle stab commands with the number of possible formulae or specific changes to make said ways happen (each approach have many formulae possible), we will end up with a ridiculous amount of possibilities and the discussion won't be good enough of deep enough for all of them. Someone may want to have commands trigger at a particular moment, but since the discussion was widespread on many possibilities, none of the proposals to make that option happen were valid and the guy ends up voting or rooting for no commands anymore. The reason why I am proposing to vote the way we will handle things, then return to discussion to figure out specific numbers is so the discussions have focus and we end up with a good product within the approach the majority feels its the best. So every step is discussed adequately.


That being said, we can have discussion develop further before voting is done and it is better than it does develop. I only posted a slate because 5 days passed without a single post.
 
Curiously, the 4 types with Commands already have STAB effects outside of them. Perhaps it would be wise to simply remove the commands altogether? We don't need to replace them with passive bonuses (We already have them !!), and it'll open up the discussion of STAB effects in general.

I'm perfectly happy to leave the commands as is. However, something I'd honestly like to see is some simple justification for STAB Commands.
 
Since the discussion on STAB commands is different from the discussion about STAB bonuses in general (the latter is broader) I goota ask this now, so we can move our discussion further:

Do we want to revisit only the STAB commands or the STAB effects overall? Because if we want the latter, then we might as well restart this from the begining.
 
Rereading the whole thread just because.

The post that started this whole thing is from G6 (and Av may have jumped the gun a little by bringing it straight to Discussion from Feedback thread). Since then, even when there were voices behind scrapping STAB commands and replace them with passive buffs (as well as boosting STAB Commands a la Trigger Abilities), there was none that, well, explicitly mentioned the need to revisit STAB effects overall. Unfortunately keeping Discussion to the 4 types with STAB commands would mean IAR's issue may (emphasis on "may") have to be delayed 'til another thread (not for me to decide though).

Will look for peeps who are willing to do a showcase battle involving STAB Commands, so that we all might have a clearer picture on how broken, or not, STAB Commands are, if buffed in a certain way.
 
I was going to slate this, but the discussion is so wide and hectic that I can't even make a slate.

Answer these questions people please:

a) Should STAB Commands stay or go?

b) If they should stay, should them be activated upon release, or through the usage of an action? Also, do you think they should be tweaked in those cases?

c) Should we revisit STAB effects as a whole or just STAB Commands?
 
a) Stay. This would be easier to work out without making some types OP and others weak.
b) Both. If both wouldn't work, then action usage. After deciding this, then tweak to buff/nerf as needed (probably nerf if automatic on send out, but buff otherwise).
c) STAB commands only.
 
a) As they are, there's pretty much no reason to keep them. They're a cool idea though, just maybe a bit of revision, idk.

b) That would kind of depend on what the STAB commands are changed to if changed at all. Basically using the STAB commands means not being able to use anything else on the action they are used, if we decide to go action usage, so they'd better be worth that action. If they're activated upon release then obv. they should be weaker.

c) STAB effects as a whole imo. Again they're a nice idea but imo a couple of them might need to be looked at.
 
a) Stay. I love my TLR designer commands where I can use them to screw over the challengers and whatnot (Exhibit A: Molten Lake)... :|

b) I do not have much of an opinion on this. It may not hurt to have some ppl go through test matches with STAB Commands not using an action before we make a judgement on whether they are broken or not.

c) As a whole. Who the hell remembers the Fairy-type STAB effect? Who the hell remembers the Dragon-type STAB effect? Also the Rock-type STAB effect is somewhat suspect as it is with priority passed Protect / Screens / etc being a powerful effect.
 
a) Stay
B) Tweaked. Evidence of a larger issue and abilities/stab effects activating only if you are ordering first instead of sending out first.
c) Whole. We need to nerf rock-type STAB's effect to not include moves that do NOT boost Defense Stages.
 
I also think we should revisit STAB Effects as a whole.

So let's get to it, I suppose.

There are the STAB Effects we have now:

Bug
Bug STAB; Adds an additional guaranteed attack on all multi-hit moves (does not include two hit moves) with a total hit cap of five (5).

Dark
Dark STAB; ignores Attract and Confusion status entirely when using Dark-type damaging and non-damaging attacks.

Dragon
Dragon STAB; -1 BAP on incoming neutral attacks Dragon itself would resist (e.g. -1 BAP on Aqua Jet against Garchomp.) Unable to have Thrash or Outrage disrupted by oncoming damage.

Electric
Electric STAB; immune to paralysis status.

Fairy
Fairy STAB: -1 EN on non-Fairy typed Nature, Sound, and Scent moves (Stacks with second STAB where applicable). (Nature Power, Natural Gift; Sound Moves; Aromatherapy, Odor Sleuth, Sweet Scent)

Fighting
Fighting STAB; ignore weight restrictions on Circle Throw, Seismic Toss, Sky Drop, Storm Throw, Submission, and Vital Throw.

Fire
Fire STAB; immune to burn status. Brighten Command.

Brighten Command: For the next six (6) actions, all this Pokemon's attacks will have their accuracy increased by one stage. Type Exclusive commands can only be used by Pokemon that are naturally that type, and are still available if the Pokemon changes type.
Command Type: Type Exclusive | Accuracy: -- | Energy Cost: 5 | Priority: 0 | CT: None

Flying
Flying STAB; immunity to Ground attacks and the Arena Trap Ability except under the effects of Smack Down and Gravity, even for ground-based flying Pokemon. Will always hit foes with Dig (except other Flying types) and Dive. Cannot be hit by Dive unless the attacking Pokemon has a size class greater than four (4). Unaffected by Spikes or Toxic Spikes. when switching in. Able to hit Pokemon in the evasive stage of Bounce, Fly or Sky Drop with single target moves that hit Pokemon on the field regardless of position.

Ghost
Ghost STAB; immune to the effects of full trapping moves and the Arena Trap, Magnet Pull, and Shadow Tag abilities. Ghost types can switch out while affected by a partial trapping move, but they will be damaged every action by their effect.

Grass
Grass STAB; immunity to Leech Seed, Worry Seed, and all "Powder" based attacks (Poisonpowder, Powder, Rage Powder, Sleep Powder, Spore, Stun Spore). Unable to have Petal Dance disrupted by oncoming damage. Ignores Arena restrictions on Grass attacks requiring an external grass source. Bloom Command.

Bloom Command: For the next six (6) actions, this Pokemon's "Grass," "Powder," and "Seed" status-moves will have fifteen (15) added points to their Base Accuracy (e.g. Grass Whistle goes from 55 Base Acc to 70 Base Acc). Type Exclusive commands can only be used by Pokemon that are naturally that type, and are still available if the Pokemon changes type.
Command Type: Type Exclusive | Accuracy: -- | Energy Cost: 5 | Priority: 0 | CT: None

Ground
Ground STAB; immune to Sandstorm. Ignores Arena restrictions on Dig and Seismic Attacks for Arenas in which any land mass exists, Evasive Digging reduced from 6 per action Energy Cost to 5 per action.

Ice
Ice STAB; immune to Hail damage, freeze status, and Sheer Cold. Frost Command.

Frost Command: For the next six (6) actions, this Pokemon's Ice moves will have triple the freeze chance. Type Exclusive commands can only be used by Pokemon that are naturally that type, and are still available if the Pokemon changes type.
Command Type: Type Exclusive | Accuracy: -- | Energy Cost: 5 | Priority: 0 | CT: None

Normal
Normal STAB; +1 BAP on attacks that match dominant arena type after 3 actions. Unable to have Thrash or Outrage disrupted by oncoming damage.

Poison
Poison STAB; immunity to Poison/Toxic status. Absorb Toxic Spikes on switch-in unless Flying-typed or using the ability Levitate. -- Accuracy when using Toxic, Poison Gas, or Poison Powder, hitting even during Dig, Fly, etc. Ignore Fog's accuracy reduction. Store Command.

Store Command: For the next six (6) actions, this Pokemon's moves will have their poison / toxic effect chance double.
Command Type: Type Exclusive | Accuracy: -- | Energy Cost: 5 | Priority: 0 | CT: None

Psychic
Psychic STAB; can lift and throw opponents with Psychic regardless of Special Attack Rank. Psychic-type attacks are not godlike and cannot be used as a catchall for Disabling, Binding, and redirecting opposing attacks.

Rock
Rock STAB; Adds an additional level of Priority (+0 to +1, +3 to +4 etc.) on naturally occurring level-up, egg, tutor, or TM attacks that increase only defense, special defense, or prevent damage (Full list: Acid Armor, Amnesia, Barrier, Defense Curl, Detect, Quick Guard, Harden, Iron Defense, Light Screen, Protect, Reflect, Skull Bash, Stockpile, Wide Guard, Withdraw). Reduced damage from all special attacks by two (2) Base Attack Power during Sandstorm, immune to Sandstorm damage. Ignores Arena restrictions on Rock attacks requiring an external rock source.

Steel
Steel STAB; immune to Sandstorm damage, immune to Poison/Toxic status, but can be corroded specifically by Acid and Acid Spray, making them susceptible to Poison-type attacks and Poison/Toxic Status.

Water
Water STAB; Ignores arena restrictions on Water attacks that require an external water source. Evasive Diving reduced from 6 per action Energy Cost to 5 per action.


- - -

Which effects you people think are fine as is and which ones should be looked into? We will go through them one-by-one using the balanced ones for comparison.
 
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