Resource BBP Bug and Feedback Thread - Generation 9 Edition!

[Gemini Taurus]

Berries have been reworked along with their abilities and as the resident-berry obsessed individual I have a piece of feedback.

A good chunk of the rework as stated was to promote the use of non-healing berries as they had largely outclassed other berries especially on users that had berry-related strategies. A good amount of the changes involved effects requiring different named berries which I think works great, however the part I find myself struggling with is timing changes on berries.

Pinch berries trigger has changed so that they can only trigger at start of round (along with a lot of berries that already have this timing), this means that on a Harvest user for example, having a pinch berry in your bag may actually be detrimental. You likely want to grab an item from your backpack that can have use immediately, but if you accidentally get a pinch berry you're stuck with it until the next round begins, or potentially even longer.

While I may be struggling to find more creative backpacks, I actually think this change pushes me away from using a variety of berries rather than encouraging them, I want to get the most use out of my backpack as possible and Harvest is a cool way of doing so, but with a lot of the berries being "dead draws" it makes me hesitant to reach for them.

Not sure if there is room for multiple triggers on the same berry, but unfortunately as-is I do find myself deterred a bit due to the side effect of many berries being start-of-round only.

 

[LouisCyphre]

Keep the circuit feedback coming; I'm hoping to do some follow-up work near the end of the month.

Some feelers:

• How do we feel about Pressure, Lucky Egg, or other large reworks?
• How do we feel about switching a mon into, say, Spikes in order to faint, and influence post order?
• How do we feel about nerfed Pokemon? Do they still check what they're supposed to?

We're not going to have perfect information on any of these after only one month of play, but I still would prefer to check.

 

[Maxim]

Keep the circuit feedback coming; I'm hoping to do some follow-up work near the end of the month.

Some feelers:

• How do we feel about Pressure, Lucky Egg, or other large reworks?
• How do we feel about switching a mon into, say, Spikes in order to faint, and influence post order?
• How do we feel about nerfed Pokemon? Do they still check what they're supposed to?

We're not going to have perfect information on any of these after only one month of play, but I still would prefer to check.

I will try to give my own two cents here.

1. How do we feel about Pressure, Lucky Egg, or other large reworks?

Pressure: I actually really like the Dread on send-in effect. It's a very nice way to give the Pressure user a bit of setup time and is a nice flavor win for Dusknoir and various legends. I'm a little worried about the increase in energy based on Round count. Even at Round 5 the opponent is burning 15 extra energy per round unless they take a turn off. That said my only experience with it has been my Realgam vs. Mustard, where it only partially worked due to Ring Target. In fact can we delete Ring Target from the game? Overall though, a very positive change to an ability that wanted some love.

Lucky Egg: Take my opinion with a grain of salt on this item, because I've historically hated this item for making my stat-stick Pokemon worse. That being said, this item is brutal against anything without item control. Unless the opponent heavily outstats the user, the opponent has access to Penalty Proof, or the opponent has item control it makes stats no longer matter. Now it does not even have a self-disposal clause, making it's presence even more oppressive. A particularly notable user (on paper) for this is Shiftry, who can patch their stats, buff with Wind Rider, and even Pickpocket a damage item from their opponent (unless their opponent doesn't bring a damage boosting item, which is a win in itself). Most other forms of getting Attack Aid and Defense Aid require a very specific Pokemon setup, this one is just too free to me. Just seems like an overly oppressive item to me.

Others:
Commander: Didn't need a nerf, how dare you! Nah I'm just kidding, I actually like the change here. I get that Dondozo's Commander effect is equivalent to Lucky Egg, but at least it has a price of having to use specifically Dondozo and Tatsugiri in the same game.
Unnerve + Intimidate: Viva La Masquerain! (I like it)
Damage Adapting Berries (Kee and Maranga): Probably a bit too strong for raids specifically. Especially since you can use the Commander role to hold both, and the Butler role to regenerate them. Fine otherwise.
Power Items: I actually like the change here. It's a pretty interesting way to incentivize stat boosting. Only thing I'm not sure about is the Silence effect on Lens, as I'm not sure how it ties into SpA stages other than randomly countering my Primarina, smh.
Shell Bell: Super excited to try this with Primarina!
Imprison: This feels way better now. Great Job with this!
Evasion Abilities: Hello Brightpowder Ninetales-Alola my old friend... (Split down the middle on this one).

2. How do we feel about switching a mon into, say, Spikes in order to faint, and influence post order?

I rather like the idea of sending in a Pokemon to change the post order. At the end of the day the player switching into Spikes is spending a resource that could be brought in with Heavy Duty Boots or Defog/Rapid Spin in order to influence post order. Seems fair to me.

3. How do we feel about nerfed Pokemon? Do they still check what they're supposed to?

I think most of the Pokemon nerfs were handled really well. The changes kept most of the power while making them not as obscene. Gallade is still strong but not a huge menace, Ursaluna now has some additional options for countering with status effects, and Bellibolt is no longer made of cheese. The only one I'm iffy on is Dragonite, where it feels almost stronger than before, but I don't think there's been a Dragonite match since the change and it was recently edited to let Mold Breaker work again, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

 

[HeliosAflame]

• How do we feel about Pressure, Lucky Egg, or other large reworks?

Pressure and spite scare me, as someone who fully intends to use both. I had a realgam that went from unlosable to nail biter because vespiquen can spam rest, potions, mud slap comboes and other tools to vastly extend a battle if they don't care about actually proactively winning the fight. Spite is at least proactive, but its very hard to interact with and also starts stacking up very quickly.
I like the ideas of having finishers like this, but the numbers seem dangerous. I guess will see more as more pressure and spite is actually used at level 4.
Lucky egg is really good but I don't mind its existence. Maybe doesn't need crit bonus
Z-move changes look really fun. I wanna try them out and will have more opinions in a few months I guess. I think a few z move uses might end up a bit strong, guess we will see
Levitate is a cool rework. We might want to watch levitate + wonder room since I think a fair amount of pokemon have no real answer to that.
Berry changes I am unsure on. A lot of the generically good berries got nerfed (intentionally I think) but many of the replacements do not seem consistently valuable enough for pvp, which leads to me just not running berries instead. Seperately I think that the 2 step phys/magic immunity berries seem a bit much in raid. There are quite a few ways to recurr them.
Power items, shell bell I have been experimenting with these items a bit and want them to be cool, but its tricky. Moves like knock off are so common, and many of them ask you to use moves that can be exploited by the opponent unless you sub to protect them. Over all it feels like these items are very awkward if you are first order. Not sure of a solution just bringing it up

• How do we feel about switching a mon into, say, Spikes in order to faint, and influence post order

Seems fine. My intuition is either they die in the switch phase and turn order changes, or they die in step 1 and turn order changes + the opponent can take an action. Neither feels particularly abusive

• How do we feel about nerfed Pokemon? Do they still check what they're supposed to?

I do not really know what the nerfed pokemon were meant to check, but I like all the nerfs. None of them look unplayable. I think gallade might still be nuts but I guess time will tell

 

[P2X7]

Some feelers:

• How do we feel about Pressure, Lucky Egg, or other large reworks?

I'm no longer interested in using Shell Bell. I don't think its reworked state is bad, per se; I just can't imagine myself bringing it to a match because the playstyle that it encourages is too restrictive for my preferences.

• How do we feel about switching a mon into, say, Spikes in order to faint, and influence post order?

I consider this an acceptable risk for setting the strongest category of Field Condition. It's really no different from switching a weakened Pokemon into a faster opponent and forcing a KO on Step 1, and both situations add some strategic depth to the game.

• How do we feel about nerfed Pokemon? Do they still check what they're supposed to?

I don't think Dragonite was actually nerfed. Multiscale's new effect prevents Dragonite from being KOed in fewer than five hits in most matchups, which gives it plenty of time to KO its foe or escape, and its new trigger condition frees Dragonite from the need to preserve a full HP bar, which in turn affords Dragonite more versatility in Item choice and allows it to switch into Stealth Rock if necessary.

The politest thing I'll say about Tatsugiri is "good riddance." In a game in which most Pokemon require months of grinding to reach competitive success, there shouldn't be a single Pokemon that best completes virtually every team in the "Bring X, Pick Y" format for zero investment beyond its initial purchase.

 

[TheEver]

I think the issue I'm having with a lot of the reworked items has little to do with the items themselves but rather with their nicheness. With a backpack size of seven in most formats, I find there is little room to consider niche items like reworked Shell Bell or the Power Items, outside of cases where they have perfect synergy with one of the mons I'm bringing (Shell Bell Skeledirge, Power Belt Archaludon, stuff like that). This sentiment is also extended to the items that didn't make it to the patch notes but find themselves occupying similar niche territory.

This is also compounded by the need (personally) to bring a Sticky Barb and a Ring Target in every backpack to keep my opponents shenanigans in check. This is good in the sense that it means abilities and items are strong and not an afterthought, but bad in the sense that it further limits creative backpacks. In fact, straight up, every backpack I make is probably containing a Ring Target, Sticky Barb, Lucky Egg, and Life Orb, leaving three slots to make my backpack team-specific. Items like Covert Cloak, Clear Amulet, or Cleanse Tag - ones that save your ass like 20% of the time - are really hard to fit into backpacks when I need to make sure six mons are supported with seven items, compared to the previously listed four which will give you some level of value in every match.

After some further thought, I think it's fine for one to switch into hazards and faint to swap posting order. I think the tradeoff is reasonable. One thing though is that I don't think mons who do this should trigger their enter play abilities like Intimidate or Pressure (I'm not sure if they currently even do or not, but I think that they shouldn't). Flipping post order is already good enough incentive.

I think Gallade and Ursaluna are still top mons, but like the goal was, I think they're now more in line with their direct competition (other S tier purchasables). Both of these two took nerfs to their favourite items, Gallade took some nerfs to two of its favourite moves, and both will feel the distribution of Bonus-Proof. I'm not sure if Dragonite can be considered a nerfed mon the way the other two big three can. I feel like it's more of a reworked mon, with the list of who it checks and who checks it shuffled around, rather than just allowing more counterplay overall like with the other two.

 

[HeliosAflame]

+1 to 1 or 2 more item slots.
I think my current backpack starts lucky egg, ring target, life orb, choice scarf, but same principal.

Something else I have been thinking about (for somewhat obvious reasons) is does it still make sense for tech mon to have their tech cost on send in rather than send out? Its not clear to me that zekrom or groudon is so much stronger than mega-metagross or mega-gengar that it should cost you your teams flexibliity in order to bring them.

I guess in theory someone could send in a whole team of tech required mon and imo if they do they just... lose if they can't legally play any more mon, same way if someone sent in 1 mon to b5p3 they would lose if their 1 mon fainted.

 

[Keriel]

Perish song checking at start of round instead of "end of every step and when a doom counter is placed" is a huge nerf and I think the buffs don't make up for it.
(To be more explicit, the fact someone with lethal doom can just switch out before dying is blah. It's very hard to keep someone trapped.)

 

[Novax]

power swap doesn't state anything about the duration of the swapped stats (though i assume it should be for the same duration as the noted stats?)

 

[HeliosAflame]

Running arven realgam and noticed I don't actually understand how the new harvest works, specifically the last line.

Different berry from what. I don't even need to have had a berry earlier in the step, I could have been holding no item, or a different consumable like sticky barb.
If its meant to be "if you had a berry during this step you can't get the same berry" then what is the point of sun, isn't the benefit from multiple berries meant to be getting vernal, and the benefit of having sun skipping that limit?
I am unsure what the intent is here.

 

[epicdrill]

So currently my interpretation of Psych Up is that it is broken in a way that effectively fake traps the target as long as the boosts last by making it so the boosts last indefinitely as long as the target is not taking turns. In addition, it also means the buffs straight up last indefinitely if you can KO the mon that had the buffs.

Consider this: an Ursaluna uses Belly Drum and extends the boosts and has 3 turns left and an opponent, let's say Gallade, uses Psych Up on Ursaluna before KOing it, with Ursaluna taking 1 turn in the process. The important part of this is Ursaluna's boosts specifically last for 6 of its turns, and Psych Up copies the duration, so Gallade using Psych Up gets +6 Atk for 3 of Ursaluna's turns, not its own. By the time Gallade KOs Ursaluna, it's only taken one turn, so Gallade has +6 Atk (2 of Ursaluna's turns). But Ursaluna is KOed and never taking another turn in the battle, making it effectively an indefinite +6.

Alternatively, if a mon stacked a bunch of Calm Minds and an opponent uses Psych Up, then the mon who stacked a bunch of Calm Minds effectively cannot switch out until the Psych Up boosts fall off, even if there's only 1 turn left on the duration, because the duration decrease for the boosts on the mon that used Psych Up pauses while the Psych Up target is not in play.

This also makes it impossible to extend buffs gained from Psych Up in any way, because every stat stage boosting move boosts for x of your own turns, and that's a different unit of time from another pokemon's turns, so by 7.1a none of these effects can change the duration at all.

 

[Fort Colorcastle]

Now that the above is fixed, I think Psych Up should work similarly to the other stage-granting moves in that they give the user a buff for the users next n turns. Currently, the turn Psych Up is used ticks down those durations by one, which I don't think should happen.

It's unintuitive (to me) that if your faster opponent uses Quiver Dance, and you use Psych Up in response, you end up with 1 less turn of the buff than your opponent does.
Another sad case is if your opponent has 1 turn left of their buff, and you use Psych Up, it immediately falls off instead of letting you have a turn to make use of it (definitely feels like a bug).

Therefore I think Psych Up should gain the "user's next turns" text to match both how stage-granting moves generally work and how I intuit the notion of copying buffs.

 

[LouisCyphre]

Therefore I think Psych Up should gain the "user's next turns" text

once more im appalled that this isn't what is happening in people's heads intuitively.

 

[HeliosAflame]

I think it is what is happening in peoples head's intuitively. However its not what is written and apparently we are meant to do what the rules say instead of what we think they should say.

 

[LouisCyphre]

there should be a rule in 7.1 now stating that turn durations are always in "the associated Pokemon's" turns—the turns of the Pokemon they are on, no matter where the condition, marker, or stage change was transferred or copied from

——————

While I've been sick (recently, sorry!), Mow has been running the place with an iron fist (as she should), which has me thinking: Should she be getting anything for all this? Should I?

Sound off with what you think is appropriate. Arguing with everyone, over every rule, may be a reward in itself; but I don't think I'll be able to attract more help of Mow's caliber with just that alone. I hope it's understandable that I don't want to just declare an amount—players work hard to earn the rewards we put out, and we don't want to devalue that.

 

[HeliosAflame]

I definitely think some amount of reward is appropriate. I don't really want to say a direct number since I don't know how long everything takes behind the scenes, but could be somewhat on par to reffing jc/time investment?
Default game where you are just reffing is about 1 jc/round, and it takes 10-15 mins per round to ref things.

another way to do it could be based on things created, like 20 jc for making a raid or realgam, though I am not sure how much of what is done falls into easy categories like that.

whatever the exact scheme is, pretty sure at least Lou should have functionally infinite jc as long as he is playing reasonably. Doing those last patches definitely provides at least as much value as reffing the number of things he would need to have reffed to balance the number of things he played.

 

[Rextreff]

Thundurus Therian's hidden ability is listed as Volt Absorb

 

[HeliosAflame]

So I am trying new harvest with Arven.
I just made sun to go with my vernal. Unfortunately my greedy houndstone has already eaten all my berries (technically he is holding a lum berry, but does not seem likely to trigger it before dying.)
Is this failure case intended? where if every single berry is eaten before you get your sun, you can't loop any of them any more.

Maybe its too low on counter play, but as the person using the berries I think restoring berries with sun at either the start or end of a round might work better.

 

[Maxim]

The Substitution Action Group for “-Raising moves” forgot to add Curse (Non-Ghost) to the relevant lists.

 

[LouisCyphre]

Curse is excluded on purpose. I don't want to deal with a potential sub abuse that involves finding a way to change type mid-step when ordering Curse.

 

[Gemini Taurus]

Beat Up is not included in either "Multi-hit attack" or "Variable hit attack" substitution action groups.

While it is possible that this is intentional because it could have one hit. I think it should probably at least be included in the Variable-hit attack group as it disrupts charge moves.

 

[Fort Colorcastle]

Defog is excluded from evasion-lowering moves but I'm not certain if that's intentional

 

[Keriel]

I think rewards for close losses might need a little bit of a bump. We've already all heard the arguments about pinnacle content so I'm not going to rehash that, but it's a little absurd that (as I understand it) if you're doing ninjas and end up with greninja on 1 hp and everything else dead, you get only 3 exp. (So even running it again and getting a win wouldn't level you.)

(Am I just salty about exactly grass knot crit into rock slide flinch ag from greninja, which had to happen exactly and in that order? Yes. Is it still dumb? Yes.)

 

[Prismaticism]

Was persim berry missed in the berry changes or was it intentionally left the same? The other status immunity berries trigger at start of round but persim still triggers at end of turn if confused.

 

[HeliosAflame]

is it useful to report small bugs in this thread one at a time, or is there a better way of doing it?
Aurora Veil has the old number for screens in the DAT.

Edit. Aurora Veil is not actually mentioned in the minor patch as being changed. So I guess the DAT is correct with the patch but it seems very confusing if Aurora Veil is using different maths to other screens.