HELLO EVERYONE
I have been having a rough time of late because of some personal issues, and it's been hard to find the time to work on this and equally hard to find the motivation
but we've recently talked as a council, and I've had an especially motivating conversation with ink this morning, and now I
finally feel ready to approach this mod with the energy it deserves
I'm sorry I kept everyone waiting for so long again </3 but I finally feel like I'm in a good place regarding this mod for once (!!??), so the current plan is:
to finish this slate (this will be the usual
24-ish-hour warning),
then to
take a break and confer as a council over the course of it,
and most likely to
come back on the other side with some important changes to report if everything goes well;
at least personally, I have found that talking over potential changes to our structure and future plans has
really improved my outlook on this mod, so I really hope everyone will give them a chance once we've ironed out the details, and I am genuinely looking forward to talking about it when that time comes : D
Those particular future plans aside, I also have a couple of mod-related announcements to make at the end of this post! but first, the moment you have been waiting for for
far too long (and
massive thanks to the rest of the council for helping me finally get this done - I relied a lot on some of their notes and it was much more of a team effort than usual, even if their help was ages ago and I just took forever to do my part cx):
If I don't mention your sub in this post, it's probably fine balance-wise and you're not required to make any changes! It doesn't mean I forgot!
Also, independently of vetoes, always consider having as few movepool additions as possible! We don't have hard rules on these, but if you have even five or six, you're probably doing something wrong!
Very general notice on ALL Swalot:
Okay, so Kero and Bolivia previously announced that reliable recovery would be outright banned on Snorlax specifically!
Having reviewed more of the subs and conferred as a council, though, we have decided to
discourage adding recovery to Swalot as well unless you have a
really particular reason for why a) your concept cannot function without it and it is
intimately related to it, more than other Swalot and more than Swalot is by default, and b) that concept, aided by recovery, is
really solid, unique and well-considered on all counts, in ways that are specific to Swalot and cannot just be saved for another Pokémon that may already have recovery.
Especially for a defensively-oriented Poison-type, which has several useful resistances and a crucial immunity to being poisoned
(and there are remarkably few Poison- or Steel-types in canon that have 16 PP recovery moves, with those that do usually getting it either thanks to their other type or to their own other forms and most of the ones that can actually use it being kind of big deals in their own right), recovery is a tool we would like to try not to be too liberal about.
Swalot is a bulky Pokémon, and we know that; recovery is a good tool on any bulky Pokémon, and we know that, too! It's obviously an easy way to make the Pokémon more relevant in OU, which is desirable in theory in the short term, but it kinda happens maaaybe too often here
(and it will really stop being a meaningful selling point if we keep allowing it every time we slate a bulky Pokémon), so the bar for that is something we are going to try to raise going forward; there are plenty of ways to make a compelling bulky Pokémon that do not involve giving it the "easy way out" that is 16 PP recovery, and some prominent users and council members have been uncomfortable with how often submissions seek to change specifically that part of a Pokémon's identity. Basically, recovery is actually pretty rare as a tool in general and there's a reason for that, so we are going to make a conscious effort to tone that down in the future.
Purely in terms of power level, Swalot as we know it may be conventionally a weak Pokémon, but there are long-standing design reasons why it does not have recovery and it will take a convincing argument to justify changing that, especially with how substantially doing so alters its base form's identity. "Swalot with recovery" will not inherently be broken and realistically may not even be relevant, but there is more to making good design choices than only balance and we will need to be convinced of why it's necessary. We will be making a conscious effort to take the addition of reliable recovery in general much more seriously going forward, as it's by far one of the more radical changes one can make to a Pokémon and it has been suggested many times in the past that we have been too liberal with it.
This in mind, we will
reserve the right to remove Recover and similar moves from most subs by default, unless they are very specifically well justified; if your sub has Recover or one of its clones now and you
badly think it needs it,
it would be wise to edit your post when you read this to make a compelling case to keep it.
To reiterate, some of the most important focal points to touch on might be
why recovery is necessary for your concept,
why your concept is still unique to Swalot and cannot be saved for a Pokémon that already has recovery as part of its identity and
why your concept justifies being a rare Poison-type with recovery. As an alternative, a weaker option like Pain Split or a draining move can still be a legitimate substitute! The main thing we are trying to discourage is
seeing recovery as a default buff for any bulky Mega that would benefit from it because we have made that mistake in the past and it doesn't. really feel good. that it happens as often as it does here.
Purely since I'm tagging you anyway, I would definitely recommend seeing the above summary of council discussion on Recover! Is it strictly conceptually necessary here/would you by any chance be able to do without adding it?
Okay uhhh this might be a bit harder to explain and I apologize if I don't do the reasons justice, but this one saw some discussion from the council, and people were somewhat concerned about this one as a premise - the best way of putting it is that this removes certain important Pokémon as possible answers for what we generally feel may be the wrong reasons, in a way that could probably benefit from being toned down.
Kero explained it best by contrasting Wailord's Ability, which "punishes" the
opposing team for relying on certain Pokémon only because they're light in weight, with something like Grass Knot, whose weight-based limitations are more constraining on the user than on defensive cores.
For example, a player wouldn't be pressured not to use Rotom-Wash solely on the grounds that it's lighter than Suicune and takes less damage from Grass Knot; however, a player who is mostly running Grass Knot to deal with Water-types might give special attention to Rotom-Wash, as it's something their Grass Knot wouldn't be able to handle and the rest of their team would need to account for it. Rotom-Wash is a weak point of Pokémon reliant on the move Grass Knot, more so than the move Grass Knot by itself is inherently a weak point of an entire Pokémon like Suicune that wouldn't otherwise be worried about its users.
On the other hand, an effect like Baleen that sets out to target specific light Pokémon like Toxapex or Tapu Fini requires special attention from the opposing team instead, because Pokémon that make for intuitive defensive counterplay to Wailord's type are undermined by the drastic boost to its damage output.
The general takeaway from this discussion was that it might be better to
broaden the set of Pokémon that Baleen helps with, but tone down the buff it gives - making a smaller dissonance between the two instead of making Wailord extremely specialized towards and extremely effective against those top threats - primarily in the context that it emphasizes matchup unduly by making certain defensive cores only invalid because of their weight.
This wasn't completely unanimous and it might be something worth discussing with us if you're not sure about making any changes, but I just wanted to do my best to communicate what we talked about!
Hi! We've discussed this and have opted to disallow it.
We normally discourage making dedicated weather sweepers without
really thinking them through; I went into as much detail as I could on this
here when I was talking about Sand Rush Mightyena and Stoutland, but there's a lot of consideration that goes into making a Pokémon worth using on a weather team and contribute to that kind of archetype in a healthy way rather than promoting unbalanced typestacking and matchup fishing at best or not fitting onto a team at worst.
I'm probably more stingy about weather Abilities at this point in time than most mod leaders, but I think it takes a lot of justification to make one compelling; at the very least, this sub definitely doesn't "speak for itself" to an extent that the extremely description you gave could be enough to have me convinced, and the selling points here that we can find without hearing your thought process feel very extreme and binary (like Belly Drum - a sand sweeper whose only setup is Belly Drum will nearly always be either completely useless or completely ridiculous depending on the matchup with very little room for middle ground, when we already have more balanced sand sweepers that find that middle ground very easily and attack with the same types) rather than like something carefully considered for adding something the archetype needs, which makes me really against it.
In other words, allowing the sub is relatively high-risk and low-reward? It seems more likely than average that it would accidentally cause problems or lead to binary matchups and less likely than average that it would add anything healthy or productive, so we're going to leave it out. Thank you for understanding!
Uh, not a veto exactly, but if I may give some feedback, I would encourage you to evaluate what specifically this has to do with Swalot :'D The concept (and the reasoning behind the Ability) rest completely on the type change and moves you added; it doesn't seem like you have made any reference to the characteristics Swalot already has? If you're sure of this, I think you should put more time into your description to give people the chance to understand your thought process better!
Okay, so this did come up in #council before I had the chance to look at it myself, and... well I will say that you actually handled it
a lot more responsibly than I would have guessed when I heard about the concept. I definitely appreciate both the choice to keep Defense low and the choice to put most of its points into Special Attack
(which is a really interesting stat to raise on Snorlax for a lot of reasons but also easily the stat that has the least to gain from this particular concept)!
That said, the consensus after some discussion is that we should still not risk allowing this, I'm afraid. x: I'm really sorry if this is disappointing and I respect how careful you tried to be with it, but Snorlax is a pretty dangerous Pokémon to give this combination - Rest Talk on something so bulky with a 3/4 chance to use a desirable move has generally been considered too favorable, especially since it can pull off something like Curse + Rest Talk and still have coverage of two random types instead of one, which is much more difficult for an opponent to plan around. The effective status immunity and reliably high passive healing it gets from this Ability just feel like too much on it, so we have decided we would be better off not taking that risk;;
(There's also the potentially relevant fact that Belly Drum doesn't cost the user any HP if the user is already at +6 Attack, which makes Belly Drum + Rest sets much lower-risk than one would expect, but it's hard to say how that would pan out in practice and I think Curse still sounds scarier probably)
Hi! Uh, this is another one I think I would rather not allow - Primordial Sea on a Water/Flying-type with Hydro Pump is a really strong combination (for comparison, Drizzle Walrein with only 15 more Special Attack is one of the most dangerous wallbreakers in the mod right now, while this has 35 more points of Speed), and Wailord also has Water Spout which could potentially be super unhealthy with perpetual rain in mind (especially in VGC). Primordial Sea on its own is admittedly not an Ability that has a lot of interesting room to explore on a STAB user, so I would kind of discourage using it here in general? but especially not on a Hydro Pump user with such a crazy-high Speed stat, I'm afraid;;
Mm. Okay, so uh. I... would like to trust that you were coming from a good place with this and just
really did not think it through, but this is actually quite important, so I am not sure I can afford to mince words here.
This is a
really insensitive submission, and I would be lying if I said I could understand why you thought it would be okay. ._. Eating disorders are extremely serious for the people who suffer from them, and the way this makes fun of them and even makes a mechanical joke of the idea of being ashamed of them and is deeply uncomfortable. It should go without saying and be common sense that we would not allow an eating disorder-inspired Ability, and this one is particularly grave in its irreverence.
I am absolutely not going to allow this or anything resembling it, and I really hope that you think more carefully before posting something like this in the future.
Nowhere near as important as the above (and be aware that Snorlax will not be accepted regardless), but on more mechanically-oriented and game design grounds:
this is also definitely overpowered and far too much chip damage to be doing every turn, and
please consider using the functionally equivalent and flavorfully similar Gooey (to reduce Speed on contact by one stage at a time) or Alluring (to prevent the pivoting effect of moves), rather than combining the two halfway? This doesn't feel like it warrants an entirely new Ability, especially since it fully outclasses Gooey in a majority of cases.
Aaaa hi I'm sorry - I know you asked me specifically if this was okay, and I think my response was more or less that I didn't know what to make of it and wasn't completely confident in how strong it would be, so I encouraged you to ask publicly in #submission-feedback
I feel bad because you didn't really get any feedback when you posted publicly, either, but the council discussed this when we were going over vetoes and the consensus was that this was probably too strong as a concept after all cx
It was notably compared to pre-nerf Toxtricity-Low-Key, and in addition to the recurring free chip as many times as Wailord can afford to come in, it was noted that it may be considered to give every Pokémon on the opposing team 12.5% less maximum HP even if it's not on the field (since a Pokémon just falling to 12.5% or less lets Wailord switch in for absolute free and KO instantly, even if you would have been able to switch out). This is in addition to how much damage it adds to pivoting moves like an ally's U-turn or Volt Switch, too.
That said!!
The balancing factor you chose to give it, that the user is also damaged when the Ability activates, was still well received, and it seems like the people who were most concerned would be comfortable with allowing it if it didn't have access to Recover (which effectively undermines that chosen balancing factor and allows its Ability to activate too many times without consequence). It is worth noting that, although replacing the move with Life Dew came up, the consensus was that this would be dangerous for different reasons - namely allowing not only the user but its partner to bypass the downside of the Ability in doubles, where the effect is otherwise even stronger - so Life Dew is not a recommended alternative.
(You would probably still be able to get away with something like Pain Split pretty safely, since Wailord is notably somewhat worse at using than other Pokémon because of its stat spread! Alternatively, Wailord already has Rest, and the effectiveness of Rest is something we have learned by now not to underestimate, especially since Wailord doesn't need to be awake to use its Ability and might be able to create enough pressure to run the move successfully. Although Recover is the thing that makes this probably too much for now, it seems like it's not a concept that would be too weak without it!)
I am terribly sorry, but Swift Swim + Water Spout scares the heck out of me and I don't really think I'm comfortable seeing it introduced @.@ I understand that that's the exact territory you were hoping to explore in the first place and you're aware that it's a strong combination, but my instinct is that this is going to be fundamentally overpowered, so I am going to veto it, sorry;;
Sssorry but
I am personally
quite deeply uncomfortable with this Ability and I can't really see any way to justify accepting it;;
I know we've had one Ability, Trash Compactor, that clears entry hazards and rewards the user for doing so, and I'm guessing that's where you got your inspiration from. That said, the actual effect of that one is quite mild; Mega Garbodor is very tame, and it has no pivoting and exerts little offensive pressure, so its Ability is kind of its main selling point and it's not
that easy to use.
On the other hand, the reward for absorbing hazards with this Wailord is, like, really,
really scary - its Water Spout becomes priority of a strong type that hits
insanely hard and can be boosted much further by rain with the proper support (notably, the effect synergizes with rain being the one weather that has a pivoting autosetter - Pelipper, which happens to be weak to hazards - and a lot of other relevant Flying-type abusers... so that's an archetype that really enables and is enabled by this kind of Ability; it also synergizes with Water Spout itself by completely ignoring hazards, which are otherwise the main balancing factor that makes the move hard to use in singles at all). Even aside from that, priority Flip Turn makes clearing hazards with Wailord completely free and impossible to punish while dramatically swinging momentum even more in its team's favor.
This definitely invalidates and excessively punishes hazards
much harder than Garbodor does, and it seems like it's definitely overpowered in general from my point of view; I'm not sure exactly how to suggest changing it, but I'm not really on board with either part of the Ability if I'm being honest, let alone both in tandem x:
Okay, so uh-- this is a super minor concern and I
really respect the pun, but I am afraid that while abismal checked with me to make sure the way he altered Gulp Missile was okay and true enough to the original effect
(for comparison: note that his Wailord activates on the same moves as Cramorant's Gulp Missile, consistently has the same 1/4 damage, and has the first of its two secondary effects in common; it is very clearly still recognizable as Gulp Missile in every possible way), yours is kiiind of at a point of being an entirely different Ability and I'm not really willing to present it as "still Gulp Missile but on a different Pokémon" x:
With that in mind, I would recommend finding a new name for the Ability and just considering its effect as a variation on Gulp Missile, rather than naming it exactly the same thing;;
Uh, that aside, I think having some more consistency between the two forms' effects would also be a good idea - in Cramorant's case (and Wailord's), the reason each part of the Ability has two different effects is because it
always does 1/4 damage first and foremost (lending cohesion to the effect), then has a different side effect depending on the Pokémon in its mouth; in this case, yours has four discrete effects and uses a different two at a time, which has the opposite result of making it feel
less cohesive. I think there is sort of just a line to be drawn where it stops feeling like one single Ability and is too far abstracted from what makes Gulp Missile work; as clever as the flavor side of it is, I think that's something I would ask you to revisit if you can and I'm not really sold on the execution;;
I am, uh, concerned. First and foremost, I think this is just straightforwardly too much of a statstick? :') Shoring up its one weak point in Defense so much already buffs Snorlax a whooole lot, and adding the Steel type is such a massive upgrade to its defensive type as well as the obvious addition of Gyro Ball making it (and Snorlax's low Speed and Curse) into an offensive asset.
75% and 110% are also quite arbitrary as modifiers and I can't really see the tiny amount of extra damage it takes from special moves, uh, doing anything; it still has 160/110 special bulk, and it's not like base Snorlax has ever been afraid of special moves. x:
I might just be looking at this the wrong way, but it doesn't really seem that, uh, convincing that you had any particular balancing factors in mind - I'm gonna say no to this for now, sorry :'D
...
but wait! there's more!!
We have some recent balance changes to cover!
First,
a handful of Mega Evolutions have been provisionally banned from ongoing singles tournaments, although they are still meant to be usable in our main format for the time being while we work some things out. These include
Mega Empoleon,
Mega Galarian Slowking, and
Mega Silvally in its Ghost form (every other Mega Silvally remains legal). All three are still unchanged and will remain legal for the purposes of VGC!
Moreover, a smaller handful of Mega Evolutions have been rebalanced recently! These changes are not live yet, but they will be in the near future.
For the time being (just until the changes are live), please consider these moves illegal on Clefable and Walrein and please do not use Mega Mudsdale in tournaments. Mega Dusknoir is still fine!
Clefable has lost access to the move
Will-o-Wisp;
Walrein has lost access to the move
Focus Blast;
and
in what is quite possibly my favorite nerf we have ever done?? 
the Ability Inner Fortitude 
now prevents the user from being put to sleep, instead of protecting the user from Intimidate. The reasoning for this is to prevent Mudsdale from abusing Rest, a move which consistently pushed it over the edge and made it frustratingly unfeasible for most teams to break it, but which the much weaker Mega Dusknoir with the same Ability is not known to use so the change works in its favor. Mudsdale still has access to Pain Split as an alternative form of recovery but is no longer resilient to status.
Although this take on Inner Fortitude can be taken as a strictly better form of Insomnia, this was accepted in the context that it was introduced through a balance change (and, for that matter, as a nerf to the Pokémon that has it).
Please do not mistake this precedent as a reason to submit strictly superior variations of other Abilities, status immunities included, going forward; Abilities are allowed to get a
little more complex and bend the rules as it becomes apparent that that's necessary to balance them
(some of the more complex official Abilities are also ones that have gained more details over time for balance reasons!), but it's important to draw a distinction between the situation here and the idea of submitting this as a first pass at the Ability.
This was a
really clever and effective way to target the broken elements of Mega Mudsdale without the collateral damage so many other attempted nerfs risked; it is important to respect that the change was made for
that context specifically.
Little things that elevate my mood:
Ctrl + F "nerf" takes you straight to Inner Fortitude's entry in the Abilities file of our code! cx
Moreover, there are some updates to report on the
M4A Sandbox!
First of all, in case you missed it,
Hisui is here! We've been slowly refining our interpretations of their new moves, and what should be the final batch of updates is not currently live but will be made live in the
next patch. You can find the full details on how all of them will be implemented
here!
There are not currently plans to adopt Pokémon or moves from Legends: Arceus into our main format until they make their way to the main series officially, but some special tours will be taking place in the near future to give us a taste of these Pokémon, including a
Hisui Pokédex VGC tournament that will be run by
BlueRay in the near future (after the end of our ongoing Individual Tour)!
Aside from official tours, you're encouraged to have fun experimenting with them in the Sandbox!
Moreover, remember that the M4A Sandbox is
a Custom Game format designed for you to experiment under your own rules, so you can add moves to these Pokémon - or add their new moves to others! - at your own discretion; the Sandbox's teambuilder will indicate only the moves that are currently, canonically legal on them in a National dex format, but that doesn't mean it's all you can use just as long as you and your opponent are on the same terms!
There are two other updates on the sandbox, too!
First: our somewhat-long-standing but equally-understated
Mix and M4A format will be
consolidated into the sandbox in the next update, which is to say that you can use any of our mod's Mega Stones on any Pokémon, under Mix and M4A rules and on the same team that you use the sandbox mod itself or a custom Mega Stone of your own design!
There has been next to no interest in Mix and M4A as a competitive format and its actual playerbase is better aligned with the sandbox's existing goals, so this is primarily a convenience feature. There are no plans to hold tournaments under Mix and M4A rules in the future.
Next, the "Sandierbox" format - a spinoff of sorts of the M4A Sandbox, in which our own
KeroseneZanchu (the very same madman who made the original sandbox!!) has implemented some custom Abilities that have not been accepted to the main mod so far, so people can experiment with those on future submissions - will
also be united with the main sandbox, so you don't need to challenge someone to a separate format to use one of those Abilities any more!
The idea of distinguishing the two formats is somewhat dated and somewhat at odds with the nature of the sandbox in the first place, and there is no reason not to give Kero the freedom to influence the main sandbox in the first place, so consider this a convenience update that unifies two formats with the same goal!
There may be some other organizational changes to our formats in the future, especially based on some of the changes I mentioned we were planning to discuss at the top of this post, so keep an eye out for more updates!
I'll be sure to let you know when we have anything concrete!!
Lastly, I would take this opportunity to give a proper sendoff to our long-time friend
ViZar, who has recently chosen to step down from the competitive council and to leave the mod.
A lot of us have been reevaluating our roles in the mod recently, and it's very important that we respect his choice to act on that when he decided that his relationship to the mod was not healthy for him; we're all still figuring things out here.
That said, it has been amazing having him here and all of us hold him in extremely high regard, and we want to thank him for the time and effort he put into supporting us (and to make sure he knows he will always be warmly welcomed back if he wants it!).
He's still actively involved in other mods in the community, so this isn't a goodbye by any means, but it is important to me to make sure he knows we're grateful to him and how much respect we have for him; I'm really sorry that your choice to leave came at a time when I was inactive myself and that I didn't have the chance to say this sooner </3
With all of that said, it's time to close off this long-overdue announcement!!
As usual, submissions will close and voting should begin in about 24 hours or a bit later, and the council will make a compilation of all of the legal entries then! If you've gotten feedback here that you want to address, it would be best to do that as soon as possible with that in mind. C:
(As usual, though: no worries if you can't quite make it by then! If you decide to make changes based on this, then as long as you can do that before voting closes
just leave enough time for people to vote for you! and please make sure to check which council member made the compilation post for that Pokémon and get in touch with them, such as by pinging them or DMing them here or on Discord, we'll be happy to edit the compilation to include any amendments you made!)
ping-induced rage
