Hi again, everyone!
First thing is a small update: it has become increasingly clear that our usual schedule just does not work, particularly during PMOTS when there's so much more to cover with every update, so I am provisionally increasing the standard length of the submission phase again
from five days to six days in addition to this particular one, um, obviously being more than six days. In addition, as per usual, this post will be an end-of-submission-phase feedback post and a
24-hour warning for the current submission phase, in order to give time to respond to the feedback in question. C:
The next update is something of a sadder note, but
Mossy Sandwich has asked me to announce that he will be
stepping down from the competitive council; this happened some time ago (on the 8th), but this is my first opportunity to bring it up in the thread.
He does still plan to be present as part of the mod, so this isn't a goodbye or anything! but he feels he can't be as active in the mod as he was before. This obviously shouldn't be an obligation for anyone, so we should all respect that decision and be grateful for everything he's done for us so far!
Thank you for helping us with this for so long, Mossy!! It's been awesome having you on the team!
We've recently had some tournaments as well, and I would like to extend huge congratulations to the winners:
BlueRay for his much-deserved wins in our first ever VGC tournament back on the 6th
and our second New Recruits tournament this past Saturday, and newcomer
Exploziff for their incredible win in the first M4A Monthly tournament this past Sunday!
The level of participation in the three tours was amazing, and there were some very cool matches in all of them!! If you're interested, you can check them out here:
I would also like to expend massive thanks to
inkbug for running both of these tours so smoothly and compiling the replays on his awesome wiki as always! ;u;
Following that!
In the previous update to the thread, we talked about some balance changes that were being considered and shared a poll to decide whether they should go through. I think it's well known on the Discord by now that all of the changes passed, but I would like to take this opportunity to share the results in the thread as well!
For
Starmie to
lose access to the move
Photon Geyser:
20 in favor vs 3 against - passes with an 87.0% supermajority
For moves affected by
Mega Feraligatr's Ability
Savage to hit exactly three times:
21 in favor vs 2 against - passes with a 91.3% supermajority
For
Mismagius to
lose access to the move
Fling:
17 in favor vs 6 against - passes with a 73.9% supermajority
For
Mega Samurott's Ability
Heavenly Techniques to boost the move
X-Scissor, but
not the move
Smart Strike:
23 in favor vs 0 against - passes (obviously) with a 100% supermajority
in hindsight, I should really have offered these as separate options, but I trust everyone is okay with this - I'm sure it wouldn't have been a fully unanimous vote if people had reservations about just one of the two changes
For moves affected by
Mega Araquanid's Ability
Body of Water not to account for modifiers to the user's Defense and Special Defense:
21 in favor vs 2 against - passes with a 91.3% supermajority
There were also a handful of bugfixes made alongside these changes!
Mega Exploud's Ability,
Seismic Scream, now activates once for each successful
use of a sound-based move, not once for each target successfully hit. This doesn't change anything in singles, but it was previously an issue in doubles, when it could activate as many as three times from a move like Boomburst.
Moves boosted by
Mega Bastiodon's Ability,
Settle, now behave properly like special moves for
all intents and purposes, except that they account for the user's Attack in place of its Special Attack. Previously, they behaved as physical moves but targeted the Special Defense stat (like the opposite of Psyshock), which was inaccurate both to the submission and to the Ability's most current description. This change does not affect their damage in ordinary situations, but many effects
(examples include burn, Counter and Mirror Coat, Weak Armor, and some Berries) respond differently depending on whether a move is physical or special, and this has Settle-boosted moves respond more consistently to those situations.
Mega Zoroark's Ability,
Forgery, can no longer copy the item of a Pokémon holding a Z-Crystal or a Pokémon with no item, instead passing them by to the next valid Pokémon. Previously, Forgery was carefully implemented with Z-Crystals in mind, but it has since come to light that the official games make special exceptions to prevent Mega Evolved Pokémon from using Z-Moves even with the appropriate item, so it was agreed that this interaction was inaccurate and should be removed.
These changes, as well as slate 30's winning Mega Evolutions (
), have been live on Dragon Heaven for a few days now, though the update is still not live on Showdown and I'm not sure why (I submitted this patch to both servers on the same evening the poll closed, but I have not heard back).
Since the submissions went live, a few minor changes and fixes have been discussed for the custom Abilities, but I have not had the opportunity to address these so far.
Hi! I'm afraid I cannot allow your Torterra or Infernape.
This one is a problem for a few reasons.
The first and probably most important issue is that automatically applying Sand Tomb to grounded Pokémon is, like, super broken. The Ability Arena Trap is already uncompetitive (and banned!) on its own, because it prevents the opponent from switching out if Torterra counters one of their Pokémon. Moreover, by tying the effect to a terrain instead of giving Torterra Arena Trap by itself, this also enables trap
passing (Torterra leaving battle doesn't free its opponent, so doing so, even just by being KOed, means its replacement can be whatever is necessary to counter or set up on the trapped Pokémon and can put the battle in an unwinnable slate for the opponent far too easily).
The second thing is that, without that, the effect of grounding all Pokémon is largely redundant to Gravity - if you were to submit any field effect that grounded Pokémon and wasn't unhealthy, I would absolutely tell you to replace it with Gravitas, the Ability that already exists to set Gravity on entry, instead of unnecessarily creating a new one. However, there's already another submission that uses Gravitas and there is no reason to allow both.
That aside, it seems the aim of this is to introduce a new field effect, which
is something we're trying to avoid doing unnecessarily and judging by very high standards, so it requires a
very strong justification on your part. If you rework this at all to be more balanced, I still would not recommend making it a field effect, as there's a high chance that it would not be allowed.
On the other hand, this one is just too strong statwise. Sheer Force boosts its damage far beyond acceptable levels, accounting for its high mixed attacking stats, setup options and insane Speed. It's almost impossible for you to get this to be allowed without changing the Ability - I would have you severely limit its stats to... probably just almost completely unboosted offenses (104/104? 109/109?) and no more than about +7 Speed (115 - you have 158), and even that is with great hesitation and there's a high chance it could still need to be nerfed
(and there's not that much room to nerf it), so it would probably be far better not to allow it. No promises whatsoever that I will allow this with Sheer Force no matter how much you lower its stats.
Sorry, but yeah, this really doesn't constitute a rename of
(or really any use of) Parental Bond.
Mm... much as I love your other two, I will take my usual stance and say that - when two people have submissions that are this close together - it is really much better for you to collaborate and agree on a route that satisfies both of you. While the 30-point Speed difference probably counts for something, the movepool changes have very limited practical differences and a majority of sets either of these runs would be the same, and I doubt that could be a deciding factor in someone's vote; for most intents and purposes, this is either a better or worse version of the same sub more than it is a different sub, and I think it would really be better to change it to another Ability (and/or share feedback with Dramps on why you'd rather his was slower). Sorry to disappoint, but I'm not sold on the differences being enough;;
First disclaimer: I
will allow this if you still want and there is no mandatory change here at all, so uh, feel free to ignore this if you're really set on this route! I just feel like it would be worth making a general statement here, since this kind of thing has come up before.
But uh, there are a lot of Abilities in this mod that I would say have had a positive impact but would, with the benefit of hindsight, probably discourage
repeating?
As much as I personally love Heavenly Techniques, it's widely regarded as one of the most complex Abilities in the mod, and newcomers have repeatedly singled it out as confusing or hard to understand. It's an effect that's definitely cool as a one-off, and I wouldn't mind seeing the Heavenly Techniques that already exists used again to integrate it better, but it would be a bad idea in my eyes to make a habit of adding more Abilities in that vein. I'm vaguely worried that adding a "clone" of it with a different set of effects increases the barrier to entry more than just having one or the other does, and especially when their effects don't align (so that's now two separate sets of HP benchmarks one has to learn - and has to remember which Ability each of them is for) and this one's effects are individually more unique and less straightforward (two separate checks for the higher attacking stat, which is very rarely used in Abilities at all, and one of them is Foul Play in Ability form, which has never been seen before and could be a cool gimmick all on its own - compare the max HP effect of Heavenly Techniques being clearly derived from Gale Wings, another Ability that requires max HP, and its mid-HP effect committing to one specific stat unconditionally). If it can be said that Heavenly Techniques is simple enough
(and admittedly, many would disagree that that can be said), this is still tangibly less so in a way that I would discourage.
If there is any chance I could convince you to focus on just one of the effects here - whichever you consider the most important or the most unique or the most appealing - I would
really encourage that. But again, I'm not going to stop you officially or anything, and you can leave it as-is and won't be vetoed; this is just a request, not a requirement. .w.
You're gonna have to pick one -
Immunity is an entire Ability of its own, halving an unrelated move type's damage is "Immunity but strictly better" which we avoid
(if you want the Poison resistance, why not make, like, a Heatproof clone? reducing damage taken from the poison status as well as Poison-type moves, but not strictly preventing it), and boosting two more arbitrary move types by 30% is definitely a completely different Ability in itself.
I'm pretty sure this is an Ability I can't allow on anything. You could always just make it immune to pivoting moves, though, if that's your main goal.
Same problem as
ChoiceScarfed's Infernape - Adaptability is probably just a stronger offensive Ability than Infernape should be allowed to have, period. Your stats are at least on the tame side, but I'm pretty sure there would be major problems with allowing this at all, sorry.
I am terribly uncomfortable with how hard this hits and how little it has to give up to that end. It's extremely fast and will realistically have a nature increasing both its Speed and Attack, and it can even pull off an extremely strong mixed set since it can use physical Fighting moves at maximum power with minimum Attack and still run special Fire moves at no cost. I think I have to veto this for power level.
Not... technically... a veto...? probably? but a
reeeally strong personal preference - I am begging you not to introduce special Intimidate. We do not need special Intimidate. No one needs special Intimidate. Intimidate being physical is such a fundamental part of the game design of the series
(especially VGC, which is a format that we do have now and does need to be taken into account) that I have an instinctive negative response to people cloning it for no reason. Intimidate is fine as it is - could you please consider just giving it that?;;
Or you could give it "Assault Vest in Ability form," which is the official games' closest special equivalent to Intimidate and should remain that way.
It's
probably pretty much harmless if it's locked to a single Mega and it's not like special Intimidate will become a universal fact of life the way physical Intimidate is, so I feel like I can't reasonably veto this, but I still
strongly dislike it and would seriously discourage ever doing this if you're okay with that.
This is both probably too strong
(the 1.3 to Fire moves coming right away, I mean) and doubtless way more elaborate than it needs to be, so I'm just gonna give it a no. Go with your choice of Flash Fire or any Water immunity Ability that exists or any Flying immunity Ability you want.
No obligation to do this, but as I noted when I responded to you on the Discord, I think you would be better off just using Stamina for this Ability instead? Functionally, this doesn't really lead Torterra to be used any differently than Stamina would, so making a new Ability for it is kind of extraneous. I'll leave it up to you, though!
Thiiis scares me a bit, actually - Infernape already runs a Life Orb, so this is effectively giving it +100 BST for "free" rather than at the cost of an item slot, and it's already more or less at the top of UU to my knowledge. If nothing else, I would advise you to lower its Speed a bit for a relatively smaller advantage over its base form - I'm not sure vanilla Infernape upgraded to 128/128/132 offenses is the safest addition.
Also, while I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, could I ask you to rename its Ability? The word "triggered" has been appropriated very widely in a way that's mocking and demeaning towards people living with mental illnesses; it has connotations that I don't want to be a part of the mod.
Can I ask... like... why? ;-; This is total RNG and there's not any way at all for either side to plan around it,
especially with it happening at the start of the turn so you don't know what type your Weather Ball/Terrain Pulse would even be. It's just a completely pointless and not skill-based effect that has little to do with Torterra and less to do with how it's used. It's even detrimental to its own moves, making Growth and Synthesis less reliable for some reason, and the attempt to reduce RNG by introducing HP dependence just makes it needlessly complicated. I'm not sure why you would want this or why we should allow it? OTL
if you do really want to keep this, if nothing else, could I suggest making the odds either 1/4 uniformly or 1/3 for rain/sun/Grassy/Misty and 1/6 for sand/hail/Electric/Psychic, for consistency with other chance-related effects? 28% and 22% are pretty arbitrary and kinda weird
but like I'm not gonna promise that this will be allowed tomorrow anyway
I will at least confer with the Discord for second opinions
There is a higher chance that this will break Pokémon other than Empoleon than that Empoleon itself will be broken, and accordingly, there is no way to balance Empoleon around an effect like this. This is not allowed.
This... could be so much simpler (consider Slush Rush?), but we also really don't need a new hail Mega and introducing one would be largely detrimental - I don't think it would be a good idea to accept this either way.
I am positive you were already told as much on the Discord, but there's already another Justified Infernape - the one by Mossy Sandwich - and I don't think there is any sense in allowing a second one that doesn't bring anything especially new to the table.
Okay, I do want to say first that I
love the choice to revisit some of our old customs instead of making new ones and I really respect the execution for the most part!!
That said, I know I said so on the Discord already, but I am very concerned by giving Volcanic Singe to
Infernape specifically, because it
really steps on the toes of a Pokémon whose... toes... should not be stepped on
okay pretend I said something that makes sense and that Magcargo says toes. Magcargo was specifically designed around not having moves that could be spammed to prolong the effect, while Volcanic Singe synergizes
really well with Close Combat - and while it would be awesome to have such excellent move-Ability synergy, that becomes a problem when Magcargo isn't doing all too well itself and has been considered for a buff, and this would wildly outclass it at its one selling point.
This
is an extremely perfect Ability choice for Infernape, and like I said on the Discord, I even asked Ausma if she would be okay with me doing it myself well before you posted this; however, I think it's important to respect her answer and there are valid reasons not to introduce competition to Magcargo when Magcargo already barely works and sorely needs help itself, and I cannot allow this. I am very sorry :c
the singe pun is so good though hgfhjgk I respect you
We don't allow combining Abilities like that here - please pick one!
It would be far simpler just to give this Infiltrator or something - it's incredibly rare for a move hitting more than once to be a good thing without any direct benefit from their secondary effects, and in past submissions, it's been criticized as awkward and inconsistent with canon to restrict their secondary effects to the final hit as well. (Obviously, in Infernape's case, allowing it both secondary effects would be broken anyway - it has far too many ways to abuse that.)
We will literally never allow this Ability on absolutely anything, as it is unquestionably broken as a form of team support. This would be vetoed on Unown. It will definitely be vetoed here.
That aside: the closest equivalent, Mega Slowking's Ability, sets Trick Room only while it is on the field (i.e. it cannot be shared with its team). Mega Slowking started out spending 55 points of Speed, both to avoid spending its 100 points optimally and as an active hindrance to operating under Trick Room. Mega Slowking was later nerfed to have
+90 Speed and is still questionably balanced and one of the scariest Pokémon in the mod. Auto-Trick Room with this low Speed is a hard no even with the limiting factors of Counter-Clockwise Spiral (Slowking's Ability).
There are already other submissions with
"Life Orb in Ability form" Infernape (the one by fratelli bc) and
Thick Fat Torterra (the one by TheUltraFinder) - both with rather similar stats, too - so if you disagree on how the others handled them, you should consider giving that as feedback instead of posting a competing submission that's almost the same. Thanks!
Similarly, there's another similar
Lightning Rod Empoleon by BlueRay, so it would be best to discuss it with him rather than posting a competing submission with the same idea. Thank you!
Quick clarifying question
(you can just edit your post or DM me! no need to make a new one) on
Empoleon: you say "against foes with type advantage or super-effective moves," but these should be the same thing, right? If you can, I would suggest changing it to "against foes with super-effective moves" alone, since type matchups don't mean anything if the Pokémon doesn't have a move of those types.
This one sounds rather terribly broken - there are other burn-oriented Infernape submissions, but these submissions have steeper requirements than a 75% chance to burn (and a 1.5x power boost the remaining 25% of the time!), and I do not think it's at all safe to allow this one. Sorry;;
Whoa there. This is, uh, at least four Abilities in one, and two of them are better versions of Abilities that already exist. I will say this:
pick one out of Shell Armor, Neuroforce, Stamina or Defiant-but-for-defenses.
Sssorry, but I really can't allow this or anything like it. There is no way to execute this that is realistic or optically sound, and having a banlist of stones, while consistent with Mix and Mega as a format, is incredibly arbitrary from an in-game standpoint. It also bears reminding that Mix and M4A is an Ubers-based mod - not an OU-based one - and plenty of the combinations that are legal there would be major problems here, while some that aren't could just as well be issues for competing unduly with our other Megas and stepping on their niches (see the Volcanic Singe Infernape's problem earlier). The idea is almost cool, but I think it would be better left to Mix and M4A itself;;
Can I ask why this needs to be, uh, this? as opposed to just Rough Skin or Iron Barbs? or Innards Out if you want to be fancy? It's not just that it's complicated but that that excess complication doesn't actually serve any clear purpose or do something a simpler Ability can't. This one I don't think I'm going to allow without a change.
Aaand we're done!
Submissions will close and voting should begin in 24 hours, and I'll make a compilation of all of the legal entries then! If you've gotten feedback here, it would be best to implement it as soon as possible with that in mind.
(As usual, though: no worries if you can't quite make it by then! If you need to make changes, then as long as you can do that before voting closes
just leave enough time for people to vote for you!, I'll be happy to make the amendments you need!)
