Format Discussion Scarlet/Violet Random Battle Sets

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

tl;dr please remove AV Ting-Lu because it isn't a good pivot and doesn't check special setup well

OK, most of the crap sets I was going to complain about like Choice Band Forretress got thankfully removed, but there is one notable one that I still see today. This stupid 4 attacks AV Ting-Lu set. It does nothing, at best it gets a 50% damage ruination off before the opponent switches into something that can threaten it because of its many, many weaknesses. Lack of leftovers or HDB in a meta where spikes and rocks are often unremovable is basically a death sentence and means it never can really be a good pivot as its set name implies. I would nearly always have the hazards set in most scenarios.

I think that despite the set name, the intended use of it is to scare boosting sweepers such as Volc, Crown and Oricorio that don't want to or can't switch out. The problem i have with that is that most of the time, teraing basically invalidates it, be it gaining a better defensive typing, boosting a move so that it gets beaten faster than it can beat the threat, or gaining a free turn to set up one more time. And using Tera on these pokemon isn't exactly a waste; these are among the deadliest pokemon in randbats and chances are you'd be using it on them anyway. On the rare occasion it actually does effectively check a special boosting threat, its lack of longevity means that you have to preserve it very very carefully lest it drop below the threshold it needs to take 2 hits after a turn of boosting. Usually this means playing basically 5v5. Overall I think it's at the very least a very tenuous special check if one at all.

edit: one more thing:
what is it with the influx of psychic noise on EVERYTHING? Psychic is a better STAB move 99% of the time, as leftovers usage is at an all-time low, and the only other use is against healing pokemon, which seem kinda rare an

ok we'll drastically lower the rate of av ting lu next update

 

[pokeblade101]

what is it with the influx of psychic noise on EVERYTHING? Psychic is a better STAB move 99% of the time, as leftovers usage is at an all-time low, and the only other use is against healing pokemon, which seem kinda rare and not a good trade off for the insane power loss. I'm struggling to explain how big of a power drop it is, but it causes the pokemon to lose crucial KOs on basically everything. There's not really much more to say about it, the effect is just not worth the loss in power.

We are gonna track Psychic Noise. This month is mostly used as a test for it and it does look like some pokemon would be better off using Psychic but there are still many notable ones that want psychic noise.

 

[pyuk]

Can Bulk Up Grimmsnarl get Tera Steel and/or Poison? Each would cover all three of its weaknesses and make it immune to being poisoned, and as a bulky setup set I think it would benefit greatly from a defensive Tera. There are a decent handful of faster Dark types that carry Sludge Bomb which resist Sucker Punch and can’t be Thunder Wave’d.

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

Can Bulk Up Grimmsnarl get Tera Steel and/or Poison? Each would cover all three of its weaknesses and make it immune to being poisoned, and as a bulky setup set I think it would benefit greatly from a defensive Tera. There are a decent handful of faster Dark types that carry Sludge Bomb which resist Sucker Punch and can’t be Thunder Wave’d.

Ok

 

[Zaide]

Is Aura Sphere over Body Press on Scarf Archeludon (with t-bolt, flash cannon, draco) just an "artifact" of it getting a ton of moves and needing aura sphere to roll specs ?

 

[pokeblade101]

Is Aura Sphere over Body Press on Scarf Archeludon (with t-bolt, flash cannon, draco) just an "artifact" of it getting a ton of moves and needing aura sphere to roll specs ?

That set purely exists to roll choice items while the others do not. It makes it so that Arch can roll choiced items 33% of the time only on this set, and not be way lower if it was combined with the others.

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

Is Aura Sphere over Body Press on Scarf Archeludon (with t-bolt, flash cannon, draco) just an "artifact" of it getting a ton of moves and needing aura sphere to roll specs ?

technical limitation

 

[hammy3581]

Can "Bulky Support" terapagos run dark pulse instead of tri attack? Even though the whole thing about it is tera, I don't like being forced to tera on any ghost type or have to switch out. Plus if you are forced to defensive tera early game it can become easily exploitable by ghosts, or most rock and steel types. I just feel it would be a good thing to try out, especially because how bad its winrates are currently.

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

Can "Bulky Support" terapagos run dark pulse instead of tri attack? Even though the whole thing about it is tera, I don't like being forced to tera on any ghost type or have to switch out. Plus if you are forced to defensive tera early game it can become easily exploitable by ghosts, or most rock and steel types. I just feel it would be a good thing to try out, especially because how bad its winrates are currently.

Terapagos will be scrapped and revamped from scratch in mid-month january under the philosophy of pretending that tera doesn't exist.

 

[SparksBlade]

Hi, Garganacl should always have Salt Cure as the +1 Stone Edge is simply never matching with the passive and long term damage and utility of Salt Cure. So even on Curse sets I'd rather have Salt Cure because I'm not clicking Curse every time my Garganacl comes in, and I'd rather get the tankiness by Curse while having passive damage by Salt Cure instead of trying to hit 8 Stone Edges while spamming recover. There's just toooo much that Curse+Stone Edge is never beating and you'll regularly run into those.

 

[platinumCheesecake]

Hi, Garganacl should always have Salt Cure as the +1 Stone Edge is simply never matching with the passive and long term damage and utility of Salt Cure. So even on Curse sets I'd rather have Salt Cure because I'm not clicking Curse every time my Garganacl comes in, and I'd rather get the tankiness by Curse while having passive damage by Salt Cure instead of trying to hit 8 Stone Edges while spamming recover. There's just toooo much that Curse+Stone Edge is never beating and you'll regularly run into those.

sure but we'll also completely remove curse

mod edit: this was actually a council vote that just concluded before Spark's post even happened, so have fun folks

 

[DkKoba]

this is a bit of a general complaint from laddering in the past week after being away from some months, but the overall feel is that the current sets are way too tuned towards HO. One may say, this is more a fault of game freak for releasing so many HO mons, but its not fun to rand 6 mons that are all offensive, can't switch into anything, and lose to the wrong mon. In older gens, I can get a decent enough variety in my team.

We need more defensive/utility sets.

 

[Celever]

this is a bit of a general complaint from laddering in the past week after being away from some months, but the overall feel is that the current sets are way too tuned towards HO. One may say, this is more a fault of game freak for releasing so many HO mons, but its not fun to rand 6 mons that are all offensive, can't switch into anything, and lose to the wrong mon. In older gens, I can get a decent enough variety in my team.

We need more defensive/utility sets.

I agree with you. However, to explain why gen 9 has ended up in the situation it's in where it's tuned towards HO deserves some explanation.

The first side of it is that rands actually does listen to the community as much as possible, and overwhelmingly the community dislikes defensive and utility sets more than offensive sets. There are significant portions of the community who would be happiest if every mon in the game were running some kind of setup sweeper kit (and unfortunately or fortunately depending on your perspective, an increasing number of defensive mons can now do that thanks to Iron Defence + Body Press). Many people on the rands auth also prefer offence across the board. I'm not one of them -- I've done sweeps of the format and pushed for additions like phasing / Haze / Clear Smog to try and maintain balance, and such sweeps have also been accepted by leadership. Leadership does actually do its best to listen to both sides, and effectively implements both sides...

...but the primary part of it is that sets are actually winrate tested now, and balance / defensive / utility builds have more skill expression than offensive sets do. Offensive sets don't have 0 skill expression, of course. You still need to position the mon onto the field so that it's safe to set up, or make a risk vs reward calculation of which choiced move to click. But anything other than a setup move or attack is harder to use optimally, and so when higher skill expression sets are winrate tested, their winrates are lower than their actual viability is, because players just don't know how to use them properly. This means that a utility set has to be even better than a setup set in order to get itself a positive winrate change during testing. An example of where this has happened somewhat recently is with Revavroom, who had a great utility set from the start of the format up to a couple of months ago. Chat began being full of requests to delete utility Revavroom, and when it was tested on ladder its winrate increased by something like 2%, one of the biggest winrate increases from a new set we've had in Gen 9. Utility Revavroom was good, but you can't ignore a statistic like that.

It's not actually a bad thing necessarily that this is the case. This comes down to the "should rands cater to the greatest number or the greatest skilled" debate. Rands leadership firmly prefers to cater to the greatest number, and when significant proportions of the community cannot use sets like utility Revavroom well, and these instances are confirmed during testing, it is a good thing under that philosophy to remove it from the format. I fall into the greatest skilled camp, under the belief that facilitating skill in sets first will force worse players to improve, but it is neither the opinion of the leadership nor of the majority of the community, which is also fine. A major case for the greatest number argument is (to use Revavroom again, it's just the most relevant example here IMO) that because winrates are also used for level balancing, the fact that people en masse were so bad at using utility Revavroom actually meant that its Shift Gear set was overlevelled. It was the best setup sweeper in the format bar none for a short period, until the utility set was removed and its winrate rose to the point that it quickly caught level nerfs.

...with all of that said, if you want to do a sweep of the format and suggest a number of defensive- / utility-oriented changes, I can guarantee we'll carefully consider them. More utility is a good thing.

 

[Irpachuza]

Also because Gen 9 is more offensive everywhere? GF cut a lot of stalling options, and other kind of utility is harder to apply in Randbats since most depend on team synergy.

 

[pyuk]

I think the bigger issue here is that Randbats can’t adjust EVs for sets. Leftovers, Assault Vest, Heavy Duty Boots, and Intimidate are really the only things you can put on a set to make it easier for a Pokémon to switch in. Sure, giving more Pokémon recovery moves might make it easier to switch in and take 40% from a resisted hit more often, but we’re talking about situations where your best switch-in takes 60% because you don’t even have a real resist. Giving a Pokémon Thunder Wave isn’t going to fix that. Well, it will for that Pokémon’s opponent who now has a switch-in thanks to its weakened offensive presence.

That’s the other side of the coin: it’s an arms race. The more Pokémon there are that have HO sets, the harder it is for balance sets to switch in, which makes it more optimal for middling Pokémon to lean towards either offense or defense. As stated, it’s easier for the player base to use offense sets and easier for set development to make them, so sets generally end up leaning towards offense which in turn puts even more pressure on the new middle to lean one way or the other, and the effect cascades. Deliberately making many Pokémon’s movesets “worse” to make them more support-oriented could help, but that would be very hard to stomach for players and devs alike. A greater proliferation of Leftovers, Assault Vest, and Heavy Duty Boots might help with this, but Assault Vest has the same problem it always does and cuts out the ability to use most support moves while not providing any damage boost to the attacks it does allow, and Leftovers only adds a measly 6.25% cushion to the 2HKO ranges you’d like to avoid. Boots, on the other hand, would probably go a long way on the many teams without removal that get generated (as would adding removal to more sets, but Blastoise and Smeargle are literally the only FEs that learn removal that can’t already roll it), while Intimidate could let some Pokémon like… uh… Squawkabilly get more switches in (everything that can get Intimidate already gets it besides Squawk and Mabosstiff, the latter of which has basically no support moves besides Destiny Bond, Pain Split, and non-ghost Curse… Pain Split/Curse + Intimidate doesn’t sound too bad, actually). With all of that said, though, there is one more item that passively provides defensive utility that can help switch in: Eviolite.

At this point, I honestly think the best place to look for unexplored defensive utility is in NFEs. Obviously Knock Off and hazard weaknesses are big problems, but there are still a handful that I think can get around those to pull their weight.

• Bisharp resists Knock Off and has plenty of physical bulk besides. It doesn’t have much to stand out over its evolution besides a little speed and only very slightly more bulk at the same level, but the lack of Supreme Overlord is almost a niche in itself, letting it be balanced around being useful throughout the match without the incentive to save it for later, and, as far as niches go, I think Duraludon (which is 1.5 tiers lower than Bisharp, currently) sets a pretty low bar.
• Quaxwell is a “bulky” Water with Rapid Spin and Roost. It’s not much, and it doesn’t even resist Knock like its evo does, but if we’re really this desperate for defensive utility it might just be enough.
• Tinkatuff can, uh… um… how about we just give Tinkaton Pickpocket sometimes first and see how it does as a Knock Off absorber. Pickpocket activates immediately upon losing one’s item to Knock Off which Tinkatink abuses a lot in LC.
• Sneasel-Hisui also has Pickpocket and a Dark resistance as well as 115 base speed if that means anything. I think it has the potential to be at least as good of a fast bulky eviolite user as Misdreavus. Maybe give it Drain Punch sometimes?

Oh, and I guess Sitrus Berry is good for blocking 2HKOes too, but it’s probably too unreliable except maybe for IronPress sets. Anyway, I’ll end with this bonus suggestion: give Blastoise Wave Crash as a roll over Hydro Pump.

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

• Sneasel-Hisui also has Pickpocket and a Dark resistance as well as 115 base speed if that means anything. I think it has the potential to be at least as good of a fast bulky eviolite user as Misdreavus. Maybe give it Drain Punch sometimes?

staff got really excited for hisuian sneasel until we learned it doesn't get drain punch or really any recovery at all whatsoever and therefore cannot successfully do The Okidogi

also we're def giving tinkaton pickpocket that's really nice actually

 

[pokeblade101]

Unsure if this should go to a different thread, but I feel gen 4 machamp could run a guts wallbreaker set, pretty similar to gen 7. Most likely toxic orb, close combat, facade, and some variation of the current moves it runs. I couldn't say exactly what it would be but I feel it might perform well enough as an early game wall breaker.

Yes there is a thread specifically for this here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/past-gens-random-battle-sets.3674281/

 

[thatcameguy]

could you test infestation on dipplin? i find it doesn't really do much but sit there whenever i have it and getting passive damage and trapping a mon could be pretty decent on it with good bulk

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

could you test infestation on dipplin? i find it doesn't really do much but sit there whenever i have it and getting passive damage and trapping a mon could be pretty decent on it with good bulk

ok

 

[Gabhi]

um any idea on no evio tank duraludon thunderwave and phasing give it some utility and body press hitting hard is nice also rocks

 

[DkKoba]

I think I would argue the automatic level adjustment is somewhat at fault in that while it can give a rough idea where a pokemon should be, such as putting a mon like chi yu at a lower level and sunflora at a high level - it does not properly account for it's actual power level. I feel this through old gens that have adopted the automatic level system as well - where certain mons are notably more powerful than they should be in relation to others that got nerfed, especially when it comes to speed tiers in particular.

I suggest some level of manual speed control at the very minimum when it comes to adjusting randbats sets to help remedy some aspects of brokenness present, perhaps also potentially nerfing bulky on sweeper sets, and maybe increasing bulk on more passive sets(body Press mons and the like excluded)

While it's been expressed the randbats Council wants to lean towards "press win button = fun" another argument could be made that that should be something perhaps given to the unranked randbats ladder - as having an elo system for a ladder should imply some sort of competitiveness at least and letting a better player triumph above rand.

I'm not one to be able to present math and hard statistics but I know other more invested players definitely do feel what I am expressing and know what it's like, so this is a call to those skilled at presenting these things at pursuing the truth of the matter whether there is an underlying issue mechanically and where that issue can be remedied.

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

I think I would argue the automatic level adjustment is somewhat at fault in that while it can give a rough idea where a pokemon should be, such as putting a mon like chi yu at a lower level and sunflora at a high level - it does not properly account for it's actual power level. I feel this through old gens that have adopted the automatic level system as well - where certain mons are notably more powerful than they should be in relation to others that got nerfed, especially when it comes to speed tiers in particular.

I suggest some level of manual speed control at the very minimum when it comes to adjusting randbats sets to help remedy some aspects of brokenness present, perhaps also potentially nerfing bulky on sweeper sets, and maybe increasing bulk on more passive sets(body Press mons and the like excluded)

While it's been expressed the randbats Council wants to lean towards "press win button = fun" another argument could be made that that should be something perhaps given to the unranked randbats ladder - as having an elo system for a ladder should imply some sort of competitiveness at least and letting a better player triumph above rand.

I'm not one to be able to present math and hard statistics but I know other more invested players definitely do feel what I am expressing and know what it's like, so this is a call to those skilled at presenting these things at pursuing the truth of the matter whether there is an underlying issue mechanically and where that issue can be remedied.

Calls for manual/arbitrary level balancing have been requested and denied several times by the council and format heads alike. This is unlikely to go anywhere, but I'll bring it up to the council regardless.

 

[DkKoba]

Calls for manual/arbitrary level balancing have been requested and denied several times by the council and format heads alike. This is unlikely to go anywhere.

I would counter that this time is different as previous gens did not have issues that required this, outside of Unown's relative level to other mons being too close and other minor things, such as ADV deo-A being way too strong, etc. and the request for manual leveling was not necessary

Wrt council mindset- I am hopeful that significant change is on the horizon due to distinct flaws of people too disconnected from tiers making arbitrary decisions that are unpopular to the active players of tiers - although maybe that's just being wishful here.

 

[bobomania]

um any idea on no evio tank duraludon thunderwave and phasing give it some utility and body press hitting hard is nice also rocks

could you please clarify what you are trying to suggest in this post

 

[thatcameguy]

i don't like tera grass on appletun, i don't think a slight boost on apple acid is worth it when you pretty much only gain being neutral to dragon and fairy, i find tera steel to be better in every way