Format Discussion Scarlet/Violet Random Battle Sets

[platinumCheesecake]

is there a need for cresselia to have both psychic and psyshock as potential moves? i've already experienced myself or witnessed a cress losing a calm mind war due to carrying psychic over psyshock, and it just seems pretty silly that it would be able to have psychic in that situation when psyshock is just as good in most situations with the added benefit of being able to do better vs other calm mind mons. If there isn't a great reason for psychic to be kept as a potential moveslot, i think it would make more sense to have psyshock as its only stab

So you ask this, and I got curious how often psyshock is preferable to psychic. Its not often that you're really boosting up beyond +2/+2, and typically if you get there you've already won anyway. So I think the real question here is "is the tradeoff from winning CM wars worth the 15 bp reduction in the cases where you are not boosting to +6." Let's do some math and see where this takes us.

math

I may be off by one or two here, but by my count 26 mons have sets with calm mind. Of those 9 only have it some of the time, reducing the frequency of facing a foe with cm by a little. To account for probability, lets call it 4 mons' worth. And lets just assume every mon that has cm will get it, since typically that's the case with how Setup Sweeper roles work (though there are cases where mons have cm and dont get it). We can mostly discount mons without recovery, since cress would just wall them out with moonlight anyway. So we concern ourselves with the 13 mons with recovery moves that would constitute cresselia entering into a cm war in which psyshock would be superior. Well, make that 10, since Umbreon and Spiritomb don't care about Psyshock vs Psychic (and Arceus-dark, but the odds of getting any one arceus form are annoying to math out so I'll ignore him) and Cresselia, because whatever change we make would affect your opponent too. Of those 10, theres (very roughly) a 50% chance they roll the species and the set with CM and recovery. So lets make the math easy and say there's 5.

5 mons' worth of CM+recovery sets, and 276 unique species in the format

The odds of your opponent having at least one pokemon that would be hit harder in a cm war by psyshock is 1-[(271/276)*(270/275)*(269/274)*(268/273)*(267/272)*(266/271)].

TLDR for above: Looks like about 10% of the time your opponent will generate a team with a pokemon that can enter a CM war with Cress.

Obviously in an actual game there will be many, many times when either cress or the rival CMer get offed before they square off in their epic struggle, so I'll ballpark 5-8% of games with a cress will see a CM war.

If we add psyshock to cress, we can either add it as a 50/50 between its psychic stabs or commit fully and remove psychic. Knowing that in 8% of games there is a possibility of entering a CM war, do we allow for the other 92% of games to see a 12% reduction in base power versus every other target?

Personally, I'm not convinced, but we can try and put psyshock as an option and see where the winrates go. In all actuality, it probably won't make all that much of a difference.

(And incidentally, if my logic holds, we actually should consider swapping Slowbro over to Psychic, since it also can enter in a cm war, but currently is psyshock-only)

 

[Ampha]

This aint virizion bruh, get this forced psyblade, as much as having cov is cool, it wont hit that hard w/o its main stab

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

View attachment 498066
This aint virizion bruh, get this forced psyblade, as much as having cov is cool, it wont hit that hard w/o its main stab

close combat does the same amount as psyblade even before tera

 

[Ampha]

close combat does the same amount as psyblade even before tera

Ye but wild charge is taking 0 if you are not using tera electric, plus it just doesnt fit w the setup sweeper set since you are taking at least a huge ammount damage between SD+ Life orb + recoil, wild charge felt extremely useless on the battle in question even tho guy had flying type

 

[bodi]

i think that hisui lilligant should definitely not get hustle it misses so much the damage isnt worth it .Chlorophyll is so much better

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

i think that hisui lilligant should definitely not get hustle it misses so much the damage isnt worth it .Chlorophyll is so much better

Hustle is, on average, deeply worth having. It is a necessary risk for power. We will not be removing it at this time, as precedent from past generations is that hustle users get hustle because hustle is strong. (see: Flapple not getting Ripen in Gen 8, Alolan Raticate in Gen 7, Dracozolt).

I apologize because you lost a game due to a hustle miss. You losing because of it is not enough of a reason to remove hustle, though.

 

[bodi]

Hustle is, on average, deeply worth having. It is a necessary risk for power. We will not be removing it at this time, as precedent from past generations is that hustle users get hustle because hustle is strong. (see: Flapple not getting Ripen in Gen 8, Alolan Raticate in Gen 7, Dracozolt).

I apologize because you lost a game due to a hustle miss. You losing because of it is not enough of a reason to remove hustle, though.

thank you for responding i want just to say if you can make 2nd set for it if you say hustle is good then chlorophyll isnt bad either

 

[Turtlek]

thank you for responding i want just to say if you can make 2nd set for it if you say hustle is good then chlorophyll isnt bad either

It is, it’s basically useless

 

[Celever]

thank you for responding i want just to say if you can make 2nd set for it if you say hustle is good then chlorophyll isnt bad either

Chlorophyll can be a good ability! If you have a sun setter on your team (who generates before Lilligant-Hisui) then it can actually have Chlorophyll instead of Hustle, which is the best we can do to implement that synergy and allow Chlorophyll's effect to be procced.

Otherwise, Chlorophyll is certainly not a good ability as it does nothing at all. Hustle is the root of most of Lilligant-Hisui's value, as its attack stat is only above average and so Hustle is responsible for its pretty great damage output we see when it lands an attack. The best way to use Lilligant-Hisui is definitely as a wallbreaker where it can fire off attacks relatively safely due to a good matchup vs the Pokémon your opponent has out on the field, and this strategy gives you more time to adapt should Hustle cause a miss.

Plus, Defog's accuracy drop actually being useful for something is simply quite cool. That's not why it has Hustle, but it's cool nonetheless :P

 

[Apo1lo0017]

Wouldn't Urshifu-R's item be better if it was muscle band or wave-incense rather than punching glove? Punching glove removes contact from his attacks, which completely negates his ability, and abilities like Rough Skin are rarer than sets with Protect, making the value for other items better.

 

[pokeblade101]

Wouldn't Urshifu-R's item be better if it was muscle band or wave-incense rather than punching glove? Punching glove removes contact from his attacks, which completely negates his ability, and abilities like Rough Skin are rarer than sets with Protect, making the value for other items better.

There is also flame body (4 Pokemon), static (3 Pokemon), gooey (1 Pokemon), aftermath (3 Pokemon), tangling hair (1 Pokemon), cute charm (only enamorus) and then rough skin (1 Pokemon ) you have to keep in mind here. So this is 14 vs 24 Protect users so yeah you are right that protect is more common. So this will boil down to if you think hitting through protect (Stuff like moody users and wish users) are more valuable than getting screw over by a contact ability. I might be with you on this after this analysis. At least until more Pokemon come into the format.

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

Wouldn't Urshifu-R's item be better if it was muscle band or wave-incense rather than punching glove? Punching glove removes contact from his attacks, which completely negates his ability, and abilities like Rough Skin are rarer than sets with Protect, making the value for other items better.

The contact removal only affects Surging Strikes, which is most often the attack used against all of the above-listed contact ability pokemon; you can still break protect just fine with Close Combat, which is often more useful against Protect users anyways because they're typically Water or Grass type.

You are not using Surging Strikes on an Alomomola.

 

[Z-nogyroP]

two very minor things i've noticed, though one is a good bit more significant than the other. on the sub calm mind miraidon set, wouldn't it be preferable to have thunderbolt instead of electro drift? electro drift is easily its most spammable move since the other move is typically draco meteor, but only having 8 PP makes it difficult to make use of, and doubling the amount of PP it has available for its electric STAB is probably better than the 10 BP difference. (draco meteor is also kind of counterproductive for the set, but the power drop between it and dragon pulse is much more significant - that said, it should probably have either electro drift or draco meteor plus dragon pulse or thunderbolt, not both.)

the other is that i just got a tera ground cloyster with tera blast, but cloyster also learns drill run. tera blast obviously has some minor advantages over drill run like 5% more accuracy and no contact, but drill run has the same BP and doesn't force you to terastalize to make use of it - tera blast is a dead slot if you tera something else, so i think drill run is at least worth it for tera ground.

that said i know there are some issues where those proposed moves might be rolled on other sets (electro drift and draco meteor are fine on the specs miraidon set, for example) and these are fairly small so it's not a huge deal one way or the other

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

two very minor things i've noticed, though one is a good bit more significant than the other. on the sub calm mind miraidon set, wouldn't it be preferable to have thunderbolt instead of electro drift? electro drift is easily its most spammable move since the other move is typically draco meteor, but only having 8 PP makes it difficult to make use of, and doubling the amount of PP it has available for its electric STAB is probably better than the 10 BP difference. (draco meteor is also kind of counterproductive for the set, but the power drop between it and dragon pulse is much more significant - that said, it should probably have either electro drift or draco meteor plus dragon pulse or thunderbolt, not both.)

the other is that i just got a tera ground cloyster with tera blast, but cloyster also learns drill run. tera blast obviously has some minor advantages over drill run like 5% more accuracy and no contact, but drill run has the same BP and doesn't force you to terastalize to make use of it - tera blast is a dead slot if you tera something else, so i think drill run is at least worth it for tera ground.

that said i know there are some issues where those proposed moves might be rolled on other sets (electro drift and draco meteor are fine on the specs miraidon set, for example) and these are fairly small so it's not a huge deal one way or the other

Good questions!

Miraidon has Electro Drift on the calm mind set primarily because it needs all the power it can get, even on Super Effective targets; its low level means the Expert Belt effect on Electro Drift is quite important, especially when unboosted. I understand PP issues, but on something like Miraidon, power is extremely important.

As for Cloyster, the reason it doesn't have Drill Run is because, on other sets, Drill Run isn't strong enough to be useful, and it's unfortunately not possible to fully separate Tera Ground Drill Run from all of its other sets. It's a "we would if we could" situation.

 

[Ampha]

Whats the point of Tera ghost Falinks if it doesnt have any way of abusing the ghost typing w/o tera blast, at least make Tera ghost + Tera blast a pair

 

[Celever]

View attachment 503957
Whats the point of Tera ghost Falinks if it doesnt have any way of abusing the ghost typing w/o tera blast, at least make Tera ghost + Tera blast a pair

Ghost-Type lets you switch out after using No Retreat, so it's useful enough on its regular set to be usable combined with good defensive properties. Tera Blast Falinks will always be Tera Ghost too.

 

[Mega Croissantamence]

I don’t have any screenshots because I didn’t know they were required, sorry about that and I will have them in the future.

My main complaint is how prominent hazards are, and how incredibly scarce hazard REMOVAL is. Every team I’ve ever had was able to set up spikes, stealth rock, or toxic spikes, but very few had rapid spin, mortal spin, tidy up, or Defog. If hazards are a staple, hazard removal should be too.

I know these moves aren’t very widely distributed, and I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes, but if the algorithm could be tweaked to favor adding at least one Pokémon with hazard removal, I feel that would make the game more enjoyable.

It is very frustrating to see your opponent send out a Kricketune that you couldn’t have known they had, followed by you realizing you can neither prevent sticky web from going up, nor can you remove it.

 

[Celever]

I don’t have any screenshots because I didn’t know they were required, sorry about that and I will have them in the future.

My main complaint is how prominent hazards are, and how incredibly scarce hazard REMOVAL is. Every team I’ve ever had was able to set up spikes, stealth rock, or toxic spikes, but very few had rapid spin, mortal spin, tidy up, or Defog. If hazards are a staple, hazard removal should be too.

I know these moves aren’t very widely distributed, and I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes, but if the algorithm could be tweaked to favor adding at least one Pokémon with hazard removal, I feel that would make the game more enjoyable.

It is very frustrating to see your opponent send out a Kricketune that you couldn’t have known they had, followed by you realizing you can neither prevent sticky web from going up, nor can you remove it.

Not only is it technologically impossible to ensure every team has hazard removal, but it would also make the format significantly worse if every team had it. There are a lot of Pokémon who aren't particularly good in a vacuum who rely on hazards to have a use case, and so if every team had hazard removal the number of shitmons we get increases a lot. If you get a team with hazard setter Sudowoodo, Qwilfish-Hisui, and Spidops, and your opponent has hazard removal, you're kind of playing a 3v6 so you better pray your other 3 Pokémon are broken.

Legit every Pokémon that can get hazard removal gets it. It's why Oricorio of all things uses Defog when it would individually prefer to be a Quiver Dance sweeper at all times. The balance is still tipped in favour of hazards being stronger / more common than hazard removal is, but the answer to that isn't to ensure hazards are useless and make even more Pokémon completely useless than is currently the case (where it's really only Luvdisc and usually Delibird).

The only way giving every team hazard removal could be balanced is if we also gave every team a Gholdengo to block hazard removal LMAO.

 

[Lady Writer]

I don’t have any screenshots because I didn’t know they were required, sorry about that and I will have them in the future.

My main complaint is how prominent hazards are, and how incredibly scarce hazard REMOVAL is. Every team I’ve ever had was able to set up spikes, stealth rock, or toxic spikes, but very few had rapid spin, mortal spin, tidy up, or Defog. If hazards are a staple, hazard removal should be too.

I know these moves aren’t very widely distributed, and I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes, but if the algorithm could be tweaked to favor adding at least one Pokémon with hazard removal, I feel that would make the game more enjoyable.

It is very frustrating to see your opponent send out a Kricketune that you couldn’t have known they had, followed by you realizing you can neither prevent sticky web from going up, nor can you remove it.

yo when can i get hazards every game tho

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

yo when can i get hazards every game tho

we're also not doing that; neither forcing hazards nor forcing removal is technically feasible.

 

[platinumCheesecake]

Just a general point of order: the point is that theyre random battles. There is a format where you can get a hazard setter and defogger every game, and its called Overused. Or if you don't wanna teambuild, play Battle Factory.

Forcing hazards, removal, mega evolutions, z crystals, tera blast users, a mon to resist every type, at least one Toxic user, at least one OU or Uber, and a mon with some way to hit shedinja are all suggestions I've heard in my tenure. If we were to go forward with every team generation suggestion we would be left with a complete betrayal of the format itself.

 

[Mega Croissantamence]

All of your other examples were pretty niche, meanwhile most random battle teams have hazards. I get that the point is to work with what you have, but it’s pretty hard to work with anything when your opponent got to set up sticky web or toxic spikes and you can do nothing about either.

If you’re mono weak to fighting, you can Tera out of it and remove the threat before your opponent realizes its value. If your setup sweeper doesn’t have Tera blast, you can just wait longer to use it until you wouldn’t need it as badly.

if your opponent has a hazard setter, they’ll probably wait for a good opportunity, send it out (which is nearly impossible to predict since teams are hidden) and then you’re stuck against sticky web or T spikes with no way to remove them. It’s a very common situation, and makes the remainder of the match incredibly one sided.

 

[Irpachuza]

You are actively ignoring the multiple persons saying it's not technically feasible.
Furthermore, the examples given by Celever are niche because we currently don't enforce removal. They are pretty much explaining you why it'd be unoptimal to enforce it, and with your last post you are directly cycling back to your original pretences without acknowledging the (a) competitive, (b) technical, and (c) policy reasons that three different council members took the time to address. If you don't intend to follow up a proper debate, please don't continue complaining. For the moment, we are fine waiting for Home and/or DLCs to increase movepools and removal users.

 

[Piplz]

tbh while i do agree forcing removal of hazards would go against the nature of the format, said nature isn't a reason not to have sanity checks where necessary. things like having only a maximum of two pokemon sharing the same type *is* an example of a sanity check. zacian not being possible in the lead position is another example.

personally my only real gripe with the format has always been dugtrio/goth as leads, i will die on this hill if need be, but those mons should not be possible leads for the same reason zacian shouldn't. it completely throws player agency out of the window. this kind of sanity check has precedence (again, zacian), and i believe it would be very simple to make it happen and wouldn't ruin the format whatsoever.

there is absolutely nothing positive about being able to play a 6v5 because your opponent happened to roll a pikachu against your dugtrio on turn 1

 

[Bruh Wobuffet]

tbh while i do agree forcing removal of hazards would go against the nature of the format, said nature isn't a reason not to have sanity checks where necessary. things like having only a maximum of two pokemon sharing the same type *is* an example of a sanity check. zacian not being possible in the lead position is another example.

personally my only real gripe with the format has always been dugtrio/goth as leads, i will die on this hill if need be, but those mons should not be possible leads for the same reason zacian shouldn't. it completely throws player agency out of the window. this kind of sanity check has precedence (again, zacian), and i believe it would be very simple to make it happen and wouldn't ruin the format whatsoever.

there is absolutely nothing positive about being able to play a 6v5 because your opponent happened to roll a pikachu against your dugtrio on turn 1

I had to agree on this.
Yes Its luck based, but forcing 5v6 without skill needed could be annoying. At least getting in a trapper still takes Some skill, but leading a trapper is not.
It's different from a bad matchup, because in those cases you can usually justify switching to something else.