Format Discussion Scarlet/Violet Random Battle Sets

[thatcameguy]

i get that's it stab but i believe u turn on iron bundle is slightly better than flip turn with u turn having no immunities meaning you'll always get the switch while with flip turn there's always the chance that something is immune to it

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

i get that's it stab but i believe u turn on iron bundle is slightly better than flip turn with u turn having no immunities meaning you'll always get the switch while with flip turn there's always the chance that something is immune to it

Ok

 

[woodgoldtwo]

i get that's it stab but i believe u turn on iron bundle is slightly better than flip turn with u turn having no immunities meaning you'll always get the switch while with flip turn there's always the chance that something is immune to it

Every Pokemon that has either Water Absorb or Storm Drain is weak to Freeze Dry except Lapras which isn’t in S/V and therefore do not want to switch into an Iron Bundle, and if they do switch in, hard switching into something else is almost always a safe play since most Storm Drain/Water Absorb Pokemon are either passive or easily predictable

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

i get that's it stab but i believe u turn on iron bundle is slightly better than flip turn with u turn having no immunities meaning you'll always get the switch while with flip turn there's always the chance that something is immune to it

Update: several days later, this request has been denied by staff because freeze dry hits all non-terad water immunities except, like, AV Volcanion. Tera'd water immunities are not considered a big enough problem by the staff to warrant the change.

 

[MidKnightShadows]

I am not exactly Sure where to post this but if someone can point me where to go if this is not the place that would be great.

Would it be possible to have a sub-mode of random battles where you get a random team but can choose who is put out first, it seems like a slightly better way to get more into competitive Pokémon and prevents a situation where to just get a bad match up due to luck versus getting a bad match up due to the opponent out thinking me. No other changes to the mode simply the ability to choose which Pokémon is the lead rather than just whatever Pokémon is first on your random team.

 

[bobomania]

I am not exactly Sure where to post this but if someone can point me where to go if this is not the place that would be great.

Would it be possible to have a sub-mode of random battles where you get a random team but can choose who is put out first, it seems like a slightly better way to get more into competitive Pokémon and prevents a situation where to just get a bad match up due to luck versus getting a bad match up due to the opponent out thinking me. No other changes to the mode simply the ability to choose which Pokémon is the lead rather than just whatever Pokémon is first on your random team.

it is unlikely that we will have a randbats format with team preview. however, something like battle factory might be more in line with what you are looking for. it is designed to emulate tiers and has the "randomly generated teams" aspect

 

[Dratios]

Could Defog be added to Volbeat/Illumise without causing too much other trouble?

 

[bobomania]

Could Defog be added to Volbeat/Illumise without causing too much other trouble?

if they had it!

 

[bodi]

I don't know if this is intentional or not but kingler having shell armor over sheer force serves no purpose at all ( gen 6 )

 

[divine.lathe]

sheer force doesnt affect any of those moves (assuming thats superpower on the left) so sheer force would be useless

 

[bodi]

sheer force doesnt affect any of those moves (assuming thats superpower on the left) so sheer force would be useless

yeah I forgot that it doesn't learn liquidation

 

[thatcameguy]

since you took all coverage moves away from basculin and gave it double edge is it possible to have reckless as an option to roll over adaptability?

 

[livid washed]

since you took all coverage moves away from basculin and gave it double edge is it possible to have reckless as an option to roll over adaptability?

I'd much rather power up aqua jet and flip turn by 1.33x, and have a stronger wave crash, than boost double-edge's power by 1.2x. Normal is not a great type to be choice locked into, especially without STAB. Adaptability Wave Crash does enough damage against many Water resists anyway.

We removed most of Basculin's coverage specifically to guarantee that it always gets triple water move, which is fantastic with Adaptability. Double-Edge was the 4th move that covers all water immunities neutrally, but it shouldn't be used against anything that's not immune or 4x resistant to Water. (If, say, Jellicent returns in DLC2, we may reconsider the coverage move.)

 

[Level 51]

Edit: wow, this post took sufficiently long to write that by the time it was done the change was reverted! Still leaving it here for posterity reasons, thank you Cake for the decision :)

Sorry, not sure which thread to post in, let me know if I should move this elsewhere. Or you can move it for me with your mod powers

I think Zarel's Blessing is a terrible idea. I want to make it clear, from the outset, that my objection is a philosophical one, and not a practical one. The TL;DR: I don't think that these Pokemon's badness warrants going outside the limits of the game to fix it.

I'm sure from council discussions that the council is intimately familiar with the counterarguments, but for completeness' sake I will briefly reiterate them here:

• In contrast with level balancing for balance, Zarel's Blessing isn't actually a thing that could appear in a game. I get that possibly level balancing is insufficient for some of these truly terrible Pokemon (and it is indeed backed up by w% stats), but this measure is really artificial and is an egregious break in the simulation.
• Part of the charm of randbats, at least for the average player, is that sometimes you just get a completely terrible team and have to do your best, or sometimes just lose—that's what makes it random. I'm not playing randbats to get an amazingly balanced format or because I want an exclusive test of skill. It's very much a fun format.

The upvoters, however, noted that this is a consistent method of balancing that will increase the competitiveness of the format in major tournament and high ladder play, Ultimately, Zarel's Blessing will likely make the format better, despite its strangeness, because it has the potential to make rolling these Pokemon not a heavy innate disadvantage in game.

I'd like to comment on this specifically. The concept of balancing on specific, niche, element in a format that's known for its randomness and unpredictability seems very much like a drop-in-the-ocean kind of deal. I really don't believe that "[increasing] the competitiveness of the format in major tournament and high ladder play" is a valid justification if you really think about how much of an effect this actually has. Given the probability of pulling an Unown and the effect it has on your game, I'd say its expected net impact is probably less than getting burned by Heat Wave. There are many, many scenarios in randbats that are going to offer one player a "heavy innate disadvantage", even just in team formation alone. Why is this one so special and so worth balancing that it warrants going outside of game mechanics?

To end off, I really hope the community outside of tournament randbats players gets some say or otherwise has some levers for change on this change. I view randbats as an iconic PS format, and I think a major change like this—not to the balance, but to the spirit of the format—going unpolled in the community is a misstep, especially (and I cannot stress this part enough!) if it can't be reverted by typical voting means.

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

Sorry, not sure which thread to post in, let me know if I should move this elsewhere. Or you can move it for me with your mod powers

I think Zarel's Blessing is a terrible idea. I want to make it clear, from the outset, that my objection is a philosophical one, and not a practical one. The TL;DR: I don't think that these Pokemon's badness warrants going outside the limits of the game to fix it.

I'm sure from council discussions that the council is intimately familiar with the counterarguments, but for completeness' sake I will briefly reiterate them here:

• In contrast with level balancing for balance, Zarel's Blessing isn't actually a thing that could appear in a game. I get that possibly level balancing is insufficient for some of these truly terrible Pokemon (and it is indeed backed up by w% stats), but this measure is really artificial and is an egregious break in the simulation.
• Part of the charm of randbats, at least for the average player, is that sometimes you just get a completely terrible team and have to do your best, or sometimes just lose—that's what makes it random. I'm not playing randbats to get an amazingly balanced format or because I want an exclusive test of skill. It's very much a fun format.

I'd like to comment on this specifically. The concept of balancing on specific, niche, element in a format that's known for its randomness and unpredictability seems very much like a drop-in-the-ocean kind of deal. I really don't believe that "[increasing] the competitiveness of the format in major tournament and high ladder play" is a valid justification if you really think about how much of an effect this actually has. Given the probability of pulling an Unown and the effect it has on your game, I'd say its expected net impact is probably less than getting burned by Heat Wave. There are many, many scenarios in randbats that are going to offer one player a "heavy innate disadvantage", even just in team formation alone. Why is this one so special and so worth balancing that it warrants going outside of game mechanics?

To end off, I really hope the community outside of tournament randbats players gets some say or otherwise has some levers for change on this change. I view randbats as an iconic PS format, and I think a major change like this—not to the balance, but to the spirit of the format—going unpolled in the community is a misstep, especially (and I cannot stress this part enough!) if it can't be reverted by typical voting means.

It was already gone by the time you posted, but this feedback is very important to us and i respect it immensely. Thank you.

 

[Celever]

Since the mechanic has been reverted, I'm just replying to engage with your points since I think it's worthwhile to do so. I voted against Blessing, so it's not much to do with the mechanic itself, and for clarity purposes these are my views as an individual who happens to be on the council, and I'm not speaking for the council (I'm not even a leader of the council so how would I lol).

Edit: wow, this post took sufficiently long to write that by the time it was done the change was reverted! Still leaving it here for posterity reasons, thank you Cake for the decision :)

Sorry, not sure which thread to post in, let me know if I should move this elsewhere. Or you can move it for me with your mod powers

I think Zarel's Blessing is a terrible idea. I want to make it clear, from the outset, that my objection is a philosophical one, and not a practical one. The TL;DR: I don't think that these Pokemon's badness warrants going outside the limits of the game to fix it.

I'm sure from council discussions that the council is intimately familiar with the counterarguments, but for completeness' sake I will briefly reiterate them here:

• In contrast with level balancing for balance, Zarel's Blessing isn't actually a thing that could appear in a game. I get that possibly level balancing is insufficient for some of these truly terrible Pokemon (and it is indeed backed up by w% stats), but this measure is really artificial and is an egregious break in the simulation.

For the record I voted against Zarel's Blessing and was one of the more vocal opponents of the proposal, for exactly this reason. Not even that "the mons aren't bad enough to add a completely rands-specific mechanic to the game", just that adding a completely rands-specific mechanic to the game shouldn't happen in general, even in the name of balance. Any line we draw is arbitrary, for instance we could just let Unown run multiple Hidden Powers and that would be less intrusive than the proposal of Zarel's Blessing was, and probably more effective, too. If it hadn't been suggested by Zarel, I don't think it would have passed, and this was the first vote of this type for the randbats dev council so I think it was a learning experience across the board.

However...

• Part of the charm of randbats, at least for the average player, is that sometimes you just get a completely terrible team and have to do your best, or sometimes just lose—that's what makes it random. I'm not playing randbats to get an amazingly balanced format or because I want an exclusive test of skill. It's very much a fun format.

I'd like to comment on this specifically. The concept of balancing on specific, niche, element in a format that's known for its randomness and unpredictability seems very much like a drop-in-the-ocean kind of deal. I really don't believe that "[increasing] the competitiveness of the format in major tournament and high ladder play" is a valid justification if you really think about how much of an effect this actually has. Given the probability of pulling an Unown and the effect it has on your game, I'd say its expected net impact is probably less than getting burned by Heat Wave. There are many, many scenarios in randbats that are going to offer one player a "heavy innate disadvantage", even just in team formation alone. Why is this one so special and so worth balancing that it warrants going outside of game mechanics?

To end off, I really hope the community outside of tournament randbats players gets some say or otherwise has some levers for change on this change. I view randbats as an iconic PS format, and I think a major change like this—not to the balance, but to the spirit of the format—going unpolled in the community is a misstep, especially (and I cannot stress this part enough!) if it can't be reverted by typical voting means.

I disagree with essentially all of this part of the post. Of course, randbats has a level of team variance, but I don't think it makes sense to use that fact as reason not to try and ameliorate the format as much as possible. Randbats has a real tournament scene with high level gameplay, and it is a format with considerable skill expression where the better player wins about as commonly as in teambuilt formats. Why should randbats aim to cater to the casual playerbase more than teambuilt formats do, which is not much? From where my personal standpoint is as a council member, I think we currently cater to the casual playerbase too much, the primary mechanism through which we do so being by the winrate collection on ladder starting too low. Rands isn't unique in the fact that players can get a hype rise out of winning off the back of a bad matchup, and I don't think it's beneficial to pretend it is unique in this respect. Every format has matchup variance, and while rands' matchup variance is rather different in many respects, it's not different in its severity for the most part.

Most formats make decisions based on tournament play. It's a large part of why Baton Pass is banned in a lot of formats, and is also why specific team archetypes such as weather teams commonly see tiering action taken against them. It's not to make the casual or laddering experience better, it's at least in large part because the presence of these archetypes being strong forces makes selecting which traditional team comp you choose to bring for a tournament game to be an extremely high variance and impactful decision on the result. Formats usually try to place HO archetypes on the slightly weaker side of the format, where players wouldn't bring them to any regular round 1 tournament, instead having them be counterpick builds. And from that stems calls for tiering action a lot of the time, since a counterpick build is essentially supposed to be an inconsistent risk-bring that places greater emphasis on the matchup than on the skill expression during the battle itself. Resultantly, the fact that Unown or other shitmons appearing in tournament games is somewhat rare doesn't really matter, because Baton Pass was also rare in most formats where tiering action was taken against it. It's about the disparity that surfaces when it is brought to the battle.

Obviously in rands you don't build your team, but the same process occurs while designing the format, and design is becoming increasingly optimised every day. It hasn't actually been a "for fun" format for a long time in the way that you mean it, and design is taken very seriously. The shitmons are by no means "so special and so worth balancing", and that ignores the amount of balancing and refinement that goes into every Pokémon in the format, which is constant and statistically effective. Blessing came about because the means through which everything is balanced are ineffective on the shitmons because of the game's natural boundaries; my position was that we have to accept that as it is, because the game's boundaries exist, but I would urge you not to think that council zeroed in heavily on one issue while neglecting everything else, because that's not the case.

The assumption behind rands design is that the average player finds competitivity fun. I think Blessing came about as a result of tunnel-vision toward this aim, and specifically Blessing wasn't a good idea, but it wasn't a bad idea due to the fact that rands was trying to maximise competitivity and bring the lowest denominator of mons up a bit. That is an important aim, and the Blessing thing does not mean that rands developers should begin catering to casual players even more than before. No other format values casual play over competitive, why should we be the exception?

 

[woodgoldtwo]

Zoroark will now visually mimic the sixth slot's level, but have a static and balanceable actual level going forward.

What does this mean? Is there an example?

(sorry if this is a stupid question but I've never been able to fully grasp how Zoroark actually works in random battles so this is extra confusing for me)

 

[Celever]

What does this mean? Is there an example?

(sorry if this is a stupid question but I've never been able to fully grasp how Zoroark actually works in random battles so this is extra confusing for me)

The game is being modded so that Zoroark’s illusion copies level as well name and sprite. This isn’t how it works in-game, where Zoroark will always display its actual level, even when Illusion is active.

Current implementation is that Zoroark has a range of levels it can actually have itself, and that level will match whatever mon is in the sixth slot. If the sixth slot’s level is outside Zoroark’s range, the team order will be shuffled so a Pokémon within its range is in slot 6 instead. This means that if the sixth slot is used, and therefore a Pokémon with a different level to Zoroark’s is in slot 6, Zoroark will have a level that the Pokémon in slot 6 can’t have, and you therefore know it’s a Zoroark. It also causes a visual bug on the side bar because of this, which cannot be fixed by any means, and trust me we’ve tried. This results in a lot of false bug reports for core staff unaffiliated with rands to have to deal with, which is why this is viewed as desirable, as well as Zoroark being able to have a consistent level to call its own.

 

[Level 51]

Thanks for engaging with the post! I have two main points to make in reply to your post, and I think both are probably sufficiently removed from the specific case of Zarel's Blessing that it's not beating a dead horse anymore.

Of course, randbats has a level of team variance, but I don't think it makes sense to use that fact as reason not to try and ameliorate the format as much as possible.

The first point is that I think we're mostly on the same page here—I don't believe that we should look at the format being random and outright elect to do nothing, always, in the direction of balancing. I think level balancing was a nice idea, for instance (iirc randbats began at level 100 across the board, in the very beginning). What I meant (but probably didn't sufficiently elucidate) was that the degree of awkwardness introduced by the solution, relative to the seriousness of the problem, was way overblown. Given that you voted no I'd assume you believe the same.

No other format values casual play over competitive, why should we be the exception?

I don't necessarily think that the tier should explicitly value casual play over competitive. I do, however, think that randbats is a sufficiently different case to other more conventional competitive tiers that specifically and manually targeting parts of it for balance to attempt to gain competitiveness is, as I said earlier, mostly a low-return effort, to the extent that I would probably argue it's not worth doing it.

As for my interpretation of randbats as a for-fun/casual format: I guess I see randbats as a primarily for-fun format with a competitive/tournament scene built around it, as compared with most other conventional formats/tiers, which were explicitly formed with tournament or at least competitive play in mind. Whether or not this is accurate to the original idea of randbats, or to what it is now, is obviously debatable and probably contentious, but I do think that on a landscape of formats, randbats in general sits more towards the casual side and has a decently higher proportion of casual players interacting with it compared to the other tiers (simply due to its low-friction setup as a hop-in tier), and as such should have a greater responsibility to cater to a casual crowd.

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

i don't like HJK and reckless on mienshao, cc is a much safer option and is a strong enough move, regen is also way better for longevity especially on scarf where you can just u turn out and heal

Good news! Scarf Reckless Mienshao is unpopular among the staff and the regs alike, so we will be removing scarf reckless.

Scarf regenerator will continue to not exist due to its existence requiring three separate hardcodes in three separate locations. Scarf Mienshao will cease to exist entirely.

Thank you for your feedback, again.

 

[Bruh Wobuffet]

Zangoose can get no knock off on it's set, which is a legit problem since it is 100% useless with a ghost type on the opponent's team, which is common and having something stonewalled by any ghost is simply not that good.
I get there are hard code issues but are there actual ways to solve this? It would also be difficult to enforce if need to be corrected

 

[Celever]

Zangoose can get no knock off on it's set, which is a legit problem since it is 100% useless with a ghost type on the opponent's team, which is common and having something stonewalled by any ghost is simply not that good.
I get there are hard code issues but are there actual ways to solve this? It would also be difficult to enforce if need to be corrected

The only ways to solve this are to:

• Make it solely Tera Dark (because it forces an attack of its type)
• Delete one of Quick Attack, Swords Dance, or Close Combat (making it a 4-move set, and therefore it will always have coverage for Ghost-Type).

This has been a reasonably common complaint and it is a deeply bad set in some matchups. But on balance, right now we feel the value of SD + Quick Attack, which would cease to exist entirely unless we delete Close Combat which has its own issues, is worth the occasional terrible matchup. Furthermore, Tera Normal Facade or Quick Attack make Zangoose one of the best wallbreakers or cleaners in the format, respectively. Against anything that isn’t Ghost-, Rock-, or Steel-Type of course, but that’s why the coverage options are there.

If you want to advocate for either of the options we’ll discuss. Right now though our mentality is that Zangoose is the most severe case of 4MSS in the game.

 

[Zap]

Can sylveon get a set with terablast

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

Can sylveon get a set with terablast

It had one before with Trailblaze, but we decided Florges would use Tera Blast better due to having the free moveslot for it; Sylveon is reliant on WishTect for recovery (which it has to forgo entirely with Tera Blast) while Florges can run Synthesis.

Sylveon wouldn't want Tera Blast as its only attack because it'd be taking a 12 BP hit for the option of instead taking a 28 BP hit and getting walled by a different set of typings, which isn't a particularly good trade in a rands setting.

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

Zangoose can get no knock off on it's set, which is a legit problem since it is 100% useless with a ghost type on the opponent's team, which is common and having something stonewalled by any ghost is simply not that good.
I get there are hard code issues but are there actual ways to solve this? It would also be difficult to enforce if need to be corrected

We plan to split Zangoose into three sets of four moves to prevent this.

Hey, forgive me if this has already been discussed but I've noticed an increase in leftovers > boots on some mons that feel like they shouldn't. The two that I've mainly had issues with are skeledirge and cyclizar. I was told that they have always had the option between the two and would get lefties when generated with another mon that has hazard removal, but now with there being more consistent removal on teams it feels more noticeable.

For both of these mons, mainly skeledirge because of the rocks weakness, it feels as though the risk of not having boots in certain matchups is far greater than the benefit of having leftovers on teams where you do have the option to consistently remove any hazards. In a lot of matchups where you have a removal option it's still not feasible to be able to keep hazards off for the entire game, a few examples being: hazard setter winning 1v1 vs your removal mon, removal mon being too slow or not having enough survivability in the matchup to use multiple times, or more rarely having a spinblocker that is difficult to take advantage of in the matchup. I know that all of these things can be played around to a certain degree and might not affect every game, but even in such cases leftovers often don't give enough of an advantage to these mons to make it worth it.

Skeledirge needs 5 turns of leftovers to have a positive impact against only one stealth rock switch, and you are much less likely to be able to use your recovery move as it significantly increases your chance of getting 2hkod on switchin. It becomes even worse with the increased spike distribution in this gen, and the fact that the opponent may have hazards distributed between multiple mons on their team which significantly decreases the chance of your removal options being able to deal with both (rocker+tspikes/webs, or rocks+spikes on seperate mons).

Cyclizar has the same issues as above, although it's significantly less of a disadvantage when facing against only stealth rock. Because the nature of the cyc sets however, you are rarely staying in more than 2 turns (usually knock/draco/taunt directly into shed tail) and is used as a pivot mon in most cases which means against one layer you are usually going to be either neutral or saving more HP with boots.



tldr: should remove leftovers as an option from skeledirge and cyclizar in favour of boots

We have recently unanimously council voted to make existing boots users always boots, even with hazard removal on the team. This will be put in effect next update.