Format Discussion Pokemon Sun/Moon Random Battle sets

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Shahdow

Banned deucer.
Some of these sets are fucking garbage. I remember one time I got Braviary without Brave Bird against Dusknoir. I think it was BulkUp/Roost/Return/RockSlide. What does Rock Slide even hit that Brave Bird doesn't hit harder? Only thing I can think of is Rotom-Heat.
 
Some of these sets are fucking garbage. I remember one time I got Braviary without Brave Bird against Dusknoir. I think it was BulkUp/Roost/Return/RockSlide. What does Rock Slide even hit that Brave Bird doesn't hit harder? Only thing I can think of is Rotom-Heat.
I think how it works is that each Braviary gets four moves out of bulk up, substitute, roost, brave bird, return, rock slide, and superpower. Your Braviary just happened not to get brave bird. I agree that this way of creating movesets is bad.
By the way, rock slide hits harder than brave bird when the opponent is rock electric type, electric flying type, rock fire type, rock flying type, rock ice type, fire flying type, fire ice type, flying ice type, or fluffy.
 
It would make sense that Pokémon that can attack from both side of the spectrum only focus on physical or special attacking, instead of getting this weird mixed sets. Especially if they also have a setup move.

Bringing this Virizion as example:

 

Adeleine

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It would make sense that Pokémon that can attack from both side of the spectrum only focus on physical or special attacking, instead of getting this weird mixed sets. Especially if they also have a setup move.

Bringing this Virizion as example:

I like mixed sets but not double STAB, bad-fitting setup move mixed sets like this
 
I've heard from many players that random battles simply aren't relevant or important enough to warrant change. However i shall not be deterred!.

The amount of games i've either lost or won in random battles simply because there is a xerneas with geomancy in the game is ever increasing. The opponent will send Xerneas out and you know immediately whether you won or lost based on what mons you have in reserve. The solutions to dealing with a Geomancy Xerneas are both extremely few and rare for example having a skarmory with its sturdy still intact that has access to whirlwind, having a pokemon with prankster thunder wave or destiny bond, having something robust enough such as chansey with thunderwave or clefable with unaware and thunderwave. Steel pokemon don't alleviate the problem as it commonly carries hp fire or focus blast and even then xerneas can survive bullet punches from the likes of mega scizor and m-metagross. All of your scarf mons are useless after it sets up geomancy so you cannot hope to outspeed on switch in, few mons are tanky enough to survive even a single hit after it sets up. There is no poison priority and toxic is not an option as you will be losing a pokemon per turn unless you have a tonne of sturdies or focus sashes which can be gotten around with their stealth rocks. In contrast xerneas is perfectly manageable if it has scarf or even specs, i wouldn't rate Xerneas without geomancy on the top echelon of available mons... not even close.

I've been playing randoms for quite a while years actually when i have 5 minutes to play a game of showdown and in that time no other pokemon stands out as being broken and toxic to the game as the combination or xerneas stats and geomancy. All other mons in the game can in most situations be dealt with. Some games you will flatout lose purely because you do not have the tools available to deal with a geomancy Xerneas. The means of beating other mons are far more flexible.

I think to say "it is a random battle" and "sometimes you will get Xerneas and win" are poor arguments whether you win or lose, Geomancy is like a free victory condition and requires zero thought to use and great decision making and luck to overcome. The only thing truly random about random battles are the pokemon you get, everything else down to the items, movesets and levels is not random. My only request is that you remove geomancy from Xerneas, doing this would make random battles a much greater experience.

TL:DR. Geomancy detracts from random battles and should be banned.
 
I just got a Bibarel with a Choice Band and Simple (without a stat-boosting move!). I'm pretty sure this isn't supposed to happen (Unaware would've at least been of some use...).
upload_2017-4-10_17-55-46.png
 

Seriously, what's the point in having both dragon dance and rain dance?
On this topic, I'd like to suggest a different way of generating movesets. Each Pokemon will have a list of "necessary" items, moves, and abilities. For example, Greninja is completely pointless without protean, so every Greninja in Randoms should have protean. If the developers have some extra time, each Pokemon should also have a list of "conflicting" combinations of moves, abilities, and items. I'm going to use the example above and say that Kingdra should never know both dragon dance and rain dance. This applies to abilities and items as well. For example, Breloom should never have both toxic orb and technician.
 

Seriously, what's the point in having both dragon dance and rain dance?
Thanks for your feedback. Rain Dance is an alt option on Kingdra's DD set in BW UU, because its STABs were only resisted by Empoleon and it had no extra physical coverage for that, so Rain Dance was a great option on top of DD for making it blazing fast and powering up Waterfall. Nowadays it might be worth it to reconsider its usefulness because Iron Head hits Fairies which are the main resist to its STAB now, so a proper DD set would probably work out differently in the current generation. Kingdra really does lack a bit in the physical coverage department.

Each Pokemon will have a list of "necessary" items, moves, and abilities. For example, Greninja is completely pointless without protean, so every Greninja in Randoms should have protean.
The hard part is determining what is "necessary" or not, but in a sense, that's what we do. (For the record, Greninja always has Protean or Battle Bond anyways, so if you see a Torrent Greninja, please report it because that is a bug. And yes, Battle Bond Greninja can be pretty good, so just deal with it.)

each Pokemon should also have a list of "conflicting" combinations of moves, abilities, and items.
We do this already, to the best that we can with our current code base. It's just not perfect because of how we generate sets. It's super easy to describe what needs working on, but to put it into code without turning Randoms completely into Battle Factory 2.0 does take some thought, and is taking a long time to implement properly.

For example, Breloom should never have both toxic orb and technician.
Does this actually ever happen? It shouldn't ever happen because we already set up our code to have Toxic Orb only ever show up in situations where a Pokemon benefits from it, because we choose items last. Without Poison Heal, Breloom should never get Toxic Orb.

I just got a Bibarel with a Choice Band and Simple (without a stat-boosting move!). I'm pretty sure this isn't supposed to happen (Unaware would've at least been of some use...).
That's strange, I'm pretty sure the code base should have already thrown out Simple in that case. This might take some time to investigate what's going on.
 
The hard part is determining what is "necessary" or not, but in a sense, that's what we do. (For the record, Greninja always has Protean or Battle Bond anyways, so if you see a Torrent Greninja, please report it because that is a bug. And yes, Battle Bond Greninja can be pretty good, so just deal with it.)
I understand that it isn't a problem with Greninja in particular, but I've seen enough Porygon2s without recover to think this is an issue in general. As for the battle bond thing, I'm pretty sure Showdown! discriminates between Greninja and Greninja-ash, so I don't think of Greninja-ash as Greninja. By the way, I found another bad moveset. It's a Pokemon with both dragon claw and outrage.

Thanks for your feedback. Rain Dance is an alt option on Kingdra's DD set in BW UU, because its STABs were only resisted by Empoleon and it had no extra physical coverage for that, so Rain Dance was a great option on top of DD for making it blazing fast and powering up Waterfall. Nowadays it might be worth it to reconsider its usefulness because Iron Head hits Fairies which are the main resist to its STAB now, so a proper DD set would probably work out differently in the current generation. Kingdra really does lack a bit in the physical coverage department.
If it needs extra power, can't it just use dragon dance twice and save the last move for something else?
 
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If it needs extra power, can't it just use dragon dance twice and save the last move for something else?
Back in Gen 5, the entire point was that there was nothing else worth running for the last move anyways, so starting with Rain Dance was also used to bluff a Special set, catching a Blissey or Snorlax by surprise. But I digress.

Anyways, Dragon Claw/Outrage has been a problem for us for quite some time because of how exactly we keep our lists of conflicting moves. It's the kind of set that shows up once in a blue moon, but even once in a blue moon is often enough for players to notice because of how many games happen in a day!
 
Can we PLEASE get rid of non-Prankster Illumise? Seriously?

I've heard from many players that random battles simply aren't relevant or important enough to warrant change. However i shall not be deterred!.

The amount of games i've either lost or won in random battles simply because there is a xerneas with geomancy in the game is ever increasing. The opponent will send Xerneas out and you know immediately whether you won or lost based on what mons you have in reserve. The solutions to dealing with a Geomancy Xerneas are both extremely few and rare for example having a skarmory with its sturdy still intact that has access to whirlwind, having a pokemon with prankster thunder wave or destiny bond, having something robust enough such as chansey with thunderwave or clefable with unaware and thunderwave. Steel pokemon don't alleviate the problem as it commonly carries hp fire or focus blast and even then xerneas can survive bullet punches from the likes of mega scizor and m-metagross. All of your scarf mons are useless after it sets up geomancy so you cannot hope to outspeed on switch in, few mons are tanky enough to survive even a single hit after it sets up. There is no poison priority and toxic is not an option as you will be losing a pokemon per turn unless you have a tonne of sturdies or focus sashes which can be gotten around with their stealth rocks. In contrast xerneas is perfectly manageable if it has scarf or even specs, i wouldn't rate Xerneas without geomancy on the top echelon of available mons... not even close.

I've been playing randoms for quite a while years actually when i have 5 minutes to play a game of showdown and in that time no other pokemon stands out as being broken and toxic to the game as the combination or xerneas stats and geomancy. All other mons in the game can in most situations be dealt with. Some games you will flatout lose purely because you do not have the tools available to deal with a geomancy Xerneas. The means of beating other mons are far more flexible.

I think to say "it is a random battle" and "sometimes you will get Xerneas and win" are poor arguments whether you win or lose, Geomancy is like a free victory condition and requires zero thought to use and great decision making and luck to overcome. The only thing truly random about random battles are the pokemon you get, everything else down to the items, movesets and levels is not random. My only request is that you remove geomancy from Xerneas, doing this would make random battles a much greater experience.

TL:DR. Geomancy detracts from random battles and should be banned.
Kartana is stronger in randbats than Xerneas*. Xerneas at least gives you a turn to do something about it. I've had battles with Kartana leads where I should have simply clicked X as I had no way of outspeeding it.

* Because of level balance, a LOT of things live a +2 Moonblast and you probably have one or two of them on your team.

"It is a random battle" is a great argument. If you've been playing randbats at all, you'd realize that probably ~30% of all games between two decent players are decided based on either a) the presence of hazards or hazard control or (b) the absolute lack of any sort of counter/switch-in to a fast mon that can deal a lot of damage. There are far, far, far more Pokemon than just Xerneas in that category.
 
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Kartana is stronger in randbats than Xerneas*. Xerneas at least gives you a turn to do something about it. I've had battles with Kartana leads where I should have simply clicked X as I had no way of outspeeding it.

* Because of level balance, a LOT of things live a +2 Moonblast and you probably have one or two of them on your team.
If level balance actually works, shouldn't you also have a few things that outspeed Kartana?
 
If level balance actually works, shouldn't you also have a few things that outspeed Kartana?
That's not how level balancing works. A Pokemon with bad Speed isn't going to outspeed Kartana even with level balancing.

Also a decent amount of Fire-types, Grass-types, and some Steel-types can all eat a hit from Kartana pretty well, especially Fire. But yeah, there are way more super-heavy hitters than just Xerneas. Are they imbalanced? Who knows
 
It returns!

One gen later, the creature of nightmares itself makes its comeback to haunt us and devour our immortal souls.

I'm talking, of course, about Life Orb Bronzong.



I mean, seriously.
 

Adeleine

after committing a dangerous crime
is a Top Social Media Contributoris a Community Contributoris a Smogon Discord Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Smogon Media Contributoris a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Bruxish is in a weird position. I don't directly agree with you since I'd find Dazzling fine on a moveset that has <=1 bite moves and no priority attacks (Dazzling is less useful when you have your own priority), but the problem is that Psychic Fangs and Aqua Jet are so prominent on it that this doesn't happen in practice. Maybe Dazzling's rating should go down? It isn't bad though, so hmm...
 
I have never, ever seen an Alola-Persian miss Hypnosis in randbats.

I'm hallucinating, right? Or is this some new mechanic?
 
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