How to prevent the gen 6 Pokemon meta from sucking

[Espinosa]

Any ideas what implementations could save it?

Beginning with gen 4, the offensive power of things became ridiculous and walling less effective, revengekilling becoming a necessary procedure in many games and fast overpowered mons taking turns nuking each other. Stealth Rock made switching in painful for a large portion of the cast and made the usage of specific Pokemon a very impractical idea.

Gen 5 wasn't too dissimilar but weather wars only reinforced and further stimulated the OHKO massacre.

Gen 3 was the last gen where you can play long, enjoyable battles where the match isn't decided or ruined in a single action, even though the necessity to customise EVs and natures resulted in poorer defences if compared to gen 2.

Some bizarre ideas I've been contemplating:

a) since the weather wars aren't going away, make the special defence boosts in sand apply not only to rock types but ground and steel types as well.

b) similarly to how some mons have auto-weather abilities, introduce abilities that automatically put up a Light Screen or a Reflect upon switching in.

c) we have Stealth Rock, Spikes and Toxic Spikes, but it would be great to have buff-like effects that linger on and can be blown away with Rapid Spin just like the three moves I listed. Something along the lines of Wish but consistently working in your favour when you switch in, or maybe stat increases.

B and C in the same meta would make it a really lousy game to play though (such defence would demand an even more outageous form of offence).

[Icon of Sin]

Make entry hazards, especially rocks, a one time use per cast.

If you go for an auto Light Screen/Reflect, a lot of moves could be used in abilities, such as Gravity or the numerous Room moves. Unlike weather, I wouldn't make them permanent. Only when the user is on the field.

Maybe Hail boosting Ice type Defense or something.

I'll probably throw in some more when I get more time.

Edited September 9, 2013 by Woodshooter

[Knight]

Perhaps a Pokemon with the ability to prevent your opponent using trap moves.

Edited September 9, 2013 by Knight

[Espinosa]

Perhaps a Pokemon with the ability to prevent your opponent using trap moves.

Maybe the opposite - new equivalents of gen 2 Misdreavus on steroids? I haven't been bothered by trapping at all, and in gen 3 Magneton and Dugtrio existing makes the metagame so much more interesting.

[PKL]

I think it's unsalvageable at this point. The power creep is what made me stop playing. It will only get worse.

[Irysa]

Quite frankly, the only single thing I want is weather to get its own fucking tier above OU/bring back Dream World OU. I am 100% sick of Drought/Drizzle/Sandstorm shit, that's why I quit/rarely play UU instead.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

Sandstorm really is not a problem because the weather does minimal contribution

Sun and Rain, OTOH

[Irysa]

well yeah, sandstorm by itself wasn't really that big of a deal (at least once the mole got bumped to ubers), but so many times I ended up playing games that just revolved around trying to cockblock the opponent's weather and get your own out, making everyhting so tedious and annoying, and sandstorm is involved in that (even if it isn't directly that powerful). That's why I also listed dream world OU as a thing again, like it was back near the start of gen v. Sandstorm can exist then without Droughtails and Drizzletoed.

Edited September 9, 2013 by Irysa

[FrostyFireMage]

- Lay the nerf smackdown on Scizor and Garchomp.

- Nerf Drought/Drizzle or make Cloud Nine less sparse.

- Increase the amount of Pokemon that can learn Rapid Spin and/or nerf Stealth Rock/Spikes.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

Its pretty hard to Nerf Scizor, considering the reason why Scizor is so good is all based on the Basic Mechanic and the Fundamental of the game

Nerf U Turn and Volt Switch?, not sure how

Edited September 9, 2013 by JSND

[Espinosa]

Give Scizor Truant

lol

[XeKr]

I think it's unsalvageable at this point. The power creep is what made me stop playing. It will only get worse.

Basically this. DPP OU was pretty much the limit for me in terms of playability (even then, DPP UU was often more fun).

Gen 5 OU was basically ubers (UU was okay). imo Gen 6 will be worse once the novelty wears off..

Edited September 9, 2013 by XeKr

[Jedi]

I personally felt the Metagame was way too broken when Gen 4 rolled around, I feel Gen 3 was the height of it being fun.

I don't play much competitive mon anyways though.

[XeKr]

I can definitely see that, but I feel the physical/special split and Choice Specs/Scarf+Life Orb added just enough to make Gen 4 compelling.

I also had tons of fun with Toxic Spikes (probably my favorite team type). Not so much Stealth Rock. >_>

Edited September 9, 2013 by XeKr

[Jedi]

I can definitely see that, but I feel the physical/special split and Choice Specs/Scarf+Life Orb added just enough to make Gen 4 compelling.

It was, but it was also unfortunately the time Dragons rose to their current power :/

[Djing]

Buff Hail.

Hail now causes Ice types to have Steel type weakness and resistances. Ice attacks are unaffected. Now Ice types get all the resistances of a Steel type with Ice STAB.

Abomasnow would effectively be Grass/Steel.

Cloyster is a Water/Steel monster that resists everything.

Articuno is Skarmory on steroids.

Also make Air Lock and Cloud Nine weather conditions.

[NinjaMonkey]

Cloyster is a Water/Steel monster that resists everything.

Electric, Ground and Fighting moves are super effective, Grass and Fire do neutral damage.

Edited September 9, 2013 by NinjaMonkey

[Espinosa]

Still, you gotta agree how big of a change is made by changing ice's weak/resists to steel weak/resists. Empoleon disappeared so quickly out of sight after DPP, though.

I really like this idea; I think we could get the most from this - Articuno kicking ass more than ever before (it wasn't even awfully powerful in RBY, barely making it to OU just because it's too good for BL - much like Jolteon, Dragonite and Cloyster - and I suppose some would say Gengar too).

[Lord Glenn]

A complete whitewash and balance fix is about the only viable solution I can see... which automatically means that Game Freak won't have the stones to do it.

They've continually been contradictory when it comes to balancing things. They realize that Psychic is too dominant, so they bring in Dark and Steel as counters (even though it was limited in scope in Gen II). But, they then continually inflate ridiculously strong legendaries and pseudo-legendaries, give some Pokemon amazing abilities while giving others abilities that make them unusable, continue to keep Stealth Rock as broken as it is, but only now are offering a "counter" for the overpowering Dragons (which, as I am predicting, isn't going to be as dominant of a counter as they're thinking it will be - Dragons have a wide array of moves at their disposal, not just STAB, meaning that Fairy's immunity to it is heavily diminished - another type with SE against it will help somewhat, though), etc.

Honestly, I'd just rather Game Freak make the changes that would improve the game as a whole (not just the competitive meta) and tell everyone to just "DEAL WITH IT" to fix what's broken. I've about lost my faith in their ability to improve the series on multiple levels. At this point, it just feels like they're flying by the seat of their pants just doing whatever they feel like instead of legitimately moving the series forward.

If you want something more concrete than that... I honestly don't know where I'd start outside of posting any of the documents that I've typed up over the years or some of the posts I've previously made in the board here. They're basically an amalgamation of all of the stuff I'd personally change were I in charge of the series (and hopefully, the majority of the changes would make sense and be in a positive direction).

EDIT - Oh, and it would certainly help people get more into the metagame if it didn't require either "cheating" or massive sinks of time to breed for IVs and moves and EV grinding; my suggested solution to that is simply to normalize all IVs at 31 during competitive battles (including things like the Battle Tower), as I mentioned here.

Edited September 10, 2013 by Lord Glenn

[Djing]

Electric, Ground and Fighting moves are super effective, Grass and Fire do neutral damage.

I was using hyperbole but thanks for the clarification.

[dondon151]

I can definitely see that, but I feel the physical/special split and Choice Specs/Scarf+Life Orb added just enough to make Gen 4 compelling.

on the contrary, most players would agree that the new mechanics in gen 4 really sort of broke the figurative camel's back. suddenly there's a massive increase in diversity of types that can be physical or special, and pokemon are just not designed to handle it. any defensive pokemon was fine before in gen 3 because it knew that certain types of moves were realistically only usable by certain pokemon.

anyway, i'm not sure if i mentioned it on this forum earlier, but pokemon needs, like, a mass extinction event. you know, human activity induced mass extinction. throw in climate scientists and evolutionary biologists, too (anyone else find it weird that each region only has one pokemon researcher?)

Edited September 10, 2013 by dondon151

[XeKr]

Hmm, while probably true, at that point it could still be played around (particularly when Salamence/Garchomp were gone, or in UU). Gen 4 stall and semi-stall were by far my favorite playstyles. The tendency toward hyper-offense and weather silliness in the more current metagames is what I dislike.

[Smiley Jim]

Here's my BFL on how TrollFreak should rebalance the game, outside of what they have already done:

[spoiler=Stealth Rock]

Nerf Stealth Rock. This should be obvious. If there's one move that's associated with 'gamebreaking', its SR. Basically, the way its damage formula works, it makes anything that's weak to it a hell of a lot less viable in the metagame. And it's easy as hell to set up and keep up, as you only need to use it once to get its full effect, while you need three layers of Spikes to get the full effect. In fact, it's not too much of a stretch to say that if not for SR, stuff like Moltres would be OU, or be high UU at least. One idea(credit goes to Snowflake) would be to apply diminishing returns to super effective damage and resistant damage.

Here are the returns(courtesy of Snowflake):

Double resistant: 6.25%

Resistant: 9.375%

Neutral: 12.5%

Weak: 18.75%

Double weak: 25%

The idea here is to give SR weak Pokemon more leeway in how frequently they can switch in.

[spoiler=Drizzle and Drought]

Nerf permanent weather. The introduction of Drought Ninetales and Drizzle Politoed from the Dream World transformed the Gen V metagame into a weather-dominated one. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ. Even with all the nerfs that Smogon imposed on rain(up to and including a combo ban on Drizzle and Swift Swim), rain is still brutally overpowered. Sun is almost as bad, the only real difference being that sun sweepers have to choose between double STAB or double speed. Rain can have both. That and most sun sweepers are cockblocked by Heatran. There's a few things that can do the same to rain sweepers, but they either can't withstand repeated hits due to a lack of reliable recovery(Ferrothorn), or have rather low damage output without significant investment(Jellicent).

My suggestion is to make ability induced weather dissipate after 5 turns from when the user switches out(basically, weather is permanent only as long as the inducer stays in.) Also make Cloud Nine and Air Lock cause weather to dissipate upon entry, and give them more availability.

[spoiler=IVs and EVs]

Let's not shit ourselves here, no one likes IV breeding. It's tedious and a waste of fucking time. Using cheat devices to create perfect IV 'Mons is a decent solution, but that 'option' comes at the cost of not being able to use that cart in official tournaments. You could always just use Pokemon the way they are, and hope that its IVs are good enough, but that's akin to playing Russian Roulette, but with a 32 chamber gun filled with 31 bullets. Multiply that by the amount of stats that you need to have a perfect IV, and you will find that just simply using shit you just caught/bred on a dime is not worth it.

As far as fixing that goes, I liked Lord Glenn's proposal of just inflating IVs to 31 across the board when the player plays competitively or in the Hax Tower. Another idea is to simply remove IVs from the game, but I doubt that GF would do that. A halfway solution would be to lower the range from 0-31 to 0-15 like in gens I and II. It's not the best solution in the world, but your chances are better with 15 bullets than 31 IMO.

I'll come up with a few more improvements at a later date.

Edited September 11, 2013 by General James

[Knight]

Here's my BFL on how TrollFreak should rebalance the game, outside of what they have already done:

[spoiler=Stealth Rock]

Nerf Stealth Rock. This should be obvious. If there's one move that's associated with 'gamebreaking', its SR. Basically, the way its damage formula works, it makes anything that's weak to it a hell of a lot less viable in the metagame. And it's easy as hell to set up and keep up, as you only need to use it once to get its full effect, while you need three layers of Spikes to get the full effect. In fact, it's not too much of a stretch to say that if not for SR, stuff like Moltres would be OU, or be high UU at least. One idea(credit goes to Snowflake) would be to apply diminishing returns to super effective damage and resistant damage.

Here are the returns(courtesy of Snowflake):

Double resistant: 6.25%

Resistant: 9.375%

Neutral: 12.5%

Weak: 18.75%

Double weak: 25%

The idea here is to give SR weak Pokemon more leeway in how frequently they can switch in.

[spoiler=Drizzle and Drought]

Nerf permanent weather. The introduction of Drought Ninetales and Drizzle Politoed from the Dream World transformed the Gen V metagame into a weather-dominated one. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ. Even with all the nerfs that Smogon imposed on rain(up to and including a combo ban on Drizzle and Swift Swim), rain is still brutally overpowered. Sun is almost as bad, the only real difference being that sun sweepers have to choose between double STAB or double speed. Rain can have both. That and most sun sweepers are cockblocked by Heatran. There's a few things that can do the same to rain sweepers, but they either can't withstand repeated hits due to a lack of reliable recovery(Ferrothorn), or have rather low damage output without significant investment(Jellicent).

My suggestion is to make ability induced weather dissipate after 5 turns from when the user switches out(basically, weather is permanent only as long as the inducer stays in.) Also make Cloud Nine and Air Lock cause weather to dissipate upon entry, and give them more availability.

[spoiler=IVs and EVs]

Let's not shit ourselves here, no one likes IV breeding. It's tedious and a waste of fucking time. Using cheat devices to create perfect IV 'Mons is a decent solution, but that 'option' comes at the cost of not being able to use that cart in official tournaments. You could always just use Pokemon the way they are, and hope that its IVs are good enough, but that's akin to playing Russian Roulette, but with a 32 chamber gun filled with 31 bullets. Multiply that by the amount of stats that you need to have a perfect IV, and you will find that just simply using shit you just caught/bred on a dime is not worth it.

As far as fixing that goes, I liked Lord Glenn's proposal of just inflating IVs to 31 across the board when the player plays competitively or in the Hax Tower. Another idea is to simply remove IVs from the game, but I doubt that GF would do that. A halfway solution would be to lower the range from 0-31 to 0-15 like in gens I and II. It's not the best solution in the world, but your chances are better with 15 bullets than 31 IMO.

I'll come up with a few more improvements at a later date.

I love your ideas, especially regarding stealth rock and weather. I think that IV's should have some sort of method to increase them though within the game, like Pokesteroids or something.

[Icon of Sin]

I think that IV's should have some sort of method to increase them though within the game, like Pokesteroids or something.

Change the vitamins (Protein, Carbos and such) so they do that. At 9800$ a piece I'd pay to get all the required IVs to 31. Maybe make something to do the opposite in case you want to abuse low speed, Hidden Power or less confusion damage.

With the Power items, EVs can be easily tweaked.

Edited September 11, 2013 by Woodshooter