Life Orb

[zarator]

Since as Frosty noticed this thing requires a discussion thread of this own, I may as well set it up. To give everyone an equal stepping foot, I'll quote the post that started the discussion the Feedback thread. I also invite people who gave important/relevant comments in the Feedback thread to reinstate/elaborate their points here:

Life Orb

Currently, unless my ASB experience is somewhat skewed, it seems this item is vastly underused - mainly because it is kinda bad compared to its alternatives. An extra 3 BP on all attacks is good... until you realize that you're also losing 2 HP every time you attack. That alone makes this item undesireable for most trainers, and generally inferior to its alternatives, from the signature items to Expert Belt.

For this reason, I'm proposing to buff Life Orb slightly - or better said, to revise some of the (frankly excessive) nerfs we applied to this item in ASB. I'm thinking mainly to the interaction of this item with Magic Guard and Sheer Force. As most of you know, these two abilities currently don't negate Life Orb recoil. I think we should reconsider this point.

Life Orb and Magic Guard: This is perhaps the most appalling of the two cases. For those who don't know, only five FE Pokemon currently have Magic Guard: Alakazam, Sigilyph, Clefable, Reuniclus, and Krilowatt. Three of them are Psychic-type and are hit hard by Knock Off and Thief. The other two have an incredible coverage, and when using Expert Belt and hitting supereffectively, their power is only 1 BP weaker than it would be if they were using Life Orb. The idea recoil-less Life Orb would break any of these five Pokemon is questionable at best.

Life Orb and Sheer Force: This is admittenly more complex, since the list of Sheer Force Pokemon is a bit longer. Not counting legendaries, we have: Conkeldurr, Darmanitan, Druddigon, Braviary, Nidoqueen, Nidoking, Steelix, Kingler, Tauros, Feraligatr, Hariyama, Mawile, and Rampardos.

Now... Mawile hardly counts because without Mawilite it's pretty much worthless (and Everstone is superior anyway). Kingler and Tauros don't have many ways to abuse Sheer Force significantly. As for the others:

Conkeldurr: Dynamicpunch and elemental punches are the main Sheer Force moves here. Elemental Punches are gonna strike supereffectively in most cases, so Expert Belt would be pretty much equivalent. As for Dynamicpunch... its subpar accuracy makes it a bit questionable.
Darmanitan: Flare Blitz is pretty potent, I'll give you that - even if the recoil is pretty intense. Then there is Fire Punch, Rock Slide... I am a bit on the fence on this
Druddigon/Steelix/Nidoqueen/Nidoking/Hariyama/Rampardos: Most of the Sheer Force arsenal is made of coverage moves, so once again, the difference from Expert Belt is small. Even when some of these Pokemon have STAB attacks that would benefit from Sheer Force (Steelix's Iron Tail, Nidoking's Sludge Bomb), these STAB moves are generally inferior to the SE attacks when they hit the target neutrally, or have stronger alternatives in the Pokemon's arsenal (such as Gyro Ball for Steelix).
Braviary: Sky Attack is pretty much the only real concern here.
Feraligatr: Pretty much ALL of Feraligatr's attacks are boosted by Sheer Force... but I can't really see Feraligatr to be strong enough in ASB to be broken by something like this

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As you may have noticed if you read the above, a lot of my argument relies on the entire idea of "when hitting SE, Life Orb is only slightly better than Expert Belt and thus isn't broken". I can see some of you being a bit uneasy with this point, but you should also consider that the amount of ways to neutralize Life Orb is pretty large - more than you may think.
Knock Off, Thief, Covet, Trick, Switcheroo, as well as the Pick Pocket and Magician abilities, can all mess up with Life Orb. Meanwhile, Skill Swap, Entrainment and Gastro Acid can negate Sheer Force and/or Magic Guard. Now, this doesn't want to sound like a "any item goes" argument. The idea I'm trying to conveying here is that there are enough ways to take out an item to make that +1 BP kind of pointless in most situations

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Alternatively...

If you don't like the idea of making Magic Guard and/or Sheer Force Pokemon immune to LO recoil, we could consider reducing the HP recoil to 1. This would put Life Orb more on par with Expert Belt, trading the ability to hit harder with neutral hits for 1 HP of recoil each round. This could make Life Orb attractive for those Pokemon that sport powerful STAB attacks but also some important coverage moves.

Tl;dr: I propose we adopt any of the following solutions:

1) Make Magic Guard Pokemon immune to Life Orb recoil
2) Make Sheer Force Pokemon immune to Life Orb recoil
3) Make Magic Guard and Sheer Force Pokemon immune to Life Orb recoil
4) Reduce Life Orb's recoil to 1 HP per attack instead of 2

 

[Maxim]

While I would love a buff for good old Braviary, I have to echo Frosty's comments in the Feedback thread: If we want to buff this item, we need to do something other than make it into a pseudo-signature item for Sheer Force/Magic Guard Pokemon. I'm not sure whether any of the Pokemon with the ability would necessarily be broken with it (besides maybe Conkeldurr and Krillowatt, but I'll not touch on that), but at that rate we would really buff the Pokemon and not the item itself. Really, there are a lot of ways to buff this item that would make it broken, or make it obscenely more useful than other items (I think that if we reduced the recoil to just 1 hp, then it would probably see far more use than Expert Belt).

I think the best method to go about this is to see how it works in the competitive environment.

Whenever a Pokemon holding a Life Orb successfully uses a damaging attack, that attack deals 1.3x its normal damage, rounded down, and the attacker loses 1/10 of their maximum HP, even if the opponent is behind a Substitute.

Full Version

In a competitive environment, Life Orb ends up used a ton because it gives you a load of damage potential. The thing is, the side effect is minimized by the fact that either A) The Pokemon using it will die from other sources before the recoil becomes a problem or B) If it does die to recoil, chances are it's done more than enough damage to the opponent's team, allowing a teammate to clean up the mess. This is a bit tricky to do in the ASB metagame because there's not enough damage potential for A to really apply, and the boost isn't really obscene enough to make B apply. I don't honestly have any well thought out propositions about how to handle this, but hopefully this gets the ball rolling.

 

[Geodude6]

I think the simplest way to buff Life Orb is to reduce the recoil to 1 damage. As it is now, Life Orb is only viable on mons with high HP, such as Pyroak, Colossoil, or Braviary. Reducing the recoil to 1 damage would make Life Orb more viable on Pokemon with 100 or even 90 HP.

In a competitive environment, Life Orb ends up used a ton because it gives you a load of damage potential. The thing is, the side effect is minimized by the fact that either A) The Pokemon using it will die from other sources before the recoil becomes a problem or B) If it does die to recoil, chances are it's done more than enough damage to the opponent's team, allowing a teammate to clean up the mess. This is a bit tricky to do in the ASB metagame because there's not enough damage potential for A to really apply, and the boost isn't really obscene enough to make B apply.

With regards to B, instead of reducing recoil, alternatively we could buff Life Orb to a 4 BAP boost. However, this one I'm a little unsure about, due to the fact that Pyroak and Colossoil are already very good mons with a Life Orb, and giving them more firepower might not be the best idea.

TL;DR either reduce LO recoil to 1 dpa, or make it give a 4 BAP boost as opposed to the current 3 BAP boost.

 

[Gerard]

The problem with that is that then Life Orb ends up outclassing Expert Belt since

A) It boosts every move

B1) If the recoil is reduced to 1 then the net gain becomes +2 dmg on neutral moves (vs +0 of Expert Belt), +.5 on 2x weak moves (4.5 [-1] vs 3), +1.25 on 4x moves (6.75 [-1] vs 4.5) and even on resisted moves (2 [-1] vs 0)

B2) if the damage is increased to 4 then the net gain is +2 dmg on neutral moves (vs +0 of Expert Belt), +1 on 2x weak moves (6 [-2] vs 3), +2.5 on 4x weak moves (9 [-2] vs 4.5) and again on a resisted moves (2.67 [-2] vs 0), thus Life Orb is always better than Expert Belt in every way
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I'm in favor of this move because we respond to in-game in most mechanics so I don't see this as trying to buff life Orb rather than putting it in line with most other items and mechanics in the game, which is something we commonly do so idk why do we have to make an exception here. We can't really make LO better unless we decide to make it better than Expert Belt. Life Orb's niche is using it to power low BP moves (when the recoil is 1) and to increase the power of spread moves (when the dmg boost is worth the recoil due to the extra net gain), this gives it another one that's in line with in-game so I don't see a problem with such a boost

 

[waterwarrior]

Gonna keep it short and sweet. I believe that we should buff Life Orb by changing the recoil to 1 DMG simply due to the fact that it follows what happens in-game. All other items have their effects divided by 10 (Expert Belt's 20% boost becomes 2 BAP, Muscle Band's 10% boost becomes 1 BAP, etc.). Life Orb follows this with making the 30% boost a 3 BAP boost, but then it breaks off the path of pretty much everything else by dividing the recoil percentage by 5, while it only makes sense to divide it by 10 like everything else.

 

[deadfox081]

I think it is also probably worth pointing out that regardless what we set the recoil at Life Orb will always act to break your own endure. Taking one of the more powerful survival techniques in ASB out of your arsenal the minute you equip it. This also provides internal balance.

 

[Gerard]

I think it is also probably worth pointing out that regardless what we set the recoil at Life Orb will always act to break your own endure. Taking one of the more powerful survival techniques in ASB out of your arsenal the minute you equip it. This also provides internal balance.

That only happens if your attack is boosted, enduring and using Endeavor for example is unchanged, though I see your point one only has to be careful while enduring (you also get one extra attack)

 

[ZhengTann]

Just wanted to point out that I really like this:

... Life Orb's niche is using it to power low BP moves (when the recoil is 1) and to increase the power of spread moves (when the dmg boost is worth the recoil due to the extra net gain)...

If we are going to boost Life Orb, why don't we first set a goal for what Life Orb is supposed to do, before we decide how to tweak the recoil and/or BAP boost? Otherwise we'd just end up with no change, or a buff that turns it into a generic good item that outclasses the majority of others. IMHO Gerard gave off a good start, although I personally think the "powering low BAP moves with less recoil" part isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'm currently mulling over giving Life Orb a niche that allows mons with lower HP to receive a greater advantage than those with higher HP (similar to how Rare Candy works on BRT), but I might not come up with good ideas that would fit.

 

[Mulan15262]

Just wanted to point out that I really like this:

If we are going to boost Life Orb, why don't we first set a goal for what Life Orb is supposed to do, before we decide how to tweak the recoil and/or BAP boost? Otherwise we'd just end up with no change, or a buff that turns it into a generic good item that outclasses the majority of others. IMHO Gerard gave off a good start, although I personally think the "powering low BAP moves with less recoil" part isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'm currently mulling over giving Life Orb a niche that allows mons with lower HP to receive a greater advantage than those with higher HP (similar to how Rare Candy works on BRT), but I might not come up with good ideas that would fit.

Perhaps subtracting CIEL(max HP/100) per attack, so pokemon with 100 HP or less (about 87% of all, not sure about just FEs) recieve 1 damage, while pokemon with more than 100 HP (about 12% of all) would take 2 damage.

 

[Engineer Pikachu]

Gonna keep it short and sweet. I believe that we should buff Life Orb by changing the recoil to 1 DMG simply due to the fact that it follows what happens in-game. All other items have their effects divided by 10 (Expert Belt's 20% boost becomes 2 BAP, Muscle Band's 10% boost becomes 1 BAP, etc.). Life Orb follows this with making the 30% boost a 3 BAP boost, but then it breaks off the path of pretty much everything else by dividing the recoil percentage by 5, while it only makes sense to divide it by 10 like everything else.

This makes LO essentially outclass EB in every way except for cases involving Endure: any resisted or neutral hit will deal more than 1 extra DMG with a +3 BAP boost (except Ice Beam on Thick Fat Walrein or similarly extreme cases but then you have better moves to use), while any super effective move will have the net +1 BAP over EB multiplied up. I don't think that's particularly balanced, given the usefulness of EB already.

That being said, while it is true that LO is fairly underwhelming in Singles fights, I think it shines in Doubles+, for reasons Gerard touched on above. Most spread moves you use in a fight will deal more than 2 extra DMG and will probably do even more; a neutral hit is a +3 bonus over EB, a 2x SE hit is a +1.5 bonus over EB, etc. I don't think it's fair to consider only Singles fights when balancing items, which most of us seem to be doing (not explicitly but I see a lot of "doesn't outdamage EB" which isn't really true for all cases)

 

[zarator]

Assuming Engineer Pikachu is right (I believe he is), we may consider keeping Life Orb as it is and simply lifting the "nerf" over Sheer Force and Magic Guard. Aside from adhering to in-game precedent, I believe this would give Life Orb an use in Singles (as a sort of pseudo-signature move), while it retains its more general usefulness in Doubles without becoming overwhelming.

In this case, I feel the only argument against this decision would be that some of the Magic Guard/Sheer Force users would become broken, but aside from maybe a couple Sheer Force Pokemon (which I touched on in my OP), I don't feel any of the potential candidates would be broken by this choice. Or at least, I haven't seen any convincing argument in this sense, personally.

 

[Dogfish44]

Discussion is dying faster than a Paras vs a Heatran in the sun. 48 Hours, potential poll:

Life Orb should deal damage when held by a Magic Guard Pokemon
Yes
No

Life Orb should deal damage on Sheer Force boosted attacks
Yes
No

What BAP Increase should Life Orb supply?
3
4

What Recoil should Life Orb incur?
1
1.5
2

 

[zarator]

I think 48 hours passed^^