Format Discussion Scarlet/Violet Random Battle Sets

Thoughts/ideas regarding Deoxys-Normal and Deoxys-Attack:

Add Tera Dark on both of their current sets: Being immune to Prankster (especially prankster twave) is nice. Boosted damage on Knock Off is nice when it's already a safe move option. Resisting stray Sucker Punches is also nice to get one more hit in with mons that usually OHKO/2HKO everything.

Add a Setup Sweeper set: Nasty Plot / Psycho Boost / coverage / coverage. Coverage could be Thunderbolt/Shadow Ball/Ice Beam/Superpower/Knock off with Tera Psychic, Ghost, or Fighting. Always Life Orb.
  • Nasty Plot, besides boosting Psycho Boost even further, allows Deo-N/A to click Psycho Boost again without having -2 SpAtk.
  • Thunderbolt, Shadow Ball, and Ice Beam all hit various pokemon that can stomach Psycho Boost.
  • Superpower hits most specially bulky pokemon. Knock Off is also an alternative - however, only one should be selected in order to avoid this set potentially only generating one special attack (Psycho Boost).
  • Tera Psychic strengthens Psycho Boost. Tera Ghost boosts Shadow Ball and grants an immunity to Quick Attack and Extreme Speed. Tera Fighting strengthens Superpower and provides a resistance to Sucker Punch.
  • I also would prefer to either have the physical coverage be forced or to only have Shadow Ball as special coverage. This prevents Deo-N/A from only having special moves.
 
Antsaya said:
Thoughts/ideas regarding Deoxys-Normal and Deoxys-Attack:

Add Tera Dark on both of their current sets: Being immune to Prankster (especially prankster twave) is nice. Boosted damage on Knock Off is nice when it's already a safe move option. Resisting stray Sucker Punches is also nice to get one more hit in with mons that usually OHKO/2HKO everything.

Add a Setup Sweeper set: Nasty Plot / Psycho Boost / coverage / coverage. Coverage could be Thunderbolt/Shadow Ball/Ice Beam/Superpower/Knock off with Tera Psychic, Ghost, or Fighting. Always Life Orb.
  • Nasty Plot, besides boosting Psycho Boost even further, allows Deo-N/A to click Psycho Boost again without having -2 SpAtk.
  • Thunderbolt, Shadow Ball, and Ice Beam all hit various pokemon that can stomach Psycho Boost.
  • Superpower hits most specially bulky pokemon. Knock Off is also an alternative - however, only one should be selected in order to avoid this set potentially only generating one special attack (Psycho Boost).
  • Tera Psychic strengthens Psycho Boost. Tera Ghost boosts Shadow Ball and grants an immunity to Quick Attack and Extreme Speed. Tera Fighting strengthens Superpower and provides a resistance to Sucker Punch.
  • I also would prefer to either have the physical coverage be forced or to only have Shadow Ball as special coverage. This prevents Deo-N/A from only having special moves.
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On discussing with the team, we'll add Tera Dark to them but we'd rather not add Nasty Plot due to their extreme frailty and ladder's tendency to click setup moves even when the mon is in danger.
 
calm mind raging bolt is lack luster, consider AV w/ volt switch or terablast.

The RWR is interesting though it puts it at 50
 
Forsh said:
calm mind raging bolt is lack luster, consider AV w/ volt switch or terablast.

The RWR is interesting though it puts it at 50
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Bolt already has an AV set (and it's guaranteed to roll volt switch). Why do you think CM bolt is lackluster?

On a related note: What if Raging Bolt got a Wallbreaker set? It could get specs (same moves as volt switch) or boots/lefties. Specs bolt hits like a truck and boots/lefties taunt lets it stuff defensive checks (glowking, clodsire, killowattrel, etc.) and some slower setup mons (mostly ironpress mons like Bronzong and Registeel). Taunt could also be an alternative to tbolt on the Bulky Setup set for similar reasons.
 
I recently played a game with Dusknoir's bulky attacker set, and it was so much fun (and singlehandedly won me the game). Props to whoever on the team suggested that (https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9randombattle-2321196115 for that game).

I'd like to suggest a similar set for Breloom:

Bulky Support
Tera Types: (unsure what would be best here, perhaps steel, rock, or fighting?)
Moves: Substitute, Focus Punch, Leech Seed, Spore. That might be enough, but if you want more attacking moves, potentially Giga Drain, Seed Bomb, Mach Punch all could work as options.
Ability: Poison Heal
Guaranteed Toxic Orb

Or something along those lines. It would fill a similar role to Dusknoir's similar set, with less bulk but much better healing, sleep utility & powder immunity instead of Frisk utility & normal immunity, and Focus Punch would be more immediately threatening. Also, I'd like to add that not only does Focus Punch synergize with sub, but also with Spore, and even Leech Seed which invites switching.

Edit: slightly adjusted moves and my justification. Also to note, I realized a similar set was kind of suggested in passing a little while ago, but it was really a footnote on a comment suggesting Close Combat. Since Close Combat was the only suggestion that got addressed, so I think this comment is still worthwhile.
 
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The_Fish_Fresh said:
I recently played a game with Dusknoir's bulky attacker set, and it was so much fun (and singlehandedly won me the game). Props to whoever on the team suggested that (https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9randombattle-2321196115 for that game).

I'd like to suggest a similar set for Breloom:

Bulky Support
Tera Types: (unsure what would be best here, perhaps steel, rock, or fighting?)
Moves: Substitute, Focus Punch, Leech Seed, Spore. That might be enough, but if you want more attacking moves, potentially Giga Drain, Seed Bomb, Mach Punch all could work as options.
Ability: Poison Heal
Guaranteed Toxic Orb

Or something along those lines. It would fill a similar role to Dusknoir's similar set, with less bulk but much better healing, sleep utility & powder immunity instead of Frisk utility & normal immunity, and Focus Punch would be more immediately threatening. Also, I'd like to add that not only does Focus Punch synergize with sub, but also with Spore, and even Leech Seed which invites switching.

Edit: slightly adjusted moves and my justification. Also to note, I realized a similar set was kind of suggested in passing a little while ago, but it was really a footnote on a comment suggesting Close Combat. Since Close Combat was the only suggestion that got addressed, so I think this comment is still worthwhile.
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We've considered SubPunch Breloom in the past in various generations and in none of them did we ever consider it consistent or worthwhile enough to drop grass STAB and Mach Punch; only having oneSTAB attack and that attack being focus punch means you're really quite exploitable, especially with those stats. Poison heal and spore can only do so much to ameliorate that issue.
 
I think Moonblast has some merits over Hyper Voice.
-30% drop is huge and wins a lot of CM wars
-Extra PP is useful for bulkier opponents
-Cute charm can be used
-Won't instant lose to mons that it's supposed to beat like Kommo-o and Mightyena
 
Stoner said:
I think Moonblast has some merits over Hyper Voice.
-30% drop is huge and wins a lot of CM wars
-Extra PP is useful for bulkier opponents
-Cute charm can be used
-Won't instant lose to mons that it's supposed to beat like Kommo-o and Mightyena
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We're not going to be adding Moonblast to Sylveon just because you can sometimes lose to Mightyena. Everything except the last point is marginal at best and the last point isn't enough to warrant a global cut of Sylveon's move power.
 
Stoner said:
I think Moonblast has some merits over Hyper Voice.
-30% drop is huge and wins a lot of CM wars
-Extra PP is useful for bulkier opponents
-Cute charm can be used
-Won't instant lose to mons that it's supposed to beat like Kommo-o and Mightyena
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I could see it being rolled as an alternative to Hyper Voice. Personally, I value the extra damage via 108 BP (after Pixilate) as well as being able to hit through Substitute.
 
A Cake Wearing A Hat said:
We've considered SubPunch Breloom in the past in various generations and in none of them did we ever consider it consistent or worthwhile enough to drop grass STAB and Mach Punch; only having oneSTAB attack and that attack being focus punch means you're really quite exploitable, especially with those stats. Poison heal and spore can only do so much to ameliorate that issue.
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Fair enough. I'm assuming you've considered this, since I mentioned it in my original post, but I'd like to know -- would you consider a set with seed bomb instead of leech seed unviable as well? So Substitute, Spore, Focus Punch, Seed Bomb.
 
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The_Fish_Fresh said:
Fair enough. I'm assuming you've considered this, since I mentioned it in my original post, but I'd like to know -- would you consider a set with seed bomb instead of leech seed unviable as well? So Substitute, Spore, Focus Punch, Seed Bomb.
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yeah, main downside of this one is you can't heal off your substitutes as easily and that makes it a lot less effective at Punching with its speed/bulk. and unlike dusknoir, the main thing they'd be switching into you with (i.e. the most likely time to get a free sub) is birds. which you can't really hit with this set. If there were 5 or 6 moveslots, SubPunch Poison Heal Breloom would be goated, but alas breloom as always suffers from one of the biggest cases of 4MSS of any pokemon ever
 
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9randombattle-2324180263

This isn't a request about sets but rather team generation. I don't know if the replay shows it, but I managed to roll Blissey and Chansey on the same team. Not really a pressing concern, but I think you shouldn't be able to generate two mons which are more or less the exact same onto the same team. Ofc not all pre-evos are carbon copies of their evolved forms (Ursaring vs Ursaluna, Porygon-2 vs Porygon-Z), so I'd get it if changing this ain't worth the hassle.
 
Sqookblooks said:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9randombattle-2324180263

This isn't a request about sets but rather team generation. I don't know if the replay shows it, but I managed to roll Blissey and Chansey on the same team. Not really a pressing concern, but I think you shouldn't be able to generate two mons which are more or less the exact same onto the same team. Ofc not all pre-evos are carbon copies of their evolved forms (Ursaring vs Ursaluna, Porygon-2 vs Porygon-Z), so I'd get it if changing this ain't worth the hassle.
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We knew this was a 1/10000 chance of happening, roughly, when we decided to keep Chansey (both times the council voted on it, even). It's a small enough chance that it's not worth specifically coding out. Tough luck, though, and thanks for the report. Definitely the kind of thing we're looking for.
 
Have you ever considered adding Tera Flying Pikachu as a defensive Tera to remove the Ground weakness entirely? I understand Tera Water leaves only a Grass weakness to Pikachu, but it doesn't really have any Grass counter moves, whereas Surf deals with Rock counters for Tera Flying and Volt Tackle is still a powerful STAB move that can take care of Ice types. Also, in some cases it may be better to stop a non-STAB Earthquake (which almost always KOs Pikachu anyways) and deal extra damage instead of increasing one move's BP by 40.
 
A couple casual friends and I were running FFA randbats, and after some frustrating games came to the conclusion that none of us liked how Protect seemed to show up on most pokemon, most of the time, because of the way FFA can incentivise everyone spamming it due to the chaotic presence of three hostile parties. We came up with a couple ideas that could maybe solve the issue, such as rejecting seeds that granted more than 2 or so protect users on a given team, or a rule that made protect fail for everyone if more than one person used it on the same turn, but ultimately resolved to blacklist it (because it would theoretically open up a new move slot for literally anything else, which could have been more interesting). We had no issues with other moves that work similarly (Spiky Shield, Detect...) because they're so rare.

I did lots of research on the custom ruleset coding, only to find that "Custom bans are not currently supported in Random Battles." I know I certainly won't be able to convince people to ban Protect from FFA randbats, let alone the base sets, so I would rather discuss the customization aspect. "Not *currently* supported" implies the intention to add the feature in the future, so I want to ask: Is there an ETA for its addition? What are the major obstacles stopping it from being supported right now? Is it because of the winrate data feeding into the levels? Surely you could just keep custom games out of the pool. Since individual pokemon sets are somewhat manually created, I'm guessing that part of the problem is banning too much stuff at once. Surely there's a way to compensate for that, right? Instead of throwing an error simply blocking black/whitelists entirely, could you not allow less intensive rules lists (say, ban a couple mons/moves/abilities, allow a couple new ones) and throw an error saying there are too many restrictions if it fails to generate a valid seed for some reason while custom rules are active? In my usecase, I just want Protect gone. I can imagine people not wanting to deal with AG/Ubers mons, or just one random specific guy they hate.
 
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AshKetchumsPikachu said:
Have you ever considered adding Tera Flying Pikachu as a defensive Tera to remove the Ground weakness entirely? I understand Tera Water leaves only a Grass weakness to Pikachu, but it doesn't really have any Grass counter moves, whereas Surf deals with Rock counters for Tera Flying and Volt Tackle is still a powerful STAB move that can take care of Ice types. Also, in some cases it may be better to stop a non-STAB Earthquake (which almost always KOs Pikachu anyways) and deal extra damage instead of increasing one move's BP by 40.
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Tera Water ensures that Pikachu always has Surf in its moveset. With a different tera type in the mix, Pikachu will not always have coverage for Ground-types.
 
Nimta said:
A couple casual friends and I were running FFA randbats, and after some frustrating games came to the conclusion that none of us liked how Protect seemed to show up on most pokemon, most of the time, because of the way FFA can incentivise everyone spamming it due to the chaotic presence of three hostile parties. We came up with a couple ideas that could maybe solve the issue, such as rejecting seeds that granted more than 2 or so protect users on a given team, or a rule that made protect fail for everyone if more than one person used it on the same turn, but ultimately resolved to blacklist it (because it would theoretically open up a new move slot for literally anything else, which could have been more interesting). We had no issues with other moves that work similarly (Spiky Shield, Detect...) because they're so rare.

I did lots of research on the custom ruleset coding, only to find that "Custom bans are not currently supported in Random Battles." I know I certainly won't be able to convince people to ban Protect from FFA randbats, let alone the base sets, so I would rather discuss the customization aspect. "Not *currently* supported" implies the intention to add the feature in the future, so I want to ask: Is there an ETA for its addition? What are the major obstacles stopping it from being supported right now? Is it because of the winrate data feeding into the levels? Surely you could just keep custom games out of the pool. Since individual pokemon sets are somewhat manually created, I'm guessing that part of the problem is banning too much stuff at once. Surely there's a way to compensate for that, right? Instead of throwing an error simply blocking black/whitelists entirely, could you not allow less intensive rules lists (say, ban a couple mons/moves/abilities, allow a couple new ones) and throw an error saying there are too many restrictions if it fails to generate a valid seed for some reason while custom rules are active? In my usecase, I just want Protect gone. I can imagine people not wanting to deal with AG/Ubers mons, or just one random specific guy they hate.
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Im pretty sure ffa sets are actually randdubs sets (unless they suddenly changed that recently), so thats why you sometimes run protect a lot (bc in doubles is crucial) and also sometimes dumb sets like a pollen puff wo chien some time ago.
 
Nimta said:
A couple casual friends and I were running FFA randbats, and after some frustrating games came to the conclusion that none of us liked how Protect seemed to show up on most pokemon, most of the time, because of the way FFA can incentivise everyone spamming it due to the chaotic presence of three hostile parties. We came up with a couple ideas that could maybe solve the issue, such as rejecting seeds that granted more than 2 or so protect users on a given team, or a rule that made protect fail for everyone if more than one person used it on the same turn, but ultimately resolved to blacklist it (because it would theoretically open up a new move slot for literally anything else, which could have been more interesting). We had no issues with other moves that work similarly (Spiky Shield, Detect...) because they're so rare.

I did lots of research on the custom ruleset coding, only to find that "Custom bans are not currently supported in Random Battles." I know I certainly won't be able to convince people to ban Protect from FFA randbats, let alone the base sets, so I would rather discuss the customization aspect. "Not *currently* supported" implies the intention to add the feature in the future, so I want to ask: Is there an ETA for its addition? What are the major obstacles stopping it from being supported right now? Is it because of the winrate data feeding into the levels? Surely you could just keep custom games out of the pool. Since individual pokemon sets are somewhat manually created, I'm guessing that part of the problem is banning too much stuff at once. Surely there's a way to compensate for that, right? Instead of throwing an error simply blocking black/whitelists entirely, could you not allow less intensive rules lists (say, ban a couple mons/moves/abilities, allow a couple new ones) and throw an error saying there are too many restrictions if it fails to generate a valid seed for some reason while custom rules are active? In my usecase, I just want Protect gone. I can imagine people not wanting to deal with AG/Ubers mons, or just one random specific guy they hate.
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To answer some of the simpler questions here, basically you can't use custom challenges to ban a single move because there are a lot of mons with only 4 moves in their sets, and having one of those be banned would stall the team generator and cause a crash. It's more complicated that it sounds to just have those mons be thrown out on generation, or to define what "too many" banned moves is. There are no current plans to implement such custom bans, as far as I'm aware.

As for everything else, as koopa003 said, the sets are pulled from the doubles movesets, and Protect is a very good move in doubles, so it is on a lot of sets. FFA Protect and other similar doubles strats have been brought up a lot, and there is ongoing discussion on what to do about it. We'll have some sort of answer for you sometime this month.
 
Nimta said:
A couple casual friends and I were running FFA randbats, and after some frustrating games came to the conclusion that none of us liked how Protect seemed to show up on most pokemon, most of the time, because of the way FFA can incentivise everyone spamming it due to the chaotic presence of three hostile parties. We came up with a couple ideas that could maybe solve the issue, such as rejecting seeds that granted more than 2 or so protect users on a given team, or a rule that made protect fail for everyone if more than one person used it on the same turn, but ultimately resolved to blacklist it (because it would theoretically open up a new move slot for literally anything else, which could have been more interesting). We had no issues with other moves that work similarly (Spiky Shield, Detect...) because they're so rare.

I did lots of research on the custom ruleset coding, only to find that "Custom bans are not currently supported in Random Battles." I know I certainly won't be able to convince people to ban Protect from FFA randbats, let alone the base sets, so I would rather discuss the customization aspect. "Not *currently* supported" implies the intention to add the feature in the future, so I want to ask: Is there an ETA for its addition? What are the major obstacles stopping it from being supported right now? Is it because of the winrate data feeding into the levels? Surely you could just keep custom games out of the pool. Since individual pokemon sets are somewhat manually created, I'm guessing that part of the problem is banning too much stuff at once. Surely there's a way to compensate for that, right? Instead of throwing an error simply blocking black/whitelists entirely, could you not allow less intensive rules lists (say, ban a couple mons/moves/abilities, allow a couple new ones) and throw an error saying there are too many restrictions if it fails to generate a valid seed for some reason while custom rules are active? In my usecase, I just want Protect gone. I can imagine people not wanting to deal with AG/Ubers mons, or just one random specific guy they hate.
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Update: A full revamp of free-for-all is being worked on, giving it its own sets, levels, and code. Protect will not be banned or removed from it in any way shape or form; protect will in fact be at a significantly higher appearance rate than it used to be.

However, Toxic, Toxic Spikes, Toxic Chain, Toxic Debris, Malignant Chain, Sleep-inducing moves, and Shadow Tag are currently slated to be wiped from the new edition of the format.

While this may not be the answer you wanted or expected, I hope it's still mostly good news.
 
Just curious, but would it be possible to actually create a free for all ladder? Ik it can be kinda weird but also pretty fun
 
A bit of an unusual suggestion and one that I'm not sure would actually change anything, but I think Mewtwo should be able to roll Pressure as well as Unnerve.

Both of Mewtwo's Abilities are extremely situational, but work very well in the specific situations that they're good against. Unnerve currently makes Mewtwo effective against Harvest users, denies Sitrus Berry from BD Azumarill and Eiscue, and occasionally denies Custap Berry from Golem. All of these are undoubtedly useful aspects of Unnerve, which is why I'm advocating for Pressure being a roll rather than an outright replacement.

Pressure is very useful in a couple specific situations, most notably in playing around Sucker Punch and switching into Encore. Mewtwo sets with Recover and/or Nasty Plot would be a bit more lenient to use against Sucker Punch users, as they only have four chances to use it against you rather than eight. This can potentially be key in playing around revenge killers like Cacturne, Shiftry, non-Scarf Toxicroak, and Honchkrow, and may even prevent them from successfully revenge killing another Pokémon later on should they run too low on PP. This would also allow Mewtwo to serve as a highly effective switch-in to Encore, again slashing its PP in half and making it easier to play around for the entire team. The fact that Mewtwo has to directly switch into an Encore user to make use of this does admittedly make it less overall helpful, but it's a solid use case either way.

If it were possible, I'd have suggested to specifically have Pressure be a roll on sets running either Nasty Plot or Recover, but given it's all merged as one, I don't think that's terribly feasible. So I'm simply giving the idea that it should be a general roll on Mewtwo, to help diversify its gameplay even more and potentially give it some fun, useful, and skillful interactions.
 
Enderwither02 said:
A bit of an unusual suggestion and one that I'm not sure would actually change anything, but I think Mewtwo should be able to roll Pressure as well as Unnerve.

Both of Mewtwo's Abilities are extremely situational, but work very well in the specific situations that they're good against. Unnerve currently makes Mewtwo effective against Harvest users, denies Sitrus Berry from BD Azumarill and Eiscue, and occasionally denies Custap Berry from Golem. All of these are undoubtedly useful aspects of Unnerve, which is why I'm advocating for Pressure being a roll rather than an outright replacement.

Pressure is very useful in a couple specific situations, most notably in playing around Sucker Punch and switching into Encore. Mewtwo sets with Recover and/or Nasty Plot would be a bit more lenient to use against Sucker Punch users, as they only have four chances to use it against you rather than eight. This can potentially be key in playing around revenge killers like Cacturne, Shiftry, non-Scarf Toxicroak, and Honchkrow, and may even prevent them from successfully revenge killing another Pokémon later on should they run too low on PP. This would also allow Mewtwo to serve as a highly effective switch-in to Encore, again slashing its PP in half and making it easier to play around for the entire team. The fact that Mewtwo has to directly switch into an Encore user to make use of this does admittedly make it less overall helpful, but it's a solid use case either way.

If it were possible, I'd have suggested to specifically have Pressure be a roll on sets running either Nasty Plot or Recover, but given it's all merged as one, I don't think that's terribly feasible. So I'm simply giving the idea that it should be a general roll on Mewtwo, to help diversify its gameplay even more and potentially give it some fun, useful, and skillful interactions.
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I don't think that it's possible to limit Pressure to sets w/Nasty Plot or Recover without splitting them into their own role and either:
  • enforcing those moves: e.g. Setup Sweeper/Fast Bulky Setup enforcing Nasty Plot;
  • risking undesirable item gen: e.g. Specs generating on Fast Attacker/Wallbreaker if Mewtwo generates four attacking moves, Lefties generating if Mewtwo has both NP and Recover on Fast Support and Fast Bulky Setup;
  • Hardcoding Life Orb to deal with undesirable item gen.
Your alternative suggestion of simply having Pressure roll on Mewtwo's singular role is as simple as another entry into its ability pool.

I'm not sure about its usefulness though. A lot of sucker punchers carry additional coverage that hits Mewtwo hard for SE or neutral damage (e.g. Cacturne, Shiftry, Honchkrow, Kingambit, etc.). Although they they fear Mewtwo's coverage (especially Fire Blast). A lot of encore mons can generate progress-making tools that Mewtwo hates (Toxic, Twave, Knock Off, etc) although plenty cannot generate them simultaneously (e.g. Scream Tail). I'm happy to test Pressure and see how winrates fare, though.
 
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