Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Pokémon pot-pourri

I'm sure you've all seen the news already, but allow me to repeat... FREE CELEBI WITH POKÉMON BANK. This is fortunate, because I don't think I have one of these. Just as notable is the fact that it comes with a move that was totally unheard of before: Hold Back, which is a False Swipe-like move. Its typing and power are still unknown, but considering that it's a completely different move, and one with a distribution of exactly one Pokémon, and a legendary on top of that, I would be surprised if it was an exact clone. Either way, this won't be changing anything competitively speaking. Anyway, as I just said, this is the first time we've ever heard of that move. This is where the complete lack of datamining either really stinks or really shines depending on your perspective, as it allows for unexpected surprises to crop up (and just imagine if we didn't know about the three event Pokémon...).

On another subject, Mega Kangaskhan has been under scrutiny by the Smogon higher-ups for a while (and understandably so), and as of this writing, surprisingly no decision has been taken. I mean, I don't think it's a very hard one to take. I have to say, this whole situation makes me sad, because Kangaskhan needed the help, and badly. So when it finally gets a chance to fight back, what does it get for its troubles? It gets banned to ubers. (At least it's a safe assumption to make.) Never has a Normal-type had such offensive presence since the heyday of Snorlax in gen 2. Too bad Parental Bond turned out to be overkill, with the baby hitting way harder than it has any right to. That's what I get for years and years of bashing baby Pokémon as being useless, I guess. Theorymon question time: would things have been different had added effects only occurred at the end of the attack rather than on each hit? (I'm looking at you, Power-Up Punch.)

(Edit: Just a few hours later, Mega Kangaskhan is gone. And if you're somehow against this, I strongly suggest you start playing gen 6, because clearly you haven't done so yet.)

And while higher-end battlers are looking at Mega Kangaskhan for some banning action, on the other end of the spectrum we have... Slowbro and Slowking? Yup. Scrubs the world over are getting destroyed by a set that should never be able to topple a skilled player. And when I say destroyed, I mean that there's a total lack of destruction going on. The idea is this: put a Leppa Berry on an Oblivious Slowbro/king, send it in on something it can beat, use Block on it, then start spamming Slack Off every turn. The Leppa berry will be consumed when PP gets low, at which point you use Recycle then resume spamming Slack Off. Repeat repeat repeat. Then, when the opponent starts using Struggle, that's when you give him a huge slap in the face by using Heal Pulse every other turn, which will keep your opponent alive and unable to switch indefintely. Cue ragequit.

At least that's on principle. Unfortunately, just like FEAR and Prankster Copycat Riolu, this is a cheesy set that has the potential to claim wins over lesser adversaries, but any savvy opponent will have (and won't hesitate to use) one of the many counters to this strategy. Since we're not talking about a trapping ability, which activates automatically, the opponent has one turn to switch into his counter of choice. Setup sweepers are the best, as this set is complete and utter setup bait, and this can often outright mean the end of the game in favor of the so-called "victim". Toxic also effectively means an outright kill, since the set relies on staying in for prolonged periods of time, and after a few turns the poison damage combined with what the opponent can put out in terms of damage will offset Slack Off, then kill Slowbro/king outright. Knock Off, Volt Switch and U-Turn, all of which they're weak to, also screws up things greatly, as do phazing moves. Anything that can deal more damage in a turn than Slack Off heals works as well, as long as it has enough PP to eventually get the kill (Slowbro is, after all, bulky, but not indestructible). Taunt is, however, ineffective, since Oblivious now grants an immunity to it. Yep, a reason why you might not want to run Regenerator, imagine that. This is one of the two reasons why the set is more effective than last gen (where it was still possible, mind you), the other being that since criticals are weaker, a timely one is far less likely to kill you unexpectedly.

This set has two funny things going for it. First, the set's name is "Funbro", despite it presumably not being fun for anybody, even the user. Second, while certain communities have been panicking over it lately, if you try looking it up on Smogon, you will find find nothing but radio silence. Furthermore, it's a set that's clearly been known for some time, as Block, Recycle and the Leppa Berry were all used enough to show up on the stats last month - near the bottom, of course. That's not the case for Heal Pulse, though, which suggests even they use it to wipe out a specific threat rather than induce ragequits. But my point is, if it had any effectiveness whatsoever, it would've spread like wildfire. It hasn't. So this is yet another set that uses wacky interactions between moves to get something interesting out of them, but ultimately falls flat on its face.

8 comments:

  1. Wait, haven't we known about Hold Back for a while? I know I knew about it, at least a couple of weeks ago. Not only that, but I think I recall it being an exact clone of False Swipe, all except the name. There were no typing questions when I saw it being discussed.

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    1. Well at least I've never heard of it. Heck, Serebii doesn't even have a page for it in the Attackdex, and he's usually way ahead of everyone there.

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    2. Okay, looking into it apparently one or two people got it with Metronome before, and that's it. And it goes without saying that nobody can guess power or typing with two completely random uses out of Metronome.

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    3. Well, I only heard it from secondary sources and word-of-mouth, so I suppose they wouldn't know any better than I would. I'm sure Serebii has been more careful lately after the leaks of the events, so perhaps it's not on the site because we weren't supposed to know about it.

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    4. Didn't stop him from posting Magma Storm's nerf. Besides, apparently there's never been a page for it at any point in the past, even when the events had one.

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    5. How can they nerf something that didn't exist last gen?

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    6. ...Magma Storm's been around since gen 4...

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  2. I always felt like I was just on the edge of figuring out a legitimate way to counter Mega-Khan... like it wasn't actually broken but just really good. Burns worked, sometimes. Still, not surprised to see it go.

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