Monday, June 16, 2014

Perma-weather quasi-confirmed, new Baton Pass limit voted in

I haven't taken a look at the official ORAS website before today, and now I wish I hadn't. On top of confirming stat boosts for Primal Kyogre and Groudon just like for mega evolutions (Kyogre's special attack and Groudon's physical attack are mentioned explicitly), you can read this tidbit in Primal Groudon's section:

And it appears that its Ability might get a boost!

Yeah, depressing, I know. We all know what that means, and we all saw it coming. Kyogre's almost definitely getting the same treatment, too. Honestly, I could've seen perma-weather Primal Kyogre/Groudon getting used a lot even WITHOUT stat boosts. They're really not necessary, but I guess Gamefreak is just THAT sick of Mega Mewtwo Y.

Also, last month I mentioned a suspect test aimed at stopping the superdominance of full Baton Pass teams, of which there existed exactly two: the one with Mr. Mime as last team member, and the one with Zapdos as last team member. And Mr. Mime, despite being absolutely terrible in any other context, ALMOST MADE THE OU CUT-OFF LINE at one point. So the most sensible scenario was approved through suspect voting: no more than three Baton Pass users on a team now. Certainly beats any kind of combo ban with Speed Boost or Magic Bounce or what have you, though said option still had more support than I expected. And it sure beats doing nothing when you can induce a record amount of ragequits just by having Vaporeon, Sylveon, Espeon, Smeargle, Scolipede and either Mr. Mime or Zapdos show up on team preview. I'm not kidding, you could have all six of these, but only have them have Tackle or whatever, and you'd still get a pretty decent win/loss ratio with all the ragequits. I wish someone actually experimented with that, because not even in the heyday of rain teams were the NOPEs this loud.

With that said, if you were a scrub looking for some easy wins with full BP things, think again. Mr. Mime usage works well as a barometer since it's so bad otherwise. Look at where it is in the unweighted stats. #158. Holy crap that's low. Now go into the weighted stats, starting with 1500 as the minimum rating. #137, a slight increase, but nothing insane. Now increase the minimum rating to 1695, which is what's currently used for tiering. #76, way higher than before. And just for that extra kick in the nuts, with a minimum rating of 1825, which represents the top 0.4% players or so, it comes in at #65. So it really was a team for very skilled players, and top players with this team were nigh unstoppable, even by top players who didn't run it. Hence the decision that was taken - and you won't see me complaining.

12 comments:

  1. Well, either way, Kyogre and Groudon were never going to be anything less than uber, so it's uber's problem. Ubers was always the metagame where crap was just flying around unchecked, and the metagame was OK even with perma-weather. It might actually make things a bit more diverse because not many current ubers take advantage of the weather, so I'm sure many Swift Swimmers and such will thrive. Then again, I'm certainly no expert on that metagame. Perhaps the amount of Pokemon that become viable in ubers will be outweighed by the dominance of weather teams.

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  2. In other ban related news, NU recently banned Venomoth and had a bunch of crap stolen by RU, UU, and in a few cases BL with no dropdowns, helping to stabilize the tier (though now Sigilyph is pretty insane, being able to run three movesets and kill you with all three of them).

    But you probably don't care much about NU.

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    1. Fun fact: Smogon's official tier list has Venomoth listed in BL1 instead of BL3 for some reason. I'm assuming a mistake.

      Other fun fact: there are only two megas allowed in RU (Banette and Abomasnow), and none at all in NU. How much of that is due to the fact that there are so few megas to start with right now? The answer in a few months.

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    2. Slow, something amazing is going to happen at the release of OR/AS. See, it may only be for a few days, but there's no way Sceptile is moving up, and it is going to Mega Evolve...

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  3. Off topic but this article made me die inside:

    http://www.contactmusic.com/article/how-much-does-pewdiepie-earn-felix-kjellberg-youtube_4248194

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    1. You know what's really bad about PewDiePie? When you do something, the best people in that field are supposed to make you proud to be part of it. As a former LPer, I can safely say that PewDiePie does NOT have that effect on me. Instead, all there is is deep-rooted shame. As in, "you do Let's Plays? So you overreact to everything and make unfunny joke after unfunny joke?" Sadly, this is how the medium is seen nowadays. Instead of elevating it like any role model should, he preys on it.

      And meanwhile, well, name one LPer that has at least a million subs that at least tries to produce quality content, whether you actually like their style or not, instead of resorting to the lowest common denominator for the easy money. (I can guess who you're thinking of right now, and no, he's still not there yet.)

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    2. I don't see PDP as what's wrong with LPs so much as what's wrong with content creation on youtube, period. His schtick is games-oriented but his formula is pretty much emulated throughout the "massively popular for some unknown god-forsaken reason" channels. Check the most popular original-content channels by male posters (female posters go by a different rule, 90% of the time being "is she hot or not"....) and you'd hardly tell them apart.

      Speaking of how the medium is perceived, I have cut back on my watching easily by 90% over the last two years. It doesn't interest me much anymore; it's either the same games that I already had my time with (or had no interest in to begin with), or the same people with the same routines that got old the first hundred times you heard it. Hell you don't even need IGN to know when a game comes out, just look for the LPs there will be two dozen starting the first day (followed by 60 videos complaining about DMCA takedown requests for said videos). [Cynically wondering if this all had a place in your quitting making LPs]

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    3. No, not really, anyone who watched my stuff for a minute could tell I wasn't cut from the same cloth. Of course I'm not passing judgement on whether my stuff was good or not, that's not my call to make, but the last thing I did was trying too hard.

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    4. I meant more like if you lost interest in the whole scene you'd lose interest in doing it yourself, but I know you were just doing it as a spare-time thing (you did refuse to monetize many times). You fulfilled a niche, and you showcased the games while knowing wtf you were talking about. Honestly, a Pokemon LP where the player clearly has no clue what he's doing is a god-awful experience.

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    5. I dunno, NCS's Sapphire LP which was not only completely blind but his first experience ever to Pokémon wasn't entirely bad, partly because he got some luck with what he decided to team (Things like Breloom, which are pretty damn powerful) and partly because he's not entirely horrible.

      That's the exception which proves the rule though.

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    6. Well I lost interest in the LP very quickly (he did flail about at first, but he went too overboard with his toilet humor that I have no clue if he played better or worse as the game went on as I stopped watching). As for luck in one's team, the game isn't really THAT hard to cheese if you've only a half-assed understanding of the game's mechanics (if nothing else, you brute force it).

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  4. "His good looks" "describe the self-starter as humble and down to earth"
    Shoot me. Shoot me now.
    Well, at least he knows how to pander to the armada of kiddies, and made a lot of money off it.

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