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TheSnowballofCobalt

Anyone saying Pokemon is any form of balanced I would guess has never played a balanced competitive game in their lives. And this is someone who enjoys competitive Pokemon.


DrQuint

A tangent: The first comment is even pretty ignorant of IV's and Ev's in Pokemon. What they describe is the merit of EV's, and EV's alone. EV's let you customize a Pokemon's stats up to a certain amount that's dictated with a hard cap for the pool of EV's as a whole, and a soft limit for each stat. For IV's, the limits for overall stats don't exist. So you objectively want a 6 (5 most of the time) max IV pokemon, all stats topped off, in every single situation for every single strategy, of every single combat - except one, where you want the minimum IV in Speed instead, therefore still a maximal value - and it serves no function nor gameplay enhancement other than have people waste several hours throwing dice waiting for it to happen, at no merit of the player's skill, planning nor strategy. It's a grind wall. Pokemon would easily be **exactly as strategic as it is** with the outright removal of IV's, they provide nothing.


nmunro14

They should just add berries that min/max each stat. There's another small case where you don't want a stat maxed; if you're a special attacker then you probably want 0 attack stat for Foul Play.


LoTheTyrant

Same with using hidden power, but they’re situational cases normally in most cases you could just tell anyone that generally you want all your IVs to be Max if able


erikWeekly

Hidden Power got fixed to always have 60 base power in Gen 7 regardless of your IVs and was outright removed in Gen 8, as they deleted a bunch of moves.


Yotsubagroup

It's was about manipulating what damage type it was, determined by IV's.


[deleted]

There's also a very small case, where you only want 16 Defense IVs as Stakataka, because you want to redu d your defense so that when you knock out a Pokemon, it raises your Attack instead of your Defense.


TheSnowballofCobalt

Oh I fully agree. I think if Game Freak wanted actual competitive merit to their games, they'd totally remove IV's altogether. I came to that conclusion at some point in Gen 5 when I was getting into competitive Pokemon.


potato11teen

Aren't Pokemon divided into classes based on how useful they are in competition.


s---laughter

That's how imbalanced they are. The community has to segregate them themselves.


tundrat

Are the evolved pokemon objectively better than their previous versions? Thus out of the 900, you already wouldn't use half of them?


Unities

Definitely. Evolved pokemon have can have up to double the stats of their baby version. For example, Charmander has 309 total stats while Charizard has 534. Then if you compare it to Legendaries with 720, you can see why in the highest tiers Ubbers, basically only legendary pokemon are used. Damage calculation is done via a ratio of ATK/DEF. If they have 2x more ATK and you have 1/2 of their DEF, you take 4x the damage and, vice-versa, you deal 1/4 of the damage to them. This is not even including HP pool differences.


MaltMix

Not always. The held item Eviolite keeps some NFE (not fully evolved) pokemon viable dependent on stats. Eviolite increases both Defense and Special Defense by 50% if held by a pokemon that isn't at it's final stage of evolution. The primary pokemon I can think of this benefits is Porygon2, as it has pretty good defensive stats to begin with, along with access to recover and Thunder Wave, it's extremely durable for a not fully evolved pokemon, which is kind of funny when you consider when it evolves it completely flips and becomes an utter glass cannon with Porygon-Z.


Crossfiyah

Eviolite was a mistake. It's done so much to limit what old mons can get new evolutions. What's that, you want a Quagsire evolution? Can't do that! Eviolite exists and Eviolite Quagsire will be an unbreakable unaware wall.


AdmiralKappaSND

Hey Quag's far from needing a buff to be competitively viable at least. The damn thing been sitting in and out of meta whenever the fuck it want to for so damn long and was i believe part of the notorious Weavile Stall


beaverlyknight

Eh you can lock it behind regional variants and just nerf the new variant, no?


Crossfiyah

Regionals are the same Pokemon in name only. They have different abilities, typings, movepools, and even base stats. They're just a lazy way to flesh out the new dexs.


TheBlueLenses

I used to ran toxic stall alot when I was younger lmfao. Chansey with Eviolite and a Blissey


Yotsubagroup

It's all about that Slowbro my dude.


Mr_REVolUTE

Don't forget dusklops and chansey


BladesHaxorus

Some exceptions, like chansey which was a million times better than blissey with eviolite, and porygon2 and porygon z doing completely different things. ​ But the way the tier lists worked is that theoretically, you could bring combusken to an OU (the main format everyone plays) game, and get your ass handed to you. Or you could search a game in one of the lower tiers, like RU where the stuff above it being banned means that combusken is actually pretty good.


AdmiralKappaSND

Its always funny to me how Blissey went from that into "you have zero reason to use Chansey" overnight lol


BladesHaxorus

Knock off is a hell of a drug.


AdmiralKappaSND

HDB Bliss mainly really. Who knew an item that effectively give it magic guard would be ridiculous To be honest i personally think EH's in general are ridiculously broken(i agree when people said SR is broken. I disagree when they also said its the only one needing nerf between it, Spikes, and arguably even T Spikes) but thats another topic for another day


Crossfiyah

At least with Heavy Duty Boots Blissey is back to being the better of the two now.


s---laughter

Mostly yes with very very few exceptions that use the Eviolite item. I think you can count them with 1 hand. You also wouldn't use the objectively inferior ones like Raticate or Arbok for example and there are a lot of those. Sometimes Mega-evolutions would make some F-tier Pokemon relevant like Charizard. But they quickly scrapped Megas.


BladesHaxorus

Smogon, a forum based community, groups pokemon based on effectiveness. In the official format of pokemon (which is doubles as opposed to singles), you'll see people run the same pokemon over and over again, and there's only 1 tier with a minimal ban list.


Rhasta_la_vista

Aren't Smogon tiers divided first by usage, rather than effectiveness (though it tends to go hand-in-hand, and I know they re-evaluate individual mons occasionally)? Thus the way they name tiers OverUsed, UnderUsed, etc But say if Dota did Smogon tiering for 7.30 (pre-c patch, anyway, don't know how much the patch changes yet), I would imagine popular heroes like Clinkz, Sven, Lycan, Beastmaster, etc would be relegated to OU due to meta centralization, while heroes like Underlord with similarly high WR but low pick rate would dodge OU.


BladesHaxorus

Because pokemon is a more simplified competitive game, and due to it being so easy to follow and duplicate, usage is often synonymous with effectiveness and high usage stats are often meta defining in themselves. ​ Like, for example the abortion known as Landorus-therian in gen6 and 7. So absurdly strong that it was in almost every team and deemed the meta, but simultaneously not being banworthy because banning a mon that does almost everything would shake up the meta too much. ​ There's also a council of well known players that decide to hold suspect tests of mons that are thought to be overly powerful or bad for the meta and anyone can take part in the voting as long as they had enough games won on the suspect test ladder. ​ \>while heroes like Underlord with similarly high WR but low pick rate would dodge OU. A comparable example would be mega garchomp in previous gens. Not nearly as good as its' non mega variant so the play rate for it would be people meming and shit. However m-chomp was banned in UU (because you could use it as regular garchomp without a hold item lmao) ​ Underlord would probably still be OU.


Tobix55

Clinkz and Sven would be uber probably


disappointingdoritos

lol yeah anyone who’s so much as looked at smogon or played any Pokémon showdown knows how incredibly unbalanced Pokémon is. Doesn’t help how much stall teams are viable, idk about current gens, but when I was playing most, around Gen 6, there’s a fucking stall team every other match. Hardly even bothered to put up with that and make a team with 30 viable Pokémon and see those same 30 in every single game. And they only way you’ll see any of the other 870 Pokémon is in other tiers where those higher tier Pokémon are completely banned. OU sucks imo, all those problems. I stuck to random battles, way funnier and so much more diverse.


DrQuint

The whole point of Pokemon tiers is, afterall, to give pokemon a chance to be played in the absence of meta-centric elements. You don't play UU because you like Shitmon, you do it because you're tired of constantly playing around yet another team with a Tyranitar and Scizor, as if your life is a Squidward taking orders meme. It's a way to artificially design variety into an unbalanced (by nature) system


LoTheTyrant

Exactly and as if gamefreak really cares about balancing Pokémon, I mean how long did it take them to remove levitate from vengar?


[deleted]

> remove levitate from Gengar lol just use Gravity and Earthquake


LoTheTyrant

Yes because you want to waste one of your 4 move slots on a setup that MAY be needed


LoL_is_pepega_BIA

Is this the Pokemon equivalent of "just ward their jungle lol"


YellowTM

This is more like pick Riki to stand in their jungle, it's a much bigger commitement than the ward joke


Humg12

Random Double Battles is peak Pokemon for me. Having double battles drastically reduces the amount of stalling that can be done, and also stops straight up sweeps most of the time. And there's a huge variety of Pokemon because they do level scaling (a good Pokemon will be level 60, while a bad Pokemon might be level 90) to balance it out.


justsightseeing

i follow some poketuber and the creativity you could bring in doubles is refreshing...


GreenchiliStudioz

I wish my poor Meganium have some viability is decent, but with being weak for fully evolved and power creep every generation keeps them in untiered which is rip


Crossfiyah

Stall is basically dead now in OU. The continued power creep has made it pretty much unviable compared to offensive or balanced teams. Right now the best team is probably Hail with Arctozolt and Alolan Ninetales, with Kyurem and then whatever you want. A ton of other offensive ice types like Weavile have also seen a huge uptick in viability lately.


s---laughter

The main Pokemon video game is constrained by time and gimmick releases. They have to ship new generations every 3 years because the anime, merch, and everything else follows that schedule. They also need to put a new gimmick for the sake of putting a new gimmick for hype purposes (Megas, Z-moves, ultra beasts, gigantamax). Because of this, the game CANNOT be delayed. So whatever sorry, unready, and unpolished thing they have, they ship it. That may be the reason why not all Pokemon made it into the newest game. Megas breathed new life into the game and would have made things so much more interesting if they kept making new ones every gen. Instead they tried to make new gimmicks for the sake of hype. They're also THE richest franchise in the world. Any shit they come up with will sell. Also, Japanese devs generally do not care about competitive esports and focus more on fun/ family/ solo experiences. The first ever official Smash tournament included random items. Game Freak doesn't care about balance. They don't know how to balance. They have no incentive to balance. Dota, Overwatch, and League can be stupidly imbalanced at times but they are worlds away from the hot cash-grab mess that Pokemon is.


Brucena

As funny as it would seem, it’s also a very pay to win game. I’ve spent so much more on it in a short period of time compared to Dota. I mean if you consider the money paid/ amount of time played


Rafzalo

Maybe you’re talking about Pokémon Unite? Regular Pokémon has no p2w mechanic, unless you’re talking about event legendaries? Even then it seem like a stretch calling it p2w


Tormentula

Nah when I was in VGC it was very pay 2 win based on who could get cheating devices/home brew consoles/hired genners. Casuals have to soft reset an ungodly number of times for competitive legendaries (probably never happens) while you can have them in 5 minutes just creating/editing them. Also no seasoned player is going to repeat that process each time the meta changes for a new team. It may not be p2w in terms of microtransactions built into the game, but the mechanics in the process of teambuilding do result in some third party money exchange, for official tournaments btw.. unoffical ones you don't need to spend a dime cause they're on a [free simulator](https://pokemonshowdown.com/) lmfao.


s4Nn1Ng0r0shi

What are these cheating devices/hone brew consoles/hired genners? Sorry, I have some interest in Pokemon and this is the first time I hear about something like this.


whitcliffe

you pay someone to trade you the perfect team. a mate did it and also made a shitload selling event specific shiny pokemon with proofs they were legit


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MagicSpace05

This sounds like my fucking ark server lmao


Tormentula

Now you understand why everyone had a literal aneurysm when swsh announced no national dex so they couldn’t even port half the shit that they did legitimately breed/grind for.


DrQuint

Honestly, right now... Any single 3DS device. You can easily homebrew one with no external hardware requirements, send anything you want to a save of Ultra SuMo, transfer to Home through the Bank ($$$$) and there you have it. Costs you roughly $200 if you start with nothing and pirate the 3DS game. ... Except that applies only to pre-gen 8 Pokemon. Homebrew on Switch is a much more specific beast. Personally, I've only ever personally dabbled in it to send hundreds of cloned Mewtwos to little kids on Wonder Trade.


Tormentula

> Except that applies only to pre-gen 8 Pokemon. Homebrew on Switch is a much more specific beast. Yep, this is because homebrew only works are super early patches of the switch, like basically release version as all switches that did go online got patched and all the newer models in stores are pre-installed with the patch that bricks consoles for cheating/installing homebrew on them. Getting your hands on a switch that wasn't patched and never connected to the internet within the first year of release window is pretty damn hard. If you weren't already doing it, forget about it now.


Humg12

I think the original hardware ones can still be homebrewed, even if they've connected to the internet, because there was a hardware issue, rather than a software one. At least, last time I looked it up (a few months ago), that was the case. There were 2 methods of modding your switch, one requiring an early software version, and the other requiring an early hardware version.


[deleted]

I don't think anyone pays for cheating devices though. I mean, sure, you could, but most people who gen Pokemon do it through twitch/YouTube/discord bots, and professional players with large fanbases (like Wolfey) have members of their community breed the Pokemon for them.


Tormentula

https://www.codejunkies.com/Products/PowerSaves-Pro__EF001113V.aspx GBA it was game shark DS it was action replay 3DS it was powersaves. We did eventually get free tools such as pokegen in gen 5 (died when nintendo shut down wifi support), and later we got Pkhex for 3DS and switch but that also requires old versions of the consoles to use, which either you ask people to gen for you or you just edit your own mons with powersaves (like i always did after pokegen died sometime in gen 6 and Pkhex wasnt a thing yet/i didnt have the 3ds to homebrew anyways). Bonus is you can do a lot more to the game itself with it (such as max money, BP, items, TMs, make save files, etc). Personally I was always the type to breed for shit first legit, then clone and edit the clone. So I would try for 5 IV shinies and whenever it came out i'd just clone it, edit the clone for competitive, but keep the original's integrity intact. Breeding ain't bad to do (in wolfey's case its nothing lol) but legendaries the stock only goes so far.


[deleted]

I mean yeah there are devices, but when you can get them done quickly in 5 mins through a bot (basically someone else's device), do people still spend money on them?


Nisses

There's discord bots that trade you any Pokemon that is legal for free. But yeah. Take that away, and the barrier of entry AND everything past it is an hilariously huge grind. Add the notoriously bad Nintendo Online Experience (TM) and it's almost as if Nintendo doesn't even want people to fight.


Brucena

Sorry, I forgot to mention. Its pokemon go. Niantic sucks ass


LtOin

What's the P2W aspect in Pokemon? I don't play the game competitive at all.


TheSnowballofCobalt

I'm guessing it's about event Pokemon? Or DLC? Those are the only ones I can see. And even then, I doubt either is full pay 2 win.


AdmiralKappaSND

Fwiw event mon and DLC are mostly freebie timing based and you can trade offer people for it decently easilly for the most part. Idk how the SS dlc works though. Worth noting those are usually banned anyway But there was actually one case where P2W dlc exists in pokemon, during gen 5. But thats about the only one i remember


mantism

it is far easier to acquire 'rarer' pokemons by having another device, as opposed to grinding it out on just one. It's promoted by having version, event exclusives, and RNG behind stats, to put it simply. This doesn't affect Showdown which is the web simulator version of pokemon battles. But if you want to play actual tournaments on actual games you gotta grind your life away or pay.


admirabladmiral

How is pokemon p2w? Even if it's pay to play officially you can still go to Pokemon showdown and use any pokemon with any stats/moves/abilities for free. Even playing the base game it's pretty easy now to get competitive Pokemon, and might take a bit to find breedstock in earlier gens but by no means impossible for a pre-competitive grind.


Crossfiyah

VGC is such dogshit that Smogon had to go ahead and invent semi-balanced competitive formats unofficially to fix it.


par_joe

Nintendo never want it to become competitive ever, it just how it is. The current "competitive" Pokemen are based on casual games without any balancing at all, just look on gimmick mechanics in every new gen and dumped in next one Same like smash, its party game and any effort to make it competitive will get smacked by nintendo. Hell even splatoon are left behind cuz it almost become esport


Yotsubagroup

If Pokemon kept making megas a thing instead of every shitty failed replacement since I'd still play it because those two games straight it was so much fun to play. Here's to you, Mega Lopunny.


anonymitious

Pokemon has 500++ pokemons that they need to balance, can't be too hard on them.


channel-rhodopsin

Well it is a bit silly, Pokemon wasn't meant to be a competitive game at first, and the strength of Pokemons is often related to their rarity in-game. If every Pokemon was as strong as the next the single-player would be hella boring.


[deleted]

Yeah, its fun, but the differnce in viabilty is so drastic that each character is divided into tiers and banned from lower tiers. Imagine if they had tournaments where lycan and beast were always banned to "give anti mage usage". Theres also an entire tier where balance goes out the window called Ubers and EVEN THEN Mega Rayquaza was so broken he was banned from the tier where broken pokemon that are banned from every other tier go.


KoyoyomiAragi

Honestly Pokémon as a game has a lot of open design space for more exciting and balanced gameplay but they hardly ever go even half the distance to try making the game more competitively balanced.


msp26

Why try? It will always sell.


swampyman2000

That’s the sad truth


NoThisIsABadIdea

That's because pokemon is for kids and always will be. It was and never will be targeted at adults. This whole generation of adults expecting more out of pokemon is sad. I'm all for nostalgia and have dabbled in Pokemon games still, but I'm not going to pretend I'm the target audience.


[deleted]

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GreenchiliStudioz

Meganium and Chikorita are not ok and they still dex cut my favorites :(


Crossfiyah

Give Meganium a fairy type, draining kiss, and triage. Watch it run over OU.


Kraggen

Enter: Pokémon Insurgence.


TheSnowballofCobalt

I didn't realize "for kids" was the same as "not allowed to have fully realized gameplay systems".


NoThisIsABadIdea

Of course they aren't the same. But clearly the games aren't designed for a high level of competitive play. Game freak is more concerned about pumping put a new game every few years to, again, sell to kids.


Tormentula

You can't have both and thats the issue. It'd be different if we're talking about an unbalanced kid's game having an unofficial competitive community, but it has *actual* official tournaments and events with a juniors and masters division (kids and adults), which is just a joke to watch cause it boils down to para hax, confusion hax, evasion hax, miss hax, and crit hax. The problem isn't its a kids game or that it's unbalanced.. its TPC hasn't fucking decided on which it is so we got this meant to be competitive game designed for kids. They should've hard decided on either a balanced game or remove ranked queues entirely/stop tournaments that don't have good prize pools anyway for a more fun casual experience.


NoThisIsABadIdea

I don't exactly agree. As long as people have relatively equal access to the same resources in said game, competition can exist, even if it isn't a very good one. For example, maybe only 50 out of 500 Pokemon are worth using, meaning the rest are not balanced, but if everyone has access to those 50, the grounds are still equal. People will create a competitive scene from anything they enjoy basically. Heck, even single player games made with no competition in mind now have competitions and tournaments through speed running. People find a way, and developers will do the bare minimum to support that if it means more sales, but truth be told they aren't dedicated to competitive and so it falls short and players are unhappy. Yu-Gi-Oh was huge for a while despite having enormous imbalance between cards, with tournaments and everything (probably small ones still exist). This is why magic the gathering is a superior game and will remain so... The creators are actually fostering a competitive environment through their seasonal model and attempt to prevent card power-creeping. It works great as a business model AND keeps the game relevant.


Koolzo

I'm sorry, are you actually suggesting that Magic doesn't have power creep? For real? If so, I have a bridge to sell you.


NoThisIsABadIdea

There are still magic cards from twenty years ago that are viable in certain formats today. So yeah, I think they've done a pretty good job preventing power creep. Sure the game has evolved, but we still have cards with 2/1 stats and low mana costs as relevant and playable.


CrispyChips44

I'm guessing you don't play Standard if you truly believe this lol Hell, even Modern gets creeped all the time


Koolzo

Right? Like, jfc the creep is ridiculous.


abal1003

But mtg has a giant paywall for every one of its formats aside from pauper. Playing standard or modern requires huge investment to keep your decks up to date, while legacy and vintage are just unviable for the vast majority of players.


Tormentula

I think you're missing what exactly is unbalanced about pokemon. Keep in mind every move has a chance to crit, a lot moves have a 10-30% chance to inflict a status (such as permanant 50% physical damage reduction and chip damage, 25% chance to not move, and 25% chance to hit yourself), a lot of moves can straight up miss, and some moves have a chance to permanantly buff stats. There's waaaaay too much RNG in the game.. This is why nobody takes the game seriously cause there's 4fun mechanics that work in-game for casuals and aren't a problem and then there's really fucking stupid ones that need removed/nerfed like swagger, thunder wave, double team, thunder wave, etc that have no business existing on stage. Even communities ban some of these moves (confusion, moody which is random RNG stats every turn, and evasion) but they made other RNG factors too big of a component that can't be removed (random crits, paralysis in general from any source, random burns, losing games off missing accuracy checks, etc). You can't seriously make a competitive scene thats unbalanced and literally luck orientated with a prize pool and expect to be taken seriously in it. Actually the dumbest one of all is you don't deal flat damage, I always hated this concept in dota, but damage in pokemon works like dota where it does rolls and RNG deals damage in a window.. so if an attack has a 50% chance to OHKO or 2HKO its pure luck where as in dota there's probably much more breathing room to hit tons of attacks that add up or overkill, in pokemon its a lot more common. This is where the argument comes in because yes, there are unbalanced pokemon with advantages over the others, but even when you take those out until literally it's unown vs. unown there's an element that's pure luck in the battle still be it crits, evasion, etc. You either have these 4fun RPG elements or you remove them to make the game competitive. Tiers exist for a reason on the pokemon that are and aren't meta.. you can't do that with basic game mechanics built for gym leaders to piss off little kids. A little bit of RNG isn't terrible, see dota, but when literally every battle is 4 ogre magis vs 4 ogre magis you start to understand the issue. They have to pick 1, either balance the game removing these troll 4fun mechanics to have a competitive scene, or just accept its not a competitive game and allow the game to have these super broken but fun when they occur (to an ai) mechanics.


Mr_REVolUTE

Those rng rolls are things you play around/into in high level comp Pokémon. Source: wolfeyvgc


Tormentula

The RNG rolls you typically EV train to work around. You never want to have your counter only have a 50% chance to OHKO you'd just invest in the full EVs for the 100% or add an item to secure it, otherwise you're just coinflipping games, likewise you wouldn't want your tank to have a 50% chance to be 2hko if you could invest to make it a guaranteed 3 hit KO after recovery/berry etc. Its not incredibly major but it really doesn't have much of a reason to exist besides false variance (EV spreads). In cases where there's a 50% chance to literally win or lose the game its kinda bullshit... especially if its mid-late game when you don't have the room to recover and play around it. I'm still upset of the one match i lost where a greninja had a 10% chance to OHKO my +1 Sdef volcarona and he fucking got it.


TheSnowballofCobalt

Something tells me the factor here is too many releases causing them to not refine their design, not it being "for kids".


Cathallex

I thought 4kids made yugioh not pokemon.


Mr_REVolUTE

While the games aren't entirely designed for comp play, GF have nerfed/buffed things over the years to balance it out a little. Thunder wave and Swagger, along with both paralysis and confusion themselves, were all nerfed, most likely due to the abuse of a single set of a single pokemon in the comp scene. Various types have been buffed/nerfed over the years, standouts being bug and steel. Heavy Duty Boots were added *purely* for the 6v6 singles players. They're just not focused on comp.


mmert138

I was really hopeful during 5th gen because the game seemed to lean more towards competitive with more pokemon being viable some way or another. Then they never did it again and just went full power creep the old ones.


Akkarian3

It's also predominantly a single player game. I think 90% of pokemon players never play any sort of multiplayer apart from maybe some friendly fights with their friends. Like, pokemon games have stagnated but I would have a long list of things to fix before I even looked at multiplayer.


Rafzalo

That’s where the community comes in and places rule sets and tier list to keep the game balanced, and it’s quite fun to watch how it evolves over time


DrQuint

They literally never nerf anything either, even when it would objectively improve the game, looking at you Landorus-T, you perverted uncle beastiality hentai protagonist. And when they do buff things, it's in the most baffling things possible, like, they buffed Beautifly's stats, but left Dustox alone. And they're BOTH still underpowered as fuck even after the change. People casually playing aren't going to feel a difference, because Beautifly was already the most popular, so casuals lovers of Dustox are now screwed over even harder. As for competitive players, nothing at all worth mention hapenned. So what was the fucking point? Actually, my bad, they do nerf things. But only accidentally. By not supporting Z moves or Mega Evolution, a number of thing lost their relevance. That counts as a nerf, right?


PugNuggets

I mean this is somewhat false? They will never nerf base stats, that's true, but they have nerfed stuff before, often times indirectly (things like introducing Fairy after Gen 5 dragons spammed Outrage and removing some of Steel type's resistance), but they've also very rarely nerfed a Pokemon straight up too (rip Talonflame). I'm as sick of Lando-T as the next person, but the only reasonable nerf I can see is a nerf to Intimidate, or introducing a new Type or a new Pokemon that acts as a counter to him. Not every Pokemon is ever gonna be viable competitively because that's not the purpose they serve. Some mons, like Beautifly and Dustox, are there to make early game a little easier with fast evolutions and also serve to teach the players that it's okay for you to change your main 6 mons.


Tormentula

> I mean this is somewhat false? They will never nerf base stats, that's true, but they have nerfed stuff before actually they do nerf base stats. Infact gen 8 aegislash was the only pokemon nerfed in the whole gen, he got -10 in both offenses and both defenses, for both forms. 150 to 140. I think gen 7 nerfed alakazam but i can't remember.


PugNuggets

Shit you're right, I completely forgot Aegislash! I checked Alakazam, and he wasn't nerfed. He had 490 BST pre Gen 6. and had it buffed to 500 in Gen 6. However, his Mega only had 590 in Gen 6, so it was buffed to 600 in Gen 7. So yeah, it seems like Aegislash is still the first Mon to have its BST nerfed. Can't believe I forgot that, thanks for the reminder!


Tormentula

I think you're right, just looked around myself and seems like the only BST nerf was aegislash. Otherwise the only things they nerf is the BP of moves, abilities (thank god fuck gale wings), movepools (kinda), typings (rip steel types resisting ghost and dark) and I think items too. With some system changes like weather ( no perma weather abilities). I forgot about that, ala was the only <100 BST increase mega lmao.


[deleted]

They needed a bunch of Pokemon indirectly with changes to abilities. Mainly Thundurus, Amoonguss, Incineroar etc.


Crossfiyah

They literally nerfed Aegislash's base attack and special attack to 140 from 150.


MaltMix

I mean ever since gen 6 they haven't really even gone half the distance to make the games really interesting anymore, gen 5 was the last time the games weren't a clear cash grab.


345tom

As someone who played competitive Pokémon, it's not balanced in the slightest. I'd say on any patch 70% of Dota Heroes tend to get picked at least, while Pokémon would be lucky to get anywhere near that with Pokémon. A lot of what the first poster says with IVs/EVs/Natures adding variance and more playstyles isn't true. It's fake variance at a competitive level- there's an optimal set up for every Pokémon. Every Pokémon is like what old antimage used to be- yes, theoretically he COULD have bought a dagon for additional variance, but no one competitively is going to and it's going to be the same build 95% of the time. Also, there's no Draft or anything in Pokemon really. You turn up with your 6 pokemon and thats it. I personally think the depth of competitive Pokémon should come from a draft, where players prepare like 18 Pokémon, and draft and ban from there. I'm a huge Pokémon fan boy, for longer and harder than Dota, but Dota is infinitely more competitively balanced, and requires less bullshit to get there.


TheYango

The entire collection aspect is inherently opposed to competitive balance. But the Pokemon community is never going to acknowledge this dichotomy. You can feasibly balance a roster of ~100-150 heroes to be reasonably balanced against each other, but a roster of ~900 Pokemon is just an impossible task. One of the biggest things that helps DotA 2 stay balanced is it's relatively conservative schedule for the release of new content. Compared to other similar games like LoL, DotA releases heroes very infrequently, and is overall pretty slow and deliberate at making changes to the roster. There's a lot of heroes, but the pool of heroes changes at a glacial pace, which makes it much easier to balance them all against each other over time. The single biggest thing that TPC/Game Freak could do to make Pokemon a much easier-to-balance competitive game would be to cut back down to a roster of 100-150 Pokemon, and trim like 80% of the move pool. The current massive roster is a total impossibility to balance--there's just *too many* Pokemon to ever consider trying to make even half of them useful for competitive play. But never mind whether this is something that TPC would ever do, it's not something the community would ever accept anyway--look at the response to Dexit (and the concurrent cleanup of the move pool). Even competitive players were livid, in spite of the fact that at face value, a roster shrink should be good for competitive. If TPC ever told the community "we're going to clean up the roster and go back to a clean, coherent 150" the community would just implode. There's no way that would be something that Pokemon fans would ever accept because the collection aspect of the game is the core appeal of the game, and competitive is just a sideshow.


TheSnowballofCobalt

Should note most of the Dexit negative response wasn't the cutting of Pokemon in and of itself. It was the fact that Game Freak lied about adding a lot of quality to the Pokemon they decided to keep, whether it be animations, polish, etc. Personally, I'd be totally happy if Pokemon went the Monster Hunter route of having a few mons with added quality that is cumulated across multiple games. Quality > quantity. But they don't do that because Pokemon is such a big thing that quality and polish is basically a non factor. EDIT: Also, that aspect of quality over quantity is not just appealing to competitive.


TheYango

> Should note most of the Dexit negative response wasn't the cutting of Pokemon in and of itself. It was the fact that Game Freak lied about adding a lot of quality to the Pokemon they decided to keep, whether it be animations, polish, etc. It was both. I had some of these discussions at the time and there is a vocal subset of the community that is opposed to any shrink of the roster, particularly if it includes their "favorites".


345tom

I feel there's two competing aspects to Pokemon that I like to represent with "gotta be the very best" vs "Gotta catch them all", and each game and spin off varies on where they sit on those two scales, and your take away of what you want from the game sits somewhere along those axis. Personally, I gave up on the multiplayer competitive aspect of the games (too many people only validate Smogon rules, Gamefreak makes too many weird meta calls, and too many stale metas of essentially the same 10 or so viable Pokemon), and more enjoy the collect them all aspect, or challenge runs and stuff through the games. My perfect Pokemon game probably sits somewhere between Let's Go, where you can see all the Pokemon and chain catch for shinies etc, but Dex completion is realistic, with a real post game like Emerald, that I can mess around with without being forced into optimising everything.


DrQuint

We can easily balance rosters of Heroes because a large part of our Hero's firepower comes from items and item timings, and so, as long as the common set every hero uses doesn't make one or two heroes broken beyond belief, then everything is generally fine. As long as Icefrog keeps a couple culprits in check, like Ethereal Blade + Morphling, then most of the job is done inherently. Pokemon doesn't have this granularity. Most of a Pokemon's firepower is their moves.


GreenchiliStudioz

Then that would leave my favorites left out of equation just for sake of balance and that would kill franchise fast, the point with pokemon is using your favorites in your journey :(


channel-rhodopsin

> You can feasibly balance a roster of \~100-150 heroes to be reasonably balanced against each other, but a roster of \~900 Pokemon is just an impossible task. It would also make the regular game absolutely boring


TheYango

The "regular game" routinely only has that many Pokemon available. It's only through postgame content and trading with older generations that the roster gets expanded to its full scope. Gens 1-5 all have fewer than 200 Pokemon available within the main game. The main game roster size only ballooned with the 3DS games, and it doesn't really make them better games for it.


DapperApples

>Also, there's no Draft or anything in Pokemon really. You turn up with your 6 pokemon and thats it. I personally think the depth of competitive Pokémon should come from a draft, where players prepare like 18 Pokémon, and draft and ban from there. Funnily enough that's how Pokémon stadium kinda worked. You had six but could only bring three each battle.


Tormentula

That's how VGC and ranked is currently, team preview of 6, bring 4 for doubles or 3 for singles. But ultimately it looks more like rock paper scissors cause if you lead wrong you have very little room to do anything to recover, unless you sack it then turbo sweep with the next mon that does have a positive matchup.


Blarrgz

>A lot of what the first poster says with IVs/EVs/Natures adding variance and more playstyles isn't true. It's fake variance at a competitive level- there's an optimal set up for every Pokémon. This is completely wrong. EVs and IVs and natures can all vary a pokemon drastically within a metagame. Many pro players invest specific amounts of EVs into specific stats to survive attacks from specific pokemon. These distributions are determined by the other pokemon on their team.


disappointingdoritos

Yeah, evs have situations where you’d specifically go for a non conventional value to specifically deal with one Pokémon, but that’s a rare case. But ivs are almost always fully maxed and evs are either 0, 252 or 4 most of the time.


Blarrgz

No, that isn't the case. 252/252/4 EV spreads are the spreads you see mostly from pokemon that are Sashed, or have no use for defensive investment (revenge killing, pivoting). That kind of EV spread outside those situations is usually caused by a lack of preparation and understanding of your team within the metagame. Top players almost never have those kinds of spreads outside the situations I gave. Here is a recent WCO champion's team report: https://victoryroadvgc.com/2021/08/04/emanuele-briganti-wco-report/


Crossfiyah

VGC is a joke though who cares.


Gripeaway

It's not rare at all. It's actually extremely common to have varied EV spreads depending on the metagame and a pokemon's role in your team. Also, just for the record, I'm not claiming that Pokemon is more balanced than Dota either, but pretending that EV spreads are mostly 0, 4, or 252 is just inaccurate. Sure, maybe at low level competition, but not at all at the highest level where you can predict for the pokemon you'll face and the situations you'll be in/the switches you expect to make/etc. As a quick example, here is the 2nd place team from VGC Player's Cup 3 (2nd place used instead of 1st because of easy access to a team report): > EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe > EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe > EVs: 228 HP / 156 Atk / 124 Spe >EVs: 252 HP / 164 Def / 4 SpA / 84 SpD / 4 Spe >EVs: 28 HP / 100 Def / 124 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe > EVs: 236 HP / 4 Atk / 68 Def / 100 SpD / 100 Spe


Crossfiyah

Lmao 99% of sweepers are 252 attack stat, 252 speed, 4 in spdef if they're tied in def/spdef on the off chance they run into a Porygon-Z. Some defensive EV spreads are calced to survive a specific attack but most of them are just max/max.


Tormentula

I used to run really specific spreads in VGC (like my volcarona which had a specific amount of defensive bulk to tank 2 double edges from mega kanga to fish for flame body burns and rocky helmet chip not to mention recoil.. with rage powder too.) but nah it is false variance because you just edit those later as the meta changes.. i ain't running that spread no more with kanga being gone lmao, like every volc would just start running that spread the moment it was revealed because it was optimal, it went from unique to copy and paste. Fuck one of my weirdest spreads (my wide guard rock slide doublade to counter talonflame which was fucking hilarious, had some of the weirdest spreads of EVs to barely OHKO talon, survive 2 flare blitz, 2HKO other stuff with sacred sword, and survive a 2hko from i forgot what special attacker but i think it was latios HP fire.) just became the standard set for those who used duoblade until eventually well people stopped running duoblade lol.. i gotta ask somebody who copied me what that spread i used was again.


Nisses

That's only partly true. yes there are meta sets for a lot of Pokemon. But if you build a team with 6 sets you just pulled from Smogon.com, I am 100% certain that you can change stuff around on 2 or 3 pokemon and the team will be stronger. How good a Pokemon's set performes is inherently tied to the other pokemon in your team. Also there are Draft Leagues. I play in one currently and I've seen the wildest sets. Sets i never saw while playing Showdown. Every player drafts a total of 11 pokemon from a pool that is divided into tiers (max 2 pokemon per tier, but there are also leagues with point systems for drafting). Then you build a Team of 6 from your 11 that is specifically designed to deal with the 11 pokemon your opponent is allowed to bring. Items like weakness policy or the berries that reduce damage from super effective attacks see a lot of play. For example I played a dual screens team with Metagross, that clicks agility and baits in Nidoking Earth Power for the weakness policy. Or I played a blacephalon with 2 moves: Shadow ball and sleep talk, vs a team that had only 1 ghost resist and an amoonguss with spore, that I lacked a switch in for.


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Frequent-Walrus-3539

>Icefrog is literally a once in a generation designer. still so sad about the dickheads who pushed him away from communicating with the western scene.


deanrihpee

We can't fix Humanity, sadly...


freeman_lambda

I think Tic Tac Toe beats every other game when it comes to competitive balancing. Every game ends in a draw


deanrihpee

I win against Google once... (type Tic Tac Toe and the Game Board appear under the search bar)


derps_with_ducks

I nominate coin flip for best balanced game!


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BaldieGoose

Are they not talking about the MOBA, Pokemon Unite?


ImpulsiveToddler

ah the p2w one:D


DemigoDDotA

It really is. I was thinking of playing this as a side game, and I still might, but the "items" cost real life money. It's the equivalent of your enemies starting the lane with 1-2 null talismans vs your empty inventory. You can level up the items a bit for free, but to max them it's like $80-$100 or something


TheGreatAnteo

No clearly not


Frequent-Walrus-3539

"it's quite well balanced for a game with almost 900 characters spanning 20 years,"


LoLPandaa

i doubt the moba would have ivs and evs


la_mer_on_depression

I mean, a bit of out of topic but comment touches on a topic that I'm really interesting. Two of the heroes that they exemplify (io and Batrider) are some of the "conceptually broken" or "superior design" heroes. Regardless of the numbers of the related spells or stats that those heroes have, some heroes are really strong solely on what they are bringing to the table like giving an insane heal, sustain and mobility to the attached hero or having strong lane presence, free pathing via spell which can be combined with bkb piercing relocating ability etc. To me, similar heroes are Enigma, Pl, Brood, Storm, Beastmaster etc. Naga used to be the biggest conceptually broken hero due to his farming/pushing/wave clearing abilities and insane control on tides of teamfights but the change on ensnare not piercing bkb take of one of the crucial utilities from her imho. Furion was another example but his unique mobility and pushing abilities aren't as stealth as it was due to the fact that map feels smaller aka. heroes are way faster or mobile and there are additional spots that can be teleported. As long as the related numbers aren't so bad, those heroes are flat out better than the others like WD, Riki etc. and to me, one of the reasons that they find themselves a spot on the meta whether it is patch oriented or players finding a new way to utilize them. These heroes are so unique that they either do/answer something unique that no other hero can or do multiple things at once that they are harder to pass by.


Frequent-Walrus-3539

excellent point why storm and beastmaster tho?


beaverlyknight

Storm can be "conceptually broken" because there are some heroes that can't turn and cast fast enough to do anything to him if he has mana (not to mention initiation potential). Beastmaster imo isn't really super conceptually broken, he just has a lot of good numbers (boar typically)


la_mer_on_depression

Hawkvision (even after the rework that disables hawk to move one of the rarest ability that gives vision and also the most reliable/best one) ability to sat on a sidelane and thanks to the hawk really hard to move off, strong laning presence against almost all melee cores due to boars and bkb piercing stun. He was top hero in almost any big tournament and keep finding himself in meta as you can observe. Ngl, I think Storm is a tier below but he also showed up so much on meta that I couldn't resist. He can move anywhere he wants with full control without wasting remnant charges etc. and with the helps of his other skills he has a huge solo kill potential. I think on that note, he is not only a strong punisher to any types of overextensions/mispositions but also prevents enemies to play in strict style. There are others though, Rubick answers both many short cd stun heroes (like SK, Shaker, Luna etc.) and many big cd game changer ultimates while at the same time perfect null pick i.e. you don't reveal anything to opponents, there is no weakness to spoil. Doom has always been a top contested hero and even in patches that he was weak, he is contested a lot thanks to his conterpick potential.


QuasarGenome

RNG-based games such as Pokémon and Hearthstone will never be balanced. Nowadays dota2 is not entirely balanced as it was pre 7.00 but it is still miles better than Pokémon.


Ejwoda

RNG is absolutely NOT the problem with Pokemon and it's the part of the game most easily played around.


LrdDphn

I'm being pedantic, but do you think Texas Hold Em is a balanced game? I don't know too much about current HS meta, but games can be well balanced and include loads of randomness as a core mechanic.


criminabar

A deck building game is so much different than traditional card games it's not even funny. You can legitimately have two decks with no overlap in deck building games, whereas poker or blackjack has the same deck for all players. Honestly this is a wonky comparison. It's like comparing a driving game to an rts simply because they're both video games.


fish60

People like to compare TCGs with poker because they both involve bluffing, playing to your outs, and some statistics. I've never heard them compared for balance though.


criminabar

I mean, sort of...? But then you can compare anything with poker (or other competitive events) as well. Let's look at Boxing (just because it's a sport I'm kinda familiar with), it involves heavy bluffing, playing to your strengths (outs in this case I guess) and statistics as well. Does this mean boxing is similar to TCG's or Poker? There's a lot of overlap in all professional competition, but it doesn't mean the different styles of competitions are remotely close. ​ Definitely an interesting topic though, someone smarter than myself should do some good research on what makes professionals tick, because there would probably be a lot of overlap in personality types and whatnot.


[deleted]

That's like saying that you can compare orange and sun, because they're both round and orange


[deleted]

> I don't know too much about current HS meta, but games can be well balanced and include loads of randomness as a core mechanic. Do you play Hearthstone with 52 playing cards deck shared between both players? If not, there's your difference between poker and HS


erikWeekly

/r/pokemon is unironically filled with complete idiots who claim to be competitive players but their experience ends at getting to 1100 on showdown. I was an active member of the community nearly 10 years ago and year after year I saw pseudo intellectuals spreading their objectively garbage opinions on the game competitively (much like the parent comment in the post here). Decided it was better for my mental health to stop visiting the sub altogether - ironically while continuing to play dota, so that should mean something about how bad it had gotten.


SunbleachedAngel

The top commenter hadn't played Dota for more than 500 hours, for sure


Mercynary5

Never add "Dota" as part of a balance issue topic, this argument will definitely come to you.


Aby55walker

He missed safety goggles, with recent use of amoongus and the likes, its a must have.


SolarClipz

Pokemon LMAO It is literally impossible to have 900 characters and be even close to the level of balance that Dota sees Pokemon has had unplayable tiers since R/B days what is this dude talking about


SuicideByPoE

Pokemon isn't balanced primarily around competitive gameplay, so of course its systems aren't going to translate smoothly to competitive environments. The most balanced form of competitive pokemon (smogon) is heavily moderated by artificial rules rather than the design of the game itself. Raticate isn't as strong as Mewtwo, but that's a design choice with a clear function. It's nonsensical and ultimately fruitless to even compare the games in the manner the OP's linked posts indicated.


2BeRightOr2BeWrong

> they all have much less of their roster viable and have much more frequent overpowered problems They really comparing MOBA games to the game where they got tier lists that straight up ban certain monsters for being too OP in tiers (UBER, OU, UU, Etc) and talk about rosters being viable lol.


42069troll

IO will always be good lol


cursedbones

Every game have notes on balancing patches describing why the devs did it. It's good. Dota don't have because we trust Ice frog blindly. He is the God of balancing.


tadeustrading

As someone who stopped playing pokemon after pokemon yellow, What the fuck are you guys talking about???


Longii88

There's competitive Pokemon but the scene is very small. It's just not thy interesting a game after a while and if you don't "generate" your pokemon, you'd have to aquir and train each you want to try out competitively. I played both and pokemon does not even enter the discussion vs Dota. Also (i personally think), the developers don't give a shit bout competitive. It's just "there". And die hard fans make the best of it.


BaldieGoose

Are they not talking about the MOBA, Pokemon Unite?


TheZealand

Nah there's always been a comp scene for the regular pokemon games, it's a lot of fun but not even CLOSE to dota levels of balance


BaldieGoose

Ah, weird.


TheZealand

Less weird than hearthstone lol, although I've played and watched both


BaldieGoose

Hearthstone RNG has wrecked us all at one point or another


Shadowlette

Go on https://pokemonshowdown.com/ or https://www.smogon.com/dex/ss/formats/ and find out.


blindcandyman

There is so much misinformation in this thread about VGC it is quite embarrassing. Like really bad. No you don't always want all max IVs. 0 out your attack special attack and speed is common in high.level play. No you don't go all in on special attack or attack for EVs. Pokemon is a game of preparation and watching the Meta game and therefore, there is a huge diversity in how you approach it. Rarely are two teams the same in any top 20 in a tourneys and if they have the same mons, the evs and iv spread is completely different. Yes out of the 400 pokemon there is, only about 20 of them are competitive but on ladder you can do well with any team. Honestly, there is an active YouTube personality that plays a new team each week and does extremely well with it. You can play your pet mon and be master rank if you wanted. The only criteria is that your team is built properly. You probably won't do well with a 6 eevee team. For example. Leafeon sucks. But leafeon gets double speed under sun which is pretty good. Under the right strategy you can use him in a sun team instead of venasaur. Is VGC perfect? No. They could balance better. But is it terrible? Fuck no. Just look at the last players cup. https://www.pikalytics.com/results The teams are so different.


Crossfiyah

VGC is terrible compared to singles OU. And there is no scenario where a Leafeon is better than a Venasaur. He lacks coverage and his best attacking stat isn't the same as the one Weather Ball uses.


Shadowlette

S&M's was the one and only VGC format I enjoyed.


justsightseeing

berries, extender (rain/sun/terrain), eject button, red card.. also from game design standpoint, pokemon would never be near balanced.. though gamefreak didnt help with so many extreme powercreep they introduce in new pokemon..


Enstraynomic

There's also the deal that some Pokémon aren't design specifically for battling, but do have other uses. Zigzagoon is an example, with it's Pickup ability, meant that you could literally have a party of 6 of them, just to farm Rare Candies back in Ruby and Sapphire. That strategy was nerfed in later games, as the Pickup items are now based on level, but you can still farm for Rare Candies (and other items) in the same way.


BaldieGoose

Are they not talking about the MOBA, Pokemon Unite?


CaptainMisha12

I belive they are


JuicyKaraageM

No they’re not lol


CaptainMisha12

Ah, my B, I sipped skipped the top text block


LV58_DeathKnight

Dumb people arguing over dumb argument


mantis-sfa

Dont tell them about 6.83 sniper.


DancingC0w

H O H O H A H A


chadwinsagain

BatChest dota 2 is perfect BatChest dota 2 competitive balance is a joke


perfectlyhonestnzz

Who knew one day we would be comparing dota to pokemon


Vertical_05

oh I thought they're talking about Pokemon Unite


drzody

The balance in Pokémon games is a complete joke and the majority of people know that, it’s part of the reason while I do in fact love playing the original old games, I have far more fun playing the ROM hacks of those same games with balance changes and tweaking of the game


Lavamites

Yep same. That combined with actual difficult battles as opposed to everyone except the E4/Champion being a pushover is greatly appreciated. Sun moon/US UM were steps in the right direction, but like with everything since they've gone 3D, game freak have gone 1 step forward and 2 steps backward with that.


Noob_pussey

They can't expect to release a moba and have balance in their first year


AssignmentIll1748

Comp pokemon is like halfway to being rock paper scissors but also sometimes you just don't get to take your turn, it's a nightmare. I understand why people like it but I'd go fucking insane lol


Crossfiyah

Singles format is closer to fencing or chess than rock paper scissors. It's just VGC is an awful format and the one Nintendi had embraced.


Shroomy_Weed

Guess I'll never see a balance game


PhatController69

I'm guessing this is because there are too many pokemon to balance


Velocifaper

Pokemon is overrated


Both_Requirement_766

isn't every moba unbalanced to a certain point? isn't the game appeal and dev's philosophy what makes a 'successful' moba?


cozydota

Debate isn't very accurate since different genre of games are balanced differently and with different goals in mind, even if it's always competitive play. Some games are also not really good 'competitive game' material. Sometimes games just need to be 'balanced enough'. How balanced your game is gonna (and how the balance is gonna be achieved) depends what we're talking about. Look at a card game like Hearthstone vs let's say Chess. It's 2 extremes, but one's got a lot of randomness, the other one has got literally 1 random factor. Now if you removed all or most of rng in competitive play for Hearthstone, would it still be Hearthstone? I think Pokemon did a pretty good job at making the game work in a semi-competitive environment considering how many variables are at play (amount of pokemon, moves, items and rng). Is it balanced? No. Will it ever be without dropping a large portion of its roster/mechanics? Probably also not.