X&Y's impact on competitive battling.

With a new generation approaching once again the competitive battling field is about to go under some major changes. We are in the last few months of gen 5 competitive play and many players now are anticipating what gen 6 will bring. B&W gave us Dream World abilities which many veteran players despise and say ruined competitive play while others say it added a new and interesting element. So will gen 6 do the same thing? What do you hope to gain out of gen 6 competitively speaking? More spinners? More hazard setters? The elimination of DW abilities? More or less instant weather? Discuss anything that you think or hope X&Y will bring to the competitive field.

X&Y's impact on competitive battling.

Well, for one part, The Pokémon Company is completely revamping the Global Link and the Dream World and an image of the newly created site made specifically for X and Y has been released by them already, so by the looks of it, DW abilities aren't going to vanish into thin air, and there might even be new abilities to look forward to. Competitive battling, however, will remain the same with the Rating and Free Mode,with the occasional online tournaments , but the battle sequence with undergo major aesthetic changes that fit with the idea of X and Y 's 3D interface.

I'm so excited for the new generation! My first pokemon game was black, so this will be my first game release with new pokemon so I have no idea how my team will adapt.

One thing I am looking for is some new and powerful grass types. I have high hopes for Chespin and its evolution being grass/dark so it might make my team if it turns out better than Shiftry.

I think it will be funny when the pokemon games just come out and everyone is using every pokemon to see which ones are going to be fit for battling. I wonder how the fairy type will change things up. Definitely looking forward to the next generation.

I'm hoping to see some improvements to the Ice-types defenses. There is only one commonly used, albeit still somewhat uncommon, Ice-type in VGC and only because it summons hail. Beyond that, its the rare Mamoswine and Weavile. Gamefreak seems so busy trying to 'nerf' Dragons by giving them another weakness, but the issue is the nearly unresisted a-bomb called Draco Meteor and the under-representation of Ice-types.

I also think they need to limit Stealth Rocks damage to x1, and lower Thunder Wave and Toxics distribution greatly. Normal-types could use some improvements too.

I guess what I hope to see is change made amongst types we have, rather than the bandage called Fairy-types.

I have to say, this generation will make for one interesting metagame thanks to the addition of the Fairy-type, which is Game Freak's latest measure to stop the rage of Dragons that has dominated the 4th and 5th Gen standard metagame, there may have been possibilities to nerf Dragon-types by reducing Outrage and Draco Meteor's power but they wanted to leave said moves untouched by introducing a new weakness for Dragons, and that's what the Fairy-type is. Also, so many awesome Pokemon never make it into OU mainly because of the one entry hazard that simply cuts their HP in half by just entering the field, Stealth Rock. Hence why so many Rock-weak Pokemon are not seen in OU unless if it has a helpful secondary type that neutralizes the Rock weakness. Maybe even weaken Stealth Rock's damage if needed. And with new moves and abilities coming, I hope to see all the new things in the 6th Gen competitive field and although I am worried the new X & Y Global Link may see the end of the Dream World abilities we all know, I am still hoping this generation will have one of the best metagames in Pokemon history, even more given we will be having full 3-D graphics this time around.

With the introduction of the Fairy type, Dragons just may become easier to check.

If Azumarill becomes Water/Fairy too, and it gets a physical Fairy STAB, it can make a decent check to Kingdra (assuming that the rumor of Fairy resisting Dragon is true). It may even see more use in OU.

Personally I'd like to see an item introduced that extends the duration of Trick Room. I have always been a fan of Trick Room teams because in this fast paced game you can really cripple the opposing team with a TR team however, it is hard to pull one off when TR only lasts 5 turns and after you set up and boost stats you really only have about 2 or 3 turns before you have to set it up again. So maybe an item that has a similar effect to Damp Rock, but extends the duration of TR to 8 turns.

jellicentfan1 said:

Personally I'd like to see an item introduced that extends the duration of Trick Room.

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That's what I was thinking as well. This item should also extend the period for Gravity, Wonder Room and Magic Room, even though they affect all Pokemon on the field. As for the name, well, maybe we'll call it the Dark Clay?

I hope that there won't be another tier that adds on to our current five tier system. It gets complicated rating a Pokemon when you consider the Pokemon's moveset, ability, typing and statistics.

I also think they need to limit Stealth Rocks damage to x1, and lower Thunder Wave and Toxics distribution greatly.

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Toxic definitely needs to have a lower distribution. I don't know why GameFreak would give it to every Pokemon except for Tynamo, Wobbuffet and some pre-evolution Bug-types. It's such a strange move distribution.

Return and Frustration also shouldn't be distributed widely (Actually it shouldn't be distributed at all) because they outclass many other common Normal-type moves such as Strength, Cut, Scratch and Take Down. At least they aren't seen very often in the higher tiers due to several Pokemon resisting Normal.

Twilight Sky said:

Ultimately, this generation has been really poor. Mostly because things kept getting banned left, right and center in a futile struggle to have some sort of "balanced" metagame, which would probably be too late to have anyway (at least for BW2) by the time X/Y comes out. I'm hoping that X/Y would present with a smaller banlist of sorts to remedy the issue, but I'm not too confident of that, either.

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BW OU has a fairly small ban list. Blaziken, Deoxys-D, Excadrill, Genesect, Landorus, Thundurus, and Tornadus-T isn't very much at all, especially considering that the last four of those are powerful legendary Pokemon that would eventually get banned anyway (plus Blaziken and Excadrill which are really, really good). Smogon has been very lenient with bans, and I think that has to do with the lack of balance in BW OU. Some think that if balancing BW OU requires a great deal of bans, then it's not worth trying to fix. They think that BW OU should be like this, and that if you want an balanced metagame, then play in the lower tiers instead. Some actually like smaller ban lists for no apparent reason, but they fail to realize that large ban lists are inevitable as each generation passes. I'm of the opinion that anything should be done to make the standard metagame balanced. BW OU does have the potential to be balanced, but it would require swift suspect tests that end with a lot bans (see: SR, weather, etc.). Unfortunately, Smogon can take a long time before dealing with troublesome Pokemon, so this likely isn't very possible for them. Unless they speed up their process and ban more, then we can't expect XY OU to be any better than BW OU.

Keiran777 said:

I'm hoping to see some improvements to the Ice-types defenses. There is only one commonly used, albeit still somewhat uncommon, Ice-type in VGC and only because it summons hail. Beyond that, its the rare Mamoswine and Weavile. Gamefreak seems so busy trying to 'nerf' Dragons by giving them another weakness, but the issue is the nearly unresisted a-bomb called Draco Meteor and the under-representation of Ice-types.

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I've always wanted hail to boost Defense for Ice-types, just like how Rock-types get a Special Defense boost in sandstorm. If that happened alongside a Stealth Rock nerf (or if SR was simply banned by Smogon), then Pokemon like Walrein would be pretty effective.

There should be no ban list because witch are you going to spend more time on a common pokemon like bedoof or a legendary like Zekrom. So in any case if we could use all are pokemon without qeustion the online battling would be alot better and wholike having to use only three of the six makes reall no sense to do that and by making them go to lvl fifty well that defeats the whole purpose of testing yourself against other poeple when you can't use the full value of your pokemon. This is just m opinion but I have high hopes for pokemon x/y.

My hopes for 6th gen's metagame:

-A nerf to Stealth Rocks would be better than banning it. Perhaps instead of x2 and x4, it could be x1.5 and x2/x3?

-A balance to weather would be nice. I know there are teams out there built to counter weather teams, but not having instant weather was one reason why I preferred 4th gen's metagame.

-Despite not being too popular, I've always liked the idea of background attacks like Gravity, Trick Room, etc. it allowed more themed teams to be made, and I hope more of these come in X/Y.

-With the introduction to Fairy-type, I hope that the lackluster of offense in types such as Steel and Poison will be alleviated. Same goes with the defense of Ice-types.

And, of course, the obvious, guaranteed, additions they will make like more viable attacks, abilities, items, etc. along with alterations of older attacks.

In my opinion I don't think Stealth Rock damage needs changing. It really depends on what the Pokemon can do to mitigate this problem. For example Ho-Oh's typing makes it as we all know 4x weak to Stealth Rock, but has Roost, Regenerator and very high overall stats to compensate for its problems, and for these reasons it is only permitted in the Uber tier despite the Stealth Rock weakness.

I'm excited to see more Ghost and Normal type Pokemon. I don't have the black and white games so I haven't had the pleasure of working with those abilities however, they seem fun to have :). Even with the introduction of new Pokemon I doubt that my team will change, though I am excited for what it has in store.

Who knows? Anything can change :P. But first, I need a 3DS haha!

I really don't think the introduction of fairy type pokemon will stop the rain of the dragon because like all pokemon you can just overpower the other pokemon like for example I was battling a lvl 100 samuarott with a lvl 100 blaziken I lost but using one FIRE type move I destroyed over half it's health and most lvl 100 dragon types are alot more power full than blaziken so that's why I don't think fairy types will be that good cause I'll just over power them

Hmm. I'm expecting that a lot of people for the winter regionals will be carrying slap-dash teams. There's only about 2.5 months in between the fall and winter regionals and I'll bet that at that point, people will still be trying to figure out the best ways to use most of the new pokemon and probably only about a quarter of the pokemon will have their roles figured out.

I haven't paid attention to metagame for a while and quite frankly I suck at competitive battles, but my opinion is that I don't really think Fairy types will change up the metagame too much, because Dragon types are usually meant for powerful pokemon in general. If the Poison and Steel weakness are true, Iron Tail and Sludge Bomb/Wave will definitely get increased usage (as inaccurate as former is, accuracy doesn't stop the popularity of Stone edge and Focus blast).

Donno... the introduction of new Fairy type Pokemon I believe will have a somewhat significant impact on the metagame (OU, anyway), as well as Clefable (thinking this one will finally be decent against the Lati twins). As for the retyping old stuff, it depends on the 'mon. I seriously doubt Wigglytuff will ever improve enough to be worth using outside of lulz.

I know that the conversation if going on in X and Y forum, but it should probably be here.

Do you think the Mega Forms will have a heavy impact on competitive battles?

Mega evolution Pokemon from my competitive standpoint:
-Mega Mawile's max Attack with Huge Power is 590, assuming no stat changes. But it'll have to deal with its frailty and slowness, so Thunder Wave support for it would be great. It also has Sucker Punch to compensate for its low Speed.
-Mega Absol with Magic Bounce is nice; now it won't have to fear Thunder Wave and Will-o-Wisp while it sets up Swords Dance. Again, its frailty will be an issue, assuming no stat changes
-Mega Ampharos is essentially an inferior Zekrom. At least it may see some more use in the lower tiers.
-Mega Lucario's Adaptability boosted Close Combat is going to hurt. A lot.
-With the reveal of Mega Blaziken, it may stay in Ubers again the next generation around.

Ultimately I feel it is going to depend on this: Will they get a high enough stat boost to make up for the loss of a held item?