Competitive Suggestions

[Proteun]

This thread is for suggestions on what could be added to the games making competitive play even more interesting. Now I don't mean things that would be too powerful to actually use (the Super type, immune to all other types and 10x effective against anything), but things that could just add ways of battling. No over-powered stuff here.

Something that I thought of was a Spite move that actually lowered some base power from a move, like 20 off or something. V-Create going from 180 to 179 doesn't make such a big difference...

 

[Anti]

Nerfing Scald to a 10% burn chance. It's frustrating that Scald spam can be so mindlessly effective with burn being such a crippling condition. Yucky!

In terms of something being added, I can't think of much--I generally like it. The crit nerf was beautiful. I wouldn't mind Explosion being un-nerfed as I found it to be a fun element of risk-reward play in early gens, but maybe make the Defense subtraction -1 instead of -2.

 

[Nah]

Nerfing Scald to a 10% burn chance. It's frustrating that Scald spam can be so mindlessly effective with burn being such a crippling condition.

The burn chance is half the reason to use Scald though. And it doesn't burn as much as you'd think it does.

I kinda want entry hazards, or at least Stealth Rock, to be nerfed a bit. I hate how they strip off absurd amounts of HP from pokes and forces me to run a Spinner/Defogger on almost all my teams. If they made it do half the damage it does now, that'd be good. Or at least make a bunch of good Spinners/Defoggers. There aren't a whole lot of decent Spinners/Defoggers, and its annoying to run Excadrill or Latias on every team.

 

[Anti]

Exactly, people wouldn't use Scald if it wasn't worth it, and it is. I want to make it not worth it because 30% is too high and it's really frustrating when Specs Keldeo users, for example, spam Scald like it's gen four Draco Meteor/Outrage because it has so few truly safe switch-ins.

I like hazards because they punish players for giving free turns to opponents and failing to establish and maintain momentum, but I think it would be interesting if they played around with the damage outputs--so long as they remain competitively viable. (Also, there are a lot of Defog options, which means that at least for me, it's not too restrictive in team building, but I understand that frustration as someone who had to forgo hazard control because no Defog user really fit on my team. That is Pokemon team building though--finding those balances.)

Also, Ghost has become a pretty amazing attack type and it being nerfed wouldn't hurt. It's no coincidence that Aegislash is a god.

 

[Dr. Silver]

If Scald were to be nerfed, then its fellow status inflicters Lava Plume and Discharge would also have to have their status rates dropped. But for moves that are meant for having a chance were to be nerfed, 20% would have to be the cutoff in order to make them suitable alternatives to Flamethrower and Thunderbolt.

For a competitive item, I'd like to see a brother item to the Assault Vest, one which increases the Defence of Pokemon, rather than their Special Defence. There are a few Pokemon that could benefit from having their defences boosted without having to sacrifice major EV investments.

 

[MoxieInfinite]

Nerf Knock Off. The power boost was unnecessary.

 

[Zeffy]

If Scald were to be nerfed, then its fellow status inflicters Lava Plume and Discharge would also have to have their status rates dropped.

That would be unnecessary, I think, since the distribution of both Lava Plume and Discharge is scarce. Unlike Scald, which almost every, if not all, Water-type can learn.

I also agree with the above - nerfing Knock Off.

 

[Cypher DS]

Right now Heat Wave is drastically overpowered in double and triple battles. Its power is on par with Surf and Earthquake but without the drawback of striking teammates. When combined with Drought-inducing pokemon like Ninetales or Mega Charizard-Y, Heat Wave will wreck opposing teams without forcing the user to protect his or her partners.

I would like to see either a reduction in Heat Wave's power, or a modification so that it attacks teammates.

 

[srinator]

Nerfing scald is stupid but I agree with nerfing knock off. That move is too op. ESP since everything can run (pls don't take me literally). Also I want to steel to resist ghost dark again, it would make aegi op but well something has to be done about ghosts and dark mons <> rn dark is probably one of he best offensive types out there if not the best.

But rather than such changes I want the current meta to stabilise and to become balanced. Both ubers and ou. Ubers is very unstable as of now tbh with minimise hax (I coudnt hit the thing for 10+ turns). Ugh wish time would pass quickly

 

[jimmies]

What makes Scald more broken than Lava Plume or Discharge is its very very wide distribution, additionally it also compliments most Water types as they tend to be defensive as opposed to the typically frail and fast Fire and Electric types.

A reduction in the burn to 10% would be a fair enough nerf.

 

[Dark Azelf]

Meh Scald is fine to counter balance the stupid HO BS imo.

Would love to see Knock Off nerf as has already been said.

Stealth Rock nerf on 4x rock weak mons would be cool also.

Also nerf ghost and dark so that steel resists them like last gen imo. That change was honestly dumb af lol.

 

[champagnepapi]

In addition to all the dumb moves being nerfed I'd like to see more potential ways to actually take advantage of Volt turn, which has made a bit of a resurgence now in X/Y. Last gen we had Gastrodon, but he's not entirely useful now, and Mega Sceptile can discourage volt switching but other than that there's nothing to discourage it, and I think the meta would benefit from having pokes like this since U-Turn/VS kinda nullifies double switching when you're vs a poke who has it and easily puts you into a good position if you have it. Also I'd like steel to lose its nerf, Bisharp and Aegislash are ridiculous now really.

 

[MoxieInfinite]

Imo we should just set Pokemon ten years back, so no DPP, no BW and no XY. GSC and ADV were better. No instakill buttons, no 100% hazards meta, no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hyperoffense ♥♥♥♥ where you win the game by making one doubleswitch and then you just kill, sac, kill, sac, kill, sac.

Nerf offense pretty much. And give non Chansey/Skarm/MVenu/Quag/Glisc/Tran stall teams a chance. XY is so one-dimentional atm, it's not even fun playing.

 

[HoneClaw]

Nerf Scald and nerf Knock Off. Neither moves have good switch-ins, outside of Storm Drain / Water Absorb and physically defensive megas, respectively.

Scald's 30% chance is ridiculous. The first part of the equation though is that it's a highly spammable water type move so fire-types that would normally not be affected by the burn aspect have to worry about, well, super effective damage. Water types that resist, too, have to worry about the relatively high burn chance. Getting a burn off on anything is good, except maybe AV Conkeldurr. If Scald's burn chance was lowered, we'd see people choosing between Surf and Scald more. I think that sort of opportunity cost measurement is healthy for the metagame.

Knock Off buff was a horrible idea. I still honestly would rather see the metagame without it. The fact that Dark now has so few resistances means it just utterly maims whatever comes in, unless it's something like, uh...well, nothing really. M-Aggron is probably the best KO sponge, but that's beating around the fact that nothing appreciates losing its item. Knock Off doesn't require thought. It doesn't require thinking about the better coverage move or even switching out. You just click Knock Off and something either takes a wallop of damage or loses its item. Zero thought required.

Along those lines, I think Ghost and Dark need to be re-nerfed in some way. Dark, not as much, at least when we finally get physically defensive fairies worth a damn. Ghost, however, is the new Dragon. Highly spammable, one resist, and one immunity (Normal, which is an awful typing), and it gets perfect coverage with four other types (Dark, Normal, Fairy, Fighting). To be honest, I'm not sure how I'd nerf it exactly because nerfing Ghost means buffing Aegislash (an awful paradox, I know).

Imo we should just set Pokemon ten years back, so no DPP, no BW and no XY. GSC and ADV were better. No instakill buttons, no 100% hazards meta, no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hyperoffense ♥♥♥♥ where you win the game by making one doubleswitch and then you just kill, sac, kill, sac, kill, sac.

Nerf offense pretty much. And give non Chansey/Skarm/MVenu/Quag/Glisc/Tran stall teams a chance. XY is so one-dimentional atm, it's not even fun playing.

Hyperbole much? I won't lie that Deo-D/Deo-S makes HO the prominent playstyle, but stall is very much a viable playstyle. I'm an avid stall player, so I know what I'm saying when the playstyle is very much still alive. (Baton Pass is god-awful for it though and Neo-BP is even worse).

DPP was one of the balanced and fun metas so I'm not sure if you were actually around for it, but you'd be nostalgic for it right now. DPP UU is probably the greatest metagame of all time, no lie.

I don't think anyone except me and you want to go back to the stall days of GSC though.