What does gen 8 need to bring to the table to make competitive better?

With generation 8 coming up next year, many competitive battlers are already envisioning what new mechanics will come along with the generation as well as changes to old mechanics/Pokemon. In your opinion, what needs to be changed with our current battle system to make battling better?

I would like something that separates the Tapu's. They have centralized the OU tier, making some Pokemon just harder to use. I'm sort of hoping for a Pokemon that specifically has some way of countering them.

Honestly at this point id just love them to start again and basically start to isolate new games from older ones. No backwards trade compatibility with older versions and make it simpler like in the first couple of gens probs up to 4th gen. Too many pokemon (over 1000 is ridiculous and you only get 6 slots) and with unnecessary gimmicky battle mechanics which amounts to little more than (often overpowered) bells, whistles and fluff which is way more convoluted than is frankly necessary imo in comp pokes.

Z-Moves are stupid broken, so I'm imagining something else that is suppose to encourage crazy teambuilding coming up next. I'm not hoping that Z-Moves get nerfed, but I also don't want some kind of power creep with stuff.

As for what I personally want, well here is a list:
- Another (set of) non-Mega non-Z-Crystal item(s) that can't be knocked off.
- Some item that extends the duration of Gravity (really cool mechanic, though doesn't see much use in Singles). Maybe can extend to Trick Room, but I don't know if that would be broken or not.

I might post more later, but these are just my initial thoughts.

I don't competitively battle(so take what I say with that in mind as a disclaimer) but I think Fairy Types need a nerf. Their two biggest weaknesses in Steel and Poison aren't really weaknesses and while Fairy was brought in to counter Dark Types(hence Light > Dark), Dark was brought in to tamper down on Psychic dominance in Generation 1. With that in mind, why can't Psychic be the counter to Fairy with an immunity to Fairy moves and dealing x2 to Fairy? It give players a strong Special counter to Fairy types while breathing new life into Psychic types.

Finally on an unrelated note: Allowing us to rename Traded Pokemon. Can't they add a trigger than whenever you acquire a Pokemon(via catch, gift or Trade) that you be prompted to name it? Therefore yielding players the chance to remove stupid nicknames or renaming it back to what the Pokemon happens to be?

1. Add more weather and day effects to battle. This is more of an in-general, though it heavily applies to competitive as well. I want to feel immersed in the actual environment by making me choose strategies I wouldn't otherwise explore. Mostly new moves and add effects to existing weather conditions to better distribute damage, weaken or strengthen moves of a certain type. As for time, it would simply be a mechanic to throw in a fighting type Eevee who rocks the daytime while balancing fighting types at night and weak against psychics during the morning. It feels lame that electric types aren't ridiculously amped up in the rain or that fire types still haven't taken damage either. If Sandstorms can impact non-Earth types while rendering itself immune, why are fire types immune and electrics having zero impact? Or being in a much colder or hotter/arid environment, if not a jungle.

2. A counterbalance to fairy types. Beef up Steel or make Poison the type it's very weak to, if not both. It's really broken. Or a new type called Industry...though that pretty much falls into both of those, the former a product while the latter construed as runoff from pollution, but I digress. Perhaps a line that heavily counterbalances by having a Steel/Poison combo?

3. Revamp older Pokemon to make them useful again. There's no excuse older gens should be left in the dust, not to mention, I'm not in favor of mega evolutions that much either as an actual solution to this issue. Make their stats on par and just be done with it.

3.

I haven't been following competitive pokemon closely for a fair while now, but from what I gather now the metagame is unsalvagable in this current state. Anything that can be done in an effort to curb the powercreep will either fail or make it even worse - Fairy type is a good example of a countermeasure to powercreep turning into powercreep itself.

And really, why is the metagame so bad that it can't recover? Simply because new Pokemon keep coming in and in. You have to bring the most overpowered and busted tools to the table if you are going to stand out in a sea of 800+ monsters and anyone joining in later needs to one-up your game and then anyone joining after that needs to one-up their game and so on. Thus, this leads to powercreep and the sorry state of the metagame.

Pokemon suffers powercreep threefold - From the acclimation of pokemon occupying the higher and higher statlines, the increased competition for space within each role and the inclusion of ever strengthening moves and abilities. The first one is simply due to more and more pokemon being released at higher statlines. Gen I had few Legendary Pokemon and Pseudos which meant that, while they generally sat on the top of the meta, there was more than enough room for others below them to take up residence in OU. Gen II added in more, which meant more slots got taken up by legends and pseudolegends and so on. Fast forward to now, where we are in Ultra Beast, pseudolegend and Tapu hell, it is not difficult to see why the metagame is so digusting - There are just simply enough of these stat-inflated monsters that they take up nearly the whole of OU and the only other things that stay there are the ones who can compete with them.

The second point simply translates to competing with each others in roles, and explains how there is powercreep among the pseudos and legends. When you can't get additional stats to get an edge over your rivals in the role you want to play, you have to optimize your stats to produce a better statline. Back in Gen I, most of the pokemon in OU have optimized stat spreads which let them excel in the roles they are built to take and so pokemon with defensive stats of 90 or so backed by good HP were considered to be "bulky". Gen II comes along and their new pokemon have to compete with them by optimizing their stat spreads more than their competition and so the bar rises a little. See the pattern? Now, in Gen VII, the bar has been raised so high that coming in with that Gen I 90/90 bulk spread is not working. Now you need something like 120 defense with good HP or even 150/150 mixed defenses at a huge cost to your HP or offenses to be considered bulky.

The final point has to do with moves and attributes. Even if your optimized stats are weaker than your foe's, you can get the edge over them if you have better moves and abilities than them. In Gen I, pokemon had limited movepools, suboptimal typings and no abilities or held items and were at the mercy of a broken type chart. On subsequent generations, the move list was expanded and changes like rebalancing the types happened and entirely new mechanics like abilities and Mega Evolutions get added. While some got nerfed, like Psychics in general with the introduction of Dark and Steel, they generally grew stronger and the ones who got more than others were generally able to jump ahead. This leads to today where everyone is getting more broken moves and abilities than ever before, ranging from the Tapus' terrain setting abilities to Beast Boost for the Ultra Beasts to Z-Moves letting anyone fire off a potentially deadly attack or defense at the moment you don't want it the most.

Tl;dr: Gen VIII needs to revamp the battle system as a whole so everyone will end up on equal footing. There is no "fixing" the metagame - It needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch due to years and years of building on top of it.
Need to quit rambling now...

I don't get why people think the Fairy type is so broken personally. It provided a desperately needed nerf to dragons and gave Steel and Poison more offensive presence which was greatly appreciated. They also made Fire types more viable defensively. The types they are effective against are all powerful or have few weaknesses of their own with Dragon,Dark and Fighting now having just three weaknesses each There's not even anything special about Fairy moves. Only two offensive moves are good with a third being decent and the only good status move they have is Geomancy which is an exclusive move. There's not even that many viable Fairy types with the Tapus being the only really noteworthy ones - and they're a lot more notable and useful for their other type than being Fairy. The only area they fucked up on with Fairies was the random Bug resist.

Honestly what I'd like to see is just capitalising more on things that have been left out or ignored. They've done more the past two gens for Hail and I'd like to see that trend continue since there's still no good users of Slush Rush or Ice Body. More interesting type combinations with Ice/more Hail abuse abilities would be good too. Bug could use more support still too with it having a few great mon and then soooooo many bad ones all with millions of weaknesses.

Most of all though, something to fuck stall over. Please? Please.

>stall
>needs to get fucked over

pick one

The Ice type desperately needs to be buffed defensively. And with that I mean it needs more resistances. I think Water, Ground, Flying, and even Bug and Fairy would make good candidates.

I thought i would just give my thoughts on this matter.
I just think the power creep needs to be toned down a bit while at the same time bringing in a new cast of decent mons that does not cater to the overly bulkish meta that is gen7. for a while i have realized that due to this power creep there is a struggle for building really effective teams and while i believe it is normal to have a best mon in the meta, when there are many it becomes really stressful to play and in my opinion i see this in the buffing of greninja, Zygarde, the introduction of the ultra beasts ( which are not too bad but i should mention them), and some others the beginning of the problem at hand which could get worse if they bring in mons that are more powerful or more tankier. Perhaps stat reworks via. differing calculations of base stats to attempt to balance the power creep? Right now the game just needs to get interesting we have had the same meta for about a year and a half and not much has really changed and USUM did not really make it any better with the introduction of more mons with sticky web and just three new ultra beasts ( one of which is banned) two of which are really bad ( one bad due to poor decisions or perhaps balancing? *Blacephelon not getting Hp fight due to how Ivs work for Ultra beasts*) I am going to wrap this up because i do not want this to look like i am going on a complete tangent. All and all mainly the power creep is one of the only glaring issues and teambuilding is rather stale as it feels like to me that only 6 or 7 mons work on a given build whenever i try to build nowadays. Perhaps introduce mons that can cancel out the viability of the current ones and boost the viability of the older ones while not necessarily making the ones now completely bad? I do think ice needing a defensive buff could be an intersting idea however, i would just hope it would not cause mons like avalugg to become unkillable as ice could be useful on more stall builds if it did get the wrong (right?) buff resistance wise and Kyurem-B perhaps bulkier as well which i do think should not happen as Kyurem-B already can be a pain to deal with.

Just a small thing, but I'd like for Hidden Abilities to be revamped. By that I mean, some new abilities released in gens 6 and 7 (and surely there will be some in 8) fit really well with older (gens 1-5) Pokémon, but because they were given HAs in gen 5, they weren't replaced (except for the Litwick line, but that's because it wasn't distributed with its HA to begin with). But we saw they're capable of completely "retconning" an ability (removing Gengar's Levitate) in gen 7 so I'd hope in gen 8 they can spruce up some older Pokémons' HAs. It definitely has the potential to breathe some new life into them.

I just want to see the end of powerups like mega evolution and Z-moves. Those are things that I feel should be limited to the story mode and kept out of competitive mons.

To everyone saying that Fairy needs a nerf or broken, please tell me why you think so, because I don't think that it's not broken at all. Moonblast might be a tad strong, but that's like complaining about Scald and Discharge.

gimmepie said:

Most of all though, something to **** stall over. Please? Please.

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See: Tapu Lele, Blacephalon, Kartana, Kyurem-B, Z-Moves, and more. I feel like a lot of people just get annoyed when they end up having to face stall, because it requires a lot of patience and time. If you get triggered before the match, then just forfeit, because you're going to be wasting your time. Keep in mind that stall players are people too, and will have to make predictions to win as well.

5qwerty said:

To everyone saying that Fairy needs a nerf or broken, please tell me why you think so, because I don't think that it's not broken at all. Moonblast might be a tad strong, but that's like complaining about Scald and Discharge.


See: Tapu Lele, Blacephalon, Kartana, Kyurem-B, Z-Moves, and more. I feel like a lot of people just get annoyed when they end up having to face stall, because it requires a lot of patience and time. If you get triggered before the match, then just forfeit, because you're going to be wasting your time. Keep in mind that stall players are people too, and will have to make predictions to win as well.

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Honestly, I don't get particularly triggered by stall because of how time consuming it is to play against, although I have to admit it's definitely boring. What annoys me about it is that it feels like there's very little strategy involved. You just poison or burn your opponent and then wait it out with recovery while they scramble around trying to break through a team of six walls. You don't have to be clever about it to the same extent as other play styles.

Although I admit, part of my irritation is just that it's a play style I personally struggle against.

Stalls skillfullness isnt in the battling aspect per se as any brain dead chimp can make A-B counter switches (although it does often require good plays i.e. double switches but good stall attempts to remove these game breaking risky plays for the most part), rather in the teambuilding aspect. Putting together a team that can overcome ridiculous offensive pokemon (which lets be honest the odds are by far and away slanted in offensive pokemons favor) whilst including essential roles with very limited pokemon that function well on stall is no easy task. Then you have to account for hazards and/or their removal, status absorbing, things like taunt, having a wincon and being able to defeat theirs, breakers and other things the standard cookie cutter offensive team often sees as negligible. Stall punishes lazy terrible non synergistic team building before the battle has even begun in a nutshell.

5qwerty said:

To everyone saying that Fairy needs a nerf or broken, please tell me why you think so, because I don't think that it's not broken at all. Moonblast might be a tad strong, but that's like complaining about Scald and Discharge.

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Orithan said:

The Fairy type was brought in to rebalance the metagame. At the time it was introduced Fighting types and Dragons were running rampant while types like Steel and Poison were rare as offensive types. That's why it was added in, but I question how well it did its job to rebalance the metagame.

The type put a stop to the dragons spamming Outrage everywhere and Fighting types breaking through everything in Gen V and it gave a helpful boost in viability to Poison and Steel type moves, which was one of its objectives. Its other objective, to bring balance to the metagame, has failed. The type chart is now arguably as unbalanced as before - this time, Fairy is the dominant type and it will continue this way until the type chart is balanced again.

Fairy is absurdly powerful both offensively and defensively. Not only are its two weaknesses to weak offensive types and boasts an extremely strong spread of resistances, but it has nearly unrivaled offensive prowess in its wide coverage and key types it hits for super effective damage. It also has a bunch of really strong and reliable offensive moves and a nicely distributed spread of support moves. The type gets more tools than every other type and, with the notable exception of Grass, it combines with every other type well - Nearly every pokemon who got the type saw a dramatic increase to their viability, a testament to how overpowering it is.
The only thing that has stopped the type from becoming as rampant as the Dragons before is the pokemon who have it - the pokemon receiving the type tend to be otherwise underwhelming and the ones that would be good otherwise (eg. Azumarill, the Tapus, Mega Mawile, Mega Altaria) are dominant.

Fairy should have had much more thought put into balancing it itself. It has no business being as centralizing to the metagame as it is and it is busted ingame as well because it is just so easy to pick up a good fairy and run with it.
Really, the type needs to get nerfed and hard. It needs another weakness and a couple more types resisting it. Psychic is a strong candidate for a type to both resist the type and hit it for Super Effective damage because of the flavor connection between the two and going by how sharply the type dropped off in effectiveness in later gens.

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Source

Tl;dr - Fairy is stupidly powerful in general and is running rampant and needs to be nerfed.

Orithan said:

Tl;dr - Fairy is stupidly powerful in general and is running rampant and needs to be nerfed.

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I already explained why this isn't the case though?

Hm. This is pretty short, but I'd like to see more viability on some of the more obscure moves ie. Trick Room, Magic Room, Gravity, etc. More tools for that like an ability that gives instant Trick Room when it's on the field sounds pretty cool to me. o:

gimmepie said:

I already explained why this isn't the case though?

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While you provided your reasoning, the problem with Fairy is the lack of checks and balances outside. Now that you came in on my post specifically to disagree with my points, I will show you why and how I disagree with each of your posts.

gimmepie said:

I don't get why people think the Fairy type is so broken personally. It provided a desperately needed nerf to dragons and gave Steel and Poison more offensive presence which was greatly appreciated. They also made Fire types more viable defensively. The types they are effective against are all powerful or have few weaknesses of their own with Dragon,Dark and Fighting now having just three weaknesses each

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I agree with all of these points. The type was needed to be introduced in order to pull the type chart back into order. Those are what the type needed to do.
Where I disagree is the notion that its type matchups are fully balanced. The lack of weaknesses other than Steel and Poison makes Fairies difficult to take out because those two types are otherwise underwhelming and the pokemon often have to give up a moveslot specifically to check them. The lack of types resisting Fairy has, and especially thanks to their narrow distribution, grants it very powerful offensive synergy with strong coverage types like Ghost and Ground.

The balance issues coming from Fairy comes about from its combination of powerful traits which together combine to create the strongest type in the game, not just any of its parts.

There's not even anything special about Fairy moves. Only two offensive moves are good with a third being decent and the only good status move they have is Geomancy which is an exclusive move.

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While they are not anything particularly special about the moves and they are few in number, the type has a very precise list of moves - The type has strong 90+ BP offensive moves on both sides of the spectrum that are readily available to them and lots of special attackers get Fairy coverage in Dazzling Gleam or Moonblast. Their support moves, while few and number and situational, tend to be powerful when used in Doubles.

There's not even that many viable Fairy types with the Tapus being the only really noteworthy ones - and they're a lot more notable and useful for their other type than being Fairy.

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The Fairy pokes in OU, namely Mimmikyu, Magerna and the Tapus, benefit greatly from having their Fairy typing because it grants them valuable STAB coverage to threaten out various threats like Garchomp and Tyranitar and their resistances are powerfully utilized to discourage Dragons.

On a second note, note the big boost in viability the pokemon receiving the Fairy type got on the transition to Gen VI. Even if they didn't make it to OU itself, they made at least some headway in the lower tiers. That's a testament to how strong the type really is. And that's even considering that the pokemon who got the type were often really bad beforehand.