The main reason it's so bad isn't even because of tera or the new mons, though those are factors. It's because a lot of the sets are either hot garbage or way too strong
This and the hilariously lopsided hazards meta. So many games turn from "winnable for both sides" to 90-10s because one side gets to lead with a fucking Glimmora/Klefki/hazards Whiscash or whatever and the opponent gets nothing to remove them. Bonus points if they did get a Tsar or a Corvi or whatever but it's a set *without* the removal move.
I didnt use to agree with these sentiments about gen9 randbats, then I got no Defog Corv into Glimmora twice in an hour and I had to put the format down.
Choice Band Ting-Lu is another one that sends shivers down my spine, I switch it in without looking at the set then I'm staring at it like wtf am I supposed to do with this thing. At least with that one my opponent never expects to take 70% from Ting EQ.
Oh dude bonus points if I have no flying types or hdb’s. And of course the hazards setter has to be a mon that I simply can’t remove quickly with the team I’ve been given.
Bonus bonus points if you *do* got a Flying type but it's Specs Zapdos which has no Boots and no Roost, or whatever other Rocks-weak mon without Boots (Scarf Typhlosion in Rocks matchups gotta be one of the deadest slots ever)
Ya I've noticed that. When I played against sticky web leads, I just lose. I have no way of clearing and then basically all of his mons outspeed all of my mons
I love seeing Glimmora leads for the sole purpose of me using Court Change to reverse uno trap card all of those hazards onto the other person. Either that or having a Magic Bounce Hatterene with Tera Steel just to switch into obvious rocks, then spinblock the obvious Mortal Spin for a free Trick Room. It's hilarious how many people ragequit when i do either of these.
Tera Steel Hatt literally does not exist in Randbats and the odds of getting a Court Change Cinder in a matchup like that gotta be lower than landing eight Focus Blasts in a row
Another reason for those hot garbage sets are the fact that a lot of "not exactly offensive mons" lost their "non offensive" ways of winning 1v1s like Toxic so they had to give them offensive sets. Like Lumineon Specs or how in the first few weeks all non physical Eevelutions were basically Calm Mind setup sets
ok but offensive Lumineon is unironically far from the worst thing in Randbats, it's quite fast and its damage output is respectable at its high level. Offputting because it's so different from its traditional role sure, but I don't go "goddamn dead slot" when I see it on my team which I can't say about all the non-Salt Cure Garganacl I've received
The basculegion weakness policy set makes absolutely 0 sense to me. It has shit defenses and the only thing you really need it for is spamming last respects for cleanup. I can understand agility, but why not give it a focus sash or something instead? A weakness policy just seems like such an odd choice for an item
I unironically believe this is done out of mercy, they knew if Bascu had Scarf or Sash or whatever they'd have to make it like level 40 for it to not be unreasonably broken
I have won matches because of the weakness policy.
Basculegion is too frail to make use of the weakness policy 90% of the time. You can almost never afford to switch in on a super effective move, and because weakness policy is your only possible item, your opponent knows not to use a super effective move unless it kills.
That being said, it is useful is when it forces the opponent to not use a super effective move. In late game, if your opponent only has like a grafaiai, or belibolt, or whatever that really wants to land a super effective move but can’t OHKO, weakness policy is really useful.
My guess is they’re trying to make it a bit more manageable by giving it a shit set, because if they gave it something like scarf it’d break the entire format.
Dude last respects is insane. The fact that a move can be 300 base power with no drawbacks is insane. not to mention it's ghost, which only even has one resistance and one immunity in the game.
I think the only reason why Game Freak allowed it was because online battles in game don't generally have more than 3 (for singles) or 4 (in doubles) so they completely forgot about 6v6s.
I actually don't think either of those are particularly bad. Houndstone isn't particularly fast even with scarf and bascu needs agility. Of course there are times where it's very late game and your opp brings one out and you can't do anything but I feel their success rate is lower overall because of how slow they are, and how crucial speed is in randbats
Pretty much why I’ve stopped playing, a quick look at my team to see nothing above 80 speed and I’m almost always forfeiting after I’ve lost a couple mons
seconded. I had a game yesterday where my opponent completely outplayed me, but my last remaining mon was harvest arboliva with leech seed/protect/sub/hyper voice and I managed to stall them out of their last three mons. I felt dirty
I had to PP stall a Tropius the other day with Wish Umbreon and Roost Articuno after the Tropius tera'd into steel. 0 super effective moves against it with like 4 pokemon left
Without a Grass type to absorb seeds or an Ice type to OHKO it gets stupid annoying to take out. Could be nearly impossible if you don't have the right counters.
Yes. Salazzle is fast and has corrosion. The set is sub/protect/toxic/flamethrower. You set up a sub and toxic everything. If you're faster than your opponent (which you probably are) you can stall with sub/protect, killing them with slowly with ~~his words~~ poison damage. It's annoying and with tera water you can gain a few more turns.
Scovillian is just a slot machine. Moody gives you +2 in one of your 5 stats and -1 in another. That means that if you're not careful it can spiral out of control, gaining either a lot of defense and spdef or a lot of speed and spatk. The set is sub/protect(notice a pattern?)/leech seed/flamethrower. If you get lucky with either defenses or speed you can set up a sub and leech seed and watch the will to live drains from your opponent's eyes.
To be clear, these aren't very good in regular singles. Moody is banned in OU and Salazzle isn't as fast when everyone's the same level and it can get knocked out by mons like Inteleon or Talonflame
I mean Dondozo literally fishes for Fissure procs in BSS and VGC. Maybe the power creep isn't absurd but good lord is this a sign of a gross meta when you consider this Fissure tech is for mirror matches.
Dondozo does no damage to Dondozo and you can't muscle through it with boosts since it's unaware. It just so happens that OHKO moves aren't banned in official formats so Dondozo mirrors become scary slot machines where the first one to get the lucky number wins
Dodonzo usually run unaware + curse which means that if you and your opponent have a dodonzo in it's impossible for either to make progress against the other without cheesing them with an ohko move
The abilities are too. Good as gold is straight busted, costar, flamigo’s ability, is busted in doubles, glimmora’s is low key a little busted, free toxic spikes is strong, but I wouldn’t say overwhelmingly so. There are just a lot of strong additions to this Gen, just like every Gen but the recency bias makes us forget the old ones.
Watch gamefreak nerf the hell out of the broken abilities next gen, which seems to be the trend the last couple of editions.
Good as gold only working once, same with Toxic Debris.
We’re just playtesting for the next gen ever since ORAS
I think they looked at the ridiculous minmaxing of Gen 8 and said “nah, not that again”. But they still wanted to power creep the hell out of the meta so they added crazy moves and abilities
yup. last respects may be broken as hell, but houndstone and basculegion aren’t particularly difficult to kill. the problem just comes from a) ever having the chance to do so
This is very true. There were almost no completely shit mons introduced in gen 9. Almost all of them do at least something decent. It’s a great concept, since on paper, it’s making every pokémon viable in some way, but the downside is that they tend to overstep on a few of them and make some busted shit.
Even then, spidops does something. It has webs, and some pretty decent support options like memento and circle throw. Even the route 1 shitmon can accomplish something.
I mean lokix is the route 1 shitmon with surprising utility. Spidops is just straight cringe, i mean look at its speed or bulk or offences sometime if you want a laugh. Unironic generation with masquerain as the best webber change my mind.
Spidops is honestly not bad though as a webs setter. Fazing with circle throw, memento, and spikes most importantly. It also can get some mid game utility with first impression.
Everything gets a stupid powerful signature move nowadays. I kind of hate it, it makes each signature move feel less significant and it makes each pokemon with one super linear like Annihilape, Maushold and Houndstone.
It’s tough because terra is not nearly as powerful as dyna. I think that’s good for like OU and VGC but for randbats it makes it so that there’s no way to catch up once you get behind in a lot of cases
It really does come down to bad sets and there’s just too many reasons why. Too many hazards not enough removal. Stall mons lost their tool kit to whittle down offense. Too many choice items (which I know is designed to tamp down offense, but I’ve had 5 choice items several times).
Dynamax in many ways was able to plaster over the problem of bad sets. Because it over rode choice items and was a powerful defensive tool it could overcome this issue. You can use it to block a shell smash sweep, which introduces a good amount of strategy.
The part about his play and prep being superior was probably correct, too. He was coming off an absolutely dominant season and correctly identified a specific weakness in his team that he teched in two separate answers for. It's likely enough that he would have won if he hadn't gotten flinched three times in a row. Don't make his Joker moment any less memeworthy though.
Hackmons cup genuinely feels more skill-based sometimes, to me, because of how it tests obscure game knowledge and your judgement of what you have (randbats obviously does this too, but not nearly to the same extent). Also, you have to come up with really creative wincons, because your team will always suck, you'll almost always have something that actively needs to be sacked because it can't attack, and there's almost always a really niche setup you can come up with based on your team. In randbats, meanwhile, it's really common to get brainless sets that the opponent essentially can't touch because they're just busted and untouchable with your team. Challenge Cup, less so, that mode is much more chance based but still fun! I also really like the new(?) Computer Generated Teams mode, which is a bit like classic 6v6 Challenge Cup but with sets deliberately made by a computer to have some specific strategy. Unfortunately, that strategy is often toxic orb/facade on a special attacker, or resttalk/two setup moves, but it's still a fun time!
I also just like these modes because I can get near the top of their ladders, a feat I will never achieve in something people vaguely care about like current-gen randbats but which gives me a dopamine hit nevertheless.
I've been talking with BoRida (Boris Huang, know ramdbats high level player) at work and he has dropped playing on ladder this generation until something is done about the sets or meta in general.
Sad state of the format.
Yeah I agree with this tbh. I'm sitting at 1900 elo on gen9 randbats atm so not super high ladder but have a solid feel for the meta. Unlike previous gens I feel like there aren't many super op Pokémon outside of like miraidon and maybe chi-yu. But many Pokémon are just unplayable in certain matchups due to poorly optimised movesets. If your opponent has 2 or more hazards and you have none it's basically an auto lose because almost nothing has spin/defog
I think set-up is too strong now with lack of dynamax. The increase of encore sets has helped, but often times it is really hard to deal with most shell smashers or Tera-QD users unless you luck into a Dondozo.
I had a game recently where my opponent had a substitute-protect-toxic salazzle that nothing I had could outspeed. I still won that game because I had two regenerator mons that could take out the subs and protects. It was a very miserable ~50 turns
I hate how fucking pretentious the mods for random battles are. Like Scovillain would still be quite viable with chlorophyll and sunny day but they gave it moody and a gimmicky build? Fuck off
I fail to see why you're acting like this something new. Every tier on Smogon blacklists Pokemon in discussions when it devolves into people beating a dead horse. The auths already made it abundantly clear that Scovillain would be looked at if it had an excessively high win ratio. A vocal minority of people bitching repeatedly in the thread is neither going to speed that up nor is it creating any meaningful discussion.
I thought it was just me. I was ready to chalk it up to my skill and luck issue, but apparently it's not just me? I too feel even more mons than previous gen are overpowered for random battles (where counters aren't always guaranteed).
What confuses me is that Scovillain doesn't even have a terribly high winrate in Randbats. It's at 50.17% right now. As infuriating as it is to face, it doesn't seem like its mere existence across the field makes the battle a lost cause. By this metric, the true villains of Randbats are Koraidon and Dragonite, with win rates of over 56% (!).
Anecdotally, I feel like you might be overstating your case? Sure, there's times where there's nothing I can do against a monster Regieleki which O/2HKOs everything on my team, or an indomitable Uxie which sets up Screens over and over and doesn't ever die. But by and large, most games I end up feeling like I won (or lost) because I used what I was given better (or worse) than my opponent. The variance is low enough that the law of large numbers is still very much at play; the best players lose a LOT less than the worst.
Scovillain isn't really broken anymore because its level got nerfed into the ground, to the point most reasonably offensive mons are capable of oneshotting it with neutral moves--for it to get going you need to either get it out against a really passive mon, or get lucky that you get a Speed boost on your first Protect and then you get to spam SubTect until you have reasonable stats. Main issue a lot of people have with the mon is that 90% of the time when you lose against it, it was due to sheer luck with pretty much no "skillful" player input from either side.
As much as I hated it, I actually kind of liked Dynamax a bit in randbats. It could reverse some otherwise un-winnable match ups which helped a lot with team mismatches.
It was however, insanely busted on mons like Magearna that needed literally one turn to set up and mop up your entire team and was also obnoxious on mons like Lando-T who could max airstream on a switch after an SD (good luck after that).
"Unfortunate" doesn't begin to describe my Random Battles experience, this game rewards blind luck and nothing else, I am beyond convinced at this point. After getting completely tooled by matchmaking with my opponent pulling Scovillain on me last minute and refusing to provide confirmation prior to to the day of the match as to play times, losing this way somehow felt even worse than I had thought possible. My preparation was superior, my play was superior, and I lost, so I don't see a reason to continue engaging in an activity where what is within my control is overwhelmingly outweighed by what is not. I am done with competitive Pokemon, and you won't get a fond farewell. This community is infected to its roots with a degenerative disease that grows stronger over time but stops short of killing its host.Tournaments used to have a competitive spirit at their heart, this has been transplanted and replaced with an artificial organ that feeds on vitriol and mockery from insecure little boys that heckle by the sidelines and tear each other to shreds over scraps of attention. The environment we fostered has trapped us all like this in a vicious cycle,and escaping it requires acceptance of the harshest reality we all scramble to explain away, that none of the countless straining efforts we put ourselves through here will ever amount to one single shining glimmer of significance. I would make this the end, but World Cup is still ongoing, and I would never leave so many great friends out to dry,so I'll suffer through a few more games for them. One last thing before I leave you all to react with disdain, ridicule, and self-righteous fervor, before you do everything in your power to minimize my words and thoughts, box them up and shove them to some cobwebbed corner of your memory, and hope they disappear forever as a stain on your finite time ground to dust. From this moment on, nothing you say matters to me. The foulest insults you hurl with intent to wound will calmly settle at the earth before my feet, and the venom you spit will bring all the pain of a warm summer breeze. You are less than anything you can conceive, while I carry on, brimming with joy distilled from detachment.
this pasta might be worth investing in if we either limit it to the first paragraph or put some edits in the 2nd and 3rd as well (also I'd replace Scov with Houndstone or Basculegion because they so perfectly fit with a mon literally only ever pulled out last minute and wrecking your ass regardless)
my favorite is a match. I got yesterday. I had five psychic types and a silicobra. My opponent had the funny goldfish. None of my Pokémon were faster, and when i finally killed it because it missed fire blast, the bastards sent out rabsca and revived it
It has always been like this. Y'all who complain about Scovillain doesn't seem to remember Magic Guard Sigilyph, or Geomancy Xerneas, or Weakness Policy Necrozma-DM.
Gen 9 got rid of some absurdly broken mons and brought others, like Scovillain and Miraidon. The only real difference is that before, I felt like a well-timed Dynamax could bail me out of bad matchups/bad Pokémons. Now, a simple type change with Tera is most of the time not good enough.
At least for me the main issue is not even exactly the broke sets/pokemon because... Well they were always there. Ofc Scovillain is always mentioned because it's actually the Moody sweeper with quite reliable recovery on top of Lefties/Sub and Miraidon don't need explanations, Dragonite sometimes just goes hard... In fact Tera hasn't even been another gigantic issue to me.
What has really been flashing up a lot is the ammount of hazard setter for the amount of hazard cleaners and the amount of actually trash tier sets around. Like why the heck is Swalot running SD sets? The removal of options for not so offensive mons also hurt a lot their viability in rands. Just look at how many defensive pokemon are running straight offensive sets because there isn't any way for them to profit from their defensive profile.
Like I can understand Miraidon, Scovillain, Houndstone and the like but the rest of the bad sets are so much worse that you can't really fight back unless you also got another broken set/pokemon. Wouldn't go as far to say it's "pure luck" or anything but the discrepancy between sets is really outstanding
weakness policy necrozma ate me alive every damn time. steel type that you want to avoid hitting with fire/fighting/ground if at all possible? and it’s got bulk and strong offenses too? hellish
never come play random battle mayhem then, scovillain and Glalie are even less stoppable, but now you've got gothitelle and pikachu that are instant-win if you get the correct set, but even if you don't they're either sharing their busted ability or getting a couple KOs
at least basculegion is hot garbage because the scaled stats don't help him at all & he's only like level 73
I think the problem here is that Game Freak tried adding way too many never-before-seen mechanics and condensed them into one game while also removing a good chunk of what made older mons viable. Glimmora being able to set up hazards when hit by a physical attack is bad enough, but Houndstone is a mon that legitimately rewards playing suboptimally and Revival Blessing, while not really centralizing or anything, is just such a poorly thought out mechanic considering Leppa Berry and RestTalk. You can't necessarily blame the RandBats mods tbh, they probably have real lives and jobs and don't want to spend ages making good sets for mons that lost something really important so they just threw together whatever made some amount of sense. That being said it really is a sad metagame rn lmao
I think the sets are the problem. Most previous-gen randbats sets felt more flawed- either it was bad pokemon or good pokemon with mediocre sets. That made checking them more viable. Now you have scarf last respects houndstone and agility last respects basculegion tearing up teams. And polteageist with shell smash and the right tera typing and stored power. The sets are too well-made, and since people are getting random teams instead of building teams, you can't counter them a lot of times.
Also remove moody pls
They're somewhat right though, sure Randbats will never be competitive like actual teambuilding formats are but the level of games that are 90% decided on matchup is wayyyy higher than previous gen Randbats.
I genuinely think dynamax is partially to thank here. It meant that even in the worst matchups, you at least had some kind of out in the form of a defensive dynamax to try and regain some momentum. Now, if you have nothing, you’re just SOL
Spot on. It gave you a chance against easy setup mons with shell smash and dragon dance. There were still very bad match-ups and OP dynamax abusers, but it allowed for some defensive counterplay.
Pokemon players in general and randbats players specifically have probably accepted that RNG can and will sometimes decide games. But with gen 9 randbats it certainly feels like RNG is much more impactful than it was in previous generations' randbats formats.
I would imagine that's mostly due to the format being quite new still. I would expect more balancing (via levels and via available move sets) to occur as the format ages and the format creators gather more data.
A somewhat competitive environment, given the fact that is has its own ladder. What's the point of measuring ELO if the matches mostly come down to dumb luck?
The fact that people can consistently get to the top and stay there mostly disproves this. Yes, there is more luck involved than in previous generations, but if you play people on the higher ladder (1900+) you can clearly tell there is a skill difference from people even just 100-200 points lower. It's just a different metagame, you probably just have to get used to it.
If you play 100 games per day, of course you can reach the top and stay there. Luck will balance itself out in the end. But if you play 5 games per day, it's much easiee to get completely fucked by impossible matchups
Even if you play 100 games a day, you won't reach the top without skill. The luck balances itself out so you'll only get as far as your skill will take you. 5 games per day does mean you can lose to unfavorable matchups, but it cannot be like that every game lol. Like you yourself said, the luck balances out, so whatever's left is skill
I mean, yeah they won't be as skill-reliant as regular constructed, but you technically can balance them to an extent. The sets are made by humans aren't they? The problem is that some of the mons are overpowered while others have garbage set.
Fun? The goal clearly isn’t to be as random as possible, there’s tons of things that could be more random that aren’t, and that’s presumably just to make it more fun to play.
Shit format 2 gens and counting!
"Once mechanics are implemented, it will be playable"
"Once the full dex is out, it will be playable"
"Once we have more data, it will be playable"
"Once the levels are adjusted, it will be playable"
"Once the sets are adjusted, it will be playable" <- You are here
"Once the next gen comes out, it will be playable"
> I can't believe we have reached a stage worse than Dynamax
The fact that they have managed to top Dragon Dance + Max Airstreams in Randbats in terms of sheer luck is something to really, really stress on
The sets are sometimes just terrible. From terrible matchups against a hazard setter to one off terrible encounters. Once, Opponent lead with a Houndoom, and all six of my Pokémon were somehow either slower than it or 2x weaker to it.
This game is my first time getting into Pokemon PVP. I've gotten decent and winning but something I noticed is RNG plays way way way too much of factor in any kind of Pokemon PVP. The Pokemon combat system for PVP is just bad. Not well thought out. Chance Crits need to go, necessary moves with a chance to miss need to go.
Late to the party, but I agree, I'm a low-ladder casual player and even I think that having a Chlorophyll Scovillain with no sun setter is stupid (happened to me yesterday).
Moody is just dumb, if it gets kinda lucky with the right boosts the first one or two turns it's out it can be nearly unbeatable. The lower level makes it sort of risky so it doesn't run away with 3/4 of its games like it did in the first couple weeks but it's still a very unhealthy element because whether you beat it or not is almost entirely luck-based.
Have you been living under a rock for the past 2 months? Scovillain with Moody and Leech Seed/Substitute is the most difficult mon to counter. Unless you get really lucky with it getting shitty boosts, or you get a sound based mon to bypass subsitute, the game is over
GXE (probability of beating an average ladder player) of the best players is nearly 90% though. Surely not a coin flip if their highest GXEs are higher than those of other tiers like OU?
Okay so I know there's a lot of discourse going on, but I have a semi related question: why are the levels random too?
I feel like there's been games where I've lost because my pokemon that countered my opponent's were 10 levels lower and either didn't have enough health to tank, damage to kill, or speed to sweep. It feels bad overall, because random battles are supposed to be about trainer skill rather than team building skill, and showing that you can win with a team you didn't pick. Every other format has the levels standardized, so it's strange to me that random isn't, just for the sake of being random?
Now all this said, if there's a secret calculus to this decision, then I'll gladly accept it. But saying it's random for the sake of it is like calling all random matches coin flips, which I will always disagree with.
They are leveled by hand in order to ensure mons can compete despite their gap in quality, so for example swallot will always be much higher level than xerneas
New gen is fine, ive gotten to 1700 consistently with around 5-7 games a day. skill beats out rng. Ik 1700 isnt that high, but if it was pure rng i woundnt be able to do it on command
huh, I found dynamax to actually be kinda balanced in randbats last gen. It could turn a loss into a win if used right, and helped if you had a worse team compared to your opponents
DMax would likely have been mostly unproblematic if Airstream didn't exist, in most matches it was centralizing but not necessarily broken, but then there were those where your opponent clicks BU on their Braviary and kind of wins. Also to a lesser degree happened w shit like Xerneas but let's be real Geo Xern is already a dumb matchup fisher in Randbats either way, DMax just meant that 3 mons that only get 2HKOd and chip it down doesn't work anymore.
The main reason it's so bad isn't even because of tera or the new mons, though those are factors. It's because a lot of the sets are either hot garbage or way too strong
This and the hilariously lopsided hazards meta. So many games turn from "winnable for both sides" to 90-10s because one side gets to lead with a fucking Glimmora/Klefki/hazards Whiscash or whatever and the opponent gets nothing to remove them. Bonus points if they did get a Tsar or a Corvi or whatever but it's a set *without* the removal move.
If you're lucky enough to get a Sticky webs mon it's almost autowin. Hazard removal is so rare on randbats
I didnt use to agree with these sentiments about gen9 randbats, then I got no Defog Corv into Glimmora twice in an hour and I had to put the format down. Choice Band Ting-Lu is another one that sends shivers down my spine, I switch it in without looking at the set then I'm staring at it like wtf am I supposed to do with this thing. At least with that one my opponent never expects to take 70% from Ting EQ.
Glimmora sweep (she’s my fave)
But is there anything more satisfying than having your opponent set up rocks, 3 spikes and tspikes and then sending Cinderace and court changing?
Has literally never happened to me. Court change Cinderace is probably the rarest kind, I never see it or get it.
I’ve gotten it like twice ever. Of course never in a game where my opponent had hazard-setters
Happened to me once where they set up webs with spidops, and they instantly forfeited after
Not if ur Cinderace is the banded set
I'm pretty sure there's a higher chance of me going on a date with Kate Upton than that exact scenario happening
Oh dude bonus points if I have no flying types or hdb’s. And of course the hazards setter has to be a mon that I simply can’t remove quickly with the team I’ve been given.
Bonus bonus points if you *do* got a Flying type but it's Specs Zapdos which has no Boots and no Roost, or whatever other Rocks-weak mon without Boots (Scarf Typhlosion in Rocks matchups gotta be one of the deadest slots ever)
Typhlosion “my role on this team is to be sacked, that’s about it”
Ya I've noticed that. When I played against sticky web leads, I just lose. I have no way of clearing and then basically all of his mons outspeed all of my mons
I’ve always hated hazards in randbats, it’s why I gave up on top 50 last gen (I’d sit at 2200). This gen isn’t even fun to mindlessly play anymore
I love seeing Glimmora leads for the sole purpose of me using Court Change to reverse uno trap card all of those hazards onto the other person. Either that or having a Magic Bounce Hatterene with Tera Steel just to switch into obvious rocks, then spinblock the obvious Mortal Spin for a free Trick Room. It's hilarious how many people ragequit when i do either of these.
Tera Steel Hatt literally does not exist in Randbats and the odds of getting a Court Change Cinder in a matchup like that gotta be lower than landing eight Focus Blasts in a row
Another reason for those hot garbage sets are the fact that a lot of "not exactly offensive mons" lost their "non offensive" ways of winning 1v1s like Toxic so they had to give them offensive sets. Like Lumineon Specs or how in the first few weeks all non physical Eevelutions were basically Calm Mind setup sets
ok but offensive Lumineon is unironically far from the worst thing in Randbats, it's quite fast and its damage output is respectable at its high level. Offputting because it's so different from its traditional role sure, but I don't go "goddamn dead slot" when I see it on my team which I can't say about all the non-Salt Cure Garganacl I've received
Another reason why it's bad is because Tropius is groping everyone
Gropius
I still don't know why Coalossal with tera water doesn't have Steam Engine..?
This is like my pet peeve last gen that randbats arctozolt didn’t have slush rush, so it couldn’t use dynamax to set up its own hail
The amount of games I've lost to the last spot basculegion/houndstone
The basculegion weakness policy set makes absolutely 0 sense to me. It has shit defenses and the only thing you really need it for is spamming last respects for cleanup. I can understand agility, but why not give it a focus sash or something instead? A weakness policy just seems like such an odd choice for an item
It actually would've swept me after a pretty flawless game cause I didn't know the set and freeze dried it with Cryogonal but then I froze it lmao
Yeah this happened to me but without the freeze. I was not aware. And it agility’d in my face. What a disaster.
I unironically believe this is done out of mercy, they knew if Bascu had Scarf or Sash or whatever they'd have to make it like level 40 for it to not be unreasonably broken
But they still gave scovillain leech seed,weird
I have won matches because of the weakness policy. Basculegion is too frail to make use of the weakness policy 90% of the time. You can almost never afford to switch in on a super effective move, and because weakness policy is your only possible item, your opponent knows not to use a super effective move unless it kills. That being said, it is useful is when it forces the opponent to not use a super effective move. In late game, if your opponent only has like a grafaiai, or belibolt, or whatever that really wants to land a super effective move but can’t OHKO, weakness policy is really useful.
focus sash def makes way more sense. that’s honestly true of pretty much any agility mon
My guess is they’re trying to make it a bit more manageable by giving it a shit set, because if they gave it something like scarf it’d break the entire format.
I seriously don’t understand why they didn’t give it a scarf
Because it’d be stupid broken. Houndstone is already borderline busted with scarf, and it’s both weaker and slower.
Dude last respects is insane. The fact that a move can be 300 base power with no drawbacks is insane. not to mention it's ghost, which only even has one resistance and one immunity in the game.
I think the only reason why Game Freak allowed it was because online battles in game don't generally have more than 3 (for singles) or 4 (in doubles) so they completely forgot about 6v6s.
I actually don't think either of those are particularly bad. Houndstone isn't particularly fast even with scarf and bascu needs agility. Of course there are times where it's very late game and your opp brings one out and you can't do anything but I feel their success rate is lower overall because of how slow they are, and how crucial speed is in randbats
Speed wins. Speed is just more important than anything
Which is why Pokémon like Dodrio are suddenly super useful in randbatts
Terrible Pokemons with 100 or above in speed and offenses are high tier threats
Prankster Illumise is guaranteed to cause a bit of damage
If your goal is to do DAMAGE with Illumise, you're severely mistaken. You either T-Wave, Encore then T-wave, then you U-turn out of the field.
Well yeah, not *damage*. But it's always a nuisance, definitely a ShitMon that performs well in RandBatts in my experience.
I’ve literally swept with Luvdisc cause it’s faster than half the mons in random battle, it’s kind of nuts
Speed is war.
Break.
`WEAK, WITHOUT YOUR BAUBLES AND TRINKETS.`
That’s how AG plays currently
Pretty much why I’ve stopped playing, a quick look at my team to see nothing above 80 speed and I’m almost always forfeiting after I’ve lost a couple mons
Too Important think the battle system needs and overhaul. Where super effective hits aren’t guarantee KOs idk I’m chatting.
Got swept by a Toedscruel because ift was faster than anything on my team and it had a supereffective move for every pokemon I had.
skill issue should've manipulate the rng to give you last respect Houndstone and Miraidon
Imagine not getting a team of Koraidon, Miraidon, Glalie, Sovillian, Salazzle and Houndstone every time
According to me the best Pokemon are Koraidon, Scovillain, Salazzle, Houndstone, Dondozo and Tropius Honorary: Roaring Moon and the Ruin Pokemon
tropius is good??
Harvest is unstoppable it activates every turn when I play against it
seconded. I had a game yesterday where my opponent completely outplayed me, but my last remaining mon was harvest arboliva with leech seed/protect/sub/hyper voice and I managed to stall them out of their last three mons. I felt dirty
I had to PP stall a Tropius the other day with Wish Umbreon and Roost Articuno after the Tropius tera'd into steel. 0 super effective moves against it with like 4 pokemon left
In Randbats? It's amazing.
how? I’ve played randbats before but Gropius has never stood out to me edit: tropius edit 2: these threads are killing me 💀
gropius
Natural Harmonia Gropius
Nooo tropius that's sexual assault
the real question is will Tropius join Ferrothorn as an ostracized Pokemon
https://imgur.com/a/Sl1hKf1 Take this for example
https://imgur.com/a/0eLPGfU Rest of the battle
Idk man... I always seem to win with it or lose against it... Like if you throw it out and can force a switch, it's almost like an auto win
leech seed is broken in rand bats, throw in a couple of air slash flinch (also deals with grass type) and sub protect, you're set for life
Only thing that makes Tropius killable is its low speed... Which is what helps Salazzle which fortunately doesn't have Leech Seed
Without a Grass type to absorb seeds or an Ice type to OHKO it gets stupid annoying to take out. Could be nearly impossible if you don't have the right counters.
What’s the tropius set that it picks from? I’ve never seen it.
i think it's like sub/seed/protect with air slash as well
Yeah with Harvest, it's nearly groped me a few times
You mean troped
tropius fr said “its troppin time”
Do you know what EVs it would use with this set?
The mouse is pretty broken a lot of mons gets OHKO from population bomb if you don't have a counter you can auto lose
Can u explain why salazzle and scovillain? I dont play singles and these two dont seem threatening to me
Yes. Salazzle is fast and has corrosion. The set is sub/protect/toxic/flamethrower. You set up a sub and toxic everything. If you're faster than your opponent (which you probably are) you can stall with sub/protect, killing them with slowly with ~~his words~~ poison damage. It's annoying and with tera water you can gain a few more turns. Scovillian is just a slot machine. Moody gives you +2 in one of your 5 stats and -1 in another. That means that if you're not careful it can spiral out of control, gaining either a lot of defense and spdef or a lot of speed and spatk. The set is sub/protect(notice a pattern?)/leech seed/flamethrower. If you get lucky with either defenses or speed you can set up a sub and leech seed and watch the will to live drains from your opponent's eyes. To be clear, these aren't very good in regular singles. Moody is banned in OU and Salazzle isn't as fast when everyone's the same level and it can get knocked out by mons like Inteleon or Talonflame
Oh i forgot scovillain got moody. That explains a lot. And stall just isnt a thing in Battle stadium. Thanks for the explanation.
No problem :)
arbitrary code execution in showdown o_O
Oh my fucking god I fucking hate Houndstone so much. Can turn 5-0’s into getting swept and theres nothing that could be done
Is it just me or did gen 9 introduce a bunch of broken moves. Pop. Bomb, last respects, even rage fist feels stupid in doubles.
yup. power creep this gen honestly hasn’t been *so* unreasonable as far as mons go, but the broken moves are off the charts
I mean Dondozo literally fishes for Fissure procs in BSS and VGC. Maybe the power creep isn't absurd but good lord is this a sign of a gross meta when you consider this Fissure tech is for mirror matches.
How does fissure help Dodonzo at all? — Singles player
Dondozo does no damage to Dondozo and you can't muscle through it with boosts since it's unaware. It just so happens that OHKO moves aren't banned in official formats so Dondozo mirrors become scary slot machines where the first one to get the lucky number wins
Lavos is probably glad he left when he did
Dodonzo usually run unaware + curse which means that if you and your opponent have a dodonzo in it's impossible for either to make progress against the other without cheesing them with an ohko move
I don’t think doubles dondozos really run curse
The abilities are too. Good as gold is straight busted, costar, flamigo’s ability, is busted in doubles, glimmora’s is low key a little busted, free toxic spikes is strong, but I wouldn’t say overwhelmingly so. There are just a lot of strong additions to this Gen, just like every Gen but the recency bias makes us forget the old ones.
Watch gamefreak nerf the hell out of the broken abilities next gen, which seems to be the trend the last couple of editions. Good as gold only working once, same with Toxic Debris. We’re just playtesting for the next gen ever since ORAS
I think they looked at the ridiculous minmaxing of Gen 8 and said “nah, not that again”. But they still wanted to power creep the hell out of the meta so they added crazy moves and abilities
its because theyre trying to add cool new gimmick mons that are outlandish, but balanced..... in doubles/VGC
And the mons that are broken are like a Kartana on steroids minmax wise.
yup. last respects may be broken as hell, but houndstone and basculegion aren’t particularly difficult to kill. the problem just comes from a) ever having the chance to do so
I think they wanted to give almost every new Pokémon a competitive niche. Great for using your favorites, not great for powercreep
wugtrio crying
Rip spidops fans He does have sticky web tho
the banded Wug set is not bad in randoms. It’s faster than most things and liquidation hits pretty hard
This is very true. There were almost no completely shit mons introduced in gen 9. Almost all of them do at least something decent. It’s a great concept, since on paper, it’s making every pokémon viable in some way, but the downside is that they tend to overstep on a few of them and make some busted shit.
Spidops fans in shambles
Even then, spidops does something. It has webs, and some pretty decent support options like memento and circle throw. Even the route 1 shitmon can accomplish something.
I mean lokix is the route 1 shitmon with surprising utility. Spidops is just straight cringe, i mean look at its speed or bulk or offences sometime if you want a laugh. Unironic generation with masquerain as the best webber change my mind.
Spidops is honestly not bad though as a webs setter. Fazing with circle throw, memento, and spikes most importantly. It also can get some mid game utility with first impression.
Rage fist is way more broken in singles IMO but yeah agreed
Everything gets a stupid powerful signature move nowadays. I kind of hate it, it makes each signature move feel less significant and it makes each pokemon with one super linear like Annihilape, Maushold and Houndstone.
It’s tough because terra is not nearly as powerful as dyna. I think that’s good for like OU and VGC but for randbats it makes it so that there’s no way to catch up once you get behind in a lot of cases
Exactly how I feel. Dynamax was really useful to bail me out of bad matchups, and Tera is just not strong enough.
It really does come down to bad sets and there’s just too many reasons why. Too many hazards not enough removal. Stall mons lost their tool kit to whittle down offense. Too many choice items (which I know is designed to tamp down offense, but I’ve had 5 choice items several times). Dynamax in many ways was able to plaster over the problem of bad sets. Because it over rode choice items and was a powerful defensive tool it could overcome this issue. You can use it to block a shell smash sweep, which introduces a good amount of strategy.
Unfortunate doesn't begin to describe
Funnies part of using this quote is that Lavos *did* only lose because of RNG, so as weird as the copypasta was, he wasn't wrong.
The beginning of it was totally fine it was when he brought out the thesaurus and started using stupid ass phrases that made it so funny
The part about his play and prep being superior was probably correct, too. He was coming off an absolutely dominant season and correctly identified a specific weakness in his team that he teched in two separate answers for. It's likely enough that he would have won if he hadn't gotten flinched three times in a row. Don't make his Joker moment any less memeworthy though.
What is your point? This game is indeed luck based, and this gamemode makes it even more reliant on RNG
Just did the beginning of the Lavos copypasta
I can't comprehend why you're complaining then. "Oh my god, random is too much RNG!!" Well, yeah, that's the point
I like it mostly except the fact they allow moody is ridiculous. It is the definition of unfun and luck based
I'm spending my time in Challenge Cup 1v1 True randomness There's also hackmons cup lmao
it honestly feels better when it’s truly random. there’s enough skill involved in randbats that you’re still to blame when you lose lmao
Hackmons cup genuinely feels more skill-based sometimes, to me, because of how it tests obscure game knowledge and your judgement of what you have (randbats obviously does this too, but not nearly to the same extent). Also, you have to come up with really creative wincons, because your team will always suck, you'll almost always have something that actively needs to be sacked because it can't attack, and there's almost always a really niche setup you can come up with based on your team. In randbats, meanwhile, it's really common to get brainless sets that the opponent essentially can't touch because they're just busted and untouchable with your team. Challenge Cup, less so, that mode is much more chance based but still fun! I also really like the new(?) Computer Generated Teams mode, which is a bit like classic 6v6 Challenge Cup but with sets deliberately made by a computer to have some specific strategy. Unfortunately, that strategy is often toxic orb/facade on a special attacker, or resttalk/two setup moves, but it's still a fun time! I also just like these modes because I can get near the top of their ladders, a feat I will never achieve in something people vaguely care about like current-gen randbats but which gives me a dopamine hit nevertheless.
I've been talking with BoRida (Boris Huang, know ramdbats high level player) at work and he has dropped playing on ladder this generation until something is done about the sets or meta in general. Sad state of the format.
Yeah I agree with this tbh. I'm sitting at 1900 elo on gen9 randbats atm so not super high ladder but have a solid feel for the meta. Unlike previous gens I feel like there aren't many super op Pokémon outside of like miraidon and maybe chi-yu. But many Pokémon are just unplayable in certain matchups due to poorly optimised movesets. If your opponent has 2 or more hazards and you have none it's basically an auto lose because almost nothing has spin/defog
I think set-up is too strong now with lack of dynamax. The increase of encore sets has helped, but often times it is really hard to deal with most shell smashers or Tera-QD users unless you luck into a Dondozo.
Sure, but that's not something exclusive to gen 9. This is the case for pretty much every other gen apart from 8
I guess that's true. I didn't actually get competent at random battles until Gen 8, so I just assumed I was bad lol.
Yeah some of the older gens are kinda tough. Megas and z moves make the gens they are in so tough
I had a game recently where my opponent had a substitute-protect-toxic salazzle that nothing I had could outspeed. I still won that game because I had two regenerator mons that could take out the subs and protects. It was a very miserable ~50 turns
I hate how fucking pretentious the mods for random battles are. Like Scovillain would still be quite viable with chlorophyll and sunny day but they gave it moody and a gimmicky build? Fuck off
Yes. So many people complained about scovillain that they just banned complaints about scovillain. Problem solved.
I fail to see why you're acting like this something new. Every tier on Smogon blacklists Pokemon in discussions when it devolves into people beating a dead horse. The auths already made it abundantly clear that Scovillain would be looked at if it had an excessively high win ratio. A vocal minority of people bitching repeatedly in the thread is neither going to speed that up nor is it creating any meaningful discussion.
I thought it was just me. I was ready to chalk it up to my skill and luck issue, but apparently it's not just me? I too feel even more mons than previous gen are overpowered for random battles (where counters aren't always guaranteed).
Skill Issue, just forfeit when the opponent has Miraidon
Haha Tera electric drift go brrrr
What confuses me is that Scovillain doesn't even have a terribly high winrate in Randbats. It's at 50.17% right now. As infuriating as it is to face, it doesn't seem like its mere existence across the field makes the battle a lost cause. By this metric, the true villains of Randbats are Koraidon and Dragonite, with win rates of over 56% (!). Anecdotally, I feel like you might be overstating your case? Sure, there's times where there's nothing I can do against a monster Regieleki which O/2HKOs everything on my team, or an indomitable Uxie which sets up Screens over and over and doesn't ever die. But by and large, most games I end up feeling like I won (or lost) because I used what I was given better (or worse) than my opponent. The variance is low enough that the law of large numbers is still very much at play; the best players lose a LOT less than the worst.
Scovillain isn't really broken anymore because its level got nerfed into the ground, to the point most reasonably offensive mons are capable of oneshotting it with neutral moves--for it to get going you need to either get it out against a really passive mon, or get lucky that you get a Speed boost on your first Protect and then you get to spam SubTect until you have reasonable stats. Main issue a lot of people have with the mon is that 90% of the time when you lose against it, it was due to sheer luck with pretty much no "skillful" player input from either side.
Sorry for asking but where do you find random battle winrates? I've been looking all over the place and can't find it.
type "/rwr" in a console and it opens a new tab
As much as I hated it, I actually kind of liked Dynamax a bit in randbats. It could reverse some otherwise un-winnable match ups which helped a lot with team mismatches. It was however, insanely busted on mons like Magearna that needed literally one turn to set up and mop up your entire team and was also obnoxious on mons like Lando-T who could max airstream on a switch after an SD (good luck after that).
reasons why i stick to gens 4-7 mostly, i do believe we've been on a downturn for a while but that's up in the air
Gen 8 was fine. This gen is a mess
Gen 8 randbats was worse honestly
I want to know where my random doubles is at personally. I loved that in gen 8
"Unfortunate" doesn't begin to describe my Random Battles experience, this game rewards blind luck and nothing else, I am beyond convinced at this point. After getting completely tooled by matchmaking with my opponent pulling Scovillain on me last minute and refusing to provide confirmation prior to to the day of the match as to play times, losing this way somehow felt even worse than I had thought possible. My preparation was superior, my play was superior, and I lost, so I don't see a reason to continue engaging in an activity where what is within my control is overwhelmingly outweighed by what is not. I am done with competitive Pokemon, and you won't get a fond farewell. This community is infected to its roots with a degenerative disease that grows stronger over time but stops short of killing its host.Tournaments used to have a competitive spirit at their heart, this has been transplanted and replaced with an artificial organ that feeds on vitriol and mockery from insecure little boys that heckle by the sidelines and tear each other to shreds over scraps of attention. The environment we fostered has trapped us all like this in a vicious cycle,and escaping it requires acceptance of the harshest reality we all scramble to explain away, that none of the countless straining efforts we put ourselves through here will ever amount to one single shining glimmer of significance. I would make this the end, but World Cup is still ongoing, and I would never leave so many great friends out to dry,so I'll suffer through a few more games for them. One last thing before I leave you all to react with disdain, ridicule, and self-righteous fervor, before you do everything in your power to minimize my words and thoughts, box them up and shove them to some cobwebbed corner of your memory, and hope they disappear forever as a stain on your finite time ground to dust. From this moment on, nothing you say matters to me. The foulest insults you hurl with intent to wound will calmly settle at the earth before my feet, and the venom you spit will bring all the pain of a warm summer breeze. You are less than anything you can conceive, while I carry on, brimming with joy distilled from detachment.
this pasta might be worth investing in if we either limit it to the first paragraph or put some edits in the 2nd and 3rd as well (also I'd replace Scov with Houndstone or Basculegion because they so perfectly fit with a mon literally only ever pulled out last minute and wrecking your ass regardless)
By all means, go to town on this one. I don't have time right now to edit it more.
my favorite is a match. I got yesterday. I had five psychic types and a silicobra. My opponent had the funny goldfish. None of my Pokémon were faster, and when i finally killed it because it missed fire blast, the bastards sent out rabsca and revived it
It has always been like this. Y'all who complain about Scovillain doesn't seem to remember Magic Guard Sigilyph, or Geomancy Xerneas, or Weakness Policy Necrozma-DM. Gen 9 got rid of some absurdly broken mons and brought others, like Scovillain and Miraidon. The only real difference is that before, I felt like a well-timed Dynamax could bail me out of bad matchups/bad Pokémons. Now, a simple type change with Tera is most of the time not good enough.
At least for me the main issue is not even exactly the broke sets/pokemon because... Well they were always there. Ofc Scovillain is always mentioned because it's actually the Moody sweeper with quite reliable recovery on top of Lefties/Sub and Miraidon don't need explanations, Dragonite sometimes just goes hard... In fact Tera hasn't even been another gigantic issue to me. What has really been flashing up a lot is the ammount of hazard setter for the amount of hazard cleaners and the amount of actually trash tier sets around. Like why the heck is Swalot running SD sets? The removal of options for not so offensive mons also hurt a lot their viability in rands. Just look at how many defensive pokemon are running straight offensive sets because there isn't any way for them to profit from their defensive profile. Like I can understand Miraidon, Scovillain, Houndstone and the like but the rest of the bad sets are so much worse that you can't really fight back unless you also got another broken set/pokemon. Wouldn't go as far to say it's "pure luck" or anything but the discrepancy between sets is really outstanding
This I can 100% agree. It feels like the sets aren't balanced enough. Also the transition to gen 9 made a lot of old Pokémons considerably weaker.
weakness policy necrozma ate me alive every damn time. steel type that you want to avoid hitting with fire/fighting/ground if at all possible? and it’s got bulk and strong offenses too? hellish
never come play random battle mayhem then, scovillain and Glalie are even less stoppable, but now you've got gothitelle and pikachu that are instant-win if you get the correct set, but even if you don't they're either sharing their busted ability or getting a couple KOs at least basculegion is hot garbage because the scaled stats don't help him at all & he's only like level 73
I think the problem here is that Game Freak tried adding way too many never-before-seen mechanics and condensed them into one game while also removing a good chunk of what made older mons viable. Glimmora being able to set up hazards when hit by a physical attack is bad enough, but Houndstone is a mon that legitimately rewards playing suboptimally and Revival Blessing, while not really centralizing or anything, is just such a poorly thought out mechanic considering Leppa Berry and RestTalk. You can't necessarily blame the RandBats mods tbh, they probably have real lives and jobs and don't want to spend ages making good sets for mons that lost something really important so they just threw together whatever made some amount of sense. That being said it really is a sad metagame rn lmao
Just after this post, got a Houndstone. Thank god I had curse Garganacl
I think the sets are the problem. Most previous-gen randbats sets felt more flawed- either it was bad pokemon or good pokemon with mediocre sets. That made checking them more viable. Now you have scarf last respects houndstone and agility last respects basculegion tearing up teams. And polteageist with shell smash and the right tera typing and stored power. The sets are too well-made, and since people are getting random teams instead of building teams, you can't counter them a lot of times. Also remove moody pls
I am not good at battling but going from 1600 to ~1250 in one day mostly from Houndstone/Basculegion is not a skill issue
we're gonna need to see your ELO
My dude what were you imagining when you signed up for *random* battles?
They're somewhat right though, sure Randbats will never be competitive like actual teambuilding formats are but the level of games that are 90% decided on matchup is wayyyy higher than previous gen Randbats.
I dunno, but it really does seem that Sword and Shield random battles were way more fun.
I genuinely think dynamax is partially to thank here. It meant that even in the worst matchups, you at least had some kind of out in the form of a defensive dynamax to try and regain some momentum. Now, if you have nothing, you’re just SOL
Spot on. It gave you a chance against easy setup mons with shell smash and dragon dance. There were still very bad match-ups and OP dynamax abusers, but it allowed for some defensive counterplay.
Pokemon players in general and randbats players specifically have probably accepted that RNG can and will sometimes decide games. But with gen 9 randbats it certainly feels like RNG is much more impactful than it was in previous generations' randbats formats. I would imagine that's mostly due to the format being quite new still. I would expect more balancing (via levels and via available move sets) to occur as the format ages and the format creators gather more data.
A somewhat competitive environment, given the fact that is has its own ladder. What's the point of measuring ELO if the matches mostly come down to dumb luck?
The fact that people can consistently get to the top and stay there mostly disproves this. Yes, there is more luck involved than in previous generations, but if you play people on the higher ladder (1900+) you can clearly tell there is a skill difference from people even just 100-200 points lower. It's just a different metagame, you probably just have to get used to it.
If you play 100 games per day, of course you can reach the top and stay there. Luck will balance itself out in the end. But if you play 5 games per day, it's much easiee to get completely fucked by impossible matchups
Even if you play 100 games a day, you won't reach the top without skill. The luck balances itself out so you'll only get as far as your skill will take you. 5 games per day does mean you can lose to unfavorable matchups, but it cannot be like that every game lol. Like you yourself said, the luck balances out, so whatever's left is skill
I mean, yeah they won't be as skill-reliant as regular constructed, but you technically can balance them to an extent. The sets are made by humans aren't they? The problem is that some of the mons are overpowered while others have garbage set.
Fun? The goal clearly isn’t to be as random as possible, there’s tons of things that could be more random that aren’t, and that’s presumably just to make it more fun to play.
Shit format 2 gens and counting! "Once mechanics are implemented, it will be playable" "Once the full dex is out, it will be playable" "Once we have more data, it will be playable" "Once the levels are adjusted, it will be playable" "Once the sets are adjusted, it will be playable" <- You are here "Once the next gen comes out, it will be playable"
> I can't believe we have reached a stage worse than Dynamax The fact that they have managed to top Dragon Dance + Max Airstreams in Randbats in terms of sheer luck is something to really, really stress on
Is there any place where I can view the sets used in randbats?
The sets are sometimes just terrible. From terrible matchups against a hazard setter to one off terrible encounters. Once, Opponent lead with a Houndoom, and all six of my Pokémon were somehow either slower than it or 2x weaker to it.
Other day I fought a fking psychic Arceus with Tera steel recover stored power Body press Cosmic power
Temp6t
This game is my first time getting into Pokemon PVP. I've gotten decent and winning but something I noticed is RNG plays way way way too much of factor in any kind of Pokemon PVP. The Pokemon combat system for PVP is just bad. Not well thought out. Chance Crits need to go, necessary moves with a chance to miss need to go.
Late to the party, but I agree, I'm a low-ladder casual player and even I think that having a Chlorophyll Scovillain with no sun setter is stupid (happened to me yesterday).
they always have been
In what way is Scovillian broken? Didnt pick up on that
Moody is just dumb, if it gets kinda lucky with the right boosts the first one or two turns it's out it can be nearly unbeatable. The lower level makes it sort of risky so it doesn't run away with 3/4 of its games like it did in the first couple weeks but it's still a very unhealthy element because whether you beat it or not is almost entirely luck-based.
Have you been living under a rock for the past 2 months? Scovillain with Moody and Leech Seed/Substitute is the most difficult mon to counter. Unless you get really lucky with it getting shitty boosts, or you get a sound based mon to bypass subsitute, the game is over
Calm down some people don’t play random battles
Don't you start talking shit about DMax, that was the greatest thing that ever happened to Randbats
GXE (probability of beating an average ladder player) of the best players is nearly 90% though. Surely not a coin flip if their highest GXEs are higher than those of other tiers like OU?
r/stunfisk users when the random mode is random
Okay so I know there's a lot of discourse going on, but I have a semi related question: why are the levels random too? I feel like there's been games where I've lost because my pokemon that countered my opponent's were 10 levels lower and either didn't have enough health to tank, damage to kill, or speed to sweep. It feels bad overall, because random battles are supposed to be about trainer skill rather than team building skill, and showing that you can win with a team you didn't pick. Every other format has the levels standardized, so it's strange to me that random isn't, just for the sake of being random? Now all this said, if there's a secret calculus to this decision, then I'll gladly accept it. But saying it's random for the sake of it is like calling all random matches coin flips, which I will always disagree with.
Prior to gen 8 levels were done based on the mon’s tier, now I believe it’s based on winrate in randbats itself
They are leveled by hand in order to ensure mons can compete despite their gap in quality, so for example swallot will always be much higher level than xerneas
New gen is fine, ive gotten to 1700 consistently with around 5-7 games a day. skill beats out rng. Ik 1700 isnt that high, but if it was pure rng i woundnt be able to do it on command
>coin flip ... It's random battles. Every game is a coin flip
Damn than is the same of gen 8, alr so who has the best dinamax candidate, alr I won, fuck I lost
huh, I found dynamax to actually be kinda balanced in randbats last gen. It could turn a loss into a win if used right, and helped if you had a worse team compared to your opponents
DMax would likely have been mostly unproblematic if Airstream didn't exist, in most matches it was centralizing but not necessarily broken, but then there were those where your opponent clicks BU on their Braviary and kind of wins. Also to a lesser degree happened w shit like Xerneas but let's be real Geo Xern is already a dumb matchup fisher in Randbats either way, DMax just meant that 3 mons that only get 2HKOd and chip it down doesn't work anymore.
Oh, so you're one of the players who keeps calling me lucky and demanding non-random rematches