Rache

The changes above have now been implemented, in addition to: -A few completely new builds for a variety species. Among them is a replacement for the Metronome Clefable, I've had my fun. -Trick Room, Gyro Ball, and Metal Burst now also reduce speed IVs to 0 (previously only EVs were reduced). -Pokemon that don't make use of their attack stat have had their attack EVs and IVs reduced to 0. It wasn't done for this update, but something we're also considering for the future is preventing dual screens from appearing on more than one Pokemon. This is a fairly common set on a variety of species here that while decent on one party member, has generated a lot of complaints due to how frequently it's pulled on multiple.

This is being considered mostly due to how item generation works here, with it being a per-build thing rather than based on stats, the presence or quantity of certain moves, etc. Showdown seems to give frail leads Focus Sash most of the time, making Pursuit at least less impactful. If these blacklists make the format worse despite this though, it's not too late to undo. Would appreciate more input if others have strong feelings on the topic.

Aipom and Porygon have been removed from rotation. One because it's awful and the other because it's just a worse version of its evolution, which is already in the format. The other NFEs will remain for now, but if there's enough demand to remove them, it's not off the table. Disabling a build is a one-way street though - once gone, I can't bring them back without an update. --- For the direction things are going in at the moment: Build-related: -A few more mistakes fixed, such as Weather Ball on Ninetales. -Inferior items like Shell Bell have been removed. -Some of the more situational moves and items have been removed or weighted more heavily against. -Choice items have been made significantly less common. Most of the same Pokemon can pull them, but are more likely to pull other items instead. -Entry hazards are a bit less common and ways to remove them are a bit more common. -Most builds with a high chance of having no damaging moves are more likely to have one. Some with one are more likely to have two. -Minor unrelated tweaks to a large number of builds. Format-related: -Pokemon from the lowest tiers (lv83 + lv100) are limited to 2 per team. -No type will appear more than twice on any team. -Identical dual types such as Pidgeot + Fearow will not appear together. -Pokemon with Pursuit, Arena Trap, and Shadow Tag will no longer be selected as leads. -Experimental tier changes will begin to occur monthly based on species winrates (52% to drop 1 level, 48% to gain 1 level). -Winrate data for the format will be reset after builds are imported to ensure that the statistics these level changes are going to be based on are accurate. These changes aren't in place yet though, they require a server update.

To add a bit of context to their performance, both are currently doing better than their evolutions. Golbat is ranked #23 and wins 53.36% of the time. Crobat is ranked #31 and wins 53.06% of the time. Seadra is ranked #70 and wins 51.53% of the time. Kingdra is ranked #86 and wins 51.01% of the time.

They won't be included until they're available in the rest of the game. Human players are a lot more punishing than the AI if you don't know that something can have a particular ability, so it won't feel very fair. -- I'll be disabling NFEs that perform poorly later today. At the moment, this is what I'd like to remove: -Onix -Lickitung -Porygon -Aipom -Yanma -Murkrow (will be re-enabled after hidden abilities) Meaning that these are the ones I'd like to keep: -Pikachu because it's tiered -Golbat because it's tiered -Magneton because it's tiered -Chansey because it's tiered -Porygon2 because it's tiered -Gligar because it's tiered -Piloswine because it's tiered -Dusclops because it's tiered -Rhydon because it's been tiered previously and is performing decently. -Seadra because it's performing decently -Tangela because it's performing decently -Togetic because it's performing decently -Magmar because it's performing decently -Sneasel because it's performing decently -Electabuzz because it's performing very well -Misdreavus because it's performing very well -Roselia because it's performing very well Feedback would be appreciated.

It's against the spirit of the format as it's a fully evolved Pokemon, just like Unown. Limber Ditto should hopefully be less obnoxious after gen 4-5 species are added and it's less common as a result. I'm revising the builds at the moment based on the feedback I've received, both here and elsewhere. The next set of build updates should include more hazard removal and/or fewer hazards, fewer Choice items, fewer low quality items, and some tweaks to individual builds that were poorly received. I'm not sure when these changes will be implemented, but hopefully it ends up being an improvement. For the current state of the format, some Untiered Pokemon have received some level adjustments based on their performance compared to the Pokemon that share their level, they should be a bit more manageable or less bad now.

Because it is so abysmally awful without Imposter, Ditto has been bumped up to lv100. It now has slightly less HP than Sunflora and will likely still have the lowest winrate in the format.

There are currently no plans for the automated tournament system to support randoms.

Hazards are about twice as common as ways to remove them, but I'm not sure that this is a bad thing as it means that when you do have hazard removal, it's likely going to be useful instead of a wasted moveslot. If it's widely considered an issue after more time has passed though, I'll look into either reducing hazard availability/weighting or adding more removal. There are quite a lot of Choice items, it's something a lot of Pokemon can take advantage of. If this is a common complaint over time, I'll reduce the number/weighting of them based on how severe of a problem it ends up being. Like with hazards though, I think it's too early to tell how much tweaking is appropriate. With regards to Eviolite, these are the current NFEs, their winrates, and their placements if in the top 50. It's early enough that this data won't be accurate long-term, but it should give a rough idea of how much of an asset or liability they are. The rules I used when selecting them were "was fully evolved in its debut generation or is named Pikachu" for the sake of including the viable ones like Piloswine and Scyther without it being especially arbitrary. Some NFEs perform well, but if the ones that perform poorly are widely agreed to make the format worse to play after more time passes, I'm not opposed to removing the ones that don't/won't have a niche over their evolutions. Aipom in particular stands out as complete garbage. We started with tier-based levels to keep it simple, but if manual adjustments would make it better, it's something we can potentially look into in the future. Doing this manually would be extremely complicated though given the huge amount of variety in the builds. If we were to seriously pursue this sort of thing, I think we'd probably take the approach of automating it based on species winrate at the end of each season instead, increasing level if winrate is too low and decreasing it if it's too high. In combination with tweaking or removing problematic builds, the format would theoretically balance itself over time. While I'm aware that winrates don't tell the full story of a Pokemon's success, I think it's a bit more relevant in randoms than in standard tiers as you can't build around abusing or facing specific things. I think I'd rather wait and see how things go with the current system before committing to a huge change like that regardless though. Slaking was #2 when I checked the usage for the NFEs above but is now #1 with a 57.02% win rate (Scyther's fell to 56.77%). Slaking seems to be a common complaint, so for now it's been dropped to lv81 (from 83) as the speed change becomes relevant at this level. If this isn't enough, its position in Untiered allows it to go as low as 80. Feedback from matches after the level drop would be appreciated. Somewhere we intentionally deviated from Showdown was with how the builds are constructed - there are far more of them and you're not supposed to be able to memorize or map them out (without an obscene amount of effort, a few have over 1000 sets). While experience can make it a bit easier to guess what you're facing, you're going to guess wrong a lot too. Surprise value and concealing your gimmicks is part of the design here and we'd rather keep it that way, it's also a lot simpler to pick up and play when you're not expected to be issuing commands mid-battle if you want to win often. While the format is derivative of Showdown's, the goal isn't to make a clone, but to use it as a base for something a little different. Dubs-specific builds is something I might look into putting together in the future, but the current builds were many months of work and there are still two generations left to do, so it'll be a while. I don't feel like I'm familiar enough with doubles to build a good meta for it yet either. _________ I've also been made aware that Showdown does a small amount of team rigging, and it sounds pretty good, so we'll be adding this in a future update: -Limit of 2 Pokemon from the lowest tier (lv83). -Limit of 2 Pokemon sharing a type (if you pull Pidgeot and Raticate, you won't get another normal type). -Limit of 1 Pokemon with any specific dual type (you can't pull Pidgeot and Fearow on the same team, but you can pull Pidgeot and Salamence).

This one's already fixed for the next build update, the item was missed when converting builds with hidden abilities to no longer rely on them. This one's intentional, it's a pure offensive set. Poison Heal was chosen instead of Effect Spore to allow it to safely switch into and benefit from Toxic / Toxic Spikes. This build can pull other items too.

This was the result of a broken check, it's been fixed for the next update to correctly reject gems if the user doesn't have a damaging move they can use it with.

To start with, here's a quick summary of how the format works. How the randomization works: How the stats work: How the rewards work: The current meta is experimental, and as such it's going to have problems. It's likely to go through a lot of revisions before it's reasonably balanced, and that's what this thread is for. If you've encountered a build that doesn't make sense, please either report it here or via PM. Examples of what I'm looking for would be moves or items that don't seem to serve a purpose at all on the set you got. Please don't report gimmicky yet cohesive sets for being non-optimal. If you believe that a particular build is overpowered or think you've identified a format-wide balancing issue, this is the place to bring it up and discuss it too. Big changes probably aren't going to be made at this early stage, but once the format's been around for a while, concerns from the players most experienced with it will be taken seriously. If you think we can make the format better in any other way, feel free to make suggestions.

While both are profiting from the mistakes of others, sniping is purely opportunistic and the fault isn't with the buyer at all. It's unreasonable to expect hundreds of players refreshing the GTL not to buy something underpriced as soon as they see it. As mentioned above, posting misleading listings is fishing for people to make mistakes that otherwise wouldn't be happening. The sorts of sales we punish for are the blatantly dishonest ones that aim to trick buyers into paying more than they think they are. Although buyers can choose not to buy, they're trying to snipe the listing and are competing with every other player trying to snipe, so they're encouraged to click yes as quickly as they can after glancing at what looks like a great price, but missing the extra 0. While the buyer isn't without fault here, they've done exactly what the seller was trying to bait them into doing.