Let’s face it, dragons were ass till around Gen 3.
Then they got buffed and it hasn’t really stopped.
Haven’t had any interest in Pokemon since Pearl and before that the last one I played was Gold which was my favorite. Is competitive multiplayer still ruined by the need to grind EV train/breed?
People just SAV them nowadays… No need to waste the time.
Get an action replay, then you’re good. They’re basically accepted now, from what I hear.
Someone needs to tell Nintendo that the buffs are good enough…plenty of other classes need some love.
my 2 cents on how to rework Ice:
weaknesses: fire, fighting, steel, rock
resistances: water, dragon, flying
effective against: flying, grass, ground, dragon
and maybe a 1.5 def boost in hail (similar to rock’s sp.def in sandstorm)
also, steels on their own are not enough to stop/counter dragons since most of them learn SE moves against them (EQ, Fire Blast, Flamethrower, etc)
I’d still argue for the removal of that Rock weakness. You won’t be countering much of anything with a quarter of your health getting stripped off every time you come out of the pokeball…
Ask Walrein about its walling abilities… oh wait, it can’t wall shit because it has no health to take hits because it loses 25% for coming in, and everyone and their mother knows Close Combat/Stone Edge/Bullet/Drain/Mach Punch, or is throwing out the tactical nukes known as Draco Meteor/Outrage…
Well they were okay in Gen 3. Salamence and Flygon rocked, but they could be handled (unless it was a good healthy mixmence coming in on a bad play, then bye-bye.)
Then came Gen 4 with the refocus on offense>defense, new items, the physical/special attack split, Outrage going up to 120 BP, Draco Meteor to give them an amazing special attack, Stealth Rocks that basically murdered Ice types as a whole, and GARCHOMP. People complain about Gen 5 dragons when in the early DP days every team ran a good lead, a Garchomp, a wall, and 3 Garchomp counters…
Oh, and then he got banned and there was much salt.
I’m still salty about Garchomp and Salamence in Gen 4, lol. I didn’t even run them myself very often, and I never really had a problem preventing them from setting up(I was never fool enough to leave a Sandstorm up for Chomp, and never had problems dealing with Sally), but I’m crazy.
I even went along with reasonings for the banning… When Skymin went(a Poke I bet was designed for dealing with Chomp), and then fools started talking about Scizor being overpowered along with the Salamence ban, that’s the moment I said fuck Smogon for good.
To think it has gotten even more ridiculous since then…
Wern’t the main reasons for banning Garchomp because 90% of people ran it and the Yache set would kill at least two pokes if played correctly?
90% of Smogon’s player base sucks as well… j/k but not really.
Seriously, Chomp was tough to play against, but not this impossible juggernaut, Yache or not. Ice isn’t the only thing you can hit it with. I brought a lot of Chomps down just with Rain-boosted Hydro Pumps and Blizzards. (Yache doesn’t prevent KOs from Blizzard on the standard fourth gen set, BTW) Hell, I used Snatch/Substitute Absol to beat a Garchomp by stealing his Swords Dances once, lol… I Subbed on the first Swords Dance, he does it again and I snatch it, Psycho Cut for about 65%, Sucker Punch for the KO. I think dude quit after that, can’t remember.
A lot of the problem has always been the average Smogon player’s refusal to think outside the box and approach problems from different angles beyond what they expect the “metagame” to play like.
It leads to a very Smashboards-esque method of thinking that their way is the “best” and “only true way” of playing the game.
My issue with Garchomp in the 3rd gen was that he was definitely too centralizing. It had only a handful of real counters, most of the time you had to lose at least one poke just to scout it since there were a bajillion variations and Yache Berry + Sandstream made it a nightmare with Sand Veil.
That said, no dragon pissed me off more than Specsmence in Gen4. Draco Meteor was like a fucking nuke that only Blissey and a select few could take without reaching near death. Even with resistance most Steel types would pretty much be crippled. All reward without any real effort. One of the reasons Stealth Rock became prevalent was because of these flying/dragons, but it came at the price of buttraping most Ice and Fire types as well.
I agree with the centralization argument, WS. I saw that thing on everybody’s team back in the day. Hell, its on everyone’s team now…
Specsmence was a straight up bastard, and Double Dragon teams(teams built around Chomp & Mence) were extremely annoying.
Stealth Rock should have been Stealth Ice instead… Let’s see how badass Garchomp is when its the one getting 50% of its HP sliced off…
Poor Grass types would get raped, however… but hey, Abomasnow is suddenly top tier OU material, lol.
Stealth Rock shouldn’t exist in any form unless they enacted the changes I said earlier where it loses Offensive Typing and goes down to minimum Spikes Damage.
If you think about it, every gen has had one or two centralizing non-uber Pokemon.
RBY had Tarous and Alakazam (and Chansey, forgot that.)
GSC had Snorlax.
RSE had Suicune and Tyranitar.
So Gen 4 was when they took action against it.
Was it because of the power creep being too strong to handle by the other Pokemon? Or was it just cause of the player base?
Or it could be that netbattling was just catching on then.
Hell, they could keep it the same-- just lower the distribution on it to only include Rock, Ground, and other mineral-based Pokemon, like a few Steel and Ice types, and make Rock types able to “absorb” them like Poison types do to Toxic Spikes… at least that way you can see it coming and have some additional options to deal with it…
There is no earthly reason why Pokes like Blissey and fuckin’ Infernape should be able to use that damn move…
Also lol.
Warning: Smogon.
Pffft… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… insert Joker laughing GIF here
My goodness, there is powerful scrubbery at work here…
Smogon never fails in the comedy department, but it did get me thinking about how some of the older gen sets might fare nowadays… Like obviously Snorlax doesn’t run roughshod with the Curselax set(except in UU), but could the Belly Drum set still work? Tauros can’t run Blizzard anymore, but the could the Hyper Beam(Now Giga Impact) set do some work?
It’s gotten me thinking about some ways to rework some of those old school movesets and playstyles into the current meta. I’ll probably fail horribly thanks to the power creep, but you never know until you try, right?
Never saw that site before…kind of want to forget it exist.
Some gamefaqs nonsense on there…
Watching GAF rage over the 2DS has made my day so far.
To be honest I might get one this fall to prepare for the Hoenn remake.