Mai vs. Zekrom_B0lt

Gevaisa said:

2vs2 Single
DQ: One week
Damage Cap: 40%
Banned Moves: None
Terrain: ASB Central Stadium

Although designed to be a state-of-the-art battling facility and located at the very heart of ASB Central's battle district, ASB Central Stadium actually sees very little use. Most battlers prefer the infinite variety of the holodrome's simulated arenas to the basic, if impressive, stadium field, and official tournaments tend to feature tours of other regions rather than a homefield brawl. There is one advantage to the stadium, though--its proximity to the holodrome grants it access to a full range of simulation options, allowing trainers to trick out their team to whatever extent they like before battling.

There's nothing much to say about the battlefield: it's a large, rectangular arena covered in astroturf. A circular pool will open in its center if a Pokémon requiring water to move around in is sent out. In this arena, Pokémon can summon absolutely anything they need for their attacks: tidal waves, boulders, and so on are in ready supply.

Click to expand...

Zekrom_B0lt's rental squad with hidden abilities and some items

Goggles the male Hydreigon (Levitate, Safety Goggles)
Frosty the female Squirtle (Rain Dish, Icy Rock)
Graves the male Charmander (Solar Power, Reaper Cloth)
Haruhi the female Pikachu (Lightning Rod, Magnet)
Granola the Metagross (Light Metal, Power Herb)
Marie the female Sceptile (Unburden, Wise Glasses)

1. Luftballon's active squad

Jane the female Taillow (Guts, Snowball)
un bol d'air the female Drifblim (Unburden)
Mienbar the female Mienfoo (Regenerator, Zoom Lens)
Honeybee the female Misdreavus (Levitate, Dusk Stone)
Kirsten the Rotom (Levitate, White Herb)
神樹 (GERTRUD) the female Bellsprout (Chlorophyll, Lucky Egg)
買物 (Cart) the female Hawlucha (Unburden)
飛降・棋 the female Gligar (Sand Veil, Razor Fang)
服毒・藻 the female Skrelp (Adaptability, Wise Glasses)
一酸化炭素中毒・天 the female Amaura (Refrigerate, Lucky Egg)

Zekrom_B0lt sends out first
1. Luftballoon sends out and attacks
Zekrom_B0lt attacks

Re: 1. Luftballoon vs. Zekrom_B0lt

i'll send out Granola the Metagross first

Re: 1. Luftballoon vs. Zekrom_B0lt

WELL OKAY THEN

before we begin, I’ll note that the battle style isn’t set in the battle conditions but, with bluzzy’s permission, we’ll be running this as Switch. just another thing to be aware of :33 don’t overworry for it!

keep in mind that there is no penalty for not knowing the answer, okay, so we’re clear, ask all the questions you want! conceptual understanding is key, clerical errors will be judged lightly, this examination is open-book, open-notes, collaboration permitted, cite your sources!

right.

sooo, metagross, eh? light metal, even. I think I’d like a bit of breathing room to brew up some trickery with more ah, variety, than my usual. honeybee, then, you’re up.

well, to start with, let’s snatch anything we can, shall we? whatever that metagross might choose to do, if we can snatch it, do that. barring that, we’ll start off with telekinesis—even on a switchout, telekinesis’ll be a fine choice. once that’s up, proceed with zap cannon.

Snatch / Telekinesis ~ Snatch / Telekinesis / Zap Cannon ~ Snatch / Telekinesis / Zap Cannon

Re: 1. Luftballoon vs. Zekrom_B0lt

Hone Claws ~ Shadowball ~ Shadowball

Re: 1. Luftballoon vs. Zekrom_B0lt

It was a wonderful day for a battle. The sun was high in the sky, the view of it unobstructed by clouds, and it shone cheerfully down on Sinnoh, which was not where this particular battle was taking place. It was, in fact, a wonderful day for a battle in Sinnoh. In Asber, on the other hand, the sun was barely peeking over the horizon. It wasn't raining, but the clouds were looming over the arena, as if mocking the battlers' choice of days. Nonetheless, both of the battlers, as well as the referee – especially the referee – seemed in good spirits about the upcoming match.

The referee whistled to begin the match. Zekrom_B0lt tapped the button on one of its pokeballs (which was in rather unattractive pastel colors, as rental things are wont to be), and held it out in front of itself. Light flowed hastily out, and coalesced into a rather large, menacing-looking quadrupedal creature who perched lightly on grass floor of the stadium. 1. Luftballoon responded by throwing its pokeball, which hit the ground and released its occupant, then bounced back into its hand. The arrival was a small, floating ghost with a worrying smile, which she aimed eagerly at the Metagross. Granola, unintimidated by the relatively diminutive Pokemon, smirked back, insofar as one can smirk when one's face is not made of dynamic moving parts.




Almost as soon as she entered the field, Honeybee responded to her trainer's ensuing orders by gathering dark energy, and staring eagerly at Granola, ready to respond to even the slightest movement. Granola, oblivious, obliged her by swiping the sides of its claws against its metal (aluminum?) legs, sharpening them on the hard metal. Before that created any visible result, an obscure cloud of energy swept towards it, and then away, bringing with it not so much anything as the concept of a thing, an idea of sharpness, which it deposited with the Misdreavus. Honeybee's smile didn't move an inch. Granola, on the other hand, would have had a towering glare on its face, if it could make facial expressions.

Expressing its rage in the only way available to it, Granola reared up on its hind legs, and between its front ones it gathered a patch of energy through which the world looked darkened and warped. It took mere moments to form, and then Granola lobbed it immediately at Honeybee. It sank into her skin-equivalent (a bedsheet?), and she winced visibly, her first change of expression since she entered the battlefield. Her grin now tinged with anger, insofar as one can grin with anger, she concentrated on the Metagross, and he was pulled, struggling helplessly, into the air.

Perhaps the only advantage of being floating in the air was that all four of Granola's legs were now free. It swung them towards each other, and as it pulled them back, a blob of the same shadowy energy as before formed almost instantaneously between them and shot towards Honeybee. She braced herself slightly before it hit her, but it still impacted her more than you would think such an insubstantial projectile could. Her expression carefully calm, electricity began to appear in front of her – little sparks, at first. It quickly developed into a large ball of roiling lightning. It slowly moved toward Granola, gradually picking up speed. Granola looked at it with dread in its eyes (but not on its face). It impacted Granola almost hard enough to move it at all, in the grip of the telekinesis. The worst part of it wasn't the impact, though, but the electricity, which coursed through Granola's aluminum? body, having nowhere to ground itself. Granola's limbs shook erratically about, its control over them disrupted significantly by the electricity. Honeybee took in the sight with a sadistic grin.




Referee's Notes:
I'm somewhat dubious about the viability of conditionals in combination with Snatch. I had Honeybee use Snatch on her first move, since it's priority and it would have been the first order she heard. On subsequent ones, there was no possibility of her using Snatch, because she would have waited, and, if Granola used a move that she could Snatch, she wouldn't be able to because it would already have happened.

The sprite BBCode for xy Misdreavus does not work.


For round two,
Zekrom_B0lt commands
Mai commands

Re: 1. Luftballoon vs. Zekrom_B0lt

Shadowball ~ Shadowball ~ Meteor Mash

48 hour DQ warning for Mai. (This is arguably a bit late, but it seemed to make sense to count from when she switched places with Luftballoon.)

On your reffing itself:

Your prose works. It's clear enough to show what's going on and gives an entertaining description of the battle. There are a few oddities (like general unsureness of the description and setting the parentheticals after commas - that interrupts the flow of the text a lot), but the faults are more strange than outright damning. It's basically satisfactory as-is, and I'm not quite qualified to comment on writing skills...

As for the actual results of the actions, there are no glaring problems. There are a few things I'm suspicious about - reactive snatch is a well-established conditional, and priority moves in general can be used reactively - they were actually resolved in the correct way in the reffing, just ... for questionable reasons. But, since you probably won't be watched over by another referee extensively after this test battle, making sure you have the proper ability to reason out commands is most important.

The duration of moves is typically counted by a pokémon's own actions - it's more consistent and less biased towards speed that way. This is a somewhat minor thing.

Critical hits add a tenth of the base power (or the base damage listed in the app - typically the same thing) to the final damage. The chance starts at 5%, and the stages are 5%/10%/20%/30%/50%. This is in the first page of the old Attacks and Abilities Guide, for reference.

(Speaking of chances, it's nice that you give your rolls, too, but they aren't really helpful without communicating what you're rolling for/what numbers are needed to do what.)

On the numbers: snatch should probably have an energy cost of its own; I'd give about 2%. AntiSTAB is ... kind of optional at this point, and actually disregarded by a lot of well-established refs: this is because it tends to reward spamming STAB attacks over practically anything else, particularly spamming super-effective attacks. You'd think that would be a more effective strategy, since, well, they're super-effective.

But, uh, on to the commands.

HELLO, HONEYBEE

ALSO THE REST OF RES'S ACTIVE SQUAD

So, ah, it's ... unfortunate that your trainer had to leave and will its entire active squad and a significant chunk of its team to me, but you're in good hands, Honeybee. I don't actually have, like, any badges to prove I'm worth controlling you or anything (we don't have those here!), but trust me, I am--and you don't even have a specific level, either, so it's okay.

Anyway! It's your time to shine and spread some pain. Why not wait for that shadow ball to hit, then inflict a plague on Granola? Or, more accurately, a curse. And after that, since your health should be chopped in half, you might as well pain split afterward--wait for that shadow ball to hit you first, too, so it all evens out health-wise. It just sounds better. And finish off with a hex.

Curse ~ Pain Split ~ Hex

Sorry this is late.




On the start of the new round, Granola began to form a shadow ball between its claws. It quickly found, though, that the spasms in its limbs made aiming the sphere rather difficult. As it futilely attempted to swing its aim towards Honeybee, the Misdreavus took the opportunity to begin shrieking in agony, as though she had already been hit by the incipient projectile. Granola gazed at her with some confusion in its eyes, and an increasing amount of worry as it was beset by a sense of what could only be described as doom. Ignoring it, Granola, in a burst of effort, threw the unearthly orb it was holding towards Honeybee, who was too distracted by her pain to dodge. It somehow sank slowly into her while impacting her hard enough to throw her back head over tail, prompting another shriek. Even after stabilizing in the air, she seemed not to be paying full attention to Granola, as if she were sleepy, or drugged, or merely in so much pain it was distracting her.

Granola was now giving her a slightly concerned look. It was a veteran fighter, so it wasn't unused to savagery and viciousness, but there was some expectation of reciprocity. Seeing Honeybee just floating there, curled in on herself and lost to the world, it was kind of sad. Against all expectations, Granola found itself feeling kind of sympathetic for her. It wasn't as though it couldn't imagine what she was going through. It had been through more than a few fairly unpleasant battles. This train of thought continued, and Granola fell further and further into painful reminiscence. As the pain became more and more real, it noticed something amiss, and its attention snapped back to the battlefield. Honeybee was fixing him with a hypnotic smile, one not nearly so mocking as her usual. The pain, though – the agonizing, almost debilitating pain – had followed Granola back to the battlefield. Realizing what Honeybee had done, it roared loudly, and reared up to fire another shadow ball at her – only to be interrupted by electricity sparking through its body, shorting out its motors. It fell unceremoniously to a heap on the ground, its limbs arrayed helplessly around it and still flailing randomly.

Honeybee, who seemed much more firm and energetic than she had just a short time ago, decided to seize the opportunity, chanting ominously. Almost immediately, Granola's thrashing became more pronounced. There were snapping noises and cracking noises, as though some of the Metagross' more delicate parts had broken in the mayhem. The paralysis, bad enough to begin with, made it entirely impossible for the poor creature to even move voluntarily when given assistance by Honeybee's dark magics. The spectacle was interrupted, though, when the referee blew her whistle. Honeybee shot him a glare, but, unmoved, he waved a flag at the Misdreavus. Whatever the esoteric meaning of this gesture was, it prompted Honeybee to sigh melodramatically. Whatever was causing the paralysis to become so harmful vanished, and Granola's limbs fell limp on the ground. Before the referee could signal for the hold to end, though, Granola once again began to writhe and flail in pain. This time, though, there wasn't any visible electricity. What's more, the Metagross, who had beforehand evinced only a little that it could vocalize, was shrieking in pain, a sound like metal grating on metal. It ended as quickly as it had started, leaving the onlookers slightly spooked.






Mai commands next, then Zekrom_B0lt.

48 hour DQ warning for Mai. (This one is definitely late, but who cares.)

Apologies for the late evaluation. This test battle has been a bit of a mess all around, hasn't it?

Again, there were no major problems with your prose - it describes the battle well enough, is entertaining, and is on par with what's expected of a referee.

The calculations were thrown off majorly, though: first, curse doesn't work off maximum health, so Honeybee losing 50% of her total health is wrong. Curse works off current health, meaning that after shadow ball hit and Honeybee had 70% health, she should have only lost 35% to deal the curse. Pain splitting would obviously be affected by this: they would average out to 62% health.

After that, hex should have done its full damage amount. I see that you accounted for curse damage being uncapped, but pain split damage is uncapped too (I noted that in the question box a while ago and even suggested that it might be changed, but as nothing has happened to that effect, we go with the old ruling until further change/notice). Hex should also have done 24% damage; you would indeed get 22.5% damage (from which I assume you rounded down; I round up on .5s as a rule, but I know that's not necessarily a given practice) on 6% base damage (doubled for status) * 1.25 for STAB * 1.5 for SE, but its base power is actually 65. When that's accounted for and doubled, 13 * 1.25 * 1.5 = 24.375. From which you would round down, of course.

Finally, curse damage is uncapped (hex was the only move Honeybee made that should've affected the damage cap): you were right on that aspect (and 4% was a good, well-thought out number for the energy). But it, too, runs off of current health rather than total health: so, if Granola's health was only 38% at that point (running from the numbers I gave), it would only shave off 4% health (rounded up).

These are all pretty large errors! I could see how curse would be confusing, given that the summary gives the move's numbers in percentages, rather than the possibly-more-clear fractions in the description. However, this is a significant divergence from the effects of the moves in ASB; being somewhat tricky commands, I expected you to check beforehand for the effects, and ask questions if necessary.

I'd like to look over the reworked reffing before you post the one for the next round. I'd wait for it to be revised to post commands, but as I've probably taken enough time already...

Honeybee, hex Granola, then switch into GERTRUD at the soonest possible opportunity (the next action after you successfully hit Granola). If you can't land a hex on Granola (for any reason except substitute: destroy substitutes with hex, and yes, landing a hex on a substitute qualifies you to switch into GERTRUD next action), nasty plot instead.

Repeat those commands until they work, basically. :V

hex / nasty plot / switch into GERTRUD ~ hex / nasty plot / switch into GERTRUD ~ hex / nasty plot / switch into GERTRUD

Double Team ~ Pursuit ~ Dig

i hope this wasn't forgotten about