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Question Box

I don't really see why you can't order your Pokémon to go last and use Metal Burst, since you can do it with Payback in order to net the doubled BP. But yes, it should probably not return 2x the damage taken. I'll go ahead and switch it up to 1.5x, and give a think or two about whether it should be lower.

(As a matter of fact, even if it's reflecting the in-game nature of the moves, Counter and Mirror Coat returning 2x has always been very powerful, even if the energy cost in return is also exorbitant... I can't remember the last time I reffed either of those without them bumping into the damage cap, in fact. Might be a good opportunity to nerf countermoves across the board, although this would of course need some discussion first.)
 
Metal Burst's learnset is almost all slow pokemon anyway, though, and it being speed-determined seems like an intentional way to keep it from being a handier Counter/Mirror Coat. It's like Mat Block and Me First.
 
Considering we've always allowed Bide to be delayed, despite it being a priority move, I don't see why Metal Burst can't do the same. With it doing 1.5x instead of 2x the damage, it should be manageable.
 
Wait, how/why do you delay Bide?

Also, a lot of why delaying Metal Burst bothers me is that it's a move that specifically fails in-game if you're faster. You can't Me First or Mat Block if you're outsped; you shouldn't be able to Metal Burst if you outspeed. Delaying Payback is weird to me, too, since that's also a move that specifically gives you a bonus if you're outsped, but at least Payback doesn't fail outright.
 
You can command your Pokemon to delay Bide.

There is no way to outspeed your opponent (short of priority moves) if you are slower than them, so Me First and moves like those should fail regardless. In the games, if you are the faster Pokemon, you cannot choose to attack second, but ASB is much more flexible than the games. I do not think it's unrealistic to ask your Pokemon to wait to execute a move.
 
What's the purpose of delaying Bide, I meant.

It seems silly to me that you can't have Me First carry over to the next action, then. If you can make your pokemon delay Metal Burst (instead of presumably getting antsy and doing it too early), then why can't you use Me First at the end of the preceding action to do whatever they're doing the following action? They're both moves where their in-game priority seems like a deliberate choice.
 
So you can absorb another attack. For example, say you use Bide on the first action. Normally you'd absorb attacks on the first and second actions, then release at the beginning of the third action. By delaying, you can wait until your opponent uses one more attack and release Bide at the end of the third action.

I'm confused as to what you mean by carry over to the next action? Do you mean that Me First, if used second, should be able to copy the move your faster opponent will use the action after? If that's the case, while ASB is more flexible than the games, there is still a degree of separation between actions. Being able to carry moves across actions would disrupt the turn-based flow of the game and steer it more in the direction of a real-time battling system. Off the top of my head, the only moves that actually carry across actions are passive things like weather.
 
Ah, that makes sense.

I mean that by similar logic to allowing Metal Burst, you might as well allow Me First to disregard order; maybe you sacrifice moving at the end of the first action so you're immediately ready at the beginning of the second action, or something.

They're both moves that are balanced in-game by their priority. Being able to delay most moves makes sense to me, but Metal Burst outright fails if you go too fast. Why should you be able to cheat one move and not the other?

If you can force Payback to have negative priority, can you force Avalanche to *not* have negative priority? Avalanche goes second mostly to see if your opponent will attack you, after all.

FTR I'm against letting any of the moves that have effects that specifically depend on priority to modify their priority. Encore works against the last used move in general, so letting that be delayed makes sense; Bide's priority is so you can't then go 'oh, they used Bide end of last turn, so I'm not going to attack them', so letting that be delayed also makes sense.
 
Sacrificing an action to gain priority on the next is an idea that has been vaguely tossed about, but I don't know how often that will be used because, outside of very exceptional circumstances, it would be better to have three actions than two, even if you get priority on one. Regardless, I'll bring that up with everyone else and see what they think.

I don't see Me First as a move being balanced by priority; I see it as a move that makes no sense if it can be used after your opponent (it's called Me /First/, after all).

Again, you can't force yourself to be faster than your opponent if you are initially slower; you can only force yourself to be slower if you are initially faster. Avalanche is described as requiring a great deal of time to summon the move, hence the negative priority.
 
I'm ignoring the ASB descriptions here, because they can change. Sure, here Avalanche is described as requiring a great deal of time to summon the move, but that's an explanation being given for the in-game move, and it also sounds silly and very energy-intensive.

It might as well just be them setting up a snowy trap, and the negative priority is waiting to see if the enemy's going to run into it, hence it doing more damage if they try to hit you. Otherwise you give up and just trigger it and hope it hits them wherever they happen to be. In which case, it'd make perfect sense to be able to pull it off early if you wanted.

Also, delaying Payback is absurd: Payback's buff is 'that jerk just did something and now I'm pissed'; why the hell would the pokemon be more pissed if they just intentionally waited for their opponent to act?

Me First indeed makes no sense if it can be used after your opponent, but if they wanted, they could have easily given it positive priority. Metal Burst makes no sense if it can be used before your opponent, but it could have easily had negative priority the same way Counter and Mirror Coat do. This seems an intentional decision on the part of the game designers and messing with it is strange to me.
 
surskitty said:
Also, delaying Payback is absurd: Payback's buff is 'that jerk just did something and now I'm pissed'; why the hell would the pokemon be more pissed if they just intentionally waited for their opponent to act?
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payback also doubles in power if the opponent is frozen or fully paralysed or asleep or recharging or unable to act, as long as they did those things faster than you. I'm not sure why this is any more absurd than the concept of bide/counter/mirror coat/revenge/avalanche in the first place. they moved first, so you get the bonus, is the mechanic. the justification can vary by context.

surskitty said:
Me First indeed makes no sense if it can be used after your opponent, but if they wanted, they could have easily given it positive priority. Metal Burst makes no sense if it can be used before your opponent, but it could have easily had negative priority the same way Counter and Mirror Coat do. This seems an intentional decision on the part of the game designers and messing with it is strange to me.
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ingame the cost is -25% damage and you must be slower (when you're probably slower anyway), in exchange for saving a moveslot and not needing to predict damage class (just whether it's damage). these are huge advantages. (you also get exempted from immunity, but that's less often significant.)

in asb moveslots don't matter except for smeargle and you are saving a conditional slot (and only if you're commanding second) over commanding counter / mirror coat. granted, both counter and mirror coat has p poor distribution—but so does metal burst, and notice that you sacrifice no ability to conditional an actual offensive move.

the balance consideration in asb is vastly different from ingame here.
 
Flavour descriptions can indeed be changed, but they reflect the innate mechanics of the move. Delayed priority is innate to Avalanche. Most moves do not have innate priority - in the games, you simply execute the moves in an order determined by stats, but in ASB we're given more freedom to manipulate turn order /within reason/. In essence, you can command a Pokemon to wait and thereby reduce their priority, but you may not command them to somehow go faster and thereby increase their priority.

re Payback: again, that's flavour, and while flavour is all fine and dandy, in the end we want ASB to adhere to innate move mechanics at the very least.

In Me First, if you go second, there is simply nothing to use. If you use Metal Burst first, there is something to use, it just doesn't really do much. Semantics aside, I assume the game designers gave Metal Burst non-negative priority because they feared it would be overpowered otherwise, but in ASB we don't have as many ultra-powerful attacks flying around to counter for immense effect. In addition, it is also much easier to recover from a difficult turn of events in ASB. Therefore I do not see Metal Burst as it stands now to be broken.
 
I think you can have most moves that require waiting (like avalanche) not be delayed, you just wouldn't get whatever benefit they would give you if you took more time. Same as not having two-turn moves be two-turn, like hyper beam etc.
 
"If the user is slower than the opponent, the base power of this attack is equal to the absolute value of the difference in base speeds between the user and the target opponent, up to 150 base power. Otherwise, its base power is 25."

slightly slower is worse than being faster, might as well just clamp it at 25.
 
blazheirio889 said:
Flavour descriptions can indeed be changed, but they reflect the innate mechanics of the move. Delayed priority is innate to Avalanche. Most moves do not have innate priority - in the games, you simply execute the moves in an order determined by stats, but in ASB we're given more freedom to manipulate turn order /within reason/. In essence, you can command a Pokemon to wait and thereby reduce their priority, but you may not command them to somehow go faster and thereby increase their priority.

re Payback: again, that's flavour, and while flavour is all fine and dandy, in the end we want ASB to adhere to innate move mechanics at the very least.
Click to expand...
Aaaaand Metal Burst's innate move mechanics are 'it fails if you're faster' and Payback's are 'it's weaker if you're faster'. Why are you insistent on adhering to Avalanche's and not those two's?

I'm honestly against allowing actions to be delayed unless action order's going to change between that action and the following action. So if someone's adjusting their speed, or if there's a speed tie. Turn order is turn order and everyone should just get used to it.
 
But the speed orders are not inherent to the moves.

If you'd prefer that to happen, then it seems you'd best stick to the main series. Or you can set that rule when you make challenges. That rule will not be enforced for the entire league, however.
 
They have 0 priority, don't they? That's inherent to the moves.

ETA: Also, as far as delaying actions goes: letting faster pokemon effectively get a double action is kind of ridiculous. You should not be able to let faster pokemon always be able to get the advantages slower pokemon get (like Encoring without worrying about Protect) at will. That's kind of unbalanced right there.
 
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If it's 0 priority and the move depends on speed order, then there is probably a reason for this. Otherwise they could have made Payback a 100 bp move with negative priority.
 
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