Superbird

Hey Superbird, are you still interested in reffing the Baby Bug Ball Brawl? (I think it should be down to 13-14 participants due to bans, if that helps :p)

edit: taking into account people who are no longer around, it's probably going to be down to 8-9 participants. that's at most the same as a three-way triple! manageable, right?

Hi, you have 48 hours to PM me your commands in your battle with TruetoCheese. Post in the Absence Sheet or let me know if you need more time.

Byrus asked me about it, so here's how I'll be treating Dig in this arena, if it becomes relevant to your commands:

I haven't actually played X/Y so I wouldn't know from personal experience, but I found this gameplay picture, which makes it look to me like concrete/stone for at least 6ish feet down from the balcony. There looks like enough space for digging to work, but only some Pokemon would physically be able to break through it, like Ground types with an emphasis towards bulk and strength (Graveler) or just generally very strong, bulky Pokemon. Each stage of the attack would take 3-5% more energy than normal, though (if the Pokemon had a physical implement to help it dig, like in Eifie's example Rhydon's horn, I'd add less but still some extra energy.) I don't think I would allow a one-action Dig solely because of the material the floor's made of.

edit: Okay, looking through your active squads, I think the only Pokemon I'd let Dig work for are Gorouna (Graveler) for 3-4% extra energy per stage and maybe Llara (Ferrothorn) for 4-5%.

Hi, since Byrus will be be taking Crazy Linoone's place in your tournament battle, you can take some time to rearrange your squad.

hey also thanks for the quick reffing! Great work as always :)

hey, so walker's post in the absence thread said they'd be away until the end of last month, which has passed... maybe you could give em a nudge regarding our battles? :c

I am getting to it I swear, my procrastination is just getting kinda ridiculous :v Apologies for the wait.

Right, so this is something I'm hoping to eventually bring up in a public discussion instead of with you specifically, but just so we're settled here, 6%/round is an excessive amount of status damage, and setting Toxic up to break even with it also makes it excessive (it's kind of climbing really rapidly no matter how you look at it). There's not necessarily a problem with status conditions having relatively low damage output, anyway; I think that's an impression a lot of people get because you can deal a lot of damage fast by attacking straightforward, but, inflicting status conditions isn't supposed to be a direct substitute of attacking straightforward, it's supposed to be an entirely different approach to battle. This, just as much so in ASB as in the games (when making a compet team, you'll never be complaining about how a Garchomp deals much more damage by just using Earthquake instead of Toxic, just as you won't be complaining about how an Umbreon has not one thing in its offensive movepool that will serve it better than running Toxic -- this admitedly is in no small part because of stats, which ASB disregards for the most part, of course, but the beauty of it is that wielding a Garchomp much the same way someone would use an Umbreon now just mostly depends on whether you want to).

This, again, is something I'll probably be talking in ASB Meta sometime soon, as it's not really an issue that's endemic to your reffing scale, but, just so I don't leave that thread of discussion hanging.

It's probably best that you do at this point since fixing it by now would require going back on it again, and whether that'd be better would be... highly arguable. But yes, do try to avoid unecessary external interferences with your reffing decisions.

I'll try to get back to you soon on the numbers discussion.

I'll have to get back on the poison numbers later as I have an overpowering headache, but just to adress the other issue as I'm still up for it: appointing yourself as the judge of what does and doesn't matter or what is or isn't good for someone in a battle can be a troublesome attitude as a referee. Let's assume, more for the sake of argument than anything (and also being that I don't feel like checking whether that's actually the case in the actual battle), that at least one of the enemies of the toxic poisoned Pokémon in question has access to Gastro Acid, Skill Swap, or any other prospect of negating Magic Guard. Do they get to take advantage of your sudden policy shift in order to inflict amounts of damage to the opponent that they couldn't have planned for? You can't really account for every possibility that might aggravate irregular decisions, you shouldn't have to, and one might even argue that it's not your prerogative as a referee to do so. I hope I'm not coming off as harsher than I have to be, but you have to watch out for this kind of thing; part of the reason why we have referees at all is so an impartial party is in charge of resolving the commands, and going back on what you've explicitly put down as the battle status when you weren't obligated to isn't impartial behavior (it's not intentionally favoring any one part, necessarily, but it's still inviting the battle to be influenced by factors external to the battle).

For the record, and since it's best not to clog the relevant thread further, your toxic poison scale may be broken. Toxic poisoning isn't supposed to easily catch up to the damage dealt by other continuosly damaging status conditions -- it's infinitely more available and shouldn't outclass status conditions that are harder to inflict (being that almost everything learns Toxic while regular poisoning and burn can only be reliably inflicted through relatively uncommon moves, or unreliably inflicted by secondary effects that activate rarely). Additionally, tying it to that standard tends to make its damage output climb too rapidly.

Additionally, even if it doesn't change the immediate battle conditions, retroactively changing your reffing methods tends to be a major faux pas as it interferes with the battlers' ability to command based on wha's happening and what they can expect to go on to happen. I don't know that retroactively changing it back would necessarily be a solution, but I do advise you to avoid doing this as strictly as possible in the future.

Apparently I've missed your birthday, so happy late birthday! I'd just like to say the new addition to your signature made me literally laugh out loud.

Hey, happy birthday!

Happy birthday, man! You, too, can vote and drink (the latter if you come to Puerto Rico)! :D

Do you have anything on your ASB wishlist you'd like?

This other guy shows up in various tracks, but I think he first shows up here.

I'm watching a GameXplain MK8 tournament video, and someone playing Baby Luigi had a Superbird usertag. Was that you?

Grah, I'm really sorry about that. Why didn't you say anything sooner?

Ack, sorry. Last time I read the thread I saw your reply to pathos but missed Dragon's post >.<

You should be able to close our tournament battle now.