Suggestion Box

[nastypass]

I think there was some discussion about nixing trick room's command order reversal effect, but it kinda fell through. As it stands, the ability to keep renewing trick room and keep commanding second is pretty overpowered. I never understood why it had that added effect. (I mean, it makes sense flavour wise, I guess, but it still seems unnecessary)

Also, I'd kinda like to renew the discussion about making Defeatist and truant viable, because I thought the ideas put forward were pretty good and there's really no reason for these abilities to be such a huge nerf in ASB.

The command order reversal was modified such that you can't do that anymore. Truant seems to have been buffed already - loafing around recovers energy and you gain a 2% damage booost - but yeah Defeatist is still a straight nerf when Archen and Archeops' base attack stats aren't a thing.

 

[Eifie]

omg why does Trick Room continue to be so OP. Now if you use it on the last action of a round when you're commanding second, then you command second, then first, then second, and then it wears off so you command second again. I went looking and found a ruling that Trick Room's six actions don't include the action it's used it, and it looks like you can't abuse Trick Room that way when you're commanding second because you'll end up commanding second twice, then commanding first twice no matter what you do (assuming you don't take another action to use Trick Room again). Could we go back to that?

 

[....]

omg why does Trick Room continue to be so OP. Now if you use it on the last action of a round when you're commanding second, then you command second, then first, then second, and then it wears off so you command second again. I went looking and found a ruling that Trick Room's six actions don't include the action it's used it, and it looks like you can't abuse Trick Room that way when you're commanding second because you'll end up commanding second twice, then commanding first twice no matter what you do (assuming you don't take another action to use Trick Room again). Could we go back to that?

I don't really see why it even needs to have the command order reversal aspect, tbh. Even though I love using Trick Room to change the order that Pokemon move in, I always found the command reversal to be a bit too much. If we keep the command reversal, then maybe the energy cost of Trick Room could be increased so that it can't be spammed? Or maybe we could make it sort of like how Psychic is used, where you can choose how it's going to be used (so you can choose either the command reversal or to change the order that the Pokemon move in). Or we could just get rid of the command reversal thing altogether.

Either way, Trick Room is too overpowered as it is right now.

 

[Dragon]

Or maybe we could make it sort of like how Psychic is used, where you can choose how it's going to be used (so you can choose either the command reversal or to change the order that the Pokemon move in).

I kinda like this, although it could mean that faster Pokemon start using Trick Room in order to get the command reversal? And I feel like it should primarily be a move that gives slower Pokemon an advantage. It'd be interesting to have something where only slower Pokemon can do the command reversal, but a lot of problems could come up with that, probably.

(I think the command order thing is cool, but it'd probably be less trouble to just get rid of it entirely?)

 

[Eifie]

Mmm, you're kind of right. Changing its duration to how it was with that previous ruling would make it so that you balance out commanding second twice in a row by having to command first twice in a row, but you could just use Trick Room again early to stop that second command order reversal from happening and then you'd be commanding second three times in a row. I also always feel bad about Trick Room forcing my opponents to command first twice when all I really wanted to do was speed up my ridiculously slow things.

I like what Mawile suggested about having to choose one, except that then the command order reversal aspect is still pretty great since it's just what I said above. You could give up one action every single round to command second forever if you wanted to. Maybe we could make the command order reversal only happen once per team per battle, or something. Psychic types and the things that general learn Trick Room tend to already have a ton of other cool toys anyway, though, so it might be better to just get rid of the command order reversal thing.

 

[Music Dragon]

Just for clarification: in order to be mathematically sound, the duration of Trick Room needs to be an even multiple of three actions after the action in which it's used. Six actions, not counting the action in which it's used, would be ideal: then you'd get to command second twice in a row, then command first twice in a row. In other words, you'd want Trick Room to last seven actions if you include the action in which it's used.

If Trick Room lasts seven actions, including the action in which it's used, the following happens:
Round 1: I command second. I use Trick Room on action X.
Round 2: I command second because of Trick Room.
Round 3: I command first because of Trick Room. At the end of action X, Trick Room wears off.
Round 4: I command first.

So, go with seven actions if you want to keep this effect.

Anyway. Regarding the aforementioned fact that you can abuse Trick Room by cancelling it early, allowing yourself to constantly command second if you're willing to spend one action each round using Trick Room... An easy fix, besides removing the effect entirely, would be to make it impossible to cancel Trick Room.

 

[Meowth]

I've no idea quite what, but perhaps something could be added to Trick Room's flavour to justify preventing it from being used in immediate or rapid succession. Maybe some timey-wimey bollocks like one has to wait the full duration of another Trick Room for the dimensions to stabilise before it can be used again.

 

[Music Dragon]

I've no idea quite what, but perhaps something could be added to Trick Room's flavour to justify preventing it from being used in immediate or rapid succession. Maybe some timey-wimey bollocks like one has to wait the full duration of another Trick Room for the dimensions to stabilise before it can be used again.

I recommend that you read my paper "An Application of Ergodic Theory to Temporal Distortion", a seminal text in the field of timey-wimey studies. It turns out that the move Trick Room - and all other means of warping time, for that matter - cannot be used to restore order, only to further distort. As it happens, this is a special case of a more powerful result, known as the generalized second law of thermodynamics. Current research suggests the possibility of extending the duration of Trick Room, but it doesn't seem possible to cancel it early.

You can access the paper in the Technobabble Database, probably available through a local university or library.

 

[Eifie]

At least for now, since everybody seems to be in agreement on this part at least, I'm going to change Trick Room's duration to six actions not including the one it's used on.

The options we seem to have for dealing with how it could be abused to constantly command second are to remove the command order reversal altogether, or make it so that the user can't cancel Trick Room (maybe the opponent can, maybe they can't). The second probably seems better?

 

[TruetoCheese]

At least for now, since everybody seems to be in agreement on this part at least, I'm going to change Trick Room's duration to six actions not including the one it's used on.

The options we seem to have for dealing with how it could be abused to constantly command second are to remove the command order reversal altogether, or make it so that the user can't cancel Trick Room (maybe the opponent can, maybe they can't). The second probably seems better?

Second probably seems better? Unsure.

If the discussion's still open I'd like to have a go:

I think it is an interesting mechanic. There was a suggestion up there, I can't remember from who (forgive me, I'm tired), that you could choose between command order reversal or speed reversal. Which might be an interesting way to dilute the power of the move. Given that only a Pokemon who is slower would use it, the commanding second provides an unnecessary boon. If you split it up, then you either choose between being faster (if yours is the slower Pokemon) or commanding second (if you aren't the slower one).

The problem here is that there are Pokemon who do have good speed and access to Trick Room (Porygon, Starmie and Gastly lines spring to mind). So they could essentially drop an action every ~2 rounds to guarantee ordering second two rounds in succession without the speed loss. You could probably solve this by saying you can't use it immediately after the duration ends because physics' butt is still sore of reasons. Just like the one's you want to put in place already.

 

[Eifie]

Second probably seems better? Unsure.

If the discussion's still open I'd like to have a go:

I think it is an interesting mechanic. There was a suggestion up there, I can't remember from who (forgive me, I'm tired), that you could choose between command order reversal or speed reversal. Which might be an interesting way to dilute the power of the move. Given that only a Pokemon who is slower would use it, the commanding second provides an unnecessary boon. If you split it up, then you either choose between being faster (if yours is the slower Pokemon) or commanding second (if you aren't the slower one).

The problem here is that there are Pokemon who do have good speed and access to Trick Room (Porygon, Starmie and Gastly lines spring to mind). So they could essentially drop an action every ~2 rounds to guarantee ordering second two rounds in succession without the speed loss. You could probably solve this by saying you can't use it immediately after the duration ends because physics' butt is still sore of reasons. Just like the one's you want to put in place already.

I kind of do want them to be separated in some way, because right now Trick Room is just pretty bad to use when you're already commanding first and even better to use when you're commanding second (if you're thinking about just immediate gain), and I'd kind of like it to be... not like that when you actually want to use it just for the speed reversal.

 

[Eifie]

Double post yeaaaah! Since this kind of has the potential to affect the current tournament round (though I haven't checked how many sendouts actually learn Trick Room), I'd kind of like to move forward with something for Trick Room soon. Nobody seems to have disagreed with at least being unable to cancel your own Trick Room, so would people be okay with going with that at least as an interim measure?

 

[Eifie]

Well, since nobody's said anything otherwise and people pretty much agreed on it before anyway, I'm going to edit the description for Trick Room to say that a Pokémon can't cancel its own Trick Room. This is, of course, easily reversible if anyone wants to say anything against it.

 

[Vipera Magnifica]

For a database feature, it would be nice to have the ability to arrange the Pokémon in your active squad and PC. Having the set order kind of bothers me.

 

[Eifie]

To bring the discussion of Hex/Venoshock/Brine back up: we're considering upping the base power to 100 when the target is statused/below half health, with no extra energy cost. Is everyone cool with that?

 

[Lord of the Fireflies]

Seems a bit low considering there are things like Earthquake with the same base and needing no status to be used at full power...

 

[nastypass]

Seems a bit low considering there are things like Earthquake with the same base and needing no status to be used at full power...

The issue is the fact that when Hex and Venoshock are used at full power, they're 13% damage for 3% energy (or 16% and 2% if used with STAB, aka most of the time they're used) with a setup that's very easy in ASB. If you ask me they ought to have the energy bump up a bit anyway, because 10 for 3 is still way efficient.

 

[Vipera Magnifica]

Why not just increase the energy cost instead?

 

[Eifie]

Why not just increase the energy cost instead?

We could do that, but I think it's still a bit OP for Hex/Venoshock users to have to take one turn to set up and then have a 130 BP move consistently available to them with no drawbacks.

 

[JackPK]

Boomburst is a consistently available 140 BP move with no drawbacks, and the elemental Hyper Beam variants, Sky Attack, and Skull Bash are also >130 BP ones if you expend the energy to use them without a charging turn. I've heard no balance complaints about them, so why not just increase boosted-Hex/Venoshock's energy cost to comparable to the one-turn versions of these moves?

It just seems weird to me to nerf the BP of a couple of moves for being "a bit OP" and leave intact moves that are, by all measures, even more powerful.