dondon151

I strongly dislike it when users claim that legendary Pokemon are not in Reborn because they would make the game "too easy." This is obviously false to anyone who spends a moment to contemplate how strong legendary Pokemon actually are. Most legendary Pokemon are not particularly good to begin with (Regirock, Uxie, Moltres, etc.) and they are worse than some of the options that are currently available in-game. Blaziken is way better than any legendary Pokemon, and that's just the easiest example that I can come up with off the top of my head. This attitude among users here also leads them to assume that any player wanting legendary Pokemon is lazy, strategically inept, and unable to appreciate the difficulty of the game. None of these assumptions may be true, and it further leads to groupthink and implicitly sanctioned ridicule (as should be evident from the numerous posts in this thread). I empathize with you, OP, because I've found myself in this position before. I'm really not sure why legendary Pokemon aren't available in Reborn. My hypothesis is that they're meant to be exclusive because that's how they are canonically, and they tend to be popular Pokemon by default even if they aren't always the strongest because most players can't adequately judge power (also evident from the numerous posts in this thread). Popular Pokemon are always given the axe in this game, regardless of their actual power. Meanwhile, take the time to enjoy using Pokemon that you may not have used before. (Pedantry time: you can get an Arcanine; it is the Legendary Pokemon, after all...)

The optimal strategy is still to overlevel a small team. Gen 5's EXP system didn't solve this problem, but it was a step in the right direction. I think this problem is fundamentally unsolvable without taking drastic measures (such as Reborn's badge level cap system).

Should this be re-posted in the bug reports forum?

It's fine for a strong Pokemon to have a lame period. The most well-balanced Pokemon from a game design perspective are all kind of lame at some point of their existence.

Archeops's best in-game moveset without egg moves is probably Acrobatics, Rock Slide, U-turn, Endeavor / Bulldoze.

No items. Delphox only. Final Destination.

I strongly disagree. There are already Pokemon available before Florinia that do better against her. Florinia also has a Ferroseed that doesn't take SE damage from Vanillite's STABs.

Not unlike how Florges is a "mothertrucking" special tank with offensive power? It also has a better defensive typing and more acceptable durability on the other end. You have low standards for overpowered Pokemon. I don't think it's a problem that a Pokemon like Torterra has similar capabilities of Curse sweeping, but with a better typing and a better level-up movepool.

I think the fact that Kecleon isn't good is reason enough that it can be obtainable earlier in the game. Vanillite? Cubchoo? Bergmite? Granted, none of them make sense early on in terms of setting, but we have to ignore that for the sake of diversity.

It is bad. Kecleon doesn't have the raw power of Greninja (even from the physical side), its type coverage is worse, and its moves are less powerful. Greninja's level-up movepool is frankly not that good either despite getting a near unresisted Round + Water Pulse combination in addition to utility stuff like Smack Down, but at least it eventually learns stronger attacks at higher levels or by TM. Kecleon's physical options basically cap out at 80 BP (except for, like, Aqua Tail and Iron Tail, the former being unavailable and the latter being bad) coming off base 90 atk, and even though his special movepool is limitless, special moves aren't going to do much off base 60 spatk. I'm pretty sure that as of E14.6, it's not possible to "trick" the AI into using ineffective moves by changing your type with Protean. If you use Shadow Sneak to predict a normal-type attack, the enemy simply isn't going to use a normal-type attack.

I can see this being a neat bug-that's-actually-a-feature.

Kecleon is pretty bad; look at its level-up movepool. I don't think that Azurill really even needs too much of an axe. Its main problem is that it's already at its final stage with its 2 best STABs by L25, whereas most Pokemon learn their good STABs in the L45-50 range (which is also when the House Key is first accessible, so move tutor moves fall under that umbrella). There's also a lack of water-type competition in general, so of course Azumarill is likely to be a player's go-to water-type choice because Slowbro, Starmie, Kingdra, Jellicent, etc. aren't yet obtainable when Azurill is obtainable. Anyway, there are a lot of decent-ish water-types that could be made available earlier. Seel is an obvious one. I like your Qwilfish suggestion too. Off the top of my mind, I think the Chinchou and Remoraid can also be made available earlier. As for replacing the Growlithe trade, I think that the Pokemon received in the trade should be something of similar value. Right now, Azurill is clearly stronger than Growlithe because it reaches its final form faster, learns good attacks faster, and is overall just better. The best replacement for Azurill, in my opinion, is Staryu. It evolves via the same general mechanism as Growlithe and it's overall actually a little weaker, but it will also have a trade EXP bonus to sort of cancel that out. On Vulpix: its early availability doesn't seem like a big problem to me when you consider that it's stuck in its basic form until almost L45. Realistically, it's only obtainable prior to Florinia with people exploiting the cave-in field interaction, which I recall Ame saying that she was going to modify or remove to not be so exploitable.

This is totally random and it just came to my mind. In Reborn, the move Mist turns the field into a misty field in addition to conferring protection against stat drops. In the main series games, Guard Spec. and Mist have the same effect and even the same use message ("the ally was shrouded in mist!"). So given that Guard Spec. and Mist are canonically exactly the same, should they both have the same effect in Reborn? Also, I noticed a contradiction on the field effects page for the misty field: All Pokemon are immune to status conditions The base accuracy of these moves [Lovely Kiss, Sweet Kiss] becomes 100 The first bullet doesn't specify whether the immunity applies to all status conditions or non-volatile status conditions only (Misty Terrain only protects against non-volatile status in-game). The second bullet says that 2 moves which only inflict status are elevated to 100 accuracy in a terrain that protects against status.

I think you're underrating Gigalith. Regardless, whether Trick Room or Gigalith is more responsible for trivializing Charlotte doesn't matter; the point is that one of them should be axed if we want to be consistent with axing Hariyama. Again, this line of reasoning isn't convincing. If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that it's better for the player to use a cheap strategy of burning every physical attacker and winning without difficulty than it is for him to use a different cheap strategy of sweeping with his own Pokemon and winning without difficulty. Why is the former better than the latter? Is it because he's using more moves? But obviously the quantity of moves doesn't matter when it comes to determining whether a battle is easy or difficult, nor does it correspond to how much planning went into the execution of the strategy. For example, in the long-forgotten metagame of gen 3 OU, defensive play was overall easier to execute than offensive play. If you're guaranteed to win a battle as long as you land your burns, it's no different from if you're guaranteed to win a battle as long as you land your hits. Moving Makuhita later in the game is the definition of it getting axed. EDIT:

I'm sorry, but I don't see the difference. Is it not "strategy" to use a Pokemon that's supposed to be strong against a gym leader? How is setting up Gigalith in a double battle and sweeping different from setting up Blaziken in a single battle and sweeping? Hilda did not only say that a Pokemon has reason to be axed should it "break a leader." She also cited the example of Hariyama having a good matchup specifically against Florinia's Cradily as rationale for axing Hariyama. So if we want to keep ourselves consistent, it seems like there's a pretty low threshold set for a Pokemon to deserve the axe: it must be able to emphatically beat a gym leader's ace. Doesn't Gigalith and/or Trick Room cross this threshold? Also, according to LittleDevilex's post, her Pokemon weren't specifically EV trained. Gigalith has Sand Force, one of the highest atk stats of all rock-type Pokemon, and it learns Rock Slide and Sandstorm via level up. Trick Room does render Charlotte beatable without hard counters like Gigalith, but other rock-type Pokemon don't quite have the power to OHKO the enemies with a spread Rock Slide, and Charlotte doesn't have a single rock-type neutral or immunity. Like, I've tried setting up a ground-type before (Diggersby); it doesn't quite work. It needs a lot more help to sweep. So just to make things clear, I'm not advocating axing Gigalith. I think it's great that such an option is available. I'm just struggling to understand if there's any consistency in hatchet criteria, i.e., why should one Pokemon be axed when another Pokemon does a similar thing in a different context? I've already listed the 3 necessary conditions that I think a Pokemon must fulfill to be axed, and the only Pokemon that I think fulfills those criteria as of the current release is Azumarill for hopefully obvious reasons.

LittleDevilex defeated Charlotte in about a minute with Gigalith and a Trick Room user.

So, what, is Gigalith going to be axed now because it trivializes Charlotte? Or Flygon because it trivializes Aya and Radomus? Or Eevee/Glaceon because it trivializes Terra? Shouldn't we also push the Rain Dance TM to after Charlotte because it makes her battle too easy? This is the territory that Ame has willingly entered by choosing to design a Pokemon game with gym leaders that specialize in a single type of Pokemon. Obvious weaknesses are usually negated by the field effect, but you can't cover all possible bases. Superheated field beats water-types (sort of), but it does nothing to rock-types. You can try as hard as you can to design Charlotte's team to contain 6 fire-types and not be vulnerable to rock-types, but abusable AI in conjunction with the space of available strategies means that there's always going to be something that renders these battles trivial. Let the player have his fun. I come from the Fire Emblem community, and we talk all the time about how units on horses are broken. I've seen all kinds of suggestions to address this imbalance by nerfing cavaliers to the point of unusability, and it's like people don't realize that broken things can be fun if they're not too broken.

Moves that interact with the field get applied every time they hit a target. So not only are your Surf and Discharge observations true, but also if you were to, for example, use Blizzard on the water surface field, the first target hit would only activate the field transformation, but the second target hit would get the damage and freeze% increase from the icy field. Even though I think this is kind of neat, it just looks buggy. It's like, something that you wouldn't first expect, but then you understand it based on your intuitions about programming and how these events are ordered.

Diggersby performs better with Swords Dance and at least some normal-type STAB. Bounce only gives you coverage against the few levitating ghost-types, and Hammer Arm gives you coverage against Lunatone, Solrock, and Bronzong. Lunatone and Solrock are pretty common among some Meteor Grunts, but I still don't think it's worth running Hammer Arm. Diggersby is also available early-ish, but most of its good moves come either very late or via move tutor. You're stuck with spamming Take Down for awhile, which is pretty strong coming off that Huge Power boosted atk, but the recoil is unpleasant and the accuracy also leaves something to be desired. At least you can teach it a weaker but more reliable Facade to tide you over to Strength. EDIT: Pyroar should run Work Up over Bounce.

Hariyama is an underrated Pokemon, but it's exactly the kind of Pokemon that we need available in Reborn. It's not normally frequently used in-game (except in, like, Pokemon Emerald playthroughs) and it has significant disadvantages compared to more popular fighting-types, but it has very usable niches in doubles and also as a bulky Guts Pokemon with Facade. You can't just go about listing every advantage that a Pokemon has and then proceed to declare it too strong for the game. Every Pokemon has its niche; some are bigger than others; some are more interesting than others. If you want a fun exercise, you can try doing this for every Pokemon in the game - for example, Goldeen is too strong because it has Lightningrod for an electric-type gym and the AI can't see absorbing abilities, it has well-distributed stats, it actually learns a physical water-type STAB at a reasonable level. Goldeen OP, axe Goldeen. Or, Budew is too strong because it can evolve into Roselia instantly with happiness grinding, its BST is better distributed than tier 2 grass-type starters, and its level up movepool contains strong moves. Budew OP, axe Budew. At this rate, we can axe every half-decent Pokemon in the game. Ekans? Glare + Coil too strong. Bidoof? Moody too strong. Litleo? Moxie + trade EXP bonus too strong. And so on. For a Pokemon that deserves the axe, there needs to be several criteria that it meets. Does it steamroll through general trainer battles? Does it trivialize too many boss battles? Does it crowd out other available candidates from being used (i.e., are too many players using it instead of something else that does a similar job)? If it doesn't meet all 3 of these criteria, I don't think it deserves the guillotine. This is also why I think it might be useful for the game to gather and send usage stats, if at all possible, so we can cease speculation on which Pokemon we think are overused and empirically determine which Pokemon are actually overused.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Is there a way to tackle this problem empirically? For example, have Reborn collect and send team usage data after a player wins a major fight and saves.

Swoobat is still vulnerable to physical attacks during and after setup, and it's not even that strong at +2. You can't get a Swoobat with a special psychic-type STAB unless you catch one at L10 and grind it up to par. The L20 ones are easier to use from the get-go, but they lack Confusion. So... Mankey? Again, I don't think that axing Pokemon as a knee-jerk reaction to them being good for a couple of boss battles is a good policy. We'd be playing whack-a-mole: one option gets axed and another one turns up.

I agree that Prankster is very strong, but Meowstic is already one of those lesser used psychic-type Pokemon as is. It's like, literally the only reason to use Meowstic.

Even though Hypno would destroy Corey? Isn't this a reason to not include it? Milotic is a super popular Pokemon. OR/AS also gave it Coil, which means it has a basically invincible (though boring) setup sweep with offensive moves that have nearly perfect neutral coverage. I think we have to quit worrying about whether X Pokemon would make Y battle too easy. All gym leaders have sizable weaknesses. There are tons of players posting in the "which gym leader do you think was easiest" thread boasting about how they trivialized every gym leader in the game with some available Pokemon.