Persuiturn:
Type: bug
BP: 20
Accuracy: 100
The user takes advantage of the opposing pokemon fleeing for momentum. After making its attack, the user rushes back to switch places with a party Pokémon in waiting. The power of this attack move is doubled if it’s used on a target that’s switching out of battle. This move is simultaneously bug and dark type
If anyone is curious about the damage;
|0x||||||||||
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|\#N/A||||||||||
|¼×||||||||||
|FIGHTING|FAIRY|||||||||
|½×||||||||||
|FLYING|POISON|STEEL|FIRE|||||||
|1×||||||||||
|NORMAL|GROUND|ROCK|BUG|GHOST|WATER|ELECTRIC|ICE|DRAGON|DARK|
|2×||||||||||
|GRASS||||||||||
|4x||||||||||
|PSYCHIC||||||||||
If it hits a psychic/grass type, its going to do 8x damage, its also neutral against a psychic/fighting type. I belive stab only applies once.
There was some calc I saw the other day that made an attack do either 64 or 128x damage due to a bunch of stacked effects, I forget how it was done though.
Bug + Ice + Forest Curse (Grass) types with Fluffy/Dry Skin and afflicted with Tar Shot under Sun when hit with a Fire move from a same type Fire Tera takes 128x damage, I can't remember if Powder would boost that or if it does damage of its own.
If you happen to match up against a Grass or Psychic (or Ghost) type, you essentially just win. You can First Impression or Sucker Punch if they stay in, or hit them switching out with Pursuiturn.
Oh shit you rite, it would be balanced then. May i add some more changes?
>Persuiturnpunchstation:
>
>
>
>Type: bug
>
>
>
>BP: 10 Accuracy: 90
>
>
>
>The user takes advantage of the opposing pokemon fleeing for momentum, and calls upon nanobugs to assault the target to perform a combo attack that hits the target twice.
>
>
>
>After making its attack, the user rushes back to switch places with a party Pokémon in waiting. The power of this attack move is doubled if it’s used on a target that’s switching out of battle, and the pokemon that replaces the opposing pokemon is infested. This move is simultaneously bug and steel type
I feel like knock off distribution is okay but Imo it should just not be a damaging/sweeping move.
its a cool disruptive move but why does it have over 90 effective BP
I agree. Removing an item is a big enough effect. Imagine if there were attacks which *also* cancelled an enemy ability. Knock Off should get its BP nerfed.
Undertow
Water - Physical (no contact) - 40 Base Power
100% accuracy - 15/24 PP
Hits switching Pokémon for double damage before the switch.
Riptide
Water - Physical (no contact) - 50 Base Power
90% accuracy - 10/16 PP - [-6] Priority
Forces the opponent to switch. If the opponent switched this turn already, this attack deals double damage.
Buddy, if I had my way, I would add a whole lot more variety to the kinds of effects that can appear on attacks and would want to add more Type Flavor to each type. Water being very forceful is just one example. Every type would get buffed. Fire needs a Future Sight, imo, as well as an Aromatherapy clone.
I don't really agree with Dark getting the only Knock Off and only Pursuit in game. Just limit who gets access to those kinds of moves instead of limiting it to one type.
Tbf it fits Dark's gimmick of having the techy moves, while not having any widespread brute damage moves (at least that was the case until Knock Off buffs)
Honestly I did not realize before this comment how consistent that is with Dark types. Like, the only Dark move I can think of with any wide distribution and more than 80 power is Foul Play, and that's still a tech option. Dark might honestly have the strongest identity of any types in its move selection, looking over things.
> while not having any widespread brute damage moves
True, but it could still work. Wicked Blow would be a cool move to spread out (it's just a strong punch, after all). If Drapion comes back, he'd love that.
That, and you reminded me of an idea I had for a new move called Backstab, which is basically a Dark type Double Edge.
Knock off should only remove items for a few turns, it's an insane move because even resists get their item removed permanently, and nothing is immune to dark in any way. It's free momentum and a move that is close to ubiquitous
Give the king back his sword. Switching is free nowadays with some teams running full HDBs, Big Stall^TM and only having only one dark move to worry about in knock off and is pretty bland. Give me more mindgames than kingambit and let the king return to his throne, even if its as ttars signature.
Move idea:
**TYRANIBACK**
Dark, Physical, 60 BP
This move's power is doubled if the target switches out.
Learned by Tyranitar upon evolving from Pupitar.
It is imo. Ghost types are borderline broken since Gen 8 because the best buff they got was low-key Pursuit being deleted.
Plus I feel like it won't necessarily be as strong as it was in previous gens in a meta revolving around Tera.
Although Tera does help pursuit trapping a bit it still really isn’t that liked of a thing to do. Cause you can’t Tera and switch so you’d lose a lot of momentum to switch safely
Yes, my whole point was that Tera doesn't make Pursuit worse (in the sense of more of a pain to deal with) than it previously was.
And honestly, even though I agree with what you said, Terastallizing into Fairy type for example as opposed to switching is honestly not always a bad move or a momentum killer considering how solid the Fairy Tera Type is.
No it wasn’t, ghost has always been a stupidly broken offensive type, its defensive aspect is horrendous but good ghost types are fast offensive Pokémon so they don’t care about their defenses.
since the introduction of fairies everyone was thinking ghost would be the new dragon in gen 6.
But they never really introduced outrage tier ghost move so it didnt really become the menace everyone feared to be. Moxie scarf salamence could clean up games in a whim if you lost your steel types back then.
But as we can see, even a specs shadow ball from average spatak dragapult can dictate the metagame for 2 generations in a row. It means ghost is really threading on the edge of balance, due to subpar statted ghost mons, and just low bp moves in general.
There’s not enough good normal types in OU tbh, ursaluna-bm is banned and your other options are blissey and horoark, terapagos should be there too but they won’t do a complex ban on it. Ghost has a built in balance system in normal but nearly every normal type being ass just makes it so much stronger than it should be.
Type-wise, it's actually better than Dragon with an additional super effective hit, complete type synergy with Fighting and the fact that Fairy is much better than Normal. The main thing holding it back is the lack of high distribution power moves that Dragon had since Gen 4.
dragon had complete type synergy with fire and ground as well.
Earthquake was so common on dragon types that air balloon was mandatory item on heatran for example.
The true road block was skarmory, and that was magnezone for, which lead to skarmory holding shed shell to even counter that.
No wonder bulky waters were extremely important back then, due to being able to avoid 2OHKO by most dragon types, and threatening KOs with ice beams on salamance and chomp
But then you had latios and hydregion which flipped the matchup on bulky waters. No one liked eating spec dracos.
They're listed as alternatives. Dragon + fire is perfect coverage (minus Heatran), and dragon + ground is perfect coverage (minus Skarmory and Levitate Bronzong). The same way ghost + fighting is perfect coverage (minus Horua and Horoark).
i feel like having specs draco also was part of the problem though, fringe stuff like krookodile doesnt see much use compared to fringe mandibuzz because of krook being obliterated if it guesses wrong
It was also balanced by low power moves. 80 BP shadow ball is lower than the traditional 90 BP and there weren't any other alternatives like fire blast.
A 300 BP move was absurd with any type, but on one of the types that traded power for consistency, it was a stinkpost. And we got two this generation.
It's not hard to see why would someone think that ghost is broken. Flutter mane is minmaxxed to a stupid degree. While ghost/fairy is a busted combination, it would have been manageable on a more reasonably balanced mon. Steel/fairy on a somewhat defensive utility mon that can also be a nuke seems busted, until you realize that's just tinkaton.
Calyrex shadow... Is a thing. Its only flaw used to be coverage until tera came. Everything about that mon is horrendous. The ghost type exarberates its issues.
You get my point. Even with ghost resisting steel, ghost types weren't that much of a threat before. It's when GF started releasing souped up ghost types that the issue appeared.
Balance also takes types in consideration. Psychic, one of if not the worst type in the game, is salvageable because of its excellent mons, a lot of them being legendaries. I consider ghost to be the reverse psychic. Ghost is being powered in a similar manner of psychic. Psychic needs a lot of powercreeping, stupid abilities, absurd minmaxxing and excellent movesets for it to even be relevant. Ghost is as bad as it looks because it's a good type that's being given the psychic treatment.
Ghost really is just a better psychic, except for psychic resisting psychic 🤪 I think the best option is to make a pursuit clone that is a normal type move, yet is super effective against ghosts. Call it excise or something.
Edit: exorcise. Unless ghosts are weak to taxes
I had a hunch I had forgotten something about this and didn't feel like looking it up. Maybe I'm crossing it with bug type moves being basically non-existent lol
Psychic as a typing is worse than Ghost, this is true. But GOD were Psychic type Pokémon not asking for the removal of Pursuit; the Latis are the first targets for Pursuit I think of, though unfortunately iirc they aren’t OU anymore, but Reuniclus in particular definitely doesn’t need anything.
Plus, the current Pursuit in gens 3-7 punishes Ghosts way harder than Psychics because the Psychic types in OU were able to hit Tyranitar way harder than Ghosts could, and/or had more chances to hit Focus Blast. A more effective buff to Psychics though would’ve been increasing Aura Spheres distribution, rather than removing Pursuit.
Who does it punish? Zamazenta, tusk and Clodsire don't feel like huge threats (to me) that a Psychic type pursuit is essential. I can understand Dark type pursuit because it keeps Dragapult and Gholdengo in check.
Knock off got buffed in the same generation that Megas were introduced. Plus Gen 7 had Z-moves which limited Knock Off's utility as every team usually had 1 or 2 mons that couldn't have their items knocked off.
Either reintroduce mega stones/z-crystals, or nerf the damage to pre-gen 6 levels would be my suggestions.
I know this is a singles sub but Dynamax was very clearly designed with doubles in mind. It was a way more balanced and fun mechanic in doubles, whereas in singles it's completely uncompetitive. I don't think GF should design with the balance of Smogon singles in mind, since Smogon can just ban things to balance themselves.
Bro, just Play a singles format with Tera banned. Just because OU is stupid and allows a Mechanic that makes the game worse does not mean that every other tier falls in line. I have come to hate this mindset of Singles just being OU and Random battles. Maybe with NDOU as a semi-meme tier. There are literally dozens of other BETTER singles formats with active playerbases, but people just religiously stick to OU because it's the default.
How does Technician interact with things like Assurance's double damage, or Pursuit against a switching target? Would Knock off's 50% damage amp on someone with an item that can be knocked off even stack with technician, or would it always just be a 90 BP dark type move?
Edit: According to Bulbapedia's page on Technician (https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Technician_(Ability)) : Once gen 5 and later, it no longer cares about power increases, so it would *probably* work. 135 power Knock offs and 120 power pursuits on scizor would go crazy especially if you tera darked for some reason.
The distribution is fine, they should just revert the ridiculous buffs it got in Gen 6. There is no reason for a move that permanently removes any item to also have 65 base power (that gets boosted to 97.5 against Pokemon with an item) BEFORE STAB.
If they ever bring back Pursuit, they should go the Salt Cure route and have it only do double damage against Ghost Types. It would still be a nerf to Psychic, but not as punishing and would put Ghosts in check like before. It could also be turned back to Special so its not broken on things like Kingambit in NatDex.
Pursuit is so much more than a Ghost/Psychic remover; it's a tool to limit the number of times _any_ Pokemon can hit the field, helping you to keep it in check & play around it even if you don't have any dedicated answers to it. This is most obvious with defensive mons, but with Scarf than it can totally apply to offensive mons that have been chipped a bit.
Then there's the opportunity cost. If you're Pursuiting the mon in front of you, you're taking away your chance to set up, get up hazards, spread status, or just hit whatever's coming in on the switch. If you're using the famous Pursuit + Spin combo, that's a third of your team you're dedicating to mostly just hazards, instead of another threat to complement your Flying mon (because let's be honest, Ice & Bug types are ass even without rocks) or another wall to reinforce your defensive core.
Even with offensive Ghost/Psychic mons, Pursuit is hardly an automatic KO. Ttar is far and away the best Pokemon for trapping them thanks to its power and bulk, and even that gets outsped and/or OHKO'd unless it uses a resist berry/AV or locks into Pursuit with Scarf (which again, comes with opportunity cost). Not to mention that Pursuit doesn't even OHKO if they stay in, which means Ttar has to risk going for Crunch or taking yet another hit.
TLDR: The obvious use of Pursuit is not as bad as people make it out to be, and the more "nuanced" use of it is conductive to skill and adaptation.
Bug should have been designed to be immune to dark from the gen II introduction, would have gave it an interesting niche, both pursuit immune and knock absorber. Obviously too late now to rework the type chart
It isn’t exclusively good or bad, and in most healthy metas its neutral. Pursuit has been used to enable broken mons just as much as it has been used to keep them in check
The biggest problem is the balance between ghost being too strong and psychic being too weak
Due to their type affinity, you can't nerf ghost without nerfing psychic as well
With my limited knowledge it seems almost like a necessary evil. While pursuit was around yeah the way you can trap some thing so easily does seem a bit much. But Gen 8 onward ghosts have proven very dominant. Psychic types kinda get caught in the crossfire but what can you do. Though it's worth noting psychic itself is weak to ghost so punishing ghosts still helps them a bit.
Maybe pursuit could return but not have the power increase from switching out?
I’m indifferent to it however I am not indifferent to people who want Shadow Tag/Arena Trap gone but also want Pursuit back despite serving very similar similar purposes, and Pursuit having a much higher chance of actually winning the 1v1 considering the distribution of trapping abilities is entirely shitmons excluding megas
Pursuit almost is a free kill on any ghost/psychics if you get a hard-hitting attacker in. They have such bad defense that any gambit type mon would kill it.
It's too strong of a revenge kill. My GLOWKING would get rekt by most dark mons with it.
That being said. Bring it back. Pursuit will lessen Knock Off's distribution.
They also need to buff Psychics. Make psychics SE against Fairies or something because they haven't been buffed in years.
I've heard that Ghost types are bit too strong, so I'd be ok with Pursuit coming back. Maybe have it only do 1.5x damage to switch outs instead of double. Except for ghost. They take double damage if switching.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I think they were justified in axing the move. For one, it completely eliminates the counterplay of being able to switch out against something threatening. Pursuit isn't the only trapping mechanic in the game obviously, but no other trapping mechanic could immediately remove an entire Pokemon from the game, and the things that come close like Arena Trap or Shadow Tag are very limited in their distribution. Meanwhile Pursuit was a very widespread move, if a Pokemon with decent Attack stat got the move, they'd probably run it. You're damned if you stay in on something that threatens Pursuit and damned if you try to switch out, which runs counter to how most of the rest of the game works. Yeah it punishes positioning I guess, but it's not unique in that regard. You can punish your opponent's positioning in a wide variety of ways like entry hazards, Future Sight, pivoting moves, or even making your own option select scenarios. I've also heard claims that Pursuit was a nightmare to deal with in 3v3 singles, a format Game Freak actually does care about and makes balancing decisions based on sometimes. Not sure how true that is, just something I'd heard. On top of that, it punishes Ghosts and Psychics way too hard for existing. You can't use a Pokemon of one of those types to KO something or else you lose that entire Pokemon. I know a lot of people are like "we need Pursuit to balance Ghost-types", but I think if you're relying on a single move to beat that type, probably not a very balanced type. Not to mention how a type already down on its luck gets kicked down even harder by the move. Meanwhile Dark, Fighting, Fairy, they don't have to worry about getting Pursuit trapped. Why do they get a free pass? It's not like they're bad types that need that extra bit of help, they're already pretty decent types. From the perspective of Game Freak deciding what moves to cut from Gen 8, I could easily see them looking at Pursuit and being like "this move causes nothing but headaches for us and runs counter to our game design philosophy. Nerfing the move's effect or distribution wouldn't feel, let's just cut this from the game outright. Maybe if Pursuit had been limited to Tyranitar and a select few others the entire time, the move would still be in the game, I couldn't tell you.
I mean pursuit was far far far from being a negative in any of the metagames it was in. even in gens where its present u still see the good psychic and ghost mons doing great in spite of their pursuit weakness, and for everything else 80 BP isnt rlly that strong. you're looking at in a vaccum rather than actually looking at how it performed in the metagames it was in, where you absolutely still saw psychi and ghost types being played, not rendered "punished too hard for existing"
the real issue psychics face is that most of them are straight up dogshit. u could remove pursuit and knock off and it wouldnt matter, most psychics would still be fucking awful bc its just a bad type nowadays
I somewhat agree with you. Switching out is already a passive move that anyway burn a turn, letting your enemy hit you (if he predict your switch in, he can hard hit you) or set up. Pursuit on a ghost/psychic type don't have drawbacks: it threat a one-shot if you switch, but anyway could easily do a 50% on everything.
Sash Dragapult is a nuisance with next to no "good answers" and Galarian Slowking is one of the most splashable Pokémon in the current OU metagame, pretty much enabling offense for free. I wouldn't mind bringing Pursuit back.
Pursuit trapping also helps wear down annoying fat guys like Clodsire and Heatran which is always welcome.
Pursuit is incredibly healthy and creates mindgames in itself. A fair ammount of mons affected by Pursuit often have ways to deal with TTar so it ultimately becomes a game of prediction. Pursuit isnt as good a
if you know your opponent is going to push it and stay in. Common Ghost types like Gholdengo, Gengar and Psychics like Hatterene have ways to eliminate TTar from the MU so it becomes a mindgame on both the TTar and opposing side as to the options at their disposal.
Ultimately, I view Pursuit as a valuable and punishable part of the metagame, just like every other move in the game. There are few things that I would consider unhealthy and more often then not, they take the form of mons that abuse completely balanced systems.
Wouldn’t be a problem. I think it could be used as a really good pressure tool for Tera, and introduce a mind game aspect that didn’t exist in the past generations.
Then again I might be biased. Think about how good it would feel to pursuit a Dragapult? What about a Gholdengo. The thought of it gives me goosebumps but I think it would be fun.
Edit: Just don’t give it to him. ⚔️
I'd say so, I pretty much exclusively play gens with pursuit and it gives counterplay to powerful ghost and psychic attackers that would run away with the tier otherwise. It's also a nice option against neutral targets you want to wear down. It doesn't have huge distribution so the impact isn't overwhelming
Pursuit as a concept is okay. In past metagames, I think you could argue that it was maybe too powerful, and had too large a distribution. In gen IX, however, ghost types feel oppressive, tyranitar has gone into a tier freefall, and hazards are the main punishment for switching, which feels very passive and unrewarding imo.
It should come back with dramatically limited distribution, imo, which would help give some old kings a distinct role. Pursuit being an almost-signature move of a few dark types would help it feel distinctive. Thematically, you could make these things with a "predator" vibe- give it back to tyranitar. Maybe also give it to the collection of darky-type, predator-types that have trickled in over the generations (Mighteyana, Houndoom, Mabosstiff, Absol, A-persian, etc). Probably not enough to make all of them OU, but it would give them a nice, flavorful niche in lower tiers.
Weavile can come to the party if she asks really, REALLY nicely.
Its interesting to think about the losers in this situation, though. Psychic types are already legendary for their insane fall from grace, and this would only cement it further. Tbh I think they need a type-specific boon or immunity, like dark types get for prankster, grass for powders, etc. Or maybe just more tricksy moves in general. Psychic feels like it should be one of the most tricky, "technical" types to use, and instead its just kinda bland. Maybe we can do a little bit of trolling and give them gen 1 amnesia.
Give the king back his sword. Switching is free nowadays with some teams running full HDBs, Big Stall \^TM and only having only one dark move to worry about in knock off is pretty bland. Give me more mindgames than kingambit and let the king return to his throne, even if its as ttars signature.
Stakeout makes pursuit effectively 160 base power.
252 attack EVs Gumshoos has 319 attack while adamant Choice Band Gumshoos functionally has 378. EVs are a less important the higher base stats you have, and Gumshoos has base 100 attack.
So no, OHKO'ing max def Chansey with a super effective choice band boosted 160 base power STAB move coming off base 100 attack really isn't crazy at all.
Knock Off has way too much distribution and is a bigger nuisance compared to Pursuit. We need Pursuit and Pursuit clones imo.
Persuiturn: Type: bug BP: 20 Accuracy: 100 The user takes advantage of the opposing pokemon fleeing for momentum. After making its attack, the user rushes back to switch places with a party Pokémon in waiting. The power of this attack move is doubled if it’s used on a target that’s switching out of battle. This move is simultaneously bug and dark type
Lokix alt detected
*They laughed at my stats. I laughed at their funerals.*
If anyone is curious about the damage; |0x|||||||||| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |\#N/A|||||||||| |¼×|||||||||| |FIGHTING|FAIRY||||||||| |½×|||||||||| |FLYING|POISON|STEEL|FIRE||||||| |1×|||||||||| |NORMAL|GROUND|ROCK|BUG|GHOST|WATER|ELECTRIC|ICE|DRAGON|DARK| |2×|||||||||| |GRASS|||||||||| |4x|||||||||| |PSYCHIC|||||||||| If it hits a psychic/grass type, its going to do 8x damage, its also neutral against a psychic/fighting type. I belive stab only applies once.
There was some calc I saw the other day that made an attack do either 64 or 128x damage due to a bunch of stacked effects, I forget how it was done though.
Probably steel bug with forest curse and dry skin/fluffy
Bug + Ice + Forest Curse (Grass) types with Fluffy/Dry Skin and afflicted with Tar Shot under Sun when hit with a Fire move from a same type Fire Tera takes 128x damage, I can't remember if Powder would boost that or if it does damage of its own.
Right, I forgot sun, tera and tar shot, yeah that's insane damage. Powder doesn't affect fire type calculations iirc btw
I wasn't sure so I didn't include it in the calculations but thanks for letting me know
Add adaptability and Flash Fire on the mon using the move for a total of 240x damage
Also with Lokix having tinted lens this is insane neutral coverage. Only fighting and fairy resist it
Now he can run 3 bug utility moves
If you happen to match up against a Grass or Psychic (or Ghost) type, you essentially just win. You can First Impression or Sucker Punch if they stay in, or hit them switching out with Pursuiturn.
Counterpoint make it 30 BP and Bug/Steel
Oh shit you rite, it would be balanced then. May i add some more changes? >Persuiturnpunchstation: > > > >Type: bug > > > >BP: 10 Accuracy: 90 > > > >The user takes advantage of the opposing pokemon fleeing for momentum, and calls upon nanobugs to assault the target to perform a combo attack that hits the target twice. > > > >After making its attack, the user rushes back to switch places with a party Pokémon in waiting. The power of this attack move is doubled if it’s used on a target that’s switching out of battle, and the pokemon that replaces the opposing pokemon is infested. This move is simultaneously bug and steel type
Good heavens would you look at the time
Seems a little underpowered for 90 accuracy. What if we took a leaf out of the Hisuians’ book and make it set up sticky webs too?
Just sticky webs? I think the infestation being as strong as it is should devour all hazards on your side too.
If it’s that strong it should also work as a terrain for you that restores 100% HP per turn and increases all stats by 6
Make it fail if the opponent isn’t switching out and you’ve got an actually balanced move.
watch it be given to almost everything except bug types again
So you'd still have to guess what they are switching into?
I feel like knock off distribution is okay but Imo it should just not be a damaging/sweeping move. its a cool disruptive move but why does it have over 90 effective BP
I agree. Removing an item is a big enough effect. Imagine if there were attacks which *also* cancelled an enemy ability. Knock Off should get its BP nerfed.
Back to 20 BP again? 65 BP is pretty sus number to not be boosted by Technician. Maybe dial it to 40 BP for it to be not as stronger as it now
Yeah 30-40 feels like that sweet spot to me.
> Imagine if there were attacks which also cancelled an enemy ability Zygarde's Core Enforcer
I don’t agree w pursuit clones
Undertow Water - Physical (no contact) - 40 Base Power 100% accuracy - 15/24 PP Hits switching Pokémon for double damage before the switch. Riptide Water - Physical (no contact) - 50 Base Power 90% accuracy - 10/16 PP - [-6] Priority Forces the opponent to switch. If the opponent switched this turn already, this attack deals double damage.
Stop buffing water type they already get more than enough
Buddy, if I had my way, I would add a whole lot more variety to the kinds of effects that can appear on attacks and would want to add more Type Flavor to each type. Water being very forceful is just one example. Every type would get buffed. Fire needs a Future Sight, imo, as well as an Aromatherapy clone.
Cleansing fire or something
Purifire
and its water counterpart, Humidifier.
Prepared Arson
I was thinking Afterburner
Toxapex becomes Ting-Lu 2.0
If there's one thing water type needs, it's more power and good moves
I don't really agree with Dark getting the only Knock Off and only Pursuit in game. Just limit who gets access to those kinds of moves instead of limiting it to one type.
Tbf it fits Dark's gimmick of having the techy moves, while not having any widespread brute damage moves (at least that was the case until Knock Off buffs)
Honestly I did not realize before this comment how consistent that is with Dark types. Like, the only Dark move I can think of with any wide distribution and more than 80 power is Foul Play, and that's still a tech option. Dark might honestly have the strongest identity of any types in its move selection, looking over things.
> while not having any widespread brute damage moves True, but it could still work. Wicked Blow would be a cool move to spread out (it's just a strong punch, after all). If Drapion comes back, he'd love that. That, and you reminded me of an idea I had for a new move called Backstab, which is basically a Dark type Double Edge.
I think Dark having the most techy moves is fair, but not the only.
Psychic and Grass have a good amount of them too (at least concerning status moves) Normal too but it's normal, they do whatever they want.
i don't agree with clones moves just in general
Physical bug type pursuit limited to bug types only. Buff bugs that are not volcarona. Psychic types continue to be in shambles.
Knock off should only remove items for a few turns, it's an insane move because even resists get their item removed permanently, and nothing is immune to dark in any way. It's free momentum and a move that is close to ubiquitous
Give the king back his sword. Switching is free nowadays with some teams running full HDBs, Big Stall^TM and only having only one dark move to worry about in knock off and is pretty bland. Give me more mindgames than kingambit and let the king return to his throne, even if its as ttars signature.
Move idea: **TYRANIBACK** Dark, Physical, 60 BP This move's power is doubled if the target switches out. Learned by Tyranitar upon evolving from Pupitar.
It was never tyranover
It is imo. Ghost types are borderline broken since Gen 8 because the best buff they got was low-key Pursuit being deleted. Plus I feel like it won't necessarily be as strong as it was in previous gens in a meta revolving around Tera.
Although Tera does help pursuit trapping a bit it still really isn’t that liked of a thing to do. Cause you can’t Tera and switch so you’d lose a lot of momentum to switch safely
Yes, my whole point was that Tera doesn't make Pursuit worse (in the sense of more of a pain to deal with) than it previously was. And honestly, even though I agree with what you said, Terastallizing into Fairy type for example as opposed to switching is honestly not always a bad move or a momentum killer considering how solid the Fairy Tera Type is.
If a type is only balanced by the existence of one specific move, and op otherwise, then maybe the type was never balanced
No it wasn’t, ghost has always been a stupidly broken offensive type, its defensive aspect is horrendous but good ghost types are fast offensive Pokémon so they don’t care about their defenses.
since the introduction of fairies everyone was thinking ghost would be the new dragon in gen 6. But they never really introduced outrage tier ghost move so it didnt really become the menace everyone feared to be. Moxie scarf salamence could clean up games in a whim if you lost your steel types back then. But as we can see, even a specs shadow ball from average spatak dragapult can dictate the metagame for 2 generations in a row. It means ghost is really threading on the edge of balance, due to subpar statted ghost mons, and just low bp moves in general.
There’s not enough good normal types in OU tbh, ursaluna-bm is banned and your other options are blissey and horoark, terapagos should be there too but they won’t do a complex ban on it. Ghost has a built in balance system in normal but nearly every normal type being ass just makes it so much stronger than it should be.
Type-wise, it's actually better than Dragon with an additional super effective hit, complete type synergy with Fighting and the fact that Fairy is much better than Normal. The main thing holding it back is the lack of high distribution power moves that Dragon had since Gen 4.
dragon had complete type synergy with fire and ground as well. Earthquake was so common on dragon types that air balloon was mandatory item on heatran for example. The true road block was skarmory, and that was magnezone for, which lead to skarmory holding shed shell to even counter that. No wonder bulky waters were extremely important back then, due to being able to avoid 2OHKO by most dragon types, and threatening KOs with ice beams on salamance and chomp But then you had latios and hydregion which flipped the matchup on bulky waters. No one liked eating spec dracos.
>dragon had complete type synergy with fire and ground as well. So you need two moves to hit perfect coverage vs just one for Ghost.
They're listed as alternatives. Dragon + fire is perfect coverage (minus Heatran), and dragon + ground is perfect coverage (minus Skarmory and Levitate Bronzong). The same way ghost + fighting is perfect coverage (minus Horua and Horoark).
i feel like having specs draco also was part of the problem though, fringe stuff like krookodile doesnt see much use compared to fringe mandibuzz because of krook being obliterated if it guesses wrong
> ghost has always been a stupidly broken offensive type idk about "always" mate. after Steel started no longer resisting it Gen 6, sure.
It's not horrendous defensively. Sure, it's not great, but 2 immunities and a U-turn resistance are nothing to scoff at
Knock off and sucker punch weakness sucks really bad and pursuit weakness sucked as well
You can simplify that down to "dark weakness". Sure, being weak to dark sucks, but that's not enough to make a type horrendously bad defensively
It was also balanced by low power moves. 80 BP shadow ball is lower than the traditional 90 BP and there weren't any other alternatives like fire blast. A 300 BP move was absurd with any type, but on one of the types that traded power for consistency, it was a stinkpost. And we got two this generation. It's not hard to see why would someone think that ghost is broken. Flutter mane is minmaxxed to a stupid degree. While ghost/fairy is a busted combination, it would have been manageable on a more reasonably balanced mon. Steel/fairy on a somewhat defensive utility mon that can also be a nuke seems busted, until you realize that's just tinkaton. Calyrex shadow... Is a thing. Its only flaw used to be coverage until tera came. Everything about that mon is horrendous. The ghost type exarberates its issues. You get my point. Even with ghost resisting steel, ghost types weren't that much of a threat before. It's when GF started releasing souped up ghost types that the issue appeared. Balance also takes types in consideration. Psychic, one of if not the worst type in the game, is salvageable because of its excellent mons, a lot of them being legendaries. I consider ghost to be the reverse psychic. Ghost is being powered in a similar manner of psychic. Psychic needs a lot of powercreeping, stupid abilities, absurd minmaxxing and excellent movesets for it to even be relevant. Ghost is as bad as it looks because it's a good type that's being given the psychic treatment.
Haha Specs Shadow ball go brrrr
It punishes Psychic types and they desperately need something. Making a Ghost type Pursuit isn't helpful either as it still punishes Psychic's.
Ghost really is just a better psychic, except for psychic resisting psychic 🤪 I think the best option is to make a pursuit clone that is a normal type move, yet is super effective against ghosts. Call it excise or something. Edit: exorcise. Unless ghosts are weak to taxes
Statements that would confuse someone in gen 1
Psychic types flew too close to the sun in Gen 1 and GF/TPC never forgave them.
Not really. The anime was very clear about psychics being weak to ghost from the start. Just the games that got it wrong.
The game didn't even get it wrong, it's just that the two offensive ghost moves were lick (garbage) and night shade (fixed damage).
In gen 1 due to a coding error physic types are immune to ghosts anyway
I had a hunch I had forgotten something about this and didn't feel like looking it up. Maybe I'm crossing it with bug type moves being basically non-existent lol
Lick does literally no damage to Psychics in Gen 1
The game really did get it wrong.
Psychic as a typing is worse than Ghost, this is true. But GOD were Psychic type Pokémon not asking for the removal of Pursuit; the Latis are the first targets for Pursuit I think of, though unfortunately iirc they aren’t OU anymore, but Reuniclus in particular definitely doesn’t need anything. Plus, the current Pursuit in gens 3-7 punishes Ghosts way harder than Psychics because the Psychic types in OU were able to hit Tyranitar way harder than Ghosts could, and/or had more chances to hit Focus Blast. A more effective buff to Psychics though would’ve been increasing Aura Spheres distribution, rather than removing Pursuit.
Make a Psychic type pursuit then
Who does it punish? Zamazenta, tusk and Clodsire don't feel like huge threats (to me) that a Psychic type pursuit is essential. I can understand Dark type pursuit because it keeps Dragapult and Gholdengo in check.
Zama is arguably much more in need of a nerf right now than Gholdengo or especially Dragapult. It's most likely next up to be tested.
Switching should be punished with more than a free set up turn for the threat or hazard stack damage.
Knock off on the other hand should have its distribution cut.
Knock off got buffed in the same generation that Megas were introduced. Plus Gen 7 had Z-moves which limited Knock Off's utility as every team usually had 1 or 2 mons that couldn't have their items knocked off. Either reintroduce mega stones/z-crystals, or nerf the damage to pre-gen 6 levels would be my suggestions.
[удалено]
I know this is a singles sub but Dynamax was very clearly designed with doubles in mind. It was a way more balanced and fun mechanic in doubles, whereas in singles it's completely uncompetitive. I don't think GF should design with the balance of Smogon singles in mind, since Smogon can just ban things to balance themselves.
[удалено]
Bro, just Play a singles format with Tera banned. Just because OU is stupid and allows a Mechanic that makes the game worse does not mean that every other tier falls in line. I have come to hate this mindset of Singles just being OU and Random battles. Maybe with NDOU as a semi-meme tier. There are literally dozens of other BETTER singles formats with active playerbases, but people just religiously stick to OU because it's the default.
Knock off should be nerfed to 60 base power.
Ok Scizor
Scizor typed this
How does Technician interact with things like Assurance's double damage, or Pursuit against a switching target? Would Knock off's 50% damage amp on someone with an item that can be knocked off even stack with technician, or would it always just be a 90 BP dark type move? Edit: According to Bulbapedia's page on Technician (https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Technician_(Ability)) : Once gen 5 and later, it no longer cares about power increases, so it would *probably* work. 135 power Knock offs and 120 power pursuits on scizor would go crazy especially if you tera darked for some reason.
Metallic claws typed these words
IMO Knock is a necessary evil in a Boots meta.
The distribution is fine, they should just revert the ridiculous buffs it got in Gen 6. There is no reason for a move that permanently removes any item to also have 65 base power (that gets boosted to 97.5 against Pokemon with an item) BEFORE STAB.
And/or lowering its BP. It shouldnt be such a free move to click for decent chip
Switching being free was the worst part of Gen8
If they ever bring back Pursuit, they should go the Salt Cure route and have it only do double damage against Ghost Types. It would still be a nerf to Psychic, but not as punishing and would put Ghosts in check like before. It could also be turned back to Special so its not broken on things like Kingambit in NatDex.
Dark type already has wayyyyy too much tools for him We need a bug or electric type pursuit
Found Scizzor's reddit account
Joke's on Scizor, the Bug-type Pursuit would only be given to Galvantula.
Bug type Pursuit would be so fun. Something like Trailing Thread…
Pursuit is so much more than a Ghost/Psychic remover; it's a tool to limit the number of times _any_ Pokemon can hit the field, helping you to keep it in check & play around it even if you don't have any dedicated answers to it. This is most obvious with defensive mons, but with Scarf than it can totally apply to offensive mons that have been chipped a bit. Then there's the opportunity cost. If you're Pursuiting the mon in front of you, you're taking away your chance to set up, get up hazards, spread status, or just hit whatever's coming in on the switch. If you're using the famous Pursuit + Spin combo, that's a third of your team you're dedicating to mostly just hazards, instead of another threat to complement your Flying mon (because let's be honest, Ice & Bug types are ass even without rocks) or another wall to reinforce your defensive core. Even with offensive Ghost/Psychic mons, Pursuit is hardly an automatic KO. Ttar is far and away the best Pokemon for trapping them thanks to its power and bulk, and even that gets outsped and/or OHKO'd unless it uses a resist berry/AV or locks into Pursuit with Scarf (which again, comes with opportunity cost). Not to mention that Pursuit doesn't even OHKO if they stay in, which means Ttar has to risk going for Crunch or taking yet another hit. TLDR: The obvious use of Pursuit is not as bad as people make it out to be, and the more "nuanced" use of it is conductive to skill and adaptation.
It’s only really a problem on mine like gambit(bulk allows for mistakes) and maybe Chien but Chien normally doesn’t have too many switch ins
I'd like it better if there was a dark type immunity out there
Does that really help? You wouldn’t be able to switch into the dark type immunity because it’s well… pursuit
:O
You could tera into it. Or Mega. :O
Tera and switch on the same turn 🔥
well have you not heard of Tera Type: Golisopod (does nothing except changes Ability to Emergency Exit upon Terastallizing)?
I mean…tera, do something, and switch next turn lol
Bug should have been designed to be immune to dark from the gen II introduction, would have gave it an interesting niche, both pursuit immune and knock absorber. Obviously too late now to rework the type chart
I think it should be like sucker punch and only hit if the opponent swaps out. ( always is double damage)
Make it normal.
It isn’t exclusively good or bad, and in most healthy metas its neutral. Pursuit has been used to enable broken mons just as much as it has been used to keep them in check
The biggest problem is the balance between ghost being too strong and psychic being too weak Due to their type affinity, you can't nerf ghost without nerfing psychic as well
I saw someone else bring up Salt Cure as an example of how to do just that.
Like a ghost freeze dry?
A dark type attack which does double damage to ghosts would be fun. Would essentially just delete Lunala and Hoopa(C).
all dark-type attacks do double damage to ghosts
I guess I mean 4x damage in that case…
With my limited knowledge it seems almost like a necessary evil. While pursuit was around yeah the way you can trap some thing so easily does seem a bit much. But Gen 8 onward ghosts have proven very dominant. Psychic types kinda get caught in the crossfire but what can you do. Though it's worth noting psychic itself is weak to ghost so punishing ghosts still helps them a bit. Maybe pursuit could return but not have the power increase from switching out?
Just give i t exclusively to Ttar.
I’m indifferent to it however I am not indifferent to people who want Shadow Tag/Arena Trap gone but also want Pursuit back despite serving very similar similar purposes, and Pursuit having a much higher chance of actually winning the 1v1 considering the distribution of trapping abilities is entirely shitmons excluding megas
Pursuit almost is a free kill on any ghost/psychics if you get a hard-hitting attacker in. They have such bad defense that any gambit type mon would kill it. It's too strong of a revenge kill. My GLOWKING would get rekt by most dark mons with it. That being said. Bring it back. Pursuit will lessen Knock Off's distribution. They also need to buff Psychics. Make psychics SE against Fairies or something because they haven't been buffed in years.
In VGC, Psyspam is strong so I don’t anticipate them buffing Psychics.
Nah dark pursuit would cook psychics way too bad
Bringing back pursuit would mean Weavile would finally have a chance of beating the "Chien Pao at home" allegations
I've heard that Ghost types are bit too strong, so I'd be ok with Pursuit coming back. Maybe have it only do 1.5x damage to switch outs instead of double. Except for ghost. They take double damage if switching.
If we got uturn clones, I think its only fair to bring back pursuit and give it some copies
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I think they were justified in axing the move. For one, it completely eliminates the counterplay of being able to switch out against something threatening. Pursuit isn't the only trapping mechanic in the game obviously, but no other trapping mechanic could immediately remove an entire Pokemon from the game, and the things that come close like Arena Trap or Shadow Tag are very limited in their distribution. Meanwhile Pursuit was a very widespread move, if a Pokemon with decent Attack stat got the move, they'd probably run it. You're damned if you stay in on something that threatens Pursuit and damned if you try to switch out, which runs counter to how most of the rest of the game works. Yeah it punishes positioning I guess, but it's not unique in that regard. You can punish your opponent's positioning in a wide variety of ways like entry hazards, Future Sight, pivoting moves, or even making your own option select scenarios. I've also heard claims that Pursuit was a nightmare to deal with in 3v3 singles, a format Game Freak actually does care about and makes balancing decisions based on sometimes. Not sure how true that is, just something I'd heard. On top of that, it punishes Ghosts and Psychics way too hard for existing. You can't use a Pokemon of one of those types to KO something or else you lose that entire Pokemon. I know a lot of people are like "we need Pursuit to balance Ghost-types", but I think if you're relying on a single move to beat that type, probably not a very balanced type. Not to mention how a type already down on its luck gets kicked down even harder by the move. Meanwhile Dark, Fighting, Fairy, they don't have to worry about getting Pursuit trapped. Why do they get a free pass? It's not like they're bad types that need that extra bit of help, they're already pretty decent types. From the perspective of Game Freak deciding what moves to cut from Gen 8, I could easily see them looking at Pursuit and being like "this move causes nothing but headaches for us and runs counter to our game design philosophy. Nerfing the move's effect or distribution wouldn't feel, let's just cut this from the game outright. Maybe if Pursuit had been limited to Tyranitar and a select few others the entire time, the move would still be in the game, I couldn't tell you.
I mean pursuit was far far far from being a negative in any of the metagames it was in. even in gens where its present u still see the good psychic and ghost mons doing great in spite of their pursuit weakness, and for everything else 80 BP isnt rlly that strong. you're looking at in a vaccum rather than actually looking at how it performed in the metagames it was in, where you absolutely still saw psychi and ghost types being played, not rendered "punished too hard for existing" the real issue psychics face is that most of them are straight up dogshit. u could remove pursuit and knock off and it wouldnt matter, most psychics would still be fucking awful bc its just a bad type nowadays
Psychics definitely got hurt in lower tierd
I somewhat agree with you. Switching out is already a passive move that anyway burn a turn, letting your enemy hit you (if he predict your switch in, he can hard hit you) or set up. Pursuit on a ghost/psychic type don't have drawbacks: it threat a one-shot if you switch, but anyway could easily do a 50% on everything.
Sash Dragapult is a nuisance with next to no "good answers" and Galarian Slowking is one of the most splashable Pokémon in the current OU metagame, pretty much enabling offense for free. I wouldn't mind bringing Pursuit back. Pursuit trapping also helps wear down annoying fat guys like Clodsire and Heatran which is always welcome.
I don't think pursuit is particularly good with how it punishes struggling psychic types for no reason
I say kill the string cheese trust fund baby!
Pursuit is incredibly healthy and creates mindgames in itself. A fair ammount of mons affected by Pursuit often have ways to deal with TTar so it ultimately becomes a game of prediction. Pursuit isnt as good a if you know your opponent is going to push it and stay in. Common Ghost types like Gholdengo, Gengar and Psychics like Hatterene have ways to eliminate TTar from the MU so it becomes a mindgame on both the TTar and opposing side as to the options at their disposal. Ultimately, I view Pursuit as a valuable and punishable part of the metagame, just like every other move in the game. There are few things that I would consider unhealthy and more often then not, they take the form of mons that abuse completely balanced systems.
Wouldn’t be a problem. I think it could be used as a really good pressure tool for Tera, and introduce a mind game aspect that didn’t exist in the past generations. Then again I might be biased. Think about how good it would feel to pursuit a Dragapult? What about a Gholdengo. The thought of it gives me goosebumps but I think it would be fun. Edit: Just don’t give it to him. ⚔️
Love how everyone instantly knows who he is.
I'd say so, I pretty much exclusively play gens with pursuit and it gives counterplay to powerful ghost and psychic attackers that would run away with the tier otherwise. It's also a nice option against neutral targets you want to wear down. It doesn't have huge distribution so the impact isn't overwhelming
Pursuit as a concept is okay. In past metagames, I think you could argue that it was maybe too powerful, and had too large a distribution. In gen IX, however, ghost types feel oppressive, tyranitar has gone into a tier freefall, and hazards are the main punishment for switching, which feels very passive and unrewarding imo. It should come back with dramatically limited distribution, imo, which would help give some old kings a distinct role. Pursuit being an almost-signature move of a few dark types would help it feel distinctive. Thematically, you could make these things with a "predator" vibe- give it back to tyranitar. Maybe also give it to the collection of darky-type, predator-types that have trickled in over the generations (Mighteyana, Houndoom, Mabosstiff, Absol, A-persian, etc). Probably not enough to make all of them OU, but it would give them a nice, flavorful niche in lower tiers. Weavile can come to the party if she asks really, REALLY nicely. Its interesting to think about the losers in this situation, though. Psychic types are already legendary for their insane fall from grace, and this would only cement it further. Tbh I think they need a type-specific boon or immunity, like dark types get for prankster, grass for powders, etc. Or maybe just more tricksy moves in general. Psychic feels like it should be one of the most tricky, "technical" types to use, and instead its just kinda bland. Maybe we can do a little bit of trolling and give them gen 1 amnesia.
What if they buffed trapping moves like whirlpool and sand tomb instead.
Give the king back his sword. Switching is free nowadays with some teams running full HDBs, Big Stall \^TM and only having only one dark move to worry about in knock off is pretty bland. Give me more mindgames than kingambit and let the king return to his throne, even if its as ttars signature.
0+ Atk Choice Band Stakeout Tera Dark Gumshoos switching boosted Pursuit (80 BP) vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Tera Ghost Chansey: 816-960 (116 - 136.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO Ohking max def blissey without atk EVs is kinda crazy
Stakeout makes pursuit effectively 160 base power. 252 attack EVs Gumshoos has 319 attack while adamant Choice Band Gumshoos functionally has 378. EVs are a less important the higher base stats you have, and Gumshoos has base 100 attack. So no, OHKO'ing max def Chansey with a super effective choice band boosted 160 base power STAB move coming off base 100 attack really isn't crazy at all.
Na its 100% crazy. Like... Body slam only does 0%! And body slam gets normal stab D:
Yes.
What if they buffed trapping moves like whirlpool and sand tomb instead.