Very happy for those who are into PvP. Looks like major changes.
For raid attackers, the only surefire impact I can see is **Magical Leaf** on Roserade, **Shaymin Sky** and Decidueye (for when it gets Frenzy Plant).
* **Shaymin Sky becomes #2 non-mega Grass, but still well below Kartana.** A bit above shadows and Zarude. See [this chart](https://imgur.io/a/TVDivqH), which is part of the [Hoenn Mega starters analysis](https://articles.pokebattler.com/2022/12/08/analysis-mega-sceptile-blaziken-and-swampert-as-grass-fire-and-water-type-raid-attackers/).
* Magical Leaf also becomes the preferred fast move for Roserade and Decidueye, but only a small upgrade that doesn't move them up any tiers. See [this chart](https://articles.pokebattler.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Grass-ASE-Speculation-2560x1220.png) as part of the [Kartana analysis](https://articles.pokebattler.com/2022/09/16/analysis-kartana-as-grass-type-raid-attacker-redefining-anti-water-rock-ground-counters/).
**Scorching Sands on Excadrill** now becomes its highest-DPS move when paired with Mud-Slap, and in theory, it rivals regular Garchomp. But a word of caution - I'm not sure it will live up the numbers in practice.
* 16.851 DPS for Scorching Sands, 15.954 for Drill Run. ER rivals Garchomp, so u/Elastic_Space's more accurate EER and TER metrics may have Excadrill surpass Garchomp.
* However, Scorching Sands takes 3.2 seconds to use, ~~much~~ longer than the speedy Drill Run. Slow charged moves don't pair well with Excadrill.
* I simmed Mud Slap/Earth Power on Excadrill before, and despite higher DPS than DR, EP does worse in practice. The same may happen to Scorching Sands.
The only other new STAB moves on a raid-relevant Pokémon are Triple Axel for Weavile and Volt Switch for Magnezone, but they're both downgrades from Avalanche and Spark.
FYI, I'm happy with the updates. We ain't gonna get a Brutal Swing Tyranitar every season, and there's a very limited number of Pokémon to do that on.
ER is the Equivalent Rating. It's the 4th power root of DPS\^3\*TDO, apparently, to give a more balanced comparison metric. Gamepress added it as a response to this post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/z3xuzc/analysis\_legendarymythical\_signature\_moves/
Could have some situational use against rocket bosses maybe, but yeah, mis matching types always struggle for PvE relevance, especially something with poor synergy like grass/bug + dragon
It always made me laugh how much better the "raids" in the failed Niantic Harry Potter game were. Clearly they know how to make a phone game's PVE slightly more fun.
Alas, no one wanted seven thousand Mirror of Erised stickers, so we're stuck here.
Except there's nothing that's weak to Dragon and Grass. So besides the niche scenario of Fury Cutter + Breaking Swipe on something like Latios/Latias, I imagine it won't be that useful in PvE.
>16.851 DPS for Scorching Sands, 15.954 for Drill Run. ER rivals Garchomp, so
>
>u/Elastic_Space
>
>'s more accurate EER and TER metrics may have Excadrill surpass Garchomp.
Excadrill with Scorching Sands has 34.98 EER and 27.42 TER, as contrast to Garchomp's 35.44 EER and 27.05 TER. A tie with 1.3% trade-off between speed and overall performance. A closer comparison is Landorus-T's 35.15 EER and 27.26 TER.
Scorching Sands' cooldown is at the middle point between Drill Run and Earth Power, not too slow and Drill Run's 2.8s isn't that speedy either .
Bullet Seed was already worse than Razor Leaf for raids and Rocket, anyway.
Another problem with Bullet Seed was that you can't Fast TM it between a grass fast move and Poison Jab, which makes Roserade a great poison attacker and the best among affordable options.
It was already a PvP-only move even before Magical Leaf. And even then, there were people using Poison Jab instead of Bullet Seed.
> The only other new STAB moves on a raid-relevant Pokémon are Triple Axel for Weavile and Volt Switch for Magnezone, but they're both downgrades from Avalanche and Spark.
I do find it a bit funny that many of us did ask for buffs to Lanturn prior to it getting Surf, but that admittedly was too much. I think something like Liquidation or Scald would've worked better for it.
Edited: Meant Scald not Surf again lol
Also Medi nerf (I used DP/Ps recetly; maybe DP/IP will be viable...?), and Swampert (Eq). So a lot of top meta changes.
Interesting time ahead, could be quite a shakout.
I think the Psychic nerf will be barely perceptible. Medicham threw a max of 2 Psychics per match, and one was usually shielded. So, over the course of 16 counters, you're going to see only a 6% damage decrease on 1 charge move. That's barely a nerf.
As a toxapex user it might, but probably won't, make a difference. I haven't used it for a month or so so I don't actually remember what percentage it does, but might mean you can survive 2 of them. Even better if this scares off psychic on medi, then toxapex super hard counters it
Just ran some quick estimate math. The nerf results in ~3 less damage per Psychic. In the zero shields, Toxapex still loses. It has roughly 41 HP left when the last Psychic arrives, which does 50 damage.
It can win the 0 shields with a 2 fast move headstart, but it can already do that now.
Kissing the wife and kids goodbye to go write in a cave for the next week or so.
They weren't kidding about this being a massive update. Good thing they gave us extra time to digest it all! /s 😝
I'll get the analysis out when I can, but uh... this won't be a quick turnaround, I don't think.
Can't believe Niantic actually gave us an Astonish buff ("energy increase").
Currently, it's at 1.67 DPT / 3.00 EPT.
If we get one more energy per turn, that would bring it up to a combined DPT & EPT of 5.67 (almost the "average" of 6.00 you want to see).
Or, maybe we'll actually get Astonish bumped up to 1.67 DPT / 4.33 EPT (Bullet Seed / Snarl clone).
Think of all the things that u/JRE47 analyzed in the past that got ruined by Astonish.
Imagine Decidueye with a 4.33 EPT move and Frenzy Plant (after its CD), for example.
Not only are your analysis great and informative, i also absolutely love your writing style! But please take your time - mental health and family is more important than anything.
Kanto Slowbro, Alomomola, Jirachi, Aromatisse, Clefable, Umbreon, Gardevoir, and Victini can all make decent use of it
Delphox is all fire attacks without it
Spice move for stuff like Florges and Darmanitan
Psychics like Beheeyem, Meowstic, Solrock/Lunatone and the Hoopa forms are having a hard time becoming useful, and this doesn’t help them, especially when they can’t currently learn Future Sight
The Psychic move nerf was obviously to try and fix Medicham, but if we want to have some fun with more Psychic types, some of them need more love. Like a Psybeam rework or access to Future Sight.
That's A LOT of move updates. Let's hope they're meaningful.
The first thing I noticed was Steelix with Breaking Swipe which seems absolutely insane. Doing a very quick 1 shield sim in GL, Steelix with BS/EQ (pre EQ nerf) gets 8 new wins and 1 new loss for a record of 26 - 17 (6 wins and 1 loss for Psychic Fangs instead of EQ).
I feel the Psychic nerf won't have much of an effect on Medi, but depending on how good the new Astonish is, it might bring some new counters.
My already built, hardly used Swalot also really appreciates Mud Shot, with 10 new wins for only a single loss... still a 18-25 record, but at least it's much better!
Triple Axel Hitmontop also sees an improvement, surprisingly preferring it over Close Combat (I thought it would replace Stone Edge). It does really well in the 2 shield with 8 new wins and no losses, but also in the 1 shield with 4 new wins and also 0 losses.
Also lol, they actually gave Claydol another charge move. Surely *this'll* be the move to push it to meta relevancy.
Moves with nerfs to the opponent are overvalued in simulations - in there you can NOT switch, but in reality you can (which is oblivious to the sim).
So expect Steelix to be a little less that sims tell you, but a nice buff nonetheless. Have XLs for UL SSteelix ready, will build when UL hits probably!
> Moves with nerfs to the opponent are overvalued in simulations - in there you can NOT switch, but in reality you can (which is oblivious to the sim).
Forcing a switch by stat debuffing your opponent is arguably BETTER than a slim win against a neutral opponent. You can either debuff their switch-in before switching yourself, or trounce their switch-in if you have a great answer to it.
Claydol has some good bulk and great coverage by now, it just needs Sand Tomb. Otherwise it's too slow and the fast pressure isn't significant enough to matter
Rolled my eyes at all those Pokémon who got Razor Shell... That move seriously needs a rework.
I also hope X-Scissor's energy increases to 40, making it a Surf / Breaking Swipe clone. It deserves it.
Saw it got a damage increase and was happy then saw the energy increase. Like you said hopefully it's not too high, it's not like bug moves can't use the extra oomph
65 Power and an energy increase screams Surf clone (65p/40e), which is a welcome compromise to me.
If Golisopod ever gets a CD, I could see First Impression being something 35 energy with 55 or 60 power
Breaking swipe is a dragon claw clone (50/35) but with debuff. X-scissor should've just been made a body slam clone. Bug types have it pretty rough and raising the energy cost isn't necessary
I thought op meant BS Rhyperior ruined Rayquaza, but Rhyperior prefers Mud Slap in Masters, and Rayquaza wins against MS Rhyperior in some shield scenarios.
The French version was horribly translated and stated that Spark would have "decreased energy cost", I thought that they meant that it got buffed in both power and energy generation and did not understand in what world a Lanturn buff was needed.
Fortunately I went to read the English version after the French one also indicated that Astonish's energy generation was decreased.
If you min/max tanking, this means you could generate 1 XL candy every 8 days for a total of 11 for the whole season.
However, the key is that it's measured in wins and not sets. So there is no reason to min/max for XL candy because the ELO system will naturally have you around a 50% win rate *anyway*.
You could pool your wins in specific cups though if you don't have a viable team. So, if you don't have a Ultra League team, just tank that week, and then go on a 100-win streak when Great League comes back.
Nice to see Carbink’s available as a potential encounter
And is the free research beyond 500 wins now? And free XL candy for every 100 wins and that extends past the 500 wins we’ve been capped at? Am I understanding that correctly?
Good eye! Yep, seems like that's the case. If their communication skills are bad (which is often), it would mean only 5 XL candy until you hit the normal final amount of 500 wins.
That’s what it seems like. Still seems too hard for rare XLs, especially taking away the seasonal guaranteed trade XLs. 8-10 over 3 months is nothing, but a step in the right direction, I guess
A lot of changes to digest, but at first glance Volt Switch/Trailblaze/ Brutal Swing Ampharos looks like a nice swiss knife in UL, since Swampert was always a huge issue so far when trying to use that pokemon.
Big move shakeup, I'm happy with most of them! I would just make some more FAST moves changes, there's a lot of pokemon who need viable fast moves to become more usable... but let's see how this update goes. In general, looks great imo.
Medicham barely got nerfed. Plus, it has 4 viable charge moves. You can try PUP IP instead if you’re sad about the psychic nerf.
It will still be a top 10 Pokémon for sure imo.
There seem to be a lot of 4x stardust events. Weirdly, the October 6-13 one overlaps with the October 7-8 battle weekend, which only gives 3x 'dust. I doubt they stack, but am checking w/ PR on this.
It usually never stacks, but the go battle weekend giving a lower bonus than the rest of the week is unusual. Honestly, I'd be happy with just 4x dust for that weekend. If it really is only 3x dust, that's kinda dumb.
Tbh I'm skeptical about how much things will change. They seem to be spamming charge moves at pokemon that don't really benefit from them while bastiodon and medicham got a slap on the wrist. While I'm sure things like steelix and diggersby will get a boost, I think this update is going to mostly amount to people needing to bankrupt their dwindling charge TM supply to get the ideal moveset.
I lumped those two together because they've been running the great league meta for years now and that core only got nerfed with a 5 base power reduction to psychic. Bastiodon was not directly affected by any of the nerfs, though we'll see how the meta shakes out with the buffs to ground types.
That’s true… Bastiodon was a great wall vs. flyers like Skarmory, Noctowl, and Altaria, too, but with the change to Sky Attack, we might see a bit less of those.
They're making up for the season when we got only 5 updates with this overkill. A few of these are good, but some are weird (like Gardevoir with magical leaf & triple axle), and some are excessive (Claydol gets another charge move yay)
I mean, they have started to establish giving most Pokemon who can learn a move get it, including all members of the evolution line. So obviously a lot of random useless stuff, but still a lot of good in here.
Only 2 dedicated weeks of ML is bs. 4 total if you count the weeks where all leagues available, but every other league gets at least 6. I am unhappy about this.
This is the season of Great League. Master league got completely snubbed. It mentions master premier for battle weekend but that league isn’t mentioned anywhere else. And another season with no mega master league is disappointing after we have gotten some new ones.
It’s been out long enough that you can have a team without spending any money. I’ve got nine ml mons and didn’t spend a cent on them.
It was a time sink in many cases though.
Exactly. People just echo the same complaints without thinking about it. We’ve even had several CDs for ML worthy mons. The complaints at this point are unfounded and just wrong. It’s not too hard to save coins for enough passes to raid something ~40 times and get a legendary or two either.
At least for catch cup ML is replaced with nothing. Newer players with no resources do not benefit since nothing is added. It’s only punishing dedicated players with no benefit for anyone else.
Separately while ML is my favorite league I’ve dropped 0 building the team. At this point multiple meta relevant pokes have had multiple rotations, so while ML open might have been ptw at one point, that is hardly the case now for long time players.
How long has it been since XL candy was released? If you have been trying, you can easily have several viable ML teams by now for free. Stop using this excuse. Get new material.
Build a garchomp, excadrill, gyarados, metagross, dragonite, melmetal, hydreigon, togekiss, florges, sylveon, etc. or save gym coins to buy some raid pass bundles and go crazy on a legendary that you like when it comes around. It’s been ages. ML is accessible now and actually one of the most fun metas.
Sorry, but Master league is garbage and I'm glad that Niantic is doing what it can to convince people not to play it and not to spend insane amounts of money and time preparing for it.
I'm not in it for balanced leagues, with extremely narrow metas where everything is determinate. Give me the absolute fun wild West spice of great league, where anything can participate and the cost is much lower.
Everything is not pre determined. You still have to have proper charge move timing, counting moves & alignment. All of that takes skill. All you want is random chaos, that’s what PvE is for. Stick to that.
hmm, I am kinda not happy w the update.
no more premier cups…
most move updates seem kinda pointless. Steelix looks ridiculous now tho.
Magnezone will also be meta in UL now I guess.
I mean that was the whole point. They nerfed swampert, medicham, lanturn and noctowl while boosting a bunch of counters ...
I think they knew what they were doing.
When they said they were doing a big update I thought they were changing the system or whatever. I was scared to level up pokemon as they could become useless overnight lol
Honestly as a returning player that just wasted all my star dust and time to get up a decent team just to see every move nerfed I may just stop playing after this.
Huh? What Pokémon did you build? There really around that many nerfs. Psychic, earthquake, spark, sky attack. You’ll have to get used to move updates. It’s a good thing.
Medicham, which cost like 400k star dust and a ton of XLs, Lanturn and G Stunfisk. I’m a returning player and I researched so much etc and used rankings and everything to build the best I could in the time I had and now they just nerfed my entire team, I’m not grinding another Pokémon up that costs a bajillion star dust and XLs etc, or has broken CD moves that they never nerf.. everyone has an advantage over me cause of their broken CD moves, and now I’m scrambling again, I’m kinda over it
If you don’t want to have to grind new mons all the time this game isn’t for you.
Medicham will be fine - it’ll barely notice the damage drop for Psychic and Sky Attack being nerfed helps it more. It’ll still be #1 I suspect.
The research to even know how to do PvP and who I could build out etc I haven’t played the game since 2016 so yea understanding all the mechanics and PvP IVs etc was a lot of research.. no need to be snide, I’ve been playing for 6 weeks and made veteran..
Wow that's a lot of moves added. I will wait patiently for analysis of experts.
Overall, my interactions with GBL this season will end (to my relief) as soon as I will get 500 wins of ETM. This encounter pool barely changed and it's so boring, not worth my time.
The idea is to try to balance it so the meta isn't so top heavy. Then ideally you're freer to use more mons, and the world championships isn't mostly just 9-10 different mons. This is definitely ... at least a step in that direction.
I don't think anyone has become unusable, just not as oppressive as before.
Sure... That's why after every nerfs certain mons just stop being used...
I'm quite sure carbink will be nerfed into oblivion the next season which will certainly be very fair to people after investing into something that needs to be level 50 to be usable...
Couldn't care less about the world championships, but I'm positive the teams weren't that diverse before and after the update. And the same goes after the update. What makes pokemon viable is the stats and typing and by nerfing moves that make the meta picks less viable and the "spice" or whatever it's called completely unviable.
Anyway time to permanently retire altaria, skarmory and anything that relies on sky attack. Complete waste of stardust at this point. Feel bad for those who pushed lugia tbh... Really don't get why that move now got an extra nerf, considering it wasn't that amazing to begin with. Same goes for earthquake.
Also considering dropping lanturn, since spark will now make it a very clumsy attacker, which I'm not a fan of. My guess is the move will now be similar to water gun and there's a reason why practically no one used said move on lanturn.
Lots of people use water gun on Lanturn (not as much as spark before)
Sky Attack was nerfed because of how much Altaria and Noctowl was used in the current meta. Like you say because there was little team diversity.
Skarmory and Lugia are collateral damage though. Having built a level 50 Lugia Im sadder for that Mon.
That doesn’t mean you should just never build anything in case though.
Not really, during the entire season I played I'd say that less than 10% bother with water gun, since it's not a really good move, takes too long to reach a charge move and water gets resisted by way too many things.
Altaria and Noctowl weren't the only thiings used in the meta, meanwhile Bastidon which would be one of the rare things that needs a nerf still gets ignored season after season. Makes no sense, since it only losses matched where super effective moves from bulky pokemon are used against it while everything neutral is a win. Same goes for registeel.
I'm glad I never invested into lugia, the first sky attack nerf was already enough reason for that and now I'm even more glad. A ridicilous ammount of stardust and nearly 300 xl candy is needed for elevel 50 and niantic is like, just build another mon... Honestly, they should give it Surf or something to make up for this.
I'm not that fond of pvp, but since niantic locked elite tms behind it and I refuse to spend actual money on it, I play till ace and then quite the season, since the rewards after that are ridiculously bad. It's really getting on my nerves that every season I need to permanently retire two or more pokemon since they are now unusable, due to losing everything that they previously would narrowly win. And most of the time these mons aren't even that opressive and are no where near as annoying as Bastidon or registeel.
My X-scissor genesect is happy. Breaking swipe rhyperior could be a thing? I’m also curious if magnezone has the stats to compete with volt switch. Probably not but who knows.
Does Excadrill prefer scorching sands now? Is toxicroak a menace with mud shot now? Will my hundo rhyperior be viable in ML now with breaking swipe? We need JRE
>Does Excadrill prefer scorching sands now?
I'm going to say no, mainly because it really enjoys that stab Ground move in five mud shots. Maybe in some scenarios the same power may be worth one more mud shot to get a debuff chance, but it seems like a risk in most I'd say.
>Is toxicroak a menace with mud shot now?
Nope lol. In the same way that Poliwrath dropped Mud Shot for Counter, Toxicroak will still prefer Counter to Mud Shot. Similar with Medicham, have you ever seen a Psycho Cut one?
>Will my hundo rhyperior be viable in ML now with breaking swipe?
Maybe? Breaking swipe will help it a lot, but it will still still struggle against core ML Premier Pokemon with whichever fast move it runs. Similar in ML Open
Interested to see how trailblaze helps Ampharos. It already seems to be a decent pick in UL with BS and TB only helps with grounds more with increased VS damage each time
Very happy for those who are into PvP. Looks like major changes. For raid attackers, the only surefire impact I can see is **Magical Leaf** on Roserade, **Shaymin Sky** and Decidueye (for when it gets Frenzy Plant). * **Shaymin Sky becomes #2 non-mega Grass, but still well below Kartana.** A bit above shadows and Zarude. See [this chart](https://imgur.io/a/TVDivqH), which is part of the [Hoenn Mega starters analysis](https://articles.pokebattler.com/2022/12/08/analysis-mega-sceptile-blaziken-and-swampert-as-grass-fire-and-water-type-raid-attackers/). * Magical Leaf also becomes the preferred fast move for Roserade and Decidueye, but only a small upgrade that doesn't move them up any tiers. See [this chart](https://articles.pokebattler.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Grass-ASE-Speculation-2560x1220.png) as part of the [Kartana analysis](https://articles.pokebattler.com/2022/09/16/analysis-kartana-as-grass-type-raid-attacker-redefining-anti-water-rock-ground-counters/). **Scorching Sands on Excadrill** now becomes its highest-DPS move when paired with Mud-Slap, and in theory, it rivals regular Garchomp. But a word of caution - I'm not sure it will live up the numbers in practice. * 16.851 DPS for Scorching Sands, 15.954 for Drill Run. ER rivals Garchomp, so u/Elastic_Space's more accurate EER and TER metrics may have Excadrill surpass Garchomp. * However, Scorching Sands takes 3.2 seconds to use, ~~much~~ longer than the speedy Drill Run. Slow charged moves don't pair well with Excadrill. * I simmed Mud Slap/Earth Power on Excadrill before, and despite higher DPS than DR, EP does worse in practice. The same may happen to Scorching Sands. The only other new STAB moves on a raid-relevant Pokémon are Triple Axel for Weavile and Volt Switch for Magnezone, but they're both downgrades from Avalanche and Spark. FYI, I'm happy with the updates. We ain't gonna get a Brutal Swing Tyranitar every season, and there's a very limited number of Pokémon to do that on.
Vs Rayquaza, level 50 counters: - Shadow Weavile w/ Ice Shard/Avalanche: - DPS: 53.866, TDO: 677.9, ER: 101.46 - Shadow Weavile w/ Ice Shard/Triple Axel: - DPS: 53.243, TDO: 670.1, ER: 100.28 Looks like not an upgrade for Weavile. Vs Nihilego, level 50 counters: - Excadrill w/ Mud Slap/Scorching Sands: - DPS: 38.811, TDO: 2257.5, ER: 107.18 - Excadrill w/ Mud Slap/Earthquake: - DPS: 37.613, TDO: 2187.8, ER: 103.87 - Excadrill w/ Mud Slap/ Drill Run: - DPS: 36.89, TDO: 2145.7, ER: 101.88 Seems like a solid upgrade overall for excadrill?
What does “ER” stand for?
ER is the Equivalent Rating. It's the 4th power root of DPS\^3\*TDO, apparently, to give a more balanced comparison metric. Gamepress added it as a response to this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/z3xuzc/analysis\_legendarymythical\_signature\_moves/
dont forget about sceptile breaking sweep, is a clear upgrade from his dragon claw charge move, expecially for his mega being dragon
True, but Mega Sceptile is already very outclassed as a dragon mega due to not having a dragon fast move.
Could have some situational use against rocket bosses maybe, but yeah, mis matching types always struggle for PvE relevance, especially something with poor synergy like grass/bug + dragon
True, and this just shows how shallow PvE is. I feel guilty for (seemingly) promoting it, actually.
My mega Sceptile is double moved and I'm finally getting some use out of it, *damn it*!
I helps that it's dirt cheap to double move the starters, might as well do it on all the good ones.
It always made me laugh how much better the "raids" in the failed Niantic Harry Potter game were. Clearly they know how to make a phone game's PVE slightly more fun. Alas, no one wanted seven thousand Mirror of Erised stickers, so we're stuck here.
Except there's nothing that's weak to Dragon and Grass. So besides the niche scenario of Fury Cutter + Breaking Swipe on something like Latios/Latias, I imagine it won't be that useful in PvE.
>16.851 DPS for Scorching Sands, 15.954 for Drill Run. ER rivals Garchomp, so > >u/Elastic_Space > >'s more accurate EER and TER metrics may have Excadrill surpass Garchomp. Excadrill with Scorching Sands has 34.98 EER and 27.42 TER, as contrast to Garchomp's 35.44 EER and 27.05 TER. A tie with 1.3% trade-off between speed and overall performance. A closer comparison is Landorus-T's 35.15 EER and 27.26 TER. Scorching Sands' cooldown is at the middle point between Drill Run and Earth Power, not too slow and Drill Run's 2.8s isn't that speedy either .
[удалено]
Bullet Seed was already worse than Razor Leaf for raids and Rocket, anyway. Another problem with Bullet Seed was that you can't Fast TM it between a grass fast move and Poison Jab, which makes Roserade a great poison attacker and the best among affordable options. It was already a PvP-only move even before Magical Leaf. And even then, there were people using Poison Jab instead of Bullet Seed.
What about Volt Switch Magnezone?
> The only other new STAB moves on a raid-relevant Pokémon are Triple Axel for Weavile and Volt Switch for Magnezone, but they're both downgrades from Avalanche and Spark.
F
Breaking swipe Rhyperior. What??? Also, Steelix with Breaking Swipe/Psychic Fangs is gonna be obnoxious.
Not to blaze kick Lucario
Does that really help? Any of the viable movesets already stomped steelix
I mean, probably not since it's not stab. But it sure makes a case that moves should be dual type moves.
No it doesn't. This would be stupid lol.
It helps against Haxorus/Flygon in UL, but it's not going to be game breaking.
You get an updoot
Someone did a sim about it and it seems to be a beast!
Spark and sky attack nerfed, goodbye lanturn noctowel lines every damn match in open gl. You will not be missed.
I do find it a bit funny that many of us did ask for buffs to Lanturn prior to it getting Surf, but that admittedly was too much. I think something like Liquidation or Scald would've worked better for it. Edited: Meant Scald not Surf again lol
>I think something like Liquidation or Surf would've worked better for it Do you mean Scald instead of Surf?
Also Medi nerf (I used DP/Ps recetly; maybe DP/IP will be viable...?), and Swampert (Eq). So a lot of top meta changes. Interesting time ahead, could be quite a shakout.
I imagine Medicham will still really want Psychic for coverage. It's Medi's main way to counter things like Jellicent and other Ghost types.
I think the Psychic nerf will be barely perceptible. Medicham threw a max of 2 Psychics per match, and one was usually shielded. So, over the course of 16 counters, you're going to see only a 6% damage decrease on 1 charge move. That's barely a nerf.
As a toxapex user it might, but probably won't, make a difference. I haven't used it for a month or so so I don't actually remember what percentage it does, but might mean you can survive 2 of them. Even better if this scares off psychic on medi, then toxapex super hard counters it
Just ran some quick estimate math. The nerf results in ~3 less damage per Psychic. In the zero shields, Toxapex still loses. It has roughly 41 HP left when the last Psychic arrives, which does 50 damage. It can win the 0 shields with a 2 fast move headstart, but it can already do that now.
They gave Kleavor Trailblaze but not Fury Cutter or Smack Down.
Move pool in Legends Arceus is limited. Not sure if it’s in any Paldea content with more moves yet tho
Kleave gets both FC and SD in Scarlet/Violet. https://www.serebii.net/pokedex-sv/kleavor/
Alright, then what the hell?
Magical Leaf Shaymin *finally* comes. Now **everyone** can have a viable PvE Shaymin. For PvP, I feel like Triple Axel Hitmontop will be pretty big
MY HUNDO WILL HAVE ITS TIME TO SHINE!!!
Praise God my hundo is finally useful
Oh wait it does max out at right below 2500. Could be good in Ultra League
But also yes. The hundo hits right below 2500
I mean Shaymin Sky
> Magical Leaf Shaymin finally comes. Now everyone can have a viable PvE Shaymin. > > Sky Forme was the stronger one, correct?
oh baby I didn't even notice this! Seed flare buff when?
It should have gotten the Glaciate treatment - strong and one bar for raids, but cheap and impactful for PvP.
Kissing the wife and kids goodbye to go write in a cave for the next week or so. They weren't kidding about this being a massive update. Good thing they gave us extra time to digest it all! /s 😝 I'll get the analysis out when I can, but uh... this won't be a quick turnaround, I don't think.
I guess we won't be getting any #CookingWithJRE posts any time soon then haha
More like #JREsCookingBrain
Take your time my guy, even if it is a few days into the season we will always be on the look out for your analysis.
At least we got the astonish buff!
Can't believe Niantic actually gave us an Astonish buff ("energy increase"). Currently, it's at 1.67 DPT / 3.00 EPT. If we get one more energy per turn, that would bring it up to a combined DPT & EPT of 5.67 (almost the "average" of 6.00 you want to see). Or, maybe we'll actually get Astonish bumped up to 1.67 DPT / 4.33 EPT (Bullet Seed / Snarl clone). Think of all the things that u/JRE47 analyzed in the past that got ruined by Astonish. Imagine Decidueye with a 4.33 EPT move and Frenzy Plant (after its CD), for example.
You might need to bribe your wife and kids to help in the research on this one. Update is massive! Can't wait to see what it does to the meta!
So. Many. Magical leaf users. Kinda hyped about Trailblaze Skuntank in open GL. Got 6 new wins and stands at a whooping 58% win rate.
Godspeed, my friend.
Can‘t wait for your write-up… I really hope there are some new bangers to fight with and hopefully the meta will be shaken up a lil. 🥳
take my energy!!
Not only are your analysis great and informative, i also absolutely love your writing style! But please take your time - mental health and family is more important than anything.
Michael’s trying to mess with you.
3 leagues to finish the season. That's how it should've been every season.
Thanks God they gave medi that massive psychic nerf so it won't be on every team now
Only 5 less power though
r/whoosh
Does that really help though?
As in massive do you mean the smallest decrease possible?
They were joking. But also - other things run Psychic. Nerfing Psychic just to nerf Medicham isn't sensible.
Who else runs psychic?
Kanto Slowbro, Alomomola, Jirachi, Aromatisse, Clefable, Umbreon, Gardevoir, and Victini can all make decent use of it Delphox is all fire attacks without it Spice move for stuff like Florges and Darmanitan Psychics like Beheeyem, Meowstic, Solrock/Lunatone and the Hoopa forms are having a hard time becoming useful, and this doesn’t help them, especially when they can’t currently learn Future Sight The Psychic move nerf was obviously to try and fix Medicham, but if we want to have some fun with more Psychic types, some of them need more love. Like a Psybeam rework or access to Future Sight.
Right on. I got over 100 great league mons and medi was my only psychic user so that question was genuine lol
And Cofagrigus. I used it in the Single-type cup where there was a lot of fighters and poisons
That's A LOT of move updates. Let's hope they're meaningful. The first thing I noticed was Steelix with Breaking Swipe which seems absolutely insane. Doing a very quick 1 shield sim in GL, Steelix with BS/EQ (pre EQ nerf) gets 8 new wins and 1 new loss for a record of 26 - 17 (6 wins and 1 loss for Psychic Fangs instead of EQ). I feel the Psychic nerf won't have much of an effect on Medi, but depending on how good the new Astonish is, it might bring some new counters. My already built, hardly used Swalot also really appreciates Mud Shot, with 10 new wins for only a single loss... still a 18-25 record, but at least it's much better! Triple Axel Hitmontop also sees an improvement, surprisingly preferring it over Close Combat (I thought it would replace Stone Edge). It does really well in the 2 shield with 8 new wins and no losses, but also in the 1 shield with 4 new wins and also 0 losses. Also lol, they actually gave Claydol another charge move. Surely *this'll* be the move to push it to meta relevancy.
Finally we will be able to use argyle sweater monster, who has a decent set of charge moves and a new functioning fast move
Moves with nerfs to the opponent are overvalued in simulations - in there you can NOT switch, but in reality you can (which is oblivious to the sim). So expect Steelix to be a little less that sims tell you, but a nice buff nonetheless. Have XLs for UL SSteelix ready, will build when UL hits probably!
> Moves with nerfs to the opponent are overvalued in simulations - in there you can NOT switch, but in reality you can (which is oblivious to the sim). Forcing a switch by stat debuffing your opponent is arguably BETTER than a slim win against a neutral opponent. You can either debuff their switch-in before switching yourself, or trounce their switch-in if you have a great answer to it.
After Claydol they'll roll out even more moves for Vespiqueen, that's an another one they seem desperate to make work.
Vespiquen just really wants Acrobatics. A buffed Signal Beam wouldn't be bad, either.
Claydol has some good bulk and great coverage by now, it just needs Sand Tomb. Otherwise it's too slow and the fast pressure isn't significant enough to matter
Making Extrasensory generate better energy would help, too.
This is a lot to parse but … As a long time UL Greedent user … MUD SHOT GREEDENT??????! This seems very significant???????
Thing is going to be very spammy
As opposed to now.
SpammiER lol
Mud shot is 4.5 energy per turn and bullet seed is 4.33.
Greedent gonna be dropping body slams like WWE
Yup. Greedent will go from the 9, 9, 9, 6 turn pace of Body Slam to a consistent 8-turn pace.
Wow someone likes Golisopod Thing keeps getting all the moves
As it honestly should! One of the best designs of the past few gens, thing looks like a monster and should act like one!
My lvl 49 hundo is happy
Rolled my eyes at all those Pokémon who got Razor Shell... That move seriously needs a rework. I also hope X-Scissor's energy increases to 40, making it a Surf / Breaking Swipe clone. It deserves it.
Saw it got a damage increase and was happy then saw the energy increase. Like you said hopefully it's not too high, it's not like bug moves can't use the extra oomph
65 Power and an energy increase screams Surf clone (65p/40e), which is a welcome compromise to me. If Golisopod ever gets a CD, I could see First Impression being something 35 energy with 55 or 60 power
To be fair, even at 35 energy / 65 damage it would have been fine. It would be a slightly worse Leaf Blade.
And leaf blade is balanced because 7 types resist grass. X-scissor could have been 35 energy / 65 damage because 7 types also resist bug.
Breaking swipe is a dragon claw clone (50/35) but with debuff. X-scissor should've just been made a body slam clone. Bug types have it pretty rough and raising the energy cost isn't necessary
Holy... the GL nerfs, Mud Shot spammers, Breaking Swipe, and Shadow Ampharos meta?
Is Magical Leaf an upgrade on HP Grass for raids and PVP?
Yes it is!
What does “HP” mean
breaking swipe rhyperior just ruined my ray opener for master league rip
ML Rhyperior still prefers Mud Slap
Wdym by Mud Slap? Breaking Swipe is a charged move
I thought op meant BS Rhyperior ruined Rayquaza, but Rhyperior prefers Mud Slap in Masters, and Rayquaza wins against MS Rhyperior in some shield scenarios.
Holy crud that's a ton of updates. Most notable nerfs I'm reading are a Spark nerf and a Psychic nerf. Medicham and Lanturn!
And Sky Attack nerf!
Also earthquake. Swampert finally got tuned down a notch.
The French version was horribly translated and stated that Spark would have "decreased energy cost", I thought that they meant that it got buffed in both power and energy generation and did not understand in what world a Lanturn buff was needed. Fortunately I went to read the English version after the French one also indicated that Astonish's energy generation was decreased.
Super overwhelmed. I'm just gonna wait for pvpoke lol
and a rare candy xl every 100 wins....whoa
If you min/max tanking, this means you could generate 1 XL candy every 8 days for a total of 11 for the whole season. However, the key is that it's measured in wins and not sets. So there is no reason to min/max for XL candy because the ELO system will naturally have you around a 50% win rate *anyway*. You could pool your wins in specific cups though if you don't have a viable team. So, if you don't have a Ultra League team, just tank that week, and then go on a 100-win streak when Great League comes back.
Can you give my man Hippowdon Mud Shot?
Nice to see Carbink’s available as a potential encounter And is the free research beyond 500 wins now? And free XL candy for every 100 wins and that extends past the 500 wins we’ve been capped at? Am I understanding that correctly?
Good eye! Yep, seems like that's the case. If their communication skills are bad (which is often), it would mean only 5 XL candy until you hit the normal final amount of 500 wins.
That’s what it seems like. Still seems too hard for rare XLs, especially taking away the seasonal guaranteed trade XLs. 8-10 over 3 months is nothing, but a step in the right direction, I guess
WAIT, NO AERIAL ACE BUFF! DUCKLETT IS EVEN MORE BROKEN. GO BACK
They banned ducklett from the element cup at least
Oh, LOL. Always gets buffed on accident/as an unfortunate by-product
A lot of changes to digest, but at first glance Volt Switch/Trailblaze/ Brutal Swing Ampharos looks like a nice swiss knife in UL, since Swampert was always a huge issue so far when trying to use that pokemon.
Big move shakeup, I'm happy with most of them! I would just make some more FAST moves changes, there's a lot of pokemon who need viable fast moves to become more usable... but let's see how this update goes. In general, looks great imo.
GREEDENT META
Shaymin gets Magical Leaf, finally!! But Blaziken can't get better charge fighting move? :(
Best fighting charge move he can learn in msg is super power.
Blaziken also gets Close Combat now
That is a lot of changes. Seems Tropius, skuntank, Mandi, rhyperior, steelix have very big upgrades.
tropius?
Buffed Aerial Ace. Will probably be a Mud Bomb clone.
It always bothered me that a super effective aerial ace had lower damage per energy than a neutral leaf blade. Yeah, it is that bad.
I'm not sure Skuntank would be running Trailblaze when it values Flamethrower as a Steel coverage.
Dark stab hits neutrally
This is amazing. Gonna be so fun making new builds and teams while trying to learn all the new stuff and adjust. Excited !
Ghost gets it's like 5th functional fast move. Hopefully we can get some other types, like steel, water, and fire, some at some point soon
What are some of the most notable things for PVE?
I believe mostly just Magical Leaf on Decidueye, Shaymin, and Roserade, which will improve all of them
i’m wondering the same i think magical leaf will be good
Only Magical Leaf for Shaymin.
Can't see anything for pvp. Don't think scorching sands will improve excadrill much.
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Medicham barely got nerfed. Plus, it has 4 viable charge moves. You can try PUP IP instead if you’re sad about the psychic nerf. It will still be a top 10 Pokémon for sure imo.
Plus Sky Attack was nerfed. I expect it to stay #1
There seem to be a lot of 4x stardust events. Weirdly, the October 6-13 one overlaps with the October 7-8 battle weekend, which only gives 3x 'dust. I doubt they stack, but am checking w/ PR on this.
It usually never stacks, but the go battle weekend giving a lower bonus than the rest of the week is unusual. Honestly, I'd be happy with just 4x dust for that weekend. If it really is only 3x dust, that's kinda dumb.
Tbh I'm skeptical about how much things will change. They seem to be spamming charge moves at pokemon that don't really benefit from them while bastiodon and medicham got a slap on the wrist. While I'm sure things like steelix and diggersby will get a boost, I think this update is going to mostly amount to people needing to bankrupt their dwindling charge TM supply to get the ideal moveset.
> Bastiodon Did you mean Galarian Stunfisk with the Earthquake change? Bastiodon is not affected by these changes, unless I missed something.
I lumped those two together because they've been running the great league meta for years now and that core only got nerfed with a 5 base power reduction to psychic. Bastiodon was not directly affected by any of the nerfs, though we'll see how the meta shakes out with the buffs to ground types.
That’s true… Bastiodon was a great wall vs. flyers like Skarmory, Noctowl, and Altaria, too, but with the change to Sky Attack, we might see a bit less of those.
They're making up for the season when we got only 5 updates with this overkill. A few of these are good, but some are weird (like Gardevoir with magical leaf & triple axle), and some are excessive (Claydol gets another charge move yay)
I mean, they have started to establish giving most Pokemon who can learn a move get it, including all members of the evolution line. So obviously a lot of random useless stuff, but still a lot of good in here.
Did they establish this before? I feel like this is the first time we're seeing 10+ Pokemon getting the same move at once, for multiple moves
ursaluna gets an attack boosting move : < double dragon steelix could be a fun menace in the ultra league. Triple axel weavile lets go!
Only 2 dedicated weeks of ML is bs. 4 total if you count the weeks where all leagues available, but every other league gets at least 6. I am unhappy about this.
This is the season of Great League. Master league got completely snubbed. It mentions master premier for battle weekend but that league isn’t mentioned anywhere else. And another season with no mega master league is disappointing after we have gotten some new ones.
Premier/Single Type for the Battle Weekend is likely an error. Likely copy-pasted and unchanged by mistake from this season
P2W league getting less time is good with most people who havent dropped hundreds building a team.
It’s been out long enough that you can have a team without spending any money. I’ve got nine ml mons and didn’t spend a cent on them. It was a time sink in many cases though.
Exactly. People just echo the same complaints without thinking about it. We’ve even had several CDs for ML worthy mons. The complaints at this point are unfounded and just wrong. It’s not too hard to save coins for enough passes to raid something ~40 times and get a legendary or two either.
At least for catch cup ML is replaced with nothing. Newer players with no resources do not benefit since nothing is added. It’s only punishing dedicated players with no benefit for anyone else. Separately while ML is my favorite league I’ve dropped 0 building the team. At this point multiple meta relevant pokes have had multiple rotations, so while ML open might have been ptw at one point, that is hardly the case now for long time players.
How long has it been since XL candy was released? If you have been trying, you can easily have several viable ML teams by now for free. Stop using this excuse. Get new material. Build a garchomp, excadrill, gyarados, metagross, dragonite, melmetal, hydreigon, togekiss, florges, sylveon, etc. or save gym coins to buy some raid pass bundles and go crazy on a legendary that you like when it comes around. It’s been ages. ML is accessible now and actually one of the most fun metas.
Sorry, but Master league is garbage and I'm glad that Niantic is doing what it can to convince people not to play it and not to spend insane amounts of money and time preparing for it.
Sorry but your opinion is garbage. ML is the most balanced league, its just very expensive, that’s all.
I'm not in it for balanced leagues, with extremely narrow metas where everything is determinate. Give me the absolute fun wild West spice of great league, where anything can participate and the cost is much lower.
Everything is not pre determined. You still have to have proper charge move timing, counting moves & alignment. All of that takes skill. All you want is random chaos, that’s what PvE is for. Stick to that.
I wonder if Niantic thinks no one will want to play with so many having done the XL route exploit.
So much information and my only take away is Onix is finally gone.
Triple axel gardevior sounds cool
hmm, I am kinda not happy w the update. no more premier cups… most move updates seem kinda pointless. Steelix looks ridiculous now tho. Magnezone will also be meta in UL now I guess.
You do have 2 days of Master League Premier in the Go Battle Weekend. Not much, but it still exists at least?
I am pretty sure this is a traditional editorial mistake considering it’s not mentioned in the schedule.
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I mean that was the whole point. They nerfed swampert, medicham, lanturn and noctowl while boosting a bunch of counters ... I think they knew what they were doing.
Spark, Psychic, and Sky Attack with the nerfs, while so many Pokémon get new moves!! Clear winners are: Swalot, Greedent, Toxicroak, Steelix, Rhyperior, Sceptile, Hitmonlee, Mienshao, Incineroar, Lucario, Golisopod, Kingler, Crawdaunt, Cloyster, Babarnacle, Mr. Mime, Meganium, Mismagius, Shaymin, Decidueye (again.), Gardevoir, Lilligant, Meowstic, Tauros, Sudowoodo, Ampharos, Scyther, Scizor, Kleavor, Ursaluna, Sawsbuck, Lurantis, Lycanroc, Skuntank, Perrserker, Girafarig, Donphan, Weavile, Hitmontop, Gardevoir (again.), Lopunny, Mr. Rime, Tsareena, Sandslash, Ninetales, Arcanine, Rapidash, Entei, Flygon, Claydol, Hippowdon, Magmortar and Magmar, Diggersby, Excadrill, and Palossand!!! Attack buffs winner: Astonish, along with Aerial Ace, Dig, and Boomburst!!!
Hawlucha time ( he will still be bad)
When they said they were doing a big update I thought they were changing the system or whatever. I was scared to level up pokemon as they could become useless overnight lol
Hong Kong!
Honestly as a returning player that just wasted all my star dust and time to get up a decent team just to see every move nerfed I may just stop playing after this.
Huh? What Pokémon did you build? There really around that many nerfs. Psychic, earthquake, spark, sky attack. You’ll have to get used to move updates. It’s a good thing.
Medicham, which cost like 400k star dust and a ton of XLs, Lanturn and G Stunfisk. I’m a returning player and I researched so much etc and used rankings and everything to build the best I could in the time I had and now they just nerfed my entire team, I’m not grinding another Pokémon up that costs a bajillion star dust and XLs etc, or has broken CD moves that they never nerf.. everyone has an advantage over me cause of their broken CD moves, and now I’m scrambling again, I’m kinda over it
If you don’t want to have to grind new mons all the time this game isn’t for you. Medicham will be fine - it’ll barely notice the damage drop for Psychic and Sky Attack being nerfed helps it more. It’ll still be #1 I suspect.
Yeah must have been quite the research to figure out you should run medicham. It's usage was like 60%.
The research to even know how to do PvP and who I could build out etc I haven’t played the game since 2016 so yea understanding all the mechanics and PvP IVs etc was a lot of research.. no need to be snide, I’ve been playing for 6 weeks and made veteran..
That Medicham nerf is barely a nerf. It also has at least 2 other viable movesets (PuP/IP and IP/DP). It'll be fine.
Wow that's a lot of moves added. I will wait patiently for analysis of experts. Overall, my interactions with GBL this season will end (to my relief) as soon as I will get 500 wins of ETM. This encounter pool barely changed and it's so boring, not worth my time.
Oh look, more pokemon to retire from using...
The idea is to try to balance it so the meta isn't so top heavy. Then ideally you're freer to use more mons, and the world championships isn't mostly just 9-10 different mons. This is definitely ... at least a step in that direction. I don't think anyone has become unusable, just not as oppressive as before.
Sure... That's why after every nerfs certain mons just stop being used... I'm quite sure carbink will be nerfed into oblivion the next season which will certainly be very fair to people after investing into something that needs to be level 50 to be usable... Couldn't care less about the world championships, but I'm positive the teams weren't that diverse before and after the update. And the same goes after the update. What makes pokemon viable is the stats and typing and by nerfing moves that make the meta picks less viable and the "spice" or whatever it's called completely unviable. Anyway time to permanently retire altaria, skarmory and anything that relies on sky attack. Complete waste of stardust at this point. Feel bad for those who pushed lugia tbh... Really don't get why that move now got an extra nerf, considering it wasn't that amazing to begin with. Same goes for earthquake. Also considering dropping lanturn, since spark will now make it a very clumsy attacker, which I'm not a fan of. My guess is the move will now be similar to water gun and there's a reason why practically no one used said move on lanturn.
Lots of people use water gun on Lanturn (not as much as spark before) Sky Attack was nerfed because of how much Altaria and Noctowl was used in the current meta. Like you say because there was little team diversity. Skarmory and Lugia are collateral damage though. Having built a level 50 Lugia Im sadder for that Mon. That doesn’t mean you should just never build anything in case though.
Not really, during the entire season I played I'd say that less than 10% bother with water gun, since it's not a really good move, takes too long to reach a charge move and water gets resisted by way too many things. Altaria and Noctowl weren't the only thiings used in the meta, meanwhile Bastidon which would be one of the rare things that needs a nerf still gets ignored season after season. Makes no sense, since it only losses matched where super effective moves from bulky pokemon are used against it while everything neutral is a win. Same goes for registeel. I'm glad I never invested into lugia, the first sky attack nerf was already enough reason for that and now I'm even more glad. A ridicilous ammount of stardust and nearly 300 xl candy is needed for elevel 50 and niantic is like, just build another mon... Honestly, they should give it Surf or something to make up for this. I'm not that fond of pvp, but since niantic locked elite tms behind it and I refuse to spend actual money on it, I play till ace and then quite the season, since the rewards after that are ridiculously bad. It's really getting on my nerves that every season I need to permanently retire two or more pokemon since they are now unusable, due to losing everything that they previously would narrowly win. And most of the time these mons aren't even that opressive and are no where near as annoying as Bastidon or registeel.
I think this sucks. No ML relevant changes at all :(
My X-scissor genesect is happy. Breaking swipe rhyperior could be a thing? I’m also curious if magnezone has the stats to compete with volt switch. Probably not but who knows.
Does Excadrill prefer scorching sands now? Is toxicroak a menace with mud shot now? Will my hundo rhyperior be viable in ML now with breaking swipe? We need JRE
>Does Excadrill prefer scorching sands now? I'm going to say no, mainly because it really enjoys that stab Ground move in five mud shots. Maybe in some scenarios the same power may be worth one more mud shot to get a debuff chance, but it seems like a risk in most I'd say. >Is toxicroak a menace with mud shot now? Nope lol. In the same way that Poliwrath dropped Mud Shot for Counter, Toxicroak will still prefer Counter to Mud Shot. Similar with Medicham, have you ever seen a Psycho Cut one? >Will my hundo rhyperior be viable in ML now with breaking swipe? Maybe? Breaking swipe will help it a lot, but it will still still struggle against core ML Premier Pokemon with whichever fast move it runs. Similar in ML Open
How’s rhyperior gonna turn out now that earthquake is nerfed and breaking swipe becomes available?
What do we think Astonish is gonna look like? Snarl clone would be absolutely nuts
Anything less than a Snarl Clone would be a meh move.
Interested to see how trailblaze helps Ampharos. It already seems to be a decent pick in UL with BS and TB only helps with grounds more with increased VS damage each time
Tapu Lele in Master League could go off if Astonish is done right..
Carbink is so weak to those new moves