vikingboybilly asks:

If diamond is harder than steel, shouldn’t the rock and steel weakness/resistance to each other be reversed?

I see no compelling reason for it, unless we believe a) that Rock Pokémon are made of diamonds or something equally hard, b) that Steel Pokémon are made of ordinary carbon steel and not some kind of bizarre bio-alloy, and c) that Mohs’ hardness is a good indicator of how a Pokémon’s body holds up under the diverse stresses of battle. On the other hand, I see no compelling reason for the way that relationship works currently either, and Steel-types have too many damn resistances anyway, so sure, go nuts.

Anonymous asks:

More than once, I’ve seen you complain about how gen 4 didn’t simply switch Sceptile’s physical and special attack stats. Are there any other pokemon who you think should be fixed simply by having some of their base stats changed or switched? That was never a solution you brought up in your Top 10 Worst Pokemon, and while I know it’s a bit of an uncreative solution, for several pokemon it’s the only plausible solution.

Hmm. Well, I think the Pokémon on that list need a good deal more than that – most of them do actually have attack stats that match their movepools reasonably well, if memory serves; the problem is that both are awful. I’m not sure I’ve every really thought that about any other Pokémon. Sceptile is sort of a special case because there’s a flavour/aesthetic component to it. Sceptile looks and feels like he should be a physical attacker, but he isn’t because the designers loaded him up with moves that push the limits of what makes sense in generation III mechanics – moves that, like Sceptile, look and feel physical but were actually special at the time because of their type, like Leaf Blade and Dragon Claw. I don’t know if there’s any other Pokémon that had quite the same experience of that transition; the vast majority of them came out better off. Sceptile is just weird because it seems like they deliberately statted him up to work with the quirks of the pre-generation IV mechanics that Pokémon like Absol, Feraligatr and Sneasel were stuck trying to work against.

Anonymous asks:

Would you ever consider dong reviews for Mega Evolutions like you did with the new Pokemon from Unoba and Kalos

Eh. To be honest with you I’m not really interested in individual Mega Evolutions, because I tend to be most interested in the way Pokémon fit into the world/environment/society/etc as species, and in the case of Mega Evolved Pokémon, much of the point is that they resolutely just don’t. As a general concept I think it’s worth rambling about at length – and I have – but at the moment something like that is not really on my radar at all.

vikingboybilly asks:

I think the problem with hail is that it gives benefits ONLY to ice types, whereas the other weathers splash around benefits to electric, grass, ground and steel types. Any ideas to give other types advantages in hail?

It doesn’t even benefit Ice-types, really, so much as not disadvantage them… that is, unless they have Blizzard, Ice Body or Snow Cloak. I sort of think it would make sense to add something analogous to Sandstorm’s bonus for Rock-types and say that Hail gives Ice-types +50% physical defence. It’s hard to think of anything that makes thematic sense with Hail as a benefit for types other than Ice, though, which is probably why Game Freak has never done it. You might be able to come up with something that makes sense for Water-types, I suppose, but they already have bonuses from rain, so screw them. You could, however, make the penalties more severe for some types in particular – defence penalties for Rock and Steel, for instance, on the grounds that rapid cooling makes materials more brittle, which would add more to Hail’s ability to wear opponents down. Or perhaps Hail could do more damage to Pokémon that are weak to Ice attacks, which gives a bit more variance to how teams with different compositions are affected by it. At the moment the only real way to build a Hail team is to put several Ice-types on it, but if there are some Pokémon who are weakened significantly more than most by Hail, there will be others who are in a position to take advantage of that.

Anonymous asks:

Attack and Sp Attack are not great stats. A special attacker doesn’t use physical attacks, so why do they need any points in Attack? Mixed attackers are generally less efficient at doing their job without speed or bulk to protect them. Do you think there could be more added to these stats to make them more useful so that a Pokemon like Absol and Cacturne don’t have massive dead weight stats that they aren’t using.

Hrrrmm. Well, I do see your point. Mixed attackers have kinda been on a downward slide for the last couple of generations thanks to the gradually increasing options for getting overwhelming power in a single attack stat (particularly now that we have mega evolution). Flexibility is great, but that’s what your teammates are for. And because Game Freak seem to use a Pokémon’s base stat total as a rough guide for how powerful they want it to be, a Pokémon like, for instance, Arbok is wasting a limited number of notional ‘points’ by having 65 base special attack instead of 15; Arbok isn’t going to use special attacks anyway. The trouble is that this is, in theory, a way of helping Pokémon who, like Absol, have moderate scores in attack stats that they will never use… but what could you possibly add to special attack that wouldn’t be just as helpful to Alakazam? My instinct here is that, whatever you try, odds are good you’ll wind up with exactly the same situation as we have now – strongly preferring one stat is still better, just for slightly different reasons. You probably wind up nerfing all defensive Pokémon, but I don’t think this is your intent. The best I can come up with to address this would be such a radical change I’m not even sure I’d want to do it – namely, replace the strict division of physical and special with a spectrum, so that you can have 100% special attacks like Psychic at one end, 100% physical attacks like Close Combat at the other, and a bunch of mixed ones like Thunderpunch being 40% special or Flare Blitz being 20% special. Like I said though, that changes the game so radically as to make it unrecognisable.

I think it’s also worth noting that, if you’re not in a competitive online setting – that is, if you’re just playing through your game, and not paying all that much attention to EV training – then the flexibility of mixed physical/special sets is a significantly bigger deal. Sometimes the difference between a Pokémon who flat out cannot do something and a Pokémon who is merely not very good at it can be much greater than it is on the competitive scene.

Anonymous asks:

Bunch of random thoughts on my favorite type, Poison? I think some simple tweaks, that also make logical sense, would make the type much more balanced: poison should be super effective on water(cause toxins affect aquatic animals more strongly), and the poison status effect should sharply lower special attack(analogous to burn). Maybe throw in effectiveness on bug and resistance to dark? Also, what do you think of the idea of a Poison/Fire legendary that creates oil spills and sets fire to them?

Poison, Poison, Poison…

Poison is underrated, I think. Like, everyone knows Poison attacks are terrible, but Poison as a type, defensively, is actually really good; just ask Weezing. Making all of those changes would make Poison much too strong, I think – but making it super-effective on Water types probably wouldn’t be too much, and it’s thematically appropriate. As for the poison status… well, thematically burns weaken your physical attacks because they make movement painful and make the affected parts of your body tender; I guess you might justify an equivalent special attack penalty from poison by claiming that the poison damages concentration or something? But I think thematically I would prefer just making all poison “toxic” to bump it up to the level of other status effects. For the attacks that currently cause that status (Toxic, Poison Fang, potentially Toxic Spikes), give them a head start on the damage ramping – start at 1/8 of the target’s HP on the first turn instead of 1/16. The legendary Pokémon could be interesting; I think I’d be inclined to see it as a sort of souped-up Muk, an avatar of industrial pollution, which potentially comes with some interesting territory to explore – if something is born out of toxic waste or oil spills, does that make it evil, or mean that it doesn’t have the same rights as other Pokémon? Does it spread pollution itself, or does it actually wipe out oil spills by burning them away, and what is its overall impact on the environment? Mechanically, what could also be neat there is a signature move along the lines of a Fire-type Venoshock – fire damage, with a bonus on poisoned targets (much stronger than Venoshock though, obviously).

Anonymous asks:

What would you say to wonder guard gaining an additional magic guard effect?

Well, it might make Shedinja suck less, and I’d be in favour of that… but the thing about Shedinja and Wonder Guard is that, because it’s so all-or-nothing, it’s almost impossible to balance. If your opponents can consistently damage it, it’s completely worthless. If your opponents can’t consistently damage it, it’s horrendously overpowered, until people wise up and start building their teams so that they can. There’s no middle ground. I don’t think changing the list of things that can insta-kill Shedinja actually helps much. Maybe if Wonder Guard worked differently – like if, in addition to its existing effect, it reduced all damage Shedinja does take to 1, and then Shedinja could be given more than one hit point (something like 3 or 5)… I feel like, at that point, you have more variables involved and more capacity to fine-tune the ability (by giving Shedinja a different number of hit points). But that’s just me brainstorming.

Anonymous asks:

Good news, Kricketune found his niche! I saw this really cool strategy in doubles of pairing Kricketune with Cresselia. This takes advantage of Focus Sash, Protect, Endeavor, and Perish Song under the effects of Trick Room to easily clear your opponent’s Pokemon.

What exactly does Kricketune specifically add to that? Wigglytuff and Marowak also get both Endeavour and Perish Song, are faster than Kricketune under Trick Room, are significantly tougher than Kricketune (although I’m not sure whether that matters in the context of this strategy) and have more useful abilities. I mean, major props to whoever found a way to make Kricketune useful, but without more details I kinda suspect there are still other Pokémon who would do it better, even for something as specific and contrived as this.

brick3621 asks:

Are there any particular features from previous Pokémon games (like walking Pokémon or mid-battle dialogue) that aren’t in Gen VI that you miss?

Well, to be perfectly honest, I have trouble thinking of any features like that at all – which I suppose means that I don’t miss them, whatever they are. It would be nice to bring back the walking Pokémon from Heart Gold and Soul Silver, now that you mention it; they were a nice touch. I can imagine it being a bit of a drain on the graphic designers’ time and energy in the 3D world of generation VI, though. The hilarious glitches from Red and Blue give the games a certain je ne sais quoi…

vikingboybilly asks:

Do you think the pseudo-legendaries could be nerfed? I think it’s weird that dragonite’s BST is higher than the legendary birds.

I think it’s very unlikely. Game Freak almost never directly nerfs Pokémon, and the base stat totals of those particular classes of Pokémon have been regularised for so long that it’s pretty obvious they don’t think it’s weird.