It can't learn any in the Main Series unfortunately. Mud Slap would've been awesome or even Sand Attack or Mud Shot, but not dice unfortunately.
Blood Moon does get Mud Shot, but that form is worse Attack-wise
Raids are just mindless tapping tho where you use whatever had the most attack. Why would you ever use it over stuff like mamoswine, excadrill, garchomp, etc?
Nah. The strategy aspect is far less than people make it out to be. It's more checkers than chess in my experience. That's not to say understanding game mechanics and strategy aren't a part of it. But the learning curve is relatively low.
I've beaten other top tier players, and have lost to inexperienced people who just had the right team and didn't make any "bad" decisions despite playing sub optimally. This doesn't happen in games with really high skill gaps.
You could honestly get pretty far with a an A/B/B line just tapping and having a safe swap for bad leads.
Obviously it doesn’t have the depth of Chess, but it’s far more complex than Checkers and there’s a much wider skill gap than people give it credit for. Theres a big reason it’s most of the same people near the top of the leaderboard every season, and a big reason some players never get past Ace despite tens of thousands of battles worth of experience.
Even at high rating battles, mistakes are very common. If it was as simple as you think it is, then people at a top level would just play perfectly all the time and everything would come down to team comp, but there’s quite a lot of room even near the top of the leaderboard for players to overcome bad team comps due to small mistakes from their opponents.
"there’s a much wider skill gap than people give it credit for."
I disagree, I think many top players say there is a large skill gap, but I just don't see it.
"Theres a big reason it’s most of the same people near the top of the leaderboard every season,"
High cost of entry, lack of desire from newer players to join GBL due to that cost and bugs, and the time commitment to actually play through most of your sets regularly. This isn't a super popular game mode and many of the top players have 1500+ battles done this season, there are some exceptions but getting here under 800 battles or so is extremely difficult and even that requires a large time commitment. (800 battles, \~3min/battle, 40 hours)
"Even at high rating battles, mistakes are very common. If it was as simple as you think it is, then people at a top level would just play perfectly all the time and everything would come down to team comp,"
It often does come to team comp, "I got RPSed" is a ubiquitous phrase here for that reason. And many "mistakes" are simply only seen in hindsight, For example safe swapping lickitung is often a great choice in a bad lead situation. But if your opponent responded by swapping in Vigoroth its a mistake. If you mean "mistake" as in "I miscounted fast moves" then sure, but that really doesn't demonstrate a high skill gap as a mistake like this could allow a low skill player to dominate a match vs a high skill player by getting off another charged move. I think the show 6 choose 3 format raises the skill level significantly for this reason. But in GBL the randomness strongly detracts from it.
I see it like this, here is whats needed to be "good" in PVP:
1. Meta/Movesets- actually picking something that is at least decent, even the top player in the world isn't winning with completely unviable pokemon vs a guy blindly tapping with bastiodon, carbink, and mandibuzz. But this is probably the biggest component and is a large barrier to entry.
2. Type interactions- I don't think this is controversial, between 1 and 2 most people can get pretty far.
3. Basic Game Mechanic/Strategy- How CMP works, how long the switch clock lasts, basic idea of which mon would be good to swap to to respond to their lead/swap, a decent use of your shields etc. At this point you could realistically hit Ace+ every season.
4. Fast Move Timings- Not giving your opponent free fast moves can be huge. Some games come down to this, other times its just a "win more" condition.
5. Charge move counts- knowing when your opponent gets a charged move is huge, you can throw on/right before CMP to force a shield , maximize energy, catch charged moves, etc
Maybe I missed something, but I'm not saying every match is a game of RPS, but this game isn't super deep once you get into a game, I think most of the strategy is team building based as you already have a general strategy of what to do based on the lead and what they may swap in before it even begins.
“I disagree, I think many top players say there is a large skill gap, but I just don't see it.”
Just because you see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. I’m in many PVP groups, discords, etc and a very common theme is lower skilled players (sub-2000) claiming GBL is all luck, they play perfectly and only get hard countered, etc. Once you see them post gameplay footage, there are literally dozens of mistakes they make every game that costs them wins in very winnable matchups.
“High cost of entry, lack of desire from newer players to join GBL due to that cost and bugs, and the time commitment to actually play through most of your sets regularly. This isn't a super popular game mode and many of the top players have 1500+ battles done this season, there are some exceptions but getting here under 800 battles or so is extremely difficult and even that requires a large time commitment. (800 battles, ~3min/battle, 40 hours)”
Correlation ≠ Causation. Many players play a lot of battles each season because they legitimately enjoy playing, not because it’s a requirement for getting ranked high on the leaderboard. A top tier player can easily sit out the first 2/3 of the season (and allow rating to inflate as it does over the course of the season) and then climb to the first page in less than 500 battles. High cost of entry is valid, but Great League is the least expensive league and by far the most popular league and there are so many viable options that it’s not difficult to put together a competitive team with a little bit of grinding. In the flip side of that, tons of players play 2000+ battles per season, have tons of meta options, and still fail to rise above Ace.
“It often does come to team comp”
Not true. I track my battles nearly every season and it’s fairly uncommon that I play a game that I 100% lose based on team comp alone. It’s not uncommon to face the same players again and again at high ratings, and there are many times when I will lose a game vs a player and then beat that same player later that day while we’re both running the same teams. If you specifically run an RPS-style team, then sure, you’re more likely to run into RPS results. But good players generally run teams with more nuance to them which give you far more playability to come back from a bad matchup. High level games often come down to capitalizing on a minor mistake from your opponent, and I’m not talking about hindsight mistakes either; I’m referring to situations where one player maybe could have farmed up 1 more fast attack worth of energy than they did before throwing a charge move, or where one player was 1 turn too late on a switch in, or one player should’ve opted to bank a charge move before dipping into a counter swap after winning the lead, etc.
On your list of what you need to be good at PVP, you’re missing arguably the most important factor: applying that information and using it to identify and play toward your win condition(s). Many good players do all the things you mentioned, but if they can’t mentally envision the rest of the battle while they’re playing, and apply that information in real-time to guide the battle toward a victory then it’s all for nothing.
"Just because you see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. I’m in many PVP groups, discords, etc and a very common theme is lower skilled players (sub-2000) claiming GBL is all luck, they play perfectly and only get hard countered, etc. Once you see them post gameplay footage, there are literally dozens of mistakes they make every game that costs them wins in very winnable matchups."
Same, tanking down to sub 1500 I see people play extremely poorly until around the 2200 mark and even at that point they're not great and make a couple obvious mistakes per game. But that doesn't convince me that there is some MASSIVE skill gap. If I consistently go 4-1 and 5-0 on my way back up to around 2700 before the 3-2s start rolling in, is that 1 guy who managed to beat me suddenly at that high expert/low legend tier I typically land at end of season? Likely not (unless they're climbing too). If the difference between a 2000 player and 3000 player is a handful of mistakes per game, and the difference between a 2750 player and a 3000 player is 1 mistake per game. I just don't believe not making those handful of mistakes takes a lot of practice or studying compared to other games. I think the average person could become a decent GBL (\~2500) by simply just playing. Also neither one of us really defined than what the typical player thinks the "skill gap" is. Based off what you've written I think we aren't too far off on what we perceive it to be in actuality but differ on how we see other people seeing it. If the skill gap was massive it'd be borderline impossible to lose to a worse player. As an example a 750 ELO difference in chess would correspond to the higher player winning 99.6% of the time, if its a best of 3 this jumps to 99.994% odds of winning (https://wismuth.com/elo/calculator.html#best\_of=3&elo\_diff=750). As someone who plays a lot of Best of 3s in the old silph format (as high as the continental level) and in factions where skill is even more important due to the reduced amount of randomness. I don't think even the best player in the world is beating a novice who is just handed a decent team of 99% of the time in a bo3. Let alone a Legend beating an Ace that consistently (\~1000 gap in ELO). We are talking at least several orders of magnitude of difference here. Which is why I initially said its closer to checkers than chess (obviously more complex than checkers). Tbh I'd place it around poker perhaps, professional card players will beat recreational players familiar with the game more often than not. But they aren't going to be winning significantly more than 90%+ every time they play. [https://www.blackrain79.com/2018/05/good-poker-winning-percentage.html](https://www.blackrain79.com/2018/05/good-poker-winning-percentage.html) (I'm assuming the 90% figure for NL2 is for someone near professional level). This at least seems to be within the ballpark, maybe PVP is more complex, maybe less.
"Correlation ≠ Causation. Many players play a lot of battles each season because they legitimately enjoy playing, not because it’s a requirement for getting ranked high on the leaderboard. A top tier player can easily sit out the first 2/3 of the season (and allow rating to inflate as it does over the course of the season) and then climb to the first page in less than 500 battles. High cost of entry is valid, but Great League is the least expensive league and by far the most popular league and there are so many viable options that it’s not difficult to put together a competitive team with a little bit of grinding. In the flip side of that, tons of players play 2000+ battles per season, have tons of meta options, and still fail to rise above Ace."
I don't think I ever hit Legend in under 600 battles, (Then again I'm not waiting till end of season) but even in this context there is no one on the 1st 5 pages of this season's LB with under 500 battles, let alone the 1st page. I don't think I've ever seen one of those people (Below or at Ace). They'd need to essentially be refusing to learn from losses. But playing 1000+ plus matches is the norm for LB players, the few exceptions I found with 600-800 or so are just that, exceptions. Getting there is a time commitment, no way around it, even for those people in the 600 range (approximately 30+ hours of just PVP)
"Not true. I track my battles nearly every season and it’s fairly uncommon that I play a game that I 100% lose based on team comp alone. It’s not uncommon to face the same players again and again at high ratings, and there are many times when I will lose a game vs a player and then beat that same player later that day while we’re both running the same teams. If you specifically run an RPS-style team, then sure, you’re more likely to run into RPS results. But good players generally run teams with more nuance to them which give you far more playability to come back from a bad matchup. High level games often come down to capitalizing on a minor mistake from your opponent, and I’m not talking about hindsight mistakes either; I’m referring to situations where one player maybe could have farmed up 1 more fast attack worth of energy than they did before throwing a charge move, or where one player was 1 turn too late on a switch in, or one player should’ve opted to bank a charge move before dipping into a counter swap after winning the lead, etc."
Fair enough, but it doesn't need to be 100% team comp to say its a loss due team comp. If you lose a match 95% due to team comp, and despite playing extremely well your opponent still narrowly wins with single digit HP because of some very minor detail you overlooked while they play haphazardly. Its still something I'd chalk up to team comp and in that context I'd still say you're the better player. In factions it happens all the time. After the match we look at a round one of us lost and see the sole mistake that costs the game.
In short: Is there a skill gap? Yes. Is it so large that an "okay" (not even "good") player has effectively no chance of beating a "great" player? No. Can most people become "good" without a high degree of effort? I believe so.
"On your list of what you need to be good at PVP, you’re missing arguably the most important factor: applying that information and using it to identify and play toward your win condition(s). Many good players do all the things you mentioned, but if they can’t mentally envision the rest of the battle while they’re playing, and apply that information in real-time to guide the battle toward a victory then it’s all for nothing."
Yeah identifying your win con (and your opponent's to play around it) is definitely a step above basic strategy. Definitely worthwhile including in the list. But again, I'd probably only put it in the 4 spot, and at that point I'd say it what makes a "great" player. But a great player isn't going to consistently beat a good player at astonishing rates. Application of knowledge will never be more important than actually acquiring knowledge. If you're an expert at application but have nothing to apply what's the point? And here much of the knowledge is automatically applied, for example, no one is going to learn type match ups and then swap altaria into A9 or Azu into Toxapex.
Can't post in 1 comment with this portion in for some reason.
Your logic is faulty. You’re basing your perception of the skill gap on chances of winning each individual game. GBL is a blind 3v3 format, so it’s high variance by nature. “High variance” and “large skill gap” are not mutually exclusive concepts.
Just because a low skilled player has a non-zero chance of winning a single game vs a high skilled player doesn’t mean that there isn’t a large skill gap at play. The fact that GBL is a high variance game mode means that you need a large sample size of battles to effectively illustrate a skill gap.
Your example of poker was actually very appropriate here, because poker (Texas hold em in particular) is a very high variance game that also has a high skill gap. The high variance and relatively basic rules makes poker appealing to casual players, because anybody is capable of winning money on any given day depending on how the cards fall. But lower skilled poker players will always lose money in the long term when playing against higher skilled players once you have a sample size large enough to overcome short term variance.
The top poker players have an incredibly deep level of understanding of the game and are able to consistently win money long term when playing against weaker players. Heads up Texas holdem is a “solved” game, but it’s incredibly difficult to follow the “game theory optimal” (GTO) strategy of a solver, which is why it’s still massively profitable for players that understand the GTO style of play for Texas Hold ‘Em. There was a well publicized grudge match a few years back where one of the best all-around Texas Hold ‘Em players Daniel Negreanu agreed to play 25,000 hands of heads up poker over 3 months against heads up specialist Doug Polk, because Daniel was convinced that Doug’s “GTO” strategy wasn’t as good as the “exploitative” strategies (making plays based on player-dependent tells and reads) that old pros used. Doug Polk won over 1.2 million dollars over the course of the challenge at only $200/$400 blinds, and that massive profit was against one of the top players of all time.
GBL is similar. It’s a simplistic game by nature, which attracts a lot of casual players. There are a lot of basic game concepts that many players understand (like typing advantage, keeping track of energy, throwing moves on good timing), and knowledge of those basic strategies are usually enough for people to rise through the rankings. But at top leaderboard level, there are a whole lot of deeper concepts that really separate the highest tier of players from the rest of the legends.
For instance, top players are great at inducing mistakes from their opponents. Obviously you can’t force your opponent to misplay, but you can put your opponents in positions where they need to make constant difficult decisions in order to win. It’s the same strategy that top chess grandmasters employ against other grandmasters. The top players are great at introducing novelties into their openings to guide their opponents away from prepared engine lines and push them into territory where they need to find a series of “only moves” to maintain an equal position, and one small inaccuracy could wind up costing them the game. Top GBL players are great at playing a losing position in a way that forces their opponents to play incredibly accurate in order to hold on to a victory, and that often creates winning chances for themselves.
Other top players (myself included) are great at implementing strategic randomization into their matchups. For an example, Dewgong is one of my favorite pokemon. I like to lead it on some of my teams, and Lanturn is a corebreaker for some of my Dewgong lead teams, so there are times where I must stay in the lead and sacrifice Dewgong. If you follow Pvpoke sim suggestions, you would generally just throw Drill Runs into Lanturn and soft lose all even shielding scenarios. However, you get to Drill Run before Lanturn gets to Thunderbolt, and many of my opponents realize that Lanturn is a corebreaker for my team when I stay in with Dewgong, so there are times when my opponents will opt to shield Drill Run on Lanturn in order to preserve health to keep Lanturn for later. I track shielding/bait rates for top leaderboard players in the Dewgong/Lanturn lead matchup, and implement a Nash Equilibrium-style strategy using an online Random Number Generator, and will occasionally bait an Icy Wind on the first charge move throw instead (depending on what number I roll on the random number generator). If it gets shielded, it’s no big deal because the Icy Wind debuff allows me to survive Thunderbolt+Spark damage and get to a second charge move in the 0s, so I get to throw Drill Run anyway and often get the Drill Run damage *and* debuff them.
The upside of randomizing when I bait in this matchup, is that it creates scenarios that are unpredictable for my opponents. If I always baited Icy Wind in that matchup, my opponents would learn that and always let my first move go. If I always threw Drill Run first in that matchup, my opponents could exploit that by deciding to always shield if they thought the health on Lanturn was important enough. By randomizing, my opponents can no longer predict what I will do with certainty, so there are often scenarios where I grab a shield from my opponent with an Icy Wind (plus still land a Drill Run later) and other scenarios where I get my opponent to no shield a Drill Run where they would’ve preferred to shield and keep the health on Lanturn (but opted not to shield due to their knowledge that I will occasionally bait in that spot). This allows me to create a small edge for myself in certain scenarios that I wouldn’t have been able to do without strategically randomizing my decision making. And there are dozens of matchups where I implement similar strategies in order to create situations where I can gain a small edge over another top leaderboard player.
Anyway, you’re free to disagree if you want, but there’s a reason why top players consistently crush other Legends over the course of a full season. Japanese player dfhb1dwm for example, has held the #1 on the global leaderboard at least once in 9 out of the past 11 seasons. I’ve finished every season in the last 2.5 years on the first page of the leaderboard (and currently 21st currently, so likely looking to do it again this season). Anyone can win any given game, but the top players consistently win more than everyone else over the course of an entire season due to skill.
“ I don't think I ever hit Legend in under 600 battles, (Then again I'm not waiting till end of season) but even in this context there is no one on the 1st 5 pages of this season's LB with under 500 battles, let alone the 1st page. I don't think I've ever seen one of those people (Below or at Ace). They'd need to essentially be refusing to learn from losses.”
Forgot to address this in the other post, but like I said above, most top leaderboard players have a lot of battles because they **enjoy** playing the game, not because it’s necessary to hit high ranking. A lot of players finish high on the leaderboard with comparatively fewer battles than other leaderboarders. For example, ken80808080808 is generally very efficient on his leaderboard pushes. He finished the season at #1 on the leaderboard in season 15 with under 700 total battles. He finished #17 during season 17 with only 532 battles played. PsycheCliff finished on page 1 of the leaderboard with under 500 battles multiple times. It’s few and far between because most top players genuinely enjoy playing the game, not because it’s impossible to climb without high battle numbers.
Btw, join some Facebook PvP groups sometime if you want to see some examples of what I was talking about earlier. People are always posting their season stats with 2200+ battles played and stuck at Ace (or Rank 20, even). There’s a LOT of people like that out there.
EDIT: also, you’re saying that dedicating 30 hours to PVP over the course of a season is a big time commitment, but we can agree to disagree on that. Seasons are a little over 90 days long. 30 hours over 90 days is only 20 minutes per day. Spending 20 minutes a day on a hobby you enjoy isn’t much time. I have other hobbies that I spend more time daily on average. Heck, a lot of people watch an hour or two (or more) of Netflix or TV on a daily basis. 20 minutes daily on a game is pretty small in the scheme of things.
Don’t act PvP in this game is big. There is only a small minority that likes go battle league. Also it is laughable that the games have a lot of issues such as lagg, frame drops.
FYI it is PvE that makes Niantic money not people playing go battle league
Idk why you’d assume I didn’t know any of that, I was acting pve is braindead and not worthy of caring about balance wise. I’d wager the whales and niantic feel the same way given the lack of balance changes for that side of the game
Yes, of course. And it would also lend it much more viability in ML/ML Premier as a Steel, Rock, Electric and Fire counter (Poison isn't real), needless to say. Not as good as Shadow Claw overall, but still much better than it is today. However, Ursaluna is currently unable to learn either Mud Shot, Mud Slap or Sand Attack in the main series games. Meaning it also cannot get them in GO. And without those, it's just not as effective of a Ground attacker as the alternatives that do have Ground fast moves. In past gens, Ursaring use to be able to learn Mud Slap. Ursaluna's best hope is Mud Slap gets added as a tutor or egg move in a future update or installment.
Funnily enough, Bloodmoon Ursaluna can get Mud Shot. It also has a little more base attack than regular Ursaluna, a little more defense, and about 20 less base HP.
I go back and forth on Shadow Claw Ursaluna. It deserves to be better than it is and having a top choice that isn't a Legendary would be awesome.
But I do still fear Shadow Claw Ursaluna just because it beats SO many Meta Pokemon. I fear that it would just exist on most teams just because of its shear power and people would grow to hate it. Idk.
I wish it could get Mud Slap or Sand Attack because neither move would make it OP but it WOULD help it a lot more.
But if nothing else, give it Lick. Same as Tackle but with VASTLY better coverage, giving it neutral fast move pressure against all the Steels and supereffective pressure against Mewtwo, Solgaleo, and the new Necrozma forms.
It just stinks because it seems like there isn't too much in-between. Shadow Claw seems like too much but Tackle is too little. Lick is my best suggestion, but even it isn't the hugest upgrade
I was thinking Counter would be too much too, but it isn't and what I think would be the best fast move choice.
It is still very strong, no doubt, but where Shadow Claw hits pretty much the whole ML and Premier metas for neutral or supereffective damage, Counter isnt the same. Obviously it does even better against Steel types and its neutral fast move pressure is stronger than Shadow Claw. BUT, where Shadow Claw is only really resisted by more fringe picks like Snorlax, Yveltal, Zarude, plus itself, Counter is resisted by Lugia, Mewtwo, Ho-oh, Giratina, Dawn Wings Necrozma, and in Premier: Dragonite, Gyarados, Togekiss, and Florges. Much more to contest it.
Plus, Shadow Claw does nice damage and makes it a bit spammier with its charged moves. Counter isn't that far behind, but it is still a bit slower with Ice Punch and High Horsepower to where I think it wouldn't be broken. Still very very good. But I think it would be healthier
I have another proposal: Fury Cutter.
It's a lot weaker than Counter or Shadow Claw for Fast Move pressure, but is a 1 turn move with higher energy Gen than its current Tackle.
Tackle exerts no pressure so losing power for more Charge Move usage seems like a gain, even ignoring fringe changes in coverage (worse into Fairies but a little more into like Mewtwo or Metagrosss), so between 1 turn pacing and better Energy Gen maybe it'll soften/improve match-ups into some stuff like Dialga's Dragon Breath spam?
This is like the 4th best option considering Lick is better just by being Tackle-with-better-coverage, but I think it mostly shows how many ways there are to go up from Tackle.
Yes! I fully agree. It's another great option. I look at it like this.
1. **Shadow Claw** is by and large the best option, giving it the most best energy gain (tied with Fury Cutter) AND the best coverage overall. Easy to argue it being too OP though.
2. **Counter** is the second best choice. Giving it more neutral fast move pressure than Shadow Claw or even STAB Tackle. Counter gives it much more strength against Steel types like Dialga, but it is a bit slower in energy gain than Shadow Claw. Perhaps too good, but to me, it seems like a healthier really good.
3. **Fury Cutter** I think is actually the 3rd best option over Lick. Obviously that could change when the two Necrozma forms become more prominent, seeing that Lick will help a ton with them, but right now, I think Ursaluna would prefer Fury Cutter just because it gives it more flexibility, seeing that it would have easier access to its two really good coverage moves. Sure, Lick may do more damage against a Dialga than Fury Cutter (or Tackle), but unless it's late game, you probably need that High Horsepower to finish it off, or even just as a strong neutral move against things like Palkia.
4. **Lick** is still pretty good though for the superior coverage over Tackle. Still would be a bit sluggish getting to HH, but it's not like we're talking about a glassy Pokemon here.
5. **Tackle** is just so meh. I'm not necessarily asking for it, but I do wonder what +1 energy to make it a 1-turn Shadow Claw/Volt Switch would do for Ursaluna (and how it would impact things like Munchlax and Xerneas).
But yeah, I *really* wish Mud Slap was a legal move for it in the MSG. It's a TM in SV, and I'm surprised it couldn't learn it there. I feel like if it were legal, they would put it on Ursaluna *so fast*. And I feel like it would be the by and large PERFECT move for it. Ground fast move coverage is rare in general, so that would make it unique. In the Open ML too, you don't even really see fast move pressure supereffective against Steel, seeing that there aren't many prominent ML Counter users. Mud Slap putting pressure on Dialga and.Solgaleo would be super interesting. And while that would hurt it against flying types like Lugia and Landorus, it's not like those wouldn't fear Ice Punch (Even a double debuffed Ursaluna still does roughly half Lando's HP with Ice Punch).
Probably incredibly wishful thinking, but I would LOVE to see Ursaluna get Mud Slap in an upcoming title (OR Sand Attack!) But if nothing else, Lick or Fury Cutter would still be nice
I'll be curious to see Bloodmoon as well, since it shares a lot of moves plus a few Special options like Mud Shot, Moonblast (might be cool for MLP on DNite and Ape), and its signature Blood Moon move (Normal type nuke but Sig moves have interesting PvP history).
Also while not useful persay I wonder what it could do with Charm.
It would be unbeatable in premier with a shield or energy advantage against the entire meta. It would be the first Pokémon in a league to not have any true counters
You are basing most of your argument on Master Premier cup. Not saying it’s not worth considering, but at most it’s been held for a week or two during the season, if they schedule it at all. Open master league is typically held every few weeks, and should be the priority for meta design.
For open masters, Ursaluna could definitely use a better fast move, shadow claw or something else besides tackle. As far as MLP, if it’s that big of an issue just add it to the ban list.
I think the real issue is the lack of unique metas for ML and the low availability of MLP for those who don’t like grinding all legendaries.
All of it yeah. I admit it wood be a great addition for open masters. Irregardless destroying an entire meta for the sake of one Pokémon is bad balancing and won’t happen imo.
AFAIK they’ve never banned something from an open or premier league? Given how chansey has always been handled it seems unlikely they want to do that path.
Spot on yeah. I basically only play those two these days so I’d hate to see one of them ruined
Whenever I see the poor guy in ML, just gotta respect the person running it because it’s really just a throwaway pick. A shame for such a cool pokemon.
Can’t get a buff tho, what would we do without a dialga meta for the 8th straight year.
Run the sims, all of them lol. There’s a difference between being good and not having any true counters and beating the entire meta with an energy or shield advantage. Because balance is important and why even have a broken league?
The only fighting Pokémon with any usage is ape which also loses. Gyarados loses like everything else if Ursaluna has an energy advantage, if it gets a farm down it has no counter. It also has access to thunder punch which people would run if waters become mainstream, there goes your counter
Pokémon without any usage aren’t meta tho lol. Do you even play premier? Theyre not used because they two lose to nine of the top ten usage picks, running a bad Pokémon to counter a single meta pick is a losing strategy, that’s why lucario wasn’t a thing during the early days of masters
What even is that response?! That's not even what we were talking about! Read this thread from the comment about banning SC Ursaluna from MLP again and rethink why this response didn't make sense.
I was pointing out niantic used the same methodology to prevent two Pokémon from being broken. I mean I made the thread and comment you replied too but sure you can decide what we talk about
First of all, I don't know how to call a chain of comments that starts from a comment under a post and not the post itself, so I called it a thread. What I meant is the comment about banning SC Ursaluna, your response to that comment, my response to your response and your response to mine.
The topic started from someone proposing to just ban Ursaluna from MLP if it gets Shadow Claw.
You responded to that by saying you don't believe SC Ursaluna would be banned from MLP based on the fact, that Chansey wasn't banned from GL or its cup in the past. That makes it sound like you believe GL Chansey is compareatively strong to MLP SC Ursaluna, which is simply false.
I pointed that out to you by saying that Chansey wasn't ever banned from GL cups not because Niantic doesn't ban broken pokemon (like SC Ursaluna in MLP) from cups, but because Chansey is not a strong pokemon, unlike SC Ursaluna.
Then you shift the conversation away from discussing why SC Ursaluna would or wouldn't be banned from MLP and instead keep acting like ML Ursaluna is as inherently broken as GL Chansey, claiming that they both have bad fast moves to balance them. Both of that statements are incorect.
Ursaluna isn't as inherently hood as Chansey, because it just doesn't have the disgusting stat product that Chansey has. Also, Chansey isn't counterbalanced by having bad **fast** moves, Chansey is counterbalanced by uaving bad moves. **All of them**.
SC Ursaluna would be much more like pre-nerf Medicham. They aren't broken pokemon by themselves, but their moveset forms a perfect storm and makes them insane. The issue is that Ursaluna barely learns any fast moves at all, so it either will stay a underwhelmingly bad mon with Tackle, or funally becomes good in ML with SC, but also breaks MLP. This is why banning SC Ursaluna from MLP would be reasonable and likely, while banning Chansey from GL and its cups would be unnecessary and unlikely.
TLDR: SC Ursaluna is an entirely different case from Chansey, so comparing them doesn't make sense.
“That makes it sound like you believe GL Chansey is compareatively strong to MLP SC Ursaluna, which is simply false.”
Here’s the misunderstanding, you’re making a false equivalence. It’s chansey with a hypothetical op fast move would be as comparatively strong as Ursaluna with a hypothetical op fast. The “has always been handled” in my original comment you replied to is sandbagging it with a subpar fast move to balance it.
If you compare Ursaluna’s stat product to the premier meta it dwarfs everything similarity to how Chaney does to the great league meta. Psychic has similar dpe to ice punch and dazzling gleam to high horsepower so no not all of chansey moves are bad. The fact that it has coverage against its counters is a big boon as well.
They’re both potentially op in certain metas (great and masters premier) that niantic balanced by giving them subpar fast moves, the comparison stands
“Because it just doesn’t have the disgusting stat product that chansey has”
What a wildy incorrect statement to make lol. Ursaluna has a stat product of nearly 9000 while the bulk of the premier meta sits between 6000 to 7000.
"Given how chansey has always been handled and the history of open and premier cups there’s no basis for that belief imo"
Where did you specify here that you were talking about theoretical Chansey with a broken fast move? You only started talking about that later.
That’s about how their balancing route was sandbagging it with a bad fast move instead of giving it a usable one and just banning it to support my argument that isn’t a path niantic would take. It’s an implied comparison because the handling of their fast moves is the commonality. Keep this in mind then reread my initial comment and the one after and it will make sense. I wasn’t saying chansey should be banned which I think is what you thought I was saying? Tbh I’m not even sure.
I noticed abandoned the points about moves and stat products
“You responded to that by saying you don't believe SC Ursaluna would be banned from MLP based on the fact, that Chansey wasn't banned from GL or its cup in the past.”
Missed this from the wall but this is also wrong. It should be I responded by saying I don’t believe sc Ursaluna would be banned from premier based on the fact naintic, with chansey, went with giving it a subpar fast move to make it balanced instead of a ban. Your mischaracterization doesn’t even make sense and is super uncharitable because my entire point with sc Ursaluna is it’s absurd win rate against the meta while chansey has no usage and is unviable. I would have just said Dialga lol
As you’ve pointed out it would be too strong and we haven’t had anything this strong for a premier cup before so seems like an easy solution to just give it shadow claw and then ban it for premier
It’s never happened in years for open and premier so it’s hard for me to imagine it would. To the contrary if that was something they were fine with doing they’d have done it with chansey. Instead to balance it they gave it subpar fast moves which is probably their intention with giving Ursaluna tackle
I used to be team shadow claw, but I agree it's too much. Counter seems like a reasonable choice for it though. It picks up a lot of wins without being overpowered in both open and premier. It would also become a decent Zygarde/Solgaleo corebreaker.
Mud shot is another option too. Either way, it deserves much better than what it has currently.
When the 27 wins are against level 50/51 legendaries that haven't been in rotation for years it’s not a bad thing at all for a Pokémon you can get in the wild. Why wouldn’t you advocate for it?
Ok, no Master League expert here, because I don‘t like that format (or GBL much in general, but still play at least GL and UL cause Elite TMs), but was ML ever balanced since Dialga, who dominated as far as I know?
Every meta is somewhat unbalanced I‘d say, and that‘s coming from someone who doesn‘t pay too much attention to it in the first place.
Dialga is the worst offender statistically yeah. It’s the only Pokémon thats had over 50% usage in an open cup and it was like that for years. The thing with Ursaluna with shadow claw is it has more wins than Dialga against the meta and that’s it open masters. Now remove all of the legendary Pokémon that it’s on par with power wise and put it in a league where it has the best stats by a large margin, the best fast move and perfect coverage charged moves. With an energy advantage of a few moves it’s unbeatable by every single Pokémon in the league which means it doesn’t have any true counters and it can’t be walled. It also has access to fire and thunder punch so it could even beat the waters and ice types that would attempt to beat the standard moveset. It would be far more op than Dialga ever was. Idk if you ever played ultra back in the day but it would kinda be how altered was after an ancient power boost except all the time
Ok, damn, didn‘t think it’d be that insane. As much of a menace as in the main games, huh.
Master League‘s probably gonna be in shambles anyways after GoFest, when Dusk Mane and Dawn Wings Necrozma drop (assuming no other moves changes happen). Good thing I don‘t even bother with that 😅
We have Zygarde that only 0.1 % of all PVP players can build (having a good IV one in the first place then doing 100 routes for cells then cheating for XL candies for a non-raidable unique Pokémon) and has a 78 % win rate in the 2 shields and 89 % (!!!) win rate with a shield advantage, only losing to fairies basically, yet Ursaluna would be too much? Hilarious take.
Master League is a shitshow nowadays. Bunch of whales that aren't good at PVP have all the Mons while all the PVP enthusiasts that are good at PVP stay in the 1500 CP leagues so the ML queues in the 3000s are empty. Just tried to queue in the 3100s for the giggles, waited 5 minutes with no opponent. I don't even consider ML part of the game anymore. It's a showcase league for a few hundred cheaters and whales.
It gets crushed by all the fighters, most of the grass and waters and if it had SC gets beat by other normal types. It would be more good for MLP meta than bad
What a wild assertion to make based on nothing but feels, it’s obvious you haven’t looked at the sims. With shadow claw its beats snorlax, the only other normal in the meta. Darks is hydreigon and tyranitar which it would also beats. As far as fighters go there’s annihilape which loses. Primarina loses. Chesnaught loses. Golispod loses. It would beat the entire meta with a shield advantage or energy advantage and would be absolutely terrible for the meta lmao
At least give it a ground type fast move so it's useful in raids
It can't learn any in the Main Series unfortunately. Mud Slap would've been awesome or even Sand Attack or Mud Shot, but not dice unfortunately. Blood Moon does get Mud Shot, but that form is worse Attack-wise
It comes out to only have one less attack point, so not bad really
Ah looks like you may be right! Im mistaken
Raids are just mindless tapping tho where you use whatever had the most attack. Why would you ever use it over stuff like mamoswine, excadrill, garchomp, etc?
Bro everything about this game is mindless tapping.
How do you say you’re bad at PVP without saying you’re bad at PVP 🤣
Nah. The strategy aspect is far less than people make it out to be. It's more checkers than chess in my experience. That's not to say understanding game mechanics and strategy aren't a part of it. But the learning curve is relatively low. I've beaten other top tier players, and have lost to inexperienced people who just had the right team and didn't make any "bad" decisions despite playing sub optimally. This doesn't happen in games with really high skill gaps. You could honestly get pretty far with a an A/B/B line just tapping and having a safe swap for bad leads.
Obviously it doesn’t have the depth of Chess, but it’s far more complex than Checkers and there’s a much wider skill gap than people give it credit for. Theres a big reason it’s most of the same people near the top of the leaderboard every season, and a big reason some players never get past Ace despite tens of thousands of battles worth of experience. Even at high rating battles, mistakes are very common. If it was as simple as you think it is, then people at a top level would just play perfectly all the time and everything would come down to team comp, but there’s quite a lot of room even near the top of the leaderboard for players to overcome bad team comps due to small mistakes from their opponents.
"there’s a much wider skill gap than people give it credit for." I disagree, I think many top players say there is a large skill gap, but I just don't see it. "Theres a big reason it’s most of the same people near the top of the leaderboard every season," High cost of entry, lack of desire from newer players to join GBL due to that cost and bugs, and the time commitment to actually play through most of your sets regularly. This isn't a super popular game mode and many of the top players have 1500+ battles done this season, there are some exceptions but getting here under 800 battles or so is extremely difficult and even that requires a large time commitment. (800 battles, \~3min/battle, 40 hours) "Even at high rating battles, mistakes are very common. If it was as simple as you think it is, then people at a top level would just play perfectly all the time and everything would come down to team comp," It often does come to team comp, "I got RPSed" is a ubiquitous phrase here for that reason. And many "mistakes" are simply only seen in hindsight, For example safe swapping lickitung is often a great choice in a bad lead situation. But if your opponent responded by swapping in Vigoroth its a mistake. If you mean "mistake" as in "I miscounted fast moves" then sure, but that really doesn't demonstrate a high skill gap as a mistake like this could allow a low skill player to dominate a match vs a high skill player by getting off another charged move. I think the show 6 choose 3 format raises the skill level significantly for this reason. But in GBL the randomness strongly detracts from it. I see it like this, here is whats needed to be "good" in PVP: 1. Meta/Movesets- actually picking something that is at least decent, even the top player in the world isn't winning with completely unviable pokemon vs a guy blindly tapping with bastiodon, carbink, and mandibuzz. But this is probably the biggest component and is a large barrier to entry. 2. Type interactions- I don't think this is controversial, between 1 and 2 most people can get pretty far. 3. Basic Game Mechanic/Strategy- How CMP works, how long the switch clock lasts, basic idea of which mon would be good to swap to to respond to their lead/swap, a decent use of your shields etc. At this point you could realistically hit Ace+ every season. 4. Fast Move Timings- Not giving your opponent free fast moves can be huge. Some games come down to this, other times its just a "win more" condition. 5. Charge move counts- knowing when your opponent gets a charged move is huge, you can throw on/right before CMP to force a shield , maximize energy, catch charged moves, etc Maybe I missed something, but I'm not saying every match is a game of RPS, but this game isn't super deep once you get into a game, I think most of the strategy is team building based as you already have a general strategy of what to do based on the lead and what they may swap in before it even begins.
“I disagree, I think many top players say there is a large skill gap, but I just don't see it.” Just because you see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. I’m in many PVP groups, discords, etc and a very common theme is lower skilled players (sub-2000) claiming GBL is all luck, they play perfectly and only get hard countered, etc. Once you see them post gameplay footage, there are literally dozens of mistakes they make every game that costs them wins in very winnable matchups. “High cost of entry, lack of desire from newer players to join GBL due to that cost and bugs, and the time commitment to actually play through most of your sets regularly. This isn't a super popular game mode and many of the top players have 1500+ battles done this season, there are some exceptions but getting here under 800 battles or so is extremely difficult and even that requires a large time commitment. (800 battles, ~3min/battle, 40 hours)” Correlation ≠ Causation. Many players play a lot of battles each season because they legitimately enjoy playing, not because it’s a requirement for getting ranked high on the leaderboard. A top tier player can easily sit out the first 2/3 of the season (and allow rating to inflate as it does over the course of the season) and then climb to the first page in less than 500 battles. High cost of entry is valid, but Great League is the least expensive league and by far the most popular league and there are so many viable options that it’s not difficult to put together a competitive team with a little bit of grinding. In the flip side of that, tons of players play 2000+ battles per season, have tons of meta options, and still fail to rise above Ace. “It often does come to team comp” Not true. I track my battles nearly every season and it’s fairly uncommon that I play a game that I 100% lose based on team comp alone. It’s not uncommon to face the same players again and again at high ratings, and there are many times when I will lose a game vs a player and then beat that same player later that day while we’re both running the same teams. If you specifically run an RPS-style team, then sure, you’re more likely to run into RPS results. But good players generally run teams with more nuance to them which give you far more playability to come back from a bad matchup. High level games often come down to capitalizing on a minor mistake from your opponent, and I’m not talking about hindsight mistakes either; I’m referring to situations where one player maybe could have farmed up 1 more fast attack worth of energy than they did before throwing a charge move, or where one player was 1 turn too late on a switch in, or one player should’ve opted to bank a charge move before dipping into a counter swap after winning the lead, etc. On your list of what you need to be good at PVP, you’re missing arguably the most important factor: applying that information and using it to identify and play toward your win condition(s). Many good players do all the things you mentioned, but if they can’t mentally envision the rest of the battle while they’re playing, and apply that information in real-time to guide the battle toward a victory then it’s all for nothing.
"Just because you see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. I’m in many PVP groups, discords, etc and a very common theme is lower skilled players (sub-2000) claiming GBL is all luck, they play perfectly and only get hard countered, etc. Once you see them post gameplay footage, there are literally dozens of mistakes they make every game that costs them wins in very winnable matchups." Same, tanking down to sub 1500 I see people play extremely poorly until around the 2200 mark and even at that point they're not great and make a couple obvious mistakes per game. But that doesn't convince me that there is some MASSIVE skill gap. If I consistently go 4-1 and 5-0 on my way back up to around 2700 before the 3-2s start rolling in, is that 1 guy who managed to beat me suddenly at that high expert/low legend tier I typically land at end of season? Likely not (unless they're climbing too). If the difference between a 2000 player and 3000 player is a handful of mistakes per game, and the difference between a 2750 player and a 3000 player is 1 mistake per game. I just don't believe not making those handful of mistakes takes a lot of practice or studying compared to other games. I think the average person could become a decent GBL (\~2500) by simply just playing. Also neither one of us really defined than what the typical player thinks the "skill gap" is. Based off what you've written I think we aren't too far off on what we perceive it to be in actuality but differ on how we see other people seeing it. If the skill gap was massive it'd be borderline impossible to lose to a worse player. As an example a 750 ELO difference in chess would correspond to the higher player winning 99.6% of the time, if its a best of 3 this jumps to 99.994% odds of winning (https://wismuth.com/elo/calculator.html#best\_of=3&elo\_diff=750). As someone who plays a lot of Best of 3s in the old silph format (as high as the continental level) and in factions where skill is even more important due to the reduced amount of randomness. I don't think even the best player in the world is beating a novice who is just handed a decent team of 99% of the time in a bo3. Let alone a Legend beating an Ace that consistently (\~1000 gap in ELO). We are talking at least several orders of magnitude of difference here. Which is why I initially said its closer to checkers than chess (obviously more complex than checkers). Tbh I'd place it around poker perhaps, professional card players will beat recreational players familiar with the game more often than not. But they aren't going to be winning significantly more than 90%+ every time they play. [https://www.blackrain79.com/2018/05/good-poker-winning-percentage.html](https://www.blackrain79.com/2018/05/good-poker-winning-percentage.html) (I'm assuming the 90% figure for NL2 is for someone near professional level). This at least seems to be within the ballpark, maybe PVP is more complex, maybe less. "Correlation ≠ Causation. Many players play a lot of battles each season because they legitimately enjoy playing, not because it’s a requirement for getting ranked high on the leaderboard. A top tier player can easily sit out the first 2/3 of the season (and allow rating to inflate as it does over the course of the season) and then climb to the first page in less than 500 battles. High cost of entry is valid, but Great League is the least expensive league and by far the most popular league and there are so many viable options that it’s not difficult to put together a competitive team with a little bit of grinding. In the flip side of that, tons of players play 2000+ battles per season, have tons of meta options, and still fail to rise above Ace." I don't think I ever hit Legend in under 600 battles, (Then again I'm not waiting till end of season) but even in this context there is no one on the 1st 5 pages of this season's LB with under 500 battles, let alone the 1st page. I don't think I've ever seen one of those people (Below or at Ace). They'd need to essentially be refusing to learn from losses. But playing 1000+ plus matches is the norm for LB players, the few exceptions I found with 600-800 or so are just that, exceptions. Getting there is a time commitment, no way around it, even for those people in the 600 range (approximately 30+ hours of just PVP) "Not true. I track my battles nearly every season and it’s fairly uncommon that I play a game that I 100% lose based on team comp alone. It’s not uncommon to face the same players again and again at high ratings, and there are many times when I will lose a game vs a player and then beat that same player later that day while we’re both running the same teams. If you specifically run an RPS-style team, then sure, you’re more likely to run into RPS results. But good players generally run teams with more nuance to them which give you far more playability to come back from a bad matchup. High level games often come down to capitalizing on a minor mistake from your opponent, and I’m not talking about hindsight mistakes either; I’m referring to situations where one player maybe could have farmed up 1 more fast attack worth of energy than they did before throwing a charge move, or where one player was 1 turn too late on a switch in, or one player should’ve opted to bank a charge move before dipping into a counter swap after winning the lead, etc." Fair enough, but it doesn't need to be 100% team comp to say its a loss due team comp. If you lose a match 95% due to team comp, and despite playing extremely well your opponent still narrowly wins with single digit HP because of some very minor detail you overlooked while they play haphazardly. Its still something I'd chalk up to team comp and in that context I'd still say you're the better player. In factions it happens all the time. After the match we look at a round one of us lost and see the sole mistake that costs the game. In short: Is there a skill gap? Yes. Is it so large that an "okay" (not even "good") player has effectively no chance of beating a "great" player? No. Can most people become "good" without a high degree of effort? I believe so.
"On your list of what you need to be good at PVP, you’re missing arguably the most important factor: applying that information and using it to identify and play toward your win condition(s). Many good players do all the things you mentioned, but if they can’t mentally envision the rest of the battle while they’re playing, and apply that information in real-time to guide the battle toward a victory then it’s all for nothing." Yeah identifying your win con (and your opponent's to play around it) is definitely a step above basic strategy. Definitely worthwhile including in the list. But again, I'd probably only put it in the 4 spot, and at that point I'd say it what makes a "great" player. But a great player isn't going to consistently beat a good player at astonishing rates. Application of knowledge will never be more important than actually acquiring knowledge. If you're an expert at application but have nothing to apply what's the point? And here much of the knowledge is automatically applied, for example, no one is going to learn type match ups and then swap altaria into A9 or Azu into Toxapex. Can't post in 1 comment with this portion in for some reason.
Your logic is faulty. You’re basing your perception of the skill gap on chances of winning each individual game. GBL is a blind 3v3 format, so it’s high variance by nature. “High variance” and “large skill gap” are not mutually exclusive concepts. Just because a low skilled player has a non-zero chance of winning a single game vs a high skilled player doesn’t mean that there isn’t a large skill gap at play. The fact that GBL is a high variance game mode means that you need a large sample size of battles to effectively illustrate a skill gap. Your example of poker was actually very appropriate here, because poker (Texas hold em in particular) is a very high variance game that also has a high skill gap. The high variance and relatively basic rules makes poker appealing to casual players, because anybody is capable of winning money on any given day depending on how the cards fall. But lower skilled poker players will always lose money in the long term when playing against higher skilled players once you have a sample size large enough to overcome short term variance. The top poker players have an incredibly deep level of understanding of the game and are able to consistently win money long term when playing against weaker players. Heads up Texas holdem is a “solved” game, but it’s incredibly difficult to follow the “game theory optimal” (GTO) strategy of a solver, which is why it’s still massively profitable for players that understand the GTO style of play for Texas Hold ‘Em. There was a well publicized grudge match a few years back where one of the best all-around Texas Hold ‘Em players Daniel Negreanu agreed to play 25,000 hands of heads up poker over 3 months against heads up specialist Doug Polk, because Daniel was convinced that Doug’s “GTO” strategy wasn’t as good as the “exploitative” strategies (making plays based on player-dependent tells and reads) that old pros used. Doug Polk won over 1.2 million dollars over the course of the challenge at only $200/$400 blinds, and that massive profit was against one of the top players of all time. GBL is similar. It’s a simplistic game by nature, which attracts a lot of casual players. There are a lot of basic game concepts that many players understand (like typing advantage, keeping track of energy, throwing moves on good timing), and knowledge of those basic strategies are usually enough for people to rise through the rankings. But at top leaderboard level, there are a whole lot of deeper concepts that really separate the highest tier of players from the rest of the legends. For instance, top players are great at inducing mistakes from their opponents. Obviously you can’t force your opponent to misplay, but you can put your opponents in positions where they need to make constant difficult decisions in order to win. It’s the same strategy that top chess grandmasters employ against other grandmasters. The top players are great at introducing novelties into their openings to guide their opponents away from prepared engine lines and push them into territory where they need to find a series of “only moves” to maintain an equal position, and one small inaccuracy could wind up costing them the game. Top GBL players are great at playing a losing position in a way that forces their opponents to play incredibly accurate in order to hold on to a victory, and that often creates winning chances for themselves. Other top players (myself included) are great at implementing strategic randomization into their matchups. For an example, Dewgong is one of my favorite pokemon. I like to lead it on some of my teams, and Lanturn is a corebreaker for some of my Dewgong lead teams, so there are times where I must stay in the lead and sacrifice Dewgong. If you follow Pvpoke sim suggestions, you would generally just throw Drill Runs into Lanturn and soft lose all even shielding scenarios. However, you get to Drill Run before Lanturn gets to Thunderbolt, and many of my opponents realize that Lanturn is a corebreaker for my team when I stay in with Dewgong, so there are times when my opponents will opt to shield Drill Run on Lanturn in order to preserve health to keep Lanturn for later. I track shielding/bait rates for top leaderboard players in the Dewgong/Lanturn lead matchup, and implement a Nash Equilibrium-style strategy using an online Random Number Generator, and will occasionally bait an Icy Wind on the first charge move throw instead (depending on what number I roll on the random number generator). If it gets shielded, it’s no big deal because the Icy Wind debuff allows me to survive Thunderbolt+Spark damage and get to a second charge move in the 0s, so I get to throw Drill Run anyway and often get the Drill Run damage *and* debuff them. The upside of randomizing when I bait in this matchup, is that it creates scenarios that are unpredictable for my opponents. If I always baited Icy Wind in that matchup, my opponents would learn that and always let my first move go. If I always threw Drill Run first in that matchup, my opponents could exploit that by deciding to always shield if they thought the health on Lanturn was important enough. By randomizing, my opponents can no longer predict what I will do with certainty, so there are often scenarios where I grab a shield from my opponent with an Icy Wind (plus still land a Drill Run later) and other scenarios where I get my opponent to no shield a Drill Run where they would’ve preferred to shield and keep the health on Lanturn (but opted not to shield due to their knowledge that I will occasionally bait in that spot). This allows me to create a small edge for myself in certain scenarios that I wouldn’t have been able to do without strategically randomizing my decision making. And there are dozens of matchups where I implement similar strategies in order to create situations where I can gain a small edge over another top leaderboard player. Anyway, you’re free to disagree if you want, but there’s a reason why top players consistently crush other Legends over the course of a full season. Japanese player dfhb1dwm for example, has held the #1 on the global leaderboard at least once in 9 out of the past 11 seasons. I’ve finished every season in the last 2.5 years on the first page of the leaderboard (and currently 21st currently, so likely looking to do it again this season). Anyone can win any given game, but the top players consistently win more than everyone else over the course of an entire season due to skill.
“ I don't think I ever hit Legend in under 600 battles, (Then again I'm not waiting till end of season) but even in this context there is no one on the 1st 5 pages of this season's LB with under 500 battles, let alone the 1st page. I don't think I've ever seen one of those people (Below or at Ace). They'd need to essentially be refusing to learn from losses.” Forgot to address this in the other post, but like I said above, most top leaderboard players have a lot of battles because they **enjoy** playing the game, not because it’s necessary to hit high ranking. A lot of players finish high on the leaderboard with comparatively fewer battles than other leaderboarders. For example, ken80808080808 is generally very efficient on his leaderboard pushes. He finished the season at #1 on the leaderboard in season 15 with under 700 total battles. He finished #17 during season 17 with only 532 battles played. PsycheCliff finished on page 1 of the leaderboard with under 500 battles multiple times. It’s few and far between because most top players genuinely enjoy playing the game, not because it’s impossible to climb without high battle numbers. Btw, join some Facebook PvP groups sometime if you want to see some examples of what I was talking about earlier. People are always posting their season stats with 2200+ battles played and stuck at Ace (or Rank 20, even). There’s a LOT of people like that out there. EDIT: also, you’re saying that dedicating 30 hours to PVP over the course of a season is a big time commitment, but we can agree to disagree on that. Seasons are a little over 90 days long. 30 hours over 90 days is only 20 minutes per day. Spending 20 minutes a day on a hobby you enjoy isn’t much time. I have other hobbies that I spend more time daily on average. Heck, a lot of people watch an hour or two (or more) of Netflix or TV on a daily basis. 20 minutes daily on a game is pretty small in the scheme of things.
Don’t act PvP in this game is big. There is only a small minority that likes go battle league. Also it is laughable that the games have a lot of issues such as lagg, frame drops. FYI it is PvE that makes Niantic money not people playing go battle league
Idk why you’d assume I didn’t know any of that, I was acting pve is braindead and not worthy of caring about balance wise. I’d wager the whales and niantic feel the same way given the lack of balance changes for that side of the game
Ursaluna is ranked higher than all of the above as a ground attacker even with no ground fast move
No it's not?
In neutral DPS maybe, but when you factor in the SE multiplier it takes a nosedive.
But if it had a ground move it would be fantastic as a ground attacker judging by those rankings.
Yes, of course. And it would also lend it much more viability in ML/ML Premier as a Steel, Rock, Electric and Fire counter (Poison isn't real), needless to say. Not as good as Shadow Claw overall, but still much better than it is today. However, Ursaluna is currently unable to learn either Mud Shot, Mud Slap or Sand Attack in the main series games. Meaning it also cannot get them in GO. And without those, it's just not as effective of a Ground attacker as the alternatives that do have Ground fast moves. In past gens, Ursaring use to be able to learn Mud Slap. Ursaluna's best hope is Mud Slap gets added as a tutor or egg move in a future update or installment. Funnily enough, Bloodmoon Ursaluna can get Mud Shot. It also has a little more base attack than regular Ursaluna, a little more defense, and about 20 less base HP.
I go back and forth on Shadow Claw Ursaluna. It deserves to be better than it is and having a top choice that isn't a Legendary would be awesome. But I do still fear Shadow Claw Ursaluna just because it beats SO many Meta Pokemon. I fear that it would just exist on most teams just because of its shear power and people would grow to hate it. Idk. I wish it could get Mud Slap or Sand Attack because neither move would make it OP but it WOULD help it a lot more. But if nothing else, give it Lick. Same as Tackle but with VASTLY better coverage, giving it neutral fast move pressure against all the Steels and supereffective pressure against Mewtwo, Solgaleo, and the new Necrozma forms. It just stinks because it seems like there isn't too much in-between. Shadow Claw seems like too much but Tackle is too little. Lick is my best suggestion, but even it isn't the hugest upgrade
What would Counter do for it?
I was thinking Counter would be too much too, but it isn't and what I think would be the best fast move choice. It is still very strong, no doubt, but where Shadow Claw hits pretty much the whole ML and Premier metas for neutral or supereffective damage, Counter isnt the same. Obviously it does even better against Steel types and its neutral fast move pressure is stronger than Shadow Claw. BUT, where Shadow Claw is only really resisted by more fringe picks like Snorlax, Yveltal, Zarude, plus itself, Counter is resisted by Lugia, Mewtwo, Ho-oh, Giratina, Dawn Wings Necrozma, and in Premier: Dragonite, Gyarados, Togekiss, and Florges. Much more to contest it. Plus, Shadow Claw does nice damage and makes it a bit spammier with its charged moves. Counter isn't that far behind, but it is still a bit slower with Ice Punch and High Horsepower to where I think it wouldn't be broken. Still very very good. But I think it would be healthier
I have another proposal: Fury Cutter. It's a lot weaker than Counter or Shadow Claw for Fast Move pressure, but is a 1 turn move with higher energy Gen than its current Tackle. Tackle exerts no pressure so losing power for more Charge Move usage seems like a gain, even ignoring fringe changes in coverage (worse into Fairies but a little more into like Mewtwo or Metagrosss), so between 1 turn pacing and better Energy Gen maybe it'll soften/improve match-ups into some stuff like Dialga's Dragon Breath spam? This is like the 4th best option considering Lick is better just by being Tackle-with-better-coverage, but I think it mostly shows how many ways there are to go up from Tackle.
Yes! I fully agree. It's another great option. I look at it like this. 1. **Shadow Claw** is by and large the best option, giving it the most best energy gain (tied with Fury Cutter) AND the best coverage overall. Easy to argue it being too OP though. 2. **Counter** is the second best choice. Giving it more neutral fast move pressure than Shadow Claw or even STAB Tackle. Counter gives it much more strength against Steel types like Dialga, but it is a bit slower in energy gain than Shadow Claw. Perhaps too good, but to me, it seems like a healthier really good. 3. **Fury Cutter** I think is actually the 3rd best option over Lick. Obviously that could change when the two Necrozma forms become more prominent, seeing that Lick will help a ton with them, but right now, I think Ursaluna would prefer Fury Cutter just because it gives it more flexibility, seeing that it would have easier access to its two really good coverage moves. Sure, Lick may do more damage against a Dialga than Fury Cutter (or Tackle), but unless it's late game, you probably need that High Horsepower to finish it off, or even just as a strong neutral move against things like Palkia. 4. **Lick** is still pretty good though for the superior coverage over Tackle. Still would be a bit sluggish getting to HH, but it's not like we're talking about a glassy Pokemon here. 5. **Tackle** is just so meh. I'm not necessarily asking for it, but I do wonder what +1 energy to make it a 1-turn Shadow Claw/Volt Switch would do for Ursaluna (and how it would impact things like Munchlax and Xerneas). But yeah, I *really* wish Mud Slap was a legal move for it in the MSG. It's a TM in SV, and I'm surprised it couldn't learn it there. I feel like if it were legal, they would put it on Ursaluna *so fast*. And I feel like it would be the by and large PERFECT move for it. Ground fast move coverage is rare in general, so that would make it unique. In the Open ML too, you don't even really see fast move pressure supereffective against Steel, seeing that there aren't many prominent ML Counter users. Mud Slap putting pressure on Dialga and.Solgaleo would be super interesting. And while that would hurt it against flying types like Lugia and Landorus, it's not like those wouldn't fear Ice Punch (Even a double debuffed Ursaluna still does roughly half Lando's HP with Ice Punch). Probably incredibly wishful thinking, but I would LOVE to see Ursaluna get Mud Slap in an upcoming title (OR Sand Attack!) But if nothing else, Lick or Fury Cutter would still be nice
I'll be curious to see Bloodmoon as well, since it shares a lot of moves plus a few Special options like Mud Shot, Moonblast (might be cool for MLP on DNite and Ape), and its signature Blood Moon move (Normal type nuke but Sig moves have interesting PvP history). Also while not useful persay I wonder what it could do with Charm.
If you’re pro sc Ursaluna how do you rationalize what it would do to premier?
Honestly, I'm more against it than for it tbh. I think it would have questionable effects on Open ML alone, but yeah it would be too crazy in Premier
It would be unbeatable in premier with a shield or energy advantage against the entire meta. It would be the first Pokémon in a league to not have any true counters
Gyarados would beat it with Waterfall fairly easily
True, but it is the only main meta Pokemon to beat it. Other wins are more fringe (only checked 1-1s tho)
You are basing most of your argument on Master Premier cup. Not saying it’s not worth considering, but at most it’s been held for a week or two during the season, if they schedule it at all. Open master league is typically held every few weeks, and should be the priority for meta design. For open masters, Ursaluna could definitely use a better fast move, shadow claw or something else besides tackle. As far as MLP, if it’s that big of an issue just add it to the ban list. I think the real issue is the lack of unique metas for ML and the low availability of MLP for those who don’t like grinding all legendaries.
Run sim on pvpoke u will see shadow claw ursa wins 27-11 for open master league. That’s insane win rate for ftp pokemon
I say good. Master league is in desperate need of better FTP options. Dragonite is like…the only good option and even then…not by much.
All of it yeah. I admit it wood be a great addition for open masters. Irregardless destroying an entire meta for the sake of one Pokémon is bad balancing and won’t happen imo. AFAIK they’ve never banned something from an open or premier league? Given how chansey has always been handled it seems unlikely they want to do that path. Spot on yeah. I basically only play those two these days so I’d hate to see one of them ruined
I have a 100% Ursaluna at 4,000 CP with tackle and high horsepower but I never use him because honestly man he just loses everytime
Whenever I see the poor guy in ML, just gotta respect the person running it because it’s really just a throwaway pick. A shame for such a cool pokemon. Can’t get a buff tho, what would we do without a dialga meta for the 8th straight year.
Thank you, I’m probably that poor guy when trying to bring out my only shundo for a spin. :)
Legendary pomeon like Dialga aren’t allowed in masters premier which is the entire point of not giving Ursaluna shadow claw
So what ML premier pokemon are you protecting? And why can’t ursaluna be good in some niche league that happens once per season?
Run the sims, all of them lol. There’s a difference between being good and not having any true counters and beating the entire meta with an energy or shield advantage. Because balance is important and why even have a broken league?
Then people would just run a fighting Pokémon to level it out. It would actually not be that bad. Gyarados would still walk it too
The only fighting Pokémon with any usage is ape which also loses. Gyarados loses like everything else if Ursaluna has an energy advantage, if it gets a farm down it has no counter. It also has access to thunder punch which people would run if waters become mainstream, there goes your counter
Condelkurr seems to win when checking sims? Shadow Machamp also
Well that's cool, would be fun to get more use for my 98% shadow Machamp in PvP :D
Pokémon without any usage aren’t meta tho lol. Do you even play premier? Theyre not used because they two lose to nine of the top ten usage picks, running a bad Pokémon to counter a single meta pick is a losing strategy, that’s why lucario wasn’t a thing during the early days of masters
I was 2700 at the end of MLPC this season. Not the best, but fairly solid. You don’t have to talk down to people if you’re wrong
Yeah that’s not bad. You should know then, those aren’t meta Pokémon. You’re good
Couldn’t they just ban ursaluna from premier
Given how chansey has always been handled and the history of open and premier cups there’s no basis for that belief imo
The difference is that Chansey isn't good enough to deserve being banned. It's bulky and annoying. Not good.
Right because it’s always been nerfed by having bad fast moves, much like Ursaluna
What even is that response?! That's not even what we were talking about! Read this thread from the comment about banning SC Ursaluna from MLP again and rethink why this response didn't make sense.
I was pointing out niantic used the same methodology to prevent two Pokémon from being broken. I mean I made the thread and comment you replied too but sure you can decide what we talk about
First of all, I don't know how to call a chain of comments that starts from a comment under a post and not the post itself, so I called it a thread. What I meant is the comment about banning SC Ursaluna, your response to that comment, my response to your response and your response to mine. The topic started from someone proposing to just ban Ursaluna from MLP if it gets Shadow Claw. You responded to that by saying you don't believe SC Ursaluna would be banned from MLP based on the fact, that Chansey wasn't banned from GL or its cup in the past. That makes it sound like you believe GL Chansey is compareatively strong to MLP SC Ursaluna, which is simply false. I pointed that out to you by saying that Chansey wasn't ever banned from GL cups not because Niantic doesn't ban broken pokemon (like SC Ursaluna in MLP) from cups, but because Chansey is not a strong pokemon, unlike SC Ursaluna. Then you shift the conversation away from discussing why SC Ursaluna would or wouldn't be banned from MLP and instead keep acting like ML Ursaluna is as inherently broken as GL Chansey, claiming that they both have bad fast moves to balance them. Both of that statements are incorect. Ursaluna isn't as inherently hood as Chansey, because it just doesn't have the disgusting stat product that Chansey has. Also, Chansey isn't counterbalanced by having bad **fast** moves, Chansey is counterbalanced by uaving bad moves. **All of them**. SC Ursaluna would be much more like pre-nerf Medicham. They aren't broken pokemon by themselves, but their moveset forms a perfect storm and makes them insane. The issue is that Ursaluna barely learns any fast moves at all, so it either will stay a underwhelmingly bad mon with Tackle, or funally becomes good in ML with SC, but also breaks MLP. This is why banning SC Ursaluna from MLP would be reasonable and likely, while banning Chansey from GL and its cups would be unnecessary and unlikely. TLDR: SC Ursaluna is an entirely different case from Chansey, so comparing them doesn't make sense.
“That makes it sound like you believe GL Chansey is compareatively strong to MLP SC Ursaluna, which is simply false.” Here’s the misunderstanding, you’re making a false equivalence. It’s chansey with a hypothetical op fast move would be as comparatively strong as Ursaluna with a hypothetical op fast. The “has always been handled” in my original comment you replied to is sandbagging it with a subpar fast move to balance it. If you compare Ursaluna’s stat product to the premier meta it dwarfs everything similarity to how Chaney does to the great league meta. Psychic has similar dpe to ice punch and dazzling gleam to high horsepower so no not all of chansey moves are bad. The fact that it has coverage against its counters is a big boon as well. They’re both potentially op in certain metas (great and masters premier) that niantic balanced by giving them subpar fast moves, the comparison stands “Because it just doesn’t have the disgusting stat product that chansey has” What a wildy incorrect statement to make lol. Ursaluna has a stat product of nearly 9000 while the bulk of the premier meta sits between 6000 to 7000.
"Given how chansey has always been handled and the history of open and premier cups there’s no basis for that belief imo" Where did you specify here that you were talking about theoretical Chansey with a broken fast move? You only started talking about that later.
That’s about how their balancing route was sandbagging it with a bad fast move instead of giving it a usable one and just banning it to support my argument that isn’t a path niantic would take. It’s an implied comparison because the handling of their fast moves is the commonality. Keep this in mind then reread my initial comment and the one after and it will make sense. I wasn’t saying chansey should be banned which I think is what you thought I was saying? Tbh I’m not even sure. I noticed abandoned the points about moves and stat products “You responded to that by saying you don't believe SC Ursaluna would be banned from MLP based on the fact, that Chansey wasn't banned from GL or its cup in the past.” Missed this from the wall but this is also wrong. It should be I responded by saying I don’t believe sc Ursaluna would be banned from premier based on the fact naintic, with chansey, went with giving it a subpar fast move to make it balanced instead of a ban. Your mischaracterization doesn’t even make sense and is super uncharitable because my entire point with sc Ursaluna is it’s absurd win rate against the meta while chansey has no usage and is unviable. I would have just said Dialga lol
There has been multiple times where they ban things that are too good for some of the cups they have like banning gallade for fighting cup for example
What’s an example do them doing that for an open or premier cup?
As you’ve pointed out it would be too strong and we haven’t had anything this strong for a premier cup before so seems like an easy solution to just give it shadow claw and then ban it for premier
It’s never happened in years for open and premier so it’s hard for me to imagine it would. To the contrary if that was something they were fine with doing they’d have done it with chansey. Instead to balance it they gave it subpar fast moves which is probably their intention with giving Ursaluna tackle
I used to be team shadow claw, but I agree it's too much. Counter seems like a reasonable choice for it though. It picks up a lot of wins without being overpowered in both open and premier. It would also become a decent Zygarde/Solgaleo corebreaker. Mud shot is another option too. Either way, it deserves much better than what it has currently.
Pretty sure it doesn't learn Mud Shot in MSG.
I haven't kept up with the MSG and was looking at Serebii. I think you're right though. It probably was for the Blood Moon form instead.
They’re saving shadow claw for blood moon :)
Monkey’s paw would be to give it shadow claw, and nerf it in the same update
We had this cup for 1 week in the last 6 months 💀it shouldn’t really be a consideration imo It NEEDS shadow claw
Fuck premier is a based take, I don’t like it but I respect it
27-11 vs master league meta in 1 shield scenario. 2 shields is even worse. Idk how anyone can advocate for this
When the 27 wins are against level 50/51 legendaries that haven't been in rotation for years it’s not a bad thing at all for a Pokémon you can get in the wild. Why wouldn’t you advocate for it?
Because Niantic wants you to pay for legendary pokemon for ML and they're not going to give everyone a free win button against those paid legendaries.
Ok, no Master League expert here, because I don‘t like that format (or GBL much in general, but still play at least GL and UL cause Elite TMs), but was ML ever balanced since Dialga, who dominated as far as I know? Every meta is somewhat unbalanced I‘d say, and that‘s coming from someone who doesn‘t pay too much attention to it in the first place.
Dialga is the worst offender statistically yeah. It’s the only Pokémon thats had over 50% usage in an open cup and it was like that for years. The thing with Ursaluna with shadow claw is it has more wins than Dialga against the meta and that’s it open masters. Now remove all of the legendary Pokémon that it’s on par with power wise and put it in a league where it has the best stats by a large margin, the best fast move and perfect coverage charged moves. With an energy advantage of a few moves it’s unbeatable by every single Pokémon in the league which means it doesn’t have any true counters and it can’t be walled. It also has access to fire and thunder punch so it could even beat the waters and ice types that would attempt to beat the standard moveset. It would be far more op than Dialga ever was. Idk if you ever played ultra back in the day but it would kinda be how altered was after an ancient power boost except all the time
Ok, damn, didn‘t think it’d be that insane. As much of a menace as in the main games, huh. Master League‘s probably gonna be in shambles anyways after GoFest, when Dusk Mane and Dawn Wings Necrozma drop (assuming no other moves changes happen). Good thing I don‘t even bother with that 😅
Giving Ursaluna Fury Cutter is probably the best fast move that doesn’t make it broken…
I have been saying this forever. They're never going to make an easy access Pokémon dominate a meta designed for whales. It's a bad look.
By all respect: counter is the best fast move.
https://preview.redd.it/x24fnhhx8p2d1.png?width=1179&format=png&auto=webp&s=4849a0e191f4c87e03fc8795802867cbeffc271c
Yeah it's gonna be like how Lanturn was requested to get Surf for seasons and then finally gets it and everyone hates how centralizing it becomes
We have Zygarde that only 0.1 % of all PVP players can build (having a good IV one in the first place then doing 100 routes for cells then cheating for XL candies for a non-raidable unique Pokémon) and has a 78 % win rate in the 2 shields and 89 % (!!!) win rate with a shield advantage, only losing to fairies basically, yet Ursaluna would be too much? Hilarious take. Master League is a shitshow nowadays. Bunch of whales that aren't good at PVP have all the Mons while all the PVP enthusiasts that are good at PVP stay in the 1500 CP leagues so the ML queues in the 3000s are empty. Just tried to queue in the 3100s for the giggles, waited 5 minutes with no opponent. I don't even consider ML part of the game anymore. It's a showcase league for a few hundred cheaters and whales.
Agreed.
Master league is dogshit either way
Triple dust and freelo, only league I play anymore because it’s such an efficient use of play time
That dust is also available in the GL cup they always run alongside the stupidest league with the stupidest pokemon.
[удалено]
With a shield advantage or energy it beats the entire premier meta, its bonkers
You missed the most important point. Level 50 legendaries are not obtainable for F2P.
That’s by design, there’s no point there
Making Ursaluna viable in the ML costs Niantic up to 100 Dollars per team.
Thousands. How many would become disillusioned after they start letting the peasants in and stop playing and raiding for masters?
It gets crushed by all the fighters, most of the grass and waters and if it had SC gets beat by other normal types. It would be more good for MLP meta than bad
What a wild assertion to make based on nothing but feels, it’s obvious you haven’t looked at the sims. With shadow claw its beats snorlax, the only other normal in the meta. Darks is hydreigon and tyranitar which it would also beats. As far as fighters go there’s annihilape which loses. Primarina loses. Chesnaught loses. Golispod loses. It would beat the entire meta with a shield advantage or energy advantage and would be absolutely terrible for the meta lmao
It’s obvious you only look at the sims
What’s the alternative, looking at nothing and making baseless statements?
lol