Current Events > The power creep in Pokemon is nuts

(+) Yeah! (+)

Like they added like 20 new pokemons this gen that have perfectly minimaxed stats and abilities and movepools. Everything from previous gens just sucks now in comparison.

Stuff Like Garchomp, Landerous- T and Heatran are like below average mons now.

Terastalizing has been a big reason for the balance being thrown way tf off.

Some adapt to it better than others.

Zapdos has been OU for 8/9 gens, only falling to UU for Black and White.

Wtf even in PokemonGo Garchomp is in all of the gyms

Garganacl is a funny one

Ability that makes it immune to status afflictions but also take half damage from Ghost attacks while having one of the precious few perfect accuracy Rock moves that also deals repeat damage to enemy mons but doubles that damage against Water and Steel mons

I love my Yugioh card salt monolith~

ZMythos posted...

Terastalizing has been a big reason for the balance being thrown way tf off.

Agreed.

Anything strong can flip the table on its counters or have 2X STAB damage or pull a second/third STAB out of its ass.

Good fuck garchomp
flygon is king

There are more non-SV Pokemon in OU by more than a 2:1 ratio. And most of the SV Pokemon are like, pseudo-legendaries/whatever the similar thing is called. Paradox?

I don't think it's power creep as much as it's "The latest gen introduced something really strong that isn't banned yet but will probably end up banned," because the average new Pokemon isn't really any better than previous, it's mainly the "new super strong storyline thing" that is better.

ZMythos posted...

Terastalizing has been a big reason for the balance being thrown way tf off.

But I was told balancing mega evos or any of the other gimmicks ruined the game

hereforemnant posted...

But I was told balancing mega evos or any of the other gimmicks ruined the game

To be fair, Mega Evos were uniquely bad in that they literally could only help certain Pokemon, period, because... Only certain Pokemon had them. And, for some reason, they tended to give a lot of already really strong Pokemon Mega Evos.

Dynamax, Terastalize, etc. also cause balance issues, but atleast they can be used by ALL Pokemon, so the potential is there.

Mega Evos, in theory, were great, if they would have given them exclusively to weaker/"missed opportunity" style Pokemon, in order to make them more competitive. They... Absolutely did not do that, though, or if they did, it was negated by the fact that... Much better Pokemon also had Mega Evos, so why would you even use one of the weaker ones?

Giving Beedrill a Mega Evo? Fantastic idea!
Also giving one to Garchomp? ...Why?

Personally I never understood the need for Mega Evolutions. I would have been perfectly happy with them simply adding 2nd or 1st evolutions to single stage / double stage mons. As a rule, I tend to never use single stagers in the game so it would be nice to have more options.

Mega Evolutions just seemed like an excuse to create more hype around a majority of Pokemon that already had hype. Like Mega Mewtwo...really?

I completely forgot about Dynamax because of the awful games it was tied to.

I would think the scale of how much these gimmicks fucks up the game would be better weighted towards mega evos if literally everything having access to teras fucks it up even more. Hidden Power was always a unique gimmick for having a move with STAB or coverage for something, but adding another layer with Tera just makes everything a huge shit show. That much wide scale unbalancing just makes it unfun.

StealThisSheen posted...

Mega Evos, in theory, were great, if they would have given them exclusively to weaker/"missed opportunity" style Pokemon, in order to make them more competitive. They... Absolutely did not do that, though, or if they did, it was negated by the fact that... Much better Pokemon also had Mega Evos, so why would you even use one of the weaker ones?

Giving Beedrill a Mega Evo? Fantastic idea!
Also giving one to Garchomp? ...Why?

I get the comparison, but an awkward choice.
Mega Garchomp gets worse in a lot of ways than regular. Losing an item slot is a big deal and it goes down a speed tier when it megas. Usually better to have something else mega evolve.

StealThisSheen posted...

To be fair, Mega Evos were uniquely bad in that they literally could only help certain Pokemon, period, because... Only certain Pokemon had them. And, for some reason, they tended to give a lot of already really strong Pokemon Mega Evos.

Dynamax, Terastalize, etc. also cause balance issues, but atleast they can be used by ALL Pokemon, so the potential is there.

Thank you. I legit don't get the broader community's obsession with megas. They were a terrible concept.

ChocoboMogALT posted...

I get the comparison, but an awkward choice.
Mega Garchomp gets worse in a lot of ways than regular. Losing an item slot is a big deal and it goes down a speed tier when it megas. Usually better to have something else mega evolve.

Yeah, Mega Garchomp was probably the wrong choice for my comparison, but you get what I mean. And, honestly, it still sorta works, since Garchomp didn't need a Mega Evo at all, and it even makes it worse, so it was wasted effort.

I didn't even dislike the gen 9 meta before the return of more older pokemon. It's just that the fun runs out once you have a really bad battle, and that happens in any meta.

I have noticed in gen 9 randbats that there are, more often than not, at least 3 mons on my team with two stats above 200.

hereforemnant posted...

I completely forgot about Dynamax because of the awful games it was tied to.

I would think the scale of how much these gimmicks fucks up the game would be better weighted towards mega evos if literally everything having access to teras fucks it up even more. Hidden Power was always a unique gimmick for having a move with STAB or coverage for something, but adding another layer with Tera just makes everything a huge shit show. That much wide scale unbalancing just makes it unfun.

Yeah, tera is kinda unique from Dynamax, in that it's much more abuseable. Dynamax was honestly the best of the three, since it meant you could take ALMOST anything and make it competitive, since you could catch people off guard.

Some of my favorite Twitch streams were watching people take otherwise bad Pokemon, like Wailord, and build a team around them Dynamaxing, which would just confuse the hell out of people and lead to interesting matches.

I watch iateyourpie on Twitch, and he literally dedicated a good chunk of time to building a team around Wailord in the SwSh days, just because... He really liked Wailord. And he literally got to top 1000 with it, for a brief time. It was just hilarious and great fun to watch.

Gamefreak has been known to be shitty at balancing, amongst several other things.

I don't know if I'd even call Gamefreak "shitty" at balancing. It's impossible to balance hundreds of options. Hell, fighting games struggle to balance anything more than like, 10 options. They'd be "shitty" if there was literally a single "always win" option or two, but OU even having, say, 30 options in it is pretty decent.

They can't even balance EXP gain

ProfessorKukui posted...

They can't even balance EXP gain

???