How can we make defensive Pokémon actually useful?
Hey all, I’ve been thinking, given so many Pokémon are geared towards defence I have been trying to come up with a better battle system to increase the value of a tanky Pokemon. I have a few ideas, tweaks, and new mechanics that could be applied to raids mostly, although maybe gymming could be affected as well. I should mention I haven’t thought in depth about these ideas, they’re literally dawning on me as I write them.
1. So you would have to increase the base amount of damage balls you’d get for this to work, but what if there was a system that could penalize complete team faints. Something like 1 ball per 6 Pokémon fainted. Now like I said earlier, you’d wanna increase base damage balls by 1-3 to counterbalance this, and if you were willing to throw in say a Latias for increased survivability, that could yield an extra ball or two. You’re giving up damage for the luxury of not losing another ball. Although, looking at it now, this is probably a net 0 affect one way or the other.
2. Raid bosses only being able to attack single targets. I think if ppl had to coordinate tanks, that would allow almost everyone in a raid party to actually use their defensive stalwarts. A Pokémon like Latias would actually have value. Especially with moves like hers. Now the only thing is you would need to add some sort of a provoke mechanic to get the raid boss on your Pokémon when you want to switch. Although perhaps this adds too much complexity.
This are just a couple ideas I came up with on my lunch break. Nothing flushed out or anything, and these ideas probably wouldn’t work but I’m just wondering, what ideas can you guys think of to promote the usage of Pokémon that aren’t the best in class for DPS/TDO.
Answers
Given that several legendaries have their best counters in themselves (looking at you Mewtwo, Rayquaza and Groudon, to a lesser extent Thunder Kyogre + Lati@s), the theme carries through. The above idea would penalize players trying to get their first, reducing the chances to get on the ladder, so to speak.
Penalizing players who haven't made as much progress is a bad idea and specifically goes against the spirit of Niantic's comments when they introduced weather about wanting to boost the player's chances, not the AI's.
No, you don't understand. I agree that the arbitrary penalization suggested by OP is a bad idea, but having the right counters for a raid boss is every players' responsibility, not one for Niantic to provide. Also not having the BEST counter isn't really that much of a hinder in most cases since the second, third, and fourth options often do the job well enough, so much that in many cases the difference is negligible. My point is that players are the ones that have to work towards getting a battle-ready team for any raid boss they want to take down and the game should not, ever, make up for their shortcomings. People who like soloing tier 3s work their asses off in order to be able to achieve those goals and it takes time, strategy, and a lot of commitment. That's the mentality that leads to success in this game -and pretty much everywhere else- and it should be rewarded, not held back by a condescending attitude.
I can only think of adding abilities and maybe invent some type of bonusses for matching certain species by color (all pink gym), shape (bonus damage if all gym fillers are dogs), or evolutionary lineage (increased defense if all are eevolutions), or something that would increase the available strategies.
Maybe they could artifically increase the desirability of certain Pokemon like shuckle, miltank, or tropius by making them refill their gym mates' motivation every once in a while or making defenders boost their gym mates stats based on their higher stat during battle by virtue of sharing a gym: Steelix would boost other defenders' defenses, gengar would boost their attack, etc.
I have many ideas, just ask
I like the idea of synergy; however, I question the feasibility of its implementation in this game. How would it stack? Say Steelix and 4 other pokemon boost defense. Those 5 + Blissey...
I would much rather prefer abilities be introduced; I wonder how they would flip the switch in older pokemon though, considering they can't even transfer gender from pre-January 2017 pokemon into the Dex.
You're right. In that scenario, I would either make it so only one boost per stat is applied per gym or give that boosting ability only to the last Pokemon or something.
In the main series games, most Pokemon have 3 possible abilities. I think that maybe they could just randomly assign one of two abilities to all old Pokemon (since the third ones are called "hidden abilities" and are usually treated as exclusives, which could be exploited by Niantic for c-days or whatever) and introduce ability capsules as an obtainable item in order to make it possible to change their abilities to one of the other ones available to that species.
Shadow tag Wobbuffet would be very interesting as a gym defending option. And we all know that Shedinja is in dire need of its ability for any sort of relevance.
