Hell, in Ultra Sun and Moon, Gamefreak even seemed to throw a bone towards the Smogon crowd with Defog becoming a tutor. There's a lot of other little details like that this gen for Gamefreak's formats, such as Mimikyu being an amazing blanket check to a lot of hard to stop sweepers, Toxapex being a valuable asset to stall teams, etc. I also appreciate Gamefreak's attempt to punish Earthquake with Tapu Bulu, even if that Pokemon sadly probably isn't the success story Gamefreak was hoping for. Psychic Terrain means theres more consequences for priority in both Singles and Doubles too, which is pretty cool. Breloom is still very common in Battle Spot singles, but theres more drawbacks to using it, and thankfully, it destroyed those annoying Vivillon teams (that are probably gonna pop up quite a bit in Battle Spot Special this season LOL). To add to this, the Tapus in particular had a pretty positive effect on Battle Spot Singles, beleive it or not! Tapu Koko and Tapu Fini's terrains block Sleep for grounded Pokemon, which was a MAJOR balanceing force for the sleep spam that would pop up last generation. As some of you may recall, Thundurus was freaking everywhere back in gen 6, but with these nerfs, you basically only see Thundurus-T in Batle Spot Singles now, with regular Thundurus pretty much disapearing. A more minor nerf, but it did make Mega Salamence a bit easier to check (for the record, Mega Salamence is mostly fine in Battle Spot Singles, unlike 6v6 formats where its apprently quite busted lol)Īnother big example are the major nerfs to Prankster, with Psychic Terrain nerfing targeted support moves (and also other priority, more on that later!), and Dark-types being immune to Prankster. There's also the -ate nerfs, such as Aerilate giving a 1.2 damage boost instead of 1.3.
That was a big change in Sun and Moon: Parental Bond got nerfed to a 1.3 boost instead of 1.5, which has led to a pretty massive drop in usage for it (Mega Kangaskhan is still something to account for in teambuilding, however!).
#Pokemon sword and shield pokedex controversy tldr free#
For example, in gen 6, Mega Kangaskhan was sorta the elephant in the room: Parental Bond basically gave it a free Choice Band that ignored Focus Sash (but also made it more vulnerable to rocky helmet lol), and it was damn near everywhere in all of Gamefreak's formats for good reason! I base this mainly on there being a lot of balance changes that seemed specfically made to balance issues people had with Batle Spot Singles and Battle Spot Doubles / VGC. I'd argue that Pokemon Sun and Moon is the most reactive Gamefreak has ever been to competitive Pokemon communities! By the way, there's a point I want to bring up about Pokemon Balance in general in this context that inerests me.