Status!

[Sirfetch’d]

Status ailments can severely affect a Pokemon's ability to battle. Status moves are used to give yourself an advantage in battle such as giving yourself a chance to set up by putting the opponent to sleep, paralyzing the opponent to cut their speed to near useless levels and possibly preventing them from attacking, or even poisoning the opponent to slowly eat away their HP.

There are currently many types of status ailments:

• Burn- A burn can be inflicted upon the opponent by the use of many fire moves or touching a Pokemon that has flame body. This is extremely detrimental to Physical Pokemon because it cuts their attack to 50% unless they have the Guts ability in which it raises attack by 50%. This also reduces your HP in battle by 1/8 of the maximum HP each turn.

• Sleep- Sleep can be inflicted by the use of moves such as Spore, Hypnosis, Sleep Powder, etc and currently lasts 1-3 turns randomly. Before Black and White however, this had a chance to last 5 turns. Sleep can be used to your advantage to set up, or used alongside moves like Dream Eater to inflict damage to the opponent.

• Freeze- Currently there are no instant freeze moves and the only way to inflict a freeze is to use ice attacks such as Ice Beam and Blizzard which have a slight chance to freeze the opponent. After a Pokemon is frozen it has a 20% chance to thaw out or is instantly thawed out if a fire attack is used. Ice typed Pokemon cannot be frozen. Until gen 2 Pokemon could not unfreeze without the aid of an external item, or being healed at a Pokemon Center.

• Paralysis- One of the most common ailments is paralysis. This status can easily be inflicted by use of Thunder Wave which is a highly distributed move. Paralysis cuts the Pokemon's speed to 25% unless the Pokemon has the ability, Quick Feet, in which it raises it by 50%. A Pokemon that is paralyzed may not be able to attack. This has a 25% chance of occurring.

• Poison- There are 2 types of poison status. There is regular poison and bad poison. Regular poison takes away 1/8 of the maximum HP each turn. Poison and Steel types are immune to this. Pokemon with the Poison Heal ability however, have HP slowly restored if inflicted with this status. Bad poison is somewhat different. Bad poison is inflicted by the use of Toxic, Poison Fang, or if the opponent steps on a double layer of Toxic Spikes. At first Bad Poison takes away 1/16 of maximum HP each turn, and then with each additional turn it adds 1/16 to the damage it takes away. For example, on the 3rd turn you will lose 3/16 of your maximum HP. This is the reason as to why Toxic is such a common move.

There are also additional status moves such as: confusion, curse, infatuation, etc. that are not normally seen in competitive play.

• How often do you use status moves?
• Which is your favorite status ailment to inflict?
• Is freeze broken?
• Is the distribution of Thunder Wave and Toxic too high?

Discuss anything about the use of status competitively!

 

[Melody]

Freeze isn't broken. It's annoying yes; and often rather arbitrary in it's appearance, this is what gives Ice types their threat. So this is in no way "Broken". I've never seen any argument containing the word "Broken" based on anything other than a dislike for the tactic. Such attitudes skew even hard numerical statistics; which can be slanted in the favor of the presenter by merely modifying scale and window values on a graph.

So yes; my views are opinions. But so are yours, no matter how many numbers you claim to have crunched or battles you've experienced.

Personally I find that Paralysis is much too common, being distributed among both Grass and Electric moves that are open to many Pokemon's learnsets. I'd like to see Paralysis become a bit less common; especially since speed is often crucial to survival. Toxic itself is it's own sub-status of poison; and I wouldn't mind seeing other statuses getting stronger versions of themselves like this; Burn and Sleep would benefit from this type of change as well.

I could see being Badly Burned doubling the damage it does, and slashing your attack down by 4 or 5 instead of 3 stages. Likewise with Deep Sleep, this would be impossible to awaken from naturally (A la standard wake-up chance per turn) unless hit by an attack that awakens them or given a Chesto/Lum Berry or Awakening/[Status/Full] Restore item. Barring being impossible to naturally wake from; Ensure that the target sleeps for 3-7 turns before naturally awakening. Ideally these statuses should be made uncommon either by a small percentage chance or by only being caused by a few select moves exclusive to Pokemon who are potentially undervalued or difficult to obtain.

Confusion was big in earlier generations, but has become less of a factor since Paralysis tends to be more effective somehow. This should be fixed, considering confusion tends to have a 50% success rate, while Paralysis has a 25% chance. Yet it's more often than not that paralysis stops a move more often than confusion seems to.

Flinch is a uselessly annoying status; should either bring in more damaging moves to cause it or scrap it altogether. As it is now, it's just not very reliable because of it's rarity. It should probably also be renamed; the word "Flinch" just pisses me off. It would make more sense to call it something like "too Scared to move" or something like that.

 

[Sirfetch’d]

I could definitely see being "badly burned" possibly being introduced in the future. It would be just like in real life where there are different degrees of burns. However, if this happens it should be kept exclusively to a few moves that only a few Pokemon should learn. I wouldn't want this to become as common as bad poison because this would have nastier side effects due to it slicing the attack even more.


I also agree that the distribution of paralysis inducing moves, especially T-wave is slightly too high. I don't see the point or well.... I don't see Toxic being reduced in smaller amounts because I think it would be too much of a stretch for nearly every Pokemon learning it and then with the introduction of a new generation only giving it to a select few.

 

[Aeroblast]

I think Freeze status is actually extremely under-featured, because there are no instant freeze moves, and there's no other reliable way to freeze a Pokemon.

 

[Squirrel]

How often do you use status moves? - A lot! I don't use them as much as the more serious battlers, but even I end up using countless status moves on a team which really says a lot about how useful and important they are. I tend to have at least 2 or 3 on a team and they really can sway a battle either way, so they're invaluable moves when used well.

Which is your favourite status ailment to inflict? - Paralysis! Freeze and Sleep are great but they can often work out badly when the opponent gets lucky with a quick recovery, whereas Paralysis is a permanent Speed reduction and the 25% chance of not being able to move is invaluable. Burn is great too and the Attack reduction is useful, but situational, and Toxic is a lot of fun but can very often go to waste when you're using a team like mine (I enjoy using sweepers a lot more than stallers), so Paralysis wins.

Is freeze broken? - No! If there was a way to ensure you caused Freeze with every attack then yes, it'd be beyond broken, but currently with such a low occurrence rate I think it's fine. It's certainly one hell of an annoying status to have happen to you, but I guess that's why you'd choose to use certain moves over the others when you're looking at status effect chances.

Is the distribution of Thunder Wave and Toxic too high? - Nah. I admit that it's annoying seeing them so much and after a battle your whole team has pretty much either been Paralyzed or Poisoned at least once each, but I think that's all just part of the game and I'm fine with it. It doesn't strike me as unfair or anything because if you're using these moves it's unlikely that you're using a hard-hitting Pokémon but much more likely that you're using a staller, so it's just what they do. Then sure they can swap into a hard-hitter, but so can you so I don't see it as an issue, just a fun dimension to the game to ramp up your strategies.

To me the most underrated status is Confusion. That can be a real poop to fight against!

 

[srinator]

How often do you use status moves?
Most of the time i just let it happen indirectly as a result of some move, i dont like stall very much and hence i try to avoid using toxic. I have barely ever used will-o-wisp although i think that is the best status move there is seeing how it cripples physical mons. paralyze is good although pretty annoying and non-predictable so i dont use that much either same case with swagger/confuse-ray.

Which is your favorite status ailment to inflict?
as i said before burning a physical mon will be "favorite" status ailment but i guess since it is useless against mons like infernape i would go for flinching moves.

Is freeze broken?
Most people who get freezed might say its broken but to be honest i don't really think so. First it being rare second many moves that can get out of it for example scald or flare blitz iirc. Although yes it is very annoying but then sleep is to right? is that broken ? nope true that there isn't any moves dat damage and put ur mon to sleep like ice attacks does (frz ie) but still its p much the same.

Is the distribution of Thunder Wave and Toxic too high?
tbh i hate thunder wave, i am not seeing its bad its very freaking annoying both when used by you or by the opponent, mainly due to its unpredictability and yes it may be high but its pretty much manageable if you play smart and not let your scarfer or fast mon get paralyzed :I I usually let my mons get paralyzed if there is a chance to one since it makes my tr team work better but ofc sometimes it just doesn't move for 5-6 turns and that's freaking annoying.

toxic is good move but is often a ***** to me missing almost every time i use it although its very abuse able in stalling and i think its a great move

 

[Nolafus]

I use status moves very commonly in the form of sleep for my grass team. I recently gave toxic to Weezing in my NU team so I'm trying to get more into using it as it can be extremely useful.

My favorite would be sleep as you can set up while your opponent is under its curse. Of course, there's the whole chance of the opponent waking up early, but that's what keeps it from getting overpowered.

Freeze is not broken. I could probably count the number of times I've been frozen on one hand and all of those times it didn't last long, if it afflicted me at all.

I think the distribution of toxic and thunder wave might be a little too high, but it makes the meta game more fun and unpredictable.