@@pessoadefinitivamentenorma8282 Funbro has the legendary status of being banned from Anything Goes but revive cats got Anything Goes banned. Hard to say which one is stronger.
I love how Liepard shows up now and again across Competitive Pokemon history to ruin everything with broken Assist strats. The best part is where we, smogon and gamefreak forget it exists until it comes back again with another broken strategy in a later gen. It is truly the only dark type who earns that typing.
@@35.tucongtan64 liepard and purrloin using dark void(darkrai's signature move) with priority, calling it from smeargle's moves, in 2 player vs 2 player doubles
Natdex is turning into the Vintage/Legacy formats from Magic the Gathering. Once you have 20+ years of content available at once, people find the most ridiculous combos that the designers didn't plan for.
One thing you also didn't mention is that revive cat teams are actually unable to beat each other, as their dittos can copy their opponent's Liepards and thus have infinite assist pp. So even if you just accept that it's the meta strategy and use it you'll be forced to tie against opponents also running it. And speaking from personal experience, countering it isn't as simple as slap e-speed on something and win. I also got it to rank 1 on the ladder at some point, and I was consistently beating teams with 2 or 3 e-speed users. It genuinely became an unplayable tier.
I think they should make National Dex Anything Goes an unrated tier, like they have unrated Random Battles. That way, if you end up facing an opponent doing annoying bs, you can just forfeit with no consequences
I have the same opinion on stall. It's pretty boring to me but you can definitely tell when someone skilled is using it versus someone that just clicks, aka brain dead stall
Imagine being a Gamefreak employee, finding out last minute that you accidentally made Revival Blessing callable by Assist. "We deleted Assist in the game anyway. This won't cause any problems."
No one did it - it allows to pull moves by default. Mostly because the ban was added later on, after Prankster was added and Liepard was given Assist. The only reason the move is even problematic.
This is what I find hilarious about noobs running to AG to fill a team with Mega Rayquaza and Arceus… Anything Goes means *Anything Goes.* If you didn’t like stall or cheese strats in OU, you’re REALLY not gonna like stall and cheese strats in AG.
Reminds me of how Pure Hackmons ladder got axed in Gen 8 because Eternamax Eternatus was so hilariously broken that it was almost literally the only mon used in the format, along with multiple other legal exploits like HP editing that made it completely unplayable.
@@AedraRising Pure Hackmons is a metagame about ANYTHING that can be hacked into the game Eternamax eternatus is a pokemon in the game, therefore it can be hacked into use, therefore it is allowed into Pure Hackmons
Towards the end people were also playing 2cats variant of revive Cats, which had the added element of getting suddenly switched to 2 actual offensive pokemon who would then suddenly kill you when you mess up a switch 100+ turns in.
If I had a nickel for every time Assist Liepard dominated competitive, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, right?
I used to play NatDex AG in gen 8, was pretty high up on the ladder and I would occasionally see cool strategies or stuff like that. But the higher you went the more it was basically just Nat Dex Ubers because that's what would consistently win. However in gen 9 from what I'm hearing the games are just 100 game atallwards against lipard and that's not fun, I understand that they would want to ban something that takes the fun out of playing pokemon. Although I would be against banning "Overpowered" strategies, because that's what the metagame is supposed to be about. Part of the fun of playing Nat Dex Ag is that you could have 6 Arceus in your team and customize it. The mega gengar and Calyrex bans seem like competitive descisiosns that have no place in a for fun meta while the liapard revival blessing is just abnoxius.
I hate the fact that mega gengar is banned, like, a shadow sneak from marshadow kills it, i don't see how much powerful it can be, but i got it once in my team and it sweeped and killed a max spdef scorvillian
@@maximilianomartincastrocor8883 It can get a free kill on any team due to Shadow Tag, and Encore combined with Shadow Tag allows it to set up with Calm Mind and sweep. Plus Destiny Bond and Perish Song shenanigans. Shadow Tag and Arena Trap are uncompetitive and broken abilities.
Absolutely agree. No one is playing AG for competetiveness. Otherwise Evasion and Moody would be banned. It really feels like whoever made the AG ban list decided to sneak in those extra bans while they were doing it because they didn't like them. Then they killed AG so people would be forced to play their preferred version of AG Ubers. If so many people wanted AG Ubers there wouldnt be these hypothetical long wait times. They knew for a fact lower level players didn't want AG Ubers and it was only a collection of upper level players that wanted it. So a select few people got to force 95% of a community out of their game mode to play one they would like more.
spoken like someone who has never played a tear mirror theres a reason every top player without exception says how enjoyable and skill intensive the game became that format
I hate single deck metas as much as the next guy but just because a majority of decks are unviable doesn't mean it isn't skill intensive, it just means the format is unfair to the greater playable deck list, which ofc Konami doesn't want to invalidate most cards in its boosters
@@seltzer666 tbh konami does want most cards it prints to be unviable, thats why the boosters are set up the way they are its good for them if u buy many boxes just to get a kashtira core the prime example of this was in THSF when you got one brionac per 5 fucking boxes and nekroz was very clearly the best deck
Agreed, I do natdex ubers with supposed 'shitmons' to challenge myself on low ladder and it genuinely makes me so miserable seeing people scold me for it when I'm just trying to have fun using unique strategies I come up with against a very powerful tier
Honestly, what I would really like to see implemented is National Dex Doubles, since I feel like many of the broken strategies in the current NatDex format would be easier to counter or harder to pull off, while also giving rise to newer strategies that are impossible in the current generation. One combination I'd love to see is a doubles combo of Primal Groudon and Koraidon.
Natdex ubers was made to ban all the strats that made the game unplayable for everyone while still retaining the chaos of AG but now they started banning other stuff. As broken as mega gengar is I can't be the only person who doesn't want it to be banned, it was a cool pokemon after all, and it's not only that too there are other things
I mean you have to understand that mega gengar is one of those strats that makes the tier unplayable. For example, you really can't click a set up move at all because mega gengar comes in, shadow tag traps you, encores you into set up, and it sets up sub and nasty plots just to win the game. It wasn't fun.
@@Rose-ez7yn So what do you expect the players to do who actually liked the chaos of Anything Goes, then? If the goal is to rejoin into one tier to avoid splitting things further, then you need to make decisions that don't make the split even worse. That's why there's only one ladder and not two. Gen 9 Anything Goes exists, but National Dex is where the true fun always was for a tier like that. It's not truly replaceable by either tier.
Mega gengar is legal in gen 6 and 7 ubers. In my opinion the nat dex council has always been too willing to ban things for a tier that’s not an official format
@@Rose-ez7yn A game mode on Showdown with no ladder is essentially killed off from any sort of development or ease of play, which is exactly what a casual format needs to function. If the idea of ranking is an issue, then you can make it an unranked matchmaking game. Frankly if it weren't literally exclusive to Showdown then I don't think there would be a problem, people could just play on the actual game, but that doesn't exist, so all this has done has made it unnecessarily difficult to find other players.
@@Rose-ez7yn Speaking as someone who's now been playing competitive for a decade, I think the *last* thing you want to do as a competitive community is discourage casual play and people's ability to use crazy stuff in its own environment. "Tough luck" is an unnecessarily brutal standpoint to take for something so simple. Smogon may be competitively focused, but Pokemon as a whole is not, so I think this is insanely foolish and makes Smogon look more elitist than it already does to the outside. I know from experience that as a whole it isn't, but that won't stop people from thinking it, and given this slap in the face I wouldn't blame them.
Tbh I wish more resources would be invested into Natdex by the community as a whole. I would love to be able to play Natdex OU, UU, RU, NU, and PU, tbh
As one of the more high ladder "honest" NDAG players (I didn't use Tera Shed or Revival cats), you had to try and have something to counter the two. I personally loved using Ting Lu since it could just spike stack and then I just whirlwind enough to where the cats kept getting chipped and then they lost. Tera Shed is similar since I brought status/phasing moves to ensure that I was somewhat safe. Sucks that the ladder had to go but we still go strong in NDUbers 🙏
Honestly it was the peoples fault. It was fun until people ruined it. What was a sandbox is now without the sand and thus unenjoyable and was avoidable as those use strategy likely were playing for points so it just became unwanted overtime
@@SpookySpectral yeah. i never viewed the tier as being really "competitive" in a sense. but i wouldn't blame the people because they just found a strat that made them win a lot of the time. that's just the nature of a ladder. whatever is the best strat will be used and abused.
@@firewall5189 it runs curse, gunk shot rest, and recycle with leppa berry giving it infinate pp to out stall the cats, but what makes it better than other mons like garbador is that its ability sticky hold makes it so that its leppa berry cannot be removed by thief.
Nat Dex AG is my most played format and holds most of my teams but almost half are banned for one reason or another (M-Rayquaza, Baton Pass, Dupes etc.) which is just unfair to me and others who just wanted to have fun.
Sacrifices of the few and all that. Imo they should have actually tested whether having both ladders up would have resulted in both ladders having too long wait times. Like I don't doubt that it would but it's the only chance players like yourself had and you guys deserved at least that.
I remember how a lot of cards that "Yu-Gi-Oh!" Players hate are basically floodgates, cards that limits how much the player can play like Skill Drain and Vanity's Emptiness. Even less effective floodgates that does not completely stops a player can be annoying, like cards that banishes cards that normally are supposed to be send to the GY. It's to the point that most Yugitubers rejoice when they learn that some particularly annoying floodgates get forbidden (A.K.A.: Banned), as can be seen with Mystic Mine and Barrier Statue of The Stormwinds. Basically, what I'm saying is that strategies that completely stops the opponent on their track is not fun, and kills the desire to play the format/game. I don't think they should have removed the ladder from Anything Goes, and instead just ban unfun strategies, like Revival Blessing Liepard and Tera-Electric Shedninja. It's would make the meta more healthy while also allowing more casual players to just have some fun, especially since I think those are just the few problem cases that were mentioned and makes the format unfun.
Both YGO and Pokemon have to have incredibly big and detailed banlists to reward skill. Seems both ended up being marketable and beloved but are unbalanced messes with the meta.
The issue is that we're talking about AG here. It's called "Anything Goes" for a reason, and any bans (beside endless battle/desync/softlock) inherently go against the concept of the tier in the first place. If you want to ban something from the tier, then the tier is no longer AG by definition, and if we're banning things for being uncompetitive/broken, then we may as well play Ubers instead.
Yu-Gi-Oh still lets you play without a banlist what Smogon is doing is removing a ladder that lets you play this format unless you want to play it casually in custom rules for the 5 people who play that format competitively.
@@emmetstanevich2121 Well, technically, AG is already not AG by definition, since Smogon does not allow you to use endless battle strategies. Another example of letting, well, anything be allowed being a bad idea and killing the meta tier is Gen 8 Pure Hackmons. In it, people used Eternamax Eternatus and a bug that allowed it to only take 1 damage from one type of attack. One is already difficult to take down, but two with different builds almost makes it impossible to win if you do not know what you are doing. The two strategies I asked to be banned are not as bad (especially Tera-Electric Shedinja), but they are still difficult to take down if someone is just going in casually, and more importantly, unfun to play against if you don't really have an out.
@@spookyscarylamppost3431 Yes, and you missed the problem of why it's controversial before that, evidently. There is no "fun, fuck around" sandbox meta now, and people genuinely liked that. Check out Elo Bandit's most recent video to find the outpouring of players who miss the tier, and the claims of why it was a dumb decision to axe it entirely. Not splitting the niche of a niche ladder makes sense! However the problem lies in when the council for a tier makes decisions that immediately break off the largest part of the tier, the part that wanted a fun meta and didn't give a shit about competitive integrity. I think there is a place for NatDex Ubers, for sure, but it's no replacement
I've been playing AG formats for about three years now. Out of the two gimmicks you mentioned, the only one that posed a real problem to me was the revival spam one. Most of the time you always want to run ways to deal with setup (which is pretty popular on the tier), so running Mold Breaker or Teravolt to deal with Unaware BS isn't uncommon. The problem with making an "Ubers" version of NatDex AG is that it further restricts the players experience by catering towards the whiny part of the playerbase, with unnecesary bans such as the Calyrex and Miraidon bans. That's my main gripe with that solution. Forcing infinite matches was already banned with a special clause, they could have done sometging similar for the Revival Blessing + prankster combo.
I guess that back in the days of Funbro, it was a one-time thing, and the generation before that (which was 4) had nothing that was just broken beyond relief. Now, it is a given that Tera Electric Shedinja exists (which at least is easily countered by Legendaries), that Assist Prankster will exist, and Dynamax and all the other broken stuff in Gen 8 made people far too accustomed to banning stuff that was broken simply because after various voting the broken things were banned.
As a person that played national dex ag in gen 8, it's was very fun. It’s actually what I spent most of my time on, I did do ou sometimes; but getting to use anything was so fun! I hope that the Pokémon showdown players can switch to national dex AG gen 8 (if that’s a thing)
Gen 8 anything goes is the closest thing This is just stupid, it doesnt make sense to remove a tier that has a lot of players and that it was never meant to be competitive in the first place
Something common that a lot of people are discussing is splitting tiers, but that misses why ladders get removed. There's only a limited player base on Pokemon Showdown, & creating too many ladders in reality just creates a bunch of dead ladders. NatDex AG got so tedious that people stopped playing it. It's already a niche tier, so splitting it up, or even having both it & NatDex Ubers at the same time, effectively splits the user base & makes both ladders far quieter. This is also why you never find past gens' lower tiers or Ubers with permanent ladders. You would split the playerbase of an already niche meta & never get games. When those past metas, or even the gimmick metas, get features for a single month, you get a lot more activity on them.
You mentioned that you wouldn't talk about revival cats in more details since it was derivative of elobandit's video, but this in of itself is derivative of his more recent video. It also frames it that a majority of players were looking for bans/changes which isn't the case per his video
Revive cats really weren't broken, they were just annoying. In high ladder games, I rarely saw the team and didn't even bother bringing counters. It's a cheese strategy that has easy counters.
Revive cats seems like it wouldn't be something TPC would have enabled calling revival blessing with assist if revival blessing were in the same generation
I imagine some gen 9 moves don't have the flag set, which would then suggest that at least a passing thought went into whether or not it should be callable. that's the main way I'd see them feeling confident in the decision to let Assist call Revival Blessing.
Also Assist can't be called in gen 9, which makes the idea even more ridiculous. Because just because something is flagged by default - it means it should be adapted to Showdown as it is.
I freaking love National Dex. It lets me pick at the only handful of pokemon I actually LIKE from the last couple gens while still getting to use the mons I actually love.
Keep it as AG, sure revivecats are annoying but the whole point is it's not a competitive format, it's a dumb casual sandbox that you can jump into. Turning it into ubers introduces a banlist that is already getting ridiculous because it's not just removing the two strats that made AG unplayable but banning all the fun stuff
Natdex AG getting removed is pretty lame tbh, its AG, it doesnt need a council to function cuz theres no need for tiering. NDUbers was absolutely needed, but thats no reason to murder AG. The tiers arent the same thing by a longshot(Natdex with strong legendaries doesnt even work too well for AG since the most dominant strats barely even use legends), AG is crazy shed and cat shenanigans, Ubers is an actual metagame Something notable against shed is also hail, which allows you to bypass shedinja switching in for as long as its up as no1 runs tera-ice shed
Some ways to counter revival cats: Whirlwind+hazard stacks, because they can't run a recovery move because of assist. Extreme speed sweepers like mega ray and arceus normal are great too, but it's only reliable if you have a way to setup substitute. Toxic+whirlwind. Same deal with the hazard stack strat, but a bit difficult to do so. Bulk up sash marshadow with shadow sneak. (Actually, any strong and fast priority mon can fralda with them)
as someone who played Natdex AG while it still had a ladder, it basically got less and less fun the higher you got on it, since you see less people messing around with funny strategies (personal one i used was miraidon + alolan raichu double teaming everyone to oblivion), and more about people wanting to win, so of course they are gonna bust out the strats with the highest chance of victory, which of course was either tera-shedinja or revive cats
As some1 that played the tier and iirc peaked at 8th on ladder, playing the serious players was the fun part, few things in mons were less satisfying than e-speeding through the cats once theyre all chipped down
Make nat dex AG something without a ladder but something you can still queue up for to fight random people. This prevents the dilution if the competitive pool at a top level while still giving a space for casual people to find random matches. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, it only has to be one or the other for people higher up on the ranked ladder. That’s where the long wait times get really atrocious. Casual players were probably never going to get up there so them being removed from the pool doesn’t impact the time.
ideally there should be ladders for both tiers, but if it comes down to it i'd rather natdex ubers. if we just have natdex ag then when things that are slightly too op for ou get banned if you wanna play a format with them you're also forced to play with gimmicks like no species clause and baton pass, revival cats, etc
I am for having both nat dex AG and Ubers, even for long queue times, on showdown, there are ladders for OU of every generation (BDSP OU is still on the ladder but LGPE isn't), random battle of every generation, metronome battles for gen 9, and even just in gen 9, there are 20 options (14 solo metas and 6 doubles, metronome battle not included in these but gen9 OU is). There are more metas than mentioned, so with all of that choice there are surely some of them with longer queue times than nat dex AG and Ubers had if they coexisted
a general trend i keep seeing in competitive singles is that the more freedom there is in how you can build your team in a tier, the more downright bullshit and restricting that tier becomes. natdex aa ag would just be the pinnacle of that (outside of hackmons) and be completely unplayable beyond the lowest level where there's still casuals lol.
Shedinja is one of my favourite pokemon and it feels so good but also so weird to see it in a banned list with the likes of Mega Ray and Calyrex Shadow.
I'm a pretty active NDOU player, and it was definitely interesting to watch this process happening on the national dex discord server. People had discussed National Dex Ubers last generation, but Dynamax actually helped keep a lot of the most ridiculous stuff in check. Dynamax isn't possible to add into a format with tera on showdown, so the basic idea of NDAG was already being challenged pretty heavily by coding limitations. Another factor, that's a bit less interesting, that factored into NDAG losing all traction was how tera interacts with some very powerful Ubers. Specifically, Calyrex shadow becomes impossible to check once it can get stab on draining kiss.
So basically, Gen 8 NatDex AG was pure luck in that because of the specific gimmick of the generation checking other gimmicks, while Tera is far too fundamental a change plus Gen 9 having Revival Blessing in the first place?
the thing i doesn't understand though is despite those controversies, they never hold any sort of voting system or something in that regard. We know it will be controversial, and the insiders that never played the metagame even slightly removed the entire thing. Honestly i felt like a tier with only tera shedninja and revive cats banned and nothing else is banned (like bp, evasion, trapping) would be a reasonable solution because from what we saw from gen 8 natdex ag, without those 'cheese' the metagame would probably be playable a misconception about how funbro is banned while revival cats weren't is that funbro force the game to not end by intention, while revival cats is trying to win. It is not to say revive cats are healthy for the metagame, but funbro targets to let the game goes forever, whose is much worse because while it takes strategy to 'trap' something, the target isn't to knockout something or to even win the first place, it's unlike 'matchup fish' teams whose purpose is still to win, just that they are using a uncompetitive strategy to win. Funbro isn't making the game uncompetitive or unfun or even unplayable, it is making the game based on whether if you need to quit or not for the other to even win. Thats why endless battle clause is in AG.
augh I literally just added Espathra to a team and now I have to change it back to what it was. If only laws were so quick to ban stuff in real life that is a nuisance and a threat to you - and no I'm not talking about flamingos or ostriches.
I’m for National Dex Ubers. I want to play in a Meta game with powerful legendaries of all gens fighting each other. Terra Shedninja and Revive cats are just braindead gimmicks that suck the fun out of that. Casual AG players shouldn’t matter anyways. They screw up the ladder by giving free points to serious players. Happy that Nat Dex Ubers has an actual community and can’t wait to play in the tier
The game data is wrong, it's blatantly obviously filler data. Every single move is 'callable' by Assist except for enemy only moves, including moves that their equivalents have never been able to be called by Assist in the past. It's entirely arbitrary.
Funny thing is that problems like this, which are inherent to new mechanics and attacks, is one of the benefits to the dex cuts and removed attacks. Some of these tactics are so obvious and broken to face that GameFreak would never have put in a move like Revival Blessing alongside Assist or Terastalization alongside something like Shedinja. Those mechanics are only possible because they cut Assist and Shedinja. I mean yes, in theory they could have come up with some solution beyond cutting, like making Revival Blessing not a viable Assist target or making it so Shedinja can't Terastalize to Electric with some BS shoved into the game to "explain it" in world. But solutions like that would have also had outcry and would require fixes for every big issue like that, while cutting them let's them save time to put development time in other areas, even if they still need even more time to develop the games than they're getting.
Can’t believe GameFreak accidentally created something worse than Dive Cats. I think switching to Ubers is probably sensible if the majority of players want it. I do think “banned from Ubers” should be a very high bar - if it were up to me, it would just be excessively luck-based strats like evasion getting banned. Mega-Ray, Zacian, Calyrex-Shadow, Mega Gengar, Miraidon, Koraidon? GameFreak designed powerful stuff, that’s what Ubers is for, it’s not supposed to be balanced.
To be fair to GameFreak, Assist isn't legal in gen 9, and I'm pretty sure all moves are callable by default, unless flagged to not be callable. GameFreak simply forgot to add a flag that would literally never be relevant in gen 9 (unless Assist comes back in a DLC.) Then again, Sleep Talk is also able to call Revival Blessing, and that is a move that exists in Gen 9, so I'm not sure if GameFreak cares all that much about it.
@@emmetstanevich2121 The revaroom moves from the Team Star Leader battle is not callable by assist, so no, it’s not callable by default, it’s an intentional decision.
I mean, in this case Game Freak actually didn’t create this problem considering that Assist doesn’t exist in Generation 9 so obviously they wouldn’t have to take it into account. This is 100% just a fundamental issue with Smogon.
Well, I'm still mad because ND AG is gone, but with all the context is understandable, I just hope GF makes revival b uncallable by assist at some point so the tier can return in the future, otherwise is permanently dead and is sad
Assist was removed from the series in gen 8. There’s about a 0% chance GameFreak makes balancing changes to a move they deleted because an unofficial simulator wants to use it but also doesn’t want to make unofficial balance changes of their own.
@@TheMistermastermario but moves still have assist calls for it, the torque moves cant be called but revival blessing can? it can also be called by sleep talk so seems odd
@@darthhydreigon820 seems like by default it's callable, so if a move is not manually set to be forbidden then it can be called. They instead removed Assist which effectively means no moves whatsoever can be called by it in the actual game. So it's only a 3rd party problem and as such the 3rd party will have to find a solution
@@eclipseeffigy maybe... but the torque moves arent.... so why go through the effort to remove it from torque moves but not revival blessing, idk i guess they didnt anticipate this or smth... like roar was callable by assist in gen 5 and chainable, maybe they just overlooked it
@@darthhydreigon820 Well, the torque moves (and the starmobiles in general) aren't meant to be used by players (kinda like the opponents in pokestar studios,) and according to bulbapedia, they aren't able to be called by ANY other move (such as copycat, mimic, instruct, etc.,) so it seems they simply had all their "exclusion" flags set, including the currently unused ones (no sense in checking which ones you're setting if you want to set them all anyways.) For Revival Blessing, I assume GameFreak didn't have problems with it being called by other moves (such as mirror move,) and any exclusions they do make would be for interactions that they specifically take issue with, which probably doesn't include a move that got axed last gen.
i think NDAG should remain a tier but people gotta realise that it is anything goes. apparently smogon devs got a lot of complaints about how “broken” certain strats are in ag… but if you care so much, just play regular natdex, or even better the newly formed natdex ubers its either you allow every broken strategy into AG, or none of them into Ubers
I disagree that having both AG and Ubers would split the player base. As someone who doesn’t care about the NatDex Ubers, I still would’ve played NatDex AG, and I don’t think I’m alone. You’re not looking at a pool of players who would be divided by having two formats, you’re looking at a player base that will only play one and not the other, and therefore removing one removes all of those players immediately. RIP revivecats.
I doubt that. Now that they removed Nat dex AG, most plays will probably go to either Nat dex UBERs because they want to play with legendaries, or just AG, instead of just not playing the game entirely.
I was 7th overall in gen 8 national dec anything goes. I was 23rd in national dex. I was sad when it was banned but realized Ubers was a thing and am now 97th in Ubers at first I was against it but now I do prefer this it favors my play style and is much more fun to play.
I think even if both ladders existed, NatDex AG's userbase would eventually all switch over to NatDex Ubers, *except* for the Shedinja and Liepard (and other banned 'mons - Calyrex, Mega Gengar, etc.) players. If they want to have a ladder all to themselves, I say why not? If people want to try finding a new meta-defining strategy that can beat these teams, why not provide a ladder wherein they can do that?
I genuinely enjoys gen 8 ndag, so i did try out ndag this gen early on, and i felt it was really overcentralized. i felt forced to use shedinja or a shedinja counter, and since nothing can technically be banned from ndag, i do see why it died off
I liked toying with teams in Nat Dex AG, figuring out ways to counter strategies I ran into, including revive cats. The whole point of the format was to have a format where things could run wild without restriction after the dexit, wasn't it? Freedom to make any team you wish and test it against whatever your opponent came up with, regardless of how strong it was, or what generation. It was a tier made for uncompetitive play, with no clauses and gimmicks of all types that people would want to try out. Removing it is senseless in my opinion, and saying that 'having both NDAG and NDU would 'split the player base further' is an incredibly weak counter argument that disregards that the player base was already so split up across the various categories that were already being played. Adding one more format would not have significantly split the player base in any fashion, and saying that it would result in much longer wait times to get a game is likely overexaggerated. tl;dr, my personal opinion is that removing NAT AG was a bad decision that while made with good intentions, screwed over a portion of the userbase.
While ND Ubers is more popular, and should be prioritized as THE Nat Dex format to play, ND AG should still exist as an active ladderable thing specifically as the ultimate “we do whatever we want within cartridge rules” tier. It is unfair that that sort of creative play is considered bad just because it leads to the same battles, and while ReviveCats and Electric Tera Shedinja are the meta, it is fun in a sense to see what specific counters you need for those thing that will now perpetually exist.
was going to write a comment with my thoughts, but then i realized that yours already brought up the points i was thinking of and probably did so better
@Boble Yee its not just a straight majority on all counts tho. A majority of the competitive players wanted it, sure, but the casuals thatd make up most of the ladder mainly play the tier for being AG and not Ubers, so I doubt itd be a majority of people playing the tier at the start, much less at the end when the people playing the tier would be the people playng the tier for what it was
So whats the problem? You say its not a competitive mode and good for you because they only removed the ladder but you can still challenge people to an NDAG match.
@@eclipseeffigy NDAG was always a ladder format, it was a way for casuals to play with whatever they wanted without having to care about rulesets restricting them
Smogon just handled the situation very badly, most ppl dont even care about competitive at all and national dex AG had A LOT of players, giving these 2 facts it doesnt make sense to be removed
@@watercrystals9744 Showdown is mostly played by casuals and ppl that for whatever reason dont have a switch ,most just simply dont care about competitive, if casuals are gone showdown is mostly dead
@@watercrystals9744 You severely underestimate people's unwillingness to actually have to interact with a person online. That fact alone is the reason why people are dead wrong when they say ignorant shit like: "You can still play a 6v6 Single on cart". No, in practice we cannot, because 100% of the playerbase wants to avoid having to directly ask for a battle online, and would rather just use the automated matchmaking system, which is currently called "Battle Stadium". Even on Showdown, most players are not up for casual conversation during a battle. The last time I saw actual PvP interaction on Showdown was when I took a peek inside Gen 7 VGC back in the day.
They should have just bite the bullet and make Assist not call revival blessings. IDC about purism, the problem is in all intents and purposes invented by Smogon and very likely an "I don't care" moment from GameFreak.
@@thejuic3b0i64 indeed, because of 3v3 Singles. There was already a stall problem in that format, being a big reason why recovery moves now have only 8 PP max.
Pretty sure that goes into Sleep Clause territory. The fact you have to practically mod fhe game to get more balance just shows what a broken mess it all is.
@@DrCoeloCephalo I mean, in this case it’s not even the game that’s broken, it’s Showdown itself that caused their own issues by believing that unused vestigial code is god.
I don’t think that last argument makes sense. If Natdex AG is such a bad meta then you shouldn’t expect to split the players all that much. You’d just end up with a very sparsely populated AG ladder and a much more populated Ubers ladder. If that’s not the case then apparently “people want it” isn’t all that true.
revive cats is honestly what got me back into showdown for a few weeks. it's extremely fun to pilot that team, especially the giratina variant with 4 cats. idk, im sad that its a dead metagame now. i see why it was annoying tho, so i guess its fine
Inside the game code Revival Blessing has the assist tag enabled. Are all the new gen 8/9 moves enabled? I'd be curious to know, because if nothing has it since the move was deleted, then it's likely just all moves are assist enabled by default, and there's no reason to differentiate them now.
not all, the torque moves for example do not and while those are unobtainable they directly show off that theres some reasoning behind not changing revblessing to stop working with assist since its technically intended
Everything except for enemy only moves. I'm strongly against using placeholder data given it also enables Assist calling moves with precedent that it wouldn't (the new special Protect move). The decision to use it as is was entirely arbitrary and never how GF would have implemented it if they kept it.
@@ClasIsMid The torque moves are NPC-exclusive, and they can't be called by ANYTHING (including instruct, encore, etc.) They probably just have every flag set, because why would they specifically not set the assist flag?
In my opinion this is the occasion to implement "complex bans". For example no balloon on shedinja and no team with assist where only one move can be called. Accuracy clauses is still fine but keep the rest.
Wait times is a non-issue in my opinion. Give people the option to choose what they want to play instead of nuking the ladder version of natdex AG. If someone wants to play a game, they’ll wait a few minutes on ladder. It happens all the time for people in less popular formats. I used to wait like 15 mins in queue for hackmons games but they didn’t just delete the tier. If someone wants to play a format where they can abuse shed or revive cats they should have an option that isn’t customs.
I'm ok with the ladder going to just ndu as long as ndag isn't removed completely because of it. I still want to be able to mess around with friends in ndag, but if there is a reason they wouldn't be able to keep it even as just a non-ladder option then so be it I guess.
I support ND AG having its own ladder, and National Dex Ubers seems to have entirely separate appeal. The reason to play ND AG is its own definition - an entire lack of any bans, either by smogon or by gamefreak. And after watching Elo Bandit's video, I don't believe that either Revival Cats or Shedinja makes the game unplayable or even unfun.
Rest in peace to NatDex Anything Goes. It seems like quite a lot of people didn't like the tier already, but honestly in Gen 8 it was really fun to play. Yeah, you gotta deal with stupid cheese, cuz that was part of why it existed, but for people like me it was just another knowledge check and trying my best to outplay it. The "sandbox meta" was my favorite because it was my only true knowledge check in Pokemon Showdown, so I am a bit sad to see it go, but it's for the greater good. Gen 9 was doomed due to Revive Cats' creation, but from the moment Revival Blessing was *leaked*, I had already in part accepted this moment would come. It was such an absurd move that I knew people would find a way to infinite stall with it, and look what happened. It's not quite infinite, but this is the true nasty form of what a stall team COULD be. As for whether Gen 9 NatDex AG should have the ladder... Frankly I think despite the name, you could make an *Almost* Anything Goes (kinda like Almost Any Ability) and achieve the best of both worlds. You keep the sandbox feel, but you get rid of what is the *most* unfun stuff to play against. One could argue this is what NatDex Ubers is, which is partially true, but I genuinely think there's a place for people to enjoy bullshit strategies like BP chains and watch the serotonin hit occur. Revive Cats, while fundamentally less *unbreakable* than something like BP chaining - and I respect the research put into its meta development - was not only difficult to play around, but not fun. And I think I'd someone shitting in a sandbox would sooner just leave the sandbox and the caretakers get together a new one without them in it, compared to saying "no sandbox". But that's just me
I think they should have thought of it the moment they added gen 9 to the showdown and straight up not allow Assist to pull Revival Blessing. Because you know they would do that in the original games - like you can't use some of the other moves with it (double turn moves and moves like Whirlwind - Assist basically breaking the mechanics of these, due to better priority). And isn't the first time Smogon had to do this, as they already allow Megas, Dynamax and Z-Moves - and aside anime, there isn't really that much precedence of how many gimmicks you can use or how it should work. 5:30 The issue with that is that they would definitely change it. Assist is not coming back so there is no point for this. If something isn't usable - game data doesn't matter. Remember that Hisuian forms didn't have all of their abilities before gen 9 even, because they don't use their abilities in Arceus. Game files say that Assist can't be used and that applies to all new moves. Even if they just shoehorned "true" flag for all of them. Like that is not logical.
2:27 Why is it running Secret Power? Personally, I think it's tragic a format was lost to ND:AX. Okay analysis video. Thanks for uploading! I appreciate you citing the other info sources on this topic!
late reply, but secret power and poltergeist are the only physical moves in shedinja's movepool that don't make contact so you can't beat it with rocky helmet, and before hisuian zoroark they provided perfect coverage
