Manaphy in ranked PVP

[Baganha]

I haven't read all the comments (as there are obviously too many of them), but the thing is, not that we only don't have the tools to adequately deal with manaphy (tons of good legendaries and all megas), the resources we have to deal with it are very limited. Let's say I want to use a serperior or latios to check it. For serperior i need to buy a black ms, grind for hours to get a h.a one which then turns out to be trash or decent at best. Let's say it's actually epic, still useless as it didn't receive hp fire or ground. For the other you need to fill the whole pokedex just to potentially get trash ivs again and then waste tons of money for reroll tickets which still doesn't guarantee it will be properly usable. That being said, in such a slow meta which lacks good scarfers and megas, base 100 speed for a really bulky and threatening mon is already too much. Not to mention, they added protean greninja out of nowhere while half of the legendaries from BW that were actually OU during that period are still missing in PRO (a quick reminder, manaphy was in ubers during BW). I haven't played the game for like half a year, yet surprisingly, even tho protean greninja has a few real counters (with which all it can actually deal depending on the coverage it's carrying) it dropped in usage, most likely just because for most of the people playing PRO conkeldurr being one of the most used mons that has access to a strong mach punch is actually a major dealbreaker (or for similar reasons). They haven't thought about the impact greninja would have for the meta then (didn't even want to hear about it being banned) and obviously they haven't learned from their old mistakes. As said previously, it is just pure luck people actually don't know how to team build about greninja properly, so it's not that threatening and it's dropping more and more. Same thing was happening with speed boost blaziken and dugtrio until people actually started abusing them more and more and until they nerfed talonflame. By this point i'm completely aware that whoever picks what the next legendary that will enter pvp will be has either no clue about the PRO pvp scene or just doesn't care about it at all

 

I believe a big part of the pvp scene is influenced by the pokemon's availability, i myself am guilty of this as i dont tend to grind for anything that is considered rare, i never tried or intend to in the future to grind for a froakie or snivy for example, and end up grinding for common mons that are good in pvp, like mamo, kingdra, pelipper, gengar, buying the rest of the fundamental mons for a cheap price (meaning they dont have the best stats).

However, the game does offer the tools you need to get anything you want that is pvp legal, it is up to you if you want to put the investment in it, some have better luck than others and get the godly mon they were looking for after 5 minutes, others take 5 hours to just get a decent one but you can skip the grind in its entirety if you're willing to buy the pokemon you want from someone else, the point is, its your decision if you want to put in the investment for it or not, this is a mmo game and i dont feel like i need to explain the whole gist about how its supposed to be grindy etc. Yeah its sucks most of the time, but thats the way the cookie crumbles.

Anyways i felt like writing this to clarify that i dont believe usage/availability (unless its an event exclusive mon) should be regarded as a means of pointing out the meta's flaws or explaining how a pokemon's counterplay is even more limited because the mons that deal with it are very rare, no one here is truly on equal footing with one another, but that doesnt mean there is a reason to bring it up for discussion, if that was the case then everyone should have the right to complain about it with the exception of the luckiest player on pro.

[Heroofthestreet]

I believe a big part of the pvp scene is influenced by the pokemon's availability, i myself am guilty of this as i dont tend to grind for anything that is considered rare, i never tried or intend to in the future to grind for a froakie or snivy for example, and end up grinding for common mons that are good in pvp, like mamo, kingdra, pelipper, gengar, buying the rest of the fundamental mons for a cheap price (meaning they dont have the best stats).

However, the game does offer the tools you need to get anything you want that is pvp legal, it is up to you if you want to put the investment in it, some have better luck than others and get the godly mon they were looking for after 5 minutes, others take 5 hours to just get a decent one but you can skip the grind in its entirety if you're willing to buy the pokemon you want from someone else, the point is, its your decision if you want to put in the investment for it or not, this is a mmo game and i dont feel like i need to explain the whole gist about how its supposed to be grindy etc. Yeah its sucks most of the time, but thats the way the cookie crumbles.

Anyways i felt like writing this to clarify that i dont believe usage/availability (unless its an event exclusive mon) should be regarded as a means of pointing out the meta's flaws or explaining how a pokemon's counterplay is even more limited because the mons that deal with it are very rare, no one here is truly on equal footing with one another, but that doesnt mean there is a reason to bring it up for discussion, if that was the case then everyone should have the right to complain about it with the exception of the luckiest player on pro.

 

Well yeah. It is a MMO game and therefore it should be grindy (personally after some time i started doing the same thing you do, farming only low tier mons, tier 7 at most and that happens like once or twice during a year), but definitely not as much as it is right now as that's what's actually repelling both the vets and the newbies to continue playing it. For most of the time, farming in general is not really grateful (looking at the time invested into it compared with the outcome), so with adding more and more relevant stuff that were missing before, it becomes harder for the vets like me to keep up with the game, whereas at the same time the game doesn't encourage newbies to even enter the fight with the vets, as there's potentially too much relevant stuff that needs to be farmed or grinded for, while the economy is ridiculous right now (not even epic mons going for 5-10M just because they're top meta or good for the meta, but rare). Furthermore, a newbie usually doesn't have the proper knowledge (unless they have previous experience, like from showdown) to build the right team and often even the best players need to test their teams to see whether they're actually usable for laddering or not. That being said, a newbie will need to invest tons of time/money for mons that in the end will actually prove not to be viable, or at least not with the other mons he has gathered. By this point, you can already see how discouraging this for someone to continue is (if he wants to enter competitive pvp). In my opinion, everyone should be able to use mons like h.a hp fire serperior that has enough spd ivs to outspeed gengar if they feel like, but often you won't even find anyone selling them and if they do, be sure they'll abuse the laws of supply and demand at most, often even writing they can cancel the auction if it doesn't reach 10m which is also ridiculous and needs to be changed as that's actually not how auctions in real life go/work. Personally i'd implement something like nature rerolls for all mons, which would cost around 1m or idk how much pvp coins. That would still make the game grindy (not in a sick way tho), but also give everyone a chance to have epic/godly high tier mons. I'm aware that all i have written now has gone too much off topic, but i couldn't help myself and felt the urge to write it. If the goal of the game developers is to amass new players and encourage them to keep playing the game (while also preserving the interest of vets to continue playing it as well instead of making them quit) then imo the strategy of developing the game is going towards the wrong direction (which we can from present evidence witness, as the amount of active people in both servers is constantly dropping) and some radical changes should seriously be considered to be made

[Starkrey]

i also agree with you, and im also going to stop playing until we either ban manaphy, or get the mons we need to face him (toxapex, mega venusaur, or tapu fini - lele, etc)

 

Nothing to add.

 

People are abusing manaphy since one or 2 months already, and getting 90%+ winrates/other huge unexplainable winrates or unworthy Rank 1's out of it.

Rest and Manaphy in rain, or double screens manaphy is just a pain and is actually broken since we haven't the necessary mons to face it yet. We actually have a few (Ferrothorn Power Whip, Serperior even if it doesnt really OKHO manaphy and can't come on it freely, it also dies to ice beam of course, some revenge killers once you decided which pokemon you are gonna sacrify or take a risk with) but being absolutly forced to play them with specific sets in every team in order to not be swept or get 2/3 mons killed by manaphy is just ridiculous and restricts too much team building, and fun of course, not mentionning this pokemon is actually braindead to play.

You also can't play a stall team in this meta either, because the usual manaphy counters and spedef walls/checks like chansey are just absolutely useless against rest and hydration under rain.

Basically kills at least one pokemon each game and can sweep your whole team in end-game if your counters or revenge killers are dead, this pokemon is just too much of a threat for this PRO Meta, if looking at the current winrates of the players abusing it isn't enough, then it is a lost cause.

Edited March 8, 2019 by StarkRey

[Baganha]

Well yeah. It is a MMO game and therefore it should be grindy (personally after some time i started doing the same thing you do, farming only low tier mons, tier 7 at most and that happens like once or twice during a year), but definitely not as much as it is right now as that's what's actually repelling both the vets and the newbies to continue playing it. For most of the time, farming in general is not really grateful (looking at the time invested into it compared with the outcome), so with adding more and more relevant stuff that were missing before, it becomes harder for the vets like me to keep up with the game, whereas at the same time the game doesn't encourage newbies to even enter the fight with the vets, as there's potentially too much relevant stuff that needs to be farmed or grinded for, while the economy is ridiculous right now (not even epic mons going for 5-10M just because they're top meta or good for the meta, but rare). Furthermore, a newbie usually doesn't have the proper knowledge (unless they have previous experience, like from showdown) to build the right team and often even the best players need to test their teams to see whether they're actually usable for laddering or not. That being said, a newbie will need to invest tons of time/money for mons that in the end will actually prove not to be viable, or at least not with the other mons he has gathered. By this point, you can already see how discouraging this for someone to continue is (if he wants to enter competitive pvp). In my opinion, everyone should be able to use mons like h.a hp fire serperior that has enough spd ivs to outspeed gengar if they feel like, but often you won't even find anyone selling them and if they do, be sure they'll abuse the laws of supply and demand at most, often even writing they can cancel the auction if it doesn't reach 10m which is also ridiculous and needs to be changed as that's actually not how auctions in real life go/work. Personally i'd implement something like nature rerolls for all mons, which would cost around 1m or idk how much pvp coins. That would still make the game grindy (not in a sick way tho), but also give everyone a chance to have epic/godly high tier mons. I'm aware that all i have written now has gone too much off topic, but i couldn't help myself and felt the urge to write it. If the goal of the game developers is to amass new players and encourage them to keep playing the game (while also preserving the interest of vets to continue playing it as well instead of making them quit) then imo the strategy of developing the game is going towards the wrong direction (which we can from present evidence witness, as the amount of active people in both servers is constantly dropping) and some radical changes should seriously be considered to be made

 

I definitely get where you are coming from, but you also have to see this in the devs prespective, the devs definitely want this game to be an MMO at its core, PVP in fact seems to be considered something like endgame, for players who are done with the game so to speak, they wouldn't change anything (relating to spawns/rarity tiers etc.) just so it influences pvp, this has alrady been stated by prehax.

 

Giving every player the power to get the perfect pokemon that they want kind of loses the whole point of it being a MMO, at this point it just becomes showdown with some grinding prior to it, or to some extent a regular pokemon game. Thats something that should not be lost if youre estabilishing yourself pretty hard on a specific game genre like pro does.

 

While nature rerolls for regular mons looks like a great idea it would definitely not be good in the long run, the standards for a pvp pokemon would be much higher, meaning there would also be less market for those who are just selling decent pokemon, most of which are newbies so it would be harder for them to get in the game. This would also favor top pvp players even more, making it even harder to compete for high placements each season if you werent appart of it in the beginning. Also i dont see how could this very profitable for the devs as well, which whether you like it or not, as always gotta be in consideration.

 

This will be my last post regarding this issue as i dont want to deviate more than i already have and want focus on this thread's main subject.

[Eltyyy]

No offense but mega venu and toxapex arent exactly manaphy counters either, manaphy uses psychic :] and i dont think its ban worthy even tho its annoying, unaware works and there are other mons that can check manaphy, while its annoying to revenge kill coz of its bulk its also pretty possible to do with what we have pretty easily, i dont see manaphy being OP, top tier / strong yeah for sure, but in no way does it strike me as OP or "Unbeatable", its just like many other setup mons, bad players will get destroyed by it for the most part and good players will find the way to play around it or build around it/against it

[Baganha]

No offense but mega venu and toxapex arent exactly manaphy counters either, manaphy uses psychic :] and i dont think its ban worthy even tho its annoying, unaware works and there are other mons that can check manaphy, while its annoying to revenge kill coz of its bulk its also pretty possible to do with what we have pretty easily, i dont see manaphy being OP, top tier / strong yeah for sure, but in no way does it strike me as OP or "Unbeatable", its just like many other setup mons, bad players will get destroyed by it for the most part and good players will find the way to play around it or build around it/against it

 

Unaware clef works as a solid counter but it goes without saying just because that particular set exist doesnt make manaphy balanced. Revenge killing it isnt an impossible job but again it is pretty limited the amount of things that effectively check it, it shouldnt take a pokemon to be "unbeatable" for it to be considered broken, mons like unburden hawlucha are an example of this as they have their fair share of counterplay but its setup just allows it to bypass most of ther meta with ease cleaning 2-3 mons if not entire teams, thats the main diference from manaphy and any other regular setup mon in the current meta.

[Idkup]

Unaware clef works as a solid counter but it goes without saying just because that particular set exist doesnt make manaphy balanced. Revenge killing it isnt an impossible job but again it is pretty limited the amount of things that effectively check it, it shouldnt take a pokemon to be "unbeatable" for it to be considered broken, mons like unburden hawlucha are an example of this as they have their fair share of counterplay but its setup just allows it to bypass most of ther meta with ease cleaning 2-3 mons if not entire teams, thats the main diference from manaphy and any other regular setup mon in the current meta.

Unburden is only banned because it does not work correctly.

[Baganha]

Unburden is only banned because it does not work correctly.

 

Really? i couldve sworn it was fixed but eventually banned anyways, thank you for the clarification.

[Chris]

So im not sure if making a new thread is the best idea instead of discussing it in another thread such as pvp rules but whatever im just gonna do it.

 

The reason im making this thread is to discuss manaphy's place in the pvp ranked ladder and why i believe it should be considered "broken" in the meta.

 

I wanna startoff by saying that i do not have a lot of experience in pvp, there might be some things i get wrong in this post and if thats the case i obviously would appreciate if anyone corrected me/tell me why im wrong.

 

For my experience, manaphy has had the most amount of usage in rain teams, which is fair since it boosts its stab while giving it the ability to not get statused thanks to hydration, with this manaphy 6-0 the vast majority of stall teams and if it doesnt do that it gets minimum 2-3 kills, in rain it 2hko chansey at +6 surf which im sure if you've seen manaphy against stall you'd know how easy it is to get 2 tgs up. The only switchins that would threaten manaphy to not get up 2 tg would be av tang, amoonguss and ferro. To which tang gets 1v1 if its switching on a tg, unless it has leaf storm, which is an ohko after rocks, needless to say leaf storm is very if not completely unused due to its lack of recovery that giga offers and low pp and overall less reliable stab. Amoonguss is ohko'd after +3 ice beam/psychic unless its an av set which again is 1v1'd. This in itself wouldnt be a bad thing if stall/bulkier balances were the only thing manaphy had a good time against, however this is not the case as manaphy has the tools to be devastating against every playstyle.

 

Firstly there is its typing and stats which are fenomenal, 100 across the board means that this pokemon definetely has the bulk to set up tail glow with ease, even against the more offensive threatning mons such as drill, scizor, ttar (unless banded), weavile(unless banded), volc etc and can always take a hit from mons like conk, bish, mamo, shell smashed cloyster, gengar, togekiss and so on. Manaphy is able to put so much pressure to offensive teams that the only way to beat it at that point is mainly with the use of priority between sucker from bish plus espeed from banded dnite or using something like latios that can dish out a big hit in draco meteor and potentially ohko if its specs. While playing against manaphy with offensive teams may not feel as if youre pushed into a corner as if you were using more bulkier teams, its still has the firepower to completely breakdown your team, right now ive only been talking about one set in particular which is tg +3 attacks, and id argue it is for sure the best set, but options like tg + rest on rain teams is also insanely dificult to deal with, more so for offensive teams since it gives much more longetivity to manaphy also it is much easier to setup against chansey with rest, so thats also a bigger issue for stall. Cm rain dance manaphy while a very unpopular set and i honestly dont believe it will have much presence in the meta does have its uses, having some better niches compared to crocune, better speed, better spatk, better recovery, no status etc.

In fact i dont see why ho wouldnt want to have this in a team, providing immense wallbreaking power whilst still matchup very well against faster teams.

 

Regarding to actual counters, i believe there is mantine, av goodra, unaware clef and spdef ferro (unless manaphy is hp fire), which is a very limited amount to say the least, also taking into account that spdef ferro is the only rather splashable mon of these three.

Checks consist in a bigger number such as serp, latis, cloro venusaur, ss kingdra on non rest variants, and in general if it not at full, mons like gengar and zam.

 

This last point is pretty subjective and im not sure how exactly pro deals with this kind of things but afaik the only way to get manaphy was through this xmas event, which seems a bit unfair for all the other players that maybe didnt join the game at that time or were too busy and just simply couldnt finish the event, specially when were talking about manaphy, which whether you agree or not to be busted, i think we all agree that its an insanely good mon that no player would refuse to not try to get him for pvp purposes.

 

With that i conclude this post (sorry for the walls of text) i do hope to hear the opinions of the community regarding this, if you dont agree with my points you are more than welcome to explain why, i believe discussions like these should be more implemented in this community and with pvp expanding in interest for a lot of players, i think there needs to be a more critical aproach to what people want pvp to turn into and maybe reducing its influences on communities like smogon because they are very diferent metas.

 

Just a quick response from my side; Just because a Pokémon is very strong or the best in the Meta doesn't mean it has to be banned. In case of Manaphy, there are enough counters and even stronger Pokémon.

[Zytrax]

Just ban all legendaries from pvp and we all have a better life.