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SwSh Dynamax: Thoughts, Feelings, or Concerns

Can't remember if I stated my ideas about them here already, but I believe they'll be upgrades of their signatures. Rillaboom will have a binding move that lowers speed every turn, kinda like Octolock, Cinderace will have guaranteed burn, and Inteleon ignores all effects, meaning screens, moves, abilities, weather, and stat changes.

that ball reminds me of Steamroller. Its football related? Breaking through Protects and Max Guards?
 
For those of you wondering why Dynamax is busted and got banned, here's the Smogon's Monotype Council's Reasoning.

Dynamax is exceedingly unpredictable. Unlike Z-Moves and Mega Evolutions in the past, Dynamax can be used by any Pokemon at any time. It is certainly the case that there are some Pokemon that are better than others at Dynamaxing, and it is fairly obvious what the game plan might be from a teambuilding perspective. However, Dynamax is extremely flexible, so during the course of a game, that game plan will shift and every turn brings with it the question of whether Dynamax will be used or not for both sides. To make matters worse, Choice item users can break out of their Choice lock at any time as well. The value of scouting Choice users is diminished greatly when that information does not guarantee that your switch-in is safe. The notable example used in our thread was Choice Scarf Excadrill vs Toxapex, which is a huge mess of 50/50s: will Excadrill stay in to Dynamax, what move would it use if it does, will the Toxapex stay in to risk Max Quake, will it Max Guard to counter the potential Dynamax, etc. The game can devolve very quickly in scenarios like this to being 50/50s every single turn. The sheer unpredictability of this mechanic severely hinders the competitiveness of the metagame.

Dynamax is more than just unpredictable, though, as it brings ridiculous power to the table. The most obvious problem in the Dynamax suite is Max Airstream, which not only has increased damage (unlike Max Knuckle and Max Ooze) but also boosts the user's Speed by one. When considering the elevated damage output, this lets many sweepers get out of hand very quickly if they're given even a turn to set up. The easiest way to see just the extent to which Max Airstream is broken is by just looking at Flying teams, which is comprised of simply dual screens + Max Airstream sweepers. While Gyarados, with its Moxie + Max Airstream providing what's basically a free DD evrey turn, is by far the most prominent of sweepers, almost anything with Flying coverage can easily take advantage of it. For example, even Barraskewda can boost to +1 Speed in order to outspeed Choice Scarf Trace Gardevoir with non-STAB two-turn Bounce thanks to Dynamax. Slower Pokemon

Dynamax would not be what it is without Max Moves providing incredibly powerful secondary effects beyond just Max Airstream. The terrain and weather Max Moves are just as powerful in the right hands. Max Flare and Max Geyser boost their own damage by setting weather, something doubly powerful in the hands of Swift Swim sweepers. A similar story can be told for Electric-, Grass-, and Psychic-types that can set their own terrain and immediately boost their own damage. Of these, Max Mindstorm is especially notable for blocking priority, which is an incredibly powerful option for sweepers like Polteageist, Barraskewda, and Hatterene. These moves show the problem extends beyond just particular Max Moves. Even the "less powerful" Max Moves in Max Knuckle and Max Ooze can be snowbally in the right hands.

Dynamax brings insane defensive utility as well that makes fast sweepers all the more dangerous. Doubling health effectively halves damage taken, which turns every sweeper into a tank that's difficult to take out. Setting up your sweeper becomes so much easier when you can rest assured that even a double into a supposed check is unlikely to stop your sweep. For example, for Dragon teams, double switching out to Duraludon on Gyarados as it Dragon Dances is almost worthless, as even a Max Lightning fails to OHKO a Dynamax-boosted Gyarados, which means it has much more leeway in trying to set up. Trace Gardevoir can give up its Choice Scarf boost temporarily in order to fire off powerful Max Mindstorms and Max Overgrowths against Water teams, as even rain-boosted Choice Band Barraskewda can't OHKO it from full. Pokemon like Barraskewda, Excadrill, and Hatterene that abuse Life Orb during Dynamax are even more durable because the recoil is halved to 5%.

For all of these reasons, the council agrees with the overall consensus from the Dynamax in Monotype thread: Dynamax is simply too good for our metagame.
I’m just simply providing reasons why people deem Dynamax busted. If you don’t like Smogon rules, that’s fine. You can play cartridge formats like Battle Stadium Singles which allows Dynamaxing.
 
I think Dynamax is a major bummer of a mechanic - I wish there was more interaction between moves / items and the Dynamax status. I don't understand why Brick Break doesn't break the Dynamax pokemon's barrier - it seems like a wasted opportunity. Similarly, multi-hit moves not breaking multiple levels of the barrier seems like another wasted opportunity - there's an obvious strength reduction and accuracy reduction for moving those moves, so why not give them this tiny plus side?

Initially I was super excited by the mechanic, but post-game it's been really disappointing. Feels like the cap is not the strength of my pokemon or my ability - rather it's based on the NPC trainers' RNG. Really sucks the air out of it.
 
I don't understand why Brick Break doesn't break the Dynamax pokemon's barrier - it seems like a wasted opportunity.

One regular, highly-distributed move being able to fully dismantle the barrier with no drawbacks would be insanely overpowered. I could see an argument that Hyper Beam-tier moves should get to break two bars like Max Moves do since you have to recharge (and actually now that I mention it, I kinda wish that's how it worked), but what you're suggesting here is incredibly unbalanced.

Similarly, multi-hit moves not breaking multiple levels of the barrier seems like another wasted opportunity - there's an obvious strength reduction and accuracy reduction for moving those moves, so why not give them this tiny plus side?

If they had it so that multi-hit moves that manage to score 4 or 5 hits get to break two bars, then sure, I could get behind that. But in general, it's not that hard to deal damage in Max Raids, so that just isn't as valuable as being able to break barriers. The idea of those moves "trading" offensive capability in favor of breaking multiple bars doesn't feel like a fair exchange to me.
 
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I dislike that that shiny catch rate in Dynamax raids is not 100%.
I had a shiny gigantamax lapras the other day and it was unbelievably disappointing to me that it failed to catch. It's pretty lucky to find a giga shiny so it feels kind of mean for the catch rate to be so low when you can only throw one ball.

Pokemon go has a 100% catch rate for raid shinies and i'd just assumed it would logically be the same on this!
 
i do think it's kinda weird how Behemoth Bash/Blade don't take out two bars of shield. they're more effective when the target is dynamaxed, so from a flavour point of view it makes sense and it's odd how it doesn't in actuality.
 
i do think it's kinda weird how Behemoth Bash/Blade don't take out two bars of shield. they're more effective when the target is dynamaxed, so from a flavour point of view it makes sense and it's odd how it doesn't in actuality.
Apparently OHKO moves remove 2 barriers if they connect. Considering that Dynamax Pokemon are LV 60 at max, a level 100 Pokémon should have roughly 70% hit rate.
 
Considering that Dynamax Pokemon are LV 60 at max
Er, I'm pretty certain that I've caught Pokemon from raids at level 70, though that still gives a minimum accuracy of 60% (50% for non-Ice types using Sheer Cold).
 
i do think it's kinda weird how Behemoth Bash/Blade don't take out two bars of shield. they're more effective when the target is dynamaxed, so from a flavour point of view it makes sense and it's odd how it doesn't in actuality.

In my experience I've hardly ever needed them to. Raids where four chaps roll up all with their own Zacian and go to town don't last very long, even with the barriers. With the amount of damage they do, I think the "flavor" idea is that they are able to pretty much just bypass the barrier.
 
In my experience I've hardly ever needed them to. Raids where four chaps roll up all with their own Zacian and go to town don't last very long, even with the barriers. With the amount of damage they do, I think the "flavor" idea is that they are able to pretty much just bypass the barrier.
From what I’ve read, it’d be pretty helpful to the folks without subscription who're ending up with Magikarp or Solrock as partners.
 
From what I’ve read, it’d be pretty helpful to the folks without subscription who're ending up with Magikarp or Solrock as partners.

I’d say it’s the partners that need improving in that regard, rather than the move mechanics. And you can always reset for different partners.

And shitty though the AI partners may be, just earlier tonight I managed to take down a 5-star G-Max Coalossal with my Sirfetch’d. I was playing offline, and my partners were Mudbray, Togepi, and that useless Wobbuffet. It not exactly easy (although, haven’t people been wanting more difficulty in the games?), but it can still be done without NSO.
 
I want more difficulty, but I want that difficulty to come from my own failings, not from terrible AI partners.

Help me here - what are those "failings" exactly? In what tactical areas are you deficient that you would like Max Raid bosses to exploit?

It's pretty much always going to come down to AI one way or the other. Either they crank the AI and the RNG up to increasingly advantageous levels, or they put some shitty AI partners around your ankles like cinderblocks and have you try to navigate the minefield of a Max Raid battle. We actually get to see what it's like when we have to take on a couple of Max Raid Battle without any partners at all during the Sordward/Shielbert arc and guess what, it's easier than ever because nothing is hindering you and you just have to play the relevant type matchups. Even if those ones put up barriers, all it would do is let them get a couple more licks in against you. Because battling a wild Pokémon is simply not hard, ever, especially when you have healing items and a party with more than one or two members.

There's self-imposed challenges, of course. You can choose to not take advantage of the fact that you can use infinite healing items and revives when no other NPC can, but that's still an active decision on your part to make the game harder than it is. We're talking about a game that is essentially just glorified rock-paper-scissors where the absolute worst consequence for losing is that you drop a negligible bit of cash and try again.

I certainly think Pokémon would do well to have more NPCs oriented around popular, effective strategies. The Totem Pokémon in the Alola games did that and it was nice. But even then, that would probably be done more for the purpose of teaching the player how to be more versatile in competitive PvP (which is where the designers' focus now lies) than about making the single-player campaign harder, and it's not like the game didn't offer you some ideal counters to each Totem Pokémon via in-game trades.
 
We actually get to see what it's like when we have to take on a couple of Max Raid Battle without any partners at all during the Sordward/Shielbert arc and guess what, it's easier than ever because nothing is hindering you and you just have to play the relevant type matchups.
Usually when people ask for the games to be harder they want the AI to be smarter and use better designed teams. Max Raid success generally being based off which idiot AI allies you get and how stupid they feel at the moment isn't an interesting way of making things harder.

The big issue is raid battles end up being boring; there's no real strategizing because you have a team of AIs doing things at random, so it comes down to just using brute force because everything else is less effective.

I think max raids would have worked vastly better if instead of NPCs you used four of your own Pokémon. They'd need to give high star raid bosses a few more tricks or better stats, but that would be interesting gameplay; there would be strategizing and bringing Pokémon with support moves like Reflect and Light Screen. Like a tough boss fight in another RPG like Dragon Quest.
 
Help me here - what are those "failings" exactly? In what tactical areas are you deficient that you would like Max Raid bosses to exploit?

It's pretty much always going to come down to AI one way or the other. Either they crank the AI and the RNG up to increasingly advantageous levels, or they put some shitty AI partners around your ankles like cinderblocks and have you try to navigate the minefield of a Max Raid battle. We actually get to see what it's like when we have to take on a couple of Max Raid Battle without any partners at all during the Sordward/Shielbert arc and guess what, it's easier than ever because nothing is hindering you and you just have to play the relevant type matchups. Even if those ones put up barriers, all it would do is let them get a couple more licks in against you. Because battling a wild Pokémon is simply not hard, ever, especially when you have healing items and a party with more than one or two members.
I don't think SpinyShell was saying he expected to get the difficulty he wanted from Max Raids, though, just that he wanted difficulty that was based on his own strategies in some form, which could come from anywhere.
 
Please note: The thread is from 3 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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