Endless Battles despite the Clause

Discussion in 'Pokémon Chat' started by Clavito, May 14, 2015.

  1. Clavito

    Clavito New Member

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    You've most probably heard of the mighty Funbro, a troll strategy torture device used to create endless battles by holding a Leppa Berry and Recycling it when needed, so it doesn't lose any PP, Slacks Off when necessary, and Heal Pulses the enemy so he doesn't die to Struggle recoil. It also carries Block so when it gets a target that can't 2HKO him it won't be able to switch out.

    Slowbro/Slowking @ Leppa Berry
    Ability: Oblivious
    EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD or 248 HP / 252 SpDef / 8 SpD
    Bold Nature
    - Slack Off
    - Recycle
    - Block
    - Heal Pulse
    Of course, this is unacceptable in competitive play, so the Leppa Berry+Recycle and Leppa Berry+Harvest combo was banned by Smogon, even in Anything Goes, the tier without bans. It's notable that Showdown disallows this combo on the same pokemon, but you can, for example, carry Recycle on one poke and Leppa Berry on another
    That being said, the ban is not perfect. There are still ways to cause this endless battles and I'll name the three I discovered. I would've posted this in the original EB clause thread, but it was no longer open for futher replies.

    1) Tricking a Leppa Berry onto your enemy, and then taking it back. Since Showdown won't see this as having Recycle+Leppa on the same pokemon, it will let you enter a battle. The problem was that Slowbro needs all four of his moves, so he couldn't afford having Trick. I thought of a way to use quite a different endless battle strategy with the Truant+Shadow Tag combo:
    Give the leppa with Switcheroo with Whimsicott, die, give the enemy Truant with Durant. Now Gothitelle can TrickScarf the opponent and get the Recycle Leppa combo. Protect when the enemy can attack and use your random filler when Truant kicks in. Leppa will give you the PP you need, but you need to Recycle it each time you consume it.
    2) Tracing Harvest. This was quite easy to create, I knew that both Trevenant and Exeggcutor got Skill Swap, which could be given to oponents and that Gardevoir was the only Trace mon able to create endless battles.
    You can pull this off if you can trap a mon that can't 2HKO Gardevoir, but that’s easier said than done. You need to remember not to get a move on 0 pp if you haven't Harvested your Leppa yet, as after harvesting, it won't activate.
    3) Making Assist pick Recycle. By far the hardest, as no mon that know Assist can cause an Endless Battle except for Smeargle, who is easy to 2HKO. If by some miracle you trap an opponent who can't status you or 2HKO, this is the set:
    Delibird so he can D-bond+Recycle (I just picked a random Recycle mon, there might be better options), Milk Drink as it is the best recovery move that Smeargle gets. Apart from that, just a common Funbro set that uses Assist instead of Recycle.
    As a conclusion, you can see that the ban is imperfect, and therefore we need either a Leppa Berry ban, a more complex ban (trick+leppa, trace+leppa, assist+leppa), or a battle timer for Showdown for this problem to be solved.
     
    Last edited: May 14, 2015
  2. fitzy

    fitzy Heart of the cards Forum Moderator Forum Moderator

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    I played around with this. It's pretty damn hard to pull off and requires your opponent to play in such a specific way that I just don't think it matters.
     
  3. Clavito

    Clavito New Member

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    The original Funbro required for your opponent not to switch when having a mon out that can't 3HKO said Slowbro. Gimmicky, yes, but if you get those 2 turns, there is nothing the opponent can do back to you by that point.
     
  4. Rabidragon

    Rabidragon Sakura's pet in Liga America

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    PO Trainer Name:
    Rabīdoragon
    I must admit that those sets prove that the clause/ban is not perfect, but what we really need to ask is if those sets are really being used in the battles in PO to be considered a real problem or to deserve a more complex ban, soo we are really having victims of those combos or is just an scenario that could happen?

    Even if a new ban is not implemented i suppose that if something like this happens you can simply call an auth to watch your battle and kick/ban the guy, im pretty sure that no one is going to argue that is a fair kick/ban
     
  5. pokemonnerd

    pokemonnerd Only uso listens to pnerd. Devo too. Article Contributor Article Contributor

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    These are so ridiculously convoluted and insane in the difficulty of pulling it off that it's simply not worth the effort coding every single endless battle scenario. I don't know why you would even post these publicly since only 1 in a thousand people are going to figure how to do this on their own and less are going to actually be successful even against mindless opponents.

    We'd probably just be good with this:

    (20:03:30) +Fuzzysqurl: i think a better way to handle it would be to hard code Recycle to ignore leppa berry
    (20:03:46) +Fuzzysqurl: since like everything relies on Recycle + Leppa

    Since it's so difficult to even pull off the conditions for everything not involving leppa+recycle+heal pulse on one pokemon.
     
    Last edited: May 19, 2015