BH Parental Bond Policy Decision

[E4 Flint]

Right now the second option is in total, not just with parental bond. That ban would go under other.

Super fang, seismic and night shade are nowhere near broken normally. Those who voted for that option very likely thought of it on P.Bond, myself included. The poll should maybe have been just "ban" or "other."

A simpler ban may not be the better ban.

Also keep note that while distributed there are 21 people who do not want a pbond complete ban.

 

[Whatwasthatnoise]

I'm of the opinion to ban it, because you're effectively running multiple effects at once. The Super Fang and Night Shade one is just the start- There's been a couple of Jirachi-equivalent sets going around with Body Slam and Iron Head, and usually other moves like Sacred Fire as well. You're basically running a weaker version of Pure or Huge Power that also affects Special moves, simulating Super Luck because of the doubled crit chance, Serene Grace, simulating Infiltrator by bypassing subs and potentially running an item like King's Rock.

Most other offensive abilities have downsides, like Adaptability only affecting STAB moves, or Protean swapping your type. This? Doesn't. There's no reason to not run this on an offensive unless you're going for a healing ability, Refriger/Aeril/Pixilate or Mold Breaker. That I can think of anyway.

 

[Hollymon]

A few of us had a discussion on Showdown, and there is a certain set that has no counters (according to Adrian) and none of us could find one either, just a Shedinja really. But it's really just the Super Fang/Night Shade aspect which is a problem because there is hardly any counters or checks to it at all and it's too powerful. Shedinjas are an unreliable check aswell because of SR, Burn, almost everything but they kept telling me about Lum Recycle. That is basically the only way to stop them really and then there is the danger of running out of PP. Even just PBond without those two moves is broken. Without a sub, Sacred Fire is a 150 BP move with 100% chance to cause a burn, way too powerful. Even with a sub, you are still going to take a fair amount of damage from the second attack and you may still get the secondary effect.

Just my 2 cents

 

[RotomPoison]

It's not 50x2 for the burn chance. If it was (or even worked in any way close to that) then it actually would always burn.

 

[leafbarrett]

Without a sub, Sacred Fire is a 150 BP move with 100% chance to cause a burn, way too powerful.

75% chance to burn. Not 100%.

 

[ntiller]

I do not think it is ever a good idea to ban specific move ability combinations. That leads to a really stupid banlist. I also do not think any of the most abusable moves have done anything wrong on their own, and certainly don't deserve a ban. Since something obviously needs to be done (a mon that can 2HKO almost anything regardless of its attacking stats is obviously not okay) I am in favor of banning this ability.

Even if it is possible to get Parental Bond to play nice with the rest of the meta through a series of convoluted bans, is it really worth the added complexity, especially given the unreliability of the proposed countermeasures?

 

[Rumors]

I am in favor of an outright ban and here is why.

First, the elephant in the room: Seismic Shade Fang. Any Pokemon in the tier, and literally any Pokemon, including Weedle and Sunkern, can 2HKO any susceptible Pokemon with that move combination. Only Ghosts with greater than base 100 HP and Shedinja cannot be 2HKOed as Seismis Shade is a clean 2HKO on anything below base 100 HP. There's no reason something like Weedle should ever have the capability to 2HKO something like Lugia (FEAR aside).

Second, purely in terms of damage output, Parental Bond outclasses all other legal pure damage abilities. Adaptability boosts STABs by 50%. Technician boosts base 60 or less moves by 50%. Drought/Drizzle indirectly boost Fire/Water moves 50% via weather. Blaze/Torrent/Overgrowth/Swarm boost their types' moves by 50% but only when HP is 33%. Guts increases Attack by 50%, but only when statused. Flare Boost is the same for Special Moves and is limited to burns. Hustle boosts physical moves by 50%, but reduces accuracy by 20%. Solar Power boosts special moves by 50%, but only in the sun and also drains HP as quickly as the standard poison status. All other damage-boosting abilities are either below 50% or do not work in singles.

Meanwhile, Parental Bond boosts damage by 50% for all moves all the time with no draw backs of any sort. Hence, if you want a damage boosting ability, there's little reason to run anything else. Refrige/Pixel/Aerilate, Prankster, and Moldy are about the only other viable options and even then only on specific Pokemon or sets, and offensive Moldy is kind of nerfed this generation with the lower reliance on Unaware.

The over-centralization it causes for just those two reasons alone would be enough to annoy me. But, there's more!

With Parental Bond, because the attack strikes twice, you're actually getting "lite" versions of other abilities. Serene Grace and Super Luck are the most prominent. You could also argue that you get Infiltrator-lite and Skill Link-lite, except the latter working on every move.

Basically, secondary and crit chance are increased by 25% over their normal values and the user can break through and damage Pokemon behind subs reliably. They also bust through the rare non-Sheddy Sturdy and Focus Sash.

There's also a lot of other shenanigans that haven't really been explored much but are out there. Off the top of my head...

Nuzzle to bypass Lum Berry, except for Harvest Lum.
Power Up Punch for obvious reasons.
Moves like Mystical Fire to neuter an attacker while hurting it.
Moves like Low Sweep to gain a massive speed advantage. Low Sweep and the like usually does this already thanks to how narrow speed tiers are in BH, but with PB it can even gradually slow down a Speed Boost user.
Let's not even mention moves like Mud Slap. >.>
PB Acid Spray pretty much forces out even the sturdiest of special walls.

While those are less directly threatening than the Seismic Shade Fang combo (which is really just stupidly effective), that kind of stuff could still be problematic and I imagine at least some of it would start showing up should Seismic Shade Fang get the ban. I don't know how broken those would be in practice, but it's worth considering.

Or they'll just start using Choice Band PB V-Create Mega Blaziken. I've used that before Seismic Shade Fang was discovered and it was just silly. At least my Adaptability Entei in Gen V only got the boost on STABs.

And finally, Parental Bond sets a bad example for our younger players. It encourages them to go out and have children simply to gain an advantage in battle. And I don't know about you, but anything that encourages the next generation to raise their own kids to be child soldiers has to be a bad thing.

 

[Whatwasthatnoise]

Stuff

This. So much this. And, having tested most of this, it's entirely accurate.

Pbond is basically the single most effective boosting ability. Feel like outclassing everything save Pure or Huge Power? Sure. Why not?

This is on top of having the most expansive set of secondary effects of literally any ability. You have a poor man's version of Super Luck, Serene Grace, Infiltrator, Skill Link, and Mold Breaker. In some cases it's superior to Serene Grace, as you can have secondary effects activate twice, doing things like statusing through a Lum Berry or dropping stats past someone's White Herb. Beside that, you also have the guaranteed stat-drop moves as mentioned above, with some other nifty options like an effective 75% Burn rate on a damaging move, 40% activation effects like Seed Flare or Night Daze, and the plethora of 30% status secondary effects.

This is the outright second-best damage boosting ability on the physical side, and the best on the Special side. And the second-best in the realm of crit-boosting, secondary activation (And on anything with less than 50% activation rate there's not really much difference and could be argued that it's better) sub-bypassing, and Ability-negating.

One single ability should not be capable of doing that all at once. You can mindlessley click whichever attack is most effective right this minute, because there's a fair chance that whatever switches in will be hit hard enough that it can't do so repeatedly, if it's not outright crippled from the effects.

This is not even mentioning the Shade Fang combination, which kills basically everything not called Giratina or Shedinja. Giratina cannot take multiple rounds of damage very well if not Poison Heal, and often dies to secondary moves like Crunch or Moonblast, and Shedinja dies to double-Burn from Sacred Fire. Or a trapping move. Or even sandstorm.

Tl:Dr Parental Bond is ridiculous because this is a single ability doing all of this. At once. It may not be the best at anything (and even that's debatable) but it's second best at everything.

 

[Anthiese]

I vote lets ban it, i can see where this is gunna go, plus i dont really feel like echoing everyone else's point against it since i agree.

 

[Adrian Marin]

If Pbond gets banned (just being formal here because it's not banned yet) I honestly think we should also ban Kangaskhanite just like how we banned Gengarite in BH.

 

[verbatim]

Gengarite's not banned in BH, and, for now I intend to follow that precident. IMO Parental Bond isn't so dangerous that Kangashkhan will destabalize the tier. Also, I should be able to commit the ban to the repo soon, but it might not go live right away.

 

[E4 Flint]

Gengarite's not banned in BH, and, for now I intend to follow that precident. IMO Parental Bond isn't so dangerous that Kangashkhan will destabalize the tier. Also, I should be able to commit the ban to the repo soon, but it might not go live right away.

Technically there are more people opposed to a ban (52%) atm but okay. Post here when it's done for sure.

 

[verbatim]

The ban has been committed to the repository. That being said, I'm going to be gone for the rest of the day, so if someone could post here when it goes live I would be most appreciative.

 

[Arcticblast]

Technically there are more people opposed to a ban (52%) atm but okay. Post here when it's done for sure.

The option to ban Parental Bond holds a plurality (and is sitting at 49.5% anyway), and BH doesn't really have the playerbase to support a majority with so many poll options.

For what it's worth, 11 of the voters voted to ban Super Fang, Night Shade, and Seismic Toss, which is kind of acknowledging that there is a problem.

Locking.