The difference between 70% and 80% accurate moves is immense. Intuitively it's just 10%, but in reality, you miss 50% more focus blasts then hydro pumps (going from 2 misses out of 10 to 3 misses out of 10 is 50% more misses, similarly going from 90% to 80% doubles your number of expected misses).
My cutoff for comfortability on accuracy is 85%, it took me years to accept 90% but playing without Toxic or Draco is just ridiculous. Plus I'm typically quite lucky with Fire Blast for whatever reason
Hey BKC i just want to say your content is the best, I love rewatching a ton of your videos as they are always so entertaining. I deal with panic attacks and you videos help so much in helping me calm down and laugh. I just want to say I appreciate all that you do.
"it misses and it does 0%" the thought occured to me when you said that. imagine a world where missed moves did a percentage of damage instead of nothing. would be interesting
I vaguely recall some insane metagame, where the creator did the math and made all moves 100% accurate, but with proportionally less power. The goal was I think to remove the RNG entirely from the game. Was fun to think about, though probably not fun to play :)
It'd be interesting if on every move with a miss chance, part of that chance could instead be a "graze" where it does reduced damage. Like, let's say it's half the miss chance, and proportionally halved damage.
A while ago, I watched a video talking about RBY Ubers where I heard that Submission was the worst good move in Pokemon history, and I think Focus Blast is like the Gen 4+ iteration of that title
@@pikminologueraisin2139 reverend put it better in his video, but the niche submission has in RBY Ubers is that it’s an option select for normal types while also having more PP than Psychic or Boltbeam, and your 32 recover PP offsets the recoil you’d have in clicking it. There’s also sets that run mobile attack with barrier and amnesia to really PP stall, but that only leaves you with 16 psychic or ice beam PP to actually threaten the team. Simply a testament to the meta warping effect that a Mewtwo set can have in any game of RBY Ubers.
Submission is the strongest regularly damaging Fighting type move that existed in Gen 1 apart from Hi Jump Kick (which is only available to the unviable Hitmonlee). It's a pretty good analog to FB aside from Fighting damage not being as useful there (you could perhaps similarly consider HJK as the Aura Sphere of its time).
The point of focus blast is that it’s typically incorrect for your opponent to stay in against it. You obviously don’t want to put the game on a 70/30 split, because your win rate is capped at 70%. But your opponent isn’t going to accept a 30% win rate either. Most of competitive Pokémon is putting your opponent in pseudo 50/50s where you’re actually slightly favoured.
Or competitive Pokémon is about playing yourself into favourable positions. When Pokemon start dying and get worn down it quickly stops being as simple as "Well just switch out lol" and if you've played yourself into a spot where hitting 1 Focus Blast guarantees victory (or even just makes it very likely), you've probably played very well. Problem is that that same scenario can in its worst case be a 30% chance to lose instead, despite playing yourself into a good position. That's the point of the video. Frail Pokemon relying on 70% accurate moves for crucial coverage is surrendering a huge amount of agency over how the game plays out.
Aura Sphere was nerfed because of Latios Or rather what a bunch of Pokemon did, that is practically spearheaded by Latios clicking Dragon Gem Draco Meteor and blowing up gen 5 VGC's face. Its on the same branch of nerf alongside the ones that hit nerf, the elemental trio, the 120 BP version of elemental trio and such that hit a good chunk of staple typing special attacking moves FWIW Aura Sphere distribution was limited because its basically only owned by "Special" pokemon kinda like Extremespeed. Originally Aura Sphere was only on Legendaries(and notably it was on Mewtwo and Mew, the Dragon Trio), Lucario(who is associated with Aura), and Togekiss(who they consider sorta special. Its one of the Extremespeed user) Notably in gen 5 only Mienshao gets it, and it makes sense the three dragons didnt have them because in general gen 5 nerfs movepool(probs due to infinite TM?). My favorite trivia is that we went from EVERY starter being able to use Earthquake to like "none" in gen 5 and it was when Ice Beam first was noticably not on every Water Type. Gen 6 it was only on Clawitzer who is very thematically oriented for that kind of moves, and Squirtle who was retconned into Ryu from Street Fighter in gen 6 to account for its Mega being a little quirky(no seriously. Gen 6 Squitrle randomly gets Pulses) I think by Gen 7 it SHOULD have been generic. It was still pretty "exclusive club esque" in learnsets, but theres enough random mons having it by that point. Like Lopunny
That was Gen 8 when it first became a TM in Sw/Sh Gen 7, only Magearna gained it whose a mythical And then from Sw/Sh onwards it became a basic move now at this point. Vacuum Wave’s distribution was also very sparse until S/V where it also being a DLC TM
I ran Focus Blast on my Gengar in Gen4 when it was current, and Garchomp was allowed in OU. The problem with not running Focus Blast, is that your next best alternative is HP Fighting, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, which means you lose the speed tie against someone not running HP Fighting, and you are forced to run Modest, since you're not winning the speed tie, and you need every boost to SpA you can get. When Gen4 was current, I used Focus Blast very sparingly, maybe once per game, and hoped that they were scared of a Focus Blast coming, where they'd switch out, and I'd hit them with a Thunderbolt or Ice Beam instead. Most times it was Ice Beam, because literally every team had Garchomp on it. You were an idiot if you didn't build your team around Garchomp at that time.
Last time I played Gen4 was when it was current, like 16 years ago. I'm not gonna remember every moveset and what they can/can't learn. It's probably HP Ice.@@GATOUATZAP
3:00 everyone claiming Kingambit wasn't a problem in early gen 9, but he was on basically every player's team when it mattered and having endgame pretty much decided by him But yeah that type of thing happens in a lot of competitive games, where something is not that good but people claim it is, but never use it when it matters. Or the opposite like my example above
If Gapdos came with Thunderous Kick (80 BP, 100 Accuracy and 100% chance to lower Def on hit) then it would definitely be great in RBY OU as it would reliably take on the Big 3 (ESPECIALLY Snorlax and Chansey, Tauros at least could cause a ton of damage in a 1on1), Rhydon and Exeggutor, and even though Zapdos, Alakazam and Starmie would he great checks, it would still be very annoying to see pop up, like Zapdos but maybe even worse. Being a good fighting type with a good fighting move in RBY is already a good trait due to how good Normal and Rock are, but the added bonus of STAB Drill Peck and a great speed on top ? Yeah, that's a recipe for greatness
Some would be very interesting. My favorite is A-Ninetales in gen 1. Ice is actually good in RBY, and with STAB Blizzard, it becomes much more usable than it's base form
@@sephikong8323I think for how he did his megas video he didn't bring any moves with the logic that those moves don't exist in that generation (even mega ray didn't get dragon accent which is required for it to mega evolve) you can argue the logic there but it's made up scenario
Imagine if Focus Blast worked like protect. 100% accurate and halves in accuracy after each subsequent use. The odds of hitting 2 remain the same, but you can rely on hitting it once.
There's a term for the dynamic you discuss about claimed theoretical viability versus actual tournament usage in the Snorlax versus Skarmory example: 'revealed preference'. I think Game Freak intentionally choose to give Focus Blast bad accuracy and Aura Sphere bad distribution to create more asymmetry between types and make Fighting still feel mostly physically biased even after the physical/special split (probably to try to make Lucario in particular seem distinct). If so, I actually think the general principle was good, but doing it with accuracy specifically was bad (or at least they got things a bit wrong with the balance of FB where it's at the point where it's too bad to be reliable, yet too good to be unviable; if they HAD to use accuracy, it might have been better to reduce FB accuracy even more to Dynamic Punch levels so that it was mostly pushed out of competitive usage). It also feels like Psychic deserved more of a buff as an offensive typing to make up for having a relatively bad main coverage option as well as generally being a bit mediocre after Gen 2 perhaps over-nerfed it, but I guess it did eventually get something like that with Psychic Terrain.
It has to be in some people's movesets to keep people's teambuilding honest. Similar to how you sometimes throw out a move that's super predictable to keep your opponent's play honest.
@@AshenDust_Aura Sphere was 90 BP until Gen 6 nerfed it because of Mega Launcher’s damage output (same reason Dragon Pulse was nerfed to 85 BP) Only to then increase it’s distribution to mons that never had it before since from Sw/Sh onwards like Gardevoir, Kommo-o, and Armorouge
This could be useful to think of in terms of game theory and pure vs. mixed strategies. The long story short of this is that a "50:50" involving Focus Blast is more like a 33:67 skewed against Focus Blast when taking accuracy into account. Assume this is BW OU with a 100% Focus Sash Alakazam (Player A) against a 80% Toxic Orb Breloom with no Mach Punch and a 100% SpDef Chople Berry Tyranitar (Player B) in the back. Assume no Hazards and no Critical Hits. Only turn 1 actually matters because Player A would use Focus Blast turn 2 or would have lost already. Player A can Psychic or Focus Blast turn 1 (for simplicity, assume all other plays are strictly inferior). Player B can hard switch into Tyranitar or stay in with Breloom to break Alakazam's Focus Sash. First is an exaggerated game where the exaggerated "perceived" accuracy of Focus Blast is 100% (when players say "I would have won if not for Focus Blast!"). Player A Psychic loses to Player B Hard Switch 100% of the time (0:1), but beats Player B Stay In 100% of the time (1:0). Conversely, Player A Focus Blast beats Player B Hard Switch 100% of the time (1:0), but loses to Player B Stay In 100% of the time (0:1). This is a true 50:50 so the game isn't so interesting. Unless the Player A has information that the Player B uses a certain strategy (e.g. Player B will Hard Switch Tyranitar 90% of the time), the optimal strategy for Player A is to flip a coin and choose their move, a mixed strategy. The expected win rate of Player A employing the coin flip strategy against Player B using the coin flip strategy is 50% ( 0.5*(0.5*0+0.5*1)+0.5*(0.5*1+0.5*0)=0.5 ). When Player B is employing the coin flip strategy in this game, Player A's strategy doesn't actually matter but that's beside the point. Second is the same game with actual accuracy of Focus Blast taken into account. Player A Psychic stays the same. Player A Focus Blast only beats Player B Hard Switch 50% (actually 49% but 50% is simpler) of the time (0.5:0.5), but still loses to Player B Stay In 100% of the time (0:1). In this actual game with the assumption that Player A, Player A employing the same mixed strategy of the coin flip against Player B's coin flip strategy will have an expected win rate of 37.5% ( 0.5*(0.5*0+0.5*1)+0.5*(0.5*0.5+0.5*0)=0.375 ). If Player A employed a pure strategy of using Psychic every time against Player B's coin flip strategy, the win rate would improve to 50% ( 1*(0.5*0+0.5*1)+0*(0.5*0.5+0.5*0)=0.5 ). However, Player B has a brain, so if Player B notices that Player A never used Focus Blast in the past, Player B will employ the pure strategy of Hard Switch into Tyranitar every time. In this case, Player A will have a 0% win rate ( 1*(1*0+0*1)+0*(1*0.5+0*0)=0 ). Then Player A will notice that Player A never Stays In, so Player A will Focus Blast every time, netting Player A a 50% win rate ( 0*(1*0+0*1)+1*(1*0.5+0*0)=0.5 ). Iterating this process, I believe the most effective strategy for Player A in this game is to Psychic 2/3rds of the time and Focus Blast 1/3rd of the time, assuming Player A has no info on Player B. One can also make this game 3 dimensional by adding the variable of whether the Alakazam player has Focus Blast or Grass Knot. One can also keep adding variables to map out a whole game. I won't do that since this comment is already quite long. This would have been so much easier with a table, but UA-cam comments aren't really made for this sort of thing. I also probably made a mistake somewhere, so anyone can feel free to correct it.
If you were nuts you could use Gravity with Focus Blast to make it actually good. It also makes levitating Pokemon vulnerable to Earthquake, so Zapdos and Skarmory and friends wouldn't want to come out while Gravity is active.
I once lost a battle because there was an ha spcial def glister and used hyper voice on my rivalry pyroar and had overheat and uproar, the glister was about 90 hp but I did not know it was special def so I lost, and I clicked uproar instead of overheat because I was scared of the 10 percent chance miss.
you made a great point fn the video, if you can help it you'd rather avoid taking the risk of needing to hit focus blast and moreso use it as a last ditch effort, which I think is a great point back to your video about positioning where you want to be in a situation where no matter what the opp does, you can always do 'x' move instead such as that example you gave of six heatrans vs your scarf chomp just clicking eq
I do believe in the right context it is Viable, but its really out of necessity/a lack of options for most Pokemon. Its an interesting balancing decision that is very dissatisfying in practice. Its the one time I've noticed Game Freak actually looked at the type chart and decided to make sure that "unstoppable" offensive monsters like Gengar and Alakazam don't just steam roll everything in their way with Aura sphere. I'm paraphrasing off of flawed memory here, but I remember the old smogon analysis of Gengar reveared it as this unstoppable threat that always has the potential to just win games with its sub/split set. This being thanks to Shadow Ball and Focus blast being borderline unwallable. While on paper this is true, the multiple Pokemon that deal with it neutrally and either cripple, or KO Gengar in return is enough that it never felt that way whenever I tried to build with it. I say with the right context because Gengar did get banned in BDSP. I think this happened because steel types no longer resist ghost, sliming down the amount of genuine counters/checks it has in the DPP dex. Also, no pursuit goes a long way to help with this idea as well. Jirachi no longer checks it, max spdef Heatran gets 3 hit KO'd by Shadow Ball with rocks up, Scizor gets wrecked even harder than Heatran thanks to this nerf, Clefable now gets wrecked by sludge wave thanks to its fairy type. Lasty, Gengar and most special attackers always have a plan to get around Blissey if the team is built well, so it still being a fantastic counter to Gengar on paper isn't to big of a problem. With the stage set, while Focus Blast isn't as depended on in BDSP as heavily as it was in Gen 4. It really only served to push Gengar ever so slightly over the edge, assisting it by clearing up Ttar, the only common/viable Dark type that truly stands in its way. Blissey being its only good long term check, and a lack of pursuit meant Gengar actually was given a chance to live up to its theorized potential in the DPP dex. To further exemplify how Focus Blast is still on the fringe of Viability, it might be why Gengar managed to keep up pace with gen 4's power creep. Wilo wisp utility, and Sub/split both give Gengar ways of out playing it's checks. This would only be possible if it's coverage in two slots became splashable/powerful enough to threaten most things for a solid chunk of damage paired with hazards. Gengar's move pool got nerfed harder than it got buffed imo. But thanks to how many things Ghost/Fighting hits neutrally, it still has room to mess around with its massive utility move pool whilst maintaining its offensive presence that a Pokemon like Gengar should have. If it weren't for this fact, I feel like Gengar wouldn't be as immediately effective at its job against most of the meta like it does now. There's so many new choices you'd have to make. Even if you set the conditions right, it's non stab moves don't pair well with Ghost single handedly like Fighting coverage does. There's a whole tangent here that I could go on about if Gengar would remain viable in the tier without Focus blast, but I think I've already bored quite a lot of you here since this is a big wall of Text rather than a guy speaking it into your ear. So I'll leave it be. In review, thanks to Focus Blast still having a necessary target to hit in Tyranitar, FB's questionable viability still managed to push Gengar to ban worthy status in this context. This makes it clear to me that the move is more viable then the Math may imply, it just needs to be on Pokemon that compensate for the moves drawbacks to become a "solid" and reasonable option to pick.
From mons and other mon like games I’ve played 70% seems to be the lowest accuracy that doesn’t discourage the vast majority of people. I do want to find out why this is. An intuitive guess on my part is probably because 50 is a coin flip and 60-65 look like a 1 in 3+ fail chance A more numeric theory is because the chance of hitting 70 more than once consecutively is close to 1/attempt 1: 0.7 ~ 1/1.4 (only 1/1 for 100 accuracy) 2: 0.49 ~ 1/2 3: 0.343 ~ 1/3 4: 0.2401 ~ 1/4 5: 0.16807 ~1/6 It does diverge after 4 consecutive attempts, but 4 successful attempts can easily swing matches. It could be the odds feel relatively linear per attempt when playing. When the odds are lowered the consecutive success chance drops lower faster. I wonder what peoples opinions are on this?
This is a nice comment I'd like to quote: "@dakodastevens8972 16 hours ago The difference between 70% and 80% accurate moves is immense. Intuitively it's just 10%, but in reality, you miss 50% more focus blasts then hydro pumps (going from 2 misses out of 10 to 3 misses out of 10 is 50% more misses, similarly going from 90% to 80% doubles your number of expected misses). " Frail offensive mons rarely fire off more than 3 attacks in a game. So a 10% difference in acc could mean 50% more misses. Drop things down to 60% acc and it would be a coin flip whether you hit 2/3 attacks. That's why sleep powder is viable and hypnosis isn't (unless you're guaranteed to be behind screens or veil like Ninetales A).
Inclement Emerald has that and it really doesn't make a major difference in most situations. Most pokemon that run focus blast _need_ to run focus blast for the 120bp and dropping to 80bp doesn't cut it. The sensible solution would be for Gamefreak to increase Focus Blast to 80acc or 110bp/85acc
@@booshywaters3726 Depends on the mon's needs. Some would absolutely rather run Aura Sphere. It's like BKC's Greninja vs half health Heatran example. Sometimes you would just much rather have the accuracy. Because in competitive battling, things take chip damage from switching in on resistances or whatever and aren't necessarily at full health all the time, like theorymon calcing would have you believe. Inclement Emerald is not a great example because of this, since it's not really how competitive battles go.
30% chance to miss only refers to the cumulative average. You missing all of your focus blasts averages out because your opponent will always land 140% of their focus blasts.
“It is said that Focus Blast only misses 30% of the time. This is heavily inaccurate. Most people have Focus Blast miss 60% of time. Spiders Georg is an outlier who has all his Focus Blasts hit all the time and plays Pokemon so many times and should not be counted.” - me when I have a bad grasp of probability and want to shoehorn in a meme.
I doubt we'd ever see anything like this, but ever since around gen7 id legit thought itd be a really cool generational gimmick for each team to have a budgeted number of "team points". It could be one point, it could be three, it could be more. But the idea being that these points are shared amongst an entire team and are finite for the match. Among other ideas to spend such points on, a trainer could select on their turn to spend a point to make their move 100% accurate. (Obviously this wouldnt be useable with deliberately RNG stuff like dynamic punch or OHKO moves like fissure). I know that just sounds like z-moves, but there are two key dinstinctions. The first is that itd ideally be like two or three budgeted uses per match instead of one. The second is that it would never give "190 BP" to anything or give ridiculous stat stage boosts like z-moves did with status moves. The goal wouldnt be big, grand-standing effects. Other than the aforementioned accuracy stuff, itd be stuff like: - use a point on a turn to be immune to a sleep on that turn. (Could be variations for other status, but the point being that the status would have to be chosen during teambuilding prior to the match). - use a point on a turn to boost a move with 75 BP or less by 20%. - abilities like shadow tag still let trapped mons spend a point to switch out one time per point spent. - if your pokemon was outsped and ko'd without being able to do anything at all, you could spend a point so that your replacement pokemon gets +1 speed upon becoming active. The goal would be that to help climb out of being trapped into a corner by, among other things, giving you a limited trump card to reduce unfavorable RNG when you need it the most.
70% accurate moves are the worst. Back in late Gen 8 I was laddering for the Melmetal Suspect with a solid and slightly off-beat balance team, relying on Rillaboom's Grassy Terrain to boost Heatran, Melm and Swampert's longevity. There was (and still is) a Torn-T on the team. I was just 2 or 3 wins from getting reqs when I hit a patch of awful Hurricane luck. Across 9 or 10 games (idk it was over a year ago) I think I clicked 21 'canes and missed 19 of them, most of them important, some not so much. I wound up having a record in that stretch that looked something like L/L/W/L/W/L/L/W/W. I missed reqs unfortunately, due to some mistakes and a lot of bad luck. My opponents where making mistakes and cane missing lead to those going unpunished, but that's just the game we play sometimes.
This is why I run airslash on Torn. Utility Torn doesn't get too many 2HKOs from hurricane anyway. And nastyplot Torn doesn't get too many +2 OHKOs unless you run life orb or Fly Z.
You should use it once to show you have it then never use it again. You don’t wanna rely on a 70% hit but your opponent is gonna switch out because they don’t wanna rely on your 30% miss
hey BKC, a video request id like to see after watching this one is: “what is the most viable team in gens 1-3”. these gens are old and “figured out” so to speak. so my question is, what team covers the most threats while also having the smallest gaps (i.e., the bad match ups are the ones you’ll least likely to see in the tier).
If someone comes up with a phenomenal team that is truly that good, covers most threats, and has uncommon bad matchups, people will exploit that by adjusting their teams with coverage options, ev spreads (g3), etc, and take advantage of knowing your exact composition and win conditions because it's The Best Team that people use constantly. Those bad matchups will not be very rare for very long as the meta adjusts. Teams can occasionally rise above the meta, but people will race to figure out counters, and the original team can be altered to counter these counters, and so on, until you have several very viable options that match up fairly equally against large parts of the tier. Most teams used in tournaments are quite close together in viability, you just need to pick and choose what weaknesses you want to play around, and what strengths seem the most beneficial to have at the moment. As long as there's more than a handful of viable mons, you'll tend to have enough variance that there's not a team that remains so powerful for long.
hey bkc would u consider making a video discussing/laddering the new ubers UU it’s surprisingly fun without annoying things like toxapex and corviknight
I just realized that the 70% accuracy doesn't only translate to the battle itself, it will translate to the trajectory of the team, while using a particular team with a mon using FB, you will land on average only 70% of the time, which teams, your team has an extra 30% dead turns only because one of the moves will not land always. So the overall effectivity of your team diminishes by default, not 30%, but it will diminish.
Also worth remembering Tornadus enjoys running with peliper rain teams making it's hurricanes 100% accurate focus blast has no way to make it more accurate
I feel like half the utility is just having focus blast. Like yeah its got low accuracy, but does the other player want to count on the miss? Sometimes they can afford to, but just having it can force them to play around it
Missing focus is kinda bad but the strength is worth it. Being able to sometimes 1HKO or 2HKO is better than thudding off worthlessly like aura sphere which regardless of luck will fail to kill mons in a lot of situations. Focus being inaccurate sucks, but 70% is not that bad, especially with the choice of up to 3 more accurate moves. Also the enemy doesn't always capitalize missing focus because they play considering the possibility that you hit focus and won't call the odds unless they are desperate enough to take a 30%. The fact that keledo considers it in addition or instead of even an incredible move like secret sword says a lot. Its not a bad move. Also not everyone assumes they are better than your opponent. If you are a lower tier main playing an OU main for example its totally logical to gamble on inaccurate moves or hax to get the best case scenario where you can actually win against a favored opponent.
It's true. I initially found it bizarre when gen 8 magearna still ended up using focus blast when it was blessed with aurea sphere, but it actually makes sense looking at the tier. Specs magearna threatens an OHKO on ferro, who could potentially recover itself back up through leech seed switches. Max phys def blissey risks a 2HKO on switch-in. You would think something like specs kyurem would want earth power since heatran resists its STABs but nope, it also dropped earth power in favor of focus blast.
Focus blast is like fire blast and hydro pump in some case, a necessary evil. I know they dont have the same accuracy but i missed sacred fire 3 time in a row, if not 100 percent , it is always a risk. When you dont have the move , you can be in bad spot as said as the heatran case that recover quickly with protect and lefties.
What I find very odd about this question is that, although I agree that FB's 70 accuracy is crap (any move below 90% accuracy is 50% accuracy), but everyone points fingers at FB, but not moves like hurricane who also have 70% accuracy.
Hurricane is only really used on Rain teams, in which under Rain Hurricane never misses, so unless you are in a situation where clicking Hurricane is the correct option outside of Rain (which is not negligible) you are basically have an always accurate move.
Would Gengar remain viable in DPP without focus blast? I think it could be, but it wouldn't be as versatile as it is now with out a sacrifice in offensive power, and coverage.
I put a Zapdos on my Gen 9 OU team yesterday and one match I straight up lost to the green tea Sinistea after missing 4/7 hurricanes :/ and another match, I hit only 1/4 hurricanes (didn't lose that one since I just cleaned up with other team members). I think I landed less than I missed across the whole session. I hate 70% accurate moves so goddamn much, Hurricane being by far the worst feeling
It feels really bad to rely on having to hit, but fighting coverage for psychic/ghost types is just too good not to use. Thinking about it as relying on not getting Scald burned really emphasizes how scary it is to click though
I'd say it isn't just about Focus Blast, or Stone Edge, or Thunder. This is a problem with RNG in general and moves having an accuracy stat. Players are discovering new games, where competitiveness and skill are encouraged, while luck and randomness are frowned upon. Pokémon is showing its age in this regard, what used to be a simple way to balance strong moves, is now becoming a relic of the past. Making randomness so influential is considered bad game design nowadays, unless the game itself is some form of gambling.
I hate the term "focus miss" because it foregoes the opportunity for "unfocused blast." Also makes me wonder if FB's terrible accuracy should be considered defensively in the teambuilder. Like spec into special defense so it requires two FBs to knock you out, rather than one
Doesn't Mega-Mewtwo-Y run Focus Blast? Also, I think comparing tournaments to high ladder isn't exactly fair. You can risk losing a crucial game on ladder, not so during that last tournament game.
Factoring in crits wouldn’t your chances for killing something that takes two focus blasts to kill technically still be favorable? Small nitpick but when the margin is that close it still kinda matters
It's viable 70% of the time
"If it's not 100% accurate then it's 50% accurate"
-Blunder's friend
77% when using Victini 🔥
70% of the time it works all the time
Not at all what viable means
@@MightyMobileMatt100% when using special attacking wall breakers Machamp and Golurk
The difference between 70% and 80% accurate moves is immense. Intuitively it's just 10%, but in reality, you miss 50% more focus blasts then hydro pumps (going from 2 misses out of 10 to 3 misses out of 10 is 50% more misses, similarly going from 90% to 80% doubles your number of expected misses).
My cutoff for comfortability on accuracy is 85%, it took me years to accept 90% but playing without Toxic or Draco is just ridiculous. Plus I'm typically quite lucky with Fire Blast for whatever reason
another way of putting it in perspective: you are more likely to hit 3 straight hydros or stone edges than 2 focus blasts
you are not thinking of availability
Hydro pump & Gunk shot / Head smash do not have the same accuracy. The game can't tell me otherwise. 80% must be the miss chance on hydro pump.
I’d say 75% based on this tbh. Small but noticeable increase
“If you hit 2 focus blasts YOU are the lucky one.”
Honestly that one line sums it up.
I personally enjoy the BKC vs the voices in his head segments to start each video (smogon forum ptsd will do that)
Focus Blast is my favorite escape goat to use to deny all my other mistakes in a match since I get to say "I lost cuz I missed blast"
you mean scapegoat
Hey BKC i just want to say your content is the best, I love rewatching a ton of your videos as they are always so entertaining. I deal with panic attacks and you videos help so much in helping me calm down and laugh. I just want to say I appreciate all that you do.
"it misses and it does 0%" the thought occured to me when you said that. imagine a world where missed moves did a percentage of damage instead of nothing. would be interesting
Tripple axel?
Just use magnitude or multihit moves
I vaguely recall some insane metagame, where the creator did the math and made all moves 100% accurate, but with proportionally less power. The goal was I think to remove the RNG entirely from the game. Was fun to think about, though probably not fun to play :)
It'd be interesting if on every move with a miss chance, part of that chance could instead be a "graze" where it does reduced damage. Like, let's say it's half the miss chance, and proportionally halved damage.
A while ago, I watched a video talking about RBY Ubers where I heard that Submission was the worst good move in Pokemon history, and I think Focus Blast is like the Gen 4+ iteration of that title
reverend
@@supremechaosbeing2696 Yep :3
submission isn't a good move, I don't get it
@@pikminologueraisin2139 reverend put it better in his video, but the niche submission has in RBY Ubers is that it’s an option select for normal types while also having more PP than Psychic or Boltbeam, and your 32 recover PP offsets the recoil you’d have in clicking it. There’s also sets that run mobile attack with barrier and amnesia to really PP stall, but that only leaves you with 16 psychic or ice beam PP to actually threaten the team. Simply a testament to the meta warping effect that a Mewtwo set can have in any game of RBY Ubers.
Submission is the strongest regularly damaging Fighting type move that existed in Gen 1 apart from Hi Jump Kick (which is only available to the unviable Hitmonlee). It's a pretty good analog to FB aside from Fighting damage not being as useful there (you could perhaps similarly consider HJK as the Aura Sphere of its time).
The point of focus blast is that it’s typically incorrect for your opponent to stay in against it. You obviously don’t want to put the game on a 70/30 split, because your win rate is capped at 70%. But your opponent isn’t going to accept a 30% win rate either. Most of competitive Pokémon is putting your opponent in pseudo 50/50s where you’re actually slightly favoured.
Or competitive Pokémon is about playing yourself into favourable positions. When Pokemon start dying and get worn down it quickly stops being as simple as "Well just switch out lol" and if you've played yourself into a spot where hitting 1 Focus Blast guarantees victory (or even just makes it very likely), you've probably played very well. Problem is that that same scenario can in its worst case be a 30% chance to lose instead, despite playing yourself into a good position. That's the point of the video. Frail Pokemon relying on 70% accurate moves for crucial coverage is surrendering a huge amount of agency over how the game plays out.
@@redcurry5917AGENCY?!?!?!?!
@@obiwancannoli1920it's blunder hours
You have zero idea what you're talking about.
Aura Sphere was nerfed because of Latios
Or rather what a bunch of Pokemon did, that is practically spearheaded by Latios clicking Dragon Gem Draco Meteor and blowing up gen 5 VGC's face. Its on the same branch of nerf alongside the ones that hit nerf, the elemental trio, the 120 BP version of elemental trio and such that hit a good chunk of staple typing special attacking moves
FWIW Aura Sphere distribution was limited because its basically only owned by "Special" pokemon kinda like Extremespeed. Originally Aura Sphere was only on Legendaries(and notably it was on Mewtwo and Mew, the Dragon Trio), Lucario(who is associated with Aura), and Togekiss(who they consider sorta special. Its one of the Extremespeed user)
Notably in gen 5 only Mienshao gets it, and it makes sense the three dragons didnt have them because in general gen 5 nerfs movepool(probs due to infinite TM?). My favorite trivia is that we went from EVERY starter being able to use Earthquake to like "none" in gen 5 and it was when Ice Beam first was noticably not on every Water Type.
Gen 6 it was only on Clawitzer who is very thematically oriented for that kind of moves, and Squirtle who was retconned into Ryu from Street Fighter in gen 6 to account for its Mega being a little quirky(no seriously. Gen 6 Squitrle randomly gets Pulses)
I think by Gen 7 it SHOULD have been generic. It was still pretty "exclusive club esque" in learnsets, but theres enough random mons having it by that point. Like Lopunny
Interesting observations
That was Gen 8 when it first became a TM in Sw/Sh
Gen 7, only Magearna gained it whose a mythical
And then from Sw/Sh onwards it became a basic move now at this point. Vacuum Wave’s distribution was also very sparse until S/V where it also being a DLC TM
Evil BKC be like “Snorlax is my favorite gen 3 pokemon, and my father!”
I ran Focus Blast on my Gengar in Gen4 when it was current, and Garchomp was allowed in OU.
The problem with not running Focus Blast, is that your next best alternative is HP Fighting, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, which means you lose the speed tie against someone not running HP Fighting, and you are forced to run Modest, since you're not winning the speed tie, and you need every boost to SpA you can get.
When Gen4 was current, I used Focus Blast very sparingly, maybe once per game, and hoped that they were scared of a Focus Blast coming, where they'd switch out, and I'd hit them with a Thunderbolt or Ice Beam instead. Most times it was Ice Beam, because literally every team had Garchomp on it. You were an idiot if you didn't build your team around Garchomp at that time.
but gengar doesnt learn ice beam
Last time I played Gen4 was when it was current, like 16 years ago. I'm not gonna remember every moveset and what they can/can't learn. It's probably HP Ice.@@GATOUATZAP
3:00 everyone claiming Kingambit wasn't a problem in early gen 9, but he was on basically every player's team when it mattered and having endgame pretty much decided by him
But yeah that type of thing happens in a lot of competitive games, where something is not that good but people claim it is, but never use it when it matters. Or the opposite like my example above
“Kingambit isn’t a problem for me, I use my Kingambit to countersweep, and everybody does that, so it’s fair!”
Still hoping to see if regional forms were introduced in earlier generations. Say “Marowak-A” in Gen 2 or Gapdos in Gen 1.
If Gapdos came with Thunderous Kick (80 BP, 100 Accuracy and 100% chance to lower Def on hit) then it would definitely be great in RBY OU as it would reliably take on the Big 3 (ESPECIALLY Snorlax and Chansey, Tauros at least could cause a ton of damage in a 1on1), Rhydon and Exeggutor, and even though Zapdos, Alakazam and Starmie would he great checks, it would still be very annoying to see pop up, like Zapdos but maybe even worse.
Being a good fighting type with a good fighting move in RBY is already a good trait due to how good Normal and Rock are, but the added bonus of STAB Drill Peck and a great speed on top ? Yeah, that's a recipe for greatness
Some would be very interesting.
My favorite is A-Ninetales in gen 1. Ice is actually good in RBY, and with STAB Blizzard, it becomes much more usable than it's base form
I think alolawak would make Snorlax ALWAYS run equake, it could never afford to not
@@sephikong8323I think for how he did his megas video he didn't bring any moves with the logic that those moves don't exist in that generation (even mega ray didn't get dragon accent which is required for it to mega evolve) you can argue the logic there but it's made up scenario
What about Alolan Muk? That guy is probably a fierce Pokemon in Gens 2 and 3. It's got an amazing defensive typing.
2:46 I feel the exact same thing about GSC offense players. "Oh yeah gsc offense is good" Then you see both of them bring stall in tour games
Imagine if Focus Blast worked like protect. 100% accurate and halves in accuracy after each subsequent use.
The odds of hitting 2 remain the same, but you can rely on hitting it once.
Actually the odds of hitting 2 would be 1% higher
@@zylen3167For some reason I find that hilarious.
@@lucaslennan3356It's like a cruel joke!
you are a genius i will vote for you for president of Nintendo
sick idea
There's a term for the dynamic you discuss about claimed theoretical viability versus actual tournament usage in the Snorlax versus Skarmory example: 'revealed preference'.
I think Game Freak intentionally choose to give Focus Blast bad accuracy and Aura Sphere bad distribution to create more asymmetry between types and make Fighting still feel mostly physically biased even after the physical/special split (probably to try to make Lucario in particular seem distinct). If so, I actually think the general principle was good, but doing it with accuracy specifically was bad (or at least they got things a bit wrong with the balance of FB where it's at the point where it's too bad to be reliable, yet too good to be unviable; if they HAD to use accuracy, it might have been better to reduce FB accuracy even more to Dynamic Punch levels so that it was mostly pushed out of competitive usage). It also feels like Psychic deserved more of a buff as an offensive typing to make up for having a relatively bad main coverage option as well as generally being a bit mediocre after Gen 2 perhaps over-nerfed it, but I guess it did eventually get something like that with Psychic Terrain.
It has to be in some people's movesets to keep people's teambuilding honest. Similar to how you sometimes throw out a move that's super predictable to keep your opponent's play honest.
they should do the same thing to focus blast they did to hydro pump. 110 80%
How about 100 90%
Or get this…90 100%, too bad there’s no alternative fighting special move with 90 100%
@@GravityIsFallingjust make Aura Sphere 90BP and improve its distribution
@@GravityIsFallingor instead of knocking accuracy, give it the same debuffs as close combat
@@AshenDust_Aura Sphere was 90 BP until Gen 6 nerfed it because of Mega Launcher’s damage output (same reason Dragon Pulse was nerfed to 85 BP)
Only to then increase it’s distribution to mons that never had it before since from Sw/Sh onwards like Gardevoir, Kommo-o, and Armorouge
This could be useful to think of in terms of game theory and pure vs. mixed strategies.
The long story short of this is that a "50:50" involving Focus Blast is more like a 33:67 skewed against Focus Blast when taking accuracy into account.
Assume this is BW OU with a 100% Focus Sash Alakazam (Player A) against a 80% Toxic Orb Breloom with no Mach Punch and a 100% SpDef Chople Berry Tyranitar (Player B) in the back. Assume no Hazards and no Critical Hits.
Only turn 1 actually matters because Player A would use Focus Blast turn 2 or would have lost already.
Player A can Psychic or Focus Blast turn 1 (for simplicity, assume all other plays are strictly inferior).
Player B can hard switch into Tyranitar or stay in with Breloom to break Alakazam's Focus Sash.
First is an exaggerated game where the exaggerated "perceived" accuracy of Focus Blast is 100% (when players say "I would have won if not for Focus Blast!").
Player A Psychic loses to Player B Hard Switch 100% of the time (0:1), but beats Player B Stay In 100% of the time (1:0). Conversely, Player A Focus Blast beats Player B Hard Switch 100% of the time (1:0), but loses to Player B Stay In 100% of the time (0:1).
This is a true 50:50 so the game isn't so interesting. Unless the Player A has information that the Player B uses a certain strategy (e.g. Player B will Hard Switch Tyranitar 90% of the time), the optimal strategy for Player A is to flip a coin and choose their move, a mixed strategy. The expected win rate of Player A employing the coin flip strategy against Player B using the coin flip strategy is 50% ( 0.5*(0.5*0+0.5*1)+0.5*(0.5*1+0.5*0)=0.5 ). When Player B is employing the coin flip strategy in this game, Player A's strategy doesn't actually matter but that's beside the point.
Second is the same game with actual accuracy of Focus Blast taken into account.
Player A Psychic stays the same. Player A Focus Blast only beats Player B Hard Switch 50% (actually 49% but 50% is simpler) of the time (0.5:0.5), but still loses to Player B Stay In 100% of the time (0:1).
In this actual game with the assumption that Player A, Player A employing the same mixed strategy of the coin flip against Player B's coin flip strategy will have an expected win rate of 37.5% ( 0.5*(0.5*0+0.5*1)+0.5*(0.5*0.5+0.5*0)=0.375 ). If Player A employed a pure strategy of using Psychic every time against Player B's coin flip strategy, the win rate would improve to 50% ( 1*(0.5*0+0.5*1)+0*(0.5*0.5+0.5*0)=0.5 ). However, Player B has a brain, so if Player B notices that Player A never used Focus Blast in the past, Player B will employ the pure strategy of Hard Switch into Tyranitar every time. In this case, Player A will have a 0% win rate ( 1*(1*0+0*1)+0*(1*0.5+0*0)=0 ). Then Player A will notice that Player A never Stays In, so Player A will Focus Blast every time, netting Player A a 50% win rate ( 0*(1*0+0*1)+1*(1*0.5+0*0)=0.5 ). Iterating this process, I believe the most effective strategy for Player A in this game is to Psychic 2/3rds of the time and Focus Blast 1/3rd of the time, assuming Player A has no info on Player B.
One can also make this game 3 dimensional by adding the variable of whether the Alakazam player has Focus Blast or Grass Knot. One can also keep adding variables to map out a whole game. I won't do that since this comment is already quite long. This would have been so much easier with a table, but UA-cam comments aren't really made for this sort of thing. I also probably made a mistake somewhere, so anyone can feel free to correct it.
It was funny in the anime that ash scraggy missed all its focus blast when Sawk wasnt even moving
Rare 'anime writer played the games' sighting.
+1 if it went slightly to the left of Sawk every time.
It as Throh
Focus Blast's chance to miss is the same chance as Scald's burn or Moonblast's special drop.
Aka 100% of the time
I remember BKC's reaction to Pokeaim slapping Focus Blast on a mon that got Aura Sphere
70% of the time it works 100% of the time
If you were nuts you could use Gravity with Focus Blast to make it actually good. It also makes levitating Pokemon vulnerable to Earthquake, so Zapdos and Skarmory and friends wouldn't want to come out while Gravity is active.
reverend
I once lost a battle because there was an ha spcial def glister and used hyper voice on my rivalry pyroar and had overheat and uproar, the glister was about 90 hp but I did not know it was special def so I lost, and I clicked uproar instead of overheat because I was scared of the 10 percent chance miss.
you made a great point fn the video, if you can help it you'd rather avoid taking the risk of needing to hit focus blast and moreso use it as a last ditch effort, which I think is a great point back to your video about positioning where you want to be in a situation where no matter what the opp does, you can always do 'x' move instead such as that example you gave of six heatrans vs your scarf chomp just clicking eq
I do believe in the right context it is Viable, but its really out of necessity/a lack of options for most Pokemon. Its an interesting balancing decision that is very dissatisfying in practice. Its the one time I've noticed Game Freak actually looked at the type chart and decided to make sure that "unstoppable" offensive monsters like Gengar and Alakazam don't just steam roll everything in their way with Aura sphere.
I'm paraphrasing off of flawed memory here, but I remember the old smogon analysis of Gengar reveared it as this unstoppable threat that always has the potential to just win games with its sub/split set. This being thanks to Shadow Ball and Focus blast being borderline unwallable. While on paper this is true, the multiple Pokemon that deal with it neutrally and either cripple, or KO Gengar in return is enough that it never felt that way whenever I tried to build with it.
I say with the right context because Gengar did get banned in BDSP. I think this happened because steel types no longer resist ghost, sliming down the amount of genuine counters/checks it has in the DPP dex. Also, no pursuit goes a long way to help with this idea as well. Jirachi no longer checks it, max spdef Heatran gets 3 hit KO'd by Shadow Ball with rocks up, Scizor gets wrecked even harder than Heatran thanks to this nerf, Clefable now gets wrecked by sludge wave thanks to its fairy type. Lasty, Gengar and most special attackers always have a plan to get around Blissey if the team is built well, so it still being a fantastic counter to Gengar on paper isn't to big of a problem.
With the stage set, while Focus Blast isn't as depended on in BDSP as heavily as it was in Gen 4. It really only served to push Gengar ever so slightly over the edge, assisting it by clearing up Ttar, the only common/viable Dark type that truly stands in its way. Blissey being its only good long term check, and a lack of pursuit meant Gengar actually was given a chance to live up to its theorized potential in the DPP dex.
To further exemplify how Focus Blast is still on the fringe of Viability, it might be why Gengar managed to keep up pace with gen 4's power creep. Wilo wisp utility, and Sub/split both give Gengar ways of out playing it's checks. This would only be possible if it's coverage in two slots became splashable/powerful enough to threaten most things for a solid chunk of damage paired with hazards. Gengar's move pool got nerfed harder than it got buffed imo. But thanks to how many things Ghost/Fighting hits neutrally, it still has room to mess around with its massive utility move pool whilst maintaining its offensive presence that a Pokemon like Gengar should have. If it weren't for this fact, I feel like Gengar wouldn't be as immediately effective at its job against most of the meta like it does now. There's so many new choices you'd have to make. Even if you set the conditions right, it's non stab moves don't pair well with Ghost single handedly like Fighting coverage does.
There's a whole tangent here that I could go on about if Gengar would remain viable in the tier without Focus blast, but I think I've already bored quite a lot of you here since this is a big wall of Text rather than a guy speaking it into your ear. So I'll leave it be.
In review, thanks to Focus Blast still having a necessary target to hit in Tyranitar, FB's questionable viability still managed to push Gengar to ban worthy status in this context. This makes it clear to me that the move is more viable then the Math may imply, it just needs to be on Pokemon that compensate for the moves drawbacks to become a "solid" and reasonable option to pick.
70% of the time, it’s viable every time 😎
From mons and other mon like games I’ve played 70% seems to be the lowest accuracy that doesn’t discourage the vast majority of people.
I do want to find out why this is.
An intuitive guess on my part is probably because 50 is a coin flip and 60-65 look like a 1 in 3+ fail chance
A more numeric theory is because the chance of hitting 70 more than once consecutively is close to 1/attempt
1: 0.7 ~ 1/1.4 (only 1/1 for 100 accuracy)
2: 0.49 ~ 1/2
3: 0.343 ~ 1/3
4: 0.2401 ~ 1/4
5: 0.16807 ~1/6
It does diverge after 4 consecutive attempts, but 4 successful attempts can easily swing matches.
It could be the odds feel relatively linear per attempt when playing.
When the odds are lowered the consecutive success chance drops lower faster.
I wonder what peoples opinions are on this?
This is a nice comment I'd like to quote:
"@dakodastevens8972
16 hours ago
The difference between 70% and 80% accurate moves is immense. Intuitively it's just 10%, but in reality, you miss 50% more focus blasts then hydro pumps (going from 2 misses out of 10 to 3 misses out of 10 is 50% more misses, similarly going from 90% to 80% doubles your number of expected misses). "
Frail offensive mons rarely fire off more than 3 attacks in a game. So a 10% difference in acc could mean 50% more misses. Drop things down to 60% acc and it would be a coin flip whether you hit 2/3 attacks. That's why sleep powder is viable and hypnosis isn't (unless you're guaranteed to be behind screens or veil like Ninetales A).
Problem is focus blast is forced on a lot of special attackers, especially pursuit tar it's either dying or going for the 50/50
You know what’s funny? The Spanish translation for focus blast is literally “accurate wave”
rip Portazo. I will definitely miss the "door slam" attack.
I’d say gen 5 reuniclus is the only “reliable” focus blast user since it’s bulky enough to miss one
it's also the only "reliable" Thunder user
Yeah but psychic is terrible defensively.
Excellent topic of discussion
Psyspam would be overpowered if everyone had aura sphere not focus miss so atleast thats okay
Do you think the game would be better if Aura Sphere had the same distribution as focus blast?
Inclement Emerald has that and it really doesn't make a major difference in most situations. Most pokemon that run focus blast _need_ to run focus blast for the 120bp and dropping to 80bp doesn't cut it. The sensible solution would be for Gamefreak to increase Focus Blast to 80acc or 110bp/85acc
@@booshywaters3726yeah that makes sense
aura sphere is a whole 50% weaker gen 6 and onwards / 33% weaker pre gen 6 which is a big deal
@@booshywaters3726 Depends on the mon's needs. Some would absolutely rather run Aura Sphere. It's like BKC's Greninja vs half health Heatran example. Sometimes you would just much rather have the accuracy. Because in competitive battling, things take chip damage from switching in on resistances or whatever and aren't necessarily at full health all the time, like theorymon calcing would have you believe. Inclement Emerald is not a great example because of this, since it's not really how competitive battles go.
@@booshywaters3726Yeah, but that requires Gamefreak to, I don't know, actually balance their fucking game, and they can't do that.
I'd choose Aura Spehere every time
If I can use Aura Sphere instead, I will
30% chance to miss only refers to the cumulative average. You missing all of your focus blasts averages out because your opponent will always land 140% of their focus blasts.
“It is said that Focus Blast only misses 30% of the time. This is heavily inaccurate. Most people have Focus Blast miss 60% of time. Spiders Georg is an outlier who has all his Focus Blasts hit all the time and plays Pokemon so many times and should not be counted.” - me when I have a bad grasp of probability and want to shoehorn in a meme.
I doubt we'd ever see anything like this, but ever since around gen7 id legit thought itd be a really cool generational gimmick for each team to have a budgeted number of "team points". It could be one point, it could be three, it could be more. But the idea being that these points are shared amongst an entire team and are finite for the match. Among other ideas to spend such points on, a trainer could select on their turn to spend a point to make their move 100% accurate. (Obviously this wouldnt be useable with deliberately RNG stuff like dynamic punch or OHKO moves like fissure).
I know that just sounds like z-moves, but there are two key dinstinctions. The first is that itd ideally be like two or three budgeted uses per match instead of one. The second is that it would never give "190 BP" to anything or give ridiculous stat stage boosts like z-moves did with status moves. The goal wouldnt be big, grand-standing effects. Other than the aforementioned accuracy stuff, itd be stuff like:
- use a point on a turn to be immune to a sleep on that turn. (Could be variations for other status, but the point being that the status would have to be chosen during teambuilding prior to the match).
- use a point on a turn to boost a move with 75 BP or less by 20%.
- abilities like shadow tag still let trapped mons spend a point to switch out one time per point spent.
- if your pokemon was outsped and ko'd without being able to do anything at all, you could spend a point so that your replacement pokemon gets +1 speed upon becoming active.
The goal would be that to help climb out of being trapped into a corner by, among other things, giving you a limited trump card to reduce unfavorable RNG when you need it the most.
70% accurate moves are the worst. Back in late Gen 8 I was laddering for the Melmetal Suspect with a solid and slightly off-beat balance team, relying on Rillaboom's Grassy Terrain to boost Heatran, Melm and Swampert's longevity. There was (and still is) a Torn-T on the team. I was just 2 or 3 wins from getting reqs when I hit a patch of awful Hurricane luck. Across 9 or 10 games (idk it was over a year ago) I think I clicked 21 'canes and missed 19 of them, most of them important, some not so much. I wound up having a record in that stretch that looked something like L/L/W/L/W/L/L/W/W. I missed reqs unfortunately, due to some mistakes and a lot of bad luck. My opponents where making mistakes and cane missing lead to those going unpunished, but that's just the game we play sometimes.
This is why I run airslash on Torn. Utility Torn doesn't get too many 2HKOs from hurricane anyway. And nastyplot Torn doesn't get too many +2 OHKOs unless you run life orb or Fly Z.
You should use it once to show you have it then never use it again. You don’t wanna rely on a 70% hit but your opponent is gonna switch out because they don’t wanna rely on your 30% miss
20:13 that freeze 🥶
Not when I use it
I'm surprised there was no mention of Gen 2 Submission and Dynamicpunch
hey BKC, a video request id like to see after watching this one is: “what is the most viable team in gens 1-3”. these gens are old and “figured out” so to speak. so my question is, what team covers the most threats while also having the smallest gaps (i.e., the bad match ups are the ones you’ll least likely to see in the tier).
If someone comes up with a phenomenal team that is truly that good, covers most threats, and has uncommon bad matchups, people will exploit that by adjusting their teams with coverage options, ev spreads (g3), etc, and take advantage of knowing your exact composition and win conditions because it's The Best Team that people use constantly. Those bad matchups will not be very rare for very long as the meta adjusts. Teams can occasionally rise above the meta, but people will race to figure out counters, and the original team can be altered to counter these counters, and so on, until you have several very viable options that match up fairly equally against large parts of the tier. Most teams used in tournaments are quite close together in viability, you just need to pick and choose what weaknesses you want to play around, and what strengths seem the most beneficial to have at the moment. As long as there's more than a handful of viable mons, you'll tend to have enough variance that there's not a team that remains so powerful for long.
hey bkc would u consider making a video discussing/laddering the new ubers UU it’s surprisingly fun without annoying things like toxapex and corviknight
I am Ryan Gosling, AMA
How can you be Ryan Gosling when I’m Ryan Gosling?
No I'M Ryan Gosling
How many reindeer have you tended to before?
Hello, I enjoyed your genius comment about how specs latios was Rayquaza.
@@howlhades0001 wtf someone actually remembered, i forgor where i even posted it
I just realized that the 70% accuracy doesn't only translate to the battle itself, it will translate to the trajectory of the team, while using a particular team with a mon using FB, you will land on average only 70% of the time, which teams, your team has an extra 30% dead turns only because one of the moves will not land always. So the overall effectivity of your team diminishes by default, not 30%, but it will diminish.
3:45- 4:20 feels like your explaining melmetal in let’s go paired with mega aero.
I got hit and crit back to back by focus blast and fire blast once. That ended my time in whatever generation that was.
It makes me want to mod Aura Sphere on my zam
Also worth remembering Tornadus enjoys running with peliper rain teams making it's hurricanes 100% accurate
focus blast has no way to make it more accurate
I feel like half the utility is just having focus blast. Like yeah its got low accuracy, but does the other player want to count on the miss? Sometimes they can afford to, but just having it can force them to play around it
Missing focus is kinda bad but the strength is worth it. Being able to sometimes 1HKO or 2HKO is better than thudding off worthlessly like aura sphere which regardless of luck will fail to kill mons in a lot of situations.
Focus being inaccurate sucks, but 70% is not that bad, especially with the choice of up to 3 more accurate moves. Also the enemy doesn't always capitalize missing focus because they play considering the possibility that you hit focus and won't call the odds unless they are desperate enough to take a 30%.
The fact that keledo considers it in addition or instead of even an incredible move like secret sword says a lot. Its not a bad move. Also not everyone assumes they are better than your opponent. If you are a lower tier main playing an OU main for example its totally logical to gamble on inaccurate moves or hax to get the best case scenario where you can actually win against a favored opponent.
It's true. I initially found it bizarre when gen 8 magearna still ended up using focus blast when it was blessed with aurea sphere, but it actually makes sense looking at the tier. Specs magearna threatens an OHKO on ferro, who could potentially recover itself back up through leech seed switches. Max phys def blissey risks a 2HKO on switch-in. You would think something like specs kyurem would want earth power since heatran resists its STABs but nope, it also dropped earth power in favor of focus blast.
my zapdos in gsc consistently misses thunder over half the time
Made me think about gen 2 dynamic punch
Focus blast is like fire blast and hydro pump in some case, a necessary evil. I know they dont have the same accuracy but i missed sacred fire 3 time in a row, if not 100 percent , it is always a risk. When you dont have the move , you can be in bad spot as said as the heatran case that recover quickly with protect and lefties.
What I find very odd about this question is that, although I agree that FB's 70 accuracy is crap (any move below 90% accuracy is 50% accuracy), but everyone points fingers at FB, but not moves like hurricane who also have 70% accuracy.
Hurricane is only really used on Rain teams, in which under Rain Hurricane never misses, so unless you are in a situation where clicking Hurricane is the correct option outside of Rain (which is not negligible) you are basically have an always accurate move.
Focus Blast. It works, 70% of the time, every time.
Would Gengar remain viable in DPP without focus blast? I think it could be, but it wouldn't be as versatile as it is now with out a sacrifice in offensive power, and coverage.
I put a Zapdos on my Gen 9 OU team yesterday and one match I straight up lost to the green tea Sinistea after missing 4/7 hurricanes :/ and another match, I hit only 1/4 hurricanes (didn't lose that one since I just cleaned up with other team members). I think I landed less than I missed across the whole session. I hate 70% accurate moves so goddamn much, Hurricane being by far the worst feeling
Brandy Kandy Central
the obvious answer here is clearly to make it a special Focus Punch :]
Focus blast is a 120bp move that you miss 30% of the time ohko moves are 0bp moves that kills 30% of the time
5:02 Refrence?!?!?
you'd have better chances with winning with Low kick vs Focus Blast
It’s been a long time coming, but I can confidently say Is Focus Blast viable?
70% acc is actually 50% more inaccurate than 80%. 80% misses 20 out of 100, 70% misses 30 out of 100, 30 is 50% more than 20
like 70% of the time yes (unless you do it twice in a row)
Showdown players will complain "My focus blasts never hit!"
My brother in Smogon, you were the one who clicked focus blast!
You don't understand. This is called availability.
You don't understand. This is called a joke.
@@waniel2962 Jokes are supposed to be funny, not an excuse to explain dumb comments.
It feels really bad to rely on having to hit, but fighting coverage for psychic/ghost types is just too good not to use.
Thinking about it as relying on not getting Scald burned really emphasizes how scary it is to click though
I'd say it isn't just about Focus Blast, or Stone Edge, or Thunder.
This is a problem with RNG in general and moves having an accuracy stat.
Players are discovering new games, where competitiveness and skill are encouraged, while luck and randomness are frowned upon. Pokémon is showing its age in this regard, what used to be a simple way to balance strong moves, is now becoming a relic of the past.
Making randomness so influential is considered bad game design nowadays, unless the game itself is some form of gambling.
Hit or Miss, i guess they never miss huh
Sub gengar ruins my day on the gen 4 ladder
Wait how old is that first DPP OU game? Those look like 2015 era teams lol
No guard on a good special attacker would be something,
I hate the term "focus miss" because it foregoes the opportunity for "unfocused blast."
Also makes me wonder if FB's terrible accuracy should be considered defensively in the teambuilder. Like spec into special defense so it requires two FBs to knock you out, rather than one
IDK how to explain it but BKC and defunctland feel really similar to me even though their content is almost nothing alike
@5:10 turn 6 could have been very unfortunate
Doesn't Mega-Mewtwo-Y run Focus Blast?
Also, I think comparing tournaments to high ladder isn't exactly fair. You can risk losing a crucial game on ladder, not so during that last tournament game.
Factoring in crits wouldn’t your chances for killing something that takes two focus blasts to kill technically still be favorable? Small nitpick but when the margin is that close it still kinda matters
Yes, but its still bad. Like, really bad
A game coming down to a 70/30 is still in your favour
my pb for missed Focus Blasts in a row is 5
how can game freak make close combat and super power and then make almost every other 120 bp move suck so hard
70% of the time, it works 100% of the time
Is it viable? Nah
Do you got a choice? Nah
I just don't use focus blast. If a mon absolutely needs to use it to function, I don't use them. Nothing is worth 70 acc.
focus blast is funny in a cosmic way
Same what hurricane is
No, it's really not, but it's a necessary evil we have to live with
It's like asking if fissure is viable. 😂
Fissure IS viable in Gen 9 VGC lol
"B-but Gen 9 isn't broken, it's just balanced for VGC..."
No.
Trying to find consistency in a rng game lol.
HP fighting? I know; it's only good for 4x effective hits, but still
Savage
I hate focus blast. I’d run aura sphere over it 10/10 times honestly
This debate strikes at the heart of man
Me? I avoid it
Focus blast? Miss me with that shit
no.
I hate that Hurricane gets off scott free in this discussion because holy shit it is a dogshit move with very few alternative options
At least you can use Hurricane in rain to circumvent the accuracy issue. FB accuracy is always bad
BEE KAY CEE!!!!