Battle Stadium Singles blog — Goodbye, gen 8: a short timeline in images (Special Edition)
With Scarlet/Violet just over the horizon now, and SWSH's final official tournament being played in the doubles format, I figured it was time to bid farewell to generation 8.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's a controversial thing to conclude that SWSH was the worst game for ranked singles since modern online match-making was introduced back in generation 6. This being the case, to try to end generation 8 on a positive note, I will begin by briefly going over what this entry is not about.
It is not about the Dexit nor the precedent, however inevitable, it set going forward.
Likewise, it is not about Dynamax, a generational gimmick so self-evidently disastrous in every way imaginable it truly boggles the mind how it ever got approved.
Nor, indeed, is it about how unutterably bland Dynamax's design was (Max Moves, limited number of G-Max forms); how unbalanced and unintuitive key aspects of its implementation were (Max Airstream, every status move irrespective of type defaults to a Normal-type Max Guard move, various Ability-related non-interactions like Gulp Missile, Endeavor vs. Counter/Mirror Coat/Metal Burst, immunity to pseudo-haze, OHKO-moves and weight-moves [in the generation they added Heavy Slam, Heat Crash, and Low Kick as TRs, no less!]); and even how the very idea of Dynamax itself goes against the fantasy of pokemon as "pocket monsters".
No, what this entry is about, then, is about highlighting key (and fun!) moments for me over the last three years of ranked singles on SWSH through a series of images, mostly ingame screenshots.
Though the imagery below is arranged in chronological order, there is no extensive post-mortem or grand narrative here — just a bit of reminiscing and perhaps even preservation of something for posterity.
"Ranked Battles are the real deal". November 16, 2019.
The top 30 BSS pokemon of USUM surviving the transition to vanilla SWSH. Many of those crossed out would eventually be added back in through DLC, of course.
Before the addition of the G-Max soup NPC as part of the Isle of Armor DLC set everyone straight, we in the loosely smogon-affiliated BSS Discord went through the trouble of organizing the occasional co-op raid. November 20, 2019.
Season 1 of ranked singles concluded with 188,539 accounts in Master Ball rank, so the cut off for a 2000 Elo finish was as low as rank 1167.
One of the more coveted shinies, I'm told.
Before the Isle of Armor DLC expanded the pool of available pokemon, prominent physical Dynamax attackers Durant and Dracozolt were shockingly vulnerable to...Eviolite Gloom of all things. How is that for a niche?
Choice Scarf Ditto — more on that later.
In vanilla SWSH, nothing else came close to the lofty heights of Dragapult.
Global rank #16 / 89,640. March 2020.
One thousand. July 2020.
Ranked formats suffered from "cutting bug" abusers, who would disconnect from the game with impunity the moment things started going belly up (Japanese hash-tag #切断バグ). There was even a twitter account dedicated to naming and shaming players doing this. A series of patches eventually (mostly) resolved this.
Libero Cinderace was released through HOME during Season 7, slightly before the release of Isle of Armor.
Without Landorus and Zapdos to check or Dynamax duel it, Gyarados (2/3 Impish) and Hippowdon were the most consistent defensive answers. Thus, mixed Cinderace had a brief niche as something that oneshot Gyarados and twoshot Hippowdon with Max Blast Burn after it switched in on a Max Bounce opener. Toxapex here was just a nice bonus.
This period was also the first and only time throughout all of SWSH that Luxray was fairly usable due to its combination of Intimidate and +1 priority Baby-Doll Eyes.
This generation, the ingame timer started out with a mere 15 minutes of total game time, but got eventually bumped up to 20 minutes.
Gyarados was the MVP pokemon for me this generation. So many games Moxie Max Airstreamed through. On the other hand, so many missed Bounces, Stone Edges, Power Whips, and, yes, even Fire Blasts!
Let's see Paul Allen's watt record. Isle of Armor.
Aside from the rare League Card, the Honey questline awards the player with a vending machine in the Master Dojo with massively discounted bundles of EV-vitamins. A reward worth playing for both casual players and competitive degenerates alike? Good design, that.
A tiny island in the Insular Sea has five separate daily respawning nature mint spots.
"A Thwackey mirror, you say?". Despite its alarmingly ramshackled implementation, the two months of Series 6 (the infamous banlist/Dracozolt ruleset) ended up being the most fun I had in all of ranked play this generation — by far.
Endure had nigh universal distribution in generation 8.
Choice Scarf Ditto-as-Zapdos locked into Roost to try to get to the timer tie-break win-con.
Global rank #100 / 51,616. December 2020.
Nasty, that.
PP Ups eventually became a real hassle to get in anything resembling sufficient quantities to keep up with constant team experimentation, so whenever you got a Master Ball instead of a PP Up or a PP Max on the lottery, it was a bummer.
A major failure of the endgame item economy it is, then. Or could it be that this literal children's game was never really meant to be played competitively in the first place? Nah, nope, my ego definitely compels me to reject any such premise.
There's no such thing as Landon't.
I couldn't resist including one of these, an official regulations page for an upcoming online competition. "Special pokemon: Allowed". They were not, in fact, allowed in the tournament in question. And this kind of stuff just kept happening. Room for improvement going forward, perhaps?
Among the most wonderful things to come out of this generation, in terms of aesthetics alone, was the release of the balls with the most limited prior distribution — Sport Ball and Safari Ball — as obtainable items through the Cram-o-matic.
Shiny Sport Ball Heatran, my one and only Dynamax Adventure shiny hunt. Too bad having to actually land Magma Storms made Heatran a bit unpalatable to, you know, use.
A Mimikyu, Cinderace, or Urshifu for most any occasion. I trust I need not show the box with Zapdos and Landorus.
Alongside the Spikemuth Cup online competition, Series 10 (August-October 2021) was the only ruleset without Dynamax. Despite being tainted by allowing teams to bring a single restricted pokemon, at least without Max Airstream and random Dynamax swings around, Sticky Web and a number of other team archetypes from BSS' storied history made a comeback.
Behemoth Blade, mid-animation. About as close to sublime as you get with this game.
Conversely, I give you Ditto clipping into the ground while using said move.
+2 Behemoth Blade Ditto-proofing with defensive investment to avoid being revenge-killed by that most readily available way of dealing with Zacian momentum. And finishing it off with Quick Attack.
I wager it's pretty hard to find anyone well-versed in ranked singles who wouldn't admit Zacian was a mistake.
Metronome was the most fun way of playing around Urshifu's Sucker Punch as Calyrex-S.
For the record, here it landed on Shadow Sneak, the opposing Choice Scarf Ditto forced to go for it because it was playing around Focus Sash in the final mon 1v1.
Two thousand. 05 December 2021.
Pythagoras remains one of the all-time greats. 24 December 2021.
What's more impressive than trying to pilot hard stall into the victory screen in a format where you...
1) Simply can't bring answers to everything;
2) Have to have the perfect team anyway;
3) Have to know how the opponent is going to try to wallbreak you, and have to meticulously outplay them — in a Dynamax format; and
4) By virtue of playing the receiving loop, you are constantly the *haxee* instead of the *haxer*?
Answer: doing so on two accounts simultaneously.
Out-Ditto'd.
Kyogre made Seismitoad viable in a format dominated by Zacian, Kyogre, Yveltal, and Calyrex-S. Series 12.
I hereby nominate Porygon2 for Dexit in 2022-2025.
Learn the basics before abandoning them, and you too can abuse Zacian checks with a mixed special attacker Dusk-Mane.
Yes, it's situational, but that's the whole point.
Series 12, although an abomination by any objective metric, at least have us the golden age of Shedinja in ranked singles history. Here trading Will-o-Wisps to let the Zygardes duke it out.
Choice Band Zacian's main claim to fame was living any Dynamax Yveltal hit with a Play Rough punish, not being revengeable by Ditto, and outspeeding bulky Adamant Zacian-C EV'd for a Behemoth Blade mirror, threatening the latter with Dig in an endgame scenario.
Weather Ball Zapdos in hail. This wasn't a thing, mind you. But it got me switching in here. And that's a good thing, because that was the opponent's game plan going into this.
Calm Mind Xerneas. Series 12 fatigue setting in.
"Recoil damage, you say?". Physiram.
Two absolute ladder gods, Kuroko (top) and kacr (bottom), pushed for rank 1 on the final day of Season 33, the last month of Series 12.
Series 13 finally removed the limit on the number of restricted pokemon allowed, and added mythicals into the mix.
Too bad mythicals are, generally speaking, held back by their most unfortunate stat distribution. At least Choice Scarf Victini here could do Final Gambit from that otherwise useless 100 Base HP, turning the 3v3 into a 2v2. Unless, of course, you want to go ahead and Dynamax that Kyogre on turn one. No?
No longer having to compete against the most oppressive offensive restricted pokemon for team slots (Series 12), Groudon finally saw the usage it deserved in Series 13. And with it, came Solar Blade Zacian.
Complete record of games in ranked singles (BSS) in SWSH.
And it's over.
And that does it for me for SWSH. I will return to explore ranked singles in generation 9 — a roadmap is forthcoming.
Regardless of how that turns out, however, I will admit looking forward to the day when Dynamax is but a dim memory — one which I hope my new social and competitive peers in future generations of play will know to never ask me about.
- Tox
SW-0021-9848-8999
