SHIELDS - Alteration
When shields were announced for PvP, I thought to myself, "ok, there's gonna be some strategy to using them."
And there is.
My issue is that shields block 100% of the attack (except for 1HP points I think). This effectively makes any Pokemon with one-bar (long charging moves) much less viable.
What if instead, shields only blocked 75-80% of the attack? This would give these long charging time attackers more use, thus having giving more strategy for players to utilize. It's always bugged me from the beginning that shields block 100% of the attack.
Agree? Disagree?
Answers
blocking a % of the damage won't change the relative effectiveness of slow charging moves at all.
The thing that makes slow charging moves bad is that they are prone to wasting energy, as the host mon is more likely to feint with energy in the bank if its charge moves all cost more.
Shields letting through a % of damage doesn't mitigate this issue, doesn't fix it in any way, as cheap moves still have the same damage/energy cost as they do now, and expensive moves would have an ADJUSTED damage/energy cost (correcting for energy waste) as they do now.
Tl;Dr: This fixes nothing, as good moves (leafblade, Meteor mash, the CD starter moves, etc) are still good, and bad moves (hydro pump, fire blast, etc) are still bad.
It has always bugged me that shields block 100% of damage, yes, and making shields behave more like dodges would make more sense to me, but it's also always bugged me that immunities only grant 3x resistance, and that weaknesses can help mitigate an immunity (ex: Zapdos should be IMMUNE to ground. Instead, because flying is immune (3x resistant) and electric is weak, zapdos is 2x resistant to ground. It's not even a static 3x resistant to ground). My bird shouldn't care about your petty earthquakes.
My argument against your point would be that Niantic favors casual players, not hardcore players which will be the best at PVP. So many people don't even know what pokemon to use in raids, let alone understand PVP. They aren't reading about it online. When my kids battle, or I battle my kids, the experience would be very different if the block wasn't 100%. They don't understand the concept of energy gain and bar moves, and the display Niantic gives is even misleading, which puts casual players at a huge disadvantage. I literally can't use pokemon like Scizor or Kingler against them because 3 bar moves are so dominant as they waste blocks on my charge moves and do nothing with their single bar moves.
How about this...we tap to gain circles for the charge move and the damaged varies based on that. Implement the same tapping mechanism to blocking. A block provides a base 75% block, but for each circle it added an additional 5% block for a maximum 85% block. I think that makes perfect sense. If we have that for attacks, why not defense?
