Upon recent perusing of Simisage’s moveset, I have come across a bit of an oddity.
Seed Bomb, in its current state, is a straight downgrade compared to Sludge Bomb outside of typing and physical/special.
Seed Bomb:
80bp
100acc
No secondary effect
Spray
4 tile
20pp
No glide
No pierce
Sludge Bomb: 90bp
100acc 30% poison chance
Spray 5tile
20pp
No glide
No pierce
As can be seen, Sludge Bomb is fundamentally the same sort of move (a non piercing long range arc), but gets an entire extra tile of range, despite having 10 more base power, a secondary effect, and no other differences. In mainline, seed bomb actually has significantly more pp (15 vs 10), but that is not represented here. Is the range difference solely down to the difference of physical vs special?
I propose a few solutions. The first and simplest would be to raise Seed Bomb up to 5 tiles, to match Sludge Bomb. This would still render it a downgrade, but a more subtle one. Alternatively, Seed Bomb could either be given more pp (25-30), or instead be given glide in order to further differentiate it from Sludge Bomb.
I voted yes just cause I’ll almost always agree with a buff for a non-piercing spray (they really suck).
I will say though that I don’t really agree with the premise of comparing these two moves specifically.
Poison hardly gets any moves , and sludge bomb might honestly be one of its top 3. Seed bomb, on the other hand, is one of a crap ton of grass type moves, with a ton of them already being extremely good.
It just doesn’t really seem like an equal comparison saying both of these moves would be more fair being of equal bp, range and/or pp.
Honestly it wouldn’t be a hard argument to make that even now seed bomb is better than sludge bomb. Ranged special moves are a dime a dozen, and poison has terrible offensive type coverage. Ranged physical, on the other hand, is impossibly rare, and grass has great coverage.
Side note: Chance to poison really isn’t a positive. You really don’t wanna increase the chance that an enemy dies by passive damage, cause you don’t get experience from it
but just want to add that a portion of the grass pokemon that have access to seed bomb aIso have access to doubIe attack speed. this is not true for the pokemon that wouId use stab psychic or sIudge bomb
weII i guess viIepIume and venasaur are stab grass poisons…
that’s besides the point. just wanted to say we might swing entireIy opposite and make seed bomb too op
another side note.
since it’s a bomb, and bombs expIode, perhaps seed bomb and sIudge bomb shouId be granted a simiIar expIosion mechanic that fIame burst has. This goes hand in hand w/ dray’s idea that nonpiercing arcs are bad in generaI.
abilities should not a part in discussion for a move’s balance,
unless they are the signature move of a pokemon, because then the move only works under that concept, like primarina’s sparkling aria.
you cannot say we shouldn’t buff stone edge cause lycanrock has no guard,
that is not right.
not every pokemons is leafeon’s leafguard chlorophyll 110 base attack or something
making seed bomb bad for breloom because another pokemon can use it better is unfair
if seedbomb becomes op to pokemons with chlorophyll, then is chlorophyll that should be nerfed, not seed bomb. the move is not the issue. the ability is.
