Trainer Battle Dev Diary: What Did We Learn?

By: GO Stadium Team

In the Dev Diary from Niantic today we learned quite a bit about GO Battle League and the Trainer Battle system.
Bug Fixes, Matchmaking, Battle Logging, and the Maintenance of the Battle System were all covered.

At the end of the Diary, however, one of the most pressing concerns of the Pokémon GO battling community was addressed - Fast Attack inconsistencies.

So what was there, and what does this mean for Season 11?

1) Fast Attack desyncs are something that Niantic is aware of and actively working on. They have a lead that they are going to implement - that of additional synchronization points - that they believe will address the issue.

2) Fast Attack Inconsistencies: Fast Attack and Charged Attack interaction is changing.

What does this mean?
Veterans of Trainer Battles will remember that historically a Charged Attack being used at the same time as a Fast Attack will cause the Charged Attack to resolve, as well as the Fast Attack resolving during the Charged Attack.

As we understand this: that will remain!

What’s being removed is the inconsistent potential to “deny” an opposing Fast Attack.
To give an example - if you are using Hypno against an opposing Hypno, whenever you throw a Charged Attack they should get a Confusion through, and vice versa.

What else is changing?

The solution mentioned, once put in place, would presumably make some minor adjustments to Fast Attack/Charged Attack prioritization on the same turn.

To give a couple examples of what this might mean:

Example 1:

A Medicham survives a Shadow Ball from Drifblim and is at 1HP. That trainer uses Counter and goes to use Ice Punch while the opposing Drifblim uses Hex.
In the present structure of the game the Medicham trainer does NOT get to use the Ice Punch.

From our understanding of the update: Post-change, the Medicham trainer DOES get to use the Ice Punch, and if that Ice Punch faints the Drifblim, no Hex damage is applied - effectively “denying” the Fast Attack.

Note that this can occur presently during a Fast Attack, just not on its final turn.

This change as we understand it would also affect one turn Fast Attacks such as Dragon Breath which presently can “deny” a Charged Attack from occurring and post-change no longer should.
Example 2:

A trainer’s Toxicroak just fainted to an opposing Hypno and they are prompted to bring in a new Pokémon. They have a Vigoroth that previously battled, and has enough energy for a Body Slam.

Presently when they bring in Vigoroth and instantly use Body Slam, the Hypno will occasionally get a Confusion to register and occasionally not.
From our understanding of the update: Post-change, so long as the Hypno survives the Body Slam, said Confusion will ALWAYS register.

We have provided extensive examples to Niantic like the above that are being tested and confirmed so we can be sure the mechanics are working as intended. 

Other than those instances, no change to the current “expected” behavior on Fast and Charged Attacks should be expected from this Diary.

3) Finally, Niantic is aware of the occasional issues around action - or lack thereof - after Charged Attacks. This is something they are looking into and are testing fixes on during this season.

The team here at GO Stadium is very hopeful around the changes to Fast Attacks, especially to desync and Fast Attack inconsistencies in particular. While the changes are yet to be seen in actual play, the descriptions of the changes and the resulting interactions should resolve many issues that our community has with Trainer Battles.

This Dev Diary showed a transparency and granularity of information that our team and many other members of the community have pushed for for a long time. We are appreciative of Niantic for this and will continue to push for similar communications going forward.

-Stadium Team