Something in the vein of
“After Round 20, reduces the effectiveness of all healing by 5%, gaining an extra stack each round”
Possibly with a cap in place, or maybe let it run up to 100% reduced. The round number and figures are just examples, I’m just trying to suggest a concept.
I’ve noticed a resurgence of ‘infinite healing comps’ lately (or it could just be the same chap), essentially not trying to win but playing an endless game of back-row HoT healing/Wish heals and dragging the game out to 50, 70, 100+ rounds if I let it, all in order to win by forfeit.
You know the drill, Sunflower, Blossoming Ancient, Crawdad type teams. The reason I think this could work is that these teams generally do next to no damage either, you can tell their mentality immediately that is “I’m prepared to lose 30 minutes here for a single win”.
While I know you could tailor a counter team with multiple Darkness’, mortal strikes and hard hitting aquatic moves, we all know how that goes, as soon as you queue up with that you’ll stop matching the person you’re trying to out-think, and finely tailored teams aren’t generally that strong against other more rounded teams in my opinion.
Yeah healing can be problematic, I think that’s one of few things which could bring all but one folks under a single banner. The ways to deal with that may be different though.
As I’ve been preferring a bigger rework lately I am becoming more distanced from the discussions but I can tell about some proposed solutions:
A fatigue system is one, indeed.
Another could be an overflowing effect where a capped healing would do something negative. This still does not do much against Sunny Day, though due to a higher HP cap.
Addressing Sunny Day itself i.e. reducing it to 5 rounds etc.
Heal over time abilities split so 8 becomes 5 + 3 frontline only, for example. And Photosynthesis’ bonus not stacking with itself. Or just nuking the backline healing, like it or not.
Darkflame-like abilities but team-wide.
Also, dropping this from the fellow Xu-Fu’s co-mod: https://i.ibb.co/dPqJ1k1/Wo-WScrn-Shot-122518-1818071.jpg
My best proposal for Sunlight specifically is not letting backline pets benefit from extra healing when it’s up.
But the larger problem is that PvP has no concept of a draw. Yes, there are things you could call draws when both final pets die in the last round, but really those are just losses.
In Chess, there’s a 50-move rule: if each player makes 50 moves without moving a pawn or capturing a piece, the next player to move may claim a draw.
An equivalent in pet battling might be: if each player makes X moves without a pet dying, the next player to move may claim a draw.
However, a “draw” is just a loss, since you have done your battle, put in your time, and gained nothing for it. Still, it might feel better than being trapped there for an hour when you don’t want to give your opponent a win.
In principle the idea of a draw option after 50 rounds is a solid one.
However if we look back to when Tottle was bugged there are players that play with the mindset to not lose the match. Pretty odd in a game that only tracks wins. I’d assume ultimately their strategy was to strangle their meta into just forfeiting when they faced them. I could see players deliberately aiming for the draw cap with that same strategy in mind.
The viability of predominantly Sunlight teams just needs to be reduced so that these games don’t happen.
If you get stuck in a crawdad vs crawdad face off that’s totally on those players who should have avoided that outcome.