Pokemon bans “busted” move from VGC tournaments pending fix
The Pokemon CompanyPokemon Scarlet & Violet’s VGC has banned Dragon Cheer due to it not working as intended, giving players an unfair advantage in battle.
Pokemon Scarlet & Violet launched in a rough state, which extends to The Indigo Disk DLC. Not only did the DLC not fix any of the performance issues, but it also introduced many other problems, such as certain items being unobtainable.
The Pokemon Company has promised that a patch will be released at the end of January, addressing some of the issues in Pokemon Scarlet & Violet. Though an exact release date for this update has yet to be given, so fans must be patient.
Recently, the Indigo Disk DLC introduced a move called Dragon Cheer, which is necessary for evolving Dipplin into Hydrapple. Unfortunately, this move isn’t working as it should and is currently stronger than the designers intended.
The Pokemon CompanyPokemon VGC has temporarily banned Dragon Cheer ahead of Pokemon Scarlet & Violet patch
The official Play Pokemon Twitter/X page has announced that Dragon Cheer is temporarily banned in VGC battles. This ban is in effect until the next Pokemon Scarlet & Violet patch is released, which will fix the move.
Dragon Cheer is a move meant for Doubles battles, which raises the critical hit ratio of allied Pokemon by one stage. If the other Pokemon you’re using is a Dragon-type, then the critical hit ratio is raised by two stages.
Dragon Cheer is banned because of a bug that makes it stronger than it should be. Pokemon are supposed to lose the critical hit ratio buff when they’re switched out, but due to a glitch, they keep the benefit if they’re recalled and used again.
This glitch means that Dragon Cheer can be used with moves like U-Turn to perform safe buff and retreats, making it more effective than it’s supposed to be, especially when used on a team with Dragon-type Pokemon.
“How about the game’s performance. Lmao. Imagine still not addressing those horrible frame drops during overworld exploration,” one user wrote in the comments, while another said, “How long can we expect to wait for a patch update to fix this? We don’t want another Sky Drop incident where it was unusable the whole time.”
Hopefully, The Dragon Cheer ban won’t last long, as the Pokemon Scarlet & Violet patch should be coming out soon. This is just a temporary measure to prevent players from abusing a strategy that isn’t meant to be in the game.
