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Tl;dr: What would happen when the overflowed stat of any Pokémon would be lowered by any stat-lowering move, such as Screech?

About Overflowed stats,

A discovery has been made in Pokemon Sword and Shield which introduced a limitation. Pokemon in the game can naturally only have a maximum non HP stat of 654. If a Pokemon's stats overflow past this, they reset from 0 and add each additional raw stat point above 655. For example, if a Pokemon has 656 in a non HP stat, their non HP stat becomes 1. If they have 659 in a non HP stat, their stat becomes 3. If they have 780 in a non HP stat, the stat becomes 126, etc. In order for a Pokemon to have their stats overflowed, they must have a base stat higher than 248 on any non HP stat and a beneficial nature on this same stat.

So let's say that I have an Eternatus-Eternamax with 240 Defense EV's and a Bold Nature. This makes its Defense stat 655. The opposing any Pokémon uses, say, Screech. So would the Eternamax's Defense stat, which is 0, be lowered into minus numbers or something else? Or do they revert back to the original 655 and then get lowered?
If they go to minus stats, then won’t the Pokémon be worse than Sunflora in Defense (or Special Defense), or if the Attack (or Special Attack) gets lowered, then won’t every move deal <1% damage? Or do they deal an immense amount of damage? (This (attack overflow) is virtually impossible btw, but if you can get an answer for it, that'd be quite good.)
And what about Speed? Does it also goes to 0 and boom you outspeed everything or underspeed everything? (This (speed overflow) is also virtually impossible btw.)
Also, I dunno if this fact will help or not but with a 0 stat in Def or SpD, the Pokémon becomes invincible to the moves of the respective category (Def or SpD) in which their stat is 0.

This question has been bothering me for quite a while, any help would be appreciated!
I’ll add more info if I get some.

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"While 597 -> 1 (rather than 656) is not immediately busted, such a Pokemon that has a means of reducing its own Defense (like Close Combat) would get to count as 0 by going to -1, so the potential for "infinitely high defense" behavior is still there at slightly higher values. "

I believe that for Defensive stats, it's they would go negative and act like infinite defense.
Yeah that is probable. But with 0 Defense, all moves (for the respective Def or SpD stat that you've overflowed) act as if they only have 2 BP, including Z-Moves and Max Moves, so the Pokémon is already invincible. So would that make them uh something *more* than that?
Tbh this is evil sorcery Gen 8 PH is now cluttered with OHKO Moves dammit.
And thanks for the tags, btw!
I'm sure that anybody that has experience with modding could answer this
This could be done on Showdown. Might answer this. also the game is set so every attack has to do at least 1 damage, even if you are fighting against 99999 defense Pokemon with a 1 Atk pokemon
Oh okay
And I’m smol bren how’s that fact related?
"or if the Attack (or Special Attack) gets lowered, then won’t every move deal <1% damage?" You might have been talking about percentage and not hp.
Yes I was talking about the percentage
Ok. Answering question now
I'll have an answer tomorrow for some reason it doesn't let you use Pure Hackmons on mobile. My Eternatus moveset is Shell Smash to lower my own defense, Withdraw, to gain it again, and Body Press because that uses Defense. Tomorrow will be interesting
Okay, that’d be nice I guess

1 Answer

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Best answer

Replay 1
Replay 2
Replay 3
Replay 4
Replay 5

So what happens is that once Eternatus' defense hits 0, the number cannot change. As you can see I did many battles and many combinations of moves that raise and lower defense, and I could not get Eternatus' defense to change from 0. In Replay 4, I gave Eternatus 1 extra defense EV, and his defense still remained 0. However in Replay 5, I took away 1 EV, and I got interesting results. My Eternatus' defense started out as 654, one away from the supposed cutoff, but when I used Iron Defense to bring my Defense stat up to 1308, which would be above the cutoff, it didn't cutoff. It stayed at 1308. Which is weird. I'm fairly confident this isn't a glitch, or a Pokemon Showdown thing, (as Showdown obviously isn't the official game,) because Showdown practically copies code from the original games to make battle data. You can watch the replays and come to your own conclusion.

The highest defense stat possible on a Pokemon without the use of items is 2616 btw.

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Okay, thanks!!

> However in Replay 5, I took away 1 EV, and I got results that conflict your question.

They don’t conflict the question lol. Overflow happens only when a stat reaches 655 *naturally*. That’s why it didn’t reset to 0, because stat raises aren’t natural.
Oh that makes sense