Justified & Stat Modifiers
When to Burn, Set Your Shields, or Do Literally Anything Else
Justified is a rare ability in Pokémon. As of writing, only nine Pokémon currently have this ability. This ability gives your Pokémon a Physical Attack Boost whenever it's hit by a Dark-type move. In Justified teams, Trainers often intentionally hit their own Pokémon with moves like Beat-Up to hit their own Pokémon as much as four times and give themselves four Attack increases to win.
But, what does that even mean? I mean, "increase Attack four times" makes sense in a literal sense, but what difference would an increase of one, two, three, and four make in this case? And what can you even do about it?
Good news, stat changes are easy to explain and model. Bad news, there is a lot that goes into how stats are determined.
Today, we're going to look at how these stat changes are actually determined, then how Trainers can actually respond to Justified plays they may face.
Table of Contents:
Standard Stat Modifiers
Direct stat modifers in Pokémon are fairly simple to explain. First, let's split the different types of stats into three categories: Nature Stats and Hidden Stats.
Nature Stats, in this case, are the values we can directly see: Atk, Def, Sp. Atk, Sp. Def, and Speed. HP would fall under this category as well, but for the sake of discussing stat modifications, this value cannot change during a battle. These are the stats that, as the name implies, are affected by the Nature of your Pokémon. Bulbapedia's article on stat changes overall has a great chart visualizing this that we'll use as a base model. These have a range of -6 to +6 as so.
| -6 | -5 | -4 | -3 | -2 | -1 | 0 | +1 | +2 | +3 | +4 | +5 | +6 |
Hidden Stats, likewise, are stats that you do not directly see. These are Accuracy, Evasion, Critical Chance, and (for Legends: Z–A) movement speed. These stats start at the same for every Pokémon (100%), then are further adjusted by both any stat changes impacted by moves and special qualities of moves being used (such as a move with Low Accuracy missing even if a Pokémon's accuracy is at the default).
| -3 | -2 | -1 | 0 | +1 | +2 | +3 |
(Note: Critical Chance is slightly different in this regard; It has an infinite range of 0 to ∞, though 3 to ∞ has no different in effect. The rest of the logic of stat changes will still apply, however.)
For this discussion, we'll only be concerned with the Nature Stats (specifically Attack, as that is the only stat impacted by Justified).
Imagine a "default" value as a fraction. 100% can be rewritten as 1/1, 2/2, 3/3, or any version of x/x where x is a solid, whole number. For Nature Stats, we're going to define a "whole" as 2/2 (this would be 3/3 for most of those Hidden Stats). Stat changes above 0 will increase the numerator by one, or +1/+0. In reverse, stat changes below zero will instead increase the denominator, or +0/+1. If we were to recreate that table above, that would become
| -6 | -5 | -4 | -3 | -2 | -1 | 0 | +1 | +2 | +3 | +4 | +5 | +6 |
| 2/8 | 2/7 | 2/6 | 2/5 | 2/4 | 2/3 | 2/2 | 3/2 | 4/2 | 5/2 | 6/2 | 7/2 | 8/2 |
| 25% | 29% | 33% | 40% | 50% | 67% | 100% | 150% | 200% | 250% | 300% | 350% | 400% |
Note that dropping a Pokémon's stat value has diminishing returns in the negatives, but a consistent +50% in the positives.
For sake of discussion, let's assume your Pokémon was hit by an opposing Intimidate when the game opened, then on Turn One you used Swords Dance. Your Pokémon's Attack stat would change as follows:
| Stat Mods | -6 | -5 | -4 | -3 | -2 | -1 | 0 | +1 | +2 | +3 | +4 | +5 | +6 |
| 2/8 | 2/7 | 2/6 | 2/5 | 2/4 | 2/3 | 2/2 | 3/2 | 4/2 | 5/2 | 6/2 | 7/2 | 8/2 | |
| 25% | 29% | 33% | 40% | 50% | 67% | 100% | 150% | 200% | 250% | 300% | 350% | 400% | |
|
Start [0] |
✖ | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Intim. [-1] |
✖ | ← | |||||||||||
|
SD [+2] |
→ | → | ✖ |
By the end of the turn, if there were no other direct stat changes, your Hypotheticalmon would have an increased Atk value of 150%. If your Pokémon has an Attack stat of a clean 100 Points, this would be mulitplied by 150%, becoming 150.
Final Attack Stat = { 100 × [Stat Modifier Value] }
Final Attack Stat = { 100 × 150% }
Final Attack Stat = { 100 × 150% }
Final Attack Stat = 150
Special Stat Modifiers
Beyond directly changing the stats of Pokémon, there are many circumstances where a stat may be artificially altered. Unlike moves that move your value like in the above chart by a set amount, these values are multiplicative and happen at the very end of your stat calculation. For example, on Turn Two, your opponent decided to use Will-o-Wisp on your Pokémon and inflict Burn on it. The status effect Burn has an additional effect on top of dealing damage per turn that halves any Physical (not Special) damage your Pokémon inflicts. We'll call these Special Stat Modifiers.
Final Attack Stat = { 150 } × [Special Stat Modifier]
Final Attack Stat = { 150 } × [50%]
Final Attack Stat = { 150 } × [Special Stat Modifier]
Final Attack Stat = 75
These can't be cleanly put into a fancy chart like the Standard Stat Modifiers, though, because the actual equation behind damage calculation is weird. I'm not even going to attempt to simplify this; read the Bulbapedia article on Damage if you're really curious. Just know that all of that equation is just the top of the equation.
Back to stat adjustment, Special Modifiers that don't actually change the stat, just how the math is completed, have a greater effect, even if that value is the same (such as Burn with 50% Atk Drop versus Reflect cutting the overall damage in half).
Justified & Best Counters
Let's returned to the initial Justified scenario we were originally discussing. For sake of discussion, let's assume no other stat changes have taken place and Player 1 successfully managed to use Beat-Up on their Justified user. Beat-Up hits a target once per party member (four times at the start of a match in Doubles VGC), each hit separately triggers Justified, you would gain +4.
| Stat Mods | -6 | -5 | -4 | -3 | -2 | -1 | 0 | +1 | +2 | +3 | +4 | +5 | +6 |
| 2/8 | 2/7 | 2/6 | 2/5 | 2/4 | 2/3 | 2/2 | 3/2 | 4/2 | 5/2 | 6/2 | 7/2 | 8/2 | |
| 25% | 29% | 33% | 40% | 50% | 67% | 100% | 150% | 200% | 250% | 300% | 350% | 400% | |
|
Start [0] |
✖ | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Justi. [+4] |
→ | → | → | → | ✖ |
What could Player 2 do to respond to this?
The most obvious solution may be to use Haze. Haze resets all Standard Stat Modifiers on the field and put all of thsoe trackers back at 0. You would just have to make sure your Haze Pokémon moves after the Beat-Up user (and hope they don't just... you know... do it again.
You could swap in an Intimidate user, move that track down one spot. That would help a little, lower the bonus stat by 50%, but you would still face off against a Hypotheticalmon with an Attack stat of 250%. Perhaps with some well skilled pivoting you could keep decreasing that stat, but that would take multiple moves, at which point your opponent could always just re-use Beat-Up. Moves such as Charm are, in theory, twice as fast, but still leave you in the same predicament: you have to dedicate multiple turns lowering a stat that can always be re-raised.
That Burn example discussed earlier would be a good option. Burn does not move the tracker at all, so even if your opponent were to further increase their attack with another Beat-Up (+6, 400%), they could go no higher than that and still be halved down to 200%. 150% and 200% are still scary, but they're easier to survive than 300% and 400%.
Another good option that comes to mind would be forcing the opposing Justified Pokémon off the field. For example, the moves Roar and Circle Throw both force a target to swap with a Pokémon that hasn't been sent out yet, if possible; if a Justified Pokémon leaves the field, they lose those Attack gains from Justified. If your opponent wants to re-set up Justified, they would have to dedicate time and positioning to the task, giving you the momentum and letting you overwhelm the opponent in the process.
The final solution I can think of would be to use Topsy-Turvy. Topsy-Turvy is a move formerly exclusive to the Malamar line that reverts all Standard Stat Modifiers on the field. Using our Justified example, a +4 would invert into a -4. The opponent would absolutely lose any and all momentum in the battle as this would take an extra turn of Beat-Up to reset and a second to try to build that previous board.
(Alternatively, just knock out the opposing Justified user the same turn it triggers Justify. It's going to take a fair bit of damage, after all, and odds are you'll have at least one Pokémon survive each turn.)