Destroy Berserk Gene.

Here's a three categories of reasons to remove Berserk Gene from the game.

I. It was never meant to be this good.
1. Confusion was nerfed, causing Berserk Gene users to smack less often.
2. Abilities like Unburden and Own Tempo didn't exist when Berserk Gene was in-game.
3. Game Freak didn't bring Berserk Gene back in HGSS. They knew it didn't fit in a Pokemon game with abilities.
4. The Gen 2 meta was filled with overly tanky resttalkers since Sleep Talk could call Rest and all three defensive stats could be maxed out. Even Pokemon like Lugia with 50% recovery moves went with resttalk sets. With the insane amount of recovery that was present in the Gen 2 meta, you could easily stall out a Berserk Gene until the user smacks themself to death.

II. The RNG contributes less to the game than moves like Confuse Ray and Attract.
5. Confuse Ray and Attract can be opted into mid-battle when you strategically determine that they will increase your odds of winning. If a Confuse Ray smack or an opponent's Rock Slide missing would both result in a win for yourself, Confuse Ray could be used to increase your odds. Berserk Gene has to be equipped when teams are sent (other than Open matches, most of which don't have items enabled), meaning that it can only be used for hax strats.
6. Confuse Ray and Attract wear off when the target is KOd. Berserk Gene can cause a full team sweep without requiring the user to spend another turn using a status move.
7. If you get affected by Confuse Ray or Attract, you can manually disable it with a swap. You need to blow your anti-sweeper (Unaware Clefable, Red Card mon, etc) to handle a Berserk Gene Pokemon.
8. Confuse Ray and Attract have 1/3 and 1/2 chances of the user gaining a free turn each turn they're active. Berserk Gene has a whopping 2/3 chance of allowing you to move, which usually will OHKO your opponent's Pokemon.

III. We have no idea how it works.
9. Berserk Gene was added when abilities weren't in the games. We have no idea whether abilities like Imposter would activate before or after it came into play.
10. Even in the current implementation it's not normal Confusion (the same way Toxic isn't normal Poison). Do abilities referencing Confusion even still apply?
11. Many items have been rebalanced over the years. Gems getting nerfed and Sitrus Berry getting buffed immediately come to mind. Even if Game Freak still kept Berserk Gene in the games, what would its effect be now?

 

I'm not married to the RNG argument. In my opinion the comparisons to Confuse and Attract are so granular that it becomes almost arbitrary. From a macro standpoint, there's always going to be enormous RNG of all different natures, and I'm fine sitting pat with the SLP/FRZ/OHKO/ACC/EVA Clauses that are already established outside of our community. Beyond acknowledging the fact that Berserk Gene is lame as balls and not really worth preserving -- which, obviously, doesn't hold a lot of actual value in this convo -- I kind of look past it.

I think we can question its standing as a part of our game today (as a Gen II exclusive), and obviously, as long as we have stuff like TM Water Gun, that'll never on its own be a satisfactory argument. But in URPG, Berserk Gene engages with mechanics that it was never really meant to -- such as some that Gray listed, including the confusion nerf, Unburden, Own Tempo. Like, the worst case scenario is if something that actually is good and worth using got Own Tempo in the next gen, like if Infernape got HA Own Tempo, and then we'd be facing this question then if we don't resolve it now.

tl;dr it doesn't belong plz ban (and offer refunds)
-an alternative solution is keeping Berserk Gene as a permaconfuse with 50% to smack that overrides interactions with abilities, but, gross dude

 

How would this interact with Imposter specifically? There's no way of knowing whether Berserk Gene or abilities would come into play first. Any answer we give is arbitrary. The item doesn't function under current battle mechanics.

 

Yeah, that kind of gets at the grossness of it. We'd have to make some arbitraryish decision.

 

You'll have to forgive me for not being hip to whatever discussion is happening on Discord right now, but I have deleted it for the time being. So apologies if I repeat things that have been said there.

I'm honestly indifferent to it being removed. It's really not that overpowered compared to a lot of what else is in the game, and most of the main arguments for its removal by Gray are pretty speculative and subjective, honestly.

The one thing I agree with is that we do not know enough about its interaction with the modern-day meta for a lot of its mechanics and interactions to not be arbitrary things we make up. Whether or not making these things up should be taboo or not is another question. I usually would err on the side of we shouldn't, but I genuinely don't think anything we realistically do with Berserk Gene is going to break the meta.

I know this isn't super helpful since, again, I'm honestly indifferent, but hopefully my thoughts contribute something. My main point is that I really don't see a super urgent need to remove it, but I wouldn't fight against its removal either for the point above.

 

I'm not sold on the RNG argument, especially point 5. I also disagree with removing things specifically because they were only available in older games, as that would cause a lot of other things to be removed (including Gems that you mentioned, which I believe were all removed except Normal in gen 6?).

As for Impostor, I believe I've heard Berserk Gene activates "immediately before move selection", while Impostor applies as soon as the Pokémon is sent out, which would suggest to me Impostor applies first. That's a bit of an educated guess though, I suppose.

That said, Berserk Gene is a silly item and I wouldn't be opposed to having something changed in relation to it, if nothing else to being 50% smack to go with the permanent confusion.

 

I don't think the 50% smack exception would compromise the consistency of the game since it was available in Gen 2 which was a 50% smack chance. The Beserk gene was designed with the 50% smack chance in mind, anyway. If you're keeping the perma-confusion, which already deviates from normal confusion, I don't see the problem.

Also having someone psych up or imposter copy those boosts seems like one of the drawbacks of using the item that you have to plan for, and not just a matter of it 'being too OP'.