Good luck outstalling this set. And even if you phaze me out, you're still under the effects of Torment.
Really, I just fail to fathom why would anyone who takes competitive play seriously even vouch for Evasion.
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Other Evasion
- Thread starter Alopex
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Really, I just fail to fathom why would anyone who takes competitive play seriously even vouch for Evasion.
The only thing that would actually see any type of usage realistically would be roar/whirlwind, and even then it's not like phazing is seen on 99% of teams. Just the fact that you even brought up Shock Wave is telling.
Is evasion broken? No. There are ways to deal with it.
Is it something worth using? In my opinion, no. Whether both sides win becomes inherently more luck based than it already is - sure, moves will always have less than perfect accuracy. But using Double Team.Minimize/etc. forces the game to become more luck based than skill based (this is the key right here. Using evasion moves means we may as well flip a coin and decides who wins). Game deciding critical hits are a thing and will always be a thing - but removing those makes Pokemon not Pokemon. The game becomes less competitive with evasion strategies as a thing.
That said, I also think its more limiting to the metagame than it is diversifying it. Anything that can learn a phazing move, Haze, Defog, or some such equivalent will now need to have it on the Pokemon, giving many more Pokemon 4MSS. And its not like every Pokemon (or even every teams) can afford to run most of this.
This is coming from someone who uses phazing and SRs. I don't even LIKE having to phaze - it has negative priority AND means that I'm ill equipped to deal with the scenario in any other possible method.
Is it something worth using? In my opinion, no. Whether both sides win becomes inherently more luck based than it already is - sure, moves will always have less than perfect accuracy. But using Double Team.Minimize/etc. forces the game to become more luck based than skill based (this is the key right here. Using evasion moves means we may as well flip a coin and decides who wins). Game deciding critical hits are a thing and will always be a thing - but removing those makes Pokemon not Pokemon. The game becomes less competitive with evasion strategies as a thing.
That said, I also think its more limiting to the metagame than it is diversifying it. Anything that can learn a phazing move, Haze, Defog, or some such equivalent will now need to have it on the Pokemon, giving many more Pokemon 4MSS. And its not like every Pokemon (or even every teams) can afford to run most of this.
This is coming from someone who uses phazing and SRs. I don't even LIKE having to phaze - it has negative priority AND means that I'm ill equipped to deal with the scenario in any other possible method.
Actually, you have to be very careful here.
Firstly, in Generation 5, we banned Moody, the "evasion" ability. Bearing in mind, that we banned Skymin at the same time, this test was notable for receiving a 100% ban vote, something not even Skymin achieved. Why/ Because it was at its root, uncompetitive and made the game unenjoyable. Furthermore, Ubers themselves, still banned Moody, even in a game where phazers are common, where Kyogre experiences truly massive amounts of usage (thus allowing the use of Thunder more often), on a metagame thats seems more use of Aura Sphere and so on, Moody was still banned. This actually ties into with your third point, with the weather nerf, you actually see less of Thunder, which actually removes one more check on evasion.
Obviously, there are differences between Moody and Evasion, and I am not calling them the same. Moody obviously, is far more easy to abuse than say, Double Team in that it doesn't cost a turn. On the other hand, saying that Ubers "unbanned Evasion" is not strictly true, since the premier Evasion abuser (Moody), was still deemed broken.
I would also like to point out, the Nintendo metagame is exceptionally different to ours. For instance, Doubles is potentially their focus, while Smogon tends to tier toward Singles more often. Nintendo also often (or at least used to), limit the usage of mons that we currently deem OU or a tier below, so you have differences there as well. Go check out the BW banlist, which iirc included mons such as Mew, Victini, Jirachi and so on, as well as allowing Swift Swim, Speed Boost Blaziken, and Moody. Smogon places a higher focus on "balancing" competative pokemon. This isn't to say Nintendo's meta or banlist is 100% is bad, just that they are different (esp due to the different ban lists having a different focus). The point to take away from this is that the metagames cannot be compared, as they are very different.
As far as the methods to shut down evasion go...
- Phazing Moves: Still suffer thanks to Magic Bounce. Don't get me wrong, its a nice buff, but doesn't actually solve the problem
- Keen Eye: I don't actually know of anything in OU that would actually use this ability or even if it was worth the trouble of using.
- Weather nerfed: Both helps and hinders evasion since you no longer get to rely on Thunder if your using Rain.
- No Guard: It got one new abuser and thats it, are we really considering unbanning it just for Doublade, something thats impact on the meta is still unknown?
- Defog: This is the single change that makes me consider a test, since the move actually sees use on teams (as much as I can predict anyway).
- Minimize: Meh
- Murkrow: we had this before, didn't stop us banning evasion then, and it won't now, it sees no usage in OU.
- Clefable: We had Quagsire before, and while Clefable has better typing / movepool, it still doesn't stop a Baton Pass Chain with DEF boosts + Stored Power, the main issue.
Defog is the single change (granted, its a good one), this Gen that I could see justify an evasion retest, although I doubt it will be a priority due to most people disliking the potential abusive and un-controlling luck aspect that Evasion can potentially give, as opposed to testing pokemon that are potentially more borderline.
EDIT @ Below, Braviary is not going to see usage....lol
It's telling of what, exactly?
Shock Wave is horribly unviable in every generation, yes. The question was framed in such a way to suggest that everything that's been brought up would be insufficient to counter Klefki, whose defenses are only illustrative of why, if you really wanted to prepare for Evasion, you have the ability to surefire wreck it. Togekiss is very likely one of the few viable fairies, and Braviary's biggest problem has been being not particularly fast and not particularly durable while being a Flying type. In a Sticky Web metagame, not unthinkable that it could get used.
It seems very odd to me that when Game Freak's thrown out more and more abilities and moves and items clearly geared towards wanting people to work with Evasion, the blanket reaction is to not even take a look at it.
I actually did the calcs, by the way, on a few mons before I made the statement. Klefki would not survive against those surefire counters. Luck's not in its favor for surviving against standard bulky offense when employing Double Team Foul Play, either.
You are trying to vouch for Evasion yes? I can see because you like every post having any suggestion of Evasion being a good thing. Then why in the world would you even bring up Shock Wave? Fact is that Shock Wave is a terrible move whose only purpose would be in a metagame with Evasion allowed- and at that point it'd be pretty obvious something is wrong, as there are infinitely better options with Thundebolt and such.
Also I'm really not sure how good Sticky Web will be with that new Defog buff, at least Stealth Rock will hurt them but this is getting off-topic.
Right now, as an electric attack, we have the following options for most pokemon:
Shock Wave
Thunderbolt
Thunder (under rain)
Thunder Punch
Wild Charge
Discharge
Discharge has good distribution, but many of the ones who get it have historically not had the durability to survive and take the chance on the high para chance but weaker power. So your special attack options are usually Thunderbolt, really, unless you're running rain. But what if Shockwave was relevant? A subpar choice, perhaps, but if you really hate luck you could keep it in your back pocket to cover something that you know had a decent chance of screwing you if it has evasion? In return, you lose sure 2HKOs on other things.
There are distinct patterns in what rise up that could actually hope to use Double Team successfully, and what could surefire counter it. You can choose to prepare for it or not. Sure, in the actual battle, it's luck that you see, but it looks like an element of team building to me. Not much different from when you take a chance and go for double weatherless Hurricanes or Focus Punches (49% chance of that working).
We'll also be seeing important crits a lot more as-is - Stone Edge has an 80% chance of hitting now, and 1 in 4 of those hits will be 50% stronger, as opposed to 1 in 8 being 100% stronger. On average, the same effective power. In practice, that's going to lead to a lot of OHKOs and 2HKOs with higher frequency that couldn't be reached before. Should Stone Edge be dropped now? With Rock's great coverage, I think that's actually kind of a big deal.
I'm for it, again, not because I want to use it - but because I think the metagame should be more compatible with Wifi play than not, when reasonable.
Honestly, its pretty ridiculous that we still have Double Team banned. While one could make arguments against the the double boost of Minimize, and I can certainly understand the problems that people have with passive evasion boosts like Sand Veil or Moody, Double Team itself is just an objectively bad move. Its not uncompetitive. Its not broken. Its not even good in any stretch of the imagination. Statistically it can (and has many, many times) been shown that Double Team is flat out an inferior strategy to just about everything else competitive players use. Just look at Brightpowder and the like. Those are legal. Why? Because that are flat out statistically worse than other options a Pokemon could use. Its the same thing with Double Team.
With all these new things I think its about time we had a retest of evasion, or at the very least Double Team. Banning something on principle because of some BS idea of "competitiveness" is just stupid. Its not even good. We don't ban using Pikachu even though only bad noobs do it, and it doesn't help them win. Its high time we held the same standard for Double Team.
With all these new things I think its about time we had a retest of evasion, or at the very least Double Team. Banning something on principle because of some BS idea of "competitiveness" is just stupid. Its not even good. We don't ban using Pikachu even though only bad noobs do it, and it doesn't help them win. Its high time we held the same standard for Double Team.
And it won't like Feint Attack while that's happening. Okay. Making cherry pick arguments is (and I mean this with the most possible respect) not the most convincing approach, because we can play that all day. Boots on the ground will prove much more than randomly throwing out examples that can be Schrodinger Countered.
Please. If you want to seriously use a no-miss move against evasion, you're going to have to take a gamble that whatever move you chose does SE against the evader. The numbers aren't in your favor and move distribution/team composition issues just make it worse. Neutral 60 BP doesn't cut it against tanks spamming evade. You'd have better odds making Rivalry work and we all know Rivalry is a joke against good players.
Even if evasion is unbanned, no-miss moves won't be the answer.
Even if evasion is unbanned, no-miss moves won't be the answer.
Ash Borer
I've heard they're short of room in hell
I think a statistical analysis is the best way to go about this. It's challenging to devise a proper model for something so complicated, but at the same time I think it's possible to prove with reasonable margin of error that double team is trash, and minimize is the move that is much closer to broken.
an issue that a lot of players have with evasion is that it s a tactic that can fail or succeed under exact same circumstances thus it involves little tactical prowess. If a double team spamming garchomp dodges an ice beam that should have countered it, then just kills your whole team by dodging moves over and over, that's unfortunate. The issue is that the exact same thing can happen, except that same ice beam lands, but the garchomp dies. In the same case if we had any other set up sweeper its going to KO your answer to it or not, simple as that. A fast swords dancer is going to get countered if you have a scarfer that beats it, and is going to sweep if you dont. So good players bring scarfers, and preserve them in the match, that's a tactic you can employ, and requires some though thus improving the depth of the game. Double team sweepers can simply lack counters if theyre lucky.
Unfortunately this argument doesnt stand up to reason when low accuracy moves, outrage, and other random chance moves are frequent. What if a swords dance chomp's outrage ends after 2 turns then murders itself with confusion and fails to sweep? What if it gets 3 turn outrages only and never hits itself once? It's not much different than evasion in this case. What can you can argue is that statistically an outraging garchomp will beat who it is supposed to beat a predictable portion of the time, thus, if youre in a tournament, or on the ladder, youre going to win and lose a predictable amount of games based on these moves. A great player who relies on his outraging sweeper to last more than 2 turns only 5% of the time to win, will still win that 5% about 3-4% of the time, thus his record on the ladder reflects the fact that he is still a good player regardless of outrage's mechanics. A single loss or two over 50 games might barely affect a 2200 ladder rating. In the same vain, a double team spammer statistically will win some games cheaply, but how many? If a statisical analysis can prove that double team is trash, then it wont leave a large mark on the ladder, nor would it help you win tournaments because you statisically would be so brutally unlikely to win so many consecutive matches it would never happen. Other than that there's no point in arguing.
Double team sucks ass, but the baton pass chain culd probably prove it to be broken. One such counter to an evasion BP chan, roar is completely moot against espeon. Honestly I dont care if it stays banned, because I don't think it adds any depth to the game, but having needless things banned is unsightly.
an issue that a lot of players have with evasion is that it s a tactic that can fail or succeed under exact same circumstances thus it involves little tactical prowess. If a double team spamming garchomp dodges an ice beam that should have countered it, then just kills your whole team by dodging moves over and over, that's unfortunate. The issue is that the exact same thing can happen, except that same ice beam lands, but the garchomp dies. In the same case if we had any other set up sweeper its going to KO your answer to it or not, simple as that. A fast swords dancer is going to get countered if you have a scarfer that beats it, and is going to sweep if you dont. So good players bring scarfers, and preserve them in the match, that's a tactic you can employ, and requires some though thus improving the depth of the game. Double team sweepers can simply lack counters if theyre lucky.
Unfortunately this argument doesnt stand up to reason when low accuracy moves, outrage, and other random chance moves are frequent. What if a swords dance chomp's outrage ends after 2 turns then murders itself with confusion and fails to sweep? What if it gets 3 turn outrages only and never hits itself once? It's not much different than evasion in this case. What can you can argue is that statistically an outraging garchomp will beat who it is supposed to beat a predictable portion of the time, thus, if youre in a tournament, or on the ladder, youre going to win and lose a predictable amount of games based on these moves. A great player who relies on his outraging sweeper to last more than 2 turns only 5% of the time to win, will still win that 5% about 3-4% of the time, thus his record on the ladder reflects the fact that he is still a good player regardless of outrage's mechanics. A single loss or two over 50 games might barely affect a 2200 ladder rating. In the same vain, a double team spammer statistically will win some games cheaply, but how many? If a statisical analysis can prove that double team is trash, then it wont leave a large mark on the ladder, nor would it help you win tournaments because you statisically would be so brutally unlikely to win so many consecutive matches it would never happen. Other than that there's no point in arguing.
Double team sucks ass, but the baton pass chain culd probably prove it to be broken. One such counter to an evasion BP chan, roar is completely moot against espeon. Honestly I dont care if it stays banned, because I don't think it adds any depth to the game, but having needless things banned is unsightly.
Pokemon is a game that is heavily influenced by luck. Much of the game is random. It's not the randomness that makes double team bad, it's just simply too good. Evasion-based increases simply are not balanced. A chance to completely negate damage that is also a negative feedback loop (evading attacks lets you increase your evasion) is broken. The same argument could maybe be said for acid armor or amnesia, but the difference there is that you aren't completely mitigating the damage. Critical hits also counter straight-up defense increases. No such mechanic exists for countering evasion.
There aren't nearly enough pokemon with keen eye or haze either, to even humor the idea of letting it exist. Perhaps if there were stronger 'never miss' attacks (of more varied typing to boot) available to pokemon, this wouldn't be an issue....
Evasion is banned because it's a strategy is simply too good. Sometimes it fails and you lose, but when it doesn't... you just win. It's like that. There's no counter play, usually. You could maybe make the argument that we should be carrying more things to counter evasion, but I don't believe the metagame can support it - if you were to introduce evasion, it would make certain pokemon, like Blazekin, which are already monstrously strong, just simply out of control. The burden we would put on players - by making them all carry haze or some similar equivalent... I don't think it's good for the game.
There aren't nearly enough pokemon with keen eye or haze either, to even humor the idea of letting it exist. Perhaps if there were stronger 'never miss' attacks (of more varied typing to boot) available to pokemon, this wouldn't be an issue....
Evasion is banned because it's a strategy is simply too good. Sometimes it fails and you lose, but when it doesn't... you just win. It's like that. There's no counter play, usually. You could maybe make the argument that we should be carrying more things to counter evasion, but I don't believe the metagame can support it - if you were to introduce evasion, it would make certain pokemon, like Blazekin, which are already monstrously strong, just simply out of control. The burden we would put on players - by making them all carry haze or some similar equivalent... I don't think it's good for the game.
with the buff to defog and if what OP says is true that roar and whirlwind always hit, I don't see why not.
One use of minimize, and the odds are still not in your favor of your pokemon getting hit. It's not till the second use minimize where your pokemon becomes dangerous.
in fact if roar and whirlwind do always hit, evasion sounds super gimp and a non issue. you're wasting 2-3 turns of setup, for no attack or speed boosts, for something that can be wiped away in a single turn by very common moves.
Would you rather your defogger/phazer switch into 2 dragon dances, or 2 minimizes?
edit - not to mention toxic from poison pokemon is always accurate now.
One use of minimize, and the odds are still not in your favor of your pokemon getting hit. It's not till the second use minimize where your pokemon becomes dangerous.
in fact if roar and whirlwind do always hit, evasion sounds super gimp and a non issue. you're wasting 2-3 turns of setup, for no attack or speed boosts, for something that can be wiped away in a single turn by very common moves.
Would you rather your defogger/phazer switch into 2 dragon dances, or 2 minimizes?
edit - not to mention toxic from poison pokemon is always accurate now.
As others have mentioned, Pokemon, items, moves, or what not are not only banned because of power, and whether or not they can be handled. They can be and are banned simply for taking away from the competitiveness of the game-- especially if they can easily be identified and banned without drastically altering the shape of the game. Critical hits, Freeze Hax, etc. cannot be easily remove. Double Team, Minimize, and Moody easily can.
Wobbuffet and Skymin are banned in 4th Generation largely for the same reason-- not because they were unmanageable, but because they made the game less competitive. Skymin is an interesting case because he's actually more powerful in 5th gen than 4th gen (has a lot to do with his 4th gen checks--Zapdos, Metagross, Heatran, Weavile-- being a lot less effective as Pokemon in general in the 5th gen meta compared to 4th). So the 5th gen ban is more based on power, where as the 4th gen ban is more based on uncompetitiveness.
Point is that aspects of the game are not just banned for being too powerful. Evasion adds almost nothing to the game. I am certain no one will want to allow evasion moves into competitive Pokemon regardless.
Wobbuffet and Skymin are banned in 4th Generation largely for the same reason-- not because they were unmanageable, but because they made the game less competitive. Skymin is an interesting case because he's actually more powerful in 5th gen than 4th gen (has a lot to do with his 4th gen checks--Zapdos, Metagross, Heatran, Weavile-- being a lot less effective as Pokemon in general in the 5th gen meta compared to 4th). So the 5th gen ban is more based on power, where as the 4th gen ban is more based on uncompetitiveness.
Point is that aspects of the game are not just banned for being too powerful. Evasion adds almost nothing to the game. I am certain no one will want to allow evasion moves into competitive Pokemon regardless.
wait what. Since this is played on an simulator, we totally could go hog wild and remove a lot of the luck from the game. It wouldnt be difficult to turn critical hits off. It would not be difficult to turn 10% freeze to 0% freeze. If you're arguing the reason we don't do that is because we would change the shape of the game, you can use that exact argument against the banning of evasion.
If you're arguing that bans are made to remove uncompetitiveness, then why hasnt SR been banned since forever. How many pokemon have been forced to be uncompetitive because of that move? How many team compositions have been rendered uncompetitive because of SR?
If I remember evasion clause was added because of this scenario:
Pokemon uses evasion move. 30% chance to buy time for the next turn.
Pokemon uses evasion move. 60% chance to buy time for the next turn.
Pokemon uses evasion move. Pokemon is now an invincible god.
Your argument is that Evasion is uncompetitive. Just looking at the situation above, that seems the case just because no matter how good one plays, it'll come down to luck. But thats not the case anymore. there are now 100% counters.
Now instead of 30% chance of just losing randomly to evasion, you have 100% chance to counter it with phaze,haze or status.
If you're arguing that bans are made to remove uncompetitiveness, then why hasnt SR been banned since forever. How many pokemon have been forced to be uncompetitive because of that move? How many team compositions have been rendered uncompetitive because of SR?
If I remember evasion clause was added because of this scenario:
Pokemon uses evasion move. 30% chance to buy time for the next turn.
Pokemon uses evasion move. 60% chance to buy time for the next turn.
Pokemon uses evasion move. Pokemon is now an invincible god.
Your argument is that Evasion is uncompetitive. Just looking at the situation above, that seems the case just because no matter how good one plays, it'll come down to luck. But thats not the case anymore. there are now 100% counters.
Now instead of 30% chance of just losing randomly to evasion, you have 100% chance to counter it with phaze,haze or status.
No. You're wrong. As a policy, we ban stuff that is uncompetitive. Evasion moves are uncompetitive. End of discussion.
No we can't and won't. As a community, we are generally in favor of some slight modifications to mechanics we deem convenient (see: Sleep Clause), however overwhelmingly we are dedicated to real game mechanics. Without a dedication to real game mechanics, there's no real point in calling it a "simulator" as we'd no longer be simulating actual Pokemon battles. We'd be playing our own made up game.
On alternative servers, or just for fun, we may make cooked-up versions of the game for fun. However in true competitive Pokemon, a dedication to real mechanics is necessary (for 99% of everything... there is a tiny bit of grey area...)
It's not so much that it doesn't add anything to the metagame. It's more that it hurts the influence of real skill, and as such the competitive aspect of the game, while also adding nothing in return.
No, simulators are designed to remain true to the game's mechanics. Banning evasion move does not mess with the game's mechanics at all. The game has its own banlists, so there is precedence for us to have ours. Any ban we implement here could easily be imitated on a cartridge. However, critical hits, secondary effects, move misses, etc. are intricate mechanics of the game that cannot be changed without serious hacking (and I'm not even sure if hacking could achieve such ends). Ended the critical hit chance or whatever else warps these mechanics and cannot be imitated on a cartridge, so that's out of the question.
Stealth Rock is not uncompetitive, at least not in the same sense that evasion is. Evasion is uncompetitive because it enables luck to triumph over real skill, which further destroys the competitive aspect of this game. It's the same reason OHKO moves were banned: you literally just need to get lucky to reap big rewards. Stealth Rock has no such luck factor.
Haze has always been around, yet evasion moves were still banned. It's a good move with horrible distribution, and Haze users won't fit on every team. Unbanning evasion moves just makes Baton Pass teams that much more stupid, and phazing is doing nothing to those seeing as how they always run Espeon (and Mega Absol might be a new Baton Pass Magic Bounce user). Status...well, what exactly is status doing? If you're hitting the opponent with status, wouldn't you be better off hitting them outright with an attack?
Evasion moves are "uncompetitive" because they're bad. If they wasn't banned they would stop being used after a while of people spamming them and realizing they're terrible.
The point here is not if accuracy is good or gimmick. The problem is that adding more luck in a skill game is bad design. And as we can easlily deal with evasion without changing the game mechanics, why are you willing to put more randomness? Whenever that trainer with pidgey start using sand-attack, I go mad. In last generation I did not use monsters like terrakion because he depended on stone miss. Whenever I can I use surf and flamethrow because I hate missing. So I do not want to see people using minimize on my face, no matter if I can handle it or not. It's gust something I hate.
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