Other Item Clause

[ryan]

No one is saying that we can eliminate the problem of everyone doing the same things.

The difference between our views is that I see Items clause that can at least help things out somewhat, and I think the overall positives of an Items clause would outweigh the negatives (which are very small in my opinion).

Let's look at the negatives of implementing Item Clause, which was intended for a 3v3 Singles metagame and a 4v4 Doubles metagame, into a 6v6 Singles metagame.

• Stall will be fucked without the ability to run Leftovers on most of their Pokemon.
• The passive damage from chip weathers, sandstorm and hail, as well as entry hazards will add up much more quickly without passive recovery to compensate for it.
• You're bottlenecking teambuilding by limiting the choices you can use on your team.

The positives

• You'll stop complaining for a week about how uncreative people are until everyone continues to use the same shit but with slightly different items.

 

[WaterlooZoo]

This is basic combinatorics. There are MORE possibilities if you can use copies of items. There are less different possible teams if every item must be different. Suppose I've narrowed my team down to 6 pokemon. If there are 100 different items then I have 100^6 different item possibilities. If you force me to use different items then there are only 100*99*98*97*96*95 item possibilities. That's way less.

You're missing the forrest for the trees. Yes, you're right, without Items clause the total number of possible item combinations is higher.

But there's much more than this kind of silly math at play when it comes to determining whether an Items clause would improve the metagame.

Despite the logic of your math, and Items Clause would encourage diversity because each team would have to use 6 unique items per game, as opposed to the current standard of perhaps 3 unique items per game. And this in turn would lead to being able to see less "Smogon standards" and encourage more creativity.

 

[raddaya]

Why on earth is your only definition of diversity "different items OMG!"? More pokemon combinations on a single team is diversity. More item combinations isn't diversity.

 

[Spinda]

No one is saying that we can eliminate the problem of everyone doing the same things.

The difference between our views is that I see Items clause that can at least help things out somewhat, and I think the overall positives of an Items clause would outweigh the negatives (which are very small in my opinion).

I've had success both with teams that use item clause and teams that use unorthodox pokemon ( I peaked #5 with a team that had bisharp/slowking/cofagrigus.. Which wouldn't even have been viable if item clause existed unfortunately ), I have no problem with creativity and it's easy to be creative with teambuilding and still be succesful.. That's how I prefer to play, and other people prefer to use standard pokemon.. If I can still be creative with teambuilding without forcing others to teambuild a way they don't want to, that's the ideal metagame for me. That's a metagame without item clause.

An item clause metagame would be 99% bulky offense anyway, talk about diversity.

 

[dende5416]

Basically, this is why this would be horrible for an enjoyable metagame:

Want to run two sweepers but hate choice items? Sorry, you're out of luck. You can only put Life Orb on one.

Want to run a halfway defensive team? Sorry, you're out of luck, enjoy figuring out which one single pokemon to put Lefties on.

Want to run a halfway decent LC defense team? Sorry, you're out of luck; just the one Eviolite for you.

It is not at all like lefties is the only healing item. And Black Sludge even has the use of being able to be tricked onto an opposing mon, taking its useful item away and hurting it every turn.

 

[amplafied]

Why exactly do you have a problem with "people looking up 6 standard Smogon movesets and slop them together?" It's fine if YOU want to be creative, but why are you so obsessed on forcing others to be?

I play a game because it's fun! I don't want the metagame to be as diverse as possible so every match is memorable and unique. I'd much rather win or lose because of a stroke of novel genius than through the dominant strategy I've seen over and over again. Dominant strategies are in my books a bad thing because it simply gets boring for the player. Other people don't mind the dominant strategies, it's a simple matter of personal taste.

"I’ve never been to a tournament where there was a prize for the winner and another prize for the player who did many difficult moves. I’ve also never seen a prize for a player who played “in an innovative way.” (Though chess tournaments do sometimes have prizes for “brilliancies,” moves that are strokes of genius.) Many scrubs have strong ties to “innovation.” They say, “That guy didn’t do anything new, so he is no good.” Or “person X invented that technique and person Y just stole it.” Well, person Y might be one hundred times better than person X, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the scrub. When person Y wins the tournament and person X is a forgotten footnote, what will the scrub say? That person Y has “no skill” of course." -David Sirlin, Playing to Win

I wouldn't want to play a game which was uncreative and boring, no matter how often I won. Again, it's just a matter of personal taste and we each sit in one camp or the other. I totally understand where you guys are coming from and I suspect the people who want the item clause the least are the people who are the most deeply invested in the current meta.

 

[WaterlooZoo]

It never ceases to amaze me how much my opinions seem to genuinely bother certain people. Both with my views on Stealth Rock and Items clause. Guys, all I'm doing is saying how I feel. There is simply no need for certain snide comments being sent my way.

In any case, I disagree that Items clause would be the death of Stall.

Leftovers
Black Sludge
Eviolite
etc. etc.

Those all all extremely useful off the top of my head. Oh, but you might say - only Poison Pokemon can use Black Sludge! Only NFE Pokemon can use Eviolite! Well, this is just another example of how Items Clause can help bring about more diversity in the metagame.

I'm sure there are many other items useful for stall teams as well. And it seems like there have been a bunch of useful items introduced for Gen 6.

Overall it seems like Gen 6 has improved the viability of stall teams compared to Gen 5.

So if you feel that Items clause is a crushing blow to Stall teams, then you might just have to use your creativity more!

---

Oh, and one of the biggest things I forgot to mention. Remember, Items clause applies to your opponents as well. So they won't be able to simply give all of their Pokemon Life Orb. That in turn improves the viability of your stall team!

 

[2MN]

How are you planning to create more variation by stifling variation?

enforcing your creativity to be in one particular area makes you pour more ideas into a condensed section than spreading it out over a large scale

this is a pretty basic concept, I really hope that it's not some strange new thing to you

 

[amplafied]

• Stall will be fucked without the ability to run Leftovers on most of their Pokemon.
• The passive damage from chip weathers, sandstorm and hail, as well as entry hazards will add up much more quickly without passive recovery to compensate for it.
• You're bottlenecking teambuilding by limiting the choices you can use on your team.

The positives

• You'll stop complaining for a week about how uncreative people are until everyone continues to use the same shit but with slightly different items.

Haha, again with the "complaining." I really think we should experiment before we can declare stall dead, black sludge, as someone else mentioned, still exists and many stall Pokemon utilise the eviolite anyway. That's three healing items already. Weathers have been nerfed this generation and so it makes sense that hail and sandstorm damage should be more effective than ever before, it takes more effort to keep the sandstorm or hail up. The reduction in the availability of healing items can actually benefit stall as the opponent can't effectively avoid the chip damage either. You're only as bottlenecked as you want to be, people have posted in this thread how well they've done in the ladder with pseudo item clause on. The fact that two Pokemon may not be viable on the same team because there is only one leftovers only increases the diversity of Pokemon being used. You're going to have to use something that can stall without leftovers in that spot.

 

[CQC]

It never ceases to amaze me how much my opinions seem to genuinely bother certain people. Both with my views on Stealth Rock and Items clause. Guys, all I'm doing is saying how I feel. There is simply no need for certain snide comments being sent my way.

In any case, I disagree that Items clause would be the death of Stall.

Leftovers
Black Sludge
Eviolite
etc. etc.

Those all all extremely useful off the top of my head. Oh, but you might say - only Poison Pokemon can use Black Sludge! Only NFE Pokemon can use Eviolite! Well, this is just another example of how Items Clause can help bring about more diversity in the metagame.

I'm sure there are many other items useful for stall teams as well. And it seems like there have been a bunch of useful items introduced for Gen 6.

Overall it seems like Gen 6 has improved the viability of stall teams compared to Gen 5.

So, excuse me for saying this, but if you feel that Items clause is a crushing blow to Stall teams, then you might just have to use your creativity more!

---

Oh, and one of the biggest things I forgot to mention. Remember, Items clause applies to your opponents as well. So they won't be able to simply give all of their Pokemon Life Orb. That in turn improves the viability of your stall team!

So, every "stall" team needs to run exactly one Poison type for Black Sludge AND needs to run exactly one NFE mon for Eviolite AND exactly one Bulky Attacker for Assault Vest and exactly one Scarfer. Wow, that sounds really diverse!

(Not to mention that calling this still "stall" is a bit of a stretch, since it's more just "somewhat bulky")

 

[Demonages]

It never ceases to amaze me how much my opinions seem to genuinely bother certain people. Both with my views on Stealth Rock and Items clause. Guys, all I'm doing is saying how I feel. There is simply no need for certain snide comments being sent my way.

In any case, I disagree that Items clause would be the death of Stall.

Leftovers
Black Sludge
Eviolite
etc. etc.

Those all all extremely useful off the top of my head. Oh, but you might say - only Poison Pokemon can use Black Sludge! Only NFE Pokemon can use Eviolite! Well, this is just another example of how Items Clause can help bring about more diversity in the metagame.

I'm sure there are many other items useful for stall teams as well. And it seems like there have been a bunch of useful items introduced for Gen 6.

Overall it seems like Gen 6 has improved the viability of stall teams compared to Gen 5.

So, excuse me for saying this, but if you feel that Items clause is a crushing blow to Stall teams, then you might just have to use your creativity more!

---

Oh, and one of the biggest things I forgot to mention. Remember, Items clause applies to your opponents as well. So they won't be able to simply give all of their Pokemon Life Orb. That in turn improves the viability of your stall team!

I don't think people are really bothered, more so they question the diversity by introducing this clause. In your argument, you point out it gives more pokes a chance and that's true. But that doesn't invoke more diversity because you do not add those options to the previous meta-game, but rather you replace old options. In a meta, that is competitive in nature, people will always try to find the optimal options. Due to the fact that you see more options then just 1 team is due to play-style preferences and more importantly depending on your opponent teamcomp. In general, though, you see flavors you see a lot in different team. Think about the meta around weather and how it affected the meta.

When this item clause is in affect, people will just look for the next set of optimal teams and use these. That doesn't add diversity but replaces that. Now this is not bad per design ( league of legends use this concept extremely potent given their popularity ) but the meta in Pokemon is to slow-changing for that to matter. You'll use this meta for an entire generation, not a few weeks/months, and very soon the diversity you gained by switching the meta is lost because you're now stuck with the meta for the rest of the season.

Therefor, i think its important to not invoke changes in the meta unless leaving the option open would result in either an unbalanced or uncompetitive metagame.

 

[WaterlooZoo]

I just think it would be really fun.

Think about it.

With items clause, you first get a look at your opponents team and you're thinking "Hmmm, I bet their Azumarill is their Choice Band user, but I wonder what that means for their Scizor".

As opposed to "oh yeah standard Scizor, oh yeah standard Azumarill, of course".

It's really not hard to see how it would encourage (okay, force) people to do different things with their Pokemon aside from simply "standard everything", and it would bring about greater diversity in Pokemon usage.

 

[56k]

Leftovers is just not replaceable at all for hippowdon, vaporeon, jellicent, blissey, stall dragonite, stall heatran, sableye, and so many other pokemon that don't want to be chipped down by sandstorm/hail.

 

[Kriptini]

I just think it would be really fun.

This isn't a good argument for a competitive battling community. (Note my Chess comment.)

 

[PKMN1]

Leftovers is just not replaceable at all for hippowdon, vaporeon, jellicent, blissey, stall dragonite, stall heatran, sableye, and so many other pokemon that don't want to be chipped down by sandstorm/hail.

Half of those guys have a healing move anyway and Rest is now viable again thanks thanks to Nintendo finally getting rid of that stupid sleep reset.

This isn't a good argument for a competitive battling community. (Note my Chess comment.)

Actually it is a decent argument, because most people play to have fun, Pokemon would not exist anymore if people did not think it was fun.

 

[WaterlooZoo]

So, every "stall" team needs to run exactly one Poison type for Black Sludge AND needs to run exactly one NFE mon for Eviolite AND exactly one Bulky Attacker for Assault Vest and exactly one Scarfer. Wow, that sounds really diverse!

(Not to mention that calling this still "stall" is a bit of a stretch, since it's more just "somewhat bulky")

Not at all! There is no 1 way a team "has" to do anything!

I'm sure there are plenty of ways to keep Stall viable. I just came up with some other useful Items off the top of my head.

I'll repeat - your opponent won't be able to spam Life Orb / Choice Band / Choice Specs users, which in turn helps your stall team tremendously.

Not to mention guys, there are plenty of ways Pokemon have to restore HP besides items. Like their movepool.

 

[PKMN1]

I wonder if anyone had actually played chess recently competitively

it's not fun. lots of memorization of things made by people decades ago, little actual variety, lots of tie games. I'd recommend not being chess, that kind of design is going to get worse over time, because of its enforcement to the static

There is also the fact it has not changed in rules and choices at all, Pokemon get new pokemon, moves, abilities, items, etc every couple of years

 

[CQC]

Haha, again with the "complaining." I really think we should experiment before we can declare stall dead, black sludge, as someone else mentioned, still exists and many stall Pokemon utilise the eviolite anyway. That's three healing items already. Weathers have been nerfed this generation and so it makes sense that hail and sandstorm damage should be more effective than ever before, it takes more effort to keep the sandstorm or hail up. The reduction in the availability of healing items can actually benefit stall as the opponent can't effectively avoid the chip damage either. You're only as bottlenecked as you want to be, people have posted in this thread how well they've done in the ladder with pseudo item clause on. The fact that two Pokemon may not be viable on the same team because there is only one leftovers only increases the diversity of Pokemon being used. You're going to have to use something that can stall without leftovers in that spot.

As said by many people over and over again, a lot of pokemon rely on a certain item. By forcing people to run other items, you essentially make these pokemon unviable.
A item clause would therefore mean the choice of pokemon would be significantly centralized.
In other words, you'll see the pokemon that are already used often even more then now, they'll just use a slightly different item. This is the exact opposite of variety.

 

[amplafied]

So, every "stall" team needs to run exactly one Poison type for Black Sludge AND needs to run exactly one NFE mon for Eviolite AND exactly one Bulky Attacker for Assault Vest and exactly one Scarfer. Wow, that sounds really diverse!

(Not to mention that calling this still "stall" is a bit of a stretch, since it's more just "somewhat bulky")

What would you rather run which is so much more diverse? Anyway, we have no idea if this will become the dominant strategy or not. We can't just assume that because there can only be one of every item that every team will use the same six items. You did just prove that it is more diverse than teams with item clause off though, a team with two leftovers is far less diverse than what you just mentioned.

Therefor, i think its important to not invoke changes in the meta unless leaving the option open would result in either an unbalanced or uncompetitive metagame.

So, if it aint' broke, don't fix it? That's totally true, I would never even think about changing the clauses until it was proven to be a serious issue in terms of over centralisation. There is no reason why implementing the item clause would make the game any less competitive.

This isn't a good argument for a competitive battling community. (Note my Chess comment.)

Just because a change makes a game more enjoyable for some people doesn't mean that it's instantly detrimental to the competitiveness of the game.

 

[amplafied]

As said by many people over and over again, a lot of pokemon rely on a certain item. By forcing people to run other items, you essentially make these pokemon unviable.
A item clause would therefore mean the choice of pokemon would be significantly centralized.
In other words, you'll see the pokemon that are already used often even more then now, they'll just use a slightly different item. This is the exact opposite of variety.

Compare the variety of VGC doubles to Smogon OU.

 

[WaterlooZoo]

As said by many people over and over again, a lot of pokemon rely on a certain item. By forcing people to run other items, you essentially make these pokemon unviable.
A item clause would therefore mean the choice of pokemon would be significantly centralized.
In other words, you'll see the pokemon that are already used often even more then now, they'll just use a slightly different item. This is the exact opposite of variety.

If what you said was true, then sure.

I don't think what you said is true at all.

Which Pokemon were so excellent with Leftovers that are suddenly going to be "not viable" without Leftovers?

 

[Demonages]

Actually it is a decent argument, because most people play to have fun, Pokemon would not exist anymore if people did not think it was fun.

No, subjective arguments are in this case not decent due to the fact that doesn't represent the average of users of the meta-game. Now, the argument itself is good, he himself is saying he'd like it, nothing wrong with that. But the opinion of 1 person holds no value in a significantly large group of people. It might sound a bit crude, but it's because you need to go for the average opinion, not that of a group ( in this case 1 ) of people that doesn't represent the entire population.

 

[CQC]

Not at all! There is no 1 way a team "has" to do anything!

I'm sure there are plenty of ways to keep Stall viable. I just came up with some other useful Items off the top of my head.

I'll repeat - your opponent won't be able to spam Life Orb / Choice Band / Choice Specs users, which in turn helps your stall team tremendously.

Not to mention guys, there are plenty of ways Pokemon have to restore HP besides Leftovers. Like their movepool.

CB + Choice Specs + Choice Scarf + LO + Expert Belt + Gem is already a full set of offensive items(and even the most offensive teams don't use only offensive items anyway). In other words, offensive teams won't be crippled in the slightest, while defensive teams would be severely crippled, and stall teams would be as good as dead.

Compare the variety of VGC doubles to Smogon OU.

There are so many other ways they're different that comparing them is complete nonsense.

 

[ryan]

Compare the variety of VGC doubles to Smogon OU.

Compare the fact that VGC is a 4v4 doubles metagame and Smogon OU is a 6v6 Singles metagame. Item Clause was not made with a 6v6 metagame in mind, and that's why it's not used. I'm not commenting any more on the topic because it's dumb and pointless, and the arguments are bad lol.

 

[56k]

Some teams want 2 scarfers; one has a super fast Trick or Switcheroo, and the other one is a powerhouse.