Disclaimer: I'm not an Ubers player so I won't be saying anything about metagame-specific stuff.
To me it's very sad and disappointing that the community is still having to discuss such a basic aspect of the competitive Pokemon game we've constructed. If we truly strive to create the best competitive tiers for our players, there is one clear and obvious solution here. Implement an Evasion clause, just like every other competitive tier to my knowledge. I've made this argument about a hundred times in various tiering/policy review threads, and it's always the same.
1. We at Smogon strive to create the most competitive metagame for our players to engage in.
This is the given. It's the premise upon which all policy decisions are founded. Keep this premise in mind when discussing. We strive for competitiveness above all else. "Fun" is a secondary consideration and ought to be derived from competitiveness anyways.
2. The most competitive metagame is where x(better player) beats y(worse player) the most times/100.
Simply put, in a competitive metagame, better players beat worse players every single time. I will cite a tried and true analogy of chess. In chess, there are NO elements of luck or RNG. Thus, if a grandmaster of ELO 2200 were to go up against an amateur of ELO 1200, the grandmaster would win every single conceivable match, assuming no external influences (fatigue, etc). Chess is therefore a pinnacle of competition. Competitive Pokemon is not. Small elements of chance exists on almost every turn. Accuracy, paralysis, freeze, Scald, and critical hits can swiftly turn the tide of a match. These instances of luck are generally when worse players are able to beat better players. This is not competitive; however, it's the game we play.
3. To create the most competitive metagame from an imperfect medium of competition (Pokemon), we must reasonably limit uncompetitive elements.
Uncompetitive elements being those which unreasonably swing the match one way or another through pure chance, reducing skill and glorifying RNG. Now clearly the elements I mentioned above are core to competitive Pokemon. I'm not advocating the removal of any move that has a chance to miss. These are assumed risks by the teambuilder. Choosing to use Hydro Pump over Surf means I'm sacrificing accuracy for power. Teambuilding is all about these tradeoffs. In the metagame I'm most familiar with, BW OU, tradeoffs are made with every Pokemon choice and with every move slot, because there are too many threats to realistically check, and thus some must be left open in favor of others. Focus Blast is not uncompetitive. Evasion, however, draws parallels to OHKO moves in its pure reliance on chance. Similar to OHKO moves (which are banned), Evasion strategies such as Minimize are not particularly good ones, and yet they still see usage in Ubers because bad players get a kick out of abusing RNG to beat good players. Say your faster Pokemon, a Minimize user, is out against my slower Pokemon, which has the ability to KO yours. You press Minimize in the hope that I miss. If I do, you press it again, and my chance of missing becomes higher.
This is the key interaction which makes things uncompetitive. I can miss a Focus Blast on Ferrothorn, and that sucks, but my next Focus Blast doesn't have any lower of a chance to connect. Evasion, on the other hand, is not only an element of RNG, but one that STACKS. That's the core difference between it and anything else with an element of RNG in the game. One could argue that a move like Muddy Water, which has a chance to lower the opponent's accuracy, is similarly uncompetitive. However, at least I can interact with an accuracy drop by switching out. I can't interact with Evasion because the Pokemon with the Evasion boost(s) is in my opponent's control. And despite how skilled or not I may be,
Evasion makes me completely powerless against luck. It was not my teambuilding decision, it was my opponent's. It is not interactive, nor is it competitive. By choosing to use Minimize or Double Team, my opponent has successfully removed all elements of skill from the game, and replaced it with pure RNG.
Let me take a brief moment to reply to several individuals' claims that "Evasion teams suck, so they aren't ban-worthy!" If you think this, you lack any semblance of an understanding of how the policy process operates. It doesn't matter how good or bad a strategy is. All that matters is how competitive or otherwise it has proven itself to be. Even if your Evasion team loses to my regular Ubers squad 99 times out of 100, that 1 time that I miss three Earthquakes in a row due to Minimize and you pass your boosts to a sweeper and blow through my team makes Evasion uncompetitive. Completely reliant on chance AND zero opportunity for interactive play? I'd say that more than fulfills the necessary criteria to implement an Evasion clause in Ubers.
Remember that the questions we want answers to are the following: Do you think Evasion has enough of an impact on the game to warrant it being removed? Is the luck element significant enough and is it actually used enough that we should implement Evasion Clause?
Okay this also needs to be addressed. Why are you asking these questions? They are vague, unspecific, and unimportant. These are terrible ways to open a thread and lead the discussion in the wrong direction. It doesn't matter if Evasion is impactful and it doesn't matter how significant the luck is, and it matters least of all how often it's used. None of this should be affecting anyone's judgment. The ONLY question that needs asking should be: Is Evasion competitive or not? That's the core aspect of Smogon's tiering policy, and that's all which needs to be discussed.
tl;dr Evasion clause is a basic component of any competitive metagame and this discussion is absurd in its very existence.
