Evasion Clause Discussion Topic

blarajan · Feb 15, 2012

I mean this is kind of a non-issue. If you're getting consistently swept by a SubSD Sand Veil Gliscor on ladder, it's because you fucking suck, not because you're getting luck fucked. Speaking of Sand Veil Gliscor, there are no other OU relevant Sand Veil Pokemon. So I don't see the point?

The only merit the complex ban was in the UU metagame when Hail was everywhere and Froslass was a cunt. But Hail got banned there, so that became useless. In OU, nobody actually uses Hail, and even on Hail teams, Froslass isn't all that common.

This is just such a trivial issue...and if you get luck fucked, bitch a little and move on. Jirachi pisses me off way the fuck more than Sand Veil Gliscor ever could...and that's fine. The main thing is, proponents of banning all of the elements of luck are just pissed they lost a game they should have won...which happens in all walks of life.

Just make keep Evasion Clause to things that can boost your Evasion by an entire stage, and bring Lax / Brightpowder back too. Those bans were even more stupid than this is.

edit: This is specifically for LucaroarkZ. In this shitty ass game that we call enjoy, there is no 100% chance of success. There is the chance of losing regardless of the variation or how much better you are than your opponent...there is some degree of hax that goes on in every single move you make, every decision you make, and every attack that happens. This is but one of them. The only way your "BAN THIS BS I HATE MISSING" argument could gain any degree of semblance is if you extended it to removing hax from the metagame. Otherwise this is just another instance of hax that you're not very likely to see.

BAN QUICK CLAW I HATE LOSING CAUSE HIS SLOW POKEMON HAXED HIS WAY AND KILLED ME. BAN FOCUS BAND IT MAKES HIS POKEMON INVINCIBLE IT NEVER DIES. BS HAX BS HAX BS HAX.

Complications · Feb 15, 2012

The way I see it, the Veil abilities are fine, but the evasion items are unacceptable. Between Sand Veil and Broghtpowder, even a 100 ACC move is almost as inaccurate as Thunder, and anything below might as well be the equivalent of using the oh-so-reliable Hypnosis. The reason I think Veil abilities should remain legal is because of the fact that they depend on weather to work. Many teams use Sandstorm, but at the same time many use Rain and Sun, and in OU, to a lesser extent, Hail. Because they are easily counter able, I think it's fair to keep Veil abilities legal, but keep the items banned.

Adamant Zoroark · Feb 15, 2012

blarajan said:
I mean this is kind of a non-issue. If you're getting consistently swept by a SubSD Sand Veil Gliscor on ladder, it's because you fucking suck, not because you're getting luck fucked. Speaking of Sand Veil Gliscor, there are no other OU relevant Sand Veil Pokemon. So I don't see the point?

The only merit the complex ban was in the UU metagame when Hail was everywhere and Froslass was a cunt. But Hail got banned there, so that became useless. In OU, nobody actually uses Hail, and even on Hail teams, Froslass isn't all that common.

This is just such a trivial issue...and if you get luck fucked, bitch a little and move on. Jirachi pisses me off way the fuck more than Sand Veil Gliscor ever could...and that's fine. The main thing is, proponents of banning all of the elements of luck are just pissed they lost a game they should have won...which happens in all walks of life.

Just make keep Evasion Clause to things that can boost your Evasion by an entire stage, and bring Lax / Brightpowder back too. Those bans were even more stupid than this is.

edit: This is specifically for LucaroarkZ. In this shitty ass game that we call enjoy, there is no 100% chance of success. There is the chance of losing regardless of the variation or how much better you are than your opponent...there is some degree of hax that goes on in every single move you make, every decision you make, and every attack that happens. This is but one of them. The only way your "BAN THIS BS I HATE MISSING" argument could gain any degree of semblance is if you extended it to removing hax from the metagame. Otherwise this is just another instance of hax that you're not very likely to see.

BAN QUICK CLAW I HATE LOSING CAUSE HIS SLOW POKEMON HAXED HIS WAY AND KILLED ME. BAN FOCUS BAND IT MAKES HIS POKEMON INVINCIBLE IT NEVER DIES. BS HAX BS HAX BS HAX.

Can I ask why you would bring up Quick Claw/Focus Band? Neither are competitively viable items. In the case of Quick Claw, it is almost entirely outclassed by Choice Scarf. Focus Band is in turn much better left to using something like Focus Sash Alakazam.

The main reason I have a problem with the evasion abilities is that if I'm using a 100% accurate move, I want it to hit 100% of the time. It should not be up to my opponent to decide whether or not I can use 100% accurate moves. I'm not going to blame my opponent for something like missing Fire Blast. I was the one who decided to use a move with 85% accuracy.

I'm not arguing about Sand Veil/Snow Cloak being "broken" or anything. I'm arguing that they are an undesirable luck element, as explained by JabbaTheGriffin in post 2 and simplified by Alucard in post 3.

Jimera0 · Feb 15, 2012

DetroitLolCat said everything I needed to say, he even rebutted LucaroarkZ's post for me. I don't need to say anything else as now it has all been said.

I will now leave this topic be and move onto more important manners. Besides, it's becoming apparent that nothing more than a complex ban will come of this, and while it's not an ideal scenario at least nothing will be softbanned for such a stupid reason. It'd be less than ideal, but at least it doesn't look like I have to worry about it too much.

So yeah, thanks DetroitLolCat, you said it all. Also, hop by the Scramble Challange thread more often, we're (well I am) missing your presence there :P

Stratos · Feb 15, 2012

Complications said:
The way I see it, the Veil abilities are fine, but the evasion items are unacceptable. Between Sand Veil and Broghtpowder, even a 100 ACC move is almost as inaccurate as Thunder, and anything below might as well be the equivalent of using the oh-so-reliable Hypnosis. The reason I think Veil abilities should remain legal is because of the fact that they depend on weather to work. Many teams use Sandstorm, but at the same time many use Rain and Sun, and in OU, to a lesser extent, Hail. Because they are easily counter able, I think it's fair to keep Veil abilities legal, but keep the items banned.

For as much as we all complain about Focus Miss, you're still making around three out of four hits with a combo of veil ability + Brightpowder. Furthermore, if you run both of those, all the veil users except Gliscor are completely recovery free, and Gliscor's counters are so numerous and his weaknesses so prominent that even if you can't change the weather, walling him is difficult on par with hitting the toilet bowl sitting down.

Furthermore, as you mentioned yourself, you can just change the weather to turn your Thunders into Leaf Storms and I swear to God the next time I hear someone whining about Leaf Storm it'll be the first.

In general hax abuse is just a bad strategy and should not be winning games. Whining about losing the occasional ladder game is not a legit complaint because if you deserved that ranking you would find your way back up in little to no time.

EDIT @ Lucaroark: the main problem I have with Quick Claw is if I outspeed, I want to go first 100 percent of the time. The main problem I have with Focus Band is if I use a 4x super effective move on a weakened mon, I want it to die 100% of the time. The main problem I have with ICE BEAM is if I want to tank a resisted move and hit back, I want to hit back 100% of the time.

See the problem with your argument? It's applicable to all uncontrollable hax which is, unfortunately, most of it. Realistically you can't ban hax and most of us don't want to, so please stop trying.

Complications · Feb 15, 2012

LucaroarkZ said:
I'm not arguing about Sand Veil/Snow Cloak being "broken" or anything. I'm arguing that they are an undesirable luck element, as explained by JabbaTheGriffin in post 2 and simplified by Alucard in post 3.

For my second point, luck is part of the game. That's why Pokemon made abilities like this and effects like Critical hits, so battles could never be calculated monotony like what would happen if such things were banned. It adds flavor to battles and makes players have to think hard to outwit these disasvantages. While some believe battling should not include luck, only skill, it takes even more skill to beat an opponent with these factors up.

Paolo · Feb 15, 2012

Seth Vilo said:
Then I, being on the anti-any-ban side, shall address it for you.

By your logic about your opponent "choosing how accurate your moves are", then not only should Sand Veil, Snow Cloak, Bright Powder, and Lax Incense be banned, but Sand Attack, Flash, Kinesis, Leaf Tornado, Mirror Shot, Mud Bomb, Mud Slap, Muddy Water, Night Daze, Octazooka, and Smokescreen should be banned too, as they all lower accuracy.

I can switch out on all of these moves with Sand Veil, Snow Cloak and evasion items I can not.

Seth Vilo said:
Aren't these, by your definition, overpowered and broken?

At what point did I say they were broken, or even more laughably over powered? I said they were uncompetitive and don't contribute anything good to the metagame.

Seth Vilo said:
Is banning these abilities for the 4% chance of game breaking as jimera0 highlights, which is not at all statistically significant,
as well as banning all the moves I listed, not as Hipmonlee put it, "rewriting pokemon to suit our desires"?

Please don't use fake percentages in an argument and we aren't rewriting Pokemon to suit our desires. How is a complex ban of evasion abilities and their respective weathers any different then the Drizzle+SwSw or any other ban we've made different in regards to "rewriting Pokemon to suit our desires"?

Aeromence · Feb 16, 2012

IMO, the complex ban is the way to go, and everything i'm gonna say is already covered in Alucard and Jabba's posts right at the beginning of the thread.

jas61292 · Feb 16, 2012

Interesting. I should really visit DST more often. I feel like I almost missed this.

Anyways, I would like to say that I think no bans should be implemented on this matter, and the evasion item ban already in place should be removed. I think the majority of arguments from all sides have already been made, so I will not go into too much detail. However, I would like to point out one quote that I found particularly important:

Pwnemon said:
For one, it's scary that we're deciding which playstyles are "fun" and "not fun." Playing god for everyone on the ladder is just not cool. It's clear that Sand Veil abuse is not a broken strategy, and dammit if someone wants to use a non-broken strategy, they should be able to. The entire point of banning was to make as many playstyles viable as possible. Why should we get rid of one for everyone just because some of us don't like it?

This is exactly what I always have and always will think. We ban things that are broken, not things we don't like. When we start to ban things just because we feel like it, we are no longer balancing a game of Pokemon, but making a different game all together. And we are here to play Pokemon.

KurashiDragon · Feb 16, 2012

I wasn't gonna respond to this thread because I haven't been playing for a while but I'm a little annoyed with a particular aspect of the pro-banners argument.

If there's one feeling I'm getting from pro-banners on this issue, it's that the complex ban should be implimented simply for the sake of creating a more "desirable" metagame. To me however, it feels more like a complaint than anything else. What do you really have to gain by complex banning Sand Veil/Sandstream and Snow Cloak/Snow Warning? Let me answer with my opinion, nothing. Most pokemon that use Sand Veil/Snow Cloak either aren't used very much at all or are overshadowed by much better options such as Gliscor with Poison Heal. All you'll really lose from missing a move is momentum which none of the pokemon that can currently use these abilities in ou are capable of abusing to the point of being uncompetitive. gliscor comes the closest but at the same time it's so easy to come back against Gliscor from that miss that the momentum lost is mute.

As for the items I have no personal opinion on them but the pokemon that can use the evasion boosting items have better items to use than said item. Gliscor makes much better use of lefties or POISON ORB than Brightpowder on almost any day of the week.

As far as OU is concerned there really is no point in complex banning other than the sake of the ban. If you dont like the luck factor in those abilities why dont you start banning moves like Lava Plume and Scald. I sometimes find myself using those moves for the sake of the burn which would probably win me the battle. That's a luck factor that's alot like evasion abilities in which I have little control over but I abuse none the less. (Yes I know evasion abilities can be abused by changing the weather but it doesn't change my comparison very much when you consider that when you need it you can just spam Scald/Discharge to get the luck factor more in your favor.)

Dragon Rider · Feb 16, 2012

Paolo said:
Please don't use fake percentages in an argument and we aren't rewriting Pokemon to suit our desires. How is a complex ban of evasion abilities and their respective weathers any different then the Drizzle+SwSw or any other ban we've made different in regards to "rewriting Pokemon to suit our desires"?

The difference is in the impact on the metagame.Drizzle+SwSw was implemented because it was to good of a strategy.It was so overpowered it left no choice but to be dealt with.The ban was either Drizzle (taking rain out of OU) or SwSw (which is not broken and only deemed "abusable" on 3 mons in OU).Neither was a great option hence the complex ban.

Then you have individuals like Skymin and Darkrai.They also proved themselves overpowered and to difficult for the meta to handle reasonably.

Now we come to Veil/Cloak.They have had next to no impact on almost any metagame.The only 2 have been Garchomp in OU (now uber so kinda moot) and Froslass in UU (where Hail is now banned).So they won't be contributing in the future.

So out of all the Sand Veil users (8 total) we have:
1 Uber/3 OU/1 RU/1 NU/2 Unreleased

Which looks impressive until you relize the 3 OU almost all use their other ability.Donphan almost always uses Sturdy,most Gliscor are Poison Heal, and I don't see a point at all to Dugtrio without Arena Trap.

Snow Cloak users (5)
1 OU/1 UU/2 NU/1 Unreleased

So you see the difference?These pokemon with these abilities are being targeted for either a ban or complex ban just because some people see evasion and instantly rage.They have done nothing to unbalance the metagame and instead are in danger due to some players ideals.This is absurd in my opinion.

ssbbm · Feb 16, 2012

i thought we banned things that were broken not things that were annoying..

we all agree that sand veil / snow cloak / brightpowder aren't really game breaking: the only pokemon that was banned "because of sand veil" was garchomp; however, i don't think it was truly sand veil that got it banned - it's a pokemon with 102 speed and 130 attack with access to swords dance and STAB outrage - chances are it was broken without sand veil.

what sand veil is is annoying - you DO have the chance to lose a "won game" with it. just like the way a prankster whimsicott can beat you by spamming swagger. or the way a scope lens super luck absol can crit you with sucker punch. or cross chop can crit your skarmory. or the way you can accidentally crit an anger point tauros. and i dont' think we're banning any of those?

Jimera0 · Feb 16, 2012

Paolo said:
Please don't use fake percentages in an argument and we aren't rewriting Pokemon to suit our desires. How is a complex ban of evasion abilities and their respective weathers any different then the Drizzle+SwSw or any other ban we've made different in regards to "rewriting Pokemon to suit our desires"?

Alright I was going to leave this thread alone but I take offense to the accusation that my statistic was "fake". If anything, it was actually generous, and Seth Vilo didn't really quote the full scope of my estimated calculation: according to testimony from someone actually on the side of the complex ban, about 4% of the games he played were won because of Sand Veil hax from his Gliscor. I extrapolated this to what the chance of encountering an instance of outcome changing evasion has would be for a player not using the abilities. I did this by looking at the usage stats for the key abusers of the abilities and estimating that 4% of teams would have a Pokemon with one of the abilities in its respective weather. This means you have a chance of encountering one of this pokemon in 4 of every 100 games, and in every one of those 4 games you'd have a 4 in 100 chance of having the hax affect the outcome of the match. that's 4% of 4%, which works out to 0.16% of games which have outcomes decided by Sand Viel/Snow Cloak.

I'll admit though, the 4% of teams was a rough estimate, though I believe it to be generous. For the sake of clarity, I will now go to the usage statistics for January and calculate a more reliable estimate of how often the pairings of abilities in question actually come up.

First, let's start with Gliscor, the most common abuser. Last month Gliscor appeared on approximately 14% of teams. Also according to last month's statistics, approximately 15% of Gliscor use Sand Veil. For the sake of simplicity, we'll assume that all Gliscor with Sand Veil are run alongside Sand Stream. So, using those numbers I can calculate that 2.1% of teams had a Sand Veil Gliscor on them.

Next, let's look at the second most common evasion ability holder in OU, Maoswine, who appeared on 5.7% of teams. Approximately 78% of these ran snow cloak, which ammounts to approximately 4.5% of teams having a Mamoswine with Snow Cloak. This time we cannot assume that every single one of these was run alongside hail since, again according to last months statistics, only 2.7% of teams in OU ran hail, making such a possibility impossible. So instead, we will assume the ridiculous, that every last hail team had a Mamoswine on it. So we increase our total percentage of teams with Sand Veil or Snow Cloak activated to 4.8% of teams.

Now we go for the little guys, Glaceon, Froslass, Beartic, Sandslash, Dugtrio, Donphan and Cacturne. Rather than walk you through the calculations, I will simply list the percentages of teams that have members of these species with the abilities in question here:

Glaceon: 0.262% usage, 90% with Snow Cloak (from NU since no higher teirs have data on it), 0.236% total
Froslass: 0.807% total (only ability)
Beartic: 0.027% total (only ability)
Sandslash: 0.056 total (only ability)
Dugtrio: 3.719% usage, 5.5% with sand veil, 0.205% with ability assuming all used in sand (unlikely as hell).
Donphan: 5.459% usage, 1.4% with Sand Veil, 0.076% usage
Cacturne: 0.152% usage, 41% with Sand Veil (from NU again), 0.0623% total

Now let's add these all these totals together now. After that, we end up with, as a very, very high end estimate, 6.77% of teams with Sand Veil or Snow Cloak activated.

Now let's take into account how often that leads to a game winning situation. If we were to use the stated percentage of 4% by 2sly4u, it'd end up at a grand total of 0.27% of OU games being decided by Sand Veil or Snow Cloak hax. That's the same amount of OU teams that have Glaceon on them. Now let's say that you disagree with 2sly4u's experience, and wish to up that 4% to say, 20%. Alright, then it's 1.35% of games, slightly more than 1 in ever 100. And remember, I've been VERY generous with my figures to the other side of the debate here; the actual percentage is probably much lower seeing as obviously not every hail team runs Mamoswine, nor every Sand Veil Gliscor alongside sand (remember, there are move reasons to run it instead of Poison Heal, however misguided such a choice may be). Ultimately, the real number of battles it plays a significant role in is probably less than 1%.

TL;DR people skip to here!
So, this is what you're fighting for. You wish to limit all of the above Pokemon in someway, thereby affecting the variety of the metagame, for the sake of eliminating an event that happens in less than 1% of battles, an event, I should add, we can't even all agree is detrimental to the game.

There, I have made my argument with cold, hard statistics now. Maybe this will sway a few opinions.

AasTmO · Feb 16, 2012

I'm wondering. People keep calling it "uncompetitive". Doesn't that word mean roughly the same as unviable?
Anyway, even if you meant it as "not fit in a competitive environment", why not? Why should Lax Incense be banned? It gives moves the same accuracy as Draco Meteor. I never heard that get called Draco Miss yet.. In response to SV/SC+brightpowder, when used in conjunction with substitute, lefties > BrightPowder. When not used in conjunction with substitute, it gives the opponent (Gliscor, Cacturne, Froslass) ONE extra free turn every 13 battles as compared to without brightpowder, assuming 100%acc moves. Surely 1 move from those pokes every 13 games doesn't do more than SubSD Terrakion with paralysis support?

KurashiDragon · Feb 16, 2012

Jimera0 said:
Alright I was going to leave this thread alone but I take offense to the accusation that my statistic was "fake". If anything, it was actually generous, and Seth Vilo didn't really quote the full scope of my estimated calculation: according to testimony from someone actually on the side of the complex ban, about 4% of the games he played were won because of Sand Veil hax from his Gliscor. I extrapolated this to what the chance of encountering an instance of outcome changing evasion has would be for a player not using the abilities. I did this by looking at the usage stats for the key abusers of the abilities and estimating that 4% of teams would have a Pokemon with one of the abilities in its respective weather. This means you have a chance of encountering one of this pokemon in 4 of every 100 games, and in every one of those 4 games you'd have a 4 in 100 chance of having the hax affect the outcome of the match. that's 4% of 4%, which works out to 0.16% of games which have outcomes decided by Sand Viel/Snow Cloak.

I'll admit though, the 4% of teams was a rough estimate, though I believe it to be generous. For the sake of clarity, I will now go to the usage statistics for January and calculate a more reliable estimate of how often the pairings of abilities in question actually come up.

First, let's start with Gliscor, the most common abuser. Last month Gliscor appeared on approximately 14% of teams. Also according to last month's statistics, approximately 15% of Gliscor use Sand Veil. For the sake of simplicity, we'll assume that all Gliscor with Sand Veil are run alongside Sand Stream. So, using those numbers I can calculate that 2.1% of teams had a Sand Veil Gliscor on them.

Next, let's look at the second most common evasion ability holder in OU, Maoswine, who appeared on 5.7% of teams. Approximately 78% of these ran snow cloak, which ammounts to approximately 4.5% of teams having a Mamoswine with Snow Cloak. This time we cannot assume that every single one of these was run alongside hail since, again according to last months statistics, only 2.7% of teams in OU ran hail, making such a possibility impossible. So instead, we will assume the ridiculous, that every last hail team had a Mamoswine on it. So we increase our total percentage of teams with Sand Veil or Snow Cloak activated to 4.8% of teams.

Now we go for the little guys, Glaceon, Froslass, Beartic, Sandslash, Dugtrio, Donphan and Cacturne. Rather than walk you through the calculations, I will simply list the percentages of teams that have members of these species with the abilities in question here:

Glaceon: 0.262% usage, 90% with Snow Cloak (from NU since no higher teirs have data on it), 0.236% total
Froslass: 0.807% total (only ability)
Beartic: 0.027% total (only ability)
Sandslash: 0.056 total (only ability)
Dugtrio: 3.719% usage, 5.5% with sand veil, 0.205% with ability assuming all used in sand (unlikely as hell).
Donphan: 5.459% usage, 1.4% with Sand Veil, 0.076% usage
Cacturne: 0.152% usage, 41% with Sand Veil (from NU again), 0.0623% total

Now let's add these all these totals together now. After that, we end up with, as a very, very high end estimate, 6.77% of teams with Sand Veil or Snow Cloak activated.

Now let's take into account how often that leads to a game winning situation. If we were to use the stated percentage of 4% by 2sly4u, it'd end up at a grand total of 0.27% of OU games being decided by Sand Veil or Snow Cloak hax. That's the same amount of OU teams that have Glaceon on them. Now let's say that you disagree with 2sly4u's experience, and wish to up that 4% to say, 20%. Alright, then it's 1.35% of games, slightly more than 1 in ever 100. And remember, I've been VERY generous with my figures to the other side of the debate here; the actual percentage is probably much lower seeing as obviously not every hail team runs Mamoswine, nor every Sand Veil Gliscor alongside sand (remember, there are move reasons to run it instead of Poison Heal, however misguided such a choice may be). Ultimately, the real number of battles it plays a significant role in is probably less than 1%.

TL;DR people skip to here!
So, this is what you're fighting for. You wish to limit all of the above Pokemon in someway, thereby affecting the variety of the metagame, for the sake of eliminating an event that happens in less than 1% of battles, an event, I should add, we can't even all agree is detrimental to the game.

There, I have made my argument with cold, hard statistics now. Maybe this will sway a few opinions.

*Applauds* Strong argument that pretty much brutally murders alot of pro-ban arguments. You sir deserve a cookie.

To simplify what he said for the people who don't like walls of text, the total number of pokemon using the weather evasion abilities, Snow Cloak and Sand Veil, is less than 1 of every 100 battles you'd fight.

SJCrew · Feb 16, 2012

This is mainly the sentiment of the pro-complex ban group, and it's not a sufficient justification to ban Sand Veil / Snow Cloak. Serene Grace / Super Luck doubles the chance of hax; with such lines of reasoning, Serene Grace and Super Luck are also getting the ban hammer.

You may rationalize how the 20% miss chance is somehow a much worse hax crime than the 20% chance to frz something with Serene Grace Ice Punch or a 12.5% chance to crit, but you'll be a fool to not realize that these abilities fall into the same category - luck abilities that deliberately increase luck factors for the abusers. Yes, they all have "unfair" advantages - when was Pokemon ever balanced? They are Pokemon that are more well-endowed than others - deal with it.

I'm pretty shocked that at least three pages of posters let you get away with this faulty comparison. Super Luck and Serene Grace are extremely limited in their capabilities, just in the fact that they require you to use specific moves, compared to Sand Veil, which requires you to do nothing. I would be much more afraid if any of the Serene Grace users had Sand Veil instead, since it'd be similar to a 20% flinch on all moves, even against faster opponents, as opposed to trying to paralyze everything and spamming a terrible move, hoping for the best.

Jirachi can't get the freeze hax on me if it's not using Ice Punch. Most of the time, it's just a terrible move for Jirachi to have and use, unless you're attempting some kind of gimmicky Gliscor/Dragonite/Salamence lure. Status effects in general are not as big a deal since there are ways to heal/bypass them, unlike Evasion. I mean, Evasion can even avoid Taunt/Whirlwind. In my opinion, it's along the lines of Moody in terms of how bad it is for the game. If we extended the Evasion Clause, we can avoid all of the Garchomp/Froslass of Gen 6 and have this type of strategy removed from the game for good.

Quoting what another guy said earlier:

Of course it's not an accurate count. It's not like I keep a tally. But a dozen games is an educated guess. For the record, I've probably played around 300 games with that team, so around 4% of my games had outcome-affecting evasion hax, and IMO that's 4% too much.

I agree. A much more comfortable number for me would be 0%.

X5Dragon · Feb 16, 2012

Looks like I missed a lot of the later discussion, but I don't know why the argument has taken a shift to "it's haxy therefore bannable".

We already agreed that the abilities by themselves aren't broken, but the options available to counter them are at best situational (Infinite acc, low power moves) and very centralizing to the metagame (the dominance of evasion abusing mons and skarmory and heatran as counters) and at the same time gamefreak hasn't done a great job in giving us effective tools to counter them, or nerfed the ones the were supposed to do the job (multi-hit moves either all hitting or all missing).

To elaborate more, a static 20% increase in evasion is not broken or haxy, just like the 30% in flame body getting your burned (which to a physical attacker is a death sentence) or the 30% para (which means to most mons not carrying a lum or aren't walls is also a death sentence in OU).

However, unlike sand veil/snow cloak, there isn't an item that increases the burn rate or the paralysis rate. Subs block them, you can use non contact moves, you can use a lum, etc.

Evasion however cannot be avoided, but till now it's still fine. But wait, you have substitute! There goes the evasion rate up! And then now you want to unban lax incense/bright powder! There it goes again higher and higher!

What are the counters now? Low powered infinite accuracy moves...and that's it. Skarmory and Heatran, which will rise as an effective core to counter these but won't work because once one of them falls the rest of the team will crumble, will come to dominate the anti-evasion teams which will pack frosslass, gliscor and the rest of the evasion abusing family.

For those of you who say that they're not popular not now, it only takes one person to rank high with them to start a fad, just like the Deo-S + 5 sweepers which didn't happen immediately after Exca was banned, rather it took a couple of months before it caught on to the metagame and look what happened.

Also, don't come in here saying paraflinch is worse or Blaziken was unfairly banned, there are gonna be topics discussing these soon, hopefully in the near future.

-------

TL;DR version: read the above.

Pocket · Feb 16, 2012

SJCrew, so somehow needing to use an attack to make use of the double critical hit rate or needing to use Body Slam for that 60% paralysis chance, is not as "bad" a hax than a passive 20% evasion boost. And somehow that passive evasion boost is just as egregious a hax as Moody? okay, you totally convinced me </sarcasm>

Maybe if you didn't ignore the rest of the post, you would have realized why people couldn't refute my argument. I mentioned Ice Punch on Jirachi as an example, I could've easily used the more atrocious 60% flinch rate as an example. Nitpicking details doesn't help your case.

Here is the fact: you cannot do anything about Jirachi's doubled secondary effects; Jirachi's Body Slam has a 60% paralysis rate and Iron head has a 60% flinch rate no matter what you use (unless you're using Inner Focus mons). How do you deal with Jirachi? By utilizing Pokemon that can either shrug off its Iron Head barrages (ie Heatran / Magnezone / Skarmory) or hit it hard and fast so it is too weak to continue its luck fest on a 2nd Pokemon.

Same exact analogy applies to Sand Veil / Snow Cloak, and I guess I have to reiterate this point again, because you somehow totally missed it the first time. Just like you can't change the fact of Jirachi's secondary chances happening twice as often compared to other Pokemon, you generally can't do anything about the 20% evasion boost. Just like you accept how Jirachi's going to hax you more often than not, you accept that you have a chance of missing a Pokemon with Sand Veil. This extra hax broke Garchomp (just like Serene Grace broke Shaymin-S), but we merely deal with the Sand Veil / Snow Cloak Pokemon still available in OU by not letting down on the offensive pressure to limit the turns they can mess around or by using Pokemon like Skarmory who does not mind an occasional miss (or two). Using accurate moves help, too, to minimize the chances of missing! It's also not hard to pack multiple checks or a solid counter to the Sand Veil / Snow Cloak Pokemon in OU. If you were swept by SD Acrobatics Gliscor, more often than not your team was poorly designed or you were outplayed, and those are not the grounds for restricting Sand Veil / Snow Cloak.

Let's NOT forget that Smogon is a competitive battling community. Yes, a Sand Veil miss is annoying; so is a timely critical hit, Rock Slide flinch, or Ice Fang freeze. As competitive players, we (complain, but) accept and adapt to such inconveniences that take place in our matches. We separate ourselves from the newbs who clause everything that they have trouble - "only 1 legend to a team!" "SubSeed is gay, don't use!" "NO BATON PASS"

Of course clauses and bans are necessary in extreme cases. Sand Veil / Snow Cloak are not such extreme cases, and to put these abilities in the same category as Moody (and not in Serene Grace / Super Luck) is simply a terrible use of hyperbole.

Stratos · Feb 16, 2012

X5Dragon said:
We already agreed that the abilities by themselves aren't broken, but the options available to counter them are at best situational (Infinite acc, low power moves) and very centralizing to the metagame (the dominance of evasion abusing mons and skarmory and heatran as counters) and at the same time gamefreak hasn't done a great job in giving us effective tools to counter them, or nerfed the ones the were supposed to do the job (multi-hit moves either all hitting or all missing).

What are the counters now? Low powered infinite accuracy moves...and that's it. Skarmory and Heatran, which will rise as an effective core to counter these but won't work because once one of them falls the rest of the team will crumble, will come to dominate the anti-evasion teams which will pack frosslass, gliscor and the rest of the evasion abusing family.

these two paragraphs are so misguided it makes me want to cry. You're coming at this as if we're trying to bring down SV/SC. Newsflash: You've been playing with these abilities since the start of Gen IV! Note how centralizing they were there, without sun and rain to save you if you're that hax-paranoid. Now, in Gen V, they suck even more! At the very best, as Jimera so kindly calculated, you're facing SV/SC in all of 6.77% of battles. If it was a good strategy, as you assume, it wouldn't have a usage of jackshit on the 1337 stats. It would be centralizing already.

there's no need to hypothetical for the anti-ban argument. you already know what the game is like, and assuming the status quo would change is redonkulous (because lefties makes you harder to KO than BrightPowder with SV/SC)

SJCrew · Feb 16, 2012

SJCrew, so somehow needing to use an attack to make use of the double critical hit rate or needing to use Body Slam for that 60% paralysis chance, is not as "bad" a hax than a passive 20% evasion boost. And somehow that passive evasion boost is just as egregious a hax as Moody?

Yes. I'd much rather use any move I want and acquire a similar effect to Serene Grace than to be restricted to a handful of options that abuse the 'hax' it provides. Moody is the worst thing to happen to competitive Pokemon, true, but that stunt Garchomp pulled soon after with Sub SD wasn't that far behind. Unlike having a Pokemon become Uber because it's blatantly powerful, you feel like you should have won a match if X didn't miss because of that damned Sand Veil. That's probably #1 on the top five ways to lose. Even on a psychological level, Evasion is indefensibly bad for competitive Pokemon.

Here is the fact: you cannot do anything about Jirachi's doubled secondary effects;

Why do I have to? The only one it uses with any degree of regularity is Iron Head, and you're probably going to run out of PP before you flinch a stall team to death. There simply aren't as many ways to abuse Serene Grace as there are Evasion.

Jirachi's Body Slam has a 60% paralysis rate and Iron head has a 60% flinch rate no matter what you use (unless you're using Inner Focus mons). How do you deal with Jirachi? By utilizing Pokemon that can either shrug off its Iron Head barrages (ie Heatran / Magnezone / Skarmory) or hit it hard and fast so it is too weak to continue its luck fest on a 2nd Pokemon.

What I find most interesting about that list is that those counters seem to disappear if he had Sand Veil instead and used Sub CM. Either way, you're telling me that he can't hax his way through counters, so I guess the point about Serene Grace being as influential as Sand Veil is pretty moot.

Let's NOT forget that Smogon is a competitive battling community. Yes, a Sand Veil miss is annoying; so is a timely critical hit, Rock Slide flinch, or Ice Fang freeze. As competitive players, we (complain, but) accept and adapt to such inconveniences that take place in our matches. We separate ourselves from the newbs who clause everything that they have trouble - "only 1 legend to a team!" "SubSeed is gay, don't use!" "NO BATON PASS"

I've addressed this before. If we were a competitive Pokemon community that should be able to deal with any and all conveniences, we wouldn't have had to ban Garchomp from OU, Hail from UU, or indiscriminately ban Evasion-boosting moves in the first place. Individual cases are not an excuse to allow an ability that does the same thing as the moves we already banned. Banning Evasion is not about the Pokemon that use it so much as it is the influence the mechanic itself has on the game -- universally bad.

The only reason people don't complain about Super Luck is the lack of evidence. To start with, there's nothing we can do about crits on any level. We can't prove that these critical hits are happening more than they normally would since even at 12.5%, the success rate is too small to observe, not to mention the crits don't always happen in cases where they would KO a Pokemon. Suppose I switched my Lucario in on a critical hit Night Slash from Absol. 38.8% - 45.9%; weak. We only have two Pokemon that can really use the ability (not counting Togekiss, who doesn't even get Air Cutter to abuse it with), both of which are far too poor to use in standard play, so there's literally no evidence that Super Luck is decisively bad for competitive Pokemon. On the other hand we have loads of evidence proving that Evasion is intrinsically harmful to competitive Pokemon. It doesn't even humor an effective comparison.

X5Dragon · Feb 16, 2012

They suck! Your a newb who is outplayed! They aren't popular now! Let me paste the things that I think I can reply to and ignore everything else! XYZ is even more haxier and it isn't banned so suck it up!

Well at least it took 6 pages to reach this level so I think that's a plus from last time. I think the mods should push for closing statements, there isn't anything new that hasn't been said already.

And if I can correct my colleague Pocket, Sand Veil and Snow Cloak are indeed a static 20%, but the move substitute and unbanning lax incense/bright powder which increases the actual evasion rate and no effective counters and the overcentralizing part is what brought this thread in the first place.

There is no other ability that can benefit from an item and a substitute as much as evasion boosting abilities.

DHR-107 · Feb 16, 2012

A last question;

Why is this being brought up now... These abilities have been around for 2 generations... No new "abusers" have come in GenV, the only MOVE is Acrobatics on SD Gliscor.

I honestly don't see how these evasion abilities even matter. The maths is there.
All the Pokemon involved are pants (Gliscor is much better [And a lot more annoying] with Toxic Orb).

Surely if they "break the metgame" (which they don't), we would of seen this massive shift to using them? If there were more than just 2 Pokemon "abusing" it in OU (And decent Pokemon at that) then possibly. But there aren't. Dragon Rider and Jimera0 basically summed it all up for me.

@Above, someone already did the math earlier that explained Leftovers > Brightpowder in the case of 90% or less accurate moves in terms of evasion (On a pokemon without SV/SC).

AasTmO · Feb 16, 2012

Actually, lefties benefit a SV/SC mon more... but alas, I drift off. I'll try to make an overview of the discussion, for as far as possible.

Arguments pro evasion ban
1: Evasion can decide matches by giving a pokemon a free turn, for which he has to do nothing.
2: Evasion overcentralizes
3: Evasion cannot be countered within the meta
4: Evasion lets our opponent decide how accurate our moves are, as opposed to we deciding it ourselves; If I use Ice Beam for the 100% hit-rate, I want it to hit 100%.
5: Evasion lets luck dominate skill.
6: Substitute can basically multiply the chances of dodging an attack, hereby increasing the evasion that much more for free.

These arguments were (besides flaming and ad hominems) responded to by
1: The pokemon that have Snow Cloak / Sand Veil as abilities generally do not have enough power to be able to decide a match with 1 free turn, and it is not even that likely to get that free turn. In the case of evasion items, the chance of it happening is smaller than that of one of the 100acc/90pow moves statusing, which can decide a match just as well (imagine a starmie Ice Beam freezing your Tentacruel)
2: If evasion would overcentralize, why is it not there already? It's available in many forms and ways, yet no-one really uses it.
3: In the case of abilities, weather changing does that, other than that, Machamp and infinite accuracy moves do that. Just hitting hard might very well work as well. Alternatively, take a look at Hazards. They can't be countered within the meta, but over the course of years, Rapid Spin has found his way in, while it's arguably worse than infinite accuracy moves
4: But there is so much decided by your opponent... Evasion is just one of many things. @ the 100% rate: You'll want it to OHKO Salamence with Hidden Power Ice, too, but he can run Yache to survive. You can't determine everything in a pokemon game.
5: It doesn't, as the luck will only kick in in a small amount of games, even on a team that's built to abuse it.
6: The odds of missing a 100% accuracy attack vs a pokemon with BrightPowder setting up 5 substitutes are 41%. So, in 41% of the cases, a pokemon will be at 1% health with a free substitute, and (in all but 8% of the cases) no boosts. That's not a gamebreaking advantage at all..
Sub+Lefties+SV/SC is a bit more obscene though, with 41% chance of getting one free turn, and 26% chance of getting one more. The thing here is that in current OU there are no pokemon that can reliably abuse these free turns, as the SV pokemon (Gliscor, Cacturne) are pretty easily walled when using a SubSD set, and the SC set rely on hail in the first place, which is hard to keep up, and are quite easily countered as well (Froslass, Glaceon, Beartic)

Arguments contra ban of evasion in any way:
1: It's a non-significant portion of the metagame. (in a generous estimate 6,7% of the teams use it, and in a more generous estimate, <1% of matches are decided by it as shown here)
2: It hurts the metagame more than it benefits it.
3: Luck is part of the game, and as such, so is evasion.
4: Only things that are truly broken, that the metagame has no way to deal with, should be banned, and evasion is not one of them.
5: There are many more ways of hax (HaxRachi, FlinchKiss, Quick Claw, Focus Band), why ban this one and not ban those others?

Responded to by: (again, disregarding flaming and other happiness)
1: It may not be a big portion, but if it decides 1% of my matches, that's 1% too much (4% has been falsely thrown around here, but that's irrelevant)
2: It lets luck take over over skill, which is something unwanted in the metagame. The "banning" of Froslass, Sandslash, Cacturne and friends on their respective weather teams is collateral damage and not more hurting than the hax on them is (refer to argument 5 pro)
3: Luck currently is part of the game, but we can't do anything about most of the luck, i.e. critical hits. This is part of luck we can combat, and as we should minimalize luck, we should combat.
4: I didn't read any real arguments against this so far, besides from perhaps strawmanning that evasion is broken, the metagame just hasn't figured out yet.
5: Irrelevant, we're talking about evasion now.

I believe I caught the most of it as neutral as possible. Had I missed something, I'd be glad to edit it in if pointed out in a not ad-hominem way. I suggest y'all stop flaming at eachother for having different opinions, either way. Deal with the argument, not the person argumenting.

X5Dragon · Feb 16, 2012

I don't making a list is a good thing but there always counter arguments to counter arguments. In any case you are a pro-unbanning users so mention these things:

Mention in the pro-ban arguments about the boost to SV/SC gets when it uses Bright Powder/Lax Incense and the move substitute and the difference between it and Flame Body, Static, etc.

Don't forgot to mention precedents such as SubSD Garchomp and how complex banning would help in these cases.

Also saying that why isn't paraflinch and the rest isn't banned yet isn't an argument seeing how this thread is focusing on one subject and isn't open to anything else atm.

megados · Feb 16, 2012

Have to say that less banns the better. If we bann this then where does it stop? And personally sand viel/ snow cloak are not that broken. Further more evasion items are not that good to use simply because it takes up the held item. I do however think that a bann on a combination of sand viel/ snow cloak and a evasion boosting item should be banned the reason for this is that the two put together gives you a 40% increase in evasion. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Evasion Clause Discussion Topic

blarajan

Complications

Adamant Zoroark

catchy catchphrase

Jimera0

Stratos

Banned deucer.

Complications

Paolo

Aeromence

jas61292

used substitute

KurashiDragon

Dragon Rider

ssbbm

Jimera0

AasTmO

KurashiDragon

SJCrew

Believer, going on a journey...

X5Dragon

Pocket

be the upgraded version of me

Stratos

Banned deucer.

SJCrew

Believer, going on a journey...

X5Dragon

DHR-107

Robot from the Future

AasTmO

X5Dragon

megados

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