Garchomp and Sand Veil Discussion

[DrDLO]

Consider a Gliscor with Swagger, for instance. He's just lowered all your moves to 50% accuracy!

in using this as an example for how sand veil can be uncompetitive:
vs faster opponent (i know this thread is mainly garchomp, but i like this point):
1) LO starmie goes for ice beam on swagger gliscor (nonSV) before it uses swagger. Dead gliscor
2) Same starmie uses ice beam against SV gliscor and it misses. Boom it subs/KOs with earthquake or acrobatics.

vs slower opponent
1) Gliscor uses swagger against Ice punch conkeldurr to reduce moves to 50%, while conkeldurr still has the chance to KO if it breaks through confusion (hax is acceptable because the opponent used a turn to induce it and can suffer the consequences if it fails).
2) Gliscor subs against that conkeldurr, it misses and now gliscor can SD for the next poke, or KO it flat out and be behind a sub for the next poke while conk can't do anything due to the now reduced accuracy against the once-sure move. Here the gliscor user basically received 2 turns for free or got a buy one move, get a protect free. (granted a faster acrobat SV gliscor wins here anyway but doesn't get the possible second turn free without sand veil)

Sand veil may not be horrible for lower teir stuff, but when it comes to gliscor or garchomp in particular (who has the amazing base stats and great stabs to punish that one miss), it can be uncompetitive. Hope I explained the two cases well enough, but if there are holes in it please point them out -_-

 

[Schpoonman]

I didn't choose for my opponent to flinch me with iron head

Okay, this is something that's been bugging me. No, obviously there's not a damn thing you can do when Jirachi has a 60% chance of you not doing anything on your turn, when it outspeeds you. But if you're complaining that your entire team got paralyzed and then paraflinch-haxed to death, that's on YOU, not the game.

Your opponent outplayed you and removed anything fast and powerful enough to take out Jirachi before it Iron Headed you to death. If you ran a team of super slow, super bulky Pokemon, then that's also on you, because you didn't use anything fast enough to break the all-important base 100 speed mark.

And unlike Sand Veil, you have to commit that turn to hax. If Jirachi ever doesn't use Iron Head on a turn, like to Wish or use Thunder Wave or Body Slam, then you are free to take your turn, and if you were already paralyzed your chances of making a move and turning Jirachi on its head skyrocket from a measly 30% to 75%.

Sand Veil is not that kind. Yes, dropping from 100% to 80% is not bad on paper. It's never "bad on paper". But there is absolutely nothing you can do about that. You can play around Serene Grace. You can run a Quick Feet Pokemon or something that has Inner Focus and give zero fucks about Iron Head.

But when Ice Beam misses twice in a row because the RNG is a bitch that game, and Gliscor proceeds to sweep you and there is nothing you can do about that, when by all accounts your team should have been able to handle it?

I feel like reposting BKC's post about how Gliscor turned a 6-1 into a 0-1 would be redundant at this point.

 

[HabibsHotDogs]

Regardless of how important the 20% evasion is (in my opinion it is negligible), the fact is Garchomp with no ability at all would still most likely be OU. Gliscor with sand veil in my opinion is fine.. Crying about a Starmie missing her ice beam is pointless, what about those countless physical powerhouses that (just) fail to 2hko Gliscor because of poison heal, are we going to whinge about that too?


Abilities give pokemon advantages: in this case it allows Garchomp to set up multiple substitutes (in sand) on a slower pokemon until it misses or until it switches out and then Garchomp would have 1 free turn to do something.

This in turn made Garchomp too OP for BW. Now BW2 brings some changes that MAY make sand veil Garchomp more balanced.. However I don't see it, it's far too bulky. Rough skin takes away that advantage that Garchomp had either:

1. Most of the time when using the sub + SD on a slower opponent
or
2. 20% of the time when the revenger managed to miss a critical move.



Now Garchomp will not have such an easy time to set up it's substitute, nor will anybody have to worry about 100% accurate moves missing. This in turn (in my opinion) makes Garchomp viable.

Ofcourse now there is the problem of complex vs. simple ban. In my opinion PH Gliscor is common enough that the metagame will barely notice if it lost out on sand veil, Cacturne is uncommon enough for us to draw the same conclusion. In the interest of making OU more accessible.. I believe that the simple ban of just sand veil is the most appropriate thing to do, or at least a "not-so-complex" ban, perhaps SS + SV.

edit: I don't see why abilities like keen eye can't just ignore evasion changes.. or why GF can't balance their game over-all, gen 5 was more nasty then gen 4 by far in terms of non-legendaries in uber... or close to it (multiscale dragonite, volcarona, terrakion, swift swim kingdra + politoed, etc)

 

[deluge]

You may be able to do nothing about a Sand Veil Garchomp in the same way that you may able to do nothing about a Chlorophyll Venusaur or Sand Rush Excadrill. If you've lost the weather war, your team is outsped by the latter two, and you lack a counter then your loss is essentially certain. But even then, Excadrill's Rock Slide could miss against Rotom-W while Hydro Pump connects and OHKOs so you keep playing. Uncertainty is a part of Pokemon and encourages players to see battles through since they may have a turn in their favor.

If a Garchomp player manages to reduce the game to a scenario in which Sand Veil may activate against a faster revenge-killer he has just eked out a slight chance to win. It's the same kind of risk you'd be open to if you have to rely on Hydro Pump or Stone Edge (which you chose for the moveset) hitting (in the rain) in order to win. So what if the risk is imposed on you by the opponent's team building choices and manner of play? Why is that wrong?

I really dislike an editorial decision that "Sand Veil is bad" and no Pokemon should have it. As far as I understand it the purpose of suspect testing is to determine whether a strategy or Pokemon is "overpowered" not whether you like it or not. I think a strong argument can be made that evasion moves are overpowered due to their high distribution and the ability to stack boosts. I think the argument is much weaker for evasion items but since those may be stacked with evasion boosting abilities there was some (slight) justification. But now I think we have a runaway train when we're talking about banning a marginal ability just because it moderately boosts evasion under SPECIFIC unguaranteed battle conditions.

This just feels very wrong and unecessary to me. I don't think we're justified in eviscerating Garchomp and several other Pokemon then claiming to test it. That is not a proper test. The same process could be applied to Blaziken and Excadrill. Will it be done? Why not? Is it because their abilites are not evasion boosting? Why is it worse to have a 20% chance to lose due to a Sand Veil induced miss versus a 100% chance to lose (barring misses by the offense) because Excadrill and Blaziken leave your whole team in the dust? Blaziken and Excadrill were deemed overpowered and banned without trying to do surgery on them and their abilities weren't denied to other Pokemon. IMO, Garchomp should be (BW2-)tested in its full capacity and a decision made based on Garchomp's attributes as they are. That would be a true Garchomp test from which an educated decision could be made.

One of the reasons I think it would be worthwhile is the fact that life is generally more difficult for Tyranitar in this metagame. So many Pokemon got Superpower while fighting and rain offense is quite common and powerful. It'll probably be even harder to bring Sand Veil's slight benefit consistently into play.

 

[Schpoonman]

If you've lost the weather war, then your opponent outplayed you or you took the risk of using a hi-power, low-accuracy move like Stone Edge or Hydro Pump instead of Rock Slide or Surf, and you payed the price.

And that's the difference: It came down to the players' actions during team-building and during the game. Sand Veil removes the game from the players' hands and gives it to the guy with Gliscor or Garchomp or Cacturne, free of charge.

As for Blaziken and Excadrill, if Garchomp minus Sand Veil turns out to be a good thing, then maybe they can be tested without their game-breaking abilities now that we have a precedent of complex bans.

 

[Sewa]

Okay, this is something that's been bugging me. No, obviously there's not a damn thing you can do when Jirachi has a 60% chance of you not doing anything on your turn, when it outspeeds you. But if you're complaining that your entire team got paralyzed and then paraflinch-haxed to death, that's on YOU, not the game.

Your opponent outplayed you and removed anything fast and powerful enough to take out Jirachi before it Iron Headed you to death. If you ran a team of super slow, super bulky Pokemon, then that's also on you, because you didn't use anything fast enough to break the all-important base 100 speed mark.

And unlike Sand Veil, you have to commit that turn to hax. If Jirachi ever doesn't use Iron Head on a turn, like to Wish or use Thunder Wave or Body Slam, then you are free to take your turn, and if you were already paralyzed your chances of making a move and turning Jirachi on its head skyrocket from a measly 30% to 75%.

Sand Veil is not that kind. Yes, dropping from 100% to 80% is not bad on paper. It's never "bad on paper". But there is absolutely nothing you can do about that. You can play around Serene Grace. You can run a Quick Feet Pokemon or something that has Inner Focus and give zero fucks about Iron Head.

-Well, the same thing can be said for SV.
YOU didn't use a weather starter (or maybe YOU lost the weather war and your opponent outplayed you)
-You HAVE to do something to get Sand Veil, as you have to sub if you don't want opponent's scald/ice beam/etc.. to burn or OHKO you
-75% is lower than 80%, last time I checked.
-you can always run a fucking Scarf Machamp with Ice Punch (ah, also, Inner Focus and Quick Feet pokemon still suffer 25% chance (25 > 20) to not move during the turn).

 

[deluge]

If you've lost the weather war, then your opponent outplayed you or you took the risk of using a hi-power, low-accuracy move like Stone Edge or Hydro Pump instead of Rock Slide or Surf, and you payed the price.

And that's the difference: It came down to the players' actions during team-building and during the game. Sand Veil removes the game from the players' hands and gives it to the guy with Gliscor or Garchomp or Cacturne, free of charge.

As for Blaziken and Excadrill, if Garchomp minus Sand Veil turns out to be a good thing, then maybe they can be tested without their game-breaking abilities now that we have a precedent of complex bans.

The player who hopes to benefit from Sand Veil has to include Tyranitar or Hippowdon along with the Sand Veil Pokemon thus restricting team-building options. He has to forego other abilities (residual healing with Poison Heal for Gliscor or residual damage with Rough Skin for Garchomp). Then he has to play so as to ensure that sandstorm is active when the Sand Veil Pokemon are in play. And for all that trouble his opponent still has a BETTER CHANCE OF HITTING HIS POKEMON than missing with any move over 70% accuracy (most competitive moves). How is that free of charge and what is the huge gain? I think people are really exaggerating the benefit of Sand Veil and downplaying the risks/costs of trying to rely on it. It is a small bonus. If a certain Pokemon is able to do too much with that bonus our focus should be on that Pokemon not the ability. But we really haven't checked to see what Garchomp would be like in BW2.

As for the precedent of going all CAP on Pokemon to fit it into the metagame? I don't think that's a precedent we should be proud of setting. It's the power of precedent (moves...items...) that allowed an evasion boosting ability to be so nonchalantly banned without any evidence that it is overpowered in its own right.

 

[ginganinja]

If a Garchomp player manages to reduce the game to a scenario in which Sand Veil may activate against a faster revenge-killer he has just eked out a slight chance to win. It's the same kind of risk you'd be open to if you have to rely on Hydro Pump or Stone Edge (which you chose for the moveset) hitting (in the rain) in order to win. So what if the risk is imposed on you by the opponent's team building choices and manner of play? Why is that wrong?

Because the player playing against Sand Veil has no choice, if you use Hydro Pump over Surf, then you are favouring power over accuracy, you are also accepting that there will be games you might lose if you miss. Sand Veil gives you no choice in the matter, every move you use, pretty much has a 20% chance to fail, nor can you account for this during teambuilding. As someone pointed out earlier, his Hippowdon, Jirachi and Forry (?) all missed there respective Ice attacks against a Gliscor. There was nothing you could do against this, its not your fault, nothing you can prepare for, you just got trolled by Sand Veil and lost the game because of it. I myself, had my Skarmory lose to Sand Veil Garchmop (when it was OU) simply because Whirlwind refused to hit.

The fact that you appear to completely understand Evasion items being banned (10% chance to miss) and not understand Sand Veil (20% chance to miss) makes me slightly confused (especially since leftovers chomp was technically better than brightpowder chomp).

Bringing Up Excadrill and Blaziken in a response to Sand Veil is rather flawed, since Sand Rush and Speed Boost are not really "broken" abilities, whereas players have demonstrated that even even with Garchomp banned, Sand Veil continues to have a detrimental effect on the metagame. Ideally, for our metagame to be enjoyable and "fair" I support some sort of ban (limited or complex) on Sand Veil. Serene Grace shouldn't really be compared to Sand Veil, yes, Jirachi has a 60% chance to flinch you, however a) Jirachi doesn't get a free turn when it flinches you, it needs to continue to spam Iron Head and b) its Jirachi doing this, and we all know Serene Grace Sawsbuck isn't broken. Its now apparent, that even when Garchomp was banned, Sand Veil still had a very detrimental effect on the metagame via Sand Veil Gliscor, which caused many players to lose when they would have otherwise won. Therefore, Sand Veil needs to go

Lastly, before anyone brings up Cacturne (the only mon that is really affected by a sand veil ban) it was my understanding that sandstorm was banned in all the lower tiers, ergo, Cacturne running Water Absorb shouldn't be a massive problem, when Sand Veil wouldn't be in effect anyway. I prolly got something wrong here, since I am very unfamiliar with the lower tiers, but to me it seems as if Cacturne doesn't really lose out on Sand Veil being banned. (As I said, must be missing something so if someone could politely tell me what im missing, that would be swell)

The player who hopes to benefit from Sand Veil has to include Tyranitar or Hippowdon along with the Sand Veil Pokemon thus restricting team-building options. He has to forego other abilities (residual healing with Poison Heal for Gliscor or residual damage with Rough Skin for Garchomp). Then he has to play so as to ensure that sandstorm is active when the Sand Veil Pokemon are in play. And for all that trouble his opponent still has a BETTER CHANCE OF HITTING HIS POKEMON than missing with any move over 70% accuracy (most competitive moves). How is that free of charge and what is the huge gain? I think people are really exaggerating the benefit of Sand Veil and downplaying the risks/costs of trying to rely on it.

Having to run Sandstorm isn't really that much of a restriction. Tyranitar is a good enough pokemon on its own to run onto a team, and its not like Gliscor or Garchomp need heavy team support to be chucked onto a team. Sure, against Sun and Rain teams, you need Sandstorm up, the tricky part is that all the player needs to do is to a) get Sand up (not even kill the opposing weather inducer) and b) get your Sand Veil abuser in safely. If this occurs, you then have to bring in your Toed / Ninetales (giving Gliscor for example a free Substitute), and then switch back out to avoid your weather inducer taking heavy damage and thus losing you the game. This is why the simple "change the weather" arguments didn't work in the Excadrill discussions, you have to actually switch in to change the weather, take damage, switch out, and it results in a massive loss in momentum. As for the "its not a huge gain", its actually a pretty nice gain. Statistically, if you have something such as Substitute, and Swords Dance, you can stall for a miss, giving you a free turn to keep your sub up, boost, kill something which is gold in pokemon. Never, ever underestimate the power of a free turn in pokemon, especially against any player with a certain degree of skill. It gives them massive amounts of momentium, and puts you in a shit position, and a really shit position if they used that free turn to boost / kill your counter to X because your move missed etc etc.

EDIT @ Below

I don't think you got my point, but I still don't understand your posts / argument at all so its not like I intend to respond to you xD

 

[deluge]

Because the player playing against Sand Veil has no choice, if you use Hydro Pump over Surf, then you are favouring power over accuracy, you are also accepting that there will be games you might lose if you miss. Sand Veil gives you no choice in the matter, every move you use, pretty much has a 20% chance to fail, nor can you account for this during teambuilding. As someone pointed out earlier, his Hippowdon, Jirachi and Forry (?) all missed there respective Ice attacks against a Gliscor. There was nothing you could do against this, its not your fault, nothing you can prepare for, you just got trolled by Sand Veil and lost the game because of it. I myself, had my Skarmory lose to Sand Veil Garchmop (when it was OU) simply because Whirlwind refused to hit.

Respectfully, I don't think the "it's not my choice" argument is relevant. You are not supposed to have all the choice. The extreme pole of this attitude is wishing to move for your opponent or select his Pokemon. Why should I be able to select powerful but less accurate moves during teambuilding for the potential reward and my opponent not be entitled to punish me through his team building and manipulation of battle conditions? If you were intending to blast through me with rain boosted Hydro Pumps and I control the weather and leave you choice-locked into a 60% accurate move against Garchomp good for me!

In any case, I leave the argument as to whether Garchomp itself is broken open. But I'm pretty certain a Sand Veil ban is not warranted on the grounds that the ability is overpowered.

(As any aside, I find the notion of "losing when you would otherwise have won" very questionable and impossible to validate or prove. This is merely a psychological reaction: the mental conviction that one didn't deserve to lose because one "doesn't like" the manner of loss. So if Hydro Pump misses in the rain that's unfortunate but OK; if Ice Beam misses because of Gliscor's Sandveil the loss was undeserved. But there is no fundamental difference except that one loss was due to your opponent's choices and manner of play while the other was due to yours. I guess people rather lose because of themselves than because of their opponent. But this psychological reaction is hardly a reason to ban something, IMO)

Having to run Sandstorm isn't really that much of a restriction. Tyranitar is a good enough pokemon on its own to run onto a team, and its not like Gliscor or Garchomp need heavy team support to be chucked onto a team. Sure, against Sun and Rain teams, you need Sandstorm up, the tricky part is that all the player needs to do is to a) get Sand up (not even kill the opposing weather inducer) and b) get your Sand Veil abuser in safely. If this occurs, you then have to bring in your Toed / Ninetales (giving Gliscor for example a free Substitute), and then switch back out to avoid your weather inducer taking heavy damage and thus losing you the game. This is why the simple "change the weather" arguments didn't work in the Excadrill discussions, you have to actually switch in to change the weather, take damage, switch out, and it results in a massive loss in momentum. As for the "its not a huge gain", its actually a pretty nice gain. Statistically, if you have something such as Substitute, and Swords Dance, you can stall for a miss, giving you a free turn to keep your sub up, boost, kill something which is gold in pokemon. Never, ever underestimate the power of a free turn in pokemon, especially against any player with a certain degree of skill. It gives them massive amounts of momentium, and puts you in a shit position, and a really shit position if they used that free turn to boost / kill your counter to X because your move missed etc etc.

My point was that it was not "free" as Lord of Bays implied not that is is extremely burdensome. By no means is Ttar a bad Pokemon but you do have to include it and deal with covering its weaknesses thus impacting team bulilding. Furthermore you do have to dominate the weather war in the actual battle. And after all that you do not guarantee yourself a free turn and even if you get one you cannot predict when it will occur. A lot of times when people are arguing for bans they assume everything will go right for the suspect and everything will go wrong for its opponent. They assume the suspect has all the advantages. I was challenging that notion.

 

[Jimera0]

@Ginganinja

Just to fill you in, the deal with Cacturne isn't that it needs Sand Veil itself (it doesn't, not outside of OU anyway), but that it loses access to a lot of important moves such as Encore and Bullet Seed when it is forced to go with its DW ability. I've seen people say that they worry it would make Cacturne completely non-viable in any tier, though how true that is I can't say, as I also don't play the lower tiers much at all.

As for SV itself, I've somewhat softened my view. It seems like the more experienced players who want it banned just want IT banned specifically (and Snow Cloak too I suppose) because of the specifics of it. Essentially, they aren't going after other sources of hax as well, which would really get me going. The key difference between SV/SC and other sources of hax is that it's passive and allows the Pokemon abusing it to do whatever it wants in the meantime while it activates. It also has a much greater impact than many other hax related things when it does happen (A poorly timed miss can easily lose a person a match, and on sets designed to abuse this it can do it more often than not) and there are very few ways to get around it. With Flame Body, for instance, you can just avoid using contact moves. But with SV, nothing short of the crappy 60BP always hit moves and the poorly distributed Aura Sphere can counter it, and those just aren't realistically feasible to use. All this means that there's pretty much no way to play around it without getting rid of the weather that activates it, which is troublesome in its own way. So basically, it becomes something that just happens sometimes and causes losses that cannot be avoided without overspecialized counters (like the Scarf Machamp mentioned above), which is something that a lot of people here think is noncompetitive.

So I can see where the debate is coming from, and as long as we're banning SV/SC as a specific case because of the impact it itself has, I can live with it. Reasons I wouldn't live with as well with are:
a) under the guise of making the evasion clause "consistent", which makes no logical sense.
b) In the name of removing luck in the name of skill, which threatens the way we make policy and could lead to other banning of hax related things like Serene Grace and abilities like Cursed Body and Flame Body.
c) other reasons I can't think of right now because it's like 4am and I'm tired.

That doesn't mean I really agree with the decision, but it's not something I'd consider worth making a big stink about. I do hope that we find some way to let Cacturne off in the lower tiers though, because the poor cactus-scarecrow-monster-thing needs all the help it can get.

 

[Lork]

i think the issue is that sand veil makes it *too* easy, rather than just easy, to set up and sweep with garchomp. gliscor is not as big a sweeping powerhouse, and so it is limited naturally by its drawbacks, but when one of the premier mons in ou can get behind a sub and/or have +2 in attack without requiring a lot of skill, then that's whack.

should be banned along the same lines as moody was i think.

 

[ginganinja]

My point was that it was not "free" as Lord of Bays implied not that is is extremely burdensome. By no means is Ttar a bad Pokemon but you do have to include it and deal with covering its weaknesses thus impacting team bulilding. Furthermore you do have to dominate the weather war in the actual battle. And after all that you do not guarantee yourself a free turn and even if you get one you cannot predict when it will occur. A lot of times when people are arguing for bans they assume everything will go right for the suspect and everything will go wrong for its opponent. They assume the suspect has all the advantages. I was challenging that notion.

o.k thanks for summing up your argument, I was unsure lol.

Currently, Tyrantar is sitting in the Top 10, which, if nothing else, shows just how popular it is, and how easy it is for it to be chucked into a team. Sets up Stealth Rock, traps Lati@s, gives you weather control vs Rain / Sun (in that you can try and fight them)... the list goes on. I do disagree that you have to win the weather war, since, from experience playing with Excadrill, I didn't need to win the weather war, in fact, lots of players didn't. All they did was set up Sand with Tar (Ninetales cannot really switch into Tyranitar, for fear of CB Stone Edge or Crunch), use the fact that Ninetales cannot switch in, and then double switch out to (in this case Excadrill). You would then have Sandstorm up, and Excadrill in play, and you could safely launch an Earthquake, forcing a KO, as well as forcing Ninetales to switch back in somehow to change the weather (and likely switch right back out unless its running a bit of speed).

In practise, the same principal applies with Sand Veil, you set SS up, you create a situation where Politoed cannot switch in, you get your Sand Veil abuser in, you start your cycle. Quite clearely, this sort of senario involves the opponents prediction skills as well, I am fully aware of this, however, most players can understand how simple it is to get SS + SV up, if not for the entire game, if just for a turn that Gliscor can use. For example say I bring Tyranitar in on something I can scare out (lets say that I am CB, and switched in on Blissey or something), you cannot bring in Toed against me, you need to pick something else that can handle me, so you bring in your defensive Rotom W / Ferrothorn, and I bring in SV Gliscor. The situation is not you need to hit a Hydro Pump / Power Whip under Sand, or I will Substitute or Swords Dance or do whatever, despite what you have claimed, I have just got you into a position where Sand Veil is active, and now you have roughly a 60% chance to hit me, basically chancing this on Hypnosis which can easily miss (I don't care about statistics, chances are you will miss), if you switch out, I got my free turn, I got a free Swords Dance, you brought your Specs Toed in, and now you have to switch back out for fear of taking a +2 EQ / Acrobat and thus losing the weather war, giving me yet another free turn.

Sure, people can nitpick my example, im sure its flawed, but its not the point, the point is that you don't even need to win the weather war to start abusing Sand Veil, all you need is to create a situation where the opposing weather starter cannot switch in (might be as easy as setting up SR to discourage Ninetales) and you can attempt to start abusing Sand Veil. Sure, your opponent is not guaranteed to miss, but statistically, when facing Gliscor and Chomp, the sets are designed to force a miss, designed to get that crucial free turn, and its clear from the viewpoints of many players, this actually happens, and its not a rare occurance. Quite frankly, for every game you don't miss any of your attacks against a Sand Veil abuser, there will be another game when your opponent misses 3 times (don't give me statistics please, it will happen T_T).

Don't get me wrong, I respect your argument, and yes, it is valid in that sometimes people do assume the suspect has all the advantages, I just feel that in this case, its really simple to gain that advantage, which makes it very difficult to handle Sand Veil

Sorry for the tl:dr you can skip to the last full paragraph if its too long :(

 

[jc104]

I would definitely like to see sand veil banned myself. Not only does it facilitate the unbanning of Garchomp, which so far seems to have a positive impact on the game, but it also removes one of the most irritating things in this game.

The problem with Sand Veil, for me, is that it serves no purpose but to introduce "hax" into the game. Every pokemon with sand veil has a more consistent and arguably more effective ability that can be used instead, and yet people opt merely to rely on luck. On top of this, Sand Veil is almost completely unavoidable unless you WIN the weather war. It's not the other way round - as ginga says all you have to do is get sand up briefly, and gliscor or garchomp or even cacturne can prevent you from switching the weather back without a significant cost, potentially 2 pokemon (one to get your weather starter in, and one to get it out). There is absolutely no way that is worth it. So basically, short of winning the weather war, which is in my opinion already far too important, sand veil prevents you from assuring victory no matter how well you play, and serves no purpose but to do so.

Yes, we can ban things that are just annoying because people don't like them. I can see lots of slippery slope arguments coming my way, but this is just a fact. "Brokenness" is frankly a completely ridiculous and ill-defined concept. The purpose of bans is to make the game more fun and competetive (possibly also to differentiate it from ubers), and sand veil fits in here perfectly, as do a number of annoying things.

 

[SpecsX]

You need to cover Ttar's weaknesses? Gliscor resists most of them, and a bulky water resists the rest, except for Grass. Add Magnezone to trap Steels. Add bulky Water. You can even add Hippo to create a double Sand team, which no other weather can feasibly do.
PS Cacturne loses Encore and Bullet Seed, both decent moves for it, and moves that would be missed.

PPS ginganinja pretty much said what I've been saying in this thread.

 

[Tressed]

I want to see Sand Veil and Snow Cloak gone, personally.

Double Team is a banned move from the competitive scene. It breaks the Evasion Clause that is generically applied to all Smogon battles. It was considered unhealthy for a skill-based metagame, since it rewards luck instead of skill, while taking the battle from both players' control and making the game (even more) luck based. It often created situations where the crucial miss changed the outcome of a match. For these reasons it is never seen in this competitive environment.

This was copy and pasted directly from the Double Team article, and frankly it seems that this treatment should extend to Sand Veil and Snow Cloak.

I see a lot of stuff about how this ability isn't broken because they have to win the weather war and such. However, what happens if both teams are Sand/Hail teams, or god forbid, one of the teams isn't running a weather inducer? Well, basically it becomes impossible to fully check them. You could make a team that makes Garchomp nearly useless, but if its in Sandstorm, you can't guarantee that you will be able to beat it. You could make the best weatherless team ever, and proceed to lose to someone who has no idea what they're doing, but they threw TTar and Chomp on a team, Sand Veil kicked in at bad times, and you lost.
Its not like Pokémon losing Sand Veil or Snow Cloak will become bad (Cacturne, maybe, but it was low in usage for a reason.) Garchomp won't mind losing Sand Veil for Rough Skin. Gliscor still has the excellent Poison Heal, and if you're running Sand Veil Donphan or Sandslash, you're doing it wrong. Froslass still gets Cursed Body, which does create hax, but is much more manageable, while Mamoswine gets Thick Fat, which is very good for Mamoswine. There is no reason as to why these Pokémon should use these abilities. Mamoswine and Gliscor used to have a good excuse before, because of moveset constrictions, but now they can run Dream World abilities without restricting themselves to inferior moves.
I would personally love to welcome Garchomp back to OU, but not if its going to be using cheap tricks. Sand Veil and Snow Cloak are simply uncompetitive abilities, on par with the likes of Moody, and I would hate for things like this to be a part of a game that is about skill not luck.

 

[RexTheHaxer]

Mmm, if I may say I think it's good ban Sand Veil but only in Garchomp to use it in OU :).
Gliscor with Sand Veil is interesting, and not as abusive as GChomp, that after a SD, destroys the ''enemy'' team.
Furthermore, with the addition of the Therians and Keldeo, the use of SS team has fallen and Rain teams increased in use.
I see no need to ban Sand Veil in Gliscor when not abused both her, and, moreover, is used more with Poison Heal.

And sorry for my english, I'm still learning ^^u

 

[Pocket]

ginganinja, as Jimera0 has explained, the reason why a Sand Veil ban is an issue for Cacturne is because it loses out on 2 important moves Encore and Bullet Seed, which see use in lower tiers. I'm against the "collateral nerfing" of viable Pokemon due to a ban.

Like you said activated Sand Veil is the problem, so we should combo ban Sandstream + Sand Veil, and eliminate any unnecessary repercussions from banning 20% sand evasion

 

[SpecsX]

ginganinja, as Jimera0 has explained, the reason why a Sand Veil ban is an issue for Cacturne is because it loses out on 2 important moves Encore and Bullet Seed, which see use in lower tiers. I'm against the "collateral nerfing" of viable Pokemon due to a ban.

Like you said activated Sand Veil is the problem, so we should combo ban Sandstream + Sand Veil, and eliminate any unnecessary repercussions from banning 20% sand evasion

I thought this was what the default option was. If we do ban SV, we have to consider other tiers. We can't ban things all willy-nilly. SV+SS is really the only logical solution, as it is simple, and doesn't affect lower tiers at all.
No doubt this post will be ignored, like my other posts here, but I have been saying this all along.

 

[jc104]

I think a sand veil ban could be applied to lower tiers with some common sense, couldn't it?

 

[SpecsX]

Yes. SV+SS are not allowed on the same team. I mean, that's a pretty simple ban, and I don't see why you would want to restrict the lower tiers. But what alternative ban are you thinking of?

 

[yee]

I thought this was what the default option was. If we do ban SV, we have to consider other tiers. We can't ban things all willy-nilly. SV+SS is really the only logical solution, as it is simple, and doesn't affect lower tiers at all.
No doubt this post will be ignored, like my other posts here, but I have been saying this all along.

I'd like to point out that bans in OU affecting lower tiers is completely insignificant- OU is the main Smogon tier so no tiering decision should compromise it at all. In this case it happens we could ban Sand Veil + Sand Stream and stop abuse of it while preserving Bullet Seed Cacturne in lower tiers. However, it is arguable that this compromises OU because now bringing Sand Veil abusers to take advantage of Sand teams is possible in the same way you can bring Kingdra against Rain to essentially have what was deemed "Uber" against the other team.

Edit- Yes, you can compromise non-OU as much as you want as long as it's in the best interest of OU.

 

[SpecsX]

That may be, but just because OU is the "official metagame" doesn't mean you can compromise every other popular meta when you want to ban something. If you are using SV Garchomp or Cacturne to attempt to hax Sand teams, than by all means, play a ton of ladder matches hoping to run into a sand team, and then hope to hax them. Unlike Swift Swim Kingdra, which has a guaranteed boost under Rain, Sand Veil's evasion boost is no where near guaranteeing a miss. Also, Gliscor and Garchomp have far more consistent abilities than SV. Cacturne only uses SV to use Encore and Bullet Seed, otherwise Water Absorb is used.

 

[Thorhammer]

However, it is arguable that this compromises OU because now bringing Sand Veil abusers to take advantage of Sand teams is possible in the same way you can bring Kingdra against Rain to essentially have what was deemed "Uber" against the other team.

So just as nonexistent of a concern, you're saying.

 

[Leader Fox]

Would a Complex ban still allow for a Sand Veil Garchomp on a Sun Team or a Rain Team, and can basically abuse any people running a Sand Team,?

 

[yee]

If Sand Veil + Sand Stream was banned rather than just Sand Veil, then yes. That scenario will probably not be allowed to happen.