Jimera0 said:
When was the last time you've lost a game to Sand Veil? Probably back in the Garchomp era for a lot of us, and for the rest of us maybe once or twice from Gliscor.
DetroitLolcat said:
Sand Veil is a thoroughly mediocre ability that marginally affects the metagame even if Garchomp is allowed
You can't be serious...SubSD Gliscor was
very common in late BW1; it was all over the ladder, Funkasaurus used one to win the last BW OU Smogon Tour of season 13, YAYtears abused it to win the first PO Official Tournament, and it was used in not one, not two, but
several high-level battles in the World Cup. Hell, I've even seen several AcroBats from the top players on the BW2 ladder. Losing a game to Sand Veil is much more common than it may seem at first glance, and it allows lesser players to defeat better ones without skill, but rather luck. Before you mention that lesser players can also beat better ones through other sources of luck, such as critical hits, those are not abused nearly as easily. SubSD Gliscor is intentionally
passively abusing luck. If you say that Gliscor with a free turn isn't as deadly as Garchomp, you're missing the bigger point; of course it isn't as strong or fast, but giving it a free turn [or several, which is very realistic] is still not good and can instantly end games if the opponent doesn't have a Skarmory or the rare Quagsire [let's all run Skarmory on every team now, there's no way we'll ever lose to SV Glis or Chomp again!!!]. It's different from Serene Grace Iron Head spam with Jirachi; when fishing for flinches with Jira, you are also trying to get hax, but as opposed to Sand Veil, you are using your turn to attempt to immobilize your opponent. Gliscor passively sits behind a Substitute and Swords Dances as it pleases while you can't hit it with 100% attacks. SV Glis turns one of its best counters, Rotom-W, into set-up fodder, simply because Hydro Pump's accuracy is turned from Stone Edge into practically Hypnosis, and we all know how terrible of a move Hypnosis is.
To all the people who bring up Cacturne as an example of a 'mon who "isn't broken with Sand Veil": Eo Ut Mortus once got to first on the ladder with a Gliscor + Cacturne team simply by abusing the fuck out of Sand Veil. He's a very good player of course, but that says a lot about how terrible SV is for the metagame. I deliberately refrained from using the words uncompetitive/broken because then one of the pro-Sand Veil people will capitalize on that part of my post, ignore everything else, and twist the word so it fits to their ideals [such as DetroitLolcat's "don't ban anything just deal with it" vibe that I'm getting from his posts].
An example of how retarded Sand Veil is: I once had a 6-1 lead when my opponent sent out his Gliscor on my Hippowdon. Along with Ice Fang on Hippo, I had a Hidden Power Ice Forretress, and a Scarfed Ice Punch Jirachi. Gliscor subbed, danced, and 2HKO'd my Hippowdon as I missed
four Ice Fangs, 2HKO'd my Forretress as I missed HP Ice, and dodged Jirachi's Ice Punch as it OHKO'd with Earthquake. It then killed my other 3 Pokemon and I lost. My team was not weak to Gliscor at all, but I lost anyways. I can name several more examples of Gliscor single-handedly winning someone a game that they should've lost.
My tone in this post isn't very friendly and I realize that but when I see posts saying that Sand Veil is a mediocre ability, or that it [happening] isn't common, it kind of makes me think that the people making these posts don't play the goddamn game because SV is far from mediocre, far from uncommon, and far from good for the metagame.
On a different note, I'm very happy to see Rough Skin Garchomp being tested. I don't think it's broken at all without the ability to dodge everything you throw at it. Rocky Helmet + Rough Skin could be cool to deter Genesect from constantly U-turning...
EDIT:
zyrefredric said:
people are only complaining about Sand Veil Garchomp
lol