I still don't understand why we don't just get rid of the evasion increase from sand veil. All we have to do is extend the evasion clause to abilities like sand veil and brightpowder, because they in fact also depend on luck. I don't mean not allowing pokemon with sand veil to be used in OU, I mean just not taking the extra evasion into account in the attack calculations that shoddy or competitor uses.
It's not a good idea to have battle simulators differ from the actual game in any significant way, because then you will have two entirely different Pokemon metagames emerging, and that can be very confusing when discussing the game.
I don't even like the concept of the Freeze Clause on Shoddy.
I agree with literally everything stated by Cynthia. Especially on the point of Sand Veil vs Intimidate. It's a difficult argument to say that an ability that works literally 20% of the time (or less if the move is not 100% acc) is better than a reliable attack cut that works every time, particularly with the prerequisite of having a sandstorm on the field in the first place.
For simple attack potency, Salamence matches if not beats Garchomp on the basis that it has better answers to steels with a significantly better special attack to back up its fire move in trade for a second dangerous STAB.
edit: Wrap in RBY works more than 20% of the time.
Intimidate works 100% of the time
once, when Salamence/Gyarados/whatever switches into the battle. After that it might as well be Run Away or Pick Up because it isn't doing anything until the Pokemon switches in again, unless it gets Traced.
Sand Veil, with Sandstorm up, works 20% of the time
on every attack. Sand Veil has many more opportunities to work than Intimidate does.
Intimidate is absolutely useless against Special or non-damaging attacks. Sand Veil works against
any attack that attempts to hit Garchomp.
Sand Veil has far more potential to be abused than Intimidate.
As if the Garchomp user can't predict either...why this "predict" argument continues to crop up on one side but not the other astonishes me.
Honestly, I don't know.
Neither player can have telepathic prediction, and
someone is going to get outpredicted in any exchange between two Pokemon.
That Garchomp can be countered by prediction and that Garchomp can counter anything with prediction are both equally valid statements that cancel each other out and get
nowhere.
Except you seem to forget, Rain Dance and Sunny Day actually require a turn to set up, where as Sandstorm simply requires switching a pokemon in. Who is going to use Sunny Day on Cresselia, when on the Moonlight turn, any respectable player is just going to bring their Tyranitar back in and not only screw over the use of Moonlight, but also net themelves a free Dragon Dance or Substitute when the Cresselia is forced to switch out. Now you could say the Cresselia user could predict this and bring in a Dugtrio or the like on the second turn when they think the Tyranitar is coming, but then they've wasted a moveslot on Cresselia for nothing. Last time I checked, Cresselia can't afford to give up any moveslots for pointless moves like Sunny Day. Nearly all my friends (who are into competitive battling) play with Sandstorm teams for a reason. They are overpowered, easy to set up, screw over common strategies like Focus Sash, and thus are commonly used. You can't really make the argument that Garchomp without the sand is different from Garchomp in the sand, because the two almost always go hand in hand.
I wouldn't consider using an attack to lure out a threatening Pokemon so that a teammate can KO it as a wasted moveslot, I would call that teamwork.
