I don't know why people keep saying Kecleon running Iron Tail is shit. Just the ability to go "ha ha no" to Toxic/gain an amazing defensive type in general makes it a useful move for Protean sets, in
addition to it letting Kecleon inheritors kill Fairy-type so-called counters. I
regularly run into Azelf with Iron Tail, and it dramatically extends their longevity.
Even if it misses, it can be valuable to use, thanks to Protean.
There isn't really... fuck it.
Kecleon
Aqua Tail, Blizzard, Drain Punch, Fire Blast, Fire Punch, Flamethrower, Focus Punch, Foul Play, Grass Knot, Ice Beam, Ice Punch, Iron Tail, Knock Off, Low Kick, Rock Slide, Shadow Ball, Shadow Claw, Sucker Punch, Thunder, Thunder Punch, Thunderbolt
Focusing on types, leaving out moves of 60 BP or less (As well as stuff like Dig), we have
Fire, Water, Fighting, Grass, Ice, Steel, Dark/Ghost, Rock, Electric
Fire covers: Grass, Ice, Bug, and Steel
Water adds: Fire, Ground, Rock
Fighting adds: Dark, Normal
Steel adds: Fairy
Grass adds: Water
Ice adds: Dragon, Flying
Dark/Ghost adds: Psychic, Ghost
So. Out of 18 types in the game, Kecleon has moves for hitting
15 of them super effectively. It is only lacking answers to Poison, Electric, and Fighting types. In practice, Electric and Poison types are rare, and bulky enough to be stall-viable options are still rarer. Zapdos and Magnezone are basically the only decent Electric types for walling, and they're both weak to coverage Kecleon provides. This leaves basically a handful of Fighting types, such as Throh, to consistently wall Kecleon inheritors.
Now, Greninja, same rules.
Acrobatics, Blizzard, Dark Pulse, Extrasensory, Grass Knot, Gunk Shot, Hydro Pump, Ice Beam, Ice Punch, Low Kick, Night Slash, Rock Slide, Scald, U-turn, Waterfall
Flying, Ice, Dark, Psychic, Grass, Poison, Fighting, Rock, Bug. Fewer types, but wait, get to the conclusion:
Flying covers: Bug, Grass, Fighting.
Ice adds: Flying, Ground, Dragon
Psychic adds: Poison
Fighting adds: Steel, Rock, Normal, Dark, Ice
Water adds: Fire
Poison adds: Fairy
Dark adds: Ghost, Psychic
Grass adds: Water
So Greninja has super effective coverage against
17 out of 18 types. The only type that isn't potentially weak to competent moves on it (And note that everything Acrobatics covers is also covered by other moves, so even if you want to assume an item and therefore discount Acrobatics, there's no change to this number) is Electric types again, which has the same problems I laid out with Kecleon.
Now, plenty of Pokemon movepools are potentially super effective against 18 out of 18 types without this being broken, because they'll only have STAB on one or two types, restricting their peak damage to at most something like 8 different types. Protean means you get full damage against
all of these.
So what's your safe switch-in on Protean, again? Apparently, it has to be a pure Electric type with, you know, competent defensive stats. So Arceus-Electric I guess? I
suppose Sap Sipper Lanturn/Rotom-Wash are acceptably bulky, and never fear Protean. Hell, Miltank can provide Milk Drink and Sap Sipper, so they have adequate health.
252+ Atk Life Orb Protean Haxorus Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Rotom-W: 172-203 (56.7 - 66.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
... oh.
252+ Atk Life Orb Protean Haxorus Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Lanturn: 250-294 (55 - 64.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
Marginally better, still painfully vulnerable.
Still, at least they can reliably wall Azelf. That's something.
252 Atk Life Orb Protean Azelf Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Lanturn: 200-238 (44 - 52.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
---
Even so, Protean is very nearly unwallable by type. Things are probably a bit better when you take into account that this is using mixed attackers as an assumption and ignoring the overall ability to hit on a given side (eg Greninja doesn't have any Special Fighting moves, neither of them has a Special anti-Fairy move, etc), but seriously, STAB super effective against all but 3 types or all but
one? You're supposed to expect a wall to cope with this... how?
Even with just the right three moves you're already hitting 11 types STAB super effectively with Greninja as the donor, or 9 with Kecleon as the donor. Again: with three moves. Not four, completely ignoring the utility of priority moves and Status moves and so on, just focusing on STAB super effective hits off of three moves. Going "But no individual one is hitting 15/17 types STAB super effectively at once!" isn't that much of an improvement.
Protean is kind of nutty.
uncompetative is when something relys on "luck" rather then "skill" illusion does not rely on either of these, but relies on "suprise factor" which albeit being a bit cowardly, it is more skill based then luck by technical terms. illusion has no coin flips or hax abuse involved, and therefore is not uncompetative.
You seem to be defining luck specifically as "randomized numbers are involved". The more information you remove, the more luck-based things are. Illusion, with the inability to know ahead of time it's even a thing on the enemy team let alone pick out what thing it is once you
do know, usually by virtue of losing a Pokemon, that they have Illusion, removes so much information critical to making an informed decision that it substantially shifts things towards luck.
RNG is
unequivocally luck, but the RNG being uninvolved doesn't automatically make a thing not luck-based.
Greninja doesn't learn Thunderbolt, Flamethrower, Drain Punch, Fake Out, Sucker Punch, Knock Off, and elemental punches.
Ice Punch.
And it has enough Physical Defence when invested to take all the physical hits because they are low powered and not super effective (lets be real no one uses Iron Tail).
Back when I made a Protean spam team, I had
two Pokemon carrying Iron Tail. Even before I did the Protean spam team per se, I carried Iron Tail on my Kecleon inheritor because Fairies make up a lot of important, dangerous things, such as Geomancy Power Herb abuse, Fairy Unaware is popular, Belly Drum Mega Diancie is a thing, etc. Being able to beat Fairies is not some niche thing, and being able to turn Steel type at will can be amazing all by itself.
You're also ignoring the part where Kecleon gets Trick. Back when I did Protean spam, it struggled against stall until I switched two members to Choice Trick. Suddenly Mega Sableye was the only stallmon that gave the team any trouble, and that was more commentary on how overly weighted toward Physical attackers I was than anything else.
If we ban some things, we'll be heading toward banning too many things! Therefore, we shouldn't ban things.
No. This is bad logic in any meta (At what point do you actually say it's OK to ban something, if banning things is "leading toward" banning
too many things by default??), but in Inheritance in particular it's bad logic. If we ban Protean it's
substantially more likely that currently unused/underused things will suddenly leap to prominence than it is that the meta will suddenly be unable to cope with various existing things the meta copes with, especially since the only thing Protean does of any value to the meta is provide an absurdly powerful tool for breaking dedicated walls without regard to which side they're supposed to wall. Dedicated walls of that sort already have plenty of ways to get around them, mixed Protean isn't
the only answer to strong walls.
I've always preferred Haxorus to Rampardos thanks to its less vulnerable switch-in typing, increased bulk, and the fact that enemies almost always assume their Fairy is a valid switch-in when it's not.
Also, to re-iterate a point: 10% damage gain is smaller than damage variance, so if Rampardos only has a 10% damage advantage over Haxorus, yeah, that's basically irrelevant.