If you get splashed by water standing next to the street, that is not unlucky. You had the power to check whether or not there was water that could be splashed on you. You either failed to do so, or failed to realize that you should move. When there is such an obviously broken strategy that still hasn't quite been completely dealt with (though I applaud Our Benevolent Dictators [plural just doesn't have the same ring to it] on banning Geomancy), if you do not take measures to insure yourself against it I can fault you no less than not preparing for Choice Band Victini when it was around.
You have the choice to make whether or not to prepare for SmearglePass. Stop calling it bad luck when you CHOOSE to not run a counter.
This was originally written up to MikeDawg's post, but namehtmas posted right after I finished writing the bold text, everything after is a response to their post.
It absolutely is a team match-up issue. When we already have very hard-and-fast terms, muddying the water by crossing them over is going to lead to disaster. That's not a slippery slope, that's a fact. The term "luck" has now been canonized as hax, and 99% of players out there in the competitive community will NOT cross those wires. Imagine a conversation with a new player who has been doing a fair amount of research but has little-to-no battle experience going like this:
Newb: "Hey, I heard about Denis' team and how it's hella broken. Why is it broken?"
Idiot: "Well, it's luck-based, and we ban all luck-based strategies because we want the most skillful player to win."
Newb: "Oh really? How is it luck-based? Does it rely on flinchhax or something that is RNG-reliant like I've been reading on?"
Idiot: "No, just that if you carry a counter to it, you win, if you don't, you lose. Sounds really luck-based, right?"
Newb: "No, actually, that sounds like the epitome of a team match-up. Sorta like how in Ubers if you don't carry a decent check or counter to Geomancy Xerneas you're gonna have a bad time, but 99x worse."
"Idiot" might be a strong word, but this isn't fucking luck-based. It is no more "luck-based" than someone like me who struggles to break the 1500s running into players like Limitless or Koko over and over and getting my shit pushed in. Until Smeargle is banned (which frankly, I'm for. Banning Geomancy helped, but QuiverPass is clearly just as damning), it is a strategy that we have clean-cut counters for, and you either choose to lose to SmearglePass or you choose to beat it. No luck in that.
I'll try this in different terms: I'm a member of the competitive Smash community, and I main Wolf in Brawl. A traditionally horrible match-up is Falco, who has an almost-guaranteed 0-to-death chain grab on me. I'm fully aware that I have a friend who mains Falco that is going to a big tournament that I am also attending. Do I pray that I don't face him in the bracket and john that I got unlucky if I do, or do I work my ass off picking up a character that counters Falco? I'm fully out of words here to express why SmearglePass isn't a luck-based strategy. At this point, you're either going to ignore me and insist it's luck-based through some bullshit logic, or you'll see why team match-up is the problem and trying to attribute "luck" to it is about as laughable as Kitten voting Torn-T UU.