Moderated Discussion, etc.
Context:
Taunt~Taunt~Taunt
IF (NOT Taunt while you are faster) AND (NOT Pain Split while you are faster) THEN Earthquake the first time, Dig the second, Earthquake the third
Saying that this is absolutely preposterous. Why is this allowed?? This is literally two substitutions written as one, but since it uses a negative, it's acceptable? This looks to be legal with the new substitution rules, but this definitely shouldn't be allowed. Alternatively, if this is something we want in the metagame, then the following substitution should also be legal as a single substitution:
If Pain Split, Taunt. If Taunt, Pain Split.
That should be legal, because that's exactly the same as that substitution (unless I'm missing something here). If someone is a new user trying to get into ASB, this is asinine to learn how to craft a proper substitution when something like Mowtom's substitution is allowed. Note that I'm not bashing him; it's a brilliant substitution and a great loophole. I bring it up not to diminish his abilities as a player, but to correct this for all future battles.
I don't have an opinion, here. Nor I intend to have one. But some food for thought: is that a bad thing? Yes, this means that subs are indeed more powerful, but is that a bad thing? The player ordering last still has the hindsight upperhand. If the player ordering first knows exactly what the player ordering last can do to throw a wrench on his plans, then why not give him the means to prevent that from happening?
The reason why I want people to think about it is simple really: subs exist to lower the insane advantage the last-to-order player has against the first-to-order player. Sometimes I see people complaining because subs are less abusable due to some recent rule changes and that that is a bad thing because the player did make a mistake and should pay etc etc. But the subs' purpose is to lower the advantage of the last player, not increase it, so the risks of using a sub should be lower because otherwise their role in our game would possibly backfire more often than we'd want (which means that as far as their purpose is concerned, it being less abusable is a good thing). This discussion follows the exact same logic: subs are supposed to give the first player tools to fight against the last player, so if the sub can do that very well, then shouldn't it be a good thing?
The question here lies upon balancing how good subs should be so the first player doesn't have a too good of an advantage (in other words: the subs shouldn't just change who has the advantage: it should only lower the gap). If you compare the old rules with the new rules, then yes the First Player is on a better position compared to before. But that was by design, because we considered that the Second Player still has a big advantage. Maybe we went too far on that. Maybe not. I don't know. Nor I intend to enter in that specific matter (the council can/should decide it honestly). But what I need to make clear is that: if your issue with the new rules is because "you can write two subs as one", then...well...that is the intention? Make subs better. That complaint will only be adequate and acceptable if you are arguing that, because of that, the boost given by subs to the player ordering first is too good. That the system is unbalanced. That should be the basis of your argument if we want to get productive here.
Regarding subs being complicated, yes they are. And I personally hate that myself as well. But the "NOT" usage isn't the most complicated thing subs have by far (it may be the newest and least explored, but not the most complicated). If you want subs to be simpler than you gotta swing your axe in many other directions to do it properly.
Stating that there are "larger problems with subs" is not a legitimate reason why we shouldn't disallow this strategy. This is a gaping problem, from my perspective, so we may as well fix things as they come up.
I'd agree that ordering first can be a pain, and that ordering second is a huge advantage. It's why people deny counterswitching, because they want to abuse substitutions and get momentum. I would be fine with us giving some more power to the player ordering first. But not like this. If we allow substitutions like the one I quoted before, then we're basically smiling and nodding at loopholes without our own rules. It's a steep learning curve for new users and looks like a bug in the system to me. If we do allow it in order to give more power to ordering first, then allow the type of substitution I listed (If Solar Beam, Mirror Coat. If Leaf Storm, Mirror Coat.). Because they're the exact same thing.
The sub you've given is illegal because you're widening the scope. That is to say, there are two clauses which together cause the substitution to activate in less cases than if either was removed. Oh, and you're also giving two different end results 9.9
...
Doesn't mean I don't disagree that there's a broken bit though. I think it's something that caught up in vagueness - the aim was to allow for subs (In this case, in doubles vs opponents X and Y) like,
"IF (X uses Double Team) AND NOT (Y uses Wide Guard) AND NOT (Y uses Encore (A) on the following action) AND NOT (X uses Encore (A) on the following action) THEN Rock Slide"
Which I believe we should have - this is a complex sub, but I doubt anyone's going to claim it's unfair.
The issue, for me, is that we allow to have multiple attack clauses on the same mon's action. My proposal would be to clarify the original intent behind 'one attack clause per mon per action'
So, in a doubles, if you have your team A and B, and your opponent has X and Y out, you can make an attack clause that is along the line of "IF X uses Focus Punch AND Y uses Protect (X) AND X uses Chill on the following action, THEN". This should be legal - each 'action frame' (In this case, 'this action' and 'the following action') has at most one move sub based on any one mon.
This means that you can sub around follow-up Encores, Copycats, etc. (something direly missed from old ASB), but you can't sub for "IF (X uses Damaging Grass Attack) AND NOT (X uses Razor Leaf) THEN Mirror Coat", since you're trying to sub for two attack clauses in X's single 'action frame'.
So from what I can get from dogfish44 is that in order to have multiple AND NOTs in a thing, you need to be referring to different actions?
Edit: thats his suggestion, not the status quo
I'm pretty sure that I need to weigh in here, even if only because my sub started this.
I don't really have an opinion on whether what I did should be allowed or not. If we want to enact Dogfish's proposal I am totally fine with that, although I would like to point out that Birkal's "If Pain Split, Taunt. If Taunt, Pain Split." is drastically different than what I did. That sub has two different triggers and two different activations, while any sub of the form I created would do the same thing regardless of which trigger caused it. This is also true for the infamous phoenixsubs and galesubs.
except that the main example frosty used was IF fighting move AND NOT focus blast? the doubles boon was an aside, and you get one clause per mon, INCLUDING yourself. the only even possibly unintentional thing was AND NOT AND NOT without an AND YES, but even so i don't think it's bad.
I can't see the example in his post. Link? (Note: I was the person who (along with many hour plus long chats with Stratos) wrote the wretched rules.)
Here's an except from the original conversations set up where we discussed rule 9;
1) Seems sensible. KO Subs are a subset of Chance Subs, but the split makes sense atm.
3) That seems fine.
2) Rule 9 is a way to ensure 'NOT Move' is workable. Easiest to explain with examples.
Example 1 [Singles]:
Drain Punch ~ Close Combat ~ Drain Punch
IF Protective/Evasive Action AND following action is NOT Encore, THEN Swords Dance AND Push Back
This would be legal - in each action the sub checks only one Attack Clause is used.
Example 2 [Doubles]:
Hyper Voice ~ Dazzling Gleam ~ Hyper Voice
IF X uses a Protective Action AND Y uses Light Screen THEN Snatch
This would be legal - Rule 9 states that you get one attack clause per action per enemy per substitution.
Example 3 [Singles]:
Earth Power ~ Mud Bomb ~ Earth Power
IF NOT Counter AND NOT Protective/Evasive action THEN Earthquake
This would be illegal, since there are two 'attack' clauses for the same single opponent for the same action
If you need more examples or somethin' lemme know, I'm literally about to go sleep now so my brain isn't at full power.
I think that's a very good way to deal with "NOT" clauses .-.
IMO, just make it so you have 1 attack clause per Pokémon on the field. Not "number of Pokémon on the field", as that would get people saying they get 4 attack clauses in doubles and using them to sub for a single mon.
Everything else looks good to me.
(Emphasis mine)
Dogfish44
I don't get this part: "you still can't have 'NOT Protective/Evasive AND NOT Damaging/Evasive' together". Heck, how we deal with attack classes is not in the rules I think. The normal rules is that one attack class = one attack clause (or at least I assume that) and on that assumption I can't see why the above wouldn't be allowed (unless you mean a "IF NOT Protective/Evasive AND NOT Damaging/Evasive" sub which would fall under rule 4) unless I am missing something here. Can you please explain?
Frosty: "IF NOT Protective/Evasive AND NOT Damaging/Evasive", under Rule 4 alone, would be legal - because both "NOT Protective/Evasive" and "NOT Damaging/Evasive" narrow the scope of the substitution - they both cause the substitution to activate in less situations. Rule 9 actually handles that by making it illegal.
Note the running theme: We wanted attack clauses to not have more than one per mon per action per sub. I'd argue that this means that a shit-ton of people have been making subs which are basically illegal, and at some point they've just been accepted as legal - and a lot of us have less time to dedicate to ASB, so probably forgot the original intent (Or just mentally switched? iunno). My stance would be to re-establlish the intended rules, and probably update the 9 rules's wording - those were practically just a skeleton, and they were vague as sin.
Can we just get the old rules back and fix them so that shit that should have been accepted but wasn't is
Because fuck these new sub rules, combined with the inherent matchup advantage, being able to construct complex and backwards sub rules (i..e where your most likely orders are in the sub) is now rewarded with an actual advantage for ordering first. Sub rules are broken in a bad way. At least before they were broken in an intelligible way. Let's fix the intelligibly broken and forget this garbage.
I can't go into detail here on mobile but I'm with dogfish in thinking that more than anything here we have begun treating subs that are intended illegal as legal. Mowtoms sub (not singling you out its just a good example) had two NOT attack clauses, my understanding of the intention of the rules was to only allow one not per attack clause. Basically IF damaging fighting move AND NOT Focus Blast THEN Counter is legal but you can't say AND NOT Aura Sphere as well
Technically, it's two action clauses including without the NOT clause, which is why.
I'd say it might be best to change it to "maximum NOTs on attack clauses is total mons out minus one," which keeps that example while removing things that go against the intention.
I really don't see how dogf's proposal would be helpful overall, other than as a general nerf;
IAR deleted Leet's salt, but 'we should probably open a thread for this' is true. Councilperson, go do so! Last post on the matter tonight.
My proposal is aiming to go to what the original discussions resulted in, and removing the vagueness that resulted from it. Note that under the original discussions, "IF Damaging Fighting Move AND NOT Focus Blast THEN..." would've been Illegal, since that attempts to use two action clauses on one pokemon at the same instance. It's not a nerf as much as a vagueness fix. It also kills "IF NOT X and NOT Y THEN...", and as I've already stated, "IF NOT X THEN..." is not going to do much, since the end result is just the same. My proposal would be infinitely more effective at dealing with NOT spam than a simple -1 :u
Tex specifically, I'm not sure which rules you're referring to when you say 'old rules' - these current rules are ~80% older rules, and then modifications (Including some things I've seen complained about more recently - under older rules, "IF Greninja is not an X-Type and Greninja is not a Y-Type THEN" was legal).
Incidentally, if anyone wants to try editing the rules to deal with some of these cases... have fun!
Loopholes are a bloody nightmare.
Like, say you want to allow "NOT Attack Clause", but you also don't want people to be able to put their effective main orders into their substitutions? You could say that you must have at least one attack clause which doesn't have a 'NOT', but then you can't have "IF X is Poisoned AND NOT Rest", which is kind of important for Venoshock users. Of course, you could just say it's an acceptable loss, but that then feels arbitrary. And if you say "'NOT Attack Clause' shouldn't be a thing', then you've gone back to the weakest subs in ASB. Of course, you can put up with "orders in subs", and I do think we'd see less of them once we went back to the original intent (So you'd only be able to do one NOT Attack Clause, at which point there's no advantage to doing it in that method), but then you have people explicitly calling for them to go.
And now we see why I drink.
So, what about Chance Subs? These are even harder to deal with - especially with the aforementioned NOT X-Type AND NOT Y-Type. Like, you can't even go 'Okay, at least one chance clause must be a positive', since then congrats, you've just discovered how to write 'IF X has greater than 0.5 HP". Maybe you just accept chance clauses as being very powerful, or maybe you can only look at each "condition" once, so you can only check typing once. However, I'm sure that breaks about 20 different things. Maybe not though? Actually, do check to see if that works for that one edge case.
One thing I would like added is that you cannot put a NOT within a NOT? So, like you can't go IF NOT (NOT Burn AND NOT Para), you'd have to split that into two subs, "IF Burn OR Para".
Anyway I need sleep, the sweet embrace of.
Back with me? Okay then. Basically misinterpretations over Rule #9 for the past few weeks have resulted in the inevitable feedback blowup and Texas calling for an overhaul of the substitution rules back to what they were but fixed. Or something.
So yeah, discuss. Not going to set any real discussion points, just continue to debate Rule #9 and the sub rules in general or something.
