Ladder Almost Any Ability

I'd like to start the conversation by saying that illusion is limited in that if your opponent has stealth rock up you are very likely not to pull off an effective illusion, and if your pokemon have already been damaged it won't work properly either. Normally offense won't care a bout it due to the lead getting sr and a free kill only means a bit. Against stall a lot of the pokemon have protect such as chansey (or any wsh protect) and poison heal, and even ferrothorn can use it with leech seed.

against balance your pokemon can normally take a hit if it's illusion then you can go into your real counter and you can do much better. Of course this doesn't mean illusion isn't good, merely that it has a lot of limits.

I think illusion is one of the few useful offensive abilities left, and I think banning it would make the metagame less diverse, I don't want all pokemon to use tough claws/sheer force/adap/tinted lens
 
grurk said:
I'd like to start the conversation by saying that illusion is limited in that if your opponent has stealth rock up you are very likely not to pull off an effective illusion, and if your pokemon have already been damaged it won't work properly either. Normally offense won't care a bout it due to the lead getting sr and a free kill only means a bit. Against stall a lot of the pokemon have protect such as chansey (or any wsh protect) and poison heal, and even ferrothorn can use it with leech seed.

against balance your pokemon can normally take a hit if it's illusion then you can go into your real counter and you can do much better. Of course this doesn't mean illusion isn't good, merely that it has a lot of limits.
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Stealth rock doesn't hinder illusion a lot. If the illusion mon takes the same as the mon it's copying, stealth rock doesn't give you away and you can still get the kill you wanted.

Wish soft-boiled is better than wish protect on chansey, and the only other mons who really carry protect are ph mons. But protect is a free turn for your opp and giving a free turn to a lucario with your snorlax is never a good play. So yes it is a limit but a very small one.
 
motherlove said:
Stealth rock doesn't hinder illusion a lot. If the illusion mon takes the same as the mon it's copying, stealth rock doesn't give you away and you can still get the kill you wanted.

Wish soft-boiled is better than wish protect on chansey, and the only other mons who really carry protect are ph mons. But protect is a free turn for your opp and giving a free turn to a lucario with your snorlax is never a good play. So yes it is a limit but a very small one.
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sr does hinder illusion a lot, the the different damage that a pokemon takes from sr is more diverse than you would think. Illusion and set up don't get used that often either so the free turn isnt that useful, also even if they do have set up it's a 50/50 as far as the illusion player is concerned it's a 50/50.
I'd also like to point out that you used a pokemon that is 4x resistant to sr in your example.
 
Kl4ng said:
Note that Illusion is being suspected because being unable to know if Illusion is ever present is arguably uncompetitive, and not because it might be an overwhelming ability to deal with itself.
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Grurk, you're not wrong in saying that Illusion isn't necessarily broken, but we're considering other factors here. What you're bringing up is certainly true, but it doesn't address the reason behind the suspect in the first place.
 
Arguing for illusion not being banned because offense loses a tool isn't really a good one in my eyes. No one's saying Illusion is a broken ability, it's not being suspected for being broken. Its suspect is there because it's something quite similar to shadow tag, while building a team someone can essentially pick and choose what they want to get rid of and 9 times out of 10 it will get the job done with the opponent unable to do anything about it. Sure it's not as good as shadow tag in the sense that the opponent can switch out of the Illusion pokemon, but if you're buidling with the illusion pokemon in mind, it's quite easy to make it do it's job. Having proper hazard removal, making sure your lure and illusion pokemon take the same hazard damage etc. Illusion also has the advantage of distribution. Goth in general took this long to go away because stat wise it's a mediocre at best pokemon that generally relies on Trick to cripple and kill its victims in the long run. Here, you have pokemon that can straight up KO the pokemon it wants to and can do it without them having the slightest clue that they're about to get screwed. You cannot even play around Illusion from team preview like you could in OU and Goth, you just get screwed by surprise.

Your Deoxys-S, erm let's say suicide lead, hazard argument is assuming that once Deo gets the hazards up and dies it will be up for the rest of the match, but in my experience it rarely does (i don't use Deo, so can't balme me for being bad. Only ever played against it, never with).

Moving onto offense losing tools, it doesn't really even affect offense's stallbreaking capabilities. Illusion doesn't instantly break stall teams, it's a way of reliably taking out specific pokemon. You still have your run of the mill Adaptability, Tough Claws and Sheer Force that from what I'm seeing now are not going anywhere. Snaq, the biggest spokesperson for the ban has changed his mind and I personally never supported it. AAA is fine as it is, but in that "fine as it is" part illusion is not included. [Meta trend wise illusion is a non threat because people don't use it as much as they should, but that doesn't make it any less suspectworthy. And its not like you can prepare for it anyway.]

(Also apparently smogon stores written drafts cross platform, i typed this up in my pc and was going to post this tomorrow but since it's here in my phone I figured I'll post now.)

E: apparently you edited in sth about illusion decreasing diversity in offense, which i... uh will talk about tomorrow
 
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I know that illusion is being suspected for being uncompetitive, however a very underpowered mechanic that is uncompetitive should be allowed to stay in the game.
 
grurk said:
I know that illusion is being suspected for being uncompetitive, however a very underpowered mechanic that is uncompetitive should be allowed to stay in the game.
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Its only an underpowered mechanic if it can't consistently hold its own. Confuse Ray can't consistently do its job, so it isn't banned. Swagger (especially in conjuction with foul play/twave) consistently did its job, so it was banned. Illusion can pretty consistently do its job, its not 100% foolproof like shadow tag, but it works the majority of matches. Its simple deception, and deception is very powerful in Pokemon.
 
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Kingslayer2779 said:
Its only an underpowered mechanic if it can't consistently hold its own. Confuse Ray can't consistently do its job, so it isn't banned. Swagger (especially in conjuction with foul play/twave) consistently did its job, so it was banned. Illusion can pretty consistently do its job, its not 100% foolproof like shadow tag, but it works the majority of matches. Its simple deception, and deception is very powerful in Pokemon.
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I agree with your principle, but illusion can's consistently hold its own though, something as simple as stealth rocks can render most illusions ineffective, and you're not able to change which of your pokemon is your last mid way through the battle so illusion works, as it's hard to do and repeated sr damage will make the illusion obvious, due to different health totals.
I'd also like everyone to try out illusion, it's pretty underwhelming, the things I'm saying might seem inconsequential but against a player that's paying attention they are
 
grurk said:
I agree with your principle, but illusion can's consistently hold its own though, something as simple as stealth rocks can render most illusions ineffective, and you're not able to change which of your pokemon is your last mid way through the battle so illusion works, as it's hard to do and repeated sr damage will make the illusion obvious, due to different health totals.
I'd also like everyone to try out illusion, it's pretty underwhelming, the things I'm saying might seem inconsequential but against a player that's paying attention they are
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I really don't think SR are as big of a deal as you think for illusion. For one, as people have said, you can easily pair the illusion with a mon that takes the same damage. And two, if you're building a team around illusion rather than just throwing it on a team, you'd have a reliable magic guard defogger or something similar. Also, pairing illlusion with a couple regenerator mons makes it even harder for the opponent to guess the illusion. None of that is really the point though, as in my mind illusion's problem comes early game as a purely unpredictable way to get a ko that your opponent can't stop. Any mon can run it that you'd never expect, and win a game. Like a random illusion banded breloom disguised as a special attacker that motherlove ran that took out my special wall. No way I can predict that early game, and then my chansey is gone and my team has a huge hole in it.
 
Gengar @ Black Sludge
Ability: No Guard
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Hypnosis
- Hex
- Taunt /Substitute
- Sludge Wave

This set was created because Gengar is blazingly fast. Most prankster sleep users are incredibly obvious, but when people see Gengar they think Sheer Force. Hex hits for a lot of damage while also hitting bulletproof Doublade. The last moves are mostly filler, but Sludge Wave is used to hit Normal types. This set is not incredible in and of itself, but the surprise will almost always grant Gengar a kill. Further, it doesn't take up a sheer force slot. Gengar also sports an immunity to espeed.

However, the prevalence of atespeeders and Gale Wings pokemon severely hurts Gengar. Additionally, Gengar's 110 speed tier is fast, but it can still be outspeed, most notably by Shaymin-S.And its one of my Fav's
 
megaqwer:D said:
Gengar @ Black Sludge
Ability: No Guard
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Hypnosis
- Hex
- Taunt /Substitute
- Sludge Wave

This set was created because Gengar is blazingly fast. Most prankster sleep users are incredibly obvious, but when people see Gengar they think Sheer Force. Hex hits for a lot of damage while also hitting bulletproof Doublade. The last moves are mostly filler, but Sludge Wave is used to hit Normal types. This set is not incredible in and of itself, but the surprise will almost always grant Gengar a kill. Further, it doesn't take up a sheer force slot. Gengar also sports an immunity to espeed.

However, the prevalence of atespeeders and Gale Wings pokemon severely hurts Gengar. Additionally, Gengar's 110 speed tier is fast, but it can still be outspeed, most notably by Shaymin-S.And its one of my Fav's
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If you're using sludge wave to hit normal types you might as well run focus miss instead for various darks and normals like ttar, lax n shit.
 
LaxLapras said:
I really don't think SR are as big of a deal as you think for illusion. For one, as people have said, you can easily pair the illusion with a mon that takes the same damage. And two, if you're building a team around illusion rather than just throwing it on a team, you'd have a reliable magic guard defogger or something similar. Also, pairing illlusion with a couple regenerator mons makes it even harder for the opponent to guess the illusion. None of that is really the point though, as in my mind illusion's problem comes early game as a purely unpredictable way to get a ko that your opponent can't stop. Any mon can run it that you'd never expect, and win a game. Like a random illusion banded breloom disguised as a special attacker that motherlove ran that took out my special wall. No way I can predict that early game, and then my chansey is gone and my team has a huge hole in it.
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Sr really is as big a deal for illusion as I think it is, you mentioned a breloom set. breloom takes half damage from sr. Do you know how many special attackers there are in aaa that take half damage from sr? The answer is 2. Jirachi and Aegislash, and both of them seldom run more than 2 special attacks. Jirachi normally just uses doom desire (50% next highest is psyshock at 3%) and aegisalsh normally just uses shadow ball (52% next highest is flash cannon at 8%). I'm not sure why you said you'd have a reliable magic guarder, but in regards to defog by the time that you have enough pressure to defog it is very likely that one of your two pokemon will have been damaged, thus rendering your illusion useless to an aware player. For your sake I'm glad that none of that is really the point. ( what does regenerator have to do with anything???)

I have already agreed that illusions problem comes in the early game. Realistically illusion is merely a very capable lure. Banded breloom is a very good lure anyway, as people think of illusion, but then it gets a ko. The question is does a very good lure at the beginning of the game deserve a ban?
 
grurk said:
The question is does a very good lure at the beginning of the game deserve a ban?
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Yes, because it takes the matter out of the player's hands and even the best player of the world is left at "is this Latios he brought as a lead a Latios? or is it a Breloom? do I risk sacking Chansey, or do I risk sacking my Doublade?"
And there is no way a player can possibly outplay this, it brings the matter to a pure 50/50. Magnezone in OU you can play around because you know it's there and you know they can come in predicting your steel type switching in. Other weird lures like HP Rock MVenu you can expect if you see that your opp's team is particularly Talonflame weak. The Illusion mon being the actual mon or being one of the other 5 on his team you have absolutely no way to control even if you're the best player in the world.

Remember, it's not about how much it's broken, it's about how much it's unfair.
 
grurk said:
The question is does a very good lure at the beginning of the game deserve a ban?
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i think thats the wrong question to ask to be completely honest. the real question is "is this a fair lure" which by that i mean, sure, it IS a lure, but its a special lure that can lure for 5 different mons. say, for example,scarf illusion ttar is paired up with sheer force landorus, and a brave bird skarm. ttar can choose to either eliminate the opponents latios if it so chooses to do so, HOWEVER, it can also lure in the heatran on illusion with skarm, and help with ITS sweep too. i feel the problem with illusion is that allthough its no better a lure then most others, its that for ONE pokemon, its "Lure" can revolve around your entire teams normal checks. and not just 1 or 2 mons say, gale skarm has trouble with. sure, fairness doesn't matter as much in a competative game, but this is pretty much a "Shadow tag" situation as shadow tag was banworthy because it removes a healthy aspect of the game, illusion is suspect because under "worse case scenario" illusion is impossible to predict and can cost people games due to such.

to add onto this, although stealth rocks is a common sight, i hardly consider it worth a mention in terms of "is it broken". this is like arguing that Ho-oh would be okay in OU, because stealth rocks pressures it even with regenerator in its disposal. this is why most people don't take into account of "if its SR weak" when coming to bans and unbans, enless such measures stop it 24/7. illusion doesnt care about stealth rocks even IF its neutral to it, because enless your specificly looking at the percentages of damage, its quite easy to not notice "oh, why did that breloom take normal damage from stealth rocks" especially in that case, since nve and neutral to sr is actually a pretty negligible difference. on top of this, this meta also has magic bounce, priority defoggers, and on top of most pokemon being "neutral" to stealth rock, its really not a problem for illusion half the time, especially since although SR is commonly thrown around, its also commonly removed asap. stealth rocks is a very situational argument to pull, as allthough you CAN set them up, you cannot GUARENTEE their addition, therefore in a "worse case scenario" stealth rocks should NOT be up when arguing a point. when you argue to ban something, you HAVE to bring up the "worse case scenario". in which this case, stealth rocks are NOT up. this is how OU, UU, RU, NU, and most OMs work, and we too, follow this logic. SR is calculated for kills, and its not for stuff like illusion. that is because "worse case scenario" HAS to be brought up when arguing. you cant say "well stealth rocks helps you find them" because then i can just say "well, i got gale wings defog. so my illusion is in without stealth rocks up, what now". on top of that, even then, this argument doesnt work 100% as is, as both pokemon i mentioned are both neutral to rocks. which means you will be none the wiser until its too late even IF you get them up.

now, personally, ive been using illusion with dual sheer force lando/thundy (lmao landos still a damn good Sheer forcer) and ill admit, i much prefer adaptability ttar over illusion, but id be lying if i didn't say i've got so many sweeps just because people lose their checks to the duo early since ttar smacks them. personally, i'm inclined to ban it now, because albeit its very very slim in my eyes, i feel its broken due to my above statement along with what others have stated.

(wow, it feels good to argue without attacking people due to them attacking my opinions/acting condecending. i should do this more lmao)
 
It seems like this is being too far analyzed on the surface, by the concept of illusion being "unbeatable" because you can't know when it's coming, regardless of its effectiveness. Everything that has been said is just pure theory and not based on actual practice, and I think it's worth it to ensure we are making our points based on experience and playtesting rather than how something looks on paper.

Personally, I'm on the fence about it. My competitive instinct is telling me that it's just not that effective. We can argue as much as we want on paper, with how it just beats everything when it's played right, but out of all the illusion use I've seen or been a part of, it's just not been very good. There are better options on almost every mon that would actually make use of it. As much as I feel like it should be banned, I just have a hard time dropping the hammer on something that just...isn't good. Sure, it gets a surprise kill here and there, but is it really that bad to allow something like this that's, again - not that good? I just don't feel all that comfortable with banning something that is more gimmicky than good, and is predictable, not because you can see it coming, but because it's not good enough to guarantee specific kills on a consistent basis.
 
xJownage said:
I just don't feel all that comfortable with banning something that is more gimmicky than good, and is predictable
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But Baton Passed got banned from OU? It's a gimmick, it's predictable as hell (about a billion times more than Illusion), I would argue it's about as consistent and as good of a strategy as Illusion, and yet it got banned.

I don't think anyone who's pro-ban thinks so because it's "broken". It's not. But I still have to see a good counterargument to the claim that Illusion is uncompetitive, and a good counterargument to the claim that Illusion reduces the importance of player skill in a match (no don't bring up SR damage again, it's extremely situational and doesn't change the fact that even the best player can't play around every single mon possibly having Illusion)

It's up to the side that is proposing the change to bring up an argument, and so far I'm not seeing good enough counterarguments to the one I and a couple others brought up to change my mind about this suspect.
 
Baton Pass was banned because of Baton Passing boosts to very powerful Pokemon, which is, I think, a bit uncompetitive because that Pokemon can sweep your entire team.
 
The Idiot Ninja said:
But Baton Passed got banned from OU? It's a gimmick, it's predictable as hell (about a billion times more than Illusion), I would argue it's about as consistent and as good of a strategy as Illusion, and yet it got banned.

I don't think anyone who's pro-ban thinks so because it's "broken". It's not. But I still have to see a good counterargument to the claim that Illusion is uncompetitive, and a good counterargument to the claim that Illusion reduces the importance of player skill in a match (no don't bring up SR damage again, it's extremely situational and doesn't change the fact that even the best player can't play around every single mon possibly having Illusion)

It's up to the side that is proposing the change to bring up an argument, and so far I'm not seeing good enough counterarguments to the one I and a couple others brought up to change my mind about this suspect.
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Comparing the effectiveness of baton pass and illusion is complete apples to oranges, not to mention impossible to understand. Also, baton pass was MUCH more effective than illusion is.
 
The point I was making is that something doesn't necessarily need to be broken to get banned. Baton Pass got banned because it took the matter out of the player's hands and decided games based on match up. Illusion should imo banned because it takes the matter out of the player's hands and decides games by making the entire match a dumb guessing game you don't have control on. Both create scenarios where the most skilled player can lose because of factors external to skill and luck, and that in the history of pokémon has always been banned (swagplay, ohko moves, and a couple other examples).


See it like this: we define player skill by the ability to make the correct decisions in battle. A player that is facing Illusion can't reliably make decisions around it, and regardless of your skill level when you see Latios you can't do anything but switch to your Latios check (or predict a switch; but you can't predict either against an Illusion mon). Outplaying Illusion requires previous knowledge of your opponent's team, and this is uncompetitive regardless of its effectiveness.

Read up Smogon's tiering policy framework if you haven't, I think it will clear up much of what I mean in my posts.
 
The Idiot Ninja said:
The point I was making is that something doesn't necessarily need to be broken to get banned. Baton Pass got banned because it took the matter out of the player's hands and decided games based on match up. Illusion should imo banned because it takes the matter out of the player's hands and decides games by making the entire match a dumb guessing game you don't have control on. Both create scenarios where the most skilled player can lose because of factors external to skill and luck, and that in the history of pokémon has always been banned (swagplay, ohko moves, and a couple other examples).


See it like this: we define player skill by the ability to make the correct decisions in battle. A player that is facing Illusion can't reliably make decisions around it, and regardless of your skill level when you see Latios you can't do anything but switch to your Latios check (or predict a switch; but you can't predict either against an Illusion mon). Outplaying Illusion requires previous knowledge of your opponent's team, and this is uncompetitive regardless of its effectiveness.

Read up Smogon's tiering policy framework if you haven't, I think it will clear up much of what I mean in my posts.
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Baton pass was limited to 3 because DenisSsS's team had no counters, and if it did they were obscure. It was limited again because his second team was also still very good, and while not necessarily nearly unbeatable you had to have a few certain things to beat it and it was pretty match up based. His last baton pass team didn't create the current limit, that was a different team that consisted of 5 baton pass recipients. That created a limit for tournaments due to the likely hood of you being demolished by a team that you just so happened to not have a counter for, it being also very match up based. This tournament led to a ladder ban after some arguing. The same things cannot be said for illusion, it's just no where near as good.
I find it ironic that you say that for regular lures you can guess them due to a team's weakness to a certain pokemon, however you seem to be completely against the idea of being able to predict/scout for illusion. Also your examples were due to rng rather than a component of a team. (illusion doesn't factor luck) You're not going to predict earthquake latios 99% of the time, regardless of how weak a team is to heatran.
 
Can we talk about adapt tough claws and tinted lens now :~) Meta would be more fun with those gone and the mons that were banned because of them back
 
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