The crits aren’t from Laser Focus when I was laddering and other hax ensued.It’s fine if HO is dominant, but the current situation makes for a very unhealthy meta. Stacking two powerful STAB moves, using stuff like Laser Focus or a move that drops the opponent’s defenses, Assurance as the second move in a link, combos like Close Combat + Lash Out, all of those are good offensive strategies that don’t see nearly as much play as they should because it’s less risky and more rewarding to spam setup moves. If hyper offense were dominant but had more variety than “hee hoo Magearna + Volcarona + Dragapult”, I’d be fine with that.
There’s no increased chance of hax once screens are up. Laser Focus guarantees a crit for the turn it’s used plus the turn after it’s used, so if it’s the first move in a link you get two guaranteed crits. That might be the cause of some of your crit problems. As for flinches, Jirachi is just stupid like that.
Also tbh Laser Focus sounds like a bad strategy and crit based strategies in general are just bad.
Aside from Wicked Blow and Surge Strikes, you have to make some sacrifices, namely in offenses ironically, just to have their highest bounds of damage be your lowest as well.
Sure you can Laser Focus a move, but why do that when you can have 2 similar BP moves or use Sword Dance/Nasty Plot? Especially when those 2 attacking moves and SD/NP strategies can crit too.
Like Wicked Blow, I see more like more powerful Chip Away without a chance to crit than a crunch that always crits instead dropping defense, which is why that’s good and how I think about crit based sets in general.