im not denying that these people are better then me but its undoubtedly frusturating to go from playing ppl in 1700 to 1900 players who are in my skill level to dealing with losing a game to essentially a smurf losing 50 elo.
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v2 [Update on Post #5186]
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I dont think its unfair for me to point out thats its frusturating to lose extra elo to players who are higher elo on their main. Its not a skill issue when Ive achieved the same elo i had pre this shit its just annoying and could probaly be fixed for the people who normally play in 1500 and had their elo raided by ppl double there skill.
While smurfing is frowned upon in others competitive games, in pokémon showndown it's the norm, big players have multiple alts for various reasons and it's encouraged with ladders tournaments and suspect tests. Only with a culture shift this would change.
Gotta hate the feeling that you're missing just that one something.
Give it time for ladder tour/suspect alts to actually get higher on the ladder. It always gets easier when these alts are higher up and you won't get paired with fresh 1000 Elo accounts who are actually top players. Is it an inconvenience? Yeah I suppose but this seems like the best way to get a big group of players for suspects.
I literally never play during suspect tests, mostly bc I can't get reqs, but also bc I get steamrolled by other 1400-1500 players that are actually 1800-1900 elo players. Just don't play during suspects.
Mono claw is skilless and makes the meta worse for people who are trying to climb, it just makes the meta less fun by existing
Once again, when you are the one using a move like Hydro Pump, that has a chance to miss, you are the one that made the choice to use that move, taking that risk, however, when something has quick claw, it's out of your hands. The most you can do is hope it doesn't proc.
Also, the post I was talking about suggested that you shouldn't "rely on plays that only work out if you're guaranteed to go first", implying that you should make plays as if you have negative priority, instead of what you are doing, where you're saying you just have to take the chance.
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To be fair, how is this any different than your opponent using hydro pump? In that instance, your opponent turns the situation into an 80/20, and you are just hoping you get lucky. Competitive Pokémon has so many areas where your opponent can turn the game into a coin flip based on their moves, and yeah it is annoying. But probability management is a part of the game and I fail to see how someone choosing to run Quick Claw on Ursulana to beat a revenge killer 20% of the time is any different than choosing to run Focus Blast on Gholdengo to beat Kingambit 70% of the time.
There is a difference when the 80/20 exchange includes a +1 priority in the speed bracket for that random chance. That's not you working around probability, that's letting the game fish for your (insert slow very strong mon) to basically have a priority bracket in that instance it normally would never have. I don't care too much about the Quick Claw discussion but let's be a bit realistic here as to what actually annoys people about Quick Claw.
Just like I accept sometimes missing a move, sometimes having a low roll (which is something that can't really be avoided), sometimes getting (or NOT getting over many turns) Static, Flame Body or Poison Touch, I also accept that I sometimes will lose to Quick Claw. I don't see anything negative about this item, people who use it, over time will lose more than they will win. I laddered a lot during these last few weeks and rarely ever lost to Quick Claw. While I can't speak for the rest, Quick Claw didn't ruin my ladder experience at all. It also adds one positive (for me) aspect to the meta: Frail offensive teams are the ones most weak to Quick Claw, which means an opportunity cost when using them. You want to use HO, which most of the time dominates? Then take into account you can lose to Quick Claw and try to position yourself in a situation where luck impact is minimal.
As said in the Suspect thread, there are a lot of things that I (again,this is my opinion, which you have the right to not agree with) personally want banned and those are way more common and impactful in an average game than Quick Claw.
As said in the Suspect thread, there are a lot of things that I (again,this is my opinion, which you have the right to not agree with) personally want banned and those are way more common and impactful in an average game than Quick Claw.
The probabilities are just wildly different. Also you can, with good teambuilding, have something to switch to that takes Hydro Pump well. The whole point of Quick Claw is to use mons that are at the power level where they don't have reliable switch-ins, such as Ursaluna.
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its definitely gotten a lot better im residing in the 1700s rn and I'm not running into many ppl who are super low elo at my current elo im fine with playing against high elo smurfs because at 1700 is when you start getting 1900 to 2k players regardless.
there is no real practical difference. The specific way the mechanic works might annoy people more, but the actual probability is identical - you have an 80% chance for the game to work as intended and benefit you, a 20% chance to have rng and it not benefit you. The only real difference is that we've been dealing with focus miss, stone miss, hydro miss, fire miss for generations and it's become normalized, whereas quick claw is a relatively recent issue.
I dislike this argument the player using pump and fire blast is making the choice of using a more powerful move and is aware of the risk reward to it.
All that quick claw does is remove skill expression from the hands of other players and add more layers of rng to a game that has plenty with the same moves you just described.
EDIT: I dislike the notion that an insanely powerful mon going before another mon that utilizes it's speed to remove it, suddenly gaining the speed to ko it is without benefit
There is a difference between getting Static proc’d by Zapdos or missing a Hydro Pump and having to fight five quick claw mons. The latter is active taking advantage of the RNG and maximizing the odds of landing Quick Claw procs. The former doesn’t always switch the tides of a game. The mons most vulnerable to Static are physical attackers that Zapdos checks anyways. If you don’t wanna click Hydro and miss, you can always go for a 100% acc move if you feel the rusk isn’t worth it. There is still decision making and expressiveness involved, even with RNG in mind
What’s the strat to using a Quick Claw team?
Hope that quick claw procs.
What’s the strat to fighting a Quick Claw team?
Hope that quick claw doesn’t proc.
When the sole strategy for beating/using Quick Claw teams is praying for good RNG, thats a problem.
A mid ladder/high ladder player could straight up lose to someone who just started playing competitive and found this team cause if Quick Claw procs, there is nothing the opposing player can do.
Just like how King’s Rock Cloyster was able to score games off of flinches.
Just like how Sub-SD Sand Veil Chomp can win games off of just one miss.
Quick Claw teams can win games off of lucky Quick Claw procs.
If we took action of those elements, we should look at Quick Claw.
CG OU is already a matchup fishy mess. Building a well-rounded team that can play around even bad MUs is not possible. While banning Quick Claw won’t fix the problem, it will put the meta to the right direction.
This is how pokemon works - 2 players enter a game, and make decisions prior to that game about how the game will progress. The decisions ideally come at the expensive of your opponent's skill expression because it's way easier to win a game if you can win no matter how well your opponent plays. These choices all have consequences. In this case, the Ursaluna player made the decisions to sacrifice a 50% attack boost for a 20% chance to always move first. They are aware of the risk reward.
This is also no different than getting surprised by a weird coverage option that you weren't prepared for, or a mon with scarf that doesn't usually carry one. It removes your skill expression just the same because you were expecting the game to proceed as you anticipated in teambuilder/team preview, and now you're down a mon and wondering what the hell just happened.
The only argument the fact that it only works 20% of the time makes is that it actually just makes it bad. It doesn't make it uncompetitive, it just makes it generally ineffective. It's not even a good trade, it's a cheesy one, like cannon rushing in SC2 or even ye olde Swagplay. But sometimes cheese works, and is a valid strategy. This is a case of generally ineffective cheese.
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In actuality it being 20% is a net negative and further enforces the notion of rng being the main issue here and not something as simple as a switch in moves or the addition of random coverage. Take for example the fact that 80 percent of the time tusk ko's ursa but there is a chance this simple dynamic flips on it's head and now the much slower ursaluna ko's it, this is definitely not something competitive and adds nothing of value to the metagame other than making players play a game of 80-20 on top of more rng bs
EDIT: QC has already been banned in other formats of ou like dpp ou as seen here here is an excerpt from one of the moderates talking about QC's uncompetitive nature
"It is uncompetitive because it takes the game out of the better players hand a surprisingly high amount of times. While the chance for an activation is "only" 20% over a single turn, usually you have it on mons that have the bulk to be around for more turns and get the activation. You would usually put it on mons like Metagross, Machamp, Tyranitar etc who have high dmg output and OHKO potential while having the bulk to be around for a few hits. Especially in the case of Quick Claw on Machamp with Dynamic Punch activating that can just be detrimental to any sort of game plan one can make. There is no counterplay to it other than pray. add to that the fact that even if there was counterplay you cannot assume that quick claw is coming your way, since you would expect people to use more reliable items. I have a few replays from both myself and others to showcase games where the better player lost because of quick claw. "
THe problem that separates this stuff from hydro pump misses is the odds of something happening vs the reward. If your opponent is using a mon with hydro pump, you should be playing around it as if they are using a 100% accurate move. If your counterplay to hydro pump involves hoping for a miss, you are losing.
On the other hand, if your opponent is using quick claw, you cant exactly play around them getting the avctivation because the only way to play around an ursaluna/iron hands/whatever with +0.5 priority is to forfeit. Yes, there is a 20% chance of something different happening in both situations. But quick claw has no counterplay beyond hoping for no activations, while hydro pump does.
You are defeating your own argument though. You're saying that if the chance for hydro pump to hit is 80%, you should assume it's 100% until proven otherwise. If it's 20% to miss, you should assume 0% until proven otherwise. But with quick claw the reverse is true? you should assume 20% = 100% and 80% = 0%? That doesn't make any sense.
By your own argument, you should assume that quick claw will never activate, and the QC player should never count on it activating, and play accordingly.
>If your counterplay to hydro pump involves hoping for a miss, you are losing.
> If your counterplay to
I just reworded your argument to show that it's the exact same thing. 20% chance to miss/proc.
> But quick claw has no counterplay beyond hoping for no activations
You say that like it's not a 20% chance to activate lol. Just yoloing mons into the slow ass ursaluna to chip it down exactly as you would if it did not have quick claw will work the vast majority of the time. Swinging in with a CC will work 80% of the time. You're trying to argue that we should removing accuracy from the game because there's no counterplay to a move missing. It's technically true but ignores the reality of how games are conducted. There is no counterplay in a single turn to accuracy, but there are ways to mitigate it over the course of a game.
If your argument is in specific context of Ursaluna having limited counterplay and QC making that worse, then that's an Ursaluna issue. Which I would be more than happy to pursue because Ursaluna is not a healthy mon and should be considered for tiering action anyways. If we apply the always fun 'is it broken on everything' the answer is a solid no. It's specifically problematic on ursaluna because of it's insane offensive profile. It's a little problematic on glowbro and enarmous, maybe a small handful of other mons, otherwise it's irrelevant.
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The literal only good argument for removing quick claw is that no one would seriously use it and thus removing it from the game to reduce variance has no real downside. Which is a completely valid albeit dangerous argument because it applies to a lot of stuff in this game that may have merit that has not been discovered yet.
To be clear - I don't really care if it's banned or not, because it really does not affect the meta one way or another. But most of the reasons people are proposing to ban it are ridiculous. You'd think people getting QC'd 5 times in a row is a thing happening every game. Or Ursaluna's hidden ability is to proc QC 100% of the time. If you want to ban it because it has a good chance of ruining your suspect test ladder run, just say so. It's a decent reason, but the problem there is not QC, it's an inherent problem in how suspect tests are run.
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I agree with everything else you have said although I personally have not seen a QC team on my runs (thankfully) but the notion that by banning qc we set this precedent of removing items that do not need removal seems odd to me, DPP ou has yet to do what you have just so ominously remarked and i see no reason as to why CG ou would fall into such pit traps
Old gens get wide latitude to do whatever the hell they want without setting precedent, because no one's really paying attention. Current gen OU does not. Banning QC sets the precedent that it's acceptable to ban an item that adds another level of RNG regardless of how powerful it is or not. If it gets used, it's on the table for a bad regardless of how effective it is. In the same way that the Drizzle + Swift Swim ban set precedent that complex clauses were fine way back in the day.
This currently has no implications, but the point was that if it comes up in the future, people are now empowered to demand it be banned because it's been allowed previously. Imagine if we get Z-Crystals back but all of them are now 80% accurate. Normally we'd just roll with it and it'd be filed under 'risk you take for better coverage'. But if you allow a QC ban, suddenly the 'ban it for being uncompetitive' side has ground to stand on to demand action be taken because they're getting smashed by a coverage Z move with RNG aspects.
This currently has no implications, but the point was that if it comes up in the future, people are now empowered to demand it be banned because it's been allowed previously. Imagine if we get Z-Crystals back but all of them are now 80% accurate. Normally we'd just roll with it and it'd be filed under 'risk you take for better coverage'. But if you allow a QC ban, suddenly the 'ban it for being uncompetitive' side has ground to stand on to demand action be taken because they're getting smashed by a coverage Z move with RNG aspects.
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Well, by this logic, you should play as if quick claw never activated. Which, as people have stated probably over a hundred times on this thread, means that quick claw has no counterplay outside of hoping for no procs. Yes, it’s a bad item, and yes, it means you can’t use choice band or flame orb or whatever, but there’s no reason to keep an item whose only purpose is to screw with games in a way that neither the user nor the opponent can play around.
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