OU Bright Powder, Kings Rock & Sand Veil

Alpha1013

Carpe Diem
is a Site Content Manageris a Metagame Resource Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Hello everyone this is Alpha and I bring forward to everyone a thread to discuss banning or not banning king's rock, bright powder and sand veil in ORAS OU. I just thought maybe its time we had a discussion on this in actual smogon threads instead of pm's and discord channels. I feel like getting a proper and a clearer well thought and written message from good players will also help to guide newcomers and provide a reason as to why and why not.
So I request players to drop their opinions regarding this.
Tagging ABR CrashinBoomBang fade xray Vileman RufflesPro erz Lusa pj Niko Luigi Finchinator Seasons and all other players to drop their opinions regarding this.

Please do not shit post in this thread, Thank you.
 
Last edited:
Honestly I'm surprised this wasn't done much much earlier, I was surprised myself finding out a couple years ago that these items / abilities were still legal. I assumed they were nuked from every OU at the same time. I believe we still have it in ORAS OU just because the council is almost non-existent / too lazy or because some time ago council men tried to sell these elements as legit/part of the game (?).
 
I view these as if people want to give up their opportunity to bring a real set (helm chomp / sash or booster item cloy) in exchange for bring suboptimal dogshit that just gives them odds they should be free to do so. Sd chomp itself is a kinda shit mon + needing sand up and having the dedicated 3 mon sand core stacking weakness but I think it's more of an issue than cloy given it has actual stats prior to boosting + not rocks weak + easier to set up. Kings rock is only for cloy and using it gives up the sheist utility of sash/nmi/orb (which also means spikes/tspikes/spin in sash's case) on offense which can be an invaluable tool. I don't think brightpowder should be banned you're wasting an item slot but it's already gone so keep it there.

I don't think action is anywhere close to necessary on these I really view them as non issues but it wouldn't hurt to get rid of them if people want to

having been on it council is essentially non-existent and may as well just be luigi, for the year and a half I was in that chat idt poek had one line
 
Why isn't quick claw part of this thread? Philosophically speaking, I don't really see how it's that different from Bright Powder. Something like a Quick Claw Manaphy can completely steal games with lucky item activation just as much as a Brightpowder SD Chomp in sand. If anything, I've definitely seen Quick Claw come up more often than Bright Powder, and its higher activation rate means that if both are used the same amount, Quick Claw will turn games more often.

That being said, my take on whether or not these should be banned is somewhat in line with what fade said above. These items/strategies don't really cross the line of uncompetitive to me. In my view, this is similar to using less consistent sets and strategies in exchange for a boom if you get good fortune. (See: Magma Heatran, TWave + Sub Spam, Focus Keldeo, etc)
 
I'm gonna break the mold a little here and say that we should keep them. Coming from me, this might come shocking to people because if you asked me like one year ago I would be adamantly advocating for their ban. When I brought it up I was told I need to get proof. So I made some teams with them and went on the ladder / lower tours.

In an ironic twist of fate, I fell in love with them. IMO these items are really fun, but they are really inconsistent. When you get the stuff it feels hilarious, when you don't, you wish you had an actual item / ability. I would probably never bring any of these to a real tournament outside of maybe king's rock cloyster but even then sash is really nice on offense and so are other offensive items.

Reasons to keep them (echoing what was mentioned above & other reasons):
1. They are inconsistent
2. They lack significant tournament results
3. They are not fundamentally different from other hax strategies like para spam + sub/flinch moves
4. They promote creativity
5. They are fun
 
Last edited:
Brightpowder has been banned for years and that applies to all official smogon tiers. Regarding the other two I don’t think they really Need action but if people actually want them gone then it can happen obviously.

Re: council we don’t actively look to do old gen tiering, it happens on an as-needed basis. There haven’t been any changes proposed to ORAS that have gotten any significant traction in several years. If something actually comes up we’ll reorganize that council.
 
I personally am only in favor of banning things out of necessity. That is, banning them if they are actually a problem in some way. I don't think an item that lets Cloyster, after one turn of setup and only in specific matchups, get a 40% chance to potentially hax through its checks is either broken or uncompetitive. In fact, I think it's a very weak strategy for the most part, especially in the context of ORAS OU as a tier and how there's almost nothing Cloyster sets up on for free in the first place. On offense, the Ground types threaten it in their own way, (you threaten to OHKO Lando-T/Garchomp, but they're far from free setup given how common Dragon Tail/Rock Tomb are, so it's not like this is inherently in Cloyster's favor. You're not OHKOing Excadrill which lets it chip you in range of literally any priority move in the game of which there are tons, nevermind the fact that you have to potentially set up on Iron Head/Rock Slide flinch or Rock Tomb speed drops, or god forbid Toxic. Priority also tends to be on Pokemon that are already inherently good into Cloyster, like Bisharp/Scizor/Metagross), which only really gives you free setup against Weavile locked into Icicle Crash. I don't think I need to explain why you don't want to set up on Knock Off.

Against fat teams, you do get the additional avenue of Gliscor, which, with perfect setup and odds absolutely not in your favor, lets you luck past Slowbro. Whoop de doo? I know people like to complain about literally anything that they feel they "shouldn't have lost to" regardless of the actual validity of said strategy in their misguided attempt to turn Pokemon into something more chess-esque, but I really don't think it's necessary here. This feels like a hallmark "ban to ban stuff/because I don't like it" and not because it's actually broken/uncompetitive. I consider King's Rock Cloyster about as uncompetitive as Scarf Jirachi Iron Head.

I don't think King's Rock is broken. I don't think King's Rock is uncompetitive. I don't think these steal anywhere near enough games to mark them as problematic, not even close to the level of something like Swagger. If the community actually wants to ban these, then I implore you to ban every single other instance of "things that only exist to induce RNG elements, regardless of how good they are" and do away with Stench, Confuse Ray, and Supersonic as well. In a vacuum, there's no reason to ban King's Rock as it's neither consistent nor, in my opinion, a particular good strategy. If your philosophy tells you to turn Pokemon into something more akin to checkers (god knows why), and there's enough support from the playerbase, then at least be consistent and ban every instance of this. These half measures make no sense. Stop banning stuff simply because you don't like it or at least do it in a uniform way and accept that we'll have a banlist with Supersonic, one of the worst moves ever created.

For Quick Claw, as someone who literally lost an SPL game to it: It's basically a non-issue. It steals games as often as Zen Headbutt Metagross does, and the item slot on something like Manaphy/Diggersby (the mon I personally tested this on the most - it's really terrible because it's too inconsistent and the most it does is give you one surprise kill in the huge majority of games, and even that's being nice to it) is super valuable. The opportunity cost is extremely fucked, and not exactly in favor of the QC user. In a majority of games you'll be running itemless. If I believed in inconsistent strategies I'd advocate for moves with shitty accuracy a lot more.

Agree with RufflesPro for the most part, even though I sure as hell didn't laugh when QC Manaphy sniped my Conkeldurr under Trick Room in SPL. I just don't see either item as anywhere close to an issue.

EDIT: I feel like anything Evasion related should, by default, be under the umbrella of evasion clause, but I don't really care that strongly one way or another apart from the consistency of the whole thing. I also don't think these strategies are particularly powerful, and definitely not winning strategies in the long run.
 
Last edited:
I refer to the Tiering Policy Framework, and I will be going point by point.
IV.) Probability management is a part of the game.

  • This means we have to accept that moves have secondary effects, that moves can miss, that moves can critical hit, and that managing all these potential probability points is a part of skill.
  • This does NOT mean that we will accept every probability factor introduced to the game. Evasion, OHKO moves, and Moody all affected the outcome "too much", and we removed them.
  • "Too much" is if a particular factor has the more skilled player at a disadvantage a considerable amount of the time against a less skilled player, regardless of what they do.
  • In the context of considering the possibility that moves can miss, critical hit and have secondary effects, the player attempts to put himself in a position where one of these outcomes will not be heavily detrimental to the outcome of the match: it is often done through "sponges", that will absorb, for example, a Scald burn, knowing and expecting said outcome to happen instead of hoping it won't. It is often done through "walls", that will get damaged by a critical hit but still be able to survive and potentially heal back up. It is often done through "sacks", that are sent in explicitly to faint and avoid these kinds of negative outcomes. While these are solutions, it is occasionally an unavoidable situation that some of these outcomes will negatively affect the outcome of the match on one side or the other, but it is not possible to remove such foundational mechanics without altering the game by an unreasonable amount, and it is not statistically unlikely for the odds to even out throughout the course of the game. It is also the case that these are calculated risks taken in the teambuilding phase, utilizing moves like Thunder without the confirmation that they will hit, but with the idea that, when used enough times, one of them will eventually both land and cause a paralysis. In a majority of cases, still, the reward obtained combined with the low probability makes this a not abusable source of luck that will only occasionally affect the outcome when two skilled players are playing against each other, and will very rarely affect the outcome when one skilled player is facing a less skilled player.
  • The common denominator between most luck based bans are the higher than normal probabilities and/or the disproportionate reward obtained, with Evasion being "Preventing all damage and secondary effects" at a 33/50/67% chance, OHKO Moves being an instant kill at a 0% chance and Moody being hard to quantify but generally tying in to effects like doubled attacking stat, speed stat or evasion, with a near 100% to obtain a useful effect, and high chances of it being game breaking.
  • While the inspected items are less game-breaking than those illustrated in the second point, they represent a similar scenario where the reward is disproportionately high compared to the norm. Bright powder is also evasion, which is pretty much a "free turn", despite the lower chance of 10%. King's Rock is a "free turn" as long as the user is faster, with a variable chance going from 10% up to 41% in the case of 5-hit moves, Sand Veil is also evasion at a chance of 25% but with special requirements, and Quick Claw is "infinite speed" at 20%. These kinds of outcomes lack the desired counterplay that critical hits and secondary effects have: there's no such thing as a "sponge" for free turns, "wall"s can very rarely take a free turn, and multiple free turns in a row will be fatal and "sack"s only occasionally help against these situations. Quick Claw is arguably the lesser evil, as the reward is much weaker and the probability is not outstanding, but can also be potentially aggravating.

While contextualizing within the metagame is valid, it is important to remember that abusers of Bright Powder and King's Rock can be mostly any Pokemon (even though realistically few will be), and even then, the usual abusers of these items and of Sand Veil are competitively viable outside of use of the item, meaning this is not application of teambuilding creativity, but simply turning a regular strategy into a degenerate one. At the end of the day, this is not a discussion of viability, but of competitiveness.

II.) Uncompetitive - elements that reduce the effect of player choice / interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such that "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant.
While it is very much so debatable at which point the threshold of "extreme degree" has been reached, I would say it is unreasonable to expect Cloyster to be denied the opportunity to ever set up a Shell Smash, in a long game where adequate support through Screens, moves like Memento, and even just decent pivoting and positioning can be enough to allow this to happen, after which the game is very much so taken out of the hands of the player unless they have the explicitly adequate type of priority or a faster Choice Scarf Pokemon, and it is also unreasonable to expect all or most teams to have these. I would also say that Bright Powder and Sand Veil remove agency from the player at nearly no cost, meaning the player is always in a state of just hoping their moves will land, with no other level of nuance or strategic play considered. Quick Claw similarly makes players hope that it just doesn't activate.

Lastly I would argue the lack of consistency, viability or tournament results are not solid enough reasoning to keep these. The idea behind these strategies is that they allow a lower skill player to get the upper hand on a higher skill player, so you will not see these be used by high skill players, nor will you see them reach high tournament placements. Nonetheless, tiering policy should always aim towards reducing these kinds of situations at the utmost, and the removal of items and abilities that have no purpose other than reducing skill expression should be a no-brainer.
 
While it is very much so debatable at which point the threshold of "extreme degree" has been reached, I would say it is unreasonable to expect Cloyster to be denied the opportunity to ever set up a Shell Smash, in a long game where adequate support through Screens, moves like Memento, and even just decent pivoting and positioning can be enough to allow this to happen, after which the game is very much so taken out of the hands of the player unless they have the explicitly adequate type of priority or a faster Choice Scarf Pokemon, and it is also unreasonable to expect all or most teams to have these. I would also say that Bright Powder and Sand Veil remove agency from the player at nearly no cost, meaning the player is always in a state of just hoping their moves will land, with no other level of nuance or strategic play considered. Quick Claw similarly makes players hope that it just doesn't activate.

Lastly I would argue the lack of consistency, viability or tournament results are not solid enough reasoning to keep these. The idea behind these strategies is that they allow a lower skill player to get the upper hand on a higher skill player, so you will not see these be used by high skill players, nor will you see them reach high tournament placements. Nonetheless, tiering policy should always aim towards reducing these kinds of situations at the utmost, and the removal of items and abilities that have no purpose other than reducing skill expression should be a no-brainer.

No offense, but are we even playing the same tier? While screens are somewhat common (though not as much as they used to be), when is the last time we've seen Memento in an actual game? I also think you're severely overstating the ease with which Cloyster can set up, even if we assume screens/Memento are in play. There's plenty of other options to either limit it or straight up prevent it from setting up, and those are most definitely not unique to very few select Pokemon. Besides priority, you also have Knock Off, Thunder Wave/Glare, Roar/Dragon Tail/Whirlwind, Taunt, Wisp/Toxic putting it on a timer (which is really bad considering you need at least 2 hits to kill everything that isn't a team with purely offensive Pokemon, which is surely packing some priority at least), and even more fringe stuff like slow Encore on Clefable. For priority there's Mega Lopunny/Medicham as a conditional check to Cloyster, especially if paired with something that hits it on the setup turn. Conditional because Protect as a 4th move can stop it, but that's quite rare. For less conditional checks there are Bullet Punch MMeta/Scizor, Sucker Punch Bisharp, Priority Thunder Wave from Thundurus, Mach Punch Conkeldurr, as well as stuff like Extremespeed on Dragonite. There's also Sand Rush Excadrill being extremely common and beating everything that isn't King's Rock Ice Shard flinches. Almost none of these kill Cloyster from full, even at -1, but definitely after a hit on the setup turn if you don't give it completely, 100% free setup with no rocks up. Most of these are excellent Pokemon in their own right, and that's only if you actually concede it a free Shell Smash. You'd be surprised at how few actual setup opportunities Cloyster gets, even with screens up. I mean, look at this:

0 SpA Clefable Moonblast vs. -1 0 HP / 0 SpD Cloyster through Light Screen: 137-162 (56.8 - 67.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Even assuming the Clefable has nothing else to stop its sweep with, that's at most 3 sand turns away from dying if you have Stealth Rocks up, to give you another potential out not involving being explicitly faster. If you give Cloyster 100% free setup with no rocks, no plan, no priority, nothing to chip it with, and then lose because it flinches three of your Pokemon... Maybe you shouldn't have given it so much space to do whatever it wants and deserve to lose? Did the worse player really beat the better player if you're giving me free screens, a free Memento, and free setup with my Cloyster, right after I clear the field of hazards? Let's also not forget that this isn't even close to a win, it's a less than 50% chance to even do anything. Lets also not forget that, especially against fat teams where this is the most relevant (as I will say that this is probably the set with the best odds of breaking Slowbro), King's Rock being explicitly the best set only applies to very few Pokemon. NMI Cloyster knocks out many of the other targets with minimal chip damage. The effect King's Rock in particular has on Cloyster's ability to break through most Pokemon is hugely exaggerated.

+2 252+ Atk Never-Melt Ice Cloyster Icicle Spear (5 hits) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Clefable: 380-455 (96.4 - 115.4%) -- approx. 87.5% chance to OHKO

You don't exactly need King's Rock flinches to break through a lot of its "checks", and, again, this only happens with absolutely perfect battle conditions. I'd argue that it's actually very competitive that your opponent's sweeper breaks through your team if you give it absolutely free reign to do as it pleases, personally. Teams rarely need to dedicate space to actual King's Rock Cloyster answers because they're baked into most teams by default, that's just a matter of fact, and if they aren't, they probably are quite weak to Cloyster in general.

I don't see how the lack of results is a bad argument here. Are you arguing that we should ban Dunsparce or Sawsbuck for abusing a team full of paralyzed Pokemon on your opponent's side too well with Headbutt? There's a reason good players usually don't gravitate towards those strategies, and that's because they're unreliable and just not that good. This is no Swagger situation where you're in constant danger of hitting your own Pokemon for 40-50% while your opponent spams Foul Play, or something becoming almost invincible with 1-2 uses of Minimize on already good Pokemon. This is a Pokemon giving up its item slot to, at best, get a below coinflip chance to luck past some of its checks, given perfect battle conditions and matchup. And, again, most of these checks falter against plenty of other Cloyster sets. Unlike those two strategies, it also has far more counterplay than bad/inferior abilities like Own Tempo and moves that see little to no actual usage, like Aerial Ace, Shock Wave, and Aura Sphere. These avenues of counterplay already exist on a vast, vast majority of teams. I don't see how a Pokemon requiring this much setup is worse than most other "luck" angles in Pokemon, unless you want to argue that we should ban most forms of RNG? In which case, why the hell are you playing Pokemon if you intrinsically hate RNG elements, regardless of how good they are?

I can see more of an argument for Quick Claw, but we should absolutely analyze results for this. We usually ban things because they're broken or uncompetitive, and I don't see how Quick Claw robbing one game a year is anything close to full Swagger teams turning full games into actual slot machines. Quick Claw has counterplay, too, in that you don't always need to outspeed things to beat them. I'm not going to go into detail about this, I can gladly make another post down the line as I do feel rather strongly about this topic, but until there's more (like, a lot more) games of Quick Claw Manaphy being a problem than it sniping Conkeldurr Trick Room in SPL, I see this as little more than a fringe strategy that steals games once in a blue moon. I've seen more games stolen by Mega Metagross getting a 20% proc on Meteor Mash/Zen Headbutt, and it's not particularly close. And believe me, I've probably experimented with Quick Claw in this tier more than most people.

Again, no offense, but your post sounds like a bunch of theoreticals that have little to do with actual ORAS OU games.
 
Last edited:
No offense, but are we even playing the same tier? While screens are somewhat common (though not as much as they used to be), when is the last time we've seen Memento in an actual game? I also think you're severely overstating the ease with which Cloyster can set up, even if we assume screens/Memento are in play. There's plenty of other options to either limit it or straight up prevent it from setting up, and those are most definitely not unique to very few select Pokemon. Besides priority, you also have Knock Off, Thunder Wave/Glare, Roar/Dragon Tail/Whirlwind, Taunt, Wisp/Toxic putting it on a timer (which is really bad considering you need at least 2 hits to kill everything that isn't a team with purely offensive Pokemon, which is surely packing some priority at least), and even more fringe stuff like slow Encore on Clefable. For priority there's Lopunny Mega as a conditional check to Cloyster, especially if paired with something that hits it on the setup turn. Conditional because Protect as a 4th move can stop it, but that's quite rare. For less conditional checks there are Bullet Punch MMeta/Scizor, Sucker Punch Bisharp, Priority Thunder Wave from Thundurus, Mach Punch Conkeldurr, as well as stuff like Extremespeed on Dragonite. There's also Sand Rush Excadrill being extremely common and beating everything that isn't King's Rock Ice Shard flinches. Almost none of these kill Cloyster from full, even at -1, but definitely after a hit on the setup turn if you don't give it completely, 100% free setup with no rocks up. Most of these are excellent Pokemon in their own right, and that's only if you actually concede it a free Shell Smash. You'd be surprised at how few actual setup opportunities Cloyster gets, even with screens up. I mean, look at this:

0 SpA Clefable Moonblast vs. -1 0 HP / 0 SpD Cloyster through Light Screen: 137-162 (56.8 - 67.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Even assuming the Clefable has nothing else to stop its sweep with, that's at most 3 sand turns away from dying if you have Stealth Rocks up, to give you another potential out not involving being explicitly faster. If you give Cloyster 100% free setup with no rocks, no plan, no priority, nothing to chip it with, and then lose because it flinches three of your Pokemon... Maybe you shouldn't have given it so much space to do whatever it wants and deserve to lose? Let's also not forget that this isn't even close to a win, it's a less than 50% chance to even do anything. Lets also not forget that, especially against fat teams where this is the most relevant (as I will say that this is probably the set with the best odds of breaking Slowbro), this only applies to very few Pokemon. NMI Cloyster knocks out many of the other targets with minimal chip damage. The effect King's Rock in particular has on Cloyster's ability to break through most Pokemon is hugely exaggerated.

+2 252+ Atk Never-Melt Ice Cloyster Icicle Spear (5 hits) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Clefable: 380-455 (96.4 - 115.4%) -- approx. 87.5% chance to OHKO

You don't exactly need King's Rock flinches to break through a lot of its "checks", and, again, this only happens with absolutely perfect battle conditions. I'd argue that it's actually very competitive that your opponent's sweeper breaks through your team if you give it absolutely free reign to do as it pleases, personally. Teams rarely need to dedicate space to actual King's Rock Cloyster answers because they're baked into most teams by default, that's just a matter of fact, and if they aren't, they probably are quite weak to Cloyster in general.

I don't see how the lack of results is a bad argument here. Are you arguing that we should ban Dunsparce or Sawsbuck for abusing a team full of paralyzed Pokemon on your opponent's side too well with Headbutt? There's a reason good players usually don't gravitate towards those strategies, and that's because they're unreliable and just not that good. This is no Swagger situation where you're in constant danger of hitting your own Pokemon for 40-50% while your opponent spams Foul Play, or something becoming almost invincible with 1-2 uses of Minimize on already good Pokemon. This is a Pokemon giving up its item slot to, at best, get a below coinflip chance to luck past some of its checks, given perfect battle conditions and matchup. And, again, most of these checks falter against plenty of other Cloyster sets. Unlike those two strategies, it also has far more counterplay than bad/inferior abilities like Own Tempo and moves that see little to no intrinsic usage, like Aerial Ace, Shock Wave, and Aura Sphere. These avenues of counterplay already exist on a vast, vast majority of teams. I don't see how a Pokemon requiring this much setup is worse than most other "luck" angles in Pokemon, unless you want to argue that we should ban most forms of RNG?

I can see more of an argument for Quick Claw, but we should absolutely analyze results for this. We usually ban things because they're broken or uncompetitive, and I don't see how Quick Claw robbing one game a year is anything close to full Swagger teams turning full games into actual slot machines. Quick Claw has counterplay, too, in that you don't always need to outspeed things to beat them. I'm not going to go into detail about this, I can gladly make another post down the line as I do feel rather strongly about this topic, but until there's more (like, a lot more) games of Quick Claw Manaphy being a problem than it sniping Conkeldurr Trick Room in SPL, I see this as little more than a fringe strategy that steals games once in a blue moon. I've seen more games stolen by Mega Metagross getting a 20% proc on Meteor Mash/Zen Headbutt, and it's not particularly close. And believe me, I've probably experimented with Quick Claw in this tier more than most people.

Again, no offense, but your post sounds like a bunch of theoreticals that have little to do with actual ORAS OU games.
I'm not an ORAS OU player pretty much at all, I just thought I would offer my perspective from a more theoretical and policy-based standpoint, mostly for fun and to get a better understanding of policy as a whole, and also because I feel like oftentimes these threads get saturated with overly personal and opinionated posts that don't really do a great job at comprising the prominent points of the issue as a whole.

Partially I was hoping to avoid talking about the specific mons themselves because then it becomes a discussion about viability and that's the primary reason why these topics have been so contentious for a long time, the strategy does not reward the better player so it is generally not that viable. I personally think strategies that are only meant to give the weaker player a numerically unlikely advantage and have no other purpose should be banned by definition, regardless of the metagame or abusers, but it's not like I really expect this to be a popular take, even if it aligns with the framework.

At the end of the day it all lies on the definition of "Too much" which is quite personal and there's a reason why it has been so difficult to define so far and it so heavily depends on the group of players you ask. There's a vocal minority out there that would even argue that paralysis is too much and that one should be banned, it's just not a popular enough thought.

To add some more so this isn't just an empty post, Cloyster doesn't have to instantly win the game for it to have been abused effectively, even just killing a mon or two because you decided to sack your thundurus to click a twave, or rotate mlop between a bunch of sacks to fake out it to death, or clicked toxic on it and only let it kill 3 mons instead of 6 since its on a timer, all because you didn't have something that could just tank a hit and kill it/phaze it/twave it, and remember that at the end of the day if you click wisp on a lum berry cloyster the entire stours lobby will still make fun of you, so you can't take that for granted. I'm not saying Cloyster is broken or anything, it's still a shitmon, don't get me wrong, I just don't think it's totally unreasonable for a team to have at least one mon that is free cloyster setup because your skarmory forgot the whirlwind at home, or excadrill missed toxic, or even just finding a singular shell smash chance against a team that just doesnt have thund/lop/gross/sciz, and then you're playing roulette on whether you actually win the game you're supposed to win. It's not like King's Rock is useful for literally anything besides degenerating a strategy into making it luck-based, so what's the point? Are you just gonna wait around until it actually does steal an important SPL game?

Either way I'm not really too heated about this argument I would happily accept that you don't deem something nearly irrelevant as banworthy, that's very fair, I very simply just have a different opinion.
 
I don't want to go too in depth about the matter because I'm experienced enough in these kind of discussions to know that any action probably won't have enough support (a mistake, if you ask me, but that's it). I just wanted to point out, as someone who knows the tier pretty well and has been playing that a lot in the last year, that it is actually easy enough - statistically speaking too - for Cloyster to find a spot to setup and King's Rock existence in particular (even/especially when not scouted yet) plays a big role in these scenarios.

The actual problem is that King's Rock is 41% to flinch and any consistent player will consider that too much to "coinflip" when it's possible to avoid it. Now for the whole game you have that dilemma: if you give it an angle to setup, it might luck your team to an UNAVOIDABLE loss. At the same time you could be paying it way more respect than necessary, because it's a factor that slips from your hands once it setups, just to find out later that it wasn't even a King's Rock set. Furthermore, most teams don't have more than 1-2 Pokémon able to take 2 hits from +2 Cloyster. This means that in most cases you have a 41% or 16% chance to lose the game on spot once it setups, even if you have good checks like Slowbro or Ferrothorn.

Now, of course there are priority moves, and of course there is the setup turn too, and some check that needs more than 1 flinch to be dealt with. But even after putting that into the equation, it seems to me that this item brings an unnecessary, uncompetitive contribution to the metagame. A strategy does not need to be consistent to be uncompetitive. In this case specifically, the major problem is not only about how often King's Rock make you win. It's about how it gets you the win. Of course many more strategies in this game are meant to exploit odds to get you a win, but here you are forcing a coinflip. You are punishing the potentially better player that will play around a 40% the whole game and giving the potentially worse player a tool to luck his way to a win.

I think the majority of players with a gameplan-centered playstyle will have a tendency to dislike seeing Cloyster in preview or overprepping for it. It's just nonsense to leave that option open, when many similar strategies - non consistent, but uncompetitive - are banned by policies or clause. If we define as competitive anything that helps in rewarding the player that deals better with what a player can control/influence, then for sure King's Rock doesn't fall much into this definition. That being said, I leave the rest of the conversation to the rest of the playerbase.
 
I dont see a reason to ever ban the most worthless items ever that never see the light of usage in the tier.
I also dont agree with the "uncompetitive" nature of the items that many people seem to put a tag on all these % chance items as an excuse to ban em in other gens.
% chance of secondary effects happening like Flinches, crit etc is a very standard pokemon feature that all kinds of moves have and they just happen to introduce it in a few selected items too.
It is well balanced as they only have 10% chance of the effect to happen and it doesn't stack with moves having the same effect for example Dark Pulse + Kings Rock.
Compare this to Moves with Flinch Chance + some abilities stacking together like Serene Grace + Iron Head and u can see why these items are very similar, weaker options, very competitive and for a good reason never used.
And the best part all that comes at the cost of an actual, consistent item that u can only use 1 of at each pokemon compared to moves with those same effects that u can have 4 of meaning that u are way less punished for slappin in the last moveslot an iron head or a rock slide on your drill or whatever for the secondary effect possibility.
Now thats uncompetitive, maybe buff them items to 20% honestly, i would still slap a lefties instead.
 
I personally would ban the remaining luck items but if it needs more usage before being considered by the larger community then that's what we will have to wait for.

As for sand veil though, it should be an easy extension to evasion clause like we did with bright powder already. It is a simple quality of life increase with, genuinely, no downside.
 
Back
Top