With Choice Band managing to break the 6x Leftovers monotony in Advance and the DP metagame shaping up to be more offensive than it's 386 pokemon counterpart, the addition of 'Choice' items for Speed and Special Attack seemed as though they would, along with the original Choice Band, find their way on to a lot of teams.
Anyway I looked at some RMTs as mentioned in the note and here is what I found:
Teams: 20
Choice Band users: 10
Choice Scarf users: 8
Choice Specs users: 3
Even the threat list really only has four potential Choice Specs users (Alakazam, Sceptile, Starmie, and Salamence), and really only the last two of which tend to get any real consideration on RMTs.
NOTE: Usage statistics here are from the first 20 non-locked RMTs. I realize this doesn't reflect usage but considering there really aren't a lot of users submitted quality teams at this point this is a fairly accurate representation of what our board is outputting at this point. I also skipped a few RMTs that were clearly made by people with a fundamental lack of understanding about how competitive pokemon works - you'll simply have to trust my discretion in doing so.
I think there are a lot of reasons why the planned usage of this item is so low, but I'd say the two main ones are as follows:
Lack of Experience using the item
I could be wrong on this but outside of Slaking I don't really recall Choice Band being used a whole lot in early RS(albeit many of the good CB users are 386 only and we were mainly playing 200 then), and I would wager that is used at least 3-4x as much now as it was four years ago. While we've all seen(over. and over. and over.) how effective Choice Band have seen, there are very few of us who have a copy of Diamond or Pearl or Battle Revolution right now, and even fewer who actually battle online, so at least first hand very, very few people have used Choice Specs or been a victim of them, so I think lack of exposure probably contributes to the lack of use.
Choice Band vs. Choice Specs vs. Choice Scarf
The other main reason I think people are probably hesitant to put Specs on pokemon or use the item in general is the fact that loading up your team with more than one or two Choice- item pokemon greatly limits your options and makes every prediction matter even more than it did before. As such, Choice Specs are directly competing with the other Choice items for slots on teams.
vs. Choice Band
I think a lot of immediate problems come to mind here, but the most obvious is a basic difference between special and physical attacks. When you think of special sweepers I think one of two things will probably come to mind - some sort of Calm Mind(or Scheme now) + sweep(Slowbro, Raikou, Alakazam, Azelf, etc.), or a pokemon that uses attack variety to avoid needing to switch and to defeat a variety of pokemon and be difficult to predict against, most notably with boltbeam (PorygonZ, Starmie, Gengar, etc.). The concept with a choice- type item don't work terribly well with either of these niches, which forces a bit of a strategy change.
The other thing that hurts the specs here is the lack of a few key moves - we all know how ridiculously prevalent Earthquake is. Nearly every physical sweeper can learn it, it has good coverage and is just generally a wonderful attack due to it's accuracy and power. 100 power/accuracy isn't something that any widely available special attack can match - the closest equivalent is probably something like Flamethrower/Thunderbolt/Ice Beam, which are both weaker and less widely available. Another major killer is the lack of a Focus Punch equivalent - while it certainly isn't as widely learnable as Earthquake, it was a horrible dangerous move on pokemon like Tyranitar and Heracross, for example, because one correct prediction with it was lights out for nearly everything that didn't resist fighting.
vs. Choice Scarf
There's much less of a direct comparison here so there isn't nearly as much for me to say, but what it basically boils down to here is that in a lot of ways the Scarf allows you to put the prediction in the hands of your opponent. With the specs(and CB), you're forced to make a difficult, high risk high reward prediction, whereas with the Scarf it's mostly a matter of if your opponent figures out you have it before you can exploit it. I think in most cases the Scarf is going to be a lot easier to execute, which is certainly going to promote it's usage.
Anyway I guess to get to the point of where I'm going - do you consider the Specs as viable as the other two Choice items? Do you plan on using it? Flaws/discussion/etc.
Anyway I looked at some RMTs as mentioned in the note and here is what I found:
Teams: 20
Choice Band users: 10
Choice Scarf users: 8
Choice Specs users: 3
Even the threat list really only has four potential Choice Specs users (Alakazam, Sceptile, Starmie, and Salamence), and really only the last two of which tend to get any real consideration on RMTs.
NOTE: Usage statistics here are from the first 20 non-locked RMTs. I realize this doesn't reflect usage but considering there really aren't a lot of users submitted quality teams at this point this is a fairly accurate representation of what our board is outputting at this point. I also skipped a few RMTs that were clearly made by people with a fundamental lack of understanding about how competitive pokemon works - you'll simply have to trust my discretion in doing so.
I think there are a lot of reasons why the planned usage of this item is so low, but I'd say the two main ones are as follows:
Lack of Experience using the item
I could be wrong on this but outside of Slaking I don't really recall Choice Band being used a whole lot in early RS(albeit many of the good CB users are 386 only and we were mainly playing 200 then), and I would wager that is used at least 3-4x as much now as it was four years ago. While we've all seen(over. and over. and over.) how effective Choice Band have seen, there are very few of us who have a copy of Diamond or Pearl or Battle Revolution right now, and even fewer who actually battle online, so at least first hand very, very few people have used Choice Specs or been a victim of them, so I think lack of exposure probably contributes to the lack of use.
Choice Band vs. Choice Specs vs. Choice Scarf
The other main reason I think people are probably hesitant to put Specs on pokemon or use the item in general is the fact that loading up your team with more than one or two Choice- item pokemon greatly limits your options and makes every prediction matter even more than it did before. As such, Choice Specs are directly competing with the other Choice items for slots on teams.
vs. Choice Band
I think a lot of immediate problems come to mind here, but the most obvious is a basic difference between special and physical attacks. When you think of special sweepers I think one of two things will probably come to mind - some sort of Calm Mind(or Scheme now) + sweep(Slowbro, Raikou, Alakazam, Azelf, etc.), or a pokemon that uses attack variety to avoid needing to switch and to defeat a variety of pokemon and be difficult to predict against, most notably with boltbeam (PorygonZ, Starmie, Gengar, etc.). The concept with a choice- type item don't work terribly well with either of these niches, which forces a bit of a strategy change.
The other thing that hurts the specs here is the lack of a few key moves - we all know how ridiculously prevalent Earthquake is. Nearly every physical sweeper can learn it, it has good coverage and is just generally a wonderful attack due to it's accuracy and power. 100 power/accuracy isn't something that any widely available special attack can match - the closest equivalent is probably something like Flamethrower/Thunderbolt/Ice Beam, which are both weaker and less widely available. Another major killer is the lack of a Focus Punch equivalent - while it certainly isn't as widely learnable as Earthquake, it was a horrible dangerous move on pokemon like Tyranitar and Heracross, for example, because one correct prediction with it was lights out for nearly everything that didn't resist fighting.
vs. Choice Scarf
There's much less of a direct comparison here so there isn't nearly as much for me to say, but what it basically boils down to here is that in a lot of ways the Scarf allows you to put the prediction in the hands of your opponent. With the specs(and CB), you're forced to make a difficult, high risk high reward prediction, whereas with the Scarf it's mostly a matter of if your opponent figures out you have it before you can exploit it. I think in most cases the Scarf is going to be a lot easier to execute, which is certainly going to promote it's usage.
Anyway I guess to get to the point of where I'm going - do you consider the Specs as viable as the other two Choice items? Do you plan on using it? Flaws/discussion/etc.
