Metagame np: SV DOU Stage 13: Let It Snow | Evasion Abilities Banned

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bagel

bagel

is a Community Leaderis a Metagame Resource Contributoris a Tiering Contributoris a Former Smogon Metagame Tournament Circuit Champion
Doubles Leader
Let it snow, let it snow
Outside it's cold, but the fire's blazin'
So, baby, let it snow
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow
:sv/articuno:​

Now that SCL has finished, evasion abilities will be the next DOU suspect targets after results from the latest tiering survey showed significant support for a suspect.

The abilities in question are Snow Cloak and Sand Veil, both raising evasion by 1.25x in Snow and Sandstorm respectively. This equates to a 1 in 5 chance a 100% accurate move can miss a Pokemon that has an active evasion ability. For DOU, most relevant Pokemon with either of these abilities is Articuno, which over the past year has seen use in OSDT, SCL, and DWCOP paired with Ninetales-Alola on Snow teams. The buff to Articuno's evasion, combined with the aditional buff to its defense from Snow and Aurora Veil support from Ninetales-A can extend its longevity and allow it to throw off strong STAB Blizzards at opponents. However this strategy isn't generally conisdered strong enough to get a suspect compared to past DOU suspect targets such as Flutter Mane or Archaludon. Instead the main focus is on the uncompetitive and non-interactive properties of evasion abilities, as evasion is a pure RNG element that takes agency away from the player. And compared to other RNG elements at play in DOU, it isn't attached to moves/abilities that have competitive merit such as strong spread moves (Blizzard freeze chance) or speed control (Thunder Wave paralysis). Additionally, evasion abilities don't require the player to choose a move in game like the other mention RNG elements.

However evasion abilities are still very niche in the grand scheme of DOU, with Snow Cloak seeing a few uses and Sand Veil seeing even less. Outside of their abilities the abusers of evasion abilities are quite bad, Articuno suffers from its overall poor typing and mediocre offensive stats, while the most viable Sand Veil user in Garchomp has seen barely any serious use in the past couple SV DOU metagames. The prominence of Tornadus also hinders the effectiveness of evasion abilities as it commonly runs Sunny Day or Rain Dance and can automatically turn of Snow or Sandstorm to remove the evasion boost. Historically evasion abilities have been banned in most DOU oldgens-- being banned in DPP, BW, XY and SM; while being legal in ADV and SS (evasion abilities were unbanned during SS). It is important to consider that context is different for each tier, with permanent weather or more viable evasion ability users affecting the popularity of evasion abilities over the years.

As usual, 60% of the vote must be in favor to ban evasion abilities.

NOTE: THIS TEST WILL BE USING THE NEW SUSPECT PROCESS!

The instructions to participate in this test are as follows:

  • Create a new account on PS. You do not have to follow any specific naming convention, but your suspect account must have never played a game in DOU before this suspect test went up or you will not receive valid requirements (resetting W/L does not count for this - the account you use must never have played DOU before the test, full stop.)
  • At any point on your new account, use the command /linksmogon on Pokemon Showdown! You will receive instructions on what to do once you run this command.
  • Double check that you're listed as a voter here! If you aren't listed as a voter despite having valid reqs, please contact myself, Yoda2798, or a member of staff.
  • If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me/Yoda or post here!

The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2980.
The suspect laddering period has started and the deadline for getting requirements will be Sunday, December 8th 8:00 PM Eastern Time (GMT-5)

Additionally there will be 2 live suspect tournaments in the Smogon Doubles Showdown room. The winner of each of these tournaments will qualify for suspect voting, and should reach out to me, Yoda or another member of staff so we can verify and add them to the voting pool.

Suspect Tournament Times
Saturday, 30th November at 12:00 PM 4:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-5)
Sunday, 1st December at 4:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-5)

Evasion abilities will be legal during this suspect.
 
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Evasion abilities used to be banned by default in DOU tiers until a case was made to unban them in SS DOU late 2019 and the council vote took place in January 2020. I don't recall when this became the standard for other tiers but I think it was a mistake.

Turning a 100% accurate move into a move with Hydro Pump accuracy is just bad RNG to entertain in a competitive environment. Historically speaking it hasn't mattered much in DOU because the only Pokemon with evasion abilities were unviable mons anyways, but Articuno has carved a niche where it's just good enough (but nowhere near suspect worthy lol) to be usable on a snow team in tandem with Snow Cloak, and at least a couple of recent-ish tour games have been robbed to Snow Cloak misses from what I understand.

Articuno is realistically the only relevant evasion ability user in this metagame but I think it is enough to highlight why evasion abilities are problematic when viable Pokemon have access to them.

Voting to ban evasion abilities is the right call. But more importantly, it would be good to get this suspect over with so Archaludon can be brought back into the conversation again since I think SCL and DWCOP have highlighted that as a more pressing concern than evasion abilities.
 
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Hey just started my run, and decided to check where I was at...
WAIT WHERE IS MY COIL
IMG_20241129_220246.jpg

Anyone have an answer to this? I found out dw

Anyways, ill probably vote ban because of the rng based strats that can be created

EDIT: I'll give my full view on things since I officially have reqs now

Sand Veil and Snow Cloak are both very uncommon in the current meta, with only the very rare Garchomp and Articuno using them, with Garchomp not being run on Sand all the time. Given this, there are still every funny upsets that can happen with this. Imagine missing your Electro Shot with Archaludon into Blizzard cheese from Articuno. Yeah, not fun.

I go by a general rule of thumb; if it takes skill away from the game, then it is unhealthy. Basically if it lets the worse player just flip the game on it's head. You could be the best doubles player and lose to some mediocre player because of a Sand Veil/Snow Cloak related miss. THAT is unhealthy. I'll be voting ban, but would like to hear opposing arguments.
 
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Hi, nobody was around to run the first suspect tour earlier so it will now be ran later today at 4:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-5) i.e. about 1 hour 40 minutes from now. Sorry for any inconvenience.
 
If you think evasion abilities should be banned on principle of being uncompetitive, then fine, that’s your prerogative. But I really think we should have the mindset that allowing people to play any way they want to be the default, and only banning things that are clearly problematic to the tier. That way we can allow as many people to enjoy DOU as possible.

Evasion abilities are just not used enough to be problematic. There’s been a tiny amount of tour usage, and the vast majority of DOU tour players have never even played against evasion abilities in a tournament match. I’ve personally never played against it in a tournament despite playing hail dozens of times, and I’ve played the whole circuit.

I also ladder almost daily and I see evasion abilities maybe once every two weeks or so. There’s just sooo many more mildly annoying strategies that you have to contend with for laddering, such as Ally Switch, Beat up, Pecharunt, Smeargle BS, and even stuff like Scarf Rock Slide Serene Grace Dudunsparce with lvl 1 Endeavor Donphan (yes you read that right) that are much more problematic on the ladder. Giving a mid mon a slight chance of dodging an attack in the right weather doesn’t even register tbh, and that’s despite hail being extremely popular. Do not Ban.
 
As alluded to by Actuarily, this suspect test is mostly a matter of philosophy. However, my viewpoint is entirely different. I think we should be striving to let Doubles OU players act on any skill expression they'd like, but I do not think evasion abilities fall under skill expression. I think they introduce an unnecessary and uncompetitive amount of variance into the game and are something I would very much like to see removed. I don't ladder in DOU outside of suspect tests, but every time I do it never fails to face "ladder sand" or Froslass + Kyurem + Articuno in at least one of the 30-40 games it takes to achieve the requirements. Players are bringing these strategies to our tournaments. I don't think this is a reputation that should be garnered by one of Smogon's most popular metagames.

The goal here, in my eyes, is to foster an environment as competitive as possible, not something that aligns with the current freedom of evasion abilities in the tier. When you decide to load Articuno over something like Kyurem on your snow team, there is very little skill expression at play other than hoping and praying to tilt the odds in your favor. By eliminating this as an option and forcing players to ladder with or play tournaments with more competitive teams, we can raise the bar for DOU's collective skill ceiling. Even if the decrease in variance due to this ban is so utterly marginal to where some hypothetical forecast tells me we'd only stop Charizardfan1229 from getting a Snow Cloak dodge in round 2 of a seasonal, I'd still vote ban.
 
GenOne said:
Evasion abilities used to be banned by default in DOU tiers until a case was made to unban them in SS DOU late 2019 and the council vote took place in January 2020. I don't recall when this became the standard for other tiers but I think it was a mistake.

Turning a 100% accurate move into a move with Hydro Pump accuracy is just bad RNG to entertain in a competitive environment. Historically speaking it hasn't mattered much in DOU because the only Pokemon with evasion abilities were unviable mons anyways, but Articuno has carved a niche where it's just good enough (but nowhere near suspect worthy lol) to be usable on a snow team in tandem with Snow Cloak, and at least a couple of recent-ish tour games have been robbed to Snow Cloak misses from what I understand.

Articuno is realistically the only relevant evasion ability user in this metagame but I think it is enough to highlight why evasion abilities are problematic when viable Pokemon have access to them.

Voting to ban evasion abilities is the right call. But more importantly, it would be good to get this suspect over with so Archaludon can be brought back into the conversation again since I think SCL and DWCOP have highlighted that as a more pressing concern than evasion abilities.
Click to expand...
i agree, suspect archaludon as soon as possible
 
why is this a suspect test in the first place? idt stuff like evasion is ever a public test but whatever. evasion stuff should be banned by default. it adds nothing but rng. opinions exist (in other fields), but anyone who thinks different is just dishonest. ban this by yesterday, regardless of how many people play it. this is no different than other rng items/abilities, which are all banned in other metas (its not like theyre any different in singles vs doubles vs 4v4 vs 6v6 its all just luck luck luck)
 
I just qualified for the test. In around the 40 matches I played, there was lots of luck including crits, Blizzard freezes, Blizzard missing when it's not weather, lots of other imperfect accuracy moves, Thunder scoring two paralyses in a row, Rock Slide flinch, the randomness of when sleep wakes up, and more. Not once was there an incident of Snow Cloak of Sand Veil freeze. I had came across one Articuno and one Sand Veil Garchomp, the former resigning before Articuno was brought onto the field and the latter not even being paired with sandstorm. I had considered using Articuno on the Hail team I used, but then I followed some wise words from Fangame. Kyurem has better stats, movepool and arguably a better typing that together outweigh the advantages of Snow Cloak. These Evasion abilities are practically never used and I cannot find a valid reason to seriously find myself using a team with these abilities. Even if I wanted to cheese, I would use other options. Most of the luck based options have some skill in them, including commonly seen moves like sleep moves. Although there are moves that are also inherently luck based with no skill like Sand Attack and Confuse Ray. I'd argue that with Articuno, many users are not even trying to cheese, but simply seeing Articuno as a useful Pokemon since it gained usage after someone won a VGC tournament with it (specifically Specs Articuno, in a format where Kyurem was banned).

In brief, evasion moves aren't an issue and aren't close to it. I agree with previous posters that this test is larger a matter of philosophy. If you're trying to ban problematic elements, then Sand Veil and Snow Cloak are an easy no ban. If you're trying to ban things that are almost entirely RNG-based, then you could vote to ban. But then we should also ban any move/item/ability that's fundamentally RNG-based like Brightpowder, accuracy lowering moves, Acupressure, Moody, and confusion moves (except ironically Swagger, since it has more skill with a self-swagger). How far such a list goes is up to interpretation, with sleeping moves arguably belonging here too since they are also fundamentally RNG-based with the random sleep timer. Even some attacking moves like Zap Cannon could be arguably here, as this is literally the attacking equivalent of a coin flip. Although we have banned RNG-based traits before on the basis of being uncompetitive, we have only done so previously when they've been problematic. Banning them when they aren't problematic starts a slippery slope of how far do we go in banning RNG-based elements even when they're not an issue. (Although I myself would be tempted to vote ban for Brightpowder and Acupressure, since the former can be used on pretty much anything, and the latter is probably the single most RNG-based move allowed in the entire game, not only raising stats randomly but also being able to raise evasion randomly and being even harder to remove than weather-based evasion. Alas, even these I wouldn't call problematic due to their lack of usage).

Pokemon is also a game where skill matters not just in skill-based plays but skill in how to use RNG. Mostly from moves with luck that exist like Rock Slide and Sleep. But this also exists with even these extremely RNG-based features including Snow Cloak/Sand Veil. Such as deciding whether the better play is to attack a Snow Cloak/Sand Veil user knowing there could be a miss, or doing other things like playing defensively, targetting the other Pokemon instead, or removing weather should you have a weather setter. Such decisions as to whether it's better to play dice or not also exists with, say, whether it's worth trying to wake up from Sleep or to swap out. Evasion could also be viewed as a defence buff with variance e.g. on average it's a 1.25% increase in defence factoring in hits/misses, but it's inconsistent and can be more or less. This is not too differerent with other moves. Even Earthquake, which still has some variance due to the chance of critical hits. Some moves like Rock Slide have more variance than evasion due to potential flinches, misses, and critical hits.
 
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Darkmalice said:
I just qualified for the test. In around the 40 matches I played, there was lots of luck including crits, Blizzard freezes, Blizzard missing when it's not weather, lots of other imperfect accuracy moves, Thunder scoring two paralyses in a row, Rock Slide flinch, the randomness of when sleep wakes up, and more. Not once was there an incident of Snow Cloak of Sand Veil freeze. I had came across one Articuno and one Sand Veil Garchomp, the former resigning before Articuno was brought onto the field and the latter not even being paired with sandstorm. I had considered using Articuno on the Hail team I used, but then I followed some wise words from Fangame. Kyurem has better stats, movepool and arguably a better typing that together outweigh the advantages of Snow Cloak. These Evasion abilities are practically never used and I cannot find a valid reason to seriously find myself using a team with these abilities. Even if I wanted to cheese, I would use other options. Most of the luck based options have some skill in them, including commonly seen moves like sleep moves. Although there are moves that are also inherently luck based with no skill like Sand Attack and Confuse Ray. I'd argue that with Articuno, many users are not even trying to cheese, but simply seeing Articuno as a useful Pokemon since it gained usage after someone won a VGC tournament with it (specifically Specs Articuno, in a format where Kyurem was banned).

In brief, evasion moves aren't an issue and aren't close to it. I agree with previous posters that this test is larger a matter of philosophy. If you're trying to ban problematic elements, then Sand Veil and Snow Cloak are an easy no ban. If you're trying to ban things that are almost entirely RNG-based, then you could vote to ban. But then we should also ban any move/item/ability that's fundamentally RNG-based like Brightpowder, accuracy lowering moves, Acupressure, Moody, and confusion moves (except ironically Swagger, since it has more skill with a self-swagger). How far such a list goes is up to interpretation, with sleeping moves arguably belonging here too since they are also fundamentally RNG-based with the random sleep timer. Even some attacking moves like Zap Cannon could be arguably here, as this is literally the attacking equivalent of a coin flip. Although we have banned RNG-based traits before on the basis of being uncompetitive, we have only done so previously when they've been problematic. Banning them when they aren't problematic starts a slippery slope of how far do we go in banning RNG-based elements even when they're not an issue. (Although I myself would be tempted to vote ban for Brightpowder and Acupressure, since the former can be used on pretty much anything, and the latter is probably the single most RNG-based move allowed in the entire game, not only raising stats randomly but also being able to raise evasion randomly and being even harder to remove than weather-based evasion. Alas, even these I wouldn't call problematic due to their lack of usage).

Pokemon is also a game where skill matters not just in skill-based plays but skill in how to use RNG. Mostly from moves with luck that exist like Rock Slide and Sleep. But this also exists with even these extremely RNG-based features including Snow Cloak/Sand Veil. Such as deciding whether the better play is to attack a Snow Cloak/Sand Veil user knowing there could be a miss, or doing other things like playing defensively, targetting the other Pokemon instead, or removing weather should you have a weather setter. Such decisions as to whether it's better to play dice or not also exists with, say, whether it's worth trying to wake up from Sleep or to swap out. Evasion could also be viewed as a defence buff with variance e.g. on average it's a 1.25% increase in defence factoring in hits/misses, but it's inconsistent and can be more or less. This is not too differerent with other moves. Even Earthquake, which still has some variance due to the chance of critical hits. Some moves like Rock Slide have more variance than evasion due to potential flinches, misses, and critical hits.
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Most of the other RNG elements you listed in this post are moves. Moves take up your turn. Selecting a move that leans into chance is a choice you have to make, and that choice can backfire. Maybe you clicked Swagger on a Gholdengo switchin, or maybe your funny Sand Attack got harmlessly redirected by Amoonguss or Ogerpon. Even Dire Claw will occasionally just hit a thing with Cloak, or even poison something that you really needed to put to sleep.

This isn't the case with Sand Veil and Snow Cloak. These are abilities. There is no downside to having them; once the Pokemon is on your team, your opponent now has to clear the weather or risk missing a move that would normally never miss. You could argue that the downside to these abilities is the lower overall quality of the Pokemon that have them, as you alluded to when talking about Articuno vs Kyurem, but once you're out of the teambuilder, it doesn't matter that they're worse choices. With these abilities, sometimes you will be rewarded for making a bad choice in the builder. Is this what we want to reward? This isn't creativity, this is a willingness to let some games come down to chance at no risk to you.

In the last 24 hours, I have seen two separate people post teams with Snow Cloak on them in Smogcord's DOU Rates channel. People are using these abilities. These abilities add nothing to a healthy metagame, and DOU can only be improved by removing them. The arguments against banning them being "we should let people use their favorites :)" and "but there's more RNG anyway" should be enough evidence that they bring nothing good to DOU. It does not matter how "good" they are; these abilities do not contribute to a competitive format and should be banned. The fact that this wasn't a unanimous council vote and has instead gone to a suspect test is genuinely absurd.
(and honestly I'd be down to ban Brightpowder too. Is it too late to add that on?)
 
Arcticblast said:
Most of the other RNG elements you listed in this post are moves. Moves take up your turn. Selecting a move that leans into chance is a choice you have to make, and that choice can backfire. Maybe you clicked Swagger on a Gholdengo switchin, or maybe your funny Sand Attack got harmlessly redirected by Amoonguss or Ogerpon. Even Dire Claw will occasionally just hit a thing with Cloak, or even poison something that you really needed to put to sleep.

This isn't the case with Sand Veil and Snow Cloak. These are abilities. There is no downside to having them; once the Pokemon is on your team, your opponent now has to clear the weather or risk missing a move that would normally never miss. You could argue that the downside to these abilities is the lower overall quality of the Pokemon that have them, as you alluded to when talking about Articuno vs Kyurem, but once you're out of the teambuilder, it doesn't matter that they're worse choices. With these abilities, sometimes you will be rewarded for making a bad choice in the builder. Is this what we want to reward? This isn't creativity, this is a willingness to let some games come down to chance at no risk to you.

In the last 24 hours, I have seen two separate people post teams with Snow Cloak on them in Smogcord's DOU Rates channel. People are using these abilities. These abilities add nothing to a healthy metagame, and DOU can only be improved by removing them. The arguments against banning them being "we should let people use their favorites :)" and "but there's more RNG anyway" should be enough evidence that they bring nothing good to DOU. It does not matter how "good" they are; these abilities do not contribute to a competitive format and should be banned. The fact that this wasn't a unanimous council vote and has instead gone to a suspect test is genuinely absurd.
(and honestly I'd be down to ban Brightpowder too. Is it too late to add that on?)
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The banned Double Team and Minimise are also moves. I agree that those two moves should be banned. I disagree that being an ability means there isn't a downside; opportunity cost still usually exists to a smaller degree. Garchomp gives up Rough Skin and Mamoswine gives up Thick Fat or Oblivious for example. Articuno and Moody Smeargle don't really suffer here though since their other abilities are generally useless, although opportunity cost still exists from not choosing other Pokemon instead. Moves can also fall under being rewarded for making a bad choice in the builder if luck goes your way. The difference is that it's generally harder to punish an ability than a move, but still doable such as by changing the weather. The same concepts of being predominantly RNG-based and sometimes getting rewarded for a bad choice in the team builder still apply. (Acupressure evasion I also believe is harder to circumvent than abilities, in large part because it can be used to target your ally, although it only sometimes raises Evasion).
 
It does not matter how good or bad the strategy is, as if it is reliant on luck instead of one's own play, it will see use. Whether it be a high level player crashing out in the builder mid tour, a matchup where one player thinks they're at a major skill disadvantage, or just random bullshit being loaded on ladder, there will be people who put these strategies into use. Even if it does come up infrequently, it will rear its ugly head every once in a while.

Evasion abilities and items are fundamentally uncompetitive with no added benefit. These elements rip control of the game away from the players and instead place it in a roll of the dice. The goal of smogon tiering is to create the most fair and competitive format possible. Pokemon is a game with a lot of luck yes, but we should try to minimize variance to the best of our ability. With things like secondary effects, inaccurate moves, and even critical hits there is not much we can do, as it would either break cartridge compatibility or cause too much collateral damage. There is quite literally no collateral damage with banning evasion, as pokemon can run their other more practical abilities & items.
 
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Darkmalice said:
The banned Double Team and Minimise are also moves. I agree that those two moves should be banned. I disagree that being an ability means there isn't a downside; opportunity cost still usually exists to a smaller degree. Garchomp gives up Rough Skin and Mamoswine gives up Thick Fat or Oblivious for example. Articuno and Moody Smeargle don't really suffer here though since their other abilities are generally useless, although opportunity cost still exists from not choosing other Pokemon instead. Moves can also fall under being rewarded for making a bad choice in the builder if luck goes your way. The difference is that it's generally harder to punish an ability than a move, but still doable such as by changing the weather. The same concepts of being predominantly RNG-based and sometimes getting rewarded for a bad choice in the team builder still apply. (Acupressure evasion I also believe is harder to circumvent than abilities, in large part because it can be used to target your ally, although it only sometimes raises Evasion).
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Small nitpick but Moody doesn't change evasion or accuracy from gen 8 on words btw. To not makes this a one liner I might as well add my thoughts. After getting reqs and ending up losing to an Bright Powder Articuno dodging two Make It Rains and freezing my Ghold, I am confidently voting ban. I also second Articblast's point about the fact this not just being council banned and the fact we are legit suspecting is fucking stupid. While we are on the topic of bs mechanics, can we also ban King's Rock and Bright Powder pretty please they add literally nothing but frustration to the game. Quick Claw is another topic, but it can't be stacked unless your using the memey quick draw Glowbro. Unlike multi-hit and spread moves with King's Rock arguably made more absurd in doubles because TWO Pokemon can utilize it to potentially flinch down an incredibly important piece on the field, and Bright Powder being able to be stacked with the aforementioned evasion abilities. As to the point about "There are more annoying strategies so it's fine" brought up by Actuarily, said strategies are not seen in tournament games. The reason being that they fucking suck to put it bluntly, no one is actually considering level 1 Donphan or Scarf Serene Grace Rock Slide Dudnsparce in their tour prep. It's just a silly gimmick, same as something like Contrary skill swap, never mind the fact that Covert Cloak an incredibly good item on its own merits, can just straight up deny the formers value entirely and same to Dire Claw. The reason evasion abilities are un competitive is because the pokemon are actually ok enough to justify running them in tandem with there bs mechanics. TLDR; Evasion abilities promote fishing in an already fishy game, and make the overall playing experience less fun so please ban <3.
 
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bagel said:
Let it snow, let it snow
Outside it's cold, but the fire's blazin'
So, baby, let it snow
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow
:sv/articuno:​

Now that SCL has finished, evasion abilities will be the next DOU suspect targets after results from the latest tiering survey showed significant support for a suspect.

The abilities in question are Snow Cloak and Sand Veil, both raising evasion by 1.25x in Snow and Sandstorm respectively. This equates to a 1 in 5 chance a 100% accurate move can miss a Pokemon that has an active evasion ability. For DOU, most relevant Pokemon with either of these abilities is Articuno, which over the past year has seen use in OSDT, SCL, and DWCOP paired with Ninetales-Alola on Snow teams. The buff to Articuno's evasion, combined with the aditional buff to its defense from Snow and Aurora Veil support from Ninetales-A can extend its longevity and allow it to throw off strong STAB Blizzards at opponents. However this strategy isn't generally conisdered strong enough to get a suspect compared to past DOU suspect targets such as Flutter Mane or Archaludon. Instead the main focus is on the uncompetitive and non-interactive properties of evasion abilities, as evasion is a pure RNG element that takes agency away from the player. And compared to other RNG elements at play in DOU, it isn't attached to moves/abilities that have competitive merit such as strong spread moves (Blizzard freeze chance) or speed control (Thunder Wave paralysis). Additionally, evasion abilities don't require the player to choose a move in game like the other mention RNG elements.

However evasion abilities are still very niche in the grand scheme of DOU, with Snow Cloak seeing a few uses and Sand Veil seeing even less. Outside of their abilities the abusers of evasion abilities are quite bad, Articuno suffers from its overall poor typing and mediocre offensive stats, while the most viable Sand Veil user in Garchomp has seen barely any serious use in the past couple SV DOU metagames. The prominence of Tornadus also hinders the effectiveness of evasion abilities as it commonly runs Sunny Day or Rain Dance and can automatically turn of Snow or Sandstorm to remove the evasion boost. Historically evasion abilities have been banned in most DOU oldgens-- being banned in DPP, BW, XY and SM; while being legal in ADV and SS (evasion abilities were unbanned during SS). It is important to consider that context is different for each tier, with permanent weather or more viable evasion ability users affecting the popularity of evasion abilities over the years.

As usual, 60% of the vote must be in favor to ban evasion abilities.

NOTE: THIS TEST WILL BE USING THE NEW SUSPECT PROCESS!

The instructions to participate in this test are as follows:

  • Create a new account on PS. You do not have to follow any specific naming convention, but your suspect account must have never played a game in DOU before this suspect test went up or you will not receive valid requirements (resetting W/L does not count for this - the account you use must never have played DOU before the test, full stop.)
  • At any point on your new account, use the command /linksmogon on Pokemon Showdown! You will receive instructions on what to do once you run this command.
  • Double check that you're listed as a voter here! If you aren't listed as a voter despite having valid reqs, please contact myself, Yoda2798, or a member of staff.
  • If you have any questions about this new process, feel free to PM me/Yoda or post here!

The requirement to vote in this suspect test is a COIL value of 2980.
The suspect laddering period has started and the deadline for getting requirements will be Sunday, December 8th 8:00 PM Eastern Time (GMT-5)

Additionally there will be 2 live suspect tournaments in the Smogon Doubles Showdown room. The winner of each of these tournaments will qualify for suspect voting, and should reach out to me, Yoda or another member of staff so we can verify and add them to the voting pool.

Suspect Tournament Times
Saturday, 30th November at 12:00 PM 4:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-5)
Sunday, 1st December at 4:00 PM Eastern time (GMT-5)

Evasion abilities will be legal during this suspect.
Click to expand...
Guys, please. Don't be like this. We're talking about a DRU Pokémon right now. I know it's been a few days since this was a hot topic, but it literally just popped on my radar. (I'm still learning how to navigate this site). Occasional usage wouldn't even come close to justification of such a ban. Some dude said he doesn't wanna "roll the dice", when in reality they're playing a game where you roll the dice with every round. Crit, FRZ, PRZ, Flinch & Zzz. And these have a much higher percentage of happening. We're talking about 1/3 and 1/2. Let alone inaccuracies of moves themselves
 
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