On paper, that is Smogon's tiering philosophy. In practice, we have almost never banned moves, items or abilities merely for being "uncompetitive". We ban them for being broken. There are numerous examples of "uncompetitive" strategies that were considered fine (and are still legal in old metas) up until they started winning games by themselves. One of them (SwagPlay) was unbanned after several nerfs placed it under the threshold of broken.
Cloyster with King's Rock was a legit threat, able to 6-0 teams with a single lucky flinch. Glowbro hasn't proven itself to be anywhere near as powerful, it's one of many 30% winrate gimmicks in the game.
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Speaking of cheese, I've had a lot of fun with this XY-era TankChomp set:
Garchomp @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Rough Skin
EVs: 252 HP / 136 Def / 120 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Toxic
- Endure
By switching out Protect, you are essentially trading one turn protection + 6.25% damage on poisoned opponents for 29% damage (1/8 + 1/6) against users of contact moves. Pads are annoying but they're still a fairly niche item on Melm + Kart
I mean no offense, but would like to start off by saying this is an incorrect take on QDQC. Actively playing with gameshark anywhere from 20% to almost 50% of the time limits the majority of offensive counterplay necessary to deal with Quick Draw and Quick Claw. This straight up wins games by itself in absurd cases, and the general unpredictability of QDQC makes it difficult to properly manage risk. Here, you describe exactly that through numerous examples of uncompeittive strategies that were considered fine up until they won games by themselves, which QDQC already does. Now, does this mean it's broken in the same sense as other uncompetitive aspects were? Certainly not. QDQC involves tradeoffs including trading a more useful item for a 20% chance to move first in its priority bracket, the 56% - 80% chance to not move first in the priority bracket, and generally being matchup fishy. However, when it manages to activate the result can be game ending. As I previously mentioned, operating under the assumption that QDQC activates, the pool of offensive counterplay dramatically shrinks. Fast and powerful attackers that may have had no issues picking off their target otherwise are all of a sudden threatened with the possibility of being removed. This forces more passive counterplay, which is simply non-existent for some teams or is limited for the specific Quick Draw and Quick Claw abuser. Not to mention the fact that said abusers span a long range thanks to Quick Claw's general splashability on almost anything offensive that wants to catch faster offensive checks.
Other forms of counterplay such as Knock Off and Trick do not all fix the problem either. The Ability Quick Draw still exists and is unpreventable, and as previously noted the surprise factor of QDQC can be difficult to manage even with prediction which limits how effective Knock Off and Trick can be. Now, true priority moves such as Aqua Jet, Ice Shard, Shadow Sneak, Sucker Punch, and Grassy Glide certainly add a level of counterplay to the regular turn priority that QDQC has, but are specific and are not available on all teams. Aqua Jet is only available to Urshifu, Barraskewda, and Crawduant; Ice Shard is only available to Weavile and Mamoswine; Shadow Sneak is only avilable to Aegislash; Sucker Punch is only available to Bisharp and notable on Dragapult; and Grassy Glide is only available to Rillaboom. The variety of pokemon that benefit from QDQC are not all threatened by the same priority, which means this is not a surefire answer either.
This doesn't even touch on QDQC's relation to other rng related components in the game or how it specifically violates Smogon's tiering philosophy, which I plan to cover later in a more detailed and straight-lined post which has been in the works for months since I first brought up QDQC.
This is completely correct. Kings rock cloyster and kings rock weaville were a problem because the only good counter play to flinches is inner focus, which has no users that have a good matchup vs the kings rock spammers, or steadfast which is the most gimmicky of counter play possible. The only way to stop your team getting melted by rng is to outspeed the opposing threat while being survive a hit (which is difficult due to the limited amount of mons that can outspeed shell smash cloyster) or ohko the opposing mon (which isn’t reliable vs aurora veil teams). The unreliable counter play means that you have to consistently risk the 50/50, which is uncompetitive.
TL/DR: The good counter play is bad/non existence meaning that you have to risk the flinch, so it is really uncompetitive
This is a good example of what I mean. In cases where QDQC manages to activate, it creates unreliable offensive counterplay which means that your risk management is artificially decreased, which is uncompetitive. Speaking on what was said earlier, being broken and being uncompetitive are certainly not mutually exclusive of one another, but I think failing to gauge the brokenness and uncompetiveness of QDQC or shifting too far in either direction isn't correct.
I implore those of you who still have thoughts regarding QDQC to keep the conversation going and post your thoughts. Following the most recent surveys it looks like a lot of the community is still either confused or indifferent to the situation, and correcting that is a necessary step in further deciding on tiering action from the council.