Hi, Flawless Creation here. We've had a lot of talk on this thread about both Arena Trap and Dracovish already, but another problematic issue in the tier atm especially when you go higher up the ladder that I dont see enough discussion is King's Rock. King's rock is blatantly uncompetitive in my opinion and deserves to be banned.
For starters, there is literally no incentive to use King's Rock except if you're literally aiming to bank on the 10% flinch chance to cheese past your opponent; something that we should not be endorsing as a competitive game. King's Rock reminds me a lot of Brightpowder back in Gens 4 and 5, where the metagame still had permanent sand and so Brightpowder Garchomp & Brightpowder Gliscor proved to rely too much on RNG for their ability to cheese past counters and win the game, regardless of the skill level of the other player. Just as how brightpowder proved to be problematic when paired with the ability Sand Veil, King's Rock at the moment is proving to be problematic when paired with multi hit moves, specifically Cloyster. Without King's Rock, Cloyster would probably be seen as a niche use for some teams. However with King's Rock, Cloyster's ability to cheese past teams is extremely uncompetitive, as it can flinch past would be counters such as Rotom-wash, Aegislash, Toxapex, Seismitoad 41% of the time. This renders player skill useless most of the time as even the best players would be losing the game (or at the very least, losing a HUGE portion of their defensive core) 41% of the time. You may say that a good player can just prevent Cloyster from ever setting up, but with its base 180 defense it can literally set up vs any physical attacker in the tier, especially if screens is up. That just is not a feasible option. The whole scenario throws the game from either player's hands and tosses it entirely to the chance of RNG. Of course, 41% isnt consistent at all, but thats not the point; in a competitive environment, we should not be allowing items that purely rely on hax to be allowed in the game as they take away the outcome of the game from the players to RNG.
A lot of players may agree that King's Rock is extremely frustrating to play against but they dont think its bannable because of Jirachi, and even Togekiss in previous generations being allowed. The main difference between Jirachi and Togekiss is that they have valid, legitimate uses they bring to a game. Jirachi could make for an excellent Choice Scarf Healing Wish user, Stealth Rock setter, wish passer, specially defensive wall, calm mind attacker. Togekiss provided an excellent switch in to fighting attacks, ground attacks, heal bell user, nasty plot stall breaker, etc. Serene Grace is the only ability on Jirachi, so it does not have the leisure of choosing from a different ability. RNG is always going to be in Pokemon; however we still strive to ban as little as possible especially when these Pokemon have legitimate uses in the tier.
On the other hand, there is literally NO reason to not ban King's Rock. King's Rock has no use whatsoever besides banking on the 10% flinch chance that happens completely randomly. Banning King's Rock would have 0 collateral damage, as opposed to banning Jirachi and Togekiss/ Serene Grace, which would. Again, this item is literally used for the sole purpose of trying to hax your way past your opponent, which should NOT be encouraged.
Finally, people may say that banning King's Rock this generation would make no sense as King's Rock has been allowed in all the previous generations and it received 0 buffs in Gen 8. Just because something was not banned in a previous generation does not mean it wasn't problematic, and we should still address the issue now when we still can. For example, baton pass, a move that has been allowed since Generation 3, wasn't banned from its entirety until Gen 7. After the Generation 7 ban, we then retroactively banned baton pass in gens 6, 5, and heavily restricted it in gen 4. Similarly, Arena Trap, also an ability that has been allowed in competitive play since Generation 3, was not banned until Generation 7. After the Generation 7 ban, we then retroactively banned it in Gens 6 and 5 as well. Mindsets change, people. Just because the previous pool of players did not think something was not an issue back then doesn't mean its not an issue now, or even back then. We should totally ban King's Rock this generation and possibly revisit it in previous generations as well if necessary. High ladder has been extremely frustrating to grind for countless players and is probably why top ladder is so dead atm, because you may be able to get up to 1800 on ladder and then next game lose 30 points from a 1600 ELO player as they were able to cheese past your team with the 41% flinch chance.
Please don't ignore this. If any player, or any tiering leader, has any disagreements on what I posted, reply so we can see the counterarguments. However right now based on my gathering of thoughts from numerous people high up the ladder, banning King's Rock has a considerable amount of support.
