Evasion Clause Discussion Topic

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If I don't want hurricane or confuse ray to confuse me what do I do? If I don't want to get burnt by scald what do I do? If I don't want to get critical hit what do I do? I could go on with a lot of examples but I think the point is clear.

If your answers are the lolish use own tempo/fire pokes/that trait that prevents crits. Then I've got a lolish answer to your question: use moves that don't miss such as aerial ace.

Also thank you Seth Vilo. I also agree with hipmonlee.
The question isn't about avoiding hax entirely. It's more about it not being very effective. So what if I get confused? I would switch out, or if I'm feeling adventurous, try to attack. If I know an opponent has scald, I might switch to a Poison Heal user or Reuniclus. Now critical hits are a different matter. A user can't really change critical hit ratio without major changing to movepool, and if so, switch to your appropriate wall and assume that all hits will be critical hits. Burn the pokemon, toxic, something to limit its lifespan / power. It's not a big problem apart from lower tiers, with abusers. Evasion has no "easy way to make it less effective". It needs to be controlled.
 

alexwolf

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If I don't want hurricane or confuse ray to confuse me what do I do? If I don't want to get burnt by scald what do I do? If I don't want to get critical hit what do I do? I could go on with a lot of examples but I think the point is clear.

If your answers are the lolish use own tempo/fire pokes/that trait that prevents crits. Then I've got a lolish answer to your question: use moves that don't miss such as aerial ace.

Also thank you Seth Vilo. I also agree with hipmonlee.
The point is clear but you are wrong. All these can be prevented more or less. If you don't want to get confused by Hurricane carry Sub users, if you don't want to get burned carry Water Absorb, Dry Skin, Fire pokes in sun, Sub. If you don't want to get critical hitted carry sub users, and focus on attacking instead of defending.

Finally no one of these effects are even comparable to evasion. Evasion is by far the best giving you a free turn whenever it occurs, while confusion lasts only 2-5 turns and can be healed upon switching out, burn only halves Attack, and crits double the damage, which is at best equal to a free turn and at worst inferior (meaning that if you want to kill a poke with 2 hits then a miss and a crit do the same by allowing you to kill the poke without getting hit, but if i want to setup crit does nothing for me while a miss still does).

Which pokemon can sweep or can cause heavy damage to your team if you miss ONCE? Garchomp. He's gone.

Which pokemon is bulky and can also evade attacks in weather? Mamoswine and Sandslash are the bulkiest, yet they're not even close to being noticeable threats nor can they abuse that single turn very well.

So, what's the worry?
The worry is that you can lose a game that you deserved to win even from Sandslash or Cacturne. Don't tell me about crits since they are game mechanics and can't be changed.
 
The worry is that you can lose a game that you deserved to win even from Sandslash or Cacturne. Don't tell me about crits since they are game mechanics and can't be changed.
Not many people use Sandslash or Cacturne. Even less people actually manage to sweep with them. If you do get swept so easily, then I think your team might have trouble with more than just evasion.
 
@ Alexwolf

You're talking like you can magically set up a sub out of nowhere and before their poke attacks. Also you can always get outpredicted. What I'm trying to say is that you can't run a perfect team that covers absolutely everything. Of course there are options against any given strategy but you're always gonna get outlucked from time to time.

And yeah, boosting evasion is very abusable, and it's banned for a good reason (I don't want it unbanned) however the ocassional sandveil miss is not that big. It will obviously make you lose ocasionaly, but so will a random freeze, crit, miss or whatever. Evasion traits and evasion items are only a few ways to get haxed, and they're not the worst of them if you ask me.

I tell you what, if my oponent wants to use items such as brightpowder, quick claw and the like that makes me happy for they are inferior, at least in my opinion. Poison heal Gliscor is a tad lot harder to take down than the sand veil one, and mamoswine has no better options. In fact, when was the last time you lost a game due to snow cloak miss?

On a side note: sub is a way to avoid critical hits? Are you serious?
 

erisia

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From what I've played of OU, I think the current situation is pretty good. SD Acrobatics Gliscor can be pretty annoying, but I'll have to admit I have much more fun playing against it than the Toxic Orb crap. Whilst I think Garchomp might not be /too/ bad without access to Sand Veil, I'm not particularly fussed with whether it stays Uber or not, so I'd probably go for the status quo atm. Even with a complex ban, Sand and Garchomp respectively are still going to be popular, so users of Sand teams will still be annoyed by Garchomp's evasive manuveurs.

But that's just my largely uninformed opinion.
 
Just so my opinion on this is known, I agree with Pocket, Hipmonlee, etc. I think that banning the evasion items was a mistake since I don't think they are broken in any way. There are multiple ways to be consistent here as Pocket has said, and I don't think our ban philosophy should be to ban things just because they fall under the same umbrella of evasion-raising things. We should find them to be overpowering or broken if we want to ban them, and if they are causing something else to be broken, we need to carefully consider what it is that is broken.

Also, we don't change game mechanics, since that was mentioned earlier. The definition of sleep clause is found here.
 

Brambane

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A quick question: if the Evasion clause is changed, will it continue to blanket all other metagames in addition to OU? Or is this an "OU Specific" Evasion Clause? Just out of curiosity.
 

Celestavian

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I agree with the item ban, and I also think we should place a complex ban on Sand Veil and Snow Cloak.

Comparing Evasion to Serene Grace, Super Luck, etc. is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. This is the Evasion Clause, not the Luck Clause. If we want to get rid of those then we will make a separate clause, but until then, they shouldn't be our focus or used for comparison.

As for why the complex ban should be put in place, the abilities by themselves are far less threatening than the combination of each ability and their respective weather. Banning them outright would also, as stated before me, ban decidedly mediocre Pokemon (Sandslash, Cacturne, etc.). That said, banning decidedly mediocre stuff should be avoided at all costs, and so something like Acupressure and Metronome should stay legal. The reason why they are mediocre (and the reason why the evasion items, Moody, and Sand Veil are not) are the fact that they are not passive. Passive evasion boosts require no effort at all to use and benefit from, besides bringing in an inducer to set up weather. Acupressure and Metronome require a turn to use and do not guarantee an Evasion boost, unlike DT and Minimize which are also not passive.

As for the items, sure they take up a space for a more usable item, but they still increase Evasion. I can still have a sure sweep ruined because my opponent got lucky and I missed a normally 100% move courtesy of BrightPowder, which Leftovers/Life Orb/Choice items/etc. can't do. You can say the same for Quick Claw and Razor Fang and crew but like I said, the Evasion aspect is up for debate at this moment. Isn't one of the definitions of a competitive game to be based on luck the least amount possible?
 

Jibaku

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It would likely be not a surprise that I support unbanning brightpowder/Lax Incense, and I feel that the ban is in bad taste because they're minimal hax items that just happened to fall into an existing taboo. And while it's hard to quantify the potency of luck, it's difficult to argue that these items are in any way more useful than say, Leftovers, given their extremely small boost. Honestly, the best use for Brightpowder was to bluff a Choice item on Garchomp (which isn't saying much because it could've also done that with a type resist berry/Lum), while also adding to Sand Veil so it could set up Substitutes with ease. With Garchomp gone (and nobody would even use Brightpowder chomp in ubers...), good luck finding a use for these items. Speaking of Garchomp, the Brightpowder ban was also a kneejerk reaction to it and enormously failed to address the actual issue.

The other goal I hope that we can achieve by unbanning Brightpowder is to entirely abolish the idea of banning small things out of pickiness. It might not seem much, but I fear that it could spiral out of control. The Baton Pass vote in the last Suspect Test was a sign that it can happen.

My philosophy on bans is simple: Ban what's actually broken, leave whatever's fine.

Oh and there's no way I'll support the flat ability ban due to the fact that Evasion Clause is currently a global clause and doing so will ban stuff like Cacturne/Sandslash from Gen 3 and 4 as well. Considering that Evasion Clause also applies to Ubers, it bans them from there too. That's just silly collateral damage.
 
Just giving this my two cents:

Items increase evasion by 10%. So what? Deal with it. 10%. Hustle is worse. Even on top of the abilities, it's only a 28% evasion increase. Alakazam is OU even though it relies on Focus Blast for coverage, so we should be able to deal with 90% accurate moves.

Abilities: Same as above, really. I mean, Stone Edge and Hustle do the same thing as these abilities, and the Evasion clause is the only reason Garchomp is Uber. Ever since the Lati twins went OU, Garchomp has more or less been meh.

Moves, on the other hand, have a huge impact on the metagame. Almost every Pokemon gets Double Team through TM, meaning after one turn of set-up your opponent has 75% accuracy. This also requires nothing more than a moveslot, which on the Pokemon using it could just be a filler move it has no use for. Minimize, for the Pokemon that get it, gives your opponent 60% accuracy after a single turn. Chansey and Blissey, not to mention Clefable, would be so broken if those moves were not banned. Imagine having a Hypnosis-accuracy Close Combat or Outrage.
 
I think people a lot of people are really missing the point that by allowing any form of evasion you are making the game less competitive. Not only that but you are taking away a team builders choice to use 100% accurate moves.

The main question that I want to ask people that want anything evasion related to be legal is why you want to make the game less competitive?

If we have a complex ban of Snow Cloak/Sand Veil and their respective weathers on the same team as well as keeping evasion items banned what are we missing out on? Sure you can't use Froslass on your hail team or Sand Veil Gliscor on your sand team but doesn't making the game as competitive as possible out way the fact we can't use a couple Pokemon that get nearly no use in OU?
 

Adamant Zoroark

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The thing about Sand Veil and Snow Cloak that makes me support a complex ban on Sand Veil + Sand Stream and Snow Cloak + Snow Warning on the same team is that you can eliminate someone's check to your Pokemon with just one miss. One miss. Since these abilities increase Evasion by 20%, it lowers your typical move to the same accuracy levels of Stone Miss.

Let's look at a very possible scenario from OU before Garchomp's ban. Garchomp comes in on your Blissey. Blissey will be taking a lot of damage from an Outrage, so you switch out to your Scizor to start Bullet Punching it, but Garchomp instead subs. You Bullet Punch the sub, it hits, breaks the sub, Garchomp Earthquakes, doing 47.52% - 56.27% to your CB Scizor. You go for Bullet Punch again, but what next?

You have a 64% chance of hitting an 80% accurate move twice in a row, which is actually, in my mind, very low.

Oh, but this can happen too!

You switch to Scizor on a predicted Outrage, Garchomp subs instead. You go for a Bullet Punch, and it misses. Garchomp goes for the Earthquake, for a solid 2HKO after Stealth Rock. You now have no hope of beating Garchomp with your Scizor, and there is also the possibility of Bullet Punch missing again, leaving you with your Scizor down (and you have no Ice Shard, so no priority) and going up against a Garchomp with a sub up. Good luck.

You could have just kept Blissey in to ST Garchomp, breaking its subs - Oh, I almost forgot, you also have that nasty chance of missing Seismic Toss.

However, while outright banning Sand Veil and Snow Cloak would theoretically work, it is not a viable choice because this will lead to a soft ban on several Pokemon that are clearly not threatening, such as Glaceon, Froslass, Sandslash, and Cacturne. This is why I support a ban of Sand Stream + Sand Veil and Snow Warning + Snow Cloak. This method effectively reduces the issue that is Sand Veil and Snow Cloak, makes the metagame more enjoyable, without removing perfectly viable Pokemon from the lower tiers.

Also, I saw an argument that "Stone Edge and Hustle do the same thing". I don't understand this logic. Sure, Stone Edge in no weather has the same accuracy as Close Combat vs a Sand Veil user in the sand, but you can actually do something about Stone Edge's accuracy yourself: Stop using Stone Edge. What can you do about Sand Veil? You could run your own weather, but that's not what I call reliable since you can't guarantee that you can keep your weather starter alive long enough to keep Sand/Hail off the field.
 
Also, I saw an argument that "Stone Edge and Hustle do the same thing". I don't understand this logic. Sure, Stone Edge in no weather has the same accuracy as Close Combat vs a Sand Veil user in the sand, but you can actually do something about Stone Edge's accuracy yourself: Stop using Stone Edge. What can you do about Sand Veil? You could run your own weather, but that's not what I call reliable since you can't guarantee that you can keep your weather starter alive long enough to keep Sand/Hail off the field.
My sentiments exactly it should be your choice to use less then perfectly accurate moves not your opponents.
 
@ Paolo

Limiting the options when tembuilding is also making the game less competitive.

@ LucaroarkZ

You're talking like one miss=game lost and that's not always the case. One miss doesn't necesarily make you lose your check/counter. Also teams often have more than one way to deal with most pokemon. Sure it sucks to miss a hit, but having to ban some pokemon that are not overpowered for it is even worse if you ask me. Ok garchomp may be broken and went Uber, but do you seriously think mamoswine, froslass, gliscor, sandslash or cacturne are broken?

I agree to ban evasion moves. I don't care about items, I don't use them. If people want to use them, good for them: 10% evasion for no leftovers recovery? Deal, I like that.
 

Focus

Ubers Tester Extraordinaire
First post in about 4 years to say unban Brightpowder and Lax Incense.

Now then: What the heck is the purpose of bans, anyway? My answer would be that whatever bans exist should for the benefit of the metagame. In other words, bans make competitive play as rewarding as possible. I have a sneaking suspicion that most of the best players will avoid using these items because there are simply better alternatives. Leftovers is statistically better than an item that kicks in only 10% of the time at best. I would personally be relieved if I faced a good player had a Brightpowder. On the other hand, there are bad players and trolls who might use these items for teh lulz or to genuinely experiment to see how effective those items are. I am not sure what the big deal is if they get a cheap win once in a blue moon.

Also, what's with banning it from Ubers as well? Those items were not effective and they were not common enough for me to acknowledge their existence. That makes about as much sense to me as banning crap like Acupressure or Focus Band. The same arguments against having BP/LI banned still hold in Ubers, except it is now completely pointless. In fact, now that Garchomp is banned from OU, it is the time to bring these things back into existence.

If nothing else, a more concise banlist is easier on the eyes.
 

Adamant Zoroark

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@ Paolo

Limiting the options when tembuilding is also making the game less competitive.

@ LucaroarkZ

You're talking like one miss=game lost and that's not always the case. One miss doesn't necesarily make you lose your check/counter. Also teams often have more than one way to deal with most pokemon. Sure it sucks to miss a hit, but having to ban some pokemon that are not overpowered for it is even worse if you ask me. Ok garchomp may be broken and went Uber, but do you seriously think mamoswine, froslass, gliscor, sandslash or cacturne are broken?

I agree to ban evasion moves. I don't care about items, I don't use them. If people want to use them, good for them: 10% evasion for no leftovers recovery? Deal, I like that.
Okay, let's put it into this perspective. Garchomp takes out your Scizor because of Sand Veil hax. Oh shit, they also have a Double Dancer Terrakion! It can go for Swords Dance to tear through your Skarmory, or for Rock Polish to tear through your Rotom-W and you don't have your Scizor because their Garchomp haxed it!

I never said they were broken. In fact, they're far from it. I didn't even say Garchomp was broken. Show me exactly what part of my post you got that from, please.
 

Texas Cloverleaf

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You have a 64% chance of hitting an 80% accurate move twice in a row, which is actually, in my mind, very low.
Statements like this are cited frequently as evidence but are inherently false to to the fact that accuracy in Pokemon does not use continuous probability, that is to say each event (an attack) is not dependent on another for its result. Ergo, it is a flat 80% chance to hit, not a 33% chance to hit 5 times in a row.

Its the difference between tossing a coin, recording its result and tossing a second coin; and tossing two coins at the same time.
 
@ Paolo

Limiting the options when tembuilding is also making the game less competitive.
So limiting you from using 2 Pokemon that are both UU on a sand team and 3 Pokemon that are UU or less on a hail team is less competitive then evasion?

I think you are forgetting a complex ban wouldn't be banning these Pokemon it would be just disallowing you from using them in combination with their weathers.
 

Katakiri

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Personally, I've never seen anything wrong with the items. You're giving up your precious item slot for a slight and permanently set evasion increase. To be fair, not many Cloak-Veil Pokemon would ever give up their item slot for it. Sand Veil Gliscor misses out on Flying Gem & Acrobatics, Froslass misses Lefties, Mamo misses LO or Scarf, Dugtrio...why? Really only Garchomp & maybe Donphan as a gamble replacement for Sturdy can make true use of Cloak-Veil & Brightpowder.

On the other hand, not many, if any, non-cloak-veil Pokemon can make use of Brightpowder. In this sand & spikes-ridden beach we call a metagame, recovery & sheer power seems key. It's just like Chansey vs Blissey; sure you get a beneficial iteam, but is it worth losing Leftovers for?


I'll go as far to say that if Brightpowder stays banned, Eviolite should be banned. How is a set-in-stone increase to one defensive stat any different than a set increase in another stat? They both come at the same cost of an item slot.

Let's say you're firing off a 100 acc move, you have no prior knowledge of either of the items, they come at the same cost of an item slot on the same Pokemon; a guaranteed OHKO on a Pokemon becomes a guaranteed 2HKO with Eviolite and then compare that to having a 10% chance of missing a guaranteed OHKO.

Which one seems more broken now?
Every pro-ban argument I've seen mentions "game-changing elements" and "it's supposed to hit all the time" so:
Why not ban Wide Lens & Zoom Lens?
It works both ways. A 90 acc move become 99 or 100 acc. They're not "supposed to hit all the time."
Why not ban Scope Lens & Razor Claw?
Is raising the Critical Hit Ratio any less "game-changing" than raising Evasion by a set 10%?
Why not ban King's Rock?
Is adding an additional crippling effect any less "game-changing" than Brightpowder?

Looking at this list, I realize the the item banning seems to have a HEAVY bias against defensive items and not offensive. Talks of Eviolite being banned pop up now & again, especially in the lower tiers. Why not offensive items like those listed above? They're EXACTLY as "game-changing" as the Defensive items. How is missing a 2HKO because of BrightPowder ANY different than getting 2HKOed because King's Rock flinched?

It's just a complete bias against defensive play-styles & nothing more.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
Statements like this are cited frequently as evidence but are inherently false to to the fact that accuracy in Pokemon does not use continuous probability, that is to say each event (an attack) is not dependent on another for its result. Ergo, it is a flat 80% chance to hit, not a 33% chance to hit 5 times in a row.

Its the difference between tossing a coin, recording its result and tossing a second coin; and tossing two coins at the same time.
no, Lucaroark is correct. You have an eighty percent chance to hit the first time, and another eighty percent chance to hit the second time. That means a 64% chance to hit both times, a 4% chance to hit neither time, and a 32% chance to hit once exactly. simple math
 
Statements like this are cited frequently as evidence but are inherently false to to the fact that accuracy in Pokemon does not use continuous probability, that is to say each event (an attack) is not dependent on another for its result. Ergo, it is a flat 80% chance to hit, not a 33% chance to hit 5 times in a row.

Its the difference between tossing a coin, recording its result and tossing a second coin; and tossing two coins at the same time.
I know realistically yes, each time it's 80%. But isn't there a statisical way that you can look at previous probabilities to calculate the next odds? IDK, I haven't taken this kinda math in 4 years so I could be totally wrong, if so can someone explain why. (yet I can rotate unending curves around an axis to find it's volume lol)
 

Adamant Zoroark

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Statements like this are cited frequently as evidence but are inherently false to to the fact that accuracy in Pokemon does not use continuous probability, that is to say each event (an attack) is not dependent on another for its result. Ergo, it is a flat 80% chance to hit, not a 33% chance to hit 5 times in a row.

Its the difference between tossing a coin, recording its result and tossing a second coin; and tossing two coins at the same time.
First of all, you and I are thinking of completely different things. I said hitting the move twice in a row, in which case you take the chance of hitting it once, and square that. In this case, it's .8^2, which is .64, or 64%. You are thinking of just the chance of hitting it.

Edit: Double ninja'd.
 

alexwolf

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Personally, I've never seen anything wrong with the items. You're giving up your precious item slot for a slight and permanently set evasion increase. To be fair, not many Cloak-Veil Pokemon would ever give up their item slot for it. Sand Veil Gliscor misses out on Flying Gem & Acrobatics, Froslass misses Lefties, Mamo misses LO or Scarf, Dugtrio...why? Really only Garchomp & maybe Donphan as a gamble replacement for Sturdy can make true use of Cloak-Veil & Brightpowder.

On the other hand, not many, if any, non-cloak-veil Pokemon can make use of Brightpowder. In this sand & spikes-ridden beach we call a metagame, recovery & sheer power seem to key. It's just like Chansey vs Blissey; sure you get a beneficial iteam, but is it worth losing Leftovers for?


I'll go as far to say that if Brightpowder stays banned, Eviolite should be banned. How is a set-in-stone increase to one stat any different than a set increase in another stat? They both come at the same cost of an item slot.

Let's say you're firing off a 100 acc move, you have no prior knowledge of either of the items, they come at the same cost of an item slot on the same Pokemon; a guaranteed OHKO on a Pokemon becomes a guaranteed 2HKO with Eviolite and then compare that tohaving a 10% chance of missing a guaranteed OHKO.

Which one seems more broken now?
Every pro-ban argument I've seen mentions "game-changing elements" and "it's supposed to hit all the time" so:
Why not ban Wide Lens & Zoom Lens?
It works both ways. A 90 acc move become 99 or 100 acc. They're not "supposed to hit all the time."
Why not ban Scope Lens & Razor Claw?
Is raising the Critical Hit Ratio any less "game-changing" than raising Evasion by a set 10%?
Why not ban King's Rock?
Is adding an additional crippling effect any less "game-changing" than Brightpowder?

Looking at this list, I realize the the item banning seems to have a HEAVY bias against defensive items and not offensive. Talks of Eviolite being banned pop up now & again, especially in the lower tiers. Why not offensive items like those listed above? They're EXACTLY as "game-changing" as the Defensive items. How is missing a 2HKO because of BrightPowder ANY different than getting 2HKOed because King's Rock flinched?

It's just a complete bias against defensive play-styles & nothing more.
I didn't read all the post, but i don't think that people were bitching around about Garchomp and Brightpowder because they had a bias against defensive playstyles.
Quite the opposite. Any poke that has been accused of being broken or almost broken in any tier was either straight up offensive(Mamo,Glaceon) or was just aiding offense(Froslass).
 
Basically I don't have a problem when it's an item. Anything works for items really.See Katakiri for reasoning. Also, all of the items mentioned do not have a major impact on crit hit / flinch / accuracy ratio, and give up a precious item slot. I'd much rather have an expert belt or plate than a small increase in hax.
This doesn't mean that abilities are good - this kind of hax needs to be controlled.
(On a unrelated note, I just noticed that the top post of each page is mine.)
 
I know realistically yes, each time it's 80%. But isn't there a statisical way that you can look at previous probabilities to calculate the next odds? IDK, I haven't taken this kinda math in 4 years so I could be totally wrong, if so can someone explain why. (yet I can rotate unending curves around an axis to find it's volume lol)
Weeeell, seeing that he calculates the probability after the first hits, it should be the same, since the two are independent - i.e. if one, then another. However, if asking about both - i.e. chance of both, then the multiplication is correct. If looking from Blissey forward as to the chances, it is 64%. However, after the sub is broken, it's up to 80%.
 
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