Evasion Clause Discussion Topic

[JabbaTheGriffin]

Evasion Clause in BW has been a heated discussion topic since it was first discussed and voted upon at the beginning of BW, where the traditional clause of Double Team + Minimize being banned was implemented after the poll was decided by a 66% supermajority. Since then, it was been modified once, when BrightPowder and Lax Incense were added to the clause following a 86.8% vote in favor (arguments can be found in this thread).

Recently, the OU council held a discussion about the OU tier with one main topic on the agenda: Evasion Clause. While none of the council want to remove Evasion Clause entirely, some want to add some form of restriction for the evasion abilities Sand Veil and Snow Cloak, while others want to remove the items previously added.

Three possible options were brought up and discussed: unbanning the items, banning the abilities (and therefore also any Pokemon that only have those abilities), and a complex ban of Sand Stream + Sand Veil / Snow Warning + Snow Cloak on the same team (which could potentially mean that Garchomp would be tested). Of course, there is also the option not to change anything.

And now for everyone's favorite thing in the world! A pros and cons list!

Complex Ban
Pros:
- Evasion is nearly entirely banned (DT+Minimize, BrightPowder+Lax Incense, Sand Veil+Snow Cloak, random boosts of Moody -- the only remaining ways to increase evasion are the ability Tangled Feet, and the moves Acupressure and Metronome), meaning it is more a consistent rule
Cons:
- Complex bans are bad in terms of some popular ban philosophies
- Complex bans reduce the accessibility of Smogon metagames to outside users

Unbanning BrightPowder and Lax Incense
Pros:
- Avoids a complex ban
- Decreases the number of bans (better under a "fewer bans is better" philosophy)
- Evasion items may not be broken since they replace a potentially better item and have relatively small boosts to evasion (better under a "only ban broken things" philosophy)
Cons:
- Overturns an 86.8% in favor ban
- Adds methods to increase evasion (worse under the principle that Evasion decreases skill)

Banning the abilities
Pros:
- Avoids a complex ban
- Evasion is nearly entirely banned (DT+Minimize, BrightPowder+Lax Incense, Sand Veil+Snow Cloak, random boosts of Moody -- the only remaining ways to increase evasion are the ability Tangled Feet, and the moves Acupressure and Metronome), meaning it is more a consistent rule
Cons:
- Some Pokemon that don't have their dream world ability released are banned collaterally
- Some Pokemon may lose the ability to use moves that are only legal with Sand Veil or Snow Cloak

The pros and cons of doing nothing should be pretty obvious.


Also, it should be noted, if the complex ban goes through, Garchomp may be tested, since it's obvious to everyone that it was only banned because of how well it dodged attacks under Sandstorm.

So the issue comes down to what we should value most as a site? Should we limit our banning to things that are broken? And what are the future implications of doing that? Or should we value consistency of ruleset and in which way should we approach that? Is a complex ban acceptable in a situation where it's not absolutely necessary to the metagame, but merely beneficial?

This topic will most likely end around 2 weeks from now, or at the point which we feel all reasonable discussion on the topic has been exhausted.

 

[JabbaTheGriffin]

As for my personal opinion on the matter:

I believe that a complex ban in this scenario creates the most consistent ruleset out of any of these options. I think one of the most important things we need in our metagame is consistency of ruleset. What's the point of Evasion Clause if we're only going to ban *some* evasion modifiers? I don't think that Evasion Clause was ever a matter of broken/not broken. I think Evasion Clause has always been a matter of adding what we consider to be completely unnecessary luck factors to the game. I think we've always held the opinion that if we're using a 100% move, it should hit 100% of the time. Therefore I think it's imperative that we take the step forward in banning evasion modifying abilities.

Now, on the issue of the simple evasion ability ban versus the complex ban, I don't like the unintended fallout that would occur from the ability ban. Things like Froslass being soft-banned because of a lack of a second ability just make this method completely undesirable to me. I know a lot of the userbase isn't quite fond of complex bans, but I think in this case that it's the best course of action. We have precedent of banning Weather Ability + Weather Affected Ability, so this complex ban wouldn't extend complex bans into a new area, thereby avoiding any "slippery slope" arguments. I highly value consistency of ruleset, and this is the only option that accomplishes that without unnecessary fallout.

 

[haunter]

Echoing what Jabba said on the matter. Complex bans are undoubtedly the best possible choice to stay consistent with two of our most important policies:
1) least possible bans;
2) removal of undesirable luck factors from the metagame.

This thread is going to stay open for discussion for approximately two weeks. After taking, hopefully, useful input from it, the council will take the decision on how to proceed. Please use civil tones in this thread, I'll personally moderate it.

 

[Avira]

So the issue comes down to what we should value most as a site? Should we limit our banning to things that are broken? And what are the future implications of doing that? Or should we value consistency of ruleset and in which way should we approach that? Is a complex ban acceptable in a situation where it's not absolutely necessary to the metagame, but merely beneficial?

Personally, I would say yes, a complex ban can be acceptable if it is merely beneficial in the sense that it increases the reliance on skill instead of luck. A competitive community should value skill over all else in my opinion. Evasion Clause is meant to promote skill and all attempts should be taken to remove Evasion out of the metagame.

The thing about a complex ban on Sand Veil/Snow Cloak with the two corresponding autoweather abilities is that once all the Pokemon with Sand Veil/Snow Cloak have their Dream World abilities released, the ban can be modified to a simple ban on Sand Veil. The only complex ban would then be the Drizzle + Swift Swim ban. This ban as a temporary solution keeps something like Froslass from being soft banned by a ban on Snow Cloak, which would be an awful solution since Froslass is not even a top threat.

 

[Arcticblast]

As a reference...
-Pokemon with no non-DW ability but Sand Veil
--Sandshrew
--Sandslash
--Cacnea
--Cacturne
--Gible
--Gabite
--Garchomp
-Pokemon with no non-DW ability but Snow Cloak:
--Glaceon
--Froslass
--Cubchoo
--Beartic

I'll post my opinion later.

 

[Tomahawk]

I'm just gonna say that I don't like the complex ban and the ability ban. The latter is especially a ridiculous idea. Banning Froslass, Mamoswine with Ice Shard / Icicle Spear, Gliscor with Roost or Stealth Rock and Sandslash among others is just dumb, I think most people agree with me that none of these Pokemon is actually broken. The complex ban is also quite weird. Why can't I just use Mamoswine on a hail team even if I don't want to abuse Snow Cloak? Personally, I think the situation is fine as it is right now. SubSD Gliscor might be annoying, but if we're gonna ban Sand Veil / Snow Cloak because of that set, we might as well ban Serene Grace, any move with a flinch ratio, any move with a high crit ratio, etc. This could easily become a slippery slope.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Tomohawk, I hink an important distinction that you aren't making is he fact that any decision would not result in a ban but would rather be an extension of evasion clause, hence the topic title. There would be no slippey slope possible based on "hax influencers".

Ipods are ass to type on

 

[Treadshot A1]

Just throwing my 2 cents in to the matter for the hell of it.


I personally don't see the point behind these abilities being banned, in any way. Straight up ban or complex, i never found the two abilities to be annoying (i've honestly never missed a hit due to Sand Veil, though, so i might be a bit biased there). I'll add in here that frankly most pokemon with Snow Cloak suck anyways, but that's really neither here nor there.

To me, the first thing i thought of when i heard of Sand Veil was (barring Garchomp, obviously) Defensive Gliscor, and while that thing is a pain to take down, i've never really found Sand Veil to be the best ability on it anyways. Poison Heal, anyone? I can't really think of anyone else who uses Sand Veil a lot and is annoying to take down because of it. The only reason Garchomp was broken with Sand Veil was because often with Garchomp it was a case of "kill it now, or never". You had literally one turn to do it. If Sand Veil activated that turn, then it was gg. I've never had the situation where i was facing down another Sand Veil user where i only had one turn to take it down. Plus, Garchomp was broken for so many reasons other than Sand Veil. The only other prominent user i can think of is Mamoswine, and that thing's main job is Ice Sharding weakened Dragonites. The Choice Band ones may be a bit annoying, but between the physical walls of OU and the fact Mamo is weak to so many forms of priority (and many pokemon resist Ice Shard, which is especially bad when you're Choice locked), it's far from a case of having one turn and only one turn to take it down before it sweeps. Plus, weakened Mamoswine does not like Extremespeed's +2 priority.

Snow Cloak...why? Aside from the obvious "who uses Hail?" debate (which i won't go into), only Froslass springs to mind as a user, and it's only real use for Snow Cloak is determining whether it gets one more layer of Spikes up.

So i think for now i'll stick to keeping the abilities around, as i don't really see the need for any ban on them. Sure, luck could be removed by removing these two abilities, but it's not yet broken enough where i find it necessary. It's not like Moody where Protect + Substitute was a viable strategy to abuse Moody, and with Bright Powder and Lax Incense gone, the best way of abusing the two abilities is gone. Plus, with DrizzleToad and DroughtTales running around everywhere, it's not like these two abilities are going to be as dominating as they (or maybe just Sand Veil) were last gen where Sand was everywhere. The less said about Hail's prominence, the better. ;)

As for the items, putting them back in would seriously break any user of the two abilities above. Hell, BrightPowder + Sand Veil Garchomp was broken, and i don't see much of a difference with the pokemon left. Offensive Swords Dance Gliscor behind a Sub, with BrightPowder and Sand Veil in Sandstorm, anyone? I say ban either the items or the abilities, and since banning the abilities would ban some pokemon outright, i say keep the items banned.

Tl;dr: Keep things the way they are. No need for new bans, simple or complex.

 

[Paolo]

I'm really on the fence with this one. I really dislike the fact that some Pokemon are able to skirt around evasion clause due to the fact they aren't broken and it's their ability that's increasing their evasion. Has anyone yet suggested a complex ban of Sand Veil/Snow Cloak and there respective weathers that activate them on the same team? I personally believe that it's the players choice to use less then perfectly accurate moves and a complex ban like this would give you the choice whether or not you want to run either hail or sand thus potentially making your moves less then perfectly accurate. Not only that but it would eliminate the need for any bans of Pokemon that aren't broken.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

RE: Treadshot

Brightpowder and Lax Incense actually have very little effect on Sand Veil / Snow Cloak, as back in the np: OU Round 3 thread it was statistically shown that Leftovers provides more oppurtunities for misses than does the aforementioned items.

Edit: round 3 not 4 my bad

 

[haunter]

Paolo, your idea corresponds to the complex bans proposal.

 

[Treadshot A1]

RE: Texas

Two things:

A) Show me (or link to) the statistics, please. I like hard figures rather than conjecture.

B) Doesn't mean unbanning the items is a good idea. Pokemon without Snow Cloak or Sand Veil still get a boost to their Evasion, and while many would despair a lack of Leftovers, there are also many pokemon who only need that one turn to set up and sweep (basically anyone that uses Rock Polish/Agility, like Terrakion or Empoleon, would relish the free boost and then proceed to dismantle an opponent's team with either great dual STABs or Water STAB). Even Lucario would benefit from it, as a Swords Dance or Nasty Plot set doesn't need any item in particular, and a free boost could still beat its way through a team with Extremespeed and/or Bullet Punch. Alternatively, make your opponent drop pokemon and take up a new hobby with a BrightPowder ParaFusion Flinching Jirachi.

Also, this wouldn't be viable, but i just imagined a BrightPowder Blissey, against a team full of Stone Edge/Focus Miss users. lol That would be so painful...

 

[alexwolf]

Personally, I would say yes, a complex ban can be acceptable if it is merely beneficial in the sense that it increases the reliance on skill instead of luck. A competitive community should value skill over all else in my opinion. Evasion Clause is meant to promote skill and all attempts should be taken to remove Evasion out of the metagame.

The thing about a complex ban on Sand Veil/Snow Cloak with the two corresponding autoweather abilities is that once all the Pokemon with Sand Veil/Snow Cloak have their Dream World abilities released, the ban can be modified to a simple ban on Sand Veil. The only complex ban would then be the Drizzle + Swift Swim ban. This ban as a temporary solution keeps something like Froslass from being soft banned by a ban on Snow Cloak, which would be an awful solution since Froslass is not even a top threat.

I agree with you. But for now the complex ban is the best solution. If and when the DW abilites of those pokes come out, we will see what we will do. Also with the complex ban, we avoid limiting the movepool of many of those pokes, and thus we have greater variety.

I completely agree with Jabba. Consistency of our ruleset is something very important. Also it is true that the Evasion Clause was not added because evasion moves were broken, but because they would made the meta more luck based.

Imo the complex ban is by far the best option, and has only 1 negative, which is the complexity of those kind of bans, which doesn't affect the meta in a direct way, while every other negative does!

EDIT: To anyone saying that the Sand Veil / Snow Cloak users are not broken, so there is no need for any ban i have to say this. Double Team and Minimize were never tested or found to be broken, and as has been extensively discussed in many threads, there are very few pokes capable of becoming broken with those 2 moves, in which case it would be better to ban them individually than ban a move that almost every poke in the game gets. So broken is not the case for the evasion clause (and OHKO moves clause), but removing unecessary and unhealthy luck from the meta is the reason.
So does Sand Veil / Snow Cloak make the game more luck based? If you think that yes is the answer, then they should be included on the evasion clause, as it was done with the moves.

 

[DDRMaster]

I'm just gonna say that I don't like the complex ban and the ability ban. The latter is especially a ridiculous idea. Banning Froslass, Mamoswine with Ice Shard / Icicle Spear, Gliscor with Roost or Stealth Rock and Sandslash among others is just dumb, I think most people agree with me that none of these Pokemon is actually broken. The complex ban is also quite weird. Why can't I just use Mamoswine on a hail team even if I don't want to abuse Snow Cloak? Personally, I think the situation is fine as it is right now. SubSD Gliscor might be annoying, but if we're gonna ban Sand Veil / Snow Cloak because of that set, we might as well ban Serene Grace, any move with a flinch ratio, any move with a high crit ratio, etc. This could easily become a slippery slope.

Mamoswine could still run Oblivious and Gliscor could still run Hyper Cutter, so they wouldn't have to give up their Egg/4th Gen moves. I do agree that banning the Abilities would be a bad idea as it would mean an outright ban of Froslass, Beartic, and Sandslash and would prevent Cacturne from using its 3rd and 4th Gen exclusive moves, like Focus Punch, Drain Punch, and Giga Drain.

 

[alphatron]

Minimizing luck is very important in order to make the pokemom metagame a worthy one, but we've long since accepted that not all luck can be removed, nor should all luck be removed. The little luck that remains now is actually utilized by the player for either good or bad. People spam substitute against paralyzed opponents in hopes that the 25% chance for full paralysis will kick in and allow for a free turn of setup. Machamp uses dynamic punch against anything that isn't immune to it just so he can pull off a confusion status and possibly hinder the opponent. People opt for fire blast over flamethrower in order to deal more damage and net needed kos, knowing that it misses every now and then. People use serene grace Jirachi with paralysis support, and others cross their fingers and hope at they end up getting critical hits against those who use sigilyph while attempted to boost to maximum stats with cosmic power.

When using abomasnow and mamoswine on the same team, I actually hope that snow cloak does activate every now and then in my favor. That's one of the reasons I'm using both Pokemon together after all. In the case of garchomp, this obviously got out of hand and ruined games (this is also because garchomp is a pain in the ass pokemon regardless of sand veil). In the case of the snow cloak/sand veil users that are still in the OU tier, it hasn't been a serious problem.

Okay, so your opponent has no way to control the evasion boost granted to you by snow cloak unless they run their own weather. They have no way to alter the luck factor, which is what sets snow cloak aside from willingly using fire blast over flamethrower, focus blast over hidden power fighting (ugh), etc. But your opponent also has no control over critical hits and high/low damage rolls. These things happen and we have to accept them, unfortunate or fortunate as they are.

The combo ban would make sense to me if it broke every Pokemon, or even a couple. It doesn't. Sand veil only caused problems for one Pokemon and it wasn't the only reason garchomp was banned. Without it, he's still a fast pokemom with amazing coverage, excellent offensive AND defensive typing, and sr resistance, and high defenses. He only needs earthquake and outrage to plow through everything, a yache berry to maim whatever you thought was a counter, and a fire move to crush the steel types that couldn't do anything back to him anyway...thanks to his good defenses. Sand veil netted him free turns, but it wasn't the only thing that made him insane.

 

[BurningMan]

Now, on the issue of the simple evasion ability ban versus the complex ban, I don't like the unintended fallout that would occur from the ability ban. Things like Froslass being soft-banned because of a lack of a second ability just make this method completely undesirable to me. I know a lot of the userbase isn't quite fond of complex bans, but I think in this case that it's the best course of action. We have precedent of banning Weather Ability + Weather Affected Ability, so this complex ban wouldn't extend complex bans into a new area, thereby avoiding any "slippery slope" arguments. I highly value consistency of ruleset, and this is the only option that accomplishes that without unnecessary fallout.

Pretty much what i wanted to say, it would really suck banning froslass and Beartic as well as Sand Slash from the lower tiers where their weather isn't even present.
I don't think the Hax Items are broken (i don't even think Double team is broken), but they are annoying and if we got the choice to remove them from the metagame then i don't see why we shouldn't do this.

 

[alexwolf]

@Alphatron

Criticals and low/high damage rolls all controlable. If you don't want to get crited too often, you can have many Sub users, and many offensive mons. If you don't like to get screwed by low damage rolls, then you can pack a lot of entry hazards and make sure that the OHKOes and 2HKOes that you get are 100% sure.

But as you said Snow Cloak and Sand Veil cannot be played around, unless you have your own weather, which btw is one of the few solid reasons that the anti-ban group can make. Nice catch! Now if we all decide as a community that weather is common enough to mitigate the otherwise unavoidable luck introduced by Sand Veil / Snow Cloak then the combo ban doesn't happen. If we decide that they are not, it happens.

Btw it is really enjoyable talking with thoughtfull and informed people like you Aplhatron, since instead of going around circles in a quote war, we can focus right from the start in the actual point!

 

[Treadshot A1]

Alexwolf, to say yu can block Crits with Subs and you can block Low Damage Rolls from having huge impact with hazards...


...and then say that you should ban the abilities because you can block Snow Cloak and Sand Veil with your own weather...



....doesn't that mean both are play-around-able? Run hazards = no low damage roll ban. Run Subs = no crit ban. Surely then, Run Weather = no Snow Cloak/Snad Veil ban?

 

[Showsni]

Firstly, I think that banning the evasion incresing items whilst not banning the other hax items (Quick Claw, Focus Band, King's Rock and so on) is just silly. Why should we allow someone to get a lucky 10% Focus Band roll, survive and KO back if we're disallowing pretty much exactly the same situation with a Brightpowder activation? For consistency's sake, if nothing else, either ban all the hax items or ban none of them.

It seems to me the idea of clauses is pretty much to try and "fix" underlying game concepts. Sleep clause, for instance, isn't enforced by Nintendo (except in Stadium); they're quite happy to allow us to put everything to sleep. Sleep Clause changes the mechanics of the game itself in the simulator to stop this. So we have precendent, here; clauses are allowed to change the underlying game mechanics in the simulator.

So here's my suggestion. Why don't we do this with Evasion Clause? Have the simulator programmed to simply ignore any evasion boosts, whether from move, item or ability, whenever Evasion Clause is switched on. This would solve all the problems, as far as I can see. There'd be no problems with soft banning Pokémon; you could run Snow Veil Froslass, it just wouldn't do anything. There'd be no complex bans; it's a simple clause, easy to activate, and easy to deactivate if we want to use evasion. It would remove the problems with Accupressure and Metronome giving evasion boosts; hey, it could even let Moody get a retest!

The one problem with this apporach is that the simulator makers want to simulate the real games as closely as possible. I respect that, but in the case of clauses we're already changing real game mechanics. Why not simply do the same here?

Of course, we'd still need bans/whatever for wifi players.

 

[Shineygengar]

Banning Froslass, Mamoswine with Ice Shard / Icicle Spear, Gliscor with Roost or Stealth Rock, it still gets hyper cutter, so it can use roost and SR, but its useless other than blocking intimidate pretty much.

i think it should stay the same, or un-ban items. banning the abilitys would be crazy, and not being able to use froslass and mamoswine on hail teams would make hail completely un-usable. when running sand in ubers, garchomp never haxes out the opponent, its always his stats that pull through. i've never got +6 with garchomp ever. all the pokemon with veil and cloak have something else going for them. banning the abilities would ban the pokemon themselves when thats what wasn't intended, and how often do you see the abilities in OU anyway? (other than mamoswine, who has to have it).

i can't think of anything else to say, i'm used to evasion because i play street pokemon, you always have to find away around it, and its not that hard.

 

[alexwolf]

Alexwolf, to say yu can block Crits with Subs and you can block Low Damage Rolls from having huge impact with hazards...


...and then say that you should ban the abilities because you can block Snow Cloak and Sand Veil with your own weather...



....doesn't that mean both are play-around-able? Run hazards = no low damage roll ban. Run Subs = no crit ban. Surely then, Run Weather = no Snow Cloak/Snad Veil ban?

First of all i didn't say that we should ban the abilites. I said that if the community decides that weather is common enough to mitigate the luck that those abilites bring, then no ban will happen. But if we decided that they are not, the combo ban is the best course of action.

So it all depends to what people think about weather. Are Sun, Rain and Hail used enough to counter the luck that Sand Veil brings? Are Sand, Rain and Sun used enough to counter the luck that Snow Cloak brings?

Finally crits and low damage rolls have one major difference with those abilites. We cannot alter the first ones, because they are part of the game mechanincs, which we as a community have decided not to alter, while the latter can be easily prevented with a clause (either single ban or combo ban).

Also @Showsni

We didn't ban the other items, because they have counters, while the evaision increasing items don't. Focus Band can be bypassed by any passive damage such as Toxic, Burn, Sand, Hail, Leech Seed, etc. Quick Claw gives +1 priority to whatever move you are using, which is way worse than giving you a free turn alltogether. Quick Claw can be countered by either using very bulky defensive pokes that would go last anyway, or by using fast pokes with priority moves. King's Rock can be countered, simply by not letting the opponent attack first, which means using fast mons, or by setting up a sub.

Finally your idea sounds good, but the main problem is that Smogon wants to avoid as much as possible altering game mechanics, and when it does it is only for very serious reasons like Sleep Clause (imagine a meta without Sleep Clause).

 

[Stratos]

I'm with Alphatron yet again on this issue. In IV gen, I ran a Sand Veil Gliscor with Brightpowder on a Sand team. I ran Sand Veil over Hyper Cutter and a worse item. The whole point in this logic was to get saved by hax if all else failed. Would I have done this if hax was not my goal? Hell no.

What I'm trying to say here is that too many of you are considering Sand Veil/Snow Cloak hax as an unintentional side effect that must be minimized. I ask you to think of it not just in how best to eliminate it, but also to see it as a legitimate strategy people run and ask if it really SHOULD be banned.

 

[SJCrew]

Minimizing luck is very important in order to make the pokemom metagame a worthy one, but we've long since accepted that not all luck can be removed, nor should all luck be removed. The little luck that remains now is actually utilized by the player for either good or bad. People spam substitute against paralyzed opponents in hopes that the 25% chance for full paralysis will kick in and allow for a free turn of setup. Machamp uses dynamic punch against anything that isn't immune to it just so he can pull off a confusion status and possibly hinder the opponent. People opt for fire blast over flamethrower in order to deal more damage and net needed kos, knowing that it misses every now and then. People use serene grace Jirachi with paralysis support, and others cross their fingers and hope at they end up getting critical hits against those who use sigilyph while attempted to boost to maximum stats with cosmic power.

You're not taking into account the resources required to execute these strategies. Champ can only do so much with his 8 DynamicPunch PP and low speed. Jirachi and Togekiss could definitely flinch teams to death if their speed and offensive typing were a little better. The tools described here don't match up to the free turns you get to execute an entirely different strategy while Evasion abilities bail you out. If Jirachi, Togekiss, and Machamp want their opponent not to move, they have to use their respective moves under favorable conditions. Compare this to when Froslass wants her opponent not to move, she ignores them and clicks Spikes.

But your opponent also has no control over critical hits and high/low damage rolls. These things happen and we have to accept them, unfortunate or fortunate as they are.

The only reason we haven't seen any demand to remedy critical hits or damage rolls is because it's literally impossible. They're an intrinsic element of the game mechanics that cannot be altered via rule set. You would have to just play another game. As for the things we can control...

Okay, so your opponent has no way to control the evasion boost granted to you by snow cloak unless they run their own weather. They have no way to alter the luck factor, which is what sets snow cloak aside from willingly using fire blast over flamethrower, focus blast over hidden power fighting (ugh), etc. But your opponent also has no control over critical hits and high/low damage rolls. These things happen and we have to accept them, unfortunate or fortunate as they are.

This logic can also be applied to the gameplay elements we've already claused out. "Don't like your opponent spamming Double Team or Minimize? Deal with it. Pokemon is luck."

I'm not seeing a disconnect between Sand Veil and Double Team as 'uncompetitive' aspects of the game on a basic level. Both effects, while in play, surrender the game to RNG, regardless of player's choice. We made it clear that we wanted to avoid this when we banned Moody, and in that same vein, I'd like for us to remove Evasion from the competitive metagame in any way we possibly can.

I'm with Alphatron yet again on this issue. In IV gen, I ran a Sand Veil Gliscor with Brightpowder on a Sand team. I ran Sand Veil over Hyper Cutter and a worse item. The whole point in this logic was to get saved by hax if all else failed. Would I have done this if hax was not my goal? Hell no.

What I'm trying to say here is that too many of you are considering Sand Veil/Snow Cloak hax as an unintentional side effect that must be minimized. I ask you to think of it not just in how best to eliminate it, but also to see it as a legitimate strategy people run and ask if it really SHOULD be banned.

This seems more like playing favorites than a valid point. The point of using hax abilities/items/Pokemon is always to force your opponent into helplessness while you execute your strategy. Can we use this logic to rescind the elements we've already claused? If not, then it shouldn't hold water against Evasion abilities, which for all intents and purposes do exactly the same thing any other Evasion-based move or strategy.

 

[Showsni]

Also @Showsni

We didn't ban the other items, because they have counters, while the evaision increasing items don't. Focus Band can be bypassed by any passive damage such as Toxic, Burn, Sand, Hail, Leech Seed, etc. Quick Claw gives +1 priority to whatever move you are using, which is way worse than giving you a free turn alltogether. Quick Claw can be countered by either using very bulky defensive pokes that would go last anyway, or by using fast pokes with priority moves. King's Rock can be countered, simply by not letting the opponent attack first, which means using fast mons, or by setting up a sub.

Brightpowder can be bypassed by using Swift et. al. And Focus Band on a Magic Guard Pokémon negates the passive damage weakness. I'm not saying these items are broken; far from it, I personally believe that all of them should be allowed (in the interests of banning as little as possible). I just don't see that certain hax items should be banned whilst others remain.

Finally your idea sounds good, but the main problem is that Smogon wants to avoid as much as possible altering game mechanics, and when it does it is only for very serious reasons like Sleep Clause (imagine a meta without Sleep Clause).

Yes, and that's the rub. The question here is whether Evasion Clause is

a. Necessary in all cases and
b. Required enough to warrant changing game mechanics.

I think that if we decide Evasion is something we want to not be affecting the game at all, then a mechanic change is the simplest and most effective way of enforcing it. If we are going to decide to ban everything with the hint of evasion (Snow Cloak in Hail + Brighpowder + Double Team + so on) then a simple mechanic change (increased Evasion does nothing) has got to be a much better solution.

If of course we decide Evasion isn't that big a deal, and only warrants banning certain things (say, just Double Team + Minimize) we can simply carry on as we are, and there's no problem.

 

[BurningMan]

b. Required enough to warrant changing game mechanics.

I think that if we decide Evasion is something we want to not be affecting the game at all, then a mechanic change is the simplest and most effective way of enforcing it. If we are going to decide to ban everything with the hint of evasion (Snow Cloak in Hail + Brighpowder + Double Team + so on) then a simple mechanic change (increased Evasion does nothing) has got to be a much better solution.

If of course we decide Evasion isn't that big a deal, and only warrants banning certain things (say, just Double Team + Minimize) we can simply carry on as we are, and there's no problem.

This should never happen, unless there is a glitch that makes the entire game unplayable smogon will never ever alter the game mechanics. (i think its pretty retarded that there is still no consensus regarding how sleep clause should be enforced).