Evasion Clause - It's time to fully bake this half baked implementation.

[Zacpz]

Friends, Romans, ADVers.

It's time to talk about the elephant in the room: Accuracy lowering moves.

For a very long time competitive Pokémon sims have banned evasion raising moves, such as double team, for being uninteractive and taking skill out of the game. In other words: accuracy hax moves are cheese.

Yet, since the banning of double stat passing for being uniterective and cheesy, the Ninjask Nathans of this world have taken to using sand attack on ninjask.

The discussion which surrounded stat passing last time revolved on it being uninteractive and leading to needing to use whirlwind as counterplay to the stat pass teams it enabled. The current issue is that the only completely reliable counterplay is to bring Skarmory as it is a phaser which cannot have its accuracy lowered. This is much the same issue but with even less flexibility.

We have a long standing evasion clause, and precedent for uninteractive cheese being ban worthy. Although this has not come to a tour yet, as it is not as reliable as mead pass of old, I propose that the council acts proactively for the ladder community and the health of the tiers future (where do new players learn the tier after all) by banning accuracy lowering moves and items as a quality of life improvement.

These items are already banned, as it was presumable seen as a way to decrease bullshit. Lets do thee same with moves that have the same effect.

Council, please do what right as a quality of life improvement for the tier.

Star M Dragon McMeghan Gilbert arenas undisputed

Edit: Just to clarify, this is as much about sustaining ADV as an active community. Players come and go, but ladder cheese will always be a barrier to entry. If low ladder is a less rage inducing place, people will have more opportunity to improve without the incessant bullshit. As the current host of ADV League, which is designed for low and high level players alike, I assure you this is an issue to a section of the player base who shouldn't go unrepresented because they're not noteworthy players. They may well one day become noteworthy, but that doesn't mean their experiences are currently invalid.

 

[RoiDadadou]

Throwing sand is really rude.

 

[cactuTH6]

Please, please get rid of Sand Attack for the sake of my mental health when laddering.
There is nothing that makes me want to quit playing ADV more than when I lose because of missing roar.

 

[R8]

Honestly I've always been wondering why smogon rulesets allow stuff like sand attack in general. Sure, we can't ban everything that involves luck of course - rng management is a part of the game, this is even something you can read in the Smogon's tiering policy framework thread - but I am not sure what competitive value Sand Attack, Flash or Smokescreen add to the game. I guess you could make an argument for offensive moves as their main value might not be fishing for luck anyway (Like Mirror Shot or Mud Bomb), but what about accuracy lowering status moves? Winning CM wars maybe?

 

[ABR]

I fully agree with the OP - we should remove cheese by banning speedpass (statpass as a whole) and overriding the current clause.

 

[Zacpz]

I fully agree with the OP - we should remove cheese by banning speedpass (statpass as a whole) and overriding the current clause.

This thread is about consistent between the evasion clause and accuracy lowering moves. Please do not derail.

 

[Zpanther19]

Finally someone said it!!

 

[IronedSandwich]

Ninjask's sand attack baton pass set is a problem. It leverages how evasion drops require the user to force out since Ninjask passively gains boosts, and it can simply sand attack the new switchin regardless. It's distortionary. Obviously Ninjask isn't a Tyranitar level threat but neither was Soundproof

 

[Real Sablesalt]

Even though one can switch to remove the acc debuffs I can see how that isn't ideal and how you are going to at some point either have to land a move while having lowered accuracy or they going to start doing some nasty stuff when you switch.

I wouldn't mind evasion clause being updated for this sort of stuff.

Personally I am of the belief evasion clause should work by removing evasion boosts or ideally by ignoring them in accuracy calculation by not considering positive evasion, evasion chance by ability and whatnot so the few mechanics that care about the stat stay intact just for the sake of keeping the games still mostly 1:1


even if the luck factor in the cartridge games still exists it would still be possible for the same events to happen on emulator as on cartridge if you simply got lucky and hit anyway unlike if the stat couldn't be interacted with which would have niché situations in later gens that would always cause desyncs like stored power, punishment, moody, minimize punishing moves(despite this making minimize useless)


If evasion clause also added accuracy debuffs to it I think that would be entirely fine as accuracy lowering moves don't really add much to the game and the best example I can think of in terms of a valid competitive use for them is flash on rby mewtwo.

If evasion clause was changed to encompass accuracy I think a name change might be in order as well to go with it, probably "hit rate clause" with the sub explanation "hit rate decreasing moves/abilities/effects are ignored" or something along those lines.

I say this as a person who likes to screw with rng related factors on the ladder with my favourite being snow cloak frolass in gen 4 ou.

Generally I don't believe hit rate tilting moves/abilities/effects are good when trying to test players based on their skill due to the fact they both create a psuedo floor for their results equal to the success rate of that rng turning out good or bad.

but also because the rng doesn't factor the opponents skill fairly often which makes it a legistics nightmare when combined with stuff like the elo system which cannot understand the differnce inbetween win rate and skill of a player which means these factors make such a system less stable since the ranking will give the same reward for defeating a higher ranked player with them as without them and the same applies in reverse of the average players facing a higher ranking player who is using them as it can increase the average players ranking beyond their normal rating due to battling someone who was higher rated using a rng based stratiegy.

Of course ladder elo does get averaged out with more battles but that goes back to the problem of the pseudo skill floor these create as well and it still would be ideal to minimize these factors.

 

[Triangles]

Free Cacturne

 

[Real Sablesalt]

Free Cacturne

I want them free too even if it takes the reworking of evasion clause to ignore evasion abilities because it's very sad the lad had to go for only having sand veil

 

[Cdijk16]

Let's not derail the thread with Cacturne discussion, this is for discussing a possible ban on accuracy lowering moves.
I'll go find a few replays of BP Sand Attack cheese.

 

[johnnyg2]

The fact that I was able to win any game with this garbage 0 iv 0 ev team should be all the evidence needed. Ban sand attack, mud slap, and bright powder. If I had my way, smogon would also ban quick claw and the other luck based items to be congruent with callous’s tournaments, but alas. Speed pass/modding the game to add cacturne with sand immunity but no evasion is a separate discussion, let’s focus on these small quality of life improvements

 

[5imian]

Firm believer in this. I generally believe that within the spirit of why evasion clause exists, at least brightpowder needs to be banned, if not sand attack, flash etc

 

[EmethEl]

I would also like accuracy lowering moves to be banned. They do not add anything to the meta game other than fishing for a miss (most notably Ninjask).
You could just ban every move that lowers accuracy as a whole. Moves that lower accuracy as a secondary effect like Muddy Water are replaceable with better moves that don't lower accuracy.

I would also like to add moves that can cause the confused status to this list as well, since I suspect Ninjask may move on to using Swagger, but that's a discussion for another time as mentioned before.

 

[VZR]

Even though evasion is obviously stronger and a lot more broken than simply using an accuracy lowering move (such as in the case of Ninjask using Sand Attack vs it using Double team and passing the evasion stat as well as speed) it should probably still be addressed. Giving up a free turn or two to reset accuracy drops can be detrimental against teams that aim to pass speed and setup with a sweeper (ie. Marowak).

 

[Monai]

Release double team

 

[alexandrsk]

Umbreon with sand-attack doesn't get talked about enough. I've used it to cheese wins in the past (especially prior to the mean look + baton pass ban).

I'm not opposed to banning flash and sand-attack as Skarmory seems to be the only true counter; however, I don't think banning moves like Mud-Slap and Muddy Water is necessary.

Mud-Slap, for starters, can be easily countered by the plethora of flying and levitate users.

Muddy Water, on the other hand, is completely a non-issue. I may have seen it once or twice on the ladder. Even if it was commonly spammed, only one Pokémon, Swampert, can use the move (and he isn't even very good at using it). And, even then, it only has about a 25% chance to lower accuracy (after factoring in accuracy).

 

[Siglut]

I agree with abr. Skarmory's ability to unconditionally dodge accuracy-lowering moves - one of the tier's most important strategies - is entirely uncompetitive and leads to matchup fishing or using totally unviable pokemon like magneton to compensate. We should really have gotten rid of this mon ages ago.

This is also about sustaining adv as an active community. Many times I have run into "skarm bliss" users on ladder and I have to quit out immediately vs that. The tier would be much more accessible if this strategy were not all over the ladder.

For real though, I don't think we should ban absolutely everything that has a chance of leading to hax. Sand attack and bright powder are relatively low-impact to ban but I think there's some value in allowing people to queue up with their ingame level 40 swampert with mud-slap or whatever that move is.

 

[TyCarter]

I don't like sand. It's coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.

 

[Jimothy Cool]

Sand Attack and other Acc drop moves on Pokemon other than Ninjask are just bad and very easy to play around. A Jolt using Sand Attack for e.g is getting very little reward from the low miss chance and you can just reset your drops by switching.

A player can make a horrible Risk/Reward play if they want to, you can go for a Rock Slide flinch or a Freeze chance in a position where you'll die if you don't get it. That's kinda how I feel about Sand Attack on Pokemon other than Ninjask. Nothing much of value would be lost with Acc drop moves banned but I think the real issue is Ninjask.

Ninjask can passively speed boost without having to spend a turn doing so, and potentially Disrupt phasing or an incoming attack with Sand Attack or even Swagger to maintain its Speed boosts.

Even though the vast majority of games a Ninjask Sand Attacking will get punished and just die or be phased out, people run this strategy purely to fish for the cheesy win which can be very frustrating to face. It's very 1 Dimensional to play against and makes the game come down to hoping you don't miss. I personally almost lost to this on my run to #1 after missing a couple Roars.

If we ban Acc drop moves the Ninjask cheese players will just start using Swagger instead and going for the exact same thing. The root of the problem is Ninjask and it's ability to get huge reward out of any form of Disruption.

I'm not sure what action should be taken but my hunch is that Ninjask is a problematic mon with very little merit outside of cheese and should probably just go

 

[alexandrsk]

Sand Attack and other Acc drop moves on Pokemon other than Ninjask are just bad and very easy to play around. A Jolt using Sand Attack for e.g is getting very little reward from the low miss chance and you can just reset your drops by switching.

A player can make a horrible Risk/Reward play if they want to, you can go for a Rock Slide flinch or a Freeze chance in a position where you'll die if you don't get it. That's kinda how I feel about Sand Attack on Pokemon other than Ninjask. Nothing much of value would be lost with Acc drop moves banned but I think the real issue is Ninjask.

Ninjask can passively speed boost without having to spend a turn doing so, and potentially Disrupt phasing or an incoming attack with Sand Attack or even Swagger to maintain its Speed boosts.

Even though the vast majority of games a Ninjask Sand Attacking will get punished and just die or be phased out, people run this strategy purely to fish for the cheesy win which can be very frustrating to face. It's very 1 Dimensional to play against and makes the game come down to hoping you don't miss. I personally almost lost to this on my run to #1 after missing a couple Roars.

If we ban Acc drop moves the Ninjask cheese players will just start using Swagger instead and going for the exact same thing. The root of the problem is Ninjask and it's ability to get huge reward out of any form of Disruption.

I'm not sure what action should be taken but my hunch is that Ninjask is a problematic mon with very little merit outside of cheese and should probably just go

I think you make a valid point. Maybe we need to ban Ninjask to Ubers.

 

[Deezcastforms]

I originally just made a basic "Ban Sand Attack" post, which I've now deleted, because after seeing Jim's post, my opinion has changed.

I'd be down for any change that puts Ninjask cheese in the dirt for good. And while I wouldn't complain if it got an outright ban, I don't really want that because I think we could solve the problem by banning BP on Jask like Ingrain is banned on Smeargle. Where Jim says Jask itself is the root of the problem, I think it's specifically Jask BP. Jask gets to keep his bullshit, but he's gotta set up SD and run the sweep on his own. Because people don't hate Jask for what it does on its own. They hate it for what what it allows other mons to do.

 

[airports]

zac's lowkey taking the opportunity to farm reacts this spl cycle xd. smart guy. i totally agree with the op, accurqcy stuff needs to be punted out of the tier and, i think, quick claw should follow...quickly. slide and beam are moves that underpin the tier, and as such tiering them comes at a high price, if not in terms of remaking the meta, than through a convoluted, semingly arbitrary ruleset. by contrast, accuracy lowering moves and quick claw are both total nonsense and an easy fix. ban 'em.

 

[Leftwingbo]

Keep sand-attack pls

And don't ban jask, it has a legit niche on speedpass teams

Being annoyed with accuracy drops is a far-cry from the inability to phaze at all like with meadpass

No more bans, the metagame is healthy