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It is a bit strange to me that the council held a binding vote to decide the state of King's Rock. It's not like the council holds binding votes when deciding whether or not to suspect Pokemon. Your hands are tied if you commit to no suspect, and upcoming metagame shifts completely invalidate that stance. And it's clear that nobody has an idea of what constitutes an acceptable timeframe for conducting a revote. I don't think these votes should be conducted without the structure necessary to support them, and that includes not only an adjustment of the percentage required to pass them, but also the conditions under which they can (should) be conducted, the conditions/timeline for holding a revote, and the conditions under which an individual vote can be considered valid or invalid. Alternatively, just don't conduct these internal council votes (or adopt a system like the one peng outlined); as long as council members are complaining about their own peers voting "incorrectly," then the idea that they can apply our tiering philosophy more capably than the average voter seems to hold less weight.
That aside, I know these are less topical issues, but I think they should be addressed. Bringing up National Dex (a literal mod), Monotype, and BW (an old gen that has historically been tiered inconsistently to CG OU) as some sort of meaningful precedent is ridiculous and makes the ban argument look like a joke. These arguments have no place here. Also, as I said in my survey submission, mandating a yes/no response to the King's Rock question without providing an option for abstention in order to complete any of the survey was inappropriate. In general, the survey results should not be used in any official capacity as long as you cannot verify the true identity of submissions. From my time on the council, I know there was very little done to verify that people submitting were truly who they claimed to be, and I personally uncovered one case where someone submitted under the guise of another (qualified) user. I know people don't care about this stuff as much as King's Rock, but this rubbed me the wrong way, and I had to call it out.
Alternatively, just don't conduct these internal council votes (or adopt a system like the one peng outlined); as long as council members are complaining about their own peers voting "incorrectly," then the idea that they can apply our tiering philosophy more capably than the average voter seems to hold less weight.
Agree with this bit entirely. The only time the council should be voting is on quickbans directly after releases and what we did was not proper. The initial vote was a misstep and it largely falls on my shoulders for rushing it for the sake of getting a resolution -- I apologize for that. It was a grey area and we should have found a better solution. I need to be better than this.
As for the surveys, they have been used this way in every tier, including OU, for a while now. OU, UU, RU, and NU all use surveys. The results are NOT used as the sole decision makers because of what you say -- they are at the mercy of people being who they say they are and they are informal -- and the council input is still very important in the entire process, but it has been a way for the council to stay in-touch with the pulse of the playerbases. I feel the surveys have been a massive success to OU. The council has virtually no transparency last generation, but now I have been able to share our discussions through council minutes and the community has been able to share their thoughts through the surveys. I quite like this infrastructure for all of the tiers I mentioned and have firsthand success with it in OU and NU.
Also, as I said in my survey submission, mandating a yes/no response to the King's Rock question without providing an option for abstention in order to complete any of the survey was inappropriate.
At long last, we have a conclusion to the King's Rock saga in SS OU. After speaking with the SS OU tiering council, SS OU tiering leader, and Smogon tiering administrator, King's Rock is now banned from SS OU.
While I would like to keep this post on the briefer side as every argument has been exhausted numerous times over across the last five pages, I would like to note a few important pieces of information that factored into this decision:
We received 86% support among qualified survey respondents
This is not sufficient alone, but such a strong majority absolutely prompted further council discussion and review with leadership
It was clear the prior vote was insufficient given how a very small minority of the playerbase -- 7 councilmen -- conflicted with the opinion of the larger playerbase
On top of this, even the overall playerbase had a majority of players supporting a ban in the survey
There was less certainty among councilmen, leadership, and administration that the result of the past council vote was truly reflective of the metagame
Council size was something discussed
We only had 7 members, which is the lowest it has been in recent memory and not necessarily representative of the full playerbase
It is likely we look to expand the council moving forward in order to combat it as the status quo is insufficient
Some councilmen who voted to keep King's Rock ultimately were content banning it
The support throughout the community was discussed
We received a great deal of posts arguing for King's Rock being banned
Again: the survey results we discussed in the prior point
I received dozens of messages expressing concern about the outcome of the initial vote, the result of the initial vote, the preceent it set, etc.
The presence of King's Rock in the metagame is not one we can underplay in good faith
Players have consistently discussed this topic throughout the generation
The topic has gained greater traction in recent months, especially with this thread being present
Cloyster's usage has doubled over the last couple of months
It currently sees more usage than: Blissey, Scizor, Zeraora, Zapdos, Slowbro, and Slowking in SS OU
OLT has done a great job proving how effective and disruptive King's Rock strategies can be
Ultimately, we have discussed this matter within the thread, through a public survey, internally among councilmen, and finally with the community tiering administrator. The consensus is that there is widespread community support for banning King's Rock from SS OU. We intend to improve our process and increase the size of the council moving forward in order and I take firsthand responsibility for any errors leading up to this.
Tagging Marty and Kris to implement the ban of King's Rock in SS OU.
I have asked for this thread to be unlocked. The SS OU Council has banned Evasion a few days ago.
My question is: Why hasn't this done in every tier for one and good? Why does the premier competitive Pokémon online community keep allowing items like Quick Claw or Bright Powder to be used, when they add nothing but negatives? SPL starts in one week, more than enough time to get rid of all the uncompetitive garbage that this game still has to offer.
There's not really much else to say, thanks for reading.
Banning brightpowder is a direct follow up from king’s rock AND sand veil bans. We got rid of a “luck item” and an evasion ability. So, surely the evasion item can be done away with, unless you want to ban cloyster instead of king’s rock and free sand veil.
On that note, there’s also no reason not to get rid of quick claw and co once you establish king’s rock as undesirable.
re: Other Tiers
I disagree with it but it makes sense to try to keep king’s rock and quick claw allowed. That said, we already have evasion clause in place and half the tiers at least have sand veil banned too. There is legitimately 0 reason to keep brightpowder.
tl;dr
Brightpowder needs to be banned from all gens except MAYBE gsc because they haven’t touched evasion abilities (they don’t exist). Every other tier realistically should ban it. King’s rock / quick claw may be debated but they need to go from bw unless cloyster is banned instead.
I was originally going to make a new thread, then I remembered this one existed so please excuse the introduction.
Bom Dia. In August of last year, OverUsed banned King's Rock and Bright Powder (and abilities such as Sand Veil that function similarly), as both were deemed to be uncompetitive and went against our tiering policy. However, I believe that they missed an item and an ability: Quick Claw and Quick Draw. This item and ability give the user a 20% and 30% chance to move first in their priority bracket, respectively. Quite frankly, I don't understand why these haven't been removed from our website yet, as just like King's Rock and Bright Powder they reduce the amount of player skill needed to win a given game of Pokémon. Despite not appearing very often in tournaments, the few times it has appeared it has been used to great effect. Here is a replay of Nat v. TDK from the UnderUsed World Cup II that I feel effectively details why Quick Claw + Quick Draw Slowbro-Galar is problematic - [Gen 8] UU: very rare goose vs. TDK. Thank you for reading, and let's give these luck items the axe already.
I completely agree with Aqua Jet. I do not understand why quick claw and quick draw were not banned together with king's rock and brightpowder. How are they any different? All of the aforementioned items (and ability in the case of quick draw) increase the amount of rng involved without contributing anything of competitive value. They are simply inconsistent strategies that effectively turn games into a dice roll. If our goal is to make the tier as competitive as possible, then I fail to see how we can justify their presence. For this reason I would love for us to finally get rid of quick claw and quick draw.
as far as i know, UU is the only metagame where QC (alongside QD with gbro) sees any relevant usage at all, so i'm going to restrict my comments to that use case. I'd like to compare slowbro-galar to moltres-galar as boosting sweepers. for those unfamiliar with the sets, here are the relevant parts to this discussion
the reason I bring up these sets as comparison is because fundamentally, they operate in the same exact way. both sets operate off the same premise -- naturally bulky pokemon with reasonable special attack boost their stats via NP (or in gmolts case, just agility and berserk sometimes), then use attacking moves with randomsecondary effects that effectively "cancel" the opponent's moves (in gmolt's case, through flinches, in gbro's case, through moving faster and killing it). Additionally, the relatively unlikely chance of these secondary effects is amplified because both pokemon have enough natural bulk to usually live one hit, giving them multiple chances at rolling these effects and either breaking a large hole in the opponent's team or sweeping outright. I think the implication in "qcqd is inherently uncompetitive" implies "if i am faster i should always be able to use that as offensive counterplay" and i don't really agree with that at all.
There is no inherent, fundamental difference between +2 GMolt flinching a 50% health primarina that would have revenge killed it and KOing it the following turn and +2 GBro rolling quick claw flamethrower on an Excadrill that would have revenge killed it. In both cases, you can circumvent the secondary effect by using priority moves. In both cases, you are unable to use the move that you selected because of a randomly rolled secondary chance. In both cases, your counterplay fails. In both cases, it is fair to say that it's not reasonable to consider the counterplay as a hard counter because of the reasonable likelihood of secondary effects.
I understand that losing to QCQD may -feel- worse than other forms of variance, but there's no meaningful distinction between it and any other form of variance -- whether that's min/max rolls, para, flinch, or any other number of game mechanics. The fact that quick claw is an easier target does not mean it should be targeted.
As a final note, i think it's important to reiterate that slowbro-galar with QCQD is not broken. it sees usage very rarely, usually performs poorly or on average, and very very rarely has a high roll scenario -- just like gmolt very rarely flinches down a primarina from full health. Banning QC is a nerf to a set that's C tier at best, and i don't see any reason to do that.
the reason I bring up these sets as comparison is because fundamentally, they operate in the same exact way. both sets operate off the same premise -- naturally bulky pokemon with reasonable special attack boost their stats via NP (or in gmolts case, just agility and berserk sometimes), then use attacking moves with randomsecondary effects that effectively "cancel" the opponent's moves (in gmolt's case, through flinches, in gbro's case, through moving faster and killing it). Additionally, the relatively unlikely chance of these secondary effects is amplified because both pokemon have enough natural bulk to usually live one hit, giving them multiple chances at rolling these effects and either breaking a large hole in the opponent's team or sweeping outright. I think the implication in "qcqd is inherently uncompetitive" implies "if i am faster i should always be able to use that as offensive counterplay" and i don't really agree with that at all.
One thing that I believe is a false parallel in this example is the context behind the sets being used. While moves like Fiery Wrath and Hurricane can proc secondary effects to muscle past answers, they have non RNG based purposes, as they're Molt's primary STAB attacking moves. What differentiates Quick Claw and Quick Draw from those two are that they are entirely based on RNG with no other effects. There is literally no incentive to use the item or the ability outside of the purpose of trying to maximize your odds of winning by relying on the likelihood to get positive RNG in a situation that would otherwise be a loss. For these reasons, I think banning both QC and QD is for the best.
There is literally no incentive to use the item or the ability outside of the purpose of trying to maximize your odds of winning by relying on the likelihood to get positive RNG in a situation that would otherwise be a loss.
if you look at the whole sentence, this is just not true. the actual, genuine reasonable planned outcome from running QCQD is "i might get one more hit off than I would otherwise". the expected outcome of QCQD procs over the course of 2 attacks is .88 attacks, -- over the course of three it's 1.32. in this way, it makes it practically very similar to something like a resist berry, leftovers, or custap berry -- all of these rely on conditions (hit with a specific type of attack, regain enough health to make a difference, get knocked into 25%) in order to gain an extra chance to attack. the reason quick claw is never seen on any other pokemon is because outside of the context of quick draw, the potential upside of "gaining an extra turn" is much less likely to be received through quick claw than it is through another item like the ones listed above. while it is possible to randomly roll an insane string of 5 qcqd rolls all of which matter (you would have been slower otherwise, you would have been KOed had you not procced), that's an extreme edge case, not the intended nor desired outcome.
if people were fishing for insane high rolls through this kind of rng manipulation, you'd see people running things like quick claw stakataka, quick claw, cursola, or whatever other high damage slowmon could potentially hack out a win. the reason people run it on qcqd is because only in that instance does it give you a better shot of "gaining an extra turn" than other, more conventional methods.
hi other uu council member here, going to be pretty much speaking directly on glowbro since quickclaw ban hurts its viability and no other pokemon really uses it in any tier.
km covered p well why glowbro rng isn't that significant compared to other common mons interactions already but i want to emphasize that qcqd hardly sees any usage. Banning for the sake of "tiering consistency" just eliminates a unique option from glowbro's kit. NP glowbro (p much reason why im posting) is worth keeping around. It is a fun sweeper than can provide defensive utility w its typing on certain offensive builds, and can occasionally fit onto more bulky structures as well. it wasn't included in the first wave of luck bans because of how irrelevant it is. the difference between quick claw and king'srock/brightpowder is massive. cloyster was a menace during OULT with a staggering 9% usage in OU, meanwhile the only games that are found of glowbro succeeding in tournaments are uh, one uu masters game and a game from UUWC (lol) last year? worth noting that TDK's loss to qcqd could've been avoided with a different winpath, and the master game just bailed after a misplay in the endgame rather than making crucial progress midgame or w/e.
this discussion is being brought up out of nowhere since it hasn't actually done anything significant in tournament play. a lot of pokemon is already weighing the odds, it can just be more "triggering" when it's in a single turn i guess (tho i dont see it too different than setting up NP to Twave and subsequent QuickDraw to full para). just leave it alone. if it's an issue in OU, fine, but as of rn it holds as much weight as Scope Lens or Starf Berry in UU.
We have fundamentally agreed across all tiering that evasion and evasion boosting is uncompetitive. We have not extended that to all luck-based mechanics in the game. Sometimes a item like King’s Rock incurs a ban for boosting flinch chance, but an ability like Serene Grace doesn’t. Many other items, moves, and abilities increase the chance of another stat or mechanic performing well. For example, Focus Band gives you a 10% chance of having infinite HP that turn, meaning counterplay that would be successful in the absence of Focus Band may not be in all cases.
As far as I’m aware, nobody has ever seriously called for a Focus Band ban, and with good reason: it’s not good! In the same way, we should restrict our tiering discussions to things that most people agree are good and our bans to things most people agree are too good. Considering the input already shared in this thread, this does not appear to be the case with QCQD.
There is literally no incentive to use the item or the ability outside of the purpose of trying to maximize your odds of winning by relying on the likelihood to get positive RNG in a situation that would otherwise be a loss.
It's not indeed the only one, and we aren't short of examples:
Momento Smogon (Jirachi) @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Thunder Wave - Iron Head
- Toxic
- Substitute
(Whatever set it is running, but I like using this one to troll in ladder)
Would Jirachi use Iron Head if it wasn't because of flinch chance? Steel isn't that good as an offensive type neither.
Pretty sure you have seen a set like this ever or similar in your life. Does Togekiss run Air Slash, or even more, is Togekiss run for any reason besides Air Slash?
Is Slowbro optimal replacing Scald with Surf in this set?
And the examples are almost infinite: Lava Plume over Flamethrower, Discharge over Thunderbolt, Static/Flame Body over Pressure, Sludge Bomb over Sludge Wave...
Every question from the spoiler can be answered with "No". Basically, a key piece in those Pokemon sets are RNG based moves / abilities, and that's totally ok! Luck has been present since Pokemon was released and we have to deal with it. Paralysis, Sleep and Freeze are annoying, but deal with them, or should we ban Ice Beam and Thunder Wave? They add so much RNG to the games, making it absolutely unplayable and mentally harms any player who has to deal with it, something totally unacceptable in our community which tries to make the best for our users, for God's sake!
Do you know what's not ok? Bringing to the table a mechanic that succeeded in a single tournament game in like a whole year and a half it has been available. The Tiering Policy has become a joke, a single replay from thousand games is enough to consider a mechanic banworthy? Let's ban Accupressure then! Or what about Starf Berry? Nobody would want a random stat boost that autowins a game, no thanks!
There is literally no incentive to use the item or the ability outside of the purpose of trying to maximize your odds of winning by relying on the likelihood to get positive RNG in a situation that would otherwise be a loss.
There is literally no incentive to use Iron Head, Air Slash and Scald on those Pokemon besides RNG (flinches can clean games easily, and pls don't talk about Scald, it just wins matchups by burning a single mon). And they are staples on their tiers, unlike Slowbro-G, so using your same argument, Jirachi, Togekiss and Slowbro / their moves / abilities should be banned. Zapdos can paralyze with both Static and Discharge, and it runs both of them for RNG aspects, then we should ban Zapdos aswell. And the list goes on...
The thing is: where do we draw the line? Why banning some luck based elements but not all of them? Why banning any of them? This line is getting more and more obscure and the method we are using to determine the bans don't seem to be good at all.
But not everything is bad news. I know you guys don't like luck, so let me introduce you the custom client that should replace Smogtours: Luckless! It has no luck mechanics, you always know what's going to happen. Enjoy it!
I remembered a Hipmonlee post from one of the older luck items threads where he presented a few use cases for Quick Claw in ADV, so I figured I'd quote it here:
In defence of the luck items, I want to note quick claw in particular is a fun item in a lot of scenarios. It's great against sub stalling, eg. you could basically auto win against classic ADV bp chains trivially by just chucking it on your lead. I also once used it in a tournament where I had to play a 1v1 with Parasect vs a Blaziken or something, and found my best odds of winning were by attempting to get quick claw rolls like 4 turns in a row while using dig. Its a fun item that can be used in a lot of fun ways. It may not be particularly practical in your favourite metagame, but I think its worth hanging on to.
Obviously, some of the specifics don't by-and-large apply to SS OU (though its utility vs sub stalling could theoretically translate past just BP counterplay), but I think it highlights a key idea that I think often gets left to the wayside in the argument about hax items: ultimately, they increase the range of options for player expression, and I think that the negative impacts are small enough that said increase in player expression completely eclipses them. The fact is that the presence of Quick Claw and Quick Draw gives you a reason to use a Pokemon that is otherwise (to put it as bluntly) a completely purposeless pile of trash that otherwise fills no remote niche that isn't rendered completely redundant by Slowbro, Slowking, Slowking-G, Toxapex, or all four at once existing in OU. It also gives people more funny/subversive/diverse ways to use it in an environment that it isn't otherwise completely outclassed in (UU). I don't know about you, but I think that's cool as shit, and this kind of diversity/player expression is something that game design and rulesets are supposed to nurture: not stifle.
And what's more: it isn't even causing any issues in either of those environments. If you are put in a situation where your only way of not losing is to not lose a few 56:44s, 90%+ of the time it means you have misplayed or have otherwise been outplayed. And unlike Cloyster, which did not-even-that (40.951%) without depending heavily on procs due to being naturally faster after boosting and spamming an effective 125 BP STAB in most common matchups once Pex/Bro is neutered (and even versus them you could sometimes force situations where you have bought turns to attempt to proc multiple times before they can actually initiate their counterplay), if you do not get Slowbro's procs it will most likely do nothing in a significant number of matchups due to its low speed, fairly average bulk (95/95/70 is pretty solid but not mind-blowing when your only investment is max HP), and below average firepower for an NP attacker. And then there are the BD variants, which are just so stupidly high risk:reward to the point of being quite bad both on ladder and in tournament but stupidly fun regardless. And when the odds for proccing are that high I'd argue that there isn't really much good reason to not account for it in your decision making, because as much as its "inconsistent" it's kinda the same as ParaFlinching in the sense that you will usually get fairly similar outcomes over short-term turn samples (fairly similar usually meaning a few turns where you can plan for multiple consecutive procs).
If you don't want some strategies to depend on variance in outcome, play chess.
Disclaimer: I know very little about UU, so I'm going to be responding to the points concerning more with tiering policy, what was in line with the decision reached on King's Rock, Bright Powder, and evasion boosting abilities, as well as some personal experiences and stuff I gauged just from playing mons. Also, unless stated otherwise, I am referring to current-gen usage-based tiers (OU-PU).
There is no inherent, fundamental difference between +2 GMolt flinching a 50% health primarina that would have revenge killed it and KOing it the following turn and +2 GBro rolling quick claw flamethrower on an Excadrill that would have revenge killed it.
Yes, there is. The odds of a QDQC Galarbro moving before the opponent is 44%, which is more than double the odds of a Galartres Fiery Wrath flinch. The ability to lose the game more than twice the time to QDQC Galarbro than to a Galartres Fiery Wrath flinch already makes these two scenarios different. What's also important to note is that Galartres has to boost both its Speed and Special Attack in order to achieve these odds to flinch down a Primarina. Galarbro needs one less turn to do this because it can already outspeed all but priority moves, only needing Nasty Plot to boost its Special Attack. This means that Galartres has more natural counterplay considering it needs 2 turns to achieve this calc you're giving, and at a much lower chance in comparison; Galarbro only needs 1 turn and has higher odds. The only way they are fundamentally similar is that they stop the opponent from winning in a scenario where they wouldn't, but the odds are significantly higher on Galarbro's side to win that interaction than they are on Galartres' side.
if people were fishing for insane high rolls through this kind of rng manipulation, you'd see people running things like quick claw stakataka, quick claw, cursola, or whatever other high damage slowmon could potentially hack out a win. the reason people run it on qcqd is because only in that instance does it give you a better shot of "gaining an extra turn" than other, more conventional methods.
It's not uncommon for me to load up a low ladder match and see some random QC mon. Like King's Rock, this is not something you can scout for until it procs, so you could be perfectly fine thinking that the opposing Garchomp is not Scarf and proceed to force it out with something naturally faster like Dragapult, but suddenly Quick Claw procs and you lose because the opponent made a suboptimal play. It is near impossible to tell what item your opponent has in a standard match, and you can only say what it isn't via rolls, if it takes Rocks damage, and if it's faster than a Pokemon that's normally faster than it, among other things. The reason it does not see use is that it's inconsistent, but as we saw with King's Rock, this was not sufficient reasoning to keep it legal as it was deemed uncompetitive.
[Quick Draw/Quick Claw] wasn't included in the first wave of luck bans because of how irrelevant it is. the difference between quick claw and king'srock/brightpowder is massive. cloyster was a menace during OULT with a staggering 9% usage in OU, meanwhile the only games that are found of glowbro succeeding in tournaments are uh, one uu masters game and a game from UUWC (lol) last year?
There have been multiple arguments in this thread in the past saying that KR, BP, and evasion boosting abilities being uncommon was a reason why they shouldn't be banned. However, this was deemed inadequate reasoning to keep them around because, at their core, they are uncompetitive aspects in the metagame regardless of how much use they see. There is an argument to be made that Quick Draw and Quick Claw are uncompetitive; thus, it does not seem fair to say that just because they have low usage, they are not problems. This doesn't fall in line with past decisions over uncompetitive aspects.
As far as I’m aware, nobody has ever seriously called for a Focus Band ban, and with good reason: it’s not good! In the same way, we should restrict our tiering discussions to things that most people agree are good and our bans to things most people agree are too good.
When you say "nobody", I'm going to assume you mean "nobody that plays OU", because there has been an instance of a metagame banning Focus Band. Granted, this was done in an Unofficial Metagame with rules widely different from OU; however, saying that no one has ever wanted to ban Focus Band is not correct. And again, it has been stated before that, regardless of how good they are or the usage they have, uncompetitive aspects do not fall in line with standard tiering procedures due to their unique natures within metagames.
The thing is: where do we draw the line? Why banning some luck based elements but not all of them? Why banning any of them? This line is getting more and more obscure and the method we are using to determine the bans don't seem to be good at all.
I understand the dissatisfaction with how Smogon bans uncompetitive aspects and the attempts to draw a line in the sand between what's enough hax in our children's game. This was a position I held for quite some time, particularly when this thread was first posted. However, this line of reasoning uses the slippery slope fallacy, which is when someone states that R will lead to S, S will lead to T, and these decisions will eventually lead to Z, which is bad, regardless of how improbable these scenarios are. In this case, it's banning King's Rock, then banning Quick Claw/Quick Draw, and finally, all the way down the line, banning all forms of hax, like Dark Pulse flinches and Ice Beam freezes. IMO this reasoning is faulty because there has been no indication that Smogon will ban stuff like this; in fact, I believe both tiering admins and metagame leaders like Finchnator said they would be actively opposed to this due to probability management being a part of the game. The key difference between Ice Beam freezes and stuff like King's Rock, Bright Powder, and arguably Quick Claw is that (barring extreme cases like OU Kyruem) even though they may lose you the game, not only do they happen less often, but you can play around the freeze (ex: your Melmetal gets frozen by an AlolaTales Blizzard. You can run a cleric, maximize the turns Melmetal spends on the field in order to have the highest possible chances of thawing, or even switching into a Scald if you're that desperate/you have a dumb opponent). With the other 3 examples, often you could/can not manage these odds because they were decently high and/or getting haxxed by these items often gave the opponent a crucial free turn. We all know about King's Rock Cloyster, but what about Sand Veil + Bright Powder Garchomp setting up on counters and winning because the opponent missed a move that usually has 100% accuracy? To me, this doesn't seem like a slippery slope in banning all forms of hax, but rather a natural follow-up to the banning of multiple RNG items. At least I hope we can all agree that Smogon doesn't want to ban Ice Beam freezes.
Side note: This post also mentions Serene Grace, but I think banning that has genuine collateral in making Jirachi (and Meloetta if a hypothetical Seren Grace ban carried over to future generations Meloetta is in), compared to King's Rock and Sand Veil, which merely impacted viability and not legality (yes, I know about ADV Cacturne, I'm talking about current gen metas, and even then it was more clear-cut that Sand Veil was uncompetitive)
In defence of the luck items, I want to note quick claw in particular is a fun item in a lot of scenarios. It's great against sub stalling, eg. you could basically auto win against classic ADV bp chains trivially by just chucking it on your lead. I also once used it in a tournament where I had to play a 1v1 with Parasect vs a Blaziken or something, and found my best odds of winning were by attempting to get quick claw rolls like 4 turns in a row while using dig. Its a fun item that can be used in a lot of fun ways. It may not be particularly practical in your favourite metagame, but I think its worth hanging on to.
Obviously, some of the specifics don't by-and-large apply to SS OU (though its utility vs sub stalling could theoretically translate past just BP counterplay), but I think it highlights a key idea that I think often gets left to the wayside in the argument about hax items: ultimately, they increase the range of options for player expression, and I think that the negative impacts are small enough that said increase in player expression completely eclipses them. The fact is that the presence of Quick Claw and Quick Draw gives you a reason to use a Pokemon that is otherwise (to put it as bluntly) a completely purposeless pile of trash that otherwise fills no remote niche that isn't rendered completely redundant by Slowbro, Slowking, Slowking-G, Toxapex, or all four at once existing in OU. It also gives people more funny/subversive/diverse ways to use it in an environment that it isn't otherwise completely outclassed in (UU). I don't know about you, but I think that's cool as shit, and this kind of diversity/player expression is something that game design and rulesets are supposed to nurture: not stifle.
Funny for the user? Undoubtedly. Funny for the opponent? Not at all. I love creativity in Pokemon and encourage it whenever I see it, whether it be low ladder sets or my own sets that no one expects. However, if what you call player expression is abusing uncompetitive aspects like Bright Powder and arguably Quick Claw in order to win games you shouldn't, even when your opponent makes all the right moves, then I do not think keeping them around for that reason is fine. Smogon strives to be a competitive game, and while strictly adhering to this ideology has its failings (see: the different viewpoints on what the WCOP format should be in its respective thread), I think that nurturing the type of stuff Bright Powder and King's Rock allow is not Smogon's responsibility. There are plenty of ways to be creative without resorting to uncompetitive aspects that take games out of players' hands and cause players to win games they should've lost.
I've been pretty vague on my own opinion of Quick Claw + Quick Draw, using the word "arguably" a lot, and that's because, quite frankly, I don't care all that much. I won't cry myself to sleep if Quick Claw + Quick Draw ends up staying; at the same time, I won't scream with joy if it gets banned. I only responded to the anti-ban arguments because a lot of them lacked sufficient reasoning IMO, and I am 100% open to hearing more of them as long as they don't use the slippery slope fallacy or use past failed arguments like usage or viability. We're talking about an arguably uncompetitive aspect, not something that abides by standard tiering rules. However, I think we all need to ask ourselves an important question going forward in this debate: do we actually care if Quick Draw/Quick Claw gets banned? I'm not asking about the sort of precedent this ban would send considering the slippery slope fallacy and all that, but rather as a standalone aspect. If Quick Claw was banned right now, would you be able to make a post for/against the ban of Quick Claw not as an aspect of policy, but rather a part of the game? If the answer to that question is Yes, then I think we can move closer towards an agreement on if it's truly banworthy or not; if it's No, then I believe the quality of the posts here will drop steadily, and that wouldn't be good for anyone.
What's also important to note is that Galartres has to boost both its Speed and Special Attack in order to achieve these odds to flinch down a Primarina.
shockingly galartres does not in fact have to boost its speed to outspeed noted base 60 mon primarina
not going to spend too much longer on the rest of your post because you literally opened it by admitting you weren't qualified to speak about the one tier this mon is relevant in, but if you want to cherrypick the comparison between gtres and gbro, the major factor in gtres' favor is that the hax in question (flinching, confusion) is stackable -- which if anything makes it infinitely less competitive. gtres can scam out a 100-0 on prim with a stupid high roll of 4 dark pulse flinches, but gbro's turn disruption will only ever "prevent" the opponent from attacking if it outright OHKOs, which significantly expands the pool of "reliable counterplay" to gbro and limits the extent to which the variance can change the outcome of the game.
i don't understand why we continue to return to this well-trod road of some hypothetical slippery slope when the answer is very firmly given every time a new rng mechanic gets banned -- if an element of RNG / luck / variance is not actively harmful and causing significant damage to a metagame, there is no reason to take action on it. this conclusion is even evident in the posts of people arguing for the ban, because if you truly believed that the viability of the strategy had no impact on whether it should be banned, you wouldn't spend paragraphs nitpicking the percentages and semantics of what makes it good -- and you'd be campaigning for the removal of even more unviable forms of rng like starf berry, blunder policy, and scope lens.
I apologize for that mistake. The intent behind my comparison between Galartres and Galarbro is that one needed an extra turn in order to outspeed offensive checks in general, because I believe it is unfair to point to a single interaction in either case and declare whether or not something is banworthy, and the other did not need an extra turn to do so, only needing to boost with Nasty Plot in order to start sweeping. In the midst of that, for some reason I forgot that Galartres already outspeeds Primarina. Again, sincere apology for forgetting something simple like that, but hopefully you were able to understand what I was trying to get across regardless of that.
not going to spend too much longer on the rest of your post because you literally opened it by admitting you weren't qualified to speak about the one tier this mon is relevant in, but if you want to cherrypick the comparison between gtres and gbro, the major factor in gtres' favor is that the hax in question (flinching, confusion) is stackable -- which if anything makes it infinitely less competitive. gtres can scam out a 100-0 on prim with a stupid high roll of 4 dark pulse flinches, but gbro's turn disruption will only ever "prevent" the opponent from attacking if it outright OHKOs, which significantly expands the pool of "reliable counterplay" to gbro and limits the extent to which the variance can change the outcome of the game.
I disagree that stacking hax makes Galartres more uncompetitive. In this case, assuming each Pokemon is given a free turn and Galartres uses Agility with Galarbro using Nasty Plot, a flat 44% chance to outspeed and OHKO offensive checks at +2 with Galarbro seems a bit more problematic to me than hitting Hurricane and confusing (21%), hoping your opponent hits themself in confusion the turn they would kill you (6.93%), and then fishing for flinches or hoping the opponent hits themself in confusion (39.8%, factors in Fiery Wrath flinch chance, confusion hit chance, and snapping out of confusion chance), you can that the odds for Galarbro are better than the odds for Galartres, especially when you consider this happening over consecutive turns. It seems unfair to me to equate Galartres to Galarbro because of this in order to say, "well actually both are uncompetitive", when it's clear that their degrees of being uncompetitive are different.
i don't understand why we continue to return to this well-trod road of some hypothetical slippery slope when the answer is very firmly given every time a new rng mechanic gets banned -- if an element of RNG / luck / variance is not actively harmful and causing significant damage to a metagame, there is no reason to take action on it. this conclusion is even evident in the posts of people arguing for the ban, because if you truly believed that the viability of the strategy had no impact on whether it should be banned, you wouldn't spend paragraphs nitpicking the percentages and semantics of what makes it good -- and you'd be campaigning for the removal of even more unviable forms of rng like starf berry, blunder policy, and scope lens.
I think there's an argument to be made that all RNG-based items/abilities are uncompetitive. I'm not going to make that argument because
A. I don't agree with it
B. I don't care about the fates of RNG-based items/abilities
C. Anyone who makes this argument pulls the risk of looking "anti-fun", even though ensuring that games are not subject to stuff like Bright Powder is a valid concern
but it's important to note that such an argument exists regardless.
Regardless, you are again making a false comparison between aspects that solely exist to increase hax (King's Rock, Bright Powder, Sand Veil) and aspects that have positive uses to them. I will not argue about Start Berry because I don't care about it, but Blunder Policy allows for Hustle Pokemon like Dracozolt and Durant to outspeed standard checks as long as they miss. This is important because this implies that hitting their opponent is a good thing, when in reality, a hit does not guarantee that Dracozolt or Durant win the interaction, and neither does a miss; they can still lose because the opponent lived a hit and KOed it back, or they missed and lost while the Speed boost didn't matter. In the same vein, Scope Lens has a positive aspect in fishing for crits against defensive set-up sweepers, which can otherwise win games unopposed, as well as increase the damage output of Super Luck Pokemon in lower tiers like Absol and Unfezant. Again, you can make the argument that these are also uncompetitive and should be banned, but it's less clear-cut that these items are wholly uncompetitive, in comparison to King's Rock and Bright Powder.
Again, I have to ask: do people really care if Quick Claw/Quick Draw gets banned? I'm not trying to say this as some sort of "gotcha", but I'm genuinely curious. The way I see it, Quick Claw/Quick Draw offer no positive benefits to the game other than making one set on one mon have better odds of beating offensive checks based on sheer luck, and we seem to be in agreement that no slippery slope exists (unless I am misunderstanding your post). So if it's not about precedent or a slippery slope, then what's the point of defending these aspects? To me, it seems that people arguing both for and against a ban are not doing so because the decision impacts them, but rather just because. If it's about keeping Galarbro viable in UU, then that feels like inadequate reasoning for keeping Quick Claw/Quick Draw legal considering Galarbro is already viable. If people really don't care and are arguing just because, then I see no need to have a discussion about this. Just make a decision and move on. However, I am open to hearing reasons for keeping these aspects outside of slippery slopes or tiering/precedent arguments if people truly care.
stop trying to ban luck from pokemon good lord. this whole discussion has been godawful ever since the one genuinely problematic element* (cloyster, who could sweep some slightly weakened teams even without flinching, usually only needed the 41% flinch odds to go in its favor once to win, and was abused to great success) was banned. since then, the discussion has become extremely lenient on what constitutes "uncompetitive" RNG abuse, to the point where we are pretending that strategies which have not had significant success -- BrightPowder on random mons and QCQD Slowbro-Galar being 2 obvious examples -- are gamebreaking enough to deserve a ban. can we at least wait for significant proof of something's banworthiness to materialize before demanding it be removed from the game?
I don't see how QCQD Slowbro-Galar is any unhealthier than, say, Scarf Togedemaru flinching thru entire endgames in PU, Scarf Togekiss using Serene Grace Air Slash to do the same in RU, or flinching moves on any sweeper like UU's Moltres-Galar. That is to say, not really unhealthy. Counterplay to all of these has been developed: using a) priority, b) a faster cleaner (in the case of the Scarfers, idt many outspeed molt-galar), and/or c) defensive walls that counter these Pokemon well enough that the RNG needed to break thru the wall is very unlikely. instead of trying to remove any possible "RNG abuser" from the game cant yall just use these methods to balance them? they seem to be working very well so far, given that QCQD bro has about 0 tournament wins since Light Clay was banned.
*adv sand veil also seemed like a dumb strat that deserved the ban due to the much greater # of chances you get to fish for that rng with permasand + multiple abusers -- not sure whether it was part of the same discussion or not
Yet another UU council member here, figured I'd share my thoughts about this whole silly debacle since it's involving the tier I main. I initially was going to post yesterday but had doubts about sharing my belief that the potential quick claw ban is dumb and shouldn't happen considering how others did that for King's rock earlier in the thread and got flamed by like 12 users. Eventually after seeing many posting against the ban and taking more time to understand how these two situations are different here I am making this post. avarice and KM emphasized a lot of my beliefs in their earlier posts so I won't try to repeat too much, but the main issue I have with this ban is that it simply isn't a problem.
I feel like in general we like using terms like "policy" "uncompetitive" "consistency" and all that stuff to try and make the arguments grander than they may seem when in actuality we're almost forgetting why we ban elements: because they're problematic. We banned evasion because it was problematic. We banned baton pass because it was problematic. We banned King's rock because it was problematic. We ban abilities like Arena Trap or Drought in lower tiers because they're problematic. We ban Pokemon, whether it's Cinderace in OU or Goodra in NU, because they are problematic. What isn't problematic, however, is Quick Claw. It's a shitty and gimmicky hit or miss element that has realistically seen absolutely minimal use and even less instances of it working (as seen with the above game). This isn't like Cloyster who was tearing up the ladder during OULT and got 9% usage or Brightpowder + sand veil teams that shat out a few wins in tours and had cringe evasion mechanics. This is something that quite literally amassed two wins out of 200+ UU games in the span of half a year, I heavily disagree with the idea of banning something for the sake of banning it when it hasn't been a problem. KM brought this up, why aren't we targeting luck elements like scope lens, focus band, starf berry, or all the other useless items? They involve luck don't they? it's because they haven't demonstrated themselves to be problematic and thus have no reason to warrant a ban. To me what matters are results, I don't want some theoretical numbers bullshit. Show me this so called uncompetitive and unhealthy element being a problem in UU and then I'll consider banning it. This is where the line is drawn, let's stop with the silliness before we get ahead of ourselves.
I remember when i said scope lens was a luck item in inside scoop and people actually came for my neck. wild times.
Anyways i'd like to add my own take to this discussion which, atleast in the facet of "competitivity", only evasion esque things should be discussed. While things like focus band and quick claw are dumb, like monky said they haven't proven to be an issue. That being said, there has never, and will never, be a time where evasion boosting isn't the most agregious, obnoxious shit and is arguably the most uncompetitive mechanic pokemon has. I fully support the evasion abilities banishment, and bright powder. That being said there are still some stragglers with evasion let untouched, and the most stupid one is by far Acupressure.
Now everyone that has seen me do a tiering survey knows I say ban acupressure on all of them without fail, but frankly while Acupressure hasn't been anything but a meme in alot of cases, a dynamic i dont think is discussed is why should we wait for something to become problematic when its already known to be shaky. Giving acupressure to a mon built like, zygarde 50% statwise would easily showcase just how batshit broken that move is, and honestly why should we wait for it to become a problem, the move already breaks an existing clause and there is really no reason it cannot and has not been put in evasion clause by this stage. While Acupressure Drapion and somewhat Malamar are the only main relevant users of it, the fact of the matter is it still cheats past an existing clause, and really should be done away with. Everything non evasion tactic rng fish meme is tolerable and don't need touching.
the reason I bring up these sets as the comparison is because fundamentally, they operate in the same exact way. both sets operate off the same premise -- naturally bulky pokemon with reasonable special attack boost their stats via NP (or in gmolts case, just agility and berserk sometimes), then use attacking moves with randomsecondary effects that effectively "cancel" the opponent's moves (in gmolt's case, through flinches, in gbro's case, through moving faster and killing it).
Was this not part of the reason Moltres-Galar was suspected (and eventually banned)? To quote the Now Playing thread (aptly named "Get Lucky") "Galarian Moltres's ability to turn many otherwise safe counters on their head simply by getting a single timely Fiery Wrath flinch or Hurricane confusion is undesirable, to say the least.". Not trying to be sarcastic here, just a genuine question.
ok, see above replay
Also, a reminder that 2/3 of the times Slowbro-Galar has been used in tournament games (that I've watched) since UU World Cup II it has won, with the only loss being the replay you showed.
Also RE: Acupressure, I also agree that that should be gone for its ability to boost evasion and turn games into a diceroll. There is already a precedent of this happening in Monotype, found in the announcement here.
the diff between gmolt and glowbro is that gmolt is broken regardless of flinching capability lol it was just icing on the cake, my team was very weak to gbro (even standard cm variants) and i didn't play aptly around it (i let mamoswine get paralysed unnecessarily and willingly gave it a free setup opportunity that could've been avoided) so no real reason to use it as "evidence" here. don't particularly care if it gets banned on the grounds of being uncompetitive (although i don't think it is), the idea of it being broken is pretty nuts however.
Also, a reminder that 2/3 of the times Slowbro-Galar has been used in tournament games (that I've watched) since UU World Cup II it has won, with the only loss being the replay you showed.
Its not about the usage, its about removing uncompetitive strategies before they become too problematic (plus, its also called being consistent with the ruleset).
If not being able to fight back against Flinches (King's Rock), Evasion (Sand Veil/Snow Cloak, Bright Powder), and random Priority (Quick Claw) are considered problematic and bannable, then why is Quick Draw exempt? Its counterplay is clearly having something faster to revenge-kill it, as after an NP, it is quite strong already so defensive counterplay is going to be super shaky. In comparison to Galarian Moltres, it also only needs one turn for a chance to be extremely scary.
Also if you bring up Serene Grace here (another hax-y ability), it has counterplay, may it be Inner Focus, Paralysis, or simply being faster.
