Proposal Apply Evasion Clause to All Forms of Evasion

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Evasion boosting moves are currently banned in all generations. Additionally, the following are also banned:

(Keep in mind Bright Powder = Lax Incense in gens 3+, and Snow Cloak only exists in gens 4+)

SS: Sand Veil, Snow Cloak, Bright Powder

SM:

ORAS:

BW:
Sand Veil, Snow Cloak

DPP: Sand Veil

ADV: Sand Veil

GSC:

I'd like to propose for "Evasion Moves Clause" to go back to the name of "Evasion Clause" and apply to all forms of evasion boosting. This would mean that Sand Veil, Snow Cloak, and Bright Powder would be banned in every tier. This would ban: all 3 from SM, all 3 from ORAS, just Bright Powder in BW, ADV, GSC, and also Bright Powder + Snow Cloak in DPP.

This is not a "crusade against luck", it is simply a re-definition of the longstanding evasion clause. We aren't even adding anything new here, just updating the definition to actually remove elements of evasion boosting in competitive pokemon.

Please do not mention Froslass being used on one (1) team in DPP OU over the last 5 years. At the very least just get rid of Sand Veil in the remaining tiers (6-7) and Bright Powder / Lax Incense from All. Thank you.
 

Merritt

no comment
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Head TD
The premise here is not fully accurate, as not all evasion moves are banned across all generations. The exception I'm thinking of is for Z moves that boost evasion. This thread is where the redefinition of Evasion Clause to just ban Minimize and Double Team originates for people unfamiliar with when it changed.

Do you intend to reban those in this proposal or are these something we would continue to exclude? If included, would this be implemented as a complex ban (Z crystal+specific move teambuilder level ban), an in-battle ban (unable to click the specific z move), or a flat ban of the moves Camouflage, Detect, Flash, Kinesis, Lucky Chant, Magnet Rise, Sand Attack, and Smokescreen?
 
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The premise here is not fully accurate, as not all evasion moves are banned across all generations. The exception I'm thinking of is for Z moves that boost evasion. This thread is where the redefinition of Evasion Clause to just ban Minimize and Double Team originates for people unfamiliar with when it changed.

Do you intend to reban those in this proposal or are these something we would continue to exclude? If included, would this be implemented as a complex ban (Z crystal+specific move teambuilder level ban), an in-battle ban (unable to click the specific z move), or a flat ban of the moves Camouflage, Detect, Flash, Kinesis, Lucky Chant, Magnet Rise, Sand Attack, and Smokescreen?
Thank you for clarifying this.

I think evasion clause can apply to everything that has the sole purpose of boosting evasion. So the things I mentioned would be banned but the things you mentioned would be kept. This is also in line with how we have always treated stat boosts alongside BP (ancient power doesn’t count).
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
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Love rehashing debates some of which go back like a decade ago...

A few points:

For whatever it is worth - all things that alter the chance of a move hitting that are not +/- stat changes to either Accuracy or Evasion (i.e. everything else like Brightpowder, Sand Veil, Lock On, etc.) are technically accuracy modifiers not evasion modifiers. This is mostly semantic but just putting it out there that the only type of evasion modifier that exists is an evasion stat modifying move like Double Team.

Pokemon is a game that fundamentally contains luck. Taking the case of Brightpowder, it contributes only a small portion of luck, as compared to other elements that are permitted (i.e. Jirachi has a 20% chance to freeze stuff with Ice Punch which is both higher probability and more impactful). While I do understand drawing a distinction between an element that has both competitive and luck-based reasons to be used like Ice Punch Jirachi vs a purely luck element like Brightpowder, I would also point to other purely based luck elements that are not banned and are arguably more impactful - Confuse Ray, Flash, etc. Moves like these have a clearly larger impact than Brightpowder just from a sheer magnitude of the chance of effects impacting gameplay. I do acknowledge the key difference here being that Brightpowder is passive and doesn't require a move to be clicked, which thus also inherently is an advantage since anything requiring a move to be clicked also means Speed Tiers become relevant. That said - Confuse Ray on Prankster mons has always remained legal post Swagger ban. Accuracy droppers like Flash have actually been used too and can cause serious problems because of how they can be stacked, and while switching is an option theoretically, hazards can make switching undesirable and thus make Flash potent. I don't mean this to say that we should ban Confuse Ray and Flash as well, so much as to say "Why Brightpowder?" Pokemon has a lot of luck elements. What is the the actual line being drawn here and what is its rationale?

While banning an item like Brightpowder would have no collateral, that is not so for straight up ability bans on Sand Veil/Snow Cloak. For one thing, certain Pokemon in certain generations have access to only one of these abilities to begin with and thus become de facto banned. But even beyond that, certain movesets are only obtainable with certain abilities. For example, Cacturne had only Sand Veil prior to BW. It only learns Encore by virtue of a Cacnea event in Gen 3 and being transfered to modern gens. A hard ban of Sand Veil effectively bans Encore Cacturne from ORAS and beyond, since Encore is not obtainable on Water Absorb. Some other moves or move combinations are also similarly effectively banned from Cacturne (and other mons as well who only had Sand Veil/Snow Cloak prior to BW). I don't purport to have the full list of impacted sets, but just wanted to make clear these are not actions with zero collateral. For OU purposes - probably not much in the way of meaningful collateral, but if this were to be applied with transitivity, it could definitely impact lower tiers.
 

Plague von Karma

Banned deucer.
I think many people would prefer if this proposal went through if only to make Evasion Clause consistent. No, nobody is chucking "moves" in unless they're splitting hairs. It's an optical nightmare. Nobody cares, I promise.

I will say though: I'm pretty sure this post is going to get met with someone saying "let old gens decide", only for them to never decide and have the discussion die out in less than a week. Maybe that's the real intention. Or you're all MyHermes drivers in disguise, there's that too.

--

As I said in a post a while ago, I consider additional invisible variance to be undesirable. This applies moreso for if it's passive. It seems you all agreed with me and liked that post, but for those who can't be bothered to click, lemme summarise. When it comes to Brightpowder, you never know it's going to mess up your game plan until you actually miss your 100% accuracy move. That turn, especially in newer generations, can single-handedly ruin everything. Personally, I believe this should never happen unless there is something saying otherwise to you. For example, an accuracy drop, Hustle, etc. I don't think this is a controversial opinion.

"But PvK, you play RBY!"
And that's why the actual accuracy has been shown on PS for the past year! I squawked loud enough! Besides, who's to say I don't ladder newgens too, eh? Ehhhh? You don't know me!

I think abilities like Snow Cloak are less egregious in generations beyond BW, but given they're costless to run and exist solely to make Evasion Clause look weird, you can argue they're better off gone anyway. I think the whole "but you effectively ban this Pokemon" gambit is a bit weird, because sure, it's collateral damage, but they still have the problematic element. It's not our fault they were made with one ability, and it's not our problem either. We should not be making concessions for Pokemon that are often pretty terrible in OU anyway. Froslass concerns me a mite bit but eh, I'll let someone experienced write a 40-page rant about that one. I can't say the same for lower-tiers, though, and this post seems to be OU-centric anyway. This is probably where I'd agree with the "let x decide" people: it's probably best to let them pick and choose here, as their niche nature means they know the impacts better. Will they actually decide? Jesus take the wheel.

To me, the risk-reward to spending a turn on using an accuracy drop is not great. You're spending a moveslot on an attack that could be something impactful, not risking a free hit, and not easily switched out of. I respect the hazards argument someone proposed, but I also think the opportunity cost is terrible. When it comes to the weather abilities, there is often none, and Brightpowder, while definitely worse, tends to find its place in weird areas anyway. I don't think the problem is it being used at all, just the fact it's added passive invisible variance. The arguments about chance end up becoming kind of irrelevant because of that: the problem is that when they arrive, it's usually something of great consequence, and in the case of Brightpowder and Snow Cloak / Sand Veil users with other abilities, you can't really be faulted for how you played that turn either, which can feel kind of unfair to some. Yeah, you can scout them; Frisk Brightpowder, check for Rough Skin Garchomp, and what-have-you, but...you probably see the issue.

Whether they're actually a problem is largely an idealistic argument. Someone's going to go absolutely ballistic at this, while another person is going to chuck a Haha react from a safe distance because they don't understand. Personally, I think that given the low-stakes and overall improvement in metagame health, it's a fair call to make.

I still want Quick Claw Melmetal guy to have my children btw. Love react to support the search party.
 

Zokuru

The Stall Lord
is a Tiering Contributor
It's not a pro or anti proposal message, just some informations added to the topic. BrightPowder is actually considered as one of the optimal items to run on Charizard in GSC ( Being it, QuickClaw, Miracle Berry and Leftovers ). It is not just fishing for luck, it's actually maximising your chance at a sweep, depending on the state of game your team allows you to setup the bellydrum in. The main perks it has over QuickClaw as a luck item are against Double-Edge Snorlax and Suicune, especially in SleepTalking scenarii, switching it from a 50/50 to a ~54/46 in Zard's favor. As well as being able to get the BellyDrum in the first place on a miss if you are into a corner.

Either this is wanted or not, competitive or not and to be kept or not isn't my point, this is just informations, do what you want with it.
 
Can we ban bright powder, lax incense, quick claw,swagger etc already

pkmn players are the first to cry hax, but they're also somehow the first people to write PhD thesis' on why brightpowder over the course of 50 million games heuristically isn't objectively broken via a graph that most people neither understand nor care about n_n
 
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In my opinion Sand Veil/Snow Cloak abilities shouldn't be included in the evasion clause. Snow Cloak hasn’t been an issue in DPP and Sand Veil hasn’t in fairy gens, from what I know. If they do in the future then tier leaders can decide to ban it, but individual tiers should be able to decide on that and what the consequences of those bans will be. The collateral damage isn’t too significant but it’d be pretty unfortunate to lose certain Pokemon or move combinations for no reason other than consistency. I’m completely onboard with adding evasion items to evasion clause though, they serve no purpose other than being uncompetitive and add nothing positive.
Please do not mention Froslass being used on one (1) team in DPP OU over the last 5 years.
I feel like this is a bit of an exaggeration, it got used in SPL and sees pretty significant usage in side tournaments (for a B rank mon at least). Especially with bab’s team gaining popularity recently.
 

Star

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OGC & Tour Head
After reviewing this thread and discussing internally, we've decided that the evasion items (Bright Powder and Lax Incense) will be incorporated into the Evasion ruleset. These items provide the user with an advantage that opponents have no way of accounting for, either in the teambuilder or through play. Evasion has long been considered an uncompetitive mechanic, and banning these items comes with no collateral while increasing competitive integrity.

Evasion Abilities (Sand Veil/Snow Cloak) will not be added to the Evasion ruleset at this time. Unlike the items, banning these abilities would come with the collateral of Pokemon becoming unusable due to not having any legal abilities (ex. Froslass in DPP). Tiers can independently choose to incorporate Evasion Abilities in their ban list (as several already do), but this will not be implemented universally.

This change will require either renaming the "Evasion Moves Clause" to "Evasion Clause" and incorporating these items, or having a separate "Evasion Items Clause" that bans these items. We'll let the PS team (Marty Kris) decide which of these would be more appropriate.
 
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