Gen 3 ban required

On a related tangent, Sand Stream is far more broken than Sand Veil and its removal would result in fewer de facto bans (and no transitivity breaking). SV is only busted when SS has been activated; no one would care about it if you needed to waste a moveslot on Sand Storm to gain the perk for 5 turns (or 8 if you give up the item slot as well). The constant Lefties recovery of GSC flipped into a constant loss of health to sand, and its been a huge factor in ramping up the offensive nature of OU in later gens (seriously, think about how much total damage it does in every game, and without even using a move to make it happen.) It's why Ttar sat in S-Rank for 3 gens (and is still A+, but SS is no longer permanent).

Considering either alternative, banning SV is just odd to me. For the actual topic of ADV, my line of thought is the same. Extending Evasion Clause to prevent using Cact + TTar on the same team is sensible; possibly giving an opposing Cact increased evasion should just be seen as a drawback to using Ttar. Cact and a bunch of other random things getting the boot is unnecessarily extreme, though (and especially weird compared to banning just the #1 mon that's also causing the only actual issues with the ability).
Some interesting points here. Sand Stream itself in ADV is certainly not busted, it is the Sand Veil abusers that are rendering games uncompetitive. Complex banning TTar + SV users on the same team may be the optimal route to go, or it may not be. I daresay (without looking at any usage stats) that TTar is the #1 most used mon in the tier, so ultimately what does complex banning really achieve? The pool of viable mons in ADV is certainly more shallow than either of DPP/BW. Hence I would much rather favour a blanket ban on sand veil itself. Lets look at the individual pokemon who get sand veil:

1. Dugtrio - much rather have arena trap
2. Cacturne - only one ability, so it gets banned
3. Gligar - has hyper cutter, so the only loss is to uncompetitiveness
4. Sandslash - only one ability, but totally unused afaik in OU, its loss would be unmissed

So, only Cacturne is really affected by a ban on SV. If anyone has run a viable TTar-less Cacturne team to this date, please let me know.

Mechanics, Pokemon, moves, abilities, items, etc. all change with each generation. If something that wasn't problematic for generations is suddenly being abused in the current one, why would we need to retroactively "fix" what used to be acceptable? Take Swagger, for example. It's been claused out for the past two gens, but that was never even considered during GSC - DPP. In this case, Prankster's what pushed it over the edge. This sort of thing should always be case-by-case.
Nothing at all has changed in terms of the mechanics of Sand Veil from ADV to DPP to BW. Thus, if the ability is banned in the latter two generations, then it should be the case for ADV. Also, strategies that develop in later generations often trickle back into past gens. Look at Heist's swagger aerodactyl for instance. Just because sand veil was not a glaringly obvious issue in the past does not hinder it from being an issue today.
 

Paraplegic

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Cacturne needs to be banned.

If I cant use SV garchomp in bw then idiots on ladder in ADV shouldnt be able to use cacturne.

Turns 100% won games into luckfests.

Anyone who disagrees is the same skilless trash using it.

thx.
I'm not disagreeing with your point at all, it really is bullshit and a ban is completely warranted, I just want to point out that in the op you specifically mentioned cacturne and not sand veil and thats probably why the discussion gravitated towards cacturne.

Beyond this, I just want to emphasize the point that there is absolutely no competitive merit to keeping sand veil as a whole around. Just because cacturne is "worse" in this generation then later, more prominent sand veil abusers of later gens, doesn't mean it isn't still objectively skilless bullshit. As smurf has said, if anybody has any possible relevant reason for keeping sand veil around please share, because unless the vast majority of us are missing something huge(hint: we aren't), it seriously offers nothing worth keeping to the gen and I see absolutely zero reason to keep it around.
 
I personally have never played adv ou however, a solution that was hinted at that sound decent was a complex ban of sand stream and sand veil on the same team. this would prevent the "abuse" of sand veil and would still keep caturne in the tier.
 
This seems like an overreaction to me.

You claim that evasion abilities were banned in other generations due to being "uncompetitive". The way things actually turned out was: initially, Garchomp was banned because it was too strong in DPP (Sand Veil Substitute sets were very popular and a contributing factor). Then later when a few other things were banned, Gliscor began to show up as another very strong threat with Swords Dance and Sand Veil. At this point, from my perspective, there is a significant chunk of Smogon's userbase that wants to ban any RNG elements they reasonably can, so instead of banning the actual threat, the userbase (when given the option) voted to ban evasion abilities under Evasion clause, resulting in a bunch of weak Pokemon also being banned.

Calling all/arbitrary RNG elements "uncompetitive" is frankly nonsense. There are a massive number of competitive games with huge RNG/chance elements. Virtually all card games have a massive RNG/chance element and everyone knows they are played competitively. Pokemon, similarly, has a lot of chance and RNG management. Banning things that are not too strong is unnecessary and from my perspective, the result of an emotional overreaction. Note that I am not saying certain methods of invoking RNG are not too strong, because this is clearly the case sometimes. Cacturne in RSE OU is not one of them.

There are also many extremely similar game elements that people take advantage of and barely anybody seems to want to ban them (e.g. paralysis + substitute, flinch moves with or without substitute, confuse ray, etc).
 

Triangles

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Pokemon is partially luck based in itself, and you can't avoid that.
Cacturne has low usage and certainly isn't strong in the meta, there were 2 Cacturnes in SPL history, both used by the same guy, both losing. It's sorta semi-viable but it's way overrated by all you guys. For every game that Cacturne does its Sand Veil dodging shit, there's 5 more it just sits there and dies like a bitch. Doesnt need any changes, end of.
 
Pokemon is partially luck based in itself, and you can't avoid that.
Cacturne has low usage and certainly isn't strong in the meta, there were 2 Cacturnes in SPL history, both used by the same guy, both losing. It's sorta semi-viable but it's way overrated by all you guys. For every game that Cacturne does its Sand Veil dodging shit, there's 5 more it just sits there and dies like a bitch. Doesnt need any changes, end of.
This logic is completely off imo. It's win rate in SPL is irrelevant to the issue. I mean I've seen people lose many times with prankster + swagger and sv gliscor, doesnt mean shit. Cacturne itself being semi-viable also is irrelevant, we are talking about sand veil the ability here.
 

Triangles

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This logic is completely off imo. It's win rate in SPL is irrelevant to the issue. I mean I've seen people lose many times with prankster + swagger and sv gliscor, doesnt mean shit. Cacturne itself being semi-viable also is irrelevant, we are talking about sand veil the ability here.
Sand veil isn't uncompetitive in ADV though, only a few mons get it, most of whom suck horse dick and one of whom is OK at best. Sand Veil's banned in other gens because actual good mons can abuse it. Just because a rule applies to 1 gen, doesnt mean it should to another. If sand veil cacturne was an actual problem, maybe this discussion would be a bit more valid, but as it is you're trying to fix an issue that just doesnt exist.
 
Sand veil isn't uncompetitive in ADV though, only a few mons get it, most of whom suck horse dick and one of whom is OK at best. Sand Veil's banned in other gens because actual good mons can abuse it. Just because a rule applies to 1 gen, doesnt mean it should to another. If sand veil cacturne was an actual problem, maybe this discussion would be a bit more valid, but as it is you're trying to fix an issue that just doesnt exist.
How bout you hop on the ladder. Also, moody is on a lot of inferior mons but that's still banned, so that is more flawed logic.
 
Calling all/arbitrary RNG elements "uncompetitive" is frankly nonsense. There are a massive number of competitive games with huge RNG/chance elements. Virtually all card games have a massive RNG/chance element and everyone knows they are played competitively. Pokemon, similarly, has a lot of chance and RNG management. Banning things that are not too strong is unnecessary and from my perspective, the result of an emotional overreaction. Note that I am not saying certain methods of invoking RNG are not too strong, because this is clearly the case sometimes. Cacturne in RSE OU is not one of them.

There are also many extremely similar game elements that people take advantage of and barely anybody seems to want to ban them (e.g. paralysis + substitute, flinch moves with or without substitute, confuse ray, etc).
As the only person who's raised any kind of sensible argument against banning sand veil in ADV, Earthworm I'd like to see where you would draw the line between methods of invoking the RNG that are uncompetitive and those that are part of the game (so to speak).

Personally I believe paralysis + substitute, flinch moves with or without substitute, confuse ray, etc. all differ on the basis that they do not directly alter evasion. As we have seen in the past, altering evasion is uncompetitive. I mean per your logic, why can't i use double team? I am merely maximising my RNG/chance element am I not?
 
As the only person who's raised any kind of sensible argument against banning sand veil in ADV, Earthworm I'd like to see where you would draw the line between methods of invoking the RNG that are uncompetitive and those that are part of the game (so to speak).

Personally I believe paralysis + substitute, flinch moves with or without substitute, confuse ray, etc. all differ on the basis that they do not directly alter evasion. As we have seen in the past, altering evasion is uncompetitive. I mean per your logic, why can't i use double team? I am merely maximising my RNG/chance element am I not?
It is very difficult to draw a line in a game with as many factors to consider as Pokemon, but for example, Garchomp in DP was clearly too strong, and that was due in large part to using SD sets with Substitute + Sand Veil (+ optional BrightPowder). Most bans thus far that haven't simply been carried over from a previous gen have had at least a somewhat reasonable basis (although I haven't kept up with the current gen or even BW that much). I am aware there was a Swagger ban and my first instinct there was that it might have been an overreaction, but I can't say for sure having never played against it. Many people who have played against it have told me it was too strong.

I also think Evasion would be worth testing (possibly starting from around gen 4 which was when the pace of games began to accelerate a lot, although the support for this would be zilch). I don't think Evasion is much different to paralysis/flinch/confusion at all. The effect is very slightly stronger in that one PP gets wasted when you miss your turn due to it. I don't want to go into too much detail on evasion here but my expectation is that similarly to paralysis it will be most effective with use of substitute and/or other similar effects (similar to paraflinch), but with the bonus of having strong synergy with baton pass which might allow it to lean towards the "too strong" side. Also, Minimize is a lot stronger than Double Team after the changes.

But I have no plans to try to get anything to happen because it seems like it would face too much opposition and I don't care enough. If I want to use that kind of effect I normally just use paralysis, I think it is stronger anyway given permanency and speed reduction.
 
it's a false equivalence to posit cross-generational 'uncompetitiveness' as precedence for a ban. evasion itself isn't 'inherently uncompetitive' [whatever that means]. although sand veil doesn't require any active activation unlike thunder wave e.g, i would agree w. earthworm that the latter is far more effective because it's enduring and reliable. contextualizing abilities in their metagame is crucial when determining 'uncompetitive' and 'overpowered' factors. as such, we can't quite compare a cacturne to a gliscor/garchomp metagame and how the tiers went about ban policy. evasion is an added rng factor, and arbitrarily determining it to be "uncompetitive" compared to any other rng factor pkmn contains seems kinda gnarly. cacturne is a nichemon that can be a nuisance, but i'm not quite convinced anything about this is necessitating a ban. there are still a litany of other pokemon that can give players rng opportunities as well, you know.
 
The idea of Sand Veil is, in theory, broken. However, if we look at this practically there is no real reason to ban it. The pokemon that abuse the ability suffer from having low base stats and often being more of a liability to their team.

The idea of banning SS + SV is fine, but that means more complications for people trying to learn the meta in a generation that is already pretty hard to learn for newcomers.
it doesn't make sense though, if this pokemon is in fact as bad as you stated previously then how will his banning lead to complication, that's not like cacturne is something that common in adv ou from what i've seen and he's also not something you usually prepare for just because of how matchup / luck based it is. So yeah banning SS + SV is the way to go definitly
 
More new players would likely be put off by the fact that we allow a permanent evasion ability than just seeing in teambuilder "Sand Veil is banned".

I'm not a fan of abilities / conditions that can influence the outcome of a game strongly based on little to no fault of one player. Additionally I'm no purist in the sense that I think we need to preserve as much of the original core gameplay as possible. Sand + SV is incredibly unfun to play, incredibly niche and has precedent to be banned under our structure for other tiers. I don't think we as a community gain anything from keeping a strategy based around coinflips, I felt the same for swagger in BW and feel that way here.
 
i think sand veil is dumb too but earthworm brings makes good point. there isn't too much of a difference between sand veil and other rng factors like twave, body slam, rock slide. i don't see how you can justify banning sand veil and not banning those moves. logically all of these rngs factors are seen as acceptable. we just happen to have a bias against sand veil for emotional reasons.

i know that we hate sand veil but let's try to answer this question: what's the difference between sand veil and other rng factors? how can we justify banning sand veil when we allow body slam, thunder wave and rock slide?
 

Typhlito

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Im no fan of sand veil either. Im not a fan of hax from either side in general but I guess the only key difference which was mentioned earlier is that its something that is automatically activated without the use of a move. What makes it a bit worse is that unlike in future gens, sand is the only real weather used. Sure there are the occasional rain/sun/salac hera teams but theyre not that common. Doesnt help that the one mon that summons sand is also one of the best mons in ou so more times than not, sand will be up. Body slam, twave and rock slide (btw, twave is the only comparable move here imo) as annoying as they could be, they have to be used to work. Thats not to say that sand veil is better than rock slide but I dont like the idea of being able to hax without doing anything but sit there. If an ability can make a cacnea potentially work in ou, it might be an issue and is definitely worth this discussion.
 

Funbot28

Banned deucer.
i think sand veil is dumb too but earthworm brings makes good point. there isn't too much of a difference between sand veil and other rng factors like twave, body slam, rock slide. i don't see how you can justify banning sand veil and not banning those moves. logically all of these rngs factors are seen as acceptable. we just happen to have a bias against sand veil for emotional reasons.

i know that we hate sand veil but let's try to answer this question: what's the difference between sand veil and other rng factors? how can we justify banning sand veil when we allow body slam, thunder wave and rock slide?
While is is true that other RNG factors do exist like Thunder Wave and Rock Slide like you had mentioned, however those are moves that take up a turn to abuse this RNG factor (ik Twave is a status, but you still need to use the move to status ur opp), while in the case in Sand Veil , the ability is inherently there and is usually permanent due to Tyranitar being everywhere and there being no other relevant weather setters. This in turn creates a scenario where the Cacturne/Cacnea could perform other tasks to whittle down the opponent like Substituting, Leech Seeding or attacking while still possessing the ability to abuse the RNG hax. I find this is the main issue in which Sand Veil creates unhealthy matchups and thus should be considered when discussing its banworhtyness.
 
i know that we hate sand veil but let's try to answer this question: what's the difference between sand veil and other rng factors? how can we justify banning sand veil when we allow body slam, thunder wave and rock slide?
Im no fan of sand veil either. Im not a fan of hax from either side in general but I guess the only key difference which was mentioned earlier is that its something that is automatically activated without the use of a move. What makes it a bit worse is that unlike in future gens, sand is the only real weather used. Sure there are the occasional rain/sun/salac hera teams but theyre not that common. Doesnt help that the one mon that summons sand is also one of the best mons in ou so more times than not, sand will be up. Body slam, twave and rock slide (btw, twave is the only comparable move here imo) as annoying as they could be, they have to be used to work. Thats not to say that sand veil is better than rock slide but I dont like the idea of being able to hax without doing anything but sit there. If an ability can make a cacnea potentially work in ou, it might be an issue and is definitely worth this discussion.
This pretty much sums up my thoughts on the question that Danilo posed, well said.
 
typh made a good point. the other moves have an opportunity whereas sand veil costs u the opportunity of using inferior abilities. that's significant. nilo moving more towards the center
 

Triangles

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I literally dont get this stupid fucking smogon circlejerk. POKEMON HAS LUCK FACTORS INVOLVED IT IT WHICH IS INEVITABLE. SAND VEIL IS NOT STRONG OR COMMON IN ADV, THEREFORE IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE BANNED. Stop shitting the bed about a problem that doesn't exist.
 

UD

BeerLover
The only thing I want to say with respect to the argument that Sand Veil should be banned on account of it being an ability and not a moveslot that otherwise manipulates RNG (T-Wave, Body Slam, and Rock Slide were the examples provided), is that Serene Grace should also be banned under similar criteria. I really hate fighting Cacturne, but I might hate fighting the ubiquitous HaxRachi (AstaRachi) sets even more. Not saying this is what *should* happen to either ability, just that the logic applies to both cases equally.

Can we please just ban Quick Claw and Brightpowder at least? These two items are the most egregious forms of hax in the game in my opinion.
 

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