Evasion Clause Discussion Topic

[Entere]

I was writing down a long reply when I accidentally deleted it. So I'll give a shorter version:
Complex ban, no item ban.
Items use item slot, aren't really effective.
Complexness only temporary, and the abilities are equivalent to double team, which takes a turn.
To those who say "don't fix what ain't broke", it's the clauses' job to avoid gimmicks like Spore.
To those who say "other kinds of hax are allowed", this hax is very major. Statuses need to be piled up for them to be effective, but not so much evasion.
The pokemon who can't have another ability will be sorely missed in hail and sand, but it's not that bad.

 

[Razza]

For the record there are only 3 mons (pre evos not included) that have sand veil/snow cloak and do not have a released alternate ability. [Feel free to correct me if im wrong]

1. Garchomp: unreleased dw ability rough skin
2. Froslass: unreleased dw ability cursed body
3. Sandlslash: unreleased dw ability sand rush

First thing to notice: none of these mons are OU or get any significant usage in the OU metagame. A flat out ban on these abilities (leading to a soft ban on froslass and sandlslash) would therefore have negligible impact on the OU metagame and would therefore be most desirable in terms of BW OU. However as i take it any OU bans also effect all metgames underneath it and this would mean froslass and sandlslash bans would a larger effect on UU and RU. I think the best course of action would be to ban sand veil and snow cloak in OU only, other metagames (basically UU as bar UU sand, auto weather is OU) can then determine what action they wish to take on these abilities.

If that is not an option a complex ban would be best.
In any case a complex ban would only be temporary as when the above mons have their dw abilities released it can be changed to a simple ability ban.

On the topic of evasion modifying items just keep them banned, in most cases they shouldnt be used as they are an inferior item to alternatives such as leftovers, and nobody wants to miss against some scrub who thought it would be a good idea to use them. People arguing for there unbanning are just being pedantic and arguing on principle as any competent player wouldnt use them on a competitive team anyway if they were unbanned.


P.S Also just because i know someone is going to bring up the "why not ban confusion, paralysis jirachi etc"

ACTIVELY paralysing, confusing and flinching your opponent to keep them from hitting you is a perfectly fair and competitive strategy.
Preventing your opponent from hitting you via PASSIVE evasion boosting abilities and items is neither.

EDIT:

The combo ban would make sense to me if it broke every Pokemon, or even a couple. It doesn't. Sand veil only caused problems for one Pokemon and it wasn't the only reason garchomp was banned.

http://pokemon.aesoft.org/replay-the-pdc-show-vs-Tsu--2012-01-06 see turns 20 and 21

"sand veil only caused problems for one pokemon".........

 

[Pocket]

I do not find it necessary to ban non-broken abilities in any way. There is a large gap in "uncompetitiveness" that separates Sand Veil and Snow Cloak from Double Team / Minimize and Moody. The main difference is that the abilities cannot stack Evasion boosts the way the claused factors could, preventing the vicious cycle of ever decreasing chances of hitting the opponent, totally relinquishing any control from the victim after 2 or 3 successful boosts.

Alphatron (or Tomahawk9?) hits a good point - you can also minimize luck by banning Serene Grace or Super Luck mons. However, we do not, because these Pokemon are manageable without excessive preparation. SJCrew also brings up a good point about Pokemon's resources in abusing such luck - some Pokemon are bestowed with more resources than their counterparts to abuse certain luck factors to excessive levels. These extra resources granted by few Pokemon had caused Shaymin to abuse Serene Grace to excessive levels, as well as Garchomp abusing Sand Veil. Jirachi or Togekiss cannot abuse Serene Grace to the same broken levels as Shaymin, just like how Mamoswine or Gliscor cannot abuse their evasion-boosting ability to broken levels as Garchomp - Jirachi / Gliscor are merely annoying with their abilities, but manageable.

True, Double Team / Minimize may not be broken in majority of the cases, but we claused them anyways, because they made sufficient Pokemon broken. We cannot actually confirm this, b/c it would be so fucking time-consuming, but it's not a big stretch to come to this conclusion. I'd rather test individual swift swimmers to resolve or confirm Aldaron's Proposal than test EVERY mon that is broken with Double Team / Minimize.

I vote for unban Brightpowder / Lax Incense, since it is indeed absurd to ban certain hax items and not others, such as Focus Band and Quick Claw, which can be just as game-breaking as evasion-boosting items. By removing such negligible items from Evasion Clause, we can be consistent by only banning stack-able Evasion factors that COMPLETELY leaves the victim helpless after 2 or 3 boosts.

 

[Stratos]

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

playing favorites? hah. i was merely providing a (years-old) anecdote to demonstrate that some people were approaching the issue as if the debate had already been settled and all that was left was to find a solution.

other than that, i'm basically a less eloquent version of Alphatron and Pocket, so listen to them.

 

[Dragon Rider]

Just asking but why is Tangled Feet being excluded from the discussion?

It seems to me that competetive value is not a deciding factor in this discussion and it is rather a question of rule consistency.The argument being that Snow Cloak and Sand Veil do nothing but increase evasion.Well Tangled Feet is also an ability that increases evasion.Should it not be considered?

Also if an all encomposing ban on "anything evasion related" were to be considered, I would also point out Acupressure,Starf Berry, and Metronome should be added.Some mons can try abuse Acu (like Battle Armor Drapion) to try to start a chain of boosting.Same can be said about Harvest+Starf to try to boost out 1 pokemon.Metronome, however unlikely it is, can get DT/Minimize.

I do not believe any of the previous stuff is even good competetively or remotely broken.But that does not appear to have any influence here.Either all should go under the principle or each should be evaluated on a case by case basis in regards to competetive play.Just my opinion

 

[CrazyBacon]

Just asking but why is Tangled Feet being excluded from the discussion?

Tangled feet requires a pokemon to be actively confused, which is not easy to do, since none of the 7 pokemon have a reliable way too confuse themselves. Spinda has thrash (I Guess) but you also have a 50% chance too hit yourself in confusion, that means the odds of you hitting your opponent is LESS than them hitting you (50% vs 80%)

Also if an all encomposing ban on "anything evasion related" were to be considered, I would also point out Acupressure,Starf Berry, and Metronome should be added.Some mons can try abuse Acu (like Battle Armor Drapion) to try to start a chain of boosting.Same can be said about Harvest+Starf to try to boost out 1 pokemon.Metronome, however unlikely it is, can get DT/Minimize.

I do not believe any of the previous stuff is even good competetively or remotely broken.But that does not appear to have any influence here.Either all should go under the principle or each should be evaluated on a case by case basis in regards to competetive play.Just my opinion

Each of those moves, requires the pokemon too make a move and successfully pull it off. In addition, the chances of getting an accupressure boost isnt huge, and whilst you try and waste time trying too get an evasion bost, you are giving your opponent free turns too whirlwind you/taunt you/ outright kill you. Sand veil and snow cloak, require sand/hail too be up (with auto inducers this is an easy feat providing you kill off the enemy weather abuser) furthermore for sand veil to be active whilst sand is up the abuser has too simply be sent out. It doesnt have too waste a turn using accupressure/minimize etc. it comes out right away and starts 'haxing'

 

[alexwolf]

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



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

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

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

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

The first is an issue of Magic Guard and Focus Band combined so it is not an issue of Focus Band alone. Also you cannot propose solutions for something if they are not viable. In 99% of the games, always hitting moves are useless and completely worthless, unlike for example passive damage that bypass Focus Band or defensive slow mons that don't care about Quick Claw's effect. Finally i already explained to you why only those items are banned. Because they have no viable counters, while adding unneeded luck.

 

[Kefka Palazzo™]

I do not find it necessary to ban non-broken abilities in any way. There is a large gap in "uncompetitiveness" that separates Sand Veil and Snow Cloak from Double Team / Minimize and Moody. The main difference is that the abilities cannot stack Evasion boosts the way the claused factors could, preventing the vicious cycle of ever decreasing chances of hitting the opponent, totally relinquishing any control from the victim after 2 or 3 successful boosts.

Alphatron (or Tomahawk9?) hits a good point - you can also minimize luck by banning Serene Grace or Super Luck mons. However, we do not, because these Pokemon are manageable without excessive preparation. SJCrew also brings up a good point about Pokemon's resources in abusing such luck - some Pokemon are bestowed with more resources than their counterparts to abuse certain luck factors to excessive levels. These extra resources granted by few Pokemon had caused Shaymin to abuse Serene Grace to excessive levels, as well as Garchomp abusing Sand Veil. Jirachi or Togekiss cannot abuse Serene Grace to the same broken levels as Shaymin, just like how Mamoswine or Gliscor cannot abuse their evasion-boosting ability to broken levels as Garchomp - Jirachi / Gliscor are merely annoying with their abilities, but manageable.

True, Double Team / Minimize may not be broken in majority of the cases, but we claused them anyways, because they made sufficient Pokemon broken. We cannot actually confirm this, b/c it would be so fucking time-consuming, but it's not a big stretch to come to this conclusion. I'd rather test individual swift swimmers to resolve or confirm Aldaron's Proposal than test EVERY mon that is broken with Double Team / Minimize.

I vote for unban Brightpowder / Lax Incense, since it is indeed absurd to ban certain hax items and not others, such as Focus Band and Quick Claw, which can be just as game-breaking as evasion-boosting items. By removing such negligible items from Evasion Clause, we can be consistent by only banning stack-able Evasion factors that COMPLETELY leaves the victim helpless after 2 or 3 boosts.

This.
Oh, and banning Snow Cloak on Froslass and Mamoswine is just so unnecessary. Hail isn't even considered a threat to most players and banning the abilities would just be making it weaker.
We already got rid of the only true Weather-Evasion pokemon a while ago, Garchomp, who also has ridiculous speed, power, and bulk.

Unban Brightpowder / Lax Incense
IIRC, it was proven that Lefties is better overall than Brightpowder/Lax Incense for survivability.

 

[Pocket]

Also complex banning these abilities would actually be setting a precedent for banning a non-broken factor. Oh wait, there's Brightpowder / Lax Incense. Yea, let's simply not make this precedent by lifting the ban on the items that are only minor inconvenience at best (the abilities are also minor inconveniences; not enough to be dubbed as uncompetitive). Complex bans are meant to ban overpowering aspects of the metagame, such as Swift Swim + Drizzle (or Shell Smash + Baton Pass in RU?), so please don't abuse this ban method to keep Blaze Blaziken or Garchomp outside of Sand in OU.

 

[alexwolf]

I do not find it necessary to ban non-broken abilities in any way. There is a large gap in "uncompetitiveness" that separates Sand Veil and Snow Cloak from Double Team / Minimize and Moody. The main difference is that the abilities cannot stack Evasion boosts the way the claused factors could, preventing the vicious cycle of ever decreasing chances of hitting the opponent, totally relinquishing any control from the victim after 2 or 3 successful boosts.

Pocket it has been proven by a certain user, that stacking Evasion boosts is not worth it. Only the first boost is worth the time that you spent using it. While a poke with 2,3 or 4 evasion boosts sounds good, a poke with 2,3 or 4 Dragon Dances, Quiver Dances or Calm Minds sounds much better to me. And don't tell me that after the first evasion boost the opponent is very bound to miss because this is false. In most situations your opponent will be able to kill you before you get enough boosts, simply because the odds are with his side.
And if you say to me that you can use Sub to fish for misses, then that means that you have only 2 remaining slots.
So this means that you will run either a recovery move with an attacking move, leaving you walled from a billion things, 2 attacking moves, which can still be walled by many defensive mons untill you run out of pps, or a boosting move and an attacking move, which again leaves you walled by many many things.
Take standard mons, and try to fit DT in their sets, and you will quickly notice that for most of those pokes, it simply isn't worth it. If each poke had 5 or 6 slots, then DT could be broken but as of now i don't think it is. I am of the opinion that it was banned because it would make the meta more luck based, without having enough viable counters (noone would complain if Flamethrower, Ice Beam and Tbolt always hitted).

Alphatron (or Tomahawk9?) hits a good point - you can also minimize luck by banning Serene Grace or Super Luck mons. However, we do not, because these Pokemon are manageable without excessive preparation. SJCrew also brings up a good point about Pokemon's resources in abusing such luck - some Pokemon are bestowed with more resources than their counterparts to abuse certain luck factors to excessive levels. These extra resources granted by few Pokemon had caused Shaymin to abuse Serene Grace to excessive levels, as well as Garchomp abusing Sand Veil. Jirachi or Togekiss cannot abuse Serene Grace to the same broken levels as Shaymin, just like how Mamoswine or Gliscor cannot abuse their evasion-boosting ability to broken levels as Garchomp - Jirachi / Gliscor are merely annoying with their abilities, but manageable.

Exactly. Pure luck is tollerated when it can be countered. Jirachi, Super Luck mons, parahax can all be countered by certain VIABLE methods, while evasion increasing methods can't. It doesn't matter if they break the meta, it matters that they make it unenjoyable. DT may not be worth it most of the times, but if it was allowed, many below average players would use it, winning games that they otherwise shouldn't against better players. This meta wouldn't be broken, but it would be unenjoyable. Same goes for the items and the abilites regarding evasion. Even 1 or 2 lost game out of 10,20 or 50, matters, because you should never be in a sitaution where whatever you do the match is lost, if the RNG decides it.

True, Double Team / Minimize may not be broken in majority of the cases, but we claused them anyways, because they made sufficient Pokemon broken. We cannot actually confirm this, b/c it would be so fucking time-consuming, but it's not a big stretch to come to this conclusion. I'd rather test individual swift swimmers to resolve or confirm Aldaron's Proposal than test EVERY mon that is broken with Double Team / Minimize.

I don't think we banned them for making sufficient pokes broken. I think we banned the because with these moves around the meta would be a clusterfuck, where a lucky player could be at the top 50 players, even for once in a year, because he got lucky, and we don't want that.

Also complex banning these abilities would actually be setting a precedent for banning a non-broken factor. Oh wait, there's Brightpowder / Lax Incense. Yea, let's simply not make this precedent by lifting the ban on the items that are only minor inconvenience at best (the abilities are also minor inconveniences; not enough to be dubbed as uncompetitive). Complex bans are meant to ban overpowering aspects of the metagame, such as Swift Swim + Drizzle (or Shell Smash + Baton Pass in RU?), so please don't abuse this ban method to keep Blaze Blaziken or Garchomp outside of Sand in OU.

Bans, either simple or complex, are meant to make the metagame better, imo.
This is why the evasion raising moves were banned, while they weren't broken moves, imo.
Moody was a broken ability, because it broke everything that had it. If one supports that DT was banned as a broken move, then this means that all, or almost all pokes that got it abused it to a broken degree. Is this true? No.

 

[Pocket]

alexwolf, I don't want to dilute this thread into a quote war, so I'm just gonna leave it with this:

You can say how it was "proven" that Double Team / Minimize is not broken. However, Sand Veil / Snow Cloak is NOTHING compared to those moves. For one, Double Team / Minimize would make any sturdy Baton Passers intolerable to face. Even you acknowledge that bringing down Double Team / Minimize would lead to a clusterfuck of lucky people on the top of the ladder, winning games they should not. Such cases are so few and far in-between with Sand Veil / Snow Cloak. Comparing this non-stackable Evasion ability to the stackable Evasion moves is comparing a Venomoth to a Volcarona as QDer.

 

[JabbaTheGriffin]

To me, the entire issue has never been about a matter of broken or not. It's about consistency of ruleset and reasonably managing luck factors. We can argue about the different luck factors and how they compare to evasion, but that's not what this topic is about. We can argue some other time about whether when these clauses were initially created whether or not there should there have been a flinch clause. We're looking at evasion clause right now. Now, we as a site, both when Evasion Clause was first created, and then once again at the beginning of Gen 5, determined that Evasion is a luck factor that we would like to control, regardless of whether or not it's actually broken.

So, if you're going to tailor your arguments towards me, leave brokenness out of the equation because I know that generally, none of these things are probably broken. I'm simply looking to enforce our decision at the beginning of this generation that we should manage evasion through a clause. I believe that if we're going to decide that evasion is a luck modifier that we're going to manage in this way, that we should create a consistent rule that reasonably encompasses all direct evasion modifiers. If you're going to argue that neither Sandstream + Sand Veil nor Brightpowder/Lax Incense are broken, then you're going to have to deal with the fact that Double Team most likely isn't broken either. So should we completely get rid of Evasion Clause? A supermajority of policy makers felt that we shouldn't and neither do I. So that leaves the issue of how we make this rule consistent (which it unfortunately hasn't been for years). I think the complex ban is the best way to do this.

 

[Pocket]

I am arguing that Evasion Clause should be re-defined as a restriction towards moves, abilities, etc that can boost Evasion by multiple stages rather than 1 passive boost, and remove Brightpowder / Lax Incense for consistency sake.

Evasion Clause was meant to prohibit the use of Double Team / Minimize. It was most certainly NOT meant to remove all aspects of evasion / accuracy issues, since that is silly as a Flinch clause. I am pretty sure the supermajority that voted in keeping the archaic Evasion Clause alive were not thinking about weak Sand Veil or Brightpowder when making the decision.

 

[alexwolf]

alexwolf, I don't want to dilute this thread into a quote war, so I'm just gonna leave it with this:

You can say how it was "proven" that Double Team / Minimize is not broken. However, Sand Veil / Snow Cloak is NOTHING compared to those moves. For one, Double Team / Minimize would make any sturdy Baton Passers intolerable to face. Even you acknowledge that bringing down Double Team / Minimize would lead to a clusterfuck of lucky people on the top of the ladder, winning games they should not. Such cases are so few and far in-between with Sand Veil / Snow Cloak. Comparing this non-stackable Evasion ability to the stackable Evasion moves is comparing a Venomoth to a Volcarona as QDer.

Nice catch about the Baton Pass teams. They are one of the few types of teams that could abuse DT to a very good and potentially broken effect. However for this situation, we will have to blame the combo of BP and DT and not DT alone, since other strategies would still not be broken with DT in play.

My point is that if we are not arguing, and don't care about brokeness, simply because this isn't the issue, then the quantity should not matter. It is unenjoyable to lose a match due to evasion, no matter how often it happens. Sure DT would be much more popular than Sand Veil and Snow Cloak users are now, but this would be irrelevant, because it is a matter of principle, and consistency as Jabba says. Why should the opponent win either 1 out of 100 matches due to pure luck, while you had no option to prevent it from happening?

It doesn't matter how good is the evasion factor that we are talking about, because we are not talking about broken things. The logic that you try to apply is for measuring broken things. The best evasion factor is the most annoying/difficult to face, meaning the one that should go. But we are talking about encompassing anything relevant to a rule we made, meaning it is a matter of principle.
If we make the clause that you are proposing this means that we will have approached a problem of principle with a mindset that applies for broken things.
I know that the shit i am telling may sound confusing and unclear but they are the best i can do, since English is not my mother tongue and the thought is really complicated in my mind (maybe i couldn't explain it even in Greek lol).

 

[X5Dragon]

This is a tough issue, especially in the light that multi-hit moves, which should naturally be a remedy for sub + evasion boosting ability, are nerfed in a sense that if the first hit doesn't land then the rest don't instead of each hit having a separate probability according to the move's base accuracy.

To get the easy things out of the way, Evasion boosting moves like Minimize and Double team, along with Moody should be banned outright. The fact that you can continue to increase your evasion instead of a static, low percentage figure is just wrong.

On the rest, banning Bright Powder/Lax Incense by themselves is like banning Quick Claw or any other similar item, it's a poor gamble and if the users wishes to use it he can be my guest but it doesn't merit a ban.

Finally, and because what I said about Multi-Hit moves and the potential abuse of Sub + Evasion Ability, I support the complex bans of Sand Stream + Sand Veil & Snow Warning + Snow Cloak. The move substitute is what breaks the camel's back for me, I would have been fine with plain 20% evasion ability especially since the abusers are weak/neutral to all priorities. If somehow there was a way to ban the group of Weather + Evasion Boosting Ability + Evasion Boosting Item + Substitute then that would have been an awesome and very reasonable and professional way to deal with this matter but unfortunately this seems like too much work.

 

[Seth Vilo]

I am arguing that Evasion Clause should be re-defined as a restriction towards moves, abilities, etc that can boost Evasion by multiple stages rather than 1 passive boost, and remove Brightpowder / Lax Incense for consistency sake.

Evasion Clause was meant to prohibit the use of Double Team / Minimize. It was most certainly NOT meant to remove all aspects of evasion / accuracy issues, since that is silly as a Flinch clause. I am pretty sure the supermajority that voted in keeping the archaic Evasion Clause alive were not thinking about weak Sand Veil or Brightpowder when making the decision.

Completely and 100% with you on this, Pocket. My main concern with the argument that Sand Veil and friends are too "luck-based" or "leaving a match to the RNG", and banning them accordingly is this: where does it stop? If we ban Sand Veil and such as well as Brightpowder/Lax Incense - both of which are very non-broken aspects in their own rights and do not alone make a Pokemon broken by any means - what's to stop further ridiculous action? For example, these: What's the difference between the 20% of Sand Veil being unfair and non-competitive, but the 20% chance for Stone Edge or 30% chance for Focus Blast to infamously miss being perfectly acceptable? Let's make all moves 100% accuracy then, or only allow moves with 100% accuracy. If you think about it, isn't the 15% variable damage for each and every damaging move used bar Night Shade and Seismic Toss also leaving thins to the RNG, and thus is noncompetitive in this definition? Therefore, all moves hit for the same variable damage. And ban DynamicPunch since it causes confusion; because confusion leaves something up to chance, it is obviously broken. Jirachi, Togekiss, Blissey, Chansey, and Dunsparce are all broken because of Serene Grace.

This extrapolation may seem silly here, but I can no longer say it's extreme. I've seen arguments for these types of bans happen frequently here. A complex ban is exactly what is sounds like. Complex. Isn't Smogon aiming for a metagame with the least possible bans, and only on broken things? This blanket-ban on all evasion (which is basically what the complex ban actually is) opens the door for all the other bans I just listed above. I don't want that kind of metegame for us Smogonites. Do you? Ban the Pokemon, not the ability.

I am arguing that Evasion Clause should be re-defined as a restriction towards moves, abilities, etc that can boost Evasion by multiple stages rather than 1 passive boost, and remove Brightpowder / Lax Incense for consistency sake.

Seconded.

 

[Hipmonlee]

These bans to me have the feel of rewriting pokemon to suit our desires.

I think for a precedent for the complex ban we have the example of blaze blaziken.

For the general ban, we have the absurd scenario of banning sandslash from OU. As frustrating as these pokemon may be to deal with, a general ban is really just silly.

There are other issues I think that deserve some consideration. Banning a pokemon from OU that is legal in RU is just confusing, and is somewhat contrary to the premise of our tiers.

I am a strong advocate for unbanning brightpowder/lax incense. It was an absurd decision at the time, and it has only become more absurd with the banning of Garchomp, which was essentially the driving force behind the brightpowder ban in the first place.

I mean, from your op, if the goal of the complex ban is consistency, then it doesnt seem like a good way of achieving it. Mostly because it is so complicated. If the goal is to remove the reduction of skill in the game caused by the use of cacturne, then, I just dont think that is compelling.

The ability ban is really nasty.

I think we should favour as few bans as possible and consistency of rule set. Which is why I support unbanning the items.

I mean seriously, a restriction on the use of sandslash just seems extraordinarily complicated to me. Yeah, sandslash isnt a big loss, but you know, some people love sandslash. You might have a team where you want to use a shitty donphan with swords dance. Or you might want to test your ability to use RU pokes in OU or something.. It's not nothing that we are taking away here..

 

[Spaniard]

P.S Also just because i know someone is going to bring up the "why not ban confusion, paralysis jirachi etc"

ACTIVELY paralysing, confusing and flinching your opponent to keep them from hitting you is a perfectly fair and competitive strategy.
Preventing your opponent from hitting you via PASSIVE evasion boosting abilities and items is neither.

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying ban paralisis, flinch or confusion, but I just don't see any difference in what you're saying. Using a evasion boosting move, item or trait is the same as using t wave or flinching move. You are using one of your pokemon moves/traits/items hoping that it buys you a lucky bonus. You may argue that traits or items are not moves but what is the difference in between those cases:

Garchomp decides to use brightpowder instead of leftovers.
Gliscor decides to use sand veil instead of poison heal.
Rotom decides to run confuse ray instead of hidden power.
Politoed decides run scald instead of hydro pump.

In all cases you sacrifice something (recovery, coverage, power) to get the possibility of getting lucky. And any of the listed scenarios could perfectly win you a battle. However you say that only evasion is wrong because it reduces skill impact for luck.

My opinion on the topic is not to change anything. Lucky misses are ocasional and don't really have that huge impact (and yeah, i also hate losing because of a miss). I don't use evasion traits myself, but I hate it whenever smogon changes the ruleset. It is absolute mayhem to adapt to a new metagame and get your teams trashed because they don't work anymore. I think we all should grow up and learn to accept it when we lose because of bad luck instead of complaining about how much this game sucks. No matter how much you modify the rules pokemon will always factor luck; if you don't like it don't play the game.

On a side note, luck always evens out and it's all reduced to percentages. Luck variance on pokémon is not even that great as skill>>luck. If you don't believe me, try and play poker, and even there pros still consistently win. You won't always lose because of bad luck, and if you do, you're simply not good at this game (yeah, that's hard to accept but we can all improve). People quickly forget it when we win due to luck.

EDIT: I want evasion moves banned. I don't care about evasion items so do as you wish, but for God's shake don't modify tiers for something as stupid as sand veil gliscor (which is the only somewhat popular evasion abuser at the moment).

 

[Entere]

This is a tough issue, especially in the light that multi-hit moves, which should naturally be a remedy for sub + evasion boosting ability, are nerfed in a sense that if the first hit doesn't land then the rest don't instead of each hit having a separate probability according to the move's base accuracy.

To get the easy things out of the way, Evasion boosting moves like Minimize and Double team, along with Moody should be banned outright. The fact that you can continue to increase your evasion instead of a static, low percentage figure is just wrong.

On the rest, banning Bright Powder/Lax Incense by themselves is like banning Quick Claw or any other similar item, it's a poor gamble and if the users wishes to use it he can be my guest but it doesn't merit a ban.

Finally, and because what I said about Multi-Hit moves and the potential abuse of Sub + Evasion Ability, I support the complex bans of Sand Stream + Sand Veil & Snow Warning + Snow Cloak. The move substitute is what breaks the camel's back for me, I would have been fine with plain 20% evasion ability especially since the abusers are weak/neutral to all priorities. If somehow there was a way to ban the group of Weather + Evasion Boosting Ability + Evasion Boosting Item + Substitute then that would have been an awesome and very reasonable and professional way to deal with this matter but unfortunately this seems like too much work.

I agree with this. Evasion is a luck factor that can get way out of control. It isn't like confusion, which wears off and requires a turn to cause (and wastes a moveslot), or infatuation (which nobody uses because it isn't present on good pokemon and only works for the opposite gender.) Evasion has no exceptions (except for moves with perfect accuracy, like Aerial Ace, with very poor power.) And, despite taking out a few pokemon (very VERY few good pokemon will be affected), I feel that the complex ban should do the trick. An outright ban would be too strict to pokemon like Froslass.

 

[Seth Vilo]

These bans to me have the feel of rewriting pokemon to suit our desires.
...
For the general ban, we have the absurd scenario of banning sandslash from OU. As frustrating as these pokemon may be to deal with, a general ban is really just silly.

There are other issues I think that deserve some consideration. Banning a pokemon from OU that is legal in RU is just confusing, and is somewhat contrary to the premise of our tiers.

I am a strong advocate for unbanning brightpowder/lax incense. It was an absurd decision at the time, and it has only become more absurd with the banning of Garchomp, which was essentially the driving force behind the brightpowder ban in the first place.

I mean, from your op, if the goal of the complex ban is consistency, then it doesnt seem like a good way of achieving it. Mostly because it is so complicated. If the goal is to remove the reduction of skill in the game caused by the use of cacturne, then, I just dont think that is compelling.

The ability ban is really nasty.

I think we should favour as few bans as possible and consistency of rule set. Which is why I support unbanning the items.

I mean seriously, a restriction on the use of sandslash just seems extraordinarily complicated to me. Yeah, sandslash isnt a big loss, but you know, some people love sandslash. You might have a team where you want to use a shitty donphan with swords dance. Or you might want to test your ability to use RU pokes in OU or something.. It's not nothing that we are taking away here..

I hate to quote an entire long post, but this post is pure gold. Thank you very sincerely for voicing your (and my) opinion Hipmonlee, and I'm glad someone else feels the same about the Garchomp/Moody ban as I do, but won't get in trouble for saying it as I felt that I would have being a mere lurker.

Also thank you Spaniard for this: "You won't always lose because of bad luck, and if you do, you're simply not good at this game (yeah, that's hard to accept but we can all improve). People quickly forget it when we win due to luck." Yes, you loose a few to hax. It's Pokemon. That's part of the game.

 

[alexwolf]

@ Spaniard

Everything you listed has counters or can be avoided. If you don't want your move to miss, use the more reliable alternative. If you don't want your team to be haxed in the wrong time by T-Wave, then carry ground mons or Poison Heal and Volt Absorb mons, or Taunt, or Sub. If you want to avoid flinching moves set up a sub or carry fast pokes.
If you don't want to miss against a poke with Evasion boosts, what are the measures that you can take to prevent it? The only viable one that i can think of is changing the weather, which most teams can't, due to the lack of a weather inducer.

 

[Kefka Palazzo™]

@ Spaniard
If you don't want to miss against a poke with Evasion boosts, what are the measures that you can take to prevent it? The only viable one that i can think of is changing the weather, which most teams can't, due to the lack of a weather inducer.

Which pokemon can sweep or can cause heavy damage to your team if you miss ONCE? Garchomp. He's gone.

Which pokemon is bulky and can also evade attacks in weather? Mamoswine and Sandslash are the bulkiest, yet they're not even close to being noticeable threats nor can they abuse that single turn very well.

So, what's the worry?

 

[Entere]

@ Spaniard

Everything you listed has counters or can be avoided. If you don't want your move to miss, use th more reliable alternative. If you don't want your team to be haxed in the wrong time by T-Wave, then carry ground mons or Poison Heal and Volt Absorb mons, or Taunt, or Sub. If you want to avoid flinching moves set up a sub or carry fast pokes. If you don't want to miss against a poke with Evasion boosts, what are the measure that you can take to prevent it. The only viable one that i can think of is changing the weather, which most teams can't, due to the lack of a weather inducer.

Or you can use Hone Claws (hello Durant!), Coil (hello Serperior!), or Aerial Ace / other no-missing moves. However, given that all these options are terrible (except for Coil, but it's on bad pokemon), Evasion is pretty unstoppable. Also,
@Seth Vilo:
I'm a bit on the fence about Brightpowder. It's okay, I guess. However, the notion that all bans need to be simple is a bit absurd. This is better for the pokemon - imagine the meta without Froslass or Sandslash. (I guess that's kind of your point, to eliminate all of the Evasion ban.)
About hax, I think hax should be at least a bit justifiable. For example, it's your fault for not trying to avoid the paralysis / confusion / low accuracy of Focus miss. Only low / high damage rolls really don't depend on the haxed user, but they DON'T depend on the haxed user's opponent either.

 

[Spaniard]

@ Alexwolf

If I don't want hurricane or confuse ray to confuse me what do I do? If I don't want to get burnt by scald what do I do? If I don't want to get critical hit what do I do? I could go on with a lot of examples but I think the point is clear.

If your answers are the lolish use own tempo/fire pokes/that trait that prevents crits. Then I've got a lolish answer to your question: use moves that don't miss such as aerial ace.

I like Kefka's palazzo's post.

Also thank you Seth Vilo. I agree with hipmonlee as well.

 

[Hipmonlee]

Ok to clarify, I am comfortable with the bans on moody and garchomp, though I never actually played bw at a time when moody was legal, so, I am not really able to comment on it.

I just meant that the brightpowder ban was really a reaction to garchomp with brightpowder, when it should have been pretty plain to see that the issue was with garchomp and not with brightpowder. But then garchomp itself got banned, so what tenuous justification there was for banning brightpowder in the first place is now gone.