I'm late to the evasion/accuracy commentary but i 100% agree that if a fight mainly employs stuff like that, its either the devs being extremely lazy or them still not realizing how evasion/accuracy strategies are not forcing the player to engage with some fun new battle dynamic. I think evasion is worse because accuracy can at least force interesting switches, but evasion is just ass!!
Now you may say that evasion has a pretty easy answer: just use moves that never miss. Alright, lets check the number of moves that are coded to never miss:
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big list, but we clearly see the dynamax elephant in the room. not only that, but a lot of these are status moves that will not actually help you with an evasion boosted opponent ever or just dont exist in the games right now/are legendary signature moves aka will never be useable in the campaign. I will cut the fat, and I'll even be generous and keep some moves that could be used for gimmick combos to beat foes.
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Wow now isnt that just dogshit ass. Let's group some of these moves together, from most to least useful:
- Genuine evasion strat destroyers, that either allow you to hit the target no matter what with your normal moveset or just reset all the evasion boosts/inverts them/steals them. Clear smog, psych up, topsy turvy, lock on, toxic (only on poison types). defog too but its slower since its only 1 stage of evasion per use. some of these only work with Stats evasion, and for Weather/ability evasion you need skill swap or roleplay
- Attacking moves that bypass accuracy and are actually Good. Smart strike, aura sphere, flower trick (better hope this gets de-signatured from meowscarada), false surrender (better hope this gets de-signatured from grimmsnarl), kowtow cleave (better hope-).
- Set up needed: moves that need proper weather to bypass accuracy. Hurricane, blizzard, thunder. They are all extremely high bp moves so IMO if you can set them up then theyre a really good strat
- Moves that CAN be genuine strat destroyers but will not work if the cheese is on the last mon, i.e whirlwind and roar. If you dont OHKO it might also be a problem but I believe in you
- Attacking moves that bypass accuracy and are kinda mid/scale very poorly in the end game. Magical leaf, magnet bomb, aerial ace, disarming voice, shadow punch, shock wave, swift.
- Fuck minimize in particular: moves that get double accuracy but like... only with minimize. If your opponent is using double dance or anything else then good luck lmfao. Body slam, heat crash, dragon rush, stomp, flying press.
- Weird gimmicks that only work if you have some very specific combos but hey uuuh thats something right. reflect type to be immune to their moves or also be evasive? pain split can cut off hp enough to make the fight easier if you know what youre doing... maybe... you could also transform and copy THEIR evasion boosts and make it the worst fight ever. or fuck it struggle moment who gives a shit.
So our options here are really bad. Not only are there limited number of moves that are at the high tiers, but their distribution is actually pretty bad. Many signature moves, limited spread or no TMs in general. Psych up is very available but only works for stats. The most available ones start with whirlwind/roar and the low bp, but the latter can be an issue because they scale reaaally bad late game. If you dont have a stab user for some of these they might as well not be viable. The minimize ones are a bit of a joke, most modern evasion strats use double team or abilities. Gimmicks are gimmicks.
SO evasion isnt impossible to beat, but the methods for it are cumbersome at best and straight up bad at worse. The way many of these are set up means that half of your options will not be available (early/mid game will rarely have things like hurricane, blizzard, thunder or moves like toxic, aura sphere, etc while late game power creeps stuff like magical leaf, aerial ace etc, some of the mons that get these moves can be locked in areas after the evasion challenge etc.). Idk man i think all of this goes from "making the player engage with more of the battle system" into "making the player work with some ass tools to play a battle normally instead of relying on rng rolls".
Theres way better ways to force harder battles that make the player think. Evasion is up there with level jumps in the "we couldnt actually come up with a good challenge"
