Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v2 [Update on Post #5186]

[DaddyBuzzwole]

That's because it still doesn't solve anything. All this does it lower the probability from 6 Pokémon to 1. Tera still has the same affects.

nah, single tera means that it's more constrained, like mega evolution or z-moves. you'd have to have a single dedicated tera mon on your team instead of anything potentially doing it. the mechanic itself is not an issue. the things that are icky about it (to me at least) are the fact that any mon on a team can use it and the necessity of playing around certain mons like they have 10 typings at once. single tera + preview solves everything that i personally think is bad about tera. the main problem with it is that it makes sense and will fix things, so people won't vote for it

 

[Candelia]

So I may get into competitive, is here the right question to ask about teambuilding-?

 

[awyp]

So I may get into competitive, is here the right question to ask about teambuilding-?

No if you have simple questions about team building it should be asked here below

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/simple-questions-simple-answers-thread.3710772/

 

[Candelia]

No if you have simple questions about team building it should be asked here below

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/simple-questions-simple-answers-thread.3710772/

Ooooh, thank you! I saw that but wasn't to sure if I could as there... Thank you, again :D

 

[RoyalDispenser]

What would the point of the council be if their job was just "do what the survey says"? They have discretion

Counterpoint, what would the point be of the survey if it means nothing end of the day anyways?

If survey results are just 'suggestions' then I'm pretty sure council could care less about them outside of using them to shut up anyone claiming no one wanted X done or X was a minority view.

That's why I dont get where their priorities are, the survey suggest one thing is more urgent than the other in the eyes of the community but if it isn't urgent to the council's eyes then literally what's the point, its basically just confirmation to them that enough care about what they're already planning to do while ignoring everything else around it.

 

[Floatstonemafia]

nah, single tera means that it's more constrained, like mega evolution or z-moves. you'd have to have a single dedicated tera mon on your team instead of anything potentially doing it. the mechanic itself is not an issue. the things that are icky about it (to me at least) are the fact that any mon on a team can use it and the necessity of playing around certain mons like they have 10 typings at once. single tera + preview solves everything that i personally think is bad about tera. the main problem with it is that it makes sense and will fix things, so people won't vote for it

My single biggest issue with tera restriction is that if we're going that far, we might as well ban it. That's as deep down the rabbit hole as the highly complex bans trying to axe baton pass strategies until people wised up and just banned baton pass. The point was to maintain relatively simple bans, and anything creating as large of a gap between cart and smogon as restricted to 1 is imo a big no-no. Especially since it runs into the fairly obvious problem of smogon tries to keep the simulator as playable on cart as posssible, and that's a restriction that's simply not really feasible on cart besides a gentleman's handshake that you will only tera X mon. It's not like mega stones were you could say 'you cannot have a legal gengar with gengarite on it' or dynamax were the choice was 'alright no one touch the dynamax button'. You kind of half ass it where you say 'alright, every mon can tera, but only one can actually do it. And we call it ahead of time.'

The second big issue is that it still has a number of problems. It still makes the format offensively favored (because if you get the one tera, putting it on a sweeper has drastically better returns than a defensive mon) because it still enables a sweeper to bypass their checks. It also does not solve the teambuilder problem. You still have to treat every mon in the format like it could become 4 other things until proven otherwise, and that extreme pressure on teambuilding is also contributing to how shitty this gen is. Like why would we go nuclear and still not fix the problem in it's entirety.

 

[Candelia]

My single biggest issue with tera restriction is that if we're going that far, we might as well ban it. That's as deep down the rabbit hole as the highly complex bans trying to axe baton pass strategies until people wised up and just banned baton pass. The point was to maintain relatively simple bans, and anything creating as large of a gap between cart and smogon as restricted to 1 is imo a big no-no. Especially since it runs into the fairly obvious problem of smogon tries to keep the simulator as playable on cart as posssible, and that's a restriction that's simply not really feasible on cart besides a gentleman's handshake.

The second big issue is that it still has a number of problems. It still makes the format offensively favored (because if you get the one tera, putting it on a sweeper has drastically better returns than a defensive mon) because it still enables a sweeper to bypass their checks. It also does not solve the teambuilder problem. You still have to treat every mon in the format like it could become 4 other things until proven otherwise, and that extreme pressure on teambuilding is also contributing to how shitty this gen is.

I mean, its better than a stall-favored meta, isn't it? Of course, in the perfect world, both sides would be viable and great to use, but a stall-favored meta would be beyond terrible.

Wouldn't it? okay im really overstepping my limits here so feel free to flame and smite me for how wrong I am lmao

 

[Floatstonemafia]

There is 0 chance this meta every becomes stall favored, unless a crapton of mons get booted to ubers. You would probably need to axe Valiant, Bax, Kingambit, Gholdengo, Garg, Hoopa, and Ursa to get there. After a tera ban. Even without tera there are way too many stallbreakers present in the format, with too little hazard control. Not to mention Gholdengo and Garg who are basically anti-stall - the pokemon.

And even if somehow we get there, we could just, ya know, ban some stall mons.

 

[Candelia]

Fair, fair... Okay, I see your point.
That went a lot better than I thought it would.

 

[Delibird Heart]

There is 0 chance this meta every becomes stall favored, unless a crapton of mons get booted to ubers. You would probably need to axe Valiant, Bax, Kingambit, Gholdengo, Garg, Hoopa, and Ursa to get there. After a tera ban. Even without tera there are way too many stallbreakers present in the format, with too little hazard control. Not to mention Gholdengo and Garg who are basically anti-stall - the pokemon.

And even if somehow we get there, we could just, ya know, ban some stall mons.

I'm curious, was there ever a stall/defensive mon banned from OU in the last few years ? I don't remember anything like that happening, ever. Granted, I don't think there was any meta in which stall was straight up dominant, but it was certainly strong in gen 6 (at least that I remember, could be wrong) and there was never talk of a msab suspect (the biggest stall enabler) or something similar. Similarly, clef was very very strong last gen but I don't think it was ever considered for a suspect despite being by far the best defensive/utility mons of maybe all OU gens ever. I'm not saying council is "big stall", but it does seem there's a bias towards taking action against offensive mons rather than defensive ones, even when they become very centralizing/ubiquitous. It might just be that none of these was quite over the line though. But I seriously hope for a garg suspect at some point (then again if tera goes garg will also be easier to deal with, so it might not be necessary).

 

[Eeveeto]

I'm curious, was there ever a stall/defensive mon banned from OU in the last few years ? I don't remember anything like that happening, ever. Granted, I don't think there was any meta in which stall was straight up dominant, but it was certainly strong in gen 6 (at least that I remember, could be wrong) and there was never talk of a msab suspect (the biggest stall enabler) or something similar. Similarly, clef was very very strong last gen but I don't think it was ever considered for a suspect despite being by far the best defensive/utility mons of maybe all OU gens ever. I'm not saying council is "big stall", but it does seem there's a bias towards taking action against offensive mons rather than defensive ones, even when they become very centralizing/ubiquitous. It might just be that none of these was quite over the line though. But I seriously hope for a garg suspect at some point (then again if tera goes garg will also be easier to deal with, so it might not be necessary).

At the end of Gen 6 Mega Sableye was banned (which I think was a big mistake btw).
Shadow Tag Ban was also influenced by Gothitelle being used in Stall teams with Trick+Rest or sets that PP Stalled defensive threats or some wallbreakers not in Stall teams.
Dugtrio is more complicated, since it's purely an offensive Mon. However, Arena Trap was largely influenced by Dugtrio in Stall teams revenge killing popular Stall breakers like Heatran or Pursuit Tyranitar.

 

[Delibird Heart]

At the end of Gen 6 Mega Sableye was banned (which I think was a big mistake btw).
Shadow Tag Ban was also influenced by Gothitelle being used in Stall teams with Trick+Rest or sets that PP Stalled defensive threats or some wallbreakers not in Stall teams.
Dugtrio is more complicated, since it's purely an offensive Mon. However, Arena Trap was largely influenced by Dugtrio in Stall teams revenge killing popular Stall breakers like Heatran or Pursuit Tyranitar.

Huh ok, my bad then, I really forgot about the msab ban. Shadow Tag and Arena Trap could arguably be seen as having been banned for being just too strong in general, but it's true that it was mostly used on stall. However the ability to trap heatran or other similar mons could be unvaluable for a lot of teams (even in gen 7 AG, trapping Pdon with Z ground dugtrio to let your scarf/specs kyogre sweep was a strat at some point).

 

[ianlazerbeem]

My single biggest issue with tera restriction is that if we're going that far, we might as well ban it. That's as deep down the rabbit hole as the highly complex bans trying to axe baton pass strategies until people wised up and just banned baton pass. The point was to maintain relatively simple bans, and anything creating as large of a gap between cart and smogon as restricted to 1 is imo a big no-no. Especially since it runs into the fairly obvious problem of smogon tries to keep the simulator as playable on cart as posssible, and that's a restriction that's simply not really feasible on cart besides a gentleman's handshake that you will only tera X mon. It's not like mega stones were you could say 'you cannot have a legal gengar with gengarite on it' or dynamax were the choice was 'alright no one touch the dynamax button'. You kind of half ass it where you say 'alright, every mon can tera, but only one can actually do it. And we call it ahead of time.'

The second big issue is that it still has a number of problems. It still makes the format offensively favored (because if you get the one tera, putting it on a sweeper has drastically better returns than a defensive mon) because it still enables a sweeper to bypass their checks. It also does not solve the teambuilder problem. You still have to treat every mon in the format like it could become 4 other things until proven otherwise, and that extreme pressure on teambuilding is also contributing to how shitty this gen is. Like why would we go nuclear and still not fix the problem in it's entirety.

completely agree, "Tera captain" is a ridiculous mechanic that makes no sense and has zero place in discussion.

The fact that there are folks suggesting "we don't have to ban tera, we just need to add Tera type at preview, only allow one predetermined Mon per team to Tera, ban Tera blast, and only allow (or ban) stab Tera, then it'll be balanced and we can preserve the mechanic" is a fucking joke. What's being "preserved" exactly?

 

[Napoli Burns]

Serene Grace is an uncompetitive

it is not, the game offers abilities and items to contrast it or playing around like rhelmet, rough skin or just be faster or resist the hit

because they have been an accepted part of the metagame for a long time

flame body is only on a contact move, scald on some mons with low spa is just an inferior wow and on mons with high spa hpump or surf is just better, twave/paralys has immunities, u have items to contrast it

If I switch Tapu Bulu

If I use Kartan

we are in 2023, covid ended maybe u should think more about the present

Viable RNG =/= no counterplay RNG

u can't counterplay rng of quick claw except hope to be lucky or use only priority; the item is abused by high atk pokemons that can 2okho most of the metagame even if the hit is resisted

see how much priority moves exist in 20 years of the game and the base power of them, qc give some sort of priority to any pokemon u want

If Sand Attack starts seeing legitimate and viable 1% use in modern times, there is a very good chance for some to beg for a Sand Attack ban by nitpicking

u really have no arguments, how sand attack that is passive, make u lose momentum can be compared to a +0.5 priority cc of iron hands that i want to rkill with an earth power of sandy shocks? qclaw doesn't require setup at all

You can't be pro-Scald and anti-Quick Claw with these arguments. Either learn to play and stop whining about Quick Claw,

lEaRn To PlAy U cAnT bE pRo ScAlD

The thing I fundamentally disagree with this post is that my issue with Quick Claw is on principle, and a consistent definition of competitiveness. If Quick Claw was not used at all, I'd still want it banned. I want Focus Band gone, for instance, an item I've literally never seen be used on Smogon before. Because I see this as just an active improvement on the game.

flop the pig made a post full of retoric without saying anything, linking bullshit articles and "i used qclaw on thorn in gen 7"

 

[pika pal]

flame body is only on a contact move, scald on some mons with low spa is just an inferior wow and on mons with high spa hpump or surf is just better, twave/paralys has immunities, u have items to contrast it

I would note with Scald it's not quite that cut and dry a comparison (don't have a major disagreement with the others). WoW is 85% accuracy and a free switch to anything that can absorb the status or to Fire types, who usually match well into a lot of Wisp users due to Passivity or resisting their own moves types. Scald is a 30% chance but also significantly bypasses Taunt as an option, so Stallbreakers can't taunt a Scald Water and set-up safe from Burn compared to a WoW user, which has significant momentum options. The only Burn immunities we have are mons with specific abilities or Fire types, of which only Volcanion, Baxcalibur, and Garganacl get truly free switch-ins to the actual Water Attack (Garg by virtue of having Recovery for what would be SE Chip damage)

0 SpA Toxapex Scald vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Heatran: 102-120 (31.5 - 37.1%) -- guaranteed 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

This is a mon with 53 SpA, and yet that's not a negligible amount of damage to take if you don't have self-healing. On the offensive considerations, sure, a lot of Water attackers prefer Hydro Pump or Surf's power for KOing things, but it's not like running Scald to punish what should be safe switch-ins is by any means unprecedented: Keldeo's absolute lack of coverage left it the slot to play with, and some Pokemon with what would be offensive stats even have tried running bulky sets because Scald basically means free Physical Longevity such as Starmie and Vaporeon (whose statline is a Bulky attacker well before the defensive mon Scald made it into), alongside it being unequivocally the best Mono-Attacking option for Water Boosters like Suicune and even the rare CM Kyogre set in Ubers. Hydro Pump maybe but for Surf, that extra 10 BP (12.5% increase in power) is only worth it if it amounts to 6.25% damage that even one Burn Proc will get you, and that assuming it matters in the Meta being played (Gens 6-7 not having Boots and throwing Nukes around already, not to mention the state of Gen 9 if we end up with it back in DLC like people speculate from previews).

I'm still convinced that Scald's place in VGC as the reliable ST Water STAB (burns or not) was a factor in the Status itself getting the damage reduction in Gen 7. 1/8th of your health getting freely thrown around on a spammable move is kind of dumb even if the Phys drop means nothing to you.

To reiterate: Scald was not "inferior" WoW or Water STAB. Scald was the baseline that your mon needed a Damn good reason not to use if it was anything less than Hyper Offensive missing several Major KO thresholds. Counterplay exists but it still such a pacebreaker on teams that Scald is the one dictating the flow of the teambuilding rather than being in response to something, because if your win condition is weak to Scald you WILL run into it across all the users it had, compared to being able to play by ear for certain Breakers or other Defensive staples.

tl;dr Diatribe against Scald, move is too reliable for what it does to be called a "worse" anything. Not comparable to QC in direct practice but equally frustrating garbage for different reasons.

 

[Froctopus]

flop the pig made a post full of retoric without saying anything, linking bullshit articles and "i used qclaw on thorn in gen 7"

Yeah his post is full of rhetoric, he's trying to persuade people not to ban quick claw by using examples scenarios.

"No YoU cAn'T uSe OuTdAtEd ExAmPlEs To SuPpOrT aN iTeM i DoN't LiKe"

In effect, yes, avoiding using a physical attack on Kartana against a Zapdos is competitive, and able to be played around. Because in the gran scheme of a game that isn't fucking HO vs HO, where Kartana will be sent out several times, and Zapdos will probably live, it is almost a guaranteed chance that Zapdos will get the paralysis. This makes Static a "RNG" ability, but it is also, at the same time, competitively consistent.

Here is an example from Toxapex. Staying in on 0 Attack Landorus-T and using Scald. Even if this does not burn, this play is not fully fueled by "risking it all on a 30% chance", as the Toxapex player is confident that they will be able to rack up Regenerator healing and be able to do something similar, again. This and other examples especially makes Scald, not in effect about RNG, but actually competitively consistent.

You say that individual Pokemon should be banned for King's Rock, like Cloyster. When would King's Rock finally reach that barrier of "breaking enough Pokemon"? And I'd like to also say this: Cloyster, the Pokemon itself, has competitive value. Being an option on teams even without King's Rock, or in lower tiers. King's Rock, however, does not actually add any value to a tier like Gen 8 OU. It is also not consistent enough, because playing around King's Rock flinch is not something that can be played around from Turn 1. Cloyster cannot generally fish over and over again, making a check like physically defensive Toxapex a "well lol, lmao, get fucked because didn't teambuild!", it is usually down to one single turn for the opponent to make a move, and for most viable teams, needs to just not get flinched.

You could argue that banning Cloyster would get rid of the majority of this. I would mostly agree, but why keep King's Rock? It is an item that is only there to be abused and become an uncompetitive force, what value does it add to any Smogon tier? You may say "well, duh, to buff Cloyster/Maushold/etc.!" But that isn't the only thing that it does, it also enables unsavory playstyles and has potential.

In short, I find your argument to not be sound, from the perspective of: Game design. I feel like people in Smogon forums and the like often do not understand, that at the end of the day,

Smogon 6v6 Singles is not the same game as Pokemon Scarlet/Violet. And Smogon acts as a collective game designer. A game designer that cannot create new elements, but actively makes decisions that changes the game and influences different play. Banning Volcarona was not a decision the council made just because they felt it was uncompetitive, but it was a game design decision, a metagame design decision, believing Volcarona's defensive utility on teams to not be worth the potential trouble for upcoming tournaments.

As a community we must not forget that we hold the keys collectively to the game design of what we want to play, and that choosing to keep things like Quick Claw/King's Rock is not a neutral game design choice, it is biased, with the language of neutrality. You have decided that keeping things for the sake of keeping things is more worthwhile to the game, than patching up potentially uncompetitive- no, objectively uncompetitive elements.

On the topic of "holding an item = competitiveness", no. Things such as picking an ability (Sand Veil) is also not a competitive choice, despite being technically a trade-off. Garchomp is actively better on average with Rough Skin, and choosing Sand Veil instead is not enough to make something competitive, because it is consistency that makes something uncompetitive.

I've heard some float around the idea that items (like Scope Lens) that increase the odds of RNG-related effects from occurring are also in the category of uncompetitive. I absolutely disagree, because I see these as creating more consistent results, rather than the otherwise. For instance, Scope Lens + an ability like Sniper makes Critical Hits an expected result throughout a game, and not something that is expected. I would go as far as to argue that things such as Serene Grace actively make moves such as Flamethrower more competitive. Because I am here to present this conclusion:

Competitiveness and RNG's relationship is about expectation and agency.

It is not simply "the more RNG effects the more bad uncompetitive" that makes something like Quick Claw banworthy to me, it's that it removes agency from the opposing player while something like Serene Grace is not.

Getting flinched by Jirachi Iron Head a few times is not Serene Grace making the game less competitive, because that is actively the expected result of the interaction, and can be played around as a result, and unlike something like Quick Claw, can actively unironically be stopped. For one, a Pokemon like Ferrothorn can literally kill something like Scarf Jirachi for trying a stunt like that. Two, if not Scarf, it can be outsped. Three, what makes Shaymin-Sky banworthy isn't "RNG", it's actually how consistent it is at proc'ing effects that removes the opponent's agency.

Quick Claw being 20% and having such a drastic effect means that there is no real way to actively combat it, while also not being consistent enough to make matchups consistent. This isn't a situation of "Kartana uses Smart Strike and if the opponent goes into Zapdos, it can get paralyzed 30% of the time, this is something the Kartana player must avoid." It's "I can revenge kill this Pokemon, or it can 20% of the time kill my Pokemon back instead, without me even being able to get a turn."

I'd go as far as to argue a Quick Claw with a 100% chance of going faster than an opponent in the same priority bracket, would actually make the item more competitive. Because it would be consistent, so you'd just know that it will occur. Yes this would probably get banned, but that would not make it uncompetitive, just overpowered, which is not the same thing.

So, again. What is the game design reason to keep an item like Quick Claw as is? It is not consistent enough to be something you can reasonably expect a player to, turn by turn, with most teams, punish, or play around. Ursaluna at +2 is going to kill most Pokemon, especially in a Hyper Offensive meta. Will we ban any bulky Attacker because it would be viable on these Pokemon?

Or is Quick Claw just an undesirable item for a competitive metagame?

I really like your idea that Smogon is more of a game designer, I never really thought about it until you brought it up. Thought that was a really cool insight that I'm going to use as I go forward.

However, onto your Quick Claw take. I like the idea that there has to be competitive consistency. However the examples don't really help explain what you mean. In the Zapdos example you lead me to believe that it would be inevitable that the Kartana will attack the Zapdos. Because of this, the Kartana will be forced to risk the paralysis. Sure this is consistent because its a set % chance on physical attacks. But you are abusing the threat of static to keep the Kartana. For the Toxapex example you are using the combination of bulk, regenerator and scald to threaten out a Landorous, with the added 30% chance to increase your survivability with each scald you get off. In both these examples it seems to me that the "consistency" is that you have scenarios where they are abused to ward off certain matchups. How is this any different than quick claw? If I have quick claw on a bulkier pokemon, I use its combination of bulk, attack strength, and the added chance to go first to threaten out your weaker attackers and force a more favorable match up.

Now some may say that quick claw takes agency out of the game because it "adds a 0.5 priority to a move" but how is this lack of agency different from switching in Zapdos on my physical attackers, I can't do anything about it. What about a water type just spamming scald and switching when it gets low. The answers to these questions are play around it. So that should be the answer to the quickclaw mon. Its pretty easy to decipher what mons run quick claw, especially with the infamous team with QDQC Slowbro-G. So understand the threats and make sure you have proper ways to counter them. Contrary to popular belief, these quickclaw mons can't OHKO their checks unless they set up.

 

[KamenOH]

Yknow, if people are really pressed about QC, wouldnt it be far easier to just implement Item Clause? Not only would only one mon be able to run QC, most likely G-bro, but it would also curb power creep by a lot. You could only run 1 HDB mon, 1 Booster energy mon, 1 leftovers mon, 1 LO mon, etc. ad infinitum. There wouldn't be the hellbent curve towards HO, as much as i fucking love said curve, and stall gets two Leftovers mons because toxapex could always run Black/Toxic Sludge, one of those two iirc.

This isnt some fucking thesis, but really item clause seems long overdue.

 

[Sheerluck Holmes]

Preview doesn't change the fact that mons can just pick counters regardless of knowledge foretold

Take, for example, flying gambit versus a team with ice spinner tusk. Instead of it being a clear eq or cc, it's a dangerous 50/50 for the tusk player because click eq into the new airplane gambit and you lose, and click spinner into a still steel gambit and it just resets itself.

This is the fundamental problem.

On the flipside, if Tera Preview reveals Fire Kingambit, then Earthquake becomes a 100% cert move rather than "Do I click Ice Spinner and hope he goes Flying" instead?

 

[awyp]

On the flipside, if Tera Preview reveals Fire Kingambit, then Earthquake becomes a 100% cert move rather than "Do I click Ice Spinner and hope he goes Flying instead?

That's the benefit of Tera Preview (No what do they tera to, but when)

 

[Froctopus]

Yknow, if people are really pressed about QC, wouldnt it be far easier to just implement Item Clause? Not only would only one mon be able to run QC, most likely G-bro, but it would also curb power creep by a lot. You could only run 1 HDB mon, 1 Booster energy mon, 1 leftovers mon, 1 LO mon, etc. ad infinitum. There wouldn't be the hellbent curve towards HO, as much as i fucking love said curve, and stall gets two Leftovers mons because toxapex could always run Black/Toxic Sludge, one of those two iirc.

This isnt some fucking thesis, but really item clause seems long overdue.

This sounds like an interesting idea to spice things up

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

yeah, item clause does seem like the best way to solve the quick claw issue, and it has official precedent. the problem here isn't one quick claw, it's five quick claws

 

[Hpdsd]

Yknow, if people are really pressed about QC, wouldnt it be far easier to just implement Item Clause? Not only would only one mon be able to run QC, most likely G-bro, but it would also curb power creep by a lot. You could only run 1 HDB mon, 1 Booster energy mon, 1 leftovers mon, 1 LO mon, etc. ad infinitum. There wouldn't be the hellbent curve towards HO, as much as i fucking love said curve, and stall gets two Leftovers mons because toxapex could always run Black/Toxic Sludge, one of those two iirc.

This isnt some fucking thesis, but really item clause seems long overdue.

If you want Gholdengo and maybe just maybe Glimmora and Sam-H banned than yeah that is a cool idea.

 

[SnackWasTaken]

it is not, the game offers abilities and items to contrast it or playing around like rhelmet, rough skin or just be faster or resist the hit



flame body is only on a contact move, scald on some mons with low spa is just an inferior wow and on mons with high spa hpump or surf is just better, twave/paralys has immunities, u have items to contrast it





we are in 2023, covid ended maybe u should think more about the present



u can't counterplay rng of quick claw except hope to be lucky or use only priority; the item is abused by high atk pokemons that can 2okho most of the metagame even if the hit is resisted

see how much priority moves exist in 20 years of the game and the base power of them, qc give some sort of priority to any pokemon u want



u really have no arguments, how sand attack that is passive, make u lose momentum can be compared to a +0.5 priority cc of iron hands that i want to rkill with an earth power of sandy shocks? qclaw doesn't require setup at all

lEaRn To PlAy U cAnT bE pRo ScAlD



flop the pig made a post full of retoric without saying anything, linking bullshit articles and "i used qclaw on thorn in gen 7"

Damn you really dissected that article. No need to be so harsh pal

 

[Exotic64]

i wish item clause did exist since it would make it so there wouldnt be 6 heavy duty boots stall or 4 booster energy HO
however i do want quick claw banned, mainly because in the right situations it can flip a game on its head with its 20% chance
people can argue that critting or something like para would be similar, but the thing is quick claw is just an item and although u can foregow possible other better alternatives, having that 20% chance to get the best scenario where your strong mon (balanced with its abysmal speed) can go first and possibly OHKO an important mon etc
gen 9 OU is currently of a very high skill ceiling and one mistake often costs the game itself. having quick claw to just proc (20% is a low, albeit not impossible chance) in the right circumstances can be devastating. the team Delibird Heart made is in my opinion the best possible way to abuse mono quick claw - putting it under screens makes the normally pretty fat mons such as iron hands and ursaluna (which have very good bulk and very good offensive stats however lacks speed which is how GF intended to balance it out) much harder to kill, and due to their hefty bulk and limited pool of real checks and counters when under screens - if said check/counter does get wiped out as a result of the 20% quick claw it can straight up mean game over. this is partially light screen and reflect's fault however it should be said that quick claw is uncompetitive and should be looked at.

quick claw is as rage inducing as static and flame body. i think gen 8 flame and static was good since it punished braindead u turn spam and kncok off. but in gen 9 if my booster valiant or tusk gets paralyzed from zapdos static they are effectively rendered useless for the rest of the game. and similar to quick claw, its an ability and acts as a passive, not an active, meaning its all by chance and it cant be controlled by the player. it just happens. will static be banned? i hope so but realistically its not happening lmfao. however, quick claw being banned is definitely an option if something like bright powder is gone.

 

[kosecant]

This sounds like an interesting idea to spice things up

Just remember, pretty much every rule set in VGC serves to make the game more offensively centered, because that’s always been the priority for that format. Item clause will not solve the problem everyone thinks that it will