Luke

Can you respond please, otherwise what you have said is baseless and adds nothing to this thread.

No showdown tiers = good PSL. There's like 3-4 competent picks and the rest are absolute dog shit. E: also having LC as a tier is aids because there's no tours except unofficials... No matchmaking.. So it's hard to tell as a manager who is good and who isn't lmao

@Rache@Squirtle @Kyu I'd appreciate if any of you could read my post, and any corresponding replies from known members of the community - and potentially respond. Thank you ?

I agree, however I wanted to include it as a last sub-section as I think it is stupid how it is abuseable. Thanks for pointing that out, 3 clips were incorrect they have all been fixed.

I don't want to risk my post being nuked ?

I'll provide not only theory but also evidence from recent tournaments & current ranked play from this season + last season to back up this claim. In this very long winded post I will break down how the introduction of RNG strategies bit-by-bit has slowly began to shape OU into an RNG hell hole. *I have tried to find at least 1 video example for each point here, but the video may not correlate directly with the point made since I do not record every single duel which I play lol In this thread i will attempt to list and create a discussion on the current RNG abuse which (mainly) is happening in OU, alongside a list of viable solutions for each. I hope to create a discussion and dialogue with players, mods and developers alike. So we can nip these issues in the bud. If anyone has any good examples in lower tiers please post and I'll add it to the post too. Firstly I want to speak about in my opinion the biggest issue right now, and that is: Kings Rock: For those who don't know, or need a refresher this is what this item does: "Grants all attacking moves that do not already have a chance to flinch a 10% chance of causing each target to flinch." Now, a 10% flat rate would not be entirely problematic, it's an annoyance.. sure. The issues begin to arise when you combine this item with multi hit moves, specifically Skill Link on Cloyster. Utilising King's Rock gives Cloyster a 41% chance of flinching the opponent when using Rock Blast or Icicle Spear. a 41% flinch chance is very high. 2nd to only Togekiss (60%) having this high of a % rate to brute force an opposing check or counter with flinches is way too high, and way too consistent when paired with a move with can boost speed up to +2. I'll show some examples below. Example 1: https://streamable.com/4by1p9 Cloyster brute forcing probably the best wall against it (Relaxed Poliwrath) Typically this is unviable, but this was used in an anti Cloyster counter team. Even so it was irrelevant because it just dropped to the flinches. - Warning message did not do anything. Example 2: https://streamable.com/mi5wkg Cloyster brute forcing its way past a Jellicent even after it was disabled by its only move which hits Jellicent for decent damage. The other player is forced to recover, then scald and pray for a burn, which does not happen. - Warning message did not do anything, again. Example 3: One of my many personal experiences with this horrible mon flinching my bold Rotom-Wash to death from max HP. Warning message did not do anything.... Yet again. (This was from ranked so I could not record for a better view.) In every single scenario the new change in mechanic of announcing King's Rock had 0 impact, and this is the case almost every single time. As there is nothing to counterplay this mon other than luck itself. Even if you hard counter it. What are the solutions to fix this item? Well, there are a few viable ones. However the developers are very hard headed on not banning hax items for some strange reason. Below I will list off a few acceptable / "viable" options which I will list from best to worst. 1) Remove the item from competitive play 2) Nerf the flinch % to 10% even on multi hit moves 3) Make Skill Link + King's Rock banned under a new clause "Skill Link + Kings Rock Clause" 4) A complete rework of the item, changing it completely adding a new viable strategy; you are unable to be flinched. This will mimic how the old version of inner focus used to work. As you can see the lower we go in the list the more wacky the solutions are, I would also like to mention that I strongly believe even if it is banned for Cloyster we will see a big spike in usage of King's Rock on Weavile to utilise beat up + Icicle Spear, which is manageable yes. But still utilises a very broken anti skill strategy. But other than this I believe they are all are suitable changes which will balance this item. Cursed Body: For those who don't know, or need a refresher this is what this ability does: "When a Pokémon with this Ability is hit by a damaging move, there is a 30% chance that the Cursed Body will disable that move of the attacking Pokémon for 4 turns." Once you begin to play regular ranked / tours you really notice how ridiculous and pretentious this ability is. The 2 users of this ability mostly have to be attacked directly to be taken down, since Gengar is immune to toxic and very hard to chip to death; while Jellicent almost always carries taunt. Putting you into a situation where every time you attack with a choice locked mon (which is most commonly used to eliminate both mons) you immediately can become setup bait for a setup sweeper hiding in the back. Here's an example below of how Cursed Body takes the game out of peoples hands from those who have very valid strategies of eliminating a Pokemon with cursed body: Example 1 (shortened): https://streamable.com/17g5yt Example 1 (full battle): https://streamable.com/c4ho7d As you can see, the game was won until cursed body had activated and he was able to put rocks up.. So he switched while rocks went up, meaning that he could no longer set up rain and win the game. This would not have been able to happen without Cursed Body. Potential solutions: 1) Ban the ability from competitive play 2) Nerf the Cursed Body chance to 10% 3) Only non contact moves / non choiced etc 4) Ban Cursed body + Revert gengar to Levitate Sand Veil: Probably the last of the big RNG issues in OU right now is sand veil, It is able to completely turn the tides in games and you can be absolutely helpless to it.. Example: https://streamable.com/egvs01 As you can see, this player was about to win with Excadrill - but out of no where Garchomp dodges an earthquake and kills his win condition. There is no way it would have survived without this dodge. It is able to change games and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. There is no counter play other than not using sand yourself, and hoping that your opponent does not use sand (this is difficult when Tyranitar is used with Garchomp 47% of the time). This is not healthy. In my opinion this ability should fall under the current evasion clause we have in PVP, since the ability literally says "Sand Veil raises the ability-bearer's evasion by 20% in a sandstorm. It also gives immunity to sandstorm damage" How does this not fall under the evasion clause? This is an ability which directly boosts evasion. Accupressure: This is NOT an over-arching meta destroying move, but i thought i'd mention it since it should simply just be immediately banned under the evasion clause. I won't type much for this, as it is honestly quite rare. However - I just ask you to watch this example clip of it boosting evasion. This is absolutely insane, I know. But I literally spectated 1 game from this specific person and I saw this lol. I was also told from various players about them auto losing to this because they simply couldn't hit. Example: https://streamable.com/yxrkr3 - For context the Cofagrigus was tricked. We have an evasion clause, this should simply fall under the evasion clause and the move should no longer boost evasion or simply be banned in competitive play. But, how successful and consistent are these strategies? Let me show you examples from a player who i have anonymised as "RNG Abuser" to prevent any witch-hunt or toxicity directed to this person. Since it is not their fault that these strategies are available to be abused, but the current system which enables them. The team he abuses: https://pokepast.es/1ff4127f4d6d5766 (Abuse of Kings rock and Cursed body) CC Win Official Final (OU) Official Final (OU) All of this is within the past 2 weeks (from written), these are examples from 2 back to back official OUs and 1 CC. But, if this is not enough please see below that he is able to net himself on a top 10 spot, with a 70% WR on ranked in over 500 games. Using purely, and only RNG strategies. This is not the only person abusing such strategies, but the most prominent one who caught my eye. I don't necessarily want to close off this post at all, but rather I'd like to continue the discussion to the rest of the comments in this post. I want people to share their thoughts on these items, abilities and moves. Are they as potent as I believe they are? And if I am wrong please disprove me below. I am open to all forms of discussion with anyone with good points, thank you for reading. Chinese translation + thread:

Where kalos

Trying to lowball someone who literally updates a spreadsheet of every price of any notable vanity probably wasn't the wisest idea..

Pvp players did not have functioning ranked rewards for about 3 years. Please stop complaining because we have finally got some attention after 3 years of begging lol

Ok so They don't publicly say what they voted. They don't respond when their anonymous vote is questioned.. They already make decisions before any discussion thread goes up ( JJ had said this regarding Lucario but a mod removed it lol) They don't get any negative feedback because they are protected.. And i can go on and on and on. But as Quinn says, why waste my time hammering home points when most of this stuff gets ignored anyway. I reiterate what is the point in these discussion threads other than making us measly non TC members feel like we have a say in what happens - when it has been shown that we absolutely don't since it's all ignored no matter how active / good we are competitively. You can keep saying we are listened to, but they are just words. And actions are louder than words as the old saying goes. And TC's actions don't reflect what they say.

We have the right to criticise TC members for making decisions which are illogical from a competitive standpoint. They are supposed to be the backbone of PVP balancing, if we can't question when they do stuff we believe is wrong then what's the point of all these discussion threads?

they'll reply one day

This would make so much stuff which is good unbearably broken. No thanks. When we get HA and Legends (2030) maybe this can be discussed..

Our TC members ladies and gentlemen! Trying to create a fair and fun meta for every style right? ? Uh no, "due time" is several months lmao. Because of how stupid the tiering and banning system is we will have to endure a full season of an unplayable tier (probably longer) because there's a policy of not banning within a season. Some examples of broken shit staying in a tier for a very long time ( can't give exact times for all since I don't remember but its at least 3 months for some 9 months for others): SD Garchomp Draco Hydrei NU Durant NU Venomoth NU Roserade UU Porygon2 UU Haxorus UU Porygon-Z NU Dugtrio And some others which I will have forgotten. So yeah, it isn't a problem for you dead TC members who don't touch the game. But for those who play regularly and enjoy this game 3 - 9 months of an unplayable tier will be a problem.

This should be all you need to see to know you are making a huge mistake

Alakazam to NU? This is a visual bug and you mean NUBL right... P2 + P-Z + Luc in UU will make the tier an absolute shit show, dropping more broken stuff to keep broken stuff in check is not good. Luc might be fine without P2 and P-z though. But guess we won't ever find out..

@MunyaCan I double check that the tier shifts won't be put into place until the 10k RP tours for UU and NU respectively? iirc they usually were done like this in the past and it really sucked..

+1 I'm typically quite negative but I have to say it was great that staff hosted one of these, I know a lot of people were excited for it.

absolutely agree, gtl flipping doesn't look like it has results within the first few days.. But for very little time put into flipping you can easily make back millions by waiting weeks for stuff to sell. And just putting in 1-2 hours a day (if that) If you want to learn about GTL flipping then just watch the market closely and don't be afraid to fail, that's how you learn. You will lose money in the start and overpay for stuff, but eventually you'll have knowledge which comes second nature to you of the market.

Not too sure why my post was deleted? It was very polite and had good points in it.. But whatever, I'll repost it as it surely must've been a mistake ? What are the state of HA and dungeons now? Since for some reason randbattles got priority over them.. Will dungeons and HA be put on hold because of random battles? I saw Rache talking about there being updates coming to Rand battles. Will this happen instead of HA and Dungeons?

Thanks, where is this posted so I can know where to look ?

Could we not be told when they will be hosted before the season even starts? Makes sense to do it this way since people can plan ahead.. And tours can be scheduled around them

Ever since the introduction of Sinnoh there has been an unofficial rework of how banning works, it has been stated sometimes in threads or referenced but it has NEVER been officially stated and cleared the air being outlayed with what are the exact current tiering policies. As seen here, both of these threads are currently listed as the active rules. This doesn't happen, if it did Hydreigon, Wobbu, Garchomp would all be in ubers tier. We need an mapped out detailed version of what the hell the current tiering system is, it's currently nerfs right? Why? And why does it not state this. What is the competitive benefit of not banning Pokemon and just pulling 50 complex bans out of your guys ass to keep broken stuff in tiers. Which overcomplicates stuff for not only new players, but old players alike. There is a distinct lack of knowledge from the players side on what the hell is going on nowadays in pvp and I feel we deserve some explanations. Yes in the past the dev team has been fucked over by admins and mods leaking stuff, which has forced them to be in some kind of goth-like teenage rebellious state where they moap around and are completely closed off not revealing absolutely anything. We are not trying to fuck over the dev team, we simply want to know what the future of the game we have poured way too much time and effort into is. I am telling you now for a fact these threads do not create enough communication and something needs to change, a TC discord would solve this problem. As I stated before 1-2 posts from an odd TC member and you saying "We are looking at it" is not really giving us much clarity. This is great and all, but we don't see this. The inactive players could be amazing at theorying and arguing but we don't see it, so all we see is dead players who never publicly comment, haven't played in years and we are supposed to rely on these guys to be creating a healthy and fun environment for tiers..? Do you not see the problem here.. Why was it not openly discussed when the issue was first raised nearly a month ago by a TC member? I only saw 2 members publicly comment about it. Except another post which was removed because it said stuff which you didn't like in it. This is good to hear I am glad something is finally being done about this, but the point still remains about the lack of communication in the public eye.

Can there be some form of TC discord created where we can actively engage with the TC members? Sort of fed up of having to hear 1 member comment about something, radio silence for weeks then Munya saying "we're discussing it soontm" it doesn't really seem like a good system.. Nor do we have any idea what is going to happen, while it seems like any input from players outside of TC is just ignored.. Not to mention many dead members hide behind this very private TC method. And now an ex TC member (a very active and currently successful one at that) has came forward speaking out on their incompetence. And when you're in control of our tiers, we should at least be able to see if these guys are competent - or just living in the past and doing guess work. Right now it's pretty much players theorying in our own player created discord, it would be a lot better to have an open dialogue with quicker response time with the tier council members. Maybe even a sub-section to the official one would work. Just some food for thought. It has been very frustrating for a long time basically talking to a wall about issues in competitive. I'd also like to add onto this that it's sort of unofficially been stated that there's been a change in how the tiering works, why is there no official announcement on this? Why do the competitive playerbase (a pretty large chunk of this game) have 0 idea on how the official logistics of competitive tiering works anymore? It has been left up to speculation. And from what I have heard many tier council members don't even properly know. Where is the clarity? @Munya @Kyu@Squirtle

Team Name: Hinata & Kageyama Player OU: Luke Player NU: Aloned