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Evasion Stacking: It's a thing.
Topic Started: Jul 4 2015, 09:59 AM (2,802 Views)
TM93
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GrayGriffin
Jul 5 2015, 01:02 AM
TM93
Jul 4 2015, 05:02 PM
While I do appreciate something like an AoE Move dealing an automatic Tick of HP even on a Miss, in the end I can see how it's just an extra layer of complexity to the system. Smite may honestly be okay as a perk for a move with shaky accuracy, but it's not really a selling point for me overall: an offensive build really should be formed around HITTING the target, not MISSING the target.
Wouldn't it make more sense to say it's based around damaging, instead of hitting or missing, the target? In that case, Smite attacks are obviously good, since they can do damage in more than one situation.
Smite is still something that should not be a selling point of a move, as you should be aiming to hit the opponent over relying on Smite's effect to deal damage. I'd rather take a more accurate, low damage move that will reliably hit even at lower levels, than a high damage, low accuracy move with Smite. Losing between 30 and 50 percent of your original damage depending on the original type interaction is a massive loss, and is not a situation you want to be in.

It's better than not doing any damage at all: don't get me wrong, but if I have the choice between Aura Sphere and Focus Blast, you can bet your butt that I'm going to be taking Aura Sphere so that I can keep up reliable, consistent damage over damage that spikes up and down due to the Smite keyword (in addition to how Focus Miss has Scene x2 Frequency). In addition, Focus Blast has an AC of 7, even with the very basic 6 Evasion that's now 13+ you have to roll, a 'modified' 40% chance to hit, that means you'll be hitting for the Smite Damage far more than the Normal Damage in this scenario. I'd rather just lose 11 base damage and keep something that I know will hit regularly, than Focus Blast. This is obviously a bit of an extreme scenario: another example would be Flamethrower vs Blast Burn/Fire Blast (the former of the two is still bad: Exhaust Moves are not a good idea even with added benefits such as more Damage and AoE, heck, the fact that it has Smite makes it even worse: when it Misses you not only deal far less Damage, but since you still DID Damage you are now forced into that Recharge scenario, which leaves you highly vulnerable for a turn. You have to be guaranteed of a KO to want to use it, but the scenarios where you both have access to Blast Burn and where you'll be facing Enemies with Evasion less than 6 will be fairly low, considering those types of moves tend to either be from Expensive TM's, mid-to-late-game Tutors (only Fully Evolved Starters can learn it) or are very high on a Pokemon's Level Up list (Gyarados/Dragonite/Tyranitar for example with Hyper Beam)). But honestly I'd still lean towards Flamethrower for my choice of moves, losing 8 Damage for -2 AC and EoT Frequency makes it something that can easily be patched up by your own Stats, which have a higher impact on damage later in the game than DB does anyways.

Consistency is a key point in an effective setup on any Tabletop system: it doesn't matter what system. Smite is nice if you don't have any other choice and NEED the Coverage (such as Focus Blast on Alakazam or Iron Tail on Raichu), but if a Pokemon has an option for a Lower-damage, higher-accuracy, or just plain spammable Move over one with Smite, most of the time that's the better option for the Pokemon in the long run.
Edited by TM93, Jul 5 2015, 05:38 AM.
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zoofman
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Have you considered introducing more Smite moves into your battles, including moves like Aerial Ace and Shadow Punch, or using abilities that neuter evasion from non defensive sources?

There's plenty of counter measures to evasion stacking already built in.
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FanaticRat
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While I did bitch about evasion as well (though honestly that was more about trainers being able to get tons of it from shields, which I should have clarified and is really a separate problem ) thinking back on it some more, I do have to admit it hasn't been a major problem at the levels I've experienced, which have been about 10-50 pl 5-25 tl. How many of these games get to a high enough level that everything gets +6 evasion anyway. Or rather, at what point does it become a problem in play?

And yes, I realize I'm being a gigantic hypocrite.

Edit 2: Another thing, TM's SE essay was mentioned, but I would like to caution people using it as a basis of argument that the scenarios used to make the arguments aren't actually indicative of how most if not all ptu games will play.
Edited by FanaticRat, Jul 6 2015, 10:50 AM.
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Giant2005
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FanaticRat
Jul 6 2015, 08:55 AM
And yes, I realize I'm being a gigantic hypocrite.
You aren't being a hypocrite - you are acknowledging that you were mistaken. That is such a rare and wonderful thing on the internet, don't label it with a word with such negative connotations as hypocrisy.
Seriously, kudos for being such a top man.
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TM93
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zoofman
Jul 5 2015, 10:33 PM
Have you considered introducing more Smite moves into your battles, including moves like Aerial Ace and Shadow Punch, or using abilities that neuter evasion from non defensive sources?

There's plenty of counter measures to evasion stacking already built in.
Jumping right back in here: Smite against an Evasion Stacker is honestly an even worse idea: At +9 Evasion, you'll be hitting for the Smite Damage more often than you will for the Normal Damage. Again, a 30-50% loss on these Moves means that you'll be taking a fairly long time to be KOing them: as you saw in my Calculations on my little Rant, even if you're hitting for Double Super Effective Damage with one of the most powerful STAB Combos in the game (and High Jump Kick hits as hard if not harder than most Smite moves), lowering that by 30-50% against even a lower-level, less bulky opponent is going to be making it take over 4-6 turns (due to the vast majority of Smite moves having Scene x2 Frequency, even with a PP Up that's Scene x3) to KO for the most part. Even at +5 in your Offensive Stat it'd be iffy it you could even deal a 2HKO with a Smite Move, it takes far too long to build up to a level where Smite is worth it. Some Smite moves against Targets that just aren't Double Weak? Probably never going to snag a KO in the first place if Smite keeps being activated.

Even if the odds are 50/50, unless the Pokemon has a Double Weakness or is below Level 30 (which I find highly unlikely: most Smite moves don't start appearing in a Pokemon's Movepool until later levels), Smite moves also cannot even be guaranteed to be Super Effective against an Evasion Stacker.

And here's a bit of the Issue in my opinion too: you have to go and make a Build that not every Pokemon can run to thwart Evasion abuse: but quite literally any Pokemon can get to +9, and it's even easier with the new rules about getting a Training Feature off the bat (Inspired, if you haven't guessed): Bright Powder may seem expensive, but it's a bit over twice the price of an Ultra Ball. If over the course of your campaign, a Trainer cannot plausibly obtain what's basically 20 Ultra Balls in order to get 6 Bright Powders, I would consider the GM was being pretty stingy with the money rewards. But either way, quite literally every Pokemon can use this tactic, not counting further issues such as Illuminate creating a -2 Accuracy Penalty (not based around Evasion, but it would bring you up to a Pseudo-11 if you stacked with the 9 previously. Even AC 2 moves are now essentially AC 13 in that scenario: that is SCARY).

But anyways, here's the heart of the issue: with relative ease, quite literally every Pokemon can become an Evasion abuser, which turns every Move that is not No-Miss into a 50/50 or WORSE unless the Attacker has:

No Guard (not very common at all, Machamp, Honedge/Doublade, and Golurk get it if memory serves)
Compoundeyes (A few Bugs get it but very little else, and even then it really only lowers it to +7 Evasion over +9 essentially)
Keen Eye (Pretty much only on Flying Pokemon, and only removes the issue of Boosted Evasion, at +6 Evasion even an AC 2 Move is at a shaky 8+ roll)
No-Miss Moves (While they are fairly common, the issue, which I'll elaborate on more, is that not every Pokemon gets enough No Miss Moves that also deal damage to be able to gain proper Coverage)
Vulnerability (This is fantastic honestly, but not every Trainer is going to be taking one of the Classes that let you apply it and quite frankly it'd be rude to expect them to, and moves that apply Vulnerability naturally are: Bounce. That's it).
Hone Claws (Not a massive amount of Pokemon get it, and if you do go that route it takes forever to be able to negate what an Evasion Abusing Pokemon gets to their cap instantly)
Thunder Wave (Helps with Speed Evasion but does not really stop Defense-based Evasion. The target would still be at +7 Evasion from Defenses if they were using Bright Powder)
Smite (you saw my rant above, for the most part against an Evasion abuser you are just flat-out neutering your offensive presence if you rely on Smite).

If you take a look, while I stated, and it's quite true, that Evasion Abusers include quite literally every Pokemon in the book, there are at best about 50% of all Pokemon that naturally get Evasion-thwarting techniques. And unless you dedicate your whole team to stopping Evasion, there's no way to stop them all. A Crobat with Aerial Ace seems great, until the foe tosses out Ice Beam and starts threatening you more offensively than you are to it. A Roserade with Magical Leaf seems fine and dandy until you come up against any Pokemon with Sap Sipper. A Lucario with Aura Sphere seems fantastic, until you run up against any Ghost Type ever. This means that a GM can easily counter Evasion "Countering", and in PvP Scenarios Evasion just becomes something the game centers around. This is not a very healthy environment overall.

While I fully acknowledge that there are a lot of ways around Evasion, the fact of the matter is that it's also far too easy to ABUSE Evasion as it is compared to how easy it is to stop Evasion Negation, and as such there are always going to be Evasion users that will screw up your 2 or even 3 Evasion "Counters", unless you dedicate your full team to Evasion Negation (which overall somewhat lowers your effectiveness against Pokemon that do not abuse Evasion, as some of these Pokemon may just get better Ability or Move Options in certain cases), which will just screw your team over.

As for my Rant, I 100% acknowledge that this is a very sterile, controlled test, but the point was NOT to show all of the dozens of interactions that could POSSIBLY happen in the scenario. If I added in Trainer Interference from Edges or Features, that was an extra layer of complexity that the test would have to allow for, and that layer of complexity would not be something that would be the same for everyone who utilized that in their Pokemon's Builds. The same goes for if I added Allies to the scenario: I do fully admit that most PTU games have bigger, Team-oriented Battles, but on the other hand if the Player with Blaziken has 2 or more Allies and Weavile has literally nothing, that's quite honestly an Encounter that is inherently stacked in the Player's favor no matter the Type Interactions. In what would be considered a "fair fight" the Weavile would have several Allies, Weather that is in it's Favor, or have a Boss Template if we really only intend to have Weavile out there and nothing out. If it's a Gym Battle with 2 or more Players, the Gym Leader had darn well better be using an equal number of Pokemon or have a Boss Template up, otherwise that's just asking to give the Players an easy win. I feel I more than justified my decision with the two Pokemon I used for an Example. If Blaziken is allowed allies to go and finish off Weavile, why isn't Weavile allowed allies to go and help protect it from Blaziken by keeping the others busy somehow, or just attacking Blaziken at the same time?

And yes, you are right, that's NOT how most matches will go: most Pokemon don't even have Double Weaknesses to Exploit like I gave in my Example.

As for the Levels, I stated this before and I will state my feelings again: just because not every Game hits Level 100 or even Level 60, does not mean that it's effects on Mid to End Game should be ignored. What that tends to create is a System that really only encourages people to get about halfway in and then have interest drop as things suddenly become agonizingly slow and tedious compared to the simple ease of the Early game.

Another idea for Evasion that would have little to no effect on the Early game but help drastically at the late to End game: lower how much Evasion a Pokemon can have from it's raw Stats to 4, but keep the Hard Cap at 9. This means less Pokemon will be creating 50/50 Whiff Fests by simply EXISTING at Level 70 or higher (and if you just go for a balanced set, it's very possible for a Pokemon to hit 30 in all it's Evasive Stats around Level 60, earlier if you have the right Trainer Build and Species, Blaziken and Weavile have middle-high BST's, Starters all sporting BST's of 53 if memory serves, Weavile sporting 51, but they also have very mixed Offensive Stats, something with less points in STAK and more in Defense/Special Defense/Speed would hit that point several levels faster), and it would also mean Pokemon might start putting a bit less into their Defensive Stats if they mean to take an Offensive Role: creating a more specialized, dedicated Attacker setup, which would in turn help make the Type Interaction of Lategame become less bothersome in what can survive what when it really shouldn't be doing so due to it's perceived role on the team.

I want to state that I do not think Evasion is a bad thing in and of itself, or that it's something that should not be stackable: a Frail Evasion user sounds just fine, as it's a gamble: get hit once and you're pretty much out, but too many Evasion users can also be very BULKY while also hitting fairly hard: it really needs to be properly looked at to see if it's really something healthy for an Endgame scenario, and I really believe that it is not.

I also want to state no disrespect to anyone who believes Evasion is fine as it is: and I do agree, at early to early-middle Levels, it IS just fine, it works well, as do the new Type Effectiveness Mechanics, the issue comes in at Endgame when everyone has a hard time hitting everyone and the Pokemon basically gain Anime Endurance.

I also mean no disrespect to the Devs; I entirely understand that Evasion is a tricky issue and is very hard to balance in a game like this. These are just my feelings on the subject, I understand that emotions and tone are very hard to convey through text, and I understand that I also get very passionate about things I have a strong opinion about. I just want to apologize here if this came off as rude, harsh, or otherwise in any way.
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FanaticRat
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A couple things.

Quote:
 
Jumping right back in here: Smite against an Evasion Stacker is honestly an even worse idea: At +9 Evasion, you'll be hitting for the Smite Damage more often than you will for the Normal Damage.


As opposed to 0 damage from missing with a non-smite move.

Quote:
 
Again, a 30-50% loss on these Moves means that you'll be taking a fairly long time to be KOing them: as you saw in my Calculations on my little Rant, even if you're hitting for Double Super Effective Damage with one of the most powerful STAB Combos in the game (and High Jump Kick hits as hard if not harder than most Smite moves), lowering that by 30-50% against even a lower-level, less bulky opponent is going to be making it take over 4-6 turns (due to the vast majority of Smite moves having Scene x2 Frequency, even with a PP Up that's Scene x3) to KO for the most part. Even at +5 in your Offensive Stat it'd be iffy it you could even deal a 2HKO with a Smite Move, it takes far too long to build up to a level where Smite is worth it. Some Smite moves against Targets that just aren't Double Weak? Probably never going to snag a KO in the first place if Smite keeps being activated.

Even if the odds are 50/50, unless the Pokemon has a Double Weakness or is below Level 30 (which I find highly unlikely: most Smite moves don't start appearing in a Pokemon's Movepool until later levels), Smite moves also cannot even be guaranteed to be Super Effective against an Evasion Stacker.


You ignore that the damage will add up, and not every move is gonna miss against a mon. I also really question if your builds are actually something players will use, or if it is applicable to pokemon outside of that scenario (which, honestly, didn't wow me. Showing calcs for a pokemon getting 2hko'd doesn't make me think they're some massive tank).

Quote:
 
And here's a bit of the Issue in my opinion too: you have to go and make a Build that not every Pokemon can run to thwart Evasion abuse: but quite literally any Pokemon can get to +9, and it's even easier with the new rules about getting a Training Feature off the bat (Inspired, if you haven't guessed): Bright Powder may seem expensive, but it's a bit over twice the price of an Ultra Ball. If over the course of your campaign, a Trainer cannot plausibly obtain what's basically 20 Ultra Balls in order to get 6 Bright Powders, I would consider the GM was being pretty stingy with the money rewards. But either way, quite literally every Pokemon can use this tactic, not counting further issues such as Illuminate creating a -2 Accuracy Penalty (not based around Evasion, but it would bring you up to a Pseudo-11 if you stacked with the 9 previously. Even AC 2 moves are now essentially AC 13 in that scenario: that is SCARY).


But why is every pokemon running around with bright powder anyway? If you're pouring your held items into that, you're missing out on stat boosters, focuses, special items, mega stones, contest accessories, etc etc. You're also using one order over all the other great orders there are in the game just to get the evasion that high, and it's not even guaranteed to work.

Quote:
 
But anyways, here's the heart of the issue: with relative ease, quite literally every Pokemon can become an Evasion abuser, which turns every Move that is not No-Miss into a 50/50 or WORSE unless the Attacker has:

No Guard (not very common at all, Machamp, Honedge/Doublade, and Golurk get it if memory serves)
Compoundeyes (A few Bugs get it but very little else, and even then it really only lowers it to +7 Evasion over +9 essentially)
Keen Eye (Pretty much only on Flying Pokemon, and only removes the issue of Boosted Evasion, at +6 Evasion even an AC 2 Move is at a shaky 8+ roll)
No-Miss Moves (While they are fairly common, the issue, which I'll elaborate on more, is that not every Pokemon gets enough No Miss Moves that also deal damage to be able to gain proper Coverage)
Vulnerability (This is fantastic honestly, but not every Trainer is going to be taking one of the Classes that let you apply it and quite frankly it'd be rude to expect them to, and moves that apply Vulnerability naturally are: Bounce. That's it).
Hone Claws (Not a massive amount of Pokemon get it, and if you do go that route it takes forever to be able to negate what an Evasion Abusing Pokemon gets to their cap instantly)
Thunder Wave (Helps with Speed Evasion but does not really stop Defense-based Evasion. The target would still be at +7 Evasion from Defenses if they were using Bright Powder)
Smite (you saw my rant above, for the most part against an Evasion abuser you are just flat-out neutering your offensive presence if you rely on Smite).


One of the big ones you're forgetting is simply flanking. That lowers evasion right there and doesn't cost a thing other than a bit of teamwork. Thunder Wave helps with speed evasion and can make enemies lose turns, which is a big thing. Moves like mind reader and lock on exist, not very well distributed, but they exist. Moves like Sing and Sweet Kiss debuff on misses, and that's counting trainer options to increase accuracy (there are a good handful, but focused orders and precision orders are big ones, as well as ravager's for a greater number of attacks). Oh, and that's not counting the large amount of ways pokemon can increase their damage so that when they do hit the numbers matter more, like items, trained stats, greater effect ranges, last chance features, duelist exploit, etc etc.

Quote:
 
If you take a look, while I stated, and it's quite true, that Evasion Abusers include quite literally every Pokemon in the book, there are at best about 50% of all Pokemon that naturally get Evasion-thwarting techniques. And unless you dedicate your whole team to stopping Evasion, there's no way to stop them all. A Crobat with Aerial Ace seems great, until the foe tosses out Ice Beam and starts threatening you more offensively than you are to it. A Roserade with Magical Leaf seems fine and dandy until you come up against any Pokemon with Sap Sipper. A Lucario with Aura Sphere seems fantastic, until you run up against any Ghost Type ever. This means that a GM can easily counter Evasion "Countering", and in PvP Scenarios Evasion just becomes something the game centers around. This is not a very healthy environment overall.


So not only does my opponent have a full team of +9 evasion pokemon, they also have full counters to any counter I could throw at them. I would be surprised if a GM was making teams to be so directly adversarial to mine, and would have to wonder where all these trainers/bad guys/legendaries/wild mons/level 1 rattatas are getting bright powder. Not to mention, if such a tactic is really so detrimental to the game, why would a GM purposefully make encounters around it then try to hard counter people for trying to deal with it if all it does is artificially lengthen the game?

Quote:
 
While I fully acknowledge that there are a lot of ways around Evasion, the fact of the matter is that it's also far too easy to ABUSE Evasion as it is compared to how easy it is to stop Evasion Negation, and as such there are always going to be Evasion users that will screw up your 2 or even 3 Evasion "Counters", unless you dedicate your full team to Evasion Negation (which overall somewhat lowers your effectiveness against Pokemon that do not abuse Evasion, as some of these Pokemon may just get better Ability or Move Options in certain cases), which will just screw your team over.


This argument really supposes the person saved up enough money and forwent a lot of other stuff to get not one, but multiple pokemon into high evasion. Nevermind the fact that such a strategy might not even work, it takes a lot more set up and sacrifice than I think you're really acknowledging.

Quote:
 
As for my Rant, I 100% acknowledge that this is a very sterile, controlled test, but the point was NOT to show all of the dozens of interactions that could POSSIBLY happen in the scenario. If I added in Trainer Interference from Edges or Features, that was an extra layer of complexity that the test would have to allow for, and that layer of complexity would not be something that would be the same for everyone who utilized that in their Pokemon's Builds.


The problem is, the controlled test will rarely, if ever, happen, so it's a lot less applicable to real play and decision making. Sure, each player's not going to be accounted for, but with all the feats and items and abilities and edges available at that high level it's inconceivable that the pokemon wouldnt' be adjusted in some way.

Quote:
 
The same goes for if I added Allies to the scenario: I do fully admit that most PTU games have bigger, Team-oriented Battles, but on the other hand if the Player with Blaziken has 2 or more Allies and Weavile has literally nothing, that's quite honestly an Encounter that is inherently stacked in the Player's favor no matter the Type Interactions. In what would be considered a "fair fight" the Weavile would have several Allies, Weather that is in it's Favor, or have a Boss Template if we really only intend to have Weavile out there and nothing out. If it's a Gym Battle with 2 or more Players, the Gym Leader had darn well better be using an equal number of Pokemon or have a Boss Template up, otherwise that's just asking to give the Players an easy win. I feel I more than justified my decision with the two Pokemon I used for an Example. If Blaziken is allowed allies to go and finish off Weavile, why isn't Weavile allowed allies to go and help protect it from Blaziken by keeping the others busy somehow, or just attacking Blaziken at the same time?


I don't know why you assume that the group fight argument implies that the enemy has absolutely no support from other mooks to balance the encounter, because that's not going to happen either. I feel you're warping the argument to justify your very odd and overly-specific scenario. But yes, the Weavile probably has allies to assist it, and then things come down more to party composition, positioning, and teamwork than this coinflip scenario you propose. THAT is how the game will turn out, not white room 1v1s with carefully calculated statistics. A real game will be too dynamic to allow for that, which lessens the impact of so called tanking double SE hits. A simulation is only as good as it can be applies to real life.

Quote:
 
And yes, you are right, that's NOT how most matches will go: most Pokemon don't even have Double Weaknesses to Exploit like I gave in my Example.


Then why use it as an arguing point?

Quote:
 
As for the Levels, I stated this before and I will state my feelings again: just because not every Game hits Level 100 or even Level 60, does not mean that it's effects on Mid to End Game should be ignored. What that tends to create is a System that really only encourages people to get about halfway in and then have interest drop as things suddenly become agonizingly slow and tedious compared to the simple ease of the Early game.


This again raises the question; has anyone actually hit that high to see this in action? I know the plural of anecdote isn't data, but neither is hypotheticals. I see a lot of calculations and theorycraft about what high level is like but haven't really seen any playtesting or anything, so I'm not even sure if this problem actually exists at high levels like you claim. And even if mid or end game shouldn't be ignored (I would think 60 is more akin to end game myself), neither should the parts of the game most people will be playing, and thus I think it's premature to change things based on a scenario people rarely play without considering the scenarios most people do.

Quote:
 
Another idea for Evasion that would have little to no effect on the Early game but help drastically at the late to End game: lower how much Evasion a Pokemon can have from it's raw Stats to 4, but keep the Hard Cap at 9. This means less Pokemon will be creating 50/50 Whiff Fests by simply EXISTING at Level 70 or higher (and if you just go for a balanced set, it's very possible for a Pokemon to hit 30 in all it's Evasive Stats around Level 60, earlier if you have the right Trainer Build and Species, Blaziken and Weavile have middle-high BST's, Starters all sporting BST's of 53 if memory serves, Weavile sporting 51, but they also have very mixed Offensive Stats, something with less points in STAK and more in Defense/Special Defense/Speed would hit that point several levels faster), and it would also mean Pokemon might start putting a bit less into their Defensive Stats if they mean to take an Offensive Role: creating a more specialized, dedicated Attacker setup, which would in turn help make the Type Interaction of Lategame become less bothersome in what can survive what when it really shouldn't be doing so due to it's perceived role on the team.


Can't really comment on the evasion thing here, but that last line, just 'cause a mon's offensive doesn't mean it should be getting OHKO'd or 2HKO'd due to a role on a team. Stuff like that is, really, not all that fun or interesting; your mon does one thing, then oops, fainted, switch out for another.

Quote:
 
I want to state that I do not think Evasion is a bad thing in and of itself, or that it's something that should not be stackable: a Frail Evasion user sounds just fine, as it's a gamble: get hit once and you're pretty much out, but too many Evasion users can also be very BULKY while also hitting fairly hard: it really needs to be properly looked at to see if it's really something healthy for an Endgame scenario, and I really believe that it is not.


Like I said before, I really would like to see playing data on this before jumping to conclusions, 'cause I really doubt everyone's going to be springing for high evasion on their mons with bright powder and inspired training and 30/30 defenses.
Edited by FanaticRat, Jul 6 2015, 06:50 PM.
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Giant2005
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TM93, Bright Powder doesn't work the way you stated. It grants +2 Speed Evasion and Speed Evasion is capped at +6. It does nothing for a build that is already getting +6 Speed Evasion naturally and it isn't going to help those that are relying on Physical and Special Evasion. Also, every single Pokemon is capable of dealing with an Evasive foe - all it takes is one grapple and their Evasion is erased.
More than that though, you seem to be stuck on the Nintendo games that the TTRPG was based off. In the Nintendo games it is fine to run around one-shotting NPCs but the same principle would be extremely poor game design for a TTRPG. In the Nintendo games, if you get one-shotted, it isn't a big deal - you either take the monetary loss and carry on your way or you simply reload and try the fight again. In a TTRPG, being one-shotted could cost you months of real time work on a character. Not only might the Trainer or Pokemon die outright but even a simple loss can be crushing to the wrong type of character.
With having everything one-shotting everything in sight, the chances of that final battle are so much greater and it really limits the options of what the GM can use as an antagonist - the GM would actively have to decide between using a Pokemon that a player has no chance of surviving or essentially erasing that Pokemon from the game in order to keep his players alive. The reduced super-effective damage usually prevents people from being one-shotted and gives them a fighting chance against something that is super-effective against them. Sure they are heavily disadvantaged but with a good strategy and maybe a lot of luck, they can survive and even seize victory. It turns a guaranteed death into an extremely challenging but uncertain battle. Anyone that has ever played a TTRPG and become invested in their character knows that the latter is the better option.

Just the other day one of my companions had his Arcanine fight a Scyther. That Scyther was heavily disadvantaged and was basically being burned to a crisp, yet secretly I was hoping he would win. It was a really good fight that had the expected result but that Scyther fought well and managed to cause an injury against the Arcanine before he was defeated. That was a good fight that everyone walked away from happily. That same fight would have been boring and far from being worth remembering if that Arcanine simply one-shotted that Scyther and called it a day.
Edited by Giant2005, Jul 6 2015, 07:58 PM.
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loyalbabus
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Giant2005
Jul 6 2015, 07:56 PM
TM93, Bright Powder doesn't work the way you stated. It grants +2 Speed Evasion and Speed Evasion is capped at +6. It does nothing for a build that is already getting +6 Speed Evasion naturally and it isn't going to help those that are relying on Physical and Special Evasion.
To be clear on this, the text states "Additionally for every 5 points a Pokémon or Trainer has in Speed, they gain +1 Speed Evasion, up to a maximum of +6 at 30 Speed.". My reading on this is that the speed evasion from stat points only goes up to +6, but it doesn't state or imply a hard cap. I may be missing a separate rule in the book, mind. Thing is massive.

Edit:

Also "To calculate these Evasion values, divide the related Combat Stat by 5 and round down. You may never have more than +6 in a given Evasion from Combat Stats alone."
Edited by loyalbabus, Jul 6 2015, 09:02 PM.
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Shirokiba
Pokémon Trainer
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evasion is capped effectively at +9. no literal cap except from stats (+6) but a moves AC will not go above +9 AC, you can have more evasion to cover potential debuffs to it and all but it's largely not needed.

No matter from which sources you receive Evasion, you
may only raise a Move’s Accuracy Check by a max of +9.

This is from the PDF page 234 lower right
Edited by Shirokiba, Jul 7 2015, 01:28 AM.
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FanaticRat
Pokémon Trainer
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According to the devs, bright powder can't bring speed evasion past 6, and since it's speed evasion that can get screwed by thunder wave and glare, the argument that every mon can get it for +9 evasion is kinda moot.
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