Ban King's Rock, Bright Powder, in PVP

[Speederbruh]

I don't know why it hasn't been done. I think this is unanimous, I don't believe there is anyone who would disagree with this but I'll make my point anyway.

 

Main user of King's Rock: Cloyster

Main user of Bright Powder: Sand Veil Garchomp in sand

 

These items are honestly terrible items, even for a Pokemon such as Cloyster, you get more value out of a Life Orb, White Herb, or most notably a Focus Sash. However, the issue with all these items are that they completely invalidate your opponent's turn.

 

In context of King's Rock skill link users, you are able to press buttons in a braindead fashion to muscle through checks and counters. Say I switch in my Slowbro (possibly the best check to Cloyster) into a Cloyster. I am expecting to use a move to either cripple or KO Cloyster. However, Cloyster is able to get through Slowbro simply by getting flinches; 

+2 252 Atk Cloyster Rock Blast (5 hits) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowbro: 150-180 (38 - 45.6%) -- approx. 3HKO after Leftovers recovery.

Thanks to Shell Smash, Cloyster becomes faster than pretty much everything else in the meta, so the only real surefire way to kill it after a Shell Smash is to have a weather sweeper up, or use priority moves. Sadly, most priority moves are physical, and Cloyster takes priority moves like a champ;

+1 252 Atk Dragonite Extreme Speed vs. -1 0 HP / 0 Def Cloyster: 120-142 (49.7 - 58.9%) -- 99.6% chance to 2HKO

So in most teams, you will find yourself praying to not get flinched by Cloyster in order to win. You most likely wont get flinched by it either (41% chance of proc), but, its a nice way to lose a game to someone spamming a button. It simply promotes unhealthy PvP mechanics.

 

In context of Sand Veil Garchomp with bright powder, that extra 10% turns the 1/5 dodge chance to a 1/3 dodge chance. If you dodge your opponent's attack, you essentially obtain a free turn! This allows for players to make plays assuming that their opponent will miss their attack, which they won't most of the time, but once every 3 games, you will be killing your opponent's win condition by simply staying into something you should not. For example, imagine a Mega Diancie and a Garchomp. Garchomp stays in and clicks Earthquake, trusting Sand Veil + Powder to dodge Diancie's Moonblast. The stars align and you dodge Moonblast, proceeding to one hit knockout the opponent's Diancie with Earthquake.

 

Now you may ask, how is this different from our beloved Serene Grace pokemon? Serene Grace Pokemon; namely Jirachi and Togekiss have a 60% chance to flinch with Iron Head and Air Slash respectively. The difference is that these Pokemon (most of the time) cannot win simply by closing your eyes and blindly clicking a move. Firstly, both of these Pokemon have no damage potential, their STAB moves are mediocre in base power at best (excluding Nasty Plot Togekiss sets). Togekiss is mediocre/slow in speed while Jirachi is mediocre meaning they can easily be checked by faster Pokemon even if they are lucky enough to get 20 flinches to break a Zapdos. As a solution, these Pokemon are often used with a scarf, allowing them to outspeed most of the meta while locking them into one move. Unlike Cloyster and Veil + BP Garchomp, there are multiple surefire ways to deal with these Pokemon; for example, as they are unable to deal any meaningful damage, a tank that resists their STAB (such as Heatran) can reliably mitigate any damage with Leftovers recovery, it should also be noted that Jirachi's Iron Head is a contact move, meaning abilities/items such as Iron Barbs/Static/Rocky Helmet can deal with it, and that Togekiss is a relatively slow Pokemon for a scarfer and vulnerable to priority moves, so there are many surefire offensive and defensive methods to deal with these sorts of Pokemon.

 

Summary:

King's rock and bright powder are items absolute noobs can use to hax better players and somehow win (once every few matches, odds are never in their favor) by using uncompetitive methods to do so, this is unhealthy for the meta. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

 

Overall these items are NOT COMPETITIVE, and should be removed from PvP.

[Cyanirl]

no thank u speeder

[Smogonplayer]

Lol skill issue, just learn to play little bro. 

- 1000 aura.

[Tgbnamish]

-1. 

[Senorsmeargle]

+1

[Cyanirl]

-1

[Bagv]

-1

[Cyanirl]

actually

+1

peace and love