We all know the feeling. You have played close to perfectly all game and have got yourself in to a great situation. As long as you keep one of your members healthy you basically have the game in the bag. You are forced to take a hit with your win condition that you know you can survive. Unless...A critical hit! Down goes your win condition and your chances of winning. You cry hax and tell yourself you're never playing this stupid game again, only to load another match a minute later. What are your opinions on luck as a component of the game? Do you think it's healthy to keep games less predictable and to give players another variable to consider, or do you think it is unhealthy for the competitive scene and leads to the worse player winning too often? Do you have any examples of times you or your opponent have gotten extremely lucky, whether it be luck at a crucial point in the battle or just a scenario that is extremely unlikely to happen? I personally think it's an important part of the game, though I wish there were more highly accurate options. For example, I think accuracy is an important component of the game and I like the high risk high reward idea with moves such as Hurricane which, while having a 30% chance to miss, has a 30% chance to confuse if it hits and has a high base power. I like how Hurricane (and its counterparts like Thunder and Blizzard) have remedies to their accuracy in rain, but I wish this were true for other moves. I feel like a similar change to Toxic could be made for Will-o-wisp and Thunder Wave, being that Fire and Electric types have 100% accuracy when using these moves. We still have access to these moves on Pokémon of other types, but having a 100% chance to burn move available seems fair. If not will-o-wisp, at least a separate move that certain Fire types get such as has been done with Spore. I do also think there should be trade-offs to using moves with relatively high secondary effect chances. Scald for example is a move that pretty much every water type should run at this point as there is no drawback. It is 100% accurate, has very similar base power to the alternative Surf, and puts pressure on switch ins. I feel like a change in base power of Scald would at least bring Surf back in to the conversation of 100% accurate water STABs as opposed to only being used in very niche situations, such as certain Manaphy to take on Chansey. The nerf to burns really didn't really change their effectiveness in the competitive scene all that much, and I feel the nerf to Thunder Wave was in the opposite direction. Paralysis in generally should have received an overall fall in full paralysis chance instead of making luck an even greater factor. That being said, 'hax' is certainly needed to discourage setup playstyles and to give players in tough situations a potential win condition to encourage them to continue playing until the end. These are two examples of when my opponent were incredibly fortunate. While they didn't eventually change the outcome of the battle, these events were very unlikely to occur. http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7vgc2017-499803318 My opponent needed his Quick Claw to activate, a critical hit and a poison to KO my Tapu Lele. Otherwise, my scarf Kartana would outspeed and KO his Weavile before he could move. He gets it. Kind of interesting how Quick Claw is the only form of priority that works in Psychic terrain. Also to note, I normally wouldn't Thunderbolt a Marowak, but considering I saw that Flare Blitz didn't have recoil I knew he was Rock head and not Lightning Rod and thought it was better not to risk Dazzling Gleam not taking the KO. http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-196119917 My friend has focus band proc 3 times in a row. Skip to turn 12 if you want to see it. I wouldn't recommend watching the whole battle, my friend has no idea what he's doing and just wanted to see what competitive was like and I just used a team I took from a smogon RMT. Just something I've never seen before.
