Staff Post Summer Scramble Showdown Rule Clarification

Alright, sorry this took so long, but I figured I should give this the time it deserved and try to explain all of the points I’ve seen. I was going to write this as a reply to the original thread, but it ended up being lengthy, so I decided to make it it's own thing. After reading this if you still have concerns, you can use this thread from now on to express those concerns.


One-Status rule:

If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to read up on the specifics of the status rule, because it looked like there was a little confusion on that.

I know Toxic Spikes wasn’t explicitly stated, and that’s a bit of a grey line, so thank you for bringing that up. Toxic spikes can be avoided. There are plenty of Pokémon that can be swapped in to avoid being poisoned by it. Because of that, I’d say Toxic Spikes is fine, along with other entry hazards. That’s technically not YOU applying the status condition, it’s your enemy applying it to themself. You wouldn’t use Toxic on a Pokémon that can’t be poisoned, but you wouldn’t necessarily know if your opponent has a way to counter Toxic Spikes.

I also saw Scald being brought up, so I’ll point out this part of the extended rules. One of the things that was banned was “using moves with a chance to cause status conditions in conjunction with abilities like Serene Grace.” You can still use Scald, or any other damaging move with a CHANCE to cause a status ability. That’s based on luck, so if you want to take the risk spamming Scald for a burn, that’s fine. Using it with Serene Grace is banned because it decreases that luck aspect. Nuzzle and Inferno were mentioned to be banned specifically because they’re a guaranteed paralysis/burn.


Protect rule:

One other thing that I’d like to point out is how the points are being distributed for this. Winning, of course, is going to give you the most points, but you’ll also get points for any Pokémon you manage to knock out, even if you lose. The reason being because this is also a team building competition. You’re getting points not only for your team winning, but how well your team does in general. How tedious do you think it would be if both teams used stall sets to try to keep their Pokémon from fainting? What if one team did this and the other didn’t? The team that doesn’t use stall sets might be just as viable, but wouldn’t get any points if they can’t defeat any of the opponents Pokémon. That would be frustrating if it happened to you, it wouldn’t be any fun. All of that effort you put into making your team would be for nothing, even if it was perfectly viable.

I will yield on one point. It was mentioned that substitute was easy to deal with and is used on bulkier/offensive sets. That’s true, although it’s also used on some stall-sets, which is why it was originally banned. To be honest, I was really on the fence about this one specifically, but I think I’ve thought of a compromise. I’ll be willing to change Substitute from “banned” to “restricted,” meaning that if you decide to use it on your team, you’ll have to ask me to check the Pokémon you’re using it on. If I give you the go ahead, then go ahead and use it. If not, you’ll have to make some changes. I'll be updating the rules with this change momentarily.


Legendary Ban:

As for legends, there are 36 legendary Pokémon that would be useable for OU, all of which I see fairly frequently. In almost every single battle, in fact. That’s not counting alternate forms either (like Kyurem/Kyurem-black) which I would say you wouldn’t be able to count separately based on the no repeat rule anyway. So 36 Pokémon in a competition where you’ll be using a total of 24 Pokémon. Even if teams weren’t made entirely of legends, there would most likely be a lot of them. Yes, this is in part for variety, but also to encourage you to try something new. Again, team building is an important aspect of the competition, try to be creative and outmaneuver your enemy’s creativity.


Conclusion:

Think of this competition like it’s own ranking. OU, LV edition. You wouldn’t question why Arceus can’t be used in OU. A variation of the one-status rule was already done, to a lesser extent, with the sleep clause. Both you and your opponent will be following these same rules. It’s no different from going between an OU, NU, Ubers, or any other ranking with set rules and restrictions; this is just its own ranking with its own rules, using OU as the backbone.

 

You're right in thinking that this was to prevent FEAR. As you yourself said, they're gimmicky. Going back to the importance of team creation, FEAR sets don't require very much creativity. Also imagine for a moment you were on the receiving end of that. You and your team spent nearly a week trying to come up with an awesome and unique team... just to be swept by a level 1 Aron. Would you be happy with that?

Aww you beat me to the punch. Well, you guessed right!

 

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "loses no turns" but I'll try to explain what I think you mean. Correct me if I'm wrong. The rule only applies if you put the status effect on your enemy. If you keep using Hypnosis and it keeps missing, you can keep doing it until it hits. You can apply however many status conditions you want to your own Pokémon and this rule applies to your opponent as well. If your opponent uses Rest and falls asleep, and you use Hypnosis afterwards and it doesn't work since your opponent is already asleep, you weren't the one to cause the status condition, so you still have your one status condition you can inflict.

I would saaaay it would be a one time thing. I'll say this though: Yawn gives your opponent the chance to switch out, so if you use Yawn and they choose to stay in and fall asleep, that's on them. That might help you out if you want to do something based on sleep?

If anyone thinks of another situation similar to Yawn, go ahead and bring that up here, but I'll probably be okay with it.

Good question. I'll have to think on this one a bit more. A back and fourth with Heal Bell and a status move could be a battle of its own kind. For this week at least, I'll say no, because I'm not sure how long it would take me to decide and I wouldn't want people to put effort into making their teams just for the rule to be changed up, prompting them to redo things. You already have less time this week than initially intended since the event ended up going up a little later than expected.

The point was primarily just to make it a lot harder to do and also make it so there's less of a risk of the battles becoming too tedious. There may be workarounds. This may not eliminate it entirely, but at the very least a lot more thought than usual will have to go into it.

 

The rules list on the main event thread has been updated with the "restricted" rule for Substitute and clarification for moves like Toxic Spikes or Yawn, in which your opponent can intentionally avoid the status condition.

 

So it looks like there’s been a bit of a disagreement over the disqualification for this week’s match. That’s understandable, Crimson lost 6 points. But it got to the point where a member of Team Crimson approached the captain of Team Azure to ask for a compromise. While very nice of Azure to consider doing this, I thought I should mention a few things. Keep in mind this is, at least in part, so Azure knows the full context of what happened leading up to the disqualification.

The deadline, although tentative, was for midnight last night, PST. Team Azure had their team done early, and had time to ask me to check their team to make sure they hadn’t broken any rules, which is something I have mentioned multiple times as an option. I never got a confirmation that Crimson had even finished their team and, when I looked through their team creation thread, saw that their team was declared as being finished nearly 3 hours after the deadline. It should also be mentioned that essentially half of the team was put together by one person within the last 2 hours of the team-building phase. One of the three Pokémon that was added in the last two hours was one of the Pokémon holding Leftovers, which is what led to the team being disqualified.

This was preventable at so many different points, but in the end, the result is entirely Crimson’s responsibility. Both Azure and Crimson have had the same amount of time to put their teams together and both have known the rules from the start. They’ve been there for both teams to reference whenever they wanted, and yet only Crimson broke a rule. It wouldn’t be fair to Azure, even if Azure agreed to a compromise, when they put in so much effort to make sure the rules were being followed.

Again, this is only week one of four. If Crimson is able to keep battling like they did today, they could easily earn those points back. Consider it a learning experience so something similar like this doesn’t happen again.

 

@Gwoomy @OzoneFruit sorry, forgot to ping in the last update, so I'll do that now. Please make sure your teams see both my previous message and this one.

I've been talking with @TripleAAABattery for a little while now. I don't like that he essentially lost his chance to battle for his team and, due to the amount of work he has personally put into the event so far, I thought it would be appropriate to let him represent his team once more. This will apply to one of any of the remaining future battles, so he can come back at any time.

At the risk of sounding like I'm expecting this to happen again, which I don't but I just want to say this anyway, everyone, on both teams, please try to be careful going forward. No one likes when things like this happen. Something similar happened to my team last year, and it was for an event I wasn't around at the time to help with. I felt like if I had been there I could have prevented it, so I know how much this stings. Work together, double check each other's work. You don't need to be a competitive expert to help out in an event like this. Don't forget, you're getting participation points for this too.