Honestly, this seems like people being afraid of change. Fact of the matter is, evasion mechanics are different now. It's no longer pure luck, so it's no longer uncompetitive. roar/whirlwind 100% accurate. toxic from poison pkm 100% accurate. defog and haze with defog getting a GAME defining buff. People are applying outdated knowledge to a complete new meta.
I've already explained before why those aren't always unreliable. Roar and Whirlwind don't do anything against Baton Pass teams, probably the greatest benefactors of dropping the Evasion Clause. Toxic fails against Poison-types, Steel-types, Pokemon with Substitute, Magic Guard/Bounce users, Pokemon with Taunt, etc. Defog and Haze are good, but even then you
still have to have the right solution for the right Double Team user. Everything learns Double Team, so you will never know what sort of evasion booster you're going to have to deal with until you actually see the move. You'll have to run multiple anti-Double Team measures to really be safe, and then you'll be going through quite a bit of trouble just to avoid being haxed, don't you think?
From where I sit evasion is an interesting, if annoying strategy, and more viable strategies = more variety = better game.
Clicking "Double Team" and praying for hax isn't a strategy. It's a desperate attempt by bad players at uprooting the legitimate skill advantage of good players.
Nobody is going to rise to the top of the ladder because of evasion hax.
Lol, I laddered to around #15 on the Ubers ladder not too long after Evasion moves were unbanned with a really crappy team based on Minimize Drifblim alongside a few random sweepers, and I'm an average player at best. Yes, people can rise to the top of the ladder with enough luck.
B. Your whole argument is based on Smogon's 6v6 swtich-to-a-counter metagame, which GameFreak neither supports nor tries to balance.
So your argument about evasion moves in Smogon's metagame isn't based on Smogon's metagame?
Yeah, sorry, I stopped reading after Whirlwind Staraptor.
I mean if you're forced to use specific pokemon vs specific pokemon as your counter argument, then I can say your double team jolteon can't do anything against my roar swampert. And then you'll say I'll support it with my swampert counter. and then I'll support with my anti-swampert counter, and so your bring out your anti-anti- swampert counter, and congrats we now have a pokemon metagame.
If Jolteon has a Life Orb and HP Grass, it OHKOs some variants of Swampert, but I digress. From the standpoint of the teambuilder, how are you supposed to know what the opponent's Double Team user is? You can't just excuse it as "well, no matter what Double Team user you mention, I'll have an appropriate counter" because team building doesn't work like that. Are you seriously supporting running several no miss moves, phazers, Poison-type Toxic users, etc. just so that hax doesn't get the best of you?
Ah, now I wasn't around for this debacle personally, but if I understand correctly the problem was that the Moody stall worked to boost ALL of your stats, not just evasion. So I don't think this is a very pertinent argument.
No, evasion was by far the worst part about Moody. I actually was around for that, and I remember not only the early Moody days, but also the more recent Moody suspect test in Ubers.