A No-Item Tier

No-Item Tier:

The reason for this post is to make the claim that a tier without items would be as competitive or more competitive than a comparable tier with items.

Items create a layer of unpredictability that forces a player to rely on a level of chance instead of skill. When a player wins because of opponent play error instead of his/her play skill then that is a problem with our competitive system.

The main problem I have with the item system is that offensive items such as Life orb, expert belt, choice band, choice specs, and even the respective gems are more powerful than defensive items such as leftovers, respective defense increase berries, black sludge, bright powder, etc. The only comparable item is eviolite and it cannot be used on every defensive pokemon.

This creates an advantage for offensive driven teams and creates a stale environment for the competitive game.

This also limits the effective ability of many potential defensive pokemon and pidgeon holes players into choosing a limited selection of defensive pokemon, which in turn further increases the need for players to focus mainly on offensive pokemon when creating a team.

By removing the imbalance we would see more balanced teams and less OHKO's, which would allow for a wider variety of pokemon to be used competitively against each other.

Lastly, with the item system teams have less collective strategy and more individual strategy with simple type coverage. With a no item system, I imagine we could see new strategies arise that focus on team mechanics rather than more individualistic strategies.

It would be an interesting topic but hmmmm a lot of things would change

coice pokes would be screwed same with eviolite

There would be a lot of setting also which would become a little repetitive