So many weather teams... Is non-weather viable?

I thought I'd chuck in some of my thoughts i've got after testing out a Trick Room myself pretty extensively.

Firstly, to those of you saying its "anti-weather", you aren't entirely wrong, its just that I have found Trick Room to be quite anti-meta. This metagame seem to be serving the speedier Pokemon a lot better than slow ones. Being able to turn your slow Pokemon into speedsters with just one ability is a godsend and can really rip shit up if your opponent doesnt know how to handle the situation they are in. Now obviously its sometimes difficult to fit Trick Rooms in when youre trying to also maintain the flow of the game.

The above point is the first thing i'd like to comment on. I have found the 'sweet-spot' of Trick Roon users to be 3. With 3 users you have exactly a 50% chance to be able to use Trick Room precisely when you need it. The key to doing this is planning out what you are going to do per 5 turns of TR being up. Go in with a plan, execute the plan and ensure that when Trick Room runs our one of your users are in play and ready to set it up. Even one turn outside of TR can prove detrimental to your game. There is nothing worse than blasting that Salamence, only to have him live with a sliver of health, to go ahead with a Dragon Dance and sweep your team because you either dont have a priority user or because your team is just too slow to get a TR back up before being toasted.

This leads me on to my second point. There are certain abilities and moves that are significantly nerfed when under Trick Room. One example being priority attacks. When you are almost guaranteed to outspeed all of your opponents team, why would you be worried about packing loads of priority moves that are weaker than ordinary moves? Of course, this is not to say you dont need to have one priority user, as I think its vital to pack a contingency plan for cleanup or sweeping without TR.

My favourite thing however is by abusing TR, Pokemon that were before seemingly unusable suddenly become awesome. Rhyperior being one of my favourites at the minute. The thing is, Pokemon that are uber slow often have another stat pumped up in place of Speed, and this means under TR you are getting the best of worlds. Whether its your Slowbro outpacing that pesky Gliscor and OHKOing with Ice Beam, or your Rampardos smashing shit up with its ludicrous attack stat.


Trick Room so obviously has its miscomings; Taunt ruins it, Trappers such as Dugtrio can be really annoying, trapping your weak TR setter and wasting it whilst your precious TR clock is ticking away, as well as almost total uselessness without TR up. However, with careful planning, good teambuilding, meticulous game plans and a decent metagame knowledge you can completely wreck those poor unsuspecting people.

P.S. im just gunna post some of my favourite TR setters and abusers:

Setters: Porygon-2, Slowbro, Dusclops, Reuniclus, Bronzong and Gardevoir.
Abusers: Reuniclus, Conkeldurr, Marowak, Magnezone, Rampardos, Rhyperior, Scizor, Gallade, Crawdaunt, Breloom and Machamp.
 
To think of weather team with no immediate stealth rock is really assuraing...
For my own focus sash team, it works very well against rain and sun. Well sangstorm.....
 
tr's problem is at its very core

first you have to set it up without being koed. you either run a dedicated tr support or a bulky tr sweeper (reuniclus, slowbro even). if you have dedicated tr support, you only really have 5 pokemon to play with and you have to switch out of your tr support, wasting a turn of trick room. if you run a bulky tr sweeper then youre either losing ~50% on the trick room OR your opponent switches to a check. you then are either at 50% against a pokemon that can probably not be ohkoed, or you are at 100% against a check. you can either sac your bulky sweeper to weaken the check or switch out. either way, you have 3(or 2?) turns of tr left.

what can you do in two turns? you can, at most, ohko 2 pokemon if you have perfect prediction + against an offensive team. if its a decent defensive team youre 99% screwed.
best case realistic scenario: youre against a hyper offensive team which didnt taunt you for some reason. it's turn 5ish and you just finished ohkoing 2 pokemon with a tr sweeper (that can't set up tr). this puts you at 6/4. they switched to a check against your bulky trick room sweeper / setter-upper, so it's still at 100%.

turn 6 starts and they switch in a sweeper. if they have a that sweeper can tank one hit + sweep your team, that's gg right there (unless you carry a revenger in which case good for you!) if they dont have a sweeper that can tank a hit, then they can just ohko your pokemon, because youre forced to stay in otherwise they sweep you clean. score is 5-4 at this point.

you basically have to have perfect prediction + good team matchup to get to 5-4 (not even 6-4!) against a competent opponent.
 

GatoDelFuego

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Honestly, I'm not so sure about the original question of the thread anymore. Sun teams seem to steamroll over absolutely everything now. You might say that heatran is some kind of stop to dugtrio with shed shell or air balloon, but if it has a balloon it can be easily broken on a switch in (EDIT: by genesect) and if it switches out with shed shell and "grabs momentum" as it switches to a levitator then shed shell is revealed and the sun user can switch out into their chlorophyll sweeper. Venosaur has Sludge Bomb to erase the dragons, and can still perform dangerously well with earthquake. It's bulky enough not to be OHKOd by anything faster than it, IE priority, and can heal off everything with Giga Drain. And that's just venosaur. Sawsbuck and Victreebel are extremely dangerous, as well as liligant. Things will be changing in the next few days, and who knows what will come out of this recent suspect test.
 
It's viable, but you always need to make sure you have plans against weather with every team you build. You might have a difficult time otherwise. I myself use Tyranitar in a non-weather team, mainly due to having a chance to remove rain...
 

Lavos

Banned deucer.
It's viable, but you always need to make sure you have plans against weather with every team you build. You might have a difficult time otherwise. I myself use Tyranitar in a non-weather team, mainly due to having a chance to remove rain...
If you want to check Rain, why are you using Tyranitar? It's weak to Politoed, weak to Tornadus-T, and weak to Breloom - three Pokemon that are an extremely common sight on Rain teams (toed is 100% necessary). I would suggest you give Abomasnow a try, as it's perfectly capable of beating not only Politoed, but also Tyranitar, Hippowdon, and even Ninetales if you're willing to sacrifice Protect for Earthquake. Abomasnow is a great check to weather starters and an extremely anti-meta Pokemon in general. See how you like it!


Abomasnow @ Expert Belt
Trait: Snow Warning
EVs: 252 Atk / 156 SAtk / 100 Spd
Lonely Nature (+Atk, -Def)
- Wood Hammer
- Ice Shard
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Protect / Earthquake

Wood Hammer OHKOs most Tyranitar and Politoed and does a good 80% to Hippowdon. Ice Shard picks off Landorus, Salamence, Dragonite (with broken Multiscale), and weakened Lati@s. HP Fire OHKOs most Scizor, Forretress, Genesect, etc., and Protect helps scout out both Genesect and Scizor to make a better decision for the next turn, whereas Earthquake removes your ability to scout, but lets you OHKO standard Ninetales and Heatran. Speed EVs outrun standard Politoed, Skarmory, and other base 70s.
 

Arcticblast

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I made a weatherless team yesterday to play around with Volcarona. It started as a Sun team but I kept running into synergy nightmares, and the teams just looked... bad. So I took out Ninetales and evertyhing just started working out. Weatherless teams don't have to get all flustered about countering weather. My team consists of Volcarona, Donphan, CM Keldeo, SpD Jirachi, Scarf Terrakion and bulky DD Dragonite. The only time I really considered weather there was when I added Jirachi (Tornadus-T check) and in the end I had at least one check to each of the three major weathers. As long as a weatherless team can check each weather it can succeed.

Typing on a DSi sucks by the way.
 
If you want to check Rain, why are you using Tyranitar? It's weak to Politoed, weak to Tornadus-T, and weak to Breloom - three Pokemon that are an extremely common sight on Rain teams (toed is 100% necessary). I would suggest you give Abomasnow a try, as it's perfectly capable of beating not only Politoed, but also Tyranitar, Hippowdon, and even Ninetales if you're willing to sacrifice Protect for Earthquake. Abomasnow is a great check to weather starters and an extremely anti-meta Pokemon in general. See how you like it!


Abomasnow @ Expert Belt
Trait: Snow Warning
EVs: 252 Atk / 156 SAtk / 100 Spd
Lonely Nature (+Atk, -Def)
- Wood Hammer
- Ice Shard
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Protect / Earthquake

Wood Hammer OHKOs most Tyranitar and Politoed and does a good 80% to Hippowdon. Ice Shard picks off Landorus, Salamence, Dragonite (with broken Multiscale), and weakened Lati@s. HP Fire OHKOs most Scizor, Forretress, Genesect, etc., and Protect helps scout out both Genesect and Scizor to make a better decision for the next turn, whereas Earthquake removes your ability to scout, but lets you OHKO standard Ninetales and Heatran. Speed EVs outrun standard Politoed, Skarmory, and other base 70s.
I actually run the old Dragon Dance set on Tyranitar. Between Sandstream, his bulk and raw physical power, he's exactly what I need. The current team usually never runs Rapid Spin, so Abomasnow was something I wanted to avoid using, haha. Sometimes the team uses Starmie though, so I might make another version with Abomasnow instead just see how it goes.
 
I too have noticed the emergence of the increasingly popular toed teams running rain. I myself run this starmie (I don't run a rain team) free boosts! Yay!
[pimg]121[/pimg]
Starmie@Life Orb
Natural Cure
252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Nature-Timid
-Hydro Pump
-Ice Beam
-Psyshock
-Rapid Spin

however having a keldeo yourself versus the majority of rain teams is like a free boost.
i also recommend a jolteon on the team just to get rid of toed, which can be an offensive behemoth in rain as well. i admit i am fairly new, but the amount of other weather teams is actually quite sparse (having seen only 2 or 3 drought teams, and 1 or 2 Sandstorms) on the note of freebies having a tornadus w/ hurricane is also a smart option for countering rain teams especially w/ with a c-scarf. Ferrothorn as well makes a good counter to most rain teams. Watch out for Hp fire running around. If you want to run an anti-weather team, as I'm sure people have mentioned above, any other weather team crushes rain, putting a stop to the never ending rain that dampens many of our battling experiences.
 
My main team uses no weather, hazards or Rapid Spin, and still made it to rank 211 on PO's server. The team I'm talking about is Baton Pass, though I can't say I recommend you use it, as it's extremely tough to play if you want to contend with the likes of OU weather spamming. One thing I find about weather is it's predictable. I have a set method for fighting weather teams. If I see Tyranitar in the preview, I lead with Gliscor. Now, in this situation, 99% of sand teams will lead with 'Tar, and 99% of the time they will be a specially defensive set with SR. Gliscor uses Taunt, no SR for them. Now I have to risk them having Ice Beam. If they do Gliscor dies. If they don't I begin the chain with Agility. Alternatively if SR doesn't bother you (it does for my team) just do something else. If they have a rain team, they will lead with Politoed. For me, this means I lead with Venomoth and start Quiver Dancing, or Sleep Powder first if I feel like taking risks. Unless the Politoed crits or has Perish Song, I pretty much win by default. I don't have much in the way of strategies for sun or hail, because I'm less concerned about them because of their rarity. My point overall is, if you want to use non-weather you have to manipulate the team preview. When they see you have no weather most people will lead with their weather inducer. If they're smarter they know this, and will lead with something else to take out your counter. It's all a matter of how far up there your opponent is. Here's another idea. Two of my other teams go the opposite direction: I have a rain/sun offensive and a sand/hail stall dual weather team. My rain/sun team uses a Volcarona, which functions well in both weathers, and the other has a Mamoswine for the same reason. Having two weather inducers limits your team a lot, but it trolls other weather teams fairly well.
 
Definitely viable, definitely a challenge. I've made it 200 some pretty easily on the PO server with a weatherless team as well, but I must say, U-turn is essential to my victory against weather teams. In this metagame, you simply cannot afford to mispredict (many would agree) and get locked in to an ineffective move. Especially with Hurricanes, Hydro Pumps, and other OP shit flying off (I kid... ). Genesect's introduction has only made things more difficult (especially since sand and rain can slap it onto the team with ease).

This is largely due to the fact that I am running HO, however.
 
One thing very annoying of the weather is rain is the most haxor(h4x0r) weather.

Hurricane hax(fortunately only both Tornadus and few Dragonites use it), Thunder hax, Scald hax and Water Pulse from Jirachi hax(and Iron Head from it)

Sun teams which carry Solarbeam are annoying too, Solarbeam is incredibly powerful. Yes, Solarbeam tends to suck even in Sun, but there are sets/mons for to preserve Sun such as Ninetales Sunny Day or trappers.


Also, most people stand out that Venusaur is faster that everything in Sun, but there is still priority(Ice Shard/Bullet Punch) everywhere(Venusaur with Giga Drain is a lot better, but it is an another discussion)

Don't forget that moveslots only for to conserve the weather(Sunny day, almost) are dead moveslots against weatherless teams. When I use weather and this, the moveslot dead is noticeable.
 
Sawsbuck under Sun is faster than Venusaur and just as potent on the physical side.

I'd also only consider running a weather changing move on a mon that could abuse it, or if more than one member of my team could abuse it.
 
While Sawsbuck is faster than Venusaur under Sun, that really isn't that important when there is really nothing relevant you outspeed with the extra speed that Venusaur doesn't already outspeed. The extra speed does not compete with the many benefits Venusaur has over Sawsbuck including the ability to go mixed making you that much harder to switch into, and hit your "counters" such as Heatran with an Earthquake. Venusaur also supports much better bulk, meaning under Sun it can perform an offensive and defensive role using a SubSeed set. The extra bulk is key here, Venusaur can still shake off priority attempts to stop your sweep, while Sawsbuck cannot really take a hit. There's also the issue of how easily you are walled even when setup. 4 attack Life Orb Sawsbuck lacks the raw power needed to execute a sweep, and as a result needs a lot more team support. No matter what moveset you run, you can't hit everything with Sawsbuck, and running one move over another leaves you helpless against something else. This is something Venusaur has never had problems with, and to sweep it does not really need any team support whatsoever.

Weather changing moves are an interesting topic, however they really should only be used if the Pokemon / Team in question actually benefits from it. I've seen people trying to successfully use manual Hail and Sandstorm to stop Rain and Sun teams from performing as well as they should, however this still is not as effective as using Pokemon that are generally good against weather in general. If you have problems with Rain Teams, use a Rotom-W or even your own Keldeo or Tornadus-T and take full advantage of Rain. If you're weak to Sun, use a Heatran or Latias to buffer the hits of Chlorophyll abusers. It can be seen that using a Sun / Rain Team against a weatherless team can automatically put you at a disadvantage, and in some cases can be true, however there are enough common 'mons that give weather such a hard time that I feel any well built weatherless team can with against a weather team. Even people complaining about the common weather teams only leads to more diversity in weatherless and weather teams respectively. The recently established Lavos Sun already shows how weather has changed from B/W1 to B/W2, and shows the use of new Pokemon in Sun such as Xatu, something that was previously unheard of. With so many people fixated on how to beat weather, you gain so many new additions to help deal with weather. Underrated and Pokemon with little usage are brought up to OU for the fact they can deal with a certain Pokemon, or team archetype which is why the metagame is constantly changing. If you look in any of the creative / underrated moveset threads, you will see many interesting and effective sets that take advantage of the current state of the metagame and abuse it to incredible effect.

Despite all this, I still think manual weather is a very interesting concept, however situational it may be. Manual Rain for example is a strategy that aims to take down opposing weather inducers that aren't Politoed and then set up Rain Dance and abuse the Swift Swim abusers to their previous unbanned potential. It destroys unprepared teams and punishes those who are not prepared, and let's face it, very few people are prepared for said Swift Swim abusers. It's a strategy that isn't to be expected, so I imagine people would not value their weather inducer much while looking at team preview, seeing you don't have a Tyranitar or Ninetales of your own. It also requires very little team support, maybe one or two Rain inducers and possibly Stealth Rock, but there are a lot of suicide leads who can perform this role well, and keep up the offensive momentum needed on this type of team. I know this is very situational, but in the current state of the metagame where people are complaining about Sun Teams everywhere, I feel this could be effective and pretty fun to mess with the same weather teams you see everywhere.
 
I run a no weather stall team and it suns just fine, I actually advocate no weather stall because hail stall is a pain to make and run correctly, rain stall is to common and predictable in my opinion, and sand stall does have some issues forming in this meta (although yes possible). The biggest problem with them all is your wasting an entire slot on one pokemon, the loss of the one slot severely limits team building and forces you to run pretty much generic stall teams.
 
Ok I see people complain a lot about how sun simply destroys non-weather teams due to the fact that there's not a whole lot that can stop a Venusaur with a Chlorophyl boost. Sure, Heatran can help defeat sun teams, but I find that it is easily disposed of by Dugtrio/Infernape. However, all is not lost for those facing sun teams with no weather of their own. There is a Pokémon that can rip right through most sun teams with relative ease.




Landorus@Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force (Mother fucker)
Nature: Timid/Modest (Timid is recommended, but modest helps score some significant OHKO's, like Genesect, with no prior damage)

Earth Power
Psychic
Hidden Power Ice
Rock Polish

All it takes is one Rock Polish and you outspeed everything in the sun. No Chlorophyl user will be faster than you, and you can KO all of them (Sawsbuck has a 6% chance of being OHKO'd after Stealth Rock, but who runs Sawsbuck anyway? Besides, it can't OHKO you back). It can take out all sorts of sun users as long as you make sure of a few things first:
1. Heatran doesn't have a balloon
2. Dugtrio's sash is broken (this doesn't really matter, but a crit SE can OHKO)
3. STEALTH ROCKS ARE UP (Spikes REALLY helps too, even 1 or 2 layers)
4. Latias is dead (1v1 just won't end well)

If you can make sure that is all taken care of, then Landorus will sweep most sun teams. And just to be a doll, I've run some calcs for you guys to marvel at.

Genesect
252/252 Timid Landorus vs 0/0 Genesect
Earth Power: 239-282 (84.45 - 99.64%) -- 75% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

252/252 Modest Landorus vs 0/0 Genesect
Earth Power: 261-308 (92.22 - 108.83%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock

Donphan

252/252 Timid Landorus vs 252/0 Donphan
Earth Power: 344-407 (89.58 - 105.98%) -- 75% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

Venusaur

252/252 Timid Landorus vs 4/0
Psychic: 307-361 (101.65 - 119.53%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Ninetales

252/252 Timid Landorus vs 252/252 Calm Ninetales (not even close to standard)
Earth Power: 330-390 (94.28 - 111.42%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock

Latias

252/252 Timid Landorus vs 252/0 Latias
Hidden Power Ice: 146-174 (40.1 - 47.8%) -- 7.42% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock

Xatu

252/252 Timid Landorus vs 252/152 Xatu
Hidden Power Ice: 203-239 (60.77 - 71.55%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
(This one can be difficult to pull off because SR are hard to get up, but all he can do back is U-turn or maybe Heat Wave)

Terrakion

252/252 Timid Landorus vs 4/0 Terrakion
Earth Power: 499-588 (154.01 - 181.48%) -- guaranteed OHKO

For shits and giggles, here it is in the sand too:

Earth Power: 330-393 (101.85 - 121.29%) -- guaranteed OHKO



And the rest are obvious OHKO's like Infernape, Dugtrio, Victreebel, Heatran, Victini, etc. Obviously, all the possible OHKO/2HKO's become much more likely if Landorus is Modest, but being Modest makes it harder to set up a Rock Polish, which is hard enough as it is in today's metagame. But this set does work really well against a lot of other teams too. I use it on my rain team to help me with the weather war, and it does wonders.
 
After playing on the Showdown ladder and getting up to ~1780 rank, I've realized that non-weather teams CAN work, but they do require a heck of a lot more investment in certain team members. I personally have been running an offensive sandstorm team, and let me tell you, I DREAD having to face another weather, because it means that I have to actually think about my moves, and I have to keep my weather starter alive (or at least to a significant point where the weather doesn't even matter anymore). Whenever I run into a weatherless team, I think to myself, "Oh good, no weather. Now I don't have to think as much." Why I think this is because weather is such an effective tool in the meta, and if I don't have any weather to combat mine, then I can just send in t-tar, set up rocks, and if T-tar dies, it's no big deal, or even if I don't get my rocks up, it's not a big deal. Usually, if you can win the weather war, then you control the entire momentum of the game. That's why non-weather isn't as viable in this meta, because without weather, your momentum isn't going to be very good. You're going to have to look out for things that benefit greatly from the weather on your opponents team. Take Sand Force Landorus for example. In Sandstorm, he's a very dangerous pokemon. But, if it's another type of weather, he's still a threat, but he's a much less dangerous one. Now, if you put up a Landorus against a rain team, it might not happen that you can keep sand up, and Landorus will be firing off petty attacks. Now, if you are facing non weather, then you can keep sand for the entire game, and things like Landorus, heck, even Stoutland and Sandslash, can do work on the enemy team, because they have no switch ins to something that is so powerful. That's why I think non-weather isn't a very viable tool in the meta right now. With the respective weather up, those threats are going to be a very hard thing to deal with. It's even more stressful for building a team without weather, because you have to counter every single thing that can benefit from the weather, and sometimes even the weather starter itself. There are benefits from using non-weather though, which gives you free reign over any Poke you choose to use, not just limiting yourself to the standard rain inducer + required synergy + whatever else you have. But, because of that, most non-weather players don't try to have synergy in their choices in members. They usually slap 6 pokes together and call it non-weather (Or at least, what I've seen in it anyways). I do think non-weather is still an option, but compared to weather teams, it's anywhere but equal to them.
 

Gary

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I'm strongly against using weather myself, as I prefer the more classic feel of making a team entirely from scratch without having to worry about having a spot for Toad/Tails, Dugtrio, and my entry hazard setter.

I feel that making a weather team has become very easy now, rain especially, with the introduction of Tornadus-T and its devastating Hurricane. Now saying that, I don't think it's all Tornadus-T's fault, it's just that pretty much anyone can put a Tornadus-T on a Rain team and spam Hurricane, and with U-Turn/Regenerate Stealth Rocks isn't as effective in crippling it. I've found the only really effective way of countering a spamming Tornadus-T, is Thunder Wave. Thunder Wave lets my whole team out speed it, and when my Terrakion is gone or too weak to switch in on hazards, T-Wave is my only hope. So my point is, rain teams are becoming more of an annoyance then anything else, and although I have little problem checking Tornadus-T, it's quite annoying to almost always having to sacrificing a teammate to it without it even having to set up or anything.

Sun is by far the more annoying team to face. Not just because of the ever so powerful Venusuar, it's just the sheer amount of Sun teams that I see with the same exact Pokemon, or a lack of originality. Sun teams pop up all over the RMT Forum, and all I see 90% of the time are; Ninetails, Dugtrio, Venusuar, Victini, Xatu/Espeon, Genesect. Who ever first came up with the idea is a genius, however the annoying thing is now every single sun team is based around these six individuals with the occasional Chandelure and Lilligant. My point is, I am seeing a lot less creativity going into these sun teams and getting very tired of seeing the same exact teams being posted on the forums for a rate. It's like, wow, why do you need a rate when you can just copy everyone else? All in all though, I find it much easier to counter sun teams, but Venusuar can get awfully annoying with it's blazing speed and access to Sleep Powder.

I don't have anything against weather users, but it's just very sad to see a lot of really well put together teams that take days of testing and help from team raters become over shadowed by weather teams that are almost identical. Non Weather is still perfectly viable, as I succeed greatly over teams with weather then with teams without, however it is a shame how many teams have to adjust more to the sheer mass of weather threats where as non weather threats can be sometimes forgotten because of that. My main team has nothing to do with weather, and it's much more fun to use in my opinion then weather teams, as it requires more time and effort to put together, plus more strategy involved.

There is only one huge thing that honestly I can't stand, and that's rage quitting weather teams. Yes, I realize it sucks when your secret weapon or wall breaker faints early on, but it's very frustrating when I happen to pick off Tornadus-T or Venusuar early on, and to have them rage quit right after. It makes me realize that weather teams are depending to much on there spammers/sweepers that this metagame because of it is relying more on hyper offence then strategy. I've I had times where rage quitting seemed okay, but I get that one crit or hax that saves me the game, leading me to victory. If weather teams stop worrying so much about their offensive team members, then weather would be much more interesting to face. I'm just sick of Ninetails bringing out weather, Venusuar comes in, gets a kill, get revenge killed, rage quits.

So after all that, non weather is definitely still viable, it's just overshadowed and underrated due to the sheer mass of weather teams, and the lack of originality. But as always, a team is a team, and I respect it.
 
I believe Lavos Spawn created the Sun teams you speak of. Also, weather teams CAN be unique, but it's easier just to use Torn-T and spam Hurricane.
(Oh yeah, by the way, Venusaur sux, Victreebel pwnz)
 

Gary

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I believe Lavos Spawn created the Sun teams you speak of. Also, weather teams CAN be unique, but it's easier just to use Torn-T and spam Hurricane.
(Oh yeah, by the way, Venusaur sux, Victreebel pwnz)
Yep your right they CAN be unique, however many choose to take the easy route and use an already well known successful team. Rain IMO is easier to have unique team members, but yet again, it all usually lies upon Tornadus-T shoulders.

And yes, I have to agree with you Victreebel should be used over Venusuar any day. Soooooooooooo underrated.
 

Pocket

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Amazing post, Jimbon!

Sawsbuck has no bulk, so Venusaur is much more useful in checking opposing Rain teams in a pinch.

However, Sawsbuck is seriously underrated imo. Under the sun, it's revenge-killing capabilities are unparalleled by other chloro sweepers - QD Volcarona, Scarf Darma / Victini, and dragons all fall down by Sawsbuck's powerful LO Double-Edges. Not many mons can survive a hit after a SD boost, even Gliscor feels Sawsbuck's power. The only hard counters are probably Scizor and Skarmory, which should not be THAT much of a problem for Sun teams.

Also Rain Dance teams in OU sounds intriguing, but I don't see it working out so well. This meta is well-prepared against powerful Rain onslaughts, and mons like Ferrothorn and Latias would be annoying to remove. Basically, there are quite a few mons that can waste those Rain turns.

Other auto-weather inducers are also a bitch to deal with, removing rain and causing many dangerous sweepers to outrun Swift Swimmers. It wont be easy switching Ninetales into the likes of Kabutops or Kingdra, though. Despite my skepticism in working fantastically, Rain Dance team is definitely worth trying out :d
 
For the most part, no. If you run non weather HAVE to either run multiple pokemon that can counter weather or multiple Pokemon that can abuse weather like veneusaur, stoutland, or kingdra.
 
i don't like weatherless teams. bw2 is completely focused around rain, with sun and sand also making appearances, meaning that if you're going to try to counter weather then there are a ton of threats you'll need to check...

or you could just run hyper offense, which in my mind is the best way to beat current weather teams. weather these days is centered around x-weather-abuser-sweep, such as tornadus-t, terrakion, venusaur, whatever. however, this also means that a lot of these teams lack extremely solid walls that can handle repeated offensive pressure knocking at their door. spamming a ton of set-up sweepers actually works rather well in this metagame. personally, i prefer lead aerodactyl hyper offense, as it's pretty much assured stealth rock since it's the fastest stealth rock setter in ou and can outspeed and 2hko both magic bounce pokemon with stone edge/rock slide. once you have rocks up, dual screen with mew/latios/latias/espeon and then bring out the big guns. personally, i think shell smash cloyster is particularly effective in this metagame, as most teams don't carry a super-speedy choice scarf user anymore, preferring their scarf thundurus-t (slower than +2 cloyster) and scarf genesect (slower than +2 cloyster). with dual screens and sr it's ridiculously easy to set up on something and pull off a convincing sweep.

and since we're talking a bit about cloud nine ability, i've got to say the best stoutland/sandslash counter out there remains scarf golduck.
Spamming setup sweepers does not work well in this metagame. There's a reason why pretty much nobody runs dual screens hyper offense anymore like they did in very early BW. With the amount of threats that get instant speed boosts from weather, run choice scarf, and and run will o wisp, relying on setup sweepers is a surefire way to make sure that the only matches you will win will be against noobs. Not to mention that most setup sweepers are horribly weak to rock and ice, attacking types that are everywhere in this metagame as well as stealth rock.Setup sweepers are not worthless but they should only be used sparingly...no more than one of them should be on your team. Unlike weather and scarf strategies, setup sweeping cannot be relied on.
 

dragonuser

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Spamming setup sweepers does work and having more than one is certainly viable. Countless teams are seen using 2-3 setup sweeper cores to a lot of sucess in this metagame. Breloom/Genesect/Landorus are just a few examples of very potent set up sweepers that can fit most teams. With intelligent building you can work around Scarfers and weathers and actually use them to your advantage. Just because this metagame is a bit faster than BW1 and has more scarfers doesn't make setup sweepers any less potent.
 
Okay so maybe it won't hurt to use 2, but that's the maximum any team should use or else it becomes dependent on an outdated strategy.

Landous isn't really a set up sweeper. It doesn't have to as almost all of them are scarfed. Scarf Genesect out classes rock polish Genesect.

BW brought so many threats that could deal with setup sweepers. Why do you think Salamence isn't uber this generation? Setup sweepers have to well...set up. This is counter productive, especially compared to offensive threats that don't have to setup like Scarf Genesect, Tornadus-T, Venusaur in the sun, Kingdra in rain etc. Setup sweepers always have to worry about whether something has an attack that could kill them before they set up.
 

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