NU Stage 7 - Snover Suspect Discussion

[Django]

Hey there.

This thread's primary purpose to discuss the suspect of this round - Snover. Everyone is welcome to participate in discussion and debate whether or not Snover, and by extension Hail, is broken. Senate members and potential rotating council members are expected to post and participate in discussion. Examples of things that should be talked about in this thread: your experience with said threat (using it and facing it), what beats said threat, your opinion of its effect on the metagame (whether positive or negative), etc.

Rotating council members will be selected differently this round. Anyone who wishes to partake in this vote and earn a vote towards a TC badge must fill out the application here and PM it to me. I will then share it with Zeb / Raseri and we will decide who has qualified to vote.

This thread will be closed in about a week-ish or when the discussion dies down, whichever happens first. At that point in time, the NU Senate will decide what will be voted on and votes will be sent via PM to Zebraiken. Just because something is talked about in this thread does not mean it will be voted on. Remember, you are trying to convince the council members with your posts. Keep it civil! And yes, this is a shameless C/P of the last discussion thread.

A bit of admin is also in order, as both CrashinBoomBang and Amarillo have stepped down from their positions on the NU Council. They will be replaced by EBeast and Annoyer. Thanks to CBB and Ama for their help in shaping NU, and good luck to Annoyer and EBeast! Merry discussing and a merry Christmas from Zebraiken :)

The alt id thread will go up in a few hours.

 

[Majestic Electric]

Hail isn't too common, despite the hype it has received. Regardless, Hail is very easy to check. Emboar, Regice, and Gurdurr are arguably some of the best checks to Hail. Stealth Rock also hinders its abusers (except Piloswine). If anything, facing it is just annoying.

As for Snover, it's pretty mediocre. Grass / Ice is a terrible typing. Rock and Fire are some of the most common attacking types right now, and even the weakest Fire move can take it out. Snover also has poor stats compared to other Grass- types in the tier.

This is not a voting thread

 

[Django]

Before we go any further I want to make something clear; this is not a voting thread or anything of the sort. This is a discussion thread, and providing one line of opinion is not discussion. Please put more effort into posts from here on out, this thread will be moderated closely as it is crucial for the decision of council members on whether Snover should remain in NU.

 

[ium]

hail is very potent in this metagame. a majority of hail teams being used by certain people have shown that even though you are wasting one teamslot for snover and using only one slot for an abuser, it's pretty much all you need. the rest of the team can be relegated to more supportive roles in order to help a hail abuser, such as glaceon, succeed. the things that i think of are alomomola and shelgon for wish support, golurk and piloswine for stealth rock, sawk and gurdurr for opposing ice-types, and duosion and misdreavus for fighting-types that threaten most hail teams. there's obviously much, much more that can be explored: grumpig sponges special hits extremely well while being able to whirlwind certain boosting threats out, and setting up spikes with something like garbodor can wear down the opponent's hail counters to help the team succeed.

speaking of the hail pokemon themselves, glaceon and walrein offers a really annoying substitute + protect set to take virtually no damage at all against mostly slower things while wearing the opposing pokemon down to where blizzard can KO. when used alongside garbodor for toxic spikes, they can simply stall out most things and not even have to attack that often. they can be both offensive and stall-ish which can really hold back a lot of opposing teams. specs glaceon also fucking smashed a ton of stuff when i used it, 2HKOing things like rotom-f and bulky mantine. then there is rotom-f which, as we already know, has a very useful base 86 speed to use a choice scarf with.

however, hail teams are inherently flawed. first of all, you're slapping snover onto a team. on one hand, you check ludicolo and seismitoad and stuff like that, but on the other hand, you're potentially giving a free substitute to emboar and opposing ice-types. you're also using a pokemon that eases the offensive pressure on the opponent's sawk so that it may come in and start applying its own pressure. sawk's best answers, duosion and misdreavus, are really prone to knock off and dark-types. the best answer to emboar seems to be alomomola, but special variants will have no issues (barring hax). emboar's checks in general cannot afford to switch into the wrong move. it's risky business and snover only gives these pokemon that opportunity.

next, you are using a hail abuser, which is pretty much glaceon or rotom-f. you are stacking weaknesses which makes it easier for all the aforementioned threats to dent holes in your team. hail teams are very prone to any form of hazards and do not really have the slot to use up on a rapid spinner. glaceon and rotom-f are also not fast enough to handle something like cinccino and definitely do not have the power to muscle through piloswine or regice.

because of ice-types not really offering great defensive synergy, you're limited to four teamslots to cover the rest of the threats. that's not too bad honestly, but you become heavily reliant on a small number of pokemon to have as answers to common stuff like cinccino, braviary, sawk, emboar, and others while also trying to get through defensive things such as duosion, regice, and piloswine that the ice-types sometimes have trouble with.

so far, i think that hail isn't broken because it really puts a strain on the rest of the team to provide a decent backbone.

as for things that hail teams have trouble with, people have expressed their opinions about how amazing special emboar is in this metagame. i agree it is great. however, i think that physically-inclined water-types are pretty amazing and underrated too. unless your hail team is packing alomomola, you're unlikely to have a reliable answer to samurott and carracosta. i am amazed at how many teams have nothing to reliably take a hit aside from snover (which gets boned by megahorn and stone edge anyway) while being forced to rely on a scarf user to revenge kill them. i have been using carracosta for the most part and it is pretty damn good. at +2, ice-types can't stay in unless it's scarfed and can KO, while stuff commonly seen on hail teams, such as sawk and golurk, are outsped and KO'd.

i have been using choice scarf cinccino as well; it is a catch-all revenge killer to things commonly seen on hail teams, including sawk and golurk. many good players have been using alomomola to take on cinccino, but i've been pairing it with regice and duosion which makes it really hard to for hail teams to break through. all of this is just really showing how there are pokemon already in the tier that can be reliable answers to hail. it's a strong playstyle, but it's really manageable without having to overprepare for it.

 

[Sweet Jesus]

Hail is definately a metagame changing threat. People have mentionned it's not very popular, but I think it's mainly because we all come up with a similar reasoning when trying to build good hail teams which can quickly lead to a boring playstyle. I'm sure people will eventually come up with original ways too abuse hail very soon.

People have mentioned many threats mainly banded and specs emboar but one thing about emboar that isn't always taken in consideration is that the pokes emboar threaten often carry protect or sub and a better speed forcing him to choice lock himself and letting the hail user switch to an appropriate counter like carracosta while dealing some hail damage. This is why I see pinsir as slightly more intimidating although nearly every hail team carry's rotom-f which is arguably the best hail abuser and outspeeds him by one point. Sawk is another great hail counter who also falls short by one speed point. I've been using a life orb set with knock off lately and it's works wonders (not just against hail). Not being choice locked really messes with protect users and knock off will cripple many eviolite users that would want to switch into him such as duosion Leaving only amoonguss alomomola and musharna as reliable switch-ins. Coincidence: they all happen to do pretty bad in hail.

I wouldn't agree that hail has any definite counters but it sure is a very hard thing to counter charizard, sawk, duosion, emboar, tauros and pinsir all at the same time while still abusing hail. (alomomola does seem like a great add with wish to heal SR damage on ice pokes)

On the other side, hail can really demolish many unprepared teams and it's winning clause is completely different from any others in the meta. This brings a whole new dynamic highly weakening many cores that contain musharna and amoonguss, two pokes on which a huge amount of teams usualy rely on defensively. I think many people (and I include myself in there) have not yet started to change their teambuilding process in a way to cover hail correctly and a well built team can easily propulse one to the top of the ladder.

Hail also wears down the incredibly threatening offensive threats that are the guts/toxic boost abusers. the additional residual damage along with the plethora of protect users will often lead them to die before they can pull off anything useful.

About snover itself, he's not exactly quite as usless as many say. Leech seed + hail + toxic + protect will really threaten many defensive pokes and it's sp.d and resistances are pretty useful against certan threatening water types. Blizzard isn't exactly weak and will demolish most other grass types that would want to take the leech seed. In fact, snover is one of the things that pisses me off the most when I use my current team that's been doing great on the ladder. This capacity to annoy walls all day and make them switch on hazards can be extremly useful to offensive teams that will attempt a sweep late game. One thing I've changed my opinion about however is that snover does not exactly do so well against ludicolo. While he does wall him, he has no reliable recovery and coming in means ludi could very well go for the rain dance and set up his weather after you've come in. Snover being your ludi counter is then forced to stay in and eventualy die without bringing back hail or give a kill to the opponent while stacking up stealth rock damage on himself just to get hail back up.

I'm not fully decided yet wether I consider hail as broken or not, and would like to try out alomomola in a hail team before pronouncing myself on that question since it really seems to cover many counters and is a poke with which I have a lot of experience.

 

[Shuckleking87]

I agree with just about everything Sweet Jesus said. I believe that even though hail is not that common, it is extremely annoying to face if you are not prepared. Therefore, you should change up your teambuilding process to counter hail.

Are you going to pick musharna or duosion as your physically defensive psychic type? With the nullification of leftovers and a significant decrease in the usefulness of its recovery move, in hail, musharna does not do its job as effective, though it successfully outside of it. Duosion, while not having the cleric abilities and ability to pass status, can avoid hazards, hail damage and have a reliable recovery move.

Now I’m not saying that this more favorable situation for duosion is good or bad, it just that with hail, I believe there are fewer options for team building. Fast toxic orb abusers such as zangoose and swallow have a harder time surviving in this metagame, as so many hail users utilize protect with ice body. With the protect and hail, that’s an extra 1/8 health lost without giving any damage.

That is why I believe sub and wish passing should be more popular. Subs to utilize the time spent on protect and wish passing to attempt to negate hail and hazard damage. Problem with sub is that you are racking up damage on yourself after you lost 25% of your health; the only viable time to sub would be to execute a sweep/minisweep. Sub bu braviary, sub exeggutor, sub haunter just don’t work as well imo (though I don’t know why I have not seen an increase in sub combusken, though sub+lifeorb+hail can do its toll). Wish support would be nice, and alomomola is a great wish passer, but it cannot take on cb sawk, which is a major flaw (however, I am still a fan of alomomola wishpassing). Lickilicky would work wonders if cloud nine and wish were legal, but it’s not..

This is obvious, but types weak to blizzard are not as effective. Grass types barring ludicolo and snover are very difficult to use, flying pokes have to worry about stealth rocks and hail, meaning they can only switch in 2 times a match, ground types cannot take as many hits with the common hail threats, and sturdy users are dead after one turn. Some generalizations, but hail just hampers a lot of pokes. Sure, some uncommon ice types are going to pop up to abuse hail, and fire/fighting types will increase to combat the ice. So it’s a meta essentially dominated by 3 types. I don’t know if that makes a difference or not.

I understand that hail is still not that common, but if it is, I believe this will deter people from playing. I know it’s a competitive tier, and though 75% of all pokemon can be used, only about 10% of that number should be used. If hail brings a competitive edge to your team, then consideration for its usage is a must. With OU, the popular “weather wars” dominate the tier, it takes away from the (clique moment coming up) in-game aspect about Pokemon. Now while I understand there is a clearcut separation from the gameboy and competitive battling world, I believe contributing factor for the (I think) 3rd most played tier is due to this more original aspect, where weather wars are not a factor. Of course, all weather can be implemented, as sun teams should be a great counter to hail teams, but the fact that snover can set up hail nilly-willy is an aspect I do not appreciate. Yes, volbeat, priority users, or any designed weather setter can 99% of the time set up weather; yet the one turn the opposition is setting up weather can make all the difference. With hail, there is no way of the “1%” chance to prevent it and it won’t stop snowing, so you cannot “stall out” 8 turns of weather. If there were more accessibility to instaweather, or no instaweather, I’d be fine, but, even though hail is arguably the weakest weather, it’s difficult to give one weather that much of an advantage.

 

[watashi]

one thing about sawk, emboar, pinsir, and every other offensive pokemon without a multi-hit move is that they can all be protect stalled out by ice body users. you shouldn't be using those pokemon as your only answer to hail teams unless your whole team is able to break bulky walrein's subs. even without toxic spikes, many teams, especially offensive ones, will be unable to break through protect spammers.

i don't have the time to give my own opinions about hail, but i think some people are understating what it can do to unprepared teams.

 

[Django]

I've been trying out a more defensive Hail team on the ladder, and I have to say it has been really really effective. Like Sweet Jesus touched on, I've been using Alomomola as an answer to Emboar and a few other physical threats, along with Grumpig to beat Special Emboar and other dangerous Fire-types. Add hazards from Garbador (which become so much more potent with Leftovers recovery negated by Hail) and you have a really dangerous team. As for whether its broken? I don't think so. Despite your best efforts, the Hail team will always be dangerously weak to something. Ironically, the one I ended up with was horribly weak to Duosion, with my only answer being Golurk or Whirlwind Grumpig, but since it is immune to passive damage it can just stomp most of my team and switch out of Golurk. If I altered the team to fix this though, I would open myself up to a whole slew of other threats; Special Emboar, Specs Glaceon, Regice, Charizard etc etc etc. This kind of problem will always exist for Hail teams, purely because of the type overlap they are almost forced to use.

Offensive Hail teams are also excellent, but suffer from the same problems. If you are running more than one "abuser" you are likely to be run over by almost any Fire-type, any Fighting-type, or a combination of the two. One thing I do want to talk about though, is Rotom-F, and in particular its Life Orb set. While using this I found it to be exceptionally dangerous, and looking through NU there is very little that can switch into it and beat it. Often it requires a sacrifice on the opposing team to get a check in and force it out, and can easily break down many teams on its own. However, it obviously needs to be paired with Snover to be this effective as HP Ice is just not powerful enough, while its SR weakness and somewhat lacking Speed means it can be pressured easily and not given many opportunities to do damage. What do you guys think of Rotom-F? Can it push some Hail teams over the edge, or is it just another powerful abuser like Glaceon?

As for FLCL's point about Ice Body users, it must be noted that Sawk will outspeed them, as will a few of the other threats mentioned, so they will have to have a Sub up first to actually beat them. Of course because of this, relying on Sawk alone to beat them is silly, but if you can guarantee that there is no opportunities for Glaceon or Walrein to get a sub then you can pretty much exclusively use Sawk, even though it cannot switch in.

 

[The Quasar]

Hi all,

I play for a very short time than you and then excuse me if my opinion may be incomplete or even wrong.
Playing on showdown, I have rarely encountered offensive hail teams and almost never defensive team. Well, I think Django's analysis is damn correct.
Excellent team but with few weakness too.
Fighting-type and Fight-type but also Rock-type are a really range of enemies.
Snover ia also weak to poison-move like Sludge Wave.

Furthermore, changes weather forcing them even more to show weaknesses. Snover and its teammate are being still slower opponents (think about on rain, for example).

 

[Tyrano]

I know I'm not part of the council (I'm not very active in the forums), but I would like to give my opinion in this case. I'm gonna talk about hail, not snover.

So, I think hail is a great impact in this actual metagame. Despite I haven't seen too many hail teams laddering (I don't know why), hail has made me change my teams and my way of playing this tier. I had a great NU team based on Musharna, which had a record of 96/16 (w/l) on the ladder and peaked #8, this team in my opinion only has one weakness: hail, it totally rapes my team, something that almost any team couldn't during all the time I used it. So I had to build a new team focusing only in defeating hail teams, but even this new team has problems to do it.

Hail may seem not so important, but believe me it is. Not only deals damage each turn, but also has some nasty abusers which is why I think it should be banned. Taking damage every turn is a pain in the ass (adding that there isn't too many ice pokemon that resists it), breaks focus sash and make LO pokemon so volatile that is not a great idea to use them.

But the real threat is hail abussers. Hail offense in my opinion isn't the real problem, it may work, but surely not as well as hail stall. Hail stall now is THE playstyle in NU. Based on wearing down your opponent by residual damage (hail + protect, sr, status changes, even spikes...) you have great abusers like walrein (can be used even in hail OU), rotom-f, glaceon, maybe articuno, piloswine, etc. that is so hard to take them down. Their only weakness are fighters like sawk or emboar, but both of them can be handled by alomomola for example. I also read duosion can be a threat, but believe me that after one or two CM it still has a normal spdef (CM spdef boost is ignoring eviolite, you can try by yourself, damage is almost the same after 1 than after 2 CM), so it can be taken down with two blizzards.

Some may say that hail abusers are weak to sr and there aren't good spinners in the tier, but my opinion is that they really don't need it. Apart from articuno wich takes 50%, the other abusers only takes 25% and should have protect, so they recover almost all the damage in two turns (with ice body), rotom-f has also pain split, leech seed for snover, alomomola's whish, etc.

To sum up, my opinion is this is not a voting thread, snover really doesn't seem a threat to me, but its ability does.

 

[ebeast]

First thing I want to get out of the way is that some people have been saying that Snow Warning should be the suspect rather than Snover. I really don't think this should be the case because Snover and Snow Warning are all part of the same package and should be treated as such. I don't know if we'll ever get another suspect who falls in the same criteria as Snover, but if we do we should set the precedent to banning the Pokemon rather than an Ability so that something similar to the Snover Placement thread in Policy Review doesn't have to happen again and things can run smoothly. Also popularity should not be taken into account as critically as other factors since when Jynx was banned it was only #15 in 1337 stats.

Anyways, I agree with FLCL that Hail is not something you can just brush off and say it's easily taken care off without even taking it into account; Hail is a prominent threat and needs to be prepared for. Like other threats such as Sawk, if someone is unprepared for Hail and gets destroyed by it then it is the player's fault. However, I don't think Hail is broken in the slightest for a few reasons: First, while I don't believe that Snover is a useless Pokemon, it is less than desirable due to a lack of reliable recovery and a Stealth Rock weakness. Like SJ said, Snover is not really that great of a counter to Ludicolo either as Colo can just Rain Dance as Snover switches in and hit it hard with Hydro Pump, while Snover has to try to slowly take it down with Toxic and is pressured from switching out due to Stealth Rock. Second, having to pair it up with another Ice-type or two piles up a lot of dangerous weaknesses such as a Fighting-, Fire-, and Rock-type weakness that makes Pokemon such as Sawk, Emboar, and Regirock extremely dangerous for Hail teams to face. Third, Hail teams have an immensely difficult time trying to cover threats due to stacking types and will end up weak to something in the end, be it Braviary, Swellow, SD Samurott, Absol, Skuntank, Drifblim, Emboar, Electric-types, or opposing Weather teams. Even when Hail teams find a combination that covers most, if not all of the relevant threats, their teams are bound to be slow and sluggish which powerful Choice Band and Choice Specs users can easily take advantage of.

Hail is a powerful playing style, but the fact that they will be inherently weak to certain threats and have to rely on a Stealth Rock weak Pokemon with no recovery to set their weather in a tier where Sunny Day, Rain Dance, or just stand-alone Swift Swim Ludicolo are not uncommon makes using Hail somewhat difficult.

EDIT: Another characteristic about Hail that I forgot to mention is that it limits the recovery of Moonlight and Synthesis to only 25%. This mainly affects Musharna and Amoonguss, which were Pokemon that were extremely resilient and hard to take down. While they weren't broken before, having their main source of recovery shafted somewhat "balances" them out further and makes teams less needy of a Skuntank or Absol as the replacement, Duosion, has considerably less bulk than Mushy and can be taken care of much easier by hard hitters.

 

[ium]

Their only weakness are fighters like sawk or emboar, but both of them can be handled by alomomola for example.

alomomola can't completely handle both of these. choice band sawk is extremely common, and with alomomola taking stealth rock damage and being unable to take advantage of leftovers recovery, it risks being 2HKO'd or left with very low hp to where hail KOs it afterwards. it's also only a mere check to emboar as emboar can run a special set that, although isn't the most popular, is still very present. there's choice band emboar which is pretty manageable by any competent team since alomomola can just switch back out once emboar is locked into wild charge, but do note that alomomola does risk a 2HKO otherwise.

this is just to show that you can't just have alomomola as your only answer to these things; django has been using both alomomola and grumpig to give these threats a hard time. but as a result, the hail user is putting further limitations on his/her teambuilding and will always be weak to something. what we have to question here is whether hail teams are still too powerful despite the inherent flaws most of them carry. from my experiences, no not really, because i have just used pokemon, such as regice, and i have been able to keep hail threats at bay. regice isn't really niche either; it proves very useful even against non-hail teams and was becoming popular before snover was unbanned. this is the same case with a lot of other things that check hail pokemon.

I also read duosion can be a threat, but believe me that after one or two CM it still has a normal spdef (CM spdef boost is ignoring eviolite, you can try by yourself, damage is almost the same after 1 than after 2 CM), so it can be taken down with two blizzards.

i have no clue what you're talking about. duosion isn't 2HKO'd at +1 or +2 unless we're talking about some uncommon modest choice specs glaceon.

One thing I do want to talk about though, is Rotom-F, and in particular its Life Orb set. While using this I found it to be exceptionally dangerous, and looking through NU there is very little that can switch into it and beat it. Often it requires a sacrifice on the opposing team to get a check in and force it out, and can easily break down many teams on its own. However, it obviously needs to be paired with Snover to be this effective as HP Ice is just not powerful enough, while its SR weakness and somewhat lacking Speed means it can be pressured easily and not given many opportunities to do damage. What do you guys think of Rotom-F? Can it push some Hail teams over the edge, or is it just another powerful abuser like Glaceon?

well rotom-f is kind of on the same boat as glaceon with the fact that the opponent will most likely have to sacrifice something to handle it if they have a substitute up. i honestly think that glaceon is much more of a problem since it has more chances to maintain a substitute after scoring a KO against whatever due to ice body. the distinct advantages i see to rotom-f is thunderbolt and more speed, but if we're talking about the former, most water-types can't really take an onslaught of blizzards anyway. in my opinion, rotom-f is just another very powerful threat just like glaceon. they both play with some differences, but i don't think it pushes anything over the edge, especially when hail teams are too hard-pressed to fit both abusers in one team.

anyway django and ebeast basically touched upon what i said a little bit: you're stacking snover and some other ice-type and you have fewer slots left to suit the rest of your team's needs. that just leaves a huge gaping weakness to something in the tier. however i think we should also question to what extent should a team need to prepare for hail. i placed pokemon such as cinccino, regice, piloswine, and duosion onto one team, but is that considered too much? they aren't really niche so they have other uses against non-hail teams, which further makes me believe that hail isn't really broken, but someone may think otherwise.

 

[MetaGross66]

Okay, time for me to throw in my two cents. I haven't had much experience with hail. I've only tried it once to test its efficiency in this tier and was bored within the span of a couple of battles because I was losing consistently. It was probably the team I built that led me to this conclusion, though. I've found that there are so many anti-hail measures already implemented into the NU metagame that one can just build a normal team as I have and still get pretty high up on the ladder. The fact that it isn't even common is definitely a testament to how "broken" Snover is in actuality. It isn't really centralizing. Emboar, Sawk, and many other Pokemon that were common before still are. The only real accommodation I've made is to give my Adamant Golem max speed. This way, it won't be outrun by other slow things like Walrein, Regirock, Piloswine, opposing Golem, etc. The best part is, it works. I've swept whole hail teams with this, unfortunately. I don't know if it's because of the people using the Hail teams or the Hail teams themselves (the ones I've faced seemed legit from what I've looked at in RMTs). Also, Toxic Spikes destroys them inside out. If you can lure out their poison type if they even have one it's only a matter of killing it or punishing the switchin with a powerful rock/fire/fighting type move. Every time they switch something dies. The biggest issue is definitely Rotom-F. Nothing is safe when it comes to the ghastly refrigerator. However, it's easy to punish if it's not scarfed. For example, nothing is coming in on Cinccino.

tl;dr: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This is not a voting thread. It's harmless.

 

[Tayo]

I believe that hail is just too powerful for NU at the moment. It has many abusers in NU like Ice Body Glaceon, Ice Body Regice(when relesed), Rotom-Frost, Walrein, Duosion, Piloswine, Lampent(due to its typing), Articuno, Lapras, Vanilluxe, Beartic, and any other water type that can use blizzard (like Gorebyss). Even though ice is not the greatest type ever do to its weakness it is very potent in NU. With only Sawk, Monferno, Throh, Gurdurr, Emboar, Armaldo, Charizard, carracoasta, regirock, lampent, and the ever rare Combusken as the only real counters to hail, Hail just does care if it only has these pokes to deal with. I mean Alomomola, Mantine, Lickilicky, and Amoonguess can take care of these pokes alone. It may not be popular now because many people think its only allowed in RU and UU, but when more and more people use it will become more apparent that it is in fact deadly. Also using torkoal as a rapid spiner helps the fire weakness and armaldo is good too. Now I understand that putting all these hail abusing pokes on to one team is not possible but you can put put its counters into one team, which tells you that it does not have that many counters. With Glaceon alone you can't swich in any of these pokes in as they are all taken down with one or two hits as specs Blizzard with two layers of spikes and stealth rocks one hit kos all the counters. So as for right now hail in NU is a no-no as they are few checks to a hail team.

 

[ThePROlificHipster]

I only signed up to the forum to say that a majority of the people who post here are butt hurt. Not only is hail the worst weather condition, ICE typing is the worst typing. Put those two together and you just have a terrible team in general. The problem seems to be that people aren't using dedicated hail teams but instead just using Snover as some gimmic for residual damage. You say you people have been trying to devise some hail team but all I see are generic Pokes with Snover crammed in. I mean in order to stop the endless butt hurt on this forum, you might as well ban Hail since it really isn't being used on Hail teams. Lettuce be real tea hear.

 

[watashi]

there are very diverse ice-types in the tier, such as rotom-f and piloswine. using two of them on the same team doesn't ruin the synergy of a team at all since you still have a few other team-slots to cover other threats. in fact, running a simple core of snover / piloswine / rotom-f allows you to check a huge amount of offensive threats in the metagame. your second argument also contradicts your first one since you seem to be arguing that people aren't using enough ice-types on their teams. from my experiences, many offensive pokemon such as emboar and cinccino appreciate the passive damage from hail a lot since it wears down their counters and nerfs certain defensive pokemon's recovery moves. lastly, if hail is not being used on hail teams, there is absolutely no reason to ban it since it's not affecting the metagame or causing "butt hurt" at all.

 

[Django]

OK no, enough terrible posts. Put effort into your posts and actually provide discussion relevant to Snover and Hail, not to Staravia of all things. If I have to delete any more posts of similar quality there will be infractions, so let this serve as a final warning.

Also this is not a voting thread, stop putting DO NOT BAN / BAN at the end of your post. This is a discussion thread.

Bah Humbug

 

[jake]

dude staravia is fucking awesome


In regards to official business, Sweet Jesus and ium will be joining the Senate voters (all of them, including new additions Annoyer and EBeast) for this round. Both have made significant efforts in contributing their thoughts & ideas to the discussion and verifying that they are intelligent and good battlers. There were a few other users that I had considered and would have liked to add onto the rotating council, but they hadn't actually posted on the forums or made an effort to talk about it on IRC, which I explicitly stated at the beginning of this round.

I am fairly certain of the stance of most voters, but this thread will remain open until December 30th (and possibly into the 31st depending on how this discussion is going), where all voters will be required to turn in their vote + the usual paragraph. I do not expect an essay, but I need a thorough and direct assessment of your thoughts regarding Snover & hail.

To clarify for the uninformed or those seeking complex bans for some reason, I am not interested in treating Snover and Snow Warning as separate identities (ie we are not going to ban just "Snow Warning"). Snover is literally only used to bring hail into play and has minimal usage outside of this, so no harm will be done by categorizing them as the same suspect. If hail is deemed broken, Snover itself will be banned from NU.

If you guys have anything to discuss about hail to sway opinions, please bring it up now or forever hold your peace.

 

[Manveru123]

I originally started playing NU mostly because I hate constant weather wars in OU, and weather in general, so I was a bit worried how will Hail affect the metagame.

The fact is, it did, but not THAT much. What I'm seeing is Duosion appearing more often than Musharna and barely used pokes being used more often (Walrein, Glaceon, even Lampent - just to name a few). It is however far from broken and honestly all it did was add a new, interesting team options.

 

[Celever]

I second what Manveru said, but I was honestly using hail long before Snover came into action. Just slap hail on Walrein and Sealeo (they're both great walls, in and out of hail, but especially in) with Walrein having an icy rock but Sealeo eviolite and you're pretty much set! Set a sub up before/after you set up hail and then stall it out for ages. It was honestly solely for Walrein and Sealeo on my team but I packed Blizzard on Samurott in case Sealeo or Walrein died and hail was still up. Hail really wouldn't be any more broken in RU than in NU, the pokemon are pretty darn similar and it wouldn't even dispatch most of the threats in RU! Hail is best left alone in my opinion, you've put it in NU now, barely anything changed except for a lot more hype about NU, it really would be stupid to take it out now..

 

[Nyara]

Well... I never losed to a hail team, actually, and I'm not even running an specific counter or check (Butterfree, Wigglytuff, Masquerain, Flareon/Rapidash, Articuno, Random Support Pokémon), and... it's not a problem at all to combat, maybe the unique one who cause me huge problems is Wallrain inside the hail, because it's powerful stall of 32 days of stall in hail with Substitute + Protect, and at some degree Piloswine it's somewhat hard to me to check him and evade it's SR use, but even then, when I'm playing against a hail team I'm feeling they tend to sacriface 2 , and even 3 usable Pokémon in order to just play with hail because yes.

For example, Snover rarely does something apart from being K.O'ed and summon hail, that makes the match a 6vs5 in fact, while others like Piloswine tend to just sacriface itself in order to do a desesperate support, an awful thing that worse things; 6vs4 is pretty more easy to win, and more when Hail Abussers rarely have the power to sweep teams, and they tend to run specific and somewhat useless sets of others Pokémon in order to combat it's hard counters, what against teams who doesn't carry those hard counters, it's make things even simple: an almost 6vs3, something easy to handle with anything who can take a hit and hit back hard (and nop, it's not like the Hydreigon's Draco Meteor, or Chandelure's Overheat, Hail Abussers don't hit that hard).

Now, some people do a smarter play, and use hail just as an extra power weather that helps them to break Focus Sashes and Sturdy users, for hit extra K.O's with the residual damage, and for spam Blizzard on place of Ice Beam for usually BoltBeaming better, but even then, they are losing a member in order to do that, and some teams do similar things but better using Tailwind for make things like Rampardos complete beasts, or just use the traditional Sunny Day/Rain Dance/Hail/Sandstorm moves, that makes you lose a turn or two and a move, but some abussers can summon it and abuse of it later of, and being of more help than Snover is.

Also, it's funny how Cinccinno tends to massive check hail teams, and Cinccino is one of most used NU Pokémon. And of course, hail teams tend to be really weak to Stealth Rock, other bad point.

 

[Cherub Agent]

Can you expand on why Rock is the worst defensive typing? Crucial resists to Fire, Normal, and FLYING mean that the vast majority of teams carry a Rock-type to act as their bird check. To me that's not a sign of a bad defensive typing, especially when Ice has no resistances apart from itself and a Stealth Rock weakness.

 

[Nyara]

Rock is a decent to good defensive typing, at least on NU, where the Grass-Type and Water-Type are not so dominant as they are on higher tiers and you can actually wall a whole of things, or at least not get a OHKO.

Steel: The best defensive type of the game, resistances to almost all with just few weakness.
Electric: Flawless defensive typing with only one weak point and useful resistances; good candidates for Air Ballon.
Dragon: Great defensive type, but it's weaknesses to Ice hurt.
Ghost: Great defensive type, great inmunities, decent resistances, and rare weakness, only bad point? Weak to Pursuit.
Dark: Great defensive type as long you mantain it far from the Figthers and U-Turn.

Water: Pretty nice, good resistances, not too common weaknesses, over avarage.
Poison: Nice defensive type, but sadly, it do have two common weaknesses.
Grass: Mixed bag, too many weaks, but at the same time it's resistances are great.
Fire: Good defensive type as long you're able to prevent or spin Stealth Rock, it's resistances are pretty useful.
Rock: Mixed bag like Grass, too many weaks, but it's resistances are excelent.

Bug: Good defensive type as long you're able to prevent or spin Stealth Rock, otherwise it's somewhat bad.
Ground: Overall, it's imnunity to Electric, and resistance to Stealth Rock helps, but it' weaknesses don't.
Psychic: Mostly standar, but it's weaknesses to Pursuit hurts.
Figthing: Decent at best, it's resistance to Stealth Rock helps, but it's all it have.

Normal: Being unnable to resist attacks is awful, and Fighting is too common to help.
Flying: Awful, too many weaks, and it's inmunity to Ground is not of help with all those EdgeQuake users.
Ice: Awful, Flying at least resist Figthing attacks, but those guys doesn't even do that.

 

[ThePROlificHipster]

Rock is the worst defensive typing, not ice.
ESPECIALLY when you have hail on your side, clearly you have no idea of how freaking good things like Glaceon and Rotom-F become when hail is up.

Still, I don't find Snow Warning broken in NU given how common rain dance users are - once Snover goes down hail teams are relatively easy to stop.

I think I know what I am talking about since I run hail both in NU and OU. Hail is much more of a threat in NU because you don't have threats similar to OU. No Scizor, Breloom, Volcarona, and most notably no weather wars.

Hail in NU also limits the viability of Eviolite users that do not have any significant recovery moves. The one place where you thought they had a home is no longer a good place for them.

As for Snover, he usually doesn't live longer than a turn or two. His primary use it just to setup hail and potentially switch into a defensive/spD Pokemon and setup a substitute. Is Snover ban worthy? No. Is hail ban worthy? Yes.

Why do I think its ban worthy? Hail provides some residual damage. Couple that with a Pokemon with terrible HP and a Scarf or Life Orb and they will probably die faster than usual. Couple with a U-Turn poke and a Volt Switch poke and you find yourself in a terrible loop.

 

[Manveru123]

About banning hail. One thing we have to realize is that if Hail stays, sooner or later we'll have people asking for sun and sand (rain obviously not possible). To be honest, if Snover stays, I don't see why Vulpix or Hippopotas shouldn't be allowed too. That's only fair. But if they DO get allowed, we'll be suddenly facing weather wars in pretty much every tier, and that is not a good thing for people who try to run away from that (which is a reason I don't really play OU).

So, either we accept that weather wars are an integral part of this game, or force lower tiers to abandon them altogether, without letting a single permanent weather stay. In my opinion we cannot eat the cake and have the cake, so please keep that in mind.