Auto weather poll

What should Smogon do regarding auto weather?

  • Ban Drizzle

    Votes: 149 26.9%
  • Ban all Auto-weather

    Votes: 112 20.3%
  • Keep it as it is

    Votes: 292 52.8%

  • Total voters
    553
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alexwolf

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The difference between that, Deglas, is that the player not using weather has to think more, which isn't exactly a problem, but the player using weather has to think less. Nothing should ever be an "I Win" button, it's why we banned Genesect and contributed to why we banned Tornadus-T.
This is not true. A well built team weatherless team can handle just fine opposing rain and sand teams. Sun teams are usually problematic for weatherless team but every team type has weaknesses. Stall is very weak to heavy offense, and sun offense is weak to sand teams with Hippo. I think your problem is that a good weatherless team is harder to build than a weather team, but this shouldn't be an issue. Some team types were always more difficult to team build with and to use, but this doesn''t make them any less viable, and is a poor reason to argue that something is broken.

For example weatherless teams with Celebi have little troubles with rain teams, except from a few specific Pokemon such as Tornadus, NP Thundurus-T and SD Toxicroak (after an SD boost obviously).
 
Hm, I hadn't thought about the weather player having to think less. And DougJustDoug's thread is very helpful.

My biggest problem with banning Drizzle is that it is likely to lead to a cascade that bans Drought, and then possibly Sand Stream, taking up a lot of time for almost the same result as just banning weather outright (We would retain Hail and BlizzSpam).

And as for banning weather outright, that would completely redraw the metagame, as abusers dropped tiers and Pokemon shunned because of weather jumped to OU, and other Pokemon become harder to handle. I don't really have a problem with the redrawing in and of itself, but the cure could well end up being worse than the disease. Thinking it over, I think that the idea someone earlier suggested, running weather and non-weather metagames simultaneously might be a good idea, that way people could see what this weatherless metagame they desire actually looks like before we commit to it.
 
Thinking it over, I think that the idea someone earlier suggested, running weather and non-weather metagames simultaneously might be a good idea, that way people could see what this weatherless metagame they desire actually looks like before we commit to it.
Been there, done that. We dropped it cause there was no player base.

Also, I agree with Alexwolf that you have to think more/less with weatherless/weather. The extra effort you have to put into a weatherless team to beat weather ones is about the same you have to put into one type of weather team to prevent it from being crippled by another. The only easy bit is that having weather to build around gives you a clearer idea of what to put in your team.
 
Well, my problem with the weather, at least in my opinion, is the fact that it's actually overcentralizing the metagame. Wanna have a sun team? Ninetales. Wanna have a rain team? Politoed. Wanna have a sand team? Oh, variety, Tyranitar and Hippodow. Wanna have a hail team? Abomasnow, and if you add all their usage you'll see how overcentralizing is the actually metagame, and how they have almost the same partners again, again, again, again, and again, and if we look at the weatherless teams, its the same; Deoxys-D (the fact that we need to put on OU an Uber Pokémon just to make somewhat viable weatherless is a thing to take in consideration, too), with... surprise! The same partners over, and over again, and with only being able hard offensive and hyper offensive teams if you don't carry weather.

So, yes, we have some of variety if we sum the 5 styles (and the somewhat tricky, but usable Gravity and Trick Room teams), but if we look at the reality, they are not more than 12-18 teams on most of the OU metagame, it looks just like the OU of the Gen. I, where have a Tauros, Chansey, and Starmie was almost a rule, but hey, the number of viable Pokémon and powerful ones on BW2 is a lot higher than the ones of the Generation I, we shouldn't allow overcentralizing, null team preparation, and pressing the "Win Button" and increasing even more the match-up syndrome.

Even discarding what I said, Drizzle by alone is another problem, as you need to check and counter them, or you're just unnable to play on OU, they make almost unviable the half and counting of UU Pokémon, and they have type and field win, as they are not weak to SR, at difference from Hail and Sun, and they naturally win against Sandstorm, Weatherless, and Sun, by just spaming Surf and Ice Beam most of the time. We even had to did a complex ban on Drizzle + Swift Swimmers! And even then Drizzle is showing to be the most effective way to play at the moment. We can ban all the current OU Pokémon that have benefits from rain, but know what? It will not change nothing, Water Type was always the best on every generation, and you can even put NU Pokémon to take the place of the older abussers, and still making Drizzle an issue.
 
Of course a well-built team can win consistently. It means the player sat down and took the time to think of what needed to be on the team to make it successful. Auto-weather compromises that, as the Swift Swim era clearly showed. If a Smogon Tour champion loses to a day one newbie because the champion was using a stall team they spent months on but lost to the newbie spamming Keldeo's Hydro Pump under Drizzle, that looks like a fucking problem to me.

Yeah, a good weatherless team is absolutely harder to build, because since Genesect's ban they don't have any one thing that makes winning enormously easier, like Venusaur or Tornadus-T. Auto-weather gives bad players OP tools to use to get wins they did not earn. We banned Sand Veil Garchomp two generations in a row because you needed two Pokémon to win a game against ANY team, and it didn't matter how fantastically-built the opposing team was or how beyond skilled the opposing player was.

And your analogy about weatherless with Celebi vs. rain is preposterous. "except for a few specific Pokémon". You mean like rain's best abuser since Manaphy and Swift Swim were banned?
 

alexwolf

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The rain's best abuser which you are talking about (Thund-T or Tornadus?) can be shut down easily though. Tornadus is SR weak, frail, and walled by many Pokemon, namely Jirachi, Bronzong, Chansey, and Blissey. Thund-T is SR weak too and the NP set is not so popular as there are not so many defensive teams around. All other sets can be played around with reltive ease if you have Celebi.

Also:

Of course a well-built team can win consistently. It means the player sat down and took the time to think of what needed to be on the team to make it successful. Auto-weather compromises that, as the Swift Swim era clearly showed. If a Smogon Tour champion loses to a day one newbie because the champion was using a stall team they spent months on but lost to the newbie spamming Keldeo's Hydro Pump under Drizzle, that looks like a fucking problem to me.
Auto-weather makes teambuilding harder? Possibly, so what? If the individual rain threats can be handled without overpreparing for said playstyle and/or using niche and gimmick Pokemon, then what is the problem? That you have to think more? Once again in every single meta there are some team types that are harder than others to build and play with, and this alone means nothing.

If a Smogon Tour champion loses by said noob, it is his fault for not preparing against a major threat (unless hax is involved), which can be handled without compromising your team too much. Every team has weaknesses, and it's your choice which holes you want to close and which to leave open.
 
I voted "keep it as it is", but I also wouldn't have been strongly opposed to banning Politoed (although I have no idea what that could potentially lead to, as banning the main weather inducer in the metagame is a HUGE deal, it's a shame that no weaker Pokemon had Drizzle as that the playstyle could've been nerfed by banning Politoed and then having to use Poliwag or whatever as the Drizzle Pokemon).

I think Smogon have done a good job with weather this generation (I don't think a lot of people fully appreciate how complicated it is and how many factors there are to consider). Hopefully next generation we won't have to use Swift Swim + Drizzle style bans though.
 
I think that the metagame should stay as it is. Yes, most of what rain had was OP (referring to Manaphy, Tornadus-T) but it now isn't broken. If your team has problems with rain teams then use something that does well against rain. Simple as that. I use SandStall and I don't have an issue with rain because I am prepared for it. You have a problem with Tornadus? Set up Stealth Rock and pack a Jirachi/Zapdos/Bronzong/Chansey. Heck, my team uses specially defensive Skarmory against Tornadus. You have a problem with Thundurus-T? Set up Stealth Rock and pack a Gastrodon/Chansey/Blissey/Latias. Ferrothorn, Amoonguss and Celebi don't do too badly either, neither does specially defensive Hippowdon. You have a problem with Keldeo? Pack a Jellicent/Amoonguss/Celebi/Latias. You should build your team to effectively deal with the common threats in the OU metagame, if you can't deal with rain then your team needs looking at, same as any other threat in OU.
 
Been there, done that. We dropped it cause there was no player base.
A problem easily solved by actually banning Drizzle you can always go back to the way it was later -or not, we're really late in Gen V's age anyways-, and the information you get from this kind of full-scale experiment will be better than the theorymoning largely used in these kind of thread from both sides. If this is not done now that there is still a solid player base for Gen V then you'll probably never do it... There is very little to lose by experimenting at this point and a lot to win in case weather remains the top dog on Gen VI.
 
I voted for Ban

Auto weather is not balanced in any way , rain dish , swift swim , dry skin , sand rush , sand veil , building teams around weather abuse , centralizes too much the metagame itself in weather wars

All weather should be equal in terms of buffs and effects gamefreak did a terrible job on it balance wise
 
I voted "keep it as it is", but I also wouldn't have been strongly opposed to banning Politoed (although I have no idea what that could potentially lead to, as banning the main weather inducer in the metagame is a HUGE deal, it's a shame that no weaker Pokemon had Drizzle as that the playstyle could've been nerfed by banning Politoed and then having to use Poliwag or whatever as the Drizzle Pokemon).
Well, to clarify, it's only the auto-weather abilities (at least drizzle and drought) that warrant a ban. Politoed and Ninetales could still use their regular abilities and reside in UU (probably RU for Politoed). I don't see it being such a problem.
 
Team preview basically forces team match-ups already.

Unless one player has a ton more skill than another you can basically tell what the outcome is going to be before the game starts. Even if we had the Gen IV metagame with team preview it would still allow players to play their cards to a team advantage since you know exactly what you're dealing with before you deal with it.

Drizzle hasn't been broken since the SwSw/Manaphy ban went through, Tornadus and Thundurus got sniped along the way because people still seem to hate anything that's even moderately useful in rain, but it hasn't been broken for years.

Game Freak pulled the trump card. We have entered the era of auto weather. Every single Gen from this point on will be weather wars. This is where it began. This is where the haters just need to get their head out of the gutter and stop trying to force Gen V to be Gen IV. Go back and play Gen IV if you want to do that.

Would that I could return to those times, sadly that's impossible...

I honestly believe that Gen IV was the best time to have been playing competitive Pokemon (this was when I actually started playing, so forgive me if I’m a little biased). Back then, the discussion forums were a lot more lively and warstories were actually commonplace. Compared to now, whereby discussion takes place in the form of so-called “projects”. Also, we had a simulator that, whilst not perfect, did what we needed it to, nothing more, nothing less.

We don’t need a simulator that auto-closes the window if another player quits, or displays the HP of Pokemon in actual numbers so that you don’t know whether or not you can switch into SR. Also, while I understand that it was necessary to differentiate itself from PO, and admit that it was cool at first, animations aren’t really necessary either. Some players might disagree (mostly newer players to be honest), but for truly competitive players like myself, animations are nothing but a distraction. I would much rather focus on the actual battle itself, not on the animations. It would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that they take up so much of our valuable playing time. This is bad if you think about it because in the long run, the average time taken per battle will have increased, thus lowering the actual amount of games you could have played within a given period of time (in general, the more you play, the better you become). Also, don’t even get me started on “time stall”, a term that came about only with the introduction of PS!

It’s a real shame for those that only started playing since Gen V. If I’m honest, Gen V is like a dumbed down version of Gen IV. No team preview means that you have to think less, since you have access to more information at the beginning. You don’t have to work out what the opponent has based on what you’ve seen so far, no more hiding late-game sweepers, no more “scouting” etc. Also, the widespread distribution of VoltTurn makes double switching obsolete, further reducing skill levels. Stuff like Drizzle etc. makes teambuilding a joke (and a horrible one at that), just slap on a bunch of rain abusers and call it a day. Anyone can win with Poli + Keldeo + Torn-t + Torn-t counter (aka Jirachi) + Toxicroak + SR…
 

Adamant Zoroark

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I'm legitimately amazed at how anyone can... well, even like a metagame that is infested with all kinds of auto-weather. When I used a Rain team in the Genesect era (and even a slightly modified one after it) I found that I was winning less games due to skill and winning more games due to the fact that Rain is practically an automatic win condition. Keep in mind that this Rain team DID NOT have Tornadus-T even though it was built pre-Tornadus-T ban. Sure, you need to put some thought into the team.... Like, 2 minutes of it at most. Fuck 5 minute Sand teams, build a Rain team in two minutes tops

In my opinion, Aldaron's Proposal was (no offense to Aldaron) just a cheap excuse to keep Drizzle in the metagame, and one that barely worked at that. We've been working at nerfing Rain for two years now and it's still the most dominant weather. No more of this bullshit. We can't go much further banning toys that are just for Rain, because.... There's only one left, and banning it would not solve anything about rain, and banning anything else like Keldeo would lead to giving weatherless teams less options to use.

I've had enough. It is time to stop chipping away at Drizzle since it will clearly always be the most dominant weather (matches up well against every weather except Hail), and it's too much of a burden on weatherless teams to have to check both Rain AND Sun with just 6 Pokemon. There is no way you can argue that you can handle all of these things "without compromising your team too much", because I've noticed that weatherless teams are unbelievably rigid. You could even argue that other team archetypes (even Rain) are rigid. I do not remember teams being this rigid in DPP, and I remember battling requiring far more skill in DPP.

We should have banned Drizzle a long time ago. You can polish a piece of shit all you want, but it'll always be a piece of shit. The only way to possibly un-shit the metagame is to get rid of all the shit that makes it shit, and Drizzle is a good place to start.
 
What? The worst generation ever for competitive battle was the four, no matter how you seen it, even the Generation I was more balanced and fun, with all it's glitches and stuff, but the four is extremenly unbalanced and is a total disaster as you can just win pushing the "victory button" all the time (ie, Close Combat and stuff).

Generation V tryed to fix a bit the gigant disaster that leaved the Generation IV, with mixed results, more viable options, but less generally thinking, at least for OU, as Politoed really shaped the current metagame like Snorlax did with the Generation II, still, it's still better than the excesive horrible Generation IV, someone rebember the omnipresence of Heatran and Tyranitar? I do. The Generation V at least have some more kind of balance and variety, still pretty bad, but not as worst as the Generation IV.

The Generation's II and III are so far the more balanced ever, with more variety, and when you need to think a lot on team building an on mid-match, and even GSC's UU and RSE's UU and NU are really balanced.
 

Deck Knight

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Rain is clearly overcentralizing to an obvious extent. Lets look at the number of things that have been banned in order not to address the 800 lb drizzling gorilla in the room:

Swift Swim: Because when Drizzle + Swift Swim was legal, Kingdra, Kabutops, and Ludicolo were too mighty. This ban took care of their viability.

Manaphy: Hyration Rest + Tail Glow borked this.

Thundurus: This was largely the doing of Prankster, but Perfect Acc Thunders contributed.

Tornadus-T: Perfect Acc Hurricane says hello.

Compare this to sand, which has no complex bans and has only banned Excadrill and Sand Veil, the latter under a conditional evasion pretense that pulled Snow Cloak into it.
 

Adamant Zoroark

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What? The worst generation ever for competitive battle was the four, no matter how you seen it, even the Generation I was more balanced and fun, with all it's glitches and stuff, but the four is extremenly unbalanced and is a total disaster as you can just win pushing the "victory button" all the time (ie, Close Combat and stuff).

Generation V tryed to fix a bit the gigant disaster that leaved the Generation IV, with mixed results, more viable options, but less generally thinking, at least for OU, as Politoed really shaped the current metagame like Snorlax did with the Generation II, still, it's still better than the excesive horrible Generation IV, someone rebember the omnipresence of Heatran and Tyranitar? I do.
Something tells me you never even played DPP if you honestly think RBY was better. RBY was shit, there were like two viable teams, maybe having one or two Pokemon changed. You could not just click Close Combat and win games like how you can spam Rain teams and win games, I have no idea where you got that.

Go play DPP before you say something about it.

Also, unbalanced? Stall was actually good in DPP, here it borders on being non-viable! There is no way in HELL BW is more balanced!

EDIT: Just saw your edited post....... There is no way in hell GSC has variety. Every single (serious) team has Snorlax there and the differences between stall and offense are obscure as fuck.
 
The 20% of fully evolved Pokémon are viable and have huge use on RBY, and even, there's a huge borderline tier (not on Smogon because their just have 2 tiers for fast information) of others 24% of completely viable Pokémon for some teams. Yes, I know, 81 fully evolved doesn't make a huge, huge metagame, but there was variety, different strategy's, and differents way to play around with the game, if we look at the not-impressive 15% of viable Pokémon of the DDP's OU, and the mostly omniprescense of Heatran/Tyranithar (just pointing because you pointed Snorlax on GSC), you'll see how DDP's was frankly, null of variety and of viable Pokémon.

Yes, I know those people who started to play competitive battles with DDP feels nostalgia and stuff with that generation, but that was a really ugly generation with the competitive aspect.

GSC's by other hand had an about of 34% of viable Pokémon for OU battles, being about 20% used most commonly, there's not exist hyper offensive or mega stall, all the teams were stall-inclined, balanced, or offensive-inclined, and apart from Snorlax and at some less degree Skarmory, all the others Pokémon were really far from being called "extremenly used" or OP at all, and even with Snorlax you can just forgoe him and play around without any major trouble; he's the best, but not by a huge ammount.
 

Adamant Zoroark

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The only things viable in RBY are in OU, and maybe like three UU Pokemon. Not exactly what I'd call "diverse".

DPP was definitely not an ugly generation. Everything that needed to get banned got banned. Heatran is everywhere because Scizor is everywhere, unlike how Rain is everywhere because it's fucking Rain. There was a fuck ton more variety back then, partially stemming from the fact that Stall was actually good there. DPP had 48 OU Pokemon (and 11 BL's, all of which are viable). Hell, even a good number of UU Pokemon were viable in DPP OU. I could point out the omnipresence of Tyranitar and Celebi in ADV OU, but I'm not because that was a good generation regardless of the omnipresence of maybe a few Pokemon instead of A WHOLE FUCKING PLAYSTYLE.
 
Fully Evolved Pokémon on Gen. I: 81
Number of OU Pokémon on Gen. I: 16

Let's do mats!

16 / 81 x 100 = 19,75

Rounded to 20%.

Number of BL (completely viable on some teams) on Gen I: 16

16 / 81 x 100 = 19,75%

Rounded to 20%, there was 2-3 UU Pokémon usable, too, but offen gimnnicky, but still viable at the end.

About the play styles, dunno, Generation IV was pretty offensive inclined, Dragon Zone was one of most common playstyles, hyper offensive at the end, stall was viable (stall is still viable on BW) with some Sandstorm teams, more offen thanks to Gliscor, but there is all, not really used at all or effective all the time.

Tyranitar and Celebi on ADV are really far from the usage of Tyranitar and Heatran on DDP.
 

Adamant Zoroark

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Dragon + Magnezone pretty much died off once Latias and Salamence were banned.

Percentage of Pokemon viable does not mean shit. RBY is still an unbelievably non-diverse generation. It's just a cheap method of making a non-diverse metagame look diverse when it really isnt. If there were 10,000 Pokemon and only 200 of them were viable, who cares? It's still 200 viable Pokemon, which is a lot. Stop denying that DPP was more diverse than RBY, because RBY was the least diverse generation yet.
 
36 viable Pokémon... (from 81, btw)

vs...

43 (OU) + 11 (BL) + 2-3 viable Pokémon (UU's)... (from 293, btw)

Not seen great difference, if you ask me, and more where the usage/balance and stuff was a lot stronger on RBY than on DDP (that should be taken in account that DDP reached to it's current stats thanks to a good bunch of not-official-Nintendo bans - it means, forcing balance on an unbalanced base generation -, and even then it's still a lot more unbalanced than RBY), the unique thing on the vs I could grant to DDP was the stall being more viable, as stall on RBY is almost not-existent thanks to the (huge) Critical-Hit ratio, still, seudo-stall is still viable on RBY and works pretty well.

About the playstyles, DDP was Sandstorm vs Sandstorm, Weatherless (Dragon Zone, usually) vs Sandstorm, and almost ending the list.
 

Adamant Zoroark

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Way more than 2-3 UU's in DPP were viable. Alakazam, Donphan, Dugtrio, Feraligatr (yes, Feraligatr), Hitmontop, Kabutops, Ludicolo, Milotic, Mismagius (not kidding), Sceptile, Slowbro, Spiritomb, and probably some more were all viable in DPP OU, regardless of how small their niche was.

RBY, on the other hand..... lead with something like Eggy/Jynx/Alakazam, use Thunder Wave on shit, carry Rhydon/Golem to stop Zapdos, carry Tauros......... How is that a diverse generation?
 
If a Smogon Tour champion loses to a day one newbie because the champion was using a stall team they spent months on but lost to the newbie spamming Keldeo's Hydro Pump under Drizzle, that looks like a fucking problem to me.
It's the Champ's fault for using a stall team in the first place. I say with certainy that stall is the worst playstyle in Ubers, OU, UU, and RU. I'm not too sure about NU, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was also the case. If you want to win consistently, don't play with stall.
 
Sure, its overcentralizing the game and weather has become a staple. But it should not be banned. EVER. For any game to be fun, there must always be a challenge. Things like manaphy, blaziken, excadrill, and tornadus t are examples of things that make it too dificult and impossible to play. They should be banned for that. Weather is a huge component in this metagame, and it provides a level of difficulty, fun, and creativity to the game. It is not broken, just extremely common.

If we were to ban it, that would be dumb. BW is a weather metagame, period. Every generation has its era, and this is the era of weather. I personally think banning weather would make the game less fun than it is now. Rain is far by the most troublesome weather, but not impossible to prepare for. There are plenty of pokemon capable of putting rain to a halt. Amoonguss, ferrothorn, virizion, and celebi are all great for this. You just have to stylize your team to deal with as many of the different threats as possible. Thats the fun in team building too, isn't it?

Anyway, thats my two cents on it. I seriously think we should not ban weather.
 
It's the Champ's fault for using a stall team in the first place. I say with certainy that stall is the worst playstyle in Ubers, OU, UU, and RU. I'm not too sure about NU, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was also the case. If you want to win consistently, don't play with stall.
You're completely missing the point. If this was a tournament-winning stall team (which was the implication, but I guess subtext doesn't exist anymore), then it shouldn't have had its shit pushed in by Jimmie No-Scopes pressing "Hydro Pump" over and over.

You know WHY stall is so shitty in Gen V? Because the power creep, of which rain is a prime contributor, in Gen V was so immense that shit that made stall weep like MixApe and Tyraniboah back in Gen IV are worthless now. Why worry about trying to hit that Skarm super effectively when Terrakion's CB Stone Edge 2HKOs with Rocks? Who gives a shit about strategy when Scarf Keldeo under rain 2HKOs the metagame with SURF, much less Hydro Pump?

I didn't really give a shit about Sand or Hail back in Gen IV, but seeing how bad Drizzle and Drought are has just poisoned auto-weather of any sort. It's a toxic element to the metagame that we're better off without.
 
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