Auto weather poll

[alexwolf]

So, I think I might change camps to ban all weather. Why? Because I can give myself no satisfactory answer to this question:

Why, other than Deoxys-D Hyper Offense, should I run a weatherless team, when weather teams are easier to build and easier to use?

Because some people like to use different types of teams, strategies, and Pokemon, except for the same stuff over and over. And because winning with a team that you put a lot of thought to build and revolves around a more complicated gameplan is way more satisfying than winning with an easy to build and use team. Just because something is easier to use doesn't mean it is better than something that is harder to use.

 

[Schpoonman]

We are a competitive site. Using your favorite Pokémon is all well and good but it doesn't mean shit when it comes to the structure of the site. That's the equivalent of saying "Well, I'm running a rain team, but I like Thunderbolt's animation more than Thunder's so I'm gonna use that." It doesn't fly.

This is specifically why shit like Gravity and Trick Room are so damn rare. They're fucking cool and devastating when done properly, but they're incredibly difficult to pull off. So most people don't bother unless they really really want to use them. Even then, very successful iterations are even MORE rare because you have to be a damn good battler yourself to make them work, and not everyone is that skilled.

So when we have shit like rain and sun and Deo-D HO that takes five minutes to put together and sweep the entire fucking ladder we lose on people actually being creative.

While I'm at it, I'd like to lay to rest the myth that if we didn't have rain we'd just have three more cookie cutter teams. You ever notice that this is the generation for cookie cutter teams? I'll admit that I only started competitive battling on the tail end of Gen IV, but the extensive battling I did at that time had EVERYTHING. Stall, semi-stall, balance, hyper offense, etc. I don't need to list them for you, you know what they are. Certain Pokémon were popular, obviously, and synergy-blessed cores like Fire-Grass-Water were common, but half the ladder wasn't using the same four or five teams. You basically had to run into the same player in order to encounter the same team twice. I've lost count of how many Politoed-Tentacruel-Jirachi-Torn-T-Ferrothorn teams I've seen on the ladder since BW2's launch.

If that's not a toxic metagame environment than nothing is and I don't know why the hell we're bothering with tiering at that point.

 

[Deglas]

And because winning with a team that you put a lot of thought to build and revolves around a more complicated gameplan is way more satisfying than winning with an easy to build and use team.

The thing is, for many newer or less-skilled players, the choice is losing with a team that you put a lot of thought to build and revolves around a more complicated gameplan or winning with an easy to build and use team. I myself enjoy trying to be creative, but for someone with low skill or experience who is playing to win, creativity won't work. Even with average skill and some experience, creative weatherless teams that are not Deoxys-D hyper offense will be harder to build and win with than a weather team.

In many ways, this debate has no one group that can carry it out. The people with enough skill and experience to be trusted to know what they are talking about are the ones who have the least problems, as they will have the knowledge and skill to be creative succesfully. The people with the most problems are the average and new players, who simply are not regarded as knowing what should be done as much, and these people cannot be creative successfully the majority of the time.

I apologize if this post was offensive and/or unclear, I just had a hard time deciding how to phrase things.

 

[alexwolf]

Lord Of Bays you forgot something that i said:

Just because something is easier to use doesn't mean it is better than something that is harder to use.

As many said before, heavy centralization around certain Pokemon and playstyles will always exist in OU, it has always been like this. Your problem is seeing people using the same 3-4 mindless teams on the ladder? Then use yourself some more creative and innovative Pokemon or sets and show them the right direction instead of blaming weather for it (if you did, if not ignore this). People always use the same few easy-to-use teams over and over again, regardless of weather.

 

[Lirg]

At first I was against Drizzle. But I noticed that it will stay in OU for the remaining of the Gen V. Drizzle's problem isn't that it's overpowered but it brings other problems.

The first for me is the teambuilding's problem. Teams have strong archetypes. You can't use sun abusers in rain team and rain abusers in sun team. So these kind of team build themselves, as seen as you have less possibilities to put on. On the weatherless, you have to stop the opposite weathers sun and rain. It means that your water pokémon is useless in sun and your fire pokémon is useless in rain (About that, as seen as rain is prominent in OU, it's mostly your fire pokemon which is useless). You DO benefit from the weather, but you can't do as the weather you want is still there (or else, why do you make a weatherless team?). So you must put on your team pokémons which aren't affected too much by the weather.
With that, you have the appearance of diversity but a lot of pokémons are trapped inside a weather and can't be used otherwise.

The problem isn't Drizzle but the fact that we have now several auto-weathers which are for two of them totally conflicting. If Drizzle was the only weather in OU, the OU would be totally different but every pokemon inside it would be usable at every condition.

Which brings me to my second point. If Drizzle was the only weather, some pokémons wouldn't be OU anymore but others would be. Every electric and flying pokémons will tend to use Hurricane and Thunder and not use fire attack anymore. This situation kind of existed already in Gen IV. Everytime you read a analysis on a pokémon who need Life Orb, you saw that pokémon has trouble to survive the Life Orb recoil and the sandstorm damage. But now, the fact is we have a weather war. So we don't know how the conditions are, especially if you have a weatherless. Even with rain as main weather, trying to put Thunder in a weatherless is risky because if you are against a sandstorm, your attack is near useless now.

So, do we need to ban Drizzle? The question is tricky. The weather war will continue as long as we have two relatively powerful together. Ban all the weathers? Not a good idea either as seen as weather as they are now aren't broken as hell.

About stall, I can't say really. I may be biased because I usually play weatherless offensive team.

 

[Schpoonman]

Okay, I definitely misread that, sorry. I feel like my point still remains that the easier teams get more wins because the vast, vast majority of players do not have the skill (myself included; I've only had two truly successful teams this generation, one Deo-S HO team, and my current 3-Dragon team, which should say enough on its own) to use the creative teams and win.

You're absolutely right that certain Pokémon and certain playstyles have always been popular and the metagame will revolve around them. But besides Gen I which barely counts, never before have teams with the same identical Pokémon (I'm not talking four teams using different variations of Celebi, Snorlax, and Suicune, I'm talking about four teams using the exact same Tentacruel, Keldeo, and Landorus, down to the EVs) been used to this extent.

Gen V being the auto-weather gen has led to people using the same 3-4 mindless teams that are better than 90% of any team out there and that kills viability for so many other teams simply because the vast majority of us can't build original air-tight teams. We got swept by Torn-T Rain and Venusaur Sun when we try to stake out on our own and we didn't learn when we used those same teams ourselves.

This isn't to imply that this should be Call of Duty where even Jimmy No-Scopes with his head up his ass can win games consistently. If you're bad, you do not deserve to win, end of discussion. But there's no room for players to grow in Gen V. You were either good before it started and you know what to do to avoid falling into the cookie cutter trap, or you try to use something original, get floored, and then start spamming CB Terrakion like everyone else. And auto-weather contributes to that more than anything else in this game.

 

[Nyara]

Ahah, I think your signature is perfectly fit for your post. I've always been for the pro-weather party, but according to what Gen VI brings to the table, the council might take a different approach to weather strategies.

If anything, this poll proves that Drizzle isn't the "obviously broken" ability that some people make it to be.

The fact that people stopped to care about weatherless, hail, stall, and at some lessen degree sandstorm and sun doesn't mean it's not broken, it just mean a general opinion and perception about the problem, yet, nothing definitive.

Anyway, you can play around it, but like Snorlax in GSC, there's not competitive reason to not use weather, or to use hail, or even sandstorm, and sun teams almost always lose against rain, but they have a small advantage against the other weathers and rivals with sandstorm. So, it's a problem, you can be creative (for example, I have a NU weatherless team on OU with 38% win ratio, and a OU weatherless with 44% win ratio) and make viable options, but they will be always inferior to any creative rain or sun option, that is. It is broken? Define broken, and there we have your problem, nobody can exactly say what is and what is not broken, we doesn't have any "constitution" or even base to see what we should consider broken.

If broken means overpowered, and just superior by any means, and that force you to run multiple checks/counters, then rain, and at lessen degree sun are broken. If broken means "a lot more stronger from the bests OU Pokémon", then it's not broken, because the stronger OU Pokémon are rain and sun abussers, and at lessen degree some dragons, thus, sun and rain are not broken because they form a core part from OU.

What I seen with all the bans did so far, the community tried to aim more for the first mean; an example is Tornadus-T, he was the best to keep rain up, but at the same time the best OU Pokémon are rain abussers, thus, he's not "broken" by the second mean, but he sure is by the first. While Keldeo had more power than almost any OU Pokémon under the rain, but he's OU because it's not hard to check or counter him (to deal in a some way with him), thus, he was keep on OU by the first mean, too.

For the future (Gen VI) we should have a clear "constitution" or least guide of what to consider broken, and what means we should take at the end, and what should be do if something is broken, just ban it? Debuff it until it stops to being broken (slow process)? Balance and overcentralization does care, or just forget them? It is just a suggestion to make the tiering and suspect process easier and clear.

I also ask to take more care about any "universal ban" like the one with Sand Veil/Snow Cloak and stuff, I know Garchomp needed a debuff, but those bans also affects a lot of other Pokémon who need those abilities to being viable, or to work better on lower tiers, and "universal debuffs" for just one Pokémon seems silly, I think we should not fear to complex bans, as universal bans tends to make more damage and also tends to make slower the tiering process on lower tiers, Aldaron's Proposal showed how the community feels ok with complex bans if they are really needed.

 

[haunter]

The fact that people stopped to care about weatherless, hail, stall, and at some lessen degree sandstorm and sun doesn't mean it's not broken, it just mean a general opinion and perception about the problem, yet, nothing definitive.

The whole tiering process is a matter of opinion. Even the definition of "broken" is entirely subjective and the fact that we've spent 4 fucking years trying to find an agreement on such a concept, without coming to a satisfying result, is the best proof of it.

People haven't stopped caring about SS or Drought teams, nor they stopped caring about weather-less teams. Actually, I'm pretty sure that many teams at the top of the ladder are weather-less teams. Check your sources before making asinine comments, thanks.

 

[Birkal]

 

[Huntofthelion]

This isn't really the place to ask about tiering -- the appropriate thing to do would be to talk to the OU council members in private. A lot of these comments are purely subjective to opinion and aren't very helpful, especially because I haven't seen a single argument that could possibly convince the council members of taking a particular course of action. If they feel Drizzle is worth testing, they'll test it. If they feel banning weather is in order, a vote will happen. It's as simple as that.

 

[Aldaron]

I am going to re-open this in spite of the....questionable nature of the logic / consistency behind the majority of these posts, if only to encourage people to vote in this informal straw-poll-like poll.

I am personally curious to see where the "community" at large stands in a general sense on this matter, as informal as this is.

 

[RaikouLover]

I wish I could vote for two. I'm in the camp for "Ban All Auto-weather" or "Keep it as it is." I feel like you can't make a preference when banning a weather. Yes, rain is the most popular but that is because the cores are the easier to use. However, having used Rain / Sun, they are have significant drawbacks. For starters, if you use Politoed / Ninetales, you already have to think about stacking up on type weaknesses. Furthermore, your team becomes much weaker if your team's weather starter perishes and you lose all benefits. I cannot say Rain is a surefire win against Sand or Sun because it depends on the player and team combinations. There were some sand and sun teams that flat out beat rain no matter what. However, they are generally worse against other weathers or weatherless. Counterteaming certain team archetypes does exist and it is tough to say if that is all weather or just the multitude of threats in BW2.

Another thing to consider is how weather helps defensively. Rain in particular does a good job of aiding defensive cores (Jirachi / Ferrothorn / Tentacruel) in countering more offensive threats in OU. One of the complaints I had when running weatherless was how many coinflip battles there seemed to be (Deoxys-D + 5 sweepers with numerous speed ties). Weather adds another dimension to defensive balance, whether that is favorable typing provided by rain / sun, or additional residual damage provided by Sand and Hail. Don't forget Sand Rush / Chlorophyll for non-scarf revenge killing as well!

 

[TheFourthChaser]

I see this has gotten a lot worse lol.

With the right support Weavile can neuter the behemoths. It's not a rain counter, I would never say that. But it did in fact check the most popular rain abusers at the time.

I'm aware of the once clear skies on PO, and I know about its low usage, and I know about a turny environment. Yet, wouldn't that mean you're arguing rain shouldn't be banned? Or do you just think my alternate approach is silly altogether?
Because No Weather is a common requesite for WiFi BattleFinder users. And besides your countering my idea, you seem quite upset about the rain abuse.

P.S.- A lot of us are.

I'm not exactly against a Clear Skies ladder I am just against the silly things that come with it. Some people use a CS ladder as justification for abusers > weather bans and when the argument is brought up it turns to "lol you guys coulda just played Clear Skies". If you can get those to not happen the ladder sounds fine to me.

Ahah, I think your signature is perfectly fit for your post. I've always been for the pro-weather party, but according to what Gen VI brings to the table, the council might take a different approach to weather strategies.

If anything, this poll proves that Drizzle isn't the "obviously broken" ability that some people make it to be.

Yea basing it off of this thread is clearly a great idea.

Why does everybody keep saying we've spent all our time trying to avoid banning Drizzle? We banned SS + Drizzle, Tornadus-T and Manaphy. (not even sure if we can lump it all on Rain seeing as Tail Glow got buffed to +3) Thundurus-I was mostly banned due to 111 speed + NP + 125 SpAtk with annoying Prankster stunts gathering more rage. (There's obviously a large chance that I'm wrong. I tried to find the old thread to confirm/deny my memory but I couldn't find it) Rain had nothing to do with Genesect getting banned and it actually shot up in usage as soon as he was kicked. That makes a grand total of 2-4 bans that were made in the place of Drizzle. (depending on how much you think Manaphy and Thundy needed rain) I wouldn't exactly call that bending your backwards to avoid banning Drizzle. (which already was suspected way back when with all of the other auto weathers)

That is kind of avoiding a Drizzle ban, you could've banned the weather and not have had to go through all of those bans. Imagine if we had just done it first, we could've been a lot closer to a better metagame if it weren't great already.

I wish I could vote for two. I'm in the camp for "Ban All Auto-weather" or "Keep it as it is." I feel like you can't make a preference when banning a weather. Yes, rain is the most popular but that is because the cores are the easier to use. However, having used Rain / Sun, they are have significant drawbacks. For starters, if you use Politoed / Ninetales, you already have to think about stacking up on type weaknesses. Furthermore, your team becomes much weaker if your team's weather starter perishes and you lose all benefits. I cannot say Rain is a surefire win against Sand or Sun because it depends on the player and team combinations. There were some sand and sun teams that flat out beat rain no matter what. However, they are generally worse against other weathers or weatherless. Counterteaming certain team archetypes does exist and it is tough to say if that is all weather or just the multitude of threats in BW2.

Another thing to consider is how weather helps defensively. Rain in particular does a good job of aiding defensive cores (Jirachi / Ferrothorn / Tentacruel) in countering more offensive threats in OU. One of the complaints I had when running weatherless was how many coinflip battles there seemed to be (Deoxys-D + 5 sweepers with numerous speed ties). Weather adds another dimension to defensive balance, whether that is favorable typing provided by rain / sun, or additional residual damage provided by Sand and Hail. Don't forget Sand Rush / Chlorophyll for non-scarf revenge killing as well!

Why can you not have a preference when banning a weather? Sand and Hail don't have the abusers and type boosting effects that the other two weathers have and Sand being "dominant" is basically weatherless, like it was in all the previous generations, except you have Landorus (which I admit may possibly be suspect at that point) and Stoutland. Terrakion has proven to be great regardless of weather and Sandslash sucks.

Weather can aid defense but it has a much easier time aiding offense. In BW1 Drizzle was alright because, for the most part, it was forced to become a defensive style but, as we've seen, it is so easy for something new to come up and completely change all of that. Sun Stall wasn't even really a thing until WCoP and even then it's super dependent on team matchup. In my opinion the defensive benefits aren't worth having to put up with all the offensive ones.

 

[Homeslice]

Is weather over-centralizing the metagame? Not really. Did Scizor over-centralize the Gen 4 metagame? Not really. Did the viability of creativeness get sucked out of 5th Gen? Somewhat. Gen 4 had 48 OU pokemon by the end of the generation. 5th gen currently has 52. Now then, an addition of four hardly means much. Gen 4 had 493 total pokemon. Gen 5 has 649. Now while not all are fully evolved in each, Gen 5 has had an abundance of NFE creep into the NU and RU tiers. 48 out of 493 is about 9.73% of pokemon in OU in 4th gen. 52 out of 649? Not so much. It's only about 8.01%- but that could also be debated about the movement of new pokemon to other tiers. Uber stayed the same. Some UU pokes became OU, and vice-versa. The introduction of RU shouldn't really have an impact- not many NU pokemon in 4th gen became OU besides Politoed, Gastrodon, and Ninetails. Ubers count stayed the same. However, the amount of pokemon in 5th gen that were put there because of their abilities with weather isn't as high as you'd think- only 8 benefit or cause weather through abilities. Now typing and attack benefits? That's a different story. I counted 44 total- that's all I found from STAB boosts, covering up glaring 4x weaknesses, pokemon used to counter weather, pokemon who get some sort of merit from the damage of hail and sandstorm, and pokemon who get perfect accuracy for Blizzard, Thunder, or Hurricane. That leaves about 8 pokemon who aren't really in OU because of weather perks. Who are they based off what I see? Dragonite, Salamence, Hydreigon, Gengar, Haxorus, Deoxys-D, and Conkeldurr. I understand one is missing, but again, it's a rough estimate. Notice how four are dragons?
Can my information be reliably used for arguments against rain? Maybe. I understand these numbers aren't exact, but it just shows that there's lots of perks to weather. But just because there's perks doesn't mean it's broken. Weather can also help a hell of a lot of Pokemon in the lower tiers too- The only types that don't really gain any help from weather are Dragon, Dark, Ghost, Fighting, Poison, and Normal. But that's if they're purely one of those types or a combination of both. Even then, some pokemon that are these types can get support from weather because of abilities (Castform [Even if it's a derpy ability] and Toxicroak) or attacks (Dragon types and Fighting types can get some boosted fire moves and fire punches). So really, weather is an extremely useful factor in battling that always gave lots of Pokemon higher edges- it was just that in Gen 4 it didn't last all game unless you were playing ubers. The most it could last was 8 turns- only really getting use of it for 7 turns because most leads set it up but had to switch or suicide for the team to use it much more effectively. In spite of all this, I still think it is not broken, because there's no driving statistic proving it's broken. There's no 200 Base Power Water move pokemon like only Golduck get that has 100% accuracy in rain that automatically confuses and paralyzes the enemy but only has 10% accuracy normally that makes Golduck so OP that it wouldn't normally be without weather. At worst, you have to deal with Hydration, Rain Dish, Chlorophyll, or a pokemon who's only weakness is fire and has rain to reduce its damage. Nothing about it is extremely broken, it's the communities fault it's so overplayed, not because it's broken.

tl;dr: The community is holding back the viability of creativity, not auto-weather or weather perks

 

[DetroitLolcat]

In my opinion, we've been dodging a pretty obvious problem in Politoed for the past two years and have not been willing to realize that Politoed is just not something meant for the OU metagame.

In order to shoehorn Politoed into a metagame it quite obviously doesn't belong in, we've banned Manaphy, Drizzle+Swift Swim, Thundurus, and Tornadus-Therian. Every time a threat emerges that can take advantage of permanent Rain, we always end up banning it and choose to ignore what has enabled four Pokemon/combos to be banned. Politoed is the reason why Manaphy was banned, why Thundurus was banned, why we had to introduce a new banning mechanic (the complex ban), and why Manaphy was banned, and still, some people think Rain is still too dominant a strategy.

Politoed is probably not broken right now, but that's because we've irreparably damaged the OU metagame by cramming it into a tier due in large part to a fear of change. As of now, we've probably balanced Drizzle but at a great cost to the metagame and to competitive Pokemon. We've spent two years trying to balance Politoed without banning it.

We've done plenty of mental gymnastics and added policy measures simply to corral Drizzle into OU. We invented and "popularized" the complex ban. We started banning abilities instead of Pokemon. We banned three other Pokemon because Politoed made them broken without realizing that they made Politoed just as broken. Rain isn't like the other weathers, so the slippery slope argument doesn't apply. Sun doesn't have the abusers Rain has. Sun doesn't have bulky starters that aren't weak to Stealth Rock. If I'm wrong and Sun is just as bad as Rain, we can ban it. We do not have to accept Politoed and auto-Rain as a fundamental part of Gen 5 if it breaks the metagame, just as we don't accept Blaziken, Swift Swim, Kyogre, and the rest of the Uber tier as parts of Gen 5.

Two years ago, Drizzle was suspected but ultimately allowed to remain in OU. If we could see the problems Drizzle has brought to OU over the past two years, would you have voted to ban it then? I know I would have.

P.S. Does this poll prove that Drizzle isn't as broken as we thought or proves that we've just nerfed Drizzle to the point where it isn't broken?

 

[blitzlefan]

Personally, I'm in the ban all weather camp, but two of the big reasons I think this way is because A) a lot of players are too lazy for teambuilding and therefore resort to easy-to-use, pre-made cookie cutter teams, and B) this simplifies the game to an very annoying degree and there is just a lot of rain spam in general. Maybe, if there was more information about how to deal with the "standard rain team", checks/counters would become more prominent and possibly more playstyles would emerge? (If there is a way to reliably take down weather teams.) A suggestion would be for someone to start a thread featuring the standard weather teams (similar to an RMT) and the community nitpicks and discovers better ways/strategies for taking down the standard weather teams (again, if reliably beating weather teams is even possible). Delete this post if it's just stupid or if it isn't possible.

 

[Vemane]

I still can't comprehend why people believe that banning Drizzle is a viable idea in any regard. Yes, it produces multiple (allegedly) broken pokemon, but using that as a stab against it while completely ignoring the other factors is absolutely ridiculous.

Drizzle balances the metagame. As much as it is somewhat dominating (which is only the case because people think it SHOULD be dominating... and sand isn't even that far behind in usage. If drizzle is done away with, not only are multiple viable playstyles being done away with, but then sun will lose its largest counter, and then that will be the new dominating weather because of the greatly reduced competition. Thus more will be banned and such.

I was under the impression that Smogon's policy was to ban things only that were broken, and in doing so preserve as many things as possible.

So suddenly it is fine to ban things like Drizzle because they make the metagame "boring" (completely opinionated concept)? Or even to ban things like tornadus-t because they are annoying (inb4 "i idn't read the rest of the post but torn was brokkkkkeeeenennn!!! posts). Not only does this go against policy, but it also makes it difficult to not simply jump on the bandwagon of banning to make things more fresh rather than because something is actually broken.

Truthfully, saying an entire playstyle (with multiple sub playstyles) is broken is absolutely ridiculous, simply because they are a huge part of the metagame and cannot be passed off as dominating when, by definition, it does dominate a portion of the meta.

That would be like banning hyper offense, or stall, etc.

it not only stabilizes the metagame, it is the metagame.

 

[doughboy]

DoughBoy's Rant on Weather

I am going to be honest here and say I voted to "ban all weather". I started playing in the Excadrill era, but I always found it to be the most centralizing force in the metagame.

What bugs me about weather is that for non-weather teams they have to play at a distinct disadvantage from pre-turn 1 and play in a condition with almost no way to reverse the effect outside of using their own weather move. Outside of Sunny Day Heatran and Rain Dance SS Kingdra (which already are strong anti-weather countermeasures) no Pokemon utilizes a "weather-changing move" as a component of its strategy. How about just for an anti-weather countermeasure? Well, the weather-changing move can only be Hail because of the likelihood of running into Sand, Sun, or Rain on the ladder (i.e. you can't change the advantage of a certain type of team). With almost every poke strapped for four moveslots already, shoehorning Hail on your team just undermines the strength of your own strategy and in almost all circumstances is an unoptimal option. Similar arguments have been made with Deoxys-D getting hazards up very easily with an advantage turn 1 where you have to resort using Magic Bounce Pokemon or a surprise Magic Coat (which can get pp stalled q.q ) to make sure to counter all variants

The next option for a weatherless team to deal with weather to have a specfic collection of Pokes that counter the most popular abusers. Man oh man, the plight of non-weather can not be understated when against Venasaur in Sun. Without a decently health Heatran (which can be trapped with Duggy), Thunder Wave Chansey, or Mamoswine/Weavile you are fucked. Previously against Rain with Tornadus-T, without Sp. Def Jirachi or Zapdos you were screwed. Another Poke is Keldeo, whose best "non-pursuitable" counter has a 58.98%

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252 SpA Choice Specs Keldeo Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 228+ SpD Amoonguss in rain: 186-219 (43.05 - 50.69%) -- 58.98% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock

chance of getting 2HKO'ed after Stealth Rocks... Rain-boosted Hydro Pumps are the new "STAB Outrages/Draco meteors" that non-weather team have to handle. Here are some example Pokemon that smash non-weather teams to smithereens that required specfic Pokemon to deal with outside of your own weather:

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-Sun

• Venasaur - Heatran, Mamoswine, Thunder Wave Chansey (paralysis for revenge losses 1 vs 1)
• Victini - Heatran (prediction), Dragonite
• Volcarona - Heatran on Balloon, Dragonite
• Dragonite - Heatran (Balloon), Mamoswine, Landous-T (sort of)

-Rain

• Keldeo - Amoonguss, Dragonite, Sp. Def Celebi
• Tornadus-T - Sp. Def Jirachi and Sp. Def Zapdos
• Garchomp (SD lefties) - Quagsire, Max+ Skarmory, Tangrowth
• Thunderus-T NP - Quagsire, Latias
• Tentacruel (spins SR away like nothing, sits, subs, spam scald/toxic) - Celebi, Chansey, Rotom-W, sub dnite
• SubCM Jirachi- Gastrodon, Perish Song Celebi, Quagsire (I put this here because it is almost always a lose/lose situation for the person facing Thunder CM Jirachi. An offensive Pokemon that is strong and fast enough to break the sub gets paralyzed making it useless; while the defensive Pokemon that is not affected by paralysis can not stop Jirachi from boosting and killing them/haxing them. by far the best paralysis spreader in the game)

Taking into account these threats without a weather starter while you have to deal other Dragons, Terrakion's, and the various other offensive threats in the tier? No wonder non-weather has a struggle...

We have seen it time and time again with Excadrill, Sand Veil Garchomp, Tornadus-T, Keldeo, and Thunderus-I were put on the chopping block because weather enhanced their power to become unmanageable for most of the tier, even their usual checks and counters (even Blaziken and Manaphy were apart of this to an extent). 7 suspects all related to the power of weather (8 with drizzle+SS).

The last thing that you can do and is often recommended when teams come across these problems is to of course: run your own weather. And herein lies the problem (at least to me). The metagame has gotten to the point where the most effective way to confront other weathers and their abusers, you have to run your own. Essentially, outside of very offensive teams who can setup as strong of support early game, such as deo-d teams, non-weather teams are subjugated to the advantages/increased power of weather teams with little means to remove it or enhance their own. And why the hell not run weather? Not when it gives you access to powerful Pokemon unable to be outsped by scarfers (sand/sun), not when they give the strongest non-boosted attacks ever in OU with excellent typing (rain -water / sun -fire), not when it gives you access to the best spinner in the tier/game (rain, previous sand), not when it enhances the effectiveness of the best defensive typings around (rain - steels/waters), and not when it expands the power of your coverage/STAB (RAIN, sun)?

I am going to re-open this in spite of the....questionable nature of the logic / consistency behind the majority of these posts, if only to encourage people to vote in this informal straw-poll-like poll.

I am personally curious to see where the "community" at large stands in a general sense on this matter, as informal as this is.

So in short what is the logic behind my vote and stance? We can not keep weather in OU because its inherent power, especially rain, over teams that do not run weather (essentially a collection of 4 pokes for rain, sun, and sand) has gotten to the point where the game is too centralized around having weather. In order to effectively combat weather's advantage, one most run their own, and sacrifice an area of strength/take on a weakness against another archtype in order to make room for specialized combating the massive power of another weather/archtype. This is where the proclaimed "matchup" based environment comes from, teams being unable to fit some sort of an answer to so many hugely powerful archtypes. The 5th generation's expanded movepools/amount of Pokemon to contend with has a hand to do with this, but it is weather that largely exasperates this.

Note: Sand and Hail have much less power potential than Sun and Rain. I don't think Sand would be banned after Sun and Rain, but I think it has the possibility to be on the chopping block possibly due to Stoutland (but then it could be a ban on Sand Rush).

 

[Cesterp]

I'm going to just leave this post here...

First off, I'd like to clarify that I'm a UU person. I've only played UU consistently, and it's the only tier I really understand to such a depth where I don't have to see something and worry about what it's going to do. When I first got into the community, I at first thought Ubers but realized it wasn't much fun working with the stuff I'd obsessed over for multiple years of in game play and would rather try out the lesser-quality stuff. I became aware of the fact that OU was the main game and the most popular and whatnot, so I naturally went to one worse than that because I'm a happy non-conformist and not conforming is what I do best. I spent a while getting decent (as in, I sucked but not so much anymore), and now consider myself to be a not horrible player. I'm not a super successful laddererererer (#37 is my peak), but I can manage to win more than half my battles and know that when I lost, the loss was to someone who is either more intelligent than me or spends more time at the game than me. With that said, I'll go into the stuff that is actually relevant to this whole debate.

First off, weather is not as easy as those who are fighting it want to make it sound. I've imported some successful teams and tried to use them in OU, and using weather properly is not as simple as clicking

. Weather wars are tough, and I'd find myself valuing winning the weather war so much further ahead of everything else that I would lose 5-0 a lot, with the only dead mon on the other side being their weather inducer and my last mon standing being a TTar/Politoed/whatever. Which of course is really bad. But the point here is- it's not an instant win button. You've got to worry about other weather and make sure you're valuing everything properly- weather introduces a whole extra aspect to care and worry about, and there's nothing wrong with a more complex game. It makes being good at it more difficult and require more time and dedication, something we want as a community.

And then you can say something like, "Well, that only means weather is difficult when you're facing other weather." Which would be correct, at least as far as my point goes. As soon as you're not facing another weather team, that extra dimension of a weather war that makes the game more complex, fun, and tricky to understand goes away. Instead, you've replaced a competitive, fun aspect with an advantage that you automatically get just because your team matches up against theirs preferably. The first team I had was some variant of hyper offense and sun, and I found myself ALWAYS winning against weatherless teams. It's hard to beat a team that has a Quiver Dance Volcarona, Growth Venusaur, a Ninetales, an SD Sawsbuck, and a Scizor for fallback priority. You kill one thing, and there's a second, more powerful sweeper in its native environment of strong sunlight waiting to punch you in the face. Note- unless you have weather of your own. Then, my team is just a bit... terrible... and dies as soon as Ninetales does. I mean, it's an awful team, and if a competent player uses it, they should feel awful. But something like that is REALLY hard to beat when you don't have weather or three phasers (Skarmory, Heatran, and Kyruem-B... amidoinitrite). Which is a bit silly. Beating weather shouldn't require weather, or else it removes the variety that we aim to achieve.

I'm not really sure where that puts me, but I don't feel like my opinion is all too important because I am nowhere near as active in OU as most people here. And while I've just provided an argument as to why weather isn't a good thing, I think I'd vote for it to stay. It's fun and unique to the tier of OU (Hail in UU does not count, it is neither good nor fun to play with or against), and for all the complaints that exist, I think a skilled player will not be affected by weather as much as most people like to think they are. I haven't liked weather in my visits to the tier of OU, but it's because I don't know what to do with it and it's scary. I'm not sure who said it or where it was in this thread, but I'm going to paraphrase something along the lines of, "I'm pretty sure you have your facts wrong. Go check the top of the ladder, I'm sure that most of the teams up there are weatherless." I'm not absolutely certain how true or not this is, but from my knowledge and observation, it seemingly is. It's a very good point.

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

At this point I am of the opinion of simply that weather, particular drizzle, is a part of a metagame, love it or hate it we have to deal with it. In my eyes its almost comparable to Snorlax in GSC, maybe if you picked it apparent and analyzed it, yes it could be broken by some standards, but overall it not only stabilizes the metagame, it is the metagame.

That's all I really have to say about it. If though weathers are picked apart, like suspect pokemon, it should be on an individual process, like a suspect pokemon. No one knows what the metagame would realistically look like with drizzle and we should not make presumptions about it, for all we know a metagame with only sand, hail, and sun might be perfectly balanced. Weather itself is not a conglomerous force either, and no action should be taken on it all at once. Honestly, I don't think the opinion of banning all weather is even justified.

 

[MeteorMiss]

P.S. Does this poll prove that Drizzle isn't as broken as we thought or proves that we've just nerfed Drizzle to the point where it isn't broken?

Keep in mind that you might not be reading the poll correctly. Although one option is ahead of the others, this means that about half the voters want drizzle banned.

Anyway, people who complain about "cookie cutter" teams should look at the usage statistics. Not a single Pokemon is over 20% usage, including Politoed or Deoxys-D. "Cookie Cutter Teams" aren't as common as it appears.

 

[ankyfdarkness]

Generally I like weather. Yes, to a degree it over centralizes, but most metas I've played have some centralization. There was the dragons and steels during Platinum's OU, there was Bliss/Skarm during Gold/Silver, Psychics during Red/Blue, ect. so I'm not sure why weather receives the hate that it does. Ultimately, with the ban of Tornadus-T I really don't think rain is even as big a threat as it use to be. Most other teams with a well built defensive core can usually stop Politoed and friends.

tl;dr? I'm good with weather and don't find it overpowered.

 

[TheFourthChaser]

I still can't comprehend why people believe that banning Drizzle is a viable idea in any regard. Yes, it produces multiple (allegedly) broken pokemon, but using that as a stab against it while completely ignoring the other factors is absolutely ridiculous.

Drizzle balances the metagame. As much as it is somewhat dominating (which is only the case because people think it SHOULD be dominating... and sand isn't even that far behind in usage. If drizzle is done away with, not only are multiple viable playstyles being done away with, but then sun will lose its largest counter, and then that will be the new dominating weather because of the greatly reduced competition. Thus more will be banned and such.

I was under the impression that Smogon's policy was to ban things only that were broken, and in doing so preserve as many things as possible.

So suddenly it is fine to ban things like Drizzle because they make the metagame "boring" (completely opinionated concept)? Or even to ban things like tornadus-t because they are annoying (inb4 "i idn't read the rest of the post but torn was brokkkkkeeeenennn!!! posts). Not only does this go against policy, but it also makes it difficult to not simply jump on the bandwagon of banning to make things more fresh rather than because something is actually broken.

Truthfully, saying an entire playstyle (with multiple sub playstyles) is broken is absolutely ridiculous, simply because they are a huge part of the metagame and cannot be passed off as dominating when, by definition, it does dominate a portion of the meta.

That would be like banning hyper offense, or stall, etc.

You're just contradicting yourself, Drizzle enables multiple things to be broken and is different from a playstyle like HO. In DPP Deo-S made HO really damn good, that was broken and banned.

Keep in mind that you might not be reading the poll correctly. Although one option is ahead of the others, this means that about half the voters want drizzle banned.

Anyway, people who complain about "cookie cutter" teams should look at the usage statistics. Not a single Pokemon is over 20% usage, including Politoed or Deoxys-D. "Cookie Cutter Teams" aren't as common as it appears.

Stats are terrible and shouldn't be used in an argument, Infernape is above Keldeo AND Deo-D, mons that should be Top 10 easily.

Generally I like weather. Yes, to a degree it over centralizes, but most metas I've played have some centralization. There was the dragons and steels during Platinum's OU, there was Bliss/Skarm during Gold/Silver, Psychics during Red/Blue, ect. so I'm not sure why weather receives the hate that it does. Ultimately, with the ban of Tornadus-T I really don't think rain is even as big a threat as it use to be. Most other teams with a well built defensive core can usually stop Politoed and friends.

tl;dr? I'm good with weather and don't find it overpowered.

Snorlax was a way better example for GSC than Skarmbliss and in RBY you only had like 16 OU Pokemon. Torn-T doesn't nerf Rain that badly. Like I've said before, while Tornadus-I doesn't have that insane speed stat or Regenerator it has a stronger Hurricane and Prankster. A greater emphasis on spinning is created but spinning in OU is no problem.

EDIT:

I voted for keep it as is. I don't understand why people want it banned and just because you're tired of it and it's used too much or hate it blah blah blah isn't a valid reason. That's like banning Scizor because it's everywhere even though it's not broken at all. It's called the OU tier for a reason. Also I'm pretty sure the majority seems happy with how it is right now, it's the reason why clear skies tier has barely any players on PO and I think someone here said there was one on Smogon but barely anyone played it. I laughed when someone here said that rain teams are an automatic win against sun teams, something tells me you don't know much about the metagame. Well made sun teams can beat rain teams without much problems if you're a good player. Anyways IMO weather isn't broken at all. For the people that don't like weather well you could either play in clear skies tier or just play in lower tiers. Banning weather simply because some people don't like it is pointless because you can't please everyone.

I fucking told you guys Clear Skies ladder was used as some bullshit justification. Comparing Scizor to Drizzle is just terrible, no good player ever wanted to ban Scizor or thought it was remotely broken. Playing the lower tiers is a terrible answer, OU is the most popular and important tier and needs to be fixed. I really appreciate BW UU for being able to remove it's weather problem early on, it has had a great effect on the tier and it is probably 1 of the 3 good gen 5 metagames.

 

[Victini Owns]

I voted for keep it as is. I don't understand why people want it banned and just because you're tired of it and it's used too much or hate it blah blah blah isn't a valid reason. That's like banning Scizor because it's everywhere even though it's not broken at all. It's called the OU tier for a reason. Also I'm pretty sure the majority seems happy with how it is right now, it's the reason why clear skies tier has barely any players on PO and I think someone here said there was one on Smogon but barely anyone played it. I laughed when someone here said that rain teams are an automatic win against sun teams, something tells me you don't know much about the metagame. Well made sun teams can beat rain teams without much problems if you're a good player. Anyways IMO weather isn't broken at all. For the people that don't like weather well you could either play in clear skies tier or just play in lower tiers. Banning weather simply because some people don't like it is pointless because you can't please everyone.

 

[haunter]

Yea basing it off of this thread is clearly a great idea.

Yeah, in fact, it's better to make observations basing them off the personal beliefs of a small group of people...