Auto weather poll

[Pocket]

LucaroarkZ, I'm saying that team match-up shouldn't be an issue to begin with, or even if you want to make it an issue, it's not something that you can resolve. Sure you can "ease" the issue by removing one major team archetype, but is it worth cutting metagame diversity so drastically just to attempt a half-ass job at alleviating "the problem?"

I also find it rather arbitrary and illogical to remove Rain when anti-Rain people are stating how Rain loses to most of these match-ups...

LucaroarkZ, both sides are at fault for theorymoning. I may have no factual evidence that banning Rain would be detrimental to the metagame, but neither do the opposing side have any factual evidence that banning Rain would make the metagame any better. I do agree that testing Drizzle would help answer the question, but 1) is it even a question that needs to be answered (determined by OU council)? and 2) this is not the point of the thread.

 

[ginganinja]

Of course you have to use teambuilding skills in this regard, but no matter how well you build your team, it is physically impossible to build a matchup-proof team, especially not in this metagame. In the case of matchup, the player with the team losing the matchup will always be at a disadvantage against the team that wins the matchup, regardless of how skilled/unskilled either player on either side is.

You do know that even removing Rain or something doesn't fix the "matchup" problem right? Rain (or weather) is just a team style, and having a "bad matchup" will occur regardless as to whether we have weather in the game or not. There will always be shit we will be weak too, its just a part of teambuilding. BW2 has just brought in a truckload of threats everyone is trying to prepare for and people want to cut down on it I guess. IDK

Can you explain to me your major point because I didn't get it when I read your post sorry.

Note, I don't actually care either way if Drizzle stays or goes.

 

[Adamant Zoroark]

Need help? Here, I'll provide some context:

So how do we fix it? Well, I'd argue that weather at least plays a minor part in it, but the problem is, nobody has really played a weather-free BW OU metagame (there was Clear Skies but the player base was way too small). I'm starting to think we should stop throwing around all these theories that have no actual evidence to back them up and actually test to see if eliminating weather will at least be a good first step.

Okay, "fix" isn't the most ideal term here, so maybe "minimize" is a better term. I said that I think weather at least played a part in it, but I can't confirm that because nobody has really played a weather-free BW OU (how many people played Clear Skies again? 2? Yeah, not a very big sample size there). Thus, we can't be so sure until we actually TRY suspecting it. And this applies to both sides.

So, basically, my point was "Hey, maybe we should actually try suspecting Drizzle instead of just tossing around all these theories that can't be backed up by facts right now?"

 

[KurashiDragon]

So, basically, my point was "Hey, maybe we should actually try suspecting Drizzle instead of just tossing around all these theories that can't be backed up by facts right now?"

I've been lurking on this thread for a while now and I've seen alot of arguments for and against banning any kind of weather. However, I always thought that most of these arguments can be solved with a simple "why dont we just suspect rain and see where it gets us. Many of the arguments against banning weather is that it'll limit diversity but there's no proof of this. Some arguments for banning Weather is that it limits skill. Again there's no proof. It's easy to toss around ideas as to weather or not something should be or shouldn't be banned but in the end your all really just blowing fumes at each other.

TL;DR I'm seconding lucarioz on this one. Just suspect it so we can find out once and for all if Weather is really as broken as people are making it out to be.

Oh and I'm pro drizzle ban. I've been one even sense Drizzle first became a thing in the OU envrionment. However, just it's just my opinion. It doesn't do any good just as those against the ban dont do any good without FACTS!

 

[dcae]

I have also been reading through, and I back fully the idea of suspecting Drizzle. This will allow all our theories, as mentioned previously, to be tested, and it will consequently show us if it works out or not. Personally, I am a weatherless team user, never enjoyed weather teams, and I've never had problems dealing with weather teams, so I don't care either way. However, due to the huge amount of people who dislike weather, this constant argument might finally come to an end.

 

[nihilist]

I like the idea of banning Drizzle and Drought.

People have been talking about how shitty the entire BW metagame has been, so why don't we test a metagame without the two dominant weathers? It will end the weather war era and help us build a healthier metagame for X/Y.

 

[Bossness]

I like the idea of banning Drizzle and Drought.

People have been talking about how shitty the entire BW metagame has been, so why don't we test a metagame without the two dominant weathers? It will end the weather war era and help us build a healthier metagame for X/Y.

Uh...What? I did not know that tiers carry on into the next generation. Please clarify what you are saying. I do not get it.

 

[Bent1ey]

If nihilist thinks like me, he probably means the knowledge of how the format behaves without Drizzle would be useful to settle on a better meta for X/Y.

 

[Reymedy]

Okay, there us something that clearly bothered in one of the past posts. And it's getting since but since I saw it once again, I feel like it's time to react !

I think people fail to realize that banning a Pokemon cuts down on the meta diversity / options available to us, so bans should be a last-resort measure (not simply for convenience).

cutting metagame diversity so drastically just to attempt a half-ass job at alleviating "the problem?"

This statement, cannot be taken for granted by any mean.
You can't say that ban => less diversity for sure.

It's a little too easy to say that, and I'm pretty sure that everybody knows why.
If you ban Salamence in ADV (I'll take an example, this is an EXAMPLE, nothing here that I want to argue about), what could happen ?

Dragonite can come from BL, Flygon will probably be more played. And, the underplayed Heracross threat will emerge. Maybe, even Blaziken will be more played (because Duggy+tons of Bulky Waters+Mence was too much) and won't have to pack Rock Slide. Bulky waters domination will go down a little probably..

With one ban, you can open the way to more diversity. I used "can" because it can obviously go either way. But it is absolutly wrong to claim that the contrary will happen in every case.

 

[BKC]

oh my fucking god its like talking to a brick wall

even when it loses the matchups, IT IS STILL A MATCHUP-BASED GAME. not to mention that mirror matches -- which are extremely common -- are fucking COINFLIPS. does this sound like it promotes skill above all else? NO.

will team match-up always exist in pokemon? of course, but not to the extent where games are literally won or lost because of it, which is what matches involving sun or rain [on EITHER side -- don't tell me to not use them if i don't like them because that doesn't fix shit] bring to the metagame. if you guys want, i will list every single match-up involving sun and rain and explain how it instantly wins or loses.

we should not be leaving elements that bring such an extreme degree of matchup that shitty players are consistently beating better ones in the metagame because of it, if we want to make it as competitive as possible. "cutting metagame diversity" like pocket said is not an argument against this [not to mention it's a flawed argument, as rain makes a lot of mons viable but a lot more unviable; if diversity is really that much of a concern, rest assured that you'll have a lot more viable mons WITHOUT drizzle in the meta, and no, there wouldn't be just three team types]. we strive to make the most competitive metagame possible, which means one where the player has to actually play to win and not just ride an easy matchup to victory; diversity doesn't play a single factor in this equation. of course they're not mutually exclusive, but if you're really going to use that against me you're just grasping for anything you can get.

also, removing rain won't remove every instance of match-up from the game; i don't pretend that it will, but what it does do is remove the worst element of it, one that is so extreme that it is literally deciding games before they're even being played. sun also does this; however, if rain goes, sun might be manageable via conventional methods since you don't have to bend over backwards to check rain anymore -- who knows?

what i do know is that we need to get rid of drizzle right now

 

[BdB4445]

I'm seriously cool with at least suspecting Drizzle and Drought (especially when pokemon like Tornadus-T get banned because of drizzle). Immediately banning them isn't necessary, but it would be great to test it for an extensive period of time and come up with statistics comparable to the most recent OU stats.

No one knows how much diversity will be added or lessened until it's tested. But I personally think the metagame will be more competitive if rain/sun teams have to actually work for their weather (you know, taking a pokemon's item slot as well as a moveslot, and spending a turn). I just worry about rain dance / sunny day not being so viable because tyranitar and abomasnow can just take it right back.

I' just think it will make for more meaningful weather wars, assuming weather remains just as viable. Switching in back and fourth is simply boring.

Edit: I decided to get an avatar so I can feel like my opinion matters more. Colon capital D

 

[Deglas]

Yes, why not just test Drizzle and maybe Drought. Worst case, we might find that with weather is better, and we wasted a suspect test. Best case, the metagame improves substantially.

And all those people saying that banning weather limits diversity are forgetting that while Pokemon like Toxicroak, Venusaur, and Gastrodon would disappear, there would likely be an increase in defensive Pokemon that aren't capable of taking weather boosted attacks and sweepers shunned in favor of more powerful weather sweepers.

 

[yoshinator879]

I think that the best course of action at the moment would be to find out what a weather-less/drizzle-less/whatever metagame is like, because all we can do right now, all we are doing right now, is theorymoning, and you cannot base an argument off of theorymon. Maybe this means suspecting it, or maybe is just means making another ladder or two on PS, but what we're doing right now isn't working.

We can't properly decide whether or not something should be banned until we know what metagame without it looks like, which is why we suspect things before banning it. This is why I think we need to suspect rain, it's too big of a thing to just argue that it is broken, you also need to prove that it will make the metagame better.

 

[SHUCKLE MAN]

I agree with a number of posters here, while I did vote the "keep it as it is" option, that it could be good to "experiment", at least so we have this experience to look back on when we could be faced with similar situations in Generation VI.

I know that "it's approaching the start of Gen VI" isn't a valid reason to suspect test something, but I don't know, I think it could be useful, looking at it more from a "scientific experiment" perspective. I don't have a clue what the outcome would be, I'd be interested to see what would happen, and it's something we could learn from.

I personally think Smogon have dealt with rain quite well overall. People always criticize them, but there is no perfect solution to this.

I would be interested to see what a non-Drizzle metagame would be like though, the only worry I (and I think other people too) would have is that if a non-Drizzle metagame turned out to be good, then there would be people calling for it to be auto-banned at the start of Gen VI, which brings me onto this:

Immediately banning them isn't necessary

I completely agree. Not only with weather, but with everything in general. It's not necessary to "insta-ban" anything. And I hope we don't auto-ban anything in Gen VI.

The main arguements those in favour of auto-banning in general use are "it's obviously broken, just ban it straight away" and "it'll take too long to start from the beginning".

I can understand those two arguements, however, with regards to the "it'll take too long" arguement, I think the recent situation with Chansey in UU proves otherwize. Chansey was dropped down to UU on January 2nd and banned on January 13th. Or there-abouts. So less than 2 weeks. Granted, UU players did have previous experience with Chansey before it re-entered the tier, but it proves that Smogon can quick ban obviously broken things (obviously if it's not very clear whether something is broken or not, the more thorough testing process can be used).

The notion that some members have that Smogon will take 3 months to ban Pokemon isn't always true, and if Smogon can replicate a "quick-ban" system like for Gen VI, then I don't think it's necessary to to auto-ban anything, especially not Drizzle. Remember, some were suggesting Mew to be auto-banned this generation. It's always worth at least a brief test.

So, to conclude, I don't think people have to worry about a Drizzle test taking too long. I'm sure a reasonable time frame can be used (and similarly for Gen VI).

Yes, why not just test Drizzle and maybe Drought. Worst case, we might find that with weather is better, and we wasted a suspect test. Best case, the metagame improves substantially.

I agree with this. What's wrong with testing things? Even the worst case scenario is a "good" scenario imo. It settles the arguement once and for all. What is 2-6 weeks in the grand scheme of things?

 

[Bent1ey]

The real question about an essential supect vote is whether or not the ladder should keep Sun or not, because the theoretical notion of Sun being too strong without Drizzle around has been thrown perpetually during this discussion, and a good 20% of the voters wants to do away with several if not all weathers.

A metagame without neither Drizzle nor Drought may as well be the first reasonable step, but for those open to Drought existing and banning Drizzle exclusively, the option for a Drought ladder can be kept open -assuming Drizzle is actually banned of course, if it isn't the point is moot-.

 

[Sound]

I didn't want to get involved (primarily since I don't really have a side, though I'm leaning towards anti-drizzle) but I'd like to second (or third, or fourth, or whatever) at least suspecting Drizzle. Including Febuaury, we have about 8 months until X/Y's release (9 if they come out late October). Assuming a rate of 1 suspect per month, that's enough time for 8 suspects. If banning Drizzle causes other pokemon to be broken, then so be it. We'll still have 7 monthes for testing. It's unlikely more than 7 pokemon will be broken. The only off the top of my head that could be affected by Rain leaving would be Sun. Sure, plenty of pokemon like Rain leaving (Gliscor, Mamoswine, Heatran), but I highly doubt everything afflicted will broken.

And, look at it this way. If Drizzle is suspected, at least there is an end in sight.

 

[TooMuchSugar]

I think it would be a great idea to suspect drizzle. I am slightly pro-drizzle, but if a majority of Smogon users want it to go, then it should certainly go. I doubt whether anything would be particularly broken without rain, but sun teams and fire types in general would see a lot more usage (Darmanitan for OU?). Maybe one or two things would have to be banned, maybe even drought, but it's definitely worth trying, if only so everyone will quit complaining about it.

 

[kd24]

idk if you all realize this but we've spent 2 YEARS now trying to nerf rain - and many people STILL think it's broken. We've banned dozens of Drizzle abusers and it is still the most overcentralizing dominant force in the metagame.

The only argument I can see against banning Drizzle is "what about Drought?" Well, we can suspect Drought too! We shouldn't have to hold off on banning clearly broken things because it *MIGHT* make something else broken, that is how progress is stalled.

our stubborness to preserve weather at all costs totally fucked up this generation and it's nearly over now so I say we just say 'what the hell' and take the plunge - I've never known such a universally slated metagame as BW2OU so it's not as if we have anything to lose, right?

no offense to those tiering contributors who I know have worked tirelessly behind the scenes, but you can't polish a turd.

hard to believe the 2 posts that sum up exactly how i feel were on first page and went almost unnoticed but yeah these exactly. i will always get hate for calling bw2 a failure because i know some people think its a lot of fun, but i just dont see the appeal for how things are at all. if two things really fucked up my enjoyment of pokemon, it was "our stubbornness to preserve weather" and team preview. the worst part is we actually needed team preview because of weather and the wide range of threats =[

even if you ban everything broken in all weather (manaphy, swift swim, tornt), its just weather itself that is so stupid. why should ferrothorn be impossible to take down, why should specs starmie or keldeo be a viable thing that wrecks through teams unfairly, why should steel the best typing lose a weakness, why should i say man i hope i dont play sun if im not using dragonite on a team, etc. its these subtle effects of weather that just make things dull and tedious to play through and we don't really give them any attention because they don't fit our "standards" of broken.

 

[Pocket]

BKC, it seems like you're talking to a brick wall, because your arguments are just not coherent / rational, and I wont pretend to agree with something incoherent / irrational.

Match-ups exist everywhere. Even when the opponent does not bring in Rain. And NO, matches are not lost or won solely by presence of Rain / Sun; please don't throw out egregious statement as if they're true. You still have to play the game to win. Sure a standard Sand team may have an upper edge against a standard Rain team, but that is not equivalent to "instant win / loss." Not to mention a Rain team is a team with Politoed in it - the other 5 Pokemon are not fixed and are dynamic. It's up to the player how much "match-up reliant" there team becomes by how much emphasis they put on Rain dependence.

And regarding mirror match-Ups. Since when did outplaying your opponent ever meant a "coin flip" win? It's as if neither player had control over the game, as if the entire game was ruled by chance or hax... completely ridiculous statement. The only increased element of chance are the potentially higher incidence of speed ties, if players even resort to such desperate / risky calls.

Not to mention mirror match-ups have always existed since the beginning of Pokemon. Yes, people tend to use standard teams. Removing rain wont make it go away or even lessen it, lol. Haven't you seen goofball's superman mirror match-ups back in ADV? or a game of RBY or GSC??? People would still risk having "mirror" Deo-D teams; Sand teams; Keldeo + TTar teams; DragMag teams, Taylor's weatherless team, or what have you.

Regarding diversity - It's entirely understandable to say that metagame diversity is reduced by the loss of a major team archetype (aka Drizzle ban), but claiming that rain lowers meta diversity cannot be further from the truth - it's just a claim that is void of any substance, similarly to claims of how presence of Rain / Sun "worsens" team match-ups and mirror matches. What exactly is this "diversity" you speak of, cuz all I see is a meta of Rain / Sun / Sand / Weatherless be reduced to Sun / Sand / Weatherless, which to me is less diversity.

I can't believe I need to explain all this tbh -.-

 

[Bent1ey]

To discuss Team Previews is hardly on topic, but I do think it ended up being an interesting adition because the high level threats that Gen V introduced can be somewhat controlled and minimized by preserving their respective counter. The meta is already incredibly offensive, so ignoring which pokemon you need to keep alive in order to resist the opposing onslaught would be quite frustrating after a while, and it would accentuate the randomness on any match up. Maybe weather makes this match up/preview problem even a bigger issue, but I don't think that the lack of weather would erase the necessity of team preview: the current powerlevel is just too high.

By the way, the worst argument used in this discussing by far are the examples and analogies with Gen IV, which was an entirely different meta.

If we decide to see "removing Drizzle" as removing a "whole archtype" and willingly considering weatherless as "just another archtype" obviously our mentality isn't in the right place to discuss its banning. If a strategy, lets say Stall, is no longer viable because 1.5 boosts on water moves is too difficult for it to take them, then aren't we also "removing a whole archtype" by allowing Drizzle into the mix? Of course people can claim that there are rainstall teams and rain offense teams, to which we can answer that there are several kinds of Stall made impractical by Drizzle's sheer power... The point being that these two mentalities will never agree because they depart from already biased definitions of the archtypes they consider worthy of mention and which ones aren't worthy anyways. Now if there was proof to discuss this instead of basing the whole discussion of semantics and diverging definitions, I think we would stop running on circles here.

 

[Ojama]

BKC, it seems like you're talking to a brick wall, because your arguments are just not coherent / rational, and I wont pretend to agree with something incoherent / irrational.

Match-ups exist everywhere. Even when the opponent does not bring in Rain. And NO, matches are not lost or won solely by presence of Rain / Sun; please don't throw out egregious statement as if they're true. You still have to play the game to win. Sure a standard Sand team may have an upper edge against a standard Rain team, but that is not equivalent to "instant win / loss." Not to mention a Rain team is a team with Politoed in it - the other 5 Pokemon are not fixed and are dynamic. It's up to the player how much "match-up reliant" there team becomes by how much emphasis they put on Rain dependence.

And regarding mirror match-Ups. Since when did outplaying your opponent ever meant a "coin flip" win? It's as if neither player had control over the game, as if the entire game was ruled by chance or hax... completely ridiculous statement. The only increased element of chance are the potentially higher incidence of speed ties, if players even resort to such desperate / risky calls.

Not to mention mirror match-ups have always existed since the beginning of Pokemon. Yes, people tend to use standard teams. Removing rain wont make it go away or even lessen it, lol. Haven't you seen goofball's superman mirror match-ups back in ADV? or a game of RBY or GSC??? People would still risk having "mirror" Deo-D teams; Sand teams; Keldeo + TTar teams; DragMag teams, Taylor's weatherless team, or what have you.

Regarding diversity - It's entirely understandable to say that metagame diversity is reduced by the loss of a major team archetype (aka Drizzle ban), but claiming that rain lowers meta diversity cannot be further from the truth - it's just a claim that is void of any substance, similarly to claims of how presence of Rain / Sun "worsens" team match-ups and mirror matches. What exactly is this "diversity" you speak of, cuz all I see is a meta of Rain / Sun / Sand / Weatherless be reduced to Sun / Sand / Weatherless, which to me is less diversity.

I can't believe I need to explain all this tbh -.-

PS: kd24, well I guess that's an issue you have to inevitably overcome, because to me, it appears you dislike the influx of these additional threats with each coming generation, which will only get "worse" :[

OMG, what just happened, did Pocket take out his brain from his pocket to use it ? Seconding his post :D

Also yah it's true that banning Drizzle wouldn't change anything about the diversity. Everyone would use Sand, Sun and DragMag and this would be even more boring. Comparing BW with DPP is maybe a bit stupid but when Salamence and Latias got banned because they were considered too strong for the Tier (and everyone were using them in almost every team), everyone "started" (they were already used but less) spamming Starmie, Infernape, Heatran etc. People want to win so they obviously use the most broken shits in the tier, banning all threats wouldn't help because with those threats banned there would be new threats etc, etc... In my opinion, banning Drizzle is not the best solution to make the Tier better (the current metagame is actually ok I think).

 

[Lee]

PS: kd24, well I guess that's an issue you have to inevitably overcome, because to me, it appears you dislike the influx of these additional threats with each coming generation, which will only get "worse" :[

man, that argument frustrates me. 'you have to move with the times, this is gen V!' what a crock, weather is the central, defining theme of this entire generation because we allowed it to be, not because of some pre-ordained mysticism or command-from-on-high. we're under no obligation to humour Game Freak's whims. calling out kd for 'disliking the influx of addititional threats' is an inductive fallacy at best - he doesn't appear to have any problem with Haxorus, Volcarona, Terrakion, Kyu-B, Thundurus-T, Roopushin, Jellicent, Landorus etc etc. he has a problem with a field condition but for some unknown reason we as a community have strived to preserve said field conditions at the expense of everything else, going as far as to ban multiple Pokemon and introduce a complex ban - a notion that would have been completely alien over the previous few generations - and it still hasn't stopped threads exactly like this one popping up every other week.

Pocket EDIT: Yea, sorry, kd24 & Lee - my skimming comprehension failed YET AGAIN

 

[Eggbert]

The argument that "BW will be centralized around something whether we have rain or not" is incorrect. Because of the power of weather, the majority of battlers are forced to use more standard and repetitive team cores, which are very rigid and leave few options for different teams. The very fact that a weather inducer is needed on so many teams already limits possibilities greatly. If you are running Tyranitar or Hippowdon, it becomes much more difficult to fit, say, Hydreigon because you already stack the weaknesses, while having Lati@s is 100% more necessary to check threats like Terrakion, sun teams, ect. There's no incentive, no point to using anything else. It forces standard team builds. Just use the standards and have a more stable team. There are a few successful weatherless teams, but these will only be good with the top battlers and are still disadvantaged. Why go uphill and fight chlorophyll Venusaur, rain dish Tentacruel, rain specs Keldeo, and the like, when you can neutralize them with a weather inducer?

Weather limits options because of its power, this is what is making BW so stale. Remember Shaymin from last gen? It's amazing in this metagame with access to the powerful seed flare, not much can take it on safely. But no one uses it. Why use it over Celebi, who is needed to keep Keldeo at bay, or Ferrothorn, who provides hazards and a check to various threats like Starmie. If you aren't running the latter two, the rest of your team will be pressed to keep up with the threats and covering additional roles. Having a weather inducer sets 1/6 of a team to 3 general builds from the start, with top tier standards like Latios, Ferrothorn, Heatran, Jirachi, and Rotom-w being used so much because it is the only way to realistically check everything. It is very difficult to make teams with interesting, unappreciated, and powerful mons because of how certain standards are needed to keep a team together. There is no space. It Gen 4 it wasn't, you could check the majority of the tier with a core of 3 pokemon and a good scarfer, and good battlers were able to make creative teams that did well. Less weather, less rigidity, more team options--->better, more diverse metagame.

 

[UltiMario]

he has a problem with a field condition but for some unknown reason we as a community have strived to preserve said field conditions at the expense of everything else, going as far as to ban multiple Pokemon and introduce a complex ban - a notion that would have been completely alien over the previous few generations - and it still hasn't stopped threads exactly like this one popping up every other week.

If we banned every single Pokemon that could possibly abuse rain, and then left Politoed and everything else, people will still complain about Rain being too powerful and needing to be banned just as often.

There is a line between complaints from legitimate problems with something being too powerful in the metagame, and complaints from bias simply because someone cannot accept the fact that something can be allowed in the metagame regardless of anything.

Drizzle complaints at this point are the latter.

 

[Dark Fallen Angel]

The argument that "BW will be centralized around something whether we have rain or not" is incorrect. Because of the power of weather, the majority of battlers are forced to use more standard and repetitive team cores, which are very rigid and leave few options for different teams. The very fact that a weather inducer is needed on so many teams already limits possibilities greatly. If you are running Tyranitar or Hippowdon, it becomes much more difficult to fit, say, Hydreigon because you already stack the weaknesses, while having Lati@s is 100% more necessary to check threats like Terrakion, sun teams, ect. There's no incentive, no point to using anything else. It forces standard team builds. Just use the standards and have a more stable team. There are a few successful weatherless teams, but these will only be good with the top battlers and are still disadvantaged. Why go uphill and fight chlorophyll Venusaur, rain dish Tentacruel, rain specs Keldeo, and the like, when you can neutralize them with a weather inducer?

Weather limits options because of its power, this is what is making BW so stale. Remember Shaymin from last gen? It's amazing in this metagame with access to the powerful seed flare, not much can take it on safely. But no one uses it. Why use it over Celebi, who is needed to keep Keldeo at bay, or Ferrothorn, who provides hazards and a check to various threats like Starmie. If you aren't running the latter two, the rest of your team will be pressed to keep up with the threats and covering additional roles. Having a weather inducer sets 1/6 of a team to 3 general builds from the start, with top tier standards like Latios, Ferrothorn, Heatran, Jirachi, and Rotom-w being used so much because it is the only way to realistically check everything. It is very difficult to make teams with interesting, unappreciated, and powerful mons because of how certain standards are needed to keep a team together. There is no space. It Gen 4 it wasn't, you could check the majority of the tier with a core of 3 pokemon and a good scarfer, and good battlers were able to make creative teams that did well. Less weather, less rigidity, more team options--->better, more diverse metagame.

I have to agree with this. Weather makes my options less diverse; if I wanted to use Hydreigon on sand teams, I had to take into account the weakness that it shared with Tyranitar or Terrakion. If I wanted to use it on rain, I would have to forgo Fire-type attacks, and this would take out its premise of being "uncounterable". If I wanted to use it on sun, it would yet stack weakness with other members of team. Another example, as I explained on other post, is Breloom. It does not fare well in sand or sun because on the former, it has its options limited thanks to the sandstorm passive damage, and on the latter, Breloom's weakness to Fire is aggravated, not to mention there is no reason to use Breloom over a Chlorophyll sweeper.

Also, I am tired of being forced to carry a sturdy Water resist on every team just to tank rain-boosted Water attacks. While is true that, with or without Rain, you should always pack a Water-type resistance, on this metagame, you can't simply resist Water; this is not sufficient. You should resist Water AND have the bulk to actually take repeated rain-boosted Water-attacks. That's why things like Starmie aren't actually good options to tank rain-boosted Water attacks.