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Deglas if you want a concrete example of how the sand team beats rain, here you go: Hippo comes in on Toxicroak, sets up SR that can't be spun. Wear down Toed while countering the threats and keeping sand up as much as possible. No amount of good switching will get rain out of it.
What if Toxicroak uses Swords Dance as Hippowdon switches in, and then uses Ice Punch? If Hippowdon Earthquakes, what does it do when Starmie comes in?
Can Jellicent repeatedly switch in on Starmie Thunderbolts? Without giving something a free turn as Jellicent switches out? Or being sent within 2HKO range for Keldeo Hidden Power?
If Rain has SubToxic Tentacruel over Starmie, how does Jellicent beat it?
Why are you using a team that has TWO Pokemon that are dedicated Rain counters AND TWO weather inducers as an example of how easy Rain is to beat?
Why can I find things Rain can do for a good chance of winning despite how much the deck has been stacked against it?
A little off-topic but LOL at still using specs/scarf Keldeo.
LO Taunt Keldeo is where it is at, counters deo-d teams, molests sand teams without celebi and powers through the majority of rain teams. (Somewhat useless against sun teams as Venusaur gets a free +2 SpAtk).
Pokemon that otherwise "counter" Keldeo such as physically defensive Gastrodon, Tentacruel, Jellicent and switch ins expecting choice locked moves can do nothing to this Keldeo.
Toxicroak, Amoonguss, Latias and Celebi will still wall it to hell and back though, lol.
Anyone that implies any weatherless team vs a well played weather team is an impossible match-up deserves to be shot. Especially if it's Rain or Sun. In my experiences fucking Stoutland of all things tends to be the weather sweeper that's the most difficult to deal with, and there's a good reason for that.
IMO, Weatherless vs Sun/Rain starts 6-5 (Politoed with specs is about as bad as it gets for Weatherless, and even then you should still only take 60% max taking it down). Do they have a weather sweeper that's HEAVILY advantageous against my team if it sets up? Likely so, but there's two issues. One, they're already a mon down, so I'm free to sack one thing against it and it's no big deal. Two, once I do nail it... that's a pretty big blow to a weather team. Most sun teams are designed to support a Venusaur and/or Volcorona sweep. Getting and keeping rocks up is by no means difficult, and if you don't have something to take on Venusaur, you probably have a terribly built team because you're lacking something that can handle set-up sweepers as a whole. Sun teams especially fall apart when their sweepers go down, weatherless doesn't have this issue because it's not carring like 2-3 mediocre mons just to make Venusaur better.
With Rain, sometimes you have to worry about Keldeo, Thundy, or Jirachi setting up on you. It varies from team to team. None of these set-up sets are near overpowering though (Keldeo especially as shown by our last suspect vote). Most the issue with rain just comes from the constant barrage of double STAB water moves, but IMO that's actually easier to deal with than Sun or Sand. Rain isn't that hard to keep in check rather easily with stuff like Jirachi, Latis, Bulky Waters, and Amoonguss. There's plenty of options (which synergize well together) that can combat rain.
Sand of all things is the most threatening to weatherless IMO. The game doesn't start 6-5 in favor of the weatherless team because Tyranitar doesn't suck, and it makes it much more stressful to keep your checks and counters for stuff like Terrakion, Landorus, and Stoutland alive.
And as a last statement: More weatherless teams need to use TR Reuniclus. That thing is like the glue that holds weatherless together. I cannot count how many games have gone like from like 1-3 to 1-0 because I saved Reuniclus to the very end and cleaned up weakened teams because I knocked out their priority user and got a TR up with a sliver of health left.
252 +2 SpAtk Life Orb Venusaur (+SpAtk) Energy Ball vs 252 HP/0 SpDef Reuniclus: 83.73% - 98.58%
252 Atk Choice Band Stoutland (+Atk) Crunch vs 252 HP/4 Def Reuniclus: 71.23% - 83.96%
252 SpAtk Life Orb Keldeo-R Surf vs 252 HP/0 SpDef Reuniclus: 81.37% - 95.75%
If you think Politoed instantly makes rain a 5 pokemon team, you're using it wrong. Politoed's Hydro Pumps hits roughly as hard as Latios Draco Meteors, and the coverage is pretty good as well. Rain boosted Scalds hurt like hell, and Burn will always make switching into Politoed a chore. Perish Song is rare, and Hypnosis is unreliable but 60% of the time something might as well be dead. It was outclassed, but never bad. Now Ninetales is bad.
What if Toxicroak uses Swords Dance as Hippowdon switches in, and then uses Ice Punch? If Hippowdon Earthquakes, what does it do when Starmie comes in?
Can Jellicent repeatedly switch in on Starmie Thunderbolts? Without giving something a free turn as Jellicent switches out? Or being sent within 2HKO range for Keldeo Hidden Power?
If Rain has SubToxic Tentacruel over Starmie, how does Jellicent beat it?
Why are you using a team that has TWO Pokemon that are dedicated Rain counters AND TWO weather inducers as an example of how easy Rain is to beat?
Why can I find things Rain can do for a good chance of winning despite how much the deck has been stacked against it?
in your example, you switch into toxicroak as it swords dance. the hippo is always going to eq here as you go to starmie
0 Atk Hippowdon Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Starmie: 136-162 (41.97 - 50%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
so its the starmie thats put into the bad health range via sandstorm.
and if theyre using tentacruel then hippowdon shits on you even harder.
but maybe you stay in with toxicroak and ice punch
+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Toxicroak Ice Punch vs. 252 HP / 4+ Def Hippowdon: 320-377 (76.19 - 89.76%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
in which case hippo survives and kills you back, and you lost proly your best stallbreaker on that particular rain team. you bring in starmie and they go to ferro/jelli/celebi/etc. and hippo can still have a decent chunk of health left based on EVs and damage roll
your "concrete examples" suck, all im seeing is pressure on the rain team which is the point you were trying to DISPROVE
i dont even agree with bkcs post like i told him earlier because i think only sand stall shits on rain but rain beats sand offense and can beat sand balance, but your example just makes very little sense for what you're attempting to prove.
Wow, my post got good reactions. I'm surprised. I thought I was just going to be ignored. Okay then. *Cracks knuckles* Time for Round 2. This time, I'll be honing in on something I merely touched upon in my post. The fact that Rain is better than weatherless.
The reason I feel Rain should be banned is quite simply because it's better than weatherless. This may seem shallow, but this makes Rain quite overcentralizing. This isn't the case of a pokemon outclassing others, Rain essentially outclasses other entire teams.
Why Rain is superior to Weatherless
Reason 1: Rain inherently doesn't need to carry checks to other weathers for the same reason that HO doesn't need to carry checks to Stall. The team style itself serves as a one of the greatest checks. Weatherless doesn't have this luxury. They need something to check Rain, Sun, and Sand. You need a minimum of two slots dedicated for the sole purpose of check weather. And, the keyword is minimum. Two slots assume you handle Rain and Sun with Latias and then add a Sand counter. Dragonite can be substituted, but it needs RS support which is another slot and as others in this thread have said "It's not that hard to keep SR up." Rain has more slots it can use to stack threats, while weatherless needs to pack more counters. Even the best weatherless team can break under all the pressure.
Reason 2: Rain is more versatile than weatherless. Keep rolling your eyes. No, seriously. Let me ask, is it a good idea to use Infernape on a weatherless team? No? That's because you might run into a nasty Rain team and he'll simply be Keldeo fodder. How about Starmie? Oh sure, being argueable the best spinner in the tier... However, 100 SpAtk is really underwhelming. Especially under Sun, where you no longer have a STAB. Oh sure, you can revenge kill Venusaur with a Scarf and Psychic, but then it either ceases to be a spinner, or a good revenge killer outside of Venusaur. However, Infernape is perfectly good on Sun and Starmie is perfectly good on Rain. See what I'm getting at? Weatherless is unable to choose any pokemon nerfed in certain weather conditions, because then you stand the chance of having to play 5-6 in a metagame where every pokemon counts. Rain and Sun both have access to these pokemon, making them a good deal more flexible than weatherless. In this category, Weatherless has to bare all Weather's weaknesses without any of their strength.
Reason 3: A Rain 'mon is stronger than a weatherless 'mon. Want to know what I'm talking about? I'm refering to the fact that Ferro under Rain is a better Dragon counter than Heatran in weatherless. I'm refering to the fact that Keldeo under Rain outclasses Terrakion (at revenge killing, wall breaking, sweeping, I'll give you SR setting though). Name me one common Rain 'mon that is worse than something with no way to abuse any weather.
If one team style outclasses others, we get rid of them. We did it with HO and Deo-S, we did it Sand and Excadrill. We had to outright ban 3 rain abusers, use a complex ban to get three more pokemon that, and I quote, "Weren't broken without rain." And a few more that would have risen up to fill the niche (Omastar and Seismitoad are both pretty threatening on paper). We took away 6 powerful tools for Rain, but this doesn't matter. The problem is that Rain is the powerful tool. It outclasses other playstyles, and it deserves at least a suspect test.
your "concrete examples" suck, all im seeing is pressure on the rain team which is the point you were trying to DISPROVE
your example just makes very little sense for what you're attempting to prove.
Looking back and thinking harder (maybe even just thinking), this is right. I honestly don't know what I was thinking with my example.
The only somewhat decent point in my post was that the Sand team given packs two rain counters and two weather inducers, so it isn't exactly a good example for proving anything. It just shows that if you have a lot on your team to stop something, that something is going to have a hard time.
I'm gonna honnestly begin to hate those weatherless teams are less good than Rain comments. I mean, maybe on average but I don't even know why people are talking about it because it does not fit the topic so well. I could tell you that my team got Kingdra, Keldeo Celebi, Rotom-W.. or w/e, and that I eat Rain everyday.
First, if there is a match-up weatherless teams need to be ready to face (and are afraid) it's the Sun match-up. Nothing else.
Rain ? please, during the past suspects, many rain teams were just crushed by a couple of threats. And when I say a couple, I mean it.
I'm talking about Scarf Keldeo who could crush offense on his own, and the CM set that can set-up on like almost every pokemon of a Rain stall.
Hell, I really want to hear people who did the ladder with Rain offense teams (okay I'm talking to a big majority here xd), how many Scarf Keldeo's ties did decide their games.
I played weatherless, a lot.. during the two last suspects, and from my tiny experience, I was not afraid of a Rain match-up. I mean, if you can't build a weatherless able to take this match-up, you failed somewhere in my opinion because it's the first match-up you should focus on.
However Sun, is really trickier. First because, they are not the center of the metagame, so you can't play around it as easily when you build, you just "try" to beat Venusaur and that's all.
The speed being what it is in this metagame, having to give up the domination of the speed tier to a pokemon like Venusaur that can Sleep one of your pokemons and go +2 for free means that you can have three solutions :
- Get a fat wall, that can stop it no matter what happens (Heatran... but usually you get trapped sooner or later, and Heatran cannot really trap Venusaur on the other hand... and well Earthquake is an option that many people consider, don't bring me a list of other walls, I want walls that wall it no matter what happen, not walls that get crushed at +2 and there is not many choices... you can take a bulky Latias.. yepee..)
- Outspeed it with some surprise scarfers (like Starmie, a Scarf Starmie is pretty good in an offensive weatherless, spinning for Dragonite for instance)
- Kill it with priorities (and mark the S in the end, unless you got Adamant Mamo LO or something like that, you'll end up losing some pokemons with priorities to get in the range you need).. which is the choice that I made. It works decently, but I'm still afraid of the big fat Sun team filled with abusers (played by low ranking players most of the time, I mean, not Sun, but these Sun teams totally centralized on their abusers like if they don't even try to take into account what could show up against them.. they just blast you with raw power brainlessly..).
This means, that your options are restrained to a level I find just.. barely acceptable. As someone enjoying building weatherless teams more than anything else, I truely believe that it's a shame to be forced to follow one of these options.
So diversity is preserved with no bans ? I laugh.
These are all anti-rain Pokémon. Your argument here is worthless.
Sun teams are less of a problem because the player has to be good for them to be a problem. You have to play around Rocks and Spikes and all other manner of residual damage or else Venusaur and Volcarona aren't going to last long enough to sweep. Rain has the luxury of putting out Pokémon and crushing teams without top-tier playing.
man oh man i am so sick of you twisting my arguments or just ignoring certain parts so it's more convenient for you
lol don't give me that horseshit. i think you're the only one who has actually called the cohesion of my arguments into question, which shows you're really grasping for anything you can get right now.
some examples.
rain team -- politoed/toxicroak/tornadus/keldeo/starmie/ferrothorn
sand team -- hippowdon/forretress/jellicent/celebi/heatran/scarftar
sun team -- ninetales/dugtrio/forretress or xatu/venusaur/latias/trapper heatran
weatherless team -- deoxys-d/gengar/scizor/terrakion/keldeo/latios
rain vs. sand
this IS an instant win for the sand team, right from team preview. rain is NEVER winning this match-up. it's more than a mere "upper edge" for the sand team; the only way the sand user can lose is if he actually TRIES to throw the game away. go ahead and find a way to win for the rain team, unless you want to admit defeat since provided the sand team's user has half a brain, he'll make the simple plays and win by default. if you call that rain team mediocre or bad then i just don't know what to tell you. then again you called tabloo a mediocre team so who knows...
rain vs. weatherless
rain's never losing this, as it has the permanent weather advantage, and starmie completely crushes deogar, so the weatherless team's not going to get a chance to overwhelm with hazards [sr and spikes usually aren't even enough]. tornadus brutally slaughters everything with a hurricane that will never miss, only revenge killing option is scarf keldeo, who's totally walled by toxicroak. the only time weatherless doesn't get completely fuckwrecked by rain is when it bends over backwards countering it, which offensive teams can't afford to do. the best they can do is run kingdra who can't even OHKO keldeo and can't hope to break ferro.
rain vs. sun
yeah...politoed will get trapped by tran or dugtrio and then venusaur/latias have fun. you can't maintain hazard control because forre will shit on ferro all day. if the rain team decided to get cute and run dugtrio over whoever, the game becomes "who can trap the other's weather inducer first" -- an EXCELLENT display of skill.
sun vs. sand
hippo can't be trapped, it sets sr that forre can't spin, meaning you can force sand on them again and again till tales dies and then you win. fun.
sun vs. weatherless
if the sun team has forre it loses, if it has xatu it wins. either way it's an extreme case of matchup, whether beneficial or not doesn't matter.
rain vs. rain
lol
sun vs. sun
lol
sand vs. sand
the better player wins this.
yes, rain teams have politoed; that is precisely what makes them what they are, and what makes them so match-up reliant. also contrary to popular belief, rain teams are very rigidly built, the only thing differentiating them from one another is usually a single mon or two.
it's not ridiculous at all. a rain vs. rain match-up or a sun vs. sun match-up is literally speed ties and other such things...
i'm not complaining about mirror matches in general. i'm complaining about the mirror matches that are decided on coinflips because they're so hit-or-miss, i.e. rain and sun. remember gene vs goofball in that adv botw? same team but gene played better and he won. the winner of a gsc match almost never wins on a coinflip and absolutely never on team matchup [to my knowledge]. deo-d is also a broken sack of shit but that's a different discussion.
first off; how does drizzle make the meta diverse? the teams are literally all the same with a mon change here and there. also remember the diversity of dpp? a sand/weatherless metagame has its own diversity that it can't use to its full extent because of drizzle. you can't categorise all weatherless teams as the same. if you say dpp teams are all the same as a rebuttal then you clearly don't know the tier.
also diversity is not an argument to keep something that clearly puts less emphasis on player skill in the metagame. i'm just trying to show you that it's not all going to be the same without drizzle, which you seem so worried about even though it's not even a valid argument.
i don't care who you are, don't fucking condescend to me like that.
I love how you make a bunch of "standard teams" that just work out to be completely raped by your examples in question. I don't care how good at this game you might be, but these are some of the most naive and simplistic examples I've ever seen. The metagame is not made of four standard teams and slight variations. I know those are only examples, but all you're doing is extrapolating single examples to a broader picture. It does not work that way. Frankly put, if you make a rain offense team that gets completely raped by a sand stall team, then you suck as a teambuilder. There really aren't any ifs or buts in this matter. You might retort with "I've built heaps of teams and they get trashed" or "If I do so and so, I'd be weaker to other teams", but that is your responsibility to balance out the strengths and weaknesses or your team and make sure that your team is weak against the least amount of teams as possible. You believe me? Why don't you try changing Toxicroak to CM Virizion and see how the sand team deals with that? All you have to do is wear down Celebi and a bit and that entire team just dies. Synergistically, that didn't change much on your team at all. Or, another way would be replace Starmie with Tentacruel and replace Toxicroak with a spin blocker and use SubCM on your Keldeo and it becomes much harder for the opposing sand team to stall you out. They might make your team slightly weak to God knows what, but really, the teams are still synergistically intact and operate around the same way. I thought of these changes within a minute. If you spend maybe half an hour on it, you might even come to better solutions, if you are willing to put in the effort instead of calling for bans left right and centre.
Also, you haven't answered what I asked before. How do these team matchup in any way imply that Drizzle / Drought are broken? All your examples have shown is that Sand stall dominates the entire tier. So... why are we calling for Drizzle and Drought to be banned. It makes no goddamn sense. Otherwise, it shows that the weather conditions mutually counter each other, and therefore the game is indeed balanced and we don't have to ban anything.
Another you haven't considered in your matchup arguments are the mentality of the players. I'm more willing to say that outcomes of battles are determined from the psychological war between two players than any team does (which is why I never do well in tournaments, I suppose). I can tell you now that if you go into a match with your rain offense team and you come across a sand stall team, if you automatically think you've lost the game, you've already beaten yourself. There's no point in playing. What if you changed your attitude completely, and think "This is hard, but I can win this", you might actually come out on top. Yes, your team is disadvantaged, but many, many more factors determine a match. Maybe you opponent might not have a good day, maybe they'd fuck up somewhere, maybe you'd get some hax here and there to help you, or maybe you just end up outpredicting them. There are so many factors to winning in Pokemon that when you make "team A automatically beats team B" arguments, all it does is just show how little you've actually thought of the problem.
These are all anti-rain Pokémon. Your argument here is worthless.
Sun teams are less of a problem because the player has to be good for them to be a problem. You have to play around Rocks and Spikes and all other manner of residual damage or else Venusaur and Volcarona aren't going to last long enough to sweep. Rain has the luxury of putting out Pokémon and crushing teams without top-tier playing.
Um... how exactly is that argument worthless? Why is sticking an anti-rain Pokemon to make your team stronger against rain a worthless argument? All it does is show that people are willing to put in the effort to try and counter the dominant team archetype in the metagame. It just hows utter laziness if you're telling that me you're unwilling to bring rain checks into a battle and then complain when you get completely trashed.
shrang i really think you need to re-evaluate the supposedly "naive and simplistic examples" that bkc is offering here...
rain team -- politoed/toxicroak/tornadus/keldeo/starmie/ferrothorn
sand team -- hippowdon/forretress/jellicent/celebi/heatran/scarftar
sun team -- ninetales/dugtrio/forretress or xatu/venusaur/latias/trapper heatran
weatherless team -- deoxys-d/gengar/scizor/terrakion/keldeo/latios
all four of those proposed team archetypes are basically the most common variants of their playstyles in the current metagame. the rain team bkc lists basically is my rain offense team, not saying the pokemon used themselves are mine but the team build is good enough that i use it. i've used the sand team he lists to success, the sun team is standard as hell minus latias (which is still more common nowadays, thanks dragonuser) and the deo-d team is as well. his playstyle v. playstyle matchup analyses are also accurate...he's right that standard sand stall beats standard rain offense 95% of the time, rain offense usually beats weatherless, rain offense usually loses to tobestran sun, and sun v weatherless is a coin flip based on whether the sun user is running forretress or xatu. all these matchups assume both players are competent users, of course. the only real matchups nowadays where skill is involved are where there's the same weather, or lack of, on both sides of the table, e.g. rain v rain, sand v sand, deo-d v deo-d. you don't have to like it, you have to accept it. i also realize that these matchup archetypes don't always hold true when one or more battlers is using innovative and original movesets or mixing things up a bit, as evidenced by shakeitup's rain offense beating my sand stall in ost9 because he had agility lanturn and i was shocked enough to misplay and lose four pokes subsequently. however, this is uncommon and becoming less and less seen as the metagame progresses, since people are discovering and popularizing what they deem to be good sets and then the sheep follow their shepards so to speak.
in summation, playstyle and team matchup doesn't always decide the game before it begins, but it almost always gives one player a significant advantage over the other, and that's not something we should strive to have present in our metagame. ace matador told me a game of pokemon should be like a game of chess, and i agree with him. whoever out-thinks and outplays their opponent ought to win the match, but because team matchup is so present in today's metagame, that's not happening nearly as much.
@shrang: He said that weatherless does not have trouble against rain (this is assuming a weatherless team built to be all-purpose, not a rain killer) and then lists four anti-rain Pokémon on ONE team. I can use Jellicent, Gastrodon, and Jirachi on a team and rain is going to do jack shit against it, but how well is that team doing besides rain?
Yes, I know that these are the most common variants in the metagame. It doesn't not mean that's they're only ones and most importantly, it does not mean that you can't deviate from these teams. While yes, I'm not denying these are probably the "best" or "most successful" teams, if you're just being a sheep and using teams that everyone else uses, well of course you deserve to have your ass handed to you. Evolution happens because organisms with mutations survive changes, not the wild type. Team matchups have always given people significant advantages over one another, I agree with that, but in the end, people win because of a whole lot of other reasons. I know the advantage is bigger now, but in the end, better players still win most of the time, not people with better teams. You can be like BKC and automatically beat yourself when you see a shit team matchup, or you can fight it out and see what happens. We'd all love Pokemon to be like chess, but in reality, it just doesn't work because of how the mechanics of Pokemon. Instead, I've like to think of Pokemon more like tennis, where one team is a player and the other another. There is hax in tennis, and people fuck up in tennis. For example, Rafael Nadal's top spinning forehand plays into Roger Federer's weakest side, his back hand. That is one significant advantage that Nadal has over Federer. Indeed, Nadal has beaten Federer more times than vice versa. However, Federer doesn't go "fuck I'm playing Nadal again, I'm going to lose, ban lefties with massive top spinning forehands", he fights for the match, and he wins a significant portion of their head to head meetings.
As for Drizzle and Drought, yes, they have significant advantages in terms of team matchups. However, do they dominate the entire metagame as that if you don't run them, you're at a significant disadvantage which warrants them being banned? No. BKC just highlighted that sand stall dicks both of them. So why should we ban them?
i'm not going to detract from the point you make there with the tennis analogy, it's completely legitimate. yes, team matchup creates advantages and disadvantages from the start, and yes, the player at an inherent disadvantage can still win if they make little to no blunders, outpredict their opponent on many consecutive turns, and get a little lucky. there's always a way to win when it's still 6-6. however, regardless of the fact that team matchup doesn't decide everything, my point is the fact that it usually decides too much. all the examples bkc listed - rain v sand, rain v sun, sand v sun, deo-d v rain, deo-d v sun - give such an absurd level of advantage to one player and disadvantage to the other that it's unhealthy for the metagame. yes, you can always make the argument that you can play your way out of rotten matchup, but let's face it, in an extremely high level bw2 ou battle between two players of world-class caliber, the person with the better team matchup almost always wins. this is true in any battle where both players are of about equal skill level, team matchup essentially decides the match before it begins.
as for the drizzle and drought point, you answer your own question. sand stall dicks on rain and sun, and then...? so what are my options if i want to consistently beat rain/sun teams?
a) run sand stall
b) ???
and therein lies the problem inherent in the auto-weather system.
These are all anti-rain Pokémon. Your argument here is worthless.
Sun teams are less of a problem because the player has to be good for them to be a problem. You have to play around Rocks and Spikes and all other manner of residual damage or else Venusaur and Volcarona aren't going to last long enough to sweep. Rain has the luxury of putting out Pokémon and crushing teams without top-tier playing.
Ahm. First, that was like obviously ironical. I won't make a team filled with that, but just take few. So, I guess you did not understand the argument in fact. And I really believe that you did read my post too fast. I said that a weatherless should be able to face a classic Rain (like, maybe because it's the most played archetype ??), and got the weapons to do so (or don't you agree ?), so I named some examples.
This was also a way to stop the "X beats Y no matter what", because for a weatherless, you can't say that since they can be as flexible as they want.
Second, your residual damage argument is just not logical. Venusaur won't come around many times, he comes, he sweeps, end of the story.
Same goes for Volcarona, and Suns playing Volcarona have a way to prevent or spin hazards... you will not switch 2 times your Volcarona on SR, or not get a way to prevent them on your field, no "top-tier" playing involved xD
In what you say, you make it like "who cares about Sun it's needed to be really good to play it, because it's easy to beat else"... and I see nothing coming close to a decent explanation to back it up.
Whatever, if you want to answer, take some time please. And here you clearly changed the aim of my post, making this a waste.
I don't consider myself anywhere near as experienced as a lot of the other users here, but since I'm currently running a weatherless team myself, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on the matter.
First of all, if there's any weather I fear facing the most, it certainly isn't rain. Sun hits as hard as rain does (although I do agree that rain has significant advantages in having perfect-accuracy Thunders and Hurricanes), and sun sweepers are certainly much faster. Also, a weatherless team can use rain to its own advantage, since it gives defensive benefits to Grass and Steel. Sun, on the other hand, only benefits Ground, Rock, and Fire defensively. None of those types are particularly spectacular defensively, since Rock has four other weaknesses to worry about and Fire is SR-weak. The best of the three is Ground, and yet the premier defensive Ground-types, Gliscor, Landorus-T, and Donphan, are all vulnerable to sun-boosted attacks.
Second, I don't think that the whole idea of trying to outright "counter" weather teams is what a weatherless team should aim for. Since weatherless teams are, ideally, supposed to work under any weather, it would make sense that weatherless teams should use Pokemon common on weather teams. I don't mean using things like Tornadus-I and Stoutland without weather support - that's asking to lose. Many "staples" of weather, like Keldeo on rain or Heatran in sun, are legitimately good at what they do even outside of their "home" weather. A weatherless team which uses Pokemon that "counter-abuse" the opponent's weather (a well-known example would be using Heatran against a sun team) gains a way of leveling the playing field, so to speak. Obviously the team is still playing to a disadvantage, since at least some of its members will still be dead weight against the weather team, but it's better than nothing. Also, sun has the disadvantage of being almost entirely shut down by one Pokemon - Heatran - so weatherless teams have more slots to deal with rain.
This isn't to say that weather isn't centralizing. I don't think any weather on its own is a problem, but the combination of rain and sun puts a lot of pressure on weatherless teams because they skew the type chart in opposite ways and require different sets of Pokemon to defend against. While I don't think there's enough hard, concrete information on a weatherless metagame to talk about banning Drizzle or Drought, I do agree that a suspect would be very beneficial. In the end, all everyone here wants is a fun OU metagame, and there's nothing wrong with at least testing which version of the metagame is better.
Ahm. First, that was like obviously ironical. I won't make a team filled with that, but just take few. So, I guess you did not understand the argument in fact. And I really believe that you did read my post too fast. I said that a weatherless should be able to face a classic Rain (like, maybe because it's the most played archetype ??), and got the weapons to do so (or don't you agree ?), so I named some examples.
This was also a way to stop the "X beats Y no matter what", because for a weatherless, you can't say that since they can be as flexible as they want.
Second, your residual damage argument is just not logical. Venusaur won't come around many times, he comes, he sweeps, end of the story.
Same goes for Volcarona, and Suns playing Volcarona have a way to prevent or spin damages... you won't switch 2 times your Volcarona on SR, or don't get a way to prevent them on your field, no "top-tier" playing involved xD
In what you say, you make it like "who cares about Sun it's needed to be really good to play it, because it's easy to beat else"... and I see nothing come close to a decent explanation to back it up.
Whatever, if you want to answer, take some time please. And here you clearly changed the aim of my post, making this a waste.
I'm still having trouble understanding your writing, but if you WERE being sarcastic about rain vs. weatherless, okay, we're on the same page and weatherless is underpowered compared to weather.
You describe Venusaur and Volcarona like they're these juggernauts that WILL get going and that WILL have their day, even if just for a turn or two. But their not. They're typically one Pokémon out of a team of six; you rarely see both of them on a single sun team because it requires the rest of the team to facilitate their sweep. This isn't to say that they're not incredibly dangerous sweeper; they are, but Jimmy No-Scopes isn't going to show up and take a sun team to the top of the ladder, the player has to know what they're doing.
You describe Venusaur and Volcarona like they're these juggernauts that WILL get going and that WILL have their day, even if just for a turn or two. But their not. They're typically one Pokémon out of a team of six; you rarely see both of them on a single sun team because it requires the rest of the team to facilitate their sweep.
ninetales / dugtrio / forretress (or xatu) / heatran / venusaur / volcarona is the single most standard sun team in all of existence, and alone they can't do much sans perfect sweeping circumstances, but together they open holes for each other that the other can take advantage of. that's the reason sun gives weatherless teams so much trouble. most decent weatherless lineups can handle venusaur or volcarona, but the overwhelming majority of them fall to the combination of the two. same goes for rain, same goes for a lot of sand. sun, in my opinion, is the single most broken playstyle in the current metagame. trap and kill the opposing weather starter, spin or bounce hazards, punch holes with venu/volc and sweep with the other one. simple and effective.
Major props to shrang and lavos - thank you, both, for presenting the arguments of both sides so eloquently. I think we all agree in a broad sense as to when we must ban variables to improve the metagame, but I believe we disagree at what degree of centralization should we as players intervene and alter this game.
Shrang and friends state that the current metagame leaves enough room for player performance to outweigh the initial team disadvantages, where as lavos and friends believe that the disadvantages from a team match-up is too much to overcome when facing an equally skilled player, and restrict player choices. I hope I understood both of you correctly.
I must reiterate, though, that teambuilding is also part of player's skill, and that a player should try not to make a team that is drastically weak to a major team archetype such as rain offense or sand stall. More importantly, BW2 OU offers us various means (I mean we DO have 600+ Pokemon at our disposal, not just our opponent),of overcoming these major threats that allow enough versatility and flexibility in our teams. I agree with shrang, when he states that it's the responsibility of the players to build a team that best addresses pertinent threats, not the metagame's responsibility.
However, It's a metagame's responsibilities to offer us with enough choices to cover said threats while executing our own offense, and I believe that the issue that needs to be addressed by both sides if we want to ever reach an agreement.
I am still perplexed about the anti-Drizzle's conclusion to ban Rain because of "worsened team match-up." Even if we accept BKC's oversimplifications, we reach a conclusion that Sand beats Rain, Sand beats Sun, and Weather beats weatherless. I bold weather instead of Rain and Sun, because a Stoutland sand team certainly has a significant team advantage over a weatherless team, which must face a Pokemon that cannot be revenged by most scarfers and hits like a truck to boot. You may argue that Stoutland is easy to tank, but that's not true - Normal is only resisted / immune by Steel, Rock, and Ghost-types. Compare that with Hydro Pump, which is resisted by Water, Grass, and Dragon, and a couple of water-immune abilities. Give Stoutland that double STAB boost with CB, and I'd say Stoutland is AT LEAST on par with Scarf Keldeo in the Rain from a weatherless player's perspective.
So yea, Rain isn't even the worst of weatherless players' "problems," compared to Sun and Sand teams with threats that break the speed tier. Hell, my weatherless team even matches up well against Rain teams, because I have a Swift Swimmer, which can easily sweep these Rain teams with little support.
are people seriously using 'restricts player choices' as an argument for banning something? we have a half dozen metagames to play because this community can't seem to handle a world where something like hitmonlee doesn't have a context in which it can perform effectively. for that markedly uncompetitive and casual-appeasing mentality to have any bearing on OU tiering policy is absolutely embarrassing.
are people seriously using 'restricts player choices' as an argument for banning something? we have a half dozen metagames to play because this community can't seem to handle a world where something like hitmonlee doesn't have a context in which it can perform effectively. for that markedly uncompetitive and casual-appeasing mentality to have any bearing on OU tiering policy is absolutely embarrassing.
i think you may have misinterpreted what some of us are contending. you're saying we all should use rain offense, sun offense, or sand stall, and be done with it? that's bad for ou, and here's why. when playstyles such as sun offense are requiring people to either go out of their way to counter it or lose 9/10 matches against it, that's when the line is drawn between something that's good/competitive and something that's unhealthy/uncompetitive. none of us are saying that hitmonlee should be viable on any ou team. rather, we're arguing that forcing players to run y playstyle or get demolished by z playstyle is bad for ou because it takes away all aspects of originality and creativity, making the metagame a dull and stagnant place to battle. i should be able to use a weatherless team in ou and not have my options be a) run shed shell heatran, or b) lose to sun 99% of the time. that means if i do choose option b, and i run up against a sun team on ladder, i lose. that's all there is to it. therefore, the state of the metagame itself is essentially forcing me to run one of three or four particular playstyles - once again, limiting creativity and originality, which is a lot of what makes pokemon an interesting and enjoyable experience in the first place.
I don't think anyone was arguing that rain is the only problem, just the most prominent. Sand and Hail aren't as prominent on the weatherless brain because it doesn't affect the power of certain moves, and while Hail really is a non-entity for most players. Those rare impeccably-built hail teams are being directed by a player that's going to bend you over whether he's using hail stall or sand offense, just the fact that it's hail is what sticks out in our mind.
Sand does give very dangerous, very powerful Pokémon like Landorus-I their day. And I'm sorry, but the last time a Stoutland gave me hell was in 2011 when I was playing UU and I didn't have anything to wall Choice Band Retaliate.
I don't think Stoutland is the undiscovered gem you're painting it to be. CB Stoutland needs to run Adamant or it just doesn't have enough power in which case he's outsped by Scarf 108s. His coverage is also lacking: Superpower drops his attack, Fire Fang is weak, and Wild Charge has recoil. Compare this to Keldeo who has FAR more power (base 100 compared to base 129? Really?), a truly incredible STAB combination, and resistance to Stealth Rock.
EDIT: In addition to what Lavos is saying, telling us to "Play a different tier," doesn't solve the issue. OU is THE Smogon metagame, and having users up and quit it because of its shitty state is demonstrative that something is wrong.
lord of bays, i think you're wrong to underestimate the strength of stoutland in the current ou metagame. sure, what you say about it being slower than base 108 scarfers in sand with an adamant nature is true, but thankfully the only two of those running around are terrakion and keldeo, both of which are manhandled by two common 'mons on sand teams, hippowdon and jellicent, respectively. besides, i think cb dog actually outclasses scarf keldeo/terrak in some ways just because people seem to underprepare for it when they're teambuilding. when i sit down to build a team, one of the first things i think about is to avoid making it weak to any extremely common metagame threats, of which keldeo and terrakion are classified as. i don't usually think stoutland when i think big threats, and i know many other teambuilders do, too - therefore, a large majority of offensive teams seem unready to face the dog in his natural habitat. after all, who thinks about remembering to have normal resistances, as opposed to a more common offensive type like water or fighting? plus, let's not forget the merits of stout over keldeo in particular: better coverage, stronger 100% accurate stab, and access to pursuit, which is a real asset in scenarios involving latios and gengar. wild charge is really great against rain teams, which generally have at least two, if not three or four, water types, and superpower demolishes what used to be solid checks to stoutland, meaning tyranitar, terrakion, and friends. fire fang pops scizor for an ohko as well. when it comes right down to it, there's not much at all that enjoys switching into cb stoutland.
just one problem: without sand, the dog is often dead weight.
Me and my peeps seperate Rain and Sun from other weathers because their effects are a gajillion times more drastic than those of Sand, and I assume you're not saying Hail is directly advantaged over weatherless. Sand could be, but Rain / Sun are that much more obvious. Sand doesn't get you a whole extra STAB / extra resists / bigger movepool. You have to console me and agree that's a damn slight more drastic than almost even residual damage and Stoutland, which I see as nothing more than an average threat, and Sandslash which is accepted as below average. My goal is to only cut the OBVIOUS problems. With those two, Sand is not obvious yet.
Let's get into why matchup exists. You need to experience it firsthand to truly understand it- me and BKC have both been on both sides of it and absolutely use it to our advantage in a BW game when possible. I honestly don't know how people feel justified saying we're just complaining about it because we lose to it- if you mean we don't like the deterioration of in game battle skill relating to wins sure, but that's not what I'm hearing. Not to brag, but we believe in it because we use it. Tempted to bring a Sun + Gothitelle + Dug team to beat the Sand Stall we keep talking about? We're aware of that threat and might guess against you. Whichever one of us guessed right wins the game. Sure, you do have choices when teambuilding but you cannot deny there is true restriction. Sun I won't even bother explaining- rain forces on you a one dimensional pokemon in Politoed that is useless against everything Balance and slower, while Scarf / Specs Keldeo (and the 20 other abusers we effectively banned already) clearly stand out as the most potent offensive threats. Sure, non weather teams can bring tough water resists to try to wall them but there are Rain teams, they can use clearly superior offensive threats of other kinds to be more threatening to weatherless. This is why you slap on TTar / Hippo so often, you can prepare for water attacks but if your plan is to only cover those you're doing it wrong. Because Rain is so powerful, it's in your best interest to run weather to change it and heavy resists to rain sweepers so you're on the same level. You end up with a defensive Sand team if your goal is to counter Rain, unless you run something like a Kingdra which is proving our point. You're taking a clearly inferior choice to roll the dice with team matchup vs rain in that case. When rain counterteams kinda look the same, Sun always looks the same, and Rain kinda looks the same, and Deo-D is deciding games turn one on coinflips, in this metagame you end up being able to win against Rain / Sun with just a rough idea of what the team will look like beforehand because their best options are a small group. This metagame is not based on individual threats, it is mostly based of those limited molds. Even when it is Sand vs. Sand there's a ton of questionable threats that we're not addressing because Rain and Sun would cover them up if they were broken, although this is a less important point.
I'll have to ask at this point if you're beginning to see what I'm talking about here. If you are starting to see the super-centralization going on, and want to know further why Rain / Sun / Deo-D directly lower battling skill to win correlation, please ask for more. It's not a question that can be solved completely by text, but I will tell you saying there's more a weak correlation between in game execution and wins in BW2 is a load and I hope this clears up why I'm putting it on these guys.
The problem with Stoutland is that Normal shares a very important resistance with Dragon: Steel. And when they pack Steels, which so so many people do, they always think of how Dragons try to get around them: Fighting- and Fire-type attacks.
Okay. I just ran some relevant calcs to ascertain the validity of your claims. And it just hit me that both of you are twisting the truth and I just got so furious at what I discovered that I need to step away for a little bit. If you want me to show these calcs, I will, but until then I'm gonna take a break from tiering/suspect discussion.
Okay. I just ran some relevant calcs to ascertain the validity of your claims. And it just hit me that both of you are twisting the truth and I just got so furious at what I discovered that I need to step away for a little bit. If you want me to show these calcs, I will, but until then I'm gonna take a break from tiering/suspect discussion.
can you please specify as to whose claims exactly you were trying to ascertain the validity of, who is twisting the truth, etc.? i'm sorry if any of us offended you in any way, but that last post of yours was extremely unclear, so it would help if you could defog this for us so we can help explain any problems you may be encountering with our respective arguments.
yee, i think anyone who takes two minutes to read the entirety of your post ought to understand the basis of your argument. hint: read it
