Auto weather poll

[shrang]

There's a difference between being a good/bad team builder and making arguments which shows that you've clearly haven't thought about the problem clearly. I know BKC's a good teambuilder. What I can't understand is how such a good teambuilder can make such simplistic arguments between team matchups when there are over 600 Pokemon you can play around in a combination of 6. I made a quick change to the rain offense team example that he made (Toxicroak -> Virizion), and it was already far less weak to the sand stall team that he gave. It took less than a minute. There is a difference between being a good teambuilder and not being willing to put in extra effort. I'm not attacking his ability, but the arguments that he made, which were obviously not very well thought out. There's a difference between slander/libel and telling someone their argument makes no sense.

And before you tell me, "why should I use Virizion, he sucks", I'd like to say "WHY aren't you willing to use something that's a little different to improve your team". Nothing sucks if it works.

 

[Lavos]

And before you tell me, "why should I use Virizion, he sucks", I'd like to say "WHY aren't you willing to use something that's a little different to improve your team". Nothing sucks if it works.

you essentially respond to your own argument here. you pose the question, "why aren't we willing to use something different to improve our team"? then you go on to say, "nothing sucks if it works". that's the point. some things just suck. let's take your example of changing out toxicroak in favor of virizion for a standard rain offense team. the team has now gained a specially bulky grass type capable of setting up against a few common 'mons on sand stall, thereby making itself a little less weak to said playstyle (though celebi still walls it completely). however, look at what you've lost: a priority user, keldeo check, terrakion check, and water (specifically scald burn) immunity. you gained something and lost something, that's how trade-offs work in teambuilding. the team is now less weak to sand stall, but more weak to rain and sand offense. you are better against one playstyle than you were before, and worse against two playstyles than you were before (arguably three, since virizion gets set up on by venusaur easily, too). that objectively seems like a negative exchange, and it's one of the main reasons that on standard rain teams, toxicroak sees more usage than virizion.

in summation, the reason people use some things more than other things is because some things are better than other things in more situations than other things. shrang, nobody here is arguing that we shouldn't be allowed to employ creativity in our teambuilding - rather, we're saying the exact opposite of that. creative, original movesets and teams keep the metagame healthy and exicting. they're part of what makes playing ou an enjoyable experience. auto-weather, specifically drizzle, and the importance of team matchup in bw2, is what's stifling that creativity.

going to catch some shut eye now, keep the discussion flowing guys.

 

[Huntofthelion]

Alright just a general reminder here, but everyone needs to focus on the discussion at hand and stop making personal attacks. These personal arguments go in circles and the more you harass people the less likely your post is to be taken seriously / the less likely they are to consider your point of view. This is especially the case for badgeholders as you guys are supposed to be setting an example for the other people in the discussion to follow. Cut out the passive aggressive lines, and attack the argument instead of the individual(s).

Thanks.

 

[toshimelonhead]

I am starting to wonder if this lack of creativity in Gen 5 is not just a weather problem, but a problem with Pokemon itself. Pokemon is at this point a very mature franchise. We have gone through 600+ pokemon over effectively 15 years (spanning multiple generations) and through millions of battles have found 7-8 combinations that "work". I know the fallacies here--we didn't start with 600 pokemon and the Gen1 meta is drastically different from the GenV meta--but the point remains that we have discovered the vast majority of the metagame, in my opinion.

Gen1 was easy to discover everything since there are only 10 effective pokemon to use. Gen2 got a little better, but it still revolves around the same 12-15 pokemon and very similar strategies (not to mention the endless battles). Gens III and IV were a huge step in the right direction, but they also brought huge competitive shifts which weather pales in comparison. Think about the physical/special split and how that completely disrupted the metagame from Gen III to Gen IV, or even how abilities added another huge layer of complexity from GSC to ADV. Instead from DPP to Gen BW, the biggest change was not adding a new complexity, but from building from previous framework that DPP laid upon. Even though Gen BW felt like a completely different meta when it first came out, looking back the gap between DPP and BW is smaller than in other generations. Heatran in Gen V is the same Heatran we loved from Gen IV. From this alone, it is likely that we had "discovered" almost a third of the metagame before even knowing of Gen V. We already knew some solid cores like Skarmbliss and Dragmag. Nothing transferred like that from Gen II to Gen III or Gen III to Gen IV.

This "prediscovery" problem is huge for OU because unlike lower tiers, the parameters don't change as much. In this way, BW OU feels a lot like an Ubers metagame where stuff hits really hard and there's not much you can really do to change it. If people discover something in a lower tier, it's gone usually by people using it. There's not that same flexibility in OU since we don't ban on usage (as we shouldn't), we ban for more nebulous reasons. A metagame without rain still means that we've "discovered" about 60-70 percent of the BW OU metagame just through the massive number of battles and collective knowledge over the years. Banning weather will not fix this. Sure we can make new sets and there's more options than ever to do that, but collectively we know the best sets. There's not a ton left to surprise us anymore. While weather makes it worse in that it's very easy to make a quality team, removing weather does not mean that we'll have a balanced metagame or one where teams would be more original. We would almost need a brand new game of Pokemon, which hopefully Gen 6 could provide. But even then, it seems like there's not much more to expand.

 

[HabibsHotDogs]

To the people claiming that if rain were to be banned, then it would follow that we would have to ban sun.

1. Currently a lot of non-rain teams run rain checks, a lot of these check's don't enjoy sun (Jellicent, Gastrodon, Celebi) - The demand on these rain checks is liable to decrease and thus options will open for newer team slots that will be able to deal with sun.

2. There are quite literally a plethora of fire types pushing at the edges of UU, waiting for an opportunity in OU. These fire types will rather enjoy a firey metagame and a lot of them check prominent sun threats! For example Houndoom can trap Darmanitan + Victini, Chandelure walls the most viable Sawsbuck/Venusaur sets and Victini has some unique resistances to types that rain teams commonly deploy.

3. Unlike rain, which tends to work in favour of a variety of pokemon (Thunder abusers, Hurricane abusers, water types, bulky steels, bulky grass types, the plethora of rain abilities including some on non water pokemon, etc), sun really only works in favour of chlorophyll sweepers and pokemon with fire attacks. It could be argued that certain pokemon will enjoy the 1/2 to water attacks but in a rain-less metagame we can realistically expect water attacks to almost never be present when non-STAB'd by considering its super-effective coverage, distribution on non water types and the history of past meta's which show water attacks as coverage tend to be rare.

4. The nerf to water types in general in a metagame where we could expect mass sun is not really a problem. Water pokemon tend to be useful for more then just their water stab and the few pokemon that really did need drizzle to remain viable (politoed, vaporeon, etc) will hardly create a "less healthy metagame". If its alright for 2 dark types to be classified OU, it will be alright for water pokemon to lose a few spots in OU (9 current water types in OU for reference).

5. Threats like Darmanitan and Venusaur on sun teams can easily be managed by fire pokemon of your own. Ironically fire attackers will deal with sun teams much better than water attackers deal with rain teams when you consider the bulk of water types on rain teams versus the bulk of the fire pokemon with flash fire on sun (only heatran is truly a bulky fire with flash fire). A case in point: A kingdra against a rain team is often a liability because Ferrothorn/Jirachi/Jellicent/Politoed/Vaporen/Tentacruel can at the very worst check its attacks however there are few pokemon on a sun team that will enjoy switching into Darmanitan without perfect prediction (EVERY OU viable pokemon with flash fire is super-effectively hit by one of its coverage moves).

The "broken" things that stand out to me are dragons being able to more reliably beat steels, however we already know steels aren't the only way for dragon circumvention. Many pokemon such as Landorus-T are capable of baiting outrages and meteors. Venusaur will be much more likely to be beaten in a metagame without rain because of all the pokemon we could expect to rise to OU. That said in a drizzle-less metagame I will be expecting Venusaur to be banned.

 

[Hugin]

Yeah, I think that after a Rain ban, Sun might get bigger, but it won't break. Flash Fire is fairly common, and the pokes that have it are usually a hard counter to the Chlorophyll sweepers. It'll actually be easier to counter Sun without Rain, since you don't have to worry about your fire-type becoming death fodder the instant Politoed shows up in team preview.

If Sun does break, we can suspect it then. It doesn't have the same level of abuse as Rain, but it's not impossible, and it would be fun to see how far Ninetales can fall before October.

 

[BKC]

lol shrang, toxicroak's never getting by that team. hippo is just going to come in on an attack, take thirty-forty percent or so, and set up sr that's not getting spun or slack off. if it sd's, it'll take a hefty hit, but it's not koing and you get slaughtered by earthquake in return. plus, you're not going to sd when there is a jellicent around. virizion doesn't help that match-up at all, it's never getting past spdef celebi + scarf tar. "slight changes" aren't going to change the team match-up dynamic. also, yee's post is one hundred percent correct, and you guys should read it over because he's basically re-iterated everything i've said but he seems to have been ignored.

 

[shrang]

lol shrang, toxicroak's never getting by that team. hippo is just going to come in on an attack, take thirty-forty percent or so, and set up sr that's not getting spun or slack off. if it sd's, it'll take a hefty hit, but it's not koing and you get slaughtered by earthquake in return. plus, you're not going to sd when there is a jellicent around. virizion doesn't help that match-up at all, it's never getting past spdef celebi + scarf tar. "slight changes" aren't going to change the team match-up dynamic. also, yee's post is one hundred percent correct, and you guys should read it over because he's basically re-iterated everything i've said but he seems to have been ignored.

I never said anything about Toxicroak getting past that team. If you read my post, I suggested replacing it with Virizion. Yes, I know it needs Celebi to be weakened before you can kill it, but that's what the rest of you team is doing. It's a bit like your "rain vs sun" scenario, except this time, it isn't "kill the weather inducer", but "weaken the Celebi". Same sort of situation.

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

Yee, this is one argument I will never forgive. Why is running Kingdra proving that rain is overpowered? How does running a check to a dominant Pokemon/playstyle prove that it's broken? Isn't this the case with every Pokemon? You only have yourself to blame if you get slaughtered by rain because you didn't carry an effective check.

Also, another thing is people throwing around "run multiple (2+) Water resists on a team" to take on rain is "too much". Is it really? Do you honestly expect to counter an entire playstyle (a team) with one Pokemon?

 

[BKC]

and if you'd read my post, you'd know that virizion doesn't help that match-up at all. how are you going to weaken celebi? nothing damages it to the point where it can't just recover it off, you can't wear it down with hazards...not to mention scarf tar still knocks the stuffing out of viriz with superpower.

kingdra's a rain check that does absolute jack shit outside of checking rain. if your opponent doesn't bring rain, it's usually a waste of a mon. this is the matchup problem.

i like how you ignored the rest of yee's post btw.

 

[HabibsHotDogs]

BKC, you do have a point but you're really nailing the head of something that doesn't really matter. The person who really hit the spot was the one that mentioned drizzle being a free turn and this is essentially what pushes it over the edge. Without even wasting a turn you are nerfing fire attacks by 1/2, boosting water by 50% and activating a plethora of abilities and otherwise innaccurate moves for your whole team, for the whole match, unless challenged by another weather.

This wouldn't really be a problem if (in general) the other weathers could keep up. But let us consider that for a moment.

1. Rain has just about anything and everything to deal with anti-rain threats. Because the only pokemon that are nerfed by rain are those that run fire attacks and plenty of pokemon enjoy rain or don't mind it, rain can run almost anything it likes to counter other weathers. Consider things that give rain "trouble", here are a few:

Gastrodon - Rain has Ferrothorn on most teams, otherwise things like Breloom, Latios and rotom-w all enjoy or don't mind rain.

Tyranitar - As headache inducing as this pokemon is for rain, rain has almost anything available to it to switch into the 'tar, from Keldeo to Toxicroak to Breloom & Jirachi

Trappers - The irony here is that Dugtrio traps Ninetales and Tyranitar much better than Politoed but rain is so well off, you often won't need to bother running Dugtrio, now if only sun had that luxury! As for Gothitelle it is generally a liability as it has incredible difficulty switching in, and can't ohko defensive politoed nor can it survive moves from offensive politoed (except.. focus blast? lol)

Celebi - Rain has Jirachi (u turn), Tornadus, it can easily fit basically any common turner like Scizor - who will never be ohkoed by any move Celebi runs in rain - with barely any effect on the team synergy.

Ferrothorn - This is probably the most difficult for rain to break through because its defenses are simply so good, but between moves like scald flying everywhere and a pokemon with stab fighting moves or powerful attacks it is eventually worn out.

2. Lets look at what sand and sun have... Basically any pokemon that is on sand used to counter rain, with the exception of Gastrodon & lol Cradilly will be being buffeted by the sand storm and thus nerfed in their home weather. Countering sun is a little more easy as sand teams either tend to run 'cent to spin block or eventually win the weather war with Tyranitars inherent advantage over Ninetales (can switch more freely and has better stats/movepool both defensively and offensively). The major problem sand faces is that it really can't run much sweepers as their team slots are usually filled trying to complement weaknesses and counter other weathers, as such we don't see much Stoutland or Sandslash or even physical Landorus-I in OU (their offensive power is not compelling enough to justify using them on a sand team to most players), whilst rain can easily take a pick of a variety of sweepers that can use the weather boosts. Terrakion is really the only "common" sand-improved sweeper I can currently think of.

For sun your teambuilding options are incredibly limited, as discussed multiple times in this thread. I'll just be brief on this as it has been done to death but a good sun team NEEDS to have MULTIPLE pokemon JUST for dealing with hazards and sand and rain. Of course a sun team with ninetales/sawsbuck/venusaur/scarfdarm/forretress/volcarona will absolutely steamroll a non-weather team in this current meta (since everyone overprepares for rain, yes I have been steamrolled by an oponent of low skill with the above team) but will fail the moment it meets other weathers.

3. Weatherless teams can not deal with everything at once. This one is incredibly obvious, as mentioned above, a weatherless team will be steamrolled by an offensive sun team stacking sun sweepers as they are so rare and it is impossible to prepare for them without compromising pokemon that deal with other weathers and classic comboes like drag/mag. Most weatherless teams I see these days tend to overprepare for rain and as somebody who also prefers to run weatherless sometimes its so blindingly obvious that they have weaknesses to threatening pokemon like Haxorus or Terrakion simply because they are doing their best to have a team that can hold its own against rain. It'd be interesting to see how weatherless teams prepare for sun in a meta without perma-rain as I suspect they will be much less of a threat (except perhaps 'saur)

I think instead of beating around the bush about "match-ups" we should be actually discussing issues associated with the abilities (and not how "match ups" are shaping the meta), since this is what the poll is really about. Don't get me wrong we are still technically discussing match ups but we should be hitting on the head of the issue, not beating around the bush and running circles with the arguments without actually discussing the "issue/solutions" and not the "extended problems".

 

[shrang]

54.18% - 64.09% is how much Scarftar does to Virizion with Superpower. Not the most reliable check (not to mention Virizion can just Giga Drain most of the HP back). You can double switch Tornadus into Celebi, predict the switch and slam it with Ice Beam, yadda yadda. I know this is probably easier said than done, but the point was that this is one way of reducing your weakness to sand stall. Like I said, I thought of Virizion in less than a minute. Give me an hour and I'd probably end up giving you a better solution. Even a small change like that increases your chances of winning.

I'm not ignoring yee's post either. It's just that it's so similar to yours I can address both of you at the same time. My problem with both of your arguments is that you aren't linking why rain/sun is making team matchups difficult. Your sand stall vs rain offense / sun example just confuses the shit out of me because here you are, saying why rain and sun are broken, yet you use an example which completely shows the opposite - that rain / sun are completely destroyed by sand stall. Yes, I know you're arguing that because rain / sun are so powerful, that people have to rely on using sand stall to beat it, but why is that a bad thing? It's not like sand stall sucks in general that its only purpose is to counter rain and sun. I get reminded of this. Even then, why does that matter? We have the term "anti-metagame" for a reason. Just because people are running things to counter rain doesn't mean rain is broken in any way, especially if said thing (sand stall), is perfectly viable in its own right. As for Kingdra, even if it's nothing more than a rain check (it's actually a bit more), since rain is dominant, it has that niche. That does not necessarily mean that rain is broken. As for its uselessness, it's not a waste of a mon at all. It can start its own rain (if you ban Drizzle, it can still do that, so it doesn't change anything). Apart from Ferrothorn running around, it actually has a number of ways of getting past different checks. If you look at Kingdra's analysis revamp in C&C, it doesn't just function as a "Rain Counter", but it has 4-5 very viable sets. I like to refer to evolution a lot, and this is no different. Evolution occurs because organisms with mutations survive a change in homeostasis of the ecosystem. The wild type die out. Why do you think sickle cell anaemia exists? It's clearly detrimental to affected people (carriers are slightly anaemic and completely affected people just die). Why, because malaria exists, of course! People get resistance to malaria because they have sickle cell anaemia, so why can't you use Kingdra (or other rain checks) to gain slight resistance to Drizzle?

Now onto address more of yee's post:

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.

Isn't that the case with everything else in Pokemon? You're basically saying "if we predict correctly, we win the game, and whichever predicts right wins the game". Well no shit. You just proved my point. Pokemon is still won through smart play, predictions, and status of the players, not team matchups.

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

Um... no. I don't how many times I've run a team with SubPass Jolteon and standard Dragonite and rain teams have just completely fallen on its ass against it. It's because people run these standard teams where 4 Pokemon are weak to Jolteon, and Ferrothorn becomes free Sub pass fodder to Dragonite to set up. Against the team that BKC listed, it does just that (Toxicroak is not a very switch-in to Jolteon at all while the rest are fried by Thunderbolt. It's about exploiting these kind of weaknesses, not calling for bans.

So basically, you guys are arguing for banning rain / sun / Deo-D because 1) team matchups caused by these archetypes make it impossible to play, which I've already addressed, and 2) that they cut diversity. Number (2) is not a reason of broken conditions, but I'd more attribute it to people not bothering to be creative and just stealing what's efficient. Yes, I know that's not bad in the short term just to get yourself a team, but this is just being simplistic again. I've seen some very colourful and creative teams around the place, and they don't suck. I know this shit because this is all I play Pokemon for now. You will not see me running teams without some sort of weird thing that I'm testing, and while I know the ladder sucks, they're still pretty successful. My current team is Lead Mew / SD Bisharp / DD Latios / Scarf Gengar / SD Acrobat Scizor / Bulk Up Tornadus. Find one set on that team that is standard. While I know it's not the best team around, but most of the matches I've won, and those I lost are due to me fucking up, not because of inherent team weaknesses. I've also trolled around with shit like Swords Dance Charizard (yes I know it's shit, but God that was fun). Why can't the rest of our community use their creativity, hm?

 

[Shurtugal]

Commenting on the last statement:

It's because people are playing competitively and only care about winning. I feel that creativity should be used too (commin from gal who trolls rain with specs Blissey), but I suppose creativity isn't used much since most ppl in tours or on ladder only care about winning :x

Also, no matter what we ban wont diversity always be limited? (Thus the definition diverse imo, how is banning rain / sun going to increase diversity when there will just be another common archetype to replace it? )

Banning Drizzle / Sun will only lead to these competitive players on leaning on other things that work anyway. Therefore, I don't see how diversity will be effected. Now whether auto weather is broken or not is a sticky subject, but I don't believe in its diversity argument.

 

[Eggbert]

So basically, you guys are arguing for banning rain / sun / Deo-D because 1) team matchups caused by these archetypes make it impossible to play, which I've already addressed, and 2) that they cut diversity. Number (2) is not a reason of broken conditions, but I'd more attribute it to people not bothering to be creative and just stealing what's efficient. Yes, I know that's not bad in the short term just to get yourself a team, but this is just being simplistic again. I've seen some very colourful and creative teams around the place, and they don't suck. I know this shit because this is all I play Pokemon for now. You will not see me running teams without some sort of weird thing that I'm testing, and while I know the ladder sucks, they're still pretty successful. My current team is Lead Mew / SD Bisharp / DD Latios / Scarf Gengar / SD Acrobat Scizor / Bulk Up Tornadus. Find one set on that team that is standard. While I know it's not the best team around, but most of the matches I've won, and those I lost are due to me fucking up, not because of inherent team weaknesses. I've also trolled around with shit like Swords Dance Charizard (yes I know it's shit, but God that was fun). Why can't the rest of our community use their creativity, hm?

Your only water resist doesn't have reliable recovery and is 2HKOd by most heavy hitting waters in the rain (though DD latios is cool). Volcarona really hurts your team as nothing can really touch it or switch into its stab moves (forget it even boosting). Rotom can easily punch holes as well and volt switch out of Latios to a steel which it can't OHKO in rain. Venusaur is also a nightmare and can start the pain from early on. Against weatherless teams you might do well, but you have no defense against the elemental attacks of rain and sun teams. This metagame only leaves room for a few creative sets, and even then they are on the same pokemon. Why can't people use their creativity? Because the are forced to use the same select group of pokemon to counter weather teams, grouping teams into standard molds and ruining this game.

 

[shrang]

Your only water resist doesn't have reliable recovery and is 2HKOd by most heavy hitting waters in the rain (though DD latios is cool). Volcarona really hurts your team as nothing can really touch it or switch into its stab moves (forget it even boosting). Rotom can easily punch holes as well and volt switch out of Latios to a steel which it can't OHKO in rain. Venusaur is also a nightmare and can start the pain from early on. Against weatherless teams you might do well, but you have no defense against the elemental attacks of rain and sun teams. This metagame only leaves room for a few creative sets, and even then they are on the same pokemon. Why can't people use their creativity? Because the are forced to use the same select group of pokemon to counter weather teams, grouping teams into standard molds and ruining this game.

When I post that team, I'm not telling you to RMT it lol. You completely missed the point. My team has weaknesses. I know that. However, I still end up winning most of the time, and the times that I do lose it's because I get outplayed, not because I was weak to the team (I really couldn't care less if you start spamming rain boosted Water attacks and stuff, I still win). The team beats plenty of rain / sun teams. I guess you could attribute that to people on ladder sucking, but really, that still demonstrates my point. I know the level of the ladder isn't as high as tournaments, in general, but the ability is on a continium, and a lot of players aren't dumb. It's not like they're deliberately losing like BKC is implying. The winner is the better player most of the time. There are team weaknesses to various team archetypes, but the skill levels, mental state, hax and everything plays a way bigger part in the outcome of a match than petty team matchups.

 

[Shurtugal]

Ok so I'm going to comment more:

I think Shrang's point is that the better player will always win regardless of team matchups, as was trying to use creativity teams to prove it? I agree with Lavos in the respect that most gimmick or diverse Pokemon are simply outclassed by other Pokemon (see Chansey vs. Audino), but I also believe that diversity is unaffected by weather. Allow me to explain:

There will always be a common archetype, and there will always be a generic team, and there will always be a top 10 list of overused Pokemon. Which means that diversity depends on the metgamae imo, as the metagame determines what can be used and still be diverse. Changing the metagame only changes the Pokemon we can classify as "viable" and "diverse" at the same time. Take Zapdos, its a great teammate to combat rain, and even Gastrodon too. Take rain away and all of a sudden you'll find that Zapdos and Kingdra no longer have a niche, but something like Chandy might be more viable in the obvious spike of Sun than it would be if rain were still around. I don't see how banning the weathers are supposed to magically diverse the metagame. Competetive players will want to win and somehting will always outclass something else, erasing weather just changes the Pokes we can call both viable and diverse imo.

With that said, I'm not saying sun or rain is or isn't broken (due to me being on the fence with both). I'm only saying that I don't believe in this "diverse" arguement. Also, I agree with Shrang in the aspect that the better player will always be on top. Take for example, I've beaten OU tours and good friends (not naming for their pride's sake) with Specs Blissey team. Specs Blissey worked a bit in BW2 Gene because RP Gene can't touch it and Specs Nadus was also stopped by it, and nothing can switch into Specs Focus Blast / Thunder / Ice Beam / Hyper Beam lol. Yes, Specs Blissey is shit. But I also came out on top because I knew its small merits (like countering Venusaur for my rain team, since I paired Specs Bliss with Poli) and abused them and came out on top vs. legitimate players. Point being that the better player will usually always win with the exception of hax. (This is my beef with the matchups compel losses since the better player should always be winning).


Ok keep commenting lol. Just my 2cents.

 

[Deglas]

I like to refer to evolution a lot, and this is no different. Evolution occurs because organisms with mutations survive a change in homeostasis of the ecosystem. The wild type die out. Why do you think sickle cell anaemia exists? It's clearly detrimental to affected people (carriers are slightly anaemic and completely affected people just die). Why, because malaria exists, of course! People get resistance to malaria because they have sickle cell anaemia, so why can't you use Kingdra (or other rain checks) to gain slight resistance to Drizzle?

Wait, what? This is a horrible analogy. You are telling us that to avoid malaria (beat Drizzle), we should contract sickle-cell anemia (use Kingdra). This arguement just makes me want to ban Drizzle now, with no test. If malaria could be eradicated, people would eradicate it. They wouldn't go around telling people to get sickle-cell anemia.

Why can't the rest of our community use their creativity, hm?

And I, for one, try to be creative. The problem is that it is nearly impossible to be creative with weatherless except for high-level players. I, if I play weatherless, have to run things to tank weather-boosted moves (both in power and accuracy) that can also handle associated coverage moves. I have to be able to handle Chlorophyll and Sand Rush Pokemon. And I have to be wary of using Fire- and Water- type moves and Pokemon, because they are nerfed against certain weathers. The only restriction in that list that applies equally to weather players is avoiding Fire- and Water- types and Pokemon. And even that doesn't apply completely (Sand dodeges it entirely, Rain and Sun only have to follow half of it).
Basically, most of my team is decided for me, as soon as I decided to build a weatherless team that is not Hyper Offense.

Weather just brings too much power for two little cost. Against weatherless, one turn provides a myriad of benefits for the weather players entire team. Against weather, the benefits take more work, but the battle typically revolves around the weather war. And most of the weather inducers are not dead weight against weatherless either. Tyranitar is known to be good, Hippowdon is a excellent wall/tank, Abomasnow can check dragons, Politoed Hydro Pumps hurt in rain, and Ninetails... okay, Ninetails sucks.

 

[shrang]

Wait, what? This is a horrible analogy. You are telling us that to avoid malaria (beat Drizzle), we should contract sickle-cell anemia (use Kingdra). This arguement just makes me want to ban Drizzle now, with no test. If malaria could be eradicated, people would eradicate it. They wouldn't go around telling people to get sickle-cell anemia.

Yeah ok, it was a shit example, but basically, the use of Kingdra to combat rain is perfectly justified if rain is present. Using the example of Kingdra being used to combat rain as a excuse for rain being broken is really nothing short of arrogance or laziness, since it's just showing that you're unwilling to undergo that change. It's not like Kingdra is that useless anyway. Hell, I used it on a sun team once, NOT as a rain counter (although it performed excellently), but as a 4x Fire resist.

 

[Ojama]

People have to keep in mind that a good team is supposed to avoid this problem of "team matchup". There are obviously more threats to check in BW2 OU than in DPP but as you can notice it now, people are now using this argument of "team matchup" to explain their losses even in DPP or ADV. The main problem is in the teambuilding, not because the opponent brought the perfect "counterteam". Maybe you should accept that your team isn't that good and this is the reason why your opponent has a good "matchup". I'm not saying that the team matchup factor doesn't exist, it actually does exist but a good team is supposed to have a "good matchup" as much as possible against other teams. This includes against rain teams (and sun teams as well).

I'm going to ask you all this question: what's your main problem with Drizzle? Hydropump/Surf more powerful? Ok I do agree, but what pokemons use these moves? Fire moves are weakened? It can be boring against a few ones (ferro, scizor, maybe skarm) but come on that's obviously not the main problem.

- Politoed? Is Politoed a broken pokemon itself? I dont think so. Though Pump from the Specs is really hard to handle, but it's also slow and not THAT hard to kill.

- Lati@s? Well, their counters are still the same I guess plus in Rain they cannot use HP Fire so they're totally walled by Ferrothorn. They're in my opinion as good in Rain as in Sand. Draco Meteor isn't more powerful in Rain ^_^

- Rotom-W? It is actually more used in Sand than in Rain. Rotom-W is a great Pokemon but it's not broken

- Gyarados? OK this thing is scary in Rain.

- Toxicroak? lol

- Tornadus? Well Torna is threatening but it's not as good as Torna-t. It was even UU ...

- Kyurem-B? I hear it wasn't broken at all ^______^ ( I personally think it's a broken Pokemon and not because of Drizzle lol)

- Tentacruel? lol

- Starmie? Not really often used and still has the same checks/counters. It's actually more broken in DPP than in BW2 OU...

- Keldeo? Ban this shit, it's not broken because of Drizzle but because as you noticed it, it's at least as good in Sand as in Rain due to the fact that Tyranitar traps its few counters. Drizzle just helps it being more broken when you're spamming Surf/HPump like a nobrain.

- Thundurus-T? It's not like Thunder helps getting crucial KOs lol, T-Bolt does enough damage and it hits in Sand/Sun.


If your Team is weak to Thundurus-T or to Latios, is it because Drizzle isn't banned? I don't think so... I know it's impossible to handle all these threats perfectly but you're allowed to bring 1-2 checks/counters to the most threatening Pokemons of the tier before saying "I HAD A BAD MATCHUP" or "BAN DRIZZLE".

 

[Tressed]

Yeah ok, it was a shit example, but basically, the use of Kingdra to combat rain is perfectly justified if rain is present. Using the example of Kingdra being used to combat rain as a excuse for rain being broken is really nothing short of arrogance or laziness, since it's just showing that you're unwilling to undergo that change. It's not like Kingdra is that useless anyway. Hell, I used it on a sun team once, NOT as a rain counter (although it performed excellently), but as a 4x Fire resist.

I keep seeing Kingdra pop up all over this thread, and I question its effectiveness. Against any non-rain team, Kingdra won't be particularly useful, unless you chose to run a Rain Dance set, which also means you have to build your team so it doesn't conflict. In rain, what do you expect to do? Ferrothorn is a rain staple, which Kingdra can hardly beat. The doubled speed is nice, but you can't use the boosted Water STAB to its full power when half the team resists it. Kingdra's stats are okay, but it really isn't good enough.

 

[MMII]

(got the time to make a worthwhile post now)

Thanks BKC (and later yee) for elaborating on those team match-up arguments and for giving examples. However, I'm still not totally convinced about them justifying a ban. Like Shrang, I'm having a hard time seeing why rain/sun/sand/weatherless teams have to be so cookie-cutter. From my own personal team buliding, I feel like it's the core + the intended direction that dictates the rest of the members. (even then there are a lot of different ways to dress most cores up) I feel like weather is like any other support option such as screens/hazards lead/sub pass/etc. (although weather is generally more effective) in that it is just another way to use your chosen core. I don't really see how rain dictates the rest of the team to such an extreme level that you only have 4 or so archetypes with a handful of minor slot switches. Why can't I use the same core from my weatherless offense in my rain offense or in my sand offense? I understand that things like buffed/nerfed fire/water attacks do put some restrictions and encourage the usage of some and that certain support benefit some cores more than others but I'm not seeing how choosing one support decides 4+ members of my team and not the other way around. I kinda feel that it's more the massive amount of threats we have to deal with (many with a selective list of answers) more than the weather itself. When Shrang suggests some quick example team changes the counter arguments aren't "yeah he does better under rain but gets screwed under sun" they are more "you beat Pokemon commonly found on rain teams but lose to those you would see on Sun". Assuming this to be true, that's not a problem with the weather, that is a problem with the abusers. I feel that if weather needs to be banned, it'll be more cause it makes too many Pokemon viable threats which reduces team building to random shooting in the dark rather than the weather itself creating heavily biased team match-ups. I'm not sure if it does or not but I do agree with firecape that there isn't much harm or difficulty in at least testing it. (Although, I'm kinda worried about bandwagoning and other blind biases ruining the suspect as it is very controversial. Maybe be a bit more selective/demanding? Whatevs, that's the council job anyways. I just wanted to voice my personal concerns.) Either, it brings too much variety so that it is much easier to ban weather than all the relevant threats or it doesn't have such a massive effect that we can just ban the few remaining nuisances that remain.

In this way, BW OU feels a lot like an Ubers metagame where stuff hits really hard and there's not much you can really do to change it.

Not really relevant but I want to nitpick this. Ubers has a lot of really bulky Pokemon to tank those really meaty attacks. Don't let those bigger numbers fool you, Ubers is arguably more balanced than OU ATM.


While I'm nitpicking, I remember seeing some annoying hyperbole in yee's post (sorry, I forgot to click quote earlier) where he claimed that we banned 20 or so weather reliant threats. (or something like that) It's pretty petty but since a lot of people have been arguing that we should ban weather instead of the "massive" amounts of abusers (there's only 2-4 rain related abusers, I know I saw a beautiful post going in-depth on the ban history earlier) it kinda bothers me to see it. (cause some aren't able to tell that yee is being intentionally hyperbolic)

 

[alexwolf]

Damn i was away for 1.5 days and look how many posts... Let the Quote war begin:

Reply to Lavos Spawn

alexwolf i think you're missing eggbert's point, when i read his post i see him arguing the metagame has become too centralized over certain pokes and covering those pokes with your team, and weather is a contributing factor to this centralization. you state that if people don't like weather teams then they should just not run weather themselves, but the entire reason that so many people nowadays are running weather teams, regardless of their personal opinions on them, is because weather teams (especially rain) are the best teams in the current metagame. abusing permanent 1.5x boost to water attacks, rain dish, negating fire weakness, etc., or raising rock-type 'mons sdef 1.5x, sand rush, sand force, etc., is just flat out better than running a weatherless team. i'm not saying weatherless teams can't succeed - on the contrary, i've made several myself that kick ass in this meta - but a) those teams generally use some method of countering weather because it's such a huge threat (read: kingdra), and b) weather teams are still easier to build and use than weatherless teams, not to mention that if you have weather and your opponent doesn't, you have an inherent advantage from turn 1, which essentially forces the opponent to use weather as well or accept the permanent disadvantage that comes from lack of weather on a team when the opponent has it. the advent of bw2 weather teams has essentially eliminated the playstyle of weatherless stall, and it's also greatly reduced the viability of weatherless balance, weatherless non-deo-d offense, sun stall, and hail anything. the playstyles left are essentially: rain offense, rain balance, sand offense, sand balance, sand stall, sun offense, and deo-d offense. wow. out of those 7 choices, only 1 of them allows me to not use weather and still start the battle on the same playing field as my opponent, and even within those 7 categories the nature of bw2 is such that certain playstyles match up better against others and that causes inherent advantages/disadvantages at the beginning of the battle as well.

tl;dr weather fcks up everything

Are you saying that weather teams are easier to build and play with? Ok i agree with it! Are you saying that weather teams are better than weatherless teams? Because if yes then i disagree. A good weatherless teams can combat just fine a weather team (talking about sun and rain, sand is not a weather team) and is not at a disadvantage from turn 1. I don't get why some people here say that weatherless teams are in such a bad position against rain for example, when Pokemon such as Celebi, Amoonguss, and Jellicent are so easy to fit on any team and they easily handle at least half the members of rain teams. And let's also not forget that weatherless teams can use an actually good on its own Pokemon instead of Politoed, so there is that too.

Reply to BKC

I want to comment on your view about team match-ups. I will try to be as calm as possible, and excuse me if i offend you at some point, but man this big rant of yours is completely innacurate and lacks any solid reasoning. All you do is take the team match-ups in which one of the two team types is at a disadvantage, and exaggerate this disadvantage to no end, and with no solid reasoning whatsoever, except for two lines of generic talking.

Not to mention that some of your match-ups are straight up wrong. Weatherless loses to rain? Funny because most weatherless balanced teams i make have no problem against it whatsoever. SpD Celebi cockblocks most Pokemon that rain teams have, and the few things that can get past it can be dealt with by teammates. DeoGar is crushed by Starmie? Well then let me inform you that Pokemon such as Weavile and Kingdra exist on Deo-D HO teams, and that they fuck rain teams from the ass (and T-Wave Deo-D + Focus Sash Gengar beat Starmie anyway).

I am not going to comment on each of the match-ups you described, but it is absurd that you explanation for some of them is ''lol'' or a single line. Here is for example your explantion of the sun vs sand match-up:

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.

And let me point out all the flaws in it. 1. Not all sand teams use Hippwodon. 2. Some sun teams use Xatu, and good luck setting up SR with Hippo. 3. Sunny Day Ninetales can keep momentum against Hippowdon and greatly threaten sand teams. Ninetales uses Sunny Day as Hippo comes in, and then goes to Venusaur. What do you do? Well you can predict the Venusaur switch-in and go to your check, but you have to predict, unlike what you claim. The game starts to seem not as hopeless as you claimed. 4. Sun Stall with Sableye exists. Good luck spinning with Forretress against Sabelye. 5. One line of reasoning cannot possibly be even close to explaining a match-up.

The conclusion is that your ideas about team match-ups are exaggerated to the point where they make no sense, and the reasoning itself is lackluster.

Reply to UltiMario

Gold post right there! I would also like to add that offensive Trick Room Slowking is another very good cleaner for weatherless teams that fares excellently against rain teams, and can also serve as a pivot early-midgame for special attacks, unlike Reuniclus, due to Regenerator, better resistances and better special bulk.

Reply to Sound

Of 'course weather teams need to pack checks or counter to weather threats. Changing the weather is the long-term plan, but i would like to see what is your short-term plan for switching into sand or sun threats without having checks or counters for them. Rain doesn't have to carry checks to other weathers? Do we play the same metagame? I would like to see how you handle Sunny Day Ninetales, Venusaur, or Sub Hydreigon, without a check to them. Are you going to bring in Politoed and magically solve the issue? No. You will need some checks to them, like any other team.

Also about this:

Weatherless has to bare all Weather's weaknesses without any of their strength.

You seem to be forgetting that sun and rain teams must use subpar Pokemon. The advantage of weatherless teams is that they are playing with more Pokemon (any rain team i face with my weatherless team feels like playing 6 vs 5), and that they are actually more prepared against weather, because they don't have their own weather. For example Sun teams often lack solid counters or checks to many rain abusers, because their plan is to change the weather back and sweep the rain team before they get swept. But weatherless can't do that. They have to pack strong checks and coutners, making it harder for the rain team to get past them.

So all in all, while some things that you say are true, you forget the biggest price to pay when you use a real weather team (aka Sun and Rain): you have to use shitty Pokemon, unlike weatherless teams. What does this mean? Rain alone is not outclassing any team-type, nor preventing it from being viable.

 

[Tressed]

Are you saying that weather teams are easier to build and play with? Ok i agree with it! Are you saying that weather teams are better than weatherless teams? Because if yes then i disagree. A good weatherless teams can combat just fine a weather team (talking about sun and rain, sand is not a weather team) and is not at a disadvantage from turn 1. I don't get why some people here say that weatherless teams are in such a bad position against rain for example, when Pokemon such as Celebi, Amoonguss, and Jellicent are so easy to fit on any team and they easily handle at least half the members of rain teams.

While this is true, this brings about a whole other problem. You have to pick two Pokemon for rain, at least one other for sun, something to deal with sand. That's three or four Pokemon right there, although I will admit that these positions can overlap somewhat. Still, that leaves you with two or three open slots for things that you need to put on your team, that might not do so well against weather teams, but are still important, such as hazard control, sweepers, wallbreakers, etc (again, this can overlap, but then you end up with very little diversity because everyone picks the Pokemon that can do a mix of the above, and you start seeing the same thing, over and over.)
Alternatively, you could slap Tyranitar onto a team, get some hazards, maybe a grass type (cough Ferrothorn does both), and you have four slots open to do whatever the hell you want with. Same thing goes for Rain. It leaves tons of room for abusers instead of having to try and check every relevant thing, and its no wonder people pick weather over weatherless.

But isn't that team building in general; building around any top threats (such as drizzle)?

Well, yeah, that's true. Only weather teams have the better end of it. With weatherless, you need to beat them in their element. With weather, you change the element. Its a lot easier to do the latter than the former, imo.

 

[Shurtugal]

But isn't that team building in general; building around any top threats (such as drizzle)?

 

[Hugin]

But isn't that team building in general; building around any top threats (such as drizzle)?

Yes, but Weather is more restricting. Sure, you need to counter DragMag and set-up sweepers, that's how the game works. But with Weather, the counters for one are wrecked by the others. Any Flash Fire poke hard-walls half of any standard Sun team, but gets so murdered by rain that they're not even worth the team slot. If you bring Gastrodon as your Rain counter and see a Ninetales, you might as well kill it yourself. That puts a serious limit on teambuilding, and is what has people so annoyed by weather.

 

[Zephir]

Are you saying that weather teams are easier to build and play with? Ok i agree with it! Are you saying that weather teams are better than weatherless teams? Because if yes then i disagree. A good weatherless teams can combat just fine a weather team (talking about sun and rain, sand is not a weather team) and is not at a disadvantage from turn 1. I don't get why some people here say that weatherless teams are in such a bad position against rain for example, when Pokemon such as Celebi, Amoonguss, and Jellicent are so easy to fit on any team and they easily handle at least half the members of rain teams.

Well, it's been a while in this discussion that almost everybody agrees that a weatherless team can beat any rain team as long as it prepares for it a minimum (and some already stated that sun is often more troublesome), though I think a good rain team should currently have a good answer to Celebi / Jellicent. I think Lavos just implied that they were less consistent than a solid rain / sand team ; you can't say weatherless teams are on par with weather teams because they have a chance to win ONE matchup. And they do are at a disadvantage from turn one against Rain/Sun basically because they can't abuse the weather condition as much and moreover they will probably have one mon being a dead weight.