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np: OU Suspect Testing Round 2 - Who am I to break tradition?
- Thread starter Philip7086
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Actually, the phenomenon of a "utility counter" Pokémon rising over the Pokémon that it counters isn't exactly rare. Scizor was ousted from #1 in Gen IV OU after Salamence got banned. Some would argue that Venusaur in Gen IV UU experienced the same effect, being a nearly perfect counter to Milotic. Finally, I would argue that much of Heatran's popularity stems from its ability to counter Steel/Psychics, which are IMO some of the best Pokémon in Gen IV OU, if not THE best.
I've been thinking about weather for a while, and I've been wondering whether we should even put "non-weather" on its own pedestal at all. Couldn't it be considered just another weather condition? If one considers it a weather, one could say that it "halves the Speed" of both Swift Swimmers and Sand Throwers, and sets Fire-type, Water-type, Rock-type, Steel-type and Ground-type attacks to certain levels relative to the rest. It's obviously the least sustainable "weather condition" ever, and it gets less sustainable with each passing generation. On the other hand, "non-weather" doesn't mind as much as the other conditions that the condition in particular is removed. I suppose that it's hard to think this way about non-weather because it's never going to produce "broken" conditions (since Game Freak itself puts it on a pedestal, so to speak), there is no "non-weather inducer", and it is always the condition in effect before the leads are sent out. I guess that my point is that "non-weather" perhaps doesn't have to be the "default" for Standard to be enjoyable. Let's not look too far into the future and concentrate on the present, where rain is the only technically suspect weather.
I've been thinking about weather for a while, and I've been wondering whether we should even put "non-weather" on its own pedestal at all. Couldn't it be considered just another weather condition? If one considers it a weather, one could say that it "halves the Speed" of both Swift Swimmers and Sand Throwers, and sets Fire-type, Water-type, Rock-type, Steel-type and Ground-type attacks to certain levels relative to the rest. It's obviously the least sustainable "weather condition" ever, and it gets less sustainable with each passing generation. On the other hand, "non-weather" doesn't mind as much as the other conditions that the condition in particular is removed. I suppose that it's hard to think this way about non-weather because it's never going to produce "broken" conditions (since Game Freak itself puts it on a pedestal, so to speak), there is no "non-weather inducer", and it is always the condition in effect before the leads are sent out. I guess that my point is that "non-weather" perhaps doesn't have to be the "default" for Standard to be enjoyable. Let's not look too far into the future and concentrate on the present, where rain is the only technically suspect weather.
It doesn't really counter it, the only way for a weather to counter is by having your own weather up, seeing as if you get rain back up against a sadnstorm team, then it would be tje reverse with rain countering sand
I'm not particularly fond of all the Drizzle-hate. I say ban Manaphy (who was an uber in Generation IV) and test auto-rain without Manaphy (and vice-versa, to see if they are both broken or not in and of themselves). It reminds me a lot of when they banned Froslass in UU along with Raikou. Moltres, a suspect who almost got banned as well, dropped down in usage immediately and they realized that the problem was the spike-stacking Froslass, which made Raikou and Moltres uncontrollable. I think if Manaphy (who was broken before) is gone, then Rain has more counters.
Well, the fact is is that it's entirely a matter of perspective. Personally, I don't consider "normal" a weather condition, because A, of course it's automatic, and b, even with DrizToed, it's still in play more often than not, on a metagame-wide spectrum, eg, while weather is the most dominant playstyle, it still does not constitute over 50% of all teams, thus if you hit 'Find Battle', while weather has the plurality, it doesn't have the majority. Non-weather does. And btw, on your non weather inducer, Golduck, as well as any Cloud Nines I don't know of, and of course Rayquaza in Ubers. However, I do completely agree that weather teams can be dominant, but still make the game fun and competitive.
Cloud nine/air lock are not true clear skies weather inducers. They nullify weather while they are out. What he's talking about, a true clear skies inducer, would activate upon switch in and last until overrode, just like drizzle's rain, etc.
I kinda had my hopes up for that kind of ability when I heard about drizzletoed and drought ninetails, and even before- I was (and still am) sick of sand's dominance.
This is a massive waste of a post. Exeggutor was barely mentioned in passing and is not even close to one of the top threats one should be looking for when facing a Sun team. There's no point in attempting an outright sweep with him when faster and all-around better candidates like Venusuar exist. A consummate summary of his role on Sun teams would to put things to sleep and toss around really powerful special attacks, like most Chlorophyll sweepers are supposed to.
It's more reasonable to attempt a sweep with the aforementioned Venusaur and other faster Sun sweepers with Growth, such as Shiftry and Victreebel. Even Tangrowth, simply because of the fact that scarfers aside (seriously, you act like there are 3 of these per team; once you put one of them out of commission, the rest is easy pickings) Chlorophyll gives him Jolteon-epic speed and operates on a way better movepool than Exeggutor. Those guys are the one you should really watch out for, as they can easily dismantle teams after setup.
And listing random facts about a sweeper's flaws doesn't help any either, as Rain faces a lot of the same problems too. Not all Swift Swimmers are worth using; Lumineon and Floatzel still suck. The fact of the matter is that the good ones have access to so much speed and power that a sweep can become very easy after a turn of setup that normal sweepers cannot accomplish and non-weather teams cannot hand. And the not-so good ones still pressure balanced offensive teams simply by abusing their speed and power. That's the real problem, not "Kingdra 6-0s everything!!!"
Ninetales is actually less frail than you would think. I was once playing against a last-pokemon Gyarados that I had used Leech Seed on. All I had left was Ninetales. It was a ResTalking Dos and I still managed to stall it out. Now, it wasn't a well-played Dos, but still... If anyone is curious, I used a specially defensive EV spread.
That said, Ninetales isn't the epitome of bulk. But it isn't quite as useless as everyone thinks. It can be handy sometimes. In fact, it's excellent at luring in the other weather inducers. They easily switch in, with T-Tar and Toed resisting its STAB. I love burning/toxic-ing them on the way in.
edit: I give up on trying to achieve voting rights. It's bad enough how often the server crashes, but now my computer is having issues. It's not worth it for all this trouble.
That said, Ninetales isn't the epitome of bulk. But it isn't quite as useless as everyone thinks. It can be handy sometimes. In fact, it's excellent at luring in the other weather inducers. They easily switch in, with T-Tar and Toed resisting its STAB. I love burning/toxic-ing them on the way in.
edit: I give up on trying to achieve voting rights. It's bad enough how often the server crashes, but now my computer is having issues. It's not worth it for all this trouble.
I found that the higher on the ladder you get the more sand you face and the less rain. It seems that most of the lower ranked players are utilizing rain to get the easy wins but fail when matched against a well played sand team as in my experience sand is much more powerful than rain. I feel that rain is really in no way broken outside of manaphy who seems to be the only broken rain abuse to me. I feel that the upper parts of the ladder are enough to demonstrate that rain is not as broken as everyone says it is.
I think this is some of the perspective people often overlook when considering weather in general - especially since it is such a new part of the meta. You're probably right that the Sun discussion is not too productive in the depth it is now, but discussing second order meta effects to some degree is useful seeing as people often forget them.
Alpha admittedly didn't dispute many of your statements about the Sun sweepers, he just did about those he felt to be weaker than the rest. I don't disagree with any of what you say in general, but to some degree you were using facts about a sweeper's benefits to the same end as Alpha used its flaws, so criticising him for that is somewhat unfair.
Yeah, I've made the point that Tales can be of use and not a complete deadweight, even if not outstanding, but probably didn't emphasize it enough, as you did. The Gyarados scenario I have no idea how you got out of lmao, and it probably isn't the best example :P. It's status can be useful, yes, but requires you as a necessity to predict something like TTar's switchin and use WoW for instance - or risk taking a huge chunk from Pursuit.
We need to ban this weather crap. Drizzle and drought need to go NOW. They take no skill to use and have very specific counters.I don't understand how you "qualified" voters could not get it right the first time.I respect your battle ratings and "achievements" and time but Maybe smogon needs to bring back the smogon council or something because how can you guys miss manaphy's brokenness?How can you guys miss not banning a weather inducing pokemon.Smogon has a level of tolerance for certain broken things (4th gen garchomp,latias,salamence etc.).And it was just basically just thrown to the wayside this last round blindly if you ask me.We need some paragraphs or something this time because its no way anyone that has played 5th gen that can say that rain + manaphy/kingdra/filler is fair and balanced.
Why can't Ninetails use Nasty Plot Hidden Power Fighting to take Tyranitar out? After Nasty Plot without Special Defense investement Tyranitar is going to die and Energy Ball kills Hippowdon (with 202 def, it needs a slight amount of damage with 223). Ninetails is fairly fast as well.
Admittedly it does need Life Orb to do these and a Balloon would have been helpful but...Ninetails has some use as an attacker as well?
Admittedly it does need Life Orb to do these and a Balloon would have been helpful but...Ninetails has some use as an attacker as well?
Jeez, this bitching about Drizzle seriously gives me flashbacks to UU and the Damp rock issue. And as far as my opinion, idiotfrommars hit the nail on the head. Rain does very well at the towards the bottom of the leaderboard, but Sand is just a better playstyle and a well built Sand team is not going to have a hrd time beating the majority of those Rain team everyone sees.
Actually take the time to provide some reasons for the brokenness of Drizzle/Manaphy and people may respond to you or consider your opinions, as most people in the thread have done. Simply insulting much of the site and questioning the entire method of suspect testing in the wrong forum entirely is not going to get your views listened to.
I stopped using it due to several issues. ScarfTar instantly beating you is one, Tars with reasonable defensive investment doing likewise is another. Admittedly these are not the most common, however. Reliance on prediction is another downfall, as is HP Fight's otherwise uselessness on Tales. The detriment to Tales' overall survivability by replacement of Lefties with LO is a serious issue too, as if you fail to use it to take out TTar you essentially hand the opponent the match. I guess overall what HP Fight, NP and LO do is tailor Tales very much to beat TTar, while making it disadvantaged against everything else. While I myself said TTar is Tales' bane, it's more advantageous to have a reliable build overall with a way to deal with TTar (Disable or WoW) than one specifically designed to beat it, an eggs in one basket kind of thing. SJ essentially agrees with this when he says that the LO NP Tales variants just don't cut it.
I myself used this exact set to try and take out TTar with Tales. You can either use the hit it once with HP Fight as it comes in and force it out/kill it on the second turn (unless it's scarfed) , or NP as it comes in and OHKO instead. The latter is arguably better as it gives TTar less chance to predict what's going to happen.
I stopped using it due to several issues. ScarfTar instantly beating you is one, Tars with reasonable defensive investment doing likewise is another. Admittedly these are not the most common, however. Reliance on prediction is another downfall, as is HP Fight's otherwise uselessness on Tales. The detriment to Tales' overall survivability by replacement of Lefties with LO is a serious issue too, as if you fail to use it to take out TTar you essentially hand the opponent the match. I guess overall what HP Fight, NP and LO do is tailor Tales very much to beat TTar, while making it disadvantaged against everything else. While I myself said TTar is Tales' bane, it's more advantageous to have a reliable build overall with a way to deal with TTar (Disable or WoW) than one specifically designed to beat it, an eggs in one basket kind of thing. SJ essentially agrees with this when he says that the LO NP Tales variants just don't cut it.
You still don't get it. You say weather moves are your counter to stopping rain sweeps. Yet you don't use them until politoed is dead. Which means you have no counter. Unless my politoed is dead after turn 1, I will have my rain sweepers out sweeping you which you can't stop because you have no counter. Why then do I need to bring my politoed back in while rain is still up and I'm sweeping you.
And your "experience" consists of maybe that 1 battle you mentioned a few pages back where you sacrificed your politoed and someone brought out a surprise weather move on you. And you thought "oh that's clever" and decided it was a viable counter. I doubt you've actually attempted to do this yourself and in my experience using rain and sand teams, hardly anyone ever uses weather moves to stop them let alone try to keep them hidden until my weather inducer is dead.
Yes overcentralization is one of the reasons for banning. There are others and they're mostly linked to one another. Banning factors in power, no. of counters and how centralizing it is. If something is very powerful, it's likely very few things can counter it. If very few things counter it, there are very few choices when it comes to team building meaning a smaller pool of pokemon and overcentralization. Wobb fell under the no. of counter category even if in this particular case, it wasn't overcentralizing.
Like I said nothing more than QQing. Even in early DP blissey was nothing. It hadn't changed since 3rd gen and not only were there more physical threats to it than ever before with the likes of infernape taking out the infamous skarmbliss combo, there were now powerful enough special sweepers that could actually get through it. Anyone with any experience in competitive battling could see that which is why the QQing didn't amount of anything.
You don't need experience to see that lati@s is overpowered for UU, you just need common sense. Something that was in Ubers last gen in UU this gen. Do you need experience in NU to see that Garchomp would be broken in NU? I don't think so.
Sand is merely the counter to the dominating force. You don't ban blissey because it stops kyogre. You don't ban cresselia because it stop groudon. You don't ban sand because it stops rain. That's what you fail to understand and probably why you should stop arguing.
Wobba didn't get banned because of having no counters though. It was more of, most-suspect-voters-didn't-like-him-centralizing-or-not and banned him. After all, IIRC, Wobba the first thing banned by the actual suspect system, so it's not like there were much guidelines by which people voted.
Honestly I agree with you to an extent, but only because the Sand sweepers are better (and one doesn't even need a speed boost). I still believe rain is broken and something has to change about this metagame, because imo i'd rather have the old suspects back. I don't feel that you should be fighting the entire game to control weather, and if you don't have control, or 3+ Pokemon to counter weather teams, you lose.
I assume this was for me. Here is an intresting statistic. No one that was allowed to post in Policy review (i.e people that supposedly have more experience with smogon) voted against banning drizzle.I looked at the votes phil got in pm and the ones posted on the board for this statistic. 5th gen is a new generation and everyone deserves there spot to choose the metagame .But common sense and experience with what is broken is just something that is learned by experience.Most of The people that pm'ed phil those votes did not have prior experience with tiering. And thats where i feel the problem is.Defining and teaching what makes a pokemon broken.Maybe they used rain to get far up the ladder? They don't want to ban it because it its already given them success.However with the people who already have 2, 3 badges they just want to do whats best for the site.Im not saying all badged members are smart and they make the most logical decisions. Hell no. Im saying that overall experience with communicating what deserves uber and defining what makes a pokemon overpowered like politoad and manaphy.
If you played the game you would know that manaphy and politoad create a situation in which you need a creative counter. Like salamence there are only a few counters and a few options to beat it.Either have a strong physical attacker to stop manaphy (who is as bulky as jirachi with better typing). Or calm mind beside it with blissey or something or carry your own weather maker but still manaphy already has +2 calm minds and ttar and hippo cant take it out. Now i have to use abomasnow to take manaphy out and turn my team into a hail team with a million weaknesses.Thats why the suspect voters jumped the shark this time.
That's definitely assuming a LOT about the testers though. It's a lot more likely that it's a matter of those who have been there longer being more conservative than newer testers, rather than one group of opinions just being more/less educated than the other.
Sand is only common in the higher levels of the ladder because it is a good counter to rain. A well made Sand team with Nattorei / Burungeru / anti rain mons are capable of shutting down rain. (Actually, a well played rain team can still crush sand... w/e)
Unfortunately, Drizzle has destroyed the viability of regular teams. Seriously it is impossible to beat rain without Sand, severely limiting team building. Pokemon at the moment isn't fun in the slightest. People would rather play in a broken weather filled metagame as opposed to using regular teams like in gen 4?!?
My opinion again, you can take it as you'd like... but just because sand is at the top of the ladder doesn't make rain less broken, it just means sand is just more broken. If you get to the higher parts of the ladder, you see weather. At the bottom of the ladder, weather. In the middle? the people who are bad with sandstorm or good with rain. With weather all over, its hard to justify not running weather, or at least a weather-leech or two. When your position on the ladder is mostly determined by the weather type your team takes advantage of, then less so by who takes advantage of it or has the best counter-weather team once they get to a certain rank, you have to start realizing that something is wrong.
Personally I see three problems:
1) Drizzle, because so many pokemon can get a power AND speed boost off it. Without other weather to prevent misuse it runs completely rampant, and with other weather around it makes the other weather pretty much a requirement.
2) Doryuuzu, because he has the attack potential of Metagross (highest in gen 4 ou) with more relevant stabs, but gains a free speed boost in sand. Sand istelf doesn't boost attack, so I wouldn't consider it broken in the same way as rain.
3) Landlos, because he can utilize sand power with his already near-garchomp power and speed to sweep pokemon as though he had considerably more. On top of that, he has 2 immunities and a fighting resist that make him easy to switch in, having the same typing and nearly as decent bulk (more hp, less def, but its still quite good) as gliscor. He is not a priority in my mind, but more something to consider as once other weather-bound threats are gone, in sand he may have one of the highest attacks left while retaining large bulk and speed.
The rest is all pertty balanced. I see a few more grass pokemon and taunters in this gen that will make it hard for manaphy to stay... dare i say... afloat, so I don't see it as an uber like i did in gen 4. I would also like to see a few old ones gone like wobbuffet, but we can save those for testing in a more stable metagame.
Personally I see three problems:
1) Drizzle, because so many pokemon can get a power AND speed boost off it. Without other weather to prevent misuse it runs completely rampant, and with other weather around it makes the other weather pretty much a requirement.
2) Doryuuzu, because he has the attack potential of Metagross (highest in gen 4 ou) with more relevant stabs, but gains a free speed boost in sand. Sand istelf doesn't boost attack, so I wouldn't consider it broken in the same way as rain.
3) Landlos, because he can utilize sand power with his already near-garchomp power and speed to sweep pokemon as though he had considerably more. On top of that, he has 2 immunities and a fighting resist that make him easy to switch in, having the same typing and nearly as decent bulk (more hp, less def, but its still quite good) as gliscor. He is not a priority in my mind, but more something to consider as once other weather-bound threats are gone, in sand he may have one of the highest attacks left while retaining large bulk and speed.
The rest is all pertty balanced. I see a few more grass pokemon and taunters in this gen that will make it hard for manaphy to stay... dare i say... afloat, so I don't see it as an uber like i did in gen 4. I would also like to see a few old ones gone like wobbuffet, but we can save those for testing in a more stable metagame.
Ice-eyes
Simper Fi
The fact that well-played sand teams beat poorly-played rain teams does not really make any difference to whether Rain is broken or not. Sand is favoured by higher-ranked players mostly because they prefer the playstyle, because if they play well they will beat badly used rain consistently and because Sand isn’t destroyed by massively specialised Rain counters (Toxicroak).
Doryuuzu and Landlos have a pretty decently-sized range of counters and checks. They’re easy enough to handle and in no way obviously broken, especially not in this metagame.
Doryuuzu and Landlos have a pretty decently-sized range of counters and checks. They’re easy enough to handle and in no way obviously broken, especially not in this metagame.
I think this is the kind of mentality that is really hurting Smogon right now. People have gotten so used to a metagame where that their is only one weather that they are having trouble adjusting to 5th gen where are multiple viable weather. People have to understand that this is not 4th Gen any more and I think we need to give this new metagame some time to balance out before calling weather broken. A balanced team can still succeed in this metagame they just need a way to change the weather unlike in past generations. This could be done by a pokemon like Abomasnow, or through a weather changing move like sunny day. Just like in Gen 4 most successful teams had stealth rock, I believe that eventually everyone will come to understand that they need a weather changer to stay competative. I wouldn't say this severely limits teambuilding either as it is perfectly viable to find a free spot on your team to place sunny day if your team can't fit a weather inducer.
I not good at the internet. Was this sarcasm?PK Gaming said:
Because if not, why would you post it?
Broken metagame? No.PK Gaming said:
Weather-filled metagame? Depends.
It's one thing to ban something for being broken, but if people want to ban Drizzle simply because they hate having weather, then they need to re-evaluate their thought process.
I agree with some things you said and disagree with others. Landlos has a good number of counters. Doryuuzu does not. You also have to remember that he takes no setup turn, so a counter can't switch in on his setup... so you need to find a pokemon that can take two attacks with 135 base power without making a lucky guess, and retaliate with a ohko. The best counter to dory is a good guess or a skarmory that doesn't threaten him.
I also agree that sandstorm's position in the ladder does not prove or disprove rain's brokenness. I certainly did not mean to insinuate that that was the only reason it was on the top, mearly that there was more reason than "every single good player likes sand's style more than anything else." I guarantee you there are a conglomeration of styles at the top of the ladder, and a good number of them won't mesh perfectly with sand, but have to use it (at least by proxy/counter) to keep up.
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