Aldaron's proposal: Satisfied?

[Buzzcut]

If you had actually payed attention to my post, you'd have figured out that a whimsicott with sunny day/rain dance/thunder wave/encore can not only be used to change weather, but also shut down stat-uppers and cripple. It has encore and thunder wave too and can use them just fine.

A pokemon like blissey doesn't mind sandstorm because it's already a massive wall to begin with, but there are other walls (gasp, using other defensive pokemon besides blissey and skarm?) who need the leftover recovery to really shine defensively. Scrafty comes to mind. A bulky scrafty without leftovers dies a lot faster than one who has leftovers. And yes, it cripples sweepers too. In fact it's just bad news for any pokemon who's not a ground, steel or rock type. I don't see how that's so different from other weather conditions. The goal of a weather team is to empower certain types at the expense of diversity. Like I said eariler, if you are running a sandstorm team, no guesses as to what predominant types are going to be in your team. The minute your opponent sees you have a weather oriented team they know to expect excadrill/ninetales/kingrda/whatever and that in itself is a weakness, even with team preview.

Just because you don't want to run a counter to something on your team doesn't mean it's omnipotent. Stealth rock requires a spinner to get rid of it or else it will haunt you through the entire match. Using a spinner in my opinion is far more irritating than using a pokemon who can change any of the four weathers to something more suited to your tastes and also run other services while it's working. Why would you want to use abomasnow anyway unless you were making a hail team? Abomasnow can't stop attempts at stat buffing with priority encore, nor can it thunder wave specific threats who require the speed boost from swift swim/cholrophill to be really scary in the first place.

If rain is so ridiculous then why was it considered inferior to sand last gen? Regular set-up rain and sun teams just didn't cut it. They were considered gimmicks. Why is that going to change now if drizzle is banned?

Waste of my time, so I'm going to respond to each block of text in one sentence.

That Whimsicott is useless.

Scrafty as a wall is just terrible and deserves to die easily, especially when there's Ferrethorn, Gliscor, Hippowdon, and even Tyranitar that can be considered walls.

Why would I encore when I can spam Scarf Blizzard, Superpower, Wood Hammer, and something else?

Because Drizzle Politoad wasn't around last gen?

 

[Ryanide]

Gee, brilliant arguments. Very convincing. Totally disregard that a lot of people will attest that bulky shedrest scrafty is quite effective, Mr. Internet tough guy who likes his one-liner gimmicks, and that whimsicott's priority encore is one of the main reasons people use it to stop dragon dancers and other status sweepers. I would have thought the utility behind that whimsicott is pretty obvious. Clue: use it to get rid of that weather you are so afraid of. There. Use.

As for that comment about encore, use your brain. You get an encore on a predicted boost and then you're free to switch in any one of your appropriate counter pokemon to start spaming scarf blizzard, superpower, wood hammer, etc while your opponent is forced to switch out or lose their sweeper.

Just because YOU think scrafty does not make a good wall, doesn't make my point any less valid. A proper bulky scrafty needs leftovers more than blissey, and sandstorm inhibits it and a lot of other lesser walls in the same way that rain inhibits fire pokemon. Note that all those 'walls' you presented in your example resist sand, in which case you even bringing them up is incredibly redundant, since I'm obviously not even talking about them.

And that if you say rain was so powerful last gen, why would we even need drizzle politoed?

 

[Buzzcut]

Gee, brilliant arguments. Very convincing. Totally disregard that a lot of people will attest that bulky shedrest scrafty is quite effective, and that whimsicott's priority encore is one of the main reasons people use it to stop dragon dancers and other status sweepers. I would have thought the utility behind that whimsicott is pretty obvious. Clue: use it to get rid of that weather you are so afraid of. There. Use.

Just because YOU think scrafty does not make a good wall, doesn't make my point any less valid. A proper bulky scrafty needs leftovers more than blissey, and sandstorm inhibits it and a lot of other lesser walls in very much the same way that rain inhibits fire pokemon.

And that if you say rain was so powerful last gen, why would we even need drizzle politoed?

I can't tell if you're being serious or not.

Bulky Set up Sweeper does not equal wall. Bulk Up Scraggy does something offensive, just like CM Suicune. They are not walls. If you are trying to use Scraggy as a wall (like you would use Blissey) you're doing it wrong. Reuniclus is not a wall as well, it's bulky, but it's main job is not to stop the opponent from sweeping.

Scraggy is a terrible wall. It is a good set up sweeper. There is a pretty huge difference.

Rain lasts for 8 turns in Gen 4, which is easily stall-able. Play Gen 4 and try it. There is a massive difference between infinite rain and temporary rain, especially when Tyranitar can just come in and lol at you having to waste another 3 turns just to set up rain again and switch to another sweeper.

 

[Ryanide]

Whether or not I used the right terminology with 'wall' here, bulky scrafty as a set up sweeper or whatever you want to call it has a much harder time functioning in sand. Normally it has just enough bulk to do what it does with leftovers support, but it's low hp makes it hard for it to do so without leftovers. There are a fair few other pokemon like this as well. Sand IS very obnoxious. It nullifies a lot of notable strategies and pokemon from being very useful and gives a constant, continuous punishment through the entire match to anyone who's not using ground rock or steel pokemon.

Sure, rain was stallable last gen which was one of the main reasons it wasn't very good. But I still don't see why that makes sand stream OK. You can't very well stall out sandstorm either, and it actually makes it ridiculously hard to stall out anything unless you're using a steel, ground, or rock type staller. I used a few different variants of rain team back in gen 4 and didn't find it anywhere near as effective as a sand team most of the time. The fact that sand is perminent just means it will always be dominant unless the other weather conditions are given the same treatment.

 

[Buzzcut]

That's a perk to sand and an unfortunate consequence of running life orb. I don't see how that makes sand over powered.

Sand was dominant in gen 4, no one is disputing that. I'm absolutely fine with Sun and Hail, and I personally believe permanent Sun is better than Sand right now. But I also believe that Rain is THAT over powered that even without Swift Swim it can still cause problems.

 

[Ryanide]

Likewise, I don't see how rain's perks make it overpowered in comparison to a weather effect that causes constant damage every turn regardless of what you're doing to the opponent. Fast and powerful pokemn are pretty common in the current metagame. When you run sand, you don't have to worry about focus sash users, endure/reversal strategies, 2-koing certain threats who would otherwise be able to survive hits if it weren't for the sand damage and so on. You also get a superfast Excadrill which is pretty much a premier ground type sweeper, and a haxy garchomp. Drizzle gets you acess to 3 different highly effective sweepers as opposed to just one, and a bunch of other slightly less effective sweepers, all of whom are going to be relying on water moves to do a greater deal of their damage. It provides some defensive perks to pokemon like Ferrothorn, but sand also provides defensive perks to everything with a rock typing. Rain doesn't cause damage per turn to the opponent meaning that focus sash surprise KO's are still going to be happening unless you've put down stealth rock first. Yes it's powerful, but not hugely more so than sand. I just think it's very silly to keep sand stream legal if drizzle is going to be banned.

Sand also has not only one, but two different sand stream pokemon you can use to keep it going, both of who are extremily bulky and can be used on the same team due to being different species.

As for sun and hail, I have no experience with sun/hail teams so I can't really say too much about that.

 

[WarriorPrince]

The Weather teams are actually balancing each other out. If either of them is further hindered or boosted then one of them will become broken causing a chain reaction of bans. I cannot say I am completely satisfied with the proposal, but there wasn't/isn't much else to be done. Other methods = more dissatisfaction.

 

[KurashiDragon]

I can't tell if you're being serious or not.

Bulky Set up Sweeper does not equal wall. Bulk Up Scraggy does something offensive, just like CM Suicune. They are not walls. If you are trying to use Scraggy as a wall (like you would use Blissey) you're doing it wrong. Reuniclus is not a wall as well, it's bulky, but it's main job is not to stop the opponent from sweeping.

Scraggy is a terrible wall. It is a good set up sweeper. There is a pretty huge difference.

Rain lasts for 8 turns in Gen 4, which is easily stall-able. Play Gen 4 and try it. There is a massive difference between infinite rain and temporary rain, especially when Tyranitar can just come in and lol at you having to waste another 3 turns just to set up rain again and switch to another sweeper.

Scrafty has 65/115/115 in bulk. For something to compare it to Rotom-A has 55/107/107. Scrafty also has the Shed Skin ability to get rid of status effects like Poison, Rest which works extremely well with Shed Skin in that Shed Skin will cure the sleep sooner and the Drain Punch / Bulk Up combo to get even more bulk and recovery. The only thing I believe Rotom-A has over Scrafty is better typing and more support moves. Scrafty has great bulk. You should actually research the pokemon before making such accusations.

A wall is simply a termonology for something that takes hits. What it does after that is a subcategory of the term wall. There are pokemon like Blissey that inflict status or heal your team and then there are pokemon like Scrafty, Reuniclus, and Dragonite that set up by walling different types of pokemon.

@Ryanide

Sand is actually the second or third best of the weathers. It doesn't have many abusers. Exadrill, Landlos, and Terrakion are the major abusers of sand. True you can argue that Rock types benifit from sand but they don't "Abuse" sand. Rain is actually a far more effective than sand sense drizzle came into play. In 4th gen you can stall out rain because drizzle wasn't around. With 5th gen and drizzle Rain became the dominant weather because while there were plenty of abusers of rain in gen 4 sense it wasn't permanent rain wasn't so centralizing. With Drizzle abusers of rain can abuse rain for as long as they want. Also sense there are so many abusers of rain to begin with the result is rain being overcentralising and just plain better in comparasion to the other weathers.

 

[Thorhammer]

if it must come to a ban, how about we allow only one of each 'powerful' swift swimmer on the team alongside drizzle instead of banning them completely? Therefore, you can only have drizzle and kingdra, but not drizzle, kingdra, ludicolo and kabutops on the same team. you could, however, have drizzle, kingdra and a lesser SSer like Floatzel on the same team.

At least this would 'emulate' those totally not overpowered sand teams, who only get one 'major' sser (Excadrill) and one minor sser (Stoutland)

Kingdra is broken. Entirely, not just in combination with Ludicolo and Kabutops. Such a ban wouldn't help in the slightest.

There might be some merit in a ban restricting numbers of lesser Swift Swim users if they, too, turn out to be broken only alongside each other but not as a whole, but that remains to be seen.

 

[Ryanide]

I think it would help. At least then you wouldn't have to worry about Kingrda AND Kabutops AND Ludicolo together on the same team as apposed to just one of either. But forget it, that whole idea of banning specific pokemon just because they are powerful under rain in combination with an ability that does exactly what it's supposed to (I still don't think they are broken compared to a lot of other threats running around) is just really scrubbish in my view. Reminds me of Smashboards.

 

[Thorhammer]

I think it would help. At least then you wouldn't have to worry about Kingrda AND Kabutops AND Ludicolo together on the same team as apposed to just one of either. But forget it, that whole idea of banning specific pokemon just because they are powerful under rain in combination with an ability that does exactly what it's supposed to (I still don't think they are broken compared to a lot of other threats running around) is just really scrubbish in my view. Reminds me of Smashboards.

It wouldn't help because it wouldn't stick. They'd still be broken, and we'd still have to ban things.

At the very least, we'd still have to ban Kingdra. It might be worth testing something like that with Ludicolo, Kabutops, and possibly other suspects, though. But that would only make things incredibly complicated and force us to test countless more things than we would have to just testing the Swift Swim suspects normally, not to mention the implications for future tests.

You may not like it, but banning broken Pokemon is the best way to deal with them, and these Pokemon are broken.

 

[badabing]

I doubt Aldaron's proposal was ever intended to be a permanent solution for Drizzle. I always thought the purpose of the proposal was to test rain as thoroughly as possible so that we could iron out all of its Uber qualities. That way the voters could ban more efficiently and preserve anything suitable for OU.

In round 2, everyone was focused on Swift Swim because that was by far the most abused and effective strategy to use with Drizzle. No one even considered the inevtiable brokeness of Thundurus and Torunerosu who already had blistering speed and storm STABs in the rain. Especially in the thunder genie's case, who is even broken to a certain extent outside of Drizzle, a guaranteed 100% accuracy Thunder is just too powerful when it also has access to Nasty Plot. These two pokes and Starmie have succeeded the Swift Swimmers of Round 2 and are proving to be near as broken with perma-rain. The bolstering of STAB Water attacks in tandem with Choice Specs is another broken aspect of rain as well, turning something like Politoed into a serious threat with few safe switch-ins.

Rain offense has become such an over-centralizing force in the meta that any other viable team must be defensive or have a weather changer of its own. Rain stall may be a positive contribution to OU, but Rain offense has taken the 5th gen power creep to an exceedingly high level and Drizzle needs to be banned completely. BROKEN

 

[Ryanide]

Ridiculous. If rain is such an issue making certain pokemon one-hit-wonders off a single-type stab, then let us ban all of the big dragons, Ursaring, and anything else that can reach exceedingly high levels of attack power in one turn or less.

Or seriously, at the very least ban sandstream too and let weather teams rely on weather-inducers, because if perma-sand is allowed, then every other weather team gets stuffed over due to being negated and crippled with the ease of a single Hippowdon switch. That is just unfair.

How does 'needing' to have a weather changer on your team differ from needing to have a rapid spinner to get rid of spikes? You can choose to take one moveslot aside for a weather move to check that threat, dedicate a pokemon to that purpose if you know that weather is a popular tactic in gen 5, or choose to rough it in exchange for having a more useful pokemon in that slot. I rarely found space in my team for a spinner in gen 4 and suffered the consequences of stealth rock many times, no reliable phaser or hazer either and so I got trashed by garchomps and salamences. But that was my (bad) choice. Those pokemon were all over the place in gen 4 and most of the time required specific counters to defeat. (most of the time, a focus scarfed ice pokemon) So what's the big deal?

 

[badabing]

Ridiculous. If rain is such an issue making certain pokemon one-hit-wonders off a single-type stab, then let us ban all of the big dragons, Ursaring, and anything else that can reach exceedingly high levels of attack power in one turn or less.

Or seriously, at the very least ban sandstream too and let weather teams rely on weather-inducers, because if perma-sand is allowed, then every other weather team gets stuffed over due to being negated and crippled with the ease of a single Hippowdon switch. That is just unfair.

How does 'needing' to have a weather changer on your team differ from needing to have a rapid spinner to get rid of spikes? You can choose to take one moveslot aside for a weather move to check that threat, dedicate a pokemon to that purpose if you know that weather is a popular tactic in gen 5, or choose to rough it in exchange for having a more useful pokemon in that slot. I rarely found space in my team for a spinner in gen 4 and suffered the consequences of stealth rock many times, no reliable phaser or hazer either and so I got trashed by garchomps and salamences. But that was my (bad) choice. Those pokemon were all over the place in gen 4 and most of the time required specific counters to defeat. (most of the time, a focus scarfed ice pokemon) So what's the big deal?

Huh. I think you're missing the point. Every threat I mentioned bar Toed outspeeds those one hit wonders (?), including the big bad dragons rawr. Rain gives them too much power in conjunction with that speed. Idk how perma-rain is comparable to spikes, for one, Drizzle doesn't take a turn to use. You're probably thinking too hard there.

Sand isn't nearly as broken lol. We're not going to keep Drizzle OU just to be fair to other weather teams. Drizzle stands apart as by far the most overpowered and exploitable weather. PERMA-rain cannot be stopped by a fucking Hail Tentacruel. Stupid shit like that only works in warstories. The fact that you even cited weather moves as a counter-balance to weather teams makes me doubt your experience with the 5th gen and your overall competence as a player. Btw wtf is a focus scarf? No wonder you got "trashed" last gen, with a sashed chomp counter in a meta full of rocks...

If you're going to post such opinionated utter bullshit, do me a favor and press the Find Battle tab once in a while. Ridiculous.

 

[lmitchell0012]

You guys still haven't answered my last post. We've already proved that swift swimmers can still function just fine even without permanent rain. If this is the case, then what's stopping us from banning drizzle??

 

[Sajak]

You guys still haven't answered my last post. We've already proved that swift swimmers can still function just fine even without permanent rain. If this is the case, then what's stopping us from banning drizzle??

Drizzle isn't broken, which is why it's not being banned.

 

[XienZo]

You guys still haven't answered my last post. We've already proved that swift swimmers can still function just fine even without permanent rain. If this is the case, then what's stopping us from banning drizzle??

Uh, ourselves?

We're not going to do something that many people oppose for no particular reason.

I doubt Aldaron's proposal was ever intended to be a permanent solution for Drizzle. I always thought the purpose of the proposal was to test rain as thoroughly as possible so that we could iron out all of its Uber qualities. That way the voters could ban more efficiently and preserve anything suitable for OU.

IIRC, he said this himself; the proposal was more to let us calm down than for a permanent solution.

 

[badabing]

Uh, ourselves?

We're not going to do something that many people oppose for no particular reason.




IIRC, he said this himself; the proposal was more to let us calm down than for a permanent solution.

Good for him. My post was directed towards the question, "Are you satisfied with Aldaron's proposal as a permanent solution?"

 

[adman2]

Kingdra is broken. Entirely, not just in combination with Ludicolo and Kabutops. Such a ban wouldn't help in the slightest.

There might be some merit in a ban restricting numbers of lesser Swift Swim users if they, too, turn out to be broken only alongside each other but not as a whole, but that remains to be seen.

Please tell me how Kingdra is broken from your personal experience (not meant to be an insult, but a question).

Now, I haven't had experience with him in 5th gen, but I used it a lot on a 4th gen Wifi Rain team. The set was Lonely with Waterfall, Hydro Pump, Draco Meteor, and Rain Dance. I partnered it with Kabutops as well. Is the modern Kingdra more of a physical variant with Outrage + Dragon Dance or something?

It proved quite effective, but Kingdra had severe difficulty with bulky waters, especially Vaporeon, Suicune, and even Empoleon. The most it could do was Draco Meteor, and even then they would often laugh it off with Calm Minds, Wishes, or resistances. Tyranitar also proved a problem if it switched in at the right time. Even with Drizzle, Kingdra would now have to face stuff like Ferrothorn or Water Absorb Jellicent.

That said, Kabutops without turn limits on Rain is a frightening prospect! Bulky Waters and probably Ferrothorn would still stop it, though.


For all the difficulties Kingdra had to face last gen, new threats would probably make it less.

As a former Rain user, I'd like to see how the playstyle adapted to the new Pokemon, items, and abilities. Thanks! :)

 

[Myzozoa]

I agree with the op, individual swift swim abusers should be banned, but as a whole I find it unlikely that qwilfish for example approaches the threat level of doryuuzu or venuasaur in their respective whethers.

Secondly, to create a real solution to weather abuse we have to recognize the metagame for what it is: weather wars. Not to say it is impossible to be successful without weather, as that is not true at all, but it is certainly the primary strategy of the metagame as opposed to previous generations when weather was going to be sand if it was going to be anything, and it rarely mattered beyond that.

Recognizing this gives us new insight: it isn't relevant how many or how well pokemon are able to abuse a weather type. It may seem that sand has less abusable pokemon than rain or sun, but it would be idiocy not to realize that sand is by far the best weather type, and that no other type can even touch it.

Why is this? Its very simple, the pokemon that can introduce sand, tyranitar and hippowdon are much more effective at also filling a role outside of weather introducer. Ninetales is weak to sr, has rather unexciting typing aan perhaps most importantly in the context of a weather war, has horrible defenses and hp. Now we know why sun is the least popular type of weather: it sacrifices the most efficiency to put its weather on the table.

Politoad too, is worse than tyranitar, albeit significantly more efficient than ninetales. Although is is quite capable of running a specially defensive set (who cares? its a water type) politoad competes with other water pokemon for the same role, you never saw politoads in gen 4 ou lol. If a rain team wants to run a bulky water in addition to politoad, it is losing substantial efficiency and synergy.

Now, we have tyranitar. Tyranitar has the best defenses, it has pursuit, it can run many sets including mixed. Unlike the others it also attacks from the physical side of the spectrum. it has 2 stabs, and it gains more bulk in the sand, the other weather introducers gain offensive abilities which dont make them survive any longer, tyranitar on the other hand becomes a monster special wall. Tyranitar has stealth rock, which means it can support the team as a functional lead, rather than something you're going to send in and then immediately switch out. I could probably go on another whole paragraph on way tyranitar shits all over the other weather inducers, I think its safe to say that sand is far from being second to any other weather, just by virtue of getting to use tyranitar instead of random crap weather inducers that fill no roles and are wildly inefficient.

 

[lmitchell0012]

That makes no sense at all. How is infinite rain not broken?? Infinite rain makes swift swim broken, which in turn makes drizzle broken. It's not that complicated. In order to solve this problem, we eliminate the source, which is politoed.

 

[Woodchuck]

That makes no sense at all. How is infinite rain not broken?? Infinite rain makes swift swim broken, which in turn makes drizzle broken. It's not that complicated. In order to solve this problem, we eliminate the source, which is politoed.

The question is, what are we trying to do to ban something. Are we going to ban something from the simplicity point of view, or are we going to try and minimize the impact of the ban upon other playstyles? It's clear to me that Swift Swim is the broken aspect of rain. Drizzle without Swift Swim is more viable than Swift Swim without Drizzle. IMO the best solution is to ban the most broken Swift Swimmers. I'd rather ban select pokemon than an entire playstyle; after all, aren't we trying to promote diversity?

On another note,

Are there any benefits to keeping drizzle?? Give me one good reason why we shouldn't ban it.

is complete bullshit. You have to prove why we should ban it, not the other way around. We seem to be humoring you anyways.

@Myzozoa, the appeal to banning the most broken SwSwimmers is to me that Rain can run more of them. It's kind of running several lesser Swift Swimmers in comparison to a much stronger abuser as Excadrill is. Rain with weaker swimmers like Qwilfish would be an interesting playstyle, and I think it deserves to be tested as to whether or not it is broken.

 

[badabing]

Please tell me how Kingdra is broken from your personal experience (not meant to be an insult, but a question).

Now, I haven't had experience with him in 5th gen, but I used it a lot on a 4th gen Wifi Rain team. The set was Lonely with Waterfall, Hydro Pump, Draco Meteor, and Rain Dance. I partnered it with Kabutops as well. Is the modern Kingdra more of a physical variant with Outrage + Dragon Dance or something?

It proved quite effective, but Kingdra had severe difficulty with bulky waters, especially Vaporeon, Suicune, and even Empoleon. The most it could do was Draco Meteor, and even then they would often laugh it off with Calm Minds, Wishes, or resistances. Tyranitar also proved a problem if it switched in at the right time. Even with Drizzle, Kingdra would now have to face stuff like Ferrothorn or Water Absorb Jellicent.

That said, Kabutops without turn limits on Rain is a frightening prospect! Bulky Waters and probably Ferrothorn would still stop it, though.


For all the difficulties Kingdra had to face last gen, new threats would probably make it less.

As a former Rain user, I'd like to see how the playstyle adapted to the new Pokemon, items, and abilities. Thanks! :)

Hmmm. Kingdra was one of the main Drizzle abusers that created a need for Aldaron's proposal. The most common set was specs, which 3HKOs Natt with Hydro Pump in the rain. If played correctly, Natt should only get one switch in and I would hardly call that a counter. Water Absorb Jelli was also a pretty good answer to Kingdra, but any DD or mixed set could do work on it. Taking those other bulky waters that you mentioned into account (which no one uses), Vap is the only one with a chance I'd say b/c it has somewhat steady recovery. Idk how well its taking specs Dracos. With its speed and STAB coverage bolstered by perma-rain, SS Kingdra has been one of the devastating pokes this far into gen 5, plowing through resists and just wrecking shit against any team without a weather changer. I could go on about this, but you prob get the idea. I guess someone wasn't around for R2 :P.

Kabutops ran Low Kick for Natt.