To respond to your last paragraph, it IS possible to counter effects instead of pokemon. Most weather teams have their entire team built around abusing said effect. That's why for a while before Excadrill+Thunderus were banned, we'd see Ttar/Excadrill/Scizor/Jirachi/Gliscor/Latios or Politoed/Rotom-W/Ferrothorn/Jellicent/Thundurus/Toxicroak. Why did we see these teams? Because the weather teams built the strategy around the EFFECT, NOT INDIVIDUAL POKEMON. Therefore, the best way to stop them is to counter their EFFECT, whether that be by countering multiple abusers with a single set or by switching the effect.
Scizor, Jirachi, and Latios are not sand abusers. You just saw them on common sand teams, so you put counters to those pokemon in your teams. They aren't sand in itself.
Before excadrill was banned, most sand teams were built...around him. He was a great sweeper under tyranitar's careful watch, but needed support to get around his counters and checks, such as skarmory, gliscor, conkeldurr, and azumarril. Sand teams began packing magnezone to trap skarmory, or pokemon who would attract gliscor's attention such as terrakion or hp ice landorus.
If a sand team carries heatran and magnezone, is skarmory still a counter to sand teams? The answer is no, but skarmory is still a counter to the excadrill that gave you so many problems to begin with. Some teams carried tangrowth back then. If you asked their creators why, they would say, "Tangrowth is a great
excadrill counter."
That's what we mean by countering pokemon, but not effects. You don't counter the effects because...you can't. You listed gardevoir as a great anti-sun pokemon. Well, what about the sun teams that utilize dugtrio, volcorona, lilligant, sawsbuck, snorlax, or blissey/chansey? Gardevoir does nothing against any of those pokemon (and loses you the whole game vs. volcorona). How is it a sun counter when it is nothing but a potential annoyance for the team at large?
Going on, why would I use this when it doesn't do anything outside of revenge venusaur? What is it doing against rain teams? (sand teams are unphazed).
I would much rather prefer a choice scarf terrakion, who can easily revenge the common modest life orb venusaur after it kills something. Not only that, but it takes out volcorona after a quiver dance, can revenge and check a +1 dragonite trying to abuse the drought boost on his fire attacks, kills snorlax, kills specially defensive heatran, and can actually take out Ninetales (which gardevoir fails to do). Not only that, but choice scarf terrakion is useful to me even when I'm not facing sun teams. He does all of this without being specially built to take on an entire team archtype as well.
If we're going to look for pokemon who can aide us against enemy weather, we should be looking for pokemon like him.
If it comes off to anyone that I seem a bit antsy about this, I'm not. But I do get annoyed at seeing pokemon put on teams for the sole purpose of fighting a specific weather. I once fought against a sun team that carried a dry skin sword's dance toxicroak. I assume my opponent was using it as a counter for rain teams. That life orb toxicroak wasn't helping him one bit when it kept losing hp under his own sunlight and became setup fodder for my volcorona, and I surely can't imagine it taking him to victory in most of his battles.
ITT: why alphatron is my favorite user.
<3
