np: UU Stage 10 - Suspect Test Round 1 - Let it Snow

WhiteQueen · Nov 15, 2012

please don't bring back snover. i am already impossible to beat in uu. i don't need anymore powers from the mighty snover

This post was infracted for being absolutely retarded. Use this brave man as an example of how not to post.

pokemonisfun · Nov 15, 2012

another thing about blizzard spam is that each time you click blizzard you get a ten percent chance to knock out a pokemon almost no matter what - the freeze rate (well they do have a 20% chance to defrost but that like rarely happens and often time your opponent will quickly retreat their frozen popsicle because they fear something can set up on it).

I use cloud nine altaria on hail stall for a decentish response to Chandelure (a better way to deal with it is to quickly set up hazards and hail to limit its staying power) and hails fire and fighitng weakness in general (while the rock weakness is stressed on the team even more the only real Rock pokemon in UU i believe cant take blizzards at all and other various stone edges/rock slides can usually be taken by blastoise/nidoqueen). Altaria also has perish song for nasty old last poke boosters like Snorlax and Suicune that potentially could run me over.

If you dont think Blizzard hits stuff hard for Snover you are going to be really disappointed by Giga Drain I doubt it 2hkos most bulky waters.

Roar isnt actually used on Walrien to rack hazard damage (although thats nice) but more so to prevent yourself from being phazed by the likes of blastoise and suicune and Snorlax (body slam can break your sub but their first response is whirlwind generally) as well as other stuff i probably cant think of right now. this allows you to begin your sub protect stall fest earlier (you wouldnt be able to do this if your opp had a Roar Suicune and you only had Toxic instead of Roar). Unfortunately Walrien requires heavy speed investment to make the most out of Roar, at least enough to outspeed 4 speed suicune (speed creep is important friends). Benefits include being able to set up on a wider variety of pokes like Gligar (no fear of Toxic) and being able to surprise a few pokes (weakened blastoise/claydol'hitmontop thinking it can spin on you? just blizzard its face off.) Walrien just isnt tooo bulky when you invest this much in speed though so although you can set up a sub protect stallfest against scarfgon locked in a move i doubt you would be able to set up against bandgon locked into outrage as easily, especially if you had to switch into hazards. Also im not quite sure how to maximize walriens defenses since i doubt max hp will be the most beneficial for something that has hp as his highest defensive stat.

now if only there was a way you could have enough free turns to get up tspikes and sub and aqua ring on walrien c:

Chimera404 · Nov 17, 2012

WhiteQueen said:
please don't bring back snover. i am already impossible to beat in uu. i don't need anymore powers from the mighty snover

This post was infracted for being absolutely retarded. Use this brave man as an example of how not to post.

Lol, was that... that had to be deliberate, no?

@hilarious,
That's a nice set for Altaria, though I'm questioning the viability of the Pokemon in the first place. Decent typing in a team that definitively doesn't give a crap about ice-type attacks, but the stat distribution makes it neither extraordinarily fast nor bulky, leaving it at a loss against stuff with a simply higher BST (speed, attack, etc.). Taking away Hail is also annoying at times because you lose a bit more residual damage. I'd recommend Slowbro over it if you really need something to take fighting+fire, because even without lefties recovery it has the GOD ABILITY REGENERATOR to get out of sticky situations without using Slack-Off.

Yeah Giga Drain does jack shit but at least it gives me recovery aside from Leech Seed. Back to Blizzard!

Uh.....
You might not be using Walrein to phaze for the most part but when you have a full set (or close to it) of entry hazards then you will do more damage in a single Roar than you can in 7 turns worth of stall. Aqua Ring runs into the problem that Sub only has 16 PP, meaning that you've effectively cut your stall time by half, and no priority at that. Run Protect, always... and Roar... and Substitute... and I prefer Blizzard so that I'm not COMPLETE set-up fodder over whatever support move you may run on the last slot.

You don't NEED to run full HP EV's but at least hit 404 HP so that you can have your 101 HP Subs. I don't know what's most efficient, but that's a requirement so that... uh, Chansey and Registeel can't break your sub, or whatever uses Seismic Toss in this metagame.

Free turns is easy for Stall. Send in Nidoqueen on something that seriously can't hurt it and lay down a single layer of TSpikes (you're going to be phazing so 2 layers is waste of time and damage). Then lay down SR. Then DIE and get Walrein back in, or go to Froslass and finish the job with a couple layers of spikes. Now you're down 4-6, but Stallrein's in for free and you've got time to sub and stall.

tehy · Nov 18, 2012

Actually, i saw that post before it was edited, and a mod edited it, so probably not. But it was amazingly hilarious, and a great example of how to write a post, so thanks kokoloko!

Also, free turns are not necessarily easy for stall. Any team can theoretically get free turns by suiciding a pokemon, of course, but a stall team really needs all of its pokemon in order to wall threats-suiciding one for temporary advantage is a really bad idea. This is exacerbated by the fact that you're running a snover, and if you're running suicide spikes froslass, well, that's 3 pokemon basically down. (You could sacrifice snover, but it's huge setup bait, so it's not that easy.) Stall's version of free turns is hard-walling stuff, so there's that, Still, all you're really walling is water and ice-types, but that's mostly just bulky waters that can toxic or scald-burn you, and hail teams that also run stallrein. There ARE things it can wall and switch in on, but it's not exactly easy. Stallrein is really meant to nearly die, sub, then subtect until he's out of PP. The other moves are if someone is giving you free turns via stall tactics of their own, or some form of setup.

Edit: Flareblitz, exactly what i was talking about, thanks. Pocket, that sac for hazards thing might be true, but note how he was talking about getting up hazards and THEN dying, I.E. sacrificing after you've got them down. Which is not the best of ideas. If they've got a spinner and a toxic immune/blizzard resist with recovery, they can basically wait until walrein runs out of PP,and then you've got a weakened stall core for no real reason.

Pocket · Nov 18, 2012

Yea, reckless saccing leads to demise of stall teams. However, sometimes the price of saccing Froslass or Nidoqueen for the extra layer can be really worth it, especially for a hail team, where residual damage is virtually irrecoverable. I also found out that often only 2 or 3 defensive mons are usually sufficient in halting the opponent's offensive maneuvers, so smart saccing of dispensable walls actually work (Walrein alone can pretty much shuffle / toxic-stall its way to victory when the stage is set) So both of you guys are correct in some respects :d.

Anybody managed to make Jynx work? I've been using SubNP Jynx, but Idk, it hasn't been pulling its weight. It is difficult to bring it in and hard to sweep with only Blizzard. Lovely Kiss is shit, and Jynx's Speed tier is just slow enough to be outrun by handful of threats in the tier :/ I have to admit that Scald immunity is a godsend, though!

It may most likely be the particular type of team I'm using. It's essentially stall with Jynx tacked in. Jynx doesn't seem to quite work as a lone sweeper it seems, idk. I should probably read White Queen's legendary RMT for inspiration.

EDIT: Found It. 4 Ice-types, 2 of them being scarfed, and no Rapid Spinner; wtf is this shit!

ElectivireRocks · Nov 18, 2012

WhiteQueen said:
This post was infracted for being absolutely retarded. Use this brave man as an example of how not to post.

You must be new to modding on Smogon, because it's pretty clear you have absolute no clue of what you just did.
Protip: you don't give an infraction to the legendary WhiteQueen for bragging out, you just don't.

This post was infracted for disrespecting a staff member. Goodbye :)

superbadd · Nov 18, 2012

Pocket, you might wanna try sub-kiss. Between lovely kiss and substitute, this gives jynx plenty of opportunities to just spam blizzard. Lovely kiss allows jynx to render a counter useless.
Jynx @ Life orb / Leftovers
lovely Kiss/Substitute/Blizzard/Focus Blast

Between Stealth rock and Hail damage it can 2HKO pretty much anything. :)

Chimera404 · Nov 18, 2012

Awww.... so I missed the fun?

Shucks. Anyone willing to tell me what it looked like?

About free turns for stall: It's harder to get them, for sure, but you hit the nail on the head: hard-walling stuff IS the equivalent of free turns. Hail Stall is an oddity among stall because it doesn't really need too many members besides Stallrein to beat a non-hail team (though if you're up against hail good luck to you sir). It's easy to set up hazards and then sit there for 32+ turns until the enemy is back at a disadvantage.

When I said free turns I generally meant stuff like swapping Nidoqueen into... i dunno, Heracross's CC or Megahorn.

FlareBlitz · Nov 18, 2012

Pocket said:
Yea, reckless saccing leads to demise of stall teams. However, sometimes the price of saccing Froslass or Nidoqueen for the extra layer can be really worth it, especially for a hail team, where residual damage is virtually irrecoverable. I also found out that often only 2 or 3 defensive mons are usually sufficient in halting the opponent's offensive maneuvers, so smart saccing of dispensable walls actually work (Walrein alone can pretty much shuffle / toxic-stall its way to victory when the stage is set) So both of you guys are correct in some respects :d.

I'd argue that hail is the exact kind of team where this sort of strategy isn't worth it.

You have a snover and a froslass with minimal defensive investment, meaning you're relying on 4 other Pokemon to check every offensive threat in the metagame (because those two won't be doing it). These Pokemon will also not have leftovers recovery. This puts them in a very precarious defensive position, and they won't be able to stand up to any good offensive team (which work by placing redundant offensive pressure in an effort to break walls and have at least one member sweep).

If you sac froslass to get up an extra layer of spikes, for example, LO Zapdos is going to hammer your team until scarfgon is free to sweep.

Pocket said:
Anybody managed to make Jynx work? I've been using SubNP Jynx, but Idk, it hasn't been pulling its weight. It is difficult to bring it in and hard to sweep with only Blizzard. Lovely Kiss is shit, and Jynx's Speed tier is just slow enough to be outrun by handful of threats in the tier :/ I have to admit that Scald immunity is a godsend, though!

I've made Jynx work on a hail team, but it was an LO np wallbreaker variant.

Jynx @ Life Orb
Modest / Timid
-Nasty Plot
-Blizzard
-Psyshock
-Lovely Kiss

LO Jynx is absurdly good at luring and obliterating defensive counters to the standard set, and works really well on a hail team for this reason (as those counters cause hail teams trouble as a whole). Some examples of the sheer powa:

+2 Blizzard v. max/max Umbreon: 77.7% - 91.6%
+2 Psyshock v. standard Snorlax: 79.7% - 94.2%
+2 Blizzard v. 252/0 Slowking (seriously guys, stop using this): 59.6% - 70.3%

This is going to die quickly against offensive teams, but the good news is, you still have a sleep inducing move and very powerful attacks.

ElectivireRocks said:
You must be new to modding on Smogon, because it's pretty clear you have absolute no clue of what you just did.
Protip: you don't give an infraction to the legendary WhiteQueen for bragging out, you just don't.

We're not going to encourage arrogant, idiotic behavior just because it's from someone widely known to be an arrogant idiot. Don't follow in those footsteps.

cim · Nov 18, 2012

ElectivireRocks said:
You must be new to modding on Smogon, because it's pretty clear you have absolute no clue of what you just did.
Protip: you don't give an infraction to the legendary WhiteQueen for bragging out, you just don't.

you're literally arguing that if someone is cool they should be above the rules. bravo, mate. if anything we had too much of that back in the day.

My advice for testers: Play hail offensively. Jrrrrr lent me his team. No Walrein, no spinner, and only two Ice types total. It's fun. Not sure if this style of play is broken, but it's a neat way to add a touch more offensive pressure. Think of it as an automatic layer of Spikes on your opponent (for 2HKOs anyway).

Super Mario Bro · Nov 18, 2012

This meta is amazing. It's a bit lopsided towards offense, but not super aggressive (like OU), and semi-stall teams are entirely viable. There also isn't a single Pokemon or strategy that centralizes the meta around it.

I like Snover's role in the meta, but Abomasnow would probably need to be banned to BL if it drops down from OU.

kokoloko · Nov 18, 2012

Hi.

I know I said I'd post a new thread with the requirements on the 24th, but I already made up my mind on how I'm going to go about picking the few lucky people who will have the privilege of voting as part of the Senate, so I'm just going to post them here and edit them into the OP.

If you wish to apply to vote as part of the council, you must send me a PM containing the following information:

A screenshot of your current ranking on the UU suspect ladder. Please use the /ranking command, not what is shown on the ladder, so I can see your win/loss ratio. I strongly suggest you try to get your Glicko2 above 1900 and your deviation below ± 60, by the way ^_^
A list of your UU tournaments and past ladder accomplishments that you consider relevant.
A short paragraph explaining why a past suspect should have or should not have been banned. I encourage you to include reasoning for both sides if you feel it'll make your point of view clearer, but do pick a side, please.

The deadline to apply is November 24th, at 11:59 PM.

PM / VM me with any questions you may have; don't ask them here. Also, this applies only to the vote on hail. Finally, the Mew suspect thread is up.

That is all.

PK Gaming · Nov 19, 2012

This metagame was surprisingly decent!

I didn't like the idea of introducing auto-weather into UU, but Hail's got its fair share of pros and cons in UU. Like it's actually possible to force hail into losing positions with such abusable weaknesses. (and tbh classic rain is arguably just as strong, if not better than hail in UU)

I ran a generic blizzspam team. It wasn't very good, but Ice body Glaceon was my MVP (with Rotom-F close behind it). It would usually recover off that SR damage like a champ.

pokemonisfun · Nov 20, 2012

Chimera404 said:
About free turns for stall: It's harder to get them, for sure, but you hit the nail on the head: hard-walling stuff IS the equivalent of free turns. Hail Stall is an oddity among stall because it doesn't really need too many members besides Stallrein to beat a non-hail team (though if you're up against hail good luck to you sir). It's easy to set up hazards and then sit there for 32+ turns until the enemy is back at a disadvantage.

There is so much truth in what you said here according to my ladder experience. Other types of stall usually need either all or all but one members to live if it wants to wait out your opponents attack until they give an opening for you to heal/phaze/set up hazards or in general regain some pressure and momentum. All Hail Stall needs is a Walrien with preferably one layer of any hazard up, generally the best being Toxic Spikes as well as a few select opponent Pokemon to die/be weakened.

I mean if we really want to look at this in dept, then you can just look at a standard team and see what can break Walrien. If your opponent has a Choice Scarfer thats not like Cincinno then you can basically disregard that Pokemon when your stallrien is in motion, it might actually be helpful for you to set up on. Indeed Choice pokemons in general have nothing on Walrien if he is under a sub, so if your opponent is using one or two choiced mons thats one or two pokes you check off in your head as useless in an attack on your defenses.

Then we look at other items your opponent uses, Life Orb is generally even better fr Walrien as your opponent is worn down even faster and still has no hope in breaking your stall. Leftovers Pokemon are either defensive and gives you a free sub (you can phaze them out with a sub intact usually which is why I am fond of Roar stallrien) so they are little threat too.

The only things that are truly tough for Walrien are certain leftover attackers like Bisharp who can end the stall fest potentially but they are not particularly common and still wont be able to set up if you have Roar.

Given all this Walrien can in general take down the majorities of teams, at least 3 members usually if it can find time to set up a sub and if some type of hazard is set.

Thats why I still think hail stall teams are good to use and frankly if your Hail team happens to have a bit of free space and you are using hazards, it might not be a bad idea to slap on Walrien just because it unlike the vast majority of defenders in the metagame, is self sufficient to a high degree on hail teams.

Has anyone made a successful full stall team without hail? Or has the metagame shifted so an entire playstyle was lost?

jrrrrrrr · Nov 20, 2012

cim is 100% right when he said that hail is best used offensively. More specifically, using hail as just a 6% damage booster rather than centering your entire team around the move Blizzard. Sorry if this sounds douchey, but there's no way anyone in this thread is going to convince me that Walrein is a good pokemon.

cim said:
My advice for testers: Play hail offensively. Jrrrrr lent me his team. No Walrein, no spinner, and only two Ice types total. It's fun. Not sure if this style of play is broken, but it's a neat way to add a touch more offensive pressure. Think of it as an automatic layer of Spikes on your opponent (for 2HKOs anyway).

If anyone is rushing to meet reqs, here's the team he was talking about. Me, cim and GTS were all using it and we loved it:

http://pastebin.com/LvNSvJV1

That's a pretty good summary of it, cim. Stacking your team with Ice-types in a metagame filled with Fire and Fighting types is ridiculous....so I didn't do that. The only Ice-types I have are Snover for obvious reasons (and to counter Water-types and harass Curse Snorlax), and Rotom-F who is so fast with a Choice Scarf that none of those Fire/Fighting types can touch it before eating a STAB Blizzard/Thunderbolt.

Kingdra and Victini are there to cover Fire-types, Victini and Nidoqueen are there for Fighting-types, Rotom-F revenges everything (and is usually how I "checkmate" someone with Blizzspam), and Raikou is just there because it's the best abuser of hail in UU period.

Other changes I've thought of making - Brick Break on Victini over Flare Blitz, Sub on Raikou over Aura Sphere, Dragon Tail on Nidoqueen over Toxic Spikes

And yes, I'm using Flare Blitz Victini. Don't laugh, it won me a match because I had to kill a Nidoking and Roserade back to back!

Windsong · Nov 22, 2012

I would just like to say that from my ladder experience playing exclusively with one of kokoloko's offense teams, any sort of Hail has really been mediocre and subpar as hell. Admittedly, my laddering experience is somewhat warped by the fact that I haven't lost a game yet, so everything's seeming rather ineffective compared to the pure offense I've been using, but I've played ~30 games or so and thus still believe my points to be valid.

First and foremost, defensive Hail simply cannot withstand the barrage from the numerous fire and fighting-types that run through the meta, and Pokemon that keep momentum easily, such as Mienshao and Flygon also make the life of defensive Hail miserable. I won't deny that defensive hail teams can be effective, I simply have not yet seen it demonstrated at all. While there are some nifty setups that the team can achieve with Pokemon such as Walrein, doing so requires sacrificing a spot necessary to handle certain threats, which well made stall teams simply can't do all that effectively without ending up weak to something. Defensive Hail has a definite advantage over most UU balance, sure, but it simply falls too easily against a fair amount of UU offense to really work perfectly.

Hail offense I've found even more mediocre. I ran into two or three hail offense teams (one of which, I just realized was the one j7r just posted above, being piloted by RT!) and I was not particularly impressed. Ice simply isn't that great an offensive type in UU, the extra 6% damage per turn is borderline ineffective against some teams, and if offensive Hail is made without a solid enough defensive backbone, many common sweepers can simply tear through it given slight amounts of support (for example, SD Mew is capable of running through a fair amount of j7r's team, with his only real stop to it being to sacrifice Rotom to Trick Mew a scarf). Again, Hail does fairly well against balance, which can't mount the offensive to power its way through it and lacks the defensive backbone to stand against repeated blizzards, but most solid offensive teams have a clear cut advantage over hail offense in my opinion.

Pocket · Nov 23, 2012

From using Hail teams extensively, I agree with windsong's observations. Snover just takes up such a valuable team slot. When I try to fit Snover + Hail Abuser, I find myself not having a slot for either a Revenge killer (unless I scarf Rotom-F / Jynx), a strong wallbreaker to beat Snorlax / Umbreon, or some gaping hole in my defenses, because these teams can become pretty rigid.

jrrrrrrr's team does quite an amazing job in covering all bases, though, so props for that! I'll try to emulate your team's format to tweak my own teams :d. It does look slightly vulnerable to entry hazards, though, with half of your team being SR-weak :x

cim · Nov 24, 2012

I'm going to be laddering today to try and make vote totals, but I don't feel strongly enough about it that I'd hate the result either way, hence why I waited to the last minute to do it :3.

That said, it seems pretty obvious to me that hail isn't broken. Jrrr's team is great, but it's just that - a well constructed offensive hail team. Good and fun, but not particularly broken. Defensive teams can actually be okay, but Snover / Walrein / 4 Pokemon can't possibly cover everything and will always have a few weaknesses. Obviously the above isn't a detailed justification for not banning, just a summary of my personal thoughts. I'm way too busy laddering to write my argument for Hail in advance.

Oiawesome · Nov 24, 2012

Kind of funny because jrrr's team has the same base as my team that I posted super early in this thread:2 Ice types(His snover and Jynx and my jynx and articuno)(snover dosent count for me though),a counter to hail teams(his victini my darmanitan),a bulky water(my suicune his kingdra),weather ball-er(we both have raikous),the only REAL diffrence is the nido that bieng said solid team jrrrr Im going to try to ladder a little today.

kokoloko · Nov 25, 2012

Applications are now closed. I got about 15-16 Applications (more than I expected tbh) and I'll be reading over them as soon as I get a chance. I'll get back to you with the names of the people who make it!

Oiawesome · Nov 25, 2012

Thank you koko!

kokoloko · Nov 27, 2012

Ace Emerald, Metric, Pocket, and Windsong have been selected as the lucky four who get to vote as part of the UU Senate this time around. I'll send a mass PM to everyone who will vote with instructions on how to do so right after I make this post.

Hyperactivity · Dec 1, 2012

Well. it looks like Abamasnow may come back next month, at the rate it's going. This will probably give hail a bit more of an edge, but if hail starts causing a problem, which it isn't this time in my experience, we'll know who to blame.

Dskullkid · Dec 1, 2012

I'll just chime in, but I doubt anyone will care at this point. The reason I stopped playing ou is because of how much weather there was - it just wasn't fun. So I transitioned to uu where weather doesn't exist. I'm not saying that hail is overpowered, its just not fun to play against.

kokoloko · Dec 2, 2012

Okay, all the votes are in, but I don't have the energy to c/p all the paragraphs right now. The result is a surprising unanimous decision to unban hail. I'll talk to Zarel about reinstating the standard ladder with hail allowed as soon as he can and I'll edit this post (or maybe make another one) with all the paragraphs tomorrow night.

Here you go:

Unban Hail

I’ve done extensive testing with Hail teams, and I can say with certainty that the playstyle is not imbalanced in this metagame. With Abomasnow, Snow Cloak, and Mamoswine no longer in the tier, Hail is only just barely viable. Every Hail team is forced to run Snover, an extremely mediocre Pokemon that has very little use beyond starting weather. Furthermore, the metagame revolves heavily around Fire- and Fighting-types, all of which pose a significant threat to Hail teams. Due to Ice's poor defensive typing, Hail teams have to run multiple counters to these threats, which usually leaves room for two Ice-types at most. (One of which must be Snover) As a result, the residual damage from Hail ends up working against the user because Pokemon like Swampert, Qwilfish, and Blastoise depend on Leftovers recovery to stay alive. Moving on to the actual abusers of Hail, all of them have shit typing and gain nothing other than the ability to use Blizzard instead of Ice Beam. A few, such as Glaceon and Walrein, benefit from Ice Body, but that hasn't stopped their performance from being subpar. Moral of the story: Hail isn't broken, unban that shit.

Unban hail Let it snow!

Based upon testing, hail has taken a great fall from power. The fall has rendered hail only competitively viable, far from inherently broken. Since the previous ban, hail has lost the ability to utilize abomasnow, heavy hitters like mamoswine, and absurd abuse of snow cloak. Snover simply can't compensate for abomasnow. Aboma provides many benefits to teams beyond starting weather. Unfortunately snover's middling stats prevent snover from providing the same support to teams beyond starting weather. Compound this problem with the loss of snow cloak. Without snow cloak hail is no longer blessed with free turns to cause havoc.
In the current metagame, hail has divided itself into the play styles of hail stall and hail offense. Both prove viable but in no way broken. Ice's poor defensive typing simply cannot with stand the scourge of fire and fighting types. This places a heavy strain on teams that rely on ice pokemon. Thus hail teams are unable to stock up on hail abusers as they have to marginalize their weakness to top UU threats. This creates the balancing flaw to both of hail's play styles as parts of the team themselves are hindered by hail.
Thus Unban snow warning as it's summoner has been nerfed, no snow cloak abuse, and the meta's ability to compensate for the power of hail.

Hail is not imbalanced in this metagame because a) it relies on an carrying an incredibly bad Pokemon just to set up hail b) the residual damage it causes often compromises the survivability of its own members c) hail "abusers" essentially consist of mediocre Pokemon being able to use STAB Blizzard - an attack which is just as powerful as Fire Blast, Megahorn, and Close Combat with arguably worse offensive typing d) the metagame is heavily oriented around Fighting, Fire, and Steel types, all of which cause hail severe problems as a playstyle.

This could all conceivably change when certain tier shifts happen (like Chandelure getting Shadow Tag and leaving us, Abomasnow dropping, Mew possibly getting banned) so hail is a topic we may have to revisit. But for now, it's clearly not broken.

Unban Hail

Hail has nothing but a positive effect on the UU metagame, increasing diversity in the tier while allowing a few more playstyles to become relevant than in the pre hail metagame. More importantly, Hail is far from broken in the current UU metagame. Offensive hail teams fall easily to the variety of common Fire- and Fighting-type threats in the metagame, or if they opt for a more balanced route and put in a defensive backbone strong enough to avoid being demolished by many common threats, they lack the power to beat down other (non hail) offense teams. In fact, Hail offense doesn't really have much of an impact, as teams can't stack too many STAB Blizzard users without automatically being weak to a number of common Pokemon, and the worst that well made Hail offense is bringing to the table is a few Pokemon with Blizzard over Ice Beam.

Stall in UU is difficult enough to pull off as is, and defensive Hail falls into a similar boat. It has to spend a teamslot on the semi useless Snover, only to gain little benefit besides an extra 6.25% damage per turn versus most teams (at the cost of their own Leftovers being nullified). This simply isn't worth it in a tier where teams are hard pressed to cover all the common threats as is, and it leads to teams being made with easily exploitable holes if they choose to run Hail.

To conclude, Hail does nothing but good for UU at this time. It adds a nice level of variety to the metagame, making a few more teamstyles playable, is far short of being broken, and is overall an excellent addition to the tier.

I wanted Hail banned in UU because I didn't like the idea of having Auto-weather in the UU tier, nor did I like the idea of players winning with hail by spamming a bunch of hail abusers and winning. That's not really the way to think though. Testing has shown that BW UU2 is durable & fast enough that Hail does not need to be banned. Sure, the Blizzspam strategy is easy in execution and basically rewards you for click Blizzard, but its got several significant flaws that keep it from dominating. The biggest flaw with Hail by far is Snover. Snover is utterly terrible. Hail teams more or less operate with 5 Pokemon + Hail because of how useless Snover is. Admittedly, I got some mileage out of Choice Scarf Snover spamming Blizzard, but that was the only set I got to work and it was still very bad. BW UU2 is very anti-hail; Snorlax is everywhere, and the vast majority of hail sweepers are straight up beaten by Snorlax, Fire-types and Fighting-types are also extremely common in UU, and they basically get to fire off their STAB moves and get near-guaranteed kills against hail teams. Hail teams want to get the most out of their auto-weather, so hail abusers like Rotom-F, Walrein, etc are par for the course. However, Hail teams that stack on hail abusers only compound their weaknesses. Opponents can capitalize on this against a hail players by utilizing their Fighting and Fire type to mess with hail teams (most of which don't even have checks to them). Ice-type Pokemon also have a nasty Stealth Rock weakness, and while running a rapid spinner might alleviate that weakness, UU is a tier that makes it very difficult for players to Rapid Spin. There's little point to running a hail team that barely abuses hail because a little residual damage on everything isn't worth losing a team slot. With Hail teams, I noticed that building one basically comes down to the classic stability vs immediate power decision. In my experience, the best hail teams were the ones that relied on few hail sweepers and prioritize on making their team sturdier. (Slowbro/king is really good on hail for example.) Even then, well built hail teams are still riddled with flaws (you can't build a hail team that doesn't suffer from at least one of: Snorlax, Fighting-types, Fire-types and a rampant Stealth Rock Weakness) that keep it from dominating. I played the hell out of hail and I noticed it didn't really win me matches as much as i'd like it to, It was too inconsistent for my liking. Blizzspam ends up being a crapshoot against stall, or balance that has Snorlax and (or) Fire-types. I think the combined experience of everyone on the ladder have shown that hail is extremely overrated since some of suspect players straight up stopped using hail. With Abomasnow (a Pokemon that was extremely powerful on its own) and Snow Cloak (an ability that basically broke Froslass) banned, there's little reason to keep hail banned as it stands right now.

Unban hail

Unban Hail: After extensively playing with UU Hail during this suspect round, I realized that the playstyle is not taking UU by storm. Powerful Blizzard spammers like Rotom-F benefits enormously from Hail. However, the current state of UU is unkind to them, being vulnerable to the top threats that are innumerable Fighting- and Fire-types. Snorlax and Stealth Rock are also common elements of this meta that keeps STAB Blizzards in check.

Among the shortcomings of Hail, the unconditional requirement of Snover is the biggest limiting factor of them all. Snover is simply too slow and too fragile, and is oftentimes relegated as death fodder after ensuring the hailstorm. Although it can be an alright check to Water-types, it's more of a liability, a necessary shit for the powerful Blizzards.

I find Hail to be a powerful playstyle that adds a new element to UU, but hardly an overpowering one. Maybe this playstyle might need to be re-visited if Abomasnow ever drops down to UU, but until then let's keep it.

After doing some playtest, I have come to the conclusion that hail isn't overpowered in the current metagame. While it's certainly true that Hail was broken when it got banned months ago, it's been severly nerfed since then, and it isn't what it used to be.

The main flaw every Hail team has, whether it is offensive or defensive, is Snover. This just couldn't be stressed enough, but having to use Snover is a huge drawback that is often not worth it, considering how terribly useless Snover is in every match. Furthermore, the benefits of Hail are just not good enough to make Snover worth using.
On one hand, defensive Hail teams can't abuse Hail as good now that Snow Cloak is banned, which means the #1 Hail abuser, Snow Cloak Froslass, isn't available anymore. This leaves defensive Hail teams with only residual damage and Ice Body Pokemon to toy with; and considering the way the UU metagame is shaped currently and the little viability and effectiveness of defensive play, we can conclude that defensive Hail teams are simply put, far away from being broken.

On the other hand, offensive Hail teams or ''BlizzSpam teams'' while dangerous, are usually crippled by weaknesses to common attacking types and Stealth Rock. This usually turns out on having to reduce the number of hail abusers to fill their spots with pokemon that can check the major threats to Hail teams (think of Heracross, Chandelure, Snorlax, etc) which is easier said that done, taking into account that you only have 5 slots (''thanks'' to Snover) to deal with as many threats as you can while still being able to abuse Hail. In summary, offensive hail teams (and every hail team in general) are very restricted teambuilding-wise due to the amount of flaws they usually have, which makes them much less threatening, so I think Hail is a viable, yet balanced, playstyle in UU, and I'm voting Unban Hail

Unban Hail

The recent suspect test has shown that Hail is no longer the giant that it once was. From both playing with and against hail, it becomes apparent that the play style lacks the edge it used to have. The banning of Snow Cloak is a huge boon for those fighting against Hail.

The current UU environment is not at all kind to Hail teams. Top tier threats such as Heracross, Raikou, Mew, and Darmanitan already cause regular teams plenty of grief, and are just as potent if not moreso against Hail teams.

It is hard enough to try and account for the threats that exist in UU with regular, non-Hail teams, but when you are down to 5 real free slots outside of Snover, the task becomes much more difficult. The reason being that Hail teams in their nature, in order to get the most of the playstyle require the player to:

Try to be as offensive as possible with Hail aiding your assault, employing small defensive unit to keep things together. This is a high risk playstyle. Once your unit is taken out, which usually isn't that hard to do seeing as they have to cover so much, the rest of the team basically has to KO to survive.
Forego the route of direct offense and attempt be as defensive as is possible, allowing Hail and hazards to break down the opposition. This however opens you up to the threat of boosting sweepers such as NP Mew or SD Cobalion, and your lack of offensive presence leaves you at the mercy of more offensive teams.
"Balanced" Hail teams usually tend to not fare well, as they are neither here nor there and succumb to the offensive pressures of the opponent while not being able to do enough back.

In addition to this, one must realize that Hail teams will be looking to get the most out of the weather condition. However, getting the most out of Hail usually tends to boil down to "How can I make my team suffer less in Hail than my opponents?" More often than not it ends up being a double-edged sword.

Outside of using Magic Guard or Overcoat Pokemon, none of which are much to write home about outside of Sigilyph, by using Hail you gimp your defensive Pokemon by stripping them of leftovers recovery and hasten the demise of your offensive Pokemon by chipping off an additional 6%HP each turn. Or you can stack up on Ice Pokemon, increasing the number of (easily) exploitable shared weaknesses and Stealth Rock weaknesses, which is less than favourable to say the least.

So in closing, while the residual damage caused by Hail, and the random Blizzard freezes here and there can prove annoying, Hail is not game breaking and does not put any new constraints on team building. I believe that at present, any well built UU team is more than able to cope with whatever Hail teams may throw their way and as such I propose that Snow Warning is unbanned.

Unban hail

During this testing period, I found Hail teams to be viable competitively, but a far cry from overpowering. The primary hardship faced by Hail teams is that Snover is an extremely bad Pokemon; its terrible stats make it a horrible liability in a way that Abomasnow plainly was not (Abomasnow was individually excellent). Hail teams have to worry a great deal about accounting for Fire and Fighting attacks, which are extremely common in this metagame, and with essentially five-and-a-half Pokemon to use, the problem only becomes more pronounced. Generally, this means using fewer Ice-types: my most successful Hail team had "only" two, plus one other Pokemon using Blizzard. However, the fewer Ice-types are used, the less overall benefit the team derives from actually using Hail.
The overall impact of Hail is decidedly limited. The major reasons for Hail's previous dominance in UU were twofold: the first, as noted above, was that Abomasnow was individually a very strong Pokemon. The second is that Snow Cloak Froslass created tremendous problems for the metagame. Without Snow Cloak available anymore, courtesy of the evasion abilities ban, the only real ways to "abuse" Hail are by utilizing Ice Body Pokemon (Walrein and Glaceon) or by using offensive teams with many Blizzard users ("blizzspam"). The Ice Body Pokemon have been decidedly underwhelming when I have seen them, as defensive play in general is not especially effective in UU, considering the quality of the UU wallbreakers. Blizzspam is viable, but as noted above it tends to depend on one or two Pokemon very heavily to cover the repeated weaknesses of Ice-types, and as such cannot dominate easily the way Sand teams could, or Hail teams with Abomasnow could. Overall, Hail is balanced in UU at the present time, and should be retained in the metagame.

Unban hail

As a play-style, Hail is nothing if not restrictive. Ice is the type that fairs best in the weather condition, escaping the extra passive damage and gaining powerful STAB Blizzards. However, Ice is just not a type that is easy to stack on a team. With Heracross as the new king of UU, and the addition of the powerful Mienshao and often underestimated Scrafty to the tier, strong Fighting types are rampant. Darmanitan and Chandelure are also as strong as ever, and are difficult enough to counter on non-hail teams. Hail teams often have several Ice-types (not to mention Snover, which takes an entire teamslot and doesn't contribute much if any to team synergy), and are forced to dedicate the many if not all of the remaining three or four Pokemon to countering these big threats. These necessary concessions take away from Pokemon that could otherwise help achieve the team's win condition, instead of just preventing sweeps by some of the most common Pokemon in UU. At the end of the day, it's tough to even have 2 strong Ice-types that can fully abuse Hail.

Because it is so difficult to stack Ice-types, the traditional Hail abuse, the effective use of Hail often requires a focus on the passive damage, rather than the 100% accurate Blizzards. While this can still be an effective strategy in the UU metagame, it doesn't have the raw power of spamming Blizzards. With only a few Ice-types (again, including the weak Snover), passive damage often effects both teams, and takes some work to abuse. However, the work can be done, and there have been a few very effective Hail teams in this suspect test. However, the teams were no more effective than a well crafted weatherless team. Hail doesn't force players to use it or risk having an inferior team, and a well built team doesn't provide an easier win than any other well built team. Hail is not broken, and should be unbanned.

My vote was actually Abstain due to not feeling secure enough in my ability to vote on this subject in an unbiased way. However, my vote didn't "matter" so its okay.

np: UU Stage 10 - Suspect Test Round 1 - Let it Snow

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