I mistakenly posted this one over in the OU thread.
Name: Ultimate Weather Defuser
General Description: A Pokemon that can control the weather and shift momentum away from an opposing weather team without simply becoming another tool for extant weather teams to continue their dominance.
Justification: The entire metagame has shifted to weather wars, particularly due to Drizzle Politoed, and also to a lesser extent Ninetales. A team that doesn't take advantage of weather has a hard time facing one that does.
Questions To Be Answered:
- How does one make a weather limiter that doesn't help current rain/sun teams overmuch against their opposite weather?
- What sort of Pokemon fares well against the common themes and Pokemon of rain and sun teams? (e.g. stopping a sweeper like Venusaur or Kingdra.)
- Why are extant Cloud Nine users unable to perform their function in OU?
Explanation: I know we're not supposed to specify such things as 'when this Pokemon switches in, all weather is nullified' or 'this Pokemon should have (ability)', but in a metagame utterly dominated by rain and sun, it really
would be handy to have something to keep the skies clear. There have been a couple other suggestions in this thread on the matter, and while this may be a similar suggestion, I believe the variations between them can lead to more creative discourse.
We currently have Golduck/Altaria/Lickilicky for Cloud Nine, but they're almost unusable in OU. Rayquaza and its Air Lock ability are locked into Ubers. "Ultimate Weather Abuser" was listed as a good idea, so "Ultimate Weather Defuser" sounds like a fun parallel. Once infinite weather starts, there only exist moves to
change the weather, and asides from Cloud Nine, only abilities that
change the weather. Stopping it entirely is uncommon. It gives the advantage to neither team, but could make certain Pokemon that fare poorly in the more common weather types more useable.
In order to permanently remove weather, a weather-causing move would have to be used, and the 5-turn counter run down. (Though Cloud Nine/Air Lock means that no effect is seen.) If this CAP wanted to do this, it would need to be good at walling the current rain/sun abusers and able to defeat the Drought/Drizzle starters. A Pokemon that can actually
end weather, not just change it or suppress an opposing weather, isn't much good as a weather teammate. This Pokemon would have to last out the 5 turns of null weather in order to have any noticeable effect, and would thus have to be fairly bulky. Recovery would allow it to be used multiple times in the event of a backup weather starter on the enemy team.
The real challenge here is designing a Pokemon like this that should not be used on a standard rain or sun team. It should not be able to take advantage of the increased STABs of rain and sun, it should not be aided overmuch by the decreased damage of certain types in weather, and it shouldn't provide good synergy with the common types that abuse rain and sun. (Grass/Fire/Water) There's plenty of discussion to be had here, so I'll leave it at that.