[Pocket]

I am enjoying the discussion taking place here :) Maintain this momentum, brothers!

yee brings an interesting point about "weatherless sand" teams. Most tournament players use Tyranitar more for its Pursuit-trapping capabilities than for summoning Sand. Keldeo and Landorus-I simply form a superb offensive core with a Pursuit trapper, and Tyranitar does this best. Now that Sand abusers are pretty much limited to Stoutland (and Sandslash?), there are very few specialized sand teams.

Although if you're using a bulky defensive approach for your weatherless team, Sand may work against you, since it negates Leftovers recovery from Celebi / Zapdos / Rotom-W, etc and racks up further damage on LO Latias, etc. So in a sense, sand does limit your teambuilding options to a degree, and I would advise against slapping Hippo for the sole reason to "counter weather." There are no shortages in beating weather teams, as I will explain below.

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The biggest conclusion that we all formulated from the last suspect test was that a weatherless team without Deoxys-D team is NOT crap, as some players have incorrectly claimed in the past to fuel the hatred for weather. Deoxys-D was simply a brainless, uninspired, and exploitable route to build weatherless (or weather teams), but is certainly not the cause of weatherless's success in current metagame.

The main cause for a successful weatherless teams would have to be access to powerful priorities and Scarfers to check fast weather threats. I personally find Mamoswine + Scarf Landorus core to pretty much check Sun teams with ease. Mamoswine finishes off chloro sweepers, while Landorus says "nice try," to +1 Volcarona / Heatran / Darmanitan. This core also happens to do work in Sand teams as well, since Sand does not appreciate Mamoswine's Ground + Ice offense, nor Scarf Landorus's Ground + Rock offense, which are now augmented by Sand Force. CB Nite singlehandedly is another strong check for Sun threats.

DrizzleToed can actually backfire on Rain users, since weatherless players can simply pack a Kingdra to dismantle Rain Offense. Specs Gothitelle is a perfect partner for Kingdra, and a major boon to weatherless team in general, eliminating the likes of Ferrothorn and Tentacruel for Kingdra to spam its powerful Dual STAB special offense with abandon. The opponent's Rain essentially facilitates the demise of such teams by the hands of Swift Swimmers - the presence of Kingdra alone has prevented the opponent from summoning Rain xD

Another factor for the viability of weatherless teams (I mean, weatherless have higher usage than all four weathers combined) is being freed from weather wars and the extra team slot space that can be filled up with a less mediocre Pokemon than say Politoed. We have so many weather-independent power hitters such as Landorus, Terrakion, Mamoswine, Scizor, Breloom, Latios, Conkeldurr, etc to destroy opposing weather teams, while we also have pokemon options that can abuse the opposing weather: RD Kingdra, Rotom-W, or Keldeo in Rain; Heatran, Volcarona, Chandelure, or Victini in Sun (Fire-types are actually quite useful versus Rain for dispatching Ferrothorn and Jirachi, and are accompanied with powerful coverage moves such as HP Grass / Giga Drain / Sunny Beam / Bolt Strike to dish out pain to Water-types); Landorus in Sand; or Kyurem(-B) in Hail. Creativity and flexibility are probably the biggest weapons that allow weatherless to thrive in this relatively weather-centric generation.