General Suspect Discussion Thread

X5Dragon said:

I hate to break it to you and without name calling, but every suspect testing is an attempt to balance the metagame. Nobody can say for sure how the previous uber suspects would perform in BW2, otherwise the OP wouldn't even mention the possibility of a discussion about retesting some of them back into OU.

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So you're saying that just because this is BW2 and new things have been introduced, that we push the hard reset? Did the Gen 4 metagame get a full reset when Platinum and then, subsequently, HGSS came out? No, Smogon hesitated to restart all of their progress.

Now let me ask you a few questions: With the new things introduced to BW2, what exactly stops Drizzle Swim, the first thing that was banned from BW OU, and with good reason? Now, what stops Skymin, which isn't even stopped dead in its tracks in Ubers? Now, what stops Blaziken, the Pokemon who single-handedly swept pretty much every team without a Slowbro/Jellicent/etc?

Like I said before, unbanning these threats just because BW2 introduced some changes, doesn't mean we should still unban them.

tl;dr my first post but slightly more specific

BKC said:

So, BKC, how about actually proposing a solution instead of just bitching about how terrible the metagame is? Sure! I'm supporting yee's suggestion of banning Drizzle, Drought, and Deoxys-D. I believe that this will make the metagame much less matchup-reliant, for reasons I cannot word better than yee did in his post. Once we do this, we'll have taken a giant step forward in making BW OU a more competitive metagame.

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While it really isn't necessary speaking to yourself in 3rd person, I fully agree on this. I've lost many matches due to team match up, and many others probably have too. It's just really annoying pairing up with Sun and Rain when you're using something with a bad match up versus either, and it's a very valid reason on why Hail and Weatherless teams have so much trouble nowadays.

You know what, since my first was interpreted to mean anywhere from unbanning moody and releasing Darkrai for testing to bringing down legitimate ubers and toy with the OU metagame until we reach perfection, I'm gonna have to post it in another way to avoid all this confusion:

The nominees from this thread should be tested with the Ubers being nominated for OU in the next thread at the same time rather than separately.

And again Bowlcut you are not reading what I'm posting or rather you are putting words into my mouth. I clearly said that the Aldaron proposal should reapplied such that NU pokemon with Swim Swift and the like aren't banned in a Drizzle team the same way we don't ban Sandslash and Stoutland from being on a Sand Stream team.

The nominees from this thread should be tested with the Ubers being nominated for OU in the next thread at the same time rather than separately.

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Just to clarify: this isn't a nomination thread. Also, please, no personal attacks.

Bowl Cut said:

While it really isn't necessary speaking to yourself in 3rd person, I fully agree on this. I've lost many matches due to team match up, and many others probably have too. It's just really annoying pairing up with Sun and Rain when you're using something with a bad match up versus either, and it's a very valid reason on why Hail and Weatherless teams have so much trouble nowadays.

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I have to agree with this. You know Rain and Sun are overcentralizing when a poke such as Dugtrio is OU simply because it can trap toed / ttar.

If you don't have a way to take the other weather from the enemy team, you've pretty much lost unless your team is built to specifically counter those threats. Good luck oustpeeding Venasaur in the sun without something as ridiculous as scarf Jolteon; or tanking hurricanes, thunders and boosted hydropumps without Gastrodon.

undisputed said:

No offense, but I'm not sure how qualified you are to speak about Deoxys-D if you're bring up Azelf and Espeon as your first rebuttals.

I have been playing both Suspect OU and Normal OU off and on for the past couple weeks and have high rankings, and I don't think I've seen anyone use a Taunt lead Azelf other than myself. And if you're running Azelf, you're probably running a Screens Offense team, which is actually what I was doing.

Furthermore, very few people use Espeon. I've only seen it on Baton Pass teams. Suggesting Yawn is completely ludicrous as well.

I'd like to see list of Pokemon that stop Deoxys from getting Stealth Rock to open a match. Scizor runs the risk of taking HP Fire, so it doesn't count. No good player would take that risk unless there was a strong reason to believe Deoxy-D doesn't have HP Fire. Volcarona doesn't count either because it can just be Taunt/T-Waved and can't OHKO Deoxys with Bug Buzz.

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I don't get you at all. If you are saying that HO vs HO comes down to a speed tie between Deoxys-D, then why wouldn't you run something that deals with it, such as Epseon and Azelf? If you think that by giving up Deoxys-D, you fare worst against most other kind of teams, then decide. It's your choice. You have a viable choice to defend against him, yet to refuse to use him, so you can't blame anyone other except from yourself. If a playstyle is troubled a lot by a certain mon, they take measures against it, not hope that they win coin flips, pretty much as many stall teams are forced to run Shed Shell Heatran, if they want to defend against Sun teams.

And Espeon and Azelf are not the only options at all. You have DD Lum Berry Haxorus, Substitute Terrakion, NP or Agility Thundurus-T, Rock Polish Genesect that outspeeds and ohkoes Deoxys-D at +1 SpA ( (i assume that you are using 4 Def Deoxys-D to prevent powering up Scarf Genesect's Atk raising), SubCM Jirachi and SubCM Keldeo. Note that these 6 pokes are the only things that can set-up on Deoxys-D if it has Taunt / T-Wave / Hidden Power Fire, all at once, which no Deoxys-D has the room for. Most suicide Deoxys-d i have seen always use SR + Spikes, which gives them room for only 2 more moves, which means that something will always be uncovered. So most of the times, Volcarona will also be able to set-up on Deoxys-D, as well as Scizor if it lacks HP Fire. So it is easy to see that many sweepers can abuse Deoxys-D from turn 1, alongside with Espeon and Azelf, on HO teams. Btw forgive me if some of the mons i mentioned doesn't fit well in HO team, but i think that most of them do.

Anywa my point is that if Deoxys-D makes HO team struggle so much, then they should adapt, by using VIABLE pokes and strategies that do exist.

Oh and finally i don't get at all why Yawn Espeon is ludicrous at all. A Dual Screen Espeon with Yawn and BP, does anything that a HO team would want from a screener, except laying down hazards. He prevents opposing hazards from being set-up, while also preventing any set-up with Yawn. Finally when her job is done, he can easily bring one of your pokes in, after you use Yawn on something, acting as a great team player.

I personally run Deoxys-D, and I've actually done very well with it on my own HO team, but there are multiple things that can prevent me from bringing it out on turn one, or force me out early. First of all, if the enemy leads with Politoed, I have to guess if I think it's Scarfed or not. If I stay in, and it is, I've just lost my Deoxys. If Genesect is the opposing lead, I have to be wary of Scarf Bug Buzz, or Choice Band U-Turn. Also, if the enemy leads with something that is faster than Deoxys and I REALLY don't want to give turns of set-up to (Timid Volcarona being prime suspect number 1), I'm immediately at a disadvantage against my opponent.
Deoxys-D doesn't have the speed that Deoxys-S had, which is what made that one so broken as a hazard setter. Despite its fantastic bulk, it can't take certain high powered attacks because of its low hp and lousy typing. Also, Donphan and Forretress have advantages over Deoxys. Donphan can actually hurt things, and both Donphan and Forry can spin hazards away as well as set them. Both also have sturdy to prevent being OHKO'd, which Deoxys lacks.
And finally, I've done a LOT of laddering in the past week, and I rarely even see Deoxys-D on teams. Forretress, Ferrothorn, and Donphan I see a LOT more frequently (Donphan usually on sun teams only, though). If Deoxys-D were so broken, it would be used a lot more frequently than it is.

While I might have to agree with you about its brokenness, Danger Mouse, just because a pokemon is used less than others doesn't mean it can't still be broken.

To those that are complaining about a particular type of weather.

Make 2 lists.

In the first list, put all of the pokemon who are viable to use under that weather due to the properties it brings.

In the second list, put all of the pokemon that would be viable to use if auto-weather didn't exist.

The second list is going to be a good bit smaller, and if you do this for all 4 weathers you realise that you'd be taking out a lot of pokemon from OU that otherwise wouldn't be there. The 4 weather inducers for starters.

GatoDelFuego said:

While I might have to agree with you about its brokenness, Danger Mouse, just because a pokemon is used less than others doesn't mean it can't still be broken.

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Oh, I do agree with you there, a pokemon doesn't have to be used on every team for it to be broken...but I was just making the point that it doesn't seem to get as much use as other hazard setters, which to me speaks to it not being particularly broken.

EDIT: And now, some July 2012 Usage Statistics:
3.) Ferrothorn
15.) Forretress
20.) Tentacruel
21.) Skarmory
37.) Donphan
49.) Deoxys-D

As you can see, EVERY SINGLE COMMON hazard layer is used more often than Deoxys. It will be interesting to see if August has given Deoxys a boost in usage, but I'm not seeing it that often. I fail to see how Deoxys-D can be considered broken when compared to other hazard setters, which all arguably bring more to the table than Deoxys (actual offensive presence, better overall bulk/resistances, access to rapid spin, Sturdy). All that Deoxys-D has over ANY of them is a decently fast taunt and good enough bulk to take weak hits comfortably...and I say this as somebody who uses it regularly. Deoxys-D has 4MSS so bad it's not even funny.

I don't think that the size of OU should be a factor in removing auto-weather. Nothing really benefits from having weather gone, but something should not be kept in OU JUST because it makes things viable. For example, Kyogre should not be OU because it makes Gastrodon more usable. Blaziken should not be OU because it makes Jellicent and Slowbro more usable. If they deserved to be in OU, they'd be in normally without the crutch their weather provides. Dugtrio, Victreebel, and Lapras wouldn't be OU viable because they're not OU worthy pokemon without weather.

yee said:

No one is banning anything because they are mad they lost or they don't want to change their playstyle- that's a stupid belief and I won't waste time justifying myself. In real tournament games, you guess what playstyle the other guy is using and load the team for them, guess right you win, wrong you lose. Less than a third of the time does the decision come from skill.

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People blame matchup too much for sloppy teambuilding, if your team has an prominent weakness to a playstyle or threat, that is your fault. Teambuilding involves opportuinty cost, it is very hard to make a completely foolproof team, but you can most definitely limit your weaknesses to the extent where you dont need to be "guessing" which playstyle the opponent is going to be using to select your team. By placing such high importance of what your matchup with your opponent may be, you are essentially creating a situation yourself where matchup is important.(not sure if this makes sense) I've had plenty of games where i have had "bad matchup" and still won with clever play (although this is easier with offensive teams). If matchup was such a guessing game and the most important factor as you put it, why are certain players so much more dominant than others in the BW tournament scene, or perhaps they are just really lucky with their matchups? (this is a joke btw)

yee said:

1. If it's a 50/50 guess, it's not skill. There are predictions that factor in more but not when referring to a coin flip.




2. Shed Shell Heatran w/ SR + Dragons sand teams beat sun 99% of the time. *That post is flat invalid.

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O rly?

I would love to see some evidence to back up all your very precise statistics...

BKC said:

You can't shake this off with the rebuttal "your team is bad if it's constantly got matchup syndrome"; well then, I guess the reason all the important World Cup battles were pretty much decided on matchups and 50/50 coinflips is because all those high-level players had some pretty terrible teams, right?
.

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i would be interested if you were to post logs from wcop which were decided "by matchup", as it seems to me, most games allegedly decided by matchup could have been avoided, or the matchup angle is overstated.


i also think a suspect ladder with no weather would be pretty neat for tests and stuff.

X5Dragon said:

Genesect on the other hand needs to be sent directly to uber until we have the chance to bring some ubers down to OU (which is a later discussion as you said) and new DW releases (Chandy).

Nearly impossible to trap and kill with our current pokemon, hard to find out which set it is using without losing a lot, near perfect coverage and good typing aided by rain. Also having a good ability in Download which semi-allows it to bypass Multiscale among other things and great offensive stats as a mixed pokemon (120/120/99?) that doesn't hurt either.

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Really? I find it very easy to take down Genesect with the right support. I use my Ferrothorn with Rocky Helmet to counter U-Turning Genesects who lack Flamethrower, and I also use Heatran who can OHKO it with a single Fire Blast. There really isn't much Genesect can do against a Heatran.

But then again, Genesect outspeeds Heatran and it never, EVER lacks flamethrower. Genesect can easily go out to something like dugtrio, however.

Ok, time to give my opinion on tiering. This should be interesting.

For me, the one and only problem in this metagame is weather. People in this thread are calling for a Tornadus-T ban, which I find utterly absurd. Tornadus-T is a rather poor pokemon outside of rain, and a strong but distinctly manageble threat inside. But rain is everywhere, you say? Is it really? In my experience, and that of several others, the most common weather type at the top of both the PS and the PO ladder (which sadly has a much higher standard than ours) is....sun. Yes, sun. Those few cookie-cutter sun teams that are oh so difficult to deal with (I mean seriously I'm sure half of them are identical). The things make me want to run both Tyranitar and Politoed on the same team, just to give you an idea. For me, the mere fact that one team can become so prominent is itself a problem.

However, the main problem with Sun is that it is the weather type that is by far the most potent. Anyone running a weatherless team will know that sun is the most threatening by a long shot - that's what sun does; it supresses weather teams, and is therefore the primary cause of all the ridiculous weather wars we see. I also feel that sun has the upper hand against rain (which initially sounds confusing) but not really against sand, which could possibly lead to games commonly coming down to team matchup. Playing against sun is just so different to playing against any other kind of team, and I feel that to deal with sun I need to construct my team in such a way as to disadvantage myself significantly against other teams.

Unfortunately, though, I think if sun were to be banned, we may also have to say goodbye to rain; in my opinion rain would become totally overpowered, as the majority of sand threats are weak to rain threats, and as such people might be running Tyranitar purely to remove rain - it would be the very definition of "overcentralisation" if it were in fact a word.

But then, would sand become overpowered? Why are you suggesting that we ban the weather inducing abilities for sand and rain, but merely to ban the sand-related threats? Well, I think the key here is that without sand-related abilities (sand rush and sand veil) sand is a completely harmless weather, as is hail. Sun and rain are on the other hand inherently extremely powerful due to the effect they have on fire and water-type moves. So, my preference would be merely to ban excadrill (as we already have) and sand veil, and to see how other sand rush users affect the metagame before considering a ban.

As for non-weather-related threats, I feel Genesect is the only one worthy of consideration. A U-turn of such power makes merely countering it inadequate, and it's already an extremely difficult pokemon to counter; with one or two checks weakened by repeated U-turns and hazards, or trapped by Dugtrio, Gothitelle, or Wobbuffet, Genesect can cause untold havoc to your team. But since when has volt-turn been broken? The answer is, we've never had a volt-turner any where near approaching the power of Genesect. For me, it's too much.

Honestly, I think the simplest and best option for the moment is to ban auto-weather. All pokes get their new abilities to use, and while it would make a lot of things unviable, it would be the one thing that I think could lead us to a metagame that is not so unbelievably offensive with weather wars and whatnot. Hey, you could even bring down excadrill and perhaps thundurus. I'm not saying that's the first option, I'm saying that all these silly weather wars should be done away with and then see where we can go from there.

On a related note, I've just today understood the real power of keldo. Could you imagine if Terrakion, already a huge powerhouse, got BULK UP to boost its power even further, and then receive a nearly permanent EXTRA 1.5x boost to its Close Combat? And then what if it had a rock move that could hit gliscor's special defense instead of its defense? That's pretty much the physical equivalent of keldo, who is I think going to become a monster, bans or not.

Just noting that I personally love this suspect metagame, think Rough Skin Garchomp is a great boon to the meta by improving Sand teams, providing easy SR against Sun teams, and in conjunction with Rocky Helmet and Rocky Helmet Iron Barbs Ferrothorn providing a great voltturn check.

I think I'll push for us to make this suspect ladder "official" once we in the OU council decide what council / suspect hybrid to adopt.

Aladaron, I think you mixed up the threads. This is the general discussion thread, not the garchomp one :P

Nah Gato, I meant to post that here to imply that atm I'm not really considering much else as suspect due to the current suspect metagame.

Umm, could you elaborate a bit more? You claim sun is vastly superior to the other weathers but don't explain why. You do the same with Tornadus-T and dismiss it without justification.

The case of Tornadus has already been made before yet people are bringing up the point that it is weak outside of rain. This is true in that it is far less threatening with a terribly inaccurate Hurricane however don't forget how difficult it is to take its weather away. Tyranitar has a hard time dealing with U-Turn and Superpower, Hippowdon doesn't like Hurricane, and the best Ninetails can hope for is that it wins the coin flip and not get blasted by Hurricane. In any case, Tornadus can easily U-Turn as the opposing weather starter switches in and go to Politoed to bring rain right back or simply use Rain Dance itself to continue its Hurricane spam.

Just to recap, it is far from manageable under rain due to its ability to abuse Substitute with Regenerator to prevent revenge killing and use Hurricane confusion hax to get past most of its walls.

As far as sun is concerned, I fail to see how you reached your conclusion. (besides the fact you didn't explain) It has, essentially, three types of abusers:
1. Fire types like Victini, Chandelure, and Darminitan which use powerful attacking stats and fire moves to bust along with the double STAB from sun to burn holes in teams. However, they tend to suffer from a Stealth Rock weakness, slow speed, and fragile defences. On top of that, Politoed and Tyranitar have an easy time switching in on the fire attacks they are abusing due to their natural resist, bulk, and weather change. (they have to watch out for coverage moves though)
2. Chlorophyl sweepers that use a doubled speed to sweep teams and, often times, a sleep move to take out a bothersome threat. However, they tend to suffer from mediocre attacking stats and moves which makes them reliant on boosting moves, such as Growth, to start their sweep. This turn setting up ...

... leaves them open to attacks or a weather change.
3. Dragons that use sun boosted fire attacks to bust steels. No real downsides to them except that dragons fit on any team and rain teams can respond to them with steels that lack a fire weakness thanks to rain.

Rain, on the other hand, has plenty of abusers that can fire off fast, powerful Hydro Pumps without the need of a boost which are much harder to switch a different weather summoner into due to their natural water weakness (barring hail). They even get powerful moves like Hurricane and Thunder with bothersome and/or crippling side effects. Defensively, the weakening of water attacks is a god send for the tough steel types that are important to just about any team.

(This was for jc104, btw)

Aldaron said:

Nah Gato, I meant to post that here to imply that atm I'm not really considering much else as suspect due to the current suspect metagame.

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Isn't this kind of backwards to be trying to be re-introducing former bans before dealing with the controversy brought by the new threats?

Melee Mewtwo said:

Isn't this kind of backwards to be trying to be re-introducing former bans before dealing with the controversy brought by the new threats?

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It's already been said that this Suspect discussion isn't for the purpose of nominating a new threat and a few of the OU council have already come down on the side of "nothing is suspect".

Given what else is happening in the Smogon environment I think a "what if" scenario is fairly apt.

What if Garchomp was running about today's OU meta (sans Sand Veil). Well see for yourself on the suspect OU ladder on PS! He fits right in and with his speed and power makes an excellent go-to Scarfer to deal with Tornadus-T.

Funny story, Scarf Garchomp's Outrage hits Tornadus-T as hard as Tornadus-T's LO boosted Hurricane hits Garchomp.


The danger I suppose of opening up suspect discussion is that people feel the need to come up with a suspect. If those on the top of the ladder have cracked the secret of opposing Rain which is the most used weather, the fact that it happens to be Sun does not automatically make Sun broken - that logic is a little off.

Melee Mewtwo said:

Umm, could you elaborate a bit more? You claim sun is vastly superior to the other weathers but don't explain why. You do the same with Tornadus-T and dismiss it without justification.

The case of Tornadus has already been made before yet people are bringing up the point that it is weak outside of rain. This is true in that it is far less threatening with a terribly inaccurate Hurricane however don't forget how difficult it is to take its weather away. Tyranitar has a hard time dealing with U-Turn and Superpower, Hippowdon doesn't like Hurricane, and the best Ninetails can hope for is that it wins the coin flip and not get blasted by Hurricane. In any case, Tornadus can easily U-Turn as the opposing weather starter switches in and go to Politoed to bring rain right back or simply use Rain Dance itself to continue its Hurricane spam.

Just to recap, it is far from manageable under rain due to its ability to abuse Substitute with Regenerator to prevent revenge killing and use Hurricane confusion hax to get past most of its walls.

As far as sun is concerned, I fail to see how you reached your conclusion. (besides the fact you didn't explain) It has, essentially, three types of abusers:
1. Fire types like Victini, Chandelure, and Darminitan which use powerful attacking stats and fire moves to bust along with the double STAB from sun to burn holes in teams. However, they tend to suffer from a Stealth Rock weakness, slow speed, and fragile defences. On top of that, Politoed and Tyranitar have an easy time switching in on the fire attacks they are abusing due to their natural resist, bulk, and weather change. (they have to watch out for coverage moves though)
2. Chlorophyl sweepers that use a doubled speed to sweep teams and, often times, a sleep move to take out a bothersome threat. However, they tend to suffer from mediocre attacking stats and moves which makes them reliant on boosting moves, such as Growth, to start their sweep. This turn setting up ...

... leaves them open to attacks or a weather change.
3. Dragons that use sun boosted fire attacks to bust steels. No real downsides to them except that dragons fit on any team and rain teams can respond to them with steels that lack a fire weakness thanks to rain.

Rain, on the other hand, has plenty of abusers that can fire off fast, powerful Hydro Pumps without the need of a boost which are much harder to switch a different weather summoner into due to their natural water weakness (barring hail). They even get powerful moves like Hurricane and Thunder with bothersome and/or crippling side effects. Defensively, the weakening of water attacks is a god send for the tough steel types that are important to just about any team.

(This was for jc104, btw)


Isn't this kind of backwards to be trying to be re-introducing former bans before dealing with the controversy brought by the new threats?

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I didn't make any attempt to justify my claim apart from experience. Sun is quite clearly the superior weather, at least when ignoring the capabilities of its inducer. To be honest, I really thought this was obvious. The key here is that Sun has much more powerful speed boosting threats, and that fire-type moves are significantly harder to deal with than water-type moves. There's precisely one fire-immune Pokemon in OU, and it's very trappable, while for water moves there is Gastrodon, Jellicent, Vaporeon sometimes. Then there's a whole host of specially bulky pokemon with water resistance (or just with absurd special defense like the pink blobs). But dealing with sun boosted V-creates, Flare Blitzes and Fire Blasts is a whole different matter. I don't really know what to say, except go on the ladder with a weatherless team, and try to beat some sun teams. It's not going to go well for you.

In sun, sun teams are virtually unmanageable. To be honest, I really thought that went without saying. The key here is that I was trying not to touch on weather change - I understand that sun teams can be dealt with by weather change, but if this is the only method of dealing with them (which it is) then I would consider sun teams to be overpowered.

The fact that they are so strong allows sun teams to invest a considerable amount into winning the weather war; trappers, u-turners, spinners, magic bouncers etc are easy to fit on there without excessively compromising on power. Sunny Day Ninetales can beat most varieties of Politoed one-on-one, and if rain teams are relying on water-type moves, thunder, and hurricane to do damage, they'll have almost nothing to use under sun. Ninetales can switch into a large proportion of prominent rain threats with little to no worry. As before I'll concede that sun is at a disadvantage against sand, unless of course dugtrio manages to trap Tyranitar. Again, please construct a normal rain team, go on the ladder, and see what it's like to face a sun team along the lines of Ninetales / Dugtrio / Xatu / Venusaur / Victini / Genesect (the main cookie-cutter sun team to which I was referring). Unless you've gone seriously out of your way I suspect you'll find yourself at a disadvantage.

As I've said, the mere fact that this one team completely dominates the top of the ladders is a cause for worry. It's difficult for me to prove this without persuading Antar to do 1337 stats (or an equivalent for PS with a different cutoff), but I can call on my personal experience and that of several others.

I didn't say at any point that it was easy to change the weather in the face of a Tornadus-T. It isn't. But if you look at the rest of my post I suggest banning rain later; half the point there is that rain was the only reason Tornadus-T could even be considered for banning. In my opinion rain makes a lot of other things equally unmanageable (e.g Keldeo, or basically any other powerful water-type; even Tentacruel). The reason that I find tornadus manageble, is that it's not especially strong and fairly frail; most members of most of my teams can take a hit from it and KO or cripple it in return - it's not complicated. I've also seen none with substitute; even if in theory in sounds like a good idea, it can hardly be cause for a ban at such an early stage when so uncommon.

Also, I agree in large part with that bit not directed at me. We shouldn't be looking to reintroduce threats unless there is a clear way that they balance or otherwise improve the current metagame. As I said earlier, the OU cutoff is fairly arbitrary, and there's no need to move it around without VERY good reasoning.

Skore said:

The danger I suppose of opening up suspect discussion is that people feel the need to come up with a suspect. If those on the top of the ladder have cracked the secret of opposing Rain which is the most used weather, the fact that it happens to be Sun does not automatically make Sun broken - that logic is a little off.

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Who cares if sun is the only way to oppose rain, that doesn't mean that sun can't be broken. IMO both weathers are vastly overpowered. They both "check each other" through their weather changes, and the rest of the game just gets caught up in the massive wars between them. Fact is, unless you're packing another weather, you generally can't get any sort of advantage over sun, rain, or even sand. The fact that the only way to beat sun is to change the weather is a test to how unbelievably powerful it is.

Ok going to pipe back up here and say that I still think that it's wrong to say that the only way to beat weather (including sun) is to change the weather. I say this because my weatherless teams don't do that and yet they aren't horribly weak to weather. I don't understand how that can happen and your points still be valid; it just doesn't logically follow.

For example, sun. There are several ways to deal with sun in its own element without changing the weather. Dragon types of all sorts give Sun teams a lot of a trouble. Heatran might be easily trapable by Dugtrio, but if you're careful with it that doesn't have to happen. A dugtrio trap is easily seen a mile away and you can always just switch out before it comes in. If you have rocks or spikes on something other than Heatran, Dugtrio can't even switch into Heatran; it'll get wrecked by lava plume after its sash is broken. If you're really worried about being trapped, Heatran isn't so dependent on its item that it can't run Shed Shell or Shuca Berry, though I personally haven't needed to go that far.

Mamoswine is another Pokemon that gives sun lots of trouble, its weaknesses be damned. They don't matter too much when you hit everything they have for a super-effective damage before they can attack you. You might have a chore getting it in but once you do that sun team is in trouble.

Other pokemon working together with other can serve to give certain segments of sun trouble too, so you don't have to carry more than one Pokemon that can handle it. You do basically have to have at least one Pokemon if you're running a weather-less team true, and if this was for an individual Pokemon I'd consider it broken. But it's not; it's for a slew of Pokemon, not just one. It's like calling HO broken because you need to prepare to a degree for it too. Sure you can make the argument that Ninetails is one Pokemon, but it's merely the facilitator; it doesn't do much itself. You're not preparing for Ninetail; you're preparing for the vast number of threats that use its support.

(Thanks Haunter for merging my posts. My stupid DSi forces a character limit.)
@Skore: Thanks, I wasn't aware that the council felt nothing was suspect. (Whuch was what I was hoping to find out by asking the question.)

@jc104: I was asking for justification because what you said was against the general feeling to the contrary. You even acknowledged this somewhat when you stated that sun had the upperhand against rain. (making some remark about it seeming confusing)

The Tornadus-T points was a bit more general than the rest of my post as couple people seem to underestimate it due to its dependacy of rain.

Just a little note, I use weatherless teams since I get bored of weather in OU. Bulky Dragonite tends to take care of sun threats for me and it doesn't seem much different for that team you talk about. Obviously I'll need a team mate to deal with stuff like Ice Beam from Genesect, but for one mon bulky DNite does a good job.

Another thing, Sub Tornadus is honestly, in my opinion, a big derp for all of us who didn't think of it cause its already a widely recognized to be very effective on Ho-Oh who can't abuse it nearly as well as Tornadus. (On top of that, the last slot was pretty much filler for Tornadus. Kind of a double derp, there.)


Now for the points you brought up.
1. It is true that Fire is a superior offensive attacking type. However, there are many more powerful water attackes and they have many more options than their fire brethern. As I already mentioned, the sheer power of something like a rain boosted Hydro Pump from Keldeo forces you to have a water immunity to deal with it. Sadly, that is not enough as water types tend to be very versatile, such as Keldeo's Secret Sword, and rain gives them a boost to their coverage moves as well as their water type STAB in the form of Thunder and Hurricane. This lets rain sweepers to easily get past water resisted/immune pokemon as well as, in the case of the more gifted like Keldeo, special walls.

2. You don't need to change weather to deal with sun. In the case of fire attackers, you can prey on their meh speed and SR weakness while for chlorophly sweepers you can make sure they have a hard time getting the much needed set up. For more reliable answers, there are many popular OU mons that can deal with sun threats such as Dragonite, Lati@s, Chansey, Slowbro, and Hippowdon just to name a few.
3. The thing about rain is that they can stil perform well outside rain and don't need support to keep the weather in their favor. If they really wanted to, they can easily make room for something like Dugtrio make sure their rain stays.
4. Don't overlook the defensive benefits brought by rain that sun can't match. Steels without fire weaknesses are near unbreakable walls and stuff like Tentacruel can be a real pain to get rid of.

As far as your general suggestion of getting rid of weather like sun and rain, I also disagree. This has been brought up many times in the past and Smogon has decided against it, instead choosing to ban the overwhelming abusers. Banning weather now would be a huge step backward as Smogon would have to review most of their old bans as a result of it.