BW2 General Metagame Discussion Thread

[superbadd]

I honestly don't think hail will be that powerful. OU isn't very friendly to ice types, plus there's SR which really puts a lot of pressure on it. I think hail will balance out the dragons if all of the other weathers are banned.

[ThePillsburyDoughBoy]

Originally Posted by Fat tehy

Also, why are you talking about banning sand? Really, other than the two sand veilers, there are no really great abusers of those any more, and that would remove two good-on-their-own merit pokemon from the metagame.

I would argue that Sand Force Landorus and Sand Rush Sandslash (who is an amazing Rapid Spinner when equipped with LO, tied for best in the tier) would let Sand have powerful options that couldn't be "anti-metagamed" (other than carrying bs like Sunny Day) might make Sand stand out a lot more for powerful options compared to non-weather.

Originally Posted by Fat superbadd

-Underused pokemon that are ou viable because of weather won't be any more.

By extension, you could say that there are underused Pokemon that become OU viable without weather anymore. Some UU's like Zapdos, Slowbro, Bronzong, and Kingdra (who can now more freely use Rain Dance) wouldn't have to deal with very powerful weather hits, like boosted water attacks. Some lower OU's who have difficulty dealing with powerful hits, like Reuniclus (though Genesect and Scizor really would hurt it), might see a rise too.

[alkinesthetase]

i definitely believe that if either rain or sun is banned, the other will have to accompany it into the void. these two are really the most powerful weathers by far. sun has chlorophyll, fire nukes, we all know how this works. rain has hurricane, thunder, hydro pump, etc etc.

however i don't know if sand will need to be banned, if those two are banned - that's a different story altogether, i think. the main use of sand is to get use out of tyranitar while simultaneously annoying other weathers. there are only two mons in OU that are rock (can abuse for sdef boosts), one relevant mon with sand force (landorus-I, and physical landorus is not as popular as it used to be... it was once a powerhouse of the BW metagame though) and only one relevant user of sand veil (gliscor. possibly garchomp depending on what the council says). both the viable sand rushers are in lower tiers, which is indicative of how powerful they are in OU. sand is definitely not being run because any one pokemon can become a powerhouse while under it. that might change if it becomes the only major weather though

and hail will definitely need some more work before it becomes an OU threat. really the main reason hail is run right now is for blizzard spam, residual damage (which sand fails to get on many bulky mons) and, reason #1 by far, to change the weather and deny control of it against others. hail will become stronger if all the other weathers disappear, but i have a tough time believing that it will ever dominate. you can't make a team with more than two ice types on it and still maintain a metagame edge. it's just not gonna happen with a type as shitty as ice.

all these thoughts are a long way off though so it's just theory

EDIT

landorus has sheer force, so it doesn't need sand. keldeo doesn't rely on rain to function, and the power drop isn't that great considering +2 hydro pumps will still hurt. volcarona has been used outside of sun and still works nicely, so it doesn't need sun. Rain Therians are the only things will be nuked, but even thundy-t can still fit on volt-switch teams.

you are missing the point that superbadd tried to make. it doesn't matter that these threats will still be powerful, the point is that they are LESS powerful and that means the counter list goes up. whether that's good or bad is up for discussion, but hp ground lum volcarona in sun has NO counters in the game. only checks. take away the sun and the list goes up dramatically.
as for landorus, you missed something important between sheer and sand force: almost nothing in landorus's physical movepool benefits from sheer force. stone edge and earthquake do NOT gain boosts from sheer force. the whole reason landorus was so powerful was good speed and a solid (not extraordinary) base attack, combined with the sand force boost that affected both rock and ground moves. that means its edgequake was a LOT stronger than most base 100 speed mons should have been capable of achieving. sheer force is only usable on special sets which are easily walled and frankly only effective against a narrow bracket of teams - teams that are popular right now, which is why the set itself is popular, but sheer force landorus-I is without a doubt an anti-meta mon, not a meta one. it counters popular threats but will never be one. it lacks the punch and coverage.
weatherless keldeo is really not all that common. even on sand, where keldeo does appear, the main advantage of running it is that you've taken one of rain's most powerful sweepers and put it on your own team, so you can turn rain's own weapons against it. it happens to be solid enough that it can stick up for itself if rain is not present, but it's not exactly a game-demolishing set without its rain backed hydro pumps. it only gets interesting when you give keldeo the rain support. i personally think keldeo is fine either way though - it has lots of counters because of its shit worthless movepool.

Er, without sand, NO ONE will use Excadrill, so Donphan will remain an OU spinner.

lol WHAT? you serious? sand means excadrill can no longer sweep. it is still without a doubt one of the three best spinners in the game. steel typing, high attack, and enough base HP to take a few hits (not many, donphan is bulkier, but the steel typing goes a LOOONG way). go take a look at excadrill's uber analysis. the bulky spinner set is the FIRST one. not the offensive SD set that arguably made it overpowered in OU... the BULKY SLOW ONE. yeah. it's not gonna sweep any time soon, but it still packs plenty of punch, and moreover, it's a usable pokemon with rapid spin - that alone means it will be guaranteed to see usage. i have even seen mold breaker discussed and used seriously in ubers, because bulky excadrill can use it to force out giratina-O (otherwise you can only hurt giratina-O with boosted shadow claws, and there's only so much room in a moveset that already runs rapid spin).

as for tornadus-T counters, chansey is very shaky because you cannot switch in on a superpower - you won't wish/protect fast enough to survive the next two and you have no leftovers to save your ass with protect stalling. nobody in the game should ever be running heatproof bronzong; the main reason to run bronzong is because levitate takes its resistance pattern from solid to ridiculous. otherwise you suddenly become vulnerable to everything running ground/ice or ground/rock coverage, and there's no shortage of those.

[Shurtugal]

I guess what I am trying to say is that by removing weather, your taking away playstyles commonly used in OU. We've still yet to touch rather rain, sun, and sand are broken first, much less if we should ban them. Rain has currently centralized, but it isn't broken. If we ban one, the structure does fall, but I don't see why we need to ban weather in the first place. That's my point entirely. We've yet to prove if a weather is broken.

[alexwolf]

Sand will almost surely be broken without Sun and Rain. Stoutland, Sandslash, Terrakion and Sand Force Landorus will all make sure of that. Good luck building an offensive team with Sandslash and Stoutland lurking in the corner, which will be able to revenge kill almost every offensive threat, and quite easily sweep. Oh and Terrakion... This beast will have a 324 SpD stat coupled with a 324 HP stat, which means that he will be able to set-up on most special attackers in OU, and then decimate your whole team after an SD / RP / Sub.

An argument could also be made that Hail alone would become broken, if it was the sole perma-weather. As UU has shown, we should not underastimate the power of sole perma-weather, even Hail's. You haven't faced the nightmare called Snow Cloak Froslass under constant, unremovable Hail. Or Snow Cloak Mamo. Or Specs Kyurem spamming Blizzard. You though SubKyurem was annoying to deal with if T-Spikes were on the field? Then add Hail damage to the mix, and a more pwoerful STAB on his hands, and sweet dreams.

[superbadd]

@Shurtugal you're taking what I said way too seriously, it's just a hypothetical situation, no need to come raging and attacking. FYI that post was not directed to you, just the below comment.

1)Blaziken's power in the sun is what put it over. Why? because slowbro, latias, and jelllicent could be 2HKO'd. Without sun blaziken has counters. Manaphy will have a hard counter in ferrothorn or gastrodon. So no, it won't be broken. Plus it can be toxic stalled w/o rain and no longer has a recovery move, so it's easy to wear down. It's essentially a water type mew, but with less options.
2) People will use excadrill over donphan because of the points I mentioned. You can't deny that is has more power and can beat jellicent and gengar, not to mention is can survive a special attack.
3) Just because something is SR weak does not mean it sucks. Salamence and dragonite suck going by what you said.
4) I said removal of weather would weaken pokes like volcarona not decrease their viability. They'd still be powerful, but not as threatening. Did you even read what I wrote?
5)There is no way could just predict all the possible playstyles if every weather was banned. Don't act like you can.
6) If chansey has just a little bit of damage(say 10%) and it comes in on SR, it will be 2HKo'd. Jirachi get's 2HKO'd by specs heat wave in the sun after SR. Lol, no one runs heat proof bronzong. Rotom-w can be worn down by repeated u-turns and hazard damage. Btw superpower does 44% min to rotom, it's a good check but NOT a counter.

[Scarfwynaut]

I don't think rain is broken to be honest, there are many easy work arounds for Tornadus and Keldeo, most of their checks and counters are found on common teams. Also, to be honest if one banned drizzle Keldeo and Tornadus-T (and Tornadus-N) pretty much become pieces of instant shit, so you are effectively banning them all in one swoop anyway. There is also the landslide issue of further bans to sun and maybe sand as a result.

To be honest a ban to weather, pretty much changes the entire fucking metagame, the metagame we have grown to love as 5th generation OU. If you ban weather, you have a different metagame all together. That could be an argument that weather centralizes the metagame, but that's like arguing that stealth rock centralized the 4th gen meta.

Im all for suspecting the abusers (Tornadus / Venusaur / Keldeo), that would keep the current meta without doing to much damage to it. Simply, I would rather keep our meta and tweak it, than scrap it can start from pretty much scratch over 2 years ago.

Edit: Yeah I want Genesect and Deoxys-D out of OU to, id rather have those pain in the asses gone than rain everywhere.

[Roie]

Weather wars add depth to the game. Removing permweatherstarters would add depth to teambuilding, but not actual gameplay. It doesn't matter who becomes viable and who doesn't, if the game becomes less fun. Beisdes, there are way easier ban-consideratios to make that would make a better OU, like genesect and Deoxys-D

[tehy]

I'd like to point out that deo-D offense does NOT murder stall, because stall can just run sableye. Not that it does. But it can and should.

Superbadd, blaziken can still just t-punch bulky waters. That does more damage than a sun-boosted flare blitz anyhow. It can't muscle past other counters, but those will be CHECKS, not counters.

I don't think rain adds depth to the game, it just makes almost all teams rain teams. Which isn't depth.

And donphan is way physically bulkier than excadrill;i'd use it over exca 100%.

[Shurtugal]

my point was that banning weather isn't really ideal nor is it going to happen. rain itself isn't broken. like to point out that by banning rain you would be banning rain stall, which doesn't use any of the mentioned threats in this thread. i agree with tehy, i would use phan over excadrill. not to mention ice priority is pretty resourceful. im not saying exca isn't viable, but most teams used it only in sand or as a sand check. ubers and ou are different metagames, just saying, and it works so well because the most common rapid spin blocker in ubers is checked / countered by exca.

my point is that we shouldn't be talking about the effects of weather banning because weather isn't broken, it just isn't. maybe some pokemon IN the weather are (like exca) , but not the weathers themselves.

@alkin

im not saying people should run heat proof zong, just that not all variants are ohko'ed. also, torn-t isn't seen much on sun teams and heat wave won't ohko in rain so its safe to say they counter him. rotom-w can still easily switch into torn-t. i think superpower fails to 2hko chansey, someone on this thread discussed it before, i forget the calcs. i could be wrong, but im pretty sure it can check torn.

@ tehy

deo-d can easily run mental herb to cure taunt status and taunt sableye, just saying.

edit: genesect should be suspect but idk about deo-d, magic bouncers like xatu fuck the team over and rapid spinning works, its just a matter of how fast u can remove the ghost. but w/e deo-d and gene up for debate

[alkinesthetase]

i think superpower fails to 2hko chansey, someone on this thread discussed it before, i forget the calcs. i could be wrong, but im pretty sure it can check torn.

the problem is that chansey is still a terrible solution to tornadus-t. you can't stay in against it for very long without walling up which means you have no opportunity to damage or status tornadus. if you switch in on a superpower you have to start healing right away or your chansey WILL die. a counter needs to both take its opponent's hits, and give its opponent a reason to gtfo. if you start tossing tornadus it just uturns away and oh what's that YOUR SEISMIC TOSS DAMAGE DISAPPEARED HAHA TORNADUS MOFOS IM OUTTTT. how many superpowers do you think you'll be able to switch into? in addition, chansey needs absolute maximum physical bulk to survive two superpowers after SR. if you do not invest in special defense, i guarantee you that your chansey will be washed away by specs toed hydro pumps. either way you get worn down like a sucker and you're never gonna kill tornadus with a chansey. also, if you have the horrible misfortune of facing a tornadus that carries taunt (thank GOD there are so few people that run this), chansey is totally screwed. you come in on a superpower without being in fatal range, go for the wish/boiled but suddenly you get taunted. now you're sitting at 50% waiting to take another third from a -1 LO superpower. your chansey will never switch into anything on rain offense again; toed and keldeo's hydro pumps will now kill it after SR with a boost. see ya later pink blobs

specially defensive rotoms and jirachi are legit though, jirachi won't even die to a neutral-weather heat wave. unlike chansey, these two can actually threaten tornadus-T (rotom via a stab electric attack, jirachi via threatening paralysis and then flinch hax)

[Shurtugal]

pointing out that chansey can run ice beam and toxic, js. it can also set up rocks, but yeah, chansey is a shaky check, but it still checks it. mamo is a good check to it too, although it can't switch into hurricane which is sad. bronzong is also legit, since most torn-t are used in rain. (i used a rest / toxic / hp ice / EQ spread w/ sdef and it rocks on stall teams). specially defensive skarm is also a legit counter to it. jolteon can switch into one hurricane, and outspeeds. thundy-t can also switch into like 2 hurricanes (assuming no rocks) and can v-switch for ohko. forms of priority from scizor and ice shard users check to a lesser extent alongside revenge killers (as in scarfers).

it isn't that powerful, at least, i never have problems with it. experiences vary maybe ?

edit:

@ superbad

ice types are sr weak, which yes means they are bad. dnite still rules, but usually pack spinners. want to point out that ice types also fall to fire / fight / rock / rain water attacks / suck in OU. most common types kill pure ice types usually. so froslass and regice aren't that great in ou cause of things like terrak and genesect

blaziken: can run shadow claw to mentioned "counters".

torn-t: sdef rotom-w is legit. did u consider that chesto resto might help it combat torn-t? torn-t can u-turn but i won't stay in; what if its scarfed? its a risk no one takes anyways. also, i can spin hazards so imo you can't just "wear" it down, espec. since rain teams usually only carry SR.

[alkinesthetase]

chansey's ice beam ALWAYS does less to naive tornadus-T than its seismic toss does, yeah that doesn't really work. i have checked every special attack chansey learns because i once wanted to know if i could run a move that could break gengar substitutes. protip: chansey does less damage than a gentle breeze. a turn of sand damage will probably outpower it. aside: if you run psychic on chansey, you can actually break a gengar sub

as for toxic, it's ineffectual because tornadus doesn't stay in long enough to take more than regenerator, unless it's going for the sweep. neither of those are solutions. if chansey carries twave, it can neutralize tornadus... but you need to heal first if you come in on it, so you will not be able to fire it off right away. nobody should ever be switching tornadus-T INTO a chansey knowing that the threat of twave is there and you surrender any advantage you could have against it by giving it the first move, so it's not like you're going to nail it on the switch. with a clever double switch you could potentially pull some wild shit off, but if you can play that well, surely you have a better answer to tornadus on your team

[Shurtugal]

wow thats depressing. i would think ice beam would do more, my bad for not calcing. in rain though, i guess you could run thunder but that would suck as a whole. torn-t is still counter / checked by other mentioned pokemon in my post though, I don't think its ban worthy. maybe suspect, for arguements sake ? a bunch of volt-switch pokes can check or counter it, like raikou comes to mind as well. lanturn is also a beast counter (i think it counter), torn-t as well. zapdos as well, so there is more than chansey.

however, i can see where u might not like it as most of these checks and counters are used in rain. the thing is: sun teams can kinda check it with nintales able to wall a hurricane (if it hits; sdef tales) and that venu can ohko with LO HP ice / Sludge Bomb. genesect also makes a nice check as well, which can be used in any weather. hail has a bunch of ice shard users, or pokes that can simply ice beam (scarf kyreum, not sure how many hurricanes sub set can take). idk i don;t find torn-t broken, but i can see where your coming from

[Scarfwynaut]

Id just like to point out that unless you run a stupidly specially defensive Chansey, you are never 2HKOed even after rocks. Keep in mind of the attack drop, Honko's calculator does not factor in that. I run a very highly specially defensive variant and it still has little issue.

The problem with Chansey is this: u-turn. U-turn does about 10% each time, this wouldn't be an issue if the fucker didn't gain all its stealth rock damage right back. Ironically I find Blissey better than chansey when it comes to Tornadus because it does about the same with u-turn but heals most the damage off passively, superpower still isn't common on Tornadus for some odd reason to.

Honestly it comes down to this on a stall team, everything else dies, you kill Tornadus, that's the plan anyway. And on the note of having a secondary Tornadus counter in this metagame, yeah that's hard because you know, I have to run fucking Heatran for Genesect, Heatran is an even worse counter than Blissey / Chansey.

[GatoDelFuego]

So, weather wars....they add depth by prolonging the lives of two otherwise useless pokemon on a team used only for their abilities? I'm really only talking about rain+sun here, as they're the two big bad wolves. Yeah, I suppose the idea of downpours and droughts following each other in battle sounds pretty bad ass, but that's not the point. Once a team's abuser goes down, game over. A sun team doesn't win without chlorophil and a 50% stab reduction. Rain stall can't stall out a heatran if toxicroak's dry skin keeps hurting it. I would really like it if somebody could tell me where all this "variety" and "depth" from tug-of-war matches between TWO very UNDERUSED POKEMON last generation.

Yeah, I'm discounting sand here, because while without rain and sun, it would be very powerful, but atm it doesn't have those sexy 50% stab boosts most of the time and variety like other weathers do.

[FelixMinamimoto]

I apologize for my text wall. I get mad at the OU metagame from time to time but posting in here feels more necessary these days. :)

I would not say that Politoed and Ninetales are useless. With their new abilities, obviously they got their massive jump in popularity. But I have built successful teams around Specs Politoed. The sheer power of that thing is unreal, and I've used Jirachi/Dragonite for major paralysis support to let Specs Toed sweep a weakened team. Ninetales has always been good if it can get a free turn. Sub Ninetales has always been my favorite Ninetales, and if you have hazards up, it can still mess with some stuff if it knows Roar or Will-o-Wisp or Hypnosis. There's no denying Ninetales is ass relative to the rest of the weather starters, but it's not downright awful.

Why are we talking about banning weather anyway? Weather centralizes the metagame, but that's just like SR centralizing the Gen IV meta. Not one weather is horrendously broken because the others absolutely balance them out. Sure, what essentially boils down to a rock-paper-scissors game and a ton of u-turning to get Dugtrio in on the other player's weather starter (thanks, Lavos Sun) is not a great metagame, but hasn't that always been BW? Genesect just made it a lot easier to run these u-turn games so now we're seeing what is hopefully the height of heavy offensive weather + voltturn + dugtrio. That formula is disgustingly unfun and effective.

When I started getting back into OU for real I used Lavos Sun as a starting point to learn the new meta. It got shit on hard by Hippo sand offense but could take out rain and t-tar sand offense fairly consistently. This team was so common that T-Tar + offense pretty much vanished and it was Hippo + offense as the default sand team.

It seemed to me that

Hippo Sand vs. Sun
Rain vs. Sun
Hippo Sand vs. Rain

[With Genesect+Dugtrio so fucking common now, Tyranitar as your sand starter feels almost like starting with a massive disadvantage, so T-Tar + sand offense is not included. T-tar could be included with Hippo offense for Dual Sand Starters.]

To me, the only time a Pokemon will be broken IN weather is when other weathers don't entirely murder it (Excadrill was deadly in sand, but it was very good even outside of sand) or when it gets all the luck when in its weather (SV Garchomp hi :3). What if we ban the abilities? So what? Tornadus-T still has Rain Dance. Venusaur still has Sunny Day. Banning all THREE weathers just makes Sandslash and Stoutland useless.

I will argue, however, that the metagame needs a change of some sort. It is very rigid right now. An unpleasant portion of what happens in higher level play is based on matchup. That was the issue in BW1 as well though, but now it is almost exclusively weather-driven. I do not think this shakeup needs to be in the form of a ban. Look at what Lavos Sun did to the metagame. The unbelievable popularity spike of Shed Shell Heatran is because of that team. There is a way to make this metagame better, to make it much less like you've got a coinflip chance to win or lose each match simply based on what your opponent brought. The problem is I haven't thought of it and neither has anyone else.

Y'know, I might just suck, but I left OU for a bit after Genesect came out. When I came back it was actually near-impossible to re-acclimate quickly because I had to add Heatran to ALL of the teams. Scarf Genesect just makes so many other scarfers entirely defunct. Poor Scizor has been so horrendously dethroned it is not even funny. I even started throwing defensive Counter Chansey on all the teams too because it will catch Genesects by surprise and shit on a LOT of what comes in. Genesect still seems far too good relative to the weathers.

tl;dr Politales don't suck, weather centralizes the meta but that's not necessarily a bad thing, banning abusers OR weathers is unnecessary but I don't know what fixes the metagame. Also Genesect is too damn good and if we're suspecting anything we should do that, but I'm not sure if that's because I am a baby and bad at dealing with it or because it is just that fucking excellent of a scarfer.

If anyone has found a Genesect counter not named Heatran and that synergizes decently with multiple types of teams do tell me. I've been SOL against the thing lately.

[yee]

A couple of things I would like to point out-

"Weather wars" do not add depth to the metagame. They turn it into counter Politoed and Ninetails (the two individually strongest team members of BW) so well that teams built around them lose. The most effective way to counter both is by running either Ttar or Hippo on a team that can get them in and have them outlast the Toed / Tales. Only games not involving Rain / Sun are a team vs. a team rather than a weather vs. a weather.

Removing Rain / Sun doesn't really take away playstyles as well as it adds them. Say we lose Rain stall, we can't run Tentacruel and Ferrothorn on steroids anymore- oh no we have to replace that with the next best thing (which has plenty more options for spinners in particular taking out the influence of rain). Rain is just an arbitrary boost to stall rather than a playstyle, and invalidates more options than it allows. Rain offense can just be replaced by the now much more viable Toxic Spikes offense and Rain Dance teams. Sun offense can be replaced by teams that aren't incredibly prone to instantly losing by matchup like a Dual Screens teams.

Lastly I don't see it as a challenge of "ugg I have to make a team good enough to compete against every playstyle what a challenge" as much as "If I can dunk Toed / Tales this game is too easy because the rest of the team isn't that good". The fact that Rain / Sun are the single strongest things in the metagame forces you to run it or counter it well and that means running TTar / Hippo everytime, weather is the absolute focus of teambuilding / playing and not as much about starting on an even playing field and having to find a way to get an advantage from there.

As an aside I've been finding Gensect and Thundurus-T to severly limit teambuilding which exaggerates the already existing problem. I would like to see how they do outside of weather + dug teams.

[Phozon]

I believe weather does add ALOT to the metagame. Ever since the start of BW, ( at the time I was not into singles ) alot of VGC trainers where very excited to abuse things like Kingdra and other SS+ Drizzle. Now I know its different here but the point I'm trying to make is that Stuff like that, SS+ Drizzle is what shapes the meta game and what allows it to evolve over the years. For ganted there have only been about 2 gens of serious pokes viable to mtea play, the point is, is every new Gen will bring a way to shape the metagame. For gen 3, the starting of natures and EVs was a big start. Gen 4 it was Stealth Rocks, this Gen its wather, and next gen it will be something elce. This game is always going to throw something new at us and we must try to figure out what is "broken" and what just "abuses stuff". Weather is by no means broken, it falls more into the " abuses stuff".

[GatoDelFuego]

Honestly, I don't really agree with the whole "weather is the stealth rock of Gen 5". It's far from it. Stealth Rock was another hazard added, which may have put charizard out of use...oh, wait, it didn't, charizard always was terrible. Stealth Rock can be spun away. It can be taunted. Yeah, it "centralized things", but did it break pokemon? Did be ban stealth rock when salamence could KO skarmory after SR damage? No. There were multiple ways to deal with SR, and no viable ways to deal with weather other than just changing it yourself (lol cloud nine). There wasn't an ice-type stealth rock and a fighting-type stealth rock to go along with it. Now, there are three weathers wreaking havoc, which is impossible to counter everything. I remember a smogcast at the beginning of gen 5 where people said that this would be a generation where you could not prepare for everything. That was BEFORE we found out about how powerful weathers were. They don't aid just one thing, they turn a whole team into unstoppable. Weather is something that single-handedly decides games from the start. Not all games, but most of them. Weather is broken, and there are abusers that take that weather and use it to destroy things. Should we ban 15 weather abusers, or should we ban weather? something has to give at some point, and hopefully infinite weather may eventually find itself taken out.

EDIT: I just thought I'd post some policy things here:
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other pokemon to sweep.

Gee, I wonder what makes it substantially easier for other pokemon to sweep.

Type A Banning: Reducing the Metagame's Skill-dependancy
I think it is inherent that this type of banning will often have to do with luck, but at a deeper source, it has to do with taking control of the game out of the player's hands, therefore removing the aspect of skill. That is why 4th Gen's wobb ban also probably has to do heavily with this type of ban.

It has been said many times that bulky sand beats sun, rain stall beats sand offense, and sun beats rain offense. Basically, if these matchups are present, you already know the result. That sounds a bit like removing skill and taking the game out of the players' hands to me. Anyone else have the same views?

[bubbly]

I 100% agree. The metagame has become absolutely shocking since the release of Genesect, but there's no question that the bs U-turn + trapper teams everywhere are only effective due to how broken Sun and Rain are.

My action plan: Suspect Genesect (BAN IIIITTTT). Then suspect Sun and Rain. Of the two weathers left, neither are overpowering in the slightest. Sand Rush mons will become solid counters to offense...so what? Stout and Slash aren't great mons in and of themselves; having something in the meta which actually beats the mindless offense most players bring will be great.

[FelixMinamimoto]

I would still make the argument that Genesect is markedly more deserving of a suspect than are weathers right now. I've been using it in the Clear Skies/Entry tour and it is still stupidly good, even when it's not on +Dugtrio teams.

The problem with suspecting Sun and Rain is that Sand IS very strong. Without Sun and Rain to check sand, most people will be running it. You're then either forcing people to run hail (lol) or just to DEAL with the sand rush. That gives that one weather ridiculous and unprecedented freedom in the OU tier and I don't think "sand or sand counter" is a viable metagame either.

Suspect Genesect though for the love of Arceus. Please.

Edit: @GatoDelFuego I would also argue that those matchups are not 100% accurate, even at a lower level of play. They are usually how it is supposed to go, but I still think it is possible for Sand to prepare for Rain Stall, Sun to prepare for Sand, and Rain to prepare for Sun. Whether that just contributes another layer of metagame deterioration is up to you. (I think it does though. Which is unfortunate.) And BW has always been "bs lost on team matchup." I just worry that we are getting far too ban-happy.

[alexwolf]

bubbly what makes you think that Sandslash's usefulness will only be ''beating offense''? In my books a poke with a an Atk stat of 100 and a speed stat of almost 180 in sand, with acces to SD and solid coverage, and Rapid Spin, in an enviroment with no other competent weather, will surely be something terryfying. Same about Stoutland. It will not hurt only offense, it will hurt balanced teams too, which won't be able to hold of the power of Sandslash in the lategame, where their walls will have been weakened (btw Sandslash CAN beat Gliscor) and any scarfer slower than Scarf Terrakion will be useless. And even stall maybe will be troubled, as Sandslash will be the perfect spinner.

In a sand-hail only meta, sand offense is going to dominate so hard, it is not going to be funny....

And i hope that no one asks me that if Sandslash is so good, why no one uses him now. Because Sandslash is very good inside Sand, but useless outside of it, and with rain and sun around, you will have a useless poke when sand is down. But in a sand-hail meta, there won't be this problem, and Sandslash will be free to dominate.

[Bl1tzkri3g]

The thing I've been thinking about banning rain, and probably by extension all the weathers, is that it's nearly impossible to locate the "tipping point' that takes a playstyle from very very good to broken. So i was looking at weather, and the rain abusers Aldron mentioned specifically, and heres what i found:
Keldeo: Is a nuke with specs, in rain, but the specs set has the same problems all other specs sets have: Needs too much prediction, and has problems getting in repeatedly.
Thundy-T: Hits so hard, but a scarf set needs to switch in on rocks to get it, and NP is too slow to do anything in this meta except vs. stall.
Tornadus-T: Fast as hell; has a 120 STAB attack with a chance to confuse. It would be broken besides the fact that it's coverage moves are just so weak, well not weak but not strong enough to break the things they need to.
Genesect: This, tbh, is what tips the scale for rain. It looks the least threatning on paper; no nuke moves, no specs STAB in rain. But, it does so much more; checks offense with a scarf, uses u-turn to get things (like keldeo) to get in safely, and it can even sweep with a set of Rp/bug buzz/hp ground/ice beam with a life orb and a download boost. Its not broken because of its individual skills, rather because of what it does for a team, aloowing everything with it to be so much better.
Tl;dr: Suspect Genesect

[bubbly]

Yeah, it's a tricky one. The metagame handled Excadrill, which outclasses SD Sandslash so hard it isn't funny, pretty well. Exca was banned, but still...there are a vast number of common defensive pokemon which can handle +2 Slash. The situation is different in that a Slash or Stout user wouldn't usually have to worry about other weathers, but I still can't really see either of them being overpowered. That said, I don't want to see OU being utterly Sand-dominated again any more than you.

Personally, we can't hold off banning stuff (Gene + DroughtDriz) just because of further imbalances which might result in the metagame as a result. If there are imbalances, then we do more suspect tests.