BW2 General Metagame Discussion Thread

[Lavos Spawn]

Weather gets checked by other weather. If you remove Rain, Sand and Sun will dominate. If you remove Sand, Rain will be every single team. If you remove Hail, hipsters will pull an Occupy Smogon. I say keep all weather, it keeps the tier in balance.

[czechm8]

Anybody think Xatu might see some more usage as a techniloom counter? Or is he too much of a liability with the therians about?

[WinstonShnozwick]

Originally Posted by Fat Lavos Spawn

Weather gets checked by other weather. If you remove Rain, Sand and Sun will dominate. If you remove Sand, Rain will be every single team. If you remove Hail, hipsters will pull an Occupy Smogon. I say keep all weather, it keeps the tier in balance.

Saying that broken or centralizing things keep other broken or centralizing things in check doesn't make it ok. It only forced everyone to run those things if they want to stay competitive.

[Pippy]

Originally Posted by Fat WinstonShnozwick

:) I forgot about that. Hopefully weather will get hit something that solves the problems for real this time after it gets used on 75% of teams and is broke open. (Rain I'm lookin at you now.)

I hope they wait a month or so before they start swinging the ban hammer. The problem right now is that everyone wants to try out the new stuff, particually Thundurus-T, Tornadus-T, and Keldeo, and most of it conveniently works well on rain teams. Hopefully once the hype has settled down rain will become less overused. I don't think anything is actually OP except maybe Thundurus-T, it's just people want to try out the new mons.

[bluemon]

Originally Posted by Fat WinstonShnozwick

Saying that broken or centralizing things keep other broken or centralizing things in check doesn't make it ok. It only forced everyone to run those things if they want to stay competitive.

But that's what OU is.
You have to run a certain number of valid Pokemon to stay competitive.

Im sure I can't reach 1400 with a team of magikarp/surskit/feebas/omanyte/pidgey/unown..

Just because you are forced to use a certain pool of Pokemon (I.e. OU) doesn't mean the metagame is over centralizing.

[Yggdrasill00]

Originally Posted by Fat bluemon

But that's what OU is.
You have to run a certain number of valid Pokemon to stay competitive.

Im sure I can't reach 1400 with a team of magikarp/surskit/feebas/omanyte/pidgey/unown..

Just because you are forced to use a certain pool of Pokemon (I.e. OU) doesn't mean the metagame is over centralizing.

Yeah single Pokemon are what tends to get banned (like Garchomp or Excadrill) since they over centralize OU have few counters and forcing you to have one of those few counters or that Pokemon on your team in order to not be stomped.

[WinstonShnozwick]

Originally Posted by Fat bluemon

But that's what OU is.
You have to run a certain number of valid Pokemon to stay competitive.

Im sure I can't reach 1400 with a team of magikarp/surskit/feebas/omanyte/pidgey/unown..

Just because you are forced to use a certain pool of Pokemon (I.e. OU) doesn't mean the metagame is over centralizing.

Very different. OU has around 50 pokemon in it's tier and many from UU are viable as well. Weather consists of the same staples and mons that work with weather which is much less. You are cutting the usable pokemon that can compete in OU in half or to a third it's original size if you only consider weather. And it does get to the point in weather that if you don't run it, you opponent gets free advantage via their weather that you lack, already putting you behind at the start of the battle.

[bluemon]

Originally Posted by Fat WinstonShnozwick

Very different. OU has around 50 pokemon in it's tier and many from UU are viable as well. Weather consists of the same staples and mons that work with weather which is much less. You are cutting the usable pokemon that can compete in OU in half or to a third it's original size if you only consider weather.

But you DON'T need weather to dominate in OU. And many Pokemon perform well in a certain weather so you really don't cut the pool o usable Pokemon.

Ferrothorn? Rain
Dragonite? Sun/rain
Kyurem? Hail
Hydreigon? Sun/rain
Landorus? Sand
Blissey? Sun/rain
Jellicent? Rain
Virizion? Rain/sun
....

The list goes on. OU is very diverse, IMO. No one forced anyone to use tornadus-t. Jolteon is as viable as tornadus.

[Scarfwynaut]

Rain was the only dominating weather, with swift swim gone its about equal now, rain got a little offense boost in BW but honestly the high useage is just a fad, Im sure in a few months rain will return to being just slightly more common then it was before.

[Lavos Spawn]

Originally Posted by Fat WinstonShnozwick

Saying that broken or centralizing things keep other broken or centralizing things in check doesn't make it ok. It only forced everyone to run those things if they want to stay competitive.

What's wrong with that? Some things are better than others. That's why I can't storm into OU with a team of 6 NFEs and expect to win any matches.

[Jukain]

I figured I should post this link: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpos...&postcount=951
I think GF knew they were making rain OP. In return, Lati@s counters every special rain threat. Yeah.

[bluemon]

OHGOD IS THAT SOUL DEW?

It will probably be banned

[Scarfwynaut]

Good thing I god my handy dandy Scizor on my team now.

I want to abuse soul dew, but idk my team is fine at the moment anyway, if nasty plot thundurus-t's rage is finally discovered and used, I may reconsider though.

[Yggdrasill00]

Originally Posted by Fat Scarfwynaut

Good thing I god my handy dandy Scizor on my team now.

I want to abuse soul dew, but idk my team is fine at the moment anyway, if nasty plot thundurus-t's rage is finally discovered and used, I may reconsider though.

Speaking of bugs one of my favorites Scolipede got Superpower :D Sadly Escavalier my favorite bug got screwed over with the move tutor.

Think adding Superpower will make a difference for Scolipede? Was thinking of running a Jolly one with Swords Dance/Megahorn/Superpower/Rock Slide.

[Dcae]

I thought the meta would perhaps change for the better-I was wrong. Weather teams get a huge bonus, especially rain. It'll borderline on unbearable if everyone runs Rain. Hopefully the Therians get banned (I might get flamed for this.)

[bluemon]

They didn't get much of a bonus, really. Something's like breloom and amoonguss cancel out their power so it's all good

[Magik]

i would really like soul dew not to be banned to counter rain teams easier but its way too op to not be D:
an item that gives you the power of choice specs that lets you switch moves and boost your special defense yeaahhh...no

[da gold sun]

As several other people have been saying, the metagame is still new and needs time to settle. As people face more and more of things like Therian forms, they will develop counters to them like everything else.

If you were referring to Amoongus/Breloom countering them, neither of them can take a Hurricane from Tornadus (either form, really). They are nice checks to rain, but a good rain team will have something to stop them from walling the time. I ran both Specs Tornadus and Life Orb Thundurus on the same team simply because I was going for a hyper-offense style of playing. One would severely dent, if not take out, any walls to rain, while the other cleaned up house.

Speaking of Breloom countering rain, Breloom actually does a great job on rain teams himself. Ferrothorn and Gastrodon, both huge banes to most offensive cores in the rain (hell, Gastrodon came into OU as a counter to Thundurus before he was banned), and both sand starters (Tyranitar/Hippowdon) can be beaten by Breloom, even if it's the original set and not Techniloom. Getting rid of his fire-type weakness is also pretty nice.

[bluemon]

Yes. You are right. But is rain so dominating that things can't counter it? No. Sun counters it. Rain is raped when politoed is dead and ninetales takes over. It might be too much weather, but it's very balanced

[da gold sun]

Originally Posted by Fat bluemon

Yes. You are right. But is rain so dominating that things can't counter it? No. Sun counters it. Rain is raped when politoed is dead and ninetales takes over. It might be too much weather, but it's very balanced

I'm not saying rain is uncounterable, I'm just saying it's currently "flavor of the month" for now since it got a lot of new toys with the shift to BW2 that people want to try out right now. Yes, sun may be a counter to rain, but by your same logic, rain also counters sun. Also, rain always had the advantage since Politoed had less to worry about when switching in compared to Ninetales since it had less weaknesses and wasn't weak to Stealth Rock. A battle between two weather teams becomes a game of "protect the weather-inducer," and whichever side can do that successfully will keep momentum and most likely win the battle. This isn't new to this meta, it's been present since Hail vs. Sand was possible all the way back in Gen IV.

The issue here is that rain arguably has more to work with compared to sun, especially with the new genie forms and Keldeo. Sun got Giga Drain and Roost on Volcarona, and maybe some new things for Venusaur, but as far as I know, not much else. Again, this difference has always been the case; there's a reason Politoed always had placed much higher in usage than Ninetales since the start of Gen V.

The usage of Stealth Rock to counteract BOTH the usage of Tornadus and Thundurs in rain and Ninetales and Volcarona in the rain is also an idea. In the battles I did today, not too many people ran Stealth Rock, but when they did, it gave me quite a bit of trouble. Sure, Tornadus got Regenerator, but it STILL comes in at 75% HP at most with SR, even if it had recovered via switching.

[Scarfwynaut]

Well it isn't that rain is any more exploitable then sun offensively, in fact even with the new pokemon there are 3 pokemon that really abuse rain offensively, Keldeo, Tornadus, and Tornadus-T. In part the reason rain sees so much useage is first off Ninetails is ass, stealth rock weakness on a weather-mon is terrible. Also with sun your forced to go offensive, sun stall is so rare because unless you have a solid plan with it, you just wasted a pokemon on your stall team with Ninetails. Rain is completely different, you can play rain hyper offense, bulky offense, and even stall. That's 3 times more used play styles than sun has. Honestly Im surprised sun gets the useage it does considering this.

[Ningildo]

If this turns out like during the Exca and Thundurus meta, with controversy over weather again...good god, not another shitstorm.

Some pessimistic thinking aside, I'm really happy about Techniloom being released. That has been overdue for quite some time and perhaps this will start a proposal to a Exca retest. Which will stir up more controversy...just not as much as chandy...(gdi I need to brighten up).

Hopefully some starters, in particular a certain water type from gen 2, will get either their DW ability or have a movepool boost with it. Sheer Force Feraligtr, I'm looking at you.

And guys, remember what happened to suspects that remained suspects? People eventually shut up about it and decided to deal with it. Such as Latios, Dragonite etc.

So, in time, the rain hype will die down and all will be well without bans.

...

---

Wait. In the recent past, nearly all bans, besides the insanely unnecessary retest (and necessary reban) of previous ubers (besides "kinda" Garchomp), were weather related pokemon. ahahaha...ha..ha......

Yeah, there's a shitstorm incoming. And there's nothing we can do about it.

[Cinccino]

Uh I really hate this meta. I thought the Therians would stop Volt-Turn cold, it does but lol they turn out to be another problem :/

Idk but maybe instead of banning Soul Dew we can ban Latios instead (when we decide it is OP)? Theorymoning Latias isnt that much of a problem like at some point of DP era.

[Tobes]

Jesus fuck people it's only been a few days.

No more ban talk.

[GoliathGarchomp]

Originally Posted by Fat Tobes

Jesus fuck people it's only been a few days.

No more ban talk.

Exactly. I think we should wait and let the metagame settle down for a months or two before we start making decisions on what to ban. Personally I think rain is super powerful and needs to be nerfed in the future but im not going to sit here and complain about it (instead abuse it). This opinion may not be valid in a months time, people may find counters or ways around it. Unfortunatly sun, my favourite weather cant compear to rain since whatever sun can do rain can do better. And not to mention that most rain team match up well agaist sun teams. Although Subsplit Ninetales and Giga Drain Volc were huge bonuses on sun teams.

And anyone wanting to retest previouse banned pokemon I dont think now the time. I think we should wait till this mess has been cleaned up.