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Other Is Weather Still Viable?
- Thread starter Beast Mode
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I tried rain a few times and it can be very powerful thanks to the unbanning of Swift Swim + Drizzle (I found Kabutops to be extremely dangerous), and Tornadus-T spamming Hurricanes. However, the main issue is that Politoed is not very good in on its own, and the fact that once weather dies you become extremely predictable as you are pretty much forced to try to get Politoed in again, which is easily maneuvered around. It's definitely not going to be like last gen, and teams using rain will have to be offensive and hard-hitting in order to maximize your turns in rain. You may even want a secondary Rain Dance user to surprise your opponent.
I think most people using rain teams are already using other Pokemon with Rain Dance anyway. So it probably wouldn't be surprising, although still very useful.
You don't necessarily have to use Politoed at all for a rain team. For example, rain was very good in Gen IV UU (so much that Damp Rock got a suspect test), and that was with no Drizzle Pokemon at all, so I'm sure successful rain teams could be built today without using Politoed. However, even if Politoed itself is quite a poor Pokemon, Drizzle has major advantages over Rain Dance for summoning rain, so it's possible that it will still be a staple on rain teams.
I think Politoed is better on its own, with a team that doesn't exactly need it to be powerful, but still gains from its presence, such as Scizor, Mamoswine, Keldeo, Gyarados, etc. I've been trying Politoed out on a rain team, and I'm quickly realizing how broken Drizzle was. Politoed is absolute garbage without it. Choice Specs and Choice Scarf are still great items on him, but he's not very good once you realize that he summons perma weather.
I honestly never used Leftovers on Politoed. I think it's a really really over-rated item if it's not coupled with other recovery. To compare, look at all the hate hail is getting - if it dies and you do nothing else, Ice Rock Abomasnow is dealing a total of 50% of any poke's HP. That's how little 1/16th is, that after 8 turns, it's 50%. Better than nothing, but literally just that. Even if you use protect to get that second turn, i've still felt it's barely worth it - you hand the opponent a free turn. I can't tell you how many wish-protect, sub-disable, or protect-stall strategies I've never fallen for because after the first time I see it happen, I prepare and work around it every time. Damp Rock I think is by far the better iem for Politoed. Even in Gen V I wouldn't be caught dead with a rain team without a backup Damp Dancer, given the weather war and the pure distribution of the weather moves. This gen I see no different, especially with everything short of Rain getting two great setups.
Rain I don't see changing too much, I agree with the general sentiment though that it's going to be much less common and played a bit different. I'm glad to see it knocked down from top-team without being completely unviable. This is the role I think weather should always have played.
Sun has always had more issues, being inherently weak to SR, reliant on Grass Types, and having fewer good abilities to benefit from it.
Sand is and always has been sand. Being finally banished to non-permanence is nice, but let's face it, Sand has always been top-dog. Why don't we look at the full sand-team's worth of megas thing gen - Ttar, Scizor, Garchomp, Aerodactyl, Aggron, and Mawile; the first half of these being big players since gen 4. Stall or Offense, sand is good and isn't likely to die down.
Hail? I love hail. I love Abomasnow, Mega Abomasnow, and heck, even Aurorus. I have an awful love affair with Ice type, and will likely make a Hail Team, even if it does pretty poorly. I play more "undercompetitive" local play than online anyway, so there's more room for bad fun teams like hail. I know I'm wrong, and should feel wrong, but leave me be.
I do feel so, so bad for Aurorus though. Much like Leftovers, this isn't exactly the thread for it, but seriously, wtf. This is a case of a beautiful pokemon with absolutely everything it needed to be astounding, just in the absolutely wrong combo. It has virtually the best offensive typing in the game, and it has a GREAT stat distribution for a specially bulky poke that loves to run T-wave or Calm Mind with some Will-o-Wisp or Scald support. But It's stats are offensively lackluster, and it's typing is worse than Ttars. It might see some misguided use as a secondary Hail setter, for people ballsy enough to think they need it (maybe if it's okay for lower tiers), but it's all in all a big shame and a train-wreck of great things that just don't go great together.
Someone really, really, really needs to hold someone for ransom until Herpfreak buffs both Ice and Hail.
Rain I don't see changing too much, I agree with the general sentiment though that it's going to be much less common and played a bit different. I'm glad to see it knocked down from top-team without being completely unviable. This is the role I think weather should always have played.
Sun has always had more issues, being inherently weak to SR, reliant on Grass Types, and having fewer good abilities to benefit from it.
Sand is and always has been sand. Being finally banished to non-permanence is nice, but let's face it, Sand has always been top-dog. Why don't we look at the full sand-team's worth of megas thing gen - Ttar, Scizor, Garchomp, Aerodactyl, Aggron, and Mawile; the first half of these being big players since gen 4. Stall or Offense, sand is good and isn't likely to die down.
Hail? I love hail. I love Abomasnow, Mega Abomasnow, and heck, even Aurorus. I have an awful love affair with Ice type, and will likely make a Hail Team, even if it does pretty poorly. I play more "undercompetitive" local play than online anyway, so there's more room for bad fun teams like hail. I know I'm wrong, and should feel wrong, but leave me be.
I do feel so, so bad for Aurorus though. Much like Leftovers, this isn't exactly the thread for it, but seriously, wtf. This is a case of a beautiful pokemon with absolutely everything it needed to be astounding, just in the absolutely wrong combo. It has virtually the best offensive typing in the game, and it has a GREAT stat distribution for a specially bulky poke that loves to run T-wave or Calm Mind with some Will-o-Wisp or Scald support. But It's stats are offensively lackluster, and it's typing is worse than Ttars. It might see some misguided use as a secondary Hail setter, for people ballsy enough to think they need it (maybe if it's okay for lower tiers), but it's all in all a big shame and a train-wreck of great things that just don't go great together.
Someone really, really, really needs to hold someone for ransom until Herpfreak buffs both Ice and Hail.
I still run a sand team on cartridge that a lot of teams can't deal with.
Hippodown@smooth rock
T-tar
Excadrill with Sand rush (OH THANK GOD YOU'VE COME BACK TO ME!)
Stoutland
Nidoking
Aegislash.
Sand Storm got boosted back up by getting it's main weapon (excadrill) back. With the weather change, i don't have to fear him leaving anytime soon. With Aegislash in gen 6, i don't really have to rely on Golurk to give me that protection from fighting, and he's a much better tank than the Iron Giant. It's still very predictable, but with a lot of teams being unprepared for weather wars, and not having the priority to deal with Excadrill (Mach punch, stay right where you are!) it means Sand's stronger than ever. yes, Having to run Hippodown kinda sucks in the sense that I can't just run T-Tar and keep my weather up, but it actually makes the team more capable of dealing with physical sweepers and fighting types that think they are gonna give me a hard time (SUCK IT MEGA LUK!).
Hippodown@smooth rock
T-tar
Excadrill with Sand rush (OH THANK GOD YOU'VE COME BACK TO ME!)
Stoutland
Nidoking
Aegislash.
Sand Storm got boosted back up by getting it's main weapon (excadrill) back. With the weather change, i don't have to fear him leaving anytime soon. With Aegislash in gen 6, i don't really have to rely on Golurk to give me that protection from fighting, and he's a much better tank than the Iron Giant. It's still very predictable, but with a lot of teams being unprepared for weather wars, and not having the priority to deal with Excadrill (Mach punch, stay right where you are!) it means Sand's stronger than ever. yes, Having to run Hippodown kinda sucks in the sense that I can't just run T-Tar and keep my weather up, but it actually makes the team more capable of dealing with physical sweepers and fighting types that think they are gonna give me a hard time (SUCK IT MEGA LUK!).
true, as GF couldnt stand everyone running weather in VGC/sim battles/everywhere. This makes weatherless offense play a minute role during most of Gen V, which makes stuff unbalanced and stuff that are supposed to be morderately viable are either OP in weather(Swift Swim pokes/Drill) or left in the dust to weather. I use weather myself both Gens and i find the nerf a good one, as there are no more weather warz every second fight and weatherless should be the norm imo. Last gen was crazy.
im planning on using a sun offense team. any suggestions? I put a preliminary team together on show down and it wasn't bad but wasn't great either. it needs to be achievable on cartridge. also I want to use charizard Y (got a shiny near perfect for it so im building the team around it) which pokemon should I use? what pokemon should I use for sunny set up?
Weather is no longer a strategy with which to base an entire team on, rather a tool you can use to situationally bolster your offensive posture. Its quite viable, and with the correct combos you can still deal some harsh blows. Even with weather stones, set-up weather abusers will have a narrow window to utilize their niche but they can still get the job done (assuming 1 turn of setup, you'll have 5 turns to attack. That's 1 turn to bring your weather poke, 1 turn to switch, 1 turn to boost, 5 to attack). Walls, stalls, forced switches, and revenge kills will sting a lot more now with your limited window for weather, every turn that passes is one less Pokemon your boosted sweeper can operate effeciently under. Using a weather stone unfortunately means it will take longer to refresh your weather countdown. Smart switching and less reliance on weather abilities will be important considerations to make when making a team that will use weather. For example, my monotype water team originally was quite rain reliant, but now only one Pokemon on that team has swift swim, while all others will enjoy the benfits of a beefed up stab but do not neccesarily need it to operate.
Sand will still be common, because unlike the other forms of weather, sand has always stuck out as more of an anti-weather. Sand never really stood out as a playstyle of its own after the banning of Excadrill and Landorus. Its not as easy to abuse than the other weather conditions, and for this reason pokes that you saw on sand teams last gen. were never entirely dependent on it (with the exception of a few sand rushers). And unlike the other forms of weather, sand has Tyranitar which is an amazing pokemon in its own right, and arguably the best abuser of its own sand.
Basically, I don't see sands presence changing that much from last gen, except that now you're not forced to run it if you don't want to use politoed or ninetails.
Basically, I don't see sands presence changing that much from last gen, except that now you're not forced to run it if you don't want to use politoed or ninetails.
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For a sun team I can heartily reccomend all of the following:
Charizard Y:
Pros: Brings sun, solarbeam access, insanely powerful fire blast/overheat, fast, can take powerful physical stab too for Blissey
Cons: Stealth Rock 4x weakness
Volcarona
Pros: Stupidly powerful sweeper with high bulk, recovery, and benefits from sun.
Cons: Stealth Rock 4x weakness - this will make 2 with Charizard Y =(
Venusaur:
Pros: Bulky, Strong offensive booster (growth in sun), Clorphyll (double speed in sun)
Cons: Especially weak to fire in sun, requires sun to operate, Talonflame exists
Chandelure w/Choice Scarf:
Pros: Horrifyingly powerful Overheat in sun, Excellent move pool
Cons: Squishy, Choice Locked
I would pick 2 or three of these, and build the rest of your team with a more balanced strategy in mind. In my last post I mentioned that you should not build an entire team based entirely around weather, rather use it to boost your options. Volcarona can fend for itself without sun as can Chandelure - Vensaur nearly needs sun to even operate at an OU level (unless you mega it, which you won't be doing as you have stated you want to use Charizard Y). You will certainly require a strong physical attacker (Conkeldurr, Breloom, Garchomp for example) with this team and a spinner/defogger (Starmie, Forrettress, Scizor for example). A spinner for this team is a MUST because a single stealth rock will reduce both Volcarona and Charizard to 50% hp just for a switch in. Scizor is an interesting option as it can learn defog and is an exceptional physical bruiser with access to both priority and pursuit buffed by Technician (50% increase to base power of a move of 60BP or less).
Well this got a bit wordy, I hope this was helpful =). And I do apologize if a lot of this was stuff you already knew, I just prefer to be thorough!
I used a pretty successful Sun team before PokeBank. I was pretty successful while battling on this site and others
I used:
Defensive Ninetails @ heatrock
Charizard Y
Offensive Growth HP Fire Venasaur
Scarf Chandelure
Sp Def Rotom-W
Defensive fast Crobat
I used Rotom-W and Crobat as a pseudo defensive volt-turn core so that I can set up sun whenever I needed it and to regain momentum. Crobat served as a U-turner and Defogger since Rocks would destroy this team. I chose to use a heatrock to help Venusaur sweep but without Venusaur you don't really need 8 turns of sun. Charizard Y wins games by himself.
This was by far my best team ever. I think the lack of perma weather doesn't really hurt offensive teams especially sun which has two drought users. There were times where it was unfortunate cause I would have regular Charizard in on like turn 7 of sun so I didn't want to mega evolve just to have sun run out a turn later so rare cases like that were troublesome. And stalling out Venasaur got a lot easier depending on the opponent's team composition and the sun user's predictions.
I didn't face too many Rain teams but when I did it wasn't really a problem thanks to Venasaur and Rotom. I didn't run Sunny Day on Ninetails so Poli was a problem for Ninetails. Ttar was a bit of a problem if I revenged something with Chandy and then they would come in to Pursuit trap me but I tried to avoid that situation. But Rotom could deal with Tar depending on the set and Crobat could come in on anything not Stone Edge and u-turn for some damage. A lot of offensive Tars would die to Charizard's solarbeam or Venasaur.
The lack of rocks on my team was a bit unfortunate because it makes the opponent's death fodder a lot more annoying since it lets them stall out sun turns. I was thinking of trying to fit in a magic bouncer to fix that.
Overall, I'd say Sun is not dead at all and catches a lot of people off guard. There were times where I'm like "alright, I get three kills now before sun runs out" and with a defensive core like Rotom-Bat, I could regain sun even if it meant sacrificing Ninetails.
I did feel like Scarf Chandy and Venasaur together was not redundant since Sun is no longer permanent and Chandeulre saved me a lot more times than I expected. I chose not to run Volcarona just in case Crobat died before Defogging and I didn't want my whole team to get destroyed by rocks. But in general, I could usually sacrifice Crobat for a Defog if I needed to due to Crobat's high speed. Another reason why Crobat is so good on a Sun team.
And Charizard Y makes for an ok Sun set up. It's just unfortunate cause 5 turns is so short since you spend one turn evolving/attacking, maybe a turn to switch out, a turn to Growth with Venasaur, and then you have two turns left and the opponent knows this so they always try to double switch to resist coverage moves. Or say you need to Roost with Charizard so you lose a turn roosting making it so that the sun really only benefits Charizard.
I used:
Defensive Ninetails @ heatrock
Charizard Y
Offensive Growth HP Fire Venasaur
Scarf Chandelure
Sp Def Rotom-W
Defensive fast Crobat
I used Rotom-W and Crobat as a pseudo defensive volt-turn core so that I can set up sun whenever I needed it and to regain momentum. Crobat served as a U-turner and Defogger since Rocks would destroy this team. I chose to use a heatrock to help Venusaur sweep but without Venusaur you don't really need 8 turns of sun. Charizard Y wins games by himself.
This was by far my best team ever. I think the lack of perma weather doesn't really hurt offensive teams especially sun which has two drought users. There were times where it was unfortunate cause I would have regular Charizard in on like turn 7 of sun so I didn't want to mega evolve just to have sun run out a turn later so rare cases like that were troublesome. And stalling out Venasaur got a lot easier depending on the opponent's team composition and the sun user's predictions.
I didn't face too many Rain teams but when I did it wasn't really a problem thanks to Venasaur and Rotom. I didn't run Sunny Day on Ninetails so Poli was a problem for Ninetails. Ttar was a bit of a problem if I revenged something with Chandy and then they would come in to Pursuit trap me but I tried to avoid that situation. But Rotom could deal with Tar depending on the set and Crobat could come in on anything not Stone Edge and u-turn for some damage. A lot of offensive Tars would die to Charizard's solarbeam or Venasaur.
The lack of rocks on my team was a bit unfortunate because it makes the opponent's death fodder a lot more annoying since it lets them stall out sun turns. I was thinking of trying to fit in a magic bouncer to fix that.
Overall, I'd say Sun is not dead at all and catches a lot of people off guard. There were times where I'm like "alright, I get three kills now before sun runs out" and with a defensive core like Rotom-Bat, I could regain sun even if it meant sacrificing Ninetails.
I did feel like Scarf Chandy and Venasaur together was not redundant since Sun is no longer permanent and Chandeulre saved me a lot more times than I expected. I chose not to run Volcarona just in case Crobat died before Defogging and I didn't want my whole team to get destroyed by rocks. But in general, I could usually sacrifice Crobat for a Defog if I needed to due to Crobat's high speed. Another reason why Crobat is so good on a Sun team.
And Charizard Y makes for an ok Sun set up. It's just unfortunate cause 5 turns is so short since you spend one turn evolving/attacking, maybe a turn to switch out, a turn to Growth with Venasaur, and then you have two turns left and the opponent knows this so they always try to double switch to resist coverage moves. Or say you need to Roost with Charizard so you lose a turn roosting making it so that the sun really only benefits Charizard.
How do you deal with Lum dnite(you cant sleep powder/WoW it, and you are not bound to send Venu/Rotom-W in the right time before it DDs as sun is now limited for Venu's case), weakNite(Weakness policy works even better if Rotom/Venu's dead) and ScarfChomp (outspeeds your entire team bar Venusaur, someone who cant really switch into Garchomp)?
Nite would usually get a kill or two. There have been times where I predict the DD and I Roar with Ninetails but that's not a permanent solution. It's usually a combination of Rotom, Crobat, and Venusaur depending on the DNite and depending on the health of my team. I think Jolly Dragonite sweeps my whole team tho.
ScarfChomp might get a kill once it goes for Outrage but then I can revenge it depending on the health of my team. From experience, Charizard can take a hit and kill it. Rotom and Crobat can deal with it I think, I never had a problem with Chomp actually.
I ran Dragon Pulse on my Charizard to help with my dragon problems.
The team is by no means perfect but it was pretty successful and a lot of fun.
Any ideas? Rain stall got a lot worse, but I've used things like kingdra and politoad with great success.
Resttalk toed with damp rock is the best set for it right now imo, aside from specs, which is good too. Toed obviously goes well with SS abusers, such as ludi or kingdra. On another note, Hippowdon is so amazing right now, it's not even funny. Its usage atm is criminal and it needs to be OU. It walls all electric types (aside from rotom ofc) and its bulk is titanic in general. It also shakily counters Aegis without LO (LO shadow ball actually has a chance to 2hko). Spdef hippo is the best set atm, and it's so amazingly underrated. Ninetales is pretty much dead, as the only thing it has over char y is a better support movepool, a reduced weakness to rocks, and heat rock. Those reasons don't justify using it, in my opinion, as char y has recovery, and it's much, much stronger. char y also has a better defensive typing.
Mind that the 3 more turns over a short 5 turn sun is pretty huge if you ask me. It doesnt seem to be a lot on paper, but when you actually use it in a team you will be very thankful for those 3 turns. I had been using a sun team in OU to some kind of success before, and for many times its the 3 turns that ended up mattering. The support movepool in WoW, roar and stuff is also pretty useful, while ZardY just couldnt free up the moveslot(s) for it. Also, with the weather nerf, having 2 sun setters is basically a must for your Chlorophyll guys to sweep, so i dont really agree that Ninetales is completely dead :P
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