Just something that's confusing me: People say Tornadus-T is useless/underwhelming outside of Rain because then Hurricane has 70% Accuracy... what about Excadrill without Sand, or even Swift Swimmers without Rain (except for Kingdra, he could afford setting up its own rain)? I mean, even Ninetales could revenge kill Excadrill because it was just so slow.
My problem is that Excadrill / Swift Swimmers were so ridiculously broken inside / outside of sand / rain that it was prudent to ban them. On the other hand, Tornadus-T isn't THAT overpowered even in the rain, while outside of it, it is just totally unremarkable.
Anyway, a couple of things I was thinking about today about Tornadus-T. There are two cases that are sort of similar in the past: DPP UU Crobat and DPP Latias. Both were fast hard hitters but were not blatantly overpowered like some other BL / OU Pokemon were / are. Crobat was fast, could abuse Brave Bird easily, use Roost to heal itself and U-turn out just like Tornadus-T could. Latias used her bulk to spam powerful Draco Meteor / Surf to break down defensive Pokemon. Lets just look at Tornadus-T's advantages over both
with respect to their metagames:
Against Crobat:
- Regenerator means it doesn't have to waste a turn using Roost
- Hurricane doesn't take recoil
- Has better 2 move coverage
- Not as crippled by status (especially burn)
Against Latias:
- Not Pursuit weak
- Regenerator
- Main spamming attack does not drop Special Attack
However, there are also disadvantages:
Crobat was better in these ways:
- Not weather dependent
- Actually outsped every non-Scarfer (except for Electrode at the time), while Tornadus-T is outsped by a couple of pretty decent Pokemon (Weavile / Jolteon).
- Roost - While needing an extra turn to use, it actually allowed Crobat to take down potential counters without having to switch-out at all (eg against Registeel and Weezing, he could just Taunt, Brave Bird, Roost if necessary, rinse and repeat).
- Actually has significant resistances (Shaymin, Gallade, Roserade, etc)
Latias was better in these ways:
- Not weather dependent
- Could actually cripple EVERY ONE of its counters with a timely Trick, something which Tornadus-T could only skirt around with U-turn.
- Was ridiculously bulky and also had significant resistances which made half the metagame a liability to it.
- Coverage move was actually spammable - Latias generally had nothing to lose when spamming Surf, Tyranitar and Scizor risked getting killed by it, so Pursuit was a risky move.
- Could run a whole bunch of very viable sets - Specs was the best, but it was also able to run Scarf, Life Orb + 3 attacks, Calm Mind (offensive and balanced), defensive and support sets.
So in the end, I think what brings Tornadus-T down and stops it being broken are the two things in which I bolded. Like I said in my previous post, rain is not that common that it can be classified as standard battle conditions, which means it is still significant support. The other important thing about the other two Pokemon that pushed them over the edge, was the fact that had way more safe switch-ins that Tornadus-T did. Crobat had numerous resistances (especially 4x resistances), and serviceable bulk in the UU tier. It was also able to defeat a number of seeming checks without having to switch-out. Latias had a bunch of resistances (Fire/Water/Grass core ONLY got a new lease on life AFTER her banning) as well as huge special bulk, allowing her to switch in repeatedly into attacks and nuking stuff. Tornadus-T really needs to be careful switching into attacks, since it's not very bulky, and its main resistance, Fighting, isn't much of a resistance when shit like Breloom 2HKOes you with Low Sweep + Bullet Seed and Terrakion just destroys you with CB Close Combat. It's relatively safe coming in for a revenge, but hey, pretty much every Pokemon is.