np: OU Suspect Testing Round 2 - Who am I to break tradition?

[capefeather]

I feel the need to quote myself:

(Going to Gen IV again) If Garchomp got OHKOed by Stealth Rock, it would be a far, far worse Pokémon, not even close to Uber, despite carrying all of the same 100-speed-outrunning, Bronzong-2HKOing awesomeness. (...) Now, admittedly that is an extreme example, (...) but I just had to give one because it illustrates clearly the fact that abilities do not make sense by themselves. Please, let us talk about actual Pokémon instead of talking about gameplay aspects in a vacuum... because I don't want to see any more repeat posts about this

The point? The problem that I'm seeing with people using the term "broken" is that how they're implicitly defining it is completely useless as far as actual Pokémon goes. It's just an excuse to keep disguising a fundamental disagreement as an obvious truth that we're all too stupid to understand. The idea of being "broken" is only relevant in the context of the metagame itself, not specific situations in specific battles. "Kingdra is broken when rain is up" is about as useful as "Salamence is broken when Magnezone is around to trap Steels" or "Dual Screener + Baton Pass Gliscor + Metagross is broken if it's pulled off" or even "Agility SubPetaya Empoleon is broken if nothing above 534 Speed exists on the opponents team". Pokémon don't "become broken" during a match. It's broken or it isn't.

Let's look at Gen IV UU for a prime example of a playstyle being close to broken by virtue of environmental factors. Rain offense (RO) became very anti-metagame whenever a few very powerful threats centralized the metagame, and RO subsided once said threats were banned. RO was especially rampant during the Cresselia + Porygon-Z (CPZ) environment because people were overloading on walls, revenge killers and wallbreakers. But RO "itself" didn't change whether Cresselia and Porygon-Z were there or not. It was "broken" (for the sake of argument; I know that it was deemed not broken because I was one of the voters who said so) in one environment and not in the other. This is a far more useful assessment than saying something like, "Kabutops+Ludicolo+Qwilfish become broken when rain is up, but it's harder to pull off in the non-CPZ environment." Please, that says nothing about anything.

The only reason to use the "broken-by-match" definition is for some philosophical weirdness where one feels the need to treat the suspect tests literally like a trial. "Who is guilty?" Yet, the people who have taken this approach have failed to see the whole point, which is simply to improve the game substantially. This is supposed to be the replacement to grandfathering Gen IV thinking? People also reference "Smogon policy" when, again, said policy becomes vaguer and more open to interpretation by the day, and just from reading the posts of badged users it's clear that the way in which "Smogon policy" is being invoked right now isn't necessarily being followed. In fact, when people reference "Smogon policy", they tend to grandfather the interpretation from Gen IV!

I mentioned this a few times last round, but there seems to be no real reason to stick to banning Pokémon. At the end of the day, a "Pokémon" is an index number that generates a set of base stats and legal move/ability sets, just as an "ability" is an index number that can be applied to a "Pokémon". Index numbers aren't broken; the entirety of the entity that sits inside one or more Poké Balls is. So really, in banning an "index number", one should hope to achieve a pragmatic solution that minimizes the complication of the ruleset while substantially improving the metagame.

If you cannot argue that the apparently not-optimally-pragmatic banlist modification that you're proposing may likely result in a substantially better metagame than any other modification, then please stop kidding yourself. I'm tired of people talking like broken records - inefficient spambots, even.

EDIT:

Second, you'll notice in the post you quoted that I even said that they are broken because of Rain. But we have never banned something because it makes something else broken. We ban whats broken.

really

 

[Nanoswine]

when ttar is gone the drizzle is constant
although most sand pokes are good without sand
they are easily swept by a rain team under an unthreatened drizzle

If a Drizzle team manages to take out Tyranitar or Hippowdon, it is not always guaranteed win. But I think what he was trying to say is without SS, Terakion and Randorosu are still very good Pokemon, whereas without Rain Kingdra, Kabutops, Manaphy, and Ludicolo are too slow to do much anymore (or in Manaphy's case, no more instaheal), and their Water STAB isn't boosted.

A Pokemon built for a Rain team generally performs poorer than a Pokemon built for a Sandstorm team out of their respective weathers.

 

[TheValkyries]

Bottom Line its Rain which triggers the abilities and gives the STAB boosts (and everything else it brings to the table) which affects the brokenness of things not the other way round.

First off, banning Drizzle doesn't ban Rain.

Second, you'll notice in the post you quoted that I even said that they are broken because of Rain. But we have never banned something because it makes something else broken. We ban whats broken.

At least you can stall out 8 turns of rain and then it's your turn to assault his team while he's vulnerable. However, against infinite Rain, you're on the back foot the whole game.

With what can you stall rain for 8 turns, exactly? If these sweepers were so easy to contain, why are we having such a problem with infinite rain?

 

[fidgety]

If a Drizzle team manages to take out Tyranitar or Hippowdon, it is not always guaranteed win. But I think what he was trying to say is without SS, Terakion and Randorosu are still very good Pokemon, whereas without Rain Kingdra, Kabutops, Manaphy, and Ludicolo are too slow to do much anymore (or in Manaphy's case, no more instaheal), and their Water STAB isn't boosted.

A Pokemon built for a Rain team generally performs poorer than a Pokemon built for a Sandstorm team out of their respective weathers.

and there is another reason to keep drizzle around, all the pokes that are viable in a meta with it that aren't without.

@whoever asked about the different rain style:
there is offense, stall, + balanced + each of those has at least 2-3 subdivisions of their own so yes there are a lot of rain based play-styles.

 

[Darusare]

and there is another reason to keep drizzle around, all the pokes that are viable in a meta with it that aren't without.

@whoever asked about the different rain style:
there is offense, stall, + balanced + each of those has at least 2-3 subdivisions of their own so yes there are a lot of rain based play-styles.

Ok
so what im getting from this is
its considered a playstyle if there are three walls and three attackers
and yet another playstyle with two walls and four attackers

Kingdra will still be viable
the others are still viable in OU
but will probably be relegated to UU or BL

If drizzle is banned this round
other weathers will be more effective
and rain teams will not be prevalent at all
but as long as the other weathers are decreased in power accordingly
the metagame should open up
so that weather doesnt dominate everything

 

[Nanoswine]

First off, banning Drizzle doesn't ban Rain.

Second, you'll notice in the post you quoted that I even said that they are broken because of Rain. But we have never banned something because it makes something else broken. We ban whats broken.

With what can you stall rain for 8 turns, exactly? If these sweepers were so easy to contain, why are we having such a problem with infinite rain?

Wobuffett wasn't broken on it's own, but it gave too much support to it's team. So we banned it, not the Pokemon that it allowed a free turn of setup. And don't come back and say that Drizzle only supports a select few Pokemon, because if your team isn't built to abuse that support, you should not be running Politoed. Just by switching in, Politoed turns a large amount of Pokemon from trash to potent and arguably broken offensive sweepers, and gives anything with Hydration free instant healing. Not to mention it gives a major boost to Water moves, and makes any Pokemon with a weakness to Fire that much harder to take down. That's more support than Wobuffett will ever give a team.

And don't bring up the 8 turn argument, if it was impossible to stall Rain out, everybody would have been running Rain even before Politoed was released.

and there is another reason to keep drizzle around, all the pokes that are viable in a meta with it that aren't without.

@whoever asked about the different rain style:
there is offense, stall, + balanced + each of those has at least 2-3 subdivisions of their own so yes there are a lot of rain based play-styles.

Sure Drizzle may make individual Pokemon viable. but as I have said countless times, Drizzle teams as a whole won't see much if any usage if the weathers are balanced through individual bans. And by extent, the Pokemon that Drizzle makes viable won't see usage either. So by banning individuals instead of Drizzle itself, we aren't really saving any playstyles or Pokemon.

And there are only 2 styles of Rain Teams: Offense and Stall. Stall sucks because it flat out loses against other weather teams (which I think are starting to get popular :P)

Rain needs the constant offensive momentum to keep other weather changers from just dancing in, and Rain Stall has none of that momentum. Also the whole asset to your team thing, but I don't want to write that up again lol

 

[DahliaSky]

Get over yourselves people and realize...

Rain Dance Teams were in gen 5 before Drizzle.

We saw that they were obviously not broken, and it caused no problems at all... in fact it was even harder to set up and sweep than last gen. 8 turn swift swim was doing the same with three pokes that a single boosted sweeper often did by itself. In gen 5!

So please stop arguing that it hasn't been tested, and we should do a meta without swift swim... we already have seen this.

Please stop saying that Kingdra, Kabu, and Ludi are broken with both drizzle and rain dance, because it was obvious to anyone who played gen 5 before drizzle that it wasn't broken with rain dance.

Please, list all of these playstyles that would be gone from banning drizzle. I can't think of a single one, since I can still think of plenty of ways to play rain stall (not as well, but it was never good anyway) in 8 turn rain.You may have to tweek your sets, but with 8 turns you should be able to effectively toxicstall out a poke if you have tspikes down.

And last... Actually rebut this post if you feel anything but drizzle should be banned. You guys keep ignoring the posts where we ask for a list of the playstyles, and ignoring the posts where its said that rain was already used without drizzle in gen 5. Ignorance is bliss, but you need to address the real issue here, not correct technicalities in other people's arguments. Hell, People have even corrected me, quoting some things i've said and ignoring the parts where I mention the gen 5 (in fact going as far as saying gen 4 was a bad reference when i was drawing a conclusion to the gen 5 that was without drizzle) and without mentioning that there are no playstyles that will be completely lost if drizzle is banned.

 

[alexwolf]

Please, list all of these playstyles that would be gone from banning drizzle. I can't think of a single one, since I can still think of plenty of ways to play rain stall (not as well, but it was never good anyway) in 8 turn rain.You may have to tweek your sets, but with 8 turns you should be able to effectively toxicstall out a poke if you have tspikes down.

these are the playstyles that will cease to exist:

1.rain offense!rain offense will die in this metagame without drizzle...good luck with your rain dance team that will have to use 2 or 3 supporting pokes to summon drizzle when 4 other weather inducers can just come in,cancel the weather and threaten directly the otherwise mediocre rain sweepers(almost every single rain sweeper that is being currently used except kingdra is uu or lower).remember how difficult was to keep rain up in 4th generation(i am not saying it was i am just referring to the degree of difficulty).multiply this with 10 and you can see how viable rain offense will be without drizzle...with new threats like doryuuzu,landlos,garchomp coming down to ou,sandslash with the new ability and terakion,sand is going to be more present than ever...ah and don't forget that there is also drought ninetales and sun teams can be very devastating if played right.add to all this the fact that nattorei and burungeru now exist to easily stall out the 8 turns of rain and you suddenly realize how unviable rain offense is...

2.rain stall.remeber how you said '' I can still think of plenty of ways to play rain stall (not as well, but it was never good anyway) in 8 turn rain''.you say that rain stall was never good so nerfing it more will not hurt it...how is this a right argument???in a metagame where we want as many options as possible,when u have something that is unnappealing and unpopular you try to make it worse or you try to help it?i think the second...imagine if rain offense,which is much better and appealing to people,becomes unviable without drizzle what will happen to rain stall...it will completely and uterlly disappear...
3.rain balance.this is a combination of a solid defensive core that benefits from rain(such as nattorei and scizor),and a solid attacking core that abuses the benefits that rain provides(100% accurate thunders,boosted water attacks).that kind of team usually is made to work also good without rain but its true potential comes out when rain is active!for example kerudio,zapdos,empoleon,gyarados and starmie are very nice pokes pokes outside of rain...
so these are the 3 big categories of playstyles that will disappear by banning drizzle(meaning that there are also subcategories like balance stall or bulky offense)...there may be more but that's all i could think for now...

 

[hobo bob]

First off, banning Drizzle doesn't ban Rain.

Second, you'll notice in the post you quoted that I even said that they are broken because of Rain. But we have never banned something because it makes something else broken. We ban whats broken.

Support Characteristic says hi
"Support Characteristic
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."

Quoted from Portrait of an Uber

2.rain stall.remeber how you said '' I can still think of plenty of ways to play rain stall (not as well, but it was never good anyway) in 8 turn rain''.you say that rain stall was never good so nerfing it more will not hurt it...how is this a right argument???in a metagame where we want as many options as possible,when u have something that is unnappealing and unpopular you try to make it worse or you try to help it?i think the second...imagine if rain offense,which is much better and appealing to people,becomes unviable without drizzle what will happen to rain stall...it will completely and uterlly disappear...

Are you trying to imply that we shouldn't ban Drizzle because it would ruin rain-stall? If we go by that logic we should ban Mischievous Heart so that Baton Pass has a chance too.

 

[Nanoswine]

these are the playstyles that will cease to exist:

1.rain offense!rain offense will die in this metagame without drizzle...good luck with your rain dance team that will have to use 2 or 3 supporting pokes to summon drizzle when 4 other weather inducers can just come in,cancel the weather and threaten directly the otherwise mediocre rain sweepers(almost every single rain sweeper that is being currently used except kingdra is uu or lower).remember how difficult was to keep rain up in 4th generation(i am not saying it was i am just referring to the degree of difficulty).multiply this with 10 and you can see how viable rain offense will be without drizzle...with new threats like doryuuzu,landlos,garchomp coming down to ou,sandslash with the new ability and terakion,sand is going to be more present than ever...ah and don't forget that there is also drought ninetales and sun teams can be very devastating if played right.add to all this the fact that nattorei and burungeru now exist to easily stall out the 8 turns of rain and you suddenly realize how unviable rain offense is...

2.rain stall.remeber how you said '' I can still think of plenty of ways to play rain stall (not as well, but it was never good anyway) in 8 turn rain''.you say that rain stall was never good so nerfing it more will not hurt it...how is this a right argument???in a metagame where we want as many options as possible,when u have something that is unnappealing and unpopular you try to make it worse or you try to help it?i think the second...imagine if rain offense,which is much better and appealing to people,becomes unviable without drizzle what will happen to rain stall...it will completely and uterlly disappear...
3.rain balance.this is a combination of a solid defensive core that benefits from rain(such as nattorei and scizor),and a solid attacking core that abuses the benefits that rain provides(100% accurate thunders,boosted water attacks).that kind of team usually is made to work also good without rain but its true potential comes out when rain is active!for example kerudio,zapdos,empoleon,gyarados and starmie are very nice pokes pokes outside of rain...
so these are the 3 big categories of playstyles that will disappear by banning drizzle(meaning that there are also subcategories like balance stall or bulky offense)...there may be more but that's all i could think for now...

Using Nattorei or a Zapdos with Thunder on your Rain Offense team does not suddenly transform it into a different playstyle.

Rain Stall is completely underwhelming because in a metagame that is basically Rain vs Sand, you have to keep up offensive momentum so that the opponent's weather starter doesn't just prance in and make your team ineffective. If there were a Rain Balance, it would face the same problems if it had something like a Skarmory or Tentacruel in.

And as I have said before, Rain Offense will die even if we don't ban Drizzle.

By eliminating Drizzle, we are not ridding the competitive metagame of any playstyle thats worth using in the first place, or that wouldn't be lost if we took another course of action.

 

[alphatron]

And as I have said before, Rain Offense will die even if we don't ban Drizzle.

I assume you meant rain stall?

 

[Nanoswine]

I assume you meant rain stall?

No, I meant Rain Offense.

If we ban all the abusers of Rain that are deemed broken, then there is no reason to run a Drizzle team anymore. Why would you, when you have to run Politoed just to bring the Rain abusers on your team to an acceptable level for Standard play?

 

[alphatron]

Oh, that.

If we were to ban the current broken abusers, rain offense wouldn't die as they'd simply be replaced by the likes of flaotzel, qwilfish, etc. Would that set of abusers be banned if they proved to be decent? I honestly don't know, as they currently aren't used. We'd have to see. Although I'm certain that has already been said in this thread.

For the record, I do not agree with the idea of banning of the swift swim ability at all.

 

[DahliaSky]

these are the playstyles that will cease to exist:

1.rain offense!rain offense will die in this metagame without drizzle...good luck with your rain dance team that will have to use 2 or 3 supporting pokes to summon drizzle when 4 other weather inducers can just come in,cancel the weather and threaten directly the otherwise mediocre rain sweepers(almost every single rain sweeper that is being currently used except kingdra is uu or lower).remember how difficult was to keep rain up in 4th generation(i am not saying it was i am just referring to the degree of difficulty).multiply this with 10 and you can see how viable rain offense will be without drizzle...with new threats like doryuuzu,landlos,garchomp coming down to ou,sandslash with the new ability and terakion,sand is going to be more present than ever...ah and don't forget that there is also drought ninetales and sun teams can be very devastating if played right.add to all this the fact that nattorei and burungeru now exist to easily stall out the 8 turns of rain and you suddenly realize how unviable rain offense is...

2.rain stall.remeber how you said '' I can still think of plenty of ways to play rain stall (not as well, but it was never good anyway) in 8 turn rain''.you say that rain stall was never good so nerfing it more will not hurt it...how is this a right argument???in a metagame where we want as many options as possible,when u have something that is unnappealing and unpopular you try to make it worse or you try to help it?i think the second...imagine if rain offense,which is much better and appealing to people,becomes unviable without drizzle what will happen to rain stall...it will completely and uterlly disappear...
3.rain balance.this is a combination of a solid defensive core that benefits from rain(such as nattorei and scizor),and a solid attacking core that abuses the benefits that rain provides(100% accurate thunders,boosted water attacks).that kind of team usually is made to work also good without rain but its true potential comes out when rain is active!for example kerudio,zapdos,empoleon,gyarados and starmie are very nice pokes pokes outside of rain...
so these are the 3 big categories of playstyles that will disappear by banning drizzle(meaning that there are also subcategories like balance stall or bulky offense)...there may be more but that's all i could think for now...

Using Nattorei or a Zapdos with Thunder on your Rain Offense team does not suddenly transform it into a different playstyle.

Rain Stall is completely underwhelming because in a metagame that is basically Rain vs Sand, you have to keep up offensive momentum so that the opponent's weather starter doesn't just prance in and make your team ineffective. If there were a Rain Balance, it would face the same problems if it had something like a Skarmory or Tentacruel in.

And as I have said before, Rain Offense will die even if we don't ban Drizzle.

By eliminating Drizzle, we are not ridding the competitive metagame of any playstyle thats worth using in the first place, or that wouldn't be lost if we took another course of action.

Exactly my reply nanoswine xD. Zapdos, nat, and scizor benefit from 8 turn rain also... just not any time during a whole fight without having to put thought behind it. Not only are they not a separate idea from either rain stall or rain offense type teams, even outside of drizzle you could still use rain dance ON scizor to make an opponent's switch to a fire pokemon less useful, and still utilize this "middle ground" you've created outside of drizzle as well.

Also, rain offense existed before drizzle came into the meta. It existed last gen, and in gen 5, and rain dance teams won't go away just because they're slightly harder to play. They were always uncommon (in gen 4 and 5 before drizzle), and will remain that way. Not gone. With the right support they could even be used very effectively... just don't make gimmick teams of 4-5 pokes relying on a weather condition and it brings out useful other strategies that are being forgotten in drizzle like a self support kingdra or screening rain dance users (just examples of many).

You complain about Nerfing a Never Used Strategy over fixing the metagame in a way that is the most beneficial to every other style of play's balance? Its not even making it worse, its making it less dedicated. For 8 turns it works just as well, you just have to switch out, rain up, and stall out the next poke.

 

[TorchicBlaziken]

Let's just ban Manaphy and test Drizzle next round.

 

[Nanoswine]

Let's just ban Drizzle and test Manaphy next round.

Fixed.

Also, Manaphy isn't even the biggest problem with Rain lol. I'd pick a Kingdra over it any day.

 

[Kefka Palazzo™]

Fixed.

Also, Manaphy isn't even the biggest problem with Rain lol. I'd pick a Kingdra over it any day.

Pretty much.
Manaphy is annoying,but it's the trio that's causing the problems.

Btw,I'm no longer going to try to get my voting rights.
School has started,and I'd rather just enjoy playing pokemon and improve my regular team although it's slower and out classed by rain....it's a lot more fun though xD
I'm sure Drizzle will end up getting banned or Drizzle teams will end up getting nerfed in SOME way.

 

[capefeather]

Yeah, I don't think that I'm going to pay much attention to my rating anymore, maybe ever. All it does is demoralize for no reason. I'm not letting some bs rating system get to me. Phil & Co. can just read what I think about Standard every month and give me a checkmark or not.

 

[Ulevo]

Considering that political debates seem to over influence the realities of the metagame more so than actual experience does on the ladder, I can't say I blame you.

Makes me want to go back to grandfathering all over again. At least then I didn't have to watch blind people leading blind people.

 

[UltiMario]

Just saying, a "Portrait of an Uber" from 4th Gen ONLY applies to 4th Gen.

It does not, and will NEVER apply to 5th Gen. 5th Gen's "Portrait of an Uber" will be remade from scratch.

 

[voodoo pimp]

But we have never banned something because it makes something else broken. We ban whats broken.

Wobbuffet? Mew? Level 1 Kyogre? One on one, none of those are terribly powerful.

 

[alamaster]

Support Characteristic says hi
"Support Characteristic
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."

I get what you are saying but those definitions were fucking terrible and nobody could ever agree as to how substantial the support has to be to be broken. Weather seems to be a huge part of Gen 5 and everyone who is in the Gen 4 mindset should forget about it and start from scratch. This is a new generation, we are not (hopefully) going to shape it into some retarded spin off of Gen 4.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

@ Ala, exactly what I've been saying. Why can we not seem to adjust to a metagame where weather is prominent? And how can you justify saying one is broken this early into the meta?

 

[Nanoswine]

@ Ulevo, I acknowledge that personal experience of the metagame is the single most important thing to have when it comes to suspect testing, but you can stop acting like you're the only one around here with any. It's not like any of us are posting here without ever having played before, so you can stop pretending that we are.

For people that are saying we are just trying to make Gen V a rehash of Gen IV, SS will always be the most powerful weather in the end, because it has the most powerful weather starters. Drizzle just has abusers that become faster and more powerful. And if we remove those overpowered abusers, Drizzle won't stand a chance against SS.

 

[alamaster]

For people that are saying we are just trying to make Gen V a rehash of Gen IV, SS will always be the most powerful weather in the end, because it has the most powerful weather starters. Drizzle just has abusers that become faster and more powerful. And if we remove those overpowered abusers, Drizzle won't stand a chance against SS.

If SS is the most powerful and will always be, then why is Drizzle on the chopping block? It's apparently only the most powerful if the metagame changes to benefit it.