Benlisted said:
Yeah, clearly Swift Swim isn't inherently broken - with doubled speed you can do nothing unless you have good attacking stats or support movepool. I merely think that perhaps even the Drizzle+Swift Swim ban suggested earlier is a better idea than banning the entire weather. I'll talk more about this in a sec.
I don't think that banning Swift Swim + Drizzle is a good idea. When nominating last round, the OP stated "You may not nominate a pokemon+ability combo". I feel that it would be too similar to that, which was deemed a bad idea and prohibited.
A problem with this is Doryuuzu, for example. Without Sand doubling his speed, I don't think anyone would consider him inherently broken at all (not to say that he is, this is just an example) - and the same can be applied here. My point being that if something is made broken even by something else, and even if a lot of things are by that same thing, the precedent is still to ban the pokemon itself (or restrict it in some way). I know this isn't a perfect example as SS=/=Rain, but I'm just trying to point out a bit of a flaw with that particular way of looking at things.
Precedents are irrelevant. People were worried about banning Inconsistent being a slippery slope. People have complained that banning Soul Dew was a slippery slope. We can argue about precedents all we want, but how much have they actually affected how we do things so far? I'd say that we handle bans on a case-by-case basis, rather than saying "If we do this once, we have to do it the same way every time".
Yeah, admittedly I cannot predict what the meta will look like with perfect accuracy by any means. I'm just going by the example of Rain in 4th Gen OU not being very common when Tales, Dory and Randorosu were absent primarily - and even when people were less familiar with weather, to form my prediction. It seems that a few others in the thread share my view, I don't know if you do but I just wanted to point out that it isn't solely me who thinks this will be the case :P.
It's rare that no one shares in a person's opinion. For either of us to say "I'm not alone" doesn't matter much. However, your actual point does stand.
I entirely understand that something intolerable cannot stay in the meta. I don't think there has been a concluded discussion on Rain as of yet though, so I'll withold my opinion and presume that something about Drizzle is found broken - I'd rather remove the intolerable aspects if possible while mainaining at least something of the archetype.
The discussion hasn't concluded anything about rain, other than that something is wrong.
But the question is, what of the archetype will be maintained? Suppose that the "broken trio" got banned. Do you think anyone would use Gorebyss or Floatzel? Probably not. Even with doubled speed they simply can't compete in this metagame. So the Swift Swimming archetype won't really last anyway.
I see where you're coming from - but I think what we're delving into here is the two factors of: something being broken, which I see as completely unsuitable for the meta (Ie say Kyogre for a noncontroversial example); and something which is dubiously broken but certainly overcentralises the meta (Salamence). It seems to be the definitions being blurred a bit here so I just thought I'd state what I see as both. The difference ofc is that the former can be countered (all pokes can) but only by such absurdly specialised things as Quagsire, etc, whereas Salamence had undoubtedly more and more viable counters - but had the two deadly sets which were a non-tangible factor of brokenness.
Although you're correct that Kyogre was very different from Salamence, I don't see how it pertains to this argument.
When one thing (Salamence) makes most of OU unviable, you say it's broken.
When another thing (Drizzle) makes most of OU unviable, you say it's over-centralization.
Remember how I said we should do things on a case-by-case basis? I don;t see the difference in circumstances here.
In the end, I think we both agree that something which overcentralises the meta even if it is not clearly broken needs to be addressed, however, since Drizzle is a much more multifaceted thing than say Salamence, we have the oppurtunity to address in in a different manner than if we were addressing a single pokemon - as the other factors which theoretically make it broken can be dealt with in other ways.
And yet you're not saying WHY it should be handled differently. Other than that we should preserve a team archetype.
But last Gen, almost every team was practically the same near the Salamence ban. I could've called that a team archetype. But it shouldn't have been preserved because that team was ruining the metagame.
Yes, Drizzle can be handled differently, but please explain why it should.
Yeah you really can't stress enough how underestimated Sun is. It annoys me, but I also love taking advantage of people who do so in battle :D. Like alphatron said earlier though, I doubt it would be found broken without Rain, though it is possible.
Well, whether or not it will be broken really depends on what happens to Sand, I'd say. Rain is probably going to fall out of grace after this round. With Rain no longer favored, Sand will likely be the "worst" weather. What people choose to do with it will affect what happens to Sun, imo.
Reachzero raised an interesting point a while back about him not wanting to face a Rain team even if Swift Swim were banned. It's reasonable enough - Rain would still have that power boost along with Thunder etc to abuse, and Water-move spam would simply become slower and most probably bulkier and more diverse. Rain offense would be altered for sure by removing Swift Swim, but probably not eliminated.
This is actually arguing my point for me. reachzero said that banning Swift Swim wouldn't be enough. That Rain would still suck to face. That's a good reason to ban Drizzle.
But seriously, Rain becomes almost equivalent to sun without Swift Swim. Do people use Sun simply to boost Fire STABs? No, because otherwise Sun teams would be Ninetales + 5 Fire-types.
When people use Sun, they use specialized abilities like Chlorophyll or Solar Power. You would never see a Sun team that only abuses boosted STAB. By that same token, Rain wouldn't work for the sole purpose of boosting Water STABs.
That's why Rain offense would die without Swift Swim. Because the 1.5x boost simply isn't enough to make it viable.
I think the distinction between Rain having the right to be preserved as a strategy and said item for Scizor, is that weather is one of the game mechanic cornerstones, and an entire strategy as opposed to an item for one pokemon. I know your example wasn't the best but i hope you unerstand my point.
My example was actually for a hypothetical response you could make that you never did make. Therefore, my example doesn't apply to our current argument. Which is why I'm skipping this part of your post.
Yeah sorry, I generally encompass any possible Rain strategy as an archetype, similar to Stall or Offense or Balance when referring to it like that, I really need to make myself more clear... I admit a Drizzle ban is the easiest way to solve any problems, but I just don't think it's necessarily the right way, for reasons I'm sure you gather. The whole reason I began posting here was due to the volume of people advocating for its ban - as I wanted to explain to the masses my train of thought as to why we should try an alternative. Of course if the suspect votes say differently there's nothing else to be done, but I may as well get my voice heard.
I understand your train of thought, and I suppose that it is well thought-out, but I still disagree with it. If we ban Swift Swim or the all the abusers, the archetye of rain offense will go away. Maybe something similar could arise, but it would in no ay be able to be a "new" rain offense. And yet, if we ban Drizzle, rain stall dies. For the reasons specified in my last post (do you want me to repeat them?), I believe that Drizzle is the thing that should go. However, you may rest assured that your voice has been heard.
