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

[DahliaSky]

I guess the same argument can be made for rain stall or sun stall if that even exists but as long as the swift swim/chlorophyll abusers exist, you won't see any of those.

yes, and none of them should have the stall part as long as they have the power/speed part. sandstorm can't be treated differently just because it was around in the past.

that then is a personal choise, i would rather have 5 kinds of stall then boring scarm-bliss-cress all over again
i have swept with so called walls a few times :P

<3 +1

there are also far more play styles than 3 (just not currently going), and seeing the same 9 teams over and over grates on my nerves.

what happened to para/sweep teams? what happened to unpredictable defensive teams? what happened to non-lead trickscarfing? what happened, in fact, to choice scarf in general? its mostly dwarfed by the double speed and is barely around anymore except on shandera to catch/counter or politoed. I see TONS of strategies gone from the meta, and only the three, basic, ungarnished strategies remaining.

 

[astrohawke]

yes, and none of them should have the stall part as long as they have the power/speed part. sandstorm can't be treated differently just because it was around in the past.

All things are not equal. You don't ban something that isn't broken just because something similar is banned. The offensive aspect is the only thing that's broken right now and really only for rain. It's been said before that sand has 1 viable speed abuser and doesn't give offensive power boosts. Sun has both speed and power boosts but not on the same pokemon. Rain has multiple abusers with both speed and power boosts on the same pokemon on an awesome type. As far as offense goes rain>sun>sand. Sand is not getting special treatment because it's been around longer. It just isn't as good offensively.

 

[ensoriki]

<3 +1

there are also far more play styles than 3 (just not currently going), and seeing the same 9 teams over and over grates on my nerves.

what happened to para/sweep teams? what happened to unpredictable defensive teams? what happened to non-lead trickscarfing? what happened, in fact, to choice scarf in general? its mostly dwarfed by the double speed and is barely around anymore except on shandera to catch/counter or politoed. I see TONS of strategies gone from the meta, and only the three, basic, ungarnished strategies remaining.

I don't know what same 9 teams you've been seeing. There are non-weather teams in the 100's, and I saw them when I was in the 20's as well.

 

[SJCrew]

I haven't heard anyone complaining about Parasect, Tentacruel, Toxicroak, or Vaporeon being broken. Saying Drizzle is the culprit for rain being broken is narrow-mindend and unfair.

No, trying to stick up for Drizzle and ban entirely the wrong culprit when you know it uses a combination of factors to break other Pokemon is narrowminded and unfair to the metagame. This is just like that time someone suggested banning Dark Void instead of Darkrai. Dark Void isn't doing all of the work, Darkrai is. And in this scenario, Swift Swim isn't doing all of the work, Drizzle is.

Banning something that isn't broken in and of itself just to protect something that is makes no logical sense and isn't guaranteed to even achieve the desired effect. If we make a Swift Swim clause, Swift Swim has to be the thing that's broken, NOT the benefactor making it so effective.

Now let's put this in perspective: Drizzle brings the Water attack boost, the Swift Swim activation, and Hydration ability in effect that is proven. That means Drizzle is ultimately the problem, not the abilities that benefit from it. So why are we even discussing banning anything else?

 

[Syberia]

I'd like to bring up Latios and Latias together for discussion. While I do not feel that either is worthy of being banned when taken alone, I think that both together might be a little too much. While they do not technically violate species clause, their stats and movepool are so close together that for all intents and purposes they are the same pokemon. When you also consider that both have access to Choice Specs and what is often considered the most powerful move in the game, Draco Meteor, and also that the number of things who can switch into a specs DM, survive another, and revenge kill or cripple a Lati is already unreasonably small (Tyranitar, Scizor, and Nattorei come to mind, but not much else), it becomes apparent that both Lati twins support each other in a way that really nothing else does.

Sure they share the same weaknesses, but 350 speed makes that unimportant in a lot of cases when something has to eat a 210-power move off of 500+ Special Attack to even get a hit in. What I'm essentially saying is that, just by spamming one move repeatedly, both Latis have the uncanny ability to destroy their counters/checks (or alternately force a lot of sacrifices) to make it much easier for the other to sweep uninterrupted. I wouldn't be opposed to a Lati clause of sorts.

 

[DahliaSky]

that then is a personal choise, i would rather have 5 kinds of stall then boring scarm-bliss-cress all over again
i have swept with so called walls a few times :P

<3 +1

there are also far more play styles than 3 (just not currently going), and seeing the same 9 teams over and over grates on my nerves.

what happened to para/sweep teams? what happened to unpredictable defensive teams? what happened to non-lead trickscarfing? what happened, in fact, to choice scarf in general? its mostly dwarfed by the double speed and is barely around anymore except on shandera to catch/counter. I see TONS of strategies gone from the meta, and only the three, basic, ungarnished strategies remaining.

edit: repost, original didn't stay

 

[Arc Tech]

All things are not equal. You don't ban something that isn't broken just because something similar is banned. The offensive aspect is the only thing that's broken right now and really only for rain. It's been said before that sand has 1 viable speed abuser and doesn't give offensive power boosts. Sun has both speed and power boosts but not on the same pokemon. Rain has multiple abusers with both speed and power boosts on the same pokemon on an awesome type. As far as offense goes rain>sun>sand. Sand is not getting special treatment because it's been around longer. It just isn't as good offensively.

Somewhat true, until you also look at rain's sweepers. Out of them, only Kingdra, Ludicolo, and Kabutops can really get around bulky waters due to their good secondary stabs (Kingdra's powerful outrage/draco meteor, Ludicolo's SE grass attacks, and Kabutop's high offensive prowess (which comes at the cost of frailty)). If you remove Kingdra and Ludicolo, with Kabutops suspect (frailty limits it), I highly doubt rain teams will function well- they'll be stopped short by most bulky waters, especially water absorbers. Qwilfish's best bet is stab Poison Jab. Floatzel- waterfall is probably its best bet, thanks to it having 100 BP after all things considered, better than any of it other options? Gorebyss and Omastar (and other special swift swimmers), their best bet is hp ele/grass. Its the side characteristics of the big 3 swift swimmers that make them broken over the rest of the swift swimmers. The rest would be decent, but not broken, and not much better then sun or sand sweepers.

So 2 or 3 pokes to sand's 1 or 2 (sandslash, once it is released, or maybe even Landlos). Not too major a difference to me. Really should be treated the same. Since it seems that both only break a small number of pokemon, and they do not provide support across the board to all pokemon like deoxys-s and wobb do, I'd say the sweepers are the offending element and should be banned.

 

[astrohawke]

Now let's put this in perspective: Drizzle brings the Water attack boost, the Swift Swim activation, and Hydration ability in effect that is proven. That means Drizzle is ultimately the problem, not the abilities that benefit from it. So why are we even discussing banning anything else?

The water boost and hydration have never really been the problem. At least not until it's tested and shown to be. Sun has the same boosts and it hasn't been nominated as a suspect.

 

[DahliaSky]

I don't know what same 9 teams you've been seeing. There are non-weather teams in the 100's, and I saw them when I was in the 20's as well.

anti-meta teams, but they don't fix the overcentralization since they pull from the same pool of counters, and while they work there aren't very many of them since they need a strong player and normally (not always though) a bit of luck backing them up to work against multiple weather types.

also @ astro: manaphy was uber because of hydration, and vaporeon is quite formidable with it to. to discount these two is just ignorant. Water boosts are also very big as well, since kingdra can DD instead of using swift swim to have a simaler effect on speed and deal even more damage than just swift swim+hit.

 

[Syrachime]

I know I'm a rather quiet poster, as this is only my second post, but I just wanted to throw out my thoughts on the potential drizzle ban.

As far as what I've been reading in this thread, the main thing that seems to be stirring up all the controversy is the swift swim ability and extra 50% boost promoted to water type moves in the rain. This also goes alongside the fact that the best abusers of the game are Pokemon who's typing and defenses make them almost invincible in the rain. This to me, I will honestly say sounds broken in too many ways. I think there is a way to resolve this though without banning an entire team strategy...

This is just an idea that occurred to me. Feel free to hate it or love it as you will. But what if Smogon were to make a clause that makes it illegal to use speed raising abilities in permanent weather. However, they allowed those abilities to be used if the weather was setup for the 5-8 turns manually?

Think of the clause as something like this. Permanent weather teams are legal, but the team itself can not run swift swim, chlorophyll, or any other speed raising abilities. However, these abilities can be used if the weather is manually setup with sunny day, rain dance, etc.

If you stop to think about it, taking away the speed raising abilities of rain and sun would eliminate a huge part of the problem that many people are concerned about. Not to mention that even though some of the perks are gone, there are still enough to consider running rain and sun teams with the boost to fire and water moves as well as the other affects to solar beam and thunder. I'm not saying that this clause would fix everything, but it would help alleviate some of the tension.

Well anyway, this was just my thoughts and idea. I'm all for doing something about the speed raising abilities, but I would really like to see rain and sun stay in the metagame. As this is a new generation, I'd love to see new things, weather being part of it. Toning down on what the biggest threats are of weather helps to, in my opinion, balance out the game enough to consider all forms of weather being set up both permanently and manually.

 

[Arc Tech]

I know I'm a rather quiet poster, as this is only my second post, but I just wanted to throw out my thoughts on the potential drizzle ban.

As far as what I've been reading in this thread, the main thing that seems to be stirring up all the controversy is the swift swim ability and extra 50% boost promoted to water type moves in the rain. This also goes alongside the fact that the best abusers of the game are Pokemon who's typing and defenses make them almost invincible in the rain. This to me, I will honestly say sounds broken in too many ways. I think there is a way to resolve this though without banning an entire team strategy...

This is just an idea that occurred to me. Feel free to hate it or love it as you will. But what if Smogon were to make a clause that makes it illegal to use speed raising abilities in permanent weather. However, they allowed those abilities to be used if the weather was setup for the 5-8 turns manually?

Think of the clause as something like this. Permanent weather teams are legal, but the team itself can not run swift swim, chlorophyll, or any other speed raising abilities. However, these abilities can be used if the weather is manually setup with sunny day, rain dance, etc.

If you stop to think about it, taking away the speed raising abilities of rain and sun would eliminate a huge part of the problem that many people are concerned about. Not to mention that even though some of the perks are gone, there are still enough to consider running rain and sun teams with the boost to fire and water moves as well as the other affects to solar beam and thunder. I'm not saying that this clause would fix everything, but it would help alleviate some of the tension.

Well anyway, this was just my thoughts and idea. I'm all for doing something about the speed raising abilities, but I would really like to see rain and sun stay in the metagame. As this is a new generation, I'd love to see new things, weather being part of it. Toning down on what the biggest threats are of weather helps to, in my opinion, balance out the game enough to consider all forms of weather being set up both permanently and manually.

Just one question- How could you have read through the thread and not see this idea proposed over 5 times already?

In regards to it, I would say that it could be done, as banning a broken team type rather than the individual pokemon, akin to banning a broken pokemon as opposed to one of its moves/abilties. It may not be strictly a simple rule, but it deals with teams, not an individual pokemon. If it were in a single pokemon, it would cause an arbitrary choice, which should be avoided.

 

[PK Gaming]

This concept of "Fair" doesn't make sense.
Why does anything have to be fair to Kingdra or fair to Kabutops.

It does make sense. Your banning Kingdra and the other rain sweepers from OU (and the lower tiers) it is so much simpler to ban Drizzle. Why do you insist on weakening Drizzle when you can ban it outright. You could do this to Garchomp in gen 4 (by banning SD + Outrage) and Salamence (by banning Dragon Dance) Not only is this a waste of time, you shouldn't be weakening a pokemon to make it usable.

Rains not necessarily broken because non-weather struggles with it
Non-weather mostly isn't up to snuff.
I still support the idea of a clause on drizzle but w/e.
On banning swift swim I'm not against it either I quite rather Drizzle stay.

That's not necessarily true because a well played rain team can still beat the other weathers. I honestly cannot comprehend why you want to keep Drizzle.
What happened to using regular teams and regular Pokemon? Banning Swift swim is equally stupid because it isn't broken on certain Pokemon (Luvdisc)

I would support Lati@s removal.

The Lati twins are far less broken than rain.

 

[SJCrew]

The water boost and hydration have never really been the problem. At least not until it's tested and shown to be. Sun has the same boosts and it hasn't been nominated as a suspect.

Manaphy with Hydration is a problem. Kingdra with its insane Specs-boosted Hydro Pumps is a problem. Drizzle boosts all of these things at once. It doesn't make sense to try to directly nerf the playstyle when the healthiest and most logical option for improving metagame is to get rid of the permanence of Rain that makes these factors so dominating.

Like, if there was a machine that turned people into zombies, why on earth would you go around trying to kill all of the zombies in the world when you could just destroy the machine and turn everyone back into their normal, human selves? You don't even know how many zombies there are or where they might be hiding! You're just wasting time on a pointless war when the solution for peace is within arm's length.

And to address the point about Sun: Sun has only gone off the radar for so long because between that and Rain, it's clearly the lesser of two evils. Its biggest boon right now is its versatility and the lack of knowledge about its possible movesets (Chlorophyll sweepers have a lot more options than Swift Swimmers, to tell you the truth). Next round, it's just going to be Sand vs. Sun, where we can clearly see what the full extent of the playstyle is.

 

[ensoriki]

No, trying to stick up for Drizzle and ban entirely the wrong culprit when you know it uses a combination of factors to break other Pokemon is narrowminded and unfair to the metagame. This is just like that time someone suggested banning Dark Void instead of Darkrai. Dark Void isn't doing all of the work, Darkrai is. And in this scenario, Swift Swim isn't doing all of the work, Drizzle is.

Drizzle isn't doing all the work, you continually realize that they are two seperate abilities and then act as if Drizzle is carrying the whole situation when it is not. Your looking at a combination and singling out one aspect.
It's not unfair and the slightest, and I'd say your narrowminded statement is simply your opinion based on tradition. Swift swim is preventing one from simply bringing in a normally faster pokemon and simply countering, instead a would-be counter can't switch in as it's a 2hko and they're too slow.
Swift swim is damn pulling it's weight and to pretend it's innocent is ridiculous.
That is not to say that swift swim or drizzle should be banned, but to just straight out say swift swim is the "wrong culprit" with an argument of that much depth is insulting at least.

Banning something that isn't broken in and of itself just to protect something that is makes no logical sense and isn't guaranteed to even achieve the desired effect. If we make a Swift Swim clause, Swift Swim has to be the thing that's broken, NOT the benefactor making it so effective.

Im sorry what?
Swift swim is not broken in and of itself but Drizzle is, lets get something correct here;
Damp Kingdra isn't mutilating teams, battle armor kabutops is not mutilating teams. Politoed itself is not mutilating teams.
The inducer is definitely not broken, and the "brokeness" comes from the abuse of swift swim.
Drizzle isn't broken in and of itself either, thats why it's argued under the bloody support characteristic.

Now let's put this in perspective: Drizzle brings the Water attack boost, the Swift Swim activation, and Hydration ability in effect that is proven. That means Drizzle is ultimately the problem, not the abilities that benefit from it. So why are we even discussing banning anything else?

Ha. It's a combination plain and simple, you can isolate either Drizzle or swift swim and say one is not broken without the other.
This ultimately semantics don't even matter, it doesn't matter as both are dependent on the other to shape the metagame as they are right now.

Manaphy with Hydration is a problem. Kingdra with its insane Specs-boosted Hydro Pumps is a problem. Drizzle boosts all of these things at once. It doesn't make sense to try to directly nerf the playstyle when the healthiest and most logical option for improving metagame is to get rid of the permanence of Rain that makes these factors so dominating.

One hydration user is a problem.
Kingdra is a problem.

Nerfing the playstyle doesn't mean shit, time and time again it was said rain stalls going to be hit with a drizzle nerf, and few cared. Simply put nerfing a playstyle doesn't matter, if it did regardless of rain stalls popularity or effectiveness it's nerf would be highly considered, though time and time again we hear the "who cares" "no one uses it" response.
No one is using rain dance + damp rock right now, so based on the "no one uses it" rainstall arguments, none of us should care about RD + damp rock.

Like, if there was a machine that turned people into zombies, why on earth would you go around trying to kill all of the zombies in the world when you could just destroy the machine and turn everyone back into their normal, human selves? You don't even know how many zombies there are or where they might be hiding! You're just wasting time on a pointless war when the solution for peace is within arm's length.

Heres the thing we're not "killing" pokemon if we don't ban drizzle.

 

[astrohawke]

also @ astro: manaphy was uber because of hydration, and vaporeon is quite formidable with it to. to discount these two is just ignorant. Water boosts are also very big as well, since kingdra can DD instead of using swift swim to have a simaler effect on speed and deal even more damage than just swift swim+hit.

Please. Manaphy's problem is way beyond just hydration. Hydration merely made an already good pokemon better. Hydration is basically immunity to status, an effect that can be achieved with harvest + lum berry. Should we ban harvest? Or perhaps lum berry? Not to mention sun has the exact same effect in leaf guard.

As far as the attack boost goes, it's not that big. Without the speed, pokemon like Kabutops and DD Kingdra can no longer effectively set up as your opponent will immediately bring in something faster and kill you. Most of these pokemon also only have average offensive stats usually below 100. Even with the rain boost, they hit about as hard as something with high offensive stats like latios or metagross and are much easier to check with revenge killers when they don't have that speed. And again, sun has the same attack boost. Sand also has a Sdef boost but no one seems to care about that.

Like, if there was a machine that turned people into zombies, why on earth would you go around trying to kill all of the zombies in the world when you could just destroy the machine and turn everyone back into their normal, human selves? You don't even know how many zombies there are or where they might be hiding! You're just wasting time on a pointless war when the solution for peace is within arm's length.

That's a pretty random analogy but I will run with it. What you're proposing we do isn't turn off the machine and turn everyone back to normal as that implies a solution that has no disadvantages where in fact banning drizzle entirely does have the disadvantage of removing non-broken viable aspects of gameplay that could have made the metagame more fun and diverse.

Imagine that in this zombie infested world that people were being turned in zombies but the zombies all look human. What you're proposing is that instead of bothering to check who's actually human and save them, we nuke everyone and kill them to save ourselves the time and trouble of actually having to test and sort it all out.

 

[Zephyr]

Please. Manaphy's problem is way beyond just hydration. Hydration merely made an already good pokemon better. Hydration is basically immunity to status, an effect that can be achieved with harvest + lum berry. Should we ban harvest? Or perhaps lum berry? Not to mention sun has the exact same effect in leaf guard.

As far as the attack boost goes, it's not that big. Without the speed, pokemon like Kabutops and DD Kingdra can no longer effectively set up as your opponent will immediately bring in something faster and kill you. Most of these pokemon also only have average offensive stats usually below 100. Even with the rain boost, they hit about as hard as something with high offensive stats like latios or metagross and are much easier to check with revenge killers when they don't have that speed. And again, sun has the same attack boost. Sand also has a Sdef boost but no one seems to care about that.

lol yes, Hydration is the key problem, without it, Manaphy has little difference from the other base 100 legendaries that were allowed in overused.

 

[astrohawke]

lol yes, Hydration is the key problem, without it, Manaphy has little difference from the other base 100 legendaries that were allowed in overused.

Tail glow?

 

[SlimMan]

edit: Whoa I just bumped an argument from 3 pages back. My bad.
____ In my defense, this is the first time I've been back on.

So? I can voice my opinion, thoughts and make statements. You're posting in a god damn public thread. No need to act so rude.

Perhaps I was a little out of line. Rain is much more difficult to deal with without Sand. Ridiculously so.

But if you think that running Sand is the only way to beat rain, then question how you came to that conclusion. Sorry to offend you, but I fail to see the truth in your statement.

Christ have you been playing the metagame? Rain is most definitely broken. Facing 3-5 sweepers outspeed most of the metagame and an additional STAB boost is broken. You probably rain is fine because:
1. You've been using Sand / Hail / Sun
2. You've been using Rain yourself
3. You haven't faced good rain teams yet.

(*Note: For those who think Rain is balanced, I beg of you: Make a team that DOESN'T utilize weather and tell me if you start consistently winning)

Did you read my post or someone else's? Because no where in mine did I say that rain was balanced.

I did, however, say that being weather-filled was fine. the fact that you see weather so much is not a problem for the metagame at all.

Yes, it's broken and should be banned. But when you say "Who wants to play in a weather-filled metagame?", I have every right to say that usage is not the problem here.

There is nothing wrong with my (and several others) opinion on rain being broken. Yes we hate playing against rain, but simply because it isn't fun and it limits team building. I would rather play against the previous suspects (minus inconsistent) than Rain.

One last thing. Where are you getting the idea that I attacked your point of view? I can sort of get how you misunderstood my post and thought I was calling rain balanced, but I honestly don't see how your position was in any way questioned.

 

[ensoriki]

It does make sense. Your banning Kingdra and the other rain sweepers from OU (and the lower tiers) it is so much simpler to ban Drizzle. Why do you insist on weakening Drizzle when you can ban it outright. You could do this to Garchomp in gen 4 (by banning SD + Outrage) and Salamence (by banning Dragon Dance) Not only is this a waste of time, you shouldn't be weakening a pokemon to make it usable.

No it doesn't.
Your comparing possible TEAM MATES (swift swimmers) to an individual pokemon, which would be Garchomp and salamence.
Saying you weaken drizzle by removing Kingdra & friends is still different from saying you weaken Garchomp by removing Tyrannitar while still being quite absurd.
Drizzle is not a pokemon, and swift swim is not part of Drizzle you do not weaken Drizzle by removing swift swim.
Your treating the ability like the ability IS a pokemon, when it's not.
Your last sentence is a contradiction if anything, are we not weakening Kingdra & kabutops potential by removing drizzle? If we shouldn't be weakening pokemon, ban the pokemon.

I do not 100% agree with saying to ban the pokemon but seriously if the argument is that we should not be weakening pokemon, and based on the context you spoke of Drizzle, then banning drizzle would be weakening Kingdra...which we are not supposed to do.

That's not necessarily true because a well played rain team can still beat the other weathers. I honestly cannot comprehend why you want to keep Drizzle.

Your entire hang up is the whole rain sweepers debacle, and I tell you straight that without swift swim there are still OTHER ways of playing rain, why should I want to remove Drizzle when we can live just as much with it as we can without it if we remove swift swim, or ban certain pokemon, or restrict it's team options.

What happened to using regular teams and regular Pokemon? Banning Swift swim is equally stupid because it isn't broken on certain Pokemon (Luvdisc)

Regular teams and regular pokemon? That's just some lingering bias that says that pokemon who chill in default weather are "regular".
Drizzle isn't broken on politoed, Swift swimmers teamed up with him are. If the reason not to ban swift swim is because an ability + pokemon combination is not broken, then why would I say to ban drizzle when Drizzle + politoed is not individually broken. You can say Drizzle + swift swim pokemon are broken, but then again, it's half and half.

The Lati twins are far less broken than rain.

So?
If it's less broken, but still broken at the end of the day it is broken then it doesn't matter.
They're still just as eligible to speak about, I don't even see the reason why the hell you mentioned it.

 

[SJCrew]

Drizzle isn't doing all the work, you continually realize that they are two seperate abilities and then act as if Drizzle is carrying the whole situation when it is not. Your looking at a combination and singling out one aspect.

Drizzle isn't a "single aspect" of a deadly combination, it's the single and absolute source of this combination's existence. On the same wavelength, Draco Meteor and Outrage alone can't do anything; they're just moves. The broken Dragons that abuse them are the ones that make them so problematic. Why do you think we haven't banned Altaria or Flygon?

If we went along the same mindset as yours, we would indeed be banning moves instead of the Pokemon that make them so powerful. I mean, how strong do you think Groudon would be without Earthquake? Rayquaza without Extremespeed? Your way is wrong and will not achieve anything close to the balance we're striving for right now.

It's not unfair and the slightest, and I'd say your narrowminded statement is simply your opinion based on tradition. Swift swim is preventing one from simply bringing in a normally faster pokemon and simply countering, instead a would-be counter can't switch in as it's a 2hko and they're too slow.
Swift swim is damn pulling it's weight and to pretend it's innocent is ridiculous.

How about: more sensible, logical, and easier to justify? Swift Swim can't be broken without Rain. Kabutops can't be broken without a boost to his Water STABs. None of this would even be up for discussion if Drizzle wasn't in the picture.

Also, let's look at this from another angle: if we took away Drizzle and had to set up Rain manually, Swift Swim would not be broken. Even with double Speed, we can employ stalling tactics to ensure they don't do anything worthwhile in those eight turns or change the weather on them mid-sweep. Swift Swim can't do anything against those tactics, while all Drizzle has to do is have its vessel show up for all of these methods to be rendered null and void. In this situation, it's clear to see which influence holds more power. The permanence of the Rain is the problem, not the Speed boost.

Swift swim is not broken in and of itself but Drizzle is, lets get something correct here;
Damp Kingdra isn't mutilating teams, battle armor kabutops is not mutilating teams. Politoed itself is not mutilating teams.

The inducer is definitely not broken, and the "brokeness" comes from the abuse of swift swim.

Swift Swim isn't doing anything by itself. Rain is what activates Swift Swim and gives sweepers that extra "oomph" to run through teams. I'm not afraid of Kabutops without that Rain boost because without it, he can't break Swampert and Skarmory at least has a chance to phaze it out.

These sweepers could be walled and defeated were it not for the 50% Rain boost or the double Speed. Both of these are a product of the permanent Rain Drizzle provides. Multiple sweepers abuse Drizzle to make themselves broken, so Drizzle is the problem

Ha. It's a combination plain and simple, you can isolate either Drizzle or swift swim and say one is not broken without the other.

It's always a combination of stats, moves, and abilities; Pokemon is not black and white (lol) the way you seem to think it is. Swift Swim alone is not broken and the condition that boosts it also boosts other factors that make Swift Swimmers as broken as they are.

Imagine that in this zombie infested world that people were being turned in zombies but the zombies all look human. What you're proposing is that instead of bothering to check who's actually human and save them, we nuke everyone and kill them to save ourselves the time and trouble of actually having to test and sort it all out.

No, the answer is still to destroy the machine. It saves you the trouble of having to check to see who's human by ensuring without a shadow of a doubt that all of the zombies are gone. If you have a problem with me bringing up the convenience aspect, just paraphrase that as "destroying the machine is the only guaranteed method of eliminating all of the zombies." My solution would still make more sense.

 

[capefeather]

I think that the main problem that people are having with banning stuff other than Drizzle is that we have a limited time to do these tests. Four years is a good guess for the amount of time we have to settle EVERYTHING, including other recognized metagames, and THEN to have some "actual playing" time with the "actual" settled metagame. That would be why there's such a strong pull toward at least the argument, "Look, we can ban this one thing and the metagame will improve!"

To put it in extremes, if we had infinite time, we could test every possible banlist. But we don't, and we can't.

 

[ensoriki]

By it's presence, it should give reason that the abusers are the problem as in a new metagame where rain is a possible constant, these pokemon are too strong for the metagame. Drizzle is the most effective source of the combinations existence, not the single one, don't translate me speaking on abilities to be indentical to speaking on moves, if my mindset were that, then why had I not simply spoke of banning moves? You say if my mentality was gone with we'd be banning moves despite me never once saying to ban a move, your looking at one thing and leaping to another to propose an indirect connection.

You wouldn't be afraid with kabutops without swift swim either, your mitigating the point, that without swift swim these threats would still be dispatched.




I don't see things in black & white, if I did I wouldn't sway between multiple remedies.

 

[XienZo]

I think that the main problem that people are having with banning stuff other than Drizzle is that we have a limited time to do these tests. Four years is a good guess for the amount of time we have to settle EVERYTHING, including other recognized metagames, and THEN to have some "actual playing" time with the "actual" settled metagame. That would be why there's such a strong pull toward at least the argument, "Look, we can ban this one thing and the metagame will improve!"

To put it in extremes, if we had infinite time, we could test every possible banlist. But we don't, and we can't.

I thought the whole reason we had these new UU-style suspect testing was so we could run them in parallel, so we could test a number of pokemon without taking more time.

 

[ensoriki]

I think that the main problem that people are having with banning stuff other than Drizzle is that we have a limited time to do these tests. Four years is a good guess for the amount of time we have to settle EVERYTHING, including other recognized metagames, and THEN to have some "actual playing" time with the "actual" settled metagame. That would be why there's such a strong pull toward at least the argument, "Look, we can ban this one thing and the metagame will improve!"

To put it in extremes, if we had infinite time, we could test every possible banlist. But we don't, and we can't.

I put it out quite simply a couple of pages ago, if we put that drizzle+swift swim clause we would've been able to see almost all the issues completely and have this settled by what, end of february. Then deal with the other 2 weathers in March, which should take significantly less time. While also checking out the lati's, Deo-D and whatever else pops up.

 

[astrohawke]

No, the answer is still to destroy the machine. It saves you the trouble of having to check to see who's human by ensuring without a shadow of a doubt that all of the zombies are gone. If you have a problem with me bringing up the convenience aspect, just paraphrase that as "destroying the machine is the only guaranteed method of eliminating all of the zombies." My solution would still make more sense.

It only makes sense from a convenience point of view. You're guaranteed to kill all the zombies but you're also guaranteed to kill all the humans. From a humanitarian point of view it makes more sense to save as many humans as possible before killing a bunch of innocent people.

If you can't be bothered doing it properly, might as well not do it at all and just ban all weather, everything that was uber should stay uber, ban dragons and might as well ban SR while we're at it. Save everyone the trouble of testing anything that might be broken because blanket banning is just faster.