And Ludicolo does how much to a Vaporeon with grass Knot? And Zapdoscertainly doesn't like taking Ice Beams. Not to mention most Vap's these days are Special Defensive variants.
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np: OU Suspect Testing Round 2 - Who am I to break tradition?
- Thread starter Philip7086
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Well, since they have Water Absorb, the idea would indeed be to switch in on them when they've begun spamming Water attacks, which they will most likely do seeing as it is indeed a rain oriented team.
No, they won't enjoy switching into Ludicolo (which they shouldn't do anyways unless they've got enough special defense to not get killed, he's got STAB Grass moves - that would be dumb), and I do beleive Nattorei can handle Manaphy (can't he? HP Fire gets reduced in power in the rain, and popular Nattorei sets on PO invest heavily in special defense iirc).
How is Zapdos relevant when the idea is to switch into Water type moves and reset the weather? You won't be switching into Zapdos - the opponent however might switch out from whatever Pokemon you've switched in straight to Zapdos, in which you've no removed the Rain and thus done the job.
EDIT: I'm not advocating for rain to not-be-banned, just throwing things out there. As Ice-Eyes has said below me, Rain can always be re-tested once things have settled down if it does indeed get banned.
1.Cool.
2.It still has 150 in BOTH offensive stats,making him harder to wall. Mence also doesn't have 150 base speed,making Deo-N harder to revenge.
3.People who complain about Doryuuzu need a better team,he's easy to counter. I seriously doubt people complain about Venusaur,he's easier to wall and has his weakness powered up. Most fire types with a balloon take a dump all over Venusaur.
Now,give me this HUGE list of OU mons who can counter rain while not being useless otherwise.
I disagree with you on both points. At least on the Smogon server rain is prominent but fairly infrequent when laddering and can be defeated without the use of a specific counter, thus, not overcentralising.
Second, please explain how a metagame based around weather is "bad". It is different sure, but try and argue that it is bad.
Second, please explain how a metagame based around weather is "bad". It is different sure, but try and argue that it is bad.
And here's my point.
People just claim weather is overcentralizing, and makes the game unplayable, they don't give a reason why, they just refuse to play with it.
In other news, I just found out Scarf Sceptile outspeeds every notable Rain/Sand/Sun Sweeper bar +Spe Dory, Kingdra, Kabutops, Venusaur, Doreida, and Shiftry. Quite a few of which are probably running something Neutral speed.
...I think I'll test this out.
What exactly needs to be said?!? Ice-eyes is completely right. Playing against rain is stupid. You NEED to run 2 checks (and your own weather inducer) mininum. How is that balanced? Lets not forget that if you spend half your team dedicated to dealing with rain, you pretty much auto-lose to the other weathers. There is a SERIOUS problem here. Do most pro-rain users even remember what gen 4 was about? I mean fuck, Mence was bad but at least he didn't have 400+ speed and I didn't need to devote 50% of my team to deal with them. I want to play gen 5, not some pseudo Uber metagame. And for those who say "well boohoo, this is the new gen 5 deal with it" if rain somehow stays unbanned I will devote al of my time to making sure to get it banned.
It over-centralizes the metagame AND its broken (worst of both worlds.)
''Only loses to...''? The things you noted are just about the most prominent offensive forces in their weather.
I think enough reasons have been given UltiMario. The sheer speed and power of the Rain sweepers, with minimal setup, essentially turns the metagame into a total clusterfuck.
Rain is approaching the level of overcentralisation of DP Garchomp, and it's hardly less broken.
Rain is bad for the metagame because it really throws the whole metagame out of balance for a team to have several sweepers that are so fast and hit so hard - it's almost impossible to deal with, and doing so requires that you a) have a lot more skill than your opponent and b) pack multiple very defensive checks / counters.
Rain is approaching the level of overcentralisation of DP Garchomp, and it's hardly less broken.
Rain is bad for the metagame because it really throws the whole metagame out of balance for a team to have several sweepers that are so fast and hit so hard - it's almost impossible to deal with, and doing so requires that you a) have a lot more skill than your opponent and b) pack multiple very defensive checks / counters.
Playing against rain is stupid. Wow, what a great argument. Like any threatening strategy/sweeper, it is wise to run checks in order to beat it. Sand, sun, ranku, roob, anything that is top tier needs to at least be checked if you want to have a chance to beat it, and rain is no different. Clearly people are making teams that are successful in this metagame. According to you if you dedicate your team to beating a top threat you lose to the others. Can you explain how a good amount of players are doing well in this game then, what with sand and rain being on a good portion of teams?
You have to run checks to beat any threat in the game, Rain is no different.
You're probably also targeting rain because its new.
Sand almost definitely outclasses rain, but nobody complains about it because we're all used to sand being such a dominant weather.
Nobody wants to actually play with rain because they're using to building teams around beating Hail and Sand, and not with Rain or Sun, so they want to ban it because they have to build their team to deal with more than 1 good weather.
On top of that, it brings back my old question.
What is the issue with this being a weather metagame? Is there REALLY an issue if every team has a weather starter?
Is it REALLY overcentralizing?..... or is this just Gen V's metagame, and we have to adapt to weather being the new style of play?
I honestly believe it's the latter.
Also, in the time I was looking at Sceptile, I sort of facepalmed and noticed he had unburden... that seems a bit more viable to mess with.
Sand almost definitely outclasses rain, but nobody complains about it because we're all used to sand being such a dominant weather.
Nobody wants to actually play with rain because they're using to building teams around beating Hail and Sand, and not with Rain or Sun, so they want to ban it because they have to build their team to deal with more than 1 good weather.
On top of that, it brings back my old question.
What is the issue with this being a weather metagame? Is there REALLY an issue if every team has a weather starter?
Is it REALLY overcentralizing?..... or is this just Gen V's metagame, and we have to adapt to weather being the new style of play?
I honestly believe it's the latter.
Also, in the time I was looking at Sceptile, I sort of facepalmed and noticed he had unburden... that seems a bit more viable to mess with.
The difference is that Rain is 'bad for the metagame' because you have to run so many mons capable of stopping Rain and not have anything on your team that is fodder for Rain sweepers.
Sand sweepers are far easier to stop than Rain. Sand at least deserves a proper test in a metagame with a semblance of balance.
Sand sweepers are far easier to stop than Rain. Sand at least deserves a proper test in a metagame with a semblance of balance.
Then how is Sand successfully stopping rain when the majority of its pokemon are weak to Rain's main STAB?
@ 1) Politoed isn't as greeat as you say. It has the same problem that a lot of other pokemon do. If you go offensive with it, it is so pitiful defensively that anything it can't OHKO becomes a counter. And it isn't guaranteed to put one pokemon to sleep per match. Hypnosis has such bad accuracy that you'll be lucky to put something to sleep before your opponent switches in a pokemon and forces Politoed out.
@ 2) Yes Zapdos/Jolteon can be great with Thunder. But as I said before, your whole argument is based on the double STAB being enough to make Rain Offense viable. The only pokemon who get STAB Thunder AND double STAB are Lanturn and Rotom-W. Lanturn has mediocre Sp Atk and pretty bad Def. So really, Rotom-W is the only choice to get STAB on Thunder and Water.
To repeat myself, you can say that STAB Thunder is nasty, but in order to use it you must give up on double STAB. And that is basically the whole reason that people are saying rain offense will live.
@ 3) I was comparing Porygon-Z to Swift Swim sweepers, who are incredibly powerful but can't do jack without double speed. If you wanted my comparison to bulky water, that my Porygon2 example.
@ 4) So? There are only 3 pokemon that don't have weaknesses. Just 3. ALMOST ALL pokemon have them, and you can't say "OH, this pokemon is weak to x, it must be terrible." Politoed is weak to Grass and Electric, which is actually more than the Normal type.
I can say that something like Porygon2 can take multiple STAB Seed Bombs. Politoed can not. Using your logic, that makes Porygon2 better than Politoed.
@ 5) WTF? When did we get onto a tiering discussion. I said that without Swift Swim, rain teams would NOT be like in Gen4. Becuase rain teams HAD Swift Swim in Gen4.
Which is true. Without Swift Swim, they would not be like teams that had it. How is that about tiering at all?
@ 6) That makes more sense, but you can't say it will be like last Gen. Last Gen, sand was common because Tyranitar was so good.The only reason a team ever actually used the sand was for stall. But rain stall and sand stall are so different that you can't really compare them.
So in short, it would not be like 4th Gen sand.
@ P.S.) Cholorphyll? Do you think that Sun teams are broken as well?
And another thing is that it's highly likely that it wouldn't work better.
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One last thing. I don't mean to stretch the pages so much. It just kinda happens.
And Sun can't? Victreebel destroys all but two of the common rain user-Nattorei and Zapdos-with ease. Boom, two checks to Rain leading to a weather based metagame. Remind me again why that's a bad thing?
They are generally a lot better? Where are you getting this from? Isn't the point of pokemon to have a general strategy on your team while being able to keep threats at bay? If you need to have a rain check on your team, it doesn't mean its broken at all, it just means it's a very effective play style. If you play against Sand without a Dory or Rand check you're pretty much dead as well. It's common sense to prepare for threats.
1.Yet having just Politoed is WAAAAYYYY better than having 2 - 3 mons dedicated for Rain Dance. It makes it stupidly hard to stop rain.
2.They don't really need a STAB Thunder. It's a 120 BP move that is only resisted by 3 types. It's great.
3.Whatever.
4.Nattorei has 2 common weaknesses. Heck,Steel has 3 common weaknesses,but what makes Steel so good then? RESISTANCES.
Steel is so good,because its resistances outweigh any weaknesses.(Most of the time)
Sableye,Spiritomb,and Shibirudon don't see so much use because they lack these resistances and therefore can't just switch in on most attacks,
5.Idk
6.True. Probably because weather is a lot more offensive now because of Sand Throw,Sand Power,and the two new weather inducers.
Btw,I know this wasn't directed at me,but I wanted to respond.
Right. He isn't a plain bulky water. He's very specialized in what he counters. He is a counter to some top threats.alexwolf said:
But when those threats aren't present, the other jobs can be better handled by another bulky water.
I said Empoleon cold be set-up bait because you said "It can use Roar to prevent being set up on." So don't put on an act. Don't pretend that I came up with that.
And I say that Roar is rare because I have talked to people who use specially defensive Empoleon. I have talked to people who have faced specially defensive Empoleon. And none of them have ever seen Roar.
Dragonite is also not OHKOed due to Multi-Scale. I'm not sure if Ononokusu is OHKOed, but I doubt it. Neither of these are as common as Mence or Chomp, but you've said this whole time that usage is irrelevant.
But I did talk about Wish in my scenario. I used Blissey in my scenario, which you said works well with Empoleon.
And about that ResTalk set you mentioned... what? To use ResTalk, it gets 2 more moves. If it runs Grass Knot and Ice Beam it has no utility. If it ditches on of those to run SR or Roar, then a ton of things can come in and resist the attack and do whatever they want. So I don't see how a ResTalk set works to the benefit of your argument.
And why on earth would a Kabutops run Return or X-Scissor. X-Scissor is incredibly situational, whereas Return doesn't provide any super-effective coverage. Very few Kabutops don't run Low Kick, thanks to how common Nattorei has become. A counter is not a counter if it walls (just guessing) 30% of the sweeper. If the sweeper beats it (once again, a guess) 70% of the time, then it is not a counter.
And don't give me that shit about "Did I say that? No." Because you have done that shit to me 3 or 4 times.
Although, mr hypocrite, when Empoleon doesn't run all of those moves, a significant number of the uses you listed go away. a significant number can't be done. Reasons to use it disappear no matter which move you get rid of.
Are you high? Empoleon was an old standard! It was one of the best sweepers in the game and had pretty high usage among the OU pokemon. Perhaps I need to learn how to read. But you need to learn what you're talking about.
And yes, many pokemon will see more use. But that's completely irrelevant, because by then it will be a totally different and (hopefully) stable metagame. How pokemon do in that metagame has no impact on how they do in the current one.
Yes it's great that he walls Kingdra. Suddenly, you encounter a non-rain team. Since we haven't covered this area yet, what does Empoleon do then?
No, but if he loses out on some of his many uses, he comes that much closer to being out-classed. SR and Grass Knot are unique among bulky waters. Empoleon can do things and check things that other bulky waters can't.
But as a bulky water, he also lacks other utility that have made other bulky waters so good. The biggest thing is that he pretty much requires Wish support, which not every team can spare. Suicune can't recover health, but he can boost up until he walls a shitload. Empoleon cannot.
Mr. Hypocrite strikes again! I said used the word "hypothetical" multiple times just to get the point across that I knew it wasn't required! Mr. Hypocrite must be dyslexic or something.
Yes, you said that they have good synergy together. But as I pointed out, they share >1 weaknesses (even stat-wise) with just about every common sweeper right now. A defensive core has to synergize well with the whole team, not just itself.
That's like saying that a good player can beat a rain team using just Nattorei. It won't happen.
Blissey is going to be taking a lot the abuse for that that core, because it has to heal 2 members (sometimes even the third) by itself. The opponent can exploit the fact that Blissey will be switching in and Wishing a lot. I know that no core is perfect, but Blissey is not immortal. Once it goes down, Empoleon dies pretty quickly, and then Gliscor has to go it alone. Many defensive pokemon have only Wish support to heal. But Empoleon pretty much NEEDS it to survive more than a few turns.
That's exactly my point! If it doesn't pair up well with the rest of a team, it is not good defensive combination!
You can tailor a team to pair up well with it, but then you have specifically tried to make that core work. Which is not a fair test of said core.
You keep giving me the same stupid argument: "in this situation after these things happen, it will the best!"
I am not the closed-minded one. You keep bringing up the specific situations is which Empoleon is better. I keep telling you to look at the metagame as a whole. But because you refuse to believe anything that I say, you continue to say things like "It has a certain niche for doing this, therefore it's one of the best bulky waters!"
Slowbro was specific in UU Gen4. It perfectly countered Azumarill, Feraligatr, and several other things. If your team was weak to those, you could use Slowbro. But as a general Bulky Water, Milotic was the better choice. That's what I'm saying about Empoleon.
You can't think to see any view other than the certain circumstances that you've laid out. When a battle is in different circumstances, it suddenly becomes a fictional battle to you. When you understand how competitive pokemon works, I'll be glad to hear the rest of your argument.
1) Wait, and all the useful pokemon must be good in both, defensive and ofensive roles, both at the same time? your opponent can´t see the EV´s of your pokemon (and you can´t see the EV´s of his pokemons) or the moves, so you can´t know if the Politoed that is using your opponent is defensive or offensive, the same goes for many other pokemons, and an attack of x2.25 of 120 bp. is terrible even coming from an defensive set, and really, if you make a good synergical team, the weakneses of Politoed aren´t a problem.
2) For having a good rain offense your sweepers don´t need to have both, an STAB water attack and STAB Thunder/Gale, water and electric attacks have a good coverage and with just one STAB in one of them is suficient for making a good damage in offensive rain.
3) Then what is the idea of comparing bulky waters with Porygon2 and offensive waters with Porygon-Z?, Porygon2 is a good pokemon now thanks to the prevo-stone but the analogy makes no sense because water =/= normal...
4) Porygon2 is an defensive pokemon (that is even more defensive with its ability and the prevo-stone), and you must remember that the metagame isn´t just about weaknesses, there are resistances too..., and i haven´t said that Politoed is better than Porygon-Z because it can resist a CC, it is just an example of the bulkiness of Politoed, i haven´t watched a Porygon-Z resisting a 120 bp. STAB attack (being SE or not).
5) All this discussion began when you said that baning SwiftSwim would kill the "HO rain team archetype", so yes, this is a discusion about tiering...
6) Yes, i can understand it, but really, supposing that we now ban all the auto-weather abilities, then (in the weatherless tiers that i know) Politoed is much more used than Tyranitar, so Tyranitar isn´t so good too (this is my response to your idea of that Politoed is bad), now the 5th gen is more offensive than 4th gen, but i think that for knowing how much can work rain without SwiftSwim we must test it before banning.
7) -The response to the PS. response- I think that the metagame must be equally balanced for all the weathers... it is all, and i think that it will make an 5th gen OU. metagame balanced and with a great variety of strategies.
To be fair, I don't think that very many people used defensive Empoleon. Empoleon was primarily SubPetaya. I think.
It was. And most that weren't SubPetaya were Agility+3 attacks.
Lol dude do you really want to start? Its a perfectly fine argument because rain is horrendously broken. Listen to the smogcast, as Sevendeadlysibs would put it nobody likes playing against rain. Now obviously, some people enjoy playing against rain, but the vast majority of players hate facing rain.
Now good players happen to be beating rain due to:
1. Rain teams are general terrible.
2. Sand happens to be really effective against rain teams, and top players can make due with a weather changer and 2 grass resists.
Top players beating rain doesn't mean a damn thing. Top players could deal with Garchomp, Latias and the other broken gen IV suspects. We could still beat them but they were still broken.
Rain is no different Get real. You have to run SEVERAL checks to deal with rain, don't you dare lie and say otherwise. And honestly Ala, I don't think you're in the position to argue. You were the same person who voted Inconsistent into OU, when it was apparent to everyone else how broken it was,
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