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

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I left out the ones where that were simple answers, such idk or whatever. I'm saying this because a couple idiots will otherwise think I'm leaving out important arguments.

1. Yes, Politoed is way better. But it isn't good enough to justify using a slot unless the rest of your team can pick up the slack. Rain HO teams are so powerful that they easily pick up the slack for Politoed.
But if you aren't basing your team around Drizzle, you have no business using Politoed. That was my point.

2. Other than Starmie, Lanturn, Rotom-W, and Lapras, what water-types get Thunder? Also, Stamire and Rotom-W are the only ones which are viable in this metagame.
My point in all that was that Thunder isn't strong enough by itself to make rain offense viable without Swift Swim. Pretty much every pokemon would need the double STAB.

4. This has nothing to do with weaknesses. He said Politoed>Porygon-Z because Porygon-Z dies to Close Combat. lolwut?
Doryuuzu dies to Close Combat. Garchomp dies to Ice Beam. Just because a pokemon can be OHKOed doesn't make it unviable.
He's right that Politoed>Porygon-Z. But Close Combat has nothing to do with that.

I haven´t said that Politoed is better than Porygon-Z because it can resist a CC (or at least not in that sense), it is just an example about the bulkiness of Politoed, in other words i´m saying that while Politoed can resist some STAB 120 bp. physical attack, Porygon-Z can´t (even if it the attack isn´t SE), and i´ve updapted my last commentary, all the other things that you have said are responsed in it too.
 
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.
even beyond competitiveness, one of the main goals of this site is maintaining an enjoyable metagame to play in. If everyone hates fighting Perma-rain, don't keep it. There is no reason to keep a style of play that is broken and terrible to play against
 
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.

1) I said it was a problem for almost all pokemon. On another note, defensive Politoed all use Boil Over because the burn chance> extra damage on a defensive set.
My point here was that Politoed is out-classed at offensive and defensive roles. The only reason to use it is Drizzle.

2) Offensive rain is not nearly as good without Swift Swim. But without double STAB, it sucks. So let's look at pokemon who get double STAB and Thunder. Starmie, Lanturn, Lapras, Rotom-W. So we have two viable pokemon (Starmie and Rotom-W) that get both. If rain offense is carried on by just those two pokemon, we might as well put it out of its misery.

3) You know, its funny. I actually said that normal=/=water in my post.

The reason that comparison works is Download. Porygon-Z is very similar to Swift Swim sweepers. Very powerful, very frail, and gets an extra 1.5x boost (assuming Download gives you the Sp Atk). However, even with the Download boost, Porygon-Z cannot sweep because it is too slow and frail (like all the Swift Swimmers). It would need doubled speed to sweep.

Porygon2 is similar to the "bulky offense" that you said rain offense would become. You said it would become pokemon who can get double STAB and take hit. Porygon2 can take a hit and it gets a 1.5x boost (once again, assuming Download gives it that). However, even with bulk and the extra boost, Porygon2 wouldn't make the best sweeper. It simply can't dish out the damage.

Should I use my Jolteon/Snorlax example again? Water=/=Normal.
But if you look anywhere else in the metagame, you'll see that the kind of thing you're talking about doesn't work that way.

4) I know there are. But just because Politoed can survive a Close Combat, it's not the end-all be-all of pokemon. Hundreds of pokemon can survive a Close Combat. Your thing about Close Combat made no sense.
My post wasn't even about weaknesses/resistances. It was about your illogical Close Combat thing.

edit because of your edit: Politoed being bulky doesn't make it OU material. Lickilicky is bulky but it's not that great. The only reason to ever use Politoed is Drizzle. Without that, it doesn't deserve a spot. Simple as that.

5) Yes, it is about tiering. But I wasn't talking about it then.
I said "Rain offense without Swift Swim would not be like Gen4 Rain offense."
Then you said "Gen4 doesn't relate to tiering"

So I'm asking, how does tiering relate to my statement at all? How?

6) With no Drizzle and no Sandstorm, how on earth does Politoed become better than Tyranitar? Tyranitar has better stats in 4 of the 6. They tie in 1 of the 6. Rock is a worse defensive type than Water. But Tyranitar is also able to use Stealth Rock, which Politoed cannot.
How you think that Politoed is better than Tyranitar escapes me. I fail to see your logic.

And I never said Politoed was bad. I said it wasn't worth a spot unless you make your team around it.

7) The metagame "must" not do anything. In theory, we could decide to not ban anything else and just deal with all the broken stuff.
We wouldn't do that, but to try and point the metagame toward some ideal is not right. We ban what's broken, and see where it gets us.



Farukon_o_miru said:
I haven´t said that Politoed is better than Porygon-Z because it can resist a CC (or at least not in that sense), it is just an example about the bulkiness of Politoed, in other words i´m saying that while Politoed can resist some STAB 120 bp. physical attack, Porygon-Z can´t (even if it the attack isn´t SE), and i´ve updapted my last commentary, all the other things that you have said are responsed in it too.

But Porygon-Z and Politoed weren't even being compared. So to start comparing makes no sense.
 
well i'm finally back.
first of all the issue with rain is not that it in itself broken not that swift swim is broken + not that the ss poke is broken 1 mistake i've seen chronically throughout this discussion is ppl interpreting that relationship as 2 parts however when push comes to shove it is in fact THREE parts the abusee (rain), the abuser (the swift swim poke), + the medium for abuse (swift swim). individually none of these aspects are broken heck 2 out of the 3 doesn't qualify broken. however put them together w/ the right abuser (eg. kingdra) + it amounts to something very powerful indeed i will get back to this later on.

while i didn't start competitive play till the platinum meta i like to look upon the past for answers in some respects. one would be surprised how often the answers are right there if you know where to look. how many times did the meta have to change during gen 4 to accommodate new pokes + strategies for example scarm-cress-bliss very powerful stall core until the meta adapted to accommodate it i do believe that it was suspect but eventually pokes rose to the occasion such as t-boa/luke to name a couple. the same will be true w/ rain, however in gen 3 did t-boa just appear in a divine intervention of sorts or did the players have to look for an effective stall breaker themselves + eventually happen upon what is considered a highly effective stall breaker too this day. i would assume the latter the same needs to happen for rain.

this is not the first time that this has been said in suspect + i seriously doubt it will be the last ANYTHING WORTH DOING IS WORTH DOING RIGHT. just banning drizzle when only 1 version of rain (offense) is of genuine concern is not doing it right, if drizzle was the culprit all forms of rain would be broken. as has been mentioned continously throughout the discussion it is only a handful of abusers (manaphy, kingdra, kabutops, + ludicolo) are issues + only the former 2 are genuinely broken in drizzle (manaphy is broken in rain period) + remember if drizzle goes it might as well take more than half a dozen play-styles w/ it the goal of suspect is to create a balanced + fun meta-game W/ AS MANY VIABLE PLAY-STYLES AS POSSIBLE the minimal ban thing is smogon policy not the intent of suspect even just w/o manaphy rain isn't particularly overwhelming if you are prepared (i've been on the beta server since b4 they banned manaphy at least a month or so b4 smogon moved to po so i'm well versed in that meta) if you want to control the "broken trio" whittle away at it kingdra is the best place to start as it is the most dangerous + versatile of them the others are checked/countered easily enough at least in my experience. the reason for this approach is that this way we don't over-ban.

if we are not willing to allow the meta to change w/ the times then there is no point in testing suspects. i'm gonna use the beta server stats here to show the usage of the auto weather pokes since i don't have any for smogon + the metas are similar enough:
tyranitar:17.74%
politoad:9.73%
hippowdon:8.75%
ninetails:6.84%
abomasnow:3.36%
now factor in that some hippowdon are played along-side tar i would estimate sand to be on about 24.5% of teams not all of which are totally dedicated to it some are more than likely just using the sand steamer on said team for other purposes than sand to begin w/ face it w/o the auto-weather abilities the only auto-weather pokes that would be used are tar + hippowdon. remember the checks/counters will in total usage outnumber what ever that is being checked/countered rain is no exception.
 
When it comes to infinite rain I think it's more than a trio, yet it's not much more at the same time. The alarms of "we're going to ban like 15 pokemon" won't happen if we take that route. The critical abusers are the same ones who were abusing it in 4th gen. Shell break Gorebyss hits like a truck but it's safest with white herb holding back some of that power.
 
When it comes to infinite rain I think it's more than a trio, yet it's not much more at the same time. The alarms of "we're going to ban like 15 pokemon" won't happen if we take that route. The critical abusers are the same ones who were abusing it in 4th gen. Shell break Gorebyss hits like a truck but it's safest with white herb holding back some of that power.

I've actually seen several Gorebyss using Life Orb lately.
The general strategy I've seen is to use 2 Shell Breakers.
One to lure in your main priority/revenge-killer
One to actually sweep
It's been kind of like Double Dragon last Gen with Mence/Rayquaza
 
Shell break without white herb sounds more retarded then the retard from retard land.
GOrebyss has the bulk to shell break an attack, then OHKO back and start eating through what doesn't resist.
Without the herb, anyone in their right mind is going to just smash it. Unless your pokemon is just retardedly weak. Even Chansey will t-wave it, Murkrow can drop a perish song on it's ass to buy you time if you really messed up, etc.
Shell break anything without white herb or focus sash is a free kill, worst it does is get one kill before you revenge it with priority that will now work since they reduced their own defense.
 
Hey guys, I'm not going to jump into the whole "broken" argument. (I don't really have the credit to do so) but is there a chance that the huge amount of Rain Teams are a fad? It could just be like after a really good, modern, new team, gets stuck in the RMT Archive, and a bunch of players start testing it/taking it. That's just a thought, could Rain Teams just be a fad? They're all really alike, and easily stopped by quite a few Checks. There's a reason why Nattorei is the #1 Pokemon right now, it checks the two most popular Metagames. Beyond that, the big guys can keep arguing.
 
Shell break without white herb sounds more retarded then the retard from retard land.
GOrebyss has the bulk to shell break an attack, then OHKO back and start eating through what doesn't resist.
Without the herb, anyone in their right mind is going to just smash it. Unless your pokemon is just retardedly weak. Even Chansey will t-wave it, Murkrow can drop a perish song on it's ass to buy you time if you really messed up, etc.
Shell break anything without white herb or focus sash is a free kill, worst it does is get one kill before you revenge it with priority that will now work since they reduced their own defense.

I didn't say it was smart. I said I've seen it.
Although, to be fair, once priority users go down it could be pretty hard stop. Cuz Chansey dies to +2 STAB Waterfall.
But in order to work, it would need to be really well played. Which not everyone can do.
 
Shell break without white herb sounds more retarded then the retard from retard land.
GOrebyss has the bulk to shell break an attack, then OHKO back and start eating through what doesn't resist.

But there's the things that DO resist...

Even Chansey will t-wave it, Murkrow can drop a perish song on it's ass to buy you time if you really messed up, etc.

I have no idea why you'd be better off if you had a White Herb/Focus Sash in these situations.

Shell break anything without white herb or focus sash is a free kill, worst it does is get one kill before you revenge it with priority that will now work since they reduced their own defense.

But if you're going with the double Shell Break strategy, you're supposed to draw out Priority users with one Shell Break user, and then sweep with the other.

Not to mention that given the opportunity, you also have the ability to switch out with LO, while switching out with White Herb would cripple your ability to come back in and sweep later.
 
Shell break without white herb sounds more retarded then the retard from retard land.
GOrebyss has the bulk to shell break an attack, then OHKO back and start eating through what doesn't resist.
Without the herb, anyone in their right mind is going to just smash it. Unless your pokemon is just retardedly weak. Even Chansey will t-wave it, Murkrow can drop a perish song on it's ass to buy you time if you really messed up, etc.
Shell break anything without white herb or focus sash is a free kill, worst it does is get one kill before you revenge it with priority that will now work since they reduced their own defense.
Murkrow can do that either way, and Chansey can't T-wave you if you have LO. You can always use Cloyster and pack priority as well. Don't be stupid
 
Hey guys, I'm not going to jump into the whole "broken" argument. (I don't really have the credit to do so) but is there a chance that the huge amount of Rain Teams are a fad? It could just be like after a really good, modern, new team, gets stuck in the RMT Archive, and a bunch of players start testing it/taking it. That's just a thought, could Rain Teams just be a fad? They're all really alike, and easily stopped by quite a few Checks. There's a reason why Nattorei is the #1 Pokemon right now, it checks the two most popular Metagames. Beyond that, the big guys can keep arguing.
while this is true that natorei handles rain well the same cannot be said for sand tar/chomp both have fire moves + can use them + the ground flying genie has hp fire (just doesn't use it much).
 
Hey guys, I'm not going to jump into the whole "broken" argument. (I don't really have the credit to do so) but is there a chance that the huge amount of Rain Teams are a fad? It could just be like after a really good, modern, new team, gets stuck in the RMT Archive, and a bunch of players start testing it/taking it. That's just a thought, could Rain Teams just be a fad? They're all really alike, and easily stopped by quite a few Checks. There's a reason why Nattorei is the #1 Pokemon right now, it checks the two most popular Metagames. Beyond that, the big guys can keep arguing.
If you mean Sandstorm and Rain by the two most popular metagames, each one has things that can wreck Nattorei.

In Rain teams, SD Ludicolo can beat Nattorei one-on-one with the combination of Swords Dance and Drain Punch as well as being ready to sweep with +2 Attack after Nattorei goes down. Should you switch Nattorei into something like Choice Specs Latios Ice Beam, Kabutops will KO 252/0 variants with Low Kick iirc. Choice Specs Tornelos also deals a hefty bit with Hurricane; it has a 98.62% to 2HKO max/max Nattorei.

It is true that Nattorei can counter most Sandstorm teams, but there are still some things it has to watch out for. Most Tyranitar that I've seen run Fire Blast, and I see Rankurusu and Birijion a lot on Sandstorm teams, both of whom can severely damage Nattorei with Focus Blast.
 
while this is true that natorei handles rain well the same cannot be said for sand tar/chomp both have fire moves + can use them + the ground flying genie has hp fire (just doesn't use it much).
Nattorei definitely cannot stop rain. With meh SpD, and the ability to be 2HKOed by Ludi with Focus Blast, it CAN'T take it on at all
 
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.

You continue to say rain is broken, but never say why it is broken. I don't care if 99% of people hate facing rain, nobody is forcing you to play this gen. If you don't like it, then stop playing. I do this for enjoyment and I'm sure many others do as well, but I don't like the fact that some people have gotten lazy and just ban anything remotely hard to deal with. Banning rain should be something major as it is a staple in this metagame, so I feel we should give it a few tests before deciding whether it is broken or not. You simply can't know if it actually is broken a month into the game.

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.

I imagine rain teams (and most teams for that matter) are generally pretty sub-par because it is a fairly new metagame, and people don't know what to run yet. This should be expected. You say top players make due like it's some huge breakthrough that they use a weather changer and checks. Anyone can do this. This is common sense. This means that since sand is effective against rain, anyone with a brain can do the same thing and have a decent counter to rain.

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.

Don't give me that, I've been around long enough to know what is broken and what isn't. Since you mentioned them though, you also know that it took months and months to ban those suspects. Months and months of testing them. Yet you want to ban rain in an entirely new metagame in a month. This is a little different than the previous gen 5 bans because it affects so many pokemon and their usage. This is a major decision. I don't think we should just ban it on a whim because "players hate facing rain."

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,

You do need some checks to rain, but you also need checks to sand, ranku, dragons, nattorei, sun, and every other threat in the game. Requiring checks to something doesn't automatically make it broken. Weather is a huge part of this game now and I sincerely think if we ban rain right now we are making a mistake.

As for your comment about the Inconsistent vote, I explained several times my thoughts on it (which I didn't have to do, by the way). I am a good player, there is a reason I have this check and got reqs. I don't have to explain my opinion on it to you or anyone. I have a right to an opinion and I will use it. I don't have to follow the crowd if I don't want to, and it certainly should not be brought up regarding my "position to argue."

even beyond competitiveness, one of the main goals of this site is maintaining an enjoyable metagame to play in. If everyone hates fighting Perma-rain, don't keep it. There is no reason to keep a style of play that is broken and terrible to play against

If you read through this thread, you will see that not everyone shares the same viewpoint that fighting rain is a drag. There are many reasons to keep it, yet you can't seem to find a single one to get rid of it. We should be trying to ban as little as possible, otherwise we end up with some sort of underpowered metagame that could be balanced or could be even worse. We should be testing all the odds and ends before we decide if something is broken or not. You seem to think it is some sort of panic button that when the going gets tough we can push it and bam; all of our problems are solved. It should be reserved as a last resort option if we've already tried EVERYTHING ELSE.
 
If you read through this thread, you will see that not everyone shares the same viewpoint that fighting rain is a drag. There are many reasons to keep it, yet you can't seem to find a single one to get rid of it. We should be trying to ban as little as possible, otherwise we end up with some sort of underpowered metagame that could be balanced or could be even worse. We should be testing all the odds and ends before we decide if something is broken or not. You seem to think it is some sort of panic button that when the going gets tough we can push it and bam; all of our problems are solved. It should be reserved as a last resort option if we've already tried EVERYTHING ELSE.
I HAVE SAID A BUNCH OF REASONS! Read what I post! No one could possibly enjoy a Drizzle meta unless they: A, use drizzle teams, or B, run like 4 checks to rain on every team. I have said SO MANY TIMES that the broken trio are nearly impossible to check without hampering your team's ability to do well against non-rain teams. Offer one example for a poke that can really do that and I might listen to you
 
Shell break ice shard is shit roflmao.

Uh...no. It allows Cloyster to also take out Breloom (who would kill it after the Shell Smash defense drop) as well as Murkrow, Mischievious Hearters (without Focus Sash or Sableye) etc. Cloyster doesn't need Hydro Pump and Rock Blast is only a maybe (helps against other Cloysters and Hp Electric Suicune/Vaporeon and Lapras for the most part only). It also allows you to threaten Garchomp and Landlos.
 
I HAVE SAID A BUNCH OF REASONS! Read what I post! No one could possibly enjoy a Drizzle meta unless they: A, use drizzle teams, or B, run like 4 checks to rain on every team. I have said SO MANY TIMES that the broken trio are nearly impossible to check without hampering your team's ability to do well against non-rain teams. Offer one example for a poke that can really do that and I might listen to you

Don't exaggerate, you can't speak for everyone and I'm sure people enjoy this meta. Personally I like the current meta, though admittedly I play Sun primarily.
 
Tentacruel certainly helps, but Nattorei is pretty damn crappy when fighting Rain
gasp it is only really weak to 1 type that is carried by rain teams + has a powerful stab option to keep 1 of the 2 consistant threats to it from stetting up on it.
also i like how i waste an hour typing the 5th post on the page + every1 skates right over it.
 
I HAVE SAID A BUNCH OF REASONS! Read what I post! No one could possibly enjoy a Drizzle meta unless they: A, use drizzle teams, or B, run like 4 checks to rain on every team. I have said SO MANY TIMES that the broken trio are nearly impossible to check without hampering your team's ability to do well against non-rain teams. Offer one example for a poke that can really do that and I might listen to you

I didn't see any in that post. Here's one thing that can stop all 3 of them: Toxic Spikes. A team with TS and a couple of pokemon that resist water (with all of the dragon and grass types out there is not hard) should do the trick. That's just one example, there's a lot of other pokemon out there than can handle them to an extent. It's more or less the player's ability that will defeat them, there isn't one magical pokemon that can take all 3 on. The point of a team is to have a cohesive group that can check as many threats as possible while being able to hold its own as well. I'm not going to sit here and list counters, if you think hard enough you should be able to think of some.
 
Tentacruel certainly helps, but Nattorei is pretty damn crappy when fighting Rain

Nattorei is far from crappy when fighting rain. it like one of the only true counters to kingdra, who is the best rain abuser. It also walls kabutops and can even take a superpower from it if ran.
 
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