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np: OU Suspect Testing Round 4 - Blaze of Glory

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Drizzle alone
~ Drizzle: Ban
~ Drought: Do Not Ban
~ Sandstream: Do Not Ban

Drought and Drizzle
~ Drizzle: Ban
~ Drought: Ban
~ Sand Stream: Do Not Ban

Drizzle and Sand Stream
~ Drizzle: Ban
~ Drought: Do Not Ban
~ Sand Stream: Ban

Drought, Drizzle, and Sand Stream
~ Drizzle: Ban
~ Drought: Ban
~ Sand Stream: Ban

All 4 weathers
~ Drizzle: Ban
~ Drought: Ban
~ Sand Stream: Ban

(Yes, it's not all weathers, but these are the 3 most prominent weathers. These voters are definitely anti-weather people, so they would vote the 3 weathers out and nominate Hail later).
 
Yeah, the argument shouldn't be "keeping the balance", it should be banning what is broken in all circumstances. I can't see it being split 50/50 between the "all weathers" group.
 
I have always defended smogon’s decisions and protocol in attempting to balance the Pokemon metagame, even in the face of the MANY smogon bashers at the website I go to for my wifi matches. However, I believe that the overall decision of the voters to keep all automatic weather is questionable, especially when remembering two of smogon’s purported characteristics of a desirable metagame – variety and balance.


Let’s look at the top of the ladder. The majority of people there have a weather-based team (with the weather coming from an auto-inducer). Does this, by itself, not say something about auto-weather? Some of the responses to the people complaining about the decision went along the lines of “go make a weather team and reach the top”, or “use the winning strategy to make the top”. I cannot see how these facts do not show the inherent advantages weathers such as drizzle (and in the case of sandstream – the abusers) have over non-auto-weather teams. I cannot understand that how this centralization was agreed upon by the voters to stay.

To make things clearer, I believe that drizzle is by far the strongest of the bunch. I would say drought comes in second, and sandstream comes in third. Sandstream achieves popularity through its direct users, such as Excadrill, rather than the actual weather condition.


The way I see it, the main reason auto-weather is inherently better than any other type of team is that it tactically needs to accomplish far less than non-weather teams to gain any type of boost. A weather team basically has to only keep its weather up in order to begin reaping benefits. An auto-weather inducer makes this painfully easy, unless of course, the enemy is also using an auto-weather inducer. In this case, we have “weather wars” in which in most cases, the person who loses the weather inducer will lose the match. Now we come to non-weather teams with no auto-inducers. These teams do not have the luxury of altering the actual battlefield to provide indefinite boosts to the team as a weather inducer does (or at least not as easily). They have to be able to fight all types of “old school” teams while at the same time being able to withstand instantly- powered weather teams (three significant types of weather, each very different, nonetheless).


I can focus on drizzle to provide some examples. Infinite rain brings to the table very groundbreaking changes to a match. For one, water moves, arguably the second best offensive typing in the game after dragon, is given an “extra STAB”. Thunder and hurricane also get 100% accuracy on top of their 120 base power and 30% chance of status ailment. Fire moves are halved, making any fire pokemon/move on the team highly ineffective for the entire match unless going up against 4x weak pokemon. This is allows for steel pokemon, which, along with dragons, are the defining pokemon of OU, to lose an essential weakness. If you think about it, this leads to obscene damage output right off the bat. It is ridiculous how many things are OHKOed by double STAB Hydro Pumps which are many times comparable in power to Latios’ Draco Meteor. And a 30% chance of getting paralyzed while being hit by a 120 damage attack? Come on. Even pokemon resistant to electric will run a sizeable risk of switching in. Latios gets STAB on dragon and water in the rain. So instead of spamming draco-meteors it spams Surfs and Draco Meteors. Non-weather teams are fighting an uphill fight from the get-go. They don’t get that automatic boost to every Pokemon on their team. They are fighting in an environment tailored to the enemy team, for which the enemy team only had to pay the price of sending one pokemon into battle. A Rotom-W with thunderbolt is outclassed by one with thunder.


Drought is similar to Drizzle, but to a lesser degree (due to the benefits not being as great as those of drizzle). If drizzle were to be banned, then drought would have to go to. Sand by itself is not a major threat, but its abusers are. You’d have to be pretty nuts not to run a Skarmory or Gliscor with all of those excadrills running around (if you have a non-weather team). And we all know about Garchomp.


So basically, I am basing the viability of my statements on Smogon’s own ideals of having a desirable metagame in part through the achievement of variety and balance. If the auto-weather inducing abilities of Drizzle and Drought were to stay (an d arguably if excadrill and garchomp were allowed to stay, but this is about weather), then these two characteristics would not be achieved. The fact that many of the top players, who represent the pinnacle of the metagame, utilize auto-weather, means that it is overcentralizing (referring to variety). Additionally, abilities such as drizzle and Drought do not bring balance to the metagame, as they offer immediate tactical advantage to the team utilizing it. This comes into conflict with the explanation of balance defined by Smogon.


P.S. – I hope I am not coming across as whining or anything. I, for one, will stick with smogon rules regardless as Smogon still employs the most scientific method of making decisions. I am just trying to join in on the discussion of the topic. I know that the people who vote earn the right to do so, but that does not always mean the best choice was made, especially in this case.
 
Charro said:
Are you kidding?, Deoxys-E can do several damage with Superpower, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt, Psycho Boost

Superpower OHKOes 252/0 Tyranitar with just 12 atk evs, and Psycho Boost murders everything that doesn't resist it, you can even put Fire Punch or hp fire somewhere and destroy Scizor, Ferrothorn and Forretress, and it can certainly take hits, that thing is so fast that it hits 396 spe with no investment, if you wan a support give it hp evs, and it can take tons of hits, if you want a sweeper, even with no hp evs it can survive a CB Scizor Bullet Punch at full health

Deoxys-E is NOT only a support pokemon, it can easily late game sweep a team with little effort, and not even Scarf Chomp can outspeed it

Back on topic, I want Latios to go, like I said, LO Calm Mind Latios 2HKOes spD Jirachi and Careful Tyranitar in Sandstorm, I don't really get why people don't notice this, Specs isn't even half as broken as Calm Mind with LO, the good thing is that nobody use this set, it's just a matter of time until someone discovers Latios full potential, it doesn't even need rain to defeat Tyranitar
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there was a Deo-E i saw once that had fricking Cosmic Power, Night Shade, Taunt, and Recover. After a couple Cosmic Powers even my Ttar couldn't 2HKO at +1. And you couldn't do anything to it without prankster, because it had Taunt. And pressure. Don't forget pressure.
 
And I think that was the very set that convinced people Deo was uber last Gen

It still can't do anything to Normal types, though
 
Yoshiken said:
Yeah, the argument shouldn't be "keeping the balance", it should be banning what is broken in all circumstances. I can't see it being split 50/50 between the "all weathers" group.
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Bans should never, ever be about abstract "brokenness". We ban things if they are unhealthy for the game, not because we are punishing Pokemon for being too powerful. This is the main reason why the OHKO Clause exists despite nobody thinking the strategy is broken, and why we almost never ban something that's abstractly broken but can't flourish in the metagame.

Yes, some broken things will eventually get themselves banned, but that's because being broken often has a negative impact on the metagame. If you believe that the metagame would become much worse by banning something, it seems like a poor plan to vote to ban it, no matter what arbitrary "brokenness" score you give it.

If we do put things in terms of "brokenness", there are people who think that permanent weather is broken as a whole, but do not believe that individual weathers can be singled out as broken. There were nominations that specifically stated that banning weather should only be considered as a whole.

@Pocket: That doesn't work, since voting to ban Drizzle, Drought, and Sand Stream is not equivalent to voting to ban all weather. It's only the equivalent of voting to ban Drizzle, Drought, and Sand Stream. This artificially inflates the votes for Drizzle and Drought even though there are people who do not think they should be banned by themselves.

And honestly, what harm would really be done by adding a simple "ban all weather" option to the poll? Not even using the list I made, but simply adding one more option for people who think that it should be an all-or-none affair. It would more accurately reflect the voters' opinions, which would seem to be a strict improvement over not giving people that option.
 
UltiMario said:
And I think that was the very set that convinced people Deo was uber last Gen

It still can't do anything to Normal types, though
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If you scroll down all of OU only Blissey and Porygon2 (lol) are normal types and neither are gonna be doing jack to /it/ either.
 
I believe that the overall decision of the voters to keep all automatic weather is questionable, especially when remembering two of smogon’s purported characteristics of a desirable metagame – variety and balance.
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Do we have any guarantee that banning automatic weather will bring balance and variety? There is also a possibility that the entire 'new' top 10 breaches the 20% mark which means that same team matchups will become the rule rather than the exception.

Banning all autoweather, a variable that completely dominates this generation. Would change the metagame so drastically that it would be like facing a new generation all over again. It would bring new suspects, question the banishments of Manaphy, in other words another one-year series of suspect testing.

It baffles me sometimes that some people here seem to think that once autoweather gets banned we will reach some fairytale land in which everything is balanced. I'd be more like starting all over again with only having a modest chance of reaching a better metagame after another year of suspect testing. Interestingly this result would go against another aspect of a desirable metagame, one i personally value more than any other, stability.
 
mien said:
Do we have any guarantee that banning automatic weather will bring balance and variety? There is also a possibility that the entire 'new' top 10 breaches the 20% mark which means that same team matchups will become the rule rather than the exception.

Banning all autoweather, a variable that completely dominates this generation. Would change the metagame so drastically that it would be like facing a new generation all over again. It would bring new suspects, question the banishments of Manaphy, in other words another one-year series of suspect testing.

It baffles me sometimes that some people here seem to think that once autoweather gets banned we will reach some fairytale land in which everything is balanced. I'd be more like starting all over again with only having a modest chance of reaching a better metagame after another year of suspect testing. Interestingly this result would go against another aspect of a desirable metagame, one i personally value more than any other, stability.
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What does a guarantee that banning weather will bring balance and variability have to do with anything? The only thing that matters (or should matter) is whether the metagame contains elements of a desirable metagame as of now. The testing process is quite often a long one - i never said that the simple banning of weather is the be-all end-all solution leading to a "fairytale land" perfectly balanced metagame.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that youre saying you'd rather take the quick and easy way out rather than strive make the metagame the best it could be. You're also making quite the assumptions regarding how things MIGHT turn out.
 
Not trying to put any words into mien's mouth, but I *think* he meant that banning auto-weather now would mean starting from zero in the search for a (not "the") balanced metagame, when we could very well find one with weather in our current process, as there's no "perfect metagame", only different ones with varying degrees of balance.

And what he said about stability is really fucking important; I thought Salamence was Uber, but couldn't care less about its banning because it wouldn't really change much, specially as we were in the end of the generation. The length of the DPPt suspect process also brought an uneasy sensation of instability I sure as hell do not want to see in Smogon for more than a year or so. Here's hoping we have no nominations in August-September and so we can finally put the Suspect process to rest for a while.
 
GH[O]ST said:
What does a guarantee that banning weather will bring balance and variability have to do with anything? The only thing that matters (or should matter) is whether the metagame contains elements of a desirable metagame as of now. The testing process is quite often a long one - i never said that the simple banning of weather is the be-all end-all solution leading to a "fairytale land" perfectly balanced metagame.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that youre saying you'd rather take the quick and easy way out rather than strive make the metagame the best it could be. You're also making quite the assumptions regarding how things MIGHT turn out.
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The thing is, we don't have strong evidence that weather makes the metagame worse to go through all the trouble of testing a weatherless one. All arguments against it is only biased hate. So much that all of them was voted OU by the majority.
Weather doesn't encourages centralization as there's four of them with distinct playstyles - call me crazy, but in my world, this actually encourages variety.
 
here was a Deo-E i saw once that had fricking Cosmic Power, Night Shade, Taunt, and Recover.
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And I think that was the very set that convinced people Deo was uber last Gen
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Nope, the main culprit was Taunt/Stealth Rock and then some combination of Reflect/Light Screen/Spikes/Recover/offensive coverage move @ Light Clay/Focus Sash/Leftovers.
 
Glen ^^ said:
The thing is, we don't have strong evidence that weather makes the metagame worse to go through all the trouble of testing a weatherless one. All arguments against it is only biased hate. So much that all of them was voted OU by the majority.
Weather doesn't encourages centralization as there's four of them with distinct playstyles - call me crazy, but in my world, this actually encourages variety.
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Exactly. There are plenty of people out there who look at the metagame and see 4 playstyles, Sun, Rain, Sand and Non-Weather. They refuse to acknowledge that each weather has more than 1 basic team. They then talk about how a non-weather meta has a variety of strategies not present in OU. However, the problem is that for the most part, all these strategies DO exist in OU, they just happen to also be on a weather team.

Not all weather teams are the same, and the sheer number of Pokemon made OU solely by weather should be evidence of how much variety it helps bring to the tier.
 
So basically what you're all saying is that weather should be viewed as the definitive characteristic of the metagame, rather than just an aspect of the metagame to be deemed or not deemed overcentralizing? If that's the case, then i guess it does make sense that all you see at the top of the ladder is auto-weather.

But if that's the case, doesn't it come down to a matter of opinion (whether somebody prefers a metagame that IS weather or somebody prefers a metagame which only has weather as one, possibly overcentralizing aspect)?
 
I knew it! Except I thought gaydurus wouldve Lso gotten a s majority but ok
I guess that just destroyed like 25% of the teams with chomp gone
Goodbye sub+sd "HAX" chomp
 
GH[O]ST said:
But if that's the case, doesn't it come down to a matter of opinion (whether somebody prefers a metagame that IS weather or somebody prefers a metagame which only has weather as one, possibly overcentralizing aspect)?
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Thats the problem, alot people don't like how the metagame turned out to be with weather being the most defining aspect of Gen 5.

I think we should just keep the metagame how it currently is, the bullshit people are talking about diversity is just plain wrong the usage stats are very similar to the Gen IV usage stats and i see many UU Pokemon having viable niches in OU.

Oh and it seem just while i was writing this, the votings ended and Garchomp got banned, while Thundurus fate will be decided next round.
Latios receiving a 27-45 was pretty surprising for me i thought it would be much closer, same story with Deo-E. Excadrill was pretty clear for me it has various counters and checks and opposing weather negates his most broken factor.
 
I've been recently using Garchomp on WiFi... oh god, it's so easy to sweep with this broken thing. Only Pokemon having advantage over it is Speed Boost Blaziken (who starts at +1 because he comes on Ttar) and Air Baloon/Focus Sash Excadrill if it hits (more often than not). Anything else? Nope, not really. Subs are impossible to hit. Ttar is slower than Politoed/Ninetales - maybe one battle out of 10 isn't played mostly in Sandstorm. Hmm, other pokemon with more than 333 speed might give Chomp a problem. Might.
Thanks Mewtwo it got banned.

My opinion:
Sandstorm broken? No way in hell. Drought? Of course not. Rain? Maybe...
Garchomp broken? Of course. I can't even be angry when someone disconnects when I use it. Latios? Didn't have much problem with it however boosted STAB DM is certainly scary... Thundurus? The same story as with Latios~
 
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