I have to disagree, drizzle makes it a lot easier for my stall team to deal with Dragonite and Salamence, as there fire moves are weakened, allowing me to acutally counter them.
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np: OU Suspect Testing Round 5 - Sandstorm (Excadrill/Thundurus Banned)
- Thread starter JabbaTheGriffin
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Sun isn't bothered by drizzle too much. SpD Ninetales laughs at all politoed variants bar specs, who it can still switch in on if it's healthy enough to do so. That, and offensive drizzle teams are out on their ass whenever you change the weather at all. This was never the case for sun against rain. As we all know, blaziken (before the ban) and volcorona really couldn't give two shits if you changed the weather while they were in. Politoed is outsped by every relevant chlorophyll abuser bar tangrowth and most drizzle teams use steels as a reliable switch in against enemy chlorophyll abusers, who are all easy switch ins for Ninetales...
Rain itself does nerf offensive playstyles if you build around it, and allows you to get away with using pokemon who are harmed by offensive weather conditions such as sand and hail.
Rain itself does nerf offensive playstyles if you build around it, and allows you to get away with using pokemon who are harmed by offensive weather conditions such as sand and hail.
I know what you meant, but I was just stressing that bans only exist for the purpose of bettering the metagame, and I'd rather have a fun OU metagame with a huge banlist then a metagame in which centralizing or broken Pokemon are allowed.
volcarona *kinda* cares as sun lets you set up against bulky waters easier, although it is true that you can sweep in the rain
No one said it had to be "common".
252 SpAtk Zoroark Hidden Power Ice vs 0 HP/0 SpDef Sandslash: 80.41% - 94.85%
Ahem, Stealth Rock? Spikes? Deoxys-S?
Or just kill it with priority like everyone futilely attempted to do with Excadrill. Oh wait no, Weavile's Ice Shard does LESS to Sandslash!
Okay guys, obviously Ice isn't working. How about.... I know!
252 SpAtk Politoed Hydro Pump vs 0 HP/0 SpDef Sandslash: 253.61% - 298.97%
Holy SHIT, that did MASSIVE damage! And that's with a Choice Scarf!
Specs Politoed makes a better counter to Sandslash though, for this reason:
252 SpAtk Choice Specs Politoed Hydro Pump vs 180 HP/0 SpDef Tyranitar: 87.05% - 102.59% (in sandstorm)
Fun is subjective.
I'm just stressing that we can't just ban pokemon for Shit 'n Giggles, hence "ban-happy". If a pokemon deserves a ban, it should be because it really IS broken, not because it's annoying.
Could someone post a brainless copypaste drizzle team? (I know they exist) I want to test how easy common drizzle teams can ladder up in the metagame.
edit: Metagross please rise in OU again. Agiligross anyone?
edit: Metagross please rise in OU again. Agiligross anyone?
These two bans really caught me off guard. I think Thundurus was okay to be banned, but I'm still on the fence about Excadrill. However, I've agreed with every other smogon decision up to this point, so I'm not about to denounce it just because they made one decision that I'm not 100% for. Were the bans completely necessary? Probably not. But does that make them "ban-happy"? I don't think so.
Well, AFAIK, no one said they were ban-happy, but that they might become ban-happy.
Obviously Rain will initially see a surge in use, since out of the 2 common weather types, Sand just took a huge blow, whereas Rain came out practically unscathed.
You fight more Rain teams now, great. Did the removal of Excadrill / Thundurus affect your ability to fight against these teams? I hope not...
Give time for Sand teams to recover. It just lost a valuable member to their family. Send your condolences ;_;
You fight more Rain teams now, great. Did the removal of Excadrill / Thundurus affect your ability to fight against these teams? I hope not...
Give time for Sand teams to recover. It just lost a valuable member to their family. Send your condolences ;_;
Politoed/Thunderus/Ferrothorn along with any 3 of Scizor, Dragonite, Jirachi, Toxicroak, Starmie, Rotom-W, Azumarril etc.
Adamant Rock Polish Life Orb Landorus.
Has some issues with priority, but not something a little Magnezone couldn't fix.
People underrate that shit to hell.
It still gets pretty wrecked by Sun Sweepers, though. Can't even come in on +1/+1/+1 Liligant in Sand like Drill could.
I think he means that rain has a lot more abusers in comparison to sandstorm. Rain took a minor setback in which it can easily recover from, whereas SS will take a lot longer to adjust having lost one of their best and only team players.
EDIT: Dang, Pocket beat me to it lol.
This (the boom of rain) was happening before the bans. It's relatively easy to throw a drizzle team together and have it do well because of how strong the abusers are. Now it's even easier since rain offense and rain stall both have templates that you can copy, tweak, and roll with.
Guide to building rain!!!: :happybrain:
Rain offense is almost always similar to Scarf Politoed / Ferrothorn or Grass / Toxicroak / Scizor or Jirachi (need SR or not, or like parahax) / Rotom / Wall breaker or Filler or abuser
Rain stall (oh boy) is almost always Scald Toed / Chansey / Ferro / Tenta / Filler and possible quags / Filler and Vizirion counter
That requires some serious teambuilding. And it works too! If you really need some guidance, try sub bounce gyara (easy 6-0s against teams that rely on standard rotom to check it), starmie, rain mix nite, tornadus, ect for the abuser slot.
Guide to building rain!!!: :happybrain:
Rain offense is almost always similar to Scarf Politoed / Ferrothorn or Grass / Toxicroak / Scizor or Jirachi (need SR or not, or like parahax) / Rotom / Wall breaker or Filler or abuser
Rain stall (oh boy) is almost always Scald Toed / Chansey / Ferro / Tenta / Filler and possible quags / Filler and Vizirion counter
That requires some serious teambuilding. And it works too! If you really need some guidance, try sub bounce gyara (easy 6-0s against teams that rely on standard rotom to check it), starmie, rain mix nite, tornadus, ect for the abuser slot.
Cant that be said for any team? IE standard heavy offense (weatherless) usually always involve lead Deoxys-S, Reuniclus, Conkeldurr, Dragonite, 2 other bulky offensive mons or strong priority users.
You may be right that weather may be more prone to adhere strongly to a certain template, because it only has 5 slots rather than 6 to cover most threats. However, that is a drawback seen in other weather teams, too, such as Sun.
I also don't see how the "ease of teambuilding" implies that Rain is broken. See DragMag / Dual Screen + Smash Pass teams - easy to build, effective, but not overwhelmingly powerful.
You may be right that weather may be more prone to adhere strongly to a certain template, because it only has 5 slots rather than 6 to cover most threats. However, that is a drawback seen in other weather teams, too, such as Sun.
I also don't see how the "ease of teambuilding" implies that Rain is broken. See DragMag / Dual Screen + Smash Pass teams - easy to build, effective, but not overwhelmingly powerful.
The weatherless team has many different forms, and they aren't easy to build per se. Teams like The Skies are Clear are very different from teams that use dual screens offense. Also they don't have to run those mons to be effective, it's just a successful team and people like to base teams off of it / copy it.There are also balance teams that could have a little more room for change if people realized that you don't have to go Skarm / Gast / Tran to counter weather now, stuff like Jellicent can work too. Don't have much experience with smash pass, but the only pokemon required is Gorb. Drag mag is pretty cookie cutter but now that excadrill and chomp are banned it could change. They don't have a specific template, for example on dual screens hyper offense you can go physical or special, and you don't even "have" to run deoxys. There isn't a specific format you have to run to check threats and counter the counters to your team style, so the teams aren't easy to build and can vary greatly.
Rain isn't broken, but it is the easiest way to throw together a team and win. Teams like smash pass have horrid flaws that keep them from being consistant, and aren't as locked to a format. Is this a characteristic of a desirable metagame?
Rain isn't broken, but it is the easiest way to throw together a team and win. Teams like smash pass have horrid flaws that keep them from being consistant, and aren't as locked to a format. Is this a characteristic of a desirable metagame?
The same can be said about Rain Stall. People like to base their Rain Stall teams off of pre-existing rain stall or just simply copy it. I just designed a Rain Stall team with Giga Punch that doesn't have Ferrothorn, Tentacruel, or Chansey (let's see how that goes, lol).
On the other hand, Rain offense is not at all stuck to a certain template. All it needs is Rain from Politoed...
You can't blame Rain for player's lack of creativity. Bog standards will always be bog standards, and people like to use bog standard teams. It's the unavoidable truth. It's up to individual players to step up their game and create something that they can call their own.
On the other hand, Rain offense is not at all stuck to a certain template. All it needs is Rain from Politoed...
You can't blame Rain for player's lack of creativity. Bog standards will always be bog standards, and people like to use bog standard teams. It's the unavoidable truth. It's up to individual players to step up their game and create something that they can call their own.
Except a +0 Landorus isn't even close to the "auto-win" that Excadrill was, and Landorus can't clean / revenge like Exca could. At all.
How has Jellicent improved without Excadrill and Thundurus now? I've liked her from the start and she's a pretty good spinblocker.
Well, obviously it benefits from Thundurus since it can come in and destroy Jellicent pretty easily. Excadrill could 2HKO Jellicent with Earthquake, so Jellicent coming in to block Rapid Spin wasn't a good idea. Now there's 1 less rapid spinner who can beat Jellicent; the only ones now are Hex Tentacruel (which is rarely used) and Starmie.
What do you mean how? Now that two of the best sweepers in the game, both of whom shat on Jellicent and one was an unbelievable spinner, are gone, Jellicent is going to be better. It's as simple as cause and effect. It's not a difficult concept, at all. Jellicent was good, but now its even better, even if it is only marginally better. Just because it was good doesn't mean it's standing can't improve.
Is Hex Tentacruel effective in dispatching Jellicent? It needs Toxic Spikes to poison Jellicent, which may not even work if the opponent has Toxicroak / Tentacruel / Roserade / Rapid Spinner. Hex is doing ~30% after Jellicent is poisoned, but Jellicent can Recover stall it out for 4 turns before toxic poison + Hex begin to accumulate damage. Tentacruel needs to predict correctly when it's switching out in order to Rapid Spin - otherwise Jelli can easily come back in and prevent Spinning.
Hitmonchan, on the other hand, reliably nabs the 2HKO on Jellicent with Thunderpunch. Sableye is another story...
Hitmonchan, on the other hand, reliably nabs the 2HKO on Jellicent with Thunderpunch. Sableye is another story...
I find it amusing that BP chains were a huge hullabaloo, aaaaaaaaaaaand then Exca/Thundu were banned. Ever since, I haven't seen any Baton Pass teams online. Just a humorous little thought. I still don't know what the hype was ever about. They can be effective when used correctly, but do take skill and prediction to set up. And Perish Song / Quagsire / Haze / Dragon Tail takes care of those situations in a pinch.
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