np: BW OU Suspect Testing Round 9 - Rock You Like a Hurricane

[shrang]

Lavos stop arguing before you dig yourself into a hole you can't get out of. Your argument is so flawed it's not funny, I'll point them out to your now:

1) Just because Tornadus-T has a fast U-turn doesn't mean it plays in any way like Genesect - I suggest you go read Pocket's post from a few pages back. Genesect's U-turn actually hurt pretty much everything, Tornadus-T's U-turn hits like piss. Genesect's main attack WAS U-turn, Tornadus-T's is not. This means that when Tornadus-T uses an attack (usually Hurricane), it hits a resist. It then has to U-turn out to something that can either take a paralysis move or something like that, or potentially watch your momentum disappear because Rotom-W just Volt Switched on YOUR switch-in. Change the situation to Genesect. After it uses an attack, you're looking at a counter to YOUR counter, because Genesect just U-turned out. You could say that Torn-T can U-turn out first turn too, but it would done so little damage that no-one would have cared.

2) Genesect was banned for way more reasons than Tornadus-T - If anything pushed Genesect over the line, IMO, was how hard Rock Polish Genesect was to stop. It had very different counters for its different coverage moves. After an RP, it was practically impossible to revenge kill, while still having the coverage to kill like 70-80% of the metagame. Tornadus-T, on the other hand, can't sweep like Genesect can. This is not even mentioning that Genesect also had a huge number of other sets that was able to run, all of them extremely threatening or ridiculously versatile. Tornadus-T has one set, which while good, is relatively easy to stop in comparison (I guess you could say Bulk Up Acrobatics, but seriously, who thinks that set is good?).

3) Even IF Tornadus-T plays like Genesect, you cannot claim just because Genesect is broken, Tornadus-T is broken. That is an utter logical fallacy right there. I used this for the Deo-N vs Deo-A comparisons, but it applies here. Lets just use a real life example that's relatively close to me. To get into graduate medical school, you need a score of 70/100 or above in the admissions test. Now you have Bob and James. Bob got into medical school with a score of 70/100. You cannot apply the logic that "James's competence is SIMILAR to Bob, therefore he must also get into med school. 69/100 is SIMILAR to 70/100, but still below the cutoff. To prove that James is indeed qualified to get into med school, he has to be either equal or better to Bob. Now if you replace Bob with "Genesect", James with "Tornadus-T", admission score to some arbitary rating of the Pokemon's ability that we're not going to bother to define because it's too complicated, and getting into med school with "Uber", you can easily see that this logic fails.

 

[Lavos]

first point is valid until you realize prediction exists. sure, with genesect you just click uturn and it's done. but if you have torn-t and your opp has sdef rachi, going straight for hurricane is a fool's move. think it up a little, they aren't as different as you presume.

second point is semi valid. rp gene is a good set, but it's not why it was banned, seeing as genesect without uturn is like torn-t without hurricane. i get what you're saying, but i don't buy it.

third point is utter folly. your “real life example” only holds true if we assume genesect was just BARELY over the ubers threshold, that it was banned by the skin of its teeth. one look at the round 8 votes debunks that theory. even if torn-t is slightly less uber than genesect, by your own reasoning it's still ban worthy.

going to sleep now, i'll refute your misguided claims in the morning.

 

[Deluks917]

I think if tornadus-T in rain is comparable to genesect then tornadus should not be banned. Genesect was too strong but was fairly close to being OU and rain is pretty important support.

However I think tornadus-T in rain is signifigantly better than genesect. I tihnk scarf keldeo in rain is also pretty clearly more powerful than scarf genesect unless you let gene get the download atk boost. But actually I think keldeo is probably fine to leave in OU wearas I tihnk Tornadus should be uber.

One reason tornadus is so good is that it gives rain a different direction to attack your team. Many of the other rain abusers use mostly water attacks so loading up on water (and electric ) resists or immune is very powerful. But water abosrb doesn't help against tornadus.

 

[Halcyon.]

Been lurking for a while, made an account just to participate in this suspect test. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Tornadus-T. One of the problems that people seem to have in all these suspect threads is that they only look to find hard counters for Pokemon, when, in fact, this metagame is centere much more around revenge killing. Maybe it's just me (I play almost exclusively with Hyper Offensive teams) but having a Pokemon that can revenge kill another (Scarfers/Weavile/Jolteon in Torn's case) is just as effective as having a counter. Sacrificing things to safely bring in something else is a cornerstone of competitive battling; why should it be any different when discussing things that beat Tornadus-T? Honestly, I have little to no problem beating him with good predictions and a scarfed Pokemon like Latios that can apply huge pressure to the opponent.

That being said, I CANNOT STAND the argument that all you have to do to beat any given weather abuser is change the weather. Some of us don't use weather on our teams. It was the same with Excadrill, and that pissed me off too. No, I'm not going to run ScarfToed to beat him, and I shouldn't have to. Part of what makes it so hard to play against sun teams is that a common strategy for beating Venusaur that is tossed around this forum is "just change the weather!" But unfortunately, I can't, so he can be a real pain in the ass. So please, don't vote him to stay just because you can beat him by changing the weather. That is honestly an insult to the weatherless playstyle.

So if you'll excuse a newcomer's hubris, that's my two cents. Still no idea how I'm going to vote, but I'm slowly making my way towards getting the requirements.

 

[shrang]

Actually, Lavos, it's not utter folly at all. It works for all cases that you need to prove something is either equal or better to your reference point to actually be able to use that comparison. Firstly, scales "similar" is subjective. You can change the dimensions so that Bob got 80/100 for his admissions test and James got 69. 69 can still be considered "similar" to 80, if you look at a bigger scale (it's still in the same order of magnitude, for example). My point was not actually about the example itself but more about the fact that you cannot use the train of logic that just because something is "similar" does not mean that it is the same thing rather than the specific example, which is why your train of reasoning was flawed.

Anyway, addressing your other two points, my first point was that Tornadus-T and Genesect is automatically different and incompatible is that one SPAMS U-turn as its main attack, while the other doesn't. You can switch a 2x resist like say... Dragonite (without Multiscale, obviously) for ~25% with Genesect's U-turn, rather than something that's easily healed by Leftovers from Jirachi. Genesect tended to destroy things with just U-turn, while with Tornadus-T, you had to decide whether to click U-turn or to use Hurricane. Things went from no thinking to "some" thinking.

Also, if you look toward closer to the end of the Genesect test, more people began to talk about RP Genesect as it got further on. Comparing U-turnless Genesect to Hurricane-less Tornadus-T is just dumb, and you highlighted that in post already. Obviously, RP Genesect doesn't use U-turn, and it was still one of the most dangerous threats in the metagame. Name one set that Tornadus-T has that anywhere near as dangerous as RP Genesect if it doesn't use Hurricane. I dare you.

Oh, I'll just leave you with this - Genesect's best viable counter in OU was generally seen to be Heatran. Tornadus-T's is Jirachi. +1 LO Modest Genesect's Thunder vs 252/252+ Heatran: 47.15% - 55.70%, with the option of changing attacks at will. Name one thing that Tornadus-T can do to Jirachi that gets anywhere close to that without being the biggest load of setup fodder ever (getting locked into HP Ground is classified as "massive setup fodder" and you know it).

 

[Schpoonman]

When did a player ever rely on Genesect to deal with Heatran? I'm not talking about a lure carrying HP Water in the rain or HP Ground. I'm saying you were using Genesect and you were relying on Genesect to topple his BEST COUNTER with a regular set. No one did. You used U-turn and Dugtrio, and it was damned effective, effective enough to get Genesect booted because there wasn't a damn thing you could do about it.

Jirachi is bulkier but the same logic applies. Tornadus-T isn't as purely destructive but he's immensely more difficult to bring down (Genesect is vulnerable to Spikes and doesn't have Regenerator) and is, in my opinion, MORE constraining when team-building and playing. You MUST carry an effective Torn-T check and you MUST play like a champ so they aren't worn down too quickly, because you can be damn sure that Tornadus is going to keep kicking.

There was ZERO reason to use a team without Genesect before he was banned and if you're using Politoed (which a significant portion of the tier is), there is ZERO reason to not carry Tornadus-T. That's overcentralization in a way that's comparable to Genesect.

 

[masterful]

Genesect and Tornadus-T play almost nothing like each other, and that argument means nothing unless you can show that Tornadus-T is broken with that playstyle. U-turn was so good on Genesect because it was STAB and usually boosted, while Tornadus-T's unboosted, neutral U-turns hit for dick. They are incredibly dissimilar, and I think the argument itself is without merit. However, there is definitely not "ZERO" reason not to use Tornadus. Tornadus is the best of the rain abusers, that does not immediately make it broken. You could say that, since there is ZERO reason not to run Venusaur on Sun, it's broken. You need to prove that, in the scope of the meta as a whole, Tornadus-T is broken, not that it is the best abuser of rain, since nobody's arguing that it isn't.

That said, I stand by the fact that Tornadus-T is too good at its role of picking away at an enemy team with Hurricanes and U-turns and then late-game cleaning, by merit of Regenerator being a statistic move, there being only a few safe switchins to it (and those switchins having meh recovery options), and it being just so damn fast.

 

[kd24]

over-centralization always makes for bad arguments, mostly because it's never defined in the definitions of our community or why it's bad. just because there's zero reason not to use something doesn't mean it's broken. there's also zero reason to not use ferrothorn in rain, or zero reason to not use dragonite on any team. just argue on the merits of the actual pokemon, not the usage of it.

now if you're trying to argue every team needs to bring 3-4 checks/counters then that's different but your post didn't seem to be using over-centralization in that manner.

that aside, i still haven't seen anything on ladder to change my mind about tornadus-t, but in the meantime, a fun mon to use at the moment would be specs jolteon, who actually makes a great partner with tornadus-t. i used to just bust through bulky waters with tornadus-t, but this didn't guarantee wins because people have been loading up on sdef. jolteon is the answer to that problem because stab super effective thunder doesn't care about your invested sdef. jolteon also outspeeds other tornadus-t so i don't have to speed tie with them, and continues the volt/turn synergy with dugtrio that tornadus was already bringing. im starting to shift away from the tenta/ferro/jelli core now and move towards a suicidal ferro or deoxys-d/tornadus-t/duggy/jolteon/politoed one that spams stronger attacks and just beats its way through counters.

 

[shrang]

I guess I'm sort of overlooking Tornadus-T as a long term threat, since it can just stick around and keep attacking. However, my reason for why it's not broken remains pretty much this. It's the fact that Tornadus-T needs to weave its way around its counters for way too long before it can sweep. This gives more opportunities for you to fuck up. I'm in no way denying that Tornadus-T is a borderline Pokemon, but can you REALLY compare it to all the other Pokemon that we've banned so far? Pretty much ALL of them, were Pokemon you could just send in, and mindlessly spam whatever they did and do WAY more than Tornadus-T could ever do. Tornadus-T requires a lot more planning and thought for something that's broken, IMO. You can invest that much support and planning and get the same kind of efficacy for a lot of threats in the metagame.

 

[thebrownie]

I main reason why Tornadus-T is so good is because it has a really good response if a counter/check is switched in. U-turn out to a counter of it's own or hard switch and gain health. Only pursuit users can really stop it from happening making scizor a great check (since it can't ever switch in to a hurricane).

There are other ways to get around Tornadus-T. Having a layer of rocks up and hitting it with moves that take chunks out of Tornadus-T while it switches in. or just chipping away at it as along as rocks is up it has a net negative in recovery in health.

Even then, if you're not chipping away at Tornadus-T and if you force a switch then you're chipping away at it's teammates. If you predict a switch while using Jirachi to a pokemon that resists thunder, use a coverage move. It's not rocket science if you can get rid of Tornadus-T's counter to your counter while keeping your counter alive you win. Yes, it's strong but it's not even close to being broken. It's not like it's required to win. It's just a strong strategy that viable ways of dealing with it.

It's not like the set of pokemon that outspeeds everything can ohko almost everything and only requires one turn to setup while being bulky enough to take pretty much any priority thrown at it (Genesect/Excadrill/Manaphy).

Competitive pokemon seems like it's becoming more of lets ban the best strategy even if all the good players have ways of dealing with and in a few months check if the next best is worth banning. Does anyone not realizes that banning the best strategies (because banning pokemon isn't just nurfing a playstyle) instantly changes the whole game as much as something like an expansion changes a game to a point where "Starcraft and Broodwar aren't played the same way". These banning aren't minor "balance" tweaks like making Hurricane do 100 base instead of 120" they completely change the landscape (for those that know starcraft 2 imagine if blizzard's conscious is that fungal growth is broken and just got rid of it and added a completely different functioning spell). It'll make pretty much everyone start from scratch (sure you know the mechanics and what many things can do but it's removing the biggest part in the game).

 

[Sewa]

Oh, I'll just leave you with this - Genesect's best viable counter in OU was generally seen to be Heatran. Tornadus-T's is Jirachi. +1 LO Modest Genesect's Thunder vs 252/252+ Heatran: 47.15% - 55.70%, with the option of changing attacks at will. Name one thing that Tornadus-T can do to Jirachi that gets anywhere close to that without being the biggest load of setup fodder ever (getting locked into HP Ground is classified as "massive setup fodder" and you know it).

Well...
252 SpA Life Orb Tornadus-T Heat Wave vs. 252 HP / 224+ SpD Jirachi in sun: 278-330 (68.81 - 81.68%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

 

[thebrownie]

Valid point but Tornadus-T isn't ever on sun teams... and it it were just to use heatwave it's main threat (hurricane) is useless so you don't even need jirachi to "counter" it.

 

[BKC]

Just wanted to respond to RaikouLover; so what if we ban a broken mon [Tornadus-T] who just happens to check another potentially broken mon [Keldeo]? If it's broken, it deserves to be banned even if it kept half the metagame in check. This logic also applies to the "don't ban Drizzle because there would be a so-called imbalance of weathers" argument.

dpp example

When we banned Latias, we didn't care if it kept Infernape in check.
When we banned Salamence, we didn't care if it kept Breloom or Lucario in check.

Not to mention Torn-T isn't even an ideal Keld check, I'd rather go with Starmie/Lati/Celebi/Amoonguss/Jellicent...basically what ala said.

To everyone who says "Torn-T is easily checkable by changing the weather"...guess I can't use a rain team now! Sand, sun, or hail, which will it be?! I can also run the [inferior] option of going weatherless and potentially running a weather-changing move [which won't help much if the opponent happens to run Rain Dance on their Torn-T btw], just to give myself a ghost of a chance against the overpowered piece of shit that is rain!!!

Also, since I already know what argument's ["you just don't like rain because you can't beat it"] gonna get thrown at me: I rarely lose to rain since I run like three-four counters to it...but that's the issue, I'm running three-four counters to it! Rain is so dominant that I end up bending over backwards to not get instantly fucked by rain, but that leaves me with troubles against other strategies that aren't reliant on rain [see: sun]. Fuck weather.

 

[masterful]

I guess I'm sort of overlooking Tornadus-T as a long term threat, since it can just stick around and keep attacking. However, my reason for why it's not broken remains pretty much this. It's the fact that Tornadus-T needs to weave its way around its counters for way too long before it can sweep. This gives more opportunities for you to fuck up. I'm in no way denying that Tornadus-T is a borderline Pokemon, but can you REALLY compare it to all the other Pokemon that we've banned so far? Pretty much ALL of them, were Pokemon you could just send in, and mindlessly spam whatever they did and do WAY more than Tornadus-T could ever do. Tornadus-T requires a lot more planning and thought for something that's broken, IMO. You can invest that much support and planning and get the same kind of efficacy for a lot of threats in the metagame.

Tornadus-T is far from being a poke that can only sweep or do nothing. He excels on wearing down an opposition over the course of the game with LO or Specs-boosted Hurricanes and U-turns, which set either him or some other late-game cleaner (ie. Scarf Keldeo/Scarf Mence) to finish up. When "that much support" basically entails having SR up on the opponent's side and preferably not having SR up on your side (which is, as far as I know, what you mean), that's a worthwhile sacrifice.

 

[shrang]

Tornadus-T is far from being a poke that can only sweep or do nothing. He excels on wearing down an opposition over the course of the game with LO or Specs-boosted Hurricanes and U-turns, which set either him or some other late-game cleaner (ie. Scarf Keldeo/Scarf Mence) to finish up. When "that much support" basically entails having SR up on the opponent's side and preferably not having SR up on your side (which is, as far as I know, what you mean), that's a worthwhile sacrifice.

I like how you ignored everything else and focussed on "that much support" when it wasn't even that much. I was saying how tornadus-t requires a lot more planning and (some) support because it needs to weave it's way around counters all the time, unlike all the other suspects we've banned, which either needed 1) no support and minimal thinking or 2) with the little support that it got, absolutely flattened teams with way more efficiency than tornadus-t ever will.

 

[alamaster]

Lavos stop arguing before you dig yourself into a hole you can't get out of. Your argument is so flawed it's not funny, I'll point them out to your now:

1) Just because Tornadus-T has a fast U-turn doesn't mean it plays in any way like Genesect - I suggest you go read Pocket's post from a few pages back. Genesect's U-turn actually hurt pretty much everything, Tornadus-T's U-turn hits like piss. Genesect's main attack WAS U-turn, Tornadus-T's is not. This means that when Tornadus-T uses an attack (usually Hurricane), it hits a resist. It then has to U-turn out to something that can either take a paralysis move or something like that, or potentially watch your momentum disappear because Rotom-W just Volt Switched on YOUR switch-in. Change the situation to Genesect. After it uses an attack, you're looking at a counter to YOUR counter, because Genesect just U-turned out. You could say that Torn-T can U-turn out first turn too, but it would done so little damage that no-one would have cared.

Errr, I don't know about you dude, but when I was playing against Genesect I'd use my U-turn sponge to take the U-Turn, much like I'd use Rotom-W or Rachi to take the Hurricane. The fact that Torn-T has U-Turn as well is just icing on the cake, and arguably makes it even more dangerous than Scarf Sect. Torn-T might as well be a scarf pokemon, it only comes in on stuff that it outspeeds and can KO, which is most of the metagame btw. Also I U-Turn a lot with my Specs Torn-T from the get go to scout, much like you would do with Genesect early game. Yeah, the more powerful U-Turn was nice, but unless you were playing against a team weak to Genesect, you weren't doing much damage with U-Turn anyway.

2) Genesect was banned for way more reasons than Tornadus-T - If anything pushed Genesect over the line, IMO, was how hard Rock Polish Genesect was to stop. It had very different counters for its different coverage moves. After an RP, it was practically impossible to revenge kill, while still having the coverage to kill like 70-80% of the metagame. Tornadus-T, on the other hand, can't sweep like Genesect can. This is not even mentioning that Genesect also had a huge number of other sets that was able to run, all of them extremely threatening or ridiculously versatile. Tornadus-T has one set, which while good, is relatively easy to stop in comparison (I guess you could say Bulk Up Acrobatics, but seriously, who thinks that set is good?).

I don't know why you're comparing Rock Polish Sect to Torn-T lol. One is a late game sweeper while the other acts as a revenge killer and wallbreaker. What's actually scary about Tornadus-T is that it really only has 1-2 sets (if you count LO and Specs separately) and look at how destructive it is. You know exactly what Torn-T is going to do, and there's a very good chance it is going to beat you anyway.

 

[shrang]

Ala, go read what I wrote again. You clearly haven't since I was showing lavos why he was wrong to claim that t-t was broken because it played similarly to gene. I was more stating their differences as opposed to comparing them.

 

[alamaster]

Well my first paragraph still stands, there's no difference from U-Turning with either besides a small increase of power for Genesect. Also FYI Genesect was banned mostly for the Rock Polish set, that was the only one that was actually broken or close to broken (I think Sect was OU), the versatility was icing on the cake but I wouldn't say it had many reasons for getting banned. If anything, Tornadus-T has more; abusing one of the best moves in the game (100% Hurricane), insane speed, regen, coverage with only 3 attacks with a moveslot to spare.

 

[peng]

what i really want to know is: what's the alternative to banning torn-t? will you have me run sdef rachi on every team from now on? that's called overcentralizing, and it's why we banned exca.

Overcentralizing isn't a word, [Nix Edit: Yes it is, and regardless it doesn't help your argument lol] it wasn't why we banned Excadrill and it doesn't have a place in any suspect thread. Its just an argument bad players tend to use because they are sick of seeing the same Pokemon over and over. I know thats not the context you are using it in here, but just pointing out its never been a reason to ban something and it likely never will.

Still not 100% sure where I stand on these two. Its kind of weird to be putting these 2 up for suspect when they both actually have some decent counters, when there are numerous other Pokemon that you p much have to sac something every time they come in to beat. I guess thats just a testament to how fast-paced the game has become now. Keldeo does have a couple of counters depending on what Hidden Power its running, but these are mostly all stall mons and the general consensus within the community is that stall is still unviable - an opinion I don't agree with. I'd actually argue stall probably has a better match-up vs Rain teams atm than any other archtype in the game, given that a simple "core" of Spinner / Jellicent / Zapdos is enough to gg them without prediction 90% of the time, barring vs Specs Hidden Power [Ghost] Keldeo which I haven't seen in months.

I said this about the Genesect suspect test and I'll say it again now: people need to adapt to the common threats. I have no idea why the game is still full of offense when they were clearly incredibly weak to RP Genesect, Scarf Keldeo and Tornadus-T. Too many people just throw SDef Rotom-W on a team because the damage calc says it should beat Torn, and then when it repeatedly loses to it they moan its broken. A counter to Tornadus-T almost needs to have a different definition to that of any other Pokemon. It needs to have reliable recovery, and it also often can't be used to switch-in on anything on the opposing team. e.g. Rotom-W is a terrible Tornadus-T counter because it doesn't have reliable recovery so just gets worn down too quickly whilst Torn outlasts it with Regenerator. If you are also using Rotom-W as your Politoed switch-in, you are going to be losing to rain... a lot. Whether or not you think this makes Tornadus broken is up to you, but i see far too many people that are so adamant that Rotom-W is an excellent Torn counter, that whenever they lose to it they are convinced it is broken.

The only reason I'm considering Tornadus-T broken at this point is because of Hurricane's confusion chance - its comparable to Excadrill's Rock Slide flinching, which I considered the breaking point. 30% chance just turns Tornadus-T into a slot machine, and this is a situation that seems to occur far too often. If Tornadus-T is going to banned, the Hurricane confusion chance should be a pretty major factor imo.

Currently thinking:
Keldeo - do not ban
Tornadus-T - abstain

 

[Dark Fallen Angel]

Genesect and Tornadus-T play almost nothing like each other, and that argument means nothing unless you can show that Tornadus-T is broken with that playstyle. U-turn was so good on Genesect because it was STAB and usually boosted, while Tornadus-T's unboosted, neutral U-turns hit for dick. They are incredibly dissimilar, and I think the argument itself is without merit. However, there is definitely not "ZERO" reason not to use Tornadus. Tornadus is the best of the rain abusers, that does not immediately make it broken. You could say that, since there is ZERO reason not to run Venusaur on Sun, it's broken. You need to prove that, in the scope of the meta as a whole, Tornadus-T is broken, not that it is the best abuser of rain, since nobody's arguing that it isn't.

over-centralization always makes for bad arguments, mostly because it's never defined in the definitions of our community or why it's bad. just because there's zero reason not to use something doesn't mean it's broken. there's also zero reason to not use ferrothorn in rain, or zero reason to not use dragonite on any team. just argue on the merits of the actual pokemon, not the usage of it.

There's actually a reason not to use Venusaur on sun, as well as not using Ferrothorn on rain. For the former, Venusaur has some competition with other Chlorophyll sweepers, sure, this is little competition because of Venusuar's advantages compared to other Chloro sweepers, but there are people who use Lilligant, Sawsbuck, Victreebel, and Shiftry instead of Venusaur. They are fine alternatives, and a reason not to use Venusaur. For the latter, while Ferrothorn excels at being a rain hazard setter, it faces some competition from Forretress, which boasts 2 key advantages: Rapid Spin, and Volt Switch.

However, name a reason not to use Tornadus-T on rain teams. It has 1) amazing speed (there are very few things that can outspeed him without a Choice Scarf, and those things cannot switch-in) 2) Powerful move with few resists THAT can take repeated blows of that move 3) U-Turn 4) Regenerator 5) Ability to smash most of its would-be counters with Superpower 6) One of the few things that can defeat Ferrothorn without using Fire- or Fighting-type moves 7) Thanks to Regenerator, it doesn't actually suffer from Stealth Rock.

 

[Nyara]

You can also forgoe Ferrothorn fo an ofensive rain sweeper in case you're running an hyper offensive rain-team, it usually works better with that style because you rarely switch-in things, and there are better Stealth Rock and Spike setters with some advatange over Ferrothorn, too.

 

[ssbbm]

There's actually a reason not to use Venusaur on sun, as well as not using Ferrothorn on rain. For the former, Venusaur has some competition with other Chlorophyll sweepers, sure, this is little competition because of Venusuar's advantages compared to other Chloro sweepers, but there are people who use Lilligant, Sawsbuck, Victreebel, and Shiftry instead of Venusaur. They are fine alternatives, and a reason not to use Venusaur. For the latter, while Ferrothorn excels at being a rain hazard setter, it faces some competition from Forretress, which boasts 2 key advantages: Rapid Spin, and Volt Switch.

However, name a reason not to use Tornadus-T on rain teams. It has 1) amazing speed (there are very few things that can outspeed him without a Choice Scarf, and those things cannot switch-in) 2) Powerful move with few resists THAT can take repeated blows of that move 3) U-Turn 4) Regenerator 5) Ability to smash most of its would-be counters with Superpower 6) One of the few things that can defeat Ferrothorn without using Fire- or Fighting-type moves 7) Thanks to Regenerator, it doesn't actually suffer from Stealth Rock.

You don't only have to do that with Tornadus-T, you can do that with any Pokemon. We can say "There's no reason not to use Dragonite." and then back it up with statements like 1) It has an amazing attack stat 2) It has basically perfect coverage 3) Amazing movepool 4) Thanks to Roost, it doesn't actually suffer from Stealth Rock 5) It has MultiScale (SO BROKEN!!!)

And we can continue with that with so many more Pokemon (Tentacruel comes to mind as being almost completely unique and unmatched).

If there was no reason to not use Tornadus-T on rain teams, then usage stats would show that; seeing as it's not at 30% or whatever Politoed is, there are obviously reasons to not use Tornadus-T. Personally, I dont' run Tornadus-T whenever I run balanced Rain because I find that it doesn't add to the defensive integrity of my team enough. I don't run Tornadus because it's 1) very dependent on rain 2) dependent on SR + Spikes to an extent 3) it has a few hard counters in jirachi / rotom-w, which already trouble my team.

I'm not saying that I don't find Tornadus-T broken (as I said before, I am unsure right now), but don't give out huge exaggerations like "There's no reason to not use it." If you want an example of a Pokemon that you really don't have a reason not to use, then the only example is probably Arceus.


also

@ala: the reason tornadus t's u-turn is different from genesect is because genesect could force out shit with u-turn - you would know that it would use u-turn, but you would have to switch or you would be koed; meanwhile, tornadus-t forces out other pokemon with hurricane - the tornadus user has to choose between using either hurricane or u-turn.

 

[Electrolyte]

Ssbbm, you have a very valid point, but what I think Angel's really trying to say is that not only is Tornadus very powerful for those listed reasons but also there's no Pokemon that can do what Tornadus does, better. This fact by itself is not a reason to ban Tornadus, as there are plenty of pokemon in OU that are best at what they do, but for Tornadus what it does is already also extremely useful and hard to fully counter. Tornadus is not only best at what it does, but ALSO what it does is very powerful. This is what separates it from other solidly OU pokemon like Dragonite and is what makes it potentially broken. Dragonite might have good traits as well, but is it solidly the best DDancer in OU? No, because it still has competition from Salamence. Is Volcarona the best Quiver Dancer in OU? Yes, however what it does is not overly powerful, because of its typing which gives it a weakness to SR. Tornadus, on the other hand, can fire off powerful, resisted-by-few attacks, is the best one at doing it, and has virtually no hindrances due to Regenerator and a fast U-Turn.

 

[Lavos]

Actually, Lavos, it's not utter folly at all. It works for all cases that you need to prove something is either equal or better to your reference point to actually be able to use that comparison. Firstly, scales "similar" is subjective. You can change the dimensions so that Bob got 80/100 for his admissions test and James got 69. 69 can still be considered "similar" to 80, if you look at a bigger scale (it's still in the same order of magnitude, for example). My point was not actually about the example itself but more about the fact that you cannot use the train of logic that just because something is "similar" does not mean that it is the same thing rather than the specific example, which is why your train of reasoning was flawed.

but you're still ignoring the threshold argument, unless genesect is directly on the ubers threshold and was just barely voted in then there's no was you can say torn-t isn't an uber just because it's slightly less broken than genesect. i understand where you're coming from but my point remains the same. i've stated in previous posts why tornadus-t is actually superior to genesect in some respects, and gene is definitely superior to torn-t in other areas, but they both have their merits and i feel that over the course of this suspect thread we've come to a general consensus that torn-t is too powerful for ou.

Anyway, addressing your other two points, my first point was that Tornadus-T and Genesect is automatically different and incompatible is that one SPAMS U-turn as its main attack, while the other doesn't. You can switch a 2x resist like say... Dragonite (without Multiscale, obviously) for ~25% with Genesect's U-turn, rather than something that's easily healed by Leftovers from Jirachi. Genesect tended to destroy things with just U-turn, while with Tornadus-T, you had to decide whether to click U-turn or to use Hurricane. Things went from no thinking to "some" thinking.

i don't understand your point here. i think what you're trying to say is that because genesect was mindless to use, and torn-t actually makes you think once in a while, we shouldn't ban torn-t? but if it's still broken regardless, we're going to ban it...maybe the torn-t's u-turn / gene's u-turn wasn't a great comparison, granted, but there are other similarities we can look at too. besides, the comparison thing isn't the only argument out there for banning torn-t. even if we agree that gene and tornadus-t are not similar enough to warrant a ban via that line of reasoning, there's still 121 speed, some of the best stab in the game, and regenerator + u-turn to look at.

Also, if you look toward closer to the end of the Genesect test, more people began to talk about RP Genesect as it got further on. Comparing U-turnless Genesect to Hurricane-less Tornadus-T is just dumb, and you highlighted that in post already. Obviously, RP Genesect doesn't use U-turn, and it was still one of the most dangerous threats in the metagame. Name one set that Tornadus-T has that anywhere near as dangerous as RP Genesect if it doesn't use Hurricane. I dare you.

yeah i'm not going to deny that rp genesect was a huge metagame threat, but only to offensive teams, it really couldn't do squat to any team with a functioning special wall. my point in saying that genesect w/o u-turn is like torn-t without hurricane is that both can't wear down their checks/counters without the respective moves i listed. there isn't any way genesect is getting through heatran without repeatedly forcing it to take hazards damage.

Oh, I'll just leave you with this - Genesect's best viable counter in OU was generally seen to be Heatran. Tornadus-T's is Jirachi. +1 LO Modest Genesect's Thunder vs 252/252+ Heatran: 47.15% - 55.70%, with the option of changing attacks at will. Name one thing that Tornadus-T can do to Jirachi that gets anywhere close to that without being the biggest load of setup fodder ever (getting locked into HP Ground is classified as "massive setup fodder" and you know it).

hp ground sucks, i'm not going to argue that and you shouldn't expect me to. if you take a look at the calc you made genesect doesn't actually even 2hko sdef heatran if it has protect, since it can protect out of 2hko range despite even a max roll on thunder. besides, here's what you're assuming with the genesect calc:

1. it's the specific rp set
2. it obtained the special attack boost in the first place
3. it even has thunder (most common rp set: flamethrower/ice beam/giga drain)

and even with all those things going for genesect, it still fails to 2hko its most solid counter. and let's not forget chansey/blissey, which walls the hell out of the rp genesect set. now take a glance at torn-t. sdef jirachi is, undisputably, a solid counter, i'll give you that. however, it's literally the only solid counter to torn-t in the entire game, and that's a problem. torn-t can wear down bronzong and rotom-w easily (and no i'm not taking this for granted, i see it happen all the time), and the pink blobs aren't even an issue if it carries taunt. rp genesect can't do anything to the blobs and even struggles to ohko random checks like terrakion and (wouldn't you know it) sdef rachi. yes, rachi is a good counter for torn-t, but the problem is it's the only counter for torn-t. here are your two options:

1. ban torn-t and stop worrying about it
2. have every single person run sdef rachi on every single one of their non-hyper-offensive teams so we can all reliably counter torn-t

you and penguinx have been claiming "overcentralization" to be a bad argument, maybe i'm using the wrong terminology here because i honestly don't see why it is. let's look back to excadrill and the reasons it was banned. back then you either ran skarmory, gliscor, or bronzong, else you were going to get screwed by exca 90% of the time (and even then, exca could flinch through some of its "counters"). now look back to the present day, what are the options against torn-t? you either run bronzong, rotom-w, or sdef rachi, else you're going to get screwed by torn-t 90% of the time (and even so, torn-t can confuse its way through some of its "counters"). torn-t overcentralizes the metagame on itself by forcing you to run one of three pokemon, two of which are reliably broken through anyways, just so you can maybe check this offensive monster. (again, sorry if this isn't the correct terminology, but you get my point)

the reason it's so remarkably easy to draw up multiple similarities between preexisting bw2 ubers and tornadus-t is because torn-t is also a bw2 uber and ought to be voted as such.

 

[flea]

The whole "Tornadus-T has offensive counters, stuff that can outspeed it and kill it" argument doesn't really do it for me...like I'm pretty sure everyone here knows that Jolteon is a shaky check at best (let alone counter) due to it only being able to switch in once and the Tornadus-T user can easily just switch out to an electric immunity. Same with Weavile- it's a useful poke and can certainly revenge Tornadus-T, but that all hinges on the bird's user keeping him in against said Weavile, which is just a damn stupid thing to do when it has regenerator and the best thing you have for it is a Weavile, which has multiple counters in OU.

I understand the argument "well, there are things in OU that only have offensively-oriented checks already, there's Hydreigon, MixMence, Kyurem-B, etc, stuff with literally no true defensive counter". Yeah, but those things are outsped by nearly all relevant offensive pokemon in OU, a.k.a more than just Jolteon. In order to have the coverage so no switch-in is safe, those Pokemon are forced to be slow. As soon as you know that they're not scarfed, even a Banded Terrakion destroys all three of them. None of this is true for Tornadus-T, it can remain blazingly fast with the ability to switch moves.

Also, these three are 10 times easier to wear down than a well-played Tornadus-T. Playing against a well-played Tornadus-T is a freaking onslaught, it will come in multiple times in a game and spam Hurricane or U-Turn. So to deal with it, you either have to bring in something that can stand up to this onslaught, or hope that your opponent leaves it in so you can revenge it with a scarfer. As long as your opponent has a counter to your scarfer, this will nearly always be a losing battle for you.

So what I'm trying to say is, by virtue of its speed, ability, stats, moves, etc., Tornadus-T is something that requires a true defensive counter, something that can come in and take two hits a few times per game to keep it in check. And I don't think that pokemon currently exists in this meta.