Auto weather poll

[Cherub Agent]

I'd like to say that I firmly agree with the people who say that we should start off by banning Drizzle, and if Sun proves to overpowering, to Suspect that as the next step.

Come on, Drizzle is slowly becoming nothing short of ridiculous. How many Pokemon now currently reside in Ubers because we were too stubborn to ban the playstyle? Manaphy, Thundurus-I, Tornadus-T... all of these would have found a home in OU were it not for Drizzle (Tornadus-T would probably have been UU). I think that we were so excited about the fact that Gen 5 brought us permanent Rain and Sun to the OU metagame that we simply failed to see just how broken these abilities actually are. We were too caught up in the "new thing", and so we did what we've always done, we banned Pokemon, Pokemon that would not be broken if Drizzle itself was gone. See, the fact of the matter is, Drizzle just provides too many good boosts to its abusers (and no I'm not talking about Swift Swim, that's blindingly obvious). Water is and was always one of the best types in the game; excellent resistances, great neutral type coverage and weaknesses that are very easy to work around. The 50% power boost is simply too much on such an excellent typing. But it's not just the power boost. Pokemon in Drizzle teams can spam three moves that are essentially 120 BP, have perfect accuracy and have a 30% chance of inflicting a nasty secondary effect. I'm talking about Scald, Thunder and Hurricane. Manaphy was an abuser of the first, Thundurus-I of the second, and Tornadus-T of the third. Such powerful moves with practically no drawbacks are simply ridiculously overpowering (Scald has massive distribution, Hurricane has 0 drawbacks whatsoever in Rain, and Thunder also has excellent distribution). The nerfing of Fire-type moves is a godsend for Pokemon such as Jirachi and Ferrothorn, as they will simply last throughout the entire match, and provide immense passive damage support. Dry Skin and Rain Dish are also bonuses of which no other weather has anything similar. Rain teams are simply at an inherent advantage against almost every playstyle out there, and Politoed itself is no slouch, as proven by its incredibly powerful Choice Specs set. Politoed is faster and more powerful than Choice Band Tyranitar when abusing Hydro Pump and Surf, go figure -.- In short, Rain is simply ridiculous. All Rain teams are near clones of eachother, and this makes the metagame less enjoyable. I don't know about you, but I still treat Pokemon as a game, not an obssession, and games are supposed to be FUN. I know that this is subjective, but I also know that there are many, many other people who share my opinion.

Now, a short note on what I personally think is the course of action we should take. My primary objective would be to suspect Drizzle on an alternative Suspect ladder. Should said metagame prove to be more enjoyable than current OU, the voters will make the decision to ban Drizzle as an ability. We'd then be left with Sand, Sun and Hail. I think that it is fairly obvious that Sand and Hail or not broken abilities, as not only do they not provide sufficient boosts for teammates, we had Gen 4 show us that niether weather was broken. Some discussion may be said for the new boosts introduced to Sand in Gen 5, primarily Sand Rush, but I think the general consensus is that Sand Rush abusers can be countered and dealt with. Hail isn't even worth considering suspecting in my opinion. The big question is Sun. Personally, I think that Sun would be broken without Rain, but if that is so then we simply ban it as well. The end result would be a metagame that is incredibly diverse, full of new and interesting options. It may not be a reflection of the Gen 5 metagame that we've had all this while, but it would be a more enjoyable one. It is NOT too late to correct this mistake. We have waited far too long to suspect Drizzle, and I get the nasty feeling that despite such a large amount of people wanting it to be suspected, that this won't even come to pass. I've already said all I can say on the matter, but if we do ban Drizzle, then the Pokemon that were banned because of it should obviously be given another chance in OU.

Actually, an alternative option would simply be to suspect both Drizzle and Sun at the same time. Sun may not be broken without Drizzle to keep it in check, but if we do end up with a Suspect ladder where Drizzle is banned, I predict that the number of Sun teams we see will increase exponentially, and people may vote to keep Drizzle if only to keep Sun in check. By removing both of these at the same time, we can avoid that problem.

 

[MMII]

In my opinion, when you have a complex ban (at the moment I am very strongly against complex bans) and multiple Pokemon bans just to keep something in OU, something's wrong. We should have banned Drizzle when we had the chance.

Or we could have banned SS and done the same thing. (except no more Kingdra trolling)

As far as weatherless teams are concerned, I've been running almost exclusively weatherless teams that are mostly Stall based since early BW. When I teambuild I don't try to pick mons that counter weather teams, I just look for ones that beat relevant threats. (like Keldeo and what not) My personal gripe with weather teams is that I just don't know what to do with the starter. Even Politoed feels like dead-weight that I have to assign to doing a poor job as a Scarfer or defensive mon that checks nothing I'm really worried about. Looking at my teams now, I don't see a heavy anti-weather building in them. Most of the "anti-weather" mons that are there weren't chosen because they accomplish a specific role (spin blocking, shuffling, cleaning) very well with the anti-weather bit just being a nice bonus. I haven't had an noticeable difficulty with them when I try to team-build which is probably why I'm not so keen on banning them. Anyways, these were just my own personal, and very subjective, experiences with playing weatherless.

 

[NoUserName]

I don't really think that like some of you, Thundurus-I without rain wouldn't be Uber. Sure 100% accuracy Thunder helps against non-weather teams, but Thundurus-I was mostly banned because it was only outspeeded by Deoxys-S, Starmie and Jolteon(that time Dugtrio and Alakazam weren't OU(Alakazam didn't have it's DW ability)), Scarfers, Excadrill in sand and Chrollophylls in Sun.
Thundurus-I was resistant to Bullet Punch and Mach Punch, the most common priority moves that time.

Thundurus-I perfect coverage with 3 moves, and Nasty Plot.
There wasn't any reliable counter, and gave troubles to most teams even when it wasn't used alongside with Politoed.


Manaphy with Tail Glow +3 ... Sure it wouldn't be Uber even without rain? I don't know, but I am not so sure that it would be OU with no suspects.

 

[Eggbert]

At the time, most teams were really bulky. Tyranitar / Rotom / Gliscor / Jirachi was so common and weak to thundurus in the rain that thundurus destroyed most types of teams. It was also difficult to adapt because excadrill would murder you if you didn't have gliscor and thus were necessitated to have a rigid team build. It might not be broken now since everything is so fast paced, but the last thing we need is more powehousing in OU.

 

[Cherub Agent]

Fine, but I don't really care about Thundurus-I. My concern is Drizzle. That being said, I found that it was incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to set up Nasty Plot on such a frail, Stealth Rock weak Pokemon. And when you did find the opportunity to set up, you were destroyed by a Scarfer or Mamoswine. I found the allout attacker with Thunder Wave to be a far more threatening Pokemon in the long run than a Nasty Plot set.

 

[Lemonz]

Thunderus was broken without rain, but I'm not if I could say the same about manaphy or tornadus-t. Regardless though, weather makes setting up near effortless for a plethora of pokemon. Like that thing with drizzle-swift swim.
All you have to do is have weather up, which takes no set up turns, and switch in something with chlorophyll or swift swim, and you've got an agility boost, and potentially a psuedo +1 boost to fire/ water type moves, all without taking time to set up. At least when you use rain dance or sunny day, you have to use a turn. Thats a huge advantage over weatherless teams, and is part of what makes weather abilities broken; the ability to set up without even using turns.

 

[alexwolf]

@PillsburryDoughBoy

SpD Celebi with one attacking move, Baton Pass, Recover, and Perish Song is a viable set and if you haven't used it please don't talk about it. I can't understand why you would replace P-Song or T-Wave with Baton Pass and not with U-turn, you know the most similar move to it.

Finally i don't get your point about the weatherless teams i mentioned. So what you say is that in order for a team to be succesfull it has to acount for top threats and strategies? Nothing seems wrong here, and it has been this way for a long time, so why is this a problem now?

Also:

So effectively your options for dealing with Choice Specs Keldeo on a non-weather team are Jellicent, Latias, Dragonite with good Rapid Spin support, and Celebi (two can be pursuit trapped by a common rain member scizor). If this doesn't demonstrate how badly non-weather crumbles to Choice Specs Keldeo in Rain I don't know what will. The pressure keeps on coming with a team mate with additional powerful Hydro Pumps such as Politoed, Rotom-W, and Starmie.

But weather teams don't suffer this disadvantage since they can curve the power of those Hydro Pumps. This is a reason why many teams, especially defensive ones, slap on a Tyranitar and Hippowdon, because you can expand your answer to powerful Hydro Pumps outside of those 4. Pokes included in this expansion include Amoonguss, Roserade, Tentacruel, Bulky Starmie, Gyarados, less bulky Dragonite, and Latios.

You mentioned three counters, and another one that needs spin support. You also left out Amoonguss, which is a very good check and a counter most of the time. And only one of those Pokemon is prone to getting revenge killed by Scizor, and that is Latias. Jellicent burns it, Celebi has Baton Pass, and Dnite and Amoonguss don't care. So you have three counters that don't care about Pursuit, one more if you can provide spin support, and another one if you don't mind the Pursuit weakness. That's a total of 5 coutners for weatherless teams. If you run a rain team there is also the option of BU Toxicroak, which is a hard counter. So where exactly is the problem. There are Pokemon without counters in OU that don't even need weather to function, such as Terrakion, Hydreigon, and Kyu-B, and there are other that only have one or two hard counters and again don't need weather to function, such as CB or LO Breloom and SD Garchomp. So Specs Keldeo is nothing special compared to other big threats.

Sand teams may be able to negate the water-boost of rain teams some of the time (of 'course sand will not always be up so you will still need to take Drizzle-boosted HP's from Keldeo occasionally) but they have other problems that you ignored. For example they have a few more answers to Specs Keldeo, but they also must use Ttar or Hippo. So the sand team uses a combination of two Pokemon (the sand inducer and the Specs Keldeo counter that can counter only under sand) to take on Specs Keldeo, while the weatherless team uses only one Pokemon to deal with it. I am not saying that Ttar got into the team to help deal with Keldeo, i am saying that during the game, the sand team user must use two Pokemon instead of one to get around Keldeo, which is not always ideal. And even if sand teams allows for more creativity in your team, and give you more options (i don't care if this is true or not and i am not going to argue about it), so what? Some team types are always more diverse that some others and this doesn't mean that weather is broken.

 

[blitzlefan]

Wasn't the same reasoning that was partly behind Genesect's ban the same for rain abusers? They come in and instantly gain a boost? Like Genesect's 1.5x boost from Download which came with his excellent coverage, Water types come in and get an automatic 1.5x boost on their STAB along with abilities (eg Rain Dish) and even have moves boosted (eg Hurricane + Thunder). And all this is done with no set up, bar having Politoed on the field at some point.

 

[Cyrrona]

While we may have taken multiple steps throughout the suspect process to manage a number of rain-related things without addressing the weather itself, I think it's worth noting that we did the same thing with sand by banning Excadrill, Garchomp (originally), and Sand Veil (presently). Everyone that's been waving sand off as clearly manageable should stop and consider whether that statement would hold true if we evenly applied their principles to all of our previous bans. We could have banned Sand Stream, but the community elected to preserve the playstyle and remove the problematic individual components instead. This philosophy has underscored almost every major tiering decision in Generation 5...completely scrapping the metagame we've created throughout BW with the kind of severe policy reversal proposed in this thread and opening up an entirely new can of worms (which will undoubtedly require more suspect testing) in its place strikes me as really, really inappropriate, especially considering how late we are in the generation's lifespan.

If people want a different tiering approach for Generation 6, they should probably voice their concerns in something like the "Looking ahead" thread or with the Council members themselves. As far as I can tell, the only thing we should be discussing here is whether Drizzle (or all auto-weather, for that matter) is "broken" in its current state. (I don't believe it is, for the record, but I'd support a ban on all auto-weather over a Drizzle-only ban to avoid the gaping inconsistencies outlined above.)

 

[Lemonz]

The reason sand and hail are much more manageable over rain and sun is because they former two don't modify typing damage resists and effectiveness.
This is why rain is the most powerful out of all the weathers: it turns water types into beatsticks, and give steels a psuedo-resist. Sun isn't as good because the types it targets are awkward.
It's this and the fact that rain and sand have a plethora of abusers. Sand veil was always broken to an extent; evasion and accuracy make everything unpredictable. Excadrill was banned for the same reasons swift swimmers were, only he didn't gain any extra damage from the weather, unlike swiftswimmers.
So I can understand hail and sand not being banned, whilst rain and sun are.
But still, permanennt weather induced only by switching in is a broken concept already. Weather ought only to last a set number of turns, just like other field effect like trickroom, and ought to be set up through a move, not an ability. The effects are just to powerful to be set up so easily.

 

[Dark Fallen Angel]

The reason sand and hail are much more manageable over rain and sun is because they former two don't modify typing damage resists and effectiveness.
This is why rain is the most powerful out of all the weathers: it turns water types into beatsticks, and give steels a psuedo-resist. Sun isn't as good because the types it targets are awkward.
It's this and the fact that rain and sand have a plethora of abusers. Sand veil was always broken to an extent; evasion and accuracy make everything unpredictable. Excadrill was banned for the same reasons swift swimmers were, only he didn't gain any extra damage from the weather, unlike swiftswimmers.
So I can understand hail and sand not being banned, whilst rain and sun are.
But still, permanennt weather induced only by switching in is a broken concept already. Weather ought only to last a set number of turns, just like other field effect like trickroom, and ought to be set up through a move, not an ability. The effects are just to powerful to be set up so easily.

A pseudo-neutrality, you mean. And this comes to a price of gaining a pseudo-weakness to Water.

Also, alexwolf, you make seem like every Keldeo counter can bypass Tyranitar 100% of time, which isn't true. Jellicent can burn Tyranitar, but this entirely relies on predicting it coming, and even then, Will-O-Wisp has a shaky accuracy and Scald is not always burning. Specially defensive Jellicent takes massive damage from CB-boosted Pursuit, even if it stays in, and even if Jellicent manages to burn Tyranitar, she will lose. As for Specially defensive Celebi, no matter what you may say, running Baton Pass with Perish Song is totally counterproductive, so you have to run Thunder Wave instead. Your next pokémon is forced to lose the momentum one time or another, and the opponent can take advantage of this. As for Amoongus: Yes, it does not fear Pursuit. However, it is 2HKOed by Crunch or Stone Edge, and the latter has a chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock or sandstorm damage. It can switch out freely without be OHKOed, but will still take massive damage from Pursuit if it switches out. + or - 60 - 80%. To the point that it will probably not be able to take a Keldeo blow.

 

[alexwolf]

DFA, me and PDB were talking about Specs Keldeo in rain, meaning that Tyranitar can't be in the opposing team, so Scizor is the only Pursuit mon. Also for the last time stop talking about things that you don't know. I use SpD Celebi with Baton Pass all the time and it is never counter productive. Stop insisting over such a small thing (a scouted switch) and just switch out manually whenever you use Perish Song. Finally, why would Amoonguss stay in against Tyranitar if there is a Keldeo waiting?

 

[Lemonz]

@Dark Fallen Angel

Yeah, I meant psuedo weakness. My bad xp

Thing is, it still alters resistences and weaknesses, which is an extremely powerful asset. Something like that ought to require set up time, like rain dance does, and not instantly summoning it indefinitely, like drizzle.

 

[yee]

If anyone commits one of the top 4 Smogon fallacies I've been noticing a lot, ignore them. They are most likely either uninformed, bad, biased, or just not passionate about handling tiering the best way possible.

1. If we ban Rain, other things become broken. Therefore, we should avoid banning it.

2. Even if we ban weathers, other powerful things will still be broken. Because it's impossible to reach a balanced metagame, we shall not try to fix it.

3. Team matchup occurs in all metagames. This means Rain and Sun cannot be blamed for increasing it.

4. If we remove weather, we remove playstyles like Rain Stall and Sun Offense. These will not be replaced by different types of Stall teams or different types of Offense teams.

This last one is argued by some users I hold in higher regard than the guys committing the above, but I still personally include-

5. Rain and Sun don't provide boosts that make it foolish not to use them or another weather to counter, they just make weatherless teams harder to build and use. Weatherless teams are less common for these two reasons. That's obvious bullshit IMO

 

[Bent1ey]

While we may have taken multiple steps throughout the suspect process to manage a number of rain-related things without addressing the weather itself, I think it's worth noting that we did the same thing with sand by banning Excadrill, Garchomp (originally), and Sand Veil (presently). Everyone that's been waving sand off as clearly manageable should stop and consider whether that statement would hold true if we evenly applied their principles to all of our previous bans. We could have banned Sand Stream, but the community elected to preserve the playstyle and remove the problematic individual components instead.

While I understand the reasoning behind your argument I think that your example just goes to prove how random and unequal the bannings have been, not by trying to respect Sand as a strategy, but by avoiding complex bans. Because if you look at it from the right perspective, Sand Veil and Excadrill are polar opposites of how things are banned, Excadrill was a pokemon deemed broken when using it's Sand-boost and had to be banned because of that, since there were many inferior pokes who could shine with the same ability, they decided to have Excadrill bite the bulled: the ability was deemed fair but the pokemon was broken. Sand Veil in the other hand, was the thing "breaking" Garchomp, it was hardly an argument about how the ability was broken or not, but the judges decided that including Garchomp in the meta was more interesting than having a hax ability that was almost irrelevant in every way: to include Garchomp they decided to ban the entire ability -and kick Hail in the balls in the process for whatever reason-, in a move that had an effect very similar to banning the Garchomp + Sand Veil combination. Arguably, using the same process of thought that kept Garchomp into the format, Excadrill could've been included into the format with the equivalent of the complex ban, but the complex ban is avoided in every situation, so the format would have to do without a decent non-water type spinner because this is a sacred rule: keep the bannings simple and include as much competitive pokes in the format.

This is why the Swift Swim + Drizzle ban is quite atrocius. It was guided by the same principle of keeping Sand Streamers in the format, you couldn't just ban Swift Swim because many pokemon would lose their edge under rain. But instead of treating Drizzle as any other broken pokemon or ability they decided to make it a sacred cow, arguing that it opened more opportunities than the restrictions it imposed to the metagame -I'd like to put emphasis in this, because Excadrill being one of the four decent spinners in the game didn't allow it to make the cut as a positive option for team building-. There is a second lazy argument that went by stating that banning one weather would lead to more bannings later, but that wouldn't even be considered in any other suspect ladder, this is a purely rethorical argument not worth a dime -you don't decide whether you ban things or not based on a theoretical metagame, you use facts-. We could easily allow Excadrill into the format by saying Sand Stream + Sand Rush is banned as a combination, I think it would punish Sand more than anything, but in a certain way, the Swift Swim + Drizzle ban is meant to punish Drizzle indirectly, but by extension is also accepting that the meta can include more Rain related features in non-Drizzle teams.

Anyways, you can micromanage the hell out of the format and embrace complex bans, or you can dismiss them and still keep balance, but this wasn't properly managed this Gen. The frustrating thing about it, is that the format was hardly balanced for the most part of its run, the boldest move comming from the Suspect Discussion was Aldaron's proposal and it was something meant to keep the format the same. Also I don't think that the Snow Cloak ban was handled graciously, but its more of a nitpicking since the ability was hardly part of the metagame anyways.

 

[Kidogo]

For what it's worth bentley, in the end the garchomp decision came down to the hax component inherent in SVesque abilities (I was one of the people who voted on this). THAT is why SVscor is now banned as well--having it on any mon means a player can unfairly garner victory despite huge odds against them. Excadrill, on the other hand, was the only mon on whom sand rush was broken--the ability in and of itself isn't that bad, as demonstrated by sandslash and the dog. And I think we just wanted to avoid a complex ban of "sand rush excadrill" and just banned it as a whole (not to mention that it p much defined excadrill, so it essentially made no difference).

 

[Frochtejohgurt]

Water is and was always one of the best types in the game; excellent resistances, great neutral type coverage and weaknesses that are very easy to work around. The 50% power boost is simply too much on such an excellent typing. But it's not just the power boost. Pokemon in Drizzle teams can spam three moves that are essentially 120 BP, have perfect accuracy and have a 30% chance of inflicting a nasty secondary effect. I'm talking about Scald, Thunder and Hurricane. Manaphy was an abuser of the first, Thundurus-I of the second, and Tornadus-T of the third. Such powerful moves with practically no drawbacks are simply ridiculously overpowering (Scald has massive distribution, Hurricane has 0 drawbacks whatsoever in Rain, and Thunder also has excellent distribution). The nerfing of Fire-type moves is a godsend for Pokemon such as Jirachi and Ferrothorn, as they will simply last throughout the entire match, and provide immense passive damage support. Dry Skin and Rain Dish are also bonuses of which no other weather has anything similar. Rain teams are simply at an inherent advantage against almost every playstyle out there, and Politoed itself is no slouch, as proven by its incredibly powerful Choice Specs set. Politoed is faster and more powerful than Choice Band Tyranitar when abusing Hydro Pump and Surf, go figure -.- In short, Rain is simply ridiculous.

I 100% agree with this, especially with Water type attack boost. Scald becomes Hydro Pump and Hydro Pump becomes a spamable base 180 attack with no drawbacks except for the 85% accuracy. In comparison to other similariely powerful attacks it is quite obvious how overpower rain boosted Hydro Pumpo is. Explosion/Selfdestruct kills the user, V-Create has 3 stats drops makeing the user easy to revenge, Hyper Beam/Giga Impact/Blast Burn etc. have to recharge, Draco Meteor/Overheat/Leafstorm halves the users special attack making a sweep impossible. Hydro Pump has none of these aspects. This combined with all the other boosts rain brings, I fail to see how rain isn't overpowered.

 

[Lemonz]

It wouldn't be overpowered if it took a turn to set up. As it is, all you have to do is switch, and voila!
It's in the fact that weather takes little to no effort to summon permanantly that makes it broken.

 

[NoUserName]

It wouldn't be overpowered if it took a turn to set up. As it is, all you have to do is switch, and voila!
It's in the fact that weather takes little to no effort to summon permanantly that makes it broken.

Hail it's a weather, but almost nobody says that Hail should be banned from OU.

So, this argument is invalid.

 

[Deglas]

I found the history of bans in the OU Hub Page and found a list of bans. I decided to list them here and why they were banned, because I found an interesting pattern.

Preliminary bans/clauses:

Evasion clause, Sleep clause, Species clause, OHKO clause. These were banned for being uncompetitive.
Arceus, Dialga, Giratina, Giratina-O, Groudon, Ho-Oh, Kyogre, Lugia, Mewtwo, Palkia, Rayquaza, Reshiram, Zekrom. These were banned for their sheer power.

Round 1:

Moody. It was banned for being so uncompetitve that no skill was required to win with it, just a bit of luck.
Darkrai, Deoxys-A, Deoxys-N, Shaymin-S. These were all banned for their power.

Round 2:

Drizzle + Swift Swim ban. This was clearly to adress rain, as it made Pokemon like Kingdra nearly impossible to revenge-kill, as well as boosting their main STAB to incredible levels of power.
Manaphy. Banned partially for its ability to get +3 Special Attack instantly with Tail Glow, and partially for rain giving it free full recovery and status immunity, making it impossible to wear down.

Round 3

Brightpowder and Lax Incense. These were banned to mitigate Garchomp Sand Veil ability.
Blaziken. It was banned for its power and near immunity to revenge-killing, courtesy of Speed Boost, and because in sun it 2HKO'd even its supposed counters with Flare Blitz.

Round 4:

Garchomp. It was banned because Sand Veil, when added to Garchomp's natural offensive capabilities, let it sweep straight through counters and revenge-killers, with no support other than Sand Stream.

Round 5:

Excadrill. It was banned for its sheer speed under sand, as well as its power and coverage. Oh, and it was simultaneously the best spinner in the tier.
Thundurus-I: It was banned for its power, as well as the ability to cripple walls and revenge-killers with priority Taunt and Thunder Wave, respectively. It also benefited from rain, being able to use the stonger Thunder as its STAB.

Shift to council system:

Deoxys-S. It was banned for its versatility and power; it could all but guarantee Stealth Rock and Spikes while killing the common spinners, it could be a nearly unstoppable dual screens lead, or it could use its blazing speed and excellent coverage as a revenge-killer.

Round 6:

Sand Veil and Snow Cloak. These were banned for thier ability to boost evasion for no cost in turns.

Garchomp, Brightpowder and Lax Incense return. Garchomp was deemed no longer broken, now that it could not hax its way past just about anything. Brightpowder and Lax Incense were unbanned because people realized that they were just plain useless.

Round 7:

Kyurem-B unbanned. It was deemed acceptable for OU beause its incredible offensive stats and walllike bulk were counterbalanced by its bad typing and non-existant coverage movepuddle.

Round 8:

Genesect. It was banned for a variety of reasons. Insane coverage, Download, base 120 Attack and Special Attack, and STAB U-Turn let it function as an unrivaled revenge-killer and scout with a Choice Scarf. It could also run Expert Belt to bluff the common Scarf, and get a surprise KO. It also had a destructive Rock Polish set, which easily got free turns from switches fearing the Scarf set; and the few things that could stop it could be trapped with Dugtrio, or worn down with Stealth Rock.

Round 9:

Tornadus-T. It was banned for a variety of reasons. Its speed let it outpace almost the entire unboosted metagame, and smack them with a powerful STAB Hurricane. Most of the things that could take a Hurricane were wrecked by Superpower and Focus Blast, and the remainder it could just U-Turn away from. It also had Regenerator, letting it heal off residual damage whenever it switched, often outliving its counters.

So there we are.

By my estimate:

Bans completely attributable to rain: 2; Drizzle + Swift Swim, Tornadus-T
Bans partially attributable to rain: 2; Manaphy, Thundurus-I
Bans partially attributable to sun: 1; Blaziken
Bans attributable to sand: 2; Sand Veil, Excadrill
Bans attributable to hail: 1; Snow Cloak (note that Snow Cloak was banned more for consistency than abusableness)
Bans attributable to general power: 7; Moody, Darkrai, Shaymin-S, Deoxys-A, Deoxys-N, Deoxys-S, Genesect
Bans partially attributable to general power: 3; Manaphy, Thundurus-I, Blaziken

Bans wholly or partially attributable to passive, free boosts or other benefits: 6; Moody (free +2 in a random stat each turn), Drizzle + Swift Swim (free Agility + STAB power boost), Sand Veil and Snow Cloak (free evasion), Blaziken (free +1 speed each turn from Speed Boost), Excadrill (free Agility), Tornadus-T (Regenerator)

Bans wholly or partially attributable to almost free boosts or other benefits: 6; Shaymin-S (Serene Grace Air Slash is almost free damage, Seed Flare is often free effective +2 Special Attack), Darkrai (Dark Void often gives it a free Nasty Plot), Manaphy (free status immunity + 1-turn full recovery in rain), Thundurus-I (can get a guaranteed Thunder Wave on a faster Pokemon, renedring it much less useful), Deoxys-S (can almost guarantee Stealth Rock and Spikes while denying opponents theirs, or get screens up), Genesect (Download, U-Turning on switches),

As you can see, almost all of the non-preliminary bans in the fifth Generation (exceptions being Deoxys-A and Deoxys-N) have been of abilities that grant free or almost free boosts or benefits, or of Pokemon that use various attributes (often abilities) to gain free or almost free boosts or benefits.

I apologize for such a lengthy post.

tl;dr Most of the bans in fifth Generation are at least partially because of benefits gained with no or little cost.

 

[blitzlefan]

Hail it's a weather, but almost nobody says that Hail should be banned from OU.

So, this argument is invalid.

But... it's also the fact that Rain takes no effort to set up, AND the plethora of abusers in the OU tier. Just look at the OU list, around a third to half of the pokes have moves boosted/weaknesses lost/abilities activated just by having rain on the field. Water typing is already exceptional, with few weaknesses and few resists too, but Rain makes Water pokes so much stronger.

 

[Lemonz]

Only Ice types don't get damaged from hail aswell, and there are only two viable abilities to benefit that weather, one of them recently getting banned. But still, as a field effect, it ought to take a turn to set up. If hail were to have enough abuses, it may easily become broken aswell.

But the fact remains that rain and sun, aswell as sandstorm to a lesser extent, offer immediate, viable boosts in power, are easily exploitable, and take no time to set up.
Weatherless teams don't have any strategy like that, forcing them to be play arround or through weather.
The ease of weather also makes it extremely popular, and since nearly every weather team takes advantage of an infinite weather starter, that takes an entire slot out of the team, and takes away a good chunk of creativity.
Finally, the immediate power weather like rain and sun bring to the field only contributes to the power creep this generation.

 

[Lee]

man, i was so pissed when we banned Excadrill rather than a Sand Rush complex ban - yeah, that's exactly what this clusterfuck of an entry-hazard ridden metagame needed; ban the single best Rapid Spinner and then look around in amazement when Deoxys-S gets banned the next round and Deoxys-D begins to gain notoriety the round after and everyone is condemned to using Starmie, Forry or Tentacruel on their team or just saying c'est la vie and trying not to get dicked too hard by all the A+ hazard setters in OU. can somebody remind me why excadrill was any different to say, Kingdra? it just seems as though we were trying not to bring any more attention to the elephant in the room and it was less controversial to ban excadrill than ban yet another weather-associated ability.

 

[Lemonz]

Excadrill wouldn't have been as bad if he had only eight turns (using sandstorm and that one rock) to sweep, and have to set it up.
There are just to many people running weather teams; they don't want their favorite strategies taken away.
It wouldn't have been a popular decision to ban auto weather, but we wouldn't be stuck in this quandry of a meta if we had.

 

[Tressed]

Excadrill wouldn't have been as bad if he had only eight turns (using sandstorm and that one rock) to sweep, and have to set it up.
There are just to many people running weather teams; they don't want their favorite strategies taken away.
It wouldn't have been a popular decision to ban auto weather, but we wouldn't be stuck in this quandry of a meta if we had.

Yeah, but few are going to dedicate an item slot and a move slot to run weather starting moves. I wasn't around to battle during DPP, but from the warstories I read, there were very few sun and rain teams simply because using those moves hindered you too much to be effective. Nobody will run Sandstorm + Smooth Rock + Excadrill except early on to test it.

Also, I agree with Lee about spinning, its an absolute pain in the ass to find the time to get a spinner in, nevermind fitting one on a team. Starmie, Tentacruel, Forretress. Starmie is weak as shit without rain, and Forry has no presense whatsoever. Tentacruel is probably the best spinner right now, seeing as it has that recovery in rain and all. Meanwhile, we have Deo-D, Terrakion, Ferrothorn, and everything else tossing Rocks everywhere.