Banning "Rain Dance" from UU

[franky]

It has come to my attention that most UU players know how difficult it is to face a Rain Dance team, and how easy it is to run a Rain Dance team. Its a dangerous style of play to face and once Rain Dance is set up, there is absolutely no way to stop it outside of the rare weather starters (Hippopotas and Snover) and the occasional Sunny Day teams.

We were discussing it in the UU Subforum, and the we feel like the real culprit to why Rain Dance is broken is Damp Rock. Thanks to Damp Rock, Rain Dance stays on the field for eight full turns, allowing sweepers to set up or just inflict high amounts of damage for an extended amount of time. Its very rare that you make an attack when facing a Rain Dance team, since your probably switching in and out to weather the hits. For the most part, you practically have to keep dodging hits for eight full turns without making a move. There is so much offensive pressure applied when your facing a Rain Dance team that it makes it near-impossible to find time to make a move.

Basically if we 'ban' Damp Rock, it will make Rain Dance more manageable and it makes the style of play still viable. I think there is no other way we can look to ban a style of play, but we can at least nerf it by banning Damp Rock.

 

[JabbaTheGriffin]

I wouldn't be against this. I don't see why it wouldn't be able to go through normal nomination/voting procedures. I mean soul dew is banned in OU I don't see the problem with banning an item that results in Pokemon being broken in UU. Though people also have to keep in mind the other options they have. ie banning the move Rain Dance and banning the best rain sweepers. It'd be up to the voters to elaborate upon why banning Damp Rock would be the best of the options.

 

[lilyhollow]

I don't know whether Rain Dance actually needs to be weakened, but you never really explained why testing Damp Rock in particular is a good idea. When you say that it's impossible to stop Rain Dance teams once they get set up, my first reaction isn't to try and give them three less turns of complete dominance, it's to try and lower that level of dominance altogether.

There are definitely possible arguments to be made in favor of a Damp Rock test, such as "we like those turns of complete dominance for some reason... we just think there are too many of them," but nobody has made those. So I sort of assume by default that "political" reasons such as convenience and a comparative unwillingness to ban, say, Ludicolo (or Gorebyss/Omastar or whoever), are to blame. On principle I'm pretty against making balance decisions for purely political reasons, and I don't think it's too much to ask for people to actually explain why testing Damp Rock is the best decision from an in-game perspective.

I don't think it makes any sense to "leave it up to the voters," either, because that implies the issue being deferred until after a Damp Rock test already takes place. Either you're also testing Ludicolo/Gorebyss/Omastar, and then asking voters to compare the two metagames directly (I think everyone agrees that this would be a waste of time), or you're only testing Damp Rock, in which case the comparisons would have to be based on theory-- exactly what they'd be based on if the decision were made right now. It also encourages dishonest voting; players who think the metagame is fixed by a Damp Rock ban, but not ideally-so, are more likely to just suck it up and vote BL so they don't have to go through another variation of essentially the same test.

I dislike the idea of testing items/moves in general for these sorts of reasons. I think Pokemon should be the "default" go-to Suspects, and item/move bans should only be considered in extreme, obvious situations. There are too many silly little political issues to smooth over otherwise.

 

[franky]

There really isn't anything to elaborate to why removing Damp Rock is the better method. We ultimately keep the rain dance sweepers, while reducing Rain Dance time for three turns; therefore making it more manageable. I get what your saying, but I was leaning towards the 'quick boot' with Damp Rock. I figured we would remove Damp Rock without any testing, since it really doesn't harm the metagame that much, and it essentially makes a style of play more manageable. The consensus of the UU players know that this style of play is extremely hard to face, and there really isn't any harm done when we 'quick boot' Damp Rock from the metagame. The only problem RB Golbat brought up is if Rain Dance is still dangerous, what do we do next? My ideas are twofold: quick boot Damp Rock or test a metagame without Damp Rock. I would imagine that the second option would be too chaotic, since we are testing Cresselia and Porygon-Z this round, while the latter option is a faster process without interfering with the current suspect test. Like I said, I personally prefer the first option since it really doesn't harm the current metagame, it is only making it better.

and item/move bans should only be considered in extreme, obvious situations. There are too many silly little political issues to smooth over otherwise.

In my opinion, this is considered somewhat extreme and I think it we should lean towards banning an item for this one.

 

[lilyhollow]

There really isn't anything to elaborate to why removing Damp Rock is the better method. We ultimately keep the rain dance sweepers, while reducing Rain Dance time for three turns; therefore making it more manageable.

Of course Rain Dance would be more manageable with the removal of Damp Rock-- the same could be said for Garchomp and Earthquake. The problem is that there are all sorts of unnecessary residual effects that aren't being accounted for, in addition to the fact that nobody even knows how well this would fix the problem in the first place. If Rain teams are really "that" strong when they set themselves up, maybe they'll be equally silly to play against, just not as effective (think Baton Pass teams). Or maybe it would take Rain teams off the map altogether. The point is, nobody has really put together solid theory on what would actually happen if Damp Rock were banned. Your suggestion isn't exactly conservative to begin with, so you should at least have a case as to why banning it is actually better for the metagame, not just quicker or more convenient, than a traditional Pokemon ban.

I figured we would remove Damp Rock without any testing, since it really doesn't harm the metagame that much

This applies to almost any Suspect. We would probably have banned Salamence, and put Evasion on the shelf permanently, had this ever been part of our philosophy. We don't ban things, and certainly don't skip tests, just because it's convenient. That said, there are things like Floatzel and Qwilfish sitting around in NU, so it seems fairly ridiculous to say that the metagame "isn't hurt that much" by a blanket Rain Dance nerf anyway.

 

[Aldaron]

I'd support a Damp Rock suspect test, simply because when rain is active, several Pokemon easily qualify for BL underneath the offensive characteristic, so I could support that suspect testing for Damp Rock based on the support characteristic.

I don't think we need to get into even close to the detail blame game is implying; whoever plays UU and is good can acknowledge that when rain is up, several Pokemon become broken. We don't need to "theorize" (read bullshit because that is pretty much all it is) what will happen at all; when rain is up, several pokemon become broken. We simply decide to test the duration of potential rain.

Whether damp rock extends this broken time enough is something we'll find out while playing / testing. Theorizing what will happen can give way to...actually reporting what will happen.

 

[lilyhollow]

Alright, well if it's obvious to most UU players that several Pokemon would have to be banned before Rain Dance were sufficiently kept in check, I have no reason to oppose testing Damp Rock. The problem is that nobody has really entertained the idea of fixing Rain Dance by banning Pokemon. I have no idea what the players think would probably happen if, like, just Electrode were banned or whatever... and I'd like to, because if it's feasible to fix the problem by just putting a Pokemon in BL, four times out of five that's the solution I'd prefer.

 

[Heysup]

I don't oppose a suspect test for Damp Rock, even though it's an item. Why can't we just ban things that are broken, regardless of whether or not they are a Pokemon?

For the process, I agree with Jabba. I think we should just follow the same process as a Pokemon would have, considering the characteristics of Uber/BL are guidelines and not laws. What I mean by this is that we don't need to follow them to the word.

An item can cause a Pokemon to be able to sweep/stall/support a significant portion of the metagame, and it is easily distinguishable from a Pokemon itself being broken when considering that a broken item would cause more than one Pokemon to be broken with the item (besides stuff like DST, Soul Dew, Light Ball, etc). The other option is to just classify all items as "support characteristic" Uber/BLs. Anyway, my main point is that an item can easily be tested.

If people think Damp Rock is broken, they will nominate it, write paragraphs, and eventually vote it BL the same as any other thing that is considered for BL status. I don't see how (just because it's an item) it's so much different than a Pokemon would be.

However, I want to clarify that I heavily oppose a "immediate ban without a vote".

Banning Damp Rock without following the UU process not only goes against Smogon's philosophy of banning, but it really doesn't make much sense since Rain isn't "obviously broken" (like Cresselia was assumed to be), and even if it was, it is still debatable whether banning Damp Rock would be necessary. Too be honest, I think Kabutops is the only thing possibly broken about rain, but I'll leave that discussion for the UU thread.

So, in summary, I do not think we should treat Damp Rock any different than we would a Pokemon suspect, and not "skip" the whole process. This is mainly because Rain Dance isn't "obviously" broken and doesn't come close to warrant a removal without a vote. Additionally, Damp Rock is not the definite "debatably" broken aspect of it. There are other ways of balancing Rain Dance to consider as well, like voting for the removal of the broken Pokemon under Rain Dance. People will nominate, write paragraphs, and vote it BL if it truly (or if the majority of people think so) is, in my opinion.

 

[Seven Deadly Sins]

This is a terrible idea. I don't see why we would rather do this than just nominate omastar / gorebyss / kabutops / ludicolo as suspects rather than just theoryban Damp Rock and assume that it'll work. Why not ban the Pokemon that make the strategy dominant instead of just "reducing how long the dominance lasts"?

Also, why is "banning multiple Pokemon" necessarily a bad thing? Also, what makes it so obvious that you would have to "ban multiple Pokemon". I mean, this isn't something like banning Abomasnow to make Walrein less broken. This is banning an item because it makes Pokemon broken, rather than just banning the Pokemon itself in an assumption that "reducing the length of time these pokemon are dominant" will actually fix it.

Also, from my play in UU, the most threatening sweepers have always been the ones that just carry Rain Dance for themselves. They generally use LO instead of Damp Rock, and provide more trouble than any Damp Rocked team ever will.

 

[Aldaron]

What.

First of all, the majority sentiment in this thread is to test, not theoryban.
You basically just stated something was terrible and then provided a question that misses the point. I'm also not sure why you decided to harp on the maybe one poster in this thread who supported a theoryban.

Second of all, the _point_ is that if those 5 pokemon aren't broken without rain, and if their overall effect on a battle is reduced enough by reducing their broken turns, that we should test one item as opposed to banning 5 pokemon. You're assuming we only look at singular turns and not the overall battle. Promoting damp rock as a suspect takes the overall battle perspective into account while also keep what we might ban to a minimum (1 item...or 5 pokemon...).

As for your "Why not ban the Pokemon that make the strategy dominant instead of just "reducing how long the dominance lasts"? "

What if...reducing the dominance duration makes the overall effect on the battle not dominant? Remember we need to view Pokemon in the context of singular turns (they are broken in rain) AND in the overall context of the battle (ease of setup, regularity, overspecification).

Ban 1 item (after testing of course) that reduces the duration (not only reducing the effectiveness of rain but going further into the second degree by making it less used itself) and keep all 5 Pokemon...

I don't see how this is terrible at all.

 

[JabbaTheGriffin]

Yeah what Aldaron has said lately. This is probably something I need to talk over with reach. But considering there is already precedent for banning an item I don't see why we wouldn't allow intelligent voters to decide what the best course of action is. Like I said I'll discuss this with reach first but more than likely I will allow people to nominate Damp Rock as a suspect through the regular channels. It makes no sense not to.

 

[lilyhollow]

Also, why is "banning multiple Pokemon" necessarily a bad thing?

I second this. Even if it's obvious (and apparently it might not be?) that multiple Pokemon would need to be banned to fix Rain Dance, that doesn't mean banning the item is automatically ideal. It's probably going to be easy to make an argument in favor of banning Damp Rock if Omastar, Ludicolo, Gorebyss, and Kabutops will all need to be banned otherwise... but you still have to make that argument. I mean, imagine if each of those Pokemon had nearly-identical, but manageable pre-evolutions. All of a sudden, banning "four whole Pokemon" doesn't sound so ridiculous, and trying to let the numbers speak for themselves by pointing out that "four is greater than one" becomes misleading. Yeah, that's an extreme example, but if it's so obvious that keeping those four Pokemon in the game is more important than Damp Rock, it shouldn't take much effort to explain why.

 

[Jumpman16]

Yeah what Aldaron has said lately. This is probably something I need to talk over with reach. But considering there is already precedent for banning an item I don't see why we wouldn't allow intelligent voters to decide what the best course of action is. Like I said I'll discuss this with reach first but more than likely I will allow people to nominate Damp Rock as a suspect through the regular channels. It makes no sense not to.

Be very careful when appealing to precedent in this forum. Soul Dew was as much a grandfathered blanket ban as was the ban on Lati@s themselves. Precedent is the entire reason the Suspect Test exists in the first place—many long-standing bans are incorrect and deserve to be reconsidered (or considered in the first place). I'll remind you that I had every intention of testing Soul Dew until Latios proved uber regardless of item. None of the other notable pokemon-exclusive items have actually proven to break their respective pokemon—Pikachu, Clamperl and Marowak are all NU.

Anyway, I'm initially worried about a "slippery slope" if an eventual testing of Damp Rock turns out to result in an eventual Damp Rock ban, but such a concern is silly for the same reasons "slippery slope" is an actual logical fallacy. "It makes no sense not to" for one crucial reason we should all remember—we created UU as a playable metagame, not Nintendo and not Gamefreak. While we can fault them as much as we want for making us consider bans like Garchomp and Evasion and OHKOs for all this time in Standard play, Nintendo/Gamefreak never professed to wanting the "Standard-lite" metagame that we know as UU when they created DPPt and the 200 new pokemon, moves and items that came with it. It is therefore 100% our responsibility to take any measures necessary to maintain the viability of our artificial metagames (LC included as well as NU eventually), and if it makes more sense to consider an item ban we should do so on that merit alone.

 

[mtr]

I made this point on IRC, and I'll repeat it here.

I'm not opposed to a Damp Rock test. What I'm opposed to is testing it first, as opposed to testing Pokemon first. The reason for this is that its best to err on the side of caution.

For example, Kabutops is probably the best Rain sweeper. So we test it. If it is unbalanced, then move it to BL. Is rain balanced then? If so, we're all good. If not, we can test Ludicolo and Qwilfish. If Rain is balanced after they (or one of them) are gone, our work is done. If not, then we ban Damp Rock.

Basically, by banning Pokemon as conservatively as possible, we maximize the chance that we preserve Rain Dance as a viable playstyle, whereas banning Damp Rock basically makes Rain Dance an inferior Trick Room.

 

[Synre]

I personally think testing this is a really good idea. Rain has been the single most consistent strategy for the past year or so of UU, and at times it seems too consistent. It ensures short games, there's very little creativity in team creation for the most part, and it creates games with a very specific pacing. Specifically, the rain team almost always ends up with momentum, with the other team trying to stall out the rain long enough to take control while the rain is down. The rain team is usually guaranteed at least a pair of set-ups (although I find three is a lot more typical if I'm not using a team that is an unfeasibly good counter to weather) and it tends to result in a race against time with one team or the other winning by a couple turns.

I really don't like rain as a style just because I view it as a strategy that is a little too 'easy' for the player to employ, but I think a strength of UU as a metagame is having a variety of viable styles. This simplicity in play style also goes a long way toward consistently beating some of the lesser ladder players and inflating rankings, so even more so than usual I think ladder success can be misleading here. I think potentially banning Damp Rock would be interesting in regards to that, since 3 turns getting chopped off certainly weakens its ability to create momentum, which is its main strength. I think the odds are good that it will weaken it too much, and that the playstyle will simply become undesirable, but that's theorymon and testing would be a great way to see how it actually happens. I'm not convinced that there's anything wrong with rain in spite of how much I hate it, but I could definitely see validity in a test here.

I think that this is a much better alternative than, say, banning the best rain sweepers, as is being repeatedly brought up on IRC. Without a suspect ladder in UU it winds up being really difficult to reverse if we find it is not to solve the problem in the best way to solve the perceived problem. I know the suggestion there has been mostly to remove Kabutops and Ludicolo (and maybe Omastar), all of which (well, except Ludi, I guess) are pretty damn solid on normal teams, so it has a negative effect on the metagame by removing Pokemon who aren't broken under clear skies. I think this is a mistake - retaining a playstyle is probably more valuable than retaining Pokemon if we can balance it, but if it turns out that, as I would expect, rain sucks without its best sweepers anyway, we'd be losing them for nothing. It might be interesting to remove only one of the best rain sweepers and to see what happens when rain has fewer options (although between those three, Gorebyss, and Qwilfish there's still an awful lot of choices before you have to start digging near the bottom of the barrel).

I think in short I think that rain is pretty unlikely to become more balanced regardless of what we do to it, but that Damp Rock is probably the most feasible option to test as a start, and that rain is probably successful enough even in the hands of lesser players that it might be a good idea to give it a hard look.

One final note...

I'm concerned I'm going to get all crotchety rusty old timer with this, but I really don't understand the other argument I keep hearing against this test, which is that for some reason it is completely inconceivable to test anything but a Pokemon. There was a time not that long ago where it was just as unheard of to test a Pokemon, or really anything at all (which we didn't even attempt to do until very late RSE with Mew/etc. during tours). I don't think there is any logical argument against the idea that we should simply remove what is broken in as few steps as possible to make the game as balanced as it can be with the most options still available. It doesn't matter if we're removing a Pokemon or an item or anything else, we should simply be making as few bans as possible to get things evened out, regardless of what the actual ban is on.

What I'm opposed to is testing it first, as opposed to testing Pokemon first. The reason for this is that its best to err on the side of caution.

For example, Kabutops is probably the best Rain sweeper. So we test it. If it is unbalanced, then move it to BL. Is rain balanced then? If so, we're all good. If not, we can test Ludicolo and Qwilfish. If Rain is balanced after they (or one of them) are gone, our work is done. If not, then we ban Damp Rock.

Basically, by banning Pokemon as conservatively as possible, we maximize the chance that we preserve Rain Dance as a viable playstyle, whereas banning Damp Rock basically makes Rain Dance an inferior Trick Room.

I would argue we've been testing them as Pokemon for the entirety of new UU. To the best of my knowledge none of them have ever been nominated, though. As someone who doesn't think rain is necessarily so broken we even need to do anything, why is it that we've never been inclined even to vote on Kabutops or Qwilfish or Ludicolo? If they are so gamebreaking individually, why has this never been seriously pursued in a year of testing?

I think it's interesting, too, to think about exactly how this would be executed. Do we just arbitrarily move Kabutops (or whomever) to BL? Do we let qualified voters vote on who they think is the most broken UU Rain Dance Pokemon (or vote against the process, hopefully) and just move them up like that? I'm not particularly in love with the normal process, but I'm a little interested in how exactly this would go about happening, removing a Pokemon who hasn't already been voted BL (or even voted as a suspect for several periods now).

Additionally, it's funny you mention Trick Room in that last line... perhaps we should ban Pokemon until Trick Room is a viable strategy? I'm not sure if it is necessary to consider Rain Dance somehow deserving of a place in the metagame simply by existing, as much as I agree that we should try to keep it for sake of playstyle variety.

I think this is very much an issue of playstyle, that the combination of Pokemon in the rain, as well as the duration of a dominant weather, is potentially too much for normal teams to handle. The issue is not that any one Pokemon is too good, simply that rain is able to be in control for too long, and as such I can't see much sense in removing specific Pokemon.

 

[mtr]

I would argue we've been testing them as Pokemon for the entirety of new UU. To the best of my knowledge none of them have ever been nominated, though. As someone who doesn't think rain is necessarily so broken we even need to do anything, why is it that we've never been inclined even to vote on Kabutops or Qwilfish or Ludicolo? If they are so gamebreaking individually, why has this never been seriously pursued in a year of testing?

If Rain were such a problem, why hasn't this been proposed before? Just because a Pokemon or whatever hasn't been nominated before isn't a reason to dismiss it as a nominee.

Additionally, it's funny you mention Trick Room in that last line... perhaps we should ban Pokemon until Trick Room is a viable strategy? I'm not sure if it is necessary to consider Rain Dance somehow deserving of a place in the metagame simply by existing, as much as I agree that we should try to keep it for sake of playstyle variety.

If we have a metagame that more closely resembles the current one, it is easier for voters to analyze and study the differences and then make up their mind, because the effects of adding or subtracting one Pokemon can be isolated. This was also an argument proposed against testing Species Clause: that the metagames would be so utterly different that it would be impossible to objectively judge what the "true" metagame was, as player preferences would get in the way.

My mentioning of Trick Room was just an example. Trick Room teams work only in very offensive metagames, and the reason Rain would be an inferior Trick Room is that, like Trick Room, the Rain would only last 5 turns. Unlike Trick Room, Rain sweepers are all Water-types, which leaves them open to dudes like Raikou once the Rain is gone.

 

[DougJustDoug]

I won't make any conclusive statements on whether Damp Rock/Rain Dance/Kabutops/Ludicolo/Omastar/whatever is "broken" or not. I don't have any relevant play experience in UU with any of the above to draw any meaningful conclusions. I am concerned about the process we are following, or more specifically, the process we are trying to establish for this.

This thread is a good example of the reasons I am trying to come up with some basic "ground rules" in the Characteristics of a Desirable Pokemon Metagame thread. Because, the way we proceed with "UU Rain" should be dictated by what we want and what we think is wrong with the status quo. Until we articulate that, it's going to be very difficult to test anything. I'm not saying we need to tie the decisions or actions of this thread to the Characteristics thread I made -- I'm just saying that the motivation of that thread is somewhat applicable here too.

Are we saying that a metagame with rain as a dominant win condition is unacceptable? I don't necessarily think that is true. Over in Ubers, they deal with permanent rain on a far more frequent basis than UU, and that metagame is acceptable to many people. Note that I did not say that Ubers is "balanced" -- I said that it is "acceptable". People are not constantly complaining "Rain is all over the place in Ubers, and that's why Ubers sucks!"

Perhaps the Ubers crowd actually despises perma-rain, but they deal with it because they think we can't really ban anything from ubers. That's not true, but perhaps they think that. In which case, maybe dominant rain is inherently an undesirable thing. I don't believe that is true. I think, the Ubers crowd is fairly happy with Kyogre spamming rain everywhere, and rain teams dominating almost every high-level match. If that is the case, then dominant rain is not inherently a "bad thing" from a standpoint of competitive players enjoying a metagame.

Okay, so if dominant rain isn't "bad" in that way (it might be, but let's suppose it isn't), then how is it bad?

Perhaps, we think dominant rain is bad because it decreases variety. Since people can win so much with such ease when using rain in UU, the metagame has centralized to the point where it is almost the only viable playstyle. Well, if we ban Damp Rock, we are probably effectively banning Rain entirely, because without the ability to use extended rain, people may not be willing to use it at all. Once again, I don't know that this will happen, but let's suppose it does. How far are we willing to go with this sort of thing?

With Rain Dance effectively removed from the metagame, might that create greater incentive for Hail, Sun, and Sand teams, all of which have access to permanent or extended weather? Because, one of the best ways to combat weather, is to change it. If Rain is basically banned from play -- we just made every other form of weather even better. What if one of those other weather conditions becomes consequently broken? Are we prepared to ban/limit it as well?

I am not saying the above will happen. We can theorymon a million possible future consequences of any change we make today. It's the classic "butterfly effect", and I'm not seriously advocating that we avoid taking some action today, for fear of some future theoretical mess. I'm using these examples for us to simply know "What are we trying to achieve with this change?"

Right now, the problem statement seems to be little more than "People are successfully using rain a lot in UU -- and that sucks." I think we can and should do better than that, before tossing out ideas for stuff to ban. I think there is a clear problem statement out there that we CAN define -- but it has not been presented thus far. Everyone posting in this thread is probably posting under a slightly different assumption of what we are trying to achieve. Which is why this discussion is wandering amongst a bunch of different proposals that range from banning a single item across the board, to banning an entire group of pokemon. If we can refine the problem statement, we might be able to refine the discussion of the solution.

BTW, I have no problems with banning stuff. For the exact reasons Jumpman mentioned. I do think we should exercise caution and restraint, but not because I think Nintendo and Gamefreak's Pokemon game is a sacred cow. I just think that changes are hard to enact, and even harder to revert -- so we should be very deliberate with any actions we take. As such, I think we need to have a clear idea of the goal, before taking steps to achieve it.

I think Teifu is on the right track with his post. He mentioned "playstyle variety" as a desirable end result. I think we should discuss the merits of that goal, and introduce new ones -- before talking about specifics like Damp Rock/Rain Dance/Kabutops/Ludicolo/whatever.

 

[mtr]

First of all, that's a pretty cool thread you linked to, and I read through it.

Are we saying that a metagame with rain as a dominant win condition is unacceptable? I don't necessarily think that is true. Over in Ubers, they deal with permanent rain on a far more frequent basis than UU, and that metagame is acceptable to many people. Note that I did not say that Ubers is "balanced" -- I said that it is "acceptable". People are not constantly complaining "Rain is all over the place in Ubers, and that's why Ubers sucks!"

Perhaps the Ubers crowd actually despises perma-rain, but they deal with it because they think we can't really ban anything from ubers. That's not true, but perhaps they think that. In which case, maybe dominant rain is inherently an undesirable thing. I don't believe that is true. I think, the Ubers crowd is fairly happy with Kyogre spamming rain everywhere, and rain teams dominating almost every high-level match. If that is the case, then dominant rain is not inherently a "bad thing" from a standpoint of competitive players enjoying a metagame.

Rain in Ubers basically means "Kyogre+Palkia". You may see a Kingdra here and there, and possibly a Kabutops, but my point is that Rain in Ubers doesn't have teams built around it, as is the case in OU and UU. You don't have dedicated Rain supporters and specialized Rain sweepers, you just have Kyogre and Palkia that get better in the Rain. The reason that Rain is dominant in Ubers is simply because the strategy of using Kyogre and Palkia has intrinsic merit. Whereas in UU, Rain as a specialized team strategy is so powerful that it forces teams to carry large amounts of priority should they lack things like Toxicroak.

The rest of your post makes sense, but there are reasons why Sun and Hail and Sand won't be broken. Sand requires Hippopotas (no one will ever use the move "Sandstorm"), and Hail requires Snover, and both Pokemon have little intrinsic merit, especially in terms of stats. Sun is harder to pull off than Rain simply because most Chlorophyll sweepers have poor stats, and not-so-great type coverage, especially compared to their Rain counterparts.