Cloud Nine: Anti-Weather Discussion



Instant weather. It's impossible to avoid in OU. Whether it's Politoed with Rain, Tyranitar and Hippowdon with Sand, Ninetales with Sun, or Abomasnow with Hail (lol), 45 percent of all OU teams run some form of instant weather. If only players above the rank 1337 are counted, 71 PERCENT of teams have an instant weather ability in their team.

With all the starters and abusers, weather abuse has become THE strategy of 5th gen. Just as 3rd gen had baton pass and stall, 4th gen was defined by Stealth Rock and the rock/paper/scizors of Tyranitar, Scizor, and Heatran, so too is 5th gen defined by weather. Therefore, teams that do not use weather have the advantage of gaining the element of surprise.

This thread is meant as a combining of knowledge, of sorts. I have my own thoughts on what pokemon and movesets are best for countering knowledge, but obviously I haven't been successful. So I'd like to hear from all of you what the best pokemon to beat weather teams are.

I might post a few of my favorites once the thread gets going. But in the meantime, DISCUSS! I'll link in the OP to the best comments and/or sets.

EDIT: Katakiri's post
 
Won of the best Pokemon to counter weather imo is Breloom. Breloom can easily handle Politoad, Tyranitar as well as most Ninetales pretty Effectively and when Techniloom gets released on wifi etc he will a top contender to take down weather.
 
I have found that support Tentacruel is a good anti-weather mon:

Tentacruel @ Black Sludge (discourages tricks)

Bold (Boost that horrid Def stat)

252 HP (durability)/ 252 Def (Boost the Def)/ 4 Speed (fast for a wall/supporter) or 4 Sp.Def (give that one point to it's already great stat).

Rain Dish (use if you need rain and do not have Hail)
Liquid Ooze (use if you have Giga Drain)

Choose your poison to fight weather+support your team out of these moves:

- Hail (the least used weather and thus, the least damaging to a team)
- Giga Drain (anti-Hippo and restores health. Unfortunately, you cannot use it with Rain Dish)
- Scald (spreads burns, but do not use with Toxic Spikes)
- Rapid Spin (Do I have to explain?)
- Sludge Bomb (take out Abomasnow with ease)
- Toxic Spikes (help Spread status. Preferred not to use with Scald)
- Rain Dance (If it Snow you hate, use this move. Politoed is the better choice unless your team cannot handle permanent rain conditions.)

As all of you can see, there are many options to choose from. When deciding what set you want, look to your current team and decide which weather damages your team worst.


Disclaimer: I am not the best with EVs, so don't shoot me. I have used Cruel before and it works wonders for me. Just be careful with him because if he is gone, you lose your main defense against the weather you don't need.
 
I haven't seen nearly as much weather lately, but really the best stop to weather is having Virizion and Terrakion on your team, which is cool because they kinda resist each others weaknesses to an extent and they can maim all forms of weather. Plus, it's a wicked dual-sweeping combo.
 

alexwolf

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The best anti-weather pokes right now imo are Breloom,Virizion,Abomasnow and Volcarona.

Breloom can eliminate every single weather inducer,allowing you to put your own weather or just remove the weather if you use a weather move.

Virizion can again kill every single weather inducer while at the same time being able to take hits from the more common inducers(Ttar,Toed).

Volcarona can again kill every single weather inducer and can even function in rain with its weather abusing set.It is so fast that it can outspeed even some of the Chloro sweepers like Victreebel and Tangrowth.

Abomasnow is not counted in the weather group because i don't really see him being used as a weather inducer,but rather than an anti-weather mon.
While it cannot switch in many of the weather inducers,it can threaten all of them with a physical set,while at the same time removing their weather...
 

Katakiri

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is a Researcher Alumnus
Probably one of the best Anti-weather Pokemon is Abomasnow. Physical Abomasnow to be exact. Normally the Snowman is known for firing off Blizzards but a Physical adaptation is extremely effective in this metagame. Wood Hammer smashes Politoed & Tyranitar while Ice Shard swiftly deals with Landorus, Dragons, & Chlorophyll sweepers. Most Water-types bar Gyarados are walled by Abomasnow's terrible, yet surprisingly annoying typing which lets it resist Water, Grass, Ground, & Electric while being neutral to Ice.

While Scizor & Ferrothorn don't mind taking a hit from one of it's STABs, Abomasnow can be so bold as to run Substitute and HP Fire to take care of them although just running a Fire-type teammate does just fine as well. Or if Ninetales is an issue, SubPunch is also a very viable option. On top of all that, it's one of the 2 Pokemon families that can run Swords Dance + Ice Shard if that suits you better than a Sub set.

The biggest thing about running Abomasnow is that you need to keep hazards off the field. Rapid Spin support is good, but just running Taunt on a Pokemon can work as well. But again, Abomasnow does have a nasty habit of bringing in Ferrothorn who always comes packaged with Entry Hazards.
 
Altaria can be a great ant weather. With cotten Guard it easily can be more bulky than gliscor. It can also with its added defense stack up DD dances. She works best in Anti Sand storm which most are physcial attackers
 

alphatron

Volt turn in every tier! I'm in despair!
Won of the best Pokemon to counter weather imo is Breloom. Breloom can easily handle Politoad, Tyranitar as well as most Ninetales pretty Effectively and when Techniloom gets released on wifi etc he will a top contender to take down weather.
The best anti-weather pokes right now imo are Breloom,Virizion,Abomasnow and Volcarona.

Breloom can eliminate every single weather inducer,allowing you to put your own weather or just remove the weather if you use a weather move.

Virizion can again kill every single weather inducer while at the same time being able to take hits from the more common inducers(Ttar,Toed).

Volcarona can again kill every single weather inducer and can even function in rain with its weather abusing set.It is so fast that it can outspeed even some of the Chloro sweepers like Victreebel and Tangrowth.

Abomasnow is not counted in the weather group because i don't really see him being used as a weather inducer,but rather than an anti-weather mon.
While it cannot switch in many of the weather inducers,it can threaten all of them with a physical set,while at the same time removing their weather...
Altaria can be a great ant weather. With cotten Guard it easily can be more bulky than gliscor. It can also with its added defense stack up DD dances. She works best in Anti Sand storm which most are physcial attackers
Breloom doesn't beat any Ninetales, except for the ones that switch in on focus punch, nor does he like directly switching into a specstoed ice beam. Let it be known that CM Virizion loses to Ninetales one on one. Volcorona also fails to outspeed Victreebel even after a quiver dance, and is promptly removed from the battlefield by either victreebel or tangrowth after a boost (tangrowth doesn't even need a growth/sword's dance to ohko you). Altaria doesn't help against any weather save for NU sun, due to the fact that its just too weak to hurt anything before boosting up and won't like being smacked down by a scarf landorus, ice attack, etc.

This mindset won't get you anywhere if you mean to want to defeat enemy weather teams as thinking like this creates the delusion of what it is that you're actually losing to. There is no team out there that actually fears Ninetales itself, nor is there any team that has to worry about being countered by a politoed (no, not even the mono fire teams).

You should be looking for ways to dispatch the commonly used pokemon who abuse the weather as the inducers are all relatively lousy and mediocre pokemon (save for tyranitar, but a special defense set gets you nowhere). What do I care if breloom just killed politoed? Now a LO Starmie is going to turn him into an appetizer, consuming the rest of my team as the main course.

The snowman has already been mentioned, but we should be looking for more pokemon like him. While I still consider him an inducer, he gets a nod for being able to successfully threaten the abusers used on all three weather teams. There are no sun, rain, or sand pokemon who enjoy switching into a moveset of ice shard, wood hammer, earthquake, and hp fire. The chlorophyll pokes don't like taking ice shards (and scarfsnow outspeeds them all anyway) while the steel types on rain teams no longer have the cover of drizzle to protect them from hp fire.

A few more things. If anyone is talk about slapping a weather move onto one of your pokemon (which has already been done), please do so only if you gain any benefits from it. Hail doesn't actually do anything for tentacruel aside from removing his leftovers and letting everyone know that you read a pretty awesome warstory. A bulky sunny day venusaur/tangrowth will annoy rain teams a hell of a lot more than this tentacruel ever will. A rain dance kingdra makes drought teams piss in their pants if you're able to bring kingdra in on Ninetales. If you're still using tentacruel, then you can just run rain dance and the rain dish ability if specific teams are giving you issues.

Another thing you should avoid doing is thinking that one pokemon can counter weather teams. Weather teams are made up of six pokemon, and there is no well built team in existence that will ever find itself helpless before just one pokemon. You may think that your heatran counters drought...and then it dies to a surprise venusaur earthquake and your opponent is free to sweep with volcorona. You may think that your gastrodon counters drizzle...and then you actually face a rain team and find out that this couldn't be farther from the truth. If you want to combat a weather team, one pokemon alone will not help you. Why not use the age old Celetran combo to ease your pain against both sun and rain? Hell, heatran/latias should suffice. All of the offensive chlorophyllers save for growth shiftry (whom nobody uses) are all crippled and dispatched by a healthy cresselia (who was able to stop blaziken before the ban if you don't believe me). Toxic spikes Roserade alongside Rotom-W or a scarf landorus suddenly make rain teams much easier to deal with.

To end my rambling, I should also say that we should consider tyranitar to be an anti-weather pokemon much like abomasnow. The idea of a sand team has died now that excadrill has been banned and I'm not sure if a terrakion with a 1.5 spD boost and a sand force landorus are the top threats on anybody's list. You don't need to aim to counter sand teams because there are no sand teams. There is just tyranitar, and depending on the variant, he should be losing to the abusers on said weather teams anyway (Volcorona fails to ohko specially bulky t-tar, but please try not to use that set). When used as a counter to weather, all tyranitar wver does is switch in on the revenge and then swtich out before he gets killed (unless he's scarfed). In that case, you could just use Abomasnow and take out the abuser instead of running away after changing the weather.
 

tehy

Banned deucer.
I still say Spdef hippo counters sun;by virtue of being able to switch in on ninetales. Unfortunately, no other situation in the game like that, other than perhaps SPdef abomasnow, exists currently.
 

alphatron

Volt turn in every tier! I'm in despair!
It's not a problem. ^_^ I see a lot of people do stuff like that and I used to do it myself.

Edit: You and that blasted hippo...though I've personally faced it and it does give Ninetales trouble (as well as bulky volcorona), it still has problems against chlorophyll abusers and darmanitan.
 
Well, I have recently ragequit OU for NU because of those blasted weather-wars.

Tenta was all I had besides a Heatproof max Sp.Def Bronzong with Earthquake, Gyro Ball, Rain Dance, and Psychic.
 

alphatron

Volt turn in every tier! I'm in despair!
See, that's the thing. Your bronzong is changing the weather, but he doesn't actually do anything else. A bulky volcorona will still kill him before he does anything back in return since quiver dance buffs it up to the point where psychic is meaningless.
 

tehy

Banned deucer.
Alpha, you could give him rockslide/psyshock plus CM.

Or just replace him with balloon tran;your choice.
 
One underrated mon in this meta is raikou. It has thunder for killing politoed, aura sphere for ttar/abomasnow, hp ice for hippowdown. You can't hit ninetales wich kinda suck. With speed enough to outspeed base 100 (since you need to run rash in order to use aura sphere) and good sp. Attack backed up with a great movepool. I have had great sucess with this guy
 
Breloom doesn't beat any Ninetales, except for the ones that switch in on focus punch, nor does he like directly switching into a specstoed ice beam.
You need to calm down a bit because isn't this thread for pokemon that can take down weather starters or am i wrong? also if you had read my post i said Techniloom which can do quite a number on any Politoad set, Ninetales which never seem to run Spe EVs so you can just spore, set-up and Sweep also i don't think i need to tell you what a Breloom can do to a Tyranitar
 
Breloom can't switch into Ninetales at all, unless it's some Energy Ball. It's not a counter so much as it is a revenge-killer.

And what alpha is trying to say is that it doesn't matter that much if you kill the weather starter if you have nothing to undo the job they do. If you don't have a way to stop or change the weather, they can be fairly reckless with their weather starter since they just need to come in once to do their job, and the rest of the team has all the support they need. If you're playing a weather team yourself, then handling the starter becomes more important. But if you're not, then focus more on handling the abusers like Victreebel/Starmie/etc.
 

alphatron

Volt turn in every tier! I'm in despair!
You need to calm down a bit because isn't this thread for pokemon that can take down weather starters or am i wrong? also if you had read my post i said Techniloom which can do quite a number on any Politoad set, Ninetales which never seem to run Spe EVs so you can just spore, set-up and Sweep also i don't think i need to tell you what a Breloom can do to a Tyranitar
I'm perfectly calm. The two most popular Ninetales sets run enough speed EVs to outspeed more than just breloom and usage statistics show that over 50% of the Ninetales on the server are running a timid nature. Axa also summed up what I was basically saying.
 

alexwolf

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Breloom doesn't beat any Ninetales, except for the ones that switch in on focus punch, nor does he like directly switching into a specstoed ice beam. Let it be known that CM Virizion loses to Ninetales one on one. Volcorona also fails to outspeed Victreebel even after a quiver dance, and is promptly removed from the battlefield by either victreebel or tangrowth after a boost (tangrowth doesn't even need a growth/sword's dance to ohko you). Altaria doesn't help against any weather save for NU sun, due to the fact that its just too weak to hurt anything before boosting up and won't like being smacked down by a scarf landorus, ice attack, etc.

This mindset won't get you anywhere if you mean to want to defeat enemy weather teams as thinking like this creates the delusion of what it is that you're actually losing to. There is no team out there that actually fears Ninetales itself, nor is there any team that has to worry about being countered by a politoed (no, not even the mono fire teams).

You should be looking for ways to dispatch the commonly used pokemon who abuse the weather as the inducers are all relatively lousy and mediocre pokemon (save for tyranitar, but a special defense set gets you nowhere). What do I care if breloom just killed politoed? Now a LO Starmie is going to turn him into an appetizer, consuming the rest of my team as the main course.

The snowman has already been mentioned, but we should be looking for more pokemon like him. While I still consider him an inducer, he gets a nod for being able to successfully threaten the abusers used on all three weather teams. There are no sun, rain, or sand pokemon who enjoy switching into a moveset of ice shard, wood hammer, earthquake, and hp fire. The chlorophyll pokes don't like taking ice shards (and scarfsnow outspeeds them all anyway) while the steel types on rain teams no longer have the cover of drizzle to protect them from hp fire.

A few more things. If anyone is talk about slapping a weather move onto one of your pokemon (which has already been done), please do so only if you gain any benefits from it. Hail doesn't actually do anything for tentacruel aside from removing his leftovers and letting everyone know that you read a pretty awesome warstory. A bulky sunny day venusaur/tangrowth will annoy rain teams a hell of a lot more than this tentacruel ever will. A rain dance kingdra makes drought teams piss in their pants if you're able to bring kingdra in on Ninetales. If you're still using tentacruel, then you can just run rain dance and the rain dish ability if specific teams are giving you issues.

Another thing you should avoid doing is thinking that one pokemon can counter weather teams. Weather teams are made up of six pokemon, and there is no well built team in existence that will ever find itself helpless before just one pokemon. You may think that your heatran counters drought...and then it dies to a surprise venusaur earthquake and your opponent is free to sweep with volcorona. You may think that your gastrodon counters drizzle...and then you actually face a rain team and find out that this couldn't be farther from the truth. If you want to combat a weather team, one pokemon alone will not help you. Why not use the age old Celetran combo to ease your pain against both sun and rain? Hell, heatran/latias should suffice. All of the offensive chlorophyllers save for growth shiftry (whom nobody uses) are all crippled and dispatched by a healthy cresselia (who was able to stop blaziken before the ban if you don't believe me). Toxic spikes Roserade alongside Rotom-W or a scarf landorus suddenly make rain teams much easier to deal with.

To end my rambling, I should also say that we should consider tyranitar to be an anti-weather pokemon much like abomasnow. The idea of a sand team has died now that excadrill has been banned and I'm not sure if a terrakion with a 1.5 spD boost and a sand force landorus are the top threats on anybody's list. You don't need to aim to counter sand teams because there are no sand teams. There is just tyranitar, and depending on the variant, he should be losing to the abusers on said weather teams anyway (Volcorona fails to ohko specially bulky t-tar, but please try not to use that set). When used as a counter to weather, all tyranitar wver does is switch in on the revenge and then swtich out before he gets killed (unless he's scarfed). In that case, you could just use Abomasnow and take out the abuser instead of running away after changing the weather.
Ninetales will have to attack if it wants to break your sub so it must take a FP.It can switch out also i guess so ok.
When i was talking about Virizion i was talking about SD Virizion which murders Ninetales with SE.
Finally Victreebel runs a neutral speed nature because it wants all the power it can get and thus is outsped by max speed Rona after a QD.
 

alphatron

Volt turn in every tier! I'm in despair!
I didn't mention SD Virizion since you're right about it taking out Ninetales. Still can't switch in. And if breloom is behind a substitute, then it can pretty much do whatever it wants to other pokemon. Same applies to anything behind a sub. A chandelure can suddenly become a counter to all of the weather starters (with hp fighting for t-tar) in this case.

You're also right about victreebel, even though I always made sure he had enough speed to outspace deoxys-S. Deo-S is banned now, so I wouldn't bother with a speed boosting nature anyway...
 
Let me just slip in here for a moment. As soon as a weather starter switches in, its weather instantly starts, even if we kill it that same turn. Therefore, discussing ways to kill off starters is pointless unless you have weather (be it a move or a starter) of your own.

Focus on countering the abusers, because they are the stoppable threats.
 
Me and Zz had this idea of making a team full of weather thieves and spin support, thinking "if you can't beat them, join them" while at the same time being a team perfectly capable of functioning as a non weather team on it's own.

We had a bunch of mons but the idea never materialized because I was busy patching my only one and true team so here's a few hints for those interested. Alright, spin support is clear enough, hazard/dual screens is too if you want to throw that in too, but the most important thing about the weather thief is that it should be able to destroy most of the weather team it's countering. Mountain is steep, but who cares?

1) Rain thief:

Kingdra, Poliwrath, Kabutops and Omastar

Trouble is with ferrothorn as it can stop most of these mons cold.


2) Sand thief

Landrous, Gliscor, Terrakion, Stoutland

Do we really need to steel from sand? Yes, that pun is intentional. So is Scizor, he's intentional too :)


3) Sun thief

Mix Venasaur (EQ), Volca with HP Ground


4) Hail thief

Mamoswine, Frosslass with HP Fire and sub, Articuno (when it gets released, the hax is amazing), Sash Cloyster

5 & 6)

Ermm, you probably need some spin support. Also some priority is nice, so with that said I'm suggesting Nite, Starmie, Lucario, Forettress for the dual role, Scizor, Rotom-W for scouting, etc.
 

Pocket

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Yea, having an Excadrill pre-r5 was great for not only Rapid Spinning but sweeping under the sandstorm that the opponent summoned xP

Your Rain thieves are pretty good; I wont bother with Poliwrath, though, since it's too dependent on the opponent's Rain, whereas your other mons can still pack a punch without Rain. Shell Smash Gorebyss can also be included there. Gyarados, Starmie, and Rotom-W are Rain thieves, too.

Gliscor is also another situational Sweeper like Poliwrath that is reliant on Sand Veil miss to truly shine. I'd stick with Terrakion or Landorus.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
ITT: why alphatron is my favorite user.

I personally find this discussion to be misled. I've resigned myself to the fact that weather is the metagame and you can too. The way I see it, when you put effort on your team into countering weather archetypes you've already lost the game.

Each Pokemon should be seen as an individual threat. I don't quite know how to express it, but there is no "rain team." there is "Politoed." or "Toxicroak." You need to build a team to beat Pokemon, not teams. Trying to make an anti-weather team that can GOSH DARN IT GET RID OF WEATHER is pointless. I've tried this I don't even know how many times. It never works.

When you make an anti-weather team, you need to accept that you'll be losing the weather war. Your strength is that weather inducers are horrible Pokemon. Know that it's your six inferior Pokemon to his five superior, because that is your strength. When you start trying to counter weather it's your five/four/three inferior to his five superior, and then you're done.

My recent, fairly successful weatherless team was Hyreigon/Breloom/Slowbro/Blissey/Starmie/Scizor. Notice anything? It's six good Pokemon with decent synergy, and it doesn't aim to care what the weather is. I don't know if I can stress this more, a weatherless team must not be an Anti-weather team. You need to accept that your weather opponent controls the field and you need to know that you CANNOT COUNTER EFFECTS, BUT YOU CAN COUNTER POKEMON.

I hope I made sense in this post.
 

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