Aw.
Well;i thought i'd seen that somewhere.
And yeah;i actually agree. Swift swim is far too powerful. People compare it to agility; but i always thought that was a terrible idea. A good example of why is empoleon. Because it runs agility;it only has three moveslots, so it can't really cover everything (A good example is my specially defensive tentacruel,which laughs at surf, ice beam, and grass knot). If it even wants to make itself stronger, it has to resort to substitute+petaya berry,which limits it to one coverage move;25% hp; and no boosting item;which naturally makes it much easier to wall and revenge. Rain pokemon;on the other hand; can achieve agility without wasting a slot or a turn; and achieving a psuedo +1 boost(Only to water;but this is their main stab after all.) That means they can attack the switchin with agility empoleon's power and speed , have the ability to hold a choice item, life orb, or weaker boosting item, and still have 100% hp. Not to mention they can hold boosting moves like swords dance or dragon dance to make them even more deadly. While it's true that weather users can interfere with this, none of them except abomasnow can directly switch in on anything besides a carefully predicted coverage move, and abomasnow is such a niche pokemon that it can really only be used to counter rain teams. While i've seen things like, say, a hail tentacruel, carrying weather moves is impossible for some pokemon. My tentacruel needs its toxic spikes and rapid spin for obvious reasons;its boil overs for various fire-types,particularly heatran, which my team is weak to, and sludge bomb for ludicolo, which my team is also weak to.
Point is;weather makes pokemon ridiculously powerful. This wasn't a problem back when it could be outstalled, and you needed to manually use it;but now all you need to do is have a politoed. And politoed isn't entirely deadweight when it can use hypnosis to disable a pokemon, encore to allow free switchins of deadly boosting rain sweepers, choice specs to deal high amounts of damage, or even a choice scarf to outspeed and kill unsuspecting threats. Granted;in and of itself it is an NU pokemon, but it elevates other pokemon to the uber tier by its ability. Try a team of 1 NU, 2 OU, and 3 ubers against 6 OU's, and we'll see who wins that fight. (This analogy has slight faults;but is mostly accurate in my opinion).
The main reason that i felt that it wouldn't suck;kefka;is that besides those, other pokemon are really only elevated to OU, perhaps high OU. Therefore, it would be a team of OU versus OU, and would be maybe a little fairer;politoed's uselessness would be balanced by the other pokemon's usefulness, but not overbalanced;while the inconvenience of manually used and timed rain would be balanced out by the ability to use ubers.
And by the time it took to write this post;other people wrote things; so this is replying to kefka.
Well;i thought i'd seen that somewhere.
And yeah;i actually agree. Swift swim is far too powerful. People compare it to agility; but i always thought that was a terrible idea. A good example of why is empoleon. Because it runs agility;it only has three moveslots, so it can't really cover everything (A good example is my specially defensive tentacruel,which laughs at surf, ice beam, and grass knot). If it even wants to make itself stronger, it has to resort to substitute+petaya berry,which limits it to one coverage move;25% hp; and no boosting item;which naturally makes it much easier to wall and revenge. Rain pokemon;on the other hand; can achieve agility without wasting a slot or a turn; and achieving a psuedo +1 boost(Only to water;but this is their main stab after all.) That means they can attack the switchin with agility empoleon's power and speed , have the ability to hold a choice item, life orb, or weaker boosting item, and still have 100% hp. Not to mention they can hold boosting moves like swords dance or dragon dance to make them even more deadly. While it's true that weather users can interfere with this, none of them except abomasnow can directly switch in on anything besides a carefully predicted coverage move, and abomasnow is such a niche pokemon that it can really only be used to counter rain teams. While i've seen things like, say, a hail tentacruel, carrying weather moves is impossible for some pokemon. My tentacruel needs its toxic spikes and rapid spin for obvious reasons;its boil overs for various fire-types,particularly heatran, which my team is weak to, and sludge bomb for ludicolo, which my team is also weak to.
Point is;weather makes pokemon ridiculously powerful. This wasn't a problem back when it could be outstalled, and you needed to manually use it;but now all you need to do is have a politoed. And politoed isn't entirely deadweight when it can use hypnosis to disable a pokemon, encore to allow free switchins of deadly boosting rain sweepers, choice specs to deal high amounts of damage, or even a choice scarf to outspeed and kill unsuspecting threats. Granted;in and of itself it is an NU pokemon, but it elevates other pokemon to the uber tier by its ability. Try a team of 1 NU, 2 OU, and 3 ubers against 6 OU's, and we'll see who wins that fight. (This analogy has slight faults;but is mostly accurate in my opinion).
The main reason that i felt that it wouldn't suck;kefka;is that besides those, other pokemon are really only elevated to OU, perhaps high OU. Therefore, it would be a team of OU versus OU, and would be maybe a little fairer;politoed's uselessness would be balanced by the other pokemon's usefulness, but not overbalanced;while the inconvenience of manually used and timed rain would be balanced out by the ability to use ubers.
And by the time it took to write this post;other people wrote things; so this is replying to kefka.