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np: OU Suspect Testing Round 3 - So Long and Thanks for all the Fish

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Benlisted said:
Just another quick observation from the nominations thread - the community as a whole seems to be applying different standards to weather conditions.

In particular regarding Drizzle being nominated instead of Thundurus and/or Tornadus (though admittedly both Drizzle and these two have been nommed a lot). These are the only two Rain mons seemingly percieved as broken presently, and the weather ability is being nommed. This seems odd when SS has only one fewer abusers people have been nomming - Excadrill (excluding Landorus who has vanished from noms this round), and noone has even mentioned the weather itself. However, SS also activates Sand Veil, which is seemingly a big issue right now. To a lesser extent the same can be said of nominations for Drought and Blaziken, though Blaziken can obviously perform outside its preferred weather.

Anyway, it just seems like there is a little bit of confused standards going on - in terms of when it is okay to ban a weather ability and risk crippling a playstyle as opposed to banning a few abusers, and I wanted to ask if I'm looking into it too much or do others see this too?
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Sand has been around since Gen 3, so people are biased and will be inconsistent to maintain the precious status quo.

Drizzle, however, has many more abusers. The genies may be the most prevalent, but I've turned sweeps on their head with LO Starmie of my own. SubAgility Empoleon ravages all under rain with Hydro Pump alone. Azumarill's Aqua Jet makes revenging it difficult, while Latios has pseudo STAB Surf and can utilize thunder if it wants. Jirachi, Ferrothorn, Virizion, and more force you to hit their less common weaknesses, which can be easily exploited. Sand has Excadrill, Landorus, and that's it (lol sand veil).
 
IcyMan28 said:
Sand has been around since Gen 3, so people are biased and will be inconsistent to maintain the precious status quo.

Drizzle, however, has many more abusers. The genies may be the most prevalent, but I've turned sweeps on their head with LO Starmie of my own. SubAgility Empoleon ravages all under rain with Hydro Pump alone. Azumarill's Aqua Jet makes revenging it difficult, while Latios has pseudo STAB Surf and can utilize thunder if it wants. Jirachi, Ferrothorn, Virizion, and more force you to hit their less common weaknesses, which can be easily exploited. Sand has Excadrill, Landorus, and that's it (lol sand veil).
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True. The effects of rain are much easier to abuse even if not all abusers have been nommed, and the ss is the status quo too. I probably am just being a cynical brit! Nonetheless, though less obvious, the effects of ss - residual damage and added spdef - are something people often don't consider, which are more general impacts rather than having specific abusers take advantage of them. Ttar effectively has a viable spdef set only because of this for instance, and he's never treated as an abuser, for instance.
 
AlphaSpade said:
I'm curious how everyone went from "Drizzle is balanced" to "Drizzle is still gay. Ban it now".
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I realy don't believe anyone ever said Drizzle is balanced. The fact is that Drizzle is still easy to abuse as much of the metagame can easily be involved in Drizzle in some way. For instance steel types are major in the metagame and easily abuse Rain to negate their Fire weakness. Sure you can argue that Steel types work in sandstorm as well because they aren't damaged by it. However, the way Steel types abuse Sandstorm is not as viable as how steel types would abuse Rain. Ergo Steel types are more useful in Rain than sandstorm. Rain is more viable in this aspect.

Drizzle also has many viable individual abusers. For major offensive abusers we have Tornadus, Thundurous, Starmie, Latios, Azumarill, and Rotom-w. With major defensive drizzle abusers we have every single steel type in the game but to name some major threats Ferrothron and Jirachi come to mind. To put that in perspective thats 8 major threats and to many minor threats to count. Now of course I'm not so far into the metagame so I may have missed a few but the fact of the matter remains that it's alot of options for Drizzle. Compared to Sandstorm abusers and Sun abusers Drizzle even without SS is still the king of weather and broken.

Of course this is just the arguments I've been hearing about it. I actually haven't heard many arguments against it so if it seems like I'm voting for a Drizzle ban dont get your hopes or or flame me because I actually have no personal opinion of this subject as I haven't done much research into it.
 
a big abuser you guys seem to not notice is the fucking rain setter. specs hydro pump politoed is stronger than specs latios draco meteor and politoed never dies in one hit. not saying its the only reason but stop ignoring politoed
 
@PttP

The reason why I didn't mention it is because it's actually feels more like support than offensive or defense. It's offensive because like you mentioned specs Hydro Pump is stronger that Latios' specs draco meteor. It's also defensive because it has many options like hypnosis and encore. Therefore I decided against classifying it.
 
Ohhh noooo, you're saying weather actually has good benefits to using it? Awww man, we just can't handle this, it has to go.

I've been abusing weather since day one because I knew it was going to be good, and right now, against other weather, it is pretty balanced. Be it Drizzle, Drought, or Sandstorm (Let's just never speak of hail until GameFreak realizes it created some strange bastard child of a weather and makes something good for it). But dear god does it destroy "balanced" non-weather teams. Not because it's broken, but because those style of teams are now outclassed.

It's like pitching a F-16, against an ME-109. The ME-109 was once fearsome, but now in this modern age, it barely compares. We honestly need to start erasing the idea of "If non-weather balance isn't viable, something is still wrong with the meta-game," and start realizing this a different ball-game now.
 
TheValkyries said:
Ohhh noooo, you're saying weather actually has good benefits to using it? Awww man, we just can't handle this, it has to go.

I've been abusing weather since day one because I knew it was going to be good, and right now, against other weather, it is pretty balanced. Be it Drizzle, Drought, or Sandstorm (Let's just never speak of hail until GameFreak realizes it created some strange bastard child of a weather and makes something good for it). But dear god does it destroy "balanced" non-weather teams. Not because it's broken, but because those style of teams are now outclassed.

It's like pitching a F-16, against an ME-109. The ME-109 was once fearsome, but now in this modern age, it barely compares. We honestly need to start erasing the idea of "If non-weather balance isn't viable, something is still wrong with the meta-game," and start realizing this a different ball-game now.
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So I.E, just accept it? I have heard some pretty bad excuses for wanting to keep weather in, but this almost takes the cake. Because if it is true that playing OU well in this game means running weather, every tream you want to make has to be one of four pokes? That seems so awesome and fun.
 
Back in RBY you saw the same 20 pokemon(really only the same 15 pokemon) every single match. Other pokemon just couldn't compete with them. Now weather dominates, that means you can do one of three things

A)Make a weather team
B)Make an anti-weather team(Virizion is notable for performing well against Tyranitar Rain in general, Rain Dance Kingdra rocks, Trick Room murders Dory/Cloryphyll, use a paralysis support team, use a shell break baton bass team, there are several options)
C)As another poster wiser then I said, complain about it on the forums.

Most people pick C.
 
PttP said:
a big abuser you guys seem to not notice is the fucking rain setter. specs hydro pump politoed is stronger than specs latios draco meteor and politoed never dies in one hit. not saying its the only reason but stop ignoring politoed
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You forgot the part where Politoad has base 70 speed and really needs to run Scarf and not specs if it wants to even compare to Latios. You know, TYPICALLY Slower Pokemon are either Bulkier than faster Pokemon, or Stronger, or a little bit of both. Nothings changing here.

You also forgot the part where Dragon has one resistance and Water has three PLUS ability immunities.
 
I've got a mixed opinion about weather. Nintendo/GF obviously had a hard-on for weather when they made Gen V. So do we follow the formula Nintendo/GF is nudging us towards or do we nerf weather somehow to create a more diverse metagame? My question to any of the top players is this: is the weather broken because of all the new toys it's been given or is it broken because now more than ever its really easy to set up and keep around?

I've been thinking about it for a while now and I think the way to put everyone's complaints against weather to the test is to have a tournament where you can't use the abilities Snow Warning, Drought, Drizzle, or Sand Stream. Just think of it as a way to test the reaction to a metagame without auto-weather. I don't think weather would be nearly as all powerful a force in the metagame if you had to set it up like Rain and Sun used to have to be in Gen IV.

It just seems like the majority of the heavy hitters in the current metagame have somehow made their money by abusing weather. Kingdra, Kabutops, Ludicolo, Excadrill, and Manaphy just to name the most obvious ones are all much more balanced to the rest of the metagame without their preferred weather making lives cake for them.

Other than that I'm astonished that Latios is still around.
 
You know what, I've changed my mind. Drizzle is broken.

Just some crazy thought I had, but what if we tested a metagame without weather? It would kind of be like the suspect tests last gen, specifically the one where we created an OU tier where we weren't allowed to use Salamence. This would be the same, except that we wouldn't be able to use auto-weather inducers (mabye make an exception in this tier and allow Pokemon like Tyranitar/Abomasnow/Hippowdon use their DW abilities in place of their weather ones). You could still set up effects like Rain Dance manually though, by using the move.
 
There IS a tournament going on(Clear Skies) which is a non-weather metagame. I'm very interested in how the metagame will be like.
 
Yeah, but that tournament also bans the weather moves. I think we should have a tourny/test with Drought, Sandstream, and Drizzle banned (Hail needs a perk, so let Snow Warning stay).
 
If drizzle is not banned, the swift swim/drizzle combination should be changed to a ban where the three swift swimmers who are broken in rain are banned with drizzle instead so a bunch of swift swimmers who arent broken in drizzle arent banned as they are now.
 
gabezj said:
If drizzle is not banned, the swift swim/drizzle combination should be changed to a ban where the three swift swimmers who are broken in rain are banned with drizzle instead so a bunch of swift swimmers who arent broken in drizzle arent banned as they are now.
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So, according to the nomination thread, it appears that a good chunk of the voters want drizzle banned because they still feel that drizzle is broken, even through alderons proposal of no swift swim + drizzle. People STILL find it broken with 0 swift swimmers...

Honestly, I dont see this suggestion ever going through right now, even though I see it brought up so often... If people right now want drizzle banned even when there are 0 swift swimmers, I am sure that they would want it banned MORE if Poliwrath/quilfish/golduck/omastar was running around punching holes in everything.
 
raschy said:
If Drizzle + Swift Swim is banned, why not Drought + Chlorophyll?
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This question has been brought up a million times in round 2 and still is brought up now.

The reason why drizzle + swift swim is banned is because Swift Swimmers are generally all water types (with the very few exceptions like Armaldo). A water type with double speed + stab water attacks that are ALSO boosted by rain effect make them hit incredibly hard. So essentially, it is no set up for double speed and double stab.

Drought + Chloro on the other hand is no where near the same. The only Chloro type pokemon are grass types, and aside from weather ball with victereebell, the ONLY fire type attacks that most grass types use are Hidden Power Fire....

On the other hand, Fire types who get the boost to their fire type attacks do NOT get chlorophyll, but if something like Magmortar or Flareon got an ability LIKE chlorophyll, then maybe it would be a different story as they would have double speed + double stab.

But... as it is... chlorophyll grass types using sun boosted non stab hidden power fire is NO WHERE near as powerful as swift swim water types using Rain boosted Stab Hydropump.
 
Just IMO, anything like the possibility of taking all weather out of the meta (induced or all) should be considered under the creation of a new metagame rather than suspect testing. Suspect testing has always been a gradual process where we ban things that are detrimental to the meta, or outright broken when they are broken, not because we may prefer another meta or we think that the banning of one may lead to another being broken so we should get it all out of the way.

I don't mean to say that there is anything wrong with this idea of a new meta without weather - merely that I don't think it should go under suspect testing. I actually wouldn't mind if a no-weather meta replaced a weather meta as smogon's Standard OU tbh, just as long as the current meta is still available to play, as it is both closer to Nintendo's game and follows the suspect process more closely.
 
Erazor said:
There IS a tournament going on(Clear Skies) which is a non-weather metagame. I'm very interested in how the metagame will be like.
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I played in it, Baton Pass is rediculously broken. (Shell Break Baton Pass to Cosmic Power Sigilyph with Assist Power.
 
gabezj said:
If drizzle is not banned, the swift swim/drizzle combination should be changed to a ban where the three swift swimmers who are broken in rain are banned with drizzle instead so a bunch of swift swimmers who arent broken in drizzle arent banned as they are now.
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If that's what you think, the best way to help make that happen would be to second my nomination for that exact thing.

Just saying.
 
^^its not happening, as apparent by the nomination thread people think Drizzle is broken even with 0 swift swimmers allowed, your never going to get anywhere advocating bringing back some of them, people will see it as only making drizzle more powerful tahn it already is (which it would be).
 
Lightning Tiger said:
^^its not happening, as apparent by the nomination thread people think Drizzle is broken even with 0 swift swimmers allowed, your never going to get anywhere advocating bringing back some of them, people will see it as only making drizzle more powerful tahn it already is (which it would be).
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Having the option to replace Tornadus with Luvdisc is not going to make rain teams OP.

Tbqh, if we just went with banning threats instead of all the complex bans, we could easily suspect test Kingdra, Ludi, Kabu, rain-abusing genies, and w/e else without any "philosphical" issues whatsoever.
 
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