But what does any of that have to do with whether or not Drizzle, Drought, Sandstream and Hail balance each other out or not? Where exactly did weather-less fit in to that equation?
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np: OU Suspect Testing Round 4 - Blaze of Glory
- Thread starter Philip7086
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But what does any of that have to do with whether or not Drizzle, Drought, Sandstream and Hail balance each other out or not? Where exactly did weather-less fit in to that equation?
I'd be willing to take part in the experiment, if not for the one critical flaw:
Where the hell do you get this?
We all agree that rain is a great playstyle, and a large part of the metagame. What's being argued is whether or not it's broken, and your proposed experiment wouldn't do a thing to prove that either way.
In my eyes, whether or not rain proves itself to be broken boils down as to whether or not people need to resort to using it to be successful on the ladder if they want to have any hopes of competing. The usage statistics that are coming out this month will also help to shed some light on this. It's been bothering me a lot that we've gone through 3 suspect testing phases with no statistics to back up supposed claims people have made about the laddering experiences we're having.
An example would be how some players during the time when Swift Swim Pokemon were "dominating" the ladder, reports had been made that sand was actually topping the rankings "because it countered rain" (which is a shitty argument), but if that's the case then why is it no one speaks of this anymore after rain has effectively become worse when Swift Swim + Drizzle was banned?
Things like this need to be called in to question.
An example would be how some players during the time when Swift Swim Pokemon were "dominating" the ladder, reports had been made that sand was actually topping the rankings "because it countered rain" (which is a shitty argument), but if that's the case then why is it no one speaks of this anymore after rain has effectively become worse when Swift Swim + Drizzle was banned?
Things like this need to be called in to question.
I think at this point the only course of action left for me is to apologize for my soul-numbing stupidity and assure you it's not going to happen again.
In my opinion, the main way to tell if rain is broken or not is if people need to use it to just be succesful on the ladder. Idiot people could be gaining hundreds of points of CRE thanks to this powerful and succesfull playstyle. Rain supports some of the games most powerful sweeper and with rains support, it basically buffs them to a whole new level. When we banned Drizzle + SS it lowered rain a little. At that point it was easily broken because it showed ANYONE could abuse it and easily get amazingly high on the ladder.
At this point I would like to see rain banned. I have seen players that play rather bad, and are still dominating the ladder to a very high point because of this.
At this point I would like to see rain banned. I have seen players that play rather bad, and are still dominating the ladder to a very high point because of this.
i didn't say it wasn't excellent...i just said that because thundurus and tornadus are the biggest selling points of rains as of now,sr can really put a dumper on rain teams.
and i also didn't ignore other threats i just talked about the best ones which are those that i mentioned!
if the more used rain pokes are thundurus and tornadus and they get hampered my sr then that means that rain teams nowadays get severely crippled by sr GENERALLY...not each and every time...
....how about them steel types that lose their fire weakness (pretty much, weakened fire under rain).
i was talking about the most used offensive pokemons for rain teams...
They don't balance each other out because the best abusers in each respective weather can't counter the other. Rain gets the genies, Starmie, Ferrothorn, Jirachi, Brozong, Toxicroak Rotom-W, Dragonite, and almost anything that appreciates a boosted Water-type attack, all of which are fairly popular, good Pokemon that can actively abuse the weather effect. Sand gets Garchomp, Terrakion, Excadrill, and Landorus. As you can see, the pool for active Sand abusers is much smaller, so they're essentially playing with the mission of putting Politoed out of commission at all times.
You're normally going to see a conjunction of these Pokemon on any given team with a couple of filler members. So basically, this is just OU: Weather Edition where the catch is that you lose as soon as the weather setter dies. It's already a problem that the metagame is so heavily centralized around those five Pokemon that they decide the outcome of entire matches by themselves, but it's even harder to kill the godfather (Politoed) because he gets the better guns and the better mob.
Technically, the steel types don't become water weak.
2.0 x .5 = 1.0
1.0 x 1.5 = 1.5
They take normal damage from fire attacks and 1.5 damage from water attacks. 1.5 is still less than 2.0, and the 50% difference is quite large.
I'm loving sigilyph this round. But I'm gonna keep quiet about it.
2.0 x .5 = 1.0
1.0 x 1.5 = 1.5
They take normal damage from fire attacks and 1.5 damage from water attacks. 1.5 is still less than 2.0, and the 50% difference is quite large.
I'm loving sigilyph this round. But I'm gonna keep quiet about it.
Water weak with Solid Rock? *shrug*
But yeah, I think that Sigilyph may be criminally underused. It's not the most amazing beast ever to live, but it can really be a pain if you're not prepared. (That can be said of a lot of things, but it's really true for this guy!)
But yeah, I think that Sigilyph may be criminally underused. It's not the most amazing beast ever to live, but it can really be a pain if you're not prepared. (That can be said of a lot of things, but it's really true for this guy!)
What I keep on seeing here is variety, variety, variety. Has anyone every though, perhaps, OU isn't made to diverse? Yes there are over 600 pokemon at our disposal, but hundreds of them are no where near OU standards, some may be close, but they still don't make the cut. Lets face it, OU is not diverse, its not deep, its amazingly stagnat in comparison to other metagames. And I say thats the way is suppose to be, if you don't like that go play in UU, when it comes out. Look to the past gens, in gen 1 there where exactly 14 OU pokemon, like it or not, everyone used basically the same teams, your choice was between Golem and Rhydon or Slowbro or Lapras ect, every team was basically the same. Has that changed? No, it hasn't, everyone uses the same pokemon, and same playstyles, and if your rating is suffering becuase you refuse to go with the crowd, well thats your own fault.
Yes, go ahead and ban broken pokemon, but not playstyles, because if you truly want variety in playstyles, then you should first go back to gen 1 and advicate the banning of most OU pokemon.
Yes, go ahead and ban broken pokemon, but not playstyles, because if you truly want variety in playstyles, then you should first go back to gen 1 and advicate the banning of most OU pokemon.
Sigilyph works for sure, not too many things like getting burns or taking Stored Powers after a few boosts. Jirachi with Wish can play stall with it but that's about it, and if it's physical it hates being burned for the rest of the battle. I guess Shadow Ball+Calm Mind Reuniclus can handle it too but I'd rather have a different second move on that.
I'm starting to think more and more that Drizzle might be broken after all, even without Swift Swim. Water-types, Electric-types, and even Steel-types have been mentioned before, but I find the most trouble from Hurricane users like Dragonite and Tornadus, actually. A 120 power, 100 accuracy move from a good type with a 30% chance of confusion is amazing, especially considering you can still cover other things with boosted Water-type moves on other things. Abomasnow is a decent revenge-killer that takes away the weather temporarily but it can't take Hurricane at all and it isn't all that powerful or fast. Still keeping an open mind but it's starting to add up to be a bit too much after trying quite a few things.
I'm starting to think more and more that Drizzle might be broken after all, even without Swift Swim. Water-types, Electric-types, and even Steel-types have been mentioned before, but I find the most trouble from Hurricane users like Dragonite and Tornadus, actually. A 120 power, 100 accuracy move from a good type with a 30% chance of confusion is amazing, especially considering you can still cover other things with boosted Water-type moves on other things. Abomasnow is a decent revenge-killer that takes away the weather temporarily but it can't take Hurricane at all and it isn't all that powerful or fast. Still keeping an open mind but it's starting to add up to be a bit too much after trying quite a few things.
Well, if you factor in STAB, Water technically is 2.25x, so it is a bit more this super effective, but then again, Water-type moves are generally restricted towards Waters, whereas less things that use Fire moves get STAB on it.
And Cape, I agree. That's the one thing I usually am not prepared for. Can't quite status it either seeing how it likes to just shift status off to something else. Most of the time I'm usually relying on a powerful hit from a special attacker to KO it or Trick/Taunt. That said, he can be compared to say, Reuniclus, but both play entirely different from each other.
I love sygi (altough i play UU), and he' really annoying since even if you carry the ice attack, you already gave him a free cosmic power or you just get burned, and after a couple of cosmic power is criminaly hard to kill whitout relying on a crit, the bad part is that if you swich burns you're totally walled by dark types, still if you deal with them (easy with team preview) you should be ready to sweep
Another underrated bastar is Magnezone, really?, he traps and sub charge makes nattorei and friends nothing really hard to deal with, you can use your opponents weather using thunder (altough you're better off with thundebolt), and HP fighting and coverage move helps deal with tyranitar and friends (and you would llready killed 2 bastards and probably swich and making they so much more easy to deal for the rest of your team
Another underrated bastar is Magnezone, really?, he traps and sub charge makes nattorei and friends nothing really hard to deal with, you can use your opponents weather using thunder (altough you're better off with thundebolt), and HP fighting and coverage move helps deal with tyranitar and friends (and you would llready killed 2 bastards and probably swich and making they so much more easy to deal for the rest of your team
You know what Pokemon is really underrated? Raikou. It completely mauls the genies by outspeeding and resisting their STABs. After Tyranitar and special walls has been taken down, it completely trumps shit with the CM + 3 attacks set.
On the topic of Tyranitar, I have been an advocate for testing Tyranitar ever since gen 4 (although this WILL make stuff like Latios and Reuniclus a lot more difficult to deal with). I don't give a shit if it has heaps of weaknesses, the way it comes in and just destroys like the majority of the special attacking metagame makes me want it out. The bastard can take a damn +4 Giga Drain from Celebi, for Christ's sake. While not broken in itself, the amount of support it gives the team is just way too much to be normal (this is not counting providing Sand).
On the topic of Tyranitar, I have been an advocate for testing Tyranitar ever since gen 4 (although this WILL make stuff like Latios and Reuniclus a lot more difficult to deal with). I don't give a shit if it has heaps of weaknesses, the way it comes in and just destroys like the majority of the special attacking metagame makes me want it out. The bastard can take a damn +4 Giga Drain from Celebi, for Christ's sake. While not broken in itself, the amount of support it gives the team is just way too much to be normal (this is not counting providing Sand).
Tyranitar as a suspect just seems absurd. If I'm not mistaken, it was never even considered a suspect in the previous gen. What changed? I guess there's Landorus and Excadrill, but I don't that makes Tyranitar qualify for the support characteristic. (Hippowdon has Sand Stream too). The 1.5x Special defense it gets from sandstorm is not enough to make him broken in the defense characteristics.
In another point, Phil stated in the OP the possibilty that Blaziken may "be the first banned Pokemon to be re-evaluated and brought back down to be tested again in OU". My question is, is it also possible that the complex ban Drizzle+SwiftSwim will be reevaluated?
In another point, Phil stated in the OP the possibilty that Blaziken may "be the first banned Pokemon to be re-evaluated and brought back down to be tested again in OU". My question is, is it also possible that the complex ban Drizzle+SwiftSwim will be reevaluated?
Tyranitar makes sense as a suspect. It's been the most dominant pokemon in OU for three straight gens now. Also by far the "most centralizing" one, as in, "if you can't beat Tyranitar your team will never be good". However I doubt voters will think it's capable of being "broken" or too powerful.
I'm not saying we should allow those things or be like po server, my point is (which you didn't get) is that even on that server where blaziken is allowed, his usage is all the way at 38, being at 38 is no fluke, its just not as good as everyone cracked it up to be a month ago, so it really makes no sense to ban something like that.
No one was being rude. If Blaziken had so many simple counters, he wouldn't have been such a necessity to ban. Bringing him back won't accomplish anything either.
As far as PO is concerned, Blaziken has achieved Salamence status (immensely popular, very familiar, on every other team, etc.). And besides, the environment is so different, it's not even funny. DW tier gets Baton Pass, so it naturally spends less time sweeping and more time passing boost to its teammates. I don't play a lick of Wifi, so I don't know what's going on in that respect, but there's just as much to counter it over there as there is over here, because it operates on the same rules. Point is, PO is a different community with their own Pokemon metagame, and their decision-making holds no bearing over ours.
If you really think this, you must not have been on the Smogon server much, where it was able to sweep at the drop of the hat even after we'd worked so hard to keep it in line. There are different players there, and possibly just not enough people repping him properly. On paper, he's the best sweeper in the standard metagame. In practice he's...the best sweeper in the standard metagame. Cut this PO logic bullshit out.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and Swift Swim is still legal in all tiers. Maybe everyone's just too busy getting fucked by Rain to care about Blaziken.
What?!?!?!?! Blaziken is not even close to the best sweeper on paper, there's so many more feared sweepers in the metagame. Look at Hi jump kick, inaccurate and deadly to the user, easily abused by ghosts and pokes with protect. All his fire moves have drawbacks too. And don't even get me started on the pokes that directly counter blaziken, I don't wanna be here all night.
People act like 90% accuracy is crippling without realizing that pokemon like Starmie rely on 80% accurate moves as strong STAB, and other sweepers typically use moves with less than 90% accuracy to achieve similar results.
Blaziken IS the best sweeper on paper and in practice. Every sweeper needs speed, which it boosts every turn without having to make a move. It gets a +2 boosting moves, strong STABs, a viable special movepool to mess with its typical counters, and great coverage with its STABs alone.
That said, I don't think it is broken in and of itself, it is merely Drought that pushes it to the next level. I still find Drizzle to be broken, and its banning (which I advocate) would give Drought a considerable boost, possibly enough for it to get the boot as well.
As for Tyranitar as a suspect, I'm glad I'm not the only one who has considered it. It has consistently been a top-tier pokemon and provides extensive support on top of that, but I think it has too many flaws that make it manageable within the metagame. The most obvious of these is its many weaknesses. Fighting, Ground, Water...these are all common attacking types that you don't really need to work hard to fit into your team, making Tyranitar checked by default. Definitely top tier and it might be nice to play in a metagame without it rearing its head at every corner, but I find it perfectly manageable and so I for one would vote it OU.
Drizzle needs to go, and Manaphy needs to return to its rightful place in OU. The following round would then be ideal for testing Drought.
Blaziken IS the best sweeper on paper and in practice. Every sweeper needs speed, which it boosts every turn without having to make a move. It gets a +2 boosting moves, strong STABs, a viable special movepool to mess with its typical counters, and great coverage with its STABs alone.
That said, I don't think it is broken in and of itself, it is merely Drought that pushes it to the next level. I still find Drizzle to be broken, and its banning (which I advocate) would give Drought a considerable boost, possibly enough for it to get the boot as well.
As for Tyranitar as a suspect, I'm glad I'm not the only one who has considered it. It has consistently been a top-tier pokemon and provides extensive support on top of that, but I think it has too many flaws that make it manageable within the metagame. The most obvious of these is its many weaknesses. Fighting, Ground, Water...these are all common attacking types that you don't really need to work hard to fit into your team, making Tyranitar checked by default. Definitely top tier and it might be nice to play in a metagame without it rearing its head at every corner, but I find it perfectly manageable and so I for one would vote it OU.
Drizzle needs to go, and Manaphy needs to return to its rightful place in OU. The following round would then be ideal for testing Drought.
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