np: UU Stage 4 - I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

[Rakan]

Empoleon and Rotom-H are two of the biggest bitches to any hail team in UU. Empoleon pretty much walls every Blizzspammer, and can set up Stealth Rock / Phaze, while Rotom-H applies incredible pressure to hail teams with Volt Switch and Overheat; one wrong prediction and it's GG.

About Froslass, it's a better abuser of evasion hax as it also has an immunity, meaning it can spinblock for the team, it has Taunt to rape stall, and it's Blizzards are nothing to laugh at. Froslass is, imo, the best abuser of perma-hail in UU atm. Sure, Walrein is great and all, but it requires an incredible amount of team support, not to mention it gets wrecked by Taunt. Froslass actually supports the team with Spikes, Taunt, and Thunder Wave. On that note, Mamoswine's a bitch to deal with as well. If you run some HP EVs and enough speed to outspeed uninvested Milotic / Suicune, it actually has some decent bulk. I've had success in the past with Substitute sets.

Also, why isn't anyone trying out rain or sun? I know that hail and sand are prevalent due to the permanent weather setters being present, but Sun now has things like Darmanitan and Chandelure, while rain got Tornadus. I, for one, plan on testing out both weather types soon :)

 

[Steamroll]

I am innovating by abusing right now. I want to see how diverse a hail team can be and after that I'll make a regular team that can take on all weather.

Reach I used that Gallade. It works beautifully as a general hail check.

 

[jamashawalker]

Hail teams tend to have pretty significant holes in what they can cover, just as Sand teams did. On the other hand, the sheer number of things that can tear up a Hail team without being threatened is much less than the number of things that could tear up a Sand team. Two of the Pokemon I've been experimenting with on my anti-Hail teams are Swords Dance Empoleon (Adamant, Leftovers, near max speed, SD/Aqua Jet/Drill Peck/Earthquake) and Swords Dance Gallade (Adamant, Leftovers, SD/Drain Punch/Shadow Sneak/Leaf Blade). There isn't a whole lot a Hail team can do to stop either one--Empoleon in particular has performed excellently so far. One of my complaints about the UU metagame the last period or two is that it seems to be that hardly anyone is even trying to stop the Weather stuff--the good players are using it, the bad players are failing to stop it. How will we ever determine the relative power of Hail if no one is really TRYING to anti-metagame Hail? Stop complaining, start innovating.

That's where the problem with froslass/snow cloak comes in...there are tons of anti-metagame for hail teams, for example Taunt+ CM colbian...but when hax comes into play what can you do? :/ Using hail a few times I would say that froslass has seriously gotten me out of tons of sticky situations..Anti Metagame towards hail would be sticking a random weather inducer somewhere after abomasnow is gone..reading everyone's post about complaining it really looks like the only thing people are complaining about is Frosslass/snowcloak, and why wouldnt they when they have a clean sweep but end up losing the match because snow cloak decided to turn things around

 

[TheBaron]

If I may reiterate my previous point, some moves miss, and that is part of the game. Night Daze has a 40% chance of reducing accuracy. Haven't heard a peep about that. So, let's look at some facts. Let us say that you are facing a Froslass or Mamoswine, and you decide to attack it. Here are the accuracies of your moves:

Aura Sphere (---): 100%
One-Hundred Percenters (100): 80%
Night Daze (95): 76%
Charge Beam, Hi Jump Kick, Leaf Storm (90): 72%
-------------------------------------------
Fire Blast, Seed Flare (85): 68%
Hydro Pump (80): 64%
Focus Blast, Thunder, Hurricane (70): 56%
Hypnosis (60): 48%

As you can see, most moves fall above what I will call the "Line of Viable Accuracy" (70%). Some may think that the LVA should be set at 80%, but many sets use Focus Blast over HP Fighting, so I think that means that 70s are viable. This means that you should only be seriously hurt if you are going for high risk, high reward moves below the LVA. If Snow Cloak was 25 or 30 percent, maybe it would be broken, but at twenty five percent? No way. Do Not Ban.

 

[Notty]

No-one complains about Night Daze because no-one uses Zoroark lol because Accuracy modifiers don't fundamentally change anything from the perspective of player choice. It's like Leech Seed. You can choose to stay in and try and fight through it, or simply switch out, and it's gone.

Evasion modifiers remove that element from the hands of the player, and that's why it's loathed. There's pretty much nothing you can do about the fact that all of your moves just turned into Stone Miss Edge against your opponent's Froslass/Mamoswine/Glaceon, except just use Machamp or your own weather, I guess?

I mean, from the sounds of it, some people aren't bothered by that notion, but I'm pretty sure I don't speak for myself when I say it bugs the hell out of me.

 

[TheSpecialOne]

I have been noticing a huge increase of Hail teams on the ladder. However, I don't consider Hail to be as broken as it seems. There are a lot of Pokemon that do a very nice number to most Hail abusers such as Chandelure, Rotom-H, Darmanitan, Machamp and Heracross. I don't know about Alazakam though. Magic Guard with either Life Orb or Focus Sash makes the opponent susceptable to lose a wall or two or the revenge killer of the team, rendering pratically a team half-useless just by being sent in to the battle. Since it got into the UU metagame, I always make sure to have an Alakazam check because of the influence it has in the metagame by being very powerful, not being vulnerable to status and, most notably, being immune to hazards.

 

[TheBaron]

Another Pokémon with a strong no miss move besides Mew's and Togekiss's Aura Sphere and Scyther's Aerial Ace is Golurk. Golurk probably couldn't take a Blizzard, but it could hit Froslass with a STAB Iron Fist Shadow Punch.

 

[Steamroll]

I've kind of had enough of froslass banter now. I understand that other hail abusers are fine and perfectly able to be handled, but you just don't know what's going to happen with froslass. But I agree that we should try and think outside the box when it comes to trying to handle froslass. We don't really have to go so far to create an entire hail counter team. My best idea would be something that can take a Blizzard, set up a different weather and then pursuit her as she switches out; or KO if the opponent tries to keep her in.

Froslass isn't clearly broken, imo. But with the lack of ingenuity among the playerbase from what I've seen I think that Froslass' time in UU is short. I also think Alakazam is on the chopping block, but that's more of a "I'm judging by this because almost every UU team on ladder had one." I love Sash Weavile checking Alakazam after you lose a mon. If there's no hazards all you need to do is click pursuit and he dies.

 

[jamashawalker]

My best idea would be something that can take a Blizzard, set up a different weather and then pursuit her as she switches out; or KO if the opponent tries to keep her in.

The best two pokes for that would be either SpDef. Escavalier with Rain Dance +Pursuit or a Snorlax with the same set..and the nice thing is that both are still viable outside of just taking out froslass..just have to be careful about it being behind a sub or else that will probably be your only chance

 

[iSkittles]

The best two pokes for that would be either SpDef. Escavalier with Rain Dance +Pursuit or a Snorlax with the same set..and the nice thing is that both are still viable outside of just taking out froslass..just have to be careful about it being behind a sub or else that will probably be your only chance

I'm not saying yay or nay to banning frosslass, but it can still come out ahead of both of those situations with a sub disable set, or hitting them with twave and fishing for a miss until it can switch out.

I understand the scenario isn't very likely or even common, but I felt that it should be pointed out that she would be able to do it a bit more often than others.

 

[Forsety]

Empoleon and Rotom-H are two of the biggest bitches to any hail team in UU. Empoleon pretty much walls every Blizzspammer, and can set up Stealth Rock / Phaze, while Rotom-H applies incredible pressure to hail teams with Volt Switch and Overheat; one wrong prediction and it's GG.

I can easily confirm this as I actually run those two and they form a rock solid defensive and offensive synergy. However I also know its a bad idea to speak of them as the means to all ends. Hail killing Emp's recovery hurts him bad combined with repeated punishment and a simple Stealth Rock will shred Rotom-H apart.

I also concluded Volt Switch is worthless on Rotom-H, he actually seems more effective as a bulky status spreader with Rest and Cleric support most of the time. When you have a weakness to Stealth Rock then you really don't want to have a move that forces you to switch a lot.

Then there is the bigger problem if they use Mamoswine, that thing just shreds most of UU into pieces in and out of Sand/Hail.

Also, why isn't anyone trying out rain or sun? I know that hail and sand are prevalent due to the permanent weather setters being present, but Sun now has things like Darmanitan and Chandelure, while rain got Tornadus. I, for one, plan on testing out both weather types soon :)

Do yourself a favour and use Ludicolo. I can not begin to even stress how amazing and underrated that pineapplecactusduck thing is for Rain teams at the moment. Mainly due to it being able to threaten both Sand/Hail teams out of weather as well as in it.

Sun is just...really bad in UU at the moment however. Darmanitarn functions in any kind of team fine, and ironically I find Chandy functions better in Hail teams than most. Charizard is the only real sun sweeper I've found who does perform significantly better in his environment enough to make it matter. Problem is I find a good weather team is one which can put up a fight outside of its preferred weather as well, Sun teams tend to be the only ones who flounder in this respect. Considering that there is no auto-sun in UU it means this is a requirement not a nice if they could.

 

[reachzero]

Then there is the bigger problem if they use Mamoswine, that thing just shreds most of UU into pieces in and out of Sand/Hail.

This is a really underrated point, Mamoswine is really, really hard to deal with. Rotom-h is probably the overall safest switch-in since Mamo has to choose between learning Stealth Rock or covering it (with Superpower or Stone Edge). Slowbro is ok if no Spikes are down, but Spikes are something you really need to account for. Note that I'm not saying that Mamoswine in Hail is really, really strong--the fact that it learns Snow Cloak is pretty incidental. Mamoswine is just an extremely strong Pokemon in UU, and we should be seeing a lot more than we are.

 

[fatty]

yea, I've been of the opinion that mamo is the best spikes abuser in uu for a while. if you can consistently get spikes up and keep them in play, which isn't hard at all because the uu spikers / spin blockers usually outmatch the spinners, mamo doesn't even need lo to tear through most teams. another cool thing is that mamo's STABs and power let it muscle through a lot of common defensive cores, while ice shard makes it easier to deal with more offensively oriented teams. definitely one of the best mons in uu atm along with kingdra and roserade in my eyes.

 

[ThatGuyNamedJoseph]

I think hail may just be a fad due to sand's quick arrival and departure. Before Hippo dropped, I only occasionally saw hail in the many months I played UU.
Then again, maybe all of the people who switched over to hail realized it's actually quite good and don't want to switch back. I can only hope UU doesn't turn into a horrifically repetitive weather dominated metagame like OU...

 

[hobo bob]

now that hail is gone I love using rain even more, especially since hail has such a tough time against kabutops

 

[Kaos]

Great job guys. Now EVERYBODY will be using Mamoswine. It's pretty much impossible to wall. Though, personally, I've found much more success with him in OU, as there they don't have all those uber-bulky waters and Dragonite is on every team.

Also, does anyone think a set of Sub, Icicle Crash, EQ, Ice Shard with Lefties could be viable in hail? You don't want to be fishing for hax with Sub, but you can use it to ease prediction and just get the extra hax chance as a bonus. I tried it for a little while and was a bit disappointed. I really missed the LO boost. Granted, the team wasn't really built for Mamoswine (very stallish), so I'm not gonna lose faith yet...

 

[shnen]

I've been using specs abomasnow to good effect at the moment, helping to pile the blizzspam pressure on immediately and also hitting steels with focus blast to weaken them later for the inevitable onslaughts from my rotom-f and glaceon. When it 2hkoed a deoxys d, someone who had been uber just because of his amazing defences, (although it was also likely on principle in part, being a deoxys form after all), I was sold.
It attains great neutral coverage through focus blast grass knot and blizzard, but I am not sure what HP to run, perhaps rock for chandelure/other fires or electric for pseudo-bolt beam? He is a boss.

 

[Steamroll]

What is electric gonna smack that isn't already hit harder by grass knot? Use HP rock, really gets the jump on chandy and other fire types.

 

[Scoopapa]

Bolded sentence pretty much describes it. I pack 3 counters to Froslass on one of my teams and it can still lose to it. Not just one pokemon, but the entire freaking team. I pack the same amount of counters to Cacturne and I end up losing at MOST 1 pokemon. There is a definative difference in the ways games play out, cause there is a difference in the pokemon. That would be like saying "Kyogre is only good because of drizzle". Which is a lie. Kyogre is good because he has a base 150 SpAtk stat, Water Spout, Hydro Pump, AND drizzle. Drizzle isn't the broken part, the combination of everything about the pokemon is what breaks it.

If that's what you got from my post then you totally missed the point. SC / SV is bullshit no matter how weak the pokemon is who uses it. Just because a cacturne miss is less likely to cost you the game doesn't mean it's less of a dice roll.

I can already hear people saying "but pokemon isn't chess, luck is part of the game, it's like a mix of chess and poker.". You know what? People can be good at poker. Nobody can be good at hitting Froslass. It sounds simplistic but it's really the crux of the issue. It isn't about luck, it's about luck that you have no control over. In poker you can fold if you have a bad hand. You can bluff your way out, or you can screw up a good hand by forcing early folds. It's all about weighing risks and rewards, something that takes skill and strategy. Similar things happen in pokemon. We can mitigate the effect of paralysis/flinch by switching, or we can choose higher accuracy moves for sweepers while choosing stronger but less accurate moves on a hit and run attacker. If someone is abusing sub, we have the tradeoff of continuing to attack with an inaccurate move or switch to something with a garunteed hit chance at the cost of a turn. If Roserade is facing, say Escavalier, you can just switch if you don't want to risk Sleep Powder.

With SC/SV, there is practically nothing you can do to mitigate the effect of the luck. Machamp is the only viable option since Magical Leaf / Faint Attack are ass and Aura Sphere has no distribution. The closest thing you can do otherwise is just totally dominate your opponent to the point where they never get a chance to abuse the evasion for more than one turn. You still have to deal with the luck somewhat, though, and "why don't you just outplay them, lol" is a pretty bad argument. Please guys, if you're going to use analogies to argue against a sc/sv ban please stop with comparisons to "anything that involves luck at all" and find something else that involves "luck that is out of your control and can't be avoided with strategy". Evasion is pretty much the only thing that fits that descrption (aside from critical hits which are obviously unbannable). This is why we have an evasion clause in the first place.

 

[Pocket]

Scoopapa - Please guys, if you're going to use analogies to argue against a sc/sv ban please stop with comparisons to "anything that involves luck at all" and find something else that involves "luck that is out of your control and can't be avoided with strategy".

Technically, you can totally control Snow Cloak by just changing the weather with stuff like Rain Dance Kingdra, Sunny Day Chandelure, Hippopotas, etc other than using Machamp.

Super Luck fits your description of a luck aspect that you can do "nothing to mitigate its effect," unless you use monsters with Battle Armor / Shell Armor. 1 out of the 8 moves its using will score a CH, and you can't do anything about it. Obviously we wont ban this luck ability just b/c it's "uncompetitive." Similarly, we can't ban Snow Cloak / Sand Veil just b/c it raises monster's evasiveness a little bit.

You may have an argument for banning Snow Cloak if you can prove that not only Froslass, but other Snow Cloakers, such as Mamoswine, is overpowered due to the free turns gained through misses. If it's simply Froslass abusing Snow Cloak with its fast Speed and T-Wave (or Toxic?), then the blame goes to Froslass for the sum of its parts, not on Snow Cloak (which would only be part of the reason for Froslass's brokenness).

And of course you really cant lump Sand Veil with Snow Cloak either. You have to take into consideration of the context of the current UU meta. Sand dropped in usage when Hippowdon left, so Sand Veil, just like Stoutland's Sand Rush, has less of an "impact," on this metagame.

 

[Smurf.]

does it reallly matter what heading we ban froslass under? just do it

 

[alexwolf]

Technically, you can totally control Snow Cloak by just changing the weather with stuff like Rain Dance Kingdra, Sunny Day Chandelure, Hippopotas, etc other than using Machamp.

Super Luck fits your description of a luck aspect that you can do "nothing to mitigate its effect," unless you use monsters with Battle Armor / Shell Armor. 1 out of the 8 moves its using will score a CH, and you can't do anything about it. Obviously we wont ban this luck ability just b/c it's "uncompetitive." Similarly, we can't ban Snow Cloak / Sand Veil just b/c it raises monster's evasiveness a little bit.

You may have an argument for banning Snow Cloak if you can prove that not only Froslass, but other Snow Cloakers, such as Mamoswine, is overpowered due to the free turns gained through misses. If it's simply Froslass abusing Snow Cloak with its fast Speed and T-Wave (or Toxic?), then the blame goes to Froslass for the sum of its parts, not on Snow Cloak (which would only be part of the reason for Froslass's brokenness).

And of course you really cant lump Sand Veil with Snow Cloak either. You have to take into consideration of the context of the current UU meta. Sand dropped in usage when Hippowdon left, so Sand Veil, just like Stoutland's Sand Rush, has less of an "impact," on this metagame.

Sry for getting in the discussion but there is an issue with the bolded sentence.
While what Pocket says is true for many players(only broken things get banned)some certain bans of smogon create some doubts to the principle of ''only broken things get banned''.

For example Double Team/Minimize were never tested and though never found to be broken.
And even if we tested them they would possibly break only the competitive minority of the pokes that get them.
It has been discussed many times how not every single poke can abuse DT.In fact there are only a few pokes capable of utilizing this strategy to a competitive degree.
So it is clear that these moves were not broken on anything that gets them(not even in the competitive majority).
So why were those moves banned?
Some say because uncompetitiveness does exist and it is the reason for their banning and some say because they were ''unhealthy for the metagame''.I am not really sure myself but smogon itslef hasn't really made this case clear...

So after this kind of controversial ban,the proposal to ban the evasion raising abilites,or the combo ban of the abilites in their weather,doesn't seem illogical at all to me.Quite the opposite.
Evasion raising abilites provide you a free DT without having to spend a turn.How is this not breaking the evasion clause is beyond me...
The evasion raising items,which btw cannot be stacked,get banned and not the abilites?
And anyway someone has to finally tell us wtf is this evasion clause,cause i am not sure even they know what it is...

To me the evasion clause seems to be a clause that prevents controled evasion boosting,because evasion is a very lucky based effect and there are almost zero ways around it,be it from a move,an ability or an item.

 

[Heysup]

Technically, you can totally control Snow Cloak by just changing the weather with stuff like Rain Dance Kingdra, Sunny Day Chandelure, Hippopotas, etc other than using Machamp.

Super Luck fits your description of a luck aspect that you can do "nothing to mitigate its effect," unless you use monsters with Battle Armor / Shell Armor. 1 out of the 8 moves its using will score a CH, and you can't do anything about it. Obviously we wont ban this luck ability just b/c it's "uncompetitive." Similarly, we can't ban Snow Cloak / Sand Veil just b/c it raises monster's evasiveness a little bit.

You may have an argument for banning Snow Cloak if you can prove that not only Froslass, but other Snow Cloakers, such as Mamoswine, is overpowered due to the free turns gained through misses. If it's simply Froslass abusing Snow Cloak with its fast Speed and T-Wave (or Toxic?), then the blame goes to Froslass for the sum of its parts, not on Snow Cloak (which would only be part of the reason for Froslass's brokenness).

And of course you really cant lump Sand Veil with Snow Cloak either. You have to take into consideration of the context of the current UU meta. Sand dropped in usage when Hippowdon left, so Sand Veil, just like Stoutland's Sand Rush, has less of an "impact," on this metagame.

You're missing his point. Completely.

He's saying that it is not about being overpowered, it's about having an uncontrollable scenario in which your best strategies are at a 80% success rate if you completely outplay your opponent 100% of the time 6-1 with just that Pokemon left. Then if it has enough PP to kill 6 of your Pokemon, it can. With luck. You can't control it one way or the other.

With Super Luck you need to attack first. This was actually addressed in one of the older threads. It doesn't just come in and bam it has a boosted CH attack fired off already. You need to come in safely, not faint / get flinched/slept/paralyzed/etc, and most importantly, you need to actually attack. Snow Cloak / Sand Veil means you can come in on an attack and right away have 80% evasion. Evasion, under the evasion clause, is sort of there BECAUSE of evasion being this ridiculous characteristic where you can basically make it impossible for the opponent to win without doing anything / use one Double team. The offensive equivalents are OHKO moves, you se one move and the opponent can't do anything about it if you hit. It's just who gets luckier.

As I've said, no one wants to have a "heads or tails" metagame where whoever gets luckier wins. Snow Cloak / Sand Veil, if anything, should go.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

The same logic can be applied to SV/SC, in that you must have Hail or Sand up before the ability activates, which goes back to my original point about them being passive evasion effects.

 

[Furosuto]

You know, I can sort of see where this is going. And I can't believe I just figured this out XD.

We still banned minimize, and double team, even though they are like crap. Why? Because then there is an uncompetitive luck that is brought into the game that we have no control over, and could cost someone the game.

now with snow cloak and sand veil, it is the same. Some people may argue saying "But this pokemon isn't good without snow cloak," or "He isn't good with sand veil anyways!". It doesn't matter how good or bad the mon with an evasion ability is. In the end, it all comes down to uncrontrollable luck. And that can make even the worst pokemon uber. Which would be enough reason to ban it.