On the topic of rain, I feel it has got a boost from the shift in the meta at least at the moment. Bulky grasses are not on every team any more and ferrothorn being rain's go-to grass type now has the main drawback of picking it in not beating zygarde well gone. Heatran also feels like the best mon in the meta at the minute as zygarde was the most splashable check to it for offensive teams and it gets turned into almost a dead slot against rain. Just these two trends alone are massive boons for rain and from my experience of middish ladder, it feels like positive match ups are much more common.
On the flipside, I feel like once the meta settles, rain may have new problems. Megazam and ttar I think will become more common as answers to heatran for offence or perhaps mega lati, the former of which in particular would be bad news for rain. Also I think toxapex will see more usage now with zygarde gone and toxapex+bulu feels like a tough core to break at the moment from my experiences of playing around with Sciz+pex+bulu with golem to trap tran and steela, though admittedly I was playing around with this pre-ban and it still was effective. It will be interesting to see how tornadus usage goes as well because the height of its popularity seemed to be when it was making regen cores with tang. This core will probably see less use with zygarde gone but I think tornadus could either drop due to bulky grasses not being on every team or maybe it will rise as it serves as a better ground switch-in now. Who knows, but if it gets more popular then that will also be bad for rain. Interesting to hear what others think will get better with meta trend predictions.
The X factor I think at the moment in the meta is what's going to happen with gren now that its most common answer in bulky grasses are more redundant. If it ends up being that gren runs the meta and everyone is running pex again to beat it then it will be very unwelcoming for rain.
On the flipside, I feel like once the meta settles, rain may have new problems. Megazam and ttar I think will become more common as answers to heatran for offence or perhaps mega lati, the former of which in particular would be bad news for rain. Also I think toxapex will see more usage now with zygarde gone and toxapex+bulu feels like a tough core to break at the moment from my experiences of playing around with Sciz+pex+bulu with golem to trap tran and steela, though admittedly I was playing around with this pre-ban and it still was effective. It will be interesting to see how tornadus usage goes as well because the height of its popularity seemed to be when it was making regen cores with tang. This core will probably see less use with zygarde gone but I think tornadus could either drop due to bulky grasses not being on every team or maybe it will rise as it serves as a better ground switch-in now. Who knows, but if it gets more popular then that will also be bad for rain. Interesting to hear what others think will get better with meta trend predictions.
The X factor I think at the moment in the meta is what's going to happen with gren now that its most common answer in bulky grasses are more redundant. If it ends up being that gren runs the meta and everyone is running pex again to beat it then it will be very unwelcoming for rain.
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