Weather Abilities (but mostly Drizzle)

[reachzero]

I believe that banning all auto-Weather abilities on the basis of "simplicity" is ridiculous for several reasons. The most important of these is that not all of the Weather conditions have an equal impact on the metagame. Drizzle and Drought (but mostly Drizzle) have far more Pokemon that can take significant advantage of the effects they provide than do Sand Stream and Snow Warning. I can understand banning Drizzle and/or Drought on the basis on the effects they provide simply because banning all the "abusers" is impractical. I do not see, however, why this should in any way affect Sand Stream or Snow Warning. With regard to Sand Stream, has anyone heard any player complain about Pokemon other than Doryuuzu and Randorosu in Sand? Given the option between banning Tyranitar and Hippowdon or Doryuuzu and Randorosu, I would choose the latter, simply because I know for certain that Tyranitar and Hippowdon are not unbalanced without Doryuuzu and Randorosu, yet do not know for certain that Doryuuzu and/or Randorosu are not unbalanced even without Sand.

Aldaron's suggestion seems acceptable to me, simply because it could potentially balance Rain with a single ban. I am skeptical that it would actually do so, since I suspect the other benefits of Rain will still be excessive, but I am certainly willing to see that in an actual test rather than merely theorymonning it.

 

[Nails]

Then why not ban drizzle reach? We know that'll solve the issue of rain being broken.

 

[Aldaron]

Because we are theorymonning that Drizzle without the Swift Swimmers might in fact help to balance the game through secondary effects. This theorymon will be put to the test in the next round if we are allowed to test this "lesser" Drizzle. If Drizzle is still broken, we just ban it. If it actually helps balance the game, then we're better off and probably won't have to continue with a cascade of future bans.

For example, instead of immediately banning Dory / Landlos now, we'll notice that teams can more easily put Bronzong / Skarmory / Gliscor on teams without having to worry about Swift Swim sweepers. I also point to the fact that Politoed itself will now much more often be used as a standalone Pokemon on teams (probably a Scarf set).

 

[Darkmalice]

Kingdra is not broken by itself.
Drizzle is not broken by itself (DW Politoed isn't broken as a single Pokemon without teammates who benefit from it).
Kingdra with Drizzle support is broken.

There are some other Pokemon that are only broken with Drizzle support. Let's call all these Pokemon, including Kingdra, Group 1

However, Gorebyss isn't broken even with Drizzle support.
Same goes for many other Swift Swim users. Lets call these Pokemon, including Gorebyss, Group 2.

Banning Drizzle, whilst preventing Group 1 Pokemon from being broken, would severely limit the use of Group 2 Pokemon who were never broken and don't deserve to be nerfed. Banning Drizzle + Swift Swim would still nerf Group 2. Banning Drizzle + Group 1 would not nerf Group 2; the only Pokemon nerfed are those who were broken to begin with and needed to be nerfed. All of Group 2 are badly nerfed if Swift Swim is taken away from them.

In other words, it would be more appropriate to make an Ability + Pokemon ban than a Ability + Ability ban. Ban the combination of Drizzle + Kingdra, Manaphy etc any Pokemon deemed broken under rain, as opposed to banning an ability combination e.g. Drizzle + Swift Swim that would hamper the use of Pokemon that shouldn't be nerfed.

Similarly, you can ban the combination of Sandstream + Doryuuzu without nerfing Sand Throw Sandslash when it gets released.


As for the simplicity argument, I rather have a combination ban than trying to be simple and either banning auto-weather, nerfing Pokemon that were never broken to being with, or banning entire Pokemon that aren't always broken (that are broken only in a specific weather).



Just to make it clear, I am not accusing Politoed of being broken, Kingdra of being broken only in rain, Gorebyss never be broken even in rain, and Doryuuzu being broken only in sandstorm. I only said that they were broken in rain etc for example purposes, and I felt they were the best examples to use in this case given everyone's opinions of them.

 

[Chou Toshio]

@Darkmalice's comment-- yeah, and can you guys let me use my level 82 Mewtwo while we're at it? k thanx

 

[reachzero]

Darkmalice, I certainly hope you can give us a better example of "Group 2" than Gorebyss, because if you've ever faced Gorebyss in Rain, than you likely discovered it is more dangerous than the majority of the Rain sweepers that receive more hype. The list of very powerful Swift Swimmers is quite long, and by the time you reach the actual "Group 2", you are dealing with the likes of Seaking (we could debate things like Huntail, but that isn't really the point of this thread). Part of the value of Aldaron's plan is the fact that it only requires one step, not adjustment to figure out which Swift Swimmers are stronger than others.



Edit: I would also like to comment on Pocket's proposal, found in this thread: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85113. I feel that Pocket's proposal would take excessively long periods of time to test. Phase One would require us to agree on the most dangerous Weather-abusers, and I believe it would take a rather long time to reach consensus as to which ones these are. Even if this goes smoothly, it would mean no less than three testing periods testing just Rain, and that is a very long time to potentially have a bad metagame.

 

[Nails]

For example, instead of immediately banning Dory / Landlos now, we'll notice that teams can more easily put Bronzong / Skarmory / Gliscor on teams without having to worry about Swift Swim sweepers.

None of those can deal with, say, a life orb starmie. Try dealing with a normal life orb starmie, except its stab is 1.5x more powerful and it has thunder to hit water types with. If it feels like it it has stab psycho shock to bypass blissey. If you have a more standard set, there's plenty of physical water types that would love to set up on Blissey while they start out with a free choice band boost.

I also point to the fact that Politoed itself will now much more often be used as a standalone Pokemon on teams (probably a Scarf set)

I don't disagree. It's like a scarfspecs on its water stab. 2hko + outspeeding garchomp (with hydro pump... not saying chomp is particularily bulky, but it's just an example I remember) is pretty rediculous. Jolteon outrunning it sucks, but ofc it can't switch in.

Like I've said before, a free 1.5 boost with no drawbacks is overpowered.

 

[Oglemi]

Edit: I would also like to comment on Pocket's proposal, found in this thread: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85113. I feel that Pocket's proposal would take excessively long periods of time to test. Phase One would require us to agree on the most dangerous Weather-abusers, and I believe it would take a rather long time to reach consensus as to which ones these are. Even if this goes smoothly, it would mean no less than three testing periods testing just Rain, and that is a very long time to potentially have a bad metagame.

As you said, his proposal could take an excrutiatinly long time to test; however, if there was any way we could have 2 Suspect ladders going at the same time (I realize his proposal has 3 phases, but I feel the first 2 are the most relevant), one ladder with one proposal, and one with the other, it would allow us to play both and compare/contrast the two metagames in real time.

The only problems with this would be 1) Coyotte would have to somehow implement 2 Suspect ladders onto PO and 2) How would we determine who could vote would be very hard to determine, as we can't expect people to reach the voter reqs on two seperate ladders at the same time.

Any thoughts?

 

[Darkmalice]

Part of the value of Aldaron's plan is the fact that it only requires one step, not adjustment to figure out which Swift Swimmers are stronger than others.

For the time it takes, it is just like banning individual suspects. Under this system, Politoed/Hippowdon/etc isn't going to be banned (no one is going to claim that they're broken without Pokemon to take advantage of auto weather). It's just a matter of banning what becomes broken as a result of auto weather, treating autoweather as a normal part of the game just as Sandstream was treated 4th gen. Banning weather abusers e.g. Swift Swimmers in combination with the autoweather would be done per normal 5th gen voting like Darkrai.

Even if we do another method, we would then have to vote on Drizzle / Drizzle + Swift Swim / etc being broken. It can take more than 1 round if it gets between a 50% or 66.6% majority, or if it gets <50% one round but then people consider it broken after something else gets banned. It's not necessarily shorter than banning Drizzle + Swift Swim. We may vote off all the broken Swift Swimmers the first time. Even if we don't, we'll still have other suspect candidates the next round; we'll probably get our Swift Swim candidates right before we finish the rest of the suspects. We'll definitely not be done if we end up testing currently Uber Pokemon for OU.

Banning all Swift Swimmers + Drizzle is akin to banning all 670+ BST Pokemon and event Pokemon. It's the easy way out of suspect voting. Yet I doubt anyone is calling Celebi Uber in 5th Gen or even 4th gen; similarly I don't think anyone is calling Seaking or rain stall broken (minus Manaphy). If we think that banning individual Swift Swimmers takes too long, than banning individual suspects as we are doing now takes too long, and we should just take the easy way out of voting. Suspect voting, regardless on our view on auto weather, is going to take a very long time.

I certainly hope you can give us a better example of "Group 2" than Gorebyss, because if you've ever faced Gorebyss in Rain, than you likely discovered it is more dangerous than the majority of the Rain sweepers that receive more hype. The list of very powerful Swift Swimmers is quite long, and by the time you reach the actual "Group 2", you are dealing with the likes of Seaking (we could debate things like Huntail, but that isn't really the point of this thread).

A better example is irrelevant. The fact is there are viable rain sweepers that aren't broken even in rain. And as you said, it's not the point of the thread.

 

[franky]

can someone give me a legitimate reason as to why swift swim should be banned? we should be banning the main root of the problem instead of complicating things; we should be erasing the detrimental thing in the metagame. rain as a whole is a pretty large subject itself and its difficult to pinpoint the exact problem but my thoughts are twofold

(1) ban drizzle only. this should be the quickest exit out there without having to over complicate the process by having more subsequent bans. with this simple step we get to:

1. keep the playstyle alive without removing the aspects that makes rain dance so good. we remain diverse with our metagame by making rain a viable strategy by resorting to the old fashioned damp rock + rain dance. to put it in simple terms, drizzle and infinite rain as a whole makes the game a lot more easier to play and for those who would love to keep rain as a part of the game without affecting certain aspects (swift swim) that make it viable then drizzle should easily be the one thing to ban.

2. avoid the idea of banning a fleet of rain dance abusers. in my opinion there isn't one broken pokemon under the rain and i've made a point way back when they were discussing rain in the uu tier - rain dance itself is a playstyle that requires pokemon to work in a cohesive unit to damage a certain core and there isn't a single pokemon with swift swim that can be justified as broken by itself (unless someone would like to prove me wrong).

(2) banning everything in a single swipe by removing, drizzle + swift swim ultimately eradicating the rain dance playstyle as a whole. this isn't a favorable option to me but many people seem to favor this type of ban but i think metagame diversity is obviously important here.

with those two ideas on a plate, i am trying to justify the first option to be the best route to take for the sake of metagame diversity and simplicity. if people are so hellbent with banning so many things then this is obviously the route to take without any underlying problems to it. what could possibly go wrong and i would like someone to point it out for me. i just wanted to add the fact that we should aim to nerf the playstyle as a whole and not completely disregard the playstyle and ban every single aspect of it (drizzle + swift swim + sweepers).

 

[zapzap29]

@Oglemi
While I think the idea of setting up 2 separate ladders to test different metagames is a good one I don't think we have the manpower for it. My proposal is to implement a time period in which we try out the proposal on the standard ladder, maybe sometime after this round of suspect testing is finished. This way, we would still be able to compare the differences between the 2 metagames. Then, we could pick which is the more desirable metagame based on the results. This way, we don't have to strain our player base and we would have a definitive comparison.

 

[idiotfrommars]

Another option would be to have one going on PO and the other on Smogon. Of course you would have to get Coyo on board first, and PO's been running there own form of suspect testing, but if you get it to go through the man power is there. I just though I'd bring this up, but you'll have to see what Coyo thinks of it first.

 

[coyotte508]

mmm IFM...

Anyway there's plenty of servers and plenty of tiers so you can use that to test different metagames if you wish. I wouldn't mind setting up another ladder but it's the same as if Smogon did it really...

 

[Veedrock]

Setting up ladders on different servers accomplishes nothing. The point is for players to play each tier to gain first hand experience with each metagame. The only thing your suggestion does is force people to log onto two different servers.

On topic I don't like the proposal, but I don't have any real argument against it. It just doesn't sit well with me.

EDIT: The first bit of this was aimed at idiotfrommars.

 

[Oglemi]

I didn't say it should be on separate servers and it shouldn't be.

If you think about it, it'd be like adding the UU ladder, which always had a strong playerbase even with OU, Ubers, and LC, but instead of UU we'd be adding a second OU ladder, but only for 1 round (instead of dragging Pocket's proposal out for 3 rounds).

I don't know if people would be willing to play on two different ladders of the (relatively) same tier -OU- with only (minor) changes in-between the two.

 

[Eo Ut Mortus]

This is a sort-of-late post that deviates from the current topic, but I just want to throw out that I think the justification for "complex bans for weather and only weather" is very weak. I disagree with the assertion that it is and should be an exception to the rule based on the reasoning outlined in the original post. Banning Swift Swim + Drizzle is an attempt to reduce the power of a potentially broken ability through reducing its complexity. We can also hypothetically do the same to Pokemon through banning an individual Pokemon + an ability / move. Why does the actual complexity of the object in question matter at all? To me, it seems like a mainly arbitrary criterion designed to prevent an influx of similar, perhaps far-fetched, proposals. Is there any reason, besides setting an unhealthy precedent, we do not want to explore any complex bans that do not involve weather?

For the record, I'm not actually proposing anything specific, nor am I arguing against banning Drizzle + Swift Swim - I'm questioning the reasoning behind "weather only." Furthermore, I do not necessarily support the introduction of more complex bans - I think establishing better criteria (or justifying the current criteria) would be just as fine.