Again, I really don't think Sand Stream is unmanageable right now, but if we ban Drizzle/Drought, the metagame has no way to deal with it besides building your team so that Sand Stream doesn't become a problem. This generally means that anything that's not Steel or Ground needs to use Leftovers or have severely compromised survivability.
Sand Stream might not be broken in that it rarely if ever is an immediate and obvious threat to your team. But having it around when there is no counter to it hinders diversity. It really should have been looked at during previous generations, but it wasn't.
I'd say your argument as a whole is actually valid, but this bothered me. You have your survivability hindered if you want to stay 6+ turns and has no recovery at all. This is not going to happen if you switch in and out all the time, which happens a damn lot if you use defensive pokémon of any kind. If we had an Auto-SR pokémon, no one would ever complain of Sandstorm, simply because the auto-SR dude would make everyone lose 12% on average upon switching in and, as biased as I may look like now, 6% damage every turn is more often than not better than SR damage every single turn, as in average, a pokémon needs two turns to recover the SR damage (and it's even worse with Spikes as there's usually at least two on the field...), and switch-ins and outs are a vital part of the game. You may do 6% damage every end of turn on my pokémon but, as long as it's killing shit, I won't bother that much. Now, if you force my pokémon out and it has to take 6.25-25% damage (as said, usually 12%) every single time it switches in, only to dish out a single move and then switch out
again, then it's going to add up much quicker and make the pokémon seem much less efficient than if it had to deal with Sandstorm instead.
This may seem as a biased pro-SS post but really, Sand Stream isn't that much a problem than the other weather conditions simply because it has less benefits and less abusers. Its "abusers" are basically a Sand Veiler which may get banned anyway, a Sand Forcer (which was #51 in May lol), a Sand Rusher which may also get banned anyway, and one of the inducers. If anything, Sand Stream is annoying (specially Tyranitar), but we should not ban anything on the grounds of it being "annoying".
Sandstream was fine when it lacked any major abusers that were able to sweep off its merits.
Which are Excadrill, a borderline case, Garchomp, which was banned in DPPt anyway and will probably get banned again and... Excadrill. Yeah ok.
So poor. What you said is tantamount to nerfing Sand to remain OU. Excadrill is nothing anywhere close to being broken or even good without Sand, why the hell should it be banned? Garchomp, well, we can debate all day on if Garchomp is broken or not as we have been doing for a while.
Amazing. Now banning a pokémon, something which we have done since RBY, is the same as nerfing weather. Again, "Sand" is not a pokémon. "Sand" is not a broken element shared by all its "abusers" (Rhyperior isn't even OU, in example). "Sand" only actually has a couple of "abusers" since gen III and guess what? Out of Tyranitar, Hippowdon, Garchomp, Excadrill and Landorus in OU, only Garchomp and Excadrill are thought of being truly broken. Yes, Excadrill sucks outside of Sand, but Sand is a "common battle condition" (just like, but not limited to, Rain or Sun or huhhh Spikes? are nowadays). We ban pokémon if they're broken with their best set in common battle conditions. And now you are suggesting we ban the condition instead of the pokémon, and all of this because... Excadrill has more right to be used in OU than a Rock-type has of having its SDef boosted, Stoutland (and Sandslash in the future) of doubling their Speed and not being instantly ridiculous, and Tyranitar and Hippowdon of even existing in the first place?
Some would argue that without opposing weather Landorus would indeed be "broken as shit".
| 36 | Cloyster | 26698 | 4.8656 |
| 37 | Scrafty | 26494 | 4.8284 |
| 40 | Lucario | 25625 | 4.6701 |
| 47 | Porygon2 | 21163 | 3.8569 |
| 48 | Mienshao | 21101 | 3.8456 |
| 49 | Venusaur | 21001 | 3.8274 |
| 50 | Landorus | 20408 | 3.7193 |
| 52 | Whimsicott | 19976 | 3.6406 |
Yep, Landorus is being a real boss nowadays, he isn't higher in the ladder only because of Drill and Chomp. He surely is going to usurp their spot once they leave. The horror~