Discussion Drought in SV NU

[etern]

Drought / Auto-Sun has been significantly controversial within the SV NU metagame for the majority of the time it has been playable. In 2023 both the NU Council and NU community alike agreed that the playstyle was far too strong for the tier, and as a result we banned Drought via a council slate. However, we were quickly made to revert this ban in favour of banning Vulpix, as it was the only Drought user available to us at that point in time. Fast forward to 2024 and we now have access to Ninetales, a far superior Drought setter that has quickly cemented Sun as one of the deadliest playstyles in the tier once more. Sun has a myriad of potential abusers to pick from, notably including; Venusaur, Scovillain, Brute Bonnet, Charizard, Chandelure, Typhlosion-Hisui, Shiftry, and Leafeon. Our most recent NU Survey shows that an overwhelming majority of NU players participating in NUPL believe that Sun is too consistently effective and lacking enough counterplay to the point of being overpowered.

At first, members of the community speculated that Venusaur alone might be what pushes sun over the edge, however we have seen a variety of games throughought the past month or two showcasing Sun sweeps with Pokemon such as Scovillain and Lilligant which would otherwise have little to no viability in the tier without Drought. It is also often brought up that something like Victreebel, which is in all accounts an inferior Venusaur, would be able to replace it's role on Sun teams quite easily while maintaining a similarly devestating level of power to break through the tier. Heat Rock was also discussed as a possible option, however we would rather avoid an item ban if possible, and while Drought is broken on everything that gets it in NU, Heat Rock is not broken on every Sun setter in NU, thus we feel that Drought is a much more logical choice to take action on. Furthermore, while Ninetales obviously outclasses Vulpix in every way, they functionally remain the same in their role as Drought setters. Although Ninetales can exert offensive pressure on it's own, it usually only comes out onto the field a couple of times per match to set up Sun, before switching out or clicking Healing Wish to bring a sweeper back onto the field. Vulpix has also already proven to be more than viable enough to enable Sun as a broken playstyle just a few months prior, and has only stopped being used because of Ninetales falling to NU in a recent tier shift.

With all that said, the NU Council believes that once again, the simplest and most effective course of action to address this issue is banning Drought from SV NU. Now that we have more than one Drought setter in the tier, a Drought ban would fall in line with prior tiering policy and be the safest way to ensure that the tier is able to quickly move onto other pressing matters. Therefore the NU Council intends on voting on Drought this weekend to coincide with Round 2 of NU Open and Week 3 of NUPL.

 

[Django]

Voting on drought is definitely the best way forward here, and preferable to both Heat Rock and individual abusers.

A typical sun team of Ninetales / Venusaur / chlorophyll mon 2 / fire mon / support / support can easily be replicated with Vulpix / Victreebel / rest are the same and it wouldn't have too much of an impact. Most losses to Sun aren't a direct result of Venusaurs superior bulk, or to Ninetales greater utility in comparison to Vulpix, but rather teams getting overwhelmed by the combination of speed, power, and double STAB fire moves. Those factors will still remain the same.

Banning Heat Rock would invalidate manual Sun, which I think has potential to be a valid and useful playstyle. Manual Rain exists and doesn't cause any problems right now, and I don't see manual Sun being much different.

Banning the sun abusers would result in 4-5 bans easily, most of which have useful niches in the tier outside of sun.

The only real argument against this I can see is to ban Ninetales and Vulpix directly. I don't really see much difference between the two, unless Ninetales has some sort of use in ZU outside of sun? Functionally I think this is the same as banning Drought.

As for whether Drought is actually broken, I'll save that for another discussion...

 

[Tuthur]

Hi,

Now that we have more than one Drought setter in the tier, a Drought ban would fall in line with prior tiering policy and be the safest way to ensure that the tier is able to quickly move onto other pressing matters.

As far as I know, banning a non-Pokemon element before trying to ban any Pokemon-element doesn't fall in line with prior tiering policy. Hisuian Lilligant doesn't count as a sun-related Pokemon ban as according to its announcement, Hustle sets in weatherless HO were as much of a problem as Chlorophyll ones.

Sun has a myriad of potential abusers to pick from, notably including; Venusaur, Scovillain, Brute Bonnet, Charizard, Chandelure, Typhlosion-Hisui, Shiftry, and Leafeon. Our most recent NU Survey shows that an overwhelming majority of NU players participating in NUPL believe that Sun is too consistently effective and lacking enough counterplay to the point of being overpowered.

This statement, while true, is written in such a way to make it seem like they all are as viable and interchangeable. Nobody seriously thinks anything but Venusaur and Scovillain is breaking sun teams. A lot of these Pokemon are PU and ZU legal (tiers that allow Drought) and there seems to be no complain about them (quick search on Drought in PU forum shows there hasn't been any post mentionning it since it's been unbanned over a month ago).

In 2023 both the NU Council and NU community alike agreed that the playstyle was far too strong for the tier, and as a result we banned Drought via a council slate. However, we were quickly made to revert this ban in favour of banning Vulpix, as it was the only Drought user available to us at that point in time. Fast forward to 2024 and we now have access to Ninetales, a far superior Drought setter that has quickly cemented Sun as one of the deadliest playstyles in the tier once more.

Same as above, the statements are true, but misleading. Vulpix was banned pre-SCL, without any testing as it was banned day 1 and the main abuser, Brute Bonnet, was banned regardless of sun one week later, without giving another chance to Drought. The metagame was incredibly different as we didn't even have had the massive wave of drops from DLC1. I'm going to point out, during circuit playoff, in january, Ninetales was legal and it wasn't a problem at all. Every abuser you named were legal except for Venusaur and Typhlosion-Hisui and it is not like it didn't see use, it was a viable playstyle, but nothing overpowered.

A typical sun team of Ninetales / Venusaur / chlorophyll mon 2 / fire mon / support / support can easily be replicated with Vulpix / Victreebel / rest are the same and it wouldn't have too much of an impact. Most losses to Sun aren't a direct result of Venusaurs superior bulk, or to Ninetales greater utility in comparison to Vulpix, but rather teams getting overwhelmed by the combination of speed, power, and double STAB fire moves. Those factors will still remain the same.

How'd you know that without actually testing? Victreebel is actually huge garbage and sun teams in ZU and PU avoid using it (just like pre-Venusaur NU teams). To draw a parallel, it's like if you said Chien Pao shouldn't be banned from OU because Weavile is barely weaker. In this case, the drop from Venusaur to Victreebel is more like dropping from Chien Pao to Sneasel. UU just banned Pelipper, yet Politoed exists; only time will tell them if this was the right call, but let's not pretend banning an abuser / enhancer when a downgrade exists is some silly tiering.

Banning the sun abusers would result in 4-5 bans easily, most of which have useful niches in the tier outside of sun.

That's a slippery slope fallacy. Just banning 2 Pokemon (Venusaur and Ninetales) would put us on almost the same spot as PU (which seems to have 0 problem with sun), and it's not even guaranteed that banning one wouldn't be just enough, while avoiding a non-Pokemon element ban.

Let's not make the terrible mistake to ban a non-Pokemon element across multiple tiers, when everything points toward Venusaur being the problem. Let's not overreact and claim Scovillain is as nearly as busted as it, when what happened is just players getting caught off guard week 1 of NUPL by a Pokemon that's been in ZU the whole gen, even with Drought legal. A Drought ban would only be rushed and against tiering policy precedents, there is a simple solution to this sun problem and it only requires to ban one Pokemon.

 

[Rabia]

Rabia — Yesterday at 12:39 PM
i think people r just overreacting
to a random offense trend
it's been out of the meta for months, not rly surprising to see people get bitched by it now that they're being reminded of it

Acting on sun this quickly is a mistake. I think keeping a close eye on it is ideal because it's sun and has historically been too strong for NU's power level standards, but it's been almost invisible in the tier since Hisuian Lilligant was banned. From the replays I could find, it's seen minimal use anywhere prior to NUPL week 1 (I found one usage from BLT and I think Phantomistix used it in Open at least once?). It just seems like people want to jump the gun. I understand the desire, but we should not be taking action this quickly.

 

[Stories]

Hi, I made a sun team with 3 Chlorophyll mons that’s been being spammed in tournaments and it’s incredibly strong, figured I’d give my two cents on the matter (not trolling this time).

I do think some kind of action towards Sun is most definitely needed. To me it’s more of a question of what you do to it rather than if you do anything at all; Sun is a stupidly strong playstyle right now with very high ease of use, very high customization, and very little consistent counterplay. The options I see are: A) ban Venusaur. B) Ban Drought. C) Ban heat rock.

Banning Venusaur: In my opinion this doesn’t do much to slow Sun down. The constant barrage of 120 BP Grass moves, Sun-boosted Weather Balls and Tera Blasts, as well as the unique qualities of other Chlorophyll Pokemon like Scovillain, Shiftry, Lilligant, etc.. means that although Venusaur makes great headway against traditional Sun checks like Dragalge and Muk-Alola, I think it’s very easy for other Chlorophyll Pokemon to adapt to this role.

Banning Drought: Cut-and-dry solution. Remove Sun as a viable playstyle entirely. People can bring manual Sun to cheese still, will probably work sometimes but probably not. I personally don’t like the idea of completely deleting a playstyle but Sun might deserve it.

Banning Heat Rock: imo the best solution. Safe slap on the wrist to the playstyle, can always come back to this later too if its not sufficient. Specs Scovillain is still a menace but setup sweepers wasting a turn to setup with limited turns greatly hinders their potency.

 

[fade]

The item is never the problem it's either the abusers or the ability. Ban drought or venusaur / whichever abuser is found to be most problematic. It's already nonsense that damp rock was banned in pu and light clay has been banned from the past 2 generations of lower tiers, don't add heat rock to the list.

 

[BigFatMantis]

It seems as though banning Ninetales + Venusaur would solve the majority of the issues while still keeping the Sun playstyle relevant. While it's possible to still win with Vulpix sun minus Venusaur, the playstyle is very much hindered without the "good" setter and the best abuser. Think this is probably the least collateral from all the options. At the very least, I think tiering policy would dictate that we should try banning the mons first and if it doesn't work then go after the ability/item.

 

[LBN]

I'm going to side with BFM / Tuthur on this aswell, Venusaur is very noticeably ahead of the other sun abusers in almost every department especially natural bulk (besides leafeon, who is far less deadly in comparison) which counts for a lot with your sweepers to withstand priority and the like, and Ninetales is a useable Pokémon in it's own right with some actual defensive utility in soft checking things like Typh-H, whilst vulpix is basically a 5v6 and extremely reduces the styles potency and longevity. Tuthur's argument about Non-pokemon bans never going first is ironclad, and leaves very little room for discussion on the matter. Venusaur/Ninetales should go first, as UU just enacted with Pelipper being the first action it's taken on rain.