Drizzle forces everyone to use Ferrothorn and friends just to deal with rain teams. Sand abusers, despite the fact that they're pretty dominant, are pretty much more counterable than their rain counterparts (maybe except for Garchomp). Even some of the so-called "rain counters" like Rotom-W can't take hits from rain-boosted Hydro Pumps from rain-abusers. So I vote that we should ban Drizzle and see what happens.
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Should we ban perma weather?
- Thread starter animenagai
- Start date
... No... That argument does not work...
A) A pokemon has to give up an item slot, and unless it is a wall, it will be crippled as it wont be doing the damage it needs to do, or out speed the things it needs to outspeed.
B) A pokemon has to be out to be using its left overs. I don't know if it is just me, but I only run about 3 pokemon with leftovers, and those 3 pokemon are not out the entirety of 40 turns, maybe 6 turns a piece. And thats if they don't DIE fast, considering their Left Overs are flat out negated. Sand Stream, on the other hand, unless negated by another weather (which was impossible in gen 4 unless you used RD or Hail), was out permanently.
I voted for "leave it as it is." I support a clear skies tier though.
In addition to this. I feel that, if in the event we were to ban ALL weather, we should do so by running a test tier with clear skies during the suspect test phase, and see how things go. Although, I doubt that will ever happen.
I know I'm not a competitive player and have only dabbled in any online ladder play, so I'm going to attempt to approach this from a perspective of logic and not experience. If you don't want to listen to what I say based on my lack of experience, well, I can't exactly stop you, but poodoo on you anyways.
Isn't the point of suspect testing to test things, and sometimes they even work? Drizzle was 'tested', in this sense, both with and without Swift Swimmers on it's team. It was given the benefit of the doubt and was not simply straight out banned, but instead had it's key abusers taken away. Now, in the opinion of the majority of the posters on this forum (who are at the very least an extremely vocal minority*) Drizzle still failed that second test and is still broken even without it's nastiest abusers, but the important thing is that it was tested and not automatically banned.
Doesn't Sand Stream deserve the same benefit of the doubt? Doesn't it strike you as a bit too preemptive to ban it on account of "it'll dominate after/if Drizzle gets banned"? Is there not a possibility that after Garchomp and possibly Excadrill get banned that Sand Stream proves to be a balanced, even positive factor in the metagame, like it arguably was in previous generations?
And the same argument goes towards Drought and even Hail as well should they prove to be overpowered in the future. You're supposed to test things, and sometimes they even work.
Another thing I wanted to mention is time. The DPPt metagame lasted, what 4 years wasn't it? While I doubt BW will have as much time in the limelight due to the inevitable main Pokemon game on the 3DS I still think there's plenty of time for the gradual toning down of anything that is overpowered without needing to resort to preemptive bans.
While, like I said, I lack the experience to have any relevant opinion on whether or not Drizzle or any other weather should be banned, it IS my opinion that anything that worth doing is worth doing right and that the right way to handle a situation like this is gradually tone down the power until the metagame fully matures.
(*I am not accusing the anti-Drizzle posters of being a vocal minority, simply observing that people who are unhappy with a situation are always without exception overrepresented on the internet. People who are happy with the situation have no reason to post about their contentedness, while people who are unhappy with the situation do have a reason to post. There's probably a social term for this effect, and if there isn't someone should make one and write a paper about it, get it published in a psychology journal and get all kinds of scholastic poontang.)
Isn't the point of suspect testing to test things, and sometimes they even work? Drizzle was 'tested', in this sense, both with and without Swift Swimmers on it's team. It was given the benefit of the doubt and was not simply straight out banned, but instead had it's key abusers taken away. Now, in the opinion of the majority of the posters on this forum (who are at the very least an extremely vocal minority*) Drizzle still failed that second test and is still broken even without it's nastiest abusers, but the important thing is that it was tested and not automatically banned.
Doesn't Sand Stream deserve the same benefit of the doubt? Doesn't it strike you as a bit too preemptive to ban it on account of "it'll dominate after/if Drizzle gets banned"? Is there not a possibility that after Garchomp and possibly Excadrill get banned that Sand Stream proves to be a balanced, even positive factor in the metagame, like it arguably was in previous generations?
And the same argument goes towards Drought and even Hail as well should they prove to be overpowered in the future. You're supposed to test things, and sometimes they even work.
Another thing I wanted to mention is time. The DPPt metagame lasted, what 4 years wasn't it? While I doubt BW will have as much time in the limelight due to the inevitable main Pokemon game on the 3DS I still think there's plenty of time for the gradual toning down of anything that is overpowered without needing to resort to preemptive bans.
While, like I said, I lack the experience to have any relevant opinion on whether or not Drizzle or any other weather should be banned, it IS my opinion that anything that worth doing is worth doing right and that the right way to handle a situation like this is gradually tone down the power until the metagame fully matures.
(*I am not accusing the anti-Drizzle posters of being a vocal minority, simply observing that people who are unhappy with a situation are always without exception overrepresented on the internet. People who are happy with the situation have no reason to post about their contentedness, while people who are unhappy with the situation do have a reason to post. There's probably a social term for this effect, and if there isn't someone should make one and write a paper about it, get it published in a psychology journal and get all kinds of scholastic poontang.)
My argument is that "passive damage" cannot be used as an argument as if it were "active damage". Sand does 250% damage over the course of 40 turns for free, nice. Earthquake does 100% in one turn and 300% in three turns, leaving you with thirty-seven turns to do anything else you want to; Softboiled recovers 50% every turn, more than Leftovers could ever wish for; and so on. Unless you have an argument against, say, Stealth Rock, you cannot say a 6.25% "free" damage every turn is detrimental to the metagame.
If Leftovers is an item that a Pokemon can hold, that heals your active Pokemon for 6.25% health every turn, even if the holder isn't out, amounting to 250% health gain over the course of a 40 turn battle then I suppose there might be calls for it being broken... ?__?
Sandstorm always being active in a metagame promotes the use of certain types and certain abusers (just as any other dominating weather would). While this may be accepted as a condition of the game, in the interests of a more diverse environment I voted for ban all perma-weather.
Well honestly, I always found stealth rock to be really freaking annoying in gen4, and felt that it limited the usefulness of many pokemon who were completely crippled by the power of stealth rocks. I could argue that its crippling abilities against the likes of 20% of the metagame limited diversity and thus was detrimental to the meta game. But I am sure that has been done before and I don't really care anymore.
I also would like to point out that earthquake takes a turn to use to do 100% damage. And that Tyranitar could come in, earth quake 2 things, kill 2 things, and still do a good 100% damage even after he had died just because he was in at one point and sand would be chipping away at everything.
But it is true, I agree, that it is very impossible to argue passive damage. You would have to argue spikes, toxic spikes, stealth rock, and so much more.
Edit to add:
Actually, from what I understand, a lot of the users who want drizzle banned say that it was not a good idea to try to "limit" drizzle (from removing SwSw) through the test phase and say it should be banned as a whole regardless. I have even read some claims from people who speak of drizzle being manageable with SwSw gone, but that it should still be banned as a whole, not by "nerfing it" to our liking.
Also, I will bring up that there is still a number of people who want to BRING BACK SwSw pokemon, and they believe that Drizzle would be manageable even with it getting buffed a little by having at least 1 SwSw user.
My argument is that just because damage is passive does not mean that it should be ignored. Treat damage as damage, whether that damage is the damage gained from Drizzle's double Water STAB, or if it's damage from Sand Stream. Just because the damage happens slowly doesn't mean it doesn't happen at all.
I do think that Stealth Rock is the single biggest mistake made by Game Freak since Generation II, but this isn't the place to argue about Stealth Rock.
For a better comparison, let's compare Sand Stream to Spikes.
- Spikes requires the opponent to do something (switch), Sand Stream only requires the opponent to not do something (be using immune Pokemon).
- To prevent/remove Spikes, you can:
a) Taunt the user
b) Rapid Spin
c) Magic Coat/Magic Bounce
d) Kill the user before it uses it
To prevent/remove Sand Stream, you can:
...
....
.....
a) Do absolutely nothing. If Drizzle and Drought are banned, there's no way of stopping it (aside from Hail, which is a lateral move at best), you can only deal with the consequences.
- At one layer, Spikes deals damage equal to Sandstorm only if you switch every second turn. If you switch less than that, Spikes is less relevant. The number of turns increases by 1 for each layer, so it might eventually be more damaging overall than Sand Stream is if you let them get more than one layer up.
- Most importantly, it doesn't require any input from the user at all. If there was a Pokemon who had an ability that set up Spikes or Stealth Rocks whenever it switched in, it would be extremely heavily used if the Pokemon was even approaching Tyranitar's (or even Hippowdon's) quality.
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.
Wait, what? It's exactly the opposite.
Ferrothorn is already the top #1 wall of the metagame so it's not an issue to put him on every team.
However for a Rain/Sun team to run stuff like Gliscor and Skarmory just to counter Excadrill, Terrakion and Garchomp is ridiculous. Even then, they all may fail at their purpose, unlike Ferrothorn who's a complete stop to most Rain sweepers (and, oh my god, the all powerful Swift Swimming 520 speed Kingdra!).
Sand has an unfair advantage over every other weather. It's inducers are way better than the others - Hippowdon tanks stuff and lives forever, Tyranitar has top tier legendary stats in the sand he brings and no weather inducer can switch safely into him. Compare this to the sucky Politoed, Ninetales and Abomasnow, and the later three will often die first, resulting into your average Excadrill sweep.
I'd say ban sand - then things will get balanced.
Wasn't Garchomp banned in 4th gen for being the absolute single best sweeper in the game and matches were decided by who killed the opponent's first? Well, without Drizzle Excadrill will take this position and will love it.
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".
Which are Excadrill, a borderline case, Garchomp, which was banned in DPPt anyway and will probably get banned again and... Excadrill. Yeah ok.
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?
| 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~
Why should we be treating weather as a single entity when it's really four? Rain is much different than Sand, Sun, or Hail, and I'd rather look at each one separately. I'm not saying that it's impossible for them all to be eventually broken, but there's no way we can know now, especially in a metagame dominated by Rain and Sand. And I'm not really convinced that Sand itself is the issue, because the only thing I find broken in the Sand is Garchomp, which would be almost too good already.
Although i posted this to another thread,i post it here too.IMO weather makes the metagame to complicated and too random with all this pokemon which you must counter but would never be a threat without weather.But i think they shouldn't ban weather but just Drought,Drizzle,Sandstream + Sand Rush.Just think of this metagame ;)
The problem is they are a "single entity" in a sense only one can be present at a time. You can use a Damp Rock Rain Dance only for it to be erased instantly AND replaced simply by having a single pokemon just switch in. The power of weather inducers isn't just the weather itself, it's their ability to change the weather without even taking a turn to do so - and then make it permanent.
If you could have multiple weathers on the field then they almost would be their own entities, but in truth they're all vying for one space.
They can only be there one at a time but they do much different things. It doesn't mean Hail should be considered broken if Rain is.
Weather effects in general are a powerful collection of boosts that are really tempting to use and all, but I think only Drizzle is broken (lol Nintails and two Sand sweepers). Anyway, next time you ask a yes or no question why don't you only add two options? Some of the choices overlap each other and what if those voters' collective agreement on certain weathers outnumber the people saying no? The chart is misleading.
Yes, ban all perma-weather
40 30.08%
No, we just ban drizzle and sand stream
4 3.01%
No, just ban drought, drizzle and sand stream
15 11.28%
Ban drizzle only
15 11.28%
See? A solid 74 people voted in some way towads banning Drizzle. That means that 55.65% of the voters agreed in some part to banning Drizzle and would be likely to support banning Drizzle if nothing else, something the layout doesn't show.
Yes, ban all perma-weather
No, we just ban drizzle and sand stream
No, just ban drought, drizzle and sand stream
Ban drizzle only
See? A solid 74 people voted in some way towads banning Drizzle. That means that 55.65% of the voters agreed in some part to banning Drizzle and would be likely to support banning Drizzle if nothing else, something the layout doesn't show.