Metagame np: SM UU Stage 10.5 - Water Me (weather test)

[pokemonisfun]

Told you that the nihilego set worked well. Glad to see that being used as sun counterplay

I didn't say it worked well or not. I'm just throwing out ideas on what potential counter play is, that many people have talked about but I've seen nobody done actual serious work on.

That doesn't mean it's over, pif solved the problem, stall is saved. What if Venusaur can run EQ? What if Houndoom and Venusaur simply overwhelm Nihilego with Healing Wish support? What if Sawsbuck is actually a hidden stallbreaker?

We haven't even begun to scratch the surface of these very relevant questions because nobody even proposed a stall team yet. If you don't care about defensive teams or for whatever reason you can't be bothered to try and understand weather's impact on them, fine, that's a 100% legit perspective. If you want to try and understand the metagame before making a decision, then I don't see how you can come to a conclusion before putting an effort in resolving these issues.

Anyways you do you, there's no wrong way to approach your opinion, as long as you're happy with it.

 

[Sickist]

Well if you're asking, there you go pokeisfun..

AV Goodra

Goodra @ Assault Vest
Ability: Sap Sipper
EVs: 120 HP / 252 Atk / 136 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Outrage
- Power Whip
- Earthquake
- Fire Punch

While I was trying to make a team which was able to fuck up Sun and Rain Teams, I found that AV Goodra was a pretty decent pick.
Thanks to Sap Sipper and its typing, Goodra can handle pretty nicely both Venusaur and Mega-Houndoom.

+2 252 SpA Solar Power Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 120 HP / 0 SpD Assault Vest Goodra in Sun: 200-236 (56.9 - 67.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Goodra Earthquake vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Houndoom-Mega: 218-258 (74.9 - 88.6%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock and Solar Power damage

+2 252+ SpA Venusaur Acid Downpour (175 BP) vs. 120 HP / 0 SpD Assault Vest Goodra: 246-289 (70 - 82.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Goodra Fire Punch vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Venusaur in Sun: 260-308 (86.3 - 102.3%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

As you can see Earthquake and Fire Punch can deal pretty effectively with Mega-Houndoom and/or Venusaur although Goodra struggles to handle both of them. On the other hand Power Whip is nice to punish things like Politoed, Quagsire, Kabutops or Seismitoed. Outrage is pretty much there for the STAB.. Not the best Pokemon to deal with weathers but definitively not the worst.

Mixed Toxic Protect Gastrodon

Gastrodon-East @ Leftovers
Ability: Storm Drain
EVs: 248 HP / 88 Def / 172 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Recover
- Protect
- Toxic
- Earth Power

Gastrodon is probably on the best answers to non-Ludicolo Rain Teams since it handles almost every Rain Sweeper on its own. It's also nice that it can't be trapped by Whirlpool thanks to Storm Drain.

+2 252+ Atk Kabutops Continental Crush (180 BP) vs. 248 HP / 88 Def Gastrodon: 359-423 (84.4 - 99.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
0 SpA Gastrodon Earth Power vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Kabutops: 240-284 (91.9 - 108.8%) -- 50% chance to OHKO

252+ SpA Choice Specs Kingdra Draco Meteor over 2 turns vs. 248 HP / 172+ SpD Gastrodon: 373-441 (87.7 - 103.7%) -- 75% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery (thanks to Protect, Gastrodon can't be 2HKO).

252 SpA Life Orb Latias Psyshock vs. 248 HP / 88 Def Gastrodon: 185-218 (43.5 - 51.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

Overall it trully sucks that we have to find so much gimmicks in order to deal with those shitty weathers

I'd never thought I would see the day where I would have to resort to Goodra.

Anyways, since I have a part in UU and no one respects me anyways, I'll share my probably repetitive thoughts on weather and then actually do something fun and theorymon some answers to weather/possible weather abusers.

Sun

Personally, I find Sun to be the problem child. I believe Venusaur actually is the problem with Sun being so good. Great STAB combo + HP Fire is stupid difficult to wall (borderline impossible actually). Venusaur also puts insane offensive pressure just on preview and is difficult to revenge kill due to how stupid fat it is.

But why not Houndoom? I haven't gotten reqs yet, but in the 30 games I've played on my main (because I'm too lazy to suspect ladder it up), getting Houndoom in and setting up seemed quite difficult almost every game due to a few factors:

• Being prone to hazards, especially Stealth Rocks, makes you have to defog before you can bring it in, otherwise it'll fold to any priority.
• Solar Power nails your HP, which stacked with the hazards weakness, makes Houndoom easy to wear down into range of even Scizor's Bullet Punch, or just revenge killed in general.
• Houndoom is just frail in general, making it really hard to set up. You basically have to set up on a choice locked pokemon like Krookidile thats locked into Knock Off, but even then, they can wear you down quite fast due to Solar Power + Bad Bulk.

All of these factors make Houndoom a kinda hit-n-die pokemon. Don't get me wrong, Houndoom is insanely powerful at +2, and the second most powerful thing under sun besides broken frog Venusaur. However, unlike Venusaur, it's hazards weak, really frail, and overall too easy to wear down into range of any priority, resisted or not.

tl;dr - suspect Venusaur, free sun and keep Houndoom.

Rain

I hate this shit. I've fought Rain Offense at least 8 times in a row, alongside about 22ish games vs rain in general, and it's brainless to click Hydro Pump with Specs Kingdra in the rain and claim a kill. Run on sentence, but I hate rain, so I don't care. However, Seismatoad is also pretty insane on rain, and is by far the best rocker on a rain team. Ground type/Rocker/Water Absorb on rain is crazy good, and having Water/Ground/Poison coverage is stupid good and also really difficult to wall. Overall, Rain as a whole is an issue, and I feel unbanning it would ruin the tier completely, and it would be a mistake to unban it. I don't know why we even tested rain in the first place.

tl;dr - ban rain

Now for some possible cool abusers and answers to rain and sun as of right now that I could think of:

Defenses vs Rain:

Rain Abusers:

Defenses vs Sun:

*(Soft Check)
Sun Abusers:

Starting off with the possible rain checks, AV Slowking walls all special swift swimmers except Ludicolo due to it's tremendous special fat. Chesnaught can somewhat take on Crawdaunt and Kabutops, which is always nice. Ferroseed handles Ludicolo and Kingdra somewhat, but loses to Seismatoad due to being murdered by Earth Power before it can kill Toad. Gastro and Goodra were already mentioned by Moute, so you know what they do.

As far as possible rain Abusers, Mantine is your very discount Pelipper. Same with Swanna, but it can stallbreak a small amount. Torn is pretty obvious. Omastar can shell smash and become faster then literally anything under the rain at +2, as well as having pretty good coverage between Water STAB, Earth Power, and Ice Beam. Armaldo could be a potential rocker/spinner/Abuser due to Swift Swim + SD + coverage options like Superpower, Earthquake, Knock Off, and Aerial Ace. You don't even need Bug STAB.

Moving on to the sun defensive checks (nothing counters Venusaur broke ass mon), we have Nihilego, which has already been talked about, so I'll talk about the other 4. Terrak can come in on Houndoom as long as it isn't clicking Fire Blast in the sun, and proceed to outrun it with Choice Scarf. Crobat, while really bad, can check broke mon Venusaur as long as it doesn't eat shit by coming in on rocks, which makes it a check. I've messed around with scarf Crobat a small bit too, just to see what would happen, and it's a pretty hard check to Venu and friends. I still hate Venusaur and it should be illegal to run Drought+Venusaur on the same team. Seriously ban this mon if we end up keeping sun. Latias can do the same thing, but can't come in on Sludge Bomb. Finally, Gigalith is a pretty fun mon that can switch Houndoom's weather, while chipping it with sand AND getting a Special Defense Boost. This might be considered the Hardest check, but it has no recovery, so heck.

Finally, we have our possible sun abusers if we keep sun and ban Venusaur. Victreebell and Vileplume share Venusaur's typing, as well as the ability and Growth. However, Victreebell can run a physical set with Swords Dance, and Vileplume is slightly slower, but even harder to revenge kill. Each of them have potential in my eyes, though. Sawsbuck is proven to be good on sun as an abuser with SD, so no need to explain much else there. Finally, Exeggutor can act as a wallbreaker with it's STAB combination, but it can also Explode on something like Blissey and make it eat shit. So that's all I have for now.

Thanks for reading this long ass post, maybe I'll share teams later, idk. Vote whatever you like and what you think is best for the tier, but I will 100% be voting Ban on Rain and as far as Sun goes, maybe we can free it, and see if Sun itself is actually the problem, or if it's just Venusaur. Right now, I think it's Venusaur, but we have yet to see. Have a good day all!

 

[Freeroamer]

I’ve got to be completely honest and say I don’t really understand the rationale behind sun getting a runoff vote but rain not. This would seem to indicate that it’s only Houndoom that’s problematic on these builds when there has been numerous people voicing opinions that Venusaur is incredibly difficult to deal with aswell, perhaps even more so due to its Speed severely limiting options to revenge kill it whereas Houndoom for all it’s brute initial power, has to Flame Charge to boost it’s speed beyond that of typical speed control in this tier. Between being rocks weak and Solar Power chip building up it’s also a lot more likely to be in a position where it’s getting picked off.

I also think it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that rain would be significantly easier to manage without the presence of Kingdra in particular. This thing in rain is simply outrageous, it’s got nearly the brute force of Houndoom (albeit choice locked which is obviously a big detriment) along with the incredible speed. While I might hate it more than most personally, I don’t think anyone can doubt it’s prowess when it’s on literally every rain team and to use anything else would feel decidedly suboptimal. Sun has more chance of potentially staying without Houndoom (still highly unlikely I think) and I would say the same for rain without Kingdra so why is a run off vote for Drizzle where we ban this but not the ability not an option if the above one for Drought is? I consider both broken when in their favoured weathers so it seems a lot more consistent to me to hold a run off for both if it’s something that’s considered a necessary inclusion.

On the whole I’d just rather not have the run-off vote at all, I get the argument to preserve playstyles where we can but this seems a pretty weak justification to me when the weather based abilities are quite clearly the enabler for everything that’s giving people a headache at current. I’m probably being a bit pedantic here (not unusual) but yeah I just don’t really get it. Is it literally just because we banned both Houndoom and Drought once so now we get to choose which we think is the right way to go? If so I really don’t think that warrants special treatment for Drought...

 

[Hogg]

I’m probably being a bit pedantic here (not unusual) but yeah I just don’t really get it. Is it literally just because we banned both Houndoom and Drought once so now we get to choose which we think is the right way to go? If so I really don’t think that warrants special treatment for Drought...

More or less this, yeah. The runoff vote allows the community to decide if Drought or Houndoom (or neither) are worth banning. It's not getting special treatment so much as allowing the community to make the decision that the council has disagreed on twice now.

 

[Mangrovius]

I would like to write a longer post at one point, but I didn't meet the reqs as using weather feels very dull and repetitive to me. Counterbuilding against it required me to add multiple defensive checks to my team, which strained my ability to make a team that I enjoy playing (I mostly run HO builds). In short: Rain annihilated my teams that got me well into the 1600's before. I feel like the matchup is only playable with very specific counterplay options, otherwise the 7 turn onslaught leaves you unable to recover from it. Sun didn't make me feel that way as much, but I would see how Mega Houndoom/Venusaur can strangle stall a lot better while maintaing a good matchup spread. But my vote doesn't count anyway so I'll stop there.

However, I tried experimenting with offensive answers to Rain and Sun, since this thread is filled with everything from AV Goodra to Hakamo-o. I found one pokemon that always felt underwhelming, but had an interesting niche in the current weather war: Noivern.

Noivern has a speed tier that, when equipped with a Choice Scarf, allows it to outspeed (in terrain): Modest Kingdra, Modest Venusaur, Adamant Kabutops, Modest Seismitoad, all Ludicolo and obviously Mega Houndoom (even after a Flame Charge boost). It also ties with max speed Kabutops and Venusaur. With Flamethrower and Hurricane it benefits from both Rain and Sun, the first having a 50% to OHKO Venusaur in Sun after 1 Rocks cycle. The latter being a 100% accurate stab move in the Rain that can cause confusion, which can be a pain to deal with as Noivern outspeeds nearly everything. One can opt for HP Grass to reliably take on Seismitoad and Kabutops as well. Outside of the weather matchup it does significantly less, but outspeeding relevant UU scarfers like Latias and Hydreigon while getting the OHKO on both (Lati after rocks, otherwise 50-50) is something not many pokemon can do. A guaranteed OHKO on Scizor never hurt anyone either. Noivern is by no means amazing, but due to the lack of offensive answers to weather I felt like it was deserving of a mention.

 

[ORAS-Mega]

I didn't say it worked well or not. I'm just throwing out ideas on what potential counter play is, that many people have talked about but I've seen nobody done actual serious work on.

That doesn't mean it's over, pif solved the problem, stall is saved. What if Venusaur can run EQ? What if Houndoom and Venusaur simply overwhelm Nihilego with Healing Wish support? What if Sawsbuck is actually a hidden stallbreaker?

We haven't even begun to scratch the surface of these very relevant questions because nobody even proposed a stall team yet. If you don't care about defensive teams or for whatever reason you can't be bothered to try and understand weather's impact on them, fine, that's a 100% legit perspective. If you want to try and understand the metagame before making a decision, then I don't see how you can come to a conclusion before putting an effort in resolving these issues.

Anyways you do you, there's no wrong way to approach your opinion, as long as you're happy with it.

From what I saw and faced, nihi worked well against sun. This may just be a sun counter team but the team is: Alo, Quag, Blissey, Nihi, Gligar, Altaria-Mega.

I don't know the sets and I'm not sharing the replay considering that it's not my team. And like i said, it may only be a sun counter team. It does lose to EQ venu and sawsbuck but that's the other team I saw on ladder. At the end of the day, match up wise, stall will struggle against sun. I have not played enough rain to see how stall handles it.

Nihilego was a suggestion, not the super fix to defensive teams. It does work really well against non eq venu and has wish support of its own so it can't easily be overwhelmed by venu. The protect stalls sun and I'm pretty sure the one i faced was standard timid evs (sptak boosting) with maybe some bulk. So sludge wave was still doing 50+. Again, against LO/eq venu or sawsbuck, this and the rest of the team loses so it goes to show that (at least for me) a solid defensive counter play that can handle both weathers without becoming unviable has yet to be found. At the end that's just my opinion.

 

[fratelli bc]

What if:
unban drought and drizzle
ban swift swim and chlorophyll

Then all the weathers will live in peace in UU.

Fire nation might seem problematic because Fire Lord Houndoom, but it's too easy to wear down without it's generals (chlorophyll).

 

[Yottas]

What if:
unban drought and drizzle
ban swift swim and chlorophyll

Then all the weathers will live in peace in UU.

Fire nation might seem problematic because Fire Lord Houndoom, but it's too easy to wear down without it's generals (chlorophyll).

Maybe...
The Question is: Is it worth it to ban two abilities that aren't broken without Drizzle/Drought just to unban the latter? What would we gain and what would we lose?

We would lose:
SwiftSwimmer/Chlorophyll-Teams (often a Pokemon with Prankster and RainDance/SunnyDay and the "Weather-Sweeper")
We would gain:
Easier access to Rain/HeavySun that's important for centain abilities (Dry Skin, Flower Gift, Hydration, Leaf Guard, Rain Dish, Solar Power) and buff/nerf to water- and fire-attacks (Crawdaunt, Feralilgatr, Primarina, Salazzle, any Steel-Type-Pokemon come to mind)

Maybe I've forgotten something, but imo we would gain more than we would lose and that's why I quite like this idea.
Question then: Is Drizzle/Drought without SwiftSwim/Chlorophyll op?
I don't think so, because the Swift Swimmer are the Pokemon that are broken in Rain (combined with Drizzle) and while Pokemon like Crawdaunt with its booster Crabhammer and Aquajet do massive damage, they have still the same problem they had before (e.g. Crawdaunt is slow and weak to fight priority); and it's the same in Sun -> the Chlorophyll-User are op (I would even say Chlorophyll-Pokemon>Swift Swim-Pokemon), with Chlorophyl gone, only Houndoom-Mega could be a problem but from what I've seen it is easily revenge-killed and it didn't feel all that broken (although very good).

Tldr.: I don't think Drizzle/Drought would be broken without SwiftSwim/Chlorophyll and I think it would be worth it.

 

[LLH]

Idk how doable this is but I'd like to see rain w/o kingdra. In case of a drizzle ban, is there a possibility of this happening?

 

[sporeisniceaf59]

so from what i understand mega houndoom got banned cus someone mentioned how op he could be if he was under sun which basically banned him AND sun for everyone? (and all other tiers under uu?). in my opinion mega doom is good(but he isnt that gud as in when he was banned he only got to bl) but he is just one of those mons who needs weather support to be good ,so i guess this is a popular opinion that houndoom should have stayed while sun left.another point that has been brought up is that sun gives less advantages to its mons as opposed to drizzle which is true.so,what iam trying to say is that what if we only let one weather on and banned the other one? letting sun be in the tier but banning drizzle or vice versa. also having damp rock and heat rock as the items that support this,maybe banning them would nerf the weather teams abit or render them basically useless your opinons).either way iam enjoying uu being basically hoenn right now

 

[OneSmogonCopyer]

I'd love to see weathers being here but without damp rick and heat rock. I play monotype sometimes and having damp rock banned makes it harder for rain to be executed properly and I have to account for every rain turn possible as if the rain is gone, it is hard to utilize swift swim Mons. Especially since there is only 5 turns (or 4 turns since switching costs a turn) to make it work and have to bring out my rain setter again and if there is hazards up, it will be harder to keep this up throughout the battle which would feel less frustrating to deal with drizzle and swift swim mons

 

[WMAR]

Since i have basically started this discussion i would love to give my thoughts after playing with these and man how wrong i was for thinking how healthy these abilities. I will talk about these individually but i would love to say i still am having fun with the amount of diversity of sweepers i use. Lemme point out no Reqs yet

Drizzle
With only one legal abeit inconsistent rain setter, Drizzle is less broken especially if you remove Kingdra, which i wanna prevent banning it since without rain its not broken and personally rather ban Rain rather than Kingdra. Imma show off this fun team i crafted with rain proving it can be fun to build these not being forced to use the main rain.



Not very good but very fun and i plan on building more, im more of a fun builder than a serious builder, using obscure mons and pray to win. Drizzle is diverse but i have to say Ban due to the unhealthyness of the primary sweepers Kingdra and Kabutops. I am upset that this diversity will be gone but at least the unhealthyness would be gone when we vote it away

Drought
Bit iffy, also fun to build and an underrated threat of Charizard, not good but holy hell how hard it hits, i have more teams for Drought here are some teams i made with sun





The last team has to be my favorite since its just Ninetales, remembering Pearls Ninetales team which is just Drought to boost Firium. Mega Houndoom is the biggest culprit and if we unban Drought pls ban Mega Houndoom, as it shouldnt be in the same tier as Drought.

Conclusion and Purpose of this post
The purpose is to encourage people to use diverse team and also tell my thoughts about this. It wouldnt be justice if something that i enjoyed i wouldnt talk about how i felt. Now this is what i think should happen. BAN DRIZZLE and BAN Drought unless Mega Houndoom is banned and not Drought.

Thank you for reading my post and enjoy some teams i made

 

[Chandelure83]

In short...ban Drizzle, keep Drought, or keep both. I personally believe both weathers are viable for UU as UU is a more hostile environment than the now mainly stable OU and UU allows for experiemntation, for starters...but here are some points I want to address if weather were banned.

First: Houndoom cannot have its mega stone if better mega options exist in OU so if you want mega houndoom, you have to give up on Zard Y. Arguably better drought users are out there, ones that can hold heat rock...but Zard Y packs a menacing 417 attack without modest nature and keeps its sp. attack at said level when not in sun, also having a ground immunity and bulky enough to tank a couple water attacks, viably run roost in sun. While boasting an incredible sp. attack stat, Mega houndoom is a frail glass cannon, and cannot stand up to multiple U-turns going around. Scarf lando eats it for breakfast. At best I might imagine Mega houndoom pulling a late game sweep once all mons 362 speed and faster are dead, but that almost never happens. Chansey tanks hits for days, heatran destroys you, forcing you to pull HP ground if you want to sack a move slot for it, and almost any bulky mon can eat a hit to t-wave you. Houndoom cannot survive in OU and becomes worthless.

Second: Rain is an extremely viable option in OU as you have pelipper followed immediately by switching into Pert, or slow U-turn into pert, where as no drought user gains U-turn as a knowledgable move and becomes mind games when you switch into your specific mon. On top of this, a side note...fun fact, if you will...the only Chlorophyll mon in OU is Tangrowth...for christ sakes.

Third: Following the heels of the last point...all Chlorophyll users are frail in general, and all who naturally get chlorophyll are doubling their speed at the cost of getting absolutely murdered by opposing fire type attacks in the sun. The bulkiest options, Tangrowth, Venusaur and Tropius are obliterated by fire type attacks in response. Risk vs reward, right? Wrong. Rain doesn't have to deal with this...PERIOD!!! You have to deal with 100% accurate thunders and hurricanes, but rain beats sun clean through the gate. Kingdra, which usually runs Z or specs, absolutely no bulk required? Well according to the damage calc:

+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Kingdra in Rain: 108-127 (36.9 - 43.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

I'm not even joking, the Kingdra in this situation has literally the same EV spread as the "OU specs" option, having 4 HP EVs on complete random...and Mega houndoom, the biggest culprit going throughout this whole forum, cannot touch it. "Oh well, just predict the switch or just use dark pulse"

Okay...

+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Klefki: 237-280 (74.7 - 88.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Blissey: 388-457 (54.3 - 64%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Blissey in Rain: 265-313 (37.1 - 43.8%) -- 99.8% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 192+ SpD Assault Vest Muk-Alola in Rain: 210-247 (50.8 - 59.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 248 HP / 192+ SpD Assault Vest Muk-Alola: 153-180 (37 - 43.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

And that's if you even get up to +6 in the first place. The odds you get that far without a swift swim mon taking you out first is closer to zero, and getting one nasty plot up, if at all, is hard to do on its own in UU. OU has even bigger threats!!!

+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Eviolite Chansey: 282-333 (40.1 - 47.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Eviolite Chansey in Rain: 193-228 (27.4 - 32.4%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Unaware Clefable: 82-97 (20.8 - 24.6%) -- possible 6HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Unaware Clefable in Rain: 112-133 (28.4 - 33.7%) -- 97.7% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

Heatran may die to a +6 Dark pulse but is completely immune to flamethrower and sludge bomb variants, and absolutely eats solar beam for days, even non bulky variants could take hundreds.

Fourth: Drizzle in UU is already broken as it is. You have two top contenders already in Kingdra and Ludicolo who abuse their weather, gain an additional fire downgrade and monstrously boost their own water stabs...but you also have the non water types? Mega manectric thunder, Moltres Hurricane, Swift swim or Water absorb Seismitoad, Muk as stated above can abuse the rain to either absorb strong hits from Mega houndoom, Venusaur, Lilligant and be a bulky pivot by scaring them off or hard doubling to a swift swim mon. All drought users are specially based (or prioritize it) and get eaten by Alolan muk who can pursuit trap or knock off heat rock.

Fifth: Non speed nature variants of Venusaur and Shiftry and all options slower than those cap out at 518 speed maximum, where as scarf Infernape with speed nature (granted this is one scenario), outspeeds by one point at 519. So not even accounting for all the other things I have to worry about, now I have to give up damage potential for speed just to make sure I don't get taken out by a flare blitz monkey. "Oh well, just switch into Houndoom" Okay well one, if this guy is smart he would know to do that and close combat/focus blast... Or if I mega evolved previously...

252 Atk Infernape Flare Blitz vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Houndoom-Mega: 92-108 (31.6 - 37.1%) -- 84.6% chance to 3HKO
So I'm resisting this attack, he is not attack nature invested, and he's still chunking 1/3 of my life in a hit I couldn't avoid.

If he's special? Oh god:

252 SpA Infernape Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Houndoom-Mega in Sun: 126-148 (43.2 - 50.8%) -- 98.4% chance to 2HKO after Solar Power damage

Houndoom is not a tank and was not designed to be one, so this argument is INVALID.

Sixth: On top of sun practically getting invalidated in OU by fellow weather...Hawlucha exists. Most run Acrobatics, most run SD or sub, but almost all can counter all chlorophyll users even without speed nature. Lucha cannot do the same to most rain mons like Pert and Kingdra, Ludicolo can live an HJK, and on the off chance said rain team is running Pex? Lucha is done. Sun cannot say the same thing. If Lucha were to set up unburden immediately, the only mon who might stand a chance is Max defence torkoal...but...

+2 252+ Atk Hawlucha High Jump Kick vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Torkoal: 210-247 (61 - 71.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Let alone if torkoal survives that long to begin with, to live at full HP and tank the first hit so he can potentially burn Lucha in return. Lucha is actually the scariest option possible as, after unburden, not a single mon can outspeed. Most sun teams don't run an unaware mon on them and cannot take a hit anyways.

Seventh: By banning rain, which is the most natural counter to sun regardless, Sun doesn't just get a free run and it's unfair to consider these two weathers on par with one another. If anything, you're essentially banning one because they're similar to another, and that's not what should be done. Sun also has a potentially easy time against teams with no synnergy, and stall provided you setup, as UU doesn't have fearsome unaware clef and chansey. But on top of all of that, you also have weathers in the lower tiers coming to UU. Mega abomasnow, Vanilluxe, Aurorus, Hippowdon, Gigalith all have hail and sand stream respectively...plus you have insane options like cloud nine mons, Golduck, Lickilicky, Drampa, freaking Altaria before mega evolution? Why are people not even mentioning this!?! They exist too, and especially Abomasnow and Hippowdon get used a lot in UU so why are we just acting like we're only talking about sun and rain here?

Eighth: Banning sun means being forced to run it in OU. OU invalidates sun with two mons: Pelipper and Tyranitar. You could bring two drought users, more specifically Torkoal with heat rock, and either Ninetails with heat rock or Zard Y, but at the end of the day you have a very limited movepool of options to take into OU that are viable. You have a strong hitting Venusaur and Lilligant, and they somewhat threaten Pelipper or Tyranitar, but Heatran invalidates both options without HP ground. Run HP ground? You're now unable to touch Scizor before he obliterates you with U-turn. You are forced to bring a bare minimum of a rapid spinning torkoal or a defog option in Shiftry but Shiftry is nowhere near bulky enough to survive before defog can be used. Tornadus Therian can easily run rain dance if required but let alone, usually runs flyinium Z or rocky helmet. Helmet variants invalidate the use of physical chlorophyll mons unless we're talking tangrowth, but without a swords dance, Tangrowth cannot do half to Tornadus even with rock slide, adamant nature, and Torn can just take it out. Z options are close to nil but the top tier options are Venusaur/Victreebel poisonium, Moltres Flyinium/Firium, or considering you're now fearing sp. defensive heatran you might want to run Fightinium on Sawsbuck for all I know, but then you're fearing Landorus Therian cuz he'll just eat it up.

Do NOT ban Drought, please. This ability may seem powerful, but you're not considering the after effects and even the current environment we're in as of now. By banning sun to OU, you have too many threats that exist that eat up sun teams as it is, and better rain options are also in OU. UU is a harsh environment that doesn't easily allow in Sun to begin with and climbing the ladder with with it past the 1400's is harsh as it is. I can easily go and get more replays for you, but the summary is that I cannot consistently get past the 1400's with sun, merely the cusp of 1500 is the highest I have ever achieved with it even with good predictions on my side.

Ban Drizzle, the options vary too heavily and can easily work in OU as well as UU as they are. I've gone into the bullet points detailing where rain is superior and I believe it should be restricted to OU. By banning it, you are not just "giving" the meta over to UU as there are hundreds of options that counter sun to begin with, let alone sticky web lowering any and all chances of success if torkoal is dead and cannot rapid spin in time.

I will post more replays if asked. I still stand by the side of just banning rain, and do not wish for sun to be banned.

 

[Sickist]

In short...ban Drizzle, keep Drought, or keep both. I personally believe both weathers are viable for UU as UU is a more hostile environment than the now mainly stable OU and UU allows for experiemntation, for starters...but here are some points I want to address if weather were banned.

First: Houndoom cannot have its mega stone if better mega options exist in OU so if you want mega houndoom, you have to give up on Zard Y. Arguably better drought users are out there, ones that can hold heat rock...but Zard Y packs a menacing 417 attack without modest nature and keeps its sp. attack at said level when not in sun, also having a ground immunity and bulky enough to tank a couple water attacks, viably run roost in sun. While boasting an incredible sp. attack stat, Mega houndoom is a frail glass cannon, and cannot stand up to multiple U-turns going around. Scarf lando eats it for breakfast. At best I might imagine Mega houndoom pulling a late game sweep once all mons 362 speed and faster are dead, but that almost never happens. Chansey tanks hits for days, heatran destroys you, forcing you to pull HP ground if you want to sack a move slot for it, and almost any bulky mon can eat a hit to t-wave you. Houndoom cannot survive in OU and becomes worthless.

Second: Rain is an extremely viable option in OU as you have pelipper followed immediately by switching into Pert, or slow U-turn into pert, where as no drought user gains U-turn as a knowledgable move and becomes mind games when you switch into your specific mon. On top of this, a side note...fun fact, if you will...the only Chlorophyll mon in OU is Tangrowth...for christ sakes.

Third: Following the heels of the last point...all Chlorophyll users are frail in general, and all who naturally get chlorophyll are doubling their speed at the cost of getting absolutely murdered by opposing fire type attacks in the sun. The bulkiest options, Tangrowth, Venusaur and Tropius are obliterated by fire type attacks in response. Risk vs reward, right? Wrong. Rain doesn't have to deal with this...PERIOD!!! You have to deal with 100% accurate thunders and hurricanes, but rain beats sun clean through the gate. Kingdra, which usually runs Z or specs, absolutely no bulk required? Well according to the damage calc:

+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Kingdra in Rain: 108-127 (36.9 - 43.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

I'm not even joking, the Kingdra in this situation has literally the same EV spread as the "OU specs" option, having 4 HP EVs on complete random...and Mega houndoom, the biggest culprit going throughout this whole forum, cannot touch it. "Oh well, just predict the switch or just use dark pulse"

Okay...

+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Klefki: 237-280 (74.7 - 88.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Blissey: 388-457 (54.3 - 64%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Blissey in Rain: 265-313 (37.1 - 43.8%) -- 99.8% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 192+ SpD Assault Vest Muk-Alola in Rain: 210-247 (50.8 - 59.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 248 HP / 192+ SpD Assault Vest Muk-Alola: 153-180 (37 - 43.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

And that's if you even get up to +6 in the first place. The odds you get that far without a swift swim mon taking you out first is closer to zero, and getting one nasty plot up, if at all, is hard to do on its own in UU. OU has even bigger threats!!!

+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Eviolite Chansey: 282-333 (40.1 - 47.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Eviolite Chansey in Rain: 193-228 (27.4 - 32.4%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Unaware Clefable: 82-97 (20.8 - 24.6%) -- possible 6HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Unaware Clefable in Rain: 112-133 (28.4 - 33.7%) -- 97.7% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

Heatran may die to a +6 Dark pulse but is completely immune to flamethrower and sludge bomb variants, and absolutely eats solar beam for days, even non bulky variants could take hundreds.

Fourth: Drizzle in UU is already broken as it is. You have two top contenders already in Kingdra and Ludicolo who abuse their weather, gain an additional fire downgrade and monstrously boost their own water stabs...but you also have the non water types? Mega manectric thunder, Moltres Hurricane, Swift swim or Water absorb Seismitoad, Muk as stated above can abuse the rain to either absorb strong hits from Mega houndoom, Venusaur, Lilligant and be a bulky pivot by scaring them off or hard doubling to a swift swim mon. All drought users are specially based (or prioritize it) and get eaten by Alolan muk who can pursuit trap or knock off heat rock.

Fifth: Non speed nature variants of Venusaur and Shiftry and all options slower than those cap out at 518 speed maximum, where as scarf Infernape with speed nature (granted this is one scenario), outspeeds by one point at 519. So not even accounting for all the other things I have to worry about, now I have to give up damage potential for speed just to make sure I don't get taken out by a flare blitz monkey. "Oh well, just switch into Houndoom" Okay well one, if this guy is smart he would know to do that and close combat/focus blast... Or if I mega evolved previously...

252 Atk Infernape Flare Blitz vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Houndoom-Mega: 92-108 (31.6 - 37.1%) -- 84.6% chance to 3HKO
So I'm resisting this attack, he is not attack nature invested, and he's still chunking 1/3 of my life in a hit I couldn't avoid.

If he's special? Oh god:

252 SpA Infernape Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Houndoom-Mega in Sun: 126-148 (43.2 - 50.8%) -- 98.4% chance to 2HKO after Solar Power damage

Houndoom is not a tank and was not designed to be one, so this argument is INVALID.

Sixth: On top of sun practically getting invalidated in OU by fellow weather...Hawlucha exists. Most run Acrobatics, most run SD or sub, but almost all can counter all chlorophyll users even without speed nature. Lucha cannot do the same to most rain mons like Pert and Kingdra, Ludicolo can live an HJK, and on the off chance said rain team is running Pex? Lucha is done. Sun cannot say the same thing. If Lucha were to set up unburden immediately, the only mon who might stand a chance is Max defence torkoal...but...

+2 252+ Atk Hawlucha High Jump Kick vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Torkoal: 210-247 (61 - 71.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Let alone if torkoal survives that long to begin with, to live at full HP and tank the first hit so he can potentially burn Lucha in return. Lucha is actually the scariest option possible as, after unburden, not a single mon can outspeed. Most sun teams don't run an unaware mon on them and cannot take a hit anyways.

Seventh: By banning rain, which is the most natural counter to sun regardless, Sun doesn't just get a free run and it's unfair to consider these two weathers on par with one another. If anything, you're essentially banning one because they're similar to another, and that's not what should be done. Sun also has a potentially easy time against teams with no synnergy, and stall provided you setup, as UU doesn't have fearsome unaware clef and chansey. But on top of all of that, you also have weathers in the lower tiers coming to UU. Mega abomasnow, Vanilluxe, Aurorus, Hippowdon, Gigalith all have hail and sand stream respectively...plus you have insane options like cloud nine mons, Golduck, Lickilicky, Drampa, freaking Altaria before mega evolution? Why are people not even mentioning this!?! They exist too, and especially Abomasnow and Hippowdon get used a lot in UU so why are we just acting like we're only talking about sun and rain here?

Eighth: Banning sun means being forced to run it in OU. OU invalidates sun with two mons: Pelipper and Tyranitar. You could bring two drought users, more specifically Torkoal with heat rock, and either Ninetails with heat rock or Zard Y, but at the end of the day you have a very limited movepool of options to take into OU that are viable. You have a strong hitting Venusaur and Lilligant, and they somewhat threaten Pelipper or Tyranitar, but Heatran invalidates both options without HP ground. Run HP ground? You're now unable to touch Scizor before he obliterates you with U-turn. You are forced to bring a bare minimum of a rapid spinning torkoal or a defog option in Shiftry but Shiftry is nowhere near bulky enough to survive before defog can be used. Tornadus Therian can easily run rain dance if required but let alone, usually runs flyinium Z or rocky helmet. Helmet variants invalidate the use of physical chlorophyll mons unless we're talking tangrowth, but without a swords dance, Tangrowth cannot do half to Tornadus even with rock slide, adamant nature, and Torn can just take it out. Z options are close to nil but the top tier options are Venusaur/Victreebel poisonium, Moltres Flyinium/Firium, or considering you're now fearing sp. defensive heatran you might want to run Fightinium on Sawsbuck for all I know, but then you're fearing Landorus Therian cuz he'll just eat it up.

Do NOT ban Drought, please. This ability may seem powerful, but you're not considering the after effects and even the current environment we're in as of now. By banning sun to OU, you have too many threats that exist that eat up sun teams as it is, and better rain options are also in OU. UU is a harsh environment that doesn't easily allow in Sun to begin with and climbing the ladder with with it past the 1400's is harsh as it is. I can easily go and get more replays for you, but the summary is that I cannot consistently get past the 1400's with sun, merely the cusp of 1500 is the highest I have ever achieved with it even with good predictions on my side.

Ban Drizzle, the options vary too heavily and can easily work in OU as well as UU as they are. I've gone into the bullet points detailing where rain is superior and I believe it should be restricted to OU. By banning it, you are not just "giving" the meta over to UU as there are hundreds of options that counter sun to begin with, let alone sticky web lowering any and all chances of success if torkoal is dead and cannot rapid spin in time.

I will post more replays if asked. I still stand by the side of just banning rain, and do not wish for sun to be banned.

Our tiering decisions don't matter to OU, nor do they effect OU. What we are trying to decide here is weather as a whole is a good addition to UU or is it not. Also like Stoward said when he sniped me, try recalcing those Mega Houndoom calcs. It just about 2HKO's or OHKO's everything at +2 under sun.

 

[Moutemoute]

In short...ban Drizzle, keep Drought, or keep both. I personally believe both weathers are viable for UU as UU is a more hostile environment than the now mainly stable OU and UU allows for experiemntation, for starters...but here are some points I want to address if weather were banned.

First: Houndoom cannot have its mega stone if better mega options exist in OU so if you want mega houndoom, you have to give up on Zard Y. Arguably better drought users are out there, ones that can hold heat rock...but Zard Y packs a menacing 417 attack without modest nature and keeps its sp. attack at said level when not in sun, also having a ground immunity and bulky enough to tank a couple water attacks, viably run roost in sun. While boasting an incredible sp. attack stat, Mega houndoom is a frail glass cannon, and cannot stand up to multiple U-turns going around. Scarf lando eats it for breakfast. At best I might imagine Mega houndoom pulling a late game sweep once all mons 362 speed and faster are dead, but that almost never happens. Chansey tanks hits for days, heatran destroys you, forcing you to pull HP ground if you want to sack a move slot for it, and almost any bulky mon can eat a hit to t-wave you. Houndoom cannot survive in OU and becomes worthless.

Second: Rain is an extremely viable option in OU as you have pelipper followed immediately by switching into Pert, or slow U-turn into pert, where as no drought user gains U-turn as a knowledgable move and becomes mind games when you switch into your specific mon. On top of this, a side note...fun fact, if you will...the only Chlorophyll mon in OU is Tangrowth...for christ sakes.

Third: Following the heels of the last point...all Chlorophyll users are frail in general, and all who naturally get chlorophyll are doubling their speed at the cost of getting absolutely murdered by opposing fire type attacks in the sun. The bulkiest options, Tangrowth, Venusaur and Tropius are obliterated by fire type attacks in response. Risk vs reward, right? Wrong. Rain doesn't have to deal with this...PERIOD!!! You have to deal with 100% accurate thunders and hurricanes, but rain beats sun clean through the gate. Kingdra, which usually runs Z or specs, absolutely no bulk required? Well according to the damage calc:

+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Kingdra in Rain: 108-127 (36.9 - 43.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

I'm not even joking, the Kingdra in this situation has literally the same EV spread as the "OU specs" option, having 4 HP EVs on complete random...and Mega houndoom, the biggest culprit going throughout this whole forum, cannot touch it. "Oh well, just predict the switch or just use dark pulse"

Okay...

+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Klefki: 237-280 (74.7 - 88.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Blissey: 388-457 (54.3 - 64%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Blissey in Rain: 265-313 (37.1 - 43.8%) -- 99.8% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 192+ SpD Assault Vest Muk-Alola in Rain: 210-247 (50.8 - 59.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 248 HP / 192+ SpD Assault Vest Muk-Alola: 153-180 (37 - 43.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

And that's if you even get up to +6 in the first place. The odds you get that far without a swift swim mon taking you out first is closer to zero, and getting one nasty plot up, if at all, is hard to do on its own in UU. OU has even bigger threats!!!

+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Eviolite Chansey: 282-333 (40.1 - 47.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Eviolite Chansey in Rain: 193-228 (27.4 - 32.4%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Dark Pulse vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Unaware Clefable: 82-97 (20.8 - 24.6%) -- possible 6HKO after Leftovers recovery
+6 252+ SpA Houndoom-Mega Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Unaware Clefable in Rain: 112-133 (28.4 - 33.7%) -- 97.7% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery

Heatran may die to a +6 Dark pulse but is completely immune to flamethrower and sludge bomb variants, and absolutely eats solar beam for days, even non bulky variants could take hundreds.

Fourth: Drizzle in UU is already broken as it is. You have two top contenders already in Kingdra and Ludicolo who abuse their weather, gain an additional fire downgrade and monstrously boost their own water stabs...but you also have the non water types? Mega manectric thunder, Moltres Hurricane, Swift swim or Water absorb Seismitoad, Muk as stated above can abuse the rain to either absorb strong hits from Mega houndoom, Venusaur, Lilligant and be a bulky pivot by scaring them off or hard doubling to a swift swim mon. All drought users are specially based (or prioritize it) and get eaten by Alolan muk who can pursuit trap or knock off heat rock.

Fifth: Non speed nature variants of Venusaur and Shiftry and all options slower than those cap out at 518 speed maximum, where as scarf Infernape with speed nature (granted this is one scenario), outspeeds by one point at 519. So not even accounting for all the other things I have to worry about, now I have to give up damage potential for speed just to make sure I don't get taken out by a flare blitz monkey. "Oh well, just switch into Houndoom" Okay well one, if this guy is smart he would know to do that and close combat/focus blast... Or if I mega evolved previously...

252 Atk Infernape Flare Blitz vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Houndoom-Mega: 92-108 (31.6 - 37.1%) -- 84.6% chance to 3HKO
So I'm resisting this attack, he is not attack nature invested, and he's still chunking 1/3 of my life in a hit I couldn't avoid.

If he's special? Oh god:

252 SpA Infernape Fire Blast vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Houndoom-Mega in Sun: 126-148 (43.2 - 50.8%) -- 98.4% chance to 2HKO after Solar Power damage

Houndoom is not a tank and was not designed to be one, so this argument is INVALID.

Sixth: On top of sun practically getting invalidated in OU by fellow weather...Hawlucha exists. Most run Acrobatics, most run SD or sub, but almost all can counter all chlorophyll users even without speed nature. Lucha cannot do the same to most rain mons like Pert and Kingdra, Ludicolo can live an HJK, and on the off chance said rain team is running Pex? Lucha is done. Sun cannot say the same thing. If Lucha were to set up unburden immediately, the only mon who might stand a chance is Max defence torkoal...but...

+2 252+ Atk Hawlucha High Jump Kick vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Torkoal: 210-247 (61 - 71.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Let alone if torkoal survives that long to begin with, to live at full HP and tank the first hit so he can potentially burn Lucha in return. Lucha is actually the scariest option possible as, after unburden, not a single mon can outspeed. Most sun teams don't run an unaware mon on them and cannot take a hit anyways.

Seventh: By banning rain, which is the most natural counter to sun regardless, Sun doesn't just get a free run and it's unfair to consider these two weathers on par with one another. If anything, you're essentially banning one because they're similar to another, and that's not what should be done. Sun also has a potentially easy time against teams with no synnergy, and stall provided you setup, as UU doesn't have fearsome unaware clef and chansey. But on top of all of that, you also have weathers in the lower tiers coming to UU. Mega abomasnow, Vanilluxe, Aurorus, Hippowdon, Gigalith all have hail and sand stream respectively...plus you have insane options like cloud nine mons, Golduck, Lickilicky, Drampa, freaking Altaria before mega evolution? Why are people not even mentioning this!?! They exist too, and especially Abomasnow and Hippowdon get used a lot in UU so why are we just acting like we're only talking about sun and rain here?

Eighth: Banning sun means being forced to run it in OU. OU invalidates sun with two mons: Pelipper and Tyranitar. You could bring two drought users, more specifically Torkoal with heat rock, and either Ninetails with heat rock or Zard Y, but at the end of the day you have a very limited movepool of options to take into OU that are viable. You have a strong hitting Venusaur and Lilligant, and they somewhat threaten Pelipper or Tyranitar, but Heatran invalidates both options without HP ground. Run HP ground? You're now unable to touch Scizor before he obliterates you with U-turn. You are forced to bring a bare minimum of a rapid spinning torkoal or a defog option in Shiftry but Shiftry is nowhere near bulky enough to survive before defog can be used. Tornadus Therian can easily run rain dance if required but let alone, usually runs flyinium Z or rocky helmet. Helmet variants invalidate the use of physical chlorophyll mons unless we're talking tangrowth, but without a swords dance, Tangrowth cannot do half to Tornadus even with rock slide, adamant nature, and Torn can just take it out. Z options are close to nil but the top tier options are Venusaur/Victreebel poisonium, Moltres Flyinium/Firium, or considering you're now fearing sp. defensive heatran you might want to run Fightinium on Sawsbuck for all I know, but then you're fearing Landorus Therian cuz he'll just eat it up.

Do NOT ban Drought, please. This ability may seem powerful, but you're not considering the after effects and even the current environment we're in as of now. By banning sun to OU, you have too many threats that exist that eat up sun teams as it is, and better rain options are also in OU. UU is a harsh environment that doesn't easily allow in Sun to begin with and climbing the ladder with with it past the 1400's is harsh as it is. I can easily go and get more replays for you, but the summary is that I cannot consistently get past the 1400's with sun, merely the cusp of 1500 is the highest I have ever achieved with it even with good predictions on my side.

Ban Drizzle, the options vary too heavily and can easily work in OU as well as UU as they are. I've gone into the bullet points detailing where rain is superior and I believe it should be restricted to OU. By banning it, you are not just "giving" the meta over to UU as there are hundreds of options that counter sun to begin with, let alone sticky web lowering any and all chances of success if torkoal is dead and cannot rapid spin in time.

I will post more replays if asked. I still stand by the side of just banning rain, and do not wish for sun to be banned.

Why the fuck are you talking about freaking Overused when it's an Underused suspect test. It doesn't make any sense.. Did you really played Underused to say that both weathers are fine for the tier

 

[Chandelure83]

Why the fuck are you talking about freaking Overused when it's an Underused suspect test. It doesn't make any sense.. Did you really played Underused to say that both weathers are fine for the tier

Our tiering decisions don't matter to OU, nor do they effect OU. What we are trying to decide here is weather as a whole is a good addition to UU or is it not. Also like Stoward said when he sniped me, try recalcing those Mega Houndoom calcs. It just about 2HKO's or OHKO's everything at +2 under sun.

Good to know, obviously I know mega houndoom under sun is a beast, but it doesn't matter. Thousands of opportunities to replace weather with rain, hail, sandstorm or etc are available during any fight and it makes zero sense to just keep talking about it as if sun is up the entire damn battle, sickist. I am not hearing legitimate complaints about this pokemon as I continually hear people say he can OhKO and 2HKO this and that under sun...but this is not only situational but also irrational to just assume the best for this mon at all times.

Moutemoute, I did play UU, and I played both weathers. I will gather some new replays for you if you ask for it. THE POINT of my post, however, is that OU is a harsh tier that doesn't allow in other weathers other than rain, absolutely trashing sun. Banning Drought and Drizzle from UU is an irrational decision that makes the abilities worthless and therefore should also be considered when banning it from freaking UU, as the usage as well as the pokemon that go along with it will significantly drop, potentially to whole new tiers down. I am 100% aware that OU doesn't have suspect test for either weather as OU is perfectly fine running the same 8 or 9 pokemon on every damn team and mindlessly winning, UU is not as simple as you could have hundreds of potential teams that differ ever slightly and drastically change the battle just because a strat is pulled that you cannot counter. I am talking about OU because you're talking about banning the weather to only be used in OU, Moute...did you not even think about this? Did this thought not even occur to you? Don't mindlessly ban things if you know going forth they are essentially sent to die in other tiers. Sun is worthless in OU and a gimmick at its best, easily countered with hundreds of potential stall, rain or trick room teams and Sun cannot keep up...again...something I addressed already. By default, Drought needs to have at least a shot in UU.

And something I also addressed is that UU isn't as "weak to sun and rain" as it's being blown out of proportion to be. It is not a one sided battle and never has been. I've played a total of 52 battles with sun so far (2 today, 54) and while I can get wins on lower ladder, it's not "mindless battles" that get me the victory going into 1300's and up. I lose more than not if I just play mindlessly, and even with good reads, I cannot predict all the strats possible and I usually stick to about 1400's because people are freaking good. There's no two ways about it...

So again...I talk about OU only because that's where the damn tier is going to be where Drought is legal, and this is both unfair and downright idiotic, in my opinion.

 

[Sickist]

OU is a harsh tier that doesn't allow in other weathers other than rain, absolutely trashing sun. Banning Drought and Drizzle from UU is an irrational decision that makes the abilities worthless and therefore should also be considered when banning it from freaking UU, as the usage as well as the pokemon that go along with it will significantly drop, potentially to whole new tiers down. I am 100% aware that OU doesn't have suspect test for either weather as OU is perfectly fine running the same 8 or 9 pokemon on every damn team and mindlessly winning, UU is not as simple as you could have hundreds of potential teams that differ ever slightly and drastically change the battle just because a strat is pulled that you cannot counter. I am talking about OU because you're talking about banning the weather to only be used in OU, Moute...did you not even think about this? Did this thought not even occur to you? Don't mindlessly ban things if you know going forth they are essentially sent to die in other tiers. Sun is worthless in OU and a gimmick at its best, easily countered with hundreds of potential stall, rain or trick room teams and Sun cannot keep up...again...something I addressed already. By default, Drought needs to have at least a shot in UU.

So again...I talk about OU only because that's where the damn tier is going to be where Drought is legal, and this is both unfair and downright idiotic, in my opinion.

Sucks for OU and Drought I guess, but let me quote myself again to see if you get the point this time:

Our tiering decisions don't matter to OU, nor do they effect OU. What we are trying to decide here is weather as a whole is a good addition to UU or is it not.

We don't care about OU or Drought going to OU or Drizzle going to OU. It's irrelevant and a bad choice to free something arguably broken in one tier just because it doesn't do so well in another. That goes against everything we stand for here in our tiering policies and would make suspect tests completely worthless.

 

[LordHelix]

Good to know, obviously I know mega houndoom under sun is a beast, but it doesn't matter. Thousands of opportunities to replace weather with rain, hail, sandstorm or etc are available during any fight and it makes zero sense to just keep talking about it as if sun is up the entire damn battle, sickist. I am not hearing legitimate complaints about this pokemon as I continually hear people say he can OhKO and 2HKO this and that under sun...but this is not only situational but also irrational to just assume the best for this mon at all times.

Moutemoute, I did play UU, and I played both weathers. I will gather some new replays for you if you ask for it. THE POINT of my post, however, is that OU is a harsh tier that doesn't allow in other weathers other than rain, absolutely trashing sun. Banning Drought and Drizzle from UU is an irrational decision that makes the abilities worthless and therefore should also be considered when banning it from freaking UU, as the usage as well as the pokemon that go along with it will significantly drop, potentially to whole new tiers down. I am 100% aware that OU doesn't have suspect test for either weather as OU is perfectly fine running the same 8 or 9 pokemon on every damn team and mindlessly winning, UU is not as simple as you could have hundreds of potential teams that differ ever slightly and drastically change the battle just because a strat is pulled that you cannot counter. I am talking about OU because you're talking about banning the weather to only be used in OU, Moute...did you not even think about this? Did this thought not even occur to you? Don't mindlessly ban things if you know going forth they are essentially sent to die in other tiers. Sun is worthless in OU and a gimmick at its best, easily countered with hundreds of potential stall, rain or trick room teams and Sun cannot keep up...again...something I addressed already. By default, Drought needs to have at least a shot in UU.

And something I also addressed is that UU isn't as "weak to sun and rain" as it's being blown out of proportion to be. It is not a one sided battle and never has been. I've played a total of 52 battles with sun so far (2 today, 54) and while I can get wins on lower ladder, it's not "mindless battles" that get me the victory going into 1300's and up. I lose more than not if I just play mindlessly, and even with good reads, I cannot predict all the strats possible and I usually stick to about 1400's because people are freaking good. There's no two ways about it...

So again...I talk about OU only because that's where the damn tier is going to be where Drought is legal, and this is both unfair and downright idiotic, in my opinion.

Man you know if sun gets banned its still gonna be usable in tiers below if the tier hasnt banned them right? RU for example allows sun while UU has banned it ages ago

Second, who cares whether sun usage will die forever if its banned. If its broken here it should go thats it, how it does in tiers above does not matter.

Its like saying "pls unban reshiram in ou its pretty trash in ubers pls it wont be usable anywhere else"

 

[Moutemoute]

Moutemoute, I did play UU, and I played both weathers. I will gather some new replays for you if you ask for it. THE POINT of my post, however, is that OU is a harsh tier that doesn't allow in other weathers other than rain, absolutely trashing sun. Banning Drought and Drizzle from UU is an irrational decision that makes the abilities worthless and therefore should also be considered when banning it from freaking UU, as the usage as well as the pokemon that go along with it will significantly drop, potentially to whole new tiers down. I am 100% aware that OU doesn't have suspect test for either weather as OU is perfectly fine running the same 8 or 9 pokemon on every damn team and mindlessly winning, UU is not as simple as you could have hundreds of potential teams that differ ever slightly and drastically change the battle just because a strat is pulled that you cannot counter. I am talking about OU because you're talking about banning the weather to only be used in OU, Moute...did you not even think about this? Did this thought not even occur to you? Don't mindlessly ban things if you know going forth they are essentially sent to die in other tiers. Sun is worthless in OU and a gimmick at its best, easily countered with hundreds of potential stall, rain or trick room teams and Sun cannot keep up...again...something I addressed already. By default, Drought needs to have at least a shot in UU.

You're making a mistake. Actually I don't give a fuck if Drought is useless outside of the Underused. I just think about how it will impact the tier and that's the only point players should think about. LordHelix is 100% right with its Reshiram's example. Also as he said, we just talking about a UU tiering decision which will not impact tiers bellow it.

 

[esche]

yo i think he gets it no need to get so worked up lmao

so

just finished reqs so ill drop some thoughts

first of all i had a blast laddering for this suspect and while i perfectly understand peoples concerns and misgivings about both drizzle and drought i dont see how one possibly couldnt have fun with the new styles and all these new techs to explore. the meta on ladder is very fast paced and theres crazy stuff around every corner which overall mad this a super fun experience imo.

unbanning drizzle has shaken up the meta in a way thats unparalleled in the history of sm uu. i say drizzle and not drought bc i havent encountered a single sun team during my 45 suspect games. rain is obviously dominating this suspect ladder (i used it too) but still sun seems to be getting more attention than rain in this thread (see the discussion around defensive countermeasures to sun and ppl freaking out about the team christo dropped). anyway im well aware that just bc it isnt used doesnt mean it isnt broke but theres at least some indication that if it isnt being used sun is less user-friendly than rain as a playstyle requiring more skill and better building to pull off successfully. unfortunately 45 games werent enough propel me up to the 1700s so idk maybe ppl are spamming sun up there? bc all of this sort of culminates in the question whether sth is indeed broken if it requires a competent user. anyway while i dont have any idea on what to do with sun (yet) rain has been both overwhelming and underwhelming to me. overwhelming in the sense that even though i used a shitty 5 minute team throughout the whole suspect i ended up cleaning with kingdra and seismitoad in most games pretty comfortably after hazards went up. politoed was obviously the key for this as it replaced the need for mediocre weather setter slots entirely and is a pretty decent mon by itself too sporting the coveted encore for example. i didnt even use damp rock on it bc i valued the recovery from leftovers more and i still had plenty of opportunities to cycle in the swift swimmers and wreck havoc. the higher on the ladder i climbed however the better the countermeasures to rain (and obv the playing too) got: the better the opposing team was equipped to deal with rain the harder of a time i had - as it should be. by the time i had entered the 1500s most of the games i was pretty much forced to play aggresively all the time, the games were often close calls and of pretty high quality overall. i of course cannot speak for whether the incorporation of building choices against weather on my opponents ends where restricting them on a level that made it unbearably difficult to account for other threats. ill go ahead and say however that from laddering i can report that there are quality countermeasures to rain of both defensive (as a deterrent weather setter hippo was real popular, doub and chess for kabu, and most importantly ofc good water resists such as amoonguss, jellicent, empo, bulky prima, slowking, fat toad, mola etc etc) and offensive nature (off the top of my head some are m-alt, scarf lati, trace garde, croaker, mega shark, mega bronchitis, mimikyu, klefki and, in particular, suicune) all of which obv dont merely serve the purpose of checking rain and can hold their weight in other match-ups as well. some of these are obv less viable than others but i dont regard intensively preparing and teching for a new meta fundamentally unhealthy. so rain was underwhelming in the sense that i expected it to be completely overkill in this meta but then it fell short of that expectation and i was forced to actually think (what a travesty can u believe it) and plan my games. dont get me wrong though it still was pretty powerful.

ultimately ill likely vote to keep both weathers locked away still bc even though it was fun while it lasted the previous meta was perfectly healthy with enough room for innovation imo and theres no need to meddle with that by introducing two borderline broken playstyles

oh and heres the wacky team i used


https://pokepast.es/46c0d7de4b84bbb4

peace

 

[Tobs]

Finally decided to get reqs

I usually don't say anything about the suspect bc i don't feel like i contribute to the convo with anything. However, this time i feel like the vote will/can affect the UU meta much more. I agree completely with Esche, rain was both overwhelming and underwhelming. It was overwhelming bc of the sheer power the weather brought, when i played some games on rain(shitty team and i will openly admit that i suck at playing weather lmao) i found that just clicking water move with specs kingdra did at least 50% to the most common used mons in the tier. The underwhelming part of rain was that most players i faced on ladder both lower and "higher" ladder didn't really play that well and i thought rain would just murder everything in its path but it didn't.

I ended up meeting some variations of Christo's sun team on ladder while getting reqs. Sun was stronger than i thought, i felt that the combo of venusaur and mega doom put a lot of pressure on the opponent and that it was hard to wall them both. If mega doom gets off a flame charge and/or a nasty plot it claims at least one kill and even if it doesn't it still does a shit ton of damage.

So i am probably gonna vote to keep rain banned and keep drought banned as well, but if we ban mega doom then im gonna vote to unban drought.

Also sry to whoever decided to read this bc i suck at writing stuff ahaha

 

[Jaajgko]

I’ve got to be completely honest and say I don’t really understand the rationale behind sun getting a runoff vote but rain not. This would seem to indicate that it’s only Houndoom that’s problematic on these builds when there has been numerous people voicing opinions that Venusaur is incredibly difficult to deal with aswell, perhaps even more so due to its Speed severely limiting options to revenge kill it whereas Houndoom for all it’s brute initial power, has to Flame Charge to boost it’s speed beyond that of typical speed control in this tier. Between being rocks weak and Solar Power chip building up it’s also a lot more likely to be in a position where it’s getting picked off.

I also think it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that rain would be significantly easier to manage without the presence of Kingdra in particular. This thing in rain is simply outrageous, it’s got nearly the brute force of Houndoom (albeit choice locked which is obviously a big detriment) along with the incredible speed. While I might hate it more than most personally, I don’t think anyone can doubt it’s prowess when it’s on literally every rain team and to use anything else would feel decidedly suboptimal. Sun has more chance of potentially staying without Houndoom (still highly unlikely I think) and I would say the same for rain without Kingdra so why is a run off vote for Drizzle where we ban this but not the ability not an option if the above one for Drought is? I consider both broken when in their favoured weathers so it seems a lot more consistent to me to hold a run off for both if it’s something that’s considered a necessary inclusion.

On the whole I’d just rather not have the run-off vote at all, I get the argument to preserve playstyles where we can but this seems a pretty weak justification to me when the weather based abilities are quite clearly the enabler for everything that’s giving people a headache at current. I’m probably being a bit pedantic here (not unusual) but yeah I just don’t really get it. Is it literally just because we banned both Houndoom and Drought once so now we get to choose which we think is the right way to go? If so I really don’t think that warrants special treatment for Drought...

Sun without Venusaur is still very strong, as Specs / NP Ninetales + Mega Houndoom makes for a decent fire spam core and benefits from Houndoom being almost uncheckable. Whereas without Houndoom it's a bit hard to run Heat Rock on your Ninetales so you either sacrifice a team slot for 8 turns of sun or your Venu is going to have only 5 turns of sun (in the best scenario) which makes it more easier to stall out the Sun turns. And as Hogg explained, there were some issues before regarding sun and houndoom so that's another reason for it.
I don't think the same can be said for rain as there are a lot of rain sweepers, namely Kingdra, Seismitoad, Kabutops, Qwilfish, Crawdaunt and Primarina. So removing Kingdra isn't solving the issue because it can be replaced by Primarina like this : https://pokepast.es/e9420397efc9460b
And Primarina is definitely relevant as a Rain sweeper since even though it doesn't get any boost from Swift Swim it is still hard to kill and the Rain boost helps making some 3HKOs into 2HKOs :
252+ SpA Choice Specs Primarina Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 180+ SpD Empoleon in Rain: 165-195 (44.3 - 52.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock, 1 layer of Spikes, and Leftovers recovery (if Empo defogs it will take chip anw)
252+ SpA Choice Specs Primarina Sparkling Aria vs. 252 HP / 80 SpD Amoonguss in Rain: 195-229 (45.1 - 53%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock
252+ SpA Choice Specs Primarina Sparkling Aria vs. 252 HP / 36 SpD Slowbro in Rain: 204-241 (51.7 - 61.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Choice Specs Primarina Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Blissey in Rain: 336-396 (47 - 55.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Choice Specs Primarina Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Tentacruel in Rain: 186-219 (51 - 60.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Black Sludge recovery (rain dish could def be a thing tho)
252+ SpA Choice Specs Primarina Sparkling Aria vs. 40 HP / 216 SpD Alomomola in Rain: 233-275 (48.4 - 57.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Choice Specs Primarina Hydro Pump vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Roserade in Rain: 207-245 (79.3 - 93.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock and 1 layer of Spikes

And you also have great coverage options in Psychic and Moonblast if hazards aren't up or you don't want to risk the Hpump miss.

I think the Houndoom vote makes a lot of sense and it is great to see the suggestions from the thread directly going into the tiering decisions. I still think that Mega-Houndoom is better for UU as it helps teambuilding providing lots of utility whereas Ninetales is a bit more shakier and will just add another strong breaker to the already large list.

 

[Wigglytuff]

yo i think he gets it no need to get so worked up lmao

idk man, chandy still seems pretty defensive as of their last post lol

----

I got reqs fairly early on in the test (i didn't think 4 days into a test would ever be considered "early on" but here we are) but withheld judgment because there was no doubt in my mind that my experience playing 45 battles on Days 3 and 4 would be vastly different from User X's experience playing 45 battles on Day 11 (esche noted that he never ran into Sun, which is a far cry from the 60/40 Rain/Sun that I experienced), which will also be slightly less vastly different from the Days 17 and 18 of the test because of the next god awful Swift Swim mon Rain dredges up from PU. I'm far from a good UU player, so I'm not exactly in a position to advise anyone anything, but I think the people that posted their thoughts in the first week should keep actively playing the ladder and reevaluate their thoughts towards the end of the test.

My thoughts right now are that I certainly don't want both Drizzle and Drought in the meta - imagine trying to play weatherless :pyuk: - and neither would be balanced out of the box if, by some act of God, people vote to unban one of them. Sun has that very difficult combination of Houndoom + Venusaur, where it's very possible to break one but that sometimes leaves your team weakened to the point where the other will be able to comfortably sweep. Combined, they're a disastrous duo and when I used Christo's Sun team, I only lost against Rain teams. Weatherless simply didn't stand a chance against the overwhelming power of Solar Boosted Houndoom and +2 Venusaur.

Rain is less potent but vastly more versatile. It's possible to check the top 2-3 Rain sweepers (Kingdra Kabutops and a tie between Seismitoad/Tornadus) without going out of your way to find some obscure ZU mon, but then, as more experienced weather users begin to experiment with mons like Qwilfish, Ludicolo, etc, it becomes difficult to reliably have an answer to everything. That's to be expected - there will always be a certain degree of matchup in battles, as there should be - but the addition of Rain threats to the general UU threatlist would really constrain teambuilding. (I'm actually of the opinion that Rain is more broken than Sun, but regardless I don't want a UU with either of them).

Planning to vote Ban for both playstyles and hoping to get back to good old UU in 5 days.

 

[Hugin]

I’ve seen a couple people bring up Trace Gardevoir as a weather-counter. Let me just say, as someone who was really excited to use that: don’t bother. You have to use Scarf because of all the sweepers at base 85 Speed/Houndoom, but while Scarf Gard is a pretty good weather counter if played well, it’s a terrible Scarfer. You get outsped by Mega Bee and Mega Aerodactyl, and a lot of the stuff that sweeps with one DD or whatever is base 90 or higher. I tested it early on, and it makes the weather matchup great, but non-weather can roll you.

 

[sporeisniceaf59]

yo if there was a drizzle team if u had a blissey u can just send that in and let it use sunny day.that woulrd prob be counterplay enough imo