Because I know I've been ninja'd (thank you new replies bar) I'll just point out one thing.
I honestly don't understand what this is even trying to say, but I'll try to asses it. Running something like Rain Dance is a lot different than running Hidden Power Ice or Grass. Hidden Power is used on Raikou because what the heck else are you going to use on SubCM or something? Hidden Power Ice is used alongside Thunderbolt because it grants nearly perfect neutral coverage, Hidden Power Grass is used in order to hit some checks harder but still do damage on the Hidden Power Ice stuff.
Rapid Spin is a lot different than a random weather move too because Rapid Spin is helpful for supporting your teammates that are weak to Stealth Rock or get quickly worn down. Rapid Spin is not only used for dealing with spikestacking teams.
Rain Dance or Sunny Day accomplishes absolutely nothing on most Pokemon and it is a moveslot that is dead weight otherwise, or can actually cripple your other teammates. Assuming that running Hidden Power on a Pokemon that already has almost no movepool or running Rapid Spin is akin to running a weather move on anything else makes little to no sense.
Also nothing on a Rain team is going to indefinitely attempt to stall you out with Substitute + Protect. The only Rain Dish user I can think of is Ludicolo, but here's the thing - Rain doesn't last forever unlike hail. Rain also isn't remotely common, as Silentverse mentioned.
@ "what the heck else are you going to use" - oh, I don't know, maybe Aura Sphere, Extrasensory, something that hits more than 2 things. Furthermore, HP Grass does absolutely nothing to Gligar/Flygon unless you're at like +6, which just doesn't happen, lol.
My point with this is that
coverage moves are meant to cover a team or a specific pokemon's weaknesses by surprising their counters. This doesn't just have to apply to attacking things, it can also apply to getting rid of hail.
Rapid Spin was an example of a move used to counter a playstyle in the metagame. It is undeniably true that certain otherwise-shitty pokemon have been foisted into their respective tiers purely because they have this one move. Just like Hail allows certain things to be completely shut down, so do hazards, and therefore Moltres and friends require a spinner, just as a HO team having trouble with Hail requires a weather changer.
Rain Dance and Sunny Day are in fact not completely useless. You fit them in on your team as you see fit. Say you have a Scarf Emboar already. Add sunny day somewhere, and all of a sudden you have double stab flare blitzes running around. Say you're running Entei already, that gets a boost too. You can't honestly tell me that the average RU Team doesn't run any water or fire moves, lol.
Finally, stop using usage as an argument for this, it's completely fucking hypocritical given that
you guys spent like a page and a half talking about dewgong.
Uhh, not really? Walrein's Surf 3HKOes Escavalier the majority of the time after rocks. If it's banded, you can even pp stall that out of whatever move it's using in desperate situations (Iron Head, Megahorn) as well lol, which forces it out and means you just severely crippled one of your opponent's best answers to hail. Not to mention that the stuff that actually beats Roar Walrein with a Substitute up are few and far between. Furthermore, if Walrein is still somehow forced out, that isn't even that much of a problem when you consider just how ridiculously easy it is for it to get up a Substitute, even with Stealth Rock up, simply due to its absurd bulk.
Except...like Rapid Spin, using a weather move doesn't necessarily mean you auto-win vs hail either. Snover itself is not great, yeah, but it's perfectly capable of surviving a decent amount of time throughout the match if you're actually willing to not sac it (I generally don't even like saccing Snover first turns anymore, since it's actually super useful as death fodder or providing a somewhat decent switch-in to Rotom-C). Furthermore, like spikestacking offense when hazards are spun away, hail is not completely useless with its weather gone. Hail only tends to run one or two actual abusers of hail; the rest of the team are regular Pokemon like Slowking / Golurk / Escavalier capable of checking things that give Hail issues. Because of this, hail can actually still survive decently well without perma hail on these Pokemon (and it's not like stuff like Rotom-F, Glaceon, and Walrein are entirely useless without hail either), even though it's obviously not ideal.
Uhh, just so you know, Rain is hardly prevalent in RU; it has like, 1% usage at best rofl. Imo, the thing that makes hail (and especially stuff like Walrein) broken is that you can prepare for it well enough, but unless you go through almost ridiculous lengths to ensure you're not hail weak (like using 6 mons that give Walrein no chance of set up, or running 4 Pokemon resistant to Blizzard), you're still going to find that you're going to have issues against someone who actually knows how to play Hail, simply because, like stated earlier in this thread, if Walrein sets up, you're probably going to lose at least a Pokemon in trying to beat it, probably more in fact due to just how strong it is. In a similar vein, hail offense is equally strong, because the stuff that can actually take Blizzards repeatedly (Slowking, Cryogonal) are so easy to remove with a little support. And that's really the thing about hail; people ARE running counters to it, and they ARE trying to deal with it, but it's still incredibly difficult to deal with as a whole, simply because of those two aforementioned factors. There's no denying that hail has some big flaws, such as having to use Snover and having a lot of weaknesses to certain types, but they're not overly difficult to deal with with good teambuilding. And once well-built, it becomes devastatingly powerful between its residual damage, 100% accurate STAB Blizzards, and ability to outstall huge portions of the metagame between Substitute + Protect, and that's why so many people are calling for a ban of some sort.
Okay, I'll address this point by point as well.
1. I'll be the first to admit that walrein has few counters, but they do exist. In fact, I think you'll find that the counters of Walrein that can break its sub and do damage to it past its sub are much more prevalent than Walrein itself. Your point against Esca is completely true though, I didn't think about that.
2. Contrary to what you might think, running a weather move can often nerf hail quite a bit. Walrein tends to be rather mid-late game, and Snover is usually one of the first things to go. Even if it doesn't die first turn, you even said you like using it as death fodder. Because of this, and because of the fact no one is going to predict that you're running Rain Dance on your Moltres (or whatever), they won't have a chance to set it back up. And regarding what you said about hail being good outside of hail, I have a couple of things to say. First of all, we're talking about hail threats here. By running Rain/Sun (or sandstorm lol), you are nerfing the pokes that do rely on hail, not every poke. ( I was wrong to say it's insta-win, yeah.)
Furthermore, I'd like to point to OU, a tier
with lots of auto-weather. Even with this auto-weather intact, people still run manual weather on one poke even if their team isn't a rain/sun/sand team persay, purely because it fucks with them once their weather starter is down. Unless they pull a Sandstorm Larvitar out of their ass, Dedicated Sand, Sun, and Rain teams can be completely screwed over.
3. Finally, the last paragraph. You can't argue usage, as I said in my last post. It just doesn't apply at all in this context. And furthermore, I'm not saying that hail isn't powerful, hail isn't annoying, and hail doesn't deal residual damage. All that I'm trying to stress is that this entire thread is talking about how good hail is and basically not at all about how it's possible to deal with it.
On that note, I'd like to suggest one more thing that can completely screw over Walrein as well as hail in general, and this would be Toxic Spikes. Even if the hail team is running a grounded poison (qwilfish most likely, now that nqueen is gone), it puts so much pressure on that Qwilfish to stay alive. Furthermore, Qwilfish has to come in and clear the spikes before any of the important members of the team (other than perhaps Rotom-F) can come in without fear of getting completely nerfed. If you can keep your Toxic Spiker til late game and keep up a lot of momentum, then Hail becomes much less of a hassle to deal with.
