Announcement SV UU Suspect Process Round 7 - It's Raining Men

[Lily]

​

Hi! I'm your weather girl, and have I got news for you. Get ready all you lonely ladderers, and leave those umbrellas at home...

Usage is rising, viability's getting low. According to all sources, the ladder's the place to go! Cause tonight for the first time, just about ten o'clock, for the first time in history, rain's on the chopping block!

If you've laddered at all in the past month or so, you've probably faced rain. A lot of rain, in fact; between the dynamic trio of the pelican, Zapdos, and Barraskewda, the UU ladder has been infested with a lot of Water-type damage. Rain has been a hated playstyle for a long time thanks to its cheesy nature and linear gameplan; oftentimes it's not really an "outplay" thing, you either beat rain or you lose to it on matchup, and that can be undesirable. With the advent of defensive Tera that's less true than in prior generations, but it's still noteworthy. Rain can beat down a lot of teams. We have good Water resists, but they aren't necessarily super easy to stack, and they can easily be overwhelmed by the onslaught of Barraskewda's Flip Turn or Zapdos's STAB moves outside of its already-powerful Weather Ball. Without using Slowking or Hydrapple, it can often feel like a losing game into this Flip Turn spam without much recourse. Despite the immense power of rain, though, we do have other barriers that stop it from being as powerful as it would otherwise be.

God bless Mother TTar, she's a single woman too. She took off to UU and she did what she to do. She brought every Exca, she whipped up the sand, so that each and every player could... beat the pelican? Idk how lyricists do this. The prominence of sand helps to keep rain in check, with Pelipper often finding itself struggling to keep its rain set up against Tyranitar; this can be even more difficult if it is paired with Slowking, whose Chilly Reception causes the playstyle a whole host of issues. Other strong Water-resists like Toxapex help greatly in the fight against rain as well, and niche Pokemon like Gastrodon and Salamence have found themselves popping up to deal with the playstyle, though the latter can easily be argued as a problem byproduct of the playstyle's influence.

All silly writing excercises aside, it's clear that rain has a massive influence on the tier, and while council was split on whether or not it's actually worth acting on, we ultimately came to the conclusion that the playerbase deserves the chance to decide the fate of Pelipper - and as such, rain as a whole - for themselves.

--

The voting requirements are a minimum GXE of 78 with at least 50 games played. In addition, you may play 1 less game for every 0.2 GXE you have above 78 GXE, down to a minimum of 30 games at a GXE of 82. As always, needing more than 50 games to 78 GXE is fine.

minimum games needed

GXE	minimum games
78	50
78.2	49
78.4	48
78.6	47
78.8	46
79	45
79.2	44
79.4	43
79.6	42
79.8	41
80	40
80.2	39
80.4	38
80.6	37
80.8	36
81	35
81.2	34
81.4	33
81.6	32
81.8	31
82	30

The test will operate as always. There will be no suspect ladder. Instead, the standard UU ladder will remain open. Those who wish to participate in this suspect test will instead use a fresh, suspect-specific alt. All games must be played on the Pokemon Showdown! UU ladder on a fresh alt with the following format: "UU7RA (Nick)." For example, I might register the alt UU7RA Lily to ladder with. You must meet the listed format in order to qualify.

Participants will have until Sunday, May 12th at 7:00 PM GMT -4 to meet voting requirements and post in the Alt Identification Thread. PLEASE DO NOT POST YOUR CONFIRMED SUSPECT RESULTS HERE - there is a dedicated thread for identifying your suspect results. Happy laddering!

 

[Cawil Maxamad]

Excellent rhyming

 

[itzLapis]

uh oh

 

[Heatranator]

Rain is the game and it is not here to stay. It's everwhere and being a big old pain, I just wish that it would go away. I would never, ever let that happen again. I think that zapdos might need a little bit of a look though, but big oll pelli may be the better option at the end of the day.

(Jesus Lily, rhyming while talking about rain is difficult, honestly I'm impressed you did it for so long).

Rhymes aside, rain needs to go. I do think that zapdos is the bigger problem, as it forces a lot of teams into sticky situations. Dealing with barra, while difficult, isn't the worst thing in the world, but having zap pressure teams as much as it does alongside that is too much. However, this is if rain is too powerful, which it is. Although I have found ways around rain (lanturn gang rise up), I can admit that these are unconventional mons that I would otherwise not use. You basically need a water immunity on every team, not a few water resistances. This is because barra will flip turn all over your water resists and then still clean up later in the game. Zap I already talked about before, but ground types are the only switch ins to it, which are of course scared so much by the rest of the rain team. Gren and Keldeo, while less problematic, still put on the pressure and I have even seen some lesser used mons such as quaq and manaphy used on rain. Rain really can customise their playstyle and can force many otherwise bad mons to be used (gastrodon is not really a good mon), which can still be overwhelmed.
Idk if I will be able to get reqs, but this is a BAN for me.

 

[Catcus]

rain suspect lets go, Its time for it to go(rhyme is fun :) )

I think rain needs to go. Originally, I was somewhat hesitant at first, since Zapdos felt like the bigger issue and it was relatively new at the time, but its been a while and I'm tired. Rain was always gonna be great like it was in dlc 1, but now its just too much. Zapdos is basically the perfect partner for uu rain. almost everything that beat Barra loses to Zapdos, so all it does is flip turn into it on checks and keep up pressure. While that isn't completely broken on its own, It is when you take into account that it isn't on its own. Rain works well with so many mons that benefit from rain that it can beat threats to it anyways. you see so much on rain that it becomes a nightmare to prep for. Everytime I boot up uu, I pray that I don't see rain, because even if I prep for it, I might run into one of the 5 billion versions of rain that beats me anyways.
TLDR: Ban rain

 

[ThatOneApple]

Im gonna preface my opinion with this

Rain is not broken, but its presence has a very bad effect on the builder

Most teams end up constricted to running Hydrapple + slowking because its the easiest way to prep for rain defensively. Now this isnt to say that this core is bad, and it likely would still be used even if rain was gone, but the fact that you get shoehorned into into it so often is very exploitable. Many in the builder ive felt like i've been unable to be prepared for less common threats like okidogi or raikou because i find myself locked into running the same cores a lot. There other options for answering rain defensively such as storm drain gastrodon or toxapex, but pex is even easier to bully than slowking and is often bullied by a lot of the same stuff that bullies king, while gastro is kinda just bad in any mu that isnt rain and still manages to be shaky into rain at times.

This also only really goes over the effect of standard rain with peli barra zap drill apple filler. Rain has other options to mess around with. For example, if you put a floatzel over the barra for wave crash, you end up with funny calcs like this.

252+ Atk Choice Band Tera Water Floatzel Wave Crash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Slowking in Rain: 232-273 (58.8 - 69.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
(Nice max defense now check this out)
252+ Atk Choice Band Tera Water Floatzel Ice Spinner vs. 248 HP / 96 Def Hydrapple: 416-492 (100.2 - 118.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Of course you can run both of them together to have slowking scout and then pivot to apple, but all doing this does is further the point that teambuilding with rain present is kinda fucked. Not to mention i didnt even get into options like azu to bully the slow water resists or triple axel quaq for that real good wack shit.

Other workarounds

The obvious one is using water resistant teras to try and withstand a rain assault and fire back with smth like rhyperior. However this runs into the awkward issue of trying to bait the swift swimmer with something that isnt ohkod by flip but is ohkoed by liquid, as if both kill then its just gonna flip turn, and if neither kill its still gonna flip turn. Its also not exactly you get to automatically pick smth vs the rain team as its not like rain teams are defesively inept. Using the rhyp example, if barra flip turns on you as you tera dragon, they can just go to hydrapple to scare you off, and now your rhyp has to contend with both not being able to help dance around rain zap by drawing out weather balls, as well as the fact that it now the barra just uses you as flip fodder like everything else.

Out-offensing it is another option ive seen brought up, however this ends up requiring very specific positioning to prevent the swift swimmer from getting in and clicking a free flip/liquid/whatever depending on the situation. For example, one mon that is brought up as smth to out offense rain is latios, leading it as the rain leads pelliper and clicking a button. However as mentioned earlier, rain isnt exaclty defensively inept, and typically as drill and apple to help play around a situation like this (in this case, drill fends off the latios, and then the rain threats give latios a big pain getting back in). This makes it a lot harder than it looks for latios to click buttons in the rain mu. Kix can be a pain for rain, but requires a sack or for slowking to get in without getting pivoted on, and as mentioned earlier needing slowking this much is exploitable.

Another potential workaround is to outplay telegraphed moves, but to be completely honest playing against rain can be just as telegraphed as using it. Barra gets in and you have gastro as your answer, pretty obvious whats gonna happen here so the barra uses banded cc to clock the gastro, so to me the whole "outplaying" idea is kinda crappy bc rain can do the outplaying too.

Messing with the weather

Already went over slowking a good bit and both ninetales sucks so this is just gonna be the sand guys


Really doesnt like switching in to the attacks from rain, even zap as that still stings a good bit and getting volted on is just the worst, so it runs into the same issue kix does of wanting sacks or to be pivoted in. Its not really a BAD workaround but it isnt exactly the greatest considering its janky mu into all the rain mons (also in my opinion this mon is kinda on a down turn due to the rise of coba while also being kinda bad in the event a kommo shows up, but kommo discussion is for another day so ill just leave it there.)


Significantly better at messing with rain if zap comes in given its elec immunity and the sand changing weather ball to rock, however its not exactly easy to fit as it easily lets in stuff like latios and apple. Its not a BAD mon but isnt exactly that great or splashable either and its overall usage reflects this, as its overall quite slow paced compared to a lot of other stuff and ends up being a tad exploitable as a result.

The Centralization of Rain

One could argue that rain brings a centralizing force to the tier by limiting the amount of random wack mons show up and try to gimp games. However, id have to disagree that its a good force here, as i personally find rain to make the issue of random wack mons worse. Rain in of itself is not its own mon like other centralizing forces such as zapdos or excadrill, It isnt smth i can put on a team to help blanket check a bunch of stuff because rain in of itself is the team. You cannot prep for stuff WITH rain by putting it on a team in the same vain as zapdos or excadrill, there is only prepping FOR rain. To me, this is a sign of a negative centralizing force.

In terms of prepping FOR it, I view it similarly to garganacl, its smth that if super prepped for, sure it kinda just flops. But if not super hyper prepped for it can very easily find a way to eat you, either by exploiting the common workarounds to it like apple + king stuff or by it just being sent into an opponent who was less prepped for it bc they wanted to be safer into the overall meta. Of course its not to the same degree as garg, apple king and pex arent bad like reun and covert cloak were (However you could theoretically argue the counterplay to garg was actually more vast than rain due to cloak being an item but you get the idea). However i must repeat that being forced into the same stuff a lot is not a good thing.

One could say that people need to get more creative, but to be real that could be said for anything. Bulkier apple is a creative set for checking boulder, covert cloak (insert ghost here) is a creative way to beat garg, etc etc. Ofc theres a limit to what is generally acceptible here, such as a PU shitmon like palaosand being used for boulder, but uh... storm drain gastro isnt that much of an improvement to me and here we are usin it so... yeah.

Conclusion

I believe rain should be banned, its overall just a negative centralizing force that limits what people can do in the builder by jamming up defensive cores with its presence. To me, it forces them to be built in a way that ends up being pretty easily exploited by less common set up threats as by attempting to stray away from the norm, your mu into rain can be compromised pretty easily. Not to mention the fact that rain can also mix itself up to mess with the usual workarounds. Overall rain is a bad presence in the tier, and i will be voting ban.

 

[HydreigonTheChild]

Rain is not broken... im going to comment this right now because commenting later is asking to never see rain a single time during my reqs run.

Most teams end up constricted to running Hydrapple + slowking because its the easiest way to prep for rain defensively. Now this isnt to say that this core is bad, and it likely would still be used even if rain was gone, but the fact that you get shoehorned into into it so often is very exploitable. Many in the builder ive felt like i've been unable to be prepared for less common threats like okidogi or raikou because i find myself locked into running the same cores a lot.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sv-uu-sample-teams.3720278/page-2

we can see from the samples that you can often use hydrapple and slowking but not many do.. you have cores like kommo-o + slowking, hydrapple + lokix, hydrapple + rotom-w, weather disruption + hydrapple/slowking... etc

Slowking is a very big thing that rain kinda doesnt like... chilly reception is annoying for rain and often can just be a pain in the ass esp if you liquidation into it as it chilly receptions out and just brings in smth else... pelliper cant infinitely sustain itself and using roost is expolitable by foes like zapdos, slowking using chilly reception, hydrapple, rotom-w, etc.

But if not super hyper prepped for it can very easily find a way to eat you, either by exploiting the common workarounds to it like apple + king stuff or by it just being sent into an opponent who was less prepped for it bc they wanted to be safer into the overall meta.

we can say the same thing about other things that you try to soft check like for ex. specs latios, greninja, lokix ... it is very hard to be ultra safe into them without sacrificing things in other compartments but you can get away with soft checking them to make sure they dont get the free turns to go ham.

For ex. most sample teams deal with greninja by making sure it isnt coming in for free and if you have tera in the pocket you can take it on and make sure it isnt 6-0ing a team or isnt getting that nasty battle bond activation

To me, it forces them to be built in a way that ends up being pretty easily exploited by less common set up threats as by attempting to stray away from the norm, your mu into rain can be compromised pretty easily

i think its strong... but its not broken, most teams are ample prepped for it by default and you arent gonna dominate teams that easily esp with band ttar, chilly slowking, rotom-w, hydrapple, lokix, and smth like azu really can give rain a tough time.

I dont feel the same strain compared to chomp, iron hands, garg, iron boulder, etc

 

[ThatOneApple]

kommo-o + slowking, hydrapple + lokix, hydrapple + rotom-w, weather disruption + hydrapple/slowking... etc

Kommo is a pretty iffy answer to rain, like sure if it gets in on barra it can be mildy annoying but its not exactly like rain isnt prepped for it. Most rains have zapdos and hydrapple to help force tera/beat it down respectively. Ofc kommo can be a jank set and get a win off that but being honest thats just the nature of kommo (and again, this is a topic for another day).

Washer also just isnt good into rain, lack of regen and worse overall bulk just means it only switches in once even if barra doesnt tera

252+ Atk Choice Band Barraskewda Liquidation vs. 252 HP / 168+ Def Rotom-Wash in Rain: 122-144 (40.1 - 47.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

And after a flip turn, its both in liquid 2hko rang and gets forced out by smth else. Also washer as a whole just isnt that great due to drill being the most common ground and typically running mold breaker, the rise of Hydrapple, and overall competition from other waters and zapdos.

Lokix + Hydrapple dont't really go together without smth else to glue them as apple doesnt have a way to pivot kix in and kix doesnt draw in much for apple to abuse other than cobalion. Odds are you're just gonna throw a king or torn here to try and form a double regen and double pivot core bc kix and apple dont really stick together on their own.

Weather disruption + hydapple/slowking is alright ig but imo feels kinda jank to have to do, and can lead to teams being kinda slow and easy to punish as no sand setter is fast (and as mentioned earlier, both ninetales suck).

Amother thing is that even if slowking gets in on a liquid, it has to hope for no defense drop, as if the defense drop happens and it isnt paired with a hydrapple, thats a free kill for the fish. Slowking + apple is the safest way to play around the swift swimmer bc even if king gets a defense drop, apple can back it up. The same safety doesnt rlly apply to teams using kommo or latios as a second water resist (i think kommo can BARELY live 2 tera water liquids in rain but imagine you get dropped again lol, and again thats pretty shaky and as mentioned rain tends to be prepped for kommo).

we can say the same thing about other things that you try to soft check like for ex. specs latios, greninja, lokix ... it is very hard to be ultra safe into them without sacrificing things in other compartments but you can get away with soft checking them to make sure they dont get the free turns to go ham.

I agree that these things can be a bit scary and that you can have bad matchups, but unlike rain these things can apply nice things for your team while also helping limit bad matchups. As stated in my initial post, rain cannot help a team, as it is the team itself. If my team needs a breaker, specs latios can work, if i need speed control, kix is pretty nice, but i cannot just add pelipper-barraskewda rider on my team or smth to give myself a breaker/speed control. This is why i believe rain is just a negative force in the tier, it does not expand building options while also constricting them like drill, zap, latios, kix, etc, rain only constricts.

Also as for gren, being honest the threat lorb bond stuff just feels overblown, ends up killing itself far faster than it gets kills usually due to it not being that strong initially in tandem with lorb putting it in range of everything. I think specs is prob scarier as its more initially threatening and doesnt die after attacking like twice, both protean and bond can work here but idk which is better bc ive yet to give gren a good try, i might tho bc it seems neat.

i think its strong... but its not broken, most teams are ample prepped for it by default and you arent gonna dominate teams that easily esp with band ttar, chilly slowking, rotom-w, hydrapple, lokix, and smth like azu really can give rain a tough time.

The first thing i said is that rain isnt broken, the issue with it was never that it was broken, just that it has a bad effect on building. Prepping for the usual rain stuff tends to lead to common cores being spammed and subsequently exploited, or to use smth you rlly wouldnt want to use otherwise like volcanion or storm drain gastro. The fact that rain itself can mix its options up also doesnt help matters.

Overall i get the sentiment behind trying to mix up options to work around rain, but imo you always either end up very shaky into rain while trying to explore different options that make you less scared of less common threats, or end up worse into the overall meta because what you make ends up being too dedicated to beating rain.

 

[Liz Angeles]

hated rain at first but tbh it's not that hard to deal with once you understand how to play against it when you don't have "c team" picks, i don't think anyone would argue that it hasn't had a centralising effect on the meta however it's pretty much just brought the best mons further into prominence, you aren't forced into them but it's incredibly hard to punish regen cores, who'd have thought, which means that using other stuff inherently cuts down on your survivability and you're pressured to win much faster. this is to say that the unreliablity of less common structures is not the result of rain. but the result of regenerator outlasting all. ultimately i still think there are incredibly high reward structures out there that might not have the most solid rain mu of all time but can still beat it if you make a couple of clicks, and can really punish the sort of standard meta stuff, so the meta is in a good place as far as i'm concerned, and a rain ban just isn't really necessary, so i'll be voting dnb.

 

[mrsuslawl]

yea im voting ban, if my stupid ass can get to top 100 on ladder with it it's broken

real talk though if you can wallbreak with zapdos and something like specs lati you can just clean up with barraskewda in the end, it is so easy to bring in these mons because barraskewda can flip turn on so many things, mons like excadrill either sac themselves (free switch), switch out to hydrapple or slowking (again, free switch) or tera (forced a tera, now go sac something before bringing barraskewda yet again).

 

[HydreigonTheChild]

yea im voting ban, if my stupid ass can get to top 100 on ladder with it it's broken

real talk though if you can wallbreak with zapdos and something like specs lati you can just clean up with barraskewda in the end, it is so easy to bring in these mons because barraskewda can flip turn on so many things, mons like excadrill either sac themselves (free switch), switch out to hydrapple or slowking (again, free switch) or tera (forced a tera, now go sac something before bringing barraskewda yet again).

anybody can get to top 100 ... farming ladder and playing smth ladder is weak against isnt really smth.

Barra flip turn is spammable but so is stalling rain turns... if i pivot in slowking on flip turn and u go zapdos and i go to smth else... that is turns gone, rain also doesnt have that many great MU's if the lead rain MU or it cant get rain up safely right away without risking mons. I feel train isnt that strong and ur overestimating the pressure of barra, its good but its not "lol this is a win win for me with no downsides"

often times rian is a HO playstyle which means that you are trying to get as much out of the turns as possible... if for ex. you lead rotom-w into pelliper that is alr pretty darn good for you and you are in a pretty good position. Like if they pivot from pelliper -> hydrapple you know what you can do from there? volt switch! you can volt switch out and bring in smth like torn-t, zapdos, latios, etc

 

[Heatranator]

anybody can get to top 100 ... farming ladder and playing smth ladder is weak against isnt really smth.

Barra flip turn is spammable but so is stalling rain turns... if i pivot in slowking on flip turn and u go zapdos and i go to smth else... that is turns gone, rain also doesnt have that many great MU's if the lead rain MU or it cant get rain up safely right away without risking mons. I feel train isnt that strong and ur overestimating the pressure of barra, its good but its not "lol this is a win win for me with no downsides"

often times rian is a HO playstyle which means that you are trying to get as much out of the turns as possible... if for ex. you lead rotom-w into pelliper that is alr pretty darn good for you and you are in a pretty good position. Like if they pivot from pelliper -> hydrapple you know what you can do from there? volt switch! you can volt switch out and bring in smth like torn-t, zapdos, latios, etc

7 turns per cycle, you can usually get 2-3 cycles per game, is enough to deal with stalling turns. And let's say they flip turn on your slowking, and then switch to zapdos. So then zapdos gets a free turn to volt switch on something, but what if you switch into a ground type? Well, most ground types don't have recovery and zapdos can easily click hurricane, which every ground besides rhyperior doesn't like taking. And if the zap has weather ball you just have to give up. This is also not acknowleding the fact that you basically are required into using slowking in order to not crumble to the rain assault.
Rotom-w gets chipped by rain boosted flip turns constantly until it is in liquidation range. And what if the rain core preps for rotom-w and brings an excadrill to the match? Now your rotom-w is completely useless since it has to run away in fear of excadrill and something else has to take that big damage, unless you are running it with latios or another flying type, which is usuable and viable but constricting.
Well, I could just predict that and hydro pump? Sure, but what if pelliper stays in to eat the hydro pump and they switch to gren or keldeo to massively chip rotom-w? You are forcing yourself into many 50/50 situations that is not healthy. Rain has the necessary mons of Pelipper, Barraskweda (technically can replace with floatzel, but it is much worse) and Zapdos, but the three remaining slots are flexible. You can have any of greninja, keldeo, latios, excadrill, manaphy, crawdaunt, Scizor, Azumarill, Tornadus-T, Rotom-W, Sandy Shocks, Araquanid, Quaquaval, Thundurus-T and Volcanion.
Well, what about kommo-o?
252+ Atk Choice Band Barraskewda Flip Turn vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Kommo-o in Rain: 97-114 (33.3 - 39.1%) -- 13.3% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
Unless you are running defensive kommo-o, barra just enjoys chipping you until its time to press liquidation.
252+ Atk Choice Band Barraskewda Flip Turn vs. 252 HP / 120+ Def Kommo-o in Rain: 80-94 (22.5 - 26.5%) -- possible 5HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Choice Band Barraskewda Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 120+ Def Kommo-o: 141-166 (39.8 - 46.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
Defnesive kommo-o isn't even a great answer either, it can't stop barra flip turning on the switch and bringing in zap. And when it gets to 40% health (which isn't too unreasonable), it gets cc'd on.
Lokix has to be careful of static procs on zap, it is one of the better checks to rain, but it needs a safe switch, which only really slowking can provide.
Hydrapple is a good barra answer, until it gets flip turned on and zap comes in. Then you are at square one since all you've done is waste one rain turn and a dangerous zapdos threatening a massive hurricane which will do heavy chip to anything in the tier (exca gets 3hit ko'd by hurricane and rhyperior does not like getting a confusion).

You can technically deal with rain, that is fair. I have personally been using eerie impulse tera ghost lanturn to sit on rain, but unless you use a really bad mon that you would never otherwise use (like gastrodon) or use the combo of slowking+hydrapple, you will get decimated by rain. You can't diversify your team in order to deal with other threats without making yourself so much worse against rain. That is constricting, rain answers are there, but other teamstyles can abuse this fact and pack mons that decimate your team that was prepped for rain (play rough ogerpon eats the core for breakfast and sinistcha just sets up on both mons). It leads to a matchup fishy tier where its rock paper scissors of rain teams beats conventional teams, conventional teams but rain-prepped teams and rain-prepped teams but rain teams.

 

[Liz Angeles]

7 turns per cycle, you can usually get 2-3 cycles per game, is enough to deal with stalling turns. And let's say they flip turn on your slowking, and then switch to zapdos. So then zapdos gets a free turn to volt switch on something, but what if you switch into a ground type? Well, most ground types don't have recovery and zapdos can easily click hurricane, which every ground besides rhyperior doesn't like taking. And if the zap has weather ball you just have to give up. This is also not acknowleding the fact that you basically are required into using slowking in order to not crumble to the rain assault.
Rotom-w gets chipped by rain boosted flip turns constantly until it is in liquidation range. And what if the rain core preps for rotom-w and brings an excadrill to the match? Now your rotom-w is completely useless since it has to run away in fear of excadrill and something else has to take that big damage, unless you are running it with latios or another flying type, which is usuable and viable but constricting.
Well, I could just predict that and hydro pump? Sure, but what if pelliper stays in to eat the hydro pump and they switch to gren or keldeo to massively chip rotom-w? You are forcing yourself into many 50/50 situations that is not healthy. Rain has the necessary mons of Pelipper, Barraskweda (technically can replace with floatzel, but it is much worse) and Zapdos, but the three remaining slots are flexible. You can have any of greninja, keldeo, latios, excadrill, manaphy, crawdaunt, Scizor, Azumarill, Tornadus-T, Rotom-W, Sandy Shocks, Araquanid, Quaquaval, Thundurus-T and Volcanion.
Well, what about kommo-o?
252+ Atk Choice Band Barraskewda Flip Turn vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Kommo-o in Rain: 97-114 (33.3 - 39.1%) -- 13.3% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
Unless you are running defensive kommo-o, barra just enjoys chipping you until its time to press liquidation.
252+ Atk Choice Band Barraskewda Flip Turn vs. 252 HP / 120+ Def Kommo-o in Rain: 80-94 (22.5 - 26.5%) -- possible 5HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Choice Band Barraskewda Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 120+ Def Kommo-o: 141-166 (39.8 - 46.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
Defnesive kommo-o isn't even a great answer either, it can't stop barra flip turning on the switch and bringing in zap. And when it gets to 40% health (which isn't too unreasonable), it gets cc'd on.
Lokix has to be careful of static procs on zap, it is one of the better checks to rain, but it needs a safe switch, which only really slowking can provide.
Hydrapple is a good barra answer, until it gets flip turned on and zap comes in. Then you are at square one since all you've done is waste one rain turn and a dangerous zapdos threatening a massive hurricane which will do heavy chip to anything in the tier (exca gets 3hit ko'd by hurricane and rhyperior does not like getting a confusion).

You can technically deal with rain, that is fair. I have personally been using eerie impulse tera ghost lanturn to sit on rain, but unless you use a really bad mon that you would never otherwise use (like gastrodon) or use the combo of slowking+hydrapple, you will get decimated by rain. You can't diversify your team in order to deal with other threats without making yourself so much worse against rain. That is constricting, rain answers are there, but other teamstyles can abuse this fact and pack mons that decimate your team that was prepped for rain (play rough ogerpon eats the core for breakfast and sinistcha just sets up on both mons). It leads to a matchup fishy tier where its rock paper scissors of rain teams beats conventional teams, conventional teams but rain-prepped teams and rain-prepped teams but rain teams.

the type of "50/50s" you're describing in this post don't exist at a high level of play as your goal is to position yourself such that barra and zap can't come in for free. to take your drill example, it doesn't matter if it comes in on rotom volt switch, because it's not an immediate threat to your team. however if you do happen to pump as drill comes in you probably win on spot so idk how rain can be favoured in that mindgame even if you think it's a mindgame. trying to answer rain defensively when you don't have the tools to do it will mean you lose games, however you can use your offensive tools to exploit rains own defensive issues. this type of positional game has existed in any tier that rain has existed in ever, and is not proof of rain being broken. as for the rps argument, we're just not seeing this happen at all. teams aren't packing stuff that just destroys these cores because there isn't really anything that destroys these cores, there are mons that are good into it and you might find a variant that auto loses to something but there's enough diversity in the remaining slots to account for anything you wanna throw at it, and you very much can run only one of slowking or hydrapple and still have a borderline unloseable rain mu. pairing them actually doesn't even really do anything to improve your rain mu tbh, they just pair well together in dealing with the meta as a whole. rain teams also don't beat conventional teams because conventional teams are prepped for rain, if there's a match up dynamic at play it's just rain getting farmed for the most part.

 

[Heatranator]

to take your drill example, it doesn't matter if it comes in on rotom volt switch, because it's not an immediate threat to your team. however if you do happen to pump as drill comes in you probably win on spot so idk how rain can be favoured in that mindgame even if you think it's a mindgame.

Rain is favoured in that mindgame because losing exca, while unfortunate, doesn't have as much impact as the non-rain team losing/having a heavily damaged rotom-w. Excadrill is a massive threat to teams and allowing it in to potentially throw off an e-quake is big. The non-rain player is forced to switch out rotom-w because that is most likely the rain answer of the team or 1 of 2 rain answers. It is a mindgame because rotom-w has to choose between clicking volt switch or hydro pump and if they make the wrong play, they just let in a big threat that forces a switch taking big damage.

trying to answer rain defensively when you don't have the tools to do it will mean you lose games, however you can use your offensive tools to exploit rains own defensive issues.

And pray tell, what is outspeeding barra? Nothing is outspeeding it so you have to use priority, which is basically limited to lokix (scizor and metagross ain't doing much to barra) which can't switch into any rain team. Also, rain isn't so defensively inept. Zapdos is a great mon defensively even without investment due to its typing and as stated, rain can mix and match their team to defensively answer things if needed (It's a HO team though, they don't care about defenses). Scizor benefits from rain and can help against hydrapple. Torn-t has a nice defensive profile for rain, with it allowing zapdos to be more aggresive due to not needing to deal with ground/grass types as much. Rotom-w helps against mons that abuse water boosted moves by threatening them for big damage, so it helps against azu and such. Reminder, rain has a lot of flexibility in its last three slots, so they can mix and match for whatever teamstyle they want.

this type of positional game has existed in any tier that rain has existed in ever, and is not proof of rain being broken.

I mean sure, but you have much more leeway against rain in general in other tiers. In this tier specifically, rain rn doesn't give you a lot of breathing room to make mistakes. And humans make mistakes and any game that ends because you made one mistake is a sign of something is potentially broken or constricting. If I mispredict by thinking barra will flip turn and switch in my rotom-w, but it predicts this and cc's, then my barra answer is good as gone.

you very much can run only one of slowking or hydrapple and still have a borderline unloseable rain mu.

No, you can't. You have to run both because they are the only things that are not chipped by the constant switching between barra and zapdos that occurs. The flip-volt combo chips everything down immensly. Also, both these mons can't deal with zapdos, so you have to add a 3rd mon which can deal with zap. Exca is usually the best, with sandy shocks doing quite well too, but now you are having to dedicate three slots on your team to rain. They are not bad mons in there own right, but you are forced into this core unless you want to struggle a lot against rain. And what if you don't want to use hydrapple or slowking? Isn't that just a instant loss for your team since not much can take on the combo of barra+zap and then deal with the three other goobers that rain can pick or choose. If you are forced to use a mon/core in order to not instalose, that's not healthy.

rain teams also don't beat conventional teams because conventional teams are prepped for rain

When I talked about 'conventional teams', I was talking about ones that don't overprepare for rain, so ones that don't slap on slowking+hydrapple. Also, if the norm is to overprepare for rain, doesn't that show a level of unhealthy centralisation? If that is the case, then that is admitting that rain is too powerful. Yes, you have to prep for lots of different playstyles, but rain forces you to overprepare and overcompensate, meaning that against teams that are not rain, you are making yourself worse against them.

 

[HydreigonTheChild]

7 turns per cycle, you can usually get 2-3 cycles per game, is enough to deal with stalling turns. And let's say they flip turn on your slowking, and then switch to zapdos. So then zapdos gets a free turn to volt switch on something, but what if you switch into a ground type? Well, most ground types don't have recovery and zapdos can easily click hurricane, which every ground besides rhyperior doesn't like taking. And if the zap has weather ball you just have to give up. This is also not acknowleding the fact that you basically are required into using slowking in order to not crumble to the rain assault.

Volt turn as a style is simple on paper but it isnt as simple in practice because you have to get into such a position where barra is threatening enough to where u can confidently flip turn consistently... People can call that out. If you cannot defensively play around it for ex. switching in ttar on hurricane, switching in latios on weather ball for ex., or using the fact that most rain have shaky defensive counterplay then you can take advantage of that and use an offensive pokemon like lokix, tera normal h-arc, empoleon, keldeo and with rain you arent gonna like it.

https://pokepast.es/d26a1c58a95bf2b2 this sample team really cannnot do much without rain and if you can get yourself into a position where u can tell pelipper to fuck off then you can easily take advantage of that.

Rotom-w gets chipped by rain boosted flip turns constantly until it is in liquidation range. And what if the rain core preps for rotom-w and brings an excadrill to the match? Now your rotom-w is completely useless since it has to run away in fear of excadrill and something else has to take that big damage, unless you are running it with latios or another flying type, which is usuable and viable but constricting.
Well, I could just predict that and hydro pump? Sure, but what if pelliper stays in to eat the hydro pump and they switch to gren or keldeo to massively chip rotom-w? You are forcing yourself into many 50/50 situations that is not healthy. Rain has the necessary mons of Pelipper, Barraskweda (technically can replace with floatzel, but it is much worse) and Zapdos, but the three remaining slots are flexible. You can have any of greninja, keldeo, latios, excadrill, manaphy, crawdaunt, Scizor, Azumarill, Tornadus-T, Rotom-W, Sandy Shocks, Araquanid, Quaquaval, Thundurus-T and Volcanion.

Rotom-w is a big threat cuz you arent gonna like switching into it... if it volt switches into smth like specs latios then its just gonna dump ur exca with a draco or esp if you lead latios into it....

What if i hydro pump or WoW on your switch to exca? exca also has a big hp pool and pain split is gonna give me a chunk of health back esp if i took a lot of damage. If i call out the exca right then you are in a world of hurt against any dragon type and zapdos. If pelipper stays in and calls that out that is a person calling that out, if they are going out of their way to risk the game on the spot to be that confident on a low risk play then they got rewarded with a high risk medium reward play.

Well, what about kommo-o?
252+ Atk Choice Band Barraskewda Flip Turn vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Kommo-o in Rain: 97-114 (33.3 - 39.1%) -- 13.3% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
Unless you are running defensive kommo-o, barra just enjoys chipping you until its time to press liquidation.
252+ Atk Choice Band Barraskewda Flip Turn vs. 252 HP / 120+ Def Kommo-o in Rain: 80-94 (22.5 - 26.5%) -- possible 5HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Choice Band Barraskewda Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 120+ Def Kommo-o: 141-166 (39.8 - 46.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
Defnesive kommo-o isn't even a great answer either, it can't stop barra flip turning on the switch and bringing in zap. And when it gets to 40% health (which isn't too unreasonable), it gets cc'd on.
Lokix has to be careful of static procs on zap, it is one of the better checks to rain, but it needs a safe switch, which only really slowking can provide.
Hydrapple is a good barra answer, until it gets flip turned on and zap comes in. Then you are at square one since all you've done is waste one rain turn and a dangerous zapdos threatening a massive hurricane which will do heavy chip to anything in the tier (exca gets 3hit ko'd by hurricane and rhyperior does not like getting a confusion).

lokix has many partners who can provide such switch ins... rotom-w, slowking, zapdos, u-turn from smth like torn-t, cobalion and if you bring in zapdos then smth like latios, ogerpon-c, specs keldeo, tyranitar can take advantage of

kommo-o can sure be annoying tho... if kommo-o is tera electric DD then it will be very annoying for zapdos, if its defensive then its gonna rack up a lot of chip dmg, if its clangorus soul + lefties then zapdos is kinda setup fother and might be hard to come back from without losing a bit

You can technically deal with rain, that is fair. I have personally been using eerie impulse tera ghost lanturn to sit on rain, but unless you use a really bad mon that you would never otherwise use (like gastrodon) or use the combo of slowking+hydrapple, you will get decimated by rain. You can't diversify your team in order to deal with other threats without making yourself so much worse against rain. That is constricting, rain answers are there, but other teamstyles can abuse this fact and pack mons that decimate your team that was prepped for rain (play rough ogerpon eats the core for breakfast and sinistcha just sets up on both mons). It leads to a matchup fishy tier where its rock paper scissors of rain teams beats conventional teams, conventional teams but rain-prepped teams and rain-prepped teams but rain teams.

you dont need lanturn to beat rain lol.... and slowking + hydrapple is just a good combo.. it is reliable into a lot of ladder bullshit and both are very strong on their own. You can combo like rotom-w + ttar, lokix, ogerpon-c, specs keldeo and just run over teams that rely on smth like zapdos, exca, and hydrapple

Rain answers are pretty common on every team, you slot them to deal with greninja, keldeo, BD azu, and manaphy i guess. You arent trying to run smth specific asf when water answers are common for many teams to run.

_________________________________________

Rain is favoured in that mindgame because losing exca, while unfortunate, doesn't have as much impact as the non-rain team losing/having a heavily damaged rotom-w. Excadrill is a massive threat to teams and allowing it in to potentially throw off an e-quake is big. The non-rain player is forced to switch out rotom-w because that is most likely the rain answer of the team or 1 of 2 rain answers. It is a mindgame because rotom-w has to choose between clicking volt switch or hydro pump and if they make the wrong play, they just let in a big threat that forces a switch taking big damage.

and yes excadril is a massive threat, so if you toss it into a hydro pump you are in for a lot of shit. IF excadrill is such a massive threat you are unlikely to reliably go into rotom-w with exca and deal with it, you are prob gonna get hydro pumped at some point or some player is gonna call it out.

The non rain player is prob prediction the rain player to not toss out their barra out of the window and can use WoW anyway... a burnt exca is just not gonna have any pressure at all. It is a mindgame sure... but if you are a sp. def exca like the sample team uses you are gonna want it to take hits from smth like latios and if you are getting called out for it,... ha that isnt fun

And pray tell, what is outspeeding barra? Nothing is outspeeding it so you have to use priority, which is basically limited to lokix (scizor and metagross ain't doing much to barra) which can't switch into any rain team. Also, rain isn't so defensively inept. Zapdos is a great mon defensively even without investment due to its typing and as stated, rain can mix and match their team to defensively answer things if needed (It's a HO team though, they don't care about defenses). Scizor benefits from rain and can help against hydrapple. Torn-t has a nice defensive profile for rain, with it allowing zapdos to be more aggresive due to not needing to deal with ground/grass types as much. Rotom-w helps against mons that abuse water boosted moves by threatening them for big damage, so it helps against azu and such. Reminder, rain has a lot of flexibility in its last three slots, so they can mix and match for whatever teamstyle they want.

Nothing is outspeeding it but you dont need to outspeed it to pressure it... smth like a potential tera that can hit it is gonna make it guess (you certainly dont want to toss your barra out cuz your opponent decided to tera, not fun), smth like azumarill can take a hit and dish out a brutal liquidation which rain cant really switch into it at all, offensive hydrapple like specs or NP can really threaten the teams to make sure that you may spend more turns trying to recover the hp or might not be able to endure future assaults.

Offensive zapdos isnt that good of a answer as you think... it may be able to switch in once which is good but its not gonna like doing it over and over cuz it will have to spent that precious time using roost, if for ex. you take a lokix u-turn then you will pretty much be in a losing position as they can bring in smth like specs keld, ogerpon-c, greninja, mienshao, raikou, etc

No, you can't. You have to run both because they are the only things that are not chipped by the constant switching between barra and zapdos that occurs. The flip-volt combo chips everything down immensly. Also, both these mons can't deal with zapdos, so you have to add a 3rd mon which can deal with zap. Exca is usually the best, with sandy shocks doing quite well too, but now you are having to dedicate three slots on your team to rain. They are not bad mons in there own right, but you are forced into this core unless you want to struggle a lot against rain. And what if you don't want to use hydrapple or slowking? Isn't that just a instant loss for your team since not much can take on the combo of barra+zap and then deal with the three other goobers that rain can pick or choose. If you are forced to use a mon/core in order to not instalose, that's not healthy.

volt turn isnt that strong https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sv-uu-sample-teams.3720278/post-10086754

out of the many sample teams only 4 are running such a core... hydrapple + slowking is a very flexible core that is pretty good on its own and isnt smth that is only used for rain. You can eaisly slot for ex. rotom-w, or use smth else like ogerpon-c to nuke the defense of rain. No team is really deticating 3 slots to deal with rain... those 3 slots if they are dealing with rain are also good for other tasks that they are doing.

https://pokepast.es/35447ba240361389 for ex. this team has rotom-w which is a good answer to a lot of steel moves and can volt switch on pokemon like hydrapple, latios, itself, zapdos to bring in tyranitar, torn-t, banded metagross. Tyrantiar is a good pokemon to support excadrill with knock off, hazards, and activates its sand rush, while hydrapple is a great physical wall into ogerpon, cobalion, phys kommo-o, secret sword keldeo, and more.

When I talked about 'conventional teams', I was talking about ones that don't overprepare for rain, so ones that don't slap on slowking+hydrapple. Also, if the norm is to overprepare for rain, doesn't that show a level of unhealthy centralisation? If that is the case, then that is admitting that rain is too powerful. Yes, you have to prep for lots of different playstyles, but rain forces you to overprepare and overcompensate, meaning that against teams that are not rain, you are making yourself worse against them.

if rain was so dominant we would see way more gastrodon, volcanion, and empoleon but yet they arent used as much for reasons because rain is commonly checked by commonly used pokemon and despite volcanion and empo being not bad pokemon we arent in such desperation that we have to resort to using them. i feel you are blowing it out of proportion how good rain is

 

[Liz Angeles]

Rain is favoured in that mindgame because losing exca, while unfortunate, doesn't have as much impact as the non-rain team losing/having a heavily damaged rotom-w. Excadrill is a massive threat to teams and allowing it in to potentially throw off an e-quake is big. The non-rain player is forced to switch out rotom-w because that is most likely the rain answer of the team or 1 of 2 rain answers. It is a mindgame because rotom-w has to choose between clicking volt switch or hydro pump and if they make the wrong play, they just let in a big threat that forces a switch taking big damage.

Allow me to explain in more depth. If you lead rotom wash into pelipper, the pelipper pretty much has to switch, and 90% of the time it will switch. Clicking hydro pump expecting drill to come in is therefore a valid play. However its preferable to allow drill to come in if it means that the rain user can't u turn into their abusers, if you don't allow the cycle to start early then it's far easier to deal with it. So you could argue that clicking volt switch is always the play, I'd suggest that it depends on your overall mu though. Regardless of that, if you click hydro pump into pelipper you probably lose... net 4% from u turn. If you proceed to stay in with rotom as they send in barra for the most telegraphed flip turn of all time then you'll take heavy chip, sure, but you do have another 5 pokemon. If you click volt switch into drill then switching in on eq really shouldn't be difficult, especially from a non sd drill, but ironically if you drop both slowking and hydrapple it's pretty hard to answer drill... more to come on that later. As for why these mindgames work against rain rather than in their favour, winning the sack war is very important, and being up a sack t1 gives you an incredible advantage, not to mention the fact that you won't have to deal with rocks on your side and will eventually get your own rocks on their side if drill goes down t1. There is no way for the rain user to gain this strong of an advantage from this turn.

And pray tell, what is outspeeding barra? Nothing is outspeeding it so you have to use priority, which is basically limited to lokix (scizor and metagross ain't doing much to barra) which can't switch into any rain team. Also, rain isn't so defensively inept. Zapdos is a great mon defensively even without investment due to its typing and as stated, rain can mix and match their team to defensively answer things if needed (It's a HO team though, they don't care about defenses). Scizor benefits from rain and can help against hydrapple. Torn-t has a nice defensive profile for rain, with it allowing zapdos to be more aggresive due to not needing to deal with ground/grass types as much. Rotom-w helps against mons that abuse water boosted moves by threatening them for big damage, so it helps against azu and such. Reminder, rain has a lot of flexibility in its last three slots, so they can mix and match for whatever teamstyle they want.

You aren't limited solely to using priority to deal with barra as there are pokemon other than slowking and hydrapple which can live its hits. Regardless you ignored azu and harc for some reason, both have fairly decent rain mus although I personally find azu hard to fit. Beyond that, rain can run mons with slightly different defensive profiles, sure, but it's still not taking hits very well. It's a ho, but you don't beat ho by switching to your answer every time, you beat it by positioning your own offense and trading favourably into it. Rain functions the exact same way.

I mean sure, but you have much more leeway against rain in general in other tiers. In this tier specifically, rain rn doesn't give you a lot of breathing room to make mistakes. And humans make mistakes and any game that ends because you made one mistake is a sign of something is potentially broken or constricting. If I mispredict by thinking barra will flip turn and switch in my rotom-w, but it predicts this and cc's, then my barra answer is good as gone.

How much leeway you have is entirely subjective, I generally feel there's little difference between rain in this tier and in sm ou for example. If you're losing the game to a single mistake it's a sign that you don't understand how to play the match up and that you're prioritising the wrong things, not that rain is broken.

No, you can't. You have to run both because they are the only things that are not chipped by the constant switching between barra and zapdos that occurs. The flip-volt combo chips everything down immensly. Also, both these mons can't deal with zapdos, so you have to add a 3rd mon which can deal with zap. Exca is usually the best, with sandy shocks doing quite well too, but now you are having to dedicate three slots on your team to rain. They are not bad mons in there own right, but you are forced into this core unless you want to struggle a lot against rain. And what if you don't want to use hydrapple or slowking? Isn't that just a instant loss for your team since not much can take on the combo of barra+zap and then deal with the three other goobers that rain can pick or choose. If you are forced to use a mon/core in order to not instalose, that's not healthy.

I mean to start with slowking and apple regenerating off flip turn is a reason to use one of them, not a reason to use both of them. Slowking being able to change the weather makes facing rain ridiculously easy and i can't understand what having hydrapple does to improve its rain mu, it adds another water resist but that not something you desperately need. If you don't want to use hydrapple or slowking, no problem, having a couple mons that can live one hit from barra and offensively pressure rain is more than enough to be able to deal with it.

When I talked about 'conventional teams', I was talking about ones that don't overprepare for rain, so ones that don't slap on slowking+hydrapple. Also, if the norm is to overprepare for rain, doesn't that show a level of unhealthy centralisation? If that is the case, then that is admitting that rain is too powerful. Yes, you have to prep for lots of different playstyles, but rain forces you to overprepare and overcompensate, meaning that against teams that are not rain, you are making yourself worse against them.

The vast majority of teams are running at least one of slowking or hydrapple regardless because regenerator is arguably the best ability in the game, and anchoring your defensive core around a regen mon is inherently a good idea. It's also incredibly difficult to feel solid into excadrill and any number of other things without running one of them. Rain has pushed them further into prominence, sure, but you aren't forced to run them now and they'll still be incredibly prominent if rain gets banned. This is not overcentralisation, its typical meta development.

 

[Aqua Jet]

Excellent song choice Lily 10/10

 

[Eeveeto]

Played quite a lot of battles vs Rain during the Suspect. Its certainly a dominating style that needs some kind of a nerf, although for me personally is undesirable to kill the whole style. If Pelipper was the only Drizzle Mon in UU, I would vote Do Not Ban in order to preserve the Style and would support a Suspect of some Rain threat, for example Greninja, which in my opinion is the strongest Rain abuser. However, Politoed, while very inferior to Pelipper, is not terrible, so it will work as al anternative to the bird, allowing the use of the very same Rain abussers, but nerfing the style without killing it entirely. Therefore, will be voting Ban on Pelipper.

Still, if in the future some Rain Mon (such as the mentioned Greninja) ends up being broken and banned, it would be cool to retest Pelipper again, should he not have enough usage to be OU.

 

[Goombatower69]

However, Politoed, while very inferior to Pelipper, is not terrible, so it will work as al anternative to the bird, allowing the use of the very same Rain abussers, but nerfing the style without killing it entirely. Therefore, will be voting Ban on Pelipper.

The only thing that would keep it relevant in any form is Drizzle and rain boosted stab weather balls. It only has encore, but is incredibly slow since you need every EV in bulk to keep it alive since it doesn't have pivoting

 

[Eeveeto]

The only thing that would keep it relevant in any form is Drizzle and rain boosted stab weather balls. It only has encore, but is incredibly slow since you need every EV in bulk to keep it alive since it doesn't have pivoting

It doesn,t need to do anything, just Drizzle and tank some hits. It can at least hit hard opposing weather setters except Hail ones (Hippo, Ninetales and Tyranitar are all weak to Water and for Tar it can even run Low Kick to hit even harder). Just run Restalk and you will be fine as long as you can handle Slowking with the rest of the team. People used to run Hippopotas and Snover in Old Gens lower Tiers when better setters weren,t available, so Rain won,t be killed without Pelipper, just nerfed.

 

[mrsuslawl]

the fact that politoed doesn't have a pivot option greatly hinders (poli) rain, you don't really have a rain abuser that likes to be chipped unless you sac exca on turn 3 every game

 

[artificialdeath]

It doesn,t need to do anything, just Drizzle and tank some hits. It can at least hit hard opposing weather setters except Hail ones (Hippo, Ninetales and Tyranitar are all weak to Water and for Tar it can even run Low Kick to hit even harder). Just run Restalk and you will be fine as long as you can handle Slowking with the rest of the team. People used to run Hippopotas and Snover in Old Gens lower Tiers when better setters weren,t available, so Rain won,t be killed without Pelipper, just nerfed.

Fwiw Hippo and Snover could largely pull off the same exact things as their evos, and that was mainly an issue in gens 4+5 where weather was permanent. Pelipper has a better typing + spammable STAB in Hurricane (obviously its not gonna be your main attacker but comes in handy in certain situations) + reliable recovery + pivoting, it's far more optimized for rain teams that have to make do with just 8 turns. Politoed is kind of a momentum sink that was only ever run out of necessity

 

[BolTingBlazie]

Honestly to preserve rain as I playstyle, I kind of hope pelipper gets the boot, because pelliper seems to be breaking a lot of stuff

Then iron crown can be looked at

 

[Slip]

Hello! Been a minute since I've made a post like this, but I think rain is a very passionate topic for a lot of people so I would like to through my opinion in the ring.

Through my suspect test I encountered ZERO rain teams which means I'm sure some others had the same experience during their runs making it hard to come to a decision. We all know Pelipper is the best rain setter in the tier due to its bulk, ability to abuse drizzle the most, and having access to u-turn making it a vital pivot for the frail sweepers in the back. I went and investigate what the play style would like by throwing together the team showed below to see how much of a nerf banning this mon really would be.



Threw this together in 5 minutes and used it for my first attempt. Got to the 1500s with about a 79% gxe before I lost 2 in a row and reset out of frustration. My point is the team could have potentially made reqs with almost no thought behind it. After playing it I would probably say I recommend not using it. This specific team is quite weak to greninja, mainly relying on tera or rain to take it by surprise in order to pick up the KO. Politoed however is surprisingly good as a rain setter. Being able to fit an encore mon onto an offensive team to bait setup moves and pivot in for free is really profitable in general and being able to fit a spot to set up rain again on tyranitar switching in feels amazing. Hydrapple is bulky enough to take any non ice hit and use eject button to pivot in a threat, and iron thorns helps vs zapdos and can just sometimes straight up win you the game after a DD.

Past the findings of these sets, what did I learn from my main goal of learning what would happen to rain if pelipper is gone? It will probably still exist, though I think getting rid of Pelipper does make the style a bit more weird to build. I honestly feel like this pelipper ban is more to keep Zapdos and Greninja at bay more than anything. Past sand setters like tyranitar and hippo, it is usually pretty easy for zapdos to take its checks by surprise with weather ball and letting battle bond gren get even stronger in rain can be quite troublesome for most teams. I think having the play style nerfed will make for more interesting rain teams along with freeing up the builder a bit (which is probably good apple is on like every team) in order to get more versatile teams and have a more welcoming environment to those trying to pick up the tier. And hey maybe in the future if some other things get banned we let Pelipper back in and its all good.

TLDR: Vote Ban politoed is good enough to keep the strat somewhat viable while also taking a lot of momentum away that allows rains biggest threats to switch in consistantly through the match. Ideally more versatility in the tier will stop 2-3 rain checks being on every team and we can see a wider bearing metagame with more room to play with some of the more forgotten mons and an actual on paper check to zapdos + gren that goes past "dont be weather ball" or having to play tera games respectively.

Sorry for the ramble hopefully all that made sense haha...

 

[HydreigonTheChild]

Played quite a lot of battles vs Rain during the Suspect. Its certainly a dominating style that needs some kind of a nerf, although for me personally is undesirable to kill the whole style. If Pelipper was the only Drizzle Mon in UU, I would vote Do Not Ban in order to preserve the Style and would support a Suspect of some Rain threat, for example Greninja, which in my opinion is the strongest Rain abuser. However, Politoed, while very inferior to Pelipper, is not terrible, so it will work as al anternative to the bird, allowing the use of the very same Rain abussers, but nerfing the style without killing it entirely. Therefore, will be voting Ban on Pelipper.

Still, if in the future some Rain Mon (such as the mentioned Greninja) ends up being broken and banned, it would be cool to retest Pelipper again, should he not have enough usage to be OU.

Ive felt quite the opposite, often times teams pack enough counterplay for gren, keldeo, BD azu, and rain as well meaning they are often having answers to such mons by default.... teams are often to handle such mons esp if you are running mons for the other big water threats... like u run slowking or hydrapple for keldeo, while rotom-w, pex, ogerpon can handle azu, and gren is often dealt with a combination of smth like t wave tink/slowking, priority like lokix, vacuum wave keldeo, teal mask ogerpon.

Politoad is ass... its been C tier viable any time we had rain in the tier so i doubt rain is seeing any form of viability

Past the findings of these sets, what did I learn from my main goal of learning what would happen to rain if pelipper is gone? It will probably still exist, though I think getting rid of Pelipper does make the style a bit more weird to build. I honestly feel like this pelipper ban is more to keep Zapdos and Greninja at bay more than anything. Past sand setters like tyranitar and hippo, it is usually pretty easy for zapdos to take its checks by surprise with weather ball and letting battle bond gren get even stronger in rain can be quite troublesome for most teams. I think having the play style nerfed will make for more interesting rain teams along with freeing up the builder a bit (which is probably good apple is on like every team) in order to get more versatile teams and have a more welcoming environment to those trying to pick up the tier. And hey maybe in the future if some other things get banned we let Pelipper back in and its all good.

And what does this have to do with pelipper? having more interesting rain teams is prob just gonna stem from them being more one dimensional because pelipper can run a lot of sets and can pivot in a lot of mons that can make rain viable ... but smth like politoad is just gonna be a sitting duck half the time and often times is just gonna switch in, take dmg, switch out and accomplish nothing in return.

Politoad isnt gonna make rain interesting at all. Its just gonna be a phys def blob that has one purpose... pelipper can run smth like specs even then and make a team of peli + barra work on a more balance focused style.