Aldaron's proposal: Alternatives?

[Lightning Tiger]

And banning Drizzle clearly isn't going to cease the argument, as it's not even the most popular choice in the poll, nor is it what is actually broken.

I disagree and i based my disagreement on the fact that if drizzle did not exist none of the pokemon being talked about would be a problem at all, we would not even be having this conversation.

The only thing thats causing trouble here is te existence of drizzle, if it banished there would be no issue here.

In fact, if not for Drizzle even Manaphy would probably not have been banned.

Id say that Drizzle is whats broken here, by virtue of "if Drizzle was gone none of these problems would exist".

 

[Sajak]

I disagree and i based my disagreement on the fact that if drizzle did not exist none of the pokemon being talked about would be a problem at all, we would not even be having this conversation.

The only thing thats causing trouble here is te existence of drizzle, if it banished there would be no issue here.

In fact, if not for Drizzle even Manaphy would probably not have been banned.

Id say that Drizzle is whats broken here, by virtue of "if Drizzle was gone none of these problems would exist".

If Drizzle was broken, any team put together with Drizzle would beat any other non-Drizzle team. Since that's not the case, Drizzle is not broken.

Manaphy would at least be a suspect without Drizzle. It was quickly banned last generation, and it has only been improved with Tail Glow being +3 now.

 

[Lucindril]

Drizzle is broken when used with the most dangerous abusers that give you the biggest chance of winning.
Which is what most people, if not all people, are doing. Sure, some people may adjust their teams to specifically counter rain (sometimes just sticking a Ferrothorn on a team works), but then you give some other team styles a heck of an easier time at beating you.

 

[Lightning Tiger]

If Drizzle was broken, any team put together with Drizzle would beat any other non-Drizzle team. Since that's not the case, Drizzle is not broken.

Nonsense, thats like saying that if Garchomp were broken in gen 4, then any team in gen 4 with Garchomp in it would always beat any team that doesn't have Garchomp in it. But thats not even remotely true at all, you could beat Garchomp in gen 4 without using Garchomp... but it was still deemed broken.

Buy your logic then Arceus is not broken, cause any team with Arceus will not always beat a team without Arceus in it.

Its ridiculous.

Manaphy would at least be a suspect without Drizzle. It was quickly banned last generation, and it has only been improved with Tail Glow being +3 now.

Main reason Manaphy was a problem this gen was because of Hydration allowing it to rest and wake up immediate thanks to drizzle.

 

[Sajak]

Nonsense, thats like saying that if Garchomp were broken in gen 4, then any team in gen 4 with Garchomp in it would always beat any team that doesn't have Garchomp in it. But thats not even remotely true at all, you could beat Garchomp in gen 4 without using Garchomp... but it was still deemed broken.

Buy your logic then Arceus is not broken, cause any team with Arceus will not always beat a team without Arceus in it.

Its ridiculous.

Main reason Manaphy was a problem this gen was because of Hydration allowing it to rest and wake up immediate thanks to drizzle.

No, Drizzle affects an entire team, Garchomp doesn't. Garchomp was broken because of it's ability to sweep along with it's ability to gain evasion boosts through easily achieved means that made any and all of it's counters no longer counters.

See above.

Again, Manaphy was also banned last gen, and is better now. It's going to at least be suspect tested even without Drizzle.

 

[Sajak]

Drizzle is broken when used with the most dangerous abusers that give you the biggest chance of winning.
Which is what most people, if not all people, are doing. Sure, some people may adjust their teams to specifically counter rain (sometimes just sticking a Ferrothorn on a team works), but then you give some other team styles a heck of an easier time at beating you.

Which is why the abusers, and not the ability, are what is broken. Using that same argument, I could say that Drizzle is not broken when used with the least dangerous abusers, which is 100% true. If Drizzle were broken, at the very least, every possible abuser of Drizzle would be broken. That's not the case, and Drizzle and is not broken.

 

[Lucindril]

Fair enough. But I still don't see a good enough reason to ban a Pokemon that is only broken under rain.

So I suppose Ban individual broken Swift Swim sweepers, but only with Drizzle would be a viable alternative, but that's pretty complex.

 

[AB2]

I think that banning Swift Swim + Drizzle is the best option for now. It allows it so that just the combination of pokemon are banned and not a specific pokemon has to be banned due to its ability. It makes it so that someone who is building a team has the option to use Drizzle, which is still very viable in the current metagame, but just not with Swift Swim pokemon. The entire "ban certain broken rain dance sweepers" seems kind of unnecessary in my opinion. It would take much longer to vote on and test these suspects than it would to actually just ban the swift swim + drizzle combination which is obviously broken in the first place. It allows it so that Pokemon aren't banned just for their abilities and so that those who wish to use drizzle teams or swift swim pokemon still have the option to do so.

 

[Sajak]

Fair enough. But I still don't see a good enough reason to ban a Pokemon that is only broken under rain.

So I suppose Ban individual broken Swift Swim sweepers, but only with Drizzle would be a viable alternative, but that's pretty complex.

Because the conditions that makes the Pokemon broken are easily achievable and require very little skill to initiate. I believe SR was actually one of the reasons Salamence was banned last gen (I would need verification on this though) because it allowed Salamence to OHKO more Pokemon than it otherwise could, but SR is not a part of Salamence. Weather is the same. It may not be a part, but it is very simple to set up and have a Pokemon (like Kingdra) abuse it to a point where Kingdra becomes broken with it's best possible set.

I don't want to ban Kingdra (he's one of my favorites) but I can't deny it's very easy to abuse him with minimal effort and with very few means that he can be stopped. Preferably, I would rather just ban Kingdra + SwSw+ Drizzle on the same team, but that just makes it so any Pokemon can be adjusted so it can play in any metagame, and the metagame becomes full of arbitrary restrictions just so every Pokemon can be used in every tier, and at that point nobody can would be able to follow all of the restrictions, and so on.

That's why I support banning individual Pokemon that are broken.

 

[Nanoswine]

Why have we all become so certain that Aldaron's proposal should be done away with? The suspect testing system we have in place right now is designed to streamline the process of achieving a desirable and stable metagame. The purpose of Aldaron's proposal was to prevent a massive cascade of bans from clogging up this system, and by going back on it we bring this process to a screeching halt while we arbitrarily decide which Swift Swimmers are broken, and which combination of them is not. If we just ban Drizzle outright, we still have to sort through all the Pokemon that Drizzle keeps in check.

As of now, we have a very stable and balanced metagame. Should we take a huge step back and throw everything back into chaos just to balance Drizzle in a more idealistic way? Drizzle + Swift Swim turned the metagame from a clusterfuck of Hydro Pump spam to a strategic, balanced one. I for one think that we should actually take a moment to consider what getting rid of Aldaron's proposal would mean for the metagame instead of saying "luvdics no broken lololol"

 

[10fore]

Fair enough. But I still don't see a good enough reason to ban a Pokemon that is only broken under rain.

So I suppose Ban individual broken Swift Swim sweepers, but only with Drizzle would be a viable alternative, but that's pretty complex.

Just because you can decide not to give Kingdra or Ludi the support that they need doesn't make them unbroken. Yes, they need support, but with support, they're totally broken, and achieving the support is no problem. Sure, you can decide to run MH Thundurus instead of Politoed, but why should you still get to use kingdra? Do you deserve a reward for setting up shittier rain?

Edit: Read Sajak's post a couple up. He put it better.

 

[Super Mario Bro]

I very much agree with what Nanoswine has said. However, in a perfect world, I think we should be able to test Swift Swim Pokemon on rain teams that haven't been tested thoroughly enough, like Qwilfish, Poliwrath and Floatzel, because they can definitely be stopped by almost every team I have played (Both Jellicent and Ferrohorn HARD counter Qwilfish).

On the other hand, Drizzle is undeniably on thin ice, and it might be best to just keep things the way they are to prevent further Drizzle hatred.

 

[Curtains]

people don't realize that alderons proposal actually makes the metagame less diverse. Its so easy to continuously spam Stab hydro pumps/surfs in the rain its almost pathetic. Along with the ban of drizzle i would also like to see garchomp/dory terminated . Now sand is balanced, rain is still there and usable with swift swim and rain dance. I don't understand the point of wasting time on things like bright powder when the metagame is simply in shambles and a pain to play. Its almost like rock paper scissors.

 

[Zebstrika]

people don't realize that alderons proposal actually makes the metagame less diverse. Its so easy to continuously spam Stab hydro pumps/surfs in the rain its almost pathetic. Along with the ban of drizzle i would also like to see garchomp/dory terminated . Now sand is balanced, rain is still there and usable with swift swim and rain dance. I don't understand the point of wasting time on things like bright powder when the metagame is simply in shambles and a pain to play. Its almost like rock paper scissors.

How does Aldaron's proposal make the metagame less diverse? Before the ban, everyone and their mom had a rain team and rain counters, or they lost all the time. It was much easier to spam Hydro Pump/Surf when the users were not easily revenge killed.

At least I agree that Garchomp should be terminated. But not Dory, he's so old. How about Excadrill?

We're not wasting our time on Brightpowder. It was a quick and relatively easy fix. Many people hated that piece of crap.

Swift Swim, Drizzle and other weather problems are much more controversial, so we definitely need to get the best out of our bans there, and the solution is not obvious (just look at the rest of this thread).

 

[Mario With Lasers]

oh boy here we go

Ban Swift Swim to appease the anti-Drizzle crowd, ban Drizzle+Swimmer as to fine-tune Aldaron's proposal, ban individual Swimmers as a whole so we do it as we've done for four generations by banning pokémon for their strongest sets while I conveniently forget it's Drizzle making them broken as they aren't considered broken during Rain Dance, ban Drizzle+Swift Swim so it's still allowed in UU without us having to look at its banlist as if it were Little Cup's, allow Rayquaza in OU so no one will ever bother with Swift Swim anymore.


Yeah, except for the last one which I didn't vote on, I'm serious on all of them but I can't be bothered to argue them so have at you.

 

[AlphaSpade]

If anything, the proposal made people open their eyes and say "Hey, I can do more than spam boosted water moves on a rain team?" It even made stuff like Tornadus bloom when people thought it would end up in NU. It increased diversity for rain team.

Also, just be grateful that the entire Poliwag line didn't get Drizzle, or you'd be seeing Evolite Poliwhirl's ass in UU when it's formed.

 

[Curtains]

How does Aldaron's proposal make the metagame less diverse? Before the ban, everyone and their mom had a rain team and rain counters, or they lost all the time. It was much easier to spam Hydro Pump/Surf when the users were not easily revenge killed.

At least I agree that Garchomp should be terminated. But not Dory, he's so old. How about Excadrill?

We're not wasting our time on Brightpowder. It was a quick and relatively easy fix. Many people hated that piece of crap.

Swift Swim, Drizzle and other weather problems are much more controversial, so we definitely need to get the best out of our bans there, and the solution is not obvious (just look at the rest of this thread).

Urr.. Ban brightpowder under evasion clause but keep in garchomp? What the hell kind of sense is that? Ive won and lost many battles just alone on sand veil making 100% moves miss. If you played on ladder you can still see the enormous amount of rain teams. Even more so the teams that abuse sand veil garchomp. Why not get rid of them? They are over centralizing the metagame and taking out the skill of the game. If i got a sub garchomp in the sand on the switch and you dont have a skarmory or bronzong your fucked and 3 pokemon minimum are gonna drop.If I can bring in a specs/scarf polytoad un harmed and start pumping out huge water attacks that can KO 1/2 of gen 5 you better fucking have a blissey or naitorri or somethings gonna take serious damage. (even resisted water/dragon pokemon get 2hko by specs/scarf modest hydro pump in rain!). And this is where were at. Alderons proposal only tackled 1/4 of the reason rain is broken in the first place. People can still use hydration. Still use hydro pump. Still use dry skin or other abilites. And the list goes on. Its a joke honestly. We just wasted 3 suspect test on a new generation banning stuff that should have been banned from the get go like manaphy and deoxys A. Some random abilities. Then we ban blaziken who is dangerous but easily predictable. Stop wasting time trying to preserve silly weather and let me not be confined to using stallish pokemon to take boosted attacks without any effort or set up! When are people gonna see how easy this concept is!!!! How many fucking teams have naitorri? Alot you know why? Becasue there gonna get fukin blasted by a rain team if they dont! ITS NOT DIVERSE.

 

[Walshy]

I'm going to have to agree with most of you. The metagame is way too centralized by perma weather. Fun and Gimicky teams are being overlooked by the fact that prolly 90% of the last testing round qualifiers used Some sort of weather to boost their rating. I myself am in the same position. I would just like to see a metagame or tier with no weather for this purpose.

 

[The Pokemon Pimp]

I read through this thread, and it's very well done. I have to agree with what Rising Dusk said. One of the main reasons Drizzle and Swift Swim were banned together was because of an elite group of Swift Swimmers that could abuse their abilities to the point of brokenness- namely, Kingdra, Kabutops, and Ludicolo. This ban, however, leaves out other pokemon that may not be so broken with Swift Swim and thus rain loses a lot of value. Rain teams are incredibly fun, too (just like pretty much all weather teams).

However, let me take another leaf out of Rising Dusk's book and say that Aldaron's proposal was a good ban at the time. I think it was well thought out and it served the initial purpose of banning some pokemon that obviously needed to be at least looked at. But now that the metagame has progressed a little, I think it seems clearer that this ban needs to be revised.

Finally, I feel that banning Drizzle is pointless. I agree with many users on here that rain is the best type of weather to fully utilize, but this doesn't mean it is broken. In my opinion, banning one type of permanent weather would simply create a slippery slope, and soon we would be devoid of other weather-inducing abilities as well. And quite frankly, even with all the debate right now, I feel that the inclusion of viable weather inducers has made the metagame more fun than it ever has been.

Final Vote: Ban individual Swift Swim sweepers. Tacking on Drizzle might make the ban too complex. Don't forget that if you use a Drizzle team and your Drizzle-less opponent switches in Swift Swim Kingdra, that Kingdra will still sweep your team regardless of who made the rain.

 

[Ulevo]

I'm going to have to agree with most of you. The metagame is way too centralized by perma weather. Fun and Gimicky teams are being overlooked by the fact that prolly 90% of the last testing round qualifiers used Some sort of weather to boost their rating. I myself am in the same position. I would just like to see a metagame or tier with no weather for this purpose.

Then go play Gen IV.

People are misinterpreting "balancing the metagame" for "turning generation V in to generation IV".

You don't like weather, don't play this metagame. We're not going to go around banning everything that involves and revolves around weather just because you can't use your gimmicks. If something is broken, then we ban it.

 

[Thorhammer]

I think that banning Swift Swim + Drizzle is the best option for now. It allows it so that just the combination of pokemon are banned and not a specific pokemon has to be banned due to its ability. It makes it so that someone who is building a team has the option to use Drizzle, which is still very viable in the current metagame, but just not with Swift Swim pokemon. The entire "ban certain broken rain dance sweepers" seems kind of unnecessary in my opinion. It would take much longer to vote on and test these suspects than it would to actually just ban the swift swim + drizzle combination which is obviously broken in the first place. It allows it so that Pokemon aren't banned just for their abilities and so that those who wish to use drizzle teams or swift swim pokemon still have the option to do so.

A specific Pokemon already has to be banned due to its ability - Blaziken.

Swift Swim + Drizzle is not "obviously" broken. Luvdisc proves that, and therefore informs us that we have to question every Pokemon not specifically seen to be broken with the combination.

Why have we all become so certain that Aldaron's proposal should be done away with? The suspect testing system we have in place right now is designed to streamline the process of achieving a desirable and stable metagame. The purpose of Aldaron's proposal was to prevent a massive cascade of bans from clogging up this system, and by going back on it we bring this process to a screeching halt while we arbitrarily decide which Swift Swimmers are broken, and which combination of them is not. If we just ban Drizzle outright, we still have to sort through all the Pokemon that Drizzle keeps in check.

As of now, we have a very stable and balanced metagame. Should we take a huge step back and throw everything back into chaos just to balance Drizzle in a more idealistic way? Drizzle + Swift Swim turned the metagame from a clusterfuck of Hydro Pump spam to a strategic, balanced one. I for one think that we should actually take a moment to consider what getting rid of Aldaron's proposal would mean for the metagame instead of saying "luvdics no broken lololol"

If, in testing to ban individual Swift Swim abusers, either through a simple or complex ban, we reach a point where the metagame is visibly worse than it was under Aldaron's proposal, and not going to get any better, then that would be a good reason to revert to the current system. However, until we see that, there isn't the slightest reason to assume that it will happen. We need to test and find out rather than assuming that banning individual Pokemon, our tried and true system for four generations, will somehow end in disaster this particular time.

 

[charizard24]

Then go play Gen IV.

People are misinterpreting "balancing the metagame" for "turning generation V in to generation IV".

You don't like weather, don't play this metagame. We're not going to go around banning everything that involves and revolves around weather just because you can't use your gimmicks. If something is broken, then we ban it.

The recent ban on Brightpowder proved that something does not have to be broken for us to ban it, so that arguement does not necessarily stand true this gen anymore. If enough people feel annoyed by something then it will be banned.

Essentially, I'd rather cripple a playstyle by banning its major abusers, whereas you'd rather cripple a playstyle by muzzling it with restrictions. I'd rather ban because everyone is overhyping the UU swift swimmers. It's like everyone forgets that they're actually not as good as Kingdra and Kabutops and Ludicolo. Really.

I won't say they're not broken, but we've got to play with them to know. Not banning something because we're all afraid that we're going to ban something else doesn't make sense.

In gen4 back on shoddy battle, with subject tests, we wouldn't have to do this. It'd all be on the subject server. However, there's not one of those right now, so the only way to test whether swift swim, or drizzle really, is broken is to make sure that it's not just Kingdra, Ludicolo, and Kabutops.

If I'm wrong, though, and Swift Swim does break anything with remotely good stats, we can back up, and implement a swift swim ban. Until then, though, I feel like everyone is just theorymonning about how good the rest of the Swift Swim sweepers are. Maybe they're right, but don't ban stuff because of theorymon.

Oh really, you're severely underestimating the power that a +1 to water attacks and a +2 to speed gives to these "UU swimmers". I used to see teams getting sweeped by tons of them in the second round. I still see it happening on the main PO server. Pokemon like Poliwrath/Qwilfish/Omastar/Carracosta/Gorebyss/Huntail ARE NOT WEAK!

So you'd rather let more potentially broken pokemon back into the OU metagame only to find out a month later that Drizzle is banned outright. (You may not agree with this but it is what will most likely happen).

And what if we are wrong, you'd then back up and implement a Swift swim ban which will probably be argued and disagreed on again and the entire process will start again. Why should we waste 2-3 months of testing them when in all probablility they will be broken as well. Drizzle is already up for suspect as it is. There are so many threads discussing Drizzle in Dragonspiral that its not even funny anymore. This is only going to lead to one thing: hate. Hate for Drizzle. In fact, if those UU swimmers are brought down i'd even change my stance to banning Drizzle all together and if need be, banning Drought.

EDIT: @ Thorhammer
1. Nobody uses Luvdisc in OU
2. It is still possible to use Swift Swim!!! (This is what people need to understand!) Just use Rain Dance.
3. Since most people call them "UU swimmers" then use them in UU..... with Rain Dance.
4. There is no reason for us to allow them to be OU when that will destabilize the metagame even further.

It more than likely will end up in disaster and that disaster being either a Ban on Drizzle or on all weathers. The cascading effect is imminent. If the swift swimmers are allowed back then Drizzle will be banned.

 

[XienZo]

The purpose of Aldaron's proposal was to prevent a massive cascade of bans from clogging up this system, and by going back on it we bring this process to a screeching halt while we arbitrarily decide which Swift Swimmers are broken, and which combination of them is not. If we just ban Drizzle outright, we still have to sort through all the Pokemon that Drizzle keeps in check.

The purpose of Aldaron's proposal was to prevent Drizzle from being banned and preventing the development of a new aspect of the metagame.

It has nothing to do with "clogging up" the system, which has no specific upper bound on the number of pokemon it can "process" within reason, since it tests them all in parallel; testing 1 pokemon takes just as long as 4, and there's no reason why the process would come "to a screeching halt" at all.

Oh really, you're severely underestimating the power that a +1 to water attacks and a +2 to speed gives to these "UU swimmers". I used to see teams getting sweeped by tons of them in the second round. I still see it happening on the main PO server. Pokemon like Poliwrath/Qwilfish/Omastar/Carracosta/Gorebyss/Huntail ARE NOT WEAK!

So you'd rather let more potentially broken pokemon back into the OU metagame only to find out a month later that Drizzle is banned outright. (You may not agree with this but it is what will most likely happen).

And what if we are wrong, you'd then back up and implement a Swift swim ban which will probably be argued and disagreed on again and the entire process will start again. Why should we waste 2-3 months of testing them when in all probablility they will be broken as well. Drizzle is already up for suspect as it is. There are so many threads discussing Drizzle in Dragonspiral that its not even funny anymore. This is only going to lead to one thing: hate. Hate for Drizzle. In fact, if those UU swimmers are brought down i'd even change my stance to aning Drizzle all together and if need be, banning Drought.

EDIT: @ Thorhammer
1. Nobody uses Luvdisc in OU
2. It is still possible to use Swift Swim!!! (This is what people need to understand!) Just use Rain Dance.
3. Since most people call them "UU swimmers" then use them in UU..... with Rain Dance.
4. There is no reason for us to allow them to be OU when that will destabilize the metagame even further.

It more than likely will end up in disaster and that disaster being either a Ban on Drizzle or on all weathers. The cascading effect is imminent. If the swift swimmers are allowed back then Drizzle will be banned.

1. There's no reason, if a new system were to fail, that we can't return this current implementation of Aldaron's proposal.

2. Your reasoning is PRECISELY why we need to individually test the pokemon. Are Huntail and co. really overpowered? Then, why don't you give me the suspect-testing data to prove it-oh wait, we don't have ANY evidence for EITHER way since we never did any testing. Theorymon is ultimately negligible in actual tiering, and it's a folly to attempt to base bans on them; that's essentially WHY we implemented the suspect testing system.

3. You can't simultaneously have all SwSw pokemon all be either Uber with drizzle ("Poliwrath/Qwilfish/Omastar/Carracosta/Gorebyss/Huntail") and super-never-used ("Luvdisc"), with nothing inbetween when they're pretty well distributed threat-level-wise. There's no reason why there would suddenly be a 3-tier gap that would magically appear in the middle of the SwSw pokemon.

4. Even back before the ban, having Drizzle + Kingdra + Ludicolo + Kabutops didn't mean you automatically won; they were powerful enough to convince most people to use them, but not an auto-win. There's literally no basis that the weaker SwSw pokemon would somehow have a greater influence on the metagame than the predecessors did.

 

[Chris P. Bacon]

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43566

copy/pasted from the link above
Offensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.

Defensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is able to wall and stall out a significant portion of the metagame.

Support Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other pokemon to sweep.


Drizzle clearly falls under #3, support characteristics. Since we as a community don't ban certain abilities on specific pokemon (i.e. banning Blaziken as a whole) we would ban Politoed. No one would miss these pokemon anyway since they are horribly outclassed, who unlike Kingdra fills a certain niche (seriously, Kingdra isn't uber).

If you MUST see the message "Rain continues to fall" on your screen then it has been said many times, use RAIN DANCE. I peaked at 1310 with a Rain Dance + Swift Swim team and I'm not even that good at gen 5, I'm pretty sure any one of you can go even higher so don't give me that bullshit that it isn't viable.

For the people saying it will nerf other viable things that are not exactly broken (i.e. Rain Stall), it doesn't matter. WishMence / Bulky DD Mence weren't broken at all in gen 4, but guess what it was banned as a whole once SALAMENCE was deemed broken, there wasn't any Salamence + Draco Meteor/Outrage clause or Salamence can only use Fly clause. Shit was broken, so shit that wasn't broken suffered because of the culprit.

To sum it all up : POLITOED TO UBERS!!!

 

[haunter]

If, in testing to ban individual Swift Swim abusers, either through a simple or complex ban, we reach a point where the metagame is visibly worse than it was under Aldaron's proposal, and not going to get any better, then that would be a good reason to revert to the current system. However, until we see that, there isn't the slightest reason to assume that it will happen. We need to test and find out rather than assuming that banning individual Pokemon, our tried and true system for four generations, will somehow end in disaster this particular time.

I agree with this. While Aldaron's proposal was a good emergency solution at the time it was approved, I believe it's time to restrict it only to those swift swimmers that will be found too powerful when supported with permanent rain.

Since "Smogon attempts to avoid bans as much as possible" I don't see other options than going through complex bans (drizzle + individual SS Pokemon on the same team) to create a balanced metagame.

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43566

copy/pasted from the link above
Offensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort.

Defensive Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it is able to wall and stall out a significant portion of the metagame.

Support Characteristic
A Pokémon is uber if, in common battle conditions, it can consistently set up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other pokemon to sweep.


Drizzle clearly falls under #3, support characteristics. Since we as a community don't ban certain abilities on specific pokemon (i.e. banning Blaziken as a whole) we would ban Politoed. No one would miss these pokemon anyway since they are horribly outclassed, who unlike Kingdra fills a certain niche (seriously, Kingdra isn't uber).

Your "clearly" is completely arbitrary. The support characteristic was the most vague of the Ubers characteristics used during the past generation to decide tierings and it was often twisted by some users just to make some "ad hoc" arguments agaisnt Pokemon like Latias and Salamence.

If I wanted to ban Skarmory I could easly say that its ability to lay down spikes and SR and force switches with WW could fall under the support characteristic as, undoubtedly, if used correctly Skarm "makes it substantially easier for other pokemon to sweep".

Drizzle itself is not broken in my opinion, and banning Drizzle would only make sand and sun teams more powerful and difficult to deal with, opening to more and more bans.