Should we ban perma weather?

what should we do?

  • Yes, ban all perma-weather

    Votes: 50 32.3%
  • No, we just ban drizzle and sand stream

    Votes: 5 3.2%
  • No, just ban drought, drizzle and sand stream

    Votes: 17 11.0%
  • No, leave it as it is

    Votes: 65 41.9%
  • Ban drizzle only

    Votes: 15 9.7%
  • Ban sand stream only

    Votes: 3 1.9%

  • Total voters
    155
Poll's not good enough. Some people (including myself) want drizzle to go but are fine with everything else.

Add this:

Ban one weather


@mamoswine

That thread doesn't ask you what weather you want banned. It only asks if you would be happy if perma weather were gone.
 

Birkal

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While I think the end result should be to ban all permanent weather from OU, I doubt it can be done in one clean cut. Drizzle seems to be on the chopping block. It will be interesting to see how its departure will change the metagame. If one type of weather becomes too powerful at that point, then I would recommend banning them all. But who knows? Maybe the metagame would do just fine with Drizzle, Snow Warning, and Sand Stream (minus Garchomp).
 
I'd rather not have any of them gone but if one were to be banned then I'd rather have all of them banned so we dont have to see one specific weather dominating the meta (nowai hail).

once the weathers are gone, garchomp will reign hard though.
well...seems like chomp will be gone this round anyways but whatever
all in all, id like the weathers to stay.
all of them
 
I'd rather not have any of them gone but if one were to be banned then I'd rather have all of them banned so we dont have to see one specific weather dominating the meta (nowai hail).

once the weathers are gone, garchomp will reign hard though.
well...seems like chomp will be gone this round anyways but whatever
all in all, id like the weathers to stay.
all of them
If chomp itself doesn't go beforehand.

I personally want to see drizzle gone bye bye along with Chomp. I don't believe any other the other weather is broken.
 
Drizzle is fine without Swift Swim. Most of the somewhat "problematic" sandstream users/sweepers have decent counters which are usable in their own right without having to be there solely to counter them. For example Gliscor as a counter to Excadrill.

While the Garchomp sandveil situation is troubling and certainly happens at the worst of times.. It really isn't game breaking and worthy of a ban (as much as I would maybe enjoy him banned on principal) any decent ice move deals with him anyway..

So I guess my point is; Where Smogon is right now is probably the most stable it's going to get and really doesn't need to be changed by banning weather all together.

I mean sure lack of weather would make for a rather interesting metagame but if you want the kind of a metagame drop down a tier or two and play around in there (though there is weather there also so...) and that being said not all OU teams use weather sure it might be a high majority it really is predictably Sandstorm and not even anything difficult to counter. So if permanent weather bothers you as a player pack a weather counter give him a redundant weather changing move kill their weather inducer and then wait out the five turns for yours to disappear and say hello to clear skies....
 
if drizzle gets banned, then ss would be even more dominating and what not
id rather have all weathers gone then one or two
however, again id really like to keep the meta as it is.
 
There's actually this thread:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3449090

Which is already talking about this to some extent. And in terms of your poll, it starts getting more complex in terms of banning drizzle vs drought vs sand stream. Best to just write whatever opinions you may have regarding each in the above thread, there's already a bunch of people there.
That poll is the reason I started this one. It asks the wrong question. A lot of people do prefer weather gone, other people would play anyways even if they didn't like it. Surely we should be asking precisely what goes and what stays.
 
The entire top 6 of pokes are Sandstream abusers/lovers and people still rag on rain? Yeah...I...don't really get it.
Far as I'm concerned, Rain and Sand should go. Sun would then need to be tested, and lolhail.
 

Mario With Lasers

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No, banning Drizzle for now will be enough, as weather wars are mostly Drizzle's fault; priority 5-8 turn Rain with Swift Swimmers will be the "nerf" Rain needs.
 
No, banning Drizzle for now will be enough, as weather wars are mostly Drizzle's fault; priority 5-8 turn Rain with Swift Swimmers will be the "nerf" Rain needs.
Considering a large amount of suggested bans are related to weather or something that benefits from weather (namely Drizzle and Sand Stream), it still boggles my mind to see people consistently singling out one type of weather and leaving another scot-free.

Weather wars are mostly the fault of well....weather. And not just any weather - permanent, unending weather.

Choose all or none.
 
Hate this weathers war.
And i'm curious to see a metagame without Ttar (for only a period, until unnerve will be released).
 

Jibaku

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All or none for me. I can not see how Rain is any more devastating than Sand is.

I chose "No, leave it as it is" for reasons I'd rather not have to explain due to the touchiness of this subject and how I could possibly react to it. However, I do actually enjoy the weather war aspect of BW.
 

Lady Bug

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I wanted to vote ban Drought only, but I guess it's not an option, so I voted that we leave it as it is.
 

Mario With Lasers

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Considering a large amount of suggested bans are related to weather or something that benefits from weather (namely Drizzle and Sand Stream), it still boggles my mind to see people consistently singling out one type of weather and leaving another scot-free.

Weather wars are mostly the fault of well....weather. And not just any weather - permanent, unending weather.

Choose all or none.
Drizzle, Thundurus, Garchomp, Excadrill. Yeah, that's a lot.


And I don't have to choose "all or none". Sand Stream was fine in DPPt, wasn't it? What is the only new OU being discussed as broken? Excadrill. What happens if you ban Excadrill and Garchomp (not that I find Drill to be broken...)? You're left with a DPPt Sand team with Landorus and ~6 new Rock-types. Oh wow, broken as shit. Same thing with Sun, it's not broken now and, besides Darmanitan and Victini, I can't see it being deemed broken in the near future. Oh wow Venusaur has double Speed n--oh sorry Heatran and Dragons still wall you forever.

Drizzle is the best weather condition because it has the most benefits, the least side effects and affect a shitload of pokémon, which have good typing to begin with (Kingdra, Thundurus, huhhhh Water-types as a whole). Drizzle is the elephant in the room, not weather. Banning it will give us much more breathing room for us to discuss and analyze the metagame and, if we ever find Drizzle could actually stay with a multitude of bans (but not merely to "check Sun/Sand"), then it could return. Until then, though, Drought and Sand Stream can stay, and Geniebros, Manaphy and Kingdra can set up Rain if required.
 
Drizzle, Thundurus, Garchomp, Excadrill. Yeah, that's a lot.
Gorebyss has got a bit of scrutiny for its Smash Passing, and it benefits from Rain too. Not nearly as relevant, but still...relevant. It's still another object of discussion that, surprise, relates to weather.

And I don't have to choose "all or none". Sand Stream was fine in DPPt, wasn't it? What is the only new OU being discussed as broken? Excadrill. What happens if you ban Excadrill and Garchomp (not that I find Drill to be broken...)? You're left with a DPPt Sand team with Landorus and ~6 new Rock-types. Oh wow, broken as shit. Same thing with Sun, it's not broken now and, besides Darmanitan and Victini, I can't see it being deemed broken in the near future. Oh wow Venusaur has double Speed n--oh sorry Heatran and Dragons still wall you forever.
I'm sure if I were to suggest banning Excadrill WITH Sand Rush or Garchomp WITH Sand Veil I would be shot down for suggesting a complex ban. Yet apparently you can unbreak sand by essentially making a complex ban on a higher scale by removing the few weather pokemon instead of weather itself. Blagh, what. Sun naturally is the smallest brother of the big three weather types, and Hail is an affectation at best. But they're still weather.

All or none.

To be honest, I support weather's existence because Gamefreak clearly do. Gen 5 has more weather inducers and more weather abilities - they are intended to be in the new metagame. They still pose problems, of course, but the approach should not be going in and tinkering with small parts of the system. Just deem Permanent weather the haunt of Ubers and leave it be, and make people goddamn WORK for their weather abuse with the Gen 4 items and new priority summoning of Prankster available to players. Or change absolutely nothing, that's fine too.

I just hate this constant idea that Sand is fine and Drizzle is not. They're both shit.
 
Sand is ingrained in people's heads as fine because the last generation had it and it wasn't nearly the massive problem it is now.

When you literally can make a team with the top 6 Pokemon in the metagame and it works perfectly and you can shoot up the ladder with little to no skill, and that strategy is Sandstorm, how can you argue that it's Drizzle, the main check to Sandstorm, that needs to go?
 
I just can't understand people want Drizzle gone, but want Sand Stream to stay. If there is one weather that is currently broken, it's Sand Stream. First of all, it has two summoners, one of them is one of the most-used Pokemon ever. And not without reason, it is one of the most powerful Pokemon. The problem I see with the logic that Drizzle is broken and SS wouldn't be, is that the Drizzler itself isn't broken. It's actually pretty bad. Tyranitar (and even Hippowdon to some extend) is a useful Pokemon itself. Did I say useful? I mean integral. Tyranitar is viable on pretty much every team. It's extremely dangerous with a choice item, it can run set-up sets. hell, it can even stall! If you know what set it uses, it's pretty easy to counter though, but the problem is that it's very versatile. If you see a Ttar in team preview, you can't know if it's gonna sweep you, revenge you, status your team, phaze your team, put up rocks or even all of it! Politoed can pretty much only spread status or run Specs and the useless gimmicks. Drought is actually countered by "normal" teams and Hail teams are just lol.

So Tyranitar is a threat itself, and it makes already strong Pokemon even more dangerous if not broken (Garchomp, Landorus, Excadrill and what more).

I could brag about this a lot more, but I would really like to know what others think about this.
 

Mario With Lasers

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I'm sure if I were to suggest banning Excadrill WITH Sand Rush or Garchomp WITH Sand Veil I would be shot down for suggesting a complex ban. Yet apparently you can unbreak sand by essentially making a complex ban on a higher scale by removing the few weather pokemon instead of weather itself. Blagh, what. Sun naturally is the smallest brother of the big three weather types, and Hail is an affectation at best. But they're still weather.
What. Are you going to get back to DPPt and suggesting banning all Dragons too? The main element of competitive Pokémon is... the pokémon, so if they're broken, they have to be banned. Whatever happened to this community in the last few months to make people oppose banning pokémon, of all things? Sand is not a playable entity, Excadrill is. "Drizzle+SwSw is not allowed" is a complex ban to save Drizzle's ass in a sense, "Excadrill is not allowed" isn't. I (and other people) am not trying to save Sandstorm banning "the few weather pokémon", I am trying to ban broken pokémon. Any Rock-type, Sand Forcer/Veiler/Rusher is a Sandstorm abuser. Hell, any Ground-type or Steel-type is also an abuser. And yet none of them come even close to Garchomp and Excadrill, as they are the problem. Looking at two pokémon which are borderline cases in one weather and saying all perma-weather is broken is a completely asinine assumption to make.

Poor Hail, it's so unloved that people don't even remember it when talking about banning weather =(
They do, and for some reason they think it would be broken in a metagame without any other perma-weather. Go figure.
 
Poor Hail, it's so unloved that people don't even remember it when talking about banning weather =(
Imagine if an ability like SwSw/Sand Rush/Chlorophyll came out for hail.

ICE SLIDING!

But in this whole issue, there are actually a number of pokemon, like people have said, who take advantage of perma-weather, not necessarily due to an ability.
Off the top of my head -
Rain:
Ferrothorn/Scizor/Genesect - able to survive fire type moves and set hazards/KO/KO opposition

Sand:
Rock types able to tank Special hits due to 1.5x increase (sorry, my mind is blank right now)

Sun:
Spinners such as Donphan/Claydol can tank water hits in the sun better, and do their jobs

I know the list is a bit weak, I'm pretty sure there are other pokemon that take advantage of weather without abilities.

SO what I'm really trying to say is that don't just think of SV Chomp, SR Excadrill and such only when considering this issue, but also those others that benefit from the weather. And what it may mean for the metagame.
 
Sand Stream was fine in DPPt, wasn't it?
No it wasn't, but people just lived with it since they let it be grandfathered in from Generation 3 (and because banning things that aren't purely aggressive in nature is stupidly hard).

Passive damage is one of the most dangerous things in the game, in no small part because people let it fly under the radar. If you are using a team without any Pokemon immune to it, Sandstream from an opposing lead Tyranitar will do 250% of a Pokemon's HP worth of damage over the course of a 40 turn match. The fact that this damage is completely free and comes from a Pokemon that's already good doesn't help matters.

If you get rid of Drizzle only, then yes the Weather Wars will end, but only because there will be permanent Sandstorm again. Drought might initially spike in usage, but I strongly doubt that it will be able to compete with Sandstorm over the long haul. Then we go back to a metagame where Ground and Steel types are held to a much lower standard than everyone else (Stealth Rock compounds the issue, but that's beyond the scope of this thread).

Hail suffers from many of the same problems, but the fact that Hail is only ignored by the worst defensive typing in the game helps balance it somewhat. If you run Hail you either take damage as well or you leave your entire team open to a crippling Fighting/Rock weakness. If we're banning the other weathers, though, Hail should go, too. Making Hail a permanent fixture on the field is really no better than letting any other weather be a permanent feature.

Honestly, with Thundurus, Garchomp, Latios, and possibly Excadrill out of the metagame (which seems like a very distinct possibility given the suspect nomination thread), I don't think any weather is problematic enough to warrant banning. Yes, weather will continue to be a powerful force in the metagame, but without those powerhouses running amok, weather teams will be much less menacing.

If we do ban any weather, though, I do think it would be best to get rid of them across the board. Generation 4's metagame wasn't so good that we should try to roll back to it. Usage statistics indicate that the current metagame is more balanced than Generation 4's was at pretty much any point.
 

Mario With Lasers

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Passive damage is one of the most dangerous things in the game, in no small part because people let it fly under the radar. If you are using a team without any Pokemon immune to it, Sandstream from an opposing lead Tyranitar will do 250% of a Pokemon's HP worth of damage over the course of a 40 turn match.
If you use Leftovers and there's no Tyraniar/Hippowdon (it happened most of the time in DPPt), you would recover 250% of a Pokémon's HP worth of damage over the course of a 40 turn match. Ban Lefties ?__?

The fact that this damage is completely free and comes from a Pokemon that's already good doesn't help matters.

If you get rid of Drizzle only, then yes the Weather Wars will end, but only because there will be permanent Sandstorm again. Drought might initially spike in usage, but I strongly doubt that it will be able to compete with Sandstorm over the long haul. Then we go back to a metagame where Ground and Steel types are held to a much lower standard than everyone else (Stealth Rock compounds the issue, but that's beyond the scope of this thread).

Hail suffers from many of the same problems, but the fact that Hail is only ignored by the worst defensive typing in the game helps balance it somewhat. If you run Hail you either take damage as well or you leave your entire team open to a crippling Fighting/Rock weakness. If we're banning the other weathers, though, Hail should go, too. Making Hail a permanent fixture on the field is really no better than letting any other weather be a permanent feature.
The problem isn't having a certain "permanent" condition in a metagame; the condition is only a problem when it's "broken", in the sense that it's detrimental to the metagame. Even if Sandstorm was everywhere and did passive damage every turn to non-immune pokémon, it simply wasn't considered detrimental enough to be banned. You say the damage is "completely free" but guess what, it's nullified the moment you put Leftovers in your pokémon. You're not "forced" to use Leftovers and, even if you were, it would not automatically mean Sand Stream was broken. Being a force in a metagame doesn't mean you're bad, only that you're relevant.

If we do ban any weather, though, I do think it would be best to get rid of them across the board. Generation 4's metagame wasn't so good that we should try to roll back to it. Usage statistics indicate that the current metagame is more balanced than Generation 4's was at pretty much any point.
While I see your point, one thing is comparing a metagame with four weathers allowed (and one of them nerfed) with a metagame with only two allowed and forget what I'm suggesting is a metagame with three weathers allowed. Quantity does not really matter, though, my point is that banning Drizzle will not make B/W OU the same as DPPt OU simply because there's still another usable perma-weather around. If we find Sun or Sand are still broken after Drizzle's gone (probably Drought will be seen as broken before Sand since the latter doesn't give as many benefits as Sun/Rain), then we ban it. Worst case, we'll be left with only Hail in the end. Have you ever played DPPt UU? Abomasnow (and Froslass) were banned, and yet Snover was allowed and Hail was actually fine down there. Do you think Abomasnow would be worse in a no-Sand/Sun/Rain B/W OU than Snover was in DPPt UU? I really can't see how.
 

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