BW UU Council [Final Vote on Snow Warning and Chandelure]

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kokoloko

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so basically, everyone keeps asking me to go back and ban snow warning and chandelure in bw. i'm opposed to touching past tiers unless its really necessary but since we keep banning them in every tour that we include bw in, why the fuck not. lets consider it closure.

i'm going to put this to a vote. i'm going to pick a nine man council out of applications which you will PM to me directly. the application is answering the following questions:

what have you accomplished in bw uu?
why do you think you are qualified to vote?
Click to expand...

there will be no "objective" requirements to vote here. plain old hand-picked council to vote on one last issue in bw uu before we can close the chapter.

the deadline to apply is exactly 6 days from now. if there aren't enough good applications for me to pick a 9 man council, i will conclude that people don't care enough to make the change worth it.

that is all.
 
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Results so far:

Chandelure: 6 BL 3 UU
Snow Warning: 7 BL 2 UU

Chandelure: BL
Chandelure probably should have been banned the first time around for a couple of key reasons. It has essentially one true defensive switch-in - Snorlax. Porygon2 comes close, but it's wrecked by Trick + HP Fighting for the most part. At any rate, defensive (or even bulky offensive teams) were essentially forced to run Snorlax, a reaction to Chandelure that created a relatively stale and constricted meta. For Offense teams, Chandelure really has no switch-ins - Houndoom comes the closest, but HP Fighting can again easily wear it down and kill it.

While Chandelure is easily outsped and revenge killed by offensive threats, this doesn't change the fact that offensive teams without Snorlax have absolutely nothing to switch in to it. This creates a rather unhealthy situation where you're essentially forced to sack something to the sheer wallbreaking power of Chandelure no matter what. It may be weak to SR and vulnerable to Pursuit, but that still doesn't change the fact that it has so few switch-ins. Chandelure created unhealthy playstyles and an overcentralized meta and it deserves to be banned.

Hail: BL

This one actually took a lot of time for me to mull over, because I think hail is a really tricky case. On the ladder, it destroyed for obvious reasons - only 2% of teams used it, so it didn't ever make sense to build direct counters to hail into a team. You just accepted the loss when you ran into it and moved on with your life. However, this is obviously a bad indicator of hail's brokenness because it just didn't make practical sense to even try and counter it due to its low usage.

I do, however, believe that counterplay did exist against stall. There were pokemon who were very good against Hail Stall (like Cobalion, Chandelure (rip), Band Victini, SD Cross), and there were niche moves that people didn't ever explore (like Rain Dance, Sunny Day Victini, etc). Due to the uncommonness of hail teams on the ladder, tournament players were reluctant to build serious counterplay to hail into their team until very late in the tiering process, at which point it was viewed as no more than a metagame that encroached on their building.

Hail was objectively broken when looking only at its performance, both on the ladder and in tournaments. I can't honestly say whether this was due to people's playstyle bias and hesitance to counter it, or because it truly was too overcentralizing. Without Chandelure in the tier though, my instincts tell me that Hail would be much too powerful.

Chandelure: BL

I'm really not a fan of having a Pokemon in the tier that doesn't really have any counters. Even Snorlax gets bodied by Will-o-Wisp. Chandelure is not unilaterally broken -- it is weak to SR, slow, and pretty frail. I don't think anyone is trying to argue that Chandelure is an instant win against many teams. However, when you team build and try to build a team where a) Chandelure doesn't come in on any member (impossible) and b) Chandelure doesn't automatically get a KO or cripple something when it comes in (hard). It's just too damn difficult to wall Specs + Scarf + SubWisp, not to mention the stupid shit like Calm Mind, Taunt+Wisp, et cetera that blow past counters to the other sets

Snow Warning: BL

Hail in the tier causes a lot of defensive Pokemon to get worn down very quickly while simultaneously accelerating the death of LO / Choice users as well. Unlike in OU, there is no other weather to counteract it. Blizzard Spam is a powerful strategy on top of any previous reasons, and since Hail cannot be stopped you really have to have a number of good Ice resistances to have a shot. Every damn team at the end of BW UU carried Hail, and it is really a crutch to have your Leftovers removed against powerful offense teams.

Snow Warning: UU
Hail sucks. That's all I'd say if I was allowed to. I'm not sure where this sudden late push is coming from to ban it, but I think it's very misguided. For the most part, Hail neuters its walls by cancelling lefties, and doesn't really have anything that takes advantage of it. Rotom-F I guess? Rotom-F blows. The only thing that Hail benefits is Walrein because it's fucking impossible to kill and once it gets a sub up it just dominates. I'd support a vote on Walrein or some complex ban of Hail + Walrein. But I can't vote to ban something that I don't think is very good outside one busted mon.

Chandelure: UU

This one is tougher. Chandelure is a nuke. Usually I'm banhappy when it comes to nukes. But Chandelure has enough going against it that it's a pretty shitty nuke. It's SR weak, relatively slow, and its typing fucks it over just as much as it benefits it.

Chandelure: BL

Chandelure has too many things going for it. Its insane power that it gets many chances to make use of with its typing that not only gives it excellent coverage with high-powered STABs to boot but also comes with good resists and a useful fighting immunity allowing is one thing, and it's pretty nasty at that. However, there is also its perfectly adequate bulk that its typing would be defensively useless without, and with its utility movepool it can make use of Will-o-Wisp alongside Taunt and/or Pain Split to fulfill its usual jobs albeit with less power but with the bonus of completely shitting on several common counters, the biggest one being Snorlax, the safest switch-in to it the tier has. There's also its ability to spinblock the common spinners with ease (bar offensive Blastoise, which isn't all that common aside from a few players and has to deal with a pretty significant loss in bulk) thanks to all the factors mentioned above which is a heavy contributor to the ridiculous effectiveness of Spikes in the metagame.

Snow Warning: BL

Part of what made UU such a great, enjoyable tier was the lack of what was ruining OU, weather. With hail, Blizzard goes from from really powerful yet risky to just really powerful. The power jump from Ice Beam to Blizzard is huge, as evidenced by even uninvested mons such as Abomasnow dealing heavy damage with it. The team not abusing hail is at a severe disadvantage against one that is, since the hail user can just throw Abomasnow away if he really doesn't need it (and it's a legitimately good Pokemon so it's hardly even like it's a 5v6 game) and ride his uncontested advantages to victory. In almost every battle I have played and witnessed, the advantage Hail gives against a non-Hail team is ridiculous; as if the constant 6% damage and Leftovers negation on nearly the whole metagame and 100% accurate Blizzards weren't dumb enough, there is also Walrein, who is up there as one of the most nigh-impossible Pokemon for an offensive team to kill; "unfair" is the only way to describe it.

Chandelure: BL

If you don't have Snorlax, you're probably going to lose a Pokemon or two to Chandelure. And if you do have Snorlax, you'd better hope it's not running Will-o-Wisp or something. It's just far too strong, and has a large number of set up opportunities due to excellent typing and ability.

Hail: UU

Nothing about the hail archetype is particularly broken, it's just annoying to play against. And if we're banning based on how annoying stuff is, I'd argue Rain is far more deserving of a ban. Ultimately a stall team that damages itself or an offensive team with a bunch of ice types really don't pose much of a threat, especially since Chandelure exists, but even so without it (since Kingdra / Victini / Snorlax also exist).

Chandelure: UU/BL

In short, I'm voting to ban Chandelure because it's a very unhealthy presence in the metagame. Chandelure's massive strength is undeniable. It's Specs set has only one one true counter; Snorlax, which Chandelure can get around with its equally powerful Sub and WoW sets. While it is slow compared to the rest of UU's offensive powerhouses, it is fast enough to outrun nearly every bulky Pokemon in the tier, and capable of 2HKOing all of them. Furthermore, it has the bulk and proper resistances/immunities (Fire/Fighting) to make it relatively easy to bring into battle, even against offensive teams. As a result, Chandelure seriously limits teambuilding to the point where if you are running bulky offense/stall without Snorlax, you basically lose a mon everytime it comes in. This gives rise to a very stale metagame, which is what we saw towards the end of BW2. In the recent tours that have been held in the Tournaments and Underused forums in which Chandelure was banned, I've observed a notable increase in diversity, both in the playstyles that have been used as well as the use of many Pokemon that were previously unviable with Chandelure in the tier.

Snow Warning: UU/BL

Snow Warning is broken because it gives rise to two ridiculously strong playstyles that are equally difficult to prepare for, Hail Offense and Hail Stall. Lets begin with Hail Offense. Hail takes normally annoying as fuck offensive Pokemon like Nidoqueen, Sharpedo, and Raikou, and makes them 10x harder to deal with by permitting the use of Blizzard, and in Raikou's case, the combination of Weather Ball + HP Grass + Aura Sphere that breaks every single one of its usual counters. Abomasnow is a force in its own right, being able to run a variety of sets such as Swords Dance, mixed, or Scarf effectively. The residual damage brought on by hail is worth mentioning as well. In addition to buffing already strong metagame threats like the aforementioned Sharpedo, Raikou, and Nidoqueen, Hail negates the Leftovers recovery of every defensive Pokemon in the tier, severely limiting their ability to check important threats they would otherwise be able to. As a result, most Balance, BO, and Stall teams have a terrible matchup against Hail Offense, because they simply cannot withstand the pressure applied by common Hail abusers. I won't go into detail with Hail Stall, but essentially it is broken because of a single Pokemon; Walrein. In the majority of cases, Walrein finds an opportunity to come in on something it can set up a sub on, (which is a large portion of the tier) and you proceed to lose half of your team to Substitute + Protect stall. Phazing isn't even a reliable method of stopping Walrein because it often runs Roar itself, and is faster than most other Roar/WW users.

Chandelure: UU
Chand is a very powerful mon that pretty much obliterates anything slower that isn't snorlax/porygon2/p-z (trace, no hp fighting)/sp def togekiss/umbreon (non specs)/houndoom (no hp fighting). The fact that it is pretty slow does balance this out as it is easily revenged due to its many weaknesses as well as poor defenses. Despite its huge immediate power, I do find chand somewhat healthy for the tier as it provides another check to choiced fighting types, victini, and a couple other things while not being insanely overpowered itself.


Snow Warning: BL

For a tier with an abundance of fighting/fire types, Hail has been an overwhelming cancer the entire time it has been legal. First and foremost, it is the only perma weather allowed in the tier which gives it an advantage right from the start by wearing down opposing mons with residual damage and them not being able to do anything about it. As annoying as 100% blizzards/Rotom-F are, hail stall is probably the most cancerous of all the playstyles available to hail as Ice body/Residual hail damage with sub/protect shenanigans can win games all by itself.

Chandelure: BL
when the topic of chandelure being broken or not came the first go around, i was a pretty strong advocate of keeping it in the tier. i felt as though it's stealth rock and pursuit weakness, frail defenses, and less than ideal speed made it a fairly manageable threat within the bw uu environment. after continually using and playing against it up until now though i've decided to eat my words. chandelure, if given the opportunity to switch-in, which it will against competent players, shits on pretty much every team lacking a snorlax. there literally is no other completely safe viable switch-in, and even lax has to fear a possible wow set. originally, i didn't think chandy had the typing or enough ability to stay prominent in a match, but it has proven to be a little too powerful for the metagame, and should be consequentially banned.

Hail: BL

almost like my previous opinion on chandelure, hail was something i originally saw as a nice gimmick in uu. there aren't that many abusers, especially after froslass left, and abomasnow is sr weak with a fuck ton of weaknesses. but damn, hail has probably proven to be one of the most uncompetitive aspects of the current bw uu metagame. with hail's ability to continually chip away essentially every type of team, be it stall or offense trying to break hail, it has a way, if played right, to come out victorious most of the time. even things meant to exploit common hail weaknesses, such as fighters or fires, are easily worn down through the chip damage hail teams take advantage of. hail, as showcased in the previous spl, is an easy to use, almost mindless playstyle that can net wins based on the strategy alone, let alone the player. for this reason, i'm voting towards a ban on hail as well.

Chandelure: UU

Chandelure has insane fire power with great STAB attacks that pretty much obliterate everything in the tier bar Snorlax (hell even Porygon-2 can only hope Chandelure packs flash fire and not Flame body to be able to hard counter) which makes it so scary. It also acts as a fantastic spinblocker and can put alot of pressure on spinners, even Blastoise. Thankfully its mediocre speed and poor defensive typing (weak to common types such as Water and Ground) allows it to be revenged very easily however realistically one would lose a Pokemon (or at a severely crippled one) to this if they lack Snorlax / Porygon2. While many would say this thing over-centralizes the metagame, I haven't really made teams specifically to handle Chandelure, but more like handle Fire-types in general. It can be revenged with ease, it has a good movepool but it isnt unpredictable as say Victini. When taking its negatives and positives into account, I believe for a metagame which has many offensive behemoths who can run this thing to the ground, even at times set up on the choiced sets this thing should remain underused. We can't keep looking at what this thing does to Snorlax-less stall, vs offense it doesnt last long and doesn't take out as many Pokemon as people exaggerate.

Hail: BL

Get this out of the tier. One of the main reasons I turned to uu over ou in bw was the lack of perma weather which made it alot more enjoyable. While hail allows unconventional threats such as Rotom-F, Walrein and Jynx to flourish, it also causes Hail stall to become incredibly difficult to face as there isn't any surefire way to deal with it. Looking at hail offense, Blizzard spam is hard to tank in this tier not to mention the extra damage hail inflicts just wears down offensive team really quickly. It is to a certain degree over-centralizing and does not promote a healthy metagame.

Chandelure: BL

Chandelure puts way too much pressure on teambuilding, down to the point where there are only a few viable defensive cores should you choose not to use Snorlax. It's really hard to notice if you don't play the tier regularly because you don't exactly mind using a Pokemon as good as Snorlax every time in such cases, but when you actually set out to build without it, it becomes extremely apparent. The only way to keep yourself from being Chandelure weak at that point is to either go all-out offense or use Fygon+Swampert or Suicune+Umbreon (or some combination of the two. That's how ridiculously powerful Chandelure is.

Snow Warning: BL

Hail is cancer. It honestly creates an environment that is straight up not fun to play. That, and hail gives way to a lot of arguably broken strategies to be used in hail offense. Pokemon such as Nidoking and Rotom-F become stupidly powerful and incredibly difficult to play around. Hail stall is a totally different monster, making Walrein a legitimately broken pokemon due to offense's inability to even play around it.

Chandelure: BL

My history with Candle is complicated, because when it was first tested I was confident that the fact that it practically forced you to run Snorlax on most non-HO teams wasn't bad, simply because Lax was that great. However, I started to see how much of a handicap that was, especially considering Snorlax isn't even a perfect counter due to burns/Trick screwing it over depending on the set. Chandelure basically has a great defensive typing for an offensive mon, since while it's weak to SR it can still act as a good check to stuff, while having amazing offensive presence in its 427 SpA and not terrible Speed stat of 259 w/o Scarf, meaning it has enough tools to wreck most slower things with its Sub sets (and it can still cripple defensive mons with Trick from its Choiced sets). It basically puts an enormous strain both in teambuilding and in the games, since being granted a free switch can allow it to wreak havoc to balance. While it can be taken care of due to its Pursuit weakness, there's basically only three good Pursuiters—five if you count Krook and Doomer, both of which aren't that good—and only Lax can actually switch in to not force a trade. It might not be the most broken thing ever, but it's certainly an unhealthy presence.

Snow Warning: BL

Basically, if we had enough time to actually test stuff I'd probably choose to ban only Aboma (which never got a proper suspect test) instead of the ability, since we'd already tested the ability with Snover and it was voted UU—then we'd see if Hail was broken still or not. However, since this is a necro test it's understandable that we'd prefer to make a clean ban on auto Hail. The reason for this basically stems from team matchup. While it wasn't as clear before SPL, seeing most matchups being reduced to Hail stall against Hail stall ct, or Hail stall ct against its own ct, with the odd Blizzspam being thrown in, really showed how carcinogenic auto weather was for the tier. It might not have been as terrible as it was before the Snow Cloak ban in OU, but it certainly limited the competitiveness due to how retarded Stallrein was, and how strong some offensive mons got with the ability to use Blizzard on their movesets (or Weather Ball in Raikou's case). LO Rotom-F was particularly deadly, but there was also Nidoqueen, Sharpedo, Empoleon... Altogether some strong offensive mons that became even stronger and could fit in Hail without much issue. Aboma alone was pretty good too, with Leech Seed sets being especially useful to wear down threats compounded with Hail and Blizzard to deter Grass-types from switching in, or its SD set being a strong wallbreaker with Wood Hammer and Ice Shard as solid STAB options. Obviously it wouldn't be broken without Snow Warning, but the point of it was that it had many more alternatives and better longevity than Snover, meaning that you wouldn't be super crippled by placing it on a team, even if you weren't building around it—hence not being as limited in strategies as Snover—and could, on the other hand, support those offensive mons by allowing them to run Blizzard/Weather Ball without drawbacks, while also taking advantage of that chip damage.

So yea, good riddance UU.

Don't ask me to make any more changes to BW, pls.

That is all.
 
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