Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Snag some vintage SPL team logo merch over at our Teespring store before January 12th!
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Hello everyone. As a current National Dex UU player and an ex=player from SM UU, I've always wondered what makes a weather 'broken'. As of today, Drought and Drizzle are both banned from SM UU and National Dex UU. Both of these abilities were banned in the early stages of both tiers actually, since they were cheesy playstyles that were insanely hard to prepare for in that stage of the tier. Drought had abusers like Mega Houndoom and Venusaur, while Drizzle had to deal with Pokemon like, but not limited to, Kingdra, Kabutops, Omastar, Azumarill, Mega Swampert (National Dex UU, that is), and many others.
However, I've always wondered, why do we ban the abilities instead of the most broken abusers? Especially when it comes to Drought, only two main abusers really get brought up (being Venusaur and Mega Houndoom), and no one would argue that outside of these anything pushes Sun over the limit.
Drizzle is a bit different, since Rain is overall a better weather setter, but even then just getting rid of the top 2/3 most broken abusers would surely fix this. And even if it doesn't, why is banning Politoed (or Pelipper if it ever drops to a lower tier) almost never on the table? Like, Arctozolt got banned from SS UU but not Sow Warning.
National Dex UU is looking into retesting the weather abilities soon, but there is always a big discussion on what to do. Most people tend to just say the abilities need to stay banned, but I'm not so sure about that. I personally believe that we should 100% focus on the problematic Pokémon first, which almost just never seems to be the case when it comes to these two abilities specifically in lower tiers.
For example, if Drought gets retested into National Dex UU, we should probs look into broken elements in this order:
abusers () - setters () - ability (drought)
Drizzle is a bit different, since it's generally agreed that it has more and better abusers, but even then, banning Politoed seems like a fine option to me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
tl:dr we need to strive away from just simply banning the abilities and take our time to evaluate each broken user/setter before we look into the actual ability itself. we tier pokemon, not abilities. banning the abilities is just lazy tiering if you havent taken the time to look into banning alternatives.
I don't think considering banning the setters before the abilities is a good idea. If they break the tier by setting the weather, then banning the weather setting ability makes more sense than banning the setters. What's the point of keeping Drought or Drizzle if all the viable setters are banned? That would also implies that drought-less Torkoal and Ninetales would be banned from lower tiers as well, which doesn't make sense.
I think considering banning Heat Rock and Damp Rock could be an interesting option, like Monotype did with Damp Rock and Smooth Rock. (sorry if this post is a bit nitpicking, but i believe this is still a point that had to be made)
The very general way I would look at it is that if a weather or weather inducing rock makes multiple Pokemon clearly broken that were not otherwise problematic, then it is worth examining the weather or item itself. If it’s just a singular Pokemon, then it’s best to focus on the Pokemon itself just because that’s standard suspect procedure and the priority in tiering.
We always look into individual Pokemon solutions before all else since that is the cleanest solution and most common tiering procedure, but oftentimes situations of this nature involve multiple problematic weather abusers (see: the abundance of Sun abusers in various lower tiers), thus making a single suspect an impossibility and switching the focus over to the archetype as a whole — leading to bans on weather abilities or weather rocks.
While this differs in cases of uncompetitiveness (I.e: evasion stuff and king’s rock — where only one abuser may have been broken), we have stuck pretty closely to this with brokenness in recent years.
The very general way I would look at it is that if a weather or weather inducing rock makes multiple Pokemon clearly broken that were not otherwise problematic, then it is worth examining the weather or item itself.
Then I ask, at what point do you start looking at the weather and not the Pokémon. 2 abusers? 3? 5? Maybe they're all overwhelming because they're all present, but when one or two are banned there is more room to counter the rest.
Then is there a way to have a different form of suspect for weather to get a clear grasp of what needs to be banned? For example, a test ladder without said abilities / pokemon / items you'd like to remove. Maybe a longer suspect period?
A large part of this comes down to the sheer number of like-for-like replacements there are for the Swift Swim / Chlorophyll mons, no? Like in a tier where Venusaur is considered broken af, its not too far a jump to assume that in a Venusaur-less metagame that players would just use Victreebel, then Sawsbuck, then whatever elseto similar effect, even if those mons currently see zero usage because of venusaur being better.
you’d eventually get to a point where the Chloro mons are balanced e.g bellossom but it seems in a lot of cases that if a tier doesnt have the defensive resources or revenge killers to handle any of the 3 best ~80 speed chlorophyll grass types with Growth, then its Drought thats the underlying villain, right?
drizzle is kinda crazier because if a tier is that weak to ludi omastar kabutops then its probably not going to be great against seismitoad qwilfish mantine floatzel, or even just very fast non-swsw water types. The tools to handle these mons are pretty similar in the grand scheme of things and if you can’t prep for the first 3 then its not a massive leap to think that the latter 4 are probably gonna be v strong too
presumably arctozolt follows a different reasoning because there are so few slush rush mons that are actually quite distinct (only one has bolt beak) so you don’t jump to the same assumption of “well if we ban arct then Beartic will just be busted”- the step down is way clearer than it would be for Venu-Victree-Saws or Ludicolo-Omastar-Qwilfish.
Then I ask, at what point do you start looking at the weather and not the Pokémon. 2 abusers? 3? 5? Maybe they're all overwhelming because they're all present, but when one or two are banned there is more room to counter the rest.
This is a judgement call, but once you pass the threshold into the weather making multiple Pokemon clearly broken that were not otherwise, I would look at the non-Pokemon element (I.e: the weather rock or ability) rather than the multiple Pokemon. This creates a simpler tiering process, minimizes collateral, and likely takes less time. If there are 2 broken Pokemon off the bat, there’s no saying if 1 or 2 or more pop up after they’re banned. Banning the item or ability solves this altogether at that point.
Then is there a way to have a different form of suspect for weather to get a clear grasp of what needs to be banned? For example, a test ladder without said abilities / pokemon / items you'd like to remove. Maybe a longer suspect period?
Splintering the ladder is very rarely a good idea if we draw off of past experiences and we try to avoid this now, even with OU when we have a large enough playerbase to. A longer suspect period, having a PR thread open before the formal tiering action/test (like Hogg did with weather stuff earlier this generation), or engaging with your council to get a greater idea on the perception would be the best approach here. It’s not perfect, but with proper communication and enough forethought, you can find the best solution.
A large part of this comes down to the sheer number of like-for-like replacements there are for the Swift Swim / Chlorophyll mons, no? Like in a tier where Venusaur is considered broken af, its not too far a jump to assume that in a Venusaur-less metagame that players would just use Victreebel, then Sawsbuck, then whatever elseto similar effect, even if those mons currently see zero usage because of venusaur being better.
The thing is, is that you technically don't know if the replacements are broken untill tried out enough to get a solid grasp of it. It seems like we rarely ever get to the point of actually banning abusers and always immediately strike the weather ability, even though alternatives haven't been explored enough
I don't think the tiering process necessarily needs to be simple, especially with cases like this. We should, especially when we have enough time left in the generation, try to look at different options to strike the current problem at hand (weather in this case). Especially when the tier in question may not have any other problematic elements at hand, just taking the simple route of banning the ability just seems lazy to me.
I don't think the tiering process necessarily needs to be simple, especially with cases like this. We should, especially when we have enough time left in the generation, try to look at different options to strike the current problem at hand (weather in this case). Especially when the tier in question may not have any other problematic elements at hand, just taking the simple route of banning the ability just seems lazy to me.
I cannot fathom a reality for a tier where the optimal path is to go through multiple suspects on the same topic with no assurance that you are approaching an endpoint for the sake of preserving a single archetype, especially when there is clear precedence to stop this from happening altogether. This practice stunts metagame growth, takes any and all attention away from other prospective suspects, and likely requires an abundance of resources— I do not see it being ideal for any parties involved. This does not even mention the fact that it is very possible that with metagame evolutions, new potentially banworthy exploits can pop up after months or even years, causing a relapse into the same, suboptimal tiering position.
While I don't play national dex UU, I still believe I have a stake in this as a lower tier (UU) main and would like to offer my own thoughts on attempting to establish a uniform standard when it comes to dealing with weather-based playstyles. This issue has come up multiple times this generation (times I will be referencing in this post) and honestly has a fair shot at happening again next generation, especially if gamefreak pulls dexit a second time.
To put my thoughts as clearly as possible, I believe that when examining a weather based playstyle the tier should ban no more than 2 abusers / enablers before acting on the ability. What does this mean? It means that if weather does become an OP strategy in a lower tier, the tier should at least attempt to remove 2 abusers or 1 potent setter and 1 abuser or whatever may apply before acting on the ability itself. The reason I think this way is that we shouldn't try to completely kill the playstyle but still try to nerf it, and even though the banned Pokemon would likely be unviable without the weather it's something that just happens. I've got a few examples where this approach was taken and worked well.
1. UU Sun Ban. Early this gen, there was an entire PR thread on the possibility of banning drought, as sun was an overbearing playstyle with venusaur and darmanitan tearing shit up. I wasn't on smogon when that happened, but I read about it in my spare time and agreed with the conclusion that before banning drought, UU should try to see how sun is like without venusaur before taking further action. Venusaur was banned and the story ended. Even if Darmanitan ended up as broken, I still feel it would've be better to ban it than drought itself. People always look to the "What if x drops and is also banworthy under sun? Why don't we ban the ability at the beginning?" First the stance is based on a what if, which is always iffy. If a lower tier bans 2 abusers of a playstyle, gets another abuser that is also hard to deal with under said playstyle, then they can revisit the ability. No point in trying to preserve 1 or 2 Pokemon in a tier based on a what if.
2. NU Snow Warning Ban. I was actually around for this one, but back in April NU banned snow warning, as they already tackled two parts of the playstyle (Arctozolt and Aurora veil) and were about to ban arctovish, having 3 hail related aspects banned from the tier. While this likely would've solved the problem, the NU council rightfully made the decision to just ban snow warning and unban zolt and aurora veil since there were now 3 aspects of hail that were broken in NU, and at that point they decided to just tackle the root of the issue rather than dance around it. I believe this should be the approach when it comes to tiering weather, try to solve the issue with at most 2 bans of Pokemon (or including move in snow warning's case) before looking at the ability. If it is still broken due to too many abusers, then yes, it is time to ban the ability.
Note that this is just my personal opinion, I think 2 Pokemon bans are the max we should go before acting on the ability. Others probably think different, some think anything more than 1 Pokemon is too much, while others could be fine with 3 Pokemon bans. I also want to say that this applies to the Light Clay situation in lower tiers, where there were too many setters and abusers to look at that a simple one or two Pokemon ban wasn't enough, so the complex ban happened.
Banning setters isn't the way unless there is enough disparity between them. For example, pelipper dropped to UU back in July, and some players at first thought rain was busted. Here you can clearly see that rain with politoed was balanced, but rain with pelipper could be too much, so the action would be to ban pelipper. This didn't happen and pelipper eventually rose to OU but in the scenario rain did become OP that would've been the action. On the other hand, you couldn't exactly ban any setters during NU's snow warning dilemma since there was too many of them (vanilluxe, abomasnow, aurorus) that were all equal in viability and removing them wouldn't be the solution since the other would just take their place and the playstyle would be the same.
Overall, when approaching weather playstyles in lower tiers, if there is a legitimate claim where the issue could be solved in 1-2 Pokemon bans (I'm not talking lower tier drizzle where it doesn't take a genius to figure out there are too many abusers) then try to test and ban those Pokemon before resorting to the ability. I get it, banning a Pokemon that is only viable in weather sucks, we want to have as many Pokemon useable as possible, but I still believe this is the best way to solve weather being broken in lower tiers while still keeping the playstyle viable.
I used to play SM UU and RU a lot when SM was the last gen and that's one question I always had. Why did RU tackle the abuser/s (Houndoom) but UU killed the whole ability? Considering that UU doesn't really look to have any other potential abuser (maybe Darmanitan?), I think the tier suspect testing Drought instead of Heat Rock was a big mistake back in 2019. Was it risky to introduce a potential broken element to the tier such as Drought? Absolutely, but testing and banning Heat Rock at the same time would have been much more accurate for the tier.
It isn't banworthy? Ok, let's allow it with Heat Rock banned and we even have a potential future suspect test of Drought+Heat Rock if the playstyle isn't that strong.
It is totally broken? Well, if it is broken without Heat Rock, it will with it too so 2x1.
There's another point which is banning Mega Houndoom if it is way too broken in Sun. It is the main abuser and is totally unviable in UU without sun, so the tier wouldn't mind it at all. Venusaur is a bit different, as it is in RU and banning it from UU makes it be banned from RU too. However, Venusaur isn't used in RU at all neither.
I've taken replays from, more less, June 2018, of SM RU and UU in official tours to see the usage stats of them. (Like 175 UU games and over 500 from RU, I would say they are all the replays since then) https://pastebin.com/z00VJ8Uc
As you can see, Venusaur had a few appearances in RU but nothing remarkable with a 1.20% of usage. Basically, it didn't have a considerable impact in official tours of the tier. Will RU miss it? No. In fact, if the tier was still the most recent one, it would have probably dropped to NUBL again, as its rise was exactly the last Tier Shifts of the generation, meaning it couldn't drop.
Now into UU, we have both Doom and Venusaur.
Mega-Houndoom had a total of four uses in the tournament, which is a 1.14% of usage, even lower than Venu in RU. Not only that, but also a 0% of winrate, basically meaning that those who brought it didn't perform well in their games, and neither Doom did as it used a total of 5 attacks in its 4 games. Venusaur had a single appearance in the UU tournaments. It's very clear that neither Doom or Venu are relevant in their tiers so losing them wouldn't make a significant impact to the metagames they are allowed in. I know we always try to ban the less Pokemon possible, but the problem here are the mons. If they are broken, either in weather or not (in weather here), I don't see why they shouldn't be banned and why the ability should. Exactly how UU did this generation: they banned Venusaur and waited a bit to see if Sun was still broken.
tl;dr Neither Venusaur or Mega Houndoom are relevant in their tiers, so Drought with or without Heat Rock should be tested. Then Venu and Doom should be banned if they are still broken. (btw I agree with Monky25 in that the limit of bans to deal with an archetype should be two)
I won't talk about Damp Rock and Drizzle because I find it much stronger than sun overall (more Swift Swim abusers, Water being a more consistent type, not weak to rocks, SCIZOR receving a Fire-type attack, Electric- and Flying-types hitting all their moves...). I don't know a thing about ND UU (I do from ND OU and RU though) so I can't have an opinion on Mega Swampert.
as a ex-contributor to SM RU and SM UU, the decisions was made, as Sun in SM UU would be too much of an overall playstyle, as there are many abusers from it alongside a decent enough setter in Ninetales which can turn the tables by itself with an offensive set, meaning it can even break through Blissey with a Nasty Plot boosted Psyshock, and Blissey is the main forme of hindering special attackers such as Mega Houndoom and Venusaur from busting through teams with ease. A Drought boosted Solar Power Mega Houndoom would even break Blissey by itself after it receives a Nasty Plot boost due to a great initial SpA stat of 140 it was considered too much. Initially they banned Mega Houndoom in the tier, as UU thought it would be the best action to tackle the abuser not the setter, but after a bit of testing and discussing they resolved their decision and banned Drought and unbanned Mega Houndoom as Mega Houndoom by itself (without Drought) was seen as not too broken of an element to keep in UU.
For RU however things turned out to be different due to the so called non-Transitive Ban, they came to the conclusion to let Drought stay, so Ninetales in itself can be a great standalone breaker and more teams tend to run Ninetales as a standalone wallbreaker instead of a sun-orientated playstyle with Venusaur, which does not mean sun teams dont exist in SM RU, they surely do, but Ninetales can be used outside of this said weather archetype aswell and performs really good w/o being an overwhelming element. Mega Houndoom dropped then off from UU to RU, but the revision and result of an RU discussion was, that Mega Houndoom by itself is an overwhelming presence due to the great Speed tier outspeeding a vast majority of the RU metagame by itself, a great SpA stat, and moreover a solid enough typing and bulk which is similar to the bulk of a Darkrai as example. So RU decided to keep Ninetales a less-broken but playable element in the tier with Drought and its two main sets in Nasty Plot and Choice Specs.
However, to come to a conlusion here, I am overall satisfied with how SM UU and SM RU turned those issues into a great discussion and their dedision making to ban the abuser in RU and to ban the weather element itself in UU, respectively. I think both these actions were at this point and moment of time the best results and outcome for the sun archetype.
The counterpart in rain seems to me a bit more surrounded with issues, more consistent abusers and Politoed is by far not a bad setter with plenty of choices in its movepool to disrupt the opposition, it can basically handle Pokemon like Alolan Ninetales does with supportive tools in Encore / Hypnosis, and a Drizzle boosted Scald, which can also result into a status condition in burn. So I think rain teams are definitely stronger and scarier to face than sun teams, because Politoeds phenomenal access to a great reservoir in supportive movepools and viable slots.
Swift Swim (ab)users such as Ludicolo, Omastar, Seismitoad, Kingdra, Barbaracle and even non-Swift Swimmers such as Feraligatr and Kingler can perform well in the rain archetype. So I think it is difficult to see the true power of what Drizzle can cause when it is freed up. I just think for rain there are more, scarier options to benefit from, alongside the birds in Tornadus, which can cause a lot of trouble to deal with it in long term aspects, unless you have a few amount of answers to all these threats. So I would say let Drizzle not run rampant in the UU tier.
To come up with a result in here; I am personally satisfied (as stated above) for how SM RU and SM UU dealt in Generation 7 with the bans and what to ban and I hope we do not have to deal with rain archetypes as they're even with Drizzle banned but Damp Rock unbanned a really great archetype by itself with more, capable abusers in the big pond of Water-types and Flying-types.
Maybe NatDex can take that same actions? I am not too sure what the best course of action is there, but I hope y'all find a result soon!
) - setters (
) - ability (drought)
