However, I disagree with comparisons made by users such as Ren-Chon that it is similar to Arena Trap and Baton Pass as moves and abilities are in separate categories. [...] By contrast, both Snow Warning and Arena Trap have a much smaller amount of users, and many of their users do the same thing (autoset Hail or trap a grounded Pokemon, respectively). As for Arena Trap, it enables a lot more than Snow Warning currently does. In past gens where it is now banned, Dugtrio alone enabled a plethora of threats compared to Snow Warning because Arena Trap does not need specific Pokemon with specific abilities to synergize with it, whereas Snow Warning does.
I think you missed my point a bit, although this is mostly my fault for not being more specific. My point isnt that snow warning is
as broken as baton pass or trapping abilities, my point is that for something to be banned it doesnt have to be something super broken that sweeps teams with no issues or that can tank 90% of the tier, it can simply be a move or ability that
enables broken things (trapping abilities removing counterplay to some threats, and baton pass enabling full baton pass chains). The distribution or how strong it is doesnt matter in this case, since I was just trying to exemplify different ways something could be broken. I should be clearer on that note since BP and trapping are two notoriously toxic strats slowly being eliminated in all tiers and gens, so I apologize for that.
This point makes a lot of assumptions about future metagames in a scenario where Vish is banned but now Snow Warning. It assumes that the meta would automatically resume to the point it was right before the Cress ban (minus Cress and most Hail of course), Vaporeon usage would drop off the face of a cliff, and that Sandslash-A plus maybe Beartic would be this unkillable duo that sweeps teams with ease, and this is why I don't particularly like this point. I have personally experimented with Vish-less Hail myself (replaced Vish with Beartic) and have found it to be extremely underwhelming, as even standard team builds can often play around it. The main reason why Vish is the issue is not only its interaction with Snow Warning, but also a 170Bp move not factoring STAB that it can spam against 80% of teams without any drawback, a movepool to deny any possible switch-ins such as Vaporeon, and surprising bulk that lets it live a random hit if it needs to a dish out one in return. Sandslash-A has none of these, which is why I wouldn't see Hail as broken after a Vish ban.
No one, that Ive seen at least, is trying to make future meta predictions though, and if they are their arguments should be just ignored since we need to focus on whats happening right now, not a meta or two in advance. Besides that, its pretty agreed upon that banning Arctovish would completely kill hail teams, no ones arguing against that. Beartic sucks, Sandslash-A sucks, Vanilluxe and Aurorus suck, and so on. Thing is:
how many things do we need to ban before we can recognize the real issue? We would be heading for our third ban now
completely related to snow warning. Honestly, enough is enough. We need to address the elephant in the room and ban the literally ONE common factor between all those bans. You say that Arctovish is broken besides its hail interaction, but this is just not true at all. Even in its heyday during the very first metas of pre-DLC 1 NU it was still a relatively controversial and not that dominant pick. Its broken because it has a strong, easily spammable STAB, yes, but thats largely gated by the fact you need to move first on a mon thats slow as heck. And guess whats the one thing completely removing this flaw? Snow warning. You mention how Sands-A is bad with hail up, but thats quite obvious. I repeat:
we are already possibly heading towards our third hail related ban. We dont have many other good hail abusers or broken stuff related to hail
because we already banned every single one of them.
My response is simple: just because something uses a factor to become problematic does not mean that it's what enabled it, not the abuser, that's the problem. Of course, this has a certain limit in many cases, but I don't feel that Hail has reached the point where it's enabling so much where it's unhealthy and constraining. This is where Veil comes in. I disagree that Hail vs Veil is a non-important distinction because Hail teams and Veil teams are two different playstyles with only one thing in common.
The way I see it, this argument actually exemplifies why snow warning is the issue here. You say it yourself: snow warning is what enables the whole broken strategy, and not only that but you go further on and explains how hail and av teams are fundamentally different with one thing in common. This just proves that snow warning is broken beyond hail, that the ability can not only enable the slush rush fossil brothers but can also make screens teams really obnoxious to face by having a one turn reflect+light screen. So there we have snow warning enabling two very different deemed to be unhealthy archetypes (hail offense and aveil ho), as you said it yourself. This goes to show how versatile the ability actually is in a broken way.
This argument can probably go both ways. I will admit that Vish's interaction with Snow Warning, which provides it with free chip and a x2 boost in Speed, is one of the factors that makes it problematic; however, as I stated above, it's not the only factor.
Its not the only factor, yes, but its the
main factor. You said it yourself: snow warning provides a slow mon that benefits hugely from moving first a free 2x speed boost. Fishious rend isnt broken when half the tier outspeeds and KOs arctovish, it becomes broken the moment you remove one of its two main forms of counterplay by making it basically always hit first. No matter how you see it, snow warning is the main reason why we are even having this arctovish talk right now, while auto hail has already proven to be an issue twice in the past.
I'm cheating a bit here because this is more of an anti-Hail stance than a specific anti-Snow Warning stance, but I still wanted to respond to it. As I stated on the last page, I truly do not believe Hail is broken and that people are knee-jerking to Hail being the issue when all it does is take advantage of common meta trends. In fact, if Hail wasn't such a cheesy and matchup-fishy playstyle, I would argue that a build taking advantage of common meta trends is a good thing, as it forces an otherwise stale meta to adapt. Vaporeon has already risen in usage and is a solid check to most Hail teams, while I have seen stuff such as Scarf Heliolisk and Toxicroak to outspeed/take advantage of many Hail teams. This isn't constraining, but rather different than the samey team structures I saw during the Bears suspect and right after; in fact, if given enough time, I think the meta could adapt to make Hail much less viable than it currently is right now, considering Hail has only really been popular for a bit over a month.
Thing is, theres a difference between a healthy, natural and organic process of adapting when the meta slowly shifts to accomodate for new trends and what hail is doing. Toxicroak, heliolisk and vaporeon
only started seeing play because of hail, and theyre not the kind of mons you fit on your team because you thought "oh i kinda wanna have a frog, gecko or the water dog here itd really fit my team haha :)", you use them on your team because else youll be 6-0d by hail with little to no counterplay. Hell, even if you use croak or helio you risk getting KOd by icicle crash, leaving only vaporeon as the REAL hail counter. What often happens with other offensive behemoths is that we have little to no defensive counterplay and mostly have to rely on predicting the right move or revenging it after it claimed a life, such was the case with toxtricity, pangoro and pory-z. However, hail basically removes the whole offensive counterplay option by being faster than the whole tier bar a few scarfers (that cant deal well with hail anyway) and the defensive counterplay being basically vaporeon, and even then you barely ever need to predict like you had with the aforementioned mons: if your opp doesnt have a vaporeon, you click fishious rend; if they do, you dont. The meta didnt adapt to hail, rather the players are now being FORCED to use a very limited array of choices just to have a shot. This paragraph isnt meant to be a pro-snow warning or pro-vish ban, but I just want to highlight how metagames dont always adapt in a healthy way and how damaging forcing them to is.
Loves this shift. Not only did it lose one of very few answers in Gastrodon, but also it gained two new victims to threaten with Scarf or Band Head Smash.
Fires in general are happy to see Gastro go. Notably, NP Salazzle and Wild Charge Arcanine are gonna be lookin’ fine, unless Jellicent and Lanturn start picking up, respectively.
0 SpA Vaporeon Scald vs. 240 HP / 0 SpD Glastrier: 87-103 (21.6 - 25.6%) -- 1.3% chance to 4HKO 
252+ Atk Copperajah Heavy Slam (40 BP) vs. +2 240 HP / 0 Def Glastrier: 60-72 (14.9 - 17.9%) -- possible 6HKO 
252 Def Bronzong Body Press vs. +2 240 HP / 0 Def Glastrier: 66-78 (16.4 - 19.4%) -- possible 6HKO 
0 SpA Rotom-Mow Volt Switch vs. 240 HP / 0 SpD Glastrier: 73-87 (18.2 - 21.6%) -- possible 5HKO 
0 SpA Mantine Hurricane vs. 240 HP / 0 SpD Glastrier: 91-108 (22.6 - 26.9%) -- 32.7% chance to 4HKO
+2 0 Atk Glastrier Icicle Crash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Sylveon: 237-280 (60.1 - 71%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
