np: OU Suspect Testing Round 2 - Who am I to break tradition?

[capefeather]

All Benlisted is pointing out is that there's no reason a priori to preserve "non-weather" as the dominant or even a viable weather condition. But PK Gaming has given many other reasons to ban rain itt before, and I would think that the non-weather statements that he's giving are just an extension of those reasons. How non-weather does against a certain weather condition is a pretty good indicator of how much other weather conditions have to specialize to be viable.

 

[Benlisted]

Whats your case for rain not being broken? Since we are not explaining it well enough.

As a pretty comprehensive list of everything I've said on the subject:

• I think Manaphy should initially be tested rather than Drizzle and the meta reevaluated from that point before any other action is taken.
• I believe Rain can be countered without resorting to weather if you tailor your team correctly.
• I believe that like with other factors in the meta which limit the viability of certain pokes, if you wish to use the limited viablitilty mons there are viable options that let you do so - be it weather moves or an autoinducer.
• I believe that the ideal metagame is diverse and that banning Drizzle damages the team archetype of Rain and thus reduces said diversity.
• As an extension of the above I believe that after Manaphy is evaluated, any brokenness still found to be involved in Rain teams should be considered as possibly due to its sweepers, not the weather itself, and that they should be tested if the weather is found overbearing.
• I believe that a much more weather centric meta than any previous generation reflects a diversified meta - and that given the changed circumstances of this generation that this is an understandable and acceptable occurence.

I used kingdra in this meta to counter sand to great effect. It was also the only rain user on my team. I had like 20 ppl ask me why I didn't have politoed... but once they saw that kingdra didn't normally need the support they understood. To pretend that you can't look at individual pokemon just because of the meta leaning toward weather inducers just avoids the point that I made. Weather can hold its own without being semi-perma, and shouldn't be looked at as just a single-minded strategy when it can also be used in many different (and more balanced/practical) ways than a rain-based team.

I do agree that hail is a non-issue, and wouldn't require a ban. I mostly aim to make people realize that the moves that cause weather shouldn't be used on teams solely to counter other people's inducers.... and thats where we're at now (for the few people who don't just put an inducer on their team).

Ahaa I think I have been misunderstanding you quite significantly. Your use of Kingdra as a counter to weather as well as an effective sweeper in its own right is somewhat of an extension of what I was saying about use of a weather move on one poke to counter opposing weather and benefit your team. Correct me if that's wrong? That is indeed a good point about Rain certainly being viable to be used in such a method. It certainly would be used as an anti-SS and Sun strategy is Rain itself were benned, most likely.

However what I may not have made clear was that I feel that dedicated Rain teams, with Drizzle replaced by Rain Dance, would not be viable. A sweeper like Kingdra with RD most likely would still be effective, as the team does not rely on the Rain, but a whole team does. Admittedly I don't think I made this at all clear XD, especially as I hadn't understood your excellent point about Kingdra being useful alone.

 

[PK Gaming]

The only case you make for Rain being broken in this post is that there are 3-5 sweepers who are incredibly fast and powerful (and arguably have excellent coverage too). This is part of the reason I think testing Kingdra and the like may be a good idea and make Rain no longer unbalanced - many of the Rain abusers are much less powerful and fast than the "broken trio" as someone referred to them as and arguably would not make the playstyle overbearing.

I don't think thats fair to the rain sweepers. Kingdra & Kabutops have a niche in OU and banning most of the rain sweepers just to keep an ability is silly.
Why not just ban Drizzle? Its not only effective (Banning 1 ability > Banning several pokemon) but it is also simpler too.

I think a lot of people are forgetting that banning Drizzle would not be the end of rain, there are still alternatives like Rain Dance.

 

[SHUCKLE MAN]

As a pretty comprehensive list of everything I've said on the subject:

• I think Manaphy should initially be tested rather than Drizzle and the meta reevaluated from that point before any other action is taken.
• I believe Rain can be countered without resorting to weather if you tailor your team correctly.
• I believe that like with other factors in the meta which limit the viability of certain pokes, if you wish to use the limited viablitilty mons there are viable options that let you do so - be it weather moves or an autoinducer.
• I believe that the ideal metagame is diverse and that banning Drizzle damages the team archetype of Rain and thus reduces said diversity.
• As an extension of the above I believe that after Manaphy is evaluated, any brokenness still found to be involved in Rain teams should be considered as possibly due to its sweepers, not the weather itself, and that they should be tested if the weather is found overbearing.
• I believe that a much more weather centric meta than any previous generation reflects a diversified meta - and that given the changed circumstances of this generation that this is an understandable and acceptable occurence.

I haven't contributed much to this thread (if at all), but I've been reading along, and playing the metagame, and I agree pretty much all of this.

The amount of rain we've got in this metagame startled me at first, simply because I wasn't used to it. I kept being shocked by how fast Pokemon were, by how useless some Pokemon became, and by how fantastic others became, and so on, but I'm getting used to it now. It doesn't shock me anymore.

Now when I build teams, I build them with rain in the front of my mind, along with entrey hazards, sandstorm, etc. It's just generation V OU. In Advance I had to always be constantly thinking about Skarmory, and Suicune, and Blissey when building teams, now I'm constantly thinking about Nattorei, Manaphy, Tyranitar, etc.

I did have a team that could always get 6-0'd in the rain by Kingdra, but it was just a bad team, simple as. I've prepared for Kingdra now, and no, you're not "forced" to use anything to prepare for Kingdra.

 

[Ice-eyes]

The point is that you can adequately prepare your team for Rayquaza if you build with it in mind. Rain makes a vast number of otherwise excellent pokemon a huge liability to the point that your team must contain one of 2-3 pokemon and the rest must be one of 15-20 that aren't totally useless against it.

The difference is this. For most threats, all you have to do is ensure that you have a couple of checks, and maybe a decent semi-counter if other members of your team are fodder for that threat. For Rain, you have to ensure that no member of your team allows Rain teams to do damage and/or you have to use the only hard counter to Swift Swim sweepers.

 

[cco]

I really agree with Benlisted's notion that Manaphy should be tested before we judge drizzle. Seeing as he's (in my opinion) the biggest abuser of it. Beyond that, stopping rain's just about using pokes correctly, I run a Burungeru Nattorei combo that can stop Rain handily when played correctly. As for things to ban, I think that if we go the inducer banning route, the only two who I think are all that problematic are Politoed and Tyranitar, because they both are more than capable of doing work on their own. I've been testing teams, here's what I've found

• Ninetales and Drought teams still require some tough play, because they power up rival's Stab, and it's difficult to use Steel types effectively.
  
• Politoed's Drizzle buffs the already powerful Steel Types (especially Nattorei) hurts Fire type attacks, which are most popular on wallbreakers, the problem here, in my opinion is that people are unwilling to adapt to the Rain, let's face it, Rain is now very popular, rather than ban it, we should figure out a way to work around it, here we find a bit of Overcentralization in Nattorei, who is both Rain's best friend and one of it's worst enemies.
  
• Hippowdon, in my opinion should be allowed, if we remove him, the ability to have Sand Stall, in my opinion a very fun strategy which helps the metagame, goes away, so he's the one who I'd keep around, not to mention that Balloon really hurts his effectiveness this Gen, as his tried and true set fails to scratch it without an Ice Fang.
  
• Tyranitar, I've been using him a lot, my highest Peek this gen was around 1340, it was on a team built around Tyranitar. I think that he's still top-tier OU, but if we find that Sand is overcentralizing (which I don't think we have yet) I'd rather see his Sand Stream go over Hippowdon's because he is by no means a slouch.

Yeah, that's it, I've bolded important points, also I am primarily a stall player, so it's a little biased towards stall.

 

[Kefka Palazzo™]

• Ninetales and Drought teams still require some tough play, because they power up rival's Stab, and it's difficult to use Steel types effectively.
• Politoed's Drizzle buffs the already powerful Steel Types (especially Nattorei) hurts Fire type attacks, which are most popular on wallbreakers, the problem here, in my opinion is that people are unwilling to adapt to the Rain, let's face it, Rain is now very popular, rather than ban it, we should figure out a way to work around it, here we find a bit of Overcentralization in Nattorei, who is both Rain's best friend and one of it's worst enemies.
• Hippowdon, in my opinion should be allowed, if we remove him, the ability to have Sand Stall, in my opinion a very fun strategy which helps the metagame, goes away, so he's the one who I'd keep around, not to mention that Balloon really hurts his effectiveness this Gen, as his tried and true set fails to scratch it without an Ice Fang.
• Tyranitar, I've been using him a lot, my highest Peek this gen was around 1340, it was on a team built around Tyranitar. I think that he's still top-tier OU, but if we find that Sand is overcentralizing (which I don't think we have yet) I'd rather see his Sand Stream go over Hippowdon's because he is by no means a slouch.

Yeah, that's it, I've bolded important points, also I am primarily a stall player, so it's a little biased towards stall.

What?
So by your logic,if Sand becomes overcentralizing,T-tar's SS ability should be banned....but not Hippowdon's?
Am I reading this correctly?

We HAVE found rain counters,but they're few,and most are pretty bad outside of countering Rain.

Right now,I'm using a Hail Tentacruel,but I would REALLY want a Vaporeon....problem is,I need the Tentacruel to fight rain,because permanent Hail wouldn't be good(Abomasnow) for my team.
I'm kinda forced to use Hail Tentacruel instead of Vaporeon because I need a water type,but Vaporeon isn't the best counter for rain,and the rest of my team can't sacrifice a slot for a weather-changing move.

 

[ensoriki]

I think we should make a whole clause banning weather.

But, it wouldn't really be a "ban". We would have two ladders, both of them standard:

"No weather"

and

"Weather."

Thats called OU and UU.
If weather remains dominant then what happens is things not viable in a weather based metagame don't get used in OU, which brings them down to UU. Essentially if the metagame is left alone it's likely that OU will be Politoed, Hippowdon, Tyrannitar and Ninetails, possibly Abomasnow.
Then UU will basically have everything and not contain weather.


Non-weather teams not being viable, is whatever. A playstyle doesn't HAVE to be competitively viable. Playing outside of weather is harder to do than playing in it, and that's fine, Gen V is not the previous generations and it does not have to accept neutral weather.
All weathers can stall, go offense, and run their own versions of balanced, playstyles present in neutral weather can technically resurface in weather.
If it was just Rain and non-weather then rain smashing it to pieces may be a problem.


If non-weather isn't viable that's because it got left behind, thats not because everything else necessarily broke.
OU's a weather based metagame and it's allowed to be.

 

[Kefka Palazzo™]

Thats called OU and UU.
If weather remains dominant then what happens is things not viable in a weather based metagame don't get used in OU, which brings them down to UU. Essentially if the metagame is left alone it's likely that OU will be Politoed, Hippowdon, Tyrannitar and Ninetails, possibly Abomasnow.
Then UU will basically have everything and not contain weather.


Non-weather teams not being viable, is whatever. A playstyle doesn't HAVE to be competitively viable. Playing outside of weather is harder to do than playing in it, and that's fine, Gen V is not the previous generations and it does not have to accept neutral weather.
All weathers can stall, go offense, and run their own versions of balanced, playstyles present in neutral weather can technically resurface in weather.
If it was just Rain and non-weather then rain smashing it to pieces may be a problem.


If non-weather isn't viable that's because it got left behind, thats not because everything else necessarily broke.
OU's a weather based metagame and it's allowed to be.

Balance is basically what everyone should start with.
Balance is....balanced.
If OU becomes weather only,then what's the point of even playing it? All you would see is Rain,Sand,the occasional Sun,and the rare Hail.
There's nothing different since balance would be unviable.

 

[PttP]

• I believe that like with other factors in the meta which limit the viability of certain pokes, if you wish to use the limited viablitilty mons there are viable options that let you do so - be it weather moves or an autoinducer.
• I believe that the ideal metagame is diverse and that banning Drizzle damages the team archetype of Rain and thus reduces said diversity.
• I believe that a much more weather centric meta than any previous generation reflects a diversified meta - and that given the changed circumstances of this generation that this is an understandable and acceptable occurence.

Just thought these 3 points are odd, you say that Drizzle makes the meta much more diverse, when that is clearly not the case when now you basically have to run Tyranitar on your team if you're not using rain, then use either Nattorei or Bijiron. If anything Drizzle makes the meta less diverse because of the Pokemon you're required to use to beat it, and the amount of Pokemon Drizzle makes unviable. And yes, you don't have to run a weather poke to beat rain, but it is by far the easiest and most efficient way to do it.

Basically rain makes shit much less diverse and no fun at all.

 

[ginganinja]

I think a lot of people are forgetting that banning Drizzle would not be the end of rain, there are still alternatives like Rain Dance.

Yeah, but seriously with Hippowdon, Tyranitar ,Nintales and Abomasnow still 'around' your chances of building a successful Rain Team without Drizzle is much lower. I agree that its possiable for offensive rain teams to run Rain Dance but I believe that if Drizzle got banned then Sandstorm will experience such a high usage that it would be too difficult to keep your own weather up. Also defensive Rain teams (not seen as much) would become more than likely non-existant since wasting a turn (multiable times) to abuse the defensive aspects of rain is a detriment to them

 

[cco]

What?
So by your logic,if Sand becomes overcentralizing,T-tar's SS ability should be banned....but not Hippowdon's?
Am I reading this correctly?

My logic looks a little strange on paper, it's less about Sand Stream as much as it is about the individual Pokemon. Ttar is both a Sand Stream provider and a threatening Sweeper, Hippowdon is a sand stream provider and a wall. I'm sort of ranking which Sand Streamers are the most broken, although it does look rather strange.

 

[Lamppost]

My logic looks a little strange on paper, it's less about Sand Stream as much as it is about the individual Pokemon. Ttar is both a Sand Stream provider and a threatening Sweeper, Hippowdon is a sand stream provider and a wall. I'm sort of ranking which Sand Streamers are the most broken, although it does look rather strange.

Neither Hippowdon or Ttar are broken, if anything is broken on them it is just their ability. I don't personally find sandstorm to be ridiculously hard to beat, even if they have dory. It's really just a matter of having a counter.

 

[yee]

I personally think in this thread people are focusing way too much on the weather alone instead of which pokemon are broken and which ones aren't. If there isn't a hugely broken pokemon in any kind of weather, then there won't be overcentralizing over it either. Ill start with sand-

Doryuzu- Good pokemon but has a list of counters even with a balloon (Rotom-W, Rotom-H, Quagsire, Suicune, Nageki etc.) and a bigger list of checks (Lots of things with their own balloon, Skarmory, Mach Punch, Aqua Jet, Vacuum Wave etc.) so its certainly managable.

Landlos- I see a problem here. So far as I can tell, nothing can directly counter it besides Bronzong. There is Claydol, but it could use Outrage or Grass Knot to bust through it. Its QuakeEdge combo is devastating mixed with SD and Rock Polish, the only common resistor of both that would also be able to hurt it back is Breloom, who just gets KOed after an SD. If im not mistaken, its broken because you either need an Ice attack on all of your pokemon or a Bronzong.

Terrakion- STAB Close Combat/Stone Edge and the option of SD/RP is just too much. I dare say perfection in physical sweeping. I don't see any reasonable counter to it, which means you have to rely entirely on Breloom, Scizor, or Azumarill revenge killing it. Hippowdon is KOed by Close Combat with Life Orb and cant touch it if it has a balloon and I dont see any other walls (even the Evolution Stone ones) that can switch in and wall it. The SS boosts is bulk even further so you cant OHKO with Vacuum Waves or a bulky water Surf.


Rain-

Kingdra- The most threatening set seems to be Specs in the rain. Theres the obvious choice of Blissey, but lets expand our horizons. Specially defensive Nattorei and Celebi work very well, Nattorei has the bonus of not being OHKOed by a Signal Beam and countering DD sets as well. Specially bulky water absorbers like Vaporeon and Burungeru pretty much hard counter it. Milotic can also take it on but doesnt benefit from boosted Hydro Pumps. Your own Ludicolo works pretty well too.

Ludicolo- Toxicroak, Tentacruel w/ Liquid Ooze, Chansey/Blissey, quite a bit trickier because it has a shorter list of hard counters to its best set, but still manageable.

Manaphy- Needs to be banned. I hope its just a matter of time.

Hail-

Wait, theres no broken pokemon are there? Heres proof that without broken pokemon you wont see too much of it.

Sun-

To be honest, im not too familiar with this kind of team. Scarftar works as a quickfix to most things ive seen. Shouldn't be too overly common because you need to use Ninetails for it. I guess Venasaur could be a problem but Dragonite, Salamence, and Lati@s seem to take care of the sweeper/subseeder sets pretty well at the same time. Im not the most knowlegable person with this playstyle yet but im not deciding which pokemon get banned either.

 

[Ice-eyes]

Landlos and Terakion aren't broken. Neither hit hard enough to punch through dedicated physical walls like Hippowdon or Gliscor without a Swords Dance, and both are vulnerable to revenge-killing by the ever-dangerous Latios (as well as most common Scarfers). In my opinion, one of the biggest weaknesses of Sand teams currently is that they are vulnerable to Latios coming in on Hippowdon / Landlos / Terakion / Garchomp / Gliscor / whatever and then spamming Draco Meteor and scoring free kills.

 

[Ndota]

[/LIST]
Just thought these 3 points are odd, you say that Drizzle makes the meta much more diverse, when that is clearly not the case when now you basically have to run Tyranitar on your team if you're not using rain, then use either Nattorei or Bijiron. If anything Drizzle makes the meta less diverse because of the Pokemon you're required to use to beat it, and the amount of Pokemon Drizzle makes unviable. And yes, you don't have to run a weather poke to beat rain, but it is by far the easiest and most efficient way to do it.

Basically rain makes shit much less diverse and no fun at all.

Actually, everything you just said can be applied the other way around too. Sandstorm is already the most played archtype if you didn't already know. Maybe we are forced to run Politoed to counter the sand, which is false anyway. People will run Tyranitar and sand as well as Politoed regardless if the other weather existed or not simply because it is good enough to be played. The same can be said about Nattorei and Bijirion as well, they aren't just good against rain, they are also good against sand.

Rain makes the metagame more diverse as it is another archtype of weather to play with. Without drizzle, a lot of these pokemon will be seen less. At the same time, weatherless or normal teams are just as viable as before to beat weather teams. Skill and strategy to outplay the opposing team is key as always and shouldn't matter what each player is playing in the end. Also, rain dance teams just aren't good enough as seen already from gen 4 as they take too long to set up.

You say rain is making the game not fun, but I'm sure other people and myself included agree that the game is very much diverse and fun to play. And no, I don't play a team focused on the rain strategy.

 

[Ice-eyes]

Sand is perfectly counterable outside of having your own weather and / or consistently outplaying your opponent. That's the main difference from Rain.

 

[PttP]

Actually, everything you just said can be applied the other way around too. Sandstorm is already the most played archtype if you didn't already know. Maybe we are forced to run Politoed to counter the sand, which is false anyway. People will run Tyranitar and sand as well as Politoed regardless if the other weather existed or not simply because it is good enough to be played. The same can be said about Nattorei and Bijirion as well, they aren't just good against rain, they are also good against sand.

Rain makes the metagame more diverse as it is another archtype of weather to play with. Without drizzle, a lot of these pokemon will be seen less. At the same time, weatherless or normal teams are just as viable as before to beat weather teams. Skill and strategy to outplay the opposing team is key as always and shouldn't matter what each player is playing in the end. Also, rain dance teams just aren't good enough as seen already from gen 4 as they take too long to set up.

You say rain is making the game not fun, but I'm sure other people and myself included agree that the game is very much diverse and fun to play. And no, I don't play a team focused on the rain strategy.

Exactly how do you have proof that Sandstorm is the most played weather? Right now all of you are just making assumptions that the higher the ladder, more sandstorm. I personally haven't noticed a huge difference, but if what you say is true, then there are obviously more people at the bottom of the ladder using rain than there are people higher at the ladder using sandstorm, which makes rain the most prevalent weather.

Rain doesn't make anything diverse at all. If anything, it makes the usage of Kingdra/Toxicroak/Ludicolo higher and that's basically it. Without rain, you would see more Pokemon that right now, are a setback due to the amount of rain. And so fucking what if rain sucked last generation? Last generation was much more fun than this one because rain didn't last everyturn.

You say people enjoy a rain metagame. The majority doesn't. You are part of an extremely small group.

EDIT: and yes, people would still run Tyranitar if Politoed wasn't here, but I can guarantee you that it wouldn't be run on basically every non-weather team.

 

[PK Gaming]

Landlos and Terakion aren't broken. Neither hit hard enough to punch through dedicated physical walls like Hippowdon or Gliscor without a Swords Dance, and both are vulnerable to revenge-killing by the ever-dangerous Latios (as well as most common Scarfers). In my opinion, one of the biggest weaknesses of Sand teams currently is that they are vulnerable to Latios coming in on Hippowdon / Landlos / Terakion / Garchomp / Gliscor / whatever and then spamming Draco Meteor and scoring free kills.

Terakion is fine, Landlos is definitely broken in my eyes. It literally has 0 counters and only 2 checks (Skarmory and Bronzong) I call them checks because both Pokemon are 2HKOed by LO +2 Stone Edge.

Dedicated physical walls like Gliscor and Hippowdon are CRUSHED by Landlos. Gliscor is OHKOed by HP Ice (Landlos has usable special attack) and Hippowdon is 2HKOed by Jolly LO Earthquake. That isn't normal o_0. The Rock Polish set is by far the best set... with some hazard support it's basically unstoppable. (The set is: RP / EQ / HP ICE / Stone Edge) SD sets slightly less useful against offensive teams, but they are far more useful against stall teams.

It is by far the strongest Pokemon in the entire metagame. (excluding rain of course)

That team you listed isn't a good sand team... they usually carry Nattorei to check Latios and both Garchomp and Doryuuzu revenge. Currently, I think Sand is broken, but only because of Landlos (and possibly Doryuuzu)

 

[Ndota]

Exactly how do you have proof that Sandstorm is the most played weather? Right now all of you are just making assumptions that the higher the ladder, more sandstorm. I personally haven't noticed a huge difference, but if what you say is true, then there are obviously more people at the bottom of the ladder using rain than there are people higher at the ladder using sandstorm, which makes rain the most prevalent weather.

Rain doesn't make anything diverse at all. If anything, it makes the usage of Kingdra/Toxicroak/Ludicolo higher and that's basically it. Without rain, you would see more Pokemon that right now, are a setback due to the amount of rain. And so fucking what if rain sucked last generation? Last generation was much more fun than this one because rain didn't last everyturn.

You say people enjoy a rain metagame. The majority doesn't. You are part of an extremely small group.

EDIT: and yes, people would still run Tyranitar if Politoed wasn't here, but I can guarantee you that it wouldn't be run on basically every non-weather team.

Well, there isn't exactly proof, but from the look of things, it does seem like sand is more prevalent than rain is. Another thing, people will disagree with this and I can understand why and I agree to a certain extent, but the PO statistics also show that Tyranitar and sand is played more than rain. The metagames are somewhat the same, but its the closest thing there is. We'll just have to wait for statistics for Smogon I guess.

How diverse the metagame will be without rain we won't know. However, if you ban drizzle, that just completely shuts down a whole weather archtype. Basically everything you can play with after drizzle is banned can already be played with drizzle around. Sand will still be at the top if rain is banned, so are you going to ban sand next? Rain dance just doesn't compare to permant weather. Also the whole "fun" thing you should just stop talkling about. It is solely based on opinion, and it varies with different people. People could say this metagame is more fun than gen 4 metagame, but it has nothing to do with anything and is just opinion and how you feel.

This is not a "rain" metagame. It is a weather metagame. Rain doesn't dominate everything all the time so it can't be called a rain metagame. Also, the group isn't small I suppose, because if it were, then drizzle would have been banned already since the suspect votes for banning and keeping drizzle were almost half and half with a few more on the banning side.

 

[Ice-eyes]

Terakion is fine, Landlos is definitely broken in my eyes. It literally has 0 counters and only 2 checks (Skarmory and Bronzong) I call them checks because both Pokemon are 2HKOed by LO +2 Stone Edge.

Dedicated physical walls like Gliscor and Hippowdon are CRUSHED by Landlos. Gliscor is OHKOed by HP Ice (Landlos has usable special attack) and Hippowdon is 2HKOed by Jolly LO Earthquake. That isn't normal o_0. The Rock Polish set is by far the best set... with some hazard support it's basically unstoppable. (The set is: RP / EQ / HP ICE / Stone Edge) SD sets slightly less useful against offensive teams, but they are far more useful against stall teams.

It is by far the strongest Pokemon in the entire metagame. (excluding rain of course)

That team you listed isn't a good sand team... they usually carry Nattorei to check Latios and both Garchomp and Doryuuzu revenge. Currently, I think Sand is broken, but only because of Landlos (and possibly Doryuuzu)

Well, I wasn't listing an actual team, just some random pokes that Sand sometimes carries.

If RP / EQ / Stone Edge / HP Ice is the best set, then Skarmory and Bronzong are counters. So is Physically Defensive (max/max) Hippowdon, which takes 41% - 48.6% from Jolly LO EQ in Sand. Bulky Grass-types (Celebi, Shaymin) take very little from it. Things like Latios and Rotom-W can take a Stone Edge even after Rocks and KO back. You can take measures like having a Balloon mon which can check it. Unlike Manaphy or Kingdra, it's dealable if you take reasonable precautions while team-building (rather than making it so it can't set up anywhere like you have to do with Rain unless you run Nattorei and don't play any good Rain users).

Sand Stream simply isn't broken like Rain is; it doesn't have the depth of overwhelming abusers able to sweep with minimal set-up.

 

[astrohawke]

Terakion is fine, Landlos is definitely broken in my eyes. It literally has 0 counters and only 2 checks (Skarmory and Bronzong) I call them checks because both Pokemon are 2HKOed by LO +2 Stone Edge.

Dedicated physical walls like Gliscor and Hippowdon are CRUSHED by Landlos. Gliscor is OHKOed by HP Ice (Landlos has usable special attack) and Hippowdon is 2HKOed by Jolly LO Earthquake. That isn't normal o_0. The Rock Polish set is by far the best set... with some hazard support it's basically unstoppable. (The set is: RP / EQ / HP ICE / Stone Edge) SD sets slightly less useful against offensive teams, but they are far more useful against stall teams.

It is by far the strongest Pokemon in the entire metagame. (excluding rain of course)

That team you listed isn't a good sand team... they usually carry Nattorei to check Latios and both Garchomp and Doryuuzu revenge. Currently, I think Sand is broken, but only because of Landlos (and possibly Doryuuzu)

Actually after looking into Terakion, it is pretty damn strong. It 2HKOs gliscor and skarmory after a swords dance the same as Landlos. It's also got a better secondary stab, no 4x weakness and sdef boost from sand which makes even surf from Kerudio not able to OHKO. Very hard to counter and not even that easy to revenge kill.

 

[PK Gaming]

Well, I wasn't listing an actual team, just some random pokes that Sand sometimes carries.

If RP / EQ / Stone Edge / HP Ice is the best set, then Skarmory and Bronzong are counters. So is Physically Defensive (max/max) Hippowdon, which takes 41% - 48.6% from Jolly LO EQ in Sand. Bulky Grass-types (Celebi, Shaymin) take very little from it. Things like Latios and Rotom-W can take a Stone Edge even after Rocks and KO back. You can take measures like having a Balloon mon which can check it. Unlike Manaphy or Kingdra, it's dealable if you take reasonable precautions while team-building (rather than making it so it can't set up anywhere like you have to do with Rain unless you run Nattorei and don't play any good Rain users).

Sand Stream simply isn't broken like Rain is; it doesn't have the depth of overwhelming abusers able to sweep with minimal set-up.

I never said Sand Stream was broken. I was implying that Landlos alone was broken. Bronzong and Skarmory counter the RP set, but lose to SD that's why I called them checks. Bulky Grass mons like Celebi do not like taking boosted Stone Edges (Earthquake alone does quite a bitch of damage) and are checks at best. (SD beats also beats them)

I agree with you, rain is far broken.

PS" Are you sure that calc is right? I'm quite certain Landlos can 2HKO Hippowdon with LO Sand Power EQ.

 

[Lamppost]

Landlos is by far the most broken sand mon. It completely outclasses dory with its rock polish set. It is hardly walled by anything and i was baffled that it wasn't nominated last round. I'm kind of hoping it will be this round though since i'm seeing a lot more of them now.

 

[SJCrew]

If you're carrying only one chlorophyll user, then it's really not that hard to stop considering it's only fast and not strong. It's really like trying to stop a deoxys-S sweep against your team. You can't outspeed it but it doesn't destroy everything either. You fail to mention what this particular chlorophyll user is but whatever it is, I'm sure there are some commonly used OU counters to it.

In theory, that should be correct. In practice, you're now facing Deoxys-S with Growth, a better movepool, and offensive typing. I'm not going to specify on one single Chlorophyll user, since there are more than one and you have the option to use two or more if you'd like, I'm just saying it wouldn't be advisable in this metagame. But I did mention a while back that Venusaur, Victreebel, and Shiftry are the best ones right now, mostly for having the best speed, movepool, and Growth over the rest of the Chlorophyll sweepers, and any combination thereof would be pretty hard for any normal team to beat. I'll probably see about running two to see if the offensive pressure is worth doubling up on weaknesses, but a lot of teams are having a pretty hard time beating the one I have now.

Also, I'm glad you guys are actually putting Landlos up for discussion, since I'm finally coming around to the idea that it might be too damn strong for even a weather-centric metagame. Sand Power makes his damage output insane and trying to change the weather on him will more than likely end in a dead Ninetales/Aboma/Politoed. Scarf was easy enough to check since it was often obvious which move my opponent was going to use, but then people start using SD and I'm like "Oh shit, what do I do."

Something's holding me back from saying he's broken, but I do agree heavily with the sentiments that he's starting to become a problem. I'm gonna need some more experience with him until I can say for sure.