I have always defended smogon’s decisions and protocol in attempting to balance the Pokemon metagame, even in the face of the MANY smogon bashers at the website I go to for my wifi matches. However, I believe that the overall decision of the voters to keep all automatic weather is questionable, especially when remembering two of smogon’s purported characteristics of a desirable metagame – variety and balance.
Let’s look at the top of the ladder. The majority of people there have a weather-based team (with the weather coming from an auto-inducer). Does this, by itself, not say something about auto-weather? Some of the responses to the people complaining about the decision went along the lines of “go make a weather team and reach the top”, or “use the winning strategy to make the top”. I cannot see how these facts do not show the inherent advantages weathers such as drizzle (and in the case of sandstream – the abusers) have over non-auto-weather teams. I cannot understand that how this centralization was agreed upon by the voters to stay.
To make things clearer, I believe that drizzle is by far the strongest of the bunch. I would say drought comes in second, and sandstream comes in third. Sandstream achieves popularity through its direct users, such as Excadrill, rather than the actual weather condition.
The way I see it, the main reason auto-weather is inherently better than any other type of team is that it tactically needs to accomplish far less than non-weather teams to gain any type of boost. A weather team basically has to only keep its weather up in order to begin reaping benefits. An auto-weather inducer makes this painfully easy, unless of course, the enemy is also using an auto-weather inducer. In this case, we have “weather wars” in which in most cases, the person who loses the weather inducer will lose the match. Now we come to non-weather teams with no auto-inducers. These teams do not have the luxury of altering the actual battlefield to provide indefinite boosts to the team as a weather inducer does (or at least not as easily). They have to be able to fight all types of “old school” teams while at the same time being able to withstand instantly- powered weather teams (three significant types of weather, each very different, nonetheless).
I can focus on drizzle to provide some examples. Infinite rain brings to the table very groundbreaking changes to a match. For one, water moves, arguably the second best offensive typing in the game after dragon, is given an “extra STAB”. Thunder and hurricane also get 100% accuracy on top of their 120 base power and 30% chance of status ailment. Fire moves are halved, making any fire pokemon/move on the team highly ineffective for the entire match unless going up against 4x weak pokemon. This is allows for steel pokemon, which, along with dragons, are the defining pokemon of OU, to lose an essential weakness. If you think about it, this leads to obscene damage output right off the bat. It is ridiculous how many things are OHKOed by double STAB Hydro Pumps which are many times comparable in power to Latios’ Draco Meteor. And a 30% chance of getting paralyzed while being hit by a 120 damage attack? Come on. Even pokemon resistant to electric will run a sizeable risk of switching in. Latios gets STAB on dragon and water in the rain. So instead of spamming draco-meteors it spams Surfs and Draco Meteors. Non-weather teams are fighting an uphill fight from the get-go. They don’t get that automatic boost to every Pokemon on their team. They are fighting in an environment tailored to the enemy team, for which the enemy team only had to pay the price of sending one pokemon into battle. A Rotom-W with thunderbolt is outclassed by one with thunder.
Drought is similar to Drizzle, but to a lesser degree (due to the benefits not being as great as those of drizzle). If drizzle were to be banned, then drought would have to go to. Sand by itself is not a major threat, but its abusers are. You’d have to be pretty nuts not to run a Skarmory or Gliscor with all of those excadrills running around (if you have a non-weather team). And we all know about Garchomp.
So basically, I am basing the viability of my statements on Smogon’s own ideals of having a desirable metagame in part through the achievement of variety and balance. If the auto-weather inducing abilities of Drizzle and Drought were to stay (an d arguably if excadrill and garchomp were allowed to stay, but this is about weather), then these two characteristics would not be achieved. The fact that many of the top players, who represent the pinnacle of the metagame, utilize auto-weather, means that it is overcentralizing (referring to variety). Additionally, abilities such as drizzle and Drought do not bring balance to the metagame, as they offer immediate tactical advantage to the team utilizing it. This comes into conflict with the explanation of balance defined by Smogon.
P.S. – I hope I am not coming across as whining or anything. I, for one, will stick with smogon rules regardless as Smogon still employs the most scientific method of making decisions. I am just trying to join in on the discussion of the topic. I know that the people who vote earn the right to do so, but that does not always mean the best choice was made, especially in this case.
![GH[O]ST](/forums/media/data/avatars/m/69/69331.jpg?1413405016){kind=avatar}
