Damp Rock
You'll notice I have a very user-centric argument here. I think it is a very different game arguing about Damp Rock than with a Pokemon.
We're essentially arguing to ban a style rather than a Pokemon, which obviously is what the characteristics are designed to explain the effect of. As such, I'm focusing mostly on players, and how they do with rain versus other styles, because I think the best way to figure out "Is Damp Rock too powerful?" is to start with "Is Rain too powerful in its current inception?" I've spent a lot of time seeing how players do with rain versus other styles... in theory, if playing as Rain instead of a more conventional style generally causes players to get to higher ratings than they would otherwise get, rain is probably too good, and thus we would need to do something about rain, either by removing the 'Rock or by removing a rain sweeper.
I've flip flopped on this one. I doubt anyone but maybe FlareBlitz has played more Rain games than I have this term, and when I first started using rain I was convinced it belonged in borderline. I remember when I first started using the team I told Jabba I was pretty sure I could climb as high as I wanted using my rain team. It seemed like that for a long while - my deviation was a little lower than I'd prefer since it made me go up slower and end up lower than I might have otherwise, but I ended up getting to 1600 or so pretty easily. Once I got there, however, people had started to adapt...
First it was a lot of stupid gimmick teams. People were trying to counter team Rain with Sun (which works surprisingly well if they use the faster set-up mons or simply more of them, as you'd expect from a team that focuses on grass Pokemon fighting one that focuses on water Pokemon) and similar stupid shit. However, at this point in the ladder I also started pulling harder matches because of my higher rating, and
I quickly found most people were at the top for a reason. People were grossly misplaying SD Ludicolo much less, were pressuring me better, and were making much more intelligent use of strong counter Pokemon like Toxicroak, but also of Pokemon like Milotic and Venusaur in order to combat my rain. I had quite a few nights at this point where my rating ended up around where I started or slightly lower at the end of nights, and I really do feel like the people on the top of the ladder caught on to rain to the point they were better off because I was playing it. I ended up capping out around 1637 CRE, and I think at that point my win% would be higher using a more conventional team. Flare has also never gotten much higher than this with a rain team, and I know a lot of other quality players I respect, like whistle (who apparently couldn't top 1400 CRE with it) and Heysup, have had very little success with Rain teams. I hit the ladder harder than I have in about 8 months so it's tough for me to compare my ratings with past performances, but my leader board position was about where it always was. I was actually getting frustrated with my team because I felt like it was making it more difficult to play against tough opponents since it was difficult to adapt to their styles when it should have been necessary. Rain is about as inflexible as it gets.
A lot of players on top of the ladder- Silent Verse is probably the best example - are running teams that aren't super anti-rain centric, with maybe Toxicroak and some typical defensive pivots like Milotic and Venusaur, yet beat rain very consistently and handily. The leader board is hardly full of rain teams even so. In fact, outside of Flare's alt and my Teifu account, I don't think anyone in the top 50 as of the time of my writing this is actually using rain consistently. It does an excellent job of crushing poor players who don't switch enough to waste rain turns, who don't pressure to prevent Swords Dance and to get kills on sweepers, or are otherwise completely under-prepared, and then struggles against better players who play against rain better with teams prepared to handle it. I think it is also worth noting rain has been basically has it is for many, many months now and was not "called out" until this period. Many of us have always felt it was an annoying style, but "annoying" does not mean broken. I think it is much the same as Froslass where there is a loud following of players who want to remove it because they don't like playing against it rather than because it is objectively broken.
Players who overestimate and underestimate rain seem to have one thing in common: the idea that rain takes very little thought or effort to play in both the battling and team creation stages. There's people like Twist of Fate, who argue that rain sucks because it takes no skill, or people like Smurf., who think it is too good because it takes no skill. Both sides are wrong, of course. The most interesting part of this complaining to me is how many poorly constructed rain teams there are. I feel the key to running rain effectively is playing it a lot more conservatively than most people do. I never sacrifice my set-up mons if I can afford it, I switch intelligently when I need to to use my Pokemon's resistances (good luck winning leaving Omastar out with Milotic and such), and my rain set-up Pokemon were chosen to support my team beyond simply setting up rain. I run Raikou to help deal with other waters, Toxicroak, Poliwrath, and psuedohaze, for instance, and I know Flare likes to run Psychic types to help fight Toxicroak and Poliwrath for similar reasons. I know I've seen a lot of rain teams using different sweepers than I use, too. Gorebyss vs. Omastar is obvious, but many teams choose not to use Qwilfish, or run Aqua Jet on it if they do, or run Return on it for coverage, or use specs on Omastar and/or Gorebyss... or maybe they run teams that are completely different stylistically, like a team Flare sometimes uses that intentionally slows down the game's tempo and focuses on getting entry hazards up before trying to sweep with rain.
My point in the above paragraph being that a big part of why rain is viewed as something that should be removed is less an issue of objective power and more than people feel it removes too much of the skill element of the game, which I think the above illustrates is not the case.
There are a lot of team decisions that have to be made, but from a team creation standpoint and from a combat decision standpoint. No one with any ability is losing to teams that are just spamming Waterfall or whatever, and most skilled players aren't losing to rain teams period. I think that there is a great deal that can be done with rain to be explored, however, and that another 4-6 weeks of it being more popular would lead to more innovation. Some of the less inept players using it is causing players to look at it differently, but not necessarily causing them to look at it any harder right now.
Going a bit deeper on why I think the complaint's are largely due to player laziness and mistakes, let's look at Narulyg's nomination (who, to his credit, only ladders with a sun team that is a pure rain counter to begin with...)
Narulyg said:
1. Dance
2. Switch/U-Turn
3. Swords Dance
4. Sweep
5. Sweep
6. Sweep
7. Sweep
8. Sweep
9. Switch
10. Dance
11. Switch/U-turn
12. Swords Dance?
As you can see, three turns of setup yields five turns of sweep. The turns that are italicized represent turns where your opponent more or less gets free shots at your team. If you count switching back to a Dancer, you're sweeping 5 turns out of 9.
I think he brings up several interesting points, even though the original context is explaining that Damp Rock's removal makes rain much weaker, which I agree with, but am obviously not of the opinion that rain needs to be nerfed. I don't think 5:4 is so imbalanced when you consider that the rain team is completely defenseless those first three turns and on turn 9, but things are obviously more complicated than that in a real battle.
Before turn 1 of that even begins, if I am running a non-rain team I am making damn sure that I have something that is going to counter a rain lead in my first slot. Trickscarf is definitely the most common way for teams to start a battle right now, which hurts rain by reducing the initial rain to 5 turns, knocking those "sweep" turns down to 2. Another good, popular method is a faster taunt makes the beginning of the game much more challenging for a rain team, but the key either way is that the next move (and probably the next two moves) are now completely obvious. I don't think anything is more detrimental to winning in Pokemon than playing predictably, and rain has an issue with being so - especially with this purely offensive outlook. After the Rain Dance, the opponent can certainly expect a sweeper coming in, so catching them on the switch with T-Wave or a powerful attack helps keep momentum from slipping away early. I know I've been fucking around with Taunt/Fake Out/Grass Knot/Return Ambipom a bit, which is really niche but OHKOs the 4x grass weak Pokemon on the switch or does 90%~ to Qwilfish and Ludicolo. When turn 3 rolls around, one has to expect that Swords Dance from Ludicolo, Qwilfish, or Kabutops, so maybe you should, oh, I don't know, attack or disable it!? I can not even count how many times I have played games this period where I was against
Froslass leads and it went something like this
Froslass Taunts, I U-turn my Uxie out to Raikou
Raikou Rain Dances, Froslass Taunts or Spikes
I switch to Ludicolo, Froslass Spikes
And then oh, what do we have here? For whatever reason no one seems to be running Thunder Wave on their Froslass, or they're simply clueless.
In this match up they either switch out to help giving me a free Swords Dance, or use Ice Beam or Spikes... giving me a free Swords Dance.
Rain didn't "create" that momentum, my opponent did for playing against an offensive strategy too passively. That's not to say triple spiking is the worst move for every team, either! A flaw in Rain is that the opponent does get those first two to three turns to set-up, and sometimes that can work to Rain's detriment rather than to its advantage. I've faced some really good stall teams that are almost unbeatable if I give them those three turns of spikes. The spikes add a ton of damage, and once they start their switching between defensive pivots I can't OHKO that threaten my active Pokemon later in the match, and I get worn down really quickly by the forced switching. It was actually really nice to see after smearing psycho's terrible stall so consistently - I find well played stall almost impossible to beat with an aggressive rain team unless it makes the mistake (which negates well played, I guess) of switching Chansey into a Swords Dance. And unlike what FlareBlitz has said in the topic, I definitely do find teams that are simply bad matches for rain - specifically those featuring more than 2-3 of the following Pokemon, some Trick Room set ups (rare), and Sun teams in general that are played by smart players since they tend to have more room for Sunny Day on their movesets then rain has for Rain Dance (and sun's popularity is definitely rising).
It's worth noting in the whole turn chart thing that if your opponent is silly enough to be running Electrode you know on turn zero what they are doing, which makes playing appropriately against it even easier.
There are, of course, an awful lot of Pokemon that counter most of the rain sweepers. There's no such thing as a Pokemon that "counters Damp Rock (choice scarf knock off ?????)," since what's actually being discussed is rain, so let's look at some excellent anti-rain Pokemon.
From The Top 20 Most Used Pokemon:
Venusaur - Maybe the quintessential defensive UU Pokemon, Venu has a water resist, the ability sleep something (and really, losing anything to sleep is devastating for Rain), can carry coverage moves to hit any of the rain sweepers for Super Effective damage, and has recovery available.
Cresselia - Even Adamant LO +2 Kabutops can't OHKO with Waterfall, allowing for an annoying Reflect or Twave. Dual Screen in general also tends to muck with rain pretty significantly, which Alakazam and Uxie can do as well.
Registeel - Though he needs to T-Wave, since he doesn't threaten back with anything too strong. Seismic Toss does hurt the low HP sweepers, however.
Ambipom - Fake Out wastes a turn of rain and rips into the non-/Rock rain sweepers. I know at least against me, this forces a switch
Hitmontop - See Ambipom, except it gets to mach punch Omastar and Kabutops to boot
Spiritomb - Resttalk stalling
Clefable - Isn't OHKOd by any rain Pokemon before SD, specially defensive version shuts down Gorebyss and Omastar
Raikou with Choice Scarf - Strange but used, trashes all but Jolly Qwil and Kabutops, sometimes survives Jolly Qwil anyway
Anti-rain Specialists outside the top 20:
Chansey - Destroys special Ludicolo and beats Omastar and Gorebyss unless entry hazards are stacked up and the special sweepers are hitting
with Hydro Miss. Also has the advantage of being one of few pokemon who can justify running the always annoying Protect, which wastes a valuable turn of rain and lets Leftovers tick to move out of potential 2HKO range much of the time.
Dugtrio - Strange inclusion, but he does a heck of a job messing shit up after Rain fades. He smashes Omastar and Qwilfish instantly if he can catch them without rain and does great damage to Gorebyss and to a lesser extent Ludicolo. Raikou is the most popular secondary rain set-up Pokemon other than maybe Cresselia (who is soon to be gone anyway, most likely) and obviously dies instantly to Dugtrio too, possibly before getting to set rain up.
Absol (scarf or CB) - Scarf is more practical against most teams, but Sucker Punch lets it revenge everything but Kabutops and its Aqua Jet.
Does signifcant damage to the rest, including 70% to Qwilfish and 65% to Ludicolo with Scarf. Can also be used to kill most of the set-up Pokemon before they RD by smacking the psychics with Night Slash, at worst ensures they can only set rain up once.
Sceptile (scarf) - Another one of those rare but super devastating sets, 509 speed when Modest outruns Omastar, Gorebyss, and Adamant Ludicolo in the rain, and Timid's 558 outruns everything but Jolly Qwilfish and Kabutops.
Priority as a whole - the two main users are top 20, but priority is a big problem for these frail sweepers counting on going first.
Jolly Kabutops - Perfectly playable on a non-rain team, outruns everything but Jolly Qwilfish and other Jolly Kabutops (who it ties, obviously), really puts a kink in rain by using its own weather against it.
Toxicroak - Cresselia had its usage at all time low, but Toxicroak has always been a pretty strong Pokemon with nasty plot or subpunch and it is coming back because of being great against rain. Usually resists everything Kabutops throws at it and everything Qwilfish has less Explosion, and forces Ludicolo to use weak Ice Punches or Ice Beams. The only rain Pokemon that scare it at all are Omastar (Land Power) and
Gorebyss (Psychic), and Omastar takes big damage from Vacuum Wave. Can even run Sucker Punch on physical sets to add more priority.
Poliwrath - Very niche, but boasts many of the advantages Toxicroak does with similar resistances to everything Kabutops has, as well as some bonuses (resisting everything but Poison Jab, Seed Bomb/Energy Ball, and potentially HP Grass from the special sweepers), but with the advantage of being able to be disruptive with moves like Hypnosis, Encore, and Substitute.
Rain features a lot of redundant coverage, which tends to be a big disadvantage in dealing with the above Pokemon. All rain sweepers run a water move that they desperately want to spam, since it is the only move that gets the damage bonus from rain. As such, water resists are super key to play around, but that's the thing with rain - you have to actually play around the other team and it has to actually play around you (contrary to what popular belief seems to be). Venusaur and Milotic, first and seventh in usage respectively, are ofen almost enough to defeat rain on their own if played well. No rain sweeper OHKOs a defensive version of either Pokemon unboosted outside of Explosion (and the ever danagerous SD Ludicolo doesn't even OHKO physically defensive Venusaur after a SD, meaning its a 3HKO under normal circumstances - way too little damage for a team that is playing with a turn timer), but it all comes down which team is making the better predictions... sound like a normal game of Pokemon to you?
It's worth noting that there are also a lot of pokemon capable of basically ending the game on their own if they get in while rain is down, such as SD Venusaur, Raikou, and many Choice pokemon, since Rain teams by design have a lot of common weaknesses. This type redundancy and predictability also makes rain much easier to play against than any other strategy, since you know basically that I probably have 3-4 from a pool of 5 sweepers, 4 of which basically only run one set well, the moment you see rain start falling. The Pokemon supporting them can change the game, but when it boils down to it when preparing for rain you know exactly what the offensive threats you need to cover are. Information is probably the most important currency in Pokemon, and rain is forced to play with half its cards face-up.
To tie it all together, Rain is a powerful strategy, but it is not even the best strategy for most players. As such banning Damp Rock, a move that would be made exclusively to weaken a style that already has better alternatives, seems foolish to me. Contrary to what Heysup and ToF seem to think, removing Damp Rock would definitely neuter the style, and there's just no reason to do anything to do it right now since it has enough faults as is.
Damp Rock is UU.
