How to win the weather war

[amzfishman]

So I like OU and have built a team that's fairly succesful (38-19... not great but not all that bad.) I want to try out a weather team, specifically rain. I just want to know what I should do if someone else is using a rain team and gets their weather off instead of mine.
There must be a way to do this. How?

[Douchemon]

Cloud nine. Altaria / Lickytung/licky / Golduck They all pack a Water, thunder or Ice Move to deal with Sand Sun Water. and 2 of them have decent bulk.

Slap on them or your main Weather invoker a Weather move of your choice and voila.

[TheAdmiral]

Cloud nine. Altaria / Lickytung/licky / Golduck They all pack a Water, thunder or Ice Move to deal with Sand Sun Water. and 2 of them have decent bulk.

Slap on them or your main Weather invoker a Weather move of your choice and voila.

The problem with the cloud 9 mons is that they tend to be quite gimmicky, and don't really have the statlines to be effective in ou. The best thing you can do really is to get hazards down to wear down their weather starter every time they switch them in. Status such as toxic also works well in this respect. Secondly, just don't give their weather starter easy opportunities to come in.

For example, if you were playing your rain team against a sun team, if you can get stealth rocks down 9tails will take 25% every time it switches in. It also won't want to switch straight in to a stabbed water attack so you just need to keep on attacking with stuff it can't come in easily on and avoid as much as possible having stuff out like ferro that will give it an easy switch in.

[mcdanger]

Best way is entry hazards, all weather inducers lose 12.5% every time they switch in bar ninetales, abomasnow, and hippowdon, which is 25% and 6.25% for hippo. Adding 1 layer of spikes adds another 12.5% The easiest way is to bring something that can hurt them. Tyrannitar is weak to the same stuff as terrakion, thus a terrakion counter can do some damage and force tyrannitar out. Tales is crap, speced toad can OHKO it with hydro pump under the sun. Rain has an advantage as politoad can hit all weather inducers for stab super effective damage, again bar abomasnow and almost no one uses hail.
@douchemon: cloud nine is to gimmacky and those pokemon all lack a niche, bar cloud nine, which is only a temporary solution. And never give a weather move to your weather inducer, only exception is ninetales, because ninetales sucks

[John Wallrein]

Yes, hazards definetly help as when your in a weather war and both are switching their respective weather starters in and out to change the weather that damage can add up.

If Cloud Nine had a permanent effect and better distribution it could be much better but the way it is now, I wouldn't even try to use it.

[MetalSonic]

Guesswork, hazards of course, and trapping could work out. Seeing as you're looking at a Rain team, Dugtrio could work out as two of the more prominent weather users are weak to it and it traps kinda well. I suggest Gothitelle as well cause he doesnt get enough love and specs don't play around with any weather inducer with the appropriate coverage. -w-

[AnakBae]

Other than the after mentioned ways, tech Breloom is a threat to weather inducers barring Ninetales, so pretty much the simplest task is to use it as a lead, scare the opposite lead, spore the incoming poke, SD away (If your opp doesn't have Amonguss), and proceed to do a premature sweep.

[mcdanger]

techniloom still threatens tales, it can spore it or hit it with low sweep

[Orithan]

techniloom still threatens tales, it can spore it or hit it with low sweep

Isn't Ninetales faster. Last time I checked, Ninetales had 100 Base Speed compared to Breloom's 60. The only thing that I can see Breloom firing off against Ninetales is a priority Mach Punch, which could still hurt.

[Zachmac]

Also, while hazards can be your best friend, they can also be your worst enemy, so it may help to bring a spinner sometimes.

Tentacruel is a good one for rain, and, surprisingly, sun. Maybe even sandstorm, though it wouldn't like the lack of recovery. No weather starter likes having Toxic Spikes on the field, since the the only one that can really heal itself is Hippowdown, and even that won't stop the effects of Toxic. It's rain dish ability helps rain tentacuel heal, and helps sun ones check rain teams for you.

[jireh the provider]

So ... in other terms, these are currently the only way to defeat the weather summoning Bas*****! Oh my gosh! As much as I like building a team just to stop those weather callers, I hate those guys. Spinners and the like since I'm not very good at using their roles.

Which means my built teams will always lose to a team of weather based cores. Uhgh ... its too unfair for semi competitive battlers like me who wanted to use our in game pokemon favorites competitively. A lot of battlers that I've met (with the exception of a small group of battlers) take winning too much for granted

[Dragonicwari]

Something a lot of weather users tend to forget about is the moves that trigger weathers. Once your weather inducer is gone, most of the time your opponent won't be that worried about keeping their own alive. Once it's gone you send in your weather move user and boom, you have won the weather war. Granted this isn't a permanent weather but it beats them having their weather up

[TheAdmiral]

^ A but gimmicky, and its hardly winning the war - at best its drawing. Having said this there are some occassions when it can be effective eg prankster Tornadus with rain dance

[Zachmac]

So ... in other terms, these are currently the only way to defeat the weather summoning Bas*****! Oh my gosh! As much as I like building a team just to stop those weather callers, I hate those guys. Spinners and the like since I'm not very good at using their roles.

Which means my built teams will always lose to a team of weather based cores. Uhgh ... its too unfair for semi competitive battlers like me who wanted to use our in game pokemon favorites competitively. A lot of battlers that I've met (with the exception of a small group of battlers) take winning too much for granted

The only way to rid of weather is to summon your own, but that's not the only way to beat it.

And semi-competitive players who use their in game favorites will always be at a disadvantage, simply because winning isn't their team's top priority. If you want to use your in game favorites, you'll have to accept that it'll almost always be unfair.

Not saying you shouldn't use them. That's your choice. But there are more ways to beat weather then to do it yourself. Most of my teams don't even use weather, and my strongest team certainly isn't a weather teams; just a swift swim rain dance Kingdra which only uses rain dance to power up itself, and none of it's teammates are dependent on it at all. Yet, this team laughs at the likes of Politoed and Ninetails, and has no room for them at all.

[emboarrocks]

If you are running a rain team. I would reccomend choice band dugtrio as it usually KOs ninetails and tyranitar. Dugtrio also functions as a decent revenge killer.

[TheForestSage]

can you imagine how good a stealth rock/rapid spin/weather ability pokemon would be? D:

and i hate having to use up a spot in my party just to protect my team from weather.

[Zachmac]

and i hate having to use up a spot in my party just to protect my team from weather.

Well, it's also good to have it preform other jobs for the team.

Ferrothorn helps protect you from rain, for example, but it also gives the team a steel type who can swap in on dragon attacks like Draco Meteor and Outrage, can set up hazards, and be an excellent switch in for almost anything called water type, rain or not.

Also, Latios can make a good check for sun teams, but it also carries a brutal STAB Draco Meteor to complement that high special attack and is an all around brutal offensive threat.

[Chapter of Charizard]

I use my Forretress' Volt Switch and my Scizor's U-Turn to switch into my Ninetails on my sun team. Volt.S takes care of Poli- and U-Turn gets TTar; unfortunately, Hippodown are becoming a more popular OU Sand starter. Anyway, moves that will switch out a pokemon can work well. Or, just use Altaria. I used her once to (surprisingly) some extent of success.

[Zachmac]

I use my Forretress' Volt Switch and my Scizor's U-Turn to switch into my Ninetails on my sun team. Volt.S takes care of Poli- and U-Turn gets TTar; unfortunately, Hippodown are becoming a more popular OU Sand starter. Anyway, moves that will switch out a pokemon can work well. Or, just use Altaria. I used her once to (surprisingly) some extent of success.

Forretress's Volt Switch can't KO a Gyarados, more or less a Politoed. And any good Politoed should easily destroy Forretress with it's rain boosted STAB, even if the Politoed is defensive. Forretress is a hazards support pokemon, not an offensive volt turner....

Altaria isn't that good. Most sand teams have plenty of rock moves and rain have plenty of ice. And even with cloud nine, the Latis do better at handling both sun and rain. Not to mention, the bird's relatively low stats make it an all around poor and outclassed pokemon in OU...okay, it can take a hydro pump a little better then any of the OU dragons, saving it about 10% of it's health in comparison to Latias, but I'm not sure if that's enough to justify anything else.

[Monster Guy]

Run Sunny Day on Ninetales and/or on something else.
Kill opposing weather setters with a trapper (Dugtrio or Gothitelle)

[Soperman]

can you imagine how good a stealth rock/rapid spin/weather ability pokemon would be? D:

and i hate having to use up a spot in my party just to protect my team from weather.

You don't really have to keep a spot on your team for it. Either build around a weather-starter or just make sure you can counter weather (plus the stuff mentioned above)
And a the pokemon you mentioned would depend on weather, because otherwise it's basically outclassed (unless it has phenomenal stats, in which case who knows what it would do)

Run Sunny Day on Ninetales and/or on something else.

Doesn't change the fact that you lose when Ninetails dies.

[thatjeremykid]

on my sun team i run sunny day on ninetails, and three other pokemon in the team too. one of them being rotom-w (go figure) with heat rock. it carries sunny day, tbolt to fend of politoeds, willowisp to nerf tyranitar. pretty decent team

[ParaChomp]

Shadow Tag and Arena Trap users may come to mind but they need a lot of support. Though Wobbufett is a great Pokémon, it's not a good choice with all of the weather starters commonly running moves which prevent it from doing what it does best. Dugtrio with Reversal works great against Tyranitar, Ninetales, and Abomasnow. It's problem is the fact that it lacks enough power to get a one-hit knockout against defensive Ninetales while Hippowdon and Politoed can easily suck up those blows. Gothoritelle can deal with Politoed easily due to its access to Thunderbolt though it can leave dents in the others with Psychic and Grass Knot however it lacks the oomph even with Choice Specs.

    Spoiler:- Though if there is one Pokémon I can easily count on to win the weather war, it's...:

Show Spoiler

 
Poliwrath
Leftovers
Water Absorb ability
Relaxed nature
252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
- Circle Throw
- Ice Beam
- Protect
- Toxic

Though it barely sees the light in competition, for a weather counter; Poliwrath is an excellent choice. Doesn't matter what weather you want to keep up, this guy has you covered. Circle Throw is the main star, giving you a solid attack that can damage Tyranitar and Abomasnow greatly. With the effect of forcing the foe out (or in your case, wanting the foe back in), entry hazards are much appreciated due to Ninetales and Abomasnow's Rock weaknesses. Ice Beam is a handy move in general and can hit Hippowdon for super effective damage (though you do have to watch out for specially defensive variants). Toxic helps in wearing down tanks which are commonly used by weather starters while Protect aids in scouting, gaining an extra turn of Leftovers recovery, and rack up poison damage. Politoed is put into a rough spot lacking the ability to use Water moves due to Water Absorb which you have to time well in order to regain lost health. It does have problems against Ninetales due to it using special attacks and its access to Energy Ball and Abomasnow with powerful Grass moves. With all that taken into account, such explains the investment in physical defence. Though this has to be said, outside of gaining control of the sky, it can't do much else in a tier full of offensive powerhouses. That said, is that spot for Poliwrath really worth it?
 

[Agonist]

The best way to win the weather war in my experience is to play conservatively with your own weather starter until you've eliminated your opponents. If you're planning on using Politoed, that means don't just recklessly switch in as soon the weather changes. Instead, whittle down their weather starter, or trap it, or whatever you need to do. Sand teams in particular tend to only rely on Tyranitar or Hippowdon to keep their desired weather up, and once that's gone, then their team will quickly be overwhelmed by yours. Additionally, it's never a bad idea to throw Rain Dance onto one or two of your Pokemon just in case something does go awry, and Politoed faints before their weather starter, and even if it's not fainted, you can use the rain to your advantage to force switchs, and rack up residual damage from entry hazards.

[Dragonicwari]

@Parachomp: I really like that Politoed set, have you actually tried it? If so what is it's biggest flaws in your opinion?