Hogg
grubbing in the ashes
For anyone who has been following the discussion in UU, Drought teams have become a serious issue in the tier. It has been completely taking over the ladder and tournament games, and with UULT coming up next week as our next big circuit tour it's a real concern. This has been a growing issue for a long time, but a few recent changes have really pushed it over the top. Mamoswine's ban was a huge boon for sun teams, removing their single biggest offensive threat, and Torkoal and Darmanitan dropping in the last tier shift gave it a couple of new tools. There have also been some new sets that evolved recently to fully take advantage, such as Solar Beam Noivern.
It's actually at the point where most players in UUPL have been making "no sun" agreements before playing, and for those who don't make one, it has something ridiculous like a 75% win rate. Just look at the most recent UUPL game, where Skysolo clinched the week for his team by literally using a sample team: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8uu-493150
As far as the ladder goes, Torkoal just dropped to UU this month and is already sitting at close to 12% usage from the first half of the month. Ninetales usage has been climbing steadily as well, and while it's still below the threshold to rise, if trends keep up I think no one will be surprised to see it rise by May or June.
There's also really no individual 'mon you can point to as the thing that puts sun over the edge. Other than sun itself, Venusaur is probably the most common element on these teams, since it's significantly better than the other Chlorophyll sweepers, but there are several others with similar wallbreaking/sweeping potential even if they lack its bulk. Darmanitan is the "newest" drop, and it's an absolute monster when sun is up, but many sun teams opt to use other breakers in its place, so it clearly isn't the problem on its own.
Before gen 8 came out, we made some clarifications regarding what a particular tier's council can and can't do. One of the specific things that was clarified is that while suspecting or voting on individual Pokemon can be done without oversight, complex bans (which includes ability bans) requires a policy discussion. We discussed potentially banning Torkoal and Ninetales as an immediate way to deal with this issue, and in fact the council unanimously voted to do so, but we decided to hold off and move it to a policy discussion.
This hasn't just been a problem in UU, either. One of RU's very first bans was Shiftry due to how overwhelming sun teams were in early RU, and PU is similarly having major issues with sun right now.
Anyhow, UU is ready to move forward on some kind of vote, but at this point any potential bans would pretty much just be a proxy for Drought itself. And considering that there has already been one Drought-related ban in other tiers with more soon on the way, the council thought it was worthwhile to hold off for a bit to open up a discussion about a full Drought ban.
It's actually at the point where most players in UUPL have been making "no sun" agreements before playing, and for those who don't make one, it has something ridiculous like a 75% win rate. Just look at the most recent UUPL game, where Skysolo clinched the week for his team by literally using a sample team: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8uu-493150
As far as the ladder goes, Torkoal just dropped to UU this month and is already sitting at close to 12% usage from the first half of the month. Ninetales usage has been climbing steadily as well, and while it's still below the threshold to rise, if trends keep up I think no one will be surprised to see it rise by May or June.
There's also really no individual 'mon you can point to as the thing that puts sun over the edge. Other than sun itself, Venusaur is probably the most common element on these teams, since it's significantly better than the other Chlorophyll sweepers, but there are several others with similar wallbreaking/sweeping potential even if they lack its bulk. Darmanitan is the "newest" drop, and it's an absolute monster when sun is up, but many sun teams opt to use other breakers in its place, so it clearly isn't the problem on its own.
Before gen 8 came out, we made some clarifications regarding what a particular tier's council can and can't do. One of the specific things that was clarified is that while suspecting or voting on individual Pokemon can be done without oversight, complex bans (which includes ability bans) requires a policy discussion. We discussed potentially banning Torkoal and Ninetales as an immediate way to deal with this issue, and in fact the council unanimously voted to do so, but we decided to hold off and move it to a policy discussion.
This hasn't just been a problem in UU, either. One of RU's very first bans was Shiftry due to how overwhelming sun teams were in early RU, and PU is similarly having major issues with sun right now.
Anyhow, UU is ready to move forward on some kind of vote, but at this point any potential bans would pretty much just be a proxy for Drought itself. And considering that there has already been one Drought-related ban in other tiers with more soon on the way, the council thought it was worthwhile to hold off for a bit to open up a discussion about a full Drought ban.