>>43076819How much of a counterpart is it when there's no equivalent to sand's special defense boost for rock types or how 3 types are immune to sand damage? The only thing that suggests they're counterparts is snow cloak/sand veil and the more recent sand rush/slush rush. Even then, there's places where they don't overlap like Sand Force and Ice Body. Removing some of the overlap between sand and hail would be a worthwhile trade if it makes hail viable, though giving it more of what sand has wouldn't hurt either.
>>43076861I'm talking entire teams based around weather a la gen 5 since that's where the shortcomings of hail become most apparent. Some of it applies to two pokemon weather cores like Tyranitar+Excadrill and Kingdra+Politoed(which hail doesn't really have an equivalent of either), but I think we can both agree that sand would be worse off if every pokemon that benefited from it was weak to water, for example.
