Prediction doesnt exist against mienshao. This thing combines 3 extremely cancerous aspects of this game that automatically throw skill and prediction out of the window, those being u-turn, knock off and regenerator. U-turn gives the mienshao user momentum and 33% of health back, the only situation where u-turn can ever be considered the ''wrong'' move to use is when mienshao is your only answer to the opponent's current pokemon and you cant afford to mispredict but even then mienshao is still recovering health so youre never really at a disavantage. Secondly we have knock off, the simple most mindless move ever created. Solid 97 base power and dark type plus removing items instantly means mienshao can easily cripple anything that tries to switch on it barring megas, when you combine this with that solid 121(105) base speed you realize that u-turn and knock off, both of which are already frowned upon moves for their mindless nature, become even harder to deal with since tornadus can force out almost the entire metagame and always stay at an advantage. Lastly we have regenerator, this is basically the ability that i hate the most, probably tied with shadow tag, but regardless, regenerator basically rewards reckless plays and punishes your opponent for trying to predict you, its literally the definition of uncompetitive. We all know how annoying it is to deal with defensive regen cores, now lets put this ability on a pokemon that is capable of checking and crippling almost the entire tier and what you have in your hands is a monster that is almost impossible to deal with it. The reason obscure checks and gimmicks arent showing up to deal with it is because they dont exist. You basically have ampharos, aerodactyl and the mediocre aggron(arcanine, crobat, nidoqueen, sableye, slowbro, swampert) to work with and thats it. Choice scarf users are solely revenge killers, none of them can ever dare to switch in torn due to being koed by high jump kick or just losing their item to knock off. The argument that all you need to do is setup rocks and then youll be fine is stupid at best. This isnt BW, we have several effective methods of keeping hazards off the field that its not possible to just assume theyre staying in the entire time. Hell, mienshao can actually taunt the setters. Basically big bird(stupid weasel thing) is a combination of uncompetitive aspects of the game mixed in a nasty package that makes it almost impossible to deal with it, thus making it a broken/unhealthy/unbalanced/w/e term you prefer presence in XY UU. Get this thing out of here.
PLEASE note that I am not doing this ^ to conflate mienshao and tornadus-t, but merely to bring up a point. bear with me.
This is my problem with the majority of discussion in this thread and about tornadus-t in general. It focuses on things that define its role as a pokemon - yes, it has regenerator, and knock off, and u-turn, but it's certainly not alone in that regard. Listing off the basics of using the pokemon isn't really relevant to its health in the metagame - you could write a paragraph just like this about a number of top-tier threats and they'd all sound broken as fuck.
An important thing to understand is that the introduction of a new top-tier threat into the UU metagame (which all suspect tests will end up being, it's not like we're suspecting jellicent or vespiquen) will inevitably shift the metagame. New checks and counters that were previously less used (but still viable) will rise in popularity - this is natural. Massive offensive threats that are offensively checked by the new threat will decrease in popularity - and this too is natural.
I still think that Tornadus-T is broken as fuck. It's absolutely restrictive to teambuilding, it makes many top-tier threats less viable, it has some but not enough existing checks and counters, and it doesn't die. I accept all this, and I've never thought otherwise. If my vote were the deciding vote to send it into BL or keep it in UU, I'd probably vote BL - for the sake of being cautious.
However, the reason I voted UU and the reason I posted about it in this thread is that the type of post that you see above is all too common. When we have suspect tests, there are pages upon pages of discussion about shit that we already know. Yes, we know that Knock Off has 97.5 BP on the first hit. Yes, we know that Tornadus is weak to Stealth Rock. Yes, we know that it has very few hard counters.
But for all this discussion, there is still a startling dearth of discussion surrounding whether or not the suspects contribute to a balanced metagame, an enjoyable metgame, and a diverse metagame. For me, Tornadus-T -- a pokemon who excels on all types of teams -- was the perfect suspect to examine this for. On the surface it's absolutely banworthy, but after extensive playtesting I really can not say that I had a single game that didn't feel balanced, fun, or skilled. I never felt as though the metagame was seriously shifted towards a single playstyle because of Tornadus-T - the only overcentralization came in the fact that every team was running it. And while this metagame probably would become stale in the long term as more and more people perfected the "tornadus teams", it never felt like that.
I'm not saying that how enjoyable a metagame is should be the only factor we consider - its objective viability is obviously important too (and in a situation where my vote really would make a difference, its objective viability would have swayed me to vote BL). However, I think we spend far too much time distorting and overblowing the pros and cons of a suspect and far too little time truly trying to understand the metagame they create. If all we were concerned about was a suspect's stats, abilities, and movepool, we wouldn't even bother testing it on the ladder.
