I keep seeing this argument, and its getting a bit old. I posted a lot of this information earlier, but I'm going to go into a bit more detail about it. For the most part, I'm not trying to single you out here because that argument has been consistently brought up.
I am genuinely curious about one part of your post that I will ask about a bit later.
A viability ranks: Mega Audino, Mawile, Carracosta, Gurdurr, Quagsire, Regirock
B viability ranks: Barbaracle, Ferroseed, Granbull, Hariyama, Pawniard, Poliwrath
That's 12 mons that can check or counter Sneasel defensively, and none of them are unviable. Low Kick usage on Sneasel is at about 20% unweighted and drops to 12% as you climb ladder, so its unlikely to be carrying it. Besides, most of these are not invalidated if Sneasel does have it. Even a couple of the ones with Fighting weaknesses are able to shrug it off. Regirock does it too if you invest in defense but lel
No one is saying that Sneasel checks / responses aren't viable (for the most part). The problem is when your
best case scenario against Sneasel is to basically throw your item away (in Audino's case, Mega Evolve early / prematurely) and leave yourself vulnerable to various other attackers you need to check because almost all of them have no form of reliable recovery (aka Sneasel
still puts you in a disadvantageous position) as opposed to letting Sneasel KO a majority of your team which it can very easily do, then there may be something a bit too good about this offensive sweeper.
252 Atk Choice Band Sneasel Low Kick (80 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Solid Rock Carracosta: 93-111 (26.4 - 31.5%) -- 16.8% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Sneasel Low Kick (40 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Ferroseed: 56-66 (19.1 - 22.6%) -- possible 5HKO
Basically, Low Kick is hardly ever worth clicking, with the STAB attacks doing more damage even to some of the Pokemon it hits SE or the benefit provided by Knock Off outweighing a bit of extra damage.
You are correct, which is why Sneasel hardly ever carries Low Kick. And yet, does it bother you a little when an offensive Pokemon puts in as much work as it does comparative to the rest of the tier with
its STABs alone?
Now for the thing i was wondering about: Why would someone have to run unviable sets to beat Sneasel? All of the counters/checks above have standard moves that threaten it, and in general terms you aren't going to need to look for weird coverage options to do damage to an Ice type with 55/55/75 defenses. I'd be interested to know what you meant by this.
Most Sneasel responses aren't unviable, though I suspect someone may have voiced out their opinions when Pokemon such as Avalugg and Miltank started to be brought up.
I've also heard talk about people suggesting setup sweepers, such as Barbaracle, Klinklang, or if you wanna be
that dude, Huntail and Gorebyss, to help offense combat Sneasel. There are a few problems with this.
- First, they do absolutely nothing to deter Sneasel from spamming Knock Off, which is the problem move most pro-ban users are complaining about in the first place; heck, they only reinforce Sneasel to use nothing but Knock Off since the risk of
not doing so is much greater for it. Sure, making Sneasel's attack patterns more predictable is a decent counterstrategy, however you failed to make Sneasel's consistently best and safest play any weaker, so really you kind of didn't make Sneasel that much easier to handle.
- Second, those Pokemon still cannot switch directly into a CB Knock Off, as they stand a high chance of simply getting 2HKOed on the switch. Even if they do get a clean switch, usually by saccing, aka Sneasel still managed to KO something, they would still prefer to not set up on said Knock Off as it would expose them to revenge kills afterward (the Sneasel player can save their Sneasel by saccing something else, allowing them to revenge your setup sweeper and keep their Sneasel). When you consider Knock Off is Sneasel's main attack of choice, you don't get as many safe opportunities to set up as one would think.
- Third, if the Sneasel player has an appropriate countermeasure to your setup sweeper, you really don't manage to even check Sneasel in the slightest. So Sneasel locks itself into an Ice move / Pursuit and now you can send in your Barbaracle / Klinklang for the punish. But what if your opponent has say, a Poliwrath (very common nowadays), Quagsire, Gurdurr, or some other response along those lines? You won't be able to get the punish by setting up as you'll be promptly stopped, and Sneasel is still free to do whatever it wants and smack your team fast and hard, while your setup sweeper is either left sitting along the sidelines or launch slow, unboosted attacks until their counters go down, meaning you
still want an actual Sneasel switch-in in the meantime.
