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Hey Steven Snype! We're definitely still keeping an eye on all the other things we mentioned on the watch list, with Pheromosa most likely being on the forefront of it, but as the council vote we held regarding Pheromosa wasn't entirely conclusive we decided that Landorus-I had to go first, thanks to its unparalleled ability to smash teams with very little effort, as well as adapting to any state of the metagame without the rest of the metagame being able to do much about it. The council vote we held regarding Landorus-I was actually pretty much unanimous (unlike the ones we had for the other Pokemon; I'll get to this again in a second), so we decided that Landorus had to go first.

I can't really speak for any other council members here and will just give my own personal opinion for the rest of this, so if anyone else wants to give their thoughts they're welcome to join in.

As for Pheromosa, undeniably the most talked-about Pokemon right now, I personally don't think it's broken at all. I honestly don't even think it's that great. Every playstyle has a plethora of ways to beat it, and I think that "offense loses without priority" is some of the most exaggerated stuff I have heard about suspects in a long time; it's like people don't even try to adapt. I honestly went into the post-Aegislash meta thinking it would be, without a doubt, broken as hell, but in practice, that just wasn't the case. On paper, Pheromosa definitely destroys a lot of teams but, between there actually being rock-solid counters for pretty much all its sets (Toxapex, Mantine, Alolan Marowak, PhysDef Tapu Fini, Buzzwole with a little bit of SpDef Investment, SpDef Amoonguss, Mega Venusaur, and this is only naming Pokemon that can switch in directly, not mons that beat it 1 on 1 of which there are a LOT. And yeah, I do realize Marowak/Mantine/Venusaur, in theory, do lose to SR + U-turn but not only are these not always realistic battle conditions but it also means that you won't get a kill so it's like whatever really lol),

it literally not getting any free switchins because its pitiful defensive stats meaning you HAVE to bring it in after a kill or via VS/U-turn, as well as its inability to actually OHKO semi bulky shit that's not 4x weak to Ice Beam or weak to HJK, I feel like every playstyle has a ton of viable counterplay. As I mentioned before, it's a threat to every team on paper all the time, but in practice it just doesn't happen lol. Obviously it's fallacious to base whether something is broken or not broken on my own experience solely but, from watching a ton of other great people play with and against it, and because it is just That little of an issue, I honestly can't say it's broken in good consciousness. I think a lot of people are turned off by the fact that you need priority or some actually bulky Pokemon even on offensive squads nowadays, even though those Pokemon are perfectly fine to use and, imo, a necessity with or without Pheromosa; If you have a team that gets straight up 6-0'd by a +1 Speed Pheromosa then I wager that you'll usually have the same issues vs RP/Shift Gear Genesect (which I also don't think is broken by the way; I think nothing else is broken right now), or even stuff like Zard X that outspeeds conventional non Chomp/Nihilego scarfers.

Tapu Lele, I believe, was actually the second best Pokemon in the metagame at the time of Landorus-I's banning, but I don't think it's something I would call broken. Specs is obviously basically impossible to switch into, Scarf is still impossible to switch into without a really bulky team or playing around it with resists and absolutely murks most offensive teams, and EBelt/Spoon probably destroy fat teams even more than Specs just because they don't have to predict around Celes + Dark Type + Toxapex + anything that lives TBolt nearly as much. Like I said in the last paragraph, I don't think anything is broken right now personally, but Tapu Lele is something I could definitely see getting a suspect test down the line, it's by far one of the best breakers and Scarfers at the same time, and it probably still is the best Pokemon in the metagame right now (imo).

Again, everything after the first paragraph is my own personal opinion and doesn't speak for the rest of the council, but if you have any other questions feel free to ask them, I'm sure none of us actually mind responding to questions like yours that are both valid and formulated in a respectful manner!

with all due respect cbb, i think you're kinda underrating phero in the tier. despite the super limited movepool its stuck with it's still a v unpredictable mon because of things like cb / scarf / lo / qd, but you know this. my main gripe is that the answers you've listed aren't answers in practice because things like fini are blown back by pjabs, and other things like buzzwole don't need a /little/ bit of spdef (near 200 evs pumped into it to make sure it doesn't fold to ice beams counting rocks), meanwhile things like a-wak are kinda dogshit and just folds insanely quickly when pressure is actually applied to it. obviously things are still able to answer it but some of said answers are superbad on offense. nobody is gonna run offense with mantine/amoong, while buzzwole/venu are the only somewhat splashable ones and don't completely flop against common coverage. and more into unpredictability: people are experimenting with hidden powers on it more nowadays, so it's kinda able to invalidate things like toxa/mantine w/ hp elec. ofc it runs into big moveset issues, but recently banned lando also suffered from this (obv to a much larger degree with a fuck huge movepool and all) and look where that ended up.