Stratos
Banned deucer.
All right, I've been keeping out of this thread because I wanted to see if anyone could convince me to vote to ban (coming from an originally strong anti-ban position) without my yelling at them. This is what I'd like to say; the reality is that I have been distracted time and again from posting here by a variety of circumstances. That being said, the suspect test is wrapping up, so now is a good time to post my thoughts. This will get comprehensive so buckle your tldr seatbelts.
The first thing I want to address is the idea of alternative movesets on Kangaskhan. I don't think this can be put any better than Lolk said it. Go ahead and deviate from the standard set! Your kanga will not be as effective. Let's stop this silly "unless it runs crunch" hedging we're doing in our posts. If your opponent's kanga drops sucker punch or pup, it's simply a waste of a mega slot. If we want kangaskhan to be broken, you must convince me that the main set is broken. Any other set is nothing more than a lure—effective, perhaps, at securing certain one for one trades, but not much beyond that. The argument "threat of x is almost as good as x" is one i've personally tested many times, and each time found that it seems to almost hold water until you need x to win a game and don't have it, which happens way too often.
So let's evaluate the main set. Some people argue that it's too hard to bring answers to Kangaskhan. There are so many answers, as have already been covered by others, that I can't even this.
And it's clear that it doesn't have much effect on the overall shape of the metagame. The suspect ladder saw the same trends as the current ladder, and anyone who says otherwise is just fishing for things. SPL saw both Rain and Sun teams at over 10% usage; the ladder is just finally catching up. And to all the people saying that only offense can handle mega kangaskhan: um no?? Defensive teams have plenty of their own answers to Kanga. Rotom-W, Jellicent can burn it, Ferrothorn can chip away till it dies, Amoonguss can redirect its attacks or sleep it, Scizor and Mawile can both 2HKO and take little themselves. Jirachi absolutely manhandles its every option. There's a boatload of Intimidate users that fit on defensive teams (notably Landorus-T which fits on basically any team). And as some have said, Intimidate is not the ineffective answer others have painted it as. Unless your poke on the field can't do dick shit to Kangaskhan, intimidate buys you a free turn vs it, since -1 pup is piss weak, as well as reducing kanga's sucker from strong enough to ohko frail things at +2 to only ohkoes when SE at +1. Anything short of full-blown stall can handle Kangaskhan just fine. When it comes to defense, Charizard (both x and y) is actually the biggest threat it faces; Kangaskhan is small potatoes by comparison, and easily covered on accident.
One particularly insane argument worth addressing is AuraRayquaza's here and ones like it:
In short: kangaskhan is not difficult to prepare for, it does not affect the metagame in any significant way, and it is not a Pokemon that should be run on every (or even most) teams. As a side note, I once replaced Mega Scizor on my RMT archived team with Mega Kangaskhan. I found that it greatly hurt the team to lose scizor's bulk; kanga simply could not switch in on anything.
That being said, there is still one additional facet to kangaskhan, which is its effect on actual battles. This is the only leg on which the pro-ban side can stand at all. Kangaskhan can often take a major role in setting the pace of the match until it is crippled (slept, burnt, paralyzed, or dropped to low hp). (Actually, I think this point is overexaggerated by most pro-ban users. +2 Kangaskhan is not so immediately game-ending that I feel pressured into running my strongest anti-kanga lead if it is not the overall best lead. I'd be an idiot to ignore it—but it's hardly impossible to stop). Once it has set up, it becomes the immediate priority. And with proper support, it can be very difficult to take down. However, some people are acting as if this is a trait unique to Kangaskhan, when in fact it is literally just a basic description of a set-up sweeper. Could not the same traits be ascribed to Zard X or Megabus (BellyJet Azu, for the uninitiated)? The opportunity cost of running a set up sweeper is always the same: centralization of win conditions. As you run more support for a sweeper, its effectiveness increases, but so does the amount riding on it not dying. This in turn means you can't harness whatever defensive traits the sweeper in question provides nearly as effectively, for fear of losing him. These two flaws have always been what kept strong setup sweepers (who would otherwise be absurdly powerful) in check. And though kanga beats doubles' other setup sweepers at game control, it falls absolutely flat in both of these categories. It struggles to do jack shit without a fair amount of support, meaning a lot of your game is riding on keeping Kangaskhan alive. And you are absolutely playing a five-mon defense when using kanga. Is Kangaskhan so successful as a setup sweeper that it deserves to be banned? I always felt that these two factors were enough to counterbalance his ability to manage the pace of the match. After the test, i still do. However, this is a subjective call, and everyone's votes will depend on their answer to that same question.
tl;dr: if this was tldr for you then just read that last paragraph
P.S. Everyone who's quoting tsunami's team, you're basically just casting your credentials into question. Shake's team will rarely beat a competent player. He himself admits that. It's a ladder team, and does not succeed in higher level play. So if you think that shake's team "does so well" then i would highly recommend facing some higher-caliber players in a battle before you vote so you can form your opinion from a non-ladder level of play.
The first thing I want to address is the idea of alternative movesets on Kangaskhan. I don't think this can be put any better than Lolk said it. Go ahead and deviate from the standard set! Your kanga will not be as effective. Let's stop this silly "unless it runs crunch" hedging we're doing in our posts. If your opponent's kanga drops sucker punch or pup, it's simply a waste of a mega slot. If we want kangaskhan to be broken, you must convince me that the main set is broken. Any other set is nothing more than a lure—effective, perhaps, at securing certain one for one trades, but not much beyond that. The argument "threat of x is almost as good as x" is one i've personally tested many times, and each time found that it seems to almost hold water until you need x to win a game and don't have it, which happens way too often.
So let's evaluate the main set. Some people argue that it's too hard to bring answers to Kangaskhan. There are so many answers, as have already been covered by others, that I can't even this.
And it's clear that it doesn't have much effect on the overall shape of the metagame. The suspect ladder saw the same trends as the current ladder, and anyone who says otherwise is just fishing for things. SPL saw both Rain and Sun teams at over 10% usage; the ladder is just finally catching up. And to all the people saying that only offense can handle mega kangaskhan: um no?? Defensive teams have plenty of their own answers to Kanga. Rotom-W, Jellicent can burn it, Ferrothorn can chip away till it dies, Amoonguss can redirect its attacks or sleep it, Scizor and Mawile can both 2HKO and take little themselves. Jirachi absolutely manhandles its every option. There's a boatload of Intimidate users that fit on defensive teams (notably Landorus-T which fits on basically any team). And as some have said, Intimidate is not the ineffective answer others have painted it as. Unless your poke on the field can't do dick shit to Kangaskhan, intimidate buys you a free turn vs it, since -1 pup is piss weak, as well as reducing kanga's sucker from strong enough to ohko frail things at +2 to only ohkoes when SE at +1. Anything short of full-blown stall can handle Kangaskhan just fine. When it comes to defense, Charizard (both x and y) is actually the biggest threat it faces; Kangaskhan is small potatoes by comparison, and easily covered on accident.
One particularly insane argument worth addressing is AuraRayquaza's here and ones like it:
Basically, he states that Mega Kangaskhan is the best Mega Pokemon and should be used on most teams, and thus is overcentralizing. This is pretty flawed logic when it comes to teambuilding as a whole. It comes down to the idea of team support; a Pokemon with two effective weaknesses like Charizard (rock and electric) and six resistances (steel, bug, fire, fighting, ground, grass) can actually switch into a lot more things and threaten them than a Pokemon with one weakness (fighting) and effectively no resistances (all ghost types save aegislash carry Wisp, so...). This ability to switch in and threaten allows you to actually cover specific threats and build a solid mesh of Pokemon that back each other up instead of Kangaskhan's nebulous promise of "doing something." Yes, Kangaskhan's sole weakness is easier to cover than Charizard's two. But at the downside of being easy to support, he provides little support of his own. (As a side note, support is judged by a lot more than supportive moves, and I have better things for my Mega Pokemon to be doing than giving me Fake Out, a move which it hardly matters if it's being used by Kangaskhan or Magikarp).
In short: kangaskhan is not difficult to prepare for, it does not affect the metagame in any significant way, and it is not a Pokemon that should be run on every (or even most) teams. As a side note, I once replaced Mega Scizor on my RMT archived team with Mega Kangaskhan. I found that it greatly hurt the team to lose scizor's bulk; kanga simply could not switch in on anything.
That being said, there is still one additional facet to kangaskhan, which is its effect on actual battles. This is the only leg on which the pro-ban side can stand at all. Kangaskhan can often take a major role in setting the pace of the match until it is crippled (slept, burnt, paralyzed, or dropped to low hp). (Actually, I think this point is overexaggerated by most pro-ban users. +2 Kangaskhan is not so immediately game-ending that I feel pressured into running my strongest anti-kanga lead if it is not the overall best lead. I'd be an idiot to ignore it—but it's hardly impossible to stop). Once it has set up, it becomes the immediate priority. And with proper support, it can be very difficult to take down. However, some people are acting as if this is a trait unique to Kangaskhan, when in fact it is literally just a basic description of a set-up sweeper. Could not the same traits be ascribed to Zard X or Megabus (BellyJet Azu, for the uninitiated)? The opportunity cost of running a set up sweeper is always the same: centralization of win conditions. As you run more support for a sweeper, its effectiveness increases, but so does the amount riding on it not dying. This in turn means you can't harness whatever defensive traits the sweeper in question provides nearly as effectively, for fear of losing him. These two flaws have always been what kept strong setup sweepers (who would otherwise be absurdly powerful) in check. And though kanga beats doubles' other setup sweepers at game control, it falls absolutely flat in both of these categories. It struggles to do jack shit without a fair amount of support, meaning a lot of your game is riding on keeping Kangaskhan alive. And you are absolutely playing a five-mon defense when using kanga. Is Kangaskhan so successful as a setup sweeper that it deserves to be banned? I always felt that these two factors were enough to counterbalance his ability to manage the pace of the match. After the test, i still do. However, this is a subjective call, and everyone's votes will depend on their answer to that same question.
tl;dr: if this was tldr for you then just read that last paragraph
P.S. Everyone who's quoting tsunami's team, you're basically just casting your credentials into question. Shake's team will rarely beat a competent player. He himself admits that. It's a ladder team, and does not succeed in higher level play. So if you think that shake's team "does so well" then i would highly recommend facing some higher-caliber players in a battle before you vote so you can form your opinion from a non-ladder level of play.
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