So I wanted to make this post for a while so here it is. How is gholdengo still around in OU?
Gholdengo is the most centralizing, metagame warping, and restricting pokemon for teambuilding this entire generation. It all stems from its ability "Good as gold" which makes it immune to status moves. This notably stops defog from being used to clear hazards. Furthermore it is a ghost type so it also stops rapid spin. This has lead to 1 of 4 things being true.
1. You run either Great Tusk or Cinderace as your hazard removal.
2. You run HDBs on pretty much every pokemon
3. You play Hyper offence that does not care about spikes
4. You just lose to gholdengo hazards setup.
No lets address each of these points one by one.
Number 1: You run Great Tusk or Cinderace as your hazard removal. Another option that I should mention is that maushold learns tidy up which also works, maushold is just very weak though defensively. So its not hard to just ko the maushold (it also gets worn down with spikes since it runs wide lens) and then commence your hazard stacks. Furthermore cinderace doesn't work that well either. After you court change your opponent can just set up hazards again and then you got nowhere. Tusk is a decent option since it can threaten gholdengo with both knock off and earthquake so it can often force a switch out. Lastly other options such as cyclizar just do not have enough offensive power to reliably answer ghold. Therefore you basically need to be running great tusk as the only way to remove hazards.
Number 2: Your run 6 HDBs. This is a good option to combat ghold + spikes. And certain pokmeon don't need to run boots like corviknight and cresselia since they take neutral damage from rocks and don't take damage from spikes. This option is however weak to knock off since the opposing player can knock off boots and slowly chip away at your team. This can be minimized with a specific knock off absorber such as corviknight or clefable (MG). You still are required to have a specific knock absorber (corv or clef) as well as losing all of your item slots.
Number 3: Play Hype offense. One of the biggest complaints about this metagame is that it has been too polarized with hype offense on one side and stall on the other side and almost no balance. This is because hyper offense is able to bypass removing hazards by minimizing the need to switch out and the length of the game in general. Furthermore balance or fat is pushed out since they are much more reliant on the items (such as leftovers). By keeping gholdengo around we are continuing to push hyper offence while restricting the viability of balance teams.
Number 4: Just lost to Gholdengo + Hazards. This is an option so I didn't want to ignore it. But ghold has been in the top 5 usage for the metagame for the whole year. Losing too it is just not a realistic answer.
At first I thought gholdengo was just an annoying mon that while unfun was probably not banworthy. However as we keep playing ghold seemed to get more and more banworthy until it reached the point where it is imo the main reason why S/V OU is unfun and unbalanced. Gholdengo checks all the boxes for why the last couple of pokemon have been banned. It restricts team building more than any other pokemon (more than roaring moon, blood moon luna, and gliscor all of which this was a defining reason as to why it got banned). It has no real counters to it. Blissey is the closest one but psyshock gholdengo is becoming more popular as an answer to blissey. Other than blissey the only real counters that can wall it are cm unaware tera clefable and amnesia clodsire. Without gholdengo we free up the possibly for defog to be used on Pokémon like mandibuzz and corviknight as well as other rapid spin users to be viable like quaquaval and cyclizar. We also allow for the usage of items instead of restricting it to just HDBs on all non tusk non hype offense teams. Furthermore another reason BM luna and gliscor got banned was its longevity andit being hard to deal with. Gholdengo gets recover has pretty solid defensive stats and also has this longevity that makes it hard to deal with. And what benefit does having ghold in the meta actually do? Does it have any positives it brings to the metagame?
And I am making this post now because I don't know if it will get banned at this point and if so how long it will be. If the metagame was lasting another month it would likely be next on the list to get looked at but with DLC 2 coming out next month it appears we have paused all tiering actions until the release of DLC 2. And once DLC 2 comes out several pokemon will likely get dropped back down from Ubers to OU such as gliscor, volcarona, etc. Also it is likely that there will be some new/returning pokemon that also need to be dealt with after release. It has also been told that tera will be looked at again once DLC 2 comes out. So it is likely that ghold will not be dealt with any time soon since there will be more pressing issues that will be dealt with first that arise from uber drops along with new pokemon being added to the meta along with the tera discussion.
To sum everything up gholdengo is the most teambuilding constricting pokemon of this generation that requires either great tusk, all your item slots + a knock absorber, or running hyper offense. It puts more pressure on team building than pokemon like BL luna, roaring moon, and glsicor which were all banned and a primary reason for their banning was the pressure on teambuilding. Furthermore it has great longevity with its access to recover which was another major reason for the banning of gliscor and bm luna. Lastly it has no real walls or counters to it since it has access to psyshock for blissey, which is one of the only pokemon that can wall NP+ MIR/Shadowball. It also brings no or almost no positive contributions to the metagame. It checks all the boxes for being an overpowered mon that deserves to be in ubers, massive pressure on team building, no counters and walls, and great longevity. For these reasons it amazes me that somehow gholdengo is still around in this metagame.
I think this is a really good post as to why Gholdengo is a negative influence on the tier all in all. I like the mentioning that Gholdengo really hurts balance structures a lot, which is something that I feel should be considered a lot more as an overall effect on the metagame.
I would like to expand on point 1, however, which even further strengthens the argument for a Gholdengo ban. I want to look at the Gholdengo + spikes setter + Zapdos core that is pretty popular when it comes to hazard stacking.
Here is a sample paste of the core that I feel could be really strong:
https://pokepast.es/dcc3f33a64722951
This isn't a perfect example, and I don't have a team that best showcases this, but I have seen these cores pop up a lot more, and when I was playing structures such as balance and bulky offense, these cores really felt incredibly overpowered.
Here's my issue with these cores as a whole:
1. The opponent goes into their hazard setter, which is Ting-Lu in this case, and sets up some hazards. This can be a spike or rocks.
You respond by going to Great Tusk to spin away the hazards. Why wouldn't you?
2. The opponent goes into Zapdos as to not risk their Gholdengo. Yes, this max defense Gholdengo will live a hit, but you can just knock into headlong rush the following turn, and if they switch after getting knocked, they're in range.
Great Tusk successfully gets the hazards off, for now. You lose tempo, but at least teams like these cannot punish you too hard with momentum advantage. Seems fine, right?
3. Over the course of a game, steps 1 and 2 repeat until Great Tusk inevitably gets paralyzed by the static Zapdos.
This doesn't seem like too much of a problem, but this is where the problems start occurring.
4. The hazard setter, Ting-Lu, switches in to get hazards up.
You, again, go Great Tusk to get the hazards off.
5. The opponent either goes into...
a) Zapdos to respond to Great Tusk and threaten it with a hurricane
or b) a full health Gholdengo; Gholdengo outspeeds your Great Tusk now, so this isn't a horrible idea because you can kill it with a make it rain after it headlongs or just recover off the knock off.
For the situation of a), you get the spin off and you are safe. All is well, right?
For the situation of b), you get the headlong off, but because Gholdengo outspeeds you, you need to retreat into something in order to take the attack. You have to deal with hazards for a couple of cycles, but this is only one layer, so it shouldn't be that bad, right?
6. If a) occurred last time, the opponent follows this cycle until, you guessed it, Great Tusk gets paralyzed! Now, you lost your spin chance and your opponent can put even more pressure on you, especially since Great Tusk is slower than almost the entire opposing team. If b) occurred last time, this is even worse, because now the layer on your side is too difficult to get rid of. This is a scary situation to be in against a pretty bulky team. If the opponent even wants to do so, the opponent can try to get even more layers with Ting-Lu (some rocks, for example) and attempt to sack the Gholdengo, going for game with Zapdos + pivot wear down.
This is my problem with Gholdengo. Even if you have the mon that is literally marketed to beat Gholdengo structures, against hazards, Great Tusk is simply forced to spin until it literally gets full stopped and you succumb to hazards.
Now, this is just a sample situation and, consequently, does not always result in the hazard stacker winning. If you have a mon that can punish bulkier structures like these ones in particular, you still have chances. However, these teams aren't always full stall or even necessarily balance; these structures can be what I like to isolate as just "hazard stack," where the opponent has the hazard stack core and anti-offense countermeasures, such as a Dragonite or an Iron Valiant, just to set an example.
What this translates into is a situation where realistically, you cannot get hazards off, even with one of the only hazard remover that can dream of getting hazards off consistently. Yes, Maushold exists, but that gets earthquaked on the switch by Ting-Lu until it goes down. Hatterene also exists, but it struggles to Samurott-Hisui.
Now, my last way to (hopefully) simplify everything in a way that all players would be able to easily understand and relate to is by comparing it to ice spinner during the Gliscor meta. If Great Tusk wants to remove hazards in the face of said cores, you would likely either need protective pads + wish support or head smash and pray the Zapdos is not max defense. Or, looking at a more viable solution that more balanced (and fatter) teams use, we get heavy duty boots spam, the good ol' item that pisses off low ladder players due to the fact that there is no item clause and/or heavy duty boots ban.
