As you all know, Blaziken was a borderline viable Pokemon since it's inception, up until gaining Speed Boost in BW. At that point, it was pretty much instantly quickbanned without giving it much of a chance.
Pretty much everyone agreed with it, bar the purists who opposed simply because it was a starter. And in all honesty, in BW, the ban is probably legitimate and justified (I don't play enough BW to confirm myself). However, it stayed banned in the transition over to XY, and later to ORAS, without having its legitimacy in standard brought into question. Everyone just seemed to assume it was borked AF enough to where even considering dropping it was ludicrous.
Reincarnating the blazin' kickin' chicken might not be as far out there as it would seem at first. Sure, Speed Boost + Swords Dance along with a powerful Flare Blitz and decent offensive typing make it look like the 6-0er of legends, but after re-learning the metagame after taking a small break, I noticed that the meta appeared surprisingly accepting for something considered an Uber.
(If Punchshroom can ask for an Arceus-Bug suspect, then I can ask for a blaziken suspect. At least I think it works that way.)
Looking at the current OU VR, I'm seeing a decent amount of Pokemon that would be able to match up well versus the bird. In terms of counters, I'm seeing Azumarill, Tankchomp, Landorus-T, Rotom-W, Mega Latias, Slowbro, Mega Altaria, Hippowdon, Starmie, and Mega Slowbro, all in the A ranks. Some of them can be lured with the correct Hidden Power, such as HP Elec for Azu/bro/mbro, HP Grass for Washtom, HP Ice for tankchomp/landog, but with all of these counters being pretty popular picks in certain playstyles bar Mega Altaria, Blaziken is going to get itself hardwalled by something.
For the checks, you have Keldeo, Mega Diancie, Latios, Manaphy, Talonflame, Mega Pinsir, and Mega Venusaur (dies to sludge bomb + FB recoil) within S/A, with some of them assuming that said Pokemon are at full health. Talonflame in particular becomes highly relevant, as Blaziken's presence would drop Tyranitar's usage and therefore freeing up Talonflame teams a ton.
Obviously, there are other checks and counters with lower rankings - Gyarados comes to mind - but I'm emphasizing the high-level checks and counters simply because they're more likely to be used. I'm trying to make the point that the metagame is already prepared enough to keep Blaziken from being completely bonkers, without hyperspecializing it, and metagame shifts to cover it would be bite-sized, although the overall metagame impact would be too broad to speculate on bar a suspect test.
One last thing to mention is just how easily Blaziken gets worn down. With the combination of Life Orb, Flare Blitz, and entry hazards, as well as its general frailty, Blaziken has a hard time simply keeping itself alive long enough, meaning it will most likely be used almost exclusively by Hyper Offense. The necessity of running Protect also gives the opponent a strong chance to bring in a check or a counter while Blaziken is protecting, sometimes putting Blaziken in a lose/lose situation if the opponent played well enough. Speaking of which, Blaziken has some pretty bad 4MSS - it ABSOLUTELY NEEDS protect if it wants to do anything vs. offense, and it wants dual stab, knock off, Stone Edge, Poison Jab, HP Ice, HP Elec Swords Dance, etc. It doesn't help that it has an extremely hard time setting up a Swords Dance - to put it in perspective, Mega Absol has a better chance of setting one up, since it at least has priority and magic bounce on its side.
Lastly, I will have to say that since there is no evidence to back this up and that this is complete theorymonning, it's possible I could be blatantly wrong about this entire thing, and ends up being the most broken and terrifying thing to roam the tier since the likes of Mega Salamence. But there's no real way to get reliable metagame information outside of suspects, as custom games would be more heavily biased than any suspect ladder. A tour might work, but it would be a small sample size and still slightly more biased. And at any rate, I'm not in any position to host a tour myself, so it would have been basically impossible for me to get any reliable evidence to support my claim. If anything, I want a suspect test more to get the necessary data to come to a solid conclusion.
Suspect testing, if it ever happens, would obviously come after a decent cooldown period after the current hoopa suspect, probably a good chunk longer if it actually does get banned so the metagame can settle.
Pretty much everyone agreed with it, bar the purists who opposed simply because it was a starter. And in all honesty, in BW, the ban is probably legitimate and justified (I don't play enough BW to confirm myself). However, it stayed banned in the transition over to XY, and later to ORAS, without having its legitimacy in standard brought into question. Everyone just seemed to assume it was borked AF enough to where even considering dropping it was ludicrous.
Reincarnating the blazin' kickin' chicken might not be as far out there as it would seem at first. Sure, Speed Boost + Swords Dance along with a powerful Flare Blitz and decent offensive typing make it look like the 6-0er of legends, but after re-learning the metagame after taking a small break, I noticed that the meta appeared surprisingly accepting for something considered an Uber.
(If Punchshroom can ask for an Arceus-Bug suspect, then I can ask for a blaziken suspect. At least I think it works that way.)
Looking at the current OU VR, I'm seeing a decent amount of Pokemon that would be able to match up well versus the bird. In terms of counters, I'm seeing Azumarill, Tankchomp, Landorus-T, Rotom-W, Mega Latias, Slowbro, Mega Altaria, Hippowdon, Starmie, and Mega Slowbro, all in the A ranks. Some of them can be lured with the correct Hidden Power, such as HP Elec for Azu/bro/mbro, HP Grass for Washtom, HP Ice for tankchomp/landog, but with all of these counters being pretty popular picks in certain playstyles bar Mega Altaria, Blaziken is going to get itself hardwalled by something.
For the checks, you have Keldeo, Mega Diancie, Latios, Manaphy, Talonflame, Mega Pinsir, and Mega Venusaur (dies to sludge bomb + FB recoil) within S/A, with some of them assuming that said Pokemon are at full health. Talonflame in particular becomes highly relevant, as Blaziken's presence would drop Tyranitar's usage and therefore freeing up Talonflame teams a ton.
Obviously, there are other checks and counters with lower rankings - Gyarados comes to mind - but I'm emphasizing the high-level checks and counters simply because they're more likely to be used. I'm trying to make the point that the metagame is already prepared enough to keep Blaziken from being completely bonkers, without hyperspecializing it, and metagame shifts to cover it would be bite-sized, although the overall metagame impact would be too broad to speculate on bar a suspect test.
One last thing to mention is just how easily Blaziken gets worn down. With the combination of Life Orb, Flare Blitz, and entry hazards, as well as its general frailty, Blaziken has a hard time simply keeping itself alive long enough, meaning it will most likely be used almost exclusively by Hyper Offense. The necessity of running Protect also gives the opponent a strong chance to bring in a check or a counter while Blaziken is protecting, sometimes putting Blaziken in a lose/lose situation if the opponent played well enough. Speaking of which, Blaziken has some pretty bad 4MSS - it ABSOLUTELY NEEDS protect if it wants to do anything vs. offense, and it wants dual stab, knock off, Stone Edge, Poison Jab, HP Ice, HP Elec Swords Dance, etc. It doesn't help that it has an extremely hard time setting up a Swords Dance - to put it in perspective, Mega Absol has a better chance of setting one up, since it at least has priority and magic bounce on its side.
Lastly, I will have to say that since there is no evidence to back this up and that this is complete theorymonning, it's possible I could be blatantly wrong about this entire thing, and ends up being the most broken and terrifying thing to roam the tier since the likes of Mega Salamence. But there's no real way to get reliable metagame information outside of suspects, as custom games would be more heavily biased than any suspect ladder. A tour might work, but it would be a small sample size and still slightly more biased. And at any rate, I'm not in any position to host a tour myself, so it would have been basically impossible for me to get any reliable evidence to support my claim. If anything, I want a suspect test more to get the necessary data to come to a solid conclusion.
Suspect testing, if it ever happens, would obviously come after a decent cooldown period after the current hoopa suspect, probably a good chunk longer if it actually does get banned so the metagame can settle.
