I agree that Garchomp should be banned from the OU metagame.
Garchomp is an extremely threatening Pokemon and nearly impossible to counter. Unlike Deoxy-E, whose main counter is prediction, Garchomp is so powerful as a Swords Dance Sweeper that prediction is almost meaningless. If you want to try to outpredict a Garchomp, espically the Swords Dance variety, be my guest.
Dragon/ Fire/ Ground hits all Pokemon for at least netural damage. Garchomp seprates itself from the other Dragons that can also sport this combo in many ways. STAB on two of these moves make for an extremely dangerous threat, and with combined with its bulky stats, few weaknesses, and Speed: you have an extremely threatening Poke.
For those people that say "Garchomp is so predictable! It only runs the same few moves! We can counter it!" consider this. Pokes that people run to deal with Garchomp include the following: Vaporeon, Gliscor, Milotic, Starmie, Skarmory, Bronzong, Cresselia, Hippowdon, Starmie, Bulky Gyarados; the list goes on. Through experience with Garchomp and the current metagame in general, I would like to claim that Garchomp can commonly beat these pokes, and therefore is uncounterable. Slow bulky pokes with Ice Beam can in theory beat Garchomp, but in practice they all come short. The Sub/ Brightpower set can beat all of these bulky counters save Skarmory and Bronzong, given that Sandstream is present (which it often is). A standard Swords Dance Garchomp beats Bronzong no problem, and often has enough power to easily sweep teams once early game sweepers such as Gengar and Weavile are killed. Most physical walls will hate to come face to face with a Chainchomp. So even though Garchomp seemingly lacks diversity, its few moves can deal with all its counters, and often the rest of an opponents team. In this way, Garchomp is silimar to Manaphy, who was banned from standard play, even though it only uses few moves to do its job. I would argue that Garchomp is even more deadly than Manaphy was in the early D/P enviroment. Manaphy had two or three reliable counters, while Garchomp has none.
Some may claim that many other Pokes that exist in OU (Gengar, Lucario, Tyranitar and Metagross to an extent) lack specific counters, and since Garchomp seems to fall under this cateorgy, it is acceptable to keep him in OU. Garchomp is a greater threat than all of these Pokes. Gengar has Speed and unpredictably, but is too fragile to be as dealy as Garchomp. Lucario can hit from both sides of the spectrum very hard, and has decent speed, does that mean he is uber? Once the Lucario set is revealed, it can be countered to an extent. Even after Garchomp's set is revealed, it still is extremely hard to find a sure fire counter. Those few moves that Garchomp uses kills all of its "counters". Tyranitar and Metagross are incredibly strong, but have to give up a huge amount of power to be fast enough to sweep an entire team, which often does not happen. Garchomp has all the speed and power it can get.
In conclusion, I believe that Garchomp should be moved to the Uber tier. It is the biggeset threat in today's metagame (and the most used one) and has all the same syndromes that Manaphy had when he was it standard. Banning it would allow people to bring more creativity into the standard enviroment, instead of having to worry about Garchomp all the time.
As we can see here, Garchomp is one of the most overused pokes in the game, second only to Blissey, somewhat proving that Garchomp is overcentralizing the metagame.ShoddyBattle January Ladder Stats said:
Garchomp is an extremely threatening Pokemon and nearly impossible to counter. Unlike Deoxy-E, whose main counter is prediction, Garchomp is so powerful as a Swords Dance Sweeper that prediction is almost meaningless. If you want to try to outpredict a Garchomp, espically the Swords Dance variety, be my guest.
Dragon/ Fire/ Ground hits all Pokemon for at least netural damage. Garchomp seprates itself from the other Dragons that can also sport this combo in many ways. STAB on two of these moves make for an extremely dangerous threat, and with combined with its bulky stats, few weaknesses, and Speed: you have an extremely threatening Poke.
For those people that say "Garchomp is so predictable! It only runs the same few moves! We can counter it!" consider this. Pokes that people run to deal with Garchomp include the following: Vaporeon, Gliscor, Milotic, Starmie, Skarmory, Bronzong, Cresselia, Hippowdon, Starmie, Bulky Gyarados; the list goes on. Through experience with Garchomp and the current metagame in general, I would like to claim that Garchomp can commonly beat these pokes, and therefore is uncounterable. Slow bulky pokes with Ice Beam can in theory beat Garchomp, but in practice they all come short. The Sub/ Brightpower set can beat all of these bulky counters save Skarmory and Bronzong, given that Sandstream is present (which it often is). A standard Swords Dance Garchomp beats Bronzong no problem, and often has enough power to easily sweep teams once early game sweepers such as Gengar and Weavile are killed. Most physical walls will hate to come face to face with a Chainchomp. So even though Garchomp seemingly lacks diversity, its few moves can deal with all its counters, and often the rest of an opponents team. In this way, Garchomp is silimar to Manaphy, who was banned from standard play, even though it only uses few moves to do its job. I would argue that Garchomp is even more deadly than Manaphy was in the early D/P enviroment. Manaphy had two or three reliable counters, while Garchomp has none.
Some may claim that many other Pokes that exist in OU (Gengar, Lucario, Tyranitar and Metagross to an extent) lack specific counters, and since Garchomp seems to fall under this cateorgy, it is acceptable to keep him in OU. Garchomp is a greater threat than all of these Pokes. Gengar has Speed and unpredictably, but is too fragile to be as dealy as Garchomp. Lucario can hit from both sides of the spectrum very hard, and has decent speed, does that mean he is uber? Once the Lucario set is revealed, it can be countered to an extent. Even after Garchomp's set is revealed, it still is extremely hard to find a sure fire counter. Those few moves that Garchomp uses kills all of its "counters". Tyranitar and Metagross are incredibly strong, but have to give up a huge amount of power to be fast enough to sweep an entire team, which often does not happen. Garchomp has all the speed and power it can get.
In conclusion, I believe that Garchomp should be moved to the Uber tier. It is the biggeset threat in today's metagame (and the most used one) and has all the same syndromes that Manaphy had when he was it standard. Banning it would allow people to bring more creativity into the standard enviroment, instead of having to worry about Garchomp all the time.
