You know the reason people are bringing up these Pokemon such as Barbaracle and Pawniard not because they can switch in, or be a shaky one-time check to Sneasel, it's because it absolutely pummels the "standard so good it's unbeatable" Sneasel / Gallade / Xatu / Lanturn / Mawile / Lilligant | filler | w/e core. It sets up on Sneasel locked into anything other than Knock and there's nothing the team can do to beat it after it smashes up on you. Similarly, most teams of this archetype lose to Klinklang if they don't get a Scald burn with Lanturn. That's prettty shaky, lol. Same goes for Pawniard, as the so-called best team archetype only has Mawile and Sneasel as Dark-resists, which get destroyed by Pawn (and Mawile gives a free +1 boost to boot!) Did I mention Arbok? In fact, I think that most people in the "NU regulars" group (and a lot of other players given the same team) are using this same exact team repeatedly, which really isn't ideal given that everyone (other than Kiyo, lol) seems to be basing their experience on playing this specific team. This team has majority of members losing to Sneasel, and only way to beat it is switching to Mawile over and over again, which can be exploited. In fact, this is an example of a team that lets its other 4 members get super exploited by Sneasel, to the point that Mawile is not only necessary, but becomes heavily overloaded (especially because you need it to check stuff other than Sneasel). It's a team structure that lends itself to lose to Sneasel other than just a singular Sneasel check crammed in because, well, if you didn't have that, game would be over turn 0. The reality is a threat doesn't become covered because you just have a singular, #1 check. If the rest of the team is very weak to it, you're still very weak to it.
Sneasel's frailty doesn't come into effect when it's OHKOing things, of course. The problem is, as you said, Sneasel 2HKOs offensive threats, not OHKO. Sneasel's frailty matters when it's only doing like 75% to Tauros and you die because you didn't OHKO. It's a real problem in games, especially because as yall know, keeping SR up on the opposing side can be pretty difficult, especially if you're using Mawile as your SR user. Not only do you have to force offensive threats like Tauros to switch into SR once, not twice, but 3 times means that you were being rather outplayed. Also this is the reason why non-Band sets trying to "innovate" are terrible, at least in the current metagame. You can't even OHKO Zangoose with Knock Off. That means you do like 80% to just about anything else and you'll most certainly die to whatever hit's coming your way. Congrats, Dark Plate Sneasel!
Also, the Pursuit argument: people are saying threat it puts on other members of those teams with Pursuit is something dangerous for the tier. I agree, Pursuit is a pretty gay move. But Pursuit is a gimormous part of what makes Pokemon, well, Pokemon. It's been around for, what, 16 years? I find this pursuit argument hard to believe: just because Pursuit can remove dangerous offensive Pokemon switching out of bad matchups, thus killing things even when they have counters, I suppose isn't that what BW Skuntank literally was? Literally every other good BW team had it, and you'll see this less so early when the meta wasn't so well defined, and at the end literally every team has it. If you don't have it, you had either Gothorita instead which also traps, just different things, or you didn't need it because you're a Riolu/Liepard team. Just ask FLCL and Zebraiken. Actually scratch that because anyone who played BW can confirm. According to yall I suppose we should just revisit BW and ban Skuntank, let's see how well that one goes. Also, while we're on the subject of Pursuit, "Sneasel on stall is good, so Sneasel is broken" doesn't make any sense. Fast Pursuiter on stall has been a thing before I even joined this website. That's literally more than 5 years ago. Scarf T-tar on DPP OU stall is good for exactly the same reasons why Sneasel on stall is, except that Sneasel's not tanky enough to switch into anything. Is T-Tar broken? haha, lol.
I know people are taking shots at my "First of all, we are all overlooking the fact that meta has changed this way not because of Sneasel, but because of Gallade." I suppose I didn't elaborate enough because I thought it was kind of obvious, and yall managed to come up with the most unreasonable reasoning that I'd never use. I'm not saying Gallade is the problem because it was the last mon to drop and the meta currently is cancer. I know people have short memory spans, but let's look at this: pre-Magneton drop (+ Quag, Kabu, Fletch, Pinsir) We got a (albeit flincheable) Sneasel check, an offensive mon that can take Knock Offs and can revenge Sneasel by 'being faster', Pinsir which destroys Xatu Sneasel teams by the virtue of Mold Breaker SR, and Kabutops, which CB Sneasel cannot OHKO even after SR damage. Yes, I know. Tier change impacts are not that simple, but I'm not seeing how this was a 'favorable' meta shift for Sneasel and how Sneasel's got only better and better through the recent tier shifts. I would also like to say (and many would agree) that at least in that meta, Sneasel was most certainly manageable. Many people weren't even running Sneasel. And while Sneasel / Sawk has been a core for ages.
Finchinator can certainly confirm, and even though it was a really good core, it wasn't broken. Not everyone ran that core the way it is now with Gallade: QoL still ran his stall, brawlfest still played his dumb frail offense, kiyo played U-turn teams, some played balance, etc. Now everyone's running Sneasel Gallade, other than Kiyo who's still running U-turn teams. Gallade's impact on the tier is bigger than it looks. People are explicitly shying away from Garbodor, literally one of the best Pokemon pre-Gallade ORAS NU. Why? Because it's no longer even a shaky check to Fighting-types. It just gets shafted by Psychic STAB from Gallade. And worse, unlike Sawk who's locked into stupid Earthquake, Gallade will be not locked into an attack, and sitting pretty after a boost. This isn't even taking into the consideration the chance that Sawk player got outpredicted, for some reason. If there's a difference, there you have it. Gallade killed balanced builds not because Sawk couldn't break through these checks, but because Gallade does so not only without losing momentum, and all the while requiring that you revenge kill it immediately with a strong physical attacker. It's certainly doable, but it's still forcing your hand, which becomes particularly strong if you can answer their main faster physical attacker reliably. If Sneasel gets past offensive mons that need to be SR'd multiple times before being OHKOed, it is because of Gallade that forces them to come in and get in range of Sneasel. If Sawk is really better than Gallade like many people are claiming, why isn't the cancer core "Sawk / Sneasel", instead of "Sneasel / Gallade"? I know that in paper Sawk might be better than Gallade, or Sneasel may be more broken than Gallade, etc. but my experiences actually playing tells me otherwise. Everyone is deathly scared of Gallade, no one uses defensive Poison-types, people still bring in offensive teams with no way to outspeed Sneasel, and the way people are building and playing reflects the tier.
I'd like to go on a tangent to talk a little about the banning philosophy thread, in that "Desirable Metagame" isn't any different from "Preferred Metagame." It's in fact very rare that a ban leads to an objectively better metagame and is more of a give-and-take. It if were so clear cut, it'd been quickbanned already, and it's honestly just people's opinion on which meta is more desirable to them. I may be in the minority, but that's also exactly why even though I don't really want any beef or people calling me dumb for my opinions (which may, for all I know, could be really fucking dumb) I really do want to convince any many people as possible.
