Metagame np: SV DOU Stage 2: Dance Monkey | Annihilape Banned

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fespy said:
Controversial take but don't think ape should be banned. Opinion isn't strong enough to write a post though and not a mountain I'm willing to die on.

Edit: it would be nice if the OP (or another post) could talk about the decision to suspect Annihilape over Rage Fist.
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This is also about where my opinion is; I watched a lot of replays with Ape and I don't see it running away with games nor do I see teams absolutely stacked with mandatory checks. While it did dominate in DWCoP pools, it went negative in winrate in semifinals and was only seen twice in finals (where it won one and lost another). While it's currently dominating in Seasonals, I think that has more to do with the nature of screens Ape builds being autopilot (as is true for anything that dominates the first few weeks of any Seasonal).

I feel like I'm missing something huge. This just feels like another flavor of the month mon to me and I would personally rather see the meta settle a bit before Ape is banned since it doesn't seem like its carrying the momentum it had even a month ago.
 
I think ape is broken in the current state of the meta. Rage fist as a move is silly, and paired with a fat mon that can set up and heal semi-reliably it becomes stupid levels of good.

However, one of the things that makes ape broken is how it can reliably terraform to defensively check whatever it needs to. It makes me wonder if terastalization is the thing we should be looking at first, rather than these individual pokemon.
 
in SS when dynamax was allowed, we banned beat up because beat up into justified mons was too strong.

with Annihilape, there are literally infinite ways to proc rage fist as the only requirement whatsoever is that Annihilape gets hit at all, by any move.
This doesn't need to be "solved" any further, this mon is clearly broken. The only difference about it vs what we've looked to ban before is Annihilape does actually require an intelligent gameplan to win, it's not like Flutter Mane where you just mindlessly spam spread moves until things are dead. But make no mistake, ban ape.
 
I support banning Ape, due to its overly centralizing effect on the metagame and its negative impact on the gameplay. Each team has to come up with different checks to its Tera Types and if one of them goes down or is missing the game is lost. We saw a good example of this in a recent World Cup game, where stax had to forfeit on turn 3, because he did not prepare for Annihilape + Stealth Rock. Even if you lost your counter, you should be able to trade 2-3 of your pokemon for the opposing threat, instead of losing the game on the spot.

Finally its negative impact on teambuilding can be seen in the centralization around screens and screenbreakers in World Cup. Annihilape is the only mon that justifies using them and yet almost every team has to prepare a gameplan and run techs like Toxic, Encore or screen breaking moves just to defend against it. A pokemon ranked by most in Tier 1 needs have to direct, reliable checks instead of focing players to run techs or niche mons.
 
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With the suspect vote imminent, I’m going to take a few minutes to give my reasoning for voting ban. Many of the important arguments have been said better than I could, so I’ll approach this from a different angle: the teambuilder and matchups. Aside from playing “guess the tera” every time Annihilape shows up in team preview, I believe Annihilape requires at the very least one, and more often, two checks on almost every team one builds. However, I think the worst effect of this is the detriment to other team matchups. Many of the common checks like toxic amoonguss and tr psyspam fold to chi-yu Iron Bundle, and imo the best CYIB check, sand, is rendered entirely unplayable by the presence of ape in the format. To me, the current format feels very matchup heavy entirely due to the presence of ape. Its centralizing presence necessitates weakening one’s answers to other prominent archetypes. Take, for example, rain. Rain has been used heavily in dwcop finals due (at least, I think) to its ability to counter both Annihilape teams and common Annihilape “checks”. However, almost every Mon on rain loses to a well-played freeze dry Iron Bundle.
This effect on the metagame, combined with the aforementioned solid reasoning of previous posts in this thread, is why I will be voting ban. I don’t find an ape metagame enjoyable even when it’s not on my opponent’s team. Like pretty much every Pokémon banned so far, we wouldn’t have this problem if Pokémon Home was available. The one detriment of banning Annihilape will be dragonite becoming a massive problem, so I expect priority blockers will become very necessary on pretty much every team (Bruxish time?)
 
Congratulations to showdown user "bflitcroft" for winning, who said they already qualified and would like to keep their alt a secret.
Finals replay
Semifinal 1 replay
Semifinal 2 replay

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Now that Annihilape is banned I want to bring up evasion mechanics currently legal in DOU: Sand Veil, Snow Cloak and Brightpowder (Lax Incense is not in the game currently).

In early SS DOU evasion abilities were unbanned by a council vote on the grounds that they did not have the negative impact that it had when it was originally banned in prior generations. Mamoswine was the best evasion ability user at the time, which had significantly better abilities in Oblivious and Thick Fat.

Similarly to how the evasion ability ban was carried over to SS from previous gens the lack of evasion ability ban has been carried over into SV. Currently we have Garchomp in the tier, which can reasonably run Sand Veil over Rough Skin on Sand teams and is viable itself. I have brought this in seasonal against Nido-Rus and Relicanth Primal has posted a team on the team bazar with Sand Veil Garchomp as well.

Firstly I want to propose that a default position on the legality of such abilities in DOU is established for future generations. For the past two generations the legality of evasion abilities has been carried over from the previous generation. Making two, arguably incorrect, decisions based on a different generation is not a reasonable way to decide current gen tiering policy. Instead the policy should either be that evasion abilities always start banned and will be unbanned if there aren't any abusers to make them banworthy or always start unbanned and banned if necessary. We currently have a policy that >670 BST pokemon are automatically banned at the start of a generation so this proposal would simply be an extension of this policy.

Secondly evasion items clause (for Brightpowder and Lax Incense if it is added to the game) and a King's Rock ban should also be considered. While these items have lower odds of avoiding an attack they are available for every pokemon and don't require weather but otherwise function in the same way as evasion abilities. SS OU discussed these items and evasion abilities in a community survey and subsequently banned them.

I don't think these proposals will have a large enough impact to warrant a suspect, particularly after two recent back to back suspects. A community survey followed by a council vote, like SS OU did, should be sufficient.

In my opinion evasion abilities should be banned (or at least just Sand Veil) in SV DOU. Evasion abilities should also be banned by default in future generations and evasion items clause should be added on the grounds that they are uncompetitive. I am fine with King's Rock remaining because it can be reliably beaten by speed control, which is a staple doubles mechanic (it is still cringe though).
 
I would strongly discourage council from taking any action on King's Rock. In past Doubles formats, King's Rock has far and away been used with Fling King's Rock for guaranteed flinches as a sort of pseudo-Fake Out. The only other viable use of King's Rock I can think of is Maushold with Population Bomb, which, as long as it hits 6 times, is in your favor to flinch anyway, and feels more like Serene Grace Air Slash or Iron Head sort of luck than say, Thunderbolt para sort of luck.

I'm also opposed to re-banning Evasion Abilities. What exactly has changed here since SwSh, besides Garchomp being slightly more viable? The most important argument from SwSh was that if Evasion Abilities need to be banned solely on principle because they introduce luck, many more moves, items, and Abilities need to be banned just because they introduce luck elements. Replays of someone missing moves due to Sand Veil aren't really any more interesting than someone using Effect Spore Amoonguss and the opponent getting put to sleep by some contact move, or Cursed Body Gengar disabling a Choiced Pokemon. If someone offers an argument for Sand Veil being uncompetitive, I could run a parallel argument for Abilities like these, or moves like Attract or Confuse Ray or Sand Attack or any number of moves that only introduce luck elements. It's not as if Garchomp automatically runs Sand Veil anyway; I think it'd be really foolish in the teambuilder to not run Rough Skin without also having a sand setter on your team, and even on sand, Rough Skin still has legitimate utility chipping the myriad of Pokemon using contact moves or owning Maushold when it uses Population Bomb. I wouldn't take December ladder statistics as super reliable, but in December at least, only 15% of Garchomp were running Sand Veil, and Garchomp itself is currently just tier 3 on the VR. This clearly is not an actual problem, so if we're going to ban Evasion Abilities on principle, there needs to be some material difference. I'd also push this further: if Garchomp really is uncompetitive with Sand Veil, I think you'd have a better argument for banning Garchomp rather than Sand Veil (think of how we treated Commander and Tatsugiri; hopefully people think it's absurd to actually ban Garchomp).

I don't think a default position of banning Evasion Abilities is the right move either. I find it interesting that when this discussion happened in SwSh, we talked about Dynamax counterplay and limited distribution. Those arguments didn't stand the test of time, because Doubles both later banned Dynamax and re-introduced Garchomp. Surprise! There was no issue with Evasion Abilities then. I would still defend that Sand Veil could be freed in Gen 6/7 Doubles OU and face no issues there either. Although not Doubles, Singles freed Sand Veil / Snow Cloak in Gen 6/7. As a VGC player who played in 2014-2019, I can confidently say Sand Veil / Snow Cloak weren't issues, and I'd wager the vast majority of players who play Gen 6/7 DOU would agree that allowing Evasion Abilities would have negligible impact, even if some folks would prefer it banned for other reasons. I think it's far from obvious Evasion Abilities have always been a problem, and even though we only have one generation where they were allowed, the total experience of modern metagames demonstrates that by themselves, Evasion Abilities aren't inherently bad enough to warrant a default position of ban.

Bright Powder seems even more challenging to justify banning. I'd be willing to grant for the sake of argument that there was no opportunity cost to using Sand Veil Garchomp if you already were using Tyranitar. But clearly throwing Bright Powder on random Pokemon is not apt to increase your chances to win when other, superior items exist that on average offer significantly more value. You could run Bright Powder on Amoonguss and dodge an attack to Spore, or you could run Sitrus Berry and avoid important 2HKOs, or Occa Berry, or Mental Herb, or any number of items likely to add more meaningful impact. And unlike Evasion Abilities, we have three generations of experience telling us this. If someone wants to again say, "in principle, Bright Powder should be banned", then I can again run parallel arguments for banning any number of moves, items, and Abilities that only introduce luck elements.
 
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DaWoblefet said:
if we're going to ban Evasion Abilities on principle, there needs to be some material difference
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I would say the material difference is the accessibility of counterplay. The effects of evasion abilities and items are both 1. Entirely luck-based and 2. Cannot be reliably beaten without luck for a majority of otherwise perfectly viable teams.

If your opponent uses Confuse Ray, Sand Attack, Attract or similar moves you can reset the effect simply by switching, something that is available to all teams the majority of the time. Effect Spore Amoonguss can similarly be played around by attacking it with non-contact moves, which every team will have at least some of. While this might not always be feasible depending on the situation essentially every team will have a way to mitigate Effect Spore Amoonguss without having to rely on not getting bad luck. These are also methods that do not even need to be considered at the teambuilder because every viable team should already have counterplay to these luck elements.

Counterplay to evasion abilities are much less common. If you have a weather team yourself you can simply reset the weather with your weather setting, however while weather teams are relatively common they still make up the minority of teams. Otherwise you either need to rely on luck, moves that bypass accuracy checks (the only particularly viable ones currently are Kingambit's Kowtow Cleave, Clear Smog and Aura Sphere on Armarouge) or attempt to stall out weather turns. Stalling weather turns is at least something that most teams can attempt but weather teams can keep their weather up for 10+ turns without major difficulty by simply switching the weather setter out and in again when the weather expires, or 16+ turns with Smooth/Icy Rock. Although a number of evasion ability abusers also have access to strong boosting moves that can limit how effective stalling weather turns can be.

While you didn't mention these in your post other luck-based moves have non luck-based effects. Thunder Wave offers speed control in addition to its luck effect. Scald is a damaging move on top of having a luck-based effect. It can be frustrating to lose to bad luck with these moves but I fully accept that risk management is an important part of the game and I don't have any issue with mechanics that have both a competitive and luck component, only mechanics that are entirely based on luck.

Evasion items have a weaker effect but can only really be played around by relying on luck. Item removal moves, such as Knock Off and Trick, have accuracy checks that make them unreliable in removing the effect of evasion items. Magic Room will temporarily cancel out effects from evasion items but isn't considered a viable move in all DOU metagames. Evasion items can also be run on any pokemon and are only announced after their effect takes place (or Frisk), so you can't even be sure if you need to preserve your counterplay, if you have any, or which pokemon to preserve it for until it is too late.

If we don't want to ban elements that are only luck based we should also consider OHKO moves, if we are going to have this discussion we may as well go all the way (granted to my knowledge you would want to remove OHKO clause). The Smogon tiering policy framework states that OHKO moves are banned because they affect the outcome of a game 'too much.' The probability of landing an OHKO (30%) move is only slightly higher than dodging a 100% accurate move with a Brightpower + evasion ability (28%), OHKO moves have more common immunities than evasion abilities and the detrimental effect of either happening is not always greater for OHKO moves. A Swords Dance Garchomp could sweep a team from an inopportune dodge for example. In fairness I would be in favour of adding the option to unban OHKO moves clause to any survey or including it under some sort of 'exclusively luck based mechanics' ban, should a survey actually happen.

The distinction between evasion items/abilities and other luck based moves/items/abilities is that their effect is both entirely luck based and that counterplay is not always readily available other than simply not getting unlucky.

I forgot about Fling + King's Rock so that should remain unbanned.
 
There's an unfortunate truth to "last bw" memes; the playerbase for old generations diminishes every year. While we've had annual discussions about BW DOU's viability as a DPL format, DPL 9's expansion to 8 teams feels like a definite breaking point. Excluding managers BW DOU has seen only 45 signups so far, of which the supermajority doesn't even really want to play it. We are currently at serious risk of having to exclude it from DPL next year, with XY eventually suffering the same fate. We shouldn't let these old generations deprecate, especially not while they're still represented in our official circuit.

This year the council has prioritized older generations by introducing Homefield: a bo3 single elimination format wherein the second and third games are played according to the loser's old generation of choice. This is an exciting tournament prospect but I fear we won't see that many BW & XY games: experienced players are less likely to lose the first match (and won't play their 'homefield') while newer players will favor comfort and pick newer old gens, rather than the ones they haven't been exposed to.

Currently the only open dedicated old gens tournament is Classic: other tournaments are either conditional — Homefield, Premier Leagues — or non-existent. Classic cups' single elimination format means new players risk being frozen out of the generation all year long if they lose in round 1. With so few opportunities to participate, new players are discouraged from learning old formats at all -- leading to a slow but certain death for these tiers.

My suggestions is that we should host old generation tournaments throughout the year. We don't need an official Circuit for that (yet); we just need to formalize a structured tournament schedule to gauge player interest and retention. More tournaments would encourage new players' participation, keep veterans in practice, and positively affect metagame development. And if experienced players reused teams it'd still be opportunities for rookies to learn the tier against its top players. The tiers involved would be SS, SM, XY, BW & ADV. Especially ADV has generated a lot of interest recently; subsequent tournaments could capitalize on that hype and legitimize it as a Doubles metagame. I also find it pertinent to keep SS & SM alive, who still boast healthy playerbases that don't deserve to be alienated.

The primary concerns seem to be credible interest and tournament/schedule congestions. As for the former there is no way of seriously gauging interest without trialing these tournaments. If activity is too low to justify continuation, then we can simply stop, and we'll be back where we currently are.
As for schedule congestion: tournaments could simply be 4-5 weeks of Swiss/round robin. These low stakes & low commitment tourneys being in older gens makes overlap with other current generation tournaments less significant. It could even be an opportunity to test Nails' 'Wednesday deadline' proposal, allowing players to stagger matches as opposed to scheduling everything on the weekend.

I would like to hear if council and DOU's playerbase are interested in these proposals. If there's enough enthusiasm for more tournaments I wouldn't even mind hosting one after DPL/Classic myself. As for now I think this could improve the state of these older metagames, rather than risking they bleed out slowly.

(people have argued in favor of DUbers' inclusion for DPL next year. while I'm not immediately opposed to this, I think it needs some form of structured representation before it can be a serious consideration. in this regard, we might want to look into a bigger lower tier circuit. i think that'd help Doubles grow & capitalize on new gen hype)
 
I love the idea of new players being able to learn old gens through low stakes tournaments; individual swiss makes perfect sense but another Maushold-style team minitour would be amazing as well for a better teambuilding experience.

As for DUbers, I think it'll be in a good position once Home drops. Not a lot of Pokemon are going to be added, so that gives time for people to learn the tier by the time the first DLC drops. By this time next year the number of box legend-bst mons should be about as large as in SS Dubers, making it a well-developed choice for next year's DPL. Integrating it into the existing DUU circuit or expanding it to cover DLC as well would probably increase tour clutter quite a bit, but would help immensely with representation and learning opportunities.
 
BW DOU is my favorite format but I think it suffers from the stigma of being the "hax gen." I wish more people would be open to learning it and would hate to see it not represented in tournaments such as DPL. I would be willing to fund a tournament similar to the recent ADV DOU tournament with the hope that it generates interest in the format. I'd like to see such a tournament take place before Classic starts as it would hopefully boost BW Cup sign-ups, however I wouldn't want to add to the cluster fuck of tournaments going on around that time.

I am willing to put up 1,000 USD in prizes for a BW DOU tournament. Yes, 1,000 USD. I know many of you remember me being broke to the point of having mere dollars to my name at times. However these days I am working 14 hours/day, 7 days a week and am actually financially stable now. However due to my work schedule I don't really have the ability to host a tournament.

If such a tournament is given approval and someone is willing to host it, reach out to me on discord @ Teal#1383 to discuss.
 
I'd like to address some things.

I am aware that I am shunned from the community. I am aware that 1,000 dollars is a lot of money. I am aware that people would play for free.

I live a pretty humble life. I do not spend my earnings on much besides what is necessary. I don't dream of riches either. Investing is something that I have no interest in doing. I was intending to purchase a rare pokemon "game" that goes for the same amount.

I love this game, and I love bw. I don't care about petty grudges. I'd love nothing more than to use my hard earned money (trust me, it's hard earned) to support something I'm passionate about.

This is not an attempt to "buy my way" back into the community. I understand that most people will continue disliking me for their own reasons, to each their own. It's okay.

I am indeed trustworthy in regards to payouts. I have made transactions with Grandmas Cookin where I sold him games. Everything went smoothly and if there is question on whether I'd actually payout such money I'd implore people to ask him about our transactions to confirm I am not some malicious troll.
 
I'm going to preface this by saying this is going to be unpopular (haha me if you must) given the imminent approach of DPL, but given the lack of a release date for Pokemon Home and the very realistic possibility that we will be playing pre-home for as much as a couple more months, I feel the need to make this post, as I haven't seen much discussion regarding this. I have played extensively over the last month, even maintaining rank 1 on the ladder for about a week, and I feel that tiering action is needed to have a competitive metagame until home releases. The offensive treasures of ruin are, to be perfectly honest, too much for a pre-home metagame to handle, particularly in combination with offensive partners such as Iron Bundle and Dragonite, and I believe both Chien-Pao and Chi-Yu need to at least be suspected. I was content to play the meta out, but I fear that Home may have been delayed and I really don't think this format is suitable as it is for two months of DPL. It's hard for me to imagine myself enjoying playing SV in its current state for potentially 11 weeks without getting burnt out.
TLDR: Both Chien-Pao and Chi-Yu deal absurd damage and enable otherwise benevolent partners to sweep games, yielding a very risky and unhealthy metagame. Generally, not being able to switch out of a stat reduction is a massive L that prevents typical defensive counterplay.

:Chien-Pao: :Dragonite:
I'll start with Chien-Pao. Ever since the beginning of SV, the combination of Dragonite and Chien-Pao has been popular, but it has felt particularly overbearing in the aftermath of the banning of the two best ghost types in the tier. On paper, the issue may appear to be Dragonite, the same ridiculous damage output exists with Palafin as well, although less used due to the opportunity cost of not using Dragonite. Although priority blockers exist, and are pretty much mandatory in this format, the issue is that Chien-Pao has the tools to beat all of them. Farigarif can be easily felled by Throat Chop, Tsareena is countered by Ice Spinner, and Indeedee's utility is weakened by both. I don't even need to mention Bruxish, whose lack of bulk makes it unviable for the role. Although surprise Tera-Ghost is a decent way to check espeed, I would argue that necessitating a tera use in order to check a common team archetype wholly proves the brokenness of this combo. If one loses their checks to espeed, the combo will easily sweep through the rest of most teams. Even Rotom-Wash, a traditionally bulky Pokemon, needs 252 HP evs and 72 defense evs to guarantee survival against tera normal espeed with Chien-Pao support. Note that this calculation becomes much more reasonable without Chien-Pao.
One counterargument to all of this would be that dragonite often consumes a tera in order to access immediate KO potential, but it doesn't need to tera to rack up extensive damage. Dragonite tera mindgames can be particularly brutal, as normal's only weakness being fighting makes it very risky to call a tera with, say, a Great Tusk (turn 6).
This may all sound like a case to ban Dragonite, not Chien-Pao. However, Chien-Pao enables this ridiculous damage output with sword of ruin. Without Chien-Pao to accompany it, I think Dragonite would be fine. In addition, there are alternatives to Dragonite that could be used if it got banned. As an example, Lucario also gets Inner Focus as well as extreme speed, albeit with less attack, but access to swords dance. I fully believe Chien-Pao to be the problem here. Personally, I feel compelled to include Farigarif or Tsareena on most of my teams that do not themselves have a Chien-Pao. Chien-Pao has a very centralizing impact on not only the teambuilder, but also in battle, often preventing safe play due to its coverage complimenting Dragonite so perfectly. While yes, you can counter this strategy, I think there should be counterplay beyond correctly calling which mon Chien-Pao is targeting and whether the Dragonite will call the Farigarif switchin (as I had to do in this replay). Yes, this strategy is beatable, but I think the playstyle it enables is unhealthy.

:Chi-Yu:
This Pokemon was an absolute menace in early SV when paired with Flutter Mane, with some calling for it to be banned, but it fell off the radar following the Flutter Mane quickban (too quickly I would argue). This Pokemon functions differently than Chien-Pao in its own capability to sweep games by itself without relying on a partner, with 135 Special Attack and opponents' defenses stuck at .75x (singles players noted a short time ago that Chi-Yu has effectively base 192 special attack, which I think puts in perspective how strong this Pokemon is). Its mere existence makes trick room a risky bring, and literally nothing in the format bar its own AV set can sustain a double up of a Chi-Yu and an Iron Bundle. I think this Pokemon is much more straightforward in its brokenness than Chien-Pao, it's just really difficult to live a hit and it is so strong that even truly outlandish sets can win you games. Its biggest weakness is its average speed, but it pairs quite well with tailwind (see Stax sample) and it is fast enough to outspeed most Pokemon in a pre-Home metagame. It is also checked by Chien-Pao teams, but it is always noted in tiering policy that "broken checking broken" is not an excuse to allow something in a tier, and without espeed spam Chi-Yu would be truly monstrous.

With all that being said, I would support a suspect of both of these mons, although I highly doubt this will happen given the timeline. I just want to put my word out for a closer look at the metagame with Pokemon Day not clearing up questions about Home release. This post may be proven irrelevant soon, I hope (please ILCA, please). For what it's worth, I think both mons will be even more banworthy post-home, as stronger offensive options will pair strongly with them and further limit counterplay.
 
I think trying out low stakes, Swiss style old gens tours is a great idea that has few downsides. (Prescheduled old gens room tours would also be cool and should be easy to set up.) Since these tours wouldn't have any official points attached to them, prestigious players who are too busy prepping for their rigorous one 5-10 minute game per week DPL schedule, and would rather spend their other free time yakking on Discord and creating dope memes, could just not participate. Meanwhile, people who do participate and do well would have something to show for it and could potentially use that as a stepping stone for something like DPL later on. Even with the expanded DPL slots this year, most people who sign up simply won't get picked, even as subs (and that undoubtedly discourages many from even signing up). I've heard people say they feel they need to do something in tours to get picked, but currently can't get in any old gen DOU tours (other than the single elimination, once a year Classic cups).

The bar for success doesn't need to be too high. This recent XY DOU mini-tour on ROA wasn't well advertised, but still got 20 participants: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...nament-oras-dou-won-by-shadowmonstr7.3711949/. It's currently very possible to get games on the XY DOU ladder, usually after only a few minutes, and to try stuff out, though it's admittedly not super busy. It would be cool to have that for BW too. I, for one, haven't played BW DOU at all because I haven't had any chance to do so, but it would still feel sad to lose it from future tours forever (45 sign ups for 8 slots seems fine for the time being at least, though).
 
Played DOU for the first time this week, wanted to give my initial thoughts on the meta I guess.
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got decently high on two accounts with 2 teams, mostly using the following broken guys:

:sv/iron_bundle:
This thing is broken in VGC so I figured it would be here, it's just Regieleki with flawless coverage. Easily the best Speed control in the game and beats all the Dragon-spam on mid ladder. Playing around this is genuinely such a nightmare without just throwing your AV or Sash mon into it and trading.

:sv/chien_pao: :sv/dragapult:
CB Pult + Swords of Ruin is just fucked up, very broken combo not sure who which mon is to blame for it being broken but it feels very unfair. Tera Ghost should be the standard on Chien Pao at this point, since the best offensive counterplay is often Fake Out, Fighting-type moves, and Espeed to pick off its Sash. Tera Dragon Darts just shreds late-game and Phantom Force makes for some really silly setups with CPao.

:sv/palafin_hero:
so many ways to negate anti-priority stuff, like the above cpao ice spinner which also murks Tsareena and Giraffe, Tera Jet Punch is just unfair already and becomes even more silly with Rain and Swords of Ruin.

https://pokepast.es/f23c13aabb62f5be
https://pokepast.es/95f8a420d63135ae
These are the teams i used, probably gonna wait until home to play the tier anymore since amoonguss and bundle are really unfun to play around with the limited options available in the tier.
 
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