After playing a lot of games with and without chien pao, ive come to terms with the fact that chien pao is not restricting or broken, and my stance remains on no ban, now as usual ive deduced some supporting points and an introduction :-
Okay so lets look at the tier, what impact does chien pao have? almost none, the same common cores would arise even if it wasnt in OU, great tusk + tera fairy rotom, tera fairy kingambit, opposing pao obviously, gholdengo especially scarf, the only argument for chien pao being oppressive seems to be extremely flawed and ignorant, its always a shit comparison like "use seismitoad for dracovish" the only thing pao has is power, just like lele last gen, or even weav which was fine i firmly believe that gen 8 weavile was worse than gen 9 chien pao, chien pao is just a breaker that can be well utilised on offense, and even fatter archetypes.
1. It does not force any unviable counter measures, chien pao while being strong its stabs is easy to pivot around with stuff like great tusk + rotom, kingambit + scarf dengo, tera chomp, tera anything really can check chien pao, if you play it CAREFULLY, people say if u make the wrong move u lose , but thats the case for every offensive mon especially a breaker, and yes, tera is required and should be used to check breakers, hence it is an invalid argument to say it is forcing unviable pokemon, stuff like tauros is NOT unviable and i think its a great physical wall that can do damage in ou like check dnite, kingambit, dengo, wisp tusk, body press chip everything, and obviously serves as a great chien pao counter, a well structured team could never have an issue with chien pao. Hell, even physdef scream tail HARD COUNTERS chien pao, and defeats many many physical attackers in ou like chomp, tusk, a non tera'd dragonite. Just to name a few, and tera scream tail + any tera can check tera dark chien pao, while i acknowledge that using tera to check a pokemon is a bad argument, using tera to check an ALREADY TERA'D pokemon is a great argument.
2. It is punishing lazy and poorly built teams, cheesy stuff like 5 setup mons, especially psyspam polteageist, and random quaquaval HO, or even 4 dragons + 2 steels, the influence that chien pao has is it forces u to run a solid resist to everything which is always healthy for a metagame, rather than a stale meta with cheesy teams, chien pao forces a resist in the builder and allows u to innovate while having a well structured team, cheese that user pinecoishot, and others use, like psyspam, and random sash ho, hazards + a good chien pao build will keep those in check, and force offense users like him to run a good team, like HO should have priority at its disposal to not only check pao but other stuff, balance should have a solid ice dark resist, chien pao or no chien pao,since there are almost no ice types in ou, people would run a dark resist but no ice resist, which will make the team structure very poor, and that is what we SHOULD NOT practice, ice spinner pao checks those goofy terrain teams and such, the ideal meta and i speak for most people when i say this, should not be a stale cheese infested meta that chien pao is preventing, but a meta with good resists and strong defensive cores, and proper offensive cores that include priority.
3. Very easy to keep in check, it hits hard but all wallbreakers should, we cannot ban everything that hits hard to ubers, thats how a defensive meta arises , offense would become almost unviable because checks to the defensive cores keep getting booted, weavile in gen 8 is a good comparison, atleast weavile has non contact beat up, which is much more eligible for a ban, pao can be chipped with helmet, baneful pex, and lots of residual, pao can also be wisped by rotom, checked by tusk, checked by a well played tera gambit, tauros obviously and it checks many other stuff, even a tera dnite, sub dd pult, and especially garganacl, and yes ik some of these mons cannot switch in that is why i said if played well, have we forgotten basic playing now? You never let a wallbreaker position itself otherwise it gets kills regardless, this applies to all breakers not just chien pao, you need to play carefully around breakers and make logical plays to position yourself to hit them and not let them hit you first, you must play to win not play reactively switching into stuff thats how your team gets chipped, you apply pressure and force progress, thats how you get ahead in competitive play, even when using stall/balance, which BTW got a buff in tera meta because now you can tera dondozo and pex to hard counter chien pao, so there is no excuse for chien pao having limited switchins. Some arguments against my bros vertex and 3d consist of "use seismitoad it checks dracovish!" Such a flawed, arrogant and ignorant comparison, chien pao unlike dracovish isnt forcing anything unviable to enter the tier, dracovish made RU or NU mons OU, id like to see the ru or nu mons that chien pao made ou, oh wait, there is none because common stuff with basic knowledge of play can keep chien pao in check. So immediately the dracovish comparison is super invalidated.
4. There are other things in the tier more deserving of a suspect than chien pao and i will list them here:
(i) Espathra:- okay this pokemon is something we can call oppressive, and super broken , because it is forcing an unaware mon + tera dark/psychic on every single team, otherwise get instantly swept by the physdef stored power set or the offensive one on terrain, speed boost is an addition to its ability to sweep which immediately puts you on a turn timer since its boosting speed (and 20bp in stored power) every single turn. See this is a good example of forcing specific checks.
(ii) garganacl: this one has blinded many many people, like oh my God dude open your eyes, covert cloak is a good item, but it would never be a "best" item choice on any mon if garg wasnt here, so already a mediocre item is turned into a mandatory item because of 1 pokemon, and 1 cloak isnt enough to check it, cloaks are forced on 2-3 pokemon and sometimes still not enough, the curse set requires a cloak + an unaware mon, or a cloak breaker that can check its tera type. The reason this pokemon has such a low winrate in spl is because most if not all spl teams have a cloak or a SUBSTITUTE SKELEDIRGE( yes u heard correctly) or sub setup mons in general, and the reason is just for garganacl , the fact people dont see how restricting this pokemon really is , is beyond me, purifying salt makes it immune to status and a free ghost resist thats not a dark or normal type, and salt cure if it was 4-5 turns it would be fine but its permanent until you switch, this 1/8 is still fine, but 1/4 to waters and steels is just plain unfair, i would go as far as to say if you consider garg staying ou, you should unban the following less restricting pokemon: giratina, lugia, Ho-Oh, arena trap/dugtrio, shadow tag, just run shed shell bro shadow tag and dugtrio are fine, shed shell has other uses too! Stops magnezone trapping! , thats how ridiculous the cloak and anti ban garg arguments are, these pokemon are far less restricting than a garganacl, and if i remember correctly, garganacl is a- in ubers iirc, so its doing damage in ubers aswell, sub mons and cloak mons still see usage in ubers, just a testiment to how broken this pokemon really is, truely ridiculous.
(iii) Kingambit: this is much much more oppressive than chien pao, not only does its ability enable it to be stronger than chien pao, this pokemon is about 1.5x as bulky as clefable last gen, and the later in the game kingambit comes in, the harder it hits, this id argue is forcing tauros more than pao is, paired with its deadly steel dark stab, and can sometimes even tera to beat tauros, so obviously the reason great tusk has so much usage, this places it at #3 for me in terms of oppression.
The council should look into these pokemon as soon as possible, as the most experienced user in the tier, looking into these mons can only bring good to the tier, the only one that should stay is kingambit, but it still deserves a suspect more than chien pao.
5. The tier is lacking fast offense, chien pao has a great speed tier, and since its so easily splashable on teams, it can act as a nice and easy beginner friendly speed control mon, the penalty if chien pao goes is extremely dangerous for ou as teams will struggle to find good speed control outside scarfers or speedboosting proto mons, and this will create a domino effect causing teams to look more similar, which gives u a slow meta of pivoting, defense, and little to no breakers since we have been banning them for years, look at how shit sword and shield became after the kyurem ban, triple regenerator, fat rillaboom grassspam, sand balance, to those who say ss wasnt bad? It ended horribly , dont believe me? Go look at the ss ladder and the sun moon ladder, the sun moon ladder is higher, making ss the only past gen ladder in smogon history to have the previous gen ladder higher than it, which means ss had potential but it failed as a tier in my opinion, still dont believe me? The ou room usercount and only ou room regulars can back me up here, in ss the usercount did not pass 3-400 for the last 2 years of ss, as soon as ss ended , it tripled , now its 1200 users, its poppin, for the entire duration of gen 7 there were like 800 users too, because it was a great tier, Sword/Shield OU is a lost cause its just sad. So back on topic, a slow repetitive meta with the same offense and defense cores is never healthy, if you want the community to be happy dont ignore the entire playerbase just because of the qualified one because competitive pokemon is about making everyone happy not just the serious tour players, because the community is ultimately everybody and not just the small 10% that play tours and take it seriously, i want the whole community to be happy because i take pride in helping others and i love helping new users improve by 1 on 1 coaching, its a hobby i generally enjoy.
Conclusion: I will conclude this post by saying i get why people want pao gone, but in the larger scale of things, its not the right decision to ban it, takes a piece of Sv ou with it if it goes, so my stance shall remain on no ban.
