Announcement np: SV OU Suspect Process, Round 2 - Munch

[SpritePony]

I tried for reqs under OUZO Sprite, but gave up as I didn't have the drive to try and complete the 80+ GXE task. My vote doesn't matter at all, but I'm in the ban bin.

Ended 32 - 16 at 62.1% GXE.

Panther is absurdly strong and you either need a dedicated "counter" to it (which isn't always guaranteed to work) or play around it AND the rest of its team at the same time.

 

[thebigmansback]

I got reqs so I figured I would type up why I’ll be voting ban

it’s very simple, look at the ou viability rankings and scroll down until you find something that can switch into chien-pao and then either kill it or force it out. Did you have to scroll down to B to find things like tauros-paldea/auzu, then congratulations you have eyes. The other 25 best Pokémon in the tier either get smoked by it or are incredibly prediction reliant

a Pokémon that is as strong as chien pao is allowed to exist in a meta game, but it can’t be that strong and also be the second fastest thing in the tier while also having priority. The things that should be built to beat it, like garg/pex/dondozo, all get beat down by tera dark crunch, or are forced to defensively tera just to survive and not even be able to kill back.

chien-pao simply puts too much pressure on the meta for it to be healthy.

 

[3d]

hello everyone, ill be posting another pao breakdown for spl week 4 as soon as all the games wrap up. if you're undecided id encourage you to hold back on voting for a bit to check it out as more information into paos impact on this meta will help further inform you regardless of how you chose to vote.

it can be expected to be finished by sunday evening to ensure I can cover all games.

 

[Storm Zone]

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, teams like psyspam, and random sash ho, hazards + a good chien pao build will keep those in check, and force a more structured offense archetype, 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.

 

[IExistYouDont]

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.

While the argument against banning Chien Pao highlights some valid points, such as its ability to counter cheesy teams and its relatively easy checkability, it fails to address some key issues with the Pokémon's impact on the metagame.

Firstly, while it may be true that Chien Pao is easy to keep in check with a well-structured team, it does not necessarily mean that the Pokémon is healthy for the metagame. A Pokémon with such immense power and offensive prowess has the potential to significantly disrupt the balance of the game, and may lead to a shift towards more offensive playstyles.

Additionally, the argument that Chien Pao is not forcing any unviable Pokémon into play is somewhat misguided. While it may not be forcing specific Pokémon into the tier, its presence is still forcing players to build their teams in a certain way in order to effectively counter it. This can lead to a lack of variety and creativity in team building, which is not ideal for a healthy metagame.

Finally, while it is true that Chien Pao can be kept in check with proper play, it still requires a significant amount of skill and knowledge to do so effectively. This may not be accessible to all players, and could result in a skewed metagame where only the most skilled players are able to effectively use Chien Pao. This can lead to a less enjoyable experience for less skilled players, and is not a positive aspect of the Pokémon's presence in the metagame.

In conclusion, while Chien Pao may not necessarily be broken or restricting, its impact on the metagame and potential to shift the balance towards more offensive playstyles cannot be ignored. It is important to consider these factors when evaluating the impact of Chien Pao on the metagame, and to weigh the potential consequences of allowing it to remain in the tier.

 

[Beaf Cultist]

People find the answers they look for


One-liners are funny and all, but I also wanna say that the reality of the ‘using Tera to check a breaker’ argument is probably somewhere in the middle of what the two extremes say about it. Yes, Terastallizing can be and often is a very viable way to answer certain threats, including Chien-Pao. However, when Terastallizing is the only viable countermeasure to a breaker who has not itself Terastallized, that’s what I would call a problem. Chien-Pao is such a mon. Without Tera, only a select few mons can switch into Pao repeatedly, and quite a few of them are pretty terrible into any mon that doesn’t have swords for teeth, meaning yes, Chien-Pao does force people to run otherwise unviable counterplay (unless you want to rely on Tera to reliably answer it). Tell me to my face that either Paldean Tauros would be on the VR without Chien-Pao in the tier. You can’t. Just because they aren’t OU by usage doesn’t make any difference as to the fact that Chien-Pao is forcing unviable mons to be used just for teams to feel safe against it without needing to burn their Tera.

It is punishing lazy and poorly built teams

Also shit like this is so easy to say in order to put down the opposition, but just saying it doesn’t really mean anything. Like, okay, every mon regardless of brokenness is capable of punishing poorly built teams. That’s not a metric of how overwhelming a mon is, it’s just a fact. Scarf Rampardos punishes lazy and poorly-built teams by preying on their lack of speed control options and reliable switchins. Saying that like it’s a point in Pao’s favor just makes it sound like you’re saying everyone who has a problem with the mon is actually just bad at the game.
Also sidenote but saying a mon singlehandedly disassembles all forms of HO is again not a point in favor of it being balanced lol, regardless of how much you enjoy that role.

Hard agree on both Espathra and Garg needing suspects though, those mons are wack af. Also Kingambit suspect is interesting but chances are we won’t have time for it before Home drops if we hit the other mons first.

 

[Rootb]

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 :-

That is an absolute wall of text that i'm sure you're very proud of, but it's almost completely illegible due to a lack of capitalization or punctuation.

To address the opening bit in it, though: Chien Pao hits almost as hard as Weavile did with its ice STAB, harder with its dark STAB (even on the first hit), and also has Sacred Sword as an additional coverage option. A theoretical Chien-Pao with Triple Axel would be a guaranteed OHKO a 252/252 Def+ Great Tusk.

God, could you imagine?

 

[Levant Mir Celestia]

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.

Scream Tail? As in the same Scream Tail that's C rank in the OU viability rankings, and is a UU mon? Also, saying that it can be checked if you play carefully doesn't help your case, as it implies that a misprediction has dire consequences for the side facing it, as opposed to the user.

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.

Priority would be a good answer were it not for the fact that Chien-Pao has priority of its own, and is faster any pretty much anything else in the tier. It doesn't help that no relevant priority OHKOs it if it terastallized.

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.

How is it "easy to keep in check" when the fucking thing hits like a Warlock Punch and outspeeds the whole tier except for Dragapult, which is at a severe disadvantage because it has priority for good measure? Pretty much nothing can comfortably come in and threaten to kill it or force it out. Which means sacrificial rites are needed to get those in, and guess what? Any savvy player would smell a rat and switch out.

On Rocky Helmet: It could be used to help beat Mega Kanga. She still got banned.

On Baneful Bunker: What is Toxapex gonna give up for that?

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.

Whether they should be suspected or not has nothing to do with this suspect, as this is about Chien-Pao. That being said, Espathra might need to go, but again, this ain't the time nor the place for that.

 

[Return to Zero]

I think I have too much time on my hands.

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.

Chien-Pao is the second fastest mon in the tier. The only faster one is Dragapult, who gets OHKOd by both of Pao's priority moves and doesn't scratch it with its own priority. Pao isn't just a stallbreaker. It's also the best sweeper right now, except for maybe Espathra (I don't think so but just throwing it out there), and its speed tier makes it so immediately threatening that just being against it puts you on the back foot and demands a response. Of course there's the usual Banded set, but it can also run Swords Dance to get even stronger than that. It runs circles around its "checks" and 2HKOs them reliably.

great tusk + rotom, kingambit + scarf dengo, tera chomp, tera anything really can check chien pao,

252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Tera Dark Chien-Pao Icicle Crash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Great Tusk: 342-404 (78.8 - 93%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Tera Dark Chien-Pao Crunch vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Rotom-Wash: 248-294 (81.5 - 96.7%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock
252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Tera Dark Chien-Pao Sacred Sword vs. 112 HP / 0 Def Kingambit: 696-820 (188.6 - 222.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Tera Dark Chien-Pao Crunch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Gholdengo: 756-892 (240 - 283.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Tera Dark Chien-Pao Crunch vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Tera Water Garchomp: 378-446 (90 - 106.1%) -- 75% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

In case this doesn't demonstrate the point by itself, Chien-Pao is more than capable of blowing through all of its checks. It is purely a guessing game of what move you think it will click. Of course, prediction is a big part of this game, and your ability to predict correctly is important, but consider the reverse. The Pao user is also going to predict you and guess what you're switching into. If they guess right, you lose a Pao check to a mostly guaranteed OHKO, leaving aside the possibility that any of these mons have taken any other damage ahead of time. And all they have to do to put you in that range is keep rocks up, and rocks are far from a niche uncommon strategy. And if you guess right, they can just switch out and try again later, so there's not even a huge loss for guessing wrong.

It is punishing lazy and poorly built teams

This is such a nothing statement that I don't know why you even bothered including it. Implying that losing to Pao is 100% a skill issue and everyone who loses to it is bad at the game is definitely a choice you could have made. I wonder why players at high levels still use it so much, if Pao has to stop and respect any "solid resist"...

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.

The Tauros Bros are not RU by cosmic chance. In most situations in higher tiers, they fall flat compared to more popular and widely useful options. It just so happens that countering Chien-Pao is not one of those situations. If your idea of a well-structured teams is one that always includes a Chien-Pao counter that you would only field for that purpose and you'd replace them with something more broadly useful otherwise... I mean, come on man. And let's not get into how Pao chunks the Tauros Bros even with its attack drop and the bros don't have reliable recovery, so if Pao switches out and you have to keep coming in with them to check it, you're getting worn down first.

And just for fun, here's more numbers.

252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Tera Dark Chien-Pao Crunch vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Scream Tail: 262-310 (60.3 - 71.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

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.

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,

The meta right now is one based around HO and bulky offense more than anything. This is probably one of stall's worst generations. Just because you live in fear of Chansey and hate playing against stall more than anything doesn't mean it shouldn't have a place. Isn't this why you mention later on that you want Espathra banned? For how it forces you to run awkward defense combinations meant solely for it? Fearmongering about STALL WARS: REVENGE OF THE SPIKES should not be an argument for whether or not one specific mon is overpowered.

There are other things in the tier more deserving of a suspect than chien pao and i will list them here:

You are fundamentally wrong about how suspect tests work. They do not happen at expense of each other and using them to complain about how you think other mons deserve it more than Pao is just misinformed. If Espathra is still broken after Pao's test (I think it is), then we can test it too. If Garg is broken after Pao's test (I think it isn't), we can test it too. So on and so forth. This entire section is just a waste of everyone's time. The question is whether or not Chien-Pao needs to go in the context of a metagame with all currently legal mons in it, so bringing up how other mons should get tested is pointless.

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?

More fearmongering about STALL WARS: THE UNAWARE STRIKES BACK.

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

If the competitive scene is balanced for the highest level, the lower levels are also balanced, but if it's balanced for the lowest level, the high levels become nightmarish. I've seen this argument so many times in different games and it's as bad in all of them. You have the exact same teambuilding options and can make the exact same choices the top 100 players do. Dare I say it, it sounds like you think Pao is a set of intentionally overpowered training wheels for people who can't break stall without it? That's rather problematic design when its effectiveness doesn't actually drop off when you get better.

 

[Moyashi]

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.

Ignoring the claim that Pao has almost no impact, which is ironically ignorant just like you claim the Dracovish comment was (Pao requires a team to have a dark+ice resists on just about any serious team, which is not a small impact in this meta), claiming all Pao has is power, when it in fact also packs a top class speed tier that is second only to Dragapult, and fantastic priority, just strikes me as odd.

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.

So this I'll admit is fully subjective and different people have different views on what is and isn't viable. And yes, technically Pao's main and common answers that come in pairs, are OU by nature, this doesn't necessarily mean it can't be considered restricting to play against. It's actually quite similar to UrshifuS last gen in this regard, which forced specific types of cores that were quite exploitable, despite the cores consisting of top OU mons at the time.

That being said, both Tauros forms, while having a niche, are not easy to fit on teams due to flaws they have. Without boots they have a nasty hazard vulnerability which makes them less able to check Pao long-term, on top of other mons you'd like them to check. With boots, they won't have lefties to let them switch in more times, and this limits them too. it's kind of a bad pick your poison. As for Scream Tail, I actually quite like it and find it underrated, but it's similarly flawed and difficult to fit on teams so I don't think it should be counted in this lineup (especially as banded Crunch can pressure it with hazards up).

The kinds of cores you listed to pivot around Pao (great tusk + rotom, kingambit + scarf dengo, tera chomp), all have one thing in common which highlights the issue: a lack of longevity and the fact that one wrong predict on your part will let Pao make significant progress if not make a KO. This sort of dynamic can't really be considered healthy when many teams still need to prep for other mons who are dangerous.

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,

Most broken mons typically do that. I don't really think this is a good argument in favor of keeping it. The rest of this feels like you think people should build the way you think, and that you think banning Pao will promote cheese, which isn't exactly relevant to whether Pao is banworthy or not. And, respectfully, you don't speak for most people. Opinions are very varied.

, 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

Please don't fearmonger about something that won't happen in an era of hazards being stronger than ever and the tier still having plenty of options for breaking through the defensive teams. Pao in fact, could be holding more offensive options back and by removing it, may allow more people to use these mons. Banded Baxcalibur for example shatters many structures that lack a fairy mon or tera fairy, Greninja and Meowscarada are great sources of speed control and offense, and Dragapult is as it was last gen.

Even if a defensive meta took place, how is that a bad thing? Some metas may be, but unless it unhealthily restricts building to break defensive cores (see ORAS Mega Sableye meta), it's not an issue.

5

Not gonna quote the whole bit but, you are free to feel how you feel about swsh. Surveys and general opinion, at least at higher levels, didn't see it the way you saw it (triple Regen was not a thing) though. So again, please don't fearmonger about something that has not happened and isn't likely to. And even if it did, and became problematic, again we can always do something about it.

 

[Srn]

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.

Aite sz imma respond to the parts I disagree with lets go.

The premise of this paragraph isn't technically wrong. You can run viable cores like bunker pex+physdef tusk and limit CB chien pao's progress a lot, and you can viably run dondozo to blank sd sets, or viably run tauros to check both. Physdef scream tail is very far from a hard counter unfortunately:
252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Chien-Pao Icicle Crash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Scream Tail: 210-247 (48.3 - 56.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
0 SpA Scream Tail Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Chien-Pao: 170-204 (56.4 - 67.7%)

However, I want to rant on this phrase "A well structured team could never have an issue with X." This statement is meaningless. Any well structured team is going to account for the top threats of the tier, but this doesn't mean those top threats are balanced. You can easily argue a well structured team could never have an issue with garganacl, but you advocate for its ban in the same post. It's restricting, sure, but a "well structured team" will work within those restrictions and do just fine vs garg. Does that mean we should keep it in the tier?

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.

This argument is very subjective, but also wrong. First off, who's to say which teams are cheesy and which are well structured/honest? It's a subjective line in the sand that doesn't mean anything. We are not gonna make tiering decisions to discourage "stale cheese" and encourage everything else. You don't need chien pao to keep "cheese" at bay.

Secondly, I actually think chien pao ENABLES lazy teambuilding. I made reqs for the tera suspect with 4 fat mons+great tusk+chien pao, and that template can describe many effective teams in the tier rn. Tusk is the best hazard removal, and chien pao is both the best breaker and best speed control, which lets you just run 4 fat shitters (garg is usually 1 of them) and boom. Very little thought required, yet very consistent team finished. I can only do this bc I can count on chien pao to compress breaking+speed control into 1 team slot, and I think that's not good.

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.

This is a pretty reductive argument lol "just play better." "Don't let chien pao in for free." "Use good positioning." "Dont play reactively." These statements could also be used to defend espathra. Obviously offense teams don't carry tera dark unware clodsire/skeledirge, but it's not like every offense team autoloses to any espathra. They use offensive pressure and good positioning to limit its free turns and beat it. Does that mean espathra is ok? Because you state in this same post that it's oppressive and super broken.

"Basic knowledge of play can keep X in check" should never be an argument used in a suspect test. Prediction goes both ways.

"You can tera dondozo and pex to hard counter chien pao" just sounds like "You can tera clodsire, u have a hard counter to espathra now!"

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.

All of this can be true, but the council just listened to the metagame survey results to decide what got the suspect first. Using just the scores of qualified voters, Chien pao received a score of 4.105, whereas garg got 3.059 and espathra got 2.980. I'm sure garg and espathra will get suspected too, bc council is just looking at the metagame survey results to decide which is the next one. So go fill out that survey.

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.

I think this is both a slippery slope fallacy and an apples to oranges comparison. This tier is crucially different from SS from the get go, with only 8 pp on recovery moves, limited hazard removal, very limited knock off distribution and no scalds, much more options to set hazards and the best answer to defog we've ever had. Banning chien pao will NOT lead to some uncontrolled spiral into balance/stall hell, because this tier already has so many crucial differences which don't favor fat teams as is.

How will banning the best speed control+breaker in the tier cause a domino effect of teams to look more similar if people are forced to use a variety of other, different speed control options? How can we devolve into a meta of pivoting, defense, and little to no breakers when tons of fat mons lost knock off and toxic, which were the best methods of making progress? We have so many options to break teams, some of which you mentioned in your own post, like kingambit. Tera alone opens so many doors for wallbreaking that we haven't explored yet.

I want us to remember that, on the horizon, we probably have the suspect of garganacl coming very soon. We haven't suspected a defensive pokemon since Mega sableye in XY which was 6 years and 3 months ago. Besides mega sableye, have we ever even banned a defensive mon? The fact that we are even discussing the ban of a defensive pokemon makes me not very afraid of this fat hell that seems to haunt you.

Sorry for throwing my response on top of the dogpile sz

hello everyone, ill be posting another pao breakdown for spl week 4 as soon as all the games wrap up. if you're undecided id encourage you to hold back on voting for a bit to check it out as more information into paos impact on this meta will help further inform you regardless of how you chose to vote.

it can be expected to be finished by sunday evening to ensure I can cover all games.

I appreciate the high effort posts and analysis, but this kind of breakdown honestly means very little. In your previous post, the phrase "its not instantly broken" is all that I need to respond to. Does a pokemon need to be "instantly broken" in order for it to be worth a ban to you? This is a ridiculous standard, one that has not been met by pokemon that we have quickbanned in this very tier. Palafin was not instantly broken either, choice banded sets were super limiting but not too hard to deal with if you had the appropriate fat mons. It was the taunt+bulk up sets in conjunction with tera that finally pushed it over the edge, and even then it's not like it won every game. You could do a similar analysis of the first rounds of SV OU No Johns release tour and I bet you would see similar results for palafin: it wins a few games, it contributes to some others, and it does nothing in some others.

The sample size just isn't big enough to make a solid argument imo, and even if it was, your standard of "not instantly broken" is not the threshold that we use to keep or ban mons. We are never going to see 1 pokemon sweep half of all games in SPL, and we shouldn't be using the absence of that as evidence for anything.

 

[ant4456]

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.

After playing a lot of games with and without dracovish, ive come to terms with the fact that dracovish 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 dracovish have? almost none, the same common cores would arise even if it wasnt in OU, seismitoad + toxapex,, opposing pao obviously, dragapult especially scarf, the only argument for dracovish being oppressive seems to be extremely flawed and ignorant, its always a shit comparison like "use tauros-fire for chien pao" the only dracovish has is power, just like lele last gen, or even weav which was fine i firmly believe that gen 8 weavile was worse than dracovish, dracovish is just a breaker that can be well utilised on offense, and even fatter archetypes.

1. It does not force any unviable counter measures, dracovish while being strong its stabs is easy to pivot around with stuff like seismitoad + clefable , lapras + scarf hydreigon, toxapex, anything really can check dracovish, 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, 3+ counters is required and should be used to check breakers, hence it is an invalid argument to say it is forcing unviable pokemon, stuff like seismitoad is NOT unviable and i think its a great physical wall that can do damage in ou like put up rocks, toxapex, chip everything, and obviously serves as a great dracovish counter, a well structured team could never have an issue with dracovish. Hell, even physdef water absorb quagsire HARD COUNTERS dracovish, and defeats many many physical attackers in ou like bisharp, non-power whip gyarados, sd excadrill. Just to name a few, and seismitoad + any dragon resist can check choice banded dracovish, while i acknowledge that using two+ mons to check a pokemon is a bad argument, using two+ mons to check an ALREADY BROKEN MON is a great argument.

2. It is punishing lazy and poorly built teams, cheesy stuff like 5 setup mons, especially psyspam polteageist, and random sand HO, or even 4 dragons + 2 steels, the influence that dracovish 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, dracovish 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 dracovish check 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 vish but other stuff, balance should have a solid water dragon resist, dracovish or no dracovish,since there are almost no dragon types in ou, people would run a water resist but no dragon resist, which will make the team structure very poor, and that is what we SHOULD NOT practice, earthquake dracovish checks those goofy balance 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 dracovish 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, vish can be chipped with seismitoad, baneful pex, and lots of residual, vish can also be wisped by dragapult, checked by hydreigon, checked by a well played dracovish, lapras obviously and it checks many other stuff, even a dracovish 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 dracovish, 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 home meta because now you can run clef pex corv seis to hard counter dracovish, so there is no excuse for vish having limited switchins. Some arguments against my bros vertex and 3d consist of "use tauros and it checks chien pao!" Such a flawed, arrogant and ignorant comparison, dracovish unlike chien pao isnt forcing anything unviable to enter the tier, chien pao made RU or NU mons OU, id like to see the ru or nu mons like tauros that chien pao made ou, oh wait, there is none because common stuff with basic knowledge of play can keep dracovish in check. So immediately the chien pao comparison is super invalidated.

4. The tier is lacking fast offense, dracovish 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 dracovish 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 my life 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.
Conclusion: I will conclude this post by saying i get why people want vish gone, but in the larger scale of things, its not the right decision to ban it, takes a piece of Swsh ou with it if it goes, so my stance shall remain on no ban.

 

[coral fan]

Reply to SZ:

>What impact does Chien Pao have? Almost none.
Imo this is wildly untrue, mons like Azu, Tauros, Quaquaval, Scizor, Dondozo and Toxapex all have higher usage than they otherwise would have, literally every top 10 mon has a significant impact and Pao arguably has the biggest impact of them all.

>The same cores would arise [without pao] ... it does not force any unviable counter measures
Agreed tbh. It's not super restrictive in the teambuilder compared to Gholdengo and Espathra but instead it's just too broken in the guaranteed value it provides every battle. Compare it to smth like Chi-Yu, people are still using mons like Roaring Moon, Garganacl, Azumarill, and Dragonite post-ban because they're good in other roles too. But the meta is better without the fish and it would be without Pao too.

>It's normal to expect to Tera defensive mons as a response to opposing Tera'd offensive mons
Agreed, but Pao gets the advantage because Pao can choose when (and if at all) it needs to Tera, forcing the opponent's hand to either predict Tera and risk wasting their own Tera, or just kind of sack a mon to it. Admittedly this applies to other mons too, but Pao is the most notable example of a mon that forces kills via just the possibility of Tera

>It punishes lazy teambuilding
Yeah but like most mons do this. Poorly built teams are only bad because they don't account for specific mons, obviously. Houndstone Sand destroys psyspam cheese but it's still super broken. This just isn't a good point imo.

>I speak for most people when I say this
Idk. The survey seems to say otherwise. And hey if you're right we'll see a DNB majority anyways.

>Banning Pao will lead to a defensive meta to arise
I strongly disagree. In the same paragraph you list Dondozo and Toxapex, two fat mons that have good Pao matchups, and hey without Pao in the tier there'd be one less reason to run those, right? Defensive mons are just reactions to the offensive mons in the meta so banning a breaker doesn't instantly make defensive play broken, it just changes how people will respond to the new best breakers.

>It's no Dracovish
Agreed.

>Espathra is more broken
Yeah the more I play the more I start to finally agree that this mon is far too restrictive and I wouldn't be opposed to a QB or a suspect test straight after Pao. Still want Gholdengo banned too, tho.

>Garganacl
Cloak isn't really mandatory like Shed Shell imo, but it definitely is pretty restrictive and should be considered suspect worthy. I just feel like rn it's manageable compared to some of the other broken mons, like Pao Espathra and Gholden are all higher on my list than him. Again, this isn't really relevant to Pao.

>Kingambit
I agree this is a great mon, top 5 imo, and it's for sure also boosting Tauros' usage but you seem to agree it's not actually even banworthy so idk.

>The tier is lacking fast offense


>SSOU bad post-Kyu ban
I disagree but this is subjective and irrelevant to Pao.

>Competitve is about making everyone happy, don't ignore the playerbase
Okay but like that's why we're suspecting it. The community is voting on it. Anyone who gets reqs can vote. The council is putting out pretty frequent surveys and I see Finch especially active in the OU room and on twitter. They're clearly trying to listen to the playerbase, and honestly from my pov they seem to be saying Pao is broken.
Also fwiw, user count increased just bc its the start of a new gen. 2019-2022 was a long period to wait for a casual player, By 2026 the activity will go back down to comparable 2022 levels just because new metagames and new official game releases attract more activity.

 

[YNM]

After playing a lot of games with and without dracovish, ive come to terms with the fact that dracovish 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 dracovish have? almost none, the same common cores would arise even if it wasnt in OU, seismitoad + toxapex,, opposing pao obviously, dragapult especially scarf, the only argument for dracovish being oppressive seems to be extremely flawed and ignorant, its always a shit comparison like "use tauros-fire for chien pao" the only dracovish has is power, just like lele last gen, or even weav which was fine i firmly believe that gen 8 weavile was worse than dracovish, dracovish is just a breaker that can be well utilised on offense, and even fatter archetypes.

1. It does not force any unviable counter measures, dracovish while being strong its stabs is easy to pivot around with stuff like seismitoad + clefable , lapras + scarf hydreigon, toxapex, anything really can check dracovish, 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, 3+ counters is required and should be used to check breakers, hence it is an invalid argument to say it is forcing unviable pokemon, stuff like seismitoad is NOT unviable and i think its a great physical wall that can do damage in ou like put up rocks, toxapex, chip everything, and obviously serves as a great dracovish counter, a well structured team could never have an issue with dracovish. Hell, even physdef water absorb quagsire HARD COUNTERS dracovish, and defeats many many physical attackers in ou like bisharp, non-power whip gyarados, sd excadrill. Just to name a few, and seismitoad + any dragon resist can check choice banded dracovish, while i acknowledge that using two+ mons to check a pokemon is a bad argument, using two+ mons to check an ALREADY BROKEN MON is a great argument.

2. It is punishing lazy and poorly built teams, cheesy stuff like 5 setup mons, especially psyspam polteageist, and random sand HO, or even 4 dragons + 2 steels, the influence that dracovish 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, dracovish 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 dracovish check 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 vish but other stuff, balance should have a solid water dragon resist, dracovish or no dracovish,since there are almost no dragon types in ou, people would run a water resist but no dragon resist, which will make the team structure very poor, and that is what we SHOULD NOT practice, earthquake dracovish checks those goofy balance 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 dracovish 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, vish can be chipped with seismitoad, baneful pex, and lots of residual, vish can also be wisped by dragapult, checked by hydreigon, checked by a well played dracovish, lapras obviously and it checks many other stuff, even a dracovish 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 dracovish, 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 home meta because now you can run clef pex corv seis to hard counter dracovish, so there is no excuse for vish having limited switchins. Some arguments against my bros vertex and 3d consist of "use tauros and it checks chien pao!" Such a flawed, arrogant and ignorant comparison, dracovish unlike chien pao isnt forcing anything unviable to enter the tier, chien pao made RU or NU mons OU, id like to see the ru or nu mons like tauros that chien pao made ou, oh wait, there is none because common stuff with basic knowledge of play can keep dracovish in check. So immediately the chien pao comparison is super invalidated.

4. The tier is lacking fast offense, dracovish 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 dracovish 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 my life 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.
Conclusion: I will conclude this post by saying i get why people want vish gone, but in the larger scale of things, its not the right decision to ban it, takes a piece of Swsh ou with it if it goes, so my stance shall remain on no ban.

You MADMAN

 

[658Greninja]

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.

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.

5. The tier is lacking fast offense

The difference between Lele and Kart in SS and Pao is simple. Pao is not balanced by an average speed tier and lack of priority. You have stuff like Loom and Azu with incredible breaking power and priority, but the speed tier balances them out. Here you got a base 135 mon that is on Kart levels of steroids with much better STABs and priority. Oh and don’t forget Tera too. Fast mons are balanced by a lack of raw horsepower. Pult with 100 SpA and Koko with 95 SpA. A wallbreaker will usually get one kill max before being easily forced out. However Pao can get more than one kill because its so fast and the speed control options we do have for it are weak to its priority. Scarf Ghold dies to Sucker, Loom dies to Shard, Scizor gets 2HKOd and doesn’t OHKO back with BP, Pult dies to both priority, Meow dies to Shard or Sucker with chip. Its also worth considering you may not even know if it is Band, Boots, Black Glasses, or LO.

Before you say to just pivot or play around it smartly. First of all, non-Band variants are still a bitch to switch into, especially with SD. If you don’t have a Dozo you’re about as dead as Weavile is this gen. Also these calcs.

“just play around it”

252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Chien-Pao Icicle Crash vs. 112 HP / 0 Def Kingambit: 123-145 (33.3 - 39.2%) -- 80.1% chance to 3HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Tera Dark Chien-Pao Crunch vs. 112 HP / 0 Def Kingambit: 155-183 (42 - 49.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery (nice resist)

252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Tera Dark Chien-Pao Icicle Crash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Rotom-Wash: 99-117 (32.5 - 38.4%) -- 98.1% chance to 3HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Tera Dark Chien-Pao Icicle Crash vs. 252 HP / 228+ Def Garganacl: 175-207 (43.3 - 51.2%) -- 58.6% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Tera Dark Chien-Pao Icicle Crash vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Gholdengo: 150-177 (39.6 - 46.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock

252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Tera Dark Chien-Pao Icicle Crash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Tera Fairy Rotom-Wash: 198-234 (65.1 - 76.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery (nice Tera Fairy)

252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Tera Dark Chien-Pao Icicle Crash vs. 112 HP / 0 Def Tera Fairy Kingambit: 246-291 (66.6 - 78.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

The examples you listed out, Gambit, Tusk, Tauros, and Garg, have their own problems against Pao.

The former two lack reliable recovery. Tusk in particular is tasked with spinning, knocking, setting rocks, and coming in on various threats. Also I’m gonna give some secret knowledge. If Tusk isn’t carrying BP or CC, Pao can get up a free SD in its face since EQ doesn’t OHKO. This is a realistic possibility since most teams compress the hazard removal + rock setting role to Tusks. Gambit doesn’t OHKO Tera Dark Pao with Iron Head and in return, Pao either kills it with chip or severely cripples it. Garg is forced to click Recover or pray for Icicle Crash miss. Not helped by the fact Garg can get flinch haxed. Tauros is a B tier mon with a viable niche but no reliable recovery and competition with Dirge, the other fat fire type.

SV is starting to feel samey with team structure, mostly due to the limited options in the tier, with Pao only making matters worse. Just Tusk/Ghold/Garg/Pex/filler. Having to pile in multiple checks that while are good, still limits teambuilding.

Also the fearmongering of SV OU becoming SS has gotten redundant at this point.

A. We have no idea on what the meta will be like without Pao. Any attempts are just in the realm of theory.
B. Gen 9 has nerfed recovery moves, removed Knock/Toxic on a bunch of mons.
C. https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/np-sv-ou-suspect-process-round-2-munch.3715256/post-9491163

SZ is goated so I don’t want to rift on them for too long since there is already enough posts derailing SZ on this forum.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

That is an absolute wall of text that i'm sure you're very proud of, but it's almost completely illegible due to a lack of capitalization or punctuation.

even with proper grammar nothing in that post makes any sense

 

[DiseasedFrog]

Feel honoured, player4691 sent me this wall of text, as he found it amusing. You have been blessed.

 

[CoralReaper707]

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

PLEASE stop crying about defensive teams for the love of god. Even if I will continue to whine and bitch about fighting stall or fat teams like many people do, they're a normal and healthy playstyle. Just accept this as a fact, like I did. Whether or not SS was a good meta or not is subjective. I do think Espathra and Garganacl are really interesting suspect candidates. Much more so than Chien-Pao who just should've been quickbanned. I shouldn't have to use shit like Electrode or Tauros to beat this thing. I"m sorry for lashing out, Storm Zone. However, we need to get rid of this icy Weasel/Leopard.

 

[Finchinator]

Reminder that today is the last day to get suspect reqs before the vote and 2017 is the last year to complain about defensive teams being too prevalent.

 

[tr4umpchoos]

no one is running psychic fangs on pao, which move are u giving up to fit this?

...YET!

Would be if that was the only thing that you have to run to stop it priority is still an amazing option and stealth rocks are everywhere not to mention screens offense.

Priority is a viable option but you fail to consider that a 100%HP Tera Dark Chien Pao can only be OHKO'd by a +2 Atk priority moves with the only exceptions being First Impression, Banded Technician Breloom Mach Punch (who is outsped and OHKo'd in return by Ice Shard) and Tera Normal ESpeed Dnite (it's actually a 2HKO but since ESpeed is a +2 priority move then it outspeed and kills Pao)
Not saying priority is not a viable way of beating Pao, but even that has its flaws

 

[1LDK]

2017 is the last year to complain about defensive teams being too prevalent.

What happened that year?

 

[ant4456]

What happened that year?

from my memory this was the last time stall was actually huge in OU, due to dugtrio stall being a thing

 

[Heroic Troller]

x

Before calling everyone else lazy building and bad, i hereby suggest to learn what does more damage to Ferrothorn between Urshifu's Fire Punch and STAB Close Combat. That may be why all your calcs seem to confuse the rest of the playerbase, "by far" if i may add.

 

[tr4umpchoos]

Aite sz imma respond to the parts I disagree with lets go.

The premise of this paragraph isn't technically wrong. You can run viable cores like bunker pex+physdef tusk and limit CB chien pao's progress a lot, and you can viably run dondozo to blank sd sets, or viably run tauros to check both. Physdef scream tail is very far from a hard counter unfortunately:
252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Chien-Pao Icicle Crash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Scream Tail: 210-247 (48.3 - 56.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
0 SpA Scream Tail Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Chien-Pao: 170-204 (56.4 - 67.7%)

However, I want to rant on this phrase "A well structured team could never have an issue with X." This statement is meaningless. Any well structured team is going to account for the top threats of the tier, but this doesn't mean those top threats are balanced. You can easily argue a well structured team could never have an issue with garganacl, but you advocate for its ban in the same post. It's restricting, sure, but a "well structured team" will work within those restrictions and do just fine vs garg. Does that mean we should keep it in the tier?



This argument is very subjective, but also wrong. First off, who's to say which teams are cheesy and which are well structured/honest? It's a subjective line in the sand that doesn't mean anything. We are not gonna make tiering decisions to discourage "stale cheese" and encourage everything else. You don't need chien pao to keep "cheese" at bay.

Secondly, I actually think chien pao ENABLES lazy teambuilding. I made reqs for the tera suspect with 4 fat mons+great tusk+chien pao, and that template can describe many effective teams in the tier rn. Tusk is the best hazard removal, and chien pao is both the best breaker and best speed control, which lets you just run 4 fat shitters (garg is usually 1 of them) and boom. Very little thought required, yet very consistent team finished. I can only do this bc I can count on chien pao to compress breaking+speed control into 1 team slot, and I think that's not good.



This is a pretty reductive argument lol "just play better." "Don't let chien pao in for free." "Use good positioning." "Dont play reactively." These statements could also be used to defend espathra. Obviously offense teams don't carry tera dark unware clodsire/skeledirge, but it's not like every offense team autoloses to any espathra. They use offensive pressure and good positioning to limit its free turns and beat it. Does that mean espathra is ok? Because you state in this same post that it's oppressive and super broken.

"Basic knowledge of play can keep X in check" should never be an argument used in a suspect test. Prediction goes both ways.

"You can tera dondozo and pex to hard counter chien pao" just sounds like "You can tera clodsire, u have a hard counter to espathra now!"



All of this can be true, but the council just listened to the metagame survey results to decide what got the suspect first. Using just the scores of qualified voters, Chien pao received a score of 4.105, whereas garg got 3.059 and espathra got 2.980. I'm sure garg and espathra will get suspected too, bc council is just looking at the metagame survey results to decide which is the next one. So go fill out that survey.



I think this is both a slippery slope fallacy and an apples to oranges comparison. This tier is crucially different from SS from the get go, with only 8 pp on recovery moves, limited hazard removal, very limited knock off distribution and no scalds, much more options to set hazards and the best answer to defog we've ever had. Banning chien pao will NOT lead to some uncontrolled spiral into balance/stall hell, because this tier already has so many crucial differences which don't favor fat teams as is.

How will banning the best speed control+breaker in the tier cause a domino effect of teams to look more similar if people are forced to use a variety of other, different speed control options? How can we devolve into a meta of pivoting, defense, and little to no breakers when tons of fat mons lost knock off and toxic, which were the best methods of making progress? We have so many options to break teams, some of which you mentioned in your own post, like kingambit. Tera alone opens so many doors for wallbreaking that we haven't explored yet.

I want us to remember that, on the horizon, we probably have the suspect of garganacl coming very soon. We haven't suspected a defensive pokemon since Mega sableye in XY which was 6 years and 3 months ago. Besides mega sableye, have we ever even banned a defensive mon? The fact that we are even discussing the ban of a defensive pokemon makes me not very afraid of this fat hell that seems to haunt you.

Sorry for throwing my response on top of the dogpile sz



I appreciate the high effort posts and analysis, but this kind of breakdown honestly means very little. In your previous post, the phrase "its not instantly broken" is all that I need to respond to. Does a pokemon need to be "instantly broken" in order for it to be worth a ban to you? This is a ridiculous standard, one that has not been met by pokemon that we have quickbanned in this very tier. Palafin was not instantly broken either, choice banded sets were super limiting but not too hard to deal with if you had the appropriate fat mons. It was the taunt+bulk up sets in conjunction with tera that finally pushed it over the edge, and even then it's not like it won every game. You could do a similar analysis of the first rounds of SV OU No Johns release tour and I bet you would see similar results for palafin: it wins a few games, it contributes to some others, and it does nothing in some others.

The sample size just isn't big enough to make a solid argument imo, and even if it was, your standard of "not instantly broken" is not the threshold that we use to keep or ban mons. We are never going to see 1 pokemon sweep half of all games in SPL, and we shouldn't be using the absence of that as evidence for anything.

I am in love with this reply, oh my god

 

[Lumi_Nati 31]

Before I'll tell what I'm going to vote, I just want to mention that I am generally not that good at explaining my opinion, and the few well explained things were probably already said by other people, but I'll try my best to explain why it should/shouldn't be banned.

Chien-pao is an extremely powerful offensive pokemon, it has a great attack, which is indirectly further boosted by it's ability (lowering the other pokemon's defense isn't the same as raising attack but both make you stronger) and an amazing speed tier, only being slower than pult when running max speed, making pao a great way to take out opposing pokemon by damaging them directly, but I'm pretty sure that we all know that at this point, so I'll go into some of the specific things that, spoilers, make pao too strong in the current metagame in my opinion.

In tandem with that amazing attack stat, you also get one of the best offensive stab combinations in the tier, allowing you to hit pretty much everything for at least neutral damage, and with pao, neutral damage is more than enough, even if icicle crash and crunch both have less than 90 base power. On top of that, you have sacred sword and psychic fangs for the few pokemon that resist both, as well as 2 priority moves for the few things that outrun you.

Combine all of that with tera dark and the fact that pao can afford to run adament due to its speed, and you get a pokemon that is, in my opinion, impossible to counter.

Let's take choice band pao as the example as it's probably the most used set. Tera dark crunch is so strong that if you cant resist both dark and ice, you are probably dead to a stab you don't resist. As many people know, even dondozo can't take 2 cb tera boosted crunches consistently, so if that's not safe, then what is?

It's true that some pokemon resist both stabs, but even they aren't a good long term answer. For example, the new tauros forms and kingambit both take over 20% from crunch and lack recovery, making them not reliable over the course of a game, and that's even without taking coverage into account, as that even allows it to 2HKO the tauros forms and OHKO kingambit. There are a few other examples, but they are all answers, not counters. The only one with recovery is quaquaval, which isn't too bulky, meaning that it has to stay at close to full health, and on top of that, it has a hard time fitting roost in its moveset anyway

As for checking it offensively, don't even bother making that the main way of dealing with it. Pao can outspeed breloom and scizor with its own priority, or just switch out. Dragonite is probably the best answer, but you need to tera at +1 to get the kill with espeed, and you take massive damage from icicle crash and even crunch, so you can't really switch in safely.

Now by this point, you might think that you can just beat it by assuming it's banded. For example, if your tusk died to icicle crash, you can revenge kill with your kingambit but then you might get hit by sacred sword because cb tera dark is far from the only set: black glasses, life orb and heavy duty boots are all other viable options, and good luck beating sd pao in particular without a dondozo, and even with it, life orb and black glasses still do a lot of damage. Pao can even run other tera types like electric and ghost to help against bulky waters and dragonite respectively.

The only way I found that can somewhat reliably beat most sets is tera fairy on bulky mons like tusk dozo, garg and pex,which means that you're often forced to tera to deal with pao, but even that opens you up to getting hit for a good amount of damage by icicle crash. The tera fairy walls that threaten pao don't have recovery, and the only exceptions, toxapex and garganacl, are extremely vulnerable to getting flinched to death due to them being forced to recover.

One last thing I want to add is that just because banning pao will just make defensive teams stronger, It's still a stupid reason to not ban it. For one, the pokemon itself is fundamentally broken, and on top of that, there are still plenty of pokemon which can threaten defensive teams:chain chomp, sub dirge, np gholdengo, basically every iron valiant set, and so much more. Additionally, one thing that many people tend to forget is that pao itself is one of the best breakers for balance and semi stall, due to it being able to tear apart both offense and defense in just 1 slot while getting support fro hatterene and tusk to make non boots sets even better, so banning it might actually not be as helpful, and perhaps even hindering for more bulky teams. Even if I'm totally wrong and semi stall and stall will become the top 2 archetypes if pao gets banned, then that's fine, we can just ban the things that make these archetypes broken, and keep changing the tier until we get to the point where we have a stable metagame.

As I said, I don't think pao has any good counters, both on offense and defense. While it does have a few checks, none of them can effectively revenge kill it or wall it out in the long run, making it extremely limiting and nearly impossible to beat consistently, and thus, I will be voting ban. I'm confident that banning pao will lead to a much better metagame, and even if it wont in the short term, it will in the long term.

Oh and while I did mention icicle crash flinches, I forgot about defense drops from crunch which do a similar thing... yeah just get this broken pokemon out of OU already