I meant to post this at the beginning of the suspect thread as a post of information that tries to stick with mostly facts, inform both hoping to avoid some bad reasoning from both parties, addressing both the problematic and non problematic features of Marshadow, as well as illustrating how Marshadow currently gets handled in competitive play. Well I failed that goal spectacularly, but at least hopefully this post gets completed before the voting thread is :up:
Marshadow is really fast and its neutral coverage is honestly frightening. However, I don't think it's exactly broken in a vacuum.
- and if it deserves to be banned, the argument mainly rests on its unique - understandably quite stifling - position in the metagame.
Let's lay down the facts first before diving into metagame discussion. There's little to be added to the discussion about the good parts of Marshadow. It is faster than every unboosted Pokemon in DOU aside from Koko, Mega Gengar, Deoxys, and Shaymin-Sky that sees minimal use. It has perfect coverage in 2 STAB moves, leaving a lot of flexibility to a Pokemon that does not need it. Its ability and movepool allows it all the right options for team support or simply busting through its checks, forcing opponent to react to its choices. It hits very hard, either with SSSSS that can OHKO most neutral targets, or simply with Life Orb boosted moves. In addition, Marshadow is quite difficult to OHKO. Pokemon like scarf Genesect fails to OHKO Marshadow even with a Download-boosted Psychic. In addition to Ghost / Fighting being a decent neutral defensive typing with minimal weaknesses aside from Psychic and Fairy being prominent weaknesses, Marshadow does not get OHKOed by non-STAB super effective coverage moves, or even STAB super effective moves from things with modest offenses, like Tapu Fini. In addition, it can steal boosts, and this bulk is only accentuated when it is often able to steal defensive boosts - for example stealing Misty Seed boosts or CM boosts, which happens quite frequently in real-match scenarios.
This is where now the metagaming must come in, and I will first try to defend my position that Marshadow isn't banworthy. I will keep sticking with the facts as much as possible, but the thing with metagaming is subject to opinion, which isn't hard fact.
While Marshadow sees very high usage and is a successful cog in most teams, it doesn't take over games single-handedly like you might think when you see all the draws of Marshadow listed out. This is possible because there exist counterplay to Marshadow. For one, It has trouble OHKOing bulky Pokemon, sometimes even with super effective hits. It fails to OHKO Metagross with Life Orb Spectral Thief. While it is able to KO, but not always OHKO, the common intimidators themselves with Hidden Power Ice, it neuters all its other moves and forces Marshadow to fall behind on the damage race, especially if its HP Ice gets protected or switched on. Talking of damage race, while its Spectral Thief isn't a slouch offensively, it isn't strong enough to immediately take over in the damage race with its modest Base Power and single-target damage that can be dampenend by Intimidate.
This means that something that resists Fighting and is neutral to Spectral Thief, like Amoonguss, as well as most Pokemon that just simply get hit neutrally next to intimidate support like Tapu Bulu, gets to take a go at Marshadow. The thing is, both Fighting and Ghost are prominent neutral coverage types. While this means that it is harder to counterplay by switching in resists - a serious blow to cycle-oriented teams - but they have plenty of counterplay to Marshadow as well, and those have been more threatened by Kyurem-B anyways. Marshadow is a good Pokemon to bust holes and make progress on the opposing team offensively with its neutral coverage, but it is often possible to force Marshadow to either Protect or switch out and fall behind on the damage race, or attack into it and trade in your key piece that is fairly certain to make progress every time it gets a free stab at your opponent, and now it becomes much harder to make progress on, or defeat a key defensive threat like Ferrothorn or Snorlax later in the match. This key tactic prominent in doubles forces a lot of Singles staples like Greninja or Blaziken that can easily 2HKO the entire metagame, to be quite (often unnecessarily) volatile Pokemon to use on many teams, with high damage ceiling, but possibly something that could get very little done. While Marshadow fixes that problem of potentially getting nothing done because at least it's a neutral attacker, and it's probably ludicrous to compare Marsh to those 2 unmons, I believe that being able to threaten many 2HKOs in and of itself is not exactly mean broken. In addition, as typical of most progress-makers, Marshadow provides minimal resists and defensive utility with its fairly neutral defensive typing. Offensive team archetypes such as rain, psyspam, or Trick Room can basically bypass Marshadow quite handily by not letting it get meaningful attacks off. Finally, its versatility does not mean much when you don't have the right moves or items to be as threatening - it is a liability against psyspam or other offensive teams without Shadow Sneak, while with Sneak it is quite vulnerable to Intimidate - and this issue becomes even more pronounced when you are using SSSSS, becoming quite mediocre without LO damage boost and quickly turning into liability vs Intimidate.
I believe Marshadow is more threatening in team preview than it is in practice. It is still very strong mon in practice, but not the unstoppable beast that it seems to be in team preview, where it is literally not possible to resist its combination of Ghost, Fighting, and Ice type moves. We only see it really take over game in cleanup scenarios, especially late game with SR support, but so could most other fastmon. I also believe that Marshadow sees use because it is one of our best tools against cycling and defensive play - and will probably be replaced with any of our other neutral-attacking Pokemon, and I don't see how a metagame that revolves around one set of broken Pokemon that includes Marshadow is that much fundamentally different from another set that happens to not include Marshadow and includes a bunch more very defensive Pokemon that will be very difficult to break. I see its centralization to be a main arguing point, but in a tier littered with threats such as DOU, I believe a certain amount of centralization is quite beneficial, and stops gimmicks from running rampant. I don't personally see why Marshadow should have a special target on its head over multiple other Pokemon that can blow you up at any notice, like Deoxys-A, Hoopa, Salamence, and Kyurem-B, aside from Marshadow's position as a lynchpin of offense (that it desperately needed) in most teams.
Happy suspect voting!
