I said *arguably*, and while it’s on me for not making this clear I was referring to the individual qualities that I listed. Dragonite has a much easier time setting up, can spam ES more because it’s priority and can nuke resists with Earthquake or Fire Punch, is a more egregious user of Encore thanks to its bulk, and can actually switch in on something. Arguably, it’s also better at boosting, DD is notorious for having broken several Pokemon such as Gouging Faceplate and the speed boost makes it a lot harder to respond to especially because you can just get out-prioritied barring Scizor or Metagross that can out-bulk ES, the latter of which loses to the omnipresent Earthquake and the former gets nuked by Fire Punch.>dragonite is more broken than waterpon
i cannot take this fucking thread seriously anymore
Dragonite and Waterpon are such fundamentally opposing pokemon it's impossible to compare them. Dragonite is a slow sweeper that sets up slowly (Ddance is only a +1 attack) and its STAB combination is completely a non-question as neither of the types are particularly good in a meta with steel-types everywhere and it needs 2 non attacking moves in roost and dragon dance to do its job. Waterpon has a better boosting move for what it does, an actually usable stab combination, and access to much better coverage on top of not even needing to tera to hit hard.
Edit: Ice Spinner Iron Treads with its Booster Energy intact can take care of it fine I guess. Not going to list off every other counter that comes to mind.
My point is that it’s disingenuous to get on Waterpon’s ass because the qualities that make it “broken” barring the free SpDef boost are shared by other Pokemon. “Immediate power” is also a meme argument because the same thing can be said about Darkrai. I do not actually think this tier needs more bans of offensive Pokemon, but I’d support nuking the Obese Dragon before Ogerbroad because the only value it provides to the tier is an insurance policy against the Choice Scarf.