Why I hate these Pokemon

Greninja (2015)

Greninja relied on unpredictability for success, trying to cheese games by having one of its dozen viable moves. Once you knew the set it was an AWFUL Pokemon because of its frailty, but I always managed to get cheesed by it - I remember losing in the IC to Scarf Greninja Ice Beaming my Scarf Landorus-T on the U-turn, and I also remember losing to a -1 Rock Slide Greninja that failed to KO but nevertheless flinched my Mega Charizard Y on independent occasions. It just tried to cheese you with one of its ridiculously inconsistent sets and that was super annoying to fight.

Mental Herb Smeargle (2016)

Smeargle without Focus Sash is INCREDIBLY exploitable. Instead of requiring +0 Kang to kill it, suddenly a TON of moves can just delete Smeargle from the field - but only if you knew the item. It relied on cheese and the opponent not knowing your set was Mental Herb. So you'd Taunt the Smeargle to stop Dark Void to cover, say, Scarf or Sash but no it was Mental Herb and then slept your Thundurus. At a Regional I played in 16 I played enough Mental Herb Smeargle (when my checks were just Lum on Cress + Taunt Thundurus) that I got so sick of it I ran Safeguard Inner Focus Kang at Nationals. Focus Sash is SO much more consistent on Smeargle, unbelievably so, because being able to take a hit in that meta was super significant. And yeah, a lot of Mental Herb Smeargle were running the fat Bold set to live Kang Double-Edge at -1, but it's not like you lived, idk, all the various other attacks that could hit Smeargle, including physical hits besides Kang at +0 and special moves. Mental Herb Smeargle was a terrible set and no one can convince me otherwise, but because I would get cheesed by it, it was frustrating.

Facade (2014/17)

In both 2014 and 2017, people ran Facade on Pokemon that should not have used it (Mega Kangaskhan and Snorlax respectively). Both were used as a way to troll Will-o-Wisp users. The thing was, the power loss from Facade -> Return / Double-Edge was actually REALLY significant. In Kang's case you were going from approximately 153 power Returns -> 105 power Facades which is only about 2/3 of the power and you would notice it significantly vs stuff like Rotom-W or Salamence, and in 2017 on Snorlax you missed OHKOs with boosted Return. The thing that was TRULY ridiculous was that in 2017 people ran Facade Snorlax + TAPU FINI, which gave you a decently reliable check to burn just by existing, which in my mind is ridiculous. But of course, when I used WoW into the Snorlax Fini teams they'd have Facade and then lol get rekt kiddo look at my epic trol

Discharge (every format)

Discharge is SUCH a bad move in like every format, because any mon that wants to use Discharge could use Thunderbolt instead and the power increase is significant. About the most viable usage of Discharge I've ever seen was on Specs Koko in 17 because you could get around LightningRod that way in a pinch and there wasn't a great filler 4th on Specs Koko after Tbolt / Volt Switch / Gleam. But in every other situation, Discharge is a bad move - it doesn't have the BP necessary to make up for being a spread move that hits your allies. But WHENEVER I play Discharge it always, without fail, seems to paralyze and get lots of full paras. So even though the move positionally is bad, you have the potential to get very lucky with it and that is OMEGA lame.

Aerodactyl (2017)

I got flinched out at Nationals from a Pressure Aerodactyl when Unnerve was like, WAY better in that format and I was very salty

Scarf Garchomp (2017)

You'd think Choice Scarf Garchomp in 2017 was a neat tech, because you can like, OHKO Tapu Koko before it can move and stuff. BUT THATS NOT WHAT GARCHOMP DID IN 2017. It just clicked ROCK SLIDE. I know this because I also lost, a good number of times, to Garchomp clicking Rock Slide to flinch my Ninetales as I was going to OHKO it or set Aurora Veil. It's a 3HKO on my set but hey, if you get 2 flinches you just need to hit the 3rd! The best part was when people ran Scarf Garchomp WITHOUT ANY GROUND IMMUNES. I do not have this problem with Scarf Landorus-T because Rock Slide was used in formats where Lando ran Scarf to hit Mega Charizard Y, a very important target. But that didn't exist in 2017. If you want a great example of what Scarf Garchomp was actually useful for, look at Paul Chua vs. Markus Stadter in 2017 US Internats top 8.

Special Groudon (2016)

First, special Groudon was part of "big 6" which I did not like (later variants like Big B I loved because it wasn't just inconsistent HO jank), but its special set was infuriating. I think Ezrael once put it this way: Eruption is a great move! Special Groudon isn't. Because your main STAB relies on HP, you tend to have to run fast if you're running pure special Groudon (Eruption / Earth Power / filler) which means if you were fighting other Groudon, it was just lol speed tie. Now people might say "bUT pReCiPiCe BlADeS cAn mISs" yeah but you ABSOLUTE DING DONG at least you could damage things like Kyogre or Geomancied Xerneas for more than 40%. Turns out Precipice Blades, despite having a miss chance, is a great move because it does about the same damage AND can hit both mons! What was especially bad about special Groudon was that they often ran stupid filler like Thunder or Solar Beam bc they thought they could troll Kyogre that way (note: they could not, at least reliably). The best was like HP Ice for Mence but then you didn't have a Fire stab after being hit once so lol. The reason I hate it is because you had to respect that stupid set all throughout 16, even through a real Groudon would EV for Timid Earth Power with no problem and do plenty of damage back with blades, even OHKOing in the 1v1.

Scarf Kyogre (2016)

So in 2016 this was really freaking bad. It relied on gimmicks to try to get Kyogre to KO Groudon with Air Lock, but those gimmicks opened you up super hard to Xern (Groudon's most common partner) so it was really bad. But it's one of those that you lose to enough on the bo1 ladder that it earned a place in my most hated list lol. In 2019 it wasn't the same because Scarf Kyogre was only popular in formats without Primal Groudon, which was perfectly fine.

Kommo-o (2018)

What A BAD POKEMON. These Kommo-o teams basically all did the same thing, try to cheese an actually good Pokemon (Tapu Fini) to enable a bad Pokemon (Kommo-o). However, I do not hate it that much because a number of good players actually played with it really well (a terrible Pokemon played well can still be enjoyable to watch) and because of the clangorous soulblaze animation I made to dodge copyright strikes.

Venusaur (2019/20/21)

Venusaur on the other hand is a profoundly good Pokemon, and in my opinion this is the only good Pokemon I dislike on my list. All the other Pokemon were bad in their formats imo and it was just annoying to fight due to volatility in either "surprise factor" or luck, but Venusaur is just annoying to fight because it has so many options you have to cover, especially in open team sheet context. Sleep Powder is an AWFUL move, I hate fighting it because you're rolling the dice so frequently but such a fast sleep move is so powerful that the bad accuracy doesn't matter. But it can also max and do SUPER good damage with vine lash. If you have anti-sleep protection on a mon, that doesn't really matter; you need to have it on 2 AND dissuade the max in order to actually check Venusaur which can be pretty difficult to come by on a viable team. It definitely has counterplay but in the end it's the volatility with Sleep Powder that gets me.