Crystal's Pawniard Vote

Pawniard: [B]Ban[/B}

At first glance, Pawniard seems like an odd choice to have suspected. It’s extremely predictable as it will pretty always have two STAB moves and priority in the form of Sucker Punch and either Stealth Rock or the more common Swords Dance in the final slot. However, Pawniard is very difficult to deal with during teambuilding despite its simple kit. Pawniard access to Knock Off allows it to consistently break for itself and weaken two of its most common switchins such as Gabite and Marshtomp, either of which have no form of reliable recovery. Apart from Monferno, Pawniard is able to consistently wear down its checks throughout the course of a game and making defensive counterplay limited and unreliable, and I believe Pawniard not only limits many of Monferno’s checks, most notably Slowpoke and Frillish, but also mandates the usage of Monferno to extreme levels.

Pawniard’s speed stat is very mediocre, which would suggest that there would be ample offensive counterplay. However, Pawniard is able to avoid being revenge killed by the majority of Pokemon faster than it, since its able to KO these Pokemon with a +2 Sucker Punch (Pawniard is able to easily switch into many defensive Pokemon in the tier and use them as setup bait, which is why realistically offensive counterplay needs to survive a +2 Sucker Punch in order to be of use). This counterplay is limited to offensive Monferno and Gabite (and to some extent Sash Kadabra), which I do not believe is enough to keep Pawniard in check, especially with how easy Pawniard is able to effectively pull off sweeps.

This is the part of Smogon’s definition of unhealthy which I think fits best with Pawniard:
“These are elements that may not limit either team building or battling skill enough individually but combine to cause an effect that is undesirable for the metagame.”

Overall, Pawniard puts a significant burden on teambuilding and has cause [B]unhealthy[/B] amounts of usage of another Pokemon and itself. I think banning Pawniard will lead to a more decentralised metagame where offensive threats have sufficient defensive and offensive counterplay.