Hii I have some free time today and I felt like writing my point of view on the
survey that we have currently ongoing.
Tornadus
Tornadus is basically the premier Pokémon to use in most offensive structures. Having Priority Tailwind is an amazing tool to have and quite frankly does restrict both your teambuild and gameplan a bit. It mainly runs Bleakwind Storm as an AoE stab, and the remaining two slots can be used depending on what you need. It can be one of Taunt / Protect / Sunny Day / Rain Dance / Icy Wind, and even niche moves like U-Turn, Focus Blast, Brick Break, Knock Off, etc.
Now, altough it does provide so much good utility and field control, Tornadus wants to live for a couple of turns & switch out to be able to set up Tailwind again later in the game. This frequently means you have to run bulk and/or an item like Sitrus berry to guarantee this, and this brings three weird scenarios:
- You maximize the bulk in HP & Defenses, which means you are eating a lot of hits, but you're also slow as hell and allows opponent to have an easier time Taunting your Tornadus with their own / They match your Tailwind and Tornadus will be slower than a lot of Pokémon while not dealing damage.
- You maximize Speed & HP, which means you are a bit tanky, you're also almost guaranteed to set up your Tailwind / Taunt opposing Tornadus from getting theirs up, but you are not dealing damage (And it can still die very easily to a strong single-target move like Raging Bolt Draco Meteor or +1 Cudgel).
- You maximize Speed & Spa, which mean you're NOT living most hits, but you're almost guaranteed to setup your Tailwind / Taunt opposing Tornadus from getting theirs up, while dealing a good chunk of damage too. The downside of this is you're kind of forced to run Focus Sash if you don't want to die from 1 hit / If u decide to run Covert Cloak and opp decides to target this, you won't get a second Tailwind up.
My main point being, altough Tornadus offers a good ammount of utility in speed control and disrupting moves, it also has very considerable flaws that this metagame punishes quite hard. The "not dealing damage" means you are allowing a lot of setup Pokémon to freely setup without being punished, or simply put yourself in a 1v2 situation, something that most teams & good players will abuse to start snowballing to victory.
The "Ok but I'm forced to also run my own Tornadus Tailwind" argument isn't that solid I think. Sure Tornadus is by far the best Tailwind user, but this doesn't mean you HAVE to run it if you want Tailwind. There are other good Tailwind users such as Roaring Moon, Mew, Pelipper, Lati-twins, etc., that do a good job. However, people seem to just splash Tornadus because they think they HAVE to have the priority Tailwind, often resulting in teams where Tornadus feels weird and disturbs the pace of the team instead of improving it. Evaluate your team people, see what pros and cons you recieve from the different users, and run the one that fits your team the best.
Chien Pao
I'm going to be honest and just say it how I think it is: Chien-Pao is not an
abuser Pokémon, it's an
enabler. Very much like Flutter Mane.
Sword of Ruin is a pretty broken double-edged ability, since it also lowers your ally Defense. Sure, this thing also hits like a truck and will pick up a lot of KOs if you let it stay too much on the field, but it's main point is enabling your allies to run down opposing team, while Chien-Pao itself helps to cheap/clean. We see it in Priority Spam, we see it in normal Offense and we also see it in Bulky Offense. Focus Sash should always be ran on this to further extend its presence on the field, but Clear Amulet & Life Orb sets are also popular, altough I don't think as powerful as Focus Sash.
So far, I don't think Chien-Pao is a broken Pokémon since we JUST discovered it's true potential, but I'd say to definetely keep an eye on this as the metagame develops. If we keep introducing as many dragons as we have been doing lately, Chien-Pao will definetely be more prominent.
Kingambit
I love this mon a lot, very solid win condition, but very Tera hungry. Usually, Pokémon that are Tera hungry require you to build a team around it, and this one isn't that different. The difference comes in what it offers, and this is a Pokémon that can turn a 1v6 situation very easily (Well maybe not that exagerated lol but if manages to setup and start attacking, it's amazing).
However, this has a lot of counter play. We have a lot of spread damage moves in Sandsear Storm, Make It Rain, Heat Wave, etc. We have a lot of good checks of this Pokémon in Landorus, Iron Hands, Chi-Yu, Archaludon, "Incineroar", etc. We're able to easily shut down Sucker Punch with Follow Me Ogerpon or Amoonguss Rage Powder, which means some funny 50/50 scenarios where your ally Pokémon is usually dealing damage / setting up too no matter what.
Another struggle Kingambit has its the stabs. If you're AV, then you're good, but you won't be able to boost your Attack with Swords Dance, but if you are SD, you have to decide if you want to run standard set (Which is Double Dark) and get walled by Fairy/Dark/Fight Pokémon, or Iron Head + Sucker Punch, which means not being walled anymore by these common types, but now struggle into the likes of Ogerpon Follow Me.
In general, It is a very solid Pokémon, but nowhere near as broken as it is in Singles. (Also a reason it's broken in Singles is Supreme Overlord, which often is not able to run in Doubles since Defiant is such a good ability here).
Archaludon
I was one of the people that thought this was the next tier 1 after Flutter Mane ban. I was wrong. Altough it is a very good and versatile Pokémon, it just lacks... something to be considered Tier 1. And I would say this something is lacking sustain.
It has so many viable Teras (Fly, Grass, Fairy, Bug, Fight), but all of them come with a big flaw that Archaludon is unable to fix by itself and requires support for that. It does, however, pressure opponent team with all the different sets it can run. Did u expect an Assault Vest and wanted to win by chaining two strong physical attacks? Surprise, it is Iron Defense. Did u expect IDBP Leftovers because you saw a Rillaboom with it + no rain structure? Surprise, it had an Assault Vest and is now still dealing huge chunks of damage with its strong BP moves & Body Press.
However, this thing lacking Sustain means that you can strategically wear it down so it does the minimum ammount of damage to you. Strong special attackers like Landorus, Chi-Yu and Raging Bolt can do big chunks of damage immediately, and while it can retaliate back with Draco Meteor or Body Press, it won't be as threatening as if u were constantly cheaping it and now it has 3-4 Stamina boosts. Also the speed is super weird, not being slow enough to be good in Trick Room while not being fast enough to be in Tailwind, getting some weird positioning at times.
Still, this has way more pros than cons, and is one of the closest Pokémon to Tier 1. You should totally keep this Pokémon in your mind when building because it can snowball a lot of unprepared teams very easily.
Tatsugiri
Will not talk a lot about this Pokémon since I barely played it, but I feel we have enough tools now to deal with TatsuDozo combo. I'd be super glad to have this tested in the form of Hosted DOU Tournaments!
Evasion Abilities & Whimsicott/Beat Up 
Will group these two cuz I think they're not good enough to say anything about them. We haven't had games where any of these are prominent, so eh. Sure evasion abilities + weather is annoying, but this often means you're running shit-mons to be able to abuse them. And I won't even talk about Whimsicott because of how bad it is :(
Kyurem-Black & Urshifu RS 
Will also group these two because as long as Tera remains with no regulation, these two will just be unstopable and there is no reason to think they would be healthy in our Metagame. I COULD consider it if Flutter Mane was still around, and even then my thoughts would probably still be "They're broken". Which leads me to my next big paragraph:
Teracrystallization
Okay, now into the controversial take. I don't think Tera is broken as Dynamax was, but it is definetely a bail-out card and can literally turn games upside down even if your position didn't seem good. It forces you to think a lot on the move you're clicking too, for example, an "easy" one is you can't click Body Press vs Ursaluna because of how popular Ghost is on that Pokémon. But more complex scenarios can pop up, such as you not sure of clicking Spore vs Chi-Yu because it can have a Grass Tera.
Tera also makes some Pokémon super broken, such as Kyurem Black and Urshifu-RS, earning a ban on a lot of things that in paper aren't that amazing/ban worthy.
I'm not saying some sort of immediate action should be taken at all, since we have been playing with Free Tera for over a year already, but maybe we could have tournaments where Tera is regulated / banned and evaluate from there. My personal favorite is having Tera Preview available, since this still rewards preparing the correct Tera, but isn't that much of a surprise factor as it was before that could just turn lost games into won games.
