Announcement Banlist Updates 1.4 - Goodnight Gotham

[Mateeus]

With the end of the Welcome Tour's group stage, we decided to take a look at some of the metagame's most glaring threats. These are the new bans, which have met the 4/5 vote threshold as per usual:

• Mega Mawile​
• Flutter Mane​
• Chien-Pao​
• Dragapult​
• Snow Cloak
• Sand Veil
• Acupressure
• Leppa Berry (from the previous cycle but Kris forgot to axe it )

Mega Mawile
Last slate, Mega Mawile was granted a stay for longer in the metagame after failing to get 4 out of 5 Ban votes, with the main arguments for such a decision being its slow speed and reliance on Sucker Punch against more offensive teams, as well as the necessity of Swords Dance to properly wallbreak. However, as the Welcome Tour progressed, Mega Mawile stood out on both Steel and Fairy builds as a force that could fully take advantage of its pre-mega Intimidate, screens, and entry hazard support to setup or even outright kill the majority of threats that were unable to KO it once it had screens by its side. Thanks to these traits, a revisit on Mega Mawile was needed, and this time, it got the needed votes to get out of the tier.

Flutter Mane, Chien-Pao, and Dragapult
These three Pokemon all share traits that contribute to their unhealthy status, so much so that they are grouped together in this post. All three of them have blistering speed tiers, the ability to heighten their damage output, and, most importantly, they abuse Z-Moves extremely well. The two newcomers in Flutter Mane and Chien-Pao have access to Calm Mind and Swords Dance respectively, and can either run a STAB Z-Move to deal sheer damage to neutrally targeted walls or remove offensive Pokemon slower than them, or pick a coverage move to power up and bypass some of their would-be checks, allowing anti-specific type sets to be freely chosen with little to no opportunity cost depending on what each's team needs. Dragapult, on the other hand, is no stranger to the playerbase; DD + Ghostium Z sets continue to be problematic thanks to Dragon + Ghost being remarkably good coverage.

Snow Cloak, Sand Veil, and Acupressure
Uncompetitive moves / abilities that overweigh the luck factor. As with the past gen, these were voted out by the council.

Below is the vote tally:

	maroon​	Mateeus​	style.css​	Sunnyboi0​	Vodoom​
Mega Mawile	Ban	Ban	Ban	Ban	Ban
Chien-Pao	Ban	Ban	Ban	Ban	Ban
Dragapult	Ban	Ban	Ban	Ban	Ban
Flutter Mane	Ban	Ban	Ban	Ban	Ban
Snow Cloak	Ban	Ban	Ban	Ban	Ban
Sand Veil	Ban	Ban	Ban	Ban	Ban
Acupressure	Ban	Ban	Ban	Ban	Ban

The remainder of the watchlist is as follows:

• Spectrier
• Landorus
• Galarian Moltres
• Espathra
• Iron Valiant
• Gholdengo
• Blaziken
• Kingambit
• Revival Blessing

Feel free to discuss the newest wave of bans in the discussion thread. Tagging Kris again to implement (properly this time :D).