Why is Pawniard banned from NFE but not LC?

Question

Its BST is only 340, and its abilities don't seem to be great, so why is it banned from not fully evolved, which has stronger Pokemon, but is not banned from little cup which has weaker Pokemon?

Answer 1

I asked on Showdown why Pawniard was banned from NFE and not LC. A user named Greybaum said:

The short version is Pawniard gets more switchin opportunities in NFE compared to a faster paced LC, and all of Pawniard's defensive answers lack self-healing and are chipped into range of +2 Iron Head or Knock Off pretty quickly. Sucker punch removing a large amount of offensive counterplay is also a big factor.

More info on why Pawniard was banned from NFE can be found in this Google Spreadsheet.

As for why Pawniard isn't banned in LC, while it is good in LC, it stil has its checks and counters, and it doesn't get as much switchin opportunities in LC than NFE.

Hope this helps.

Comments

A lot of it has to do with LC and NFE being very different meta games; especially so with LC limiting Pokémon to Level 5. It is almost like Comparing OU to DOU; if you aren’t Landorus-Therian, then you will likely perform and fair differently in each meta. :P

Answer 2

In addition to what has already been said, pawniard has a pretty weak matchup spread, given nearly every competitive team has a bulky fighting type, ground type is pretty common (including some very strong trappers), and if it wants to run a viable speed tier, then It tends to lose trades with a lot of defensive Pokemon.

It lose to timburr, mienfoo, mareanie, foongus, onix, trapinch, diglett, and scraggy

It beats vullaby (sometimes), grookey (sometimes), abra (sometimes), ferroseed, porygon

Most of the things it checks can run a coverage move to beat it.

By no means is it bad, and it’s role compression is near unrivalled, but it’s not broken

Comments

Grookey won't count as it runs Drain Punch most of the time.

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@Frozen Inferno I agree, but some sets don’t, so I put it in anyway as a (sometimes), since I’m trying to give pawniard the benefit of the doubt here