Venusaur @ Normalium Z

Ability: Chlorophyll

EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe

Timid Nature

IVs: 0 Atk

- Celebrate

- Sludge Bomb

- Giga Drain

- Growth / filler



Venusaur is an overall fantastic Pokemon in the tier that can do a handful of things effectively without being outclassed, but the set I posted the importable to above makes it too much for the current metagame plain-and-simple. This case is nothing too out-of-the-ordinary as there simply is insufficient counterplay to Z-Celebrate Venusaur in the current metagame. I'll go through a list of what I consider to be checks/counters and I think it will be pretty clear from there.



Counters to Z-Celebrate Venusaur: Golbat, Ferroseed

Checks to Z-Celebrate Venusaur: Klinklang, Silvally-Steel, Toxicroak (sorta), Scarf Delphox, Scarf Houndoom, Togedemaru, Sandslash-Alola



The metagame response has, more or less, been spamming the shit out of Golbat, which honestly is more a testament to how broken this set is. You have a Pokemon that is mediocre beforehand suddenly seeing consistent usage with this being the only clear-cut reasoning. All of the checks are semi-reliable, but prone to getting worn down or situationally losing to Venusaur during end-game scenarios, more or less. The Fire type Scarfers have fallen out of favors due to the emergence of Incineroar, the new Rock types, and just general deadweight nature in some match-ups. All things considered, Venusaur is the stereotypical broken win-condition right now. I can go in depth as to why those lists are insufficient if anyone wishes, so feel free to respond or disagree and I will elaborate, but for now it seems to be the consensus and not in need of any explanation.



Finally, I take issue with those who argue Venusaur being broken on the merit of versatility. Unless you're using some Z Swords Dance set or some quirky lure variant that compromises general effectiveness and practically nobody uses as of rn, then odds are there is substantial overlap in counterplay to most variants of Venusaur. To top this all off, versatility isn't a cause of banworthiness unless there is some underlying factor that crosses the line, which you cannot pinpoint without looking at this set I honed in on, in my opinion. Venusaur is simply a top-tier Pokemon if you take this out of the equation and any argument discounting this I find to be more distaste than actually full of substance and acceptable reasoning.



tl;dr - Z-Celebrate sets are absurd and they make Venusaur broken due to lack of counterplay