Liepard Suspect Discussion (Read post #202)

[Raseri]

Hey guys, it's that time you've all been waiting for: Liepard's suspect thread! The purpose of this thread is to discuss Liepard and whether or not it is broken in NU. People who wish to vote are expected to contribute to the discussions that take place in this thread. Examples of things that should be talked about in this thread: your experience with said threat (using it and facing it), what beats said threat, your opinion of its effect on the metagame (whether positive or negative), etc.

When choosing people to vote, we will take into account both ladder score and excellent posting. Anyone who wishes to be a part of the vote is expected to PM Raseri and DTC a picture of your ranking with a minimum of 85 battles, and a win rate of 75%. Note that meeting the ladder requirements will not guarantee you a vote, it will only improve your chances.

This thread will remain open for a few weeks, until DTC and myself have a group of voters we can trust to make a decision. At that point, a thread will be opened in blind voting for the voters to vote in!

We will also be encoring strict quality control on the posts in this thread. Posts like "ban liepard watch me 6-0 ladder noobs" are not allowed in this thread. Only serious discussion is allowed. We will be enforcing this rigorously.

Just to clarify: Everyone who wishes to vote has to meet the battle requirement. No exceptions. I have to meet it, former senate members have to meet it. No exceptions will be made to it.

The new suspect ladder is now up. I am also open to banning things such as Assist, if the voters believe that it is what is causing the issue.

 

[Kingler]

While I don't play NU much, it seems a bit weird to ban Liepard. It's a good pursuit trapper etc. but I think what we should really aim for is banning the moves which reduce the skill required, for example, Swagger or Assist. This should probably come under banning moves, but if overall all the tiers agree, this would be much better for the skill of the meta and will finally get rid of those people on the ladder with swagpards. Assist is slightly more legit, but still bad.

 

[Lasagne]

the problem is definitely not Liepard itself; we've come to this conclusion before. The problem is the strategies it utilizes. SwagPlay is completely reliant on luck, and takes no skill whatsoever to execute. If you get lucky using this strategy, you win. That's all there is to it. However, it is easy to stop, so I don't think this is a problem. The main strategy that makes Liepard potentially broken is the assist shuffling teams. If the opponent has no Pokemon with faster priority, but does have some form of hazards (ideally rocks), you win. Even if they have faster priority, its not hard to play around that and still win. Even if they don't have hazards (fuck the ladder), you can still win if you play well and they don't. So basically, its entirely reliant on team matchup. 70-80% of the time you have an almost guaranteed win. In the other 20-30% of the time, you still have a chance, though a slim one. This strategy is clearly unhealthy for the metagame which is why I want to ban Assist by itself. The move is unbeatable in the right situation whenever its used properly (phasing, divecats etc.), so it is unhealthy. The decisions the other tiers make doesn't affect nu (unless I'm mistaken), but I wouldn't be surprised if UU banned assist as the strategy is arguable even more broken there die to the extra damage provided by hail.

tl;dr - Liepard is fine, ban assist.

 

[Magcargo]

I must agree that Assist should be suspected instead of Liepard as Assist as theoretically, it is a move that requires no skill to abuse and win game and is really the main cause of Liepard's supposed brokenness, as it is a move that requires little to no skill to easily wreck havoc on the opponent, despite forcing you to use rather mediocre Pokemon such as Ditto. Furthermore, if we only ban Liepard, then Purrlion could potentially do the same things that it did, albeit in a slightly inferior way.

The SubSwagger set could potentially be suspected, but it is much more reliant on haxing the opponent and in reality, it is really a coin flip whether it does work or does nothing.

On a less important matter, I was wondering why there aren't any set ladder rankings (like Glicko2 of 2050, deviation of ±65) to vote.

 

[Raseri]

I guess I'll post my issue with suspecting Assist: not every user of Assist can abuse it. Assist is only (potentially) broken on Liepard. That is a big part of what makes it different than other non-Pokemon bans such as Moody or SmashPass. Both of those were broken on every user. Assist isn't broken on Hypno, Persian, or Delcatty. So why would we ban a move that is only broken on one Pokemon?

It is unprecedented to ban a move that is only questionable on a single Pokemon. It is why Gligar was banned in LC and not Acrobatics. Froslass and not Spikes etc. Why would we make an exception here? It is only Liepard that is able to take advantage of the move to this degree.

 

[Lolk]

Yeah Assist+Prankster is pretty lame, and I would prefer that be the suspect. And it has practically no counters once it gets going unlike Spikes on Froslass and Acrobatics on Gligar. SwagPlay Cat is indeed a large threat to offensive teams because of the massive damage Foul Play does to strong mons, but even then it's a 50-50 of it dying with a swagger fail (if you get caught in an encore it is your fault for playing badly). Balanced and stall teams have wish passers, clerics, and/or phazers making swagcat deal-able and even sometimes beneficial. Many mons take very little damage from Foul Play and many mons can even set up free hazards on it. Plus, balanced and offensive teams should generally have a status absorbing mon anyway and a lum berry on any random poke is a nice, quick, and surprising way to "be a dick to the dick." And banning cat for hatred of swagplay will also rid NU of a jynx check, a really cool pivot, and a potential weather necessity.

 

[Lasagne]

The problem with banning Assist+Prankster (which is what I would support) is that Smogon doesn't do complex bans, which is a shame. And the reason I want to ban Assist itself is that even on Pokemon that aren't Liepard, it's an unhealthy strategy. Your example of Persian is one that can happily use Assist repeatedly without worrying about many Pokemon outspeeding it. It's obviously not as effective as Liepard is, as it's not priority, but it can still be used.

There's also the fact that stuff like Sand Veil and Moody were banned for being uncompetitive. This is no different; it's a playstyle that requires very little skill and can easily beat the majority of teams made. There are Pokemon that weren't broken with Sand Veil or Moody (Bidoof comes to mind ok apparently that was borked too. cacturne is a better example), but it was banned anyway for being uncompetitive. Assist comes under the same category in my opinion.

 

[ryan]

Lasagne21 NU and RU have a complex ban of Shell Smash + Baton Pass, and OU has a complex ban of Drizzle + Swift Swim. Complex bans aren't unprecedented; they're just usually very easy to avoid and thus a lot better to avoid. In this situation, it might be ideal.

The thing that makes this so difficult for me to form an opinion on is how much I've used Liepard's pivot set, and I honestly think that set is not only not broken, but healthy for the metagame. It can keep setup sweepers in check with its priority Encore and provide a Pursuit trapper for offensive teams that don't want to/can't use Skuntank effectively. Its pivot set really helps Liepard to diversify the metagame by checking a lot of really big threats without centralizing things around itself.

I do recognize, however, just how bad Liepard Assist teams are and just how difficult they can be to beat. One of the only really reliable ways of beating these teams is to not run hazards, but this isn't exactly a reliable method either because it means 1. you're missing out on hazards in a hazard-infested metagame, putting you at a pretty large disadvantage against a lot of teams and 2. there are still ways to get around a lack of hazards with a Liepard Assist team. Off the top of my head, I remember in SIU v. Fuzznip for UU Open, he put Fuzznip's Crobat to sleep, giving him an opportunity to set up with Liepard every time it came in. I'm sure there are other ways of doing this as well, but this is the quickest one to come to mind.

This is why I actually support a ban of Assist + Prankster. I know we try to avoid complex bans as much as possible, but in this case, it might be what's best. We don't lose out on a Pokemon that is arguably good for the metagame, but we get rid of its only arguably ban-worthy quality, bringing balance back to the metagame without hurting it. Keep in mind that I've only played Liepard Assist teams like three or four times in all of my time playing NU, so it might be pretty easy to change my mind on this if I see a good argument about it.

 

[Swamp-Rocket]

What is extremely irritating about Liepard using Assist is that it is pretty much a Riolu that probably outspeeds all your priority moves (other than like Quick Attack Swellow or Aqua Jet Floatzel) and doesn't need a free turn, doesn't get disrupted by those moves or Protect because of how Assist works, and it is really easy to abuse. I will admit I haven't seen one of these teams yet, but they seem incredibly annoying if only going off of my experiences against Riolus which typically have not gone well.

However these teams do require you to literally make an entire team around the entire strategy and if the opponent doesnt send out the hazard user you accomplish little to nothing because of how few attacking moves are available in that way (its like the phazing moves, Focus Punch, Nature Power, Chatter, and Thief) Really if I saw a team that revolved around that strategy I wouldn't bring my Stealth Rock user on the field at all in order to prevent retarded stuff from happening.

Basically, the strategy seems really uncompetitive, but if you don't send out your Stealth Rocker what can the opponent do? Thief and Destiny Bond you to death?

And then of course there is SwagCat which is manageable.

 

[Agent Gibbs]

Basically, the strategy seems really uncompetitive, but if you don't send out your Stealth Rocker what can the opponent do? Thief and Destiny Bond you to death?

Phaze your team around with Assist Roar until they bring in your Stealth Rock user themselves and switch to Ditto, essentially guaranteeing Stealth Rock unless you can double switch to a Pokemon that not only outspeeds your own Stealth Rock user with a Choice Scarf but can OHKO it as well. I suppose you could also double switch to a faster Taunt user, spinner, Magic Coat user, or something of that sort, but the bottom line is that not sending in your Stealth Rock user alone doesn't stop a Liepard Assist team.

 

[ShootingStarmie]

Yeah, I think I'm agreeing with most of Lasagne's post about Assist being un-competitive as a whole. It's like the ban of sand veil and snow cloak in OU. I'm pretty sure Caturne on a Sand team in OU wasn't broken even with Sand Veil, but the strategy overall is just un-competitive, much like Liepard in NU with Assist.

 

[watashi]

there's one important point about assist liepard that i would like to point out, and it's the fact that it has no checks, only counters. basically, if you do not have something that completely stops liepard in its tracks, then all your opponent has to do is to make the correct moves and win without predicting or upping his level of competitiveness at all. if you look at the previous suspect jynx, you will see that it is entirely possible to beat it without having a counter to it. with that being said, assist liepard has it's fair share of counters, as i outlined in this post, and i'm sure that there are other ways to stop it as well. however, many of these methods to counter liepard require the user to utilize pokemon that are mediocre in the current metagame, such as cradily, and results in restricting conditions when building a team. keep in mind that some of these counters, such as kangaskhan, can be played around by liepard, while it doesn't work the other way around. when facing an assist team, it is completely match-up reliant; if you don't have a full stop to liepard, you lose.

 

[Fuzznip]

It's not Liepard that's broken, it's just the strategies associated with it that are arguably broken, which is essentially just abusing Swagger and Assist to their extremities. However, these two moves that Liepard uses extremely well are simply not good enough on their own to warrant a potential Liepard ban. I'll provide my insight on the two.

Swagger

It's been brought up time and time again on the competitive merit behind Swagger. The fact of the matter is Swagger Liepard is completely and utterly reliant on hax to cause any sort of nuisances. It will either cause some major hiccups to your team, possibly flat-out sweeping you, or it can fail and end up costing you. It's quite obvious the odds are in the Liepard user's favour, though. The thing is, it's still possible to use actually good Pokemon that can deal with pretty easily, since the strategy itself is just so one-dimensional, and it's not too difficult to play around it with a well-built team. For example, Own Tempo Ludicolo and Lickilicky are relevant NU Pokemon that can deter Swagger Liepard due to their confusion immunity, Bastiodon and Probopass can pretty much shut it down with their massive bulk and Magic Coat in the former's case, Toxic Spikes cripples it instantly if you manage to keep them up, and our good friend Mandibuzz can give it a run for its money, among other things. I mean, it's very possible to build these tight cores to prevent it from doing anything serious. I personally don't have an issue with it that would make me want to ban it because it just isn't all that great all things considered.

If anything, it's Swagger itself that needs to be suspected, as this move can be used by literally anything that has paralysis/Foul Play to decent effect just by the nature of how it works. But, it's not NU's place to be suspecting this because it applies to all metagames.

Assist

I'll admit that Assist Liepard is literally the dumbest thing that I've ever had the misfortune of playing against. What makes matters worse is that it's actually surprisingly effective, capable of dismantling even the most well-built teams. But, again, it's nothing worthy of being a reason to ban Liepard whatsoever. For one thing, Assist Liepard only works when the other 5 Pokemon on your team generally carry these horrid non-attacking movesets and are underwhelming Pokemon themselves, which means that you will 100% know you're fighting an Assist Liepard team the moment you look at Team Preview. With that knowledge, it's more than enough to understand the measures you need to take in order to prevent it from punishing you. For instance, don't blatantly set up entry hazards when fighting such team, as the opponent can only use Ditto or Copycat Pokemon to set up their own. It's also just Liepard that's doing all of the brutality, so just generally carrying Pokemon with Dark-resists or can prevent it from scoring free Substitutes/Nasty Plot boosts is more than enough to increase the difficulty of pulling off such a strategy.

Overall, it's a dumb yet effective strategy Liepard can pull off, but it has such clear and obvious flaws to keep it in check. It's not a reason to ban Liepard (only a reason to ban Assist, like with Swagger's case), it's just a matter of adaptation.

Again, the only reason why Liepard is even being suspected right now is solely because of those two aforementioned strategies as far as I'm concerned. That's literally the only reason. Personally, I would be extremely upset and disappointed if Liepard is banished from NU because of that, because not only will it still continue to pull these exact strategies off in any tier it chooses with the same results, NU is being relinquished of one of the best offensive pivots available. The utility it provides with Prankster Encore/Taunt/Thunder Wave/Toxic along with U-turn is so absurdly useful in checking and crippling a handful of offensive and defensive threats, and not in the least bit ban-worthy. I use it on one of my main teams for that purpose and it's just a really neat Pokemon. I'd hate to lose it.

This will be me if you take it away from me.

 

[Jayde]

The problem isn't the swagger set. While this is annoying and somewhat uncompetitive, it is the equivalent of something like paraflinch (Jirachi in OU, for instance) and doesn't seem to warrant a ban. The problem is the assist set. It's obvious that assist liepard is an excellent phazer; unlike riolu, it doesn't even require a turn of setup to start wreaking havoc.

I'm not going to focus on the capabilities of liepard as an Annoyer and a phazer, since these seem to me to be self-evident. What I find to be the more pressing reason the assist set is broken is the fact that it doubles as an effective sub NP sweeper. Not a normal one, either; as long as your team as at least one thing liepard can set up on, it can almost always get to +6 with a sub and sweep you no matter how careful you are with your hazard users. Surefire counters to liepard are incredibly rare, and even these can get worn down easily if they do not have a reliable form of recovery. Even if everything on your team can break liepard's subs, it can, more often than not, still successfully set up by simply taking a hit, phazing for more lefties recovery, and repeating the cycle. Like FLCL said, in most cases a user of assist liepard doesn't even need to play well to win; they simply just do, unless you have an infallible counter.

Also: banning assist is stupid, just ban liepard.

 

[Bughouse]

Seconding everything FLCL said already. Assist teams are stupidly noncompetitive in how they function. It's kind of like a Baton Pass team in OU where specific things shut it down, except that Baton Pass can be played around even when you lack the counters. Assist Liepard can't.

And I don't personally find Liepard's other sets merit an exception going around the established Smogon standard of suspecting and banning Pokemon rather than abilities or moves. I'd go ahead with suspecting Liepard and would probably vote to ban it.

 

[ryan]

It's not Liepard that's broken, it's just the strategies associated with it that are arguably broken

Doesn't that mean Liepard is broken?

 

[Magcargo]

If we are going to suspect Liepard itself, shouldn't we suspect Purrlion as well, as it can fulfill nearly the exact same roles as Liepard in a slightly less efficient manner.

 

[Raseri]

If we are going to suspect Liepard itself, shouldn't we suspect Purrlion as well, as it can fulfill nearly the exact same roles as Liepard in a slightly less efficient manner.

The issue with this is that there is no reason to use Purrloin, so any discussion about it would be purely theorymon. We don't suspect things based on theorymon. If Liepard is banned and Purrloin is broken, it can be looked at then.

 

[ryan]

Simply put, Purrloin is too slow and weak to pull off the strategy even remotely as efficiently as Liepard. Jayde also made a good point that even if you don't have a Substitute up, the opponent is pretty much always going to attack Liepard when they could have done something better (like Taunt) because they want to make sure it doesn't get up a free Substitute. This can mean that they can set up Nasty Plot on weaker attacks, which Purrloin can't really do.

 

[Blast]

One thing I want to point out is that pretty much every argument toward Liepard's "brokenness" all leads back to Prankster. The only reason SwagPard is viable is because it gets Prankster Swagger / T-Wave / Encore / etc. The only reason AssistPard is viable is because it gets Prankster Assist. Hell, the /main/ reason PivotPard is viable is Prankster Encore. And the list goes on. The fact that Liepard's viability is completely centered around one ability is pretty massive. If you'll notice, there are a shitton of Prankster mons that are literally only viable because of Prankster (Sableye, Volbeat, Whimsicott, etc.) I'm not saying they're BROKEN because of Prankster, because obviously there are many Pokémon that can use Prankster without being broken, like Volbeat. But you still have to take into account that Prankster is the sole thing that makes these guys viable in the first place, which may or may not signify a broken ability.

 

[Fuzznip]

Doesn't that mean Liepard is broken?

No, Liepard is not broken itself. It's the moves Swagger and Assist that are arguably broken when paired with the tools Liepard is equipped with. To me, I don't think this is the case. To others, it very well can be (the reason it's being suspected). Preventing Liepard from using such moves is the better route to take, as completely removing an entire Pokemon for the non-competitive sets it runs is bullshit in my opinion. If it's going to be banned because of that, then just ban Liepard from RU and UU, maybe OU and Uber, because there's nothing stopping anyone from using those same sets/teams in other tiers to relatively the same effect.

 

[MCBarrett]

One thing I want to point out is that pretty much every argument toward Liepard's "brokenness" all leads back to Prankster. The only reason SwagPard is viable is because it gets Prankster Swagger / T-Wave / Encore / etc. The only reason AssistPard is viable is because it gets Prankster Assist. Hell, the /main/ reason PivotPard is viable is Prankster Encore. And the list goes on. The fact that Liepard's viability is completely centered around one ability is pretty massive. If you'll notice, there are a shitton of Prankster mons that are literally only viable because of Prankster (Sableye, Volbeat, Whimsicott, etc.) I'm not saying they're BROKEN because of Prankster, because obviously there are many Pokémon that can use Prankster without being broken, like Volbeat. But you still have to take into account that Prankster is the sole thing that makes these guys viable in the first place, which may or may not signify a broken ability.

Prankster definitely isn't a broken ability. It is simply the strategies like Assist and Copycat that become extremely effective thanks to Prankster that are broken. So, like others have said, a complex ban would probably be the best way to go about this. Liepard gets to stay in NU while the most broken strategy that it can pull off, thanks to Prankster, in Assist gets banned. With this seeming to be the consensus though, do people think that Copycat Riolu should be banned as well? While it isn't quite as effective as Liepard's Assist strategy it is effectively the same idea and basically comes down to team matchup who wins the match. Aslo, like FLCL said, there are only counters and no checks to this strategy. While there may be a few more checks than Assist Liepard I think we're basically dealing with the same thing here and I'm not sure that it is healthy for the metagame.

 

[Plus]

Assist Liepard isn't much trouble if you prepare for it. If you prepare for a Liepard Assist team, then the Assist team is already at a big disadvantage. It might be unhealthy for a metagame to be so matchup reliant, but part of the reason why Assist Liepard isn't broken is because those teams are bound to lose against other teams that pack responses to Assist teams. I'd at least want a fighting chance against teams I'm at a disadvantage against, and this doesn't really seem to be the case for Assist Liepard teams -- at least for opponents know what the hell they're doing, anyway.

If you don't want Liepard to set up Nasty Plot in your face, then just attack. You don't win games by being a pussy, you win by attacking. There are lots of options in NU that hit hard, and running balls to the wall aggro is one of the better ways to deal with shuffle Liepard.

While I don't play NU much, it seems a bit weird to ban Liepard. It's a good pursuit trapper etc. but I think what we should really aim for is banning the moves which reduce the skill required, for example, Swagger or Assist. This should probably come under banning moves, but if overall all the tiers agree, this would be much better for the skill of the meta and will finally get rid of those people on the ladder with swagpards. Assist is slightly more legit, but still bad.

"It's a good pursuit trapper?" What set would you even be using that Skuntank wouldn't do better? If you're using Encore with Pursuit, you're probably better off using U-turn instead ala Pivot Liepard to actually maintain offensive momentum to a pokemon that can do some heavy damage.

EDIT for clarity: I am talking swagpard below

I don't want to advocate banning moves or not banning moves in this thread (let alone "if overall all the tiers agree"), but what exactly are the guidelines for moves reducing skill? People use Scald and fish for 30% burns on a regular basis, there are people who use Iron Head / Air Slash + Serene Grace in other tiers, and some moves like Spore (or even Lovely Kiss) can completely stop the momentum of an opponent's team due to how powerful sleep is this generation. My point is that it seems that "reducing skill" is often associated with luck factors, and there's not much of a line that you can draw that everyone can universally agree on. Luck is part of the game; if you rely on it too much, you risk inconsistency and you are giving your opponent chances to execute their own strategy at the expense of your shaky one. Just because you're frustrated that a 50/50 didn't work your way one game is fine, but it will eventually bite your opponent in the ass for using Swagpard when Swagger actually doesn't work for them because the whole premise of the set is shaky to begin with.

 

[Shuckleking87]

Assist Liepard isn't much trouble if you prepare for it. If you prepare for a Liepard Assist team, then the Assist team is already at a big disadvantage. It might be unhealthy for a metagame to be so matchup reliant, but part of the reason why Assist Liepard isn't broken is because those teams are bound to lose against other teams that pack responses to Assist teams. I'd at least want a fighting chance against teams I'm at a disadvantage against, and this doesn't really seem to be the case for Assist Liepard teams -- at least for opponents know what the hell they're doing, anyway.

How do you prepare for it? So you have a team that has either no hazards (which puts you at an extreme disadvantage against all otehr teams), run special defensive cradily, kangaskan, swellow, floatzel and extremespeed users? Even pokes like kangaskan cannot do much because they are just whirlwinded away after the fake out, and leftovers damage occurs. If there was a clear cut check to liepard (say, a magic bounce poke not weak to dark like natu), then maybe, but even then, it would be really a commitment and a disadvantage not to have that one poke. I am not not quite sure how to exactly prepare for this team while maintaining a competitive team for other high quality teams. With Swagger/t-wave combo, liepard as a 45% chance of inflicting damage to the opponent, which will usually hurt the user more than the opponent, so swagger and twave/encore are not the problem.

If you don't want Liepard to set up Nasty Plot in your face, then just attack. You don't win games by being a pussy, you win by attacking. There are lots of options in NU that hit hard, and running balls to the wall aggro is one of the better ways to deal with shuffle Liepard.

Too bad you cannot actually attack it when it has priority phazing moves that cancel out most priority moves, unlike riolu.

"It's a good pursuit trapper?" What set would you even be using that Skuntank wouldn't do better? If you're using Encore with Pursuit, you're probably better off using U-turn instead ala Pivot Liepard to actually maintain offensive momentum to a pokemon that can do some heavy damage.

Liepard does only have 5 less base power attack, and after encoring a poke into a move (say, musharna into calm mind), then pursuit trap it, it can deal a pretty heavy amount of damage, or you could u-turn after the opponent switches to gain momentum, something skuntank really cannot do.

I don't want to advocate banning moves or not banning moves in this thread (let alone "if overall all the tiers agree"), but what exactly are the guidelines for moves reducing skill? People use Scald and fish for 30% burns on a regular basis, there are people who use Iron Head / Air Slash + Serene Grace in other tiers, and some moves like Spore (or even Lovely Kiss) can completely stop the momentum of an opponent's team due to how powerful sleep is this generation. My point is that it seems that "reducing skill" is often associated with luck factors, and there's not much of a line that you can draw that everyone can universally agree on. Luck is part of the game; if you rely on it too much, you risk inconsistency and you are giving your opponent chances to execute their own strategy at the expense of your shaky one. Just because you're frustrated that a 50/50 didn't work your way one game is fine, but it will eventually bite your opponent in the ass for using Swagpard when Swagger actually doesn't work for them because the whole premise of the set is shaky to begin with.

Once again, there is literally not a luck factor involved really, it is a 100% chance that the whirlwind will work. That much luck should never be in the game if it is that overpowered. That is why I believe banning assist on liepard is the ideal ban

 

[Plus]

How do you prepare for it? So you have a team that has either no hazards (which puts you at an extreme disadvantage against all otehr teams), run special defensive cradily, kangaskan, swellow, floatzel and extremespeed users? Even pokes like kangaskan cannot do much because they are just whirlwinded away after the fake out, and leftovers damage occurs. If there was a clear cut check to liepard (say, a magic bounce poke not weak to dark like natu), then maybe, but even then, it would be really a commitment and a disadvantage not to have that one poke. I am not not quite sure how to exactly prepare for this team while maintaining a competitive team for other high quality teams. With Swagger/t-wave combo, liepard as a 45% chance of inflicting damage to the opponent, which will usually hurt the user more than the opponent, so swagger and twave/encore are not the problem.

Well, you just listed out some ways to beat Assist Liepard teams, so I'll go into detail with that then. You don't have to go hazardless; you could very well use something like a Golem + Sawk combination in order to lure out Ditto while you double switch to Sawk to force a switch. As for Kangaskhan, Fake Out is doing 40-48% on average to Liepard. I wouldn't say that it's not much; you're essentially weakening the win condition. If you take Liepard out, it's pretty much game. I'm not sure what you mean by Leftovers damage so I'll assume you mean Life Orb, so Silk Scarf is easily an item you could use over LO to deal with Liepard, and even then LO Fake Out is doing some hefty damage at 44-52%.

Swellow makes a good cleanup sweeper and revenge killer thanks to its speed and can be used to check a plethora of other threats such as Jynx, Serperior, and Haunter. I can't really speak for Floatzel as I don't really use it, but Cradily is a great pivot Pokemon that can be used to tank Normal type attackers and set up stealth rock. The curse set in particular takes a good amount of support to use, but is very efficient and can wipe out teams once things like Fighting-types are eliminated. My point is that these methods of beating Liepard aren't uncompetitive in the slightest, and have their merits apart from beating Liepard. You aren't weakening yourself by using Kangaskhan or Golem + Sawk; these are viable Pokemon that can hold their own even against teams without Liepard.

As for your responses to my other statements, I am aware you can't attack with priority Whirlwind or Roar lol. But if you were to run a well built offense in the first place, Liepard shouldn't be able to set up Nasty Plot very safely -- that was the point I was trying to make, I know how Assist Liepard works @_@

Point taken on the Pursuit trapping Liepard; I'll give it that niche which Skuntank doesn't have, although I do find that Encore + U-turn Liepard works better for a larger range of setup Pokemon, such as BU Braviary or an SD Samurott.

As for my rant on luck, I was talking solely Swagpard, not Assist Liepard lol. Sorry if I was unclear about that.