Gary
Can be abrasive at times (no joke)
Okay its been a while since anyone has really talked about Volcanion after its initial hype, and now that the meta has had enough time to adapt to it, I think Volcanion would fit better in A-. It's strong, pretty fat, and combined with its ability it has a decent amount of defensive utility which allows it to softcheck some cool stuff like Specs Keldeo locked into Scald or Hydro, Azumarill, Heatran, Mega Scizor, Mega Sableye, and Jirachi, as well as a semi-decent check to Clefable. While on paper it has the right qualities to make it a very splashable Pokemon, it's been proven over time that's not really the case. While it does have a lot of cool utility offensively and great defensive synergy, its weakness to rocks is a huge issue for a Pokemon that would otherwise benefit from smart double switching or pivoting to spam Steam Eruption which is very difficult to switch into already, and like Keldeo it would be able to heavily punish fat teams and apply a lot of pressure. But with its weakness to hazards on top of its lackluster Speed for a wallbreaker, it's hard for it to not only come in safely, but to apply a lot of pressure when its outsped by most of the metagame. Its bulk makes up for it a little bit, as not much can OHKO it when it's healthy outside of strong super effective hits, but it gets worn down very quickly. It's an interesting Pokemon with a very unique typing and a good ability to abuse it, but it still faces stiff competition from other wallbreakers, namely Keldeo, and Heatran as a Fire-type, and we all know how difficult it is to slap Fire-types on your team without stacking a ton of weaknesses, but Heatran is different.
I agree with the post made by bludz in the metagame thread about how Volcanion is pretty unexplored and it could very well be a hidden gem, but unlike Hoopa-U it's not broken as shit, and because of its movepool it's very linear. Its defensive set is complete ass, and the resist berries, while decent lures, heavily take away from its wallbreaking potential. Leftovers gives it much needed passive recovery but it's still on the weaker side, while Scarf is too slow to revenge anything. Specs is by far its best set atm, so as much as it's pretty "unexplored", there's not much you can really do with it. It's a great Pokemon that lots of teams tend to be weak to because it punishes most teams with only semi-reliable Keldeo switch-ins like Latios or Slowbro, as well as builds that depend on Amoonguss or other fat Grass-types as their Keldeo switch-in, and Slowbro is practically 2HKOed by Steam Eruption. The problem is, Keldeo is still so much more consistent despite being better prepared for because of its better matchup versus faster teams and resistance to rocks which gives it more opportunities to spam STABs and it can actually check a decent amount of Pokemon, whereas Volcanion is strictly used as a wallbreaker/holepuncher for the most part. I don't think dropping it any further than A- is reasonable as of now just because it's still just too early to properly judge its exact viability when its just not used that much right now, and that doesn't mean it's bad it just means people are just uncomfortable using it due to a lack of overall knowledge or experience with it, whereas Keldeo/Heatran/other wallbreakers are just so much easier to use. Besides, most of the shit in A are metagame staples that are far more splashable atm, minus maybe Mega Sableye, so Volcanion just looks awkward there and fits better with stuff like Mega Pinsir or Zard-Y which are very solid options but aren't splashable or require decent amounts of support.
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