Another thing that i'd like to bring up is possibly moving
Reuniclus down from A+ rank to A rank.
Reuniclus is still an excellent Pokemon, don't get me wrong, but the metagame's changed to the point where its actually a bit unfavorable for everyone's favorite blob imo. When some of the metagame's biggest threats include Pokemon such as Yanmega, Sharpedo, Doublade, Zoroark, Mega Banette, Escavalier, Meloetta, Durant, Drapion, and many more obscure things such as Shiftry and Skuntank, Reuniclus actually ends up having a pretty hard time :/. Even outside of these particular Pokemon, a bunch of common threats carry Knock Off, which smacks Reuniclus pretty hard despite its bulk, and removes either its Leftovers or boosting item in the form of Life Orb. The latter is especially annoying for the OTR set, as not just is it getting cleanly 2HKO'd or even OHKO'd by this common move, but its actually weakening it in the process and making it that much harder for it to sweep, especially when you consider TR Reuniclus performs best against fast, offensive, teams and thats where quite a few of the tier's common Knock Off users often reside. The Calm Mind set ends up having slight, but crippling 4mss because of the presence of various common Pokemon in the metagame. Most notably, Doublade, one of the most common Pokemon in the metagame completely walls the Calm Mind set unless it runs Shadow Ball, but if it does so it ends up completely walled by pretty much any Dark-type in the tier, and giving free set up to things such as SD Zoroark is never good. Not to mention that the defensive metagame is actually pretty well prepared to handle CM Reuni when things such as Tspikes Drapion, Doublade, Skuntank, and defensive Meloetta (trust me, it works, its actually bulkier on the special side than Slowking and gets stuff like Knock Off, Heal Bell, and most importantly Perish Song to support its team) can fit on stall p. well while still pulling their weight outside of simply beating Reuniclus.
This doesn't mean Reuniclus is bad though, far from it in fact, its still a p. powerful force. However, i think the metagame is currently unfavorable enough to it that it can no longer be considered "almost S rank".
EDIT:
i also made an executive descision and moved claydol down to E rank. I know some people were supporting it to move up, so i got curious and tried it out. But even with the "correct" Toxic+Protect set, on the correct playstyle, and with the right teammates, i still only came to one conclusion even after trying to make it work for 2 and a half rounds: its just garbage.
Heres Claydol in a nutshell.
Its a Rapid Spinner thats immune/resistant to all entry hazards, that's a good start right?
But then you realize that its also a Rapid Spinner with no offensive presence, meaning that outside of getting rid of those entry hazards, its not really doing much else to threaten the opponent. On top of this, bar Doublade who is admittedly common, Claydol becomes dead weight against any team with a Ghost-type Pokemon from the start. From my experience, every competent team has at LEAST two Pokemon that make this thing dead weight, especially in high level play.
But wait! It has good defenses! That must be good for something right?
Those defenses are deceptive, because Claydol has a bunch of things holding it back from being an even decent wall. First off, it has no reliable recovery outside of Wish support, meaning it relies of Leftovers and the all predictable Protect to rack up recovery. Outside of this simple lack of recovery moves, Claydol's typing might be good against entry hazards, but otherwise its plain to see that it does way more harm than good. Thanks to Claydol's Ground/Psychic-type. You don't just have a Rapid Spinner thats weak to Knock Off and Pursuit, two very important moves, but a Pokemon that takes super effective damage from all the spinblockers themselves, whether they're using Ghost-type STAB or not, things like Gourgeist and Jellicent still smack it around with their STAB attacks.
But Toxic+Protect can be used to stall out spinblockers and then eventually get the Rapid Spin off, right??
This might seem good in theory, and does eventually wear down some of the Ghost-types to the point that you can spin, but theres a big flaw to all of this. Because of Claydol's terrible typing that leaves it weak to all common coverage moves Ghost-types use, it gets forced out right after the protect the vast majority of the time, with the hazards staying up. Even if you stay in, Claydol runs a risk of just flat out dying, being crippled by WoW to cancel out its own recovery, or getting Leech Seeded by say Gourgeist, further crippling it. Either way, by the time the opposing spinblocker actually ends up going down, Claydol most often still gets forced out by the next Pokemon in, once again thanks to its "exceptional" defensive typing, still stopping it from getting the spin right away. By the time Claydol actually gets the Rapid Spin off, the hazards have most likely already done their job, and you just gave your opponent a free turn with something with so little offensive presence or walling ability otherwise.
b-b-but Earth Power beats Doublade!
This is true, but once again Claydol ends up having the same problem as before, even if you predict the Doublade switch correctly and Earth Power for the 2HKO, Doublade still got just enough chip damage on you through Shadow Sneak that Claydol usually gets forced out and doesn't get to spin anyway. Once again, by the time Claydol actually gets to Rapid Spin, the hazards have already done their job, and you most likely just gave your opponent a free turn to set up a win condition.
The reason to use this over Gligar is to not clear your own hazards!
Considering how incompetent Claydol is at actually getting its spinning job done, i'd actually much rather use Gligar on a spikestacking stall team and occasionally have to remove my rocks/spikes/tspikes than resort to using this thing (in fact, i actually did, and my team immediately started working better once i got rid of Claydol .___.). Gligar is much bulkier on the physical side, shares the same spikes/tspikes immunity while not being weak to Stealth Rock, and unlike Claydol actually has reliable recovery in the form of Roost and some neat supportive options such as Knock Off and U-turn as a defensive Pokemon/Pivot to make it useful otherwise. If any of you bring up not being 4x weak to HP ice and therefore checking Electric-types more effectively, most Electric-types that rely on Hidden Power anyway are running HP Grass/Water for Rhyperior, and in Heliolisk's case it demolishes both regardless with Grass Knot+Hidden Power Ice.
Stealth Rock+Rapid Spin is cool
Once again, Claydol is so terrible at getting the job done that it simply isn't worth it here, there are tons of options that are capable of setting up Stealth Rock in RU, and we have spinners and defoggers that are much better as well. I'd rather split this over 2 teamslots filled with competent Pokemon than resort to using this thing. Even if i absolutely had to (and i never thought i'd say this). I'd probably use damn Sandslash over Claydol. At least Sandslash isn't complete set up bait, isn't weak to Pursuit or Knock Off, and gets a Knock Off of its own to cripple spinblockers, all while actually performing better against Doublade thanks to its ability to knock off its Eviolite and lack of a weakness to Ghost-type moves.
So all in all, after extended testing both using and facing this thing, the only conclusion that i can come to is that this thing is genuine garbage, and (sorry if this offends anyone), i think this is legitimately the worst Pokemon i've ever used in any tier, metagame, or generation x__x.
/end rant
