The Teraless Espathra discussion kinda got buried by the new tier shifts, but I figured I'd give a more nuanced take on it since the people disagreeing with me seem to love walls of calcs and theorymonning how "broken" a 95/60/60 bulk mono-Psychic mon is in OU after getting two free turns to set up somehow???
So to start off, let's just go down the OU list, and see exactly how easy it is for Espathra to set up to +2. Assuming Espathra has just switched in safely at full health, this is how that list looks (generally assuming the most common set for each mon as well as a bulky Espathra set - offensive Espathra beats a handful of mons easier but loses outright to many more).
Espathra Just Dies:
Espathra Can't Beat These Long-Term:
Espathra Wins the 1v1 But Takes Huge Chip:
Espathra Can Set Up, But Will Get Crippled:
Espathra Can Set Up:
(assuming a defensive set, but no matter what the set, Lando just U-Turns out for 50% chip and the switchin beats Espathra handily)
(this is one of the mons that would beat offensive Espathra outright)
(still does a clean 30 with a slow U-Turn into a teammate that can finish the job)
(no caveats here - dozo is a passive blob)
(assuming no twave)
So, what? Espathra can only set up on a handful of suicide leads and passive fatmons, half of which just U-Turn out? That sounds pretty bad! Especially when you consider how Espathra is so weak that even at +1 it fails to kill the majority of offensive mons, allowing them to revenge kill it with ease. The worst part is, if Espathra just beat stall, then you could maybe argue it had a place on HO. But like, it still loses to stall anyway??? CM Blissey is a nightmare matchup, and even other slow teamstyles have mons like Hatt and Ting-Lu that completely ruin Espathra every time it comes in. You have to be in THE most optimal conditions for Espathra to have even a shot at success, and half of the time that still isn't enough!
Now obviously organizing things this way removes a lot of the nuance, but so does calling Treads a team's Espathra answer when that mon isn't staying alive past turn 5 most of the time lmao. As you may have noticed, a bunch of this counterplay relies on dealing enough damage to handle Espathra before it sets up, which of course means that behind Screens or with a Terrain Seed, the mon becomes much scarier. But scary Screens mons are a dime a dozen in the current meta. Compared to offensive behemoths like Roaring Moon and Volcarona, I just don't think Teraless Espathra could be called anything more than a matchup fish and a gimmick.