Scarf actually takes advantage of this thinking and destroys any faster mon. It's extremely powerful because now you have a high powered mon that can outspeed everything in the meta with prediction. Many a time have dragapult's stayed in on my scarf kyurem only to be decimated by modest freeze-dry (modest is to guarentee an OHKO on dragapult, it's a bit annoying, but the speed tier is good enough to the point that the extra power is worth it).
I do think that kyurem is ultimately banworthy, but I think the main thing is the set variety, which pushes it over waterpon in my eyes. At least with waterpon, it's going to mainly be running sd, stabs and play rough, with the occassional encore/knock off which may be a bit scary but ultimately dealable. With kyurem, I think "Oh, my glowking can deal with HDB variants easily", and then gets destroyed by specs blizzard. Or, my special wall thinks its going to wall it, and then it dds and its ggs.
That's not what 4mss is at all, there is a definition and "has perfect coverage but wants utility too" is not it, it's when a Pokémon can't run all the coverage it needs to succeed, this is not a factor at all, and it's also not 4mss because knock off and play rough tend to serve different purposes, knock is an option specifically if you want to disrupt balance/stall and you have several other wincon options, play rough is far and away the best on wincon waterpon. Claiming a mon that can run an excellent set with perfect coverage has "4mss" because it has other very good options is just nonsense
"waterpon is spikes weak" is also a very surface level analysis that doesn't consider waterpon's function on the battlefield in anyway, with play rough where you're coming in after pult is dispatched of, clicking SD, and winning, how many times are you really coming into where spikes become a problem? Sure it can't be a pivot, but that's not what it does best. However vs teams that don't use spikes, which is a lot of teams especially hyper offense, what difference does it even make? Spike spam is down substantially compared to earlier in DLC2 due to the momentum sink that setting multiple layers is in the high energy meta where every turn matters that we're in right now, sitting around and setting spikes has to be done very carefully unless you're running or playing against stall, and this dynamic in and of itself is due to the pace that Ogerpon forces by completely shitting on non-offense - why do you think Ghold usage has dropped? No one has time to hazard stack! So sure, Waterpon can't avoid taking damage from spikes, but that really hardly matters.
you're endlessly harping on about how "predictable" waterpon is but my question is exactly what difference does it make? When I saw Rillaboom and Sneasler on team preview and Sneasler comes into battle I know exactly what's about to go down but what does that change exactly? Was that a reason to keep Sneasler around? "Oh man I know Ogerpon has the set with 0 switch ins!" Thank god! You are placing far too much importance on "innovation" and "set predictability" which does explain some of the... uh... creative sets you've shared in this thread I suppose
overall every paragraph here is very shoddy reasoning... "mmm, no."
Well, 4mss is defined as (article about it :
https://www.smogon.com/articles/ssuu-4mss)
4 Moveslot Syndrome (more commonly simplified as 4MSS) is a situation where a certain Pokémon has multiple good moves but can only pick certain ones, limiting its offensive or utility capabilities.
I would say that waterpon is a mon with 4mss, not to a egregious degree, but stil something to be considered. Sure, does stabs + play rough destroy a lot of the tier, yes, it does, but to try to beat its counterplay, which is something like set-up mons that can take a hit, it has to drop play rough in order to beat them. That means now, that dragon types can switch in. I would think "Having to drop an important move in order to properly defeat counterplay" is 4mss. Again, not the worst case of it, but still 4mss.
Honestly, a lot of times. To truly threaten a team, waterpon needs a turn to sd up, which the opponent will realistically not give you, due to how threatening a +2 waterpon is. That then threatens out the waterpon, which if hazards are down, limits it to 3-4 opportunities to set up. HO teams don't give it the opportunity to get to +2, as they are blasting it with really big damage. Basically every team besides HO has some form of hazards, with 1 layer of spikes going down and stealth rocks being on the field for most of the game. I would say that a mon that has to deal with that constantly is hazards weak. It's only form of recovery realistically (no one is using synthesis on it) is water absorb and maybe horn leech. Horn leech is not used too much, as power whip is much more poweful, so water absorb it is. An opponent with an alomomola is not going to be clicking a water move when waterpon is on the field, so water absorb doesn't come into play as often as it should. Now, water absorb is definetely an amazing ability to discourage such plays, but most of the time you are not going to be getting that recovery.
Predictability is not the be all, end all of a pokemon's viability, I get that. Kingambit basically has one set with two diferent polishes of paint. It's between "I'll hit you REALLY hard" or "I'll hit you really hard, but might get rid of my weaknesses". What is realistically coming in on Sneasler? Or what is stopping it from getting the unburden boost and letting it set up? The diference between the two is how easy is it to stop them. I would say that waterpon is easier to stop then something like sneasler. At least there is decent ways to outspeed it and it doesn't have a defense boost.
Waterpon is really difficult to switch in to, I can agree with that. But the issue is that it finds difficulty switching in itself and once it does, it has to start sweeping. I would compare it to hawlucha in a way, though hawlucha is MUCH easier to deal with. Hawlucha on paper should be the scariest mon in the tier. It can outspeed everything, it has suprising bulk, and +2 acrobatics hurts most things. The thing is, it has one opportunity to do that sweep. If it doesn't, then it will fail. Waterpon is a much less extreme example, but it has a few issues it shares with lucha. Due to hazards, it can't come in that often, and it is threatened out by a lot of faster mons.