I wanted to touch on Volcarona, however, because of my place in the player base and my inability to get reqs (and unwillingness to improve to do so?), it feels disingenuous to post in the suspect thread. So, I'm not going to wait for the suspect thread and post some preliminary thoughts here.
The set I have the most (read: any) experience with is from a hazard stack team from Maverick Shooters and Mencemeat (I can't find where I got the team from, my apologies for not redirecting correctly):
Volcarona @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Flame Body
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 248 HP / 228 Def / 32 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Fiery Dance
- Will-O-Wisp
- Quiver Dance
- Morning Sun
If you want the short form, I'll say that this is not Volc's most optimal set possible, but it absolutely has a place in the metagame and makes use of the defensive utility that makes the banning of Volc so controversial. It also very much makes use of the matchup fish nature of Volcarona and has both good and bad matchups. This set probably has more bad matchups than other Volc sets, but I'm unwilling to dedicate more time to research as A) I get rank competition anxiety that lets me play maybe 5 games at most per session and B) I'm in the midst of finals at uni.
To contribute to my discussion I want to discuss two of my replays.
Volc don't do shi-
I played extremely poorly this game, so that needs to be taken into consideration for this part of my analysis.
From preview, I figured that Volc would have a slightly rough game and need quite a few turns to set up quiver dances to be fully effective. In play, I bring volc in once and miss a wisp and that's it. I really had to get rid of Blissey, Glowking, and Kleavor for it to be effective. Plus, without Bug Buzz, I was very wary of the Woger matchup. There was a possibility of me bringing Volc in against Corv, but with Twave Blissey in the back, it wasn't effective. Although my play wasn't perfect, I felt that my overall goal was in a reasonable spot for the game: either get rid of the special walls so Volc could win, or get rid of Corv to take advantage of Great Tusk's decent matchup (not sure what I would've done against Woger before the setup race at the end).
As for self-criticism, I finally learned just how good Garg could be this game, so that was amazing. I think the biggest oversight in this game was just how good Ghold was and I prob could've spent more time in with him. Bliss, Corv, Glowking, and Kleavor were pretty deadweight against it. I need to learn more about Enamorous to determine how my team can matchup against it and any advice would be appreciated.
Volc absolutely balls
Man, this game really shows just how dominant Volc can be. For my skill level (read: time investment), I was punching above my weight against this opponent. And I don't think they could do a single thing against Volc. We both could've played better in the Volc vs Dragonite matchup, but once I won that part, I won the game. Morning Sun gave me more space to setup and I would have so many opportunities to fish for Fiery Dance boosts (I'm shocked I didn't get a single one). Volc won the game as soon as it beat Dragonite and my opponent couldn't really do anything about it.
Although both games are imperfect, I think both reasonably show the dual nature of Volcarona and its matchup fishiness. I think it's important to note that I think this is not the perfect Volc set (though it was perfect for the second game), so the roadblocks experienced in the first game could be beat with a different set (tera ground maybe?).
In conclusion, I think that this dual nature of Volcarona leads to less skillful counterplay from the opponent and if I had the time or drive, I would likely vote ban on Volc. However, as shown by previous suspects, opinions can change and as stronger arguments are made compared to mine here, I feel a stronger consensus can be made. I look forward to reading through the Volc suspect thread when it opens!