Personally the reason I am not enjoying the format as much as before is that there are no options rn. There were some heat squads I was running with Rotom-W + Garchomp
This is my main issue with the tier. There's no real room for exploration of team comps when Hazard Stack is undeniably one of the strongest compositions you can put together, with Samu, Ghold, +1 effectively making it extremely difficult to keep hazards off if your team doens't have 2, or even 3 at times slots dedicated to "fuck off already" of shit on the ground.
It *really* constraints team building, boots spam isn't fun and neither is having to make sure you have Tusk+1 to ensure the sheer ease of which spikes or rocks are laid are kept down. Saying this as one who doesn't hate tusk all that much, I just find it really boring how centralized the meta is around hazards and how select mons hasten the issue with their existence.
EDIT: Thinking about it, this is also why I find the more 'fun' mons so terrible at once as well. While all mons are hazard weak, some really do suffer more than others and being unable to effectively sure you can keep them off the field to actually use them sucks. I hate Boots Meow! I hate Boots Meow!
Honestly the last time I felt the meta was actively fun and competitive was when mixed chomp was everywhere and stuff like Sub + NP Rotom-W was a valid wincon lol. I know metas settle and the optimization kicks in but that's where everything started going downhill. There were moments where we should have said, "wait, so all my mons needs boots p much?" and did something about it then. It's been a very difficult gen to balance because there's so many cases of unhealthy mons instead of just obviously broken ones. We have the tools and the processes in place to remove Chien-Pao and Cheese-Yu- we lowkey don't have that for Gholdengo.
Offensive mons don't want to wear boots most of the time. So if you have an offensive mon as soft check to stop a sweep, it has to come in at 75%, which means it now might be in range to be KO. This just makes sweeping or putting giant holes in teams even easier.
Tera doesn't give lower tier mons a chance to shine, it gatekeeps them harder than ever because the highest tier mons can do it better. It doesn't matter if your lower tier mon gets a SD off, your opp just Teras as well and stops your off-meta/heat team in its tracks. Booster Energy doesn't help with the lack of team diversity either. It's pointless to try and use something off-meta with a scarf because Val still outspeeds. Moon has a free LO installed so good luck on anything that isn't one of its few dedicated checks/counters. Your off-meta soft check might have worked, but with the 1.3x from BE it's now a clean OHKO. Then you just have Gambit, good luck trying to bring anything heat with this thing around. Fallen 5 +2 Sucker Punch obliterates basically everything.
I think this is a really good train of thought. The meta feels solved in a weird way, and we just MU fish with our strategies. Or not solved just like dying, or the innovation is suffering. The only "innovation" I see is just "which Tera is Gambit running this week." Between hazards, the insane power creep, tera, maybe TB and/or BE... something is suffocating the joy of loading up games in SV.
Before Palafin, we should really look into an "unhealthy" suspect. Not broken, just unfortunately having more of a negative effect than a positive one. I don't have the answer but personally things like Ghold, Gambit, BE, TB, Ceaseless Edge, etc. should have much more attention on their impact in regards to tier health than dropping some Ubers cheese. Again, for example, Garg isn't broken, but it's the easiest to pilot win-con I've ever seen in my many years of Showdown. Is that healthy? Does Ceaseless add more than it takes away? Does TB open up more options than it restricts? This is perspective I think the tier needs.
Lowering the power level, addressing unhealthy elements in the builder, and fixing the hazard situation should take precedent above all else. Not saying all or even any of these will magically fix SV- but I think the lack of options with team comps and strategies, and the circumstances that dictate these restraints, is a great place to start. SV's problems aren't going to fix themselves.