Firstly, solgeleo doesn't have to run stabs on its set. You can prob drop psychic stab as everything that it hits doesn't like to take knock off. Sunsteel, morning sun, knock, e-quake/cc would prob be enough.
Ok. You can knock corv or mola or gliscor and then they come in on you for ever. Those are just examples off the top of my head and 2 of them absolutely don't care about being knocked, while the last can make do with taking hazards due to regen if you don't let too many hazards go up.
In fact any non-band Solgaleo physical set is COMPLETELY hopeless into Gliscor (and band variants just get scouted before going to a more adequate counter) :
252 Atk Solgaleo Sunsteel Strike vs. 244 HP / 252 Def Gliscor: 115-136 (32.6 - 38.6%)
I somehow forgot to mention it in the first post but yeah, that's yet another very common defensive mon it has huge trouble making progress against.
Secondly, steel/psychic has some useful traits. It is has multiple resistances in grass, ice, quad psychic resist, dragon resist, steel resist and fairy resist. This means a lot of mons in the tier it can soft check really easily. Kyurem is setup fodder, hatterene is setup fodder, valiant is food, glowking is food etc.
Yes it does have the usual steel resists; But given the rest of his defensive profile you'll never want to run solgaleo as your steel over dengo, gambit, corv, crown, etc. There are many other competing steel types and you usually don't wanna run more than one or 2 on one team.
also disagree with the notions that these common ou threats are setup "fodder":
- First the only way for SolG to set up is calm mind, which given his base offenses and the moves he has to work with, is slow and easy to stop or outright wall; Its best option for psychic special stab is... well psychic, which means no psynoise to annoy walls or psyshock to beat blissey. Then you have to pick between flamethrower and focus blast for your second move (as running psychic+flashcannon would make you even more walled by a bunch of mons like gambit, hsamu, corv, iron crown just to name a few) with both options giving you trouble into some mons. You have to do this because you need msun as your 4th move on a cm set.
- Then let's get to these mons you call fodder. Kyurem can threaten solg easily if it's tera fire or tera ground blast dd (both sets have been rising in popularity on ladder) and special versions can hit it with epower. Hatterene can cripple you with nuzzle and if you're a cm variant (the only kind that you can "setup" on) then it just spams mystical fire on you forever since your coverage of psy + fire or psy + fighting can't hit it at all.
- Iron Valiant can encore, knock or dbond vs you.
- Glowking can threaten you with twave into chilly into something that forces you out.
And these are probably some of the mons Solgaleo deals with best... See how in practice he doesn't threaten shit?
It also can run knock to make progress against fatter builds or just be a wallbreaker itself with future sight, knock, sunsteel and e-quake just off the top of my head.
I did mention this in my post but yea these kind of sets are just food for the molas, corvs, gliscors and others. Mixed fsight might be interesting but then you lose msun so you just get chipped over the course of the game, which means it could be usable (theoretically, with this ONE set) but not super great or broken. Which imo is another argument in favor of dropping it !
97 speed is mid, yes, but it outspeeds a lot of shit. Kyurem specifically, which is a really good mon in the tier. No base 100s (zapdos doesn't go max), meaning that it doesn't matter too much. Solgeleo's main draw is that you don't know wtf the set is, as it can run physical, special or mixed, while having reliable recovery in morning sun.
The thing is that unlike kyurem not knowing what set it runs isn't a problem. It's not threatening to win after 1 dd like kyurem so you can just go into a safe answer (again, corv, mola, etc) and if it starts setting up you go to a more appropriate answer (something that outspeeds and 2hkoes it). Even at +2 you're not ohkoing much with psychic+coverage move (and you're outsped so you're taking damage before hitting). Example :
32 Atk Cinderace Pyro Ball vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Solgaleo: 288-338 (69.3 - 81.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+2 252 SpA Solgaleo Psychic vs. 224 HP / 0 SpD Cinderace: 339-399 (94.9 - 111.7%) -- 68.8% chance to OHKO
You're not even sure to KO cinderace after it puts you at 30-20, and then anything can pick you off. And that's bulky ace, offensive ace would do much better. If you're running max hp solg then you're opening yourself to being outsped by even more mons that can threaten you (Samurott-Hisui, Kyurem for example). In practice even if you let it set up twice to scout the set, you're not letting it do that much work (unlike raging bolt which wins games if it sets up twice).
Solgeleo's main reason to use it over glowking is that it has such a great defensive typing, glowking's typing isn't bad by any means, but it can wall a lot more mons a lot easier, such as raging bolt and glimmora. Knock off already means that it is never going to be passive as nothing besides maybe gliscor likes taking it.
...Walling raging bolt??? Buddy...
+1 252+ SpA Protosynthesis Raging Bolt Thunderbolt vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Solgaleo: 280-330 (58.5 - 69%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Ain't no wall here... Especially when you consider that unlike gking you don't get free recovery for switching out. Once again, actually HAVING TO CLICK MORNING SUN makes this much less durable than Slowking-G over the course of a game and makes prospect of a defensive pivot SolG very very hard to make work in practice because you give up enormous tempo when clicking recovery before pivoting out.
Even glimmora isn't exactly "walled": 252 SpA Glimmora Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Solgaleo: 168-198 (35.1 - 41.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
In a situation where Slowking-G can just come in on a weak hit, and either immediately click chilly and gain huge momentum, or set up fsight first then chilly out and generate huge pressure, Solgaleo will often have to just click Morning Sun first, which gives the opponent a turn to get ahead of you and go to something that 2hkoes it (like ace, landorus, etc). This means now if you click Fsight you're taking half and you'll have to hard switch instead of TPing out.
Dondozo HATES taking knock off, which means it is never switching into solgeleo. Walled by pex for dropping psyfangs is a meme, that mon is limited to stall and you can easily run e-quake as that also hits ghold for big damage after knock off. Tusk and zama don't like taking knock off.
But Dondozo does not NEED to switch into knock off variants. As I've demonstrated earlier, knock variants have to drop crucial coverage which means it'll likely walled by another mon on your team, especially since teams that run Dozo tend to be very fat teams with several potential answers for a Physical SolG. Also no I'm sorry but pex is still a very relevant OU mons and it can see play outside of stall, for example with eject button as a momentum grabber or with tspikes on some balance structures. Don't diss the marine goat.
The rest of your post mentions why SolG is possibly a good calm minder because it has recovery unlike rbolt, and better bulk. But raging bolt has 10x the power, which means it doesn't NEED to set up more times, so it doesn't NEED the recovery. Sure having to come in once and break or sweep because else you lose booster is more restrictive, but the difference in power makes up for it. In practice Solgaleo can come in as many times as it wants, Psychic + flamethrower is not winning the game off of 113 spatk. You yourself mentioned that that combo's walled by dengo and samurott-hisui...
Then you show the same calcs I did, claiming I understated Solgaleo's bulk; But being able to always live one hit is not good enough to be a scary bulky offense threat or a defensive pivot; else Sudowoodo would be OU.
I believe I've answered all your points and as such I will repeat myself;
SOLGALEO IS GARBAGE. FREE SOLGALEO !!! GIVE YOUR LIKES TODAY !!
PS: Link back to the original unban solgaleo post, for those that have missed it :)