so in order to further explain why life orb is washed, i'm going to go through all of the things that run life orb in this meta (according to last month's stats), why they run them, and why i'd rather not run them most of the time:
- the damage boost from this is actually quite nice for all-out-attacker zama, and combined with tera stellar it can be legitimately terrifying in the late game, but it seriously cuts into the mon's longevity. this is perfectly workable in the late game, but aoa zamazenta's so broadly useful throughout the span of a game that hazard immunity just generally ends up putting in more work than the damage boost. personally, if i'm looking for a damage boost on zama, i'm either running expert belt (its coverage is good enough to make this worth it) or putting a band on and going for breaker instead
- life orb is neat on mixed valiant where booster energy on an attacking stat wouldn't suffice, but mixed valiant works much better in its anti-offense booster speed role, and pivot sets that don't like booster at all would usually rather go for boots because, well, they're pivot sets in a boots gen
- i'll admit this can actually be pretty solid with life orb if you're going for a mixed set, or you're running physical with sucker punch and don't want to end up being locked into it, or something like that. but with pult, i usually prefer to pick a side and run the choice item for it, and if i'm mixed i'd rather just go for boots. yeah this is gonna come up a lot
- this generally serves the same purpose as expert belt but is much less prediction-reliant and better on neutral hits. but if i'm gonna be running a set like that i'm probably hitting most of the meta supereffectively anyway and i'd rather just go all in on the predictions
- when you have... wait, seriously? people are running life orb on this?
why?
- life orb is neat for those superpower contrary sets sometimes because the extra damage on top of enamorus's kinda insane coverage can wreck shit. but the aforementioned insane coverage means that she can just go for expert belt instead
- i'm gonna be honest i don't know why this is even in ou by usage recently. like i can see the factors that put it there, but every time i use the mon it feels like dead weight whose job can be accomplished better by ting or kyu
- just use the specs. this thing is built to not
have to switch moves
- now this one is actually quite interesting because grassy terrain partially offsets the life orb recoil, which minimizes the main drawback of the item. but band is just generally better because many of rillaboom's moves are fine even if you're locked in—u-turn, knock off, and the absolute nuclear bomb that is wood hammer are all extremely broad-spectrum clicks
there are other mons that run life orb in ou, but none of them are actually in the tier by usage and this post is running long already so i won't include them. surprisingly (though not actually very surprisingly), the only magic guard mon in the tier doesn't actually run life orb at all
While I think it's gaining some popularity, sub Ogerpon-W is still considered unconventional and can catch some opponents off guard.
raging bolt instead, it also utilises grassy terrain reduced bp on certain ground moves. Although I'll say it's not as efficient now due to 
ting-lu and 
dragonite usage rising right now, I guess 
volcanion is in a similar boat but it suffers more against dragonite compared to ting-lu.
