1: What is a Pokemon/set you think will see a rise in usage?
Zapdos. It takes hits well from Torn-T—even +2 LO Heat Wave isn’t oneshotting, and Zapdos threatens to cripple it for clicking Knock or Uturn while doing good damage with Volt Switch. Ting-Lu, while still extremely common, has seen declining usage because builds are dedicating more resources to breaking through it and because robust hazard removal to enable Waterpon’s longevity has been an increasingly common aspect of recent builds. That same hazard removal can be leveraged by Zapdos to run Helmet, Lefties, or AV, or just to allow it to absorb Knock Off while threatening to cripple enemies (I would also suggest giving Yache Berry a try—being able to cripple or kill Darkrai, Weavile, Kyurem, and boosted Tusk without using tera can be extremely valuable and it allows you to tech tera Dragon or Grass for SD Woger while still having ice insurance, or Water while having freeze-dry insurance). That same hazard removal ALSO tends to rely heavily on Great Tusk, which Zapdos counters while also really appreciating ground types being removed; while some teams will stack up on ground types due to…multiple of them being really fucking good mons, that can be exploited elsewhere on the team with other rising stars like Rillaboom or well-established threats like Kyurem, Darkrai, Tusk, Woger, Primarina, and Hamurott. I could see Heat Wave being teched more often to deal with Treads seeing as its presence in the hazard metagame has grown lately, maybe even the occasional Weather Ball with Glowking to exploit Gliscor.
2: What is a Pokemon/set you think will see a fall in usage?
Honestly, Dragapult. It’s still Pult, it’ll stay good, don’t get me wrong. But I expect it to see less usage for a few reasons. The current meta has a bunch of checks to it baked in like Kingambit and Ting Lu. Some of the rising stars and many established threats (Heatran, Tyranitar, Dragonite, Raging Bolt, Iron Treads) are good at taking a hit and firing back hard while the biggest recent winner in Torn-T will do the above while healing off chip with regen. Its boots set runs into a lot more Gholds, AV Hatts, and Ceruledges than it would like, all of which don’t care about wisp, can take on unboosted hex, and easily take or even exploit dragon coverage and uturn; these 3 make frequent appearances on veil, an archetype that boots Pult is supposed to do well into thanks to infiltrator. Defensively, while it provides speed control, spinblocking, and a short-term check to Zamazenta and Waterpon, and while it is adept at generating momentum thanks to uturn and status, it is more liable than ever to get overwhelmed by the threats it is meant to check. As the meta moves towards fatter structures with more “trade merchants” and just generally sturdier offense, Pult can find itself unable to stay healthy for long enough to pull it’s weight. As a spinblocker, it faces stiff competition from Gholdengo, Pecharunt, and Sinistcha, all of which are better at spinblocking itself (not that I am saying Pech or Sini are better than Pult overall, though I do think Sini is underrated, but that’s for another day); spinblocking is also itself a bit worse than it used to be since more teams are opting towards other forms of hazard control like Hatt and Gweezing. Specs is a bit of a liability against Torn-T teams where it can be scouted multiple times without yielding much progress; these structures tend to include mons like Ting Lu, Gweezing, and Heatran which can take advantage of some or all of specs Pult’s coverage options. Band hogs tera while struggling with Gambit and to a lesser extent Gweezing. Again, it’s still a great mon with great role compression, and it can be supported appropriately to handle longer games or to alleviate its defensive responsibilities, but it gets blanked a lot for something as high-ranked as it is and faces down a more hostile meta than usual right now.
3: What do you think will be the best archetype by the end of the tournament?
BO/Balance still. Would love to be contrarian if for no other reason than it making for interesting discussion, but I don’t see any reason for the meta to deviate from these archetypes atm. I could see heightened usage of sun, TR, and paraspam, and we all know veil’s been popping up a lot lately, but I can’t see any of these becoming THE dominant archetype.
Bonus: what do you think will be suspected after the tournament, if any?
Waterpon would be first up, both in the sense that I see it as the top priority and in that I can see it garnering sufficient support. I don’t think anything except maybe Gholdengo has greater influence on the metagame, it is the best breaker in the tier bar none whose main defensive contributions are to invalidate almost a whole type’s worth of offensive threats and to
kind of switch into Tusk and Treads. Speaking of which, its ability to come in on Tusk and Treads is itself a contribution to the hazard metagame by allowing it to 1) limit their usable turns, 2) keep them out, and 3) flat out exploit the use of spin. This, alongside it using spikes effectively (again, without letting in spinners) is a big part of bolstering its own effectiveness on hazard stack teams that can’t slot in robust hazard removal—it may not appreciate opposing hazards, and much of the robust hazard removal we see IS as a method of enabling Waterpon, but it still routes quite well in games where hazards are a dominant force (please please consider this point next time you’re tempted to say “Waterpon is countered by hazards”).
And no, Mola does not become broken if Waterpon is banned, ffs.
. I feel like every time this mon "falls off" it always comes back and its easy to see why.
? It's still good but recent metagame trends have been unfavorable to it for sure.
will be suspected, if people don't find tera blast problematic enough I don't see them finding 
has a high chance of getting suspected since it's by far the most controversial pokemon that hasn't been suspected yet, and recently it's begun to experiment with new options like taunt and synthesis that will likely continue to see usage throughout SCL, making it even harder to deal with.
pivot teams being strong to get them in
will be close to follow. AV mola is going to be the dominant mola set at high elo
we all love it when some random low-tier mon gets an established foothold in ou, so i'm kinda sad to have to say this, but araquanid is definitely on the road back to nu. webs are in a really rough spot right now with all the bo and balance teams running around, and everyone has some easy answer for araq these days. webs thrives on teams that aren't prepped for dealing with the webs lead, so i think we'll see the archetype leaning towards ribombee again in the future until that becomes the websmon that gets prepped for
I'm just a silly