Okay, the "don't ban Char X" has been beaten. I haven't seen a lot of pro-don't ban MeGallade posts. Figured I would write one.
First of all, as a disclaimer, I believe Mega Gallade
can be broken. However, a couple conditions have to be met.
First, it needs Swords Dance or a similar setup move? Why? Mega Gallade simply doesn't have the ridiculous raw stopping power people make it out to have. Yes, 165 base attack is quite nice. That's all well and dandy until you consider: "What has the natural bulk/investment capability to eat this?" Many things do, provided it's not weak to Close Combat (although if you honestly expect something to live a CC from this that's kind of stupid, for lack of a better word. That's like expecting Dragon types to eat Kyurem-Black's Outrage.) I'm going to use Mawile (normal, not mega) as an example.
Also, from here on out in general, I will be assuming a non-setup Mega Gallade for purposes of explanation unless I state the Gallade is indeed setup.
252 Atk Gallade Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Mawile: 268-316 (88.1 - 103.9%) -- 25% chance to OHKO
Okay, Mega Gallade has a 25% chance to OHKO. That's nice. But we have to remember, Mawile has 50 Base HP and 85 Base Defense, which puts it in the defense tier of a Lucario aka the Frail as Fuck tier, and yet Gallade fails to OHKO with its strongest STAB. This tells us that Gallade's raw power actually comes from taking advantage of coverage and super effective moves, which returns us to my You're not eating Outrage from Kyu-B as a Dragon argument. Don't expect your Fighting types to live STAB Psycho Cuts. They won't. Just like you shouldn't bank on your Fighting types eating Zen Headbutt from a Mega Metagross. They won't.
The next condition for brokenness is proper team support. Before we go over this, let's look at Mega Gallade's stats:
We can see Mega Gallade also has, quite frankly, bad natural bulk. Despite decent and solid Defense and Special Defense respectively, a low HP stat can make or break a Pokemon. It's typing does it little favors, with resistances to Fighting and Rock (which are move types you probably won't be using vs the respective types Gallade is on,) with a weakness to Ghost, Flying, and Fairy, and neutrality to everything else. When we combine these two factors together, it means Gallade is going to be wounded from any attacks it takes; it's a glass cannon. And with a glass cannon, unless it is intrinsically broken, which Gallade is not, you require proper team support. I'll examine the aspects of the support each type can give Mega Gallade.
Fighting
Fighting is a great type known for strong physical attacks and great offensive pressure, but
severely lacking in defensive pressure. With access to powerhouses like Terrakion, Keldeo, Breloom, Infernape, and yes, Mega Gallade, it's famed for that offensive pressure. On the defensive side, Fighting has few boons. Cobalion, Conkeldurr, and Scrafty(ish) make up what Fighting can effectively utilize defensively. Even then, Cobalion is often the only dedicated wall, which is rather specially weak, and Conk and Scrafty are often relegated to Bulky Offense. All of these defense mons have decent Physical Defense, but are left lacking in Special Defense, with Scrafty still being decent, which leads me to my next point here.
So looking here, we can see a pure fighting type has weaknesses to Psychic, Flying, and Fairy, and resistances to Bug, Dark, and Rock. Two of its weaknesses, Fairy and Psychic, are not only prominent coverage types but are predominantly special, meaning you can't abuse that Physical bulk you have. Sure, Cobalion is neutral to both, but Cobalion has no natural recovery, has poor-okayish special defense, and the Steel typing does Cobalion few favors in terms of weakness pressure, as it gains weaknesses to 3 of the most common attacking types.
Speaking of weaknesses, dual typings with the Fighting type are typically weakness heavy, but also resistance heavy. More importantly, few dual typings will alleviate the natural weaknesses of fighting, meaning you often end up with a moshpit of the weaknesses (and resistances) of the two types. Take, for example, Terrakion, one of the precious few Flying neutrailities in Fighting. What does it do get this Fighting neutrality? It exchanges it. For
5 weaknesses. To make this weakness situation worse, the common Fighting types often end up with extra shared weaknesses, and still no neutrality to Psychic or Fairy, the main bane. Scrafty may take Psychic moves, but it can't eat Fairy for shit. Compile that with low speed, and you really need to hope the opponent doesn't have DGleam.
Fighting also has very poor natural recovery, often relying on Drain Punch, which will really only help vs things you are already advantaged against.
Fighting also has few team support options. Aside from Spore on Breloom and Thunder Wave on Cobalion, you rarely see status, and hazard clearing (not a big need excluding with webs) is pretty restricted as well.
So where am I going with all of this? Considering how Mega Gallade cannot take hits, you need switchins, something Fighting simply cannot provide for Mega Gallade due to it being such an offensively oriented type. Something has to take that Para, or eat that DGleam or take that Will-o. Sure, you could try to keep up offensive pressure, and frankly, that's a great argument, but that disregards clean switches into huge threats or things actually taking a hit. For example, lets return to Mawile. Mawile can eat the strongest CC on Fighting. Consider intimidate, and you have an almost guaranteed Play Rough and (maybe) KO for the Mawile user. What this is doing is it's creating situations where something
must die or be crippled, which can break a Hyperoffensive team completely. This situation isn't terribly hard to setup and can be done with a variety of typings. Sableye, Mawile, Skarmory, Weezing, Lanturn, Rotom-Wash, just to begin the list.
To finish this part off, Fighting doesn't have the defensive capability nor the support cabability to be able to support Mega Gallade really well.
Psychic
Where do I start? Psychic is known for being one of the most versatile, powerful, and, in my opinion potentially broken types in the metagame. With access to Megas like Megagross, MeGallade, and Mega Yoga Pants, and other hard hitters like Latios, Gardevoir, Victini, and Alakazam, it's able to keep up offensive pressure with ease. On the defensive and supportive side, Psychic has access to some of the most formidable pokemon in the Metagame like Slowbro, Mew, Latias, Jirachi, hell, even Wobbuffet. I doubt I need to explain the merits of such a wide and powerful selection of Pokemon. So what sets Psychic apart from Fighting in the support game?
Offensively, Metagross, Victini, and Latios all hit hard and fast. V-Create and Draco Meteor are known to be OHKO machines. Metagross uses its higher bulk to utilize sets like a Weakness Policy set, and/or bulky offensive, with access to priority Bullet Punch and other bruising moves. While I wouldn't say Psychic is as great in the Offensive game as Fighting, it's certainly good enough combined with the other aspect:
Defensively and supportively, Psychic takes the cake as potentially the best type. Slowbro is a fantastic physical wall. Mew's vast movepool allows it to perform a variety of functions including physical defense, and full support. Latias has Wishing out the wazoo, Jirachi is a hax god. Meloetta provides the singular most valuable typing niche of all: immunity to Ghost.
How do all of these Pokemon work in conjunction with Mega Gallade? First of all, Mega Gallade actually has switchins! Meloetta can take ghost moves, and Metagross is a fantastic partner for Fairy and Flying type beatdown. Slowbro and Mew can both eat hits and deal out the status critical for lowering the speed tier (para) or attack power (burn) of an enemy with ease. Gardevoir handles Sableye. Latias can provide health for Mega Gallade should it be injured. Both Mew and Latias can remove status conditions from Gallade and help it return to the battlefield in peak condition, ready to rip you a new one. Nearly all of these commodities are things Fighting simply doesn't have the luxury to have.
Bottom line: Psychic has ludicrous team support that easily complements Mega Gallade to give it the potential to become broken.
The third, and final, condition for brokenness is coverage to kill everything you can't. Mega Gallade has access to a solid movepool; however, you typically see the same general skeleton of
Mega Gallade
Jolly
252 atk, 252 spe
-Swords Dance
-Close Combat/Drain Punch
-Psycho Cut/Ice Punch/Knock Off/ Shadow Sneak
-Psycho Cut/Ice Punch/Knock Off/ Shadow Sneak
So as we can see here, Mega Gallade has 2 moveslots taken up by SD and a Fighting STAB of your choice. That leaves you with 2 moveslots, and 4 moves. What do? This is a very good example of 4MSS or
4 Move
slot
Syndrome. Mega Gallade has the potential to eat through the whole metagame, but cannot do so with a single set. It has to chose the coverage options that are best for the team. Just with this, considering nothing else, the maximum number of types Gallade can hit super effectively is 11 (the combination of Fighting, Psychic, and Ice, which not everybody runs.) More often than not, on fighting, Gallades have Psycho Cut, which is indispensable for Poison, and Knock Off, for extra coverage on Psychic types to abuse neutrality and utility in general. These moves, with the exception of Psycho Cut, are often redundant coverage. Many Fighting types have access to Ice Punch and Knock off, leaving Psycho Cut as the niche coverage type. On Psychic, Knock off, a rarer commodity, Ice Punch, and Shadow Sneak are all common.
As an individual Pokemon. Mega Gallade has great potential. It's the definition of a glass cannon setup sweeper, possessing the setup and coverage needed to wail on 11 types and sweep. On the flip side, Mega Gallade runs for the school nurse when anything faster or stronger or capable of taking a hit. Also, smacking Mega Gallade with the ban hammer because it "Set up and swept you" is a bad argument. All setup sweepers do that. If you play in such a way that allows the opponent to set up their sweeper, that's a fault in your battle, not the brokenness of the pokemon. Now, being able to set up on everything is broken, I won't lie. Many setup sweepers are able to setup on a good portion of the metagame due to factors like typing, bulk, ability, or support. Notable examples are Char-X and Dragonite, both great setup sweepers that can set up in a large variety of situations. Mega Gallade doesn't share that trait. Its typing is meh-ok at best, its ability is super niche, the bulk is negligent, and that leads us to the fourth: support. Psychic can support Gallade to give it great opportunities to setup. Fighting on the other hand, cannot. The way Fighting does things, even with Mega Gallade, reminds me of the Kamikaze fighters of Japan. You go in, you fight until you die, or somebody who dies slightly less takes a bullet for you and you can go in and fight to the death another day. That's not really a great way to get setup opportunities.
tl;dr Mega Gallade possesses qualities that can make it broken through a combination of its stats and movepool, but requires support to fully unlock its potential. Fighting does not possess the capability to do so, but Psychic, with its godly support game, can bring out and exploit Mega Gallade's potential to the fullest. As such I feel a
Typeban on Psychic, maybe suspect on Fighting is the best course on action when dealing with Mega Gallade.
