Sorry to contribute to the ban talk some more (and the following mass of solid text), but I wanted to throw in my 2 cents on the dragapult discussion (I had an earlier post which extensively outlined my feelings on the slowtwins, and I largely still agree with my statement, in that I think they could easily tip into broken territory but right now I am ok with them existing; Volcarona I have mixed feelings on which are not fully formed so I don’t want to comment on it much).
This may be a hot take, based on the posts here, but
I honestly don’t think Dragapult is broken.
I mean, look, it is an amazing pokemon. It’s almost certainly the best offensive pokemon in the tier, possibly the best in general (I do think Lando is overall still the clear winner, it’s just too useful, but I understand people who think Pult also belongs in S tier even if I disagree). I also agree that it does have few (if any) hard counters, and the best overall answers can always be u-turned on.
However, while it is centralizing (as you would expect of any top tier threat, mind you), I personally do not find it to be as constrictive as many here seem to. I think part of the reason for this is that while it lacks a very distinct all-around hard counter, it has a plethora of widely usable checks.
I am gonna cover specs first and in the most detail by far, because I think it is the most splashable and centralizing set for sure, but I will briefly talk about boots and set-up sets afterwards.
Beyond the two best counters to specs Pult, blissey and toxapex (mixed or sp def pex is best obviously, especially with rocky helmet, but hell even fully phys def pex can scout a hit, eat anything besides draco, and either hit back or double switch out and heal with regenerator), there are several common defensive options. Provided you are sp def invested (a little more on this towards the end of the post), mandibuzz, clef, corv, and hippowdon are all solid, widely used checks with reliable recovery. Beyond this, heatran, tapu fini, AV melmetal, swampert (who I think gets slightly underrated/misunderstood right now but I think I’ll make a separate post about my fave gen 3 starter at some point), and the rare but viable sp def lando can all stomach an attack once or twice and hit back decently. Additionally, I want to make a special mention of AV slowking-g and the rarer AV regen reuniclus and AV tangrowth; obviously they are not the best answers for sure, but while both have a certain move to watch out for (shadow ball for the first two and fire coverage for tangrowth), they can still scout to take a hit and then swap out to another answer while using regenerator.
As for offensive checks, you of course have zeraora, but for scarfers you have Kartana, Fini, Lando (lando knock off has a 50% chance to one shot 0 HP/ 0 Def dragapult from full, and it’s guaranteed to kill if it’s either taken a round of rocks or a single u-turn from lando already), and the less common scarf Lele. Bisharp and Weavile of course are threats as well, and boots tapu koko with roost can stomach one shadow ball in a pinch, has the potential to threaten pult out with dazzling gleam (you need a bit of chip to kill, but after one round of rocks it’s a 75% roll in your favor), follow it with a u-turn to retain momentum, and has the ability to stay healthy in the long game.
It’s also worth pointing out that Pult’s most spammable move, shadow ball, despite hitting everything neutrally, is not actually able to one-shot many offensive threats, and its other attacking options (usually draco meteor with fire or electric coverage), while potent, can be very easily taken advantage of.
This is not to mention several more niche but viable answers, notably bulky togekiss, sp def gastrodon, and umbreon defensively (I know the latter two get memed on a bit but I do think they are somewhat underrated if specific answers which have some other applications besides just checking dragapult, unlike wigglytuff which is actually a joke lol), and mamoswine, snorlax, moltres-g, and aegislash more offensively (for an example of the last two in action check out the team Separation used in their WCOP game versus Serene Grace,
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ou-560155).
Now, for so many of these, the common refrain is that dragapult can just u-turn out. Yes, this is true. However, I feel like people are conflating specs and boots pult here.
If it is specs pult, then u-turn is not totally free, because you can still punish it with hazards, and it is fully vulnerable to every single one of them. It’s worth noting that pult is not super bulky to begin with, and while it is crazy fast, after a few rounds of hazards, helmet, sand, etc., it will get worn down. This will tend to bring it within the range of priority from Weavile (jolly ice shard does 49% min without a boosting item) and Rillaboom (band adamant grassy glide does 47% min), and in the extreme even Crawdaunt (adamant LO aqua jet does 23% min) and Urshifu (jolly band Aqua Jet does 19% min). In my experience, this gives it a lot less opportunity to keep coming in and wreaking havoc, especially compared to fast boots pivots like koko, zeraora, and tornadus, and so often
I find that one of the best ways to manage specs pult is to keep your hazards up consistently.
Furthermore, it has been brought up in this thread before, but
given that Pult is choiced, protect is a great tech to take advantage of it (as well as with any other choiced mon). I want to point to the Triangles v Clickflash game in WCOP for an example of this (
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ou-558332; here I could pull from some of my own ladder replays but I think a high stakes tournament game is more convincing lol). On the whole this game was a massive hawlucha sweep lol, but in the early game you can see Clickflash use protect stealth rocks lead garchomp as a great scout against Pult for an HO team. Other users of protect I have encountered myself are heatran, ferrothorn, and clefable (not to mention baneful bunker pex and kings shield aegislash). While these aren’t always the safest switches into pult, they can be brought in against pult on a pivot move, scout its attack safely, and then respond accordingly. I understand that despite many of these listed mons being common and viable, protect is still a niche choice to fit on a move set, but it remains an undervalued tool regardless, and can be useful outside of checking just dragapult.
Ok, now moving on to status boots sets; if you lack blissey or a cleric, I think that this set can actually be more potent against balance and bulky offense teams than specs, but it isn’t nearly as good against offense and stall (although most good stall handles all dragapult well imo). However, I doubt that anyone thinks this set is pushing pult over the edge. Getting status’d sucks, but most of specs pults previous defensive checks remain viable against this set (it even gains a few due to its usual lack of coverage), and it loses its immediate damage output versus offense. The main pain of these types of sets in my opinion is that they pivot forever without taking hazards, but even so, the overall damage output of non-specs pult isn’t too bad to deal with, and once it reveals the status of choice between burn and paralysis, there is a good chance you will have a mon on your team that swaps in well.
Lastly, I want to talk about the physical boosting sets. I do think these are viable and can very strong, but honestly, I have rarely been caught off guard by one of these. They are almost exclusively used on HO teams. Is DD pult a monster on these teams? Absolutely, but you can see it coming a mile away just by the team comp, and most solid physical walls can handle it so long as you keep them healthy (obviously this is often more easily said then done, but I think that is less about dragapult being broken and more about the fact that it is hard to play well against good HO players lol). If anything, I have sometimes been surprised when the dragapult on the opposing HO team ends up being specs instead of DD. I don’t want to say that DD sets are unviable outside of HO, but they are certainly much rarer, and I personally don’t think it is nearly as effective unless you have several other breakers ripping holes beforehand for dragapult to take advantage of.
To summarize everything, I think that while dragapult is a dominant force in the metagame, and it lacks many universal hard counters, there are several common checks, both offensive and defensive, that teams can incorporate to respond to it in a variety of ways. I want to stress that its checks are often broadly viable (as compared to water absorb mons and Dracovish), and that there are not just 2 or 3 of them (as compared to Urshifu-SS, where you basically needed clef or fini, and even then poison jab reads could end you). I don’t think this is too different from the premier offensive mons of previous generations, which often do not have a single hard counter to wall them. Specs pult is almost certainly the most oppressive set, but while it’s most spammable move, shadow ball, hits most things neutrally, it is not particularly strong overall against sp def invested mons that are not weak to it, it’s other most common options (Draco, fire coverage, and electric coverage) are strong but can be easily exploited with prediction or by a revenge killer, and even though it has u-turn it is still fully vulnerable to all three entry hazards, unlike the many fast boots pivots in the tier. Boots Pult sets spread status like cancer and are annoyingly evasive, but are much more easily walled, and DD sets are viable and deadly with the right support but are almost always restricted to one archetype, and can be answered by most common sturdy physical walls (not to mention that the most common set up variant can be walled indefinitely by a normal/fairy duo if hazards aren’t up, and by boots blissey + magic guard clefable even if they are). Additionally, while it can pivot out easily, it is not very bulky and has a fairly hard time coming in unless you bring it in on a slow pivot or after a KO, which I think limits the damage it can do so long as you are not playing too passively.
As a result of all this, I don’t think dragapult is worthy of being banned. I will admit that I have seen several teams that are exceedingly weak to it, but honestly I think that is because lots of balance/BO teams just slap on slowking as a special wall and call it a day ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Seriously guys lol, I don’t mean to call anybody out here, but I see tons of people posting bulky teams with full phys def or nearly totally phys def corv, clef, and/or mandibuzz, and their only special wall is a psychic type, and then they wonder why they are weak to Dragapult. If you are building a bulkier team, and include one decent sp def invested check that isn’t weak to shadow ball, and have either one back-up pinch defensive answer or a decent scarfer/zeraora, I think you can do fine. While you might say that this is using two pokemon to counter one, my response regarding specs pult is: 1) sure, but you have a decent variety options for both of these slots, and so it is likely you can fulfill this without tweaking your team too much if it is built solidly to start, 2) you
can get by with just one defensive check, if you accept that you will need to play very well and will occasionally lose games to bad hax, but you can say that about so many hard to wall threats in any metagame if you are just counting on one pokemon on your whole team to answer them (e.g. how many teams rely on just corv/skarm to handle rillaboom, which can be removed by magnezone, or have just one special wall for kyurem which can be frozen out of the game), and 3) if you do want that one slot hard answer, blissey and sp def pex exist, and if they u-turn on you, just keep hazards up and they will have to stop doing that eventually lol.
Obviously much of this can be hard to do in practice, and this is not to mitigate how threatening Dragapult is. It’s still incredibly dangerous, but you can definitely play around it skillfully and come out on top, and it has a wide assortment of soft answers that you can pick from to respond to it, besides the tried and true sp def pex and blissey.
All in all, I think this makes it comparable to top offensive metagame-definining mons of past gens which remain unbanned, and I will also add that I think infiltrator actually contributes to the health of the tier in my eyes by keeping screens and substitute abusers in check (sure this can be considered centralizing to an extent, but both of these strategies are still viable on the whole and it is nice to have a top tier offensive answer to them).
If you have bothered to read all of this, I hope that I have managed to provide a comprehensive case for anti-ban side to this argument, even if you remain unconvinced, and maybe give you a few ideas for how to better respond to dragapult if you struggle against it. If the meta develops more in the coming weeks (especially due to WCOP innovations/results), I would be willing to reconsider, but based on my own experience in the 1800+ ladder, both using and playing against pult, and the WCOP tournament replays I have seen so far,
I feel relatively confident in my opinion here that dragapult is not broken in the current OU metagame.
*[also choice band Dragapult is sometimes seen, but it’s super niche, and I don’t personally think it is that good outside the surprise factor. Is it possible it might steal a game from you out of nowhere because you don’t expect it? Yes, but you can say that about a million different random scarfers and band/specs mons so I don’t think it is worth considering seriously in these discussions]
*EDIT: I'm an idiot who totally neglected to bring up tyranitar once as another answer. Obviously it does get worn down overtime, but even if pult pivots out on you, it enables Sand Rush excadrill and dracozolt who can then annihilate it.