Now before I get into this post, I thought I should make a quick psa that at the time of me writing this, the ladder hasn't been updated to reflect the bans, so don't do what I did and use a team that gets demolished by one of the banned mons lol. Anyways, with that out of the way, I wanted to bring up a mom that appreciates these bans, and is slept on in general I feel.
Suicune @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 100 Def / 20 SpD / 136 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Scald
- Ice Beam
- Substitute
(Probably not the best ev spread, I just threw this spread together in like 5 minutes, so if there is a more ideal setup, please let me know.)
Evs allow cune to outspeed max speed jolly Breloom and Bisharp, and it is impossible for Amoongus to break a sub at +1 with Giga Drain, making the fungus set up bait. Hp is max for 101 hp substitutes, and the rest are put into Phys Def to shrug off physical attacks as best as possible, but just be aware that this is not a wall any means, and should not be treated as such.
Suicune is something I have not seen much of on the ladder, but I feel like it is very underrated. A lot of people are using sand balance, and it is a solid build type to be fair, but Suicune is nothing less than a massive pest for those teams. Since those teams often use grass types that counter Keldeo like Celebi and Amoongus to wall water types, Suicune can take advantage of that and sweep these teams with just a bit of support. Volcanion is obviously an issue, but even if the opponent has it, it isn't hard to pressure it, or make an easy double switch on the obviously incoming Volcanion into something that forces it out, causing it to take even more passive damage between hazards and possible sand. Cune is a pretty legit threat, and one I feel is not preapared for at all, and now that Serp and PZ are banned, I feel like Cune can really shine.
Just my pure observation, but it seems like many of these set-up Flying mons take advantage of Z-Fly too well. Technically, we could even use Z-Fly Bulk Up Torn and still have a bit of a problem to deal with. Could the broken element just be the Z-Fly / Z-Bounce aspect of each Pokemon rather than the Pokemon itself? I know this walks on the lines of a Complex ban, but this warrants more discussion in the future.
Rant, TLDR at the bottom of you don't feel like reading my eccentric and messy thoughts, or just don't want to read a wall of text because you have better things to do haha.
Tornadus and Talonflame can't boost their speed or get a moxie boost. Dragonite would most likely have gotten banned regardless of Z-Fly, and Slamence and Gyarados made it so that sacking something just made them stronger, and they could snowball extremely quickly. No other Z-Fly user even comes close to approaching that, and they can't be put into the same boat when they have much more issues, Staraptor would rather just use a Band and just kill everything without using your Z Move and having less power afterwards, because it won't hit nearly as hard without a Band, and won't decimate offense without a Scarf, so using Z Brave Bird is a waste, and you should not use it over other Z Move abusers because you don't need it. Talonflame has a piss poor attack stat, which is lower than Amoongus lol, not to mention it needs full health for priority, which means you need hazard control or you're stuck with a mediocre mon that is only useful for one turn and then it's not good, and sometimes even dead weight because frankly Talonflame is garbage without priority, and can't be compared to other mons that are actually good outside of Z Fly, and Tornadus cannot creep past any relevant scarfer and has no means of boosting its speed to remedy that issue outside of tailwind, which leaves it with one less coverage option because it will need two moves to boost both stats unlike dd users, and that isn't even permanent. Hell, Z-Fly torn is honestly not that good, you are either giving up on valuable coverage and your excellent special move pool to set up, not to mention that you'll be stuck with fly instead of a more useful move like acrobatics, and you can't set up as easily as Mence or Gyara because to you take more damage from attacks and have less resistances. Gyara and Mence had Moxie, and Dragonite had Multiscale which let it set up on almost everything in the tier if it had full health. They also just had to use dd for set up, and after said dd could outspeed even plenty of scarfers in Mence's case. They also had higher attack to boot, so I'd say that it's not Z-Fly that is the issue, but rather Mence and Gyara, who's not only had it, but decent bulk, high attack, and a means of boosting their speed and power at once, not to mention their snowball potential. Sorry for the rant, I'm just still salty about how good these things were lol. Also I'm on mobile, so there a probably spelling mistakes that I will not fix because I'm not editing this wall of text that you probably won't want to read.
TLDR: Mence and Gyara were better as abusers, Dnite was borked regardless, and the relevant Z Fly users have their own issues to begin with and cannot be compared to Mence and Gyara because they are not even close to as good, and aren't even that good in general except for Staraptor which should be using other things so that it can do its job for more than one turn.