You know, I was gonna make a really lengthy post about how Toxapex is a horribly balanced affront to game design, but to be honest, Spectrier and Urshifu might actually be worse. I really like breaking down game design choices, so might as well attempt to make it relevant to the conversation!
Sure, Pex can choose what it beats and has Knock Off for no reason except you suck, but Spectrier, too, can customize its sets to beat whatever it needs to. Some people even use Dark Pulse (which is very much not optimal) on the substitute set so it doesn’t get blanked by Chansey. Like, you think you have a hard stop to it, but then it blanks you instead of what should happen, which is the opposite. Its movepool sucks, which should be its fatal flaw (I remember everyone was making fun of it when the stats got leaked), but instead, it has pretty much all the tools it needs to beat whatever it must.
Urshifu isn’t really like that. It uses Close Combat, Wicked Blow, two other moves, you’re good now ok go win. It has good-but-not-incredible stats and a typing that historically should be TERRIBLE in OU, but who cares? Wicked Blow and Close Combat are strong enough that OU’s army of resists can’t stand in the way of them. Its other moves can kind of be chosen based on what you need for your team and whether you want to kill Clefable with cold iron or a toxic punch. Urshifu isn’t a mon that can be perfectly tailored to suit the unique needs of YOUR team, but when you have all of its bullshit, that doesn’t really matter, does it?
Basically, looking at them on paper, Spectrier and Urshifu have glaring problems that should make them easy to take care of even if you’re not specifically prepared to beat them. In fact, looking at past OU trends, Urshifu sounds like it should be crippled by its typing, and Spectrier certainly would be were Pursuit still in the game (Ghosts used to suck lol). Yet in practice, these “flaws” do not hinder them in the slightest and are merely an annoyance when building teams with them. I think so anyway, I don’t play very often nowadays and I’m not very high on the ladder so