With all due respect, if it has no counters, it should be considered broken and there should at least be a real discussion of the ban hammer. Having a check isnt enough for a lot of threats, especially since there are basically no universal checks to melmetal, its set variety let's it fish for what matchups it wants to be favorable and unfavorable for, and with proper team support stopping melmetal can get really hairy.
Look at this team for example:
https://pokepast.es/f72a4d3a7fa1e272
I peaked at 1959 with this team (I was trying to make an RMT but I don't know how to post the mon gifs that other people are doing), and it while it has issues it definitely is a sturdy team against a lot of the meta, particularly heavy physical offense. Now in theory it has some decent melmetal checks, buzzwole eats DIB and gets good chip on it, mandibuzz and hippo should generally be able to check some sets, and volcanion can blow it up and dracozolt being able to do over 60% with bolt beak, but I have been finding that melmetal is still very useful against this team, cuz there are too many goddamn sets to account for.
The issue is exactly that melmetal has too many extremely strong sets. Some guy posted above with an acid armor set that looks demonic, there's twave DIB giving the fat slow mons only a 52.5% chance to even move that turn, banded DIB 2HKO's max def buzzwole - which is one of the physically bulkiest mon in the metagame other than melmetal - pads gets past flame bodies and barbs, leftovers protect toxic is also infuriating to deal with if you don't have a steel type (which can be trapped by zone), and AV can force or give you unexpected trades that should be favorable.
I really think it's the forcing trades that makes melmetal so good. I used to play a bit of chess back in the day, and an important strategy for newer players to remember is that in general if you are up in material, you should trade as much as possible until the end game where what seems like a measly one pawn is actually an insurmountable advantage. For example if you have toxic protect DIB high horse power in grassy terrain, you might force the opponent to sack heatran to deal with melmetal, and that could open up your weavile or make your slowbro a lot better in that game. I dont think I've ever see good player not get at least 60% off and a status on a mon with their melmetal.
Exactly this. I definitely think that melmetal should be banned cuz we'd see a healthier metagame
I like the set, but mandibuzz is really good counter to this, I don't feel like calcing but maybe if burned the pult can break through. I think also a healthy pex can stop it, but obviously you have status team support.
Lastly, I feel like there has been a recent influx of calm mind suicune, which is really difficult to deal with because of pressure + substitute, so everytime you bring in a mon to stop it there are very favorable odds of getting burned in a longer match. How have you guys been prepping for it, both in and out of the teambuilder?