hello,
to Zeraoras ranking I think its ranking is justified because of a lot of reasons:
first and foremost its good speed tier leaves it faster by 1 point than dragapult which was pre home the fastest mon in the metagame naturally so zeraora outspeeding dragapult by 1 point leaves dragapult vulnerable to its coverage options in knock off / play rough.
Zeraora is natrually the fastest mon in the current metagame and its hits most of its checks via coverage options, which are amazing by itself, with knock off (dragapult), grass knot (seismitoad, gastrodon, hippowdon), play rough / close combat (hydreigon, dragapult, bisharp), and many more coverage options like the rarer used blaze kick which can hit ferrothorn as example for 4x super effective damage.
the typing of zeraora is also a blessing, which leaves it only vulnerable to one major issue, which is the ground typing attacks like erath power and earthquake.
the power of 112 attack combined with different ind of items is also a blessing, as it can function as a good breaker and can easily overwhelm its checks due to the help with life orb, expert belt or when needed bulk up. Zeraora is known to function as a good breaker currently which can easily explot mons like corviknight, mandibuzz, and ferrothorn for itself to set up a bulk up.
Zeraora right now is one of the most dangerous mons and with the help via slow u-turn / volt switches it is able to get in easily and dent holes in the opposing team or forces switches and is also able to force its checks to recover up.
Zeraora is really good with all these weapons in its arsenal, blessing typing, speed tier and ofc many coverage options which it can pick from. sure some people might think it is a rather one-sided pkmn but it doesn't need much to be a threat in the current metagame at all thus leaving zeraora at a high ranking and it should def not drop right now.
I am so glad you went into detail about these here mons so I can just expose yall for the shallow theorymoner you are
"dragapult vulnerable to its coverage options in knock-off / play rough."
not only can this mon not come in on a dragapult, the one mon in it's speed tier, whatsoever, adamant play rough (unless you are running life orb) does not kill dragapult. and knock off is just for that. in fact u shouldnt try and take on a zeraora with a dragapult anyway. In addition, most of the mons in the tier are bulky and slow, ur speed and mediocre attacks mean absolutely dick to them, since they dont care about speed anyway.
NEXT
"grass knot (seismitoad, gastrodon, hippowdon)"
unless ur running max spa with ebelt or life orb (or specs I guess) grass knot is not killing seimitoad (at least the spdef ones). in fact, lets go over this list realistically...
you are running a physical set, since every single attack you listed is physical but this so you NEVER are koing a seimistoad, you are doing like 35% to gastro, and are u not killing hippodon (unless it is just fully max def with 0 spdef and u hit it on the switch). yet all of these mons will definitely kill you. Gastro is more common than hippo, and most likely ur hippo is going to be at full and u will not kill it.
NEXT
"play rough / close combat (hydreigon, dragapult, bisharp, [I’m adding in tyranitar here])" - this is assuming ur life orb, otherwise you actually dont certify a kill on these other than sharp which is not a threat
NEXT
"Zeraora is known to function as a good breaker currently which can easily explot mons like corviknight, mandibuzz, and ferrothorn for itself to set up a bulk up."
ya... gonna stop you there because i actually run mandibuzz, zeraora will kill itself (and mandibuzz) trying to take out of mandibuzz, and corvinight is a flying type so why are saying that an electric mon cna do what an electric mon already does......
anyway cc doesnt oko ferrothro and power whip actually will kill u if they attack
P.s. bulk up zeraora is bad, and a waste of a slot.
so lets go over it all here,
the set that you believe should be run is likely
252 attack, 4 spa, 252 speed, (+ speed nature) holding a life orb
- plasma fists
- close combat
- knock off
- grass knot
is that correct? if so again, this isnt that special other than it being fast, isnt that strong, and is massively overrated. shit really is not that multi dimnesional even though yall try your damned hardest to make it so. pick something else to bandwagon
edit:
Sure Zeraora doesn't hit THAT hard, but it seems almost custom made for this metagame. It gets the jump on Dragapult by one point and has quite good coverage to compliment it and beat common threats. It can run a damage boosting item freely because its speed tier makes a choice scarf hilariously redundant. The only other things faster than pult can't even hit it neutrally lol
It's possible that you just hate Zeraora's design and the fact that its mythical status seems really dumb. I do too. But that has nothing to do with viability, so if that's your reasoning, please keep it out of this thread.
Wtf lmao no and goodbye