Yo ! Like it's pretty hard to really give a detailled thought in a few lines, I'll develop my reasonning in this post. I'm gonna probably quote or talk about things I saw on this thread, ofc they are nothing personal, it's just to supports my reasonning.
I saw some people support the idea we should not taking account dragon ovarall but only gouging fire, due to the tiering policy. That's in fact what we have to think in first. Now, I think the case of gouging fire is
complex and required more than just a quick individual analysis.
First I will use the statistic of mwp to support what I say
I will not say again what said
Gelbel3c, but this statistic show how dominant are dragon. It's not something normal, dragon win 2/3 of there game and are the type the most used. Flying in gen 8 never had this statistic and we already saw some people get tired about the omnipresence of the type. So yeah they are a problem with dragon, it's too dominent.
This statistic also show, that if u don't play gouging u have less chance to won than if u play him. Same thing for goodra. I know we talk about like 2 or 3 games, but the difference exist and it shows that to maximise ur chance of winning u have to play the defensive core of archaludon + hoodra + gouging fire.
Because in fact I think the main role of gouging is the defensive one, u play him for his bulk, for his typing and his ability to heal. It gives longevity to the core. Just playing archa + hoodra is too easy to pressure, they can't afford hazard + all the threat of the opponent. To prove that point I played the bulking bulkward set of gouging. The idea is to don't have this 2nd role of cleaner/breaker to see if it makes a difference. I made the suspect with that team:
https://pokepast.es/8960372b728b3dfe. I also went to 1700 elo, to test it more. And that doesn't change that much, it's a real confort against mon like meow/weavile/gallade/valient/hand/sneasler/and a lot of more, it's a free burn or at least it creates 50/50 generally in ur favor. Now whithout dd it's more harder to reverse game who are not at ur advantage and ovarall to clean.
The secund was also to see if in fact u only had 1 set viable on gouging, and no that's not true. U have advantage to play another set than the classic dd, against fight for exemple it's really hard to win against the bulking set, it forces u to play shifu sd water or scrafty but it's clearly at the advantage of the dragon.
Now the dd set exist, and that's the set u will see the most. To manage it u have mon like toxapex/greatusk/gliscor/gyarados/ sinistcha/archaludon/etc . BUT, all of this mon are abusable about the real strengh of dragon, his armarda of offensive threat. U will have ofc dragapult, latios but also latias/roaring/kyurem/bolt/wake/hydrei/chomp (in an hydrid role). And that's here it starts to be difficult.
Against dragon u have to at the same time manage multiple threat (that means being really in big trouble if ur opponent make a succesful double) AND be carefull to don't let ur gouging answer being too weaken for do not let him sweep ur team AND having enough offensive presence to break the core. That's a lot of thing u have to do, and ngl in practice u have to play fat or stall to manage that optimally. Dragon kills offense so easely. And when not every type have easely access to spikes + sr or even a good koff u understand also know why they are only 9 types who really exist at high lvl:
Yeah having less than 40% of winrate ovarall mean ur type doesn't work in the meta, or need to be theory craft at least
And if we analyse more specifically what are these type who are not played or just lose too much u will have all these type (normal/fire/poison/psychic/bug/electric/grass), who really struggle against the presence of gouging. At this u can add (flying/steel/dark/fighting/fairy/ghost and even drag) who also struggle against gouging, glad in general they have better answer against dragon ovarall so that's why they are played.
By struggle, I mean running specific option/type of team just for not being sweep. And we still talking about a mon who are mainly played for his defensive aspect.
When I said the case of gouging is complex, and also why I talk that much about dragon and not more specifically about gouging it's because they are a context.
Tuff tuff use the tiering policy to explain why he thinks we should do not ban gouging, in the tiering policy it said we have to focus on how broken/uncompetitive are a pokemon. Ngl I think it's clearly show why the case of gouging isn't obvious and difficult to be treat, if u take him individually I'm not sure the mon is broken, it's borderline and then exposed to lot of subjectivity.
Now for me that does not make sense to treat a pokemon independently, especially in monotype. It's not something u want, the domination about 1 type in a current metagame, it's generally an alarm to say "yo council do something to rebalanced the tier please". And clearly it's gouging the mon at the heart of why dragon is so centralizing. Of course I don't deny others strengh of dragon, I mean it's also a part of why gouging can shine that much.
All that take in account, I think we are at least in a case u have to take in account the dominence of dragon.
I also doesn't really talk about gouging in fire, but for me u have to also consider it exist and prep this is really hard. We don't see it that much because gouging check gouging, gouging check also ogerpon, well ovarall gouging just win against fire. And when the top type counter u easely, it's hard to exist in the metagame. But I still have the memory of mpl where facing a fire was pretty unfair, u have the mu and then it will be easy, u don't have the mu and then it will start to be really weird.
And saying it doesn't really count when u know the usage and the winrate of the type, would be a good argument if only we didn't ban espathra for the exact reason of "yeah it's rare, but it's uncompetitive/unhealthy".
I could also remember that, a good part of how u check gouging are mainly to prevent a sweep. It's not a mon u can really revenge kill, cuz yeah gouging doesn't afford a specs dm/band outrage but it's able to afford all the scarf of the meta.
Conclusion: So yeah, for me gouging fire is in fact broken and uncompetitive. It's a mon who centralize too much the metagame, by that I mean it littarally kills diversity, ho are almost always unviable and type who doesn't have the chance to have decent option against dragon struggle too much for being viable. The ban of gouging will really help in that sense, and that's why I'm gonna vote ban.
I knew I would write a lot but huh.... Gtz to all the people who will read it, and yeah even if I tried to be the most objective possible it's ofc an opinion so don't hesitate to debate about it, etc !