I'm personally on board with a Palafin suspect, concerns over it's power in rain are fairly overblown. You're getting what is essentially Gouging Fire in Sun type of power but requires a momentum sink to pull off. I really think people are underestimating just how much investment getting Palafin in + setting rain up is on a Hyper Offensive style, you're investing 2 turns just to get Palafin set up while your opponent does whatever they want.
I definitely think the meta has evolved and given us a ton of new counterplay, Rillaboom, Ogerpon-W, Walking Wake, Raging Bolt, Zamazenta, Dragapult are all extremely viable options that all match up extremely well into Palafin.
The counterplay is there, I think this Mon warrants a retest
Rain was up in those calcs to show its max potential, it's not needed to blow things up.
T-Water Band Wave Crash is a OHKO on Pult. Band CC after SR is a OHKO on Rilla, Wake- no SR needed for a OHKO on Ogerpon-W. Bolt takes up to 75% and OHKO if Tera Fighting. Zama a 2HKO w Band WC at +1 defense. After a BU you're at CB levels of power, with the option to Tera, and a 60BP +1 STAB. Zen Headbutt blows away Pex. Ice Punch smashes Nite. Taunt easily handles Dozo. Let's not forget Drain Punch. I could go on.
It's this lack of foresight that has caused us a ton of problems for over a year now.
I wouldn’t call Top Players like CTC or Vert as people that don’t understand the meta. There is defiantly a part of the tournament player base that do believe the Volc ban was a mistake, and in fact do want to retest Palafin. They also don’t want to continue this banning treadmill that be currently are on, and would rather look at unbanning/banning Signature Moves to free certain Pokemon.
Uh.. no comment on that first line lol
I believe there is an underlying feeling that the meta needs to be shaken up and I agree with that sentiment, but disagree on wildly misguided opinions that unbanning Ubers is the answer.
This ban treadmill was described in detail during the literal first few months of SV by certain players, myself included. When you have a mechanic that essentially acts like a mega-evolution then a lot of top tier mons will need to be banned. You can find posts from myself that essentially say, "If we keep Tera, we'll need to ban a lot of mons. Do we want more mons or is the gimmick more important?" The playerbase wanted less mons when playing mons.
The Tera debate is long dead, but at one point there was a lot conversation that Tera hasn't actually pushed out that many mons; that mons like Flutter and Pao were already busted and that's true. You don't hear that rhetoric anymore after Bax, Sneasler, Volc, and w/e else is next.
More mons most likely need to go. The only tricky part is finding out what mons are on the borderline. Again, I said over a year ago that Tera will make certain mons broken
sometimes. Zama is a great mon and somewhat honest, unless Tera Fire/Steel. We're at a point where these borderline mons are basically identified, but since they aren't always broken it's really hard to figure out what to ban. It's a puzzle to figure out what to do with this meta. It didn't have to be this difficult but that's how it went down and here we are. Anyone who is serious about trying to fix this meta is more concerned with what other mons need to be banned, since that's the only logical route we've boxed ourselves into. Increasing the power level is not the answer. The ban treadmill is already turned on and running and it will continue to run for the rest of SV.
