I want to touch on a topic that has been covered before but expand upon it. Although, melmetal galarian moltres and kyurem are problematic, I don't think they are the only one. I will touch, of course, on said 3.
: I don't think melmetal is the main problem on steel. The problem is melmetal backing the steel core up. Think about the good steel breakers: nidoking, goltres, kyurem, hydreigon, volcanion, zapdos, glowking, (maybe garchomp with fireblast/flamethrower), cinderace(don't switch, pyro and hjk r 2hko), and GRAVITY Landorus. Melmetal answers all of them decently. Especially if melmetal carries AV or sub. The backbone steel has is already a bit much for the meta and with melmmetal slamming through the few checks, it's legit nutty. However, I don't think suspect is warranted. Let's get to the "core" of the issue.
The one and only Steel Backbone: The steel backbone is infamous for a reason. There is a reason it outshines the ridiculousness that is poison's triple regenerator core. Like I previously mentioned: ALL OF STEEL'S WEAKNESSES ARE COVERED BY AN IMMUNITY.
: With aegislash allowed, the steel core has obtained the last infinity stone that was missing for so long. Just aegislash itself can shit on types like psychic as well prove to be a huge pain in the ass for types like fighting, ghost, grass, electric, fairy, ice, even rock, ground, and the steel ditto sometimes. With variants like ballon to prevent exca spining, sub to bypass leech seed and burns, even shadow sneak to pick off weakened pokemon, not even to mention the occastional offensive variants like SD, specs, and band. This is already a large list of teams that can't do much with aegislash around. Then we look at the lovely heatran.
: The fact that steel has a chance vs fire is already mind boggling to think about. Considering heatran often has protect, Cinderace has to really be careful when trying kill it with hjk. In fact, the reason I run sub hdb/left victini with scorch sands on psychic(main) is because of heatran. Of course, heatran also completely denies the opportunity for volcarona to break steel, as long as it stays alive, which is especially bad on bug where steel is one of the harder MUs. In fact, bug often rely on araquanid killing tran for volc to sweep. Before you mention buzzwole, I will get to it later. Then, let's talk about grass. Grass has no switch to heatran apart from things that outspeed. Ferro gets shit on, crad gets taunted. The only option is cc/dpunch zarude and HH/superpower rilaboom. Both of which have the same problem as buzzole. This doesn't even take into account that spdef tran with e power can help tremendously with the electric MU, let alone the fact that with magma trapping and taunt it can legit force KO on toxapex, the slowtwins, even galarian slowking if it's running scald instead of eq(running eq is not unreasonable considering how big of an issue tran is) and many more defensive problem that steel sometimes struggles with.
: Although not an immunity and not really part of the steel core, there is a reason water always runs urshifu/keldeo as well as cc barras in conjunction with specs kingdra. Ferro's weaknesses are weaknesses in the truest form of the word. Fire moves and fighting moves(as well as predicting whether it's spdef or def) are its only true weakness. The only other way to dance around is with substitute. Although taunt blocks leech, ferro can always hit you with a knock off and just leave. Speaking of leech seed, that's something fero spams a lot. It provides a reliable form of recovery as well as chip damage. In addition, ferro is amazing at setting up spikes and SR which can prove fatal to types like normal and ghost which have lacking hazard removal. Then of course, there is the problem of being similar to aegis where fero just sits there and walls like half of the meta. Grass can't do shit without sun or their own fero. If fero is spdef, the only way for electric to kill it is CC zera and heat wave zapdos.
: This is, in my humblest of opinion, the biggest problem with steel in general. People accuse pokemon like tran and aegis because of the enormous feats they can do. What people fail to acknowledge is that the steel flyers are the biggest problem. Remember I talked about buzzwole, zarude, and rilaboom. Well, all 3 get completely shat on by these 3, especially if celesteela is defensive(spdef is for flying). We are all aware of how celesteela and corviknight by themselves turns the flying vs rock into a MU in flying's favor. Now lets talk about how much of a problem these three are for when played on steel. Skarmory, like ferrothorn, famously stacks stealth rock and many layers of spikes, can roost for recovery, whirlwind to prevent setup, and is a massive defensive wall that wall the mighty terrakion, famous for being very difficult to for steel to answer. Then we have corviknight. Although it's the least used, I've come to appreciate what it can do. It sets up very often, can't be countered by intimidate because of mirror armor, and even sometimes taunt walls that r trying to recover. In terms of defensive sets, corviknight reliably pressure stalls pokemon, has roost to stay healthy, defog to clear hazards and screens, and even U-turn to give momentum. And now we have the lovely celesteela. This shit spams leech seed for days, has a 120 base power, 16 pp, 100% stab move, flamethrower for resist, grass coverage it it feels like it, earthquake to surprise heatran, tremendous bulk, even stat spread that makes spdef and def sets both viable, can run offensive autotomize with power herb meteor beam, can run flame charge physically offensive sets. God I can go on and on. If you look at the good steel breakers, the first you notice is that they destroy these birds(celesteela is a rocket ship but whatever). Any pokemon that can break through these birds immediately is not treated as steel breaker. Think of pokemon that normally would be great vs steel like excadrill, buzzwole, zarude, rilaboom, terrakion, dragapult(if you run specs, it's a good steel breaker, the birbs wall phyiscal ddance sets), garchomp(unless you run flamethrower/fireblast), dragonite(unless you run fire punch which most dragonites don't), landorus-T(rise of gravity is caused by these birds), kommo-o, gyarados, mamoswine, etc. Then look at the MU with the birds. Most are either checked or flat out countered by them(some of them may actually counter the birds, I didn't do much calcs, please tell me). IMO, none of the 3 are individually broken, it's more that they suffocate tons of good strategies vs steel(especially evading eq) as well as people not knowing which of the 3 the steel player is going to use. Only pokemon that can break through all 3 regardless of most sets are classified as steel breakers: nidoking is a fine example. This is why I think we should suspect these 3. We don't need to ban all of them, we just need to ban 1 or 2 so that people go into ladder knowing what steel bird to fully prep for.
Away from steel core:
: Yes this is a steel breaker but guess what, it's also an everything breaker. Apart from Ttar and koko, not many pokemon can actually deal with this. Most people run double dance with Fiery Wrath and Air Slash/hurricane, that set by itself is more than enough for more of the meta. Its bulk however is what pushes it over the edge for me. 90/90/125 is pretty insane considering most of the types it's weak to are mostly special attacks with rock being an exception. This coupled with base 90 speed is pretty busted. In addition, moltres doesn't have to limit itself of the 2 attack double dance set, it can run taunt or substitute to completely screw over people trying to counter it with status. Behind a sub, the only moves that can truly prevent goltres from free set up are triple axel, melmetal double iron bash, and cloyster skill link. In Murderous Mantyke's own words:
Think of specs lele comming on agility or spdef tran on NP. You would think that moltres needs to switch but with a bit of luck, even these 2 could be bypassed. In terms of suspect test, I think it's worth a try.
: Oh boy. Now that I think about it, this looks like a case of broken check broken. You need broken mons like this one to check the broken steel core. Anyways, jokes aside, kyurem is a problem. There are 2 sets: specs and sub roost. I would argue that the latter is a lot more viable that the former but both work. The problem doesn't lie within the set but within kyurem's abillity. As much as sub roost looks to be offensive, it's the ability to pp stall many pokemon that make it problematic. First, flying players know all to well how difficult it is to deal with kyurem. It pp stalls celesteela's Heavy Slam's and just sits behind a sub and freeze dries flying's entire team. Same for corviknight's body presses. In fact, I run both corviknight and celesteela on flying because as much as I hate to admit it, it seems like the only option. This is a not just a problem for flying but also for types like water if behind sub, electric, grass, poison, even being a huge threat for teams that should do well vs it like rock, dragon, fire, and even steel. It often just sits there behind a sub, roosting off the damage. There is a reason melmetal(steel) and cloyster(water) and rising in usage. DIB and rock blast are the only moves that allows a pokemon to break the sub and hit kyurem. If not, the only way to kill it is to outspeed and break the sub. However, with kyurem's amazing special attack, you would usually have to sack a pokemon. The problem is that the kyurem user can just switch and bring it in on a pokemon it forces out and sub to force another KO. In addition, like Mantyke says, freeze makes everything a lot worse. I think we definately should suspect this one.
: These two are together because I believe they fit into a core. Although not as problematic as one would think, I believe these to be broken. First they shared exactly 1 weakness: rain. These two are uncounterable in rain and for many teams, the only reliable way to defeat them is by stalling the rain out. As a psychic player, I do not have access to a lot of bulky mons with latias and mew being my best answers for these 2. Both are impossible to outspeed under rain and many types like fire, rock, and ground simply crumble under the pressure of these two. I believe they are the cause of these three types' limited usage. Although one can argue that fire has volcanion, rock has cradilly, and ground has gastrodon/seismetoad, none of those actually check this core. Volcanion need AV and lacks recovery, cradily crumbles to specs hurricane and band close combat, and both water grounds can get easily overwhelmed. Of course, those are types that are naturally weak to water, but other types don't fair better. In you look a mono water's usage, you will see that for all sections of ladder, it's the most used type, hovering at around 12 % for low ladder and up to 16 to 17% at high ladder. People complain about steel but when you look at ladder, steel usage is often very lack luster. For those arguing that rainless exist, I understand. However, rain is around 8 to 9% usage on ladder. This means more than 50% of any water teams you face is a rain team. As for suspect, neither realistically deserves it but similar to the steel core, we should suspect one of them. NOT because individually, they are broken but because together they are very difficult to deal with(made worse by peliper having roost).
: This is the only core whose "infamousness" can compete with steel's. Although poison is not used as much as steel, it's still very frustrating to face. The core is about as sus as the mushroom pokemon itself. The difference between this core(which is arguably stronger than steel's) is that all 3 have regenerator, hence why we call it poison's trip regen core. With regenerator, all 3 have an incredible amount of healing. Lack of healing is one of the biggest reason's the steel core breaks down a lot easier than this one and is also why the steel birds are such a problem: they have healing(skarmory/corviknight roost, celesteela leech seeds). In addition, assuming glowking is AV and amoonguss is physically defensive, this core can pretty much cover all of poison's weaknesses. Here, we see that many of steel breakers that work for steel don't work for poison. For ex, glowking walls volcanion unless specs, which can be easily played around because glowking can simply switch to a pokemon like crobat or g-weezing whilst healing itself(if volcanion is AV, it gets worn down while glowing lives with regenerator). Amoonguss often takes eq really well, has foul play to damage the eq users, spore to shut down a pokemon, and of course, synthesis. Toxapex is also a nightmare for many teams because its bulk is beyond absurd and is also why many barraskewdas actually run psychic fangs(solely for toxapex). Together, they cover each other's weaknesses beautifully and with constant switch, they remain at high health. Should we suspect one of them? As far as my opinion, I don't think so. Even though the core is very broken, it has a universal weakness: psyshock. However, Drapion, even though it does not have regenerator, can switch into psyshock. Making it technically part of this core. On the other hand, certain mons that steel doesn't lose to(minus gravity landorus) like bulk up landorus(with gravity or not) as well as band excadrill, or even the lati twins all break poison really well. Therefore, this is a similar issue to that of melmetal. Let's take care of the steel birds, kyurem, and galarian moltres, then we look at melmetal and the poison core.
For data of usage stats: Here it is. This is for december 2021:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VKzErmx1QkHFYWIl87MNcBMdctVmIL0DnmBnB7_1feM/edit?usp=sharing
might help grass in the steel and fire MU, might help ground in the water MU, but overall, pretty bad
The one and only steel killer, fire and fighting are gonna be a lot better
Has a minor niche on steel, ok niche on water, great addition
POGGERS normal will love this, flying might enjoy a strong attacker
useless outside of meme simple sets
Garbage
Why use this over rhyperior
TOO SLOW
Garbage
garbage, literally
pretty bad, has quiver dance, outclassed by even butterfree
pretty bad, has quiver dance, outclassed
pretty bad, has quiver dance, out classed by even venomoth
unless ur the Sejun Park of mono, electric is prob not gonna use it
just bad, outclassed
adaptabillity is nice, but very outclassed
just a worse manidbuzz/goltres
fast but bad attack
Garbage
TOO SLOW
bad
garbage
garbage
garbage
Nice alternative to lando, poison heal is noice, might work better on stall teams or act as better defensive lando
bad, use stakataka
too frail, bad
Kinda bad, speed boost and tinted lens are great, typing is bad, HDB might help it a lot
Trash
Ubers
Ubers
Ubers
Tail glow is probably back, meaning xurkitree might get a small niche, for manaphy, water gets a strong wallbreaker. If tail glow is gone, manaphy is probably gonna be bad
TOO SLOW
garbage
fighting and grass is getting a buff
garbage
garbage
garbage
fast but I think it's outclassed by staraptor
ground has rapid spin already, so it's kinda bad, good bulk though
bad
bad
garbage
ok I guess, not as bad as so mons but still, apart from hp, the other stats r bad
garbage
garbage
garbage
garbage
garbage
garbage
garbage
garbage
garbage
garbage
specs boomburst poggers?
specs eruption can be used alongside spdef tran so maybe it works(prob not)
obstagoo but bad
