Personally, I never felt like Clef was overcentralizing. Sure, it's obnoxious, but it can be dealt with fairly easily. Even if it's +1, many things still 2HKO and some even OHKO, such as a Pex Venoshock if Clef is poisoned. Is Clef an issue, yes, it's role compression and variability in sets with all of it's sets being extremely threatening make it obnoxious, but not to the point where it is a necessity to scout the set like Conk to see if a mon on your team can actually check it. It's strong af, but not broken like Conk or Zolt in my opinion.I made a post last time this was an om about potential suspects, much of it still holds up but I'd like to reiterate on some opinions I've flipped on, it's like really late so sorry for any mistakes or dumb shit
Still feel as though this thing is probably one of the most obnoxious mons in the meta due to the vast number of options it has and how necessary it is. Most people seem to use their own defensive clefable as a check to opposing CM clefable, and offensive LO clefable can beat CM clefable too but I've also seen sets like cosmic power + 2 attacks and even the demonic cosmic power + work up set which turns defensive clefable into setup fodder. If you don't see this set coming it can just destroy you if it boosts enough to take out your slow haze toxapex or clear smog mon, especially since I don't see that much dark types. This is a mon that doesn't feel broken in all games or with all sets, or even with one particular set, but the combination of things it can do and its versatility make it feel broken sometimes, I'm sure some people would argue that clefable is merely overcentralizing or splashable rather than broken and that is a reasonable opinion to have
I feel less strongly about this thing as I did prior. I feel as though Dracozolt is less unhealthy than the other factors listed here. First of all, I feel like CB dracozolt is overrated, as every team has one or multiple electric immunities (Hippo, Dracozolt or Arctozolt, Landorus-T, Krookodile or others) , as well as dragon immunities (clefable) too. Dracozolt is very prediction reliant on the part of the user, even when not choiced, and it tends to be worn down a lot when running LO. I find that when prepped for Dracozolt, it is still a threat but manageable with factors like rocky helmet recoil (I've had success with soft checks like phys def Lando, hippo, phys def eldegoss, also seen tangrowth and amoonguss) can let you outplay it and bring its health down. It can also be quite inconsistent with accuracy, relying on Outrage traps itself, and you can take it out with priority (weavile mostly, it's super under-utilized) when it's weakened. Dracozolt feels good, but a bit matchup-fishy to me sometimes. It's not the kind of mon I'd like to use but I've played against it enough that I think I know how it works.
All that said Dracozolt is still a massive threat and I still get why people want it banned. The teambuilding pressure it exerts is among the most notable in the metagame. A particular struggle I find with it is that there aren't really any defensive electric resists than can check both it and Magnezone at once, meaning you need to overload on checks to electric types a bit.
To further generalize these arguments to the sand playstyle in general I feel like it would basically entirely die out if Dracozolt was banned, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it might result in the meta shifting away from weather a bit. Hippowdon would still get use as a standalone mon but it would drop off, and some more mediocre sand sweepers like Stoutland and Drilbur might let the playstyle hold on to a bit of relevancy. I've seen a lot of weather teams on ladder but I feel like some of that is due to new toy syndrome as I've seen a lot of the better players not running weather.
still has no checks really besides buzzwole, weezing or weezing galar, usually I just go into phys def clefable with 190 speed before it gets burned and take 50% from thunder punch and go from there. Many players on the ladder leave it in on clefables that obviously speed creep them and they just die or trade but even in the hands of a doofus conkeldurr can almost always take a mon down with it. Really the fact that people are seriously using weezing in this tier shows how much of an impact clefable and conkeldurr have on this meta, I guess my takeaway here is that unless buzzwole catches on in a major way I don't see conkeldurr getting any easier to check
Why is king's rock still allowed. This shit sucks man
Evasion abilities are also pretty cheap because you can run them with no opportunity cost, and ninetales-alola even sets up hail for itself. This is a big factor in why I think hail, not sand, is the most annoying weather to face right now, although it might be because I overprepare for dracozolt a bit. However, if you ban evasion abilities I feel like it results in a lot of collateral damage as stuff like Garchomp outside of sand is perfectly fair and reasonable, even ninetales-alola is fair 90% of the time so part of me wants to leave in untouched
Zolt is just overbearing often times. The only pokemon that I can say reliably counters it are Hippo and Tangrowth (haven't run calcs with Fire Fang/Blast on Growth, so I'm not completely sure). However, Hippo still gets 3HKOd by Outrage, so if you get it down to around 60%, it can't switch in and wall anymore. Geezing and Kanto Weezing take two Bolt Beaks, but are plagued by lack of reliable recovery and vulnerability to passive and chip damage, so they can't really counter Zolt, especially because it's forced to deal with Conk and often other threats like Clefable as well. Zolt completely shuts down all teams that don't have one mon constantly healthy to specifically counter it.
Conk is a pokemon that I have pushed to get banned for a while. As you've said, the only true counters are the Weezings, which I've already talked about the weaknesses of. Even Buzzwole gets 2HKOd by Fire Punch after taking the Sheer Force and Iron Fist boosts into account. Couple this with Conk mostly running max speed other than Trick Room teams and there's not much you can do to deal with it. Fairies smacked by Jab, ghosts and psychics with Knock, bulky flyers with Ice/Thunder Punch, bugs with Fire Punch or Rock Slide, and poison types with Earthquake. Conk also has Facade to smack anything on a switch in. All it's coverage forces you to scout it out first in order to not get ran over, which sometimes doesn't even work because it can just demolish half of a team in the scouting process.
Kings Rock is inheritly uncompetitive, much like other RNG items such as Bright Powder and Quick Claw, but not strictly overcentralizing. I do think it should be banned for letting players have some control over RNG, but I can understand the counterarguments
Cloak and Veil users are frustrating, but not an easy thing to work around because you'd just have a ton of random pokemon banned. The Sandslash forms, for example. Unless there's a way to disable these abilities while enabling the other ones, I'd rather the abilities not be banned so the worse pokemon with these abilities don't get sent into limbo.
