Definitely gonna go for ban on this one, this is too restricting for the tier and every time I see someone try to adapt to this they just open up gaping holes in the rest of their team because VA Pex and VA Corv are incredibly awkward to build with, esp using your Corv ability slot for Volt Absorb of all the things it might need to do is just ew. I've used some Stunfisk too and it's not awful but for me it would literally never be there without Zera, The only real semi-splashable check rn is Dshield Mew and that's just one mon, which also loses to special sets.
The fact that it takes advantage of meta staples really well makes it super difficult to keep out of the game if you're not running something similarly awkward as the mons I mentioned above, and if you aren't running those you're left trying to play around it, which AAA normally gives the tools to do against most threats, but the fact that Zeraora is so fast with the ability to OHKO or almost OHKO so many things with coverage, as well as access to really annoying moves such as Knock Off just make it very difficult to mid-ground against. The fact that I've seen so many people attempt to hard into Hippo when it can be straight up OHKOed by Grass Knot, just to get Zera to click something that isn't Plasma Fists speaks volumes to the risks you're forced to take and how obvious they can be to call out. Rewarding anyone who can think even one turn ahead in a game is honestly pretty lame to play against to the point where even though I dislike the lack of solid counterplay for Zera, I'll rarely ever build without a solid option because it's just not feasible to keep winning games against this mon by "outplaying" in the way it generally has been for most threats in AAA.
For now, Zera is the suspect that we're voting on, but I do feel like this meta's power level may need to be toned down a bit further by looking at some other things, I played a lot of pre-home and pretty much concluded that the offensive threat level of the meta was practically perfect, with just enough threats that were powerful in the right hands to make building comfortable for a range of playstyles. Then Pokemon Home decided to give us some dumb already banned stuff + Zera + Terrak and suddenly people are struggling to make teams that adequately cover both those mons and more importantly other staples to prep for in the meta, such as Poison Heal mons, Noivern, Mamoswine and even weather. Building teams that account for the way AAA games play out while also role compressing enough to beat the top threats is way too difficult. An example would be a stretch of teams I tried to build with Volt Absorb Corv where it was also tasked with being the removal of the team without any help; this doesn't work consistently because Rocks often go up, and from there your opponent will likely have a lot of options to pile on the pressure, while we chose abilities that limited our freedom to play out of bad matchups. I'll wait and see for what the meta's like after this is gone because Zeraora is definitely a big limiting factor, but I feel like we're just accounting for the mons and not for the game at this point, which can lead to some awful matchups.
