there is something so incredibly misguided about this idea of "zapdos syndrome" as something to hold against """the masses""" aka """the community""" as a reason to not suspect something. like "hey, we got rewarded for inaction on x so now it's totally justifiable to be inactive on everything else as well!". and the ironic thing about that argument is zapdos
did get affected by tiering action, but it just wasn't directly targeted to zapdos, so this argument doesn't even make any sense. the urshifu and dracovish bans undeniably had a huge influence on the specs zapdos metagame - it made poison (ft. av glowking) more viable, it made steel more viable (and allowed for some
pretty targeted sets), it made ground, sandless especially, more viable, and it made ice more viable (which we are still dealing with the ramifications of to this day). all of these trends harmed specs zapdos without there needing to be a direct ban. so to act like the metagame magically evolved to handle specs zapdos feels very misrepresentative of what actually happened.
admittedly, i don't really have a horse in the goltres race. i agree with mushamu that the best course of action for the tier would be to suspect kyurem first, and then evaluate goltres' competitiveness afterward. as an example of how a kyurem-less meta could affect goltres, when u don't have to run glowking on both psychic and poison as to not lose to kyurem (it doesn't mean u win against it though) both types get to run a mon that isn't goltres fodder. but still, the idea of a "zapdos syndrome" having any validity over whether or not a community outcry is warranted / a mon is broken is pretty silly.
(also, can we please stop using slippery slope arguments in tiering posts? it's 2022, anyone with a dash of rational thinking would understand that a goltres suspect / ban would not mean that hydreigon is broken cause it has a move that can flinch. to act like the two things are comparable is blatantly ignorant of every other aspect of the mon that people have discussed being broken)
as for as kyurem goes:
- Kyurem: We have talked about this Pokemon as well and also don't believe it has breached the threshold for a suspect. It did not have a very dominant MWP as Dragon did absolutely terrible in the tournament and while Ice had a good winrate it's still low amount of wins and skewed by the the fact that it drew Flying a few times.
dragon has not been a good type since dracovish got banned and it sees use because it has access to the most broken mon in the metagame, so i don't really see dragon's low winrate as a great way to dismiss kyurem. i'd say kyurem artificially boosts dragon's usage so that it stills sees play on the off chance the mon will win you the game. similarly, to dismiss ice's good winrate as "skewed by the fact it drew flying a few times" is pretty disingenuous, are we still pretending type matchups decide everything? flying has a perfectly good matchup (honestly a great one) against ice if it uses double steel stab steela and/or scarf gapdos (which is part of the type's response to kyurem!), and the matchup is usually still winnable for the type otherwise. i also find this argument pretty ironic considering you yourself wrote a
post debunking this argument last year. the reason ice has such a high winrate is that kyurem (and arctozolt too) artificially boosts the type's effectiveness against every neutral matchup, and especially flying.
here's my thoughts on kyurem according to the tiering philosophy:
1) broken - "These also include
elements whose only counters or checks are extraordinarily niche Pokemon that would put the team at a large disadvantage elsewhere."
i don't think the "not using this mon will put your team at a disadvantage" part of the definition applies (and it applies very rarely in monotype because of the nature of the tier meaning that each pokemon can only fit on a maximum of two types), but this section of the definition in particular applies pretty clearly. i'd say water is a pretty good example of this. water teams using walrein, an otherwise godawful mon that you would never want against something that's not dragon or ice, as the only means to consistently check kyurem seems to be the textbook definition of this occuring. to have decent matchups against dragon or ice otherwise, water teams are forced into really awkward compositions of sash cloyster + slowking + scarf urshifu-r + defog volcanion which is really constraining on teambuilding, and it again puts you at a disadvantage if ur playing something that doesn't struggle against these mons as much like flying or poison. the celesteela / gapdos example i talked about earlier is another example for flying, that composition will feel good if you're against a kyurem but feels pretty disadvantageous if u play steel, poison, or psychic.
2) uncompetitive - "Uncompetitive - elements that reduce the effect of player choice / interaction on the end result to an extreme degree, such t
hat "more skillful play" is almost always rendered irrelevant."
there is also an uncompetitive aspect to kyurem that stems from its brokenness. the facts that types weak to it solely rely on 1/2 mons to switch into it means that the mon is often one freeze away from winning the game. and you can't really slippery slope your way out of this one either, i'm not insinuating that any pokemon with a freezing move is uncompetitive. again, kyurem is the only one of those applicable that it can legitimately win a game on its own with a freeze because of its lack of solid checks limiting its counterplay. there are numerous tournament games illustrating this happening.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8monotype-596583 (mono invitational. correct play -> go to corv on kyurem. gets frozen and instantly loses the game)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8monotype-596833 (mono invitational. correct play -> go to celesteela on kyurem. gets frozen and instantly loses the game)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8monotype-597974 (mwp. correct play -> go to corv on kyurem. gets frozen and loses the game, slower this time.)
these are just the ones i thought of at the top of my head but there might be more, not sure. i know the key is that the skillful play isn't "almost always" being rendered irrelevant, it doesn't happen enough for that to be the case. i'm just saying that there is an uncompetitive aspect present that feeds into kyurem's brokenness, although it wouldn't be enough to ban the most just on its own if it wasn't already broken.
there is also a problem with using just mwp as a monolith for a pokemon's brokenness. if you're going to say that people advocating for a kyurem ban is just another case of "zapdos syndrome", then you're ignoring the cornerstone of the syndrome that you outlined earlier - that it was just "a kneejerk reaction to a strong threat". kyurem didn't dominate mwp like specs zapdos dominated mwcop, and that's why this isn't a kneejerk reaction, but a response to a mon that has consistently been an unhealthy force in the metagame for a while, even if there has only been an outspoken response to it recently. there just isn't any basis in saying that the metagame has adapted to kyurem in a healthy way when it has had such an unpleasant influence on the metagame that players must go to such disadvantageous lengths to have a chance against it