Moltres

The incredible beast known as Moltres has waited its turn and now eagerly preys on the souls of many players, as its power cannot be matched. Its dominance over the metagame is felt by many, and most teams have burned at the hand of Moltres. While Moltres always had the mighty Fire Blast to pulverize opponents with, it now has a shiny new toy to play with: Hurricane. Hurricane is a welcome upgrade over Air Slash, allowing Moltres to break through what was once arguably its best counter in Slowking with two Life Orb-boosted Hurricanes being a guaranteed 2HKO after Stealth Rock damage. Moltres is one of the best wallbreakers in the metagame now, as it has very few defensive checks and can beat nearly all of the metagame's prominent defensive cores, including the Tangrowth + Slowking Regenerator core. However, this isn't as important as it once was because the core is dropping in popularity, due to new threats such as Durant, Escavalier, and of course our beloved Moltres. Moltres doesn't necessarily struggle against offensive teams either, as it boasts a base 90 Speed stat, which is pretty fast by RU standards.

If all of this is true, then why hasn't Moltres been banned? First and foremost, Moltres's most crippling flaw comes with its typing; being 4x weak to Stealth Rock does it no favors. This means that Moltres must always be used alongside a spinner, and the pickings of effective spinners are rather slim in the metagame. While Cryogonal and Kabutops boast the ability to beat nearly all of the prominent spinblockers in the metagame, Pokemon such as Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee are not nearly as reliable and can be responsible for Moltres's premature death. Moltres can also be revenge killed quite easily, since Hidden Power Rock is common among fast special attackers such as Sceptile, Accelgor, and Typhlosion, and priority moves such as Aqua Jet and Sucker Punch are prominent in the metagame as well. Moltres also suffers from Hurricane's extreme unreliability, since it's almost a coin flip to see if Moltres will hit two of them in a row. Nevertheless, Moltres is stupidly good at what it does, and it was almost singlehandedly responsible in Slowking's rise to fame as well as Lanturn's, and it is a top-tier threat that must be handled in some way before it's allowed to rampage through your team.