This is actually not true. Spdef Gouging Fire is actually fairly popular and if Ddance gouging fire was bad for bug, wait till you see the war crimes spdef can do on types like bug. Burning bulwark makes clicking stone axe unwise as once you have been burned, you are effectively useless. This is made worse by the fact that it learns morning sun. GF WHY. A simple moveset of burning bulwark, morning sun, dragon tail, and one of eq/fire wove(I use heat crash) could completely shut down entire teams. Namely, the set is imo close to unwinnable for grass and bug, even more so than the dragon dance variant. Take torterra for example, unboosted torterra cannot ohko this thing, so it wants to set up, but gouging might predict that and dragon tail. Suddenly, your torterra is close to useless. All of this is made worse by the fact that in sun, morning sun heals 75%. This means that all the progress you have done over that past few turns can be undone in one move. Spdef also helps in a lot of MUs, for example, gouging fire at full health is very likely to live 2 specs flutter mane moonblast which is amazing for dragon. Since heat crash has a 62.5% chance to OHKO from full(or guaranteed if rocks are up), flutter mane is forced to leave. I genuinely think that the spdef variant makes life hell for a lot of type because if your setup sweeper is not fairy type or cannot ohko spdef gouging, it's not sweeping soon. All of which is made worse by the fact that gouging has natural high attack stat so dragon tail actually stings quite a bit.Based on its unique move, i supposed at first that Game Freak planned Gouging Fire to a be a… “defensive mon”, but GF proved again that sometimes they don’t know what they are actually doing as I haven’t seen nobody either using that move (which amazing IMO), or GF as a defensive option (atleast in mono), and as you have said it’s an amazing sweeper that can give auto-wins in certains MU, let’s see how the council deals with it.
On the other hand, I am glad that you answered my post since the beginning of gen 9 you always have experimented with bug and I was wondering what your thoughts were on the situation of the type in the present meta. I hope you are able to build some teams that work and share them.