I have never been a vocal PS player, or even active in Forums, having only gotten reqs once to vote against M-Sab ban back in ORAS.
That being said however, and wish the suspect coming to an end I would like to also put in my 2 cents and provide at the best of my ability my views on why this pokémon should be
BANNED .
Magearna presented itself as a strong contender for top pokémon in OU last gen, and by the end of the first half of the Gen, everyone was aware of its strenght. It already showed signs, as many others who in this thread pointed out, of overbearing versatility (on top of infamous Steel/fairy type).
But that was kind of cute right? You could run the ever present assault vest, be a decent check to all the massively powered stuff, like Ash-G, tapus, Beasts, etc. You could run pain split to play around a Chansey, you had nice coverage, it was the first real mon able to set trick room and also sweep up as a nice gimmick (Like in that legendary Mimo team) all the while not being as much of an overbearing menace as today, being chipped down, checked by the ever popular, dearest of our hearts, Lando-T, etc.
Fast forward to gen 8
I'm not sure what happened here, honestly. The entire thread has been talking about magearna checks and counters, and how to play against it, but the reality is, with the new tools that it has been bestowed, and the general drop in power of the rest of the metagame, this is wishful thinking.
Even though the majority part of the argument is made towards Choice Specs mag, and while I also believe it to be the best and most constraining set, I think Choice Specs rise in popularity has made
other magearna sets better retroactively in the sense that it's easy to become complacent about the nature of the particular mag you might be facing.
In the past, it wasn't necessary to pack a Holy Grail vs. Mag pokémon in your team to be able to play against it more comfortably (or at all, lol), even if you got chipped down, you could hit back, maybe sack even one to two mons to beat it if it really got out of hand but...
SPECS FLEUR - ?????????????????????????????
DRAINING KISS - thats right, Magearna doesn't respect personal space, this pokémon is an offender. You want to beat it with consistent neutral damage in an effort to win the game? Well you screw you buddy, i'm going to heal myself while also getting +1 each time you die in front of me, turning you ditch effort into an assured downward slope to defeat.
Yes, I said "Die in front of me". You want to sack a pokémon to hazards or die to chip damage in field to stop me from getting a Boost? Do I look like a
Virgin Ultra Beast? I am a
CHAD DOLL and I'll get a boost regardless, because my sadism knows no bounds.
STORED POWER - Oh, yeah no, I totally get it, being walled by poison types is a thing of peasants, how dare this overpowered fairy type's (who incidentally has 2 of the best boosting moves in the ENTIRE GAME) best psychic move be PSYBEAM??
No no no my children, we at gamefreak decided that, best it would be to give this pokémon that will never see an official field of battle STORED POWER, a psychic move that will achieve a whopping 120BP with 2 boosts, coming from a +1SPA pokémon that previously could be defended against with Poison.
And while the ever present and completely acceptable arguments of "Things don't exist in a vacuum" and "You can't counter everything at once" exist, my answers to those, in this suspect, are "It doesn't" and "Who says you need to?".
Magearna doesn't exist in a vacuum, it exists in a vast many-layered realm of infinite possibility where the problem is not wether or not it will beat you now, but that it could, and it will always.
