"Gamefreak and Tanks vs Sweepers"

Gamefreak seems to misunderstand what makes a good tank, a good bulky attacker, and a good sweeper, as shown by how they made Zacian and ZamazentaZacian is basically the perfect sweeper. It's insane attack stat boosted by Intrepid sword plus its gross speed tier and amazing typing means that it can set up with swords dance and 1-2hko pretty much anything even through resistances. It's not weak to any priority moves and has a great movepool as wellZmazenta, on the other hand, is just bad. It's not a good tank OR good bulky attacker because it is missing two things: recovery and setup. It has no way to reliably regain health without losing its crown form by going resto/chesto and its ability ONLY boosts defense, leaving it vulnerable to special attacks. It has admittedly good speed but is vulnerable to priority (a good vacuum wave user can easily drop it)Not only that but it doesn't even get sword dance to threaten anything remotely bulky with so it gets counter-tanked very easily and set up on by the likes of conkeldurIn the past gamefreak has shown a propensity for making Pokémon that are held back by a lack of these things. Escavalier is a prime example, having good bulk and monstrous attack but lacking the recovery to stay relevant, giving it no space to set up and no real role but threatening specific Pokémon with revenge killingMany Pokémon are very close to viable, lacking in very specific things that frustrate players like me to no end when Pokémon could be a far more balanced gameMore examples include: Ice types being weak to stealth rock AND priority with no meaningful resistances and very common weaknesses, often being given stats befitting of a tank and STILL lacking reliable recovery for some reasonPokémon who's highest stat is in the low 100s who is both frail and slow with a useless ability and no outstanding movesPokémon with completely mediocre stats, no unique moves, and/ or a useless ability which are an insult to the work the designers put in to make them so appealing. If I spent time designing both Mawhile and Sableye and then found out that their highest stats were below 90 I'd be sad. That's someone's favorite Pokémon but it's completely unusable for no reason.Pokémon with abilities that massively hold them back but who's stats don't make up for it, or for whom the ability is SO bad that it totally ruins the mon regardless of its stats (slacking, Gollisopod, Regigias, archeops)Pokémon with one good stat that doesn't matter because of a brutal weakness in some other stat (Flareon's poor speed, toxicroak's frailty)TL;DR There are so many examples of Pokémon that are objectively worse than other Pokémon for no real reason other than the pretense that Pokémon is an RPG and therefor some Pokémon (endgame mons, rare mons) must be stronger than others (early-game mons) and frankly it's a sad waste of potential. So many great designs that go unseen on the grand stage year-after-year because gamefreak refuses to even attempt to make Pokémon viable.Look, okay, I just really like Heatmor's design and I'm upset he's objectively terrible... via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/326tSTa