>>15702851I was referring mostly to the spoilered bit. Talonflame does not lack power completely: he has enough to do his job of revenging and cleaning. He is, however, objectively less powerful than most OU heavy hitters. 120 STAB priority goes a long way even off 81 Attack, but Talonflame is no Salamence or Terrakion. The point that people who diss his base stats don't get is that he doesn't need to be. He's a totally different kind of player.
I loved Talonflame from day 1 of his reveal just because I've always thought a falcon Pokemon would be neat. Even when Gale Wings started to get attention I was conservative and didn't expect him to perform all that well. The damage he can do is surprisingly substantial, and it allows him to abuse his priority STAB and carve out a niche as a valuable teammate even in OU. Color me impressed and pleased. He certainly won't stay Top 3, but he'll always be zipping around OU in at least some capacity: the services he provides can be valuable to many kinds of teams.
Personally I think it would be hilariously awesome if he lost enough popularity to drop to UU. He wouldn't be any less useful in OU, so I could still have him in my standard team, and then he could also tear it up in UU.
