This entire post was unnecessarily hostile. / other similar comments
There's none besides what you decided to find, way to play the victim. I mirrored your attitude in my response to make a point and I'm surprised you managed to miss it.
Six Pokemon? Where is this defined? Personally I find raising six Pokemon to be tedious. I think three would be the ideal sweet spot. It's a fine balance between the tedium of equally raising a full team and the centralization problem that would be caused if solo runs were assumed.
It's an unwritten rule (sometimes quite explicitly written down however) that we train a full team because it is fun and that we pretend X items cannot assist us because they make very different Pokemon too similar (i.e. X item spam, then sweep). This is because we seem to be in agreement that it makes the game fun, as opposed to rigid speedrunning with a starter (for which no tier list needs to exist, though certainly you can speedrun the game with most mons with varying success, but this is not what we're trying to deduce).
The level 74 comment is lazy. I already demonstrated that Drilbur was appropriately leveled throughout the majority of the game and addressed that only his Elite 4 performance may need to be more closely examined.
His pre-E4 gym performance is far from perfect too. I would barely consider using Excadrill against Clay for example, perhaps only to finish off something others failed to KO for whatever reason. His Excadrill is most likely outspeeding yours and OHKOing. It is also very likely that your Drilbur is still a Drillbur by that point of the game.
If we look at the other gyms... He exists for Burgh but is of no help. Against Elesa, he suffers strong damage from Emolga's Aerial Ace and lacks STAB for Rock Tomb. Setting up is made difficult due to how much damage you intake. This more or less applies to all grounds, of which you can have a few by this point, but somebody like Sandslash (early evo!) can actually tank physical hits. Drilbur cannot, and while Excadrill's typing is one of the reason he's up there in Top, we're waiting for the evolution still.
Skyla is "kind of" a good matchup because you can setup on that stupid lead of her. However, good luck outspeeding Swanna (who only has Bubblebeam on Normal Mode though).
Drayden is so-so. His lead runs Revenge and can always force-switch you if you try to set up. Flygon could outspeed you and attack with Earth Power, but when your other mons have done the job with these two, Excadrill has a very good matchup against Haxorus who is tough.
Marlon is a bad matchup. I've done quite a few resets in this game in challenge settings to have a good idea of the AI and while it's true that the AI will go for the KO when there's an opportunity, it is still likely to go for the damage that doesn't KO. It doesn't act the same way as you suggest and you should be prepared for things to go in ways you do not predict (from prior experience). Excadrill is not taking two Scalds, and if he takes one, the second one is guaranteed to come your way because it will KO.
However, as I said earlier, a Level 50 Excadrill was used in a 0 Exp Challenge Mode run during the Elite 4. I imagine he'll still be quite dominant.
I'm familiar with this; however, 0 exp runs are artificial and only have so much relevance to our discussion. Excadrills have good learnsets and are caught at high levels during mid-endgame, and have other positive qualities that nobody is putting to doubt. We all agree that Excadrill belongs in Top, remember, that should account for something.
A 0 exp run sees a very episodic appearance of Magnemite, Darumaka and Braviary, and I believe none of Minccino, but if these Pokemon can be caught and receive experience when fighting, then their absence longterm in an artificial challenge cannot be used against them. If Darmanitans and Magnetons were common in the wild, you can bet they would appear in battles and tear things to pieces much like Excadrill does.
Also, Excadrill's 0 exp domination in the E4 is comparable to Sawk's or Gliscor's (and those are nowhere near Top because of availability and the existence of levelling up) and is reliant on setting up. Having Swords Dance is a boon for Excadrill, but neeeding X items to set up on something or continue a sweep is not, and a full team should have options to beat a tough trainer without resorting to setup tactics.
I will instead focus on how Drilbur's dominant performance warrants a tier gap.
I like this idea, and I'm really looking forward to it. This is exactly what you want to prove - that Drilbur is superior to the rest to a sufficient extent to be a tier above them.
This is a single segment speedrun. Luck is minimized as much as possible because mistakes force the runner to immediately reset. There is no saving. No retrying. Screw up and you're done. This serves to increase the objectivity of the run for our purposes.
Fair enough but when something goes wrong in a run that isn't a speedrun (which happens more often when you fight more battles, naturally), there are all sorts of way how you could resolve the problem that are beyond the rigid limits of such a playstyle as speedrunning, and since there's a myriad of ways how you could build a team and make choices, it's pointless to even list them (there are just too many after gym 2 or so when team building options grow very wide).
I've caught up on this thread. It seems like discussion has nearly stagnated. I'm trying to rejuvenate that discussion. You not liking that isn't my problem.
The discussion died out because the person running the tier list constantly says "hush" every time somebody posts something that isn't an entry, which is a sad state of affairs. I'm quite happy that the topic is much less boring than before (a discussion is rare to see) as well as seeing you personally with that attempt to argue Drilbur up into his own tier. Sorry to hear you interpreted the opposite.
I'll avoid the ad hominem. Irrelevant to the discussion.
It must suck being a martyr for reason, eh IOS?
I don't think I've ever seen a tier list here that puts a specific Pokemon above the rest a la Marcus or Seth. In fact, the recent BW1 article has no Top tier at all but instead a lengthy High tier which includes folks from Darumaka to things like tradeless Timburr, Tympole and Throh. I'm personally not so worked up about that and think that if Drilbur is proved to be above the other residents of Top tier then we should accept this. The tier list host's verdict may not reflect this however (iirc we still cannot talk about trades here for some reason). You seem to be on to something, and I think this has a lot to do with what you refer to as my "hostility" (this humours me) so I think I've done my part well - the ball is yours again now.