Niantic Doesn't know how to balance their game.
Ok so have you all realized how Niantic can not balance their game whatsoever. Here are a few examples: Lapras now Lapras for a period of time was the best defender but now well his cp was nerfed unimaginably bad and on top of that they removed Ice Shard and gave him WG one of the worst defensive moves in the game. Poliwrath is my next example remember when Poliwrath was like a teir 2 defender and the set was Bubble/Anything well now bubble is not even his best move Rock Smash is I mean 25 to 12 that is so unfair. Another one is Alakazam so I love Alakazam but I was aware he was worthless but then all of a sudden he had the highest attack stat in the game and future sight I mean yeah I love him but maybe he was made a little too strong with access to Confusion with 20 base power he is kind of OP and because of his Insane attack stat and stab a confusion from him does over 30 dmg per use that is insane. Which pokemon do you think need to be rebalanced me personally I want lapras to make a comeback because even tho I dont have one he is the hardest pokemon to beat beside blissey in my opinion.
Answers
I agree that Niantic has done a poor job of balancing the game - mostly due to movesets - but not for some of the reasons you've listed.
Alakazam was really strong in gen 1, partly due to it's high speed allowing it to go first (important in turn based strategy), while speed is seriously underrepresented in Go, making Alakazam a shadow of it's former self. Same with Gengar.
They've got the glass cannon part down, but it's not strong enough to the point where you have reason to use it instead of Dragonite, who'll do just as much DPS but with far more HP, so why bother using Alakazam besides for style points. If anything Alakazam isn't strong enough.
Lapras and Exeggutor used to be the ones seen frequently in gyms, now they've basically swapped places with Rhydon and Gyarados, so the gym scene is still just as stale as it was in Gen 1, just with different Pokemon.
Regardless, Lapras wasn't specifically targetted to be nerfed, every Pokemon had their stats adjusted to the new formula, Lapras was just done later than the others.
It was an unintended consequence of the adjustment to base stats, Niantic didn't change the formula to specifically nerf Lapras.
But I do agree that it was braindead to give it water gun when Vaporeon exists.
Poliwrath like Lapras was just an unintended casualty of changes. Bubble was changed because of Bubblestrat, not because Poliwrath needed a nerf.
To be fair they made up for that, they replaced Mud Shot which absolutely no one wanted, with Rock Smash, and Submission basically got buffed into Dynamic Punch. So it's no longer a CP-efficient defender, which didn't really matter anyway since CP is king on defense, but now it's a CP-efficient attacker, i.e. a prestiger.
What I don't understand is why they made tons of moves legacy and then also buffed them in some cases. What's the point in making good movesets not obtainable anymore, who does it benefit. I just think they're seeing how much they can piss people off but still get them to keep playing.
Like Discharge for example. Magneton sucked because it had no good electric charge move. And then Niantic buffs Discharge to where it's good on offense, but remove Discharge instead of one of Magneton's steel moves that no one wants.
It's like they were saying "We heard you didn't like Discharge, so we decided to remove it, but also fix what people didn't like about the move in the first place" :^)
Same with Shadow Claw on Gengar. It was bit too slow to use it efficiently with dodging, so they replace it with Hex which is just as slow as the old Shadow Claw and made Shadow Claw faster.
I could understand bad making bad movesets to keep people playing longer because they need to evolve more to get a good moveset, but if that is the case then why do some Pokemon have 2 good quick moves.
I agree with a lot of what you said, specifically with the glass cannons and the legacy moves. I would like to add that the addition of future site, while keeping psychic, and overheat compared to fire blast, and changing petal blizzard to a 1 bar move was a little baffling. That being said, I think the quick moves are far more balanced overall. They are closer in terms of dps, or one is better because of eps. They more clearly have a good defensive move and offensive move. My only grip would be the lack of STAB on some of those moves.
I also disagree with people's opinion on water gun on Lapras. Sure, it is a bad defensive move, but it's not like Niantic labels pokemon "offense" and "defense." At least water gun gets STAB with Lapas, compared to Gyarados that doesn't get STAB with either quick move. Lapras with water gun/hydro pump is one of the best water pokemon in terms of bulk. Sure Vaporeon is still better, but I don't think they should change a pokemon based on another pokemon. Just to add, Vaporeon is still a good defender even though it has water gun. I actually think Vaporeon could use a second quick move. Also on that note, with the bulk of Lapras and Vaporeon, would you really want a hard hitting quick move? What if you put bubble on them, or even something that hit as hard as dragon tail? Could you imagine a defender that hit harder than dt Gyarados but lasted twice as long?
I guess I think in general, Niantic did a great job in their rebalance, but that is over-shadowed by some glaring issues, which is mainly the cp system for gym placement. There are still a couple changes on pokemon that leave me scratching my head, but there are far less completely worthless movesets.
Oh yeah, I forgot about some charge moves. Flamethrower, old Petal Blizzard were for players who preferred being more HP efficient with dodging rather than ending the fight slightly quicker with Fire Blast / Solar Beam.
But for some reason they make PB one bar, and replace Flamethrower with Overheat on some Pokemon instead of replacing Fire Blast, so that way players can try and get the move they prefer instead of being forced into 2 moves that are basically the same.
Psychic gets outclassed by Futuresight, so why make Psychic a 1 bar instead of keeping it 2 and lowering the cooldown instead?
As for Water Gun, it's a bad defensive move and it's also not filling a niche on offense because a Vaporeon would do a better job. Ice is not a good defensive type, it only resists itself, and just adds more types that do increased damage, so if Lapras' typing doesn't come into play, then it's got the same stamina, basically equal defence, but less attack.
Ice moves were useful because they are SE against grass types, and having ice-typing just means they do even more damage.
If pairing water gun with hydro pump, Vaporeon does it better. If pairing it with an ice charge move, a double ice moveset would be better.
Previously if you got a Lapras, you were guaranteed an ice quick move, 2/3 specials were ice, and dragon pulse was still decent, so you basically were guaranteed a Dragonite slayer, that was Lapras' niche. Now there's a 50% chance to be disappointed because you just caught/hatched a crap Vaporeon.
I think Vaporeon didn't get a new move because of balance. Like you said, it's already strong on defense with water gun, even with it being nerfed from 6 to 5 damage. Despite their shortcomings I think Niantic know that giving Vaporeon an even higher damage quick move would be a mistake, while making a new move that would essentially be a water-type Fury Cutter wouldn't change much, so why bother.
Lapras already had a hard hitting quick move in Ice Shard, which previously had 15 base damage. Even though now it's only 12, so is Zen Headbutt, and the 2 best defenders in the game have that move, so it wasn't removed from Lapras for balancing reasons, because if a 12 damage move was too much for a defender, the first response wouldn't be to remove it from only Lapras of all Pokemon.
Also Niantic made a tweet saying they're aware of people wishing to change movesets, yet they continue to give moves to Pokemon that the move is useless on which just shows they're doing it deliberately so that we have to evolve more and therefore grind candies more.
I'm okay with grinding for candies if the game did it fair, rather than as a way to make up for the lack of content.
They could certainly do things better, but I still don't believe changes on Lapras need to be made with Vaporeon in consideration. In addition to that, the most common Lapras counter was Arcanine because he resisted ice attacks and delivered neutral damage. Water hits Arcanine, and pokemon like Golem SE. We can argue that water gun is trash, but hp will make quick work of the puppy.
And just to nit pick, psychic was always a 1 bar move. If we keep flamethrower and overheat, a 3 bar fire move would have been a lot cooler than fire blast.
Water Gun added nothing new to Lapras. Even with ice being not very effective and water gun being super effective, frost breath and ice shard still deal more DDPS than water gun.
Water is double effective compared to ice against golem but that doesn't change anything. The relative effective multiplier is less than ice against fire types where ice moves are still superior.
I didn't say anything about Hydro Pump being undesired. I think it's an upgrade over Dragon Pulse, but if the choice was between keeping Lapras' old movesets or the current ones, I'd definitely choose the old ones because Lapras is excelled as a Dragonite counter, and it's old movesets guaranteed that your Lapras would be useful for that purpose.
Psychic was originally 2 bar prior to gen 2.
of bars a charge move has isn't what concerns me, it's the duration of the move. Overheat and Fireblast are both 4+ second moves, which leaves you vulnerable for much longer compared to the ~2.5 second charge moves which are in some cases fast enough to also dodge quick moves.
What about teams? Team Mystic "won" the grass event by catching most mons. It like a soccer team with 11 players beat a team with 7. No-one cares about the grass event, but gym domination is exactly the same. I can never compete with Mystic because I can not hold gyms on my own. 100 coins and 5000 dust to their 10 players daily and 10 + 500 for me.
Lapras is fine, she doesn't need a buff. She is still the best sweeper of dragonites. As for charizard and blastoise, they are where they belong. They weren't that strong in the main games. They just seemed that way because the main games were extremely easy in story mode. However, in competitive PvP no one uses either.
I think the common misconception is that CP is the culmination of how good a mon will perform in battle. In reality, it is only used for gym placement. Honestly, I would not want to see a bunch of Lapras' in gyms again because they are still semi-difficult to dispose of. The issue is blissey is such an outlier, that it throws their formula for gym placement off - and the whole 100 seconds thing makes this mon nearly unbeatable at those high levels.
What I would like to see is a smaller CP range - if Ho-oh ever comes out, there will just be a bunch of them sitting at the top. A smaller CP range would make all those mons you like just as or more effective than they currently are in gym standings.
