1. Do you guys think anything is broken?
The four Pokemon that I have seen various people claim to be broken are Gligar, Misdreavus, Murkrow, and Scraggy. Let's take a look:
Gligar: No. While I do agree that Gligar is very very good, that doesn't make it broken in any way. Bronzor hard counters it, and it can't boost its Attack and Speed at the same time, which lowers its sweeping potential. Defensive Gligar is one of the best defensive Pokemon out there, but it isn't so good that it is broken. Baton Pass is probably the closest to being broken, but if you let Gligar get a Substitute and a Swords Dance / Agility, you probably deserve to lose the game anyways.
Misdreavus: No. Despite all the arguments about Stunky being dead weight, it does counter Misdreavus. Bulky Pokemon such as Porygon and Croagunk can also beat it. Misdreavus would be fantastic if you could look at your opponent's team before choosing your set; as is, it is stuck doing way too much—Nasty Plot allows it to break down most common checks and counters, but leaves it wide open to Stunky and Munchlax, for which it needs Will-O-Wisp for. Aside from that, its stats just are a little bit less than what it needs—not enough defenses to avoid 2HKOs from common attacks without investment, not enough Special Attack to 2HKO common Pokemon. If Misdreavus just was a slightly bit better, maybe things would be different.
Murkrow: Possibly. Murkrow is probably the most skill-based Pokemon in this metagame. SubRoost is probably the best demonstration of this—predict a switch, use Substitute, net a free kill. However, good teambuilding will defeat Murkrow quite easily. Murkrow really needs to be saved till lategame—against a good player, its presence will force them to play extremely conservatively, especially if they do not know what set Murkrow is running. Murkrow doesn't have a true hard counter, but with good play and teambuilding it is quite manageable. In a few aspects, Murkrow is a lot like Drilbur in the last metagame—while not necessarily broken alone, the effects it has on your opponent's play can be quite devastating. That being said, Murkrow is not quite broken (yet).
Scraggy: Possibly, but probably not. To be honest, I've been struggling with Scraggy a lot lately. Scraggy takes advantage of the other top suspects so well—since I'm using Porygon to check Gligar, Misdreavus, and Murkrow, Scraggy has a ridiculously easy setup. Finding a solid counter to Scraggy that doesn't suck in other situations is pretty difficult. However, Scraggy is still pretty weak. Its +1 Ice Punch doesn't even come close to OHKOing Eviolite Murkrow. Scraggy is still definitely a very dangerous Pokemon, and it is certainly much more difficult to counter due to teambuilding necessitated by Gligar, Misdreavus, and Murkrow.
2. Centralization, while not an argument that I deem makes a Pokemon banworthy, is definitely occuring within the current meta.
It is, and this actually annoys me a lot. The metagame is probably down to about 20 viable Pokemon now, and your team practically must have six of those or you lose simply due to having worse Pokemon. Too often I can tell straight from Team Preview if this match is going to be easy or not. The main problem is that there's nothing we really can do about it. Nothing in the current metagame is extremely broken, and there is no one source of centralization that I can point to and say "oh, that's it." It's just that some threats require you to have appropriate counters, for which there are not many. Then you need an offensive presence of your own, and all of a sudden you already have six Pokemon. It's not that the current metagame is bad—it is very skillbased, which is certainly something we want to see. The question is now how do we encourage innovation and creativity while keeping a balanced metagame?
3. Why is Murkrow's usage on the ladder so low in comparison to that of Misdreavus and Gligar?
Murkrow's most effective set, SubRoost, takes a lot of skill and practice to use properly. As such, many people either use it incorrectly and become discouraged with it or use a less skillbased set such as MixKrow, which is not nearly as effective and causes them to remove it from their team due to it not pulling its weight. Misdreavus and Gligar are both very easy to use, and are effective. As more people learn how to use SubRoost properly, I expect Murkrow usage to rise.
Good questions as usual Ray Jay!