You say you understand that Palpatine has enough metas, but Anakin is the exact same situation.
The problem under consideration with Anakin was not Anakin doing to well against Drevalak. It was what Anakin let Kevan do to Drevalak.
We just came off of six months where Kevan was 90+% of the meta. If Anakin had proven to be a hard counter to Drevalak, then Drevalak would have been driven out of the top slot within weeks by the thing that's been the most ubiquitous meta in the game's history for half a year, with the only change being a launch toon.
If there is one thing that could be worse than letting Palp meta 5 happen, it's letting Kevan meta 2 happen weeks after Malak dropped. I do not believe the reaction would have been quite the same if the team that was faring well after the rework was, say, GK, Snips, Ani, 3PO, R2 winning against Drevalak but losing against Kevan, instead of what looked like a potential Kevan hard lock on the meta. Which they decided wasn't happening, so it was fine.
Putting Anakin on a Kevan team was not a triumph of clever theorycrafting. It was using the newest Jedi on the previous meta Jedi team to keep it rolling. It wasn't a case of Thrawntroopers with Magma serving as antimeta when the triumvirate was at its height.
People have been saying for a long time they want more communication. But more communication means parting the kimono a little bit on the fact that the game and every aspect of it is designed. Deliberately. Including the meta. That's neither a secret nor a surprise. That's game design.
Antimeta can exist, but the meta will always be the designed central unit or units.
And tweaking things when design goals collapse is not punishing theory crafting. It's also game design. And the honest communication we're getting around it is dissolving the illusions people seemed to have around the myths of much being organic in the game.
