I've been thinking more about why there's been such a wave of 52s in X rank recently so I'm bringing this thread back from the dead, whatever, indulge me
The reason why 52 feels so annoying to fight is because it's the best weapon at punishing mistakes in the game. At its range, you can't peek a 52, pretty much ever, because its kill time outdoes basically every other weapon in the game, so you need to be very patient about when you want to push it and you need to respect its space, you can't just walk in on a 52 and expect it to go well.
So if you make a mistake in your positioning or get greedy with your plays, the 52 is just going to eat you up, simple as that. Not to mention 52 is way more mobile than most weapons in the game, so if you play as a slow weapon, you need to be aware of where the 52 is at all times because it can literally swim up to you and kill you in your endlag, even if it was outside of your range.
And that's when wall comes into play, I don't think it's that much of a get out of bad positioning free card, but it is a "I am just going to stand here, threaten to delete you, and you can't deal with me by yourself, what are you going to do :)" tool. Wall gives you so much survivability, on a mobile weapon with good range, an insane kill time, and solid paint. This sub basically requires you to displace the 52 if you ever want to fight it, and if you don't have any displacement tools you need to 2v1 the 52, and split its attention between two players, which is hard to set up in solo, and might just not work since the 52 can just delete your teammate if you're too late.
So I think the reason why there's so many 52s in X rank now, and why Melon used it (the guy who got 5000XP in japan), is because the new matchmaking system is a LOT more lenient with your opponents' X powers. Before, top 500 players would basically always get matched in top 500 lobbies, at most you'd get half 500s and half players that were close to that. Now it's usually one or two 500s per team, even for top 30 or so players, which means that you'll be fighting a lot more players that won't be as diligent or patient during the game. So having a weapon that can insta punish their mistakes is very very good, not to mention 52's a very self-sufficient weapon that can easily carry games in the right hands, it doesn't really need anything.
It has some weaknesses, but they're difficult and unpredictable to expoit. I don't think the weapon is that easy, you need to learn to play around wall and be very patient yourself, since you can overextend and get picked off for it, but it's got really valuable strenghts in solo. And yes, I get why fighting it feels annoying, since if you're both within range and are aware of each other, the 52 wins that fight 9 times out of 10 and it can feel dumb
Anyway, for funsies, try replacing the 13 times I've said '52' in this post with 'the Alien', and you've now summarised the plot of every Alien movie, trust. Is the 52 in the room with us right now?