np: ORAS OU Suspect Process, Round 5 - Run The Jewels

[Rocxidi]

Played a few games on the ladder and saw that Gothitelle was absent from all the battles I had. Nota big deal since I've played against it and know enough about how it affects the meta.

The real surprise was hazzards. With the premier Magic Bouncer of the game gone, stacking Spikes, Toxic Spikes, and Stealth Rock is as easy as it used to be, and succesfully placing and defending your hazzards puts a ton of pressure as usual. This, however, isn't a problem in terms of its effect on the metagame. It's the opposite, as the ladder allows for the use of suicide leads and many more Stealth Rock users. Sableye restricts the metagame a bit by reducing the viability of many Pokemon, whereas the ladder without Sableye contains things not commonly seen before such as Dragalge and many bulky Pokemon dropping Stealth Rocks for Spikes. Hell I even saw a damn Pineco today. It's interesting to see alot of things coming back, but in the end, I fail to see any positive or negative changes in the metagame, simply an increase in hazzard stacking, which can be interpreted both ways. That being said, I don't think Mega Sableye deserves a ban. It does make some Pokemon and playstyles harder to use, but many Pokemon fo this, such as Manaphy for stall and Manectric for offense, but this doesn't mean it's broken or uncompetitive. I'd like to hear more on the issue though, since I'm really unsure about what to think of Sableye.

Ban the shit out of Shadow Tag though.

 

[Blvdman]

I'll refrain from tearing this emotional heap of tears and wadded tissues apart too badly. . .

Firstly, I want to express that this was not just a unanimous decision based on the Council and the council alone, as seen Here. Feel free to click it but not read it at all.

Second, are we really going to use this Swiss cheesed argument again? There is a VERY clear reason the Pokemon you illogically named were banned and not the ability. People touched on it above me so I see no point in reiterating. Let's NEVER bring that garbage argument to this thread again please. I say that, but I know for a fact it will be brought up again by someone being upset their favorite panic buttons are on the chopping block.

Third, why the ever living hell would Clefable get banned? Clef didn't face some obscene amount of pressure from Goth like literally all the other Stallmons did, so it's usage likely won't rise or drop by much if any. Aside from that, Clef has absolutely no reason to be suspect. Being annoying doesn't make it suspect worthy, not that it matters at all since this is a thread that has just about as much to do with Clef as it does why the Ocean is salty.

And speaking of salty. . .
Fourth, don't bring that shit here. If you're going to try and defend your side, do that. Don't try and deter the thread and point at things you personally don't like, as that is literally ALL you did.

Fifth, I use Shadow Taggers and trappers and I can recognize the problem. We're not all just a bunch of moaners and cry babies, you'd know that if you actually read through these posts, but that'd require time and effort now wouldn't it?

And sixth, shut up about your displeasure with the council, I did it, we all do it, you're not special and no one cares.




Alright, so maybe I went against what I originally said.

Yes I understand and I know I'm not special, my post was more in terms of wondering and slight annoyance that STag is suspected, and was hoping for some more in-depth explanation to the decision as it looks like STag suspect favours Stall more than any other playstyle. The clefable example was more or less me trying to think of pokemon who would be harder to take down without STag,

Also, I didn't bother reading 10 pages of posts before I commented as that would create slight bias, but I did read posts after I had commented. "Feel free to click it but not read it at all." - a bit rude imo, but ok.

 

[Wheezer]

I feel like by this point, everyone was expecting this to happen at some point, although maybe not at the same time. If I had to vote to either ban both, or to not, then I'd definitely vote to ban both. Luckily that isn't that case, which is good, because in my opinion, Mega-Sableye should not be banned.

Think back to earlier in ORAS when many people were utilising Manaphy as a way to beat Stall. Manaphy was almost considered for a suspect test because it was so consistently devastating against Stall or Semi-Stall builds. The popularisation of Gothitelle has made Manaphy, formerly a 'suspect worthy' Pokémon, with fantastic stallbreaking potential, far less appealing. This is just one of many cases where Gothitelle is able to, from team preview, target and remove the opponent's biggest threat to the Gothitelle user's team. Some other fantastic stallbreakers, which are common targets for Gothitelle are; Talonflame, Clefable, Mega-Gardevoir, Gliscor, and Togekiss.
Without Gothitelle plaguing the metagame, many stallbreakers would, once again, become viable. This also will affect teambuilding. Now, because the pool of potential stallbreakers will become much larger, teams will be allowed more variety, as their team will not 'auto-lose' to stall because they lack Shed Shell Togekiss. The larger pool of stallbreakers will in turn make Mega-Sableye's job much harder, as there will be more viable Pokémon that threaten it, and no uncompetitive way to just remove them for little cost. Many know, if there is one thing Mega-Sableye does not appreciate, it is pressure. Sableye's small HP stat, and lack of resistances make it difficult to withstand too many hits, and it is not uncommon to see Mega-Sableye have to Recover 3-4x in a row just to stay in shape. Fire types, Fairy types, and strong wallbreakers are not uncommon Pokemon in OU, and finding a way to beat Mega-Sableye, especially with Goth out of the equation, is not even close to farfetched.
One of the arguments I see coming up a lot is that Mega-Sableye constricts teambuilding. Firstly; Mega-Sableye restricts teambuilding no more than Pokémon such as Mega-Charizard-X. With Zard-X, you could make the argument that teambuilders are forced to bring at least 1 of the following.
A: A physical wall, which can take 2 hits from +0 Zard-X (eg. Hippo, Slowbro, Landorus-T etc.)
B: A Pokémon that could revenge +1 Zard-X (eg. Scarf Latios, 100% Mega-Diancie, 100% Tyranitar etc.)
Remembering that if the opponent does manage to weaken your answer for Zard-X, you simply lose.
I don't have a whole lot to say about Mega-Sableye. This Pokémon wasn't even S ranked just recently, but it did happen to find it's way back to S rank just as Gothitelle became popular. That can't be a coincidence. Gothitelle makes Mega-Sableye seem better than it is by weaknening the pool of viable stallbreakers that Mega-Sableye based teams must prepare for.
Also, to anyone who is saying that Mega-Sableye makes it impossible for teams to get entry hazards up. That is incorrect. Mega-Sableye cannot guarantee to be at 100% at all times. Mega-Sableye cannot switch into Hippowdon if at 70% or less, as it runs a 54% risk of being 2HKOed by Earthquake. Landorus-T only needs Standard Mega-Sableye at 80% before Mega-Sableye can no longer afford to switch into Earthquake (61% chance to be 2HKOed). Obviously there are also other Stealth Rockers which will always get rocks up vs Mega-Sableye. Not saying you should be forced to run them, but Heatran, and Clefable are surefire ways to ensure Stealth Rocks vs a Mega-Sableye team. Even with Mega-Sableye on a team, it is not impossible to get your hazards up. Also remember the most popular Pokémon in the game right now. Mega-Sableye does not like switching into Dragon Tail from Garchomp. Of course these situations are all hypothetical, but they are all common enough situations, and likely one that could be related to.
Lastly, Mega-Sableye's speed is actually very important. The fact that it is always slower not only leaves it prone to being 2HKOed after a small amount of damage, but also leaves it especially vulnerable to the likes of Iron Head / Icicle Crash flinches etc.
Please remember this is just my opinion. I have never really written something like this before, so keep in mind this is my first try at it. I haven't managed to comment on everything, but that's my first impression. Hopefully my 2 cents can drive conversation.

TL;DR
Goth makes M-Sab's job look easy. Without Goth, Mega-Sableye would have to deal with a much larger number of stallbreakers.
Goth is an uncompetitive element of teambuilding, allowing a user to remove a potentially threatening Pokémon for little risk.
BAN GOTH / SHADOW TAG
DO NOT BAN SABLENITE

Also, Run the Jewels is my avi, and one of my favourite rap duos of all time. Props to whoever decided the name [:​

You're gonna want to read this post I made in the ORAS stall thread because it summarizes Mega Sableye's negative impact on defensive teams well and I will reference things from the post often. I don't really have a tl;dr, sorry.
For those of you who would like to keep Mega Sableye in Overused because you think you are "supporting stall", I advise you to think about it again with an open mind. I hope that you all see that the banning of Mega Sableye will help stall as a whole playstyle, not just offense and balance. If you are truly an advocate of stall (and all playstyles for that matter), you would consider banning Mega Sableye. Don't just pass it off as Smogon trying to make stall worse; on the contrary, it would make stall better. I talk more about offense in this post though, so you should read the one I made in the stall thead regardless.

Ok, so here is my rebuttal. Here it seems to be that you are saying that with Gothitelle gone, Mega Sableye will not be much of a problem anymore. However, Gothitelle going will not change the fact that Mega Sableye is able to bounce back hazards with its ability. It doesn't fix team matchup issues. It doesn't change the restrictions that Mega Sableye puts on stall as a whole. It doesn't free up teambuilding. It doesn't change the fact that Mega Sableye is uncompetitive.

Gothitelle was used on stall to give teams better counterplay to common stallbreakers. However, this doesn't remove the restrictions placed on offense and balance teams. They are still forced to run Togekiss, Hoopa-U, Mega Heracross, etc. Yes, they may no longer have to run Shed Shell, but they still have to run them in order to beat Mega Sableye teams. At this point you may argue, "Well offense should have a good, strong stallbreaker anyways. I mean, to put one mon on a team and beat a whole playstyle! That seems fair to me". Well, true, you may be able to beat a whole playstyle with Hoopa-U, but at the same time, this is only increasing the team matchup issue. Teams should be meant to beat other teams as a whole. My 6 mons should be able to beat your 6 mons if I am the better player and I have a decently built team. It's not my 1 mon should be able to beat your 6 mons, unless you are carrying 1 of 2 specific other mons, which I lose to (again, team matchup problems created by Mega Sableye). And yes, Mega Sableye does force offense teams to run a specific stallbreaker (keep in mind, this hurts stall teams lacking Mega Sableye even more because they are not the cause for the offensive team to be running a specified stallbreaker in the first place). Offense teams cannot normally pressure stall teams with hazards like they normally would in order to beat stall teams. As long as the offense player keeps up the momentum in his or her favor, the offense player will not need a specified stallbreaker. Instead, they can use strong attackers and break stall through smart plays and momentum. Yes, there will be quite a few offense teams running stallbreakers which you should expect to see and prepare for like Mega Gardevoir, Mega Medicham, Gengar, Mega Gyarados, and Clefable, but these mons can be prepared for with ample counterplay if you are using a well built stall team. The mons that I had listed earlier (Nasty Plot Togekiss, Hoopa-U, Rain Dance Tail Glow Manaphy, Mega Heracross are just some examples, but keep in mind there are only a few, which just adds to team matchup issues), stall has little to none counterplay against. These mons are being forced upon offense teams in order to beat Mega Sableye stall, and with Mega Sableye gone, a majority of these mons we can expect to see die out in usage because they are no longer required on offense teams in order to beat stall.

Now you may argue that I had used the point that offense cannot beat Mega Sableye without hazards unless it uses specified stallbreakers that we haven't seen too much before Mega Sableye came about. This point may seem weak to some of you because Mega Sableye does not prevent hazards from getting up against everything. For example, Stallbreaker Heatran, Clefable, Swords Dance Lum Berry Garchomp, Life Orb Garchomp, and Earth Plate Landorus-T can prevent Mega Sableye from blocking hazards if predicted correctly on the switch (Clefable is the only mon that reliably keeps Mega Sableye away). However, I would argue to you that this only serves to further create team matchup issues. What you are basically saying is that if I want to play offense, I need to either run unique stallbreakers that aren't much use outside of beating stall, or run one of these Stealth Rock setters. That seems unhealthy for the metagame to me. After that you talk about how if you get Mega Sableye to a certain percentage you are able to 2HKO it on the switch in with your rock setter (keep in mind that the Mega Sableye user can just switch to Skarmory and Defog on Landorus-T and Garchomp. This seems really ironic to me because in order to get Mega Sableye down to these percentages, you need to pressure it with Stealth Rocks.

You also make a point that Mega Sableye being slow causes it to be susceptible to flinches, and use this as a point for keeping it... I mean, come on, do I even have to argue about this one? Your argument would have been stronger if you just left this out.

Ok, so I think I covered each of the points you made. Looking forward to your response. Also, I don't think I ever congratulated you for getting reqs, so grats for that.

Ban Gothitelle
Ban Mega Sableye (if you know what's good for you)

 

[Kav]

From this sentence it seems that you don't normally prepare for stall on the ladder.

i didn't think it came off that way. all i was getting at was that if you're using a strategy who's core element is hard countered by sableye then you obviously have to prioritize stuff like abr stall as a threat more. ssjjinx said that building a team around stacking hazard's in the pre-suspect meta was a bad idea, and that sab discourages using hazards at all; which is pretty ridiculous considering spikes support literally every playstyle and skarm and ferro have both remained high in their usage as spikers.

also i guess its worth saying that i never said sableye was an unmanagable threat either. the major constraint comment was pretty much just referring to offense teams that were super reliant on hazards that a lot of people are laddering with right now, since thats where a hard counter to typical sableye cores were really needed.

 

[jacob]

ok so my thoughts on mega sab is it's not really that big of an issue on its own and that it actually really helps the meta from becoming a hazard stacking shit fest. mega sab is pretty easy to prepare for when not also having to prepare for it to be paired with a goth since most of the mons that get hazards on sab get trapped by goth with little effort.

goth on the other hand requires little to no effort to use and is completely meta breaking not only is goth good on stall its usable on most archetypes and can get at least 1 kill or cripple a mon every game. every time i go against a goth and im using a bulkier team i know that probably half my mons arent going to be off use since goth can just come and and kill it.(also heres a nice replay of me getting outplayed and outskilled by a goth http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/oususpecttest-299419263)

 

[Clair]

You're gonna want to read this post I made in the ORAS stall thread because it summarizes Mega Sableye's negative impact on defensive teams well and I will reference things from the post often. I don't really have a tl;dr, sorry.
For those of you who would like to keep Mega Sableye in Overused because you think you are "supporting stall", I advise you to think about it again with an open mind. I hope that you all see that the banning of Mega Sableye will help stall as a whole playstyle, not just offense and balance. If you are truly an advocate of stall (and all playstyles for that matter), you would consider banning Mega Sableye. Don't just pass it off as Smogon trying to make stall worse; on the contrary, it would make stall better. I talk more about offense in this post though, so you should read the one I made in the stall thead regardless.

Ok, so here is my rebuttal. Here it seems to be that you are saying that with Gothitelle gone, Mega Sableye will not be much of a problem anymore. However, Gothitelle going will not change the fact that Mega Sableye is able to bounce back hazards with its ability. It doesn't fix team matchup issues. It doesn't change the restrictions that Mega Sableye puts on stall as a whole. It doesn't free up teambuilding. It doesn't change the fact that Mega Sableye is uncompetitive.

Gothitelle was used on stall to give teams better counterplay to common stallbreakers. However, this doesn't remove the restrictions placed on offense and balance teams. They are still forced to run Togekiss, Hoopa-U, Mega Heracross, etc. Yes, they may no longer have to run Shed Shell, but they still have to run them in order to beat Mega Sableye teams. At this point you may argue, "Well offense should have a good, strong stallbreaker anyways. I mean, to put one mon on a team and beat a whole playstyle! That seems fair to me". Well, true, you may be able to beat a whole playstyle with Hoopa-U, but at the same time, this is only increasing the team matchup issue. Teams should be meant to beat other teams as a whole. My 6 mons should be able to beat your 6 mons if I am the better player and I have a decently built team. It's not my 1 mon should be able to beat your 6 mons, unless you are carrying 1 of 2 specific other mons, which I lose to (again, team matchup problems created by Mega Sableye). And yes, Mega Sableye does force offense teams to run a specific stallbreaker (keep in mind, this hurts stall teams lacking Mega Sableye even more because they are not the cause for the offensive team to be running a specified stallbreaker in the first place). Offense teams cannot normally pressure stall teams with hazards like they normally would in order to beat stall teams. As long as the offense player keeps up the momentum in his or her favor, the offense player will not need a specified stallbreaker. Instead, they can use strong attackers and break stall through smart plays and momentum. Yes, there will be quite a few offense teams running stallbreakers which you should expect to see and prepare for like Mega Gardevoir, Mega Medicham, Gengar, Mega Gyarados, and Clefable, but these mons can be prepared for with ample counterplay if you are using a well built stall team. The mons that I had listed earlier (Nasty Plot Togekiss, Hoopa-U, Rain Dance Tail Glow Manaphy, Mega Heracross are just some examples, but keep in mind there are only a few, which just adds to team matchup issues), stall has little to none counterplay against. These mons are being forced upon offense teams in order to beat Mega Sableye stall, and with Mega Sableye gone, a majority of these mons we can expect to see die out in usage because they are no longer required on offense teams in order to beat stall.

Now you may argue that I had used the point that offense cannot beat Mega Sableye without hazards unless it uses specified stallbreakers that we haven't seen too much before Mega Sableye came about. This point may seem weak to some of you because Mega Sableye does not prevent hazards from getting up against everything. For example, Stallbreaker Heatran, Clefable, Swords Dance Lum Berry Garchomp, Life Orb Garchomp, and Earth Plate Landorus-T can prevent Mega Sableye from blocking hazards if predicted correctly on the switch (Clefable is the only mon that reliably keeps Mega Sableye away). However, I would argue to you that this only serves to further create team matchup issues. What you are basically saying is that if I want to play offense, I need to either run unique stallbreakers that aren't much use outside of beating stall, or run one of these Stealth Rock setters. That seems unhealthy for the metagame to me. After that you talk about how if you get Mega Sableye to a certain percentage you are able to 2HKO it on the switch in with your rock setter (keep in mind that the Mega Sableye user can just switch to Skarmory and Defog on Landorus-T and Garchomp. This seems really ironic to me because in order to get Mega Sableye down to these percentages, you need to pressure it with Stealth Rocks.

You also make a point that Mega Sableye being slow causes it to be susceptible to flinches, and use this as a point for keeping it... I mean, come on, do I even have to argue about this one? Your argument would have been stronger if you just left this out.

Ok, so I think I covered each of the points you made. Looking forward to your response. Also, I don't think I ever congratulated you for getting reqs, so grats for that.

Ban Gothitelle
Ban Mega Sableye (if you know what's good for you)

There's actually some truth to M-Sableye making stall less effective as a playstyle. Because non-M-Sableye stall typically loses to stall with M-Sableye, M-Sableye is pretty ubiquitous, which can hurt the matchup of stall against other playstyles for two reasons:

• There's an opportunity cost for using M-Sableye compared to M-Venu or M-Bro, which actually fairly regularly outweighs its benefits (particularly against non-Spikes offensive teams or those with SR Clefable / Heatran).
• Because most stall revolves around M-Sableye, stall teams tend to be extremely similar and easy to reliably counter-team with one dedicated stallbreaker.

Unfortunately the rest of this post can basically be summarised as wanting to ban M-Sableye because it promotes diversity of playstyles, and therefore matchup - which is insane! - but I did think that that was a salient point.

 

[Shruggy]

You're gonna want to read this post I made in the ORAS stall thread because it summarizes Mega Sableye's negative impact on defensive teams well and I will reference things from the post often. I don't really have a tl;dr, sorry.
For those of you who would like to keep Mega Sableye in Overused because you think you are "supporting stall", I advise you to think about it again with an open mind. I hope that you all see that the banning of Mega Sableye will help stall as a whole playstyle, not just offense and balance. If you are truly an advocate of stall (and all playstyles for that matter), you would consider banning Mega Sableye. Don't just pass it off as Smogon trying to make stall worse; on the contrary, it would make stall better. I talk more about offense in this post though, so you should read the one I made in the stall thead regardless.

Ok, so here is my rebuttal. Here it seems to be that you are saying that with Gothitelle gone, Mega Sableye will not be much of a problem anymore. However, Gothitelle going will not change the fact that Mega Sableye is able to bounce back hazards with its ability. It doesn't fix team matchup issues. It doesn't change the restrictions that Mega Sableye puts on stall as a whole. It doesn't free up teambuilding. It doesn't change the fact that Mega Sableye is uncompetitive.

Gothitelle was used on stall to give teams better counterplay to common stallbreakers. However, this doesn't remove the restrictions placed on offense and balance teams. They are still forced to run Togekiss, Hoopa-U, Mega Heracross, etc. Yes, they may no longer have to run Shed Shell, but they still have to run them in order to beat Mega Sableye teams. At this point you may argue, "Well offense should have a good, strong stallbreaker anyways. I mean, to put one mon on a team and beat a whole playstyle! That seems fair to me". Well, true, you may be able to beat a whole playstyle with Hoopa-U, but at the same time, this is only increasing the team matchup issue. Teams should be meant to beat other teams as a whole. My 6 mons should be able to beat your 6 mons if I am the better player and I have a decently built team. It's not my 1 mon should be able to beat your 6 mons, unless you are carrying 1 of 2 specific other mons, which I lose to (again, team matchup problems created by Mega Sableye). And yes, Mega Sableye does force offense teams to run a specific stallbreaker (keep in mind, this hurts stall teams lacking Mega Sableye even more because they are not the cause for the offensive team to be running a specified stallbreaker in the first place). Offense teams cannot normally pressure stall teams with hazards like they normally would in order to beat stall teams. As long as the offense player keeps up the momentum in his or her favor, the offense player will not need a specified stallbreaker. Instead, they can use strong attackers and break stall through smart plays and momentum. Yes, there will be quite a few offense teams running stallbreakers which you should expect to see and prepare for like Mega Gardevoir, Mega Medicham, Gengar, Mega Gyarados, and Clefable, but these mons can be prepared for with ample counterplay if you are using a well built stall team. The mons that I had listed earlier (Nasty Plot Togekiss, Hoopa-U, Rain Dance Tail Glow Manaphy, Mega Heracross are just some examples, but keep in mind there are only a few, which just adds to team matchup issues), stall has little to none counterplay against. These mons are being forced upon offense teams in order to beat Mega Sableye stall, and with Mega Sableye gone, a majority of these mons we can expect to see die out in usage because they are no longer required on offense teams in order to beat stall.

Now you may argue that I had used the point that offense cannot beat Mega Sableye without hazards unless it uses specified stallbreakers that we haven't seen too much before Mega Sableye came about. This point may seem weak to some of you because Mega Sableye does not prevent hazards from getting up against everything. For example, Stallbreaker Heatran, Clefable, Swords Dance Lum Berry Garchomp, Life Orb Garchomp, and Earth Plate Landorus-T can prevent Mega Sableye from blocking hazards if predicted correctly on the switch (Clefable is the only mon that reliably keeps Mega Sableye away). However, I would argue to you that this only serves to further create team matchup issues. What you are basically saying is that if I want to play offense, I need to either run unique stallbreakers that aren't much use outside of beating stall, or run one of these Stealth Rock setters. That seems unhealthy for the metagame to me. After that you talk about how if you get Mega Sableye to a certain percentage you are able to 2HKO it on the switch in with your rock setter (keep in mind that the Mega Sableye user can just switch to Skarmory and Defog on Landorus-T and Garchomp. This seems really ironic to me because in order to get Mega Sableye down to these percentages, you need to pressure it with Stealth Rocks.

You also make a point that Mega Sableye being slow causes it to be susceptible to flinches, and use this as a point for keeping it... I mean, come on, do I even have to argue about this one? Your argument would have been stronger if you just left this out.

Ok, so I think I covered each of the points you made. Looking forward to your response. Also, I don't think I ever congratulated you for getting reqs, so grats for that.

Ban Gothitelle
Ban Mega Sableye (if you know what's good for you)

I feel like the problem here is that the methods used by most players to bypass sableye dont really apply for stall teams. Stall teams dont generally have mons capable of 2hkoing sableye and there are only a few fairies particularly viable on stall so you need to be more creative in order to defeat sableye. This is kind of exacerbated by the fact that often you dont feel like you have a teamslot spare to deal with sableye due to the ridiculous amount of threats there are to prepare for in this meta. However. Like i said before, i feel that if you are relying on hazards/chip damage to beat teams (which you usually are) and you dont have a way to deal with opposing sableyes assuming you dont also have one yourself then you didnt teambuild correctly to take account of an S rank threat. There are actually many ways to deal with opposing sableyes, rest-talk mons pretty much all will get passed him eventually. Boosting special attackers generally have no problem. Bulky waters find it easy, slowbro/suicune even quagsire can just get burns on it and then pp stall it out. Obviously most stall teams have clerics so you might think "whats the point of burning they can just heal bell". But then your win condition changes from defeating sableye to defeating the heal bell user. Common heal bell users are generally chansey/clefable. While the list of mons that defeats BOTH sableye and its cleric are relatively small thats not sableyes fault thats just the fact that few of those mons fit onto stall effectively. Its actually kinda a lot of fun to have a 5 mon stall core and then slap a magmatran on the end of it. You dont lose much as 5 mons can handle pretty much any threat or combination if you build the 5 right and then the fact you have a qt stallbreaker in magmatran makes your job a lot easier in many cases. While this suspect test 'feels' a bit refreshing in that its forcing you to teambuild differently i'd more consider it a holiday to some mountains for hiking or whatever. Yeah its fun for a few weeks in the summer but chances are you propably wouldnt want to live there all year around and the sableye suspect feels the same to me. Its a nice temporary change but its not something i believe is productive in the long-run.

 

[Sablenite]

Spikes are being spammed on the suspect ladder just because its one of the more obvious ways to take advantage of his disappearance. People are way overexaggerating how difficult it is to get rid of hazards though.

And sab didnt exactly kill hazard stacking teams before the suspect either. The strategy was perfectly viable. You just had to dedicate a slot to taking out stall (which leads back to it being a major constraint on teambuilding).

Well it is easy to remove hazards, doing so with an offensive 'mon guarantees it will be killed or taken advantage of and hazards have more PP than Defog, and we have so few spinners.

 

[Blvdman]

After reading the 13+ pages of comments, I don't think STag is the actual issue. Complaining that STag is uncompetitive is spitting in the face of users who are able to use STag well. You don't just send in Gothitelle without thinking. For example if a hippowdon uses SR while gothitelle is still in the game, its a form of punishment for not using the best move possible. Earthquake the predicted Gothitelle switch. When GameFreak designed ShadowTag they designed it for this exact purpose, an ability that helps trap pokemon that are most likely dangerous or hard for your whole team to take out and help weaken it. To call this type of ability uncompetitive is really strange.

On the other hand, the MSab + Shedinja + Goth gimmick team is really being held together by Msab and its magic bounce as no other pokemon is able to create the same effect. Espeon is not able to provide that same utility as Msabs typing and bulk can.

Overall: Shadow Tag is not uncompetitive because it serves the purpose of being able to help weaken pokemon that your whole team otherwise would have trouble taking out. For example trying to take out Venusaur but you only have Tflame who gets walled by you're opponents Heatran, thus you're talonflame can't do its job and the pressure is now stacked on ur defogger to remove the SR, but now Venusaur can some in all your other mons and just leech seed / sludge bomb away. STag allows gothitelle to weaken venusaur considerably without allowing it to fallback to its teammates.

If this type of playstyle is uncompetitive then I fear OU is going to be really bland from here on ourt in terms of innovative plays.


Note: I've noticed a lot of comments more concerned about stall, but remember there are other playstyles, so we have to make good decisions from all playstyles. I use Gothitelle on my balance team with Mbeedrill to help trap skarm, who would otherwise have a field day with my team and set up hazards.

 

[Kav]

Well it is easy to remove hazards, doing so with an offensive 'mon guarantees it will be killed or taken advantage of and hazards have more PP than Defog, and we have so few spinners.

are you saying that things like latios or starmie never find any safe chance to remove hazards?

i mean don't get me wrong, an offense team doesnt want to burn turns doing that, but the opportunity isnt remotely uncommon. even so you can rely on offensive pressure to make the act of laying hazards dangerous to begin with.

 

[D_what]

Complaining that STag is uncompetitive is spitting in the face of users who are able to use STag well. You don't just send in Gothitelle without thinking. For example if a hippowdon uses SR while gothitelle is still in the game, its a form of punishment for not using the best move possible. Earthquake the predicted Gothitelle switch.

Wh... I don't think anyone is saying Gothitelle/STAG use is uncompetitive because it's easy to use for a braindead player. Obviously if you switch Gothitelle into an attack it can't take, or into a mon with Baton Pass/VSwitch/UTurn or any number of wrong targets, that's probably not a good play and you may have turned the game into a 5-6, and not in your favour. Anyway, suspects tend to be targeted at and by players at the upper end of the ladder, we have to assume both players are capable of making good decisions. In any case, "don't ban this, because its users are terrible, it's actually much fairer for everybody when it's used by smart players" makes NO sense as an argument.

Instead, we're complaining about STAG because it's so effective when used by a smart player, even against smart opponents. Your Hippowdon case... sure, you can EQ it on the switch. But when - and you will get this wrong eventually - you mispredict, you have lost your Hippowdon. There are no outs to this. Meanwhile, if the only obvious choice is to attack every time you switch your Hippowdon in, you have just cut off pretty much all of its utility and made it massive setup bait for the bazillion things than can set up on a Hippowdon that is afraid to use Slack Off or SR. And it's not specific to Hippowdon. Take Chansey; the ONLY smart move a Chansey player can do while using a generically viable Chansey is to immediately switch out. Sure, you've just outplayed the Gothitelle user, good for you, but can you keep doing that, all without using your Chansey at all? I doubt it. If STAG is uncompetitive, it's because it grossly limits the opponent's players options, and not just when it's on the field. Its presence on the opponent's team turns swathes of 'mons into 100% liabilities, much, much worse than something like a Chesnaught is against a Talonflame. At least Chesnaught can switch out!

awww shit since when have I had 300 posts I thought I had ~170

 

[Mango Smoothie]

Overall: Shadow Tag is not uncompetitive because it serves the purpose of being able to help weaken pokemon that your whole team otherwise would have trouble taking out. For example trying to take out Venusaur but you only have Tflame who gets walled by you're opponents Heatran, thus you're talonflame can't do its job and the pressure is now stacked on ur defogger to remove the SR, but now Venusaur can some in all your other mons and just leech seed / sludge bomb away. STag allows gothitelle to weaken venusaur considerably without allowing it to fallback to its teammates.

If this type of playstyle is uncompetitive then I fear OU is going to be really bland from here on ourt in terms of innovative plays.

Shadow tag does not serve to "weaken" pokemon, it serves to outright eliminate/cripple them for the rest of the battle. And Goth can virtually guarantee that against a ton of pokemon, the more defensive targets it can occasionally even switch in on. Also, you saying "without allowing it to fallback to its teammates" and maintaining that that is a good thing is kind of troubling; the whole point of putting pokemon on a team together is for them to be able compensate for each others' shortcomings. Shadow Tag completely invalidates that part of teambuilding (and most of teambuilding that isn't Shed Shell+Pursuit), once it is in play you are stuck and your pokemon will likely die/be crippled. STag forces a 1v6 scenario on the opposing player because the player with Shadow Tag is allowed to switch out whenever they feel like, but the other player is stuck with whatever they have in against the trapper.

Also, if there's a team has that much trouble with Venusaur where their only answer is Talonflame and the rest of their pokemon are free switchins to venusaur, thats bad teambuilding on whoever made that team's part. Especially when there are more than a reasonable handful of ways to handle it.

Tell me whats "competitive" about not being able to switch out your pokemon X against an opponent and be forced to let it get crippled/get pp stalled out/die? Tell me whats "competitive" when the pokemon X I just mentioned could be one of a resonable chunk of viable pokemon? I had a battle yesterday VS a M-Scizor Goth Stall team (innovative at least) and I had to sit through 3 of my pokemon getting pp stalled out subsequently struggle to death. Tell me whats "competitive" about having my moves be inconsequential for 20+ turns because I have to keep on using my scarfed clefable's moonblast or Scarfed slowbro's scald quite literally without being able to do anything else? Does it take a remote amount of skill to keep hitting "rest" and sitting there for 20+ turns because I know my opponent can do nothing about it? Also, please tell me whats "bland" about actually having to play better than your opponent to eliminate their troublesome pokemon, and not just get one free switchin against it?

 

[MANNAT]

On the other hand, the MSab + Shedinja + Goth gimmick team is really being held together by Msab and its magic bounce as no other pokemon is able to create the same effect. Espeon is not able to provide that same utility as Msabs typing and bulk can.

This is flat out untrue as I have created my own version of the wonder trio utilyzing specs gothitelle since you can just run grass knot to murder hippo, hp ice to kill chomp/lando/glisc with a dugtrio to kill the remaining trappers and while dugtrio's trapping base is quite small because of its movepool and the fact that it only traps mons that get hit by spikes, so it isn't super uncompetitive, but gothitelle can trap every mon in the metagame bar maybe 4 mons total, with 2 of them having stag as their ability in the first place as well as having a wide movepool to adapt its sets to trap different shit for every team. With all the rockers removed by the trappers, shedinja is free to come in as it pleases, and this team is certainly not a gimmick as it is really consistent and works very well.

 

[D_what]

I had a battle yesterday VS a M-Scizor Goth Stall team (innovative at least) and I had to sit through 3 of my pokemon getting pp stalled out subsequently struggle to death. Tell me whats "competitive" about having my moves be inconsequential for 20+ turns because I have to keep on using my scarfed clefable's moonblast or Scarfed slowbro's scald quite literally without being able to do anything else?

Hot damn. I might regret this, but you wouldn't happen to have a replay of this would you? (Or a link to the other person's team.)

 

[MikeDawg]

This is flat out untrue as I have created my own version of the wonder trio utilyzing specs gothitelle since you can just run grass knot to murder hippo, hp ice to kill chomp/lando/glisc with a dugtrio to kill the remaining trappers and while dugtrio's trapping base is quite small because of its movepool and the fact that it only traps mons that get hit by spikes, so it isn't super uncompetitive, but gothitelle can trap every mon in the metagame bar maybe 4 mons total, with 2 of them having stag as their ability in the first place as well as having a wide movepool to adapt its sets to trap different shit for every team. With all the rockers removed by the trappers, shedinja is free to come in as it pleases, and this team is certainly not a gimmick as it is really consistent and works very well.

Lol oh

 

[MikeDawg]

I feel like the problem here is that the methods used by most players to bypass sableye dont really apply for stall teams. Stall teams dont generally have mons capable of 2hkoing sableye and there are only a few fairies particularly viable on stall so you need to be more creative in order to defeat sableye. This is kind of exacerbated by the fact that often you dont feel like you have a teamslot spare to deal with sableye due to the ridiculous amount of threats there are to prepare for in this meta. However. Like i said before, i feel that if you are relying on hazards/chip damage to beat teams (which you usually are) and you dont have a way to deal with opposing sableyes assuming you dont also have one yourself then you didnt teambuild correctly to take account of an S rank threat. There are actually many ways to deal with opposing sableyes, rest-talk mons pretty much all will get passed him eventually. Boosting special attackers generally have no problem. Bulky waters find it easy, slowbro/suicune even quagsire can just get burns on it and then pp stall it out. Obviously most stall teams have clerics so you might think "whats the point of burning they can just heal bell". But then your win condition changes from defeating sableye to defeating the heal bell user. Common heal bell users are generally chansey/clefable. While the list of mons that defeats BOTH sableye and its cleric are relatively small thats not sableyes fault thats just the fact that few of those mons fit onto stall effectively. Its actually kinda a lot of fun to have a 5 mon stall core and then slap a magmatran on the end of it. You dont lose much as 5 mons can handle pretty much any threat or combination if you build the 5 right and then the fact you have a qt stallbreaker in magmatran makes your job a lot easier in many cases. While this suspect test 'feels' a bit refreshing in that its forcing you to teambuild differently i'd more consider it a holiday to some mountains for hiking or whatever. Yeah its fun for a few weeks in the summer but chances are you propably wouldnt want to live there all year around and the sableye suspect feels the same to me. Its a nice temporary change but its not something i believe is productive in the long-run.

Stall teams can/should adapt. They have been working just fine in the face of sableye based on the copious amount of sableye-stall ladder games. It is important to note that sableye can't be trapped, so losing goth won't neccesarily exasperate the sableye weakness.

Is it at all a bad thing that chansey+skarm+quag+cress et al. struggle to beat an incredibly high-profile mon? If they are lacking a legitimate anti-stall wincon, then it is just poor Teambuilding that is getting in the way.

 

[Mango Smoothie]

Hot damn. I might regret this, but you wouldn't happen to have a replay of this would you? (Or a link to the other person's team.)

I do not have a replay of the battle, I didn't think much of the battle outside of "damn Gothitelle is obnoxious" (also I was testing out a team and I don't usually save replays during testing phase).

EDIT: Found the team link

 

[Victory Victreebel!]

Stag can burn in hell.

"Mega Sableye makes it extremely difficult to set-up any sort of entry hazard once it has Mega Evolved. Only a few Pokemon can afford the luxury of setting their hazards against Mega Sableye without sacrificing viability." Well, glad to see support for LAZY TEAM-BUILDING. Now, SR might become even more over-centralizing than it already is. Also, it's about time we got a bulky Bouncer, Espeon and Xatu ARE NOT ENOUGH. Stall is a good play style and M-Sableye buffs it to a point where it can compete even more. Stag Goth is the only reason M-Sab would even be nominated for a suspect because it can trap stall breakers. M-Sab is a good mon, but ban-worthy? Definitely NOT, unless you want one of the following:
-Hazards running rampant
-Taunt dominating(Because what else will stop Defog from ruining our lovely hazard-ridden unbalanced meta with M-Sab gone?)
-Lazy, slap-a-hazard-on team building instead of 'maybe I shouldn't run SR or Spikes' team building

 

[Wheezer]

There's actually some truth to M-Sableye making stall less effective as a playstyle. Because non-M-Sableye stall typically loses to stall with M-Sableye, M-Sableye is pretty ubiquitous, which can hurt the matchup of stall against other playstyles for two reasons:

• There's an opportunity cost for using M-Sableye compared to M-Venu or M-Bro, which actually fairly regularly outweighs its benefits (particularly against non-Spikes offensive teams or those with SR Clefable / Heatran).
• Because most stall revolves around M-Sableye, stall teams tend to be extremely similar and easy to reliably counter-team with one dedicated stallbreaker.

Unfortunately the rest of this post can basically be summarised as wanting to ban M-Sableye because it promotes diversity of playstyles, and therefore matchup - which is insane! - but I did think that that was a salient point.

ya, sorry, I mentioned team match-up a few times when it didn't fit with the arguments/points I was making, thanks for pointing that out.

However. Like i said before, i feel that if you are relying on hazards/chip damage to beat teams (which you usually are) and you dont have a way to deal with opposing sableyes assuming you dont also have one yourself then you didnt teambuild correctly to take account of an S rank threat. There are actually many ways to deal with opposing sableyes, rest-talk mons pretty much all will get passed him eventually. Boosting special attackers generally have no problem. Bulky waters find it easy, slowbro/suicune even quagsire can just get burns on it and then pp stall it out. Obviously most stall teams have clerics so you might think "whats the point of burning they can just heal bell". But then your win condition changes from defeating sableye to defeating the heal bell user. Common heal bell users are generally chansey/clefable.

Ok, but you cannot beat Mega Sableye stall teams with your own stall like you say you can. Yes, there are Mega Sableye counters (Mega Altaria, Sylveon, Talonflame, Clefable, Heatran, Gliscor). However, this isn't what limits teambuilding for stall. What limits teambuilding for stall (and often what causes stall teams lacking Mega Sableye to just autolose to stall teams that carry Mega Sableye) is the fact that they can't get hazards. Just because my team has a bulk up Talonflame to counter Mega Sableye, it makes no difference to whether or not I am able to get my hazards up, and therefore makes no difference to whether I am able to win by pressuring my opponents team with hazards. The only stealth rock users on stall that are capable of getting Stealth Rock up on Mega Sableye are stallbreaker Heatran and Clefable. Not only am I forced to run these mons on stall to beat Mega Sableye stall as a whole, if I hope to win (I need hazards to pressure switches unless I am carrying a dedicated stallbreaker on my stall team), but I am also forced to run a limiting moveset on either Heatran or Clefable. For example, if I was originally planning on running Unaware Clefable to beat Manaphy or something (fuck manaphy, lol, that things really annoying to teambuild for), then I would either need to run Stealth Rock over Heal Bell or Calm Mind, which I originally needed to beat Manaphy, means that Clefable is no longer able to beat Manaphy as it was supposed to, and now its purpose is just to beat Mega Sableye.

e: missed this post, sorry

Stall teams can/should adapt. They have been working just fine in the face of sableye based on the copious amount of sableye-stall ladder games. It is important to note that sableye can't be trapped, so losing goth won't neccesarily exasperate the sableye weakness.

Is it at all a bad thing that chansey+skarm+quag+cress et al. struggle to beat an incredibly high-profile mon? If they are lacking a legitimate anti-stall wincon, then it is just poor Teambuilding that is getting in the way.

"If they are lacking a legitimate anti-stall wincon, it is just poor teambuilding that is getting in the way"
...That is not poor teambuilding. You are forced to run either a dedicated stallbreaker such as Hoopa-U, Mega Heracross, or Rain Dance Manaphy if you expect to beat Mega Sableye stall using your own "stall" (unless, of course, you are running stallbreaker Heatran or Clefable with Stealth Rock). If I can't fit on one of these specific mons, don't accuse me of "poor teambuilding".

 

[Sablenite]

ya, sorry, I mentioned team match-up a few times when it didn't fit with the arguments/points I was making, thanks for pointing that out.


Ok, but you cannot beat Mega Sableye stall teams with your own stall like you say you can. Yes, there are Mega Sableye counters (Mega Altaria, Sylveon, Talonflame, Clefable, Heatran, Gliscor). However, this isn't what limits teambuilding for stall. What limits teambuilding for stall (and often what causes stall teams lacking Mega Sableye to just autolose to stall teams that carry Mega Sableye) is the fact that they can't get hazards. Just because my team has a bulk up Talonflame to counter Mega Sableye, it makes no difference to whether or not I am able to get my hazards up, and therefore makes no difference to whether I am able to win by pressuring my opponents team with hazards. The only stealth rock users on stall that are capable of getting Stealth Rock up on Mega Sableye are stallbreaker Heatran and Clefable. Not only am I forced to run these mons on stall to beat Mega Sableye stall as a whole, if I hope to win (I need hazards to pressure switches unless I am carrying a dedicated stallbreaker on my stall team), but I am also forced to run a limiting moveset on either Heatran or Clefable. For example, if I was originally planning on running Unaware Clefable to beat Manaphy or something (fuck manaphy, lol, that things really annoying to teambuild for), then I would either need to run Stealth Rock over Heal Bell or Calm Mind, which I originally needed to beat Manaphy, means that Clefable is no longer able to beat Manaphy as it was supposed to, and now its purpose is just to beat Mega Sableye.

e: missed this post, sorry

"If they are lacking a legitimate anti-stall wincon, it is just poor teambuilding that is getting in the way"
...That is not poor teambuilding. You are forced to run either a dedicated stallbreaker such as Hoopa-U, Mega Heracross, or Rain Dance Manaphy if you expect to beat Mega Sableye stall using your own "stall" (unless, of course, you are running stallbreaker Heatran or Clefable with Stealth Rock). If I can't fit on one of these specific mons, don't accuse me of "poor teambuilding".

Why sure you can. I'm going to point out that full stall is dead, long live semi-stall. As said before trapping completely eliminates the counter you had for the 'mon they are using to beat you, So RIP your fairy, fire, or w/e you were using to deal with Sableye. Unless its your Mega, which is then T-Waved to put it into a speed where its killed easier or just HAX'd to death.

Why is it so important to get SR up turn one? It really isn't you don't always need hazards to pressure switch-ins, sure there nice (and formerly easy to use, which is why so many of you are so irritated.) but there are other ways of doing so. Get creative, run something that forces sable out or abuses its presence, we have things easily able of doing this (Mega-Lopunny anyone?) and there is Volt-Turn people. Don't forget this is a diverse meta-game, get creative in what you do and how you do it. I mean seriously, I run Mold Breaker SpD Excadrill and Toxic lures out Keldeo, Landerous-T, and irritates M-Sableye like nothing else. And you forget stall runs breakers easily, provided they benefit the team. Breaker Talonflame outside of Sable, handles Hoopa-U. IDK about you, but I don't run a 'mon that has only one function.

No Ban on Sablenite

 

[Wheezer]

Why sure you can. I'm going to point out that full stall is dead, long live semi-stall. As said before trapping completely eliminates the counter you had for the 'mon they are using to beat you, So RIP your fairy, fire, or w/e you were using to deal with Sableye. Unless its your Mega, which is then T-Waved to put it into a speed where its killed easier or just HAX'd to death.

just because you have a switch-in to Mega Sableye not trapped by Gothitelle, you are not beating Mega Sableye stall by any means.

Why is it so important to get SR up turn one?

I never said anything about getting up Stealth Rock turn 1.

Get creative, run something that forces sable out or abuses its presence, we have things easily able of doing this (Mega-Lopunny anyone?) and there is Volt-Turn people.

Again, you mention Mega Lopunny, but it is not breaking Mega Sableye stall. Any team will have good switch-ins to Mega Lopunny; they are not hard to come by on stall, so Mega Lopunny doesn't abuse Mega Sableye at all. Sure, it checks Mega Sableye and forces it out, but you are not getting anything accomplished by just forcing it out. That does nothing for your team unless you have hazards up, and this is the key behind Mega Sableye being uncomptitive. It does not allow you to be rewarded for forcing something out.

Don't forget this is a diverse meta-game, get creative in what you do and how you do it. I mean seriously, I run Mold Breaker SpD Excadrill and Toxic lures out Keldeo, Landerous-T, and irritates M-Sableye like nothing else. And you forget stall runs breakers easily, provided they benefit the team. Breaker Talonflame outside of Sable, handles Hoopa-U. IDK about you, but I don't run a 'mon that has only one function.

Ok. That is one mon that gets up rocks on Mega Sableye (not like I can just Defog them away with Skarmory which completely walls it anyways, lol). And yes, I am aware that Talonflame is a good switch-in/check to a good amount of mons. I never denied that. What I'm saying is it will not help you to beat Mega Sableye stall. It does nothing but force Mega Sableye out, which you are not punishing with hazards (like I mentioned before with Mega Lopunny).

 

[MikeDawg]

ya, sorry, I mentioned team match-up a few times when it didn't fit with the arguments/points I was making, thanks for pointing that out.


Ok, but you cannot beat Mega Sableye stall teams with your own stall like you say you can. Yes, there are Mega Sableye counters (Mega Altaria, Sylveon, Talonflame, Clefable, Heatran, Gliscor). However, this isn't what limits teambuilding for stall. What limits teambuilding for stall (and often what causes stall teams lacking Mega Sableye to just autolose to stall teams that carry Mega Sableye) is the fact that they can't get hazards. Just because my team has a bulk up Talonflame to counter Mega Sableye, it makes no difference to whether or not I am able to get my hazards up, and therefore makes no difference to whether I am able to win by pressuring my opponents team with hazards. The only stealth rock users on stall that are capable of getting Stealth Rock up on Mega Sableye are stallbreaker Heatran and Clefable. Not only am I forced to run these mons on stall to beat Mega Sableye stall as a whole, if I hope to win (I need hazards to pressure switches unless I am carrying a dedicated stallbreaker on my stall team), but I am also forced to run a limiting moveset on either Heatran or Clefable. For example, if I was originally planning on running Unaware Clefable to beat Manaphy or something (fuck manaphy, lol, that things really annoying to teambuild for), then I would either need to run Stealth Rock over Heal Bell or Calm Mind, which I originally needed to beat Manaphy, means that Clefable is no longer able to beat Manaphy as it was supposed to, and now its purpose is just to beat Mega Sableye.

e: missed this post, sorry

"If they are lacking a legitimate anti-stall wincon, it is just poor teambuilding that is getting in the way"
...That is not poor teambuilding. You are forced to run either a dedicated stallbreaker such as Hoopa-U, Mega Heracross, or Rain Dance Manaphy if you expect to beat Mega Sableye stall using your own "stall" (unless, of course, you are running stallbreaker Heatran or Clefable with Stealth Rock). If I can't fit on one of these specific mons, don't accuse me of "poor teambuilding".

Lol u think that you need one of those three mons if you want to beat sableye? Really?

Even if that was the case (it isn't), if sableye is this end-all-be-all threat to stall (an ubiquitous, s-ranked one at that), it most definitely is lazy Teambuilding to not run a hard counter to it, end of story.

It seems like you have started to drift away from the " stall can't beat sableye" argument to the "nothing can beat sableye" argument, which makes no sense. Sableye stall was definitely beatable with gothitelle. If you take goth out of the picture, then doing so becomes 10x easier.

There is no excuse to calling "matchup!!" on an s-ranked Mon. Especially if you are using a playstyle that is so overhwlemingly theatened by it, you need to adapt to it (if this wasn't the case, then the metagame would never change). Lazy Teambuilding.


Edit: Wheezer oops deleted the part where I said that stealth rocks isn't a wincon. In any case:

Stealth rocks isn't a wincondition nor is it a necessity. You have three+ perfectly good taunt mons that beat sableye and fit on full stall (gliscor, heatran, talonflame, mega gyarados (people are using this in stall even on the non-sableye ladder) ). You have multiple perfectly good stallbreakers that beat sableye and fit on any team ranging from semi-stall to hyper offense (clefable, Gardevoir, pidgeot, heracross, hoopa, victini, togekiss, manaphy, charizard, latios, etc.). You have multiple good cores and strategies that beat sableye and fit on almost any team (sylveon/altaria/other strong special attacker + pursuit, lures like mixed or grass knot thunderus, charizard, etc, Sub calm mind, strong phys attacker + magnezone, knock off + sand, heal bell/refresh + strong mons that sableye would like to burn (and eventually miss, if anything), maintain longevity with hazard control (not hard against stall) and wait for eventual crits and misplays, abuse the fact that sableye has no passive recover nor bulk nor useful resistances by using u-turn when sableye comes in to bounce a stealth rock and then force it out out+maybe sand damage).

All of these can all beat standard stall (particularly without gothitelle). Of course, stall can get creative and adapt (once gothitelle is gone), but then the rest of the meta adapts as well and we recognize the idea of a dynamic metagame. No matter what a stall team does, though, it will very rarely be in a position where it can easily win from turn 0 against a well-built team (once gothitelle is gone, having a well-built team will be 20 times easier). Sableye doesn't change this fact.

 

[Wheezer]

Lol u think that you need one of those three mons if you want to beat sableye? Really?

Even if that was the case (it isn't), if sableye is this end-all-be-all threat to stall (an ubiquitous, s-ranked one at that), it most definitely is lazy Teambuilding to not run a hard counter to it, end of story.

Did you even read what I said? Yes, you can run a hard counter to Mega Sableye, that's not the hard part. The hard part is trying to be able to pressure Mega Sableye stall without having your Stealth Rock up.

um. so uh. I guess I talk about my views on Gothitelle to not make this a one-liner?
Gothitelle is a stupid mon because it is uncompetitive. I am not sure what other arguments I can make about it because all of the points imo have been already discussed in this thread. it traps mons. takes away the element of switching, therefore taking away skill. can trap any mon p much. forces really niche sets/mons. ban it.

e: sorry, I meant that you are not able to punish switch-ins, not necessarily put pressure on stall.
e2: you added more onto your post that I will address:

Edit: Wheezer oops deleted the part where I said that stealth rocks isn't a wincon. In any case:

Stealth rocks isn't a wincondition nor is it a necessity. You have three+ perfectly good taunt mons that beat sableye and fit on full stall (gliscor, heatran, talonflame, mega gyarados (people are using this in stall even on the non-sableye ladder) ). You have multiple perfectly good stallbreakers that beat sableye and fit on any team ranging from semi-stall to hyper offense (clefable, Gardevoir, pidgeot, heracross, hoopa, victini, togekiss, manaphy, charizard, latios, etc.). You have multiple good cores and strategies that beat sableye and fit on almost any team (sylveon/altaria/other strong special attacker + pursuit, lures like mixed or grass knot thunderus, charizard, etc, Sub calm mind, strong phys attacker + magnezone, knock off + sand, heal bell/refresh + strong mons that sableye would like to burn (and eventually miss, if anything), maintain longevity with hazard control (not hard against stall) and wait for eventual crits and misplays, abuse the fact that sableye has no passive recover nor bulk nor useful resistances by using u-turn when sableye comes in to bounce a stealth rock and then force it out out+maybe sand damage).

All of these can all beat standard stall (particularly without gothitelle). Of course, stall can get creative and adapt (once gothitelle is gone), but then the rest of the meta adapts as well and we recognize the idea of a dynamic metagame. No matter what a stall team does, though, it will very rarely be in a position where it can easily win from turn 0 against a well-built team (once gothitelle is gone, having a well-built team will be 20 times easier). Sableye doesn't change this fact.

Sorry if I made it sound like offense needs rocks to pressure Mega Sableye stall. I thought I had already clarified this:

Sure, it checks Mega Sableye and forces it out, but you are not getting anything accomplished by just forcing it out. That does nothing for your team unless you have hazards up, and this is the key behind Mega Sableye being uncomptitive. It does not allow you to be rewarded for forcing something out.

The basis of the argument against Mega Sableye isn't that you need hazards to win against Mega Sableye (unless you are playing stall), the main argument is that it is uncompetitive because it does not reward players for outplaying their opponent and making the Mega Sableye user get punished for switching.

 

[Sir Azelf]

Umm Stealth Rock is not a god given right, as i said earlier. Why SHOULD it always be up? Why should you not work for something as mindless as entry hazards especially one as centralizing as Stealth Rock, which you need one turn to set up and the potential to deal massive amounts of hp chip damage per game whilst you sit back and do nothing until your counter is in KO range due to chip damage? Honestly i fail to see how making this harder this is negative in the metagame. Hazard stacking is epitome of mindless, really and hazard stacking dominant metagames are notoriously really shit, DeoSharp is a good example of this. You want hazards up? Work for them and use SR/spikes setters that arent easy as hell to stop and its not as if these dont exist and arent common.

Also if you cant stall break without rocks isnt that a massive beacon that your team has alot of holes and isnt going to struggle with just stall, just saying. If you are relying on rocks that much to do something which your team should be able to do with or without rocks regardless, aka stall break then thats your own fault and is a giant red flag about how effective your team is. Most things stall struggle with doesnt even need rocks to break through either and are getting those KO's regardless.

Also the argument "All my sable counters are beaten by the rest of its team" is actually horrible. Thats the point of stall, to have counters to all your shit. If they didnt it wouldnt be good stall would it. I could say "but my Skarm is beaten by the opponents Heatran so its a shit MPinsir counter", that is basically the same argument people are using in regards to MSable here. That reasoning is absolutely illogical lol, plus if they have counters to all your stuff, maybe you're well, just bad and should take into account common cores just as stall has to (i.e Keld+Pursuit as an example of a common core stall should account for, VoltTurn is another) and use better lures, breakers etc and ultimately should utilize better offensive synergy in team building essentially.

edit: why should you be rewarded for forcing sable out? What sort of self entitled shit is that? Double switch to your breaker, lure or w/e their team struggles with which you SHOULD be packing aka wincon vs stall. Isnt that enough of a "reward" that sable is giving you free switch ins to common stuff? Basically what user MikeDawg says in the next post.

 

[MikeDawg]

Did you even read what I said? Yes, you can run a hard counter to Mega Sableye, that's not the hard part. The hard part is trying to be able to pressure Mega Sableye stall without having your Stealth Rock up.

um. so uh. I guess I talk about my views on Gothitelle to not make this a one-liner?
Gothitelle is a stupid mon because it is uncompetitive. I am not sure what other arguments I can make about it because all of the points imo have been already discussed in this thread. it traps mons. takes away the element of switching, therefore taking away skill. can trap any mon p much. forces really niche sets/mons. ban it.

e: sorry, I meant that you are not able to punish switch-ins, not necessarily put pressure on stall.
e2: you added more onto your post that I will address:

Sorry if I made it sound like offense needs rocks to pressure Mega Sableye stall. I thought I had already clarified this:

The basis of the argument against Mega Sableye isn't that you need hazards to win against Mega Sableye (unless you are playing stall), the main argument is that it is uncompetitive because it does not reward players for outplaying their opponent and making the Mega Sableye user get punished for switching.

That isn't true. Getting hazards up isn't the only way to reward good play. Lots of posts have mentioned Sableye's lack of bulk and lack of passive recovery. What about luring it in with hazard bluffs/maintaining sand/keeping offensive pressure to prevent it from using recover? That's what I've done every time I've faced sableye stall, and that's what everyone has done to me when I used sableye stall. What about that doesn't encourage skill?