Prenote: I am fairly tired while writing this so it's probably rambly, maybe repetitive, and possibly have tired brainfart inaccuracies as a result, so feel free to point out any obvious errors I probably made. I think the general idea behind the post should be on point though.
This argument makes me mad, and it's not just you it's been a lot of people saying this. I mean, are we supposed to beat a team with a single Pokemon? Is that what we're aiming for? You can't say Sableye is broken because alongside 5 other Pokemon it walls most of the metagame. That's insane. The list of checks/counters provided was quite extensive, and included 2 other S rank mons so noone can claim that it's a list of obscure mons. So what if these things don't 6-0 entire teams specifically designed to outright wall as many things in the metagame as possible? In fact, some of them actually can, but that's besides the point. When something that stops your Sableye check comes out, you can switch. This is how Pokemon is supposed to work. When you introduce something that can remove the ability to switch, you encounter a problem.
The thing that made Sableye good was that Goth could trap and cripple/remove Sab's checks and counters. I think we need to focus on just getting rid of the cancerous filth that is Gothitelle, because Sableye truly isn't that bad.
I feel like this post really encapsulates what I don't like about the STag Ban arguments, and what makes a lot of them so flawed. Let's look at what's said here.
- Sableye is a key member of stall teams
- It's effectiveness exists because its supported by 5 other members that are effective at covering its weaknesses
- The point of stall is to wall as much of the meta as possible, which is what current stall teams are accomplishing
- Gothitelle denies switching of your key counters to Sableye (who generally is your team's stallbreaker), breaking the flow of the game
- Therefore, Gothitelle is broken
The general argument is pretty solid on the surface, but there is a key point that skips a bit of logic. It's this bit right here.
- Gothitelle denies switching of your key counters to Sableye (who generally is your team's stallbreaker), breaking the flow of the game
Now, what doesn't matter that the Pokemon here is Sableye. You could replace that Pokemon with any stall mega or any other Pokemon for that matter, and the flaw in this becomes the same.
Is Gothitelle being able to trap those answers the reason why the flow of the game is being broken? Is Gothitelle the one creating this problem? I mean, it certainly looks like it does, it has one incredible niche in trapping that it's exceedingly effective in, and does it with absolute consistency (barring hax). But let's back up first.
There is another major point that I think a lot of people tend to forget. Obviously if you made a two pokemon team and went onto OU ladder, MSab + Goth isn't gunna get you wins. So the point being:
- It's effectiveness exists because its supported by 5 other members that are effective at covering its weaknesses
This is major. Why is Sab + Goth so good? Because you also have Chansey, Skarmory, Clefable, Slowbro, Quagsire, whatever the hell you want to run to clean up the rest. Gothitelle takes down threats just as these do, but it does so in a much more narrow and specialized fashion. Pokemon ultimately a game where you have 6 pieces to start with, and your goal is to get rid of your opponent's 6 pieces. The end result on Gothitelle being that it kills or cripples something that otherwise would tear through your team, and in a lot of cases it becomes crippled or dies in the process, so effectively this turns the game into a 5v5 in your favor as it targets the enemy Pokemon that's the most effective against your team, while Gothitelle is often valueless for you outside of that one crucial pick. But what's really saying if that pick by Goth contributed more to the team than say, the great typing and hazard control of Skarmory, or the general control Clefable can contribute over a game? These Pokemon are considered higher rank for a reason: they are much more broader in utility than Gothitelle, and are usually the real threats on stall, the reason why Gothitelle picking a threat is important has nothing to do with Gothitelle, it's that 1 for 1ing favorably means a lot when you have such strong team members that can so easily cover all their bases. Maybe goth will trade its life to cripple 1 thing, but this ultimately leads to Clefable straight KOing 3 Pokemon. This is the end result of what STag does. Goth is an enabler for other Pokemon to do the dirty work, and it's only pushing stall to the point of being gamebreaking when you can get 5 Pokemon that can cover literally every single threat EXCEPT a few Pokemon that you leave Gothitelle to easily clean up.
Goth isn't the best Pokemon on a stall team. It's also not going to be the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and usually not even 5th best member of your team. It's an inherently weak Pokemon that does one very specific niche that stall incredibly badly needs well enough to get the job done. Which is why I don't like the idea of banning it.
Banning Goth would almost certainly be less impactful on stall than banning something like Clef, Skarmory, or Chansey, and that just doesn't feel right.
Yes, Goth contributes to stall in a way that can feel unfair, and can feel very unfun to play against, which makes it a great scapegoat for Sableye. Would people try and dare get away with banning Clefable to keep Sableye in the tier? It's a lot harder to convince people it's not Sab when the target isn't something that feels terribly unfun to play around, even if Goth isn't as inherently powerful as Clef is. The same arguement goes triple for Gothorita, if anyone is for some reason still trying to argue that thing could even crawl out of D Rank.
I can't call someone incorrect for saying Goth is a reason why Stall is currently broken, because they're not, but it call it THE reason... or even a top 3 reason... honestly it's not correct. You have a team of 6 Pokemon, and their strengths lie in being able to cover the weaknesses of others. Gothitelle does that all right, but so does Clef and Skarm, and they do it on a bigger scale than Goth does, just in a way that emphasizes gameplay more than teambuilding. Then there's Sableye, who does it on an absolutely ridiculous scale, blocking status, hazards, taunts, and a laundry list of Pokemon from even threatening to touch your team.
The powerhouse of stall teams is Sableye, he covers what were once weaknesses of stall inherently, and the rest of the stall team is there to abuse that. Gothitelle exists only as a tool to block the most straightforward counter to that type of strategy: support a mon that can kill Sableye, and pick apart the rest of the team without the glue that holds the whole team together. Gothitelle is strong in this meta because it's a forced pick, as Sableye has so tightly bottlenecked the game that it's come down to "always run an explicit Sableye counter on every team or lose", and Gothitelle exploits that by using the other 4 members of the team as padding, and eliminating the usually single threat on the enemy team that this otherwise broken stall core can't handle. Once it does that, stall does its thing and wins the game. The fact that you have a single win condition which you are so forced to rely on, that condition always being a Sableye counter, and if it is eliminated you guaranteed cannot get back into the game regardless of where the status of the game currently is at, to me shows how ridiculous the effect Sableye has had on the metagame.
Ever since Goth came into the meta years and years ago, it's been annoying and unfun to deal with, but that's about it. Many people have gotten incredibly salty over this mon, but it's been obviously not broken for years and across multiple metas. This is because it's only as powerful as the cores it can support, and in the case of the current meta, it certainly found a broken core to work with. Goth never was a problem before Sableye, but
significantly more importantly continues to not be a problem in its absence. It is decisively a normal mon without Sableye in the meta.
The real power of current stall lies entirely in the ability to support Sableye, and I don't really like the fact that so many people are arguing that Gothitelle is broken because it nearly auto-wins games by
killing your Sableye counter. If it was "killing your stallbreaker" or something more generic, something more ubiquitous than that, I'd be on the train for taking Goth down. But it's not, Goth is
specifically powerful in a meta where its primary role is to cripple or kill answers to
Sableye. This is why it should be banned rather than Gothitelle. It's entirely Sableye's fault that the meta is where it is, and Gothitelle is just a byproduct of a meta revolving entirely around Sableye.
