[Strype McClaine]

My understanding on the real use of black sludge was for the Item Clause battles, both in and out of game. Where you could have a second “legal” leftovers with the “drawback” of it must be a poison type and it could back fire if tricked repeatedly.

I’m just getting back into the game after playing a lot of fourth gen, and I found there was never a shortage of good bulky beefy poison types who liked having a leftovers. Wheezing, Venusaur (in his UU incarnation of gen 4), and to a far lesser extent, Muk….

While trick/switcheroo is becoming more common, it seems like it is still not too much of a threat. In this case the trickster tricks the black sludge, then takes the hit from the poison type, and takes the damage from the attack. Then later, needs to survive to re-trick? The deadliness of using the item then steams out of 1) The most common tricks in a format, and 2) if they are resistant to the poison users.

So it is an inferior choice that’s inferiority is directly proportional to what is over all going in the format…
Seems Normal to me.