Disaster Area
formerly Piexplode
It's not like we've never had issues with trapping before (there was actually a stigma about using wobbuffet, as well as farceus, in DPP OU, as I've heard from theorymon - could someone explain how farceus and wobb are great pokemon in DPP Ubers and permitted on the ubers ladder, yet are not actually used? What'd be the difference between that and all the players agreeing not to use geomancy or shadow tag or baton pass?) - gothitelle was around in gen 5 with shadow tag, but it wasn't used in ubers much because of the lack of things to trap. The introduction of defog's mechanics change has allowed it to destroy hazard removers (e.g. water/grass/poison arceus), klefki (say hello to a geoxern sweep), palkia (when something goes down unless it gets critted before CM boosts are set up or double crits later on - it's worth noting palkia became a lot less offensive than in BW, where permanent rain also made it a lot less likely that gothitelle would be capable of trapping it), as a few examples as to why it's become more popular. Mega-Gengar adds to the list in the same way of pokemon you can't really use (fairy arceus, sylveon, defensive xerneas, clefable, chansey, etc.) without it being trappable and removable and introducing a fundamental weakness to the team. Gengar however gets destiny bond and taunt, allowing it to virtually guarantee removing one pokemon - the one turn of mega evolution perhaps makes it less threatening versus hyper-offensive teams (it is still usually capable of taking something down with it though) but it is still incredible. I don't know how people can see something that lets you remove 1 pokemon, virtually of your choice, off of the opponent's team, is not uncompetitive. Maybe we could hold a tournament in a different tier where one player brings a team of 5 and the other brings a team of 6, and then the person with the team of 5 gets to remove one pokemon from the team of 6. Assuming they're roughly equal in level, who would you think would win? Admittedly it's a bit far from its origins, but the point still stands that removing 1 pokemon of choice from the opponent's team with very little opportunity cost is kind of something massive..