But Ice Shard will OHKO Yache-less Garchomp, so basically it forces Garchomp to run an item.
Stealth Rock forces you to lead with Yanmega OR carry a spinner/magic mirror-er.
Or run Leftovers + Protect to 1) take advantage of speed boost and 2) recover that lost health.
Also, do you really believe that Garchomp wouldn't be better than Yanmega anyways in a Stealth Rock-less metagame?
Stealth Rock can be counteracted at any time by a Rapid Spinner. You can't delete Ice Shard off your foe's Mamoswine just because you have a Claydol.
Also, Stealth Rock doesn't make all pokemon 4x weak to it horrible by itself. For example. Volcarona is still top-20 OU despite being 4x weak to Stealth Rock (AND getting hurt by other hazards).
To go through other 4x-weaks:
Charizard isn't that great of a pokemon with its average base 100 speed and 109 SpA being its one other notable stat. Honestly, isn't Infernape better?
Articuno is Ice/Flying. Even without Stealth Rock, Ice is still a bad defensive typing, and Articuno isn't as good as its bird brethren at attacking.
Volcarona is arguably being kept OU as opposed to Ubers thanks to Stealth Rock.
Ninjask is a lead and doesn't need a whole lot of bulk anyways.
Yanmega is nerfed and the main problem it has with that is dying to priority. But it's still countered by Sp. Def. Scizor and dies to Ice Shard.
Moltres Actually, it would be kinda cool to use Moltres in an SR-less environment <3 Moltres is already solid UU and could fill a neat stalling role on Sun teams. (However, Zapdos is UU so idk about how much Moltres would improve)
Butterfree Screw Butterfree.
It would be kind of neat to have a hazards-less tier separate from OU (perhaps combined with a Clear Skies tier) so that we'd see some different pokemon shine, but I don't really believe that Stealth Rock should be banned from the actual OU tier. This discussion has come up time and time again and somehow Stealth Rock is never voted suspect (or even nominated?)
Still the best chance SR-haters have is to "join forces" with the weather haters. lol.
Still, I don't really believe Stealth Rock has that negative of an impact on the metagame.
BTW @OP: creative title for the thread I really like your originality
Why not just ask "Should Stealth Rock be banned?"
The reason why my poll asked "would you still play" was because of a debate I had about the potential split in the playerbase :/
even though i hate sr just because of its type discrimination i wouldn't want it banned...
if only it could be nerfed in 6th gen so it would do like 1%/6,25%/12,5%/18,5%/25% then it would be great...
but you have to admit that your reasoning on why those pokes are good or bad is very biased and simple minded.
f.e.:''ninjask is a lead and doesn't need bulk anyway...''
ninjask is used as a lead 'cause of sr!and of course he needs bulk so he can tank hits better before passing the boosts!and with sr stripping away 50% of its life it can't even take 1 priority hit after sr...
another example.:
Yanmega is nerfed and the main problem it has with that is dying to priority. But it's still countered by Sp. Def. Scizor and dies to Ice Shard.
is this a serious reasoning???yanmega's most serious problem is obviosuly sr!!!of 'course it has some priority issues but that happens to all frail speedy sweepers...also the fact that it is countered by sp.def scizor doesn't say anything(and ice shard also doesn't say anything 'cause you already have mentioned priority)...every poke has its counters!!!the fact that it has some counters doesn't mean that sr doesn't fuck him badly!many pokes in ou have some hard counters but they are still used!of 'course almost all of them don't lose 50% of their health upon switching in...
and also you forgot to mention how sr affects every fire,bug,flying and ice poke...a poke doesn't have to be 4x weak to sr to get serisously hampered by it...have you forgot why a defensive fire type is a joke???'cause of sr!
also ice types are bad enough!do they need sr to fuck them up even more???
anyway the thing i am trying to say was that all your examples were very biased and your post wasn't saying much...that's all!
and something last that goes to everyone:
whoever says that sr keeps so much pokes in check so it shouldn't be banned,this is irrelevant!completely irrelevant!
if these pokes were deemed broken without sr then they would just get banned!we don't adjust the situations so that some pokes won't be broken!we ban the pokes with the given circumstances!
so if volcarona was deemed broken in a metagame without sr then so be it...
the fact is that the pokes that get seriously nerfed by sr are much more than the pokes that it keeps in check!so my guess is that the ban of sr would indeed increase variety which is a wanted aspect for a desirable metagame!
but i don't want it banned only for 1 reason:without sr some pokes will be able to switch freely with no penalty!and this is big!