np: ORAS OU Suspect Process, Round 7 - Diamonds [Read post #226] [BANNED]

[Finchinator]

Hey everyone, the OU tiering council has decided to test Sablenite this round.

Mega Sableye has been a noteworthy Pokemon in the tier for the entirety of ORAS due to it having Magic Bounce, improved 50/125/115 defensive stats, and a wide support movepool (Recover, Will-O-Wisp, Knock Off, Toxic, Foul Play, etc.).

Prior to the introduction of Mega Sableye at the start of ORAS, regular Sableye rarely saw usage in the OU metagame. Its main appeal was found in the fact that it had Prankster in conjunction with the aforementioned support movepool and a unique typing, allowing Sableye to only be weak to Fairy while possessing three important immunities (Fighting, Psychic, and Normal).

Upon the introduction of Sablenite, a whole new realm of viability opened up for (Mega) Sableye. It became the only bulky Magic Bounce Pokemon in the tier and, therefore, it found a fair amount of use working as a deterrent to hazard set-up. As time elapsed, Mega Sableye became one of the most common Mega Evolutions on Stall teams. It challenged a majority of the common Stealth Rock and Spike setters (bulky Landorus-T, Tyranitar, bulky Garchomp, Ferrothorn, Skarmory, etc.) in the tier to get up their hazards safely at any point in the game. While it is clearly a complex task to attempt to quantify the impact of controlling hazard set-up, determine how much significance Mega Sableye has on the functionality of teams it finds itself on, and gauge the nature of the aforementioned impact in regards to Sablenite potentially being banworthy, the goal of this suspect is for the participants to use their experience and knowledge to formulate an opinion on this matter.

Due to the fact that Mega Sableye has been a part of the ORAS OU metagame for a long time and the playerbase has a general idea of what it does, we have decided to ban Mega Sableye on the Suspect Ladder. Therefore, participants will be exposed to a metagame free of Mega Sableye and factor this experience into their ultimate decision.

For this round we are going to have two alternative ways to qualify for voting:

1. Laddering: you will need to achieve a COIL rating of 2700 (or more) in a /!\ game limit of 70 games /!\ on the OU Suspect Test Ladder (in which Sablenite is banned), that will be implemented very soon.
2. Suspect Tours: check McMeghan's thread.

The suspect test will last for approximately 2 weeks and will end on November 13th.

Use this thread to discuss the suspect and your thoughts on the suspect metagame. If you have any questions, then feel free to contact blunder, boudouche, CrashinBoomBang, Finchinator, M Dragon, PDC, and/or TDK through a PM. These threads tend to get derailed so please make extra effort to stay on topic. Future suspects need not be discussed in this thread.

Keep in mind that, as usual, it's going to be up to the playerbase to decide the outcome of this test. Good luck and have fun laddering!

/!\ Rules for posting in this thread /!\

• No one liners nor uninformed posts;
• No discussion on other potential suspects;
• No discussion on the suspect process;
• You are required to make respectful posts;
• You are required to read this thread before posting.

Failing to follow these simple guidelines will result into your post being deleted and infracted without any prior warning.

/!\ NOTICE /!\ OU will not be tolerating any form of voting manipulation. Any attempt to manipulate votes can result in an infraction, loss of eligibility to vote in the current test, and loss of the Tiering Contributor badge. While we won't necessarily enforce super strict punishment, this won't be tolerated and will be handled accordingly. Voting manipulation can simply be described as attempting to get people to vote a way on the test in inappropriate manners. Bribing with teams to vote a certain way, directly messaging people to vote a certain way, publicly announcing "vote this way" all fall under voting manipulation. If you have any further questions feel free to shoot TDK a PM.

Antar's edit: as with the previous OU tests, the B value for this test is 17.0. To figure out how many battles you will need to have in order to achieve reqs, first determine your GXE (shown on the ladder and when you type /rating) and plug that into the following formula:

N=17.0/log2(40*GXE/2700)

(Google calculator is awesome for this kind of thing).

Here are some sample values:

GXE N
100 30
90 41
85 52
80 70
75 112
70 324

 

[kumiko]

Hi, we will be adopting the protocol of having the suspect thread locked at the start. This thread will be open in 24 hours from this post. Please use this time to formulate your opinion and play on the Suspect ladder

 

[kumiko]

Live Suspect Tournaments

Date: Friday November 4th
Time: 6 PM EDT (GMT-4)
Host: rozes
Winner: Lcans
Gained Reqs: blunder, Lcans, Zamrock

Date: Saturday November 5th
Time: 4 PM EDT (GMT-4)
Host: Prague Kick
Winner: Empo
Gained Reqs: Empo, Omfuga, TFL, Updated Kanto

Date: Sunday November 6th
Time: 2 PM EST (GMT-5)
Host: Tricking
Winner: Leftiez
Gained Reqs: boudouche, Christo., Leftiez

All three suspect tournaments will adopt the suspect ladder where Sablenite is banned.

- 64 man tournament, only the Top 2 (Finals) players get reqs.
- 96 man tournament, only the Top 3 (Finals) players get reqs.
- 128 man tournament, only the Top 4 (Semi-Finals) players get reqs.
- 192 man tournament, only the Top 6 (Semi-Finals) players get reqs.
- 256 man tournament, only the Top 8 (Quarter-Finals) players get reqs.

/!\ Important Note /!\ On Sunday November 6th at 2 AM Eastern time, GMT-4 will revert back to GMT-5. Please take note accordingly.

Anyway, enjoy posting

 

[ABR]

Before I proceed, I want everyone to consider the real reason why some people, like myself, see that Sableye does not belong in this tier. Sableye is neither uncounterable, unwallable, nor unbreakable. The argument for pro-ban people is not that Sableye is so amazing on its own that there is no counterplay. I can admit that there are many ways of killing Sableye - this isn't even an argument. However, for those of you undecided voters, please consider Sableye's unhealthy effect on the metagame.

For most of the history of OU across many generations, hazards, status, and taunting have been key forms of taking out stall. I am not saying that there is some inherent right such that we, as players, are entitled to these options. I am simply illustrating a picture of classical stallbreaking, and how its former role in the metagame is healthier than the stall dynamic we have now. Breaking stall used to be about a wide variety of pressure applications, whether it be with Taunt Gliscor, getting rocks and pivoting in your wallbreakers on double switches, or anything of the sort. With Sableye in the tier, and I am positive we all have witnessed this, the stall dynamic rapidly changed. Firstly, Sableye stops a large majority of the practical uses of hazards. All of the current spikers, which consists of Ferrothorn, Skarmory, and to some degree even Klefki, have almost no chance of getting up hazards vs stall. As for rockers, all of the passive ones like Hippowdon and defensive Garchomp/Landorus are shut down, but the less obvious ones like Heatran and Clefable are still greatly affected. They (Heatran and Clefable) might theoretically beat Sableye 1v1, but they still are extremely hindered by Knock Off and beaten by other stall mons (trapping and defog). Now, even without Sableye, stall has Dugtrio, Defog, and Rapid Spin to control hazards. When you add Sableye to the mix, getting hazards is pretty much an impossible feat. If it were to be banned, we could see unique strategies and plays open up like a spikes + toxic Ferrothorn. Again, I am not saying that there is a natural right to get hazards vs stall. I am saying that the current impossibility of getting hazards is not a healthy thing. As for taunters, Sableye throws out the use of Taunt Talon, Gliscor, Alakazam, Mew, and more. Now the difference here is that these pokemon actually take smart plays and are not automatic matchup wins. What Sableye does, in essence, is make the stall matchup a pre-decided battle. Without hazards and taunting, most creative methods of stallbreaking are disabled. This is why we see so many stall games decided turn 1, and the requirement for specific pokemon to be used to break stall. There is no strategizing and thought in stall breaking for the most part. You either have that one Crawdaunt/Heracross or you don't (these don't even singlehandedly beat stall). I believe that banning Sableye will change this dynamic, and cause a flourishing of creative methods as a stall countermeasure.

If you are not yet convinced that Sableye has a negative effect on the metagame, there is not much else that can be done. If your issue with banning Sableye, however, is that you only believe that we should ban outright broken pokemon, then maybe that can be changed. The goal of the tiering process is, at its very core, to improve the metagame we all play. I understand the need for a criteria of suspecting/banning, but these are mere guidelines, and thus you should not only see powerhouses as ban-worthy. If you want to act in line with the ideals of smogon tiering as a whole, you would vote to improve the tier. This does not mean you have to ban Sableye. This means that if you feel Sableye is an unhealthy contributor to the tier, you must vote ban, regardless of what these specific guidelines defining brokenness say.

After reading this, I hope you have come to the same conclusion that I have. Ban Sableye.

 

[BlazeLatias]

Hello everyone! We once again stand here with mega Sableye being the victim of this suspect test. As many of you know Sableye is the premier stall mega throughout the entire ORAS metagame which greatly helps stall teams with deflecting hazards and just in general providing the support that stall team loves so much. However, this also means that several problems arise because of how huge a boon Sableye-mega gives to stall teams. First off before I get started with the meat of things let me say that I don’t find mega Sableye broken. Its not impossible to break and there are several methods of killing it. This much is obvious. So what is the problem with mega Sableye you might ask? Well Sableye has two huge issues that serious effect the metagame Its overcentralizing and overall just not healthy for the tier. In this “Nedorgraph” I’m going to explain the two main reasons why I find mega Sableye overcentralizing these two reasons are how it effects the hazard game vs stall as well as the effect of common ways of how we dealt with stall in the future, to be more specific: Stall breakers.

When you think methods of breaking stall in the past you think offensive pressure, Taunt, status and passive damage from hazards. This is how we dealt with stall teams of the past. However, Sableye-mega as for the most part made these methods moot which poses a huge issue for teams as in ORAS your pretty much unable to break stall with these methods if mega Sableye is on the opposing team. Take XY for example Stall breaker mew was such an incredible tool for breaking stall thanks to mews amazing utility and ability to pressure stall teams. However, thanks to the jewel, Stall breaker mew is pretty much incapable of breaking any stall team where Sableye is still alive. Other examples of stall breakers that struggle with the presence of Sableye include Gliscor. While Gliscor does have, a SD set there is another Gliscor set that uses Taunt+Toxic that is completely shut down. These two are some of the many examples of Stallbreakers that can no longer function with Sableye-mega in the tier. If we were to remove Sableye from the tier many options would become available such as the latter as well as possibly open new options for stall breaking.

As mentioned before hazard setters are greatly impacted by mega Sableyes presence in the tier as your chances of keeping rocks or spikes up is very slim if Sableye remains healthy and alive. This is also combined with how Sableye can beat almost every viable stealth rocker or spike setter in the tier. Landorus, Garchomp. Ferrothorn and Jirachi all fail to beat Sableye and risk getting burned by wisp. Clefable and Heatran are probably some of the few rock setters that can beat mega Sableye but they really don’t like leftovers knocked off and they are at risk of losing to other Pokemon that normally accompany mega Sableye. As far as spikers go Klefki and Ferrothorn both straight up lose to Mega Sableye as they cant do enough damage (In dazzling gleam Klefki’s case) or again cant stay in or risk getting burned. The fact that Sableye prevents teams from pressuring its team with hazards is yet another reason why it overcentralizes the metagame. I’m not saying teams should be entitled to always get hazards up vs Sableye-mega teams but the pure fact that its almost impossible to set them up vs Sableye for free is where the problem lies. Id also like to state that Sableye can even stay in vs Clefable on a potential stealth rock if the player expects them to do so.

Overall Sableye seriously makes stall a hassle to prepare for and deal with because of the limitations it puts on teams. Unless your running a wall breaker that’s Capable of applying immense amounts of pressure such as Choice band Crawdaunt for example it’s a huge pain to handle stall teams with Sableye in the back supporting them. Even then the wall breakers that can most of the time pressure these builds is incapable of taking them all on by itself. Not all is bad for stall if Sableye-mega is banned because this not only encourages new ways and old ways of breaking stall with it gone but also gives more creativity to stall teams with megas such as Mega Venusaur, wisp Zard-x, Mega Scizor etc being able to serve as the replacement mega. With this said Mega Sableye should be Banned due to how it overcentralizes the metagame dominating the hazard war while also hurting the viability of several stall breakers which in turn limits the ways we can deal with stall.

Again, id like to point out I don’t find mega-Sableye broken in the slightest. I just find its overcentralizing and in general just not healthy.

 

[Morsel]

In all seriousness I think that there is an important distinction that needs to be made between broken and annoying. Of course no one likes loading up a game to see stall, but is it really that broken?

• Teams have adapted to get up hazards against mega sableye stall. Specific examples include stealth rocks Clefable, Heatran, offensive lum garchomp/landorus-t. All of these Pokemon come with little opportunity cost to run, and thus does not restrict teambuilding. How hard is it to fit any of these stealth rockers on your team?
• There are a multitude of stallbreakers that can destroy common stall at the moment (dugtrio stall, shedninja stall and ABR stall). Common examples include mega heracross (although this is being better prepared for), taunt+bulk up Talonflame, taunt Tornadus-T, taunt mega Gardevoir...the list goes on.
• Honestly if your team is weak to the point that facing mega Sableye stall is an autoloss, it is not the fault of the mega Sableye's brokenness in this case. In fact, it is your own fault in teambuilding by not accounting for this. Why did you not consider adding any of the aforementioned stallbreakers/wallbreakers to help against this playstyle? I know that Oras OU has so many threats to consider, but there are much more busted 'autoloss' playstyles to go against (think: Scolipede baton pass squads) that are much harder to account for in teambuilding.
• If mega Sableye is banned, stall teams will become way harder to actually use due to how many offensive threats there are at the moment. What I mean by this is that removing mega Sableye will force stall teams to run more hazard removers/deterrents, which just reduces the number of threats that the team can cover. This is because more moveslots, items and Pokemon are catered towards removing hazards compared to covering threats.
• Of course stall is annoying to fight, but annoying≠broken.

TL;DR: Mega Sableye is not broken due to how teams have adapted to get up hazards in its presence, in addition to the multitude of options teams have to beat common stall builds mega Sableye is found on. It, therefore, does not restrict teambuilding, nor is it a broken and centralizing force. Indeed, all a ban would accomplish is that it would make stall a nearly unviable playstyle. For this reason, I am going to vote no ban.

 

[Shaka Brah]

uh yeah, I was the biggest proponent of banning sableye before but it isn't worth addressing the issue one month - two weeks before the tier ends, there won't be nearly enough time for the metagame to adapt and settle to a sabless metagame and all we're gonna have to go on is gonna be a suspect ladder where we can see offense teams getting greedier and greedier while most bulky builds can't keep up with the newfound freedom that the lack of sable in the metagame gives them. Sableye's omnipresence and high winrates are mostly isolated to the ladder where people can spam it to get a high GXE without being good since nobody knows how to break stall and it hardly has any real omnipresence in tournaments nor is it that daunting to face anymore due to new metagame trends. Prolly gonna vote "no ban". I can't say the meta is ideally where I want it but because we decided to not ban it last time there's been a lot of adaptation and shiert, knowm saying? I feel like ORAS is fine right now. I dunno. It's a weird feeling. I say we shelf it how it is.

 

[NotSoClutch]

Hello everyone! We once again stand here with mega Sableye being the victim of this suspect test. As many of you know Sableye is the premier stall mega throughout the entire ORAS metagame which greatly helps stall teams with deflecting hazards and just in general providing the support that stall team loves so much. However, this also means that several problems arise because of how huge a boon Sableye-mega gives to stall teams. First off before I get started with the meat of things let me say that I don’t find mega Sableye broken. Its not impossible to break and there are several methods of killing it. This much is obvious. So what is the problem with mega Sableye you might ask? Well Sableye has two huge issues that serious effect the metagame Its overcentralizing and overall just not healthy for the tier. In this “Nedorgraph” I’m going to explain the two main reasons why I find mega Sableye overcentralizing these two reasons are how it effects the hazard game vs stall as well as the effect of common ways of how we dealt with stall in the future, to be more specific: Stall breakers.

When you think methods of breaking stall in the past you think offensive pressure, Taunt, status and passive damage from hazards. This is how we dealt with stall teams of the past. However, Sableye-mega as for the most part made these methods moot which poses a huge issue for teams as in ORAS your pretty much unable to break stall with these methods if mega Sableye is on the opposing team. Take XY for example Stall breaker mew was such an incredible tool for breaking stall thanks to mews amazing utility and ability to pressure stall teams. However, thanks to the jewel, Stall breaker mew is pretty much incapable of breaking any stall team where Sableye is still alive. Other examples of stall breakers that struggle with the presence of Sableye include Gliscor. While Gliscor does have, a SD set there is another Gliscor set that uses Taunt+Toxic that is completely shut down. These two are some of the many examples of Stallbreakers that can no longer function with Sableye-mega in the tier. If we were to remove Sableye from the tier many options would become available such as the latter as well as possibly open new options for stall breaking.

As mentioned before hazard setters are greatly impacted by mega Sableyes presence in the tier as your chances of keeping rocks or spikes up is very slim if Sableye remains healthy and alive. This is also combined with how Sableye can beat almost every viable stealth rocker or spike setter in the tier. Landorus, Garchomp. Ferrothorn and Jirachi all fail to beat Sableye and risk getting burned by wisp. Clefable and Heatran are probably some of the few rock setters that can beat mega Sableye but they really don’t like leftovers knocked off and they are at risk of losing to other Pokemon that normally accompany mega Sableye. As far as spikers go Klefki and Ferrothorn both straight up lose to Mega Sableye as they cant do enough damage (In dazzling gleam Klefki’s case) or again cant stay in or risk getting burned. The fact that Sableye prevents teams from pressuring its team with hazards is yet another reason why it overcentralizes the metagame. I’m not saying teams should be entitled to always get hazards up vs Sableye-mega teams but the pure fact that its almost impossible to set them up vs Sableye for free is where the problem lies. Id also like to state that Sableye can even stay in vs Clefable on a potential stealth rock if the player expects them to do so.

Overall Sableye seriously makes stall a hassle to prepare for and deal with because of the limitations it puts on teams. Unless your running a wall breaker that’s Capable of applying immense amounts of pressure such as Choice band Crawdaunt for example it’s a huge pain to handle stall teams with Sableye in the back supporting them. Even then the wall breakers that can most of the time pressure these builds is incapable of taking them all on by itself. Not all is bad for stall if Sableye-mega is banned because this not only encourages new ways and old ways of breaking stall with it gone but also gives more creativity to stall teams with megas such as Mega Venusaur, wisp Zard-x, Mega Scizor etc being able to serve as the replacement mega. With this said Mega Sableye should be Banned due to how it overcentralizes the metagame dominating the hazard war while also hurting the viability of several stall breakers which in turn limits the ways we can deal with stall.

Again, id like to point out I don’t find mega-Sableye broken in the slightest. I just find its overcentralizing and in general just not healthy.

The meta has adapted to not breaking stall with hazards. Should we ban Clefable and Quagsire because they get rid of another common way of beating stall? Is Chansey's omnipresence on stall an issue because it completely shuts down a large portion of Pokemon? This honestly just screams boredom over building the healthiest possible metagame. Sure Sableye limits stall mega Pokemon and getting rid of it might make stall more diverse and interesting, but diverse stall doesn't actually help the main argument of stall being difficult to prepare for. In fact, a predictable stall build makes stall significantly easier to prepare for.

 

[preserve]

Common checks and counters are too abundant for me to consider sableye being banned. Things like charz Y, Keldeo, Talon, Heatran, Volcanion, and possibly the best pokemon in the game right now clefable which hard counters it are checks/counters to sableye.

The only reason sableye can be considered broken is if it's being used by stall and that's just one pokemon in a team of 6 which literally each pokemon works together to stall out most teams. Either way most stall teams have a defogger, mostly in skarmory as a back up.

Banning sableye because of this reason would mean that you wouldn't be able to use sableye as a bulky calm-mind sweeper or any other role outside of stall, which I find unfair.

And this is coming from a person who absolutely hates stall and would like to see stall's influence diminish.

 

[tigers jaw]

Teams have adapted to get up hazards against mega sableye stall. Specific examples include stealth rocks Clefable, Heatran, offensive lum garchomp/landorus-t. All of these Pokemon come with little opportunity cost to run, and thus does not restrict teambuilding. How hard is it to fit any of these stealth rockers on your team?

All of the rockers you cited are either fogged on by Skarm or Zapdos, or trapped by Dugtrio. It is not hard to fit any of them on your team, but it is hard to maintain rocks against Mega Eye when you stop looking at it in a vacuum.

There are a multitude of stallbreakers that can destroy common stall at the moment (dugtrio stall, shedninja stall and ABR stall). Common examples include mega heracross (although this is being better prepared for), taunt+bulk up Talonflame, taunt Tornadus-T, taunt mega Gardevoir...the list goes on.

The issue isn't that there aren't viable breakers to beat stall, and to suggest so would be preposterous. The issue at hand is how match-up dependant the amount of Mega Eye stall teams make beating stall as a general archetype. Also, FWIW, Mega Heracross is beaten by the recently-popularised max-Def Brave Bird Skarm, max-Def Unaware Clef, AA Dugtrio after a Close Combat drop, and Wing Attack Gliscor. Taunt+Bulk Up Talonflame is generally inferior to Wisp+Bulk Up for obvious reasons, and I think you may be forgetting Mega Eye's ability to bounce back Taunt lol, seeing as predicting the Taunt is a viable meant through which to actually shut down Talonflame. Taunt Torn-T is shut down by Zapdos. Taunt Gardevoir it substandard anyway, considering Wisp is by far the best set, and Gardevoir is never breaking stall in the first place; it's more of a balance breaker these days. Also, lol, it is trapped by Dugtrio and can be trapped with Weavile.

Honestly if your team is weak to the point that facing mega Sableye stall is an autoloss, it is not the fault of the mega Sableye's brokenness in this case. In fact, it is your own fault in teambuilding by not accounting for this. Why did you not consider adding any of the aforementioned stallbreakers/wallbreakers to help against this playstyle? I know that Oras OU has so many threats to consider, but there are much more busted 'autoloss' playstyles to go against (think: Scolipede baton pass squads) that are much harder to account for in teambuilding.

As I said before, the sheer match-up dependency that Mega Eye brings to the table when it comes to breaking stall is the issue. The many variations of Sableye stall dictates that unless you have multiple breakers, one needing to be not trapped by Dugtrio, the other needing to be able to evade Weavile, whilst also being able to push past the rest of the common teammates (Chansey, Skarm, Zap, Cune, Shed, Seis, Amoong, Quag, etc.), you are going to have a near-unwinnable matchup against at least one variant of the teams. This is such a ridiculous prospect from a teambuilding perspective.

If mega Sableye is banned, stall teams will become way harder to actually use due to how many offensive threats there are at the moment. What I mean by this is that removing mega Sableye will force stall teams to run more hazard removers/deterrents, which just reduces the number of threats that the team can cover. This is because more moveslots, items and Pokemon are catered towards removing hazards compared to covering threats.

Yeah no, it managed before Mega Eye, and it will manage without it. There are variations of stall teams running about that have other Megas such as MAlt and ZardX anyway. Not to mention that, in my opinion at least, keeping something around to preserve a playstyle is ridiculous anyway, as is banning something to preserve a playstyle.

Honestly, what your post shows is the inability to think outside of a vacuum with regards to this, and serious tunnel-vision. Reminder: Sableye has teammates

=========

That being said, I am still on the fence about this one. ABR brings up some good points, and some great arguments against Sableye, but I'm currently of the opinion that trapping+Sableye is the real issue here, and until I've played enough on ladder and encountered some stall teams with Dug/Weav on there and properly assessed their function in debilitating stallbreaking methods without Sableye about, I'll steer clear of giving my stance on this. I'd just much rather have had trapping tested, then Mega Eye, but you can't have your cake and eat it.

 

[Vengeance417]

uh yeah, I was the biggest proponent of banning sableye before but it isn't worth addressing the issue one month - two weeks before the tier ends, there won't be nearly enough time for the metagame to adapt and settle to a sabless metagame and all we're gonna have to go on is gonna be a suspect ladder where we can see offense teams getting greedier and greedier while most bulky builds can't keep up with the newfound freedom that the lack of sable in the metagame gives them. Sableye's omnipresence and high winrates are mostly isolated to the ladder where people can spam it to get a high GXE without being good since nobody knows how to break stall and it hardly has any real omnipresence in tournaments nor is it that daunting to face anymore due to new metagame trends. Prolly gonna vote "no ban". I can't say the meta is ideally where I want it but because we decided to not ban it last time there's been a lot of adaptation and shiert, knowm saying? I feel like ORAS is fine right now. I dunno. It's a weird feeling. I say we shelf it how it is.

I don't see how this is a viable argument. People still play past-gen tiers all the time, namely BW, DPP and ADV being the more popular ones to my knowledge. We should be making sure that ORAS is still a balanced metagame even long after Gen 7 has been out.

My views on Mega Sableye are sort of similar to how a lot of people saw Aegislash when it was OU. It's clearly not a broken Pokemon, but its presence in the tier is so absolute that there's really no point in using any other mega on Stall teams, not to mention that it's considerably hard to break given that Fairy is its one weakness and Fire types are generally one of the only other types that handles it well, but given that Stall teams like to phase the opponent through Stealth Rocks and Spikes, opposing Fire types can be easily taken advantage of in Stall.

I don't have a final verdict just yet, but I'm leaning towards Ban to help make ORAS a much healthier metagame long after S&M is released.

 

[Get this Money]

About time this is happening.

Mega Sableye is the Pokemon that defined Stall throughout ORAS OUs lifespan, and that’s for a good reason: Mega Sableye allows Stall teams to avoid hazards on their side of the field throughout most if not all of the game in the majority of match ups. And while Stall is not unbeatable without hazards, taking away well timed double switched to put certain breakers switch-ins in 2hko range with the help of stealth rock and/or spikes damage means Stall can just keep switching in their Pokemon and recover/throw out status moves or hazards themselves and let the entire opposing team slowly die to residual damage or just run of of PP. The fact that doubling with hazards up is no longer a way of breaking Stall makes the issue of breaking Stall one that’s decided based on Team matchup, this is really troubling because:

1. Theres not a lot of Pokemon that are able to really apply pressure to Stall without hazards (and aren’t dead slots in other matchups). Throughout the OLT Cycles Pokemon like Mega Heracross and Crawdaunt became extremely popular, as well as CB Tyranitar and Stealth Rock and Knock Off+CM Clefable. These Pokemon really increased your chances of beating the standart Stall team at the time: ABRs Mega Sableye Weavile Stall, and while these Pokemon certainly helped against that team they did not guarantee you the win. This brings me to my next point:

2. There are multiple Stall Teams that only lose to specific Pokemon/poor playing by the Stall user. After people started preparing for ABRs Mega Sableye Weavile Stall team other Mega Sableye Stall teams emerged, namely Teles Mega Sableye Dugtrio Skarm Zapdos team, my Mega Sableye Talonflame Regen team and the Mega Sableye Shedinja team that was popularized during last year’s OLT (I am using OLT as an example because Stall is a lot more common on the ladder as opposed to traditional tournaments). The fact that there are about 5 or more Mega Sableye Stall/Semi-Stall teams that all excel at keeping hazards off the field and narrowing down their ways to lose to certainly – relatively uncommon – Pokemon means that as a Teambuilder you cannot build a team that’s not going to just straight up lose to one of these Stall teams on matchup. Mega Sableye creates an environment for Stall teams where they only have to worry about a small specific group of Pokemon, and even those can be taken care of relatively easy as I’m gonna explain in my next point.

3. Most of the time when there’s a Mega Sableye there’s some way of trapping involved as well. Mega Sableye’s ability to keep hazards off the field enhances the effectiveness of trapping by a long shot, since there is no longer the possibility of doubling out to keep your Pokemon from being trapped and making the trapper take hazard damage. There are no hazards up during most of, if not all throughout the game, meaning the Stall player can throw in their Dugtrio into your CB Tyranitar as many times as they want, being knocked down to Sash and killing you with reversal. There has been a Suspect on Sableye+Gothitelle already and plenty of discussions about getting Dugtrio banned (which is an RU Pokemon that get practically no usage in OU unless it’s on a Stall team), Gothitelle even got banned, even though it was not considered an issue all throughout BW’s and XY’s lifespan. Pokemon such as Dugtrio and Weavile allow Stall to sac an unimportant member of the team and trap the Pokemon that the team couldn’t defeat otherwise. And while losing a Pokemon to trap another seems like a fair trade, it really is not if you think about it. Most Teams cannot afford to run multiple excellent Stallbreakers due to them really restricting the amount of things you can cover.

Let me give you an example of a scenario where the combination of Sableye+Trapper shows how busted it really is:

ABRs Weavile Stall (MSab, Chans, Skarm, Quag, Amoong, Weavile) is up against a standart Mega Garevoir Offense team (MGard, Landorus-T, Jirachi, Keldeo, Latios, Weavile) the Stall User leads off with Mega Sableye, the Offense player leads off with Mega Gardevoir. Mega Sableye goes for Fake Out, then the Stall player goes to Chansey and the Offense player predicts that and goes for Psyshock, Stall player uses SToss with Chansey Offense player Psyshocks again, and at this point even if Chansey dies to the next Psyshock Gardevoir is gonna be trapped by CBWeavile and then it’s Mega Sableye, Skarm, Amoong, Quagsire and Weavile up against Keld, Landorus-T, Jirachi, Latios and Weavile. I am gonna come out and say that there is not a great chance of the Offense player winning this game without getting some flinches with his own Weavile or the Stall player playing the rest of the game poorly.

The issue with this scenario is that is that the main Breaker, in this case Gardevoir, but this might as well be swapped out for Mega Medicham or Life Orb Tornadus or Specs Latios or Manaphy or even Life Orb Garchomp and the list goes on. You can also add CBTar, CBTerrak, and basically any other grounded breaker to that list if you also want the list to account for the Pokemon that just get picked off by Dugtrio after getting a kill.

This means if you don’t want to lose to Dugtrio or Weavile Stall without having to rely on luck you have to either bank on your opponent misplaying or use 3-4 Stallbreakers.


This brings me to the end of my post: in a metagame without Mega Sableye Stall will no longer only have to worry about matchup. The games are going to be decided based on who played better and not based on whether one player’s breaker happens to be trapped by the Trapper that’s being used or not. At the moment it’s possible for Stall players to win the majority of their games without having to take any risk because there Mega Sableye takes games out of both players hands and makes it so that they are decided at team matchup.

Please ask yourself whether allowing a Pokemon to stay in this tier that is the epitome of the matchup issue ORAS OU has been struggling with throughout all of its lifespan is beneficial to the tier.

tl;dr: Ban Sableye

 

[Morsel]

Yeah no, it managed before Honestly, what your post shows is the inability to think outside of a vacuum with regards to this, and serious tunnel-vision. Reminder: Sableye has teammates
'.

Tunnel vision? By saying that you are insinuating that my views on this are ignorant and misinformed. I am always willing to change my point of view; this is my opinion as of now.

And yes, I am aware that sableye has teammates, thanks for the update chief. If you are going to try to patronize me then try harder


You did, however, bring up some interesting points, and I'll keep them in mind when getting reqs. Expect a counter argument later.

 

[BlazeLatias]

The meta has adapted to not breaking stall with hazards. Should we ban Clefable and Quagsire because they get rid of another common way of beating stall? Is Chansey's omnipresence on stall an issue because it completely shuts down a large portion of Pokemon? This honestly just screams boredom over building the healthiest possible metagame. Sure Sableye limits stall mega Pokemon and getting rid of it might make stall more diverse and interesting, but diverse stall doesn't actually help the main argument of stall being difficult to prepare for. In fact, a predictable stall build makes stall significantly easier to prepare for.

That's completely different then the situation with Sableye. Quagsires not even remotely as centralizing as mega sable is in the slightest. The problem is that Sableye seriously hurts teams by preventing them from using most stall breakers. Because of mega Sableye, mews usage took a huge plummet because of how it completely shuts mew down. Chanseys might wall most special attackers but it cant support stall teams to the same degree as Sableye-mega can repelling hazards. The difference between the Pokemon you mentioned and Sableye is this: Those okemon can be shut down by stall breakers. Sableye-mega beats most stall breakers thanks to magic bounce. Its not a matter of Pokemon walling most of the metagame like you imply, its the overall effect that mega sable has vs common ways of beating stall which are really hard to pull off while Sableye remains on the field. Clefable, Chansey and Quagsire can all be shut down by taunt but add a mega Sableye and suddenly for example your mew or Gliscor is unable to break stall and is forced out. The pure fact how mega Sableye limits preparation for stall and stall teams itself is quite a issue. Being predictable is hardly anything good, It reflects how centralizing and unhealthy the Pokemon is. How is a Pokemon that forces certain builds or you lose to it healthy?

 

[Mob Barley]

I praise the councils dedication to make one final remodification to the ORAS metagame. In any case, the timing is so tardy that even if a ban is passed I doubt this new metagame will be appreciated. With Sun/Moon's inception full attention won't be focused on ORAS, at least not in large rations.

ORAS was overall a very balanced metagame in general. The amount of threats compiled with uncertainty in building has always left stall players on their toes. I'd even go a step further with my contention that sableye in practice while efficent hadn't truly nullified teams altogether as some may suggest. Stall teams have came out to be generic in their builds and the most humorous part is this isn't even about stall, no.It's about some of the peculiar unorthodox combos people are able to abuse such as reliably hanging on to sash dugtrio to revenge kill and shedinja. It's gimmicks like these that are able to survive to a more feasible level of viability due to the suspects honoree sableye.

This is really what the suspect is indirectly calling for because your straight up bad if you can't handle basic stall (ABR stall). Stall isn't unbalanced. The question really set forth is do you want to remove gimmicks that sableye carries on its back. In any case the two aforementioned have caused a great deal of scrutiny to call for a second suspect. It's two birds in one stone

Personally I'm down.. For the greater good!

 

[Joycap]

OK - a couple of observations:

1. Didn't we already do this suspect test earlier in ORAS OU? 'Oh, it was alongside Shadow Tag - Gothitelle was the main emphasis', So? It's not like Mega Sableye + ST had any direct synergy did it?
2. Sun & Moon, and a thus, the S&M OU should be established in a few weeks. So technically, if you still wanted to do this suspect test, shouldn't we wait until S&M comes out? 'Hey, there could still be people playing ORAS OU when S&M comes out' eh... yes and no. I'd like to ask you - will ORAS OU still be relevant come the release of S&M?

As for my opinion on Mega Sableye itself: I do not think it should be banned. The reason I think this is that while, yes, it's synergy with stall teams sounds ridiculous - as far as i'm aware, it's the only team composition I think it actually has synergy with.

'What about trick room teams?' I hear you ask. And while that is true, and Mega Sableye is not directly affected by Taunt, it's best setters of trick room (Cress/Porygon2 etc.) are. Without trick room (outside of stall, of course), it's low HP means that dedicated attackers can cripple of kill it outright before it gets to set up, regardless of it's access to recover (which is another thing I guess).

Also, it's presence on stall (while far from invalid) if only as ridiculous as it sounds if (IMO) the opponents lead IS Sableye. Otherwise - Sableye has to come in turn 1, and then spend the 2nd turn Mega Evolving before it can deflect hazards. In the meantime, hazard control (and correct timing of such a task) is not plain sailing UNDER THE MENTALITY that Rapid Spin is more relevant then Defog, due to spinblockers such as Gengar/Doublade and (of course), Sableye.

As for counterplay: Faries, Fire types and Dark types should be common sense (KOs with Azumarill/Clefable/Mega Gardevior etc. (Hell, maybe even the Tapus' when they get released next gen... but I digress) ; Prevention of burn ; Resistance from Sableyes' STAB). But also... did we just forget that Mega Loppuny is a thing, with Scrappy HJK?

252 Atk Mega Lopunny High Jump Kick vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Mega Sableye: 270-320 (88.8 - 105.2%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO

(And before you mention Burn... Lopunny CAN run Heal Bell, and has the speed to use it with.)

This is another reason I'm not only leaning towards no ban, but I also find the timing of this suspect test... peculiar, to put it politely. With the rise of Mega Medicham and other mons with synergy to bulky offense, that would more then likely lose to Mega Sableye. If you want to take a step back for a second - think of every 3 months of ORAS OU has existed, and reflect on your opinion of Mega Sableye for each of those 3 months in comparison to what was relevant in the meta, alongside other factors at the time.

Now that I think about it... what is actually stopping the likes of Clefable/Mega Diancie running SR, if those two scare Sableye out on the spot? With that - if you're problem with Mega Sableye is Magic Bounce... then doesn't that technically make Mega Diancie / other Magic Bounce users busted?

Other then what I've already mentioned - I think we've already gone over this back when Mega Sableye was last suspected. I think we should use Mega Sableye as a reminder that the metagame is never stagnant, and is not Broken/Overcentralizing just because it can thrive in certain intervals (which, with S&M coming up soon, is what it feels like). Do Not Ban

EDIT: I feel as though it's easy to take hazards for granted, which is why I mentioned the Rapid Spin / Defog comparison. SR + Defog doesn't really work together, and with Mega Sableye being able to Spinblock is another reason this suspect test has come to be. I think a good way to adapt is finding good Defog users, and finding a comp' that doesn't rely on Stealth Rocks.

Also, while it's supposedly 'uncounterable' (which as we know, is total bollocks...), does it actually 'Counter' anything itself OUTSIDE of hazard deflection?

What i'm saying is - I see Mega Sableye as a wake-up call not to autopilot with a certain mentality, which we should be doing anyway.

 

[Niadev]

Just a friendly reminder that BROKENNESS != CENTRALISATION (or not always anyways).

I don't honestly feel I can contribute too much to the discussion that hasn't already been via some of the above posters. I'll touch on some common arguments I've seen in some places regarding the suspect, and will no doubt be used multiple times throughout this thread, probably as I'm writing this.

"It's too late in ORAS!" - Much like Generation 5 and Generation 4 are still played in tours today, Gen 6 will also very likely see play in tours. This means that if we ban MSab now, it won't go to waste in the long run. While more people will be more likely to play Gen 7, Gen 6 will still see play and as such, a balanced meta for Gen 6, even at the end, means a more interesting and balanced past gen tour scene.
"Mega Sableye isn't broken!" - It's not, and I doubt anyone is saying that seriously. On it's own, it's breakable and easy to switch in on. However, with a good team behind it, these issues are reduced pretty drastically. The support it provides stall and how heavily it influences stallbreaking in teambuilding (a notable degree of centralisation) is why it's being tested.
"Mega Sableye has way too many checks and counters to be banworthy!" - See above.

"It's annoying!" - So? Chansey's extremely annoying too, do we see a test for Chansey happening? EDIT: By this I was talking about people who only use the annoying argument as their pro ban reason.

Now, my thoughts. I'll be honest, I'm not really a good enough player to make it to the parts of ladder where stall is more commonplace. But, as someone who builds a lot of teams (none of which are particularly stand-out in quality), I have to take Mega Sab into account a LOT. A shitload of my teams have Heatran just for this thing. Rocks on Clef is just wasting an otherwise extremely useful slot for one Pokemon that you won't even see in 10% of your matches for fear of having a very uphill matchup vs Stall, not to mention you're putting yourself at huge risk of being Amoongus bait, and spore sacking a potentially very useful Pokemon is not something you want to deal with. Not to mention that stall like Tele stall now has answers to make Heatran's stealth rocking

Furthermore, Mega Sableye by itself has made many stallbreakers or sets of stallbreakers far less viable. Examples? Mew and non-SD Gliscor. I didn't actually play competitively in XY, but I hear Mew was quite the stallbreaker. The fact MSab has turned one of XY's top stallbreakers into a shadow of it's former self should be a testament to how centralising it is. Ah, and Gliscor. Better run SD on that thing or you're doing nothing to MSab and therefore nothing to the rest of the team until Sab's gone. It's nothing like what Aegi was like, but making otherwise top tier threats, in this case, to stall, far less viable by MSab's near omnipresence on stall sounds awfully remniscient of what Aegi did. Oh yeah, and it also basically mandates usage on stall due to the immense utility and checking of otherwise difficult to stop threats it offers. No, I'm not comparing MSab to Aegi, Aegi destroyed the tier on it's own and had pretty much no counters, and MSab doesn't invalidate anywhere near the number of 'mons Aegi did. Of course, you could use similar arguments for Chansey, in that it makes a lot of special attackers a lot less viable, but at least you can Taunt it and make it an almost non-entity, nor does Chansey provide ridiculous levels of support for it's team (emphasis on ridiculous).

Finally, while the meta has to a degree adapted, stall has adapted in turn, most notably with the rise of Tele stall. The prior MSab rocks setting answers were either bad outside of beating MSab (Rocks Clef), or are now trapped and removed by Duggy (Heatran) or just mindlessly Defogged on by Zappy and Skarm (SD Rocks Lando-T in the case of the latter).

As you can tell, despite the fact I'll likely be incapable of getting reqs, I am Pro Ban.

Oh yay, posts to respond to popped up while writing the above. Here's a response to one that irked me a bit

Let's not make an absurdly large post now shall we?

OK - a couple of observations:

1. Didn't we already do this suspect test earlier in ORAS OU? 'Oh, it was alongside Shadow Tag - Gothitelle was the main emphasis', So? It's not like Mega Sableye + ST had any direct synergy did it?
2. Sun & Moon, and a thus, the S&M OU should be established in a few weeks. So technically, if you still wanted to do this suspect test, shouldn't we wait until S&M comes out? 'Hey, there could still be people playing ORAS OU when S&M comes out' eh... yes and no. I'd like to ask you - will ORAS OU still be relevant come the release of S&M?

As for my opinion on Mega Sableye itself: I do not think it should be banned. The reason I think this is that while, yes, it's synergy with stall teams sounds ridiculous - as far as i'm aware, it's the only team composition I think it actually has synergy with.

'What about trick room teams?' I hear you ask. And while that is true, and Mega Sableye is not directly affected by Taunt, it's best setters of trick room (Cress/Porygon2 etc.) are. Without trick room (outside of stall, of course), it's low HP means that dedicated attackers can cripple of kill it outright before it gets to set up, regardless of it's access to recover (which is another thing I guess).

Also, it's presence on stall (while far from invalid) if only as ridiculous as it sounds if (IMO) the opponents lead IS Sableye. Otherwise - Sableye has to come in turn 1, and then spend the 2nd turn Mega Evolving before it can deflect hazards. In the meantime, hazard control (and correct timing of such a task) is not plain sailing UNDER THE MENTALITY that Rapid Spin is more relevant then Defog, due to spinblockers such as Gengar/Doublade and (of course), Sableye.

As for counterplay: Faries, Fire types and Dark types should be common sense (KOs with Azumarill/Clefable/Mega Gardevior etc. (Hell, maybe even the Tapus' when they get released next gen... but I digress) ; Prevention of burn ; Resistance from Sableyes' STAB). But also... did we just forget that Mega Loppuny is a thing, with Scrappy HJK?

252 Atk Mega Lopunny High Jump Kick vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Mega Sableye: 270-320 (88.8 - 105.2%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO

(And before you mention Burn... Lopunny CAN run Heal Bell, and has the speed to use it with.)

This is another reason I'm not only leaning towards no ban, but I also find the timing of this suspect test... peculiar, to put it politely. With the rise of Mega Medicham and other mons with synergy to bulky offense, that would more then likely lose to Mega Sableye. If you want to take a step back for a second - think of every 3 months of ORAS OU has existed, and reflect on your opinion of Mega Sableye for each of those 3 months in comparison to what was relevant in the meta, alongside other factors at the time.

Now that I think about it... what is actually stopping the likes of Clefable/Mega Diancie running SR, if those two scare Sableye out on the spot? With that - if you're problem with Mega Sableye is Magic Bounce... then doesn't that technically make Mega Diancie / other Magic Bounce users busted?

Other then what I've already mentioned - I think we've already gone over this back when Mega Sableye was last suspected. I think we should use Mega Sableye as a reminder that the metagame is never stagnant, and is not Broken/Overcentralizing just because it can thrive in certain intervals (which, with S&M coming up soon, is what it feels like). Do Not Ban

Um, has anyone actually talked about Trick room in this thread? Why are you bringing it up? Trick Room is not a good playstyle generally due to how limited the trick room turns are and how priority completely bypasses TR's speed inverting shenanigans.

Your argument that it has to spend a turn to mega evolve and put itself at risk to be able to keep hazards away is put on shaky ground by the fact that a lot of MSab run Fake Out for a secure mega evolution nowadays (54% MSab run Fake Out according to 1695 stats).

Also your whole argument of it being "suspicious timing" just reeks of absurd conspiracy theory. Are you really suggesting Smogon is anti stall when the STag, Aegi retest, and MSab test(s) have literally been the only ones that have harmed or potentially harmed the viability of stall, when every other test and ban has been for the benefit of stall (hell STag also harmed stall)? And Smogon's had like 13 suspect tests this gen, including the current one. Of the 13 suspects we've had, only 3 have harmed or looked into possibly reducing stall's viability, including the Aegi retest (Aegi harmed stall's viability more than it helped due to it's effective uncounterabillity), so 10 suspect tests have been to potentially help stall (Gren, Aegi, Lando-I, MegaMaw, Mega Luke (but that should've been quickbanned imo), Hoopa-U, Genesect, Deos (who monopolised the hazard game to a similar degree, but not way, MSab does now), Mega Meta (though it wasn't banned), and Swagger (which made stall games in general a lot more RNG based)) - a 1 to 3 ratio. You can hardly complain Smogon's anti stall after all that. Also MMedi does have counters not named MSab, one of which is kept down in viability by MSab itself in Mew. Just because MSab's gone doesn't mean MMedi's going to be an unstoppable stall annihilator. If anything, MSab going *may* make MMedi less viable to a degree, as Balance and certain offense teams will be a lot more inclined to use Mew, one of MMedi's counters (with a defensive spread), or at least VERY solid checks.

There were a number of other posts I disagreed with but my above arguments dealt with most of those already.

 

[Ajwf]

Sooooo uh I kinda want to put my opinion out there, more as a stall builder than anything else.

Mega Sableye isn't broken. Any discussion that way should be halted and killed before it begins. Mega Sableye should be viewed in a similar light to something like Aegislash's suspect, where we view it for how centralizing it is. ABR iterated this in his post and I think it is useful to reiterate this point.

From a stall perspective, Sableye represents a suffocating point of control on the style. Non-Sable stall teams are so hard to make compared to a sable-stall team because of Sable's existence. In a stall v stall matchup, the winning factors are almost always hazard control. PP control and switches play in, yes, but plays very rarely generate the KOs by themselves and pressure mounts that eventually nets kills. Stall has 2 inherent issues vs Sableye: They lack the burst damage to threaten a kill and they lack the ways to set hazards against him even while they're getting set on. This makes it nigh impossible to win a stall v stall matchup where you're the one lacking Sableye-M.

For the few of us who still try and make teams that don't focus on him, our sets normally run like Defensive DD Mega Altaria, Skill Swap Cresselia or Rocks Clefable. The sets normally are low viability outside that matchup and high risk. We're using suboptimal sets for the simple reason of avoiding Sableye-M on our team or countering him where found elsewhere, the very definition of centralized. And hell, let's be real: If I gave you my best stall team I had made in the last 1.5 years in it's best meta, you'd still probably run a Sableye-M team because it's more consistent all around, even if I did edge out offensive teams ever so slightly. A stall team without mega sableye is not worse in the meta vs offense but completely unviable against other stall.

However, the same would hold true with a ban: Stall would very much survive and probably adapt to a bulkier variant. SB Mew/Medicham may or may not find a way to break in. My guess is not simply because a mon like ZardX can be run defensively with doublade instead and completely invalidate ALL current stallbreakers outside gliscor. The complaints (honestly these complaints are utter nonsense) that some mons don't work vs stall would still hold true and good for that. You're here to balance a metagame, not destroy a style harder than Dunkey destroyed Sky in Smash.

It is ALSO possible that in a meta without sable, stall builders would be able to put together teams with the same high-threat style trap pairings (say, Doublade+Trio would still draw in stuff like heatran/Ttar and can still survive a switch out, ZardX+Trio as a throwback to Finger's team in XY). While it sounds like people are very much opposed to this Trio+Sableye existing in OU, I'm not seeing as much independent "Sableye by itself is centralizing". For stall, this is exactly the case but welcome to stall in 2015-2016... But if the argument cannot be made that Sableye is the reason trappers are good, you realize this problem will persist whether stall has Sable or not.

When talking to ABR, he talks about how Sable invalidates common stealth rockers (Garchomp/Support Ttar/Landorus leads, Azelf and such). Without a doubt his point that Mega Sable prevents any lead rockers from applying their hazards is true. However, my belief has always been that it fell on the offensive side to innovate some vs Sable. Rocks for generations have been this first move sort of choice. Most people try to set them as close to turn 1 as possible because the efficiency of any hazard increases as the difference between the turn they were placed and current turn increases. Sableye doesn't invalidate Stealth Rockers, he invalidates lead hazards. I'm not sure that's a bad thing either. And every meta rocker in OU can deal 70-80% of Sableye's HP in those two turns since none of them are ever slower. Means Sable's kill range is relatively high, and he doesn't afford the speed to recover before any threats. Sable doesn't carry any resists for these rockers which is why I believe that a change in the philosophy of how to apply hazards will still allow hazards to be placed even by those blocked by sable at turn 1. He makes hazards have less return, but that's FINE. Stealth rocks probably have the highest return of damage per turn used in the game. They can use to be harder to place.

Lastly, quit crying that he invalidates some offensive mons. I don't see it here so much but I don't think anyone sheds tears at night thinking about how unviable Chansey is because she literally does nothing to Gengar. You assume risk of having counters whenever you take a mon and good lord does medicham have enough fucking upside to validate a few good counters. Sable's invalidating A FEW stall breakers. This is nothing close to what Aegislash did. And really, stall needs mons that can take on stall breakers so it isn't a one-sided affair.

All that being said, I'm leaning ban. I think what Sable has done to stall is disgusting and has set a terrible precedence that he has even been allowed to cannibalize one style for so long. I don't think Sable's stats/ability/typing/movepool does anything to invalidate offensive pokemon but he centralized all other archtypes of stall to the point that there are no other archtypes. Fuck this trash mon.

 

[Finchinator]

Hey everyone!

I think that one fundamental concept of tiering that is important to note that some users, on and off the forum, are unaware of is the fact that we make tiering decisions in order to make the current metagame as competitive, healthy, and rid of broken Pokemon as possible. Moreover, in deciding if you believe Mega Sableye is worthy of a ban or not, you should not take into consideration the prospect of other Pokemon becoming problematic without the presence of Mega Sableye in the metagame.

For example, if you believe Mega Medicham will be broken if we ban Mega Sableye, then that is fine. However, that is only theory, not fact. Given that it is theory and not relevant to the current metagame, this should not impact your opinion on the Mega Sableye suspect at all. Please keep this in mind when formulating your opinions and posting them; thank you!

 

[Lameflame]

Hello all - glad to see Mega Sableye is getting another suspect, this time isolated from anything else that could have swayed a previous outcome. I have already written a post detailing some of my thoughts about Mega Sableye for the current PO suspect, and I'd like to paste it here as I think it condenses at least some of the major points both sides will bring up over the next inevitable 20+ pages of discussion. I may edit this later or simply post again after the suspect ladder has been up for longer than a day, but I currently am on the fence about Sableye's banworthiness despite voting to ban it last time around.

Ban Mega Sableye

• Controlling the Hazard Game:
  
  Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of Mega Sableye's utility is the ease at which it allows the user to take control of the hazard game. Setting and removing hazards in ORAS already differs noticeably from earlier generations with the new Defog mechanics & distribution alongside new Magic Bounce users making hazard removal easier than ever before. However, no single pokemon has ever facilitated a player's capacity to control the hazard game more than Mega Sableye given the sheer number of viable Stealth Rock + Spikes/T-spikes setters that outright lose to it 1v1, and whom Sableye may often freely switch into with little to no cost. The only viable Stealth Rock setters that have otherwise favorable odds to set rocks against Sableye are Clefable, Heatran, Mega Diancie and Mold Breaker Excadrill. I use the term "viable" very liberally in this case, because truthfully pokemon like Bisharp, Mega Pinsir, Nidoking, even Gliscor etc. really do not want to have to fit rocks into one of their four highly constrained move slots just to surprise Mega Sableye users once or twice throughout a battle. To elaborate further, pokemon like Mew & Jirachi should not have to run some gimmick Skill Swap set to beat Sableye, and pokemon such as Landorus-T & Garchomp who might otherwise have sets or the capacity to break Sableye are now further stifled from doing so given the pressure to actually set rocks, not get burned/lose 1v1 and then find time to set-up, which are luxuries far easier to state on paper than actually achieve practically. I don't consider forcing a very large pool of pokemon with otherwise useful sets (many that need coverage / boosting / utility options to further improve their match-up versus the types of restrictive teams Sableye is found on) to be a healthy level of "adaptation" to the metagame. Rather, it is more akin to nearly everything running Earthquake or arbitrary semi-useless coverage just to hit Aegislash. We can argue this point back and forth but I can personally guarantee that you will never see a SpDef Excadrill, a Mega Diancie, Nidoking, offensive Lando/Chomp, etc. running Stealth Rocks ever again in a metagame without Sableye, because they are just not good, and neither are many other "answers" that exist for the sole and express purpose of surprising Sableye.

• Forming restrictive cores:
  
  The fact that Mega Sableye performs its role in controlling the hazard game so well is only part of a broader issue that those who seek to ban Sableye wish to highlight. While Sableye has found success on a variety of balance/bulky offense and semi-stall teams throughout ORAS, it is fairly obvious by this point that its utility and usefulness on Stall archetypes further exaggerate its potential in a variety of different respects. Continuing on controlling the hazard game, not only does Mega Sableye beat a vast majority of common rocks setters by itself, but when in tandem with other teammates such as Skarmory, Dugtrio or Zapdos, you as a Sableye user can effectively shut down all but maybe 1-2 viable rocks users in the entire OU tier. Especially in the case of Dugtrio, of the four "best" answers to setting hazards against Mega Sableye, all but one are trapped and killed leaving you with essentially just Clefable to set rocks. Sableye + Skarmory leaves you with realistically only Heatran, unless you really feel strongly for making the case about some other niche set I have dismissed earlier. What this leads to is a lack of repercussions for the stall player to mindlessly switch in their designated counter to every method of counter-play you prepared, as the extra ~12% may well be the difference between a 2hko vs 3hko, or the slight difference in momentum that can allow you to actually outplay your opponent's countermeasures versus gaining no ground whatsoever. Now, I am not one of those individuals who feels entitled to hazards + double switches as the best and only method of counter play to stall. But, with that being said, if you are no longer actually rewarded with hazard/chip damage for making intelligent switches and plays, your team of 6 individual pokemon often cannot remove one another's checks and counters against a team of 6 synergistic walls who pay no consequence for switching into their designated counter ad nauseum. The extent with which this is possible on a team featuring Mega Sableye is far and away greater than a team without it, and every single development for Stall as a playstyle this generation (Gothitelle, Weavile, WonderTrio, Dugtrio+Zapdos+Suicune, etc.) has always involved Sableye forming some type of heavily restrictive core with a trapper or wall that could not be replicated without Sableye and its specific qualities. This only serves to further restrict the number of truly viable stallbreakers that aren't shut down by Sableye, don't lose to trapping and can break past most of Sableye's common partners.

• Exacerbating match-up woes & "gimmick" strategies:
  
  Mega Sableye's capacity to form very restrictive cores does not only apply to the hazard game, however, as the recent concern about Dugrio + Arena Trap might demonstrate. Now, it is true that ORAS has increased the instances of match-up restriction inherent in competitive play, and that stall is, has always been and always will be a play style that depends on match-up to succeed. However, as I discussed more in-depth in my earlier post linked above, there does come a point where you have to ask whether the level of centralization (of a playstyle and generally), restriction on teambuilding and the resulting cores that Sableye promotes are healthy for the metagame. I am not going to get into whether or not these cores are competitive or not, as that is simply subjective and not a winning point on either side. What I will highlight, though, is that there are undeniably several viable and even prominent archetypes of Sableye-stall (and semi-stall), which most of the time do crumble to 1-2 designated stallbreakers (e.g. Mega Heracross + Crawdaunt, Mega Diancie + Bulk up Talonflame, NP Togekiss, SubCM Keldeo, Mega Gardevoir + Latias, etc.), but which otherwise perform exceptionally well in the absence of the necessary offensive countermeasure against them. Put simply, you cannot simply choose one of the aforementioned offensive cores and reasonably feel secure that you have "prepared for Sableye stall". You have only realistically prepared for one or two variants, and if you prepare for the wrong style, your odds of winning the game have just decreased substantially from team preview no matter how well you play. To many players, the fact that "more skillful play" is rendered irrelevant by the ubiquitous nature of Mega Sableye on stall and the restrictiveness it forces in your choice of stallbreakers and hazard setters is the definition of uncompetitive, and while I am not prepared to echo that exact sentiment, I do feel that one should have some method of counter-play to any team archetype you face beyond "I brought the right stuff this time".

Keeping Sableye in OU

• Sableye is Overloaded with marginal bulk:
  
  There are many ways that you can go about discussing or phrasing this point, but while Mega Sableye does make use of great reliable recovery options, solid typing and def/spdef base stats, between its very average HP stat and the sheer number of threats it needs to handle hax-free during a battle, it is sure to be worn down. Put simply, people do make double switches on Mega Sableye as it is often forced into play on many occasions to 1v1 the current hazard setter in play or the expected one, and this is rather simple to take advantage of. I understand that prediction alone is a shoddy argument, but I'm talking less about "prediction" and more about anticipating the very blatantly obvious in-game situations where a player absolutely needs to send in Sableye to actually do its job blocking hazards or walling potent threats like Mega Medicham. Current metagame trends do not help Mega Sableye either given just how prominent the VoltTurn + wallbreaker(s) archetype has become, along with the surge in usage of Mega Lopunny. What this amounts to is effectively netting the same "chip" damage that Sableye otherwise seeks to prevent from hazards through repeated VoltTurning/simple predictions that make it far more difficult to avoid 2hkos and consistently check the breakers it is meant to check. It should be fairly obvious, but Sableye's capacity to do this is pressured even further when it is not surrounded by 4-5 other dedicated walls to serve as back-up measures to certain breakers and ease prediction, and this is largely why outside of Stall, Mega Sableye is hardly ever seen as an issue. It does not have "bad" survivability by any means, but the extent to which many teams over-rely on it (especially as the teams become more and more offensive in nature) to check OU's many stallbreakers eventually wears it down with intelligent play.
• There are many available counter-measures to Sableye itself:
  
  Yes, Sableye has a wide arrangement of checks and hard-counters that I could list off and discuss, but that argument makes me physically ill to read every time it is mentioned in a suspect for either pro/anti ban and so I'm just not getting into it.
  
  What I would like to discuss instead are the numerous ways in which Sableye can be "lured", or more broadly taken advantage of. The fact that Sableye needs to be both mega evolved, kept relatively healthy and immediately sent into play against a variety of common hazard setters/breakers is otherwise exploited when you run offensive lure sets on pokemon it would otherwise comfortably beat 1v1. A few notable examples are SD (+/- Lum) Garchomp & Landorus-T, CM Latios, Lum SD Bisharp, SubCM Keldeo, SubDD/RestoChesto Gyarados & Taunt Mega Gyarados, VinCune, Toxic Orb Breloom sets, NP Infernape, DG LO Alakazam, etc. There are certainly more that I haven't listed but my goal is less about naming all the different sets you can use and more about illustrating how many options you actually do have for innovation and skillful preparation. Some pokemon already do possess the capacity to 2hko or nearly 2hko Sableye, such as Terrakion or Tornadus-T, and many others like Gengar or offensive Mega Scizor find this even easier with very minimal prior damage. I do fully realize that certain sets are less preferable than others some of the time, but I think there is a difference in expectation between running coverage/boosting/still viable items on certain popular pokemon as opposed to things like Shed Shell Manaphy/Togekiss as one example. While it is true that most of the controversy around Sableye is more about its synergy with other teammates and less about Sableye itself, managing to kill or severely dent Sableye is not the most difficult task and once you do so, you have removed a very crucial component of a team that now can be handled by intelligently managing your hazards, double switches or by simply having breakers such as Medicham, Kyurem-B or Metagross that can handle defensive teams more or less by themselves.

Again, I want to reiterate that these are just some of the best arguments I feel should be weighted against each other for both sides of the discussion. They are not the only arguments, but I just wanted to steer the direction away from really trivial things (like checks & counters) and more about the type of metagame we seek to have and if Mega Sableye conflicts in any way with that. Feel free to agree or disagree fully or in part with any of my points, because I'm really not too overly passionate in one direction or another at the moment."

P.S. Mega Medicham isn't broken, and even if you disagree, I'm not buying it that it was only ever kept in check because of Mega Sableye. Flat out false and/or irrelevant theorymon.

 

[HailFall]

Ok so im not writing a book on this so let me get straight to the point. The crux of the issue of sableye is how it completely denies the many of the most splashable and reliable means of counterplay to stall in the tier such as taunt, stealth rocks (unless one of the very few rockers that actuallly reliably set them up), and spikes. What's left? Well, stallbreakers are what's left. Unfortunately the vast majority of stallbreakers are not particularly splashable, and only work against specific variations on mega sableye stall that dont pack a counter to them. Mega sableye makes stallbreaking intensely matchup based and can quite literally win or lose games at team preview -- this is what leads me to call it uncompeteitive. There is very limited room to "outplay" a stall team if you are not packing the appropriate breaker to beat it, and if you do its often due to a random crit or other hax. Idk about you guys but matchup based cheese is not what i want out of this metagame. Ban mega sableye.

 

[baddummy]

Despite this suspecting being so late in the tier, I think it is extremely important to ban Sableye, not only to make ORAS a fun tier to play as an old gen, but also to set a good precedent for the future.

What I've noticed is that a lot of people who oppose a ban say something along the lines of "Sableye isn't broken, you shouldn't rely on hazards, instead, just use breakers". If the player is particularly metagame-savy, they'll list off some breakers that are particularly good against the current version of sab stall, and tell me to use those.

To tackle this argument, I'll just look through a brief history of stallbreaking. Stall first popped up as a playstyle in GSC, and I think that a flaw that a lot of people have in what they view stallbreaking should be is that bringing massively powerful breakers is the default way. Actually, the most common way of beating stall back then wasn't to just straight up overpower it with some absurdly powerful breaker, but to get Spikes up, keep them up, and apply pressure with bulky set up sweepers or status conditions. Hazards have always been something that you should use with breakers to beat stall, rather than as an alternative to. What Spikes allowed is for aggressive plays and doubles to be meaningful, as you gained something from merely forcing the opponent to switch.Hazards are a key part of the skill in a vs stall game, and have been since stall first emerged in GSC, so it's no wonder that when you allow stall to simply opt out of having to play the hazards game, that you get the disastrous effect of a multitude of teams that depend very little on skill at all.

So, essentially, what I hope I've proven at this point, is that slow outplay isn't a great option to deal with stall now; it doesn't work. So, you have to rely very much on your breakers. And the question isn't whether you have breakers at all, but whether you have the right breakers for the right team. To take a quote from another pro-ban post, I feel ABR does a good job of summing up the problem with relying so heavily on specific breakers:

You either have that one Crawdaunt/Heracross or you don't

Different stall teams lose to different breakers, and so if you're relying on one breaker to bust through a stall team in the way that we're forced to with Sableye in the tier, then of course you run into massive matchup issues when facing stall teams. It’s in this respect that the people saying something along the lines of “Tele’s team loses to Gengar and Zard Y, so bring one of those” miss the point. Yeah, sure, certain stall teams just flat out lose to certain threats, but this isn’t really the meta that we should want to develop. To be clearer, it’s not about what beats a stall team, but whether you have the opportunity to outplay it.

The idea that the better player should have a chance to outplay is central to any competitive game. Sableye stall is incredibly matchup dependent, to a ridiculous degree, and it's not just an isolated matchup issue, it is literally a whole a style that revolves around causing as many matchup issues as it physically can for the rest of the meta. If you compare ORAS Sab stall to any other defensive style, any tier, you’ll see just how ridiculous it is. Defensive styles in fighting games require you to actively wall out the opponent; defensive styles in decent card games require careful card and resource management and to slowly gain card advantage throughout the course of a match; defensive styles in old gens require risk assessment and control of the hazard game. ORAS Sab stall require none of these - just merely to hope for a good match, and to not make an incredibly stupid choke when you get it. Honestly I think that when you understand exactly how matches work with Sab stall teams, that it's genuinely hard to call ORAS matches with Sableye in them "competitive" at all.

As per regards to people to saying it's not technically "broken", I feel like this is a bad way of looking at it. It might not sweep teams or get a kill every time it comes in, but it 100% gives the player using it a wildly unfair advantage in many situations. It would be sad to see people vote "No Ban" despite feeling the metagame is healthier without it due to less matchup based losses, all because it doesn't fit some arbitrary definition of "broken", which isn't generally suitable for looking at defensive threats anyway.

In conclusion:

• Sableye takes a key element of playing with and against stall - hazards, completely out of the game.
• This results in winner and loser being decided almost instantly from matchup.
• Competitive games by definition, mean that the better player will always have a chance to win.
• Matchup based losses, which is the void filled by taking elements of skill out of the game, stand in opposition to the above idea.
• Sableye stall might lose to certain threats, but this is different from giving people the opportunity to outplay things.
  
• Therefore, even if certain Sab stalls do flat out lose to certain threats, this does not take away from the fact that they run contrary to the idea that good play, by definition, should always matter, in a competitive game.
• As a result, Sableye makes the ORAS matches it is in uncompetitive.
• In order to call ORAS OU a tier that is always competitive, we must ban Sableye.

Also, yeah I realise that having a bad matchup vs stall, even without Sableye, is hard to win against. But hard to win against, and unwinnable, from a competitive standpoint, are worlds apart.

 

[soul3reaper]

Hello to all. I'm relatively new to ORAS OU (I only started to play on showdown about 3 months ago) but I'm an avid player. On showdown, we've all probably gone up against the terror known as Mega Sableye. But all in all, stall is stall. Mega Sableye may have revolutionized stall teams in that classic stallbreaking methods wouldn't work. If Sableye had access to phazing moves, then I'd be yelling 'BAN! BAN!'. Thankfully that's not the case. However, calling him cancerous (fyi that's why we ban them), is wrong. The critter has very glaring flaws that needs to be assessed before going any further.

Sableye is only weak to fairy, so he's ideal as a defensive mon. But therein lies his first (and arguably most major) flaw. His base HP is 50. In a word, Paltry.
252 SpA Mega Charizard Y Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 144+ SpD Mega Sableye in Sun: 225-265 (74 - 87.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ SpA Mega Charizard Y Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 144+ SpD Mega Sableye in Sun: 246-289 (80.9 - 95%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Both Modest and Timid Mega Charizard Y easily KO Mega Sableye.

252 Atk Mega Absol Play Rough vs. 252 HP / 112 Def Mega Sableye: 166-196 (54.6 - 64.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Another instance is mega Absol. Or for that fact, Mega Diancie. Any half decent wallbreaker, can destroy mega sableye. For example...

+4 252 SpA Serperior Leaf Storm vs. 252 HP / 144+ SpD Mega Sableye: 313-370 (102.9 - 121.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO
It's not hard to get a few leaf storms off. Against mega sableye, anybody could do it.

Another big weakness is the fact that mold breaker shuts sableye down, or for that matter skill swap. Mold breaker allows pokemon like Haxorus (mind you he's a brilliant stallbreaker), to taunt mega Sableye. Mega Gyarados also has mold breaker and access to taunt.

The third weakness is the prevalence of the fairy typing. Azumarill, Clefable, Sylveon, M-Gardevoir... All of these eat sableye for breakfast.
252+ Atk Huge Power Azumarill Play Rough vs. 252 HP / 112 Def Mega Sableye: 270-318 (88.8 - 104.6%) -- 25% chance to OHKO

even better....

+6 252+ Atk Huge Power burned Azumarill Play Rough vs. 252 HP / 112 Def Mega Sableye: 535-631 (175.9 - 207.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
if Azumarill is burned while setting up a belly drum, It wouldn't end well for sableye.

Another issue is the concept of Hazards... How can you set them up if you're playing against M-Sableye? Short Answer... You don't. Hazards aren't necessary. SR are next to useless unless they have pokes like TalonFlame, charizard, or Beedril, or Kyurem-B. Spikes are convenient but not mandatory. And if you really want SR or spikes, use Mold Breaker +Hazards. Excadrill exists.

But wait. You may be having doubts. What if they run Sableye and Talonflame on the same team? If they run Semi-stall? Answer: They can't support Mega Sableye then. Sableye requires a stall team to play effectively (believe me I was playing against this bastard for 183 turns, we were holding up the tour and CZ had to come and flip coin to disqualify one of us...). Sableye on its own is very weak. It requires a team that supports it to play effectively.

TL;DR Sableye is pretty weak unless supported the right way. Remove support and it's harmless.

I am saying Don't Ban and I urge you to say the same. We can all appreciate this mischief making mon and respect his standing in the OU tier.

 

[BlazeLatias]

Hello to all. I'm relatively new to ORAS OU (I only started to play on showdown about 3 months ago) but I'm an avid player. On showdown, we've all probably gone up against the terror known as Mega Sableye. But all in all, stall is stall. Mega Sableye may have revolutionized stall teams in that classic stallbreaking methods wouldn't work. If Sableye had access to phazing moves, then I'd be yelling 'BAN! BAN!'. Thankfully that's not the case. However, calling him cancerous (fyi that's why we ban them), is wrong. The critter has very glaring flaws that needs to be assessed before going any further.

Sableye is only weak to fairy, so he's ideal as a defensive mon. But therein lies his first (and arguably most major) flaw. His base HP is 50. In a word, Paltry.
252 SpA Mega Charizard Y Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 144+ SpD Mega Sableye in Sun: 225-265 (74 - 87.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ SpA Mega Charizard Y Fire Blast vs. 252 HP / 144+ SpD Mega Sableye in Sun: 246-289 (80.9 - 95%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Both Modest and Timid Mega Charizard Y easily KO Mega Sableye.

252 Atk Mega Absol Play Rough vs. 252 HP / 112 Def Mega Sableye: 166-196 (54.6 - 64.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Another instance is mega Absol. Or for that fact, Mega Diancie. Any half decent wallbreaker, can destroy mega sableye. For example...

+4 252 SpA Serperior Leaf Storm vs. 252 HP / 144+ SpD Mega Sableye: 313-370 (102.9 - 121.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO
It's not hard to get a few leaf storms off. Against mega sableye, anybody could do it.

Another big weakness is the fact that mold breaker shuts sableye down, or for that matter skill swap. Mold breaker allows pokemon like Haxorus (mind you he's a brilliant stallbreaker), to taunt mega Sableye. Mega Gyarados also has mold breaker and access to taunt.

The third weakness is the prevalence of the fairy typing. Azumarill, Clefable, Sylveon, M-Gardevoir... All of these eat sableye for breakfast.
252+ Atk Huge Power Azumarill Play Rough vs. 252 HP / 112 Def Mega Sableye: 270-318 (88.8 - 104.6%) -- 25% chance to OHKO

even better....

+6 252+ Atk Huge Power burned Azumarill Play Rough vs. 252 HP / 112 Def Mega Sableye: 535-631 (175.9 - 207.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO
if Azumarill is burned while setting up a belly drum, It wouldn't end well for sableye.

Another issue is the concept of Hazards... How can you set them up if you're playing against M-Sableye? Short Answer... You don't. Hazards aren't necessary. SR are next to useless unless they have pokes like TalonFlame, charizard, or Beedril, or Kyurem-B. Spikes are convenient but not mandatory. And if you really want SR or spikes, use Mold Breaker +Hazards. Excadrill exists.

But wait. You may be having doubts. What if they run Sableye and Talonflame on the same team? If they run Semi-stall? Answer: They can't support Mega Sableye then. Sableye requires a stall team to play effectively (believe me I was playing against this bastard for 183 turns, we were holding up the tour and CZ had to come and flip coin to disqualify one of us...). Sableye on its own is very weak. It requires a team that supports it to play effectively.

TL;DR Sableye is pretty weak unless supported the right way. Remove support and it's harmless.

I am saying Don't Ban and I urge you to say the same. We can all appreciate this mischief making mon and respect his standing in the OU tier.

Dont really agree with this. Generally speaking you should never make a arguement about how said defensive mon loses to the obvious pokemon its weak to. A good player wont let their mega sableye stay in on a azumarill of all things. Its just a downright awful play to make. Sableye itself supports stall teams greatly and just flat out makes stall teams disgustingly matchup based to the point where if you lack a certain threat to it your screwed as stated above.

Just gonna respond to the calcs and tell you what really happens:

vs charizard-y: The stall players switching to chansey

Vs mega Absol: Almost nobody uses mega Absol and chances are the stall player will just go to clefable or skarmory

Vs Serperior: How did you get a serperior to +4 vs sableye stall and why would the stall player go into sableye of all things when you have switch-ins like unaware clefable, Amoongus and chansey?

Vs Azumarill: Again Sableye should never stay in. These kind of stall teams carry Amoonguss, skarmory and quagsire (in the burned bd azu's case)

 

[Jiibriil]

It doesn't make any sense to ban something two weeks before the end of the tier. Especially when it was allowed for the entire tier.

That'd be like banning Chansey from RBY now, it doesn't make any sense. I personally don't think that MSab is broken, sure he's annoying on Stall, but Stall has Dugtrio and Skarmory to get rid of hazards anyway. It cripples bulky offense teams that use MSab, and that's not really necessary. But whether or not MSab is broken or not is irrelevant. This isn't the time for a suspect test...

I'd feel a lot better about this if we waited until we got the SM Pokemon, rather than hastily banning something NOW, where it'll stay for the rest of eternity because why not.