Vsomani you are convining me to not want to lean towards ban more then anything.
I may not be able to vote for this test due to time restrictions (birthday weekend yay) but i was able to get a good chunk of games on the suspect ladder to understand a few different changes. Also listening to both sides from this thread i had sort of a change of heart on my stance with sableye.
Me ,probably like most people, were excited that sableye would be retested as it would give us a chance to reevaluate since the original suspect test didnt have sableye banned , therefor we couldnt understand a meta without it. After playing a good amount of games on the ladder, through all the fighting megas and ther new versions of stall that people are trying, It is clear to me as this: some people (including myself) want to see stall just not be viable, so thereby thinking more one dimentionally towards favoring banned (not saying everyone, not even a majority of people, but just some few). It is easy to see an annoying playstyle as something to want to get rid of to make the game more diverse and interesting, and not stall on stall matchups that last 2000+ turns.
HOWEVER, mega sableye isn't broken (im sure everyone can agree on that), and i dont believe mega sableye is uncompetitive. The playstyle isnt impossible to beat, even can outright lose to certain pokemon. Although there are very few pokemon that straight out beat the playstyle, the game is a 6v6 match, not sableye versus the meta or one pokemon vesus the entire stall playstyle. Even if you don't have the straight out answer to stall in one pokemon, most teams still have ways to play around it. if you have a rotom , you are still having to decide whether to burn the possible quagsire, or volt on the sableye into one of yourpowerhouse hitters. , so you still have to use the power of your own judgment. If your the stall player, you have to determine whether you want to risk the burn on your quagsire that will result in you being pressure, or getting volted on when you go into sableye and lose momentum.
Stall is an anti meta playstyle, yeah it will have matchup based games, but so does rain against HO, or baton pass against unprepared teams. Stall isnt a mindless playstyle, and probably is requires more thought process in bad matchup games. If you played stall before you would know that playing around stallbreakers can be very difficult. Sableye provides an way to balance out status, taunt, and hazards. It isnt impossible to get status, taunt, or hazards versus sableye stall, you just have to work for it.
Through my experiences on the ladder, and through some of the discussion on this thread, i'm leaning more towards mega sableye should stay. Sableye isn't broken or noncompetative. Mega sableye isnt annoying as well as stall in general, but isnt impossible to beat, and welcomes an alternative playstyle to oppose fast powerful HO teams.
I just want to say that I am a stall player again. I have compared both stalls. I am, in fact getting better results without sableye. It is a fun plazstyle for me. I am not saying that sableye stall is not fun. I am saying that non-sableye stall is more fun. Non-sableye stall does not beat normal builds. The problem with sableye stall is that it either autowins or autoloses pretty much. It is extremely hard to taunt, get rocks up, or status sableye builds. This requires using rockers that are otherwise outclassed to set up hazards like Abr said. Heatran is trapped by dugtrio but people need to get rocks up so badly that they can sacrifice their rocker. It is extremely difficult to spikestack like abr said. Stall will not be unviable without it. How many times can mew break through sableye. I doubt it is 1 out of 10.
The difference comparing this time to last time is that this time people use dugtrio way more. Dual defog dugtrio is extremely nice and can have megas like mega altaria and mega charizard x. Mega Diancie is also nice to have for counterring mew, and revenge killing a variety of threats like keldeo. It is not that sableye is annoying. It is either all or none on team preview. People can decide whether they win or lose from team preview from some matchups. This is true because if the stall team does not have one or few hard counters to x specific breaker, then it loses. In all other circumstances it wins. Stall is used by people who just want to win, and have not expirienced the beauty of playing stall for being tough for yourslef. I would say that people use sableye stall because and all other variants have not been brought up yet, because people are lazy and want ease in both teambuilding and battling to win.
Edit: Knock off cripples 99% of its checks and counters which are not megas, which it spams. It is much easier to play for and against sableye stall. To play against sableye stall if your team doesnt have a breaker, click the x button. if your team has a breaker that is not hard countered by one of his mons, sack a mon to let it set up, or attack, then sweep. Also counter lead sable. To play for sableye stall lead sableye. If he counter leads you, you click fake out, then switch to the respective check. If he has a great breaker, against your team, it is as easy as clicking the x button at the beginning.
Non-sableye stall makes it feel like everything should be dealt with in a proper way. From volt turners like rotom, raikou, mmane,(i'm not kidding it can pressure stall) landorus, scizor, keldeo, tornadus etc. to common win conditions like bisharp, nasty plot thundurus, sub cm keldeo, mega scizor etc. This lets spikers like ferrothorn, skarmory etc. cause a nuisance for stall. Dealing with so many hazards are extremely important in acoiding ohkos, 2hkos, and 3hkoes from x mon. A non msab meta allows spikestack to thrive, which is nice because your opponent needs to set up spikes on the right mon, to get as many layers as possible. If x mon is killed after y amount of spikes which allows z mon to sweep, you can sack your entire team to get those spikes. If x mon sweeps with y poke out of the picture , and y poke has recovery spikes and double switches can be used to weaken, and kill the y poke out of the picture. Thee switches can be predicted. Against stall, this allows you to try to pressure and remove the defogger, with a series of plays. Sableye also stops ppstalling heal bell/ aromatherapy.
Vsomani you are convining me to not want to lean towards ban more then anything.
I may not be able to vote for this test due to time restrictions (birthday weekend yay) but i was able to get a good chunk of games on the suspect ladder to understand a few different changes. Also listening to both sides from this thread i had sort of a change of heart on my stance with sableye.
Me ,probably like most people, were excited that sableye would be retested as it would give us a chance to reevaluate since the original suspect test didnt have sableye banned , therefor we couldnt understand a meta without it. After playing a good amount of games on the ladder, through all the fighting megas and ther new versions of stall that people are trying, It is clear to me as this: some people (including myself) want to see stall just not be viable, so thereby thinking more one dimentionally towards favoring banned (not saying everyone, not even a majority of people, but just some few). It is easy to see an annoying playstyle as something to want to get rid of to make the game more diverse and interesting, and not stall on stall matchups that last 2000+ turns.
HOWEVER, mega sableye isn't broken (im sure everyone can agree on that), and i dont believe mega sableye is uncompetitive. The playstyle isnt impossible to beat, even can outright lose to certain pokemon. Although there are very few pokemon that straight out beat the playstyle, the game is a 6v6 match, not sableye versus the meta or one pokemon vesus the entire stall playstyle. Even if you don't have the straight out answer to stall in one pokemon, most teams still have ways to play around it. if you have a rotom , you are still having to decide whether to burn the possible quagsire, or volt on the sableye into one of yourpowerhouse hitters. , so you still have to use the power of your own judgment. If your the stall player, you have to determine whether you want to risk the burn on your quagsire that will result in you being pressure, or getting volted on when you go into sableye and lose momentum.
Stall is an anti meta playstyle, yeah it will have matchup based games, but so does rain against HO, or baton pass against unprepared teams. Stall isnt a mindless playstyle, and probably is requires more thought process in bad matchup games. If you played stall before you would know that playing around stallbreakers can be very difficult. Sableye provides an way to balance out status, taunt, and hazards. It isnt impossible to get status, taunt, or hazards versus sableye stall, you just have to work for it.
Through my experiences on the ladder, and through some of the discussion on this thread, i'm leaning more towards mega sableye should stay. Sableye isn't broken or noncompetative. Mega sableye is annoying as well as stall in general, but isnt impossible to beat, and welcomes an alternative playstyle to oppose fast powerful HO teams.
Banning sableye will remove a huge part of the matchup that you say. It will not let stall have polar matchup. North Pole for win, South Pole for lose. People favoring no ban have not given me any reasonable argument of what good sableye does. I have posted this again and again. If the power house breaker is hard countered, its over before it starts. If it is not hard countered, again it is over before it starts. If x mon has the ability to outspeed and atleast 2hko everything it is good game.Why will you not go amoongus on rotom."The playstyle isnt impossible to beat, even can outright lose to certain pokemon." I fail to understand how this is good. If it outright loses to a certain mon, does it not make it more matchup reliant. The whole argument I had was that it outright loses to a certain mon. One thing you do not understand is that stall will NOT die without sableye. It will have a nice new era, which allows it to use even MORE skill then sab stall had. What healthy effects does sab have on the meta, again?
Sab has far more cons then pros. It makes stall better, and even can impact hyper offense towards the meta. If you have not tried out stall, then I think that that is the very problem. You need to try stall to get a clear look at the ban side of the argument Sab is uncompetitive because it stops stall from playing around so many threats. It makes status absorbers necessary. It hugely pressures non sab, non fire builds.