I was being sarcastic, but let me play devil's advocate. I mean, if the metagame is stable and we are testing random stuff like Zamazenta, might as well retest stag for 2 weeks - for the same logic everyone has been using w/ Zamazenta, could be applied to Stag (only difference is stag is more hated)
Unlike many other things, we banned Shadow Tag (and trapping in general) way back in gen 6 and never looked at it again. Ever. We might've retested Arena Trap in gen 7 but I'm not 100% sure, but def not stag.
Today's metagame has evolved greatly, potentially making stag not as broken.
Cons for Gothitelle/Stag:
- Power Creep: It's way harder for Gothitelle to trap offensive pokemon like it was in gen 6; it can't pretty much switch in on anything in the game with a scarf and trick it. For example, can't really trap offensive pokemon like Kartana, Rillaboom, Melmetal, or Koko.
- More momentum moves, ex: Flip Turn & Teleport. Specifically on defensive pokemon, which is what Gothitelle excelled at trapping. Gothitelle has a much harder time trapping defensive pokemon and risking momentum loss, but even if it gets the double onto them the best it can do is cripple them with a Scarf (assuming they have switching out move). It can't really do the broken get 6 calms minds, pp stall, then get back your trick and try to sweep kinda thing it did way back then.
- Dragapult. Dragapult is the #2 pokemon in usage that provides a ghost type that cannot be trapped AND outspeeds scarf Gothitelle. There's also other viable ghost types right now such as Aegislash, Gengar, and Blacephelon.
- No HP. You might think this is dumb but HP def made Gothitelle more flexible, for example you can Scarf + HP fire to take care of Kartana as even if it was scarfed you can take one hit. Some people ran HP ground to weaken Heatran after tricking it Scarf, and some people ran other HP for certain threats.
- It's deadweight for a good amount of matchups. Generally, no matter how hard you are trying to matchup fish, it's never great to have pokemon that's deadweight against some matchups. This might be true for a lot of pokemon, but it certainly wasn't true for Gen 6 Gothitelle, which was useful in every single matchup.
Pros:
- No pursuit, this is pretty neat for Gothitelle.
- More momentum moves like Flip Turn & Teleport. Although this acts against Gothitelle more than it helps it, it certainly does help it because it does mean you can easily pair it with a Slowbro or something and get guaranteed free switch-in. Although let's say a Blissey comes in, you do get the guaranteed Tricking it Scarf while Blissey teleport outs (which gives up momentum), but like previously mentioned you don't get the PP Stalling + getting 6 Calms Minds + Getting scarf back kinda level of broken.
I know Trapping was banned more-so because it had an uncompetitive game-breaking mechanic which was eliminating switching, but with so many new factors it might be less broken, just as broken, or potentially even more broken (probably not, gen 6 gothitelle was peak cancer) - but we will never know that, unless we test it. Which was what everyone was advocating for Zam-C. Gothitelle isn't something we tested many times like Zygarde, neither it was something we tested pretty recently like Darm-G. Hell, even if it was something we tested often, which we didn't, it might still be worth restesting - case in point Blaziken and Aegislash. There ARE other factors to trapping like Wobuffet and potentially Arena Trap, but Gothitelle was by far the biggest offender.
I'm just playing devil's advocate, I wouldn't really want Stag back either - but I'm curious to see what happens, as it genuinely might not be as broken. If the metagame is so stable that we get to test whatever we think might be not completely broken in OU for 2 weeks because we have the control factor, might as well test Shadow Tag for the hell of it. Biases aside. Don't hate on this post, I'm just tryna make important discussion and address the elephant in the room. Ok I'm ready now for the dislikes.