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