Salem1 asked me to post this on behalf of him responding to
Mithril's post.
Mithril asked me to post this for him in here:
Uncompetitive - The player choice is still paramount to his victory, it just has to be made with the knowledge that Stealth Rock is up (or not for that matter) and is a part of what must be considered for the decision.
This is in effect an argument for a broken thing being balanced because you can centralize around it. Why ban anything at all from a tier then? why
havetiers? If your paragraph is reworded to include Ubers instead of SR, the same logic works. So there must be something incomplete about either the logic or the tiering system, let's see if we find it in the next points you made.
Furthermore, under the uncompetitive critera themselves, SR ticks matchup.
Matchup:"This can be match up related; think the determination that BP took the battling skill aspect out of the player's hands and made it overwhelmingly a team match up issue, where even with the best moves made each time by a standard team often were not enough." SR is one of the most matchup-defining things in the game, punishing certain types more than others for the rest of the game in a single turn, making it more punishing to use switch-ins against certain attacking types and most significantly promoting the use of types that resist it. SR-resistance is the defining centralizing factor, not that mons are weak to it - that is also bad, but it's additional in the sense you can take that away and it's still a matchup issue affecting more than those 4 types. Only because the metagame is already warped by generations of SR could this criteria be considered not true, as SR will punish a player's attempts to use skill in switching significantly more or less simply by matchup.
Broken - We can concede that stealth rock racks up a lot of damage throughout the battle (more or less depending on the inclusion of SR weak Pokemon). But this damage does not render the more skillful play irrelevant, if anything it makes the more skillful play even more impactful. Agressively doubling into an advantageous matchup can force the opponent to switch, punishing them for getting out-predicted.
That is one selective example, which makes for a poor argument. You could just as easily argue that it punishes switching into SR-weak pokemon, taking away player skill by restricting his switches into them despite knowing that an aggressive double-switch would otherwise be advantageous. This again feeds into the match-up issue, as a player will be far more punished for wrong switches if his pokemon are not resistant to SR than if they are, beyond the effect it has of punishing defensive switches by 4 types in the game which the player's skill cannot affect. SR thus has an effect on every type in the game, and not just on the types that are weak to it. The fact that you yourself add a disclaimer that SR is more or less effective based on matchup is further evidence of that, but you aren't being completely truthful, because you discount that SR-
resistance is the defining factor and not merely weakness to it.
Here are the criteria for broken:
B.) Examples are mostly Pokemon and include strong Ubers like Kyogre, Groudon, and Arceus. These aren't necessarily completely uncompetitive because they don't take the determining factor out of the player's hands; both can use these Pokemon and both probably have a fair chance to win. They are broken because they almost dictate / require usage, and a standard team facing a standard team with one of them would be at a drastic disadvantage. These examples limit team building skill.
C.) Examples also include ones whose only counters or checks are extraordinarily gimmicky Pokemon that would put the team at a large disadvantage elsewhere. These examples also limit team building skill.
D.) Uncompetitive and Broken defined like this tend to be mutually exclusive in practice, but aren't necessarily entirely so.
SR doesn't take the determining factor out of the player's hands; both can use SR and both probably have a fair chance to win (using teams centralized around the move). SR is broken because it almost dictates / requires usage, and a team which is made without stealth rock in mind (no setter, no spinner, no in- or exclusion of SR-resistant/weak mons respectively) facing one that is would be at a drastic disadvantage.
Including rapid spin or defog on your team is not only in itself practically useless except for the purpose of removing SR, it also forces you to use the few pokemon that can learn those moves and use sets on them that would otherwise be sub-optimal. You cannot count that SR-removers can themselves be setters and thus "equalize" the move slot sacrifice for spin/defog, as this goes against point B that was just made above, which
specifically states that just because both teams can use something it is not balanced/desirable.
Under point D, SR breaks both the Uncompetitive and Broken rules, as defined above.
Unhealthy - This one is a little more controversial as SR is clearly mentioned in the comment. But I think more important is the comment at the end of this point where he states that "This is the most controversial and subjective one, and will therefore be used the most sparingly. The OU Council will only use this amidst drastic community outcry and a conviction that the move will noticeably result in the better player winning over the lesser player." Unless you can honestly argue that you feel that SR results in the less skilled player winning when they shouldn't the point is moot in my opinion.
The fact that SR is mentioned as the first point with an open conclusion shows that the controversy is taken seriously, otherwise it would be used as an example that was discounted for not being unhealthy. In fact, the wording of the first point ends in "the conversation to be had". I would like to ask how a conversation can be had, which seems to be a stated goal, if an attempt at suspect testing SR is shot down in conception.
No one would need to argue anything here as this point is stated in the policy to be both subjective and secondary to the prior two, both of which I have addressed.
Stealth Rock restricts team building to some extent, but no more than considerations like status absorbers, the necessity to be able to break stall, or the ability to deal with individual threats. SR just feels like the scapegoat people are pointing at for why certain Pokemon aren't viable when, as Karxrida pointed out. there are plenty of SR weak Pokemon that are thriving. And to be honest, I personally don't think it should matter even if it is. There are going to be good and bad Pokemon regardless of the existence of Stealth Rock. Unless you honestly believe that taking Stealth Rock out of the game will make the game more skill dependent, this discussion isn't worth having. And if you do think Stealth Rock takes away from the skill of the game and makes skillfull plays irrelevent, then that's what you have to argue and at least personally, I just don't see a case for anything close to that being made.
1) Status has nowhere near the same effect as SR, so the comparison is fallacious to begin with. Status doesn't affect every mon that switches in for the rest of the game, has counter-options that punish mons for relying on it which SR doesn't to the same extent (guts, facade, resttalk, poison heal, lightningrod, magic bounce, type immunities for free turns off the top of my head - SR has just magic bounce), and is more easily predicted and played around because the average status user can't simply spam it to affect multiple mons. Rather it will most commonly be used as coverage against switch-ins that it loses to or by walls that would get set up on otherwise. This argument is a straw man as well, as theoretically anything could be argued to need preparation for.
2) Stall is a playstyle, not a move. Straw man argument.
3) Again, "necessity to deal with individual threats" is a straw man argument.
4) Mons being SR-weak is not the extent of the move's centralization, and mons thriving that are SR-weak does not disprove any of the aforementioned criteria for Uncompetitive and Broken. Straw man argument again.
5) I'm getting tired and bored of pointing out straw men, so I'll just address the last point now. You may not see the case for it being made, but factual interpretation of the tiering policy makes it clear that SR is valid for a suspect test, while the policy writing itself mentions that SR "is a conversation
to be had" and that proof for a
ban is on the side that advocates doing so. Disallowing a suspect test would prevent those who wish to make a case from presenting one in the first place. How can you prove something that you are not allowed to examine?