Well I'm glad that concerns over hazard stack and Mega Medicham builds have been tackled so extensively. I've already presented some reasoning as to why I don't think Sableye should remain in the tier, and not that this will add anything to what other people think, but I found the suspect ladder significantly more fun without Sableye, which only makes me more sure of the way I will vote.
In any case, a decent anti ban argument that has been popping up, which I may rephrase slightly, not to suite my own purposes, but just to make it as clear as it can be, is this:
Yes, Sableye has a strong impact on the metagame. However, this is to be expected of an S rank pokemon, and having to prepare for something isn't necessarily indicative of it being unhealthy. What separates Sableye from other S rank pokemon, which also impact the tier, and require attention when teambuilding?
I think the strongest way to tackle this argument is to compare it to other S rank pokemon, and pokemon that were previously S rank in different stages of the metagame, to bring it into context. The key difference between Sableye and other S rank pokemon, to break it down into simple terms, is extent, effort, and what happens if you aren't totally prepared for it. I'll elaborate on what I mean by each of these points in the paragraph below.
Extent: Ok, so a pokemon can be placed into the S rank category based on it being an offensive, defensive, or supportive threat. Sableye definitely falls into one of the latter two categories. An S rank defensive pokemon is one that can be easily fitted into a defensive core with other pokemon, and be very effective at its job. An S rank supportive pokemon can do things like be an effective cleric, throw out status, maybe throw out taunts or encores to prevent set up, although nothing currently in the s rank does the last. Clefable is S rank because it can throw out Thunder Waves and requires immediate attention to stop it from cming too many times, plus it can be a solid cleric with unaware for full stall teams. If you look way way back to earlier XY, then Venusaur was ranked as S rank. This was because of how many pokemon it could effectively wall.
So what separates Sableye from these pokemon? Well, crucially, while Clefable isn't out, it's not threatening you with cms, or throwing out twaves. Back then, when Venusaur was S rank, when it wasn't in, it wasn't walling your pokemon, or using some other rarer options at its disposal such as leech seed. When Sableye isn't in, it is still stopping hazards from going up by deterring you from using them, and thus it's still stopping the rest of the team from taking chip damage. That's the big difference between them, that Sableye impacts many more plays than other defensive S ranks can or did. At every point in the game, it makes you significantly more reluctant to use any non attacking move. Normally with defensive S ranks, they can come in and threaten you in some way, or do something helpful. With Sableye, it coming in
is the threat, because it comes in, bounces back the move you used, and thus shuts it down all at once, making it extremely efficient in terms of turn usage. This is a huge step up from something like defiant, or pursuit users, just due to the sheer number of moves and targets that magic bounce works on. Essentially, teams that run Sableye make use of it at almost every point in the game, without it even having to be in, because of how many normally good plays it totally deters. Just before this argument comes up, it isn't promoting smart play, because just identifying what pokemon uses stealth rock, and simply sending in Sableye is both the safest and most obvious play.
Effort: This ties into my last sentence of the previous paragraph about the extent to which Sableye impacts games it is in. Sableye shuts down plenty of plays, and it does this in a very safe fashion. Notice how even if the opposing player makes the absolutely optimal play, and doubles into something else on the Sableye switch, provided this isn't a breaker the Sableye team is extremely weak to, not much has been gained in the way of advantage, and obviously forcing excessive switches isn't going to be doing a huge amount if you can't punish it with hazard damage. Once it is in, Sableye doesn't actually give out free turns to a whole lot of stuff; it can fire off Knock Offs or Wisps, which you'll notice the vast majority of pokemon don't appreciate switching in on. What Sableye does is turn an obvious play into one that is very efficient too in terms of turn usage, and it seriously impacts the options the opposing player has in terms of punishment. Furthermore, as I have said before, hazard management is a skill when playing stall, and Sableye just takes what was once an important aspect of games versus stall, and puts them at such a huge advantage that they almost automatically win the hazard war, provided it is backed up by a Skarmory or similar.
What happens if you are weak to it: This point really refers to being weak to Sableye teams as a whole, and incorporates much of what I have already been saying. Due to the low effort required in playing Sableye teams, the Sableye user doesn't have to do much, if anything in the way of smart play in the event of a good matchup, and due to how it makes punishment of obvious plays much less effective, and shuts down a lot of what would be an otherwise good move, eg throwing taunts out on a stall team, the options somebody has who is weak to the Sableye team in question are very, very limited. A good number of the pokemon on the options against Sableye teams lists seem somewhat questionable, and they're usually bulky enough to shrug off one breaker they are weak to with a decent number of pokemon left. Besides that, in discounting gothitelle you assume only 5 members, which isn't what is actually going to happen. In any case Sableye teams are something which require much thought in the team building process. What it boils down to is that against a Sableye build, if you are slightly weak to it, and without significant hax, then you can pretty much chalk it up as a loss before the battle has even begun. This is the main issue I have with the statement "If you are weak to Sableye teams, you deserve to lose to them". Do I really? It doesn't seem right that somebody who is slightly weak to a certain threat, because don't forget that you can't account for everything in ORAS and thus you can't account for all Sableye builds, should just have to flop over and accept their loss vs a Sableye build their team doesn't like. I suppose I can go for the hax, but that is still out of my control, and having to rely on luck to win isn't competitive. Compared to other S ranks, and pokemon which have been S rank in the past, none of them really just ends the game like Sableye does if you aren't totally prepared for them. I've seen smart plays like keeping up pressure with rocks to stop Char X from being very threatening, or forcing a Flare Blitz to make it take a lot of recoil, and thus bring it into the range of some priority move. Clefable can end games quickly if you aren't prepared for it, but at least then it is only one pokemon you need to pressure down than a whole team, and its checks and counters are far, far more numerous than ways of beating a Sableye team are.
Some builds are more matchup based than others, true; defensive builds can't and shouldn't be able to cover all threats, and rain, which is the team style I used to get reqs with, can't do much if the opponent's team has plenty of water resists. However, all team styles shouldn't have to suffer from the same fault. I have enjoyed using rain, but I don't want every team I build to have that issue. Sableye can threaten every build that isn't absurdly dedicated to breaking it seems with a matchup loss, provided that it packs the correct team members, due to how it makes you so reliant on having certain breakers. Granted, Manaphy can threaten certain, specific builds a lot and be difficult to beat, but the number of teams to which Sableye does this is far greater, it has a much more widespread impact on the metagame, and so it's clear that there is a difference between the two.
In conclusion, after playing on the suspect ladder and getting reqs, I think that removing Sableye offers some objective improvements to the metagame:
- It leaves players with a bad matchup more room to outplay this bad matchup.
- It means players with a good matchup generally have to make more effort to turn this good matchup into a win.
- It makes teambuilding noticeably less painful.
The thing that only sweetens the deal for me is that with Sableye gone, certain offence builds become more viable. Despite what some may claim, I can assure you that they require more thought than Mega Sableye builds ever did to play. I will vote to ban Sablenite, and anyone who is interested in reducing the number of matchup based losses which standard teams suffer should do the same.