Shadow Tag: Do Not Ban
I will be arguing in favor of keeping shadow tag in ubers because it is COMPETITIVE (yes, you read that right). It is competitive for 2 reasons: it brings balance to the metagame between HO and full stall teams, and because it can be PREPARED for when teambuilding.
It brings balance to hyper offensive teams, which have taken a large hit this generation due to full stall teams that have been built, and support arceus forms. Full stall teams such as the one used by Quantum Camel with spiritomb, chansey, rhyperior, ho oh, gastrodon/tentacruel, etc. are very tough to beat, even in high ladder and by very skilled opposing players. Shadow tag can bring some balance back to the large advantage that stall has in the situation of HO vs. stall by removing one large check in the Stall team. Whether it be gothitelle, Gengarite, or wobbuffet doing the shadow tagging, all can open up a hole and make the game a bit more fair. HO teams often need a wallbreaker, or a stallbreaker, and shadow tag helps accomplish this. To make an analogy, drag mag teams use magnezone with magnet pull to break the opponents steel pokemon down, so that the rest of the HO dragon team can sweep (back in gen 4 and gen 5). The same is true for shadow tag and HO teams today in Ubers. If you want to ban stag, you might as well ban magnet pull as well because they effectively do the same thing. Now you notice that magnet pull is not under consideration: this is because there is merely not enough use of magnet pull to break defensive teams down because defensive teams have PREPARED for this, and often do not run ferrothorn as one of their main walls. And if they do run ferro, then they must be prepared for a magnet pull user. The only reason that stag is under consideration is because it used more. However, defensive and stall players could just as easily prepare for stag by using ghost pokemon (bulky ghostceus, giratina, giratina-o) as their walls, and they quite often do. It is completely fair to use these pokemon as walls, and offensive teams will have to find another way around them. All stag does is provide the user a way to clear the opponent's stalling pokemon or arceus support form. This is extremely competitive, because the opponent can prepare for it in their team building process by using darkceus for gothitelle and gengarite, and other ways as well. If you want to ban stag, you need to be able to argue that it is uncompetitive. Everyone who seems to be pro ban says something along the lines of "It is unfair to have to prepare a pokemon to be able to deal with just stag by wasting a move slot, or running a different item (shed shell blissey)". However, I believe that it is completely fair to have to prepare for this. Teams that are running blissey or chansey need to do so at some opportunity cost. By having stag around, the opportunity cost of these pokemon is increased to a point where there is MORE of a balance between full stall and HO teams. Even balance teams need to be prepared for stag, as it can break one of their walls or heal bell or arceus form pokemon down. Without stag, there will be a large shift towards stall teams, and the average turns per game will go way up. Well you might be saying, this isn't a bad thing. But not everyone wants to be playing 200-300 or longer turn games, and hence the reason HO and offensive team builds exist. It is completely unfair to nerf HO and offensive teams by banning stag. Now if we look back to the previous suspect test, it was only for gengarite. Gengarite was ultimately not banned because it was clear that Gengarite is clearly competitive. MMY and even fast mewtwo sets with pystrike can completely destroy Gengarite, and prevent it from mega evolving, and Mewtwo is used very often, so teams dont even have to make much of a switch to combat Gengarite. Now the suspect test is for stag as a whole, but the focus seems to be predominantly upon Gothitelle. The only other stag abuser worth mentioning is wobbuffet, and he is very rarely ran on teams, and definitely does not merit a ban himself because at best he can only attempt to predict the opponent's move, or encore them. Clearly, Gothitelle is now the pokemon under main question. Gothitelle, like Gengarite, brings balance to offensive teams by letting offensive teams take out the opponent's bulky support arceus form, an otherwise very difficult task. Bulky arceus forms are often A rank ubers tier pokemon, and need very little support and have extremely low opportunity costs to use. By having stag around, their opportunity cost is increased, and balance is leveled in the metagame between offensive and defensive team styles. As user blackeus showed during the suspect test by using darkceus support, he was able to ladder very high because his arceus form was able to deal with gothitelle, mewtwo forms, and gengarite effictively and easily. blackeus illustrated an important point: stag CAN BE PREPARED FOR! For these reasons, I argue that stag is completely competitive and does not warrant a ban.
Please let me know if my vote counts. I see no reason as to why it would not count. I have kept up with the current metagame discussion, I have illustrated my OPINION clearly on the topic, and have definitely written a lengthy enough paragraph.