What does "unhealthy" mean in competitive battling?

Question

As I write this question, people who know more than I do about Pokemon battling are suspecting Sablenite in OU. This is probably the first suspect test in my competitive battling career that affects me personally, as Sableye is on my OU team. Because of that, I've been reading more carefully about suspect testing. People were saying things like, "I'm not saying that mega Sableye is uncounterable, just that it's unhealthy for the metagame." From what I could understand, "unhealthy" means something like people having to put moves on their Pokemon just to counter mega Sableye or battles being decided before they start because one team has mega Sableye and the other team can't counter it. How close to the truth am I?

Comments

I'm not competitive battler by any means, but I think "unhealthy" means that the metagame revolves too much around one Pokémon, or a Pokémon is so dangerous/unpredictable it requires multiple counters. This limits the metagame and prevents it from evolving, so "unhealthy" Pokémon are removed via ban.

My two cents.

Answer 1

From what I could understand, "unhealthy" means something like people having to put moves on their Pokemon just to counter mega Sableye or battles being decided before they start because one team has mega Sableye and the other team can't counter it. How close to the truth am I?

That's the gist of it. Due to its relative strength, the mere existence of a thing requires you to take steps to counter it before you even know if you're going to face it, because it is so powerful that not having an answer to it before hand is basically suicide. This then begins to become a problem with strategic diversity, because having "mandatory" options narrows the field of possibility. You have to give up or reassign, in this case, moves in some Pokemon's movesets, and potentially even entire Pokemon on your team, in order to have a counter available to deal with Mega Sableye.

This can, depending on the meta as a whole, become a feedback loop. Because you have fewer "free" slots, you now have to alter the makeup of your team in order to deal with this other threat that was manageable before, but is now a balancing act due to your reduced options. Which limits your flexibility for this third threat, and so on. If not dealt with, it can lead to your entire team being dictated based on a handful of individual things that are so powerful the meta as a whole revolves around their existence, and the methods of dealing with them.

Comments

The main problem with suspect voting is that 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' don't have singular definitions, at least not in this context. Some argued that MSalb for example was unhealthy because it made stall predictable and forced certain mons to be unviable - but MSalb also generally made stall more viable as a whole. What makes it unhealthy?

Good answer though!

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Caveat:  I don't keep up with Smogon tiers, or participate in competitive battling.

>What makes it unhealthy?

It would depend on how exactly you are able to counter Mega Sableye.  Just by looking at him, his typing is very problematic for a hardcore defensive stall Pokemon, because his only weakness is Fairy, the newest type that has a really narrow movepool.  Sun/Moon seems to be changing this, as there is evidence that Fairy will be gaining Super Effective against Ghost, making Mega/Sableye to take 4x from Fairy, but that is a small favor without a pretty substantial expansion of its move list, as well as species that can access that move list.

The other issue is that, for a stalling Pokemon, Mega Sableye has quite usable Attack and Special Attack.  85 isn't spectacular by any measure, but it's decidedly not bad either.  Its quite usable.  This is a bit of an oversight for a Pokemon intended to be defensive in nature.  Not to say that he should have something silly like 20 or something.  But I'd think somewhere in the 55 to 65 range would have been smarter.

You are right, it does depend on how you look at it.  But it also depends on the meta as a whole.  We can already surmise that Alola will shake up the meta as it is.  Alolan Ninetails in particular may well solve the MSableye problem (Ice/Fairy instead of mono Fire), and we don't have stats for any of the new Pokemon.  I can only hope that Smogon will hold off on making any Tier changes until after Sun/Moon comes out and has a little time to settle.