I hate to nitpick through this, but there are a few problems with this as well. First of all, the point of a spinblocker isn't just to block Rapid Spin, die, and let the next Pokemon trap the spinner. Spinblockers are used for other reasons besides just spinblocking. Jellicent in particular is used for its typing and bulk, so you'd better be sure you're not going to need to check Keldeo, Scizor, etc. before you go around sacking it just to trap spinners. Gengar is less useful defensively, but it can still be used as a check to various Pokemon due to its immunities and it is still a great offensive threat, so there is a cost to just sacking it. And all to trap a spinner?Ah, I had addressed this issue on the previous page, so I glossed over it here for the sake of brevity. Here's the explanation I gave:
I'm not leaving out the facts that don't favor my argument. Yes, ghost-types are vulnerable to trapping as well as spinners. However, jellicent beats ttar and scizor easily 1-on-1, and gengar OHKOs ttar and scizor with the appropriate moves. But even mroe basically than that, who cares?! The point of the spinblocker is to come on in the RS, die or w/e, and then let the spinner get trapped by the next mon. I will gladly sac my spinblocker to kill your spinner--it's done its job! Sure, you can double-switch and try to predict (yay switching--the most essential, strategic part of the game), but you're taking hazards damage on both trapper and spinner, the ghosts can beat many common pursuiters as just mentioned, and it's nowhere near guaranteed--SR is so so easy to set up that I don't even have to bother blocking it the first time, I can just go to something that threatens your starmie out while scouting for a trapper switch. And i can afford to do this strategic switching, because you don't have hazards up! Spikes does not even come near this because so many mons are immune to it, it takes much longer to set up, and its users have so much fewer opportunities to do so because they are in general worse mons, since the distribution is so different! Lastly, I'm not assuming every team runs a trapper or a spinblocker--all I'm saying is that, if I want to keep SR up on your side of the field and you want to keep it off, it is so so much easier for me to guarantee this will happen than for you to.
This argument about spinners and trappers is getting blown way out of proportion. It just seems that every time a solution to something is brought up, you introduce some other factor to the situation, regardless of how common it actually is. Someone mentions Rapid Spin, you mention spinblockers. Someone mentions spinners that can get past spinblockers, now there are trappers! If you're carrying a spinblocker and trapper just to sack the spinblocker and kill the spinner, then it seems to me that you're going a little out of your way just to stop Rapid Spin, so no wonder you think spinning isn't reliable.
On a side note, Jellicent doesn't easily beat Tyranitar like you claim. CB Tyranitar outspeeds and OHKOs common variants with Crunch. SpD Jellicent can be OHKOd by any Tyranitar with maximum offensive investment even without Stealth Rock at least part of the time. Max Atk Tyranitar with Leftovers also beats Def Jellicent 1-on-1 a majority of the time, even if it goes for Will-O-Wisp after the first Crunch. Gengar actually fails to OHKO CB Tyranitar more than half the time without a boosting item, SpD Tyranitar takes Focus Blast decently enought and OHKOs, and Gengar has the same problems with ScarfTar that Starmie does. There's also Chople Berry, which isn't much less common than Choice Scarf on Tyranitar. Gengar also doesn't even 2HKO CB Scizor over half the time with Focus Blast without a boosting item. HP Fire OHKOs, but that's only to be expected seeing as how HP Fire is usually used for the purpose of luring in and killing Scizor (let's just hope Rain isn't up).
So it would appear that both Ghost Pokemon are capable of beating Scizor (although Gengar needs HP Fire to do it), but both also have a lot of trouble with Tyranitar. Just one last nitpick there.
"If" is the key word here. How often does this Ghost + trapper combination occur exactly? We've already deduced that the two most common spin blockers in the tier don't even hit 18% usage put together, so how much less common is this combo you're talking about? Looking at the usage stats, neither of the spinblockers show up on Scizor, Dugtrio, or Tyranitar's list of common teammates. Neither Tyranitar, Scizor, nor Dugtrio show up on Gengar's list, and only Tyranitar shows up on Jellicent's (and even then that's less because of that spinblocker + trapper relationship and more because Jellicent makes a great Rain check for Sand teams).Tl;dr: I'm not claiming every team has a ghost and/or trapper--I'm just saying that, if they choose to do so, getting off a successful RS is very very hard to guarantee because of the following:
Ah, I see what you did there. I said Thunderbolt, not Thunder. Thunder is a lot harder to use since it requires Rain (although it's not untrue that Thunder does let LO Starmie beat even SpD Jellicent). Thunderbolt is more than enough to 2HKO Def Jellicent. In fact, Thunderbolt with Analytic (which is great on the LO set since it works on switch-ins) 2HKOs SpD Jellicent most of the time even with no prior damage if it catches it on the switch, so you technically don't even need Psyshock.Basically everything but LOstarmie with the right one of thunder and psyshock
So yeah, quick nitpick there too.
Three questions here.Because even if you do beat them, you lose your spinner if they have a trapper, meaning you don't get the spin off.
One, how effective are these trappers at killing their targets? CB Scizor and non-Scarf Tyranitar have to take hits from Starmie before they can actually kill it, so you need to make sure they have enough health to actually take a hit. The Life Orb sets are particularly troublesome since both CB Scizor and CB Tyranitar need to be at full health to guarantee survival of Starmie's Hydro Pump after Stealth Rock (and Tyranitar isn't even guaranteed since it OHKOs 6.25% of the time), so you have to be very careful there just to actually beat Starmie. Scarf Tyranitar does just fine, but it's also not the most common variant by a long shot, and let's not forget that Pursuit trapping is dependent upon predicting whether the opponent switches out or not. Focus Sash Dugtrio can't quite hit 75% damage maximum against bulky Tentacruel, and it just does hit 80% against SubToxic variants. Meanwhile, Scald OHKOs in Rain, so that Sash had better be intact and Tentacruel had better be at low enough health. Heck, if it's the bulky variant carrying Protect in Rain, then it actually needs to be at ~50% or less in order to guarantee the OHKO from Sash Dugtrio's Earthquake factoring in Protect spam for Rain Dish + Leftovers recovery.
Two, what if you have the wrong trapper? Dugtrio doesn't do so well against Starmie, and Tyranitar doesn't exactly trap Tentacruel that well, nor does Scizor.
Three, do these trappers actually prevent the Rapid Spin? I believe a huge portion of your argument is begging this very question. Starmie outspeeds all non-Scarfed versions of Tyranitar and Scizor, so even if the Starmie user decides not to try and KO your trapper, they can still get the spin off. In that case, you just sacked your spinblocker for nothing, and all you managed to do was kill a Starmie. As I mentioned earlier, Dugtrio also has problems with a healthy Tentacruel, who can actually take a hit and still spin as well. So even with a trapper, you're not guaranteed to actually stop the Rapid Spin at all.
The point of all this isn't to argue that Stealth Rock is just fine as is. Heck, I really wouldn't mind banning it (I've been feeling very apathetic about this sort of stuff lately). But let's not try to act like spinning is extremely hard. You can't just mindlessly bring in your spinner and get rid of hazards any time you want, sure, but it's not that hard to bring Starmie or something in on a Pokemon that you can beat or force out and attempt a spin. You won't even have to worry about spinblockers the vast majority of the time, and even if your opponent happens to have a spinblocker and the exact trapper that they need to beat your spinner, they're still not guaranteed to stop your Rapid Spin. So overall, Rapid Spin looks pretty good right now.
One thing I do want to see discussed is the possibly detrimental effect that banning Stealth Rock would have, not on Pokemon like Volcarona and Dragonite, but on VoltTurn. I'm sure most players who were around during BW1 remember just how popular (and somewhat annoying) VoltTurn started getting in the last few months of BW1. VoltTurn essentially falls under that category Aldaron mentioned of moves that inhibit the skill involved in switching, in this case by making switching too easy. Since these sorts of teams were based around switching around and maintaining momentum while wearing the opponent down, they often needed a way to keep Stealth Rock off the field so as to switch around more effectively. Is anyone else concerned that banning Stealth Rock would encourage the use of careless switching such as that involved in VoltTurn? That's honestly my biggest concern when it comes to banning Stealth Rock.