>>30692327Because gamefreak is still too hesitant about straight up deleting moves entirely, instead either giving things stealth nerfs (sucker punch) or just taking an axe to it (dark void).
GF is very aware of how stupid Stealth Rock is. Notice how in Gen 5 that only like two or three new Pokemon could learn it, and in Gen 6 they made Defog not useless anymore and had it remove hazards. They know how annoying it is, which is why they have that trainer on Route 3 with the Red Card strategy and lol Kukui.
However, since they don't want to nerf it (for whatever reason), their solution is to promote Battle Spot Singles (which is 3v3, making setting up hazards riskier) and VGC Doubles (which moves way too fast to even think about laying hazards down).
Full on 6v6 is an unbalanced mess at higher levels of play. Smogon has tried to make a metagame that is fun and enjoyable at the same time out of this, but right now it's hijacked by people who don't know that they even want.
Brief history: Senior staff had actually been seriously debating testing Stealth Rock in DP, because it fucked the meta so much that it had become practically unrecognizable. Unfortunately, they were already mired in the disastrous Garchomp suspect test, which took well over a year to actually complete. By the time it was done, enough division had grown between the staff over both issues that testing Stealth Rock was off the table entirely.
Unfortunately, it was at that point that none of the staff would even entertain the thought of looking at SR more closely. Any attempts to bring it up were brushed off as sour grapes or the classic "well your ladder rank isn't even that high" ad hominem. Further discussion would just have the staff make strawmen and delegitimize the poster's opinions. Posts were deleted and all discussions on it were silenced.
Gen 5 was so retarded that the staff acquiesced for a moment and created a ladder without SR, with the caveat that no suspect testing would happen.
