pokemonisfun
Banned deucer.
The purpose of this thread is to convince anyone who plays UU to play more stall or prepare for stall because it will get you more wins. The reason this is not posted in the megathread is because this is a bit lengthy (please respond to what you read only) and the rules say I am allowed to make threads on major threats. Stall is the majorest of major, it is threat numero uno so I figure I am allowed to make a thread on it...
Hello I want to inform all of you of a threat it seems not so many of you are preparing for adequately, stall teams. I do not like fancy obscure language, I like to be direct and simple so I will clearly tell you my opinions on stall. Before that I want to make sure we all know what we are talking about; Pokemon is very linear when it comes to team building. You can make either defensive teams on the right or slowly creep to the left making your team more and more offensive until you have something resembling a hyper offensive team. So there are two polar opposites: full stall where you defend and chip away at health and try to set up conditions favorable to you to the point where you can just halt your opponent for the win by endgame, and then hyper offensive where you try to grab momentum and set up immediately to smash your opponent for a quick win. Everything else falls in between, except arguably Baton Pass and hax teams which I will not be referencing to.
First I want to show you a little of the face of stall in UU. Both these Pokemon are all common on stall and contribute to the greater image of stall itself, unlike offensive teams stall will not function properly if a member is wasted. These Pokemon therefore function best on stall teams.
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Why is stall then the best playstyle? Certainly it is an arrogant point to hold, that just one playstyle is the best. But in fact it is also true for because stall inherently has a better match up against most teams except the rare hyper offensive team.
This is for a couple reasons. One is that against a stall team, at least one of your Pokemon are going to be near useless for most if not all of the battle. Consider the scenario if you have a defensive P2 against a stall team. Stall teams will be attacking you indirectly, something your P2 cannot directly wall. Therefore everytime your P2 comes in its going to be set up on/crippled/ignored because it can't do enough damage. Every single one of your passive defensive Pokemon will have a significantly diminished role, perhaps even a negative role because it becomes a free turn for the stall player. This is the biggest advantage a stall user has.
The second advantage is its reliability. Good stall teams prepare for all relevant major threats and they prepare for them well. Its not like an offensive team where you say you have Darmantian covered because you have a Scarfgon (if you're revenging in general you are playing a losing game). It is saying that you have Darmantian covered because you have a Slowbro on your team. A fairly obvious problem comes up then, hax. Hax will affect you more if you use slow paced teams because your opponent gets more hits in, increasing the chance for some game changing move to come in. However in my opinion that is pretty much mitigated if you weigh in the benefits of having a solid counter to the major threats. Another problem arises from this, if you are using a stall team but you meet some random threat like Curse Cradily that 6-0s (not with Sableye though), you essentially have no way to win. This does not matter in the grand scheme of things because they are extremely rare, especially higher on the ladder which your stall team will bring you to.
UU teams at the moment are not strong enough to break through stall teams. Sure everyone has a Choice Bander maybe or a LO Darmantian but until they double up on those threats they aren't able to power through stall reliably. If none of my arguments convinced you, then consider this. There are Pokemon on some teams dedicated just to breaking stall (stall breakers). No other playstyle has become dominant enough to the point where their very use has added an extremely word to our Pokemon dictionaries to try and balance out that style with the very name of that style in it.
Hello I want to inform all of you of a threat it seems not so many of you are preparing for adequately, stall teams. I do not like fancy obscure language, I like to be direct and simple so I will clearly tell you my opinions on stall. Before that I want to make sure we all know what we are talking about; Pokemon is very linear when it comes to team building. You can make either defensive teams on the right or slowly creep to the left making your team more and more offensive until you have something resembling a hyper offensive team. So there are two polar opposites: full stall where you defend and chip away at health and try to set up conditions favorable to you to the point where you can just halt your opponent for the win by endgame, and then hyper offensive where you try to grab momentum and set up immediately to smash your opponent for a quick win. Everything else falls in between, except arguably Baton Pass and hax teams which I will not be referencing to.
First I want to show you a little of the face of stall in UU. Both these Pokemon are all common on stall and contribute to the greater image of stall itself, unlike offensive teams stall will not function properly if a member is wasted. These Pokemon therefore function best on stall teams.
There is no Chansey in UU so you can imagine how that badly affect stall, as well as positively affected Umbreon. Stall teams are strapped for spots. They need more roles than any other teams including but not limited to special walls/tanks, physical walls/tanks, hazard setter (at least SR and Spikes), phazers, clerics (usually), Wish users (usually), Ghost type, and revenge killer (sometimes). The only possible way to fit those roles on a 6 member team is for members to double or triple up on those roles, Umbreon is the best Wish user in UU and the best cleric. It walls special moves that Togekiss cannot because it has no common special weaknesses bar Bug Buzz and Focus Blast. It is the new UU Chansey that happens to beat Mismagius too.
Sableye is clearly not useful only on stall teams, but it is by far the best Ghost for a typical stall team to use. Since full stall always abuses hazards, it makes sense it always needs a Ghost to keep those hazards up. Sableye doubles up as a stall saver, common strategies people use to break stall like Taunt+set up no longer effectively breaks up stall with Sableye's priority burn and Taunt. Other spin blockers are usually too frail or are bypassed too easily with Foresight.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why is stall then the best playstyle? Certainly it is an arrogant point to hold, that just one playstyle is the best. But in fact it is also true for because stall inherently has a better match up against most teams except the rare hyper offensive team.
This is for a couple reasons. One is that against a stall team, at least one of your Pokemon are going to be near useless for most if not all of the battle. Consider the scenario if you have a defensive P2 against a stall team. Stall teams will be attacking you indirectly, something your P2 cannot directly wall. Therefore everytime your P2 comes in its going to be set up on/crippled/ignored because it can't do enough damage. Every single one of your passive defensive Pokemon will have a significantly diminished role, perhaps even a negative role because it becomes a free turn for the stall player. This is the biggest advantage a stall user has.
The second advantage is its reliability. Good stall teams prepare for all relevant major threats and they prepare for them well. Its not like an offensive team where you say you have Darmantian covered because you have a Scarfgon (if you're revenging in general you are playing a losing game). It is saying that you have Darmantian covered because you have a Slowbro on your team. A fairly obvious problem comes up then, hax. Hax will affect you more if you use slow paced teams because your opponent gets more hits in, increasing the chance for some game changing move to come in. However in my opinion that is pretty much mitigated if you weigh in the benefits of having a solid counter to the major threats. Another problem arises from this, if you are using a stall team but you meet some random threat like Curse Cradily that 6-0s (not with Sableye though), you essentially have no way to win. This does not matter in the grand scheme of things because they are extremely rare, especially higher on the ladder which your stall team will bring you to.
UU teams at the moment are not strong enough to break through stall teams. Sure everyone has a Choice Bander maybe or a LO Darmantian but until they double up on those threats they aren't able to power through stall reliably. If none of my arguments convinced you, then consider this. There are Pokemon on some teams dedicated just to breaking stall (stall breakers). No other playstyle has become dominant enough to the point where their very use has added an extremely word to our Pokemon dictionaries to try and balance out that style with the very name of that style in it.