how viable is stall as a playstyle?

[Bad Ass]

hello all, i've come to discuss an interesting playstyle that seems to have been thrown by the wayside come generation 5 -- that being, stall. full stall teams are seen fairly commonly in generations 2, 3, and 4, but in black and white they seemed to fall out of favor for a variety of different teams. hyper offense teams dominated with new huge base power moves and huge base stat pokemon. often, they utilized weather as an end to their means. balanced and weatherless teams lacked the ability to push back vs strong offense and also took a decline. recently, however, with the nerf of rain and the banning of genesect a new type of balance team has taken over bw.

these teams mostly consist of a few water resists (spdef celebi is very common along with rotom-w), a strong special attacker (landorus, latias, keldeo), and then various defensive pivots (landorus-t, aforementioned rotom and latias, garchomp). they are very common in their archetype and show a new leaning towards defense over the previous strategy of spam strong attackers until someone folds. but even with these new metagame changes, is it enough for full stall to be viable?

full stall teams, if you aren't aware, usually use 6 fully defensive pokemon. a scarfer can be added to check various threats -- scarf rotom was extremely useful in dp -- but usually is forgone and the last pokemon used to patch up any leftover holes. then, hazards go up and the staller tries to drain the opponent's HP before they can ram through his defenses and sweep. rain stall can accomplish this by using tentacruel to keep hazards off the field, having an extra fire resistance, and unlocking new abilities like 100% thunder, rain dish, and high-power scalds. sand stall has extra passive damage, access to stoutland, and can still use fire moves on their own team. there are a ton of ways to make a stall team, but are any of them viable?

here are my two cents: i don't think that stall can be performed effectively in bw2. there are too many random threats that you have to cover, too many combinations of high powered attackers to be completely safe against. this is the first problem. garchomp and terrakion alone are huge nuisances for stall since the main way to deal with them is by phazing, and they can always come in and perform another setup (that won't be stopped, this time). heck, as we saw in the smogon tournament finals, dunk had a huge problem stopping gr8astard's feraligatr, because that's just something that is not prepared for, but it works extremely well against stall! it's impossible to be prepared against the myriad of new threats, new moves, and new tactics while still being shored up against the old. you will always have to compromise your defenses, will always have to be weak to something. it's simply not possible to build something that has multiple outs vs every viable pokemon in ou.

the second issue is the lack of quality spinblockers. the list goes like this, from least bulky to most: gengar, sableye, cofagrigus, jellicent. gengar is completely unviable as a spin blocker due to every spinner being able to bypass it very easily. cofagrigus is barely viable in ou, and only with a nasty plot set at that, really. sableye has to rely on his speed to be able to burn opponents before they hit his paper-thin defenses with actual attacks, and is nearly useless vs tentacruel and starmie (aka the two most common spinners). jellicent is the most viable on a stall team with enough speed to stallbreak with taunt+will o wisp, access to recover and scald, and a secondary water typing, but even it has its flaws. it is susceptible to toxic spikes, life orb starmie can get through it with a little prediction, and forretress volt switch --> choice band tyranitar (or anything really, it takes 15 from volt switch + 12 from SR, which adds up, especially with multiple layers) completely bones it. tentacruel is nearly impossible to kill and starmie is too fast to prevent from spinning at least once. forretress can always volt switch out and pursue and/or otherwise antagonize your spinblocker, and even donphan can 2hko most of these guys with earthquake. rotom-a wasn't the greatest blocker; it had to use restalk for reliable recovery, it was weak as hell to tyranitar, and it has a very low HP, but during DP it could run a myriad of sets effectively and it showed in the metagame. spikes were neither dominant nor total trash. there was a good balance (perhaps in the favor of the spinner due to the ease of nailing it with a pursuit, but i digress).

so: is stall viable in bw? have you created a highly successful stall team? is the concept of "full stall" a relic that should stick in the early generations, and if so what does stall need to do to succeed going forward into consistently more offensive metagames?

 

[kd24]

Some people know I had quit Pokemon many months ago and my first team back was this:

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3475761

I was actually really happy with the results and found the biggest threat at the time to be what ToF noted, a well played Starmie. (This team also features a Pokemon that I noted in the Landorus-I thread, Rest Stalk Gyarados, and I'll explain what happened with my thoughts about him).

Fast forward months later and I ask in #Pokemon, "Why am I not seeing stall teams in Gen 5?" and I was bombarded with "Because Stall is completely unviable". WOW, didn't expect that. I argued for a bit and now as time has gone on, I kind of understand more and more the feeling that they were conveying. It's not that stall is completely unviable, it's that the offensive presence of metagame trends keeps increasing and increasing to the point that I struggle to stay alive. I agree 100% about the lack of spin blockers outside of Jellicent and the random threats to cover. BKC's stall team is really the only one I particularly like and even that can be faltered by the fast tempo of threats now, some which I would go as far to say are unfair. Is full stall dead? No, I don't think so and good stall teams are being made still, particularly with Stoutland as you mentioned. But plugging up holes effectively is sometimes an impossible task in some cases just because of what the threats are.

With the Rest Stalk Gyarados, it is the constant bombardment of the ever growing offensive trends that turned me off to him. I just don't ever feel like I have time to begin Resting and counter what I need to. And because of that, even more threats are discovered.

This is an important discussion because there are some really successful full stall players still out there and I'd love to hear from them on the matter, especially if BKC could give a metagame analysis of how his team has performed throughout BW2. Is stall dead? I certainly hope not. If you guys have ways to improve stall or give insight on how you play, please post it because it's something I just haven't been able to do now with how offensive consistently grows alongside the threats you now have to contend with (unchecked spinning, weather, etc.)

Good thread badass

 

[GatoDelFuego]

I believe stall to be fully viable; it may not be on the exact same level and it is certainly not as easy to use properly, but it is viable.

The defense of the titans project really showed that stall is possible if you try and work for it. Stall isn't mostly about checking individual pokemon, but about broad categories of attackers. Having something to set up hazards/spinblock/general utility in 1-2 pokes lets you come up with a solid defensive core right off the bat and then have something left over to patch up any weaknesses your team may have. The most important part of a stall team must be the core; having a core that can be broken only by 100% correct predictions by the opponent is the key to a successful stall team, as you can predict just as much to give yourself a "winning" position. Always being a defensive leg up over the opponent forces them to always make the right plays or they'll just straight up lose. Getting yourself into a "lose" situation against a stall team takes much longer, but it is often just as clear as in an offensive match.

Now the problem with stall is that there are certain pokes that you just have to counter on their own and with dedicated slots. Things like Dragonite, Landorus, Volcarona, Reuniclus, Kyurem-B, or NP Thunurus-T are opponents you can't just say, oh, it's Landorus, I'll just go into my special wall and go from there. These pokemon are excellent at breaking stall and there are too many of them to beat all at once, but this was always evident in every gen, even with Gen 5 offense. There will always be things a team can't beat, and with stall these things are just magnified. Running these dedicated counter pokes when your opponent has one of these dangerous pokes really removes it from the match, as usually you'll need it at high percentages to win while your opponent may just need theirs in a last pokemon scenario. This makes stall very difficult to play because sometimes you have to do it with 4-5 pokemon to have a chance at keeping games going.

However, the "stallbreakers" of gen 5 are often overrated. Terrakion, Scizor, Latios, Alakazam...they generally aren't problems because they can be taken care of by "blanket physical walls" or "blanket special walls"; if you have something to sponge these hits in general then you'll have no problem with these things. It doesn't make the stallbreakers any less horrible to face, though.

My favorite style of stall, as past visitors of the DoT thread will know, is AmoongBro Regenerator stall. It offers a quickstall approach to full stall, where you focus on getting hazards down and use regenerator and switching to restore any damage you're taking while forcing the opponent to take more than you. It's also imo less vulnerable to critical hits and other hax, as you're trying to keep everything with as much HP as possible and if things go down you have backup plans to get your HP back up. The only problem is that Amoonguss and Slowbro really aren't the best walls in the game, but I still love the style nonetheless.

Stall isn't easy; but anybody saying that it's totally unviable just isn't thinking right.


Also if you're using jellicent to spinblock you're doing it wrong, stall doesn't have a place for spinblockers anymore because nobody uses rapid spin to alleviate "stall's" hazard pressure; rapid spin is 95% of the time used with volcarona or kyurem or dragonite just to remove Stealth Rock for that one turn. Jellicent is great but its walling capabilities should be considered first before you're looking to spinblock. That's just a bonus.

 

[ginganinja]

O.k to begin with, im going to admit that I am 100% biased in that I utterly hate stall. I prefer battles to be over and done with quickly so I can move onto the next one. I also seem to have terrible luck so whenever I do try and use a stall team I just get haxed so this heavily affects my position.

Anyway, I agree with Badass in that currently, stall cannot perform consistently in BW2. Against the so many aggressive threats, its near impossible for stall to handle everything, and even if it can, it is heavily vulnerable to overloading which many teams are starting to do. Overloading is basically something certain offensive teams attempt to achieve, which involves hurling an aggressive pokemon at a core, designed to heavily damage it enough for a 2nd mon (which shares a similar counter) to push past it. Its something HO teams often try to achieve, and its especially relevant now with Keldeo + Tar + Landorus teams that seek to overload Celebi / Latias to gain a sweep.

In addition to this, stall has to go head to head with one of the most dangerous things in the game: weather. To do this, it often has to choose a teamslot of its own to enforce a favourable matchup (for instance rain threats becomes easier if you can keep sand up) which further puts a strain on the already limited number of teamslots that stall teams have.

Basically, I don't think stall is "dead" as I have seen successful sand stall, rain stall, and even sun stall teams in this metagame. However, I do think that many of these teams struggling with the pace of the current metagame, as well as handling all the threats to stall teams. I have seen stall teams use more "aggressive" pokemon to counter this rise, such as Stoutland, Dragonite and Latias to go toe to toe with some of these threats but I think that gradually, stall is losing its grip as the metagame speeds on without it.

 

[GatoDelFuego]

O.k to begin with, im going to admit that I am 100% biased in that I utterly hate stall. I prefer battles to be over and done with quickly so I can move onto the next one. I also seem to have terrible luck so whenever I do try and use a stall team I just get haxed so this heavily affects my position.

This is really common among people. The only thing I can say about stall is that it really takes a lot more effort to make something work. An average HO team can just smack 5 sweepers and Crustle together and it would do ok, it wouldn't be good but it could manage. Unless a stall team is build extremely well, it won't even have too much of a chance with some random nub offensive team. Losing to hax on an offensive team is easy when you can just get on to the next match and wipe the floor with somebody, but on stall I like that you get to see every match play out in its entirety. It's horrible for facing on the ladder because you have to deal with common offensive garbage constantly rushing you AND NU stallbreakers that you weren't prepared for in the first place, like Rest Suction Cups Cradily or something like that (idk if this is even a thing I just made it up). However, the feeling of beating somebody truly 100% with a stall team is the best feeling in the world. It makes every team and game a lot more personal imo. There's nothing wrong with not liking this at all, it's just different for everybody. Since I suck in general with offense anyway I'd rather lose the same amount on average with stall and feel better about my wins.

 

[Kidogo]

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the metagame is certainly not friendly towards stall. But In my experience, stall can still be an incredibly effective playstyle. Time and time again I have returned from various offensive teams to a more defensive build, and (being primarily a rain player) my most consistent teams by far have been rain stall. Atm my primary laddering/tournament team is a rain stall team, and it's served me extremely well (won 2/2 SPL matches I used it in, for example--both by miles as well). I've consistently laddered high with it, putting accounts into the 1900s and 2000s without too much challenge. it does have some weaknesses (MAGNEZONE), but it's proven pretty consistent for me (I can give a pb if anyone wants).

However, I do think that what bad ass noted about a scarfer is something I've really really resonated with. Simply put, it is impossible for a stall team to not leave dead space at time, especially given how pressed for moveslots each mon is (all need to have recovery, some form of attacking, you need hazards, utility--RS, psong, heal bell, etc.--, and maybe even a win condition). IMO, a scarfer (or maybe even two) is close to necessary for a team's success, to allow you to give that dnite a free turn in exchange for getting rocks up, before you make a slow volt switch to your scarfer to revenge. One of my favorite stall scarfers is latios, since with base 110 speed it literally outspeeds everything at +1, and a lot of stuff at +2 as well (read: +2 adamant dnite). Trick is also a super useful tool for stall vs. stall battles.

I also wanted to answer bad ass's point about the lack of quality spinblockers (jelli aside, but it has bad synergy with rain and...ttar...). I agree with basically all that you said, and imo, pursuit is really the nail in the coffin for spinblockers. If only GF hadnt designed the game so that the only type able to block RS was also weak to the ONLY trapping move in the game... However, what i really want to mention is that a spinblocker isn't actually strictly necessary imo. Think about the popular spinners: smth like starmie, tenta, forry, phan (don't think im missing any major ones?). None of these have a recovery move outside of starmie, so they are by definition able to be worn down (since they're the ones coming in on the hazards). With the exception of forry, they all have poor matchups vs ferro, the premier hazard setter for rain stall. Meanwhile, Starmie is pursuit trappable, so having something like scarf/bandtar on your sand stall means you dont have to bother with a spinblocker for mie. tenta is sooo easily worn down outside of rain (in the rain, it's a monster, don't get me wrong), forry literally has no recovery other than lefties--helps that ferro is slower than it, so leech it on the switchin to rocks--it's down to 82%. It spins, gets rid of rocks and seed--iron thorns, down to 69--you seed, it's down to ~63%. Rinse and repeat. Same with don, except that any special attack will also do around 400%, and it's weak to pwhip so it can't spin safely on ferro either. Basically, all im arguing is that spinners are easily worn down and that any good stall team should easily be able to outlast the opponent's spinner without the help of a spinblocker.

So overall, I actually a optimistic about stall. Even though offense is very powerful, stall teams have been some of the most consistently effective ones I've seen, and while I doubt stall will ever be a dominant playstyle (gato's point about it being harder to build being pertinent here), I think it definitely still has a promising future.

 

[PK Gaming]

Playing to "not lose" is a lot harder in BW than it was in the previous gens. There's always something that'll break through your defensive core, like a well timed Terrakion or Landorus gambit, or something silly like Nasty Plot Lum Berry Thundurus. Even if they play at their absolute best, stall players just aren't given enough tools to consistently win in BW OU.

That's probably why you don't see it as much, since the most important aspect about stall imo is its consistency, and if its just frustrating to see it not work 100% of the time. It's still a good strategy to use in tournaments or ladder (its nowhere near unviable) since a ton of players have trouble breaking through stall and it destroys common team archetypes.

 

[Nubagator]

I really feel stall is less viable than many other common playstyles, It's not nearly as bad as when Deo-D lead HO teams were running rampant, but all the same it's success relative to previous generations (BW1 included) has dramatically declined. I attribute this to the need to fit in too much, with too little. BW2 simply has too many threats to cover well, while retaining spikes, a spinner, and spin blocker.

Full on defensive teams are much harder to come by, and in my opinion much less effective in general. A good example of a successful stall team is Aromaticity, but while many holes are patched with a more offensive combo of Latias and Stout, the team doesn't find room for a spinner. That in itself should say something, a very successful stall team without a spinner? That's hard as hell to play, but Meru knew he couldn't have everything and opted for a team that would be optimized despite lack of hazard clearing.
Full Stall is really hard to build.

Jellicent is pretty much necessary, as are spikes. This means that any given stall team will almost certainly have: Jelli & Forre/Skarm/Rose/Ferro. Cool so you've already got 2 members, so you have 4 mons left to cover every threat you haven't got with those. Specialized threats like Reuniclus and the ridiculous Land-I require specific counters by themselves, and often something that can cover these threats has poor synergy, or provides set up for tons of mons. Celebi for example can cover Keldeo/Land(kind of)/Reun with a Spdef set packing Psong, cele shares a fire weakness with all of the aformentioned spikers, and in addition to that is set up on by tons of mons. Packing Cele as your premier specially defensive mon opens you up to Volc, Venusaur, Hydra, Latias/os, and so on. Essentially what I'm trying to get across is that team building is so ludicrously difficult that you are immensely hard pressed to build something fun, new, and effective, while still having a viable team.

Stall in general is not dead. That said Stall in BW2 really struggles to triumph, and the offensive meta game is very limiting on teams. Land-I especially complicates the problem by being stoppable with a mere 3 to 4 OU viable mons. Cele sucks, Gyara is near impossible to fit well on a team as it covers everything Jelli covers and is weak to rocks/volturn, Latias is alright but along with celebi struggles against pursuit.
I quit playing a year and a half ago and came back a few weeks ago, so forgive me if something I said seems really off. I pretty much only enjoy playing stall as team matchup is huge in BW2 and building defensive teams is really what I enjoy doing in Pokes these days.

 

[Zephir]

Stall is viable, and the ban of DeoD only helped it. It is less solid than in 4g, you won't cover everything but you can cover a large amount of common threats and that doesn't mean you'll be more consistent with another playstyle. If anything there has been a lot of stallish team in SPL for example.
The face of stall has obviously changed though, don't hope to hardcounter all the opposing team and p-haze for the victory. You'll have far less security and it's more a matter of killing actively the opposing pokemon than before ; classic walls that lack offensive response like Blissey and Skarmory are definitely less viable*. Toxic spikes are also less viable so that doesn't help. You'll find more scarf (/stoutland), and more offensive win conditions like CM Latias. Plus you can't really wall things like Latios, Thundurus T, SD Terrakion and just force them out - you have to kill them.

"Stall is viable" may be an overstatement. I don't think (almost everyone*) weatherless stall is viable. Sunstall is also hardly viable, because well, Ninetales take a slot lol + things like Heatran, Volcarona and Darmanitan are a pain in the ass. Cresselia is rather anti meta though, so you can try something with Forre (2 roles in 1) + Jelli/Sableye + Terrakion check + special wall but you'd better use dugtrio since it makes matchup against Tyranitar/Terrakion 10*easier but Hippo is still anoying and you will hardly cover all the threats. Rain Stall has Ferro + Tenta so it's not a bad start but then there is the spinblocker and Jellicent says fuck you to your balance so more often than not you don't run spinblocker. You also want to run 5 moves per pokemon and you will likely come with a build with non negligeable weaknesses ("rain threats" like Toxicroak, SubCm Jira etc or last pokemons) and/or a general lack of win conditions (ah, the good scald burn era in BW1, i wasnt playing but i don't miss it). So yeah, we're left with sand stall or sand balance (main difference being the weather inducer chosen, you're still stalling in most case).

Some poster above wrote it's hard to build : it really depends of the outlook. If you plan to cover everything yes you will discover that weakness (SubKyurem B ? Mamoswine + Magnezone ?!) and feel depressed. Otherwise, the metagame is so directive that you should come up with a solid build, not original but solid (example : Thund T murders everything slower [no, you don't have room for gastrodon] so you better use Latias or ScarfTar). Anyway it's no big deal, most of your serious opponent will play usual threats, something to overwhelm Latias/Celebi, or sandstall...

*they're also less solid as walls ofc

edit : yeah Lando-I@Uturn is now common so the answer may be no

 

[Honus]

Really nice thread, going to post even though I don't go near this forum


I think stall is 'passable' in BW2, but certainly not viable like it was in BW1 and past gens. Stall was actually looking really good in BW1, there were really well built stall builds like IR and the Schwein that could consistently take on the majority of the metagame and really had few holes, there were a lot of nice stall teams built during the era but those 2 had always stood out to me as being models. Interestingly enough both have a Blissey/Chansey on the team.

Anyways BW2 really nuked stall in my opinion, I'd rather have something as ridiculous as Thundurus-T around then any of Keldeo, Breloom, Kyurem-B or Landorus since at least it's taken out pretty easily with ScarfTar and has a pretty nice counter in Gastrodon who CB Tar can't take out immediately [probably need some spikes and containing to get it to the point where pursuit/crunch threaten].

Anyways I'll get on to Breloom, it definitely doesn't destroy stall on its own but for one thing it immediately makes the game 5-6 unless you lead with something that can outspeed and OHKO like a Latias/Starmie/ but a lot run sash so there's another mindgame 2 seconds into the match. Fighting Gem +2 Mach Punch really hits Skarm hard and forces it to either Brave Bird and kill Breloom, often leaving it at critical health where most dragons can come pick it off, Roost [probably the best choice but Mach Punch still threatens with 40% a pop and you still have to get rid of Breloom somehow] or Whirlwind and hope it gets something that it can recover on. I guess there's the whole fighting gem vs sash debate but the prospect of it even running sash is enough to defer me from attacking turn 1. Keldeo's cool to have in the meta, but there's no doubt it can pose a threat to stall because of the fact that nearly all its counters are ruined badly by CB Tar, a quality it shares with Landorus, a fair few Breloom checks are pursuit weak as well. Overall this mon is just easy to pair with the other big threats and help out with the major assault on stall. Landorus is probably the biggest threat to stall atm, given that it 2hkos literally everything. Their are obviously some 'counters' but as everyone knows their eroded upon by U-Turn and CB Tyranitar.

This post sort of outlines the whole paradox for a stall player against the CB Tar/Keld/Landorus core, the player either stays in vs Keldeo and attacks risking TTar coming in and taking out his main counter to Landorus or switching out, expecting the TTar, there's literally a high risk in every possible move he could make in the situation, losing a 50/50% could potentially cost him the game, and this is at turn 2. No one can predict well enough to avoid that for an entire game. And unlike Keldeo, the Landorus player just has to click a button if Latias/Celebi/Blissey come in and TTar is already there, prepared to trap and KO. Stall's really got the deck stacked against them when it comes to Landorus/CB Tar/Keldeo cores.

Probably the most effective stall build I've seen for BW2 is SpD Hippowdon/SpD Heatran/Skarmory/SpD Celebi/Starmie/Jellicent, I'm not sure who actually created it but apparently a fair few players at the top of the ladder have used it. It's got the same dilemma as the others when it comes to Landorus, but it's still pretty effective and can even play around stuff like Tornadus-T which is legal at beta. Despite this, Sub Kyurem-B also absolutely wrecks this stall, given that Fusion Bolt does a ton to Heatran and Skarmory and the Hippowdon/Celebi can't take its Ice or Even its dragon attacks, it's almost a necessity to get up SR/hazards fast and make some risky predictions to keep this thing from coming in and setting up its sub. I voted ban in the Kyurem-B test for this very reason, I knew it had the potential to ruin stall as the metagame slowed down and more stall teams started to appear, and that's pretty much what it's doing right now. Also it's pretty interresting Kidogo used Latios on his rain stall for Defense of Titans project; I actually used Latios on a stall team of mine in the last test just for the sake of checking Breloom and Keldeo and it worked pretty well for the most part. Team was really weak to Skarm though.


EDIT: Spaniard has a really nice post, the part about not playing it right, Meru was able to get #1 on OU [non suspect] ladder using his stall team which is definitely threatened by the big trio of Keld/Land/CB Tar but he's a good enough player to play around those threats and make them less daunting through prediction and creating a nice endgame. Still stall definitely isn't as fluid as it was in BW2 and a player of equal or slightly lower skill playing a proficient stall player could definitely give them some trouble if they knew what they wanted to do and what their opp wanted to do.

 

[Kidogo]

One thing I forgot to mention that is p huge imo is defensive BP celebi. It invalidates breloom as a problem, checks landy-i perfectly with the exception of u-turn (but it can be EVed to live EP + uturn easily, and possibly HP ice + uturn as well), which is solved by simply switching the first time you come in to test if it has it. Meanwhile, it outspeeds bandtar and can BP away from pursuit, while scarftar manages barely 50% with crunch (meaning you can afford to recover once, and if it used crunch, you can simply switch while you can take a pursuit easily). It also checks non hp-bug keldeo.

I personally don't find kyub all that bad, mostly because it basically gets two switch-ins with hazards up, and it does have hard counters (for physical sets, ferro, for special/special-inclined mixed, chansey). Man, if this thing got SD though...yeah, I dont see any way to stop that. Oh well, power creep...

 

[Spaniard]

This post is not meant to explain why stall is viable but rather give ladder evidence that it works.

For the last 4 months i've been permanently on top 10 of PS ladder playing solely stall under many alts.

As of now I've got two accounts on top 10 (2000+ elo) by abusing stall. Sure it's not the only way but it's pretty effective if you can play smart.

The problem is that most people that try to play stall build wrong cores and don't make optimal moves.

Stall doesn't work nearly as well in lower elo brackets because you see a lot of awful, non-standard, teams (some unconventional teams can work though). Let me explain: past 1850 people play a very centralised metagame and stall is based on countering it. Stall can be ripped apart with nooby gimmick sets that won't make it high in the ladder.

To sum it up. Most people think stall doesn't work because

a) They do it wrong.
b) They are not high enough in the ladder.

On a side note, celebi doesn't counter LO special landorus. That f*cker is so broken that has no counters (only can be outspeed or walled by a few non optimal pokes). When you send in a check, it'll switch out and will come back for more imbalanced mind games later on.

 

[Boondocker]

Stall's only value as a play style is that teams often under prepare for it (because who uses stall?), so you may be able to pull off a few wins with it. It's really a shame too, since alot of the fun in teambuilding comes from the whole offense vs stall thing. I have attempted to create a few stall teams in BW2, but i can never bring myself to ladder with such teams, due to the fear of stupid shit like Gothetelle and Wobbufett (i know they are uncommon...but still terrifying). Not to mention Breloom, Tyranitar, Keledo, Garchomp, Tentacruel, Venusaur....yeah full stall is completely unviable.

However, certian classic stall mons have nitches still, so all is not lost. Fortress and Skarmory have found new leases on life in the lead position with the release of Custap Berry, while Amoongus and Ferrothorn are still nice to have around. I wouldn't use more then 1 or 2 of those guys on a team though. 6 defensive mons is an obvious no-no, unless you are playing a different generation. And really why would you even want to use unbroken defensive Pokemon when you can just abuse a team of broken offensive ones?

 

[Kidogo]

Spaniard what kind of stall team(s) have you used? I'd be interested to know since I've p much only used rain stall and would love to know what other kinds of stall people are using effectively.

 

[Jukain]

I'm not Spaniard, but a lot of people use sand stall, which generally looks something like Destiny Unknown's OST finals team, Landorus-T / Celebi / Heatran / Forretress / Tyranitar / Jellicent or a variant with Landorus-T switched for something and Tyranitar switched for Hippowdon.

 

[Arcticblast]

Working off of pokemon0078's post, most Sand Stall teams (from what I've seen) run some variant on that build. Sand setter, Jellicent, Heatran, physically bulky Steel (usually Forretress), Ground immunity, bulky Grass. I haven't seen many variations of Meru's sand stall team though, which is a shame because it's a great team.

 

[BKC]

Landorus-T / Forretress / Jellicent / Celebi / Heatran / Tyranitar

dunk's ost finals team is actually mine & it's the team kd mentioned in his post. i have been using it since august 2011; the original was tran / forre / jelli / jira / tangrowth / ttar, then in march '12 i changed to tran / forre / jelli / cele / glis /ttar for my spl semis game vs mcmeghan.

stall is not dead, but the new pokes that keep flooding in certainly don't do any favors to it (although land-t was an excellent addition for defensive teams). landorus in particular is your worst nightmare when you go defensive, since not only can it just rape its counters by itself with little effort, but it's also never seen without its buddy cbtar, meaning that you're going to get swept more often than not. the same applies to keldeo.

the reason i like stall is because in this auto-pilot metagame filled with brainless offensive teams that take 0 skill to use, it forces you to think and *gasp* actually outplay the other guy, which is what pokemon is (supposed) to be all about.

there is also the fact that i'm not stupid enough to let myself have a bad matchup in a metagame that is dominated by matchups, and sand stall has a fair matchup against nearly the whole metagame. against rain offense, i have an almost guaranteed win (which is stupid but the alternative is an almost guaranteed loss so...).

the scariest mon for me when running stall, outside of cbtar + landorus and/or keldeo, is kyurem(b). regular form has pressure, black has stupidly high attack, both are incredibly bulky... sure hazards can wear em down but it can actually switch in relatively easily against most hazard setters and from there you're going to have trouble.

in my opinion, stall in bw is a thinking man's playstyle, as you are not going to be able to just go on auto-pilot and smash everything in your path with retardedly powerful attacks. it's not always easy to pull off but it is definitely more rewarding than the other bw playstyles.

 

[Spaniard]

BKC makes good points in his post. Stall requires a lot of thinking.

@kidogo

Right now i'm playing rain stall, but i've seen modifications of princess bri sand stall in the high 1900's. If i recall correctly it was hippowdon, special landorus, amonguss, bulky reflect type starmie, heatran, forretress.

 

[MMII]

I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that Stall is unviable but you are definitely choosing to shoot yourself in the foot when opting for Stall over a typical offensive team. The problem is that there are just way too many threats in the metagame and most of them can wall break without even bothering to try to.

You better pack a Gliscor, Slowbro, or Hippowdon otherwise Terrakion is going to SD and blow past you. Keldeo has those titanic Hydro Pumps that'll bite hard even outside of Rain so you'll need to add a Latias, Celebi, Amoongus or Jellicent cause Secret Sword is going to screw up with special walls lacking a fighting resist. Landorus-I is getting a lot of attention recently and it's pretty dangerous as well making your Celebi, Chansey, or Latias extra important. Breloom has that infamous Spore you'll need to absorb or somehow find something to bag as well as those mighty Technician boosted attacks to make you treasure your Skarmory, Celebi and Latia@s. Don't forget Garchomp with that amazing coverage that is going to run over you once if your Skarmory, Zong, or other physical wall is softened up or removed. This is just a portion of some of the popular threats in the current OU metagame, the list can go on and on and on. Not only that, but these guys all aren't really hazards weak so forcing them out isn't a big deal as they won't have much problem coming back in to be annoying later. Even the unmentioned threats that are hazards weak can very well leave their mark after going down. The worst part is that this is assuming they all are running their most common sets. Most of them can easily change things up a bit to become more dedicated wall breakers and nearly 6-0 Stall all by themselves. Most don't bother to do so, however, as it hurts their viability against the far more common Offense.

This is pretty much Stall's position in the current metagame. You can use it to be surprising and catch unprepared teams off-guard but even then you are going to have to work for your win. At the same time, you are going to have to cross your fingers that you don't end up with a bad match-up and have to play against one of those handful of threats you decided to skim over due to your limited team slots. You also have to hope that they don't decide to be anti-meta themselves and bring an underrated threat like Feraligatr that you didn't even consider when putting your team together. If you happen to have the misfortune of going against an opponent with a dedicated wall breaker (since balance is still kinda around) you'll pretty much have to pack your bags and go home. (or just play an amazing game) To sum it up, Stall can be used as an anti-metagame choice but you still aren't guaranteed the game and are running a fair amount of risk that you end up with a poor match-up, anyways.

I hate to be so negative on Stall but I just can't ignore the fact that my favorite playstyle is generally a sub-par team choice nowadays. This is pretty much why I'm less and less involved in OU and spend most of my time and effort in Ubers. I like a metagame where I can express myself through my personal teambuilding and playstyle choices without running the heavy risks you'll find in an unbalanced and shallow tier. It's a shame there's this bias against cover legends resulting in stupid crap like BW2 OU being the standard tier to receive all the attention. I'm not trying to say that a heathly metagame can't be a bit biased in favor of anything but Stall however I feel the decline of Stall is a red flag showing just how much OU is in need of a miracle.


I also want to make a special mention of Gothitelle. This gay little Pokemon can easily be built to take apart any carefully built team so that your team can derp its way past just about every defensive core (whether it be in Stall, Balanced, or Bulky Offense) as well as being a great way to limit cleaners like Landorus-I to a single kill or making sure those pesky Choice Scarf mons are only around to revenge kill once. (it even resists fighting type attacks so screw you Scarf Keldeo and Terrakion)

 

[Bongzong]

I personally think stalling is still sort of viable to an extent, but a good percentage of the Pokemon have ways to become threats, even if they have mediocre or terrible stats.

Most stall teams generally get set up on (if they lack a phazer) or they generally become crit fodder if their team isn't prepared for a particular Pokemon.

On the other hand stall teams can still work if you abuse the standard meta-game(auto pilot hyper offence with rocks) by tailoring some of you Pokemon to deal with their own counters on switch ins if you can predict it.

Side note
Anyway I run a stall team Landorus-t, Jirachi, Ninetales, Cresselia, Latias and Blissey had quite some success with it on showdown.

 

[Lork]

"all playstyles are equal. but some are more equal than others"

this is how i think of stall. too much breaks through it. what needs to happen to balance out stall with more offensive styles? imo game freak were very poor in giving few defensive upgrades since gen 2 compared to the power creep of offense, and i hope they rectify it. drawn out stall games are my favourite.

 

[Meru]

I've found the need for an offensive win condition to be higher than ever in this metagame for stall teams. Nowadays, most cores just end up collapsing due to the retarded offensive pressure that sweepers put out these days. So instead of aiming to stall them to death, you should aim to stall your opponent to the point where some kind of vicious sweeper can easily brutalize the rest of them. Take for example the Stoutland on my team. Stoutland is never going to give an early game victory, but with hazards, he puts the opponent on something of an "attempt limit". What I mean by that is that my opponent will have a limited amount of attempts to break through my core. What is limiting the amount of his attempts? My opponent can only put out so many attempts to break my core before they are in range of a Stoutland sweep. Unfortunately, stall is under par, as you can see, because I can't rely on pure full stall to do the trick: I have to hit back.

 

[Soul Fly]

I've never seen a full stall team on the higher parts of the ladder.

Never.

Nor do I recall seeing a proper one in the tournament scene for ages.

Nowadays most of the 'stall' teams are just a nice u-turn core with good defensive synergy with a hazards setter and a spin blocker of likes who doubles up as an agent to spread status.

These teams usually reserve two member (scarfers and likes) to clean up late game, so you're really using a hybrid playstyle here.

Gen3 and Gen 4 good old school stall? Nah? too hard.
Stopping the Terrakion spamming CC.
Only to be replaced by a Latios with ridiculous Specs damage output
only to find yourself cockblocked after that Keldeo Hydro pump gayspam.

The metagame is really shit towards this playstyle.

 

[Spaniard]

@Lork

I find gen 2 stall brutally overpowered and extremely boring.

@Soul Fly

I am high in the ladder using full stall at the moment (check spaniard and focus chogath).

 

[Soul Fly]

Wow, that's cool.

Can you share your team if you don't mind?