Other Stall

[Tressed]

First off, why people don't run max HP chansey is beyond me. The special bulk difference is miniscule even with an eviolite and it saves you about 5% on both of those attacks.

I grabbed the first spread that came out of the calculator. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Chansey's HP stat make it more efficient to invest in it's defenses, since the EVs affect the HP stat less than the defenses?

Mind you, if you're using Chansey to take on Greninja, 252/252+/4 makes more sense, since you'd be sing that spread for a specific purpose.

40 Atk Life Orb Protean Greninja Low Kick (60 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Chansey: 221-265 (31.3 - 37.6%) -- 85.5% chance to 3HKO

It's a fine Greninja counter because it works in practice. Yes, where it matters most. Chansey just rarely gets that low, and if it does you check Gren, heal up and never get into that issue again. Gren still has longevity issues when you draw out the fight vs it.

Assuming I'm not horribly wrong with my calcs, you're implying Chansey never drops below 70% in practice.

Because you're preaching about momentum, I assume you're talking a sableye team since it's really the only team that needs it to any degree... needs because sable has a sufficient lack of bulk for something with magic bounce (A consistent problem with all magic bouncers, so compared to them he is relatively bulky.). So in that scenario, where are you getting three layers of spikes? If you're using a sable team and you've let them spike you with three layers, you must be pretty damn bad.

You know what they say about assumptions, right?

The Spikes are nothing more than an illustration of damage, for the sake of displaying the potential 2HKO with prior damage. No, I don't expect offense to be running Spike stackers, but I do expect them to be running Stealth Rock, and I expect them to try getting some chip damage on Chansey before Greninja gets out there.

And let's get one thing straight: Stall, by nature, is a 'momentum kill'. Don't ever think it's anything else. You can pressure, you can create switches and you can make plays, but YOU are doing that, not the stall team. Because of the inherent lack of speed, the general lack of bulk and the usual need for recovery, stall teams are always going to be able to be pushed on the back foot. If you think you can consistently keep pressure throughout a match with a stall team, you're dead wrong. As soon as they use U-turn, taunt, Baton pass, a boosting move or move into a threat, whatever you've been doing doesn't matter: You play on their terms because even when you do all of this, your opponent may have a mon that simply invalidates what you do. And for stall teams, that's fine because you generally are able to win on an opponent's term unless they bring stall breakers or ways to crack your team with ease. No matter what, if you don't have speed to outspeed what naturally beats your team, you don't have a chance.

So Chansey being a momentum sink? Guys, we've known this forever. It hasn't changed and this isn't a great epiphany. If you're going to be bothering with momentum, go build a voltturn team with some bulky mons. I've done it, it isn't as effective when you try to form it to a true stall team. Hence why I never pursued it heavily. Chansey may be steal your own momentum but it sure as hell does a nice job of making sure none of your opponent's special attackers GAIN any momentum. Sure, there's some special mons that give chansey hell, but very few outside of landorus, mixed thundy and taunt gard manage (which must avoid losing around 72 HP to do so).

As I said, the only stall that really cares if it loses momentum is sableye... All other stalls should be prepared to expect it... Technically, I think a sable team not prepared to expect it isn't any good, but whatever... I won't use a slower gen4 rotom- with a better ability.

I'm still thinking offensively, so momentum isn't the right word. What I was try to say is that Chansey is already very passive, and needing to heal up every other turn to stay out of 2HKO range only makes that problem worse.

 

[56k]

I've become a little disenchanted with sabeleye as a mega because he seems to exacerbate the problems that stall has with some common pokemon. For example, megacharizards, megaaltaria, megagyarados, megagardevior, megadiancie, landorus-i, heatran, lum bisharp, azumarill, manaphy, and clefable all tend to be pretty tough nuggets for stall to begin with, and they all either set up on or force out sabeleye (or it gets off one status/knockoff then dies).

Meanwhile he seems to only offer redundant coverage against things that don't really bother stall to begin with: conkeldurr, ferrothorn, megaswampert, megaaerodactyl, breloom, some garchomps, some excadrills, some landorus-t. It's hard to have a stall team that doesn't "accidentally" already have checks or counters to these pokemon built in to begin with.

His usefullness against stallbreakers such as mew and gliscor and some wallbreakers like megagallade and heracross is noted, and he has the bulk to almost always live 2 hits, so I don't disagree that he's a good mega. I just think that he has a few problems when it comes to building a stall team:

-He has few useful resistances, neither in the fire/water/grass triad nor the steel/dragon/fairy triad (and actually has a weakness)
-His HP stat means he basically can't switch into anything that has a simple Life Orb
-An awful lot of your match is determined by turn1 lead matchup, comparatively
-He doesn't really help you against common wallbreaking threats
-Roughly half of the hazard layers can actually beat sabeleye, which is a very sad fact indeed

Now I am not counting sabeleye out. He's a great pokemon despite all of this and I like him very much. I just find it very difficult to support him with only 5 remaining slots that not only have to cover sabeley's shortcomings but handle the meta at large as well. The fact that sabeleye seems to do nothing at all against hyper offense except get one single burn off (which no doubt just gets lum berried away) makes me question him as a teammate.

 

[branflakes]

Either you're not using Mega Sableye correctly, or you're just not teambuilding with it correctly. It can pull its weight in almost any match because its typing, abilities and moves are unique to most of the other pokemon you would use on a stall team. Have you considered a specially defensive set as opposed to Def CM?

Also you need to acknowledge Sableye's limitations when you use it. If the opponent has a Charizard or fairy type you should probably think twice before leading with something that gets destroyed by both.

 

[jbtc10]

Sab doesn't deal with Hera, +0 Pin Missile does 60% minimum.

I don't like the CM set, it takes way too long to set up to where you become threatening which gives ample opportunity for crits and burns from things like Lava Plume and Scald to ruin you. Mono-attacking with either Dark or Ghost isn't the greatest thing either. Fairies also mean you can't do much until late game when they're gone.

As you said though, he is nice insurance against Taunt-based stall breakers like SpD Gliscor and Mew (even though they're becoming much less common now because of Sab's very existence), who can be quite painful otherwise and he's pretty amazing against opposing stall teams too.

About the lead thing, Sab is probably the most obvious lead in the game since you generally want to get Magic Bounce ASAP and thus it tends to be anti-lead quite a lot. You can include a teamate like Heatran who is good against most anti-leads to Sableye and either use the free turn to set rocks or double into Sableye so you can M-Evo safely. Generally not too big of a deal really.

 

[56k]

I don't use the CM set for the same reasons; instead I use willo/knockoff/recover/filler and just use him as a generall annoyer and status spreader. The last move has plenty of decent options all of which can get off some chip damage or extra statuses like say toxic or confusion. He just doesn't seem to do anything against hyper offense which is the matchup stall has to pay attention to most. He's only amazing against weakish pokemon which wouldn't be a threat to the stall core built around him anyway, so I won't be using sableye as much because he doesn't plug enough holes that most walls are otherwise weak too.

 

[SketchUp]

About the lead thing, Sab is probably the most obvious lead in the game since you generally want to get Magic Bounce ASAP

I don't always mega evolve right of the bat because Prankster is such an awesome ability. You can burn things like Bisharp and Garchomp if they set up a SD, and if you already have mega evolved, you can't abuse prankster to burn them before they smack you with a +2 Iron Head / Outrage (probably not the best example as both don't OHKO M-Sableye, but there are many times where the prankster burn is better than the magic bounce, especially against heavy offensive teams

 

[HolyAvatar]

I don't always mega evolve right of the bat because Prankster is such an awesome ability. You can burn things like Bisharp and Garchomp if they set up a SD, and if you already have mega evolved, you can't abuse prankster to burn them before they smack you with a +2 Iron Head / Outrage (probably not the best example as both don't OHKO M-Sableye, but there are many times where the prankster burn is better than the magic bounce, especially against heavy offensive teams

Non mega sableye has incredibly bad bulk though. If they have lum berry you are toast.
+2 252 Atk Garchomp Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Sableye: 282-333 (92.7 - 109.5%) -- 56.3% chance to OHKO
+1 252+ Atk Dragonite Outrage vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Sableye: 286-337 (94 - 110.8%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO

And special attackers still destroy you.
50/75/65 defences are abysmal for a wall.

 

[56k]

Here's how the teambuilding around sabeleye goes for me:

Start with mega sabel and immediately I'm weak to charizard-x and talonflame: I need a teammate that can actually switch in and counter them both. I need to ohko char-x (no easy feat) because after just one DD it can shred. Any botched switch or free turn lets either set up on sabel. This limits me to a bulky ground or bulky rock type with edgequake to cover both, and it's basically down to lando, rhyperior, hippo, or ttar. I choose rhyperior.

I need a bulky grass for gyarados (unaware does not work and it often has sub or taunt) and I also need a bulky water for heatran/greninja/keldeo/whatever; these are pretty mix and match. AV tangrowth is pretty cool. I avoid chestnaught due to the fairy weakness.


Sabel/rockground/grass/water

Now I only have 2 slots left and I need to cover fairies (there are just too many), life orb latis, landorus-i, mixed thunderus, charizard-y, and special attackers in general.

Zard-Y is the immediate threat. It's just too damn strong and without something either a chansey or a latias it will just destroy everything. Sure, it'd be nice if we had spdef hippo in that ground slot up above, but, then he won't be able to repeatedly deal with char-x and talon like he was supposed to. So now the team looks like this

Sabel/rockground(for char-x)/bulky grass(for gyarados)/bulky water(for everything)/bulky dragon(for char-y)

The problem is there is no perfect "fairy counter" for the last slot -- if there was, something that beats earth power hp fire diancie AND flamethrower calm mind clef AND specs sylveon AND belly azumarill -- then the team could be perfected. Unfortunately no wall actually walls every fairy and I end up always precariously flimsy to one of them and change up that last slot depending on what I feel like being weak to. The best idea is just use greninja, which in fact works swimmingly, but you implicitly resign yourself to lose 20% of games where you could have actually killed that fairy but hax.

That's the best I was able to come up with. It's not completely a stall team because I am too stretched to counter every fairy I can only revenge them.


Sabel/Rhyperior/Tangrowth/Vaporeon/Latias/Greninja

 

[branflakes]

Greninja does not belong on a stall team because it has a lot of trouble even switching in unless you sacrifice a piece of your stall core. Stall needs to have a strategy beyond simply switching in something that resists an attack. You're going to suffer endlessly against volt-turn anyway

 

[56k]

How would you build around mega sable?

 

[jbtc10]

Quaggy counters Zard X and Talon, while also countering Manectric and buggering up its volt switching momentum, plus you've now got a Bisharp counter and something which does ok at checking a good deal of the random physical attackers out there. Heatran is also a usable answer to X (EQ is fairly rare nowadays, most are DD / Blitz / Claw / Roost, and if they drop one of those for EQ, 9 times out of 10 it's going to be Roost, which is a win for you anyway since you can chisel it down with status, attacks and Blitz recoil) and Talon while also being great against most of the fairies that threaten Sab. Heatran appreciates Wish support so something like Alo is then a decent 3rd choice.

Alo itself does well against Zard-X and Talon as well, since vs X a +1 D-Claw is a 3HKO and you can stall it out pretty easily with Toxic + Wish/Tect, especially if you also have an Unaware Clefable since you can WishPass into it a few turns into the ordeal and spam Moonlight until it kicks the bucket (which won't be long at all due to Toxic Damage + Blitz recoil damage). Alo also counters choiced and modern stall breaker Talon sets (SD / Taunt / Roost / BB) by running Waterfall in the last slot (Wish / Protect / Toxic / Waterfall);

0 Atk Alomomola Waterfall vs. 248 HP / 0 Def Talonflame: 182-216 (50.6 - 60.1%) -- 82% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

 

[SketchUp]

56k
Greninja doesn't fit well on stall because it is very frail. It can wreck many teams but it needs a free switch from U-Turn, Volt Switch, saccing one of your pokemon or just a prediction. Unless you have Baton Pass on Vaporeon, you don't have any possible momentum grabber to get in Greninja safely and stall doesn't like saccing something.
Mega Sableye hates fairies but SpD Jirachi can beat 3 out of 5 most common fairies (Clefable, M-Gardevoir, Sylveon) and Skarmory, Bronzong and Amoonguss can take on M-Altaria and Non-BD Azumarill.

In my opinion your team is too much build around 'how to counter as many threats as possible, but still able to do huge damage to oppossing walls' I build stall teams around cores that can take on threats together, while still able to take on oppossing stall. I'm talking about hazards cores, 5 stall mons + stallbreaker, regenerator spam, taunt, pp stalling (pressure, rest users) and win conditions like M-Slowbro
If I, for example, make a team with M-Sableye, I look for 1. nice teammates 2. ways to take down opponents, because sableye doesn't hit that hard. As said before, Sableye hates fairy, and I just make a quick M-Sableye + Jirachi core. At this point I look at the way to defeat oppossing stall. Regenerator spam? Add Amoonguss. Hazards? Add Skarmory. If I end up with a team like Mega Sableye, Jirachi, Amoonguss, Alomomola, Chansey and Gliscor, I have ways to threaten stall (regenerator core, win condition, taunt) and dangerous wallbreakers. Mega Sableye can take on many physical attackers and stallbreakers like Mew thanks to magic bounce and turn them into setup fodder. Jirachi can threaten fairies, set stealth rocks and help against M-Sceptile, M-Diancie and Greninja (kinda) Amoonguss and Alomomola makes up a Regenertor core that can take on Non-GK Greninja, Manaphy and Mega Gyarados. Chansey is a cleric, that also helps against other stall because otherwise status can kill you and SpD Gliscor helps against stallbreakers like Landorus-I, Gengar, Mew, Oppossing Gliscor, Clefable and Stallbreaker Talonflame.
The team above is something I just made very quickly while making the post. It can threaten oppossing stall and take on nearly every stall- and wallbreaker except Greninja with the right coverage, Pinsir+Mag and SD Garchomp (probably more, but this are the ones I can think off rn). As you see, when building a team around certain cores like Amoonguss + Alomomola, Jirachi + Sableye, Chansey + Skarmory and Chesnaught + Tentacruel you can already take on many threats, so you don't have to focus that much on taking on all the threats. The last few teamslots can be taken for pokemon that can beat wall- and stallbreakers that threaten your current team (I picked Gliscor in this team for the slot, so I don't get 6-0d by Lando-I, Talonflame and Gengar) I also look if I have ways to have hazards control (this team doesn't really, but it has a rock setter and a magic bouncer) a cleric (heal bell is important against other stall) a wishpasser (teams with pokemon like Heatran, Tentacruel and Cresselia [moonlight only 8pp] need it to not get worn down easily) ways to threaten stall (regenerator, taunt, wincon) and switch-ins for as many threats as possible. The team above was made pretty quickly so it isn't the best stall team I've ever made, but it can take on stall + many threats, so I think it's not a bad team at all.

 

[56k]

The threats I'm trying to counter hardest are the ones that sabel specifically gives free turns to -- at some point he could be forced on the field to do his job while the opponent sacs something, in which case they can get a free set up turn with any sweeping fire type or fairy type. There are about ~12 or so common threats that can become extremely dangerous in front of sabel and your only tools against them are willo/toxic/foul play which can cover roughly half of them (not taking into account possible substitutes or lum berries). He doesn't have the offensive ability that other stall megas have, like scizor/slowbro/charizard, which is the main problem. It is awfully difficult not to get swept by clefables, diancies, and charizards when they get a free boost maybe 3 times in the game and your counter to it gets slowly worn down.

 

[Lil YoshiXD]

The threats I'm trying to counter hardest are the ones that sabel specifically gives free turns to -- at some point he could be forced on the field to do his job while the opponent sacs something, in which case they can get a free set up turn with any sweeping fire type or fairy type. There are about ~12 or so common threats that can become extremely dangerous in front of sabel and your only tools against them are willo/toxic/foul play which can cover roughly half of them (not taking into account possible substitutes or lum berries). He doesn't have the offensive ability that other stall megas have, like scizor/slowbro/charizard, which is the main problem. It is awfully difficult not to get swept by clefables, diancies, and charizards when they get a free boost maybe 3 times in the game and your counter to it gets slowly worn down.

Jirachi, quagsire, and chansey cover basically everything sabeleye covers. also they all have reliable recovery

 

[SketchUp]

I can assure you a Clefable won't sweep a stall team even if it sets up at 2 calm minds or something. SpD Jirachi can take flamethrowers from Clefable and earth powers from Diance like a boss and Zard-X + Talonflame can be beaten by things like Slowbro, Quagsire and Alomomola. Really, if I build a stall team, I rarely have problems with things like Talonflame or Clefable, just because the main counters for those pokemon are often on many stall teams (except stallbreaker Talonflame)

 

[56k]

Alright we'll try sabel+quag+jirachi+latias and see what I can come up with for the last 2 slots

 

[jbtc10]

I can't say I've liked Latias on stall much. Her STABs are terrible, she gets pursuit trapped by Tar, Sharp and M-Meta and seemingly invites half the tier to come in for free, especially if you're using a defensive spread. How are you using her?

 

[56k]

It's only job is beating char-y and landorus-i and keldeo and heatran so I use dpulse/psyshock/surf/recover max speed and HP investment and defense investment and leftovers.

 

[SketchUp]

Why don't you try out Resttalk Gyarados? It takes on Keldeo, Charizard-Y and Landorus-I and otber things like Greninja + phazing.
You can also try out M-Alt, who takes on 3/4 pokemon you listed and it can still act as a cleric and a counter against M-Sableye and such

Edit: Forget the M-Alt part, I thought Latias was your mega

 

[56k]

Alright check this team out. I hit 1701 with it and it has hard answers to some common wallbreakers and more soft "checky" answers to other stuff that might try to set up. In my experience the biggest threats are Gardevior, Charizard-X, banded dragonite, banded azumarill, and landorus-i. I don't actually have a defogger but ideally I can either keep hazards away OR force the opponent to defog if I need it.

Sableye/Gyarados/Tangrowth/Klefki/Gliscor/Tornadus

The sableye/gyara/tangrowth core works beautifully: rest/talk/dd/waterfall gyara can set up on an awful lot of stuff that comes in on sableye. Thank you for the suggestion SketchUp.

Anyway it's up to the other 3 pokemons to lay hazards and reliably deal with the other stuff out there like heracross, latios, charizard, and metagross. I have 3 foul play users to discourage dragon dancing and 1.5 prankster users for emergencies. The idea is that if something tries to take advantage of the fact that sableye isn't on the field to burn them, they get a surprise boosted foul play to the face.

I would like any suggestions and comments.

Sableye @ Sablenite
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Impish Nature
- Foul Play
- Knock Off
- Will-O-Wisp
- Recover

Tangrowth @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 232 HP / 24 Def / 252 SpD
Relaxed Nature
- Knock Off
- Earthquake
- Giga Drain
- Ancient Power

Tornadus-Therian (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 232 HP / 100 SpA / 176 Spe
Timid Nature
- Hurricane
- Heat Wave
- Foul Play
- Sludge Wave

Gliscor @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 Spe
Impish Nature
- Acrobatics
- Earthquake
- Roost
- Stealth Rock

Gyarados @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 216 HP / 192 SpD / 100 Spe
Careful Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
- Waterfall

Klefki @ Leftovers
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Spikes
- Thunder Wave
- Foul Play
- Dazzling Gleam

 

[TURBODERP]

What do the Defense EVs on Tangrowth do?

Also, I recommend changing up the spread for Sableye a bit. Jukain explains here why some SpDef investment for Sableye goes a long way. Finally, instead of Foul Play on Sableye, which generally doesn't do much because people are already dissuaded from setting up due to WoW, and Tflame/Charizard can beat you even at +1 and live, you can run Toxic instead (since you're not using CM). I recently made this change and it works fairly well, because you put a timer on Charizard X and Tflame and can usually Recover Stall them.

Jukain's post: ORAS OU Viability Ranking Thread - B- and C+ ranks discussion, check post #2120

 

[56k]

I use full defense on sabel because it brings the late game fight vs metagross down to rolls. Sacrificing any defense would give meta a significantly higher chance of winning based on a flinch. Gliscor beats meta in theory but in reality it's a tossup. As for tangrowth, he's meant to be some sort of mixed bulk sponge. His base defense is much higher than his base spdef, so adding 10% to it gives a larger increase and helps with uturns. That HP is the highest possible HP that is divisible by 3 but is also an odd number (for residual damage cases). Extra EVs went into defense. Pretty OCD I know but that's a habit of mine when it comes to putting the stats in.



Edit: I changed tornadus to assault vest, I don't know why I was using lefties instead. Speed is the same though: faster than latios/thundurus-t. I also changed foul play to knock off on tornadus, and I changed foul play to toxic on klefki.

Anyway I have a really wonderful replay to share with you all!

My opponent was carrying two fairies so it seemed risky to lead off with sableye. This ended up backfiring though because he's not able to reliably switch in on talonflame brave birds if he's not already mega'd and healthy. Klefki is my only flying resist but it's actually pretty nominal considering talonflames STABs.

29 turns might seem short for a "stall team" match but I need to be honest here:

as I go higher on the ladder the only playstyle I see is heavy offense. "Heavy" in the sense that things completely revolve around being able to break stall without using a stallbreaker like mew because sableye killed them off. Instead people are using direct methods like Modest diancies, banded Victinis, and of course mega heracross and manaphy and such. It's literally impossible to cover that.

sableye and slowbro has indirectly caused such a shift in offensive playstyles that slower and stronger wallbreakers are getting more common than ever. Too many mixed wallbreakers have gained viability and usage lately. It takes some serious innovation to maintain a decent selection of switch in stall pokemons while still having playability against volt turn and pure "anti stall" tactics

Anyway here's the game, a little hax goes either way (and I thought I was doomed to a scizor sweep) but I think it does what replays are most importantly supposed to do: entertain

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-196246836

 

[56k]

Developing on the previous post: I made voting reqs with the following stall (maybe stall-ish?) team. Good lord is it a grind though:

Sableye/Tangrowth/Gyarados/Tornadus-T/Klefki/Seismitoad

Sableye @ Sablenite
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Impish Nature
- Foul Play
- Knock Off
- Will-O-Wisp
- Recover

Tangrowth @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 232 HP / 24 Def / 252 SpD
Relaxed Nature
- Knock Off
- Earthquake
- Giga Drain
- Ancient Power

Tornadus-Therian (M) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 232 HP / 100 SpA / 176 Spe
Timid Nature
- Hurricane
- Heat Wave
- Knock Off
- Sludge Wave

Seismitoad @ Leftovers
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 200 HP / 252 Def / 56 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Toxic
- Earth Power
- Scald
- Stealth Rock

Gyarados @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 216 HP / 192 SpD / 100 Spe
Careful Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
- Waterfall

Klefki @ Leftovers
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Spikes
- Thunder Wave
- Toxic
- Dazzling Gleam

Sabel does what he does - annoys, burns, and kills things that may try to swords dance and sweep. The issue becomes having a switch in to the various fairy types and since it's not really possible to cover all of them while also being able to beat other common stuff out there, I have a team that focuses more on "getting chances" than countering everything that kills sableye.

For example: diancie. Well, I don't have anything that counters it. But I have a bunch of stuff that survives a hit and hits it really damn hard. I also have one pokemon that outspeeds it and can finish it off, and gyarados is faster than the unevolved form too.

Another example: sylveon. Nothing really likes specs hyper voice so I need to get that thing knocked off as soon as possible. Afterwards it's much easier to switch into.

Clefable: I can toxic the unaware variants and t-wave the magic guard ones. Gyarados sets up on magic guard ones and actually starts to become a serious threat. This is where the opponent usually switches to rotom-w and wouldn't you know it, I have the perfect counter. I realised that tangrowth wasn't enough to kill it because it just voltswitches out and does it's job again. Seismitoad fucks it over so hard though unless it can rest. But after it burns the first chesto it's basically worthless.

Charizard: gyarados hops in and sees which one it is. If it's X, well, at least it's at neutral or -1 attack now and it's pretty safe to get seismitoad or sabel in. If it's Y, then gyara just stays in and counters it.

All of my bases are loosely covered, which is why I said that it's a huge grind to ladder with the thing because sometimes there's only one chance to stop a sweep (like a pinsir) from starting but a double switch or prediction could end you if they figure out what your response will be.

I like the team very much though and will continue to use ideas from it: remember, use Tornadus-T people. Beats landorus-i and gengar and has knock off to get rid of annoying choice items and life orbs. Huge team player.

 

[Redolent]

Sableye/Tangrowth/Gyarados/Tornadus-T/Klefki/Seismitoad

Think I played you on this team not long ago. Gotta be honest, when I saw it I thought it was some kinda weird rain team lol



I just got reqs with my alomomola / mega sableye / jirachi / clefable / latias / ditto team, peaking at #1 at one point, although it's really weak to Pursuit Bisharp, Gothitelle and kinda DDSub Mega Gyara. Also lost to Pursuit CB Tyranitar because my Latias' Reflect was largely useless against it. I feel like there is absolutely nothing stall can do to cover almost everything any more, which isn't what I thought in XY, although M-Sableye is incredible and almost indispensible to me now. I've had to start running Ditto because it occurred to me that there is more or less no good way to handle a Scarf Gothitelle/BD Knock Off Azumarill combination other than Ditto. And Gothitelle is just a horrible match up based Pokemon in general that's almost guaranteed to beat stall if your opponent plays it wisely, so it's annoying. Teambuilding feels very restricted at the moment.

 

[56k]

Not being able to cover everything is what I meant by "giving myself chances" in terms of team building. For example I might be horribly weak to a certain mon. But if I can paralyze it with klefki and outspeed it later (or even flinch or confuse hax it) then absolutely I'm going for that. If I realize they have something that I can't directly stall out but a resting gyarados still has a 1/3 or 1/9 chance to pull through for a win, then I'll go for it. It's just pokemon. You can beat heracross without having a gliscor and you can beat gardevoir without having a doublade. Sometimes I can tell from the start that a battle is going to end up whether bisharp flinches sableye or whether metagross gets an atk boost or not. The team has a pretty stall vibe to it and has annoying issues certainly but every battle has definitely been winnable. I'm not sure how much of a stall team it really is without a cleric though.