[Overview]
<p>Walrein's niche in UU lies in its decent bulk and access to great passive recovery in Hail via Ice Body. With Snow Warning support, Walrein restores 1/8th of its health every turn and can use Protect to gain 1/4th of its health before the opposing Pokemon can even land a hit. Its good bulk allows it to force out weak attackers and set up a Substitute. Once it is behind a Substitute, it can use Protect to recover health wasted by Substitute so that Walrein can rack up Hail damage. Its Special Attack is decent and a STAB Blizzard can deal decent damage. However, Water/Ice typing leaves it weak to two common UU attack types, Electric- and Fighting-type attacks. It also has a weakness to Stealth Rock and all hazards. Even so, Walrein can pull its weight on Hail teams due to its good bulk and great passive recovery.</p>

[SET]
name: Stallrein
move 1: Substitute
move 2: Protect
move 3: Blizzard / Super Fang (i personally doubt super fang's usefulness)
move 4: Roar / Toxic
item: Leftovers
ability: Ice Body
nature: Bold
evs: 232 HP / 108 Def /168 Spe

[SET COMMENTS]

• Walrien can take advantage of all of its assets including high defenses and good Special Attack.
• In hail constantly using Protect and then Substitute leads to no net damage for Walrien while the opponent must take hail damage as well as any other residual damage that you have set up.
• Blizzard badly damages almost everything that is unaffaected by Toxic Spikes, which you should be using in conjunction with this set, including OHKOing Nidoking, offensive Roserade and even offensive Zapdos if you managed to put up Stealth Rock.
• Although this set may seem invincible on paper there are a few tactics your opponent can employ to defeat the traditional Stallrein. This set attempts to anticipate those tactics and counter-play against them with Roar which can phaze even Suicune before he has a chance to end your stalling cycle with Roar.
• Roar also abuses entry hazard damage should you have set them up earlier in the game.

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]

• Snover is required to set up hail.
• The EV spread is fairly simple. It gives enough Speed to beat 8 Speed Gligar and Suicune (what's your policy on speed creep lol) which allows you to OHKO Gligar denying your opponent Stealth Rocks while also setting up a Substitute before Suicune can try and Scald burn you. The rest of the EVs maximize physical bulk while giving you Substitues that survive Seismic Toss and Night Shade. 232 HP EVs are used so that there is no rounding when you use Substitute+Protect which otherwise would cost you 1 HP net per turn which could become become significant if you stall for significant periods of time.
• Alternatively Walrein can choose to invest in special defense or split up its even defenses as its typing and stats allows it to take hits from both sides decently. Generally as Walrein tries to set up on opponents like Flygon and Sharpedo physical defense is optimal - no special defense is reqired to set up on most of the tier's bulky waters.
• Speed EVs are very important as they also allow Walrein to use Roar on slower Pokemon like Blastoise before they can Roar Walrein out as well as letting Walrein KO weakened spinners before they can use Rapid Spin as they are all slower than Walrein. Should you not use Roar for some reason taking away Speed to invest more in bulk is much more plausible.
• Apart from Snover's hail support the best help Walrein could ask for comes from Nidoqueen - not only does she resist Fighting and Rock for Walrein she can set up Toxic Spikes and Stealth Rock both of which help Walrein stall. She can even check Zapdos and Raikou somewhat well with Sheer Force Blizzard and Earth Power.
• Toxic Spikes are extremely useful to help stall out opponents that are immune to hail (opposing Ice-types) and those that have recovery.
• Roserade also pairs nicely with Walrein because she too can set up Toxic Spikes while absorbing them on entry. Meanwhile she boasts a 4x Grass resistance unlike Nidoqueen helping her absorb hits for Walrein.
• Because Walrein is weak to all entry hazards, while being absolutely crippled by Toxic Spikes, she appreciates Rapid Spin support even more thn the average hazard weak Pokemon. Should you use Xatu as a pseudo-spinner keep in mind she has many overlapping weaknesses with Walrein such as Rock and Electric while being unable to very effectively abuse its resistances.
• After set up Walrein is particularly difficult to break with more offensive teams but if they have certain Pokemon who can break Walrein's Substitue Protect cycle you should be wary of setting up even if it seems like you have a "free" turn.

[Other Options]

• Choice Specs would take advantage of Walrein's actually very good Special Attack but it is mostly outclassed by Glaceon who is far stronger.
• Thick Fat is a cool ability should you be operating outside of hail in which case you can use other support moves like Encore or Yawn.
• But generally any set outside of Substitute+Protect hail stall has much less utility and is outclassed by something else.

[Checks and Counters]

• It is extremely difficult to counter Walrein with an offensive Pokemon once he gets going but there are a few ways to break the not-so-endless stalling cycle.
• Cincinno can heavily damage Walrein while breaking his Substitute with Rock Blast as can Rhyperior but both take heavy damage from Blizzard while they cannot OHKO Walrein back.
• Leftovers Bisharp cannot be Poisoned and takes no net hail damage while be able to badly damage Walrein or even set up on him; actually any Pokemon holding Leftovers while not being weak to Blizzard can usually beat Walrein if they are not Poisoned.
• Bulk Up Scrafty can practically ignore status while easily sponging a Blizzard or two and then proceed to set up or at the very least break Walrein's Subsitutes.
• Setting up hazards limits weakens Walrein so he cannot set up on as many attackers like Choice Band Flygon and Choice Scarf Darmanitan.
• Defensive teams have a somewhat easier time as they can simply heal off the residual damage Walrein inflicts on them with Umbreon or another Wish user while also generally being able to spin away hazards.

hilarious taking breaks and stuff

Nice job! I hope I can be of help.
For starters, change the EV spread to outspeed minimum Speed Gligar and Suicune. On most defensive Pokemon, you usually first max out HP and then the defense of choice. I'd advice you to change the spread to 252 HP / 96 SpD / 160 Spe Calm, since it accomplishes the same the 220 HP EVs do (I think, you can ask for more input on it anyway). Mention that outspeeding Suicune is important to Roar it before it Roars you out, if you're opting for Toxic then you can go max/max or use the same spread to KO Gligar before it does anything, which I don't know if it's really important.
Remove the Toxic Spikes mention in Set Comments, that's the kind of things AC is for, where you already mentioned it. Instead, mention the perks of Roar and Toxic, such as adding up hazard damage, and being able to stall Pokes one v. one in Toxic's case.

I think that's pretty much it, great job on you first skeleton.

220 hp is the only amount of hp walrein should be running imo because it yields 416 hp. this is the only number above 403 (for 101 subs) that is divisible by 16 (so ice body+leftovers heals exactly 1/8th per turn) otherwise rounding would make you lose 2 hp per sub+protect cycle.

also because walrien has significantly higher hp than defenses he is one of those unique pokemon where maximum balanced bulk does not come from fully investing in hp. kind of like how its a bad idea to max out hp and atack on cb snorlax because it could get more overall defense by divying up its evs among its defenses and hp (idk the exact spread).

i put the heavy toxic spikes mention into additional comments, thank you.

Frankly I dont want to put either super fang or Toxic on the set but it waaaassss standard at one point iirc. Blizzard just is really good with stab and moderately high special attack and hits everything toxic spikes can't hit which should be used with Walrien about 90% of the time.

Also can I name this set Substitute+Protect because stallrein isn't particularly descriptive and if I have my way with this it wont even have toxic in its moveset. Subsitute+protect is much more descriptive because thats exactly what Walrien will be doing 90% of the time.

actually i think i might take out 4spdef evs to put them in speed to outspeed max modest gothorita (which you can then stall out instead of being mauled) while still beating suicune without technically creeping. yes gothorita isn't important but its a good excuse to creep on suicune which is extraordinarily important C:

Stallrein is one of those long-standing community-born names that I'd personally like to see stay, I daresay everybody that has ever used this set knows it by that name

good analysis, well done, i don't have any nitpicks for once. I probably wouldn't bother giving Toxic a slash since Roar is absolutely crucial and since this set should really be used with Toxic Spikes support you'll only really be using Toxic on floaty things, the majority of which take fatal damage from Blizzard (Flygon, Zapdos etc) or are immune to Toxic anyway (Bronzong, Crobat etc).

Would maybe mention the use of something that can remove Roserade because she'll just keep removing your T-Spikes if you don't. A decent Pursuit user or Scarf Psyshock Gothorita idk

I know what the EVs accomplished (that's why I suggested 252 HP, which made you take more damage from hazards, and not 248), I just figured if you were gonna run 220 HP you could easily run 252 HP and take physical hits a bit better in return. I get your point on not maxing out HP on things that have naturally high HP, though.

The HP to defense gap is actually not big enough for this to actually be true - Max HP does actually help maximize overall bulk.

This is the spread I use 252 HP / 96 Def / 52 SpD / 108 Spe; Bold Nature. This maximizes bulk with a slight emphasis on physical defense (55% Physical). It has enough Speed to beat min Spe Blastoise, which is enough, imho. Trying for Suicune's speed tier is just a bit excessive.

I can vouch for Toxic's effectiveness; it makes Walrein a lot more self-efficient and less hazard-dependent. Understandably Roar is the superior choice, since it can wear down the likes of Rest Talk Lax, CroCune, and Umbreon much more readily if the hazards are down.

Super Fang is AC material, though.

I actually am not sure what maximizes bulk anymore but as I put in my posts the main point of running 220 HP EVs was the fact it it yielded no net damage after sub+protect whereas any other spread with over 403 hp would. So 220 EVs I believe is the only way not to slowly lose health. I will take away the point where I say it maximizes bulk if it actually doesn't. However looking at generation 4's analysis for the first time today advised running 232 HP EVs because that would still leave no net damage over subprotect, I will test that out to see if that still holds true for gen5. If it does and if thats the highest amount of HP that yields no net damage then I will be using 232 HP with those extra 12 HP evs coming from spdef. pocket that defense resource looks really cool but even if you put no bias to defense it does give you a slight bias to spdef doesn't it? Which is why I question how reliable it is. Assume for a moment that we are using 176 speed so 176 evs are off limits. If you use the rest for 252 hp and 80 def with a calm nature (424/236/237) compared with 220 hp 96 def 16spd with a calm nature (416/240/242) and put those spreads in honko's calc you will notice that my spread takes less damage from everything except of course stoss and night shades in uu which you set up on anyways.

Unless ofc QC requests me to use less speed. Frankly I think that would be foolish because outspeeding Gligar is of extreme important it will either let you get a sub up (over toxic) or it will let you blizzard your opp to death so they have 0 chance to set up sr. or it lets you kill them before they fire off a taunt. You also beat Suicune which is important because you can sub against the scald to negate any burn chance. In any case if you are aiming to beat only blastoise you might as well beat milotic too which is only 3 base speed points higher.

Toxic does make Walrein self-efficient (sufficient???) but frankly Walrein's only place is on hail stall where it shouldn't be self efficient. i will test out Toxic again and see just how good it is.

Ok the set name will be stallrein I guess.

Lastly a pretty major change, should I keep the general ev spread or should I shift the spdef to def? I am aware we have little tweaks here and there for speed and hp but thats minor compared to where we want to concentrate our defenses. I am sure a physically defensive set would work too and even a set that evenly distributes defenses.

Max HP is divisible by 8, so it provides maximal HP recovery from Lefties and Ice Body - why is 220 HP EVs necessary?

You do have a point about Gliscor, though! Here's a new spread: 252 HP / 56 Def / 36 SpD / 164 Spe; Bold Nature. If you want to keep the HP as 416, then go with 220 HP / 96 Def / 28 SpD / 164 Spe; Bold.

Calc your spread (220 hp 96 def 16 spd) vs my spread (252 hp 56 def 36 spd)

Yours - 252+ Atk Darmanitan Superpower vs. 220 HP / 96 Def Walrein: 298-352 (71.63 - 84.61%)

Mine - 252+ Atk Darmanitan Superpower vs. 252 HP / 56+ Def Walrein: 282-334 (66.5 - 78.77%)

So yes, X-act's Defensive Applet is reliable

this is all technical stuff which Walrein has a lot of because of its set and why I wasn't sure if I should do him for my first analysis. But i still think I am correct.

Max Hp is indeed divisble by 8 but NOT 16. Do you get what i'm getting at? Lefties and ice body heals oly 1/16 of your health rounded DOWN. Now do you see where I am going? Therefore with max hp you would heal 26 hp each turn from lefties and 26 each turn from ice body for a total of 52 hp per turn. you do this twice since you have protect and sub which yields 104 hp. heres the problem though, a sub costs 1/4 of your health. 1/4 of your max 424 hp is exactly 106 hp which is 2 more than what you get. so 104-106=a net loss of 2 hp per cycle.

this is opposed to my spread which has exactly 416 hp with 220 evs. 1/16 of that is exactly 26 which times 2 for ice body and leftovers is 52 again times 2 again since you use protect and sub is 104. the exact same??? but look carefully when you use sub you still lose 1/4 which translates to 104 hp...no net loss! this saves you 1 hp every turn of sub protect.


You forgot one thing about your spread calcs...you didn't give me a bold nature! With bold I only take 65.38 - 76.92% from superpower as opposed to your max hp set which takes 66.5 - 78.77% from the same superpower. Not a big difference but certainly if my set is bulkier AND yields no net sub protect damage i think the case is clear.

QED

Well, now that that's cleared, you should know that 232 HP is better then. Why? Because it gets no net loss from HP and it takes less SR damage, while being veeery slightly bulkier.
Since Substitute damage is rounded down, here's what happens:
Turn 1:Walrein used Substitute! Walrein lost 25% of its health (419/4=104 HP)
It restored a little health using its Leftovers! (419/16=26 HP) Walrein's Ice Body heals it! (419/16=26 HP)
After one turn, Walrein has 419-104+26+26=367 HP
Turn 2: Walrein used Protect! It protected itself
It restored a little health using its Leftovers! (419/16=26 HP) Walrein's Ice Body heals it! (419/16=26 HP)
So after two turns, it still regains its health completely due to Subtitute's HP loss being rounded down too, while taking less damage from SR (or the same damage, but a lower percentage of its max HP).

I'm sorry I didn't recognize my mistake in the previous post, I got confused because you said 1/8 when you were accounting for full recovery.

hilarious, I only used Calm for yours, because that's the nature you provided it in your example.

OK, that makes sense - I provided a spread with 220 HP for that case.

The fact that your spread has more physical bulk (which not really, because it's the same exact spread as I suggested with 220 HP) only means that y(our) spread has a higher emphasis than my original 55% emphasis on physical bulk. Nothing wrong with X-act's Defensive Applet. You would know if you knew the user who created it ;o

Oh, making the parentheses Toxic Stall was just a random thought, it wasn't conducive to what the actual set name should be. Toxic isn't even the first slash! Just make the set name as Stallrein without any parentheses, people will know what you're talking about.

EDIT: oh and some tips for the analysis:

The set comments needs to talk about more. You have this:

• Walrien can take advantage of all of its assets including high defenses and good Special Attack.
• In hail constantly using Protect and then Substitute leads to no net damage for Walrien while the opponent must take hail damage as well as any other residual damage that you have set up.
• Blizzard badly damages almost everything that is unaffaected by Toxic Spikes, which you should be using in conjunction with this set, including OHKOing Nidoking, offensive Roserade and even offensive Zapdos if you managed to put up Stealth Rock.

There's a lot more to say in set comments. You should explain what Roar and Toxic are good for and when to use them over each other. You should explain why one might use Super Fang over Blizzard. You should explain how you use Walrein (i.e. how you can get it into play, what you actually do when it's in play). Also, seconding what Lee said, Toxic doesn't need a slash.

AC wants more specific partners. Think of a Roserade mention for Toxic Spikes. It can take Grass- and Electric-type attacks that severely hurt Walrein and can use Sleep Powder to give Walrein free switch-in opportunities. Walrein has trouble with Fighting-types such as Heracross, Mienshao, and Scrafty, so you'll want to give Crobat, Mew, and Cofagrigus a mention. Maybe Heracross too. Hazards are annoying for Walrein, even with Ice Body. It might have to actually take a hit when it comes in, and especially if it has to switch in and out, that damage is going to pile up. Claydol is pretty good due to its Fighting resistance, but it's also not the best Pokemon, so Bulkytop should be thrown in their as well. Claydol can also set up Stealth Rock. You mention Nidoqueen for Stealth Rock, but there's a few more Pokemon you could talk about; namely, Cobalion (can take Grass-type attacks) and Gligar (can take Fighting- and Electric-type attacks). Put how Pokemon such as Nidoking and Flygon can clean up teams weakened by Walrein's antics.

Cheers!

I will wait for QC to decide what ev spread although i am pretty much convinced 232 hp is optimal.

i dont expect super fang to be here for long (honestly it only hits a handful of steels and they have to be dumb to slowly let themselves get ko'd by it). you miss out on way too much (ZAPDOOOOSSSS)

I dont understand why you want me to talk about Toxic in set comments but you also dont't want it to be in the set.

i added Roserade and mentioned how she can set up toxic Spikes absorb grass moves but I think the sleep powder thing isn't worth a mention since a sleeping poke isn't going to stay in 9 times out of 10 in my experience so walrein doesn't ever get that free set up.

Walrein only has trouble with fighting mons if he hasn't set up yet otherwise he handily beats them all except bu scrafty which can't even 2hko walrein iirc. I dont feel a need to add even more partners to cover the fighting weakness when a team in general already should cover these threats. Its like saying "rayquaza is sd normal arceus weak so have a way to cover that for your team" well duh every team should have a sd arceus counter in ubers (i do play ubers its fun C:) or it will destroy you.

i added the Rapid spin mention although i have yet to decide what the spinner should be...claydol and hitmontop are like mediocre at best while Blastoise is a good spinner for hail stall i find but for the purposes of this analysis (a walrein analysis not a hail stall analysis) it doesn't work terribly well with Walrein.

I guess Gligar and Cobalion make sense to set up SR they just never really stood out to me as good partners, just random sr users.


I might mention the offensive late game cleaners but I stressed several times how this was supposed to be on hail stall only where you won't see many of these attackers. And Nidoking won't go too well if you use Nidoqueen I am guessing (although who knows).

Keep "Stallrein" as the name; it's tradition.

QC Approved 1/3

Good analysis chief, but i'm not quite set on the EVs; mores specifically the Speed evs. What's the point of running that much Speed for Gligar? It usually runs much more speed than that (at least 54 evs from experience, which is enough to outspeed Jolly Victini. And if it doesn't, it should!). And why are you trying to beat Suicune? It's offensive sets are always going to be faster, CroCune doesn't use Roar, so that menas you really only have to worry about the Restalk set that isn't all that much common (27% of Suicunes ran Roar in November). If we do run enough speed to min speed Suicune, Restalk Suicune users are just going to run 4 more Speed evs... which is textbook Speed creeping.

In case you were wondering, speed creeping is acceptable on something like Skarmory, who only needs to run like 24 Speed EVs to outrun all variants of Wobbuffet, but it's a no go on something as slow as Walrein. If we allow the analysis to go onsite as is, it'll just cause players to run 12 Speed on Suicune / Gligar, and then Walrein players will compensate with more Speed, etc etc. I feel like a good speed benchmark is Blastoise, who is significantly more common than Suicune and it doesn't cost much Speed EVs to get the jump on Blastoise.

I'm thinking of using 220 HP / 96 Def / 28 SpD / 164 Spe or any of the spreads that safely put you out of speed creeping range. Thoughts?

PK, min speed and max speed are the two benchmarks that you're allowed to aim for without it being speed creep. Aiming to beat 0 Spe _____ is not speed creep, but aiming to beat 4 Spe _____ or 8 Spe _____ or 168 Spe _____ is. If someone suggests a Suicune spread running 4 more Spe EVs to beat this particular Walrein, THAT would be speed creep, and you should reject that, but if Walrein vs defensive Suicune is an important matchup, what you do is have Walrein's EV spread aim to beat min Speed Suicune, and then in the writeup say something to the effect of "This spread outspeeds minimum Speed Suicune, but Suicune may run a bit of speed, so adding a few more Speed EVs might be helpful to guarantee you outspeed it."

Good point, and thanks for the clarification. That said, I don't feel like Suicune is worth beating, and you're definitely not going to beat Gligar anytime soon. I think aiming for Blastoise would be ideal.

thoughts?

i would still have to use less speed evs because my set aims to beat 8 speed suicune so i believe i should be removing 8 speed evs and placing them into defense. the majority of gligar run less than 8 speed by the way, very few on the ladder run 52 (and i really never heard of running 52 speed on gligar until you said so). aiming for blastoise is still not a bad idea but if you go for blastoise i would be tempted to add just a tad more to beat milotic (so she cannot toxic you) and then by then i feel like i should go all the way up to suicune again.

the thing about walrein is that all he asks for is one chance to set up - just one - and by then if the conditions are right he can sap, easily, 100 or 200 or 300 or even more percents worth of damage. and unlike sweepers doing that much damage that damage is pretty much guaranteed. by investing more in speed you allow more chances to set up which means more chances to inflict large damage.

you still can set up on relatively strong attacks like flygon's outrage or an psychic from azelf while no matter how much you invest in defense you won't be able to take the obscenely strong ones (like lo darmanitan). there is nothing specific the extra defense evs gives to you while there are useful things investing in speed does for you.

Stallrein is probably your best bet. Offensive sets and non-hail sets are just too outclassed. Blizzard should probably be used over Super Fang due to the ubiquity of Nidoqueen and whatnot.

Alright, point taken! Go on ahead as planned.


QC Approved 3/3

I'd disagree on offensive walrein being outclassed. Consider:

Walrein @ Life Orb
Modest
Ice Body
192 HP / 252 SpA / 64 Spe
-Surf (can you believe Walrein doesn't learn Hydro Pump? It's a giant goddamn walrus, come on guys)
-Blizzard
-Super Fang
-HP Electric / HP Grass (for all you Lanturn fans) / Protect

STAB Blizzard is super nice for discouraging Roserade / Shaymin (both of whom are no more than mildly inconvenienced by an Ice Beam from something like offensive Cune), but Super Fang is what makes this set so great. Think about what kind of Pokemon generally stop an offensive Water-type - other water types, generic special walls, grass types. And now realize that Walrein has very few problems with those because of Super Fang. Super Fang takes any defensive potential counters to 44% health immediately - Umbreon faces a high chance of being KO'd with Super Fang -> Blizzard in hail conditions, for example. And the cool part is, Ice Body really helps with offsetting Life Orb recoil.

Two things. First, it would bring a Pokemon with Leftovers down to 50% after they healed, such as Umbreon. Second, in almost any scenario, if Super Fang followed by another move KOs, then two of the same move would also KO, or at least certainly get close. When you factor in that Walrein does less damage than other special attackers with Water and Ice moves, he falls out of favor completely. Since Blizzard does 40% max, Umbreon would be left with 10% health with no hazards, which means it survives Hail.

"in hail conditions"

I don't think anyone would use any Walrein set outside of hail.

"Certainly get close" is not the same thing at all when you're dealing with walls that have instant recovery, like Umbreon or those weird defensive Slowkings - your chance of 2hkoing goes from fairly high to non-existent.

Additionally, f your opponent has both a bulky water and, say, Umbreon, Super Fang is a MUCH safer move than Blizzard, because it guarantees the KO on both.

And finally, if your opponent brings in Snorlax and uses rest, you actually 3hko with Super Fang -> Surf x 2 100% of the time.

What special attackers would these be? Offensively, I can only think of Suicune, Empoleon, and the occasional Milotic / Simipour. Maybe a specs slowbro, but that has completely different coverage and other disadvantages (like that base 30 speed). None of these Pokemon have STAB Ice moves, certainly not one as strong as Blizzard, meaning that Shaymin and Roserade can all come in and threaten with powerful Grass attacks (which offensive Empoleon still very much cares about).

Is anyone still even working on this?