- What are the roles of Pokemon that were essential to your stall team's success? During the grind to the top 100, I found that hazards were the deciding factor in every singe game I played. When facing an opposing stall team, my spikes were able to wear them down very quickly when they did not carry a rapid spinner. However, when facing an offensive team, Stealth Rock alone did an insurmountable amount of damage. The constant pressure to keep switching tacked on with the mistake of giving 1 free turn of setup (leading to stealth rock) put my team in a bad position many times. For this reason, rapid spinning was incredibly useful against balanced offensive teams. Whether they were on my side of the field or the opponents, entry hazards played a big part in every match.
- What was the most useful Pokemon in your team and why? Without a doubt, the core of Slowbro, Amoongus, and Heatran was integral in every game. My only defense against the aforementioned Stealth Rock + bulky offense teams were to keep switching with Slowbro and Amoongus until I was able to get into heatran and put rocks of my own up. Several games were dependent on pokemon that could take out this core, such as Alakazam, Tornadus-T, Reuniclus, and Genesect. Luckily, heatran covered a few of these opponents, but was unable to wall the entire metagame. A stall team must have a near perfect defensive core, and mine worked wonders. Amoongus stood out in particular, as it was not only able to regenerate lost damage most of the time, but put to sleep key hazard inducers that would stack up damage against my team in particular. Overall I feel like Gliscor pulled the least weight, unfortunately. While Gliscor's SubToxic stall set is extremely competent, I found the teams it was able to beat by itself beatable by a combination of my other pokemon. However, once it had some time to set up, it became very deadly. This occurred fewer times than I would have prefferred, unfortunately.
- What were the biggest threats to your stall team, and how you dealt with them? There was no bigger threat to my team than Reuniclus--every stall team's nightmare. A huge reliance on passive damage through hazards on my team left Tyranitar as the only one able to hurt Reuniclus for any substantial damage, and it could not often switch in safely and could only pick off weakened varieties. Alakazam also put huge pressure on, and a trend began to emerge: any special attacker that could put a dent in Amoongus was a huge problem. Jirachi was another problem, but could usually be dealt with thanks to Heatran and Gliscor's resistances. That was, until, I faced a Jirachi in the rain. Ultimately, I found that playing 100% cautious was the only way to even have a chance against these pokemon. Had my opponent been perfect, I would never had won certain matches.
- Did you find it easy or difficult to build a successful stall team? I've found that when making any team that emphasizes defense over offense in BW2, it is impossible to cover everything. This has always been well known--in fact, I remember a certain quote out of an old smog article about stall; below 1337 equivalent stats stall was mostly unviable, due to niche pokemon like Calm Mind Refresh Latias walking all over them. In BW2, these pokemon are no longer niche, they are 100% competitively viable. You can't chose what will beat you, but you can chose what you beat.
- How did you reach the Hall of Fame? Was it easy or difficult? Did having a stall team benefit you? What advice would you give to those laddering with stall teams? I reached the HoF through a pure mad-grind-rush-bonus pool to the top 100 in a very small (at least I think so) number of matches. While it may have been fast, it was certainly not easy. Some matches were won "easily" due to simply having a stall team. It is quite unexpected in the current metagame, and can put several offensive teams in a bind. However, the matches where one of the pokemon that gave my team trouble turned into big panic moments, and even more so when multiples of these pokemon were involved. The advice I would give is to keep all pokemon alive at all times. On a stall team, pokemon can recover with *some* effort, and once hazards are removed, simply switching in and gaining even leftovers recover helped so much in my games. If a pokemon can be saved for death fodder, then save it. Especially with my core, three pokemon at 50% each were more useful than two pokemon at full health and one fainted. This allows you to play more flexibly, and gain those game-changing turns that defined each match. A pokemon simply existing can often beat an opponents, such as blissey vs special attackers (at least in the past...). Keeping something on the playing field allowed less "one turn mattering" or "on the edge" games.
