The Defense of the Titans Project

Oh, I didn't really catch your point there. I thought you were referring to the team. I've had a problem building sand stall in the current metagame (Hippowdon varients). Defensive Hippowdon / Slowbro / Jirachi / Latias / Forretress / Heatran was one I recently built but having Latias as your only Rotom-W check is shitty since its commonly ran with Tyranitar.

I've always found Hitmontop to be just soooooo mediocre since it can't check much.. :|

I've found that celebi has been a big letdown for me in the past, and really has much more of a genesect problem than it's worth imo. Regenerator, while passively acting, has proven to be one of the most important facets of the team. Often times you don't find the time to use that healing move, so having a way to heal up automatically is a godsend.

I was planning to replace Gliscor with Specially Defensive Hippowdon, since in honestly gives the same stuff Gliscor does, minus a fighting resistance and ground immunity, for much extended bulk and ability to beat things like genesect and jirachi, things that really troubled me in the past. It also has a huge natural power for a stall team, which would be useful in wearing down things like reuniclus. What do you guys think?

EDIT: after some thinking, I can most definitely conclude that ditto is crap for a stall team. If you switch in to transform and kill something, then the only way to do that is to have the opponent be good against themselves...such as HP ice landorus. But, this means that they can nail you with it on the switch. Well, then, why not just wait until something goes down and revenge kill? Because that's the complete opposite of stall. In that case, the opponent can just switch out an bring their poke back in later to wreak more havoc. That's what I don't like about "sack something and revenge" pokemon...like kyurem-b. But I won't get into that here....at any rate, my most important thing to keep in mind is to keep the pokemon alive at all costs, which ditto goes against. The only way it would be useful would be transforming into an opponent's defensive pokemon (like a gastrodon that you've toxiced, assuming they don't have toxic themselves) and wall "yourself". Or transform into your opponents spinner or something. But relying on your opponent to spin away their own hazards? That's just bad strategy.

I don't think you should run Hippowdon honestly, it makes you team much weaker to SD Scizor. There are still plenty of scizors out there and a good portion of them are SD, Hippowdon just flat out loses to them, one thing every stall team needs defensively is a scizor switch in, don't lose that.

But assuming scizor is strong enough to OHKO hippowdon, which I don't believe it can do, correct me if I'm wrong, then wouldn't it not be bulky enough to take a hit? Alternatively, wouldn't it be not fast enough to outspeed a heatran? Scizor is dangerous, but I don't think it can do everything at once.

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Interesting project. I've had a couple of stall cores I always wanted to try out and this seems like the perfect opportunity to do so. :}

I really, really like the idea for this project. I won't have time for a few more weeks, but I am definitely looking forward to participating in this.

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GatoDelFuego said:

But assuming scizor is strong enough to OHKO hippowdon, which I don't believe it can do, correct me if I'm wrong, then wouldn't it not be bulky enough to take a hit? Alternatively, wouldn't it be not fast enough to outspeed a heatran? Scizor is dangerous, but I don't think it can do everything at once.

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Offensive scizor with 252 speed can outspeed your Heatran and kill it with superpower / brick break. And even defensive hippowdon is easily 2HKOed by bug bite at +2. Not to mention that Hippowdon does not sponge choice band u-turns easily, taking around 30% from each u-turn.

Ive attempted to use Hippowdon for scizor in the past, it just doesn't work.

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Princess Bri said:

Oh, I didn't really catch your point there. I thought you were referring to the team. I've had a problem building sand stall in the current metagame (Hippowdon varients). Defensive Hippowdon / Slowbro / Jirachi / Latias / Forretress / Heatran was one I recently built but having Latias as your only Rotom-W check is shitty since its commonly ran with Tyranitar.

I've always found Hitmontop to be just soooooo mediocre since it can't check much.. :|

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It will sound stupid, but running "Reflect Type" in Latias, it avoids pursuiters like Tyranitar (not scarfer version, you need predict) or Scizor, and it can annoy things like Ferrothorn or Magnezone.

I used "Psyshock, Dragon Pulse, Recover and Reflect Type" set into a sun team on last suspect, but I think HP Fire or Fighting is possible too if you need it.

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So, would there be an advantage to replacing gliscor with hippowdon and replace tyranitar with something like scarf genesect? Unfortunately my team doesn't really have an SD scizor check...again, that's something I struggle with, except for gliscor. However, I think hippowdon could solve a lot of problems, and give a bit more offensive muscle to what I have.

GatoDelFuego said:

So, would there be an advantage to replacing gliscor with hippowdon and replace tyranitar with something like scarf genesect? Unfortunately my team doesn't really have an SD scizor check...again, that's something I struggle with, except for gliscor. However, I think hippowdon could solve a lot of problems, and give a bit more offensive muscle to what I have.

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Hippowdon's actually a pretty good idea, and I commend you for using it over Gliscor if you actually do that.

Here's a typical Hippowdon set I run, for reference:

Hippowdon @ Leftovers
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 Def / 252 HP / 4 Atk
Impish Nature
- Earthquake
- Stockpile
- Slack Off
- Toxic

While I would probably rather put my 252 EVs in SpDef over Def, I do have Stockpile which boosts both. Since your goal is to come in on a lot of physical threats, you can set up a Stockpile or two on them with relative ease, then heal off the damage with Slack Off and dent the opponents with Earthquake. You could also replace Toxic with a coverage move should you feel Earthquake is inadequate for offense (I used Stone Edge as my second move on a different Hippowdon set). Or if you're facing a lot of Poisons and Steels in the first place, maybe you could run a different move so you don't have trouble with Skarmory (Hippowdon knows Fire Fang, which not only gets at Skarmory but allows you to destroy Ferrothorn, Genesect, Scizor, and Forretress with little worry about them).

That said, I actually do different Hippowdon sets as well (sometimes I use Hippowdon as my SR setter, allowing Heatran to run a TormentTran set instead and still kick some ass in Stall team).

Yeah, I'm probably not going to be laddering at all. After just losing 100 points that will never be regained, unless I start a new alt or just wait a week or so for bonus pool, I'm not even cracking top 100 here. The problem with stall is that you can't just muscle through laddering, as each match takes a considerable amount of time. It took about 4 hours to do 20 matches today...and 1 piece of hax can undo an hour's worth of work. It's quite frustrating, although it is very satisfying to actually reach the peak with a full stall team. That is perhaps the reason why people don't use stall on the ladder. It's fun for tournaments, and overall more satisfying to play, but won't even get you into the top unless you devote like a week of time. Unfortunately, I don't have that. I'll be sticking around, though.

Going to restart this challenge with an alt as I've had a string of terrible luck that's basically significantly offset my chances of reaching the HoF. I've updated my OP with the new alt name. (Phanerozoic)

I restarted my alt, it is now kiss my class.

edit: I've been laddering on this alt for the last hour or so and I'm at

ou2019922159 ± 112 (provisional)1300

hopefully I can get the deviation down so I can get a class . :]

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Good discussion guys, ESPECIALLY Bri, Neliel, and GatoDelFuego! Thanks for sharing your team with us, Gato!

It seems like everybody is discussing how the currently popular RP Landorus can wreck stall. Neliel, you mentioned that Chansey fares better against RP Landorus than Blissey, but I disagree. The new optimal spread for Blissey is 4 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD+, which drastically improves its special-sponging capabilities than the former max HP / max Def+. Combine it with Lefties, it's a superior option than Chansey. Here are some calcs:

252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus (+SAtk) Focus Blast vs 4 HP / 252 SpD Blissey (+SpDef): 39% - 46% (260 - 306 HP). Guaranteed 3HKO (even with Rocks)

252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus (+SAtk) Focus Blast vs 252 HP/ 4 SpD Eviolite Chansey (Neutral): 40% - 47% (282 - 334 HP). Has a chance to 2HKO with Rocks.

Less reliable, but another interesting option is Specially-defensive Jellicent. It not only provides you a good check to RP Landorus, but also a check to Reuniclus as well. Even more it's a spinblocker :F

252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Landorus (+SAtk) Earth Power vs 252 HP / 252 SpD Leftovers Water Absorb Jellicent (+SpDef): 43% - 50% (175 - 205 HP).

OK, not as good as I expected , since it has ~25% chance of getting 2HKOed by Earth Power after SR (and a pretty much guaranteed 2HKO with Sand + Rocks). Definitely want to couple Jellicent with like Rotom-C or something :X

Another Pokemon I'm intrigued to try out is Bulky Deoxys-D. Sets up Spikes easily enough, and can prevent set-up with Taunt. It will also be a bitch to take out thanks to Recover. I've seen SJCrew use a similar set in the suspect ladder with great effect (although, it was on an offensive team).

okay i'm done laddering for now, got silver class. i never legitimately lost but i had two garbage matches where my opponents got 4+ crits. yahhhhh.. not fun. anyways, from laddering i've found that stall is still pretty cool since no one prepares for it and an effective stall team can fare well versus offense. i really am interested in seeing the teams or ideas people can come up with since there is still much to be explored in bw2 stall. i just used sun stall.

Pocket, the problem is that with stealth rock and sand(which is used a lot in combination with landorus) blissey is still 2koed, while if you use the same spread on chansey(calm max def max sp def) the damage drastically changes. 361 Atk VS 339 Def (+1) and 641 HP (120 Base Power): 211 - 248 (32.91% - 38.68%) (well, not even that drastically lol) Anyway landorus never kos even with sr+sand.
Also, jellicent sucks against landorus because scald does a 60ish which is not enough to kill it.

Neliel Tu Oderschvank said:

Pocket, the problem is that with stealth rock and sand(which is used a lot in combination with landorus) blissey is still 2koed, while if you use the same spread on chansey(calm max def max sp def) the damage drastically changes. 361 Atk VS 339 Def (+1) and 641 HP (120 Base Power): 211 - 248 (32.91% - 38.68%) (well, not even that drastically lol) Anyway landorus never ko even with sr+sand.
Also, jellicent sucks against landorus because scald does a 60ish which is not enough to kill it.

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wat.

i thought he was discussing sheer force lando? your base power describes that but its going on defense and you said sand.. ?

also pocket, spdef jellicent is such a bad counter, let alone check, to both Reuniclus and Landorus. With Taunt and Night Shade it could beat CM-Psychic Reuniclus but Psyshock gives it trouble; furthermore, it even has trouble switching in versus trick room due to shadow ball and spa investment. landorus 2hko's with hazards so.. meh. landorus ruining teambuilding :|

yea, you're right, Jellicent is a shitty check against RP Landorus, seeing how its 2HKOed by its main STAB -_-;; such a shame, since Jellicent is awesome otherwise.

I added you into HoF, Bri, I hope you like it. I'd like to hear more about your experience with Sun Stall, since I remember it got a lot of flack in the previous CCAT that fell through :d

I dont understand whats wrong with what i said. Sand is used with landorus and i did the calc with this calculator where theres no difference between defense and special defense.
oh, wait, i didnt mean sand force landorus :/