Stall in BW2

[yee]

Originally Posted by Fat alexwolf

I have heard many players saying '' stall is bad in BW2 '', or '' don't use stall in BW2 '' but this is bullshit imo. The real problem of stall is that it is difficult to build it. Good stall teams can still be built, and be very effective, if you have the guts and the patience to go through all that effort though...

I would like to point out I have put plenty of work into building the best possible stall teams- no matter what you do they be outclassed by offense in BW2. I agree that a stall team can be good on it's own, but it will be clearly inferior to BW2 bulky offense / offense no matter what you do, even if you put a Choice Scarfer on it to revenge threats. Dual Screens offense would be an extreme case of BW2 offense eating stall but without weather control (even with against some mons) you may as well give up vs Torn / Thund / Keldeo / any physical attacker in sun etc. It's very easy to set up hazards and threaten a team offensively but not to threaten another defensively. It's not impossible to beat another team by stalling but it clearly won't work as often as a good team should.

[tehy]

Originally Posted by Fat yee

I would like to point out I have put plenty of work into building the best possible stall teams- no matter what you do they be outclassed by offense in BW2. I agree that a stall team can be good on it's own, but it will be clearly inferior to BW2 bulky offense / offense no matter what you do, even if you put a Choice Scarfer on it to revenge threats. Dual Screens offense would be an extreme case of BW2 offense eating stall but without weather control (even with against some mons) you may as well give up vs Torn / Thund / Keldeo / any physical attacker in sun etc. It's very easy to set up hazards and threaten a team offensively but not to threaten another defensively. It's not impossible to beat another team by stalling but it clearly won't work as often as a good team should.

Not as much as me, and i don't find them to be that much outclassed. They have problems, sure, and next gen they may become really unviable, but not this one. And choice scarfers are not necessary, or even that great.
You mean, stall eating offense? Dualscreens teams are lolbait, it's not hard to wait for the screens to run out-i'm a stall team, i'm DESIGNED to wait a lot. And weather control isn't that hard to get either.

I don't know, i've done pretty well with stall, but they do need some great additions in sixth gen or it may be GG.

[Melee Mewtwo]

I had forgotten to mention the new toys from the Dream World. Personally, I don't like ST Gothitelle. It's got everything it needs in its movepool to mess with Stall whatever way you need it to and Shadow Tag to make sure it pulls it off.

[yee]

"Weather diversifying the metagame" isn't what stall is worried about. Rain and Sun offense will always look almost exactly the same (and as a side effect lower diversity because other forms of offense aren't as good) and without weather countering will just overpower stall. Even without Rain and Sun the top offensive pokemon of OU will beat stall. You will know exactly whats coming and not be able to stop it when you have the threats I've mentioned to deal with.

I do agree that trying to achieve a balance by unbanning Ubers is the wrong approach to reaching balance. If something's broken, smashing it again won't fix it. You have to take out all of the parts that cannot fit in a balanced metagame.

[Melee Mewtwo]

Originally Posted by Fat yee

"Weather diversifying the metagame" isn't what stall is worried about. Rain and Sun offense will always look almost exactly the same (and as a side effect lower diversity because other forms of offense aren't as good) and without weather countering will just overpower stall. Even without Rain and Sun the top offensive pokemon of OU will beat stall. You will know exactly whats coming and not be able to stop it when you have the threats I've mentioned to deal with.

I do agree that trying to achieve a balance by unbanning Ubers is the wrong approach to reaching balance. If something's broken, smashing it again won't fix it. You have to take out all of the parts that cannot fit in a balanced metagame.

Do you mean these guys?

Originally Posted by Fat yee

The problem is simply too much power creep. Stall did have a power creep of it's own with stuff like Regenerator and Rain Dish Tenta but Offense wins Offense vs. stall consistently here. It doesn't matter what weathers beat another- they're just arbitrary upgrades / counters to different offense and stall and the offense consistently beats stall because of Deo-D / Tornadus / Thundurus / Genesect / Terrakion etc. Banning rain does nerf offense more than stall when Torn / Thund / Keldeo are in the equation and it does release the need to counter entire weather team archetypes (packing defensive counters to them isn't a "challenge", it's not possible) in order to deal with those threats but with the current balance of offense and stall as is it will surely take more than just banning weather to create a level playing field.

All of those guys would be much easier for stall to handle not just cause the lack of weather would make most of them significantly weaker, but also because Stall wouldn't have to worry about all the other guys that get a boost from weather at the same time (Victini, Toxicroak, anything with water/fire attacks, Thunder, Hurricane, etc.). This makes it easier for team building and it would be less likely that there would be holes left for games to be predetermined by team match-up. I agree that there might be a few more guys to ban after that, but it would already be good first step. Anyways, we'll see what the OU council decides to do. In the mean time, we'll have to try and figure out a way to deal with what we got.


Speaking of revenge killers, Ditto is pretty anti-metagame and can benefit from Stall pushing Offense to boost while serving as your general revenge killer (as shown in the Dark Horse thread). What do you guys think of it?

[DarkBlazeR]

I ran Ditto on a semi-stall team for my Dark Horse run and whilst it didn't always come in useful, it definitely helped fight off BW2's most dangerous threats in the long run.

I'd say stall is possible in BW2, though it needs good support to work effectively. You can't simply run 6 walls like in ADV and early D/P and call it stall. If you browse through some of the most successful stall teams from 5th gen in the RMT forum, you'll notice they all run some kind of anti-anti-stall member. Choice Scarf Tyranitar is a classic option, though others have been utilised such as Excadrill (when it was OU), Dragon Tail Dragonite, CM Latias, Quagsire, Sableye, Xatu, Shed Shell Heatran, SDef Scizor, Amoonguss etc (and of course Ditto).

With a little creativity and skilled team building, it is possible to get a stall team onto the leaderboard. It's a difficult road, but I wouldn't go as far as calling stall unviable, which seems to be the consensus of the thread so far.

[Melee Mewtwo]

I'm sure you can get a stall team on the leaderboard but it doesn't mean Stall is worthwhile. I could probably get Lavos Spawn's sun team on the leader board with only one attack on Ninetales but all I'm doing is handicapping myself to prove a silly point.

Welcome back, Garchomp. Rest in peace, Stall.

[DarkBlazeR]

Originally Posted by Fat Melee Mewtwo

I'm sure you can get a stall team on the leaderboard but it doesn't mean Stall is worthwhile. I could probably get Lavos Spawn's sun team on the leader board with only one attack on Ninetales but all I'm doing is handicapping myself to prove a silly point.

Welcome back, Garchomp. Rest in peace, Stall.

I never said stall was better (or even "good" for that matter). I agree that stall is very difficult this generation, and probably not worth the hassle. My point is that it isn't completely dead as a playstyle.

[IbanezObsession]

Like other people have said, I think stall is not at all as viable as it used to be. It struggles against Rain Offense as, well, rain is pretty much broken in the offensive department with the release of Tornadus-T, as hazards no longer hinder it because of Regenerator. CB Terrakion is also nothing to joke about as it 2HKO's 95% of the pokes in OU with ease. When you see a stall player having to sac one of their pokes at full health just to switch into a poke to resist that choice-locked threat's move, then you know stall is starting to lose its viability.

I've hardly seen a successful stall team as of late, with the release of Genesect (which, by the way, has almost unrivaled coverage and a Download boost to go with it) especially. At this point, it's almost become impossible to counter/check all of the offensive threats with only a 6 slot team.

Anyone can still use stall if they wanted; the problem is getting success with it like people used to do back in DPP.

[IstheCakeReallyaLie]

Originally Posted by Fat IbanezObsession

rain is pretty much broken

True, but I don't exactly want Politoed to become the first member of BL0.

[alkinesthetase]

finally beat xcom's main campaign so i can take a break and do some smogoning

anyway i honestly don't think garchomp's return changes much for stall. most stall teams in this era kind of need skarmory (you need the spikes, and mamoswine can really injure you if you aren't running something like skarm. slowbro is solid against mamo but it loses to boosting dragons regardless, unless it lands the scald burn), and skarm's position in the game was already established - it walls most physical dragons, except

1) haxorus aqua tail under rain, which can pack quite a punch. a boosted superpower can also hurt, and a taunt is catastrophic - PK's haxorus sets in the megathread definitely illustrate how to beat skarmory.
2) dragonite's sun fire punch
NEW - 3) garchomp's sun fire fang

garchomp's fire fang and dragonite's fire punch are pretty directly comparable in terms of whether or not they can be walled. because of their low base power and lack of stab, a physically defensive skarmory can take an unboosted hit from either one fairly well. LO would hurt a bit more but almost no physical dragonite that carries fire punch runs LO (lum/lefties is standard) and almost no garchomp carrying fire fang runs it either (yache is MUCH more popular because it works against offense teams where as LO is too easily checked) of course, if boosted (CB/SD/DD), or in sun, it can leave a lasting mark on skarmory, but a whirlwind and some roosting, if you can find the time for it (admittedly a challenge), can deal with that problem. a surprise fire blast from either one, even uninvested, will also leave a deep dent in skarmory, because the standard skarm right now is (has to be) physical. but that is quite rare - mixed dragonites are the only ones that carry fire blast and they're way down at the bottom of dragonite's usage. no standard garchomp set carries fire blast either.

anyway not to say that stall is more viable because of garchomp's return, because that would obviously be incorrect. mainly the point i'm making is that garchomp, in and of itself, does not change much for stall. skarmory was able to wall most dragonite before unless they had a strong fire punch or a surprise fire blast (which is extremely rare), same is true of garchomp. stall hasn't gotten any better, but it hasn't gotten much worse either.

the real problem with garchomp's return is that every time a powerful offensive threat comes back into the game, the popularity of offense goes up further, which will probably make it even harder to ladder with stall than before. oh well. those of us that were running stall in this metagame, we knew we'd be having an uphill battle to start with.

[StairFall]

Just wanted to say that Chomp doesn't need the sun to 2hko skarm, +2 LO does the job fine. I'm also disagreeing with the notion that stall can't function with chomp running around. Offence got another powerful monster but he's no different from all the other powerful monsters. Expanding the pool of offensive pokemon doesn't make them stronger, just means there's more (almost irrelevant) choice. If you can wall Dnite you can probably wall Chomp.

[bubbly]

Stallish teams which dgaf about Genesect seem a lot more effective in this metagame, because it makes it vastly easier for them to keep momentum. For instance, I've been using Spikes Roserade / Jellicent / Rocky Helmet Heatran on a few different teams and it completely takes Genesect out of the game (and even turns it into a liability in some instances). Roserade is really underrated, it does better against Gene than any other Spiker in OU, and it checks a huge amount of stuff (Breloom, Keldeo, Rain in general, Rotom-W, Thundurus, Toxic Spikes / status). Oh, and it beats every common Spinner 1v1 if you use HP Fire :)

[Melee Mewtwo]

Originally Posted by Fat alkinesthetase

anyway not to say that stall is more viable because of garchomp's return, because that would obviously be incorrect. mainly the point i'm making is that garchomp, in and of itself, does not change much for stall. skarmory was able to wall most dragonite before unless they had a strong fire punch or a surprise fire blast (which is extremely rare), same is true of garchomp. stall hasn't gotten any better, but it hasn't gotten much worse either.

This is all true, however, Garchomp's SR resist vs a SR weakness, access to SD (Which is generally better against stall than DD since the speed boost is mostly useless), and STAB EQ makes it more annoying that Dragonite as it can't be taken down easily by phazing (you need spikes for that) and can get past other physically bulky mons with a safe strong Earthquake instead of having to be locked into an Outrage. Oh well, Garchomp is old news now.

Originally Posted by Fat bubbly

Stallish teams which dgaf about Genesect seem a lot more effective in this metagame, because it makes it vastly easier for them to keep momentum. For instance, I've been using Spikes Roserade / Jellicent / Rocky Helmet Heatran on a few different teams and it completely takes Genesect out of the game (and even turns it into a liability in some instances). Roserade is really underrated, it does better against Gene than any other Spiker in OU, and it checks a huge amount of stuff (Breloom, Keldeo, Rain in general, Rotom-W, Thundurus, Toxic Spikes / status). Oh, and it beats every common Spinner 1v1 if you use HP Fire :)

I think Genesect and Tornadus T are the two big things for Stall to worry about countering. The former cause it's Genesect and the latter cause it doesn't care about hazards and uses stuff like Taunt and Substitute so you need something that can safely come in repeatedly so that the rest of the team can be worn down. That's a pretty cool core, though. It checks a lot of the major stuff and has all the hazard utilities covered (and FWG is always cool).

Something I have been toying with for the longest time now is defensive Dragonite. His resistances lets him check a lot of rain and sun sweepers and with Multiscale he becomes a pain to force out. Thrown in SR and Sun ends up in an uncomfortable position. Sadly, he doesn't really provide much utilities and Ice and Rock weaknesses hampers his switch in opportunities.


I read in the Suspect thread about a somewhat stall looking team that used "Defensive Toed / Tentacruel / Scarf Genesect / Ferrothorn / Tornadus-T / Dugtrio". I haven't seen much of it but I'm interested to hear how it plays out. It looks solid barring that Tornadus-T weakness that was mentioned (which looks really hard for it to play around).

[DarkBlazeR]

I've been running sun stall with Shed Shell Ninetales / Forretress / Heatran / +SDef Jellicent / Regenerator Tangrowth / CM Cresselia lately, and it works wonders. Though it can still struggle against some of the more infamous stall-breakers, what it does offer is the ability to check virtually every relevant threat. Sun stall is quite an effective strategy in the current metagame as a large proportion of the most dangerous sweepers rely on rain to be threatening. Take that away, and breaking down the opponent's team becomes a hell of a lot easier.

I've noticed that many common offensive teams struggle to cope with being worn down by hazards - the lack of healing moves/items meaning that any damage is usually permanent. What makes this team effective is the fact that people generally tend not even to prepare specifically for dealing with stall, as it is generally an uncommon play style in the current metagame. Shed Shell Ninetales is amazing, and practically guarantees that I'll win the weather war. A FWG core of Heatran/Jellicent/Tangrowth checks the majority of things, Forretress is the obligatory spiker, spinner and physically defensive Steel, whilst CM Cresselia completes the team as a surprisingly dangerous late game sweeper, as well as an general utility counter to a myriad of threats thanks to its Uber-standards defenses.

[Jazz]

I've made 1950 on smogon servers multiple times with my semi-stall team. The playstyle is definitely still really good, however it takes a lot of skill considering how fast the meta is and one mistake could mean losing.

[Whitakker]

From what I've experienced, most teams usually don't expect stall teams, like DarkBlazeR said. However, using one well in this power-creeped metagame requires one to possess damn near ESP-like prediction skills if they want to overcome the offensive onslaught. Add to the fact that it's nigh impossible to check all threats with a stall team with only six slots available--something's almost always gonna be left out--using stall certainly isn't for those lacking intestinal fortitude.

I run what most would call a rain stall team, but I have an absolutely crippling SR weakness that shuts down two of my biggest attacking threats (Drizzle Volcarona and CB Gyarados). But say I replace Volcarona with Starmie to get rid of hazards? Now I've opened the door to any Scizor or Celebi to come and Do the Devil's Work on my team, two pokes that Drizzle Volcarona is meant to check. It boils down to which threats I can afford to be unprotected against the most. I've had to sit at Team Preview for at least a minute trying to decipher what their lead will be(sometimes easy, sometimes not), because it is so terribly vital for stall teams in this metagame to get the momentum in their favor from Turn 1.

I'd never say that stall is useless in BW2 OU now, its just hella difficult to do, and you need very good prediction skills to use it to any effect.

[Lady Alex]

volcarona and CB gyarados don't exactly scream stall.

[Whitakker]

Originally Posted by Fat Lady Alex

volcarona and CB gyarados don't exactly scream stall.

Of course, and like someone mentioned earlier this thread, its kind of a misnomer to call it "rain stall"...perhaps more "rain balance" is the accurate term. My team functions with two main stallers, Hydration Vaporeon and Blissey, and are given offensive backup with CB Gyara and Volcarona. In the current metagame, you really need something on a stall team to hit hard that keeps your opponent off guard. If I didn't have Gyara on the team, I'd have very little to actually attack with, outside of my revenge killer Jolteon.

[Da Funk]

Amoonguss have regenerator and amazing hp, Seismitoad have SR and water absorb, good hp, Jirachi is the most counter of Tornadus-T and Lanturn IB or Hidro pump/Chansey toxic count Thundurus-T but he have NP (...) Heatran count Genesect and Venusaur, Tenta(toxic) and Amoonguss count Keldeo etc etc... Stall is viable but the hyperof teams and off teams make difficult to win. Deo-D-torna-t-terra-thund-t(np)-genesect-landorus special and landorus double dance... D:

[alkinesthetase]

my cutoff for stall is ONE highly offensive pokemon amidst a slew of defensive and supportive mons. i think of KG stall's cb tar from dpp when i say this. a team that doesn't win primarily by outlasting and accumulating residual damage is not stall. drizzle volc + cb gyara + jolteon is not stall lol. neither is rain dugtrio + tornadus-T. the team i'm thinking of laddering with in the future (preliminarly lineup of hippo/jelli/forry/latias/heatran/genesect), even THIS is cutting the lines of stall for me.

i doubt everyone agrees with my definition, but stall looks viable in bw2 if people start thinking that cb gyara + volcarona = stall. surely it goes without saying that this is not stall. having a spiker and a spinner on your team doesn't make it stall - at best that means it's not HO. stall, in the proper sense, should be taking this to a much greater length.

[Whitakker]

Originally Posted by Fat alkinesthetase

drizzle volc + cb gyara + jolteon is not stall lol.

I agree, it certainly isn't. But from my experience, the only way my walls stick around long enough to be useful is to have that firepower waiting in the wings to take care of things that threaten them. I shouldn't label my team as "rain stall" (and I certainly no longer will, thanks to the collective wisdom of this thread), so I'll have to backtrack on that. Still, I'd rather challenge myself with using a mix of walls and fast attackers than just follow the crowd, abandon stall entirely and just slap Genesect on my team, like everyone else seems to be doing.

[Lady Alex]

Originally Posted by Fat Whitakker

Of course, and like someone mentioned earlier this thread, its kind of a misnomer to call it "rain stall"...perhaps more "rain balance" is the accurate term. My team functions with two main stallers, Hydration Vaporeon and Blissey, and are given offensive backup with CB Gyara and Volcarona. In the current metagame, you really need something on a stall team to hit hard that keeps your opponent off guard. If I didn't have Gyara on the team, I'd have very little to actually attack with, outside of my revenge killer Jolteon.

Like you said, that isn't stall. It's balance.

[Scarfwynaut]

I think the cutoff between stall and semistall is the difference in the kind of offensive pokemon you use (if you use any at all, then its obviously full stall). I feel if the main offensive pokemon is specifically geared to sweep teams rather than just function as a check, versus a pokemon to act as a sort of glue to the team. If it is the first one, its probably semi-stall. Examples of semisteall might be DD-dragonite or SD-Terrakion + a strong deffensive core. If instead the pokemon if there to simply function as a more offensive check to threats for a team, its probably still stall, for example if a team uses only CB-tyranitar, scarf-tyranitar, or CB-Scizor as its main offensive pokemon, and then the rest are defensive. Generally, its probably not semistall as that pokemon isn't geared to sweep.

The difference between semistall and balanced is very blurred, even more so by the notion of bulky offensive. Generally though, semi-stall is much more defensive than a usual balanced team, balanced is the traditional core + sweepers team, and bulky offense is balances but with more "tanky" pokemon.

So basically, Whitakker, your team is probably a more defensive "bulky offensive" team, not stall.

[Whitakker]

Originally Posted by Fat Scarfwynaut

I think the cutoff between stall and semistall is the difference in the kind of offensive pokemon you use (if you use any at all, then its obviously full stall). I feel if the main offensive pokemon is specifically geared to sweep teams rather than just function as a check, versus a pokemon to act as a sort of glue to the team. If it is the first one, its probably semi-stall. Examples of semisteall might be DD-dragonite or SD-Terrakion + a strong deffensive core. If instead the pokemon if there to simply function as a more offensive check to threats for a team, its probably still stall, for example if a team uses only CB-tyranitar, scarf-tyranitar, or CB-Scizor as its main offensive pokemon, and then the rest are defensive. Generally, its probably not semistall as that pokemon isn't geared to sweep.

The difference between semistall and balanced is very blurred, even more so by the notion of bulky offensive. Generally though, semi-stall is much more defensive than a usual balanced team, balanced is the traditional core + sweepers team, and bulky offense is balances but with more "tanky" pokemon.

So basically, Whitakker, your team is probably a more defensive "bulky offensive" team, not stall.

Thanks for clearing that up for me, Scarfwynaut. I wasn't being very clear with my words.