XY NU Stall in NU (Ya gotta make do with what ya got)

[Jillix]

After playing stall for a long time back in BW2 Nu, I decide to try to make a XY stall team. With many new threats in the tier, notably Xatu and Defog Shiftry, and the loss of great Pokemon like Alomomola, I knew I had work ahead of me to be done. In the end, this is what I came up with...
Seismitoad @ Leftovers

Ability: Water Absorb

EVs: 252 HP / 4 SAtk / 252 SDef

Careful Nature

- Toxic

- Stealth Rock

- Knock Off

- Scald​

Seismitoad works very well as a rock setter with the ability to contain fire and electric type attackers. Good mixed defenses with special investment makes him a good check to Electrivire and Magmortars not run hp Grass. Outside of rock setting, he offers general utility by getting rid of items and spreading status around. His resistance to stealth rocks allows him to switch in without fear to receive wishes from team members.

Cryogonal @ Leftovers

Ability: Levitate

EVs: 252 HP / 4 SAtk / 252 SDef

Calm Nature

- Toxic

- Recover

- Rapid Spin

- Freeze Dry
​

My second special wall and rapid spinner. I find that in NU to make stall work a rapid spinner is essential, and Cryogonal is the best choice for this. Great defensive stats and ability lets it come in on many special attackers and spin no problem, only fearing stealth rock on the way in. Recover keeps it around for a long time, will toxic works well on switches and Freeze Dry is solid stab that can smash through opposing Seismitoads and Ludicolo. Its high speed helps it spin as a last resort, nail an attacker with a move or even heal up before your opponent has time to move.

Gourgeist-Small @ Leftovers

Ability: Frisk

EVs: 252 HP / 4 SDef

Impish Nature

- Pain Split

- Will-O-Wisp

- Leech Seed

- Substitute​

A great physical wall in a tier full of fighting, water, and ground moves. This Gourgeist give me much needed will-o-wisp support along with passive damage through leech seed. Alongside this, it acts as a spin blocker and eases prediction with substitute. It has the ability to check both Sandslash, Avalugg, and Armaldo. It works great to out speed certain threats and set up a substitute before being statused or even just to deal chip damage through leech seed and will-o-wisp.

Lickilicky @ Leftovers

Ability: Oblivious

EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SDef

Careful Nature

- Dragon Tail

- Heal Bell

- Wish

- Protect
​

The pink blob of NU returns to sponge more special attacks. Licky, through the combination of huge hp, the ability to heal and phase, forces the most switches of anything on the team. By absorbing nearly all non-super effective special attacks, Licky is always a safe choice to switch into. From there, you can’t elect to either phase the switch in, or heal up a teammate. While he does struggle with substitutes, he can always wish in a different team member more suited to the task, such as…

Qwilfish @ Black Sludge

Ability: Intimidate

EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def

Impish Nature

- Pain Split

- Spikes

- Taunt

- Waterfall​

Qwilfish. Taunt is an invaluable asset on a stall team to allow it to beat other stall teams or setup sweepers. Along with being a solid spiker with a great ability, Qwilfish can dish out real damage to threats through Waterfall. Painsplit increases life span while cutting down your opponent’s, useful for matches with defoggers present. Lastly, intimidate mates many attackers much more manageable.

Slurpuff @ Leftovers

Ability: Sweet Veil

EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SAtk

Bold Nature

- Wish

- Protect

- Aromatherapy

- Dazzling Gleam
​

The newest edition, the cream puff that, well, ‘sponges’ hits. Bad jokes aside, Slurpuff does a great job of absorbing physical hits, notably fighting and dark type attacks that smash through a lot of my team. Wish is great for all-around support while aromatherapy keeps my team from getting worn down. Dazzling Gleam is solid stab to mess up Dark and Fighting types who dare to stay in.

 

[ium]

i've been playing with stall recently too, and unfortunately there's really no flexibility with building this team archetype. things like 4 attacks magmortar can potentially run through this stall team (and almost all stall teams in general) because of its coverage moves, making it hard to efficiently do much. there's also a distinct weakness to things like swellow and zangoose since you have no flying resistance for the former and your only "reliable" check to zangoose can't do much since it can only deal passive damage and would hate knock off. despite them being held back by toxic damage, they're capable of breaking your physically defensive pokemon to make it easier for a teammate to sweep

i think that instead of seismitoad and qwilfish, you're better off using regirock and ferroseed to handle the issue with normal- and flying-types while still maintaining a way to handle bulky water-types, or physical water-types like feraligatr. to help against magmortar a little bit, you can try out hypno over lickilicky since you already have heal bell support. losing hypno may open you up a little bit to standard mix shiftry, but i think that is easier to play around compared to magmortar. and finally cryogonal should use haze over toxic to help against boosting ghost- and psychic-types

 

[Brawlfest]

Stall has always been an interesting playstyle, but it lacks somewhat in the current NU tier. Common stallbreakers such as Mismagius, MixMortar, and SubCM Uxie easily tear this team apart with great coverage or easy setup. The only other major threat are strong flying types such as Swellow, which as result of a lack of a flying resist your team is unable to deal with. This said, the team has a surprisingly well built structure, and can somewhat deal with much of the metagame, but at the end of the day stall simply isn't the best playstyle to use in XY NU due to the sheer amount of threats you have to cover.

The first thing I would do is to remove Seismitoad for Defensive Steelix. Steelix offers a key flying resist that you absolutely need, but more importantly has a valuable asset to stall in the form of Roar. With such, it can easily make sure that stuff like SubCM Uxie cannot set up too much behind a sub and will get out of your way, also racking up some passive damage with hazards. Roar allows you to wear down the opponent to no end with your reliability in setting up hazards, and gives you the chance to beat many setup sweepers. Steelix also offers key resistances to stuff like Flying, Normal and Rock, enabling it to come in over and over to wall opponents.

The next change I would make is to use CroTomb / Defensive Spiritomb over Gourgeist. Frankly, even stall needs a way to clean opponents at the end of the day, and CroTomb offers just that. With the ability to setup against offense which cannot damage it while utterly destroying opposing defensive teams, CroTomb acts as a great way to check everything that Gourgeist checks, but does more by being a more effective mixed wall. Spiritomb also has a great ability in Infiltrator, meaning that you can shut stuff such as Poliwrath or Uxie down behind a substitute, and with a dark typing it synergizes well with Qwilfish, switching into threatning Psychic types and proceeding to annoy the opponent.

Minor Changes:
Cryogonal: Haze > Toxic, as again you need to take all precautions against setup sweepers, and Haze allows you to keep many in check, offering you more flexibility as a stall team. 248 HP > 252 HP so that you can switch into stealth rocks more often.
Slurpuff: No clue why you have both Aromatherapy and Heal Bell on one team, but Slurpuff appreciates Toxic > Aromatherapy much more, since Lickilicky is the more reliable cleric and status always helps on stall.

Cool stuff!
____________________

Spiritomb @ Leftovers
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
- Dark Pulse
- Calm Mind / Will-O-Wisp
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

Steelix @ Leftovers
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP / 220 Def / 36 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Earthquake
- Stealth Rock
- Toxic / Gyro Ball
- Roar

 

[Jillix]

i think that instead of seismitoad and qwilfish, you're better off using regirock and ferroseed to handle the issue with normal- and flying-types while still maintaining a way to handle bulky water-types, or physical water-types like feraligatr. to help against magmortar a little bit, you can try out hypno over lickilicky since you already have heal bell support. losing hypno may open you up a little bit to standard mix shiftry, but i think that is easier to play around compared to magmortar. and finally cryogonal should use haze over toxic to help against boosting ghost- and psychic-types

While I see where you're coming from with those suggestions, I think you may have missed that Seismitoad is actually a special wall (I know it's not normal) the reason for this was a special wall that could absorb fire moves and set up rocks, along with not compounding the fighting weakness shared by my special walls (sorry Miltank). Ferroseed is a good suggestion, but I'm worried that without intimidate I'll have a hard time shutting down some pokemon. Also, I would then have two physical grass walls, something I would like to avoid. Haze is a good idea which I think I'll implement. Thanks!

Oh and Brawlfest, I'll respond to you soon too, thanks for the rate.

 

[ium]

i didn't miss that. hp grass coming from any offensive fire-type is still a 2HKO on seismitoad so switching into them is often unrealible. that's where hypno helps. having both slurpuff and gourgeist is already good enough to make it difficult for fighting-types to do much, and even using a bulky spiritomb over gourgeist ensures that they will not have much to hit you hard with, like knock off, when unboosted

 

[Jillix]

The first thing I would do is to remove Seismitoad for Defensive Steelix. Steelix offers a key flying resist that you absolutely need, but more importantly has a valuable asset to stall in the form of Roar. With such, it can easily make sure that stuff like SubCM Uxie cannot set up too much behind a sub and will get out of your way, also racking up some passive damage with hazards. Roar allows you to wear down the opponent to no end with your reliability in setting up hazards, and gives you the chance to beat many setup sweepers. Steelix also offers key resistances to stuff like Flying, Normal and Rock, enabling it to come in over and over to wall opponents.

The next change I would make is to use CroTomb / Defensive Spiritomb over Gourgeist. Frankly, even stall needs a way to clean opponents at the end of the day, and CroTomb offers just that. With the ability to setup against offense which cannot damage it while utterly destroying opposing defensive teams, CroTomb acts as a great way to check everything that Gourgeist checks, but does more by being a more effective mixed wall. Spiritomb also has a great ability in Infiltrator, meaning that you can shut stuff such as Poliwrath or Uxie down behind a substitute, and with a dark typing it synergizes well with Qwilfish, switching into threatning Psychic types and proceeding to annoy the opponent.

Minor Changes:
Cryogonal: Haze > Toxic, as again you need to take all precautions against setup sweepers, and Haze allows you to keep many in check, offering you more flexibility as a stall team. 248 HP > 252 HP so that you can switch into stealth rocks more often.
Slurpuff: No clue why you have both Aromatherapy and Heal Bell on one team, but Slurpuff appreciates Toxic > Aromatherapy much more, since Lickilicky is the more reliable cleric and status always helps on stall.

Cool stuff!

Firstly, thanks for the rate and advice. Certainly I will now be running haze over toxic, as I see it's value. I like aromatherapy on Slurpuff for the chance that Licky is asleep, and I find that while status is useful, if I require it I will use t-spikes.
About the other suggestions: The reason I run Gourgeist is for a ground resist, which I would lack otherwise. While I do lose out on killing percentage, leech seed is wonderful not only for health but for chip which forces switches. I have tried standard stall Tomb, but maybe your suggestion would fill this spot better.
As for Seis, I use him as a special wall that resists fire and can set up Rocks. Steelix obviously can't fill this role, and I have yet to come up with another fire resisting special rock setter. While Steelix does give me these great resists, he throws off my half and half special physical split. More phazing would be great, I just don't think I can fit it in...

 

[Jillix]

i didn't miss that. hp grass coming from any offensive fire-type is still a 2HKO on seismitoad so switching into them is often unrealible. that's where hypno helps. having both slurpuff and gourgeist is already good enough to make it difficult for fighting-types to do much, and even using a bulky spiritomb over gourgeist ensures that they will not have much to hit you hard with, like knock off, when unboosted

I'm mainly afraid adding those two will skew my special physical switch, and though Slirpuff can eat focus blast pretty well, if they aren't locked in, the next special move does heavy damage. That's why I want more neutrality to fighting. Spiritomb does look nice over Gourgeist, but losing my only ground resist is kind of scary...

 

[ryan]

I like both ium and Brawlfest's rates. I think they offer really sound advice for the team, and I encourage you to test their changes, but there's still an issue that I think you can cover with a single Pokemon change.

The biggest problem I see with your team is that Slurpuff isn't really contributing much. You already have both Wish and Heal Bell support on Lickilicky, so it's really redundant with the rest of your team. The only thing it really does is offers a Dark resist, which you could find elsewhere. One really interesting option to try out is Specially Defensive Hariyama over Slurpuff. This gives you a really good Magmortar check:

252 SpA Life Orb Magmortar Focus Blast vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Hariyama: 162-192 (32.9 - 39.1%) -- 76% chance to 3HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Life Orb Magmortar Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Thick Fat Hariyama: 110-133 (22.4 - 27%) -- possible 5HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

A set with Toxic / Protect / Whirlwind / Fighting STAB would work really well for this. It gives you a phaser, a Dark resist, and a really good Magmortar check.

I also encourage you to test out Brawlfest and ium's changes. My ideas for fixing this team up altogether drastically change it, and I don't want to take away your ideas because they are pretty sound. Basically, it's just trying out different Pokemon that perform the same roles as your current ones but with better defensive synergy. If you'd like to hear more about my theories on this team, feel free to PM me.

Good luck with the team! It's nice to see another stall player, and I might RMT my stall team sometime soon ooo.

 

[Jillix]

I like both ium and Brawlfest's rates. I think they offer really sound advice for the team, and I encourage you to test their changes, but there's still an issue that I think you can cover with a single Pokemon change.

The biggest problem I see with your team is that Slurpuff isn't really contributing much. You already have both Wish and Heal Bell support on Lickilicky, so it's really redundant with the rest of your team. The only thing it really does is offers a Dark resist, which you could find elsewhere. One really interesting option to try out is Specially Defensive Hariyama over Slurpuff. This gives you a really good Magmortar check:

252 SpA Life Orb Magmortar Focus Blast vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Hariyama: 162-192 (32.9 - 39.1%) -- 76% chance to 3HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
252 SpA Life Orb Magmortar Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Thick Fat Hariyama: 110-133 (22.4 - 27%) -- possible 5HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

A set with Toxic / Protect / Whirlwind / Fighting STAB would work really well for this. It gives you a phaser, a Dark resist, and a really good Magmortar check.

I also encourage you to test out Brawlfest and ium's changes. My ideas for fixing this team up altogether drastically change it, and I don't want to take away your ideas because they are pretty sound. Basically, it's just trying out different Pokemon that perform the same roles as your current ones but with better defensive synergy. If you'd like to hear more about my theories on this team, feel free to PM me.

Good luck with the team! It's nice to see another stall player, and I might RMT my stall team sometime soon ooo.

Yeah I'm testing out the pokemon that have been suggested, and am figuring out where I can put them, if I can. The reason I like Slurpuff is that I impulsively want a special and a physical wish passer on my team, something that I just can't give up on, I guess I'm stuck in my ways. And I also like my 3 special, 3 physical balance. Again, stuck in my ways. I'd love to hear your opinions on this team, and thanks a bunch for the rate!