Stall in SM OU

blunder

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i wanted to make a post on stall in sun moon ou as it has sort of changed since oras ou. back in oras ou sableye was banned to 'nerf' stall but in sun moon ou stall is a lot more powerful than it ever was in oras. the core of toxapex + skarmory + chansey + clefable can basically take on almost everything and then utilizes dugtrio to get rid of everything that possesses even a small threat such as mind plate tapu lele, choice band tyranitar, kyurem etc. before people jump on sableye, there is no way that is the key broken part of stall. it does what it's always done which is keep layers off and if anything i'd say it's worse than it was last gen as it struggles to check stuff like swords dance continental crush + stealth rock landorus and spikes greninja. i think the biggest problem with stall currently is that its a puts a ridiculous strain on teambuilding. any good team needs to have good stall antimeasures but in sun moon you need ridiculous preparation to stand a chance. the council has plans to do something about stall but i wanted to make this thread to hear what other people had to say on the topic.
 

Eo Ut Mortus

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I saw this coming after Baton Pass was banned/nerfed for basically the same reason. Of course, in this generation, the strain on teambuilding is all the more apparent, but what reason is there to isolate the blame to stall? I could just as easily make the same claim about Z-moves or about the sheer number of new offensive threats. Really, it's just that people are worse at preparing for stall than for anything else, which has been the case throughout generations. I wouldn't yet attribute that to a dearth of countermeasures.

I know the aforementioned team is currently 2-0 in SPL, with dominant victories over its opponents, but the SM tournament metagame is relatively undeveloped, and I'm willing to speculate that team will not see as much success in the coming weeks as more and more players actually come prepared for stall.
 
stall in the past couple of generations has obviously been a very polarizing topic of conversation. you will pretty much get differing opinions every time you talk to someone, so it is pretty difficult to pinpoint exactly what the issues are with it as a playstyle or if there even are any to begin with. in my opinion, the strain that stall puts on the game right now is annoying because even with a seemingly good on paper team, you sometimes have to go out of your way to not just outright lose to the stall matchup. i wholeheartedly believe that the problem was not sableye last generation and because of the amount of threats introduced this generation it definitely is not sableye right now. i've also never been of the opinion that dugtrio is a broken or uncompetitive pokemon in any way, but the more i play sm and the more i watch people play, the more i can't ignore how well it does at holding stall together. i mean it's gotten to the point where i've seen people run shed shell on things like tapu lele, which is an objectively inferior item in pretty much every other situation just to get around this. i don't know if the answer is to suspect dugtrio or what, but it is pretty evident that something should be done.
 
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WECAMEASROMANS

Banned deucer.
stall in the past couple of generations has obviously a very polarizing topic of conversation. you will pretty much get differing opinions every time you talk to someone, so it is pretty difficult to pinpoint exactly what the issues are with it as a playstyle or if there even are any to begin with. in my opinion, the strain that stall puts on the game right now is annoying because even with a seemingly good on paper team, you sometimes have to go out of your way to not just outright lose to the stall matchup. i wholeheartedly believe that the problem was not sableye last generation and because of the amount of threats introduced this generation it definitely is not sableye right now. i've also never been of the opinion that dugtrio is a broken or uncompetitive pokemon in any way, but the more i play sm and the more i watch people play, the more i can't ignore how well it does at holding stall together. i mean it's gotten to the point where i've seen people run shed shell on things like tapu lele, which is an objectively inferior item in pretty much every other situation just to get around this. i don't know if the answer is to suspect dugtrio or what, but it is pretty evident that something should be done.
hi, i disagree with suspecting arena trap/dugtrio. i personally feel that doing this would just solve the problem for a little while before people just find a trapper that can subsequently replace dugtrio, most likely with a pursuit user such as Tyranitar/Weavile. that's what happened last generation in ORAS OU when shadow tag was banned and people were using CB Weavile/Tyranitar on stall to serve the trapping needs. a pursuiter instead of dugtrio would still be able to alleviate the minor problems that team faces in hoopa-u, tapu lele, kyurem-b, etc....

for the record i dont think theres a problem with stall right now, its just that theres a whole shitton of threats you have to account for in this metagame and several of them are extremely restricting on the tier that its extraordinarily difficult to prepare for stall when these aforementioned restricting threats exist and thats why people find it so frustrating.... i dont think this is a problem with stall as it is with just the abundance of new pokemon to account for
 

Genesis7

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Proxying this post for mulgokizary :

Hi, how are you doing?

The assertion that "stall puts too much of a strain on teambuilding" implies that in order to beat stall you will have to go out of your way to run threats that are subpar in other matchups just to be able to defeat the playstyle. I find this notion absurd. The preparation you need in order to beat stall is far from ridiculous and there are a lot of very good threats in the metagame that are capable of pulling their own weight in all three matchups. This isn't even mentioning that getting hazards on stall and keeping them up is easier than ever due to Z-Moves and the option to run things that force in Pokemon other than Sableye like Spikes Greninja or Magma Storm Heatran. Just because people haven't prepared for stall in their tournament or ladder games doesn't mean that it is unreasonably hard to prepare for the team style with keeping your team viable across the board.

Here are some Pokemon that break stall that are useful in every other matchup.

The hazard setters:

* Z-Move SD lando. Adamant lando with a Z-Move can threaten to kill all four pokemon listed in the OP and gets rocks on them very easily. Lando is useful in every matchup and you don't need me to explain why.
* Magma Storm + Taunt Heatran. Dugtrio cannot directly switch in on Magma Storm Tran. The stall player will be forced to sack Sableye in order to send in Dugtrio with its sash intact, leaving room for a spiker to set hazards up for free later, or bring in Quagsire to force the opponent to choose between rocks and securing a Bloom Doom kill on Quagsire. That isn't even to mention that Heatran can viably run Shed Shell in SM OU because it doesn't really need Leftovers recovery or Bloom Doom - without Quagsire, Heatran also kills all four pokemon listed in the OP with Magma Storm/EP/Taunt, and gets rocks up on three of them. Doing this twice will often win the game outright. Heatran is useful in every matchup due to its typing, strong STAB, and ability to get rocks up easily.
* Rocks Alolan Wak. So long as you do not lead with it and get knocked off on turn 1, this is an untrappable rocker that is far too dangerous to switch Sableye in on. It also comes in for free on Chansey without Toxic and is generally a good stallbreaker due to how powerful it is. Alolan Marowak is useful in other matchups because of its annoying typing and ability to check all electrics in an also annoying manner.
* Spikes Protean Greninja. Often forces in Chansey for free spikes that are hard to defog, especially against VoltTurn teams. Protean greninja is great in every matchup, so much so that it was banned last generation.
* Clefable. Hasn't made its debut in SM OU yet but this was one of the best stall-breaking rockers last generation, so future metagame shifts may lead to it being commonplace again, although the T-Wave nerf hurts very much.

The breakers:

* Sub-Coil/DD + Toxic Zygarde's substitute lives Foul Play a large majority of the time, prevents Quagsire from walling its powerful boosted Thousand Arrows, and with lefties + terrain support can PP stall Clefable out of Heal Bells. Not trapped by Duggy, and a very dangerous sweeper in a lot of lategame situations versus all team types. It can also help you check an Ash Greninja that only runs Dual STAB since its bulk is pretty insane.
* Sub or Taunt M-Gyara. Sub MGyara has tons of opportunities to set up on the opposing team and PP stalls Toxapex out of Haze. Sub doesn't care about Dugtrio usually, but you'll need to get rocks up before setting up with Taunt M-Gyara. Devastating sweeper against all team types lategame, too, and super easy to set up.
* SD All-Out Pummeling Tapu Bulu. Especially annoying if it runs sub. Unaware Clefable cannot switch in on Horn Leech without a 252 def Bold EV spread until Grassy Terrain is down and Skarmory is easily dispatched by SD Pummeling. It does a decent job of breaking through all four Pokemon in the OP and doesn't care about Dugtrio due to Horn Leech.
* Nature's Madness + Taunt Tapu Fini is one of the more annoying Pokemon for stall to face. It will eventually force out Toxapex by spamming Nature's Madness and will halve the HP of the opposing team's Pokemon, which makes the Stall player very weak to the entirely your team. Misty Terrain also prevents status so you can use breakers easier. Tapu Fini is obviously not dead weight in other matchups due to its great typing yada yada yada.
* Mega Metagross puts an enormous strain on opposing Stall teams, especially ones using the core in the OP. Boasting coverage options that can break through Skarmory and a flinch chance that breaks through Quagsire. Without prior damage on Duggy it'll get trapped and 2HKOed.
* Waterium-Z Manaphy with Psychic breaks through the core in the OP easily and definitely pulls its weight in other matchups, as Manaphy has historically done. It's more viable against offense now due to Z-Rain Dance as well.
* Togekiss cannot be trapped and breaks through stall teams sans Zapdos very easily. The core in the OP is no sweat for it. Its typing and bulk allow it to perform well against Balance teams too, and against offense it can at least come in on most SR Chomp sets and have an easy time of counterattacking.
* SubPunch Buzzwole is PP stalled by Sableye + Toxapex, but if you get rocks up or deal a significant amount of damage to Sableye you should be able to easily sweep the enemy team with this. Does not even care about Aerial Ace trio if it has a sub up. Buzzwole is also useful in other matchups due to its great defensive typing and powerful STAB combinations.
* CM Lele. People say it's a good option but I actually find this one underwhelming in most other matchups due to a bad speed tier and bad physical bulk, and not even that good against Stall because Dugtrio can trap it easily. I guess it can lure things like Ferrothorn and check Sciz in regular matchups with HP Fire, and its attacks are always very hard to switch in to.
* Trick Latios can cripple one of Chansey/Skarmory so that its teammates can have a field day. Not trapped by Dugtrio.
* Banded TTar. With Latios not seeing super high usage due to the new Tapu Pokemon and how easily it is for this thing to be trapped by Duggy, this thing isn't the best choice right now.
* Hoopa. Not the best choice because it's trapped by Dugtrio easily. Pulls its weight in other matchups.
* Ironically, Screech Dugtrio easily traps Chansey for the rest of the team's Special attackers to easily win the game.

There are more if you use your head enough, I just don't feel like writing all day.

Dugtrio is not particularly problematic in my eyes. On the contrary, it feels like a trapper such as Dugtrio is the only reason that Stall is able to function in the metagame because without being able to trap things that smash the team type there is often no scenario in which you can provide decent counterplay to all of the breakers in this metagame.

Thanks for reading.
 

Bughouse

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Historically, at the beginning of generations/metagames, offense tends to dominate. Then, as the largest offensive threats get banned, stall eventually comes into its own. Eventually, stall has sometimes come to dominate and people long for previous versions of the metagame where the last one or two bans of offensive threats hadn't yet happened. I don't think stall is dominant in SuMo by any means... plenty left to explore, but it is unusually good this early.

In XY, stall was certainly a thing early on but it was more lurking and it was a big risk to bring to a game because of some common matchups... stall just wasn't a major widespread thing until Blaziken, Mega Gengar, Mega Kangaskhan, Mega Lucario, Mega Mawile etc etc were booted. Stall really took on much more prominence in ORAS than it ever had in XY, which is consistent with the idea that stall gets better over time as offensive threats get banned.

Like, if you have time, take a look at some games from early XY OU in SPL 5. Stall was pretty mediocre in early XY. One hilarious game resulted in it "just losing" in the true sense of the phrase to an SD Mawile. In other games it got clobbered by Lando-I or Greninja or sometimes just lost to general offensive pressure, despite not having a dedicated stallbreaker (shocking, I know).

So, I think that it's almost certainly still too early to do anything based on comparable evidence of stall "winning" in two SPL games, one of which could have been radically different without Toxapex surviving and beating Tectonic Rage Dugtrio (very unlikely, and part of why I don't think Duggy is a net positive for Stall... removing toxapex is huge. I think having no duggy could end up making stall better) after which had the Toxapex fainted, Tapu Fini would have been a major threat for Mazar, and the other game was against a team with no way to remove hazards. Still I find it very strange that in this gen stall has risen to prominence so quickly. That indicates to me particularly bad problems with stall in SuMo that may need addressing in the future.

tl;dr you may be on to something, tho idk what would be banned, I don't think it's Duggy. But you need to give it more time regardless.
 
hi, i disagree with suspecting arena trap/dugtrio. i personally feel that doing this would just solve the problem for a little while before people just find a trapper that can subsequently replace dugtrio, most likely with a pursuit user such as Tyranitar/Weavile. that's what happened last generation in ORAS OU when shadow tag was banned and people were using CB Weavile/Tyranitar on stall to serve the trapping needs. a pursuiter instead of dugtrio would still be able to alleviate the minor problems that team faces in hoopa-u, tapu lele, kyurem-b, etc...
I don't really agree with this logic. If Dugtrio were to be deemed broken because of its trapping abilities, it might be replaced with pursuit users, but at this point the tier can be re-assessed to decide whether it's in a healthy state. If anything, this would give us the chance to see whether trapping (including pursuit) is broken in general
 

WECAMEASROMANS

Banned deucer.
I don't really agree with this logic. If Dugtrio were to be deemed broken because of its trapping abilities, it might be replaced with pursuit users, but at this point the tier can be re-assessed to decide whether it's in a healthy state. If anything, this would give us the chance to see whether trapping (including pursuit) is broken in general
i never stated that i thought dugtrio was broken for its trapping capabilities... i actually dont think its broken at all, but IF it does get suspected and banned, my opinion would be that it wouldnt even solve the stall issue, since stall can just adapt by conveniently using another pursuit trapper. i do think that re-assessing the tier to see whether trapping as a whole is uncompetitive should be pushed forward before we take any action
 
It's hard to say that Dugtrio or stall in general is "overpowered" right now. It certainly feels burdensome at times to prepare for it, but that may partially be due to the stigma around the style and sort of the delegitimization of it as a playstyle. I'm personally not sure if I'd ban Dugtrio or Arena Trap purely on the merit of it being overpowering or centralizing. That being said, there is a different issue to look at here.

Going back to ORAS, Shadow Tag was banned. The vote was pretty damn close to unanimous, having over 90% of the 200+ voters voting to ban Shadow Tag. The argument for this ban was mostly that the inherent nature of an ability like Shadow Tag, which negates switching by all but ghosts, is uncompetitive and does not belong in our tier. Gothitelle wasn't a particularly strong or fast pokemon, and was easily trappable itself. Despite this, the ability to use trick with a choice scarf pretty much got it banned.

If you follow this same logic, it's hard to see how Arena Trap or Dugtrio is much different. Dugtrio may not trap flying types, but they aren't exactly super common bar Lando-T and still ~90%+ of the tier is potentially trappable. Gothitelle only tricked or twaved things, yet still was seen as uncompetitive or unhealthy. Especially with the recent base attack buff to 100, Dugtrio actually kills things, and alongside the ability to trap a large majority of the tier, this is pretty problematic.

In order for our tiering philosophy to be consistent, STag/Goth and Arena/Dug need to be tiered together. It may seem a bit extreme at first, but logically speaking these two abilities/mons are quite similar in their inherent trapping but also their influence on the metagame. In the Goth era, many obscure sets like Shed Shell Togekiss and Manaphy saw very high usage. Right now, there exists the same thing on pokemon like Tapu Lele. And no, this isn't similar to Magnet Pull or Pursuit, because those harm way less pokemon.

So, it seems that we have 2 options left at this point: Free Gothitelle or Ban Dugtrio. It's quite clear which of these choices is better.

e: ban arena trap not dug for consistency
 
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Tele

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i disagree with "sableye isnt part of the problem". sableye has always been part of the problem because it beats almost every stealth rock user (except clefable, which is outclassed by tapus now anyway, and marowak-alola) leaving the field open for sash dugtrio to come in freely and eliminate threats that stall otherwise cant cover like hoopa-u, tapu lele, kyurem-b with z move.

stall is weaker in sumo than it was in oras pre sableye ban, mainly because of: 1- aforementioned pokemons like lele and hoopa with incredible sheer power. 2- Z moves like subzero slammer on kyurem-b or continental crush on lando-t are devastating. offense has more ways to deal with stall now, that is a fact. i do think something has to be done in regard of stall though (do not forget about shedinja stall too). i dont want to suggest that we should suspect sablenite, its too early for that. but im effectively pointing out that dugtrio wouldnt be as effective as it is now without some sort of hazard control, which sableye-mega provides.

finally, as someone who first popularized dugtrio stall during OLTIII (noone was using dugtrio on stall before) i can safely say dugtrio is the most important pokemon on stall. that does not make it broken in any way though.

and like ben gay said, pls restrain from indicating a bunch of spl games as the face of the metagame. there were actually some good games among those and some interesting builds but i wouldnt go further than that, really.
 
Weavile does not have nearly the same viability on stall as dugtrio does. In ORAS had we banned dugtrio instead of sableye, abr's stall (and variations of it with 1 or 2 pokemon changed that do the same thing) would probably be the only viable stall around. ABR stall is super easy to manage, and at worst if your team just has a normal breaker the answer is to go for a 50/50 with weavile (plot twist: they always pursuit). As ORAS developed ABR stall became outdated and very easy to manage because people started running countermeasures to stall which isn't super difficult.

However, once the dust settled from the gothitelle ban stall kind of "evolved" to using dugtrio to trap. This is when stall became extremely difficult to manage and people found it too difficult to cover in "regular" teambuilding. Dugtrio traps so many stallbreakers that it created a variety of stalls given the playstyle's newfound flexibility. One of the general issues with stall that makes it super easy to cover is that its so hard to cover all the offensive threats, that almost all stalls generally look the same. Due to dugtrio getting rid of a huge chunk of these, ORAS brought a new variety to stall that was unseen before. Look at BW, the stall archetypes are pretty basic and easy to account for because there's not so much variety. Prepping for all stalls in ORAS feels impossible due to trapping.

I think that the popularity of dugtrio on stall also tilted the votes on mega sableye. The first time sableye was suspected was when dugtrio stall wasn't yet popular (outside of maybe branflakes' team), and sableye was voted to stay by a pretty close margin (I wanna say 50% voted ban?) When dugtrio was popularized and stall became a problem, sableye was banned pretty easily. People asked for a dugtrio suspect at the time, but were shot down pretty quickly. I'm sure there were many others like me who voted ban on sableye simply because stall was too strong and the council refused to suspect dugtrio instead. I voted ban on sableye despite knowing it wasn't broken, and was satisfied with the result of the vote. That's why I hope we don't make the same mistake this generation :x

ban dug. Also branflakes is a genius.
 

Reymedy

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i think you should alleviate the power creep by targetting single pokemon first, i mean the last one you guys suspected got banned in less than a day by vote (chances are, there's more to ban)
then let the meta rest
and finally, after all of that, you can make macro-calls by looking at playstyles/combinations and the way they play out
 

Lady Alex

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It's really premature to suggest that stall as a playstyle is currently problematic. Stall has traditionally been a playstyle that a lot of people underprepare for, which I think is the basis for why some people throw around the claim that it's excessively restrictive in teambuilding. As has already been noted, some common stall builds are significantly threatened or outright dumped on by a number of mons (in addition to Z-moves people run to break through stall more easily) that are definitely still useful outside of the stall matchup. Even if it were conceded that accounting for stall on top of other archetypes isn't feasible, I would argue that it's more of a function of a handful of particular threats (hi metagross, lele, greninja, landorus-t) being far more common and far more difficult to adequately check with individual mons than it is a function of stall itself being the problem.
 
Ok I guess if you're looking at stall as a whole now then you have to look at all the elements of it in order to find out what the busted part of it is. From what I can see, they all contain the following elements:
1) Chansey
2) Defog (usually Skarm)
3) Unaware (Clef/Quag)
4) Regenerator (Toxapex)
5) Sab
6) Trapping (Dugtrio)

The first three parts are pretty uninteresting because they've been around since the start of gen6 and never caused any real problems. The last 3 have all been introduced in SM, unbanned, and buffed respectively. It's actually tough to isolate exactly what to ban, but logically, it's one of Dugtrio, Toxapex, or Sableye. At the start of this gen I decided I was going to try and vote ban as little as possible. In the first suspect I felt there wasn't really any adaptation or option other than to ban Genesect, but this suspect we have to decide what part is broken, if any at all.

I've already typed up a ton of posts about Sableye, but I guess I'm going to have to type up another paragraph, and actually I think it's a little different in SM. Every time you load up a Sableye team, it does take skill out of the game, but ultimately it's a team preview gamble about whether you see opposing breakers you're weak to, or not. As Blunderr mentioned in the OP, it's not as good at mitigating damage in terms of preventing hazards as it was in ORAS, but also to bear in mind is that if you look at the number of new breakers introduced, the gamble's much worse this gen. By that I mean we've got Lele introduced, Hoopa unbanned, which are the two big factors, but there's also stuff like Xurkitree if you want, Tapu Fini for the breaker set, Z move breaker sets, etc. I literally can't name all the new powerful threats we've got. The issue back in ORAS was that there was no guarantee you had a breaker that was super threatening to the opposing team, but with this many options, the likelihood of that happening is way bigger.
My conclusion for this pokemon is that Sableye generally makes games revolve around 1 or 2 members on your team which are breakers, but when the breakers are so splashable and so good, maybe that's ok.

Toxapex obviously walls a ton of stuff, and it makes the stall core way more resilient that it would otherwise be. The typing is definitely interesting, but it has its drawbacks for sure. Ie it is weak to ground, it is weak to psychic instead of resisting it like Slowbro, so it can't wall Metagross, and while it has haze, it still has to take the boosted hit to get the haze off. While it beefs up the stall core, it doesn't really make it invincible. Also because its scalds are so weak, you can kinda just get around it by using substitute sets, like Buzzwole can run a sub lefties set. I mean it's a factor as to why stall got better, but is it the broken part? I doubt it.

So the last potential issue is Dugtrio, which I think is likely to be the greatest offender. The reason why is because when I look at the 5 mon core of Sableye, Toxapex, Chansey, Skarmory, and Clef, I see a core that's weak to a lot of stuff. It gets blown apart by Lele, Hoopa, Xurkitree, and Magma Storm Heatran can be threatening. However, what Dugtrio can do, is revenge all of those effectively, and many more breakers.

Last gen I wrote this: http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/arena-trap-dugtrio.3582873/#post-7000913
While I stand by what I said back then, Dugtrio has received a significant buff this gen, in 20 base attack. That's 40 additional attack on a pokemon balanced by the fact that its amazing trapping ability was offset by its weak attack. Dugtrio plays a key role in these teams by basically being a near omni-check. By that I mean it's faster than basically every breaker, and even if you are weak to a particular threat, you can get off a guaranteed earthquake after it gets just 1 kill, but more likely you'll get off 2 earthquakes if you're smart and keep hazards off the field. We all know from shadow tag that powerful trapping can be devastating when paired with stall, and it seems that the additional attack has made Dugtrio's trapping powerful enough to deal strong neutral damage rather than having to rely on the trapped pokemon being weak to eq to beat it. This means that its scope of trapping is way greater than it was before.

Anyway, the effect of Dugtrio is that you can't rely on just 1 breaker to beat stall, you have to stack them. This might not seem like the worst thing, but it does mean you're forced into a very specific style of building to beat these teams, ie carrying at least 2 breakers they're weak to instead of 1, which isn't good when you have a lot of other threats to account for. Like I said earlier, I want to ban as little as possible, and so I'd like more replays before making a firm decision.

However, one thing I firmly believe in tiering, is particularly when we have this many threats to account for, we shouldn't let something which takes skill out of the game by relying on matchup exist in the tier. It's much more difficult to account for matchup based styles in newer gens than past gens when building, because you are way more strapped for teamslots. I struggled getting suspect reqs for Genesect with conventional teams, but when I switched to SabDug stall halfway through laddering, I could pick up a better winrate despite not really thinking about my plays like I had to before, or being particularly good at SM in general.

In conclusion I think that Dugtrio is the threat we should be looking at, and if it continues in the same vein as it has done thus far (perhaps there's more counterplay to these teams which hasn't yet been discovered), then removing it might be the correct decision.
 
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njnp

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http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/metagame-discussion-thread-v2.3592140/#post-7179913

I made a post earlier in the month about the effects dugtrio had on this metagame. I was glad to see this policy review post made and feel like this is the perfect time to make it cause there really won't me anything introduced or any major changes that will result in the metagames issues with stall that would resolve them.

I think a banning of arena trap would be helpful when it comes to prepping for stall. When you go into your builder and think about the variety of stall cores that are presented there is very few legimiate stall breakers left that can give stall issues singehandely.

The mon's I think of are:

Togekiss
Shed Shell Lele
SD Bulu
Dugtrio
"Torn-T"

As you can see most of the above mon's mentioned are not effected by arena trap and can not be effectively trapped by dugtrio or heavily weakened where they can no longer be effective.

I don't like how people try to compare the current gen to pass gens and try to find likeness in the issues. I also think that there are so many elements to stall that I can see why it's diffucult for the council to pinpoint one but dugtrio is the thing they need to focus and center on.

I am now just gonna continue my previous post above.


Dugtrio has already been used a total of 5 times this spl. It has more usage then heatran,lele, and charizard atm. I alot of people complained during the shadow tag suspect that its usage was not high enough to warrant a suspect. Dugtrio eliminates that argument.

Dugtrio is broken because it eliminates most stall breakers that would otherwise have a good match up vs stall....it has a huge strain on teambuilding because its counter measures are very team specific..it sometimes forces you to run shed shell on certain mons that are useless in any other scenario.. the combo of shed shell skarm + dugtrio alleviates zone trapping cores from breaking stall as well.

Aside from dugtrio people are right trapping won't just die even if the mon is removed. Banded Weav and Scarf Ttar will comeback but there still is the aspect of winning a 50/50 with those mons instead of dugtrio having 100% trapping..aswell arena trap trapping more threats to stall then pursuit.

There also is the aspect of Mega Sableye being able to keep alot of the most frequently used hazard setters from setting up to aid their team in breaking stall but Mega Sableye with so many new fairy addition and an amazing counter in tapu fini along with powerful z moves and breakers to constantly pressure it it by itself is no longer broken and imo it wasn't even broken when it was banned in oras.

Chansey is very disgusting ever sense I started playing a few years ago I always felt this mon was an issue. Chansey is able to be the ultimate wall with the introduction of the item eviolite. Chansey is able to take on monsters much better then a blissey would. Here are some examples:

252 Atk Tough Claws Metagross-Mega Meteor Mash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Chansey: 274-324 (38.9 - 46%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 Atk Tough Claws Metagross-Mega Meteor Mash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Blissey: 376-444 (52.6 - 62.1%) -- 98.8% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252 Atk Choice Band Zygarde-10% Thousand Arrows vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Chansey: 244-288 (34.6 - 40.9%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Zygarde-10% Thousand Arrows vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Blissey: 333-393 (46.6 - 55%) -- 10.9% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Choice Band Tyranitar Crunch(Pursuiting) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Chansey: 292-345 (41.4 - 49%) -- 16.8% chance to 2HKO after sandstorm damage
252+ Atk Choice Band Tyranitar Crunch(Pursuiting) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Blissey: 399-471 (55.8 - 65.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after sandstorm damage and Leftovers recovery

Basically what im showing here is chanseys ability to take strong physical atks while still being able to do its job of walling strong special atks. In the last calc even if u pursuit it its still left at around 50% and after duggy traps you. You have to try and apply pressure to keep this thing from healing but even then some stall teams are so solid they can just fodder off a mon to let chansey get back up to full health knowning your strong physical atk has been removed and it has very little to worry about.

I do not think chansey is broken at all but I do think people should stop saying "oh,just knock it off" the chances of any good player on staying in on a mon that learns knock off that would cripple its chansey is very unlikely.

I think its previous obvious but for people who somehow missed I do think that main problem with stall atm is duggy and I think Dugtrio should be suspected and then banned.

I just wanted to share my thoughts, thank you tdk for allowing me to make this post. I hope I gave good insight/opinion. Again, this is just an addition to my post thats linked in the beginning.

Thank You


+6 0 Atk Type: Null Return vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eviolite Chansey: 556-655 (78.9 - 93%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+6 0 Atk Type: Null Return vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Blissey: 760-895 (106.4 - 125.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Use Type Null-Mattybrollic

 
This is an important discussion and here are a few things that I've been thinking about when it comes to looking at how 'broken' any element is (in this case, trapping on stall).


1) Can I adequately prepare for it while maintaining a decent matchup against the majority of the current tier. So for example, is stall such an issue that I need to run 6 breakers (extreme example, but w/e) on my team just to beat it? If so, then my team will obviously struggle vs. offence, etc.

In this case, I believe the answer is yes, specifically because of Dugtrio and the nature of trapping in general. Because Dugtrio is such an obscure threat on other builds, you don't need to prepare for it. However, if say 50% of stall teams run it, then in a stall matchup with a team that isn't prepared for and thus has a bad matchup against Dugtrio, the person vs. stall with Dugtrio is at a significant disadvantage right from the start. Moreover, the cost of running a dedicated answer to Dugtrio stall is too high to justify on most teams, as you will inevitably make your team weaker vs. some other threat/core/playstyle, especially given how volatile the meta is at the moment. Therefore, I feel that a suspect test for arena trap and by extension Dugtrio is justified.


2) Is this element uncompetitive?

The answer to this is obviously more subjective, but from the way I see it, trapping on stall is uncompetitive for a number of reasons. Firstly, it puts you in a lose-lose situation in which you are forced to predict around Dugtrio. What I mean by this is that if Dugtrio comes in on your specs Hoopa-U (for example), you lose your breaker and will have a much harder time winning. If they don't bring in Dugtrio (on a double mainly, or maybe to sack it to kill the breaker), you are still forced to predict around their 5 fat mons which will wall you anyways (not as much for Hoopa, but you see my point). This differs vs. offensive trapping (magnezone) because Magnezone is much more common on regular builds (psychic spam for example) and is thus expected to be prepared for, whereas most teams can't afford to prepare for Dugtrio stall.



Anyways, those are my thoughts on this, thanks for reading.
 

MrAldo

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Just remove this element from the game and everthing will eventually fix itself. Pretty confident on that department. No other trapper in the whole game can so easily remove an important pokemon on your team that could be used, in this case, to effectively break through a defensive core. Dugtrio existence alone makes you think twice about running stuff and effectively constrains teambuilding cause the moment a Dugtrio appears, you know you arent winning with "X" wallbreaker if it is trappable.

Switch into stuff? it doesnt need to. Dugtrio whole purpose in the whole game is to effectively remove a grounded Pokemon through many conditions in the game (either at full health cause it is weak, or it is weakened to the point dugtrio can simply kill it). Pursuit trappers, will many could allegate that Pursuit in general is just as busted, it certainly involves a risk (or a 50/50) that could potentially makes you lose your pursuit trapper depending of certain circumstances (surf latios and tyranitar for example, although running weavile reduce that risk significantly it just not a guaranteed trap like dugtrio). The fact Dugtrio got a attack boost just make it worse, going from a below average attack stat to 100 attack which is pretty respectable makes its work much more easier to pull off.

It doesnt make the metagame playable but it does add a pretty constraining element, trapping in general just gets worse by every gen it passes and now with a stronger Dugtrio... meh, I guess I would be repeating myself. Dugtrio is by no means popular right now but with how good it is but it could easily be due to how good is at making stall so hard to get through.

You can remove the image if it is obnoxious I guess, I just like how dugtrio looks on this. I do believe should be suspected, and preferably banned as well. Firm believer that this would be a really nice outcome.
 
a pursuit user would definitely not replace dugtrio in terms of utility for stall.

pursuit is flawed for two reasons, mainly the second:
1) the 50 / 50 game will have to played sometimes when trying to combat threats. getting the pursuit prediction right or wrong on a stallbreaker tapu lele, for example, can be the outcome between winning or losing (though the latter is not definitive).
2) pursuit traps less targets unlike dugtrio. you can efficiently use kartana, manaphy, kyurem-b, heatran,...as tools to combat stall, pokemon that would normally be removed by dugtrio. pursuit as the only trapping move available for stall puts less constraint on your teambuilding.

you can't exactly nerf stall without banning arena trap in which dugtrio is the pokemon that holds the playstyle together. if the community believes pursuit is unbalanced in the future, it can be suspected as well.

when you really think about it, you cannot nerf stall without implementing some ridiculous complex ban. suspecting arena trap is the only way to go.
 

Tele

a quality human being
Before all the people who think dugtrio is broken and uncompetitive start crusading for it to be banned, I'd actually like those people to build a stall team without mega-sableye and then ask them if they still think dugtrio is the key problem. the answer would probably be no for the most part.

no one knows what stall can be like without mega sableye because no one has ever tried to make a stall team without mega sableye. sablenite was banned pretty much when sumo came out, leaving no time for the metagame to develop, because clearly everybody started playing sumo.

if we ban dugtrio, pursuiters will come next, you already know that. but if we ban sablenite, what is going to happen? you dont know the answer. you dont know what stall can be like without mega sableye yet you are pushing on the wrong pokemon, dugtrio, to be gone - you are clearly lacking discernment and foresight.
 
hmm i gotta disagree with you here, try to use a stall without duggy and tell me if you can actually bypass wallbreakers, while using some archetype such as dug + double defoger (Zapdos + Skarmory, or even Xatu + Skarm from FV) basically does the same as sableye in keeping hazards off field except you need to burn more slot, so yeah i don't get what you mean about "pursuiters will come next" when subbing sableye is definitly not that hard if you keep duggy.

But one thing is sure nothing can replace duggy in this metagame outside of gothitelle on some points so it's your call bro.
 

Tele

a quality human being
hmm i gotta disagree with you here, try to use a stall without duggy and tell me if you can actually bypass wallbreakers, while using some archetype such as dug + double defoger (Zapdos + Skarmory, or even Xatu + Skarm from FV) basically does the same as sableye in keeping hazards off field except you need to burn more slot, so yeah i don't get what you mean about "pursuiters will come next" when subbing sableye is definitly not that hard if you keep duggy.

But one thing is sure nothing can replace duggy in this metagame outside of gothitelle on some points so it's your call bro.
you just said that sableye mega can be easily replaceable; on the contrary i believe it is very hard to replace. xatu is really gimmick, has lots of flaws and cant prevent the most common steath rock setter, landot, from setting sr. it really is inferior to sab in almost every aspect. double defog was indeed a popular tactic in the last months of oras and it was really sucesfull. but in order to have 2 defogs users on your team, you will be forced to drop something. double defog stalls usually need a very different team structure and often they dont have chansey simply becos there is no room for it, since you are already running 2 defoggers. by "pursuiters will come next" i meant that, if dugtrio gets banned, people will replace it with cb weavile or tyranitar anyway. and even tho they are slightly less effective than dugtrio they will probably still manage to do the job. i dont get the first part of your post.

Didn't ABR make a team with Mega Alt, Double Defog and Duggy, as a direct example of a Stall without Sableye?
abr just took the common double defog stall, which i made, replacing suicune and sab with altaria and heatran. id say it was still a decent team but, just like the original one, has some flaws that can be easily exploited (f.e. water types break that team very easily without suicune, and rotom-w is pretty free to spam will-o-wisp and can keep the momentum up by volt-switching on literally everything). it is no near to be the perfect team at all.
 

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