Other Stall

[GDK]

Entry hazard are a major player in stall team and defog kinda defeat the point then.

 

[Ajwf]

Entry hazard are a major player in stall team and defog kinda defeat the point then.

I mean, not really. Rocks are the only hazard you even need, and if you really want to target defog users before going to use spikes, that's fine as well. But entry hazards this gen are 'nice' to have, not required.

 

[Ogami]

Yeah rocks are really all you need if your team is tight enough to last the storm. I've been enjoying using the turn that my opponent spends defogging/spinning to my advantage more and more. It's a nice way for a bulky offense or stall team to grab a little momentum in their favor.

 

[GDK]

Being a major player doesn't mean it's required, but it helps a lot. it really really helps.

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

I have been playing a bit and I honestly have to agree that Blissey or Chansey are almost a requirement for a stall team at the moment. Sure you can have other checks to Kingdra, Charizard-Y, Volcarona, and Landorus-I, but seriously what the hell else can take on a +6 Manaphy which has been legalized on the ladder. Heck I might give my Blissey even more special defense investment as it gets annoying close to 2HKOing.

 

[Liarliarpantsonfire]

I have been playing a bit and I honestly have to agree that Blissey or Chansey are almost a requirement for a stall team at the moment. Sure you can have other checks to Kingdra, Charizard-Y, Volcarona, and Landorus-I, but seriously what the hell else can take on a +6 Manaphy which has been legalized on the ladder. Heck I might give my Blissey even more special defense investment as it gets annoying close to 2HKOing.

Specially Defensive Mega Venusaur handles Manaphy with no problems whatsoever.

 

[WashedLaundry]

Honestly I think stall will do a lot better when / if Kangaskan is banned. I have already theorymon'd and play tested a couple of full on defensive teams in XY to cover most threats, but ironically being absolutely forced to run a ghost holds me back and I end up having holds which people can exploit with other Pokemon.

I have also considered trying out the stall ~ volt-turn teamstyle I play tested a bit last gen, in theory it wold be great to run on a defog team, as it is not reliant on hazards. Unfortunately I keep on running into issues in team building because of the shear amount of threats. Any thoughts? I have been thinking about Heatran + Rotom-W + Genesect + a Defoger + 2 other pokes.

Why not Mega Scizor? Gives you a U-Turner with a lot of impressive bulk that also carries defog. It's probably one of the better defoggers available given its ability to sustain momentum while still being bulky enough to secure the clutch Defogs.

 

[Ajwf]

Mega scizor can't do much to rock setters, unlike mandi or latias.

 

[ShedZero]

Has anyone considered Florges?
It has absurdly high SpD can have Wish, Aromatherapy, Calm Mind, is able to 2HKO any Lucario variant while tanking their steel moves, throw a moonblast as they switch in and then another, must be at 100% to tank Bullet Punch. Here some calculations:

Adamant and Modest respectvely
252+ Atk Adaptability Mega Lucario Bullet Punch vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Florges: 288-340 (80 - 94.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Adaptability Mega Lucario Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Florges: 214-252 (59.4 - 70%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ SpA Adaptability Mega Lucario Flash Cannon vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Florges: 216-256 (60 - 71.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
vs. Calm Nature
4 SpA Florges Moonblast vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Mega Lucario: 151-178 (53.7 - 63.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

It also makes a excelent defensive core with Ferrothorn, those being broken only by physical fire damage, which can be fixed by adding another another mon to the core, Blastoise jumps to mind being able completely nullify any variation of Talonflame with Scald, while being able to deliver some burns against everything else

 

[Alejandro36]

What? So your point is that if lucario switchs into a moonblast from a 100% healthy florges, she is able to shoot another moonblast before taking a shit lot of damage?? :P

If anything, florges is huge set uo bait for lucario. The oponnent ust has to switch on calm mind or arometherapy, or wish, or whatever. Then it can nasty plot/SD and win the game.

 

[ShedZero]

What? So your point is that if lucario switchs into a moonblast 100% healthy florges, she is able to shoot another moonblast before taking a shit lot of damage?? :P

If anything, florges is huge set uo bait for lucario. The oponnent ust has to switch on calm mind or arometherapy, or wish, or whatever. Then it can nasty plot/SD and win the game.

If you have Florges on play, they will switch into Lucario, this easily predictable, so he'll take a Moonblast to the face, if he decides to attak you live and kill him, if he decides to setup he is dead anyway, assuming he went for the Bullet Punch and you went 10% and killing him, at the end of the turn you'll go to 16% EoT, you can can either switch out or protect putting you at 22%, which later on the game is enough for you to Wish your HP back, it is a very fair trade since you took out the only thing that can really ruin your day

 

[Alejandro36]

The big problem there is that if you are anywhere below 94% he already has a chance to OHKO with Bullet Punch. tealth rock alone get you there. And how often are you going to be at >95% health anyway? That doesn't happen very often unless you send him after one of your pokemon is dead. And for stall this usually means you lost the game anyway.

 

[ShedZero]

The big problem there is that if you are anywhere below 94% he already has a chance to OHKO with Bullet Punch. tealth rock alone get you there. And how often are you going to be at >95% health anyway? That doesn't happen very often unless you send him after one of your pokemon is dead. And for stall this usually means you lost the game anyway.

Ok, she may not be at 100% most of the time, but it's still something your opponent needs to get rid of, having Mega Lucario more than halfway killed, with Hazard support you put him even lower, to switch out into anything that can take hits and kill him or burn and stall him dead.

 

[Nysyr]

So I ran into a physical sub variant of kyu-b, and I was at a complete loss if how to beat it with a stall team. Didn't help that it had a magnezone along side it.

 

[Seiterman]

So I ran into a physical sub variant of kyu-b, and I was at a complete loss if how to beat it with a stall team. Didn't help that it had a magnezone along side it.

You have options, but you need to be well prepared before going into battle against Kyurem-B. Faster/Prankster Pokemon with Will-O-Wisp can hit him before he gets a sub up (I'd be hesitant to switch Sableye into him, to say the least.) A more realistic option is to use something that can hit with Gyro Ball to break subs while being able to tank a physical hit. Ferrothorn does a pretty damn good job of that, and can Leech Seed on the switch for some recovery even. Obviously Magnezone makes bringing in Ferrothorn (or most Gyro Ball users,) risky, so you need to play carefully and do what you can to get rid of Magnezone or neutralize it. Choice Scarf Ditto is probably a reasonable answer as a revenge killer if sub isn't up.

Kyurem-B is a tall order for a stall team. The best answers I think lie in other play styles, but I'm sure other people can think of better answers than I.

If only there were a physically bulky Fairy-type who wasn't Carbink. -__-

 

[SansNickel]

So I ran into a physical sub variant of kyu-b, and I was at a complete loss if how to beat it with a stall team. Didn't help that it had a magnezone along side it.

The sub variant pretty much breaks stall. It doesn't help that it has teravolt either. If you think about it, it beats all your classic stall/semi stall/bulky mons: slowbro, amoonguss, heatran, skarmory, gliscor, blissey/chansey, hippowdon, etc... which is why stall can be so hard: there are just too many threats.

 

[Scarbo]

So I ran into a physical sub variant of kyu-b, and I was at a complete loss if how to beat it with a stall team. Didn't help that it had a magnezone along side it.

Physically Defensive Sylveon is a pretty good answer. LO Adamant Fusion Bolt will usually 2HKO after rocks (though lefties is way more common especially on sub variants), but Sylveon can any other hit really well and then hit back really hard with Pixilate Hyper Voice through Kyurem's sub. She's not the best on stall, but she's a decent cleric and deals well with most dragons.

Calcs:
252+ Atk Teravolt Kyurem-B Fusion Bolt vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Sylveon: 138-163 (35 - 41.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery
4 SpA Pixilate Sylveon Hyper Voice vs. 56 HP / 4 SpD Kyurem-B: 300-354 (74 - 87.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Life Orb Teravolt Kyurem-B Fusion Bolt vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Sylveon: 179-212 (45.4 - 53.8%) -- 94.1% chance to 2HKO after Stealth Rock and Leftovers recovery

 

[Liarliarpantsonfire]

Kyurem-B is not all that common so I wouldn't be that concerned about having a solid counter to it. Like said before, stall can't cover every single poke in the game so you need to focus on the most common threats primarily. If you happen to see one in team preview, the first thing you want to do is get up Stealth Rocks asap. CB sets are the most threatening imo, as Sub sets can be walled by certain pokes (even Adamant Outrage barely 2HKO's Chansey, so you can Softboiled stall it until it gets confused). Protect users help a lot to scout its set. I personally run a ScarfChomp on my stall team for situations where I'm forced to sacrifice something. Against a CB set just try to predict correctly, if it fails then sacrifice the least important team member and revenge kill it, then go from there. With your opponents wallbreaker gone you can still be in a good position to win.

And if you're really paranoid, physically defensive Heatran is a solid mon, definitely not inferior to specially defensive and it does great against Kyurem-B.

Heatran @ Leftovers
Trait: Flash Fire
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SDef
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Lava Plume
- Stealth Rock
- Flash Cannon
- Toxic

Relevant calcs:
252+ Atk Teravolt Kyurem-B Fusion Bolt vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Heatran: 102-120 (26.4 - 31.1%) -- 10.6% chance to 4HKO after Leftovers recovery
0 SpA Heatran Flash Cannon vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Kyurem-B: 236-278 (51.9 - 61.2%) -- 94.9% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

 

[Double Electric]

Has anyone considered Florges?

I tried, honestly I did. But in the end, a Blissey just proved to be more useful overall, especially since defensive teams tend to be extremely strapped for team slots. Most special walls are like that, really. They seem neat in theory, but then you realize a big pink blob could get the job done 1000% more easily. It doesn't help that most other special walls aren't much harder to set up on than Blissey/Chansey either.

 

[Alejandro36]

Indeed, I still get surprised at how hard to take down chansey with eviolite is. There is just nothing like Blissey/Chansey. Despite all the new and powerfull pokemon being added every generation, the old Skarm/Bliss from Gen 2 is still one of the most solid defensive combos there is.

 

[SupremeDirt]

If Wish for whatever reason simply can't be passed through Pokebank (even from a "perfect" legal hack of it) what are alternative wish passers that are working for people? I've been trying Latias and Vaporeon a bit, but i'm not impressed with their opportunities to actually get the wish in (though i was having some success with Wish/Baton Pass on Vaporeon, purely to get something in safely for healing).

Actually Baton Pass/U-Turn/Volt Switch to pass Wish seems a fairly decent worst-case scenario option if something has been badly crippled and you need it for something, whether it was crippled through a crit or a bad play.

Total users of it seem very limited though... since it'd generally be Eeveelution/Togekiss/Jirachi

Jirachi seems a little fast for it though and possibly eviolite Togetic would be a better choice.. though HP is fairly low and i don't much like my cleric being weak to Stealth Rock.

A dedicated Cleric Vaporeon could be interesting though, with something like Wish/Baton Pass/Heal Bell/idk

 

[Calm_Mind_Latias]

Indeed, I still get surprised at how hard to take down chansey with eviolite is. There is just nothing like Blissey/Chansey. Despite all the new and powerfull pokemon being added every generation, the old Skarm/Bliss from Gen 2 is still one of the most solid defensive combos there is.

It almost makes me want to use Fire Punch on Conkeldurr since it can now single-handedly break Skar-Bliss. People are using Knock Off instead of Thunder Punch because it gets Ghosts on the switch-in.

 

[TrueSoprano]

Indeed, I still get surprised at how hard to take down chansey with eviolite is. There is just nothing like Blissey/Chansey. Despite all the new and powerfull pokemon being added every generation, the old Skarm/Bliss from Gen 2 is still one of the most solid defensive combos there is.

Agree. Blissey has been amazing to me this gen. I'm still experimenting with defensive cores, but Blissey's staying.

 

[Tactical]

If Wish for whatever reason simply can't be passed through Pokebank (even from a "perfect" legal hack of it) what are alternative wish passers that are working for people? I've been trying Latias and Vaporeon a bit, but i'm not impressed with their opportunities to actually get the wish in (though i was having some success with Wish/Baton Pass on Vaporeon, purely to get something in safely for healing).

One problem I've had with Clerics, and wish passers in general, was they always get worn down so incredibly easily. Given they always have to take a hit in order to setup a wish to pass to an ally, they very rarely live past 2-3 passes, if that, and if you keep them in with wish > protect > wish to top themselves off before passing to a team then you have just thrown all of the momentum you could have possibly had at your oppoent on a silver platter.

With that in mind, I've actually had quite a bit of work done by Regenerating Wishers keeping my stall team tuned up. Audino, especially, as it can run a full cleric set in Heal Bell/Wish and is actually decently bulky if specialized in one of the defensive sides, giving it plenty of opportunities to switch in, setup a wish, and switch out without wearing itself down too much thanks to Regenerator. Knock off is just icing on the cake.

If you need a tougher wish passer at the cost of losing Heal Bell on the wisher itself, Alomomola is actually fantastic on the physically defensive side, and passes massive wishes. If you EV it right it can even survive a volt-switch from Rotom-W and blow up whatever they were hoping to bring in to setup on the fight with Mirror Coat. Scald for burn chance always helps, too.

 

[SupremeDirt]

Hmmmm I've never actually thought about Audino before... Alomomola could work and the mirror coat idea is actually pretty cool.
It won't work on the team i'm building right now (as a key player on it is Milotic and i don't like the idea of doubling up on mono-waters) but it could be fun.

Regenerator is actually a really interesting idea that i haven't thought much about for some reason.


I was using Unaware Clefable to pass wishes for a while (with Encore for some amusing utility) but it kept being broken by a single crit from the likes of Garchomp.. which isn't good when that's one of the things it's supposed to be walling.