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Pokemon Showdown! Username: abmasnwuselchseed
Hall of Fame Standing: wat? im not in the hall of fame i just signed up
Current Ladder Standing on Pokemon Showdown!: i havent laddered yet
abomasnow learns leech seed which is stally so i will try hail stall
@Dragonfruit, if only building a hail stall team were so easy, I have tied a number of things and something usually goes wrong. If you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them and I would be more than willing to share my experiences.
I'm not sure if rankings count after the ladder restart, but my slightly tweaked rain stall team is doing very well on the ou (current) ladder.
(I think I made gold!: http://imgur.com/FU8uY).
I've also tried it out on the suspect ladder w/o genesect and it fares even better. IMO, whatever sect's status in terms of (non)brokenness, getting rid of it definitely helps stall (the non-RP LO set in particular was incredibly annoying to face, as I only had 1 poke to outspeed it). IK that a lot of people are using sect as their offensive mon, but what do people think about how stall would be affected by a genesect ban (if it happens)?
Bumped Kidgo from Silver all the way up to Platinum! Well done, man >:D Seems like you're getting comfortable in this playstyle! It's interesting to know what tweaks you made that have facilitated this surge in rating :o I urge you to attempt gaining the Grandmaster title for Defense of the Titans!
Bedlington said:
How many people use the format given in the smog article "How it's made - Defense" or if not, is there any basic formula that is part of stall?
Yep, yee's How it's Made - Defense is a good primer to stall - just ignore his claim that Tentacruel is broken (lol!). The article oversimplify the playstyle, though, so here are a few more things to note:
~ Weather Offense: The OU meta is not simply defined by Dragons and Fighting-types. We have powerful Rain threats in Tornadus-T, Keldeo, and Thundurus; Sun threats in Venusaur, Sawsbuck, and Fire-types; Sand threats in Stoutland. Granted Steel-types actually help with some of the Normal-type threats and Tornadus-T mentioned above, but it's certainly not enough to cover all facets of the natural disasters caused by weather.
~ Phazers: Stall teams are prone to set-up sweepers, since defensive playstyle offers more opportunities to boost offense to an extent that threatens to break through your defense. A solid phazer or a combination of phazers would be ideal to squander any attempts of setting up by sweepers that your other teammates would struggle against. This is one misgivings of undisputed's Rain Man team on the article, since it's set-up bait. M Dragon's Rain stall's Dragonite is a key piece to his stalling success.
Kidogo, what is your updated team? I distinctly remember that Tentacruel set but the rest of the team wasn't quite the same. What changes helped in the rating jump?
I'm sad to see Yee didn't mention Gothitelle in the trapping section of his article. You should really add your ScarfGoth suggestion to the helpful posts section, alexwolf. I found it to be really helpful as he helps out with a large amount of Pokemon that typically bother stall. Shadow Ball does sound like a better idea. I'll miss the SE hit on Landorus but Shadow Ball lets me deal with Alakazam, Reuniclus, Starmie, Tentacruel, Jellicent and Latias better as well as avoid burning something I would rather Toxic poison.
I'll try to answer those questions soon. Right now I'm on my DSi so I can't copy-paste and have a character limit.
The team I was originally laddering with was based on a BW1 team I had, with some minorish changes. In my current version, I made two major changes: gastrodon --> ferrothorn and a big change in tentacruel's set. I also added perish song on celebi > BP since I was a lot weaker to subcharge zone and subCM rachi without gastro. Ferrothorn is proving invaluable as like the only solid check to Kyurem-B, and double steels is really helping me out (I'd really love to make one of them shed shell to help against dragmag teams but neither has reliable recovery, so idk). Tentacruel's set is one of my favorite, it's subtoxic -- toxic since all i really need is to get the opponent suffering from some kind of continuous damage (LO, burn from scald, toxic from toed, etc.) and tentacruel can stall anything out. It also beats LO gengar with a guaranteed sub up at the end, meaning I can just stay in and RS while the next poke breaks my sub.
Anyway, here's the team:
Celebi @ Leftovers
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 236 HP / 220 Def / 36 SDef / 16 Spd
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Recover
- Heal Bell
- Psychic
- Perish Song
Jirachi @ Leftovers
Trait: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 HP / 162 SDef / 96 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Wish
- Thunder
- Iron Head
I think part of what helped me jump up was that, before the reset, I had logged a ton of battles early on while experimenting with the team, which makes it really hard to get a high glicko2. So after the reset, starting out with a new account and the final version of the team, I was able to get a good w/l ratio from the start (my current w/l is 27/3 for whatever it's worth--and one of those losses was to dragonfruit I believe!).
I'm going to be off PS for a little while but when I come back, I'll definitely try for grandmaster!
Bumped Kidgo from Silver all the way up to Platinum! Well done, man >:D Seems like you're getting comfortable in this playstyle! It's interesting to know what tweaks you made that have facilitated this surge in rating :o I urge you to attempt gaining the Grandmaster title for Defense of the Titans!
Yep, yee's How it's Made - Defense is a good primer to stall - just ignore his claim that Tentacruel is broken (lol!). The article oversimplify the playstyle, though, so here are a few more things to note:
~ Weather Offense: The OU meta is not simply defined by Dragons and Fighting-types. We have powerful Rain threats in Tornadus-T, Keldeo, and Thundurus; Sun threats in Venusaur, Sawsbuck, and Fire-types; Sand threats in Stoutland. Granted Steel-types actually help with some of the Normal-type threats and Tornadus-T mentioned above, but it's certainly not enough to cover all facets of the natural disasters caused by weather.
~ Phazers: Stall teams are prone to set-up sweepers, since defensive playstyle offers more opportunities to boost offense to an extent that threatens to break through your defense. A solid phazer or a combination of phazers would be ideal to squander any attempts of setting up by sweepers that your other teammates would struggle against. This is one misgivings of undisputed's Rain Man team on the article, since it's set-up bait. M Dragon's Rain stall's Dragonite is a key piece to his stalling success.
Pokemon Showdown! Username:Melee Mewtwo
Hall of Fame Standing:Silver
Current Ladder Standing on Pokemon Showdown!:2061
Now for the questions
- What are the roles of Pokemon that were essential to your stall team's success? Rapid Spinner, Physical Wall, Hazard Setter, etc. Well I built my team by finding what I thought the appropriate Pokemon would be for the roles I was looking for. The roles I wanted were Spin Blocker, Spikes, Rapid Spinner, Stealth Rock (seperate from Spikes), Revenge Killer, and then my defensive Core. These roles were just the bare minimum and the ones I would absolutely require but some other roles ended up coming in naturally and they were also welcome.
- What was the most useful Pokemon in your team and why? You can also talk about defensive cores here. Honestly, I have nothing but praise for each of my members. They were all incredibly useful in their own ways. However, if I did have to pick a MVP it would have to go to Chansey for being such an incredible special wall. She was extremely reliably and hard to wear down thanks to Nat Cure and Softboiled. She was only a special sponge, either, has she can tank quite a large amount of unboosted Physical hits (a poor Haxorus once fell victim to her bulk). Seismic Toss and Toxic is a great combination as it makes it really difficult to avoid being crippled unless you had Taunt, 101+ Substitutes, or an immunity to Toxic (and even those guys needed to hit enough damage that I couldn't just wear them down with SToss) which is a pretty small portion of the metagame. The part that seperates her from the other members of the team, though, is her reliability in setting up Stealth Rock. It was incredibly useful to have something that could easily set up SR against any team type, and multiple times if need be. As far as cores go, the new Move Tutors gave Poison Heal Gliscor Roost giving him reliably recovery on top of crazy passive healing and status immunity. So I had an amazing Special wall with one of the best Physical walls that at the same time had pretty good type synergy. This left the rest of the team open enough for me to focus more on getting the best guys for the roles I wanted than worrying about walling stuff the core couldn't.
- What were the biggest threats to your stall team, and how you dealt with them? Umm, I do not have much computer time so I theorymon my teams. Fortunately, this team came out almost perfect (for what I was building for) so there wasn't much trial and error. I did edit a move slot here and there and tweaked a few EV spreads but they were more fine tuning than dealing with a bothersome threat. The thing I do wish I had was a dedicated sleep absorber.
- Did you find it easy or difficult to build a successful stall team? Explain why. Kinda hard to say as it was all theorymon done in some down time (like on trains and stuff). It wasn't horribly difficult when I sat down to build this team but I think knowing about ScarfGoth helped a lot with that as he let me cut corners I wouldn't normally take thanks to his cheap Shadow Tag. (Thank you so much Alexwolf)
- How did you reach the Hall of Fame? Was it easy or difficult? Did having a stall team benefit you? What advice would you give to those laddering with stall teams? Most teams don't expect a well built Stall team as nowadays even average HO teams can deal with the odd Stall team. For the most part it was easy, time consuming, but easy (which was okay since I like playing Stall). As far as advice goes, I would suggest one keeps in mine the roles I listed earlier when building their team (keep in mind to not put your SR where your Spikes are), know your calcs and what beats what, and don't forget that ScarfGoth can cop you out of unwanted situations and clean up lose ends. Don't forget type synergy and go through the threat list when you are finished.
Gothitelle (M) @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Shadow Tag
EVs: 252 SAtk / 4 SDef / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Psyshock
- Thunderbolt
- Trick
- Hidden Power [Ice]
I'll end up laddering to higher once I have the time. When I do would you like that I edit this post with the results and new alt?
Edit: I'm going ahead and trying to ladder higher with a new alt (since Suspect won't end for a good while).
Pokemon Showdown! Username:SSB4 Mewtwo
Hall of Fame Standing:New alt so none
Current Ladder Standing on Pokemon Showdown!:nothing
Sorry for being so inactive guys but my pc is broken and i had limited internet access the past few days and i spent most of my time trying to get reqs... Now back to business!
Good job Melee Mewtwo, holding up with the big boys with a stall team. Also glad to see that someone else sees the awesomeness of Scarf Goth for stall teams. Btw why do you use HP Ice? I prefer running T-Wave for anything dangerous and powerful that may get out of control, but HP Ice has quite a few targets too i guess. On to the team now... Your team is easily swept by EQ Venusaur which is a common lure sun teams use. To remedy this problem you could try running T-Wave instead of Toxic on Chansey so that later Gothitelle can revenge kill Venusaur. I don't think that Chansey loses any match-up that she was winning before but i may be missing something so feel free to correct me. Dugtrio is also a problem for Heatran but you already know the solution, use a Shed Shell on Heatran and a RestTalk set if it becomes too annoying. If you go this way you could also remove SR from Chansey and give it either Wish or Heal Bell, to enable Heatran to survive longer. Then you can remove Protect from Gliscor and give SR to it instead. Finally what is Protect's purpose on Forretress? I believe that Volt Switch is a far better option, which works amazing with Scarf Goth, as Forre lures ghosts for Goth to trap. Or you can even use Pain Split to give to Forre better survivability, which i always find it needing.
Tbh i have start seeing more stall teams in general, which makes the ladder a bit more interesting to play finally. However, most of them are very poorly used so there is still a lot of work to be done. I haven't played yet in the suspect test ladder, but those of you who had, what kind of stall teams did you face? Were they a few or a lot? Were they well built or no? And finally were they used by good players or not?
I didn't run across any notable stall teams in my suspect requirement run. The few that I did see were poorly built and poorly played. I used rain stall for most of my requirements, though, and I found Quagsire to be really useful since I ran into quite a few Gyarados since Genesect isn't around to instantly tell them "NO!" I encourage everyone to try it out. It also makes for a wonderful SD Terrakion check.
I prefer running T-Wave for anything dangerous and powerful that may get out of control, but HP Ice has quite a few targets too i guess. On to the team now... Your team is easily swept by EQ Venusaur which is a common lure sun teams use. To remedy this problem you could try running T-Wave instead of Toxic on Chansey so that later Gothitelle can revenge kill Venusaur. I don't think that Chansey loses any match-up that she was winning before but i may be missing something so feel free to correct me. Dugtrio is also a problem for Heatran but you already know the solution, use a Shed Shell on Heatran and a RestTalk set if it becomes too annoying. If you go this way you could also remove SR from Chansey and give it either Wish or Heal Bell, to enable Heatran to survive longer. Then you can remove Protect from Gliscor and give SR to it instead. Finally what is Protect's purpose on Forretress? I believe that Volt Switch is a far better option, which works amazing with Scarf Goth, as Forre lures ghosts for Goth to trap. Or you can even use Pain Split to give to Forre better survivability, which i always find it needing.
My main problem with T-Wave is that my Goth is pretty much dead after using it. Plus my team doesn't have any real strong attackers so a paralyzed threat may not be beat. If I'm going to scarp Goth I would rather trick it a Choice Scarf and use my resistances or insane bulk (looking at you Chansey) to finish it off (or set up some Spikes). I'm assuming most Growth EQ Venusaur are going to use HP Ice with it so they aren't trolled by dragons. In which case my Forretress can easily handle it. Like I said T-Wave doesn't do much for my team besides protect them from Toxic and let them spam recover on my weak Seismic Tosses or Lave Plumes. Even if the odd Growth, Giga Drain, HP Fire, EQ Venusaur shows up, I can try to use Forry's Sturdy to hit it with a Gyro Ball (Protect can buy my an extra turn of Lefties to heal off SR damage). Heatran was the last member I added on my team to check Venusaur and as a solid steel type to help with Outrages. It's a very helpful Toxic staller and has very useful resistances (plus it roasts Ferrothorn). However, it's not a major member of my team and in most cases I can get by just fine without it. Sun teams are already having a hard time with SR Chansey so as long as I'm careful with switching in and I don't kill stupid things and let Duggy revenge kill me (Roar helps a lot with that as it forces out the threat while preventing Duggy from waltzing in) I won't have any problems to justify a crummy set like RestTalk. SR is really just amazing on Chansey as she can easily set it up early game against any team type. Protect helps Gliscor stall out Toxic, nab an extra 12% HP, and scout out Choice sets and surprise ice attacks. I know Protect looks weird on Forry but I've actually been really pleased with the results. I had used Volt Switch before since it combos nicely with Gothitelle, however I ended hardly using it over Rapid Spin or Spikes and felt like I had to use prediction for it to be useful. So I ended up dropping it and decided to try Protect for some Toxic stall shenanigans. I was pleasantly surprised by how useful Protect ended up being. It helped keep Forry in good shape, scouted out Choice attacks and surprise Fire Blasts, as well as stall out Toxic an extra turn. It even baits greedy opponents into trying to nab an extra boost, just to be hit by a Gyro Ball. It also makes your opponent think twice about trying to predict a particular switch-in after I scout something like a Thunder from Starmie.
I'm kinda bothered about SD Gliscor. Sure Goth can trap and kill it but I sometimes use him for other things. It's not super bad thanks to Goth but still...
I'm going to change my new ladder alt to SSB4 Mewtwo cause the one I was using was playing crummy teams and crawling.
EDIT: Computer problems. It crashed in the middle of multiple battles so the alt is ruined. I'll get back to this later. Also, thank you Yee for clarifying that part of the article.
Just to clear things up with my article- it doesn't tell you how to cover every single threat in every single metagame. It just shows you the easy to accept foundation you need for your 4th / 5th gen team to maximize your coverage. It doesn't say Dragon and Fighting types are the primary focus of BW2 and you did a poor job reading the article if that's what you took from it, it expects you to use your metagame knowledge to finish whatever you were working on.
Secondly, Gothitelle would've been included but the article was written during BW1.
I used to really like stall, but now I'm not so sure with B-Kyurem blasting SkarmBliss and AmoongBro to pieces and Keldeo smashing through most stall teams lacking Jellicent. (but it has HP ghost/electric for that). I have respect for stall because you can get a 1700+ rating due to impatient people. People, however, won't hesitate to cuss you out for using stall. It happened to me several times. I think it might have been possible in BW, but BW2 is just too much. Maybe one of you can prove me wrong? Possibly raise a point I hadn't thought of.
I used to really like stall, but now I'm not so sure with B-Kyurem blasting SkarmBliss and AmoongBro to pieces and Keldeo smashing through most stall teams lacking Jellicent. (but it has HP ghost/electric for that). I have respect for stall because you can get a 1700+ rating due to impatient people. People, however, won't hesitate to cuss you out for using stall. It happened to me several times. I think it might have been possible in BW, but BW2 is just too much. Maybe one of you can prove me wrong? Possibly raise a point I hadn't thought of.
Keldeo is not exceptionally hard for stall to deal with, and is in fact not even one of its worries. Celebi, Amoonguss, Roar CM Latias, Cresselia in sun, SpD Jellicent, SpD Dragonite (if Keldeo doesn't have HP Ice), RestTalk Gyarados (if Keldeo doesn't have Sub and HP Electric or if Gyara uses Roar and Keldeo doesn't have HP Electric), and even Toxic Tentacruel (if Keldeo doesn't have Sub and HP Electric) are all options that stall has to deal with Keldeo. I will agree with you that Kyurem-B is one of stall's biggest problems, but there are ways to deal with it. Any physical or physically mixed version (CB, Scarf and Mixed with max Atk) is walled by physically defensive Jirachi and Ferrothorn (the latter needs rain in order to avoid the 2HKO from HP Fire). Chansey walls any specially mixed Kyurem-B without Outrage, while Perish Song Celebi deals pretty well with SubHone Claws D-Tail Kyurem-B, as long as it switches in on time. There are other ways to deal with it, but those are the most solid that i can think of.
Finally, don't let what other people think about stall let you down. If people that don't like stall consider you to be a prick or something, that's their fault and the best thing you should do is to ignore the chat. I also assure you that you can ladder to the top with a stall team, as a lot of participants in this project have proved, such as Kidogo and Princess Bri.
As Genesect is banned and ladder reset I'm going for it again - alt this time is KeisukeHonda. I am running CM Latias, if that doesn't qual then whatever, my team is very clearly stall anyway. MixBelt Aboma/Bliss/Forry/Gliscor/Latias/Walrein
