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Other Stall
- Thread starter ShootingStarmie
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I think I'm going to steal Yuttt at some point and put together a long post about what is required for stall in this meta. But for now, I'm just writing out observations after running and building two stall teams (both with hundreds of adjustments). I know smogon likes their articles, but right now we need the AED for stall in this meta.
I think one of the adjustments stall takes this year is to focus only on rocks because all others are a waste of time. To stop defog, you would technically need your prankster taunter out at all time. However, stealth rocks have more PP than defog so it is a much more versatile option, requiring less commitment, less focused pokemon and most importantly, less time to set. The old phaze stall is probably dead, but adapting gives us benefits.
Offense makes good defense, too! Mainly, stall is now allowed to look at attack stats with a little envy. Bulky offense has a good deal of good pokemon that, with some EV investment, can be transferred into stall pokes. Moves like Roost on hydregion, rarely used in OU previously, are now completely viable to abuse in stall. Stat investment into the somewhat average defenses allows him the bulk to play as a slightly more offensive stall poke. Latias, Slowbro, mega tyranitar, mega venusaur, heatran, gyarados, aegislash and other pokes with usable attack stats define the future of stall.
Without any investment into the attack side, these pokemon dish respectable damage and take damage very well.
For example, I run a custom spread venusaur-mega with 248/68/188 (all defensive stats) and relaxed nature. Running two coverage moves, I can expect to hit about 33% on neutral pokes anywhere and take much less damage. The ability to simply dish damage while tanking and phazing is so incredibly important this generation.
Scald over Willowisp! Willowisp is good, don't get me wrong, but status stall has little success this generation. I heard talking of trapping status stall, but the issue is heal bells. They're a bit more common this year with the accuracy of willowisp. While statuses are still viable and integral to stall, we can't focus on it, either. For example, Most teams carry willowisp on a pokemon or two, and toxic on another. I reduced the amount of willowisp and toxic by adding high percentage status moves like discharge zapdos and scald slowbro (also nice 100 SpA that doesn't need investment). The added chance of burn/paralysis alleviates move slots, deals damage and effortlessly gives me more damage on pokes I generally would just be status stalling. Also, moves like scald/discharge make switching more difficult on the opponent. They don't want key pokes to take these statuses and may make less-than ideal switches.
Physical walls float the boat. This meta is simply packed with physical threats. From mega lucario's deadly SD sets to Mega pinsir's similar style and the ever-present Khan, the meta simply refuses to go special. This is beneficial as much as it is harmful. Most of us have status moves to lock up this style in willowisp, but it means that "balanced stall" which look to create equal amounts of special walls and physical walls, get wrecked by one sided attacks. The most success I have had, and I have had a good deal of it, comes when I focus four pokes as dedicated physical walls and two blended walls. But these walls can handle special attacks, too. Mega venusaur, mega tyranitar, mega aggron even (when specially invested), aegislash, heatran, registeel, gyarados and a tirade of other pokemon can hang their hat on inherent special bulk (or in aggron's case, invested) and then run a perfectly fine wall to both sides simply because of the lack of OP special attacks right now. With one true special wall, generally a cleric (which is a SPECTACULAR idea, fyi, to have a SDef cleric as you can stall recovery without switching and mitigate issues with special walls), you can really take care of the full range of special attackers on the opponent's team (which is generally just two max).
Fairies stop everything, including OU wall breakers! Another adjustment is probably going to be the requirement of fairies. The wall breakers of OU are generally dragon/fight types, and fairy is a magical stop to wall breakers, although you generally have to specific which wall breakers you are going after. Togekiss can generally switch on garchomp-mega, but hates stone edge. But really, the best wall breaker counter is Clefable, hands down. Clefable cold stops garchomp (33% from EQ), Hydreigon (perfect counter), and haxorus (less from EQ) while also stopping conckledurr and some other fights. Where Clefable hurts is vs Terrakion who has that strong stone edge stab.
Florges (and even Floette)/Slyveon/Gardivoir-mega also stop Hydreigon cold, and can be a decent stop to any special wall breaker (namely latios, kyurem and even chandelure). The key resists to fighting and dragon make fairies incredibly useful to stop the monster attack all purpose wall breakers.
Reduce ground weaknesses! I haven't done a check, but my guess is earthquake was the most used move this month, and ground attacks were the most common. Perhaps flying from BB TF was up there and uturn/volt swtiches, but the mighty EQ is very seen. Though rocks are annoying, there are so many ways to handle them that just going rock neutral is fine. This means reducing steel typings, looking for levitate users and just taking a few good safe switches for ground in general. I try to keep mine with one immunity/resist for every weakness.
But there's a second reason for this. Ground's only physical competitive move is 100 base power and 100 accuracy, and the users vary from just about every physical dragon to most megas (including Khan, Mega venusaur, Tyranitar, Aggron, pinsir, charizard) and every offensive team has at least two. You never know which will have it, but it is really hard to be out trying to stop something and get blasted by an EQ. This is why mega pinsir is so difficult to stop, and the reason charizard X can't be stopped by general rock types, why mega venu can't be walled by steel types without fully knowing the set.
Dark weaknesses are also good to avoid. Pursuit, knock off, thief, foul play and some other moves are all great utility moves to hurt stall badly. Fairies of course can handle this, but watch out for those pursuit traps. Right now, knock off is a staple on most well-built bulky/tanky teams, so be aware that any dark-weak pokemon with an item will be taking massive damage when hit. Mainly, Conckledurr, Tyranitar, Scizor and mandibuzz are running these support moves. Dark moves don't always have good power, but they have excellent utility to the moves.
Define what a counter, check and wall is on and to your team. To me, I use the following definitions:
Counter: A pokemon that can come in and take little damage, less than 33% mainly, and win any fight should the opponent stay in. An example of this is what Slowbro is to Excadrill, or heatran to talonflame (esp when Heatran goes ancient power).
Check: A pokemon that can come in on any safe play and win a fight 1v1. It cannot take damage so easily, but can win after rocks damage and some other residual. preferably losing only 60-70% health max. This is what Slowbro is to mega-lucario at +2, or what talonflame is to a lot of different pokemon. Stall really should avoid this as much as possible.
Wall: A pokemon that can take no damage, or almost none and never die to another pokemon, but really can't do much back. This is Blissey to Gengar, special kyurem or any special threat. This is also skarmory/air balloon excadrill/heatran to gliscor.
Yuttt thinks of walls as overall counters (Blissey to special attacks, skarm to ground/physical). I mean, I see that as more of the idea of a tank, glass canon, bulky attacker category of pokemon, but it does work. My idea is simply a poke that prevents another from achieving any purpose but can't achieve much, either (at least in damage).
Some changes, however, exist in these definitions and that's mainly preference on what damage marks each tier. In checks, a lot of time a check will outspeed what it is checking for faster teams.
Lastly, and most importantly, spend time in team building.
If I was to tell you how I have learned stall or how I've gotten to be good with stall, I'd say it's because I build good stall teams. I invest more time building and adjusting sets and theorymonning than I do battling, and I make quick observations about the way pokes work in battle. The Dreadnought team I recently made has had revisions for now just under 30 days, and there was a good bit of teambuilding before that. Haunting Synergy, my semi-stall 5th gen stall team, also took upwards of 50 hours to put together. And I have side projects and stall teams that never take off, but I find concepts and cores that worked from them. I have a sigi burn team that I don't use anymore, but pieces and parts of it are currently in my newest creation that I'll hopefully have out by Tuesday.
But team building is way more than pick 6 bulky pokemon, or selecting a type core. It's finding utility, objectives, ideas and employing calculations to make sure the team runs well. As mentioned, I have four good cores I came up with before starting this most recent core. The dreadnoughts even just run a simple fire/water/grass core, and haunting synergy did the same. These aren't original, right? But when you employ objectives you want to reach:
Keep the team healthy at all times
Have _ amount of phazers
Check __ pokemon, counter ___.
Burn all offensive threats, stop heal bell users
Then you have basis and objective. Stall literally relies on the house you build, and the house you build must able to take on severe weather. One way of learning is to just read RMTs on stall (I did this to Meru's sand stall team, as well as a few early teams). Others is just through trial and error. Most stall teams don't run well out of the gate. I had a stall team that got outsped by base 80 speed taunters and could not win afterwards. Had to adjust and learn to counter that.
A good stall team has:
Core(s) that cover itself and expand a good amount of resistances (F/w/g, dark/psychic/steel, dragon/fairy/steel, dark/ghost/fairy)
Many, many resistances, even at the sacrifice of an extra weakness (as long as that weakness is covered somewhere). Remember, normal typing still takes neutral from a ton of attacks and a whole team getting hit for neutral would probably lose.
Objectives. What do you plan to achieve as your endgame. Phazing is no longer an option.
Utility: If it was all about walling, all stall teams would have dusclops, the world's greatest wall (short of ubers Giratina and lugia). Have knock off, wish, heal bell, willowisp, taunt, roar, stealth rocks, foul play, defog, rapid spin, haze or any move that gives you the ability to keep yourself in advantageous positions. Not all are needed, but you definitively need some of these.
Good Bulk/Recovery: This, of course, is a given. A stall team still needs to squeeze all of the above into bulky pokes and pokemon with good recovery.
Synergy: This is part of cores, but this goes deeper. For example, a core you would never expect, Latias/Lanturn/heatran existed on my HS team because lanturn heal belled heatran when he used rest, latias wish passed, and heatran tanked. The weaknesses were mostly covered in this core as well, but the combination of moves helped these three become effective. Lanturn also used discharge to slow pokemon down, heatran burned physical attacks, and latias could pass off statuses using psycho shift (alleviated switching and heal bell usage).
Testing: Unfortunately, even the most perfect-looking teams on paper have issues. Sometimes, it's just one or two very fixable flaws, other times you are rearranging pokemon left and right to steady the team out. Sigilphy, for example, has passable bulk and really great bulk after a few cosmic powers. However, it is walled by dark types. Sometimes over psycho shift, it is a good idea to run HP fighting to cover this. A simple fix, really.
Patience: Stall teams are the hardest teams to design, hence the belief that they are cheap. A great stall team probably had 100's of times more work put into it than a great HO team. The time is strenuous, too. That's just the nature of stall, you hang your hat on your ability to make good teams. You also have to scour the whole metagame, including lower tiers and even pre-evolutions (did you know that misdrevious, gligar, sligoo, bayleaf, magneton, roselia all have better defenses than their evolutions when coupled with eviolite? Most do, but these are just the better ones to look into). When you think about all the pokemon a stall team takes into consideration for what is viable, you start to see why it is such a long and hard process.
Lures: We're stall... we do have to have some underhanded tricks to get certain pokemon out of the way. Fire blast slowbro for ferrothorn? Yes please. Meru did the same thing with Latias and Roserade (I think there was some testing to note roserade had scizor switching into it a lot...) for scizor. EQ mega-venusaur for heatran? Happens. Just make sure it has more viability than the pokemon loses using that slot.
And that's it for now. Come on, let's get some more stall in OU pokebank, stall is fairly important to our meta. Keeps the world in harmony.
I think one of the adjustments stall takes this year is to focus only on rocks because all others are a waste of time. To stop defog, you would technically need your prankster taunter out at all time. However, stealth rocks have more PP than defog so it is a much more versatile option, requiring less commitment, less focused pokemon and most importantly, less time to set. The old phaze stall is probably dead, but adapting gives us benefits.
Offense makes good defense, too! Mainly, stall is now allowed to look at attack stats with a little envy. Bulky offense has a good deal of good pokemon that, with some EV investment, can be transferred into stall pokes. Moves like Roost on hydregion, rarely used in OU previously, are now completely viable to abuse in stall. Stat investment into the somewhat average defenses allows him the bulk to play as a slightly more offensive stall poke. Latias, Slowbro, mega tyranitar, mega venusaur, heatran, gyarados, aegislash and other pokes with usable attack stats define the future of stall.
Without any investment into the attack side, these pokemon dish respectable damage and take damage very well.
For example, I run a custom spread venusaur-mega with 248/68/188 (all defensive stats) and relaxed nature. Running two coverage moves, I can expect to hit about 33% on neutral pokes anywhere and take much less damage. The ability to simply dish damage while tanking and phazing is so incredibly important this generation.
Scald over Willowisp! Willowisp is good, don't get me wrong, but status stall has little success this generation. I heard talking of trapping status stall, but the issue is heal bells. They're a bit more common this year with the accuracy of willowisp. While statuses are still viable and integral to stall, we can't focus on it, either. For example, Most teams carry willowisp on a pokemon or two, and toxic on another. I reduced the amount of willowisp and toxic by adding high percentage status moves like discharge zapdos and scald slowbro (also nice 100 SpA that doesn't need investment). The added chance of burn/paralysis alleviates move slots, deals damage and effortlessly gives me more damage on pokes I generally would just be status stalling. Also, moves like scald/discharge make switching more difficult on the opponent. They don't want key pokes to take these statuses and may make less-than ideal switches.
Physical walls float the boat. This meta is simply packed with physical threats. From mega lucario's deadly SD sets to Mega pinsir's similar style and the ever-present Khan, the meta simply refuses to go special. This is beneficial as much as it is harmful. Most of us have status moves to lock up this style in willowisp, but it means that "balanced stall" which look to create equal amounts of special walls and physical walls, get wrecked by one sided attacks. The most success I have had, and I have had a good deal of it, comes when I focus four pokes as dedicated physical walls and two blended walls. But these walls can handle special attacks, too. Mega venusaur, mega tyranitar, mega aggron even (when specially invested), aegislash, heatran, registeel, gyarados and a tirade of other pokemon can hang their hat on inherent special bulk (or in aggron's case, invested) and then run a perfectly fine wall to both sides simply because of the lack of OP special attacks right now. With one true special wall, generally a cleric (which is a SPECTACULAR idea, fyi, to have a SDef cleric as you can stall recovery without switching and mitigate issues with special walls), you can really take care of the full range of special attackers on the opponent's team (which is generally just two max).
Fairies stop everything, including OU wall breakers! Another adjustment is probably going to be the requirement of fairies. The wall breakers of OU are generally dragon/fight types, and fairy is a magical stop to wall breakers, although you generally have to specific which wall breakers you are going after. Togekiss can generally switch on garchomp-mega, but hates stone edge. But really, the best wall breaker counter is Clefable, hands down. Clefable cold stops garchomp (33% from EQ), Hydreigon (perfect counter), and haxorus (less from EQ) while also stopping conckledurr and some other fights. Where Clefable hurts is vs Terrakion who has that strong stone edge stab.
Florges (and even Floette)/Slyveon/Gardivoir-mega also stop Hydreigon cold, and can be a decent stop to any special wall breaker (namely latios, kyurem and even chandelure). The key resists to fighting and dragon make fairies incredibly useful to stop the monster attack all purpose wall breakers.
Reduce ground weaknesses! I haven't done a check, but my guess is earthquake was the most used move this month, and ground attacks were the most common. Perhaps flying from BB TF was up there and uturn/volt swtiches, but the mighty EQ is very seen. Though rocks are annoying, there are so many ways to handle them that just going rock neutral is fine. This means reducing steel typings, looking for levitate users and just taking a few good safe switches for ground in general. I try to keep mine with one immunity/resist for every weakness.
But there's a second reason for this. Ground's only physical competitive move is 100 base power and 100 accuracy, and the users vary from just about every physical dragon to most megas (including Khan, Mega venusaur, Tyranitar, Aggron, pinsir, charizard) and every offensive team has at least two. You never know which will have it, but it is really hard to be out trying to stop something and get blasted by an EQ. This is why mega pinsir is so difficult to stop, and the reason charizard X can't be stopped by general rock types, why mega venu can't be walled by steel types without fully knowing the set.
Dark weaknesses are also good to avoid. Pursuit, knock off, thief, foul play and some other moves are all great utility moves to hurt stall badly. Fairies of course can handle this, but watch out for those pursuit traps. Right now, knock off is a staple on most well-built bulky/tanky teams, so be aware that any dark-weak pokemon with an item will be taking massive damage when hit. Mainly, Conckledurr, Tyranitar, Scizor and mandibuzz are running these support moves. Dark moves don't always have good power, but they have excellent utility to the moves.
Define what a counter, check and wall is on and to your team. To me, I use the following definitions:
Counter: A pokemon that can come in and take little damage, less than 33% mainly, and win any fight should the opponent stay in. An example of this is what Slowbro is to Excadrill, or heatran to talonflame (esp when Heatran goes ancient power).
Check: A pokemon that can come in on any safe play and win a fight 1v1. It cannot take damage so easily, but can win after rocks damage and some other residual. preferably losing only 60-70% health max. This is what Slowbro is to mega-lucario at +2, or what talonflame is to a lot of different pokemon. Stall really should avoid this as much as possible.
Wall: A pokemon that can take no damage, or almost none and never die to another pokemon, but really can't do much back. This is Blissey to Gengar, special kyurem or any special threat. This is also skarmory/air balloon excadrill/heatran to gliscor.
Yuttt thinks of walls as overall counters (Blissey to special attacks, skarm to ground/physical). I mean, I see that as more of the idea of a tank, glass canon, bulky attacker category of pokemon, but it does work. My idea is simply a poke that prevents another from achieving any purpose but can't achieve much, either (at least in damage).
Some changes, however, exist in these definitions and that's mainly preference on what damage marks each tier. In checks, a lot of time a check will outspeed what it is checking for faster teams.
Lastly, and most importantly, spend time in team building.
If I was to tell you how I have learned stall or how I've gotten to be good with stall, I'd say it's because I build good stall teams. I invest more time building and adjusting sets and theorymonning than I do battling, and I make quick observations about the way pokes work in battle. The Dreadnought team I recently made has had revisions for now just under 30 days, and there was a good bit of teambuilding before that. Haunting Synergy, my semi-stall 5th gen stall team, also took upwards of 50 hours to put together. And I have side projects and stall teams that never take off, but I find concepts and cores that worked from them. I have a sigi burn team that I don't use anymore, but pieces and parts of it are currently in my newest creation that I'll hopefully have out by Tuesday.
But team building is way more than pick 6 bulky pokemon, or selecting a type core. It's finding utility, objectives, ideas and employing calculations to make sure the team runs well. As mentioned, I have four good cores I came up with before starting this most recent core. The dreadnoughts even just run a simple fire/water/grass core, and haunting synergy did the same. These aren't original, right? But when you employ objectives you want to reach:
Keep the team healthy at all times
Have _ amount of phazers
Check __ pokemon, counter ___.
Burn all offensive threats, stop heal bell users
Then you have basis and objective. Stall literally relies on the house you build, and the house you build must able to take on severe weather. One way of learning is to just read RMTs on stall (I did this to Meru's sand stall team, as well as a few early teams). Others is just through trial and error. Most stall teams don't run well out of the gate. I had a stall team that got outsped by base 80 speed taunters and could not win afterwards. Had to adjust and learn to counter that.
A good stall team has:
Core(s) that cover itself and expand a good amount of resistances (F/w/g, dark/psychic/steel, dragon/fairy/steel, dark/ghost/fairy)
Many, many resistances, even at the sacrifice of an extra weakness (as long as that weakness is covered somewhere). Remember, normal typing still takes neutral from a ton of attacks and a whole team getting hit for neutral would probably lose.
Objectives. What do you plan to achieve as your endgame. Phazing is no longer an option.
Utility: If it was all about walling, all stall teams would have dusclops, the world's greatest wall (short of ubers Giratina and lugia). Have knock off, wish, heal bell, willowisp, taunt, roar, stealth rocks, foul play, defog, rapid spin, haze or any move that gives you the ability to keep yourself in advantageous positions. Not all are needed, but you definitively need some of these.
Good Bulk/Recovery: This, of course, is a given. A stall team still needs to squeeze all of the above into bulky pokes and pokemon with good recovery.
Synergy: This is part of cores, but this goes deeper. For example, a core you would never expect, Latias/Lanturn/heatran existed on my HS team because lanturn heal belled heatran when he used rest, latias wish passed, and heatran tanked. The weaknesses were mostly covered in this core as well, but the combination of moves helped these three become effective. Lanturn also used discharge to slow pokemon down, heatran burned physical attacks, and latias could pass off statuses using psycho shift (alleviated switching and heal bell usage).
Testing: Unfortunately, even the most perfect-looking teams on paper have issues. Sometimes, it's just one or two very fixable flaws, other times you are rearranging pokemon left and right to steady the team out. Sigilphy, for example, has passable bulk and really great bulk after a few cosmic powers. However, it is walled by dark types. Sometimes over psycho shift, it is a good idea to run HP fighting to cover this. A simple fix, really.
Patience: Stall teams are the hardest teams to design, hence the belief that they are cheap. A great stall team probably had 100's of times more work put into it than a great HO team. The time is strenuous, too. That's just the nature of stall, you hang your hat on your ability to make good teams. You also have to scour the whole metagame, including lower tiers and even pre-evolutions (did you know that misdrevious, gligar, sligoo, bayleaf, magneton, roselia all have better defenses than their evolutions when coupled with eviolite? Most do, but these are just the better ones to look into). When you think about all the pokemon a stall team takes into consideration for what is viable, you start to see why it is such a long and hard process.
Lures: We're stall... we do have to have some underhanded tricks to get certain pokemon out of the way. Fire blast slowbro for ferrothorn? Yes please. Meru did the same thing with Latias and Roserade (I think there was some testing to note roserade had scizor switching into it a lot...) for scizor. EQ mega-venusaur for heatran? Happens. Just make sure it has more viability than the pokemon loses using that slot.
And that's it for now. Come on, let's get some more stall in OU pokebank, stall is fairly important to our meta. Keeps the world in harmony.
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Wow. That was a really awesome post, I'd be hard-pressed to add anything to that.
Anywho, I've been having huge success with Stall this gen, to the point where it's definitely still going to remain my #1 playstyle. I tried out physically defensive Mega Venusaur today, and it's looking to be awesome. I gave it Leech Seed, Giga Drain, Sludge Bomb, and EQ, which gives it a lot of offensive presence for something found on a Stall team, and I think it functions better than Mega Aggron since there's very little that forces it to switch. For the most part, though, I've just been using variations of my Gen V stall team.
One thing I think that has changed Stall substantially is Defog. However, I don't really see it as a nerf. I've found that by devaluing the potential of entry hazards, I stop focusing so much on getting them up and instead start focusing more on making the smart decisions and switches that drive Stall play. Don't get me wrong, hazards are still amazing, and the teams that don't carry a Spinner or Defogger often get slaughtered by them. But if a team DOES have a Defogger, it really isn't a big deal because it's more important to rely on walling capacity than hazard damage, and I think it really helps you get in the stall "mindset."
You should also add that Fairies cannot be worn down by constant U-turning so a team that attempts to gain momentum by using that move would not break through fairies; instead the U-turner would just waste a turn while wearing down their Pokemon with entry hazards. Fairies are specially defensive, so Volt Switch does little to them too. You most likely do not have to waste a turn spamming Recover or Soft-boiled while you can use a utility move. Physical Genesect seems to be best Fairy anti-cleric, and I am surprised that most people are using the special spread and only 37% players are using Iron Head, a powerful STAB move when boosted by Download and a nifty side effect that exploits the slow speed of Fairies. Still, Choice Iron Head can be played around due to the nature of Choice items.
Not aware if it was mentioned or not, but Prankster Sableye is going to take a big hit this generation as well. It now has a weakness to fairy types, which based on the OP, Stall should be running anyway to stop Dragons.
Togekiss in particular, with Wishpass is also immune to Ground and Dragon moves, rendering any STAB from Garchomp ineffective while also removing a common physical power-move in Earthquake. (With the option of Roost also existent)
Also, as mentioned is Aegislash who is excellent at blocking, and even removing Tyranitar with his x4 Sacred Sword, or x2 STAB Iron Head.
Even M-Banette proves a boon, as even though it's stall as a wall is limited, it's access to priority Toxic/WoW/T-Wave/Curse, Destiny Bond, and having the attack moves Hex and Infestation leave it as a monster for long-term damage and effects. Imagine what would happen to a Spinner going in to remove a hazard, only to be spin-blocked, infest-trapped, poisoned, and cursed? Anything that could survive it to kill M-Banette soon finds itself in either a Destiny Bond, or a new wall switched in. Even with Defog, if I recall right, most pokemon that can use it are flying types anyway, a poor choice to switch into a Stealth Rock.
These three can definitely have some use on a stalling team, in my opinion.
Togekiss in particular, with Wishpass is also immune to Ground and Dragon moves, rendering any STAB from Garchomp ineffective while also removing a common physical power-move in Earthquake. (With the option of Roost also existent)
Also, as mentioned is Aegislash who is excellent at blocking, and even removing Tyranitar with his x4 Sacred Sword, or x2 STAB Iron Head.
Even M-Banette proves a boon, as even though it's stall as a wall is limited, it's access to priority Toxic/WoW/T-Wave/Curse, Destiny Bond, and having the attack moves Hex and Infestation leave it as a monster for long-term damage and effects. Imagine what would happen to a Spinner going in to remove a hazard, only to be spin-blocked, infest-trapped, poisoned, and cursed? Anything that could survive it to kill M-Banette soon finds itself in either a Destiny Bond, or a new wall switched in. Even with Defog, if I recall right, most pokemon that can use it are flying types anyway, a poor choice to switch into a Stealth Rock.
These three can definitely have some use on a stalling team, in my opinion.
Everyone's talking about FWG cores but there's a problem for stall. There aren't many viable options for fire types in stall. You got Rotom-H and maybe Heatran but that's all I'm seeing. Am I missing someone here?
SpD Talonflame is an option as well. It offers priority, checks dangerous offensive Pokemon such as Genesect, Sheer Force Landorus, Aegislash, Heatran, Scizor, regular Lucario, Volcarona, (Mega) Venusaur, Mega Mawile, and Scolipede, and is a decent weapon against stall with fast Taunt + WoW + Brave Bird for Fire-types. Fire / Flying is a great defensive typing if you have SR taken care of, and Talonflame is the living proof of that, though Gale Wings play a big role in making its SpD set viable too.
EDIT: I forgot SpD Moltres, which has good bulk and can stall like crazy with SubRoost, Pressure, and Toxic. The decline of rain teams and Pokemon that didn't care about the Toxic + Fire move combo, such as Tentacruel, Starmie, and CM Reuniclus, also greatly helps Moltres.
EDIT: I forgot SpD Moltres, which has good bulk and can stall like crazy with SubRoost, Pressure, and Toxic. The decline of rain teams and Pokemon that didn't care about the Toxic + Fire move combo, such as Tentacruel, Starmie, and CM Reuniclus, also greatly helps Moltres.
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I sometimes think about looking for a pseduo fire.
Let's throw up fire's weakness/resistances;
Weakness; Water, ground, rock.
Resists: Fairy, bug, grass, ice, steel, other fire.
The key resistances for the core are bold.
Water can technically cover ice and fire, grass can cover grass. Bug isn't used much. But we want some of these covered a bit.
(Water has two weaknesses we worry about, elec/grass)
(Grass has weaknesses like crazy, fire, ice, poison, flying, bug)
So, why not steel? Poison, flying, bug all resisted. Grass resisted, fairy resisted, steel resisted. Fire weak, but that's it.
Also, rock. It resists fire, neutral ice (hits back SE however), resists flying, resists poison. It is weak to grass, water, steel, ground, fight, though. Water, grass both cover water and grass covers grass. Steel is covered by water, grass covers ground. Fight goes neutral, so that has to be covered.
So grass/water/steel and rock/water/grass are both options selectively. Sub typing of ghost, flying, psychic, bug, poison could be helpful for both to cover up fight issues. (though admittedly poison sucks due to ground weakness).
Let's throw up fire's weakness/resistances;
Weakness; Water, ground, rock.
Resists: Fairy, bug, grass, ice, steel, other fire.
The key resistances for the core are bold.
Water can technically cover ice and fire, grass can cover grass. Bug isn't used much. But we want some of these covered a bit.
(Water has two weaknesses we worry about, elec/grass)
(Grass has weaknesses like crazy, fire, ice, poison, flying, bug)
So, why not steel? Poison, flying, bug all resisted. Grass resisted, fairy resisted, steel resisted. Fire weak, but that's it.
Also, rock. It resists fire, neutral ice (hits back SE however), resists flying, resists poison. It is weak to grass, water, steel, ground, fight, though. Water, grass both cover water and grass covers grass. Steel is covered by water, grass covers ground. Fight goes neutral, so that has to be covered.
So grass/water/steel and rock/water/grass are both options selectively. Sub typing of ghost, flying, psychic, bug, poison could be helpful for both to cover up fight issues. (though admittedly poison sucks due to ground weakness).
Torkoal (lol) is the only mainly defensive fire type, so I see what you mean MagicMissingno , but Like alphatron said, Arcanine's an option with its bulk, abilities and morning sun (not the best recovery, but it works). Heatran has great resistances, but EQ messes it up pretty bad and it doesn't have reliable recovery. Rotom-H can be used, and it can volt switch to something that resists the opponent's attacks, but still no recovery. Victini has underrated 100/100/100 defenses, so you could try to use those. Chandelure has a subsplit set that could work ok. Volcarona runs a decent chesto rest set and can use roost with its decent HP and SpD, but thats more of a bulky attacker set than stall. Thats all I can think of, not sure if it helps
Just noticed this. Are you aware that steel doesn't resist ghost anymore?
Right.....can someone remind me with dark types have good walling abilities? Sableye doesn't count since it's Ghost/Dark and looses its ghost and dark resistances.
There's Umbreon, Tyranitar, and Mandibuzz off the top of my head. There might be some I'm forgetting but the majority of Dark-types are offensively oriented.
Those three are the majors, but I always count Spiritomb and recently started checking Hydregion with some bulk investment. Gyarados-mega, tyranitar-mega and drapion are also good ones to consider, though the first two should run rest and drapion likes wish support and his assault vest.
Spiritomb, as mentioned before, has an interesting niche stall ability in infiltrator I want to explore more, but pressure works as well. he could run willowisp/toxic, rest/painsplit (infiltrator means it is unblockable), pursuit/infestation, confuse ray/destiny bond. While 108 is slightly mediocre, you can't deny three immunities and only one weakness, along with a host of resistances.
Since I know people love trapping pokes:
Spiritomb @ Grip Claw/Leftovers
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 252 SDef / 252 HP / 4 SAtk
Calm Nature
- Infestation
- Toxic
- Snarl/Confuse Ray
- Rest
It's slow, but bulky. The idea is it will never MISS trapping, as subs do not work. I'd go painsplit to take advantage of infiltrator more, but the chances are you'll have more health.
Spiritomb, as mentioned before, has an interesting niche stall ability in infiltrator I want to explore more, but pressure works as well. he could run willowisp/toxic, rest/painsplit (infiltrator means it is unblockable), pursuit/infestation, confuse ray/destiny bond. While 108 is slightly mediocre, you can't deny three immunities and only one weakness, along with a host of resistances.
Since I know people love trapping pokes:
Spiritomb @ Grip Claw/Leftovers
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 252 SDef / 252 HP / 4 SAtk
Calm Nature
- Infestation
- Toxic
- Snarl/Confuse Ray
- Rest
It's slow, but bulky. The idea is it will never MISS trapping, as subs do not work. I'd go painsplit to take advantage of infiltrator more, but the chances are you'll have more health.
I'm currently running a sand stall team: Toxic/Protect Hippo (Protect really works nicely in taking out low health Pokes along w/ Toxic), Clefable as my cleric and SR setter, M-Scizor (good utility Poke w/ reliable healing in Roost and a great counter for Gliscor), SpD Defog Zapdos, Ferrothorn, and Unaware Quagsire which has saved me a lot of matches as Unaware is a cold stop to boosters w/o a grass move.
I currently have 1784 points on the Pokebank OU ladder so i thought I can share my thoughts. Sand stall is shaping up to be really good right now. The only changes I'm thinking is replacing Zapdos > Mandibuzz but I think the electric STAB and resist is too good to pass up. Thoughts? Here is a short video of the team in action: http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/battle-pokebankoubeta-68589157
I currently have 1784 points on the Pokebank OU ladder so i thought I can share my thoughts. Sand stall is shaping up to be really good right now. The only changes I'm thinking is replacing Zapdos > Mandibuzz but I think the electric STAB and resist is too good to pass up. Thoughts? Here is a short video of the team in action: http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/battle-pokebankoubeta-68589157
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I've had AMAZING success with Prankster Sableye on stall this gen so far. It still single-handedly checks every physical attacker that isn't a Fire-type with it's standard moveset involving Taunt/Will-o-Wisp/Foul Play/Recover. It also trolls more defensive 'mons like SubToxic Gliscor horribly if it comes in safely and healthy enough. Even with Sableye's newly acquired Fairy weakness, it hasn't lost a step in effectiveness. It's pretty obvious in this meta which Pokemon have Fairy coverage on their movesets and Steel is still more than prevalent enough to see that it's a common resistance to Fairy. I don't think you can compare two similar Pokemon in Sableye and Mega Banette and say one isn't going to be very good, while the other will be amazing.
Ajwf That write-up is pretty good. I don't exactly agree with replacing Will-o-Wisp/Thunder Wave with Scald/Discharge though. There have been too many situation when I and others have played stall where we absolutely needed to get a burn or paralysis on something. Will-o-Wisp and Thunder Wave are much better in those situations, which I've found to be pretty common. Will-o-Wisp's newly buffed accuracy to 85% makes it an even more attractive choice. Even though Scald/Discharge/Lava Plume provide more offensive pressure, in those moments where you need the status to happen, 30% chance isn't very high in the grand scheme of things (seen enough players gets pissy when they spam Lava Plume/Scald/Discharge and 30% burn/para doesn't happen). Some top players towards the end of BW2 started running Will-o-Wisp over Scald on their Jellicents and I believe what I stated just now is the reason why.
I still haven't had a problem getting hazards down, keeping them down effectively and phazing. Defog is just another factor to prep for, not the end-all that says "you can't use phazing to win anymore". Defoggers often go down to either the very offensive pressure that you mention or trapped by a powerful Pursuit from, namely, Tyranitar (who most Defoggers can't beat). This isn't directed at you Ajwf per se. A lot of people in the community think this and are going with, IMO, less effective ways to get residual damage. Stall players have even stuck Defog on their own teams along with hazards to great effect, making their teams even better in the process.
SubRoost Moltres is pretty good in pre-Bank OU as a defensive Fire-type. Not amazing, but good.
EDIT: Nintenb0y Mandibuzz is shaping up to be pretty good this gen. I'd say you can afford to make the switch if your team can still handle threats like Scizor and Mega Pinsir (who Zapdos is AMAZING against btw).
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I just remembered that Drapion gets poison fang which is now a 50% chance to give toxic poison. Add in Knock Off and Assault Vest and you got some nice bulk and utility! Sadly it still needs a cleric to keep the HP up.
I do run one willowisp and one toxic on my current team, and on the second team I run one twave (solely because the user can't get discharge) and one willowisp (a ghost type). The help of scald/discharge/lava plume/sludge bomb and all other 30% status moves is it eases prediction a bit. venusaur no longer has to run toxic stall when it can elect to poison stall. Slowbro's ability to burn gives it physical bulk it couldn't get. Perhaps heatran likes not having willowisp the most, as some sets would carry him with lava plume AND willowisp. Running one just gains you a coverage move in that case, and in venusaur's case it actually gives merit to run a poison stab. Yeah, situational, but more helpful than not.
I love using defog on my team, which in turn hurts my ability to justify spikes. But more importantly, I don't have to worry so much about sitting in extra turns to lay down spikes in the first place. It should also be noted that spikes more or less force you to consider rapid spin over defog, and unfortunately, stall has access to very few good spinners. Donphan, Tenta (in rain), avalugg and cryogonal (though they die to rocks pretty quickly), claydol (who has no outside utility), hitmontop and the hitmon family (meh... the added physical bulk of intimidate can be nice) are about all the options. Defog is nice from a team building perspective because it alleviates what I have to pool from to keep my own residual damage down, but I have to respect that spikes in that case aren't good options. Plus, though most defog users ARE beat by ttar, you already mentioned scizor. There are a few out there that can wreck ttar while he tries to stand in to defog, and blocking defog takes more than a switch (unlike rapid spin).
Would these F/W/G core work for stalls?( unsure which direction to stall with, probably toxic as of now. Considering Burn stall as well, since my circle of friends ALL use Mega lucarios)
All of them are joined by 4th core, a cleric Sylveon. Can be swapped for other wish passers, but I just think Sylveon would be a nice member for its fairy properties.
Thing is, i cant get Heatran as of now, and preferably not to(I just have a slight dislike in using legendaries, just a personal preferance). No chansey either.
Rotom-H is there because he`s just...useful in general. Considering Arcanine as another alternative, but unsure if unsupported Morning Sun is worth to put him inplace of Rotom. But then again, I have a cleric in team so any advice about this is welcomed.
Tentacruel may miss the rain heal, but just in case i can get my hand on a Drizzle politoed i may sneak toed and change rotom to something else. I just slap tenta in because of rapid spin....nothing else though. Would Gastrodon/Gyarados fit better here? I just like the idea of having a spinner as a core member, plus he can use toxic. If I swap away from toxic stall, Tenta will go out and I`d probably swap in either of those two earlier.
M-Venu is there for being an annoyance and earthquake is just there just in case of emergency, taunts or finishing off things.
Im open to switching core members/element swaps (for example, going Grass/Water/Steel or Rock).
All of them are joined by 4th core, a cleric Sylveon. Can be swapped for other wish passers, but I just think Sylveon would be a nice member for its fairy properties.
Thing is, i cant get Heatran as of now, and preferably not to(I just have a slight dislike in using legendaries, just a personal preferance). No chansey either.
Rotom-H is there because he`s just...useful in general. Considering Arcanine as another alternative, but unsure if unsupported Morning Sun is worth to put him inplace of Rotom. But then again, I have a cleric in team so any advice about this is welcomed.
Tentacruel may miss the rain heal, but just in case i can get my hand on a Drizzle politoed i may sneak toed and change rotom to something else. I just slap tenta in because of rapid spin....nothing else though. Would Gastrodon/Gyarados fit better here? I just like the idea of having a spinner as a core member, plus he can use toxic. If I swap away from toxic stall, Tenta will go out and I`d probably swap in either of those two earlier.
M-Venu is there for being an annoyance and earthquake is just there just in case of emergency, taunts or finishing off things.
Im open to switching core members/element swaps (for example, going Grass/Water/Steel or Rock).
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Keldeo!
Gastro or Gyara? Yes and Yes. Both do better this gen than old tentacruel. Intimidate is really helpful on stall right now to slow down sweepers a tad bit. I love using resttalk gyarados, although it is slightly gimmicky.
Outside of your core, though, you badly need a hazard clearer. I rarely include one as part of my core unless my core involves skarmory, but Rotom-h and gyara love spinners (though gastro might be more solid give the rock resist to cover rotom-heats issue. I think for that scenario, gastrodon is the correct choice.
Edit: Expanding, gastro has one weakness to grass, which the other two cover. It resists all forms of turns, which is a huge way to stop the opponent from momentum shifting you (in fact, gastrodon is one of the basic stall staples for learning how to play because of how difficult momentum moves are to use against gastro.
Venu's two weaknesses (flying, psychic) are in half covered by rotom-heat (the flying part). The ground neutrality is taken care of here expect when moldbreaker excadrill comes (again, gastro should win that fight every time). Rotom's weaknesses are rocks and water. Unfortunately, neither are nice, but both are perfectly covered by gastrodon.
Just make sure you get a really, really strong defog user. Might even be worth investing into mega scizor or mega blastoise just to secure longevity and spins/defogs (though mandi, skarm should also do fine).
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