Blissey substitutes....

Kabuto Mushi

Everytime I look at this forum, I see at least one post that goes like this:
"I really hate Blissey."

What are some good alternative special walls, then? People in the exremely competitive circles make it seem like Bliss is the ONLY Sp. Wall... surely their are other workable options!?

What do you use, if you hate Blissey? :O
 
Empoleon and Cradily along with Clefable are some decent subs to Bliss although non of them can really wall like Bliss does. Togekiss can also wall to a certain degree
 
Calm Cresselia can act as a Special Wall to a degree.

Also, although Shuckle clears 900 Special Defense, his low HP still means still takes a high percentage of damage from many special threats, and the lack of a reliable recovery move outside of Rest makes this equally hard to take.
 
Ehh, most special threats have to either set up or use a choice specs to be of any threat to Shuckle, especially in a sandstorm.

Shuckle can just go ahead, take a hit from choice specer and knock them off with Knock Off neutering their ability to do good damage.

If they try to set up, they get Encored and then are forced to switch which makes them keep starting their set-up over again which as a result takes their threatening prescence down quite a notch.

Remember, something like Dusknoir has 294 HP/405 sp def. The HP isn't too far off from Shuckle with his 244 HP and 921 sp def is quite a bit higher than 405. Dusknoir takes hits like a champion, which means that Shuckle is going to be taking hits like a 10000-pound door, even against super-effective attacks.

The only thing to warn about with Shuckle is that a spinner is really necessary...getting 25% of his health stripped off every time he enters the match with stealth rock in play is a real downer to his walling skills.

Heh, but just for the record, Rest is actually an ideal move for Shuckle because it'll get rid of Toxic as well as restoring 100% health, and Toxic is terrible for the little guy. Another recovery move would be nice, but heh, Rest helps me to struggle opponents to death with him if need be. :P
 
Take a good look at my Sp. Def tiers. Blissey's score on this scale is 128 with 0 EV investment. The next best pokemon is Chansey, with 125 with 0 EVs. After that is Regice, with weaknesses to fire, fighting, rock and steel. (In comparison, Blissey has weakness to fighting and immunity to ghost).

Regice scores 123 with 0EVs on this scale, and 127 with 252 HP / 252 Sp. Def EVs, 128 with max EVs and +Nature.

After that, the next best pokemon are Uber Wall pokemon, Giratina, Lugia and Ho Oh.

Snorelax and Cresselia come after them.

It should be noted that none of these pokemon, aside from Blissey or Chansey (the #1 and #2 spot respectively) have a reliable recovery all the time. Cresselia comes closest, but she only gets 25% health back in a sandstorm IIRC.

In terms of pure statistical Special walling, Blissey is the top pokemon. Now, it should be noted that rock pokemon get a 50% boost to their Sp. Def in a sandstorm, but 252/252 Shuckle in a Sandstorm is only _slightly_ better than a 0/0 Blissey, while having a weakness to rock and water.

Of course, Blissey is a fat whore who can take hits, but she can't really deliver hits back. Milotic has a huge Sp. Atk and the nice resistances that come with being a water, and can take the occasional non-STAB T-Bolt. Regice and Snorelax can also actually threaten the opponent as well.

Cresselia is a more well rounded whore >_> She either has very high physical defense, or high Sp. Def. Your call, EVs matter more than her stats really, they're too close.

But yeah, Blissey does what Blissey does best, absorb Sp. Atks and then soft boil it off. And most of the time she doesn't even need too much EV investment, which is why the standard Bliss tends to be max physical defense.
 
Empoleon teamed with someone to take Electric hits make a good Special wall. 81/102 is a lot when you factor in that Empoleon has the most resistances in Pokémon (11 and 1 immunity). Plus as a bonus, if you Substitute on the switch then you can pretty much take out any counter ever, even Magnezone.

Regice works if you have Wish support/a spinner/Restalk. Snorlax is decent, but pretty much at Regice's level.

Overall, the ananlysis is right. There is no one-Pokémon replacement for Blissey. People should suck it up and use the fat egg, especially if they are stalling! But if you want something that sponges Special Attacks and hits back, Empoleon and Regice work, especially with support.

I don't like the Defense tiers because it lists Pokémon by their ability to take neutral hits, so a quick glance says "hey Empoleon sucks", but its resists make it great.
 
Registeel makes a good sp wall since its two most common week, fighting and ground, are usually physical

regirock aint bad eather if you have a sand storm going on

regice is a sp beast,

now that i think about it, all the regi's are damn good sp walls if you know what your doing...except for mr regigigas...he just sucks

o and mantine, i think that thing is a bit underated, but thats just me
 
Blue_Kirby said:
Also, although Shuckle clears 900 Special Defense, his low HP still means still takes a high percentage of damage from many special threats, and the lack of a reliable recovery move outside of Rest makes this equally hard to take.
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Have you even used a Sandstorm Shuckle? Good luck doing over 25% without SE or a massive STAB attack. About the only bad thing you can say for it is that it's Stealth Rock weak.
 
I just use several pokes with good Sp DEF stats. Milotic and Gallade find their ways into my teams relatively easy.

Its basically the same way people approach physical walling. Since there isn't a surefire way to wall all physical hits anymore, what with Skarm being 2-shotted by stuff like Physical Kingdra, they just use 2 or more pokes who can stop physical assaults. Its my approach to special walling too, altho I prefer being on the offensive anyway.

And Shuckle is evil, yes. That HP doesn't even matter all that much, it just makes it rather hard to get past pokes that use Seismic Toss/Night Shade.
 
Well, that and the fact that it does absolutely no damage to anything and the fact that all steels gets all day to come in on it.

Anyways, I don't have a de facto special wall. Resistences do the job for me. Slap together a Jiachi, play around with Tyranitar, and then get Gyarados to cover th rest etc etc
 
Vaporeon can work as a replacement.

It's got awesome HP with the benefit of being able to pass it and it's special defense is also very good. It's special attacking stat is above average and this lets it counter things such as Gyrados, Salamence (although draco meteor hurts it) and Garchomp if it has the right amount of defense EV's invested in it.

It can provide excellent support for a team as it is able to pass massive substitutes, defences with acid armor and wishes. It can also haze.

It has a good bulky typing with a good deal of resistances and it's water absorb ability lets it regain health if you switch it in on a surf/hydro pump/waterfall.

I'm using this guy on my developing team and I think he's awesome!
 
Milotic is actually a good replacement. Although it does have nasty grass/electric weakness I can't really recall many STAB T-bolts doing that much more than 50% on it. The big thing is at least it has Recover and Hypnosis.

Likewise Noctowl is another decent special wall taking every status you throw at it like a champion, non-STAB'd attacks well and even an occasional STAB hit and roosting it off.

Mantine is good too as it can launch abit of offense and actually has better resistances/immunities. Just again...watch out for electric.

Cradily and Probopass are two monstrousities as long you keep them away from fighting attacks (and ground in Pass's case). Cradily even gets the bonus of Recover.

Although most people don't do this, Umbreon is strong on the special defensive side and does have a form of recovery at least and BP too.

Uxie is pretty solid as well and at the very least doesn't have a glaring weakness like many of the previous.

No matter what you choose though you will end up with a glaring electric/fighting/dark weakness somewhere.
 
I use gastrodon, and cradilly. although gastrodon isnt really a wall because it has like only 280 special defense. stockpile fixes that quicky. Cradily stockpiles EVEN BETTER because it cant be hazed. but the fact that the only way he gets recover is through CORSOLA (barf) makes me sad.

Magcargo can learn amnesia and recover but its type is tooooo bad. I used him on a sandstorm team...

I tried mantine on shoddy. it lols at most guardoses, and can be a pseudo guaravire.

anything with calm mind (gardevour and clefable come to mind) make alternatives.

EDIT: oh yeah: magcargo is SR weak too huh
 
There is absolutely no real replacement for Blissey as a special wall. Regice has poor typing, far less HP, no reliable recovery, and a Stealth Rock weakness, Snorlax has less HP and Special Defense and no reliable recovery, Shuckle requires Sandstorm, has horrible HP (though the Sandstorm Special Defense boost compensates for nearly all of that), a Stealth Rock weakness, and no reliable recovery, Empoleon has an Electric weakness and no reliable recovery, and Cradily requires Sandstorm, has a nasty Ice weakness, and not enough HP to compensate for lower Special Defense. Blissey isn't inferior to any of these in physical defense or support options either; the high HP aids the dismal Defense. Everything else anyone mentioned here is completely and unredeemably inferior.
 
Chris is me said:
Empoleon teamed with someone to take Electric hits make a good Special wall. 81/102 is a lot when you factor in that Empoleon has the most resistances in Pokémon (11 and 1 immunity). Plus as a bonus, if you Substitute on the switch then you can pretty much take out any counter ever, even Magnezone.

Regice works if you have Wish support/a spinner/Restalk. Snorlax is decent, but pretty much at Regice's level.

Overall, the ananlysis is right. There is no one-Pokémon replacement for Blissey. People should suck it up and use the fat egg, especially if they are stalling! But if you want something that sponges Special Attacks and hits back, Empoleon and Regice work, especially with support.

I don't like the Defense tiers because it lists Pokémon by their ability to take neutral hits, so a quick glance says "hey Empoleon sucks", but its resists make it great.
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I should note however... resists are very easy to factor. Its just a bonus of 7.27 points. (or ~7). Looking at Empoleon, with 252/252 +Sp. Def nature, he has a base ~123 Sp. Def tier. Assuming you use it against something that Empoleon resists, then you gain a bonus of 7 points in defense tiers: or a score of 130 with resists, which is only similar to Blissey. In essence, even with a resist, Empoleon only ties Blissey, and considering that Blissey is only weak to fighting (which Empoleon is also weak to), overall, Blissey is taking something like half the %damage that Empoleon would take, unless Empoleon resists it in the first place.

Also, you are right in one respect: you can never look at a chart and have "the chart decide" for you. If you know what I mean. Even though Tentacruel was much lower than other walls... take Milotic, Blissey, etc. etc. I used Tentacruel as my Sp. Wall and it works great. Defense tiers are only a tool and they should always be kept in mind as a tool. The player has to use this tool to his advantage... but understand where the tool has holes or requires some level of intelligence. Empoleon is a good example because of his huge number of resists, so you must look at it and add 7 to factor the resists into play.

You are right; Empoleon is great at attacking back and that is very useful. Additionally, it doesn't "suck", anyone who has used the pokemon appearing around Empoleon knows that they aren't slackers either: Raikou, Lanturn, Claydol, Clefable, etc. etc.
 
i use togekiss. it works very well. i've seen people use umbreon and swapert before. blissey isn't the only special wall. it's just that so many people use it.
 
Real quick personal note: DT, I think the Defense tiers should be updated on the special side for Rock-types in a Sandstorm. Most people who use Shuckle/Cradily to special wall rely on the sand and it's up 99% of the time in those cases (the other 1% being fighting a hail team).
Anyways, I don't have a de facto special wall. Resistences do the job for me.
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I agree with exactly this.
 
Lou Cypher said:
But Great Sage, most of THOSE pokemon aren't hated for the fact that everybody and their mother uses it.
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A Pokemon is hated just because it is commonly used? That is the most irrelevant and idiotic argument ever. Whether a Pokemon is hated or not, whether it is used more or less as long as it remains in the same tier, whether people disagree with its aesthetics or are bored by it... All of those have no bearing on competitive Pokemon. Your post appears to propose that some of the Pokemon I mentioned as clearly inferior to Blissey can supersede the facts that they have movepools, stats, or typings that are not as good just because Blissey is used much more? Realize that people use certain Pokemon for competitive reasons. And why is Blissey so common? BECAUSE IT IS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN THE OTHER OPTIONS. Most people aren't stupid to the point that they would eschew the most effective option available for an argument that is useless. Think about it: why do you hate a Pokemon just because it is common? This goes for not only you, but everyone who believes that usage is basis for bias that disregards a Pokemon's competitive statistics.

Bottom line: Hating a Pokemon because it is the most common one is childish and useless.
 
seds said:
I use gastrodon, and cradilly. although gastrodon isnt really a wall because it has like only 280 special defense. stockpile fixes that quicky. Cradily stockpiles EVEN BETTER because it cant be hazed. but the fact that the only way he gets recover is through CORSOLA (barf) makes me sad.

Magcargo can learn amnesia and recover but its type is tooooo bad. I used him on a sandstorm team...

I tried mantine on shoddy. it lols at most guardoses, and can be a pseudo guaravire.

anything with calm mind (gardevour and clefable come to mind) make alternatives.

EDIT: oh yeah: magcargo is SR weak too huh
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how in the hell do you use bastiodon? i used one and it was always one-shotted by earthquake, ALWAYS.
 
Great Sage said:
A Pokemon is hated just because it is commonly used? That is the most irrelevant and idiotic argument ever. Whether a Pokemon is hated or not, whether it is used more or less as long as it remains in the same tier, whether people disagree with its aesthetics or are bored by it... All of those have no bearing on competitive Pokemon. Your post appears to propose that some of the Pokemon I mentioned as clearly inferior to Blissey can supersede the facts that they have movepools, stats, or typings that are not as good just because Blissey is used much more? Realize that people use certain Pokemon for competitive reasons. And why is Blissey so common? BECAUSE IT IS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN THE OTHER OPTIONS. Most people aren't stupid to the point that they would eschew the most effective option available for an argument that is useless. Think about it: why do you hate a Pokemon just because it is common? This goes for not only you, but everyone who believes that usage is basis for bias that disregards a Pokemon's competitive statistics.

Bottom line: Hating a Pokemon because it is the most common one is childish and useless.
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I dont use it because it is ugly as... nothing I have ever seen... and because its attack stats are lackluster. so >:P!! why do you love it so much anyway?
 
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