BW2 General Metagame Discussion Thread

Dark Fallen Angel

FIDDLESTICKS IS ALSO GOOD ON MID!
I am thinking of using Slowbro on my main team after defeated 2 guys with its help. Slowbro is very good as a physical wall and unlike Skarmory it doesn't get roasted by the common sun teams, and while Skarmory is 4x resistant to Grass, most Grass-types on sun teams carry Hidden Power Fire, and Slowbro can at least hit them with Flamethrower on the switch.

Wich niches Slowbro has on the current meta?
 
I've been looking for a good spin blocker too with basically no luck. I have a Sand Stall team with Jellicent which is just spectacular. Jelli can trounce all over opposing stall if you give it a few speed EVs and Taunt. The only issue is she has a lot of trouble with the most common spinners - Starmie and Tentacruel. Jelli can't do anything to stop Tentacruel from setting up and is too slow to Taunt it before it Toxic's her, which is a huge disaster. Starmie has Thunderbolt. I suppose Shadow Ball over Scald might help with that. I typically just go to my SpDef Tyranitar and Pursuit it to death. Tentacruel, though, is a huge pain in the ass.

Jump to now, when I'm trying to make a RainStall team. I have Tentacruel as my spinner since she just DOESN'T DIE in rain, plus she can set up Toxic Spikes. But Politoed+Tentacruel+Jellicent would be a bit redundant, so I'm at a lost for a spin blocker. I've been messing around with Sableye for a bit (which has the nice effect of making a sacrifice WoW or hard stopping most Reuniclus, who typically causes big trouble for stall). I've gotta say I'm in the same boat as you, Sableye just isn't cutting it. The rest of the team is great, but I find I rarely, if ever, actually spin block with him. I remember that Spiritomb was a big threat in UU last gen, and he also walks all over Reuniclus, so I may take a look at it sometime soon. His defenses are pretty great, plus he has no weaknesses. But I just wonder what I would DO with him on a team (much like I feel about Sableye). Oh well.

On a related note, anyone trying out Rain Stall owes it to themselves to try out Bronzong. With rain up, this fucker has NO WEAKNESSES and is BULKY AS HELL. I couldn't ask for a better Stealth Rocker. Plus, his slow-as-dirt Gyro Ball will wreck most set up Dragons, as well as any cheeky Xatu or Espeon. And the coup de grace is that many will bring in Heatran only to find that in the rain, even Fire Blast barely dents him while Earthquake smashes him back. He's such a beast.
 
I am thinking of using Slowbro on my main team after defeated 2 guys with its help. Slowbro is very good as a physical wall and unlike Skarmory it doesn't get roasted by the common sun teams, and while Skarmory is 4x resistant to Grass, most Grass-types on sun teams carry Hidden Power Fire, and Slowbro can at least hit them with Flamethrower on the switch.

Wich niches Slowbro has on the current meta?
Eh, probably the only new 'niche' is resisting Keldeo's Stabs, still great at sponging Fighting types and a lot of physical beasts. It can resist a Fire move, but nearly everything on a Sun team can hit its special side with Super Effective move. Ninetales can use Solarbeam as can Heatran, Volcarona uses stab of course, physical Fire sweepers can just U-Turn, and Chloro sweepers can just kill.

Edit: disregard. Lol misread that, yea Slowbro can hit with flamethrower.
 

alkinesthetase

<@dtc> every day with alk is a bad day
is a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnus
i am loving bronzong right now and it's at the top of my testing list for my stall team. its resistance pattern is just crazy: ground, ice, rock, dragon, all while neutral to fighting, means it can hard counter mamoswine and come in on choiced tyranitar. if only game freak gave this guy a better move pool... what i would give for heal bell (IT IS A BELL CMON GAME FREAK) or a phazing move on bronzong. i'd almost give up my beloved latias for it. ALMOST.

idk what i would do with spiritomb since like sableye it just has very little punch, and no recovery so it's worn down the same as many other spinblockers. at least its defenses are usable unlike sableye's but it'd probably end up the same. you eat a toxic from tentacruel and die, while starmie washes you away in LO rain-backed hydro pumps and your sucker punch doesn't OHKO unless you're attack-invested, and cb spiritomb is a bad team player. i must admit though, cb sucker punch killing starmie is starting to sound really appealing....

finally, slowbro. i'd love slowbro if it wasn't psychic. god psychic is the typing that ruins everything. fighting resist is tough to justify when pinned against a pursuit/uturn weakness (doesn't help that you're vswitch weak either...). as i said about celebi earlier, i'd consider slowbro if it wasn't psychic, but i need my latias more.

god latias i love you so much please never leave my stall team lacking in your delightful red dragony-ness
 

Lavos

Banned deucer.
Eh, probably the only new 'niche' is resisting Keldeo's Stabs, still great at sponging Fighting types and a lot of physical beasts. It can resist a Fire move, but nearly everything on a Sun team can hit its special side with Super Effective move. Ninetales can use Solarbeam as can Heatran, Volcarona uses stab of course, physical Fire sweepers can just U-Turn, and Chloro sweepers can just kill.
Not only that, but the most common Fighting-type nowadays is actually Breloom as opposed to the previously more common Terrakion. The latter is walled extremely well by Slowbro, but the former can Spore and set up all over it and/or simply Bullet Seed to take it down.

252 Atk Life Orb Technician Breloom (+Atk) Bullet Seed vs 252 HP/252 Def Slowbro (+Def) : 29.7% - 35.03%

That means 3-4 hits will OHKO Slowbro, not even factoring in Stealth Rock, which brings it down to an almost assured 3 hits to OHKO. And let's not forget, the current metagame is very oriented around powerful special attackers as well - think Genesect, Tornadus-T, Thundurus-T, Keldeo, etc. Slowbro can't beat any of those 1v1, bar possibly Keldeo, depending on both Pokemon's movesets. Slowbro is rapidly losing ground in this fast-paced, momentum-centric metagame that doesn't have time to slow down and accommodate defense-heavy, specially vulnerable Pokemon that are weak to two of the most common attacking types around, Bug and Electric. I doubt it will see much use for the next couple of months.
 
Not only that, but the most common Fighting-type nowadays is actually Breloom as opposed to the previously more common Terrakion. The latter is walled extremely well by Slowbro, but the former can Spore and set up all over it and/or simply Bullet Seed to take it down.

252 Atk Life Orb Technician Breloom (+Atk) Bullet Seed vs 252 HP/252 Def Slowbro (+Def) : 29.7% - 35.03%

That means 3-4 hits will OHKO Slowbro, not even factoring in Stealth Rock, which brings it down to an almost assured 3 hits to OHKO. And let's not forget, the current metagame is very oriented around powerful special attackers as well - think Genesect, Tornadus-T, Thundurus-T, Keldeo, etc. Slowbro can't beat any of those 1v1, bar possibly Keldeo, depending on both Pokemon's movesets. Slowbro is rapidly losing ground in this fast-paced, momentum-centric metagame that doesn't have time to slow down and accommodate defense-heavy, specially vulnerable Pokemon that are weak to two of the most common attacking types around, Bug and Electric. I doubt it will see much use for the next couple of months.
Yeah, that also adds Celebi to the equation, since it's Brelooms hardest counters.
Which I've always preferred Shaymin for that -2 special defense drop from Seed Flare. Anyone using that terd lately?
 
i am loving bronzong right now and it's at the top of my testing list for my stall team. its resistance pattern is just crazy: ground, ice, rock, dragon, all while neutral to fighting, means it can hard counter mamoswine and come in on choiced tyranitar. if only game freak gave this guy a better move pool... what i would give for heal bell (IT IS A BELL CMON GAME FREAK) or a phazing move on bronzong. i'd almost give up my beloved latias for it. ALMOST.

idk what i would do with spiritomb since like sableye it just has very little punch, and no recovery so it's worn down the same as many other spinblockers. at least its defenses are usable unlike sableye's but it'd probably end up the same. you eat a toxic from tentacruel and die, while starmie washes you away in LO rain-backed hydro pumps and your sucker punch doesn't OHKO unless you're attack-invested, and cb spiritomb is a bad team player. i must admit though, cb sucker punch killing starmie is starting to sound really appealing....

finally, slowbro. i'd love slowbro if it wasn't psychic. god psychic is the typing that ruins everything. fighting resist is tough to justify when pinned against a pursuit/uturn weakness (doesn't help that you're vswitch weak either...). as i said about celebi earlier, i'd consider slowbro if it wasn't psychic, but i need my latias more.

god latias i love you so much please never leave my stall team lacking in your delightful red dragony-ness
I'm thinking something along the lines of:

Spiritomb @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
Careful / Adamant
XX Atk / YY Def / 252 SpDef
-Pain Split
-Taunt
-Sucker Punch
-Will-O-Wisp/Toxic/Pursuit

Enough Attack EV's to get that Starmie OHKO (haven't done the calcs, so you might need Adamant or, heck, you might need CB in which case this would be a no-go haha). No HP EV's mean Pain Split will do the most good (and his HP is so low already, I'm not sure how much it would help). It's also his only healing move outside of Rest. Pressure is a fantastic ability for Stall. A bias towards SpDef means Will-O-Wisp would help. So long as he can tank like one Donphan Earthquake, it would be pretty slick. Toxic seems like a lesser option (especially since I have Toxic Spike Tentacruel doing that for me) and Pursuit is an option for hitting Reuniclus that try to flee. It also makes a real nice combo with Sucker Punch that puts your opponents in a jam. Taunt lets him beat Forretress that try to set up instead of spin (for a second I thought you would need speed EVs to do it, but many Forretress run 0 speed IV for either a strong Gyro Ball or a slow Volt Switch). Unfortunately, you still lose to Tentacruel (although what spin blocker doesn't?). Taunt also makes Reuniclus absolutely useless. Even uninvested, I believe you outspeed any variant, and it's not often that one carries an attacking move outside Psychic and Focus Blast (and you're immune to both). Again, I haven't done any calcs, but if you Taunt it, since you're so heavy on SpDef, Sucker Punch ought to kill him before he gets you. This is all theorymon, so we'll see how much he blows when I try it out tonight haha.
 

alkinesthetase

<@dtc> every day with alk is a bad day
is a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnus
i'm feeling 252 HP / 252 attack with potentially any nature (impish/careful/adamant). calcs show that on 0/0 starmie, adamant sucker punch is crippling (it's like 3 HP short of guaranteed ohko or something), but non-adamant sucker punch still deals min 90% which is ohko after any hazard or LO recoil (and obviously starmie won't be in to spin unless there are hazards up). you can take LO hydro pump as long as it's outside of rain but even with 252 hp careful you have a 3/8th chance to be ohko'd in rain - however that shouldn't matter when your sucker punch destroys starmie easily 8D donphan's maxed out attack EQ is clean 2hko with 252 hp careful, 1/4 2hko with 252 hp impish

this is actually sounding like an interesting set, i wonder how it fares against OU's powerful fighting types though. 252 hp impish gives you 3% chance of 2hko from terrakion's scarfed stone edge so even if you switch in on the rock hit you can probably live to deal a willowisp, and then you'll have to gtfo. careful leaves you with an 81% 2hko from edge so you have to come in on cc if you want to win. sadly, with an LO terrakion will 2hko you with SE regardless. as for other targets of sucker punch, the first one that came to mind was latios - but you need adamant to guarantee the KO after SR/one round of LO so it's iffy.

EDIT: hmm i forgot about pain split rewarding you for having less HP... hp is the best for taking hits beyond any doubt, you can't take rak stone edges and what not unless you go all in for defense and then special attacks will destroy you. there might be a defense spread that works well but for now it seems hp is the safest way. (side note: 0 HP / 252 Def Impish has 8% chance to be 2hkod by scarf edge, 252 HP / 0 Def impish has only 3% chance! i guess it's the extra points of lefties recovery kicking in for you there.)
 
i'm feeling 252 HP / 252 attack with potentially any nature (impish/careful/adamant). calcs show that on 0/0 starmie, adamant sucker punch is crippling (it's like 3 HP short of guaranteed ohko or something), but non-adamant sucker punch still deals min 90% which is ohko after any hazard or LO recoil (and obviously starmie won't be in to spin unless there are hazards up). you can take LO hydro pump as long as it's outside of rain but even with 252 hp careful you have a 3/8th chance to be ohko'd in rain - however that shouldn't matter when your sucker punch destroys starmie easily 8D donphan's maxed out attack EQ is clean 2hko with 252 hp careful, 1/4 2hko with 252 hp impish

this is actually sounding like an interesting set, i wonder how it fares against OU's powerful fighting types though. 252 hp impish gives you 3% chance of 2hko from terrakion's scarfed stone edge so even if you switch in on the rock hit you can probably live to deal a willowisp, and then you'll have to gtfo. careful leaves you with an 81% 2hko from edge so you have to come in on cc if you want to win. sadly, with an LO terrakion will 2hko you with SE regardless. as for other targets of sucker punch, the first one that came to mind was latios - but you need adamant to guarantee the KO after SR/one round of LO so it's iffy.

EDIT: hmm i forgot about pain split rewarding you for having less HP... hp is the best for taking hits beyond any doubt, you can't take rak stone edges and what not unless you go all in for defense and then special attacks will destroy you. there might be a defense spread that works well but for now it seems hp is the safest way. (side note: 0 HP / 252 Def Impish has 8% chance to be 2hkod by scarf edge, 252 HP / 0 Def impish has only 3% chance! i guess it's the extra points of lefties recovery kicking in for you there.)
I'd rather let others deal with scary fighting types, but he ought to do it in a pinch. Sableye does that better though with priority Will-O-Wisp. Terrakion struggles to take out both Politoed and Tentacruel who can KO back with rain boosted Water moves. A Swords Dance set would be very scary, but if I sac something, Bronzong can revenge with Gyro Ball. I saw a funny Spiritomb set with Psych Up so he could act as both a Reuniclus and a Conkeldurr counter. I think he's slow enough for Payback to do low damage and you can steal his boosts to make yourself better able to tank him hahaha.
 
Golurk isn't very good in pratice. It can spinblock it's own Stealth Rock? Yes, it's true, but... Starmie with Hydro Pump... Tentacruel with Scald...

Dusclops actually has solid defenses despite its 40 base HP. I have used him for a time, and I can say that it is actually terrible. It has solid bulk, but lacks reliable recovery, and it can't fight back against most things.

I haven't yet tried Mismagius, so I can't say how it does. At the moment the only defensive Ghost-type that is really good, however, is Jellicent. It's a shame that the metagame lacks solid options for Ghost-types in both offensive and defensive sides...
I thought his bad HP was to his benefit as he would be able to abuse Pain Split more effectively ?
 
Looking at Mismagius's movepool, this occured to me as something interesting to try. This is just an idea that popped into my head, and I can't be too sure on its effectiveness, but I am eager to try it out.

Mismagius @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Timid
4 Def / 252 SpDef / 252 Spe
-Pain Split
-Taunt
-Mimic
-Imprison

It's probably pretty bad, seeing that it takes 3 turns to set up, and she won't be killing anyone any time soon, but it can force any spinner to be left with only Rapid Spin as their available move, effectively forcing them out.

god latias i love you so much please never leave my stall team lacking in your delightful red dragony-ness
latias loves you too
 

alkinesthetase

<@dtc> every day with alk is a bad day
is a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnus
in response to question about dusclops

Pain split is just... bad on Dusclops, trust me I played with it for months. It is better to have rest-talk + a cleric on your team than attempt pain split and never get enough HP to... wall.
this, and remind me what exactly you plan to do with dusclops once you get it in. it's going to be night shading ineffectually and getting worn down constantly. at least chansey can pass wishes. throwing around burns on the switch is not as good as toxic.

dusclops is just not much of a team player. stall right now is a really concerted effort between 4-6 mons per game (sometimes one or two guys will just not have the opportunity to play a big role - but that's never a good sign) and there's no room for things like dusclops that can't help the rest of the team. out of my six mons right now, 3 can phaze, one spins, 2 set hazards. dusclops would kind of be the awkward guy hanging onto the end. he's got okay bulk with eviolite but not even chansey can get away with just walling and never helping the team. idk precisely how to express the sentiment, but dusclops is the kind of stall mon that sits there and doesn't do anything. i don't have teamslots to ditch on that.

and moreover, no matter how good pain split might be (read: not very), you'll never get around the fact that you have a shit worthless 40 base HP
 
Dusclops was good at the end of BW1, you could run a more traditional stall team and worry pretty much only about Terrakion and be set. Stall is admittedly much harder in BW2, and that's pretty much only because of Genesect and the metagame shifts it made. Stall has always had an issue with sun and Deoxys-D spike stacking. In the past you could get away with it because sun was uncommon (even in early BW2) and so was Deoxys-D. Genesect capitalizes on these weaknesses and makes them much worse, now your pretty much forced to run rain stall or Heatran to deal with it. Even if you do manage to deal with those 3 big threats, you still have you contend with offensive dragons, Latios, volt-turn, swords dance scizor, Terrakion, Breloom. The list goes on, I have no doubt stall is possible, but it is much harder than we are use to. Hopefully in a few months once the metagame cools down, stall can have a weight lifted off its shoulders as stuff falls to OU.

Also you have said you are running a stall team, do you mind sharing, currently I am testing a ton of different styles at once and I change my team every day so I can't exactly share.
 
Dusclops was good at the end of BW1, you could run a more traditional stall team and worry pretty much only about Terrakion and be set. Stall is admittedly much harder in BW2, and that's pretty much only because of Genesect and the metagame shifts it made. Stall has always had an issue with sun and Deoxys-D spike stacking. In the past you could get away with it because sun was uncommon (even in early BW2) and so was Deoxys-D. Genesect capitalizes on these weaknesses and makes them much worse, now your pretty much forced to run rain stall or Heatran to deal with it. Even if you do manage to deal with those 3 big threats, you still have you contend with offensive dragons, Latios, volt-turn, swords dance scizor, Terrakion, Breloom. The list goes on, I have no doubt stall is possible, but it is much harder than we are use to. Hopefully in a few months once the metagame cools down, stall can have a weight lifted off its shoulders as stuff falls to OU.

Also you have said you are running a stall team, do you mind sharing, currently I am testing a ton of different styles at once and I change my team every day so I can't exactly share.
I've got two full stall teams I'm working on at the moment.

This one brought me up to ~1860 or so:


Chople SpDef Tyranitar (to beat other weather and kill Tornadus-T)
Taunt Jellicent (spin blocking, Will-O-Wisp and Taunting other stall)
Amoonguss (HOLY SHIT MORE PEOPLE NEED TO USE HIM, FULL STOP TO ANY KELDEO AND ANY BRELOOM)
Offensive Starmie with Rapid Spin (spin/cleaner)
Skarmory (Spikes - a must for stall this gen)
SpDef Heatran (Stealth Rock and FWG Core)



And I'm working on a rain stall team now:


Defensive Politoed
Tentacruel (Toxic Spikes)
Ferrothorn (Spikes and Leech Seed)
Bronzong (Stealth Rock)
Annoyer Tornadus (saw it in an RMT - normal Tornadus with priority Substitute and Taunt + Hurricane and Focus Blast - an absolute monster of a cleaner)
? ? ?
Trying to find something to go here. Since I have all three hazards, I'd like a spin blocker. I'm testing out Spiritomb now but I'm not too happy with it.



On the subject of stall, how do you guys deal with Breloom. I have yet to make a stall team that doesn't simply have two full Breloom counters which is a huge inconvenience. Your first counter gets puts to sleep and if you only have one counter and try to sac something else to Spore, if you mispredict you're totally boned :/
 

alkinesthetase

<@dtc> every day with alk is a bad day
is a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnus
i would gladly share, but i know for a fact my stall team has some huge weaknesses it needs to address, some of which i should have been able to see on the spot. my ladder inexperience also shows through in the (lacking) quality of the team. i will contribute anyway though because the posts in this thread were a big push for me to make this team in the first place, hopefully this comes in handy for other players running stall! i'm planning to write an rmt once i feel semi confident in this team, but for now it still sucks

DISCLAIMER: THE TEAM KINDA SUCKS RIGHT NOW AND PROBABLY WILL CONTINUE TO SUCK FOR A WHILE
that's quite enough all caps for one post

anyway the lineup is roar/CM latias, shed shell heatran, protect/toxic tentacruel, BU breloom (worst mon in the team by far, considering either amoonguss or a substitute set), wish/sr chansey and sdef skarm. the latias i am like super confident in (this masterpiece of a pokemon has never failed me) and the heatran has been clutch, even against rain - moreover without it, even a monkey could beat me by simply using lavos sun. tentacruel is great, but it excludes some useful mons like jellicent by virtue of typing overlap so i am rather torn; i love the set though and it shits on rain, fabulous spinner in many ways. i run chansey mainly because i place big value on wish for any defensive team but carrying SR, wish and protect makes it rather lacking in moveslots. the skarm is obvious and pretty self explanatory. the breloom, i ran mainly for the typing. breloom has a really sick defensive typing (edgequake+water+elec resistances) but it has a really tough time using it well, and virizion has an even harder time because it has to put up with lefties, so i'm kind of stuck and i'm experimenting with other grass mons. i wish i could run celebi, but that means two members of my team lose to pursuit/genesect and that is what i call bad teambuilding

i was embarassed the first time i laddered against HO with this team to discover that it had a glaring mamoswine weakness (seriously a player with my amount of theoretical knowledge should have seen it before having to actually face a mamoswine and find out the hard way... i was quite embarassed) so i am looking at bronzong right now, but in exchange for a fabulous typing, it does so much less for the team than skarmory which gives me serious pause. there is also a status weakness which compels me to run heal bell but man the number of good users is so lacking.

i feel like the team is weak to ground/fighting spam but maybe that's just because BW introduced a retarded amount of strong neutral STAB coverage and you can't exactly run a team of steels and grounds just so you can resist edgequake+rak stab+boltbeam >_> i always get this sinking feeling in my stomach when i see an HO team of 5 attackers + 6th attacker/suicide lead and i just think to myself "motherfucker i'm gonna lose". HO just ends up trading one-to-one (if i'm lucky...) until i run out of walls and someone has the coverage to rip the remaining members apart. sucks to be a stall player right now but i'm even worse at playing offense and i'm a hipster, so weather is way too mainstream for me =P

EDIT: hmm as for loom... if i do end up running amoonguss, then both latias and amoong will hard counter loom so i think my team should be fine in that regard. however i happen to have the convenience of a team that already incorporates those solutions lol. i agree that spore is royally infuriating (bp can go to hell... but i would never dare say it's unfair) so i think a cleric can be helpful in situations like those. tough though, spore takes it from dangerous to terrifying so sometimes you have to lure it out.
 
I very highly recommend Amoonguss. He's nearly indispensable for stall nowadays - you either have him or Ferrothorn, period. Amoonguss brings a lot to the table. Regenerator means he will be around the entire game, end of story. It's such a spectacular ability for stall. If you EV to have special bulk (recommended), he can tank absolutely tons of hits. Even un-STAB'd super effective hits will just bounce off. Furthermore, he brings Spore which is spectacular for any team, but very useful for stall. This metagame is so fast paced that it's hard to check everything. An early Spore means that it's essentially 5-6 which is much easier to handle. Clear Smog gives him a way to shut down set up sweepers like Breloom, Keldeo, and Celebi (even +2 HP Fire won't bring him down). His main beef as a stall member is a complete shut down for any Breloom or Keldeo with a combination of Clear Smog and Giga Drain. Looks like you have a good start for a Stall team, but you should try Amoonguss out. He is criminally underused.
 
Golurk isn't very good in pratice. It can spinblock it's own Stealth Rock? Yes, it's true, but... Starmie with Hydro Pump... Tentacruel with Scald...
Going to share some insight about Golurk -

In the sun, he can always survive a Hydro Pump and OHKO after SR with a shadow punch, and Tentacruel takes massive damage from Stab EQ off 124 attack unless he gets lucky with a first turn scald burn, but won't come in on Golurk anyway.

I did try Golurk on a sun team and I was very pleased with it.

@Ames: Golurk resists Stone Edge, X-scissor and is immune to Close Combat. Iron Fist Hammer arm / EQ is an OHKO c:
 
So, what's the current deal with Terrakion? I haven't been seeing half as many of them latey for no obvious reason - the thing is as difficult to switch into as ever and is a common threat to almost every RMT posted.

What exactly can "counter" the musketeer monster truck?
 
Brelooms technician mach punch and Scizors Bullet Punch and the new lando-T are probally why their is a decrease in them. However i agree with you Terrakion is a big threat to alot of teams and in the rmt forums haha
 
Chople SpDef Tyranitar (to beat other weather and kill Tornadus-T)
Taunt Jellicent (spin blocking, Will-O-Wisp and Taunting other stall)
Amoonguss (HOLY SHIT MORE PEOPLE NEED TO USE HIM, FULL STOP TO ANY KELDEO AND ANY BRELOOM)
Offensive Starmie with Rapid Spin (spin/cleaner)
Skarmory (Spikes - a must for stall this gen)
SpDef Heatran (Stealth Rock and FWG Core)
Hmm this is actually very similar to the weather less stall I have been toying with, the major difference is I run Jirachi over Tyranitar and Slowbro over Jellicent, currently anyway. My team as is does have issues with a lack of a spin blocker and weakness to sun. The loss of such an amazing special and physical wall on the team I think would hurt, but this does add some perspective.
 
If you're looking for a good answer to Breloom, I'd highly recommend Mew. I really do think Mew is incredibly underrated on stall teams. Mew is a great answer to all kinds of Breloom. Offensive sets are still outsped with a little speed investment, while Mew can Ice Beam / Psychic it. Bulk Up sets are beaten by Taunt and either Ice Beam or Psychic. It's also very handy to have something to beat opposing stallbreakers with Taunt such as Gliscor, which annoys a lot of stall teams that lack some sort of offense. Mew also deals well with a lot more than just Breloom, including Dragonite, Gliscor, Salamence and Terrakion. Mew also has access to Taunt, and with some speed investment, you're pretty fast. It's very helpful for shutting down opposing hazard setters that come up against stall, namely Ferrothorn who is beaten by Taunt + Will-O-Wisp. Another thing I like about Mew is how it is not used as setup fodder. It still poses a good offensive stat and can viably run Taunt which is incredibly effective. The same cannot be said about Amoonguss, as anything with Sub + boosting move can generally break through it due to poor offensive stats. For reference, here's the set I'm using. Roost + Taunt more than makes up for the lack of Regenerator, as you can actually stop hazards getting up preventing more hazard damage upon switching in.

Mew @ Leftovers
Trait: Synchronize
EVs: 252 HP / 148 Def / 108 Spd
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Taunt
- Ice Beam / Psychic
- Will-O-Wisp
- Roost

As for Amoonguss, I've been pretty dissapointed with it. After playing Dream World for a long time, I knew just how good Amoonguss was before everyone began hyping over it. A couple weeks passed and people stopped using it, which was a shame. It has a big issue with 4mss, and can only really viably run one set effectively, making it pretty predictable. At one point I tried a physically defensive set in OU for shits and giggles, and it worked out pretty well. You still beat every Keldeo bar Specs, while countering Breloom harder. You also gain the ability to beat Terrakion and Landorus which is pretty good for stall against CB Terrakion, as Amoonguss + Gliscor is enough insurance against it. I really expected more Amoonguss usage from Dream World experiences, but I guess that was a much different metagame without Tornadus-T so that might explain it a little.
 
@Jimbon: I use a similar Mew set, but instead use 32 Spe EVs instead of 108. This is to outrun max speed Tyranitar and WoW before it hits me. It also outspeeds Breloom. What are the 108 EVs for?
 

Lavos

Banned deucer.
@Jimbon: I use a similar Mew set, but instead use 32 Spe EVs instead of 108. This is to outrun max speed Tyranitar and WoW before it hits me. It also outspeeds Breloom. What are the 108 EVs for?
108 Speed is to beat Jolly Breloom, which is actually pretty darn common nowadays. I run it on my suspect ladder team, because Adamant Mamoswine is all over the place in order to beat Yache Garchomp.

On the Mew set, I for one definitely prefer Psychic on Mew over Ice Beam. Sure, IB is nice on the rare occasion you're faced with a hax health Salamence vs. your last-poke 60% Mew, but overall Psychic provides a more reliable attack, and it even lets you beat out Gengar 1v1. It's especially key if Mew is your only physical wall, since Conkeldurr shrugs off Ice Beam and actually enjoys taking a Will-O-Wisp due to its Guts ability. I guess it's a matter of personal preference combined with team weaknesses, but I think it's safe for me to say that in the majority of situations, Psychic is better to have than Ice Beam.
 
Yeah Lavos, I just put a slash through Ice Beam because Ice Beam and Psychic are both viable choices. I would probably agree with you though that Psychic is the superior option in most cases beating Gengar like you said, while also having a better chance against Terrakion. It also ensures Keldeo does not use you as setup fodder, and as you are slower than Keldeo you can't taunt it before it uses a move, pretty much giving it a free Substitute / Calm Mind. Ice Beam has it's uses, if your team is pretty Dragon weak or you really dislike Gliscor.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 2)

Top