I personally agree with those saying that even with the removal of Cresselia, stall is far too strong in the current metagame.
The problem all along has been that there isn't a single broken element to remove from the stall equation that will balance out the metagame. Prankster Haze may not be broken, but it adds to the brokenness and overcentralization of stall. I really hate the idea of unbanning anything to attempt to balance stall unless it is actually not broken. It goes against all Smogon tiering guidelines, and would honestly just centralize the metagame around that Pokemon instead, with people using it to beat stall and nothing else.
A playstyle can only be considered healthy in my opinion if there are multiple practical ways to beat it that don't rely on the opponent making poor decisions. I don't see that with stall right now. Between Unaware, Regenerator, Intimidate, Prankster, immunity abilities, etc. it has the tools to deal with basically everything the metagame can throw at it at once without deviating from the basic formula
Pigeons outlined in his post.
Now I don't think anybody is really disagreeing that stall is an issue right now (besides Stall Please from the OM room, who loves the state of the meta for some reason
). So with that out of the way the real question is: what can we do?
I personally think that the way forward is to ban 'non-broken' elements of stall which contribute to the impracticality of beating the entirety of stall. I have brought up banning Murkrow as a donor as a possible way forward as it would allow thing like Mold Breaker unaware Pokemon to at least attempt to break past Unaware Pokemon, and other set up sweepers can abuse typings combined with set up to beat common Unawares more effectively.
Another partial solution would be the addition of an ability clause, which
Pigeons brought up to me as a way to stop Regenerator spam. It occurs to me that it would not only stop Regenerator spam but it would also stop people from running multiple Unaware Pokemon, giving set-up sweepers a greater chance to wear down or break past an Unaware Pokemon, especially if they carry attacks for Suicune / whatever other Unaware users become common.
I don't personally believe banning Unaware is the way to go. While it would effectively nerf stall in all likelihood, it would have a far more devastating effect on Balance. At the same time, we're already on sketchy ground tiering policy wise and I don't think not banning something because it will hurt a playstyle is supposed to be considered.
The only other practical solution I see is changing some of the rules to allow inheritance from banned Pokemon / Megas. This would give us some new wallbreakers and stallbreakers. I would personally prefer these to be the rules either way*, but how much they would affect stall I'm not sure.
I know for a lot of this post I'm echoing esteemed bird fanatic
Pigeons' opinions. That's cool with me, not trying to take credit for stuff he said, just want to reinforce some stuff and add my own 2 cents.
*I don't see how inheriting from a mega or a banned Pokemon goes against any in-game mechanics. Inheriting isn't a mechanic inherent to the games, I can't legally run Shell Smash Shell Armor Drampa in standard. Why is borrowing a moveset from a mega any different? As for borrowing from ubers, I don't get why the banlists would ever be the same for donors and inheritors. They are broken in entirely different circumstances and while some might be both broken donors and broken inheritors that is just by chance.
