Is Stall viable in tournaments?

The Plant

A major meme in this forum is the idea that stall teams are unviable in tournaments because good players always build a way to beat into their teams. Various things are presumably hard on stall including trick, heavy offense, and opposing hazards. On the other hand stall teams are almost certainly the most sucessful ladder team style. With an emphasis on your own personal experience discuss stall in tourny play.

I'll go first. I admit a part of why stall is sucessful on the ladderis that its consistent and the ladder punishes you badly for losing to lower ranked players. Stall doesn't have to deal with stone edge and draco meteor misses.

At the same time I ave never felt all that happy to face an opposing stall team. Now part of this may be me. I'm new to dp (2 months but I played ADV years back) and I'm probably average (I think i'm 1560-something right now).

However I think stall has real advantages. Lets say I'm running Heatran/Latias/Rotom/Scizor/Salamence/Lucario. This seems like a common team. I might be able to win by eityher taking out blissey and letting latias do it. Or by knocking out gyrados and sweeping with lucario. On the otther hand my Mix mence might get baited into outrage on forestress and they spin + spike and wear me out. Scizor isn't gonna help much and as long as blissey is alive neither will Latias. I might have a slight advantage.

However should I be running a more defensive team with scarf-rachi and swampert I won't have the nasty DDtar weak the above team has but my stall game is gonna be pretty bad. However I am at a big advantage versus team A.

So Stall's got some bad matches but its got some good ones too. It seems to me its less team dependant that many strategy's today and I don't see why it would be so bad in a tourament.
 
I don't know where you got the idea from that 'Stall' is less valuable or on which forum it is a 'meme'. Stall has always been valuable both in tournaments and regular matches. No person who has a lot of competitive battling expierence would make a statement in which it isn't valuable

Besides what you are saying is actually the opposite what's really happening. Stall is uncommon on the ladder because it takes a lot of time to finish a match. As such you'll climb the ladder much slower making it less appealing to those who want to reach the leaderboard. The shoddy statistics easily reflect this as typicall stall pokemon are rarely seen in the top 10 even though stall isn't gimmick at all, offensive teams simply get more matches done resulting more usages.

In tournaments where only one vital match has to be played both participants will use all their time they have to increase the chance of winning. In such a case the player will use his favorite style of playing regardless of how many time it takes(which might be in this case 'stall')
 
Mien. said:
Besides what you are saying is actually the opposite what's really happening. Stall is uncommon on the ladder because it takes a lot of time to finish a match. As such you'll climb the ladder much slower making it less appealing to those who want to reach the leaderboard. The shoddy statistics easily reflect this as typicall stall pokemon are rarely seen in the top 10 even though stall isn't gimmick at all, offensive teams simply get more matches done resulting more usages.
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He didn't say stall teams are most common. He said they are was most viable.
 
Dude, stall is used all the time in tournaments, on the Tour, whatever. The trick, however, is adjusting it for the metagame the user is playing in.

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53926

This was locopoke's (the runner-up) team for ST5, and it shows that stall teams must be adjusted to whatever metagame they are in. The Heatran lead gives opposing stall teams a fair bit of trouble by blocking Skarm, Forry and Bliss from acting. However, if this was tried on the ladder, the user might suffer because of the unfortunate CroCune weakness (the team's only feasible strategy to beat it would be to sac Heatran and finish with a CB Earthquake from Mamo, which itself might give the attacker a chance to develop another threat).

Ancient stall teams in the DP era would often have a structure like Hippo/Skarm/Bliss/Cress/Forry/Tomb simply to cope with the centralization created by potent offensive threats such as Garchomp, Lucario, and Gengar by having redundant checks for them. They were played more defensively and were less concerned with forcing a switch than today's stall teams (the only phazer on the above team would be Skarmory, rather than the 2-3 phazers most modern stall teams use).

I know I'm digressing, but the point is that stall teams will always work as long as they adapt to whatever metagame they're in. Maybe not in Little Cup, but whatever.
 
I read an article today about the south african cricket team. It kinda relates in a way.. For those of you who dont know, the south african cricket team are the superstars of sports chokers. No matter what the circumstances, you put them in a tournament and they will find a way to blow it.

The Cronje era was famous for an unprecedented win record of almost 80%, but his reliance on a set formula led to his team expecting the result to be the same every time and when things went wrong, especially in big games, they froze. Lack of options and scant scenario planning created the chokers tag. And not entirely unfairly.
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This more or less sums up the issue with Stall. It will get you a lot of wins, but it can be formulaic. And in tournaments eventually all the crap players are going to have been eliminated, and you are going to be left with people who know what you are up to, and are going to be prepared for it.

Basically, you need to do something unexpected to win in tournaments. It doesnt have to be much, and that doesnt necessarily mean dont use stall. But you need to do something your opponent wont have prepared for, and you have to be able to respond to things that your opponent is planning that you havent prepared for. If your stall team can do this then it probably will be effective.

Honestly I wouldnt have used locopokes team.. But that's not to say it isnt good (obviously it was successful).

The full article is here if anyone cares..

Have a nice day.
 
Stall is an excelent strat, but I don't think it's "viable" in actual real life tournaments because it takes too long. Talk to Vash, or 616 about stalling at Worlds 09. They both went over the 45 minute time limit for their matches and lost them basically because of that. :/ Same thing happened to me.

Stall is great, but it just takes to long for actual real life tournaments.

Just throwing that tid bit of life experience out there. :)
 
Hipmonlee pretty much nailed my opinion on the matter, but let me rephrase it a little. It's not so much that stall isn't viable in tournaments as that it's dangerous to telegraph that you will use stall in a tournament. Your opponent knows who you are before you face them, and they probably know your tendencies. In Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, it's easier to overprepare for stall than it is to overprepare for any other playstyle, and its very hard for a stall team to beat a team that is overprepared for it. So on the one hand, stall can be just as effective as any other style in a tournament if the other player is not specifically expecting it. What is dangerous is telegraphing that you will use stall, especially if you are known as primarily a stall player (like say, imperfectluck or Lady Bug).
 
http://www.smogon.com/smog/issue1/st5

A summation of the highlights of the recent tournament. Most of them refer to stall vs. stall matches revolving around who can spinblock most effectively. I'm younger than many of you guys, and I haven't been around to see many of the tournaments, but from what I've heard, a decided majority of players employ stall teams throughout a tourney. I would guess that this occurs because players would favor planning (emphasized in stall) over the more inconsistent prediction (emphasized in offense). Also, it is way easier to lose to a far inferior player if both are playing offense rather than playing stall.

@Hipmonlee: I tried locopoke's team out, and it didn't seem to work for me. Later, I tried subbing Forry+Gyara rather than Skarm+Cruel, but that only led to a very nasty DDTar weak. Obviously it was successful, but I'm guessing that a lot of its success could be attributed to the surprise factor of Heatran (and against offensive teams, Mamoswine), combined with locopoke's piloting abilities.
 
No offense locopoke's team isn't a very good stall team (sorry). He got pretty damn lucky that he didn't face a Lucario, Crocune or Cursepert the whole tournament because they basically 6-0 his team (and he got lucky in general to make the finals).

Stall is very viable in tournaments as it is in ladder. Running a cookie cutter stall team doesn't really work in a tourney since it is easy to metagame but having even just one poke that is unique can screw with someone's plan to break stall if they aren't prepared to face it. The top stall players always have one odd poke that messes up the plans of a lot of teams.
 
I think part of the misconception regarding the viability of stall teams in tourney play lies in the distinction between "pure stall" and "mixed stall" (there's probably a much better term for this lol). Pure stall is not a bad playing style but there are only so many suitable Pokemon that can make it work well and chances are, your final product will resemble something like Obi's stall team. Which wouldn't be bad except it's probably the most well known 4th gen team amongst competitive battlers. And that doesn't bode particularly well in an environment where surprise might be the best way to gain an edge (i.e. many of the battlers tend to be close enough in skill that a surprise goes a long way).

I feel that pure stall is what many people are referring to when they say "stall teams are nonviable in tournaments."
 
But then, how would one go about making a well-constructed "mixed stall" team. Offhand, one could simply use Obistall and substitute a Scarf-Trick Jirachi over Celebi as a way to beat Suicune and Gyarados, along with attempting to revenge kill a Tyranitar that might be causing trouble. But if you incorporate too many offensive elements into your team, you open yourself up to offensive threats. What are some other good ways to bring in offensive elements into a traditional stall team is what I was wondering.

To help out this thread, it might be cool if someone who has been around here for a while were to post logs of two stall teams playing each other in a tournament. High level stall v. stall play has very little documentation (most matches are too long to warstory, and some might say, too boring), and it would help a lot of people learn what goes on in such tourneys.

EDIT: I don't mean to derail the thread, but I talked to locopoke about ST5 today, and he said that since the tournament was before the Latias tests, Lucario was less common and the whole Dragon/Steel metagame had not developed, which makes more sense. Also, all Lucarios were Adamant rather than the 58.4% we have today.
 
No offense locopoke's team isn't a very good stall team (sorry). He got pretty damn lucky that he didn't face a Lucario, Crocune or Cursepert the whole tournament because they basically 6-0 his team (and he got lucky in general to make the finals).
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Nobody gets to the finals of any tournament without being lucky.. These sort of weaknesses are actually not as big a deal in tournaments as they are on ladder, because most people dont use lucario, crocune or cursepert. Lucario is common enough I'd like to be better prepared for it than that team, but the others are rare enough, and his team is just able enough to cope with them enough, that in a tournament you probably will be fine..

Lucario is only in 15% of teams, thats a 27% chance of getting through a 256 man tournament without seeing one. That's not actually that bad.. I mean your team is going to be weak to something..

Have a nice day.
 
Eh Hip, I think that kinda depends on the player. Some players are more used to having reliable switch ins to pokes, while others just try to play around it. It depends on your comfort zone. I have to say that I agree more with J though as at the very least, I wouldn't want my stall team to be luke weak.

I do agree that stall loses its edge against the top players and therefore, the higher you go in a competition (especially the more prestigious ones), the harder it is to succeed with stall. Stall by definition almost is a very bulky team with recovery moves that take advantage of entry hazards. Therefore right from the get go you'll need entry hazards, probably a spin blocker and pokes that can wall offensive threats consistently and continuously. If you want to beat stall, all you need to do is target key members in every stall team.

If you kids want a more concrete example of all this, Earthworm is widely known as a stall player. However, he did not use stall during the later stages of the World Cup. Why would he not use the style he's the most confident in? Well, because the calibre of the players he was up against justified that adjustment.
 
lol I would figure that me being the paranoid anti stall guy had something to do with it too. But I'm too humble to point that out :P

Much love Hip, have a nice day.
 
On the other hand, I used stall in the final, so it's not like I am completely against it..

Have a nice day.
 
Since my team has been mentioned a lot in this post, i'd just like to point out a few things.

Firstly, some of you may be forgetting that latias was banned during ST5 so the dragon/steel metagame hadn't fully developed yet. Lucario was 12th in usage and was only used on 13% of teams. Out of those Lucario, 58% of them were Adamant, and Mamoswine outruns all Adamant Lucario. Obviously I know I really didn't have a safe switch for Lucario and my method for stopping him was very unconventional, but there were many small changes I could've made back then (that I made recently [i still use this team]) to fix some of the team's weaknesses. Though of course, like Hipmonlee mentioned, every team has its weaknesses and there's no way to cover each and every one of them. There is no 'perfect team'.

As for the matter of whether stall is viable in tournaments or not, I have to say that it definetely is but it depends on the player and the team. If a player is more comfortable using stall (like I am and was during ST5) then it's likely that they'll do better using a stall team. But, like somebody mentioned above, you can't just use standard stall. You need something different that helps you out against other types of teams that will usually give you trouble. I like to use SubCharge Rotom-A as my Spin Blocker because it always gives me an advantage vs. heavy stall teams, and it can seriously rip apart any team if you manage to get a sub up with a boost or two. I've also used DD Mence on Semi-stall before and it's been somewhat successful. There are many things you can stick on stall teams to help them deal with common threats.
 
I can vouch for stall being successful in tournaments, at least in the DP era. I used a stall team in ST4 and came second place to goofball; I beat some pretty good people along the way.

My team was Hippowdon / Garchomp (SD) / Suicune / Heatran (bulky with Metal Sound) / Dusknoir / Forretress. I can go into more detail if people are interested, but basically my strategy relied on setting up Spikes and SR (didn't use Toxic Spikes), abusing Roar with Hippowdon and Suicune, and using Garchomp to clean up. I guess it's not your typical stall as I don't have Skarm, Blissey, Celebi, etc., but it worked very well and it's too defensive to call balanced in my opinion.

One of my tourney highlights was beating ipl's rain dance team, I still have the log in case anyone's interested. That battle in particular made me confident in my team's ability (and thus in stall's potency in a tournament to get back to the topic at hand), as if it can take down something as offensive as a rain dance team, which you'd expect to rip through stall...then I really don't believe that stall in the hands of a good player is something all good opponents can be "prepared for."
 
Doesn't stall have a favorable advantage against Rain Dance? Blissey and Hippowdon, and maybe even Vaporeon, tend to give Rain teams quite a bit of trouble.

But I would actually be interested in seeing logs of stall teams in action against skilled players, or even stall versus stall. As I said earlier, it's a part of Pokemon that doesn't get much attention from warstories or whatever, but it would be fun to see anyways.
 
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