THE STEADY RISE OF STALL...
Some of you love it, some of you hate it, but if there is one thing we all believed is that stall is dead in gen9nd.... or is it?
Ever since generation 9 came, several game changes caused stall to take a drastic pitfall to the abyss. From the Heal move's PP nerf from 16 to 8, to the faster and stronger powercreep, to anti status mons like Gholdengo and Garganacl, to Terastalization making these already powerful monsters into behemoths. For a long while, stall was considered nothing more than a noobtrap, a low ladder terror, a joke. If fact, many players believed that stall was the absolute worse archetype in the metagame, right below other archetypes also considered not very good like Sand and Trick Room. However, very recently, stall has began to see a steady rise in usage. So, how did we got here? Usually whenever a new meta starts, people mostly looks for most broken and unstoppable forces in the meta, like Baxcalibur and Bloodmoon Ursaluna were previously before they were banned, but as the storm calms down, people then start looking for answers to said treads. This is where stall comes in, as it turns out, all stall needed to do is adapt. A popular stall core nowadays is the cloddozo core, which involves Clodsire and Dondozo, as having both Unaware mons that can sponge both sides of the attacking spentrum can allow stall teams to grab momentum and make their plays. Another aspect of stall's adaptment was the change of Blissey's moveset during the time Gholdengo was in the tier. Typically Blissey mainly just ran 1 attacking move, Seismic Toss, which does a set amount of damage, and then the other moves where softboiled, status + utility. However, the problem is that it couldn't hit Gholdengo, even if it can sponge its hits well, it doesn't matter if it couldn't do anything in return. But then people started experimenting with Calm Mind Blissey (myself included) allowing it to efforthlessly wall Gholdengo, and potentially even kill it. This version of Blissey was also able to withstand Bloodmoon Ursaluna with much greater ease, while it was allowed. But recently Gholdengo was banned, and few weeks later, Baxcalibur and Bloodmoon were also banned, which opened up the posibilities for stall to thrive even more. Now Blissey or Chansey can just go back to their standard sets and Clodsire no longer needs to run Amnesia for example. A pokemon that also deserves a mention for volunteering at stall rising from the abyss is Alomomola, which after the last dlc, it gained access to Flip Turn, which may not sound like much at first, but the ability of having a slow pivot wishpasser is invaluable for many teams, not just stall. This allows stall the ability to pivot around the opponent, and keep itself healing without the need to use healing moves, granting it insane longevity. Mons like Dondozo and Ting-Lu greatly appreciate Alomomola's wishpassing, allowing them to keep up with their gameplan. This also makes Alomomola great with a Regerator core, alongside mons like Toxapex or Galar Slowking. All of these factors combined and more, have gained the interest of players to actually return to use stall once again. However it isn't without roadblocks of course, Gholdengo is gone sure, but there are still several behemoths to worry about, mons like Gliscor and Garganacl do very well against stall, and breakers like mixed Iron Valiant and Mega Gyarados can also cause issues. Other tactics like Taunt, Encore and tricking Choice items can ruin them as well. And with these new bans, the meta is currently also shifting. But if they're is one thing to be sure, is that stall is no longer dead.
Some of you love it, some of you hate it, but if there is one thing we all believed is that stall is dead in gen9nd.... or is it?
Ever since generation 9 came, several game changes caused stall to take a drastic pitfall to the abyss. From the Heal move's PP nerf from 16 to 8, to the faster and stronger powercreep, to anti status mons like Gholdengo and Garganacl, to Terastalization making these already powerful monsters into behemoths. For a long while, stall was considered nothing more than a noobtrap, a low ladder terror, a joke. If fact, many players believed that stall was the absolute worse archetype in the metagame, right below other archetypes also considered not very good like Sand and Trick Room. However, very recently, stall has began to see a steady rise in usage. So, how did we got here? Usually whenever a new meta starts, people mostly looks for most broken and unstoppable forces in the meta, like Baxcalibur and Bloodmoon Ursaluna were previously before they were banned, but as the storm calms down, people then start looking for answers to said treads. This is where stall comes in, as it turns out, all stall needed to do is adapt. A popular stall core nowadays is the cloddozo core, which involves Clodsire and Dondozo, as having both Unaware mons that can sponge both sides of the attacking spentrum can allow stall teams to grab momentum and make their plays. Another aspect of stall's adaptment was the change of Blissey's moveset during the time Gholdengo was in the tier. Typically Blissey mainly just ran 1 attacking move, Seismic Toss, which does a set amount of damage, and then the other moves where softboiled, status + utility. However, the problem is that it couldn't hit Gholdengo, even if it can sponge its hits well, it doesn't matter if it couldn't do anything in return. But then people started experimenting with Calm Mind Blissey (myself included) allowing it to efforthlessly wall Gholdengo, and potentially even kill it. This version of Blissey was also able to withstand Bloodmoon Ursaluna with much greater ease, while it was allowed. But recently Gholdengo was banned, and few weeks later, Baxcalibur and Bloodmoon were also banned, which opened up the posibilities for stall to thrive even more. Now Blissey or Chansey can just go back to their standard sets and Clodsire no longer needs to run Amnesia for example. A pokemon that also deserves a mention for volunteering at stall rising from the abyss is Alomomola, which after the last dlc, it gained access to Flip Turn, which may not sound like much at first, but the ability of having a slow pivot wishpasser is invaluable for many teams, not just stall. This allows stall the ability to pivot around the opponent, and keep itself healing without the need to use healing moves, granting it insane longevity. Mons like Dondozo and Ting-Lu greatly appreciate Alomomola's wishpassing, allowing them to keep up with their gameplan. This also makes Alomomola great with a Regerator core, alongside mons like Toxapex or Galar Slowking. All of these factors combined and more, have gained the interest of players to actually return to use stall once again. However it isn't without roadblocks of course, Gholdengo is gone sure, but there are still several behemoths to worry about, mons like Gliscor and Garganacl do very well against stall, and breakers like mixed Iron Valiant and Mega Gyarados can also cause issues. Other tactics like Taunt, Encore and tricking Choice items can ruin them as well. And with these new bans, the meta is currently also shifting. But if they're is one thing to be sure, is that stall is no longer dead.
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can score a 4.5 or something
is really such a fun mon to play with, it enables so many random mons that are bulky but have little recovery and allows me to mess around with stuff like dragalge in the builder
) while my countrymen (shout out to 
for example.
after slash's comment
