NUBLU2 stall team

[poonta]

NUBLU2

This is a defensive stall team that works well for me. It's based on an old defensive team I had in gen 5 called "NUBLU", and was much improved with the new NU Pokemon this gen. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Altaria @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 SDef / 252 HP / 4 Def
Calm Nature
- Perish Song
- Roost
- Cotton Guard
- Toxic

Altaria is a very unappreciated Pokemon, especially as a wall. Many powerful special attackers such as Typhlosion are hopeless against it. I run perish song for two reasons: first, it's about the only way I can deal with substitutes. Second, it's my win condition against the last surviving pokemon. The second unusual move is cotton guard, which unfortunately I don't use often. Most of the time I'd rather switch to Gourgeist than use cotton guard, and so I might replace it with haze or an attack.

Gourgeist-Super @ Colbur Berry
Ability: Frisk
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Shadow Sneak
- Will-O-Wisp
- Leech Seed
- Rest

Gourgeist's job is dealing with physical attackers, especially water types that like setting up. There are two unusual things about this set. First, I run rest instead of seed bomb, to great success. Rest allows me to take a move like Torkoal's lava plume or Feraligatr's ice punch and still be useful for the rest of the match. The second unusual thing is that I use colbur berry instead of leftovers. When you consider that gourgeist takes a knock-off almost every match, and that I already have two sources of health regeneration, leftovers really seems sub-par.

Miltank (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 252 Def / 252 HP / 4 SDef
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Milk Drink
- Heal Bell
- Body Slam

Miltank pairs really well with gourgeist as it resists its fire and ice weakness, and Gourgeist is immune to Miltank's fighting weakness. The set I use is pretty standard for defensive Miltank. I have considered running facade instead of body slam, as Miltank gets statused very often, although the paralyzation from body slam is useful when dealing with Xatu.

Sandslash @ Assault Vest
Ability: Sand Veil
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SDef
Careful Nature
- Rapid Spin
- Knock Off
- Earthquake
- Rest

My rapid spinner and item remover: Sandslash. I run maximum SDef with assault vest because it's unexpected and pretty much ensures Sandslash will live 2 turns. I used to have a rock attack on sandslash, but now I use rest. It's completely pointless to do so when the assault vest is there, but I find that most teams that stack hazards also use knock-off (such as mine), and it's helpful to be able to rest in such scenarios. Still, it's very rare to pull off.

Qwilfish @ Black Sludge
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SDef / 4 Atk
Careful Nature
- Spikes
- Toxic Spikes
- Aqua Jet
- Taunt

Qwilfish sets hazards and is an occasional switch-in to sawk/primape/ice beam. The set is pretty standard overall. I run aqua jet for the purpose of hitting Fletchinder, although I haven't had a chance to use it yet. Poison jab would otherwise be more useful, as it can hurt Ludicolo and Togetic. Anyway, Qwilfish is usually the first Pokemon to die on my team, which is fine so long as it gets at least 2 spikes down.

Sawk (M) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 Atk / 4 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Close Combat
- Ice Punch
- Knock Off
- ThunderPunch

Scarfed Sawk is the one Pokemon on my team that isn't defensive. It's a cleaner. Unfortunately, I can never decide what moves to give him. Close combat and knock-off are a must, but the other two moves never seem ideal. Right now I'm running both ice punch and thunder punch. Ice is for Dragalge and Vileplume, while thunder is for Fletchinder and water-type switches.

Threats:

Vileplume: can't be toxic'd, has reliable recovery, and hits 5/6 of my team hard. Altaria can perish song it, but that's about it.

Sigilyph: This thing wrecks me, especially life-orb versions. It can't be stalled, sawk can't KO, and it has coverage for my entire team. At least the cosmic power version can be perish song'd by Altaria.

Magneton: Steels are a pain because they can't be toxic'd, but special attacking steels are even scarier because Gourgeist can't switch-in and will-o-wisp. Sawk easily kills, and Altaria can usually force it out.

Baton-passing Mr. Mime and Gorebyss: Altaria gets destroyed by their attacks, and so I can't perish song. Sawk obviously doesn't outspeed them when they're +2.

Bulk-up Gurdurr: Guts is a real pain and Sawk can't easily kill. Gourgeist can stall for a while with leech seed and rest.

Dragalge: Hits hard and can't be toxic'd. Not horrible, but annoying.

Rest-Talk Spiritomb: It can't die from statuses and it easily out-stalls me. Perish song and leech seed is only way to deal with. Qwilfish's taunt is okay too.

 

[Blast]

For a stall team, this team's structure seems extremely unbalanced. A couple of points:

• You have no Wish passer. This makes the vast majority of your team completely reliant on moves such as Rest for recovery, which results in becoming massive setup fodder for basically anything while simultaneously making them extremely reliant on Miltank's Heal Bell (which is also very bad, as it only has 8 PP).
• You also have no phazer. This makes you extremely vulnerable to strong setup sweepers, which can set up and start hammering away at your team with boosted attacks, while you have no reliable way of forcing them out to reset their boosts. The closest you have is Altaria's Perish Song, which has to wait three turns to activate, as well as being pretty much useless against any sweeper that can OHKO Altaria.
• As you seem to have noted, your team has a lot of issues synergistically--for example, you have absolutely zero resists to common types like Psychic and Flying, and in general you have a tendency to be overwhelmed by several other types as well, such as Dark, Ice, Ghost, etc due to your lack of exceptionally bulky resists.
• You have Scarf Sawk on what you consider a stall team, when Sawk's general role is entirely meaningless on this particular team archetype--stall teams don't NEED late-game cleaners, or at least the ones that fall into Sawk's particular category. Sawk does nothing but make your team even weaker defensively, due to its lack of bulk and having no recovery whatsoever.
• Your team's wincon seems very vague. Right now it primarily seems to be Altaria's Perish Song, but that's not a very good wincon to depend on, especially on your team. Your reliance on Perish Song to deal with most setup sweepers makes it easy to stall out of PP, and if that happens most of your entire team kind of just sits there until they're picked off.
• A couple of your movesets are extremely questionable. AV Sandslash with Rest, for example, is frankly utter garbage for rather obvious reasons. I also don't see the point in Aqua Jet on Qwilfish to "hit Fletchinder," as because Fletch always invests in Speed so its priority Acrobatics will outspeed yours, so you would be much better off with different attacking options like Scald or Poison Jab.

With all this in mind, I would try and shift away from your "stall"-oriented playstyle in favor of a more balanced one, as it compliments most of your mindsets much better. To start things off I would suggest making Sawk a Choice Band variant and replacing Altaria and Gourgeist with Sigilyph and Spiritomb. These changes help solidify a more offensive core on your team in conjunction with your defensive teammates, complimenting a balanced playstyle much better. Also, Qwilfish is much better off running a physically defensive spread with some Speed EVs over max SpD. This lets you capitalize on Qwilfish's strong points (Intimidate + ability to check Sawk, Gatr, SD Samurott, etc) rather than trying to patch up its weaker ones, and SpD Qwilfish is generally not that great as Qwilfish is still rather frail on the special side even with investment.

Other than that, I can't suggest much else without completely revamping the team, but note that I would consider replacing Miltank with Audino and using a different Stealth Rocker, such as Rhydon, over Sandslash, as your team would still really appreciate Wish support. I'll leave that up to you, but hopefully this can help get you on the right track.

Though given the large amount of changes I had to give for this team, poonta I would definitely suggest you try out Battling 101 or the Mentorship Program, as both are great resources that can help you improve your skills. Apologies if I came off as harsh with this rate, but hope I helped.

Sets

Sigilyph @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 SAtk / 252 Spd / 4 HP
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Psychic / Psyshock
- Heat Wave
- Roost

Spiritomb @ Black Glasses / Choice Band
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Sucker Punch
- Pursuit
- Shadow Sneak
- Will-O-Wisp / Trick

Sawk: Choice Scarf --> Choice Band with the moves Close Combat, Knock Off, Poison Jab, and Earthquake for best coverage

Qwilfish: EV spread --> 252 HP / 160 Def / 96 Spd with an Impish / Bold nature and Poison Jab / Scald over Aqua Jet, outspeeds Timid Omastar and Taunts it

 

[poonta]

Thanks for the comments, Dat Blast. It's much appreciated. I'm going to look into those sets you suggested to use in a new team.

Here are some responses to your points:

For a stall team, this team's structure seems extremely unbalanced. A couple of points:

• You have no Wish passer. This makes the vast majority of your team completely reliant on moves such as Rest for recovery, which results in becoming massive setup fodder for basically anything while simultaneously making them extremely reliant on Miltank's Heal Bell (which is also very bad, as it only has 8 PP).

I agree that rest isn't great, but I honestly don't think wish is that good either. It also invites the opponent to set-up on you, and passing is only successful in situations when both the passer and recipient can wall the opponent's mon.

• You also have no phazer. This makes you extremely vulnerable to strong setup sweepers, which can set up and start hammering away at your team with boosted attacks, while you have no reliable way of forcing them out to reset their boosts. The closest you have is Altaria's Perish Song, which has to wait three turns to activate, as well as being pretty much useless against any sweeper that can OHKO Altaria.

Good point, but roar is equally useless if the sweeper can OHKO the user. Haze would be nice though, assuming I can find a a good team member.

• A couple of your movesets are extremely questionable. AV Sandslash with Rest, for example, is frankly utter garbage for rather obvious reasons. I also don't see the point in Aqua Jet on Qwilfish to "hit Fletchinder," as because Fletch always invests in Speed so its priority Acrobatics will outspeed yours, so you would be much better off with different attacking options like Scald or Poison Jab.

You're right about aqua jet. I'll go back to poison jab.

Though given the large amount of changes I had to give for this team, poonta I would definitely suggest you try out Battling 101 or the Mentorship Program, as both are great resources that can help you improve your skills. Apologies if I came off as harsh with this rate, but hope I helped.

Right now I'm 17th on the ladder (which is certainly too high). I'm not great or anything, but I think I'm beyond the 101 stage. Maybe.

 

[ium]

wish doesn't really give the opponent an opportunity to set up if you're forcing your opponent to respond and switch accordingly to whatever wish user you're bringing in. so no, both the passer and the recipient don't always have to be able to handle the same pokemon. this especially isn't always the case since not all teams are strictly offensive and can therefore give you ample opportunities to wish without pressure. also you're certainly not going to use wish in the face of something that can immediately pose as a threat without any consequences against them

the point between roar and perish song is that the former is immediate which is useful in cases where you really can't give the opponent the extra few turns necessary to be able to reach the point where the pokemon can get the KOs or important damage that it needs against your team. roar goes last but it's not letting your opponent get that ability to get more setup and stronger hits that perish song would

if you want to work with the concept of a stall team, i would look into pokemon such as calm mind or specially defensive spiritomb in order to check sigilyph, and audino to check numerous things that you've listed like vileplume and special water-types while being able to wish and spread toxic. however, it's probably easier to consider reconstructing the team because this is an attempt at a stall team which barely responds to certain threats at all (it's actually very hard with sigilyph around) and has many inefficiencies in the sets or spreads themselves