Other Stall

[alexwolf]

I think right now for stall if you don't have at least 2 of: Mega Venu, Chans/Bliss, and Quagsire, you are doing it wrong.

Quaggy is absolutely needed to not get destroyed by Bisharp right now. Its about the only thing that can switch into a +2 attack from LO bisharp and live the second hit. Lefties will suck to lose, but its better than being swept by a knockoff bisharp. Mega Venu can kinda check bisharp if you haven't slept something.

Max HP / max Def+ Mega Mawile is a good check to Bisharp, as long as it has already MEvolved because otherwise Intimidate will give a +1 Atk boost to Bisharp. It can take a +2 LO Iron Head for ~80% damage and does back ~80%, which means that in the worst case, Bisharp will die from LO after KOing Mawile (two LO rounds + SR + 73.4% (min damage from Foul Play)).

But yeah, SD Bisharp is a huge pain in the ass for stall teams.

 

[Nysyr]

Chansey and Blissey, I agree, are nearly mandatory for stall teams, but I think there be ways to get around that. I'm working on it.

Mega Venusaur is most definitely NOT a requirement, it is just a great pokemon that is capable of fulfilling many roles on the team.

Quagsire you say is needed because it beats Bisharp, but I think Rhyperior isn't 2HKOd by it, and can OHKO in return. Unfortunately, you can lose to an Iron Head flinch, and are susceptible to being worn down. I will only prepare for it being +2 and I'm already in, as I plan to switch in counters as soon as the pokemon is on the field, giving them only 1 free turn. Chesnaught also barely avoids the 2HKO at +2 by Iron Head by using lefties+Spiky Shield, and can OHKO in return with Hammer Arm. However, Chesnaught is prone to being worn down, with only lefties and leech seed for recovery.

Basically, those pokemon can be nice to have, but not completely mandatory. Bisharp is a huge threat to stall teams now, due to the huge buff to Kock off and dark moves in general.

Mega venu is the easiest way to check/counter (with eq on venu) Mega Lucario physical variants, and if you don't have him on your team you should at least have Slowbro. The main reason to use Mega venu is to have something to sponge weaker knockoff spam from stuff like Mandibuzz and Gliscor who are otherwise huge dicks to try and break for stall. He also is an amazing trick sponge for stuff like scarf Rotom-W, who otherwise you would have to sac a poke to not get boned by it.

IMO something like: Chansey/MVenu/Mandibuzz(with foul play or whirlwind at the minimum) is a good place to start for a stall team.

 

[NotSoClutch]

Chansey and Blissey, I agree, are nearly mandatory for stall teams, but I think there be ways to get around that. I'm working on it.

Mega Venusaur is most definitely NOT a requirement, it is just a great pokemon that is capable of fulfilling many roles on the team.

Quagsire you say is needed because it beats Bisharp, but I think Rhyperior isn't 2HKOd by it, and can OHKO in return. Unfortunately, you can lose to an Iron Head flinch, and are susceptible to being worn down. I will only prepare for it being +2 and I'm already in, as I plan to switch in counters as soon as the pokemon is on the field, giving them only 1 free turn. Chesnaught also barely avoids the 2HKO at +2 by Iron Head by using lefties+Spiky Shield, and can OHKO in return with Hammer Arm. However, Chesnaught is prone to being worn down, with only lefties and leech seed for recovery.

Basically, those pokemon can be nice to have, but not completely mandatory. Bisharp is a huge threat to stall teams now, due to the huge buff to Kock off and dark moves in general.

chesnaught also has synthesis.

 

[Ajwf]

I absolutely HATE quagsire to the point that I never, ever will run him again. Godawful defenses, I'd rather deal with Clefable or a priority stall pokemon carrying mach punch (kind of conkledurr with AV imo).

What I've started to do is just invest one pokemon that has a fantastic speed tier and work it into a stall pokemon. Pokemon like jirachi, latias, tornadus-t, thundy-i, Starmie, tentacruel all have a good bit of utility/bulk to go along with that 100+ speed tier. It is a bit off the traditional beaten path for stall, but it also gives me the opportunity to work outside the box a bit. And I'm not breaking the mold too badly by still looking for acceptable bulk and utility, I simply lower the standards in search of speed. Even azelf, delphox (who has a fantastic support movepool and wish recovery), kyurem (missed the tier, but has phazing and a good amount of bulk along with roost), Zygarde (Rest, glare, stab/stab...Limited support, fantastic bulk), Cobalion (excellent defense, excellent support move pool, my candidate for best lower tier stall support), mismagius and of course zapdos also have excellent reasons to use them for their speed tiering.

Last gen, I didn't care much for speed but this generation, there is just way too many issues with countering everything. If you can build a fantastic stall team in five pokemon (which frankly has been the Dreadnoughts all along... five pokes and one that just can't find a spot) and you have a diverse amount of specific pokemon you'd like to make sure aren't going to harm you, going with a faster pokemon to just not let that pokemon hit you might be ideal. As you mentioned previously to me, Nysyr, you said stall lacks diversity at times because you're limited in how many ways you can counter a pokemon. This is probably the best way to alleviate that, blurring the lines between a revenge killer and a stall pokemon, basically making a fail-safe. I don't like it much as an ideology to have to sacrifice pokemon, but specific calculations for bulk and drastically specified ev spreads can be made with some of these to maybe even form them into a fast counter, being able to maybe just take one hit but OHKO back.

Mega venu is the easiest way to check/counter (with eq on venu) Mega Lucario physical variants, and if you don't have him on your team you should at least have Slowbro. The main reason to use Mega venu is to have something to sponge weaker knockoff spam from stuff like Mandibuzz and Gliscor who are otherwise huge dicks to try and break for stall. He also is an amazing trick sponge for stuff like scarf Rotom-W, who otherwise you would have to sac a poke to not get boned by it.

IMO something like: Chansey/MVenu/Mandibuzz(with foul play or whirlwind at the minimum) is a good place to start for a stall team.

I like your thinking here. Very good start indeed. Unfortunately, you still need an answer for mega pinsir and that generally comes with rotom-wash, skarm or zapdos.

 

[Frisodium]

What about hippowdon for bisharp? I don't think the power ranger can stand many earthquakes. If he's behind a substitute you can always phaze it.

 

[Nysyr]

The issue when referring to Bisharp is, you need to account for at least spikes + SR in your calcs at +2, or +4 without those (or a knockoff and a second attack). This is simply because Bisharp will be coming in on a defog and then Either attacking or SDing again. If you defog with something like Mandibuzz and lack foul play/ww, they can grab a +4 very easily and proceed to sweep your full team. Otherwise its coming in off a voltswitch on something like chansey while hazards will still be down. This is kinda why I stopped using defog scizor on all teams, since it is the epitome of defiant bait without carrying superpower.

So in short to not get boned by Bisharp you need: an unaware poke like quaggy, or not having your defogger be massive setup bait. This usually means your defogger needs to be able to WW the target out or kill it when its boosted (ie foul play). Skarm can do it decently but it gets massively destroyed by +2 LO knockoff still.

 

[Tesung]

That's the problem, whirlwind mandibuzz or skarm can take the hit and phase, but unless you get a super lucky matchup your bird is dead, and now something it checked walks all over u

 

[Alejandro36]

Nysyr: Im considering megavenusaur too. Do you give it sleep powder? On one hand it doesnt seem so good in a stall team since there will be more turns to wake up, but sleep spore is still sleep spore. What do you guys think?

I notice Goodra is not in the special walls list. Is it because of the lack of recovery??

I agree with Ajwf about having at least one fast pokemon with some sweeping capabilities. A stall team with 6 dedicated walls is going to stall very good but find it very difficult to actually finish the game. This has always been true but is even more true now with defog getting rid off all your spikes. Right now im experimenting with a stall team that uses megakangaskhan as a late game finisher to clean when all of the other guy's pokemon are weakeness/statused (I figured they will ban it so I may as well use it while I still can). A good finisher in a stall team would be something that has some walling potentiall but can also set up and sweep. Sword dance Garchomp, calm mind Latias and Dragon Dance Megatyranitar would be examples of it.

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

Honestly I think stall will do a lot better when / if Kangaskan is banned. I have already theorymon'd and play tested a couple of full on defensive teams in XY to cover most threats, but ironically being absolutely forced to run a ghost holds me back and I end up having holds which people can exploit with other Pokemon.

I have also considered trying out the stall ~ volt-turn teamstyle I play tested a bit last gen, in theory it wold be great to run on a defog team, as it is not reliant on hazards. Unfortunately I keep on running into issues in team building because of the shear amount of threats. Any thoughts? I have been thinking about Heatran + Rotom-W + Genesect + a Defoger + 2 other pokes.

 

[alphatron]

I'm at a loss on what to do against thundurus. Between the hammer arms, prankster taunts, and nasty plots, the only things that seem to scare him away are assault vest camerupt / goodra.

 

[Ajwf]

I generally just go chansey and toxic stall him. If he did carry hammer arm, I might just resort to venu and pray no flying moves.

 

[Twin_Scimitar]

I've been running Zygarde's Physical Wall set with Dragon Tail/Earthquake/Glare/Rest (I have Heal Bell Support). It works very well as a Bisharp counter. I also spin instead of Defog-ing on the team, so I haven't run into any problems giving it any free boosts. Intimidate is tricky. I find that double switching against defiant users is always something to consider with extra care.

Stall teams, or any team for that matter, are going to lose versus certain team matchups. Although I've seen it in the past, Bisharp hasn't been all that common for me personally. For some stall teams it may just be an "acceptable loss". If Bisharp becomes more popular and Kanga doesn't leave us for some reason, there's always Sableye's priority WoW for teams that run defog... I personally don't plan on ever using him (even now I don't like it) once Kanga gets the boot.

 

[Alejandro36]

On the other hand if Bisharp becomes really popular people will just be afraid to run defog and go back to the old rapid spinn method. So stall teams can go back to using spikes + spinn blocking.

Does annyone else have trouble against teams with a lot of Volt/Turn? It seems they can gain lot of momentum and keep the stall user switching out continously without being able to fire back. A simple example. They have rotom, so you send blissey. Rotom volt switches on the switch and Scizor comes in. You send skarmory, only to get a U-turn on the switch and get rotom again...who may kill you with a volt switch and just repeat the same play if you send in blissey again.

What can you do against it? For sure you can try to outpredict them, but if you guess wrong you lose one of your pokemon, and this is much worse for a stall team than for any other kind of team. You can use a ground pokemon to stop the volt switch but almost none of them like to take an hydro pump from rotom (on of the reasons why rotom w is so good)

I generally just go chansey and toxic stall him. If he did carry hammer arm, I might just resort to venu and pray no flying moves.

Im not sure but I think eviolite chansey with max defense can actually take the hammer arm and not get 2HKOed. The real problem is taunt not allowing you to use softboiled or toxic.

 

[Ajwf]

With voltturn, you really, really have to get rocks up. That's about the best thing to do and then go weather the storm a bit. Sometimes you can sacrifice a pokemon to gain back momentum when your opponent has low health and just go for some KOs. But you need rocks up at all cost.

 

[Flamebot]

Sableye seems to be a really great stall pokemon that I think alot of people should use. It's got not the greatest bulky but has priority recover and has priority burn, and it can carry knock off. It really ruins the dat of almost all physical attackers. Pair it up withba Special wall that resist fairy or can deal with fairybwould make it an amazing stall core (I would assume) tho I could be wrong as I play more Balanced/BO...I think

 

[Twin_Scimitar]

The main problem with Sableye is as you alluded to, it's frailty. It has 50/75/65 defenses... for reference Infernape, considered to be rather frail, has 76/71/71 defenses. It's best to switch it in on an immunity or after you lose a poke, and losing even one poke with stall can really hurt. While it DOES have 3 immunities, a physical wall as part of a stall core really needs to be able to switch into many attacks, including at times neutral ones. In my opinion it doesn't work as a physical wall in a "stall core". I do use it as a check to Kanga and other fighting types with monster attacks, which it is pretty good at. Aside from that it taunts, and spin blocks (and doesn't do great at that). In my opinion it's just too hard to switch in, and not nearly bulky enough to spin block. Not that it's a bad poke, I just use him only grudgingly.

I should add that Sableye is very useful against opposing stall teams, taunting and burning stall pokemon that don't have the powerful attacks of bulky offense or heavy offense to kill it.

When the stall team allows for it I've found I'm much happier with bulkier ghosts serving the role of a spin blocker.

 

[Alejandro36]

Thank God Mega kanga is gone. Now we need to get rid of megalucario and stall may have a chance again in this Gen.

BTW, how does stall deals with megalucario? Seems to be he is even better against stall because defensive pokemon give him an easier opening to come in. The only thing that prevents megalucario from benig broken (and maybe he is indeed broken) is that against offensive teams is not easy to find an opportunity to come in and set up without getting killed. But against stall this is not very hard. Blissey/chansey in particular are huge baits for lucario, since all you need to do is to make sure not to come into thunderwave and you are done.

 

[Ajwf]

I know a lot of people keep preaching this "stall is dead" nonsense or "too many strong threats to stall" and it does get old, even for someone who religiously runs stall. Now, kan I can understand banning. He is superb against hyper offense as well as stall. Even mega lucario is a tough nut to crack, to an extent. I mean, it might not even be incorrect to say that stall is hurting a bit right now, but to the extent it has been said, this is nonsense. At 2% usage, I can't imagine all the people complaining about stall being 'dead' or non-functioning actually playing stall.

Even lucario can be stopped, if you're careful about it. I'm testing today to see if AV slowbro with a designated EV spread can take both physical and special lucario at +2. I already know he can take on physical mega lucario fairly well and the special side attacks have slightly less base power. Gyarados can hold his own for the most part as well, and I don't think he needs an assault vest to do so. Tentacruel hard walls special lucario, though I have to check how it stops physical luc (guessing not well). In all honesty, mega lucario is no worse than kyurem was last generation.

If anything, throwing in a fast revenge killer like last generation's idea of stall may help. Outspeed mega lucario seems a tad difficult, but a perfectly viable Starmie sits ready for stall to use, not only outspeeding, but resisting both stabs and providing offensive/spin support to the team. Need I remind you starmie has access to recovery? If you can do about 1/4 damage to lucario beforehand, starmie can guarantee a kill. And if you simply want to fake being timid and go analytic LO, you can OHKO with psychic after rocks every time (and have a 93% chance to do so without anyways). This gives you room to make starmie bulky while focusing on attack. Tornadus comes to mind with his 121 base speed and regenerator. He should OHKO with LO heatwave or just focus miss. With prior damage (approximately 14%) he can KO with super power, no LO needed. Support azelf can do the same, lead taunting, setting rocks and then using fire blast to target/OHKO mega lucario. Yes, it has to invest max speed (or near, at least) and max SpA, but Azelf's support slot is generally a fast variant for taunting purposes.

There are options, and some of the fast pokes even play support roles well enough. You just have to adapt a bit. I'm not sure what Lucario's suspecting will bring, I've already decided to try and help that one and give as unbiased an opinion I can. Unviable for stall? Not really, there is some adapting that needs to take place but when I build a team, I'm not looking to fit some mold of what is viable, I will make my team viable in itself.

Seriously though. Enough with the 'stall is dead'. or 'stall needs x, y, z banned' garbage. It was old weeks ago.

 

[MagicMissingno]

With voltturn, you really, really have to get rocks up. That's about the best thing to do and then go weather the storm a bit. Sometimes you can sacrifice a pokemon to gain back momentum when your opponent has low health and just go for some KOs. But you need rocks up at all cost.

I feel that Ferrothorn with Rocky Helmet would hurt it quite a bit. After all you loose 25% of your HP on U-Turning if you hit that.

 

[SupremeDirt]

for people who are still running toxic spikes, what's working for people? i'm having a huge amount of trouble fitting it on my team, since in gen 4 i just relied on forretress, who seems.. pretty lacklustre this gen.

 

[Double Electric]

Tentacruel's not bad this gen--physically defensive variants switch into Azumarill and Mawile fairly well, specially defensive can survive very strong hits, most sets are decent for scouting Charizard's mega stone, Rapid Spins, turns Leech Seed on its head with Liquid Ooze. To be honest though, Burn is usually more valuable than normal poison and the spikes can interfere with the team's will-o-wisp users, hence why I've actually been opting not to use Toxic Spikes at all. But the move is certainly there if you need it.

 

[Seiterman]

for people who are still running toxic spikes, what's working for people? i'm having a huge amount of trouble fitting it on my team, since in gen 4 i just relied on forretress, who seems.. pretty lacklustre this gen.

Forretress is usable, but your team needs to be in need of his specific qualities. He has some cool selling points like Toxic Spikes, good physical bulk/resistances, Volt Switch and Rapid Spin. There are better spinners, pivots and hazard setters than him if you don't specifically need those things though.

As Double Electric said, Tentacruel is a pretty good way to go about it. Other than him, I could see Scolipede doing a good job laying them down, as he has non-negligible offensive presence and utility as a speed passer. Greninja gets Toxic Spikes too but I don't think he's worth it on a stall team (not like Scolipede is a great fit for the team archetype either.) Finally, Drapion has the move, gets good typing and reasonable physical bulk. Honestly though, I think anything but Forretress or Tentacruel is a stretch for a stall team.

Will-O-Wisp and Toxic both have better utility and distribution, so in all fairness I'd probably just use a Toxic-staller if you want to abuse that status condition.

 

[Photofluid]

I am not quite sure if it is mentioned earlier in the thread, but are there any one whom have particular difficulty against Knock off? Especially those who can't fit a Mega into the team.

Also, at the 6th gen stall team hardly get any new toys to play with. Infestation have been getting some hype earlier, but I doubt if there are anyone achieving much success with it. And while Fairy is a great defensive typing, the fairies either lacks sufficient defensive support moves(carbink) or suffers from weak defensive stats to check all the physical typings it is supposed to counter.

Btw, even with the idea of building pure stall, I find 30% of the time I am playing a more bulky offensive strategy, most support move still have pathetic distribution(WoW limited to ghost/fire, seed with grass), and so many threats can only be checked offensively.

 

[Alejandro36]

Only good thing stall got was megavenusaur. If you haven't tried it you should. Is suprising how well it does.

 

[Ajwf]

Stall also got mega ampharos and mega scizor, along with defog working with one of our staple pokemon, skarmory. Mega Tyranitar, Mega Aggron, Mega Blastoise, mega gyarados,

Apparently, it took all of you until this generation to discover mandibuzz, but I guess if you want to call mandi's usage an acquisition to stall, that's fair enough. C05ta had a really good team with her last gen and I used her on occasion, when I didn't like sigilphy more.

Clefable with fairy typing has become a really good stall pokemon. It has a fantastic move pool, recovery and a wonderful ability set in unaware and magic guard. I personally prefer magic guard, but hey.

Florges, Chesnaught. Aegislash, Goodra, Sylveon and some intermediate fast pokemon like Zygarde, Delphox and Gourgeist are also available for us to use. That's about 40% of the viable pokemon this generation, TBH.

But really, as far as I'm concerned, defog is the greatest thing that has happened to stall, ever. I no longer need to rely on bad spinners to keep my cores intact.

But even with these being the major additions, stall has probably changed more than any other style at this point, besides maybe the ideology of a hyper offense lead. Stall has more firepower, but it will differentiate itself from bulky offense in a few major ways.

A. Setup sweepers do not exist anywhere on stall. Setting up, in general, does not happen beyond hazard set up.
B. Cleric staples. We use them all the time, bulky offense might not.
C. EV investment. We're almost 100% into health/defense, whereas bulky offense will run speed creeping and attack power to secure KOs way more often. Although, I am running this ideology on a few pokemon... but that was mainly because of lucario in which it's the best way to secure my kill on it. Generally, however, we spend EV investment to AVOID certain kos/add more bulk.
D. Endgames are way different. Stall endgames are pretty situational and can be really difficult vs substitutes and magic guarders, whereas bulky offense will generally have sweepers/cleaners that start when the opponent just has good damage on him across the board.

Personally, having almost completely finished my first favorite stall team and having one more that is ready to get tuned to that level, I can't honestly say that stall is hurting too much. It takes a good deal of creativity and thought, but that's why I enjoy building stall teams anyways.