Sunstall - 1700 Rating on PS (Checkmate in 35)

[Drakhun]

So, I haven't played in eons, and I just decided to pick the game back up on a whim. Looking over the articles and forums I found myself intrigued by the idea of stall (because I'm contrary and there is so much debate over weather or not stall is dead, and a well written how its made article on stall) and sun (I read a spectacular warstory featuring a sun-stall, and I love Ninetails). So, article in "hand" I set out to showdown to make what I hoped to be a decent sun stall team,. I name the team Checkmate in 35 turns since that has been about the average game length, win or lose. Revision Two is posted, revision three (Eviochance over Landlordus-T and some Ninetales changes) is in testing. My Current Revision, seemignly my final (after much dicussion on PS) contains my newest most awesome weapon, mixed Venusaur with HP-Ice.

Ninny (Ninetales) (F) @ Leftover
Trait: Drought
EVs: 252 HP / 136 Spd / 120 SDef
Calm Nature
- Sunny Day
- Will-O-Wisp
- Protect
- Flamethrower

Almost Standard Specially Bulky Ninetails. She wins weather wars. T-Tar and Hippo are near useless after a will o wisp, and Politoed hydropump only 2HKOs at best in the sun (and I find most politoed are bulky with scald, which is lol damage in sun)Protect allows me to stall and scout. Flamethrower is accurate and decently powerful, and every now and again gets me one more much needed burn.

Skarm (Skarmory) (F) @ Shed Shell
Trait: Sturdy
EVs: 232 Def / 252 HP / 24 Spd
Impish Nature
- Spikes
- Roost
- Whirlwind
- Brave Bird

Pretty standard skarmory does skarmory things. She (specifically a she after a scary run in with attract-hax Hax) sets spikes, whirls around setup dragons, roosts on her fat butt to stall some things into oblivion, and occasionally throws out a brave bird to do some damage. She is one of my main MVPs, making dragons not so scary (though she does know to run away from the inevitable fire blast when a dragon comes in on her), and when time allows (which can be surprisingly hard) setting up spikes. Shed Shell keeps her safe from Magnezone, and since she is so important, its worth loosing lefties recovery for that.

'Tran (Heatran) (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 SDef / 248 SAtk / 8 Spd
Calm Nature
- Lava Plume
- Stealth Rock
- Roar
- Earth Power
Standard Special Fat Tran. 'Tran is a key part of the team, and often times my lead. Special Fat tran does many things, like wall anything without a ground or fighting type attack. Lava plume in the sun hurts just about anything, and that delicious 30% burn does wonders. Rocks are always awesome, and tend to get thrown up on the force out. Roar is a bit of a secret weapon, and most folks don't seem to expect two phasers. Earth Power is legally required cover, so other tran and other fire absorbs don't wall her.

Cressy (Cresselia) (F) @ Leftovers
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 120 SAtk / 136 Def
Bold Nature
- Calm Mind
- Moonlight
- Hidden Power [Fighting]
- Psyshock

Oh Cressy, how I love you. Cressy's sturdy rump has save me in so many games. She is bulky enough to stay in and face down non-choiced pursuit users, chipping away at their health between moonlight. She wins Calm Mind wars full stop thanks to Psyshock hitting the unbolstered Physical Defense. Moonlight in the sun makes her unholy resilient, and allows her to hit more before having to heal out of the danger zone. Her offenses are a bit on the terrible side, even maxed out she can fail to OHKO things, but mighty cress gives no craps, for she will shrug off whatever is thrown at her and just finish you off next turn. Unless you're Sableye or Spiritomb, at which point she goes to her corner and cries.

'Cruel (Tentacruel) @ Black Sludge
Trait: Liquid Ooze
EVs: 252 HP / 240 Def / 16 Spd
Timid Nature
- Scald
- Toxic
- Substitute
- Rapid Spin

Near Standard subtoxic Tentacruel. 'Cruel has a lot of anti-synergy going on, with its only attack being nerfed by sun. However, even in sun having that water resist helps, and it gives me a much needed spinner. Scald not hitting very hard also is minimized by the burn chance, giving my team yet more ways to spread status. I initially had rain dish as anti-rain trickery, but I eventually switched to Liquid Ooze. I have a bit of a fighting weakness, and being able to turn drain punch against my foe helps, as does turning leachseed on its head.

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All and all though, if someone needed to go, it would be 'Cruel.

Forget what I once said about 'Cruel going. This guy is amazing, my number one fighting type switch in, and scald still burns in the sun and hits like a train (while still burning) in the rain.

[img=http://sprites.pokecheck.org/i/003f.gif]
Venu (Venusaur) (F) @ Black Sludge
Trait: Chlorophyll
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Mild Nature
- Earthquake
- Growth
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Giga Drain

The Sixth Ranger, and champion of champions, Venusaur. EQ/HP-Ice/Giga Drain has excellent coverage in the sun, and thanks to Poison/Grass being decent enough defensive typing I can generally get a growth off when I need it. That said, I do frequently call her useless, since unboosted she stuggless to kill even things that have 4x weak to ground with EQ. HP Ice however, is my surprise answer to many a thing, like Gliscor, Landlordus, and any active dragons.

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L-T (Landorus-Therian) (M) @ Expert Belt
Trait: Intimidate
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 HP / 4 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- U-turn
- Superpower

Under Revision Two Landlordus-T has become my new go-to lead. L-T often times sets up rocks or U-Turns to start the game, acting as a scout. He hits pretty hard, not as well as Hax, but has decent coverage. I have been happy, but not super happy, with him, and he will be going out in Rev 3, but putting him up to be thorough.

Hax (Haxorus) @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Mold Breaker
EVs: 252 Atk / 220 Spd / 36 HP
Adamant Nature
- Outrage
- Earthquake
- Brick Break
- X-Scissor

Stall or not, sometimes you just need stuff gone, and That's where Choice Scarf Haxorus comes in. Hax serves as my revenge killer, and sometimes late game sweeper (when Cress isn't gleefuly hacking through my enemies). Chomp double SD'd? Rub some Haxorus on it. Latiwhatever crit into a CM war victory? Rub some Haxorus in it. Espeon just being an annoying prick? Rub some Haxorus on it. The enemy team all woefully weakened by the past 30 turns of residual damage? Rub some Haxorus on it, yeah. 90% of the time its near mindlessly throw out an outrage, but EQ does come into use every now and again if there are too many healthy grounded steel switchins left, and brick break gives a nice techy answer to dual screens.

So, all and all I've been fairly happy with the team. I have some obvious issues with fighting types once Cress and Skarm go down, along with a terrible EQ weakness once that happens as well. I also lack priority, which causes issues with sashed magic guard 'Zam. Entry Hazards can still be hard to set up, but with rocks on Heatran now it's less bad. Dugtrio gives me fits. Weather team with dugtrio are my bane since 2/3 my team is trapped and killed (thankfuly there is not a lot of duggy around, so this doesn;t happen to much) I can still win thanks to bulk and all the burn and poison I get out, but it can still be troublesome. So there ya go, comment away, tell me how I'm messing up, and what I could do to be better.

 

[EnterRAYZORS]

Other than heatrans magma storm, what benefits from your sun? Skarm is hindered by it, so personally (ino it defeats the concept) id go weatherless, and add a toxic orb gliscor over ninetales or if you want an unusual weather id use hail as the every turn damage racks up, and along with a sub seed set that would be affective. Id drop haxorus as he isnt too stally, id put in a landorus T with intimidate and rocks. And id run toxic spikes over toxic on tentacruel to make stalling stall teams easier.
Cos you are a stall team hazards are good. Id contenplate a spin blocker however rapid spin is less and less common in this metagame so put on a sub pain split gengar if you find your hazards are always spun away.
Basically:
Pokemon
Abomasnow/ gliscor > ninetales
Landorus T > haxorus

Movesets
Toxic spikes > Toxic

Maybe a gengar spin blocker.

Gl with team

 

[Drakhun]

The reasoning behind sun, is it screws up other weather teams. Anyone relying heavily on Thunder or Hurricane is punished heavily by the sun, as are other weather teams who suddenly find the bulk of their offense kneecapped (turn off sandrush, turn down water damage). So essentially other than making Cress even tankier and Tran hit harder storm is more anti-weather weather. That said, changing out Ninny isn't completely inconceivable, particularly for Abomasnow which still gets my antiweather. Toxic Spikes over Toxic is brilliant and something I should have thought of. Though it makes other Tentacruel more troublesome it is much more difficult for Toed to dance around.

For now I'm going to try Landlordus-T over Hax and Toxic spikes.

L-T (Landorus-Therian) (M) @ Life Orb
Trait: Intimidate
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 HP / 4 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- U-turn
- Superpower

Maybe?

 

[dragonuser]

Hey Drakhun, this is a pretty cool Sun Stall team. I think some moveset optimizations would really help out a lot. On Ninetales I would run Leftovers, as the extra recovery helps a lot with Ninetales, and status isn't the biggest issue (cress/skarm hard wall Breloom). I would also recommend a moveset of Flamethrower / Sunny Day / Will-O-Wisp / Protect, Solarbeam on Ninetales. Like you said, Substitute is nice on Ninetales, but in practice has much less use. Toxic's main purpose on Ninetales is to beat bulky boosters like Latias, but you have CM Cresselia to boost alongside it and beat it. Will-O-Wisp hits almost all of the weather starters better, as during a weather war Politoed/Tyranitar will rarely stay in for more than one turn. This makes the 12% from a burn more useful then the initial 6% from Toxic. Even if they stay in for two turns both status's will do the same amount of damage, while Will-O-Wisp has the added bonus of crippling Tyranitar. Solarbeam can be used if you wish to go more on the offensive, but Protect greatly helps your longevity.

This team also seems to have issues coming into Electric-Type Pokemon like Thundurus-T or Rotom-W. Nothing resists Electric meaning they can spam Volt Switch and Heatran, your best switch in, does not enjoy taking a Focus Blast or Hydro Pump. While Landorus-T can deter the use of Volt Switch, it still risks swiftly being taken out by Hidden Power Ice or Hydro Pump. Skarmory and Cresselia also provide plenty of physical bulk for your team, making Landorus-T kind of superfluous. For this reason I would recommend using Chansey. While this does make your team a bit more standard, it makes it considerably more solid. Chansey does a lot of things for your team. Firstly, it serves as a good check to Thundurus-T and Rotom-W, while it also beats HP Ground Volcarona, who has the potential to setup on half of your team, and sweep right through you. It can also lay Stealth Rock for your team, which any stall team needs. Anyways cool team, and I hope I helped!

sets

Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SDef
Bold Nature (+Def, -Atk)
- Toxic
- Seismic Toss
- Softboiled
- Stealth Rock

 

[Drakhun]

That Chancey looks pretty interesting and I will give her a shot. I have had some luck running Landlordus-Therian, often times as my lead, with Expert Belt otherwise using the set posted above. Stealth Rocks has indeed been handing, and I have slowly been slogging my way towards 1600. The one thing I have noticed since taking Hax out is Latis give me issues if they crit out Cress (or if I'm a derp and let her get toxiced, but that's my missplay most the time more than anything else), because my entire team is rather a bit on the slow side, and Moxie Mence can be a nightmare once he gets going. So, thanks for your advice, Eviochance will be the next one on the testing block, but possibly with a change of taking out Toxic (As blasphemous as this sounds I might have enough status) for aromatherapy, which will let me get passive damage off my own team, and as I have learned Cress does not like Toxic and my other walls aren't too keen on burn). As is the posted Ninetails set, having protect does sound like a fantastic way to make my life easier, and will win games when trying to stall out those last few points of toxic/burn.

 

[Red3mpti0n]

Really interesting team you've got here, Drakhun. It looks like a lot of fun to use. I like the idea of Skarm on a sun stall team; it patches up a lot of common sun team weaknesses. Good call

Just a few things:

I feel like Heatran could be doing a lot more for the team with a specially defensive set. SpD Heatran's main boon over the Magma Storm set is Roar, which allows it to phaze specially-based threats Skarm can't risk staying in on. Also, Heatran is probably one of the best Genesect counters out there and you're rather weak to the little bugger; a bulkier set can take much more abuse from Genesect. Something like Lava Plume | Roar | Earth Power/Protect/(Status) | Stealth Rock would be nice. It also would give you a dedicated and reliable Stealth Rock user and frees up your Landorus-T (or Haxorus, *hint hint*). You could even invest in speed and keep Taunt in the third slot if you've grown attached to it.

You should also take dragonuser's advice on the Ninetales set. I personally would prefer Protect/Energy Ball over Sunny Day/Solarbeam but one is just as viable as the other.

For Tentacruel, you can use Sludge Wave > Scald if you're worried about Scald's reduced power in sunlight. Sludge Wave hits harder in all (or no) weather, barring rain. You should also use Toxic > Toxic Spikes again. The majority of teams don't mind them as much with all the Dragon, Therian and Genesect spam. Might as well hit what you can, ya know?

Once again, great team and good luck!