Standard Stall
1. Introduction
I was going back and forth on whether to post this or not, but this is the team that got me my very first top 500 placement and that made me quite happy so I guess here we are. From the beggining of the crown tundra metagame stall has been my favorite playstyle, and I have been playing it even while the likes of kyub and lando-I were ravaging the metagame. In the process of playing stall for most of crown tundra I feel like most reliable stall teams feature a similar core that will be explored further in this RMT. I also noticed that most stall teams tend to suffer from similar problems, those primarily being heatran and Future Sight+strong choiced breakers, as well as some specific setup sweepers. This RMT was made to make a standard stall core much more resilient to such threats. Because of these tweaks the standard stall teams can stand up to common ways to pressure stall much better, and as such is in my opinion a very good team for beginners to stall to use in lower ladder, while still being able to go toe with strong teams from higher up.
2. Team Building Process
Nothing has quite the same special walling prowess as blissey, and this mon has been a staple specially defensive backbone holding teams together for generations. In terms of sheer consistency of walling special attackers, blissey is number one in the tier. This specific blissey is kitted out to remove much of the threat of future sight to the team.
Blissey's age old partner in crime, skarmory is an extremely capable physical wall that wards of a lot of prominent threats (most notably the grass bros), while providing a great source of residual damage through its access to spikes and rocky helmet.
Derpy boy that knows no tiers is vital to holding the team together against many setup sweepers that no other mon can reliably wall, and has prevented many a setup sweep. The electric immunity is always a nice bonus.
Pex is one of the best scouts in the tier, since it doesn't go down to most attacks and can always bounce back with regenerator, and it's very hard to get rid of. It can perform a lot of duties as needed, and the fact that it brings knock off is invaluable.
Now that the core has been completed, we add some troubleshooters to the team. While clefable might not be as bulky as I want, it has some nasty tricks up its sleeve. Clefable's job is to apply a lot of pressure with sticky barb tricking, removing valuable items from opposing mons while saddling them with a sometimes crippling residual damage problem. pink blob #2 is also the team's deffoger, as pink blob #1 doesn't have the room for it on its set in this team.
I'm a massive fan of this guy on stall teams, as it makes the heatran matchup a 1000 times more bearable. Multiscale also allows it to do some scouting, as well as some emergency tanking if needed, and it can wall some dangerous threats on typing alone. It's also the team's cleric with heal bell.
3. Sets
Blissey (F) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
- Protect
- Soft-Boiled
- Toxic
- Seismic Toss
Blissey is a premier special wall and there is not much to say about that, but the real thing that's important to notice about this set is that it packs protect. Protect is our method of dealing with future sight. Since future sight is an extremely telegraphed move(especially against stall, it is followed up by teleport 99% of the time), you can easily switch in blissey and then protect, which makes blissey only take the small amount of damage future sight would do. Since they have to use future sight and switch out to a breaker, you always have time to go into blissey. The only mon this will not work against is shifu-rapid strike. Toxic is selected because it pairs with protect stalling quite well, and it really enables blissey to dislodge bulky special setup sweepers like volcarona if for some reason you don't want to use quagsire(if you are afraid of getting quagsire overloaded for instance). Protect can also be used to scout choiced mons. I won't comment on soft boiled and toss since they are pretty standard blissey moves.
Skarmory @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Spikes
- Roost
- Defog
- Body Press
With kartana,rilaboom and garchomp having such high usage, it's no surprise that skarmory will find itself a place on stall teams, since it tanks their hits so well. It can also set up spikes on several common defoggers/spinners which cannot really stop it such as lando-t and excadrill(which it absolutely dominates since it has to take helmet damage to spin). It's also a great answer to melmetal, which can often get itself killed with helmet recoil by trying to break skarmory (banded variants can pack a wallop with thunder punch though so keep skarmory healthy, and don't let it get knocked). While this set has defog for emergency hazard removal, for reasons I will outline in chapter "winning the hazard war", I think both iron defense (to boost your defense against certain setup sweepers such as kartana and chomp) and taunt(to stop corviknight defogs) could prove to be useful.
Quagsire @ Leftovers
Ability: Unaware
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Toxic
- Recover
- Earthquake
- Scald
IMO, quagsire is absolutely vital for most stall teams, since it simplifies building against many different setup sweepers and opens up a lot of space in the builder. toxic and scald let it spread status, while earthquake is in general just a good offensive option. Recover is used to boost longevity. While lefties are nice for some passive recovery, quagsire doesn't absolutely depend on them, so it is a good option to soak a knock off, if you don't want to lose your rocky helmets on other mons, or even worse boots or sticky barb. Do be careful to keep quagsire at highish health if you spot a setup sweeper that only he can keep in check, and let some of your other mons soak more hits in such situations.
Clefable @ Sticky Barb
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
Careful Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Stealth Rock
- Soft-Boiled
- Trick
- Moonblast
Clefable is a weird one on stall. It's by far the worst of the bunch at actually walling stuff, so you shouldn't just be switching it into stuff willy nilly, because you will lose it very fast. Clefable's role is to apply pressure on the integrity of the enemy team by setting rocks and especially by removing items like HDB or lefties on mons without reliable recovery which can fold very quickly to such pressure. As such it's actually best to bring in clef against more passive members of the opposing team. For a very important example, clef is very good at luring heatran and then giving it a barb on the switch, which puts it on a massive timer, and since you can just switch into dnite, heatran is basically done for at this point. Trick can also be used in an emergency to take an important damage item from a powerful threat to your team, which makes it wallable(the best example for this is taking specs from a tapu lele, massive bonus points if you can later give it to one of their walls), and with creative usage can do some pretty nutty things. One large offensive threat that specially defensive clef can switch into is dragapult, so you might as well use it for this if you did you shenanigans to take some heat off your blissey. It's also a very good switch into ferro that's not packing gyro ball, since it doesn't fear eech seed, and if you can both deny seed and give it sticky barb it goes down very fast.
Dragonite @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Multiscale
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Heal Bell
- Earthquake
- Flamethrower
- Roost
In my opinion, dragonite on stall teams is a massive game changer. It can easily switch into all heatran sets and threaten them out with earthquake, which alone is enough to consider it for such teams, but it has other uses as well. A very similair thing to the heatran issue is magnezone trapping my skarmory and dragonite's good matchup into it combined with the heatran matchup make me able to skip shed shell on both skarmory and toxapex. While this set is almost the same as the most regular defensive dragonite popularized by stormzone, one important difference is that this set packs flamethrower instead of ice beam. This is very important to winning the hazard war versus opposing corviknight, which stall teams usually cannot really stop. If you can get some residual damage on it by sticky barb,rocks,and burns, corviknight can be brought into 2HKO range from dragonite, which depending on circumstances can straight up take it out or at least force it to not defog. It also torches ferro and kartana. Another great tool is heal bell, which allows it to stomach toxics from heatran, as well as act as a cleric for the rest of the team. This thing is also a decent scout since multiscale makes it able to take some monstrous hits(I have actually managed to facetank and roost stall draco meteor specs latios with this method, and the only move from specs lele that can even keep your multiscale broken after a roost is a max roll moonblast). Dragonite is also pretty good at walling rilla and kartana, but it's weakness to knock off means this is better left to skarmory.
Toxapex @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Knock Off
- Recover
- Baneful Bunker
- Scald
Toxapex is a bit of an all rounder, if you don't know what set an opposing mon is running you can probably send in pex and it won't die, while being able to bounce back better than the others thanks to regenerator. Baneful bunker is my personal preference since it spreads status, stalls poison turns as well as stuff like sand and can rack up a lot of damage combined with blissey protecting. scald is again here for spreading more status, as well as some low but consistent damage. Knock off is good for softening up teams and making reliable progress, but watch out for your own sticky barb, as nothing can make you feel quite as dumb as hitting your own barb with knock off. It's also the team's best answer to urshifu rapid strike, since it will wreck itself on rocky helmet while doing very low damage if it ever goes for surging strikes.
4. Winning The Hazard Game
Winning the Hazard game is abosolutely vital for stall teams as it allows them to punish opposing teams for every switch in, greatly increasing the pressure on your opponent. The most important thing here is taking out two things: opposing rock setters and hazard removers. If you think you can score some free damage on those two mons with a move, going for it is often a good idea, even if you lose tempo. The best ones to take advantage of are ones without reliable recovery and/or that are weak to rocks(so think lando,ferro,excadrill, moltres...); if you can nick them with anything ranging from status, to sticky barbs to stray attacks that's a very good thing. once you break their setter, you can defog and the opponent loses a decent chunk of their pressure. Once you break their defogger you can stack hazards to quickly wear down the opposing team.
One interesting team on teams which pack more hazards than just rocks is that a lot of the times you actually don't want to defog. The way you get rid of hazards on your side of the field is often to just start throwing down more hazards than they can, so they will have to defog, which will still net you some extra damage as well as wasting their turns and tempo. this is even more pronounced since this team is quite resistant to hazards in the first place(skarmory is immune to spikes, blissey and dragonite have boots, clef is magic guard, quaggy resists rocks, and pex absorbs tspikes), so the opponent gets the worse end of the stick if you both put hazards up.
5. Threats
disclaimer: all of these threats can be played around quite well, but they still deserve mention, mostly because they actually require some prediction and/or clever play instead of just going for formulaic plays.
- putting the specs variants of these two together since they are both scary powerful breakers with a mixed damage profile. Many mons on your team can take some moves from them very well but not all. The trick to dealing with them is to get hazards and status up to limit the amount of times they can switch in. Also remember pex and blissey pack a protecting move, and dragonite and clef(clef will take massive, probably unrecoverable damage without some good double switches from this tho, so watch out) can use their recovery to see what they will be locked into and swap out accordingly. They will ocasionally force some 50/50s on you tho
- between trick, nasty plot and some annoying coverage, this thing can be a headache. it probably won't 6-0 you but it can be annoying. try to get it earthquaked, or knocked off by pex.
- only with future sight up, otherwise it gets hilariously walled by pex. Try to play the positioning game to not give it a switch in with a FS up.
- magic guard CM variants are the only annoying ones, if its carrying a Life orb knock it off with pex and then pp stall with blissey and quaggy, since without life orb it can't break them.
- more mildly annoying than straight out a threat, it's sub sets can be annoying, while specs sets with focus blast threaten blissey. Good thing is that clefable is pretty decent into both sets, so it can take some heat off your other team members. Specs also cannot take rocks well at all, and neither version likes switching in to lose their items.
- belly drum ones can't do much of anything next to quagsire, but perish trapper variants will just end you. Good thing they are rare.
- only sets packing exactly these 3 moves are dangerous: taunt, CM,draining kiss. The rest doesn't do anything to the team, and if you run into that set, just try to outdamage it with hits from quagsire, knock with pex and do some more damage that way.
- cannot threaten you at all, but pp stall is annoying, and if it refuses to go into 2HKO range from dragonite's flamethrower(which it probably be if you pressure it enough), it will just kinda do whatever it wants.
6. Replays
To be honest, I don't exactly know what's in these, but here are some replays to see how the team works in general:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1332842139
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1336365195
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1336377878
7. Ending Words
Whew, that was a lot to write. For those of you still reading, thanks for reading and I hope you have a good one!
1. Introduction
I was going back and forth on whether to post this or not, but this is the team that got me my very first top 500 placement and that made me quite happy so I guess here we are. From the beggining of the crown tundra metagame stall has been my favorite playstyle, and I have been playing it even while the likes of kyub and lando-I were ravaging the metagame. In the process of playing stall for most of crown tundra I feel like most reliable stall teams feature a similar core that will be explored further in this RMT. I also noticed that most stall teams tend to suffer from similar problems, those primarily being heatran and Future Sight+strong choiced breakers, as well as some specific setup sweepers. This RMT was made to make a standard stall core much more resilient to such threats. Because of these tweaks the standard stall teams can stand up to common ways to pressure stall much better, and as such is in my opinion a very good team for beginners to stall to use in lower ladder, while still being able to go toe with strong teams from higher up.
2. Team Building Process
Nothing has quite the same special walling prowess as blissey, and this mon has been a staple specially defensive backbone holding teams together for generations. In terms of sheer consistency of walling special attackers, blissey is number one in the tier. This specific blissey is kitted out to remove much of the threat of future sight to the team.
Blissey's age old partner in crime, skarmory is an extremely capable physical wall that wards of a lot of prominent threats (most notably the grass bros), while providing a great source of residual damage through its access to spikes and rocky helmet.
Derpy boy that knows no tiers is vital to holding the team together against many setup sweepers that no other mon can reliably wall, and has prevented many a setup sweep. The electric immunity is always a nice bonus.
Pex is one of the best scouts in the tier, since it doesn't go down to most attacks and can always bounce back with regenerator, and it's very hard to get rid of. It can perform a lot of duties as needed, and the fact that it brings knock off is invaluable.
Now that the core has been completed, we add some troubleshooters to the team. While clefable might not be as bulky as I want, it has some nasty tricks up its sleeve. Clefable's job is to apply a lot of pressure with sticky barb tricking, removing valuable items from opposing mons while saddling them with a sometimes crippling residual damage problem. pink blob #2 is also the team's deffoger, as pink blob #1 doesn't have the room for it on its set in this team.
I'm a massive fan of this guy on stall teams, as it makes the heatran matchup a 1000 times more bearable. Multiscale also allows it to do some scouting, as well as some emergency tanking if needed, and it can wall some dangerous threats on typing alone. It's also the team's cleric with heal bell.
3. Sets
Blissey (F) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
- Protect
- Soft-Boiled
- Toxic
- Seismic Toss
Blissey is a premier special wall and there is not much to say about that, but the real thing that's important to notice about this set is that it packs protect. Protect is our method of dealing with future sight. Since future sight is an extremely telegraphed move(especially against stall, it is followed up by teleport 99% of the time), you can easily switch in blissey and then protect, which makes blissey only take the small amount of damage future sight would do. Since they have to use future sight and switch out to a breaker, you always have time to go into blissey. The only mon this will not work against is shifu-rapid strike. Toxic is selected because it pairs with protect stalling quite well, and it really enables blissey to dislodge bulky special setup sweepers like volcarona if for some reason you don't want to use quagsire(if you are afraid of getting quagsire overloaded for instance). Protect can also be used to scout choiced mons. I won't comment on soft boiled and toss since they are pretty standard blissey moves.
Skarmory @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Spikes
- Roost
- Defog
- Body Press
With kartana,rilaboom and garchomp having such high usage, it's no surprise that skarmory will find itself a place on stall teams, since it tanks their hits so well. It can also set up spikes on several common defoggers/spinners which cannot really stop it such as lando-t and excadrill(which it absolutely dominates since it has to take helmet damage to spin). It's also a great answer to melmetal, which can often get itself killed with helmet recoil by trying to break skarmory (banded variants can pack a wallop with thunder punch though so keep skarmory healthy, and don't let it get knocked). While this set has defog for emergency hazard removal, for reasons I will outline in chapter "winning the hazard war", I think both iron defense (to boost your defense against certain setup sweepers such as kartana and chomp) and taunt(to stop corviknight defogs) could prove to be useful.
Quagsire @ Leftovers
Ability: Unaware
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Toxic
- Recover
- Earthquake
- Scald
IMO, quagsire is absolutely vital for most stall teams, since it simplifies building against many different setup sweepers and opens up a lot of space in the builder. toxic and scald let it spread status, while earthquake is in general just a good offensive option. Recover is used to boost longevity. While lefties are nice for some passive recovery, quagsire doesn't absolutely depend on them, so it is a good option to soak a knock off, if you don't want to lose your rocky helmets on other mons, or even worse boots or sticky barb. Do be careful to keep quagsire at highish health if you spot a setup sweeper that only he can keep in check, and let some of your other mons soak more hits in such situations.
Clefable @ Sticky Barb
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
Careful Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Stealth Rock
- Soft-Boiled
- Trick
- Moonblast
Clefable is a weird one on stall. It's by far the worst of the bunch at actually walling stuff, so you shouldn't just be switching it into stuff willy nilly, because you will lose it very fast. Clefable's role is to apply pressure on the integrity of the enemy team by setting rocks and especially by removing items like HDB or lefties on mons without reliable recovery which can fold very quickly to such pressure. As such it's actually best to bring in clef against more passive members of the opposing team. For a very important example, clef is very good at luring heatran and then giving it a barb on the switch, which puts it on a massive timer, and since you can just switch into dnite, heatran is basically done for at this point. Trick can also be used in an emergency to take an important damage item from a powerful threat to your team, which makes it wallable(the best example for this is taking specs from a tapu lele, massive bonus points if you can later give it to one of their walls), and with creative usage can do some pretty nutty things. One large offensive threat that specially defensive clef can switch into is dragapult, so you might as well use it for this if you did you shenanigans to take some heat off your blissey. It's also a very good switch into ferro that's not packing gyro ball, since it doesn't fear eech seed, and if you can both deny seed and give it sticky barb it goes down very fast.
Dragonite @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Multiscale
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Heal Bell
- Earthquake
- Flamethrower
- Roost
In my opinion, dragonite on stall teams is a massive game changer. It can easily switch into all heatran sets and threaten them out with earthquake, which alone is enough to consider it for such teams, but it has other uses as well. A very similair thing to the heatran issue is magnezone trapping my skarmory and dragonite's good matchup into it combined with the heatran matchup make me able to skip shed shell on both skarmory and toxapex. While this set is almost the same as the most regular defensive dragonite popularized by stormzone, one important difference is that this set packs flamethrower instead of ice beam. This is very important to winning the hazard war versus opposing corviknight, which stall teams usually cannot really stop. If you can get some residual damage on it by sticky barb,rocks,and burns, corviknight can be brought into 2HKO range from dragonite, which depending on circumstances can straight up take it out or at least force it to not defog. It also torches ferro and kartana. Another great tool is heal bell, which allows it to stomach toxics from heatran, as well as act as a cleric for the rest of the team. This thing is also a decent scout since multiscale makes it able to take some monstrous hits(I have actually managed to facetank and roost stall draco meteor specs latios with this method, and the only move from specs lele that can even keep your multiscale broken after a roost is a max roll moonblast). Dragonite is also pretty good at walling rilla and kartana, but it's weakness to knock off means this is better left to skarmory.
Toxapex @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Knock Off
- Recover
- Baneful Bunker
- Scald
Toxapex is a bit of an all rounder, if you don't know what set an opposing mon is running you can probably send in pex and it won't die, while being able to bounce back better than the others thanks to regenerator. Baneful bunker is my personal preference since it spreads status, stalls poison turns as well as stuff like sand and can rack up a lot of damage combined with blissey protecting. scald is again here for spreading more status, as well as some low but consistent damage. Knock off is good for softening up teams and making reliable progress, but watch out for your own sticky barb, as nothing can make you feel quite as dumb as hitting your own barb with knock off. It's also the team's best answer to urshifu rapid strike, since it will wreck itself on rocky helmet while doing very low damage if it ever goes for surging strikes.
4. Winning The Hazard Game
Winning the Hazard game is abosolutely vital for stall teams as it allows them to punish opposing teams for every switch in, greatly increasing the pressure on your opponent. The most important thing here is taking out two things: opposing rock setters and hazard removers. If you think you can score some free damage on those two mons with a move, going for it is often a good idea, even if you lose tempo. The best ones to take advantage of are ones without reliable recovery and/or that are weak to rocks(so think lando,ferro,excadrill, moltres...); if you can nick them with anything ranging from status, to sticky barbs to stray attacks that's a very good thing. once you break their setter, you can defog and the opponent loses a decent chunk of their pressure. Once you break their defogger you can stack hazards to quickly wear down the opposing team.
One interesting team on teams which pack more hazards than just rocks is that a lot of the times you actually don't want to defog. The way you get rid of hazards on your side of the field is often to just start throwing down more hazards than they can, so they will have to defog, which will still net you some extra damage as well as wasting their turns and tempo. this is even more pronounced since this team is quite resistant to hazards in the first place(skarmory is immune to spikes, blissey and dragonite have boots, clef is magic guard, quaggy resists rocks, and pex absorbs tspikes), so the opponent gets the worse end of the stick if you both put hazards up.
5. Threats
disclaimer: all of these threats can be played around quite well, but they still deserve mention, mostly because they actually require some prediction and/or clever play instead of just going for formulaic plays.
- putting the specs variants of these two together since they are both scary powerful breakers with a mixed damage profile. Many mons on your team can take some moves from them very well but not all. The trick to dealing with them is to get hazards and status up to limit the amount of times they can switch in. Also remember pex and blissey pack a protecting move, and dragonite and clef(clef will take massive, probably unrecoverable damage without some good double switches from this tho, so watch out) can use their recovery to see what they will be locked into and swap out accordingly. They will ocasionally force some 50/50s on you tho - between trick, nasty plot and some annoying coverage, this thing can be a headache. it probably won't 6-0 you but it can be annoying. try to get it earthquaked, or knocked off by pex. - only with future sight up, otherwise it gets hilariously walled by pex. Try to play the positioning game to not give it a switch in with a FS up. - magic guard CM variants are the only annoying ones, if its carrying a Life orb knock it off with pex and then pp stall with blissey and quaggy, since without life orb it can't break them. - more mildly annoying than straight out a threat, it's sub sets can be annoying, while specs sets with focus blast threaten blissey. Good thing is that clefable is pretty decent into both sets, so it can take some heat off your other team members. Specs also cannot take rocks well at all, and neither version likes switching in to lose their items. - belly drum ones can't do much of anything next to quagsire, but perish trapper variants will just end you. Good thing they are rare. - only sets packing exactly these 3 moves are dangerous: taunt, CM,draining kiss. The rest doesn't do anything to the team, and if you run into that set, just try to outdamage it with hits from quagsire, knock with pex and do some more damage that way. - cannot threaten you at all, but pp stall is annoying, and if it refuses to go into 2HKO range from dragonite's flamethrower(which it probably be if you pressure it enough), it will just kinda do whatever it wants.6. Replays
To be honest, I don't exactly know what's in these, but here are some replays to see how the team works in general:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1332842139
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1336365195
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1336377878
7. Ending Words
Whew, that was a lot to write. For those of you still reading, thanks for reading and I hope you have a good one!
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