Bulky offense is looking to be the type of team with the least flaws this generation, but a good stall team using passive damage is still perfectly possible.
The Mega-evolutions are the main thing saving the Hyper offense from death, at least, from my speculated knowledge.
Toxic posioning is probably the best thing you're going to run into when it comes to indirect damage.
From my experience as a stall player, I would say that hazards are easily a stall team's best way of doing damage, which is obvious and I think everyone will agree with me on that. However, following this, as we are discussing a metagame in which hazards are weak, I would argue that using weak attacks + burn is much better at doing damage than bad poison (which would come third in my eyes). The burn does passive damage every turn, as well as buffering against physical attacks. The weak attacks from un-EVd stats allow you to kill it a bit faster. Toxic Spikes are unreliable, they don't affect flying types and they are removed by poison types. Although Will-o-Wisp does have a tendency to miss, it can be used well in safe circumstances (i.e. If Jellicent has forced a switch, it could use Will-o-Wisp on that turn to catch a unwary physical attacker. If you fail then switch to your blanket physical wall). Also, the only type to resist burn is weak to Scald, which means you can easily Scald spam to get good effects.
Also, while Defog helps extremely, entry hazards are still going to be used on a stall team. They will choose pokemon that can continuously set up these entry hazards, even if they get defoged. It's not immpossible, but with how powerful stealth rocks, spikes, toxic spikes, and the new sticky web are, we needed something to limit or reduce entry hazard use.
Completely agree. A fast spinner such as Starmie can only spin 3 times or so in a match. It will be the same situation with Defog, and almost all Defoggers are weak to SR anyway. Mandibuzz and Scizor are the only Defoggers which can actually take some hits.
Yikes. Stall just keeps taking one punch to the face after another...
Personally, I see Hyper Offense getting along just fine, so long as people get used to dealing with sticky web.
I think it's going to lose a lot of popularity, but still be completely viable. Due to the nerfs to many special attacks, it loses a lot of important KOs. Additionally, there haven't been any absolutely gamebreakingly powerful pokemon introduced this generation - with the exception of Mega Gengar. I think HO won't be quite as prevalent as 5th gen, especially as choice dragons won't work.
I should also mention that if sticky web is on both sides of the field, the two teams are put back on even grounds again.
Not entirely true, as Sticky Web only affects grounded pokemon. So if the opponent has more grounded pokemon than you, then they do have a slight disadvantage, especially if their sweeper is grounded and yours isn't.
Volt Turn is going to love Defog. Even though entry hazards are a lot of help to them, they're even more dangerous when used against them. It's also got protean Greninja to work alongside it now, which will probably be a huge asset.
This is so true, and scary to me as someone who hated Volt-turn in late BW1.