The viability of stall, and what will dominate the 5th Gen

[Lord of Music]

With things like Shadow Tag Shanderaa, it's beginning to look like stall will take quite a small role in the 5th gen. This is big because stall, or at least bulk, was relied upon heavily in D/P/P. With the almost ridiculous power creep now though, it looks like a faster paced metagame is in store for us, with all the new hard hitters.
That being said, I'd like to hear your opinions on the team styles, or perhaps specific moves or pokemon that will take over. In the same note, discuss if you will the remaining potential of stall: we did get Nettle and quite a few decent walls and supporters, how do you think they will place themselves in the toughest metagame yet?

 

[murkrowrob]

The 5th generation may see a sudden increase in weather teams with drizzletoad, droughttails and more viable pokemon in ice teams and EVEN more good sandstorm team members.

The attack and special attack stats have certainly been high this time. Excluding legendaries, there have been 7 physical and 2 special attackers with 135+ atk/spA stats. Seeing as there were 6 SpA 135+ non-legends and 5 atk 135+ non-legends from every previous generation, that's VERY good.

Shadow Tag now more common. Choice Items may fall in use now. Also, magic room and mummy can lead to very anti-meta based teams, overconfidence, poison heal, choice items, focus sash, leftovers, choice items etc. all popular things and items/abilities that the pokemon relies on, gone.

Stall-wise, the gone-ness of stealth rock as a tm has damaged some stall teams and now theres a move where special sweeper can pwn the mighty blissey, stalling has taken a big hit. Nattorei seems to be great as a new mon and apart from him there aren't many new stallers. maybe king jelly as a special wall but that's about it.

 

[:wub:disc]

OP you are correct, regular stall teams are easy to take care of now. every pokemon on a stall team now has to be able to take a hit from Shanderaa, or else they're dead. as such everything needs to either run Shed Shell or be a physically defencive pokemon not weak to ghost and fire. oh, Nattorei? enjoy your overheat as you can't switch. Skarm? same ****. oh, and if you're a sand team since i've killed your physical walls i'm going to KO everything with Doryuuzu.

there are too many offencive threats to cover and the game didn't get enough defencive threats to make stall useful. it may work against a 'balanced' team or a team without Shanderaa (good luck finding that olololo) but at the moment everyone's testing out powerhouses and stall simply doesn't work too well.

 

[Blue Harvest]

Stall will be dead until OU stabilizes. Once that happens it will bounce back, just like it did with Obi's stall in 4th gen. You can't build a team to handle 80+ random threats but you can do it when you know what 30 most likely to see pokes are.

Shanderaa will probably end up banned (technically speaking Shadow Tag Shanderaa hasn't been released yet thus it doesn't exist, its a Dream World thing), but even if it isn't banned its not particularly hard to make a team that doesn't fear it. Just give Blissey Shadow Ball and don't use Shed-Shell less Skarmory lol.

Stall is basically just counter teaming. Thats why stall teams have changed over 4th gen yet offense has remained largely the same (same sets at least).

 

[Ungoliath]

Shanderaa is no issue if you are smart enough. There is some moves that changes abilities that you can use to counter attack and you even have Desukan to counter Shandera in that sense.
Mummy can be really useful (as well as Simple Beam) and Power Share works well enough to avoid Pyscho Shock horror (since may help to lower your opponent SPAtk). Skill Swap can be also a GREAT way to avoid Shadow Tag Shanderaa.
Skill swap is also learned by Mismagious and Dusknoir, so go figure how useful it will be to avoid anti-stall teams. An anti-anti-stall

 

[d0nut]

Shanderaa is no issue if you are smart enough. There is some moves that changes abilities that you can use to counter attack and you even have Desukan to counter Shandera in that sense.
Mummy can be really useful (as well as Simple Beam) and Power Share works well enough to avoid Pyscho Shock horror (since may help to lower your opponent SPAtk). Skill Swap can be also a GREAT way to avoid Shadow Tag Shanderaa.
Skill swap is also learned by Mismagious and Dusknoir, so go figure how useful it will be to avoid anti-stall teams. An anti-anti-stall

Everything you listed is extremely gimmicky and if Shadow Tag Shanderaa were that overcentralizing it would just be banned. It would seriously be more practical to carry Shed Shell/U-Turn/Baton Pass on everything and even that is pushing it. Fortunately from my experience Shanderaa actually isn't that broken in actual practice and its highly overrated. Its good, and a definate OU, though at this point I can't see it being Uber. Its much too slow to pull off a sweep and there are tons of great revenge killers such as Ditto which compete with the Scarf set for a team slot. Its defenses aren't that great either when you factor in how common Stealth Rock still is, and it has a number of common weaknesses. Its SpA, ability, and its Ghost typing are really the biggest things it has going for it.

 

[Lord of Music]

Shanderaa is no issue if you are smart enough. There is some moves that changes abilities that you can use to counter attack and you even have Desukan to counter Shandera in that sense.
Mummy can be really useful (as well as Simple Beam) and Power Share works well enough to avoid Pyscho Shock horror (since may help to lower your opponent SPAtk). Skill Swap can be also a GREAT way to avoid Shadow Tag Shanderaa.
Skill swap is also learned by Mismagious and Dusknoir, so go figure how useful it will be to avoid anti-stall teams. An anti-anti-stall

The thing is, how useful would this thing be apart from handling Shanderaa? Doesn't seem fit for a team slot just so you're not totally screwed over. As Blue Harvest said, there will probably be ways to create a team that can beat it when all the hype settles down.

 

[:wub:disc]

i typed up a big post and then decided i didn't like it and deleted it.

long story short, Shandera doesn't sweep stuff. it switches in on things it can KO and KOs them. against stall teams, Ditto won't be the best revenge killer, as it can't copy anything powerful... that's kinda the point of stall teams, killing with residual damage rather than power. anyway. you are correct about SR and SS and such, but Shandera only needs a single switch in order to guarantee a KO and take out a counter to a more dangerous pokemon. running shed shell on everything is also detrimental to a team as you lose leftovers recovery (on stuff like Nattorei this could be crucial as it doesn't have a great deal of recovering moves aside from leech seed or something).

though of course if it is banned this means nothing. and don't give me that dream world crap it comes out in like 2 days from what i remember.

i still don't like this post but i can't think of how i can make it better.

 

[Aerophoenix]

It seems to me that, as of now, stall is not viable. This does not mean it will never be viable; I can see Chansey and Dusclops/Dusknoir, Vapreon, Cradily, the steel-grass poke and others rising as the dust clears. As of now, we are going to be testing the offensive viability of waaaaaaaaay too many pokes to even think of stalls. Right now we need to think of what's ending up in ubers and OU offensively, then see what counters it defensively later. And then we'll see what takes down those stalls, and then we'll see stalls to counter that, and the cycle will continue until we have a stable OU, which may take some time.

 

[Ungoliath]

Everything you listed is extremely gimmicky and if Shadow Tag Shanderaa were that overcentralizing it would just be banned. It would seriously be more practical to carry Shed Shell/U-Turn/Baton Pass on everything and even that is pushing it. Fortunately from my experience Shanderaa actually isn't that broken in actual practice and its highly overrated. Its good, and a definate OU, though at this point I can't see it being Uber. Its much too slow to pull off a sweep and there are tons of great revenge killers such as Ditto which compete with the Scarf set for a team slot. Its defenses aren't that great either when you factor in how common Stealth Rock still is, and it has a number of common weaknesses. Its SpA, ability, and its Ghost typing are really the biggest things it has going for it.

What is gimmicky? >_> Sorry, my knowledge of English is kinda limited. And I can't answer you without knowing exactly what you meant about those alternatives (Which includes several ways)

The thing is, how useful would this thing be apart from handling Shanderaa? Doesn't seem fit for a team slot just so you're not totally screwed over. As Blue Harvest said, there will probably be ways to create a team that can beat it when all the hype settles down.

Skill Swap? It's useful considering that most abilities right now are kinda hard to stop. Imagine Blaziken without Speed Boost It's not only for handling Shanderaa, is for handling ability-based strategies. Which IMHO will be most new metagame due Dream World changes.


ANYWAY, until it stabilizes I do agree that Stall teams wont show. I'm just trying to picture what will happen then (I've no interest to play right now without the English names of everything because I just don't want to learn everything again )

 

[Aerophoenix]

Its SpA, ability, and its Ghost typing are really the biggest things it has going for it.

In this case, those do count for quite a lot.

 

[spareux]

as long as there are good players, there will be stall

 

[d0nut]

In this case, those do count for quite a lot.

I agree and that is why I think it will be a top tier OU, though it just isn't enough to ban it or even its ability. You never know though, as it could very well be the next Garchomp and end up discovering some amazing set which single handedly makes it Uber. I can't see that happening at this point, though it wouldn't surprise me if that happened sometime in the (distant) future.

 

[Aerophoenix]

I agree and that is why I think it will be a top tier OU, though it just isn't enough to ban it or even its ability. You never know though, as it could very well be the next Garchomp and end up discovering some amazing set which single handedly makes it Uber. I can't see that happening at this point, though it wouldn't surprise me if that happened sometime in the (distant) future.

Well, that's why I included it in my Suspect RMT (unfortunately no link as the mods haven't added it yet to the forums).

 

[jesusfreak94]

What is gimmicky? >_> Sorry, my knowledge of English is kinda limited. And I can't answer you without knowing exactly what you meant about those alternatives (Which includes several ways)

Gimmicky means that a Pokemon or moveset is used for one small purpose, perhaps the element of surprise or something, and in the long haul it's not really going to be worth using on a team. Just thought I'd clarify that.

On to the subject, I'm thinking now that the stall that we all know and love (or hate) from the 4th Generation will be gone, but there is probably going to be a new style of stall in 5th Generation. I do think that Pokemon like Blissey, for example, will still be used a lot. With Wish's new mechanics, Blissey will be passing half of its own HP to teammates with Wish. That could be over 350 HP, which could be a full restoration to many sweepers. This could be invaluable to sweepers like Ononokusu and Blaziken who might be taking Life Orb recoil, as well as other types of passive damage.

 

[Blue Harvest]

Oh wow, Wish's new mechanic is crazy. Wish Bliss / Chansey will be pulling most pokes to full HP. Stall is going to be pretty awesome.

 

[Luxrayess]

On to the subject, I'm thinking now that the stall that we all know and love (or hate) from the 4th Generation will be gone, but there is probably going to be a new style of stall in 5th Generation. I do think that Pokemon like Blissey, for example, will still be used a lot. With Wish's new mechanics, Blissey will be passing half of its own HP to teammates with Wish. That could be over 350 HP, which could be a full restoration to many sweepers. This could be invaluable to sweepers like Ononokusu and Blaziken who might be taking Life Orb recoil, as well as other types of passive damage.

Really? Awesome! Wouldn't that also make WishVappy better at support as well? (Of course, not as viable as Blissey, but still...)

 

[Aerophoenix]

WAT. That is how Wish works now? DOUBLE WAT.

The only problem is how hard it is to get a Wish Chansey for non-online players.

 

[jesusfreak94]

Really? Awesome! Wouldn't that also make WishVappy better at support as well? (Of course, not as viable as Blissey, but still...)

I think so. I loves me the Vaporeon And the good thing about Vappy is that he can run offense as well as defense. His defenses also aren't as unbalanced as Blissey's, and Water Absorb (yes, I'm still seeing this over Hydration) will make him a good partner to Pokemon with Water weaknesses (I'm looking at you, Blaziken).

 

[Luxrayess]

I think so. I loves me the Vaporeon And the good thing about Vappy is that he can run offense as well as defense. His defenses also aren't as unbalanced as Blissey's, and Water Absorb (yes, I'm still seeing this over Hydration) will make him a good partner to Pokemon with Water weaknesses (I'm looking at you, Blaziken).

I'm totally with you about Water Absorb>Hydration! Hydration requires Rain Dance to really work.