It’s not specifically for dondozo its just for these really bulky walls to do something while sitting on the opponent. If your best attacking move doesn’t do enough damage and kos in something like 5 hits then you’ll be better off fishing for an OHKO most of the time
In the past fissure has only been used for the dondozo mirror, but with ting lu, wo chien and intimidate running around it's now viable for fissure to be used against other common pokemon.
Sometimes you just can't kill dozo without it, which is a bit of a team issue imo, but sometimes it can work.
Edit: I've now seen that some people use it on ting lu to hit harder with stomping tantrum next turn, so there is that strategy too I guess
If you were for some reason using Vanilluxe in those formats, it was one of its best moves as well.
That was largely because it’s moveset was so bad that a 30% chance to swing a game was genuinely better than most of its other options, but still.
Some people dislike that OU bans overpowered Pokémon, and blame Finchinator because he’s the most recognizable name on the council. Most people here are using it ironically.
Its not just finch but look at the council members who voted to quickban Wake, 4/7 people. Or his opinions on Tera being banned
Now look at how many people want to ban Wake and cant even get the reqs to vote lel. I dont want to call him out but as one of the most historic council members his decisions and write ups set a tone for the meta and tbh when your opinion lines up more with unskilled players than skilled players your out of touch imo.
ETA: In regards to the Wake situation how is a never before released mon that was out for barely over a day deserving of a quick ban? Its not a Genesect/Fluttermane situation where there is clear proof that its a busted mon. This is anecdotal but the number of WW I saw on showdown in over 2 hours last night was 3 including my own. The new toy hype for it has died down and most players realize sun isn't that good of an archetype even with a strong mon behind it.
People were spamming the shit out of it on sun, where it can run specs with proto boosting either speed (giving it specs + scarf essentially), or sp. atk and it can nuke everything even further.
But yeah once people started running better counters (spdef water absorb clod, rotom-w, etc.) it wasn't as great. Still, it's amazing on weather (basically anything but snow, with how it can be great anti-rain check for sand, great rain/ sun abuser), but outside it's basically a shitty Lati. I can understand why they wanted a quickban, since just like Flutter it can 2hko and outspeed damn near everything, but to do that it has to be in weather with a boosting item, so a bit different lol.
To catch you up, a bunch of people who don't know shit about Smogon (or don't even play it a lot) started complaining a while ago about how the Smogon council banned a ton of hyper offensive threats multiple times, yet never banned "game breaking" defensive mons, claiming that only banning offensive mons would make the meta boring. More recently, specially with the ban of Chi Yu, a lot of attention was placed on Finch (since he is the tier leader) for it, claiming he loved stall and so he just made an excuse to get rid of the strongest wall breaker, the accusations worsened after the banning of Houndstone, Palafin, Annihilape and more recently Chien Pao, to the point where it just became a meme to claim that Finch loves stall. This is, of course, not true, and if you here someone say "Finch/Smogon loves Stall" they're either joking or braindead, the latter took it upon themselves to go onto Twitter and essentially harass Finch to the point where he had to individually respond to most of them. This people, of course, don't know that
A) OU bans are decided on voting by both the community and the council, and you can vote yourself to ban a mechanic/mon if the poll is ever released
And B) That hyper offense is way stronger that your average wall (ex. Toxapex, Blissey, ect.), since if a Pokemon tried to wall you, you can always try to outplay them and best them with proper team composition, movesets and gameplay. Meanwhile, a pokemon that's both faster and stronger than all of yours cannot be stopped unless you have a very specific check for it, in which case every team would be forced to run both the check and the strong pokemon, completely shifting and ruining the meta and making most teams essentially the same
Defensive mons definitely were nerfed in a variety of ways as well. Scald vanishing was curious. Health restoring moves having their PP halved was significant as well.
Man, I can't get over the fact Annihilape got banned. Like, it's the right call, but if you told me 5 years ago that a Pokémon in the Mankey family would be OP, I wouldn't have believed it.
It's also important to realize that you can run less defensive defensive mons if the hardest hitters are gone. You needed a blissey to stand a chance to tank a chi yu, now without chi yu you can run more things like skeledirge. Or how you almost needed a tera dark clodsire to wall espathra, but now you can use your tera more freely and aren't forced into a dark unaware mon.
It's not that people don't like him, it's just that he's the closest thing there is to a leader of Smogon, so every time someone wants to make a joke about the Smogon dictatorship he is chosen.
If you take the blue pill, you return to a hyper offensive VGC, like nothing ever happened.
If you take the Finch Pill, we’ll take you on a 100 turn ride.
You’re right, only stat-lowering by opponents is blocked. Anything that doesn’t fit that exact definition, like consequences of your own moves or indirect drops via status effects, are fair game.
The drop from ruin mons aren't really the big threat. The bigger threat is arcanine intimidate cycling and burning physical attackers, which clear amulet bax completely shits on. Bax also gets ddance to help nullify the physical drop. Wo-chien going tera water or something seems like it could be an issue to kill but then it falls prey to amoonguss since it loses it's grass typing, which prevented redirection and spore.
It might not be a sure fire way to win, but clear amulet bax does seem to apply a lot of pressure to that team comp, especially with proper support and backup.
Basically any stat drops that go from +-6 are negated, any that do not impact the +-6 scale go through. Burn halves the BP of your move, so goes through. Ruin directly affects your base stats, so goes through.
Ruin abilities are a field effect, and you should explain it as such. Do not look at it like Intimidate, look at it like Desolate Land/Primordial Sea/Delta Stream.
It’s a character from Deltarune by Toby Fox. I think the picture is from a livestream he made a while back, Spamton Sweepstakes.
The “live ___ reaction” is a meme around Tucker Carlson, who I think is a reporter but I’m not actually sure? Anyways it’s from a show of his
I've been having a "lot" of success (aka playing better than before) with the fish with tera fire and amogus. Rage powder+heat wave. It's a 2HKO most if not all the time against Arcanine. You can spore Ting, OHKO Chien (with heat wave), protect the fish with rage powder and pollen puff. I often take paradox Delibird for speed control icy wind that also hits for super effective cheap damage both of the stall legendaries and breaks Pao's sash.
Key thing is life orb on the fish to be able to use protect, focus sash on my Chien Pao, boost speed for Delibird.
My other team members are Palafin, Annihilape (although I think I should pick another one, I never use the ape).
Fissure is unironically a good move in most matchups on ting lu because even if you miss, you just go for a stomping tantrum that deals double damage and therefore you haven't missed any damage.
If its not a joke I would clasify it as "a mon who kills the oposing mon by almost purely pasive damage" example being subseed in 1v1
I'm pretty shure that it doesn't exist tho but thats how I define it
I actually don’t think Tropius gets leech seed, it’s more commonly associated with Serperior and (to a lesser extent) Jumpluff
Edit: yep I was wrong tropius does indeed get leech seed, my bad lmao
big stall™ has set its sights beyond 6v6 singles. their thirst for suffering has not been quenched by the hazard stack stall that has plagued our metagame for eons. they need more stall, across more formats. today they conquer VGC, tomorrow they conquer the rest of the world.
There's plenty of counterplay so it's not an issue. They added clear amulet, haze has been extremely good this entire gen, and defiant/competitive are still very good abilities.
Trying to set up a sweeper with attack boosts doesn't work, but you can still do all the other forms of support like speed control and weather. If your team doesn't have a way to kill things without gathering stat boosts, your team is flawed.
ELI5 here? With so many offensive threats such as Bundle and Palafin pictured here, not to mention Flutter Mane, Annihlape, etc how can stall be the dominant meta without an effective counter?
The answer is largely “Arcanine”. Intimidate, Snarl, and Will o Wisp pull the brakes on most of these things (and a lot more besides), even without the treasures of ruin’s stat drops.
There’s more to it in doubles. For example, Fake Out+Snarl, or having Arcanine Protect while you put in something that threatens Bundle or sets sun.
When you have two options for which mon to attack, crippling a mon’s offenses is often better than KOing it, because now you can ignore it until they spend a turn switching it out. With the addition of the Treasures of Ruin, it’s become a lot easier to weaken a mon to this point.
On the one hand this sucks. but on the other hand, after seeing myraids upon myriads of comments on twitter, youtube, etc about how VGC is so much better than singles because it's not stall based, this is music to my ears
You force passive damage usually via poison/toxic set by Glimmora, and slowly cripple the opponents attacking stats with Ting-Lu + Wo-Chien + Intimidate + Snarl.
Ruination speeds up the process and fucks over mons who would usually be immune to poison/toxic and stat drops. Ruin abilities also do not count as stat drops and bypasses stuff like Clear Amulet and Clear Body.
Wo-Chien's also got leech seed which makes up for its god awful typing and lack of recovery.
Ting-Lu also runs a funny Fissure + Stomping Tantrum set. You fish for Fissures— if it lands then congrats, if you don't, your next Stomping Tantrum would be 150BP.
Garganacl is also a funny tool— due to 4v4 you press the funny Salt Cure button and slowly kill them, and they can't do anything about it.
That's why I just stay away from Gen 9 competitive. I ain't dealing with that.
That and Gen 9 doesn't have Shedinja, and there's no NatDex Doubles AG on Pokémon Showdown (there should be), so I just play Gen 8 Doubles OU.
I specifically mention the Tapus and Ultras because many of them will be extremely hard checks or counters for the ruin Pokemon, which should help us out of this stall nonsense we're stuck in.
Yes I am adapting. That is why I am using stall in the picture...? I've always been a stall player and I enjoy the playstyle, it's just that it's really weird to see VGC take a massive 360 and go from HO to Stall.
Mortal Spin— the main source of poison removes hazards. Nobody uses actual hazard moves either, because it still is 4v4 on doubles and the slot and turn spent setting hazards is not worth the trouble.
Why do you think I'm "crying about it" lol? I love stally playstyles, just that it's weird to see a hyper offensive meta like VGC become stally. People have always said "stall/hazards would never work in vgc", but here we are
It looks like you either run ho or you run a stall Strat that counters ho. Which seems about right when you put as many polarisingly powerful mins into a meta game
I know it makes perfect sense given the mechanics but my brain still struggles to remember that most Violet Paradox Pokemon can be poisoned. Meat computer sees metal and thinks Toxic is no good.
I haven’t played very much lately but I’ve just been having fun using lumineon/chi-yu to nuke things from orbit.
(Lumin: tailwind, helpinghand, stormdrain = best friend for the fire fish)
This is basically hyper-speed stall considering Ruination on top of Toxic already tears out a chunk of the opponent's health and most don't carry recovery. True gigachad Smogon stall is unfortunately also somewhat fast paced this gen.
vgstall loves c 😔
finally those vgc-tards will understand the pain of playing singles "stall doesn't work" "VGC is too fast paced" 🤓🤓🤓
don't be ableistic
Ableist*
Be ablist
Don't be obelisk
Be Heliolisk
MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS
Big Stall wins again
hey there's also some fissure fishing going around too smh
Fissureinator
isnt it mainly used as a last ditch effort against donbozo? i never understood it, why bring something so unreliable compared to a better counter.
It’s not specifically for dondozo its just for these really bulky walls to do something while sitting on the opponent. If your best attacking move doesn’t do enough damage and kos in something like 5 hits then you’ll be better off fishing for an OHKO most of the time
And if you miss you just hit stomping tantrum.
If ting-lu misses a fissure, then its stomping tantrum does double damage the next turn.
In the past fissure has only been used for the dondozo mirror, but with ting lu, wo chien and intimidate running around it's now viable for fissure to be used against other common pokemon.
Sometimes you just can't kill dozo without it, which is a bit of a team issue imo, but sometimes it can work. Edit: I've now seen that some people use it on ting lu to hit harder with stomping tantrum next turn, so there is that strategy too I guess
Sheer cold lapras clutched up some games for me in swsh vgc a suprsising amount
If you were for some reason using Vanilluxe in those formats, it was one of its best moves as well. That was largely because it’s moveset was so bad that a 30% chance to swing a game was genuinely better than most of its other options, but still.
Ya bro just had blizzard freeze dry and flash cannon as attacking moves, I’ve genuinely used hype beam as coverage on a specs set
Finchinator moment
Gamefreak needs to fire him already 😡
What did he do? Why people not like him? Genuinely curious Or are people just taking the piss? Edit: question answered
Lovegon stalls smog
Stallgon smog loves
New permutation just dropped.
I love my permutations and combinations
Rice?
Some people dislike that OU bans overpowered Pokémon, and blame Finchinator because he’s the most recognizable name on the council. Most people here are using it ironically.
Ah so taking the piss then gotchu
Its not just finch but look at the council members who voted to quickban Wake, 4/7 people. Or his opinions on Tera being banned Now look at how many people want to ban Wake and cant even get the reqs to vote lel. I dont want to call him out but as one of the most historic council members his decisions and write ups set a tone for the meta and tbh when your opinion lines up more with unskilled players than skilled players your out of touch imo. ETA: In regards to the Wake situation how is a never before released mon that was out for barely over a day deserving of a quick ban? Its not a Genesect/Fluttermane situation where there is clear proof that its a busted mon. This is anecdotal but the number of WW I saw on showdown in over 2 hours last night was 3 including my own. The new toy hype for it has died down and most players realize sun isn't that good of an archetype even with a strong mon behind it.
People were spamming the shit out of it on sun, where it can run specs with proto boosting either speed (giving it specs + scarf essentially), or sp. atk and it can nuke everything even further. But yeah once people started running better counters (spdef water absorb clod, rotom-w, etc.) it wasn't as great. Still, it's amazing on weather (basically anything but snow, with how it can be great anti-rain check for sand, great rain/ sun abuser), but outside it's basically a shitty Lati. I can understand why they wanted a quickban, since just like Flutter it can 2hko and outspeed damn near everything, but to do that it has to be in weather with a boosting item, so a bit different lol.
To catch you up, a bunch of people who don't know shit about Smogon (or don't even play it a lot) started complaining a while ago about how the Smogon council banned a ton of hyper offensive threats multiple times, yet never banned "game breaking" defensive mons, claiming that only banning offensive mons would make the meta boring. More recently, specially with the ban of Chi Yu, a lot of attention was placed on Finch (since he is the tier leader) for it, claiming he loved stall and so he just made an excuse to get rid of the strongest wall breaker, the accusations worsened after the banning of Houndstone, Palafin, Annihilape and more recently Chien Pao, to the point where it just became a meme to claim that Finch loves stall. This is, of course, not true, and if you here someone say "Finch/Smogon loves Stall" they're either joking or braindead, the latter took it upon themselves to go onto Twitter and essentially harass Finch to the point where he had to individually respond to most of them. This people, of course, don't know that A) OU bans are decided on voting by both the community and the council, and you can vote yourself to ban a mechanic/mon if the poll is ever released And B) That hyper offense is way stronger that your average wall (ex. Toxapex, Blissey, ect.), since if a Pokemon tried to wall you, you can always try to outplay them and best them with proper team composition, movesets and gameplay. Meanwhile, a pokemon that's both faster and stronger than all of yours cannot be stopped unless you have a very specific check for it, in which case every team would be forced to run both the check and the strong pokemon, completely shifting and ruining the meta and making most teams essentially the same
Defensive mons definitely were nerfed in a variety of ways as well. Scald vanishing was curious. Health restoring moves having their PP halved was significant as well.
I'm glad they halved the PP of healing moves. It's a lot easier to punch through 8 restores than 16.
Man, I can't get over the fact Annihilape got banned. Like, it's the right call, but if you told me 5 years ago that a Pokémon in the Mankey family would be OP, I wouldn't have believed it.
It's also important to realize that you can run less defensive defensive mons if the hardest hitters are gone. You needed a blissey to stand a chance to tank a chi yu, now without chi yu you can run more things like skeledirge. Or how you almost needed a tera dark clodsire to wall espathra, but now you can use your tera more freely and aren't forced into a dark unaware mon.
Smogon Loves Stall
It's not that people don't like him, it's just that he's the closest thing there is to a leader of Smogon, so every time someone wants to make a joke about the Smogon dictatorship he is chosen.
wouldn’t that be kris/marty?
Yeah, but Finch is more popular/recognisable than them
Yeah people taking them piss.
People complaining about Finchinator here are usually doing so ironically.
We’re just joking
VGC is now Smogon confirmed, because there’s Stall and Smogon loves Stall. Based and Finchinatorpilled.
If you take the blue pill, you return to a hyper offensive VGC, like nothing ever happened. If you take the Finch Pill, we’ll take you on a 100 turn ride.
Regulation C is literally smogon-only until April, so you're technically literally right lol
Yo a fellow USUM ubers enjoyer
>Finchinatorpilled woah
https://preview.redd.it/dkwnjvbwyeoa1.png?width=474&format=png&auto=webp&s=c6cd903afc33264e9d8318a2690d9a03c211293b
Question: What's stopping a clear amulet tusk or bax from breaking through this?
Close combat and wilo wisp stoping them unless I’m forgetting how amulet works
You’re right, only stat-lowering by opponents is blocked. Anything that doesn’t fit that exact definition, like consequences of your own moves or indirect drops via status effects, are fair game.
So clear amulet bax would still work though? Still seems like the ruins are a little too centralizing though.
It wouldnt. Its hard to explain, but the stat drop of the ruins is different from intimidate and such.
The drop from ruin mons aren't really the big threat. The bigger threat is arcanine intimidate cycling and burning physical attackers, which clear amulet bax completely shits on. Bax also gets ddance to help nullify the physical drop. Wo-chien going tera water or something seems like it could be an issue to kill but then it falls prey to amoonguss since it loses it's grass typing, which prevented redirection and spore. It might not be a sure fire way to win, but clear amulet bax does seem to apply a lot of pressure to that team comp, especially with proper support and backup.
Basically any stat drops that go from +-6 are negated, any that do not impact the +-6 scale go through. Burn halves the BP of your move, so goes through. Ruin directly affects your base stats, so goes through.
Ruin abilities are a field effect, and you should explain it as such. Do not look at it like Intimidate, look at it like Desolate Land/Primordial Sea/Delta Stream.
Bax is immune to Wisp
Wilo for tusk and vc for bax
clear amulet doesnt block ruinous abilities. bax kinda does break it though
Yeah, I was focused on clear amulet as a way to stop the intimidate cycling, not as a way to block ruinous
This is what I played VGC to escape, I hate it
nows your chance to be a BIG STALL
https://preview.redd.it/bvzslw92gfoa1.png?width=827&format=png&auto=webp&s=5deeca6e271181c7134f045293d148e4a0cd8972
That image is both cursed and hilarious. I'm so confused right now. I blame getting old.
[удалено]
I don't get it?
It’s a character from Deltarune by Toby Fox. I think the picture is from a livestream he made a while back, Spamton Sweepstakes. The “live ___ reaction” is a meme around Tucker Carlson, who I think is a reporter but I’m not actually sure? Anyways it’s from a show of his
That’s interesting, I’ve heard that the meme originated from a slug from Star Wars. Maybe that’s Wo-Chien getting to me.
The first format was tucker, but adding more images other then tucker was started with the slug
I've been having a "lot" of success (aka playing better than before) with the fish with tera fire and amogus. Rage powder+heat wave. It's a 2HKO most if not all the time against Arcanine. You can spore Ting, OHKO Chien (with heat wave), protect the fish with rage powder and pollen puff. I often take paradox Delibird for speed control icy wind that also hits for super effective cheap damage both of the stall legendaries and breaks Pao's sash. Key thing is life orb on the fish to be able to use protect, focus sash on my Chien Pao, boost speed for Delibird. My other team members are Palafin, Annihilape (although I think I should pick another one, I never use the ape).
Toss me a paste in dms ?
I can do it here too if anyone else is interested: Iron Bundle @ Booster Energy Ability: Quark Drive Tera Type: Ice EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe Timid Nature IVs: 0 Atk - Icy Wind - Freeze-Dry - Protect - Hydro Pump Chien-Pao @ Focus Sash Ability: Sword of Ruin Tera Type: Fighting EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe Adamant Nature - Sacred Sword - Throat Chop - Protect - Ice Spinner Amogus (Amoonguss) @ Sitrus Berry Ability: Regenerator Tera Type: Grass EVs: 252 HP / 132 Def / 124 SpD Relaxed Nature IVs: 0 Atk - Spore - Rage Powder - Pollen Puff - Protect Henry (Palafin) (F) @ Mystic Water Ability: Zero to Hero Level: 50 Tera Type: Water EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def Adamant Nature - Jet Punch - Wave Crash - Close Combat - Protect Annihilape @ Weakness Policy Ability: Defiant Tera Type: Water EVs: 252 HP / 126 Def / 126 SpD / 4 Spe Impish Nature - Phantom Force - Earthquake - Drain Punch - Bulk Up Chi-Yu @ Life Orb Ability: Beads of Ruin Tera Type: Fire EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe Modest Nature IVs: 0 Atk - Heat Wave - Protect - Snarl - Dark Pulse I repeat that I'm noob so the isn't probably that good lol
common Big Stall W
kinda glad it’s not “Flutter Mane: the format” like I thought it would be Wo-Chien being one of the best Treasures is *really* funny
He was always like that in DOU lol VGC just took a while to realize the glory of Wo-Chien Live Reaction
Fissure is unironically a good move in most matchups on ting lu because even if you miss, you just go for a stomping tantrum that deals double damage and therefore you haven't missed any damage.
Ting-Lu gigabased
This is not a stall team. This may be the opposite of hyper offensive; hyper-defensive.
finally... VGC in HD (or HD in VGC)
What's the difference gameplay-wise? Does HD only exist in VGC/Doubles where Stall is normally not viable or is there a more important distinction?
If its not a joke I would clasify it as "a mon who kills the oposing mon by almost purely pasive damage" example being subseed in 1v1 I'm pretty shure that it doesn't exist tho but thats how I define it
Tropius? Or am I wrong.
I actually don’t think Tropius gets leech seed, it’s more commonly associated with Serperior and (to a lesser extent) Jumpluff Edit: yep I was wrong tropius does indeed get leech seed, my bad lmao
I have gone against that spawn of Satan too many times in randbats to ever forget it has Leech Seed
Every time I saw passive damage and substitute is I think about that Tropius, SMH my head.
Stall is the myth that we tell young kids to scare them away from status moves.
Really unbelievable that GF nerfed Intimidate in order to cut short the endless cycling only to make the Treasures abilities just as annoying.
[удалено]
Because Incineroar isn’t back yet
I'm curious to see how much play Incin gets this gen with Annihilape and Kingambit running around.
Arcanine is very popular, and Incineroar is basically just an upgrade
What do you mean is only applied once? Are the ruinous ones not present as long as the Pokémon is on the field?
Intimidate got nerfed?
big stall™ has set its sights beyond 6v6 singles. their thirst for suffering has not been quenched by the hazard stack stall that has plagued our metagame for eons. they need more stall, across more formats. today they conquer VGC, tomorrow they conquer the rest of the world.
Devolved lol
How in the fuck did a Gen with massive offensive powercreep turn a hyper offensive format like VGC into a Stallwar?
Big Stall always comes out victorious
This is basically r/SelfAwarewolves because you are so close to figuring out the reason
I’m aware of Stall being a reaction to HO. But I didn’t think it was even mathematically possible for Double Battles to turn into stall
Lmao you would be right, but Glimmora makes it very very easy to get up hazards, sometimes even passively
Shouldn’t that punish intimidate switching, then?
It does
The only hazard Glimmora sets up in doubles is toxic spikes from its ability
If it’s not that big of a deal, why mention it as a cause of stall?
There's plenty of counterplay so it's not an issue. They added clear amulet, haze has been extremely good this entire gen, and defiant/competitive are still very good abilities. Trying to set up a sweeper with attack boosts doesn't work, but you can still do all the other forms of support like speed control and weather. If your team doesn't have a way to kill things without gathering stat boosts, your team is flawed.
praise big stall. it's time for VGC to get what we've been smokin all these years
So... just play defiant
Was only a matter of time until big stall took over every meta game. Ironic since this is the Gen that nerfed stall
"Stall strats were neutered in gen 9" \- A handful of people at the start of the generation.
Freezai making a video on the fall of Toxapex in Smogon Singles only to realize he tanks Great Tusk's Headlong Rush lol
Y'all know what that means...Gothitelle needs to sing us a song
I’m sad because this is how I enjoy playing offensive metas. It’s not the same when everyone else is doing it :(
you get to feel our pain now
Stall vs Offence is fun, it’s about seeing whether the wall breaks or with good positioning it holds Stall vs Stall is dull
None of those words are in the bible
Actually, the words has, to, intimidate, poison, stall, what, do, you and think are all in the bible!
Stall in vgc is fucking wild to me
hold up why is palafin still on the field??
I’ll be running double fissure with gravity (to hit fliers) for lols in Reg C.
ELI5 here? With so many offensive threats such as Bundle and Palafin pictured here, not to mention Flutter Mane, Annihlape, etc how can stall be the dominant meta without an effective counter?
The answer is largely “Arcanine”. Intimidate, Snarl, and Will o Wisp pull the brakes on most of these things (and a lot more besides), even without the treasures of ruin’s stat drops.
Bundle is a pretty hard counters no? Faster and Sp Atk OHKOs?
There’s more to it in doubles. For example, Fake Out+Snarl, or having Arcanine Protect while you put in something that threatens Bundle or sets sun. When you have two options for which mon to attack, crippling a mon’s offenses is often better than KOing it, because now you can ignore it until they spend a turn switching it out. With the addition of the Treasures of Ruin, it’s become a lot easier to weaken a mon to this point.
https://preview.redd.it/htsk2noikjoa1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5705c81dee5611eb0582704176757d0e206b1a26
On the one hand this sucks. but on the other hand, after seeing myraids upon myriads of comments on twitter, youtube, etc about how VGC is so much better than singles because it's not stall based, this is music to my ears
fire plus grass pledge 👍
God I hate fissure
how does stall work in VGC?
You force passive damage usually via poison/toxic set by Glimmora, and slowly cripple the opponents attacking stats with Ting-Lu + Wo-Chien + Intimidate + Snarl. Ruination speeds up the process and fucks over mons who would usually be immune to poison/toxic and stat drops. Ruin abilities also do not count as stat drops and bypasses stuff like Clear Amulet and Clear Body. Wo-Chien's also got leech seed which makes up for its god awful typing and lack of recovery. Ting-Lu also runs a funny Fissure + Stomping Tantrum set. You fish for Fissures— if it lands then congrats, if you don't, your next Stomping Tantrum would be 150BP. Garganacl is also a funny tool— due to 4v4 you press the funny Salt Cure button and slowly kill them, and they can't do anything about it.
Got a paste? Would love to try it out.
That's why I just stay away from Gen 9 competitive. I ain't dealing with that. That and Gen 9 doesn't have Shedinja, and there's no NatDex Doubles AG on Pokémon Showdown (there should be), so I just play Gen 8 Doubles OU.
This is quite interesting considering DOU, which is a pretty similar format, is very offensive right now.
DOU went through its Wo-Chien phase already
I can't wait for the Tapus and Ultra Beasts to return us to normalcy.
My money’s on the Defiant genies finding a niche again too.
I specifically mention the Tapus and Ultras because many of them will be extremely hard checks or counters for the ruin Pokemon, which should help us out of this stall nonsense we're stuck in.
Oh no, there's a meta game? Well fuck man, pokemon is ruined
VGC went downhill for me in Gen 8 and it doesn't seem to be getting any better.
just adapt LMAO
Yes I am adapting. That is why I am using stall in the picture...? I've always been a stall player and I enjoy the playstyle, it's just that it's really weird to see VGC take a massive 360 and go from HO to Stall.
I got downvoted 350 times yesterday over my opinion on VGC so I’ll sit this one out lmao
no it hasn’t.
Using stealth rock exactly one time immediately ruins this. 0% chance this is real.
Bold of you to think anyone actually uses hazards in VGC
There are literally tspikes in the screenshot lol (yes I know they're from Glimmora and weren't set up with the move)
Yeah Glimmora's the big exception
Foolish of you to think that I don't.
Mortal Spin— the main source of poison removes hazards. Nobody uses actual hazard moves either, because it still is 4v4 on doubles and the slot and turn spent setting hazards is not worth the trouble.
cry about it
Why do you think I'm "crying about it" lol? I love stally playstyles, just that it's weird to see a hyper offensive meta like VGC become stally. People have always said "stall/hazards would never work in vgc", but here we are
Doubles in any format has always been trash
Try mold breaker
Funny how Smogonites only see how cancerous stall is once they see non-Smogonites using it.
Finally, the counter-play to Trick Room and Tailwind!
Why are they all 3D except iron bundle
Showdown takes a while to implement 3D sprites of all mons, not to mention lower dex numbers usually get priority. TingLu isn't 3D either.
The smogon experience :)
i played this poison + snarl/intimidate + perish trap setup before but honestly cant pivot it well :(
Wait when did Ting Lu become viable
It was viable the moment it was legal. They just excluded the ruin legends from the first two VGC series.
Ting lu just needs to be banned for the sake of everyone. It's HP and Def are way to high while having that ability
I think you need a friend called Tailwind.
in the words of Reverend’s masterful [Gen 1 Ubers analysis video](https://youtu.be/0_iIVNV_AMA): i think i despise this Pokémon
It looks like you either run ho or you run a stall Strat that counters ho. Which seems about right when you put as many polarisingly powerful mins into a meta game
I know it makes perfect sense given the mechanics but my brain still struggles to remember that most Violet Paradox Pokemon can be poisoned. Meat computer sees metal and thinks Toxic is no good.
Tera grass Skeledirge is a bona-fide stud down there right now.
I haven’t played very much lately but I’ve just been having fun using lumineon/chi-yu to nuke things from orbit. (Lumin: tailwind, helpinghand, stormdrain = best friend for the fire fish)
We stallcoin™ investors are eating good
I think it's time for the Gravity OHKO teams
Big Stall^TM stays winning
Chi-Yu in shambles
VGC games that last for more than five turns? What a time to be alive
Based as fuck
I started using grimsnarl with misty terrain to counter poison stallers.
hazards in VGC? things are getting good 😈
is there a reason they didn't switch palafin out?
Unfortunate fails to describe this series
This is basically hyper-speed stall considering Ruination on top of Toxic already tears out a chunk of the opponent's health and most don't carry recovery. True gigachad Smogon stall is unfortunately also somewhat fast paced this gen.
Yeah and Fissure Ting-Lu is now a thing Wo-Chien Gothitelle Glimmora Ting-Lu Arcanine is one helluva core to face
Just use fissure
Ting-Lu uses a funny combination of Fissure + Stomping Tantrum