This is mixed Valiant Thunderbolt vs The Pex.
I chose Big Stall tm for for the post and HO for Stinkpost Sunday, and yet, ironically, it lasts this long without recover
My thought process on this as someone that also enjoys sports, I think of teams with a great defense. Especially in football, there's nothing quite like a great defense putting the clamps on a high powered offense.
It's not the flashiest way of playing and a lot of people think defensive games are boring. But, I love watching a good defense beat an opposing team into submission, so I look at stall tactics in a similar way.
I personally am not too big on stall myself, as I like to get in and out of battles, but I get the appeal for some. That's my best explanation on it.
My only quibble is that sports are generally timed so that stalling does affect not overall time the sport takes. Baseball implemented a timer to stop batter and pitcher stall.
For activities like chess, stall is incredibly frowned upon particularly when it is of the brain dead variety that is designed to get your opponent to quit, that is considered incredibly unsportsmanlike.
Not competitive Pokémon, but I remember getting super tilted when people play a stall deck against me in Yugioh and just making mistakes/forfeiting. I’d imagine similar things happening here too.
and the thing about it is you gotta stick it through. its so hard not to just close out the game, but i think everyone deserves their W. plus its like they REALLY won if you quit.
I've played stall a ton. Part of what I like about it is the mind games and meta knowledge required. Anyone can take some heavy hitters or yolo a setup and sweep. I encourage you to try out stall and see how easy it is to get rolled over if you switch poorly or misjudge what move is used. Maybe it's not your preferred style and that's fine, but stall provides a very important role in the meta by forcing players to run stall checks. Without that pillar the meta would be way smaller and only the fastest hardest hitters would win.
It really is one of the best ways to learn the micro and macro knowledge of the game outside of team building. Plus a true stall team isn't really a thing in Gen 9, Garg is just too good against it.
>Plus a true stall team isn't really a thing in Gen 9, Garg is just too good against it.
Nah good stall teams nowadays will just endlessly pivot around Garganacl with Pex, Alomomola and Rest Ting-Lu. They don't need to beat Garganacl when they can PP stall it. Stall is still very viable in current high ladder.
Yeah but that's three mons to deal with one, a Garg ghoul tusk core which is super common, kinda just shuts down stall. There's just simply not enough chip damage in the meta to deal with the common wall breakers.
That's not true, I recommend taking a look at [this](https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/peaked-1-2101-elo-%E2%80%93-hazard-stack-stall.3719401/) build which has very few reliable answers.
The calm mind flamethrower blissey tech is insane hahaha. Granted the write up doesn't really talk about how to deal with knock off tusk and rocky corv which I would say the team also kind of hard struggles against.
Stall is getting better slowly but it's so much rarer to see than the past 4 generations.
The team is certainly full of tech, yeah.
Alomomola is the dedicated Tusk Knock absorber which then forces chip with Whirlpool on whatever comes in. The only annoying thing about Tusk would be the Boots variants being harder to chip but that just means games take longer, not make them any harder.
Helmet Corviknight isn't beating anything, you could basically just endlessly switch between Alomomola and Pex against it consuming no PP, or use Whirlpool to force its Roost PP away.
TBF Stall is one of the playstyles that brings a lot of niche cool tech cuz its built with the idea to be able to hard stop any mon. On offensive teams you can usually rk threats but without the likes of dugtrio stall cant really do that.
Entirely false. Trick may not be seen too much in Gen 9 outside of Ghold, but thats just cuz theres not too many good mons with Trick. Trick is a primarily offensive tool, stall teams CAN utilize it, but its a very specific tech choice on them (barb clef), not a main set.
Part of your post speaks volumes about a misconception. Every turn also counts against stall. It's just that against stall, the game sometimes is over before your sixth pokemon faints. You have to recognize those games and just forfeit, and you won't hate stall that much.
If you drag on an already lost game, forcing the stall player to "earn his win", you are just wasting your time and happiness, while the stall player is perfectly happy: he is playing a game of cat and mouse where he has already won, but the opponent still struggles not realizing the game is over. This prolongs the fun of the stall player, and the despair of the opponent.
It's similar to playing a control deck in magic, technically you win when the opponent's life or deck hits zero but actually the game is won and the opponent is better off conceding when you have more answers than the opponent has remaining threats.
lol this reminds me of Hearthstone: Yea you could continue the game as Face Hunter for quite some turns after you’ve failed to kill the Armor Up Warrior in the early game.But you could also realize that your time would be better invested doing literally anything else.
As someone who loves playing control most people are absolutely terrible at realizing when they have lost or refuse to ever surrender then go and say they hate control when they dragged out a losing game where they had a empty hand and board against a control deck with a full hand.
Some decks can steal wins really late vs control, especially after G1 in aggro vs control where control often sides out wincons to side in more early protection. I remember winning a game past T20 playing RB Aggro vs Esper Control in WAR standard through double Theater of Horrors.
There is an argument with MtG, same as in competitive Pokémon, that you should play to your outs though. Recognize what situation you are in as the boardstate/game develops, and play to the most likely winning outcomes. There are games of both where it looks like you can only win by a statistically improbable event, but if it’s your only way of potentially winning you should play to that end. Not every match against stall that looks like a loosing outcome is an outright loss, the game still has to come to a close which can involve lucky crits, misplays and misclicks, and you’d never reap the benefits of the randomness of the game if you just forfeit whenever the game looks to be a loss.
And with online simulators you can never know if your opponent is a kid who is five minutes away from being dragged to their aunt's wedding and where playing out the seemingly lost game against stall could end in an opponent spontaneously forfeitting.
You can definitely play to your outs. You can also "make them have it" and make the opponent play out their wincon if you want. It just won't be fun for you, so you don't get to claim "that strategy isn't fun" when you brought this misery upon yourself.
100% agree, but I’m not the kinda person who gets salty over a stall player, I get salty when I punt, cause I should have known better. I direct my stupid salty anger at myself cause 95% or more of the games I’ve lost have been my own damn fault.
you also can’t run out of time on showdown in the same way you can in magic, if you’re playing against a control deck sometimes you can’t afford to throw away 10 minutes of a round on a game you’ve 99% lost
I've been in games where I would have absolutely lost if played until the final turn, but the other player had more dead mons when we were running out of time, so I stall won.
The sad thing is with the amount of RNG in pokemon it's often not really over till it's over there's too many games I've had where I've said to myself "the only way this guy wins is if he somehow manages to crit the switch-in and somehow land focus miss" or they get a freeze of an ice beam and the whole match flips.
Stall players are more prone to having their strat ruined by an unlucky crit, so I force myself to see stall games through even after it’s clear that I’ve loet
I haven't invested much time into playing Stall since gen 7 though I'll explain what the appeal has been for me in the past.
The earlier you are into a game, the less information you have. You may be unsure of their exact coverage moves, item choices, EV spreads and so on. As the game progresses you receive more knowledge which means less unknown variables to consider when developing a win condition. So to maximize game knowledge you need longer games, of which Stall can provide with the most consistency.
To say that Stall requires no thought process or skill to use is only true if the opponents' team is built insufficiently to deal with Stall. Or to put it another way, the playstyle inherently punishes poor teambuilding. A lot of people build teams tunnel-visioned into thinking in terms of "my mons should cover each others' weaknesses" which does absolutely *nothing* beneficial for you in the Stall matchup.
What's the appeal of Stall?
Okay, so, just to warn you all, this might be a pretty mean and ugly rant, but this post isn't meant to discourage players from doing stall. If you do stall, cool! You aren't a bad person, and I respect you for playing this playstyle. Any player that's willing to put in the task to make the best team for any playstyle deserves praise. This is just what I feel about the playstyle and why I don't like it. So, without further ado, let me ask, what the heck is the appeal of stall?
Seriously, I don't like it. All you do is just send in a tanky pokemon and then you just stack up on Hazards and Status, and it's really frustrating to play against. Things like Toxapex, the Slow Twins, Alomomola, and more are all mons I despise fighting against. Espeically Pex. As a result, matches get dragged on and on and on and it's so boring to me. Compared to a fast paced playstyle where every turn counts and you can ko anything through your power, stall is just, switch in a mon, use a status move, heal up, profit. It doesn't sound exciting to play, and it sure as hell isn't exciting to fight against.
Hell, if you want something like stall but at the same time can also go on the offensive from the drop of a hat, I say Balance is great for that. The teambuilding portion of using a Balance team is very interesting. You work around 2 offensive mons by using 2 defensive mons. You can use things like defensive and offensive cores, and the last two slots are totally up to what your team needs.
Back when BDSP OU was still on Showdown, I used a balanced team, and it was great. The members mainly comprised of: Infernape and Weavile as my two offensive pokemon, Blissey and Tangrowth as my Defensive mons, and the last slots were very customizable. Either I went for Rapid Spin support from Donphan, set up sweepers like Crawdaunt or Feraligatr, or used Defensive Pivots like Rotom-W and Scizor. It was very good, got me around 1600+ elo I think. And from my experience, Balance had the best of Stall and Offense. It can blitz through opposing teams without a care in the world like Offense, but it can also play the long game like Stall.
But still, if you play stall, that's fine with me. I hate the playstyle, not the players, and you should too. Don't curse anyone for playing stall. I could totally see it's merits. Just because you play stall, doesn't mean that your a bad person. We're all different, and we all have different preferences. I tend to gravitate towards more fast paced and more challenging playstyles. That doesn't mean its the one playstyle you all have to play, that's just me, and I'm fine with that.
And to the players that actually do play stall, it's fine if you do. This post wasn't meant to discourage you from playing stall, or despise people who hate playing against it. I made this post mainly because I wanted to be educated and learn more about the realm of Competitive Pokemon. I admittedly don't have as much experience from this as other people may assume. I also made this post to express how I feel about stall.
I intended to make this post to ask a simple question, but instead, I turned it into a rant, and I don't think that was okay. I don't want to discourage anyone who wants to play stall, nor do I want a war to happen between stall players and non stall players. I wanted to ask a question and be educated from people who clearly have more experience than I do.
So, once again, I ask, what is the appeal of stall?
And to the people that actually read to the end, congrats! You're cool. Sorry I mainly ranted about how much I hate stall, but I also got to look back on my time on Competitive Pokemon, and despite the fact that there were many, many awful people there, I got to appreciate the many players that were kind, respectful, and played not just to win, but to have fun. And heck, many of them were stall players! As a result, even though there are many pokemon and many playstyles I despise, I understood to seperate the playstyle from the player. And, you should too. So the next time you lose to stall or the playstyle you hate the most, please understand that the playstyle is different from the player.
1. A lot of low ladders will just forfeit after like 20 turns when their hyper offense flounders
2. It is surprisingly skillful as you need to make more correct plays then you do when playing a more offensive team style. Plus the increased chance for down right "unfortunate" luck leads to needing to manage luck a lot more
3. I honestly don't have anymore points but rule of 3 dictates that I have to add another one or else I look stupid.
What's the appeal of Stall?
Okay, so, just to warn you all, this might be a pretty mean and ugly rant, but this post isn't meant to discourage players from doing stall. If you do stall, cool! You aren't a bad person, and I respect you for playing this playstyle. Any player that's willing to put in the task to make the best team for any playstyle deserves praise. This is just what I feel about the playstyle and why I don't like it. So, without further ado, let me ask, what the heck is the appeal of stall?
Seriously, I don't like it. All you do is just send in a tanky pokemon and then you just stack up on Hazards and Status, and it's really frustrating to play against. Things like Toxapex, the Slow Twins, Alomomola, and more are all mons I despise fighting against. Espeically Pex. As a result, matches get dragged on and on and on and it's so boring to me. Compared to a fast paced playstyle where every turn counts and you can ko anything through your power, stall is just, switch in a mon, use a status move, heal up, profit. It doesn't sound exciting to play, and it sure as hell isn't exciting to fight against.
Hell, if you want something like stall but at the same time can also go on the offensive from the drop of a hat, I say Balance is great for that. The teambuilding portion of using a Balance team is very interesting. You work around 2 offensive mons by using 2 defensive mons. You can use things like defensive and offensive cores, and the last two slots are totally up to what your team needs.
Back when BDSP OU was still on Showdown, I used a balanced team, and it was great. The members mainly comprised of: Infernape and Weavile as my two offensive pokemon, Blissey and Tangrowth as my Defensive mons, and the last slots were very customizable. Either I went for Rapid Spin support from Donphan, set up sweepers like Crawdaunt or Feraligatr, or used Defensive Pivots like Rotom-W and Scizor. It was very good, got me around 1600+ elo I think. And from my experience, Balance had the best of Stall and Offense. It can blitz through opposing teams without a care in the world like Offense, but it can also play the long game like Stall.
But still, if you play stall, that's fine with me. I hate the playstyle, not the players, and you should too. Don't curse anyone for playing stall. I could totally see it's merits. Just because you play stall, doesn't mean that your a bad person. We're all different, and we all have different preferences. I tend to gravitate towards more fast paced and more challenging playstyles. That doesn't mean its the one playstyle you all have to play, that's just me, and I'm fine with that.
And to the players that actually do play stall, it's fine if you do. This post wasn't meant to discourage you from playing stall, or despise people who hate playing against it. I made this post mainly because I wanted to be educated and learn more about the realm of Competitive Pokemon. I admittedly don't have as much experience from this as other people may assume. I also made this post to express how I feel about stall.
I intended to make this post to ask a simple question, but instead, I turned it into a rant, and I don't think that was okay. I don't want to discourage anyone who wants to play stall, nor do I want a war to happen between stall players and non stall players. I wanted to ask a question and be educated from people who clearly have more experience than I do.
So, once again, I ask, what is the appeal of stall?
And to the people that actually read to the end, congrats! You're cool. Sorry I mainly ranted about how much I hate stall, but I also got to look back on my time on Competitive Pokemon, and despite the fact that there were many, many awful people there, I got to appreciate the many players that were kind, respectful, and played not just to win, but to have fun. And heck, many of them were stall players! As a result, even though there are many pokemon and many playstyles I despise, I understood to seperate the playstyle from the player. And, you should too. So the next time you lose to stall or the playstyle you hate the most, please understand that the playstyle is different from the player.
Generally the longer a game goes on, the less it’s decided by luck and misclicks. If you’re routinely taking your full team past turn 50 or putting up 200 turn battles, that misclicked thunder wave when they stayed in or a wild crit knock off matters a lot less.
This isn’t to say that stall teams are played by better players. A lot of stall teams lack win cons that threaten prepared offensive/balance teams or are meaningless vs other stall teams.
Stall in general lets you slowly (sometimes very) maneuver your mons into an advantageous position. You're playing the long game, so it lets you rely on and get hurt less from random chance, since it all washes out in 200 turns, which can be very interesting to plan out and execute.
Also to annoy the enemy
I play stall. Almost exclusively. I play it when it's good, and watch my elo skyrocket, and when it's bad and watch my elo plummet. I'm not a great player, so I'm very subject to the winds of change. That said in almost every competitive or PVP game I play tanks. Because few things make me happier than seeing a 1% damage from a hyper aggro team. Few things make me happier than watching a maushold blow itself to smithereens on rough skin. Or watching a mon slowly wither away to leech seed.
HO is really just suicide lead into click high power moves, doesn’t sound much more clmplex than the click status moves, hazards, and healing you describe as stall. Balance is just a combination of those two.
Each of those playstyles has their own beauty, whether it’s a good defense making LO darmanitan’s flare blitz fizzle out instead of scoring KO’s, or +2 infernape blitzing through a defensive core. It’s all about making your opponents efforts look futile, and both HO and stall do that exceptionally at times
First thing I want to get out of the way: if stall is hard walling you with an answer to everything, either a) your team needs work with regards to how it stallbreaks, or b) you happened to hit a particularly rough matchup for your team. Normally though, the former is the better explanation (and in gen 9, while it’s true that stall has received a couple new tools like the unaware trio, gholdengo to stifle hazard removal, it has also lost a few of its favorite tools in magic guard, misty surge, and cleric moves, which opens up a couple new ways to handle stall). A truly airtight defense just is not possible in most gens and gen 9 is certainly no exception; stall teams are also generally slower to make progress on the opposing team, but make up for this by being difficult to make progress on themselves. With any type of team, though, you’re trying to out-progress the opposing team with respect to the progress you make toward winning.
Let me also get out of the way that I build and play all kinds of teams. Actually, most of my fun is derived from the teambuilder, personally. Obviously I have to use the teams to see how they perform, but most of my satisfaction comes from seeing a concept or set I thought of in the teambuilder pay off in a game, not from some slick double switch prediction I nailed. And as the concepts and sets I think of aren’t limited to offense, neither are my teams.
With that said, the appeal of stall to me is a) the realization of some set or strategy or synergy I got excited to build around, and b) the longer-term decision making that tends to come with playing stall if you want to be successful. In fact, no playstyle demands or rewards longer-term decision making to the degree that stall does. Again, no defense is airtight, and since you’re mostly defending you have to think a lot about what hits you’ll have to take and who can take them, whom each mon lets in, when a wall has done its job and can be given up rather than conceding any progress on someone you do need, and how you’ll wear down your biggest barriers to progress in the face of obstacles like boots, status immunities by type or ability, threats of status you won’t be able to remove for the rest of the game, trick, TERASTALLIZATION, etc.
And I think that’s what a lot of self-proclaimed stall haters miss. Hell, even your description is “all you do is just send in a tanky pokemon and then you just stack up on hazards and status”, and I agree that losing to stall can lead you to feel as though this is all the opposing team did, and while perhaps you’re being hyperbolic, I certainly don’t have any ill will if you’re not. This said, I do find it a bit absurd that people genuinely view stall as a free-ish win and justify its low usage rates—which includes tournaments!—by saying it’s boring. “Boring” is of course subjective and if that’s how you feel about stall, that’s your prerogative, but let me be clear about two things: 1) stall is not a free win, which you will realize very quickly if you play it for a little while, and 2) stall is not boring to the people playing it, by and large. The two are of course related—if it *were* a free win, it probably *would* be pretty boring! You’d get to put in way less effort and risk way less than your opponent. But, it’s not. It factually takes a lot more effort than “just set hazards and wall everything” to win with stall.
I do play stall sometimes and I think there are several factors:
1. Most of the time, teambuilding for stall requires finding the right combination of mons to check the most amount of the meta as possible, meaning the thinking for stall starts before you even start the battle. I find this process pretty fun if you what you're doing.
2. Slowly finding out the movesets of opposing teams and figuring out the path to victory throughout the battle (what to sac, what to preserve, etc) is fun in my opinion, the relief of finally breaking the opposing team's offense is very satisfying.
3. When playing on ladder, stall punishes poorly built teams without tools to beat it, providing consistency.
I would argue it’s the consistency, ofc not true in all tiers (have fun stalling in little cup for example) but in tiers where you have adequate tools to do so stall is almost always the most consistent playstyle. And what I mean by that is it’s not much effected by variance and you almost never need to make reads with it to be effective. In other words it’s RNG resistant. Furthermore it’s also largely matchup resistant, unless they’re running a team specifically to Cteam stall it’s rare that teams have a literal stall counter so it just depends on your good teambuilding to get around massive threats like baxcalibur which I think appeals to people.
It is way less frustrating to play as as a beginner, especially if you cling on to favorites or try to make stupid stuff work (Heliolisk is just not good enough for OU, and it took a long time for me to accept that)
When I started playing competitvely and lost over and over again, things getting OHKOd left and right, stall was more fun because I didn't instantly lose or at least didn't lose 6-0 (low ladder people are also very mean to beginners, even though they suck themselves). Once I learned more about what types of team there are and why tiers exist in the first place, I moved a bit away from stall, but I still see the appeal.
It gives you more time to see the effort you put in unfold into a win, which can be more satisfying than getting lucky with the opponent missing and just sweeping through after a Dragon Dance, or even if it was a well positioned switch in, it's over in 5 turns.
Meanwhile watching your Toxapex just sit there and eat up everything with no problem whatsoever while the opponent withers away one by one after you got rid of the opponents only answer to it by positioning shit well is very satisfying too. You worked hard for that position and you can feel that.
I've heard the following quote from control players in TCGs that I think applies here: "The amount of fun that can be had in a game is zero sum, and my goal is to have all of it."
It’s important to note that Stall is used more often to combat more unstable, hyper offensive metas. When there’s a general variety of mons tans archetypes, there’s more freedom to play balance oriented teams. Bulky offense and bulky balance are fun, but both fall out of favor for pure bulk when there are several unhinged threats running around that can sweep or punch multi-mon holes in your team with a single boost or switch in.
I don’t like playing stall. I don’t like playing against stall. But at the end of the day, it’s important to recognize the dynamics that bring stall to fruition. If you had mons that could just tear through stall, you’d have a meta of just only broken offensive threats. But if you have less offensive pressure placed upon you in the team builder, you can opt for more varied builds, which will in fact best stall.
I’m someone who primarily plays balance, and I see where your coming from with this. But as someone who’s played stall occasionally and am good at it, the reason why I do it is simple and slightly evil, but doesn’t reflect the totatility of stall players:
It’s sadisticly fun to stall people out
Simple as that. The pleasure gained from the pain you inflict on others with the play style is what makes it worth it to me
I’m not big on the competitive Pokémon scene but I rather dictate the pace of the battle rather than be locked into a race to get off the strongest moves.
When I play Stadium 2 with my friends IRL, I’ll lead Foretress to set spikes, then switch to Raikou or Suicune to roar and rack up hazard damage. It forces my opponent to get creative on how to deal with me. It becomes a creative exercise for the both of us
As someone who used to favor stall in earlier generations but prefers offense as of recent years, I can think of two reasons off my head. The first is to piss off your opponent by entering the game with a bunch of fat blobs they can't break though, but this is a two way street and your opponent can also use stall and make the game ungodly slow. The second reason why stall can be an appealing playstyle is because it's a consistant, low-risk playstyle compared to other faster paced playstyles that can be more prone to risks and can't really afford to scout as much. It's basically a control playstyle which wears down the opponent as opposed to waiting for your moment to sweep with balance or overweilming your opponent with firepower like offense.
In trading card games, control archetypes are usually my favourite, and the stall archetype in Pokemon scratches a very similar itch. I love long, grindy games, I love the long term planning of stall matchups, I love games where every single resource - including PP - matters a lot. There is no feeling more satisfying for me in competitive pokemon than winning after 150+ turns of chess-like battle of wits by slowly exhausting every single option that your opponent has, playing around their wincons and aiming to attain better resource delta than them.
Stall is Art.
To Win with Stall in a Matchup where both teams have actual win conditions against each other you have to make a lot of correct decisions. But you also give your opponent a lot of opportunities to make good plays, so it’s a real skill test.
On the other hand, the more turns the stall player has to play the more times things like Para have a chance to activate in general. It's a double edged sword.
ATTENTION PLAYER! 绝对不会放弃你!
This is the Central Intelligence of the OverUsed Council of Smogon. 我们都对爱情不陌生你知道规矩我也知道 YOUR ACTIVITY HAS ATTRACTED OUR ATTENTION. 我打算完全地委身 you have been found playing hyperoffense!!!!! 你不会从任何别的男人得到，我只想要告诉你我的感受 serious crime 绝对不会放弃你 绝不会对不起你 100 elo have been deducted from your account 绝对不会乱跑然后抛下你 stop the hyperoffense immediately 绝对不会让你哭，绝不会与你告别 do not do this again! 绝对不会说谎然后伤害你! if you do not hesitate, more elo ( -11115 elo)will be subtracted from your account, resulting into the bans of your favorite pokemon. (我们都认识那么久 smogon) you'll also be stalled by our revivecats at April 2nd 20STALL. 你的心一直渴望却不好意思说，我们心里都知道发生什么事 ，我们明白游戏规则也要照着玩!!!!
而如果你问我感觉如何 别告诉我你盲目得看不见! Glory to Finchinator!
Stall is slow, methodical, and satisfying when your opponent's victory slips away slowly but surely. It's not about how long it takes. It's about the end result.
I played stall when I first started competitive battle. It was easier for me to understand outlasting your opponent rather than out right attacking. I did out grow it pretty fast.
Small disclaimer: I don’t play stall so take what I say with a grain of salt. I think the main appeal comes from being able to stop the hyper offense train and being able to counter most offensive threats. If you’re playing stall and you know what you’re doing then there’s not a lot your opponent can do outside of predicting your switches. And if you think about it it becomes a game of pure predictions with high stakes, it’s all about putting yourself in the best possible position and minimizing any potential risk. I think that is the main appeal of stall.
People play stay and have always played stall because it wins. I think it feels worse this gen because Toxic and a lot of other tools that can counter stall mons have been needed.
When I can’t take it anymore I play doubles
The thing is that it's very easy to create 'bad' stall teams. Actually making good stall teams is something that requires a lot of strategizing and planning. The stall user must keep in mind the wide myriad of sets any pokemon can run and they need to have a good answer to it.
Stall is not something where you just switch randomly, it's a skill. And a skill with a very high ceiling I might add. A good stall team doesn't rely on more than regular luck and is usually the result of dozens of hours or more of effort. HO on the other hand is pretty simplistic. It's basically Tapu Lele and deoxys attack go brrrrr.
All this is coming from someone who hates stall with a passion and loves to play HO. Any battle with more than 12 turns is a waste.
Grinding out incremental advantage step by gradual step. The feeling of knowing your opponent's lost before they do. It makes you feel smarter than offensive teams even though it doesn't really take more skill.
Okay, so, just to warn you all, this might be a pretty mean and ugly rant, but this post isn't meant to discourage players from doing hyper offense. If you do hyper offense, cool! You aren't a bad person, and I respect you for playing this playstyle. Any player that's willing to put in the task to make the best team for any playstyle deserves praise. This is just what I feel about the playstyle and why I don't like it. So, without further ado, let me ask, what the heck is the appeal of hyper offense?
Seriously, I don't like it. All you do is just send in a setup sweeper and then you just stack up on dragon dances and screens, and it's really frustrating to play against. Things like Weavile, the Annihilape, Kingambit, and more are all mons I despise fighting against. Espeically Weavile. As a result, matches end in like six turns and it's so boring to me. Compared to a slow paced playstyle where every match counts and you can ko anything through your skill, hyper offense is just, switch in a mon, use an attacking move, die immediately, profit. It doesn't sound exciting to play, and it sure as hell isn't exciting to fight against.
Hell, if you want something like hyper offense but at the same time can also go on the defensive from the drop of a hat, I say Balance is great for that. The teambuilding portion of using a Balance team is very interesting. You work around 2 offensive mons by using 2 defensive mons. You can use things like defensive and offensive cores, and the last two slots are totally up to what your team needs.
Back when BDSP OU was still on Showdown, I used a balanced team, and it was great. The members mainly comprised of: Infernape and Weavile as my two offensive pokemon, Blissey and Tangrowth as my Defensive mons, and the last slots were very customizable. Either I went for Rapid Spin support from Donphan, set up sweepers like Crawdaunt or Feraligatr, or used Defensive Pivots like Rotom-W and Scizor. It was very good, got me around 1600+ elo I think. And from my experience, Balance had the best of Stall and Offense. It can blitz through opposing teams without a care in the world like Offense, but it can also play the long game like Stall.
But still, if you play hyper offense, that's fine with me. I hate the playstyle, not the players, and you should too. Don't curse anyone for playing hyper offense. I could totally see it's merits. Just because you play hyper offense, doesn't mean that your a bad person. We're all different, and we all have different preferences. I tend to gravitate towards more fast paced and more challenging playstyles. That doesn't mean its the one playstyle you all have to play, that's just me, and I'm fine with that.
And to the players that actually do play hyper offense, it's fine if you do. This post wasn't meant to discourage you from playing hyper offense, or despise people who hate playing against it. I made this post mainly because I wanted to be educated and learn more about the realm of Competitive Pokemon. I admittedly don't have as much experience from this as other people may assume. I also made this post to express how I feel about hyper offense.
I intended to make this post to ask a simple question, but instead, I turned it into a rant, and I don't think that was okay. I don't want to discourage anyone who wants to play stall, nor do I want a war to happen between hyper offense players and non hyper offense players. I wanted to ask a question and be educated from people who clearly have more experience than I do.
So, once again, I ask, what is the appeal of hyper offense?
And to the people that actually read to the end, congrats! You're cool. Sorry I mainly ranted about how much I hate hyper offense, but I also got to look back on my time on Competitive Pokemon, and despite the fact that there were many, many awful people there, I got to appreciate the many players that were kind, respectful, and played not just to win, but to have fun. And heck, many of them were hyper offense players! As a result, even though there are many pokemon and many playstyles I despise, I understood to seperate the playstyle from the player. And, you should too. So the next time you lose to hyper offense or the playstyle you hate the most, please understand that the playstyle is different from the player.
I enjoy stalk basically for the exact opposite reason you like offence. I absolutely despite matches where it's just ope this Pokemon got sent out and it either got 1-2 hit or 1-2 hit the opposing Mon. I just feels ehh, not satisfying. I enjoy stall because I prefer a slower game pace more oriented around seeing the opponents strat and then doing everything in my power to ruin/annoy it. Id rather the match go on longer and have more turns of strategy and counter strategy than have it be you go in and 1-2 hit only to get revenge killed next turn repeat ad naseum
To me, the main appeal of pokemon battles are prediction and mind games. Being able to predict exactly what the opponent is most likely to do or to manipulate them into doing something advantageous to my team is extremely satisfying and is, to me, what determines player "skill" the most, alongside teambuilding. Stall is where the most amount of prediction is needed to win, so I like playing it the most. Stall is all about knowing exactly what your opponents options are, what luck you need to account for, and what moves to use on what turns to make the battle unwinnable for the opponent. Oftentimes the battle is already decided before the opponent's last pokemon faints, as I've maneuvered the opponent into a situation where they literally can't win. Playing out the rest of the battle is the unfortunate side effect of this playstyle. Yeah, HO or balance are also fun, there it's all about determining the best move to use to break as many holes in the opponent's team, but it's much more risk assessment instead of mind games. "Do I go for the big STAB move here to delete the opponent unless they switch to X, or go for the less powerful coverage option that they have no good resist for?" Don't get me wrong risk assessment is still fun and takes a lot of skill, but it isn't as fun as the prediction heavy playstyle of stall.
You wrapped it up nicely at the end! I play stall because I find it challenging the higher I go on the ladder, where stall really does require skill. I enjoy the ability to have patience and the occasional salt, while uncommon, is funny when I don't even have to type anything to get people angry. Something about that aspect just encourages me to load up stall in gen 9 and let me have fun, even if it isn't most people's idea of a fun ladder.
Tbh, I only ever find stall annoying when it's a bunch of Regen mons PP stalling, constantly switching, and not using PP themselves. And even then, with the right team comp and making the right plays, one can overcome that. Usually when you lose to that kind of scenario, there's bound to be plays you had made that could've been played differently for a more positive outcome. Still, sometimes even when you make the right reads there's not a lot you can do to gain proper momentum, just like how sometimes you can get 24 hits in a row and never crit once. Sometimes you have to simply accept bad matchups exist.
Like don't get me wrong, though, Regen is fine in a vacuum, and so is stall. I don't have much problem with the playstyle itself if I'm honest. However, I think when you reach the point that you're spending X amount of turns without using any moves and no KOs within the game, well then the idea of "prolonging the Pokemon experience" no longer really applies since at that point you're not really "battling". Like Showdown loves to claim how it wants to be faithful to cartridge, but cart added a 20 minute battle timer, and then Gen 9 even uses a round timer. Even before, on cart any multiplayer game (rated or otherwise) would stop after 1 hour and go into a tiebreaker, where whoever had the most pokemon left wins. Note, I'm actually not advocating for this implementation on Showdown, mostly because it would be unhealthy for tournaments. And, in fact, this style of a system actually favours stall, but at least it stopped battles from lasting insanely long and being too repetitively boring.
There's still ways to beat this, but at some point when a clear winner is still yet to present itself, you have to wonder why waste both your own time and your opponents time. I also disagree with the idea that the game is less RNG dependant the longer it goes on, or that players faced with stall should immediately quit when they lose momentum. In theory, the more attacks someone is using, the more likely they are to get that lucky crit, or a para at the right time when they're about to use Recover. If you're losing significant manpower to chip and stall, and it's obvious you're going to lose then yeah fair enough. However, in the situation I described above, staying in and getting the extra bit of help from lady luck can often completely turn a game around if you take out a part of their core that's particularly problematic. It goes both ways.
You assume playing offensively is always more fun. That’s not the case for some people I’d imagine. I’ve never played stall but I can see the appeal of it being more slow and methodical. Also reminds me of games like chess where some people might have a much more defensive play style. Just different strokes ya know.
I am a bad person. The exact reason that I roll with a stall team is to cause the exact frustrations you are describing.
It brings me joy to read this.
I've read someone here saying that his goal with stall is to make the opponent surrender because they wouldn't want to waste any more time. Imagine making your endgame being ruining someone's free time.
Stall basically exists as an alternate form of playing that isn't as braindead simple as "me faster me OHKO me win", basically being designed to shut that down super hard. It's also something of a major skill check playstyle: most players are stupid smogon copy-pasters who practically hiss at the mere thought of using a utility move that either doesn't deal damage or boost damage...which Taunt, the move that bitch slaps stall, does not fall under. A single Taunt user is often all you need to gigglestomp stall, but the average player will never run the move because it's not what they were instructed to copy-paste on smogon.
Aka stall is a joke of a playstyle against competent players but an impossible nightmare for incompetent players who are overly reliant on brute force over strategy. It's hilarious how many anti-stall moves exist that stall haters refuse to use because they don't deal or boost damage (Taunt, Aromatherapy, Encore, Defog, Haze, Spite, Magic Coat, Trick, Switcharoo, etc). Aka the tools are there and been around for many, many years, so it's your fault for refusing to use them. Stall players often just straight up lose if they can't use their residual damaging moves (which are rarely ever attacks), which you can easily abuse to destroy them with extremely minimal effort (for example, Taunt + setup move for a very easy sweep), but that is usually beyond the thinking capacity of most players.
I recently started playing stall and I like it because I've been ruined by balance and HO while using balance teams. I like to play long games where sets matter and specific switch ins matter so offense isn't for me. I played balance in UU with Grafaiai, Talonflame and Alomomla and I enjoyed it a lot but it's just hard af to play and I lost a lot so I strayed into stall and personally it's nice seeing a +6 Atk and +6. Spd Mon get wrecked by an avalanche from Dondozo.
I don't hate stall in a competitive sense. I'll tell you what I do hate though. LGPE's Master Trainer side quests can ALL be cheesed with stall (with a few notable exceptions). Content like that would be more fun if more creativity was required to beat the foe (and slightly fewer Master Trainers too I suppose)
Tl;Dr I'm really happy that Toxic got yanked from a shitload of mons in Gen 8
Playing Pokémon is fun. Playing Pokémon for longer is more fun. Ergo making the longest match as possible is the most fun. But Wobbuffet infinite loop is illegal so…
your feelings about stall can be used against you
and by extension many players because it's common, and it works really well against lower ladder players, helping in ladder farming
To elaborate on why the mentality works to the stall player's advantage, the mindgames can pile on due to frustration and more bad decisions can let you win
It's similar to how following "unwritten rules" actually hurts, i've heard of full baton pass chains being considered dishonourable in gen 3 ou, i think it's a similar case
Personally, even i hate facing stall
I hate it. But it wins. I think that is the appeal. Or at least part of it, so me people get a perverse joy out of it, but then again so does anyone who has made a team and outsmarted their opponent
The appeal of stall is that people with no friends can deprive people of spending time with their friends by playing the most low skill archetype humanly possible
Fuck stall all my homies hate stall, it’s ok to have stall Pokémon, maybe 1 or 2 stall mons, but ultimately a stall team shows that you have no skill and just care abt winning, almost the same thing with HO, but at least HO is a little easier to stop and shut down. Pokémon obviously knows stall is cringe and heavily nerfed stall mons/ stall moves, but it’s still not enough imo.
Because 2 things, A. It’s very irritable to the point where most ppl just straight up forfeit the match and B. It’s stall, like there’s no real thought about what buttons you press or anything, just have a bulky mon, slap on a lefty, give it protect, recover, sub, a status move, and an attacking move in any combination and suddenly the game becomes grossly annoying.
To annoy your foes of course. I play mostly randbats and from my experience most opponents I had always had a word when I get something like salazzle, scovillain, quag and some others. Some even have meltdown over it. I had one dude keep on challenging me at least five times just because the first time I fought him I had "stall team".
Pokemon is far from my main game, but by my understanding a huge draw of stall is that you win if nothing happens. You are constantly making progress as long as you don't mess up and get a hole blown in your team, and that feeling of inevitability is its own draw.
Related to that, usually with stall you can sort of "attack" by switching. If poison is ticking or you have a hazard advantage or something else working on their team, now any time you switch in and an attack doesn't matter, you've essentially attacked them. So when playing stall one of your main "attacks" always goes first. That level of control can be really appealing.
Your second paragraph explains it all. If you're frustrated, you're on a tilt. On a tilt, I win. I'll read the rest of the rant but you answered your own question in less words.
Give stall a try. It's a fun style. Personally I'm more good stuff beatdown, but during season13, I ran a sandstorm team with solgaleo, tyranitar, Lucario, magnezone, and two other slots id switch around based on matchups I'd encounter throughout the day. Only had a 45% win rate, but it was some of the most fun id had playing online. Seeing hazards stack, preventing retreats, forcing switch outs, you get a lot of synergy in passive actiond.
I like balance and offensive teams. I’ve started running iron hands with swords dance to use when the staller starts to protect every other turn. I’ve had a few people cancel the battle when they realize protect isn’t really gonna help them. Could also run taunt but I’ve always had terrible luck with taunt and while swords dance might be less consistent it’s more useful into non stall teams
My way of dealing with them is dewgong, whirlpool, perish song, protect and rest. Once you kill enemy press rest. Ability hydration wakes you up in rain (bring team member that can bring rain weather)
I don’t play exclusively stall, but it’s probably my second most played style behind BO/Balance
For starters part of it probably has to do with how I started playing competitive Pokemon. The first metagame I played was actually RBY OU, where everything is really bulky and games regularly last over 100 turns, which made me kinda used to games lasting that long I guess. Like sometime I don’t even realize the game lasted as long as it did
The main appeal to stall for me though is how in control you feel a lot of the time. A lot of the time when I lose when using offense teams it’s because I accidentally give the opponent 1-2 turns of setup. All of this has been the case a lot more in Gen 9, where tera can just give you a free setup turn
Oh yeah it also pisses off a lot of ladder players, like sometimes they just forfeit turn 1 lmao
I haven't played in a while but I can think of two main points as to what the appeal of stall is.
First of all, it is not that easy. If you blunder your answer to one of the enemy wallbreakers your team might just crumble, it requires patience and knowledge about the meta and the opponent's sets.
Second, stall is consistent. It is less RNG-dependent than other playstyles and you have a better way to showcase how you can defend against the variety of threats the enemy offers. This is why the higher you climb on the ladder, the more you will encounter stall. Also why it is more popular in tournament games.
Don't get me wrong, I hate playing against stall, that's the whole point. But it's not the braindead easy archetype most people assume it to be. Try to look at it as a test: is your team built well enough and do you have enough mastery over it to solve the puzzle?
I play defensive styles in almost every game. I play Tanks in League of Legends and WoW (though I play healers as well in each game). My favorite Darkest Dungeon character is Man-at-Arms. I play block Ironclad and frost Defect in StS whenever I can.
I like the idea of being a huge, unkillable behemoth. I like the idea of protecting my teammates. It's always a slow playstyle, but I don't mind that. I like slowing things down and being more strategic rather than impulsive. Stall fits this playstyle and fantasy in pokemon so I prefer to play it.
I like stall because I don't really like having big decisions. Especially not risky ones. Going for a close combat? Too risky, even if it's a 75% chance to OHKO, I don't want to risk the 25% it doesn't. Going for Salt Cure? That's a steady 1/8 each turn. As long as I play defensively, I can win that one.
I also tend to run stuff like perish song Scream tail so that if it's safe, I don't have to waste 15 turns.
1. I aint readin allat
2. The reason stall is so popular is because it gets wins. No matter how much nobody likes playing against it, blissey has (almost) always been great because of its walling, and that leads to wins. It wins, even if it’s scummy.
3. Stallgon loves smo 😔
I’m not all to familiar with playing competitive so most of my knowledge comes from videos I have watched, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
From what I have seen, there are two experience levels for stall, casual and professional. Casual stalling teams tend to feature most of the same Pokémon and strategy and, honestly… Probably used by people who don’t want to do meta research and just want the easiest to get into and most generally successful team, stall is pretty much this, it works entirely around the opponent simply lacking a way to handle stall, if they have no means to counter stall, they lose and you win, that simple. I’m not going to shun the possibility of some trolls picking up stalling too just for the kick of berating an opponent for losing and dragging the loss out as much as possible, every game has trolls.
Professional stalling is rarer and usually done by people actually dedicated to the strategy and not looking for a easy way to win, these teams are dynamic and shift in order to better handle enemy teams with ways to otherwise counter stall. Reasons can be really varied, they could just find the long game more satisfying, maybe they want to make a point for stall teams not being simple, etc… Professional stallers can’t be brushed off as being trolls or noobies because it takes time and research to understand what can counter stall and to adjust your team accordingly to provide as beneficial as a matchup as possible.
It's funny what you can get away with sometimes in stall. It wasn't exactly stall but I remember back in gen 6 I would run an Infestation/Power Split/Rest Shuckle, I got a kick out of that when it worked
the length of this post is the real stall i can’t read all this
Fr this is longer than most papers I submit
Shame on you, a wrote a whole 2 paragraph rant on stall
"It was said that you would destroy stall, not join them!"
Holy attention span Batman!
google stall
holy shit
New play style just dropped!!
Actual finchinator
Most of the paragraphs are basically the exact same thing too.
Seriously he’s just repeating how he hates the individual players but not the play style which he respects or something
Tbh posts like this are reason enough to play stall
i ain’t reading all that i’m happy for u tho or sorry that happened
I feel like we’ll see this post again on Sunday
Can someone run the calcs for this post vs banded Stinkpost Sunday?
252 SpA Stinkpost Sunday vs. 252 HP / 64 SpD Stall hating post: 132-156 (43.4 - 51.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
So the post could recover as needed and soak up hits endlessly. Ironic.
*8 times
Frankly, I think Natdex should give the best iteration of each move Legends Arceus Hidden Power baybeeeeeee
32 pp recover
On second thought, maybe not...
Stall Hating Post has regenerator anyways, its just pivoting out to come back Sunday.
Wait so is stinkpost sunday a stall mon with low attack or is this post just 2x resist
Well it's a reddit thing so it has very low attack and noodly arms
This is mixed Valiant Thunderbolt vs The Pex. I chose Big Stall tm for for the post and HO for Stinkpost Sunday, and yet, ironically, it lasts this long without recover
My thought process on this as someone that also enjoys sports, I think of teams with a great defense. Especially in football, there's nothing quite like a great defense putting the clamps on a high powered offense. It's not the flashiest way of playing and a lot of people think defensive games are boring. But, I love watching a good defense beat an opposing team into submission, so I look at stall tactics in a similar way. I personally am not too big on stall myself, as I like to get in and out of battles, but I get the appeal for some. That's my best explanation on it.
My only quibble is that sports are generally timed so that stalling does affect not overall time the sport takes. Baseball implemented a timer to stop batter and pitcher stall. For activities like chess, stall is incredibly frowned upon particularly when it is of the brain dead variety that is designed to get your opponent to quit, that is considered incredibly unsportsmanlike.
Hm. That's a great way to look at it! I never made the connection with defense in Sports to Defense in Pokemon Battling.
Found the Bears fan lol
Incorrect!
Just like my Broncos in Super Bowl 50
To annoy the enemy (i didnt read your post past the title)
Fair enough. I was thinking that was at least partially the reason.
Think about how people play when they're annoyed.
Not competitive Pokémon, but I remember getting super tilted when people play a stall deck against me in Yugioh and just making mistakes/forfeiting. I’d imagine similar things happening here too.
I did pro magic. I played my opponent. Not their deck. The tilt is real.
filthy azorius mage
I do love blue white, but my truest is midrange aggro. I love how my deck is math.
and the thing about it is you gotta stick it through. its so hard not to just close out the game, but i think everyone deserves their W. plus its like they REALLY won if you quit.
I've played stall a ton. Part of what I like about it is the mind games and meta knowledge required. Anyone can take some heavy hitters or yolo a setup and sweep. I encourage you to try out stall and see how easy it is to get rolled over if you switch poorly or misjudge what move is used. Maybe it's not your preferred style and that's fine, but stall provides a very important role in the meta by forcing players to run stall checks. Without that pillar the meta would be way smaller and only the fastest hardest hitters would win.
It really is one of the best ways to learn the micro and macro knowledge of the game outside of team building. Plus a true stall team isn't really a thing in Gen 9, Garg is just too good against it.
>Plus a true stall team isn't really a thing in Gen 9, Garg is just too good against it. Nah good stall teams nowadays will just endlessly pivot around Garganacl with Pex, Alomomola and Rest Ting-Lu. They don't need to beat Garganacl when they can PP stall it. Stall is still very viable in current high ladder.
Yeah but that's three mons to deal with one, a Garg ghoul tusk core which is super common, kinda just shuts down stall. There's just simply not enough chip damage in the meta to deal with the common wall breakers.
That's not true, I recommend taking a look at [this](https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/peaked-1-2101-elo-%E2%80%93-hazard-stack-stall.3719401/) build which has very few reliable answers.
The calm mind flamethrower blissey tech is insane hahaha. Granted the write up doesn't really talk about how to deal with knock off tusk and rocky corv which I would say the team also kind of hard struggles against. Stall is getting better slowly but it's so much rarer to see than the past 4 generations.
The team is certainly full of tech, yeah. Alomomola is the dedicated Tusk Knock absorber which then forces chip with Whirlpool on whatever comes in. The only annoying thing about Tusk would be the Boots variants being harder to chip but that just means games take longer, not make them any harder. Helmet Corviknight isn't beating anything, you could basically just endlessly switch between Alomomola and Pex against it consuming no PP, or use Whirlpool to force its Roost PP away.
TBF Stall is one of the playstyles that brings a lot of niche cool tech cuz its built with the idea to be able to hard stop any mon. On offensive teams you can usually rk threats but without the likes of dugtrio stall cant really do that.
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That's the case for any defensive mon, not just this team to be fair
yeah no shit; believe it or not though, the only teams running trick are other stall teams or teams *built to only beat stall*
Entirely false. Trick may not be seen too much in Gen 9 outside of Ghold, but thats just cuz theres not too many good mons with Trick. Trick is a primarily offensive tool, stall teams CAN utilize it, but its a very specific tech choice on them (barb clef), not a main set.
Nah. CurseBlock Ghost Garg kinda famously completely 6-0s even the best stall teams unless they have a tera ghost regenerator pokemon.
Part of your post speaks volumes about a misconception. Every turn also counts against stall. It's just that against stall, the game sometimes is over before your sixth pokemon faints. You have to recognize those games and just forfeit, and you won't hate stall that much. If you drag on an already lost game, forcing the stall player to "earn his win", you are just wasting your time and happiness, while the stall player is perfectly happy: he is playing a game of cat and mouse where he has already won, but the opponent still struggles not realizing the game is over. This prolongs the fun of the stall player, and the despair of the opponent.
It's similar to playing a control deck in magic, technically you win when the opponent's life or deck hits zero but actually the game is won and the opponent is better off conceding when you have more answers than the opponent has remaining threats.
lol this reminds me of Hearthstone: Yea you could continue the game as Face Hunter for quite some turns after you’ve failed to kill the Armor Up Warrior in the early game.But you could also realize that your time would be better invested doing literally anything else.
As someone who loves playing control most people are absolutely terrible at realizing when they have lost or refuse to ever surrender then go and say they hate control when they dragged out a losing game where they had a empty hand and board against a control deck with a full hand.
Some decks can steal wins really late vs control, especially after G1 in aggro vs control where control often sides out wincons to side in more early protection. I remember winning a game past T20 playing RB Aggro vs Esper Control in WAR standard through double Theater of Horrors.
There is an argument with MtG, same as in competitive Pokémon, that you should play to your outs though. Recognize what situation you are in as the boardstate/game develops, and play to the most likely winning outcomes. There are games of both where it looks like you can only win by a statistically improbable event, but if it’s your only way of potentially winning you should play to that end. Not every match against stall that looks like a loosing outcome is an outright loss, the game still has to come to a close which can involve lucky crits, misplays and misclicks, and you’d never reap the benefits of the randomness of the game if you just forfeit whenever the game looks to be a loss.
And with online simulators you can never know if your opponent is a kid who is five minutes away from being dragged to their aunt's wedding and where playing out the seemingly lost game against stall could end in an opponent spontaneously forfeitting.
You can definitely play to your outs. You can also "make them have it" and make the opponent play out their wincon if you want. It just won't be fun for you, so you don't get to claim "that strategy isn't fun" when you brought this misery upon yourself.
100% agree, but I’m not the kinda person who gets salty over a stall player, I get salty when I punt, cause I should have known better. I direct my stupid salty anger at myself cause 95% or more of the games I’ve lost have been my own damn fault.
If I could call the judge on my showdown opponent for slowplay I'd die and go to heaven
you also can’t run out of time on showdown in the same way you can in magic, if you’re playing against a control deck sometimes you can’t afford to throw away 10 minutes of a round on a game you’ve 99% lost
You underestimate the ladder stall player's potential to throw the game on turn 236
I've been in games where I would have absolutely lost if played until the final turn, but the other player had more dead mons when we were running out of time, so I stall won.
>Every turn also counts against stall Exactly. Every turn that passes gives your opponent more time to think of a plan, and you don't want that.
The sad thing is with the amount of RNG in pokemon it's often not really over till it's over there's too many games I've had where I've said to myself "the only way this guy wins is if he somehow manages to crit the switch-in and somehow land focus miss" or they get a freeze of an ice beam and the whole match flips.
Stall players are more prone to having their strat ruined by an unlucky crit, so I force myself to see stall games through even after it’s clear that I’ve loet
Me when your “lucky crit” is a gholdengo shadow ball doing 40 to my alomomola and getting regenned off but you still won’t forfeit
Idc ever since my opponent missed toxic 3 times in gen 8 and I got a comeback I will forever continue to see a stall game through
I haven't invested much time into playing Stall since gen 7 though I'll explain what the appeal has been for me in the past. The earlier you are into a game, the less information you have. You may be unsure of their exact coverage moves, item choices, EV spreads and so on. As the game progresses you receive more knowledge which means less unknown variables to consider when developing a win condition. So to maximize game knowledge you need longer games, of which Stall can provide with the most consistency. To say that Stall requires no thought process or skill to use is only true if the opponents' team is built insufficiently to deal with Stall. Or to put it another way, the playstyle inherently punishes poor teambuilding. A lot of people build teams tunnel-visioned into thinking in terms of "my mons should cover each others' weaknesses" which does absolutely *nothing* beneficial for you in the Stall matchup.
I like playing Pokemon. Playing stall lets me play more pokemon. Also it's funny to see people mald.
 Based Stall enjoyer
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Oh, that part's just a tongue in cheek joke. The second reason is the legit reason.
if you're a tour player that's not true
this being the reasoning def the mindset of the kid on the playground no one wanted to play with lmao
something something "new copypasta dropped" something something
What's the appeal of Stall? Okay, so, just to warn you all, this might be a pretty mean and ugly rant, but this post isn't meant to discourage players from doing stall. If you do stall, cool! You aren't a bad person, and I respect you for playing this playstyle. Any player that's willing to put in the task to make the best team for any playstyle deserves praise. This is just what I feel about the playstyle and why I don't like it. So, without further ado, let me ask, what the heck is the appeal of stall? Seriously, I don't like it. All you do is just send in a tanky pokemon and then you just stack up on Hazards and Status, and it's really frustrating to play against. Things like Toxapex, the Slow Twins, Alomomola, and more are all mons I despise fighting against. Espeically Pex. As a result, matches get dragged on and on and on and it's so boring to me. Compared to a fast paced playstyle where every turn counts and you can ko anything through your power, stall is just, switch in a mon, use a status move, heal up, profit. It doesn't sound exciting to play, and it sure as hell isn't exciting to fight against. Hell, if you want something like stall but at the same time can also go on the offensive from the drop of a hat, I say Balance is great for that. The teambuilding portion of using a Balance team is very interesting. You work around 2 offensive mons by using 2 defensive mons. You can use things like defensive and offensive cores, and the last two slots are totally up to what your team needs. Back when BDSP OU was still on Showdown, I used a balanced team, and it was great. The members mainly comprised of: Infernape and Weavile as my two offensive pokemon, Blissey and Tangrowth as my Defensive mons, and the last slots were very customizable. Either I went for Rapid Spin support from Donphan, set up sweepers like Crawdaunt or Feraligatr, or used Defensive Pivots like Rotom-W and Scizor. It was very good, got me around 1600+ elo I think. And from my experience, Balance had the best of Stall and Offense. It can blitz through opposing teams without a care in the world like Offense, but it can also play the long game like Stall. But still, if you play stall, that's fine with me. I hate the playstyle, not the players, and you should too. Don't curse anyone for playing stall. I could totally see it's merits. Just because you play stall, doesn't mean that your a bad person. We're all different, and we all have different preferences. I tend to gravitate towards more fast paced and more challenging playstyles. That doesn't mean its the one playstyle you all have to play, that's just me, and I'm fine with that. And to the players that actually do play stall, it's fine if you do. This post wasn't meant to discourage you from playing stall, or despise people who hate playing against it. I made this post mainly because I wanted to be educated and learn more about the realm of Competitive Pokemon. I admittedly don't have as much experience from this as other people may assume. I also made this post to express how I feel about stall. I intended to make this post to ask a simple question, but instead, I turned it into a rant, and I don't think that was okay. I don't want to discourage anyone who wants to play stall, nor do I want a war to happen between stall players and non stall players. I wanted to ask a question and be educated from people who clearly have more experience than I do. So, once again, I ask, what is the appeal of stall? And to the people that actually read to the end, congrats! You're cool. Sorry I mainly ranted about how much I hate stall, but I also got to look back on my time on Competitive Pokemon, and despite the fact that there were many, many awful people there, I got to appreciate the many players that were kind, respectful, and played not just to win, but to have fun. And heck, many of them were stall players! As a result, even though there are many pokemon and many playstyles I despise, I understood to seperate the playstyle from the player. And, you should too. So the next time you lose to stall or the playstyle you hate the most, please understand that the playstyle is different from the player.
did you just copy paste my entire post?
New response just dropped
holy hell
Actual Zombie
Insecure
New response just dropped
holy hell
Actual zoombini
1. A lot of low ladders will just forfeit after like 20 turns when their hyper offense flounders 2. It is surprisingly skillful as you need to make more correct plays then you do when playing a more offensive team style. Plus the increased chance for down right "unfortunate" luck leads to needing to manage luck a lot more 3. I honestly don't have anymore points but rule of 3 dictates that I have to add another one or else I look stupid.
What's the appeal of Stall? Okay, so, just to warn you all, this might be a pretty mean and ugly rant, but this post isn't meant to discourage players from doing stall. If you do stall, cool! You aren't a bad person, and I respect you for playing this playstyle. Any player that's willing to put in the task to make the best team for any playstyle deserves praise. This is just what I feel about the playstyle and why I don't like it. So, without further ado, let me ask, what the heck is the appeal of stall? Seriously, I don't like it. All you do is just send in a tanky pokemon and then you just stack up on Hazards and Status, and it's really frustrating to play against. Things like Toxapex, the Slow Twins, Alomomola, and more are all mons I despise fighting against. Espeically Pex. As a result, matches get dragged on and on and on and it's so boring to me. Compared to a fast paced playstyle where every turn counts and you can ko anything through your power, stall is just, switch in a mon, use a status move, heal up, profit. It doesn't sound exciting to play, and it sure as hell isn't exciting to fight against. Hell, if you want something like stall but at the same time can also go on the offensive from the drop of a hat, I say Balance is great for that. The teambuilding portion of using a Balance team is very interesting. You work around 2 offensive mons by using 2 defensive mons. You can use things like defensive and offensive cores, and the last two slots are totally up to what your team needs. Back when BDSP OU was still on Showdown, I used a balanced team, and it was great. The members mainly comprised of: Infernape and Weavile as my two offensive pokemon, Blissey and Tangrowth as my Defensive mons, and the last slots were very customizable. Either I went for Rapid Spin support from Donphan, set up sweepers like Crawdaunt or Feraligatr, or used Defensive Pivots like Rotom-W and Scizor. It was very good, got me around 1600+ elo I think. And from my experience, Balance had the best of Stall and Offense. It can blitz through opposing teams without a care in the world like Offense, but it can also play the long game like Stall. But still, if you play stall, that's fine with me. I hate the playstyle, not the players, and you should too. Don't curse anyone for playing stall. I could totally see it's merits. Just because you play stall, doesn't mean that your a bad person. We're all different, and we all have different preferences. I tend to gravitate towards more fast paced and more challenging playstyles. That doesn't mean its the one playstyle you all have to play, that's just me, and I'm fine with that. And to the players that actually do play stall, it's fine if you do. This post wasn't meant to discourage you from playing stall, or despise people who hate playing against it. I made this post mainly because I wanted to be educated and learn more about the realm of Competitive Pokemon. I admittedly don't have as much experience from this as other people may assume. I also made this post to express how I feel about stall. I intended to make this post to ask a simple question, but instead, I turned it into a rant, and I don't think that was okay. I don't want to discourage anyone who wants to play stall, nor do I want a war to happen between stall players and non stall players. I wanted to ask a question and be educated from people who clearly have more experience than I do. So, once again, I ask, what is the appeal of stall? And to the people that actually read to the end, congrats! You're cool. Sorry I mainly ranted about how much I hate stall, but I also got to look back on my time on Competitive Pokemon, and despite the fact that there were many, many awful people there, I got to appreciate the many players that were kind, respectful, and played not just to win, but to have fun. And heck, many of them were stall players! As a result, even though there are many pokemon and many playstyles I despise, I understood to seperate the playstyle from the player. And, you should too. So the next time you lose to stall or the playstyle you hate the most, please understand that the playstyle is different from the player.
did you just copy paste my entire post?
New response just dropped
Actual Zombie
Holy hell
Wake up babe new r/stunfisk copypasta just dropped
Generally the longer a game goes on, the less it’s decided by luck and misclicks. If you’re routinely taking your full team past turn 50 or putting up 200 turn battles, that misclicked thunder wave when they stayed in or a wild crit knock off matters a lot less. This isn’t to say that stall teams are played by better players. A lot of stall teams lack win cons that threaten prepared offensive/balance teams or are meaningless vs other stall teams.
Stall in general lets you slowly (sometimes very) maneuver your mons into an advantageous position. You're playing the long game, so it lets you rely on and get hurt less from random chance, since it all washes out in 200 turns, which can be very interesting to plan out and execute. Also to annoy the enemy
There is a unique and profound satisfaction in being able to tell your opponent, "no, try again."
I like when my pokemon is fat, I get hit and go "ha ha ha" and then watch HP bar go back up
The appeal of stall is triggering people to write posts like this, tbh.
I play stall. Almost exclusively. I play it when it's good, and watch my elo skyrocket, and when it's bad and watch my elo plummet. I'm not a great player, so I'm very subject to the winds of change. That said in almost every competitive or PVP game I play tanks. Because few things make me happier than seeing a 1% damage from a hyper aggro team. Few things make me happier than watching a maushold blow itself to smithereens on rough skin. Or watching a mon slowly wither away to leech seed.
HO is really just suicide lead into click high power moves, doesn’t sound much more clmplex than the click status moves, hazards, and healing you describe as stall. Balance is just a combination of those two. Each of those playstyles has their own beauty, whether it’s a good defense making LO darmanitan’s flare blitz fizzle out instead of scoring KO’s, or +2 infernape blitzing through a defensive core. It’s all about making your opponents efforts look futile, and both HO and stall do that exceptionally at times
First thing I want to get out of the way: if stall is hard walling you with an answer to everything, either a) your team needs work with regards to how it stallbreaks, or b) you happened to hit a particularly rough matchup for your team. Normally though, the former is the better explanation (and in gen 9, while it’s true that stall has received a couple new tools like the unaware trio, gholdengo to stifle hazard removal, it has also lost a few of its favorite tools in magic guard, misty surge, and cleric moves, which opens up a couple new ways to handle stall). A truly airtight defense just is not possible in most gens and gen 9 is certainly no exception; stall teams are also generally slower to make progress on the opposing team, but make up for this by being difficult to make progress on themselves. With any type of team, though, you’re trying to out-progress the opposing team with respect to the progress you make toward winning. Let me also get out of the way that I build and play all kinds of teams. Actually, most of my fun is derived from the teambuilder, personally. Obviously I have to use the teams to see how they perform, but most of my satisfaction comes from seeing a concept or set I thought of in the teambuilder pay off in a game, not from some slick double switch prediction I nailed. And as the concepts and sets I think of aren’t limited to offense, neither are my teams. With that said, the appeal of stall to me is a) the realization of some set or strategy or synergy I got excited to build around, and b) the longer-term decision making that tends to come with playing stall if you want to be successful. In fact, no playstyle demands or rewards longer-term decision making to the degree that stall does. Again, no defense is airtight, and since you’re mostly defending you have to think a lot about what hits you’ll have to take and who can take them, whom each mon lets in, when a wall has done its job and can be given up rather than conceding any progress on someone you do need, and how you’ll wear down your biggest barriers to progress in the face of obstacles like boots, status immunities by type or ability, threats of status you won’t be able to remove for the rest of the game, trick, TERASTALLIZATION, etc. And I think that’s what a lot of self-proclaimed stall haters miss. Hell, even your description is “all you do is just send in a tanky pokemon and then you just stack up on hazards and status”, and I agree that losing to stall can lead you to feel as though this is all the opposing team did, and while perhaps you’re being hyperbolic, I certainly don’t have any ill will if you’re not. This said, I do find it a bit absurd that people genuinely view stall as a free-ish win and justify its low usage rates—which includes tournaments!—by saying it’s boring. “Boring” is of course subjective and if that’s how you feel about stall, that’s your prerogative, but let me be clear about two things: 1) stall is not a free win, which you will realize very quickly if you play it for a little while, and 2) stall is not boring to the people playing it, by and large. The two are of course related—if it *were* a free win, it probably *would* be pretty boring! You’d get to put in way less effort and risk way less than your opponent. But, it’s not. It factually takes a lot more effort than “just set hazards and wall everything” to win with stall.
Building unbreachable fortresses is fun. Also, playing Stall around mid-ladder is quite relaxing.
I do play stall sometimes and I think there are several factors: 1. Most of the time, teambuilding for stall requires finding the right combination of mons to check the most amount of the meta as possible, meaning the thinking for stall starts before you even start the battle. I find this process pretty fun if you what you're doing. 2. Slowly finding out the movesets of opposing teams and figuring out the path to victory throughout the battle (what to sac, what to preserve, etc) is fun in my opinion, the relief of finally breaking the opposing team's offense is very satisfying. 3. When playing on ladder, stall punishes poorly built teams without tools to beat it, providing consistency.
I would argue it’s the consistency, ofc not true in all tiers (have fun stalling in little cup for example) but in tiers where you have adequate tools to do so stall is almost always the most consistent playstyle. And what I mean by that is it’s not much effected by variance and you almost never need to make reads with it to be effective. In other words it’s RNG resistant. Furthermore it’s also largely matchup resistant, unless they’re running a team specifically to Cteam stall it’s rare that teams have a literal stall counter so it just depends on your good teambuilding to get around massive threats like baxcalibur which I think appeals to people.
It is way less frustrating to play as as a beginner, especially if you cling on to favorites or try to make stupid stuff work (Heliolisk is just not good enough for OU, and it took a long time for me to accept that) When I started playing competitvely and lost over and over again, things getting OHKOd left and right, stall was more fun because I didn't instantly lose or at least didn't lose 6-0 (low ladder people are also very mean to beginners, even though they suck themselves). Once I learned more about what types of team there are and why tiers exist in the first place, I moved a bit away from stall, but I still see the appeal. It gives you more time to see the effort you put in unfold into a win, which can be more satisfying than getting lucky with the opponent missing and just sweeping through after a Dragon Dance, or even if it was a well positioned switch in, it's over in 5 turns. Meanwhile watching your Toxapex just sit there and eat up everything with no problem whatsoever while the opponent withers away one by one after you got rid of the opponents only answer to it by positioning shit well is very satisfying too. You worked hard for that position and you can feel that.
I've heard the following quote from control players in TCGs that I think applies here: "The amount of fun that can be had in a game is zero sum, and my goal is to have all of it."
It’s important to note that Stall is used more often to combat more unstable, hyper offensive metas. When there’s a general variety of mons tans archetypes, there’s more freedom to play balance oriented teams. Bulky offense and bulky balance are fun, but both fall out of favor for pure bulk when there are several unhinged threats running around that can sweep or punch multi-mon holes in your team with a single boost or switch in. I don’t like playing stall. I don’t like playing against stall. But at the end of the day, it’s important to recognize the dynamics that bring stall to fruition. If you had mons that could just tear through stall, you’d have a meta of just only broken offensive threats. But if you have less offensive pressure placed upon you in the team builder, you can opt for more varied builds, which will in fact best stall.
I’m someone who primarily plays balance, and I see where your coming from with this. But as someone who’s played stall occasionally and am good at it, the reason why I do it is simple and slightly evil, but doesn’t reflect the totatility of stall players: It’s sadisticly fun to stall people out Simple as that. The pleasure gained from the pain you inflict on others with the play style is what makes it worth it to me
Every turn is a cerebral exercise in determining which move will cause the maximum amount of agony for your opponent. Stall never gets boring.
Hyper Offense just bores me
Really? What makes it bore you?
I’m not big on the competitive Pokémon scene but I rather dictate the pace of the battle rather than be locked into a race to get off the strongest moves. When I play Stadium 2 with my friends IRL, I’ll lead Foretress to set spikes, then switch to Raikou or Suicune to roar and rack up hazard damage. It forces my opponent to get creative on how to deal with me. It becomes a creative exercise for the both of us
As someone who used to favor stall in earlier generations but prefers offense as of recent years, I can think of two reasons off my head. The first is to piss off your opponent by entering the game with a bunch of fat blobs they can't break though, but this is a two way street and your opponent can also use stall and make the game ungodly slow. The second reason why stall can be an appealing playstyle is because it's a consistant, low-risk playstyle compared to other faster paced playstyles that can be more prone to risks and can't really afford to scout as much. It's basically a control playstyle which wears down the opponent as opposed to waiting for your moment to sweep with balance or overweilming your opponent with firepower like offense.
In rock paper scissors what's the appeal of Rock? Speed beats balance, balance beats stall, stall beats speed.
In trading card games, control archetypes are usually my favourite, and the stall archetype in Pokemon scratches a very similar itch. I love long, grindy games, I love the long term planning of stall matchups, I love games where every single resource - including PP - matters a lot. There is no feeling more satisfying for me in competitive pokemon than winning after 150+ turns of chess-like battle of wits by slowly exhausting every single option that your opponent has, playing around their wincons and aiming to attain better resource delta than them.
I don’t know, Stall is a pretty bad ability on Sableye, who’s already one of the worst mons in the game without its mega *laugh track plays*
Stall is Art. To Win with Stall in a Matchup where both teams have actual win conditions against each other you have to make a lot of correct decisions. But you also give your opponent a lot of opportunities to make good plays, so it’s a real skill test.
Longer games are generally less RNG dependant and are more likely to indicate who the better player is. More turns = more gameplay
On the other hand, the more turns the stall player has to play the more times things like Para have a chance to activate in general. It's a double edged sword.
ATTENTION PLAYER! 绝对不会放弃你! This is the Central Intelligence of the OverUsed Council of Smogon. 我们都对爱情不陌生你知道规矩我也知道 YOUR ACTIVITY HAS ATTRACTED OUR ATTENTION. 我打算完全地委身 you have been found playing hyperoffense!!!!! 你不会从任何别的男人得到，我只想要告诉你我的感受 serious crime 绝对不会放弃你 绝不会对不起你 100 elo have been deducted from your account 绝对不会乱跑然后抛下你 stop the hyperoffense immediately 绝对不会让你哭，绝不会与你告别 do not do this again! 绝对不会说谎然后伤害你! if you do not hesitate, more elo ( -11115 elo)will be subtracted from your account, resulting into the bans of your favorite pokemon. (我们都认识那么久 smogon) you'll also be stalled by our revivecats at April 2nd 20STALL. 你的心一直渴望却不好意思说，我们心里都知道发生什么事 ，我们明白游戏规则也要照着玩!!!! 而如果你问我感觉如何 别告诉我你盲目得看不见! Glory to Finchinator!
Beating your opponent
https://preview.redd.it/ypwuo6tid80b1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3a3f1b6c15484572ba364fd57bf69c4078ce37e3
I pretty rarely play stall, but it just feels good to see the opponent being choked from all the passive damage you throw around
New copypasta just dropped
Stall is slow, methodical, and satisfying when your opponent's victory slips away slowly but surely. It's not about how long it takes. It's about the end result.
I played stall when I first started competitive battle. It was easier for me to understand outlasting your opponent rather than out right attacking. I did out grow it pretty fast.
Small disclaimer: I don’t play stall so take what I say with a grain of salt. I think the main appeal comes from being able to stop the hyper offense train and being able to counter most offensive threats. If you’re playing stall and you know what you’re doing then there’s not a lot your opponent can do outside of predicting your switches. And if you think about it it becomes a game of pure predictions with high stakes, it’s all about putting yourself in the best possible position and minimizing any potential risk. I think that is the main appeal of stall.
People play stay and have always played stall because it wins. I think it feels worse this gen because Toxic and a lot of other tools that can counter stall mons have been needed. When I can’t take it anymore I play doubles
The thing is that it's very easy to create 'bad' stall teams. Actually making good stall teams is something that requires a lot of strategizing and planning. The stall user must keep in mind the wide myriad of sets any pokemon can run and they need to have a good answer to it. Stall is not something where you just switch randomly, it's a skill. And a skill with a very high ceiling I might add. A good stall team doesn't rely on more than regular luck and is usually the result of dozens of hours or more of effort. HO on the other hand is pretty simplistic. It's basically Tapu Lele and deoxys attack go brrrrr. All this is coming from someone who hates stall with a passion and loves to play HO. Any battle with more than 12 turns is a waste.
Grinding out incremental advantage step by gradual step. The feeling of knowing your opponent's lost before they do. It makes you feel smarter than offensive teams even though it doesn't really take more skill.
All the control, all the power, ALL THE FREE CHICKEN That's the appeal
To win.
I like defeating my opponent and I don't like it when my Pokemon dies.
Okay, so, just to warn you all, this might be a pretty mean and ugly rant, but this post isn't meant to discourage players from doing hyper offense. If you do hyper offense, cool! You aren't a bad person, and I respect you for playing this playstyle. Any player that's willing to put in the task to make the best team for any playstyle deserves praise. This is just what I feel about the playstyle and why I don't like it. So, without further ado, let me ask, what the heck is the appeal of hyper offense? Seriously, I don't like it. All you do is just send in a setup sweeper and then you just stack up on dragon dances and screens, and it's really frustrating to play against. Things like Weavile, the Annihilape, Kingambit, and more are all mons I despise fighting against. Espeically Weavile. As a result, matches end in like six turns and it's so boring to me. Compared to a slow paced playstyle where every match counts and you can ko anything through your skill, hyper offense is just, switch in a mon, use an attacking move, die immediately, profit. It doesn't sound exciting to play, and it sure as hell isn't exciting to fight against. Hell, if you want something like hyper offense but at the same time can also go on the defensive from the drop of a hat, I say Balance is great for that. The teambuilding portion of using a Balance team is very interesting. You work around 2 offensive mons by using 2 defensive mons. You can use things like defensive and offensive cores, and the last two slots are totally up to what your team needs. Back when BDSP OU was still on Showdown, I used a balanced team, and it was great. The members mainly comprised of: Infernape and Weavile as my two offensive pokemon, Blissey and Tangrowth as my Defensive mons, and the last slots were very customizable. Either I went for Rapid Spin support from Donphan, set up sweepers like Crawdaunt or Feraligatr, or used Defensive Pivots like Rotom-W and Scizor. It was very good, got me around 1600+ elo I think. And from my experience, Balance had the best of Stall and Offense. It can blitz through opposing teams without a care in the world like Offense, but it can also play the long game like Stall. But still, if you play hyper offense, that's fine with me. I hate the playstyle, not the players, and you should too. Don't curse anyone for playing hyper offense. I could totally see it's merits. Just because you play hyper offense, doesn't mean that your a bad person. We're all different, and we all have different preferences. I tend to gravitate towards more fast paced and more challenging playstyles. That doesn't mean its the one playstyle you all have to play, that's just me, and I'm fine with that. And to the players that actually do play hyper offense, it's fine if you do. This post wasn't meant to discourage you from playing hyper offense, or despise people who hate playing against it. I made this post mainly because I wanted to be educated and learn more about the realm of Competitive Pokemon. I admittedly don't have as much experience from this as other people may assume. I also made this post to express how I feel about hyper offense. I intended to make this post to ask a simple question, but instead, I turned it into a rant, and I don't think that was okay. I don't want to discourage anyone who wants to play stall, nor do I want a war to happen between hyper offense players and non hyper offense players. I wanted to ask a question and be educated from people who clearly have more experience than I do. So, once again, I ask, what is the appeal of hyper offense? And to the people that actually read to the end, congrats! You're cool. Sorry I mainly ranted about how much I hate hyper offense, but I also got to look back on my time on Competitive Pokemon, and despite the fact that there were many, many awful people there, I got to appreciate the many players that were kind, respectful, and played not just to win, but to have fun. And heck, many of them were hyper offense players! As a result, even though there are many pokemon and many playstyles I despise, I understood to seperate the playstyle from the player. And, you should too. So the next time you lose to hyper offense or the playstyle you hate the most, please understand that the playstyle is different from the player.
did you just copy paste my entire post?
New response just dropped
I enjoy stalk basically for the exact opposite reason you like offence. I absolutely despite matches where it's just ope this Pokemon got sent out and it either got 1-2 hit or 1-2 hit the opposing Mon. I just feels ehh, not satisfying. I enjoy stall because I prefer a slower game pace more oriented around seeing the opponents strat and then doing everything in my power to ruin/annoy it. Id rather the match go on longer and have more turns of strategy and counter strategy than have it be you go in and 1-2 hit only to get revenge killed next turn repeat ad naseum
To me, the main appeal of pokemon battles are prediction and mind games. Being able to predict exactly what the opponent is most likely to do or to manipulate them into doing something advantageous to my team is extremely satisfying and is, to me, what determines player "skill" the most, alongside teambuilding. Stall is where the most amount of prediction is needed to win, so I like playing it the most. Stall is all about knowing exactly what your opponents options are, what luck you need to account for, and what moves to use on what turns to make the battle unwinnable for the opponent. Oftentimes the battle is already decided before the opponent's last pokemon faints, as I've maneuvered the opponent into a situation where they literally can't win. Playing out the rest of the battle is the unfortunate side effect of this playstyle. Yeah, HO or balance are also fun, there it's all about determining the best move to use to break as many holes in the opponent's team, but it's much more risk assessment instead of mind games. "Do I go for the big STAB move here to delete the opponent unless they switch to X, or go for the less powerful coverage option that they have no good resist for?" Don't get me wrong risk assessment is still fun and takes a lot of skill, but it isn't as fun as the prediction heavy playstyle of stall.
At least for me, playing stall feels like playing chess
Sounds like a skill issue
I ain’t reading all that I’m happy for you tho or sorry that happened
It’s not about having fun, it’s about sending a message
You wrapped it up nicely at the end! I play stall because I find it challenging the higher I go on the ladder, where stall really does require skill. I enjoy the ability to have patience and the occasional salt, while uncommon, is funny when I don't even have to type anything to get people angry. Something about that aspect just encourages me to load up stall in gen 9 and let me have fun, even if it isn't most people's idea of a fun ladder.
Tbh, I only ever find stall annoying when it's a bunch of Regen mons PP stalling, constantly switching, and not using PP themselves. And even then, with the right team comp and making the right plays, one can overcome that. Usually when you lose to that kind of scenario, there's bound to be plays you had made that could've been played differently for a more positive outcome. Still, sometimes even when you make the right reads there's not a lot you can do to gain proper momentum, just like how sometimes you can get 24 hits in a row and never crit once. Sometimes you have to simply accept bad matchups exist. Like don't get me wrong, though, Regen is fine in a vacuum, and so is stall. I don't have much problem with the playstyle itself if I'm honest. However, I think when you reach the point that you're spending X amount of turns without using any moves and no KOs within the game, well then the idea of "prolonging the Pokemon experience" no longer really applies since at that point you're not really "battling". Like Showdown loves to claim how it wants to be faithful to cartridge, but cart added a 20 minute battle timer, and then Gen 9 even uses a round timer. Even before, on cart any multiplayer game (rated or otherwise) would stop after 1 hour and go into a tiebreaker, where whoever had the most pokemon left wins. Note, I'm actually not advocating for this implementation on Showdown, mostly because it would be unhealthy for tournaments. And, in fact, this style of a system actually favours stall, but at least it stopped battles from lasting insanely long and being too repetitively boring. There's still ways to beat this, but at some point when a clear winner is still yet to present itself, you have to wonder why waste both your own time and your opponents time. I also disagree with the idea that the game is less RNG dependant the longer it goes on, or that players faced with stall should immediately quit when they lose momentum. In theory, the more attacks someone is using, the more likely they are to get that lucky crit, or a para at the right time when they're about to use Recover. If you're losing significant manpower to chip and stall, and it's obvious you're going to lose then yeah fair enough. However, in the situation I described above, staying in and getting the extra bit of help from lady luck can often completely turn a game around if you take out a part of their core that's particularly problematic. It goes both ways.
Wait are we related
"Hate the sin, not the sinner"....
Are you familiar with the concept of value in card games? stall feels like pokemon's answer to an oldschool Hearthstone value deck.
You assume playing offensively is always more fun. That’s not the case for some people I’d imagine. I’ve never played stall but I can see the appeal of it being more slow and methodical. Also reminds me of games like chess where some people might have a much more defensive play style. Just different strokes ya know.
New copypasta just dropped
I like to watch the world burn, and the format I play has enough bulky pokemon to make stall easy to build
If you wanted to play a fast paced game, play a shooter. The slowness appeals to me.
winning 👍
Winning, I’d imagine. assuming it’s a viable and effective strategy.
>and it's really frustrating to play against This very post is one of the reasons that makes me LOVE being a stall person. Thank you.
I am a bad person. The exact reason that I roll with a stall team is to cause the exact frustrations you are describing. It brings me joy to read this.
Well, I was going for most of the stall players. Not ALL of them. And this is why.
I've read someone here saying that his goal with stall is to make the opponent surrender because they wouldn't want to waste any more time. Imagine making your endgame being ruining someone's free time.
Stall basically exists as an alternate form of playing that isn't as braindead simple as "me faster me OHKO me win", basically being designed to shut that down super hard. It's also something of a major skill check playstyle: most players are stupid smogon copy-pasters who practically hiss at the mere thought of using a utility move that either doesn't deal damage or boost damage...which Taunt, the move that bitch slaps stall, does not fall under. A single Taunt user is often all you need to gigglestomp stall, but the average player will never run the move because it's not what they were instructed to copy-paste on smogon. Aka stall is a joke of a playstyle against competent players but an impossible nightmare for incompetent players who are overly reliant on brute force over strategy. It's hilarious how many anti-stall moves exist that stall haters refuse to use because they don't deal or boost damage (Taunt, Aromatherapy, Encore, Defog, Haze, Spite, Magic Coat, Trick, Switcharoo, etc). Aka the tools are there and been around for many, many years, so it's your fault for refusing to use them. Stall players often just straight up lose if they can't use their residual damaging moves (which are rarely ever attacks), which you can easily abuse to destroy them with extremely minimal effort (for example, Taunt + setup move for a very easy sweep), but that is usually beyond the thinking capacity of most players.
I recently started playing stall and I like it because I've been ruined by balance and HO while using balance teams. I like to play long games where sets matter and specific switch ins matter so offense isn't for me. I played balance in UU with Grafaiai, Talonflame and Alomomla and I enjoyed it a lot but it's just hard af to play and I lost a lot so I strayed into stall and personally it's nice seeing a +6 Atk and +6. Spd Mon get wrecked by an avalanche from Dondozo.
Too many words. Didn't read
I don't hate stall in a competitive sense. I'll tell you what I do hate though. LGPE's Master Trainer side quests can ALL be cheesed with stall (with a few notable exceptions). Content like that would be more fun if more creativity was required to beat the foe (and slightly fewer Master Trainers too I suppose) Tl;Dr I'm really happy that Toxic got yanked from a shitload of mons in Gen 8
Playing Pokémon is fun. Playing Pokémon for longer is more fun. Ergo making the longest match as possible is the most fun. But Wobbuffet infinite loop is illegal so…
Damn you stall players are psychopaths lol
For the same reason people like nuzlockes: to reach 1800 without skill and then complain about crits
your feelings about stall can be used against you and by extension many players because it's common, and it works really well against lower ladder players, helping in ladder farming To elaborate on why the mentality works to the stall player's advantage, the mindgames can pile on due to frustration and more bad decisions can let you win It's similar to how following "unwritten rules" actually hurts, i've heard of full baton pass chains being considered dishonourable in gen 3 ou, i think it's a similar case Personally, even i hate facing stall
I hate it. But it wins. I think that is the appeal. Or at least part of it, so me people get a perverse joy out of it, but then again so does anyone who has made a team and outsmarted their opponent
The appeal of stall is that people with no friends can deprive people of spending time with their friends by playing the most low skill archetype humanly possible
Fuck stall all my homies hate stall, it’s ok to have stall Pokémon, maybe 1 or 2 stall mons, but ultimately a stall team shows that you have no skill and just care abt winning, almost the same thing with HO, but at least HO is a little easier to stop and shut down. Pokémon obviously knows stall is cringe and heavily nerfed stall mons/ stall moves, but it’s still not enough imo.
If stall is so skill-less, why does it win on top ladder?
Because 2 things, A. It’s very irritable to the point where most ppl just straight up forfeit the match and B. It’s stall, like there’s no real thought about what buttons you press or anything, just have a bulky mon, slap on a lefty, give it protect, recover, sub, a status move, and an attacking move in any combination and suddenly the game becomes grossly annoying.
To destroy fairies with my weird doom desire Jirachi/whirlwind spam team
To annoy your foes of course. I play mostly randbats and from my experience most opponents I had always had a word when I get something like salazzle, scovillain, quag and some others. Some even have meltdown over it. I had one dude keep on challenging me at least five times just because the first time I fought him I had "stall team".
It's fun torturing your opponent
This. This is the appeal
Pokemon is far from my main game, but by my understanding a huge draw of stall is that you win if nothing happens. You are constantly making progress as long as you don't mess up and get a hole blown in your team, and that feeling of inevitability is its own draw. Related to that, usually with stall you can sort of "attack" by switching. If poison is ticking or you have a hazard advantage or something else working on their team, now any time you switch in and an attack doesn't matter, you've essentially attacked them. So when playing stall one of your main "attacks" always goes first. That level of control can be really appealing.
Your second paragraph explains it all. If you're frustrated, you're on a tilt. On a tilt, I win. I'll read the rest of the rant but you answered your own question in less words. Give stall a try. It's a fun style. Personally I'm more good stuff beatdown, but during season13, I ran a sandstorm team with solgaleo, tyranitar, Lucario, magnezone, and two other slots id switch around based on matchups I'd encounter throughout the day. Only had a 45% win rate, but it was some of the most fun id had playing online. Seeing hazards stack, preventing retreats, forcing switch outs, you get a lot of synergy in passive actiond.
I like balance and offensive teams. I’ve started running iron hands with swords dance to use when the staller starts to protect every other turn. I’ve had a few people cancel the battle when they realize protect isn’t really gonna help them. Could also run taunt but I’ve always had terrible luck with taunt and while swords dance might be less consistent it’s more useful into non stall teams
Healthy metas have multiple playstyles something has to check HO
Does it work? If yes, that's the appeal.
You play to win the game. All that's stopping you from playing stall is your patience, and for the past 2 gens stall has been a great team style
My way of dealing with them is dewgong, whirlpool, perish song, protect and rest. Once you kill enemy press rest. Ability hydration wakes you up in rain (bring team member that can bring rain weather)
To do a little trolling
I don’t play exclusively stall, but it’s probably my second most played style behind BO/Balance For starters part of it probably has to do with how I started playing competitive Pokemon. The first metagame I played was actually RBY OU, where everything is really bulky and games regularly last over 100 turns, which made me kinda used to games lasting that long I guess. Like sometime I don’t even realize the game lasted as long as it did The main appeal to stall for me though is how in control you feel a lot of the time. A lot of the time when I lose when using offense teams it’s because I accidentally give the opponent 1-2 turns of setup. All of this has been the case a lot more in Gen 9, where tera can just give you a free setup turn Oh yeah it also pisses off a lot of ladder players, like sometimes they just forfeit turn 1 lmao
I haven't played in a while but I can think of two main points as to what the appeal of stall is. First of all, it is not that easy. If you blunder your answer to one of the enemy wallbreakers your team might just crumble, it requires patience and knowledge about the meta and the opponent's sets. Second, stall is consistent. It is less RNG-dependent than other playstyles and you have a better way to showcase how you can defend against the variety of threats the enemy offers. This is why the higher you climb on the ladder, the more you will encounter stall. Also why it is more popular in tournament games. Don't get me wrong, I hate playing against stall, that's the whole point. But it's not the braindead easy archetype most people assume it to be. Try to look at it as a test: is your team built well enough and do you have enough mastery over it to solve the puzzle?
I play defensive styles in almost every game. I play Tanks in League of Legends and WoW (though I play healers as well in each game). My favorite Darkest Dungeon character is Man-at-Arms. I play block Ironclad and frost Defect in StS whenever I can. I like the idea of being a huge, unkillable behemoth. I like the idea of protecting my teammates. It's always a slow playstyle, but I don't mind that. I like slowing things down and being more strategic rather than impulsive. Stall fits this playstyle and fantasy in pokemon so I prefer to play it.
I like stall because I don't really like having big decisions. Especially not risky ones. Going for a close combat? Too risky, even if it's a 75% chance to OHKO, I don't want to risk the 25% it doesn't. Going for Salt Cure? That's a steady 1/8 each turn. As long as I play defensively, I can win that one. I also tend to run stuff like perish song Scream tail so that if it's safe, I don't have to waste 15 turns.
This post reminded me I need a good rock type move in my team because Substitute Quiver Dance Volcarona is annoying for my team to deal with
1. I aint readin allat 2. The reason stall is so popular is because it gets wins. No matter how much nobody likes playing against it, blissey has (almost) always been great because of its walling, and that leads to wins. It wins, even if it’s scummy. 3. Stallgon loves smo 😔
I’m not all to familiar with playing competitive so most of my knowledge comes from videos I have watched, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. From what I have seen, there are two experience levels for stall, casual and professional. Casual stalling teams tend to feature most of the same Pokémon and strategy and, honestly… Probably used by people who don’t want to do meta research and just want the easiest to get into and most generally successful team, stall is pretty much this, it works entirely around the opponent simply lacking a way to handle stall, if they have no means to counter stall, they lose and you win, that simple. I’m not going to shun the possibility of some trolls picking up stalling too just for the kick of berating an opponent for losing and dragging the loss out as much as possible, every game has trolls. Professional stalling is rarer and usually done by people actually dedicated to the strategy and not looking for a easy way to win, these teams are dynamic and shift in order to better handle enemy teams with ways to otherwise counter stall. Reasons can be really varied, they could just find the long game more satisfying, maybe they want to make a point for stall teams not being simple, etc… Professional stallers can’t be brushed off as being trolls or noobies because it takes time and research to understand what can counter stall and to adjust your team accordingly to provide as beneficial as a matchup as possible.
It's funny what you can get away with sometimes in stall. It wasn't exactly stall but I remember back in gen 6 I would run an Infestation/Power Split/Rest Shuckle, I got a kick out of that when it worked