Stall in SM UU (was: SM UU Blissey)

[Adaam]

Hello everyone. With the recent lifting of the low tier old-gen tier lock, I want to address everyone's not-so-favorite topic of SM UU stall. Towards the end of SM's lifespan, stall grew to be a behemoth of a playstyle. Despite relatively infrequent usage in tournaments, it yielded insane results and winrates. People would use "stall" as a synonym for "free win" when prepping. Players would attempt to prepare for it by slapping on a breaker, only to be outlasted after taking out maybe one or two Pokemon by the infamous AloBlissQuag core. In this post, I will demonstrate stall's devastating power in SM through its winrates in high-level tournaments and by explaining its theory.

Tournament Usage
For each game, I will use 'W' if the staller won, 'L' for a loss.

UUPL

UUPL IX
TDK vs robjr - L. Required a Thunder miss turn 42 for rob to have a chance despite using stallbreakers like CM Coba and Superpower Nidoking.
TDK vs mncmt - L. TDK is cheeks and tossed a 100% win turn 34 by sacking Gligar instead of Articuno to a NP Recover Celebi. Had he l2ped and made the correct play, he won easily as Gligar would wall the CB Infernape for the remainder of the game.
Sacri vs CBU - W. Not even close, Sacri lost on preview.
Finch vs robjr - L. Required tough 50/50 with Pursuit on the Celebi to win
Me vs Hs - W. Another beatdown where the person being stalled had no chance on preview
Gondra vs rozes - W. In this game vivalospride stalled Barclay. Despite facing Future Sight + AV Shao, a theoretical awful MU, stall wins.
rozes vs Bushtush - L. No fucking clue how Venomoth ended on this win screen, I will admit this was a tough mu. Bush's team, however, hard loses to any Pyukumuku variants of stall.

UUPL VIII
Christo vs Empo - W. Another nightmare MU for stall that it finds a war to win. NP Azelf, DD Gatr, and Facade M-Altaria are not enough to win.
Sage vs Jaajgko - W. Not close.
sjneider vs Empo - L. Empo makes a misplay and Scalds an unrevealed Altaria. Gets swept by Facade (F).

UUPL VII
Poek vs watashi - L. Hard cteam with CM E-ball Reuniclus with Z-Psychic.
TDK vs ict - W. Easy win for Carson (stalling again classic)
TDK vs Freeroamer - W. Another cruise victory and also fuck Carson my god.
Accelgor vs Shiba - W. LMAO beef battle?? But this was destruction as to be expected from stall
vivalospride vs McMeghan - L. SubSD Decidueye was used to hard cteam Roro, who was using semi-stall exclusively up to this point.
robjr vs Pearl - L. Lost off a Quagsire crit.
Amaroq vs Osh - L. Not sure how Osh ever won this game but he played very well and this case I will concede.

SPL

SPL X
soulgazer vs Leru - L. Required a hard cteam involving SubSD Virizion, which is unviable in every MU besides cteaming Pearl stall as it is hard walled by Altaria variants.
Christo vs Lycans - W. Hard destruction off preview.
Pak vs robjr- L. Rob is helpless until Pak misplays by Scalding an unrevealed Altaria. A lot of these losses are just by inexperience with the Altaria matchup. Simply using Toxic instead of Scald is a guaranteed win.
Pearl vs HT- W. Not close
bugzinator vs Christo- L. I sound like a broken record but this is another loss simply by the stall user not knowing how to use the team. bugzi has this game won after Toxicing Celebi, but decides to sack Articuno for no reason instead of Softboiled spamming with Blissey and then trapping it with Aero.
Pearl vs Shiba- W. Not close

Snake + UU Snake

Smogon Snake Draft
Amane Misa vs Adaam - L. I get outplayed by Krook Pursuit trapping Rotom twice and losing to Toge as a result.
Amane Misa vs Corckscrew - W. Not close, features a new Muk + Pyuk variant.
Soulwind vs Christo - W. Not close and it shows how Pearl's stall will win in the NP Celebi MU when you play the sequence correctly.

UU Snake
avarice vs vivalospride - W. Features no Alo Stall muscling through a "tough" my against Lass HO.
Santu vs Xiri - W. Not close
suapah vs basaninho - W. Not close

UU Open

Pearl vs kingofcrimea - W. Hardest stall cteam I have ever seen losing to Pearl stall.
Pearl vs Flawless Nazgul - W. Not close
Pearl vs Xiri - W. Not close
Pearl vs Xiri again - W. Not close

Miscellaneous replay I found for UU classic Adaam vs pif. Pif uses a Quagsire-less stall that shows how versatile the style is. NP Celebi seems like a threat, but its hilariously walled by Pyukumuku of all things.

This is a ~62% winrate for stall from replays I dug up, with many losses caused by players making misplays with respect to Celebi and M-Altaria. Pearl for example rocked a near 100% winrate with his team, and a lot of people tried using it and threw a win away. Yes, if you Scald an Altaria you're probably going to lose, and if you don't know the Toxic sequence vs Celebi you also will lose. However, relying on someone competent to throw with stall is not a reliable way to beat it.

Some losses were by hard cteams to specific stall builds such as the Virizion replay. Now imagine if soulgazer brought Altaria stall? Leru would have been helpess, with brings up my next point. Stall is extremely versatile. The flagship build is Pearl's Aero/Cuno stall, but there are many viable variants. To quote an old post I made here:

While these are the most popular stall teams, I want to emphasize that stall is extremely malleable. Any good stall team will have AloBliss + Unaware, leaving the last 3 slots fairly open to many options. Doublade can be used to counter Z-Fight Terrakion better than Quagsire, Alolan Muk can be used to pursuit Celebi with ease, Slowbro can be added to handle NP Infernape, and so on. The point is trying to counterteam these two specific teams does not ensure that you are no longer stall weak. You might think a Choice Band Crawdaunt is enough to handle stall if you expect Pearl's team to be used, but if you run into bulky Mega Altaria your Crawdaunt is suddenly useless. You might try NP Togekiss with Alolan Muk to trap Nihilego, but a Mega Aerodactyl or Spdef Pyukumuku will ruin your day. There is not one strategy that can both break through the patented Alo/Bliss/Unaware core + any support mon the stall player might use. You are at the mercy of the team brought against you, making preparing for stall a nightmare.

pif further elaborates on how versatile stall can be, showcasing multiple different teams he made and dominated UU with. Stall really becomes mind boggling to handle once you step back and realize more stall teams exist than Pearl's one team he made 3 years ago. If you expect to be stalled by someone, you not only have to try and cover all possible variants, but you also need to ensure you aren't weak to any normal team. This is an impossible task, and it's gotten to the point where people have given up in preparing for stall and hoping they don't face it.

My Proposal

SM UU council voted on what to do about stall. Here were the results:

Results

We were split on what to do in an attempt to only nerf the playstyle by testing Alomomola and not Blissey. As a result, nothing happened. I do not want to make this mistake again. It is obvious that Blissey is the cornerstone of stall. Blissey walls a massive portion of the metagame, provides Stealth Rock, Heal Bell support, absorbs Toxic with Natural Cure, and is surprisingly hard to switch into with Toxic + Stoss. Blissey is the best Stall Pokemon, and thus should be suspect tested.

What exactly does Blissey do?
In terms of what it walls, let's check the VR thread. Using Blissey counters Latias, Hydreigon, Primarina, Amoonguss, Celebi (somewhat), Manectric, Slowbro (without Rest), Alomomola, Empoleon, Gengar (this is a stalemate but you outstall it), Rotom-H, Hippowdon, Starmie, Mew, Tentacruel, Kyurem, Moltres, Nidos without Superpower, Suicune, Nihilego, Volcanion, Houndoom-Mega, Blastoise-Mega, and many more. It also has enough physical defense to 1v1 Mega Aggron, Mega Steelix (without curse), Krook, can Toxic unboosted Mimikyu, can Toxic Aero and softboiled spam, can Toxic NP Infernape if it hasn't boosted, and generally trade with a threat in emergency scenarios. I'd go as far and say Blissey would be unstoppable if we didn't have Scizor, which is one of the laughably few mons that can switch into Toxic and Seismic Toss due to its immunity + Roost + Swords Dance. Seriously, try and think of other Pokemon that can. As mentioned before, Blissey is also a status sponge for stall, taking on many Toxic users. This is massive as PP stalling Heal Bell becomes such a tall task when the stall user has no need to ever click it.

Won't banning Blissey make stall unviable?
Maybe, but this is not something we should be concerned with. Never have we suspected the 2nd or 3rd best mon on a particular playstyle in an attempt to preserve the whole thing. We banned Drizzle, which made Rain literally unusable, instead of targeting the 2nd or 3rd best abusers. We banned Mega Venusaur, the cornerstone of SM UU balance, and now balance is quite awful. And if we ever decide that SM UU Spikes HO is too powerful, would we suspect something like Mimkyu? Or the actual cornerstone Pokemon like M-Sharpedo? Testing Alomomola or even Quagsire/Pyuk is dancing around the real issue that is Blissey, and I implore everyone else reading this to agree.

Conclusion
Stall is obscene and the best and most consistent playstyle in the tier. The only reason it isn't spammed is because of the negative connotation it has, and also because it's just lame to play in the tournaments SM UU is still played in (mainly subforum PLs). It almost always draws a great MU, and even in "bad MUs" the stall user has many outs and often needs to outlast one or two Pokemon before winning with AloBliss. Let's not make the same mistake twice and do something about stall this time

 

[Pak]

Writing this on phone at work so ideally this doesn’t end too long, but I feel obligated to chime in considering I played it in UUPL recently and also because I originally voted to not do anything about stall toward the end of the gen. The reasoning can be found here, and honestly, I do stand by it. However, to me a big point of emphasis was that of trying to preserve stall in some capacity as stated by hogg before. Yeah it kind of sounds like a noble cause, but what adaam said in the op did resonate with me. You don’t make small nerfs to address whatever other broken element in a tier. There’s no denying that stall in sm uu is ridiculous. I even agreed at the time but there didn’t seem to be a good balance to strike in my mind, as mentioned in that post.

But yeah, more time has passed by, it’s only become more apparent what kind of hold stall has on tournament play. As we all know, best of 1s are absolute dog shit for a game with as much variance as this one, and stall is so overbearing that you almost can’t reasonably hope to cover it without making a dedicated effort to do so. That generally implies cutting certain corners that make your team worse overall, purely in the name of having a ‘playable’ stall matchup. It makes preparation super bogged down and people often find themselves ignoring the possibility of facing it entirely because otherwise you’ll sit there going insane. Gentleman’s agreements only go so far and there will always be tdks lurking around every corner. SM UU will always have its issues, mostly due to the identity it essentially accepted by keeping Scizor around from the get-go and allowing things to warp around it entirely. The damage is done there however, as shown by the test that kept it in the tier toward the end. But yeah, we can still reasonably handle the other main issue in stall, so why not? I can say for a fact it would make the tier 1000x more desirable to play in best of 1 settings especially, not having to worry about losing at preview if your opponent decides not to be a nice guy.

 

[vivalospride]

Heavily support SM UU stall nerf, in fact it'd make me feel happiness for the first time in weeks to do so. I have never been entirely sure as to how to handle stall entirely in this metagame in terms of like, what to ban, but Blissey obviously makes sense and it doesn't have to be more complicated than that. Blissey is the cornerstone of stall in this tier and without it stall would be missing a whole lot of glue.

This tier is horseshit for a handful of reasons but this tier is pretty enjoyable to play at the same time. As someone that prides himself on his prep work for this tier in tournaments and probably the person that actively has built the tier the most on the site post-gen, I can't emphasize enough the weight that stall has in the builder. It's to the point where you just kinda pretend it doesn't exist just to feel better abt yourself and the tier you're building, there's no point in doing otherwise anyways. It is fucking DIFFICULT to lose with stall if played well and you didn't roll a completely unwinnable matchup (if those exist).

What I'm getting at is that anyone who builds or plays this tier would have an enormous weight lifted off their back immediately with stall being nerfed or just straight up gone, to say you either overextend for stall or accept probably losing to it if you see it might be slightly harsher than reality but it's not far from it, you can give yourself small outs best you can for some sort of midground... but "small outs" in this tier would be solid ones in any other tier, stuff like dd facade alt, celebi, np kiss, np luke or ape, drag z psyshock lati, etc. A good staller is not going to lose to one of these even though they could be considered full blown stall breakers if you wanted to, they need a fair amount of support to make stall a good matchup, and unlike other tiers it is extremely rare to run into a single mon or even two that you think makes the matchup genuinely unwinnable as a stall player.

Stall has personally ruined my enjoyment of the tier almost entirely, honestly. I prep every game scared now bc ik being stalled is a very viable possibility, I was convinced CBU wouldn't stall in UUPL vs Sacri' bc it's fuckin CBU and he hit us with stall and I got burned for not having a stall MU of any sort. That's just how it goes though, it's literally the threat of stall dangling in front of you and you knowing there's only so much you can REASONABLY do about it in the effort to make a good team.

Some people can look at spikes HO's consistency and say something similar, but the lack of variety and ability to really experiment too much and maintain it's consistency is one thing to keep in mind... another thing to keep in mind is literally just the fact that while SM UU HO is extremely consistent to an extent that is unlike what we're used to with HO in pokemon, it's consistency is in rolling very winnable matchups, especially since the counterplay to HO is a lot less concrete. Stall is consistent in rolling winning matchups, shit, stall curbstomps the mimi HO shit a lot of the time if it's played well unless the sets are all geared towards beating stall, so like bug bite lo Scizor and drag z psyshock lati w recovery, taunt or wood hammer mimi? (people really have ran this), etc. Obviously HO's viability doesn't have a ton to do with stall in this context but this tier has had a weird thing where the extreme archetypes and stall and ho have been weirdly consistent when they are historically not supposed to be, but people comparing them as similar in the context of their impact on SM UU building/the tier in general I think are gravely underestimating stall's stranglehold on the tier.

I feel like there's no reasonable argument for stall being healthy or fine in the tier so I am not bothering going into painstaking detail any further of why it's super good as that's been drilled into all of our brains by now, surely. So I will say as someone that loves SM UU, the potential this tier has to be one of the better UU gens we have is very real and stall literally completely obliterates that. This tier is not sad or unfun to play or build despite all it's deeply rooted issues when stall is not an option on the table. The threat of stall looming over me is enough to make this tier almost impossible to enjoy in a competitive setting, especially with the nature of bo1s.

Pls support this cause :)

 

[justdrew]

Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times if only one remembers to turn on the light - Albus Dumbledore

Thank you Adaam for turning on the light, Albus did not die in vain. Really great job cataloguing replays and giving details on the matchups and what events decided the game. Pak deserves a whole lot of credit for his post about Conk as well, which led to its ban and subsequently the potential bans of Pokemon throughout generations. I may not have equal credentials to those who posted here before me but I did play SM UU almost to it's entirety. What is stupid about it is the tools it possesses and it's unmatched strength in the meta. Stall got called to be banned by Pif in the weather suspect which was just too late of a time to make a decision on such an important suspect. We did not have the luxury of time we do now. I was recently thinking about what specifically to ban in stall to nerf it and I think Blissey is the best of all options. The only other things to ban would be regenerator or Alomomola specifically and perhaps unaware which would open up the field to weaker sweepers to act as stall breakers. After all the core is Alo Bliss Quag. We suspected Scizor because of its centralization and how all players are forced to make sure their matchup vs it is good. Scizor is one single Pokemon and stall is an entire team. The contingencies you have to put in place are so much more significant and can be so much more damaging. Adaam mentioned 28 different Pokemon Blissey has the ability to counter or 1v1 (dependent on set and circumstances). 28 Pokemon... Stall is a constraint on building that requires sacrifices that can be detrimental vs another style. It has made the tier a chore to play and prep in. The only replay I possess that's good enough for use is Me vs. Serene Grace in Majors pools. I had suspected the use of stall so I prepped with one of the most interesting teams I have ever made which does not have much viability outside of a stall matchup. Fury Cutter Metronome Scizor really came in clutch. I use this example only to show the extent I went to to ensure a win vs stall. I am throwing my hat in the ring to support a stall nerf. I agree that Blissey is a good option but frankly I would back anything the community votes for. SM is my favorite tier and I would like it playable again.

Danke, Auf Wiedersehen!

 

[Lily]

personal thoughts: don't play a whole lot of sm outside of tests and usually don't build it but stall is stupid as shit and blissey does seem like the most logical place to tackle it since it's pretty much the only one that will have a massive, guaranteed impact. it's completely true that building in sm means either building a bad/fishy team that can beat stall or completely ignoring the stall matchup in your mind and hoping you just don't run into it. anyway, i'm mainly here to post this on behalf of Smallsmallrose, who gave her thoughts on discord:

I'm of the opinion that there's multiple ways to attack stall. Taking away Alofish takes away the best free pivot in the tier and button clickers like Mamo, and basically Choice Band anything make a lot more progress (Especially band Sciz, who basically just U-Turns everytime.) And pressures Blissey to be the wish passer, causing it 4MSS. Blissey takes away the catch all special wall that glues half the tier together and stall's best answer against status. Talking about Unaware goons is interesting because hot take: I actually think Pyukumuku is way more of a problem than Quagsire. Spdef Pyukumuku is what stopped "Basically any special attacker that beats Blissey" from being a stallbreaker. Stuff like Luke, Infernape, Celebi, Chandelure, and many more all became borderline worthless against stall bc of one mon. But banning Quag would also take away one of Stall's more dependable volt blockers and lets momentum based teams run train on stall. (Also, forcing the remaining Pyuk to run physdef so special anything that beats Blissey autowins vs stall again) Or if you were to go after the ability itself, basically anything that boosts becomes way more dangerous. I feel like Stall could still pull some interesting counters to this, like hazers/phasers, but those would be much easier for a strong wincon to play around. Especially if we're talking about gen 7 where Z-Moves can kill seemingly strong defensive answers from like 60.

I think of the options Alofish is the worst, its a slap on the wrist at best and many stalls have shown they can just about squeak by without it. It would make stallbreakers specifically stopped by Alo more consistent, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily the best angle. Blissey is the best option on paper to completely gut the playstyle and send it to the depths of hell never to return, but this also comes at the cost of one of the tier's cornerstone special walls. Even outside of stall, the tier as a whole loses the best specs anything switchin as well as a great emergency check to certain setup mons. As much of a Snorlax enthusiast I am, I'm not sure I'm ready to live in a UU where it's the best Specs Prim answer. Unaware has a chance to not completely gut the playstyle while still wholly changing the face of it and bringing it in line. Plus, I think it'd be less impactful on the rest of the tier than removing Blissey. Many non-stall builds use Blissey as glue against the unforgiving threat-stacked metagame. But literally who is using Pyukumuku or Quagsire outside of stall? These aspects would phase out of the metagame anyway if stall suffered too much from a Blissey ban, So I think it would be worth testing them first to see if Blissey could be preserved.

I don't necessarily disagree with the idea that cutting out Unaware would pretty much kill stall off entirely, but I'm not sure if it's the way to go - it'd require a bit more work at least, and I'm not sure how it'd apply to tiers lower than UU (I think? transitivity is dead for oldgen tiers but idk). Personally still in favour of a Blissey ban but this is an avenue worth discussing even if it's already been done to death.

 

[ramolost]

hey
this thread is kinda dead and its sad.
i wont explain why a bliss ban would be good because pak viv and adaam already did and they did it way better than i could ever. just refer to their posts for that.
however, i always loved sm uu and played it quite a lot (2-0 en uupl...), therefore i have experience with tier. stall always been broken like adaam pointed out and banning bliss would be a good thing. idt i ever talked to someone about sm uu and they said that stall was fine. however for whatever reasons, we all agree that stall is broken but no actions are taken. i was big on the suspect stall when pif started with it few years ago idk idr but council didnt took any action but w.e., what is done is done. now that we can actually do something we should.
wont re-read my post so might be messy. didnt read the 2 posts above coz losers but to resume :
i 100% support a blissey test

 

[pokemonisfun]

We were split on what to do in an attempt to only nerf the playstyle by testing Alomomola and not Blissey. As a result, nothing happened. I do not want to make this mistake again. It is obvious that Blissey is the cornerstone of stall. Blissey walls a massive portion of the metagame, provides Stealth Rock, Heal Bell support, absorbs Toxic with Natural Cure, and is surprisingly hard to switch into with Toxic + Stoss. Blissey is the best Stall Pokemon, and thus should be suspect tested.

I agree with this part, as well as everything else in Adaam's post. Stall is clearly broken in terms of how strong it is. Since stall isn't a Pokemon and Smogon generally does Pokemon bans, we should make clear we are not banning Blissey because it is broken but it is the clearest way to ban or nerf a broken playstyle, that also happens to fall under Smogon's preference for not complex bans (Pokemon bans).

Here are some of my stalls from gen7uu https://pokepast.es/3e07d2f96b6e5d51, it's quite clear there is no way you can prepare for all of them while keeping a viable team. The most obvious common Pokemon link between them is Blissey and the bottom three that don't run Blissey are arguably just balance teams. Common stall breakers like NP Infernape and NP Celebi don't even threaten some teams - SpDef Pyukumuku alone can easily beat both.

Some things I'd like to see to make this discussion complete and clear:

1) If there is any opposition to banning or nerfing stall? If not, we should proceed with a vote, which I won't seem to qualify for but will support
2) Are we banning or are we nerfing stall? This is relatively new, styles have been nerfed before like the ongoing Screens discussion and previous weather discussions, but stall is a playstyle that has no such defining element as Screens or Drought ability/weather rock. We are fortunate there is a clear target in Blissey in gen7uu, but we need to make clear for the sake of future decision makers if we are banning or nerfing and why.
3) Make clear we are banning Blissey not because Blissey is broken but because of Adaam's quoted post above
4) Make clear we do not try to crutch playstyles, we are banning Blissey knowing that this may make stall unviable but we do so anyways because stall is broken
5) We should acknowledge and make clear that the UU Council in gen7uu created precedence we no longer follow when they decided to vote based on wanting to prop stall up. We should make clear we only tier to ban broken and uncompetitive elements.
6) Hogg said in this post https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...r-me-weather-test.3653094/page-7#post-8227068 that Pearl posted the "semi" official reasoning on why stall was not banned. I just looked for it and cannot find his post. Please tag me and I will edit if it exists somewhere or a similar post exists. I understand though, as part of that discussion, a significant element was "it was too late" in the generation to do tiering. Seeing as now we are allowed to tier old gens, I would like for the precedence set by this decision of "it was too late" to be banished now and forever and anyone who posts it again will not be allowed to take part in tiering (suspect votes)

 

[avarice]

for the sake of discussion, i wanted to advocate for an unaware ban like Smallsmallrose mentioned. Quagsire and Pyukumuku outside of full stall is has never really been successful (with the exception of Corazan 's iconic mismagius ft quagbliss I suppose). i get how this could be seen as dancing around the issue but Blissey actually contributes to the tier and allows for unique structures. Umbreon can't fill the void of Blissey on these sort of teams with shit like Terrakion about. Even Cobalion (sewage) becomes a menace as Alomomola cannot run Knock Toxic when it can't pass to Quag but... Slowbro? And like rose mentioned all the Nasty Plot users (Celebi, Infernape, Lucario, etc) become infinitely more threatening with no spdef Pyukumuku in play. in pokemonisfun 's teamdump there were 2 teams without an unaware mon and 3 without Blissey (tho some are more balance and somewhat reflect the style hadn't totally died with mega venu ban) and the teams without use haze Mantine, a mon that simply isn't strong enough to replace Blissey in tier where voltturn is so relevant. i want to emphasize preserving Blissey isn't about an attempt to save stall but rather a strong mon that gives more flexibility to prepare against Pokemon like Primarina and Latias. I see the appeal in deleting the best special wall immediately but there's no time restriction now so it's difficult for me to understand why it's not worth taking the less drastic approach toward the issue.

one example I read in Adaam's post w blissey as the cornerstone mon should b nuked was mmq vs shark on spikes. i find this pretty interesting given how I do remember people regretting vote dnb on mmq when it was given its suspect test (with the amount of people running the shitty Z set). resuspect was even mentioned somewhere (tho idt by council) yet nobody at this time complained about shark since mmq was the new element. This is obviously different since mmq also works outside of HO on niche BO teams like mega shark can, but I don't think it's an incorrect mindset in regards of picking an element to ban. things together can overwhelm a tier ie doomer n sun.

ultimately I don't feel too strongly on saving blissey (obvious pros of being lazy in fat prep) but hope unaware ban is at least considered (tho ik it's a tall order banning an ability instead of a mon) since I believe it has the least impact on the rest of the tier. yes there is no restrictions with banning things now however with that rhetoric couldn't you even go all the way back to scizor, malt or latias suspects where plenty were influenced by the timing?

e: yes banning quag/pyuku together is cleaner and would be better policy wise if going this route my mistake. unaware just came to mind first as it is what makes them usable in the first place and banning them as mons somewhat opens the question of "is only one unaware user overwhelming". other posts have outlined how blissey itself isn't broken but rather stall as a whole so there shouldn't be a difference in what element.

 

[pokemonisfun]

for the sake of discussion, i wanted to advocate for an unaware ban like Smallsmallrose mentioned. Quagsire and Pyukumuku outside of full stall is has never really been successful (with the exception of Corazan 's iconic mismagius ft quagbliss I suppose). i get how this could be seen as dancing around the issue but Blissey actually contributes to the tier and allows for unique structures.

I don't think it's permissible under Smogon tiering policy to make decisions based on what a Pokemon contributes to the tier. We only ban if a Pokemon is broken or uncompetitive. If we use your logic, we could unban Xurkitree since it contributes to the tier by nerfing stall. If Primarina becomes broken after Blissey is hypothetically banned, Primarina will be tested next.

Also, why not just ban Quagsire and Pyukumuku if you want to ban Unaware so much? Isn't this the more obvious step?

 

[Pearl]

I agree with this part, as well as everything else in Adaam's post. Stall is clearly broken in terms of how strong it is. Since stall isn't a Pokemon and Smogon generally does Pokemon bans, we should make clear we are not banning Blissey because it is broken but it is the clearest way to ban or nerf a broken playstyle, that also happens to fall under Smogon's preference for not complex bans (Pokemon bans).

Here are some of my stalls from gen7uu https://pokepast.es/3e07d2f96b6e5d51, it's quite clear there is no way you can prepare for all of them while keeping a viable team. The most obvious common Pokemon link between them is Blissey and the bottom three that don't run Blissey are arguably just balance teams. Common stall breakers like NP Infernape and NP Celebi don't even threaten some teams - SpDef Pyukumuku alone can easily beat both.

Some things I'd like to see to make this discussion complete and clear:

1) If there is any opposition to banning or nerfing stall? If not, we should proceed with a vote, which I won't seem to qualify for but will support
2) Are we banning or are we nerfing stall? This is relatively new, styles have been nerfed before like the ongoing Screens discussion and previous weather discussions, but stall is a playstyle that has no such defining element as Screens or Drought ability/weather rock. We are fortunate there is a clear target in Blissey in gen7uu, but we need to make clear for the sake of future decision makers if we are banning or nerfing and why.
3) Make clear we are banning Blissey not because Blissey is broken but because of Adaam's quoted post above
4) Make clear we do not try to crutch playstyles, we are banning Blissey knowing that this may make stall unviable but we do so anyways because stall is broken
5) We should acknowledge and make clear that the UU Council in gen7uu created precedence we no longer follow when they decided to vote based on wanting to prop stall up. We should make clear we only tier to ban broken and uncompetitive elements.
6) Hogg said in this post https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...r-me-weather-test.3653094/page-7#post-8227068 that Pearl posted the "semi" official reasoning on why stall was not banned. I just looked for it and cannot find his post. Please tag me and I will edit if it exists somewhere or a similar post exists. I understand though, as part of that discussion, a significant element was "it was too late" in the generation to do tiering. Seeing as now we are allowed to tier old gens, I would like for the precedence set by this decision of "it was too late" to be banished now and forever and anyone who posts it again will not be allowed to take part in tiering (suspect votes)

Didn't originally intend on posting in this thread but I figured that I can give you a hand with this. No idea where my original post about stall was either, but this was my reasoning to not touch stall in a nutshell back then:

During the last summer, many people brought up how absurdly good stall was in the UU metagame, and that action was required to prevent it from dominating as hard as it was. Even though I never expressed my thoughts on this whole ordeal formally (I tried my best to articulate my thoughts through the UU Discord, but I admit I probably should have gone beyond that), I believe now is a good time to talk a little bit about how this came to be, and how I feel about it. One of the arguments that was brought up at the time was that it was extremely easy to rack up wins with this play style in a ladder environment. This is factual, but analyzing this statement with a sole metagame in mind is extremely reductive, since stall as a play style is just superior at a base level for ladder play for a multitude of reasons: for starters, it has the biggest amount of autopilot wins out of any team archetype one could possibly use, which means some games will simply be switching back and forth between Blissey and Alomomola as Stealth Rock and Toxic kill every single Pokemon as they're unable to put a dent onto anything, a luxury neither bulky offense nor balance have, while hyper offense forces its user to use their brain anytime a Scizor is on the opposing team, and that shit had like 40% usage by the end of the generation. On top of that, it is arguably the best play style at capitalizing on opposing mistakes, considering that any progress is fairly easy to mitigate as soon as the opponent loses momentum, between the squad's two Defog users, Alomomola's Regenerator and Wish support, meaning that whenever there's a respectable skill gap between two people in a given game of Pokemon, stall tends to further amplify that, which combined with the first point, on average, a competent person using stall is going to be winning more often than a competent person using any other play style, as the latter has a bigger chance of facing match ups that are tougher to overcome or simply getting screwed up by a multitude of factors which aren't entirely reliant on skill expression, regardless of the tier that is being talked about. With that said though, I do believe UU stall went through a period in which it was way better than stall has any business being in any tier, but the solutions available to handle this problem were either straight up bad (banning Blissey and killing a multitude of bulky offense and balance teams that rely on it, while also getting rid of one of the best answers to Pokemon that are a pain in the ass to handle overall, such as Primarina and Latias) or weren't guaranteed to fix the issue at all (banning Alomomola or even one of Quagsire or Pyukumuku), while the death of stall as a team archetype (or its nerfing rather) was not guaranteed to improve the metagame as a whole at all. Just imagine if Primarina and Terrakion teams were able to exist without having to worry about sacrificing this match up at all. On top of that, I can't help but feel that the point we reached was not just a consequence of stall's components being too good in a vacuum, but the metagame in its entirety being a tad too unkind towards threats that were in fact good at handling this kind of teams. What I'm trying to say with this is that it is extremely hard to build functional squads against the rest of the tier with Pokemon such as Lucario and Haxorus, while more reliable stall answers like Infernape, Heracross and Celebi can be a little too restrictive in the whole team building process (having a Fire-type that handles Scizor so poorly or even a Grass-type that isn't Amoonguss tends to reflect poorly in other match ups that aren't stall).

tl;dr:
- ladder dominance was a poor argument in this specific case (IMHO);
- banning/nerfing stall isn't guaranteed to improve the metagame;
- banning blissey doesn't impact stall exclusively and also erases multiple other team archetypes that aren't stall from the metagame entirely;
- stall's dominance isn't exclusively related to the strength of each of its components but also to the fact that dedicated stall countermeasures are extremely hard to incorporate onto teams for other reasons (e.g. scizor existing, pursuit aerodactyl etc).

With that said though, I admit that I haven't played this metagame (or competitive Pokemon for that matter) ever since SS got released and my authority on the matter is probably as relevant as a sack of potatoes nowadays, so I'm not gonna be an Oglemi and get in the way of progress. I personally admit that I made a fair bunch of mistakes back when I was the tier leader and the youngins are free to fix them as they see fit in order to create a metagame that they personally have fun playing. If my opinion still matters for anything though, I believe that it would probably be better to look at Scizor before dealing with stall because (IMO) a Scizor ban could potentially open up a lot more options in the teambuilder that would make stall less dominant in a vacuum. Also I'm not even gonna lie: the thought of a metagame where people are free to slap offensive Primarina, Terrakion and other offensive demons onto teams without having to worry about the stall match up in any capacity scares me a little, but that's for sure a discussion for another day if anything.

To sum it up, I'm not opposed to the idea of testing things in any capacity. In fact, I'll gladly support experimentation and therefore a potential stall test. If stall were to get targetted in particular, I still feel like Unaware/Mola > Blissey because it would have the least amount of impact on other playstyles, but my gut says taking a look into other problematic aspects of the metagame beforehand is more likely to wield positive results in the long run, although I could 100% be wrong on this so feel free to ignore it if you want.

 

[pokemonisfun]

With that said though, I admit that I haven't played this metagame (or competitive Pokemon for that matter) ever since SS got released and my authority on the matter is probably as relevant as a sack of potatoes nowadays, so I'm not gonna be an Oglemi and get in the way of progress.

Thanks for your post but I wouldn't say opposing is getting "in the way of progress." It really would be nice to just air everything out, so if we see there truly is little or no opposition, we can move forward without issue. If there is opposition, we debate; that's still progress.

As for Scizor, I don't think we should do that since Scizor already had a public test. Thus, the precedent I'd like to set is:

1) We can tier to nerf playstyles
2) We do so first by banning the most obviously simple (Pokemon) element of the playstyle. If that's not feasible because the playstyle has too many broken elements, we can do complex bans but make them as small as possible (Light Clay for screens)
3) For old gens, we vote on things first that have not been voted on by the public when the old gen was current. We can revisit things that have been voted on publicly later.
4) We are okay greatly inhibiting or essentially eliminating playstyles when we ban if we ban broken elements only
5) Even in old gens, we only ban broken elements, without factoring second order effects* because second order effects are too difficult to determine

*Second order effects = effects of a tiering decision that are not directly related to the tiering decision. For example, Blissey getting banned will make stall worse - that's a first order effect (effect of a tiering decision directly related to the tiering decision). The second order effect would be Primarina getting better because it's counter is removed. Unfortunately, Blissey ban weakening stall isn't the best example of a first order effect. A true first order effect would be Blissey ban making Blissey impossible to use. But we aren't banning Blissey because Blissey is broken, we are trying to nerf a playstyle which means we are already in a second order effect. If you want to argue for including second order effects, I think this is the best argument you can make - a playstyle nerf is already inherently a second order effect.

Point 5 I just wrote above seems controversial. I think Smallsmallrose avarice and Pearl all mentioned something that they would disagree with it.

Avarice said in his post for banning Quagsire and Pyukumuku instead of Blissey:

"Preserving Blissey isn't about an attempt to save stall but rather a strong mon that gives more flexibility to prepare against Pokemon like Primarina and Latias"

He's talking about second order effects essentially which I don't think we should factor into because 1) it's impossible to determine all of them and 2) why stop at second order? Why can't this go endlessly to "well Latias gets better so that means Infernape gets worse so that means Celebi gets better so that means..."

I hope everyone agrees with me and we can just vote but I doubt it, but also I do think the ball should be in the "ban Quagsire/Pyukumuku" side's court now.

 

[Adaam]

i want to emphasize preserving Blissey isn't about an attempt to save stall but rather a strong mon that gives more flexibility to prepare against Pokemon like Primarina and Latias. I see the appeal in deleting the best special wall immediately but there's no time restriction now so it's difficult for me to understand why it's not worth taking the less drastic approach toward the issue.

If stall were to get targetted in particular, I still feel like Unaware/Mola > Blissey because it would have the least amount of impact on other playstyles,

I want to address these thoughts specifically because the argument interests me. I agree 100% that banning Alomomola or Quagsire will be less intrusive to the overall meta. They are rarely seen outside of stall. Why is that though? It's because they are not very good Pokemon in UU, so again, targeting them is a hacky solution.

It should not be our tiering goal to minimize impact on the tier with a ban. Bans are inherent metagame shifters, as the targeted Pokemon are really, really good. If they weren't, they would not be tested. If they are really good, then they are going to be used a lot and affect a lot of teams when they leave. Why is Blissey unique, compared to other Pokemon we banned? Blissey checks Primarina, but Buzzwole checked Scizor and Mamoswine and Terrakion. Maybe we should unban it and look at Buzzwole's best partners to ban instead? Latias was one of SS UU's top used Pokemon and checked so many building boxes, yet we banned it anyway. If Blissey's ban makes a bunch of special attackers unmanageable, then we can target them after (although I severely doubt that there exist Pokemon that are "not broken" solely because of Blissey's presence).

I believe that it would probably be better to look at Scizor before dealing with stall because (IMO) a Scizor ban could potentially open up a lot more options in the teambuilder that would make stall less dominant in a vacuum. Also I'm not even gonna lie: the thought of a metagame where people are free to slap offensive Primarina, Terrakion and other offensive demons onto teams without having to worry about the stall match up in any capacity scares me a little, but that's for sure a discussion for another day if anything.

Echoing what pif said, Scizor had its time in the sun and was voted to stay and I am strongly against revisiting that decision. Even so, this thread is meant for Blissey (or other stall options), so I don't want others to chime in on Scizor, Latias, Altaria etc. Fwiw, I don't see how banning Scizor will do anything besides buff stall by removing Pursuit CB Zor from the tiny threatlist stall had to deal with.

 

[kumiko]

gonna preface this by saying I'm not convinced stall isn't broken. The playstyle is insanely strong and it's probably the most powerful in SM UU compared to any other metagame I have sufficient knowledge of. However, I can't really find myself supporting it after reading this thread. I find the majority of arguments here to be incredibly lazy and biased. The arguments in this thread can quite literally be translated to: stall is an incredibly good playstyle, but I didn't prepare for it in this tournament, so I lost to it. Like, how can you simultaneously think that the playstyle needs to be nerfed because of how good it is but then not acknowledge it when preparing for a tournament game? This is like making it to high ladder during SM UU, laddering with a team 6-0d by stall, and then running into the UU Discord/PS Room to complain about how broken stall is once you match up against pif and get farmed with the swiftness.

There is also a crazy amount of weight placed upon how ~impossible~ it is to prepare for stall which just isn't true. I'm not gonna break down every game Adaam linked in the OP, but I will do a couple.

TDK vs robjr - L. Required a Thunder miss turn 42 for rob to have a chance despite using stallbreakers like CM Coba and Superpower Nidoking.

This is quite a poor analysis of the game. For one, hitting two Thunders is not even in my favor, but considering the fact I can recover after missing the first one does mean it's far more likely for me to end up on top. But this is entirely ignoring the fact my Latias was burnt by the very first Scald used by Slowbro, thus meaning I was now able to avoid Toxic from both Blissey and Rotom-H, which would have otherwise prevented my Latias from doing anything. On top of this, saying this CM Cobalion set is a stallbreaker is quite an exaggeration. In fact, this core would not have been remotely good vs the typical Articuno + Aerodactyl team I am frequent to use. Articuno stonewalls Nidoking and CM Cobalion would not be able to break Gligar + Aerodactyl. His team was not well equipped for stall, but yet it was able to beat stall.

Gondra vs rozes - W. In this game vivalospride stalled Barclay. Despite facing Future Sight + AV Shao, a theoretical awful MU, stall wins.

This is a very skewed analysis. For one, Gondra did not play this game optimally; as soon as SR goes up for him, rozes has no good way of stopping the Regenerator core, but he immediately lets his Slowbro get Toxiced and it takes a long time for SR to go up. rozes also has no way of stopping SR, considering the setter is Nidoqueen. The Slowbro is tossed very prematurely, to which rozes very conveniently dodges a HJK, which would have collected a kill in a game that was very much so not over yet.

rozes vs Bushtush - L. No fucking clue how Venomoth ended on this win screen, I will admit this was a tough mu. Bush's team, however, hard loses to any Pyukumuku variants of stall.

Bushtush was my player, and considered how hard rozes was pushing to play early, I knew he was going to stall. I made sure Bush used a team that had a very easy matchup vs stall, but Bush botched the matchup quite hard, but rozes was kind enough to donate more than just the game. Venomoth completely trucks stalls and the team has a superb matchup against stall. Pyukumuku stall is completely nonexistent and frankly I don't understand why you would ever use it in this metagame.

Christo vs Empo - W. Another nightmare MU for stall that it finds a war to win. NP Azelf, DD Gatr, and Facade M-Altaria are not enough to win.

A nightmare matchup? In what world? I'll give you the fact NP Azelf and Facade Mega Altaria can be good against stall, but how on earth is DD Feraligatr? Did you forget Alomomola was a thing or something? The other two are also far from dedicated stallbreakers; in fact the best thing against stall on Empo's team is the SR + Taunt Krookodile, which was tossed very prematurely and gave Christo free rein. Facade Mega Altaria needs Pokemon partnered with it that force the Water-types to Scald, things like SD Scizor and the like, not a Scarf Scizor. Facade Mega Altaria will never be enough to break stall on its own with this kind of team support, and NP Azelf can be easily handled as you saw.

sjneider vs Empo - L. Empo makes a misplay and Scalds an unrevealed Altaria. Gets swept by Facade (F).

Again, my player. sjneider was equipped with a team very solid vs stall; two Pokemon that basically force Quagsire and Alomomola to click their status inducing moves in Bewear and Scizor, to which the Quagsire eventually Scalds the Scizor as it U-turns to Altaria, which solidifies the stall breaking of the team. Calling it a "misplay" when Empo most certainly has to Scald at some point is a very warped interpretation.

TDK vs Freeroamer - W. Another cruise victory and also fuck Carson my god.

Did you watch this game? I had an absolutely horrendous matchup, to which I was, quite frankly, given the win by two very abhorrent plays from Freeroamer. If Crawdaunt never takes a burn, there is no universe where I would pull out this matchup. Even with the burn in mind, I should still end up losing, but Freeroamer makes a very needlessly aggressive play and brings the Aerodactyl in on Articuno as I Freeze-Dry, to which the game is promptly forfeited. No offense to Freeroamer here of course, but this is not an example of stall being broken, but just a very blatantly botched game.

As for Scizor, I don't think we should do that since Scizor already had a public test.

Echoing what pif said, Scizor had its time in the sun and was voted to stay and I am strongly against revisiting that decision. Even so, this thread is meant for Blissey (or other stall options), so I don't want others to chime in on Scizor, Latias, Altaria etc. Fwiw, I don't see how banning Scizor will do anything besides buff stall by removing Pursuit CB Zor from the tiny threatlist stall had to deal with.

Let's not front. Scizor was given a last second "well might as well" suspect test far too late into the metagame. Please go back and count all the posts and messages where people say things like "it's too late for such a drastic change to the metagame" all over. I'm not saying Scizor absolutely should have been banned, but I quickly gave up my hopes due to the general public opinion. I had wanted a Scizor test for over a year prior to when it happened, to which I was brushed off. When it happened, it was far too late and no one invested in the metagame wanted to make a change like that; I didn't even really want to at that point. Banning Scizor would create a huge domino effect that was far too late to engage in. The test was posted May 20th, and ended June 4th. The release of SS was November 15th. Say Scizor was banned, to which we would immediately test Mega Altaria, to which we would have to test Latias promptly after. This would give us about one month for the metagame to settle before the release of SS, to which now only boomers such as us will care about the tier. It's very illogical to think that Scizor was given a fair test.

Also, an aside; banning Scizor most definitely opens up room to beat stall because it eliminates Scizor from being used on stall (which is insanely good) and also frees up general teambuilding so much. Teambuilding is so restricted in this metagame entirely because of Scizor, not stall. But, anyway.

I do not support making any changes to UU at this point. I do not believe banning Blissey would be a positive change for the tier, and I am very against any kind of other nerf due to the details involved with them. I think every Pokemon on stall has a very real application on other playstyles with the exception of the Unaware Pokemon, but I absolutely do not want to ban them due to the fact the goal isn't to make stall unviable. We aren't here to pick and choose it so a playstyle that is very clearly good just gets eliminated off the planet because people don't want to prepare for it. This thread, in addition to every other discussion on stall, makes it abundantly clear that no one thinks there's a single Pokemon utilized on stall that's simply broken or needs to be banned, but rather the goal is only to eliminate the playstyle. I do not believe this is the proper way to go about a ban and I do not think banning a single element of stall would have a positive impact. Blissey is an incredible Pokemon and fits on more than just stall, and without it I think the metagame would become incredibly stagnant and the only types of teams that would be remotely consistent would be offenses, which is a far worse outcome than what we have currently. I do not think anyone finds Alomomola to be the issue, but it is very easily abused due to weakness to status and general lack of power. It also fits on many playstyles and is an asset to more than just stall. I've already explained why I'm not fond of banning the Unaware Pokemon. The other stall Pokemon I don't think I need to explain why they fit on other playstyles.

Ultimately, I think the anti-stall crusade is incredibly lazy. Do I think we have the best metagame we could have? I'm not convinced of that, but I absolutely dread a world where we just ban stall and accept what's to come with nothing to come after. Even with Hogg lifting the lock on old gen tiering, that doesn't mean we are to be actively tiering these metagames as if they're current. We should keep the changes to a minimum, and I do not believe this falls under the same scope as ORAS Conkeldurr, for example. I do not think any single change would make the metagame be in a better off state and I do not want us to be actively making multiple changes to a tier that is just fine.

 

[pokemonisfun]

Generally speaking I agree 100% with you on Scizor TDK. I also don't think Scizor was treated fairly and would like another test for it. But you should make another thread for that, which of course takes time and effort. Message me if you don't feel like it and I'll set time aside to. However you also say:

I do not support making any changes to UU at this point.

This seems to contradict, in spirit at least:

Let's not front. Scizor was given a last second "well might as well" suspect test far too late into the metagame. Please go back and count all the posts and messages where people say things like "it's too late for such a drastic change to the metagame" all over. I'm not saying Scizor absolutely should have been banned, but I quickly gave up my hopes due to the general public opinion. I had wanted a Scizor test for over a year prior to when it happened, to which I was brushed off. When it happened, it was far too late and no one invested in the metagame wanted to make a change like that; I didn't even really want to at that point. Banning Scizor would create a huge domino effect that was far too late to engage in. The test was posted May 20th, and ended June 4th. The release of SS was November 15th. Say Scizor was banned, to which we would immediately test Mega Altaria, to which we would have to test Latias promptly after. This would give us about one month for the metagame to settle before the release of SS, to which now only boomers such as us will care about the tier. It's very illogical to think that Scizor was given a fair test.

Also, an aside; banning Scizor most definitely opens up room to beat stall because it eliminates Scizor from being used on stall (which is insanely good) and also frees up general teambuilding so much. Teambuilding is so restricted in this metagame entirely because of Scizor, not stall. But, anyway.

I don't think saying how Scizor was treated unfairly is productive if you wish to take no action on it anyways. Frankly I could have taken plenty of potshots against our council but I refrain from doing so in the interest of productivity.

But hey, I tried :(

 

[Adaam]

Like, how can you simultaneously think that the playstyle needs to be nerfed because of how good it is but then not acknowledge it when preparing for a tournament game? This is like making it to high ladder during SM UU, laddering with a team 6-0d by stall, and then running into the UU Discord/PS Room to complain about how broken stall is once you match up against pif and get farmed with the swiftness.

There is also a crazy amount of weight placed upon how ~impossible~ it is to prepare for stall which just isn't true. I'm not gonna break down every game Adaam linked in the OP, but I will do a couple.

How do you prepare for stall then? I am stumped, and so are many other users. We have explained before how difficult it is, enumerated multiple "stallbreakers" and why they fail to do the job consistently, and nobody has still shown how to prepare for stall. Do we just use NP Celebi and call it a day?

I'm not gonna break down every game Adaam linked in the OP, but I will do a couple.

You didn't mention any of the hard stone wall 6-0s stall had, of which there were many, but that makes sense. The beatdowns were self-explantory. I admit I did not watch all 50 stall games in full because I don't want to hate my life. I don't see how a refutation of 6 of the many many games shows how our argument is lazy. Not to mention it missed the overall point of a 62% winrate for stall.

This is quite a poor analysis of the game. For one, hitting two Thunders is not even in my favor, but considering the fact I can recover after missing the first one does mean it's far more likely for me to end up on top. But this is entirely ignoring the fact my Latias was burnt by the very first Scald used by Slowbro, thus meaning I was now able to avoid Toxic from both Blissey and Rotom-H, which would have otherwise prevented my Latias from doing anything. On top of this, saying this CM Cobalion set is a stallbreaker is quite an exaggeration. In fact, this core would not have been remotely good vs the typical Articuno + Aerodactyl team I am frequent to use. Articuno stonewalls Nidoking and CM Cobalion would not be able to break Gligar + Aerodactyl. His team was not well equipped for stall, but yet it was able to beat stall.

Agreed. His team would be useless vs other stall variants. Which is one of my central points: it's impossible to prepare for all forms of stall! You say "His team was not well equipped for stall, but yet it was able to beat stall" as if this is the same as not preparing for Latias and getting swept by it.
Can you explain what stallbreakers exist that beat all stalls? Since CM Cobalion apparently is not one as it loses to the Cuno stall team.

Again, my player. sjneider was equipped with a team very solid vs stall; two Pokemon that basically force Quagsire and Alomomola to click their status inducing moves in Bewear and Scizor, to which the Quagsire eventually Scalds the Scizor as it U-turns to Altaria, which solidifies the stall breaking of the team. Calling it a "misplay" when Empo most certainly has to Scald at some point is a very warped interpretation.

You don't ever have to Scald the Scizor. It's a misplay to do so. He had EQ. Not to mention Empo blatantly Scalds the Altaria like turn 9. I I think he just didnt know Facade was a thing and any more experienced stall user wins this game easily.

Bushtush was my player, and considered how hard rozes was pushing to play early, I knew he was going to stall. I made sure Bush used a team that had a very easy matchup vs stall, but Bush botched the matchup quite hard, but rozes was kind enough to donate more than just the game. Venomoth completely trucks stalls and the team has a superb matchup against stall. Pyukumuku stall is completely nonexistent and frankly I don't understand why you would ever use it in this metagame.

The stall was extremely telegraphed and you prepared for it. What about the examples where the stall user surprised their opponent and cruised to a 6-0? How are we supposed to predict obvious stall attempts in the future? Consider my game against hs: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7uu-548824. Was hs supposed to call out the stall attempt and bust out his patented stall team? Or is it his fault for being “lazy” and “not preparing” for stall by using Pokémon walled by Blissey? If you look at most SM UU teams, you'll see that is the rule and not the exception that AloBliss is walling the majority of the team. What is expected of the average user in preparing for stall? Two dedicated stall breakers? Three? Or just one? Are there any stallbreakers that exist to handle all variants?

Disagree with the Pyuk statement as well. I've linked replays of it both in Snake and UU Classic and it putting in work.

So again I ask how do you prepare for stall? Are all the teams you use good vs stall, or do you accept you're going to lose if you see AloBliss on your screen? If I look at some SM teams you use, will they all be good vs stall? Do they all have a fighting chance against it? If not, is it reasonable to expect to have no chance against a playstyle? I respect the opinion that we want to minimize changes to our old gen tiers, and if the arguments made here are not convincing enough to ban Blissey then so be it. But please don't call the argument for wanting to weaken stall lazy when you have provided zero counterplay for it and admitted yourself that X Y and Z stallbreakers are useless against other stall teams. You dread a world where we ban stall and don't do anything afterwards, but I'm more afraid of the one where we openly accept it as a free win playstyle and shrug our shoulders.

 

[pokemonisfun]

Bushtush was my player, and considered how hard rozes was pushing to play early, I knew he was going to stall. I made sure Bush used a team that had a very easy matchup vs stall, but Bush botched the matchup quite hard, but rozes was kind enough to donate more than just the game. Venomoth completely trucks stalls and the team has a superb matchup against stall. Pyukumuku stall is completely nonexistent and frankly I don't understand why you would ever use it in this metagame.

I just realized you posted this and I want to answer you in good faith because I know you're invested in the tier.

Firstly, I won the most recent UU classic with Pyukumuku stall so it does exist:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7uu-518386

To answer your question of "why you would ever use it" is it beats the following breakers, that I listed here two years ago: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...anking-thread-v3.3641346/page-14#post-8149532

1) NP Heal Bell Togekiss
2) NP Azelf
3) Sub CM Chandelure
4) NP Infernape
5) NP Lucario
6) CM Reuniclus
7) Superpower Nidoking
8) CM Psyshock Latias
9) Block Slowbro (only with Rest unless Slowbro runs CM)
10) NP Giga Drain Celebi
11) Sub Gengar
12) Work Up Refresh Pidgeot
13) NP Houndoom w/o Taunt

 

[rs]

As someone that voted on UU stall and played SM UU for the entirety of its 'current generation' lifespan, I thought I should post something about it. But anyways, I heavily support a UU stall nerf, whatever that may be. Pretty much all has been said as to why stall is overbearing in the posts above, so won't really get into that.

My first choice immediately goes to Unaware the ability THEN to Blissey. I don't see banning Alomomola as a valid option anymore considering that it is definitely the weakest nerf out of the 3, and it honestly probably wouldn't do much in the grand scheme of things. When it was first discussed in SM council near the end of the generation, I advocated for the ability to get tested over the likes of Blissey/Alomomola because of the net positives that would be brought to the tier if said ability could be banned, but it was never really an option that got enough support. The main draw of banning unaware is that it's an immediate nerf to the playstyle and doesn't have any sort of effect on other playstyles, which makes it minimally invasive to the tier as a whole (which should really be the goal for messing with/changing old gens). Even though I know non-pokemon bans aren't usually the best way to go about things in a tiering sense (see: Drought > Mega Houndoom being banned in SM UU but not SM RU), I do believe it's the best way to nerf stall while also having a net positive impact on the rest of the tier.

As for Blissey, I think it's just a necessary evil like its offensive counterpart Scizor. In a sense the meta warped around it in a way that it fits on almost every playstyle (like Scizor), and it checks a big part of the metagame (also like Scizor). It also eases teambuilding for BO/Balance squads in an extremely offensive tier by being one of the more reliable checks to mons like Lati, Hydreigon, and Prim. I get the simplicity in wanting to ban it and wouldn't be opposed to it, but I also think it would have an overall negative effect on the tier and would also be way more intrusive than most old gen tiering decisions.

tldr Unaware > Blissey, but not opposed to Blissey since something DEFINITELY needs to be done

e since pif asked: Would prefer banning unaware completely rather than Quag/Pyukumuku individually because I think Unaware is the most problematic part of the playstyle and both of them on their own can do way too much for it w/ Unaware. Not to mention the messiness of banning a PU mon in Pyu from UU but I digress

 

[Hogg]

I haven't really commented here yet because I haven't been playing much SM since the release of SS, but I suppose it's worth chiming in. I voted to move forward with a suspect on the original stall vote, because like others have mentioned here, running stall was so ridiculously drawback-free in late SM. I'd definitely support some kind of action on it now. My own preference at the time was Alomomola, both because it felt like a lower-impact ban overall and because I didn't think that Blissey on its own was the heart of what made stall so overwhelming. But if the general consensus is that Blissey is a better element to focus on, I'm fine with that. For what it's worth I also think that stall will still be viable with either one of these elements removed, it just will introduce more drawbacks.

 

[pokemonisfun]

Posting for PDT, who played gen7uu in the most recent UUPL:

Don't have a badge to reply in policy review, I won't speak too much on this, but stall is incredibly restricting on the builder in SM UU. It often means weakening the matchups vs. bulky offense and hyper offense structures that have been spammed since the development of the current meta. I believe Blissey or Alomomola are the main causes behind it, in my opinion fat can still be viable with Unaware users allowed just not quite as consistent. I think a lot more creativity versus the balance and offense matchups can be developed through a bit more freedom in the builder and would be healthy for the meta.

 

[pokemonisfun]

Two points:

1) I'll address a question that was raised to me by Serene Grace: why are we taking action on stall now instead of when it was a current gen? Pak basically answers that here:

I originally voted to not do anything about stall toward the end of the gen. The reasoning can be found here, and honestly, I do stand by it. However, to me a big point of emphasis was that of trying to preserve stall in some capacity as stated by hogg before. Yeah it kind of sounds like a noble cause, but what adaam said in the op did resonate with me. You don’t make small nerfs to address whatever other broken element in a tier. There’s no denying that stall in sm uu is ridiculous. I even agreed at the time but there didn’t seem to be a good balance to strike in my mind, as mentioned in that post.

But yeah, more time has passed by, it’s only become more apparent what kind of hold stall has on tournament play. As we all know, best of 1s are absolute dog shit for a game with as much variance as this one, and stall is so overbearing that you almost can’t reasonably hope to cover it without making a dedicated effort to do so.

So he gives two reasons, 1) we no longer are trying to tier with the goal of keeping stall a viable playstyle in mind, we only tier to ban broken or unhealthy elements of the game and 2) it's become more apparent it's broken in tournament play (well I don't know, I think I showed plenty of tournament replays before, but I won't begrudge this point).

A third reason Pak didn't mention is that with the tiering on old gen lock, we are no longer subscribing to the idea it's too late to tier -at the end of gen7uu as TDK points out, people were afraid to make big decisions because they thought the metagame could not change and recover in time after a change (e.g. no time to ban hypothetically broken Primarina if Blissey got banned at the end).

Let's not front. Scizor was given a last second "well might as well" suspect test far too late into the metagame. Please go back and count all the posts and messages where people say things like "it's too late for such a drastic change to the metagame" all over. I'm not saying Scizor absolutely should have been banned, but I quickly gave up my hopes due to the general public opinion. I had wanted a Scizor test for over a year prior to when it happened, to which I was brushed off. When it happened, it was far too late and no one invested in the metagame wanted to make a change like that; I didn't even really want to at that point. Banning Scizor would create a huge domino effect that was far too late to engage in. The test was posted May 20th, and ended June 4th. The release of SS was November 15th. Say Scizor was banned, to which we would immediately test Mega Altaria, to which we would have to test Latias promptly after. This would give us about one month for the metagame to settle before the release of SS, to which now only boomers such as us will care about the tier. It's very illogical to think that Scizor was given a fair test.

Because stall's council vote took place on September, 5th 2019, after Scizor's public vote on June 3rd, 2019 it's fair to say that there was even less time for stall to be fairly considered. Now we have time to consider with the old gen tier lock gone and should no longer use this argument.

2) We need to resolve these issues still:

1) I'm sure TDK speaks for others when he wishes to not nerf stall. In a sentence, he just doesn't think stall is strong enough to need to be nerfed. I think all the work that's been done to argue against this has been done and we're not being productive anymore (perhaps we could mention TDK seems to not use enough stalls, considering Pyukumuku unviable when I consider it very viable, this might suggest his understanding of stall is limited to a smaller set and therefore less broken).

To be productive, I'd like to suggest this: for tiering old gens, we don't need to be unanimous in asking for a tiering change. Unless there are new points of opposition, we should feel comfortable knowing we will take a vote on one element of stall.

2) There's no agreement on whether we should factor the second order effects I mentioned earlier, the other metagame effects of a ban.

Actually, most seem to disagree:

Hogg says "My own preference [when gen7uu was current] was [to suspect] Alomomola, both because it felt like a lower-impact ban overall..."
Shiba says "The main draw of banning unaware is that it's an immediate nerf to the playstyle and doesn't have any sort of effect on other playstyles, which makes it minimally invasive to the tier as a whole (which should really be the goal for messing with/changing old gens)"
TDK says "I do not believe banning Blissey would be a positive change for the tier"

Although they don't agree on whether stall needs to be nerfed, they all factor in the total health of the metagame. I think Shiba makes a reasonable start to an argument - total health of the metagame should be factored in because it is an old gen.

I think we need guidance from policy leaders, and I will not hesitate to tag them if needed. The only guidance I see so far on how to tier old gens compared to current gens is this:

Just so that there’s an official policy ruling: we will be implementing the proposal from my previous post. The tier lock will be lifted for old gen lower tiers. If issues arise that require tiering changes in an old gen lower tier, a Policy Review thread should be created where the issue can be discussed. If there is significant support, we can move forward with a vote, using tournament results from official circuits and subforum team tours to generate voter lists.

This doesn't suggest to me we need to treat old gens significantly different than current gens. Hogg could have easily wrote the same thing about current gens: "If issues arise that require tiering changes in a current gen lower tier...".

Thus, I still think we should not factor in second order effects on the metagame and continue to tier as needed if stall's hypothetical nerf creates more broken threats. If you agree (and I acknowledge you might not) that we should not consider second order effects, then you'd generally agree Blissey still should still be the suspect.

 

[shiloh]

dont rlly have a horse in this race but i just wanted to touch on a point that adaam made rq

It should not be our tiering goal to minimize impact on the tier with a ban

while i do believe this is true for current generation tiers, i think this is the wrong viewpoint to have when it comes to old generation tiering. they are both very different in my opinion, in the fact that i think there has to be much more justification to have any kind of test for an older generation when compared to a current one. while hoggs post may not explicitly say that, the fact that the thread has to be created first and requires "significant" support behind it should mean that there is a higher bar when it comes to old generations tiering, more than likely @ the hands of the tier leaders + tiering heads.

we should be attempting to minimize impact on the old generation lower tiers as much as possible, because we will not have as much of a playerbase playing the tier year round / being able to develop the metagame in the ways a far impacting ban could have. if sm was still the current generation, there would be plenty of time for the meta to adapt, more tests and action to be taken in timely fashion, and less overall harmful impact on the tier compared to how the ban would be post generation. so yes, while our tiering goal for current generations should not be minimizing impact on the tier with a ban, i think that it should absolutely be the case when dealing with old generation lower tiers. especially in cases like this where there are more calls for dealing with the overall playstyle rather than the individual mon.

 

[Jaajgko]

I'm not sure how I feel about stall yet since I haven't been building since last year's UUPL but I do know that I don't support the idea of banning Blissey. First because of the aforementioned negative repercussions mentioned by Pearl. Second because I think that we should only ban mons that we deem broken or unhealthy, and nobody really made that argument yet. A ban should target the problematic elements, and here everybody seems to agree that it's the combination of Blissey, Quagsire and Alomomola. While we should generally avoid complex bans, I think it is really appropriate here, since the general consensus is that it's not one pokemon that is at fault (only that Blissey would be the most effective target), it doesn't make sense to me to risk worsening the tier by banning a pokemon that hasn't been argumented to be broken or unhealthy (at least not yet), and whose banning will impact other playstyles. If we want to nerf stall, my proposition is to complex ban the combination of Blissey, Alomomola and Quagsire and keep Blissey in the tier. I know it doesn't sound appealing but overly trying to make it simple by targeting the wrong element and risk ruining the tier sounds worse to me. Again, if you think that Blissey is broken or unhealthy, please make the argument, but with what's been written in this thread, it doesn't make sense to me.
Also idt my replay should've been included. My team is built around the offensive core of DD Altaria, Z-Moltres and SD Scizor, and supports it with heal bell and double defog. I won the game because I was able to chip my opponent's team until Altaria was able to sweep, not because my defensive core was able to maintain my opponent's offensive options.

 

[Adaam]

After some good discussion, I appear to be in the minority with wanting to suspect Blissey. I think it is the clear broken element of stall, but I will concede it is the most drastic of the 3 possible stall nerfs (the other being Alomomola or Unaware). Both TDK, rozes, and Shiba bring up a very valid point - despite the lock being lifted, SM UU is still and oldgen and we shouldn't be shaking the beehive too much. This philosophy hasn't been codified anywhere, but I think it is a fair assumption to make. So I will proceed from here assuming that when tiering old-gen low tiers, we should strive to make only necessary and low-impact changes.

That said, this thread is overwhelmingly agreeing that stall is a broken playstyle. The only naysayer is potentially TDK, who admits in his post that "I'm not convinced stall isn't broken." I consider this enough support to push forward with action, as I echo pokemonisfun's sentiment that we don't need absolute unanimous agreement to proceed. If the community does not actually want such a nerf, then the vote should reflect that.

My new proposal would be to test Quagsire. The benefits of simply Quagsire over Unaware/both Pyukumuku and Quagsire is that Quagsire is UU by usage, and I expect pushback from other tiers by targeting Pyukumuku. Pyukumuku stall IS good and is very viable, but Quagsire is the more splashable Unaware mon. Suspecting Quagsire also has the explicit approval of Pearl, Shiba, avarice, and smallsmallrose and the implicit approval of myself, pokemonisfun, pdt, vivalospride, Lilburr, Pak, Ramolost, and itsjustdrew. I think Jaajgko also did not approve nor disapprove a Quagsire test, just explicitly disapprove of Blissey for the previously mentioned reasons. If I interpreted any of your posts wrong please correct me Banning Quagsire is low impact and a clear nerf to stall, as it loses a Ground-immunity that stops Mega Manectric and hard stops to SD Scizor, SD Terrakion/Cobalion, DD Altaria, and other physical setup sweepers. However, it does not cripple the playstyle as a Blissey ban would (I again want to emphasize we only care about this aspect using the assumption made earlier. SM UU is an oldgen now, and we will not treat it like current gen). Stall can still use Pyukumuku for Unaware, or opt for no Unaware at all. No other playstyle uses Quagsire consistently as well. AFAIK TDK is the only one who explicitly disapproved of a possible Quagsire test and I would ask him to elaborate his position if he truly does not want a test.

Also why is my replay being included there lol. My team is built around the offensive core of DD Altaria, Z-Moltres and SD Scizor, and supports it with heal bell and double defog. I won the game because I was able to chip my opponent's team until Altaria was able to sweep, not because my defensive core was able to maintain my opponent's offensive options.

My mistake, this was clearly a semi-stallish build and not full stall and should not have been included.


EDIT: Regarding the complex ban proposal above, this should be an absolute last resort based on our philosophy with complex bans. If a simple one Pokemon ban can achieve the goal of nerfing stall without intruding on the tier too much, we should approach that instead. Quagsire seems to be the best candidate for this. Jaajgko's proposal is also arbitrary, as we could also ban AloBliss on the same team, or Blissey + Quagsire, or ban any subset of the big three stall Pokemon on being the same team. Let's focus on the simple solutions first.

EDIT AGAIN: I want to elaborate on how removing Quagsire nerfs stall. Quagsire is a fantastic glue to wall a bunch of sweepers like SD Scizor, Bisharp, Cobalion, Terrakion, block Volt Switch from Mega Manectric, offer Haze to handle DD M-Altaria and Suicune better, and handle a bunch of other miscellaneous setup mons. Pyukumuku is a valid replacement, but its passivity and lack of Haze makes it the inferior choice most of the time, and it fails to block Mega Manectric. Stall can also consider using Doublade to handle a lot of the aforementioned threats, but it still loses to Manectric and requires Wish Support. Stall receives a palpable nerf and requires more thought in building a team, instead of just slapping AloBliss + Quagsire and walling the entire metagame. This is a fair compromise from the previous discussions, and if anyone disagrees I implore you to post here so we can settle this

 

[Christo]

After skimming through this thread I tend to agree with TDK regarding players arguments not being very convincing, however I do think it’s reasonable to test out some nerfs because it is definitely the most consistently dominant style in the tier. I want to point out that it takes some skill to pilot stall well, and it takes a lot of knowledge of the tier to make the correct plays necessary to win. One blunder such as allowing a toxic on quagsire or lazily burning a Facade Altaria with scald can end the game instantly.With that being said, I think a nerf is fair because stall has a ton of options in order for it to be successful(blissey + regen wish pass + 2 unaware mons + hazards being extremely easy to manage due to lack of long term spikers).

In order for the test to be successful, I recommend testing a ban of Alomomola or a ban of Unaware.I think the people suggesting for a ban of Blissey are missing the point of why stall is so effective.
A ban of alomomola would allow for ample counterplay from common Pokémon without a need to overly prep for stall. For example, Choice Band Scizor would be almost impossible to manage without alo as it was the only thing preventing it from making progress.
A ban of Unaware would obviously create opportunity for set up sweepers to create more counterplay as well as making electrics with Volt Switch such as rotom H and Manec more difficult to handle. A lack of quagsire being splashable on stall teams makes finding a ground type a lot harder.

If I had to decide which ban I would prefer I would slightly lean toward banning Unaware because Alomomola can potentially function on more archetypes than quagsire/pyuku. Please don’t ban blissey, that doesn’t make any sense.

 

[esche]

Despite having actively played SM UU for the entire duration of when it was the current generation, I haven't really been motivated to get back into it ever since. This mainly stems from its inherent revolvement around Scizor taking up all the focus, but also from frustration when it comes to preparing for stall. Therefore, I would certainly welcome a change in the form of a suspect test in an attempt to nerf stall in the hope of making SM UU more enjoyable again. I won't dwell on the details of what makes stall feel overbearing to many, as they have been aptly pointed to multiple times in this thread by well-respected players already. Instead, I wish to voice my support for the testing of one suspect in particular.

I believe removing Quagsire from SM UU is a good compromise in this case.

Quagsire, unlike Alomomola and Blissey, is essentially a stall-exclusive pick, and its loss would not noticeably affect other playstyles. You can argue that this should not be of concern when addressing a seemingly broken playstyle but I believe some caution about metagame impact is justified since SM UU hasn't been the current generation for quite some time now. Anyhow, with the removal of Quagsire stall takes a direct hit in that the dedicated stop to (physical) set-up sweepers is - in some capacity - compromised. This will open up flaws that offensive structures can capitalize on to overwhelm stall cores more reliably and effectively. Without Quagsire, VoltTurn becomes more immediately threatening and physical set-up sweepers get a little bit more breathing room. While a ban of Quagsire might spark a change of Pyukumuku EV spreads, focusing more on physical defense, this in turn would free up special set-up sweepers more. Only time can tell what trends and developments we would be seeing, of course, but the onus would be on stall to adapt. Don't get me wrong, even with this change, stall will likely remain a strong presence in SM UU. However, unlike before, where the composition of stall could vary quite a bit depending on their choice of Unaware sponge, it will now have to compromise. Taking Quagsire out of the equation when preparing for stall will undoubtedly be a relief, allowing more offensively inclined teams to incorporate counter measures against stall at, hopefully, lower cost. With fewer variants of stall to account for, I believe we might actually see a resurgence of stallbreakers. This might sound counter-intuitive at first but instead of simply conceding the stall match-up, players will be more willing to incorporate options against stall since they will be able to combat stall more consistently and not just depending on which stall variant you happen to face, which is one of the main frustrations with the current state of stall in SM UU.

tldr; banning quag is low impact overall but limits the varities of stall thus making countermeasures against it more reliable

protect innards out pyukumuku at all costs