all 12 of my fellow gsc cord posters may recall that i had a big ass double elec stall phase a few months back. my thoughts regarding the archetype have changed since then. originally all of this was just gonna be a big discord post in response to a question asked by cyberacc on the stallcord but shit got so long i figured id just post it here and share my thoughts with yall so you guys can cteam me. normally i actually use caps on the forums but since this was originally a discord post and i dont feel like adding caps to the start of every single sentence yall will have to bear with me (i hope lol). anyways thats enough preamble, lets get into it
to start, i have actually begun to favor mie and cune over zap as the last mon on stall lately. i think all three are still great but ive grown to prefer mie and cune mainly becuase of machamp and ttar. machamp is super dangerous for zap stalls, skarm by itself is just a not a terribly reliable answer for machamp. ive drifted away from cruel lately for similar reasons, iirc i mentioned that in gsc cord a little while ago. cune isnt amazing vs machamp either but its toxic is deadly and it forces machamp to expend its cc stockpile to deal with it, which is very nice as even in the worst case where machamp takes down cune and skarm he'll likely have to expend nearly all his ccs to do so, where as with zap he uses rs for zap and cc for skarm, leaving him with likely half or more of his ccs to annihilate the rest of your team with. and mie requires no explanation here ofc. hes goated vs champ (as long as they dont have curse + hp bug/ghost)
as for ttar his mixed coverage has cost me many games. a good stall will have an answer for nearly any ttar set (although some stalls lack answers to stuff like eq rs tbolt dp) but the process of scouting ttar can open devastating holes on your team. scout with lax, you could get chunked massively by dp, scout with kou, could get chunked for even worse by eq and even pursuit trapped for your troubles. either of these scenarios could open you up to getting swept by a backvap, jolt, zam, etc. scout with skarm and you risk getting chunked by fb or tbolt, opening you up to a sweep from machamp, wak, quag, etc (not hera cause his megahorn does so little that youll survive and rest even if youre chipped by ttar fblast). cune is the ultimate blanket answer to ttar, even tbolt fails to deal sufficient damage to be threatening. mie is less foolproof but still does very well, only being threatened by crunch and tb. both do much better than zap. for those reasons ive used zap less but i still like him a lot as i mentioned earlier. the one time i miss zap the most when playing with cune or mie is vs roarkou/wwzap, a zap of your own is an absolute godsend in these mus and goes from making these mons go from potential team sweeping threats to basically nonissues.
these are probably my five favorite variants of double elec stall
https://pokepast.es/edac3909bb486a1e
https://pokepast.es/21211cfec36af827
https://pokepast.es/9ddb931b2235feae
https://pokepast.es/18fb04b65b51d655
https://pokepast.es/dd8bbff3fe2c92b8
all of these teams follow a similar framework of groundlax, thund kou to threaten lax harder (unless roar is being used), tb zap to make machamp mu more consistent, hp water zap for lix, and forre golem hazard core with protect forre cause that shit is broken. regretably none of these teams run cloy, cloy would be very nice for maro and quag but i value forre's toxic immunity too much. stuff like ttar, umb, missy, gar, and even miltank can all be used but be aware that doing so will shoehorn you into using a solo spiker-spinner, which will generally make the hazard game much harder, so i tend to prefer golem. overall i think these are all fine squads but like any stall team they have weaknesses.
team #1 opts to handle the last mon curse firelax mu by fighting fire with fire and engaging in a curselax war. this is not the most consistent solution to last mon curse fire lax but it will work more often than not as youll generally be able to obtain initiative with your own lax if you play your cards right. the main issue with this team is that lax has to drop sleep talk for curse in order to facilitate this strategy. you could drop eq instead of st but without a pursuiter this will make your mu vs double elec gar offense HORRIBLE as youll have virtually no way to make your opponent go anything other than zap, kou, or gar, meaning your forre or golem will never have safe entry to spike or spin. so we drop st instead of eq. without st on lax this team can potentially run into problems vs sub jynx, as lax is not safe as long as jynx holds her lk and vs kou jynx is free to fish for psychic drops and crits behind the safety of a sub where she is no longer threatened by kou's thunder
team #2 and #3 deal with curse firelax by way of curse golem. this requires the removal of roar on golem, which in turn forces us to make space for phazing on another one of our mons movesets. team #2 replaces skarms toxic with ww, this has the negative consequence of making the team weaker vs mixtar, as skarm's toxic is one of the main tools double elec teams have for dealing with mixtar. no toxic also makes the spikes war more difficult as you no longer have an i win button to push vs cloy in the form of toxic. however, dp may not quickly chip cloy but it does enough to eventually bring cloy to its knees in a long game, and ww can be used if you have a layer of spikes up to both chip cloy and deny him entry at the same time.
team #3 runs the oft maligned roarkou as its phazer. if you dont know why people hate roarkou, its because with st kou stops shit like cloy, forre, mie, golem, etc from spiking or spinning on him for free, but with roar theres nothing a sleeping kou can do in this regard. and thanks to thunder having a 21% chance to inflict para, kou will end up having to sleep a lot during the course of an average match of gsc. the only way to sleep with roarkou and stop the opponent from making progress in the spikes war is to get up your own layer of spikes, and then, send sleeping kou in and immediately double out to something that beats your opponents spiker/spinner (zapdos works great here). this process will result in your opponent's spiker or spinner getting chipped for 1/16th of their hp, and if repeated enough times, will result in their spiker or spinner being placed in considerable danger. eventually, your opponent will fear sending in their spiker/spinner on sleeping kou to avoid racking up spikes chip, and this will give you the opportunity to shave off a sleep turn. needless to say this is A LOT of effort for something that could be done very easily with st kou just by clicking st. tbh idk if thats why everyone hates roarkou but thats certainly why i hate running him. also, a sleeping roarkou will be at the mercy of your standard late game threats like vap, zard etc (although ironically enough roarkou does much better than st kou vs jolt)
team #4 decides to handle curse firelax by simply exploding on it with golem and forre. there are many pros to running explosion, the move is a godsend in many late game offense scenarios even if they dont have curse firelax, it just allows you to get way more value out of golem and forre than you would otherwise be able to. however, explosion does make them worse at performing their main task: spiking/spinning and in the case of golem, walling firelax. with no rest on golem, golem will ultimately fail to serve as a long term answer to firelax, and if he should be statused by flamethrowers 10% or by flame tox lax, you will be in for a rough time. as for forre, lack of protect generally gives you less longevity and makes you more vulnerable to spikes shuffling strats
and then team #5 foregoes all of the weaknesses of the previously mentioned squads... at the cost of having nothing for curse fire lax.
ill close this out by posing yall a few questions. what last mon do yall prefer on stall? zap, mie, cune, or something crazier like cruel, umb, etc. how do you guys feel about the solo spiker-spinner issue, and who are your favorite firelax checks on stall for each of the last mons you enjoy using? finally should i enter this g.uSa.c vs the world tournament (really dumb name btw im sorry). i love gsc and ik yall are looking for signups but im feeling kinda burnt out atm. i may very well be up to playing but i also might not.
to start, i have actually begun to favor mie and cune over zap as the last mon on stall lately. i think all three are still great but ive grown to prefer mie and cune mainly becuase of machamp and ttar. machamp is super dangerous for zap stalls, skarm by itself is just a not a terribly reliable answer for machamp. ive drifted away from cruel lately for similar reasons, iirc i mentioned that in gsc cord a little while ago. cune isnt amazing vs machamp either but its toxic is deadly and it forces machamp to expend its cc stockpile to deal with it, which is very nice as even in the worst case where machamp takes down cune and skarm he'll likely have to expend nearly all his ccs to do so, where as with zap he uses rs for zap and cc for skarm, leaving him with likely half or more of his ccs to annihilate the rest of your team with. and mie requires no explanation here ofc. hes goated vs champ (as long as they dont have curse + hp bug/ghost)
as for ttar his mixed coverage has cost me many games. a good stall will have an answer for nearly any ttar set (although some stalls lack answers to stuff like eq rs tbolt dp) but the process of scouting ttar can open devastating holes on your team. scout with lax, you could get chunked massively by dp, scout with kou, could get chunked for even worse by eq and even pursuit trapped for your troubles. either of these scenarios could open you up to getting swept by a backvap, jolt, zam, etc. scout with skarm and you risk getting chunked by fb or tbolt, opening you up to a sweep from machamp, wak, quag, etc (not hera cause his megahorn does so little that youll survive and rest even if youre chipped by ttar fblast). cune is the ultimate blanket answer to ttar, even tbolt fails to deal sufficient damage to be threatening. mie is less foolproof but still does very well, only being threatened by crunch and tb. both do much better than zap. for those reasons ive used zap less but i still like him a lot as i mentioned earlier. the one time i miss zap the most when playing with cune or mie is vs roarkou/wwzap, a zap of your own is an absolute godsend in these mus and goes from making these mons go from potential team sweeping threats to basically nonissues.
these are probably my five favorite variants of double elec stall
https://pokepast.es/edac3909bb486a1e
https://pokepast.es/21211cfec36af827
https://pokepast.es/9ddb931b2235feae
https://pokepast.es/18fb04b65b51d655
https://pokepast.es/dd8bbff3fe2c92b8
all of these teams follow a similar framework of groundlax, thund kou to threaten lax harder (unless roar is being used), tb zap to make machamp mu more consistent, hp water zap for lix, and forre golem hazard core with protect forre cause that shit is broken. regretably none of these teams run cloy, cloy would be very nice for maro and quag but i value forre's toxic immunity too much. stuff like ttar, umb, missy, gar, and even miltank can all be used but be aware that doing so will shoehorn you into using a solo spiker-spinner, which will generally make the hazard game much harder, so i tend to prefer golem. overall i think these are all fine squads but like any stall team they have weaknesses.
team #1 opts to handle the last mon curse firelax mu by fighting fire with fire and engaging in a curselax war. this is not the most consistent solution to last mon curse fire lax but it will work more often than not as youll generally be able to obtain initiative with your own lax if you play your cards right. the main issue with this team is that lax has to drop sleep talk for curse in order to facilitate this strategy. you could drop eq instead of st but without a pursuiter this will make your mu vs double elec gar offense HORRIBLE as youll have virtually no way to make your opponent go anything other than zap, kou, or gar, meaning your forre or golem will never have safe entry to spike or spin. so we drop st instead of eq. without st on lax this team can potentially run into problems vs sub jynx, as lax is not safe as long as jynx holds her lk and vs kou jynx is free to fish for psychic drops and crits behind the safety of a sub where she is no longer threatened by kou's thunder
team #2 and #3 deal with curse firelax by way of curse golem. this requires the removal of roar on golem, which in turn forces us to make space for phazing on another one of our mons movesets. team #2 replaces skarms toxic with ww, this has the negative consequence of making the team weaker vs mixtar, as skarm's toxic is one of the main tools double elec teams have for dealing with mixtar. no toxic also makes the spikes war more difficult as you no longer have an i win button to push vs cloy in the form of toxic. however, dp may not quickly chip cloy but it does enough to eventually bring cloy to its knees in a long game, and ww can be used if you have a layer of spikes up to both chip cloy and deny him entry at the same time.
team #3 runs the oft maligned roarkou as its phazer. if you dont know why people hate roarkou, its because with st kou stops shit like cloy, forre, mie, golem, etc from spiking or spinning on him for free, but with roar theres nothing a sleeping kou can do in this regard. and thanks to thunder having a 21% chance to inflict para, kou will end up having to sleep a lot during the course of an average match of gsc. the only way to sleep with roarkou and stop the opponent from making progress in the spikes war is to get up your own layer of spikes, and then, send sleeping kou in and immediately double out to something that beats your opponents spiker/spinner (zapdos works great here). this process will result in your opponent's spiker or spinner getting chipped for 1/16th of their hp, and if repeated enough times, will result in their spiker or spinner being placed in considerable danger. eventually, your opponent will fear sending in their spiker/spinner on sleeping kou to avoid racking up spikes chip, and this will give you the opportunity to shave off a sleep turn. needless to say this is A LOT of effort for something that could be done very easily with st kou just by clicking st. tbh idk if thats why everyone hates roarkou but thats certainly why i hate running him. also, a sleeping roarkou will be at the mercy of your standard late game threats like vap, zard etc (although ironically enough roarkou does much better than st kou vs jolt)
team #4 decides to handle curse firelax by simply exploding on it with golem and forre. there are many pros to running explosion, the move is a godsend in many late game offense scenarios even if they dont have curse firelax, it just allows you to get way more value out of golem and forre than you would otherwise be able to. however, explosion does make them worse at performing their main task: spiking/spinning and in the case of golem, walling firelax. with no rest on golem, golem will ultimately fail to serve as a long term answer to firelax, and if he should be statused by flamethrowers 10% or by flame tox lax, you will be in for a rough time. as for forre, lack of protect generally gives you less longevity and makes you more vulnerable to spikes shuffling strats
and then team #5 foregoes all of the weaknesses of the previously mentioned squads... at the cost of having nothing for curse fire lax.
ill close this out by posing yall a few questions. what last mon do yall prefer on stall? zap, mie, cune, or something crazier like cruel, umb, etc. how do you guys feel about the solo spiker-spinner issue, and who are your favorite firelax checks on stall for each of the last mons you enjoy using? finally should i enter this g.uSa.c vs the world tournament (really dumb name btw im sorry). i love gsc and ik yall are looking for signups but im feeling kinda burnt out atm. i may very well be up to playing but i also might not.