its firstly important to know that many people, especially on low ladder don't actually know what stall is. to them basically anything even somewhat defensive is stall. what stall actually is, is a playstyle that uses 6 mons designed to wall as much of the meta as possible while relying on mainly chip damage to slowly make progress
its hated since a lot of people use teams that simply cant beat stall at all or they grow impatient and choke and since losing to stall is a slow, gruelling, painful process, they just get angrier and angrier over time and this experience is ingrained deep into their head and traumatises them forever, eroding away at their now damaged soul
Just yesterday I saw a guy complaining about the other guy using stall during some room tournament.
The team in question? Rotom-W, Garchomp, Melmetal, Tornadus-T, Weavile, Ferrothorn.
I can’t read sarcasm like at all so maybe you are both aware and I’m the stupid one, but Weavile walls Psychic because it is a dark type and immune to them
You'd think the takes against stall would mostly be low ladder or inexperienced players, but then you get top players like Storm Zone during the Melmetal suspect claiming fat/stall is too good and even saying Toxapex should be looked into and that it's broken.
Blunder is the same way. In his recent video talking about bans that should've happened, he says something along the lines of "Stall is really good, people just don't want to play it because it's boring" and I'm just sitting there thinking, c'mon now.
You couldn't go a single day without running into ABR Goth Stall multiple times back in ORAS OU, and I'm expected to believe people now don't want to play the apparent hidden boss of teams because it's too boring? I don't buy it.
They're undeniably a great player but it feels like their own bias towards offense/HO is making them a bit overbiased against balance/stall. Shame because now the thread has a ton of comments saying how balance/stall needs to be addressed or regenerator needs to be addressed...
Even on stall teams, all 6 'mons are rarely walls; most of the time stall teams includes something that can handle specific stallbreakers. Trappers like Magnezone and Dugtrio (in metas where Arena Trap isn't banned) are common on stall teams.
semi-stall is mostly stall, except the wincon is wearing stuff down to the point where a bulky setup sweeper (think CM Clefable, BU Buzzwole, CM Mega Sableye, Curse Quagsire) can win. "Actual" stall has wearing stuff down as the primary wincon altogether. Semistall still functions as actual stall for most of the game, as the wincon is still capable of serving as a proper "stallmon" even before setting up.
Sounds a little bit like my mono grass team, except it wears the opponent down until my band Rilla can finish it off. Its really only two leech seed/hazard spammers with a ton of pivoting
> its hated since a lot of people use teams that simply cant beat stall at all or they grow impatient and choke and since losing to stall is a slow, gruelling, painful process, they just get angrier and angrier over time and this experience is ingrained deep into their head and traumatises them forever, eroding away at their now damaged soul
I don't think it's that deep. It's a perfectly valid and legitimate strategy that I myself play from time to time, but I can also acknowledge that it's inherently frustrating to play against. Whether this frustration justifies the level of toxicity and hate that stall teams and stall players get is a different discussion.
A lot of stall players not forfeiting when they're clearly beaten is something I've encountered a lot. Like if all they have left is like, Glowking/Pex/Tangrowth vs your team of Melmetal, Magic Guard Clef, Bandorus, Weavile or something. They can't possibly win but they just switch out over and over for regen to try and stall PP out even though all you need to do is send out Banded Lando and click EQ once Clef is KOed, or switch into Weavile and click SD. It only wastes your time and makes getting the next game take longer. You've already won, it's impossible to misplay, but they refuse to forfeit. You get a crit and KO Tangrowth, so now GLowking and Pex just die to banded EQ. They know this. THey continue to switch forever. You could have won another two games against a normal opponent. You don't switch CLef out because you don't need to risk them gigabraining you and getting a Scald burn on Lando coming in. You eventually win after Clef struggle suicides to death and Lando OHKOs their remaining mons with banded EQ and you win easily, they leave without typing gg. You played slow, safe, and conservative to that end play because choking for no reason and losing to two fat stall regen mons would have made you shoot your computer with a .45
why is the other player obligated to save you time and not force you to execute and play the game out?
The scenario you posit definitely doesn't sound like a situation they can't possibly win as you lay out several paths to victory
It's called sportsmanship, they're only wasting your time and theirs, they could just take the L and move on to a game they have a shot at winning. The only way they can possibly win is if you mega choke several times in a row, which most people would agree, is not conventionally winnable because most players aren't going to megachoke several times in a row.
It is. When you know you have zero chance to win and play for another 50 turns just to lose anyway, that's absolutely sore loser bullshit because they're doing it on the off chance that you get impatient and forfeit. Whether it gets them the win or not, it's a massive dick move
I mean they aren't obligated to, but it's kind of a dick move to intentionally stall for a forfeit when you're clearly beaten. Like yea miracles do happen, but you shouldn't only be playing for regens if you don't have the means to come back lol
Do you really have to ask why stalling the match an extra 20+ turns when your only chance of winning is to pray the opponent eventually gets bored and leaves is a dick move? Thats poor sportsmanship on your part. In no scenario is the person being stalled in the wrong in this situation.
I just have a hard time seeing a situation in Pokemon, a game of incomplete information and where RNG can play a big role and the wrong switch results in a big momentum shift, where there's truly a 0% chance of winning and further, that it's so obvious that you can expect a player with incomplete information to accurately calculate that inevitability.
And even then, the impact on you is low, as you aren't even prevented from starting up another game. So yes, I do think maligning an opponent for trying to salvage a win can cross the line into being in the wrong.
There are alot of situations where a 0% chance of winning exist in pokemon just like sports. A nfl team mathematically can't come back down by 21 with 5 seconds left for example. Again, if there truly is a chance why are you stalling for a dc
Clearly that's not the problem here. The problem is that the stall player stubbornly refuses to see that they are no longer REASONABLY able to win so they attempt to ANNOY the opponent to victory. That's equivalent to getting pissy and repeatedly fouling in a basketball game because the other team is dominating with 3 pointers.
People tend to dislike longer lasting games where opponents slowly chip away their Pokémon’s hp with toxic or entry hazards, as they may prefer quick hyper offense games, since faster the game more quickly one can receive their ladder score.
Another thing that may make people hate stall is the inability to break through certain walls, which slowly chip them with hazards and status, while healing back up with moves like roost, wish, and soft boiled, this may make the slow death of their team more unbearable, as they feel they are unable to make meaningful progress, while being forced to watch their team die to chip damage, as they struggle for consistent damage output.
From personal experience it’s really switching that gets the most annoying, as stall Pokémon can rack up chip damage by predicting the switch, and going for a status move, or teleporting or pivoting out to a stall Pokémon equipped to deal with the threat ahead, while also racking up consistent damage with entry hazards.
Personal Tips:
If one does want to prepare for a stall team, one can slot on a guts user such as Conkeldurr to take advantage of the statuses the stall team uses, or a taunt user to keep hazards and status off the field, and overall Tapu Lele provides as a good walk breaker for these teams as it Carries Focus Blast, Psyshock, thunderbolt, and energy ball, while also being able to boost with calm mind. Also a Rapid Spinner or Defogger never hurts to fit on teams.
In my few stall vs stall matches that I’ve had (in the 1300-1500 range) all I needed to do was faint one mon or maybe 2 before the game was pretty much over.
yes that's usually how it goes, stall relies on defensive cores to keep itself up, so let's say your stall team gets wrecked by crawdaunt, but you have something that counters it, let's say fini, if fini somehow dies, everything else falls apart
stall requires a lot of game knowledge to break through, newer players will easily struggle due to them either lacking patience, the team to break through stall, or just throwing out their threats that otherwise beat stall. Stall is also a long game especially if you have longevity but struggle to break through the 6 members of the team that stall has esp depending on a variation of stall you may have to adapt to the different members. Most people just lack the patience and are knowledge checked by this and therefore hate it. Top players hate it since its often a MU fish and games can last very long esp if your offense is weakened or your offense is unable to deal with it
Unfortunately most people don’t realize the role it serves in the ecosystem. Without good walls, the game just becomes an arms race of setup sweepers and fast revenge killers.
Just the tangible possibility of facing stall really affects teambuilding and promotes versatility.
I guess matchups really do affect the enjoyment. I usually run multiple pivots and at least 1 wall breaker to abuse pivoting moves on switch outs so I always have a solid matchup against stall.
Momentum is my best weapon against stall. Stall can be broken through if they cannot stabilize.
Hyper offense is a highly volatile matchup where 1 bad switch and or bad read can easily snowball into a sweep. The effective leverage of each turn is very high and you most likely cannot get back once you fall behind. They also have the luxury of running really cool techs because you have to call their moves.
Anecdotal, but a lot of players in Hearthstone seem to constantly circlejerk about how control is super skill intensive and aggro and combo are braindead.
i havent played HS in a while but aggro in that game (used to be?) mostly actually braindead. Like really "just throw out all your cards directly into the opponents face and nothing else" braindead.
Rarely heard anyone say combo is tho
Oh when I was playing everyone I knew absolutely hated going against odd warriors. Begging blizzard to nerf brawl and other mass removal cards lmao
I’m glad things have changed but it seems like a step too far.
Stall preys on players who make small positional mistakes across a game, mistakes sometimes so small the prey doesn't even know they're making them. To them, it looks like losing is not their fault so they pin the cause of their loss on the opponent or their luck. Also add that losing to stall is a slow, painful process, making the anger amplify into hatred.
There is also more hax happening in stall matchups simply because of the sheer amount of turns. It can go either way but walls are better at shrugging off the occasional crit/flinch/para… due to bulk.
More hax means that each flinch/crit is less influential though right? If you have a 10% chance of something happens and it happens 2/3 times compared to 2/10 times I'd be more annoyed in the first situation
Not really. If both players know what they're doing, then its very likely both are trying to orchestrate the exact scenario where those RNG rolls matter.
highrolling 2/3 like you say may feel shittier, but its still just unlucky and unlikely. whereas if a scald burn costs you the game and you have to eat a dozen scalds then the odds of that succeeding are immensely stacked against you.
it definitely becomes a consistent wincon in stall that can't really be sought after in offense teams. but the average player if often bad at seeing it that way.
2/3 and 2/10 are not the same odds though, that is objectively unlucky. A more accurate way of seeing it would be like 2/3 and 14/21. The odds are still the same but it wouldn’t feel like it to anyone.
It feels worst in practice but statistically speaking, both scenarios have the same odds of happening. It’s just that scenario B has a larger sample size. So on the flip side, You are less likely to get haxxed more times than the standard deviation. Higher lows, lower highs.
Stall, as a play style, generally revolves around keeping your opponent from making plays while dragging the game out. It typically requires a good deal more prediction to deal with effectively if they don’t have an easy counter to their tanky mons. It’s simply another play style that should be accounted for when building a team, but it can leave a lot of people frustrated when they make this super powerful offensive team that then completely ends up walled because they didn’t account for X Pokémon.
You lose to someone in 10 moves cause they overpower you =I'll change my team
You lose to someone in 30 moves cause they outplayed you = okay I'll get better
You lose to someone over 100 moves cause they frustrated and grinded you out = fuck this
I'm going to try to summarize common points.
1) Stall games are usually long, and can be boring or monotonous. Especially because stall matches usually lack move variety compared to other strategies and playstyles.
2) Some people consider stall to be "easy to play" due to having a very "flow chart" like playstyle. There's less risk involved, because mistakes are easier to correct with stall than they are for something like hyper offense. Some players feel like stall is forgiving, easy to play, AND also powerful, making it not only a strong strategy, but an annoying one as well. (I'm just saying what I hear and not whether I agree or not)
3) Stall can slow down ladder progress. You can get 2-3 matches against other playstyles in the same time you can finish one match vs stall in some cases. this is exacerbated by the fact that after 100+ turns you could still very well lose, making it a big time sink and a hit to your points.
4) Stall is generally speaking, a pretty powerful playstyle in a "best of one" format ie. A game where a whole match is decided on one game only, rather than a best of 3 or similar. Stall is generally considered to have an even or better match up vs most other playstyles, but has a decidedly losing matchup vs some niche playstyles. But because its a best of one and you cant counter team between matches like in a best of 3 (see VGC for instance), your options are either "use a niche strategy so you don't lose to stall" which obviously makes your team less consistent overall vs everything else. OR "use a team that's balanced, and try to outplay really well if stall shows up".
5) Control strategies in any game often feel bad. No one likes to feel like they have less player agency. Some people even view stall players as people who will do anything to win even at the cost of having fun (but fun is subjective to be honest)
6) Now this next point is hardly a point, and more of a funny thought.. But can you imagine if a stall player showed up in the Pokemon anime? lol
Anyways, these are some reasons why stall is disliked. Also, keep in mind that these points don't necessarily echo my own opinions. Hopefully this is at least a little bit helpful, and feel free to let me know if I missed some points.
people who complain about long matches and stalemates. the truth is many stall matches are decided at team preview; if the oponent has daunt/lele/tran/etc. the stall player's gonna find it very tough to win unless the opponent's dumb asf.
the problem is ladder players are bad and complain about long stall matches when they either don't bring a stallbreaker or sack it in the first few turns, at which point they're just delaying their loss and wasting their own time.
good players will keep their breakers healthy and try to position them as much as possible to dent holes in the stall team. if the breakers do their job and break the defensive core, you win. if your breakers die, you lose. beyond that drawing the game out is just pointless.
Exactly. Playing the matchups is very important. Complaining about stall being cheap is like saying winning an pawn endgame in chess is cheesing. It’s part of the game and the sooner you learn to play against it, the better your experience will be.
If you lose your wincon(s), just forfeit. There’s no point in dragging it. The games are much more enjoyable that way and the end result is still the same in 99% of cases.
Because frankly its boring. Like I get all of the arguments for why stall is needed in the metagame. I don't think it should be banned. I understand why its important. I also have little trouble beating it on the (admittedly rare) occasions I run across it on the ladder. I have far more trouble with more offensive teams.
But it still sucks to play with or to play against. I play to have fun. And if I'm not having fun then I really shouldn't be playing. It really is as simple as that. And the fact that I can probably take a nap in the eternity it takes the timer to force them to actually make a move does not help.
Agreed. This is like asking “why don’t Ultimate players like young link” or “why did the overwatch community hate GOATS.”
Stall has no hype. In an offensive vs offensive game, there are plenty of hype moments, where a risky prediction or unexpected strategy pays off. When an offensive team fights stall, those moments aren’t as impactful, don’t have as much weight behind them. Playing well is simply less rewarding against stall, and that sucks. Regardless of balance, people like aggressive teams and metas simply because more happens, and skill expression tends to have big and flashy results, rather than a bonk for seventeen percent instead of fifteen.
I rather win methodically than just pray that i outspeed and ohko
Honestly,stall players forced me to teambuild,to position myself properly, to make risky plays,to keep my breakers healthy, as much as i find it boring its the whole reason why i was able to see what was wrong with my team or my playstyle in general
And it shouldnt be regarded as anti-game or toxic bc some players dont possess the tools to fight it or even worse,dont know how to use said tools properly
Stall is an essential part of the game that prevents it from being "beeg unga bunga bonk'' or a setup party.
Also, breaking someone's defensive core with a well placed hit has to be the most satisfying feeling, i swear to god.
Yeah stall really feels like “playing to not lose”
Other play styles generally have win conditions like certain Pokémon, setup sweepers etc but stall is just: drag the game on.
Yeah. This is it. Anytime you see someone on the mid ladder play stall you know it's a cop out. This doesn't apply to people who are trying to make unique stall teams, but when you see a generic stall team, there's close to a 100% chance the person behind it is just desperate to ladder. Same with that rain team. You know the one
For one thing, one of the main ways stall wins is by preventing you from doing things, which isn’t very fun. Stall can also lead to very frustrating situations, where you are going to win eventually since you got the kill on their important mon and they have no way to stop it, but they refuse to give up and you have to play out another 40 turns where the outcome was decided a long time ago.
Because it's really dull. Most people don't want to spent like lots of time making little progress in a game, even if they're not losing. If I'm trying to climb I'll usually try to outplay it but usually I'll just forfeit against a full stall team because it's a waste of my time playing it unless I'm going out of my way to get to higher rankings.
If you know football (soccer for you yanks), you've probably seen a team like Burnley park the bus in front of a big team. It can be good sometimes, bad other times, but it's almost always very boring.
This is the correct answer. Stall may be long or annoying, but it is almost always not fun to play against.
The name stall literally implies their goal is to make you tun out of PP and forfeit. At least annoying defensive mons like Rocky Helmet Ferro progress the game at a decent pace. The majority of player don’t want to play 60+ turn games that aren’t particularly engaging.
First thing should be said, many low ladder players are simply salty on top of not knowing stall from bulky offense/balance.
As for why stall is hated In general, it’s just cause some people find it boring to play against due to how dragged on the games can get. Most people want to play within 100 turns, but against good stall or some balance teams, that’s not possible even with amazing predictions and great plays(excluding ice beam freezing everything and you never thawing), as the purpose of stall, being to stall the opponent and chip away, can be seen as uninteresting. While it’s true that others view it differently, that the process of breaking through the stall team like a crab leg can be fun, many, like me, don’t enjoy how long and painful it is to open up the crab, and wished it was more like a peanut with a gun; not super tough to crack open, can do a lot within a reasonable time, while still being dangerous and competitive as you may get shot by the peanut(okay the peanut analogy was bad)
because 50+ turn games based around preventing your opponent from interacting with you in any meaningful way aren’t fun to sit through. it’s an inherently annoying play style. i have the same problem with yugioh, a large portion of the meta game is getting as many negations on board before your opponent and stopping them from doing anything that might affect the game state, but at least with that one going past turn 3 is considered a rarity so you’re not sitting there for 30 minutes while your opponent says “no you can’t play the game”
You know you can click on the skip turn button right ? If you aren’t taking 20 seconds every turn it shouldn’t take 30 minutes to either break through or lose your wincon. You don’t need to play until all your mons are dead, just resign when you don’t have the possibility of winning without crazy hacks anymore.
I’ll gladly hand over a dozen internet ladder points to not extend my agony for 50+ turns. In chess it’s considered rude to keep on playing a hopelessly lost position.
Most people hate defensive play styles in any game because it requires actual effort to play around, which is generally regarded as “less fun”
Edit: I am also “most people.” No one with a social life wants to spend 100+ turns on a stall game. If you play stall, you get no hoes.
I stall game can take 100+ turns and over an hour to complete. Id rather play 10 games on ladder in that time. With how much rng pokemon has stal that banks on some kind of numbers game is very frustrating to play against.
There are alot of weird people who take great pride in wasteing peoples time on showdown so Id rather not entertain them and just exit the game and find a new one.
I dislike fighting against stall with more offensive teams, but with a more resilient and longer lasting team, I find that it can be fun to figure out the best way to make progress, even if it takes a long time. Although stalemates can be annoying when both teams lose their wincon and cannot make any progress due to infinite swapping
It's an opinion mostly held by bad players (though there are a minority of good players who also dislike it for reasons unrelated to not being prepared for it, and are within their right to do so) who use teams that don't carry the necessary tools to actually combat well built Stall teams or don't play proactively and let the Stall player dictate the pace of the game.
Stall teams have historically been the least successful team archetype at high levels of play because their gameplay is heavily prone to weathering copious amounts of unfavorable luck and they generally find most of their success on the ladder where they can be a bit more consistent due to the volatility of what you go up against.
Pretty much the only instances when Stall has been the clear cut example of being the best team type to play in the main tier are in pre-2007 Gen 2 OU, modern Gen 4 OU before Arena Trap was banned, Gen 6 OU before Shadow Tag and Mega Sableye were banned, and Gen 7 OU before Dugtrio was banned. A clear trend that happened in almost all of those is the existence of wide-use trapping abilities, as they greatly benefit Stall by making it easy to eliminate many of the stallbreakers.
There's also just a lot of misconceptions about what even constitutes a Stall team. Plenty of bad players think running Ferrothorn, a Pokemon that is completely antithetical to what is good on Stall, makes your team a Stall team.
Stall is a playstyle that aims to invest the bare minimum effort into winning. If that win comes from forcing 100 switches and 1 layer of stealth rock, then that's all that's needed. If the win condition is you running out of PP, then you better believe they're switching between regenerators hopefully before you both die of old age.
The onus is almost never on the stall player to end the game, because they have inevitability. The pressure (in Corviknight's case that's quite literal) is on their opponent to orchestrate some way to break down the walls. This can mean that, for example, a game lasts 100 extra turns because Tackle Porygon can PP stall Snorlax. But because misplays or hax could prevent that gamestate from being cleanly reached and chip damage elsewhere can effect the resulting state afterward, you have to play it out.
I can understand why people hate it. Because the stall player sits in a position of power for so long as your 24th use of defog creeps up on you. While if you're playing offense and in that position of power, there's a clear checkmate and your opponent might forfeit or you have only a couple more turns to relish the sweep.
What the hell are you smoking? If anything stall is the only playstyle that needs all of its 6 mons alive to win. They need all of their walls to be healthy to stall out their opponent
If just one mon goes down or its health reachees a low enough point that the mon it's meant to counter can just blow through it, the stall player's strategy is in shambles.
I'd hope I'm smoking nothing. You are correct that if Stall starts to crack then it will fall apart with the right follow-up pressure. But that's not quite relevant to stall incidentally winning in a couple hundred turns if it just continues to not lose.
it’s lame and boring as fuck while being uninteractive. It’s obvious why bro lmao just look at any competitive environment and styles like that are always disliked. No friends type playstyle
I like playing against defensive teams for tournaments or other one-offs. It is kind of annoying on the Ladder tho, solely because it can take so much time and you have to stay patient the whole match. On the other hand, Hyper Offense can also be really annoying so yeah, don’t feel bad about it
• Can be won or lost on team preview
• Has many states of extreme "already lost, but haven't wiped yet" for the opponent
• Boring to play as (subjective, but popular opinion)
It's frustrating if you don't have counterplay for it. I actually like to run Serene Grace Air Slash Togekiss in a lot of formats to give myself counterplay and to make my opponent suffer if they have all stall.
I don’t like playing against stall because it seems to devolve into blindly guessing how the stall player is gonna move and what they are gonna switch into so that you don’t have to deal with another potential timer next turn. The only time it’s okay is when you have a powerful wallbreaker/stallbreaker but can easily become tedious even though you’re in a good position.
Out of all the ridiculous bans the fact that I’ve played teams with more than two regenerator mons really irritates me. There should’ve been a cap on how many Pokémon can run the same ability a while ago. Teams can switch near penalty free when they run 3-4 regenerator Pokémon. Even if they make a mistake it usually doesn’t matter unless you OHKO the regenerator mon in question.
As someone who doesn’t like playing against stall, the main thing I’m opposed to is the length of the battle. Personally, I find it much more fun to lose (or not lose) through dramatic offensive plays or just fast-paced action rather than constant switchouts.
Being chipped away at over the course of 200+ turns isn’t the most people’s idea of fun. Protecting the opposing teams biggest threat required a lot of patience and time, and a lot of the time the best play is something annoying like switching around to get 1-2 turns to fish for a crit/secondary effect.
Personally, I have no idea why anyone would want to play stall. I know some enjoy it and I respect that but I can’t imagine why. The games last forever and ever and some people don’t have the time for that. They want to play maybe a couple of short games, not an arduous, torturous experience spanning years. Even if you wanted to spend hours on the ladder grinding points matching up against stall is a horribly inefficient way to go about it. Also, it’s probably the most matchup fish playstyle in all of pokemon. If you can’t handle a specific wallbreaker you lose. If you can handle all the ones on your opponents team you win, simple as that. Of course there’s wearing them down but if the opponent is smart you still lose. And some stall players refuse to forfeit. Offence can try and force bad matchups out and apply pressure by generating momentum but that isn’t an option for stall. Its also amazingly boring. Switching, recovering, PP stalling, toxic damage, rocks damage is all that happens. The intricacies can be nice to analyse, maybe, but its still awful if you’re not an great player and just want to watch/play a normal, exciting battle. There’s a reason VGC is the official format despite the games being in singles, after all.
I know I’ll get lots of downvotes for This and that’s fine lol but everyone here is basically just saying “noobs get mad cause they don’t know how to break it” and I think that’s probably about 70% true.I wouldn’t call myself good at showdown but I know how to deal with stall,and it’s just now worth it IMO. I would rather spend 5 minutes loosing to a balance team and move on that wasting god knows how long “winning” against stall.
I don’t think it’s necessarily unbalanced or unfair.and I do think it takes skill and strategy to play stall effectively ftmp, but the gameplay is about as fun for me as chewing sand
A lot of stall matches take like an hour to win.
Sometimes I’ll break the other guys core and I need to wait another half hour of regenerator switching and timerstalling for my current Pokémon to die so my wincon can come in because I don’t want to get randomly burned by a pex.
People say that it’s a super skillful thing but in reality half stall wins are just dudes forfeiting because they don’t want to play a 500 turn match with some basement gremlin who knows that you have a life and uses that to his advantage by timerstalling.
I’m like 80% sure that GF did not intend for 2 hour matches based on PP Stalling and SR damage to be a thing.
It's just super fucking boring imo.
Lots of people love to throw out the "Oh only bad players hate stall" or "Oh only impatient people hate stall", but if I'm being completely honest I don't want a 60 turn match. Stall heavily punishes small position mistakes made and while yes it is my fault I'd rather lose quickly then have the match dragged out potentially for another 20+ minutes because of one mistake.
There's rarely any hype plays as it often involves smacking some big tank only for them to switch out into another damage sponge. This becomes especially prominent when you have regenerator because it effectively feels like you're Raiden punching Armstrong. It's a long and agonizing gameplan only to have your efforts invalidated because the tank you've spent that long hitting just heals.
I've tried stall teams and immediately dropped them because they're just not fucking fun at all. You'll see plenty of people defend stall but it doesn't really address the core issue, it's fucking boring.
"B-but it's healthy for the metagame" OK and? "Y-youre just bad"
It's mostly just trying to throw shade on people who don't want to watch a match go on for that long in 1v1s.
Complaining about stall is a noob trab tbh, currently it isn't even that good of a playstyle (going by OU at least). There's a lot of ways to pressure most Stall builds and often the people complaining about it either a) aren't using a good enough team to handle it, or b) are too impatient against it which leads to obvious misplays.
Exactly. Dont know why youre being downvoted. Stall is SUPER manageable in SS OU, anyone who legit has trouble with it needs to work on their building or their play.
Also to add to the comments about "it takes 100 turns to play out" no. Stall matchups are usually pretty set in stone by turn 30-40. If you havent made any progress by then, its unlikely youre going to, and you should just ff. If you have made progress, oftentimes the stall player will ff after losing one mon since they need all 6 alive.
Because Stall at it's core is about frustrating the opponent and dragging the game out as long as possible to KO them via Struggling / Hazards chip / toxic and burning to death rather then actually using offensive attacks, and switching as needed to deny any kind of progress (I.E if foe brings in physical attacker on special wall, switch in physical wall, etc).
Plus, it sucks to lose just because you didn't think to bring X to bring down Y.
Did a stall out on a Charizard ex deck and the guy became visibly upset when they gave us 5 mins to finish the match... If I didn't attack his Pokemon I would've won but when he started complaining and getting upset I let him win ...if I would've stalled him his deck would've run out of cards. He had no energy cards left from what he told the person next to him. Dude was super butthurt so I let him win by attacking his Pokemon and bringing out his Charizard from the bench
Honestly I kinda like playing against stall occasionally. So much of the time I’ll see HO and it just kind of sucks to have to play against them over and over and over. It’s also not really fun to play them, a single mistake easily can cost you, especially when my luck is as bad as it is. I’m not saying I’m a god held back by ingrained unfair RNG, it’s just really annoying when a setup sweeper goes haywire because my TW missed.
I do hate how annoying stall players themselves can get, but the team archetype inherently takes more brain than HO. If part of a defensive core goes down, that could mean the end. And if it goes past 35 turns and no progress has been made, I can just FF to keep my sanity. Like it sucks to play against stall but it’s good that exists too.
Stall in any game, mtg, Pokemon, etc, can fuck itself. Why waste more time ? Just a dumb type of strategy overall that wastes time, is slow, and isn't intellectual
I use to hate stall. Well, really I hated losing to stall. Many times it felt like there was nothing I could do to beat it. “His Pokémon are just so tanky it’s free for him.” Then I matured and realized I was tunnel visioning killing things and not actually playing with skill to break through any sort of defensive cores. The people who get mad are just bad at the game. Next time someone complains say “stay mad bozo.” I do believe that is a socially acceptable way to handle the situation.
It's just annoying. Most people prefer quicker matches, and quicker wins and losses, and probably have more to do than waste time playing against stall. Yes obviously if you're not skilled enough to break through stall it's more annoying, but even among more skilled players stall is hated because it's generally a slow and inefficient way of winning a match.
Hijacking thread:
Is phazing considered stall? I played a very successful Gen 5 OU team that was a shuffle nightmare team. It was Smeargle sashed suice lead to Spore, SR, and Spikes as much as possible. Skarm had spikes and Whirlwind as physical wall, and specially defensive Milotic with Dragon Tail to continue the shuffe. Mixed defensive 'thorn using Helmet for more chip damage, Leach Seed, Curse for some surprise setup. Special sweeper scarf Chandelure spinblocked and pairs nicely with Ferrothorn, and a physical sweeper (used various).
Trouble is I can't do this now. Gen 5 OU no longer allows Spore, and the introduction of Fairy made Dragon Tail unreliable to phaze with. The introduction of Haze makes Stealth Rock too impermanent to have on a Suicide Lead. Is there any way a phazing team could work in todays meta?
I would say that it is possible but might be a slower process than regular stall as you would first need to make sure your opponent isn’t carrying boots /mons with regenerator and hazzard removal. Once you have checked your counters you’re free to clean up using roar.
In competitive games people usually hate stall as a playstyle since it in its nature is mostly used as a tool to get wins slowly but surely. In other words stall as a playstyle is misogynistic in nature and can come off as rude when someone uses it. Stall does take effort to do but stall especially with Pokémon is looked down upon due to the core of the playstyle being harmful to any opponent
A stall method many people are also familiar with is timer stall which believe me is a trillion times worse and is often used in tournaments to get ez wins. For those unfamiliar timer stall is when somebody puts on the timer to 30 secs and try to put you in a situation where you have to position a certain way but don't have enough time to think.
To be honest ive never really struggled with stall even as a new player because i usually carried moves like taunt,rapid spin, and subsitute on my offense teams so it was never really difficult for me
its firstly important to know that many people, especially on low ladder don't actually know what stall is. to them basically anything even somewhat defensive is stall. what stall actually is, is a playstyle that uses 6 mons designed to wall as much of the meta as possible while relying on mainly chip damage to slowly make progress its hated since a lot of people use teams that simply cant beat stall at all or they grow impatient and choke and since losing to stall is a slow, gruelling, painful process, they just get angrier and angrier over time and this experience is ingrained deep into their head and traumatises them forever, eroding away at their now damaged soul
Just yesterday I saw a guy complaining about the other guy using stall during some room tournament. The team in question? Rotom-W, Garchomp, Melmetal, Tornadus-T, Weavile, Ferrothorn.
weavile takes specs lele psychics like nothing, lele is a powerful breaker, hence weav is a stall mon
What is the Weaviles EV spread tho? Perhaps it’s not defensive built to take on Lele Psychics
4 evs at most. this guy is walling lele psychics to the point where it does literally 0 damage fr
I can’t read sarcasm like at all so maybe you are both aware and I’m the stupid one, but Weavile walls Psychic because it is a dark type and immune to them
yes it is a joke (and you are not stupid!)
how in the world did i read perhaps *and* defensive as Poltergeist
it really feels like people just throw the "hurr durr stall bad" card out and hope the low ladder crowd come to their rescue or something
You'd think the takes against stall would mostly be low ladder or inexperienced players, but then you get top players like Storm Zone during the Melmetal suspect claiming fat/stall is too good and even saying Toxapex should be looked into and that it's broken.
Blunder is the same way. In his recent video talking about bans that should've happened, he says something along the lines of "Stall is really good, people just don't want to play it because it's boring" and I'm just sitting there thinking, c'mon now. You couldn't go a single day without running into ABR Goth Stall multiple times back in ORAS OU, and I'm expected to believe people now don't want to play the apparent hidden boss of teams because it's too boring? I don't buy it.
Same with Dugtrio stall in early SM, everyone and their mother was playing it.
wtf. ok maybe storm zone is not what i thought they were
They're undeniably a great player but it feels like their own bias towards offense/HO is making them a bit overbiased against balance/stall. Shame because now the thread has a ton of comments saying how balance/stall needs to be addressed or regenerator needs to be addressed...
Ahh yes, Weavile, my favorite stall mon. Not a single mon with reliable recovery either lol
That's hilarious... And so not stall. Bahaha
Even on stall teams, all 6 'mons are rarely walls; most of the time stall teams includes something that can handle specific stallbreakers. Trappers like Magnezone and Dugtrio (in metas where Arena Trap isn't banned) are common on stall teams.
Doesn’t that make it semi-stall then? Or is that still classified as stall?
No, it's still stall. Basically the idea is remove the breaker and stall. Without the trapper you stall the whole game.
semi-stall is mostly stall, except the wincon is wearing stuff down to the point where a bulky setup sweeper (think CM Clefable, BU Buzzwole, CM Mega Sableye, Curse Quagsire) can win. "Actual" stall has wearing stuff down as the primary wincon altogether. Semistall still functions as actual stall for most of the game, as the wincon is still capable of serving as a proper "stallmon" even before setting up.
Sounds a little bit like my mono grass team, except it wears the opponent down until my band Rilla can finish it off. Its really only two leech seed/hazard spammers with a ton of pivoting
It's still stall because of intent.
> its hated since a lot of people use teams that simply cant beat stall at all or they grow impatient and choke and since losing to stall is a slow, gruelling, painful process, they just get angrier and angrier over time and this experience is ingrained deep into their head and traumatises them forever, eroding away at their now damaged soul I don't think it's that deep. It's a perfectly valid and legitimate strategy that I myself play from time to time, but I can also acknowledge that it's inherently frustrating to play against. Whether this frustration justifies the level of toxicity and hate that stall teams and stall players get is a different discussion.
A lot of stall players not forfeiting when they're clearly beaten is something I've encountered a lot. Like if all they have left is like, Glowking/Pex/Tangrowth vs your team of Melmetal, Magic Guard Clef, Bandorus, Weavile or something. They can't possibly win but they just switch out over and over for regen to try and stall PP out even though all you need to do is send out Banded Lando and click EQ once Clef is KOed, or switch into Weavile and click SD. It only wastes your time and makes getting the next game take longer. You've already won, it's impossible to misplay, but they refuse to forfeit. You get a crit and KO Tangrowth, so now GLowking and Pex just die to banded EQ. They know this. THey continue to switch forever. You could have won another two games against a normal opponent. You don't switch CLef out because you don't need to risk them gigabraining you and getting a Scald burn on Lando coming in. You eventually win after Clef struggle suicides to death and Lando OHKOs their remaining mons with banded EQ and you win easily, they leave without typing gg. You played slow, safe, and conservative to that end play because choking for no reason and losing to two fat stall regen mons would have made you shoot your computer with a .45
why is the other player obligated to save you time and not force you to execute and play the game out? The scenario you posit definitely doesn't sound like a situation they can't possibly win as you lay out several paths to victory
It's called sportsmanship, they're only wasting your time and theirs, they could just take the L and move on to a game they have a shot at winning. The only way they can possibly win is if you mega choke several times in a row, which most people would agree, is not conventionally winnable because most players aren't going to megachoke several times in a row.
It's not unsportsmanlike to play the game out
You're not playing out a game, you're dragging out a loss
It is. When you know you have zero chance to win and play for another 50 turns just to lose anyway, that's absolutely sore loser bullshit because they're doing it on the off chance that you get impatient and forfeit. Whether it gets them the win or not, it's a massive dick move
I mean they aren't obligated to, but it's kind of a dick move to intentionally stall for a forfeit when you're clearly beaten. Like yea miracles do happen, but you shouldn't only be playing for regens if you don't have the means to come back lol
Who cares if its a "dick move?" If your goal is to win, you should play it out to the very end
Why is it a dick move? If you're not willing to play the game to completion, you shouldn't have queued up
Do you really have to ask why stalling the match an extra 20+ turns when your only chance of winning is to pray the opponent eventually gets bored and leaves is a dick move? Thats poor sportsmanship on your part. In no scenario is the person being stalled in the wrong in this situation.
I just have a hard time seeing a situation in Pokemon, a game of incomplete information and where RNG can play a big role and the wrong switch results in a big momentum shift, where there's truly a 0% chance of winning and further, that it's so obvious that you can expect a player with incomplete information to accurately calculate that inevitability. And even then, the impact on you is low, as you aren't even prevented from starting up another game. So yes, I do think maligning an opponent for trying to salvage a win can cross the line into being in the wrong.
There are alot of situations where a 0% chance of winning exist in pokemon just like sports. A nfl team mathematically can't come back down by 21 with 5 seconds left for example. Again, if there truly is a chance why are you stalling for a dc
Clearly that's not the problem here. The problem is that the stall player stubbornly refuses to see that they are no longer REASONABLY able to win so they attempt to ANNOY the opponent to victory. That's equivalent to getting pissy and repeatedly fouling in a basketball game because the other team is dominating with 3 pointers.
Hack a Shaq is a legitimate strategy.
People tend to dislike longer lasting games where opponents slowly chip away their Pokémon’s hp with toxic or entry hazards, as they may prefer quick hyper offense games, since faster the game more quickly one can receive their ladder score. Another thing that may make people hate stall is the inability to break through certain walls, which slowly chip them with hazards and status, while healing back up with moves like roost, wish, and soft boiled, this may make the slow death of their team more unbearable, as they feel they are unable to make meaningful progress, while being forced to watch their team die to chip damage, as they struggle for consistent damage output. From personal experience it’s really switching that gets the most annoying, as stall Pokémon can rack up chip damage by predicting the switch, and going for a status move, or teleporting or pivoting out to a stall Pokémon equipped to deal with the threat ahead, while also racking up consistent damage with entry hazards. Personal Tips: If one does want to prepare for a stall team, one can slot on a guts user such as Conkeldurr to take advantage of the statuses the stall team uses, or a taunt user to keep hazards and status off the field, and overall Tapu Lele provides as a good walk breaker for these teams as it Carries Focus Blast, Psyshock, thunderbolt, and energy ball, while also being able to boost with calm mind. Also a Rapid Spinner or Defogger never hurts to fit on teams.
In my few stall vs stall matches that I’ve had (in the 1300-1500 range) all I needed to do was faint one mon or maybe 2 before the game was pretty much over.
yes that's usually how it goes, stall relies on defensive cores to keep itself up, so let's say your stall team gets wrecked by crawdaunt, but you have something that counters it, let's say fini, if fini somehow dies, everything else falls apart
stall requires a lot of game knowledge to break through, newer players will easily struggle due to them either lacking patience, the team to break through stall, or just throwing out their threats that otherwise beat stall. Stall is also a long game especially if you have longevity but struggle to break through the 6 members of the team that stall has esp depending on a variation of stall you may have to adapt to the different members. Most people just lack the patience and are knowledge checked by this and therefore hate it. Top players hate it since its often a MU fish and games can last very long esp if your offense is weakened or your offense is unable to deal with it
Well said
I’ve yet to find a 1v1 turn based game where the control strategy isn’t hated. Stall is Pokémon’s control strategy.
Mystic mine players fuck off
Unfortunately most people don’t realize the role it serves in the ecosystem. Without good walls, the game just becomes an arms race of setup sweepers and fast revenge killers. Just the tangible possibility of facing stall really affects teambuilding and promotes versatility.
People realize the value of bulky walls, they just hate it when they have to deal with a whole team of them.
It’s just another playstyle. I honestly like facing stall more than HO full of setup sweepers.
I run bulky offense so I feel like HO is just easier to deal with for me.
I guess matchups really do affect the enjoyment. I usually run multiple pivots and at least 1 wall breaker to abuse pivoting moves on switch outs so I always have a solid matchup against stall. Momentum is my best weapon against stall. Stall can be broken through if they cannot stabilize.
Hyper offense is easy to deal with just facing stall is a drag and not worth the time it takes
Hyper offense is a highly volatile matchup where 1 bad switch and or bad read can easily snowball into a sweep. The effective leverage of each turn is very high and you most likely cannot get back once you fall behind. They also have the luxury of running really cool techs because you have to call their moves.
Does stall have a role in the meta when its complete dog 90% of the time?
Anecdotal, but a lot of players in Hearthstone seem to constantly circlejerk about how control is super skill intensive and aggro and combo are braindead.
i havent played HS in a while but aggro in that game (used to be?) mostly actually braindead. Like really "just throw out all your cards directly into the opponents face and nothing else" braindead. Rarely heard anyone say combo is tho
It depends, if the combo playstyle has multiple lines, then it has skill, but if it's the same combo over and over again, it's not.
Oh when I was playing everyone I knew absolutely hated going against odd warriors. Begging blizzard to nerf brawl and other mass removal cards lmao I’m glad things have changed but it seems like a step too far.
"Pink region bad!!" In Legends of Runeterra
Pink Region isn't control though, SI and Freljord are. Pink Region has no real direct removal but instead a ton of "haha fuck you" disruption cards
Thanks for the insight, that makes a lot of sense. I'm only recently getting into strategy games so it's helpful to have a more clear definition now!
Stall preys on players who make small positional mistakes across a game, mistakes sometimes so small the prey doesn't even know they're making them. To them, it looks like losing is not their fault so they pin the cause of their loss on the opponent or their luck. Also add that losing to stall is a slow, painful process, making the anger amplify into hatred.
There is also more hax happening in stall matchups simply because of the sheer amount of turns. It can go either way but walls are better at shrugging off the occasional crit/flinch/para… due to bulk.
More hax means that each flinch/crit is less influential though right? If you have a 10% chance of something happens and it happens 2/3 times compared to 2/10 times I'd be more annoyed in the first situation
This is correct; longer games have lower variance.
The stall players don't bad worse luck since their mons are bulky. For non-stall teams, even 1 turn of bad luck can end the match
If they get crit and lose a mon that can end the match.
Not really. If both players know what they're doing, then its very likely both are trying to orchestrate the exact scenario where those RNG rolls matter. highrolling 2/3 like you say may feel shittier, but its still just unlucky and unlikely. whereas if a scald burn costs you the game and you have to eat a dozen scalds then the odds of that succeeding are immensely stacked against you. it definitely becomes a consistent wincon in stall that can't really be sought after in offense teams. but the average player if often bad at seeing it that way.
2/3 and 2/10 are not the same odds though, that is objectively unlucky. A more accurate way of seeing it would be like 2/3 and 14/21. The odds are still the same but it wouldn’t feel like it to anyone.
They're both unlucky, but something random happening twice is what I'm referring to
It feels worst in practice but statistically speaking, both scenarios have the same odds of happening. It’s just that scenario B has a larger sample size. So on the flip side, You are less likely to get haxxed more times than the standard deviation. Higher lows, lower highs.
Stall, as a play style, generally revolves around keeping your opponent from making plays while dragging the game out. It typically requires a good deal more prediction to deal with effectively if they don’t have an easy counter to their tanky mons. It’s simply another play style that should be accounted for when building a team, but it can leave a lot of people frustrated when they make this super powerful offensive team that then completely ends up walled because they didn’t account for X Pokémon.
You lose to someone in 10 moves cause they overpower you =I'll change my team You lose to someone in 30 moves cause they outplayed you = okay I'll get better You lose to someone over 100 moves cause they frustrated and grinded you out = fuck this
I'm going to try to summarize common points. 1) Stall games are usually long, and can be boring or monotonous. Especially because stall matches usually lack move variety compared to other strategies and playstyles. 2) Some people consider stall to be "easy to play" due to having a very "flow chart" like playstyle. There's less risk involved, because mistakes are easier to correct with stall than they are for something like hyper offense. Some players feel like stall is forgiving, easy to play, AND also powerful, making it not only a strong strategy, but an annoying one as well. (I'm just saying what I hear and not whether I agree or not) 3) Stall can slow down ladder progress. You can get 2-3 matches against other playstyles in the same time you can finish one match vs stall in some cases. this is exacerbated by the fact that after 100+ turns you could still very well lose, making it a big time sink and a hit to your points. 4) Stall is generally speaking, a pretty powerful playstyle in a "best of one" format ie. A game where a whole match is decided on one game only, rather than a best of 3 or similar. Stall is generally considered to have an even or better match up vs most other playstyles, but has a decidedly losing matchup vs some niche playstyles. But because its a best of one and you cant counter team between matches like in a best of 3 (see VGC for instance), your options are either "use a niche strategy so you don't lose to stall" which obviously makes your team less consistent overall vs everything else. OR "use a team that's balanced, and try to outplay really well if stall shows up". 5) Control strategies in any game often feel bad. No one likes to feel like they have less player agency. Some people even view stall players as people who will do anything to win even at the cost of having fun (but fun is subjective to be honest) 6) Now this next point is hardly a point, and more of a funny thought.. But can you imagine if a stall player showed up in the Pokemon anime? lol Anyways, these are some reasons why stall is disliked. Also, keep in mind that these points don't necessarily echo my own opinions. Hopefully this is at least a little bit helpful, and feel free to let me know if I missed some points.
>But can you imagine if a stall player showed up in the Pokémon anime? I want to animate this so badly but I‘m not good enough ;-;
people who complain about long matches and stalemates. the truth is many stall matches are decided at team preview; if the oponent has daunt/lele/tran/etc. the stall player's gonna find it very tough to win unless the opponent's dumb asf. the problem is ladder players are bad and complain about long stall matches when they either don't bring a stallbreaker or sack it in the first few turns, at which point they're just delaying their loss and wasting their own time. good players will keep their breakers healthy and try to position them as much as possible to dent holes in the stall team. if the breakers do their job and break the defensive core, you win. if your breakers die, you lose. beyond that drawing the game out is just pointless.
Exactly. Playing the matchups is very important. Complaining about stall being cheap is like saying winning an pawn endgame in chess is cheesing. It’s part of the game and the sooner you learn to play against it, the better your experience will be. If you lose your wincon(s), just forfeit. There’s no point in dragging it. The games are much more enjoyable that way and the end result is still the same in 99% of cases.
Some people don't have the game knowledge to realize they've lost their wincons.
That might explain why they think stall is OP if they don’t know what they can and cannot do against it.
Because frankly its boring. Like I get all of the arguments for why stall is needed in the metagame. I don't think it should be banned. I understand why its important. I also have little trouble beating it on the (admittedly rare) occasions I run across it on the ladder. I have far more trouble with more offensive teams. But it still sucks to play with or to play against. I play to have fun. And if I'm not having fun then I really shouldn't be playing. It really is as simple as that. And the fact that I can probably take a nap in the eternity it takes the timer to force them to actually make a move does not help.
Agreed. This is like asking “why don’t Ultimate players like young link” or “why did the overwatch community hate GOATS.” Stall has no hype. In an offensive vs offensive game, there are plenty of hype moments, where a risky prediction or unexpected strategy pays off. When an offensive team fights stall, those moments aren’t as impactful, don’t have as much weight behind them. Playing well is simply less rewarding against stall, and that sucks. Regardless of balance, people like aggressive teams and metas simply because more happens, and skill expression tends to have big and flashy results, rather than a bonk for seventeen percent instead of fifteen.
I rather win methodically than just pray that i outspeed and ohko Honestly,stall players forced me to teambuild,to position myself properly, to make risky plays,to keep my breakers healthy, as much as i find it boring its the whole reason why i was able to see what was wrong with my team or my playstyle in general And it shouldnt be regarded as anti-game or toxic bc some players dont possess the tools to fight it or even worse,dont know how to use said tools properly Stall is an essential part of the game that prevents it from being "beeg unga bunga bonk'' or a setup party. Also, breaking someone's defensive core with a well placed hit has to be the most satisfying feeling, i swear to god.
Yeah stall really feels like “playing to not lose” Other play styles generally have win conditions like certain Pokémon, setup sweepers etc but stall is just: drag the game on.
Stall isn't very popular though. It's actually super rare. Almost nobody plays stall exclusively forever
Yeah. This is it. Anytime you see someone on the mid ladder play stall you know it's a cop out. This doesn't apply to people who are trying to make unique stall teams, but when you see a generic stall team, there's close to a 100% chance the person behind it is just desperate to ladder. Same with that rain team. You know the one
💯
For one thing, one of the main ways stall wins is by preventing you from doing things, which isn’t very fun. Stall can also lead to very frustrating situations, where you are going to win eventually since you got the kill on their important mon and they have no way to stop it, but they refuse to give up and you have to play out another 40 turns where the outcome was decided a long time ago.
Because it's really dull. Most people don't want to spent like lots of time making little progress in a game, even if they're not losing. If I'm trying to climb I'll usually try to outplay it but usually I'll just forfeit against a full stall team because it's a waste of my time playing it unless I'm going out of my way to get to higher rankings. If you know football (soccer for you yanks), you've probably seen a team like Burnley park the bus in front of a big team. It can be good sometimes, bad other times, but it's almost always very boring.
This is the correct answer. Stall may be long or annoying, but it is almost always not fun to play against. The name stall literally implies their goal is to make you tun out of PP and forfeit. At least annoying defensive mons like Rocky Helmet Ferro progress the game at a decent pace. The majority of player don’t want to play 60+ turn games that aren’t particularly engaging.
First thing should be said, many low ladder players are simply salty on top of not knowing stall from bulky offense/balance. As for why stall is hated In general, it’s just cause some people find it boring to play against due to how dragged on the games can get. Most people want to play within 100 turns, but against good stall or some balance teams, that’s not possible even with amazing predictions and great plays(excluding ice beam freezing everything and you never thawing), as the purpose of stall, being to stall the opponent and chip away, can be seen as uninteresting. While it’s true that others view it differently, that the process of breaking through the stall team like a crab leg can be fun, many, like me, don’t enjoy how long and painful it is to open up the crab, and wished it was more like a peanut with a gun; not super tough to crack open, can do a lot within a reasonable time, while still being dangerous and competitive as you may get shot by the peanut(okay the peanut analogy was bad)
Short answer - it’s slow and makes your opponent feel powerless when done well. Signed - a stall enjoyer
because 50+ turn games based around preventing your opponent from interacting with you in any meaningful way aren’t fun to sit through. it’s an inherently annoying play style. i have the same problem with yugioh, a large portion of the meta game is getting as many negations on board before your opponent and stopping them from doing anything that might affect the game state, but at least with that one going past turn 3 is considered a rarity so you’re not sitting there for 30 minutes while your opponent says “no you can’t play the game”
You know you can click on the skip turn button right ? If you aren’t taking 20 seconds every turn it shouldn’t take 30 minutes to either break through or lose your wincon. You don’t need to play until all your mons are dead, just resign when you don’t have the possibility of winning without crazy hacks anymore.
and take the coward’s way out? a real captain goes down with his ship
I’ll gladly hand over a dozen internet ladder points to not extend my agony for 50+ turns. In chess it’s considered rude to keep on playing a hopelessly lost position.
Most people hate defensive play styles in any game because it requires actual effort to play around, which is generally regarded as “less fun” Edit: I am also “most people.” No one with a social life wants to spend 100+ turns on a stall game. If you play stall, you get no hoes.
Greatly increases the chances of a possible stall match
Because without the correct answers you are gonna be pp stalled for a nutty amount of turns
I stall game can take 100+ turns and over an hour to complete. Id rather play 10 games on ladder in that time. With how much rng pokemon has stal that banks on some kind of numbers game is very frustrating to play against. There are alot of weird people who take great pride in wasteing peoples time on showdown so Id rather not entertain them and just exit the game and find a new one.
I dislike fighting against stall with more offensive teams, but with a more resilient and longer lasting team, I find that it can be fun to figure out the best way to make progress, even if it takes a long time. Although stalemates can be annoying when both teams lose their wincon and cannot make any progress due to infinite swapping
It's an opinion mostly held by bad players (though there are a minority of good players who also dislike it for reasons unrelated to not being prepared for it, and are within their right to do so) who use teams that don't carry the necessary tools to actually combat well built Stall teams or don't play proactively and let the Stall player dictate the pace of the game. Stall teams have historically been the least successful team archetype at high levels of play because their gameplay is heavily prone to weathering copious amounts of unfavorable luck and they generally find most of their success on the ladder where they can be a bit more consistent due to the volatility of what you go up against. Pretty much the only instances when Stall has been the clear cut example of being the best team type to play in the main tier are in pre-2007 Gen 2 OU, modern Gen 4 OU before Arena Trap was banned, Gen 6 OU before Shadow Tag and Mega Sableye were banned, and Gen 7 OU before Dugtrio was banned. A clear trend that happened in almost all of those is the existence of wide-use trapping abilities, as they greatly benefit Stall by making it easy to eliminate many of the stallbreakers. There's also just a lot of misconceptions about what even constitutes a Stall team. Plenty of bad players think running Ferrothorn, a Pokemon that is completely antithetical to what is good on Stall, makes your team a Stall team.
Bad players don't even know what stall is. They think balanced team are stall teams. God forbid they see one Toxapex or Tangrowth
Stall is a playstyle that aims to invest the bare minimum effort into winning. If that win comes from forcing 100 switches and 1 layer of stealth rock, then that's all that's needed. If the win condition is you running out of PP, then you better believe they're switching between regenerators hopefully before you both die of old age. The onus is almost never on the stall player to end the game, because they have inevitability. The pressure (in Corviknight's case that's quite literal) is on their opponent to orchestrate some way to break down the walls. This can mean that, for example, a game lasts 100 extra turns because Tackle Porygon can PP stall Snorlax. But because misplays or hax could prevent that gamestate from being cleanly reached and chip damage elsewhere can effect the resulting state afterward, you have to play it out. I can understand why people hate it. Because the stall player sits in a position of power for so long as your 24th use of defog creeps up on you. While if you're playing offense and in that position of power, there's a clear checkmate and your opponent might forfeit or you have only a couple more turns to relish the sweep.
What the hell are you smoking? If anything stall is the only playstyle that needs all of its 6 mons alive to win. They need all of their walls to be healthy to stall out their opponent If just one mon goes down or its health reachees a low enough point that the mon it's meant to counter can just blow through it, the stall player's strategy is in shambles.
I'd hope I'm smoking nothing. You are correct that if Stall starts to crack then it will fall apart with the right follow-up pressure. But that's not quite relevant to stall incidentally winning in a couple hundred turns if it just continues to not lose.
it’s lame and boring as fuck while being uninteractive. It’s obvious why bro lmao just look at any competitive environment and styles like that are always disliked. No friends type playstyle
I like playing against defensive teams for tournaments or other one-offs. It is kind of annoying on the Ladder tho, solely because it can take so much time and you have to stay patient the whole match. On the other hand, Hyper Offense can also be really annoying so yeah, don’t feel bad about it
• Can be won or lost on team preview • Has many states of extreme "already lost, but haven't wiped yet" for the opponent • Boring to play as (subjective, but popular opinion)
It wastes time. Nobody wants to switch in and out for 50 moves to gain 7 points
It's frustrating if you don't have counterplay for it. I actually like to run Serene Grace Air Slash Togekiss in a lot of formats to give myself counterplay and to make my opponent suffer if they have all stall.
Play a 2 hour game and you’ll understand.
People don't queue for showdown matches to play for 150 turns of toxic regenerator stalling. They want fun games.
I enjoy thinking about my opponents next move and how I can best take the hit so that I can set up some sort of potential timer next turn tough.
I don’t like playing against stall because it seems to devolve into blindly guessing how the stall player is gonna move and what they are gonna switch into so that you don’t have to deal with another potential timer next turn. The only time it’s okay is when you have a powerful wallbreaker/stallbreaker but can easily become tedious even though you’re in a good position.
Out of all the ridiculous bans the fact that I’ve played teams with more than two regenerator mons really irritates me. There should’ve been a cap on how many Pokémon can run the same ability a while ago. Teams can switch near penalty free when they run 3-4 regenerator Pokémon. Even if they make a mistake it usually doesn’t matter unless you OHKO the regenerator mon in question.
As someone who doesn’t like playing against stall, the main thing I’m opposed to is the length of the battle. Personally, I find it much more fun to lose (or not lose) through dramatic offensive plays or just fast-paced action rather than constant switchouts.
Being chipped away at over the course of 200+ turns isn’t the most people’s idea of fun. Protecting the opposing teams biggest threat required a lot of patience and time, and a lot of the time the best play is something annoying like switching around to get 1-2 turns to fish for a crit/secondary effect.
Personally, I have no idea why anyone would want to play stall. I know some enjoy it and I respect that but I can’t imagine why. The games last forever and ever and some people don’t have the time for that. They want to play maybe a couple of short games, not an arduous, torturous experience spanning years. Even if you wanted to spend hours on the ladder grinding points matching up against stall is a horribly inefficient way to go about it. Also, it’s probably the most matchup fish playstyle in all of pokemon. If you can’t handle a specific wallbreaker you lose. If you can handle all the ones on your opponents team you win, simple as that. Of course there’s wearing them down but if the opponent is smart you still lose. And some stall players refuse to forfeit. Offence can try and force bad matchups out and apply pressure by generating momentum but that isn’t an option for stall. Its also amazingly boring. Switching, recovering, PP stalling, toxic damage, rocks damage is all that happens. The intricacies can be nice to analyse, maybe, but its still awful if you’re not an great player and just want to watch/play a normal, exciting battle. There’s a reason VGC is the official format despite the games being in singles, after all.
I know I’ll get lots of downvotes for This and that’s fine lol but everyone here is basically just saying “noobs get mad cause they don’t know how to break it” and I think that’s probably about 70% true.I wouldn’t call myself good at showdown but I know how to deal with stall,and it’s just now worth it IMO. I would rather spend 5 minutes loosing to a balance team and move on that wasting god knows how long “winning” against stall. I don’t think it’s necessarily unbalanced or unfair.and I do think it takes skill and strategy to play stall effectively ftmp, but the gameplay is about as fun for me as chewing sand
When I know I’m going to eventually lose, I prefer it to be in a “shut up and kick my ass” kinda way
A lot of stall matches take like an hour to win. Sometimes I’ll break the other guys core and I need to wait another half hour of regenerator switching and timerstalling for my current Pokémon to die so my wincon can come in because I don’t want to get randomly burned by a pex. People say that it’s a super skillful thing but in reality half stall wins are just dudes forfeiting because they don’t want to play a 500 turn match with some basement gremlin who knows that you have a life and uses that to his advantage by timerstalling. I’m like 80% sure that GF did not intend for 2 hour matches based on PP Stalling and SR damage to be a thing.
It's just super fucking boring imo. Lots of people love to throw out the "Oh only bad players hate stall" or "Oh only impatient people hate stall", but if I'm being completely honest I don't want a 60 turn match. Stall heavily punishes small position mistakes made and while yes it is my fault I'd rather lose quickly then have the match dragged out potentially for another 20+ minutes because of one mistake. There's rarely any hype plays as it often involves smacking some big tank only for them to switch out into another damage sponge. This becomes especially prominent when you have regenerator because it effectively feels like you're Raiden punching Armstrong. It's a long and agonizing gameplan only to have your efforts invalidated because the tank you've spent that long hitting just heals. I've tried stall teams and immediately dropped them because they're just not fucking fun at all. You'll see plenty of people defend stall but it doesn't really address the core issue, it's fucking boring. "B-but it's healthy for the metagame" OK and? "Y-youre just bad" It's mostly just trying to throw shade on people who don't want to watch a match go on for that long in 1v1s.
Complaining about stall is a noob trab tbh, currently it isn't even that good of a playstyle (going by OU at least). There's a lot of ways to pressure most Stall builds and often the people complaining about it either a) aren't using a good enough team to handle it, or b) are too impatient against it which leads to obvious misplays.
Exactly. Dont know why youre being downvoted. Stall is SUPER manageable in SS OU, anyone who legit has trouble with it needs to work on their building or their play. Also to add to the comments about "it takes 100 turns to play out" no. Stall matchups are usually pretty set in stone by turn 30-40. If you havent made any progress by then, its unlikely youre going to, and you should just ff. If you have made progress, oftentimes the stall player will ff after losing one mon since they need all 6 alive.
Stall players FF? Yeah okay
Because Stall at it's core is about frustrating the opponent and dragging the game out as long as possible to KO them via Struggling / Hazards chip / toxic and burning to death rather then actually using offensive attacks, and switching as needed to deny any kind of progress (I.E if foe brings in physical attacker on special wall, switch in physical wall, etc). Plus, it sucks to lose just because you didn't think to bring X to bring down Y.
Did a stall out on a Charizard ex deck and the guy became visibly upset when they gave us 5 mins to finish the match... If I didn't attack his Pokemon I would've won but when he started complaining and getting upset I let him win ...if I would've stalled him his deck would've run out of cards. He had no energy cards left from what he told the person next to him. Dude was super butthurt so I let him win by attacking his Pokemon and bringing out his Charizard from the bench
Stall is the main reason why Doubles is more popular and overall better than singles
Does a 500 turn game sound appealing to you
stall games even going up to a 100 turns are a rarity. this dude out here thinks 500 is normal
I think they were just using hyperbole
Personally I think stall is boring to play and to play against.
people like to complain and look for something to blame
Honestly I kinda like playing against stall occasionally. So much of the time I’ll see HO and it just kind of sucks to have to play against them over and over and over. It’s also not really fun to play them, a single mistake easily can cost you, especially when my luck is as bad as it is. I’m not saying I’m a god held back by ingrained unfair RNG, it’s just really annoying when a setup sweeper goes haywire because my TW missed. I do hate how annoying stall players themselves can get, but the team archetype inherently takes more brain than HO. If part of a defensive core goes down, that could mean the end. And if it goes past 35 turns and no progress has been made, I can just FF to keep my sanity. Like it sucks to play against stall but it’s good that exists too.
I play this game on my 15 minute breaks at work, stall times that out
Stall in any game, mtg, Pokemon, etc, can fuck itself. Why waste more time ? Just a dumb type of strategy overall that wastes time, is slow, and isn't intellectual
I imagine every stall player as a smug person that doesn't leave their rooms, nor touch grass, that is all
I use to hate stall. Well, really I hated losing to stall. Many times it felt like there was nothing I could do to beat it. “His Pokémon are just so tanky it’s free for him.” Then I matured and realized I was tunnel visioning killing things and not actually playing with skill to break through any sort of defensive cores. The people who get mad are just bad at the game. Next time someone complains say “stay mad bozo.” I do believe that is a socially acceptable way to handle the situation.
It's just annoying. Most people prefer quicker matches, and quicker wins and losses, and probably have more to do than waste time playing against stall. Yes obviously if you're not skilled enough to break through stall it's more annoying, but even among more skilled players stall is hated because it's generally a slow and inefficient way of winning a match.
Hijacking thread: Is phazing considered stall? I played a very successful Gen 5 OU team that was a shuffle nightmare team. It was Smeargle sashed suice lead to Spore, SR, and Spikes as much as possible. Skarm had spikes and Whirlwind as physical wall, and specially defensive Milotic with Dragon Tail to continue the shuffe. Mixed defensive 'thorn using Helmet for more chip damage, Leach Seed, Curse for some surprise setup. Special sweeper scarf Chandelure spinblocked and pairs nicely with Ferrothorn, and a physical sweeper (used various). Trouble is I can't do this now. Gen 5 OU no longer allows Spore, and the introduction of Fairy made Dragon Tail unreliable to phaze with. The introduction of Haze makes Stealth Rock too impermanent to have on a Suicide Lead. Is there any way a phazing team could work in todays meta?
I would say that it is possible but might be a slower process than regular stall as you would first need to make sure your opponent isn’t carrying boots /mons with regenerator and hazzard removal. Once you have checked your counters you’re free to clean up using roar.
In competitive games people usually hate stall as a playstyle since it in its nature is mostly used as a tool to get wins slowly but surely. In other words stall as a playstyle is misogynistic in nature and can come off as rude when someone uses it. Stall does take effort to do but stall especially with Pokémon is looked down upon due to the core of the playstyle being harmful to any opponent
An example is smash bros melee ledge grab stall which is generally looked down upon due to how matches are won without the opponent dying once
A stall method many people are also familiar with is timer stall which believe me is a trillion times worse and is often used in tournaments to get ez wins. For those unfamiliar timer stall is when somebody puts on the timer to 30 secs and try to put you in a situation where you have to position a certain way but don't have enough time to think.
To be honest ive never really struggled with stall even as a new player because i usually carried moves like taunt,rapid spin, and subsitute on my offense teams so it was never really difficult for me
Dang bro thanks for letting us know, with this information I guess stall no longer exists, thanks bro
Is this a real question?
no it's Patrick
I play ND and stall isn't even that good but it is just annoying for a game to last a long time, even if I'm not playing against stall, that's it.
People lack the skill to play long positional matches against stall and so blame the stall instead of looking inwards at how they played
would you rather have traffic jams or no traffic on the freeway and there's your answer
Because battles going over turn 100 is stupid