Distrurbing tendencies in DP battles.

Phiphler

More often then not, it would seem, battles in D/P end in hourlong stallwars. The number 1 reason is of course Blissey, but a general overreliance on certain walls make Blissey vs. Blissey, Cresselia vs. Cresselia, Skarmory vs. Skarmory more and more common.

To those who thought this generation would not be all about stalling, lol.

The sad part is, that any team that does not include Blissey has little hope of success. You need the something as extreme as Blissey to give you the advantage, and since its free to use, why not?

I just see the metagame slowly petrifying into stall stall stall, same old walls over and over again.

Anyone else feel like me?
 
This is only because gamefreak didn't think when they came up with wifi battling. You can't have animations for EVERYTHING. Anyway, I can see where you're trying to go here, and I don't like it. I'll leave this open for now but if something about a certain something getting banned pops up, this will be closed in 3 seconds.
 
Go tell that to CS'mence.

Its true that stalls are more common, (Blissey VS Cresselia, ugh) but the majority is fairly fast-paced, such as Choice Scarf Porygon Z, VS Choice Specs Alakazam. Either one will die this turn, then they both switch into a Blissey, then they get scared of a stall-war, and switch into something else. Thats happened to me so many times...
 
The reason that more hardcore walls like Blissey are popping up is because things in D/P are just too powerful for lesser things to handle. If such things disappear, then the metagame will be about attack, attack, attack, till you die, and people will be complaining about that.
 
Note, Im not saying we ban the good walls, Im just pondering what they mean to the metagame.

A team with Blissey, Cresselia, Gliscor, Skarmory, Dusknoir and whatever would come out on top against most things, the limitation is the patience of the user.
 
Maybe this is because most Pokemon used are not mixed, and this mentality should change. Mixed Pokemon should speed up the metagame. If all your Pokemon have only physical or special attacks, and not both, then it's likely that you'll be stalled. If both yours and your opponent's Pokemon are like that, then both will be stalled, lol.
 
Most of the undesirable changes in the DP metagame are because things hit too hard, if it weren't for that we'd see more varied walling pokes and more special based pokes too.

IMO the cause of this problem is the choice items and life orb. Removing them would probably return the metagame to a more varied state. Obviously you make serveral pokemon non-viable by removing choice items, but I think a non-choice enviroment would be one worth testing.
 
X-Act said:
Maybe this is because most Pokemon used are not mixed, and this mentality should change. Mixed Pokemon should speed up the metagame. If all your Pokemon have only physical or special attacks, and not both, then it's likely that you'll be stalled. If both yours and your opponent's Pokemon are like that, then both will be stalled, lol.
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X-Act sums up my thoughts as well...

Advance started this way too as I recall, started with massive DDdos, Salamence, Choicedactyl sweeps. People started countering back with specialist walls and pokemon and gradual indirect damage.

It all seemed like that till you had things like McGar coming in and saying 'no thank you' and smacking those specialist walls to hell.

It'll happen eventually and already has, Chain Chomp's recent takeoff is only proof of that.

Obviously you make serveral pokemon non-viable by removing choice items, but I think a non-choice enviroment would be one worth testing.
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I don't think they'd become any less viable then if you were to suddenly ban Baton Pass. The only Choice items I would remove would be the Band/Specs. Scarf is alot less threatening than hyped up to be.

A non-choice environment does sound like a nice novelty though.
 
X-Act said:
Maybe this is because most Pokemon used are not mixed, and this mentality should change. Mixed Pokemon should speed up the metagame. If all your Pokemon have only physical or special attacks, and not both, then it's likely that you'll be stalled. If both yours and your opponent's Pokemon are like that, then both will be stalled, lol.
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Why, hello there, Chainchomp!

It's too bad that Chainchomp is another excuse for people to not use Flygon.

On another note, what else do we have aside from Chainchomp and Mcgar that are commonly seen? Maybe stuff like exploding Azelves?
 
Technically yes Exploding Azelf is a D/P mixed sweeper, I actually feared that set more than anything when I first saw the new Pokemon emerge.

Other common Mixed Sweepers?

A famous UU one comes to mind, Druidcruel back from the GSC era. It essentially started the whole idea of attacking an opponent in their weaker stat. Its remained 100% unchanged and still is one of the most powerful things you can fight in UU which is a testament to how its stood the test of time.

Standard Swamperts are technically mixed as well, many people use one without even realizing that much.

Actually for the few people who attempt to use UU in a OU environment you should notice a large majority of them rely heavily on mixed sets because theres no other way they could damage significantly enough if they weren't.
 
One of the biggest reason for the matches that end in stall are the way the game is played earlier in the match...

When people take out their opponent's sweepers and lose their own at the same time, they have nothing left capable of breaking the stall. Perhaps if they played a little more conservatively they would not end up in such a position.
 
MixApe anyone? Let's just say that this and Heracross are extremely hard to wall with only two Pokemon, if you are also trying to cover everything else. This was the original DP Mixed Sweeper and will probably be the most prevelant throughout the DP era (once ChainChomp hype wears off it will be as common or less common than all other forms of Garchomp).

I hardly think that Exploding Azelf counts as a Mixed Sweeper. To sweep, you cannot willingly KO yourself, because then it is not you sweeping, but someone set up. Honestly, how many of you use Azelf as your main Special sweeper if you plan on running Explosion.

Okay, onto more mixed Sweepers. There's SharpenGon. I'm not sure if Adaptability or Download make this more effective, but if Normal wasn't so easy to wall, ouch. Nasty Plot/Sharpen/Return/Tri-Attack. Too bad Ghosts completely wall that. Hm... Sharpen/Return/Dark Pulse/HP-Fight? The thing is Dark Pulse and HP Fight gain alot of their power from Nasty Plot normally.

Kingdra is another good mixed sweeper. Waterfall/Hydo Pump/Dragon Pulse/Rain Dance. It's a mini-Palkia. Yah, mixed sweepers do exist, it's just that things like Cresselia and Dusknoir have the defenses to take these on. They also need to haev good coverage. MixApe loses to Salamence and Gyarados because they resist all of it's attacks. They do fall to any Infernape with Stone Edge or HP Ice though, so it's not like they counter all forms.
 
I sorta forgot Porygon2 is a viable mixed pokemon thanks to Download, I need to try that out myself.

Main problem though is it suffers from 4 slot syndrome but otherwise if you EV'd it in S.atk and brought it on something like Blissey than you could attack from both sides equally hard while taking a few hits yourself.
 
I'm a little new to the competitive Pokemon scene, but I've been studying the game pretty hard since I started playing D/P. It seems to me that even in Standard OU battles, almost everything that players use to attack hits so incredibly hard that OHKOs happen all the time and are the bread-and-butter of attacking. This means that players have to switch in bulky tanks, walls and counters constantly and hope to set up based on prediction.

So the harder the attacking pokemon hit, the more important the walls are and the more players will carry them with maxed out defenses, lefties and healing moves. Those walls don't die very easily unless players get careless, so its the predictable and more vulnerable attackers that die first. That leaves the bulky pokemon behind to try to finish the battle and the true stall-wars begin.

Its the design of the game meeting the restricted OU standards used in battle. There's not much you can do besides work with mixed-sweepers like people are suggesting and/or learn to properly predict the incoming Walls and cripple them with something nasty.
 
The problem I see in the metagame that creates stall wars is that while their are plenty of viable mixed sweepers (Infernape, Azelf, Tyranitar, Chain Chomp), Gamefreak in all their wisdom neglected to give us some mixed walls. The reason Blissey vs. Cressy takes so long to finish is that both are special attackers, complete with their own sets of high special defense. Even after a few Calm Minds, there still isn't a whole lot of damage being done. Rhyperior vs. Dusknoir is the same way. BulkyDos vs. Skarmory. All of the common walls of today are only one attack type oriented. Now, that's not to say I have a solution to this problem (besides giving Rhyperior Flamethrower, but I don't think that idea will catch on), I'm just explaining what I think the problem is.

In relation to that is the remarkable amount of walls and tanks that use stat-uppers or other non-damaging attacks these days. I'll use a recent battle of mine as an example, where I foolishly allowed my opponent to bring Probopass in against my Bronzong. As I sat their trapped, waiting for the end to come as I set up SR, Light Screens, and Trick Rooms, my opponent, instead of simply KOing me with Thunderbolt, chose to Taunt me into Gyro Balls and Magnet Rise every five turns. What could easily have been a five turn battle became a twenty turn one. The same process of helpng yourself applies to more common walls like Blissey and Cresselia. Blissey uses Calm Mind six times, as does Cressy. Both launch useless attacks at each other, waiting for a critical hit, and whenever they hit the 50% mark, a turn is spent Moonlighting or Softboiling.

The point is, advance and D/P have taught smart players that less attention can be paid to killing your opponents as long as you prepare for the future, which results in stall wars that nobody wants.
 
Well there really are a multitude of reasons for this and not just one single thing to blame. Obviously your battles on WiFi are going to take way longer than they would on a simulator because of the animations and even sometimes the lag time of WiFi battling in general. It inherently takes longer. Another reason, as Surgo mentioned, is that some people expose too much of their team early on. When you get a battle of two people that do this you're obviously going to annihilate each other's strong attacking pokemon and end up with the bulkier walls. It's a double-edged sword. The walls you send in just force a switch and to a newer battler usually that's not good enough. You want your opponent's threats out of the picture in general and are willing to sacrifice your own threats in order to do it. Sometimes if you have more patience early in the battle, you'll find you require less at the end.

The number 1 reason is of course Blissey
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This is partly because of how Blissey's stats are. People protect Blissey a lot for its great ability to eat up special attacks. If a physical attacker comes in, people send Blissey running. There's not much you can do about that besides take advantage of your opponent's eagerness to defend it and predict those switches to get yourself a better match up. Blissey will still take Stealth Rock and Sandstream damage if you're using them and if Blissey can never get a reliable turn in play it will get worn down and unable to Softboiled. Easier said than done I know but welcome to competitive battling.

To those who thought this generation would not be all about stalling, lol.
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This game, at least for me, has been generally faster paced than Advance. Games on WiFi do feel longer but I bet if you count the actual turns that take place you won't get a very large number a majority of the time. My Advance turn average is probably around 50-60 turns which is nothing in the grand scheme of things... if you've played RBY and especially GSC competitively you know that games can be five times that in turn length. Even Advance games have the ability to go longer but I always use teams that either win or lose once it hits a certain point. My DP experience does not even come close to matching my experience in other generations but from what I've seen and just how game mechanics are, it's hard for me to visualize a true stall game being developed. We have Choice items for both attack stats now, I hardly ever see any Resting aside from Cresselia let alone BellResting, Stealth Rock hits everything, it's harder to Rapid Spin with Dusknoir, another Sandstream pokemon was added... I could go on and on about changes that break general stall.

I think personally you're overreacting a bit because you had a few too many battles where not everything fainted right away and you got stuck with two sturdy pokemon facing each. It happens. That's competitive battling. Go watch a few GSC battles for some real stall..
 
This impression is mostly from Shoddy actually, the TSS team I use for Wi-Fi leaves Blissey pretty useless due to almost complete absence of Special Attacks. Phys.tanking Cresselia and Skarmory are more annoying, but they can never reach the Blissey vs. Special attackers level.

On the other hand, every other "balanced" or fun-team Ive made on Shoddy repetedly run into brick walls in the form of these common walls.
A very common factor seems to be Paralysis, many tanks can induce it, and it cripples most sweepers.

I dont want to imagine playing some of these battles over Wi-Fi, the mere thought is enough to give me nightmares >_>

Slowbro is a good example of how a physical tank should be, resists physical, attacks special, if that is what you were talking about Cooper?
 
After fighting in over 230 WiFi battles this summer (each around 20 minutes), here's what I conclude.

Most of the good mixxed walls (i.e. Uxie, Cresselia, Suicune) aren't used that much due to the fact that Soft Resetting is a Big Pain in the ass, especially for Suicune (it's less of a Pain if you have Colloseum).

In about 1/8 of those matches, I had used a Blissey. The opponent was trying to find a way to Get thru Blissey with a special sweeper (which of course is stupid). Clearly, players are getting annoyed of having to switch their Special sweeper out of Blissey. That explains some stall wars.

A lot of people still use dial-up, or in a case with a friend, his WiFi lags due to his firewalls.

You'd think that the game would go faster due to most walls getting 2-3hkoed by so much, but that's apparently not the case,
 
My problem with the big 2 is how truly hard they are to "counter." Cresselia and Blissey can incapacitate any sweeper capable of dealing huge damage to them with paralysis or sleep. I find that CB: Heracross/Tyranitar/Metagross, are the only pokes really capable of breaking through these two walls. Any other sweeper either gets T-waved and rendered practically useless, or Ice Beam'd if your a ground pokemon. And the few pokemon that don't care about T-wave or Ice Beam get stalled out unless they have ridiculously high attack scores.

Forget about Skarmbliss, Bli$$elia (lol) is a whole lot scarier. And teams with Cresselia+Blissey+Skarmory are really hard to breakthrough, even for the new D/P metagame. I would put a Heracross on my team to take care of all these threats, but having good resistances is so important in D/P, it's really hard to find room for something that's so "frail" and slow.

/End rant

P.S. I'm in now way advocating the banning of any pokes that aren't broken. I'm just complaining about our metagame cause it makes me feel better about myself. :p
 
It's been said before and I'll say it again. If you got rid of blissey special sweepers would just dominate everything.

Look at damage calcs. for Specsmence
 
onoez? Really, if your team isn't capable of, at the very least, stalling out a Blissey, then it's not going to win very many matches anyway.
 
Alright, lets change the tone in the topic.

What are good wallbreakers in this gen? Heracross and Tyranitar obviously, but what more is there?

Side note, SpecsMence is pretty much the only special threat you can do the "Ban Blissey and its over" argument for. Sweepers such as Azelf and Gengar can be countered, Sucker Punching Spiritomb is a favourite.
 
That reminds me of a battle I had a few hours ago where we just called it a draw to prevent a long drawn out stallfest between Bronzong and Gardevoir.
 
Phiphler said:
Alright, lets change the tone in the topic.

What are good wallbreakers in this gen? Heracross and Tyranitar obviously, but what more is there?

Side note, SpecsMence is pretty much the only special threat you can do the "Ban Blissey and its over" argument for. Sweepers such as Azelf and Gengar can be countered, Sucker Punching Spiritomb is a favourite.
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Infernape does an even better job then the Choiced Pokemon you listed imo.

Blissey is not "required" in the metagame, especially now that Manaphy has packed it's bags and left for Ubertown. It's just that so many Special Pokemon function also as a Blissey counter (Sploding Azelf/Heatran, Chain Chomp and friends), her importance is really.. not that high.
 
Blissey is need for this meta, because the closest thing to Blissey in terms of sp. walling is Cresselia.But even that falls to Specmance easily

Bold Cresselia hit by average specmance(252Spatk modest) is 50.23-59.01% Then after getting hit again by it it does about 23-29%. That means that Creeslia is going to die unless it's carrying moonlight.
 
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