Hail: More Than Anti-Metagame Idealism

I come back to Hail:

Some questions:

Is really Walrein viable for Hail right now?

Good spinners for Hail apart of Starmie which isn't THAT bulky? I tried Physically Defensive Intimidate Hitmontop but isn't too bulky and he doesn't have instant recovery, so, without Rest, it can't survive too much nor take hits, and Tentacruel which is almost the same, at least Tentacruel is recovered from the opponent's rain.

I even tried Blastoise, but it is even worse, at least can Roar/Dragon Tail, but relies of its healing to opponent Rain.

lol in the previous page, I asked the same a month ago, but if the more opinions, the better.

I am looking forward to get released Overcoat Forretress too.
 
Walrein has no half-decent options beyond stalling, and Stallrein won't do much against an experienced player, since everyone and their brother knows what it does (and by extension can stop it fairly easily).
As far as spinners go, Starmie, Tentacruel, and Hitmontop are the only ones that really stand out. Forretress is better with Sturdy than with Overcoat even in hail, as long as it has Leftovers, since at full HP it can survive a Fire attack that would otherwise destroy it and spin once (I don't remember if Leftovers recovery precedes Hail damage, or if it's the other way around). I'd be wary of using a Fire-weak Pokemon as a hail team's spinner, though. Which spinner is best depends on the team; I'd recommend an offensive spinner Starmie on an offensive team, bulky Starmie or Tentacruel on balance, and Tentacruel if you're ballsy enough to use a hail-stall team.
 
I personally prefer Tentacruel or Starmie, the latter more than the former. They both bring an excellent fighting resist to a hail team, while doing numbers against rain. I've had good success with both, but what makes Starmie just that little bit better is the instant recovery it has over the other spinners, plus it can check keldeo with psyshock. I've found forretress to be not that good for me spinner wise, but I guess I might be using it wrong.

The use of Walrein is a bit eh, everyone and their mother knows what set it runs and it isn't that hard to stop. Since Kyu B has been let down it has been a boon for hail teams, it can pull off a powerful mix set with blizzard or sub hone claws d tail set in hail to go with hazard stacking. While this may not push Hail over the edge and make it a rather dominant weather, it is a welcome addition. I also like to use Mamoswine in hail as my dragon killer, it works wonders, as well as against the therians. Lando T can also be used in Hail to be a good def pivot, a core I like to use is Sdef rachi and lando t, both cover opposite side of the spectrums and rachi provides wish support. Water attacks can be annoying, but abomasnow and starmie help with that. I've found hail to be an interesting weather altogether.
 
Honestly if you want to use something like walrein, wait until Ice Body regice is out. I ran that thing on my Dream World team and it was pretty fun to work with. It gets a couple extra weaknesses, but it gets a ton of bulk, being able to practically sponge any special attack
 
Random Question, I have been working on Hail Stall (I actually have a team that works pretty well but it still needs improvement) and I was wondering if people think it is advisable to build a hail stall team in the form given in the smog article "how its made - defense" ?
 
Bedlington said:
Random Question, I have been working on Hail Stall (I actually have a team that works pretty well but it still needs improvement) and I was wondering if people think it is advisable to build a hail stall team in the form given in the smog article "how its made - defense" ?
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In the article i cant see that much advise on making a hail stall team. The adviise it gives is helpful espeacilly covering fighing types. You could always post your team at the rmt and see if they could help you with your teams weakness. My advise for hail stall would be to find a counter to gensect (such as rotom h ) as it can destroy teams.
 
A thread lost in the sands of time... With the decline of Stall and the rise of massive fighting-type threats, is Hail still viable as an Anti-Metagame force?
 
Yes.

I've been running hail stall in many forms since the end of Gen 3 and as such have a lot of opinions/experience with the style, which I could enumerate but I don't really want to rant without direction so if anybody has any questions or specific topics they want to discuss toss them out.
 
I've had on and off success with hail, and I remember I saw a post a LONG time ago (can't remember who said it), who made a very valid point: What is it that hail is trying to accomplish? He joked around about Hail's true purpose is to spread passive damage, but I kinda thought about it some more. And then it kinda hit me. Hail is resisted by only 1 type in the entire game, Ice. Now, if you look at the OU tier, you'll see that there is a total whopping of 3 Pokemon that resist the passive damage caused by hail. Now, imagine the opponent taking 6% of damage each turn, ALONG with the 25% of a curse from a rest talking dusclops, AND the 12% from 1 layer of toxic spikes or burn, AND the 12% from a leech seed, AND then add that up with damage they take from your ferrothorn using a rocky helmet. The opponent will be dead in 2 turns. You see, this is how powerful Hail can be. With Sandstorm, so many types are resistant to it, and here's the thing with hail. If you have out a walrein, and you have 2 layers of toxic spikes out, then you can essentially stall out the entire enemy team to death with a combination of protect and sub, along with the combination of super fang and brine for things that can't break your sub. The thing is though, with the sheer defensive power that pokes that benefit from hail have, it can EASILY achieve all of this, as well as being able to fire off 100% accurate blizzards. Abomasnow, Nidoqueen, Heatran, Dusclops, Ferrothorn, Walrein. All of these pokes together can create a great team, one that is capable of setting up every entry hazard in the game, along with the ability of 4 out of its 6 team members having the ability to fire off 100% blizzards.

In my opinion, Hail should be used as a weather that is to spread around as much passive damage as possible. If you use Hail, you should be prepared to be in the game for a long run.
 
Sork said:
Now, if you look at the OU tier, you'll see that there is a total whopping of 3 Pokemon that resist the passive damage caused by hail.
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Might want to revise that number - Alakazam and Reuniclus are immune through Magic Guard. Poison Heal Breloom and Gliscor still gain about 6% health every turn. The other weather starters, while not immune to Hail, get rid of it (Abomasnow can't switch in on any of them except Hippowdon). So the final number is essentially 11. A far cry from 3, huh?
EDIT: I guess there's Overcoat Forretress, but that got a little over 3% usage on Forretress. Yeah.
Now, imagine the opponent taking 6% of damage each turn, ALONG with the 25% of a curse from a rest talking dusclops, AND the 12% from 1 layer of toxic spikes or burn, AND the 12% from a leech seed, AND then add that up with damage they take from your ferrothorn using a rocky helmet. The opponent will be dead in 2 turns. You see, this is how powerful Hail can be.
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No good player will allow all of this to be set up at once. Curse is just bad anyway, especially on a Pokemon meant to take hits... and in Hail, you're killing yourself faster than you're killing the opponent with Curse. Toxic Spikes isn't that great in this metagame either - you have to be able to beat Steels, Flying-types, Reuniclus, Alakazam, Conkeldurr, Poison Heal Breloom, and Tentacruel all at once.
With Sandstorm, so many types are resistant to it, and here's the thing with hail. If you have out a walrein, and you have 2 layers of toxic spikes out, then you can essentially stall out the entire enemy team to death with a combination of protect and sub, along with the combination of super fang and brine for things that can't break your sub.
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Same here. Sand might have more types immune to it, but it also provides benefits besides Ice Body - 50% Special Defense boosts to Rock-types, Sand Force, and Sand Rush.
The thing is though, with the sheer defensive power that pokes that benefit from hail have, it can EASILY achieve all of this, as well as being able to fire off 100% accurate blizzards.
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Any decent Fighting-type would like a word with you - Terrakion, Conkeldurr, and Keldeo all pose a serious threat to Hail. All of that is nearly impossible to set up even on the best stall teams
Abomasnow, Nidoqueen, Heatran, Dusclops, Ferrothorn, Walrein. All of these pokes together can create a great team, one that is capable of setting up every entry hazard in the game, along with the ability of 4 out of its 6 team members having the ability to fire off 100% blizzards.
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As long as Dusclops goes down (not hard), a Calm Mind Keldeo can sweep through this entire team. Swords Dance Terrakion is in a similar boat, although it needs to beware of Nidoqueen instead. (What's Dusclops doing to it when it's behind a Sub?)

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy using Hail and I like using Toxic Spikes (I dropped Spikes for Toxic Spikes on my team, get at me OU), but overall they aren't nearly as good as we'd all love to believe.
 
I think that Arcticblast is right in a lot of his points. Making a hail team is a LOT harder than simply throwing six defensive pokemon together and expecting hail damage to eventually add up to a win. However, I think that making a hail stall team is very viable in today's metagame.

I think that the biggest thing that actually helps hail is the prevalence of other weathers in the metagame. Many teams that you will face are heavily dependent on their weather being present and you have a built-in way to mess up their entire strategy from the get-go. If you can make your team versatile and flexible while being able to constantly screw with opposing strategies, you'll do well.

I think the difference with hail, and the thing that many people think makes it harder, is that it's difficult to simply assert your will on an individual battle. Rain offense can constantly batter you will high-powered, rain-boosted Hydro Pumps and take advantage of Volt Switch/U-Turn cores to maintain momentum. Sand offense can constantly threaten to set up a dangerous sweeper like SDTerrakion, CMKeldeo, RPLandorus, etc., along with having CBTar/Scizor as trappers. Hail, on the other hand, doesn't really have an easy way to impose itself on the other team and snatch the momentum. The lack of awesome hail attackers or advantageous abilities means that you have to be flexible and have good prediction skills to be able to find opportunities to derail your opponent's strategy, ride out their waves of high-powered sweepers, and control the battle in the long-term in order to get a victory.
 
Overcoat Foretress seems like the perfect spinner on any Hail-based team. Absorbs those pesky Fighting time moves decently enough as well.

Another two interesting options are Breloom and Gliscor, as they have Poison Heal they are not hurt by hail. Gliscor in particular would make a good defensive core.

Jellicent seems like a perfect Pokemon for Hail teams. It resists Steel and Fire and is totally immune to Fighting. It also can shrug off most Rock-type attacks in the current metagame and hit back with a Will-o-Wisp.

Gliscor and Jellicent make a pretty good core. So I could see them fitting well with Abomasnow.

Also, Banded Delibird make an ideal wall breaker.
*trolololol*
 
The Zororoaster said:
Also, Banded Delibird make an ideal wall breaker.
*trolololol*
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Dat rapid spin...

Hail stall does work, but it suffers severe competition from sand stall, which gets better type synergy and has more pokemon immune to it in general. Not to mention how bulky Hippowdon is. I've made a few stall teams (and am working on a moderately-successful one right now) and sand tends to be easier to build a core of pokemon around.

That being said, a proper Hail core is very, very, effective. Hail is the best weather once done correctly. If you have a solid core, then Hail will disrupt Rain, Sun, and Sand. I'm thinking a good core would be something like Slowbro, Kyurem (regular), and Gliscor.
 
Ill start this off by saying the is NOT the best use of him, but can be extremely fun. My apologizes if his has already been mentioned.

Walrein@lefties
Standard EVs for Stallrein
Sub/protect/super fang/brine

I noticed the other day that Walrein is one of the very few pokemon that can learn both super fang and brine. (IIRC the only other is sharpedo) Since brine's base power doubles to a very impressive 130 before STAB if the opponent is at or below half health, since super fang cuts the opponents current health by half, and hail cancles out lefties recovery. This thing can be lethal, as I said not the most realible, but it's one of the most fun. Use with toxic spikes for more efficient beating of mons with instant recovery as they won't be able to keep up the super fang+increasing toxic damage.
 
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