The new Champion Stadium cap as well as the new options just dropped, so why not do some runs exploring what can be done now. I'm probably shooting myself in the foot by making my first run pure stall, but this week has good stages to show some concepts.
Stall is very viable in Pokémon Masters. It's especially useful in Champion Stadium because you can tailor the stage's options to specifically benefit the playstyle. Basically you grab all the bulk points while avoiding enemy power-ups. You can then build your team defensively in order to outlast the opposition. Every stall team needs a residual damage catalyst, and preferably some offensive debuffs to play for the long con.
Stall is the recommended playstyle for new CS players because it's applicable on any weakness, and you can run basic F2P teams to gain a huge chunk of points. Most players grow out of stall once they build their 6*EX pairs, but I think stall has a lot more depth than it's given credit for. I tried to represent the bigger stall archetypes but there were a lot of pairs I couldn't fit here, like Pokey Trap Lodge Lillie or Stop Hitting Yourself Mallow. Even new pairs like Costume Shauna are pretty good for stall.
2500pts actually makes stall easier. Between the new Damage Reductions and HP+8 you get 900pts for free - 400pts of spillover that 2000pts Champion Stadium didn't have. 2000pts stall sometimes had to compromise with Half Ally HP or Str+3 to make up points. The one stall archetype that suffered are vampire teams. Damage Reduction makes it impossible to drain health effectively.
[0:00] - Standard Stall
Parameter: Improved Status
Lucy + OG Janine is your run of the mill stall core. Lucy applies Bad Poison and Trap to initiate the stall. Janine on the other hand crowd controls the enemy's offense with Venom Drench, which debuffs the Atk, Sp.Atk and Spe of all enemies afflicted with Poison. Note Bad Poison stacks over time, unlike regular Poison, which makes it better to stall out centermons.
To round up the team you want a tank who responds to the stage's primary offensive spectrum, be it OG Skyla or OG Misty. BP Morty is a more global defensive Support. Confuse Ray lets him fish for Confusion self-hits to avoid damage. He also has an excellent syncing passive in Synchro Healing.
[2:20] - Evasion Stall
Parameter: Improved Secondary Effects
BP Janine is a pretty good stall catalyst because she has Poison Fang and can progressively raise the party's Eva with Shifty Squad 2. If you pair her with an Acc debuffer she dodges attacks constantly.
I brought OG Clemont because he can debuff Spe and Sp.Atk, which gives the party some breathing room between attacks. OG Misty is defensive backup. Ice-weak Agatha has a penchant for applying Poison, so tanking with Antitoxin Janine made more sense to me. Plus, Recuperation 1 is free healing.
[4:41] - Bertha Stall
Parameter: Improved Special Damage
Bertha was specifically designed with stall in mind. She has 3 sources of residual damage: Pokey Trap 5 Sand Tomb, Stealth Rock and Sandstorm. Not only that, she can debuff Atk with Sand Slinger. Bertha can honestly solo stages with lower Trap resistance. Water-weak Bruno is such a stage. I thought about bringing another Pokey Trap user to capitalize from that, but you just get more damage from Poison.
3/5 Bertha has Sand Castle 2 and Soothing Sand 1 so she greatly benefits from another Sandstorm user to maintain her passives. I went with Ingo because he activates Ground Theme Skills and debuffs Acc.
This team doesn't have good syncing passives, so it's optimal to "save" sync to break Bertha out of a potential Flinch.
[7:00] - Sun Stall
Parameter: Improved Gauge
Healing Sun 2 Erika is unkillable along a Solarize source. Her best teammates are OG Lyra and Variety Lucas. Now you can also run OG Erika and BP Erika on the same team. BP Erika has Healing Sun 1 on her grid and activates all her Theme Skills with OG Erika. Lorelei spams Surf and has a physical sync so I gave Lyra Team Toughen Up 4 to fish for Def buffs.
[9:21] - Burn Stall
Parameter: Improved Physical Damage + Improved Status
Burn stall is one of my favorite archetypes. Very few pairs can Burn stall effectively, and even fewer stages can be Burn stalled to begin with. Basically anything with Lessen Burn 7 or higher is very difficult to Burn stall.
I like running Holiday Siebold and Marley for these teams because they combine their Scorcher 2 for added Burn recoil. I typically round up the core with Wallace because he activates Water Theme Skill and has Pokey Trap 6 Whirlpool. He also has Sterner Stuff 2, First Aid 4, Recuperation 2 and Trainer Move Shielded 2 to improve his match-up into physical stages.
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The Eggmon Compendium: docs.google.com/document/d/1k...
I stream Pokémon Masters sometimes: / zinfogel