Are stallers still part of the meta? (Gen 8 OU)?
It has been a long time since I played Gen 8 OU, or even played anything Pokemon at all. Were their changes to the current meta? The usual stallers like Hippowdon or Toxapex nerfed? Or has somebody found a counter to it since new Pokemon were released in Gen 8 OU? Or has it remained the same?
Pleaselog inorregisterto add a comment.
Short answer: Stallers, often referred to as walls in competitive Pokemon, can fit well in bulky offense or balanced team compositions.They are still very much part of the metagame in gen 8 OU.
Currently, as you mentioned,Hippowdon and Toxapex remain the premier walls of gen 8 OU. Things like Skarmory and Corviknight are also quite good. Although things like Slowbro / Slowking and Blissey have dropped in viability recently, they’re still up in the rankings because of how Teleport is reworked.
There are also a lot of offensive threats in Gen 8 OU that prevent these walls from being as effective with notable examples being Urshifu, Weavile, Zeraora, Magnezone / Heatran.
Stall as a team archetype is largely dead in Gen 8 OU.
Long answer:
If we look at how stallers operated in previous generations, it pretty much involved the use of walls to induce status effects, such as Toxic or Burn, or phase out set-up sweepers using moves like Whirlwind. In generation 7, stall as a team archetype is pretty much unviable because there were so many offensive threats, such as the Tapus and Ash-Greninja, and more mechanics geared around offense, such as Mega Evolutions and Z-moves.
The removal of such mechanics meant that walls encountered much less threats in terms of move sets. However, the current metagame has an abundance of offensive threats, as I mentioned earlier, that make it difficult for a fully functioning stall team to work.
There are a couple of new introductions to generation 8 OU that somewhat changes how walls work now:Heavy Duty BootsandTeleport.
Heavy Duty Boots: HDB has likely hurt the ability of stallers to “stall”. Since Heavy Duty Boots grants immunity to entry hazards, new threats, such as Volcarona, could switch in freely even if something like Stealth Rocks was up. On additional note, the ability to ignore entry hazards makes Toxic Spikes and Spikes, both of which are important to have on stall teams, very difficult to use.
Teleport: Teleport has definitely improved the role that stallers could take on. For instance, Blissey, a Pokemon that was previously considered to ruin the momentum on the team, could now easily pivot out using Teleport, allowing it to fit on balanced or bulky offense teams.
Some other worthy mentions:
Body Press, which is an attack based off a Pokemon’s defense, has made Physically Defensive walls, such as Skarmory, less passive.
tl;dr: In Gen 6 OU, walls were prevalent. In Gen 7 OU, walls weren’t as good anymore.In Gen 8 OU, walls have shifted part of their role to become defensive pivots for offense Pokemon on the same team.
I hope this helped! If you’re interested in the topic, I listed the sources I used.
