Pokémon players are so sick of stall that they’ve crafted a broken counter

In Pokémon, there are so many creative strategies and approaches to take when it comes to battling. One of the most controversial strategies is stalling out the opposing Pokémon’s HP with a combination of status conditions, setting up, protecting, and healing yourself. It often turns the battle into a slow and painful waiting game, and players have figured out the perfect way to end these stall tactics once and for all.

In a July 12 Reddit thread, one player came up with a new Pokémon ability that would punish anyone trying to stall out the game. 

Since the whole idea of stall relies on keeping your Pokémon healthy and healing their HP when necessary, this ability would reverse the effects anytime a Pokémon on the field tried to heal their HP. Rather than gain HP, they would lose it. In other words, they would no longer have a feasible way of stalling out their opponent.

This would mean Leftovers would now hurt the holder instead of healing them each turn. Likewise, if a Dondozo wanted to use Rest to heal back up to full HP, it would accidentally knock itself out instead.

This brings us back to the question posed in the thread: Is the ability too unbalanced?

Absolutely. But the main takeaway here is we’re tired of the long stall game, and some of us even want it banished from the games altogether. This ability would help accomplish that.

If we were to make it more balanced and realistic, there is an existing move and ability we can look to for inspiration—Heal Block and Liquid Ooze. Heal Block prevents the target from healing for a few turns, and if this were made into an ability that affects the whole field, it would already eliminate the potential for stall.

Liquid Ooze, on the other hand, damages any Pokémon that uses an HP-draining move on the ability holder. Something more limited like Liquid Ooze could definitely work as a new ability that rightfully punishes Pokémon trying to heal and stall.

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