Stall teams

(under construction)

## Introduction

Stall teams are quite different from the usual Weapon+Sstaff+Shield setups, as they tend to sacrifice a lot of offense in exchange for a slightly (yet considerable) increase in defense.
Because of that stall teams can survive the onslought of enemy teams of up to 1.5 times one's own level.

Advantages:

* starting around level 40, stall teams can generate higher average streaks than other teams of similar level, due to their robustness towards high level meta teams. The bonus XP from high streaks should make up for the higher tie rate.
* stall teams allow to level pets with high STR, high MAG and even include a pet that can be used as a healer in a different setup.

Disadvantages:

* Stall teams require weapons that are not usually used in other setups, e.g.: sprout aegis, mag sstaff and energize scepter.
* Due to weaknesses towards certain rare compositions it's not generally a setup for the late game.
* It can feel bad to get one's streak ended by a team only half one's own level.

There are multiple types of stall compositions existing, but the most famous one is the (true/full/sprout) stall team, which utilizes a sprout shield on a pet with lots of , like Eagle.
The different stall compositions work better/worse depending on the level of the team and the overall meta, so pay attention to their respective descriptions.

### Scepter Attacker Stall / Short Stall

The setup is the same of any classic x/sstaff/shield team, except that x is a scepter and the pet holding it is a  attacker like eagle. Since eagles have a low MAG value, the effect of them using scepter is more or less to transfer their own WP to the allied healer and tank. The outcome is usually 2-4 bonus rounds of taunt and 2-4 bonus rounds of healing. This is particularly useful at earlier levels, when it's hard for tanks and healers to last more than 10 rounds. Once the scepter pet runs out of WP, it will change from its WP-transfer role into an attacking role. Many enemy teams did already waste lots of WP into healing in those first few turns, when the short stall team didn't even attack yet. On the flip side, glass cannon teams without any defenses have all the time in the world to wreak havoc.

Suggested level ranges: Lvl 1-40. This setup is particularly interesting at low levels, because it enhances healer and tank with needed WPs, while scepter itself needs no WP to function. After level 40 it's probably a better idea to switch to a more powerful stall setup.

Suggested pets: Eagle or Snake as attacker. You want these for sprout stall anyway. High MAG pets as healer does already work here, since the scepter pet will grant a few 100 bonus WP mainly to the healer pet. But also a standard healer might work well. As for the tank choice a usual tank is going to work well, at low levels ideally a tank with high WP (like Sloth).

Suggested weapons: Scepter with energize, mtap, critical or strength passive. healer should hold a default sstaff, i.e., with energize. Tank, depending on base stats and level should either use a shield with energize or regeneration. Note that unlike with advanced stall setups, the cost of sstaff and shield do matter just like they would do for any other non-stall composition.

Suggested arc of development: this is an intermediary setup, i.e., the main purpose is to level pets relevant for future setups. For that reason either a classic healer (balanced WP/MAG) should be used (which can also take the role of a scepter pet in a sprout stall team), or a high MAG healer, which will either continue as a healer in sprout stall (but with an sstaff with magic passive) or, in the event of moving away from stall, as a magical attacker. Also the tank should be chosen according to late game plans, even though it would not find a home in a sprout stall team if one stays loyal to the stall idea.

Strengths: good for early levels and does not require top notch weapons

Weaknesses: Due to lack of offense even a completely unprotected gem team can attack for 4+ rounds without interruption. Teams that can exploit that are triple AOE teams and banner teams with gems.

### Full/True/Sprout Stall

Sprout stall teams are the most common and best known stall teams. A typical setup looks like this:

#1: Eagle/Snake with a high taunt shield (49%+) and a sprout passive (the higher the quality, the better, but it's not too important. Cost should be low, but is not really that important...

#2: High MAG pet like lizard, 250k or a CP with sstaff (passive magic). Again, the cost of the sstaff is not that important, high heals and high def-up matters more

#3: A low MAG healer-like pet (Zebra, Snowman, Squid) with an energize scepter.

(\*) position of healer and shield bearer can be swapped, but while both setups have their merits, the general recommendation is to have the tank go into #1.

The damage output is low, but only few compositions can crack sprout stall.

TBD: more info on sprout stall.

Suggested level ranges: 40+. The main reason for this high level is that your scepter pet needs to be able to provide ample amounts of WP to its allies, and for most scepter pets this is hard prior to level 40. Another reason is that you want your tank to be able to kill gem pets with one attack, for which they need 646 STR. However, the minimum strength is a very soft requirement and stall teams live very safe even if they cannot kill gems with a single attack. When to stop: about 55. The level when to stop will slowly grow over time, as it's based on the question: what are you more likely to encounter, a high level team that can kill you if you don't run stall or a Blitz team that can kill you if you run stall? As team levels rise higher and higher, you might be safer to run stall (which can survive teams of \*much\* higher levels) than to run a team that's safe from Blitz but dies when meeting a level 60+ dagger team.

Suggested pets: For sprout stall my personal suggestion is to run snake/eagle for tank. With higher levels CPs with 3/4 HP are a better choice, because due to a bug in mortality, pets with little base HP (like snake/eagle) will have their healing reduced by more than what the debuff mortality indicates. While the mortality bug affects all pets, the effective power of that bug does decrease significantly beyond 4 base HP. For the healer pet I highly recommend a minimum of 10 MAG. Base HP, MR and PR all together need to sum up to at least 5, with 2 HP being the absolute minimum. Reason: double gem AOE teams will break through your massive healing defenses if you use a CP with less than 5 points in all these defensive stats.

Suggested weapons: TBD

Suggested arc of development: TBD