In your futile opinion, which is better, Stadium or RBY? Dead RBY Subforum ;~; I prefer Stadium, the broken mechanics suit me more. And i fucking hate wrap.
Stadium is a bit slower due to Hyper Beam always recharging, an important nerf for Tauros/Snorlax. Without Hyper Beam they won't score important kills, and if you use it and kill something whatever your opponent sends out it's going to get a free hit (2 if he's faster) Sub is the other relevant difference, but idk very well how does this affect to the meta. Sub can be useful on snorlaxes vs paralysed Chanseys (and even Starmies, as without Surf it can only do 24% max to snorlax iirc). But, on the other hand, it's also useful on zams. But I don't really think sub is better than reflect, reflect zam already forced you to play defensively anyway, and i you manage to para zam then a 75% zam with sub up is much easier to handle offensively than a para zam with reflect up. Sub zam shines vs eggs without d-e though.
Substitute Zam forces things like SToss Chansey and/or DEdge Eggy (which admittedly isn't that bad), and the stall wars will never end. Hyper Beam nerf means specialists become even more groundbreaking than previously. Wrap on the other hand is an ABSOLUTE bitch that ruins an otherwise great game. I love RBY with Wrap banned. I dislike both Stadium and RBY with wrap allowed. Stadium is the overall stalliest meta around, possibly only beaten by GSC, but I'm not sure. Substitute dominates and makes it really tricky to get status in.
I forget, is focus energy up and running yet? When it is, that'll probably have a pretty big impact with regard to offense in Stadium. Without it, it's all Hyper Beam nerf, sub buff, and hence, stall-tactics buff.
Sub Zam doesn't really force Chansey to run Stoss. Sure it helps, but the things you are hitting for SE with tbolt are more important than sub zam. I don't see how Subzam can force more stally plays than reflectzam. It's just that Sub gives you the edge in stally/status matchups, as opposed to reflect which gives you the edge in physical matchups thus letting you go for the stally matchups without worrying about physical sweepers. In fact, I'd say Substitute helps offense more than defense/stall overall. But the Hyper Beam nerf is THAT relevant though. Also, the stalliest meta is probably RBY Ubers since the only reliable offense there is explosion (in GSC you have explosion/spikes/drum and in RBY/Stadium there is Tauros/Snorlax/Explosions/etc). Wraps are RNG based but not that dominant nor reliable imo (and cloy's clamp is more useful as team player rather than for straight sweeping, which is impossible vs Starmie). Lastly, as Jorgen pointed out, FE is also worth mentioning. Jolteon benefits from it, also Kangaskhan (gets 70% CH rate after a single FE) and to a lesser extent Nidoking. Seems like Kanga could have some potential, at least it's not randomly walled to death by something.
Sorry RBY, I love Stadium now. Going back a few weeks, I was initially annoyed when the short Stadium sleep was introduced. It completely changed the importance of using Sleep Powder in situations for Eggy. But once I adjusted to using Eggy the new way, it almost seems better than the RBY sleep. I can risk a Starmie lead sleeping early and actually have a very good chance of it waking up later in the game without taking a big hit to the rest of the team. The new Substitute mechanic is also an awesome alteration. I'm particularly fond of the Substitute Chansey set, takes plenty of sub 25% attacks, like strong Blizzards and most importantly makes it that much harder for the opponent to go for the freeze. Of course, when running Seismic Toss / Softboiled / Substitute / Thunder Wave, Snorlax and Rhydon can be very intimidating and you lose one advantage (outspeed,twave, sub) when it gets paralyzed itself, but it remains very viable in the current metagame, especially when players insist on playing RBY-like and going for the freeze so much.