OU RBY OU Viability Ranking (2013 to 2016)

[Kel9901]

I agree with everything m9m said except maybe kangaskhan, what's its selling point over tauros/snorlax?
Haven't used raichu, but I guess it has a niche in being able to get past the rocks (though most special attackers hit them hard anyway so i'm not sure what raichu has over them- maybe raichu should be compared to other special attackers rather than zapdos/jolteon since it doesn't really have a great physical offense- body slam and submission are all it has, and they're pretty weak)

 

[magic9mushroom]

Don't listen to anything magic9mushroom says.

Hahaha, you can talk.

Raichu really is worthless. Its only perk is that it's an Electric that isn't walled by Goldon, except it both hits and takes hits like a wet noodle so it doesn't scare anything else anyway. Zapdos is good precisely because it's very threatening to everything except Goldon, whereas Raichu is equally worthless because the price it pays for getting around them is that it threatens absolutely nothing else.

Yes, Raichu is shit and shouldn't really be used. So's everything in D-rank.

I agree with everything m9m said except maybe kangaskhan, what's its selling point over tauros/snorlax?

Over Tauros, Counter and Mega Kick. Over Snorlax, speed. And yeah, it's only really useful if you've already got both - Persian's no different, though, when you get down to it. Should have said "maybe" and not "probably", whatever.

Haven't used raichu, but I guess it has a niche in being able to get past the rocks (though most special attackers hit them hard anyway so i'm not sure what raichu has over them- maybe raichu should be compared to other special attackers rather than zapdos/jolteon since it doesn't really have a great physical offense- body slam and submission are all it has, and they're pretty weak)

Pin Missile's utterly useless except when it's 4x super-effective, and Jolteon's Double Kick is a lot weaker than Raichu's Submission:

Raichu Submission vs. Chansey: 294-346 (41.8 - 49.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
Jolteon Double Kick (2 hits) vs. Chansey: 186-220 (26.4 - 31.2%) -- guaranteed 4HKO

So yeah Jolteon isn't in the same breath as Zapdos either. Raichu shouldn't really be using Body Slam (neither should Jolteon), because it doesn't really solve any of their problems. Raichu should be using either Submission (for Chansey) or Seismic Toss (for Egg), not trying to do both.

If you want a specific niche for Raichu, it'd be as a (STABbed) specialist with no special weaknesses that doesn't get rekt by Slowbro or Rocks. But in reality it's shit, like most of D-rank (lol Dodrio).



My two cents on how to define the ranks:

S-rank: Mandatory mons. A team without these is considered nonstandard.
A-rank: Cream of the crop. Great mons that'll pull their weight every game.
B-rank: Threats. Scary 'mons that can do work and need to be respected.
C-rank: Minor threats. You can counter these by accident, but they're unique enough to be useful on some teams and teams weak to them exist.
D-rank: Mediocre stuff, not exactly BAD but thoroughly unimpressive.
E-rank: Shit-tier, should never be used. No point actually naming these in a list, they're literally "the rest".

Hmm, looking at my most recent list, I did put Kanga in D. But Jorgen did some talking about how it's potentially on par with Persian and I found it somewhat compelling.

Translating that list to this ranking system and alphabetical order it'd be like S: Egg/Taur A: Zam/Chan/Lax/Mie B: Cloy/Gar/Golem/Pras/Don/Bro C: Coon/Nite/Jolt/Jynx/Persian/Bel/Zapdos D: Fable/Gyara/Hypno/Kabutops/Kangy/Kingler/Raichu E: da rest. Moving all of the bolded ones of a given tier to the next tier up wouldn't bother me particularly, that's a matter of cutoffs (ie, Nite to B or Jynx/Zap to C would both be fine by me). And like I said maybe Kangy to C or Persian to D. IDK what to do about those two.

 

[Mr.E]

Venusaur, Sandslash, and Dodrio are usable enough tbh. And Persian is plainly superior to Kangaskhan, it both hits harder (at least with Slash) and, more importantly, outspeeds Tauros.

The point of Jolteon's "other" attacks is mostly just to beat Eggy and do more respectable chip damage to Goldon than Zapdos does with its puny Drill Peck. You're not going to Double Kick Chansey to death, of course, but oh well. Jolteon also outspeeds everything, even Alakazam (and Pin Missile might be useful there too). It's not the same universal threat as Zapdos, because Zapdos takes hits better and beats Chansey, but it's fairly respectable.

 

[Isa]

do more respectable chip damage to Goldon than Zapdos does with its puny Drill Peck. You're not going to Double Kick Chansey to death, of course, but oh well.

??????
Jolteon Double Kick (2 hits) vs. Rhydon: 64-76 (15.4 - 18.4%) -- possible 6HKO
This bonus damage means jack shit unless you're using Surf on Lax, in which case it's still only slightly better than Zapdos Drill Peck.

Jolteon Double Kick (2 hits) vs. Chansey: 186-220 (26.4 - 31.2%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
Jolteon Double Kick (2 hits) vs. Chansey on a critical hit: 356-420 (50.6 - 59.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO (25,4% CH rate for Jolteon)
Chansey Ice Beam vs. Jolteon: 67-79 (20.1 - 23.7%) -- guaranteed 5HKO

Let's for the sake of convenience just assume that both Pokémon are paralyzed and at 100% HP.
Jolteon uses Double Kick, doesn't crit, Chansey uses Ice Beam.
If Jolteon gets a Critical hit here and Chansey doesn't use Softboiled (or is prevented from doing so), Chansey dies next round unless Chansey lucks out with a full paralysis on Jolteon. This two-turn scenario has a 20,6% chance of happening, where Jolteon gets a crit and isn't FP'd the turn after, so every time you get hit by Double Kick from full HP, you must heal up or risk dying 20% of the time.
Let's say that Jolteon does not get a Critical Hit and you use Ice Beam. Chances for Chansey to die are now at ~33% according to this beautiful diagram: http://puu.sh/cFZXJ/9083fbcae9.png
Let's just for the sake of convenience say that one Softboiled negates all damage from 1 CH DK or 2 non-CH DKs.

So let's say you heal up every time after taking one Double Kick. In a scenario where you're using Softboiled every second turn and Ice Beam every other (assuming no FPs nor CHs on either side here temporarily), you'll be spending a minimum of 8 turns tanking Double Kicks before Jolteon dies to Ice Beams and Chansey still lives, 7 turns spent in uncertainty as by the 8th you'd be safe using Ice Beam.
From max HP, the chance of getting to the scenario where Chansey has a 33% to die (again, source being the beautiful diagram I made) is 0.25*0.75*0.254 = 4.76%.
Across 7 turns of Double Kicking, that's 1-(1-0.047)^7 = 28.6% to get to that scenario at least once, which had a 33% chance of killing Chansey, so roughly 9% chance for Jolteon to kill Chansey in one sequence of crit+crit/fp from full health, ugh im too tired of this math to continue but tl;dr chansey can certainly die to double kicks.

i'd guesstimate jolteons chanses overall to ~30-40% at beating Chansey. low ball.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Venusaur, Sandslash, and Dodrio are usable enough tbh. And Persian is plainly superior to Kangaskhan, it both hits harder (at least with Slash) and, more importantly, outspeeds Tauros.

Persian outspeeds Tauros but is 2HKOed by it; Kanga isn't. And Kangaskhan's Mega Kick hits harder than Persian's Slash, not to mention that since HAIPA BIIMU exists Kangaskhan's OHKO threshold is higher than Persian's and their 2HKO thresholds (even with Body Slam on Kanga) are pretty similar. Also Slash can't get hax (it's already a crit, and it has no secondary effect) so it's easy to overestimate its power (an unparalysed Chansey, for instance, is basically guaranteed to defeat a Persian that simply spams Slash).

The point of Jolteon's "other" attacks is mostly just to beat Eggy and do more respectable chip damage to Goldon than Zapdos does with its puny Drill Peck. You're not going to Double Kick Chansey to death, of course, but oh well. Jolteon also outspeeds everything, even Alakazam (and Pin Missile might be useful there too). It's not the same universal threat as Zapdos, because Zapdos takes hits better and beats Chansey, but it's fairly respectable.

Pin Missile is useless vs. Zam. Thunderbolt is better, even after one or two specfalls. In fact, Thunderbolt is better than Pin Missile even against Tangela and Parasect, which resist the former and are weak to the latter. Pin Missile is solely for use against Egg and Grass/Poison types ie stuff that resists Tbolt and is 4x weak to PM.

Jolt's chip damage to GolDon is still low enough (36% to Golem with a crit and max damage) that the correct predict of a GolDon switch is not to DK but to double to Tauros. Double Kick is for Chansey, and Isa's right that that MU isn't a cakewalk for Chansey (still in Chansey's favour, but you can't fart around the way you can vs. Starmie). Of course half the time people using Jolt are using the set from the Smogon analysis that doesn't actually HAVE DK and they consequently get rekt.

My point in saying it's not in the same breath as Zapdos is that its coverage moves are very specific to one or two Pokemon and are a waste of a turn if something else switches in. Zapdos, however, can spam Drill Peck relatively freely, since it has STAB and a widely-effective typing - it's Zapdos' best move against Egg, Chansey, Alakazam, Gengar and Jynx and does at least respectable damage to everything else except other Electrics and Rocks.

 

[Aerodactyl Legend]

Isa, is that estimate (30-40%) that Jolteon will beat Chansey with Double Kick factoring them both paralyzed+100% health or both fully healthy? Of course DK is an option and it could work, but unless Jolteon is already paralyzed, I'd usually wouldn't risk getting hit with Thunder Wave.

On Kangaskhan, I don't see why anyone would use it when you already have Snorlax and Tauros. I'd use Persian over it any day, for that speed. It barely takes physical his better than Tauros and takes a good step worse on the Special side. All while being weaker and slower and having a shittier Blizzard. We don't even need to explain why Snorlax is better. But that 115 Speed on Persian is definitely something to look at. I've used it a few times alongside Starmie, as my third cleaner (backing Tauros and Starmie up), pretty much securing and late games as long as I played the first half of the team right.

 

[Isa]

Uh. Without using Thunder Wave vs. Chansey, Jolteon has a solid 0% win rate versus Chansey, as Chansey now outspeeds and can heal up whenever it is within range of getting KO'd by a Critical Hit. If you're playing Jolteon vs. Chansey, you either switch out or paralyze it and then go for Double Kicks (or preparalyze it - Chansey isn't better if it starts the game paralyzed!)

 

[Aerodactyl Legend]

Uh. Without using Thunder Wave vs. Chansey, Jolteon has a solid 0% win rate versus Chansey, as Chansey now outspeeds and can heal up whenever it is within range of getting KO'd by a Critical Hit. If you're playing Jolteon vs. Chansey, you either switch out or paralyze it and then go for Double Kicks (or preparalyze it - Chansey isn't better if it starts the game paralyzed!)

I meant at the very start of their confrontation when I said completely healthy. A non para'd Chansey is a no-go for Jolteon. Just needed a clarification (so, overall, it's a little lower).

I'd still rather use Jolteon over Raichu though, lol.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Isa, is that estimate (30-40%) that Jolteon will beat Chansey with Double Kick factoring them both paralyzed+100% health or both fully healthy? Of course DK is an option and it could work, but unless Jolteon is already paralyzed, I'd usually wouldn't risk getting hit with Thunder Wave.

Generally what you do with Jolt (assuming you've got the Rocks out of the way) is to double on Starmie/another Water, TWave as Chansey comes in, force it out and double again on Starmie and then DK as Chansey comes in again. Chansey wins most of the time in a straight healthy 1v1, but it changes pretty dramatically if it's coming in on DK and pre-paralysed.

On Kangaskhan, I don't see why anyone would use it when you already have Snorlax and Tauros. I'd use Persian over it any day, for that speed. It barely takes physical his better than Tauros and takes a good step worse on the Special side. All while being weaker and slower and having a shittier Blizzard. We don't even need to explain why Snorlax is better. But that 115 Speed on Persian is definitely something to look at. I've used it a few times alongside Starmie, as my third cleaner (backing Tauros and Starmie up), pretty much securing and late games as long as I played the first half of the team right.

You don't use Blizzard, you use Surf (Kangaskhan gets Surf). Also Persian has a hard wall and Kangaskhan doesn't. Also Persian can't para stuff unless it uses Body Slam and does even less damage than Kangy, and can't "crit" its STAB unless it commits to Hyper Beam, mostly negating its fantastic crit rate. Also Persian can't beat Tauros 1v1 unless Body Slam doesn't para and it crits Hyper Beam, while Kangaskhan can (threat of Counter, and EQ + EQ + HBeam almost never 3HKOs Kangy - BSlam + EQ + HBeam is about 50-50 - while Kangy almost always does 3HKO back and can para). Also what's actually in that Speed range? Starmie shits on both of them anyway (but it's less scared of Persian because Slash doesn't para or "crit" and Screech is telegraphed), Tauros we've covered, Gengar hardwalls Persian but dies in 2 hits to Kangy, and I guess there's Zapdos with its 15% or so usage. Persian has a lot more speed, but it barely benefits from the crit rate and it still doesn't outspeed the one thing physicals really want to ie Alakazam (outspeeding Gengar is also good for a physical and Persian would have a serious niche in doing so if it could hurt Gengar, but that's the great irony of its existence).

Of course, most teams don't actually use either, because they're mini-Tauroi. But yeah like I said I'm not really confident about all this and I'm mostly just parroting Jorgen here. I do know that basically every time I've tried to use Persian it's sucked and I've very rarely been actually scared of it, while I have gotten swept or at least seriously threatened by Jolt/Arty/Vic before.

 

[Aerodactyl Legend]

You don't use Blizzard, you use Surf (Kangaskhan gets Surf).

Believe it or not, I've seen a couple run Blizzard for whatever reason. Probably for Dragonite.


And Persian doesn't take on stuff one on one, it's a cleaner...

 

[Jorgen]

I'm probably too down on Persian for my own good. Slash is pretty baller. I just like Kanga more because it isn't hardwalled and, therefore, more likely to be useful in any given match. Unlike Raichu, who works off a similar concept w.r.t. Jolteon and Zapdos, Kanga gets STAB Normal moves, which are way more useful than STAB Tbolt.

I like to think of Kangaskhan as a Normal-fighter. Basically, uses coverage to shoo away other Normal counters, thus forcing the opponent to basically just smash it to get rid of it, which is when you can Counter for the KO. Granted, Lax can do this too, but Kanga actually outspeeds stuff like Exeggutor, meaning opponents stand to take 2 hits on the switch rather than just one.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Okay forget the Kanga/Persian shit for the moment then. Here's the things I think should move and rationales for them.

Cloyster to B: Cloy's physical bulk and 4x Ice resist give it switch-in opportunities vs. a whole pile of stuff (one of Dragonite's biggest woes) and it double-switches vs. basically everything, Clamp guarantees free switches and locks out slower stuff from getting an attack, STAB Blizzard, and if all else fails a decent Explosion (can't keep Gengar out, but the Rocks aren't switching into Cloy in a million years). Starmie's the only real answer to it since basically everything else either loses to Cloy itself or can be Clamped and countered with something threatening.

Dragonite to B or Jynx/Zapdos to C: I feel like Dragonite a rank lower than Zapdos and Jynx is kinda downplaying it. Dragonite needs Gengar removed (or at least weakened), but Zapdos needs the Rocks removed even more - and once their respective counters are gone, which one's scarier? Zapdos is crippled by fighting almost anything - even the Waters, aside from Slowbro - and as such it's rarely sweeping even when the Rocks are gone; Dragonite, on the other hand, is definitely capable of sweeping. And Jynx is scary in the first few turns but it often ends up sitting around for half the game; the only thing it can really switch into and beat is Egg without a physical attack and it's potentially OHKOed by all the major physicals.

Hypno to D: Hypno has Vaporeonitis. What is Vaporeonitis? It's being a bulky special, but having: 1) no ability to threaten (at least a couple of) the Recover users 2) no recovery 3) no Explosion. Things with Vaporeonitis (like, eponymously, Vaporeon) look like they're great, and win a lot of matchups with physicals, but in real play they just get walled and slowly ground down into the dust. Lapras almost has Vaporeonitis, but it poses at least a little threat to all the Recover users thanks to its powerful STAB with an instant-death secondary effect, its decent Attack to use Body Slam, and its access to Electric moves for Starmie. What does Hypno have? Well, it has Hypnosis, which is certainly not a bad move. But Hypnosis' accuracy makes Hypno bad as a sole sleeper, and it's too slow to be an effective lead. It doesn't have enough other good options to make it a surprise as Chansey and Lapras can - in fact, it's blatantly obvious Hypno has Hypnosis since that's basically the only reason to use it over the much faster, more powerful, Recover-using Alakazam. So... if you have to run a reliable sleeper (ie Egg) alongside it anyway, Hypno's sleep is no more valuable than Egg's (unlike Chansey's/Lapras's), you can't lead with it and you can't sleep more than one thing... how often is its Hypnosis actually doing something? And if it's not sleeping anything (that wouldn't have been slept anyway), it's back to Vaporeonitis ie uselessness. The only moderately interesting Hypno set I've seen is Body Slam/Meditate/Reflect/Rest - at least it's unique - but that's still a gimmick and belongs with the other gimmicks IMO.

Raichu to D: Okay so in actuality, you're not going to use Raichu. There are better alternatives. But that's really the case for basically anything in D, so it's not exactly an exclusion criterion. And, well, it can actually force switches on Waters/Rocks and it can actually get past a paralysed Chansey (though not Alakazam) so I feel like it's just generically good/unique enough to get a mention.

Venusaur to E: It's a mostly-inferior version of a mon already bad enough to be C-rank. It can't threaten para or Wrap like Bel (which are half the reason Bel's so scary), its +2 Hyper Beam isn't nearly as powerful, and in return it gets... to outspeed Cloyster instead of tying and to get a little more physical bulk (the damage ranges always overlap and it's still always 2HKOed by Zapdos). So yeah, this is like putting Dewgong on the list because zomg it has 20 more speed than Lapras and that totally gives it a micro-niche. You're never going to use both, and Victreebel dominates it in teambuilding because if nothing else at least they don't know its whole set just from seeing what species it is.

Burn E rank: Because no, they're not viable. Even if they are a "surprise". Waste of space and might mislead someone into actually using them.

Also I think Egg is worthy of S rank because it does the same shit every game and that shit's good. But I know a lot of people whine about it (probably because Egg's something you rely on and forget about until suddenly you take out a non-Egg team and get consistently rekt) so I won't insist on it.

 

[Aerodactyl Legend]

Are you seriously suggesting that Zapdos be moved to C? That's literally all I see of that post at the moment.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Are you seriously suggesting that Zapdos be moved to C? That's literally all I see of that post at the moment.

Well, I put it up as an option, yes. Dragonite to B would also work.

I don't think Zapdos is on par with the Rocks or the Waters (Gengar's a bit more iffy).

 

[Ortheore]

I'm with m9m in thinking Cloy and Dnite should be B rank.

Cloy is as good a check to normal attackers as they come (the only wrapper with significant defensive utility), STAB blizzard is always fun, and it's got a nice boom as well. Dnite is difficult to work with, but when it does work, there really is no threat quite like it- you could easily argue that once set up Dnite is more threatening than Tauros.

Don't drop Zap and Jynx, Zap becomes a monster as soon as GolDon's out of the picture and it's loads better than everything else in C (except Dnite/Cloy which is arguable, but they should move up anyway), while Jynx is easily the best lead in the game imo.

Yes, drop Venusaur tho, I have absolutely no idea why you'd use Venu over Bel.

Idk about Hypno. I've never really used it, but if I were to use it I would definitely do so as a lead. I can definitely see the appeal- it's the only good lead that can sleep something and then immediately para the switch-in (Egg can do that, but it's a shit lead so w/e), while if you let it take sleep, that's not that bad. I'd say it's worthy of C, but like I said, I haven't got much experience with it.

Tauros all alone in S rank seems weird. Like he's great, but not a whole tier better than Lax/blob/Egg imo

 

[magic9mushroom]

I'm with m9m in thinking Cloy and Dnite should be B rank.

Cloy is as good a check to normal attackers as they come (the only wrapper with significant defensive utility), STAB blizzard is always fun, and it's got a nice boom as well. Dnite is difficult to work with, but when it does work, there really is no threat quite like it- you could easily argue that once set up Dnite is more threatening than Tauros.

Don't drop Zap and Jynx, Zap becomes a monster as soon as GolDon's out of the picture and it's loads better than everything else in C (except Dnite/Cloy which is arguable, but they should move up anyway), while Jynx is easily the best lead in the game imo.

Well, having 9 Pokemon in B and 4-5 in C looks pretty weird. Nite/Zap/Jynx are all sort of on a level, and while they're clearly all pretty good I think they're not as good as the Waters and Normal resists. You have to draw a line at some point.

Idk about Hypno. I've never really used it, but if I were to use it I would definitely do so as a lead. I can definitely see the appeal- it's the only good lead that can sleep something and then immediately para the switch-in (Egg can do that, but it's a shit lead so w/e), while if you let it take sleep, that's not that bad. I'd say it's worthy of C, but like I said, I haven't got much experience with it.

What lead matchups is Hypno winning that Egg wouldn't? Both get slept by Jynx and Gengar (and at least Egg can more reliably sleep them if they miss), Hypno clearly takes more damage from Zam, and even vs. Starmie Hypnosis' lower accuracy means the average damage they'll take is pretty similar. Jynx's freeze chance on Blizzard is probably better than Hypno's Thunder Wave given Hypno's just going to see Chansey after it throws sleep. Egg has Explosion to make Chansey think twice and thus give it some potential to hurt/para other stuff; Hypno's walled.

 

[Mr.E]

Pin Missile is useless vs. Zam. Thunderbolt is better, even after one or two specfalls. In fact, Thunderbolt is better than Pin Missile even against Tangela and Parasect, which resist the former and are weak to the latter. Pin Missile is solely for use against Egg and Grass/Poison types ie stuff that resists Tbolt and is 4x weak to PM.

You made me bother to do the damage calcs and Pin Missile averages about 90 to (+0) Tbolt's 98. You underestimate how specially bulky Zam is with its whole 368 Special dealio in RBY. Tbolt is also 100% accurate, and can PAR if you're lucky, but one could make the argument Pin Missile is a better attack to use due to the variance in damage fucking with Zam trying to out-Recover it and a crit five-hitter almost literally OHKOs it from full HP.

I've always said Eggy is the best non-Tauros mon in the game. And Dragonite really does not get setup that easily considering everything in the game can either paralyze or is Cloyster, who just OHKOs it (if you give it a turn to attack by not Wrapping or killing it), to say nothing of the occasional Gengar. You have to protect the shit out of it, and then also get a little lucky.

 

[Isa]

http://rby2k10.proboards.com/thread/1582/jolteon-alakazam

Magic is in the right.

 

[magic9mushroom]

After accounting for everything (rounding errors, crits, real accuracies) Tbolt does an average 119.0 damage compared with Pin Missile's 89.1 (33.6% higher). Pin Missile's variance does indeed mean that it peaks higher; the chance that Pin Missile does damage greater than Tbolt could possibly do is 4.8% (hit, crit, and either 5 hits or 4 hits and decent damage roll).

Tbolt after one Special fall averages 94.9 damage. After two Special falls it averages 82.5 damage, so I'll concede that Pin Missile is better in that case. Unless Alakazam has Reflect up, in which case Pin Missile's damage drops to an average of 64.7.

 

[Crestfall]

Seeing as nothing further has occurred in terms of tier movement I want to bump the Eggy to S nomination.

I can fathom building a team without tauros and without chansey or starmie or zam. A team withouteggy just seems wrong and insanely difficult to do. It can be thrown on a team just as easily as tauros if not more.

Now my word carries little to no weight, but for those keeping up with SPL (a large majority here - hell half you guys are in it) Eggy is THE dominating mon. It's usage is rank1.

Egg is just the ultimate all purpose mon. It can take paras for you. Sleep AND stun. And it can threaten nearly anything with boom. It can switch into the rocks anytime it pleases barring a Boom from Golem. It's psychics aren't anything to be shrugged off either. Even zam who can handle it is normally asleep or can get put to sleep by it. Chansey is a reasonable switch in, but coming in on a Psychic with previous damage leaves it scared of boom. The more and more I get into RBY and watch (read logs of) SPL the more it seems Eggy is an S tier mon in Gen1.

 

[Kel9901]

Seeing as nothing further has occurred in terms of tier movement I want to bump the Eggy to S nomination.

I can fathom building a team without tauros and without chansey or starmie or zam. A team withouteggy just seems wrong and insanely difficult to do. It can be thrown on a team just as easily as tauros if not more.

Now my word carries little to no weight, but for those keeping up with SPL (a large majority here - hell half you guys are in it) Eggy is THE dominating mon. It's usage is rank1.

Egg is just the ultimate all purpose mon. It can take paras for you. Sleep AND stun. And it can threaten nearly anything with boom. It can switch into the rocks anytime it pleases barring a Boom from Golem. It's psychics aren't anything to be shrugged off either. Even zam who can handle it is normally asleep or can get put to sleep by it. Chansey is a reasonable switch in, but coming in on a Psychic with previous damage leaves it scared of boom. The more and more I get into RBY and watch (read logs of) SPL the more it seems Eggy is an S tier mon in Gen1.

Out of the 'top four' of chansey/lax/tauros/egg, I find egg the easiest mon to drop. Without chansey, you have to use zam (or get rekt by starmie/etc), which leaves you more open to slowbro and starmie as well as taking more damage (and being able to be paralyzed by bslam) by physicals ignoring reflect. Tauros- it's the best at what it does, and what it does is really good (revenge kill, just hit really hard). Snorlax can be dropped much more easily than say chansey, but it's still one of the best 1v1ers in the game, which leads to its popularity.

On the other hand, egg is very easy to drop (many of my teams are non-egg). You can just use a non-lead jynx (or gengar I guess), you can use victreebel, and you can just chuck sing on chansey. It does leave you a little bit more open to grounds, but you should probably carry cloyster/articuno/dragonite/starmie/something to cover it a bit better

 

[Borat]

the whole argument that something being more easily replaced than something else makes it worse somehow doesn't hold water to me. sure tauros functions similarly to snorlax, and zam functions quite similarly to chansey, but their roles on a whole are more important than the niche egg occupies, which is sort of a jack of all trades thing. i'm not necessarily saying specializing is always better, but in this case just because you can take off chansey and put in zam and the team will be sorta the same whereas egg's place is really difficult to find a substitute for doesn't correlate to something being better. doubling down on something as paramount as the niches tauros/chansey occupy isn't exactly a bad thing.

i'm not agreeing with the fact that egg is "easily replaceable" though, because it isn't. it's consistent, it just doesn't win games to me the way snorlax/tauros does. sure there are games where tauros gets paralyzed first turn and dies without doing anything (albeit that's probably different with new body slam), but that is just the nature of offensive pokemon. basically, tauros and snorlax are game winning pokemon, whereas egg is sort of just there. reliable, consistent, and a necessity. on the contrary, chansey/zam are usually the main things you're trying to get through before sweeping a game. as for zam/chansey, i think they're actually irreplaceable much more than even egg. no zam? sure that's doable. no chansey? again, doable. but no zam and chansey? good luck dude. this niche is way more important than the one egg is in.

plus, rby doesn't have enough viable pokemon for us to start throwing out the "make a team without X" card since we don't have to.

 

[Isa]

egg should be on every team unless youre using a wrap-based team with victreebel and is the second hardest mon to not include on your team bar tauros

egg is s material alongside tauros chansey and snorlax

op is dead though so someone who isnt me (because i already run viability ranks on PO) should do a new topic and mods should lock this.

 

[Jorgen]

Yeah S tier should probably be those 4 mons. That said non-Wrap Egg teams can definitely exist and work. Generally you want Starmie if you go that route, though.

 

[Bedschibaer]

OP is dead but i can change everyones posts with my moderation powers, so i can still update this thread (which i wanted to sometimes earlier but there was never really a strong consensus on changes). So basically i agree on moving the big 4 to S rank. Starmie and Zam as the only mons in A for now is somewhat acceptable by the rank definitions, because they are a lot less flawed than any of the B ranks. Also what do you think about changing the rank definition of S? offensive and defensive threat is nice and good, but it might as well lay focus on the fact, that the s rank pokes fulflill roles that are so important it's almost mandatory to run them, that your team will be arguably worse if you don't use them or if you don't manage to find a decent substitution for them.