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Gen 2 GSC Viability Ranking (OU)
- Thread starter Jorgen
- Start date
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a general way of determining contribution is through % of turns that a pokemon stays active in a given game. if charizard really does all those thigns (absorb eq, weakens pokemon, "walls" things, then that certainly counts as contribution. but i have a feeling those claims are unfounded. if charizard is active, he's ready to rock and roll. he's not a long term pokemon. one trick pony defines charizard more than any other pokemon.
I didn't say he walls things. And the eq thing, to be more specific, A common thing that happens is my raikou is out and theres a steelix out, a very popular pokemon. My raikou is lets say around 60% health. I predict steelix will use eq (or he might explode but that wont neccessarily be a bad thing) i switch to charizard. Now he has to switch or take fire blast which will most likely kill him. And i can predict which pokemon he'll switch to and switch my self bla bla bla. Just stuff like that. That's all i meant. Anyway, isa asked to see one of my winning games so i'll post one and you can see how i play. I rather do that anyway instead trying to explain myself.
steelix doesn't threaten very many things. cloyster and egg are two easy switches on your team alone that also offer instant offense. even though charizard is probably one of the best pokemon to switch into steelix, if it's early in the game, you don't really want to reveal your charizard.
ultimately, being able to switch into steelix is a meh example. being able to switch into marowak/machamp however.... but charizard can't do that so.
here are other things charizard can switch into: skarmory, forretress.
guess what else can switch into skarmory/forretress?
if you can honestly argue charizard's defensive merits, then you've successfully paved way for charizard's "ou" status.
but you can't. not necessarily because you don't know enough, but charizard is wholly awful defensively. again the term one-dimensional never rung more true.
ultimately, being able to switch into steelix is a meh example. being able to switch into marowak/machamp however.... but charizard can't do that so.
here are other things charizard can switch into: skarmory, forretress.
guess what else can switch into skarmory/forretress?
if you can honestly argue charizard's defensive merits, then you've successfully paved way for charizard's "ou" status.
but you can't. not necessarily because you don't know enough, but charizard is wholly awful defensively. again the term one-dimensional never rung more true.
I agree with pretty much everything you are saying, but not in the same way. You say all of that as if it makes charizard a bad pokemon. A pokemon being one dimensional doesn't neccessarily make him bad, though I don't know if I'd label charizard one dimensional. And I was also unaware that unless you had great defense then you can't be ou. Anyway, i made a profile on the website that isa posted a link to. I posted 5 games there. I just picked the ones that showed off charizard the most out of the games i had because that's what isa asked for. So if anyone wants to check them out they can. My profile name on there is the same as it is on here.
that's totally taking what i'm saying out of context. i never said that. i said charizard being one dimensional is one of the main reasons it's not ou; if you can prove otherwise, you've made a case for it being ou.
also, everything i've said DOES make charizard a bad pokemon. how does it not? having to avoid paralysis like the plague, having to dodge everything doing more than 25% damage, hows that's not make charizard bad?
and you're not using pastebin correctly. you're suppose to paste the links.
http://pastebin.com/u/soulboundx
so i'll just say what charizard does in these games
g1 you come in on a predicted hp fire but the egg FPd so eh, but your fire blast also missed the opposing vaporeon. tanking a sleep move and then waking up fairly early can be done by any mon
i'm fairly sure your opponent could have just boomed his way to victory but instead you were allowed to set up curses and thus you were allowed to sweep with zard, but only because your opponent misplayed - and even towards the end the only play for him was to boom again. i'm also noting that a machamp would have had the same sweep more or less
g2 you come in on an earthquake from +2 marowak but since you switch out zard to the exact same mon you switched out earlier, you didn't gain anything. once gengar was slept a machamp could once again have done the same sweep as your zard, and it only worked out because you didn't get unlucky with gengar sleep turns (and because your opponent decided that jolteon was a good waste of a pokemon vs. a revealed charizard...)
g3 your opponent uses hypnosis exeggutor. what.
you come in on an earthquake and then use that to double into lax for a thunder, which i'll say fine to, but so far the trend seems to be that you use the flying type to come in on earthquakes and then immediately get out.
you set up charizard on a snorlax and proceed to get a flinch AND a crit rock slide, not bad not bad. you also crit the cloyster to kill it...yeah you have a very skilled charizard this game, RNG really blessed you
g4 why do you revenge a 8% cloyster when spikes are up with a paralyzed steelix...and then you live two marowak EQs when switching in on it when spikes are down so that you can sleep it, hot damn (97.4% chance to 2HKO after Spikes and Leftovers recovery).
either way literally the only thing charizard did this game was to come in and use fire blast vs. exeggutor on the last turn of the game. anything with hp bug (hello machamp, for example!) could do the same
g5 you send in cloyster on a zapdos to spike up and get away with it because your opponent got scared, damn not bad
you use charizard as an EQ pivot again here but just like every other time, it's merely to switch out into raikou, and then you switch out from that as well?...and when charizard comes in on the snorlax, you again get lucky - you dodge body slam paralysis and you crit+flinch with rock slide. yeah you sweep after that but you weren't gonna do that in the first place if you didn't get lucky
the overall theme here: charizard has absolutely no defensive niche that you've shown except the ability to act as a pivot by coming in on earthquake and then promptly switching out. in two of these logs you get incredibly lucky in order to secure the sweep, in one log the only thing you do with charizard is to come in on the last turn to get the last KO, in two logs you get a sweep that i feel like a machamp could have gotten just as well. and honestly your opponents were more or less awful - hypnosis exeggutor, using thief with the same pokemon more than once, switching out a 8% snorlax when spikes are down and spinning is not an option...
tl;dr you haven't impressed me
so i'll just say what charizard does in these games
g1 you come in on a predicted hp fire but the egg FPd so eh, but your fire blast also missed the opposing vaporeon. tanking a sleep move and then waking up fairly early can be done by any mon
i'm fairly sure your opponent could have just boomed his way to victory but instead you were allowed to set up curses and thus you were allowed to sweep with zard, but only because your opponent misplayed - and even towards the end the only play for him was to boom again. i'm also noting that a machamp would have had the same sweep more or less
g2 you come in on an earthquake from +2 marowak but since you switch out zard to the exact same mon you switched out earlier, you didn't gain anything. once gengar was slept a machamp could once again have done the same sweep as your zard, and it only worked out because you didn't get unlucky with gengar sleep turns (and because your opponent decided that jolteon was a good waste of a pokemon vs. a revealed charizard...)
g3 your opponent uses hypnosis exeggutor. what.
you come in on an earthquake and then use that to double into lax for a thunder, which i'll say fine to, but so far the trend seems to be that you use the flying type to come in on earthquakes and then immediately get out.
you set up charizard on a snorlax and proceed to get a flinch AND a crit rock slide, not bad not bad. you also crit the cloyster to kill it...yeah you have a very skilled charizard this game, RNG really blessed you
g4 why do you revenge a 8% cloyster when spikes are up with a paralyzed steelix...and then you live two marowak EQs when switching in on it when spikes are down so that you can sleep it, hot damn (97.4% chance to 2HKO after Spikes and Leftovers recovery).
either way literally the only thing charizard did this game was to come in and use fire blast vs. exeggutor on the last turn of the game. anything with hp bug (hello machamp, for example!) could do the same
g5 you send in cloyster on a zapdos to spike up and get away with it because your opponent got scared, damn not bad
you use charizard as an EQ pivot again here but just like every other time, it's merely to switch out into raikou, and then you switch out from that as well?...and when charizard comes in on the snorlax, you again get lucky - you dodge body slam paralysis and you crit+flinch with rock slide. yeah you sweep after that but you weren't gonna do that in the first place if you didn't get lucky
the overall theme here: charizard has absolutely no defensive niche that you've shown except the ability to act as a pivot by coming in on earthquake and then promptly switching out. in two of these logs you get incredibly lucky in order to secure the sweep, in one log the only thing you do with charizard is to come in on the last turn to get the last KO, in two logs you get a sweep that i feel like a machamp could have gotten just as well. and honestly your opponents were more or less awful - hypnosis exeggutor, using thief with the same pokemon more than once, switching out a 8% snorlax when spikes are down and spinning is not an option...
tl;dr you haven't impressed me
I more or less agree with everything said about Charizard. It's very one dimensional and has good potential to contribute nothing to the team it's on. One more thing that must be said about Charizard that's been understated is that it is very match up based and thus inconstant. If all you face are borat style standard Zap/Lax/Egg/Cloy/Lix/6th Explosion offense teams then yeah Charizard is going to seem good because all it takes for it to put in work there is minimal weakening of Lax and Cloy, A speed tie against Zapdos that's slightly in your favor, and a good switch in 6th mon depending. Against teams with faster mons like Gengar and Raikou or defensive teams with Suicune Charizard will find it very hard to do much of anything because of the threat of being revenged/tanking a hit and killing/phasing. It also is hard to make plays with against teams like this because of drum being such a high cost move and using it meaning you probably aren't doing it again. Charizard is overall too one-dimensional, inconsistent, and high risk to raise to A-Rank.
Also it doesn't fit on the standard explosion team too well at all due to not having all the support it needs. There are probably at least ten better offensive threats that can go there Machamp being my favorite.
Also it doesn't fit on the standard explosion team too well at all due to not having all the support it needs. There are probably at least ten better offensive threats that can go there Machamp being my favorite.
G1 - sure i got lucky with the sweep but its pokemon. Something lucky is gonna happen every game to someone. But at the end of the day i made the right choices with the luck given to me to secure the victory. It's
Not like i just automatically got the win. And machamp can sweep yes but theres probably some variables you're not taking into consideration.
G2 - me switching back to raikou is an over prediction.
G3 - the only lucky thing that happened was the flinch but again, this is pokemon. I didn't need the crits to win. They were just there. I would of won without them as well.
G4- if i didn't sleep the marowak i could of been in trouble. I've played that guy 10000000 times. He knows my team better than everyone and i knew exactly what he was using too. So some of it i might be over predicting. And Charizard would of got more ko's if he didn't forfeit but he knew i had won.
G5- eh, same things i said for g1
And I've never put machamp on a team and idk how he would work on here. So I can't really say if he's more effective. I've only played against machamps. But I know he couldn't do everything charizard does.
Edit- also, it's obviously very hard to impress with you with just battle logs. If i was trying to make a case for raikou or anyone else being ou, if they weren't ou, with logs you'd probably also say "not impressed" because their effectiveness wouldn't be immediately obvious. Charizard is not great defensively. Never said that. He's great offensively.
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Against suicune, gengar, raikou, you said it would make it hard for charizard to do much of anything. But.. That's not neccessarily true. Like i said in an earlier post, my mindset through a battle is to just win but also to eliminate threats to charizard in one way or another so by the time i throw him out, he can take care of pokemon that would have given him problems earlier. This team has some weaknesses, sure, but so does every team.
Idk. I guess talking to people who are super set in stone about everything in this game is a waste of time but whatevz.
Buuttt.. If you think charizard isn't that great then seriously try him out atleast. Give him a chance. Don't just throw him in the trash after the first game you throw him out and he gets killed and doesn't contribute. Learn to play with a charizard on your team . Play Tons of games with him. If after that you still think he's
Not that great then cool but, i have a feeling a lot of people haven't used charizard seriously or tried hard to make him work.
nobody has their mentality set in stone -- you're just not making any convincing arguments. i chalk it up to the d-k effect. i'm willing to bet i have at least 10x as many games on charizard as you do, against more teams, against better players. my ash team against mr.e had it.
edit: i looked at one log. i did a ctrl-f charizard. here's everything i found:
is this really a charizard show case game? one turn? 3% activity in a game isn't very high contribution i would think.
edit2: here's another game:
you'd get a "pokemon" comment from mr.e with that kind of luck. and yes, charizard is amazing with a bit of flinch + ch + speedtie + para dodge luck.
so what exactly are you proving with these logs again? what's groundbreaking here? charizard can ohko egg with fb?
be serious, how far do you think this team will get if you were playing more serious players? (i.e. not piloswine)? there's a lot of gaping holes with the team where charizard isn't even the biggest issue. you're raw resting raikou/snorlax for example. egg set and steelix set don't mesh at all (rock slide doesn't kill zapdos, you still need explosion). exeggutor is the only thing standing in the way of a clean st curselax sweep from turn 1.
edit3: looked at the rest of the logs. so one glaring oversight is clearly the lack of diversity of teams. none of these games show what'll happen if you play against any half-decent stall, which is historically where charizard falls short. it's not very good playing the longer game, because he's always one hit away from being out of commission. nobody is underestimating his offensive game, but nobody likes playing 6v5 which is what charizard makes you do til he's ready to drum. and when he does drum, he either goes guns blazing flinching shit left and right, but he just as easily might misse a rs/fb and end up doing LITERALLY nothing even though you set it up perfectly.
even on a team like yours, he's very blatantly the most expendable of the 6. snorlax? clearly not, the metagame revolves around this pokemon. cloyster the spiker? clearly not. the metagame revolves around this move. raikou? no. steelix? that's your normal resist/phazer. egg? perhaps, but god damn are you weak to eq/rs. hopefully it should be pretty clear why charizard isn't ou...
edit: i looked at one log. i did a ctrl-f charizard. here's everything i found:
Code:
Start of turn 32
Charizard used Fire Blast!
It's super effective!
The foe's Exeggutor lost 74% of its health!
The foe's Exeggutor fainted!
eltin182 forfeited against soulboundx!edit2: here's another game:
Code:
Start of turn 27
Charizard used Belly Drum!
Charizard cut its own HP and maximized its Attack!
The foe's Snorlax used Body Slam!
Charizard lost 117 HP! (32% of its health)
Charizard restored a little HP using its Leftovers!
Start of turn 28
Charizard used Rock Slide!
A critical hit!
The foe's Snorlax lost 96% of its health!
The foe's Snorlax flinched and couldn't move!
Charizard restored a little HP using its Leftovers!
The foe's Snorlax restored a little HP using its Leftovers!
Start of turn 29
Charizard used Earthquake!
The foe's Snorlax lost 9% of its health!
The foe's Snorlax fainted!
JonasAlves sent out Zapdos!
Charizard restored a little HP using its Leftovers!
Start of turn 30
Charizard used Rock Slide!
It's super effective!
The foe's Zapdos lost 100% of its health!
The foe's Zapdos fainted!
JonasAlves sent out Piloswine!
The foe's Piloswine is hurt by spikes!
Charizard restored a little HP using its Leftovers!
The foe's Piloswine restored a little HP using its Leftovers!so what exactly are you proving with these logs again? what's groundbreaking here? charizard can ohko egg with fb?
be serious, how far do you think this team will get if you were playing more serious players? (i.e. not piloswine)? there's a lot of gaping holes with the team where charizard isn't even the biggest issue. you're raw resting raikou/snorlax for example. egg set and steelix set don't mesh at all (rock slide doesn't kill zapdos, you still need explosion). exeggutor is the only thing standing in the way of a clean st curselax sweep from turn 1.
edit3: looked at the rest of the logs. so one glaring oversight is clearly the lack of diversity of teams. none of these games show what'll happen if you play against any half-decent stall, which is historically where charizard falls short. it's not very good playing the longer game, because he's always one hit away from being out of commission. nobody is underestimating his offensive game, but nobody likes playing 6v5 which is what charizard makes you do til he's ready to drum. and when he does drum, he either goes guns blazing flinching shit left and right, but he just as easily might misse a rs/fb and end up doing LITERALLY nothing even though you set it up perfectly.
even on a team like yours, he's very blatantly the most expendable of the 6. snorlax? clearly not, the metagame revolves around this pokemon. cloyster the spiker? clearly not. the metagame revolves around this move. raikou? no. steelix? that's your normal resist/phazer. egg? perhaps, but god damn are you weak to eq/rs. hopefully it should be pretty clear why charizard isn't ou...
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The first game you mention . He still had most of his team left after i killed his exeggutor. Charizard secured the win. And i have logs against other players who i consider better than all of those players besides eltin, but not many because this team is new and the ones i do have charizard doesn't contribute that much. Not because I think he can't but just because its a newish team and i haven't got to play many games against better players. Isa gave me a list of people who he considered top players most of which ive never heard of besides bomber, but i've only played him with old teams , haven't played him with this one yet. And yeah, im sure you've played alot more games than me with charizard.
Ummm.. Idk how this team would do against a good stall team. Idk if I played a "good" one before. Idk what would be considered a good stall team . Im sure i could beat any stall team with this team but if I didn't win by sweeping with charizard people would still just say "yeah you won but, charizard had nothing to do with the win". I mean some times my raikou doesnt contribute that much, some times steelix doesn't, but sometimes just a pokemons presence on the team in battle is enough contribution. I agree that charizard could be replaced on this team with something else that would be more flexible and have more options. I totally agree with you. But charizard is really good at what he does. But if charizard doesn't meet your standards of ou then fine. It's just a tier list that I don't have to agree with. I'll still put charizard on my team because he's fucking awesome and maybe get other people to do the same. But it's cool. Agree to disagree.
I'm late to the party but Charizard shouldn't even be B. Zam, Golem, Houndoom, Venusaur loitering down in C are all totally better than that trash.
It's not that Charizard is difficult to setup due to the self-damage, it's not that it isn't fast enough although both of those things are true. Even if those added concerns didn't exist, it can't OHKO dick even if you pull it off. Marowak does 50% more damage than Charizard with their shared primary attack, due to STAB on Earthquake, and it still can't OHKO some of OU's most physically bulky threats. Charizard literally fails to OHKO Starmie. Even when Charizard isn't outsped and killed by whatever, it usually just does 60-70% damage to a target and dies to the counterattack (because it already did half the work for you!). Trying to flinch shit with faster Rock Slide is not a reliable way to push those kills through. Its only claim to fame is "countering" Skarmbliss, and being Charizard. Incidentally, Charizard needs a max damage roll to OHKO Blissey.
Charizard doesn't have much defensive utility either, since its only useful resistance is Ground and mostly just as a pivot because Charizard can't take most EQ users itself. Maybe the occasional Steelix and I suppose Charizard does hard counter Heracross (like all other Flyers). You can only really switch it into Skarm/Forry and threaten offensive pressure from there. I see other people have already said this stuff though.
"pokemon"
It's not that Charizard is difficult to setup due to the self-damage, it's not that it isn't fast enough although both of those things are true. Even if those added concerns didn't exist, it can't OHKO dick even if you pull it off. Marowak does 50% more damage than Charizard with their shared primary attack, due to STAB on Earthquake, and it still can't OHKO some of OU's most physically bulky threats. Charizard literally fails to OHKO Starmie. Even when Charizard isn't outsped and killed by whatever, it usually just does 60-70% damage to a target and dies to the counterattack (because it already did half the work for you!). Trying to flinch shit with faster Rock Slide is not a reliable way to push those kills through. Its only claim to fame is "countering" Skarmbliss, and being Charizard. Incidentally, Charizard needs a max damage roll to OHKO Blissey.
Charizard doesn't have much defensive utility either, since its only useful resistance is Ground and mostly just as a pivot because Charizard can't take most EQ users itself. Maybe the occasional Steelix and I suppose Charizard does hard counter Heracross (like all other Flyers). You can only really switch it into Skarm/Forry and threaten offensive pressure from there. I see other people have already said this stuff though.
did you even use charizard in that battle, I only saw half the team because I ragequit after Pikachu got ungodly lucky against Eggy to kill it (probably still would've ran train through the entire team with just Snorlax but fuck RNG sometimes).
"pokemon"
Zard's fine in B. I mean yeah he OHKOs precious little fresh but that's why you bust him out later in the game when Spikes/Poison/Rest turns have made more OHKOs possible and more 2HKOs palatable. Of course, maybe I just like him because I'm often on the good end of "pokemon" and tend to see my attempt at going for that key flinch or speed tie pay off.
might i reiterate the notion of hyper beam to solve that exact issue. using charizard to 6-0 teams is rather unrealistic, and using him as an expendable wall breaker of sorts (akin to egg/cloy/gengar) might lead to more "consistent" and practical contribution. at the risk of repeating myself too much, here's stuff:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/charizard-ou-revamp.3544419/
i don't remember. but if you didn't "pokemon" out i would've got some mad style points with this.
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/smogon-premier-league-2-week-6.86883/page-3#post-3347628
I'm sort of still confused at where this is going because he initially was talking about Charizard's actual tier placement, not its viability ranking, then the discussion shifts transparently.
It doesn't need to be moved in either case. It's a threat because of Belly Drum and its speed tier. But it needs decent support to actually get it work because it gets walled or checked. More effort than what it's worth for many teams, otherwise it would be higher. It doesn't fill any major defensive/utility roles, so those situations on those log are not substantial. It's not a splashable mon. A minor pivot is something a lot of mons can do.
It doesn't need to be moved in either case. It's a threat because of Belly Drum and its speed tier. But it needs decent support to actually get it work because it gets walled or checked. More effort than what it's worth for many teams, otherwise it would be higher. It doesn't fill any major defensive/utility roles, so those situations on those log are not substantial. It's not a splashable mon. A minor pivot is something a lot of mons can do.
Maaan all these charizard downplayers . Weaken the opposing team, send charizard out during the late game when you can assure a free turn, belly drum and win. Sounds pretty good to me.
And on a side note, I couldn't help but notice a certain a person liking mr. E's post calling charizard shit . A certain person who was a victim to a charizard sweep the last rated game i played two days ago *cough* *cough* Mr. 378 *cough*
And that moveset you posted borat is interesting. And so is that team. Dk if it works but it looks awesome
And on a side note, I couldn't help but notice a certain a person liking mr. E's post calling charizard shit . A certain person who was a victim to a charizard sweep the last rated game i played two days ago *cough* *cough* Mr. 378 *cough*
And that moveset you posted borat is interesting. And so is that team. Dk if it works but it looks awesome
Problem is that you're using unmemorable ladder games that may very well be cherry picked as the means for your argument. In the game you speak of I was using the exact kind of explosion team where Charizard does well against which is exactly what I detailed in my post on it. Yeah Charizard can do well in cases like that but that doesn't speak at all for it's overall viability. In order for it to do well your opponent not only as to run the ideal kind of team for it but also it has to stay unrevealed and hopefully unexpected so that it can sweep or wall break in the case of borat's set. It offers just about nothing else outside of this role though so one of the different offensive threats that do offer better synergy or threaten things like Charizard but do not require the heavy investment it does are usually better.
At this point you're just repeating yourself and blindly calling people out for disagreeing with you. Doing these things isn't making your argument any stronger. It got me to respond though so there's that.
At this point you're just repeating yourself and blindly calling people out for disagreeing with you. Doing these things isn't making your argument any stronger. It got me to respond though so there's that.
Lol. I've gotten a lot of people to respond. And maybe, hopefully, possibly play with charizard more. Truth is, i've been sent by the dragon master himself. He took a look at smogon's tier rating for charizard and was like "aww hell nawww" . And so through a series of encrypted emails, he sent me a message telling me to meet him in a place far away from civilization. He taught me what pokemon should go on a team with charizard and how to use him to his best potential. It tooks months, before he had perfected my skills. I came out of training to finally show the world the forgotten power of charizard. I've left many opponents crippled in my fire scorched path, i've retired players, i've put the fear of the dragon in their hearts. I have one final mission...... Make charizard S tier. I've got a kitchen full of brooms that i bought for half off and i won't stop sweeping until we're at the top. Ima make charizard so popular that there will only be two teams in existence. The one im using to destroy my foes one by one, and a team made specifically to counter charizard. Im talking about starmie, blastoise, tentacruel, suicune, all on the same team just to counter charizard. Ha... But not even that will be enough. Me and my charizard army will bring him to the top and make you question everything about the tier list. What you thought was a reasonable tier list is nothing but a lie. But the moment of truth is here!!! ALL HAIL THE POWER OF CHARIZARD!
Okay, im done posting in here.
Okay, im done posting in here.
Any more posts like that then it'll probably be for the better...
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