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Gen 2 best lead in GSC
- Thread starter jdba90
- Start date
Leads are less significant in GSC because even if you have a losing match-up, you have a lot of breathing room for switching around, since things simply live a lot longer. Your best bet is just something that can pack a punch, and maybe threaten to sleep. You probably shouldn't use a sleep move turn 1 though, but rather try to deal a bit of initial damage to your opponent's sleep talker. Nothing wrong with leading Spikes either.
A spikes lead would probably be the best
popular leads
jolteon- indeed. pass an agility to wak / drumlax and close the game in <20 turns.
kou- prevents jolteon from bpassing; quite a few times it also forces out ground types/lax, therefor you may just blindly send in cloyster 1st turn and get that spikes layer up.
lax- beats jolteon and raikou, unpredictable, has an accurate sleep move
cloyster- spikes up early in the game, threatens snorlax
zapdos- there are better electrics to lead with. it's cool for pseudo passing early game though, plus it scares the crap out of cloyster and beats snorlax / forces it to lk with a combination of reflect and its powerful thunder.
nidoking- beats every other lead so far + slp move. i wouldn't say it necessary has a negative match-up when it comes to facing gengar leads, too.
gengar- a fast slp move, though unreliable. at the very least, it is unpredictable with that combination of counter / dbond / explosion.
on a regular basis, you'll only find those in a leading position, but there are a number of considerably rarer leads you could take into account.
tyranitar- in absence of a better starter (usually in teams in which snorlax shouldn't be spoiled too early), it has a decent match-up when it comes to facing electric leads (bar reflect, 'till they don't fully understand your moveset at least) and gengar.
houndoom- pursuits cloyster. counter is cool, too
jynx- beats nidoking
forretress- dunno why people use this as a starter as it basically loses to every other lead :D
jolteon- indeed. pass an agility to wak / drumlax and close the game in <20 turns.
kou- prevents jolteon from bpassing; quite a few times it also forces out ground types/lax, therefor you may just blindly send in cloyster 1st turn and get that spikes layer up.
lax- beats jolteon and raikou, unpredictable, has an accurate sleep move
cloyster- spikes up early in the game, threatens snorlax
zapdos- there are better electrics to lead with. it's cool for pseudo passing early game though, plus it scares the crap out of cloyster and beats snorlax / forces it to lk with a combination of reflect and its powerful thunder.
nidoking- beats every other lead so far + slp move. i wouldn't say it necessary has a negative match-up when it comes to facing gengar leads, too.
gengar- a fast slp move, though unreliable. at the very least, it is unpredictable with that combination of counter / dbond / explosion.
on a regular basis, you'll only find those in a leading position, but there are a number of considerably rarer leads you could take into account.
tyranitar- in absence of a better starter (usually in teams in which snorlax shouldn't be spoiled too early), it has a decent match-up when it comes to facing electric leads (bar reflect, 'till they don't fully understand your moveset at least) and gengar.
houndoom- pursuits cloyster. counter is cool, too
jynx- beats nidoking
forretress- dunno why people use this as a starter as it basically loses to every other lead :D
gorgie
formerly Floppy, now Rock hard
It's not. Borat doesn't understand the groins he is translating.
The "best lead" often depends on your team and its win condition(s), to put it bluntly. If you are aware of your team's major pitfall(s), you will consider the possibility that your opponent's starting pokemon may just as well fall into that category and will choose, the pokemon that is most likely to lessen that probability as much as possible, as your lead.
The "best lead" often depends on your team and its win condition(s), to put it bluntly. If you are aware of your team's major pitfall(s), you will consider the possibility that your opponent's starting pokemon may just as well fall into that category and will choose, the pokemon that is most likely to lessen that probability as much as possible, as your lead.
i'd argue that "leads" are irrelevant in gsc. no matter what, you can switch to another pokemon right away to counter an immediate threat. jolteon as a lead isn't even that effective, i'd probably hide joltwak as long as possible instead. if marowak or drumlax with an agility boost can sweep a team in 20 turns, it is a case of shitty teambuilding.
if anything i'd go with reflect raikou or something.
if anything i'd go with reflect raikou or something.
I always liked Electabuzz or Zapdos as a lead, but didn't people use Spikes like Forretress, and Cloyster? Electabuzz, because it learned all the elemental punches, Cross Chop and Bolt, nothing really resist it. Zapdos for speed and special, and it's typing.
No, Joltwak is THAT good. And in the case with shitty team building, only shitty opponents would result in "surprise joltwak" working.
Otherwise though, you're right. Leads are irrelevent. Floppy is a ranty old fool. There are probably "advantageous" leads WITHIN a particular team with respect to the other members, but there are no flat-out universal leads.
Starmie was popular, and so were spikers, but then players realized by having a lead opens you up to anti-leads. It's better not to have a lead at all really.
Otherwise though, you're right. Leads are irrelevent. Floppy is a ranty old fool. There are probably "advantageous" leads WITHIN a particular team with respect to the other members, but there are no flat-out universal leads.
Starmie was popular, and so were spikers, but then players realized by having a lead opens you up to anti-leads. It's better not to have a lead at all really.
Nidoking is a decent lead, helps fend of stuff like Raikou and Jolteon and also gets lovely Kiss, but I never tend to use it due to the amount of GSC sleep talkers. Nice wallbreaker later in the game too
I tested this one because it really appealed to me and it actually isn't that bad.
yeah ok "green_flash" is putting skarmory on a team too hard???? i never said joltwak is bad, i said you should wait until the other team starts to crumble before you clean up with marowak. this is gsc. shit doesn't break so easily.
joltwak is deadly to skarmory. the properties of this simple combo are not to be understimated in any way, as skarmory basically can't do shit to marowak in terms of direct damage, and 27 times out of 100 skarmory will not even be capable of phazing +2 marowak after it pierces skarm for around 50%. joltwak can still set-up later and skarmory will again risk a flinch, shall it avoid flinching the first time (leading to its death).
but i was more specifically referring to drumlax. i think everyone with even mediocre gsc experience can easily understand how easily drumlax rapes stall, 2hkoing even skarmory and ohkoing the sturdiest walls in the meta (cloyster, suicune, etc).
the hardest team to break is a stall, aka the opposite of a "shitty teambuilding" by principle when referring to defensive properties. but stall falls to drumlax, sooner or later (and even a shitty played drumlax usually takes down at least two pokés).
so now what about the combination of jolteon and drumlax? i admit i originally wasn't very fond on this, i just saw a thread in which borat was talking about that. later i tried it out. wow. basically this is an ultra-accelerated drumlax set-up, which can easily won games turn #1; ok you are susceptible to a jumpluff running encore, or alakazam, but come on, this is hardly the case. snorlax has enough survivability to belly drum in face of (nearly) everything, plus the threat of lovely kiss for forcing switches, altough you hardly should straightforward lk, unless you are up against one of those rare pokés which are capable of taking out more than half of lax's health bar (or skarm). so you basically belly drum as your opponent sends in skarm, lovely kiss, ohko everything in sight. if lax is killed by a combination of recoil and faster pokémon (thunder raikou for example), at this time your opponent's cloyster is probably done for yet, skarm is asleep, and consequently marowak has a free time. hence your <20 turns game.
this is common scenario, just for you to know. gsc is nowhere stallish anymore, meta has evolved.
a handful of people still play gsc, i find it hard to believe it could "evolve". drumlax and marowak were always strong, but to pretend like leading with jolteon and passing +2 speed to either of them is autowin is just stupid. snorlax doesn't 2hko skarm unless he has double-edge, in which case he will die too quickly to "sweep" anything. marowak doesn't 2hko skarm either but has the chance to flinch. either way, this strategy is obviously most effective later in the game, so why not save the combo till then?
there are many gsc communities / old gen communities still active outside of smogon. basically a bunch of people who thinks dpp sucks cocks and is still causing metagame shifts in the old gens.
dedge drumlax is widely used nowadays, i was implying it was a drumlax of that kind. in the case of agilipass, also consider the fact that your drumlax will not only ohko almost anything, but outspeed almost anything as well (so it usually doesn't die before taking out most of the opponent's team).
because the goal of an offensive team should be to beat down the opponent without leaving openings to be exploited. if your approach is slow and your team (which consists of a jolteon, a non-leftovers pokémon and a non-resting lax so far, plus other three strictly offensive minded pokémon) can't execute the plan fast enough, you will lose to aggressive tactics. so you'd better try to be the first to set-up. a jolteon combo represents lategame turn #1 for many teams nonetheless.
there's no reason you can't make a solid, balanced team and include marowak as well. just don't have too much setup fodder and you'll be fine. you also don't need to go for an all-out offensive snorlax/marowak either. i go drum/d-e/eq/rest lax and eq/rs/sd/rest wak. shit does happen... what if you get statused? 999 attack double-edges will wear you down incredibly fast. i think it's better to take the safe route rather than risk losing it all by trying to win quickly.
Both arguments are irrelevant really.
Joltwak/lax is effective without it having to be a surprise, therefore Jolteon as lead clearly makes sense. More chances to run the combo means better chance for it to succeed, and having Jolteon on turn one gives you that extra chance. Plus, what else would you start with?
Joltwak/lax is effective without it having to be a surprise, therefore Jolteon as lead clearly makes sense. More chances to run the combo means better chance for it to succeed, and having Jolteon on turn one gives you that extra chance. Plus, what else would you start with?