OU Defensive OU Team?

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I don't mean stall, I just mean a team that has a solid counter to every genuine threat. Here's what I consider the main threats-

Slowbro
Reflect chansey/alakazam
Reflect snorlax
Amnesia snorlax
Dragonite
Wrap
Switch in to rhydon
Switch in to snorlax
Switch in to tauros
Taking sleep

That's all I can think of at the moment. Many of those are easy to counter, but not all at the same time. I'm having trouble thinking of a team that has a solid counter to all of these threats whilst still maintaining decent offence.
 
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cloyster
exeggutor
alakazam
slowbro
snorlax
random

rest/reflect stuff. toxic, attacking move. avoid getting ch'd by tauros.
 
I like Borat's list, but a Zapdos could tear it apart; as the random filler on that team I'd suggest Golem/Rhydon. They'd also help absorb Wrap if you're playing to PP stall it (Gengar obviously helps with Wrap, too, but wouldn't add much else to that team).
 
This is honestly a bit pointless... There is no such thing as "defensive" team in RBY, in RBY there are hardly these kind of archetypes. Almost every competitive RBY team consists on six Pokemon taken from the same OU pool. Synergy is pretty limited as well; you can pick six mid-top OU Pokemon almost at random, and chances are the team will feel well synergistically. You are having trouble finding a team that can deal with the top threats better than the standard teams can simply because there is no way to make such team. I mean, you don't have to think much when trying to make a RBY OU team because there are very few usable Pokemon to look at. It seems that you have already toyed with different combinations of the most common OU Pokemon, so what about now? What are the other options? Jolteon? Maybe Venusaur? Gyarados perhaps? The best RBY Pokemon are so good because they excel at offense but also -and perhaps more importantly- at defense. If you go down in the list of RBY Pokemon you will find some Pokemon that are viable in OU because they have some offensive potential, but if you compare Persian to Snorlax, Clefable to Chansey, or Kingler to Lapras, you can't possibly tell me that these three are better defensively than the three OUs. There is just no way to make a team that is better defensively by considering unstandard Pokemon over the most common OUs.

Anyway if what you are looking for is a Rest-themed team that attempts to be successful, then the following is probably a good starting point:
Rest/Leech Seed/Stun Spore/Psychic Exeggutor
CRay/Rest Lapras
Rest Snorlax
Add Tauros, a special wall (like Sing Chansey) and a filler (like Alakazam or Rhydon) and you'll be good to go, but all in all, the team will still be the same standard team, although with more creative movesets, so to speak.

If you are looking for a team with better Snorlax (and to an extent, Tauros) coverage, then I think we can call the Cloy/Egg/Lax/Chansey/Tauros/filler team a pretty standard one. Slowbro is a really good choice as well.
 
crystal how does that team beat anything ;__;

you proly got the most helpful advice you're going to find. i echo that in rby, just using the standards will cover the other standards and you wont really find great answers for threats without using the bulky strong mons anyway. but... id like to mention rest on some mons does work since crystal talked about rest mons - atticus has taken me to school with his rest jynx to fuck up my chansey after he sleeps something many times cuz of psychic special drop which is always worth looking into
 
Rest is just more of a stall tactic though. I'm not looking for stally pokemon, I'm looking for a combination of normal pokemon that together can handle any threat. So for example having a gengar to counter wrap. Having a rhydon to wall zapdos. Havings a victreebell to scare out slowbro etc. The pokemon aren't stally, they're just there to provide an answer to any threat.

Crystal, standard teams can handle the standard team of exeggutor starmie chansey rock snorlax tauros. That team is more defensive than offensive, as it's good at handling a wide arrange of threats, but its offence is less threatening than a team with say, slowbro or zapdos.
 
Zapdos can handle:
- Slowbro
- Starmie
- With luck, Articuno
- With luck, Chansey
- Reflect Snorlax

Slowbro/Kingler can handle:
- Switch in to Rhydon
- Switch in to some types of Snorlax
- Switch in to Tauros (needs a bit of luck or prediction)

Gengar can handle:
- Wrap (sometimes)
- Sleep something if Zapdos/Kingler are out from play

Having an exploder can also help you to revert disasters, and... that's pretty much all, and maybe lead with Starmie, as it can make flee the Gengar's and Grassies's leads, and can take the sleep from Jynx. Amnesia Slowbro can also handle Reflect Alakazam, anyway. Fill any remaining slot as you wish, maybe with Tauros and stuff to put offensive pressure.
 
Just want to point out though that slowbro can only safely switch into rhydon once unless it's paralysed. Rhydon can potentially 3HKO slowbro, so if he's already taken an earthquake and eats another one on the switch he's in KO range due to being slower.

Zapdos for reflect snorlax is something I hadn't thought of, but it's not that reliable against slowbro. It still reuqires a lot of luck for that.
 
Besides putting Light Screen on Chansey or Starmie, the best methods I've found to neuter the crab are to put Kinesis on Zam or Leech Seed on Egg.

There are, of course, a lot more ways to kill it than to wall it.

Reflect chansey/alakazam
Hit it until it dies. Or bring out Slowbro if you want to force the issue.

Reflect snorlax
Amnesia snorlax
Well, that all depends on what its attacking moves are. Slowbro can generally do pretty well, though.

Dragonite
Wrap
The only true counters to Dragonite are Cloyster and Lapras. Other than that, just don't let it set up and punish it for Hyper Beaming.

Switch in to rhydon
Egg. Only does it a few times, though, so if you really want to neuter it, put recovery moves (Mega Drain, Leech Seed, Rest) on Egg.

Starmie and Slowbro aren't terrible either.

Switch in to snorlax
Switch in to tauros
Cloyster, unless they have Thunderbolt. If unknown moveset, Slowbro's probably the safest.

Taking sleep
lol.

That's all I can think of at the moment.
Zapdos - I think we all know the counters to that.
Starmie - See Zapdos.
Hyper Beam - you need a way to punish predicted Hyper Beams. Rhydon's the best, but a fresh Dragonite can also work.

Many of those are easy to counter, but not all at the same time. I'm having trouble thinking of a team that has a solid counter to all of these threats whilst still maintaining decent offence.
I've played around with this sort of thing myself. Best I can think of would be something like this:

Lead: Alakazam. It'll either get slept or paralysed, but Alakazam's the most defensive lead.

Exeggutor: With Leech Seed + Rest, it holds off Slowbro and Rhydon quite effectively. Season with status and attacks to taste.

Cloyster: Counters Dragonite and Snorlax, and additionally gives you a totally safe switch-in to Ice Beam or Blizzard. Its existence can also make an opponent think twice about Hyper Beam.

Chansey: It's Chansey. If you didn't put Sleep Powder on Egg, put Sing on here. Otherwise, putting Reflect on gives you a solid Zapdos wall.

Snorlax: Body Slam, Selfdestruct, season to taste. You need something that can explode in a pinch.

Slowbro: Big scary offensive threat. Also gives you something that can switch into, and paralyse, basically any other offensive threat.



Well, that's my best attempt, anyway.
 

Joim

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As already pointed out, there's no such thing as a defensive team in RBY. The best way to battle fire in RBY is with fire itself.
When building a RBY team, you must take into account this:

  • Sleep lead
  • Way to defeat Chansey / Alakazam
  • What if Slowbro
  • Paralysis spread
The fastest sleep lead, albeit unreliable, is Gengar. You can scare it of with Alakazam. Then you can use Jynx, which is a fast, almost reliable sleeper. Venusaur has a niche in being faster than Exeggutor despite its weakness to super common Earthquake and Psychic, but it can 2HKO Chansey with Body Slam after Swords Dance.


If you want to go defensive, I suggest you use standard Chansey and reflect Alakazam plus Tobybro. Agiliywrap Dragonite is "defensive" in the sense you will slowly wear down opposing mons (bar Gengar) and you can use it as a defensive pivot to get free switch ins. It's extremly boring and slow, though. Golem is more defensive than Rhydon and it has access to Explosion, use it to easily stop Zapdos, absorb Thunder Wave and maybe even EQ Gengar (take care of Mega Drain). Exeggutor is a very good "defensive" mon, it can take Earthquakes any day, puts to sleep, can paralyse and uses the best RBY move, Psychic. Amnesia or Reflect Snorlax is something you should take into account too. Snorlax can stack up Amnesias and Rest, or even Reflect and Rest back damage, you won't be able to faint it before it gets awake again.

There, you have a defensive team:
Gengar / Jynx, Alakazam, Chansey, Golem, Exeggutor, Snorlax.

However, keep in mind that mons like Persian won't care about stat buffs. Persian can crit all the time and it's an excellent "Reflect-breaker", as well as taking down Alakazam and Chansey with relative ease.
 
Yeah I don't want a non-tauros teams.

Again, I'm not looking to stall, stall doesn't work in RBY. I'm just looking for a team that can cover every threat, that isn't the same thing as stalling. Tauros has the potential to 'counter' a lot of pokemon, so it's too valuable to drop.

I'm not sure I'm convinced that zapdos and leech seed eggy are solid slowbro counters. Taking neutral surfs and hitting on slowbro's special side hardly seems like a good counter, and even if rest eggy can stall it, it can't damage it, so slowbro can just switch out and you now have a sleeping eggy for not much in return.
 

Jorgen

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Well then what is wrong with the standard Starmie/Egg/Golem/Lax/Chansey/Tauros team? Covers everything you need right there.
 

Joim

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Why is everybody suggesting non Tauros teams? They're not worth it, really.
You're right, Tauros is a great asset, but non Tauros team can work as gimmicks: work once in a while. This might also work well: Gengar / Jynx, Alakazam, Tauros, Golem, Exeggutor, Snorlax.
 
Well then what is wrong with the standard Starmie/Egg/Golem/Lax/Chansey/Tauros team? Covers everything you need right there.
It doesn't really cover slowbro without exploding, nor reflect chansey without being forced into a freeze war.

Also note that if starmie takes the sleep, it's in big trouble against wrap teams.

I mean it does theoretically have answers to threats, but they all rely on luck or come at some expense.
 
you're going to crit slowbro with starmie or chansey and win via that way. slowbro is way better on paper than on practice.

reflect chansey is going to do what vs you? no one uses that anyway

wrap teams will give any team trouble, it just becomes based on luck

a perfect coverage team CANT exist because everyone would use it and it would never lose. you simply cant cover every threat and you'll roll over vs the standard
 
you're going to crit slowbro with starmie or chansey and win via that way. slowbro is way better on paper than on practice.
Trying for a crit Tbolt with Chansey is, well, chancy at best. Chansey has a 10.4% chance to crit per attempt - 10 turns on average is more than enough time for Slowbro to paralyse Chansey, Amnesia to full, and start Surfing.

Thunderbolt Starmie does a decent job against Slowbro, but it's still luck-based, and your Starmie WILL be paralysed in doing it.

reflect chansey is going to do what vs you? no one uses that anyway
Reflect Chansey is going to sweep you with Seismic Toss if you don't freeze it or stick a Recoverer/Rester in front of it, that's what it's going to do to you.

wrap teams will give any team trouble, it just becomes based on luck
This is total BS, lol. Dragonite dies to Cloyster/Lapras and doesn't deal with Gengar well, Cloyster dies to Starmie/Zam/Gengar, Victreebel dies to Zam/Gengar/Zapdos and can't deal with Egg well. Oh, and I suppose there's Moltres, which dies to Chansey/Starmie.

Covering Wrap is entirely possible, it's just that some people don't do it.

a perfect coverage team CANT exist because everyone would use it and it would never lose. you simply cant cover every threat and you'll roll over vs the standard
You can cover every threat, you just can't cover them all with the same thing, making it possible for a better player to beat you with correct prediction.
 

Joim

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The only "uncoverable" Wrap is Dragonite AgiliyWrap. You just need keep switching to waste its PPs, if you have Gengar and Chansey you'll take little damage from it. Also it will eventually fail.
 
If a paralyzed Chansey comes in as Slowbro Amnesias i think Chansey will have an around 25-30% chance to win. I mean, freezes are more likely than Chansey crits...
 
kd42- No one uses reflect? When was the last time you played RBY? Reflect chansey cockblocks pretty much all offense in the game except slowbro and wrappers, who can still lose to it. It sits there going for a freeze, and often if it doesn't freeze anything it'll end up paralysing alakazam, who is the only standard pokemon who forces it out, or a physical pokemon who tries to crit through reflect.

Reflect is generally the best fourth-slot move for chansey. Sing is kinda gimmicky but good if you don't have a second sleeper. Counter is crap because good players will always scout it first.The only thing thunderbolt is hitting are cloysters when they miss their clamps. But even then you have thunder wave, which completely destroys cloyster's threat as a clamper, and with reflect you can actually make it think twice about exploding, which is the only way a paralysed cloyster can hurt chansey. Plus you also have starmie, whose thunderbolt scares all waters.

Starmie will always switch out from chansey. The only time chansey will thunderbolt starmie is late game, but late-game reflect is normally better because there are usually more physical pokemon around then (eg. tauros). A starmie that stays in on chansey realising it doesn't have thunderbolt will likely get paralysed or frozen anyway.

Having a defensive team covers anything doesn't mean you'll always win, because you can still get outplayed or haxed. Having a team that covers everything means that you don't auto lose because you didn't cover some pseudo-gimmicky threat.


Wrap isn't based on luck. If someone thinks that the wrap meta consists of slowly wrapping stuff until they faint then they don't know anything about the wrap meta at all.

Magic- Agility dragonite isn't countered by ice moves. Any intelligent player won't set it up where dragonite is in a position to take STAB ice, and any intelligent player will likely scout for ice attackers first and try to remove them.

The reality is dragonite will get chances to set up, regardless of what you run. Its counters are things that cockblock it when it's already set up, namely rocks and gengar. The rocks are better pokemon than gengar, but they still do a sufficient job of nullifying dragonite, whilst still fulfilling other roles on the team and maintaining defensive synergy.


Crystal- That's still too luck-based for my liking though. I'm looking for a more solid counter. Victreebell is a good counter, but has to be careful switching in, and lacks defensive synergy because it's an almost purely offensive pokemon. The only defensive utility it has is switching in on chansey's thunderbolts and trying to control the battle from there with wrap.
 
I'm considering it, but it handicaps those pokemon in other scenarios. The good thing about stuff like victreebell is that they don't have to compromise any potential.
 
Paralysis definitely compromises Victreebell's potential though...

Anyway I'm not suggesting using Screen on these pokemon, but simply that just shouldn't bother much about it. I mean, sure, Vict will help dealing with Slowbro, but Slowbro shouldn't be the main reason you are using Vict. 'Threat covering' in its most radical sense is not how rby team building works because there is not enough space in a six pokemon team to make a successful one this way.
 
Magic- Agility dragonite isn't countered by ice moves. Any intelligent player won't set it up where dragonite is in a position to take STAB ice, and any intelligent player will likely scout for ice attackers first and try to remove them.

The reality is dragonite will get chances to set up, regardless of what you run. Its counters are things that cockblock it when it's already set up, namely rocks and gengar. The rocks are better pokemon than gengar, but they still do a sufficient job of nullifying dragonite, whilst still fulfilling other roles on the team and maintaining defensive synergy.
That would be why I was talking specifically about Cloyster and Lapras, and not Jynx. Cloyster and Lapras have the bulk to eat Wrap while threatening an OHKO if Dragonite uses anything else or misses.
 
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