OU RBY OU Ladder / "Jank" Discussion Thread

[Billybobman]

I've tried Tentacruel. From my perspective, it seems to want to do things late game,
The team I used to test used these mons: (no link just mons). 3 Sleepers + 3 Exploders. The idea of the team was to try to get rid of special attackers by blowing up a bunch, then let Tentacruel face of with Tauros.
I personally think Tentacruel is bad b/c of it's poison typing making it harder to deal with since it feels like a mon that wants to take it on.
Lmk if you have a better team for it. Spamming Wrap against did not feel the safest, and I think players would have just switched out anyways.

I wanted to ask, is worthy of E1? I think it's better than . It has more opportunities to switch in due to it bulk and Ground immunity. I like pairing it with or over . But apparently GyaraJolt is good in gen 1. I've heard that there is a community that feels it's underrated in this video:

.

I'm sure I said this somewhere, but I don't think it's Electric type weakness holds it back that much. I think it's a mon that wants to deal with and rather than the special attackers. It's immunity to EQ allows it to be a safer switch in to . You can also take advantage of the fact that Snorlax likes to use Reflect in certain situations, which can give it opportunities to switch in. When it threatens a mon, it can go for Body Slam for the para/crit hax on the switch, and follow up with Hyper Beam. Being a water type with Tbolt helps against Cloyster.

I like it more than anyways.

 

[Ortheore]

Imo GyaraJolt is extremely overrated. Jolt is terrible at baiting EQs, since Lax/Taur frequently prefer to click Normal STAB, meanwhile Don can just click RSlide if it thinks an EQ resist is coming. Offensively they do a reasonable job of supporting each other most of the time, but are both susceptible to being hard countered so this is fairly iffy (Don and Star on the same team is very plausible lol). The best teammate for Gyarados is easily Gengar.

Personally I'm not super fond of Gyara, it struggles too much against Starmie, also the Elec weakness is very relevant against Chansey as well as Star. That said, E1 is not that high a bar to clear, so I'm not opposed to it moving up.

I personally haven't played much with Tentacruel, but clearing special attackers in order for it to take on Tauros isn't the approach I'd take, purely because it's just not a good matchup for it. Also Tenta's not that bad against special attackers, it does have an Ice resist and excellent special bulk after all, but it struggles mostly against faster pokemon. Granted faster pokemon and special attackers have considerable overlap, but if you're targeting stuff like Egg and Bro to support Tenta (idk if you are), I think that's not ideal

 

[Billybobman]

Imo GyaraJolt is extremely overrated. Jolt is terrible at baiting EQs, since Lax/Taur frequently prefer to click Normal STAB, meanwhile Don can just click RSlide if it thinks an EQ resist is coming. Offensively they do a reasonable job of supporting each other most of the time, but are both susceptible to being hard countered so this is fairly iffy (Don and Star on the same team is very plausible lol). The best teammate for Gyarados is easily Gengar.

Personally I'm not super fond of Gyara, it struggles too much against Starmie, also the Elec weakness is very relevant against Chansey as well as Star. That said, E1 is not that high a bar to clear, so I'm not opposed to it moving up.

I personally haven't played much with Tentacruel, but clearing special attackers in order for it to take on Tauros isn't the approach I'd take, purely because it's just not a good matchup for it. Also Tenta's not that bad against special attackers, it does have an Ice resist and excellent special bulk after all, but it struggles mostly against faster pokemon. Granted faster pokemon and special attackers have considerable overlap, but if you're targeting stuff like Egg and Bro to support Tenta (idk if you are), I think that's not ideal

I'm not a huge fan of GyaraJolt either, mostly b/c I don't like Jolteon, but I sometimes feel that is better than I think it is. I prefer as a teammate due to it hard countering and checking Edit: I forgot to mention that helps against too.

When I use Gyara, I use it against Lax and switch it immediately out if it is ever threatened by Twave or Tbolt. I always use it against the Physical Normals if I can. I use Body Slam on predicted switches into Starmies (pray for a para and or crit) and Chanseys (pray for a crit to follow up with beam). I try to keep it safe like how you would keep safe. It scares out (players tend to take the first Hydro Pump hit however) which I find to be valuable. Also, it helps a bit against which I think is a great trait to have.


About Idk, I haven't tried it as more of a mid game mon. I was unable to find a good amount of opportunities to set up SD.

 

[Leeto64]

Has anyone attempted this? Not sure if this thread is also interested in jank sets for OU staples, but just thought this up

I'm a bit rusty and not particularly skilled (am at like 1200 elo) on this tier but from personal experience, Rest feels relatively passable as an option, i've always prefered running Agility since Jolt doesnt feel like a mon that sticks for long; just noticed that with Reflect tho, it can theoretically survive important hits and maybe 1v1 some important mon from there, Snorlax and Tauros EQ turns from a 2HKO into a 3HKO, Lax Body Slam becomes a 5HKO, but most importantly it can actually survive Boom from full HP from any mon which could be useful from either a hard read or to screw over a very anxious opponent, i'd prefer this alongside Twave for the support, but theoretically it could last a longer time combining Reflect + Rest against something like ReflectLax

 

[Sabelette]

That set means you are bodied by special attackers as well as paralysis, and it doesn't actually gain you anything - if you spend a turn to turn a 2hko into a 3hko you come out negative. At best you break even, at worst you get owned by a crit.

 

[V_rb]

I have an update for this ladder tier list—but it's not an "update" in the sense that I'm changing any of my stated opinions or tier placements. I'm actually just here to reaffirm that everything I posted here is still 100% accurate for ladder play. In fact, the more I learn about the game, the more I discover how right I was about literally everything from the start. Things aren't supposed to work that way, but they just sort of did. I don't like patting myself on the back, but it would be remiss not to acknowledge the immaculate precision of this tier list. You know how Newton figured out the laws of gravity, and we still use them, untouched, 400 years later? That's gonna be this tier list for RBY laddering. If you want ladder success, take this tier list to heart. Seriously.

(That said, bear in mind that this tier list was conceived by applying competitive/high level tournament strategy to ladder, as opposed to typical ladder strategy. If you're new to laddering, or don't take laddering all that seriously, this tier list may not seem very intuitive—regardless, this is as about as definitive as you can get.)

End of 2023 (non)update on my Ladder VR:
No changes necessary. This is still perfectly accurate.

 

[brookman]

been a while but I was brought out of my relatively brief hiatus by gambler keegan videos and as such I have some fresh jank to share.

I see you've all been chewing on sevi's high quality post for a while so allow me to lower the standard quite a bit. (although I will borrow the format)


UUBL Jank

Hypno is running meditate + headbutt to troll starmie/zam/chansey leads and encourage switching to spread more para.

Lapras and Hypno do an enormous amount of work while dragonite and victreebel are secretly there just to be a back up thunderwaves for golem/persian support late game (although sometimes wrap is kinda nice)

team kinda auto-loses to jynx lead (switching persian in to sleep sack or gambit a LK miss can be a play, or some a few other 'desperation' gambits can work but. .. . ) also, gengar invalidates at least half the team.

time for my . . .quarterly jank ladder game.

this is actually a repeat of that same team ( , , , , , )

insanely good game imo. opponent could player better but by the time they realize what's happening its too late.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen1ou-2022352966


edit for the fans:
pov: you're about to break 1500 on ladder and you run into my golduck team.

 

[Prof_J]

I never used this team in public Smogtours games so all its replays are FUCKING GONE, and I'm too busy to get new ones :(.
But this is funny enough to share. It contributed to getting me out of the pools phase in the first (and last) RBY Majors, generated some salt on ladder, and won an almost-200 turn game against Jynx+Starmie+Zam Psychic spam:

Surviving proof

https://pokepast.es/f0ba42994d47988b

Out of the 9 normals you can lead with, Kang and tauros are the only two (that you would want to use) that don't choke to Gengar. But I want to keep Tauros in the back. Kang has a respectable crit rate, Hypnosis has less-than-respectable accuracy, and it's a great way to bait paralysis onto Chansey Turn 1. Use Surf instead of Counter; the extra coverage against Rhydon is needed, and you will not be able to use Counter against someone who isn't brand new to the tier. You would want to counter Tauros, but even Kang's on site analysis says " [Tauros] Blizzard does more than slam and scouts at the same time". You won't land it.
Dodrio used to be the lead but it was a huge let down. You'd think your best matchup would be against Jynx and you could just Hyper Beam...but with the amount of teams that can just go Rhydon, it leaves you open. You have to Slam, and probably get slept anyway...in addition to losing to Gengar.
Chansey set does what it does.
The Snorlax set can be your preference of classic 4 attacks PhysLax, or Amnesia. I switch between the two on a whim. However...when I use PhysLax, I tend to lose much more quickly and much more frequently. Amnesia is less aggressive, but it can help you bounce back against special attackers if and when something happens to Chansey. I just have more consistently good results with it, and I used it in the Majors. I thought it would be a neat exercise to re-evaluate some of these games and see if I could have won any of them easier and sooner with Physlax, but....well, they all got chucked out of existence.
Porygon is what allows you to run an actually good Snorlax set instead of a meme one that tries to do too much. I never used Tbolt.....so you could try Hyper Beam. Beam snipes a weakened Chansey that may switch in. Don't forget to maximize attack!
Persian should have the default set to help with Rhydon and Cloyster. Tauros...man, idk what it is about this thing, but it makes a lot of people mad for some reason.

Your worst matchups will actually be other meme teams. You can at least make a plan to fight OU-viable teams. Meme teams with enough mixed attackers are harder on this structure, and need to be adapted to on the fly.

It is imperative that you keep the nicknames.

Have fun!

 

[Billybobman]

There are pokemon that we dont talk about but still obviously have potential, I know winning is kinda cool, I kinda like the idea of proving that something can win, but the battling is the fun part. Seeing success is cool, but it's still about fun, do we really need to have a Jank section, it seems mean

 

[NotVeryCake]

There are pokemon that we dont talk about but still obviously have potential, I know winning is kinda cool, I kinda like the idea of proving that something can win, but the battling is the fun part. Seeing success is cool, but it's still about fun, do we really need to have a Jank section, it seems mean

Who does it seem mean to? The pixels and data? This thread is primarily for top players to discuss relevant meta trends; top meta players don't want to hear about Onix getting to 1400 on ladder or something along this lines, because its not relevant to the meta. The jank thread exists for people whp don't want to discuss relevant meta trends and instead want to discuss more "out there" type of stuff.

 

[Billybobman]

Who does it seem mean to? The pixels and data? This thread is primarily for top players to discuss relevant meta trends; top meta players don't want to hear about Onix getting to 1400 on ladder or something along this lines, because its not relevant to the meta. The jank thread exists for people whp don't want to discuss relevant meta trends and instead want to discuss more "out there" type of stuff.

Obviously Gyarados is a lot stronger than people give it credit for, not sure why it doesn't show up higher in the viability. Keeping stuff hidden or treating it like nonsense when it obviously is not is silly. Even if you are focused on winning, you should try to acknowledge the strengths of other pokemon, otherwise how will we actually know what is good and what is not.

It's literally how research works, I don't understand why yall have been against it

 

[NotVeryCake]

It's literally how research works, I don't understand why yall have been against it

These mons have been researched. Taking the example you gave; Gyarados has been proven to be undeniably underwhelming and mediocre, it even got an analsysis at the behest of a banned user. Its base stats look nice on the surface but the crippling weaknesses, mediocre speed, and being incredibly hard to fit onto a team make it mediocre at best.

Edit: forgot to mention that no one is stopping you from researching these mons and coming to your own conclusions on their viability, but their is a thread to do that (the jank thread) and this thread is not it

 

[Billybobman]

What par tof the dex entry says gyardos is mediocre? Usually they will say that tehy are mediocre

 

[NotVeryCake]

What par tof the dex entry says gyardos is mediocre? Usually they will say that tehy are mediocre

If you took the time to even read the first sentence of the analysis:
"Gyarados clings to RBY OU relevance"
Anyways, I think Tauros is good, Zapdos too

 

[Green on fire]

What par tof the dex entry says gyardos is mediocre? Usually they will say that tehy are mediocre

NotVeryCake is telling you to go to the jank threat, idiot

 

[Acetylaldehyde]

It's literally how research works, I don't understand why yall have been against it

It's compartmentalization, which is a big part of research. When Im reading about neurons it can frustrating to get papers about muscle, even if they are related and both interesting.

This thread is for highly focused trends on the top pieces of the OU meta. The "Jank" thread is for niche harder to work peices. Another way to think about it, Jank thread you can talk about things that can/could work; this thread is for things that DO work.

Perhaps "Jank" reads as insulting, but it's not meant that way. I like the conversations and ideas that come up over there, but I appreciate it being conatined to a different thread. That way I can set my mind to the appropriate context. As Cake said, listing success as "I got 1500 elo on ladder" means something different to me than "I beat Serpi in a bo3 with this strategy."

 

[Ortheore]

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with dismissing ladder results bc the ladder is generally not a high standard of play. Maybe if you're grinding to well over 1600 I'd respect it? But that elo isn't terribly impressive on more active ladders, which highlights how underplayed the rby ladder is

Imo the only thing ladder scores prove is if a strategy is bad. Specifically, if you're struggling to reach 1500+ with a given mon/strategy, then that's a red flag that it's bad. Anything else means little.

It's honestly not uncommon to see bad players/strats above 1500. The only reason anyone uses it as a notable threshold is that only a couple dozen players bother to maintain a higher ranking, given that decay occurs above that point

I also think the decay system is stupid. Can't you just hide inactive players from the ladder instead?

 

[Sabelette]

I also think the decay system is stupid. Can't you just hide inactive players from the ladder instead?

I've been pushing for this forever but no response, gg.

 

[NotVeryCake]

What are peoples opinions on Rest Cuno?

 

[Melanie goes boating]

Where can we push for a rework to the hiding inactive accounts from the ladder thing?

 

[Kaosdone]

https://pokepast.es/2928fec44eaa9fce Here is my team i made. its 100% jank.

I only got this outcome due to how i started out. I originally had the 4 normals and an alakazam, so then i couldnt really hit zapdos, so i added sandslash, since it helped against both rhydon and gengar too (Ik it doesnt REALLY help with gengar but still), then i didnt have sleep, so i replace alakazam with jynx. i would have never ended up with this outcome if i had something else as my lead. like a jolteon, cause then i would have blizz tauros, and would probably have ran rhydon.

 

[Meta4International]

Charizard:

isn't as bad as most people make it out to be, I've used it to beat top players by forcing out

turn 0 and paralyzing opponents

on Turn 1. It also can setup late game as a sweeper. IMO, maybe even C-tier level. I've used it to get above 1500 on the ladder myself. If anything, I can bean on most people with it, it's criminally underrated.

 

[Ortheore]

Charizard:View attachment 597686 isn't as bad as most people make it out to be, I've used it to beat top players by forcing out View attachment 597687 turn 0 and paralyzing opponents View attachment 597688 on Turn 1. It also can setup late game as a sweeper. IMO, maybe even C-tier level. I've used it to get above 1500 on the ladder myself. If anything, I can bean on most people with it, it's criminally underrated.

I can agree with Zard being underrated by the playerbase in general, but that's only because the consensus is that it's unviable, whereas it's probably usable, but undeniably mediocre. Definitely not worthy of C tier

Anti-leading Jynx honestly isn't that big of a selling point when Gengar does that and is much better, plus other Fire types are available that are a bit better into non-Jynx leads. I also don't see how you're paralysing Starmie, since Zard lacks reliable para, not to mention the risks involved with leaving Zard in on Star are bonkers.

Its sweeping potential is handicapped by its average stats and awful typing. I'm not saying it can't be threatening, but usually a team will have plenty of counterplay without even trying

 

[NotVeryCake]

If you want to anti lead Jynx with a shitty Pokemon use Ninetales lol

If I had to run a set of SD/HBeam/Razor/Sleep I would choose Vic over Venu

Dropping Razor for a set consisting of Wrap/HBeam/SD/Powder can be a fun suprise

 

[Meta4International]

If you want to anti lead Jynx with a shitty Pokemon use Ninetales lol

That's not what I'm saying though, I was trying to make a point that Charizard isn't even like bad though... and is competitive enough to be viable in OU. It's not just a anti-lead vs Jynx, but can run multiple sets so it's not easy to predict what to switch in vs it, you cant just switch chansey into submission, or snorlax into a fireblast, or exeggutor, even starmie can be body slammed for Para if it's trying to switch in. Alakazam doesn't want to be body slammed, and if your switching out, it also gives the opportunity to SD.

Charizard can switch into exeggutor sleep powder and if it misses, forces exeggutor out, and if it hits, it can wakeup late game and sweep with SD

Also Charizard poses a significant threat to all of the most commonly used mons, Tauros, snorlax, chansey, exeggutor, all of the big 4.
I've ran Charizard for rank 1 on the ladder.