OU Reflect vs Seismic Toss on Alakazam

[Omanyte]

Also you're making it out like alakazam is some great staller that you send out once and don't switch out for a very long time...

That depends on what you're opponent has at the time, but I appreciate that it's often not the case.

snorlax doesn't need to switch in anyway, its perfectly fine staying in its pokeball until lategame.

It depends on the situation, but generally I'd gladly trade 100 damage to Snorlax for a Lax Body Slam on whatever they switch in. And there's the threat of that (or Golem/Rhydon) everytime SToss Zam comes out.

the point is nobody is going to switch physical attackers like snorlax into reflect zam when they have a psychic type.

But they will switch in a physical for SToss Zam.

An early Zam will ALWAYS lead to Chansey being brought out (or Zam dittos I guess). The main gain of this for Zam is to lower Chansey's special and then paralyse on the switch. Sure, after that you could SToss their Starmie/whatever for a neat 100 damage, but really I'd switch out before then because waiting that long is just easting up your Psychic PP.

also, again as i've already said, there's only like a 56% chance sleep powder/lovely kiss connects after paralysis, and that's EVERY turn, not just the first turn... they're about as likely to hit you as if they'd been using sing. aside from that, if you are leading with zam, there's a good chance you'll be asleep all game and it doesn't matter what 4th move you'd used at all, but at least seismic toss lets you tack on some damage, or on somewhat rare occasions allows you to force the opponent out without sleeping you at all. basically, if you're leading zam, there's not much reason to use reflect, and if you're using reflect you might as well lead something else...

We completely agree on this point. Well, maybe not quite the last sentence, but I'll agree that SToss Zam is more effective in those first couple of turns most of the time.

seismic toss zam doesn't need to worry about status as much because it has a different role, and because it doesn't mind paralysis as much, it thus makes a good status absorber! reflect is much less useful if you get paralyzed (i'll say it again in so you can't ignore it) because you can't go first against physical attackers or exploders or what have you (and please keep in mind setting it up against special attackers is only a feasible point if starmie, slowbro, rest jynx, and enemy alakazam are all dead, and if chansey is alive, restless jynx and exeggutor must be dead too.) but seismic toss doesn't lose any usefulness when you get paralyzed. seismic toss doesn't beat physical attackers, but it makes you less vulnerable to slowbro, starmie, and so on.

I think paralysis is equally bad on both Zams. With Reflect you can set it up on a special pokemon or just paralyse whatever physical is coming in (if it's not Golem/Rhydon). Jynx and Slowbro are both pretty rare, Zam is only a problem if they're running SToss and as for Starmie...Starmie will stall Zam for sure (and SToss will obviously do better versus Starmie) but it's not like Starmie is an immediate threat like Lax is for paralysed SToss Zam.

if seismic toss were as bad as you are making it sound none of these good players would be using it at all so maybe you should try either using it for yourself or being reasonable for a change of pace.

Well personally probably 80% of Zams I see are running Reflect. I'd even call it the "standard moveset". I don't think SToss Zam is bad, it's just not as good as Reflect. It's main advantages appear to be a bit of extra damage in turn 2 as a lead and beating Reflect Zam in a Zam ditto.

 

[shrapn3l]

I have to disagree with this. An active paralysed zam without reflect up is really a dangerous position to be in. With reflect up, snorlax won't even think about switching into a paralysed zam unless it's looking for a trade via SD. In fact, I'd say that the main selling point of reflect is not minding about paralysis as much, so that zam can become dangerous when you are only facing one of chansey/psychics so that you can stay into said chansey/psychic bar stoss zam, afford taking a twave, force it out via spc falls/stalling/if it doesn't recover and use the free turn to psychic whatever physical mon comes in. If you don't reflect then the opponent will likely find an opportunity to send its snorlax/whatever before: instead of forcing it to switch into a potential psychic, the physical is switching in for free and usualy getting a free body slam. Of course if there is no psychic/chansey then much better for zam because you don't even have to take paralysis, but in this case most of the times you are probably better off not using reflect and going for psychics anyway so the last move doesn't even matter.

But this is on paper and in theory stuff. In RBY there are too many random crits/fps/explosions and their (mis)predictions for this to be accurate, and explosions are still koing or almost koing reflect zam.

well there are multiple things that you have to consider here. firstly, your opponent in all likelihood has both a chansey and a psychic, or two psychics. if your opponent only has one psychic type(depending on which it is, zam is trouble like you said but slowbro is trouble too)/chansey left, and only a few physical attackers in addition, that sort of IS what i would call "late game." at that point getting paralyzed is "fine" because you don't necessarily want to switch zam out and you may stay in until you have a reason to switch (like you run out of psychic PP or the game is over). i stand by what i said in this sense: reflect zam doesn't want to be paralyzed until it's ready to do its thing, because you MAY end up having to set up against a physical attacker, and, imo, you're ideally setting up against a physical attacker while there is nothing to stop you from sweeping. you don't want reflect zam to be paralyzed BEFORE it's ready to switch in and set up, for this exact reason. so you don't stall with it early to mid-game, that's a waste. you save it for the scenario you yourself have outlined, and regardless of how quickly that scenario arises, it's still "late game" in a sense, unless the opponent just don't have anything to stall you with at all, in which case reflect zam WILL be useful all game, but that's a rare occurrence.

seismic toss zam isn't meant to do any of that and CAN function better as a status absorber from early to midgame. if you use zam to absorb sleep you may give snorlax/tauros some free switches on those turns you get sleepy zam in for free so you can try to wake it up, right? you have to weigh what's worth it. it's a matter of, what's worse? letting snorlax come in sometimes or letting more of your pokemon get statused? for reflect zam, letting snorlax in or sacrificing your usefulness by taking paralysis and/or wasting psychic pp early? but we've already discussed why reflect zam is best saved for late game. it's also a matter of, because a pokemon CAN do something, SHOULD it do something? you can use stoss zam to absorb para and still get the most out of it, but, as i've said, getting reflect zam paralyzed early sacrifices a lot of its usefulness. so you CAN use reflect zam to absorb para early, but since it's usually ineffective early, you'll just be switching it out without doing much harm, and you'll have sacrificed some of its late-game usefulness as well, so you SHOULDN'T if you can avoid it. i mean, you'd rather not have zam paralyzed ever, but stoss zam is relatively decent at absorbing it considering its function as a special wall, which it does better than reflect zam. i think we can agree that stoss zam functions much more like chansey.

i definitely agree that neither is much "better" overall than the other, but as i said, stoss zam has a more general usefulness as a utility pokemon, and is useful all game, but reflectzam is selfish and needs proper support and set up to do what it is supposed to do consistently, as a sort of hole puncher/sweeper, and it is best used late game if you can manage it.

 

[Crystal_]

itt most of the times you send a fresh alakazam into a physical attacker when it's in a position to sweep you'd be better off psychicing right away unless snorlax is above around 64% or maybe it's a healthy golem/rhydon. Tauros is a case studied over the years, but I often go for twave/psychic rather than reflect because these two get more damage/paralysis on tauros should it crits first or second turn and I think the chances of succeeding with all three are really close. I think reflect is specially good for the scenario when you send it into chansey, reflect up, and force a physical swicth-in eventually. Otherwise it's not that relevant imo.
BUT still, if you need something to switch into chansey early game or whenever because your chansey got frozen/boomed/you are not using it and snorlax is getting worn down quickly or whatever, then reflect is meant to ensure your opponent doesn't get tricky with snorlax/rhydon/whatever switches. It might even be the opposite thing because of spc falls/zam can outstall chansey/twave on the switch-in/snorlax or rhydon or golem into softboiled and you know what stuff.

I think I see why you say stoss makes a better status absorber. Because it hits egg/jynx harder before they put you to sleep and can exchange twaves with other zams and starmies and then have the chance to scare them out thanks to stoss (which psychic alone has a much harder time doing and means using a lot of pps) and be able to para something else. I think that's what you mean right, that stoss zam has better matchups as far as status inducer mons go?

if you think zam is "crippled by the fact that he's too fragile to survive long enough" to take advantage of seismic toss then you don't know what you're doing. seismic toss is useful ALL GAME and especially when you're leading zam, whereas reflect is most useful when you're ready to clean up with zam lategame and is honestly rather unimportant before that most of the time. reflect zam is good, but it's a selfish pokemon. at worst its a decent backup counter for chansey, but it needs the team to help it out and make things go its way before it make a REAL impact. it's a sweeper, really. seismic toss zam is the opposite, a team player and a decent special wall, that probably won't have the large impact that reflect zam can have in an ideal scenario, but it will have a more consistent impact on every game.

i definitely agree that neither is much "better" overall than the other, but as i said, stoss zam has a more general usefulness as a utility pokemon, and is useful all game, but reflectzam is selfish and needs proper support and set up to do what it is supposed to do consistently, as a sort of hole puncher/sweeper, and it is best used late game if you can manage it.

Anyway I think you are exaggerating a bit the difference between the two zam sets, or the importance between using one move or the other. Before working as "stosszam" or "reflectzam" they work as... zam. It's not that reflectzam has to wait for the lategame for a position to sweep to be useful. That's what reflectzam does but zam itself can do other things. Just because taking early para would be compromising reflectzam's sweeping potential doesn't mean that sending it early game given the scenario is a sacrilege. Reflectzam can be as good as stoss zam as a special wall.

Or that snorlax switching into a non-reflect para'd zam is the end of the world. If lax swicthes into stoss is still 100 hp, 19% iirc, and if you are sure lax isn't beaming or zam is full health, then zam can even gor for twave (bar fp), take a slam, switch out and then three turns later he switches into your chasney and all of a sudden it is 100% again. And that slam may just have hit lapras for 25% or slammed golem then eq'd/surfed egg or whatever. But ofc, lategame snorlax can be much more dangerous that that, i know.

 

[shrapn3l]

it (reflect zam) doesn't have to wait for late game to be useful, but that's when it's most useful, so ideally you would save it for later IF you could. all i'm saying is that, since it's better saved for later, you shouldn't stall with it or get it paralyzed just for the sake of stalling when your opponent has a bunch of psychic types and/or chansey because you won't accomplish much and you're sacrificing a lot, but with seismic toss you don't have to worry about "conserving it" as much because it's less dangerous and significant late game. the reflect set can take special hits and spread para about as well as the stoss set, but the question is really "is it worth it?" which depends on your team and your opponent's team and what point it is in the game. with seismic toss zam, those factors don't matter as much because it's not as important or dangerous later on and you're worried about things like snorlax and rhydon and how long you can switch your counters into them instead

of course it can work the same way as stoss zam in many situations, but if i were to build a team with reflect zam i would try to make it so that i had other answers to chansey/starmie/what have you so that i could conserve it. plus, obviously, you definitely need extra help against slowbro and enemy stoss zam. the strategy wouldn't always work out the ideal way, obviously, but the intent is to give it the chance. on the other hand, whereas reflect zam is the kind of pokemon i would try to build a strategy around, seismic toss zam is more the kind of pokemon i would (seismic) toss onto my team as an afterthought if i need a special wall. i do not agree that reflect zam is as good of a special wall as stoss zam though simply because it doesn't have as good of a match up against many special attackers and has more limited offense/pp, but i admit that it CAN function as a special wall and status absorber if the need be. the sets are not extremely different but they are not meant to be used exactly the same way either, otherwise the moves would be completely interchangeable (in many individual games it ends up being the case that it does not matter what move you used, but on the other hand, it is often quite obvious which set will fit your team better in the long run). it's important to highlight the differences, though, for players that don't get all that, whereas it didn't seem important to point out the similarities when the ultimate goal is to contrast them, but yeah, they're not incredibly different and neither move is drastically superior to the other.

 

[Mr.E]

Look at it this way: Eggy, Starmie, and Zam are three of the best pokemon in the game not named Tauros. (In fact, I'd argue they round out the top five along with Chansey.) The choice is mostly irrelevant against the normals and SToss is better against the psychics. Necessary, even, as Psychic PP is way too easy to stall without that fallback attack.

Reflect is better against what, Snorlax? Tauros crits/PARs too much for it to be helpful in most cases and Golem/Rhydon are 2HKOed by Psychic on average anyway. About the only other thing it does is stop Golem or Gengar from Exploding on you. I'm pretty sure Snorlax isn't used as often as Eggy / Starmie / Zam, probably not as dangerous either.

 

[Dre89]

Reflect is good against physical normals. It allows you to para tauros first turn alot safer, and then from there you have the advantage. It also means that rocks lose to you when you're parad. The idea is that you have reflect up before they come in, this gives you a good shot at beating then even when parad.

I think you're underating lax's usage and threat.

 

[420]

Reflect is better against what, Snorlax? Tauros crits/PARs too much for it to be helpful in most cases and Golem/Rhydon are 2HKOed by Psychic on average anyway. About the only other thing it does is stop Golem or Gengar from Exploding on you. I'm pretty sure Snorlax isn't used as often as Eggy / Starmie / Zam, probably not as dangerous either.

Snorlax is kind of a big deal.

 

[Crystal_]

Tauros
Snorlax / Chansey
Exeggutor
Starmie / Alakazam
Lapras / Golem / Rhydon
etc

I'm pretty sure

But anyway, no matter how much tauros can crit it won't ever think about switching into a para'd zam with reflect up unless it's your last option to win. Otherwise it will.

 

[Omanyte]

^Exactly^. Tauros isn't CH every other turn, it's more like 1 in 5. If you've already got it up it's a big advantage. Reflect also stops all sorts of things that have Hyper Beam/Explosion coming in and killing a rogue Zam.

Oh, and Snorlax is on pretty much every team.

 

[Mr.E]

Actually it's more like a 1-in-3 CH rate but the big thing about Reflect against Tauros is "if you already got it up." Between crits and PAR, Reflecting in front of Tauros is a lost cause so it must be set up in advance... but unless it's an unavoidable endgame scenario, Tauros is almost never coming in on Alakazam anyway. It technically wins a duel, if you want to switch in on Recover, but nobody willingly trades their Tauros 1-for-1.

And well, Reflect just isn't useful against anything else except Snorlax. Even if you want to argue that Snorlax is individually more dangerous than the trio of Starmie / Eggy / Zam, which I don't even think is true, it's not more dangerous than all three of them combined nor is it as common as any of them. When does Zam even use Reflect? It'd rather switch out against Chansey than use Reflect to dig in and use up half its Psychic PP before forcing Chansey out for a fresh Starmie. If you're doing that, skip the Reflect and just trade with Snorlax directly because you're not doing shit lategame without extra Psychic PP anyway. Toss conserves your Psychic PP against other psychics, gives you low-percentage kills combined with paralysis (which is better than your ~0% odds with Psychic alone), and bypasses playing special drop wars. Everything else gets wasted by Psychic and Snorlax doesn't even want to switch into one of those.

It does stop Eggy from blowing you up, not so much Golem since EQ + Explosion still kills through Reflect, but that's about the extent of Reflect's versatility. I don't even think that's very important since you need way too many Psychic PP to kill it, besides which Eggy will probably switch regardless. It can't duel Zam and generally wants to blow up almost anything else.

 

[420]

I don't even think stopping exeggutor's explosion is really a good thing anyway. I would LOVE for eggy to explode on my alakazam in most cases, with or without reflect. 1 for 1 with eggy is a good deal.

 

[Mr.E]

Hell, might as well use Counter. That still beats Snorlax pretty well, in addition to the occasional Tauros and Toss Zam. ;/ Though you lose having your own Toss for Starmie/Eggy. The only physical attack you might care about that evades Counter is Zapdos' Drill Peck.

 

[Dre89]

If you run stoss, you give lax a pretty good switch in, and lax is one of those pokemon you're not supposed to give free switches. Zam is likely to be paralysed which makes the situation even worse.

I don't see why people keep saying that reflectzam wastes more PP and can't do as much damage to psychics. The whole point of mid-game reflectzam is that you don't have to sit there dueling specials after you've paralysed them because you can set up offensive switch ins better due to the fact that you've limited their viable switch in options to only specials, ones which your zam has likely already paralysed.

Of course reflectzam is inferior stosszam at stosszam's role. The question is which roles (as they both have at least two different roles) are better.

 

[Crystal_]

I don't even think stopping exeggutor's explosion is really a good thing anyway. I would LOVE for eggy to explode on my alakazam in most cases, with or without reflect. 1 for 1 with eggy is a good deal.

Of course you aren't going to explode eggy initially, you'd rather put it to sleep for instance and keep eggy alive. But lets say, you have already land sleep, you've taken para in the process and you are at low health due to switching into golem/rhydon/snorlax/taking psychics/tosses / whatever, common scenario. Then I'd gladly go for the trade with zam. But Eggy's explosion still does loads of damage even through reflect though.

Actually it's more like a 1-in-3 CH rate but the big thing about Reflect against Tauros is "if you already got it up." Between crits and PAR, Reflecting in front of Tauros is a lost cause so it must be set up in advance... but unless it's an unavoidable endgame scenario, Tauros is almost never coming in on Alakazam anyway. It technically wins a duel, if you want to switch in on Recover, but nobody willingly trades their Tauros 1-for-1.

I already said going for psychic or twave instead of reflect in fresh vs fresh against tauros is arguably the better idea. Reflect is meant to prevent tauros from switching into zam.
Tauros switching into paralysed stoss zam as it recovers, then between fp and crit i think there is actually +1/3 chances that tauros can beat zam even without taking a hit. And most of the other cases will be zam getting a twave and a psychic but still losing. Plus, Hyper Beam is threatening below 90% zams with an ohko. Of course, sending tauros early-mid game when you don't even know how useful would it be lategame is tricky, so yea people will rarely switch their tauros into zam, they will switch... snorlax/golem/rhydon instead. And what's reflect useful for?

And well, Reflect just isn't useful against anything else except Snorlax. Even if you want to argue that Snorlax is individually more dangerous than the trio of Starmie / Eggy / Zam, which I don't even think is true, it's not more dangerous than all three of them combined nor is it as common as any of them.

Snorlax is clearly more dangerous than any of the psychics. And better than any of them, and if it isn't more common than them it's just players' fault. Psychic types aren't meant to be dangerous (albeit they sometimes are via freeze or lack of special walls from your opponent). They are useful defensive mons that are generally neutralizable (bar eggy's explosion which is a trade in worst case scenario). But you can't compare them with snorlax to discuss about reflect's/toss' usefulness anyway: Seismic Toss is meant to better wall psychic-type mons, Reflect is meant to prevent physical stuff to capitalizing on you, it isn't meant to wall anything.

It'd rather switch out against Chansey than use Reflect to dig in and use up half its Psychic PP before forcing Chansey out for a fresh Starmie.

Two reasons of why staying with zam: 1. you have no better option, 2. you are in a position where you can clearly capitalize on forcing chansey out (generally lategame scenario, which is what has been argued here), plus you can also force chansey out via pp stall.

If you're doing that, skip the Reflect and just trade with Snorlax directly because you're not doing shit lategame without extra Psychic PP anyway.

No, in the scenario we are talking about zam only has time to get a twave and maybe a psychic, maybe nothing.

It does stop Eggy from blowing you up, not so much Golem since EQ + Explosion still kills through Reflect

But reflect is at least forcing Golem to explode most of the times, isn't it?

 

[Mr.E]

Still, when are you setting up Reflect? Reflect doesn't do anything to Chansey, so Zam wastes a turn to Reflect. Generally you want to switch out anyway unless it's lategame and nothing else is left to eat Psychic spam, so using Reflect would be pointless until then. Just get that extra Psychic in so you can force the Softboiled a turn sooner and get the hell out. Same with other Psychics, except Toss is useful here to conserve Psychic PP (and deal 50% more damage). Like oh hey, Starmie is weakened and paralyzed... think I'll Reflect up so Snorlax is dissuaded from switching in after it heals up, rather than Toss for the 25% chance of a kill? :evan: Depending how weak, you can keep hitting Psychic so Snorlax doesn't even want to switch in.

Even if you want to waste a turn with Reflect, not having Toss already makes the opponent less likely to want to switch in the stuff that Reflect works against not because Reflect dissuades them from coming in but because they'd rather run your ass out of Psychic PP. Starmie and enemy Zam can eat quite a few Psychics, Recover off the damage and switch out of special drops with little consequence. Same with Chansey except Toss doesn't help you there anyway (other than having more attack PP), Eggy except you do permanently wear it down slowly. If you don't have Seismic Toss to "win" without Psychic there's no reason for Snorlax or Rhydon to switch in. They don't want to eat a Psychic when shedding special drops.

Golem is likely 2HKOed by Zam Psychic so it's already forced to Explode against Zam, Reflect or not.

The whole point of mid-game reflectzam is that you don't have to sit there dueling specials after you've paralysed them because you can set up offensive switch ins better due to the fact that you've limited their viable switch in options to only specials, ones which your zam has likely already paralysed.

Alakazam's Special is so much higher than its Defense it still has about the same bulk on the special side as it does physically even after Reflect. It already tends to beat other special attackers, the only reason they tend to switch in to begin with is because they don't get their shit pushed in by Psychic and they can trade paralysis.

If you're switching out anyway, there's no purpose to Reflect. The point of having Reflect is so you can sit there and duel other specials, because Zam will eventually win, while being insulated against physical switch-ins (especially if you accept eating paralysis). But that only happens in endgame, otherwise your opponent has enough healthy specials to just rotate between them and stall you out of Psychic PP. Snorlax and friends aren't even necessary. This is exactly where you need Seismic Toss.

TL;DR version, Reflect is only useful insofar as Zam is facing off against physical attackers. However, Seismic Toss is the move against which they want to switch in (especially Snorlax). Without Toss they have no reason to come in, the opponent can just dick around until you run out of Psychic PP or switch yourself. Counter at least beats other Toss Zam, worse against everything else Toss would be good against though, and unlike Reflect the opponent doesn't see it coming if Zam does face off with a physical attacker. Kinesis is better at setting up your own switchouts, which you will be doing frequently without Toss there to conserve your Psychic PP.

 

[Jorgen]

I'm pro-SToss in this argument. The main thing about Reflect is that the only things you can set it up against are only forced out by SToss, and the only things it helps against only need to come in against Zam to beat it if it's running SToss to preserve its Psychic PP. Psychic and Twave threats are usually enough to make Physicals keep their distance most of the time, and who knows, with prediction you probably end up killing them with Psychics when they switch in predicting Recovers instead of just having your Psychics wasted against stupid Starmie.

EDIT: All this time we're assuming Zam needs to use either SToss OR Reflect. What about a SToss PLUS Reflect set at the cost of Twave? Granted, Zam's general use is as something that easily shuffles things and paralyzes them, but if you have Reflect and two attacking moves to preserve Psychics, you can get something like Stun Spore Eggy to paralyze the Starmies/Alakazams that need to be para'd in order to die to SToss. Of course, Chansey is a problem, but it can be forced out to make something take a Psychic that hates it, and of course the aforementioned Eggy can just Explode on it.

 

[Yai-Inn]

Nice thread. What does everyone think about Kinesis? I've always been a fan, should I drop it?

 

[420]

Of course you aren't going to explode eggy initially, you'd rather put it to sleep for instance and keep eggy alive. But lets say, you have already land sleep, you've taken para in the process and you are at low health due to switching into golem/rhydon/snorlax/taking psychics/tosses / whatever, common scenario. Then I'd gladly go for the trade with zam. But Eggy's explosion still does loads of damage even through reflect though

If eggy's at that point I'd rather go on the offensive with seismic toss than set up reflect. If it's as weakened and paralyzed as you say, if it tries to switch in I at least have a chance at picking it off before it gets to do anything. And I only would have to predict its switch in if it's above 25%, if it's below then there's really no threat at all since toss will pick it off anyway.

 

[Jorgen]

Nice thread. What does everyone think about Kinesis? I've always been a fan, should I drop it?

I've never liked it really. It always seemed to me to be more of an annoyance option than an actual good move to use. I guess it makes it harder for Eggy to put it to Sleep as Zam Psychics its health down, and of course makes Exploding a non-option since a 25% chance of missing while killing yourself is not worth it. Plus it annoys Chansey trying to go for the Freeze in the PP war, though usually Chansey should just be paralyzing it anyway. It runs into a lot of the problems Reflect Zam does (easily PP stalled), but unlike Reflect Zam it doesn't have the ability to safely take Physicals' attacks.

 

[Borat]

Kinesis avoids Zam/Chansey mirrors though.

Also, I've always found Reflect potentially gamebreaking, whereas ST is just there. Drumlax vs Curselax in a sense.

 

[shrapn3l]

Kinesis avoids Zam/Chansey mirrors though.

Also, I've always found Reflect potentially gamebreaking, whereas ST is just there. Drumlax vs Curselax in a sense.

absolutely not... there are plenty of times that you'll be facing multiple psychic types and/or chansey and you'll wish you had chosen seismic toss regardless of whether or not your opponent has a snorlax. if reflectzam was better in the majority of games and more of an asset than seismic toss zam on pretty much any team and was ADDITIONALLY a CONSISTENTLY great lategame sweeper, i might agree, but the superior move is largely team dependent, and still reflectzam only functions to its maximum potential as a sweeper probably less than half of the time even on an appropriate team/against a good matchup. seismic toss is good at least as often as reflect zam and it pretty much always does exactly what you expect it to do, which may amount to less than what reflectzam can POTENTIALLY do, but the fact of the matter is that reflectzam CAN'T function as a "gamebreaking" sweeper even most of the time and DOESN'T fit better than seismic toss zam on every team anyway. it's more like deciding between fire blast or earthquake on your drumlax or something (but i do not really like the drumlax comparison that much anyway).

 

[Dre89]

Again, late-game sweeping is only one of reflectzam's roles. Mid game it can para stuff (like stosszam) and set up offensive switch ins because it limits the opponent's viable switch ins to only other (usually paralysed) physics (unlike stosszam).

Both zams are going to get paralysed, if they try to control the mid-game. If you're using stoss to conserve PP, then you'll be using it a decent amount, so it doesn't seem to hard to switch lax or a rock into a stoss/recover/twave (in the case of rocks or restlax).

At that point, you've now lost control of the battle. I understand that there's a lot of theoretical scenarios that shouldn't be taken into account due to the nature of switching and prediction, which is player based, but that type of prediction and switch-in is realistic enough to warrant consideration.

 

[shrapn3l]

i'm not sure if that was in response to me but i wasn't saying that reflect zam is only usable as a lategame sweeper, just that seismic toss makes zam better at the midgame in many scenarios, and that which move you choose is overall largely dependent on your team, so it's ridiculous to compare one to drumlax and one to curselax...

it's also ridiculous to suggest that you've "lost control of the battle" just because you're faced with an unfavorable matchup at some point during the midgame. who cares if you let snorlax in if you have ways to mitigate its damage and multiple ways to hit it hard? that's not necessarily worse than being impotent against multiple psychic types and letting yourself get paralyzed only to waste valuable, limited psychic pp and get forced out without tacking on some permanent damage!!!

how's this for a counter example? you force out chansey with your reflectzam and they bring in slowbro. slowbro uses amnesia and "you've now lost control of the game" because you can't force it to rest with reflectzam. or otherwise, say you force out chansey and they send in starmie. if you don't have your own chansey or some way to quickly force starmie out (lapras into blizzard/twave/hpump -> zapdos on tbolt, or something like that) you have to stay in and waste more pp trying to get a specs drop on that too and then they can just go back to chansey. with stoss zam there's much less of a need to use chansey because it zam IS your special wall and your opponent is more inclined to try and counter you with things like snorlax than starmie. if your team is built appropriately, that's WHAT YOU WANT. also keep in mind that you have no reason to stay in against chansey if you don't plan on setting up reflect and sitting there, which is obviously never the plan with stoss zam, and is only the plan half of the time with reflectzam, but again, sending reflectzam out before you can reflect and force in a physical attacker is not ideal. When you get chansey to softboiled, chansey is just as vulnerable to snorlax switchins as seismic toss zam is (it's actually more vulnerable because it doesn't have stab psychic) so it's not fair to assume that you'll always be the disadvantaged one in the chansey vs zam scenario just because you can't keep snorlax from coming in, because they can't keep snorlax from coming in either and nothing's keeping you from switching out.

 

[Dre89]

I'll admit slowbro is a problem, but when starmie comes in just paralyse it and send in snorlax.

 

[Psyshock]

I agree with Umby-Each has specific use. Mono-attacking Psychic was fine in Gen I, so Reflect can aid resilience when facing physical attackers and moves that would otherwise destroy Alakazam. Seismic Toss though, that helps with Amnesia users like Snorlax or my brother's Mewtwo. T-Wave should be on the set to annoy or paralyze Pokes who outspeed other members of your team IMO. Zam is definitely good; always has been. On every game/file I've ever had coz he's my fave :D