fuck it lets post some meta takes. comparing my usage to the overall as a base, though my usages were a bit influenced by what i thought would do well into my opps (i prepped for everyone r3 and onwards, dont remember if i prepped for r2 but probably) and also the sample size is just small (11 games)

Overall
| 1 | Mr. Mime | 151 | 94.38% | 49.01% |
Amaranth
| 1 | Mr. Mime | 11 | 100.00% | 90.91% |
Nothing checks it except itself and sort of Magneton. It bullies the best/most common sleepers in the tier and it's literally always good. Sort of an OU Tauros situation where you could probably go mimeless but I don't really see the advantage in dropping a mon that trades so overwhelmingly positive vs the rest of the tier and doesn't really have answers

Overall
| 2 | Charizard | 123 | 76.88% | 47.97% |
Amaranth
| 5 | Charizard | 5 | 45.45% | 100.00% |
Zard is very strong and I think #2 or #3 with Venomoth, but I ended up loading him a bit less than that as I didn't find the prospects of loading into likely mirrors or double water games too appealing, and people understandably bring a lot of both of these things. Zard mirrors tend to be very "guess what I'm thinking"-y or otherwise speedtie coinflippy in nature, and I trusted myself to find active advantages with other builds rather than having to leave it up to luck in that way. I don't really think 75%+ is warranted tbh, folding to fat Waters and any Rock coverage from grounds and any TWave is a lot of counterplay overall, but certainly it's a strong lead and it also runs away with games like little else with the SD set in the back. It's also just a lot easier to handle when it's expected, I'd recommend default Zard loaders to think about mixing it up a little more.

Overall
| 3 | Venomoth | 99 | 61.88% | 52.53% |
Amaranth
| 2 | Venomoth | 6 | 54.55% | 83.33% |
This mon is amazing - fat slow waters completely run this tier and Venomoth gets to take an OHKO when they come in. But I also think Venomoth gets a bazillion chances to do its thing throughout the game and NU isn't necessarily about rushing sleep like other tiers may be - I think a lot of people have this idea that they want to get Sleep off and then sleepsack their Venomoth to keep more valuable mons up, but I don't actually think that's very necessary as Stun Spore ensures it stays valuable even in sharp lategame situations where its typing seemingly exposes it - but the reality is that taking a 90% chunk from Fire Blast in exchange for Stun Spore into Psychic is often more than fine. Keeping your Venomoth awake also prevents opps from being able to leverage their own sleeping pokemon as a sack / momentum reset, since you then threaten resleep. This is why I really wasn't fussed about Blastoise lead and it looked quite fine to me - I'm happy to welcome enemy Veno early game as I think the pokemon always gets value whether early or mid or late, and I don't really feel at a disadvantage giving enemy Veno the first chance at doing stuff - I know mine will always find a spot to get value later, it's just too good at doing that. The only problem is Mime but being able to lure and Stun Mime on the switchin can be very nice in itself

Overall
| 4 | Poliwrath | 76 | 47.50% | 50.00% |
Amaranth
| 9 | Poliwrath | 3 | 27.27% | 100.00% |
Don't really rate this guy as highly as everyone else seems to, it's just a slower blastoise that gets farmed by the move Psychic but gets to learn Hypnosis as a tradeoff. I don't think this tradeoff is very good as Hypnosis misses a lot. It has a niche as something that exploits lead Fires to click the sleep button, but I think Poliwhirl is even better at doing that because the follow up that it threatens is that much scarier. So that leaves Poliwrath in a sort of middle position where it's not my preferred bulky water for midgame situations (Blastoise and Kabutops typings are so much better), it's not my preferred water for punishing Fire leads (Poliwhirl is), and it's definitely not my preferred solo sleeper (Venomoth is extremely reliable and scares Mime entrance thru Stun more effectively). So then it really gets use in situations where I want very specific compression of some of these roles in one slot, or maybe if I'm not feeling like risking the Whirler or something like that. It's obviously good, I just don't find him worth slotting in half my teams though

Overall
| 5 | Magneton | 60 | 37.50% | 46.67% |
Amaranth
| 4 | Magneton | 5 | 45.45% | 80.00% |
People are getting apprehensive of loading this a little bit maybe, but it's still the nuts whenever it doesn't hit into grounds. And the grounds themselves are kinda doodoo, they definitely wouldn't be getting any use if not for this guy, you can usually build to lure or exploit them with the other five. You can see from overall usages that grounds just aren't very common even still, so even as a pure fish this mon has quite a lot of value. It's sort of a 'second Mime' situation where, if you aren't running a ground, Magneton helps you stabilize against enemy Magneton too - so there's a lot of incentive to load this in that sense too. I like Magneton and I like even greeding Magneton as a pure fish without particularly covering for the Ground match ups from time to time

Overall
| 6 | Seadra | 58 | 36.25% | 51.72% |
| 7 | Fearow | 53 | 33.12% | 49.06% |
| 9 | Raticate | 45 | 28.12% | 51.11% |
Amaranth
| 14 | Raticate | 2 | 18.18% | 100.00% |
| 15 | Seadra | 2 | 18.18% | 100.00% |
| 16 | Fearow | 1 | 9.09% | 100.00% |
I don't get the hype at all for these guys. Seadra folds to Rest Waters, which are viable (because they eat seadra up for breakfast) no matter how much gastlies or whoever else tries to convince you otherwise. If you have high Seadra I WILL load Rest and I WILL enjoy the freewin thank you very much. And even aside from that issue, it just doesn't do much to justify itself significantly above other Water options for me. I'll take EQ to hit Magneton + more bulk to switch into Fires + access to SToss and Counter etc. any day. Fearow is a very similar story - sure it's scary and it clicks Agility and oooo big guy with strong attack and a lot of speed or whatever, but is there really such a need to risk the Kabutops match up? To me it doesn't seem dominant enough at trading into everything else to be worth running that risk. But of course my Fearow is so pathetically low that I can afford to bring it once in a while because I can expect not to run into many Kabus (and even then I'm still spooked bc they may well be running Graveler for my Magnetons!)
Raticate is a bit of a different situation, because it's much more match up neutral thanks to Super Fang, but I *hate* the speed tier being under Charizard and Fearow given how much everyone loads these two. Funnily enough, it is probably a great bring into me given that I don't rate these two nearly as much as the rest of the playerbase. But I'd still rather put other guys in my builder because everyone else *is* loving those 100 speed dudes and I'm not eager to risk running my rat into that.

Overall
| 8 | Blastoise | 46 | 28.75% | 45.65% |
| 11 | Kabutops | 36 | 22.50% | 44.44% |
| 17 | Golduck | 12 | 7.50% | 66.67% |
| 18 | Poliwhirl | 10 | 6.25% | 80.00% |
Amaranth
| 3 | Kabutops | 5 | 45.45% | 100.00% |
| 6 | Blastoise | 4 | 36.36% | 75.00% |
| 7 | Golduck | 4 | 36.36% | 100.00% |
| 8 | Poliwhirl | 3 | 27.27% | 100.00% |
The flipside of my lower Seadra and Poliwrath: I get to use all these cool guys instead. I'll go to war for Kabutops especially and also Blastoise to a lesser degree: these guys are MEATY in a tier where being meaty and dying in 4 hits instead of 3 (or 3 instead of 2) matters a lot. Kabutops especially I think is severely underrated, Slash is really strong and farming Fearows is just so good, without sacrificing all that much in the other MUs (you'll want a second and maybe a third water, but that's hardly a sacrifice with so many great ones in the tier and no real punish to water stacking outside of Magneton). Golduck and Poliwhirl are a bit memey, and I don't think they're amazing - the usage for Golduck especially certainly overrepresents how good I think it is - but they can lead the game down some EXTREMELY forcing lines through Amnesia and really snowball a small tempo lead into a huge material lead as opponent desperately scrambles to stop the rampage. Or, they trade for a fat SToss water one-for-one and nothing really happens. Could go either way. In any case, it's funny that I singlehandedly make up 1/3rd of all Golduck uses and nearly 1/3rd of all Poliwhirls.

Overall
| 10 | Moltres | 40 | 25.00% | 40.00% |
| 13 | Arcanine | 19 | 11.88% | 42.11% |
Amaranth
| 10 | Moltres | 2 | 18.18% | 50.00% |
| 17 | Arcanine | 1 | 9.09% | 100.00% |
These are inferior Fires to Charizard in a majority of situations. I only led Moltres against Chungler, twice, to specifically snipe the Venomoth match up, because Fire Blast has strong odds to OHKO which forces it out completely... except he just stayed and got the tie lmao. Don't even remember when I loaded dog. They only really have a place either over Charizard (but Zard is pretty clearly better), or alongside him (but do you really need two fires? what match up are you really trying to punish?) so I don't think they're that great. I just very rarely felt compelled to bother with either of them, like I said in the Zard paragraph it can be appealing to dodge the stupid mindgamey mirrors by creating an asymmetry but that aside I don't really care for these guys

Overall
| 12 | Graveler | 24 | 15.00% | 45.83% |
| 16 | Nidoking | 13 | 8.12% | 53.85% |
| 21 | Sandslash | 4 | 2.50% | 75.00% |
Amaranth
| 11 | Nidoking | 2 | 18.18% | 100.00% |
| 13 | Sandslash | 2 | 18.18% | 100.00% |
| x | Graveler | 0 | 0.00% | 0.00% |
Lol, zero Graveler, lmao. I kind of hate Nidoking, but I think it's likely the best Ground in the tier - outspeeding most waters and having TBolt to smite them is really so much better than either of the slow guys. Sandslash + Kabu/Aero is role decompressing Graveler into two pokemon with better stats and ability to trade with stuff, and that's where my two Slash uses come from. I haven't really found myself wanting to Graveler even though the compression is appealing, because I think Waters are really good and I valued the higher pressure + not-being-ohkoed-by-Surf capabilities of the other two. I also think Fearow is not all that great + already pushed out of relevance by my scout thanks to near 50% Kabutops, so that part of Graveler's appeal is nearly entirely lost on me. It still looks fine though, I just happened to prefer other Grounds in the specific MUs I found. 25% overall Ground rate definitely seems a bit sus to me - Magneton is powerful, you guys need more answers to him even though it sometimes sucks to use them. Sneaky positive of all of these guys - switching on weakened+paralyzed Mimes going for TBolt or TWave (Sandslash especially is great at this while the other two get 2hkoed by Psychic and might not want to try their luck)

Overall
| 14 | Aerodactyl | 14 | 8.75% | 50.00% |
| 14 | Porygon | 14 | 8.75% | 35.71% |
Amaranth
| 12 | Porygon | 2 | 18.18% | 50.00% |
| x | Aerodactyl | 0 | 0.00% | 0.00% |
These guys are okay or whatever. Hard to justify over the actual good mons in the tier, but not terrible. Porygon clicks Thunder Wave (never bad) and Aerodactyl is fast with a great MU on backzard.

Overall
| 19 | Exeggcute | 6 | 3.75% | 50.00% |
| 19 | Venusaur | 6 | 3.75% | 0.00% |
| 22 | Gastly | 3 | 1.88% | 66.67% |
Amaranth
| 18 | Gastly | 1 | 9.09% | 100.00% |
| x | Exeggcute | 0 | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| x | Venusaur | 0 | 0.00% | 0.00% |
Bad memes, do not use. Venomoth clears you, Venomoth rinses you, Venomoth lives in your walls. I once thought Gastly was an OK counterbring to Raticate lovers but I don't even think that's a legitimate use case anymore. Just Moth for sleep, the small theoretical upsides for these guys are not worth everything that they give up. Venu's decent MUs where it gains some momentum (Magneton, basically all Waters) are ruined by it giving that momentum right back to some very terrible ones (Charizard, other Fires, Fearow, even Venomoth himself). No Stun Spore threat really lets them walk all over you.