OU The Legitimacy of Rhydon in GSC OU

[MiracleWhipz]

Hello everyone,

After a lot of thought, I began to wonder how viable Rhydon truly is in GSC OU. After playing a bit of OU and spending some time in the team builder, it seems that everything Rhydon offers can be emulated by other Normal resists that come with additional benefits.

As a Curse sweeper, Rhydon's preferred set (Rock Slide + Earthquake + Curse + Roar) is vulnerable to Toxic and is easily shut down by the ubiquitous Cloyster or any of the legendary Electrics running Hidden Power Water (even HP Ice deals considerable damage). If you opt for a mono-Rock set with Rest as the last move to address the status issue, then you have to ask—why not just use Tyranitar? While Tyranitar lacks an Electric immunity and doesn’t quite match Rhydon’s raw physical bulk, it makes up for it in virtually every other area. As a Rock/Ground type, Rhydon fails as an Electric absorber because it gets destroyed by Hidden Power Ice and Water. In this role, it’s also outclassed by Golem, who offers more utility with Rapid Spin and the wall-breaking Explosion. When considered as a Snorlax phazer, Rhydon’s bulk allows it to be a decent response, but its susceptibility to status and poor special defense often make Steelix the more appealing option in that phazer/Lax check slot. Even as a Ground that could spread paralysis, Nidoking offers that with Thunder with additional utility in Thief and Lovely Kiss.

In the team builder, it's incredibly difficult to find a place for Rhydon. In battle, you have to play very carefully to avoid special super effective attacks and Toxic. All of its potential roles can be better performed by another Normal resist or Ground type. Why is it still in OU? It can't shine a lot in the tier, but what about the tier below it?

Examining the UU roster of Pokémon, Rhydon could have solid niches there. Its powerful Rock Slides and Earthquakes could allow it to be a wall breaker, it could even go mono Rock without having to compete with another Rock/Ground. Its typing and bulk can allow it to perform defensive duties against threats like Granbull, Scyther, and Dodrio. As for its checks and counters the UU tier is filled with bulky water types, a decent amount of grass types, and a lot of powerful special attackers with Rhydon hitting coverage. I think it may be worth it to drop Rhydon to UU and test it there.

 

[DAWNBUSTER]

For what it is worth, I believe Rhydon would be both a healthy and positive addition to the GSC UU metagame. Something that would be very good but not too good.

 

[tylerkehne]

I've never been able to build a Rhydon team that doesn't feel like a fish. It's dangerous but its matchup spread is horrible when you consider all the things packing strong special stab, ice/water/grass coverage, stab eq/cc, or toxic. Feels unreliable as a long-term lax check, hit and run attacker or curse sweeper. It can cook sometimes but so can high-end UUBLs like Espeon, P2, Molt etc. If any more experienced players have any wisdom about how Rhydon is being underutilized that would be cool to see, but right now IMO it doesn't merit the OU label. Also would love to see some usage stats from recent tours.

 

[MiracleWhipz]

I've never been able to build a Rhydon team that doesn't feel like a fish. It's dangerous but its matchup spread is horrible when you consider all the things packing strong special stab, ice/water/grass coverage, stab eq/cc, or toxic. Feels unreliable as a long-term lax check, hit and run attacker or curse sweeper. It can cook sometimes but so can high-end UUBLs like Espeon, P2, Molt etc. If any more experienced players have any wisdom about how Rhydon is being underutilized that would be cool to see, but right now IMO it doesn't merit the OU label. Also would love to see some usage stats from recent tours.

(From SPL XVI GSC Discussion)

The description sums it up pretty well. For a little more detail, Rhydon's typing and special bulk does not allow it to do much outside of checking most Snorlax variants. Thanks to Rhydon being the primary Snorlax check on many teams, Rhydon can't abuse certain opportunities in fear it'll take too much damage (or get blunted by status) to efficiently check Snorlax. For example, in a situation where Raikou is getting ready to rest, any Ground type (or Tyranitar ) would love the opportunity to harass Raikou and cause the opponent to juggle defensive switches. Rhydon can't be so liberal with switching it because takes minimum ~43% from a Hidden Power Ice (not factoring in spikes). If it can't switch into a sleeping Raikou safely, then it sure can't switch into Zapdos who deals a minimum of ~45% from a Hidden Power Ice.

 

[Jorgen]

I feel like Rhydon has always been one of those things where you remind yourself "oh yeah I should probably be able to handle that" but, at the same time, is awfully shaky to be piloting yourself. In this era where you're probably already running EQ or even Surf on Lax to punish Golem, though, Rhydon's taken a backseat even in the former regard (although I will say that the cost of letting Golem do its thing unopposed is less immediately painful than letting Rhydon do the same).

Still, it's hard not to look at builds like NidoGarTar where everything except Snorlax takes SE damage from Rhydon's STABs and wonder if it's worth kicking the tires on ol' Rhydon and mixing it into your rotation.

That said, I think a drop to UU might be a bit hasty. Surely there are UUBLs worth dropping before we start targeting Rhydon, no?

 

[aminita]

My latest project in the builder is trying to make curse rhydon offense work, and I've been having a miserable time lol...
It has attractive traits with its its ground typing and huge stab EQ, but it's really held back by its godawful SpDef and slightly too slow speed. It owns lots of offense teams if you get it in nicely, but it also gets owned by nearly any special attack, which really sucks if you also want to use it against lax. Its high risk high reward, but hard to justify when ttar exists. Admittedly it's ground typing can be nice for aggressive punishes on the electrics that ttar can't do, but make one wrong move and rhydon is out of commission. Rhydon offense teams are also terrified of surprise surf coverage or hp waters, but having to scout those moves is pretty awkward and loses tempo, as well as putting you closer to hp ice 2HKO range with spikes. It also feels very underwhelming into stall with the standard curse roar set as it's deathly afraid of toxic and starmie.

I haven't completely given up as there's a few more team concepts i want to try, but it definitely feels underwhelming in OU rn. No clue about how it'd be in UU tho, I've yet to play that tier lol.

 

[gorgie]

outside of its very specific roles on certain offenses, rhydon is just a sh*t attempt at fusing wak and ttar into one mon

 

[bdt2002]

Rhydon is a very specific Pokémon I've always felt like was a bit underexplored in the modern metagame. And at first glance, yeah, why would you try and build with it when Tyranitar and OU's four other Ground-Types are right there for competition? The rise of Golem certainly hasn't helped it, providing a valuable niche as a Rapid Spin user while being similar enough to Rhydon to attempt to cover most of the same matchups in the builder, especially when you take Self-Destruct/Explosion into account as both a user of and one of the better available pivots into the move. Rhydon's up there with Blissey as one of the Pokémon most often cited for a potential tiering change to UUBL, but I want to take a more in-depth look at Rhydon and come to a decision on what I think should happen.

Archetypally, Rhydon is designed as a bulky physical tank, with high HP and excellent physical stats backed by complementary physical STABs but balanced out by low special stats and Speed and multiple common Type weaknesses. Historically it's tried making use of similar sets to other GSC OU staples such as Curse + Roar and even RestTalk at one point, but Rhydon's defensive disadvantages complemented by that low Speed make it harder for Rhydon to perform more consistently than its more specialized competition on a wide variety of teams. Something else I think is worth mentioning that I realized while looking into GSC Rhydon is how... Rock Slide honestly feels kind of useless on it? The problem isn't with Rock Slide itself or with its offensive coverage alongside Earthquake. The problem is that the list of meta-relevant Rock-weak threat Rhydon would like to be clicking the move against, which isn't as large as you might think- all threaten out Rhydon's main sets in one way or another. Zapdos threatens it out with Hidden Power's coverage, and the Fire/Flying-Types Moltres and Charizard are both rarer in usage and can threaten Rhydon with their own coverage, especially Solar Beam if being used on Sun teams, or with the sheer power behind even resisted Fire-Type moves that, even in the best case scenario for the Rhydon player, still have a nasty habit of inflicting Burn at the worst possible times. the Ice-Types of OU aren't safe matchups for Rhydon at all and most of the already few viable Bug-Types in this tier aren't even weak to Rock at all. Most everything else is either hit harder and more accurately by Earthquake or, should Rock Slide be absolutely necessary, be better covered by the much more versatile Tyranitar anyway.

The biggest problem for Rhydon is just that this metagame is just simply too fast paced for it. Rhydon tends to do better in Balance-centric metas and while the Self-Destruct/Explosion resistance is nice, it's not nearly enough to account for all of Rhydon's other flaws and competition for a team slot. I suppose you could try and double up on team slots with Rhydon and one of its competitors, but at that point you're just stacking weaknesses for the opponent to take advantage of. The current metagame favoring offensive output has not been a favorable environment for this Pokémon due to Rhydon not being able to provide much team support for these offensive threats or provide defensive counterplay that cannot be replicated by other Pokémon. If Rhydon is going to succeed in this tier and prove it deserves to keep its OU status, the playerbase is going to have to help it out and see if the metagame can evolve and produce a valuable enough niche for this Pokémon that, perhaps most importantly, is something that Golem or Tyranitar cannot replicate. Both of these Rock-Types are Top 10 caliber staples of the tier, and at this state of the tier there's very little reason to use Rhydon over one of them.

---

So, what should be done with Rhydon's tiering status, at least for right now? This is where things get a little muddy. The growing opinion seems to be that Rhydon should be dropped into UU and perhaps tested in that tier just in case it does end up overbearing. Rhydon is currently UUBL in ADV, but I do think there are enough differences between GSC and ADV to not want to immediately assume whether or not Rhydon will be balanced in this environment. The thing is, this isn't just a matter of if Rhydon should be categorized as OU- this is also a situation of whether or not the UU playerbase wants or needs Rhydon, and I think that's the part everyone's ignoring here. Historically speaking tiering drops post-generation have been the most successful when the Pokémon being dropped also provides value for the tier it is being dropped into. So to me, this feels more like a question for them than the OU playerbase at this point of agreement. Me personally, this is what I would recommend:

• If the UU playerbase wants to welcome Rhydon into their tier, allow them to drop Rhydon into UU while holding a suspect test among qualified players to determine if it's overbearing or not, which would determine if Rhydon ends up as a UU or a UUBL placement.
• If the UU playerbase does not want to welcome Rhydon, keep Rhydon in OU for now and only drop Rhydon into UUBL if the tiering council determines Rhydon has not developed enough in the metagame to further warrant its designation as an OU Pokémon.

 

[Blaine500]

I disagree with these takes. If you want to drop something, how about Marowak? Besides Swords Dance + 3 attacks has it ever done anything else in its gsc career? (thought so) Rhydon actually has regular utility with Roar in order to deal with Lax and Jolteon (assuming it's HP Ice).


It's also probably the only physical mon that actually dents Skarmory after 1-2 curses just from the raw power (while not weak to Drill Peck) and it can't even be roared out from it being slower, but even beyond that, Rock Slide can flinch Skarm preventing it even further from doing its phazing job. Does it struggle against water types? ofc. Does it like some good paraspam-sure, rhy not? but are we really gonna pretend like all of this isn't also the case for Marowak as well?


Wak provides ZERO utility to its team outside of Offense, and it often has to set up anyways before it can really get started as most will send a flyer in to face it as it doesn't actually have STAB on its Rock Slide. And that's not to mention how it has to be babied constantly because Thick Club means no leftovers and Theif utterly ruins it. Rhydon compresses dealing with Lax while also being a very serious threat once the opponent has boomed their Cloyster, while Marowak practically needs the red carpet rolled out perfectly before doing its thing (which is one thing and one thing only). Suspect test Marowak in UU against Slowbro and lets see how overwell that goes...

 

[bdt2002]

I disagree with these takes. If you want to drop something, how about Marowak? Besides Swords Dance + 3 attacks has it ever done anything else in its gsc career? (thought so) Rhydon actually has regular utility with Roar in order to deal with Lax and Jolteon (assuming it's HP Ice).


It's also probably the only physical mon that can actually dents Skarmory after 1-2 curses just from the raw power (while not weak to Drill Peck) and it can't even be roared out from it being slower, but even beyond that, Rock Slide can flinch Skarm preventing it even further from doing its phazing job. Does it struggle against water types? ofc. Does it like some good paraspam-sure, rhy not? but are we really gonna pretend like all of this isn't also the case for Marowak as well?

I don’t know how hot of a take this is going to be, but I don’t think Rock Slide is all that good on Rhydon right now. The problem is less that Rock Slide’s a bad move, because it’s not, and more that the things you would want to be clicking Rock Slide against have ways of forcing Rhydon into a disadvantage position. Out of that list, only Moltres and Charizard feel like reasons worth running Rock Slide for while still being able to take a hit in the process (Charizard needs to boost to threaten Rhydon, and Moltres can be an issue but would prefer Sun to be up for SolarBeam). Tyranitar’s able to get away with it more often because its defensive typing isn’t as bad as Rhydon’s, but non-Skarmory Steels are always going to be hit harder by Earthquake anyways and even for it and Forretress Rhydon gets access to Fire-Type moves. The remaining Rock-weak Pokémon you might see in this metagame all threaten Rhydon in at least one or two ways, even if not directly. On top of that, Rhydon’s slow enough that it can generally only rely on Rock Slide flinches if the opponent is paralyzed anyway, and I would argue that Marowak gets more out of Rock Slide’s type coverage and slightly higher Speed because of its more immediate threat that doesn’t come from having to rely on RNG.

Ultimately both Ground-Types are fairly niche and Marowak takes a lot of support just like Rhydon, but I slightly prefer Marowak over Rhydon independently and think Rhydon trying to make use of Rock Slide as much as it does holds this Pokémon’s development back a fair bit. Rock Slide Rhydon being mid probably isn’t going to be a popular opinion like I hinted at at the beginning of this post, but the Dual STAB Curse + Roar set falling out of favor is a major reason why Rhydon’s even in this discussion to begin with and I would rather see more development of Rhydon’s lesser explored options.

 

[Jorgen]

Curse and Roar are probably the most replaceable parts of Rhydon's standard kit atm since non-Curse Lax is pretty common nowadays. You really want both STABs on this guy. Hitting Zapdos is super duper important, even if you're not hitting Zapdos with it per se, you're keeping it out by threatening to use it.

 

[bdt2002]

Curse and Roar are probably the most replaceable parts of Rhydon's standard kit atm since non-Curse Lax is pretty common nowadays. You really want both STABs on this guy. Hitting Zapdos is super duper important, even if you're not hitting Zapdos with it per se, you're keeping it out by threatening to use it.

What most Zapdos are going to do against Rhydon depends on two things- Rhydon’s remaining HP and the Hidden Power type Zapdos is running. In the rather specific scenario Rhydon can enter into Zapdos at full HP and no Spikes are up, it can always take one HP Ice unless it’s a critical hit. Water and Grass I believe KO with Spikes up most of the time. I would like to say that from my own experience, however, most Zapdos players will probably think something’s up if you switch Rhydon in off of a fainted ally like that or with a slower Baton Pass. Most of the ones I’ve faced like to switch out in the anticipation from a Rock Slide, usually from Tyranitar but sometimes our old friend here.

So to reiterate your point for any newer players that may stumble upon this- Rhydon’s Rock Slide is strong enough to where the threat of it can make an impact in the battle even if the move itself is not being used. Plus, you never know when you might need it anyways. I’m not going to recommend trying to, say, bluff having Rock Slide when you really don’t, I’ve already tried that and it usually doesn’t end well, but I can at least see why you, the newer player, would want to try that, especially when I have seen Golem pull similar tricks before so as not to commit to Explosion too early. (For context, Rhydon runs Rock STAB noticeably more often than Golem does.)

 

[Blaine500]

What most Zapdos are going to do against Rhydon depends on two things- Rhydon’s remaining HP and the Hidden Power type Zapdos is running. In the rather specific scenario Rhydon can enter into Zapdos at full HP and no Spikes are up, it can always take one HP Ice unless it’s a critical hit. Water and Grass I believe KO with Spikes up most of the time. I would like to say that from my own experience, however, most Zapdos players will probably think something’s up if you switch Rhydon in off of a fainted ally like that or with a slower Baton Pass. Most of the ones I’ve faced like to switch out in the anticipation from a Rock Slide, usually from Tyranitar but sometimes our old friend here.

So to reiterate your point for any newer players that may stumble upon this- Rhydon’s Rock Slide is strong enough to where the threat of it can make an impact in the battle even if the move itself is not being used. Plus, you never know when you might need it anyways. I’m not going to recommend trying to, say, bluff having Rock Slide when you really don’t, I’ve already tried that and it usually doesn’t end well, but I can at least see why you, the newer player, would want to try that, especially when I have seen Golem pull similar tricks before so as not to commit to Explosion too early. (For context, Rhydon runs Rock STAB noticeably more often than Golem does.)

That's because you're suppose to keep Rhydon in the back for the mid to lategame, and only really reveal it early if the opponent's Snorlax is getting out of control. Towards the midgame Zapdos has very likely been forced to rest which means that when it clicks sleep talk it only has a 1/3 chance of even selecting Hidden Power Ice (HP Water only shows up like 20-ish % of the time and usually only on the Roar set), which are good odds. In return Rhydon straight up 2 hkos Zapdos with Rock Slide without even needing a single curse to do it.

Rhydon Rock Slide vs. Zapdos: 219-258 (57.1 - 67.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

I agree with Jorgen to an extent, Curse isn't always needed as Rhydon on its own is often hitting so hard that it doesn't always need the set up, but Roar, imo, is often too useful to give up. Roar + Double STAB is the heart of the set, while Curse is more like a bonus if you see an oppurtunity to start boosting. So that 4th slot is where "experimentation" can often be done with stuff like Body Slam, Zap Cannon, Sub, etc... Another thing I want to bring up as I havn't seen anyone address it, is that HP Rock exists. All the depression posts about Rock Slide misses can literally be fixed through HP Rock if not missing means that much to you and it even has more pp to boot :)

Rhydon Hidden Power Rock vs. Zapdos: 204-240 (53.2 - 62.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

 

[bdt2002]

Another thing I want to bring up as I havn't seen anyone address it, is that HP Rock exists. All the depression posts about Rock Slide misses can literally be fixed through HP Rock if not missing means that much to you and it even has more pp to boot :)

Rhydon Hidden Power Rock vs. Zapdos: 204-240 (53.2 - 62.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

Old Hidden Power has a better power-to-accuracy (or would it be accuracy-to-power?) ratio than Rock Slide- 70 compared to 67.5. It’s not much but I think it’s worth it given the higher PP and not getting that many flinches due to Rhydon’s low Speed. I don’t remember what the IVs are for it, but it doesn’t seem that bad.

 

[Blaine500]

Old Hidden Power has a better power-to-accuracy (or would it be accuracy-to-power?) ratio than Rock Slide- 70 compared to 67.5. It’s not much but I think it’s worth it given the higher PP and not getting that many flinches due to Rhydon’s low Speed. I don’t remember what the IVs are for it, but it doesn’t seem that bad.

Yea, Rock Slide has a base power of 75 with a 90% accuracy, while HP Rock has a base power 70 with 100% accuracy. So in essence, you're giving up 5% more dmg in order to never miss with a added bonus of 50% more pp. You still keep many of the same ko ranges, such as Zapdos remaining a 2hko (without a boost) as well as maintaining the OHKOs on Moltres and Charizard.

Rhydon Hidden Power Rock vs. Moltres: 388-456 (101.3 - 119%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Rhydon Hidden Power Rock vs. Charizard: 428-504 (119.2 - 140.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO


You're only really gonna feel the difference against Dragonite (if you even run into it).

Rhydon Hidden Power Rock vs. Dragonite: 185-218 (48 - 56.6%) -- 33.9% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
Rhydon Rock Slide vs. Dragonite: 200-236 (51.9 - 61.2%) -- 97% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

With that said it does level off back to the same when you're at +1.
+1 Rhydon Hidden Power Rock vs. Dragonite: 277-326 (71.9 - 84.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+1 Rhydon Rock Slide vs. Dragonite: 297-350 (77.1 - 90.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

The Dvs of HP Rock are: 11 Hp/13 Att/12 Def (15 in everything else).
The slight bulk difference results in the following calcs;

Zapdos Hidden Power Ice vs. Rhydon (Hp Rock Dvs): 187-220 (46.1 - 54.3%) -- 4.9% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
Zapdos Hidden Power Ice vs. Rhydon: 187-220 (45.2 - 53.2%) -- 0.4% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

So basically, the odds that Hp Ice 2 hkos has increase by 4.5%, which means that Rhydon has a 95.1% chance that HP Ice will take 3 hits to take it out. The difference is barely noticable and if you support it with Light Screen forget about it, lol. Now you do give up the flinch chance of Rock Slide but realistically speaking, the only things Rhydon is flinching is Snorlax and maybe a Skarmory trying to phaze you out (unless you're using paraspam ofc).

 

[Jorgen]

It's a marginal difference, I'll grant y'all that, but idk. Something about using Hidden Power when you have a perfectly usable Rock Slide just feels wrong.

For instance, Rock Slide keeps open the (small) chance that you're running hp bug for egg.

fFinches are also no small resource to have available to you! Lax and Skarm are cool, but that can also create a huge single-turn swing if you're up against e.g. a paralyzed Zapdos or Cloyster. Hell, Rock Slide's extra damage can even squeeze out a couple damage ranges against Cloyster that wouldn't be possible or realistic with HP Rock:

Rhydon Rock Slide vs. Cloyster: 129-152 (42.5 - 50.1%) -- 37.8% chance to 2HKO after Spikes and Leftovers recovery
Rhydon Rock Slide vs. Cloyster: 129-152 (42.5 - 50.1%) -- 94.8% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery and poison damage

Rhydon Hidden Power Rock vs. Cloyster: 119-140 (39.2 - 46.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Spikes and Leftovers recovery
Rhydon Hidden Power Rock vs. Cloyster: 119-140 (39.2 - 46.2%) -- 24.8% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery and poison damage

There's also this unfortunate damage calc difference:
Rhydon Rock Slide vs. Jynx: 343-404 (103 - 121.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Rhydon Hidden Power Rock vs. Jynx: 318-374 (95.4 - 112.3%) -- 71.8% chance to OHKO

idk, I feel like there's enough edge cases where Rock Slide proves the more useful move that I'd rather not give those up for HP Rock's marginal reliability boost.

 

[Blaine500]

It's a marginal difference, I'll grant y'all that, but idk. Something about using Hidden Power when you have a perfectly usable Rock Slide just feels wrong.

For instance, Rock Slide keeps open the (small) chance that you're running hp bug for egg.

fFinches are also no small resource to have available to you! Lax and Skarm are cool, but that can also create a huge single-turn swing if you're up against e.g. a paralyzed Zapdos or Cloyster. Hell, Rock Slide's extra damage can even squeeze out a couple damage ranges against Cloyster that wouldn't be possible or realistic with HP Rock:

Rhydon Rock Slide vs. Cloyster: 129-152 (42.5 - 50.1%) -- 37.8% chance to 2HKO after Spikes and Leftovers recovery
Rhydon Rock Slide vs. Cloyster: 129-152 (42.5 - 50.1%) -- 94.8% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery and poison damage

Rhydon Hidden Power Rock vs. Cloyster: 119-140 (39.2 - 46.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Spikes and Leftovers recovery
Rhydon Hidden Power Rock vs. Cloyster: 119-140 (39.2 - 46.2%) -- 24.8% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery and poison damage

There's also this unfortunate damage calc difference:
Rhydon Rock Slide vs. Jynx: 343-404 (103 - 121.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Rhydon Hidden Power Rock vs. Jynx: 318-374 (95.4 - 112.3%) -- 71.8% chance to OHKO

idk, I feel like there's enough edge cases where Rock Slide proves the more useful move that I'd rather not give those up for HP Rock's marginal reliability boost.

Yup. The way I see it, there's a decent case to be made for either of them, tbh. It all depends on weither or not you want more power and flinch odds (the few things you can flinch) or you just REAALLY don't want to ever miss. That decision is all up to the builder and what they value more in their playstyle. I was just showing that there were more options on the table for this issue, as many were borderline going full on and about Rock Slide misses...


As for the Cloyster and Jynx calcs. The 2 hkos on Cloy can only even be possible if it's paralysed with spikes down with the assumption that you don't miss any of your Rock Slides while you paraflinch it (gotta keep that in mind).

And the Jynx calc goes from 71.8% chance to OHKO with HP Rock to -> 100% after spikes, btw.
Rhydon Hidden Power Rock vs. Jynx: 318-374 (95.4 - 112.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Spikes.

 

[Jorgen]

One other minor advantage of hidden power, too: the extra pp.

Less relevant nowadays, but it does mean you match Fire Blast Snorlax's effective PP with a standard Roar set. Granted, you might rather just be able to flinch and kill it, but it's part of the equation I guess.