Let’s see if can make my next post here more intelligent than my admittedly worthless post I put here last time. Nothing wrong with poking fun at myself, no? In all seriousness, though, I’m wondering what the community thinks of Water-Types in the current metagame. My own recent rise in opinion on Zapdos has me re-examining these two in particular since Lapras seems to have largely fallen out of the upper echelons of the tier and Slowbro similarly isn’t seen as a true-blue OU Pokémon at this time. On one hand, I can see an argument for Starmie placing as high as third on someone’s VR but realistically I do think fourth place is best for it, and Cloyster… I’m just going to say it, at least in my inexperience with the long-term metagame trends, this thing can matchup super well into so many things if you position it well.
Starmie and Cloyster both bring to the table something that I think is either mandatory or close to it on every serious RBY team- an Ice resist. (Cloyster especially since it’s quad-resistant and Freeze immune for good measure.) Ice Beam and Blizzard are only resisted by Water and opposing Ice-Types in this generation and between those two types and their own natural synergy, Water has the better benefits outside of the Ice-Type head-to-head. Starmie I believe is the fastest Water-Type in RBY and also has Psychic typing which comes with its own benefits allowing for some move flexibility on the standard Recover + Thunder Wave set, and Cloyster, while lower ranked for most players due to its own flaws, I do want to learn more about if, and how much, defensive synergy this might have with Starmie and how good Cloyster actually is as its own Pokémon beyond just being “that bulky Water that can use Clamp and try to soft check Snorlax with the threat of Explosion”.
I figured making a more structured, hopefully educated post like this instead of… whatever I was smoking last time would be more beneficial to this thread and to me as a player. Starmie and Cloyster are two of my favorite Pokémon to use in this generation and with Water being one of my favorite Types in the series as is, I’m very interested in learning how I can team build with these two, because at least on paper, Starmie and Cloyster feel like they should have at least
some synergy together on some kind of Double Water build (one fast special threat and one physical wall). Alas, we all know that something that sounds good on paper might not always work in practice, but that just motivates me to want to learn and play this tier more.
I do apologize for the length of this post, by the way. I promise this is the last section. While I’m on the subject of Starmie, one of the biggest things I’m running into in my inexperience is how I should handle my own Starmie in the “paralysis meta”, so to speak- Thunder Waves are basically everywhere in RBY including from opposing Starmie, and I’ve heard arguments in favor of and against using Starmie as a sleep blocker. On one hand, a paralyzed Starmie seems to be less viable at helping check Tauros, but I’ve also heard it said paralyzing Starmie and also Alakazam can help against sleep moves, albeit not nearly to the extent a paralyzed Chansey is capable of against special attackers. I guess what I’m trying to ask is, should I have to make the decision in the moment, is it more or less worth it to try and keep my Starmie healthy or to let it sleep block? (And by extension freeze block if you’re into that sort of thing)
