OU Lead Tier List

[shrapn3l]

yeah i realize why dodrio is a great lead (i still think in fact that it's better than starmie as a lead but of course starmie warrants a slot on your team moreso than dodrio always) hence why it is so high on my list.

Won't scare off Zam, since Zam outspeeds and 2HKOs easily.

The issue is that if you've got 5 good mons and 1 bad mon, and they've got 6 good mons, and you take the sleep on a bad mon and sleep them back, now you've both got 5 awake good mons. You haven't gained anything by using a bad mon and then getting it slept that you couldn't have done by using a good mon and getting it slept.

This is why I say that the "best" thing to take sleep with, if you have to take it with something, is Gengar or Rhydon, because then you can have 5 good awake mons + 1 still-somewhat-useful sleeping mon. Alternatively, you can scrap that idea (because, yes, it IS risky) and just try to hurt them as much as you can when they do sleep you.

This is also why I don't really see the point of leading Zam. I mean, sure, it'll always take the sleep. But that's hardly a win for you, because Zam's awesome when awake and a sitting duck when asleep. I'd rather have something that can actually do something (other than Thunder Waving Egg and giving them a mon immune to sleep) before going down, which is why I think that lead Starmie is better in most cases.

i suppose persian is actually just really bad as a lead. i was just trying to entertain the idea because at first it seemed like it could be at least "OK." but thinking about it, it probably belongs with the "w/e" stuff on my list. still curious about how charizard compares to other fires as well (clearly it's worse than ninetales because it's got ice, water and elec weakness and low ass special so it doesn't hurt anything nearly as much as ninetales and also takes WAY worse damage from everything. but it is faster than jynx so at least it can maybe scare it off, making it better than moltres and arcanine at least maybe? i guess. then there's also rapidash to think about...) none of this stuff is of prime importance though really.

also, zam vs starmie as anti leads is interesting. zam does better against gengar (marginally) and can smack every other lead with psychic or seismic toss and paralyze everything. starmie on the other hand, is worse at absorbing sleep, does better against exeggutor because of blizzard, and does worse against jynx because it has no seismic toss. i'd say overall zam is a bit better as an anti-lead just because of the versatility of seismic toss and how much better it is at taking sleep. for example, while they're about equal when it comes to scaring lead gar off, zam can come into gar while it's asleep and wake up on it while starmie can't. this is a quality that's really good in a sleep absorber because you limit the risk of sacking anything unnecessary, or losing two pokemon because of one sleeper. that's what mr.e is talking about kinda. you HAVE to sack something to sleep no matter what in rby (unless you're really lucky), so if you have to go down 5-6 for a really short period of time, you might as well make it the pokemon that's most likely to outlive the opponent's sleepers, which zam is the best at. zam also can switch into any sleeper and force them out while it's asleep anyway, because if you smack it around in its sleep there's a good chance it'll wake up and just recover and you'll only have wasted pp. so generally people just switch out to tauros or snorlax or something which gives zam opportunities to wake up (although giving them too many opportunities to switch in is never good either, but essentially anything you have sleeping gives them opportunities to come in).

Gengar is a terrible absorber because you will rarely, if ever catch explosions against good players because they know better than to boom when their boomer can only take one more hit.

Gengar and rocks can't realistically wake up on anything and recover off the damage, can't relieve spc drops, and can't absorb statuses from common status spreaders. Doing that stuff every battle is better than catching an explosion once every ten battles.

Shrapnel- If your zam is against their eggy, you don't paralyse it unless your sleeper can threaten it (eg. Jynx) or you have a wrap team. This is why lead zams should always run stoss, to troll the opposing lead until they take sleep.

i agree that whether or not you paralyze egg should be completely dependent on your sleepers/your team, but i still maintain that most of the time people will t wave and not even think about it, for the same reason every scrub will lead zam without thinking about it: they're chumps. i personally would paralyze egg a lot of the time, and then stay in with zam in case they try to double powder, and eventually they'll switch, and my sleepers would then be egg and sing lapras, so i'd try to catch something with lapras, and double switch to lapras whenever i thought exeggutor was coming in because it puts the opponent in tough spots. but that's not really that important. i'm not sure if you're still suggesting that egg is a bad lead when zam is by far the most popular lead, but regardless, if you have a zam on your team you're pretty much guaranteed the even sleep trade whether you lead with it or not because your zam can still switch into and take on any sleeper. we're arguing whether or not something is worthy of being a lead, not whether or not it must be on your team. if you don't have zam at all, then you DEFINITELY lose the sleep trade as you describe it, so i don't think it's correct to think of the quality of a lead in those terms. also, if zam is popular, and you lead exeggutor, you put your opponent to sleep first and have an opportunity to threaten with snorlax or rhydon or tauros or something right away. leading zam gives you no potential for momentum against exeggutor because you have to worry about double powder (of course you can judge this on a player to player basis, but usually the best thing to do against exeggutor is stay in, because if you get double powdered, then fuck the sleep trade, you're DEFINITELY behind). if you lead zam and end up in zam mirrors though, there's no way to judge with certainty what two pokemon will be facing off next turn because throwing out twave turn one in a zam mirror is fucking stupid and you have no idea what the opponent is going to switch to. zam is better against jynx of course, and gengar to a lesser degree, and enemy exeggutor to a still lesser degree, but if zam is popular, it's stupid to say that exeggutor is a bad lead because ending up with your exeggutor vs zam can pay off for you with much more certainty than a zam mirror.

also, gengar can wake up against some status spreaders, for example chansey and psychicless starmie (which is most starmies) almost as well as zam can. it just doesn't wake up against exeggutor, enemy zam and enemy gengar as easily. but it can still take advantage of its normal immunity to some degree regardless of whether it's asleep, and usually after gengar sleeps something, it's done enough that it doesn't matter if you let it take sleep. gengar rarely does more than sleep something, act as a pivot and explode anyway. it's certainly not as good as zam, but it's probably the second best thing in the game to let take sleep. i'm not sure i agree that the rocks are good sleep absorbers though because every sleeper/almost every status spreader smashes them to pieces while they're asleep.

 

[Mr.E]

Zam has no reason to switch out of Eggy unless it's the ultra-rare Double-Edge (Strength) variety, in which case it isn't double powder. Eggy can't do anything to Zam except Explode, which defeats the purpose of putting it to sleep, granted you probably don't want Zam to get blown up by it either.

 

[magic9mushroom]

and does worse against jynx because it has no seismic toss.

It depends. I've used Blizzard/Psychic/Hydro Pump/Recover on lead Starmie before. That was funny.

Admittedly, that's rare.

 

[Dre89]

Mr. E.- Zam's reason for switching out against eggy is a switch to tauros or lax. You really don't want to allow those pokemon in for free unless you have a pseudo physical wall like cloyster or lapras.

Shrapn3l- I'd still say zam is a better lead than eggy because zam never has to switch out against a lead, whereas eggy does. Even if you lead your eggy against zam, note that you're probably trading paralysis on your sleeper (or one of them) for sleep on the best sleep absorber in the game. If you lead with zam, you either get at least an even sleep trade, or you get your absorber paralysed (not bad if they don't use wrap) with a chance for your sleeper to get a sleep off without getting statused in return.

Also, gengar is a still a bad sleep absorber because he can't recover. Jynx doesn't recover, but can use rest more reliably due to being able to sleep on psychic types and also the ability to freeze war chansey.

 

[Omanyte]

Firstly, I was never claiming that Persian was a great lead or anything, just that it's something worth considering.
Persian deals good damage to Eggy on Turn 1 and Slash does almost 70% to Jynx. Sure she doesn't do well vs Gengar (or Zam), but unlike something like Moltres Persian can be difficult to switch into if you're not running Gengar.

 

[shrapn3l]

Mr. E.- Zam's reason for switching out against eggy is a switch to tauros or lax. You really don't want to allow those pokemon in for free unless you have a pseudo physical wall like cloyster or lapras.

Shrapn3l- I'd still say zam is a better lead than eggy because zam never has to switch out against a lead, whereas eggy does. Even if you lead your eggy against zam, note that you're probably trading paralysis on your sleeper (or one of them) for sleep on the best sleep absorber in the game. If you lead with zam, you either get at least an even sleep trade, or you get your absorber paralysed (not bad if they don't use wrap) with a chance for your sleeper to get a sleep off without getting statused in return.

i will agree that zam is a better lead overall than the egg. but you were saying that eggy is a bad lead and there's not a benefit to leading it against zam which is what i was trying to refute because that's a lil silly.

Firstly, I was never claiming that Persian was a great lead or anything, just that it's something worth considering.
Persian deals good damage to Eggy on Turn 1 and Slash does almost 70% to Jynx. Sure she doesn't do well vs Gengar (or Zam), but unlike something like Moltres Persian can be difficult to switch into if you're not running Gengar.

i was not trying to call you out on this or anything i was literally just trying to explore the option because i've never given it thought before and these types of discussion can be very useful for Learning and etc

 

[magic9mushroom]

Firstly, I was never claiming that Persian was a great lead or anything, just that it's something worth considering.
Persian deals good damage to Eggy on Turn 1 and Slash does almost 70% to Jynx. Sure she doesn't do well vs Gengar (or Zam), but unlike something like Moltres Persian can be difficult to switch into if you're not running Gengar.

Dodrio hits both Exeggutor and Jynx far harder (Drill Peck is super-effective on Exeggutor, and Dodrio's Hyper Beam is so powerful it OHKOs Jynx more often than not).

Thing is, to have a good anti-lead you really want a credible threat of OHKOing the sleeper before they can move. Persian can't threaten an OHKO on Egg or Gar, and it can only do it on Jynx by trying for a Hyper Beam crit. Starmie threatens an OHKO on Gengar with critical Psychic, and it's got at least the possibility of effectively OHKOing Egg with a Blizzard freeze.

 

[Dre89]

Shrapnel- But what I'm saying is that it's still better to zam ditto than lead eggy against a zam. A lead zam will paralyse something before sleeping. As a general rule of thumb, it's better to get your absorber paralysed than your sleeper (unless they have a wrap team) because a paralysed absorber can do its job without actually having to go sleep. Yes a sleeper can still sleep whilst paralysed, but it makes it harder, and even after the sleep it is crippled unnecessarily when an absorber makes much better use of paralysis than a sleeper does. It's like people run sleepers solely to sleep and then do nothing the rest of the battle, the sleeper will still have at least one other job after getting a sleep off, which will most likely be made harder be unnecessary paralysis.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Lead Zam ditto means nothing gets slept for ages assuming you both T-wave. Lead Egg vs. Zam means you sleep Zam and they don't sleep anything unless they have Jynx (which they don't, or they wouldn't be leading Zam) or Sing on Chansey or Lapras (technically Swords Dance Parasect can force Egg out too, but that's hardly common).

 

[Dre89]

Well you don't twave their zam unless you have a wrap team or a sleeper that threatens him.

It's not that hard to land sleep without leading eggy. You just have to get your sleeper in on something that it outspeeds or doesn't threaten it. I do it all the time. The former is preferable however, because it means your sleeper won't take paralysis most of the time.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Well you don't twave their zam unless you have a wrap team or a sleeper that threatens him.

It's not that hard to land sleep without leading eggy. You just have to get your sleeper in on something that it outspeeds or doesn't threaten it. I do it all the time. The former is preferable however, because it means your sleeper won't take paralysis most of the time.

Of course it's not hard to land sleep without leading Egg. It is, however, hard to land sleep when the first thing you do in a match is to Thunder Wave your opponent's Egg.

 

[Dre89]

But you don't need to do that. You can just stoss egg until you get slept. Even if you don't have jynx and you paralyse eggy, if you have something like rhydon you can constantly lure it into rock slides until your sleeper threatens it.

 

[magic9mushroom]

But you don't need to do that. You can just stoss egg until you get slept.

Well, that's what I'd do, yes, but it doesn't seem to be what most people do. :-/

EDIT: Paralysing Jynx, though, is useful because it allows Rhydon to force Jynx out.

Even if you don't have jynx and you paralyse eggy, if you have something like rhydon you can constantly lure it into rock slides until your sleeper threatens it.

Rhydon takes risks coming in on everything not named Zapdos, it's hardly certain you'll wear down Egg before Rhydon's worn down.

 

[Jorgen]

Paralyzing Egg first thing with Zam isn't necessarily a bad thing even without Sing Lapras, especially as Egg can actually be pretty difficult to paralyze otherwise if you're letting Zam take Sleep. Sure, you give up your own Egg's ability to sleep something early, but you're able to deal with the opposing Egg much more easily (sometimes KOing it right in the lead matchup as you have a chance to SToss a perpetually FPing and inaccurate Egg to death).

 

[magic9mushroom]

you have a chance to SToss a perpetually FPing and inaccurate Egg to death).

A chance less than half that of Starmie's chance to freeze Egg solid on turn 1. :p

 

[BenTheDemon]

Exeggutor needs to be S. Do I really need to explain this?

 

[Jorgen]

Egg is hardly a lock for S tier because it loses more often than it wins against the two other sleeper leads. The only opposing leads it has an advantage over are those expecting to get slept anyway.

 

[magic9mushroom]

Exeggutor needs to be S. Do I really need to explain this?

Yeah, you do. Why do you think it's an S-rank lead?

 

[BenTheDemon]

Well, because it has Sleep Powder, doesn't mind being paralyzed, takes negligent damage from other leads, bar Jynx, and if it's put to sleep first, it's usually the one you would want to sleep of your 6 Pokemon.

 

[magic9mushroom]

takes negligent damage from other leads, bar Jynx,

Starmie 3HKOs with Blizzard, and a 2HKO's quite likely once you factor in Starmie's ridiculous crit rate and Blizzard's freeze chance. Gengar and Zam 4HKO with Night Shade and Seismic Toss (almost all lead Zam will have Seismic Toss; Night Shade's fairly common on Gengar).

and if it's put to sleep first, it's usually the one you would want to sleep of your 6 Pokemon.

No. Awake, Exeggutor is a bulky sleeper, a solid counter to the otherwise annoying Golem and Rhydon, and it's also got Explosion. Asleep, it's useless - and if it's indeed slept on the first turn, that means it does nothing for the whole game.

Exeggutor isn't terrible to let sleep after it's already slept something and gotten banged up a bit, but letting it get slept on the first turn is just dumb.