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OU RBY OU Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Enigami
- Start date
I love junk pokemon especially junk normal types, this is right up my ally. I’ve never had clefable at the top of the ladder but I’ve enjoyed playing sing/twave/blizzard/mega kick.
I acknowledge mega kicks accuracy can be an issue but it does free up a move slot compared to body slam + hyper beam, so u can get slp para coverage and stab all on the same set.
And as for early game use mr rocket may be right but the early game line I’ve had some success with is para bait lead + bolt beam chan. When you put in chan early the most common switches are lax if you catch para and eggs if you don’t, clefable can be used to cover both of those pokes with sing, and If sing lands you can use your strong follow up options to really run away with the game.
I acknowledge mega kicks accuracy can be an issue but it does free up a move slot compared to body slam + hyper beam, so u can get slp para coverage and stab all on the same set.
And as for early game use mr rocket may be right but the early game line I’ve had some success with is para bait lead + bolt beam chan. When you put in chan early the most common switches are lax if you catch para and eggs if you don’t, clefable can be used to cover both of those pokes with sing, and If sing lands you can use your strong follow up options to really run away with the game.
I want to say something about Chanseyless teams. Idk if you guys have ever played fighting games. But in a fighting game, the idea is to use your character's tools to overcome your opponent's character's tools. There is this asymmetry between you and your opponent's character, and the most skilled player usually wins. This changes when your opponent uses the same character as you. These matchups feel different than the rest when you play them. The asymmetry is gone, and therefore the options to gain leverage and momentum feel more limited, and therefore the skill gap beteen you and your opponent decreases to some extent..
In gen 1, because there are so few pokemon, the matches more often than not feel as if they lean more to a mirror match (a match of two symmetrical sides) as opposed to a match of two completely different characters and tools (a match of asymmetrical sides.) I have found that a huge advantage in playing chanseyless teams is that it introduces this asymmetry, which widens the skill gap slightly more between players, and lets the better player gain leverage easier. This isn't to say anything as bold as chanseyless is better, but I have found that when I use chanseyless, my winrate increases, and I attribute that to the introduction of asymmetry.
In gen 1, because there are so few pokemon, the matches more often than not feel as if they lean more to a mirror match (a match of two symmetrical sides) as opposed to a match of two completely different characters and tools (a match of asymmetrical sides.) I have found that a huge advantage in playing chanseyless teams is that it introduces this asymmetry, which widens the skill gap slightly more between players, and lets the better player gain leverage easier. This isn't to say anything as bold as chanseyless is better, but I have found that when I use chanseyless, my winrate increases, and I attribute that to the introduction of asymmetry.
Peanut gallery - say more stuff about chanceyless teams, I thought that was an interesting post.
Or advantage in asymmetry. I agree with the idea, but I think of it as more of having the upper hand and less of skill. Frame of reference ironically para chan vs chan, but I could see and argument in acquiring the upper hand being a skill.
If you imagine an average game, it can go something like this: First turn Jynx mirror. You press lk. So do they. 50/50. They get the sleep. You can stay in expecting them to blizzard, you can switch to chansey, etc. Let's say you switch to chansey. They fish for freeze. You press sing. You sleep them. Now what? You have options, but let's say you press thunderwave so you para whatever comes in. They switch in chansey and the chansey is paralyzed. Let's say you think that they'll press ice beam instead of thunderwave to try to fish for freeze, so you throw in snorlax to catch the ice beam, so you now can put pressure on with lax. They throw their lax in to take the body slam. Maybe you press body slam again here, maybe reflect. But regardless, you eventually both end up pressing reflect. As you can see here... nothing interesting is happening. A lot of
stalemate-y moves. There isn't a lot of room for taking a lot of leverage here. You'll have to gradually fight for it unless you get lucky (such as the jynx that gets the sleep first freezing whatever pokemon that comes in afterward. That's two pokes down in a couple of turns). If you try to fight a mirror, throwing a right punch just causes the reflection to throw the same punch. You're not getting very far fighting your reflection. To be clear, the better player is going to make marginally better plays here which, while marginal, will lead to big rewards (the win). But that leverage is gained MARGINALLY, if the other player isn't bad. Stalemate moves gradually become winning or losing moves.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen1ou-2250410097-xvg3ghb391dlafzxa8n49nahry3iygdpw
I've posted this elsewhere, but if you watch this game, it is a fight to the death from the very beginning, though the beginning is a little boring. Our team structures are so different that we can't throw the same punch. Pressure is on from go. This means you are making game winning moves or game losing moves (as opposed to stalemate moves) the majority of the game, and the player who plays the most intelligently is going to win (it goes without say that this goes out the window when rng rears its ugly head.) But hopefully this is slightly clearer in conveying what I mean.
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A remark I would like to make here is that freeze and sleep can be defining in RBY by nature. But players have the choice in the teambuilder (and during a battle) to either go with a strategy that is part of a trend, or try to react to this trend and counteract it. So I think it's not the meta itself but the players who make those choices. There is considerable depth in the RBY metagame despite the relatively low amount of viable Pokémon.
A slightly hot take here: The classic Rhydon team (Starmie/Exeggutor/Chansey/Snorlax/Rhydon/Tauros) isn't that great compared to its usage. If we were to tier teams with A tier being the highest, it would be a low B. It's solid, but... some of you will know what I mean immediately when I say this... it is the Slobro of teams. Slobro is a solid poke; when it works, it works great. But it is slow, and slowness is a bad luck magnet in gen 1. I find that, like Slobro, it has a consistency cap that isn't as high as I would like.
MieEggDon is a far better team when you uses Exeggutor as your sleep sack instead of Starmie. That gives you the extra speed you need while also having a viable Rhydon and Cloyster switch. It’s not perfect, but no team is 100% foolproof.
Anyone ever try building a stall team and playing as if you're playing gsc stall? I've been playing with a stall team. I can get it to the 1500s on ladder, but I think it sucks. But there is one thing very promising about it, and therefore (maybe) promising about stall in general in gen 1: if I get the lead (taking out one of my opponents pokemon first), I almost always win pretty easily from there. The issue is getting the lead. I haven't figured out how to make a stall team (meaning a team predicated on defense and reaction as opposed to offense and action), that has a solid plan for gaining the lead. The offensive team always has the advantage starting out.
The only source of passive damage is Toxic, which as Melbelle said, sucks. With that said, this is my best attempt at a Toxic team from a couple years ago: https://pokepast.es/776ad55b914adf72
Ultimately this is not 'true stall' in any sense of the word, you still need to play relatively offensive in many spots, but you do aim to maximize your defensive options - your answer to Chansey is often Toxic + Rest Gengar and just waiting for it to die, your answer to Starmie/Alakazam is often Toxic and then Chansey and slowly draining them with passive damage + STosses. Your answer to many Snorlaxes is either Gengar or Cloyster (primarily defensive counterplay), and obviously you have a defensive answer to Zapdos.
But this is a far cry from GSC stall, which is way, way more functional: they get Spikes, they get broken RestTalk to turn anything into a respectable defensive piece, they get Leftovers, their Poison deals twice as much damage as ours, and their offensive mons have 6.25% critrate as opposed to 20%+, meaning the prospect of 'enemy breaker [Tauros] coming in and making my team fall apart with one crit' is much less of a concern. True stall on that level cannot exist in RBY with the mechanics we've been given.
I experimented with this a while back (as in 8 years ago lol) during a phase where I was messing around with low-tier mons. I wanted to see if Aerodactyl could work as a Snorlax counter, which led me to build a kind of stall-oriented team: https://pokepast.es/1e82c412ed77f922
The idea was to take advantage of the meta at the time: Reflect Snorlax was gaining traction but still much less common than the standard 4-attack set, which worked in Aero’s favor. On top of that, most Chanseys were running Seismic Toss / Reflect sets, a useless set against what this team brought. Since the vast majority of teams you faced used the big 4, you usually had an answer for everything. The main objective was to force the opponent into a loop where you could reliably respond to all their moves and throw away Ice Beams while denying them any real progress. The tricky part was handling Tauros coming in on Resting mons: the team had to correctly predict Slam vs Blizzard and, of course, hope to dodge hax (easier said than done).
I actually won a tournament game with that team: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen1ou-676557911
I had to land two clutch Stun Spores while paralyzed and dodge some hax at the end to win, but the replay gives a good sense of the little counterplay my opponent had. Of course, this Aero squad is unplayable today, but back then, it was the closest I got at building something remotely resembling a stall team. Looking back now, I might’ve been better off using Porygon over Aerodactyl: it’s a stronger pick if you’re going for the “I wall Snorlax” gimmick.
Nowadays, I don't think a real "stall squad" could really exist. On top of the arguments Amaranth mentionned, the meta and the players have become way more aggressive and unpredictable. Still, if you're looking to build something funky, the best place to start is always by analyzing the current trends. Just keep in mind that in that case you'll have to b weary of Tauros's 21.5% crit rate.
The porygon version of that team is actually the team I've been using. And yeah, basically everything you said is spot on. The beginning of the game is heavily in the opponent's favor, mostly due to tauros, but if you outplay and get the lead, it is surprising just how safe you feel compared to getting the lead with a more offensive team. Obviously, you're never completely safe in this crazy game, but the team is actually really good if you win in the beginning. You seem to gain more leverage than the average team does getting the lead. But yeah, a good player can really exploit the weaknesses of the team, keeping that from happening, and maybe there is no answer to that. But it'd be game changing if someone did find an answer.
World Cup usage/winrate numbers are up
Some of my observations:
- Gengar and Jynx performed much worse in playoffs than in Round 1, and Jynx was already the biggest underperformer in Round 1. Nothing too surprising as Jynx has a history of ~45%ish winrate but this is the first time in a while I see it get so bad (playoffs winrate was all the way down to 37.25%)
- People catching onto God Cloyster - first time I see it over 20% usage I think, 23% in Playoffs with a 55% winrate. Solid work everyone. Cloy is the truth
- Elec leads giga crushing overall and especially in playoffs - someone tell me the lines please I don't know how to not instalose if Chansey eats twave t1 and then they go Rhydon. Or do you just lose these and autowin all the others?
- No other notable outliers usage or winrate wise that I can see
- Rest Tauros fad seems nearly dead with only 5 uses in nearly 700 Tauroses, TBolt picking up some usage again with Cloy gaining ground
- Snorlax: Ref/Rest both at 40% winrate, Selfdestruct goated and the other Physlax moves also performing quite well. Counter Lax smashed Round 1 and flopped in playoffs, Amnesia just lost a lot more than it won. Physlax is king?
- Counter Chansey steady 60% winrate (why did we not ban this when we had a good excuse). TBolt strongly positive - the best honest move - Sing below average, Reflect unpopular but winning just fine when brought
- Exeggutor: Stun most popular but MD best performing. Rest relatively popular but absolutely dreadful winrate. Normal moves basically a mirage at this point
- Starmie: ~3x as many Psyblizz as there are SurfBolts, but TBolt crushed it especially in playoffs
Some of my observations:
- Gengar and Jynx performed much worse in playoffs than in Round 1, and Jynx was already the biggest underperformer in Round 1. Nothing too surprising as Jynx has a history of ~45%ish winrate but this is the first time in a while I see it get so bad (playoffs winrate was all the way down to 37.25%)
- People catching onto God Cloyster - first time I see it over 20% usage I think, 23% in Playoffs with a 55% winrate. Solid work everyone. Cloy is the truth
- Elec leads giga crushing overall and especially in playoffs - someone tell me the lines please I don't know how to not instalose if Chansey eats twave t1 and then they go Rhydon. Or do you just lose these and autowin all the others?
- No other notable outliers usage or winrate wise that I can see
- Rest Tauros fad seems nearly dead with only 5 uses in nearly 700 Tauroses, TBolt picking up some usage again with Cloy gaining ground
- Snorlax: Ref/Rest both at 40% winrate, Selfdestruct goated and the other Physlax moves also performing quite well. Counter Lax smashed Round 1 and flopped in playoffs, Amnesia just lost a lot more than it won. Physlax is king?
- Counter Chansey steady 60% winrate (why did we not ban this when we had a good excuse). TBolt strongly positive - the best honest move - Sing below average, Reflect unpopular but winning just fine when brought
- Exeggutor: Stun most popular but MD best performing. Rest relatively popular but absolutely dreadful winrate. Normal moves basically a mirage at this point
- Starmie: ~3x as many Psyblizz as there are SurfBolts, but TBolt crushed it especially in playoffs
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(Quote is from the OU VR thread)
Wait, that works? When I was theorymonning on Reddit about Porygon2 a while back, I brought up Sharpen as a potential option but got told (by Sabelette, so an actually credible source and not just a random redditor) that boosting only one level at a time would be too slow to be functional. But if regular Porygon is already running Sharpen in OU and getting away with it (even if only as a "degenerate set" that preys on people not expecting it), then I'm really curious as to how that actually plays out.Porygon can actually get under your skin in the wrong circumstances. And when it does catch you off guard, you just end up feeling like an idiot. Also I somehow manage to get swept by that Sharpen Agility degenerate set every time I comeback from a break because I forget it exists, so there it is.
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Well Porygon2 didn't exist until GSC, which I would assume she thought you meant, in which case you would just run Curse. To be clear, Porygon is already incredibly niche in RBY OU, and Agility + Sharpen setup sweeper isn't even its most common set at that. The reason it exists at all is that watching it sit on Snorlax is really funny, and it usually slots on Twave to help do that. Which means you can't run the sweeper set since you run out of moveslots to do it if you have wave.
...The post in question, literally titled "What if Porygon2 was in RBY?" I guess I should have included a link to begin with, but I didn't want to look like I was making up an excuse to plug my own stuff.
I know what Porygon in RBY OU does normally, but Peasounay specifically mentioned getting got by the sweeper set, which means that at least someone is actually running it (on ladder I would assume). That's the part that specifically has me going "what in the goddamn".
Cholaski, a pokemon gen 1 player, created a team somewhere around 2016-2017. It is the second team posted in this thread https://pokemonperfect.com/forums/i...oughts-on-the-meta-at-the-highest-level.4546/.
He has used this team to top the ladder every year since under different account names. I made an account specifically to just solo this team to see for myself just how good it was. The account parodies his name. I call myself ChoNASTY. As of this moment, that account sits at the top of the ladder.
The team is composed as follows:
Jynx
-lovely...
He has used this team to top the ladder every year since under different account names. I made an account specifically to just solo this team to see for myself just how good it was. The account parodies his name. I call myself ChoNASTY. As of this moment, that account sits at the top of the ladder.
The team is composed as follows:
Jynx
-lovely...
So much pokemon history exclusively focuses on tournies at the neglect of much else. So, here is a team which I think enough time has passed to consider it a piece of pokemon history.
I randomly stepped into the thread where we voted for Counter Chansey, a few days ago, and I felt a bit bad over having voted for the ban. Thanks for bailing me out! Definitely a dirty move. Don't know whether it should go or not.
Zapdos lead, the opening you just mentioned is brutal. I think you really have to land Exeggutor's Explosion on Chansey, have a backup sleeper and a Starmie. Well, bad matchups happen no matter what you pick I guess.
Single moves don't tell the whole story about movesets. A move might fail because of the combination of moves rather than the move itself and offensive moves are more likely to be revealed in games you are winning. Anyway yeah, it looks like Reflect and Rest take away a lot of space when used together. Reflect Snorlax is ok, just not for every team.
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Freeze is the dumbest thing about gen 1 ou in my opinion. And its worse form is Jynx sleep into freeze. It's not impossible to come back from, but I don't think I've personally lost a game yet in which I've hit that combo. I've come back from it myself, but it's usually against a worse player. Either luck has to turn heavily back into your favor, or you have to make some really aggressive reads, but a really good player can anticipate this and really just keep that momentum. You've most likely lost, and if having two pokes down wasn't enough, this combo usually happens near the beginning of the game when all your opponent's pokes are at full health. Overall just an extremely op combo.
(ps. Smogon, please give us the NC 97 ladder, so I can stop playing ou. I want to spam double team, so I will never be frozen again.)
(ps. Smogon, please give us the NC 97 ladder, so I can stop playing ou. I want to spam double team, so I will never be frozen again.)
I have a question for RBY OU players. Which tournament format do you prefer, single elimination or round robin?
round robin becomes way too long with a few players and can have the issue where you still have games to play but can no longer win
and if anyone drops out including ppl who can no longer win it becomes a mess
edit: in case its not clear i prefer single elim over 2 decade long tournament with dropouts messing it all up
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not an rby ou player but an rby player in general but i feel like tournament format prefrence changes trough player count,when the tour happens and what the tour is trying to acomplish
for me if we are talking about general team formats my prefrences are double elim=swiss+topcut>>single elim>>>swiss=roundrobin
but if there are only a few players(at or below 7 players) i like round robin much more while liking single and double elim less and swiss makes less sense so my prefrence would most likly be somthing like round robin=double elim>single elim>>>>swiss+topcut>swiss
at over 64 i am starting to like double elim less and single elim less while round robin shouldnt even be mentioned after even 10 players swiss is still bad while swiss top cut is still solid
single elim=swiss+topcut>>double elim=swiss>>>>>>>roundrobin
if the tour is between some other majorly important tours for the same player crowd or is part of an larger cuircut my opinion is around the same as with 64 only double elim is even less and single elim is a bit better
single elim>swiss+topcut>swiss>>>double elim>>>>>>>>>>roundrobin
if there isnt something in the near future for the player base i like double elim a bit more
double elim>swiss+topcut>>single elim>>>swiss=roundrobin
if the reason for the tour is trying to give the players of the meta as many games as possible i like swiss top cut and roudrobindouble elim>single swiss+topcut>round robin>double elim=swiss>single elim
and finaliy just wants to be simple and get an solid clear winner i like double elim and single elim more
double elim=single elim>swiss top cut>swiss=round robin
so depending on the the difrent atributes of the tour my prefrences change
Both are terrible and the only good single formats are GC and Seasonals. Especially RBY where you can just get randomly haxxed by a random loading Charizard and Hypno you really want a nice safety net to fall back on whereas single elim formats give you none of that.