There's a bunch of stuff that's recommended in the teambuilder that's good in later gens but not used much in RBY, pretty sure that's the case here
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OU RBY OU Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Enigami
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i just don't remember it being shown in the recommended moves when i last logged in so it took me by surprise. is there any pokemon that even dare to use it? lol
Toxic is suboptimal strategy in RBY, but it does not deserve to be in the same group of moves as Leer, Swift, Peck, Rage, etc. There are legit Toxic strats, normally involving Wrap and similar moves or the also niche Leech Seed. There is a difference between suboptimal choice and totally unviable move, losing 6% per turn is still annoying for everything that doesn,t have Recover or Rest, even Chansey, despite prefering it over other status, does not truly like it.
i can see why. chansey at 79% and 78% risks getting chipped by poison into ohko territory by tauros and snorlax's hyper beams ( 79% for the bull, 78% for lax respectively ), not to mention the chip from poison can change exeggutor's explosion against chansey from a 74.4% to ohko to an outright ohko, making the poisoned chansey player have to play the explosion mind game depending on the state of the game.
Not to dispute your point, but I think this is a funny example bc I'm pretty sure Leer (or Tail Whip) Rhydon is significantly more relevant than Toxic
Chansey only prefers other statuses over toxic because most people who run toxic don't abuse it enough. Chansey should hate toxic. Toxic plus trapping moves wreck Chansey. If you toxic the Chansey, you should hyper focus on reading when your opponent wants to switch her in, so you can always be ready to be in a position in which you are forcing her to switch out. Also, it is great for winning a stall war. Toxic is underrated and underexplored.
Please explain how you're switching your trapping user into Chansey's Thunder Wave to trap it for 9% exactly, you're going to have to double on it quite a few times for this to make a dent without just eating a hit from the opponent calling the obvious double out
Oh, I'm not very obvious... obviously. But, it's not just that though. Chansey is one of the most common pokes to use to burn the opponent's trap pp. Toxic throws a monkey wrench into that common strategy. Toxic also makes it easier to keep Chansey's hp at very problematic percents. This can be very much abused as well. With toxic, even a little bit of damage goes a long way in the grand scheme of the match.
Just as that team is the Slobro of teams, this classic team (Alakazam/Exeggutor/Chansey/Snorlax/Starmie/Tauros) is the Lapras of teams. Lapras is a good poke, just... not really outstanding. Can this team do well against most teams? Yeah... but it doesn't really dominate. Every time I win with this team, I feel like I would've won with a lot less work with another team. Another low B.
EDIT: So, out of the three teams that I've mentioned in this thread, they are tiered as follows:
High A:
Mid A:
Low A: The Cholaski (Jynx/Chansey/Cloyster/Tauros/Starmie/Golem)
High B:
Mid B:
Low B: Classic Don (Starmie/Exeggutor/Chansey/Snorlax/Rhydon/Tauros)
Classic Zam + Mie (Alakazam/Exeggutor/Chansey/Snorlax/Starmie/Tauros)
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as for the lapras of rby teams, just like lapras itself, it gets fucked by a skilled zapdos player. sure you get a lot of special bulk so you're not pressed about the plethora of psychics thrown around in a match, but the tradeoff of having such an abhorrent zapdos matchup really makes it hard to justify when your opponent can easily just paraspam, signifigantly chip your zam+mie+eggy with their other mons and go ballistic with zapdos.
Rhydon is a good replacement on that team. It works. I've used that variation to much success. But, Golem, on that specific team at least, is better. I have so many replays where Golem's explosion is the deciding factor in my victory with that team. Cholaski, who also likes to run both variations and has been using that team for close to a decade now, seems to agree, as he runs Golem far more than Rhydon. But also, in the ever-growing Chanseyless meta, Golem's strengths are going to shine through more and more. Just as an example, this team that I've seen Kaz use and which I have used quite a bit myself (Alakazam/Starmie/Jynx/Lax/Tauros/Golem) seems far more suited for Golem, and I would personally never run Rhydon over Golem on that team. They both have their strengths.
Bad take. Zapdos is not even remotely the biggest problem Lapras has. In fact, Lapras's Blizzard does more to Zapdos than Tbolt from it does to Lapras (Lapras still loses due to being slower). Starmie + Chansey combination is much more problematic for Lapras than Zapdos will ever be. Lapras needs to luck to get through them. And that's the other problem Lapras has: it needs enemy team paralyzed and use Confuse Ray to get through some Mons, like the mentioned Starmie and Chansey. It also needs to avoid paralysis instead in order to outspeed Egg, Chansey, Rhydon and Snorlax. Some people run Sing on Lapras, but that is an unviable move on anything not named Chansey (who can heal, therefore misses are less costly).
Jolteon, Gengar and Alakazam are other OU Mons that give Lapras way more problems than Zapdos does. In any case, if you run Lapras, you should be running a Ground anyway (which will be Rhydon 90% of the time) or a Jolteon.
https://pokepast.es/57822c7a40726aab < This is the one Lapras team I consider viable in my builder. It has a lot of paralysis and enough lures for Starmie and Chansey, so Lapras can run over with some confusion luck. It also has good Jolteon and Zapdos counterplay in my own Jolteon and Sandslash. Not a perfect team due to having 2 UU Mons and not Snorlax, but still deemed (by me) viable enough after extensive testing.
The team won vs Isza in RBY Championship Quarters of last year, though I needed lots of luck for it and Lapras itself didn,t contribute much due to being paralyzed very early in the game (specifically the thing I said you need to avoid the most): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1ou-809135
To sum up: No, Lapras can,t be slotted on any team, has 4 slot syndrome (wants Blizzard, Body Slam, Confuse Ray, Thunderbolt, Hyper Beam and Rest at the same time) and has a lot of problems going into an OU match. But Zapdos is not one of them, Chansey, Starmie and Jolteon are (Gengar and Zam getting honorable mentions, but less reliable). Its still a viable Mon, being able to give problems to standard teams as long as they are paralyzed and forcing Cloyster to Boom most of the time (therefore won,t be able to check Tauros).
Jolteon, Gengar and Alakazam are other OU Mons that give Lapras way more problems than Zapdos does. In any case, if you run Lapras, you should be running a Ground anyway (which will be Rhydon 90% of the time) or a Jolteon.
https://pokepast.es/57822c7a40726aab < This is the one Lapras team I consider viable in my builder. It has a lot of paralysis and enough lures for Starmie and Chansey, so Lapras can run over with some confusion luck. It also has good Jolteon and Zapdos counterplay in my own Jolteon and Sandslash. Not a perfect team due to having 2 UU Mons and not Snorlax, but still deemed (by me) viable enough after extensive testing.
The team won vs Isza in RBY Championship Quarters of last year, though I needed lots of luck for it and Lapras itself didn,t contribute much due to being paralyzed very early in the game (specifically the thing I said you need to avoid the most): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen1ou-809135
To sum up: No, Lapras can,t be slotted on any team, has 4 slot syndrome (wants Blizzard, Body Slam, Confuse Ray, Thunderbolt, Hyper Beam and Rest at the same time) and has a lot of problems going into an OU match. But Zapdos is not one of them, Chansey, Starmie and Jolteon are (Gengar and Zam getting honorable mentions, but less reliable). Its still a viable Mon, being able to give problems to standard teams as long as they are paralyzed and forcing Cloyster to Boom most of the time (therefore won,t be able to check Tauros).
thanks for enlightening me, i now understand why my belief was so ignorant and have come out with a much better understanding of what bothers lapras the most, i appreciate your guidance
The Lapras team I use in these replays is better. Ideally, Lapras doesn't try to fight Chansey, unless it is a last resort.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen1ou-2384864738-bly1bic7dqtc4wcqsk1lnf7ifpbqchhpw?p2
And as I was saying, Chasneyless is becoming more popular, and as that happens, Lapras will rise in usefulness, like in this game in which my opponent is Chanseyless.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen1ou-2384844165-w966tqutq99iyrmo04rdeeyhmuftuyapw?p2
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"strictly outclassed in every regard" is very much an exaggeration; rhydon is a better mon but golem does different things and will occasionally be preferred depending on your gameplan and on the match ups you're trying to cover. we are seeing a minor golem resurgence at the top level, rhydon still clears him by a lot but he has his spots
what matchups is golem favouring over don? / gen
the offensive use case that i've seen develop here and there lately is pairing it with zapdos - the mu vs enemy zapdos is generally favorable (you have a defensive answer to their zap, they usually don't have a great one to yours), the mu vs egg+mie is fine (golem explodes for a 1 for 1 at the first good opportunity and zapdos is favored in the endgame), and the mu vs rhydon is shaky but playable (you have an option for pivoting zapdos on EQ and then golem on rockslide to steal momentum from it - obviously there's mindgames but you have paths to play out of it. golem outspeeding rhydon actually matters in these lines, which is funny)
of course you have a huge ice weakness defensively so finding a fit for this combo is not simple, and it's by no means a dominant archetype or anything, but it's loosely playable
the defensive use case with cloyster has a bit of a longer history - (cloy+rock) as a combo has been slowly brewing as people find ways to make it work, lately the hot thing is dropping lax to fit both of them, but golem has long existed as an alternative in these structures as it still covers the zaps while also being able to ideally explode the starmie for your cloyster later down the line
once again i'm not saying either of these things is a substantial part of the meta, just that talking about it as if it's a Venomoth is a bit crazy, it's just a marginally worse version of one of the top10 mons in the meta with occasional niche upside
:( Why did you say all that to end it with, "He is a worse version of x." You listed the ways in which he is not like x throughout your post. I can't for the life of me understand how people can call such a pivotal move such as explosion niche? Especially as the meta becomes more aggressive.
Hot take, but I don't care about tournaments and think they are held in too high esteem. The only thing to gain from tournaments is some vague notion of "legacy." But legacy doesn't much matter in gen 1; just look at GGFan if you don't believe me. I've played everyone here. I've taken games from everyone here. That's good enough for me. Gen 1 is simple enough for me to know the game and to know exactly how good I am. And honestly that is really all I want: to be good enough to beat anyone, and to help to evolve the meta :) :) :)
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And btw, it seems I am helping, if even in a small way. Someone messaged me on here privately to tell me that after I made a post speaking of Chanseyless teams, that they saw a correlative increase in Chanseyless teams on the ladder, just as an example. And I do think that the play-style you use and contribute to, Kaz, with Chanseyless, is the future. I think the future is not a future where Chansey is obsolete, but a future in which at least half, if not the majority, of teams used are Chanseyless. And yeah. Simply topping the ladder, or beating good players with teams like that, changes minds. And I don't have to tell you this, but that's important because dropping Chansey opens up many new avenues that haven't been well-explored. It's not just about dropping Chansey. Dropping Chansey is a means to new places. So... yeah. Could go on forever.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen1ou-2395423953-df4xc2fsfta3nikxdkid2tj8aixi0bcpw
running jolteon could help to avoid running into that glaring ice weakness ( the lack of ice weakness with jolt doesn't come into play here but a golem switch out from a tauros blizzard into jolt/cloy/pinkegg can put a tauros on the backfoot theoretically, assuming no freeze ). it also provides some level of role compression by running coverage for exeggutor thinking you're running rest while also running everything else in its standard set. i run cloyster for the defensive synergy like you mentioned and exeggutor for an additional eq switch in plus a status user, psychic user and a second exploder. having now played with a variation of "the cholaski", i've come to understand the cases where golem can actually provide more stability for certain teams.
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