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Resource RBY Simple Questions & Simple Answers Thread

As a casual getting back into the format, why is chansey ranked 4th on the OU viability? Although its likely still considered a great mon, being ranked below eggy seems like a big deal. Has chansey slightly fallen due to a more aggressive metagame? Is chanseyless more popular now? Or is exeggutor considered just that good now?
 
people pretty much just figured out chanseyless is quite good.
i wouldnt say chansey fell because the metagame is faster bur rather the metagame got faster because people are using less chansey.
egg is stupid good and one of the actual best role compressions in the game
 
If Zapdos had Bubble Beam or even just Water Gun, would it be ban worthy? (If a question like this isn't supposed to be posted, I'll delete it).
 
I’m actually not sure this would be as significant as it seems. Yes, the Rhydon matchup would be different, but my biggest problem with Water-Type move Zapdos in RBY would be that you become much worse into Exeggutor as a result of dropping Drill Peck. Thunder Wave + Agility, especially on lead Zapdos, is too important to drop IMO and while this is absolutely not a common pick, I have seen some posts over time, including one recently, that suggested Zapdos could try and use Toxic in the actual tier to, obviously not completely flip the matchup, but at least be able to do something to Rhydon. I would personally much rather be walled by Rhydon than walled by Exeggutor if I had to pick.

Edit: Of course, the pro-ban argument would be that you don’t know if Zapdos is going to be running Drill Peck, a Water move, or both in this hypothetical landscape, and this could lead to uncompetitive scenarios where a player wins because they happened to have the correct coverage move by chance.
 
I’m actually not sure this would be as significant as it seems. Yes, the Rhydon matchup would be different, but my biggest problem with Water-Type move Zapdos in RBY would be that you become much worse into Exeggutor as a result of dropping Drill Peck. Thunder Wave + Agility, especially on lead Zapdos, is too important to drop IMO and while this is absolutely not a common pick, I have seen some posts over time, including one recently, that suggested Zapdos could try and use Toxic in the actual tier to, obviously not completely flip the matchup, but at least be able to do something to Rhydon. I would personally much rather be walled by Rhydon than walled by Exeggutor if I had to pick.

Edit: Of course, the pro-ban argument would be that you don’t know if Zapdos is going to be running Drill Peck, a Water move, or both in this hypothetical landscape, and this could lead to uncompetitive scenarios where a player wins because they happened to have the correct coverage move by chance.
I don't particularly care to weigh in on water move Zapdos, but I will mention that with lead Zapdos, it's actually standard to drop Agility for Rest because lead Zapdos isn't meant to be a sweeper.
 
Dropping Drill Peck on Zapdos is crazy lol, being able to potentially break through Chansey is too valuable. Also Egg. Agility is 1000% its most droppable move.

My gut reaction to water move Zapdos would be that it's S tier but not immediately banworthy. That said, with Lax/Taur/Chans/Egg/Star all being so dominant, adding another Pokemon to those ranks would cause such a huge disturbance that it's impossible to say how things would look in this hypothetical. Like if there's 6 (borderline) S pokemon that's obviously not ideal, but probably at least one of them is losing out big time in this hypothetical and I don't think we can reasonably say how far it would fall
 
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Has there ever been much experimentation into Tentacruel in OU? The thing has a surprising number of strong traits, such as its Hydro Pump is the strongest unboostedb special move that isn't a Legendary Bird attack, Wrap on a decently high base Speed, access to Swords Dance which is especially nice with Wrap, and Blizzard + Mega Drain to try to hit Water resistances. The one big problem obviously is that a lot of teams are probably going to have at least one move on each Pokemon that turn it into a fine red mist because of just how many weaknesses it has, although there are technically many more niche things that won't have a super-effective option or weakness it can potentially use as an opening (Rhydon, Amnesia + Reflect Lax or perhaps Ice Beam + Reflect Lax, non-Tbolt Chansey, Articuno/Cloyster). I of course would not surprised if it could not do anything seeing how being weak to nigh everything on account of how bad its typing is is just unforgivable, but I always was curious because of just how seemingly gifted it is in its other traits
 
Has there ever been much experimentation into Tentacruel in OU? The thing has a surprising number of strong traits, such as its Hydro Pump is the strongest unboostedb special move that isn't a Legendary Bird attack, Wrap on a decently high base Speed, access to Swords Dance which is especially nice with Wrap, and Blizzard + Mega Drain to try to hit Water resistances. The one big problem obviously is that a lot of teams are probably going to have at least one move on each Pokemon that turn it into a fine red mist because of just how many weaknesses it has, although there are technically many more niche things that won't have a super-effective option or weakness it can potentially use as an opening (Rhydon, Amnesia + Reflect Lax or perhaps Ice Beam + Reflect Lax, non-Tbolt Chansey, Articuno/Cloyster). I of course would not surprised if it could not do anything seeing how being weak to nigh everything on account of how bad its typing is is just unforgivable, but I always was curious because of just how seemingly gifted it is in its other traits

Have 2 teams with it, one clearly bad, the other is this: https://pokepast.es/5001392e0c1f1aea

There are 2 routes, Sleep Lead or Paralysis lead (just like almost every RBY team). Since Tentacruel shares typing with Starmie, I decided to not use it. Still, I opted for a paralysis lead (so, no Jynx or Gengar). Between the other 5 Mons of the team, Tauros is clearly the best lead. Other than that, team has very standard sets. Tentacruel being a Water type also means that you need either Rhydon or a Jolteon to not be too weak to Electrics, I opted for the Rhydon route here because like Tentacruel, it enjoys the whole team paralyzing stuff.

Not among my best teams, but can get wins. I don,t have a high opinion of Tentacruel, I consider both Arbok and Lickitung easier to use as Wrappers (not even talking about Nite and Vic). Still, it has Wrap, SD and very high Special, so it can work in the right situation.
 
Hi, if you want to lead with Tauros and put Rest on it, which coverage move would you be dropping? also, for a late game Tauros, if you wanna go Fire Blast to help in the Tauros mirror, which standard coverage move is dropped? I'd assume Earthquake?
 
Hi, if you want to lead with Tauros and put Rest on it, which coverage move would you be dropping? also, for a late game Tauros, if you wanna go Fire Blast to help in the Tauros mirror, which standard coverage move is dropped? I'd assume Earthquake?
Lead Tauros really wants EQ for the Gengar match up (you could bank on your opponent being scared of it and switching out, or you yourself could switch out, but either of these options complicates your game)


Back Tauros is generally cycling EQ/Blizzard/Thunderbolt based on desired coverage, Fire Blast can fit into those rotations just fine (though it is a very niche move and I wouldn't use it in most cases). If you really want to use it, I would recommend always having either EQ or Blizz to retain a good match up on Rhydon but otherwise it just depends on preference and what your team is trying to do
 
Yes, Snorlax is very very good. You should be using it unless you can think of a very compelling reason to replace it with something else (you probably won't be able to).
Cloy teams and Don/Reflect Chansey teams sometimes don't use lax, and cloy teams are usually good even without lax but yes I would agree with that statement here.
 
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I am a Snorlax hater. In the context of RBY this means that I only use Snorlax like 60% of the time instead of 95%. You should definkitely use Snorlax very often, I just think it's not as mandatory as Tauros, Egg or Chansey. Regarding the set, it depends on the team, but also on the opponent you are facing. Use ReflectLax if you consider the opponent worse than you, if you are not sure about that, use 4 Attacks, it's easier to play and punishes your own mistakes less, since you just click buttons.
 
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