By request: Discuss Mewtwo here.

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Since a mod seems to agree with me that RBY Mewtwo doesn't belong in a discussion of GSC Snorlax, here's a place for it.

:rb/mewtwo:

This thing has a BST of 590, far eclipsing Mew and Dragonite at 500 and outstripping all competitors in the crucial Special stat. Its typing - mono-Psychic - has no useful weaknesses in RBY, while giving STAB on, and resistance to, the special wallbreaking move of the same name. If this wasn't enough, it has access to the rare and incredibly powerful boosting move Amnesia, doubling its already huge Special in a single turn, a plethora of other special attacking moves to use it with, and the aptly-named Recover to shrug off all but the strongest attacks with ease.

Mewtwo isn't just Uber, it was the original Uber; the near-universal banning of Mewtwo from competitive RBY was what gave rise to the concept of an "OU tier" and "Uber tier" in the first place.

Nevertheless, some have recently raised questions - probably from lack of relevant experience, as RBY Ubers is rarely played - about just how broken Mewtwo actually is, and as such this thread is here for discussion of that topic.
 
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Lack of relevant experience indeed. What does a typical RBY Ubers team look like?
Mewtwo and Mew are invariant - the big question for Mew is whether it has Explosion (Mew's +2 Explosion OHKOs Mewtwo, but it either gives up coverage or Softboiled to get it). Light Screen/Ice Beam Chansey and Surf/Thunder Wave Slowbro are very common as Mewtwo answers (aiming to, respectively, freeze it or parahax it with a 999 STAB Surf). Snorlax is bulky enough to take a 999 hit on either side and explode, so it's used a lot as well. Exeggutor's still a good sleeper due to its bulk, and Starmie can act as a backup to Slowbro or Chansey with Light Screen, Recover, and Ice/Psychic resistance.

Tauros is seen reasonably frequently, because it still has its potential for hax - that said, it relies much more on that hax to get past Mew's Softboiled and Mewtwo's Recover than it does in OU. Articuno and Zapdos can be used to block Mew's common Hyper Beam/Earthquake combo and hit it hard without risking Mewtwo to Explosion. I suppose you could use Rocks or Gengar to block Explosions and Mew's Hyper Beam, but the crazy amount of STAB Psychics and Ice moves flying around (and boosted Earthquakes, from Mew) makes them extremely fragile.


That's what I've seen in my own admittedly limited experience.
 
RBY ubers might as well be "kill opposing mewtwo". Pretty sure 5/6 slots are dedicated to countering mewtwo, with the 6th slot being mewtwo.
 

Joim

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Mew, Mewtwo, Lax, Chansey, Jynx, Eggy, Slowbro, Dragonite, Cloyster, and ~Tauros (though its seen way less) are probably the staples of RBY Ubers.
This. Mewtwo is so goddamn OP that an Ubers game is a game of "who kills Mewtwo first", mainly. Your only chance is to paralyse it when it uses Amnesia to then explode on it or just let your unparalysed Mewtwo win. Mew is pretty decent in Ubers as it can use a good SD set, sweeping all OU mons but Mewtwo.

I can't believe anyone question Mewtwo's OPness on RBY, lol. If Mewtwo or even Mew are avaliable, there's literally no reason to not to use them.
 
This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Not a single post mentioned what actually keeps Mewtwo in check, which is wrap. Ubers has pretty much never been played extensively with wrap because the original simulators had dodgy wrap mechanics.

Wrap means that Mewtwo can't really afford to get paralysed, which significantly lowers how many things it can stay in against and how many things it can switch into. It now has to worry about switching into tauros and lax, smart rocks, and nearly every special pokemon in OU.

Pretty much everything that has been said in this thread previously is irrelevant because it didn't consider wrap. You don't need to go for freeze wars and stuff like that when you can just paralyse-wrap it.

This would also change what pokemon are commonly used in Ubers. You'd probably see the standard wrappers such as victreebel cloyster and dragonite become more popular.
 

Joim

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Wrap is only powerful if you paralyse Mewtwo. Any smart player won't let his Mewtwo to be paralysed so far and will aim to cripple wrappers say paralysing these first.
 
Wrap is only powerful if you paralyse Mewtwo. Any smart player won't let his Mewtwo to be paralysed so far and will aim to cripple wrappers say paralysing these first.
That's exactly my point. For Mewtwo to avoid paralysis, he has to switch out against a lot of pokemon, and he has to be cautious about what he switches into. He's still the best pokemon in the game, but it nullifies his threat significantly because he'll have to spend a lot more time in his masterball if he doesn't want to get paralysed.
 

Jorgen

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I think in many cases Mewtwo actually likes paralysis because it makes him immune to Freeze.

Not sure about Wrapping being good in Ubers. In OU it's a different story because things are slower and weaker defensively, nor do they have the shit-rocking powers of Mewtwo. If you miss against a +2 Mewtwo, your Wrapper dies, whereas in OU, you can live at least one Ice Beam or Blizzard or Tbolt or what have you.
 
This. Mewtwo is so goddamn OP that an Ubers game is a game of "who kills Mewtwo first", mainly. Your only chance is to paralyse it when it uses Amnesia to then explode on it or just let your unparalysed Mewtwo win.
Nah, you can take it out without Explosion. Slowbro works if it doesn't have Thunderbolt, and Light Screen Chansey can run a freeze-war against it. Starmie can take a swing, too (had a hilarious game once where my last-poke Starmie woke up on +4 Mewtwo and froze it to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat).

Mew is pretty decent in Ubers as it can use a good SD set, sweeping all OU mons but Mewtwo.
Yeah, "but Mewtwo" are really the operative words there.



@Conflict: Substitute doesn't block status in RBY.
 
I think in many cases Mewtwo actually likes paralysis because it makes him immune to Freeze.

Not sure about Wrapping being good in Ubers. In OU it's a different story because things are slower and weaker defensively, nor do they have the shit-rocking powers of Mewtwo. If you miss against a +2 Mewtwo, your Wrapper dies, whereas in OU, you can live at least one Ice Beam or Blizzard or Tbolt or what have you.
I hope their mewtwo likes paralysis. Taking para for freeze wars is a non-wrap thing really. Going for freezes is sub-optimal when wrap is legal.

A wrap team is usually going to have 2-3 wrappers, so there is some leeway. Besides, it's not as if you're going to try to literally wrap him to death, you can just wrap him until he's in KO range of something, or 2HKO range of something he can't OHKO in return.

I'm not saying he's not a huge threat or anything, he's still the best pokemon in the game by far. I'm just saying he's more manageable with wrap than he is with non-wrap.
 
What you actually claimed was that Mewtwo doesn't need to be Uber with Wrap legal. The sheer audacity of that statement of theorycraft is mind-boggling.
 
What you actually claimed was that Mewtwo doesn't need to be Uber with Wrap legal. The sheer audacity of that statement of theorycraft is mind-boggling.
Considering that no one has played Ubers with wrap extensively if at all, saying that he is still OP is also theorycraft.

The wrap and non-wrap metas are very different. This is evidenced by the fact that many people who have never played wrap don't know much about the meta, and I imagine a wrapper who never played non-wrap wouldn't know much about the non-wrap meta either.

What I'm saying isn't really theorycraft, it's just game mechanics. Statistically, a paralysed Mewtwto is likely to lose to a few wrappers plus a hard hitter or exploder without having to sacrifice your own Mewtwo if it's just willing to sit there hoping for a wrap miss.


That's just basic game mechanics. What you're saying, which is with regards to being able to force him out, switching wrappers in etc. which is player/skill dependent, is theorycraft.
 
Perhaps some valuable info for people who feel like arguing but have really no business doing so (I do have relevant experience and knowledge of RBY but don't particularly play it much):

Off the top of my head
1. you cannot unthaw thaw unless hit by a fire move or haze
2. all moves, even 100% accuracy ones, have a small chance to miss (I think 1/252? Don't quote me on this)
3. your chance to crit is based on your pokemon's base speed, not on the standard critical hit domains seen in later generations
4. ice does neutral dmg to fire, psychic is immune to ghost and poison and bug hit each other for x2
5. there's something weird with softboiled failing sometimes on Chansey, maybe mushroom can clear this one up
6. wrap isn't banned on smogon
7. hyper beam doesn't go on cooldown if it kills the pokemon

edit: dug up my old RBY wrap team, may be relevant:

Alakazam
~ Recover
~ Psychic
~ Seismic Toss
~ Thunder Wave

Dragonite
~ Hyper Beam
~ Blizzard
~ Thunder Wave
~ Wrap

Onix
~ Earthquake
~ Bind
~ Rock Slide
~ Explosion

Tangela
~ Sleep Powder
~ Mega Drain
~ Bind
~ Stun Spore

Cloyster
~ Explosion
~ Double-Edge
~ Clamp
~ Blizzard

Victreebel
~
Double-Edge
~ Stun Spore
~ Razor Leaf
~ Wrap
 
1. you cannot unthaw unless hit by a fire move or haze
I think you mean "unfreeze" or "thaw", "unthawing" would be getting frozen again. :P

2. all moves, even 100% accuracy ones, have a small chance to miss (I think 1/252? Don't quote me on this)
1/256, I believe. It's an issue with a move's accuracy being expressed as X/256 where X goes from 0 to FF (255).

3. your chance to crit is based on your pokemon's base speed, not on the standard critical hit domains seen in later generations
And high-crit-rate moves have x8 crit rate - for things above 64 base speed this means that they'll have a ~100% crit rate (actually 255/256 due to the same error as with "100%" move accuracy). This is why Persian is good despite its mediocre stats; Slash will always crit and thus hits for extremely high and reliable damage.

5. there's something weird with softboiled failing sometimes on Chansey, maybe mushroom can clear this one up
It's not specifically with Softboiled, but the issue is that the "is HP already at full" check for Recover and Softboiled is done mod 256 and thus it can "fail due to HP already full" when the Pokemon's HP actually isn't full.

7. hyper beam doesn't go on cooldown if it kills the pokemon
Or in a couple of other weird situations (the most common being if a partial-trapping move is used).
 

Joim

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Nah, you can take it out without Explosion. Slowbro works if it doesn't have Thunderbolt, and Light Screen Chansey can run a freeze-war against it. Starmie can take a swing, too (had a hilarious game once where my last-poke Starmie woke up on +4 Mewtwo and froze it to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat).
Submission Mewtwo OHKOs Chansey :P
 
Submission Mewtwo OHKOs Chansey :P
Not without a crit, it doesn't (and it's not guaranteed even then). Even Machamp's Submission won't quite do the trick from full health without a crit.

But yes, Submission Mewtwo will defeat Chansey, just like Thunderbolt Mewtwo will defeat Slowbro.
 
Perhaps some valuable info for people who feel like arguing but have really no business doing so (I do have relevant experience and knowledge of RBY but don't particularly play it much):

Off the top of my head
1. you cannot unthaw thaw unless hit by a fire move or haze
2. all moves, even 100% accuracy ones, have a small chance to miss (I think 1/252? Don't quote me on this)
3. your chance to crit is based on your pokemon's base speed, not on the standard critical hit domains seen in later generations
4. ice does neutral dmg to fire, psychic is immune to ghost and poison and bug hit each other for x2
5. there's something weird with softboiled failing sometimes on Chansey, maybe mushroom can clear this one up
6. wrap isn't banned on smogon
7. hyper beam doesn't go on cooldown if it kills the pokemon

edit: dug up my old RBY wrap team, may be relevant:

Alakazam
~ Recover
~ Psychic
~ Seismic Toss
~ Thunder Wave

Dragonite
~ Hyper Beam
~ Blizzard
~ Thunder Wave
~ Wrap

Onix
~ Earthquake
~ Bind
~ Rock Slide
~ Explosion

Tangela
~ Sleep Powder
~ Mega Drain
~ Bind
~ Stun Spore

Cloyster
~ Explosion
~ Double-Edge
~ Clamp
~ Blizzard

Victreebel
~
Double-Edge
~ Stun Spore
~ Razor Leaf
~ Wrap
That team has a few flaws. For one, dragonite should always run body slam and surf. Blizzard is a waste and hyper beam can lose you battles. You don't need to the extra damage when like one or two more wraps puts them in bslam range. Bslam also gives it more utility outside of setting up.

Cloyster is ok, but I'd put rest over double-edge. Rest allows it to comfortably wall snorlax (and to an extent tauros if it doesn't crit). It's not just a one-time switch in either, it's still a good switch in to lax when it's asleep, and you can wake it up reliably.

Tangela is interesting, it's a pokemon I've started to think has potential in OU with wrap legal. It's basically the best switch in to rocks in the game, as it tanks hits slightly better than eggy, and is more threatening offensively than it due to bind.

Rhydon needs to go over onix too. Having 3 wrappers is bad if you don't have a pokemon that can capitalise of that. You need some-kind of hard-hitter that you can use punch holes in their team. The reason why I suggest rhydon is that it's an offensive threat whilst still being able to wall dragonite. The 2HKO on chansey is also a really good offensive pivot, as it's not hard to paralyse her.

I think you need some kind of sweeper too. The best options are probably dragonite or tauros. Tauros is tauros, but is more luck-based. He does however, double up as an excellent revenger.

Dragonite is more consistent, but he won't pull a win out of his ass like a tauros can. He also like a million other roles that he can play simultaneously that I won't go into now. He's probably the most misunderstood pokemon in the game.

Sorry for the rant.
 

Mr.E

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Mewtwo really isn't that unbeatable. The thing is, without relying unduly on luck tactics, the only way to beat it PP stalling. You can trade with Explosion, you can treat it like Chansey and try to freeze it or something, but the only reliable way to win is to PP stall it. Suicide is a 1-for-1 and freeze wars are 50/50.

Mewtwo, unlike Alakazam, is too bulky to just pound at with physical attacks. Hell, it's bulkier than Eggy let alone Zam. Snorlax and Tauros barely 4HKO with Body Slam, Hyper Beam is 50% max. But Mewtwo still retains Zam's incredible offense, even more so because he has a slightly higher crit rate (over 25% jesus christ) and Amnesia is basically auto-crits that also double its (special) defense. Tauros and Rhydon are fucking OHKOed, and Snorlax is 3HKOed even with no crits / boosts / drops (a feat Zam narrowly fails to achieve on average).

You require Chansey or another Psychic-type to tank that shit. And it can't even really be just any Psymon, it pretty much needs to be Zam or another Mewtwo because the dual-types can get mauled by its potential coverage. A grand total of three mons, one of which is itself. So now you can paralyze it with T-Wave... then what? You certainly can't go toe-to-toe on the special side. You can't really switch in a physical attacker either because even the best case scenario is eating 75% from its coverage move. Even if one takes that risk, banking on a lucky full-paralysis or tanking the hit, it can easily tank a physical hit or two unlike Zam.

Luckily, Mewtwo's reliance on coverage opens up a few more holes in its offense. However, it's still unkillable. It certainly won't die to special attackers and short of Body Slam Amnesialax, there isn't a physical attacker in the game that can afford to tango with even non-Psychic Mewtwo. All it really means is Slowbro/Starmie can help Zam/Chansey stall it to death, or Tauros can threaten to revenge kill it if something else dies, depending on whether it has Psychic or Tbolt (assuming Ice Beam is always taken for freeze wars). It can forgo Amnesia even but that makes it lose to Mew and puts it at a disadvantage in Mewtwo freeze wars, not advisable.


RE: Dre's absurd suggestion that Wrap legality makes Mewtwo non-broken.

I never thought Wrap is broken. Pretty much everything in RBY has either Body Slam or T-Wave, so keeping a potential Wrap abuser unparalyzed is not an easy task (tougher than keeping a faster-than-Wrapper mon unparalyzed at least). Dragonite's the only one potentially worth using because Agility negates PAR speed drop, even then free Wrap kills only happen about 2/3 of the time. When it fails? You die. When you don't get setup at all? You have a shitty Dragonite instead of something good. Cloyster is okay too, arguably the only trapmon worth using for other reasons, but Clamp isn't its main attraction. Those who ban Wrap moves only do so on the low-percentage potential that it happens to run through an entire team, rare enough that I don't buy into it but some people don't like even the smallest prospect for it occuring.

Regardless of my personal feelings on Wrap, the fact of the matter is that Agility/PAR + Wrap beats everything with some luck. At best, that says to me Wrap is broken and should be banned anyway... and then there's nothing else holding Mewtwo back so it should still remain banned. ;[ Secondly, as was the first response from somebody else in the GSC Snorlax topic, it's not even a legit argument to make in a community that doesn't even regularly ban Wrap.
 
Regardless of my personal feelings on Wrap, the fact of the matter is that Agility/PAR + Wrap beats everything with some luck.
Not everything. Dragonite only has 32 Wraps, and Wrap does nothing to Gengar and a pittance to Golem or Rhydon. It can be successfully PP stalled out.

I suppose it can be done with Lickitung's EQ + STAB Wrap + Swords Dance combo, but if your entire team is paralysed (Lickitung speedties with Snorlax) then you probably deserved to lose anyway.


More relevantly to the topic, you can basically phaze a paralysed Mewtwo with Wrap, but it's hardly reliable, requires you to lose something to even get your Wrapper in safely, and has a huge penalty for failure while at best phazing Mewtwo. In no way, shape, or form is this a Mewtwo counter.
 
Mr E. Have you ever played wrap before? No offence but your post seems to suggest you haven't.

If someone just sets up dragonite on like turn 4 or something and tried to sweep, you don't need luck, you can just PP stall it. Dragonite is only ever going to sweep a smart player if their team is already very crippled, and in those situations pokemon like tauros could do the same.

Not only that, but gengar cockblocks it completely, and rocks make it a lot easier to PP stall.

Agiwrap is nowhere near broken, and anyone who thinks that doesn't understand wrap at all. The only people who I've ever swept with it are people who didn't know how to defend against it. Against good players who stall it I just wait until I detect their switch pattern and make an offensive switch (eg. get victreebel in on golem) accordingly.

I don't get why people seem to think that when I say wrap makes Mewtwo more manageable, that I'm talking about just wrapping it to death. People really need to get this idea out of their head that that is what wrap is about. Paralysis plus wrap on Mewtwo not only means that you can go try KO it with wrap outright, but you also get free switches to hard hitters or exploders who now outspeed him.
 

Jorgen

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We get it, Wrap can mitigate a paralyzed Mewtwo's strength because it can't move after being Wrapped, but it's vulnerable to unlucky misses. That's true for pretty much anything. Let's steer the conversation back to Mewtwo and not continue to derail the thread that only exists because of a derail in another thread.

Oh, and because just saying "hey gais dont derail pls" isn't very constructive, let me pose the following question about Mewtwo: does Selfdestruct have a place on a Mewtwo set for allowing you to trade with your opponent's Mewtwo or Mew before they can have a chance to set up and sweep? Or is Mewtwo literally so broken that sacrificing it for a kill is just stupid?
 

Mr.E

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I don't see why you would use Selfdestruct to trade Mewtwos when you could just play Freeze Wars and, on average, still trade Mewtwos (you win half the time, lose half the time) while also beating every Mewtwo that won't engage in Freeze Wars with you. It also only averages 56% damage, so you have to chip them low enough that you're in danger of losing a speed tie and getting screwed when they Recover first. Save Explosion for Mew if you wanna pull stuff like that.


I've been playing this game for 15 years Drenumbers, I think I know what I'm talking about. Wrap is usable enough, the free chip damage and switch turns are cool. However, it's no free pass to destroying entire teams. First off, the abuse potential is greatly mitigated by the fact virtually everything can cause PAR. Secondly, Wrap is so weak and inaccurate that it rarely causes significant damage before missing (and getting your ass killed).

The average damage caused by Wrap, assuming you just sit there and take it like a bitch waiting for a miss so you can PAR/kill the user, is roughly equivalent to a 180-power attack. (On average: 45 damage per one use, a little over four uses before missing.) High? Sure. It also has no secondary effects and isn't learned by anything particularly threatening for any other reason. I mean, I admit Wrap Tauros would destroy the game... Dragonite is non-existent in OU play without it. Wrap barely makes Drag usable. Clamp is pretty fucking broken, luckily Cloyster not only lacks Agility for real abuse but it can't even paralyze shit on its own.

And of course to relate it to the actual topic here, Mewtwo is an above average tanker of Wrap spam (it has roughly Snorlax's physical bulk) and is OHKOing your ass the second you miss.
 
A bit off topic but does anyone have any logs of them successfully combating a wrap team? I have had issues with them in the past and have only ever seen how to combat it in passing discussion. If you have any logs of actually performing in that method, that would be great.

The average damage caused by Wrap, assuming you just sit there and take it like a bitch waiting for a miss so you can PAR/kill the user, is roughly equivalent to a 180-power attack. (On average: 45 damage per one use, a little over four uses before missing.
I know this can be applied to any move, but factoring in an average of 2 critical hits, isn't this 210 power?
 
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