Other Tiers GSC Inverse OU (now on RoA Spotlight Rotational Ladder)

[Earthworm]

GSC Inverse OU

GSC Inverse OU has just become the chosen RoA Spotlight Rotational Ladder for March by popular vote. However, right now the ladder isn't very active so I am making a thread for discussion to hopefully prompt people to try it out.

GSC Inverse OU is GSC OU but in a mode where resistances and weaknesses are reversed. Immunities become 2x weaknesses, 4x weaknesses become 4x resistances, 2x resistances become 2x weaknesses, etc. As you might expect, this completely flips the type chart around and turns Steel into a terrible defensive typing, Raikou into a horrible Zapdos answer, etc.

So how does this affect the GSC OU metagame? One very obvious and critical change is that nothing resists Explosion, or Normal-type attacks in general. This means that counterplay to Explosion is limited to things like extremely high Defense Pokemon that aren't Rock/Steel types, Protect users, Substitute users, Reflect, Curse, Acid Armor, faster Sleep, etc. Snorlax also no longer has any real need for coverage attacks, meaning it will probably be running something like Curse / Protect / Lovely Kiss / Return or RestTalk, or Self-Destruct etc.

What strategies do you think will be/are effective? Is anything outside of exploders / Normal-types viable? Is this Flail Dodrio's time to shine? Let us know in this thread.

 

[Whydon]

Snorlax seems potentially broken in this I feel (even more so than it already is in the traditional format). Normal-types tend to be pretty good in Inverse formats, and the only thing that hits Normal types super-effectively are...Ghost-type attacks. Yeah. This looks pretty cool though, excited to see if other Normals like Clefable and Porygon-2 will have a chance to shine here.

The Cloyster vs. Cloyster matchup seems to become much more reliant on luck now, coming down to whoever can get off a Surf first. Cloyster seems to still be the better Spiker in the tier, with Forretress now having a horrendous defensive typing. Gengar and Misdreavus take a pretty big hit as they can no longer spin block and they’re weak to the omnipresent Normal-type attacks, but might maintain a niche with Explosion and Perish Trapping, respectively.

 

[Sacrificed]

I think snorlax should be quick banned imo.It was already goat mon in gsc with multiple options and every team runned.Inverse makes this mon even more busted with non resistance offensive moves and argubably leaves with much better defensive typing (None of the ghosts in gen 2 is physical attacker but they are still bad anyways).This mon even suspected in gen 7 inverse which is 5 gens later and shows that even with that powercreep it is still a big threat.For this reason ì believe gsc inverse snorlax is almost comparable to rby mewtwo(maybe ı exaggerated a bit too much but ı still think it is way too strong to stay in inverse gsc ou)

The second thing that ì believe is explosion and self destruct should be quick banned too imo.In this offensive meta game they are much more powerful with non resistance.That means almost nothing is safe to these moves and makes these moves much more risk free and even gives the users team momentum.

 

[Earthworm]

Snorlax is clearly ridiculous in this game mode, but whether we ban it depends on what people want from this mode. If we are trying to have a metagame which is sort of balanced, then we should probably ban it and either ban or restrict explosion. However, the game mode is sort of a novelty in the first place, and it isn't totally unplayable in its current state. To avoid confusion about what is allowed, I am inclined to say we should just keep it the way it is and come up with strategies to fight Snorlax/Explosion with (which do exist).

Here are some observations I've made from the games I've managed to get so far:
- Many different variants of monolax are viable. Curse RestTalk is decent, and pretty much any combination of LK / Curse / Drum / Protect / STAB / Selfdestruct also works. There is pretty much no point in running anything other than STAB attacks.
- Both Zapdos and Raikou are still good. Reflect Raikou can be very annoying to deal with if your team is Explosion-based, and is also good for Ground-types in general. Zapdos can run RestTalk like it usually does, but it seems like sets like Reflect and Substitute definitely have their niches.
- Exploding Poison-types like Muk and Weezing seem to be pretty decent, not having weaknesses to either bolt/beam or normal attacks, and they have useful Ground and Psychic resistances. Poison STAB is also pretty strong. Weezing can also Haze against Protect Drumlax with some degree of safety.
- Articuno is a pretty decent pick for its ability to handle Electric-types along with decent typing. It is only weak to Bug, Grass, and Ground. Moltres seems like it would be good in theory as well, again thanks to Electric-resist, although it is obviously significantly less sturdy than Articuno.
- Gengar is very scary with its high speed, access to great coverage (Thunderbolt/Ice Beam/Giga Drain for boltbeam neutrality/resists) as well as Hypnosis/DBond and of course Explosion.
- Miltank is common and can potentially stop Curselax from getting out of control if it doesn't have or has already used Lovely Kiss and doesn't have Belly Drum. It can also run a Curse set itself pretty decently now.
- Umbreon has potential, although it is CurseDrumlax bait.
- Heracross and Marowak are both solid. Only Ttar resists Heracross's Megahorn+EQ, which Heracross has the option of running a Normal attack for. Marowak is stopped by nothing with EQ+Return.
- Baton Pass is obviously very scary, nothing really stops a fast Drumlax (other than faster exploders) or Marowak (with Protect or Substitute for Cloyster/Weezing/Muk Explosion). It's probably a good idea to have a Hazer/PHazer. Explosion might not cut it against Substitute Jolteon/Smeargle.
- Cloyster is good, but can struggle when a lot of Pokemon have Ice-type attacks, and Cloyster vs Cloyster is very risky speed tie. Forretress is okay since little can OHKO it and it can set up and remove Spikes and Explode.
- Exeggutor has a lot of potential since it can both status-spread and explode. Psychic+Grass is also a great combination, hitting many important Pokemon hard.
- I would not recommend using Steelix, Fighting-types other than Heracross, or Skarmory.

I haven't really looked into the possibility of stalling in this tier. I think it should be possible to use some kind of screen-based stall, although nothing would be reliable against Snorlax, and it would probably be pretty easy to counter team.

 

[Funbot28]

So took a spin of this metagame and I honestly must agree that Lax deserves a ban for sure. Not only does it lack any weaknesses in this meta, but OU staple sets such as DrumLax and standard CurseLax lack any reliable checks due to how powerful Normal-type moves can be spammed in inverse without little counterplay. Explosion is also ridiculous as it really acts as a free kill in a GSC meta where normal answers such as Steelix, Missy, and Skarmory just flatout die to a boom.

I find that there is really scarce answers to both Lax and Boom so the idea that we should keep them in the metagame in order to adapt to them really seems illogical if the goal is to have a more playible metagame that is less overcentralized by a threat that is already dominant in the vanilla format.

Here is a team that I have been enjoying so far, I feel Charm spam is the only way to go to really counteract opposing Lax (but even then, Lovely Kiss and Belly Drum kinda overpower that).


Explosion Spam + CurseLax

Also Stall seems kinda moot in a meta where boom is seen everywhere and has little counterplay to it, but I def still need to try it out.