OU RBY OU Discussion Thread

[Bohrier]

Taking away the ability to hide ladder matches would be amazing for the ladder scene. Ladder had more of a sense of community when everyone was hanging out in chat watching good matches together.

Dyt ppl actually watched ladder matches even back in the day idts--ppl watched Replays of ladder matches cuz there were more guys voluntarily playing good elo ladder

Obtaining a high elo seemed much harder back then. I remember watching Peasounay hit the 1700s live in 2017 and it seeming very impressive. Now getting 1700 doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

you'd think it's a big deal when the current number 1 is 80 points lower rated than 1700....




I remember Roudolf 13 had a 97.6 GXE
That will never happen now . Rn the highest GXE is 90.8 which is crazy low if you compare it with the days of old-- This leads to 2 conclusions that either the top end has gotten weaker or the bottom end has gotten strong
The first is obviously not true which you will realise if you go watch a 2016 SPL RBY replay and come back to a modern time to realise that even the best player of that time Tiba is not as good as a lot of even journeyman RBYers(I mean no offense by this term Just throwing it out there to emphasise skill diffs)
So it must be that the bottom end has gotten strong and this is very easy to identify
Back in the day there were 0 resources for RBY in smogon which was still the premier site--if you needed help you went to PP which many guys didn't even know about
Now you have VR Samples threat list speed tiers this that whatever
Lots of resources have come up even in the past year and a bit--the most significant of which being Marco's guide on youtube

So 95% will never happen?Yes that is indeed true
However we have this thing now called a ladder tournament which makes ladder mean so much more than it ever used to so if anyone says ladder is somehow worse than in the past idk man

 

[Leader of the Rockets]

Bottom has definitely gotten stronger. Top is the same in terms of relative skill to one another. The top players, on an experiential level, were tough to beat back then, they are just as tough to beat now, because everyone grew together, more or less. BUT, there is definitely less matching with top players than back then. When I'm high on the ladder, I would say I match with more people not on my skill level than I did back in the day. And sometimes when I do get someone on my skill level, I play them over and over, which signals that there just aren't enough good players playing. This changes from time to time. Sometimes I do get a good variety of skilled players. But, it does seem to me, just from my experience playing on ladder this year, there aren't as many great players playing as often as back in the day.

 

[Believer of GXE]

Finding the term "skill creep" to be adequate for what that this is.
"In different games, skill creep manifests as increased map knowledge and repetitive "meta" strategies, as seen in games like Warzone and Escape from Tarkov, or through the relentless optimization of high-level play in competitive multiplayer games like Apex Legends and Destiny 2."

The term "Skill inflation" is decently similar as well.

Skill creep and how it relates to poker:

• Improved Player Knowledge: Even at lower stakes, most players are now familiar with concepts like hand ranges, 3-betting, big blind defense, and pot odds, whereas a couple of decades ago, these were advanced tactics.

How this is similar to Rby:
Improved player knowledge: Even at lower ELO's most players are now familiar with concepts like using OU material, using more optimal movesets, using better theory when team building, and playing better mathematically, and knowing fundamentals, using the calculator for calculating damage, etc. these were advanced tactics a decade ago.

Although there is IMO a ton of availability for growth.

 

[Amaranth]

The first is obviously not true which you will realise if you go watch a 2016 SPL RBY replay and come back to a modern time to realise that even the best player of that time Tiba is not as good as a lot of even journeyman RBYers(I mean no offense by this term Just throwing it out there to emphasise skill diffs)
So it must be that the bottom end has gotten strong and this is very easy to identify

Something to mention here is that a lot of stuff that is common wisdom now, was not common wisdom back then. So you look at replays and think "oh yeah this is obviously unoptimal, these guys must've been so easy to beat and relatively low level" - and there's some truth to that, but I also think if you went back in time, you would have to figure out why that shit was unoptimal on your own first.

This is still largely the same way you beat the top players today: figure out what they're doing, then figure out how to beat it. But the stuff in 2017 was certainly beatable by a lot more angles of attack than the meta we have today. So it was "easier" because there were more angles where you could pull ahead of them, but I don't think they were especially further ahead or further behind relative to common wisdom compared to the top players of today. It's just that the common wisdom from back then was much, much less complete.

 

[Bohrier]

Something to mention here is that a lot of stuff that is common wisdom now, was not common wisdom back then. So you look at replays and think "oh yeah this is obviously unoptimal, these guys must've been so easy to beat and relatively low level" - and there's some truth to that, but I also think if you went back in time, you would have to figure out why that shit was unoptimal on your own first.

This is still largely the same way you beat the top players today: figure out what they're doing, then figure out how to beat it. But the stuff in 2017 was certainly beatable by a lot more angles of attack than the meta we have today. So it was "easier" because there were more angles where you could pull ahead of them, but I don't think they were especially further ahead or further behind relative to common wisdom compared to the top players of today. It's just that the common wisdom from back then was much, much less complete.

This comes back to the resources point and the community growth point--Common wisdom is more complete when top players begin talking to non top players and also the fact that the resources have grown exponentially in the past 4ish years I'd say
Scouting is also so much more complete--back in the day you only knew vaguely what players played like-- and much more in depth overall

 

[Believer of GXE]

What happened is information scarcity decreases over time. Players learn facts over time. Being optimal let's say is a number, the closest a player achieves to optimal is the best that they can hope for. If players learn facts over time, than they will have more optimal scores over time. This has to do also with why one would be playing in the first place as well. Such as in 2014 there was the advent of twitch plays pokemon, which brought a lot of players playing the gen1 team from the TPP game into gen1 competitive battle. If other things like that could exist it breathes new life into this game. Other people who have played early gens as a kid likely don't know there is a competitive ladder out there for that still though, smogon as a whole is still kind of in the shadows of what's known.

 

[Leader of the Rockets]

It's funny how we use the term "stronger" when we are referring to the bottom here. Because while it means that they play more optimally and consistently, it also does mean that they play more predictably. I am far less scared of the bottom now. I remember when playing the top players years ago, they were always a lot easier for me to read than the bottom. The less skilled players were like crazy psychos who would just pull off some wildcard, unreadable moves that could really unsettle you sometimes when you were trying to climb the ladder. Their lack of what the optimal option was would sometimes play in their favor. This is still true to some extent. But it was more true then.

 

[Maris Bonibell]

Hiya, just wondering if any moltres fans (or theorists given the low tour usage) consider any different teambuilding for moltres in comparison to articuno

 

[Amaranth]

Hiya, just wondering if any moltres fans (or theorists given the low tour usage) consider any different teambuilding for moltres in comparison to articuno

Worse into Rhydon and worse into Zapdos at a time where 80% of your run of the mill mainers have a scout of 40% rhydon and 40% zapdos usage, no thanks. I consider myself a Moltres theorist, but I cannot see the argument at all into a majority of possible opponents. If we start seeing more Egg+Cloy together, or even just backzams/gars/anything else as opposed to zap/don, then Moltres will be back I reckon

Don't really think your builds change too much, one combo I like is Golem+Moltres as you can pretend that you aren't comically weak to rhydon/zapdos but honestly I don't think it's the right approach - I think you'd be better off just accepting you're unfavored there, and run solid structures (lead + big4 sort of stuff for ex) to make your MUs more solid everywhere else

 

[Eeveeto]

As I said one year ago or so, personally I don,t even consider Moltres to be the best Fire type. It uses 3 offensive moves... and all of them have below 100% Accuracy. Thats the definition of unreliable. On top of that its weak to Electric and Ice. The Ground immunity doesn,t matter much because all Mons with EQ have something to hit Moltres. Out of 12 OU Mons, the only 3 whose most common sets don,t have a super-effective move vs Moltres are Snorlax, Exeggutor and Alakazam and all 3 are capable of crippling the bird in other ways. If it at least was capable of OHKOing Egg from full, it might have been better, but 77,8 is the maximum damage.

Flareon is better. It has Body Slam (best RBY move even without STAB, though Flareon happens to have 130 Attack too) and doesn,t have the Electric and Ice weaknesses. It also has a stronger Hyper Beam and Quick Attack to finish some things. Flareon has a better match-up than Moltres vs the following Mons: Chansey, Starmie, Alakazam, Zapdos, Jynx, Gengar and Jolteon. Flareon doesn,t rely on hitting Fire Spin to kill Starmie and while it will still have a bad match-up vs it, at least it paralyzes it and can take several hits unless its Surf (the less common STAB) Starmie. Flareon has a 100% (minus misses) chance to OHKO a 50% HP Chansey with Hyper Beam, Moltres needs Chansey at 41% to do the same and it can,t wear it down with other physical moves (because it doesn,t have them), while Flareon can use Body Slam on the switch or 1vs1 if Chansey has been paralyzed. Flareon won,t be doing a sweep 10% of the time like Moltres does, but Flareon will do consistent damage in almost 100% of the battles if well used. Flareon has its all share of problems, it has low Speed, bad physical bulk and 4 slot syndrome (wants to have Fire Blast, Body Slam, Fire Spin, Hyper Beam and Quick Attack, but can only have 4 of them), but it learning Body Slam and not being weak to Thunderbolt, Ice Beam and Blizzard compensates all that.

Fire types are bad in RBY, all of them, there is no way around that fact. But between the mediocrity they are, Flareon for me is miles ahead of Moltres due to being far more reliable at dealing damage and taking it too.

A Flareon team, not perfect by any means, but has won some RBY Cup battles in the past: https://pokepast.es/42e26f3528968767

 

[Believer of GXE]

Does anyone have any good recommendations on what to do turn 0 for Jynx vs Tauros? Tauros leads typically have T-bolt an atypical amount of the time too I've noticed. I'll take advice from the standpoint of any team.

 

[violet river]

Does anyone have any good recommendations on what to do turn 0 for Jynx vs Tauros? Tauros leads typically have T-bolt an atypical amount of the time too I've noticed. I'll take advice from the standpoint of any team.

Well the options are either:
1 - Lovely Kiss
2 - Blizzard
3 - Switch out
3 seems misery to me, letting tauros walk all over you is exactly what the tauros wants.
2 is interesting - the damage on tauros is Super Relevant, and it risks tauros critting you sure, but landing a blizz on ros is just so good when jynx is a worse mon than ros. Afterwards you have to swap lax anyw, so its risking some luck and also you sack lax hp but I generally quite like this line, ESPECIALLY because ros lead teams want to sleepsack the ros some of the time anyways, it puts them in a super awkward midgame often i find. 48% jynx unpar is perfectly good at absorbing sleep from egg or singchans midgame anyw so if you get the good outcome its very good.
Lovely Kiss is just a generally safe click.
I like blizzard a lot, because it messes with what those teams want to do. It basically just depends on how tauros-resilient my team is. Blizz means you have to swap t2 into tauros anyw, so you better have a backmie or backcloy at least, not just lax.

 

[Believer of GXE]

Well the options are either:
1 - Lovely Kiss
2 - Blizzard
3 - Switch out
3 seems misery to me, letting tauros walk all over you is exactly what the tauros wants.
2 is interesting - the damage on tauros is Super Relevant, and it risks tauros critting you sure, but landing a blizz on ros is just so good when jynx is a worse mon than ros. Afterwards you have to swap lax anyw, so its risking some luck and also you sack lax hp but I generally quite like this line, ESPECIALLY because ros lead teams want to sleepsack the ros some of the time anyways, it puts them in a super awkward midgame often i find. 48% jynx unpar is perfectly good at absorbing sleep from egg or singchans midgame anyw so if you get the good outcome its very good.
Lovely Kiss is just a generally safe click.
I like blizzard a lot, because it messes with what those teams want to do. It basically just depends on how tauros-resilient my team is. Blizz means you have to swap t2 into tauros anyw, so you better have a backmie or backcloy at least, not just lax.

So I was thinking like lovely kiss 55%, blizzard %40% and swap maybe 5%?
I feel like because I have cloyster and golem, that I can find swapping more often than having a normal Snorlax here. Maybe swapping 20% even.
Maybe lovely kiss more than that, probably.

 

[pac]

Does anyone have any good recommendations on what to do turn 0 for Jynx vs Tauros? Tauros leads typically have T-bolt an atypical amount of the time too I've noticed. I'll take advice from the standpoint of any team.

lower the Defense EV a little and use Counter Jynx if you're a true gamer

 

[Believer of GXE]

lower the Defense EV a little and use Counter Jynx if you're a true gamer

I don't like running counter on Jynx for the 1% of the time it's a tauros lead im facing though. Its too rare of a thing to want to change the set for, I'm not even sure if them leading Tauros even favors them, because they won't have a Tauros for late game oftentimes.

 

[LHF]

I don't like running counter on Jynx for the 1% of the time it's a tauros lead im facing though. Its too rare of a thing to want to change the set for, I'm not even sure if them leading Tauros even favors them, because they won't have a Tauros for late game oftentimes.

Tauros is very capable of leading and applying pressure to a team in the early stages of an RBY OU match. Rest is an option in slot 4 to help it recover off stray damage it might take in the process, but also 4 atk as you know it can help do some major damage. Plus, just because you use Tauros as a lead does not mean it won't stick around to help potentially clean up the match later on.

 

[Thare Rain]

Tauros is very capable of leading and applying pressure to a team in the early stages of an RBY OU match. Rest is an option in slot 4 to help it recover off stray damage it might take in the process, but also 4 atk as you know it can help do some major damage. Plus, just because you use Tauros as a lead does not mean it won't stick around to help potentially clean up the match later on.

What attack would you give up on Tauros in order to have Rest? I'm interested on trying this out

 

[violet river]

What attack would you give up on Tauros in order to have Rest? I'm interested on trying this out

usually blizzard -> body slam + hbeam + eq hits everything fine enough, quake is strong enough to not be walled by rhydon, slam slam beam kills exeggutor and zapdos in the same amount of time as blizzards, etc.
body slam + hbeam + blizzard can cleave past rhydon more, but tauros walled by gengar is not desirable.

 

[Thare Rain]

usually blizzard -> body slam + hbeam + eq hits everything fine enough, quake is strong enough to not be walled by rhydon, slam slam beam kills exeggutor and zapdos in the same amount of time as blizzards, etc.
body slam + hbeam + blizzard can cleave past rhydon more, but tauros walled by gengar is not desirable.

Makes sense, I thought of maybe running Tbolt/Thunder as Tauros lead might make enemy Starmie/Cloyster to come in but that would require giving up Beam or not using Rest at all D:

 

[violet river]

Found this discussion you guys are having while I was lurking yesterday evening. IMO Rest Tauros is okay so long as you make sure to not allow the opponent to gain too much momentum off of your sleep turn; Tauros can struggle with status and it also has no other reliable recovery so I can see why people would want to run it but all three of Hyper Beam, Body Slam and Blizzard are too valuable to give up and depending on the state of the metagame I struggle to want to pass up on one of Earthquake or Thunderbolt either. It’s far from the worst option it can run but I do think it’s fairly limited in its utility on a Pokémon practically designed to give an offensive win condition to standard balance teams.

Holy nothing burger rest is ok if you do the good things and not the bad things
Blizzard is not too valuable to give up you needa play the game it only meaningfully changes your ability to brawl endgame reflax and rhydon(and rhydon SHOULD run anyway)

that being said, i agree that tauros moveslots are limited, but it's crazy to say blizzard is the undroppable one lol
"Allow the opponent to gain too much momentum" this needs to be rephrased heavily as "you can only rest on free turns" like whatre you supposed to do, just mind control them into not attacking your resting tauros lol

 

[LHF]

Makes sense, I thought of maybe running Tbolt/Thunder as Tauros lead might make enemy Starmie/Cloyster to come in but that would require giving up Beam or not using Rest at all D:

This is not necessarily a bad idea at all. Thunderbolt Tauros is very viable if you're trying to win in the later game with something that desperately wants Cloyster gone(think about something like Articuno). With Starmie, you would want to click Body Slam anyway as the para chance really helps other pokemon pressure it down the line.

Tauros Body Slam vs. Starmie: 102-120 (31.5 - 37.1%) -- 83.7% chance to 3HKO
Tauros Thunderbolt vs. Starmie: 110-130 (34 - 40.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

You lose a minor amount of damage in exchange for an extra 20% odds of paralyzing the Starmie, quartering its speed and potentially fully paralyzing it sometimes.

 

[violet river]

You don't need thunderbolt as tauros lead -> it is Rare that cloyster will be the primary reactive counterplay to tauros, and if it is, your whole team should be able to react to cloyster well, due to not being paralysed

 

[violet river]

So I was thinking like lovely kiss 55%, blizzard %40% and swap maybe 5%?
I feel like because I have cloyster and golem, that I can find swapping more often than having a normal Snorlax here. Maybe swapping 20% even.
Maybe lovely kiss more than that, probably.

Sorry i forgot to respond to this -> I feel like swapping is okay if you're very able to swap around tauros AND you don't have any other sleeper, and you're trying to evade the turn one crit, but I dunno I think you should just sleep t1 and if you get crit you call the opponent lucky and bad. Swapping lax t1 for example just to take damage and then let the opp go chansey and threaten counter sing etc with their unpar chansey just all feels kinda bad. I think blz is great if you can swap around tauros well, and kiss is good to try and evade having to dance around it(I'd kiss on JynxMieDon, and blizz on JynxMieCloy for ex). Maybe I undervalue swapping to try dodge the crit, because of how decent the odds are to just not get crit and sleep the ros(which I view as a fantastic outcome) but some of these teams really suck if you get crit and then a different mon gets slept anyways. It's just that swapping is also bad because your turn two play is also terrible

 

[Ortheore]

So I've been testing a triple Wrap team on ladder (after previously testing solo Dragonair and dual Dragons) and I need to vent because this archetype is incredible fucking garbage. Stacking up on awful Pokemon with common weaknesses makes a significant number of matchups absolute hell. But the real issue is that the fundamental premise of the team rests on spamming moves with absolutely terrible risk-reward ratio. A single miss is likely to mean you're crippled with paralysis or lose well over half your HP. Meanwhile if you land Wrap? A typical bulky pokemon used to sponge Wrap is likely taking 12ish% from a single Wrap usage (varies significantly ofc, I used Bel vs Egg as a sample here).

This means you need to roll the dice on these inaccurate moves several times over to match what they're likely to achieve if you miss once. When you start looking at the odds for landing high volumes of Wraps over the course of a match it gets pretty bad. Extreme dependence on RNG is a crucial flaw of this team structure, meaning that although they technically can work, doing so is the exception rather than the rule. A solid recipe for severe tilt imo

If you search for tournament performances this year featuring Dragonair (the hallmark of these sorts of teams), it's absolutely bleak. Based on the replay archive, it's been brought 10 or 11 times to notable tournaments (replay thread shows Dair's usage in the invitation as 5, but the spreadsheet only has 4 uses recorded?). The only game these teams won was a victory piloted by Eledyr, where they didn't click Wrap once. There are some counter-arguments to be made here for sure. It's a small sample size, with a degree of bias (3 Dragonair usages were by Enigami in the invitational, where they seem to have been fairly aggressively counter-teamed), and not all teams used the triple-Wrap structure (including a ToxWrap appearance from Kaz). But there's just nothing good to point to here. I haven't looked for any 2024 replays though, so there is that.

Also if you're interested, I made a spreadsheet for calculating the likelihood of KOing a given Pokemon with Wrap without missing. May not be useful, but I was curious. Link below, lmk if I made a mistake or you think I should tweak it to make it better
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VDRmXtQow66d6mG_deOAD2UBTLQLMlL9CDWq99Hgelk/edit?usp=sharing

Also if you reckon that this is a skill issue, I'm open to tips lol. Here's my current team.

 

[Eeveeto]

^No comments about Wrap general viability, just think that both Arbok and Lickitung are better as third wrapper than Dragonair. The EQ access helps vs Gengar and SD makes Lickitung a win condition without sometimes neededing to click Wrap.