OU RBY OU Discussion Thread

[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.

Click to collapse...

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:

Click to collapse...

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.

Click to collapse...

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.

 

[Allen Bottles]

Hey yall, I'm a VGC player that's been getting more seriously into Smogon, mainly RBY OU. I have a question, hope it isn't a repeat but I didn't find this anywhere else. I have a skill issue I must eradicate.

What are the "roles" in a team in RBY? For example, I know that in VGC you want a speed controller (Tailwind, Trick Room), support (redirector/healer/etc), lead attackers, and so on. I'm familiar with Lax and Chansey being two of the main tanks, Tauros being best attacker, Egg and Gen are sleepers, etc. Is there a role compendium for RBY or are the roles each Mon can fill a bit more flexible here?

This is the team I have been running for reference.

My Team

Clefable is not a Chansey replacement btw, I just like using Clefable

 

[Ortheore]

Hey yall, I'm a VGC player that's been getting more seriously into Smogon, mainly RBY OU. I have a question, hope it isn't a repeat but I didn't find this anywhere else. I have a skill issue I must eradicate.

What are the "roles" in a team in RBY? For example, I know that in VGC you want a speed controller (Tailwind, Trick Room), support (redirector/healer/etc), lead attackers, and so on. I'm familiar with Lax and Chansey being two of the main tanks, Tauros being best attacker, Egg and Gen are sleepers, etc. Is there a role compendium for RBY or are the roles each Mon can fill a bit more flexible here?

This is the team I have been running for reference.

My Team

View attachment 789494
Clefable is not a Chansey replacement btw, I just like using Clefable

Click to collapse...

Short answer is there's not really a role compendium and you're right in that pokemon are generally flexible in the roles they fill. Starmie's a good example, since in your team you're clearly using it as a key defensive cog (or so I assume based on your team), but it can often be a lead, and other teams might lean more towards using it as a sweeper. Also Lax is generally the tier's best wallbreaker, but it can just as easily be a wall in its own right (as you're clearly aware), and certain sets can even act as win cons. Roles can also vary battle to battle too.

Unfortunately I don't think there's much of a solution other than continuing to build experience. Idk if you keep notes on your teams but maybe keeping notes on how you should use certain pokemon or respond to certain scenarios might be a good idea? Not sure if that's specifically going to help here, but it's something I tend to do (it also feels very redundant in later gens where every mon serves a clear purpose, which I think highlights the different dynamics)

Also for someone just getting into the tier I think that's a decent team, you've clearly done some solid research/testing.

 

[Allen Bottles]

Short answer is there's not really a role compendium and you're right in that pokemon are generally flexible in the roles they fill. Starmie's a good example, since in your team you're clearly using it as a key defensive cog (or so I assume based on your team), but it can often be a lead, and other teams might lean more towards using it as a sweeper. Also Lax is generally the tier's best wallbreaker, but it can just as easily be a wall in its own right (as you're clearly aware), and certain sets can even act as win cons. Roles can also vary battle to battle too.

Unfortunately I don't think there's much of a solution other than continuing to build experience. Idk if you keep notes on your teams but maybe keeping notes on how you should use certain pokemon or respond to certain scenarios might be a good idea? Not sure if that's specifically going to help here, but it's something I tend to do (it also feels very redundant in later gens where every mon serves a clear purpose, which I think highlights the different dynamics)

Also for someone just getting into the tier I think that's a decent team, you've clearly done some solid research/testing.

Click to collapse...

Thanks man, I did indeed do my research and made adjustments to that team over the course of bout 70 games on ladder. I actually really like the idea of note taking, might pick me up a lil Old Gen journal for my desk today lmao.

I suppose the next step is making more teams and trying a bunch of stuff on ladder.

 

[Amaranth]

In modern generations there are just a lot more "things to do", which creates roles. In RBY, there are basically only 3 real things you can do: spread status, make offensive progress, or wall an enemy from making progress.

Spreading status is fairly elementary - broadly speaking, Sleep is very powerful and Paralysis is also quite good.
Making offensive progress and walling enemies is all relative: you're good at it depending on how you match up with enemy pokemon.

So it's a bit useless to think of it in terms of stable roles: sometimes your Zapdos is queueing into a Rhydon/Golem and its role is... at best luring them on the field so that you can double on them, or just being sacked for tempo. Sometimes it's queueing into Jolteon and then it's usually best to use it to push Paralysis on it so that your other pokemon can pressure the Jolteon more (since they match up with it so much better). Sometimes it's queueing into none of these things and it can be a nasty wallbreaker, or an agility sweeper even. But both of these things are essentially just "this pokemon beats the enemy pokemon 1 on 1 and nothing else switches on it for free, so it gets a concrete advantage".

Even other RBY tiers tend to have slightly more elaborate roles - Amnesia and Swords Dance users are much more viable across the board, so the concept of a Sweeper (ie. something that doesn't naturally beat things 1 on 1, but can with a free turn or two) is relevant. None of those are really much good in OU beyond the occasional Slowbro.
So understanding a game of RBY does not go through "roles" in the ways newer generations do. It's all about parsing the matrix of how each of your 6 pokemon matches up to the enemy 6 - identifying which pokemon will make the most progress most reliably, which ones you need to hold back because they're your only answer to something on the enemy team etc.
You can build some heuristics for that - generally Tauros is good to save for later because it has a great match up spread into most pokemon in the tier and can finish things off with his high speed and Hyper Beam, while Chansey is hard to displace and therefore good at early game status spread, and Snorlax is great but slow, so he thrives as soon as paralysis support is in place to flip a few of his match ups from "loses because slower" to "wins because faster".
But these are loose concepts that will not be true every game. Mastery of RBY is built by understanding how the greater picture changes based on different pokemon, different moves etc. from game to game. And of course, doing all of this through the fog of no information on the enemy team on turn 0.

In summary: no there are no "roles" in RBY OU the way you have them in modern singles generations, and especially not in the way you have them in Doubles formats where entire playstyle-defining moves exist (speed control, fake out etc)

 

[Allen Bottles]

In modern generations there are just a lot more "things to do", which creates roles. In RBY, there are basically only 3 real things you can do: spread status, make offensive progress, or wall an enemy from making progress.

Spreading status is fairly elementary - broadly speaking, Sleep is very powerful and Paralysis is also quite good.
Making offensive progress and walling enemies is all relative: you're good at it depending on how you match up with enemy pokemon.

So it's a bit useless to think of it in terms of stable roles: sometimes your Zapdos is queueing into a Rhydon/Golem and its role is... at best luring them on the field so that you can double on them, or just being sacked for tempo. Sometimes it's queueing into Jolteon and then it's usually best to use it to push Paralysis on it so that your other pokemon can pressure the Jolteon more (since they match up with it so much better). Sometimes it's queueing into none of these things and it can be a nasty wallbreaker, or an agility sweeper even. But both of these things are essentially just "this pokemon beats the enemy pokemon 1 on 1 and nothing else switches on it for free, so it gets a concrete advantage".

Even other RBY tiers tend to have slightly more elaborate roles - Amnesia and Swords Dance users are much more viable across the board, so the concept of a Sweeper (ie. something that doesn't naturally beat things 1 on 1, but can with a free turn or two) is relevant. None of those are really much good in OU beyond the occasional Slowbro.
So understanding a game of RBY does not go through "roles" in the ways newer generations do. It's all about parsing the matrix of how each of your 6 pokemon matches up to the enemy 6 - identifying which pokemon will make the most progress most reliably, which ones you need to hold back because they're your only answer to something on the enemy team etc.
You can build some heuristics for that - generally Tauros is good to save for later because it has a great match up spread into most pokemon in the tier and can finish things off with his high speed and Hyper Beam, while Chansey is hard to displace and therefore good at early game status spread, and Snorlax is great but slow, so he thrives as soon as paralysis support is in place to flip a few of his match ups from "loses because slower" to "wins because faster".
But these are loose concepts that will not be true every game. Mastery of RBY is built by understanding how the greater picture changes based on different pokemon, different moves etc. from game to game. And of course, doing all of this through the fog of no information on the enemy team on turn 0.

In summary: no there are no "roles" in RBY OU the way you have them in modern singles generations, and especially not in the way you have them in Doubles formats where entire playstyle-defining moves exist (speed control, fake out etc)

Click to collapse...

RBY is so based

 

[Enigami]

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.

Click to collapse...

I haven't used Triple Wrap in a while, but I think it was stronger in the past than now. Tauros/Snorlax/Chansey/Exeggutor used to be pretty much mandatory, which generally meant you only really needed to paralyze the lead with your lead and you might be in a position where all you need to do is paralyze the Tauros with one of your wrappers and be in a very strong position with 2-3 wrappers outspeeding their whole team. Now people are a lot more comfortable playing even Chanseyless or Laxless teams, which often means even more Pokemon your wrappers have to trade paralysis with. Still, with what you're touching on, that's one reason I've been playing super heavy wrap spams (5 wrappers) when I do play Wrap. If you catch a team with few faster Pokemon and a lead that doesn't switch out on turn 1, you'll have plenty of backup wrappers to take over when one chokes and overwhelm the opponent. I'd like to do something about the bad 2025 wrap showing going into 2026 but I don't think opponents are just going to load in wrap-weak teams against me anymore.

Hopefully you can convince them wrap is bad and that they shouldn't bother worrying about counter-teaming it ;)

 

[Leader of the Rockets]

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.

Click to collapse...

I usually switch out. There are no good options. They are starting off with the momentum, and have simply gotten the upper hand on you, but switching is the safest option.

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.

Click to collapse...

I don't agree with much of this. Tauros is good at crits. I really don't think Blizzard damage is worth it. I mean, Tauros is really dangerous no matter what his health. I don't think giving up the momentum is worth it. Lovely Kiss is obviously an option but man... if you're playing for consistency, this really wouldn't be my go to. I mean, everything you said is true, just with the caveat that it is all inconsistent. You're going to lose more games than you should if these are your go to options. These options can work, they just will absolutely fail you more than you'd like them to if you're playing for consistency.

 

[violet river]

So after thinking about it, Lovely kiss is winning, blizzard is losing, and swapping is losing,

Blizzard turn 0 on Jynx is losing because of the difference in crit rate vs Tauros.
Swapping turn 0 is losing because the Tauros player who is leading with it, will often have counters to the things that counter it, and its exactly what the Tauros player wants. Swapping is what happens if Jynx misses anyways, it's a back up option.
Lovely kiss is still landing more often than Jynx getting crit is though. The math for it is: Tauros crits 21%
So 100-21=79%
Additionally for paralysis calculation: 30% of 79% is 24%,25% of 24% is 6%.(Chance of FP)
79-6=73%
73% of the time my Jynx has a chance to use lovely kiss so 75% of 73 is 54%.(Chance lovely kiss lands successfully)

So 21% of the time is very bad for Jynx(Jynx faints)
54% of the time it's very bad for tauros(sleep lands on Tauros)

I'll take that trade as Jynx, it's very risk heavy on both sides, but Jynx is getting a positive scenario about 2.5to1ratio.

Click to collapse...

Jynx blizzard landing on tauros is a good outcome because tauros hp is significantly more valuable than jynx hp. A 48% hp jynx can sleepblock exeggutor/chansey, and still get a sleep off -> a 55% hp tauros is significantly crippled

 

[violet river]

I usually switch out. There are no good options. They are starting off with the momentum, and have simply gotten the upper hand on you, but switching is the safest option.

I don't agree with much of this. Tauros is good at crits. I really don't think Blizzard damage is worth it. I mean, Tauros is really dangerous no matter what his health. I don't think giving up the momentum is worth it. Lovely Kiss is obviously an option but man... if you're playing for consistency, this really wouldn't be my go to. I mean, everything you said is true, just with the caveat that it is all inconsistent. You're going to lose more games than you should if these are your go to options. These options can work, they just will absolutely fail you more than you'd like them to if you're playing for consistency.

Click to collapse...

Something important to me is that a chipped tauros gets mauled in the 1v1 by the enemy tauros -> after a blizzard, tauros is in range of 2x slam. Enemy tauros doesn't even have to hyper beam to beat you. Ros being low hp makes it way less threatening because of how it now loses 1v1 to enemy Ros

 

[Leader of the Rockets]

One thing that I have noticed in my years playing this game is that many players do not value Jynx's life when playing. Idk why this is, but I've seen it a lot, and I'm seeing it now in this thread. Guys... Tauros is trying to take a pokemon slot from you, and you guys are just trying to sleep him. You're playing for completely different rewards, and one is playing for a much better reward. For whatever reason, you guys are not weighing that properly. Risking your Jynx dying, and by consequence allowing your opponent to sleep another one of your pokes instead, is not worth it considering Tauros' crit rate, paralyzsis rate, and lovely kiss's miss rate. Most of the time, absolutely switch.

 

[Amaranth]

Is sleep worth 91.3% of a KO philosophically? I think that it is near that....idk if it is exactly, but it's got to be close. For instance sleep isn't only half as good as a KO....its a bit more.

Click to collapse...

1/7 times (14.3%) Tauros wakes up instantly. 28.6% within two turns. Sleep is very obviously not 100% of a KO, not even 91%, in any scenario where the sleeping player can make any attempt to wake up.

Leader of the Rockets is spot on basically.

 

[Leader of the Rockets]

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)

Click to collapse...

*sigh* Haven't added to this in a while, but I have been playing a bit lately and one thing I have learned is that we haven't made a lot of great teams. I don't like most teams I play with. Most teams are like the Don team. You play some games with it, and you think, "Man, this team really feels solid; I'm unstoppable if I play right." And then you play a game where you lose, and you rewatch the replay and it's like... there just wasn't much I could have done differently here, and it's depressing. Obviously, no matter what team you use, you're going to have losses like that. But the lower down the team tier list you go, the more losses you will have like that. Most "good" teams in this game are B tier. Very very few A tier teams. I need more A tier teams.

 

[Leader of the Rockets]

More random thoughts: Dr. Obvious alert, but back Starmie is so good. Just the most amazing pokemon to have during the late game. So powerful.

Lapras, when there is no Chansey on the field, is so consistently devastating. I used to be a hater, but now I love Lapras. Chanseyless has powered her up, both in giving her favorable opposition and by giving her better teams to be on. Takes planning for sure. Definitely not a pokemon you can just throw out and be effective with, but man, don't listen to the haters Lapras. You're at least just as good as you were pre-2014.

Everyone knows Jynx is good. She is so popular. But Jynx is reaaallyy good. Reaaalllly good. When I'm not using her I really miss her. She is probably a bit better than we all think and we already think shes really good. More accurately put, she allows really great team composition. Her biggest strength.

 

[Leader of the Rockets]

PS. I made an alt, Techno Rock, a couple days ago to mainly experiment with Flareon and Kabutops. I came to the conclusion that Flareon sucks and is NOT better than Moltres, and Kabutops is OK, which is a big deal if you were under the impression he flat out sucks. Sword dance plus hyper beam is a legit late game threat. I usually used him late game. Dk if mid game Kabutops is good, and I'm sick of him so I'm not testing it >:(

Completeley unrelated to that, a few minutes ago I just so happen to play a game in which I was able to demonstrate switching Jynx out of normals.
Turn 1 I switch out from Persian, and turn 13 I switch out from Tauros (That's right. I switch out twice!), and guess what? Nothing bad happens. In fact, I win because of it. Soooooooooo........ Switch out!

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen1ou-2496132717-rfbox83y5jvlnbh2smwy9flu7w7i6qipw

 

[bdt2002]

:rb/starmie: :rb/cloyster:

Let’s see if can make my next post here more intelligent than my admittedly worthless post I put here last time. Nothing wrong with poking fun at myself, no? In all seriousness, though, I’m wondering what the community thinks of Water-Types in the current metagame. My own recent rise in opinion on Zapdos has me re-examining these two in particular since Lapras seems to have largely fallen out of the upper echelons of the tier and Slowbro similarly isn’t seen as a true-blue OU Pokémon at this time. On one hand, I can see an argument for Starmie placing as high as third on someone’s VR but realistically I do think fourth place is best for it, and Cloyster… I’m just going to say it, at least in my inexperience with the long-term metagame trends, this thing can matchup super well into so many things if you position it well.

Starmie and Cloyster both bring to the table something that I think is either mandatory or close to it on every serious RBY team- an Ice resist. (Cloyster especially since it’s quad-resistant and Freeze immune for good measure.) Ice Beam and Blizzard are only resisted by Water and opposing Ice-Types in this generation and between those two types and their own natural synergy, Water has the better benefits outside of the Ice-Type head-to-head. Starmie I believe is the fastest Water-Type in RBY and also has Psychic typing which comes with its own benefits allowing for some move flexibility on the standard Recover + Thunder Wave set, and Cloyster, while lower ranked for most players due to its own flaws, I do want to learn more about if, and how much, defensive synergy this might have with Starmie and how good Cloyster actually is as its own Pokémon beyond just being “that bulky Water that can use Clamp and try to soft check Snorlax with the threat of Explosion”.

I figured making a more structured, hopefully educated post like this instead of… whatever I was smoking last time would be more beneficial to this thread and to me as a player. Starmie and Cloyster are two of my favorite Pokémon to use in this generation and with Water being one of my favorite Types in the series as is, I’m very interested in learning how I can team build with these two, because at least on paper, Starmie and Cloyster feel like they should have at least some synergy together on some kind of Double Water build (one fast special threat and one physical wall). Alas, we all know that something that sounds good on paper might not always work in practice, but that just motivates me to want to learn and play this tier more.

I do apologize for the length of this post, by the way. I promise this is the last section. While I’m on the subject of Starmie, one of the biggest things I’m running into in my inexperience is how I should handle my own Starmie in the “paralysis meta”, so to speak- Thunder Waves are basically everywhere in RBY including from opposing Starmie, and I’ve heard arguments in favor of and against using Starmie as a sleep blocker. On one hand, a paralyzed Starmie seems to be less viable at helping check Tauros, but I’ve also heard it said paralyzing Starmie and also Alakazam can help against sleep moves, albeit not nearly to the extent a paralyzed Chansey is capable of against special attackers. I guess what I’m trying to ask is, should I have to make the decision in the moment, is it more or less worth it to try and keep my Starmie healthy or to let it sleep block? (And by extension freeze block if you’re into that sort of thing)

 

[Leader of the Rockets]

:rb/starmie: :rb/cloyster:

Let’s see if can make my next post here more intelligent than my admittedly worthless post I put here last time. Nothing wrong with poking fun at myself, no? In all seriousness, though, I’m wondering what the community thinks of Water-Types in the current metagame. My own recent rise in opinion on Zapdos has me re-examining these two in particular since Lapras seems to have largely fallen out of the upper echelons of the tier and Slowbro similarly isn’t seen as a true-blue OU Pokémon at this time. On one hand, I can see an argument for Starmie placing as high as third on someone’s VR but realistically I do think fourth place is best for it, and Cloyster… I’m just going to say it, at least in my inexperience with the long-term metagame trends, this thing can matchup super well into so many things if you position it well.

Starmie and Cloyster both bring to the table something that I think is either mandatory or close to it on every serious RBY team- an Ice resist. (Cloyster especially since it’s quad-resistant and Freeze immune for good measure.) Ice Beam and Blizzard are only resisted by Water and opposing Ice-Types in this generation and between those two types and their own natural synergy, Water has the better benefits outside of the Ice-Type head-to-head. Starmie I believe is the fastest Water-Type in RBY and also has Psychic typing which comes with its own benefits allowing for some move flexibility on the standard Recover + Thunder Wave set, and Cloyster, while lower ranked for most players due to its own flaws, I do want to learn more about if, and how much, defensive synergy this might have with Starmie and how good Cloyster actually is as its own Pokémon beyond just being “that bulky Water that can use Clamp and try to soft check Snorlax with the threat of Explosion”.

I figured making a more structured, hopefully educated post like this instead of… whatever I was smoking last time would be more beneficial to this thread and to me as a player. Starmie and Cloyster are two of my favorite Pokémon to use in this generation and with Water being one of my favorite Types in the series as is, I’m very interested in learning how I can team build with these two, because at least on paper, Starmie and Cloyster feel like they should have at least some synergy together on some kind of Double Water build (one fast special threat and one physical wall). Alas, we all know that something that sounds good on paper might not always work in practice, but that just motivates me to want to learn and play this tier more.

I do apologize for the length of this post, by the way. I promise this is the last section. While I’m on the subject of Starmie, one of the biggest things I’m running into in my inexperience is how I should handle my own Starmie in the “paralysis meta”, so to speak- Thunder Waves are basically everywhere in RBY including from opposing Starmie, and I’ve heard arguments in favor of and against using Starmie as a sleep blocker. On one hand, a paralyzed Starmie seems to be less viable at helping check Tauros, but I’ve also heard it said paralyzing Starmie and also Alakazam can help against sleep moves, albeit not nearly to the extent a paralyzed Chansey is capable of against special attackers. I guess what I’m trying to ask is, should I have to make the decision in the moment, is it more or less worth it to try and keep my Starmie healthy or to let it sleep block? (And by extension freeze block if you’re into that sort of thing)

Click to collapse...

If you see up a little higher, as of now on my team ranking tier list, the highest ranking team so far has both of these pokemon on it. So, these two go great together. Whether or not you should let Starmie be put to sleep depends upon the team. Rule of thumb is if you are using lead Starmie, let it be put to sleep, but if using back Starmie, usually not (again, depends on the team). Back Starmie is usually best saved for as long as possible. It's endurance, speed, thunderwave, and high crit chance make it a great late game pokemon just by virtue of the fact that the later the game goes on, the less options your opponent has to defend against Starmie's power. So, the longer the game goes on, the more Starmie is powering up.

And Cloyster is great thanks to explosion. All his other tools are really good. Blizzard, Clamp, rest/double edge/hyper beam. But when you couple this already great tool set with explosion, it just puts him from good to great. Because he can cause a lot of damage without explosion, even take out other pokes, but then he has explosion just sitting there for another easy kill. Explosion is just a really good move in general that the majority of pokes are susceptible to.

 

[Leader of the Rockets]

Even more random thoughts/rant:

As someone who has topped the ladder with multiple lead Jolteon teams, I finally feel comfortable saying this. Lead Jolteon is not good. In any scenario in which you would use lead Jolteon, you should just use lead Zapdos instead. What does lead Jolteon even do? Scare away Starmie? Who cares. WHoooooo cares. Back Jolteon is sooooooo much better than lead Jolteon. It just doesn't make sense to use lead Jolteon when that disparity exists. Like.. back Jolteon is so much better. After using lead Raichu for a quite a bit, I feel comfortable saying that even lead Raichu has more of a niche than lead Jolteon, because grounds can't switch into him and he hits Chansey harder. "Ohhhhh, but pin missle!!! Jolteon can use pin missle against Egg!" WHOOOOOO CCaaaaarrrreeess. You rarely get the kill. No one cares. Lead Jolteon sucks. There is never a good reason to use lead Jolteon, and it should be retired from being a lead. Thanks for listening

Alakazam is... a timid lead. He'll obviously always have a place as a lead. But it always seems like Alakazam leads are trying to avoid playing the opening game. Like he's nervous. Like, "Uhhhh, ummmm, what do I do? Uhhhhh, well, heh heh, thunderwave is always good right?" But you know what... the opening game can be silly sometimes, so a little timidity and mediocre conistency maybe isn't so bad some times.

 

[DarkSorcerer1313]

:rb/starmie: :rb/cloyster:

Let’s see if can make my next post here more intelligent than my admittedly worthless post I put here last time. Nothing wrong with poking fun at myself, no? In all seriousness, though, I’m wondering what the community thinks of Water-Types in the current metagame. My own recent rise in opinion on Zapdos has me re-examining these two in particular since Lapras seems to have largely fallen out of the upper echelons of the tier and Slowbro similarly isn’t seen as a true-blue OU Pokémon at this time. On one hand, I can see an argument for Starmie placing as high as third on someone’s VR but realistically I do think fourth place is best for it, and Cloyster… I’m just going to say it, at least in my inexperience with the long-term metagame trends, this thing can matchup super well into so many things if you position it well.

Starmie and Cloyster both bring to the table something that I think is either mandatory or close to it on every serious RBY team- an Ice resist. (Cloyster especially since it’s quad-resistant and Freeze immune for good measure.) Ice Beam and Blizzard are only resisted by Water and opposing Ice-Types in this generation and between those two types and their own natural synergy, Water has the better benefits outside of the Ice-Type head-to-head. Starmie I believe is the fastest Water-Type in RBY and also has Psychic typing which comes with its own benefits allowing for some move flexibility on the standard Recover + Thunder Wave set, and Cloyster, while lower ranked for most players due to its own flaws, I do want to learn more about if, and how much, defensive synergy this might have with Starmie and how good Cloyster actually is as its own Pokémon beyond just being “that bulky Water that can use Clamp and try to soft check Snorlax with the threat of Explosion”.

I figured making a more structured, hopefully educated post like this instead of… whatever I was smoking last time would be more beneficial to this thread and to me as a player. Starmie and Cloyster are two of my favorite Pokémon to use in this generation and with Water being one of my favorite Types in the series as is, I’m very interested in learning how I can team build with these two, because at least on paper, Starmie and Cloyster feel like they should have at least some synergy together on some kind of Double Water build (one fast special threat and one physical wall). Alas, we all know that something that sounds good on paper might not always work in practice, but that just motivates me to want to learn and play this tier more.

I do apologize for the length of this post, by the way. I promise this is the last section. While I’m on the subject of Starmie, one of the biggest things I’m running into in my inexperience is how I should handle my own Starmie in the “paralysis meta”, so to speak- Thunder Waves are basically everywhere in RBY including from opposing Starmie, and I’ve heard arguments in favor of and against using Starmie as a sleep blocker. On one hand, a paralyzed Starmie seems to be less viable at helping check Tauros, but I’ve also heard it said paralyzing Starmie and also Alakazam can help against sleep moves, albeit not nearly to the extent a paralyzed Chansey is capable of against special attackers. I guess what I’m trying to ask is, should I have to make the decision in the moment, is it more or less worth it to try and keep my Starmie healthy or to let it sleep block? (And by extension freeze block if you’re into that sort of thing)

Click to collapse...

As LotR said, the value of healthy Mie or sleep blocker Mie depends of the team, but i guess healthy Mie is more worth in general, because it can be a very important and powerful mon as late game approaches and is capital to defeat the majority of compositions of Cless teams, the actual trend of OU.

Albeit i don't have much experience in MieCloy teams, i think they synergize well in the scenario of healthy Mie, due to Cloyster relieving physical attackers such as Tauros, allowing these teams to keep Mie healthy until late game.
(sorry for bad english)

 

[dangerk1d]

In any scenario in which you would use lead Jolteon, you should just use lead Zapdos instead. What does lead Jolteon even do?

Click to collapse...

I like jolteon because it performs better into jynx/gar, but there's also that question of; if the electrics are inconsistent/difficult to sleepsack anyway, why not go for zap and just get a better reward? You're probably looking for a good matchup anyway, so you might as well get a better payoff if you're using something less consistent.

I think for me, the main reason I find myself wanting to use jolt lead is if I'm already using back zam. I still want the good lead matchups into gar/jynx, and in that case I think jolt makes sense if my intention is to rip twave t1.