OU RBY OU Discussion Thread

[Allen "Bottles" Graham]

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

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" Graham]

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.

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)