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)

 

[Allen "Bottles" Graham]

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

[Believer of GXE]

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.

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.

 

[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.

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

 

[Believer of GXE]

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

Yeah, but I have to weigh losing Jynx and playing the game out 5vs6 21% of the time, The positive of blizzard freezing is negated by missing. So then the only thing left is to compare crit chance, speed tiers, and also if crit is true, Tauros gets the 1hko and Jynx doesn't.
Lastly is there a chance the Tauros player can switch? And no there isn't, because they aren't going to swap out into a lovely kiss. So it makes blizzard for the purpose of that they sometimes swap is then also a moot point too.
That makes blizzard not good here.
Or rather, the relative forward progress of your opponent will supercede your own relative progress, because it still has positive outcomes, but I think they are outweighed significantly, because If I do the math for this:
Tauros crits and 1hko Jynx=21% 100-21=79
Jynx uses blizzard 79% of the time.
Blizzard misses 10%. 10% of 79 is 7.9, rounded to 8. 79-8=71
71% of the time Jynx gets to land a blizzard
From here, 14% of the time Jynx crits and does 90%, 10% are freezes, and 47% of the time will be an average hit of 45% dmg.
So:
A. 21% Jynx gets crit and ko'd
B. 6% Jynx is full para'd and didn't move
C. 47% Jynx lands a blizzard doing 45%
D. 8% Jynx misses
E. 7% Jynx freezes tauros
F. 14% Jynx crits and does 90%
(24% of the time Jynx is paralyzed by body slam)

So scenerios A,B,D are bad for Jynx, but I guess it isn't that bad.

Compared to lovely kiss though:
A.21% Jynx gets crit and ko'd
B. 6% Jynx is full para'd and can't move
C. 54% Jynx lands lovely kiss
(24% of the time Jynx is paralyzed by body slam)

So the 'A's and 'B's of each blizzard and lovely kiss cancel each other, so that's 27% similar, but there's still 73% that isn't.

Comparing item "C" on each option is crucial.

C. 54% Jynx lands lovely kiss vs Tauros
C. 47% Jynx lands blizzard for 45% dmg
also +14% of the time Jynx crits for 90%

So I'm comparing 54% of the time sleeping Tauros vs 61% of the time doing damage, and then what though? Tauros gets to double hit the Jynx player if they go for blizzard way to often, because it's not only turn 0, but the lovely kiss option sets up a great play for turn 1. While blizzard sets for a disaster on turn 1. If Jynx lands lovely kiss on turn 0, it sets up for damage on turn 1. Meanwhile if Jynx uses blizzard, which is already somewhat bad for turn 0, but that's not the bad part, it's on turn 1 after taking a body slam from Tauros, then what? Its such a big difference that if isn't close.

Switching out if compared is also losing because turn 0 will always result in damage and there is a devastating information disadvantage of not knowing the Tauros sets. There's nothing to swap to...maybe Gengar+Zapdos could thwart Tauros leads somewhat well.

Realistically the cards play themselves I think, the Tauros player is forced into body slamming, and the Jynx player is forced into lovely kiss, by game theory.
So who wins in the end Tauros or jynx?
Well for Tauros:
A. 21% crits and KOs jynx
B. 19% Jynx misses lovely kiss
C. 54% Jynx lands lovely kiss
D. 6% Jynx is paralyzed and can't move
That means it's a positive outcome for Tauros 21+19+6 for a total of 46% of the time.

The Jynx player will land lovely kiss 54% of the time so it's positive for the Jynx player more often 54%Jynx 46%Tauros for favorable turn 0 outcome, very volatile opening for both indeed.

Also...it sets the Tauros player for a late game with sleeping Tauros often, which means the sleep means it's closer to a KO than a sleep on let's say Alakazam, Starmie or Jynx (things that are normally sleep sacked have a greater chance of waking up). So it becomes akin to a 95% KO instead of a 85% KO. (Comparing the relative difference in sleeping pokes for both sides wake up odds) I predict Tauros will wake up at like 5% of the time maybe compared to maybe 10-15% for standard sleep sacks.

Also calculating it like "Jynx is still useful at 48% and Tauros is better to do damage on, although justifiable, calculating this out further isn't too hard though....if Jynx does indeed use blizzard, the Tauros player will mode 55%, the Jynx player will mode 45%, the Tauros player on turn 1 then gets to freely hit whatever Jynx player swaps to, than the Jynx player is at the information disadvantage of the century because even after taking damage twice, the moveset isn't known, which is...more damage.

Jynx using blizzard is super losing.

In short: Jynx using lovely kiss is somewhat winning though.

 

[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.

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