OU RBY OU Discussion Thread

Enigami

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This thread is for discussing competitive RBY OU. Discuss metagame trends, analyze and critique gameplay, share teams, and more. This serves as the general hub for all things RBY OU.


Rules
  • Posts must center around competitive RBY OU.
    • For discussing more casual or fun strategies in RBY OU, see here.
    • For discussing lower or other tiers, see here.
    • For asking simple questions about RBY OU, go here.
  • Ensure your posts are grammatically coherent, contribute to the discussion at hand, and aren't simple one-liners. Don't double post unless there's a significant amount of time inbetween.
  • Standard Clauses / Mods
    • Desync Clause Mod: Desyncs changed to move failure.
    • Sleep Clause Mod: Limit one foe put to sleep
    • Freeze Clause Mod: Limit one foe frozen
    • Species Clause: Limit one of each Pokémon
    • OHKO Clause: OHKO moves are banned
    • Evasion Moves Clause: Evasion moves are banned
    • Endless Battle Clause: Forcing endless battles is banned
    • HP Percentage Mod: HP is shown in percentages
  • Banned Moves
    • Dig, Double Team, Fissure, Fly, Guillotine, Horn Drill, Minimize
  • Banned Pokemon
    • Mew, Mewtwo
 

Amaranth

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The new wave is clicking ice moves until your opponent sends Snorlax, going Gengar on it for sleep, and playing the game from there. You delay your own sleep by just icespamming and letting them do whatever they want, but you get significant frz chances which is easily worth it overall. Obviously has its counters but I've been having tons of success with it lately

I have a feeling we are approaching a relatively solved state with regards to sleep, it will take a revolution the same size of the "we don't twave t1 anymore" shift to do anything about the situation. And I'm just not sure if I see it happening, I don't think waking up will ever be viable counterplay to sleep because the sleep length odds just seem way too bad, you will lose routinely due to 6-turners if you try that, and I don't really see anything else that will stop rushing to sleep ASAP from being the best play. Perhaps some brand of crack hyperoff can hope for something by keeping constant pressure on Chansey/Exeggutor but outside of that I just don't see it, and even those would still need plans into Jynx and Gengar. I suppose there's also the possibility of builds that can handle themselves 5v6 and try to use the paralysis lead to gain the full pokemon back, but I dunno, that seems very inconsistent too.

The tier has plenty of life still, a lot of top players quit transitioning into this no twave meta shift so it's not been explored as deep as it could have been. But it definitely feels like there is much less space left to explore than there was in 2018, which in some ways is a good thing, in other ways it makes it difficult to keep updating my builder. SPL will be fun.
 

Hipmonlee

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Depending on builds, I generally feel that two paralysed pokemon for a sleep is a reasonably balanced trade.

Especially if youre using hypnosis. With 60% accuracy, youre getting on average 2.4 turns of sleep per click of hypnosis. Comparing that with a click of thunderwave and its not completely a no brainer which one is better than the other.

I really like twave spam at the moment.

I would note the one issue I have with it is when you twave early and get frozen. But a paralysed pokemon takes 9 turns to have a better than 50% chance of freezing you. And the difference between being totally screwed and just almost certainly screwed after a t1 freeze probably isnt really worth splitting hairs over.
 

Amaranth

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Especially if youre using hypnosis. With 60% accuracy, youre getting on average 2.4 turns of sleep per click of hypnosis. Comparing that with a click of thunderwave and its not completely a no brainer which one is better than the other.
Nah but it's not just the simple math, for multiple reasons. One is that Gengar can find turns where Hypnosis has extremely low opportunity cost (very easy vs EQless lax, and even vs EQlax people will often switch it out from Hypnosis rather than risk getting Lax slept), so it can get loads of chances to fish for it. Two is that "2.4 turns of sleep on average" looks unimpressive in theory, but in practice any time you roll 3+ you're giving away half your team to Tauros, so the opportunity cost of trying to roll that 2.4 average is ridiculously high. You can't look at this game and try to quantify stuff like this, judging the opportunity cost of each move is going to be always more based on approximation and feel than hard math. We're not engines.

I'm interested in seeing if twave spam can make a resurgence, don't get me wrong. I can see a world in which paraspam wins games again in the future, but since the opportunity cost for sleep is so low and the upside is so big, if I had to put money on it, I would say that it's more likely that pure paraspam (T1 TWave and all) doesn't make a significant comeback at the top level ever again. Happy to be proven wrong, there are a lot of Slowbro and Slowbro-adjacent setup threats from the lower ranks that could turn out to really work in these sorts of playstyles for example.
 

Hipmonlee

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When you say that "You can't look at this game and try to quantify stuff like this" I think that is very much the wrong way to look at something like this. You can, and should. And I think that's precisely what you've done, you just came to a different conclusion to me.

However, you do need to be accurate about it, and you're right that 2.4 figure is kinda misleading. I thought about going into more detail, but I didnt think it was so misleading as to undermine my point. The point is its easy to overestimate the value of sleep, and its easy to underestimate the value of paralysis.

I think that t1 Thunder Wave is always going to be around. Even setting aside scenarios like a Victreebel in back or something, paralysis is just too good to not take opportunities to spread it. A paralysed Starmie or Alakazam is always at risk of dying against basically anything. They cannot stay in against your lead psychic after taking a twave unless they are willing to click twave themselves. And by playing that way they would be giving up a big advantage. Paralysed Chansey is much more annoying, but its not invincible, and you obviously cant just always switch to Chansey t1.
 

Amaranth

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When you say that "You can't look at this game and try to quantify stuff like this" I think that is very much the wrong way to look at something like this. You can, and should. And I think that's precisely what you've done, you just came to a different conclusion to me.
I have not quantified anything lol. I don't assign numbers to plays. I can compare two plays without needing to assign a number to each one. Is that really so wild and so wrong? How come I win any games if quantifying plays is fundamental and the only right way to do things? Come on now.

However, you do need to be accurate about it, and you're right that 2.4 figure is kinda misleading. I thought about going into more detail, but I didnt think it was so misleading as to undermine my point. The point is its easy to overestimate the value of sleep, and its easy to underestimate the value of paralysis.

I think that t1 Thunder Wave is always going to be around. Even setting aside scenarios like a Victreebel in back or something, paralysis is just too good to not take opportunities to spread it. A paralysed Starmie or Alakazam is always at risk of dying against basically anything. They cannot stay in against your lead psychic after taking a twave unless they are willing to click twave themselves. And by playing that way they would be giving up a big advantage. Paralysed Chansey is much more annoying, but its not invincible, and you obviously cant just always switch to Chansey t1.
T1 TWave is hardly around at all right now man. I see it pretty rarely and when it does it gets frequently exploited. You can't risk giving up a full pokemon on turn 1 by hitting twave into a potential Sing Chansey for the advantage of "maybe if he stays his starmie will get lucked 70 turns from now", the upsides of sleep are so much more concrete than the upsides of paralysis. People can't always Chansey T1, but in a situation where one player is either Blizzarding or going Chansey, and the opponent is either TWaving or going Exeggutor, I'd much rather be on the side with odds to go an entire pokemon up two turns into the game than the one who gets slight tempo leads for a correct prediction. The punish against T1 Chansey in mie/zam lead mirrors is both risky and relatively weak.

And that's not to say that paralyzing a Starmie or Alakazam isn't valuable, it's pretty strong in fact, but it's not a game-winner in itself and the drawbacks in trying to land it T1 far outweigh the positives across all matchups I think. You can always get your sleep first and try to twave em later if they're not asleep already. Essentially it just boils down to the concept that getting your sleep blocked by paralysis is way more impactful than getting your paralysis blocked by sleep.

If the opportunity cost to sleep was particularly big I'd be more inclined to agree with you, but it's just so fucking easy to drop tbolt on Chansey or fit Exeggutor or Gengar on any team and make it work with little effort. When it's so easy and so good it's just... why not?
 

Hipmonlee

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I think we were talking past each other regarding quantification. I kinda thought you meant there was no point in working out the expected return of a move. Mostly because I didnt assign numbers to plays. And I also didnt say that you cant win without doing that, it kinda feels like youre arguing with someone else here.

Some things to consider:
- Zam has about a 25% chance to get two special drops on a par Chansey before it successfully sings Zam. The worst case scenario here is not necessarily all that bad.
- Along with that there is a cost to carrying sing on Chansey. You only get one out of tbolt, twave and counter. It will be considerably weaker against Lax.
- Also if it's ice only it obviously blows against any ice type, and if its toss only it sucks against Rhydon. It's your choice to wave t1, you can build your team accordingly.
- If Chan is sleep blocking Eggy or Gengar you can just explode on it. Even on a single sleeper team sacing Eggy to take out Chan can easily be worth it if you have strong enough special threats.
- If your sleeper isnt Chansey, then against wave Zam it isnt that easy to get your sleeper in. Like, the standard play would be to go Chan to take the par then Eggy on the Psychic, but obviously Eggy gets paralysed, which is again good for Lax or Rhydon. And again, its not unheard of for Zam to just take out Eggy without taking the sleep. You also get the bonus chance to crit the psychic as it comes in for free.
- Ironically, one of the most dangerous lines for Twave t1 with Zam is for your opponent to twave you back. Chansey has its weaknesses as a sleep blocker, but its definitely better at it than Alakazam is.
- Starmie is definitely weaker in the t1 paralysis lines, but its still an option you should consider. With a t1 switch to Chan against Starmie on turn 2 Chan can freely, twave, tbolt, icebeam or sing. So there isnt really a safe play there, except I guess go to Zam to absorb it. Generally I like to have Psychic on Starmie for that turn. Mostly because it stops Chan from just icebeaming. But Starmie's Psychic is not the same as Alakazams. Basically when you do this it should be because you have something special in mind. I wouldn't just throw this out mindlessly.
 

Amaranth

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Some things to consider:
- Zam has about a 25% chance to get two special drops on a par Chansey before it successfully sings Zam. The worst case scenario here is not necessarily all that bad.
Cool, then what? You can also get a twave on another pokemon, which is nice, but you're still committing to never getting sleep while your opponent gets sleep. That's still bad. Your Zam needs to go real super saiyan and escape sleep altogether to get anything out of that situation.

- Along with that there is a cost to carrying sing on Chansey. You only get one out of tbolt, twave and counter. It will be considerably weaker against Lax.
- Also if it's ice only it obviously blows against any ice type, and if its toss only it sucks against Rhydon. It's your choice to wave t1, you can build your team accordingly.
Of course, but it's not a big sacrifice to make all things considered. The big weakness of Sing Chansey is the Jynx match up (unless you're not monoice Chansey, but then your set sucks and you're sad for other reasons), nothing to do with turn 1 twavers. It's not any weaker against Lax than standard boltbeam Chansey, given that you still have a slot for either twave or counter.
Almost all of the fills in traditional T1 twave teams aren't any good at punishing monobeam chansey - dropping tbolt for sing is only worse against Lapras/Cloyster (which still hate getting twaved), Articuno (which you still beat), and Starmie (which still doesn't break you and you're more likely to freeze it before it does anything threatening to Chansey; also it doesn't like twave either). The ONLY pokemon that really benefits from tboltless Chanseys is Slowbro. Hence his playrate last SPL.
The opportunity cost is very small. I've ran toxic in that slot in less serious teams, you really dont need the 4th move for anything crucial if your first three are soft+ibeam+twave.

- If Chan is sleep blocking Eggy or Gengar you can just explode on it. Even on a single sleeper team sacing Eggy to take out Chan can easily be worth it if you have strong enough special threats.
Oh yeah? Then you have an exploded pokemon and a slept pokemon vs 5 healthy pokemon. You're just going a full mon down. That's not good and not easily worth it. If you don't think this scenario is a problem I don't know what to tell you, you pretty much can't do any better out of the opening than a full pokemon lead w/ no significant luck involved.

- If your sleeper isnt Chansey, then against wave Zam it isnt that easy to get your sleeper in. Like, the standard play would be to go Chan to take the par then Eggy on the Psychic, but obviously Eggy gets paralysed, which is again good for Lax or Rhydon. And again, its not unheard of for Zam to just take out Eggy without taking the sleep. You also get the bonus chance to crit the psychic as it comes in for free.
Sure yeah, Eggy t1 on Zam can be risky, and it's the reason I much prefer Sing Chansey teams to old "big4" structures with lame ass Exeggutor. Eggy t1 a play you make to catch T1 Chansey while not being dead lost against T1 twave, it's not a play you make to counter T1 twave. I would never bring standard Eggy teams against someone who twaves turn 1.

- Ironically, one of the most dangerous lines for Twave t1 with Zam is for your opponent to twave you back. Chansey has its weaknesses as a sleep blocker, but its definitely better at it than Alakazam is.
The most dangerous line is hard Chansey on twave, full stop, nothing comes close. Remove that and then yeah no shit we go back to 2016 meta. Sing Chansey T1 is the sole reason we've moved on from turn 1 twave mirrors.

- Starmie is definitely weaker in the t1 paralysis lines, but its still an option you should consider. With a t1 switch to Chan against Starmie on turn 2 Chan can freely, twave, tbolt, icebeam or sing. So there isnt really a safe play there, except I guess go to Zam to absorb it. Generally I like to have Psychic on Starmie for that turn. Mostly because it stops Chan from just icebeaming. But Starmie's Psychic is not the same as Alakazams. Basically when you do this it should be because you have something special in mind. I wouldn't just throw this out mindlessly.
Starmie has even less odds of going super saiyan than Alakazam, yeah. It doesn't really do anything great for you if you're planning to twave t1. Not sure what this point is trying to argue.
 
I do think Sleep should be seen almost as damning as freeze, essentially killing a pokemon for free. In a way Sleep can be a mixed bag where sometimes you are gonna wake up but on the flipside you often see players wasting tempo in the hope that pokemon will wake up and no longer be dead weight. The biggest use of a sleep sponge actually is that none of your other pokemon can get slept. It can't really be compared to even two pokemon being Twaved and I think even playing vs. a Rhydon team, I'd rather have the two Paralysed Pokemon than one slept pokemon. This is especially the case because most of the time when you have 1 pokemon slept, it doesn't really block Paralysis since you want to keep your sleep fodder alive so another pokemon doesn't get slept so you end up with 1 pokemon slept and another paralysed anyways.

I had a look at SPL XII and Sleep moves and asked the question, if a pokemon is put to sleep by Sing/Sleep Powder/Hypnosis, does it actually get off a move for the rest of the battle? This is really just the first two weeks of play since I couldn't be bothered to go into more replays. This number might not be 100% accurate I was skimming through these as there was a lot of gameplay footage:

33/44 times a Pokemon was slept it stayed asleep didn't get an attack off for the rest of the battle or 75% of the time.

Of the times there was a wake:

- Tiba got Tauros slept with 3 turn wake vs. last attack of opposing tauros where won a speed tie and got 1 slam off
- Sadisticnarwhal's Jynx woke up vs. Paralysed Starmie 5 turn wake however only lovely kissed once into paralysed mie and died
- Spies Starmie woke up turn 3 actually got some usage such as a twave but the battle unfortunately was already over by this point.
- Troller got a T1 wake vs. Jynx with Tauros, Nails also got a wake with starmie in a after being slept in a chansey vs. starmie war late on in the battle but it was already over by then
- Trollers Jynx 1st turn woke in a Jynx vs. Jynx war only to get instantly reslept by Metalgross without accomplishing anything
- Trollers Alakazam wakes in Game 3 after 2 turns asleep and puts in a lot of work
- SMB wakes T1 with Jynx vs. Jynx, gets off 1 blizzard and put back to sleep again
- Kaladins Alakazam wakes in the late game after being slept by Jynx and brings its home
- Tibas Lapras first turn waked vs. Chansey Sing, missed a Sing and then got slept, woke up later in the battle and helped check a Bro

Included in the 75% statistic are the following:

There were 2 occasions where pokemon fainted on the turn they woke up. There was 1 occasion where a pokemon woke up but was immediately switched out and the battle ended before that pokemon got to make an attack.

Now granted this is very little data from a quite lazy layman so take it as you will. Sleep has been extremely strong for quite a long time, I'd say from watching the footage that only in 4 cases out of the 44 times pokemon got slept in the first two weeks in SPL did the pokemon not only wake up but actually had a decent impact in the battle or about 9%, though obviously this is up to interpretation. A lot of the times the wakes happened when they did it was too late on into the battle or they ended up not even doing anything.
 
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Serpi

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I think it's fine to have t1 twave in mind as an option that people could start doing again. Personally, I very rarely pick a t1 option that is weak to a sing chansey switch and it's the same for most top players so logically, t1 sing chansey switches should decline and dedicated t1 twave teams could show up again. It's difficult to work Victreebel currently vs Gengars and back Zams but the power of twaving Mie t1 when they have Mie/Egg/Don while you have Vic is still there and it could work atm.

Generally I'll always choose a starting line that might get me freeze/sleep over one that might get me a good para or two, just because freeze and sleep give me a hard advantage that I can try to manage and defend while early paralysis gives me (at best) the opportunity to get advantage with aggressive plays if paralyzing that specific mon was really good for my gameplan. You'd think that the saying "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" would apply to twaving instead of using an inaccurate sleep move or Ice Beam, but for me it is the other way around. Even if the twave play works out for you in the moment, you will have to apply more pressure or the natural course of the match will lead to your opponent blocking status all game long and landing sleep, a potential freeze or maybe a counter when you get desperate with lax.
 

Amaranth

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I think it's fine to have t1 twave in mind as an option that people could start doing again. Personally, I very rarely pick a t1 option that is weak to a sing chansey switch and it's the same for most top players so logically, t1 sing chansey switches should decline and dedicated t1 twave teams could show up again.
My problem with this is that the counterplay to early Sing Chansey is just not very strong. People are already switching Eggy (or sometimes even Jynx) on Chansey T1 a fair amount, and they're already trying to hit a couple Ice moves into it before the Sing lands, and it definitely makes the strategy less dominant, but it's still completely fine for the Sing Chansey player even when that happens - freeze luck is the only way to really gain an inch on them even when you know it's coming. When people need to run Jynx, a pokemon that has held a ~40% tournament winrate for years, to try and gain an edge on Sing Chansey, that's when you know it's really strong.

One of the best and most underexplored answers is double sleepers with t1 twave, maybe that is something I can see working. When you have a backup sleeper to actually help you break through the first sleep block it makes a lot more sense. Maybe that's a direction teams could take in the future, I'll have to play around with it
 
I do think Sleep should be seen almost as damning as freeze, essentially killing a pokemon for free
Pretty much this. Id go so far to say that Sleep is even stronger just because of the fact that you have a 75% chance with Sleep Powder to remove one Pokemon from the game. 55% for Sing if we look at a unparalyzed Chansey. With freeze moves its just the 10% that you might or might not get in a single game plus you need to consider that you can block freeze with ice Pokemon like Cloyster and Jynx. In the meta before Sing chansey players had the opportunity to block sleep with their paralyzed lead Pokemon which is rarely the case anymore.

I think the only logical consequence is to follow what did happen in Generation 5 and also ban Sleep from RBY
 
i dont think sleep is ban worthy. I mean , it's not only because it's strong that you have to ban it. You ban it because it's strong and unhealthy for the meta.
In my opinion sleep stabilize rby ou meta and then it's fine.

and to answer amaranth , para spam can be played.
wrap spam / Persian:fishlax;tauros / vicdon/ don;persian;tauros
all of this could be cool with

yes in fact sleep is better in 90% of the ways but you can play it.it's cool to counter some players
 

Hipmonlee

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Some quick points I dont have too much time.
Cool, then what? You can also get a twave on another pokemon, which is nice, but you're still committing to never getting sleep while your opponent gets sleep. That's still bad. Your Zam needs to go real super saiyan and escape sleep altogether to get anything out of that situation.
So, if youre happy to switch out on 1 special drop. I have it that Alakazam cripples the chansey about 12% of the time (that is, lowers its special then kills it before it is able to softboiled to above 600 hp, in practice the Chansey would probably switch out, but it will definitely be in a bad state), forces the chansey to switch about 25% of the time and gets slept around 63%. If you wait for the second special drop, then the odds that Chansey gets back to above 600 are actually terrible.

33/44 times a Pokemon was slept it stayed asleep didn't get an attack off for the rest of the battle or 75% of the time.
Could you break these down by wins/losses? Its just that if you have a pokemon put to sleep and dont need it to win, it is a bit misleading to count that the same as a pokemon which you did your utmost to try to wake it, but failed.
 

phoopes

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I can't tell if banning sleep is a serious suggestion or not because it seems really outlandish to me. But let me assume that it is. How does "ban sleep from RBY" work? Are you suggesting banning it from OU only? Or from all formats? Because IMO as primarily a UU player it's not broken down there, mostly due I think to prevalence of Wrap and being able to burn sleep turns by taking minimal chip damage from that. I haven't kept up with the OU meta much in the past couple of years so I can't really speak on that, but if you're suggesting banning it from all formats I'm thinking slow your roll there.
 
I can't tell if banning sleep is a serious suggestion or not because it seems really outlandish to me. But let me assume that it is. How does "ban sleep from RBY" work? Are you suggesting banning it from OU only? Or from all formats? Because IMO as primarily a UU player it's not broken down there, mostly due I think to prevalence of Wrap and being able to burn sleep turns by taking minimal chip damage from that. I haven't kept up with the OU meta much in the past couple of years so I can't really speak on that, but if you're suggesting banning it from all formats I'm thinking slow your roll there.
I know you wont like it but: Ban it from UU as well. One less possibility for Dragonite to set up. Anyway this is the OU thread and not UU or NU
 

Enigami

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Crazy idea, but one that just might work if players feel early Sleep and/or Freeze becomes too much of a problem: Allow Paralysis prestatus in RBY. This would guarantee a status blocker from turn 1, forcing the early game away from fishing for early pseudo OHKOs and instead breaking through the opponent's status blockers, while Sleep moves and playing for freezes in the mid-late game would be preserved.

Additionally, it could make Freeze Clause feasible to remove, eliminating one of the very few "mods" from RBY OU.
 
Could you break these down by wins/losses? Its just that if you have a pokemon put to sleep and dont need it to win, it is a bit misleading to count that the same as a pokemon which you did your utmost to try to wake it, but failed.
I want to clarify that I wasn't suggesting sleep was banworthy or anything, RBY is a jank mess that I enjoy and I just want to bring some interesting stuff to the conversation.

If I have a bit more time later this week I'll do some more indepth statistics on it with a larger sample size and I'll try include some sort of winrate. I think it may be difficult to get a good picture considering multiple sleeps within the same match and the most common line to be a trade of sleeps.

To answer your second part, it's hard to really quantify whether a pokemon is necessary for a win or not since this often changes throughout the game and for the most part (asides from Jynx), I'd say your typical slept pokemon are just generally useful to have in every game. I suspect quite common is the scenario where both players have a starmie/alakazam asleep very early on in the game but there is enough of a backbone to have a competitive 5v5 match until one side gets the short end of the stick and you see more desperate plays being made by the losing side. When you are 5v5, waking up a slept Pokemon seems far less of an advantage than waking up when you both only have 3 Pokemon and one of your Pokemon is asleep. Also I think there is generally a difference between waking early on in the game vs. later on in the game due to the lesser amount of status spread around your team or the opposing sleepers may still be alive and able to sleep again regardless of if you live/die trying to wake. Its an interesting quandary regardless.
 

Enigami

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Gotta say, I am not enjoying the modern trends of playing for freezes in the opening part of the game at all. In my observation, way too often the result of a player gambling for a freeze T1-T2 pays off and suddenly the other side is 5-6 purely due to dumb luck. It feels little different than if we had OHKO moves unbanned and lead Fissure Dugtrios were running around gambling for cheesy OHKOs. And while OHKOs hitting are more likely than freezes, Pokemon like Jynx or Starmie can often easily afford to throw out random ice moves early on to fish for a free kill while something like Dugtrio is threatened enough that it maybe gets one or two opportunities to gamble for OHKOs before it dies.

While some amount of hax is accepted as a part of RBY, the optimal opening strategy literally being to hope you hax your opponent is extremely uncompetitive. While there is counterplay, the only reliable counterplay to cheesy Starmie freeze/Jynx sleep+freeze openings is to run non-lead Jynx. I think something has to be done, because I should not be playing RBY and having far more fun and feel like there's more actual strategy involved in every tier I play that isn't OU. (Edit: I've seen elsewhere people thought I was trying to claim UU is less variant than OU. Just to clarify, UU is one of the only RBY tiers I don't play, so I don't know how that compares with OU)
 
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I guess a creative option would be to force lead Starmie out on t1, for example by leading with Jolteon. You could pair lead Jolteon with Eggy so that you have a GSI to a possible Rhydon that wants to block Thunderbolt.

And in a different situation where the opponent opens with Jynx - for opposing Jynx you can indeed have your own Jynx in the back that comes in on a Blizzard and then you can try to sleep something yourself.
 

Enigami

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Lead Jolteon only stops freeze-fishing Starmie, not Jynx. There are leads that beat either freeze-fishing Starmie or Jynx, but not both. And I've already covered non lead Jynx, but being forced to run non lead Jynx just to avoid dealing with cheap shots should not be the solution.
 

Texas Cloverleaf

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Crazy idea, but one that just might work if players feel early Sleep and/or Freeze becomes too much of a problem: Allow Paralysis prestatus in RBY. This would guarantee a status blocker from turn 1, forcing the early game away from fishing for early pseudo OHKOs and instead breaking through the opponent's status blockers, while Sleep moves and playing for freezes in the mid-late game would be preserved.

Additionally, it could make Freeze Clause feasible to remove, eliminating one of the very few "mods" from RBY OU.
Intriguing, tell me more
 
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I believe that a predefined status modification as described in the concept would be unnatural. It would feel too much like a 'pet' mod, too much of a departure from cartridge mechanics, rather than something you'd see in an official format. But of course the concept could be tested as an OM, and if the community really likes it, it could be voted on.
 

Amaranth

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I believe that a predefined status modification as described in the concept would be unnatural. It would feel too much like a 'pet' mod, too much of a departure from cartridge mechanics, rather than something you'd see in an official format. But of course the concept could be tested as an OM, and if the community really likes it, it could be voted on.
FYI prestatus is perfectly allowed in cartridge. Currently RBY plays under Cleric Clause, which forces both players to fully heal their teams before battling, but there is no such limitation on cartridge and you could show up with prestatused pokemon if not for us agreeing not to. The cleric auto-healing your team before battle was only introduced in gen 2 (maybe 3).
 
Okay, I did not consider that Cleric Clause, but my feeling about the prestatus concept remains the same. In addition the idea was brought up in 2016 and the consensus was that it would be fun as an alternative meta but not as part of the official format.
 
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