Lower Tiers RBY Sub-Zero Used Discussion + Resources

[gastlies]

You can exclusively load only the top 10 until the end of time and never be punished for it, B ranks are good counterpicks into one-dimensional scouts (like nidorino into my scout LMAO), C ranks I don't really use/see the point of in the tier

Slash is just so stupidly powerful and is such a free click. You also own Ivysaur which is on nearly every team as well giving u a very good entry point, you also don't care about burn since slash crits. Main issue is speed + blizzbolt weakness but slash's raw power more than compensates

This guy is a demon once tortle goes down it's actually crazy, ur so strong into common backmons like marowak farf fires and agility makes u very hard to revenge. I was spamming the shit out of this throughout RBYOMPL and it always put in the work, easily still a top-tier mon.

Overrated - Hard to stack water-weaks in the tier bc Horsea is a demon and u wanna run farf already which is horsea weak. Best used as leads since they own ivy lead but I find back fires hard to justify in general. Even then they don't have an awesome mu spread in lead like Charm is p bad into bok for example

Fuck this mon because it counters my teamstyle so well but that means I'm grateful it's in the tier in an ironic way. It's good for tiers to have "assholes" where if you spam the good teams the mon just counters you hard and Nidorino is the asshole of this tier cuz farf + waterspam is the best teamstyle and Nidorino absolutely dumpsters it. After Zpice owned me with this week 3 I had to constantly respect the threat of it in builder/battle, so even though I never used it myself it was always something I had to watch out for, which is why I rank it highly.

Not a huge fan of the mon but if ur running it please use Blizzard

This mon is complete ass and I genuinely don't see a reason to use it over Pikachu. If someone comes up with a genuine reason to use Clefairy over Pikachu please let me know but for now I will call it ass.

Very low on this mon bc its best into firespammers but waterspam is a much more effective way to kill firespammers so I feel this mon doesn't rlly have a place, maybe if someone is firespammer AND arbokspammer its good

 

[ButtGallon]

Tortle is the best mon in the tier, Ivy #1 truthers are wrong. You really need tortle as a reactive answer to charmeleon/horsea/ponyta/opposing tortles, and can answer marowak after a death or on a double, and ivy/farf in the right circumstances. Unless you want to go dumpster diving for shit like Seel and Shellder, tortle is the only defensive water game in town, and is far and away the best defensive piece in the tier. Ivy is still great too, but you can play sleepless and not particularly notice it, whereas not having tortle to pivot into charm/opposing tortles is absolutely something you're going to feel while playing.

These are the big midgame tradmons of SU— hit everything pretty hard and doesn't get one shot by anything. They've each got their different checks and I don't think any of them strictly outclass the others. Farf is probably the best, and slash hits most things the hardest of these three, but its speed tier means without setting up it's getting outsped by all the other trademons outside of lickitung, and its bulk isn't great. I've seen a lot of charmeleon slander recently, and while it's definitely got a vulnerability to wartortle and marowak, reactively it doesn't really lose that hard to either of them, and charm is the best mon to get in after landing a sleep powder. If you really want to play the 1v1, after switching in on an fblast, wartortle takes 75% before killing charm, and a lot of the time that's worth it. Arbok is more focused on being bulky than damage dealing, and EQ/rock slide means it's favored against charm/ponyta/pikachu/nidorino/golbat, and even farf in a 1v1. It does invite marowak in bigly though, only dealing 20% with EQ and taking 80% from marowak's EQ in return.

I used to hate using this thing because it folds like a cheap suit into wartortle/ivysaur/horsea, but it hits like an absolute truck, and can find entry points on arbok, farf, and pikachu, who are quite common mons. It also pairs well with paraspreading from stuff like arbok/pika/bodyslam. Once wak can outspeed something, it's not particularly scared of it, and it's doing 40% to Ivysaur and Wartortle on entry.

Endgame demon if an opponent plays too cavalier with wartortle. Forcing a midgame trade or a lot of damage on tortle isn't terribly hard to do with something like charmeleon, farf, or your own tortle, and horsea with an agility up goes kind of crazy. Bad into pika/wartortle/lickitung, great into pretty much everything else. If an opposing wartortle has more than 20% health though, horsea is unrevealable. Rest tortle shuts horsea down completely, and every team has one (though not every team runs rest)

The 90 base speed mid/endgame mons, they all do roughly the same thing— revenge something and then either sweep, or die to/get scared out by whatever comes in next. The only one with any defensive profile is golbat, finding entry on EQs and ivysaur, and acting as a diet farfetch'd with more bulk and the ability to beat rhyhorn/kabuto with mega drain instead of instantly fumbling tempo into them. Pika/pony both spec into fighting different things. Both able to chunk marowak/farf, but pony is better into lastmon ivy/pika, and pika is better into lastmon horsea/wartortle. Meowth hits everything pretty hard, but usually not as hard as you'd like, missing out on a lot of important 2hkos and being 2hko'd in return by most of the tier.

Super bulky, super slow, but wins a 1v1 against pretty much the entire tier. It doesn't really have a defensive profile outside of like coming in on pikachu and maybe arbok, but it can break pretty much anything you need it to if you can get it in safely. Btw don't use swords dance on this thing, use slam/beam/EQ/bliz, and maybe tbolt or surf if you really want better matchups into tortle/fires respectively.

Diglett lead is fake, back diglett is only mostly fake. Being literally the fastest thing in the tier is great for revenging if an opponent likes preserving low health mons, but it's just not as consistent as the 90 base speed mons. Fumbles into wartortle, ivysaur, horsea, farfetch'd, golbat, lickitung, marowak, like... why not just run a fastmon that's got a decent matchup spread like golbat/meowth?

gastlies the reason to use clefairy over pika would be for the early arbok matchup. Gets 4hko'd by EQ so it can come in and threaten twave earlygame without fumbling into either an ivysaur or a marowak switch the way pika does. Also 2hkos maro with bliz and doesn't get 2hko'd by EQ in return. It's worse than pika overall, but it's less switch-inable when a lot of mons are healthy, and better coverage than pika means less stuff wants to switch into a twave and get chunked next turn.

Dedicated answers to farf/charmeleon spammers, but holy moly do they crumble into a lot of the tier. Anything with a water or grass type attack instantly destroys both of these, (which is half of the top 10 mons in the tier), and even things like lickitung/marowak can chunk them crazy hard. Kabuto is better into marowak spammers but worse into arbok, and vice versa for rhyhorn.