OU SPL IX RBY Metagame Observations

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Hipmonlee

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So to prep for WCoP this year I started going through the logs from the SPL and taking notes on the current state of the metagame and what I could expect to be facing. I got up to about round 6 before I got bored and started really half-assing it. On the whole I was massively impressed. The quality of RBY played at Smogon has never been better than it is now. Which is annoying for me because it makes it very hard for me to just drop in every couple of years and beat everyone. Although on the other hand I do get to enjoy watching Roudolf's replays.

But I had a few thoughts on things, and now I am out of the tournament I figured I might as well share them.

There were I guess three big things that I want to go over. There's a lot of little things, but these were the most fundamental ones.

1. Surf Starmie is awesome.
Have you ever been in the situation where you start an RBY game and you send out your Starmie and your opponents sends out their Alakazam. You have Psychic and Blizzard so on turn 2 you choose Psychic but then after that you dont get to attack again before your opponent forces you to switch? Because this is kinda how I expect Psychic + Blizzard Starmie to go against an SToss Alakazam.

The problem is that when you are paralysed you can FP on the turns you try to recover. Basically for a recover war, whatever your goal is (whether it is to kill the opposing pokemon outright or to reduce its health so you can switch in something dangerous on a recover) you have a huge advantage if you are doing more damage per turn (as health percentage) than your opponent. You're more likely to force them to recover first and the more time they spend recovering the less time you spend recovering. Paralysis has a compounding effect on your damage per turn.

So the key here is that average damage from a Surf Starmie to an Alakazam is around 35% when you factor in CHes. So on average it 3hkos and 2hkos with a CH. From my experience I'd say Surf Starmie has at least a 70% chance of getting the better of an Alakazam in that scenario. Plus Starmie is just much harder to pressure with a switch in if you do lose.

Now, Surf Starmie obviously has some downsides. What I am really advocating for is including Surf Starmie as part of your rotation. And to move Psychic Blizzard Starmie to like the bottom of your rotation (honestly I dont think that is a very good set at all).

Some things to consider:
* Eggy can only beat Surf Starmie if it has Mega Drain (or by sleeping it). Adding Mega Drain Eggy to your rotation will probably become a good idea if Surf Starmie catches on. And when that starts happening, your Alakazams are going to be a lot happier.
* Surf + Blizzard is a reasonable combination. I am unsure if I have ever seen anyone but me ever use it, but I really like it. Try not to expose your set too early.
* OHKOing Rhydon and not missing its substitutes is very helpful.
* Surf + Tbolt gives you 48 pp of attacks. Same amount of total PP as Alakazam or SToss + Reflect Chansey.

Having said all of that, there is another option that people seemed to be starting to catch on to at the end of SPL, but was sadly absent before then: just switching to Chansey. Its damage per turn advantage is absolutely enormous. Obviously you lose the security of having Chansey as a Lax switch in, but if your goal is winning the initial recover war, then this is definitely a strong option.

And to complete the circle here, here is another big advantage of Surf Starmie: it is pretty likely to paralyse Chansey. So if you are planning on doing a lot of damage with Snorlax, Surf Starmie is probably gonna be a big help to your team.

2.You guys rely on Snorlax too much.
The biggest loser with the Body Slam mechanic change is definitely Snorlax. Well, maybe Tauros but Tauros was already so far ahead of everything it can take a bit of a hit.. Now I do love Snorlax, there may have even been a time when I considered it more valuable than Tauros (I was wrong). But it isnt the only pokemon. Lots of things can switch into a 50% health Alakazam/Starmie/Chansey and mess people up. Zapdos, Slowbro, Cloyster, Lapras, Clefable, Rhydon, Dragonite, Victreebel etc. can all do that job. And Snorlax without Hyper Beam really sucks against Cloyster. Cloyster seems really great in this metagame, use it more.

But there are two particularly bad ways this exhibits. The first is you use Snorlax in situations where it would be perfectly safe to use Tauros. If there's a sleeping Pokemon out and you want to switch in a normal type to exploit that, then the correct normal type to use is Tauros. Pretty much every single time. Get your Tauros into games, it will win them for you. Too often I see you guys go to Snorlax in this situation and just get chased away by a Chansey. It is a massive squandered opportunity.

The second is sometimes you will play your asses off to bring in a Snorlax when you know your opponent has a Reflect Chansey and then just switch back to whatever Pokemon you were using at the start of this exchange when it comes out. I was tearing my hair out in SPL watching this happen over and over again. Snorlax works great initially because Chansey coming in vs Lax gives you an easy switch to a sleep user (ideally on the turn Chan reflects). But once you have slept something, you need to either paralyse that Chansey or use something other than Snorlax (or plan to actually fight Unpar Chansey with Snorlax). Or you really are just giving your opponent a chance to take the initiative off you.
Some options:
* Explode with Lax against Chansey.
* Explode with Eggy against whatever the thing that is absorbing your paralysis is then paralyse Chansey.
* Threaten to explode with Eggy against that par absorber, lure out Rhydon or a sleeper and switch in Tauros.
* Use Ice Beam Lax and freeze the Chansey (note: if Chansey isnt frozen on the first turn then it will probably win freeze wars against Lax).

3. Some of you are far too passive.
This is a bit harder to explain. But basically you dont often win RBY games with Chansey. Chansey is there to let your Snorlax or Tauros or Alakazam or Starmie or whatever do the real work of winning the game.

A lot of you seem so afraid of risking any damage to your Tauros (or Rhydon/Zapdos/whatever else) that you get almost no value out of it. You just seem happy to play out PP wars that really offer neither player any advantage. I love PP wars because they give so many opportunities to do things. Its also one of the reasons I like to use Rhydon a lot, its great at exploiting Pokemon with a lot of Thunder Waves to burn through. The times when PP wasting something with the goal of actually running it completely out of PP (rather than just reducing its number of attacks enough that it is afraid to use them) are pretty few and far between, and you will definitely know it when they happen. You would almost always be better off sneaking your Tauros in and trying to kill things with Crits and FPs. Paralysed Tauros will still mess shit up if you give it a chance.

But the real threat comes if people know you are going to be passive, and might start using crap like Victreebel against you. Victreebel is a very scary pokemon that cant really switch into anything at all (except obviously Surf Starmie). But if you are constantly switching back to Chansey its pretty tempting.. I think Persian is another classic example I have seen a few times. I pretty much never consider using Persian previously, but at the moment, it really looks tempting.

Then finally, I have all these notes. Id be happy to share them, but they need to be sanitised/edited a bit - they were intended for my personal use. And theres too many of them for me to do them all. So I thought I would ask if anyone has any specific games they would like me to give my notes on I could probably clean those up. Or if you have any specific games not from SPL I can probably give notes on those too.
 

Heroic Troller

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Hello, this thread is interesting, i will reply on bold to make it easier

1. Surf Starmie is awesome.
So the key here is that average damage from a Surf Starmie to an Alakazam is around 35% when you factor in CHes. So on average it 3hkos and 2hkos with a CH. From my experience I'd say Surf Starmie has at least a 70% chance of getting the better of an Alakazam in that scenario. Plus Starmie is just much harder to pressure with a switch in if you do lose.

on a pure pratical fact you are right but most of the top players (and for what's worth me too) just don't like to play a straight 1v1 lead this way, especially when you feel confident in your chances to win "clean". The risk of being your leader the one crippled out and lose the game because the opponent lands the sleep and goes 4 vs 6 is almost never worth it. Alakazam also is pretty dangerous, whenever you have Surf or not, after just one attack, if you full para the following turn you drop to the risk zone of 39% hp, where he can try to Psychic crit ohko.

Some things to consider:
* Eggy can only beat Surf Starmie if it has Mega Drain (or by sleeping it). Adding Mega Drain Eggy to your rotation will probably become a good idea if Surf Starmie catches on. And when that starts happening, your Alakazams are going to be a lot happier.

this is wrong as well, after just one special drop Psychic Exeggutor becomes pretty dangerous (and faster even if both par) Exeggutor Psychic vs. -1 Starmie: 86-102 (26.6 - 31.5%) -- guaranteed 4HKO. Add to the picture more drops or full paras (because they happen with rates as big as 33%+25% each turn) and -your sleep blocker doesn't sleep block-, Blizzard is super necessary to fight back, scaring with the devastating crit chance (and also hits Zapdos too).

* Surf + Blizzard is a reasonable combination. I am unsure if I have ever seen anyone but me ever use it, but I really like it. Try not to expose your set too early.
* OHKOing Rhydon and not missing its substitutes is very helpful.

This coverage is just too inconsistent, Starmie shall never be walled and abused by Lapras.

* Surf + Tbolt gives you 48 pp of attacks. Same amount of total PP as Alakazam or SToss + Reflect Chansey.

Rarely Starmie gets to the point of using all of them, i'd say it didn't happen to me in the last year. And the problem Exeggutor remains.

And to complete the circle here, here is another big advantage of Surf Starmie: it is pretty likely to paralyse Chansey. So if you are planning on doing a lot of damage with Snorlax, Surf Starmie is probably gonna be a big help to your team.

There are much better and safer ways to paralize Chansey that do not require to waste a moveslot on Starmie. Also not only Psychic is the best move to attack Snorlax, but you largely overstate the Alakazam match up if you think that Surf scares him away, not without a special drop, he's faster and can spam up to 32 Recovers which returns to packing Psychic and using that for Snorlax over Surf.

Once you achieve the needed special drop Blizzard just works as well as Surf to scare Alakazam away.

2.You guys rely on Snorlax too much.
The biggest loser with the Body Slam mechanic change is definitely Snorlax. Well, maybe Tauros but Tauros was already so far ahead of everything it can take a bit of a hit..

i can't disagree more, Tauros is the biggest winner (on pair with Chansey). He gained the enormous immunity from Body Slam's para, improving (too much) the match up vs Snorlax to the point where he sit there and doesn't care of any Body Slam, he just has too many turns to crit. Rhydon became close to food and Lapras erased Body Slam from the moveset, Tauros lost just some power (paralizing pokemons slower than him) but gained an absurd shield from slower enemies improving a lot overall. Tauros used to be a bit more under control, today sadly he does what he wants.

As for Snorlax he gained no fear of para as well, so he started to play Reflect as well (becoming arguably the strongest and most centralizing pokemon of current rby ou). The biggest loser is Rhydon because he lost one good matchup of PhysLax (Slam EQ SelfD HBeam) replaced by Reflect who just wins the 1v1 easily, and also the chance to use Body Slam on Tauros from behing the Sub to paralize resulting is a very awful matchup.

Now I do love Snorlax, there may have even been a time when I considered it more valuable than Tauros (I was wrong). But it isnt the only pokemon. Lots of things can switch into a 50% health Alakazam/Starmie/Chansey and mess people up. Zapdos, Slowbro, Cloyster, Lapras, Clefable, Rhydon, Dragonite, Victreebel etc. can all do that job. And Snorlax without Hyper Beam really sucks against Cloyster. Cloyster seems really great in this metagame, use it more.

Cloyster is better now vs Snorlax yes, but he has to pack Rest although Snorlax can force a Par and Rest stall in his face (Blizzard is 4hko). And if Slowbro teached us something is that Resting Water types are food to the Electric Legend. That being said Cloyster has so many awful match ups (as well as relying on a 70% accuracy move to actually do some progress) that i don't see why we should use it more.
My replies were only when i disagreed with you, i like discussing a lot especially when people has opposite ideas.
 
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Hipmonlee

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Oh good! I was worried I wasnt controversial enough and no one was gonna reply..

this is wrong as well, after just one special drop Psychic Exeggutor becomes pretty dangerous (and faster even if both par) Exeggutor Psychic vs. -1 Starmie: 86-102 (26.6 - 31.5%) -- guaranteed 4HKO. Add to the picture more drops or full paras (because they happen with rates as big as 33%+25% each turn) and -your sleep blocker doesn't sleep block-, Blizzard is super necessary to fight back, scaring with the devastating crit chance (and also hits Zapdos too).
Being 4hkoed isnt that big of a threat. Once we are both Paralysed I am pretty confident a 4hkoed pokemon will usually be able to recover against something with a low CH rate that isnt 2hkoing me with a ch. You'll get that next special drop eventually, but I probably only need to switch out of spec drops 2 or three times. You might catch me with a Sleep Powder, but you havent got that many chances to get that right. And all the while I am doing permanent damage to you with Surf, so the more turns you try to Sleep Powder me, the more I am wearing you down. Yes I misspoke when I said Eggy cannot beat Starmie without Megadrain, but my point was really that people think that Surf Starmie is terrible against Eggy when actually its fine.

on a pure pratical fact you are right but most of the top players (and for what's worth me too) just don't like to play a straight 1v1 lead this way, especially when you feel confident in your chances to win "clean". The risk of being your leader the one crippled out and lose the game because the opponent lands the sleep and goes 4 vs 6 is almost never worth it. Alakazam also is pretty dangerous, whenever you have Surf or not, after just one attack, if you full para the following turn you drop to the risk zone of 39% hp, where he can try to Psychic crit ohko.
Care to elaborate on how you would play this lead? From what I have seen in SPL and WCoP this is pretty much what people do. Possibly I am overlooking most of the top players, I have obviously been out for a while..

But regardless, I have kinda two issues with your argument. Firstly, if I am leading with Alakazam and my opponent leads with a Starmie that I know isnt gonna have Surf, then I figure I have at least a 60% chance of winning this match-up. So if my opponent is a good player, I'm not gonna give up that advantage for no reason. You might call that not "clean" but Im fine with it. Note: I am not saying I would never just switch out to a Chansey or something in that situation if I had reason to do so, but Im definitely willing to stay in. But Surf Starmie flips that completely, as soon as I see Surf I have to start thinking about how I get out of this matchup.

Which I guess brings me to my next point. From turn 1 Surf Starmie gives you much more opportunities to do things. Because I am doing more damage, I am always under less pressure so it is always easier for me to switch. Like say turn 2 you SToss me and I Surf you, you are now at significantly higher risk of being 2hkoed than I am. It just makes life so much easier for me to switch rather than Recover on that turn.

The one big nice thing in Alakazam's favour is if you havent paralysed Starmie you can go to Eggy and get your sleep off nice and easy. Which is the main reason I said that Surf + Blizzard is worth using. Yeah, its bad against Lapras, but I'm fine with that. Especially since you usually dont know I havent got thunderbolt until after I have Blizzarded something.

he's faster and can spam up to 32 Recovers which returns to packing Psychic and using that for Snorlax over Surf.
Starmie definitely can kill Alakazams that are Recover spamming.. And it has the same total PP as Zam.. Like, I dont see how your Eggy argument can line up with this defence here. Starmie naturally does basically the same damage to Alakazam with Surf as Eggy does to Mie after Eggy gets its special drop. Add to that the fact that Starmie CHes twice as often as Eggy does and when it does CH it actually does do twice that damage. Starmie Recover spamming against Eggy only has to survive two thirds as long.

Obviously Psychic is the better move against Lax, but it isnt that much better.. And there really should be absolutely no question that Surf is the better move against Alakazam.

As for Snorlax he gained no fear of para as well, so he started to play Reflect as well (becoming arguably the strongest and most centralizing pokemon of current rby ou).
Honestly, I just dont think this set is all that great..

The biggest loser is Rhydon because he lost one good matchup of PhysLax (Slam EQ SelfD HBeam) replaced by Reflect who just wins the 1v1 easily, and also the chance to use Body Slam on Tauros from behing the Sub to paralize resulting is a very awful matchup.
Ooh, I definitely disagree with this one. Rhydon gets a huge boost from everyone using SToss Chansey instead of Ice Beam. Maybe I could agree that Golem was the biggest loser, since now Rhydon's extra HP is really critical against Chansey.

Cloyster is better now vs Snorlax yes, but he has to pack Rest although Snorlax can force a Par and Rest stall in his face (Blizzard is 4hko).
You want to Clamp Snorlax while it's awake. You'll have very little trouble with it.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]
 
I'll reply as well. Cool that you posted this thread. I very much enjoyed wathcing your WCoP games, because I'm always curious how someone who plays once a year can do (so your Surf Starmie mention does not surprise me at all ;]). I think I'd be too rusty to hold up but as you descibed you put in a good amount of preperation, so there's that. Let me tell you that much, I think you did great and your play was in my eyes one of the best in this tour in RBY (granted, I did not watch all the games, but I know how the others play...). Anyway, let me get into the comments about your analysis. I'll use the same method as Troller did when responding to the things you said, I'll just write my answer to specific parts of the post in bold.

1. Surf Starmie is awesome.
Have you ever been in the situation where you start an RBY game and you send out your Starmie and your opponents sends out their Alakazam. You have Psychic and Blizzard so on turn 2 you choose Psychic but then after that you dont get to attack again before your opponent forces you to switch? Because this is kinda how I expect Psychic + Blizzard Starmie to go against an SToss Alakazam.

The problem is that when you are paralysed you can FP on the turns you try to recover. Basically for a recover war, whatever your goal is (whether it is to kill the opposing pokemon outright or to reduce its health so you can switch in something dangerous on a recover) you have a huge advantage if you are doing more damage per turn (as health percentage) than your opponent. You're more likely to force them to recover first and the more time they spend recovering the less time you spend recovering. Paralysis has a compounding effect on your damage per turn.

So the key here is that average damage from a Surf Starmie to an Alakazam is around 35% when you factor in CHes. So on average it 3hkos and 2hkos with a CH. From my experience I'd say Surf Starmie has at least a 70% chance of getting the better of an Alakazam in that scenario. Plus Starmie is just much harder to pressure with a switch in if you do lose.

So I can see where you are coming from, obviously. I'll talk about the Suf set in general below. For now just consider the Zam match-up. Of course, it is better than any other move you normally see on Starmie vs Alakazam. You do 60 with a crit to Zam and then you can bring in your Lax on the Recover, nice and well, and better than PsyBlizz at that very thing. So I can get behind that; not as a standard set to bring to the makority of games, but to bust out sporadically. Still, in the above paragraph you overstate it. I get that factoring crits it does 35% average, but that still does not mean it 2HKOs with a crit, in fact it never 2HKOs with only one crit. So, I see the forcing Zam to Recover more often part, but honestly even with Surf you STILL don't beat Alakazam, like Troller said Zam can drop your Special and it gets even harder. (If Surf would IN FACT be a 3HKO on Zam, I think we'd see it way more frequently, it would be actually good then.
Sidenote: I've tried to cheese on Zam with Starmie lead before, I used a (otherwise very suboptimal) set of Psychic Twave Hydro Pump Recover. With luck you get the Spc drop first (he might use Stoss instead of going for the drops) and then Hydro does 50-60 or something and around 70 with a crit. So if you get the drop at the right time, you outspeed him (even if both PAR) and can net the surprise kill when he tries to recover.


Now, Surf Starmie obviously has some downsides. What I am really advocating for is including Surf Starmie as part of your rotation. And to move Psychic Blizzard Starmie to like the bottom of your rotation (honestly I dont think that is a very good set at all).

Some things to consider:
* Eggy can only beat Surf Starmie if it has Mega Drain (or by sleeping it). Adding Mega Drain Eggy to your rotation will probably become a good idea if Surf Starmie catches on. And when that starts happening, your Alakazams are going to be a lot happier.
* Surf + Blizzard is a reasonable combination. I am unsure if I have ever seen anyone but me ever use it, but I really like it. Try not to expose your set too early.
* OHKOing Rhydon and not missing its substitutes is very helpful.
* Surf + Tbolt gives you 48 pp of attacks. Same amount of total PP as Alakazam or SToss + Reflect Chansey.

Now about the set itself. I've seen you run Surf+Tbolt, which is what I'd chose as well on a Surf set. I have to echo Troller here again on the "Eggy does not beat Starmie unless MD" part. I would definitely not feel comfortable to play around with getting recover through para and a Psychicing (and thus Spc dropping) Eggy which I could only scratch back in return. You're basically forfeiting too much offensive pressure with Starmie vs Egg and give it way too much room to try to spread sleep/para/damage/get an Explosion off at basically any time it wants for me to be comfortable with. This is the main reason I think Surf is in fact not great on Starmie, believe me when I say, I've thought and tried a lot of stuff around with Starmie (including a Reflect Twave Psychic Recover set). It's probably a preference thing, but dropping Blizzard is almost a no-go for me.
Which brings me to the next point, a Blizzard+Surf set on Starmie (if we assume Twave and Recover as given) is a crime in my eyes. Bif part of why Starmie is that good is because of its access to Thundebolt and thus ability to threaten opposing waters.
Even Psychic Blizzard is not that great because you lose (usually) to other Starmie with Tbolt and give up being able to crit Slowbro, which is both huge (while additionally being a bit worse off vs Lapras and Cloyster). But at least you gain the Spc drop ability which comes in handy vs most Chansey and the best move to fight Snorlax with and flip the Gengar match-up around. The upsides are just greaten than what Surf offers, which is the Alakazam (and Jynx) match-up and a OHKO on Rhydon and some more PP. Granted, that OHKO on Rhydon can come in surprising, because people stay in with Rhydon in starmie to fish for a Body Slam or a crit, because Starmie recovers most of the time to not be left at 50%, so there Surf can be a nasty surprise.


Having said all of that, there is another option that people seemed to be starting to catch on to at the end of SPL, but was sadly absent before then: just switching to Chansey. Its damage per turn advantage is absolutely enormous. Obviously you lose the security of having Chansey as a Lax switch in, but if your goal is winning the initial recover war, then this is definitely a strong option.

Switching to Chansey is always an option on t1. The downside is, that they might then change their mind of letting their fast lead take the PAR and go to their own Chansey. You then missed an opportunity to get PAR on their Zam/Starmie. You risk going down to a series of full paras and Spc drops from the opposing Zam or could be forced to switch out Chansey when it's PAR and low in which case you lost quite some ground already. Still going to Chansey has a lot of upsides, especially if that bad luck does not come. The most notable upside is that you are protected from sleep induced by Sing Lapras (which Starmie and Alakazam both cannot block comfortably), which has become super common. People like Sing Lapras, despite Sing being that inaccurate, which makes it awkward for either player, sometimes your only hope is to dodge a Sing with your Chansey and get the Twave off, and the opponent is crossing fingers to hit that (alsmost) coin flip.

And to complete the circle here, here is another big advantage of Surf Starmie: it is pretty likely to paralyse Chansey. So if you are planning on doing a lot of damage with Snorlax, Surf Starmie is probably gonna be a big help to your team.


So

2.You guys rely on Snorlax too much.
The biggest loser with the Body Slam mechanic change is definitely Snorlax. Well, maybe Tauros but Tauros was already so far ahead of everything it can take a bit of a hit.. Now I do love Snorlax, there may have even been a time when I considered it more valuable than Tauros (I was wrong). But it isnt the only pokemon. Lots of things can switch into a 50% health Alakazam/Starmie/Chansey and mess people up. Zapdos, Slowbro, Cloyster, Lapras, Clefable, Rhydon, Dragonite, Victreebel etc. can all do that job. And Snorlax without Hyper Beam really sucks against Cloyster. Cloyster seems really great in this metagame, use it more.

I agree with that one. Unfortunally Cloyster was never really my style, so that is why I personally don't use it. But I definitely agree. Cloyster is especially good (as is Victreebel atm) because people will let their lead Starmie or Alakazam just take the PAR without knowing anything about the opposing team. And usually the 6th Pokemon on teams these days is rarely an Alakazam or a Starmie (which is a bit more common to be fair), but rather one of Rhydon, Zapdos, Lapras. So if you happen to face an opponent with a Starmie/Zam lead and Rhydon/Lapras 6th and they let their lead take the PAR, while you have a Cloyster/Victreebel waiting, they are in for a praying session to miss Wrap/Clamp on a timely turn.

But there are two particularly bad ways this exhibits. The first is you use Snorlax in situations where it would be perfectly safe to use Tauros. If there's a sleeping Pokemon out and you want to switch in a normal type to exploit that, then the correct normal type to use is Tauros. Pretty much every single time. Get your Tauros into games, it will win them for you. Too often I see you guys go to Snorlax in this situation and just get chased away by a Chansey. It is a massive squandered opportunity.

The second is sometimes you will play your asses off to bring in a Snorlax when you know your opponent has a Reflect Chansey and then just switch back to whatever Pokemon you were using at the start of this exchange when it comes out. I was tearing my hair out in SPL watching this happen over and over again. Snorlax works great initially because Chansey coming in vs Lax gives you an easy switch to a sleep user (ideally on the turn Chan reflects). But once you have slept something, you need to either paralyse that Chansey or use something other than Snorlax (or plan to actually fight Unpar Chansey with Snorlax). Or you really are just giving your opponent a chance to take the initiative off you.
Some options:
* Explode with Lax against Chansey.
* Explode with Eggy against whatever the thing that is absorbing your paralysis is then paralyse Chansey.
* Threaten to explode with Eggy against that par absorber, lure out Rhydon or a sleeper and switch in Tauros.
* Use Ice Beam Lax and freeze the Chansey (note: if Chansey isnt frozen on the first turn then it will probably win freeze wars against Lax).

Also agree here. There have been habits going around to play with minimal risk and this includes using Snorlax a lot, because it won't lose much momentum if something goes wrong, because it's just so fat. But in principle, you are completely in the right here, people should bring in their Tauros more, it will achive much more than Snorlax at certain times.

3. Some of you are far too passive.
This is a bit harder to explain. But basically you dont often win RBY games with Chansey. Chansey is there to let your Snorlax or Tauros or Alakazam or Starmie or whatever do the real work of winning the game.

A lot of you seem so afraid of risking any damage to your Tauros (or Rhydon/Zapdos/whatever else) that you get almost no value out of it. You just seem happy to play out PP wars that really offer neither player any advantage. I love PP wars because they give so many opportunities to do things. Its also one of the reasons I like to use Rhydon a lot, its great at exploiting Pokemon with a lot of Thunder Waves to burn through. The times when PP wasting something with the goal of actually running it completely out of PP (rather than just reducing its number of attacks enough that it is afraid to use them) are pretty few and far between, and you will definitely know it when they happen. You would almost always be better off sneaking your Tauros in and trying to kill things with Crits and FPs. Paralysed Tauros will still mess shit up if you give it a chance.

As much as I hate to disagree with that one (I dislike the passive RBY as well), I have to say that a PAR Tauros is definitely no good, not even close to the unPAR version. Especially with all the Reflectlax running around. You do have some moderate chances to kill one with a fresh Tauros, but those chances become extremely small if that Tauros is PAR. A lot of stuff (Snorlaxin particular, but even Chansey in an emergency case or bulky non-Normals likel Eggy and Lapras or Slowbro) fears switching into PAR Tauros way less than switching into fresh Tauros. Tauros really wants to be faster than the opponent, so that nothing switches in and outspeeds it. Not to mention, that even PAR Starmie does not fear switching into Tauros anymore when Tauros is PAR... it's just not likely to mess shit up anymore, and it's usually not worth risking a PAR on Tauros just to break the Chansey or something.

But the real threat comes if people know you are going to be passive, and might start using crap like Victreebel against you. Victreebel is a very scary pokemon that cant really switch into anything at all (except obviously Surf Starmie). But if you are constantly switching back to Chansey its pretty tempting.. I think Persian is another classic example I have seen a few times. I pretty much never consider using Persian previously, but at the moment, it really looks tempting.

Yep. Like I said above in the Cloyster comment, completely agree.

Then finally, I have all these notes. Id be happy to share them, but they need to be sanitised/edited a bit - they were intended for my personal use. And theres too many of them for me to do them all. So I thought I would ask if anyone has any specific games they would like me to give my notes on I could probably clean those up. Or if you have any specific games not from SPL I can probably give notes on those too.

Damn, I wished you took notes the SPL before that, I played much better there than this time ;P
 

Heroic Troller

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Oh good! I was worried I wasnt controversial enough and no one was gonna reply..

Being 4hkoed isnt that big of a threat. Once we are both Paralysed I am pretty confident a 4hkoed pokemon will usually be able to recover against something with a low CH rate that isnt 2hkoing me with a ch. You'll get that next special drop eventually, but I probably only need to switch out of spec drops 2 or three times. You might catch me with a Sleep Powder, but you havent got that many chances to get that right. And all the while I am doing permanent damage to you with Surf, so the more turns you try to Sleep Powder me, the more I am wearing you down. Yes I misspoke when I said Eggy cannot beat Starmie without Megadrain, but my point was really that people think that Surf Starmie is terrible against Eggy when actually its fine.

i guess this is why we don't find each other, you are confident in your odds while i feel very scared in that scenario. Catching your switch out is pretty simple because special dropped Starmie does 0 to Exeggutor, he can just throw 4-5 Sleep Powder then suddenly attack again. 33% of drop is a lot and from -2 the damage starts to get serious.

Care to elaborate on how you would play this lead? From what I have seen in SPL and WCoP this is pretty much what people do. Possibly I am overlooking most of the top players, I have obviously been out for a while..

But regardless, I have kinda two issues with your argument. Firstly, if I am leading with Alakazam and my opponent leads with a Starmie that I know isnt gonna have Surf, then I figure -I have at least a 60% chance of winning this match-up-. So if my opponent is a good player, I'm not gonna give up that advantage for no reason. You might call that not "clean" but Im fine with it. Note: I am not saying I would never just switch out to a Chansey or something in that situation if I had reason to do so, but Im definitely willing to stay in. But Surf Starmie flips that completely, as soon as I see Surf I have to start thinking about how I get out of this matchup.

60%? What? Alakazam has a greater chance to win the match up given the speed control and Surf is just 4hko (improved by crits), one or two crits if not chained won't scare a faster enemy, after one Seismic Toss vs Surf turn you are the one who should start Recovering, Alakazam doesn't forgive.

Which I guess brings me to my next point. From turn 1 Surf Starmie gives you much more opportunities to do things. Because I am doing more damage, I am always under less pressure so it is always easier for me to switch. Like say turn 2 you SToss me and I Surf you, you are now at significantly higher risk of being 2hkoed than I am. It just makes life so much easier for me to switch rather than Recover on that turn.

which is wrong, Starmie needs one crit+one full para the next turn to beat Alakazam. While Alakazam needs a full para that turn and a crit the following, they need the same but Alakazam is again faster and therefore a better critter.

The one big nice thing in Alakazam's favour is if you havent paralysed Starmie you can go to Eggy and get your sleep off nice and easy. Which is the main reason I said that Surf + Blizzard is worth using. Yeah, its bad against Lapras, but I'm fine with that. Especially since you usually dont know I havent got thunderbolt until after I have Blizzarded something.

Starmie definitely can kill Alakazams that are Recover spamming.. And it has the same total PP as Zam.. Like, I dont see how your Eggy argument can line up with this defence here. Starmie naturally does basically the same damage to Alakazam with Surf as Eggy does to Mie after Eggy gets its special drop. Add to that the fact that Starmie CHes twice as often as Eggy does and when it does CH it actually does do twice that damage. Starmie Recover spamming against Eggy only has to survive two thirds as long.

i know i'm getting boring with this answer but again Alakazam is faster, Exeggutor not only outspeeds Starmie but can improve the damage any turn (33% drop) and doesn't care of Starmie's weak stabs unlike the Starmie vs Alakazam.

Obviously Psychic is the better move against Lax, but it isnt that much better.. And there really should be absolutely no question that Surf is the better move against Alakazam.

there's a question for Hydro Pump but it would go off topic. Yes Surf is stronger for Alakazam than any other move he usually plays, but the point is that not only (in my opinion) you overrated a lot the effect of the move (as Lusch said the good niche is forcing Recover not beating Alakazam) but also kind of understimated the big coverage downsides such as the Exeggutor's match up. Psychic is much better at punching Rest Snorlax, without the drops you should rely on 3 attacks with 0 full para+one of them being a crit to win.

Honestly, I just dont think this set is all that great..

i learned the hard way what happens when you don't keep at least one strong special attacker healthy.

Ooh, I definitely disagree with this one. Rhydon gets a huge boost from everyone using SToss Chansey instead of Ice Beam. Maybe I could agree that Golem was the biggest loser, since now Rhydon's extra HP is really critical against Chansey.

surely Chansey is a new good match up, but if we look at how Rhydon was before the change it is in fact a nerfed version of himself.

You want to Clamp Snorlax while it's awake. You'll have very little trouble with it.

what i mean is, if Cloyster gets paralized on the switch in, he doesn't threat Snorlax anymore, so he needs Rest. And depends what trouble means to you, to me rely on Clamp is a very spot to be in.
 
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Hipmonlee

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which is wrong, Starmie needs one crit+one full para the next turn to beat Alakazam. While Alakazam needs a full para that turn and a crit the following, they need the same but Alakazam is again faster and therefore a better critter.
Starmie has two turns to get its crit, Alakazam has only one. Plus this assumes I already didnt crit you the turn earlier. The difference in crit rate per turn is tiny.

60%? What? Alakazam has a greater chance to win the match up given the speed control and Surf is just 4hko (improved by crits), one or two crits if not chained won't scare a faster enemy, after one Seismic Toss vs Surf turn you are the one who should start Recovering, Alakazam doesn't forgive.
60% is my very rough estimate of Zam vs Non-Surf Mie, for Surf Mie vs Zam I would say better than 70%. I dont know what more I can tell you except I have been using this set for over 15 years and it usually crushes Alakazam.
 

Heroic Troller

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if it really does crush Alakazam usually and the set have been spammed for "over 15 years", how (and why) is it not used today by other people? Successful movesets as Double Edge or Hyper Beam Exeggutor become common as soon as they were used once.
 

Hipmonlee

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I assume because you mostly havent been exposed to it. There definitely seems to be a lack of continuity from classic RBY and todays players. GGFan seems to be the only player playing today from when Surf Starmie was common. I guess he just doesnt like the set much.

I suspect the reason it got lost is because Psychic vs Psychic wars became fairly rare when the metagame was much more about having a sleep lead and then playing around Chansey. For a long time people were much more into throwing their Psychics under the sleep bus. Gengar became a popular lead and Starmie started adding Psychic for dealing with that.
 
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