Hipmonlee
Have a nice day
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.
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.