OU The future of RBY OU in Smogon

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I 100% agree with peas, not even trying tradebacks because we can't ban lkiss on lax seems pretty dumb, we (as a community) are the ones who decide the bans anyway, so if we find out tradebacks (except lkiss lax who is clearly too strong for the tier, but we could test it as well just in case..) improve RBY, we should just make an exception from that tier-leading policy and improve the tier

Maybe not allowing complex bans make some sense in other tiers, but in a tier like RBY they really dont (we have too few mons available to use in rby, and banning snorlax altogether doesnt seem good to me)
 
Just want to say that bans on individual movesets (e.g. Reflect Lax) are a shortcut to making RBY seem like an absolute laughing stock. Do people not care that these kinds of bans just make a ruleset seem contrived and illegitimate?

Keeping RBY in SPL is something that's only possible in the short term, in the longer term it's kinda inevitable that it'll get dropped as new generations and metagames arise and displace it. A better solution would be a dedicated old gen team tour, though I haven't considered scheduling and burnout in relation to this proposal (could be too many team tours for some players)

I'd also like to float the idea that RBY's current issues arise as a result of a progression towards a solved state (obligatory note that matchup and RNG prevent the game from ever truly being solved). There simply isn't a lot of room to optimise things further. To me, banning things because you don't like this optimised state is kinda disappointing, almost akin to banning things because you're just bored. We've pushed the game and its associated meta to its limits, and now you want to spit in the face of that progress? To implement massive changes that potentially render the game unrecognisable for the sake of postponing something that's inevitable for a game that has been out for over 20 years, has questionable balance to begin with and can never receive any balance patches or anything like that?

I'd also like to point out that change of any sort carries a lot of risk and uncertain gain. The risk is obvious, you discard the weight of legacy and potentially alienate a lot of players. The issue I have is, what obligation is there for TOs to consider an unproven, untested meta that doesn't have the advantage of being contemporary for inclusion into SPL? It could work, but in the short term it'd undoubtedly be a step back, and I'm sceptical that the payoff would be worth it to recover that ground.

Personally, at this point I'd abandon RBY altogether if it saw the kind of changes described in this thread.

Also I really love sleep in RBY, as I think its strategic implications are really interesting.

Belated edit: Lilyhollow's point below mine is a really good one. If you really insist on developing some new version of rby, it should be done parallel to the existing version
 
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^ Yes, I'm an outsider etc etc, but, to me the clear solution in these kinds of situations is to adapt as a community rather than scramble for rule changes. By 'adapt' I don't mean 'pinch your nose and just keep playing OU,' but rather, literally just play and develop UU or some other similar thing (doesn't matter what it's called) alongside it. And if people really want that in tournaments over and above OU, that's where I'd be trying to throw the weight of the community. It just seems like there's so much history behind RBY OU that it would feel strange for it to be redefined directly.
 
People only think wrap is not competitive because the meta developed for years without it, so people are used to building slow bulky teams and not being punished for it. The anti-wrap tradition is why the reflect meta was allowed to develop into the extremely centralising state it's currently in. Wrap being more mainstream creates a pseudo-triangle because wrap punishes the slower, reflect-heavy teams that people here are complaining about. But fast teams like double psychic or psychic + jolteon who struggle with reflect teams do well against wrap teams. If wrap teams were more present, chanseys will be more inclined to take icebeam or tbolt to deal with cloy and bel. Old school physical lax sets could be more enticing than relfect because laxes will need to damage in one turn before being subdued by cloyster.

I think the misconception about wrap being a brain-dead strategy comes from people not distinguishing between sweeping with wrap, and using it for mid-game control. Wrap-sweeping only works in conditions where other sweepers work too (lots of damaged and statused mons). Sure wrap-sweeping in those conditions is brain-dead, but so is sweeping with tauros or a swords dance. The skill is earning that position to begin with.


On the other hand, using stuff like cloy and bel for mid-game control makes the game far more strategic, especially when the opposing player has a fast team or is using wrap too. The mid-game becomes about using wrap for free switches to set up good match-ups and momentum. A lot of turns become about jostling for control and momentum rather than inflicting damage or status. It changes the dynamics of battles completely because slower bulkier mons like reflectlax become less valuable, but protecting fast pokemon from status is paramount. The trade-off is that you lose a lot of the immediate power in terms of damage and status that you get with non-wrap teams. It takes more turns to earn an advantage with wrap teams, and a single bad turn can destroy your win condition. T

hat's actually why I stopped using wrap-teams: a single turn of bad RNG could undo ten turns of outplaying my opponent. It's easier to just use non-wrap teams because they can be more impact-full with less strategy.

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"people only think it is not competitive because they are not prepared for it"
Wow, really? I could run 6 pokemons with 100+ speed and still think that a bugged mechanics that sorely rely on flinching your opponent is uncompetitive, i could run 6 unaware and say that baton pass chains are uncompetitive. What i find funny is that you replied yourself with your last sentence "it can lose you turns and turns of advantages in one miss" in other words never missing with your very competitive flinching move and if one does you lose? Heck that's exactly what uncompetitive stands for, it takes away the control of the game just to roll dices, if you are prepared you sweep with ease otherwise you get haxed or hax back for 50 turns.
But what really bothers me is how people always state how frail it is as if it makes it any more competitive, then i ask you, if you throw a punch at guy, is it wrong punching or having a good accuracy? Wrap is either wrong or right and win rates should never be mentioned, the argument has never been "it's broken/it wins too much". Swords Dancer are amazing reflect answers and Victreebel without wrap would be very interesting in that regard, we got ways to beat slow mons without necessarly going for the most lazy, braindead and cheap.
 
"people only think it is not competitive because they are not prepared for it"
Wow, really? I could run 6 pokemons with 100+ speed and still think that a bugged mechanics that sorely rely on flinching your opponent is uncompetitive, i could run 6 unaware and say that baton pass chains are uncompetitive. What i find funny is that you replied yourself with your last sentence "it can lose you turns and turns of advantages in one miss" in other words never missing with your very competitive flinching move and if one does you lose? Heck that's exactly what uncompetitive stands for, it takes away the control of the game just to roll dices, if you are prepared you sweep with ease otherwise you get haxed or hax back for 50 turns.
But what really bothers me is how people always state how frail it is as if it makes it any more competitive, then i ask you, if you throw a punch at guy, is it wrong punching or having a good accuracy? Wrap is either wrong or right and win rates should never be mentioned, the argument has never been "it's broken/it wins too much". Swords Dancer are amazing reflect answers and Victreebel without wrap would be very interesting in that regard, we got ways to beat slow mons without necessarly going for the most lazy, braindead and cheap.
You’re only talking about sweeping with wrap, when your wrappers are already faster than everything. Against fast teams you can’t mindlessly spam wrap. If Zam switches into bels wrap, both players have a lot of options. Bel can get a free switch to Chansey, but if the other player reads this they can go to Snorlax or their own bel to threaten sleep or gain control of the battle by wrapping Chansey, because it then forces Chansey to switch to a faster Pokemon. Alternatively the original bel player can keep wrapping and see what the opponent does, but if the wrap expires they’ve now lost control and could potentially be stuck in a bad match up. The point is it’s not brainless because against fast teams you can’t just spam wrap without predicting what the opponent will do otherwise you eventually get outsped and forced out, which puts you at a disadvantage.


It’s also funny you say it’s anti-competitive because it’s the complete opposite. When you play wrap heavy teams you get nothing for free through positive RNG. You don’t get meaningful crits or secondary status effects through RNG. All the advantages you get are through predicting what the opponent will do and using the switch mechanic to maintain momentum by setting up positive match ups.




If something is anti-competitive it requires no variation in strategy between games yet you always retain a chance of winning. OHKO moves require no strategy other than being faster.

If you lead with a wrapper and just try to wrap everything in front of you to death you will lose every battle. You need to incapacitate their fast mons, which you earn through outplaying your opponent. If you’re against slow bulky teams, you have to try get wrappers in on them safely. The point is you have to change your strategy depending on what you’re versing.

When two wrap teams verse each other, the game becomes much more like GSC. It’s more strategic, it takes more turns to earn an advantage and there’s significantly less RNG in play. To me that’s more competitive.
 
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People only think wrap is not competitive because the meta developed for years without it, so people are used to building slow bulky teams and not being punished for it. The anti-wrap tradition is why the reflect meta was allowed to develop into the extremely centralising state it's currently in. Wrap being more mainstream creates a pseudo-triangle because wrap punishes the slower, reflect-heavy teams that people here are complaining about. But fast teams like double psychic or psychic + jolteon who struggle with reflect teams do well against wrap teams. If wrap teams were more present, chanseys will be more inclined to take icebeam or tbolt to deal with cloy and bel. Old school physical lax sets could be more enticing than relfect because laxes will need to damage in one turn before being subdued by cloyster.
!?!?!?
No, Wrap never was banned in first place.
It's always been around with low usages, also because the team that beats it is already being used: Starmie + Zapdos, there's no need to build teams that lose against most stuff.
Wrap punishes Rhydon teams, that aim at stopping Zapdos - it won't stop Reflect.
Also, Reflect Snorlax hits Cloyster on the switch in with Body Slam just as much as Physlax does and Reflect Chansey hits wrappers with Thunder Wave just as much as BeamBolt Chansey does, BeamBolt is significantly better only against Cloyster and maybe Dragonite (if you get to move, in first place).

Besides false statements, the issue still is Reflect Lax, who limits dramatically teambuilding choices.
 

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Wrap was banned from RBY tournaments for a long time in ye olden dayes of yore (I'm talking a long ass time ago), I think it was also glitched on NB to not work properly.

I'm pretty sure other sites banned it as well (Isa's site might have? I think PO did as well for a little bit.)
 

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rby2k10 banned wrap yes and id argue for a time that was the leading place to play rby on - back when the biggest rby tournament ever played had 48 entrants, used seeding, double elimination and pools (i.e. 2010-2011). this was also dre's first community so i guess put his comment into that perspective

PO never banned wrap though


from a rby player perspective rby needs fixing BAD. i stopped enjoying rby very quickly after spl 6 when crystal discovered his thing because the meta quickly became worse, but it seems to have gotten only less enjoyable with time. if the playerbase wants to explore changes its very reasonable to do so. snorlax and chansey are absurd.
from my personal ex-tournament director perspective, no changes to rby would be convincing me to keep rby in for another year of spl. if it would be kept in, it wouldn't be at the expense of another tier, but as a result of the slots increasing from 12 to 14. that'd keep rby in for a while but i think everyone realizes that sooner or later, you need to stop expanding slots unless the community explodes in size. thats not to say that an increase to 14 would be breaching a line, i'd be fine with it, im merely saying that even if everyone agreed rby ou was the best tier on smogon (and right now you'd find many arguing the exact opposite), it'd still get dropped sooner or later.

my point is that changes to rby should be made for the sake of the tier itself and not because of some hopeful presence in official smogon tournaments. rby can survive without being in spl - it has done so before. between spl 4 and 6, rby went unrepresented in tournaments for two whole years, but came back with a field much stronger than in its last iteration and saw the highest prices for rby players ever recorded. in that period the rby community was blossoming, me and marcoasd were on the rise and were just as acclaimed names as we'd be if rby had been in spl 5. official tournament representation on smogon isn't the end all be all and there'll always be a community for playing it, fostering the next big talent.
 
Yeah, thanks for the historic memory which is always helpful but still, RBY post Body Slam tragedy was barely ever played on PO - only during its very first DAYS.
I have made the point that my opinion on Wrap depends strictly on the context, you may not agree of course but bottom line we're discussing about banning Wrap right now and not due to what was happening 10 years ago under different mechs.

I'd also like to float the idea that RBY's current issues arise as a result of a progression towards a solved state (obligatory note that matchup and RNG prevent the game from ever truly being solved). There simply isn't a lot of room to optimise things further. To me, banning things because you don't like this optimised state is kinda disappointing, almost akin to banning things because you're just bored. We've pushed the game and its associated meta to its limits, and now you want to spit in the face of that progress? To implement massive changes that potentially render the game unrecognisable for the sake of postponing something that's inevitable for a game that has been out for over 20 years, has questionable balance to begin with and can never receive any balance patches or anything like that?
RBY before and after 2014 are basically two different games.

In 2014 RBY#1 was solved, after 15 years or so, and everything was fine more or less. At least, nobody was questioning the metagame - yeah, you would get the sporadic discussion about AgiliWrap getting banned, but oh well...

I don't think RBY#2 is entirely solved yet, but most players are fed up already because it only gets worse and worse.
RBY #1 reached a pretty stable state that was also playable, RBY#2 has always been a mess.

Nobody knows yet whether it's fixable or not (I admit I don't like our odds), but as Peasounay pointed out there are guys who just don't want to try which is an entirely different matter.
May it be because of "I feel I can give my best in this state", "I don't want to re-learn the tier again", "we'd lose players" or whatever else, that's fine.
The important thing is to be clear about it, and possibly to avoid misleading points in the discussion: the tier is not questioned out of boredom, it's questioned because it's a shitpile.
 
If we follow thorugh with Smogon tiering policy btw, history shows us that stuff does not get banned solely because it is uncompetitive. ABR touched on it a bit, that changes need to really be necessary to be implemented, and I agree. And we've seen it too. I know we're talking about RBY, but we seem to follow smogon tiering, because we'r eon Smogon, so I'll just assume that now.
Consider bans on Arena Trap in Gen5. They first banned Dugtrio. Then afterwards made the ban "Arena Trap" (to catch Diglett and Trapinch as well). SO this was obviously not a ban because Arena Trap Trapinch is so ridiculously broken. No, we're of course talking about it being uncompetitive. "It takes away a fundamental aspect of the game, switching". So by that logic, Shadow Tag (in a vacuum an even more uncompetitive Ability due to trapping more Pokemon) should be banned as well (just as uncompetitive). It is not. And rightfully so. Why is that though? Because you look at the abilities in the context of the metagame they're played in. In OU you Arena Trap staple like Tyranitar and Heatran, while Shadow Tag does not trap those. (to put it simple, because I'm not a BW dude, bear with me here) This makes it apparent, that something being uncompetitive alone, does not equal there being a necissity of a ban. It is rather the combination of something being uncompetitive AND it being an actual issue in the meta (that does obviously include it being common enough, otherwise it would not be an issue.)

Now, regarding RBY. Like Peas said, we need to figure out what the problem actually is with the meta. And I believe the majority here agreed (if they see a problem at all, which is also not objective btw) that it is the Reflect Normals. Those should be the target of any changes if at all, nothing else.

People calling for a ban on Wrap due to it being uncompetitive. (Note: Those people know that it is not broken, so they have to argue based on its uncompetitiveness) Now... as explained above, using precedant of Smogon tiering, uncompetitive alone does not equal ban, but also the context of the metagame has to be looked at.

And now we have to realize, that cutting Wrap hurts a total of 2 Pokemon total (Victreebel and Cloyster (that is if you count Clamp as Wrap which some people don't even wann do)), if we wanna be really welcoming, we say it's 3 by including Dragonite. Realistically though, it's only Victreebel. So the question devolves into: Does Victreebel really pose that much of an issue to the metagame? / Is Victreebel the reason the metageme supposedly needs fixing? Clearly not. Yes Vic and Cloy usage is at a historical high. But that is not the whole truth. Rhydon usage is at a historical high (while Zapdos being historically low). Starmie 6th and especially Alakazam 6th are historically underused as well (not to mention Gengar). Of course Victreebel usage is as high as it is now. It'll go down again a bit once those trends shift (as they will, because why would people keep overusing RockStar when they have a higher chance of getting destroyed by Vic?)

Victreebel has many flaws (weakness to physical attacks, which are spammed. weakness to Ice and Psychic, probably the most common attacking types out there.) Hell, this Pokemon does not need to be weakened even more. We should take a look as to why the usage of certain Pokemon (slow Rhydon Teams) is as high as it is. The answer is (and here the circle completes): Because ReflectLax does fit great on those teams, because you don't miss EQ or Boom as much due to Rhydon's physical presence and Zapdos-checking ability. (to put it short). Something that other teams Lapras teams or 6th Alakazam Teams) cannot claim as easily. And then we're back to ths core issue that is the only one that might need adressing: The Reflect Normals. You keep those in check (change something about them) and your Lapras usage or Starmie 6th etc will rise again (because they are lowered for one or another reason indirectly by Reflect Normals' presence). Leading to Vic (and Cloy) being even less apparent than they currently are.

tl,dr: Something defending Wrap, and pointing out Reflect Normals are the issue that needs attention istead (if at all)
 
Here is a good question: Where do you draw the line between "this tier needs fixing" and "I just personally don't like this game competitively." ? From reading through the comments in this thread, it seems to me that some users here would just be better off playing another gen. Once your issues with the game have passed a certain threshold, it is no longer an issue of fixing the game, but rather this game just isn't the game for you. You have to ask yourself "If I have this many issues with the game, why am I still here playing it?" None of us are obligated to play this game and once the number of fixes you propose become too numerous, you're now trying to make your own personalized game instead of playing the game we all gathered here for in the first place.
 
!?!?!?
No, Wrap never was banned in first place.
It's always been around with low usages, also because the team that beats it is already being used: Starmie + Zapdos, there's no need to build teams that lose against most stuff.
Wrap punishes Rhydon teams, that aim at stopping Zapdos - it won't stop Reflect.
Also, Reflect Snorlax hits Cloyster on the switch in with Body Slam just as much as Physlax does and Reflect Chansey hits wrappers with Thunder Wave just as much as BeamBolt Chansey does, BeamBolt is significantly better only against Cloyster and maybe Dragonite (if you get to move, in first place).

Besides false statements, the issue still is Reflect Lax, who limits dramatically teambuilding choices.
Wrap was banned in the past and even when it wasn’t there was always a negative stigma about it. I used to cop shit for using it all the time.

Reflect lax gets walled by rest cloyster barring a crit and gets forced out due to clamp. It also has issues with bel as long as bel can get in safely, and a sleeping lax is set up bait for nite.

Reflect Chansey is more problematic but wrap still helps control the match because you can use Chansey as a wrap-pivot because she’s slow.
 
Wrap was banned in the past and even when it wasn’t there was always a negative stigma about it. I used to cop shit for using it all the time.

Reflect lax gets walled by rest cloyster barring a crit and gets forced out due to clamp. It also has issues with bel as long as bel can get in safely, and a sleeping lax is set up bait for nite.

Reflect Chansey is more problematic but wrap still helps control the match because you can use Chansey as a wrap-pivot because she’s slow.
Well, it was banned by a forum but the main simulator allowed it I guess. Anyway, that was a different game.

Of course Cloyster refuses to go down against a Snorlax variant without HB, but if this could work in the big picture we would have always seen a Cloyster spam in RBY after 2014 (which did not happen): Snorlax wants to switch out unless it gets a paraslam which is only 30% of the time, and even there HB can get predicted.
The issue with Cloyster is that it's matchup dependant (the metagame is not as diverse as it used to be: if you want to differ from the S4 forumla you're hurting your chances in the big picture and at this specific time your picks for the filler role are 4 - Rhydon, Zapdos or a Wrapper*) and it either gets on offense to a point where the best counter for it is a sleeping Starmie (if still alive) or Cloyster (and the whole team) get eaten alive by Zapdos.
There are reasons to avoid switching into Snorlax at all: Cloyster is somewhat of a mixed sweeper more than a counter for Snorlax these days - again, Rest is too much of a green light for Zapdos and you don't want to Rest against a Rhydon team where all you need is some minimal setup to go to town.
To put it very simply and brutally, trying to make plays with your filler is not the main reason why you win or lose games.
And that's the issue with things outside of S4 right now: you play rock, scissor or paper, there's no middle grounds. No mitigating factors.

*The fact that Zapdos took a beating in this SPL is pretty interesting though, that's why I think that the metagame is not solved yet. I did not follow the games closely, but this might be a sign of Wrap vs Zapdos matchup being significantly better than the respective bad matchup for the other two archetypes right now (maybe due to an extremely high usage of Rhydon? Aka just a trend?).
Wrappers only recently replaced Lapras and Water-types...
 
Well, it was banned by a forum but the main simulator allowed it I guess. Anyway, that was a different game.

Of course Cloyster refuses to go down against a Snorlax variant without HB, but if this could work in the big picture we would have always seen a Cloyster spam in RBY after 2014 (which did not happen): Snorlax wants to switch out unless it gets a paraslam which is only 30% of the time, and even there HB can get predicted.
The issue with Cloyster is that it's matchup dependant (the metagame is not as diverse as it used to be: if you want to differ from the S4 forumla you're hurting your chances in the big picture and at this specific time your picks for the filler role are 4 - Rhydon, Zapdos or a Wrapper*) and it either gets on offense to a point where the best counter for it is a sleeping Starmie (if still alive) or Cloyster (and the whole team) get eaten alive by Zapdos.
There are reasons to avoid switching into Snorlax at all: Cloyster is somewhat of a mixed sweeper more than a counter for Snorlax these days - again, Rest is too much of a green light for Zapdos and you don't want to Rest against a Rhydon team where all you need is some minimal setup to go to town.
To put it very simply and brutally, trying to make plays with your filler is not the main reason why you win or lose games.
And that's the issue with things outside of S4 right now: you play rock, scissor or paper, there's no middle grounds. No mitigating factors.

*The fact that Zapdos took a beating in this SPL is pretty interesting though, that's why I think that the metagame is not solved yet. I did not follow the games closely, but this might be a sign of Wrap vs Zapdos matchup being significantly better than the respective bad matchup for the other two archetypes right now (maybe due to an extremely high usage of Rhydon? Aka just a trend?).
Wrappers only recently replaced Lapras and Water-types...
When I used to use wrap my team was zam chansey bel cloy rhydon dragonite, but in hindsight tauros is probably a better choice than nite. That team is pretty good in the current meta because cloy deals well with reflectlax and rhydon likes reflect chansey and zapdos. That team has answers to all the scenarios you just mentioned too. The main strategy was to use wrap and status to get rhydon in for free. Rhydon also deals with zapdos, who otherwise counters cloy-bel cores.

This is the other thing about wrap, it allows you to forgo some of the big 4 and not put yourself at a disadvantage. Bel over egg trades defensive stability for offensive capability, and lets you punish every rest user in the meta. Cloy is the lax replacement because it's your check to other lax, and is even better than lax at checking other reflectlaxes. Bel and egg provide this utility whilst also allowing you to control the match with wrap and clamp. Bel and Cloy are decent special attackers in their own right, and rhydon tauros give you immediate physical threat too.
 
That's a good starting point, I'm going to have fun with something similar these days. It benefits from Lapras being rare.
Starmie is a major issue though, even as a lead that stays off paralysis - the usage is damn high.
There's always some trick pushing back to S4.
 
That's a good starting point, I'm going to have fun with something similar these days. It benefits from Lapras being rare.
Starmie is a major issue though, even as a lead that stays off paralysis - the usage is damn high.
There's always some trick pushing back to S4.
Yeah it definitely has issues. I'm running jynx instead of zam to help against eggies, who can be a problem. But this team can also struggle against jynxes if they win the sleep war. It has issues switching into rhydon as well, especially once you've shown cloyster because then you risk eating rockslides.

Starmie cockblocks the team but it doesn't pose much offensive threat as long as you protect your chansey. The good thing about having rest cloy is that you don't get punished as hard for letting in lax with your chansey as other teams do. As I've said before, it's better in this meta because reflect lax often can't break through cloy. I haven't done the calcs but I'm curious if cloy can rest loop +6 ice beam due to double resist.
 
Zam looks better than Jynx for this team, it fits better the pseudo stall strategy.
Problems arise when the Alakazam/Chansey duo gets somewhat lucked via freeze or Egg breaking through (DE is way more common today) - Egg is the reason why Starmie ultimately beats you unless your Wrappers get to work before bad things happen. Sleep Powder is also a punch to the face.
I would not rely too much on predicting Explosions in the long run.

You can Rest loop +6 Blizzard (Amnesialax should use Blizzard because the 3 turn clock on incoming Laxes -after Amnesia- is damn important).
 
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Zam looks better than Jynx for this team, it fits better the pseudo stall strategy.
Problems arise when the Alakazam/Chansey duo gets somewhat lucked via freeze or Egg breaking through (DE is way more common today) - Egg is the reason why Starmie ultimately beats you unless your Wrappers get to work before bad things happen. Sleep Powder is also a punch to the face.
I would not rely too much on predicting Explosions in the long run.

You can Rest loop +6 Blizzard (Amnesialax should use Blizzard because the 3 turn clock on incoming Laxes -after Amnesia- is damn important).
Jynx or Zam lead are the sleep fodder. Its hard to land sleep early in the game with bel, but at the same time it's less important because paralysis increases in value. I often switch chansey into egg because a boom trade opens up my rhydon. It means I have a more trouble with starmie, but there is the option of trading bel for starmie, to open up my cloy- rhydon combo.

I'd say the biggest problem is ice beam reflect chansey. If it gets paralysed and my zam is asleep, nothing can break through it and the only option is try sweep it with wrap-clamp which will likely fail.
 
Is there a tier list somewhere for tradebacks RBY, with or without Lovely Kiss Snorlax?

With no move restrictions, would Snorlax be even stronger in RBY than it currently is in GSC?
 

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So I'm not an RBY player, nor have I really played competitive mons for the last 5-6 years or something, but I feel like theres one option here that people aren't really considering, albeit a pretty controversial one. Revert back to pre-Crystal_ RBY?

Smogon, understandably, wants to keep its rulesets applicable to both simulator and cartridge play. This is particularly important when it comes to the most recent generation, as beyond SPL and WCoP there are thousands of people using Smogon rules for USUM + ORAS WiFi battles on cartridge. If you were to implement a rule or ban that is simply impossible to mimic on cartridge then you alienate a huge proportion of the community. However, when it comes to past gens (especially anything that now has a later-gen remake), do we really have a need to cater for the cartridge community? Are there any serious competitive RBY players battling on cartridge these days?

When Crystal_ discovered the various errors that we were incorrectly simulating in RBY, we felt an obligation to immediately integrate them. After all, we simulate Pokemon, which directly means that anything we do on simulator needs to also be possible on cartridge. However, in this case, the Smogon RBY community are the only people affected by effectively using a Simulator-exclusive set of rules. Yes, there will be people who don't follow Smogon at all who stumble across PS! and might want to play some RBY games with their friends, but I highly doubt these people will care whether or not its specifically true to the RBY experience on cartridge anyway - 99% true is definitely good enough for the nostalgia to shine through.

We were simulating RBY incorrectly for how long, 15 years? And either nobody until Crystal_ noticed, or just nobody seemed to care about it until that post. Again, I don't play RBY so feel free to shut me down if I'm wrong in saying this, but it feels like the community can quite widely agree that competitive RBY was "better" before things like the Body Slam mechanic were fixed. If you guys can come to a supermajority vote that 2014 RBY was better than what you have now, then I personally feel as though you'd be justified in basically undoing those changes. Call it RBY* or RBYlegacy or RBY2014 or something better than that if you aren't comfortable calling it RBY.

At an extreme end it seems like you're choosing between this:
1) Continue on with true RBY rules - the hardcore playerbase doesn't seem to enjoy it as much, perceptions of the format from other Smogon users has tanked, it is potentially just dying. The win in this situation is that you can remain proud that the game you are playing IS Pokemon through-and-through, and if somebody wanted to pick up a copy of Pokemon Yellow tomorrow and play Smogon rules, they could.

2) Revert back to 2014 RBY. It seems like this was a more enjoyable format for most, more "competitive"? Perceptions of RBY were better from other Smogon users, at least when I was still playing DPP/BW there was a significant amount of respect for the RBY community and the metagame. The downside is that Smogon RBY becomes less accessible and you can no longer play the Smogon format on cartridge, but I would argue that nobody is trying to do that anyway. Although controversial, this decision may act to prolong the life of RBY and the happiness of its playerbase.

People are inevitably going to be very strongly against changing cartridge mechanics and for good reason, but we've already set a precedent:
Sleep Clause - Doesn't actually exist in RBY, GSC, ADV, DPP, BW2 - it only exists in Stadium, Stadium2, Colloseum, Battle Revolution which are NOT the simulated formats. We've mashed rulesets together to make something cohesive. The only way to make Sleep Clause work on cartridge is to say "if you use a Sleep move again you forfeit" whereas on PS! the move will instead fail. This makes changes to the way PP stalling works, and in later gens, is relevant when it comes to Choice items. If you Sleep something in Gen4-7 with choiced Spore, you MUST switch on cartridge, but on simulator you can stay in and allow the move to fail.

Freeze Clause - as above.

Bugged moves - Not sure if this is the case still, but at least for a while the move Sky Drop did not work on PS!. BW was not a true simulation of cartidge at the time and nobody cared in the slightest. I am sure there are more examples of this.

There will be the "slippery slope" arguments too but I think this is pretty clearly a particularly a one-off situation. We were playing RBY wrong for years and a lot of people prefered playing it wrong compared to the real mechanics that we have now. We aren't picking and choosing mechanics to alter at a whim, but rather saying "hey that bugged set of rules was actually really fun and defined how we played RBY for 15 years, lets go back to that". The only other time this has happened off the top of my head was when we worked out that our ADV Spikes damage was incorrect, but comparatively thats a relatively minute detail. The other major difference compared to making artificial changes in other gens is that would affect practically nobody but the active RBY community.

Sorry for the super long post, will shut up now but tl;dr don't be overly attached to the idea of perfectly simulating RBY if the format ends up dying because of it. Is it better to truly simulate RBY if nobody wants to play it, or get it a little bit wrong but have the community actually enjoy it?
 
So I'm not an RBY player, nor have I really played competitive mons for the last 5-6 years or something, but I feel like theres one option here that people aren't really considering, albeit a pretty controversial one. Revert back to pre-Crystal_ RBY?

Smogon, understandably, wants to keep its rulesets applicable to both simulator and cartridge play. This is particularly important when it comes to the most recent generation, as beyond SPL and WCoP there are thousands of people using Smogon rules for USUM + ORAS WiFi battles on cartridge. If you were to implement a rule or ban that is simply impossible to mimic on cartridge then you alienate a huge proportion of the community. However, when it comes to past gens (especially anything that now has a later-gen remake), do we really have a need to cater for the cartridge community? Are there any serious competitive RBY players battling on cartridge these days?

When Crystal_ discovered the various errors that we were incorrectly simulating in RBY, we felt an obligation to immediately integrate them. After all, we simulate Pokemon, which directly means that anything we do on simulator needs to also be possible on cartridge. However, in this case, the Smogon RBY community are the only people affected by effectively using a Simulator-exclusive set of rules. Yes, there will be people who don't follow Smogon at all who stumble across PS! and might want to play some RBY games with their friends, but I highly doubt these people will care whether or not its specifically true to the RBY experience on cartridge anyway - 99% true is definitely good enough for the nostalgia to shine through.

We were simulating RBY incorrectly for how long, 15 years? And either nobody until Crystal_ noticed, or just nobody seemed to care about it until that post. Again, I don't play RBY so feel free to shut me down if I'm wrong in saying this, but it feels like the community can quite widely agree that competitive RBY was "better" before things like the Body Slam mechanic were fixed. If you guys can come to a supermajority vote that 2014 RBY was better than what you have now, then I personally feel as though you'd be justified in basically undoing those changes. Call it RBY* or RBYlegacy or RBY2014 or something better than that if you aren't comfortable calling it RBY.

At an extreme end it seems like you're choosing between this:
1) Continue on with true RBY rules - the hardcore playerbase doesn't seem to enjoy it as much, perceptions of the format from other Smogon users has tanked, it is potentially just dying. The win in this situation is that you can remain proud that the game you are playing IS Pokemon through-and-through, and if somebody wanted to pick up a copy of Pokemon Yellow tomorrow and play Smogon rules, they could.

2) Revert back to 2014 RBY. It seems like this was a more enjoyable format for most, more "competitive"? Perceptions of RBY were better from other Smogon users, at least when I was still playing DPP/BW there was a significant amount of respect for the RBY community and the metagame. The downside is that Smogon RBY becomes less accessible and you can no longer play the Smogon format on cartridge, but I would argue that nobody is trying to do that anyway. Although controversial, this decision may act to prolong the life of RBY and the happiness of its playerbase.

People are inevitably going to be very strongly against changing cartridge mechanics and for good reason, but we've already set a precedent:
Sleep Clause - Doesn't actually exist in RBY, GSC, ADV, DPP, BW2 - it only exists in Stadium, Stadium2, Colloseum, Battle Revolution which are NOT the simulated formats. We've mashed rulesets together to make something cohesive. The only way to make Sleep Clause work on cartridge is to say "if you use a Sleep move again you forfeit" whereas on PS! the move will instead fail. This makes changes to the way PP stalling works, and in later gens, is relevant when it comes to Choice items. If you Sleep something in Gen4-7 with choiced Spore, you MUST switch on cartridge, but on simulator you can stay in and allow the move to fail.

Freeze Clause - as above.

Bugged moves - Not sure if this is the case still, but at least for a while the move Sky Drop did not work on PS!. BW was not a true simulation of cartidge at the time and nobody cared in the slightest. I am sure there are more examples of this.

There will be the "slippery slope" arguments too but I think this is pretty clearly a particularly a one-off situation. We were playing RBY wrong for years and a lot of people prefered playing it wrong compared to the real mechanics that we have now. We aren't picking and choosing mechanics to alter at a whim, but rather saying "hey that bugged set of rules was actually really fun and defined how we played RBY for 15 years, lets go back to that". The only other time this has happened off the top of my head was when we worked out that our ADV Spikes damage was incorrect, but comparatively thats a relatively minute detail. The other major difference compared to making artificial changes in other gens is that would affect practically nobody but the active RBY community.

Sorry for the super long post, will shut up now but tl;dr don't be overly attached to the idea of perfectly simulating RBY if the format ends up dying because of it. Is it better to truly simulate RBY if nobody wants to play it, or get it a little bit wrong but have the community actually enjoy it?
You can't do anything in life without principles. It must be asked, on what principle are we changing gen 1 to be less representative of the actual cartridge game? To be more fun? That sure is a very subjective reason to change something. What I find fun you might not find fun. It is a foundation made on sand, and clearly so. The principle for not changing the game is accurate simulation. That is a far more sturdier principle. Objectively speaking it is. Foundations made on sand don't last. The reason we are here is to play a simulation of pokemon.

As for the precedents we've set that you've mentioned: Sleep Clause- The optimal way of dealing with sleep moves is to let players put more than one pokemon to sleep, but if they do, force them to automatically forfeit. I don't see any reason why this couldn't be implemented in place of what we have now. The game would still mostly be played the same as we are playing it at the moment. I don't understand why this wasn't the way it was implemented from the start and would love to have that explained to me.

Freeze Clause- We have two options. Either we have no freeze clause, or we use the same solution as above. This would change the game in a significant way.. For example you would get a freeze, and now you'd have to weigh the risk of using ice moves and potentially getting disqualified, or using a less effective, but safer, move. I'm not sure which of these options I would choose myself, but I lean more toward the former option as of me typing this.

I do not agree with the precedents we have set on altering the cartridge mechanics, because the whole attraction here is that we are suppose to be playing simulations of games we love. Because the clauses above are in a Nintendo 64 version of the game we play, it has made them easier to swallow, but we do not play that version, so I cannot defend them, even though in the case of freeze clause I sure would want to.

To wrap things up, in my opinion changing the game to let body slam paralyze normals is just too arbitrary because there is no strong principle behind it. The main problem with not making decisions on good principles is that sure, you might get your way now on faulty principles, but when someone comes along to change your game in an arbitrary way they like but you don't like, what principle will you use to defend your beloved game? What will you run to for help? I'm sure everyone in this thread has heard a change proposed that they don't like. Take away your principles and your game will become a mess. You think it is a mess now? No. Just wait. You throw away your principles and your game will be even worse.
 

peng

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Those are all valid points and I don't disagree with you. I don't have a dog in this fight so don't feel particularly strongly either way, just kind of playing devil's advocate. Its not a clear cut situation - there's certainly an argument to be made that perfectly replicating RBY mechanics is kinda futile if nobody wants to play it.

On the point of fun - I agree that in most formats that fun shouldn't matter. However, in most other formats you can be pretty sure that you'll always have people who want to play even if its not very fun. If USUM was incredibly boring, you'd maybe get a dent in the number of people playing but there will always be a strong playerbase around until the next gen comes out. Fun in the older formats becomes incredibly important, as RBY simply can't afford to lose a chunk of its playerbase because it isn't fun to them. It'll die.

Look at it like the board game Monopoly (I'm from the UK so hopefully this metaphor makes sense elsewhere lol). At least over here, nobody who owns Monopoly actually plays it the way it was intended to be played in the rulebook - you play that fan-made rule where any bill money goes in the middle and whoever lands on Free Parking collects it. If you play Monopoly the way it was meant to be played, it isn't fun, so this extra unofficial rule is almost universally adopted. A lot of people born in the last 20 years have actually never played Monopoly properly, they don't know any better than the optimised way of playing it.

2014 RBY is strikingly similar. Everybody was accidentally getting it wrong for 15 years, and when we find out what the real mechanics are, we seemingly decide that real RBY is probably just not actually that good, shouldn't be getting major tournament representation, and people are quitting as a result. This is like throwing Monopoly in the bin when you find out that you've been playing it wrong and that the real rules are awful. Surely one of the discussions to have is that maybe its better to keep the game and play it incorrectly, like everyone did, rather than getting rid of it altogether - especially when the precedent has been set by getting the rules wrong in a bunch of other board games too (Sleep Clause). Its not an arbitrary decision to just modify the way Body Slam works, because thats how everyone assumed it worked for over a decade - many many trophies and tournaments were won and lost based on that mechanic, and those trophies are still credited as being RBY tournaments even now we know that its technically not RBY mechanics. Again, I'm not strongly on either side of this but there's certainly an argument to be made that playing RBY with the incorrect Body Slam mechanics is better than the community for it dying, if that is the way people think it'll go.

I appreciate that fun is subjective, which is why you'd need an overwhelming amount of support to pass something like this, but its a discussion worth having. Morals are useless if the RBY community shrinks.
 
Those are all valid points and I don't disagree with you. I don't have a dog in this fight so don't feel particularly strongly either way, just kind of playing devil's advocate. Its not a clear cut situation - there's certainly an argument to be made that perfectly replicating RBY mechanics is kinda futile if nobody wants to play it.

On the point of fun - I agree that in most formats that fun shouldn't matter. However, in most other formats you can be pretty sure that you'll always have people who want to play even if its not very fun. If USUM was incredibly boring, you'd maybe get a dent in the number of people playing but there will always be a strong playerbase around until the next gen comes out. Fun in the older formats becomes incredibly important, as RBY simply can't afford to lose a chunk of its playerbase because it isn't fun to them. It'll die.

Look at it like the board game Monopoly (I'm from the UK so hopefully this metaphor makes sense elsewhere lol). At least over here, nobody who owns Monopoly actually plays it the way it was intended to be played in the rulebook - you play that fan-made rule where any bill money goes in the middle and whoever lands on Free Parking collects it. If you play Monopoly the way it was meant to be played, it isn't fun, so this extra unofficial rule is almost universally adopted. A lot of people born in the last 20 years have actually never played Monopoly properly, they don't know any better than the optimised way of playing it.

2014 RBY is strikingly similar. Everybody was accidentally getting it wrong for 15 years, and when we find out what the real mechanics are, we seemingly decide that real RBY is probably just not actually that good, shouldn't be getting major tournament representation, and people are quitting as a result. This is like throwing Monopoly in the bin when you find out that you've been playing it wrong and that the real rules are awful. Surely one of the discussions to have is that maybe its better to keep the game and play it incorrectly, like everyone did, rather than getting rid of it altogether - especially when the precedent has been set by getting the rules wrong in a bunch of other board games too (Sleep Clause). Its not an arbitrary decision to just modify the way Body Slam works, because thats how everyone assumed it worked for over a decade - many many trophies and tournaments were won and lost based on that mechanic, and those trophies are still credited as being RBY tournaments even now we know that its technically not RBY mechanics. Again, I'm not strongly on either side of this but there's certainly an argument to be made that playing RBY with the incorrect Body Slam mechanics is better than the community for it dying, if that is the way people think it'll go.

I appreciate that fun is subjective, which is why you'd need an overwhelming amount of support to pass something like this, but its a discussion worth having. Morals are useless if the RBY community shrinks.
I'm someone who started playing post 2014 and I really like the game, and to one day go play a game of gen 1 to only realize there has been an unnecessary change to it that doesn't represent the actual game is a bit irritating. That's my dog in the fight. Here is what the situation looks like to me. For 15 years people played a game that doesn't exist anymore. They have memories and history with that game and it sucks that it is gone. That's why we are talking about this. That's the main reason, not the only one, but the main one. If people weren't lied to for 15 years, we wouldn't be having this conversation. We need to be honest about that. People who are advocating these changes are coming from a mostly biased perspective. An UNDERSTANDABLE biased perspective. If I was in their place and had played a game for 15 years, I might fight to have it back too, but that doesn't make it right. I've said my piece on this, and I can do nothing else but leave it at that and hope people agree with me and try to accurately represent the cartridge game that I, and many other people, like.
 
I'm not a rby player and I know nothing about it. I just want to comment on the nature of this thread. It has a lot of parallels with ubers and spl, and I encourage that people start exploring adding slots to the tournaments, opposed to making it exclusive and forcing tiers to come up with ad hoc rationalizations to keep their representation.

I also want to note that trying to figure out what hypothetical metas will look like is entirely pointless. There are at least 74^6^5^4 (I could be wrong with this number) different permutations that could happen in any given rby ou metagame. It's a fruitless endeavor to predict the future states of metagames in 200 words smogon posts.

Just implement it and see how it goes. If it's fun, then keep it.
 
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